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May 2022

HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Churchill’s Lesson for Our Time:Daryl McCann

By on May 14th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/05/churchills-lesson-for-our-time/

“Churchill’s lesson is not about how to wage war—though he knew something about that as well—but how to avoid wars. The armed forces of Ukraine have bloodied the nose of the Russians and knocked Putin’s “special military operation” off balance, while thousands of Ukrainians have been killed and millions have fled the country. Putin is undoubtedly a monster but not an irrational monster, which is all the more reason why the implications of Churchill’s lesson should have been grasped by Obama and Biden. Better, by far, there had never been a Russo-Ukrainian war even if that war results in an unlikely Ukraine victory or, at least, stalemate. Hopefully, America and the West in general will take to heart Churchill’s lesson in time to stymie Xi Jinping’s designs for Taiwan.   ”

Winston Churchill has a reputation in some quarters as a warmonger, and yet nobody was as courageous and prescient in trying to avert the Second World War. His line of argument, which brought him social and political ostracism in the years immediately preceding Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, might be summarised as follows: appeasing a vainglorious demagogue was folly. In the preface to The Gathering Storm, the first part of his six-volume history of the war, he defined his theme as follows: “How the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness and good nature allowed the wicked to re-arm.” On November 16, 1945, in a speech to the Belgian Senate, Churchill implored the West to “profit at least by this terrible lesson. In vain did I attempt to teach it before the war.” It could be argued that Churchill’s lesson did leave its mark, if only for the duration of the Cold War. However, Xi Jinping’s militarisation of the South China Sea and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, commencing on February 24, suggest we need to learn it all over again.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Selective Targets of Green Scorn: Brian Wimborne

By on May 14th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/05/the-selective-targets-of-green-scorn/

“Greens diktats concerning climate change, global warming, weather and the role of human economic activity in ending life has swept the world like a virus, for which the only antidote is rational thinking. Without a reasoned and rational approach to global problems, Green ideology may turn out to be the greatest confidence trick in the history of Mankind.”

There is no surer way for a political party to gain voters’ attention than to predict the imminent end of the world. Creating fear in the public mind is as old as politics, itself. Having shaken people’s faith in the future by instilling that fear, the party’s next ploy is to offer a solution that is not open for debate.

No contemporary party has used this method of politicking with such success as The Greens. For years they have successfully portrayed themselves as tree-hugging pacifists whose sole concern is protection of the environment. However, this is only a minor part of an ideology founded on scenarios that forecast the end of the world.

One of their earliest forecast calamities depended on a hole in the ozone layer above the Antarctic. In the view of the Greens, this would expand, causing increased solar radiation that would endanger life on Earth. This idea did not attract enough public attention to elicit the widespread fear the Greens’ always need to advance their agenda. Moreover, proof that the hole was expanding, was not convincing.

Next came global warming. Selective evidence of increased temperatures that would cause droughts, crop failures and mass deaths from starvation, pointed to humanity’s inevitable end.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Rescuing “Virtue and Talents” Amidst the War on Tests Wenyuan Wu

By on May 14th, 2022

https://www.aier.org/article/rescuing-virtue-and-talents-amidst-the-war-on-tests/

On March 28, 2022, Stuart Schmill, Dean of Admissions and Student Financial Services at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced the school’s plan to restore the consideration of standardized tests to its undergraduate admissions process. A heavyweight bucks against the self-destructive path of attacking merit and standards. Will more follow suit? Or, is MIT’s rebellion too little and too late?

In his 1813 letter to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson laid out his vision for American meritocracy— “a natural aristocracy among men,” grounds of which “are virtue and talents.” This republic of merit separated the newly independent nation from the old world where artificial aristocracies “founded on wealth and birth” hindered the common good. Jefferson stipulated what it meant to have a merit-based education system that diffuses learning democratically and efficiently:

to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects to be completed at an University, where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.

The Test-Free Movement in a Historical Context

Forces within, from slavery to school segregations under Jim Crow laws to race-based admissions, have tried to corrupt the grand proposal of equality and merit. Like previous illiberal bargains to categorize students by race, the central focus of test-free admissions is also preoccupied with immutable features of the individual, under the fashionable banner of social identities, rather than observable academic performance. But unlike historical race-based practices that were rooted in bigotry and racism, arbiters of “equitable” college admissions in the modern era claim they are waging battles against the evil spirits of white supremacy, systemic inequities, and structural racism.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

An Abortion Miss for Politicized Science The Lancet, a medical journal, decides it has expertise in American law.

