After first broaching the subject of the populism of Pope Francis and Donald Trump last September, I admit to being provocative, perhaps excessively so. Then the pope and Trump engaged in a controversy over building walls, with Trump initially taking exception to having his religious faith questioned.
The anti-Semitic hysteria on many elite American campuses (the veil of anti-Zionism now thrown off) is belatedly becoming the subject of major concern in the Jewish community. As well it should. The young people of this community, in what should be idyllic years, are being exposed, often for the first time in their lives, to unreasoning hatred.
Matt Ridley talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his latest book, The Evolution of Everything. Ridley applies the lens of emergent order to a wide variety of phenomena including culture, morality, religion, commerce, innovation, and consciousness.
Jews who live in the West — the Mountain and Pacific states — stand apart from their counterparts in the rest of the country living in the Northeast, Midwest and South. Western Jews — of whom about three quarters live in California and about half of whom live in the Los Angeles area alone — are more likely to be members of the baby-boom generation, living alone or intermarried, raising non-Jewish children, unaffiliated with synagogues or Jewish organizations and identify as Democrats and liberals.
I'm glad that co-author Bryan Caplan called attention to the excellent essay by Nathan Smith. Otherwise I might not have known about it. Bryan highlighted some great sections. I want to highlight one other section. It's about the nicest modern defense of Western civilization that I've seen in a couple of decades.
A few days before the San Bernardino shootings, President Obama reacted to Donald Trump’s proposal to bar Muslims entry into the U.S. by saying, “It is the responsibility of all Americans––of every faith––to reject discrimination.
