Monsieur Spade

 

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should resign, calling him an obstacle to a two-state solution. 

Like a neighbor wandering into your house and rearranging your furniture.



Monsieur Spade

From a review of Monsieur Spade, a series on Prime:

It starts with a great premise, twenty years after the events of “The Maltese Falcon,” Sam Spade has retired in a small town in southern France still riven by World War II and Algeria. Clive Owen is excellent as Spade and there are some good noir lines:


Henri Thibaut: You were in the army, Mr. Spade?

Sam Spade: No, I was a conscientious objector.

Henri Thibaut: You don’t believe in killing your fellow man?

Sam Spade: Oh, I think there’s plenty of men worth killing, as well as plenty of wars worth fighting, I’d just rather choose myself.

Yet for all the promise, I didn’t finish the series. In addition to being set in France, Monsieur Spade has a French cinema atmosphere, boring, long, vaguely pretentious. There is also a weird fascination with smoking, does it pay off with anything? I don’t know. Didn’t finish it.

Deviation

 

Deviation

The Biden administration’s strange, costly, and coercive crusade to replace internal combustion vehicles (ICVs) with electric vehicles (EVs) is disproportionate to its minuscule climate impact. 

The American Enterprise Institute’s Benjamin Zycher says the EPA’s own assumptions project that the new regulations will mitigate global warming by 0.023 degrees Celsius by 2100. Because the standard deviation of the Earth’s surface temperature record is 0.11 degrees Celsius, “that effect would not be detectable.”

Not detectable.

The debatable casual conclusions of difficult and complex measurements nonetheless have become gospel. And the political response is so out of proportion that one suspects other influences. (One is not understanding the math.)

But apparently, there arises a moment when we stop following the science.

Creating Shortages

The U.S. publishing industry is driven by celebrity authors and repeat bestsellers, according to testimony from a blocked merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. Only 50 authors sell over 500,000 copies annually, with 96% of books selling under 1,000 copies. Publishing houses spend most of their advance money on celebrity books, which along with backlist titles like The Bible, account for the bulk of their revenue and fund less commercially successful books.

***




Creating Shortages

President Biden has formally proposed the highest capital gains tax in over 100 years.

Here is a direct quote from the Biden 2025 budget proposal: “Together, the proposals would increase the top marginal rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends to 44.6 percent.”

A Biden capital gains and dividends tax rate of 44.6%.

Under the Biden proposal, the combined federal-state capital gains tax would exceed 50% in many states. California will face a combined federal-state rate of 59%, New Jersey 55.3%, Oregon at 54.5%, Minnesota at 54.4%, and New York state at 53.4%.

And the capital gains tax is not indexed to inflation. So Americans get stuck paying tax on some “gains” that are not real. Of course, the government apparently does not have a good understanding of inflation so this point may be lost on them.

What is not lost on anybody is the nature of capital gains. It is the ultimate barometer of risk and reward, the summary, in yield terms, of the chances of success of an investment. Pharmaceuticals, for example, are so expensive to develop, so risky an approval process, and so difficult to bring to market, that many large firms have stopped doing it, shunting the process to smaller, focused companies created and supported by people who understand risk. And reward. That tension makes profits, loses savings, succeeds and fails--and develops pharmaceuticals.

Of course, without those investments, without small, struggling companies there will be pharmaceuticals--just not as many of them.

This is the shortsighted world of those who drain productive capital to create their contracting legacy.

The Biden tax rate is more than twice as high as China’s rate. China’s capital gains tax rate is 20%. Even China understands the consequences of punishing investment.

Frankenstein

So, will we taxpayers be paying the student loans of the pro-terrorist demonstrators?

***

Frankenstein

Ever since the Supreme Court ruled last year that President Biden had no authority to unilaterally write off $430 billion in student loans, he and his aides have been crowing that they intended to do it anyway.

Biden declared he would “stop at nothing to find other ways” to get what he wanted. Soon the administration began generating fresh schemes to cancel student debt — or, more accurately, to transfer that debt to taxpayers. In February, announcing his intention to relieve an additional 153,000 borrowers of the obligation to pay back what they owe, Biden again stressed that he would not comply with the court’s mandate.

“The Supreme Court blocked it, but that didn’t stop me,” he boasted on Feb. 21.

Recently the White House moved to wipe out more student loans — this time absolving some 30 million individuals of their liabilities. Once more there was an explicit assertion of resistance to the court’s decision. “When the Supreme Court struck down the president’s boldest student debt relief plan,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona proclaimed, “within hours we said: ‘We won’t be deterred.'”

So the government opposes itself. Somehow the administration sees itself as rebellious, like a street demonstrator, asserting its position against a structure specifically designed as the national foundation, created to protect its citizens from the government by defining and channeling it.  

Anyone concerned by the rise of lawlessness might well start here for a cause as the executive proudly defies its creator.

Barr's Vision for Democracy

 

In an interview Friday, the BBC called the White House 'cowardly.'

***

Barr's Vision for Democracy

The Trump candidacy--indeed his entire public nature--has suffered from the intense criticism he has received from his prior cabinet members who not only hate his policies but hold him personally in low regard.

Kelly, his longest serving Chief of Staff: "A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.There is nothing more that can be said,.God help us.”

Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: "It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against."

Mark Esper, Trump's former secretary of defense, “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”

And, most damaging, Trump’s well-regarded former attorney general, Bill Barr, “He is a consummate narcissist. And he constantly engages in reckless conduct. … He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests. Our country can’t, you know, can’t be a therapy session for you know, a troubled man like this.”

But there has been a shocking change. Barr has changed his mind and will vote for Trump. Why? Because, while Trump is playing 'Russian Roulette,' Biden's pathway is certainly 'suicidal,' and, with Trump, at least society has a chance.

The great and successful democracy has been reduced to the position where a personality disorder playing Russian Roulette is America's best chance.

Not the greatest compliment but...

Notes and Noted 2

Notes and Noted 2

The Gospel today is disturbing, with Christ contemplating man and his failures.

***

The Obama administration in 2016 paid some $1.7 billion to Iran in a combination of foreign currencies – most of which was the settlement of a decades-old financial dispute – to secure the release of four detained Americans with no restrictions on how the money would be spent. Photographs of the first installment of $400 million in cash, packed on a wooden palette for transport, were famously leaked and fueled the outrage of GOP critics.

