Views from Crestmont Drive

• A reading from Steven Pinker, about progress the MAGA folks are reacting against;
• Double standards about Trump and presidential immunity; J.D. Vance and protesters; DeSantis and woke banks; the National Day of Prayer; another Republican taking advantage of a bill he voted against;
• Items about taxes, the federal debt, Biden’s name-calling, boils, the woke mob, God in the Constitution, false fetal videos, Trump falling asleep;
• How Trump’s ‘higher law’ is a retreat from civilization;

Today’s reading is from Steven Pinker, reflecting in 2002 on the racial prejudice and eugenics policies of the early twentieth century, and how much progress some of us have made since then.

We have come a long way. Though [such attitudes] continue to thrive in much of the world and in parts of our society, they have been driven out of mainstream intellectual life in Western democracies. Today no respectable public figure in the United States, Britain, or Western Europe can casually insult women or sling around invidious stereotypes of other races or ethnic groups. Educated people try to be conscious of their hidden prejudices and to measure them against the facts and against the sensibilities of others. In public life we try to judge people as individuals, not as specimens of a sex or ethnic group. We try to distinguish might from right and our parochial tastes from objective merit, and therefore respect cultures that are different or poorer than ours. We realize that no mandarin is wise enough to be entrusted with directing the evolution of the species, and that it is wrong in any case for the government to interfere with such a personal decision as having a child. The very idea that the members of an ethnic group should be persecuted because of their biology fills us with revulsion.

Continue reading →