Tree planting and climate change

The New Neo Posted on by

If true, this is pretty amazing:

“This new quantitative evaluation shows [forest] restoration isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one,” said Prof Tom Crowther at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, who led the research. “What blows my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed.”…

But tree planting is “a climate change solution that doesn’t require President Trump to immediately start believing in climate change, or scientists to come up with technological solutions to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere”, Crowther said. “It is available now, it is the cheapest one possible and every one of us can get involved.” Individuals could make a tangible impact by growing trees themselves, donating to forest restoration organisations and avoiding irresponsible companies, he added.

I have no idea whether AGW is correct, and I’ve done a lot of reading and written many posts on the subject. But this seems to offer the possibility of a mode of attack that those on both sides could agree would be the least disruptive way of trying to approach it:

New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”.

The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn native tree saplings would naturally grow. That area is about 11% of all land and equivalent to the size of the US and China combined. Tropical areas could have 100% tree cover, while others would be more sparsely covered, meaning that on average about half the area would be under tree canopy.

The scientists specifically excluded all fields used to grow crops and urban areas from their analysis. But they did include grazing land, on which the researchers say a few trees can also benefit sheep and cattle.

Perhaps too good to be true. And certainly a major effort would be required. But it sounds more practical than any other solution I’ve heard.

[NOTE: If you have access, here is the full text of the article.]

About that citizenship census question: moving the Overton Window

The New Neo Posted on by

I recently went into some depth on the history of the citizenship question in the US Census:

I’ve done some genealogical research online about my family, and looked at quite a few census pages in many different years. Questions about citizenship were long a feature of the federal census. Here’s a timeline:

“From the first time in 1820 to the most recent in 2000, when only a small sample of households were asked, questions about citizenship on the census have had a history of stops and starts, twists and turns over 200 years.”

There’s a chart at the link, describing the changes in the question over the years, with examples. It’s clear that this is not a new question, and that even quite recently it’s been asked of a sampling of households (usually 1 in 6). Why it was okay to ask 1 in 6 but not okay to ask everyone? It seems an obviously valid question to me.

It also seems quite obvious why Democrats and the left are fighting this. They are afraid of what it will reveal. Note, though, that the question does not take the form, “Is this person an illegal immigrant?” The proposed question is the same one that’s been asked of a sample of respondents for decades: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” It is ludicrous to think a nation has no right to ask such a question on its census. If for some reason that nation—the executive branch and Congress, not the courts—decides that in practice the question is actually inefficient and/or discourages responses in general, then those branches of government can decide not to use it again. SCOTUS should not be the branch to make that decision ahead of time, based on some theory about what might happen [the theory being that illegal immigrants will be undercounted because they won’t participate in the census].

SCOTUS actually punted on this one, but the practical result is that the delay will make it very difficult for forms to be printed if the federal government decides to include the question, because a ruling won’t be coming down in time.

There have been conflicting reports on whether the government will go ahead with the question or not.

This story is an excellent example of moving the Overton Window ever leftward, something in which the Obama administration specialized. You might even say it was the goal of that administration—the fundamental transformation of America, or at least of the mental map Americans have towards a host of issues.

Prior to Obama, although I’m virtually certain the left was working on getting people to consider a citizenship question to be some sort of offense against the “undocumented,” nevertheless such a question had long been included, although in more recent years it had only been asked of a sample of respondents. It was Obama who changed that by eliminating the question entirely:

Barack Obama was the first President to exclude a question on citizenship in the U.S. Census.

But today, the Trump administration is being assailed from the Left for its efforts to include the question.

The Left has responded typically, with accusations of racism. The question of nationality, they claim, is a danger to immigrants.

Any problem exists only for those people previously known as “illegal aliens,” who then started to be called “illegal immigrants” (the beginning of an Orwellian Overton Window shift on this) and now often labeled “undocumented” by the left in a further refinement of the re-labeling process. But that does not change the fact that the government has a valid interest in asking such a question, and it’s the same interest it always had all the many years such a question was considered standard and unobjectionable.

More:

NPR, quoting the Urban Institute, says the census threatens to put “more than 4 million people at risk of being undocumented.” The headline warns the addition of the question could lead to “worst undercount of black, Latinx people in 30 years.”