The nuclear deal is believed to have resulted in a roughly $50 billion influx of cash for Iran from its implementation in 2016 to 2018, when President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement – a significant amount but a far cry from the $150 billion that Trump estimated had reached Iran.

While the Biden administration renewed talks with Iran to reenter the pact, the discussions have led nowhere and U.S. negotiators publicly walked away. Though not believed to be directly connected, some analysts have speculated that the Biden administration's move to free up the $6 billion could have been an incentive to continue talking even as Tehran slowed the pace of development of a nuclear weapon.

***

The Atlantic article, "Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls
The case for making journalism free—at least during the 2024 election"
by Richard Stengel, is behind a paywall

***

More from the unreal mendacity universe. Soaking the rich, while appealing in its simplicity, misses the scale of the problem. Brian Riedl, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow, noted that if we were to confiscate 100 percent of the income of everyone making over $500,000 per year, it would fund the government for less than a year. This puts into perspective the enormity of the $34 trillion national debt versus the income of the rich.

Taxing the rich is a convenient distraction hiding the reality that if spending isn’t cut, taxes will have to be raised on everyone, a lot. 

***

The ‘whistleblower’ who sparked Donald Trump’s first impeachment was deeply involved in the political maneuverings behind Biden-family business schemes in Ukraine that Trump wanted probed, newly obtained emails from former Vice President Joe Biden’s office reveal.

***

Alphabet Inc.’s Google has fired 28 employees after they were involved in protests against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon.com Inc. to provide the Israeli government with AI and cloud services.
 

Non-Profits Are Their Own Reward

It looks as if Israel's attack on Iran has been muted. Their public disdain for America's position was not.

***

Non-Profits Are Their Own Reward

The United Network for Organ Sharing is a non-profit scientific and educational organization that administers the only Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network in the United States. It was established by the U.S. Congress in 1984.

Here are some elements brought to light by Organize, another non-profit patient advocacy group that under an 'innovative' program embedded with the HHS and working with HHS staff produced hard data. They are particularly outraged by the current kidney donor monopoly.

Advocacy groups--especially when funded by government--are always a bit hard to be sure of but here are some of their claims.

One out of every four kidneys that are recovered from an American organ donor is thrown in the trash.

Organs are literally lost and damaged in transit every single week. The OPTN contractor is 15 times more likely to lose or damage an organ in transit than an airline is a suitcase.

Organs are not GPS-tracked!

Seventeen percent of kidneys are offered to at least one deceased person before they are transplanted. The tracking system for patients is so dysfunctional that 17% of kidneys are offered to patients who are already dead.

Medicine is obsessed with self-scrutiny where physicians evaluate themselves and their colleagues. The prototype: M&M conference, Mortality and Morbidity where a week or month of complications are publicly reviewed and decisions debated--by the participants. But the infrastructure, the architecture where the practice of medicine lives, is never questioned.

Energy Costs

Energy Costs

This chart shows the average change in electricity prices over the last decade. Electric rates remained relatively flat in the seven years before President Biden took office, rising 5% thanks to cheap natural gas. Yet since January 2021 electricity prices have soared 29.4%—about 50% more than overall inflation. Big numbers.

Electricity prices have increased 13 times faster under Biden than across the previous seven years. 13 times. Big numbers. 

Most of it is a result of the left’s climate agenda, and the price increases will get worse. And what if Israel attacks Iran?

  The world would be so much safer if the leaders simply prioritized          protecting their citizens. And smarter. It would be nice if they were          smarter.

     

Justice Delayed

Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction. --CEO of NPR

***

Justice Delayed

What is going on in the Middle East?

Israel responded violently to the Oct. 6 atrocity and the Americans were alarmed because their reconciliation policy toward Iran, initiated by Obama, was suddenly in jeopardy. The Americans have given Iran billions, removed restrictions to trade, and encouraged moderation by Israel in its relations with its tormentor. One might argue the Americans are cynically trying to avoid damage to Iran's contribution to the world's oil production--and American oil prices in an election year-- but that likelihood is subservient to the basic Obama theme of normal relations with the terrorist theocracy. Then Iran hit Israel with 330 missiles.

The Middle East froze. What would Israel do? Would Israel hit the oil refineries? The Iranian nuclear facility? Biden said, "Don't."

And Israel has done nothing. And Passover is coming. And some of Israel's domestic polling has turned cautious.

There are rumors. The U.S. has traded Israel Rafa for Iran. America has threatened to remove military support. Or military hardware supplies. There is some gigantic NATO-like plan on the table here with the Shiites.

Whatever is afoot, Israel's declining a righteous revenge opportunity would be a first. And its impact would be fascinating because, while the university children demonstrating do not understand, both aggression and caution with fanatics are dangerous.

Atrocity

Atrocity

So, we have been hearing about attacks on citizens by Israel since the gruesome Oct. 7th atrocity. Never mind the uncertainties of war, the wildness and errors. Never mind the Hamas attack specifically targeted civilians. Israel is as guilty as any culture at war. Are they more guilty? Was Hamas 'more guilty?'

Or we can focus our social concerns on Iran--but not Hamas. Iran launched 320 drones, rockets, and cruise missiles at tiny Israel. Were 320 missiles all targeting military sites?  Are there that many military targets in Israel? Should we just assume that Iran was behaving differently?
 
Who do these demonstrators think they are kidding?

Notes and Noted 1

Notes and Noted 1
 

On Monday, Sheila Jackson Lee delivered a speech for supporters ahead of the total solar eclipse, in which she spoke about the sun and the moon.

"Sometimes you've heard the word full moon, and sometimes you need to take the opportunity just to come out and see a full moon...that complete rounded circle, which is made up mostly of gases," the Texas Democrat said. "The sun is a mighty powerful heat, and it's almost impossible to go near the sun."

She added that "the moon is more manageable"

She used to be on the House's Science, Space, and Technology Committee  

****

Poverty is no mystery. Poverty has been, and remains, man’s standard dish throughout history in most places in the world. Affluence is the mystery. Why is it that a small portion of the world’s population for only a tiny part of its history is exempt from the fate that has befallen the rest of the world?--williams

****

The political model for make-work programs is FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, which paid Americans to work when nearly one in four were jobless. The U.S. now has a labor shortage, but the Biden Administration wants to mobilize more than 20,000 initially for something called the 'Climate Corps'—and some 50,000 by 2031. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey want the Climate Corps to employ 1.5 million over five years.

