EDUCATION Comments turned off

Student debating, once a bastion of logic, has been invaded from the left By Richard E. Vatz

Posted By on August 18th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/student_debating_once_a_bastion_of_logic_has_been_invaded_from_the_left.html

During my 48 years teaching at Towson University, all my classes involved informal or formal debating: the quintessential activity of academic classes outside and sometimes including the sciences and arts. Sadly, like everything else in academia, debating has succumbed to leftist ideology.

I love debate for its focus on credibility and evidence. It should be teaching the up-and-coming generation of thinkers. However, as James Fishback has noted, judges’ political preferences have come to dominate high school debate.

Under its major sponsor, the National Speech & Debate Association’s website, judges post “paradigms.” The purpose of paradigm alerts is to let debaters know in full disclosure judges’ stylistic biases, say, if they are put off by overly rapid speaking or if they approve of debaters’ apprising their audiences of the relative importance of specific arguments.

But in the last few years, Fishback explains, “Judges with paradigms tainted by politics and ideology are becoming common…[at] national tournaments, judges are making their stances clear: students who argue ‘capitalism can reduce poverty’ or ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ will lose—no questions asked.” In general, Fishback argues, high school debate has been degraded “from a competition that rewards evidence and reasoning to one that punishes students for what they say….” One of several examples Fishback provides is a debate judge under whose list of “Things That Will Cause You to Automatically Lose” is ‘Referring to immigrants as ‘illegal.’ ”

I can attest that the same is true in collegiate debate, the last place in education I would have expected political bias to interfere with education.

Several colleagues, including one who has both designed debate camps and programs and served as a tournament judge and another who is a major administrator in the National Communication Administration, tell me that, among debate coaches and judges, coaches and judges throw around their biases as a sign of virtue. This is a disheartening and dispiriting sign that we’re seeing the end of the unbiased marketplace of ideas and academic freedom. Worse, this is happening in an activity that, by definition, should be resistant to politically approved outcomes.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The EPA Defies the Supreme Court The agency imposes a ‘suite’ of climate policies and doesn’t even try to hide its own lawlessness. By Chris Horner

Posted By on August 18th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/epa-environmental-protection-supreme-court-regulation-unconstitutional-climate-change-administrative-state-biden-42f31ce3?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

In politics, inadvertently telling the truth is called a “gaffe.” Last year Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, made a remark in passing that gave away the Biden administration’s plans for enforcing its climate agenda through a “suite of rules” imposed under programs lacking any credible connection to climate. A few months later, a Supreme Court opinion transformed Mr. Regan’s indiscretion into justification for wholesale judicial repudiation of the Biden administration’s climate regulatory blitz.

Mr. Regan’s comment came on March 10, 2022, when he addressed the press following his keynote address to CERAWeek, a climate conference in Houston. A reporter asked about vulnerabilities of the EPA’s approach to installing climate regulation through the Obama-Biden Clean Power Plan, which was then awaiting judgment by the court. Mr. Regan replied that the agency had abandoned the idea of relying on any specific grant of regulatory authority. Instead it was in the process of tightening rules under numerous and varied regulatory programs all at once, pressuring disfavored operations to close and compelling investment consistent with the EPA’s desires.

Mr. Regan went on to cite rules to tighten regulation of mercury, ozone, soot, hazardous air pollutants, water effluent and coal ash under acknowledged congressional grants of authority. But he also called the “expedited retirement” of power plants “the best tool for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions” and opined that the “industry gets to take a look at this suite of rules all at once and say, ‘Is it worth doubling down on investments in this current facility or operation, or should we look at the cost and say no, it’s time to pivot and invest in a clean-energy future?’ ”

This already reflected something of a scofflaw position. Congress never approved what Mr. Regan described. It became a serious problem when the justices struck down the Clean Power Plan in June. West Virginia v. EPA held that the agency didn’t have the authority it claimed to force power-plant closures by setting unmeetable emission standards and thus dictate, as the court had put it, “how Americans get their energy.”

