Richard Hanania's Newsletter

Whatever happened to caring about suffering Africans? “We Are the World” was before my time. But I remember that throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the idea that the Dark Continent was full of war crimes, starvation, and suffering that Americans had a duty to alleviate was...

Note: To do book promotional stuff, I’ll be in DC Monday and Tuesday this week, and NYC for about a week starting Wednesday. I may do one or two meetups. To remain informed, check the X feed and Substack notes, where I’ll post updates on what I’m doing.

Ruxandra Teslo and Amol Punjabi recently wrote about how a Chinese startup developed a new drug that signifi...

My politics are anti-populist, which kind of sounds like I’m against the average citizen. But that is not necessarily true. I see the vast majority of the public as relatively passive and uninterested in politics. This makes them mostly harmless, and this is why democracy is fine, since, depending on what elites are doing, they can be led in a positive or negative direction. ...

Nearly all talk of “jobs” drives me crazy. Politicians say we can’t accept port automation or self-driving cars because we need to protect jobs. Or we need fewer immigrants for the same reason. Or that one source of energy is better than another because it creates more jobs. In public opinion surveys, the idea of

My book Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster will be released on July 7. Please preorder here