Displaying posts published in

2016

How the Left Is Destroying Science By Bruce Walker

Science is a process for finding truth in our material world. The blossoming of science occurred in Medieval Europe and continued to flourish until the early part of the last century, almost exclusively in the Western world. This was not coincidental.

The combination of the ancient Greek desire for free inquiry combined with the Judeo-Christian belief in an orderly universe and, most vitally, the Judeo-Christian primary value of honesty created in poor, small Europe explosions in thought that the old, rich empires of the East could not achieve.

It is also not an accident that the overwhelming majority of early great scientists were either among a small pool of ancient Greeks – essentially Pythagoras, Archimedes, and Euclid – or among especially devout Medieval Christians – (Friar) Roger Bacon, (Bishop) Jean Buridan, (Bishop) Robert Grosseteste, (Father) Nicolai Copernicus, and (Canon) Galileo.

Because these profoundly devout Christians considered physics and mathematics simply another manifestation of a holy and ordered Creation, they never worshipped science. Lying was a sin, and lying about the nature of the world was a particularly serious sin, because it knowingly concealed the true nature of the world.

Within the Medieval university was that same sort of freedom and mutual respect that had never existed before except in the academy of Plato. As with the academy, the Medieval university had schools of thought and different interpretations of what phenomena meant. This was science.

Scientism, on the other hand, is a vile misology that arose at the end of the nineteenth century and has infected those processes intended to discover the truth about our world ever since. The most evil and dishonest regimes in modern history – Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Maoist China – were all utterly and passionately devoted to whatever pseudo-science was needed to support the party.

Often these regimes cranked out huge numbers of physicists, mathematicians, engineers, and related hard science disciplines, but it is not the quantity of trained scientists, but the quality of their environment that matters. We were afraid, at the beginning of the Cold War, that the hordes of physicists and engineers that the Soviet Union turned out would leave America behind. In fact, science did much better under the tsars than the Soviets.

The Average Student at a For-Profit College Was Worse Off After Attending Undergraduates were less likely to be employed and earned smaller paychecks, largely due to high dropout rates, a new study found By Josh Mitchell

Millions of Americans enrolled in for-profit colleges in recent years to learn a trade and find decent-paying work. A new study found devastating results for many of their careers.

The working paper, published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, tracks 1.4 million students who left a for-profit school from 2006 through 2008. Because students at these schools tend to be older than recent high-school graduates, they’ve spent time in the workforce. The researchers used Education Department and Internal Revenue Service data to track their earnings before and after they left school.

The result: Students on average were worse off after attending for-profit schools. Undergraduates were less likely to be employed, and earned smaller paychecks–about $600 to $700 per year less–after leaving school compared to their lives before. Those who enrolled in certificate programs made roughly $920 less per year in the six years after school compared to before they enrolled.

The key factor is that most of these students never earned a degree–they dropped out early. Excluding them, the minority of students who earned degrees saw an earnings bump after graduating.

“Certificate, associate’s, and bachelor’s degree students generally experience declines in earnings in the 5 to 6 years after attendance relative to their own earnings in the years before attendance,” write co-authors Stephanie Riegg Cellini of George Washington University and Nicholas Turner of the U.S. Treasury Department.

The picture is even worse when considering most students borrowed to attend the colleges. Nearly 9 out of 10 for-profit school students took on student debt; those in associate’s programs borrowed an average $8,000 and those in bachelor’s programs, $13,000. CONTINUE AT SITE

What’s Killing Jobs and Stalling the Economy A toxic regulatory brew, from Dodd-Frank to state licensing laws, has poisoned the formation of new firms that drive growth. By Marie-Joseé Kravis

An economy that has struggled for growth for seven years showed fresh signs of trouble Friday with a sobering jobs report. Nonfarm payrolls climbed by a mere 38,000 in May—the fewest since September 2010. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also reported that a record 94,708,000 Americans were not in the labor force last month, as the labor-force participation rate fell to 62.6%, from 63% two months earlier.

When thinking about what has stymied the U.S. economy, I sometimes recall a biology lesson about the role that cell death plays in explaining embryonic development and normal growth of adult tissue. In economics, as far back as Joseph Schumpeter, or even Karl Marx, we have known that the flow of business deaths and births affects the dynamism and growth of a country’s economy. Business deaths unlock resources that can be allocated to more productive use and business formation can boost innovation and economic and social mobility.

For much of the nation’s history, this process of what Schumpeter called “creative destruction” has spread prosperity throughout the U.S. and the world. Over the past 30 years, however, with the exception of the mid-1980s and the 2002-05 period, this dynamism has been waning. There has been a steady decline in business formation while the rate of business deaths has been more or less constant. Business deaths outnumber births for the first time since measurement of these indicators began.

