For almost all of my adult life, I supported and voted for Democrats. I saw the Democratic party as more closely supporting my underlying values.
It is very hard to be poor. If my car breaks down, or I have a medical condition, I can write a check to fix it. If I were very poor, that would be hard to do. Life isn’t fair. I was born healthy with reasonable intelligence to a two-parent stable family in a middle-class neighborhood. I was able to go to college and get a good paying job. My success is due in part to hard work, but also the result of undeserved luck. I want to help those less fortunate to succeed. I don’t want to pull the ladder up behind me. I want opportunities for everyone. My favorite person in the whole world is my wife. I want her to be able to do anything she wants with no artificial glass ceiling. I hate discrimination. I care about the environment. All these values seemed to me to be better aligned with the Democratic party. Hene, my voting.
I retired a few years ago and was fortunate enough to pick up the book “Applied Economics- Thinking Beyond Stage One”, by Thomas Sowell. He points out that many seemingly good economic policies often have long term negative consequences (stage two). After reading virtually everything else he has written, my views on many things have changed. The market is not perfect, a car company will produce a lemon, but the market tends to be self-correcting and a growing economy with jobs can help the poor more than handouts. Many government rules restrict freedom and raise costs, which hurts everyone, especially the poor.
I read the books, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers: The Michaela Way” by Katharine Birbalsingh , “Charter Schools and Their Enemies” by Thomas Sowell and “School Choice Myths: Setting the Record Straight on Education Freedom” edited by Neal P. McCluskey and Corey A. DeAngelis, and my thinking on educational choice changed. Educational vouchers or charter schools won’t be perfect, but they offer more promise for improvement than teacher union dominated schools.
I read the book “When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroy Beauty, and Threatens Lives” by Heather Mac Donald (and several Thomas Sowell books) and I began to realize that DEI helps no one. It is discrimination, it produces resentment, harms our ability to benefit from smart people, and the mismatch in colleges even hurts those that get in via affirmative action. It is a negative for our society.
I read “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” by Abigail Shrier and “Trans: when Ideology Meets Reality” by Helen Joyce and I gained an understanding of the insanity of the trans cult. The trans ideology hurts children, families, and women. Not my values.
I started reading extensively on climate change. I read all of Michael Mann’s books, but I also read books by people the left have labeled as climate deniers. I now believe that our climate is warming, humans have some influence, but there is no apocalypse. Even the IPCC in its latest report (AR6, Working Group 1, Chapter 12, Table 12.12) shows that we do not expect to be able to detect increases in hurricanes, draught, flooding, or tornadoes by 2100 even under an all-coal scenario (RPC 8.5). John Stossel has two excellent videos on this topic:
Climate Change Myths Part 1: Polar Bears, Arctic Ice, and Food Shortages
I now follow Podcasts such as “Dad Saves America” and subscribe to Substack’s such as “The Honest Broker” by Roger Pielke Jr. I also now vote Republican. They are not perfect. I don’t like Trump’s tariffs, his need to have constant chaos, and his frequent unpresidential behavior, but I see the other side (Democrats) as worse. As Thomas Sowell says, “There are no solutions only tradeoffs”.
You sure picked up a great reading list. Good for you!!!
Sowell is the most important economist of our time today. The range of his work has far broader and deeper impacts for our current challenges than ever Friedman or Hayek, though I love them all.
You’ll be excited to know that Katharine Birbalsingh and I are collaborating on the launch of a new project to spread her ideas even farther.
I have also read everything by Charles Murray including “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010” and “Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950 – 1980”.
I recently finished a book called “The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind” by Melissa Kearney. I know from Sowell, and others, that being raised with a dad in the home (assuming stable) is a better predictor of future success in life than race or wealth. The title of your podcast could not be truer. The question is, how do we encourage two-parent family formation with a dad in the home? Children can be successful coming from other family structures, but two biological heterosexual parents in a stable low-conflict marriage is the gold standard. From an evolutionary or religious perspective, that should not be a surprise.
Thank you for this interesting perspective. I also really appreciate your important and timely discussion of the misuse of terms like Nazi and fascist that cheapen and ultimately devalue these deservedly powerful terms.
It feels superficially nice to find common cause with conservatives and former progressives who seem clear-eyed on issues of DEI, gender ideology, and the danger of ascendant political Islam. The problem is, I find that you don't have to dig too far into that side of the Substack divide before you start running into the people who say that gay marriage (like mine, for example) is part of the same radical left agenda and should be rolled back. I simply cannot find common cause with people who view my love for my husband and our long, happy, stable marriage -- which, values-wise, is temperamentally conservative -- as lesser-than. I defend those people's right to have that point of view, but I also do not want to spend my time with them. The right of two consenting adults to marry one another and enjoy the protections thereunto appertaining is a small-l liberal -- and, again, fundamentally conservative -- non-negotiable for me. If one truly was left of center in 2008, they would almost certainly have believed this, and so, if they're being honest about their personal political stasis, they should continue to believe it now.
