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Ruth King

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Trump’s Marshall Plan for Inner-City Kids School choice is the most important civil rights cause since Martin Luther King. September 19, 2016 Matthew Vadum

By on September 19th, 2016

Eleven days ago Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a revolutionary speech in Cleveland about public education that should have changed the face of American politics forever. Unfortunately few people know about this compassionate blueprint for desperately needed change. That is because the Sept. 8 address came the day after Trump’s strong performance at the Commander In Chief Forum hosted by Matt Lauer. Pundits’ tongues were still wagging furiously over what happened at that event as the thought that Trump could actually win in November began to sink in.

But it’s not just the fault of talking heads and the rest of the mainstream media. Trump did himself no favors during what was touted as a major speech focusing on education and lifting up America’s inner cities. Instead of diving right in, he devoted the first 18 minutes to attacks on Hillary Clinton over national security issues and the war on the Islamic State that had nothing to do with America’s inner cities and the decades that corrupt big city Democrats have spent oppressing inner-city children.

In short Trump’s revolutionary call to arms against the public school monopoly was effectively buried by the candidate’s lack of discipline. Consequently, few people are aware of Trump’s unprecedented proposal for a $130 billion plan to bail poor inner-city kids out of schools that don’t teach them, who are thus condemned to lives of grinding poverty.

The speech that unveiled a modern-day Marshall Plan to rescue poor kids in low-income neighborhoods from failing public schools barely caused a ripple. But if the lives of the poor in our inner cities are to change, Americans need to know about Trump’s plan.

What’s especially refreshing about the Trump proposal is that it is not half-hearted or drawn up in a way to placate Democrats, who now are not going to relinquish their control of the failed urban public school system. Republican politicians have in the past advocated relatively timid, innocuous-sounding school choice proposals but Trump’s plan is a blazing thunderbolt hurled at the education establishment that puts previous school choice proposals to shame.

Trump’s plan, which he laid out at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, an inner-city charter school, drives home the point that Democrats are the true enemies of inner-city residents. They have a monopoly control of America’s major inner cities that goes back 50 to 100 years. Democrats want poor blacks and other inner-city inhabitants to stay exactly where they are – and keep on voting Democrat until the end of time.

Everyone with eyes knows that the urban public school system in America is a travesty. Over decades the Left took a basically good system that churned out good citizens, entrepreneurs, and employees, and transformed it into a jobs program for adults, especially Democratic Party supporters and labor bosses. It amounts to a gigantic partisan slush fund that everyone who pays taxes in America is forced to support. And no matter how much money gets spent, things never seem to improve.

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Historic’ in the Worst Way By Elliott Abrams

By on September 19th, 2016

President Obama and his defenders are trumpeting the new aid agreement with Israel as proof that he is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. In fact, it’s a bad deal and should be treated the same way Obama treated prior agreements he didn’t like: It should be forgotten by the next president. The White House may be saying this is the greatest deal ever, but in Israel many observers are saying that Obama did no favors for the Jewish state. That’s the conclusion Israeli journalists have all reached. They’re right.

The current aid agreement is for $3.1 billion a year. The new one is for $3.8 billion, but the increase is almost entirely illusory. Congress already appropriates hundreds of millions of dollars beyond the base $3.1 billion level for Israel’s missile defense, so the current aid level is actually about $3.5 billion. That means the total increase is roughly $300 million a year. But given inflation in the costs of military items, and the greater threat to Israel due to Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, the net result is at best continuation of the current aid agreement.

But Obama imposed two additional conditions that had never existed before and are absent in the aid agreement George W. Bush made with Israel in 2007. First, Israel must spend every dime in the United States after a phase-in period, meaning it cannot use the funds to purchase any military equipment made in Israel. Second, Israel has agreed that it will not go to Congress to seek additional funding under any circumstances.

The latter condition is a big deal and is why Sen. Lindsey Graham is so opposed to what Obama has wrought. It’s “not binding on the Congress,” he said this week. “I’m offended that the administration would try to take over the appropriations process. If they don’t like what I’m doing, they can veto the bill. We can’t have the executive branch dictating what the legislative branch will do for a decade based on an agreement we are not a party to.” And Speaker Paul Ryan’s spokeswoman said, “We will continue to appropriate the funds that we determine are necessary to meet the needs of our shared security interests in the Middle East.”

