Let's get this party started
Welcome to Rounding Up
Welcome to the first issue of Rounding Up!
I thought I’d open this issue with a few thoughts about what I hope to do in this newsletter.
The conversation is increasingly moving in the direction of walled gardens (or silos or whatever). Everybody has a Substack, a podcast, a Slack channel, etc. Tanner Greer has some interesting thoughts along those lines: he argues that the shift toward a more siloed discourse means a fracturing of the public square and a loss of the cross-pollination that characterized the blogosphere. (Oh, for the good ol’ days of blogging!)
So how about a newsletter that offers glimpses into those walled gardens? Each issue of Rounding Up will be a series of links and quotes—particularly emphasizing newsletters, podcasts, and other media slightly off the beaten path. A newsletter of newsletters, as it were. Yes, there will be some links to “regular” online pieces, too.
I can’t begin to cover all topics in this newsletter, so I’m going to focus on a few. Many of these links will focus on political reform. There’s so much interesting material about reform these days: reimagining policy, confronting big questions, pondering political realignment, and all that jazz. So why not a compendium of links around that theme? This reform is not clearly about the “left” or the “right.” As the links below indicate, Rounding Up will include material from a variety of political persuasions. And it won’t just be about policy and politics, either. Snippets from culture, philosophy, the arts, history, and so forth could also be included.
Rounding Up is an experiment, so none of this is set in stone. If you’re interested in following this experiment, subscribe. A few times a month (no more than once a week), you’ll get a list of what I hope are interesting links.
By the way, if you have any newsletters you think I should be following or any tips, feel free to drop me a line (through Twitter, email, etc.). Check out @fredbauerblog or fredbauerblog via gmail.
Thanks so much for reading!
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Right Futures: National Review is 65! For its anniversary, it has a cornucopia of pieces thinking about the history and future of the political right in the United States (see, for instance, this piece by Matt Continetti). In collaboration with American Compass, The American Conservative has a package of articles examining the legacy of the Trump presidency (with Daniel McCarthy, Julius Krein, Rachel Bovard, Oren Cass, and Wells King).
Matt Stoller looks at the dynamics of corporate mergers:
This merger represents something that is an increasingly important dynamic in the American economy, a merger done not just to gain power to exploit others, but with the goal of procuring market power to protect oneself against an existing monopolist. Concentration in one area of a supply chain leading to concentration elsewhere is a phenomenon called ‘Concentration Creep,’ and we’re now seeing it everywhere.
Matt Yglesias writes on travel restrictions and masks.
Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic chat about culture and COVID.
The Manhattan Institute’s Michael Hendrix warns that crime is rising in the Big Apple:
Crime in New York City is rising to levels not seen in years. Newly released data from the NYPD show a near doubling in shootings this year to November 2020, compared with the same period last year (1,412 vs. 721). Murders are also up by 38.4 percent year-on-year.
Two out of every five arrested in a shooting in November had been previously nabbed for gun possession. (Gun arrests were also up in November by 112 percent.) While overall crime remained flat for the month of November, and the monthly rate of shootings is down, violence is still significantly higher than the same time in 2019.
Speaking of MI, a fascinating discussion about liberalism with Andy Smarick, Dan Burns, Stephanie Slade, and James Patterson.
Oh, hey—an interesting forum on American liberty for Law and Liberty (with Sam Goldman, Titus Techera, and more)…
Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke offer a taxonomy of grandstanding for Persuasion:
The twin defining elements of moral grandstanding are:
A moral claim, expressed in public speech or writing. A grandstander might say something like: “To those of us who care about justice, it’s obvious that the police need to be abolished. How is this even a debate in 2020?”
A desire to impress others. For example: “I can’t believe all these sheep, wearing masks in public, simply obeying the liberal media. Be a man!” The grandstander aims not just to state an opinion, but to show off his courage, flouting the medical consensus.
Sometimes people grandstand by piling-on, as when they register agreement with a large group, so they can be seen as being on the “right side of history,” or doing their bit to shame an alleged wrongdoer. Other grandstanders turn conversations into an arms race, in which people ramp up moral claims.
New Kid on the Block: Saagar Enjeti and Marshall Kosloff—hosts of the reformist podcast “The Realignment”—now have a newsletter, too. Listener mail, book lists, and previews of coming attractions!
Disruption Alert: Sonny Bunch worries about the fate of movie theaters.
Anand Giridharadas interviews Harvard professor Michael Sandel about his new book on the meritocracy.
ANAND: Can you talk about the moment when merit seemed like an incredibly progressive innovation arriving in societies and then what went wrong?
MICHAEL: Merit arrived, so to speak, as a progressive ideal, as a way of enabling each person to go as far as talents and efforts would take them. It seemed like a welcome alternative to aristocratic societies, caste societies, societies ridden with racial prejudice and discrimination. And, of course, it represents an advance over those ways of life.
But we became so intoxicated with the ideal of a meritocracy that we came to think that if only we could remove barriers to success, then the winners would deserve their winnings. They would have a right, a claim of moral desert, to the rewards that society heaps on those who land on top. And that's where we've gone wrong.
We've seen deepening inequalities during the last four decades of globalization. And we've assumed, in the grip of the meritocratic ideal, that the only real response to that inequality is to offer individual upward mobility, the chance to rise, typically by going and getting a university degree. And this, I think, has been a woefully inadequate response to inequality.
Meritocracy is not an alternative to inequality. If you think about it, it's a justification for inequality.
A cool feature from The American Mind on whether philosophy is a science. Matt Peterson kicks it off:
This is a very serious question. Philosophy originally means love of wisdom. To paraphrase the ancient Greek man: don't call me someone who knows, but only someone who loves knowing. But how do we know? Here's where education today fails utterly. Over the centuries, despite many disputes, there was a western thread of knowing arguing that you can indeed reason your way to some truths. In fact, it holds this is a key difference between man and the rest of the animals. Speech is possible because of this pursuit and perception of truth. We can ask ourselves vital questions: Who and what am I? What will make me happy? How should we live our lives? How did I and everything else get here and where am I and all the rest of it going? Why do we die and is it the end? Is there a God? What is good and evil? What is just? What is the natural world and how does it operate?
Rod Dreher on poetry:
Anyway, good poetry and good movies, like all good art, recalibrates the inner eye. When you cannot bless, art reminds you that life remains a blessing. The crackle of Auden’s verse, like the martini-dryness of Bill Murray’s wit, open up a lane back to the land of the living — if we are capable of sitting still quietly in a room alone, and receiving what the artist reveals to us.
American Mind also thinks about art here.
Justin EH Smith writes about Substack, The Discourse, and the purpose of the university.