Required reading from around the web of the best, most interesting, or most though provoking things we’ve read:
Hazony: Conservative Rationalism Has Failed – Part I: Unfettered reason cannot conserve anything.
“In recent decades, American and European elites have devoted themselves to the project of rethinking society from scratch. What were once linchpin concepts such as family and nation, man and woman, God and Scripture, the honorable and the sacred, have been found wanting and severely damaged, if not overthrown. The resulting void has been filled by new doctrines, until now mostly neo-Marxist or libertarian in character. But a racialist ‘white identity’ politics in a Darwinian key is gathering momentum as well. All three of these approaches to political and moral questions are, in a sense, creatures of the Enlightenment, claiming to be founded on a universally accessible reason and to play by its rules. This is another way of saying that none of them have much regard for inherited tradition, seeing it as contributing little to our understanding of politics and morals.”
Wilson: Democrats plot strategy to win back Senate
“Democrats planning their bid to win back control of the Senate will run hard against the Washington swamp next year, repurposing one of President Trump’s most effective campaign messages from the 2016 election as their own. Top party operatives are poll-testing messages aimed at winning over voters who are fed up with a gridlocked capital, searching for ways to build an advantage among swing voters who may still like Trump, but not the senators who are seeking reelection in 2020. And while Democrats could not convince some of their best-known candidates to forgo long shot presidential campaigns in favor of bids for Senate seats, the party will now rely on a once-unorthodox stable of candidates with little or no experience in elected office. It is a strategy reminiscent of 2006 and 2018, when House Democrats . . .”
Lowe: Amid abortion referendum, Zuckerberg asked Ireland’s government if he should block American pro-life ads
“He also revealed, possibly for the first time, that during Ireland’s recent referendum on abortion he consulted with Ireland’s government (which supported legalizing abortion) about whether Facebook should block pro-life ads originating outside the tiny island nation. […] Facebook is ‘currently evaluating’ their policy on deepfakes, Zuckerberg said, conceding that deepfakes differ from other misinformation.”