There is another condition in this agreement that is more absurd, and belies Obama’s claims of deepest friendship for the Jewish state. As the price for concluding the deal, Obama forced Israel to agree that if Congress appropriates additional funds in 2017 or 2018, Israel will not accept the aid and will return the money. This is a first in American history and constitutes a deliberate undermining of the constitutional power of Congress to determine foreign aid levels.

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A New York Times Editorial Calls for Cutting US Aid to Israeli Military : Ira Stoll

By on September 19th, 2016

Just how far out of the American political mainstream is the anti-Israel editorial position of the New York Times?

The latest outrage from the newspaper is an unsigned staff editorial criticizing as excessive the 10-year, $38 billion aid agreement signed last week between Israel and the United States. That deal was approved by President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry, and praised by Hillary Clinton. Congressional Republicans, if anything, want to make it bigger.

Standing outside that bipartisan consensus, the Times editorial, representing the paper’s official, institutional opinion, asserts, “It is worth asking whether the ever-increasing aid levels make sense, especially in the face of America’s other pressing domestic and overseas obligations.” The editorial even goes beyond that, not just “asking” but answering in the negative: “In truth, the aid package is already too big.”

One sign of the anti-Israel bias of the Times is that it uses a different standard to measure military aid to Israel than it uses to measure spending on other things. The Times’ characterization of the aid as “ever-increasing” fails to take into account inflation. The White House fact sheet on the deal states that the money, covering 2019 to 2028, “will be disbursed in equal increments of $3.3 billion in FMF and $500 million in missile defense funding each year for the duration of the understanding.”

When congressional Republicans try to constrain the growth of welfare or entitlement spending programs like food stamps or Medicare by holding spending growth to less than the inflation rate, let alone level in nominal terms, the Times editorialists and columnists work themselves into a furor denouncing “cuts.” Yet when it comes to Israel’s aid, somehow only nominal dollar figures get mentioned, with no adjustment or understanding of the idea that $3 billion in 2007, when the last memorandum of understanding was signed, is worth something different than $3.3 billion in 2028, which will be the final year of aid covered under the new memorandum.

If the Times editorial writers have trouble understanding this point, let them perform a thought experiment with keeping their own salaries constant every year for 10 years straight, without any increase for inflation. Do you think they’d describe that as “ever-increasing”? Or let them imagine a federal budget for college financial aid, or for health care for the poor, or some other favored Times cause, that featured an amount locked in at a constant number for 10 years straight, with no increase or adjustment for inflation from year to year. Why, the Times’ own single-copy newsstand price in New York City has skyrocketed to $2.50 today from the 60 cents it cost in 1999. Home-delivery prices have also steadily climbed. Would the Times commit to a decade-long subscription price freeze?

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A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Britain: August 2016 Honor killing, “self-styled emirs,” child sexual abuse by Soeren Kern

By on September 19th, 2016

“To use the term ‘honor killing’ when describing the murder of a family member — overwhelmingly females — due to the perpetrators’ belief that they have brought ‘shame’ on a family normalizes murder for cultural reasons and sets it apart from other killings when there should be no distinction.” — Jane Collins, MEP, UK Independence Party.

Voter fraud has been deliberately overlooked in Muslim communities because of “political correctness,” according to Sir Eric Pickles, author of a government report on voter fraud.

“Not only should we raise the flag, but everybody in the Muslim community should have to pledge loyalty to Britain in schools. There is no conflict between being a Muslim and a Briton.” — Khalil Yousuf, spokesman for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.

Only a tiny proportion — between five and ten percent — of the people whose asylum applications are denied are actually deported, according to a British asylum judge, quoted in the Daily Mail.

Police in Telford — dubbed the child sex capital of Britain — were accused of covering up allegations that hundreds of children in the town were sexually exploited by Pakistani sex gangs.

August 1. Nearly 900 Syrians in Britain were arrested in 2015 for crimes including rape and child abuse, police statistics revealed. The British government has pledged to resettle up to 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK by the end of 2020. “The government seems not to have vetted those it has invited into the country,” said MEP Ray Finch. The disclosure came after Northumbria Police and the BBC were accused of covering up allegations that a gang of Syrians sexually assaulted two teenage girls in a park in Newcastle.

