RUTHFULLY YOURS

The slowly metastasizing assault on free speech that has played out on American college campuses since the 1960s has reached a crisis point. What’s needed is a concrete plan to restore liberty of thought and discussion to the American academy — a plan capable of focusing the support of sympathetic students, faculty, parents, alumni, administrators, trustees, and citizens, and their elected representatives. I offer here the outlines of such a program.

The greatest difficulty faced by those who support the ideal of intellectual freedom is locating levers for change on campuses where the greater part of the faculty and administrators have either abandoned classic liberal ideals or forsaken their defense. The actual mechanics of restoring freedom of speech are not mysterious. Campuses need to forthrightly identify liberty of thought and discussion as their central value, educate students in this principle, and energetically guard against its violation. But how can we restore freedom of speech when so many of those charged with its defense on campus have either turned against it or subordinated it to other ideals?

While it is true that a great many faculty members have rejected classic liberal values, other faculty — and especially many students — have not. To a considerable extent, a willful faction of students and allied faculty has succeeded in intimidating the larger number of students who continue to adhere to classic liberalism. Our goal must be to marshal support from the broader public for this weakened and wavering yet potentially powerful majority of students. We need a program that can simultaneously energize a movement of students on campus and marshal concrete support from the broader public.

The don’t-ask-don’t-tell era of racial preferences in college admissions may soon be at an end, as Abigail Fisher’s challenge to the University of Texas’s affirmative-action program makes its second appearance before the Supreme Court, which will hear the case this Wednesday.

Significantly, Ms. Fisher isn’t asking the Court to ban affirmative action. Instead, her case seeks to hold schools to the general rule that the government may employ race-based measures only as a last resort. And even then, such measures must be almost perfectly calibrated to serve a compelling interest — in this instance, achieving the educational benefits of diversity.

In the admissions context, those principles have too often been honored in the breach. And for that, blame the Court. Its 2003 decision upholding the University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative-action program combined the tough language typical of decisions reviewing race-conscious government policies with a loose and open-ended analysis of the way the program actually worked and the way it was justified.

Climate Hysteria: the fastest growing religion on the American left.

I’d call this hyperbole but they’re serious.

At the U.N. climate talks — called COP21 — everyone’s attention is focused on a 48-page document that could determine the very fate of the planet.

Its name?

FCCC/ADP/2015/L.6/Rev.1.

Say that three times fast.

That’s a (bad) joke, of course, but high-ranking officials here actually are struggling to say the always-changing name of this all-important text aloud.

Most seem to be interpreting “/” mark as “stroke.”

“FCCC-stroke-ADP-stroke-2015-stroke-L6-stroke-Rev1-stroke-Ad1,” Daniel Reifsnyder, who had been helping to oversee the negotiation process here, said in front of a room of hundreds Saturday, his image broadcast onto four local screens and his words translated live into several languages.

“Oof,” he added.

In a Monday visit to a Northern Virginia mosque, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson declared “anyone who does not understand” that Muslims want peace “does not understand Islam.”

Johnson dropped in on at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society in Sterling, Va., the day after President Obama said Americans have a responsibility to respect their Muslim neighbors.

Johnson said the “new phase” of the terror war — with “terrorist-directed and terrorist-inspired attacks” — requires “a whole new approach to counterterrorism and homeland security,” including Muslim outreach as he’s done over the past couple of years.

One of the “most meaningful discussions” on his “tour,” he called it, was in June with the ADAMS Center imam, which began with a Boy Scout Troop leading meeting participants in the Pledge of Allegiance. That imam, Mohamed Magid, is a past president of the Islamic Society of North America, an organization linked to the Holy Land Foundation in its terror-financing trial and to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“In responding to this new environment, we must not vilify American Muslims. We must not throw a net of suspicion over American Muslims and an entire religion. We must not force American Muslims to run and hide, and retreat to the shadows,” Johnson said. “This would be counter to our homeland security efforts, and it is un-American. Now, more than ever, is the time to work together, to protect and defend our communities, our families, and our homeland.”

The November 28, 2015 issue of The Economist magazine has a 14 page special report on climate change. It is a pathetic example of how the media intellectual elite can get science wrong. It is apparently very easy for the self-interested and crony capitalist driven global warming establishment to fool the media elite. When The Economist does get a few important things right, it fails to draw the obvious conclusions. I don’t think it is just a matter of economics majors not understanding science. The problem is that the economics majors are listening to special interests without a proper degree of skepticism. They should have consulted with and listened to some of the many distinguished scientists that are protesting the climate scare. (See, for example, here, here, here and here.)

The promoters of the climate scare are loud and very positive that they are right. They accuse the skeptics of being tools of the fossil fuel companies, an outright lie. This crude approach seems to work, at least with The Economist or The New York Times.

One thing the Economist gets right is that wind and solar are ruinously expensive and create ancillary costs borne by other parts of the electric grid. Wind and solar are not the answer to reducing CO2 emissions. But, The Economist fails to draw the obvious conclusion that nuclear power is the solution. Nuclear power is proven and does not emit CO2. (The discussion is academic because there is little reason to undertake CO2 limitation. The science that predicts global warming doom is flimsy and global warming has been absent for a long time.)

Incredibly, The Economist does not bother mentioning the massive benefits of having more CO2 in the atmosphere. Plants take in CO2 from the atmosphere and create plant bodies from the carbon in CO2 and the hydrogen in water. It is an observed fact that plants grow faster when the atmosphere is enriched with CO2. Greenhouse operators often place CO2 generators in their greenhouses to promote growth. Enriching the air with CO2 makes plants more drought resistant. In one experiment soybean yield was increased by 68% when CO2 levels were doubled. There is no doubt that the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere during the 20th century greatly benefited agriculture, creating billions or even trillions of dollars of increased production.

