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April 2023

Harvard Has a Free Speech Moment Fifty professors form an alliance on academic freedom.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-council-on-academic-freedom-professors-free-speech-steven-pinker-bertha-madras-6ac96bc4?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Conservatives are so few at American universities that the battle to restore respect for free and open debate will have to be led by what used to be known as traditional liberals. Well, maybe there’s hope. On Wednesday Harvard University said it’s forming a new faculty-led Council on Academic Freedom dedicated to the free exchange of ideas as a cornerstone of “reason and rational discourse.”

In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, Harvard professors Steven Pinker and Bertha Madras write that “an academic establishment that stifles debate betrays the privileges that the nation grants it.” Free speech, they write, is also essential to human progress. Intellectual orthodoxy “is bound to provide erroneous guidance on vital issues like pandemics, violence, gender, and inequality.”

The professors note that although they are comfortable with expressing controversial or unorthodox views, others on campus are not. Tenure no doubt helps. But the diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy is powerful at Harvard and the school ranks 170 out of 203 in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s free speech list. Mr. Pinker and Ms. Madras acknowledge the school has had “cases of disinvitation, sanctioning, harassment, public shaming, and threats of firing and boycotts for the expression of disfavored opinions.”

The academic freedom group includes former Harvard president and Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former dean of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine Jeffrey Flier, law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, economist Gregory Mankiw, social ethics professor Mahzarin R. Banaji and Islamic intellectual history professor Khaled El-Rouayheb, among others across the ideological spectrum.

When the Mad Fringe Becomes the Centre Declan Mansfield

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2023/04/when-the-mad-fringe-becomes-the-centre/

‘I got turned on today watching the fear in Posie Parker’s eyes. She actually was fearing for her life’.

These are the words of a ‘transwoman’ (a biological man who identifies as a woman) commenting on the violence directed against the Let Women Speak event in Auckland. The first thought of any civilised person reading that disgraceful comment might well be that all ideologies have zealots, and that the man does not represent the mainstream of the cause he supports. This is unequivocally not the case with transgender ideology. The fringe, to be precise, is the centre. This is something that critics of transgenderism have tried to highlight since the ideology became the Left’s cause du jour.

At the heart of transgender ideology lies an impulse, a psychology, a drive, which, due to biological reality, cannot be sated.  The twin delusions that your real self is unrelated to biology and that one can be ‘born in the wrong body’ expresses itself psychologically as a desperate desire to be recognised as something the trans person is not and can never be. This is the core of the profound irrationalism that characterises transgenderism and it is the source of the relentlessly extreme behaviour that manifests as an animosity towards anyone who, even in the most insignificant way, fails to affirm the fantasy of the trans person’s self-identity.

The inability of trans activists to accept the tangible, corporeal reality of their bodies while rejecting others’ entirely rational belief in biological reality are the drivers of an inchoate rage that brooks no argument, and which creates a mindset that rejects traditional concepts of decent behaviour and tolerance towards other human beings. To do so would allow the possibility that someone may not affirm the idea that the trans person is the opposite sex or, in modern parlance, the ‘gender’ they claim to be. Anything, then, that advances the trans agenda of forcing people to affirm their self-identification is allowed, no matter how ugly the behaviour or destructive the consequences. This is not true of all trans people, many of whom just want the same rights as everyone else, but it is true of the majority of transgender activists.

Reversing The Destruction of a Generation If the world is going mad, don’t accept it. By Edward Ring

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/11/reversing-the-destruction-of-a-generation/

The March 14 issue of New York magazine featured an article with the catchy title, “Tate-Pilled: What a generation of boys have found in Andrew Tate’s extreme male gospel.” For anyone who enjoys the theater of forbidden, poke-the-woke content, much of the article is wildly entertaining. For example, describing Tate’s online fans, the author writes:

 But they stayed for the ostentatious, outrageous masculine display: the machetes and cigars, the diamond watches, the Bugattis and Lamborghinis, the obscene piles of banded cash like a scene out of Scarface.

This is genuinely funny. The nerve of this man, not only to be a man but an exaggerated caricature of a man. Moreover, and unlike, say, Howard Stern back when he was funny, Tate can presumably back up his hyper-male braggadocio, given that he twice became kickboxing champion of the world.

It should surprise no one that Andrew Tate has attracted millions of young male fans. He is the antidote to the politically correct, vapid absurdities they are force fed by every institution in the Western world. A generation of American men are being systematically marginalized, demoralized, demotivated, abused and destroyed. The Tate phenomenon is an extreme reaction to an extreme problem.