The trough expandth.

****

The Biden tax hikes would primarily fall on capital income, leading to less domestic investment, fewer jobs, and slower economic growth. According to estimates from the Tax Foundation, the budget proposal would reduce long‐​run GDP by 2.2 percent, hurt wages, and eliminate 788,000 jobs. This is likely a significant understatement of the negative economic effects. The analysis notes that the budget’s proposals will make America an international outlier on individual and corporate taxes, making the U.S. a less attractive investment.

***

“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”--Adam Smith

***

A new poll asked, “How much do you think the top 1% of taxpayers by income account for in terms of share of total federal income taxes paid?"

The correct answer, as of 2020, is 42%. The top 1% of income earners pay 42% of the taxes in this country. But less than a quarter of those surveyed guessed right. Twenty-two percent (including more than a third of Democrats) thought the top 1% of taxpayers paid only 1% of income taxes. Twenty-five percent suggested it was 12% of revenue. Nineteen percent said they weren’t sure.

Maybe the citizenry has a very poor concept of numbers but how would anyone know with people like Biden--who are supposed to be representatives of the people in the country--saying the 'rich' pay less than a secretary or plumber?

As a communications strategy, Republicans could do worse than simply repeat the official IRS data over and over.

Lincoln

 

Lincoln 

We Americans stupidly recognize April 14 as the day before taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly, it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

Don't

Don't

Fascinating mess in the Middle East.

Biden said "Don't;" Iran did. So will Biden have an Obama 'Red line?'

I can't imagine what Iran is thinking other than perhaps a symbolic display, like a minuet--Iran steps here, Israel steps there--with no serious damage done. 

 

Iran's high-volume but relatively low-tech attack did virtually no damage, reaffirming Israel's defense is very good. But this looks like a pulled punch, a political, not a true military, act. Iran displays its feathers as an aggressive entity that will fight if pressed. The Middle East is having visions of what would really happen if their cartel/commerce was shut down and everyone else is pondering a world without energy. Biden has been reduced to an old man trying to defend his lawn.

Biden could become peripheral here but the attack on Israel raises everyone's hand. Even China doesn't want war. And there is clearly a Middle East leadership vacuum that the U.S.--not the Biden golem but some figure--could fill and consolidate local support. (Of course, the weak-minded Dems could let someone like Russia or China step in and become that consolidator.)

But Iran looks to have given Israel the high ground. What if Israel refuses to play symbolism? What if they use it to solve their Iran problem for good?

Leading the Recalcitrant

Leading the Recalcitrant

A poll taken last month shows that 48% of consumers would not consider buying an EV. That’s up seven percentage points from last year. Only 35% of those who responded to the Gallup poll said they might consider buying one, down from 43% just a year ago. A mere 9% said they were seriously considering an EV purchase. That portion was 12% in 2023.

EV ownership has increased. In 2024, 7% of Americans own a battery-powered car. Last year only 4% owned an EV.

But maybe the fever has broken. Even 27% of Democrats are saying in 2024 they would not buy an EV compared to 17% last year. Among independents, the “would nots” have grown to 47% from 38%.

Of course, EVs aren’t the only choice Democrats want to make for the country.  

Democrats insist that they have to manage the production of household appliances, limit the choices of sneakers and deodorants, and design dishwashers and gas cans. They have banned or restricted a host of modern conveniences, from single-use plastic bags to plastic utensils to natural gas, condiment packs, and incandescent bulbs. They’ve outlawed shower heads and toilets they don’t like. They have targeted heating and cooling systems with obstructive guidelines.

There is so much to do.

These people clearly believe we need help in making decisions and living. Their idea of democracy must be limited to voting and must not be connected to the idea of freedom itself.

The Power of Soft and Fluffy

From the Othani story. 

Mizuhara accompanied Ohtani to a bank in Arizona “in or about 2018” and helped him open an account where his baseball salary was deposited. Investigators believe Ohtani’s earnings from endorsement deals and investments went to a different account.

Mizuhara later falsely identified himself as Ohtani in phone communications with the bank, managing to lift an online banking suspension on the account and begin verifying wire transfers with his own phone.

 The complaint says Mizuhara’s phone contained hundreds of pages of text messages with a number associated with a specific bookmaker — known as Bookmaker 1. The messages appear to include negotiations as Mizuhara tried to pay off his gambling debts.

“I have a problem lol,” read one message from Mizuhara on June 24, 2023. “Can I get one last last last bump? This one for real. . . . Last one for real.”

Investigators also cite a spreadsheet provided by a source in Bookmaker 1’s organization that showed roughly 19,000 wagers between December 2021 and January 2024 for Mizuhara’s account — nearly 25 bets per day on average. The wagers ranged from roughly $10 to $160,000 per bet, averaging around $12,800.

Mizuhara’s winning bets totaled over $142 million, but his losing bets were around $183 million — a net loss of nearly $41 million. Winnings were not paid to Ohtani’s bank accounts, even though those accounts were used to help pay off the debts.

Investigators say records do not show any bets from Mizuhara’s account on baseball games.

The final entry in the Statement of Probably Cause includes a text exchange between Mizuhara and Bookmaker 1 on March 20, 2024 — the day Mizuhara was fired from the Dodgers amid news reports about his gambling and theft.

“Have you seen the reports?” Mizuhara wrote.

“Yes, but that’s all (vulgarity),” Bookmaker 1 responded. “Obviously you didn’t steal from him. I understand it’s a cover job I totally get it.”

“Technically I did steal from him,” Mizuhara said. “It’s all over for me.”

***

The Power of Soft and Fluffy

This country, more and more often, confuses political positions with beliefs.

One hates to copy and paste but this, from Swain on Biden, is just too good.

'He puts one in mind of Earl Haig’s remark about the Earl of Derby: “A very weak-minded fellow I am afraid, and, like the feather pillow, bears the marks of the last person who sat on him!”

Mr. Biden bears the marks of many a backside. For most of his career, he supported the Hyde Amendment barring the use of federal funds for abortion. Running for president in 2020, Mr. Biden announced he favored repealing the amendment. In 2019, during an early Democratic primary debate, Sen. Kamala Harris lashed Mr. Biden for opposing forced busing in the 1970s. He had taken that position a half-century before for the excellent reason that the public overwhelmingly hated busing, but in 2019 he felt obliged to sound as if he half-supported it.'