But the framing implies Trump is the first U.S. President to include a question on citizenship, when in fact Trump is simply following the established and understandable tradition of asking those who fill out the form if they’re actually Americans.

The charge against Trump is one that demands reframing – Obama was the first to not include a question on citizenship, naturalization, or nativity in almost 200 years. The Trump administration is simply undoing Obama’s 8-year effort to distort the status quo.

Obama’s own efforts to not ask the question was limited to the 2010 Census. From 2009 to 2016, the former president’s Census Bureau had no problem asking anyone if they were Americans on all eight of his annual ACSs (American Community Survey), which targeted smaller demographics key to the success of the Democrats in the eight years of his administration.

The ACS even asked the question in both English as well as Spanish.
American Community Survey (Census Bureau).

I’d love to see a poll asking people whether they believe this question would be originating with Trump—in other words, whether they think the question is new, and if not, when they think it stopped being asked. My guess is that most people have already bought the idea that it is Trump who is changing the usual practice on this, and don’t even realize that the change was really with Obama.

The Epstein mess

The New Neo Posted on by

As it stands now, the story of Jeffrey Epstein is sordid, troubling, and full of rumor.

If you’d like to get up to speed on it, see this, this, and this. From the latter article:

On Saturday, billionaire financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was arrested for the alleged sex trafficking of dozens of minors in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005. In a criminal indictment unsealed Monday, federal prosecutors claimed that Epstein lured underage girls, some as young as 14, to his luxurious homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach under the guise of paying them cash for massages. He then molested them and encouraged them to recruit other young girls to return with them. The victims who returned with new victims were paid a finder’s fee.

“In this way, Epstein created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit, often on a daily basis,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a statement.

The hedge-fund manager and former friend of presidents Trump and Clinton faced similar charges a decade ago but escaped federal prosecution via a widely criticized, shockingly lenient plea deal. After a decade of legal efforts by many of his victims — and, more recently, increased scrutiny from lawmakers and the media — Epstein faces prosecution by the notoriously tough Southern District of New York and a long prison sentence if convicted.

We’ve heard about Epstein for a long time. His alleged activities were smarmy and exploitative, the plea deal seems highly suspect, and the possibilities for implicating others among the rich and famous are enormous.

It’s the latter possibility that has a lot of people salivating. One of the complications in Epstein’s story—in addition to the usual complexities involved in sorting out truthful allegations from false ones—is that some of those rich and famous people who were involved with Epstein may have been on his plane for the philanthropic endeavors to which he also lent his vast financial resources. The majority of them may not have had anything to do with any sexual activities with minors or even with adults, although some may have.

How to sort it out? It will be revealed over time—unless Epstein gets another secret plea deal.

The fox went out on a chilly night…

The New Neo Posted on by

He prayed for the moon to give him light
He had many a mile to go that night
Before he reached the town-o, town-o, town-o,
Many a mile to go that night
Before he reached the town.

Or to be more exact, 2,176 miles, from Norway to Ellesmere Island in Canada:

A young Arctic fox has walked across the ice from Norway’s Svalbard islands to northern Canada in an epic journey, covering 3,506 km (2,176 miles) in 76 days…

Researchers at Norway’s Polar Institute fitted the young female with a GPS tracking device and freed her into the wild in late March last year on the east coast of Spitsbergen, the Svalbard archipelago’s main island.

The fox was under a year old when she set off west in search of food, reaching Greenland just 21 days later – a journey of 1,512 km – before trudging forward on the second leg of her trek.

She was tracked to Canada’s Ellesmere Island, nearly 2,000 km further, just 76 days after leaving Svalbard.

What amazed the researchers was not so much the length of the journey as the speed with which the fox had covered it – averaging just over 46 km (28.5 miles) a day and sometimes reaching 155 km.

“We couldn’t believe our eyes at first. We thought perhaps it was dead, or had been carried there on a boat, but there were no boats in the area. We were quite thunderstruck,” Eva Fuglei of the Polar Institute told Norway’s NRK public broadcaster.

I couldn’t remember where I first heard that song, but I was a child at the time. The voice reverberating in my head seems to be the voice of Burl Ives. And here he is:

Americans are not especially fond of the woke

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are the results of a poll taken last October:

Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24. On this particular issue, the woke are in a clear minority across all ages.

Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness—and it turns out race isn’t, either.

Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87 percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness.

No surprise that Asians would be most upset, but the scores for Hispanics and American Indians (hey, shouldn’t that be “native Americans” to be PC?) are somewhat surprising. Makes me wonder how the phrase “is a problem” was interpreted by many of the respondents. Is it possible that some people interpreted a “yes” to the question as meaning there isn’t enough political correctness?

More:

The one part of the standard narrative that the data partially affirm is that African Americans are most likely to support political correctness. But the difference between them and other groups is much smaller than generally supposed: Three quarters of African Americans oppose political correctness. This means that they are only four percentage points less likely than whites, and only five percentage points less likely than the average, to believe that political correctness is a problem.

If age and race do not predict support for political correctness, what does? Income and education.

While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it. And while 87 percent who have never attended college think that political correctness has grown to be a problem, only 66 percent of those with a postgraduate degree share that sentiment.

Political tribe—as defined by the authors—is an even better predictor of views on political correctness. Among devoted conservatives, 97 percent believe that political correctness is a problem. Among traditional liberals, 61 percent do. Progressive activists are the only group that strongly backs political correctness: Only 30 percent see it as a problem.

No surprise there. Self-titled “progressive activists” are the main proponents—and enforcers—of wokeness.

Going to the report itself—all 160 pages of it, which I certainly haven’t read—I note the following: “82 percent of Americans agree that hate speech is a problem.”

So almost everyone says that political correctness is a problem, and the same number of people say that hate speech is a problem.

Houston, we’ve got a problem. That does not compute.

My guess is that people are defining the terms in wildly different ways. To me, “hate speech” means “laws against hate speech,” a European and Canadian notion that I’m strongly against. But to most respondents, it may just mean “people hating each other.”

The relevant questions appear on page 132 of the report, and they are simple: Agree or disagree with “Political correctness is a problem in our country” and “Hate speech is a problem in our country.”

I really detest the way polls are worded. You might wonder why I report on polls at all. Despite their myriad flaws, I still think they have something to tell us, although perhaps the main thing they tell us is how flawed polls are.

This is interesting:

The vast majority of Americans want to feel free to speak their mind, but they also recognize that there should be limits on speech that is dangerous or hateful. Levels of conviction on both of these subjects are relatively similar among the liberal segments and the Politically Disengaged. However, among Moderates, Traditional Conservatives, and especially among Devoted Conservatives, there is a stronger recognition of the need to preserve free speech than of the need to protect against hate speech.

On each issue, there is a wide gap between the majority of Americans and the views of either the Devoted Conservatives or Progressive Activists. Devoted Conservatives value freedom above other concerns, and are almost three times as likely to disagree strongly with the need to protect people from dangerous and hateful speech than Americans on average (34 versus 13 percent). Progressive Activists, on the other hand, worry that free speech is often a cover for offensive and dangerous speech, and 36 percent of them strongly disagree with the claim that political correctness has gone too far, compared to an average of 7 percent of Americans generally who strongly disagree with that claim

So is the vast middle apathetic about the issue? Uncertain what the terms mean? Sort of interested in liberty and sort of interested in curbing speech that disturbs them—in other words, muddled about the competing approaches and how intrinsically opposed they are to each other?

Offspring and politics: go figure

The New Neo Posted on by

It struck me today, for no reason at all, that the only two presidents we’ve ever had who’ve been divorced are two of the most conservative presidents politically.

And then I started thinking about Ronald Reagan’s children. He had two sets, one grouping with first wife Jane Wyman and another with second and more long-term wife Nancy Davis. Curiously, though (at least to my way of thinking) the children he had and/or adopted with Wyman were Republicans (see this and this), and the ones he had with Nancy were and still are liberals (see this and this).

And this was despite the fact that during his first marriage Reagan was a liberal himself, and during his second marriage a conservative. One would think the political affiliations of the children would have followed more closely the trajectory of Reagan’s change, but it’s exactly the opposite. It was the younger ones who rebelled.

