Iconoclast: Fear a Friendless Future
“Friendlessness is on the rise,” cautions The Week’s Damon Linker. “That’s the troubling takeaway” from a study showing the number of Americans with “no close friends” has risen “fivefold over the past 30 years.” It’s not just “bad for the lonely,” it’s “a bad sign for our country and our society.” We’re “social, communal creatures” who “enjoy engaging in common enterprises and the emotional intimacy that can follow.” But the “wasting away” of civil society has led to “virtual communities” more like “collective groups of topic-specific pen pals than real-world friendships.” Without testing “against the hard limits and constraints” of “the physical world,” ideas “can run wild,” partly explaining “why our politics have become much more polarized.” Stark loneliness can make “even the most toxic forms of political association” seem attractive.
Conservative: Wokeness Kills Diversity
“Intellectual diversity at universities has greatly suffered,” laments Aron Ravin at National Review. “But it is not only intellectual diversity that suffers in today’s college climate. Even the diversity that admissions officers favor, diversity of background, is weakened by wokeness.” Some two-thirds of schools surveyed by the National Association of Scholars recently reported offering “separate, racially designated graduation ceremonies and residential areas.” Which raises a tough question: “How will the broader student body reap the benefits of a diverse campus if the students opt into self-segregated programs?”
Libertarian: Aim High, Not Low in Energy
European researchers have determined that, “to save the planet from catastrophic climate change, Americans will have to cut their energy use by more than 90 percent,” fly just “once every three years” and “live in housing no larger than 640 square feet” for a family of four, reports Reason’s Ronald Bailey. But since “there are absolutely no examples of low-energy societies providing decent living standards,” the researchers recommend a “fundamental transformation,” including free health, education and public transportation along with “fairer income distribution.” But the far better and easier solution is “to aim for a high-energy planet,” which will “spur economic growth and innovation.” Rather than forcing “Americans to live on the amount of energy currently available to Bolivians, the goal should be to enable people in energy-starved poor countries to gain access to energy supplies currently enjoyed by average Americans.”
From the right: Defund Biden’s IRS
For the Internal Revenue Service to be the agency President Biden wants, “it needs the $80 billion in extra funding” he’s proposing, The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn reasons. If that money can “bring in” the estimated $700 billion a year it fails to collect from “tax cheats” and others, it will “more than pay for itself,” at least according to the “Joe Biden School” of thought. Yet the “Milton Friedman School” would argue that “the best tax collection system” is based on fair, simple and low taxes. Besides, considering the agency’s past performance — the Lois Lerner scandal, say, and recent leaks of individuals’ tax info — should we “even be talking about giving it more power”?
Sociologist: The Rise of Progressive Fascism
“In many ways,” warns Joel Kotkin at UnHerd, Benito “Mussolini’s notion of fascism has become increasingly dominant . . . in the worldview of those progressives who typically see ‘proto-fascism’ lurking on the right.” His “idea of an economy controlled from above, with generous benefits but dominated by large business interests, is gradually supplanting the old liberal, capitalist model” in the name of “serving racial and gender ‘equity,’ as well as saving the planet.” The Democratic Party is “increasingly a subsidiary of the corporate elite,” as “today’s oligarchs” push “politically correct statements about climate change, gender and race, while still obtaining . . . unprecedented wealth.” Opponents must aim “to restore competition and protect consumers from the overweening power and vast wealth of the corporate elites.” We need “a reawakening of the spirit of resistance to authority that has long marked human progress.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board