I agree that the Left is in decline at present, but that will change as it always does. And as for the Left having not achieved anything in the Real World, how about the Child Labor laws, Women's Suffrage, racial equality laws, Social Security, minimum wages laws, anti-trust laws, environmental protection, same-sex marriage, etc.? All of those movements have been led by the Left and have been opposed by the Right. I don't think most of the Left believes in Perfect Equality in outcomes, just more equality in opportunity and I think many in the Left are whole-hearted supporters of Progress as you set out. You have set out a Straw Man, a bogeyman, to attack, largely based on your antipathy to Woke ideology which is to the Left as Fascism is to the Right, on the fringe. Life in the countries with strong Social Democratic traditions is generally considered superior to life in the USA by the judges who determine "Best Places to Live". And the economies of Denmark, Sweden, Australia, and others are doing well, if not as well as High Tech has been doing in the USA (but as well as the rest of the US economy). I think you have been watching too much Fox News and have come to accept that anything Left or liberal is bad. Terribly one-sided article this.
Can you give me one example of a political party on the Left (democratic or authoritarian) who has said "Our policies have created enough Equality to satisfy us, so we will not ask for more?"
And do not say Scandinavia. I lived in Denmark for 2 years, and I know that many parties on the Left there believe that Denmark has immoral levels of inequality and that the government must take immediate action to address the problem.
If you cannot give me a single example, then this proves that the Left has never been able to achieve enough equality BY THEIR OWN STANDARDS. Given that it has been over 200 years, it is reasonable to conclude that it cannot be done, and we should shift to a more achievable goal.
You are deliberately misstating what I actually wrote in the article, and then you accuse me of creating "a Straw Man, a bogeyman?"
Seriously?
I never said that the Left has never achieved anything. I said that their prime moral goal of Equality is unachievable, and they refuse to acknowledge that fact.
Your reply is just further proof of the lack of willingness to confront this central moral dilemma.
None of the policies you list created anything like Equality, except equality of legal rights, which I stated in the article is achievable and I support. And I acknowledged that Social Security helps the elderly in the article.
The Left always identifies an inequality, campaigns against it, and says that they have policies that will address the problem, but then the results are still rampant inequality in the very domain that they campaigned. By their own standards, that is a FAILURE.
I never said “perfect equality of outcomes.”
And how does the Left measure equality of opportunity? By the existence of equality of outcome between groups.
So the term “equality of opportunity” to the Left is just a nicer sounding equality of outcome. Significant differences in outcome between men/women and blacks/whites are considered a moral outrage by the Left even when the rules are identical.
I have never heard anyone on the Left claim that their goals are to improve their rankings on the Best Places to Live. And there is no evidence that the rankings are due to government policy anyway.
The Central Moral Dilemma of the Left preceded the Woke by more than 200 years.
I think it says something about Michael that he would bother to pin your critical comment to the top of this article's comment feed. I've never seen someone from the Left do that to a right-wing commenter.
As one who is decidedly on the Right (I am a Christian, Burkean, postliberal, a position nearly outside the Enlightenment tradition) I have a great deal of argument with Michael, even in this piece. From my perspective, he comes across as a near-libertarian. But I would never call him left-wing. And I certainly wouldn't tell him he's "watching too much CNBC".
Liberalism is liberationist. It seeks to demolish all unchosen constraints so that it may create utopia (perfect Equality). Both philosophy and history back this thesis. Has it done some good things along the way? Yes! But as an ideology, it will never stop liberating. The same movement that freed a black woman from the unjust constraints of slavery in the 19th century frees her great-great-granddaughter from the unjust constraints of biology in the 21st. Liberalism's great fault (which Michael highlights well) is an inability to declare victory. Patrick Deneen summarized it as, "liberalism failed by succeeding too well."
You have not read his other stuff then. It is ok if the left is criticized Robert. Also calling them Social Democratic is disingenuous considering they also do things that are to the right of America. Sweden has partially privatized their social security system and has been puberty blockers for children. Overall, they are a very free market state with a strong social safety net. Lastly, telling people they are wrong by insinuating they watch a certain news network is just pure laziness.
