1 Comment

Hi Chris, I just listened to your interesting interview with Nick Gillespie. Thank you for saying you find Shakespeare tedious; I do as well, and I'm white. I don't know why high school kids [at least when we were growing up] are forced to read authors that most adults prefer not to. It's bizarre that you have to wait until college [if you make it that far] that you are assigned reading material that makes you interested in a life of learning.

Here's what's on my mind: You mentioned that some black conservatives are essentially Uncle Toms, and I would like some clarification. I do realize that black conservatives are not popular in black communities; but I found myself shunned from my own community last year, when I moved from progressive to libertarian. I discovered that most of my so-called liberal friends would not even give me the courtesy of explaining why well-intentioned social programs often misfire due to misapprehensions of human behavior, so I'm not surprised that this is a universal problem.

I understand the philosophical difference between WEB DuBois and Booker T, and also the fact that MLK and Malcolm X needed each other in a good cop/bad cop dynamic. But I'm curious as to how you feel about Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell. I find both of them to be enlightening not just about black culture [which I have to take their word on], but also libertarian thinking that anyone can relate to. Moreover, my opinion on charter schools was taken from Thomas Sowell's book that came out last year--he certainly exposes the duplicitous agendas of Diane Ravitch and Randi Weingarten. But in a larger sense, Sowell's Conflict of Visions strikes me as a historically important treatise on the myopic duopoly in American political and economic thought.

I must confess, I have mixed feelings about their philosophical progeny [such as Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Larry Elder]; I'm thinking these may be the people you were referring to. And then there are the younger generation [Coleman Hughes, Jason Riley, Candace Owens], who I hardly know anything about. Where do you think this movement is going; and are these young black conservatives any more or less misguided than the current crop of white progressives, in your opinion?

What bothers me most of all, considering the wild extremes of the past year, is that most people in America still can't be bothered to read boring books, or even listen to lectures or interviews with people who think deeply about social policy and human behavior. Although I'm encouraged by the rising popularity of long-form podcasts, so who knows? I just wonder about the thought process of people on the left & right who want to "burn it all down" and start over. How are you supposed to start over when you don't even know why the old system failed? Anyway, you know as well as I do that this is a problem; where do you see a place to begin untangling this mess?

Expand full comment