More things I believe
Even more has become clear to me lately:
■ That Joe Biden shouldn’t apologize for supporting the 1994 crime bill because the primary function of government is to protect people from other people, which the bill admirably did.
In essence, criticism of the bill is built around the dubious assumption that people living in crime-infested neighborhoods would have been better off if criminals had been left on the streets instead of put behind bars.
Critics also get it backwards by confusing the independent and dependent variables—“mass incarceration” didn’t destroy the black family, the disintegration of the black family caused an upsurge in (mostly blackon-black) crime and what came to be called mass incarceration.
■ That the reasoning behind Biden’s flip-flop on the Hyde Amendment— that a right is meaningless unless people have the means of exercising it (hence the claimed need to use taxpayer dollars to finance abortions)—only holds water until you try to apply it to other, more firmly established rights.
Does, for instance, the Second Amendment mean that government has an obligation to buy a Glock G19 for anyone who can’t afford one? And does the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press require government to buy everyone their own newspaper?
■ That political correctness has undermined public discourse by encouraging posturing rather than thinking. We have effectively incentivized the dissemination of “correct” but illogical arguments because those making them can expect to receive approval from woke virtue-signalers and protection from criticism.
Put differently, people are increasingly rewarded for saying dumb things that others can’t say are dumb.
As Charles Murray famously noted, when you subsidize something you get more of it, and we are now subsidizing and getting more ludicrous ideas (that gender is a social construct, that we should “always believe the woman,” that eating at Taco
Bell is a form of cultural appropriation, etc.).
■ That it was amusing to see Disney CEO Bob Iger threatening to boycott the state of Georgia because of its “fetal heartbeat” bill.
Whatever one thinks of Georgia’s pro-life law, or abortion more broadly, there is an obvious contradiction in Disney running a huge resort in the police state of communist China, which Iger not too long ago called the company’s “greatest opportunity since buying land in Florida,” and filming in repressive Middle Eastern countries where women lack rights of any kind, as Disney also frequently does, but being too dainty to operate in an American state because of its restrictive abortion regime.
The intriguing question might be why Iger, a presumably intelligent person, would lay himself so open to charges of hypocrisy by saying such things; that none of his aides pulled him aside beforehand and mentioned the China and Middle East stuff before he spouted off about Georgia.
Or, again, when it comes to virtue-signaling, maybe logic and consistency don’t matter. It’s the politically correct sentiment that counts.
■ That it is distressing to see the left increasingly abandon the principle of free speech on the grounds that disagreeable speech constitutes a form of violence that makes members of “marginalized” groups feel unsafe.
It is also ironic because, as Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution puts it, “Far from serving as an instrument of oppression and a tool of white male privilege, free speech has always been a weapon of those challenging the authorities—on the side of persecuted minorities, dissenters, iconoclasts, and reformers. In the United States, free speech has been essential to abolition, woman’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, feminism, and gay rights.”
None of the movements Berkowitz cites would have been successful without the robust tradition of respect for free speech that the left now seeks to undermine.
Censorship is the ally of dictatorships that hope to suppress challenges to the existing order. Free speech is the ally of people seeking change in the form of equal rights and justice.
■ That something has gone wrong in higher education when research studies and employer surveys indicate college students are studying less, learning less, and graduating with weaker writing and critical reasoning skills, but college grade point averages (GPAs) continue to go up.
Many of our colleges are now dependent for financial survival on “retaining” as many of their students as possible, which in practice means keeping enrolled large numbers with poor levels of preparation and only a cursory interest in studying; a circumstance which can’t help but lead to reduced rigor, lower expectations, and easier grading.
■ That it is refreshing to see the new CEO of ESPN, Jimmy Pitaro, acknowledge that people don’t want political commentary mixed in with their sports.
Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage argued that producers should focus on doing what they do better than other producers, and ESPN most certainly doesn’t do politics better than outlets that specialize in doing politics (just as those outlets don’t do sports better than ESPN).
No, everything doesn’t have to be politicized, and we aren’t wayward children in need of hectoring about racism or sexism from our self-appointed moral superiors while trying to watch a ballgame.
When we seek political instruction it might also make more sense to turn to learned scholars of political theory or history rather than the guy reporting the hockey scores on Sportscenter.