The transformation of the American upper class One of our least noticed revolutions, and why it is at the root of many of today's problems. frompovertytoprogress.substa…

Christopher Columbus and the Tyranny of Presentism A Call for Adult Memory The point is not to canonize Columbus. It is to remember him as he was: morally flawed, ambitious, consequential. Columbus Day should not be a hagiography. It should be a day of honest reflection on the ambiguity of human history. We can acknowledge the suffering unleashed by European conquest without pretending pre-Columbian societies were utopias. We can honor Indigenous resilience without erasing the courage it took to sail into the unknown. We can hold two truths at once: that Columbus’s voyage opened the door to both devastation and progress. The real tyranny is not Columbus’s, but ours, if we silence the past because it offends us. History’s purpose is not to flatter our moral vanity. It is to confront us with what humans are — and to remind us how fragile our moral gains really are. This Columbus Day, we should resist the tyranny of presentism. Not because Columbus was innocent, but because history never is. unfashiontruthec.substack.co…

This Is the Good Scenario? It’s easy enough to answer the question of whether we want A.I. that kills us all. We don’t. But do we want A.I. that enriches us all, if the cost is our control and comprehension over the world in which we live? What is the value to human beings maintaining primacy over our own struggle, and how do we weigh it against the easing of that struggle? I want the cures and the theorems and even, on some level, the capable digital assistants. And I also believe the struggle for human progress is essential to the human story, and even the human soul. nytimes.com/2026/10/18/opini… via @NYTOpinion

I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down. nytimes.com/2026/10/18/opini… via @NYTOpinion

Has Administrative Bloat Reached a Breaking Point? chronicle.com/article/has-ad…

Alpha school critique substack.com/@cantarutti/not…

Trump’s Bubble Is About to Burst nytimes.com/2026/10/17/opini… via @NYTOpinion

Changing Teaching and the "Grammar of Schooling?" larrycuban.wordpress.com/202… via @CubanLarry

The destruction of the Vanderbilt fortune is one of the most dramatic examples of dynastic wealth squandered in all of human history – underlining that even the most lavish of fortunes requires for its preservation the discipline and skill that created them in the first place. worldpoliticshistory.substac…

In Praise of Ignorance In this context, I’d say, quite a lot of ignorance is not only OK — it’s a prerequisite for thinking new thoughts about hoary topics in the arts and sciences. A bit of whimsy goes a long way. Perhaps, as Emerson argued, it’s even a unique hallmark of The American Scholar. Perhaps a rising generation of writers and intellectuals will leaven the crabbed caution of their learned teachers, and curb their instinct to parse every passing thought, in order to recommit themselves to a sheer love of the unknown, of reading widely and roaming freely, exploring the vastness of the universe, and the infinite riches of human experience. jamesmiller411396.substack.c…

My new blog post is an essay about the historical construction of the American meritocracy, which is to say the new American aristocracy based on academic credentials.  An overview of the argument: Modern systems of public schooling have transformed the concept of merit.  The premodern form of this quality was what Joseph Kett calls essential merit.  This represented a person’s public accomplishments, which were seen as a measure of character.  Such merit was hard won through good works and had to be defended vigorously, even if that meant engaging in duels.  The new kind of merit, which arose in the mid nineteenth century after the emergence of universal public schooling in the U.S., was what Kett calls institutional merit.  This you earned by attending school and advancing through the levels of academic attainment.  It became your personal property, which could not be challenged by others and which granted you privileges in accordance with the level of merit you acquired. Here I examine three consequences of this shift from essential to institutional merit in the American setting.  First, this change democratized merit by making it, at least theoretically, accessible to anyone and not just the gentry, who in the premodern period had prime access to this reputational good.  Second, it formalized the idea of merit by turning it from a series of publicly visible and substantive accomplishments into the accumulation of the forms that schooling had to offer – grades, credits, and degrees.  Third, following from the first two, it served the social function of naturalizing the privileges of birth by transposing them into academic accomplishments.  The well born, through the medium of schooling, acquired a second nature that transformed ascribed status into achieved status. davidlabaree.com

The epicenters of the baby bust will surprise many people. Europe has a higher fertility rate than Thailand. Tokyo has a higher fertility than Mexico City, Bogotá, or Santiago. China may already a lower fertility rate than Japan. derekthompson.org/p/why-the-…

The Global Fertility Crisis Is Worse Than You Probably Think derekthompson.org/p/why-the-…