Archive for 2018

ROSS DOUTHAT ON European Elites And African Babies: “So why are they creeping back into the discussion? For three reasons: Because African birthrates haven’t slowed as fast as Western experts once expected, because European demographics are following Macron’s Law toward the grave, and because European leaders are no longer nearly so optimistic about assimilating immigrants as even a few short years ago. . . . This trend would have revived a certain kind of population-bomb anxiety no matter what, but the anxiety in Europe is a little more specific than that — because over the same period, Europe’s population is likely to drop by about one hundred million. (Western Europe’s leaders are a vanguard here: Neither Macron nor Angela Merkel nor Theresa May have any biological children.) In the late 1990s Europe and Africa had about the same population; a hundred years later there could be seven Africans for every European. And the experience of recent refugee crises has demonstrated to European leaders both how easily populations can move northward, and how much harder assimilation may be than they once hoped.”

OPEN THREAD: Enjoy yourselves.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON ON THE WITCHES OF BROOKLYN, putting hexes on Brett Kavanaugh to make him “suffer:” Emotionally healthy adults do not wish to inflict suffering on people over political disagreements.

Dakota Bracciale, owner of the shop, tells Newsweek: “We know the system is broken, and the people in charge need to be taken down by any means necessary, magical or otherwise. . . . This is basically Antifa witches — we’re coming for these people’s throats.”

Question: Does that sound like a disagreement about politics to you?

Occasionally, our friends on the left do us the favor of making plain that which conservative critics have inferred about their ranks: that they are intellectually unserious, that they are damaged, that they are high on rage, that they have made a religion of politics. Father Gary Thomas, an exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose who may be taking the Catland gang more seriously than they deserve, will be saying a special Mass to counter the proffered hex. One welcomes the efforts of a Catholic priest who takes his faith seriously enough to invite ridicule — a fool for Christ, as Paul put it. But in much the same way that it is difficult to imagine the Almighty choosing the likes of Jerry Falwell as His emissary, it is difficult to imagine the other guy choosing as his agents a couple of sad dopes in Brooklyn — not in a world in which Kim Jong-un and Taylor Swift exist.

Read the whole thing.

THE SEARS BANKRUPTCY: A lot has been written in the last few days about how Sears’ mail order business (mostly inadvertently) helped subvert Jim Crow. But don’t forget the importance of Sears President Julius Rosenwald’s efforts to address Jim Crow head on. He used his immense wealth to fund thousands of “Rosenwald schools” to educate African Americans throughout the rural South.  Just one more capitalist hero …