“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.” The speaker is Thomas Gradgrind. He is talking to two adults, the school master and Josiah Bounderby and to a class of students, each known principally by a number. The quoted sentences form the first few lines of Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times. Today’s focus on STEM programs, Common Core and standardized tests – the robotic production of students – suggest that the 160 years separating the publication of Mr. Dickens’ novel and today have brought only limited change in the desire for centralized control and the unpredictable whims that are fundamental to human behavior.
Eric Cohen’s eloquent and inspiring essay in Mosaic outlines a series of ideas that are both truly Jewish and truly conservative. I agree with them: the sanctity of the traditional family structure; a Jewish nationalism that joins morality, Jewish identity, and self-preservation; and a measured embrace of free markets. For Cohen, these ideas form part of a call to arms, a call that is directed not only to like-minded conservatives but that might ultimately fire and perhaps rescue Jews on the brink of assimilation, weakness, and self-destruction.
And yet there is something missing. Midway through this sweeping essay, Cohen enlists the biblical book of Joshua to illustrate certain hard truths about the requirements of Jewish survival and continuity. Among those requirements is the one taught by the figure of Joshua himself, the conqueror of Canaan—namely, having the power, when necessary, to wage and to win war.
http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2015/04/immigration-to-israel-during-the-british-mandate/
Before, during, and after World War II, the British government strictly circumscribed the number of Jews who would be allowed to enter Palestine. Thousands came nonetheless. The film By Air, Land, and Sea tells some of their stories:
I’ve had a fun time out on the Earth Day airwaves talking about Climate Change: The Facts. That’s the new book featuring me and some of the world’s most eminent scientists on the state of the climate debate as we prepare to enter the third decade of the global-warming pause. And I’m thrilled to find that the book is currently Number One on the Climatology Hit Parade, ahead of Naomi Klein, Naomi Oreskes and any number of Naomis, and also Number One on the Environmental Policy Hot 100.
If this keeps up, in the forthcoming Mann vs Steyn trial I may call myself as an expert witness.
My sincere thanks to everyone who’s bought this important new book. The turn-of-the-century cartoon science of the hockey stick is over, and it’s time for climate science to make a new start.
On the other hand, serial litigant Michael E Mann also has a new book out whose Earth Day orders have rocketed it up to Big Hit Sound #1,920,648.
Wrapped in the arrogance of their youthful ignorance, student crusades seldom produce more than the bedlam of spoilt children demanding to have their whims immediately indulged. But the push for universities to divest carbon stocks, that is both different and dangerous
The growing calls by certain students and environmental groups for Australian universities to divest themselves of fossil fuel-related enterprises is typical of the feel-good grandstanding university students have long enjoyed. At a glance, the demands of these undergraduate eco-fascists appear sensible enough: universities have a privileged status in society as places of progress and innovation. They have a responsibility to embrace their as vanguards of social change and lead the fight against climate change. It is only right that they sever ties with companies that reap their profits by plundering the loins of Mother Earth.
Tempting, as it may be to accept this heartfelt concern for the planet’s wellbeing at face value, there are good reasons why the blossoming of this new species of eco-authoritarianism should be cut down at the roots.
The alleged killing on Friday of a former henchman of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein by Shiite militiamen loyal to Iran could have far reaching consequences for the United States.
Ibrahim Ezzat-al-din ad-Douri was one of a handful of survivors from Saddam’s inner circle. Labelled the King of Clubs in the famous deck of cards that guided U.S. capture efforts after the 2003 liberation of Iraq, ad-Douri evaded traps a sand fly.
Three times he was pronounced dead. Three times he returned to give video-taped speeches and make public appearances, leading an insurgency against the United States and, more recently, against the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
Ad-Duri supporters tell me that he has done so again – although pro-Iranian militiamen claim to have conducted DNA sampling on the beard of the man they killed in a raid on Friday and proclaimed it [2] to be ad-Duri.
[1]Immigration has become the third rail of American politics.
At a time when the labor force participation rate has fallen to 62 percent and the employment growth for the last 15 years [2] has gone to immigrants, opposing the Super-Amnesty of 12 million illegal aliens is still considered an extreme position… in the Republican Party.
So when Scott Walker merely suggested that Congress should make immigration decisions based on “protecting American workers and American wages,” he was denounced for it [3] by… Republicans.
