21 car century insurance: Young woman stumped by simple question

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My dear friend, you know I have plenty of sympathy for younger folks, and the housing and other costs they face. I have made that clear repeatedly, in many ways, in both this newsletter and on the Tom Woods Show.

But let me tell you what I have no sympathy for:

(1) People who tell me I can't end a sentence with a preposition, as in "what I have no sympathy for." A good rule of thumb is that if slavish obedience to a rule yields a stylistic atrocity, make an exception to the rule. "That for which I have no sympathy" is too grotesque even to consider.

(2) Young people who, despite having every bit of human knowledge at their fingertips, insist on pressing their dogmatic opinions on things they know nothing about (there I go again with the prepositions, by the way).

Case in point:

That Twitter character known as "el gato malo," who was great during Covid, has been digging up examples of students who approach the microphone to give a Turning Point USA spokesman a piece of their minds, but who it turns out know nothing about anything.

He writes:

This is such a wild trend:

100% conviction
0% comprehension

It's a magic word cult.
They do not even understand what the words they are speaking mean.
They think they are magic spells that make people have to agree with them and that silence dissent.
This is the sort of empty headed addle brained identity that emerges from years of cosseted cancel culture.
They argue by assertions they cannot even explain, much less defend.
It can only sustain itself by suppressing debate and discussion.
It disintegrates like sugar sculpture in a thunderstorm when challenged or asked to explain itself.

Here's an example, though it's missing something without the video, in which the young person is clearly flabbergasted that she's actually being questioned:

Young Person: I still don't think that a lot of the struggles that we're faced with in America today is because of immigrants. I would say it's probably more because of capitalism and the top 1% people that hoard wealth. It makes it harder for the rest of us.

TPUSA Person: You said capitalism is causing the issues that are taking place for people our age right now in this country. How is that happening? What does capitalism do? So what is capitalism?

[At this point in the video you can see the young woman is flustered, and trying to buy time: she obviously doesn't know what capitalism is.]

Young Person: What do you mean, "what is capitalism"?

TPUSA Person: What would you define capitalism as?

Young Person: Okay.

TPUSA Person: Because you said capitalism is causing the ills of the people in this country.

Young Person: Yeah.

TPUSA Person: And so I'm asking you to define capitalism.

Young Person: No, I'm saying that it's not immigrants that are causing the problems for America. I would say that it's capitalism.

TPUSA Person: Sure. Just tell me what capitalism is.

Young Person: Okay.

At that point she walks away. She has been stumped by being asked to define the central term in her argument.

There are plenty of things that are harming her -- special privileges for everyone who arrives here who doesn't look like her, a Federal Reserve that debased the dollar by 29 percent in just the past six years, a medical care and "insurance" system so shot through with regulatory absurdities and industry self-interest as to bear zero resemblance to a cost-cutting free market, and on and on -- but "capitalism" ain't one of them.

The bottom one percent is doing a lot more to make her life difficult than the top one percent is. She is certainly not suffering from anyone's "hoarding" of wealth -- the wealthy people she's been told to despise have their money tied up in productive investments, and ordering them to liquidate those so she can have 20 bucks would make her cohort drastically worse off than they are now.

And even if wealthy people did "hoard" wealth, the effect of that would be to lower prices across the board, which would be good for her.

Now look at that exchange again.

That young woman had never once been made to explain herself. In her head were slogans where understanding should have been. The moment someone asked her to define her own central term, the whole structure dissolved -- "like sugar sculpture in a thunderstorm," as our friend put it.

You, dear reader, are not that person. You actually know things. You have thought hard about a subject, maybe several, over many years. You can define your terms. You can withstand the questioning. You have the one thing that poor young woman completely lacked: something real to say, and the understanding to back it up.

But:

If you have genuine knowledge, the kind that holds up when challenged, why is it still trapped in your head?

There is a hideous asymmetry in our world: the woman at that microphone had nothing and said it loudly, while I know how many of you have something genuine to say and say it to no one.

You have a book in you -- the expertise, the hard-won understanding, the thing you could defend against any questioner. What you may not have is the knowledge of how to actually get it out of your head and into a finished, published book that other people can read.

Outlined, written, edited, published, and marketed.

Well, the old man here can help you, because I've written 14 of them, including a couple of New York Times bestsellers.

But at midnight not only does the sale on the Woods Author Academy come to an end, but the program closes its doors permanently to new members. (I'm moving it over to my School of Life, where it will be a bonus for those good folks.)

The link: