Mainstream, Moderate, Conservative Ideas

Just as I was sending last week’s newsletter about how absurd it is for
commentators to only now pretend to notice the racism and violence
inherent in the conservative movement, Joseph Epstein published, in the
Weekly Standard, an appallingly vile piece of garbage titled “Chicago, Then and Now.”

It’s about how blacks are going to have to bootstrap themselves up out
of this bad spot they’re in, just like the Jews and Italians and Irish
did back in the day, bwah bwah bwah you’ve heard this one before.

This is a mainstream Republican “intellectual.” An icon of the movement. A respected scholar.

Sure, you may write off his statement that “homosexuality is a curse”
because he said that years ago, right? But what of his claim this month
that “with the advent of the pill and the sexual revolution, nice girls
have all but put prostitutes out of business?” That, tossed off as an
aside on the way to his real point, that “few people are likely to note
any valuable advances in [black] culture over the past 60 years.”

The Weekly Standard brands itself as an upstanding, respectable sort of
conservative journal, but they feel no qualms whatsoever publishing an
article to the effect that “negroes haven’t improved themselves enough
to merit my respect.”

And of course, that’s just one facet. The rot is pervasive. EPA chief Scott Pruitt, of “I can’t fly coach because average Americans hate me so much” fame, has recently told the Christian Broadcasting Network that he thinks coal-burning is part of Jesus’ plan for America. (If this were a network TV drama, we’d complain that the writers are repeating the 1980 James Watt storyline.)

Good news, everyone
Headline: The 99 Best Things That Happened in 2017.
A lot of good things got overshadowed by disaster. But we’re making
some important progress: Public health, carbon emissions,
conservation… There’s some good stuff in here.