August 1. Male refugees settling in Britain must receive formal training on how to treat women, a senior Labour MP said. Thangam Debbonaire, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees, called for a “refugee integration strategy” so that men “understand what is expected of them.” She said it could help prevent sexual harassment and issues “including genital mutilation.”

August 2. Jane Collins, MEP for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), launched a petition calling for the BBC to stop using the term “honor killing.” The petition says the term “cultural murder” should be used instead. It states:

“To use the term ‘honor killing’ when describing the murder of a family member — overwhelmingly females — due to the perpetrators’ belief that they have brought ‘shame’ on a family normalizes murder for cultural reasons and sets it apart from other killings when there should be no distinction.

“Murder is murder, whether it be for cultural excuses or others. The term ‘honor killing’ is a euphemism for a brutal murder based on cultural beliefs which have no place in Britain or anywhere else in the world.”

August 3. Zakaria Bulhan, a 19-year-old Norwegian man of Somali descent, stabbed to death an American woman in London’s Russell Square. He also wounded five others. Police dismissed terror as a possible motive for the attack, which they blamed on mental health problems. But HeatStreet, a news and opinion website, revealed that Bulhan had uploaded books advocating violent jihad on social media sites.

August 4. A public swimming pool in Luton announced gender-segregated sessions for “cultural reasons.” The move will give men exclusive access to the larger 50-meter pool, while women will have to use the smaller 20-meter pool. The gender-segregated sessions are named ‘Alhamdulillahswimming,’ an Arabic phrase which means “Praise be to Allah.” UKIP MEP Jane Collins said the decision to have segregated times for swimming was “a step backwards for community relations and gender equality.” She added:

“The leisure center said this is for cultural reasons and I think we all know that means for the Muslim community. This kind of behavior, pandering to one group, harms community relations and creates tension. Under English law we have equality between men and women. This is not the same in cultures that believe in Sharia Law.”

August 5. Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood may be allowed to seek asylum in Britain, according to new guidance from the Home Office. The document states that high profile or politically active members

“may be able to show that they are at risk of persecution, including of being held in detention, where they may be at risk of ill-treatment, trial also without due process and disproportionate punishment…. In such cases, a grant of asylum will be appropriate.”

The new guidance contradicts previous government policy. In December 2015, then Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain would “refuse visas to members and associates of the Muslim Brotherhood who are on record as having made extremist comments.”

August 5. Stephen Bennett, a 39-year-old father of seven from Manchester, was sentenced to 180 hours of community service for posting “grossly offensive” anti-Muslim comments on Facebook. One of the offending comments: “Don’t come over to this country and treat it like your own. Britain first.” He was arrested under the Malicious Communications Act. The judge said Bennett, whose mother-in-law and sister-in-law are Muslims, was guilty of “running the risk of stirring up racial hatred.” He described it as “conduct capable of playing into the hands of the enemies of this country.”

August 6. British MPs face a six-year alcohol ban when the Palace of Westminster, which has dozens of bars and restaurants, undergoes a multi-billion-pound refurbishment beginning in 2020. They will move to an office building operating under Islamic Sharia law. Their new home, Richmond House, is one of three government buildings which switched ownership from British taxpayers to Middle Eastern investors in 2014 to finance a £200 million Islamic bond scheme — as part of an effort to make the UK a global hub for Islamic finance. Critics say the scheme effectively imposes Sharia law onto government premises.

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Iran’s Rouhani: Tactical Shift at the UN by Majid Rafizadeh

By on September 19th, 2016

By criticizing and blaming the U.S. for not honoring the terms, Rouhani plans to exploit President Obama’s weak point, as the negotiating team has been doing all along, by invoking Obama’s fear that Tehran might pull out of the nuclear deal — a move that would highlight the failure of the accord. This tactic will, as usual, successfully pressure the administration to give Tehran even more geopolitical and economic “carrots,” and pursue a policy with Iran of agreeing to even more concessions.

Rouhani’s tactical shift is intended to reinforce Iran’s entrenched revolutionary ideal of anti-Americanism, appease Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards, and ensure his second term presidency.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will be attending the 71st session of the UN General Assembly in New York this week.