Perhaps even worse, the "the Left left me" people are often the most susceptible to veering into full-on hypocrisy. They got high on their own supply as First Amendment-absolutist warriors in 2021-22, but now are either condoning or even outright supporting cancellation of leftists engaged in wrongspeak/wrongthink about Charlie Kirk's assassination or MAGA ideology in general. (I find it disrespectful to dance on a murdered man's recently-dug grave and don't do it myself, but I still believe that people have a First Amendment right to speak distastefully.) They are also prone to hypocrisy about their belief in the scientific method, contending that pediatric transgender medicine should be verboten because it is not supported by hard evidence while simultaneously dismissing the overwhelming evidence for the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
Indeed, if there's one characteristic that truly unites right and left, it's hypocrisy -- and illiberalism. We're increasingly seeing that the grand coalition of the anti-Woke Left from the Biden years was not monolithic, but rather a marriage of convenience between true small-l classical liberals and bad-faith Woke Right types merely pretending to espouse liberal values for political expediency. Now that we're living in MAGA: The Sequel, the latter's true, ulterior illiberalism is exposed. A "true" classical liberal like me believes that liberal principles should be universal and apply to everyone equally -- one rule for everyone, with favoritism toward none.
Don't get me wrong -- many of the "Left left me" people are also true liberals, but unfortunately, I think that a lot of them are less steadfast in their principles than they think they are. They have, perhaps unwittingly or even unknowingly, been dragged along to the right, based on peer pressure or in response to being wronged by the Woke Left, but lack the insight to realize it. And, ironically, the Woke Left and Woke Right are actually, beneath the surface, birds of an illiberal feather.
The real political divide now, in my mind, is not left vs right, but rather liberal vs illiberal. Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Lyndon Johnson, the Georges Bush, Bill Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, and Barack Obama are all liberal. Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Viktor Orbán, Nicolás Maduro, Rashida Tlaib, Joseph McCarthy, Hasan Piker, Zohran Mamdani, and Nick Fuentes are all illiberal. I am proud to be a liberal like Winston Churchill and not an illiberal like Jeremy Corbyn.
Thanks. We’re on the same page. Liberal vs Illiberal as a more important vector is at the heart of this video for sure. Central to classical liberalism is human equality. This makes all forms of legal privilege or favoritism illiberal. Collectivism is inherently illiberal.
I would caveat that Obama and Warren are not really liberal. Obama has been crusading for censorship for years now, and the woke reign of terror began under his administration in part because of his use of title IX to create an environment of pure witch hunts and kangaroo courts on college campuses. Obama is a bad actor and a radical in “no drama” sheep’s clothing. He’s weather underground in a Martha’s Vineyard mansion. Warren is cut from the same cloth.
I will say that I see no indication that liberalism as we understand it can survive without Christianity as the dominant cultural and moral force in the society. The equality principle finds its strongest roots in Christ’s universal message and St. Paul’s incredible evangelism of it to all, Jew or Gentile, Man or Woman, Slave or Free, etc.
Secular materialism collapses back into the laws of nature, which are tribal and brutal and identitarian.
Today’s left seems to be unable to learn because, in some sense, learning means you have to start some place rooted in Tradition. Tradition, among their giant list of forbidden things, is against their progressive religion. “Then Jesus saith to him: Put up again thy sword into its place: for all that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” (Matthew 26:52). There are also many historical statements that reflect wisdom similar to this Gospel passage. Those who advocate for violence seem to be so ignorant to what they propose and are so easily willing to attempt to manipulate someone else to do it for them.
I respectfully disagree with your characterization of Barack Obama as illiberal. His record clearly wasn't perfect, but surely neither was his predecessor's, and yet both were very much in the American political mainstream and both of them acted*mostly* in the liberal tradition. I try neither to let my personal policy preferences taint the analysis, nor to fall prey to black-and-white/all-or-nothing views.
I'm not sure what your digression into Christianity was in response to, since I did not call for secular materialism to replace anyone's faith. I cannot deny the historical and pragmatic centrality of Christianity to Western civilization. But, as a Jew, I still feel perfectly at home in the liberal order even though I do not look to Christ for my moral framework.
For almost all of my adult life, I supported and voted for Democrats. I saw the Democratic party as more closely supporting my underlying values.