…..

If the left’s avant-garde wants a 32-hour workweek today—Mr. Sanders is pushing it—you’re safe to assume that a second-term Biden administration will make that demand, too. Racial reparations? The criminalization of “misgendering” and other forms of “hate speech”? Denuclearization? Nationalization of industries? Mr. Biden isn’t there yet, but give him time. It’ll only take the right people to sit on him."

Forgiveness

The inflation since Biden's election is 18.9%


Forgiveness

Biden is reinstituting his "loan forgiveness" plan, a notion of canceling loan contracts made by students and shifting them to taxpayers who never agreed to that contract. The Supreme Court has already rejected the idea, ruling that such a federal act was beyond the executive. It was illegal then and will be illegal now.

Why would the Democrats do this? Votes. The polls say this is a very popular idea. And Biden is doing poorly with the young demographics. Of course, having someone else pay for your education is appealing, like having someone else pay for your car. That doesn't make it right and there was a time when people in this country would have recoiled against the very suggestion of forcing his neighbor to pay for his responsibility.

But the country may be changing. The populace may not align with the country's founding principles. And that may be the nation's greatest problem.

In Dog Years

In Dog Years

The biotech company Loyal announced that it had moved closer to bringing to market a drug that improves the life expectancy of dogs. “The data you provided are sufficient to show that there is a reasonable expectation of effectiveness,” an official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration informed the company in a recent letter. (Loyal provided a copy of the letter to The Times.)

The drug is a long way from approval and the F.D.A. must still review the company’s safety and manufacturing data. But conditional approval, which Loyal hopes to receive in 2026, would allow the company to begin marketing the drug for canine life extension, even before a large clinical trial is complete.

More are in the pipeline. A team of academic researchers is currently conducting a canine clinical trial of rapamycin, which has been shown to extend the lives of lab mice. And Loyal is recruiting dogs for a clinical trial of another drug candidate, dubbed LOY-002.

Importantly, the cellular activity of these early drugs is known and so will attract further analysis and refinement. That is to say, the research will be more targeted and will get better.

Longevity studies, by definition, take a long time and, while dogs match well with human studies, they have a much shorter life span, which exaggerates the time requirements. And subjective evaluation is very inaccurate.

But these studies are coming. Metformin has shown evidence it improves survival rates in healthy controls. Then, of course, the quality of life question will arise, as will the therapeutic possibilities.

Snakes

Snakes

ESG stands for environment, social, and governance. ESG investors are said to invest with these endpoints --rather than simple economic considerations.

But Bork writes the ESG movement is increasingly perceived not merely as a social movement but as a cartel. 

A cartel. 

In a 2022 letter to BlackRock’s Larry Fink, 19 state attorneys general questioned the effect on fiduciary responsibility when big asset managers work in tandem with nongovernmental organizations and proxy advisers to restrict oil and gas production. The attorneys general asserted that ESG investors violate the Sherman Act, the nation’s foundational antitrust law, by engaging in a “restraint of trade.” This has manifested in the environmental arena, when asset managers have made huge investments in oil and gas while seeking to restrict the supply of oil and gas.

So the ESG movement is only masquerading as a socially responsible group trying to decrease fossil fuel production; they are actually interested in decreasing only the oil production of their oil-producing competitors. And scarcity increases value.

So, is the creation of scarcity of a crucial energy source for your own benefit socially responsible?

Deep Thinking Economists

 

Deep Thinking Economists

Angus Deaton, the 78-year-old Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist, is re-examining his views.

Deaton said recently that economists are relying on outdated ideas around welfare economics or, even worse, not learning it at all. Simultaneously, Deaton says, the US is seeing societal problems like rising suicide and alcoholism rates and the opioid crisis.

"I think the country is in sort of a bad way, in spite of all this hoopla that's going on about how well we're doing economically. And so I'm an economist now sort of thinking, 'well, how should I change my practice of economics a little bit?'" Deaton said. "...well-being is a lot more than just money."

A Nobel Prize-winning economist thinks there is more to human well-being than money. And he just realized this may be important.

Now if that is not a lightning strike insight into our problems, nothing will be.

This guy won a Nobel Prize.

Sunday/Thomas

 

Sunday/Thomas

Today's gospel is the "Doubting Thomas" gospel. It could be a short story. It is an insight that unfortunately has become a cliché.

Thomas is not portrayed as a fickle guy in the gospels; he is actually a brave, committed man. When Christ wants to return to a town where they tried to kill Him previously, Thomas, after losing the argument against going, announces he will go with Christ so they can die together. So his caution over the talk of Christ's resurrection stems from only one thing: his desire for the truth.

"Thomas" means "twin." Doubting Thomas is a twin. The other side of doubt is belief. So his other twin is "belief," the product of doubt. Doubt is a process. But that is not true for all.

Solipsism: the position in Metaphysics and Epistemology that the mind is the only thing that can be known to exist and that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. It is a skeptical hypothesis and leads to the belief that the whole of reality and the external world and other people are merely representations of the individual self, having no independent existence of their own, and might in fact not even exist. It is not, however, the same as Skepticism (the epistemological position that one should refrain from even making truth claims).
There are people who make their livings talking like this.

Several modern currents of thought are rushing us toward the rapids. One is doubt itself, as a philosophy, a tenet of modern life. For many, doubt is the endpoint.

Descartes asked, "What can I know?" He described us as isolated individuals whose knowledge was individually subjective. But this comes at a price. I can doubt the existence of the external world, and I can doubt the existence of what appears to be my body. But when I try to also doubt the existence of my inner self, my thinking, then I find that I am still there--as a doubting mind. Doubting is the thing that in the end I cannot doubt. Doubting, however, is thinking, and the existence of thinking implies the existence of a thinker. Hence Descartes' famous conclusion: "I think, therefore I am." So the self sees us as isolated individuals prioritizing our subjectivity above all else. And the agent of thought is doubt. And, unlike Thomas, those doubts are never answered.

This has implications for more than the individual. "Community" implies shared beliefs, things held in common. So doubt, as an endpoint, is as destructive, as isolating, as paralyzing as any heresy. It is the keep of the immobile and the somnolent. Like the pacifist, doubt requires the efforts, and the sacrifices, of others to exist.