Based on the latest developments, all signs point to a tactical shift by Rouhani, in which his messages and tone will be quite different this year.

In the previous sessions of the UN General Assembly, Rouhani and his team adopted a diplomatic tone in order to have the UN Security Council lift sanctions against Iran. He praised the success of the nuclear agreement, its contribution to peace and its prevention of more tension and potential conflagration in the region. Iran’s objective was achieved: a few months later, when all four rounds of the Security Council sanctions were removed, billions of dollars and billions of cover-up stories arrived, all cost-free gifts from the U.S.

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A Black Sergeant Brings Obama and Black Lives Matter to Justice “Obama has conspired to incite violence, looting, arson, assault against law enforcement.”Daniel Greenfield

By on September 19th, 2016

“Obama has conspired with all Defendants and others to incite violence, looting, arson, assault against law enforcement and helpless communities with the purpose of making a new ‘fundamentally transformed America’ appear preferable to the crime waves and chaos they themselves are creating.”

These words come from a shocking lawsuit filed by an African-American police sergeant.

Obama’s war on cops has cast a fearful shadow over police forces across the country, but no single force has suffered as much as the Dallas Police Department which buried five of its own. Now a lawsuit takes on not only the racists and bigots of Black Lives Matter but their backers all the way to the top.

On a hot night in July, five police officers were murdered at a Black Lives Matter anti-police rally.

Chief David Brown stated that, “The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He said he was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated that he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

Some Black Lives Matter supporters celebrated the murders by Micah X. Johnson. Others claimed that the murdered officers had brought their deaths on themselves. A Black Lives Matter supporter brandished a sign, “Killer Cops Create Cop Killers”. Below it was the hashtag #FTP which stands for “F___ the Police.” #FTP is a hashtag often associated with the hate group’s anti-police activism.

Black Lives Matter draws its inspiration from cop-killer and domestic terrorist Assata Shakur. The recent manifesto of the Movement for Black Lives named her and other racist cop-killers as “political prisoners”. It also complained about the way that Dallas police took out Micah X. Johnson.

But the whitewashing of Black Lives Matter began before the bodies of its latest victims were even cold.

The media fussed over the impact on the hate group and a “backlash” against the “shell-shocked Black Lives Matter community in Dallas”. It wasn’t as concerned about the “shell-shocked” Dallas police officers who were targeted for death by this racist “community” of racists and left-wing radicals.

At the memorial, Obama spent more time praising Black Lives Matter than its victims. The bodies were buried and the racist agitators got back to their business of inciting the murder of more police officers backed by $130 million in left-wing cash from big bucks leftists like Soros and the Ford Foundation.

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‘Beyond Tolerance’: The Delusional Ideologies of Obama, Clinton and Trudeau Leftist leaders’ suicidal call to show “respect” to our enemies and their violent ideology. Howard Rotberg

By on September 19th, 2016

In a recent press conference, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the media that Canada, having been tolerant enough to admit many Muslim immigrants, including some 25,000 Syrians this past year, should now go “beyond tolerance.”

I like press conferences and also debates because at such times it is hard for our politicians to be “scripted” and therefore they tend to say what they are really thinking, not what their PR people tell them to say. And so, Trudeau, whose response to Islamism seems to involve something called “inclusive diversity,” avoids the gist of the issue, which is to determine to what extent radical Islam and its political ideologies of jihad and sharia law are threats to Canadian values and rights. This politician, who never finished university, seemed rather uneducated in the matter of ideology. Should we welcome evil ideologies as part of our inclusive diversity? Do we still believe that some things are good and some are evil? Do we think that a nice Canadian welcome, together with conduct and words not just tolerant, but beyond tolerant, will turn intolerant jihadists into tolerant Canadians?

The problems we are facing are legion. Just last week, a report was issued on the extremist literature found in Canadian mosques. In The Lovers of Death? Islamist Extremism in our Mosques, Schools and Libraries, a former RCMP security analyst and an Egyptian-born expert on Muslim extremism concluded: “It is not the presence of extremist literature in the mosque libraries that is worrisome,” the new report contends. “The problem is that there was nothing but extremist literature in the mosque libraries.”

