Thursday roundup

 Joel Kotkin of Chapman University has an overarching-scope-type piece at Quillette on how cities got going early in human history, how they evolved, and how they reached their present state. He says people originally started coming together to live in dense population clusters to make and trade things. In the last century, the city's purpose - and he maintains it's true of cities worldwide - has morphed into their becoming places "dominated by elite business services operating out of high-rise towers - the commanding heights of the world economy, beneath which all others were relegated to subordinate roles." Now, in the late stage of this phase, inequality in cities is glaring and increasing. The class that is doing well has also to a considerable degree left those towers for a remote work style. Meanwhile, the class at the bottom of the hierarchy is increasingly living in desperation and despair. Where to go from here?

Meghan Murphy has a piece at Spiked entitled "Why I Left the Left," and she delivers on the title's promise. She began adult life with her leftist bona fides in impeccable order:

I have been dedicated to the left since I was a teenager. As a young woman, I identified as a Marxist, viewing even socialists as ‘not left enough’. I voted for Canada’s left-wing party, the New Democratic Party, in every provincial and federal election from the time I was 18 until a few years ago. I viewed anyone who voted for our centrist party – the Liberal Party, now led by Justin Trudeau – as right-wing. I was not just left, but left of the left, and proud of it.

But she came to see that, as identity politics took center stage, the Left was going to factionalize and eat its own:

In feminism, a lot of time is dedicated to asking why our movements, forums and activist groups quickly descend into infighting, drama and toxicity. During my time working with feminist collectives, it was always impossible to come to any decision. Meetings were often held hostage by narcissists who wished to make everything about their various afflictions and ‘trauma’, and who were willing to tear the group apart, seemingly just to test their power.

All this is ingrained in the leftist approach now, where ‘Safe Spaces’ are prioritised over getting things done, and where being an ‘ally’ means publicly proclaiming solidarity or condemnation, regardless of one’s individual thoughts or opinions. Independent thought is treated as a threat.

Any movement that treats those who achieve success, a platform or any form of power as traitors to be torn down and destroyed – or thinks that advocating for universal civil rights and liberties is ‘racist’, ‘misogynist’ or ‘transphobic’ – is not a movement ‘for the people’. 

Jonah Goldberg's latest makes the point I was making in a post here at LITD the other day - namely, that nothing good's going to come from Democrats on the House January 6 committee muddying the waters by calling for abolishing the Electoral College. He covers more considerations than I did, such as the fact that, in an at least somewhat more perfect world, there wouldn't be a need for a January 6 committee:

The January 6 committee shouldn’t be necessary because the proper response and remedy to the attack should have been a rapid impeachment and conviction. The defeated president suborned a mob to hector and harass Congress into invalidating a presidential election. A Congress with an iota of institutional and constitutional sense would have done so within a few days of the attack. All of the vital evidence and testimony sought by the committee should have been sought by a Senate trial.

Andrew Donaldson, writing at Spectator World, shows that Joe Biden has no one but himself to blame for the present morass in which he finds himself.

Monsignor James Shae's remarks upon receiving the 2022 Canterbury Medal from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty are priceless. Wherever you see yourself re: ideology, culture, or on the big questions of ultimate reality, this guy will explain to you, with appropriate portions of humility, humor and bedrock conviction in the rightness of what he believes, why Christians can’t maneuver through the modern world in any way other than the way they do.