Luxury Beliefs
There are all kinds of ideas and policies that would have bad effects if implemented. But there is a special class of bad ideas and policies that proliferate in good part because those who hold them, being insulated from their effects, have never seriously thought about the consequences that would ensue from their implementation. The reason why the concept of luxury beliefs has resonated so widely is that it gives a name to people who treat as a parlor game questions that potentially have very serious consequences—just not for themselves.
Yasha Mounk, Luxury Beliefs Are Real.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the young man who coined this phrase. It strikes me as analogous to the whoring and wenching of the rich and famous which does not, shall we say, translate well to kids in The Projects (but is more like a transgressive raised-middle-finger than a “belief”).
The Hive Mind
Consider this ominous anecdote from Steven Mintz, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin:
I require substantial writing in my 400-person U.S. history survey course—but now I largely receive 400 variations on the same essay. The wording, structure, transitions, tone, even the closing sentences are largely identical.
This is eerily like the zombie-ish characters in Pluribus, who all say the exact same thing.
But in Mintz’s case, this is real behavior from real students. They have voluntarily abandoned their individual opinions and embraced the hive mind.
And the hive mind is available to all of them via Chat GPT.
…
I actually take some solace in TV series such as Pluribus and Severance. They show how anxious we are about this threat. At some deep level in our souls, we know that the destruction of our autonomy and selfhood is not a good thing.
It isn’t progress. It isn’t utopia. It isn’t liberation.
And that is the first step in escaping the ant hill. The next step is to bring others along with us.
This is why I keep talking about a New Romanticism (see here and here). That is our counter-offensive, and it’s already starting.
Ted Gioia, The New Anxiety of Our Time Is Now on TV (bold added)
Fundamental law
Ultimately, however, constitutionalism means that society must accept an unpopular policy that respects constitutional limits over a popular policy that violates them. The very foundation of constitutionalism is that certain fundamental protections—whether for free speech or the separation of powers—must be beyond the reach of popular majorities. There will almost always be some policy that is popular but unconstitutional.
Andrew O’Donohue on “court-baiting.”
The Reality of Irreligious Violence
The shift from church power to state power is not the victory of peaceable reason over irrational religious violence. The more we tell ourselves it is, the more we are capable of ignoring the violence we do in the name of reason and freedom.
William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence.
I have published this on several Sundays over the years, I’m sure, but with our POTUS and ever-so-manly-and-full-of-lethality “Secretary of War” gleefully murdering supposed drug dealers in the Caribbean in the name of fighting “narco-terrorism,” it seems like a worthy weekday reminder now.
As a Chosen People with what Niebuhr refers to as a “Messianic consciousness,” Americans came to see themselves as set apart, their motives irreproachable, their actions not to be judged by standards applied to others.
Andrew Bacevich in his Introduction to a 2008 University of Chicago Edition of Rheihold Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History.
Shorts
- What’s important to notice is that it isn’t, and never was, “Orthodoxy is masculine.” It only felt masculine, in comparison with the general run of American churches. (Frederica Matthewes-Green)
- Put someone with a complex about not being respected in charge of an agency with guns and you’re asking for trouble. (Nick Catoggio, A Few Bad Men)
- The problem is not so much that public policy has failed as that it has succeeded at the wrong things. (Oren Cass, The Once and Future Worker)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 