In America today, if someone is a white, straight, biological male who “identifies as male,” he is condemned for his ethnicity, his masculinity, his “othering” cisgender normality, his heteronormativity, and for all of these undesirable “oppressor” traits, his privilege. If he’s not white but possesses any of these other so-called toxic traits, he is still a candidate to get on board the Tate train, where he will be welcome.

All of this vitriol directed at “heteronormative cisgender males” is concocted, hostile garbage. It is a lucrative, divisive hustle, peddled by mediocrities, adopted as the new marketing gospel by corporations, and pushed by politicians, the media, and every educational instructor and bureaucrat from kindergarten through graduate school. Anyone who speaks out against it is stigmatized as a Nazi, at the same time as anyone who falls for this garbage is indoctrinated to believe any sort of violence is justified, up to and including murder, if their motivation is to eliminate Nazis.

Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei Signals Regime Split A dictator in a state of panic. by Struan Stevenson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/irans-ayatollah-khamenei-signals-regime-split/

Has the ongoing insurrection in Iran, now into its seventh month, exposed glaring splits in the theocratic regime? In his Nowruz (Persian New Year) address to the nation, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the elderly and increasingly delusional Supreme Leader, insisted that the main priority of the theocratic regime was to fight inflation. Unveiling his concept of ‘The Year of Curbing Inflation,’ he indirectly acknowledged that his country is bankrupt, but failed to offer any way of resolving the perilous state of the Iranian economy. His mumbled remarks may have disappointed his hard-line followers, who prefer to hear pledges to “wipe Israel off the map” or cries of “death to America,” and have little appetite for economic reforms. But splits and divisions amongst the mullahs are now the trademarks of this failing fascist regime.

The Iranian economy is in plummeting decline. Spiralling inflation, currently at 43.4 percent, and a collapsing currency, have combined with tough western sanctions to bring the country to a virtual standstill.  Food prices in particular have suffered massive spikes over the past year, including a 125 percent increase for meat, 250 percent for onions, 82 percent for eggs, and 78 percent for rice.The active Iranian workforce is 26 million, of whom at least 10 million were jobless even before the Covid pandemic. Youth unemployment is at a staggering 40 percent. At least 60% of the population are living in poverty, unable to meet their essential daily needs.

Combined with the mullah’s own venal corruption and regional warmongering, it is little wonder that the country with the world’s second largest gas reserves and fourth largest crude oil reserves is now facing economic meltdown. Iran, despite its once rich, civilized and open culture, has become an international pariah, its religious fascist regime condemned for human rights abuse and the export of terror, while its 85 million beleaguered citizens struggle to feed their families.

Will the Experiment in Political Freedom End in Failure? Bad omens abound. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/will-the-experiment-in-political-freedom-end-in-failure/

Napoleon supposedly said that from the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step. This truth applies to great nations as well as great men like Napoleon. The decay of a nation often manifests itself in the trivial and inane, as well as the tragic and existential.

Our current political, cultural, and social dysfunctions have clearly taken that step over the last few decades, and now is putting at risk our country’s successful 247 years of achieving political freedom and equality for all.

Clearly, we Americans are living through attacks on that success no one could have predicted even 20 years ago. And this civilizational failure of nerve and moral exhaustion is leaving us vulnerable to our global enemies. If and when we go, the long great political experiment––freedom and equality and self-rule for all regardless of birth, wealth, or education–– will finally end in failure and despotism.

The bad omens abound. Faith is moribund, banished to the realm of subjective preferences. Love of country and one’s fellow countrymen has been displaced by a specious, “citizen-of-the-world” globalism devoted to power and money. Government, always vulnerable to corruption, is now completely debauched, and justice is sacrificed to political expediency. We are so selfish and short-sighted that we continue to ignore the looming bankruptcy brought on by feckless debt, deficits, and profligate entitlement spending that is morally, as well as fiscally, bankrupting us. And our political factions, especially the “woke,” are conducting our most important policy debates with temper tantrums, violence, censorship, and socio-political “cancellation,” our modern equivalent of Orwell’s “memory hole.”

Indeed, we’ve become so juvenile and surreally silly that even the most obvious facts of science like biological sex are reduced to subjective options, when not promoted as mandatory. More immediately dangerous for many citizens, a “war on cops” as well as “catch and release” prosecutors have turned our largest urban landscapes into dystopian nightmares of violence and squalor.

Most fundamentally, purpose and meaning in our lives come not from faith, country, and family, but from preposterous cults like “transgenderism,” “systemic racism,” and apocalyptic “climate change,” which are preached with myopic hysteria and intolerant fervor.

