"Too Tired to Think of a Quirky Title" Edition

Hello,

Obligatory shilling. I wrote for The Critic about the spectacular failure of TalkTV.

I wrote for my paying subscribers about animal welfare.

Careful now. Gabrielle Bauer cautions against applying the precautionary principle:

The precautionary principle doesn’t come with such checks and balances. On the contrary, it tends to perpetuate itself and acquire a life of its own, especially when co-opted by the machinery of government. In his book Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life, the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito describes the political condition that can emerge: “Instead of adapting the protection to the actual level of risk, it tends to adapt the perception of risk to the growing need for protection — making protection itself one of the major risks.”

We have to be cautious of our own response to caution. That sounds obvious, but in March 2020, many of us - and I do include myself - were not. I would never have believed that shutdowns would persist for so long, so far past the point of diminishing returns, even with the ominous example of the Afghanistan War approaching its twentieth anniversary. The follies of do somethingism need not justify do nothingism. But we have to be more sober about that something.

The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. Louise Perry has written this challenging, provocative book. There is an interview in the Times and an extract in the Mail. Kat Rosenfield responds critically.

Abolitionists on the streets, authoritarians in the tweets. Liam Bright challenges fellow leftists who endorse restorative justice for criminals and punitive treatment for wrongthinkers:

I have often witnessed the following combination of characteristics in a person or organisation on the left, specifically those from (or drawing heavily from) the professional middle classes. First, re the justice system a commitment to restorative justice as opposed to punitive measures wherever possible, an extremely-critical-up-to-the-point-of-abolitionist attitude towards incarceration, and where not abolitionist then at least in favour of reduced sentencing and more lenient judgements. Second, re disputes in their local sphere, a mercilessly punitive attitude, using the full scope available of whatever communal norms or local organisational procedures exist to seek out and punish to the full extent possible rule violators. 

I’m sure Liam could turn this around on people like me: how can one oppose “cancel culture” yet support carceral measures when it comes to criminals? Well, we have different attitudes towards what is and isn’t utterable - and, besides, mean tweets are not the same as robberies and assaults. But I must admit that I do think there are inherently bad faith intellectual actors, just as I believe thag there are inherently dangerous criminals. “Bad faith” is more difficult to define than “robberies and assaults” (and is not reducible to a set of opinions). I wouldn’t advocate for anyone to lose work over it. But the sad truth is that some people never learn.

IM-1776. I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of the first print edition of Mark Granza’s dissident right magazine. Aesthetics, the contributors collectively hold, are key to cultural change - and the magazine is a beautiful piece of work.

Asabiyyah. Ed West introduces us to Ibn Khaldun:

Although he saw the greater scheme of the universe as an almost proto-Darwinian evolutionary process, human history was very much cyclical, and the rise and fall of kingdoms and dynasties was marked by what he called the ‘asabiyyah cycle’.

Monsters in our minds. Jeremy Black reflects on Gothic fiction:

The Age of Nightmare is not the usual term for the period from the 1760s to the 1810s, let alone the following century. Yet, in Britain, alongside transformative change toward greater international and economic power, it was an age of anxiety and fear.

Have a lovely week,

Ben