This is outstanding. It verbalizes a lot of disorganized thoughts I began having years ago (reading Thomas Sowell) and carrying through until today. People begin with MORAL assumptions (examples: black students will perform equally well as white students on average minus without racism and structural barriers, women are underrepresented among corporate executives due to sexism, imprisonment and crime are social problems defined by over-policing and can be constructively addressed by lessening a range of criminal penalties, 'renewable' energy sources are a viable and affordable replacement for our energy infrastructure and should be fully implemented right away). These aren't assumptions based on curiosity or real-world data-they are ethical imperatives, masquerading as public policy initiatives. Because they are not rooted in data they are impervious to NEW information... and critics and dissenters are invariably labelled and saddled with a thoughtcrime for questioning the assumptions.
This seems to be a psychological and emotional issue as much as an epistemological one.
I recently began to believe that the entire political structure of Leftism is different from the mainstream as well: it's symbolic and abstract, which reflects the believers' disconnections from real world challenges and constraints (like crime, and scarcity).
It took me a great deal of thought to hone my ideas down into a few key principles. The problem is that most people are completely unaware of the assumptions that their views are based on, so you have to work backward from their stated intentions to their underlying assumptions.
I assign Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut to my civics students every year to drive home exactly the point you make here: equality is impossible to achieve and undesirable even if you could.
I think your description of progress substantially overlaps with conservatism. Conservatism would be marked by a lack of downward force from government to enact particular social change except for basic civilizational standards.
I think some conservatives believe that, but I am not sure that it is what conservatism is. For example, I do not hear a lot of conservatives really focused on increasing per capita GDP. They typically focus on other issues.
I know many on the Right who are hostile to my concept of material progress. I think because they perceive it as leading to a "downward force from government to enact particular social change"
To be fair, I do not claim to understand conservatism. A lot of it seems to be intellectual mush that is just arguing against the most recent version of the Left. And then in the next generation, the Right completely changes their arguments to counter a later version of the Left.
I think many brands of conservatives want to use "downward force from government to enact particular social change" and I have no problem doing it to fulfill the goals of promoting long-term widely-shared economic growth.
Funny you say that about the right. Like you, I try to understand the left and what I disagree with. But I just don’t get the right. I am not sure what their core principles are and what they are trying to conserve, other than as an opponent to the left (which I appreciate).
I have heard it said that there is “the Left” and then there is everyone else. Everyone else has wildly differing views, but they share an opposition to the Left. The Left calls the opposition “the Right,” but it is really too heterogeneous for a label.
I don’t know if it is true, but it kind of makes sense.
That's funny to me, since as (what most people would call) a pretty far-end conservative, I see very little overlap between Michael's progress theories and conservatism.
I think the single-minded focus on progress is distinctly libertarian and largely incapable of (or even hostile to) conserving anything meaningful.
(Not trying to rag on you, Michael, since from your reply, it's clear you are aware of such criticisms from the right.)
Yes, I get to be the whipping boy for both sides! That is fine. I enjoy the intellectual discussion, and I am not afraid to be the only person in the room arguing for something.
Don’t worry. I am not easily offended as long as others stay respectful and on topic.
For the record, I am far more concerned about results rather than ideological purity.
You are probably correct that I am probably closer to Libertarianism than to the Left of the Right, but I also have strong disagreements with Libertarians exclusive focus on Individual Liberty over all other goals and their unwillingness to use government for anything beyond the very basics.
I am more aware of the need to conserve some things even at the expense of material progress than you may realize. I just have not written about it. I might do so in the future. It is a very difficult issue, and I want to thrash through my beliefs before I go public.
An excellent article. But today in Canada and Europe and even the US the equality religion of the Left has been surpassed by a new and even more destructive religion: saving the planet from global warming now morphed into climate change and the climate crisis. I would like to see you write about this topic as well.
Yes, I agree that Green ideology is somewhat of an exception to my "Equality is the central moral goal of the Left." But as I stated in the article, almost all Greens accept Left policies on non-environmental issues, so it is not a big exception in practice.
I have actually written a huge number of articles on Green energy policies:
"Promoting a clear pathway that enables youths from low-income families to enter that prosperous working class."
Can you tell me where you express your ideas on how to accomplish this goal?
I certainly do not believe in equality as a goal, but I do believe in basic support for every human being. In your view of the optimum society, who supports the truly disabled—for instance the mentally handicapped. In our present society this is handled to a large degree by families, but in default of families by the government. How would you address that problem of the clearly disabled?
