Check out these recent articles from around the web:

Disdain for the Less Educated Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice by Michael Sandel: “Building a politics around the idea that a college degree is a precondition for dignified work and social esteem has a corrosive effect on democratic life. It devalues the contributions of those without a diploma, fuels prejudice against less-educated members of society, effectively excludes most working people from elective government and provokes political backlash.”

How Climate Migration Will Reshape America by Abrahm Lustgarten: “Might Americans finally be waking up to how climate is about to transform their lives? And if so — if a great domestic relocation might be in the offing — was it possible to project where we might go? To answer these questions, I interviewed more than four dozen experts: economists and demographers, climate scientists and insurance executives, architects and urban planners, and I mapped out the danger zones that will close in on Americans over the next 30 years.”

Why Does California Have So Many Wildfires? by Kendra Pierre-Louis and John Schwartz: “But while California’s climate has always been fire prone, the link between climate change and bigger fires is inextricable. “This climate-change connection is straightforward: warmer temperatures dry out fuels. In areas with abundant and very dry fuels, all you need is a spark,” he said.”

Abortion isn’t the only issue on the presidential ballot by Michael Gerson: “For some, treating the 2020 election as a referendum on abortion is a way to live with Trump’s moral ugliness. If there is only one issue on the ballot, then only one policy position counts, not Trump’s character as a man and a leader. This has the virtue of simplicity and the drawback of complicity in grave wrongs.”

As repression mounts, China under Xi Jinping feels increasingly like North Korea by Anna Fifield: “Over the past four years, the Chinese government has detained more than 1 million Uighurs in reeducation camps designed to strip them of their culture, language and religion. They’ve had to shave their beards and uncover their hair. They’ve been made to pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party. Children have been taken from their parents and put into orphanages.”

Biden must fix Obama’s biggest foreign policy failure by Josh Rogin: “There are no easy answers in Syria, but letting Assad off the hook will not bring peace or keep us safe. Biden’s promise to use U.S. leadership and leverage to force better outcomes there is the correct one to make — and the Syrian people’s only hope.”

Colleges Are Fueling the Pandemic in a Classic Market Failure by  Sarah Cohodes and Susan Dynarski: “Competitive, free markets work when individuals and institutions pursuing their own interests converge, making everyone best off. In the case of colleges reopening, self-interested action has instead led to a predictable market failure: fueling viral spread.”

The Integralism of Adrian Vermeule by Jason Blakely: “Vermeule’s plan for regime change at home, however, is not just practically dubious, a recipe for destructive ideological crusading. It relies on premises that often clash with the Church’s basic theological and philosophical precepts.”

What Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks Mean for Global Warming by Nadja Popovich and Brad Plumer: “President Trump has made dismantling federal climate policies a centerpiece of his administration. A new analysis from the Rhodium Group finds those rollbacks add up to a lot more planet-warming emissions.”

Trump, Orbán, and Putin Are Forming an Authoritarian Alliance by Jonathan Chait: “What draws these leaders and their regimes to Trump is a shared contempt for liberal democracy. Putin, Orbán, Duda, and Trump all rose to power in democratic systems and have turned them toward authoritarianism. They are joined in a common project to discredit liberal democracy.”