RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/higher-superstition-bruce-thornton/

More and more frequently we so-called advanced moderns believe things to be true that an illiterate farmer in 1800 would have known to be false. As every year passes, the self-proclaimed progressive “brights”–– those who “follow the science” rigorously, they claim, when making and supporting public policies–– endorse as proven facts beliefs and policies that are driven by ideological or venal self-interest rather than truth.

If they continue, the consequences will be the bankruptcy of our culture, economy, and political freedom.

Take this statement from CNN, a loud champion of “science”: “It is not possible to know a person’s ‘gender identity’ at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.” Such a statement back in 1800 would have been dismissed as the ravings of a crank or the sales-pitch for some patent snake-oil. The sex of a child, with the exception of some rare birth defects, is obvious at the moment of birth, both empirically and by medical science.

But the current fad of believing that transient psychological states are what create sex identity has led to harmful outcomes, from the physical and psychological trauma caused by hormone therapy and physical mutilation, to the impact on female athletes that follows from allowing  biological males to compete against females, to the risks to women from admitting biological males into homeless or battered women shelters, or public rest-rooms and school showers.

Our economy is hostage to the same fetishizing of “science,” leading to dubious economic proposals that ignore the real science of mathematics. The first problem is thinking that economics is a science, rather than a species of philosophy that uses numerical data in its theoretical and speculative research. Any discipline that takes into account human behavior cannot be a true science able to correctly predict similar outcomes from the same methods and evidence.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccine-passports-prolong-lockdowns-11617726629?mod=opinion_lead_pos9
Mr. Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist, is a professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bhattacharya, a physician and economist, is a professor at Stanford Medical School.

As tens of millions are inoculated against Covid-19, officials in places as diverse as New York state, Israel and China have introduced “vaccine passports,” and there’s talk of making them universal. The idea is simple: Once you’ve received your shots, you get a document or phone app, which you flash to gain entry to previously locked-down venues—restaurants, theaters, sports arenas, offices, schools.

It sounds like a way of easing coercive lockdown restrictions, but it’s the opposite. To see why, consider dining. Restaurants in most parts of the U.S. have already reopened, at limited capacity in some places. A vaccine passport would prohibit entry by potential customers who haven’t received their shots. It would restrict the freedom even of those who have: If you’re vaccinated but your spouse isn’t, forget about dining out as a couple.

Planes and trains, which have continued to operate throughout the pandemic, would suddenly be off-limits to the unvaccinated. The only places where restrictions would be relatively eased would be those still fully locked down, such as many live-event venues and schools. Yet even there, the passport idea depends on keeping the underlying restrictions in place—giving officials an incentive to do so for much longer as leverage to overcome vaccine resistance.

The vaccine passport should therefore be understood not as an easing of restrictions but as a coercive scheme to encourage vaccination. Such measures can be legitimate: Many schools require immunization against common childhood illnesses, and visitors to some African countries must be vaccinated against yellow fever. But Covid vaccine passports would harm, not benefit, public health.

like a public utility, given its extensive reach and power. 

Here are the pertinent details grabbing people’s attention, especially in Silicon Valley: 

Some aspects of Mr. Trump’s account resemble a constitutionally protected public forum. But it seems rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it. The disparity between Twitter’s control and Mr. Trump’s control is stark, to say the least. Mr. Trump blocked several people from interacting with his messages. Twitter barred Mr. Trump not only from interacting with a few users, but removed him from the entire platform, thus barring all Twitter users from interacting with his messages Under its terms of service, Twitter can remove any person from the platform—including the President of the United States—“at any time for any or no reason.” 

Today’s digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including speech by government actors. Also unprecedented, however, is the concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties. We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms. 

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2021/04/06/the-ruined-generation-n2587409

The Internet was supposed to bring with it a renaissance, a new enlightenment and a brighter future. It was to be a time when people became smarter, having access to the collective knowledge of humanity at their fingertips, and with the invention of the smart phone, in their pocket, always. What could go wrong? A lot, it turns out. Actually, just about everything. The promise was not kept. All we ended up with was a bunch of narcissists desperate to share pictures of the food they’re eating and demanding validation for their existence from everyone else.

Scroll through social media and you’ll be inundated with selfies and pictures of food. Did something really happen, did you really eat a meal if you didn’t tell the world about? It’s not that these people think you need to know where and what they’re eating, they need you to know. They want the likes and comments, they crave those more than the nutrition in the food. Hell, they probably choose where to eat based on how the food looks more than the taste or cost.

There is an entire segment of our population who now lives for the validation they receive from others. They need it. It’s not just because they like it, it’s because they have no self-worth without it.

It used to be that if you didn’t like someone, or they didn’t like you, you’d simply avoid them and the problem wasn’t only solved, it disappeared. Now people you’ve never met, will likely never meet, and probably would dislike if you did, demand you not only acknowledge their existence, but you celebrate it as well. If your beliefs, deeply held religious or simply a matter of taste, hinder the approval they desire you are labeled an “ist” or a “phobe” of some sort, then God protect you.