RUTHFULLY YOURS

Quite a large number seem to learn little of any lasting value, according to Arum and Roksa in Academically Adrift. That’s bad enough, but some students appear to be absorbing some truly cancerous ideas on campus. They’re learning how to use raucous protest and administrative procedures to harass and silence anyone who dares to disagree with their preconceived ideas. What they seem to expect college to do is to reinforce their beliefs rather than challenge them.

That is the argument FIRE president Greg Lukianoff makes in his chapter in a splendid new book The State of the American Mind, edited by Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow. In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, I write about this growing problem.

In the end, it would have made no difference which way Greece voted. The country is bankrupt, not only financially, but morally and politically. They are proof that you cannot go on spending more money than you take in. Greece is a manifestation that redistribution policies, whether from Socialism or an overly generous welfare state, do not work. No matter the form of government, its costs fall on the backs of the people. In a democracy, the people can vote for change, but when the majority receives more than they give, the end game heaves into sight.

The problem for the West with Greece is less the economic consequences, or even the ideological ones, than the geo-political changes that could evolve. Of particular concerns are the possibility of a return to authoritarianism – either from the right or the left – and, second, the relationship of Greece to Russia. Keep in mind; crises are not wasted by opportunists, and Putin is an opportunist.

Last week’s shooting death on San Francisco’s Pier 14 should finally oblige officials from so-called sanctuary cities to seriously reflect on their reckless and irresponsible alien-harboring policies. It’s hoped they now appreciate that, yes, providing “sanctuary” from federal immigration enforcement can have negative consequences. With major media now finally reporting on killings committed by illegal aliens, the pressure may be mounting on enablers like San Francisco mayor Edwin Lee to put an end to the immigration anarchy in their cities.

The term “sanctuary cities” generally refers to places that, through an act, ordinance, or policy, limit their police forces in assisting federal immigration authorities seeking to apprehend and remove illegal aliens. Even though these policies are illegal under federal law, hundreds of municipalities have adopted such measures.

When local jurisdictions shield aliens wanted by the feds, the aliens can commit more crimes.

The Kathryn Steinle murder case in San Francisco is a tragic but textbook example of the public-safety problems that are created when local governments obstruct immigration enforcement by adopting so-called sanctuary policies. The man who has admitted killing Steinle, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, is an illegal alien who has been deported five times and racked up seven felony convictions. ICE had started the deportation process, but San Francisco asked for custody of Sanchez to pursue prior drug charges. These were dropped, and in early April, instead of turning him back over to ICE for deportation, the San Francisco sheriff’s department released Sanchez, in keeping with the city’s longstanding sanctuary policies, without notification to ICE. Less than three months later, Sanchez shot and killed Kathryn Steinle.

This tragedy was not an isolated incident; sanctuary policies are one of the most serious challenges facing ICE. More than 300 jurisdictions now refuse to turn over criminal aliens to ICE.

According to ICE records, from January 1 to August 31, 2014, more than 8,100 deportable aliens were released after arrest in approximately 300 local sanctuary jurisdictions, even though ICE had issued a detainer seeking custody in advance of deporting them. Some 62 percent of these offenders had a prior criminal history, like Sanchez. Roughly 3,000 were felons, as was Sanchez.

Barbarians at the gate usually don’t bring down once-successful civilizations. Nor does climate change. Even mass epidemics such as the plague that decimated sixth-century Byzantium do not necessarily destroy a culture.

Far more dangerous are institutionalized corruption, a lack of transparency, and creeping neglect of existing laws. All the German euros in the world will not save Greece if Greeks continue to dodge taxes, featherbed government, and see corruption as a business model.

Even obeying so-called minor laws counts. It is no coincidence that a country where drivers routinely flout traffic laws and throw trash out the window is also a country that cooks its books and lies to its creditors. Everything from littering to speeding seems negotiable in Athens in a way not true of Munich, Zurich, or London.

The New York Times is very keen that somebody, anybody, “lend” Greece more money so that it can stay in the eurozone a bit longer.

I put scare quotes around the word “lend” because, as everyone knows, any money that is shoveled into Athens’s coffers will be spent and not repaid. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” advised Polonius, “for loan oft loseth both itself and friend, and borrowing dulleth the edge of husbandry.” Shakespeare is not popular by the Piraeus.

No, Greece faces what the economist Steve Moore, writing yesterday in the Wall Street Journal [1], called “financial oblivion.” There are about 11 million Greeks. They owe some $350 billion.

Jeb Bush wants you to know that he is the ultimate multitasker! He says that he can love his Mexican-born wife, Columba, and control the Mexican border at the same time! I remember how President Clinton “compartmentalized” himself so that while the upper half of him handled affairs of state, the lower half handled affairs with Monica Lewinsky. So I suppose this is possible.

“You can love the Mexican culture, you can love your Mexican-American wife and also believe that we need to control the border,” Bush told the crowd. “This is a bizarre kind of idea that somehow you can have an affection for people in a different country and not think the rule of law should apply.”

Jeb supports the rule of law? He’s got my vote!

He added that he would push to deploy “forward-leaning border control agents” closer to the actual border; use new technologies, including drones, to monitor border traffic …

This is great! Jeb plans to monitor the flow of illegal aliens!

At the July 3 Nobel laureates conference on Mainau Island, 30 of the 65 attendees signed a media-reported letter urging action against global warming. Not reported by the media: the attendees listened to Norway’s 1973 Nobel physics laureate, Ivar Giaever, give a truth-telling “Emperor’s New Clothes” speech. Also, the majority of the Nobel laureates refused to sign the alarmist global-warming letter.

Giaever gave a great speech. His explanations were clear. His graphs were persuasive. He took the part of the boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes folktale. The boy saw the emperor parading around naked and cried out, “The emperor has no clothes on!” Giaever was saying that the fraction-of-a-degree differences in temperature upon which global warming theory is based are as invisible as the Emperor’s new clothes. He said (on this video at the 6:45 mark):

The president — Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces — does not have to be a military man. Or maybe should not be a military man; a civilian perspective on issues of war is essential. But that being so, the civilian CinC should be wary of inventing military doctrine.

President Obama had a brief — and unusual — visit to the Pentagon this week. Normally, he receives his national security briefings in the White House, but he had a message to deliver about America’s war against ISIS. “Ideologies,” he said, “are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas.”

“Climate change hysteria, having debilitated science and heavily infected the media, NGOs, politics and sundry interest groups, now appears to have morphed into a virulent strain of fundamentalist belief to which even the Pope seems to have no immunity.”

Theologians once devoted their energies to calculating the number of angels able to dance on the head of a pin. Today, in the thrall of dubious science and warmist pamphleteers, Pope Francis has put his seal on a document larded with ‘facts’ no less improbable than those cavorting cherubim of old.

While the infallibility of the Pope is a matter of debate and doctrinal subtlety, the fallibility of whoever wrote the Pontiff’s encyclical, On Care for Our Common Home, is irrefutable. In incorporating an undigested, evidence-free regurgitation of alarmist hype and misinformation, it does no service to the Church or humanity. While the document’s general concern for our planet’s environment is laudable, the focus on threats and problems, while largely ignoring the numerous successes and improvements, serves more to proclaim the authors’ conspicuous righteousness than to encourage further betterment.