The Danger of Beliefs

On this day:

1768
Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the purpose of which is to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and white settlements set forth in the Proclamation of 1763 in the Thirteen Colonies.
1780
French-American forces under Colonel LaBalme are defeated by Miami Chief Little Turtle.
1862
American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln removes George B. McClellan as commander of the Union Army for the second and final time.
1943
Bombing of the Vatican.
1990
Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the far-right Kach movement, is shot dead after a speech at a New York City hotel. Investigations lead to a woman of mystery in Pittsburgh, Pa.
2009
US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 and wounds 29 at Fort Hood, Texas, in the deadliest mass shooting at a US military installation.

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"Membership of a larger group is not an identity. Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived.” --Lionel Shriver

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History teaches that the wealthiest and safest societies are ones in which innovation is, as Adam Thierer calls it, “permissionless.”

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According to data from the Africa CDC on Monday, the outbreak has killed 5,376 people: 5,372 in the DRC and two each in Kenya and Uganda.
The Bundibugyo strain of the virus, responsible for the current outbreak, has infected some 10,444 people in the DRC, Uganda and Kenya, with a death rate of more than 50 percent.

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Throuples, foursomes and other multi-partner relationships can now register as domestic partners in a Los Angeles County city after its city council unanimously approved new legal protections for polyamorous couples.
West Hollywood passed the ordinance Tuesday. Some Massachusetts municipalities already recognize multi-partner domestic partnerships,

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A Wisconsin special counsel found 100% voting rates inside nursing homes full of dementia patients.

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Simon Winchester has died.

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The Danger of Beliefs

A cataclysmic election. DeSantis called it an ELE, an extinction-level event. That sounds more than routine. One can only hope.

Since the Second World War, the U.S. has been on autopilot; we've been running on our astonishing economy. Our errors, our overreach, our dumb wars, have all been drowned in our expanding economy. By our expanding economy. We didn't need to think. Everything would be grown out of and forgiven. The inevitabilities on the horizon could always be delayed to a new horizon.

This time, it might be different. There is a cyclone of youth, intensity, and outrage. And some have an ideology. The youth and ideology are new. It is strange that this could be true of a recent and revolutionary nation born of philosophy, not history, race, or religion.

Another surprise: the Democrats, usually the party for whom good hopes and high feelings are adequate, are the party bringing the philosophy to the table. True, it's a small segment of the party and, true, the philosophy is outmoded and has repeatedly failed practical application. But it is a philosophy of formalized beliefs, and they are always inspiring. 

The problem for the Democrats is that philosophies are immodest; they want to glow. And these beliefs are shallow and are inspiring to the inept. That will stimulate discussion, and their nature will be revealed. The Republicans will be stimulated to oppose the notions. A democratic give-and-take. All of this will work to the Democrats' disadvantage.

Their outraged declarations have no resolution. The promises are impossible. (Imagine funding universal health care when we already spend over $18,000 annually per person in the country with a debt of $40 trillion; imagine adding subsidized child care; imagine subsidizing food for some arbitrary segment of the population; imagine abandoning Israel with the hopes they will just be brave and go down fighting rather than using their 44 nuclear weapons to blow up the Middle East.) But the zealots of defunct philosophies are without reflection or shame. We will finally have a discussion of the merits of common political mythologies. It will be very clarifying. The political parties will have to explain themselves. Clear-eyed freedom will reign.

Unless, of course, the Democrats find their defense so difficult that they cower in anger or behind Trump subpoenas.