LAST WEEK The Waitangi Tribunal released Tino Rangatiratanga me te Kāwanatanga: The Report on Stage 2 of the Te Paparahi o Te Raki Inquiry (Wai 1040). For the sake of brevity, I shall refer to this spawling document as the Northland Report. Sadly, the Report seems destined to make the already fraught relationship between Māori…
CHRIS TROTTER: Contested ground
CHRIS TROTTER: Contested ground
12 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, economic history, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: Age of Enlightenment, constitutional law, free speech, political correctness, regressive left
Shit or go blind? You did neither.
12 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, television, TV shows Tags: Age of Enlightenment, free speech, political correctness, regressive left

The Woke are increasingly reminding me of this classic Far Side cartoon, in that their “solutions” are exactly the same for every problem, including also being a single word,. The Veternarian pictured below also obviously doesn’t believe in fixing disabilities – although she’s at least not prepared to leave them to suffer in order to […]
Shit or go blind? You did neither.
JERRY COYNE: A powerful University dean in New Zealand touts merging higher education with indigenous spirituality
09 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in economics of education, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: Age of Enlightenment, conjecture and refutation philosophy of science, free speech, political correctness, regressive left

Jerry Coyne writes – This article from New Zealand’s Newsroom site was written by Julie Rowland, the deputy dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Auckland as well as a geologist and the Director of the Ngā Ara Whetū | Centre for Climate, Biodiversity & Society. In other word, she’s a scientist. One key to […]
JERRY COYNE: A powerful University dean in New Zealand touts merging higher education with indigenous spirituality
Douglas Murray on the West
07 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: Age of Enlightenment, free speech, political correctness, regressive left
“Today the West faces challenges without and threats within. But no greater threat exists than that which comes from people inside the West intent on pulling apart the fabric of our societies, piece by piece. By assaulting the majority populations in these countries. By saying that our histories are entirely reprehensible and have nothing good […]
Douglas Murray on the West
MICHAEL BASSETT: MODERN MAORI MYTHS
06 Dec 2023 1 Comment
in discrimination, economic history, economics of education, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: Age of Enlightenment, constitutional law, free speech, political correctness, regressive left
Many of the comments about the Coalition’s determination to wind back the dramatic Maorification of New Zealand of the last three years would have you believe the new government is engaged in a full-scale attack on Maori. In reality, all that is really happening is that ministers are stopping the crusade waged by the Ardern/Hipkins…
MICHAEL BASSETT: MODERN MAORI MYTHS
Chuck Schumer delivers Senate speech on antisemitism
04 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of crime, economics of education, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: political correctness, racial discrimination, regressive left, The Holocaust
You can read Chuck Schumer’s recent op-ed in the NYT, “What American Jews fear most,“, or you can watch his 40-minute speech on the topic given in the Senate (video below). I recommend listening to the speech, of which the op-ed is a short distillation. Alternatively, read the transcript, which you can find here. Schumer […]
Chuck Schumer delivers Senate speech on antisemitism
‘Antisemitism’ is an ideological abstraction that leftists reject….
04 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in economics of education, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: free speech, political correctness, racial discrimination, regressive left

… because it appears to refer to a certain type of person and behavior that their ideological purity tells them that they couldn’t be. They’re not the sorts of people who talk about ‘jewing down’ or believe in the inferiority of races and therefore, even while they’re smashing Jewish store windows and attacking a Holocaust […]
‘Antisemitism’ is an ideological abstraction that leftists reject….
The Irish Government Moves to Crackdown on Free Speech After Anti-Immigration Riot
02 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics Tags: Age of Enlightenment, free speech, political correctness, regressive left

We have previously discussed the growing anti-free speech movement in Ireland. As discussed in The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in the Age of Rage, these crackdowns on free speech tend to come with periods of public panic or anger. Anti-free speech advocates use such periods as opportunities to get the public to surrender this core […]
The Irish Government Moves to Crackdown on Free Speech After Anti-Immigration Riot
The media wants a hate crime
02 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics Tags: law and order, political correctness, regressive left
You have surely heard that three young Palestinian-Americans, Kinnan Abdalhamid, Hisham Awartani, and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, were shot on November 25 in Burlington, Vermont. Two of the injured were American citizens; the other a legal resident. The alleged shooter, Jason Eaton, was captured and appears to be mentally ill. From the NYT: They were shot […]
The media wants a hate crime
Lord Hannan, Daniel speaks about equality, the Treaty and the Taxpayers’…
01 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, discrimination, economic history, economics of crime, gender, history of economic thought, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice Tags: Age of Enlightenment, free speech, political correctness, regressive left
The double irony of classes voluntarily segregated by race
01 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in economics of education Tags: free speech, political correctness, racial discrimination, regressive left

Here we have a news piece (not an op-ed) from a recent Wall Street Journal, reporting that a high school in the Chicago-adjacent town of Evanston, Illinois, is offering voluntarily race-segregated classes as a way to achieve “equity”. These classes, called “affinity classes”, are of course optional, because mandated race-segregated classes are illegal. The claim […]
The double irony of classes voluntarily segregated by race
Censorship in science: a new paper and analysis
29 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in economics of education Tags: free speech, political correctness, regressive left

Well, a paper criticizing the “woke” aspects of science has finally appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, though peer-reviewed critiques of scientific censorship or ideological pressure have appeared in the Journal of Controversial Ideas (a push for judging science on merit rather than ideology), and in the Skeptical Inquirer (an explication of how evolutionary biology […]
Censorship in science: a new paper and analysis
Sunstein redefines “Liberal”
23 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in liberalism, libertarianism, Marxist economics Tags: Age of Enlightenment, free speech, political correctness, regressive left
Cass Sunstein has a lovely New York Times essay that tries to give us back the word “Liberal.” I hope it works. “Liberal” from “Libertas” means, at bottom, freedom. In the 19th century, “liberals” were devoted to personal, economic, and increasing social freedom from government restraint. “Conservatives” wanted to maintain aristocratic privileges, and government interventions in the traditional way…
Sunstein redefines “Liberal”
Pamela Paul on the problem with “progressives”
22 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in liberalism, Marxist economics Tags: Age of Enlightenment, free speech, political correctness, regressive left

I hate writing the word “progressives” when I refer to people like AOC and her squad, and especially to people like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, whom I see as regressives, hoping for some form of Islamism to infect America. But the “progressives” are also regressive in not adopting the values of classical liberalism, including…
Pamela Paul on the problem with “progressives”

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