Scott Alexander pointed this out not too long ago. Iirc, he was lukewarm about your book. But he identified that it was written primarily for the policy wonks who are maybe only a few degrees of separation from the levers of power, rather than the average Joe.
Otoh, you obviously need both the thinkers and the office-holders, as well as the cast of characters in between. They may well be interchangeable on some level, but the ideas need to germinate from somewhere, and you need someone to sign on to it (or in this case, to literally sign it).
Either way, well done. MLK day wasn’t a bad time to bring back “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.
Was he the one who said it wasn't a very good explanation of the origin of wokeness, but it was a good blueprint of how to change policy in a right-wing direction?
Yes, I think that it is fair for you and Christopher Rufo to take partial credit for these Trump executive order rolling back affirmative action and DEI. The Republicans have been completely oblivious on this issue since 1970.
I think that much more on the issue needs to be done, especially
1) rolling back the concept that “disparate outcome” is evidence of discrimination,
2) requiring institutions who accept federal funding directly or indirectly must also abolished DEI policies and practices ( not just contractors)
3) making DEI practices within institutions as evidence of deliberate discrimination which is legal under the Civil Right Act of 1964 and therefore should be sued by DOJ.
We must keep pushing while we have the initiative.
Non-Black Rightists (and some Black Right wingers) like Steve constantly throw out that "not by the color of their skins but by the content of their character: junk which illustrates that the person has never read or listened to Dr. Kings speech or understand that Dr King was never naive enough to believe that America was ever a colorblind society. Dr. King supported Affirmative Action & Reparations. The reason that Affirmative Action emerged for contractors especially in construction because the Building Trades actively discriminated against Black people in hiring and in apprenticeships. By the way, I did attend the 1963 March on Washington and so, I did hear MLK's ENTIRE speech. In 1965-68, surveys consistently found that 60-70% of White Americans strongly disproved or disliked Dr. King. Probably 90% of the right wing were in that disapproving category
Yeah, I think intelligent people on the right know that MLK was a bad guy: a Communist-adjacent race hustler, womanizer, and all-around liar. A false preacher, who wore the mantle of Christian respectability while denying Christ, and possibly a rapist. Though it sounds like you approve of him.
The common low-info voter on the street was taught in school that MLK was a good guy, and that's generally what they believe. But also I think most Americans intuitively approve of colorblindness; they don't support it because MLK, while talking out of both sides of his mouth, pretended at times to support it. They just think it sounds basically fair and decent, which it is.
Rather than argue with low-info voters on the historical record, some Republicans just use a rhetorical move whereby they bring up the parts in MLK's record when, while talking out of both sides of his mouth, he pretended to agree with us on this point of basic human decency.
MLK explicitly supported the idea of equality of outcome because he believed, absent discrimination, all groups should reach on average the same outcomes. So for him, the sign that man had been judged not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character, WAS the absence of inequality of outcome.
Even beyond his rancid personal life, this is antithetical to the values that made America the Heart of the World. Our house only survived so unhappy a marriage due to our tremendous wealth and the ramshackleness of our rivals. But three generations in, our illness has metastasized to enough of the body that no corner can continue to ignore it. MLK wasn't the only man responsible for this, but we're in our present pickle precisely because we tried to follow this foolish cause of his these last sixty years, not because we deviated from its course. If anything, our deviations were the only thing that allowed our illness to merely fester for six decades, rather than kill the country outright.
We should not have a national holiday for a man so opposed to the values that made us great, and so supportive of the values that have most corrupted us.
"It is important to note that, pursuant to EO 11478 of 1969, affirmative action also exists within the federal government itself, which employs another 2 percent of the workforce."
Hum, your book says the federal government is 6 percent of the workforce...
I gotta hand it to Rich, this horrible moral compromise has already led to serious good. Something downright worth defending. The whole country will be a better place if we're actually free to associate again.
The bastards might just get me to actually flip my ticket at this rate.
Though I agree stuff like this is overdetermined and you could rightfully attribute it to timing, cultural temperature, or even nth order effects of covid, I would like to congratulate you on the role you played. It almost makes me feel like the cacophony of podcasting and essay writing actually leads to something, and that ideas actually matter.
