Are our motives and beliefs just convenient lies we tell ourselves? A new book by the controversial economist Robin Hanson argues they are.
On April 23, a 25-year-old man named Alek Minassian killed ten people with a van in downtown Toronto. Although his tactics resembled those used in recent, high-profile jihadist attacks, Minassian dedicated his terrorism not to the black flag of ISIS but to the message board 4chan and the “Incel Rebellion,” an imaginary uprising of involuntary celibates, or “incels” — members of an online subculture based around a shared inability to find willing sexual partners. The incels see this as a form of persecution: They are denied access to something, sex, that most people take for granted. …
Liberalism has suffered a catastrophic failure, says political scientist Patrick Deneen. Though he’s not the first to make the claim.
By Park MacDougald
American politics has long been defined by the dominance of liberalism, understood in its broad sense as the philosophy of individual rights, freedom, and pluralism. Although Democrats and Republicans fight bitterly over a host of issues, these are largely family disagreements within liberalism. Both sides have made peace with capitalism, the primacy of the individual over the collective, freedom as the highest goal of politics, and the exercise of U.S. power abroad to backstop the “liberal international order.” Whereas the 20th century saw communism and fascism seize state power in Europe and elsewhere, here the radicals of…
Park MacDougald
Staff editor @ForeignAffairs (web team), sometimes writer. All views my own, RT ≠ endorsement. DM/email for pitches. email: hpmacdougald at gmail dot com