From “Universities Must Defend Free Speech” in the May 6, 1991, Journal, adapted from remarks by Benno C. Schmidt Jr., who was at the time president of Yale University:

The most serious problems of freedom of expression in the U.S. today exist on our campuses. Freedom of thought is in danger from well-intentioned but misguided efforts to give values of community and harmony a higher place than freedom. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce “correct” opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind.

On many campuses, perhaps most, there is little resistance to growing pressure to suppress and to punish, rather than to answer, speech that offends notions of civility and community. These campuses are heedless of the oldest lesson in the history of freedom, which is that offensive, erroneous and obnoxious speech is the price of liberty. Values of civility, mutual respect and harmony are rightly prized within the university. But these values must be fostered by teaching and by example, and defended by expression. When the goals of harmony collide with freedom of expression, freedom must be the paramount obligation of an academic community.

Much expression that is free may deserve our contempt. We may well be moved to exercise our own freedom to counter it or to ignore it. But universities cannot censor or suppress speech, no matter how obnoxious in content, without violating their justification for existence. Liberal education presupposes that a liberated mind will strive for the courage and composure to face ideas that are fraught with evil, and to answer them. To stifle expression because it is obnoxious, erroneous, embarrassing, not instrumental to some political or ideological end is—quite apart from the invasion of the rights of others—a disastrous reflection on the idea of the university. It is to elevate fear over the capacity for a liberated and humane mind. . . .

If you aren’t inspired to go fight alongside the Islamic State, perhaps hearing their personal accounts will make you change your mind. That’s what the newest ISIS-linked Telegram Messenger account is hoping.

“Diary of a Mujahid,” is a new channel showcasing “inspiring narratives” from ISIS fighters in English, directed toward recruiting others abroad to join.

“May this channel be a source of guidance, enlightenment, inspiration and motivation,” the account manager posted upon its launch last week, followed by daily posts from individuals sharing their experiences, pushing back on the notion that life under the Caliphate is anything less than utopian.

The Telegram Messenger app has been the Islamic State’s go-to messaging platform for communication and propaganda.

Several ISIS accounts frequently post updates showing everyday life under the Caliphate, the sunrises, the supermarkets, the food, the good life as well as the battles, martyrs and public punishments.

A candle is a brief flare of light. A wick dipped in oil burns and then goes out again. The light of Chanukah appears to follow the same narrative. Briefly there is light and warmth and then darkness again.

Out of the exile of Babylon, the handful that returned to resettle and rebuild the land faced the might of new empires. The Jews who returned from the exile of one evil empire some twenty-six hundred years ago were forced to decide whether they would be a people with their own faith and history, or the colony of another empire, with its history and beliefs.

Jerusalem’s wealthy elites threw in their lot with the empire and its ways. But out in the rural heartland where the old ways where still kept, a spark flared to life. Modi’in. Maccabee.

And so war came between the handfuls of Jewish Maccabee partisans and the armies of Antiochus IV’s Selecuid empire. A war that had its echoes in the past and would have it again in the future as lightly armed and untrained armies of Jewish soldiers would go on to fight in those same hills and valleys against the Romans and eventually the armies of six Arab nations.

The caption under the lead photo in last Monday’s New York Times spoke volumes: “Worldwide rallies on Sunday, demanding a halt to climate change…” As if any person or group of people can halt the climate from changing! Were it so simple!

Despite words that will be uttered and proclamations that will be issued by those attending the UN Climate talks in Paris, they will have little lasting effect. There are myriad reasons: This is the 22nd conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, yet little, if anything, has been accomplished. Thousands of UN employees and tens of thousands of others in government have a vested interest in the perpetuation of these conferences, which incur huge costs. There are, for example, 40,000 people from 190 countries attending this conference. (President Obama had 500 in his retinue.) Bjorn Lomborg (author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist”) recently noted in the Financial Times, that if one ran all the pledges through the UN climate model, one would find that by 2100 temperatures would be cut by just 0.05 degrees centigrade. On a cost/benefit analysis, does this make sense? China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, does not have to comply with standards until 2030. Developing nations see an opportunity for an enormous wealth transfer – in their favor. Despite allegations by those on the Left, man’s exact contribution to climate change is unknown. We do not even know if he is the principal cause. This would not be a treaty in the usual sense. Mr. Obama may unilaterally sign an agreement, but it could be nullified by his successor. He will not seek the advice and consent of the Senate. Apart from the $20 billion R&D fund announced by Bill Gates, the talks are heavy on talk and demands and light on action and innovation.

However inadvertently, the father of San Bernardino jihadist Syed Rizwan Farook has demonstrated an inconvenient truth to which Washington, in its bipartisan infatuation with “moderate Islamists,” is willfully blind: All Islamists, regardless of whether they are violent jihadists or non-violent “moderates,” have the same goals, which are driven by dictates of sharia.

As reported in the Times of Israel, the father, whose name is also Syed Farook, told the Italian daily La Stampa, that Farook the younger subscribed to the Islamic supremacist ideology of Islamic State (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, including the creation of a caliphate, the sharia governing system.

While Washington would have you believe that the goal of creating a caliphate is an “extremist” position not shared by “moderates,” the fact is that sharia makes the caliphate and the designation of someone from the Islamic community to be the governing caliph obligatory. See, e.g., my column on the sharia manual Reliance of the Traveller in connection with the Charlie Hebdo massacre (sec. o25 explains “The Caliphate”). The controversy in Islamist circles is whether Baghdadi is a suitable caliph and whether he has established a caliphate in accordance with sharia strictures; but there is no denying that Islamists support the establishment of a caliphate … except in the Beltway haven of fantasy Islam.