When Christ appeared the second time, He was probably really happy to see Thomas.

When Entitlements are Not

So Ronna McDaniel gets vilified by every one of the other NBC employees, who publically accused her of criminality. At what point does that become a hostile workplace meriting judicial intervention?

***

The opponents of capitalism are generally not moved by liberal arguments about freedom and choice, the existence of which they reject as illusory or irrelevant. The opponents of capitalism depend on a mutually reinforcing battery of facts, theories, and values that cannot be disturbed by contrary evidence, and are not susceptible to rational argument. It is a prime mistake of the liberal, therefore, to imagine that he can win the debate about “capitalism versus socialism” by the normal academic game of proving or disproving according to rules and logic.--Hartwell

***

A Morning Consult survey of 6,018 registered voters conducted between March 29 and 31 put Biden in the lead with 44 percent of the vote, ahead of Trump with 42 percent and all other named candidates combined getting 8 percent. 44% of Americans prefer more of the same.

***

St. Ivany averaged 16:08 minutes of ice time over the last three games.

***

When Entitlements are Not

In 2033, according to the latest projections, Social Security's trust fund "will become depleted," and "continuing program income will be sufficient to pay 77 percent of scheduled benefits." Two years before then, Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund "will be sufficient to pay 89 percent of total scheduled benefits."

(Peter G. Peterson Foundation)

The programs' trustees note that "lawmakers have many options for changes that would reduce or eliminate the long-term financing shortfalls." But Trump and Biden have ruled out nearly all of them because they don't know which promises to break.

It will be said that the problem with the entire system is that working people paying into the system are beginning to shrink and those taking out--retired and elderly--are growing. But the real problem is much more pointed: there is an unbridled eagerness for the government to follow what sounds like good ideas but are philosophically and/or economically self-destructive. The triumph of the immediate over the long term.

Last week, when the Republican Study Committee suggested gradually raising the minimum age for full Social Security benefits from 67 to 69, the White House immediately condemned that modest proposal. So the decision on managing this inevitable problem will be delayed... and put off... and tabled... until there is no choice but to act. 

Then those who created the problem will be seen as problem-solvers.

Out for a Penny, Out for a Pound

Harvard University's Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging will once again host "affinity celebrations" at its 2024 commencement, according to documents obtained by National Review.
Harvard plans to hold a "Disability Celebration," a "Global Indigenous Celebration," an "Asian American, Pacific Islander, Desi-American (APIDA) Celebration," a "First Generation-Low Income Celebration," a "Jewish Celebration," a "Latinx Celebration," a "Lavender Celebration" — which refers to LGBT students — a "Black Celebration," a "Veterans Celebration," and an "Arab Celebration." The university will also hold a central commencement ceremony for students of all backgrounds.

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Anyone interested in the astonishing idiocy of politicians generally and the VP particularly might look at her unbelievably stupid statement on the women's championship basketball bracket. Its stupidity is hard to grasp completely.

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Out for a Penny, Out for a Pound

The world is fretting over the possible Israeli invasion of Rafah. It fears genocide. It fears expanding the conflict. Biden has threatened a change in philosophy if Israel does not change its policy toward refugees and Rafah. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Thursday she would move to block the sale of F-15s to Israel after seven aid workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza earlier this week.

Israel vs. Palestine is a small conflict. Israel is a dense, heavily armed, nuclear power with an international footprint and aspirations; Gaza is a tiny failing agrarian community threatened with becoming hunter-gatherers. The risk to the world there is accident and vandalism. A nuclear misstep. Interrupting the world trade of oil. Iran, the major sponsor of anti-Israeli military action, insists upon several degrees of separation. A veneer of hands-off innocence.
 
But Israel just struck an Iranian outpost in Syria and killed three high-ranking officers. Iran vowed it would take revenge for the attack, and now foreign media is reporting that US intelligence is fearful of an attack on Israel. The CIA has warned that Iran will attack in 48 hours.

So, how's that U.S. containment/de-escalation policy going? Everything okay in Rafah?

Of Elephants and Rooms

 

Of Elephants and Rooms

More and more of our examinations are done through a haze of insincerity and self-interest. From pharmaceutical investigations to political surveys to environmental impact studies, we are inundated with information shaped and filtered by outcome and intent.

Illegal immigration is a great example. We debate over the accuracy of "illegal" vs. "undocumented," as if that makes a difference.

An interesting subset is illegal Chinese immigration, which should be easier to distill.

In 2021, 342 illegal Chinese nationals were encountered by U.S. officials at the border. (N.B. "encountered.") In 2022 there were over 2000. In 2023 there were 24,125 illegal Chinese encountered. In 2024, so far, there have been 22,223 illegal Chinese nationals encountered entering the U.S. illegally.

Now, movement in China is scrutinized. Those guys did not end up on the border simply searching for banned books to read.

Another way of putting those numbers is that in the last two years American immigration officials have encountered 45 Chinese battalions. Battalions.

The administration says the border is "secure." Beyond "secure," "illegal," and "undocumented," why would a state allow this?

 

Emission Reality Raises Its Ugly Head

“One of the things that we found in the Missouri vs. Biden case was that the Biden administration was telling Facebook to censor and shut down groups of vaccine-injured patients, even though their stories were true. It didn’t matter that they were truly vaccine-injured. All that mattered was that the Biden administration did not want that information out, because they thought it would be bad for the public to know it. So they coerced Facebook into shutting that down.”--Bhattacharya

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Almost a month after hitting 2024 NFL free agency, Claypool has been added to an exclusive negotiating list by the CFL's Saskatchewan Roughriders. Back to Canada.

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Emission Reality Raises Its Ugly Head

The NYT had a surprising article on energy use and climate change. Coal plants are almost gone and electricity usage is beginning to rise. Not what the U.S. administration planned or foresaw.

The front page article had the headline “A New Surge in Power Use Is Threatening U.S. Climate Goals.” The gist is that various sources of new electricity demand are rapidly emerging, from data centers to EVs to AI. Electricity demand is starting to rise, but wind and solar generators can’t be added to the grid fast enough to fulfill this demand. And thus utilities are starting to add large numbers of new natural gas plants.