I do not have a specific policy on the disabled, nor do I know much about the issue. The US already has Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). I am much more concerned about the rest of the population.
As for your first question, the pathway is described in detail here:
If you want to present your outlook as a complete take on what modern civilization should be, you need to have a position on the disabled. I am fully aware that the government provides for them now— in your opinion should it remain that way and if so, why?
Also, your emphasis that genetic endowment is the major factor in inequality COULD encourage to a revival of eugenics. Why should society be burdened with those who will not be up to the challenges of the Information age? Why should eugenics not be revived?
I think that genetic endowment is the greatest factor in inequality, but I would put family environment second. I was lucky enough to be the child of two of the three smartest graduates of Ephrata High School class of 1946. I was raised in a family where there were plenty of books, an admiration for learning, daily newspaper, and intelligent discussion at the dinner table. My parents modeled responsibility and diligence for me. My mother introduced me to Shakespeare and took me to the art gallery. I can imagine other family situations where I would have been set up to achieve much less.
Of course, we cannot guarantee each child an equal family environment, but we can at least acknowledge the critical role it plays.
Your comments are getting off the topic of the article, but:
I never "present my outlook as a complete take on what modern civilization should be." I do not have to have an opinion on everything. I only need to back up what I choose to write about.
My guess is that some form of eugenics will happen. I will write an article about it in the future.
The evidence is pretty clear from twin studies that the family environment is less important in explaining variations in outcomes than the external environment. Unfortunately, there are very few causal environmental factors that have been proven to have effects once you control for genetics.
Far more research is needed. As long as the Left refuses to acknowledge variation in outcomes based on genetics, then we will not be able to identify environmental factors with precision.
As for parenting style, remember that parents have genes too, and parenting style is likely largely genetic as well.
The usefulness of twin studies has now become a great controversy in psychology. The irony is that my parents had definite beefs with the culture they grew up with, fortunately those disagreements went in fundamentally the same direction. They moved out of their birth culture both physically and mentally and their parenting style was quite different from the one they experienced growing up. So, that makes me hesitant about the role of genetics in all this.
I will write more about genetics and outcomes in future articles, so we can talk more later.
There is no "Unbearable Incoherence of Heritability." That is like claiming that Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection is only a theory.
It is simply applying facts from biology to humans. Unfortunately, there is a strong taboo against it, particularly in the humanities.
Twins studies are not perfect, and they have their flaws, but they are by far the best that we have for now.
Twins studies largely focus on identical twins that are raised by non-biological parents, so they are the best current means to control for genetics.
Psychologists reject twin studies, because:
1) Academics hate when experts from other fields upset all their assumptions.
2) Psychologists are overwhelmingly on the Left, and those on the Left cannot admit the powerful effect of genetics without coming to terms with the Central Moral Dilemma of the Left.
Note also that there are many of the same people who refuse to allow genetic research on outcomes. They are like the person who is accused tof murder who refuses to submit to a DNA test because those tests sometimes make mistakes.
Actually, the guy’s main point is that some human characteristics are strongly connected with identifiable genes, but others are dependent on the interaction of so many genes with epigenetic factors that the genetic role will never be understood. This guy is not a psychologist, but a behavioral geneticist. He once had great hope to apply genetics to the field of human behavior but became disillusioned.
My basic point is if you wish to replace the all-encompassing philosophy of leftism, you must present an all-encompassing philosophy to replace it. If you don't do it, someone else will put the decorations on your Christmas tree and you may not approve of them. I think the major thing that is lacking in your philosophy is the issues it does not address.
Also, what could be more antithetic to human autonomy than eugenics?
Is there a post where you address how your philosophy is different from conservatism? You claim that it is different.
No, I do not have to present "an all-encompassing philosophy to replace it." That is an absurdly high standard. Nor do I even use the term "philosophy."
To the best of my knowledge, no one presents that high a standard to any thinkers on the Left or the Right. Do you reject Rawls because he does not have a disability policy?
I clearly identified the main goals of the progress-based perspective and gave specific policies on how to implement those goals. In the future, those policies might change based on results.
That is actually far more specific than what either the Right or Left does.
I do not write about "human autonomy" or "eugenics."
I think the differences between my perspective and the Right are self-evident. I have never heard anyone on the Right state the four goals that I presented. Nor do I claim to understand the Right.