Chief Justice John Roberts noted for the 6-3 majority that after Congress had repeatedly considered and rejected providing the agency authority to regulate power-sector greenhouse gases, the EPA claimed “to discover an unheralded power” that represented a “transformative expansion in [its] regulatory authority” to force “generation shifting.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

How the Woke Revolution Happened From Christopher Rufo, the perfect book to give to your clueless friends. by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on August 18th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-the-woke-revolution-happened/

The story has been told many times over the years. There are, indeed, many ways to tell it, although a passage from the beginning of Roger Kimball’s 2000 book The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America can serve as a more than suitable summary of all of them:

 In the Sixties and Seventies, after fantasies of overt political revolution faded, many student radicals urged their followers to undertake “the long march through the institutions.”…In the context of Western societies, [this] signified – in the words of Herbert Marcuse – “working against the established institutions while working within them.” It was primarily by this means – by insinuation and infiltration rather than confrontation – that the countercultural dreams of radicals like Marcuse have triumphed.

For what it’s worth, the phrase “long march through the institutions” – a reference to the long march of Mao’s army in 1934 in retreat from the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek – has been attributed by some to the German socialist Rudi Dutschke (1940-79) and by others to the Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937).

In any event, in recounting the American left’s long march, who or what should be foregrounded? No two writers have exactly the same answer. Kimball, for his part, chose to focus on a range of individuals and institutions, including Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, the “Beat Generation” writers, Timothy Leary, and The New York Review of Books. Two decades later, in a 2000 book that was also entitled The Long March, the British writer Marc Sidwell traced the gradual countercultural subversion of the West back to Gramsci before delving into the roles played in that process by György Lukács, E. P. Thompson, and Marcuse in that process. James Lindsay, whose 2022 book The Marxification of Education limits its purview largely to the subversion of the academy, puts the Brazilian socialist Paulo Freire (1921-97) at the heart of the story; and my own 2012 book The Victims’ Revolution, which also confines itself to the leftist takeover of higher education, splits the responsibility for that dire development among Gramsci, Freire, and the Afro-Caribbean Marxist Frantz Fanon (1925-69).

Christopher Rufo’s incisive new book America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything covers essentially the same territory as Kimball’s and Sidwell’s books while giving attention, along the way, to the events reported by Lindsay and me. Rufo, now a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is a remarkable young man (he turns 39 on August 26) who increasingly needs no introduction: during the last few years, he’s become a leading voice in the struggle against the mainstreaming at American schools and colleges of critical race theory (CRT), transgender ideology, and the tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In addition to writing extensively on these topics (notably at City Journal), he’s been impressively active on the barricades, leading the effort to have CRT banned from public schools in no fewer than 22 states, inspiring President Trump to ban CRT “training” in the federal government, and rolling back radicalism at New College in Florida, at which Governor Ron DeSantis named him a trustee. The progressive reaction to his activities is summed up in the fatuous headline of a 2021 New Yorker hit job: “How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict over Critical Race Theory.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Left-Wing Rage: Don’t Pretend It Doesn’t Exist

Posted By on August 18th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/18/left-wing-rage-dont-pretend-it-doesnt-exist/

The Southern Poverty Law Center has its “hate map” of conservative groups that it hopes to marginalize if not kill off entirely. Meanwhile, the feds are looking for vicious, bloodthirsty right-wingers under the bed. But a university survey recently found that the left is more prone to political violence than the right. It’s exactly what we have come to expect from a group that is so sure of its superiority and the importance of its agenda that it’s willing to break an infinite number of eggs so that it can make its authoritarian omelet.

The University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats’ June survey of 3,543 adults has produced a lot of data noise but it also includes some useful information. Of course the media want to ring the bells over one finding in particular: an increase in the percentage those who agree that “the use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.” According to the project, in early April only 4.5% of those polled agreed with that statement. By late June, though, it had risen to (a rounded-up) 7%, “the equivalent of an estimated shift from 12 million to 18 million American adults.”

The media-wide implication is that the growing support for using force to put Trump back in the White House is fueled by the extremism (and dare we say “semi-fascism”?) of Republicans and MAGA followers. A prime example of this bias is found in the headline over a story in The Hill. It reads “More say violence could be necessary to restore Trump to White House.”

A closer look at the data, however, show both Democrats (4.5%) and independents (7.8%) agree with the statement. So it’s not just Republicans who would be sympathetic to the use of force in favor of Trump. Isn’t that a point worthy of highlighting?

There’s another figure that raises concerns that the media don’t seem to care much about: 9% of Democrats “strongly” agree that “the use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president,” and another 7.1% merely agree. That’s a total of 16.1%, compared to the total of 9.5% of Republicans who strongly agree or just agree that force is justified to hand the presidency back to Trump.

Again, isn’t this a fact that needs to be emphasized?

