In the congressional debates on the 1924 Immigration Act, Representative William Vaile of Colorado, a prominent immigration restrictionist, argued that if there is any changing to be done , we wi...
Thomas Sowell defines an intellectual as one whose work begins and ends with ideas — which, John Derbyshire points out, excludes many — engineers, architects, surgeons, lawyers, generals — ...
Darwin noted that a belief in “all-pervading spiritual agencies” is well-nigh universal among human populations. There are two current theories to explain the origins and persistence of relig...
https://www.isegoria.net/2009/11/survival-of-the-most-pious/
The empirical style of thinking is a minority taste, John Derbyshire reminds us: The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true...
Deep-seated attitudes, like the colonial-bumpkin image that the English have had of Americans for 300 years and more, are very resistant to change, John Derbyshire notes — especially when they ...
The signs are not good, says John Derbyshire: It’s tough getting through life by your own efforts in a world as crowded and sophisticated as this one. Postindustrial society has huge surpluses ...
Orwell described the traditional boarding-school education given to upper-class English boys as “five years in a lukewarm bath of snobbery.” John Derbyshire describes a modern university educ...
https://www.isegoria.net/2009/11/a-warm-bath-of-political-correctness/
As preposterous as political correctness seems to John Derbyshire, who grew up in the monocultural England of the 1950s, his children have completely internalized it: My daughter, age 14 and brig...
Pessimist John Derbyshire feels that he must have missed a stage of development: I was at a friend’s house some years ago just before Christmas. My friend had a daughter, a sweet child about fo...
John Derbyshire explains how he got inoculated against intellectual snobbery: I belong to that generation of Westerners from low-class backgrounds who got access to higher education far beyond wh...
https://www.isegoria.net/2009/11/inoculated-against-intellectual-snobbery/