It is very hard to be poor. If my car breaks down, or I have a medical condition, I can write a check to fix it. If I were very poor, that would be hard to do. Life isn’t fair. I was born healthy with reasonable intelligence to a two-parent stable family in a middle-class neighborhood. I was able to go to college and get a good paying job. My success is due in part to hard work, but also the result of undeserved luck. I want to help those less fortunate to succeed. I don’t want to pull the ladder up behind me. I want opportunities for everyone. My favorite person in the whole world is my wife. I want her to be able to do anything she wants with no artificial glass ceiling. I hate discrimination. I care about the environment. All these values seemed to me to be better aligned with the Democratic party. Hene, my voting.
I retired a few years ago and was fortunate enough to pick up the book “Applied Economics- Thinking Beyond Stage One”, by Thomas Sowell. He points out that many seemingly good economic policies often have long term negative consequences (stage two). After reading virtually everything else he has written, my views on many things have changed. The market is not perfect, a car company will produce a lemon, but the market tends to be self-correcting and a growing economy with jobs can help the poor more than handouts. Many government rules restrict freedom and raise costs, which hurts everyone, especially the poor.
I read the books, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers: The Michaela Way” by Katharine Birbalsingh , “Charter Schools and Their Enemies” by Thomas Sowell and “School Choice Myths: Setting the Record Straight on Education Freedom” edited by Neal P. McCluskey and Corey A. DeAngelis, and my thinking on educational choice changed. Educational vouchers or charter schools won’t be perfect, but they offer more promise for improvement than teacher union dominated schools.
I read the book “When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroy Beauty, and Threatens Lives” by Heather Mac Donald (and several Thomas Sowell books) and I began to realize that DEI helps no one. It is discrimination, it produces resentment, harms our ability to benefit from smart people, and the mismatch in colleges even hurts those that get in via affirmative action. It is a negative for our society.
I read “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” by Abigail Shrier and “Trans: when Ideology Meets Reality” by Helen Joyce and I gained an understanding of the insanity of the trans cult. The trans ideology hurts children, families, and women. Not my values.
I started reading extensively on climate change. I read all of Michael Mann’s books, but I also read books by people the left have labeled as climate deniers. I now believe that our climate is warming, humans have some influence, but there is no apocalypse. Even the IPCC in its latest report (AR6, Working Group 1, Chapter 12, Table 12.12) shows that we do not expect to be able to detect increases in hurricanes, draught, flooding, or tornadoes by 2100 even under an all-coal scenario (RPC 8.5). John Stossel has two excellent videos on this topic:
Climate Change Myths Part 1: Polar Bears, Arctic Ice, and Food Shortages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4fChyXPgj0
Climate Change Myths Part 2: Wildfires, Drought, Rising Sea Level, and Coral
https://youtu.be/GctDsMw8N4Y?si=1YezwnUq_RJWcaFI
I now follow Podcasts such as “Dad Saves America” and subscribe to Substack’s such as “The Honest Broker” by Roger Pielke Jr. I also now vote Republican. They are not perfect. I don’t like Trump’s tariffs, his need to have constant chaos, and his frequent unpresidential behavior, but I see the other side (Democrats) as worse. As Thomas Sowell says, “There are no solutions only tradeoffs”.
You sure picked up a great reading list. Good for you!!!
Sowell is the most important economist of our time today. The range of his work has far broader and deeper impacts for our current challenges than ever Friedman or Hayek, though I love them all.
You’ll be excited to know that Katharine Birbalsingh and I are collaborating on the launch of a new project to spread her ideas even farther.
I have also read everything by Charles Murray including “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010” and “Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950 – 1980”.
I recently finished a book called “The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind” by Melissa Kearney. I know from Sowell, and others, that being raised with a dad in the home (assuming stable) is a better predictor of future success in life than race or wealth. The title of your podcast could not be truer. The question is, how do we encourage two-parent family formation with a dad in the home? Children can be successful coming from other family structures, but two biological heterosexual parents in a stable low-conflict marriage is the gold standard. From an evolutionary or religious perspective, that should not be a surprise.
Thank you for this interesting perspective. I also really appreciate your important and timely discussion of the misuse of terms like Nazi and fascist that cheapen and ultimately devalue these deservedly powerful terms.
