America’s culture and race conflicts have been horribly united by Slate‘s Aisha Harris and FOX’s Megyn Kelly over whether Santa Claus ought to be white (Kelly’s view) or a penguin (Harris’). The result is a grotesque mutant argument encompassing everything unpleasant about both disputes. When will the war on Christmas and racism come together so perfectly again? It’s a current events version of a rare comet. It’s not every day we have the opportunity to analyze a debate so morbid as this, so let’s get started.
Tag: Culture
A Critique of Independence Movements
Lately I’ve been thinking about national independence movements, like those in Catalonia, Scotland, Kurdistan, and other such places. I’ve also been hearing about separatist movements in some US states—in these cases, subsets of individual US state populations are petitioning the government for the right to carve out smaller states out of the currently existent bigger ones, in order to move their state governments’ policies to the right. These US state petitions will go nowhere, however, because federal law requires that separatist states get approval from the states they are seeking to leave in order to become independent. This got me thinking. Continue reading “A Critique of Independence Movements”
Why are Young People Unhappy?
I’ve noticed an interesting article floating around the internet. The piece, entitled “Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy” sees rampant narcissism and self-entitlement as the source of young people’s unhappiness. Does it have a case? Let’s take a look.
What is Society?
In political theory, there is some disagreement about what precisely society is. Liberal theorists believe that society is just an amalgamation of individual interests. Libertarians often argue that there is no society at all, that the individual interests are all there are. Both views contrast with the collectivist view, that there are irreducible social goods that cannot be located in individuals at all, because these goods require a society to exist in the first place. Today I’d like to weigh in on the topic by arguing that there are indeed goods that typically require society, but that this nonetheless does not make them irreducible. Society is more than the sum of various individual interests, but it is not separate from its component people either. Let’s dive in.
English Lingua Franca
The belief that everyone in the world should learn English is generally associated with xenophobic elements in Anglophone societies. As a result, it’s frequently dismissed out of hand as a serious idea–it sounds too much like something out of UKIP or Arizona. It makes it all the more interesting that a political theorist–a Belgian political theorist, from the heart of the multilingual EU–has taken the view that English should be the new global lingua franca. His name is Philippe Van Parijs. He’s most famous for his advocacy for a universal basic income (UBI), a kind of permanent income everyone receives purely for being a person. His argument for English lingua franca (which also possesses a convenient acronym, ELF) is compelling, in no small part because its focus is not on the convenience of native English speakers, but on the potential benefits available to non-native speakers in countries outside the Anglosphere.
Benjamin Studebaker 