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Vivek Ramaswamy Infuriates Fox News Host When He Won’t Take His Bait to Attack Donald Trump By Warner Todd Huston, Western Journal

Posted By on August 18th, 2023

https://ijr.com/vivek-ramaswamy-infuriates-fox-news-host-trump/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=ijr-breaking&utm_campaign=breaking&utm_content=firefly

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy expertly turned the tables on Neil Cavuto when the Fox Business host tried to get him to attack the GOP frontrunner in the 2024 race.

The pair spoke Tuesday on “Your World” about the various criminal charges filed against Donald Trump this year and Ramaswamy’s promise to pardon the former president if elected.

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If Cavuto was hoping the entrepreneur would blast Trump over the indictments, he was wrong.

Indeed, Ramaswamy told the host it is the indictments that are wrong.

“I will be unabashed about standing on the side of principle when I say, yes, these prosecutions are wrong,” he said.

“But there are 91 criminal charges in all … as you’re aware, over four criminal cases. They can’t all be politicized, can they? I mean, there’s something that the former president must have done in any one of these that struck you as wrong, if not illegal,” Cavuto said.

“I think, Neil, just because the government has brought a case, if we’re going to be a culture that now starts to say, ‘There must be something wrong if the government has charged 91 counts,’ I think that’s a … people of sheep. And when the people behave like sheep, that breeds a government of wolves,” Ramaswamy answered.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Will China, Russia, and North Korea Launch Their Nukes? by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on August 18th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19905/china-russia-and-north-korea-nukes

Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un see the world in the same terms, and they all realize that none of them will accomplish their goals unless they get the United States out of the way.

Perhaps of greatest concern is that all three regimes [China, Russia and North Korea] share a nuclear weapons doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate” or “escalate to win”: threatening the use of nuclear weapons to keep others from defending their intended victims. Xi and Putin appear capable of actually using their most destructive weapons.

Kim has made threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively. His regime last year even enacted a law authorizing such use.

When aggressors threaten the use of nuclear weapons, anything can happen. America will have to be prepared that China, along with its friends, are willing to do anything to get what they want.

The regimes of China, Russia and North Korea share a nuclear weapons doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate” or “escalate to win”: threatening the use of nuclear weapons to keep others from defending their intended victims. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin appear capable of actually using their most destructive weapons. Kim Jong Un has made threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively. His regime last year even enacted a law authorizing such use.

This week, the U.S. Navy’s Carrier Strike Group 5, centered around the USS Ronald Reagan, has been steaming off the east coast of Taiwan.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Kenny Xu Stop Stop AAPI Hate The self-professed authority on anti-Asian hate crimes in America pushes a misleading and divisive narrative on race.

Posted By on August 17th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/stop-stop-aapi-hate

America’s latest era of racial turmoil has been a boon to many organizations. Black Lives Matter is merely the highest-profile group to claim the mantle of authority on racism, while bringing in millions of dollars in contributions. Stop AAPI Hate (AAPI stands for Asian American and Pacific Islander), purporting to be the leading authority on “anti-Asian hate crimes,” has followed BLM’s model, promoting the story that America is racist toward Asians. Its motto reflects that mission: it seeks to “advance equity, justice, and power by dismantling systemic racism.”

Stop AAPI Hate’s first cause for suspicion is its loftiness. Asians in America don’t need a victimhood narrative: they are, in broad demographic terms, flourishing in the United States. This does not mean, of course, that prejudice against them does not exist. It certainly does, but AAPI and like-minded groups have little or nothing to say about its most substantive manifestations. To the extent that Asian Americans are experiencing racism, it’s either coming directly from progressive elites (as in college admissions policies that have discriminated against Asian students) or is only selectively discussed by progressive elites (as in the case of violence against Asians, which the Left is interested in blaming only on whites). What Stop AAPI Hate does choose to focus on is subjective, to say the least, and tailored to fit a desired political narrative.

Stop AAPI Hate’s selling point to the public and to its funders is its database of anti-Asian hate crimes, which documents a rise in violence against Asian Americans in 2020 and 2021. “New Data Shows that Asian Americans Remain Under Attack,” reads an August 12, 2021, press release.

The methodology underlying these data is flawed. For one, it is self-reported to the group through surveys that it administers, via its website. The alleged increase in hate crimes comes from more people reporting to Stop AAPI Hate about hate crimes. A self-reinforcing bias could be at work here: the more attention that Stop AAPI Hate and others draw to racism narratives, the more incentive people have to characterize threats against them as racist.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Great China-American Abyss One way to get along with China is to deal with it exactly the way it deals with the U.S. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on August 17th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/17/the-great-china-american-abyss/

Imagine if the United States treated China in the same way it does us?