Then again this does feel like a one in a million issue where the electorate's intuition and attention aligned with analysis. So... how bout those entitlements?
Coincidentally, it just came out this week that Destiny has been sending nudes & homemade porn of women he has had sex with to other people without those women's consent. Some of those people then leaked it. One woman, Pxie, is now suing him: https://pxie412.substack.com/p/i-will-be-suing-steven-kenneth-bonnell
Another woman, Chaeiry, claims that he recorded her without her consent and sent it to other people, although that recording was not leaked to the public. She says she will also be suing him and pressing charges: https://x.com/itschaeiry/status/1881814636191773064
In retrospect, Democrats would have been better off if Trump had defeated Biden in 2020 and won a 2nd term. Trump was never a policy guy – he talked policy changes to get elected the first time around but quickly lost interest in seeing them through. Even his interest in building the wall faded. He was just happy to bask in the limelight. In the end, he would have thrown a few bones to the woke crowd in the wake of George Floyd, and he certainly would never have been able to make the federal government backtrack on affirmative action like he did yesterday. And there's a strong chance that Trump II would have led to the Democrats winning back the White House in 2024, with a younger face at the helm.
Instead, Biden was elected and turned the woke knob to eleven. The resulting policies alienated voters and paved the way for Trump's return. Meanwhile, the Right was finally able to put the establishment dinosaurs to pasture and formulate a cogent response to the woke movement. This new wing allied with Trump, as he represented their best hope for change. The rest is now history, as it unfolds before our very eyes. Biden's woke agenda has been fully discredited and is now unravelling. Voters were left with a bitter taste in their mouth and will remember it for a long time – don't expect the Democrats to bring back their woke agenda any time soon.
A lot of people are discussing right now who is most responsible for the current anti-woke counter-revolution. I would nominate Joe Biden for the prize. His policies literally paved the way for it. But props to Richard, as he was certainly an important contributor to the intellectual foundations of the movement.
What's interesting is that Alison Somin's husband Ilya Somin, a libertarian law professor who opposes race-based affirmative action, supported Kamala Harris in 2024 as the lesser evil due to his belief that she was less bad on immigration and tariffs.
He did believe that Oliver was better on all issues other than national security (where I think that he believed that Kamala was better), but he also acknowledged that Oliver had no chance of winning, unlike Kamala, and thus decided to support Kamala as the lesser evil relative to Trump instead of wasting his vote away on Oliver. IIRC, he lives in Virginia, and Kamala won Virginia by 5%, so his vote did help count towards this outcome.
He supported Biden in 2020 and Hillary in 2016 for similar reasons, IIRC (specifically due to him viewing them as the lesser evils in comparison to Trump). He considers immigration to be a very, very, very important issue and believes that freer immigration policy would benefit both Americans and foreigners. He’s willing to accept Democrats being worse on race-based affirmative action in exchange for them giving a more liberal migration policy for the US.
No, his vote wasn't needed in Virginia; if the overall position had shifted far enough for Trump to win Virginia, he wouldn't have needed Virginia to win. I voted for Oliver in Ohio based on the same reasoning: if Harris had won Ohio, she'd have been doing so well overall she wouldn't have needed it.
Also, he could have told any members of his audience living in Alaska or Maine to rank Oliver first, as RCV solves the problem you identify here.
By that logic, you can ask Richard Hanania why exactly he himself did not support Chase Oliver in 2024, and get a similar response. Specifically, that Oliver’s odds of winning in 2024 were zero, while Trump’s and Harris’s were not.
If only conservatives didn't feel the need to deny that history has anything to do with disparate human capital population density in the course of stressing human capital density as the proximate cause of disparities.
Scott Alexander pointed this out not too long ago. Iirc, he was lukewarm about your book. But he identified that it was written primarily for the policy wonks who are maybe only a few degrees of separation from the levers of power, rather than the average Joe.
Otoh, you obviously need both the thinkers and the office-holders, as well as the cast of characters in between. They may well be interchangeable on some level, but the ideas need to germinate from somewhere, and you need someone to sign on to it (or in this case, to literally sign it).
Either way, well done. MLK day wasn’t a bad time to bring back “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.
