First Paragraph

This book has had a long gestation. It started with the fox-trot. The fox-trot has no raison d'être. There is no reason to dance at all except one - pleasure - and the greatest pleasure is calculated uselessness. One evening several years ago I stood on the sidelines at Manhattan's Lincoln Center, watching the dancers at the three-week event called A Midsummer Night Swing. They were smiling; they were having fun. I took one look and realized that dancing can make you happy. This is a book about happiness, about the pleasurable things you can do to promote it and to increase a sense of general well-being, of what is called sanguinity.

- From Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness by Willard Spiegelman

Glenn Loury

 

The Golden Years

 

Another Perspective

City Journal: Amity Shlaes on the Ken Burns film "The U.S. and the Holocaust." 

The New Cultural Revolution

 Compact: "A Black Professor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell."

In the Pipeline

 

Remembering Conquest's Insight

 "The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies."

- Robert Conquest

The old historian's words often come to mind. 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs are the sabotage du jour in many large organizations. Their actions are not only tolerated but celebrated and yet their short term and long term effects are very harmful.

What are some less specific culprits to watch for? Here are some big ones:

• A lack of urgency. [Items that should be urgent are routinely pushed to the back of the line.]
• Unneeded complexity. [The adage is correct: As soon as you are complicated, you become ineffectual.]
• A courage deficit. [If your team is deficient in people who lack the guts to take a stand, that is not a minor problem. It may be lethal.]
• An abundance of weasels. [One is too many and, if left alone, the numbers will grow. Weasels hire other weasels.]

Keep Conquest's words on your desk as a frequent reminder. Put it next to the medical rule: "First, do no harm."

The Barbarians Are Inside Disney's Castle

 

Teen Mental Illness Epidemic

Jonathan Haidt on when the teen mental illness epidemic began.

Gotta Name For It?