In Law & Liberty, John O. McGinnis finds two causes behind the increasing polarization of western society. First is the rise of identity politics and the related need to label everything as either friend or foe. The second, perhaps surprisingly, is that our era of relative prosperity has made such activity possible. “Voters can indulge extreme beliefs because society and the world have been so relatively stable,” he writes.
Not Your Grandparents’ Kennedy
The makers of Trix and Lucky Charms recently promised to remove synthetic dyes from their products, notes Kevin Roberts in The American Mind. “Nobody forced them,” he observes. “They read the room.” And the elephant in that room is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a Trump cabinet member and ringmaster of the “Make America Healthy Again” crusade. Kennedy’s Herculean tasks include battling entrenched interests while redirecting a nation that is disproportionately fat, out of shape, chronically ill and drug-dependent.
