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This week on America’s Most Trustworthy Podcast®, we talk about the meaning of the word “spying” and try to determine exactly what the definition is. Then, a bracing and brilliant discussion on reparations with the great Shelby Steele, who unlike most candidates for President, actually knows something about it. Then, our long time amigo Arthur Brooks calls in to talk about his new book, Love Your Enemies; How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt. Actually, come to think of it, we really don’t like Arthur. Finally, some thoughts on the newly photographed Black Hole, and tomorrow is Record Store Day and to celebrate, we asked the hosts what the first record they ever bought was. What was yours? Tell us in the comments.
Music from this week’s show: Supermassive Black Hole by Muse
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As some general said “We’re either alone or we’re not. Either way it boggles the mind.”
The only thing that matters is getting past the next election. This will only end the hard way.
Shelby Steele is an American treasure. If more thinkers and leaders had his insight and courage, we’d be so much better off.
I wonder what he would think of the suggestion that, rather than fixate on reparations for slavery, some kind of economic trust be established to offset the truly historical crime of lynching. (I know some whites were lynched, but mostly out west where the law was lacking.) Slavery is surely an affront to modern sensibilities, but it was a worldwide phenomenon when America got into the mix–and roughly 150 years since its demise in the West, it continues to be practiced in much of Africa and the Far East.
Lynching, on the other hand, was definitely a crime against history because it went against our legislated values of due process. My mother, who died in 2014 at the age of 97, told me that she attended a lynching in New Orleans when she was a child. Pictures of lifeless bodies hanging from trees indict our system now as well as then because there has been no recourse beyond making it illegal–which took decades!
I know it wouldn’t satisfy today’s leftist mob, but some public recognition of lynching and some attempt at redress would at least show a genuine desire to express and grapple with the multitude of historical evils known as Jim Crow.
It seems the wealthier we get, the more selfish we get. Rome had the same problem.
If you don’t want children, why should you have them? The only issue is, does government policy get in the way of procreating the needed FICA / tax slaves.
This museum opened in Montgomery, AL last year. It’s a start:
https://museumandmemorial.eji.org
This is my amateur opinion. The whole country would be served by now emphasizing stories nobody has heard very much about the historical black experience. Like the chick they wanted to put on the $10 bill. Both the suffering and the success. A lot of slaves that fought in Civil War were in disbelief about how crappy their life was after the Civil War. Things didn’t change enough. Emphasize that. They should have been given “40 acres and a mule” or whatever. They got shafted. All of this crap went on for over 100 years.
I want to hear new stories both success and how shameful it was back then. New names.
The Civil War resolved jack in my opinion. Nobody thought it through.
JMO.
This is another example of how “black lives matter” only when they are politically useful.
I remember looking at a left-wing source that stated that the official figure of over four thousand lynchings since 1865 was wrong: the real figure was over six thousand.
OK, let’s assume six thousand. That’s roughly the number of blacks killed by other blacks — every year. Strangely, nobody is putting up a new museum every year, to commemorate them.
If we count up whites killed by blacks, and subtract the much smaller number of blacks killed by whites, somebody check my numbers but I think that adds up to six thousand every couple of decades since the 1960s.
So believers in collective racial guilt can rest content in the knowledge that all the lynchings that ever happened have been paid back several times over.
Shelby Steele is a national treasure; Arthur Brooks, not so much. The fact that he thinks local governments are functioning entities where “good things are happening” shows that he’s been living in a think tank for too long. My local and state governments are a joke and are just as dysfunctional as the national scene. I’m sure James was biting his tongue to keep from bringing up the woke politicians that occupy the city councils and state offices in Minnesota who trade in platitudes and demonizing Trump. In my own city, even the best candidate for the council talked about how the city government needed to be staffed with more women, more minorities, and more LGBTQXYZ people, and that’s for a city of barely 20,000 with crummy infrastructure and crushing debt. Have fun at your cushy Harvard job, Arthur. Hopefully you will have more influence there than you had on Jonah Goldberg who obviously learned nothing from you about how to relate to people with whom he disagrees.
Local government success story:
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-laguna-beach-police-cars-american-flag-20190413-story.html
Sorry but Arthur Brooks admitting Mayor Pete and Beto into his kingdom tells me he may not be paying close enough attention to their core messages. Each is as anti-citizen sovereignty and as in love with vicious ad hominems—towards Trump or Pence or ANY on te Right of Center— as any of the other hardcore ##NeverTrumpers. I was an original #NeverTrumper but his policies, on balance, have converted me. The Donald is still a piggish guy but the Mayor and the sham Beto cannot win me over with a toothy smile and a soothing voice….Nope. Not a shining moment for AB.
