Once a State has been established, the problem of the ruling group or “caste” is how to maintain their rule.1 While force is their modus operandi, their basic and long-run problem is ideological.
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Both spouses have become abusive, verbally and physically. Exchanging blows left and right, both literally and metaphorically speaking. There’s no common ground to be found, and even if there were, at this point neither side is interested in entertaining it. And yet a narrative continues to be pushed by politicians on both sides: unity. We must find a way to unify, they say. Biden seems to preach it every single day. “We’re going to be unified whether you deplorables like it or not” is my interpretation of his speeches.
The American public school system fell apart this year. The overwhelming majority of American parents found themselves remote schooling from home. No consensus exists on whether or not schools should reopen, or whether they should reopen only after everyone attending gets vaccinated. Because teachers still get paid no matter what happens, anger and vitriol between parents, teachers, and other parents has increased to a point where the social fabric children lived in a year ago is ripping apart.
Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and Empire
by Pankaj Mishra
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020
218 pages
Pankaj Mishra dislikes the free market, and he blames it for the imperial conquests of the nineteenth century and after. But much of his book can be read as an extended commentary on some remarks by the great champion of the free market Ludwig von Mises.
In Liberalism (1927), Mises says:
One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger
by Matthew Yglesias
Portfolio Penguin, 2020
xx + 267 pages
Despite economist Thomas Sowell’s laconically phrased observation that the real minimum wage is zero, progressive elements within the Democratic coalition are likely to push for increasing the federal minimum wage once Biden takes office. While whether or not to raise the minimum wage is therefore ultimately a political question, a school of thought has gained purchase within mainstream economic circles in recent decades that contravenes long-held classical assumptions about supply and demand.
