Reading The Rites of Spring, Modris Eksteins’ brilliant account of how the First World War destroyed European civilization, led Rod Dreher to ponder the meaning of 40 million unemployed Americans. Eksteins depicted how the Europeans failed to imagine the civilizational catastrophe that was upon them. Dreher, writing in The American Conservative, wonders if anyone can truly grasp the significance of the coronavirus pandemic.
At Least He Paid his Losing Bet
Paul Ehrlich, author of the spectacularly incorrect 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb, recently died at 93. Despite his longevity, Ronald Bailey points out in Reason, Ehrlich did not live to see even one of his numerous apocalyptic predictions come true. The world’s population certainly grew, but not merely larger, richer and fatter too. Most famously, Ehrlich once bet economist Julian Simon that the world was approaching economic collapse – but in 1990 had to mail Simon a cheque.
