The more problems they made for themselves, the more they were rewarded [by the welfare state]. We had a peculiar demoralisation… I mean, an actual removal of morality from all human consideration.

I remember, I had a patient with multiple sclerosis, and her husband worked, but he didn’t earn a lot of money, and they needed some adjustments to their house so that she could get out of the house more easily and so on. It seemed to me this was a place where the welfare state could actually help. So, I phoned a social worker… and I made a grave mistake. I said, “I have a particularly deserving case…” And there was a stony silence on the other end. And then the social worker said that all cases were deserving. In other words, you couldn’t distinguish between this case of need, which was nobody’s fault, and someone who took drugs and set fire to his house in a state of intoxication. There was no difference.

And since, of course, people who behave badly become more needy, they actually gain more attention and more sympathy. If you remove desert from all considerations, this means that one source of meaning in life is completely removed.

Jordan Peterson interviews Theodore Dalrymple.

Plenty to chew on and at times darkly funny. Regarding the quote above, this isn’t entirely unrelated.

Update, via the comments, another snippet:

At which point, this came to mind.

Faced with complaints from parents about the indoctrination of children, an official in Rockwood School District, Missouri, instructed teachers to create two sets of curriculum: a false one to share with parents, and then the real set of curriculum, focused on topics like activism and privilege.

These instructions were sent to all middle and high school principals in the district. “This is not being deceitful,” wrote Natalie Fallert, the official in question, before adding, “I hate that we are even having to have this conversation.” 

It occurs to me that when your solution to such complaints includes the words “so parents cannot see it,” it may be time to revisit your assumptions. A subsequent non-apology, issued by a different official when the instructions to deceive became more widely known, insisted that the school district views parents as “allies” in the education of “our children.”

An unhappy phrasing, all things considered. 

It’s impossible to envision a world without race for the Democratic Party. For such people, it’s impossible to envision a world that gets beyond race because their bread and butter, their bottom line, their raison d'être, and everything that they’re trying to do depends upon people being kept in these boxes.

Professor Glenn Loury.

Martin Durkin’s new documentary, The Great American Race Game.

Mr Durkin’s films, which I strongly recommend, have been mentioned before.

Also, open thread.

Because you crave one, it’s time for a thrilling adventure in the world of detergent.

My husband does the laundry. No one asks him to, and often no one thanks him for doing it. But somehow, every week, our clothes, our kids’ clothes, the towels, the sheets; they all get cleaned. And with each load, the jealousy grows.

Should readers be confused – and I quite understand – the jealousy is that of Erin Hendriksen, a contributor to Scary Mommy.

Throwing the piles into the washing machine is definitely the easy part. From there, he sorts them into mounds of hang-dry vs. dryer items, hangs the clothes, folds the towels and clothes, and puts the fresh sheets on the beds. A couple of times per week, I walk into our bedroom to find a tidy little pile of my clothes. They are folded with tenderness, neatly stacked, and grouped by category. 

What glorious man-creature is this?

I know he would put them away, too, if only he knew where they went.

A flaw. Thank goodness.

That is not even close to all he does around the house either. He’s the dishwasher, the grocery collector, the garbage remover, and the maintenance man. He follows behind us all, picking up the thrown socks, crumbs, and toys, somehow managing to maintain some sort of order within the chaos.

Ms Hendriksen’s husband also entertains the children with “nightly horsey rides, weekend swimming lessons, and stories before bed.” However, this is Scary Mommy, where progressive ladies bare their souls. And so, complications, and notes of sourness, must forever loom.  

I know that I am lucky to have him, he is a saint — but does he know how lucky he is? My husband… gets to leave the house… He ventures out into the world… taking in the fresh air, talking to someone other than me, and focusing on things that don’t involve our family. Sometimes he meets a friend for a socially distanced coffee. He often returns with a spring in his step, a spring that hasn’t been in my step for months. No wonder he has the energy to do the laundry… I resent that he can walk away, head downstairs, or off to work and take that vacation.

A vacation at work, that is – earning money to pay the bills. Not least, for detergent and fabric softener.

Noah Carl on fashionable indignation versus probity and thinking: 

There are several things to notice here. First, the signatories use the word ‘revisits’ – rather than say ‘examines’ or ‘investigates’ – to imply that the theories in question have already been disproved, and hence that [economic historian, Gregory] Clark is engaged in some sort of futile exercise. Second, so far as I’m aware, ‘naturalization’ refers to the process of becoming a citizen of another country. I presume the signatories meant ‘naturalization’ in the sense of “nature versus nurture,” but it’s a very odd word to use. Third, the signatories refer to the “vast amount of research” that supposedly refutes Clark’s thesis, but don’t actually bother to cite any.

The unhappy signatories do, however, mention race and racism repeatedly – as, it seems, is the custom – despite the offending paper referring to race precisely zero times. 

Not entirely unrelated.*

Regarding the above, it occurs to me that if people are obliged, on pain of social exclusion and near-immediate career destruction, to mouth pieties that are illogical, blatantly question-begging, and which jar with observable reality, this will tend to result in an erosion of probity, a habit of pretence, and perhaps a kind of neuroticism.

Speaking of academic standards, an Ohio resident shares her displeasure with woke educators and their niche preoccupations: 

“Now, the residents with kids who did find out about your deviant curriculum, they pulled their kids out as fast as they could. More are withdrawing their kids because the school has lost control of the classroom environment,” she said. She took a moment to collect her thoughts, and then went on to say that “in the document for critical race theory, the stated goal is to make children activists in their own home. What does that mean?” She asked. “Why are you trying to create an adversarial relationship between parents and child when that is the relationship that needs to be strengthened?”

And somewhat related, Christopher F Rufo shares a conference for North Carolina’s public school teachers: 

At the first session, “Whiteness in Ed Spaces,” school administrators provided two handouts on the “norms of whiteness.” These documents claimed that “(white) cultural values” include “denial,” “fear,” “blame,” “control,” “punishment,” “scarcity,” and “one-dimensional thinking.” […]