What if American companies simply ignored Chinese copyrights and patents, and stole Chinese ideas, inventions, and intellectual property, as they pleased and with impunity?

What if the American government targeted Chinese industries by dumping competing American export products at below the cost of production—to bankrupt Chinese competitors and corner their markets?

What would the communist Chinese government do if a huge American spy balloon lazily traversed continental China—sending back to the United States photographic surveillance of Chinese military bases and installations?

How would China react to American stonewalling any explanation, much less refusing to apologize for such an American attack on Chinese sovereignty?

Envision a U.S. high-security virology lab in the Midwest, run by the Pentagon, allowing the escape of an engineered, gain-of-function deadly virus.

Instead of enlisting world cooperation to stop the spread of the virus, the American government would lie that it sprung up from a local bat or wild possum.

Washington would then make all its relevant military scientists disappear who were assigned to the lab, while ordering a complete media blackout.

America would forbid Chinese scientists from contacting their American counterparts involved in the lab, despite the deaths of more than 1 million Chinese from the American-manufactured disease.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The dangers of good intentions The performative compassion of the woke has blinded many to their tyranny. Patrick West

Posted By on August 17th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/08/11/the-dangers-of-good-intentions/

There have been many attempts to explain the ascendency of wokeness – that extreme, irrational and unreasonable ideology that has taken over our institutions. Some blame postmodern relativism. Others point to the left’s cultural turn, which has entrenched new forms of identity politics. Add to this the different mindset of newer generations – Millennials and Generation Z are accused of being more sensitive and censorious than their forebears – and the emergence of social media, which have polarised and poisoned political discourse. These explanations are okay. But another reason is seldom mentioned. The truth is, wokeness was allowed to take over.

It was allowed to happen because today’s fanatics appeared to begin with good intentions. They called for tolerance towards gay people and those who don’t conform to gender roles. They were nominally against racism. They wanted to ‘save the planet’. Who could have argued with such noble, commonplace sentiments when they were initially being uttered 20-odd years ago? Few did. It was obviously all well-meaning and nice. And that was why so many let their guard down.

Twenty-odd years later, when much woke-think has become mainstream and even enshrined in law, we must rue forgetting that old adage: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That is the lesson of history. Beware pious idealists with good on their side, boasting ostentatiously of their righteousness and compassion, for they are tomorrow’s fanatics and tyrants. As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in 1883: ‘Where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate?’

Wokery, including its allied movement of radical environmentalism, emerged a few decades after the fall of a genuine form of ideological totalitarianism: Soviet and Eastern Bloc Communism. From the early 1920s to the mid 1950s, this had seemed an attractive prospect to both insiders and outsiders on account of its good intentions. Yet it went bad from very early on, and it was partly allowed to do so because its crimes and misdeeds were for the ‘greater good’ and therefore excused. George Orwell became attuned to this barbaric, exculpatory mindset during the Spanish Civil War. He satirised it in Animal Farm, with its deluded cart-horses, Boxer and Clover, working themselves to death for an apparently noble cause.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Growing Warnings: Biden Could Get Scorched by Green Dependency on Red China By Ben Weingarten

Posted By on August 17th, 2023

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/08/17/growing_alarm_that_bidens_net-zero_approach_could_get_scorched_by_red_chinas_green_energy_dominance_973447.html

President Biden’s stance toward China hardened this month when he issued an executive order prohibiting American investment in Chinese companies developing advanced technologies that could be used by the military.

But a growing chorus of critics, including some Democrats, argue that the administration’s effort to grapple with America’s foremost adversary is contradictory, illustrated in the White House’s Beijing-empowering pursuit of ambitious climate change goals. 

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, as the White House has called for, will almost assuredly make the United States dependent on China while enriching it.

China currently holds a commanding position in the clean energy industry, controlling the natural resources and manufacturing the components essential to the Biden administration’s desired alternative energy transition. Energy experts believe that its dominance will become more entrenched in the years ahead because of domestic environmentalist opposition to perceived “dirty” mining and refining operations, and the Biden administration’s “clean energy” spending blitz – which could provide Chinese companies and subsidiaries billions in subsidies. 

The Biden administration also considers it imperative to get buy-in from Beijing on dramatically reducing emissions, given it produces more than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions globally.