If our Prime Minister thinks the solution to jihadist pro-Sharia law extremism and terrorism is to be more and more “inclusive” and “beyond tolerant,” we may have a problem.

Let’s bring into the discussion the views of American President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The term “Islam” literally means “submission,” and whether that submission is confined to the personal realm of man-God relations or it extends to acceptance of not only a system of law (Sharia) but an entire political ideology of outer-directed Jihad, is a matter of much contention.

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A Weekend of Coincidences Incidents in NYC, New Jersey and Minnesota look an awful lot like jihad, but the denial is as thick as ever. September 19, 2016 Robert Spencer

By on September 19th, 2016

It was a weekend of coincidences: acts declared not to be terrorism that just happened to look a great deal like…terrorism.

After a bomb went off at 23rd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan and another bomb was found four blocks away, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said: In a press conference in the aftermath, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said, “This was an intentional act.” However, he added that he didn’t think it was terrorism, and refused to agree with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said that the bombing was “obviously an act of terrorism.”

De Blasio’s position was entirely incoherent: what is an intentional bombing if it isn’t terrorism? Cuomo made a bit more sense as he explained that while it was obviously terrorism, “it’s not linked to international terrorism. In other words, we’ve found no ISIS connection.”

Very well. So he was leaving the door open to it being “right-wing extremists.” But was it an act of jihad? Both de Blasio and Cuomo were committed to denying that there is any jihad that has anything to do with terrorism in the first place, so they would never answer (or, given the state of the mainstream media, be asked) that question, but just to assert that the bombing was not terrorism, or international terrorism, did not entirely rule out that it may have been an act of Islamic jihadis. Yet De Blasio remained mystified: “We know it was a very serious incident, but we have a lot more work to do to be able to say what kind of motivation was behind this. Was it a political motivation? Was it a personal motivation? We do not know that yet.”

A Tumblr page entitled “I’m the NY Bomber” professed to offer a clue. It said: “You probably have all seen the news by now, the explosives detonated in New York City, that was me. I did it because I cannot stand society. I cannot live in a world where homosexuals like myself as well as the rest of the LGBTQ+ community are looked down upon by society.”

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Peter Smith Those Conservative Inexplicables

By on September 19th, 2016

I don’t get it. The disdain for Trump by a small, but significant, minority of conservatives cannot be policy-based. Yes, it’s true that his positions do not meet the conservative ideal, but there is not the shadow of a doubt they are much closer to that standard than are Hillary Clinton’s.
“Namby-pamby, panty-waisted, weak-kneed,” was the way evangelical preacher Pastor Robert Jeffress didn’t mince words on the Sean Hannity (Fox News) show in describing the never-Trump conservative coterie. Clearly he didn’t take his lead in his choice of words from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Equally clear, he was talking about conservative men. After all, most women, whatever their politics, are in a literal sense panty-waisted.

It set me wondering about the temperament of conservative men who have decided that they can never support Donald Trump. Some seem so nauseatingly precious when I see them on TV. They whine about not being able to bring themselves to support such a vile creature as Trump. And then they dissemble feebly when challenged that they are effectively supporting Hillary Clinton, her left-wing policies, and her left-wing appointments to the US Supreme Court.

For example, I saw Glenn Beck being interviewed. There are candidates to vote for other than Trump or Clinton he mumbled. Really, Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or one of a host of other minor wannabes who’ve put themselves on some state ballots? None of them has any chance and Beck knows that. He spouts about being a constitutional conservative, yet he is willing to risk the Supreme Court being stacked for generations to come with judges who will not give a fig about the US Constitution.

Another never-Trump person is Bret Stephens. He is a conservative columnist (or so he claims) for The Wall Street Journal. Take this recent piece of his, rerun in The Australian on September 14. His piece comprises his answers to a series of Dorothy Dix questions asked of him by a mysterious third party posing as a semi-apologist for Trump. How irritating is that? Never mind, I said to myself, feel the content not the annoyance. It didn’t help.

“How can you call yourself a conservative columnist when you’re rooting for Hillary Clinton?”, the mysterious third party asks. Stephens answers thus: “Because Donald Trump is anti-conservative, un-American, immoral and dangerous.” There are fifteen other questions like this, all with answers beating Trump about the head. I can only advise those who have not read Stephens’ piece to make no effort to do so.

I don’t get it. The disdain for Trump by a small, but significant, minority of conservatives, like Beck and Stephens, cannot be policy-based. Trump’s policies, while admittedly not conforming to a conservative ideal, are much closer to it than are Clinton’s. He also intends appointing solid Supreme Court judges (originalists and literalists) who will uphold the Constitution. He has put out a list of potential appointees, all of whom passed muster among the most ardent conservatives. The choice is between these kinds of judges or flunkies.

It is inexplicable to me why any conservative would prefer Clinton to Trump. That is why I have decided to name them “the inexplicables” and contrast them with the “irredeemable basket of deplorables” who Mrs Clinton believes constitute half of Trump’s supporters. Ah, but as self-identifying deplorable, and irredeemably so to boot, I am not content to leave the mystery unresolved. Is it possible to explain the inexplicable?

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The Politics of Weather by Roger Kimball

By on September 19th, 2016

Since colleges and universities are engaged in an orgy of renaming things—buildings, programs, maybe even the institutions themselves—I’d like to offer a suggestion about an important renaming opportunity. The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, for example, really ought to rename itself “Indoctrination U.” As a recent report on The College Fix revealed, that campus of UCCS is offering to indoctrinate students about the dangers of anthropogenic climate change (formerly known as “global warming”). Only one perspective on this subject will be tolerated.

The three professors teaching the class—Rebecca Laroche, Wendy Haggren and Eileen Skahill—I include their names in case you have the misfortune of attending UCCS so that you can avoid them—announced in an email that “We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course.”

Love those scare quotes around “other side,” Comrade! “Opening up a debate that 98% of climate scientists unequivocally agree to be a non-debate,” they continue “would detract from the central concerns of environment and health addressed in this course.”

Gee, and I thought it was only 97% of climate scientists were we (wrongly) said to agree with Al Gore.

I feel sorry for students trapped in those reeducation camps. I’d like to do something to help. One thing I can offer is the alternative that Profs. Laroche, Haggren, and Skahill want to deprive their students of. So, to all students at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, help is on the way. Just head over to The New Criterion and for an extremely modest consideration you can download a PDF of our recent pamphlet called The Climate Surprise: Why CO2 is Good for The Earth. (You can also get a hard copy of the pamhlet here.)

THE CLIMATE SURPRISE coverPAMPHLET—Kimball

The pamphlet is based on a conference The New Criterion hosted in March in collaboration with The CO2 Coalition, whose data those UCCS profs should study but won’t. The pamphlet includes essays by six distinguished scientists, William Happer, Craig Idso, Roy W. Spencer, Richard S. Lindzen, Patrick Moore, and Bruce M. Everett. You can also see a clip of an interview we conducted with the great Mark Steyn, who is being sued by the climate fraudster Michael Mann, here. Finally, as a teaser, here is my introduction to the pamphlet, “The Politics of Weather.” Just don’t let Profs. Laroche, Haggren, and Skahill catch reading such dangerous literature:

Are you weary of the weather wars? Are you alarmed by the extensive beachhead that “pro- gressive” culture warriors, clad in the (borrowed) raiment of science and fired by a moral fury wor- thy of an early-twentieth-century temperance campaigner, have secured in the public debate? You will be grateful, then, for Mark Twain’s 1892 novel The American Claimant, which be- gins with an advisory about “The Weather in This Book.” “No weather will be found in this book,” Twain explains. “This is an attempt to pull a book through without weather.” What a relief! For it is impossible to turn anywhere in our enlightened, environmentally conscious world without being beset by lectures about one’s “carbon footprint” and horror tales about “global warming,” “rising seas,” and imminent ecological catastrophe.

It was with this in mind that The New Criterion partnered this spring with the CO2 Coali- tion, a Washington-based think tank dedicated to combatting misinformation about the effects of CO2 and fossil fuels, on a conference to pon- der The Climate Surprise: Why CO2 Is Good for the Earth.1 We might have added “and for you, your loved ones, and the economy,” but we did not wish to appear gratuitously provocative.

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