University of Florida Students Chant ‘F*** DeSantis’ During ‘Inject-In’ Protest By Lincoln Brown

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/04/11/university-of-florida-students-chant-f-desantis-during-inject-in-protest-n1686471

On Friday, the University of Florida was the scene of a trans protest. I know, at this point, a day without a protest is a like a day without gravity. But this particular demonstration took a new tack. At issue were recent moves by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the legislature that could curtail or place regulations on gender treatments  Of course, there was the usual marching, and the crowd of demonstrators participating in the “Inject-In @ SHCC” yelled “F*** DeSantis” as they passed the University’s Chick-fil-A.

Nothing particularly unusual about that. Although someone could have shouted, “Trans chickens are chickens!” Which would have at least put an interesting accent on the day and would have been a nice change of pace. The College Fix provided an account of the affair along with a link, which propriety dictates I not post here. Yes, the “F” word again. Forget surgery, somebody needs to get these people some dictionaries so they can expand their vocabularies. Although to be fair, the decline and fall of civilization may be tied to the use of the “F” word. I have to admit that there are those on the right who could not recite the Preamble to the Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance or The Lord’s Prayer without dropping the “F-bomb.”  So that may be a systemic problem.

When the crowd reached its destination, everyone fell silent as people began to inject the hormone of their choice. Once that was complete, the crowd broke into cheers.

Super Mario Brothers is Super According to Most People! By Ethel C. Fenig

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/emsuper_mario_brothersem_is_super_according_to_most_people.html

Weirdness and deviancy may make headlines — maybe because they are weird and deviant — but most Americans — indeed most people — want to relax and enjoy with friends and family a bit of fantasy to which they can relate.  Perhaps that is why the opening of Super Mario Bros. Movie has smashed box-office records. 

‘Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Box Office: All the Records Smashed on Opening Weekend

It’s-a blockbuster! “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” an animated adventure based on the classic video game, crushed the competition with its jaw-dropping $204.6 million domestic and $377 million global debut over the long Easter weekend.

Those results far exceeded expectations and even surpassed the starts of recent installments in Universal’s biggest franchises, like “Jurassic World Dominion” ($145 million domestically) and “Fast and Furious 9” ($70 million). So, expect a sequel to be announced faster than you can say “Let’s-a go!”

“The box office just kept growing and growing,” marvels Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic distribution. “It’s a tremendous worldwide debut, and the movie has a clear runway.”

And not only families with youngsters showed up, this non-niche movie was resonating with males and females, young and old, who grew up with Mario, Luigi, and other inhabitants of the fantastical Mushroom Kingdom.

So, a movie about loving minority brothers — okay, ethnic Italian-Americans with mustaches and dark hair named Mario and Luigi — and their fantastical adventures based on a video game, is relatable not only to Americans of all ages, economic, social and other categories but also to people around the world.  Interestingly, while the professional movie reviewers humpfed.

America’s Censorship Regime Goes on Trial by Jenin Younes

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-censorship-regime-goes-on-trial-missouri-biden

Missouri v. Biden will test the government’s ability to suppress speech in the name of fighting ‘misinformation’

Ernest Ramirez, a car-wash technician in a small, south Texas town, led a simple but fulfilling life with his son, Ernesto Junior. Junior was a “wonderful child, full of smiles.” Ramirez had raised his son alone; he’d never known his own father and sought to provide Junior with the paternal love he had missed. A talented baseball player, Junior dreamed of playing professionally. The two lived paycheck to paycheck but were happy because, as Ramirez put it, they had each other.

Then, on April 19, 2021, 16-year-old Junior—who had no previous health problems—received the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Five days later, the young athlete collapsed while running. By the time the elder Ramirez arrived at the hospital, having been told he could not ride in the ambulance with his son, Junior was dead.

According to the autopsy report, the cause of Junior’s death was an “enlarged heart.” Upon receiving the news, Ramirez lost all desire to go on living. But after the initial shock subsided, Ramirez decided to travel and speak about Junior’s fate, in hopes that he could help other families avoid similar tragedies.

That plan proved more difficult than Ramirez anticipated. In September 2021, GoFundMe removed an account he had opened to raise money for a trip to the nation’s capital to share his son’s story. “The content of your fundraiser falls under our ‘Prohibited Conduct’ section,” the company’s email explained. Ramirez lost the donations he had thus far received. Two months later, Twitter took down a photograph Ramirez had posted depicting him standing beside Junior’s open casket, along with the caption “My good byes to my Baby Boy” followed by three brokenheart emojis. Even a father’s simple expression of grief was apparently forbidden by the social media platform’s government-supported censorship regime.

