Not much, it appears.

Like a butcher with a sharp knife, Charles C. W. Cooke slices the pro-socialism arguments to threads:

History has shown us that socialism exhibits three core defects from which it cannot escape and which its champions cannot avoid. The first is what Hayek termed “the knowledge problem.” This holds that all economic actors make errors based on imperfect knowledge but that a decentralized economy will suffer less from this, partly because the decision-makers are closer to the information they need, and partly because each actor does not wield total control over everything but is only one part of a larger puzzle. The second problem is that, because socialism eliminates both private property and supply and demand, it eliminates rational incentives and, thereby, rational calculation. The third problem is that socialism, following Marx’s dialectical theory of history, lends itself to a theory of inevitability or preordination that leaves no room for dissent, and that leads in consequence to the elevation of a political class that responds to failure by searching for wreckers and dissenters to punish. Worse still, because socialists view all questions, including moral questions, through a class lens, these searches tend to be deemed morally positive — bound, one day, to be regarded by History as Necessary. Together, these defects lead to misery, poverty, corruption, ignorance, authoritarianism, desperation, exodus, and death.

With Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign floundering, it appears that someone has convinced him that his only chance now is to go on an apology tour. Gad Saad is not impressed. Frankly, it seems unlikely that most American voters will be either. Even super “woke” feminists – aka unhappy women with severe “daddy issues” – may publicly applaud O’Rourke for what he’s doing but may quietly lose respect for any man who plays the victim card. What’s next? Will he be crying on a PSA with Oprah?

A friend in Vancouver, a reasonable slightly center-left guy I’ve known for four decades, pointed me to this article by Jordan Peterson, which was published in the Vancouver Sun. He added that he entirely agreed with it and asked, “Who could possibly disagree with what Peterson is saying?”

The mantra of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity (DIE) perhaps constitutes the primary identifying factor of the tiny minority of radical collectivist ideologues that nonetheless have come to dominate the humanities and social sciences in Western universities (and, increasingly, the HR departments of corporations). Of these three, equity is the most egregious, self-righteous, historically-ignorant and dangerous. “Equity” is a term designed to signal “equality,” in some manner, and is a term designed to appeal to the natural human tendency toward fairness, but it does not mean the classic equality of the West, which is equality before the law and equality of opportunity.

Equality before the law means that each citizen will be treated fairly by the criminal justice and judicial systems regardless of their status — and that the state recognizes that each individual has an intrinsic value which serves as a limit to state power, and which the polity must respect. There is likely no more fundamental presumption grounding our culture.