I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of laughs watching people on the left trying to climb the pyramid of grievances.

Because modern liberalism has largely abandoned economics in favor of a giant interlocking system of grievance-based identity politics, the left has created an incentive system where different groups are forced to fight one another as they struggle to ascend to the top of the pyramid.

So, for instance, you have fights between WoCs (Women of Color) and garden-variety white feminists over the checking of privilege. You have transgender women (which is to say, men who say they’re women) fighting against old-guard feminists who see this as yet one more assault from the patriarchy. You have the African-American community not-super-invested in the gay marriage movement.

I don’t know about you, but I’m waiting with baited breath for the final, Census Bureau-adjusted exit polls from the 2016 election to be released, because if the data show that Hillary Clinton lost in part because a noticeable chunk of minority men voted against her, then it’s going to be awesome.

I like to think of the entire spectacle as the Intersectionality War. (It’s a comic book joke.)

One of the interesting aspects of the Intersectionality War are the battles that aren’t fought. A lot of them concern Islam. For instance, the left will go to amazing, ridiculous lengths to not criticize Islam for its views on homosexuality. (My favorite expression of this ever is probably: “Though his previous books have touched on Christianity, ‘I know that Islam is also not necessarily tolerant towards homosexuality.’”)

Slavery is, you may have noticed, one of the no-go zones of modern liberal mores. You can’t even equivocate about the n-word, let alone actual slavery.

Unless, you know, you’re Muslim.

Which brings us to Rod Dreher’s fantastic account of tenured Georgetown professor Jonathan Brown’s recent musings about how slavery in the Muslim world is pretty much okey-dokey. There’s audio of Prof. Brown’s lecture here.

In them, Brown also mounts a defense of rape in the Muslim world, explaining that ideas about “consent” in the West are actually quite novel. But let’s leave the feminist stuff aside for a moment and focus on the slavery. Because Dreher hones in on two interesting points.

First, Brown excuses the practice of slavery by saying that the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh!) absolutely owned slaves. “Are you more morally mature than the Prophet of God?” Brown asked a questioner who was skeptical of the benign nature of Muslim slavery. “No, you’re not.”

So if Mohammed owned slaves, what’s a right-thinking liberal to do? On the one hand, the left has mortgaged itself to the idea that all historical figures must be held to contemporary moral standards. If we’re supposed to look askance at Thomas Jefferson because of his slave-owning, then what about Mohammed?

Second, what is this insanity doing at a Catholic school? A Catholic school that is so amped up about the historical legacy of slavery that it’s in the midst of a public crusade to wash its own hands?

Of course, Georgetown isn’t really a Catholic school. It’s Jesuit. There’s a difference. Just ask the pope.

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution gave its name to the protection against self-incrimination, and it also contains three other famous (and these days somewhat battered) guarantees​—​against double jeopardy; against deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; and of just compensation when private property is taken for public use. But before any of these, in pride of place in the very first words of the amendment, comes perhaps the least thought-of protection in the whole Bill of Rights: the assurance that no one will be “held to answer” for a serious crime unless indicted by a grand jury.

—Claudia Anderson, “We, the Grand Jury,” from our February 18, 2013 issue.

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Liam Vaughan: How the Flash Crash Trader lost $50 million.

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Math: Why it’s not crazy to be afraid of flying.

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Have you ever wondered who’s the Worst Millennial in the World? It’s this guy.

The classic military formula for success: concentrate superior force at a single point. The Occupy Wall Street movement fizzled out in large part because of its ridiculously fissiparous list of demands and its failure to generate a leadership that could cull that list into anything actionable. Successful movements are built upon concrete single demands that can readily be translated into practical action: “Votes for women.” “End the draft.” “Overturn Roe v. Wade.” “Tougher punishments for drunk driving.”

People can say “yes” to such specific demands for many different reasons. Supporters are not called upon to agree on everything, but just one thing. “End the draft” can appeal both to outright pacifists and to military professionals who regard an army of volunteers as more disciplined and lethal than an army of conscripts. Critics of Roe run the gamut from those who wish a total ban on all abortions to legal theorists who believe the Supreme Court overstepped itself back in 1973.

So it should be for critics of President Trump. “Pass a law requiring the Treasury to release the President’s tax returns.” “An independent commission to investigate Russian meddling in the US election.” “Divest from the companies.” These are limited asks with broad appeal.

On the other hand, if you build a movement that lists those specific and limited goals along a vast and endlessly unfolding roster of others from “preserve Dodd Frank” to “save the oceans”—if you indulge the puckish anti-politics of “not usually a sign guy, but geez”—you will collapse into factionalism and futility.

—David Frum on what the left could do to counter Trump (but probably won’t), February 6, 2017

Because I have become a walking cliché, last week I found myself driving around aimlessly at 3:00 a.m. in the hope that the motion of the vehicle would lull a fussy baby to sleep. When I say “aimlessly,” I’m not kidding. My rule of thumb for these late-night drives is simple: Drive straight until you come to a stop-light. Then turn right. I pretend it’s like Speed: Don’t let the minivan’s speed drop below 10 mph, or the baby will explode.

In order to keep myself from nodding off during the journey, I dipped back into the vault to re-listen to a couple of my favorite episodes of Conversations with Bill Kristol.

The two shows I revisited were the dynamite talk with my colleague Andy Ferguson and the second interview with AEI’s Charles Murray, in which he talks about globalization and populism and the (continued) decline of American civic life.

How great are these two episodes? Not only were they good enough to enjoy twice, but they put the baby to sleep and kept me awake. You can't ask for more. Go treat yourself. You'll thank me.

Best,

JVL