Walker’s belief that immigration should be based on “our economic situation,” rather than an ideological mandate for open borders, has become an “extreme right” [4] position. And yet this scary “extreme” position that foreign workers shouldn’t be brought in to displace American workers is part of our immigration law. It’s just one of those “extreme” parts that, like the illegality of crossing the border, is being ignored. It’s not just being ignored by Obama. It’s also being ignored by the Republican Party.
Scott Walker’s common sense immigration populism was met with two sets of attacks. The first set came from senators like McCain and Portman playing the old song about all those “jobs Americans won’t do.” (Not that they’re given the chance to do them.) Senator Hatch claimed that, “We know that when we graduate PhDs and master’s degrees and engineers, we don’t have enough of any of those.”
A generation of students is growing up learning to tolerate — and consider normal — bias, falsehood, prejudice, and the runaway politicization of teachers and student thugs permitting only one-sided arguments.
America’s President Barack Obama has declared war on Israel. The animosity between Obama and his administration toward Israel and its newly re-elected leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been growing for years; it reached crisis point after Netanyahu’s address to the U.S. Congress and news of his resounding victory in the March elections.
This does not mean that the United States, as a whole, shares this animosity or is bent on abandoning a vulnerable and beleaguered democracy to its host of violent and uncompromising predators. Polls show it does not.
But wars against Israel are nothing new. In 1947, months before the country was even declared independent, Arabs launched a war that led uninterruptedly to a full-scale conflict in 1948. Since then, physical violence — wars and individual terrorist attacks — against the State of Israel has been a feature of everyday life for Israelis, with Jews as the principal targets. No legally established, democratic country has ever been faced with so great a lust for its destruction and so many assaults on its people. It is singled out by a United Nations dominated by Muslim states and their allies; and now, bewilderingly, by the president of the one country on whom Israelis have always depended for moral and material support.
Dan Malloy’s truculence helped him get elected but now makes him unbearable in office. Aggression has its advantages. Ulysses Grant, for example, proved how well relentless attack works when the odds are with you. I could cite scientists, entrepreneurs, running backs — politicians, too — who demonstrate the effectiveness of sheer determined push.
That trait can get a man into office, but it won’t much help him govern.
Aggression elevated Dan Malloy, a strutting mayor of little achievement and less charm, to the governorship of Connecticut, but his truculence now works against him. Those in his own party who felt his wrath (often over minutiae) will not bail him out now without payback. In fact, Connecticut Democrats are likely to distance themselves from Malloy as quickly as they can, for they will face the voters next year, while he (I’d guess) never will again.
Meanwhile, driven wrong-headedly by Malloy, our state nears a terminal phase. We have the nation’s heaviest total tax burden, the highest per capita state debt, and the slowest economic growth. How do you escape such a hole? Not by imposing the biggest tax increase in state history — as Malloy did four years ago — and not by raising taxes again, as I expect legislative Democrats will do this year. Instead of direction, Malloy offers misdirection, picking quarrels to distract us from his disastrous stewardship. Craving attention and adrenaline, he taunts Chris Christie and insults Bobby Jindal. The most recent target was Indiana, which he declared off limits for a couple of days. Malloy knew that by pouncing on Governor Mike Pence loudly and immediately, he could make news for himself that didn’t involve the state he actually governs. Attack dog Malloy strikes in all directions, at any target, to get attention on himself and off his lousy record and the dismal mess he’s made of the Constitution State. “We have to expose Republicans for the frauds that they are,” he said recently, incessant in his disdain for those who disagree with him. I read that pleasantry while awaiting a legislative hearing on the human-services budget. Deep into the evening, the very people Democrats claim to defend – the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the workers who serve them — came before the Appropriations Committee to describe the impact of Malloy’s cuts to hospitals, nursing homes, private social-service providers, non-profit agencies.
The Senate must vote no. Although Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Republicans who control the Senate are under no obligation to do so, they have agreed to grant a confirmation vote to Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s nominee to replace Eric Holder as United States Attorney General. Ms. Lynch has testified that she supports and would implement President Obama’s executive action providing de facto amnesty to illegal immigrants. This edict, which blatantly violates Obama’s oath to execute the laws faithfully, also unconstitutionally confers positive legal benefits on illegal aliens, something only Congress has the authority to do.
Yet, five Republican senators have announced that they will vote to confirm Ms. Lynch. Three have already supported her in the Judiciary Committee: Orrin Hatch (Utah), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), and Jeff Flake (Ariz). The two others are Mark Kirk (Ill.) and Susan Collins (Maine). If they follow through in the vote now scheduled for Thursday, Ms. Lynch would almost certainly have the 51 votes needed to be confirmed. There are six points to be made about this.
