The Ultimate Minority

 

Worker or capitalist, both are slaves to making things for others. Only the artist is free. Such progressive or conservative terminology is like calling an exchange of harsh words “verbal rape.”
We need terms for the physical violence entailed in actual slavery and in actual rape, and should not cheapen them by applying them to our middle-class vexations in NW6 or Marin County.--McCloskey

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School attendance, possibly through mechanisms of status competition and bullying, seems to raise the rate of youth suicide

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In two years’ time, the French capital will ban non-essential through-traffic from its city center. The plan, which is expected to eliminate around half of the daily car journeys through Paris’ core, has been a long-term objective for the city, part of its overall drive to slash the number of cars on the roads.

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The Ultimate Minority 

We have now moved from a democracy, where the majority has a responsibility to protect the rights of the minority, to where the majority must take the minority so seriously that, in most cases, they must defer to them. The Flat Earth Society gets interviewed. People who believe the U.S. faked the moon landing speak wryly on nighttime television shows. A child who wants to change his gender gets a contract instead of therapy.

The individual, the ultimate minority, is now the cynosure of the West. Everything he does has its own inherent value and validity. The Bell Curve is now irrelevant because we accept no norms. The Adam Smith community of productive, self-interested, and industrious individuals have had, insinuated into their midst, the inept, the disinterested, and the deranged--all of whom, in our brave new world, have their own value and story, too. Only the Nationalist seems to have allegiance less to an idea and more to some sinister, unseen group.

Recall the tremor that went through the academic community when the Unabomber was caught, the conflict, and ambiguous reflections. The guy was a bright, serious student and his social concerns overlapped those of many sensible, concerned observers of the new technological world. But you don't get a "Good Content-Bad Conduct Gentleman's C" in living. You can't get your murderous, vicious acts offset by a childhood Eagle Scout badge. No society can function on "compartmentalism;" Mussolini did make the trains run on time. But that is not enough. There is a bigger picture here. Ted Bundy was charming. World War II was loud. Goebbels had a PhD and a good first novel.

It's really quite simple: "By their fruits you will know them." Murder, chaos, mendacity, destruction. These are not faults in a greater, purer whole: These are the whole.