RUTHFULLY YOURS

The great thing about science is that it’s self-correcting. The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses tested — or so I used to think. Now, thanks largely to climate science, I see bad ideas can persist for decades, and surrounded by myrmidons of furious defenders they become intolerant dogmas
For much of my life I have been a science writer. That means I eavesdrop on what’s going on in laboratories so I can tell interesting stories. It’s analogous to the way art critics write about art, but with a difference: we “science critics” rarely criticise. If we think a scientific paper is dumb, we just ignore it. There’s too much good stuff coming out of science to waste time knocking the bad stuff.

Sure, we occasionally take a swipe at pseudoscience—homeopathy, astrology, claims that genetically modified food causes cancer, and so on. But the great thing about science is that it’s self-correcting. The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses put to the test. So a really bad idea cannot survive long in science.

Or so I used to think. Now, thanks largely to climate science, I have changed my mind. It turns out bad ideas can persist in science for decades, and surrounded by myrmidons of furious defenders they can turn into intolerant dogmas.

This should have been obvious to me. Lysenkoism, a pseudo-biological theory that plants (and people) could be trained to change their heritable natures, helped starve millions and yet persisted for decades in the Soviet Union, reaching its zenith under Nikita Khrushchev. The theory that dietary fat causes obesity and heart disease, based on a couple of terrible studies in the 1950s, became unchallenged orthodoxy and is only now fading slowly.

The University of California published a guide to microaggressions. If you don’t know what that is, microaggressions are ordinary, unoffensive comments and actions that offend feminists and minority “activists” with chips on their shoulders.

Because this is such a big problem in the minds of liberals, UC has published an unintentionally hysterical guide to microaggressive behavior. What follows is a list of microaggresive behaviors, exactly as written, and then my own interpretation of what would not be microaggressive alternatives:

Microaggressive: Saying you’re not a racist because you have Black friends.

Not Microaggressive: Saying you’re a not a racist because you have black friends who are also racist.

Microaggressive: To compliment an Asian person on his math abilities.

So I read in the paper today that humans are causing a sixth mass extinction on the planet.

Then, I see that one of the authors is Paul Ehrlich–author of the hysterically wrong The Population Bomb.

But the article doesn’t mention that (in)famous book or Ehrlich’s history of hyperbolic ecological fear mongering. It simply identifies Ehrlich as a Stanford University professor and president of the Center for Conservation Biology. That’s misleading by omission.

I checked other news reports, and they similarly merely refer to him as a professor, such as this one in the Telegraph:

Scientists at Stanford University in the US claim it is the biggest loss of species since the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction which wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. “Without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event,” said Professor Paul Ehrlich, at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Even if his remark was meant seriously, did it matter more than his work?

Tim Hunt, as you’ve probably heard by now, is a Nobel Prize–winning chemist who was forced to resign his position at University College London after he said, at a lunch for female journalists and scientists, “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. . . . Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry.”

Common sense says he was joking. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that what he said was sincere and offensive. Is a sexist remark worth ending Tim Hunt’s career? Dr. Hunt won his Nobel Prize for the discovery of cyclins, a group of proteins that control a cell’s progression through its life cycle. Because some cancers stem from errors in cells’ cyclical march toward mitosis, Dr. Hunt’s work has contributed a great deal to cancer research.

Conservatives love a faction. Among my friends here at National Review, we have conservatarians (Charles C. W. Cooke), reform conservatives (Ramesh Ponnuru), the secular Right (Andrew Stuttaford), etc. The distinctive features of those camps are, respectively, being comfortable with gay marriage, favoring tax credits for children, and favoring tax credits for the children of gay marriages so long as the money doesn’t end up in the offering plate.

The reaction to Donald Trump’s announcement of his presidential campaign suggests that there is room for one more: Grow the Hell Up Conservatism.

Trump brings out two of the Right’s worst tendencies: the inability to distinguish between entertainers and political leaders, and the habit of treating politics as an exercise in emotional vindication.

Whatever Trump’s appeal is to the Right’s populist elements, it isn’t policy. He is a tax-happy crony capitalist who is hostile to free trade but very enthusiastic about using state violence to homejack private citizens — he backed the Kelo decision “100 percent” and has tried to use eminent domain in the service of his own empire of vulgarity — and generally has about as much command of the issues as the average sophomore at a not especially good college, which is what he was (sorry, Fordham) until his family connections got him into Penn.

The final version of the law introduces so many hurdles to obtaining Spanish citizenship that most prospective hopefuls are likely to be deterred from even initiating the application process. Indeed, the law in its current form ensures that very few of the estimated 3.5 million Sephardic Jews in the world today will ever become Spanish citizens.

Spanish authorities — presumably fearful that the list of Sephardic surnames could provoke an avalanche of citizenship applications — issued an urgent notice that the government has no intention of ever publishing an official list of Sephardic names.

“All these facts lead us to conclude that the government has the clear intention that the fewer the number of applicants, the better. And the economic filter ensures that only people with high purchasing power can apply. … Considering all of these factors, we believe that this law does not right a wrong. This law is more of a symbol, a first step, but not a law that will serve to satisfy the majority of Sephardim who would like obtain Spanish nationality.” — Jon Iñarritu García, a congressman from the Basque Country.

While the Turks’ most real threats are their Muslim neighbors — and the Islamists they have overtly or covertly supported in their country’s “neighborhood” — they tend to look for enemies in unlikely territories.

This is how the Turkish foreign ministry’s official website describes Turkey’s relations with the United States:

“From a historical point of view, relations between Turkey and the United States are multidimensional and based on mutual respect and interest. As NATO allies, Turkey and the U.S., carry out their bilateral relations on the basis of universal values, including democracy, freedoms, respect for human rights, rule of law and free-market economy.”

It then further beautifies the “model partnership” which U.S. President Barack Obama once portrayed:

“During the visit [in 2009], President Obama defined Turkish – U.S. relations as a ‘model partnership’ and the leadership of both governments reached a high level consensus to bring the bilateral economic, commercial, investment and technologic dimension of the relationship to a level proportionate with political, military, and security cooperation. The concept of ‘Model Partnership’ reflects the advanced level that Turkey and the U.S. have reached in the relationship.”

A sure-fire way of assessing the threat that leftists feel toward any challenge to their nonsensical narratives and preposterous policies is to measure the long knives and “important” people they drag out to slam the competition.

Whether it’s the leftwing JournoList cabal of 400 so-called journalists and academics who in 2007 colluded to launch relentless character assassinations against every person who challenged Barack Obama about anything, or the obsessive sexist attacks and slander leveled in 2008 against Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, or, more dramatically, the strange death of Obama critic Andrew Breitbart, the bleeding-heart left has zero tolerance for opposing opinions and those who express them.

But as we’ve seen in the past few days, Republican establishment heavyweights have their own long knives and “important” spokesmen, which they trotted out in force when billionaire real-estate magnate, philanthropist, and TV personality Donald Trump announced his run for the presidency of the United States of America on June 16, 2015.

Perhaps the naïve expected insightful discussion of modern Islamic violence worldwide at the April 12 Fairfax, Virginia, panel “Community and Faith Leaders’ Role in Countering Radicalization,” recently available online. Befitting the panel’s banal title and dubious Gülen movement sponsors, however, the panel’s inane multicultural, politically correct platitudes whitewashed critical issues concerning political Islam before about 50 listeners.

The setting of the Rumi Forum gives a idea of how “interfaith” it is.

The Institute of Islamic and Turkish Studies (IITS), a member of the Hizmet (Service) movement of the shadowy Turkish Muslim leader Fethullah Gülen, hosted the event along with another Gülenist organization, Washington, DC’s Rumi Forum. In his introduction, IITS imam Bilal Ankaya explained that Hizmet is “always an advocate of moderation” before an audience that had respectfully removed its shoes inside IITS’ carpeted mosque space. Hizmet seeks to “build bridges between communities,” just as diverse “people lived in peace and harmony” supposedly in the movement’s native Turkey.

Congressman also blasts White House for disclosing possible use of Azerbaijani airspace by Israel in Iran strike.

United States Congressman Louie Gohmert revealed Thursday that the Obama administration had “outed” an active Israeli spy mission in Iran. Israel, he said, had infiltrated Israeli spies into mainland Iran via cargo boats.

He dropped the bombshell in a speech at EMET’s 9th annual “Rays of Light in the Darkness” gala dinner.Rep. Gohmert, who is one Israel’s fiercest and truest friends on Capitol Hill, stated: “We are on the brink of disaster.”

He listed a stream of virulently anti-Israel actions taken by President Obama which included the “outing” of the Israeli spy mission, and the Obama Administration’s disclosing of possible use of Azerbaijani airspace by Israel.