Trying, Fruitlessly, to Debunk Some Myths |
With
Elizabeth Warren forming a presidential exploratory committee, the 2020
presidential campaign has begun. We can start expecting with more and
more articles about possible candidates, issues, and analysis,
especially of the 2016 election. As Justin Taylor notes in this article,
“Stop Saying 81 Percent of White Evangelicals Vote for Trump (It Was Probably Less than Half),”
his argument, however factual, is not going to kill this myth. But like
him, I think it’s important to recognize this is one of many bits of
fake news we’ve been treated to for the last couple of years—and so
prepare ourselves to be a tad more skeptical about anything we read in
an election season.
Speaking
of myths, here’s another one that is hard to kill: that raising
children’s self-esteem is a “social vaccine” that can cure many of
society’s ills, from poverty to crime to depression and so much more.
Although this was disproved decades ago—with a fair amount of research
showing that an undue emphasis on self-esteem is likely harmful. This is one point of journalist and novelist Will Storr’s Selfie: How We Became so Self-Obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us. Here’s an interview with the author.
The Cold Button Issue of the Next Election
As I’ve said before, I am not an economist or a son of an economist. So I may be out of my depth in even recommending this article. But it was published in The Weekly Standard
before the publication closed down recently. So I assume it must have
some level of credibility. At any rate, it seems a reasonable concern to
be worried about the federal debt, given its size, even as we trust God
providentially to care for our nation. Here’s how it begins:
America’s
deteriorating public credit is the cold-button issue of the 2018
midterms. With rare bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans compete to
pretend that the country isn’t going broke. In 1992, the third-party
presidential candidate Ross Perot likened the widening gap between
federal receipts and federal spending to “the crazy aunt tucked away in
the room upstairs nobody talks about.” The old gal’s dottier than ever.
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Friday, January 11, 2019
Trying, Fruitlessly, to Debunk Some Myths
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