Perhaps that’s a generational thing; they were both born in the 50s and came of age during the 60s, that time of turmoil and rebellious youth. Ron’s (the youngest of all the children, born in 1958) Wiki page says:

Ron Reagan undertook a different philosophical and political path from his father at an early age. At 12, he told his parents that he would not be going to church anymore because he was an atheist…

Reagan became more politically active after his father left the White House in 1989. In contrast to his father, the younger Reagan’s views were unabashedly liberal. In a 2009 Vanity Fair interview, Ron said that he did not speak out politically during his father’s term because the press “never cared about my opinions as such, only as they related to him”, adding that he did not want to create the impression that he and his father were on bad terms because of political differences.

One would think that if anyone could have conveyed the rationale for becoming a conservative and rejecting liberalism, it would have been Ronald Reagan. But it doesn’t quite work that way, does it?

As for Trump’s children, there are a lot of them. It’s my impression that they are all very supportive of his presidency, and that the sons in particular share his political orientation. His daughter Ivanka has been rumored to be more liberal, and I think the rumors are probably correct, but my hunch is that she falls into the “moderate” camp:

[Ivanka] Trump advocates for women and Israel. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, Trump said of her political views: “Like many of my fellow millennials, I do not consider myself categorically Republican or Democrat.”

I bought slacks made out of recycled bottles

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t realize it when I bought some new slacks at Target, but the label says the fabric is made of recycled bottles, to the tune of 60%.

I bought the pants because they fit (not always an easy thing to find) and are very comfortable. Part of what seems to lead to that comfort is the material, which is smooth and soft but resilient. I had no idea it had anything to do with recycled bottles, but if they’ve figured out a way to do that, then great.

They certainly weren’t expensive, either.

And lo and behold, here’s how it’s done:

Unifi, based in Greensboro, North Carolina, produces 300 million pounds of polyester and nylon yarn annually.

“As a manufacturer, we asked ourselves what we could do to be more innovative and a socially responsible company,” said Hertwig.

Repreve was the answer. It’s the firm’s flagship fiber brand made from recycled materials…

The company collects clear plastic bottles from processors around the country who first shred them into plastic flakes.

“We purchase these plastic flakes and convert them into small pellets,” said Hertwig. The pellets are then melted, extruded and spun into polyester yarn.

Repreve makes three types of recycled yarn: 100% from used plastic bottles, a hybrid of plastic bottles and fiber waste, and a hybrid of plastic bottles and used fabric…

“If it’s made from PET, we can recycle it,” said Hertwig. “This is all about educating consumers that high-quality products can be made from recycled waste.”

That article was from three years ago, but I hadn’t heard of the process till today. I’m not sure that my new slacks were made from fiber manufactured by Repreve, but it’s obviously some similar process, and I would indeed call it a “high-quality product.”

I didn’t buy it because of the recycling, I bought it because I liked the pants and the fabric. Recycling’s just the icing on the cake, but if more of this sort of thing can be done, then bravo.

A great deal of recycling is presently so messed up that a lot of what people think is being recycled actually ends up in landfills. Plus, most of the plastic waste causing problems is generated by the third world, not the US. But still, if there’s a way to make use of some portion of what’s recycled and to actually make the process cost-effective—and create a good product into the bargain—I’m all for it.

[NOTE: And here are the pants. I’m almost positive those are the ones, although the website doesn’t tout the recycled angle. They’re pretty basic, but the great thing about them is the fit and the comfort.]

On the Betsy Ross flag and Nike

The New Neo Posted on by

A good take on the topic is this National Review article by Jonah Goldberg, from which I’ll quote liberally:

Nike was all set to release a line of sneakers for the Fourth of July featuring the original Betsy Ross American flag with 13 stars in a circle.

According to reports, Kaepernick took offense because a handful of extremist groups like to brandish the original American flag to make some sort of point about something no one should care about. (I gather it has something to do with how this was “their” country before the federal government was formed. Or maybe, like many gibbons, they just like the sparkly stars and bright colors.)

The thing is, most Americans — and when I say most, I mean, like, nearly all of them — had no idea white supremacists were doing this. In countless news stories, reporters contacted experts who either didn’t know about it or were only vaguely aware that this is one of the things these groups like to wear as capes during dress-up time…

…[I]t’s true that if you search through enough old photos of Klan rallies and neo-Nazi pageants, you can spot a Betsy Ross flag from time to time.