Merit Over Identity Dismantling DEI bureaucracies is the key to reviving American universities.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/higher-ed-must-choose-merit-over-identity

Editor’s note: The following is adapted from the author’s remarks at a debate arguing the resolution, “Resolved, that academic DEI programs should be abolished,” co-hosted by the MIT chapter of the Adam Smith Society and the MIT Free Speech Alliance on April 4.

I start from the following proposition: being female is not an accomplishment. My being female should play no role in my being hired for a job. Of course, my sex undoubtedly has made me the target of sex preferences on numerous occasions, thus casting doubt on any actual qualifications I might presume to possess.

My being female should be particularly irrelevant in a university. Until recently, universities were dedicated to the Enlightenment ideal of universal knowledge. A male Chinese engineer and a female Nigerian engineer may have no spoken language in common, but they can communicate through the universal languages of mathematics and physics. Whether the buildings they erect stand or fall depends not on their nationality or sex but on their mastery of engineering principles.

I will go further. Being black, gay, or gender-fluid are also not accomplishments, and should have nothing to do with faculty hiring or student admissions. The only thing that should matter when, say, a medical school hires a researcher in pancreatic cancer is whether that oncologist is the best in his field.

The diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy is the nemesis of the Enlightenment ideal of knowledge. It puts relentless pressure on every academic department to hire on the basis of race and sex, not on the basis of intellectual achievement. Every faculty search today is a desperate effort to find even remotely qualified minority or female candidates. Being female or a non-Asian minority confers an enormous advantage in the hiring and tenure process.

Central Bank Digital Currencies: Funny Money That Will Destroy What Is Left of Private Property, Free Markets, and Personal Liberty by J.B. Shurk

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19553/central-bank-digital-currencies

[E]ven when you have followed every law to the letter and paid every fee to the cent, there is still no guarantee that government agents will not later invoke eminent domain laws to swipe what you own because they believe they can use your private property more fruitfully for the “public good” – and, since Kelo v. New London, even for someone else’s private good. So much for private ownership.

Competition, in theory, forces markets to naturally discard bad and expensive products, while keeping the prices of the best products low…. In practice, however, mature students of capitalism understand that entrepreneurs are never in search of markets for competition but rather conditions for maintaining monopoly.

The end result is that capitalists are always in pursuit of ways in which they may take advantage of laws and regulations, specialized knowledge, government contracts, or other exclusionary mechanisms to restrict potential competitors from ever entering the market.

The usefulness of money over traditional bartering for goods and services comes from its three chief functions providing (1) a unit of account, (2) a store of value, and (3) a medium of exchange.

[O]ver the last century and a half, the important steps have all been the same: First, some form of paper money is introduced and backed by the government’s promise to pay the holder of each note a fixed sum in gold or silver. Next, the introduction of a private central bank comes into existence holding a de facto monopoly power to print paper money according to its best judgment for maintaining a healthy national economy. Finally, the gold or silver backing of those paper money currencies is revoked.

[G]overnments… spend money like drunken sailors precisely because central banks right across the street will buy up their debt and facilitate the printing of more money. How could politicians object to an arrangement that allows them to spend recklessly without any normal free market consequences?

Now with the central banks printing money and reckless government spending pushing Western economic systems to the brink, a new kind of financial hocus-pocus has been proposed: central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

If governments and central banks control the creation, distribution, and exchange of virtual money, whatever remains of free markets will disappear. If governments and central banks monitor every transaction between consumers and producers, then all industries will be subjugated to the centralized command of the State. If governments and central banks assert the legal power to determine who may store value, how much value may be personally stored, and how long that value will be permitted to last, then whatever remains of private property will cease to exist. If governments and central banks maintain a digital monopoly over the only legalized forms of money, then they may redistribute wealth or penalize personal behavior without regard for individual rights or limits to their control.

No doubt propaganda campaigns will cloak this oppressive monitoring in the West’s own “politically correct” language of fighting “hate” or “racism” or “climate change” or the next COVID-like scare, but the West’s system of control over its citizens will be no different from the Chinese communist version: Individuals will have their digital wealth confiscated or replenished according to whether their behavior conforms to the strictures of the State.

[A]n overhaul of the financial system and a transition to mandated CBDCs threaten what remains of Westerners’ personal liberties.

[T]hose who value liberty know that personal ownership and the unfettered exchange of goods, services, and ideas remain the bedrock of those free nations that refuse to be enslaved.