Lat’s Fed Soc would offer little to the right (who couldn’t have confidence in its members on important political questions decided by the judiciary), and still wouldn’t appeal to the left (who always pick nominees who will side with them politically).
2/5
Further, Lat’s Fed Soc, by shunning anything seen as political, would invariably converge with the (leftwing) political norms of law schools—rendering it nominally apolitical, but practically just another variant of the ubiquitous professional orgs in left-dominated fields.
3/5
It’s unclear if it’s even possible for the law—especially of the sort Fed Soc focuses on—to be apolitical. Certainly, apolitical ideals are not what motivate most students to join Fed Soc. And as politicization is increasingly forced on us, this will become even more true.
4/5
An organization that stands for nothing sufficiently distinct will have no constituency and no reason to exist.
In sum, Lat’s proposal for the Fed Soc is a recipe for irrelevance.
5/5
Correction: It would not become irrelevant; it would be harmful to the right, misleading students and sucking donor dollars for years until they come to terms with its impotence.
All who care about @FedSoc must recognize any push in this direction poses an existential threat.
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Given this record, shouldn't we reconsider the assumption that political "interference" is necessarily bad?
'"Yes, they were interfered with politically," said Lawrence Gostin... "But that’s not the only reason CDC didn’t perform optimally during COVID-19."'
A competent administration—one strong on common sense and a savvy understanding of risk—should exercise firm oversight over bureaucracies, recognizing their institutional biases and blind spots and treating their recommendations as only one of many factors.
By helping spare elite proponents of mob-inciting ideology such pain, we only prolong a trend that harms many ordinary people, such as this utility worker, who can less afford the cost and have fewer blue-checks rushing to their defense. ... nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdg…
The tide may actually turn—to a full rejection of this mob-inciting ideology, not just isolated forgiveness—when its elite proponents see their own friends destroyed by such mobs and personally feel the risk.
Radical thought: I’d always reflexively dismissed objections to usury, like any good Econ 101 student. But Plato’s objection to lending “without sharing risk” with the borrower—rather than to passive investment itself—recently stood out to me.
Maybe there are lessons for us. 1/4
@nntaleb has similarly noted that usury prohibitions in Islamic finance drove a more robust sharing of risk.
Such policies need not prevent the productive investment of capital (or return to the investor), but rather may encourage better arrangements of that investment. 2/4
In a society beset by financialization, perhaps policies—including usury restrictions—that discourage lending relative to equity investments would push a model of finance more focused on partnering with—and investing in—people than optimizing and levering assets. 3/4
I get that many evangelical elites dislike Pentecostalism, but it’s interesting to see them so focused on their faults here on this one issue, after rarely attacking them.
Even less congruent is the way many of these same evangelical elites (though I don’t know about Erick) have celebrated the church of the Global South—where Pentecostalism is particularly prevalent—even describing it as the future of Christianity.
I also wonder if the mockery of Pentecostal practices is as much about class as it is theology. Will some—eg @DavidAFrench—who mock them when they involve Trump be as eager to mock black Pentecostal churches where similar practices prevail?
First off, LOL at talk of a "coup." Media narrative-pushing has become absurd.
There were some terrible events, including the death of the policeman. Any serious violent crimes should be prosecuted. 1/12
The vast majority of people there were simply peacefully protesting. Some broke the law. As with any protest, any vandalism or trespass was bad and should be treated in line with similar acts at other protests. 2/12
We need details on who did what. It appears the worst activities were committed by a small number of people, and we need to know who they were and what exactly they did. 3/12
Prediction: Demands will escalate that amateurs abstain from independent analysis and defer to credentialed experts.
The better the analysis, the more strident the denunciations will be.
The reason is that credentials are increasingly a filter for ideology, not competence. 1/7
Within many academic & professional domains, a key purpose of gatekeepers (credentialers, journals, etc) is to enforce ideological discipline—to ensure that an analysis is not just correct, but also advances dominant ideological priorities. 2/7
The real threat is not error (which can be refuted) but accurate analysis that transgresses ideological norms. This will rarely come from inside experts; they have already been filtered for conformity and would face professional repercussions.