When I heard this song the other day, I thought it was a parody:
How can you think you’re serious?
Do you even know what year it is?
I can’t believe the scary points you make
Still living in the currents you create
Still sinking in the pool of your mistakes
Won’t you stop firing up the crazies?
This reminds me of Paul Graham’s wonderful essay What You Can’t Say. The very idea that ‘what year it is’ should determine what can, can’t, should, or shouldn’t be said is about as unamerican and certainly as illiberal an idea one can imagine. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from his essay:
We may imagine that we are a great deal smarter and more virtuous than past generations, but the more history you read, the less likely this seems. People in past times were much like us. Not heroes, not barbarians. Whatever their ideas were, they were ideas reasonable people could believe.
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