By on May 14th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-miss-for-politicized-science-the-lancet-roe-v-wade-abortion-supreme-court-samuel-alito-11652480176?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The public’s confidence in scientific institutions has suffered greatly during Covid-19 as lockdowns and mask mandates outlived the underlying evidence. Don’t expect that to improve as an ostensibly prestigious medical journal tries to politicize medicine with an editorial denouncing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

The Lancet exhorts this week that, “The fact is that if the US Supreme Court confirms its draft decision” overturning Roe v. Wade, “women will die. The Justices who vote to strike down Roe will not succeed in ending abortion, they will only succeed in ending safe abortion. Alito and his supporters will have women’s blood on their hands.”

Allow us to offer some peer editorial review. The Court’s draft decision doesn’t end abortion in America. It returns the question to the states, where the public and elected representatives would debate and vote.

Many states would continue to allow the procedure throughout pregnancy. Some may ban it in most instances. Others would likely end up closer to where public opinion is: Allowing abortion early in pregnancy and in certain instances later, such as cases of rape or when the life of the mother is compromised.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Netflix Gives Progressive Culture Warriors a Wake-Up Call By Charles C. W. Cooke

By on May 14th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/netflix-gives-progressive-culture-warriors-a-wake-up-call/

The efforts of a woke minority to impose its narrow preferences on the rest of the country by force appear finally to be meeting some resistance.

Netflix has discovered the magical healing power of “No.” In a “culture memo” that was distributed to its staff this week, the company said what every company of its type ought to have said a long, long time ago: “If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

It is remarkable that this ever needed saying. If you don’t like soft drinks, it should be perfectly obvious that a job at Coca-Cola is not ideal. If you don’t like cattle, it should be clear that ranch life isn’t for you. And if you don’t like people saying things with which you disagree, then you shouldn’t work at one of the world’s largest streaming services. Those who insist plaintively that they are “offended” have always deserved a heartfelt “so what?” And when the company for which they work is in the entertainment business, that “so what?” ought to be issued daily. “We support the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with,” Netflix said in its memo. “We let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices.” Translation: For the love of God, stop asking us to tailor our multibillion-dollar corporation to your pathetic, narcissistic, unfathomably irrelevant tastes, you fools.

Small though it may be, Netflix’s move portends a broader shift in corporate America and beyond — a shift that, once completed, is likely to alter our politics for the better.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Tens of Thousands of Xinjiang Detainees Killed by Organ Harvesting, Expert Says By Jimmy Quinn

By on May 14th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/tens-of-thousands-of-xinjiang-detainees-killed-by-organ-harvesting-expert-says/

A researcher who last month published a paper detailing the Chinese Communist Party’s forced organ-harvesting techniques told a congressional panel yesterday that his research proves that Chinese organ-harvesting doctors killed their patients. Another expert presented analysis indicating that 25,000 to 50,000 Xinjiang prison-camp detainees are subjected to organ harvesting, then cremated, each year.

“In plain language, the papers appear to show that the donors, who were prisoners, were alive at the time of surgery, and were killed by the transplant surgeons in the process of heart extraction,” said Matthew Robertson, the co-author of a groundbreaking article in the American Journal of Transplantation.

His paper, published in April, looked at a number of cases up through 2015, in which surgeons effectively admitted to execution by organ harvesting. The analysis looked at 124,000 Chinese-language medical papers, finding at least 71 papers outright describing that practice.

“These findings show a uniquely close and long-running collaboration between the PRC’s medical establishment and its public security system,” he said. “This would make PRC surgeons, many of whom were trained in the West, involved in medicalized extrajudicial killing.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Disagreement Became ‘Disinformation’ America’s enlightened influencers mistake their interpretations of the facts for the facts themselves, giving themselves an excuse for censorship. Barton Swaim

By on May 14th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-disagreement-became-disinformation-misinformation-nina-jankowicz-governance-board-czar-11652450632?mod=trending_now_opn_2

The preoccupation with “misinformation” and “disinformation” on the part of America’s enlightened influencers last month reached the level of comedy. The Department of Homeland Security chose a partisan scold, Nina Jankowicz, to head its new Disinformation Governance Board despite her history of promoting false stories and repudiating valid ones—the sort of scenario only a team of bumblers or a gifted satirist could produce.

Less funny but similarly paradoxical was Barack Obama’s April 21 address lamenting online disinformation, in which he propounded at least one easily disprovable assertion. Tech companies, the former president said, “should be working with, not always contrary to, those groups that are trying to prevent voter suppression [that] specifically has targeted black and brown communities.” There is no evidence of voter suppression in “black and brown communities” and plenty of evidence of the contrary, inasmuch as black and Latino voter participation reached record levels in the 2020 election.

One of the great ironies of American political life in the 2020s is that the people most exercised about the spread of false information are frequently peddlers of it. Their lack of self-understanding arises from the belief that the primary factor separating their side from the other side isn’t ideology, principle or moral vision but information—raw data requiring no interpretation and no argument over its importance. It is a hopelessly simpleminded worldview—no one apprehends reality without the aid of interpretive lenses. And it is a dangerous one.

