Matt Ridley: How Scientists Mislead the World About COVID Origins

Lysenkoism.

David Catron: The Global Censorship Cancer

Agreed.

Ann Coulter: "Who's Defying Court Orders, Again?"

Dunno whether this is right, but it sounds plausible.

Inez Feltscher Stepman: A Reckoning For Higher Education

I agree.

As usual, I'll add that I think that one major cause of these problems is the totalitarian inclination of the left. It's radical and generally tends to radicalize more over time. Conservatives tend to resist change, the left tends to welcome it--in a certain rather narrow range of directions--always leftward. It also tends to see its political ends as constituting the most important ends, ends that override all others. In academia, even the search for and transmission of truth, and the transmission of the best that has been thought and said must be subordinated to leftist ideology. Free inquiry, objective research, free speech, all are merely subordinate, so all may be subordinated. It's not merely that political considerations sometimes override other goals--they always do. If free and open inquiry requires questioning the new leftist axiom that some women are male, then so much the worse for inquiry. Hence political correctness--the subordination of actual correctness--truth, justification, evidence--to that which is deemed correct by leftist idealogues.

   Some have even suggested that the left is driven to radicalization because leftists gain internet cred by adopting more radical ideas than their peers--the crazier/leftier the ideas, the greater the cred. Credo quia absurdum est.

   If leftist ideas were crazy, but the left weren't hellbent on injecting them into everything and re-engineering society in accordance with them, that would be a problem, but a lesser one. Or if the left were dedicated to injecting certain sane ideas into everything, that, again, would be a problem, but a lesser one. But the combination of radical, obviously absurd ideas with the totalitarian objective of injecting them into everything...this is a catastrophic combination.

   This is all made possible by another characteristic of the left, the acceptance of bad philosophy and bad methods. The former include relativism and social constructionism, the rejection of the very possibility of even moderate degrees of objectivity, skepticism, nihilism, subjectivism, prope-Marxism...the list goes on and on...  Add to these the academic left's introduction of bullshit, quasi-poetic, free-associative methods of reasoning that allow basically any conclusion to be "derived" from virtually any premises via inscrutable, irrational, jargon-laden bullshitting. Check out the writings of its heroes--e.g. that champion of transanity, Judith Butler. Utter bullshit. Not to even mention people like Bruno Latour, Deleuze, Helen Longino--hell, you can just throw in almost all the famous feminists of the last 50 years--Lacan, much of Foucault, most of the critical theorists... What you find in such writings is mostly bullshit--bullshit promoting left-wing ideas--pasted together and obscured by neologisms and inscrutable, quasi-poetic prose. Undergraduate-level reasoning behind a smokescreen of pseudo-scholarly cant.

   This method meshes will with another of their favorites: ceaseless, groundless accusations of prejudice--racism, misogyny, a whole array of "-phobia"s--against anyone they disagree with. The left is always able to "find" "racism" in anything its opponents say or do because (a) it is a philosophical assumption that all their opponents are racist (etc.), and (b) their "method" of "reasoning" is so loose and free-wheeling that they can, with enough babbling, "prove"--i.e. assert--anything they want.

   And, of course, we should add: they even deny the difference between genuine inquiry and sophistry to promote political ends. That's a liberal, rationalist hangup, my friends. One reason they adopt the view that "everything is political" is so that they can, with a clear conscience, slander their political opponents even when they know they are lying. Truth is your hangup, liberal. Nothing trumps the importance of the revolution...

   And here we are...a hundred million broken eggs, and not a single omelette...

   Anyway.

   My $0.02 FWIW...

Rich Cromwell: "If You're Hysterical About Trump's Tariffs, Go Touch Grass"

You've really gotta look for these pieces supporting Trump... The Federalist has been good on some things, but it's staunchly pro-Trump, and I have no reason to think they're any good on economics.

   Again, this kinda seems to make sense to me--not that that matters much. Maybe you could always plead transitoriness any time the market crashes. But in this case there really does seem to be independent, principled reason to predict a crashy event and then eventual recovery. And a much better position for the U.S. after that. Maybe, anyway.

   I'm not defending Trump on this, really. I mean, we KNOW that the left and the MSM (but I repeat myself) will lose its/their mind about everything Trump does. They even seem to have become pro-government-waste and pro-illegal-alien-Venezuelan-gangsters. So we can basically just divide through by anything they say.

   But in this case, it's not just the left that's freaking out--not by a long shot.

   Though, if I could flip a switch, I'd trade somewhat higher prices for more American manufacturing jobs.

Shane Harris: "Elites Hate Trump's Tariffs Because They Work"

I mean, honestly, the more I think and read about it, the less I understand about why this tariff business is so terrible. I'm not an economist, and I'm not stupid enough to substitute my less-than-half-assed understanding of this for the--apparent, anyway--consensus of, like, everybody else...

   I'm just saying that, if I were forced to decide on this question on the information I currently have and without knowing that basically everybody else including all the economists think it's a disaster...I'd probably opt for tariffs--at least reciprocal ones.

