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Michael Rectenwald

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“A nation is not a piece of land, so it must not be seen as such - a nation is a people - a people with various unique ingredients in their way of living - these ingredients do not make them superior or inferior to any other people in the world, rather they simply make them who they are - they simply define their uniqueness - and these unique ingredients from all the peoples of all the countries in the world beautifully construct the radiant, colorful and vivacious fabric of humanity, where all the colors are of equal potential for growth and progress.”

“-- Myth #5: Monogamy Is Natural, Evolutionarily Determined, Optimal, or Divinely Ordained -- It may seem paradoxical to combine evolutionary psychology and religious beliefs in a single section, but these ideas have much in common. Both partake of a mindset that treats contemporary culture as an expression of eternal verities, neglecting the fact that societies vary a great deal, and that modern relationships have little in common with the majority of models that have existed throughout human history.”

“Imagine a young Isaac Newton time-travelling from 1670s England to teach Harvard undergrads in 2017. After the time-jump, Newton still has an obsessive, paranoid personality, with Asperger’s syndrome, a bad stutter, unstable moods, and episodes of psychotic mania and depression. But now he’s subject to Harvard’s speech codes that prohibit any “disrespect for the dignity of others”; any violations will get him in trouble with Harvard’s Inquisition (the ‘Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’). Newton also wants to publish Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, to explain the laws of motion governing the universe. But his literary agent explains that he can’t get a decent book deal until Newton builds his ‘author platform’ to include at least 20k Twitter followers – without provoking any backlash for airing his eccentric views on ancient Greek alchemy, Biblical cryptography, fiat currency, Jewish mysticism, or how to predict the exact date of the Apocalypse. Newton wouldn’t last long as a ‘public intellectual’ in modern American culture. Sooner or later, he would say ‘offensive’ things that get reported to Harvard and that get picked up by mainstream media as moral-outrage clickbait. His eccentric, ornery awkwardness would lead to swift expulsion from academia, social media, and publishing. Result? On the upside, he’d drive some traffic through Huffpost, Buzzfeed, and Jezebel, and people would have a fresh controversy to virtue-signal about on Facebook. On the downside, we wouldn’t have Newton’s Laws of Motion.”

“It may sound like I am making too much out of all this, but the only way you can allow a kid to truly dream is if you expand their idea of what is currently possible. A kid who has nothing, sees nothing, and is taught nothing can only dream of breakfast. They can only hope to get to the next moment successfully. I want more than that for my kids...just like my mom wanted more than that for me. And I want them to want more than that too.”