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The Kiddies Contemplating the End Times
It was just over a year ago that I wrote a deep and penetrating article on “The Dissolution of the Universities.” I wrote that just as the monasteries declined over the centuries, staying very rich and not spending much money on the poor, our modern universities have declined from crucibles of knowledge into ruling-class narrative factories with gigantic endowments.
Could King Henry VIII, who dissolved the monasteries, and gave us Downton Abbey, be just a foretaste of King Donald the Great effecting the Dissolution of the Universities? Now I understand what “No Kings” is all about! Except, of course, that the universities are dissolving themselves without the help of The Donald.
The thing to understand is that back in the day the monasteries were vital repositories of knowledge:
[T]heir primary utility, from the perspective of the wider society, was as repositories, preservers, and disseminators of knowledge. Their scriptoria ensured that books were copied from one generation to the next, preventing knowledge from being lost.
But then came Gutenberg and the printing press.
Isn’t that just what our universities were, back in the day? If you wanted to get an education in philosophy, in the early 19th century, you had to go to the University of Berlin and listen to Schelling, like Kierkegaard did in the early 1840s.
But today there is AI. I asked Grok to “describe latest developments in philosophy.” Grok replied:
Concern about AI and human values and posthuman conditions
“Ethics of inequality… climate, human rights, and institutional justice.”
“interdisciplinary problem-solving—especially around AI’s disruptive power”
So really, it’s not surprising that the kiddies at their graduation ceremonies are booing mention of AI. Not because of the ethics of inequality, but the disruption that they are already experiencing. Imagine a future that does not give a damn about credentials!
The fact is that AI is making the universities — and all institutional education — obsolete. So the kiddies just went deep into debt to finance educations that aren’t worth a dime. Like I say, you can ask AI how to produce a daily schedule for homeschooling and it will give you an answer in seconds. I dare say that AI will tell you all the steps to take in founding an AI startup.
It puts me in mind of the “machine breakers” in the 19th century, the “19th-century English textile artisans who protested the rapid mechanization of industry.” See, the hand spinners and handloom weavers were being replaced by machine textile factories that were producing cheap textiles for the poor. And they decided they couldn’t take it any more. Of course, a century later, nobody gave a damn about the buggy-whip makers all losing their jobs. And whatabout the whalers and poor old Moby-Dick, replaced by a mere commission clerk and his cheap oil from oil wells. And whatabout the armies of programmers now that AI is taking over and doing it in a tenth of the time.
It’s not just kiddies at graduation facing the prospect of a bartender job like Sandy Cortez. I suspect that the current crop of hard-left DSA activists issuing from our universities reflects the rage of a declining aristocracy. Like the monasteries, the universities are rich. Like the nunneries, girls from high-status families are attending universities for the status now that high-status marriages are a thing of the past. Like the monasteries, we don’t need no stinkin’ universities any more.
I wonder if someone, right now, is developing an AI streaming series called Downton U, all about a family that had been in academia since the first research university in the US was founded at Johns Hopkins in 1876 and is now desperate to keep the old family prestige going for one more generation. No doubt Lady Mary will have to marry some low-rent tech bro.
| Tue, 30 Jun 2026 22:23:05 GMT |
Understanding Liberal Politics
John Podhoretz, son of the great Norman Podhoretz, wonders why the left abandoned The Jews and Israel. It wasn’t the DSA.
It started back in the 1980s, he writes, when Jesse Jackson came out against the Jews.
“In 1984 [Jackson] had grown powerful enough to keep the Democratic convention from considering a resolution against antisemitism.”
But it wasn’t just black leaders going against the Jews. Back in the day, Zionism was considered anti-colonial. No after the 1967 Six-Day War.
Zionism was reframed by radical thinkers in the 1970s as the ideology of a colonial oppressor of stateless Palestinians—the idea that gave rise to the notorious 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Then came “intersectionality.”
