Neo-Classical Liberals

Five Things You Need to Read Today

I finally got around to seeing the Broadway hit "Hamilton" when it debuted on television over the July 4 weekend. Since it seems a little late to do a full-scale review of a 5-year-old show, I settled for a Twitter thread which is unrolled here.

Also, check out a long and interesting discussion on language that I did a while back with my old friend Shrikant Rangnekar.

1. "From Daisies to Barbed Wire"

Someday, it would be worth writing the history of America's many, many small-scale experiments with socialism. They have a natural life cycle, from the "idealistic" hopes with which each attempt begins, to the collapse into acrimony and sometimes violence, to the bitter recriminations afterward, to the point when the whole thing goes down the memory hole so that everyone can pretend to be "idealistic" when they try it all again the next time around.

Here's a good addition to that history: a surprisingly candid look at the brief life of CHOP, the protest encampment that took over part of downtown Seattle for a little over three weeks.

This report is written from a perspective that seems slightly sympathetic to the protesters, but the problem is that it just lets them talk, and boy do they indict themselves. The signature line comes from one of the Borg drones from Black Collective Voice: "One of the really awesome things about the space, before the shootings started, was it brought together people from all over Seattle." Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

But let's follow the whole story.

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