“Antisemitism, like racism…requires intent,” Ben Shapiro declared. Shapiro was defending his decision to hire actor Gina Carano to a movie deal, despite the fact that she had shared an ugly antisemitic meme on social media. The meme showed old men with piles of money conspiring to control the globe;
We live in a time when critics deride “cancel culture” as narrowing the range of acceptable opinions. When others contend that what is called “cancel culture” is merely a justified reaction to hate speech and bigoted views that for too long went unchallenged. When social media is flooded with trolling,
Public wellbeing is being reimagined before our eyes. In Minneapolis, the city committee has chosen to end its police department. A growing number of urban areas, including Los Angeles and New York City, have focused on defunding its police departments and reinvesting the cash in less developed communities. Additionally, regions
Most parents, and most adults, don’t like to think about parents as tyrants. Usually instead parents are framed as selfless and hard-working, while children are framed as entitled and needy. Kids are lovable, but also demanding and draining. Parents, we’re told in sitcoms and in parenting advice columns,
“What happened to Brock??” I will never forget the moment I saw these words. On Monday morning more than two years ago now, I was walking towards my son’s daycare to drop him off that morning, and I had checked my phone and seen that there was an unread
In terms of economic progress, today’s capitalist-based format, which has triumphed in many corners of the globe, is preferable to an imaginary world full of closed, state-run economies and Soviet imitators. However, the case for certain trade policies, regimes, and norms is often overstated by market liberals who rush
When it comes to gender confirmation surgery, insurance coverage can be a difficult web of hypocrisy to weave through. Transgender men and non-binary people, such as myself, experience numerous roadblocks from insurance companies for gender-affirming procedures and are commonly denied coverage for additional “cosmetic” costs. Meanwhile, cisgender women are able
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own
It’s an article of faith among some anarchists and authoritarians that voting is an irrational action. There’s a proof, somewhere, in a book—was it Democracy and Decision by Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky? or was it The Ethics of Voting by Jason Brennan? Brennan somebody—anyway, everyone
[The following came out of an email conversation between Martin Gurri and Adam Gurri that took place January 16–18 of this year. The topic of the conversation was Adam Gurri’s essay What Is Liberal Democracy?] Hey Adam, I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your
“[M]y hunch is that Western social and political thought may have had the last conceptual revolution it needs,” Richard Rorty wrote. “J.S. Mill’s suggestion that governments devote themselves to optimizing the balance between leaving people’s lives alone and preventing suffering,” he went on, “seems to me
The Great Migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow South was a monumental event in American history. The character of the country as a whole was, arguably, transformed. Volumes have been published on its sweeping impact, but Resisting Segregation by Susan Kaeser tells the story of what happened in