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leged women are oppressed hire and promote and reward accordingly that would be fine if it were true but it s not true at best it s an outdated view of an america that no longer exists at worst it s a pernicious lie either way ignoring the decline of men doesn t help anyone men and women need each other one cannot exist without the other that s elemental biology but it s also the reality each of us has lived with our parents and siblings and friends when men fail all of us suffer how did this happen how can we fix it we hope this series answers those questions posted by michael kaplan at 10 13 pm email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest saturday february 10 2018 tyrannosaurus rex by paleo artist simon stålenhag tyrannosaurus rex simon stålenhag swedish natural history museum tyrannosaurus rex tearing apart a carcass while a flock of nervous herbivores skitter by in the foreground tyrannosaurs were mostly small and unimportant for the better part of their 100 million year history but in the final 20 million years of the cretaceous before the mass extinction some species like t rex reached outrageous size and fearsomeness peter brannen the ends of the world volcanic apocalypses lethal oceans and our quest to understand the earth s past mass extinctions the simon stålenhag art gallery on the world wide web the artists who paint dinosaurs by ross andersen the atlantic october 5 2015 more paleo art at jurassic mainframe rise of the tyrannosaurs by stephen brusatte scientific american may 2015 what killed the dinosaurs by stephen brusatte scientific american december 2015 ascent of the mammals by stephen brusatte and zhe xi luo scientific american june 2016 the unlikely triumph of the dinosaurs by stephen brusatte scientific american may 2018 t rex asteroid douglas henderson tyrannosaurus rex with the chicxulub asteroid hovering in the sky moments before the catastrophic impact that would have released all at once far more energy than all the nuclear weapons ever detonated peter brannen the ends of the world posted by michael kaplan at 1 44 am email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday february 9 2018 swipe left dating apps have killed romance intelligence squared debate swipe left dating apps have killed romance video intelligence squared debates february 6 2018 youtube posted by michael kaplan at 1 44 am email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday january 25 2018 esther perel rethinking infidelity at ted rethinking infidelity a talk for anyone who has ever loved by esther perel video ted march 2015 youtube why happy people cheat by esther perel the atlantic october 2017 issue the state of affairs rethinking infidelity by esther perel new york harper 2017 amazon web page rethinking infidelity by daphne merkin tablet december 20 2017 posted by michael kaplan at 1 54 am email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday january 21 2018 niall ferguson discusses the evolution of social networks with maria bartiromo historian niall ferguson discusses the evolution of social networks video sunday morning futures with maria bartiromo fox news january 21 2018 youtube youtube posted by michael kaplan at 5 51 pm email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday december 3 2017 max boot trump is making me feel like a foreigner in my own country max boot trump making me feel like a foreigner in my own country by melissa mahtani and catalina gonella video cnn december 3 2017 youtube see also boot s article at the washington post posted by michael kaplan at 5 14 pm email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest wednesday october 4 2017 peggy noonan on gun control americans want to go down fighting peggy noonan on gun control americans want to go down fighting video morning joe msnbc october 2 2017 youtube also at real clear politics video starting at transcript excerpt transcript excerpt at axios there is a sense that society is collapsing the culture is collapsing we re collapsing in crime the world is collapsing crazy people with bad haircuts have nukes everything is going bad terrorism etc they want to be fully armed on their hill at home they re americans and they want to go down fighting posted by michael kaplan at 6 19 pm email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest saturday september 16 2017 ben shapiro speaks at uc berkeley hurricane shapiro takes berkeley by storm video the daily wire september 15 2017 youtube also here 5 things i learned at berkeley last night by ben shapiro the daily wire september 15 2017 ben in berkeley scolds the poor by titus techera american greatness september 17 2017 posted by michael kaplan at 9 02 pm email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest saturday august 12 2017 the liberal crackup by mark lilla the liberal crackup by mark lilla wall street journal august 11 2017 lilla liberals should reject the divisive zero sum politics of identity and find their way back to a unifying vision of the common good donald trump s surprise victory in last year s presidential election has finally energized my fellow liberals who are networking marching and showing up at town hall meetings across the country there is excited talk about winning back the white house in 2020 and maybe even the house of representatives in the interim but we are way ahead of ourselves dangerously so for a start the presidency just isn t what it used to be certainly not for democrats in the last generation bill clinton and barack obama won the office with comfortable margins but they were repeatedly stymied by assertive republicans in congress a right leaning supreme court and what should be the most worrisome development for democrats a steadily growing majority of state governments in republican hands what s more nothing those presidents did while in office did much to reverse the rightward drift of american public opinion even when they vote for democrats or support some of their policies most americans including young people women and minorities reject the term liberal and it isn t hard to see why they see us as aloof elitist out of touch it is time to admit that american liberalism is in deep crisis a crisis of imagination and ambition on our side a crisis of attachment and trust on the side of the wider public the question is why why would those who claim to speak for and defend the great american demos be so indifferent to stirring its feelings and gaining its trust why in the contest for the american imagination have liberals simply abdicated ronald reagan almost single handedly destroyed the new deal vision of america that used to guide us franklin roosevelt had pictured a place where citizens were joined in a collective enterprise to build a strong nation and protect each other the watchwords of that effort were solidarity opportunity and public duty reagan pictured a more individualistic america where everyone would flourish once freed from the shackles of the state and so the watchwords became self reliance and small government to meet the reagan challenge we liberals needed to develop an ambitious new vision of america and its future that would again inspire people of every walk of life and in every region of the country to come together as citizens instead we got tangled up in the divisive zero sum world of identity politics losing a sense of what binds us together as a