While my lifelong experience has gradually led me from life as a happy child in an FDR liberal-type blue-collar household, to a casual progressive war resister, to an independent and self-sufficient young adult bearing an ever-increasing burden to fund public social policies, to a focused middle-to-older age adult who was able to see the opportunities and pitfalls, I have come to the very firm conclusion that one must, by necessity, think the unthinkable from time-to-time, no matter how repugnant it might be. It amounts to a periodic recalibration of one's core assumptions.
One must be ready to think thru why/why not some level of eugenics *might* be of very broad benefit that outweighs the negative outcomes for a few. One must think thru, as a serious option, forcible redistribution of private assets, and objectively estimate the benefits/harms from such a policies.
One must consider that humanity has no objective claim to any superior *moral* position than any other social animal, and that to start with the exception that it does, begins the discussion from a false premise.
If one cannot do this, then that person is being guided by preconceptions and rather than objective fact finding to be used in problem solving, and basically considers only those phenomena that support these positions, ignoring other phenomena that do not, leaving them unevaluated.
A good take, Michael. Unfortunately, there is no time left for me to comment after the time spent reading it this morning. …Reinhart and Rogoff come to mind, as well as the progressive tax structure long in place which pays to keep the moral dream of equality alive, politically active.
I also don’t know understand why you qualify “The term “Left” as a means of categorizing political ideologies is generally thought to have arisen out of the French Revolution.” Why “is generally thought” rather than stating the truth: it arose out of the French Revolution?
A very interesting article, a great deal of which I agree with, a small amount I’d argue with, though not today. But you should correct this sentence: “Therefore, others should not question their intent of obvious grifters, which which would be far too much for them to handle emotionally.” It should be “the intent” not “their.
I agree that the Left is in decline at present, but that will change as it always does. And as for the Left having not achieved anything in the Real World, how about the Child Labor laws, Women's Suffrage, racial equality laws, Social Security, minimum wages laws, anti-trust laws, environmental protection, same-sex marriage, etc.? All of those movements have been led by the Left and have been opposed by the Right. I don't think most of the Left believes in Perfect Equality in outcomes, just more equality in opportunity and I think many in the Left are whole-hearted supporters of Progress as you set out. You have set out a Straw Man, a bogeyman, to attack, largely based on your antipathy to Woke ideology which is to the Left as Fascism is to the Right, on the fringe. Life in the countries with strong Social Democratic traditions is generally considered superior to life in the USA by the judges who determine "Best Places to Live". And the economies of Denmark, Sweden, Australia, and others are doing well, if not as well as High Tech has been doing in the USA (but as well as the rest of the US economy). I think you have been watching too much Fox News and have come to accept that anything Left or liberal is bad. Terribly one-sided article this.
Can you give me one example of a political party on the Left (democratic or authoritarian) who has said "Our policies have created enough Equality to satisfy us, so we will not ask for more?"
And do not say Scandinavia. I lived in Denmark for 2 years, and I know that many parties on the Left there believe that Denmark has immoral levels of inequality and that the government must take immediate action to address the problem.
If you cannot give me a single example, then this proves that the Left has never been able to achieve enough equality BY THEIR OWN STANDARDS. Given that it has been over 200 years, it is reasonable to conclude that it cannot be done, and we should shift to a more achievable goal.
You are deliberately misstating what I actually wrote in the article, and then you accuse me of creating "a Straw Man, a bogeyman?"
Seriously?
I never said that the Left has never achieved anything. I said that their prime moral goal of Equality is unachievable, and they refuse to acknowledge that fact.
Your reply is just further proof of the lack of willingness to confront this central moral dilemma.
None of the policies you list created anything like Equality, except equality of legal rights, which I stated in the article is achievable and I support. And I acknowledged that Social Security helps the elderly in the article.
The Left always identifies an inequality, campaigns against it, and says that they have policies that will address the problem, but then the results are still rampant inequality in the very domain that they campaigned. By their own standards, that is a FAILURE.
I never said “perfect equality of outcomes.”
And how does the Left measure equality of opportunity? By the existence of equality of outcome between groups.
So the term “equality of opportunity” to the Left is just a nicer sounding equality of outcome. Significant differences in outcome between men/women and blacks/whites are considered a moral outrage by the Left even when the rules are identical.
