Weekly Roundup

Reading List

How to have political disagreements without ruining relationships

This week on our Substack, Julian Adorney writes about the increasingly common phenomenon of losing friends or loved ones over political disagreements and how to navigate those difficult conversations.

“The soldier has one goal: to win the battle, protect their side, and defeat the enemy. The soldier isn't interested in shades of gray or in finding common ground; he's interested in winning. Given our tribal roots, the soldier mindset is highly adaptive. When you're at war with a rival tribe, letting down your sword to mull over how your opponents might actually have a point is a good way to get killed.

The scout, however, has a different goal: to understand. She wants to find the truth, because getting an accurate picture of the situation—whether it’s the terrain, the location and numbers of the enemy, or the weather—is essential to helping her side succeed. The scout approaches the problems of the world dispassionately, like a researcher, unblinkered by ideological biases or motivated reasoning.

You may be thinking that times are tough, the stakes are high, and the soldier is what is needed right now. But, in the words of Abraham Lincoln during perhaps the greatest period of strife in our nation’s history, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” If Lincoln can think that during the Civil War, we can certainly think it now.”

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Deracialization Now: A Response to Glenn Loury and Clifton Roscoe

For Free Black Thought, FAIR Advisor Greg Thomas writes about rising calls for deracialization—eliminating race and racialization from our sense of self and our public life.

“From my perspective, race is a categorization and hierarchical sorting of human beings into subspecies based on skin color and phenotypic differences. The express purpose of such selecting and sorting—and, as we shall soon see, of attribution, essentializing, and acting in a racist manner—was to enable the oppression and exploitation of darker-skinned people by situating them within a caste-like structure whereby those classified as white had more ready access to the social, economic, and political benefits and opportunities of a modern system of free enterprise.

Culture, in contrast, is human meaning and values expressed in forms of creative production (art and technology), rituals, patterns of behavior, and ways of seeing and being in the world—lifestyles. One can also view culture as shared agreements, practices, and symbolic communication among groups of people. Another approach to culture is more developmental, as in the use of education to cultivate and improve the human capacity to elevate and refine, thereby producing more “cultured” individuals.”

Guest Essay: An Ode to the Tomboys and Butch Lesbians

On her Substack, Broadview, FAIR Advisor Lisa Selin Davis hosted guest authors Reid Newton (FAIR Legal Analyst) and Michelle Pollino (FAIR in the Arts Fellow). Both are lesbians of different generations who share similar concerns about the direction of the LGBT movement, and worry about its potential to harm gender non-conforming young women and lesbians.

“We often search for each other in crowds: the wild women who weathered the storm to become our authentic selves. We almost always recognize each other and exchange a knowing glance and a nod, because we know what it took to get here. There is an innate kinship and understanding of the magic that lies within us. An unspoken network of women loving women out loud. No longer hidden and unseen. A network of women allowing each other to present themselves to the world however they see fit and not have their womanhood questioned. A community of those who have released ourselves from the burden of secrecy and shame to allow for our truest selves to come out. And yet now we’re being told we’re doing it all wrong. That being lesbian is inherently exclusionary and bigoted. That being a more masculine woman means you must really be a man. That all of our hard work has been for nothing.  

This is a hill the wild women, those who run with the wolves and are unafraid, are willing to die on. Our message to the tomboys and the butch lesbians is this: Your humanity deserves gentle exploration on your own terms. Your identity is not a disease that needs treatment, or an infection that need be cut out. You are perfect just the way you are. To our trans brothers and sisters, we stand with you and will defend your rights to live as you see fit. All we ask is that you allow us to have a seat at the table without demanding we renounce the very identity that has shaped both who we are and who we love. To speak honestly with us about the risks and benefits associated with socially or medically transitioning. Only then will we be able to do right by young women navigating a world that is already poised to challenge them at every turn.”

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Episode 206: “The Pro-Human Answer to Intolerance & Racism” with Bion Bartning

On his Substack, Bill Walton hosted our very own Bion Bartning, the founder of FAIR. Bion launched FAIR to address head-on the tribalism, identity culture and politics of division that are pitting Americans one against the other. The two discuss so-called “anti-racist” ideologies, and what it really means to be pro-human.

“Our approach is to reclaim the words, reclaim the language,” explains Bion.

“We're just insisting on what those words really mean to the vast majority of people. For example, the word equity means the quality of being fair and impartial.” 

“And we're not going to give up on the word diversity. Diversity is a good thing and just because somebody's pushing conformity and calling it diversity doesn't mean that we give up on the word diversity.”

“I think what most people need is to feel that they're part of a community,” explains Bion, pushing back against these toxic ideologies. “They need to feel that there are people backing them up, supporting them, who can help them with messaging and how to talk about how we are unique individuals with a shared common humanity. We call it being pro-human.”

What do we really mean by ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’?

For The Hill Opinion, Robert Maranto, Michael Mills, and Catherine Salmon explore what diversity, equity, and inclusion really means and the impact it has had on our institutions.

“In the academy, DEI and other identitarian orthodoxies are often mandated to be taught in student orientations and required courses, and enforced by campus DEI bureaucrats who now outnumber history faculty. By categorizing virtually any criticism as “prejudiced,” DEI bureaucracies can chill free speech and have empowered some college presidents to slander their critics as bigots and then terminate them. Program renewals for academic departments, and thus continued employment for professors and graduate students, are increasingly tied to embracing DEI rhetoric and goals.

DEI in many respects is a revolutionary ideology. But it is winning. This is in part due to fear of ostracism, censorship or termination — but also because you can’t beat something with nothing.

Enter University of Chicago Professor Dorian Abbot’s DEI alternative, merit, fairness, and equality (MFE), which is consistent with traditional Enlightenment and scientific values. Under MFE, academic decisions are based primarily on academic merit, well validated standardized test scores, grades and, for faculty, publication and teaching records. Individuals are primarily evaluated on their achievements, not by their group identities. This respects individual dignity and promotes the primary mission of research in higher education: the production of knowledge.”

The Freedom to Think Differently

For Tablet, Blake Smith writes about how Judith Shklar’s minority liberalism offers both an escape hatch from the Hobbesian tyranny of democratic majorities and a pathway to becoming the freest and most authentic versions of ourselves.

“Thinking for ourselves, and so undoing and renewing ourselves, requires a social context of other thinkers who are free to say what they think out loud, protected from both state censorship and—through the action of a “strong but neutral” state—from the efforts of present and future majorities to annihilate thought. Perhaps only those who have tasted the dizzying sweetness of free thinking can know that there is something better than will-to-power and resentment that constitutes the emotional life of democratic politics. The primary task of a Shklarian liberal then, would consist of awakening others to that savor—to showing them that they, too, like each of us, are “permanent minorities.”

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