Modern High School Debating
Meanwhile, a nationally ranked high school debater displays her oratory skills . . .
Neocon PR 101
From David Sachs:
The neocon press cycle:1) New threat to American Democracy in country X! 2) Anyone who questions this narrative is unpatriotic/traitor. 3) Victory is imminent and guaranteed. 4) Victory will take time but is worth it. 5) If we don’t redouble our efforts, we will lose. 6) Setbacks were inevitable. 7) Internal doubts and a lack of staying power cost us the war. 8) Press blackout on country X. (Never that important.)
Wait 6 months. Repeat with country Y.
In case you are looking for a detailed definition for "neocon."
The Fall of Scientific American
When you come across the longstanding magazine, Scientific American, you could be forgiven for assuming that scientific truth would play a pivotal role in its output.
But not any more, it seems. Scientific American, founded in 1845, is the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. It has previously featured work by Albert Einstein, among others. However, in recent years, it appears to have been taken over by contributors who consider themselves activists first and scientists second. The magazine’s ethos now includes the express aim of ‘sharing trustworthy knowledge, enhancing our understanding of the world, and advancing social justice’ (my emphasis). It has also started to intervene in electoral politics, too. In 2020, Scientific American broke with a 175-year history of non-partisanship to endorse Joe Biden in the US presidential election.
Worst of all, when its articles touch on questions of gender and biological sex, Scientific American seems to have abandoned objective facts entirely, in favour of trans-activist pseudoscience.
Steven Pinker agrees:
As Jonathan Haidt warned, universities (and here, science magazines) can only have one telos. To do otherwise gives rise to a conflict of interest that corrupts the main mission.
If one wants to know what sex is or how many sexes there are, just ask a real life trained biologist, such as my friend Luana Maroja, who has no conflict of interest. She takes pride in being a real-life legitimate biology professor who know that there are two (and only two) human sexes because there are two (and only two) types of human gametes:
Inconsistently Applied Principles of Woke Ideology Exposed by Student Reactions to Recent Gaza Events
At National Review, Charles Cooke's sharp-edged article invites us to exhale. We didn't believe most of the allegedly high-minded principles proclaimed by Woke Ideologists. They didn't either. Here's an excerpt from "The Woke Code of Morality Was All Nonsense":
Pick, at random, a fashionable idea about the ideal limits of free expression, and you’ll observe that it has collapsed ignominiously into the dust. The prohibition on “tone policing”? Gone. The injunction to “believe all women”? Evaporated. The insistence that “silence is violence,” that “neutrality is complicity,” or that institutions are thus obliged to speak out about any injustice that they might see? Defunct. Obsolete. Kaput. In the annals of bad human ideas, has an ideology ever been as swiftly hollowed out as was this one?
After noticing the hypocrisy, Jonathan Haidt also weighed in, making reference to the release (this week) of a new book by Greg Lukianof and Rikki Schlott, The Canceling of the American Mind (2023). First of all here's how Haidt and The Canceling define cancel culture: "efforts to silence people by threatening them with social death, unemployment, or physical harm for questioning orthodox beliefs or proposing heterodox theories. " Haidt's comment:
The Canceling was a darn good book when I read a draft last spring, in order to write the Foreword for it. It’s an even better book now that the world has been treated to the shocking spectacle of so many university presidents remaining silent, or issuing only vague and cautious comments, in days after the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. Their collective reticence stood in stark contrast to the speed with which so many had offered expressions of solidarity or shared grief whenever an election or court case went the “wrong” way in the years since 2014. (In general I think universities should embrace the “Chicago Principles” and commit to institutional neutrality. See Jeff Flier’s recent application of these principles to the current situation. But if university leaders made so many pronouncements on “controversial” issues before October 7, then they should have made a strong one on October 8.)
Why did so many leaders take so long to say anything strong or (seemingly) heartfelt about the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the holocaust? Why did so many wait a few days to see which way the wind was blowing before augmenting their initially tepid statements? I see nothing to suggest antisemitism; I see everything to suggest fear.
Quotes for Our Troubled Time
"Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire
"It should be blindingly obvious by now that the identity politics of race, religion and ethnicity are deeply poisonous, blinding us from seeing our common humanity. The left and the right are equally capable of weaponizing identity to justify violence." Lee Fang
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” Selwyn Duke
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