Monday roundup

It's finally happening: post-American colleges and universities are starting to die. Peter Heck at The Resurgent lays it out, as does Greg Jones at The Federalist. We all know the reasons. They have become unjustifiably expensive due to administrative bloat. Most departments, certainly humanities departments have been ruined by identity politics. What is starting to arise as an alternative is schools and other programs that more directly prepare young people for particular vocations.

That helps them materially, but as the former repositories for the world's accumulated wisdom shrivel, where shall one go to be guided into a proper appreciation for the development of Western civilization?

I'm reminded of an Eric Voegelin quote I ran across somewhere yesterday: "The price of modernity is the death of the spirit."

Here is a closer look at perhaps the main disease afflicting post-American higher education. It's an interesting panel discussion at Portland State University on how intersectionality functions like a religion:

 Of course, this is coming from three atheists so you may find their dismissive views of religion in general off-putting (or you may not). The point here is to note how intersectionality functions as a religion in the sense that it creates an in-group, an out-group and various social mechanisms to enforce the boundaries between the two. Some samples of the discussion:

• Dr. Lindsay: “They tend to focus on moral purity for the in-group. They tend to demonize the out-group. They especially demonize heretics or blasphemers or anyone who goes too far outside that dogmatic structure of belief and threatens it. Those people are often excommunicated.
• Helen Pluckrose: “People associate with God all that is good so when atheists say they don’t believe in God they are very often understood to say ‘I don’t believe in good.’…This is also very commonly seen in social-justice movements where to say ‘I don’t like this approach to equality’ is not to say ‘Well, I prefer a universal liberal’ or ‘I am a conservative with a libertarian bent who wants everybody to have the same opportunities,’ it’s essentially to say ‘I am a Nazi.'”
• Dr. Boghossian: “In religion, they have original sin, in Christianity, I’m thinking the Abrahamic tradition…What does intersectionality have?
  Pluckrose: “Privilege.”

The panel goes on to point out many other points of similarity to aspects of religion, e.g. a conversion experience (to intersectionality) is described as “becoming woke.” There is a parallel to pure evil, which is capital H hate. There is even a kind of secular utopian heaven in the distant future, a world without hate and haters toward which the moral arc of the universe is bending.

Again, if you have religious views some of this analysis may be off-putting but I think the underlying idea which is mentioned only briefly, is that intersectionality is a substitute religion. Lack of faith doesn’t always make people secular. It often makes them seek out substitutes which provide some of the same things found in traditional religions, i.e. an all-encompassing view of the world, a sense of right and wrong, a place in which they belong and feel at home, etc. As the panelists acknowledge, those are real human needs that almost everyone feels in some sense or another. Intersectionality is just a new faith on the scene, one that seems to appeal to a lot of young people on the far left.

This is a significant development:

The U.S. will overtake Russia to become the world’s largest oil producer by 2023, accounting for most of the global growth in petroleum supplies, a top industry monitor said Monday.

U.S. crude production is expected to reach a record of 12.1 million barrels a day in 2023, up about 2 million barrels a day from this year, said the International Energy Agency, which advises governments and corporations on industry trends. American oil output will surge past Russia, currently the world’s largest crude producer at about 11 million barrels a day.

The IEA’s closely watched five-year forecast showed the U.S. hitting new strides in its oil and gas boom, helped by technological advances, improved efficiency and a fragile recovery in oil prices that is encouraging shale companies to ramp up their drilling. Once heavily dependent on imports from the Middle East, the U.S. is getting closer to achieving its goal of producing enough crude to meet domestic demand for refined products like gasoline.

Of the 6.4 million new barrels of oil that will be pumped every day between now and 2023, almost 60% will come from the U.S., the IEA said.

It's a new era in the world of post-American work:

Employers are struggling to hire workers in tightening U.S. job market. Marijuana is now legal in nine states and Washington, D.C., meaning more than one in five American adults can eat, drink, smoke or vape as they please. The result is the slow decline of pre-employment drug tests, which for decades had been a requirement for new recruits in industries ranging from manufacturing to finance. 

As of the beginning of 2018, Excellence Health Inc., a Las Vegas-based health care company with around 6,000 employees, no longer drug tests people coming to work for the pharmaceutical side of the business. The company stopped testing for marijuana two years ago. “We don’t care what people do in their free time,” said Liam Meyer, a company spokesperson. “We want to help these people, instead of saying: ‘Hey, you can’t work for us because you used a substance,’” he added. The company also added a hotline for any workers who might be struggling with drug use.

Last month, AutoNation Inc., the largest U.S. auto dealer, announced it would no longer refuse job applicants who tested positive for weed. The Denver Post, owned by Digital First Media, ended pre-employment drug testing for all non-safety sensitive positions in September 2016. 

So far, companies in states that have legalized either recreational or medicinal marijuana are leading the way on dropping drug tests. A survey last year by the Mountain States Employers Council of 609 Colorado employers found that the share of companies testing for marijuana use fell to 66 percent, down from 77 percent the year before.

Drug testing restricts the job pool, and in the current tight labor market, that’s having an impact on productivity and growth. In surveys done by the Federal Reserve last year, employers cited an inability by applicants to pass drug tests among reasons for difficulties in hiring. Failed tests reached an all-time high in 2017, according to datafrom Quest Diagnostics Inc. That's likely to get worse as more people partake in state-legalized cannabis.

Jimmy Kimmel was as ugly and ridiculous hosting the Oscars as you know he was going to be.