Yes, you should subscribe to Kevin D. Williamson’s newsletter, The Tuesday. Kevin has interesting things to say on a wide variety of topics and rarely sugarcoats his opinions. Here is a great example where he tells us about The Donald, universities and people in short order:
Race-hustling is a pretty good gig, and Donald Trump on his best day couldn’t build a wall high enough to keep college-educated middle-class white people out of a pseudo-intellectual sinecure that sweet. The women’s-studies departments simply are not large enough to absorb the surplus in the market.
Those two sentences give us writer’s envy. The sinecure would not be so sweet for us as there is enough work that doesn’t interest us in the various “studies” disciplines and the pay is typically at the bottom of the university scale. Kevin is right, however, in the sense that these folks are looking for power and have the chance to influence students and the university. It reverses part of the old meaning of sinecure. They still have the position but now have the opportunity to “cure” souls.
But we are happy because at the end Kevin gave us homework in two questions to answer. He says:
But my mention of the Reformation above reminds me of a question I have sometimes thought about: If Martin Luther, John Calvin, et al. could have seen the future, and what an unholy mess we have made of things, might they not have decided that it would be better to have one church in need of reform rather than to have 88,862 churches in need of reform? And in the secular political context, might it also be the case that people who believe that our troubles would be mitigated by founding a new political party to compete with the two big ones we already have are making the same mistake, multiplying problems rather than solving them? The analogy is far from a perfect one, and, of course, the founding of the Republican Party in 1854 did help to advance a critical reform agenda. But it seems to me that that is more the exception than the rule. I would welcome your thoughts.
First we have the capitalistic orphan and atheist’s response to the theological question. Next we will deal with political parties.
We don’t know much about Martin and John so our opinion on the Reformation is our own. Atheists, like anarchists, are rarely good at organization. To use Kevin’s term, each atheist is typically the smallest minority. As an atheist and a capitalist we like having 88,862 Christian churches although we suspect that his number is a substantial overstatement. Each individual should be able to get close to exactly what he wants from his religion in such a competitive market.
We see, at least currently, a big difference between churches and political parties. Churches are controlled by documents and the hierarchy and so they change very slowly. People who want change or want to stop the change create new churches. The Pope is picked to lead the church because he is a staunch Catholic.
Political parties once had the power that the church hierarchies have but no longer. Our understanding is the Democrats forced FDR to accept Harry Truman as a running mate in 1944. Preventing Henry A. Wallace from becoming president is perhaps the greatest service a political party has ever done for the USA. It is inconceivable that the GOP could force Mike Pence to be replaced the 2020 ticket. The Donald might do it but the party never could. In the post-WWII era political parties have become an extension of the presidential nominee. JFK’s tax cutting anticommunism seems as out of place for the Democrats and as Ike does for the GOP. The change is almost as dramatic from one candidate to the next. Consider Mitt and The Donald.
We support many choices in almost everything including churches. As a capitalistic orphan we know that choice is good for consumers. Our exception to choice is we support only two major political parties. We have three reasons. First, as the Reformation showed, once you start adding it is hard to stop. Second, our constitutional architecture of having a president and an Electoral College would make multiple parties a challenge. Keven is concerned that partisans decry the legitimacy of recently elected presidents. Fortunately, Lincoln got an Electoral College majority despite getting less than 40 percent of the popular vote. What would happen if somebody was elected president with 17 percent of the popular vote? Well, what happened when Lincoln was elected?
We are not suggesting changing the Constitution. In parliamentary systems with multiple parties there are problems with coalitions. Sometimes the coalitions are created after the election. We like knowing who we are voting for.
Third, parties change dramatically with each nominee. That is how our choices come about. It is imperfect but we don’t see a better way. We are still waiting for the candidate of the capitalistic orphans to be nominated but the candidates do vary.
So we think you should read The Tuesday and there should be many churches and few political parties.
menwithgloves 