   It sure seems that the consensus is that that's dumb--I'm not denying that. And I'm not denything that it's dumb. I'm just saying that I apparently don't understand enough to see why the dumb decision is dumb.

Pelosi, Sanders, Obama: All Favored (Reciprocal) Tariffs in the Recent Past

1) 1996 Nancy Pelosi encourages all of Congress to back reciprocal tariffs

2) 2008 Bernie Sanders wants tariffs, says jobs are going overseas

3) 2018 Barack Obama calls for reciprocal tariffs

4) 1988 Donald Trump says foreign countries must pay tariffs

Only 1 hasn’t sold out pic.twitter.com/6jqXqaYALC

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) April 4, 2025

WSJ: Trump Owns the Economy Now

I have no right to an opinion, but just about everybody on just about all sides seems to be panicking.

So that doesn't sound too good.

link

Chase Spears on Military Public Affairs Officers and the Hysterical Overreaction Strategy Against the Anti-DEI Initiative

The same sort of thing is happening in academia, too:

Last week, the Department of Defense reinstated multiple historical websites and social media posts featuring the Tuskegee Airmen, the Enola Gay, the WWII Navajo Code Talkers, the Women Airforce Service Pilots, Jackie Robinson, and the Marines at Iwo Jima, among others. These were not removed due to an official directive or innocent mistake, but rather as an act of internal sabotage—an attempt by military agents to paint the new administration as historically illiterate and regressive. The actual order was to eliminate content promoting Marxist DEI ideologies that divide the military, not to erase American history.

This hysterical overreaction strategy first (so far as I know) appeared in response to Florida's efforts to push back against ideological capture in academia. Lefty professors started claiming that they had to stop teaching certain courses, that basically U.S. history couldn't be taught, and other such loony things. The left is caught with its pants down here. Its ideas are indefensible, so it's decided to pretend that the rational efforts to roll back its totalitarian capture of academia is itself totalitarian! If you won't let us take over your truth-seeking institutions and turn them to our propagandistic ends, then you are the totalitarians! See?! If you won't let us brainwash your kids with CRT, then we can't teach American history at all!

   This is the final stage of the standard 5-phase defense of a crazy leftists idea (below, x):

There's no such thing as x

We're not doing x

We are doing x, but that's ok.

We are doing x, and that's a good thing.

It's impossible not to do x!

Ruy Teixeira: Democrat Delusions Aren't Going Away Any Time Soon

Agreed.

But a disagreement: the Dems aren't economic determinists anymore--but they remain cultural/social determinists of a different sort. They are afflicted by societism which is a form of irrationalism: basically only non-rational social causes influence belief. In fact, society even "constructs" reality itself... As is normal for such things, these views are rarely clearly articulated or explicitly endorsed--but they show up so commonly in the justifications/rationalizations the left gives for its policies and actions that it's undeniably operating at some level.

   The important thing is: humans--and especially non-leftists--never believe or act on genuinely good reasons. We are always pushed around by irrational social forces. Economic forces used to be the most popular on the left. Now the Standard Litany of prejudices--the boilerplate "-ism"s and "-phobia"s--are the preferred version. I tend to blame Marx and Freud for the left's bizarre obsession with hidden, non-rational motives...but, honestly, I'm not sure where it ultimately comes from.

Newest Ford-Class Carrier, Enterprise, to be Renamed After Elon Musk

Just plain fuck this.

This is idiotic.

The blurb at the bottom about the USS Constitution is obviously at least mostly a joke...but God knows...

Institutional Capture Watch: Hospitals Should "Resist" ICE?

They will never stop unless/until they've corrupted every institution.

NC Universities Trying to Hide DEI Requirements?

The deep academy.

Greenwald: Jason Stanley and Timothy Snyder Flee U.S. Just Ahead of DOGE Death Squads

Oh, also apparently Snyder's wife, also a Yale lefty prof.

As I've said before, Snyder's first book, Bloodlands, about the Holodomor, is pretty good. His second (?) book--a pamphlet, really--On Tyranny starts out ok, but turns into a thinly-disguised anti-Orange-Man screed. Politically, Snyder's an idiot.

Stanley is just an idiot. Period.

John Sailer: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Bankrolls Radical Activists in Higher Ed

Bullshit pseudo-scholarship and radical leftist politics are basically joined at the hip. Without each other, I'm not sure either could survive in academia--certainly they wouldn't be the destructive force they've been for the last 10-60 years (depending on how you count it...).

Jason L. Riley: The Campus DEI Retreat is a Tactical Withdrawal

Well, you know where I stand on this.

   DEI isn't the main problem--not by any stretch of the imagination.

   The problem is the ideological capture of the university.

   The left seems to have inherent totalitarian tendencies that lead it to take over institutions and bend them to its ideological ends. There is no reason to think that this tendency will go away. In fact, it's a very safe bet that it won't. And schools and universities--and young people in general--seem to be among its favorite targets. This, per Lenin, is correct strategy: occupy the bottlenecks and brainwash the youth.

