Substack Notes: Vol. 5.6

Notes, from Feb. 8th - 15th

Mar 11, 2024

I’ve come to thoroughly enjoy the ‘notes’ feature on Substack as a way to share and shape and archive content on this platform… expect many more notes very soon.

Not On Your Team, But Always Fair

Mutually Assured Cancellation II: Andrew Doyle meets the Circular Firing Squad

When I reviewed Andrew Doyle’s The New Puritans for Law & Liberty, I noted his sympathy for the “political correctness” campaigns of the 80s and 90s, and took issue with it. Doyle defends the 80s/90s “political correctness” movement. He thinks it did help women, gays, and blacks. He argues that the use of casual slurs was pervasive and that women were routinely dism…

a year ago · 114 likes · 35 comments · Helen Dale

Unfolding the World

A Simple Moment of Weakness

This article is written in response to subscriber request. For many reasons, I do not like commenting on politics-of-the-day and generally do my best to ignore them. Unfortunately events in the unfolding of the world are jumping more and more into territory I consider “relevant…

a year ago · 284 likes · 9 comments · J. Daniel Sawyer

(My reply, Feb. 9, 2024 - A Simple Moment of Weakness" is truly frightening. I knew all of that before... but to see it organized before me was anxiety-inducing. Our situation reminds me of the 'three-body problem' in physics. Apparently it's functionally difficult/impossible to model the movement of 3 gravitationally-linked bodies. Tiny changes from one can lead to increasingly wide divergences. Idk.. I'm not a physicist but we are at the mercy of so many dark and accelerating trends right now. Who knows how they will influence each other... and us?

Just a reminder that every person's acts and words matter. Be just, be kind, be honest. You never know who it might redeem, and it couldn't hurt.)

The Futurist Right

Contra Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Our enemy is biological

Anyway, most of you have heard of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s ‘conversion’ if one can call it that, so I won’t dwell too much on the fact that it includes no indicators of actual belief. I’ll instead, address her utilitarian case for belief in Christianity as a shield against barbarism. But first, a flashback to the new atheist debates…

2 years ago · 14 likes · 12 comments · Right Wing Futurist

(My reply, Feb. 8, 2024 - If she is right that we need God to convince us not to screw Lizzo, then we don’t deserve to survive.” 😂

I don’t think I could honestly make the case that our society DESERVES to survive… but I still feel the urge to redeem and strengthen and protect it because it’s MY society and I care about it in the same way I care about my own survival (just in a more diffuse and abstract way).

I’ll keep fighting because the alternative is surrender and that’s not the an I am. Ultimately it might actually come down to a question of just desserts: do we have enough men and women smart and energetic enough to resist the tide of nonsense and turn it back? God I hope so.

I think I need to think about your points here some more. Thank you.)