I have never heard anyone on the Left claim that their goals are to improve their rankings on the Best Places to Live. And there is no evidence that the rankings are due to government policy anyway.
The Central Moral Dilemma of the Left preceded the Woke by more than 200 years.
I do not watch Fox News at all.
I think it says something about Michael that he would bother to pin your critical comment to the top of this article's comment feed. I've never seen someone from the Left do that to a right-wing commenter.
As one who is decidedly on the Right (I am a Christian, Burkean, postliberal, a position nearly outside the Enlightenment tradition) I have a great deal of argument with Michael, even in this piece. From my perspective, he comes across as a near-libertarian. But I would never call him left-wing. And I certainly wouldn't tell him he's "watching too much CNBC".
Liberalism is liberationist. It seeks to demolish all unchosen constraints so that it may create utopia (perfect Equality). Both philosophy and history back this thesis. Has it done some good things along the way? Yes! But as an ideology, it will never stop liberating. The same movement that freed a black woman from the unjust constraints of slavery in the 19th century frees her great-great-granddaughter from the unjust constraints of biology in the 21st. Liberalism's great fault (which Michael highlights well) is an inability to declare victory. Patrick Deneen summarized it as, "liberalism failed by succeeding too well."
You have not read his other stuff then. It is ok if the left is criticized Robert. Also calling them Social Democratic is disingenuous considering they also do things that are to the right of America. Sweden has partially privatized their social security system and has been puberty blockers for children. Overall, they are a very free market state with a strong social safety net. Lastly, telling people they are wrong by insinuating they watch a certain news network is just pure laziness.
This is outstanding. It verbalizes a lot of disorganized thoughts I began having years ago (reading Thomas Sowell) and carrying through until today. People begin with MORAL assumptions (examples: black students will perform equally well as white students on average minus without racism and structural barriers, women are underrepresented among corporate executives due to sexism, imprisonment and crime are social problems defined by over-policing and can be constructively addressed by lessening a range of criminal penalties, 'renewable' energy sources are a viable and affordable replacement for our energy infrastructure and should be fully implemented right away). These aren't assumptions based on curiosity or real-world data-they are ethical imperatives, masquerading as public policy initiatives. Because they are not rooted in data they are impervious to NEW information... and critics and dissenters are invariably labelled and saddled with a thoughtcrime for questioning the assumptions.
This seems to be a psychological and emotional issue as much as an epistemological one.
I recently began to believe that the entire political structure of Leftism is different from the mainstream as well: it's symbolic and abstract, which reflects the believers' disconnections from real world challenges and constraints (like crime, and scarcity).
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/matters-of-importance
Glad that you enjoyed it.
It took me a great deal of thought to hone my ideas down into a few key principles. The problem is that most people are completely unaware of the assumptions that their views are based on, so you have to work backward from their stated intentions to their underlying assumptions.
I assign Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut to my civics students every year to drive home exactly the point you make here: equality is impossible to achieve and undesirable even if you could.
Interesting. I have never heard of it. My reading is almost exclusively non-fiction, mainly history, social science, and public policy.
I found a PDF on the internet, and it looks intriguing.
"... equality is impossible to achieve and undesirable even if you could."
That is basically what I would have said had I been the earliest commenter. :-)
[Opps: had I been the top commenter.] [Is that top right sort function working?]
I think your description of progress substantially overlaps with conservatism. Conservatism would be marked by a lack of downward force from government to enact particular social change except for basic civilizational standards.
I think some conservatives believe that, but I am not sure that it is what conservatism is. For example, I do not hear a lot of conservatives really focused on increasing per capita GDP. They typically focus on other issues.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/evidence-for-progress-per-capita
I know many on the Right who are hostile to my concept of material progress. I think because they perceive it as leading to a "downward force from government to enact particular social change"
To be fair, I do not claim to understand conservatism. A lot of it seems to be intellectual mush that is just arguing against the most recent version of the Left. And then in the next generation, the Right completely changes their arguments to counter a later version of the Left.
I think many brands of conservatives want to use "downward force from government to enact particular social change" and I have no problem doing it to fulfill the goals of promoting long-term widely-shared economic growth.
Funny you say that about the right. Like you, I try to understand the left and what I disagree with. But I just don’t get the right. I am not sure what their core principles are and what they are trying to conserve, other than as an opponent to the left (which I appreciate).
