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Islam and the Future of Tolerance: The Movie

If you are one of those anti-liberal sheep-like incoherent intersectional fuckwits who participated in- or uncritically supported- a mass march co-organized by a pro-Hamas Sharia law enthusiast, then this project won’t be for you. On the other hand if you are genuinely committed to liberalism (and women’s rights) please consider supporting this film. Ayaan Hirsi Alicultural marxismilliberalismislamLiberalismMaajid Nawazregressive leftsam harrisSarah Haider

Mensch

Maajid Nawaz asks “Why Did Obama Pander to the UN’s Stunning Anti-Israel Bias?“ Sneering from the comfort of their keyboards, Western leftists have grown complacent with the luxury of free speech. They have never had to suffer the wrath of an Arab dictator’s torture cells. But anyone who has ever been unfortunate enough to have…

Michael Oakeshott

Thinking of this great subtle humane thinker — his birth and death dates are close together (December 11, 1901 — December 19, 1990) — whose work stands as one of the greatest challenges to salvation peddlers. For a freebie overview check out Terry Nardin’s SEP entry and two collections — Paul and my Penn State volume and…

The wrong anti poverty recipes of the left

The always challenging and informative Deirdre McCloskey one of the few taking on the tired, false and persistent inequality memes. Of course what the regressive left have done (and incoherently so) is to conflate patterns of inequality (access) with patterns of inequity (outcome). Worldwide even the income gap between rich and poor has radical [sic] declined. If you…

Skin in the Game

In light of the election result I’m amazed by the intelligentsia’s profound tone deafness in the run up to what has just occurred. As I’ve said umpteen times before (deploying surfing analogy), they superficially look at the swell and not the undercurrents. One can’t help feeling a little schadenfreude (I made a few bob at the…

Identity Politics or Marx vs. Mill

Here are two of the more sober, clear and nuanced analyses of the current socio-cultural-political shit-storm. The first from one of the few on the Left still retaining some semblance of neuronal activity — Jonathan Rutherford (Ben Cobley is also a very thoughtful and honest commentator). The only thing I take issue with is that progressive politics is NOT liberal —…

Why Not Viewpoint Diversity?

Social psychologist Clay Routledge guest blogging in Scientific American. The tendency that Routledge points to is tone deaf to perfectly legitimate epistemic possibilities (meaningful viewpoint diversity) but we have long since pathologized ideology in a sad grab for power and influence (I have a chapter on this topic coming shortly). Surely the Overton window must be wide open…