Equally troubling, the latest analysis of Census Bureau data by the Economic Innovation Group points to the increasing concentration of new business formation in a smaller number of U.S. counties. The findings show that 20 counties account for half of new businesses and that most counties had fewer business establishments in 2014 than in 2010. Even accounting for so-called dynamic counties, the total number of firms in the U.S. remains lower than it was in 2004.

As the Economic Innovation Group shows, the 1990 recovery registered a net increase of over 420,000 business establishments, or a 6.7% increase. The numbers for the 2000 recovery were 400,000 and 5.6%. Since 2010, the number of new business establishments has grown by only 166,000 or 2.3%.

One explanation for this subpar new business formation is the overall pallid U.S. recovery. Today’s new-normal 2%-growth economy doesn’t inspire vigor or confidence. Likewise the collapse, until very recently, of real-estate values, and the imposition of tougher standards on personal credit cards, have constrained traditional sources of credit for startups. Banks have tightened lending criteria and many regional and community banks have disappeared. CONTINUE AT SITE

Conference Examines Islamic Blasphemy Law Dangers by Andrew Harrod, Phd.

It is not every day that a panelist at a conference worries about getting killed later.
“You are going to get me killed…I have got my flight back home,” stated Pakistani religious freedom advocate Arafat Mazhar to an audience questioner at an April 20 Georgetown University conferencerecently made available online. His jarring response emphasized that the conference’s examination of Islamic blasphemy norms in Pakistan and the world beyond was no mere academic matter but involves global, often lethal, threats to freedom of speech and religion.

Mazhar’s statement occurred during the conference’s afternoon panel in an exchange with an audience member from Afghanistan studying in America. Mazhar emphasized that his organization Engage Pakistan currently only supports reforming the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws with theological arguments such that these laws would not have a divine status. Any abolition of these laws, a proposition that has had deadly consequences for Pakistan’s Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer and Federal Minister for Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti, would be a much longer term goal.

Just as illuminating and disturbing was Mazhar’s Afghan interlocutor who cited a 2015 Afghan incident in which a mob brutally killed a woman accused of burning a Quran. “Had there been a good anti-blasphemy law” with codified standards, he suggested, “she would not have been killed that viciously.” On the basis of such conjectured more humane executions he accordingly asked, “Is it a good idea to get rid of the anti-blasphemy law or is it good to have a good law?”

Mazhar responded that empirical evidence contradicted such arguments previously made in favor of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. From Pakistan’s 1947 independence to the 1986 completion of these laws, Islamic blasphemy accusations caused only four extrajudicial killings, but after 1986 these killings increased by 2,500 percent. His fellow panelist, University of Notre Dame professor Daniel Philpott, noted that Pew studies had found that blasphemy laws had a perverse “pedagogical effect” in inciting hostility towards the protected faith’s opponents real or imagined.

Ambassador Alberto Fernandez, a retired American career diplomat, concurred on the panel that blasphemy laws are “like handing a loaded gun” to people. He cited a 2005 Sudan case where the government had dropped charges of insulting religion against a newspaper editor, but outraged mobs still demanded retribution. Months later his beheaded corpse turned up after a kidnapping.

Slavery Still Exists — We Just Don’t Talk about It There are a staggering number of slaves in the world today – largely invisible to the news media. By Josh Gelernter

With so many social issues in the United States being traced back to antebellum American slavery, it’s easy to forget that slavery still exists. This week an Australian human-rights group called the Walk Free Foundation released a study of contemporary global slavery: the Global Slavery Index. Everyone ought to read it.

What it says, in short, is this: According to Gallup surveys of 167 countries, there are 45.8 million slaves worldwide. Walk Free defines a slave as someone owned, someone working as a forced laborer or prostitute, someone in debt bondage or in a forced marriage.

In a single country — India, which is the worst offender — there are currently 18 and a half million slaves. To put that into perspective, there are six and a half million more slaves in India right now than were imported to North America, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean Islands combined during the entire history of the transatlantic slave trade — 373 years, from Columbus’s discovery of the Americas to the end of the Civil War.

This is an unbelievably serious problem, which virtually no one is discussing. Most modern slaves are held in Central and East Asia, and Central Africa. The top ten countries on the list, in total slaves, are India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Russia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Indonesia. Among them, they have 30 and one-quarter million slaves. Which is roughly 100 times more than the total number of slaves imported to the U.S., and territory that would become part of the U.S., between the founding of Jamestown and the end of the Civil War (258 years). Those American slaves were enough to trigger America’s bloodiest war — and, I dare say, one of its proudest moments: the abolition of American slavery. But since slavery was abolished in the United States, none of us seems to be interested any more.

