The Great Sorting

If you missed my recent bit about breeding narcissists, (subscribers don't miss anything, hint, hint), I ask you set aside 15-20 minutes to read this article:

The Takeover of America's Legal System

If you are of a TL;DR mindset, in the moment or in general, the quick-and-dirty is that today's law schools - in fact, the entire legal education system itself - have been infected by the principles delineated in Richard Delgado's Critical Race Theory: abandoning the "foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law," in favor of a 'favoritist' form of legal representation, where identity is overlaid on the facts and the law.

It's depressing to the point of despondency, but for one thing: These people may dominate the culture and the nation's institutions, but they are not the majority. Rather, they are a vocal and aggressive minority that has bullied its way to that dominance, but the cowed masses are waking up and standing up.

Consider:

• The defection of many noted liberals from the censorious and cancelling ranks of the Woke.

• The public rejection of transgender individuals participating in womens' sports.

• The disinterest in paying more out of pocket to combat global warming.

• The widespread outrage over inflation.

• The decline in college enrollment.

• The doubling in trade school enrollment across the past two decades.

• The increased parental activism and attention paid to school boards and their efforts to curriculize Critical Race Theory.

• The passage of the Florida parental rights bill.

• Citizens demanding reversals of "woke" criminal jurisprudence reforms in big cities.

• The steady advance of gun rights at the state level and a continued increase in firearm purchases.

• The migration of “leftfugees” from blue states to red states.

Woke culture, which includes the social justice crowd, the critical race theory crowd, the modern monetary theory crowd, most of academia, the warmism crowd, and most of the mainstream press, may stand in dominance, but it is losing market share. Increased stridency and virulence notwithstanding, it may have peaked in terms of numbers. And, with the Biden presidency foundering and very obvious signs of an electoral wipeout in the mid-terms later this year, it may have peaked in dominance as well.

That doesn't mean it's going away. Deeply entrenched as it is in our institutions, it likely will be as difficult to uproot and eradicate as creeping charlie or bamboo, and its continued (and usually fear-based) inculcation of our young means that its toxicity will remain a problem for quite some time. But, I have some glimmer of hope that Americans have had enough of its excesses, hope supported by the trends I listed above.

They are voicing that "enough" by sorting themselves - culturally, geographically, and associatively. The woke want nothing to do with red staters, Republicans, fly-over types, bridge-and-tunnel heathens, or anyone who doesn't slavishly abide by the New York Times' rules for society. Meanwhile, fewer and fewer want anything to do with the woke. Stridency and intolerance often lead to social exclusion, and the unwashed heathens who aren’t bending the knee to the Best-and-Brighest are growing in number.

Fortunately, we have a system where people have the ability to change some of the rules they live under and some of the neighbors they have. We have 50 states, and within those states we have countless cities, large and small, each with its own governance and character. People are moving. While some of them are bringing some their bad ideas along with them, many are leaving behind that which made them feel oppressed.

Now, if only the people at the top would allow us more local choice in rules, we could sort ourselves even better than we have. Even absent that concession by the ruling class, though, we are choosing what we agree with and what we reject. History tells us that those who go down the Enlightenment path of individual liberty and equality are going to fare better than those who reject it.

Finally, this comparison between blue Vermont and red New Hampshire tells its own tale.

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Yours in liberty,

Peter.