The diversity-inclusion-equity faith system beloved of the Left insists that we must all share its addiction and that heretics must be brought ruthlessly into line. What those who advocate and advance identitarian politics refuse to recognise is that race talk traps people inside their skin tone, inside their melanin count, forever

Part 1 of “Why Our Major Cities Are in Decay” […]

Both Sydney and Melbourne express pathologies of modern urban planning. […]

A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding […]

One of the great virtues of knowledge of past ideas […]

Here’s an historical puzzle: slaves cannot own property, they are property.  Yet slaves did, on occasion, buy their own freedom.  How can someone not legally entitled to own anything assemble enough wealth to buy their own freedom?

Because there is a difference between property rights recognised by law and property rights in the sense of the ability to use or control something.  If this was not so, there would be no point to theft.

The puzzle of slaves buying their own freedom is how Prof. Yoram Barzel (fulsome tribute here) introduces the reader to the Economic Analysis of Property Rights. 

It would be good if President Obama managed a successful Presidency for lots of reasons.  One of Reagan’s most overlooked achievements was that it was beginning to look like a successful two-term Presidency was no longer possible (Kennedy shot; LBJ broken by Vietnam; Nixon resigned in disgrace; Ford not elected; Carter, one-term failure).  Moreover, unsuccessful Presidencies tend to have manifold unfortunate consequences.  And it would be good to complete the I Have A Dream effect. 

A 1999 study (pdf) has some striking results about US academic political adherence by faculty. 

This pattern--of faculties being much more left than the general populace but the degree to which they are differing notably by discipline--seems to me to be explicable.

The so-called political correctness phenomenon has two elements.  One is a wish to promote a certain sort of civility in talk and writing.  

But political correctness has a darker side.