The Times provides this chart (sorry it's so poor) of the recent history of electricity demand in the U.S., with a projection for the next decade (this graph shows a rise in electricity demand to 2007, then a flat period until now, then a projected rise):

Demand has been flat for fifteen years, but now looks about to surge. From the Times, the Times!:

 

To meet spiking demand, utilities in states like Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia are proposing to build dozens of power plants over the next 15 years that would burn natural gas. In Kansas, one utility has postponed the retirement of a coal plant to help power a giant electric-car battery factory.

Some utilities say they need additional fossil fuel capacity because cleaner alternatives like wind or solar power aren’t growing fast enough and can be bogged down by delayed permits and snarled supply chains. While a data center can be built in just one year, it can take five years or longer to connect renewable energy projects to the grid and a decade to build some of the long-distance power lines they require. Utilities also note that data centers and factories need power 24 hours a day, something wind and solar can’t do alone.

Today, the pledge date of the Paris Climate Agreement, 2026, is only two years away, and we’re barely halfway toward the goal. Moreover, most of the supposed “progress” has been achieved by closing coal power plants and replacing them with natural gas, a process that is now nearly complete. There are almost no coal plants left to close. And now electricity demand is rising and utilities are looking to build more natural gas plants. The 2026 pledge will never be achieved.

And the 2030 pledge is even more ridiculous.

On Monday, Amin Nasser, the CEO of Saudi Aramco — the world’s largest oil company — gave a speech in Houston where he said a bunch of obvious things that somehow other oil executives (from companies based in the U.S. and Europe) are unable to say. The speech was widely reported. Here is one report from CBC. 

Excerpt: The head of the world's largest energy company on Monday urged the world to accept the "hard realities" that oil and natural gas will be around for a long time to come and consumption of both sources of energy is likely to grow for at least the next decade or two. . . . "We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them adequately reflecting realistic demand assumptions," he said. . . . "All this strengthens the view that peak oil and gas is unlikely for some time to come, let alone 2030," he said. "No one is betting the farm on that."

Here is a chart from page 2-29 of EPA’s Report showing trends in U.S. GHG emissions by economic sectors:

As you can see, the large majority of the decreases in emissions achieved since 2005 have been in the electric power sector.

Pros and Cons of The Enlightenment

It is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hid treasure.--Thomas Aikenhead

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Pros and Cons of The Enlightenment

This is an article printed in The Daily Sceptic

The Scottish Enlightenment will die on April 1st 2024, exactly 327 years, eight months, and 24 days after the incident that provoked it. For on April 1st the Hate Crime and Public Order Act (Scotland) 2021 comes into force, an Act which will criminalise speech and opinion deemed ‘hateful’ even if spoken in the privacy of your own home.

On January 8th, 1697, Thomas Aikenhead, a 20-year-old student, was marched the two miles from the Old Tolbooth Prison on the High Street to a windswept sandy hillock just to the west of the causeway that crossed the marshes between Edinburgh and the port town of Leith, known as Gallow Lee. Surrounded by the pious prayers of the clergymen of the Kirk (the Church of Scotland), Thomas was hanged by the neck until he was dead.

What was Thomas – a murderer? A rapist? Was he one of Edinburgh’s notorious ‘Resurrection Men’? No. Young Thomas’s crime was that in an Edinburgh tavern on Christmas Eve 1696, he had a drink and went on a rant offending the Church and its stranglehold on Scottish culture. He was reported, arrested and tried: “The jury found Aikenhead guilty of cursing and railing against God, denying the incarnation and the Trinity and scoffing at the Scriptures.”

Thomas Aikenhead was the last person to be hanged for Blasphemy in Britain. As such he became a martyr and inspiration. The hanging of a young man for the crime of having a rant in a pub late at night became seen as an act of tyranny and oppression so heinous it was the spark that turned a barren minor nation on the northwest fringe of Europe into the blazing furnace of ideas that was the Scottish Enlightenment. Ideas that would change the world forever.

The execution appalled Scottish Society at the time and was both the high tide of the theocratic tyranny of 17th Century Kirk and its tombstone. With Aikenhead’s execution died all moral authority of those who would control the speech, conscience, and opinions of others.

Scottish intellectuals queued up to condemn the act and their voice of outrage coalesced into arguably the most important and internationally influential Enlightenment of all.

The great 19th Century historian Lord Macaulay famously wrote of the incident:

The preachers who were the poor boy’s murderers crowded round him at the gallows, and… insulted heaven with prayers more blasphemous than anything he had uttered.

The exact spot where Thomas died has long been built over. The Leith causeway became the modern Leith Walk, the marshes were drained and the city expanded to the sea. General consensus has the spot somewhere in the vicinity of Shrub Place about halfway down the walk.

On the morning of his execution, he wrote to his friends the following words:

It is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hid treasure.

As a Scot who grew up in the 1970s in the drawing rooms of Edinburgh’s New Town, the architectural manifestation of the Scottish Enlightenment, I am truly appalled that the legacy of Aikenhead and the Scottish Enlightenment – a historical event far more relevant to the modern world than the War of Independence of the early 14th century that so enthrals the SNP and its activists, an event which put Scotland on the map of the world and one of which the nation can be rightly proud – has been trashed by the Scottish Parliament and the Yousaf Government. From April 1st 2024, saying the wrong thing at your own dinner table, let alone in a drunken pub rant like young Thomas did, will once again land you in significant trouble with the law, 327 years, eight months and 24 days after Thomas died.

Mr. Yousaf, his ministers and those who drafted and will enforce this law would do well to remember how history judged those who hanged Thomas Aikenhead on that bleak winter morning on the road to Leith. In doing so they should recall that this gross act of overreach and tyranny was the high tide of the power of the Kirk, power which was swept aside by the forces unleashed when the people said ‘enough’.

C.J. Strachan is the pseudonym of a concerned Scot.

The Law of Diminishing Returns

 

The Law of Diminishing Returns

 One never hears cost-benefit discussions on global warming intervention risks and rewards, probably because Global Warming opponents think it is beyond debate. Lomborg in the WSJ has the commonest one and presents it better than most.

More than one million people die in traffic accidents globally each year. Overnight, governments could solve this entirely man-made problem by reducing speed limits everywhere to 3 miles an hour, but we’d laugh at any politician who suggested it out of office. It would be absurd to focus solely on lives saved if the cost would be economic and societal destruction. Yet politicians widely employ the same one-sided reasoning in the name of fighting climate change. It’s simply a matter, they say, of “following the science.”