I have heard it said that there is “the Left” and then there is everyone else. Everyone else has wildly differing views, but they share an opposition to the Left. The Left calls the opposition “the Right,” but it is really too heterogeneous for a label.
I don’t know if it is true, but it kind of makes sense.
That's funny to me, since as (what most people would call) a pretty far-end conservative, I see very little overlap between Michael's progress theories and conservatism.
I think the single-minded focus on progress is distinctly libertarian and largely incapable of (or even hostile to) conserving anything meaningful.
(Not trying to rag on you, Michael, since from your reply, it's clear you are aware of such criticisms from the right.)
LOL
Yes, I get to be the whipping boy for both sides! That is fine. I enjoy the intellectual discussion, and I am not afraid to be the only person in the room arguing for something.
Don’t worry. I am not easily offended as long as others stay respectful and on topic.
For the record, I am far more concerned about results rather than ideological purity.
You are probably correct that I am probably closer to Libertarianism than to the Left of the Right, but I also have strong disagreements with Libertarians exclusive focus on Individual Liberty over all other goals and their unwillingness to use government for anything beyond the very basics.
I am more aware of the need to conserve some things even at the expense of material progress than you may realize. I just have not written about it. I might do so in the future. It is a very difficult issue, and I want to thrash through my beliefs before I go public.
An excellent article. But today in Canada and Europe and even the US the equality religion of the Left has been surpassed by a new and even more destructive religion: saving the planet from global warming now morphed into climate change and the climate crisis. I would like to see you write about this topic as well.
Yes, I agree that Green ideology is somewhat of an exception to my "Equality is the central moral goal of the Left." But as I stated in the article, almost all Greens accept Left policies on non-environmental issues, so it is not a big exception in practice.
I have actually written a huge number of articles on Green energy policies:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-green-energy-policies-threaten
These two articles are the closest to what you seem to want:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/two-wings-of-the-green-movement
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-green-energy-policies-ate-the
"Promoting a clear pathway that enables youths from low-income families to enter that prosperous working class."
Can you tell me where you express your ideas on how to accomplish this goal?
I certainly do not believe in equality as a goal, but I do believe in basic support for every human being. In your view of the optimum society, who supports the truly disabled—for instance the mentally handicapped. In our present society this is handled to a large degree by families, but in default of families by the government. How would you address that problem of the clearly disabled?
I do not have a specific policy on the disabled, nor do I know much about the issue. The US already has Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). I am much more concerned about the rest of the population.
As for your first question, the pathway is described in detail here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-case-for-upward-bound-accounts
More broadly, that is the topic of my entire third book:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/upward-mobility-the-series
If you want to present your outlook as a complete take on what modern civilization should be, you need to have a position on the disabled. I am fully aware that the government provides for them now— in your opinion should it remain that way and if so, why?
Also, your emphasis that genetic endowment is the major factor in inequality COULD encourage to a revival of eugenics. Why should society be burdened with those who will not be up to the challenges of the Information age? Why should eugenics not be revived?
I think that genetic endowment is the greatest factor in inequality, but I would put family environment second. I was lucky enough to be the child of two of the three smartest graduates of Ephrata High School class of 1946. I was raised in a family where there were plenty of books, an admiration for learning, daily newspaper, and intelligent discussion at the dinner table. My parents modeled responsibility and diligence for me. My mother introduced me to Shakespeare and took me to the art gallery. I can imagine other family situations where I would have been set up to achieve much less.
Of course, we cannot guarantee each child an equal family environment, but we can at least acknowledge the critical role it plays.
Your comments are getting off the topic of the article, but:
I never "present my outlook as a complete take on what modern civilization should be." I do not have to have an opinion on everything. I only need to back up what I choose to write about.
My guess is that some form of eugenics will happen. I will write an article about it in the future.
The evidence is pretty clear from twin studies that the family environment is less important in explaining variations in outcomes than the external environment. Unfortunately, there are very few causal environmental factors that have been proven to have effects once you control for genetics.
Far more research is needed. As long as the Left refuses to acknowledge variation in outcomes based on genetics, then we will not be able to identify environmental factors with precision.
As for parenting style, remember that parents have genes too, and parenting style is likely largely genetic as well.