And we should be interested. Who but us will do anything about it? Certainly not the U.N. After all, two of the ten largest slave-holding countries — China and Russia — are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

Conservatives to Trump: ‘You May Have Won the Nomination, but You Haven’t Closed the Deal’ What we love about America is more important than the presidency. By Andrew C. McCarthy see note please

Oh Puleez! I admire David French but he and Kristolantics will do nothing, absolutely nothing to intimidate Trump or his supporters. Like McCarthy whom I respect and admire,I will, reluctantly vote for Trump. Unlike him, I think that Kristol and the holdouts are ridiculous and destructive and have painted themselves into a corner, wasting time and energy on a silly plan and aiding Hillary in her battle against Trump….rsk

“Thank God for David French.

As anyone familiar with David’s character, career, and oeuvre knows, there are about a million reasons to utter that sentence. But I offer thanks today for his public consideration of an independent run for the presidency. It’s a very American thing to do — or at least it would be in pre-Obama America.

Allow me to explain myself before the inevitable fusillade from Donald Trump’s shoot-first-ask-questions-later (if ever) legions — the trolls who may make it even harder for reluctant conservatives to board the Trump Train than does the Donald himself.

I expect to vote for Trump in November. As I’ve previously conceded, this is not exactly a momentous concession: I live in New Jersey, which is going to be carried by the Democratic nominee regardless of whom I vote for or whether I vote at all. As National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru wisely observes, the probability that any of our votes will determine the winner of the 2016 election “cannot meaningfully be distinguished from zero.”

More significantly, however, I intend to do everything in my (admittedly limited) power to help Donald Trump arrive at policies that promote American national security and prosperity. I hope that can be done in a cordial, if wary, alliance. That is, notwithstanding my skepticism, I hope Trump’s conservative supporters are correct that Trump is no longer the by-the-numbers left-leaning Democrat he was for so many years. I hope that he really has made a conversion, that conservatives really can have a mutually advantageous relationship with him.

Yet, I am not banking on the Road to Damascus — especially for a rider who vacillates between wanting nothing to do with Syria and salting the earth beneath it. I am perfectly prepared to provide help of the adversarial “tough love” variety. After all, what we really love and want the best for is the United States. The presidency is an important means toward that end, but it is not the end itself.

Progressives Are Bending Over Backwards to Excuse Anti-Trump Violence By Debra Heine

It keeps happening. In Chicago, Kansas City, South Bend, Janesville, Albuquerque, Costa Mesa, and countless other cities, gaggles of paid, increasingly violent left-wing agitators are doing their best to shut down the rights of Trump supporters to peacefully assemble. In some cases, they are even physically attacking people. Earlier this year in Chicago (ground zero for left-wing agitation), the protesters actually succeeded in shutting down a rally. All across the nation, people’s constitutional rights of free speech and free assembly are being threatened by unhinged and out-of-control radicals.

Last night in San Jose, yet another violent mob of far-left protesters assailed and assaulted Trump supporters as they were leaving a rally, in the latest example of this ongoing anti-democratic spectacle.

Trump supporters were assaulted and even pelted with eggs when they left a San Jose rally for the presumptive Republican nominee.

The crowd also stole Trump merchandise and set it on fire, and they yelled accusations of racism at Trump’s backers.

One Trump supporter told a news report that he had his Trump sign stolen and was then sucker-punched.

Some members of the media characterized the incidents as “fights.” These weren’t fights; they were violent assaults. In the photograph below, a terrified young guy is running for his life with the mob in close pursuit.

This is what passes for political engagement in 2016 America:
Protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump chase a man leaving a Trump campaign rally on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate’s rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump chase a man leaving a Trump campaign rally on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate’s rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah

Republicans Seek Documents On Scrubbing of Iran Video The State Department said a technician deleted part of a press briefing video containing statements on negotiations with Iran By Jay Solomon and Felicia Schwartz see note please

State John Kerry, said Friday that the doctoring of several minutes of videotape from a State Department press briefing about the Iran nuclear negotiations was “clumsy and stupid and inappropriate”…..Could have described himself….rsk

WASHINGTON—State Department officials tried Friday to address the widening fallout from their admission this past week that a videotaped press briefing had been doctored to remove contradictory public statements about the Obama administration’s secret negotiations with Iran.

Congressional Republicans demanded documents related to the episode and called Friday for an investigation by the department’s inspector general. But senior Obama administration officials were unclear about just how much cooperation they would lend to Capitol Hill investigators or whether an additional internal review was warranted.