Do you know what else you can probably spot if you look long and hard enough? Nike sneakers. Does that make Nikes symbols of white supremacy?

Of course not…

Nike followed the advice of a man whose business model is to stir grievance and controversy for its own sake. Suddenly, millions of people who once thought the Betsy Ross flag was just an admirable bit of Americana now associate it with hate groups. Worse, other entirely decent and patriotic Americans will now likely start brandishing the flag to offend people who, until recently, had no idea some hate groups adopted the flag in the first place.

The ranks of the perpetually offended will misread this trolling-to-own-the-libs effort as an endorsement of hate speech, and the culture war will have yet another idiotic fight on its hands, and a symbol of the country’s founding that should be a uniting image for all Americans will now be reduced to a weapon in that war.

The left sees that as a feature, not a bug.

This sort of thing has been going on for a long time, step by step by step. There are many who toil in the fields of taking completely innocuous and even laudable portions of American history and making them seem something vile and repulsive, and this is just one tiny chapter—maybe one tiny paragraph, or one tiny sentence—in that lengthy process.

What is a somewhat recent development is the willing acquiescence and cooperation of mainstream (or formerly mainstream) corporate entities such as Nike. I think, actually, it’s a business decision by Nike. They have decided they’ll gain more business by going along with Kaepernik than they would gain by opposing him, and so they are all in.

[NOTE: See also this.]

On the fine art of describing something before it occurs

The New Neo Posted on by

According to the MSM and pundits on the left, Trump’s 4th of July Mall appearance and speech was going to be a partisan usurping of a national holiday.

It wasn’t. It was this:

…[A] soaring presidential address — a celebration of the greatness of our country. “As we gather this evening, in the joy of freedom, we remember that we all share a truly extraordinary heritage,” Trump said. “Together, we are part of one of the greatest stories ever told — the story of America.”

He went on tell that story — from our struggle for independence, the fight to abolish slavery and secure women’s suffrage and civil rights. He called out the many great Americans who “defined our national character” from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson. He celebrated our inventors and explorers — from Lewis and Clark to Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright brothers, Amelia Earhart and the Apollo 11 astronauts.

One would think that Trump’s critics might have made sure they had advance copies before making such assertions. But apparently not. So why did they make them, and risk looking like fools themselves?

I submit the following modest speculations, which are neither mutually exclusive nor completely exhaustive:

(1) In their hubris, they think they actually know exactly what he will do, despite having been surprised by him many times.

(2) They need to fill up air time with something to feed their readers/viewers, and trashing Trump is always good for ratings or traffic.

(3) They are used to making errors which are then forgotten and/or excused and/or rationalized, and it’s on to the next criticism.

(4) They know that most of their readers/viewers were not going to watch the actual festivities or hear or read the actual speech anyway, so they can say what they want about it in order to feed the “evil Trump” narrative and for the most part they can get away with it.

That WaPo article I linked in the first paragraph, and quoted in the third, is from Marc Thiessen. If you read the comments (I read only the first bunch) you’ll see evidence for the fact that those who made the Trump predictions have nothing to fear from their audience in terms of criticism. Here are just a few of the comments:

“Here’s Marc, again, trying to agitate and stir up foment with hyperbole and utter nonsense. I never read his crap, preferring just to come in here and rattle his cage.”

“I didn’t read that drivel either.”

This one, after conceding that other previous presidents made speeches on the Fourth: “Truman, Kennedy, Ford, Clinton, Ford, Bush and Reagan were not elected by the Soviet Union or Russia and whatever they did as president was intended to benefit the U.S.A. and not themselves personally or the leader of Russia.”

“Columnist is just a slavish lackey used as click bait.”

Propaganda works—and although you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, if you can fool enough of them enough of the time, you can win.

For the Fourth of July: on liberty

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited version of a previous post.]

statueliberty

The Fourth isn’t just about barbecue, although I defer to no one in my regard for barbecue.

It’s about liberty. As the years go by, I appreciate that fact more and more, and sense that our liberty is more and more threatened from within as well as without—and by “within” I mean not just those among us who would destroy it for others, but something in the human heart and mind that means not everyone cares very much about it until they have lost it.

