Richard Hanania is the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI), author of Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy, a visiting fellow at UT Austin, and the writer of richardhanania.substack.com.
He is a brilliant analyst and policy thinker of social change, bureaucracy, civil rights law, and political institutions. We discuss those topics, five of his articles linked below, as well as how civil rights law made everything illegal, groomerism as right-wing wokeness, a foreign perspective on US foreign policy and propaganda, how activists disconnect policy from the public, the failure of expertise, the failure of “contrarians”, misuse of philosophy of science and Eric Weinstein, mental illness in Gen-Z, differences between neuroticism and feminization, and the effect of social media on policy.
This week’s audio essay is a shorter one concerning extremists as saboteurs.
Richard Hanania on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/RichardHanania
Richard Hanania’s substack articles:
David Shor on campaign ads:
Pew Research Poll
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology-2/
Yuen Yuen Ang: China's Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption
https://www.amazon.ca/Chinas-Gilded-Age-Economic-Corruption/dp/1108478603
My interview with Steve Hsu:
Richard’s interview with Gail Hariot:
Timestamps
2:20 Audio essay
6:42 Interview Start
8:24 Cactus' Asch Conformity Simulation
8:55 "People are Shockingly Dishonest"
10:57 Late Blooming
14:52 Foreign Policy Lying
18:19 Democracy Narratives
23:13 Tribal Beliefs
26:40 Asian Vote
28:47 Feminization
33:05 Does Social Media Benefit Democrats or Republicans?
41:56 Liberals Read, Conservatives Watch TV
50:45 The Ideal Conservative Strategy
54:25 Florida's School Bills
56:27 Incentive-Aligned Corruption
1:00:54 Demagogues
1:04:58 Rising Conservative Activists
1:07:03 Why Everything is Controlled By Activists (and Therefore Liberal)
1:14:26 Why are obscure right-wing people better than obscure left-wing people?
1:23:13 Moral Panics, and Why Cactus Distrusts the Right
1:25:48 Stats tests violate disparate impact
1:30:50 Is it Feminization or Neuroticism?
1:40:23 Failure of "Expertise"
1:47:02 Eric Weinstein and Philosophy of Science
1:51:05 Too Much Order, Needs More Chaos
1:53:48 Outro
Richard Hanania: Why Activists Control the World, Groomerism as Right-Wing Wokeness, and the Libertarian Machine