Worth reading in entirety, Alan Jacobs reflects on an essay by Douthat:
Such a system, predictably, was terrible at generating the kind of outward-facing, evangelistic conservatives who had made the Reagan revolution possible.
He ends by saying Antonin Scalia was the sole survivor of the Old Republic, making Amy Coney Barret the Last Jedi.
(OK, Douthat doesn’t use Star Wars. But Sunstein did. I just blended them.)
Where Douthat muses on Trump’s loss, Ian Leslie reflected on Biden’s victory over both Sanders and Trump:
It's worth spending a bit of time on what it means to be moderate.Three forgotten principles of moderate politics that sparkle because they are both obvious and ignored.
Turns out Leslie has a new book, Conflicted:
Disagreement is the best way of thinking we have. It weeds out weak arguments, improves decision-making, leads to new ideas, and, counter-intuitively, brings us closer to one another. But only if we do it well - and right now, we’re doing it terribly.
Looking forward to it. Mercier & Sperber demonstrated that disagreement is how groups think, and that under the right conditions, they vastly outthink people.
For some gentle advice on How to Think, try Alan Jacobs' book by that name. We all cover the philosophy & cognitive science. Jacobs tackles the human component:
[We describe] argument as war ... because in many arguments there truly is something to be lost, and most often what's under threat is social affiliation. [My bold.]
What to do?
6. Gravitate, as best you can, in every way you can, toward people who seem to value genuine community and can handle disagreement with equanimity.