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Gun control is an issue in which Kulturkampf considerations often trump empirical considerations and reasoned exchange, which is why Gross is not having much luck moving progressives in his direction. But facts are facts: The United States does have a great deal of criminal violence, more than does any comparable country, and while the fundamental problem is that Americans are simply violent people — which is why we also have more knife homicide and big-heavy-rock homicides than other countries — a criminal with a firearm is more dangerous than a criminal with a baseball bat or a knife. Mass shootings do not account for many deaths (relatively speaking), but they are a genuine cultural phenomenon. As with health care, millions of Americans are dissatisfied with the violent-crime situation in our country. Conservatives should be dissatisfied, too. The Democrats are ready to offer an array of bad policies, and the Republicans are ready to offer Americans, for the most part, squat.

That is spot on: politicians on the left have a thousand ideas -many of which are bad, and politicians on the right want - nothing. Yikes.

There is much to be gained whenever we make the effort to understand people different from ourselves. For those of us who welcome the end of quarantining, let’s lend a hand to those for whom this change is bound to be hard and help ease their re-entry. And for those of us who dread the end of quarantine, let us continue to remind ourselves and others to try to retain the preferred aspects of quarantine even as the world spins faster once more.

Good advice.

On Nov. 8, the first results of the Pfizer-BioNTech study came in, showing that the mRNA vaccine offered powerful immunity to the new virus. Dr. Kariko turned to her husband. “Oh, it works,” she said. “I thought so.”

To celebrate, she ate an entire box of Goobers chocolate-covered peanuts. By herself.

Personally I'm all for this. There has been a brain drain of small and rural areas for decades. I'm hoping developments like this will allow some of that human capital to return to places that could really use it.

Hoping. Things rarely turn out so neatly.

If all of this sounds as if it’ll require a lot of government action, well, it will. “Ninety-nine years out of 100, I’m a libertarian,” Tabarrok said with a laugh. “But then there’s that one year out of 100.”

Bingo. I'm typically skeptical of the effectiveness of the federal government (or any large organization). That isn't a debate about what they should or shouldn't do, it's just that I don't think they are good at many of the things we ask of them. But there are some areas where I am one hundred percent for a big federal response. Wars, famines, pandemics - all fit the bill.

I appreciated the work in explaining why experts might deceive - but an explanation is not an excuse. The last paragraph is dead wrong (in my opinion) - experts should not view themselves as parents, they should always tell the truth. If a public official is lying - I don't want to in any way excuse that practice.

I've seen this a lot with emergency response situations, after hurricanes/tornadoes/wild fires. Some public officials or experts don't trust us with the truth. But my experience has been that when given good information most people make good choices -they may not be what the 'experts' want. But we are way more reasonable than they think.

Imagine if they had just told the truth last year. Masks are good, cloth masks are effective but please try to reserve N95s for first responders and health care workers. I would've started wearing a mask much sooner and I wouldn't have bought a N-95 one....like most people.

I really have no opinion on sports betting.

I loved this. One great example to me is my Uncle John. He always told me (and more important showed me) "Help anyone you can, anytime you can -and someone will always be there to help you." Just thinking of him makes me feel elated and an expansion in my chest, he makes me want to be a better person and gives me greater confidence in the goodness of others.

I don't see the issue here. Substack is a private company and isn't obligated to disclose who it pays or compensates to use its platform.

I think the last bit from the author sums it up: I like this FREE platform that lets me communicate with my readers and fills a market niche. I wish someone did this that didn't pay some people.

It's like Gmail. I don't like google and so much of what they do...but until someone has a better tech-stack that combines email/drive/photos etc etc for free...I'm using Gmail.

One question worth asking is: Can a reasonable person disagree? If the answer is yes, then a school probably shouldn't teach it - or should proceed with caution.

Racism is bad and has affected our history - a reasonable person would not disagree. Teach away.

BLM policy stance / 'anti-racism' / intersectionality - can a reasonable person disagree - yes. Look at the debates occurring in academia and in the pages of the Atlantic/New York Times etc. And if reasonable people can disagree, then our schools should proceed with caution.

This situation is more complicated than the article presents. I belong to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and they had good reasons to admit the Freedmen and remove blood from the constitution, but there are risks for that approach and it isn't the right answer for every tribe.

But the old pattern no longer holds now that the class composition of the parties has changed. More of the affluent regulars vote for Democrats these days, and more of the lower-turnout voters lean toward the Republicans. Trump did a lot to bring about this shift. But his lies about his election defeat obscured one of its implications.

As for the story with Hispanics overall, one thing that really comes out very clearly in survey data that we’ve done is that it really comes down to ideology. So when you look at self-reported ideology — just asking people, “Do you identify as liberal, moderate, or conservative” — you find that there aren’t very big racial divides. Roughly the same proportion of African American, Hispanic, and white voters identify as conservative. But white voters are polarized on ideology, while nonwhite voters haven’t been. Something like 80 percent of white conservatives vote for Republicans. But historically, Democrats have won nonwhite conservatives, often by very large margins. What happened in 2020 is that nonwhite conservatives voted for Republicans at higher rates; they started voting more like white conservatives.