Long Reads That Caught Our Eye This Week

We 💚 to read. . . Your weekly roundup of longreads that caught our eye. Be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray [View this email in your browser]( We love to read. Here are a few longreads from around the web that caught the attention of our editors this week. The Complicated Legacy of 'The Dark Knight’ Richard Newby | The Hollywood Reporter Christopher Nolan's acclaimed film changed the movie landscape when it was released 10 years ago this month, but at what cost? --------------------------------------------------------------- “You’ve changed things. Forever,” the Joker says, leering at a caped crusader on the verge of defeat. It’s been 10 years since The Dark Knight carved a crooked smile into the world of pop culture. The film made Christopher Nolan a household name, redefined blockbuster movies, necessitated recognition of the artistry of big-budget filmmakers and transformed how the public viewed the mythos of Batman and the Joker. Simply put, The Dark Knight changed things. Forever. Ten years on, and with pages of comic panels spilling onto the screen on an almost monthly basis, The Dark Knight, which opened July 18, 2008, remains the high point of comic book adaptations. Yet, despite the recognition of the film’s unequivocal greatness, much of the reason behind its greatness has become dislodged in the explosion of superhero movies, and the so-called dark, gritty, and grounded reboots that followed in its wake. Nolan delivered unto us what was arguably the first prestige superhero movie, but what did The Dark Knight cost? [Read More]( What To Learn From The Social Justice Warrior Who Was Eaten By His Own Mob Stella Morabito | The Federalist Mob compliance is a vicious and deadly cycle. The only way to stop the cycle is to stop complying with the mob’s demands. --------------------------------------------------------------- Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling predicted back in the 1950s that we’d soon have a citizenry unable to think. Many of his screenplays warned of the specter of runaway mob psychology. Today it seems that’s exactly the sort of citizenry we’ve got. Social media trolling drives mindless street theater, which drives more mindless social media trolling, and on and on. Most Americans aren’t taken in by it, but the illusions mob behavior promotes can wreak havoc even on reasonable people. The mob mindset seems to be in hyper-drive. Consider a July 14 Quillette article, “I was the Mob until the Mob Came for Me,” written under a pseudonym due to the author’s reasonable fear of retribution. These days, “Barrett Wilson” delivers pizza and sushi to support his young family, a job he can’t afford to lose. [Read More]( Slavery Did Not Make America Rich Deirdre Nansen McCloskey | Reason Ingenuity, not capital accumulation or exploitation, made cotton a little king. --------------------------------------------------------------- In his second inaugural, Abraham Lincoln declared that "if God wills that [the Civil War] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk…as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" It is a noble sentiment. Yet the economic idea implied—that exploitation made us rich—is mistaken. Slavery made a few Southerners rich; a few Northerners, too. But it was ingenuity and innovation that enriched Americans generally, including at last the descendants of the slaves. It's hard to dispel the idea embedded in Lincoln's poetry. TeachUSHistory.org assumes "that northern finance made the Cotton Kingdom possible" because "northern factories required that cotton." The idea underlies recent books of a new King Cotton school of history: Walter Johnson's River of Dark Dreams (Harvard University Press), Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Knopf), and Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books). The rise of capitalism depended, the King Cottoners claim, on the making of cotton cloth in Manchester, England, and Manchester, New Hampshire. The raw cotton, they say, could come only from the South. The growing of cotton, in turn, is said to have depended on slavery. The conclusion—just as our good friends on the left have been saying all these years—is that capitalism was conceived in sin, the sin of slavery. [Read More]( Two Nations, Revisited Mary Eberstadt | National Affairs Almost two decades before J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, and 15 years before Charles Murray's Coming Apart, James Q. Wilson, one of the most eminent social scientists of the 20th century, identified the root of America's fracturing in the dissolution of the family. Wilson, professor of government at Harvard, professor emeritus at UCLA, and a former head of the American Political Science Association, received the American Enterprise Institute's 1997 Francis Boyer Award at the think tank's annual dinner. He used the opportunity to introduce a new line of sociological argument: what he called "the two nations" of America. The image of "two nations," Wilson explained, harked back to an 1845 novel by Benjamin Disraeli, the future prime minister of Great Britain. These were the separate, non-intersecting worlds of rich and poor. Between these two nations Disraeli described, there was "no intercourse and no sympathy" — they were "as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were...inhabitants of different planets." [Read More]( The Engaging Mind of Umberto Eco Brian Murray | Law and Liberty Umberto Eco is best known for The Name of the Rose, his 1980 murder mystery set in a medieval monastery. For the most part Eco’s hefty novel clips along agreeably, even though it’s replete with Latin quotes, literary allusions, and rather complex philosophical themes. Knotty, atmospheric, and a bit bizarre, The Name of the Rose is one of the bestselling novels of all time. Eco’s status as a professor of philosophy gave The Name of the Rose an added credibility, and made it particularly fashionable in academic circles. His A Theory of Semiotics (1976) had already connected Eco closely with the rise of Critical Theory in literature departments throughout Europe and the United States. He continued to hold various academic posts, primarily at the University of Bologna, and died in 2016 at the age of 82. Eco was at his best addressing scholarly subjects in an engaging, accessible way. In his 1989 collection of essays, Travels in Hyperreality, he noted that “the fact that what I do is called ‘semiotics’ should not frighten anyone.” That book, which included pieces on Disneyland, the World Cup, and Thomas Aquinas, was without jargon and pretense, and sometimes showed Eco joking at his own expense. Writing about blue jeans, for example, he admitted that, as he grew rotund, he had to stop wearing these comfortable pants. “True,” he said, “if you search thoroughly you can find an extra large (Macy’s could fit even Oliver Hardy with blue jeans), but they are large not only around the waist, but also around the legs, and they are not a pretty sight.” [Read More]( Copyright © 2015 The Federalist, All rights reserved. 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