Was he the one who said it wasn't a very good explanation of the origin of wokeness, but it was a good blueprint of how to change policy in a right-wing direction?
Yes, I think that it is fair for you and Christopher Rufo to take partial credit for these Trump executive order rolling back affirmative action and DEI. The Republicans have been completely oblivious on this issue since 1970.
I think that much more on the issue needs to be done, especially
1) rolling back the concept that “disparate outcome” is evidence of discrimination,
2) requiring institutions who accept federal funding directly or indirectly must also abolished DEI policies and practices ( not just contractors)
3) making DEI practices within institutions as evidence of deliberate discrimination which is legal under the Civil Right Act of 1964 and therefore should be sued by DOJ.
We must keep pushing while we have the initiative.
I write more here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/we-need-to-completely-roll-back-dei
Non-Black Rightists (and some Black Right wingers) like Steve constantly throw out that "not by the color of their skins but by the content of their character: junk which illustrates that the person has never read or listened to Dr. Kings speech or understand that Dr King was never naive enough to believe that America was ever a colorblind society. Dr. King supported Affirmative Action & Reparations. The reason that Affirmative Action emerged for contractors especially in construction because the Building Trades actively discriminated against Black people in hiring and in apprenticeships. By the way, I did attend the 1963 March on Washington and so, I did hear MLK's ENTIRE speech. In 1965-68, surveys consistently found that 60-70% of White Americans strongly disproved or disliked Dr. King. Probably 90% of the right wing were in that disapproving category
Yeah, I think intelligent people on the right know that MLK was a bad guy: a Communist-adjacent race hustler, womanizer, and all-around liar. A false preacher, who wore the mantle of Christian respectability while denying Christ, and possibly a rapist. Though it sounds like you approve of him.
The common low-info voter on the street was taught in school that MLK was a good guy, and that's generally what they believe. But also I think most Americans intuitively approve of colorblindness; they don't support it because MLK, while talking out of both sides of his mouth, pretended at times to support it. They just think it sounds basically fair and decent, which it is.
Rather than argue with low-info voters on the historical record, some Republicans just use a rhetorical move whereby they bring up the parts in MLK's record when, while talking out of both sides of his mouth, he pretended to agree with us on this point of basic human decency.
MLK explicitly supported the idea of equality of outcome because he believed, absent discrimination, all groups should reach on average the same outcomes. So for him, the sign that man had been judged not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character, WAS the absence of inequality of outcome.
Even beyond his rancid personal life, this is antithetical to the values that made America the Heart of the World. Our house only survived so unhappy a marriage due to our tremendous wealth and the ramshackleness of our rivals. But three generations in, our illness has metastasized to enough of the body that no corner can continue to ignore it. MLK wasn't the only man responsible for this, but we're in our present pickle precisely because we tried to follow this foolish cause of his these last sixty years, not because we deviated from its course. If anything, our deviations were the only thing that allowed our illness to merely fester for six decades, rather than kill the country outright.
We should not have a national holiday for a man so opposed to the values that made us great, and so supportive of the values that have most corrupted us.
"It is important to note that, pursuant to EO 11478 of 1969, affirmative action also exists within the federal government itself, which employs another 2 percent of the workforce."
Hum, your book says the federal government is 6 percent of the workforce...
It was a typo and is being corrected in the ebook.
Hanania Occuped Government, Total Hanania victory.
Thank you for your service, Richard
Congrats Richard!
I gotta hand it to Rich, this horrible moral compromise has already led to serious good. Something downright worth defending. The whole country will be a better place if we're actually free to associate again.
The bastards might just get me to actually flip my ticket at this rate.
Though I agree stuff like this is overdetermined and you could rightfully attribute it to timing, cultural temperature, or even nth order effects of covid, I would like to congratulate you on the role you played. It almost makes me feel like the cacophony of podcasting and essay writing actually leads to something, and that ideas actually matter.
Then again this does feel like a one in a million issue where the electorate's intuition and attention aligned with analysis. So... how bout those entitlements?
Well done!
Coincidentally, it just came out this week that Destiny has been sending nudes & homemade porn of women he has had sex with to other people without those women's consent. Some of those people then leaked it. One woman, Pxie, is now suing him: https://pxie412.substack.com/p/i-will-be-suing-steven-kenneth-bonnell
Another woman, Chaeiry, claims that he recorded her without her consent and sent it to other people, although that recording was not leaked to the public. She says she will also be suing him and pressing charges: https://x.com/itschaeiry/status/1881814636191773064
So at least one claimed they were filmed without consent!?
Perhaps a stream to avoid until he is proven innocent. Seeing you are a woman respecter.
In retrospect, Democrats would have been better off if Trump had defeated Biden in 2020 and won a 2nd term. Trump was never a policy guy – he talked policy changes to get elected the first time around but quickly lost interest in seeing them through. Even his interest in building the wall faded. He was just happy to bask in the limelight. In the end, he would have thrown a few bones to the woke crowd in the wake of George Floyd, and he certainly would never have been able to make the federal government backtrack on affirmative action like he did yesterday. And there's a strong chance that Trump II would have led to the Democrats winning back the White House in 2024, with a younger face at the helm.
Instead, Biden was elected and turned the woke knob to eleven. The resulting policies alienated voters and paved the way for Trump's return. Meanwhile, the Right was finally able to put the establishment dinosaurs to pasture and formulate a cogent response to the woke movement. This new wing allied with Trump, as he represented their best hope for change. The rest is now history, as it unfolds before our very eyes. Biden's woke agenda has been fully discredited and is now unravelling. Voters were left with a bitter taste in their mouth and will remember it for a long time – don't expect the Democrats to bring back their woke agenda any time soon.
A lot of people are discussing right now who is most responsible for the current anti-woke counter-revolution. I would nominate Joe Biden for the prize. His policies literally paved the way for it. But props to Richard, as he was certainly an important contributor to the intellectual foundations of the movement.
Yes. And I believe that you were the guy that told me that it all goes back to EO 11246. In 1965!
What's interesting is that Alison Somin's husband Ilya Somin, a libertarian law professor who opposes race-based affirmative action, supported Kamala Harris in 2024 as the lesser evil due to his belief that she was less bad on immigration and tariffs.
Should've just supported Oliver
He did believe that Oliver was better on all issues other than national security (where I think that he believed that Kamala was better), but he also acknowledged that Oliver had no chance of winning, unlike Kamala, and thus decided to support Kamala as the lesser evil relative to Trump instead of wasting his vote away on Oliver. IIRC, he lives in Virginia, and Kamala won Virginia by 5%, so his vote did help count towards this outcome.
He supported Biden in 2020 and Hillary in 2016 for similar reasons, IIRC (specifically due to him viewing them as the lesser evils in comparison to Trump). He considers immigration to be a very, very, very important issue and believes that freer immigration policy would benefit both Americans and foreigners. He’s willing to accept Democrats being worse on race-based affirmative action in exchange for them giving a more liberal migration policy for the US.
No, his vote wasn't needed in Virginia; if the overall position had shifted far enough for Trump to win Virginia, he wouldn't have needed Virginia to win. I voted for Oliver in Ohio based on the same reasoning: if Harris had won Ohio, she'd have been doing so well overall she wouldn't have needed it.
Also, he could have told any members of his audience living in Alaska or Maine to rank Oliver first, as RCV solves the problem you identify here.
We should have RCV and a national popular vote nationwide, frankly.
RCV yes. NPV...at some point we need to decide whether we want to be a unitary or federal state and commit to one.
Even without a NPV, we can still require electoral votes to be awarded proportionately and not based on winner-take-all.
By that logic, you can ask Richard Hanania why exactly he himself did not support Chase Oliver in 2024, and get a similar response. Specifically, that Oliver’s odds of winning in 2024 were zero, while Trump’s and Harris’s were not.
Congratulations and amazingly well done, hopefully it spreads to UK now
If only conservatives didn't feel the need to deny that history has anything to do with disparate human capital population density in the course of stressing human capital density as the proximate cause of disparities.
And do now the pendulum will swing from "woke" to full-fledged nepotism and self-dealing like the "good old days".
No. Wokeness is already the most dysgenic form of nepotism.
Nice victory lap, well deserved. It’s not easy pushing against the virtue signaling orthodoxy.