Coleman Hughes

Today is the day! My first book, "The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America," is now out in fine bookstores everywhere! The Audiobook is read by yours truly! penguinrandomhouse.com/books/671726/t…

.@RichardHanania says institutions like ‘The New York Times’ and Harvard—while far from perfect—are far more reliable sources of knowledge than the podcast circuit. “If ‘The New York Times’ really gets facts wrong, they will correct it. Most of the big podcasters out there—they’re not going to correct anything.” “‘The New York Times’ is still fundamentally doing journalism. Harvard is still fundamentally doing peer-reviewed research and producing knowledge. The medical establishment is still producing drugs and learning how to treat disease.... There is no real alternative for sifting through what’s true and what’s false.”

What actually is populism—now one of the most powerful forces in domestic and international politics? @RichardHanania calls it “an ideologically thin view that divides the world into the pure people and the corrupt or evil elite.” @Coldxman: “I have no idea what specific beliefs are going to come out of a populist’s mouth—except that the people running society are way more corrupt than you think…and I’m going to smash them on the people’s behalf.” Watch the full episode: youtu.be/18wYRFjC39o

As I tell Coleman Hughes: "I think if an alien were coming to earth, and they were studying America and Europe, the last 20-30 years, they would say these are the best run societies in human history." This is what populists don't understand. Stop listening to grifters.

So let's figure out how to get more Black kids to ace the exam! Of course, that might require making teachers work harder or smarter, an idea that the teachers' mafia––ahem sorry, teachers' union––would resist.

“The American experiment created a possibility.” @CornelWest argues America’s greatest achievement wasn’t perfection—it was creating a system capable of self-correction, expanding democracy, and giving power to ordinary people. youtu.be/IcURhQiXQe4

One year of Conversations with @Coldxman 🔥🔥 The biggest debates. The sharpest minds. The conversations that mattered most. Here’s to many more. Subscribe today: TheFP.com/subscribe

lol why are they all like this. Remember Henderson’s dictum: Fascists are proles who cosplay as aristocrats and communists are aristocrats who cosplay as proles. thefp.com/p/caitlin-flan…

“The best that we ever do is learn how to love our crooked neighbors with our crooked hearts.” @CornelWest says American history begins with humility—not pretending our past was all good or all bad. Full episode: youtu.be/IcURhQiXQe4

America’s history is full of contradictions. The question is how we should understand them. @CornelWest and @Coldxman discuss whether America’s opportunities are inseparable from its injustices. youtu.be/IcURhQiXQe4

A good analogy actually––but it makes the opposite of its intended point. If your kid gets expelled from school *for something he didn't do*, then you should absolutely pull strings to get him un-expelled, even if other parents don't have access to those levers

The announcers (all former pros) thought it was a bad call. I think that's an important detail –– and missing from the coverage I've seen Is it better to get a just result via a corrupt process or an unjust result via a morally pure process? I would say the former.

I’ve always found people who bristle at “American exceptionalism” kind of… weird. Not because I lack self-awareness — I’ve spent my career cataloging every way this country fails to live up to its own rules. But that’s exactly why I love it so damn much. We built a system designed to be shamed by its own founding documents, and it still delivered one of the most spectacular, world-altering runs in human history. A genuine force for human flourishing. I also found the argument against American exceptionalism to be historically illiterate. Here’s a sample of what we were first at: • The first large-scale democratic republic in human history — not a city-state, not a monarchy with a parliament bolted on, but a bold continental experiment in self-rule, popular sovereignty, and ordered liberty. • A written Constitution (1789) with separation of powers and checks & balances — still the oldest national constitution in force anywhere. • The Bill of Rights (1791): the first time a nation wrote “the government cannot touch these” into supreme law and actually meant it. A dare the world copied — from later rights charters to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. • Public land-grant universities and mass higher education (Morrill Act), opening college to ordinary people no aristocracy would have let near the gates. (but don’t get me started about what happened after we started. Massively federally funding it.) • Kitty Hawk, 1903 — first controlled powered flight. • The Moon, 1969 — still the only ones who’ve been there. • The world’s largest economy since ~1890, powering unprecedented prosperity through grit and genius. • The assembly line, skyscraper, transistor, personal computer, ARPANET — the backbone of the modern world. • Telephone, phonograph, GPS — connecting and powering daily life. • Surgical anesthesia, polio vaccine — saving and transforming millions of lives. • Jazz, blues, rock ‘n’ roll — brand new American art forms that conquered the globe. • Hollywood’s dreams, blue jeans, bourbon, and a culture so open a kid like me could devour sushi, burritos, stuffed cabbage, and tabouli in the same week and rightfully think of it all as American. That’s the part that fills me with genuine love and pride: not just the power or the wins, but the appetite for freedom, creativity, and reinvention. The audacity to say “We the People” and keep trying to live up to it. What do you love most about this truly exceptional country? 🇺🇸

America turns 250 this Fourth of July—and patriotism will be on full display in every corner of the country. But for some, that pride doesn't come easy. @Coldxman shares a special message about how progressive ideology takes for granted what precious gifts America offers that most people on earth don't really have.

A very unusual feature of the Israel-Palestine conflict is that “refugees should be denied the opportunity to flee and resettle” is upheld by all the international humanitarian orgs and also by foreign governments that characterize their views as strongly pro-Palestinian.

“Fear of abandonment,” “fear of commitment,” “fear of intimacy,” etc are in general flattering lies people tell themselves to identify as how they want to be perceived and to be “proven right” in their personal narratives. The supposedly unflattering self-image of the unloveable victim is actually an exquisite and attenuated erotic fantasy. All of this is in service of the utmost goal of avoiding confrontation with the more mundane and depressing reality that what they really suffer from is an addiction to novelty and intolerance of boredom brought on by a disinterest in others as anything but an extension of themselves. Seeing yourself as unworthy of love is the quickest way to get around the whole question of whether you’re even capable of love.

Why the Iran Deal Will Fail, with Douglas Murray and @coldxman youtube.com/watch?v=-ZWdUT…

I, like most Americans, think that the average family and young person deserves a better shot at a decent life. I also think that socialism doesn’t work in real life, that America is good and filled with good people, and that it’s okay to work with people who don’t agree with me.

@bryan_caplan's reflections on teaching at the University of Austin! My experience has been the same. open.substack.com/pub/betonit/p/…