Politics

Sociology is an academic discipline that I generally steer clear of. It seems as full of trendy guff as Education. But there is a minority report, a subculture that questions progressive orthodoxies. A new book co-written by Jennie Bristow and Ellie Lee called Growing Up in the Culture Wars, out in the US in January, is in this frail tradition. They offer some excellent insights into what has gone wrong. One insight is that mainstream sociologists have become confused about the idea of normality; it has become seen as an oppressive threat. They acknowledge that there is a healthy sociological tradition of criticizing “normativity,” meaning the way in which societies reinforce the status quo by presenting it as natural.

The Irish Rovers sang about the biggest mixup that you have ever seen: he was christened David Anthony, but still in spite of that, his father called him William while his mother called him Pat. Picture the feelings of Lake Ontario this morning. It was christened Lac Saint-Louis by Samuel de Champlain, but it's woken up to Canada calling it William and the US calling it Pat – or rather, Lake America (without the “of,” as Trump helpfully specified in his video on Truth Social). Do you really need two Dakotas? Although Lac Saint-Louis is surely a better and more historically founded name than Lake America, one can sympathize with the American compulsion to rename things. After all, what would Texas be without a little American intervention? (Mexico, as it happens.

The Trump administration has proposed a fee of more than $100,000 for most H-1B visas. The usual suspects have come out with the usual reactions. Doug Brand, a senior immigration official in the Biden administration, called the move “catastrophic,” and the libertarian Cato Institute has warned of “devastating” consequences.  In lieu of abolishing the program altogether – my preference, but something only Congress can do – such a fee is long overdue. It’s chump change compared to the added value a truly exceptional foreign worker could generate, and at the same time would make the program less attractive as a means of importing cheap white-collar labor to undercut Americans.