Really? Well then it obviously isn’t being talked about enough. It’s no secret that slavery is still being practiced in Africa, among other negatives compared to life in the free, democratic, and wealthy US.
Has anyone commented yet about the black on black slavery in the US, or the American Indian enslavement of AIs, blacks, and whites? If we must talk about reparations then these little narrative busters must be part of the search for truth and reconciliation.
Only the liberals owe reparations for that.
If capital formation and investment etc are so difficult, how is it that so many corporations don’t pay federal income taxes?
Low or no taxes on “capital formation” and “investment” sounds like an invitation to a lot of tax-shelter schemes such as were widespread in the 60s and 70s when the top tax rate was (theoretically, at least) 70% or higher.
Once again:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ogsqu
You are making this too complicated. Supply comes before demand. It’s hard to understand, but it is true. It is not the other way around. If there is too much saved capital, interest rates will go down, there will be less stock issuance and people will consume more over saving and investing. Progress does not come through consumption. It comes through capital formation.
Previous posts edited so I had some word-count left to work with…
Proving a relationship to someone who was lynched, would be much harder than proving a relationship to someone who was a slave.
Also, seems like the percentage of black vs white population applied to the lynchings/murders figures affects them greatly.
But he needs to be properly equipped. That “titanium alloy impenetrable skin” seemed very penetrable.
I bet if you asked around, including/especially in black neighborhoods, many/most WOULDN’T know, or believe, that slavery still exists in Africa. (To black nationalists especially, “Africa is Paradise!”) And who would dare teach them otherwise?
Jonah had some good discussion on this in his Remnant podcast from March 15, 2018.
Tell us that when you’re in a boat in the middle of the Atlantic wondering how to get to Greenland. Why you are in this boat and don’t have GPS is entirely your business. As is your desire to go to Greenland in the first place. Thinking about your basic communications problem also reminds me of Meteor Burst Communications, mostly because I burst out laughing when someone told me about it. But it’s an actual thing (a cheap, secure thing) with real applications.
What gets me is why no one is commenting on the indisputable fact that the black hole looks like a Krispy Kreme donut. Seems like that’s the first thing anyone with a whit of scientific curiosity would think to ask.
Not difficult to understand, but even if true it may be irrelevant.
That sounds like another wonderful pure economic theory that could be – and might be, if ever tried – easily disproven by the behavior of actual people.
Supply creates it’s own demand. You supply what people need and want. Favoring or forcing demand misallocates capital.
Never had a Krispy Kreme, probably never will.
Anyway, as Data said, “It is clearly a bunny-rabbit.”
Let me know when you’ve successfully bench-tested that.
Look up Say’s Law. You are thinking like a Democrat or a RINO.
Do you mean it’s no longer possible to navigate the way people did before GPS was invented? What, the sun, stars, and moon have all disappeared?
GPS is much nicer, of course. But people navigated the oceans before it existed.
And what if he HAD a GPS, but no battery to run it from? Technology has drawbacks, too.
Fine, let me know when Saint Say has successfully bench-tested his “law.”
Also, it seems obvious that there can be demand that is UNMET by supply, for one reason or another. Such as cost. Is there no “demand” for super-expensive cars, by people who can’t afford them?
The thing I remember about Say’s law is not that it needs to be proven (It is notably simple), but that it has yet to be disproven.
I’m not convinced that it’s even been really tested, so far. Just for starters, It seems ripe for correlation-becomes-causation errors.
It sounds like, for example, the “climate change” activists claiming that increased CO2 in the atmosphere is what causes “global warming.” And if you’re not too particular about examining evidence closely, that can seem true, even over CENTURIES of “observation.”
But a closer look reveals that it’s actually higher temperatures – with increased solar activity being the most likely cause – which cause the oceans to release CO2 that had previously been held in the water.
Let’s say I had a large “supply” of buggy whips. Or heck, even Betamax VCRs. How much of a “demand” do you think that would create? “Supply creates its own demand” strikes me as very oversimplified, at the very least. The articles I’ve read about it, seem to agree. Not even a good “rule of thumb.”
This is a serious mistake.
But I have had bunny-rabbit. Does that help?