Glad that you had a great childhood.
https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/the-unbearable-incoherence-of-heritability
The usefulness of twin studies has now become a great controversy in psychology. The irony is that my parents had definite beefs with the culture they grew up with, fortunately those disagreements went in fundamentally the same direction. They moved out of their birth culture both physically and mentally and their parenting style was quite different from the one they experienced growing up. So, that makes me hesitant about the role of genetics in all this.
I will write more about genetics and outcomes in future articles, so we can talk more later.
There is no "Unbearable Incoherence of Heritability." That is like claiming that Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection is only a theory.
It is simply applying facts from biology to humans. Unfortunately, there is a strong taboo against it, particularly in the humanities.
Twins studies are not perfect, and they have their flaws, but they are by far the best that we have for now.
Twins studies largely focus on identical twins that are raised by non-biological parents, so they are the best current means to control for genetics.
Psychologists reject twin studies, because:
1) Academics hate when experts from other fields upset all their assumptions.
2) Psychologists are overwhelmingly on the Left, and those on the Left cannot admit the powerful effect of genetics without coming to terms with the Central Moral Dilemma of the Left.
Note also that there are many of the same people who refuse to allow genetic research on outcomes. They are like the person who is accused tof murder who refuses to submit to a DNA test because those tests sometimes make mistakes.
Actually, the guy’s main point is that some human characteristics are strongly connected with identifiable genes, but others are dependent on the interaction of so many genes with epigenetic factors that the genetic role will never be understood. This guy is not a psychologist, but a behavioral geneticist. He once had great hope to apply genetics to the field of human behavior but became disillusioned.
My basic point is if you wish to replace the all-encompassing philosophy of leftism, you must present an all-encompassing philosophy to replace it. If you don't do it, someone else will put the decorations on your Christmas tree and you may not approve of them. I think the major thing that is lacking in your philosophy is the issues it does not address.
Also, what could be more antithetic to human autonomy than eugenics?
Is there a post where you address how your philosophy is different from conservatism? You claim that it is different.
No, I do not have to present "an all-encompassing philosophy to replace it." That is an absurdly high standard. Nor do I even use the term "philosophy."
To the best of my knowledge, no one presents that high a standard to any thinkers on the Left or the Right. Do you reject Rawls because he does not have a disability policy?
I clearly identified the main goals of the progress-based perspective and gave specific policies on how to implement those goals. In the future, those policies might change based on results.
That is actually far more specific than what either the Right or Left does.
I do not write about "human autonomy" or "eugenics."
I think the differences between my perspective and the Right are self-evident. I have never heard anyone on the Right state the four goals that I presented. Nor do I claim to understand the Right.
While my lifelong experience has gradually led me from life as a happy child in an FDR liberal-type blue-collar household, to a casual progressive war resister, to an independent and self-sufficient young adult bearing an ever-increasing burden to fund public social policies, to a focused middle-to-older age adult who was able to see the opportunities and pitfalls, I have come to the very firm conclusion that one must, by necessity, think the unthinkable from time-to-time, no matter how repugnant it might be. It amounts to a periodic recalibration of one's core assumptions.
One must be ready to think thru why/why not some level of eugenics *might* be of very broad benefit that outweighs the negative outcomes for a few. One must think thru, as a serious option, forcible redistribution of private assets, and objectively estimate the benefits/harms from such a policies.
One must consider that humanity has no objective claim to any superior *moral* position than any other social animal, and that to start with the exception that it does, begins the discussion from a false premise.
If one cannot do this, then that person is being guided by preconceptions and rather than objective fact finding to be used in problem solving, and basically considers only those phenomena that support these positions, ignoring other phenomena that do not, leaving them unevaluated.
I’m sympathetic to the argument that progressives today fixate on inequality to the detriment of other values that matter
A good take, Michael. Unfortunately, there is no time left for me to comment after the time spent reading it this morning. …Reinhart and Rogoff come to mind, as well as the progressive tax structure long in place which pays to keep the moral dream of equality alive, politically active.
I also don’t know understand why you qualify “The term “Left” as a means of categorizing political ideologies is generally thought to have arisen out of the French Revolution.” Why “is generally thought” rather than stating the truth: it arose out of the French Revolution?
A very interesting article, a great deal of which I agree with, a small amount I’d argue with, though not today. But you should correct this sentence: “Therefore, others should not question their intent of obvious grifters, which which would be far too much for them to handle emotionally.” It should be “the intent” not “their.