That assertion lets politicians obscure—and avoid responsibility for—lopsided climate-policy trade-offs. Lawmakers contend that because climate change is real and man-made, it is only scientifically logical that the world ends fossil fuel use. Any downsides are a mathematical inevitability rather than something politicians choose to inflict on constituents.

A new peer-reviewed study of all the scientific estimates of climate-change effects shows the most likely cost of global warming averaged across the century will be about 1% of global gross domestic product, reaching 2% by the end of the century. This is a very long way from global extinction.

Draconian net-zero climate policies, on the other hand, will be prohibitively costly. The latest peer-reviewed climate-economic research shows the total cost will average $27 trillion each year across the century, reaching $60 trillion a year in 2100. Net zero is more than seven times as costly as the climate problem it tries to address.

Easter/sunday

 

Easter/Sunday

Easter is the essential Christian event. Every aspect of the Christian church hinges on Christ's resurrection.

The gospel is filled with little particulars (the woman hesitant to enter the tomb, Peter being outrun to the tomb, the meticulous arrangement of the burial cloths, the assumption that the body was stolen--after the assumption by the Pharisees that the apostles would steal it)--all giving misdirection and specificity to what becomes the philosophical earthquake of all time. And, of course, another biblical irony: The first to arrive, the women, could not be legal witnesses.

Yet how does this all hinge? Hearsay? The interpretation of a sacred book? Amulets and magic rites? No. Amazingly it hinges on us.

By the time Christ rises, we know all the players. We even have some insights about them. They are not revolutionaries, not mystics and, while seemingly sincere, they are not special. They are relatively normal working folks with responsibilities and, probably, annoyed families. As seen by their behavior during the Passion, they are not fully aware of what is happening. Nor are they particularly brave. Yet, after this crisis where their leader is tortured and killed, they somehow emerge as philosophers and martyrs. They all, to a man, experience a mind-changing, life-changing event. Scattered and leaderless they raise a religious movement that challenges everything in its time and, eventually, forces mighty Rome to adapt.

Christ performed the great, unarguable miracle. It was the behavior of men, people, who confirmed and developed it. No leap of faith was necessary. They were convinced and changed. Then they convinced and changed the world.

Quick Hits

 

Quick Hits

Is Beyonce's new album cultural appropriation?

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The growth of China’s agricultural subsidies is incredible: now at $300bn per year, according to the OECD. The graph, which as usual I could not paste, is astounding

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Ambitious plans to build a utopian sustainable city at the foot of an active Japanese volcano are well on their way to completion.

First announced in 2021, Toyota has been hard at work constructing their Woven City just miles away from Mount Fuji on the island of Honshū, with the first of 2,000 anticipated residents now expected to move in before the end of the year.

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A criticism of Dune 2 from a Vicky Osterweil, clearly from a recent fiction program:
"..despite all the attempts of the literalists, the movies still contain resonances and ideas beyond their control. ...Stilgar believes in a prophecy that a messiah, the Mahdi, is coming to save the Fremen from the imperium. In this prophecy, that messiah comes from outside of the planet--Paul Atreides is that messiah (yes, it's giving Lawrence of Arabia). Javier Bardem, an incredibly talented actor, spends the entire movie pointing to something Paul has just done and saying "See! This is proof he's the Mahdi!" Once or twice this is comical. But by the film's climax it's so tedious that, when Paul demonstrates his power to a war council of the Fremen leadership and the camera cuts to Bardem yelling "The Mahdi!" someone behind me in the audience said loudly to their friends "this is so stupid."

This kind of audience-condescending premise-forward literalism is not just in the narrative and scripting, it’s in the acting. The actors of Dune 2 almost all speak in that tedious whisper-growl that stands in for profundity, a vocal style also popularized by Nolan, in Christian Bale’s portrayal of the caped crusader in 2005’s Batman Begins. I believe that if a movie features a bunch of good actors and all the performances are flat and dull, as is the case in Dune Part Two, where even Florence Pugh, Lea Seydoux, and Josh Brolin lack all charisma, it is ultimately a reflection on the director (and the script), not the actors."

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And a pro TikTok position:

People keep saying “but they do the same to us.” That’s no excuse. We shouldn’t take a page from the Chinese censorship playbook and basically give them the moral high ground, combined with the ability to point to this move as justification for the shenanigans they’ve pulled in banning US companies from China.

Don’t let the authoritarians set the agenda. We should be better than that.

Good Friday

“Russian early-warning satellites don’t work accurately. As a country, Russia doesn’t have the technological know-how to build a system as good as we have in the United States.” This means “their satellites can’t look straight down at the earth,” a technology known as look-down capability. As a result, Russia’s Tundra satellites “look sideways, which handicaps their ability to distinguish sunlight from, say, fire”--Postol

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The Netherlands, which is a bit bigger than Maryland, has become the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States. Perhaps even more significant in the face of a warming planet: It is among the largest exporters of agricultural and food technology. The Dutch have pioneered cell-cultured meat, vertical farming, seed technology, and robotics in milking and harvesting — spearheading innovations that focus on decreased water usage as well as reduced carbon and methane emissions…

The country has nearly 24,000 acres — almost twice the size of Manhattan — of crops growing in greenhouses. These greenhouses, with less fertilizer and water, can grow in a single acre what would take 10 acres of traditional dirt farming to achieve. Dutch farms use only a half-gallon of water to grow about a pound of tomatoes, while the global average is more than 28 gallons.

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Good Friday



How the norms slide and slip, how the bell-shaped curve moves. Two poems about Good Friday that were outliers, now the norm.


Christina Rossetti's Good Friday


Am I a stone, and not a sheep,

That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,

To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,

And yet not weep?


Not so those women loved

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;


Not so the Sun and Moon

Which hid their faces in a starless sky,

A horror of great darkness at broad noon –

I, only I.


Yet give not o’er,

But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock.


And the atheist Housmann's Easter Sunday, taking the position of the thief:


If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,

You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,

Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright

Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night

The hate you died to quench and could but fan,

Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.


But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,

At the right hand of majesty on high

You sit, and sitting so remember yet

Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat,

Your cross and passion and the life you gave,

Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

The Last of Affirmative Action

 

The Last of Affirmative Action

This is the last of the Hillsdale article on "disparate outcomes," the outcomes of education and crime. Whatever the causes, they are a crisis for the black community. And, regardless of what these politicians say, identities cannot separate and insulate us; failure of one is failure of all.