The roots of this self-deceiving outlook are complicated but worth a brief look.

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Slavery, Anti-Semitism and Harvard’s Missing Moral Compass An official report about the university’s early history and a student editorial denouncing Israel reflect the confused state of higher education’s values. By Ruth R. Wisse

By on May 14th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/slavery-anti-semitism-and-harvard-missing-moral-compass-israel-palestine-bacow-11652449740?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

A recent report, “Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery,” notes that the university’s faculty, staff and leaders held more than 70 black slaves between 1636, when Harvard was founded, and 1783, when Massachusetts abolished slavery. In atonement, President Lawrence Bacow reports, the university intends to dedicate $100 million of its endowment to help address “the persistent corrosive effects of those historical practices on individuals, on Harvard, and on our society.”

A Harvard Crimson editorial speaks with even stronger moral conviction of the desire for rightful justice that spreads “like wildfire” when oppression strikes anywhere in the world. Moved to right past wrongs, the editors propose to help “free Palestine” by boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, which stands accused of pushing “Palestinians toward indefinite statelessness, combining ethnonationalist legislation and a continued assault on the sovereignty of the West Bank through illegal settlements that difficults [sic] the prospect of a two-state solution.”

Despite differences in literacy and purpose, the initiatives from Harvard’s president and Harvard’s students are eerily similar. Addressing genuine distress—of American blacks in one case, Palestinian Arabs in the other—both gestures misidentify the cause and, by misdirecting responsibility for the misery, make it impossible to ameliorate deplorable conditions.

Black Americans indeed still struggle to overcome the corrosive effects of slavery, but Harvard’s administration wouldn’t have insinuated itself into the problem by misappropriating guilt for deeds it didn’t commit in the past unless it means to obscure the wrongs it is committing in the present.

In the America we inherited, citizens bear responsibility for their actions, not blame for institutional history. For much longer than it housed slave-owners, Harvard did the hard work of transmitting the founding principles and texts of this country to those who must inspire and strengthen Americans of the next generation. A truthful inquiry would have featured professors who taught and students who fought to overcome slavery, 117 of them killed in that brave cause.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Teleworking Members of Congress Cost Taxpayers $70 Million Since Start of Pandemic By Adam Andrzejewski

By on May 14th, 2022

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/05/13/teleworking_members_of_congress_cost_taxpayers_70_million_since_start_of_pandemic_830922.html

While President Joe Biden urged “Americans to get back to work” and said “people working from home can feel safe to begin to return to the office” Democratic members of Congress think that doesn’t apply to them, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The news outlet reveals how a large number of Congressional offices continue to sit empty in Washington D.C., ostensibly because of Covid-19. We estimate that these closed offices cost American taxpayers $139,548 each day.

The Free Beacon reports that “dozens” of House offices sat vacant on the day of their visit in March, with signs informing visitors that staff was teleworking. They also reported 12 vacant Senate offices.

Each House office is given about $944,671 per year to cover administrative expenses and pay its’ staff’s salaries. The Senate’s allocation is based on the size of the Senator’s state, but the average allocation is roughly $3.3 million.

That comes out to $2,588 per day per House office, and $9,041 per day per Senate office. That totals $31,056 per day, with a very conservative estimate of 12 House offices working from home, and $108,492 for the 12 Senate offices working virtually.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Reversing DEI: Henry I. Miller and Tom Hafer

By on May 14th, 2022

https://americanmind.org/salvo/reversing-dei/

MIT, caught in a bind, reintroduces standardized testing.

We wrote last November that MIT, our alma mater, “has caved repeatedly to the demands of ‘wokeness’, treating its students unfairly, compromising the quality of its staff, and damaging the institution and academic freedom at large.”  As has happened across academia, total commitment to DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—has become an article of faith, with an aggressive program of minority admissions part of the canon. MIT’s most recent initiative involves new hiring and programs devoted to:

understanding MIT’s Indigenous history and Native issues more broadly. Leadership in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (SHASS) and the History Section also helped us realize that it is past time for MIT to feature cutting-edge scholarship and educate our students in this rapidly expanding discipline.

Why MIT— long renowned for its math, science, and engineering education and research, and currently ranked #2 among all U.S. colleges and universities—needs to expand its focus to the “rapidly expanding discipline” of Native American studies is unclear. Among other things, MIT gave us the Mark 14 gunsight used by U.S. Navy ships during WWII, prominent participants in the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bombs, strobe photography, and the elucidation of the genetic basis of sickle-cell anemia, so one would think that it could allow other institutions to become leaders in championing politically correct social goals. However, MIT’s soon-to-depart president, L. Rafael Reif, has become DEI-obsessed. A search of the MIT website reveals at least 70 professors and staff directly related to promoting DEI, including six new Assistant Deans for DEI who were hired in a single day.  

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