The Constitution of Knowledge

From Deceivers, Skeptics, and Enablers, 7/12, The Political Ecosystem by Arnold Kling.

I am afraid that Jonathan Rauch is also an enabler. His books The Kindly Inquisitors and The Constitution of Knowledge brilliantly articulate the values of free speech, intellectual humility, and free inquiry. But when we see Yale and The New York Times repeatedly and decisively reject those values, he still treats them with respect, as if they are still at heart the same institutions that they were when he was a boy. Even though Donald Trump has been out of office for a year and a half, Rauch still seems willing to see Trump as an excuse for the illiberal young brats and their Enabler editors at newspapers and universities.

I started The Constitution of Knowledge because everyone spoke so highly of it.  And had to put it to the side after 50 pages.  He writes well and is  knowledgeable.  He articulates many things with which I deeply agree.

And then he keeps revealing himself as an enabler.  It doesn't matter that he says all the correct things, says them well and with deep insight.  It just cannot sit well that someone claiming to believe in rational empiricism is also someone who believes that January 6th was truly an insurrection, that the BLM riots were truly peaceful, that the Russia Hoax was true, that NPR stands with the facts, and that AGW guarantees a catastrophic future.  

The gap between the Classical Liberal Age of Enlightenment model he espouses and the shibboleths, conspiracies, and self-delusions he indulges in is unbridgeable.  

I have started reading again because he does write so well.  But you have to hold your nose and divorce the reading from his actual behaviors.