In 2019, 66 percent of all black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of basic 12th-grade math skills, defined as being able to do arithmetic and to read a graph. Only seven percent of black 12th graders were proficient in 12th-grade math, defined as being able to calculate using ratios. The number of black 12th graders who were advanced in math was too small to show up statistically in a national sample. The picture was not much better in reading. Fifty percent of black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of basic reading, and only four percent were advanced.

According to the ACT, a standardized college admissions test, only three percent of black high school seniors were college-ready in 2023. The disparities in other such tests—the SAT, the LSAT, the GRE, and the GMAT—are just as wide. Remember these data when politicians and others vilify Americans as racist because this or that institution is not proportionally diverse.

We can argue about why these disparities exist and how to close them—something that policymakers and philanthropists have been trying to do for decades. But in light of these skills gaps, it is irrational to expect 13 percent black representation on a medical school faculty or among a law firm’s partners under meritocratic standards. At present, you can have proportional diversity or you can have a meritocracy. You cannot have both.

As for the criminal justice system, the bodies speak for themselves. President Biden is fond of intoning that black parents are right to fear that their children will be killed by a police officer or by a white gunslinger every time those children step outside. The mayor of Kansas City proclaimed last year that “existing while black” is another high-risk activity that blacks must engage in. The mayor was partially right: existing while black is far more dangerous than existing while white—but the reason is black crime, not white vigilantes.

In the post-George Floyd era, black juveniles are shot at 100 times the rate of white juveniles. Blacks between the ages of ten and 24 are killed in drive-by shootings at nearly 25 times the rate of whites in that same age cohort. Dozens of blacks are murdered every day, more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined, even though blacks are just 13 percent of the population. The country turns its eyes away. Who is killing these black victims? Not the police, not whites, but other blacks.

As for interracial violence, blacks are a greater threat to whites than whites are to blacks. Blacks commit 85 percent of all non-lethal interracial violence between blacks and whites. A black person is 35 times more likely to commit an act of non-lethal violence against a white person than vice versa. Yet the national narrative insists on the opposite idea—and too many dutifully play along.

These crime disparities mean that the police cannot restore law and order in neighborhoods where innocent people are most being victimized without having a disparate impact on black criminals. So the political establishment has decided not to restore law and order at all.

We must fight back against disparate impact thinking. As long as racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial disparities, the Left wins, and our civilization will continue to crumble.

Even the arts are coming down. Classical music, visual art, theater—all are dismissed as a function of white oppression. The Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted an astonishing show last year called the Fictions of Emancipation. The show’s premise was that if a white artist creates a work intended to show the cruelties of slavery, that artist (in this case, the great 19th-century French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux) is in fact arguing that the natural condition of blacks is slavery. Prosecuting this nonsensical argument required the Met to ignore or distort almost every feature of the Western art tradition—including the representation of the nude human body, artists’ use of models, and the sale of art.

Only Western art is subjected to this kind of hostile interpretation. Chinese, African, and Indian cultural traditions are still treated with curatorial respect, their works analyzed following their creators’ intent. As soon as a critic turns his eye or ear on Western art, however, all he can see or hear is imperialism and white privilege. It is a perverse obsession. We are teaching young people to dismiss the greatest creations of humanity. We are stripping them of the capacity to escape their narrow identities and to lose themselves in beauty, sublimity, and wit. No wonder so many Americans are drowning in meaninglessness and despair.

We must stop apologizing for Western Civilization. To be sure, slavery and segregation were grotesque violations of America’s founding ideals. For much of our history, black Americans suffered injustice and gratuitous cruelty. Today, however, every mainstream institution is twisting itself into knots to hire and promote as many underrepresented minorities as possible. Yet those same institutions grovelingly accuse themselves of racism.

The West has liberated the world from universal squalor and disease, thanks to the scientific method and the Western passion for discovery and knowledge. It has given the world plumbing, hot showers in frigid winters, flight, clean water, steel, antibiotics, and just about every structure and every device that we take for granted in our miraculously privileged existence—and I use the word “privilege” here to refer to anyone whose life has been transformed by Western ingenuity—i.e., virtually every human being on the planet.

It was in the West that the ideas of constitutional government and civil rights were born. Yes, to our shame, we had slavery. What civilization did not? But only the Anglosphere expended lives and capital to end the nearly universal practice. Britain had to occupy Lagos in 1861 to get its ruler to give up the slave trade. The British Navy used 13 percent of its manpower to blockade slave ships leaving the western coast of Africa in the 19th century, as Nigel Biggar has documented. Every ideal that the Left uses today to bash the West—such as equality or tolerance—originated in the West.

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The ongoing attack on colorblind excellence in the U.S. is putting our scientific edge at risk. China, which cares nothing for identity politics, is throwing everything it has at its most talented students. China ranks number one in international tests of K-12 math, science, and reading skills; the U.S. ranks twenty-fifth.

China is racing ahead in nanophysics, artificial intelligence, and other critical defense technologies. Chinese teams dominate the International Olympiad in Informatics. Meanwhile, the American Mathematical Association declares math to be racist and President Biden puts a soil geologist with no background in physics at the top of the Department of Energy’s science programs. This new science director may know nothing about nuclear weapons and nuclear physics, but she checks off several identity politics boxes and publishes on such topics as “A Critical Feminist Approach to Transforming Workplace Climate.”

What do we do in response to such civilizational immolation? We proclaim that standards are not racist and that excellence is not racist. We assert that categories like race, gender, and sexual preference are never qualifications for a job. I know for a fact that being female is not an accomplishment. I am equally sure that being gay or being black are also not accomplishments.

Should conservative political candidates campaign against disparate impact thinking and in favor of standards of merit? Of course, they should! They will be accused of waging a culture war. But it is the progressive elites, not their conservative opponents, who are engaging in cultural revolution!

Most conservatives today are not even playing defense. How about legislation to ban racial preferences in medical training and practice? How about eliminating the disparate impact standard in statutes and regulations? Conservatives should by all means promote the virtues of free markets and limited government, but the diversity regime is the nemesis of both.

Lowering standards helps no one since high expectations are the key to achievement. In defense of excellence, we must speak the truth, never apologize, and never back down.