It feels superficially nice to find common cause with conservatives and former progressives who seem clear-eyed on issues of DEI, gender ideology, and the danger of ascendant political Islam. The problem is, I find that you don't have to dig too far into that side of the Substack divide before you start running into the people who say that gay marriage (like mine, for example) is part of the same radical left agenda and should be rolled back. I simply cannot find common cause with people who view my love for my husband and our long, happy, stable marriage -- which, values-wise, is temperamentally conservative -- as lesser-than. I defend those people's right to have that point of view, but I also do not want to spend my time with them. The right of two consenting adults to marry one another and enjoy the protections thereunto appertaining is a small-l liberal -- and, again, fundamentally conservative -- non-negotiable for me. If one truly was left of center in 2008, they would almost certainly have believed this, and so, if they're being honest about their personal political stasis, they should continue to believe it now.
Perhaps even worse, the "the Left left me" people are often the most susceptible to veering into full-on hypocrisy. They got high on their own supply as First Amendment-absolutist warriors in 2021-22, but now are either condoning or even outright supporting cancellation of leftists engaged in wrongspeak/wrongthink about Charlie Kirk's assassination or MAGA ideology in general. (I find it disrespectful to dance on a murdered man's recently-dug grave and don't do it myself, but I still believe that people have a First Amendment right to speak distastefully.) They are also prone to hypocrisy about their belief in the scientific method, contending that pediatric transgender medicine should be verboten because it is not supported by hard evidence while simultaneously dismissing the overwhelming evidence for the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
Indeed, if there's one characteristic that truly unites right and left, it's hypocrisy -- and illiberalism. We're increasingly seeing that the grand coalition of the anti-Woke Left from the Biden years was not monolithic, but rather a marriage of convenience between true small-l classical liberals and bad-faith Woke Right types merely pretending to espouse liberal values for political expediency. Now that we're living in MAGA: The Sequel, the latter's true, ulterior illiberalism is exposed. A "true" classical liberal like me believes that liberal principles should be universal and apply to everyone equally -- one rule for everyone, with favoritism toward none.
Don't get me wrong -- many of the "Left left me" people are also true liberals, but unfortunately, I think that a lot of them are less steadfast in their principles than they think they are. They have, perhaps unwittingly or even unknowingly, been dragged along to the right, based on peer pressure or in response to being wronged by the Woke Left, but lack the insight to realize it. And, ironically, the Woke Left and Woke Right are actually, beneath the surface, birds of an illiberal feather.
The real political divide now, in my mind, is not left vs right, but rather liberal vs illiberal. Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Lyndon Johnson, the Georges Bush, Bill Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, and Barack Obama are all liberal. Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Viktor Orbán, Nicolás Maduro, Rashida Tlaib, Joseph McCarthy, Hasan Piker, Zohran Mamdani, and Nick Fuentes are all illiberal. I am proud to be a liberal like Winston Churchill and not an illiberal like Jeremy Corbyn.
Thanks. We’re on the same page. Liberal vs Illiberal as a more important vector is at the heart of this video for sure. Central to classical liberalism is human equality. This makes all forms of legal privilege or favoritism illiberal. Collectivism is inherently illiberal.
I would caveat that Obama and Warren are not really liberal. Obama has been crusading for censorship for years now, and the woke reign of terror began under his administration in part because of his use of title IX to create an environment of pure witch hunts and kangaroo courts on college campuses. Obama is a bad actor and a radical in “no drama” sheep’s clothing. He’s weather underground in a Martha’s Vineyard mansion. Warren is cut from the same cloth.
I will say that I see no indication that liberalism as we understand it can survive without Christianity as the dominant cultural and moral force in the society. The equality principle finds its strongest roots in Christ’s universal message and St. Paul’s incredible evangelism of it to all, Jew or Gentile, Man or Woman, Slave or Free, etc.
Secular materialism collapses back into the laws of nature, which are tribal and brutal and identitarian.
Today’s left seems to be unable to learn because, in some sense, learning means you have to start some place rooted in Tradition. Tradition, among their giant list of forbidden things, is against their progressive religion. “Then Jesus saith to him: Put up again thy sword into its place: for all that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” (Matthew 26:52). There are also many historical statements that reflect wisdom similar to this Gospel passage. Those who advocate for violence seem to be so ignorant to what they propose and are so easily willing to attempt to manipulate someone else to do it for them.
I respectfully disagree with your characterization of Barack Obama as illiberal. His record clearly wasn't perfect, but surely neither was his predecessor's, and yet both were very much in the American political mainstream and both of them acted*mostly* in the liberal tradition. I try neither to let my personal policy preferences taint the analysis, nor to fall prey to black-and-white/all-or-nothing views.
I'm not sure what your digression into Christianity was in response to, since I did not call for secular materialism to replace anyone's faith. I cannot deny the historical and pragmatic centrality of Christianity to Western civilization. But, as a Jew, I still feel perfectly at home in the liberal order even though I do not look to Christ for my moral framework.