Miscellany, April 5

  • More from Bradlaugh on his health issues [NRO, earlier]
  • Saudi Arabia: “Defense Lawyer Objects to Testimony of Genie Expert” [Lowering the Bar]
  • Monkeys taught by scientists to use money; gambling and prostitution soon appear [ZME Science]
  • Adam Smith prefigures Charles Murray on class and morality [Tyler Cowen]
  • “There was even an Inquisition trial in Los Angeles in 1820” [Chris Caldwell book review in Literary Review] And in the 1950s, not 1550s: “Dutch Roman Catholic Church ‘castrated at least 10 boys'” [Telegraph]

About Walter Olson

Fellow at a think tank in the Northeast specializing in law. Websites include overlawyered.com. Former columnist for Reason and Times Online (U.K.), contributor to National Review, etc.
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3 Responses to Miscellany, April 5

  1. RandyB says:

    Teach monkeys they’re related to humans, and they’ll act like humans.

  2. Jeeves says:

    So Adam Smith said it all before Charles Murray? Is that the point?

    Murray’s appeared at every talkfest from Fox News to AEI to Colbert to Charlie Rose. I’ve yet to hear anything from him that would cause me to run out and buy Coming Apart. Ecclesiastes–minus the data–comes to mind.

    A while back, Tyler Cowen blogged about Murray’s partial “remedies” for the problem he sees as, I suppose, a threat to our democratic society (something like that). But even Murray conceded those remedies would have little effect.

    And none of them, IIRC, was aimed at reversing the decline in religious affiliation in the U.S. Since I’ve not read the book, I can’t be sure, but in interviews he seems to make religion a necessary item in his basket of civic virtues. I’m not sure that Adam Smith, either in The Wealth of Nations or The Theory of Moral Sentiments, takes this view.

  3. cynthia curran says:

    Interesting California is an exception. While religous interest shows whether a state goes Democratic or Republican, Ca is going more Democratic with people being more religious than 40 years ago. 40 years ago California was similar to Washington and Oregon on religion. Now its in the middle. Alaska is also low on religion but more libertarian and doesn’t vote as much for Dems. California growing hispanic and asian populations and shrinking white and black populations made the changes on religion. Texas now heavily relgious will probably as its grows more hispanic moved to the middle since all heavily hispanic states Ca, Az, New Mexico and Florida are in the middle. Nevada is the exception of heavily hispanic states its below the national average.

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