In March 2018, China’s state-controlled internet, amid rumors that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was secretly visiting China, rendered the term “fatty” unsearchable. In China, “Fatty the Third” is a derogatory nickname for Kim, who inherited his position from his father and grandfather. This occurred shortly after Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party…
Read MorePatrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed is a well-argued critical dissection of liberalism, one of the most persuasive I have read in recent years. Deneen understands “liberalism” to be one of the three powerful and all-encompassing ideologies of modern times—the other two being fascism and communism—that “proposed transforming all aspects of human life to conform to a preconceived plan…
Read MoreThe first time I remember really fearing for my generation—not the abstract uneasiness aroused by depressing statistics but a gut-level dread, something dark and unnameable lurking just beyond articulation—came in the fall of 2012. Millennials…
Read MoreWhoever speaks of “crisis” today risks being dismissed as a bloviator, given the term’s banalization through endless loose talk. But there is a precise sense in which we do face a crisis today. If we characterize it precisely and identify its distinctive dynamics, we can better determine what is needed to resolve it. On that…
Read MoreFor most countries, mathematical literacy is an expected outcome of schooling. This has been true for a long time. Mathematical literacy initially encompassed basic arithmetic skills such as adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing whole numbers, decimals, and fractions; computing percentages; and computing the area and volume of simple geometric shapes. More recently, the digitization of many aspects of…
Read MoreVirtually everyone believes education is a key to prosperity. But the fact that Vice President Mike Pence had to cast a tie-breaking vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as secretary of education raises the question: why does education provoke such sharp divisions in the United States? At present, the college enrollment for the 18–24 age group stands around 40 percent, up from 26 percent in 1980. As expected, labor force participation for this age group has declined…
Read MoreMeritocracy has become a theme of great interest in contemporary politics, both in Western and Eastern societies. But attitudes toward meritocracy in the two regions differ sharply. In the West, the concept of an elite constituted by its most intellectually gifted and energetic members came into its own in the later nineteenth century with the adoption by the British government of civil service…
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