State Department officials confirmed this past week that a lower-level civil servant was asked to expunge roughly nine minutes of tape from a Dec. 2, 2013, briefing during which a Fox News reporter quizzed then-State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, about whether the administration had lied about holding secret negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

Earlier that year, Ms. Psaki’s predecessor said there had been no secret, one-on-one talks between the U.S. and Iran. Asked about that assertion, Ms. Psaki replied indirectly, saying that sometimes “diplomacy needs privacy.” That was the portion deleted from the video, though it remained in a text transcript.

State Department officials have said Ms. Psaki didn’t herself order the doctoring of the tape. But they haven’t determined which official in the State Department’s Bureau of Public Affairs made the request, and have suggested they might never find out.

“We’re in the process of studying the letters. We’re in the process of seeing how to be responsive,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters on Friday, asked about the congressional demands. “We believe we have investigated the incident to the point we can.” CONTINUE AT SITE

How the Yale Halloween Vigilantes Finally Got Their Way Nicholas and Erika Christakis step down from their administrative posts, closing a sorry chapter at the university. By Zachary Young

Nicholas Christakis and his wife, Erika, came to Yale University in 2013 with high expectations. At Harvard, the couple had held prominent teaching and administrative roles. At Yale, Dr. Christakis, a sociologist and physician, received a laboratory directorship and four appointments; Ms. Christakis, an expert in early-childhood education, became a seminar instructor. Two years after their arrival at Yale, Dr. Christakis and Ms. Christakis were awarded positions as master and associate master of Silliman College, Yale’s largest residential college. (I attend the university and reside at Silliman).

Last week, the Christakises resigned those posts.

Their departure comes as no surprise. For seven months, the couple has been subject to bullying, harassment and intimidation. They inadvertently became a national media story last fall and catalyzed a month of campus protests, prompting Yale President Peter Salovey to tell minority students: “We failed you.”

The Christakises encountered a witch-hunt mentality on a contemporary college campus. It began fittingly on the day before Halloween, when Ms. Christakis questioned guidelines from Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Committee warning against “culturally unaware or insensitive” costumes. Ms. Christakis reasoned, in an email to Silliman residents, that students should decide for themselves how to dress for Halloween, without the administration’s involvement.

Student radicals of the 1960s might have recognized her note as a defense of free expression, but those days are long gone. Instead, Ms. Christakis was denounced as a proponent of cultural insensitivity. Irate students circulated petitions, wrote editorials and posted social-media tirades. They scribbled criticisms in chalk outside the Christakises’ home and posted degrading images of them online. Two student groups demanded their removal from Silliman. CONTINUE AT SITE

John O’Sullivan Cameron’s Brexit Bind

Those who wish Britain to remain in Europe are given to depicting Leave supporters as ill-educated simpletons, not to mention crypto-fascists and, inevitably, vile racists to boot. Perhaps they haven’t noticed that elitist disdain is driving a global wave of populist rebellions
The referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union will be held on June 23, so much of what I write here in mid-May may be falsified by intervening events. At this mid-point, however, the campaign seems to have settled into a surprisingly stable pattern.

Downing Street (which for practical purposes is HQ for Remain) initially expected that it would establish an early commanding lead over Leave with an artillery barrage of attacks on a range of vital issues. But only one of those issues reflected an optimistic European theme: namely, that David Cameron had brought back from Brussels a reform package that would safeguard Britain from future excessive regulation in a freer and more flexible Europe. And that was laughed out of court when Cameron’s reform package was revealed to be both trivial and reversible by European courts. It now barely features even in the speeches of loyalist cabinet ministers.

That has left Remain dependent on a series of arguments that are less pessimistic than outright defeatist in a campaign that even its supporters label “Project Fear”. Its central theme is that Britain is too small and unimportant to survive as an independent state in a dangerous world and that to believe otherwise is neo-imperial nostalgia. Accordingly, when the campaign opened a few weeks ago, Remain supporters deluged the voters with a series of predictions that Brexit would mean losing cheap air fares, losing second homes abroad, losing millions of jobs, losing inward investment, losing various amounts of money per family, losing national security guarantees, losing intelligence on terrorism, losing control of immigration, and losing anything that had popped into the speaker’s head a moment before.

Insofar as these claims raised anything of general intellectual interest, it was that a Tory Prime Minister was heading a political campaign that was passionately left-wing in its contempt for patriotism, its dismissal of the possibility that the British people could prosper through their own efforts, and its assertion that salvation was to be found only in undemocratic supra-national institutions.

Otherwise, most of the particular arguments—losing cheap air fares, for instance—evaporated as soon as uttered. Still, Downing Street thought that it had a strong runner in Brexit as a threat to Britain’s national security. Cameron declared in a major speech in early May that Brexit threatened the country with a third world war. This was so over-the-top that it discredited the larger argument completely. Commentators weighed in to claim that Cameron couldn’t possibly believe it himself. By degrees, the security argument vanished from Project Fear.