Utopia, you are standing in it!

This series of tweets was just emitted by Andrew Sullivan. Since his venue, New York Magazine, didn’t (“wouldn’t” is probably a better word) publish one of his columns a few weeks ago—probably because they didn’t like the subject, which was presumably the demonstrations following the death of George Floyd—I am guessing he’s been at odds with them, and has been looking for a new home. According to the stuff below, he’s found one.

He implies the reasons is not “his editors,” but what else could it be?

All the unwoke are being purged, or resigning. What will journalism be like without contrarian voices?

VIET CONG’S SECRET SUBTERRANEAN BASE VIETNAM, 1 NOVEMBER 1955 – 30 APRIL 1975

During the Vietnam War, the USA had the most advanced military in the world. Boasting technology and resources other nations could only dream of, their entrance to the conflict on the side of South Vietnam against the communist North Vietnam looked certain to turn the tide of the war.

But the Viet Cong, a guerrilla force on the side of the communists who were stationed in the South, had other ideas. Beneath the Cu Chi district near Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), communist forces had been digging tunnels here and there since the 1940s during their war of independence with the French. By the Sixties, however, this tunnel network spanned 250 kilometres (155 miles).

The Americans had expected a war above ground, but what they found instead was a determined Viet Cong force that, despite the…

When I debated Amy Wax a few years back, I noted that one issue with conservative demands to return to a different family regime is that most people don’t want to do it. I noted that in American society, you can definitely join a group with strong norms against pre-marital sex and strong against divorce. It’s called the Church of Later Day Saints – the Mormons. Even though people are free to join this religion, it remains small. According to this Pew report, it’s only 1.7% of the population. And it’s no mystery – the LDS requires a lot of investment in terms of time and money.

I was reminded of the left wing version of this point: socialists will often argue that kibbutz, or communally organized farms and residences in Israel, show that an egalitarian society is possible and it works. My response is similar: there is…

I recently had the pleasure of attending a workshop on Austrian economics at Texas Tech University. The conveners have asked people to reflect on Austrianism and how that tradition addresses sociality. Some of us offered criticisms while others explored and expanded Austrian ideas. In addition to writing my own piece, which uses spontaneous order theory to think about autonomy, I spent a lot of time thinking about the social position of Austrianism within the economics profession.

Classic Austrianism (1800s-1940s): There was a time when Austrianism was a Big Deal in economics. The early figures were extremely influential and their ideas were assimilated into the mainstream. For example, Carl Menger was a big proponent of marginal utility theory, which is now econ 101. Another example is FA Hayek. In polls of economists, his article, The Use of Information in Society,remains one of the most mentioned and it provides the standard…

I thought that I was done discussing the debate on intersectionality theory between Jacob Levy, Phil Magness and myself. Well, 200 Proof Liberals (a new successor blog to Bleeding Heart Libertarians) has a post by Jess Flanigan. She argues that there are multiple version of intersectionality theory and that it’s easy for libertarians to accept the mellow version, which they never opposed anyway, but there’s a serious issue with the more hard core version:

Rojas’s point is that it’s a mistake to equivocate between these two conceptions of intersectionality. If the theory (T) refers to the first definition (T1), then it doesn’t seem like classical liberals should oppose it, but it’s also not clear how many classical liberals do oppose it. If it’s the second definition (T2), then they should clearly oppose it because T2 is directly opposed to classical liberalism. Levy doesn’t make the case that T2 is…