- Jonathan Haidt is being canceled at his own university?
- “An Emerson College survey last year put overall support for the tax-credit program at 64%, including 61% of Democrats, 68% of Hispanics and 63% of blacks,” reports Jason Riley in WSJ. “‘Families shouldn’t lose out on resources just because of where they live or what party their governor belongs to,’ said Jorge Elorza of Democrats for Education Reform, the advocacy group that sponsored the poll. ‘These findings show that voters, especially those in communities of color, want leaders who will say yes to opportunity.’”
- Andy Smarick in National Review: “Schooling builds the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for succeeding as a citizen, neighbor, employee, spouse, and parent. If you want to debilitate a generation, take away all of their practice at developing that knowledge and those skills and dispositions. And if you want to debilitate them while having society believe you’re doing us all a favor, tell them you are providing ‘innovative’ tech tools that enable ‘efficiency’ and ‘progress.’”
- Jill Lepore on the drafting of the Declaration of Independence: “While Congress went about its edits, eliminating adverbs, altering verbs, and slashing whole paragraphs, Franklin tried to distract the miserable Jefferson by telling him a story about why he had his rule about never writing something that other people would revise. When he was a printer, Franklin said, a friend who was about to open a hat shop wanted to hire a painter to make him a sign: a picture of a hat and the words ‘John Thomson, Hatter, makes and sells hats—for ready money.’ Before setting the painter to the task, Thomson asked his friends for their advice on the design. The first suggested striking out the word ‘hatter,’ as ‘tautologous, because followed by the words “makes hats.”‘ The second proposed ‘that the word “makes” might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats.’ The third said “the words ‘for ready money,’ were useless as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit.” And the fourth pointed out that what was left—’John Thomson sells hats’—was wordy, too. Why ‘sells hats,’ he asked, given that ‘nobody will expect you to give them away’? In the end, all that was left was a picture of a hat and the words ‘John Thomson.’” Don’t miss the America at 250 series from AEI, especially Democracy and the American Revolution, with essays by Levin, Wood, Garsten, Berkowitz, Allen, and Weiner. Amazing–and free.
- McKinsey shifts greater percentage of profit sharing to equity, in a move said to be responding to pressures from AI.