In 1989, UCLA professor Kimberlé Crenshaw devised the theory of “intersectionality,” according to which all political oppression stemmed from an imbalance between the powerful and powerless. Its application to the Middle East conflict was obvious: Israel was powerful, the Palestinians powerless, and therefore Israel was, by definition, an oppressor.
Then in the mid 2000s came the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. It was modeled on the anti-apartheid movement of the 1960s and 1970s. For instance, former Presiden Carter published a book entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in 2006. Then came Obama and his Iran deal. Then in 2018, Nancy Pelosi had to redraft a House resolution against antisemitism to include Islamophobia.
Podhoretz seems to be asking us to be shocked, shocked, that the Democrats have gone antisemitic.
I don’t agree. To me, it’s in the jeans. Of left-wing politics.
Left-wing politics in the 19th century starts with Marx and the workers as the victims. The socialists were going to create a new world that ended the oppression of factory workers. And then it was women who were oppressed, and the blacks. And now Palestinians.
It took until about 1990 to generalize this political ideology into “allyship” where the left is always the ally of the oppressed in their fight against the oppressors. Grok:
Allyship ideology refers to a framework within contemporary social justice activism that encourages members of socially dominant or “privileged” groups (e.g., White, male, straight, cisgender) to actively support and advocate for members of marginalized groups. It emphasizes recognizing unearned privilege, deferring to marginalized voices, engaging in ongoing self-critique, and taking actions to dismantle perceived systemic oppressions such as racism, sexism, and heteronormativity.
Do you see that Allyship is not just political, but religious? It allows believers to confess their sins of oppression and obtain absolution by joining in the fight as allies of the oppressed.
This is not unusual. Most wars and politics are not just fights against the enemy, but just wars against an evil enemy.
But, the genius of our lefty friends is to combine politics — the fight against the enemy — religion — the fight against evil — and the cause of the helpless into one secular ideology. It justifies the power of the educated elite because they are using their power to help the helpless.
And the war is endless, because there are always helpless victims needing the allyship of the Allies to fight against the powerful. And there always will be.
But back to the Jews and Israel. Do you see that when the Jews were being killed in Nazi death camps they were helpless victims and thus the left was all in to fight for them. Do you see that Zionism in the late 19th century was an almost hopeless effort to rescue the Jews from antisemitism and form their own nation state in the ancient land of Israel. So, back then, the Jews fit the bill as an oppressed people suffering under the knout of vile oppressors.
And then there was the genocide to end all genocides, the Holocaust.
But once the Jewish state got established, and fought off the Arab states that tried to conquer it, and then got a right-wing government and became a successful technological miracle. Not a victim, any more.
And somehow, our liberal friends aren’t quite as energized about the Holocaust as in the olden time.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians and the Gazans lost their battles against the new Jewish state: again and again. And Gaza has been leveled by Israel blowing up Hamas military tunnels. So Gazans are helpless victims and the Israelis are committing “genocide.” Is it true? Are the Palestinians helpless victims? Is Israel committing genocide? You are missing the point.
The point is that the whole political and moral framework of our ruling class, the educated class, is based upon the political formula that
We, the wise rulers, rule in order to fight for the oppressed peoples — anywhere in the world — against the (usually white) oppressors that are oppressing them.
The notion of “political formula” was invented by Gaetano Mosca in his book The Ruling Class.
A political formula is the moral or legal basis for the ruling class’s power.
And really, the Allyship formula says it all. I think the real genius is that it clearly appeals to women: helping the oppressed. Of course! Who doesn’t want to help the oppressed?
But the problem is that our beloved educated class can create an oppressed people out of anything. And they do.
We, the real wise ones, need to develop a pushback against the rulers’ endless search for helpless victims. Although the Mikado says it should have boiling oil in it, I say that it should be in the form of a devastating joke when you are talking to a liberal man, and “I can’t believe you said that” if you are talking to a liberal woman.
| Tue, 30 Jun 2026 02:01:04 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Action produces information — Brian Armstrong, CEO Coinbase
If you bend the arc of history, you do not get justice, but injustice.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: How The Dutch Taught Us about Government Finance