In fact, there’s something in many human hearts and minds that leads some people not to care about liberty even after they’ve lost it, unless they’re the ones in the Gulag.

For whatever reason, I’ve always been very sensitive to liberty, very touchy about it. For example, even when I was quite young, I would pay extra for a health insurance policy that gave me total freedom to choose my doctor. This may seem like a small thing, and at the time I didn’t connect it with any abstract principle such as “liberty.” But I had a horror of being boxed in by a government or a business or an agency telling what I could or could not do and where I could and could not go.

That’s not to say that I was some trailblazing, independent, courageous spirit, cutting an adventurous swath through the world. I lived a pretty ordinary life, I thought. I had a husband and a child. And even later, when I went through my political change, I had no idea where it would lead, either socially (estrangement from quite a few people, mostly mild but sometimes severe) or in terms of what I do with a great deal of my time (reading about politics/history, and writing this blog).

One doesn’t always have any idea where it will lead when you take a step, and then another step, and then another, and pretty soon you’re somewhere you never, never ever, thought you’d be.

When I was young I used to assume that a lot of people, the majority of people, felt the same way I did. Not just about liberty, but about a lot of things. For example, I thought just about everyone loved poetry—what’s not to like? I was in my thirties before I became aware that love of poetry was a relatively rare thing. Another thing I assumed, when managed care started taking over the health insurance world, was that more people would hate it and complain bitterly about it—and, if they could do it, would pay extra to get away from it. But I was surprised when so many people I knew didn’t seem all that offended by it, and even those who could have paid more in order to have choice often decided against it. They couldn’t be bothered, and were happy to save the money.

Then, when I was going through my slow political change between the fall of 2001 (post-9/11) and 2003, I was living a rather isolated life in a place when I hardly knew anyone, newly separated from a husband I’d been with for 30 years. I was also recovering from a very painful arm injury and surgery. So the change experience was a solitary one, and I didn’t start mentioning it to people until after it was pretty much complete some time in 2003.

I had somehow assumed that other people had been going through something similar to my political journey, although perhaps milder. This now seems to me a rather humorous thought, not to mention profoundly naive (you might even call it stupid), but that’s the way it was for me. I was truly shocked to be on the receiving end of a significant amount of hostility from a lot of people when I mentioned my positions on various issues of the day, and this sometimes involved friends and acquaintances I’d known for decades and with whom I’d never even discussed politics before or had a single disagreement of any substance.

Talk about an eye-opener.

Now I have a different way of looking at all of this. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday: Thomas Sowell turned 89 recently

The New Neo Posted on by

Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. I’ve written about him many times before. I recommend reading this tribute to Sowell in honor of his 89th birthday, and I especially agree with this:

Milton Friedman once said, “The word ‘genius’ is thrown around so much that it’s becoming meaningless, but nevertheless I think Tom Sowell is close to being one.”…

…[A]s a writer Thomas Sowell is truly the “Master of Idea Density” – he has the amazing talent of being able to consistently pack more ideas, insight, and wisdom into a single sentence or paragraph than what typically takes an entire essay or book for even the best writer!

I’ve noticed that “idea density” of Sowell’s before.

I also wrote this about him:

What an incisive mind he had and still has, and what a remarkably clear way of expressing himself. Several of his books are among the best treatments I’ve ever read of the differences between right and left…

For many liberals Sowell has a special clout because he is a black man of great achievement, and having been a liberal himself at one time—in fact, a leftist—he understands full well what motivates liberals and the more benign leftists, and can write of them and about them and to them with empathy.

That doesn’t mean that Sowell ever—ever ever ever—pulled his punches. Oh my, no! A sharp debater and speaker, he can be seen and heard in his prime on a large number of videos on YouTube; take your pick.

I’ve read Sowell’s autobiography, and reading it gave me a sense of the forces that shaped him into the tough and uncompromising thinker he was and is. But some of it is a mystery, as it is with all people. Sowell just seems to have been born with the stubborn strength to go his own way. That way was a different one, as you will see if you read the autobiography. It led him to, among other things, Harvard (undergrad) and U. of Chicago (PhD) degrees as an economist and then a career as renowned professor, and it led him from left to right when the facts (those stubborn things) didn’t fit his ideology.