nation what went missing in the reagan years was the great liberal democratic we little wonder that so few now wish to join us there is a mystery at the core of every suicide and the story of how a once successful liberal politics of solidarity became a failed liberal politics of difference is not a simple one perhaps the best place to begin it is with a slogan the personal is the political this phrase was coined by feminists in the 1960s and captured perfectly the mind set of the new left at the time originally it was interpreted to mean that everything that seems strictly private sexuality the family the workplace is in fact political and that there are no spheres of life exempt from the struggle for power that is what made it so radical electrifying sympathizers and disturbing everyone else but the phrase could also be taken in a more romantic sense that what we think of as political action is in fact nothing but personal activity an expression of me and how i define myself as we would put it today my political life is a reflection of my identity over time the romantic view won out over the radical one and the idea got rooted on the left that to reverse the formula the political is the personal liberals and progressives continued to fight for social justice out in the world but now they also wanted there to be no space between what they felt inside and what they did in that world they wanted their political engagements to mirror how they understood and defined themselves as individuals and they wanted their self definition to be recognized this was an innovation on the left socialism had no time for individual recognition rushing toward the revolution it divided the world into exploiting capitalists and exploited workers of every background new deal liberals were just as indifferent to individual identity they thought and spoke in terms of equal rights and equal social protections for all even the early movements of the 1950s and 60s to secure the rights of african americans women and gays appealed to our shared humanity and citizenship not our differences they drew people together rather than setting them against each other all that began to change when the new left shattered in the 1970s in no small part due to identity issues blacks complained that white movement leaders were racist feminists complained that they were sexist and lesbians complained that straight feminists were homophobic the main enemies were no longer capitalism and the military industrial complex they were fellow movement members who were not as we would say today sufficiently woke it was then that less radical liberal and progressive activists also began redirecting their energies away from party politics and toward a wide range of single issue social movements the forces at work in healthy party politics are centripetal they encourage factions and interests to come together to work out common goals and strategies they oblige everyone to think or at least to speak about the common good in movement politics the forces are all centrifugal encouraging splits into smaller and smaller factions obsessed with single issues and practicing rituals of ideological one upmanship symbols take on outsize significance especially in identity based movements the results of this shift are now plain to see the classic democratic goal of bringing people from different backgrounds together for a single common project has given way to a pseudo politics of self regard and increasingly narrow and exclusionary self definition and what keeps this approach to politics alive is that it is cultivated in the colleges and universities where liberal elites are formed here again we must look to the history of the new left to understand how this happened after reagan s election in 1980 conservative activists hit the road to spread the new individualist gospel of small government and free markets and poured their energies into winning out of the way county state and congressional elections also on the road though taking a different exit on the interstate were former new left activists heading for college towns all over america conservatives concentrated on attracting working people once attached to the democratic party a populist bottom up strategy the left concentrated on transforming the outlook of professional and party elites a top down strategy both groups were successful and both left their mark on the country up until the 1960s those active in the democratic party were largely drawn from the working class or farm communities and were formed in local political clubs or on union dominated shop floors that world is gone today they are formed primarily in our colleges and universities as are members of the overwhelmingly liberal dominated professions of law journalism and education liberal political education such as it is now takes place on campuses that are far removed socially and geographically from the rest of the country and particularly from the sorts of people who once were the foundation of the democratic party and the political catechism that is taught is a historical artifact reflecting more the idiosyncratic experience of the 60s generation than the realities of power politics today the experience of that era taught the new left two lessons the first was that movement politics was the only mode of engagement that actually changes things the second was that political activity must have some authentic meaning for the self making compromise seem like a self betrayal these lessons though have little bearing on liberalism s present crisis which is that of being defeated time and again by a well organized republican party that keeps tightening its grip on our institutions where those lessons do resonate is with young people in our highly individualistic bourgeois society a society that keeps them focused on themselves and teaches them that personal choice individual rights and self definition are all that is sacred it is little wonder that students of the facebook age are drawn to courses focused on their identities and movements related to them nor is it surprising that many join campus groups that engage in identity movement work but the costs need to be tallied for those students who will soon become liberal and progressive elites the line between self discovery and political action has become blurred their political commitments are genuine but are circumscribed by the confines of their self definitions issues that penetrate those confines take on looming importance and since politics for them is personal their positions tend to be absolutist and nonnegotiable those issues that don t touch on their identities or affect people like themselves are hardly perceived and classic liberal ideas like citizenship solidarity and the common good have little meaning for them as a teacher i am increasingly struck by a difference between my conservative and progressive students contrary to the stereotype the conservatives are far more likely to connect their engagements to a set of political ideas and principles young people on the left are much more inclined to say that they are engaged in politics as an x concerned about other xs and those issues touching on x ness and they are less and less comfortable with debate over the past decade a new and very revealing locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream speaking as an x this is not an anodyne phrase it sets up a wall against any que...