The current crop of Democrats voice ideas that just a while while ago were kept hidden

The New Neo Posted on by

Dennis Prager does the hard work I don’t want to do—which is to listen to the entirety of the recent Democratic debates, and to point out some of the excesses.

To take one example:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.: “If billionaires can pay off their yachts, students should be able to pay off their student loans.”

My only response to this statement is to ask, Do most Democrats find that a compelling argument? Do they not realize what a non sequitur it is — and therefore how demagogic?

Billionaires, like non-billionaires, pay off their debts because they do not incur debts they cannot repay, not because they are billionaires. Senator Klobuchar apparently believes that non-billionaires need not pay off their debts. Every Democrat who addressed this issue said American society should repay student debts — which amount to $1.6 trillion. The party of “fairness” thinks it’s fair that every student who repaid his or college debts — and every young American who never went to college — must pay off that debt.

Well, it depends what the meaning of “should” is. All people who take out a loan shouldn’t do it unless they think they will be able to pay it off. So in a sense, students should be able to pay off their loans.

But that’s not what Klobuchar—widely touted as one of the more moderate Democratic candidates in 2020—meant. Let’s take a closer look at what she said:

…[Y]ou have so many people that are having trouble affording college and having trouble affording their premiums.

So I do get concerned about paying for college for rich kids. I do. But I think my plan is a good one. And my plan would be to, first of all, make community college free and make sure that everyone else besides that top percentile gets help with their education.

My own dad and my sister got their first degrees with community college. There’s many paths to success, as well as certifications.

Secondly, I’d used Pell grants. I’d double them from $6,000 to $12,000 a year and expand it to the number of families that get covered, to families that make up to $100,000.

And then the third thing I would do is make it easier for students to pay off their student loans. Because I can tell you this: If billionaires can pay off their yachts, students should be able to pay off their student loans.

So that’s the complete context of the remark. And it makes no more sense in context than it does as an isolated excerpt. It’s actually preposterous for just the reasons Prager says it is: billionaires have a lot of money and families who are not particularly rich don’t. And most students aren’t going to get jobs that make them billionaires, either. So many will have trouble paying off their loans.

If simple economics were to rule, no one would make such loans to students unless there was a lot of evidence that they’d be paid off. But that’s not the way student loans actually work.

Note that Klobuchar leaves out one pesky little detail: how will this be paid for? There are a lot of students in the United States who would like to go to community colleges for free, and to 4-year colleges who will qualify for Pell grants.

Here’s more from Klobuchar on the topic, positioning herself as the moderate—which she actually is, but only compared to some of the other 2020 Democratic candidates—because she’s not advocating free college tuition for all, including free four-year colleges.

Klobuchar also makes it clear that she’d like to offer free college for all, but she’s not a “magic genie.” But I still don’t see the details of how her proposals would be paid for, which puts them in “magic genie” territory in my book. Klobuchar claims that she has found ways to pay for it but as far as I can tell she never specifies those ways.

Let me guess: the same way everything else will be paid for? Taxing those evil wealthy people, and not just those billionares with their yachts? And will those people be able to support all the social welfare the Democrats are promising? And will they decide to stop producing, or reduce their production, or just go elsewhere?

I’m not really meaning to pick on Klobuchar, who is by no means the worst offender among the Democrats. The point I’m trying to make is that the so-called “moderates” at this point are anything but, and that’s even compared to just one short decade ago.

Remember Joe the Plumber and Obama’s “spread the wealth” remark? In 2008 it was considered by many people to be a somewhat shocking (and revealing) indication of Obama’s socialist propensities, intentions which he had mostly tried to cover up during the campaign. Remarks about “spreading the wealth” were considered something that a candidate couldn’t admit to the American public or that public would reject that candidate.

But now? What Obama said in 2008, and backtracked from, would be considered mainstream now. That’s how quickly things have changed.

[NOTE: Proposals such as Klobuchar’s and the even more extreme suggestions of some other candidates would have the added benefit to the left of shoring up endangered academic institutions that serve as leftist indoctrination camps. The left needs the colleges, and at this point many colleges need the left to bail them out.]