   The left will remain in control of universities for the foreseeable future. And it will never stop searching for new and better ways to inject its pernicious ideology into the institution and, thus, into the minds of the young.

   The problem of the "deep state" is nothing compared to that of the deep academy.

   "Diversity," which morphed into "DEI," (note that no one ever voted on adding to / expanding this concept--it was just decreed by the left) has been a mere catspaw--an incredibly effective one, but nothing more. It won't go away completely (many programs and administrators will simply be "rebranded") but even if it did, the academic left would replace it. The left already has other Trojan Horse terms that are used to sneak totalitarian leftism into our institutions of learning. "Social justice"--already often even more misleadingly shortened to "justice"--for one. The term sounds plausibly neutral on its face, and seems to have an undeniable positive moral valence--who could possibly be against justice? Nobody, of course. But 'social justice'--and 'justice'--in the mouth of the academic left doesn't mean justice. It means far left conceptions of justice. 'Social justice,' like 'political correctness' is specifically designed to have both exoteric and esoteric meanings. To the uninitiated, it sounds uncontroversial, politically neutral and undeniably good. But its real, esoteric meaning is quite different: "social justice" is the implementation of far-left ideology. The term is almost never used approvingly on the right. If you hear someone advocating for "social justice" with respect to taxation, you know what they'll be arguing for--and it won't be letting everyone keep more of the money they earn...

   'Sustainability' is another term almost always used as a Trojan Horse for leftist ideas and policy--it almost always conceals leftist views about the environment, fossil fuels, global warming, (lower) consumption and (less) prosperity. 'Wellness' seems to be an emergent new terminological weapon--almost anything can be snuck in under that rubric--and at least one popular declaration in academia includes things like "community wellness" and "environmental (see: 'sustainable') wellness." "Civic engagement" seems to commonly mean doing work for left-leaning NGOs and the like--but I tend to think this has little to do with the terminology; it's just where HS and college students will be funneled...

   Anyway.

   None of this means that we shouldn't make them beat their DEI swords into scholarly plowshares--just that this is a necessary condition for saving academia, not a sufficient one.

   This battle, in my estimation, will never be over. Liberal, conservative and libertarian normies who want ideologically neutral, truth-seeking institutions will always be at war with a left that rejects the very ideas of objectivity and neutrality, and that thinks that ideological capture is inevitable--and/so it wants to be the captor.

CO Bill Penalizes "Misgendering," "Deadnaming" in Public Places, Forces Gender Pseudoscience onto Families and Schools

The blue team is still insane.

We have always been at war with Eurasia, bigot.

Happy Liberation Day Everybody!!!

[sigh]

This is gonna be real bad, idn't it?

   This is my guess about how it all goes sideways: tariffs and mass Federal firings do major (even if only short-term) economic damage. The Dems bounce back, e.g. winning the midterms. Suddenly red-team triumphalism is a joke on the order of their confidence in the "red wave" of '22...and then we're right back on the road to 1984...
   Apparently Trump has a point--though perhaps not as strong a point as he thinks--about tariffs. But this isn't a hill I want the counterrevolution to die on. Trump's got so many irons in the fire, and is shocking and aweing on so many fronts... I'd say that several failures are virtually guaranteed, just on the basis of how much he's doing, and how fast. It might not take all that much to change the national mood. And once the left is off the ropes, and the media regains control of "The Narrative"...we're back to playing defense...

   The last thing we need right now, IMO, is to let the Dems think they can stay crazy and still win. Which, well...see Wisconsin just now... To have a healthy democratic aspect of our democratic republic, we really do need two sane parties.

   Also, of course, there are some worrying signs of right-wing crazy getting out of the bottle... That's the other last thing we need right now...

   And as for Trump himself: Well, I knew the Trump fatigue was coming...but I didn't think I'd already be in stage 3 by April...but here we are.

Crawford Wins WI Supreme Court Race

Sorry, badgers.

Not sure "in rebuke of Trump, Musk" is part of a legit news headline...but what do I know?

No Statutory Basis for Universal/Nationwide Injunctions?

John Kennedy FTW.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Election

Ugh. This is a big one.

The polls I've seen put Crawford ahead. If they were just routinely blue-leaning polls that wouldn't matter much--but one was Atlas Intel.

Nate the Lawyer: Time's Illegal Alien of the Year Deported

Trump Again Threatens Military Action to Take Greenland

Insanity.

Bullshit Studies: "The Earth is a Big Badass Butch Dyke in Menopause"

Behold, academia.

Jeb Rubenfeld: Trump's (Unconstitutional?) War on Big Law

Train wreck.

Brendan O'Neill: Woke Elites, Not Trump, Purged Museums

Tearing down statues and covering up exhibitions and whatnot is not purging, bigot.

Putting them back up or uncovering them is purging.

John Naughton: Scientists Fear Being Refused Readmittance to the U.S. After International Conferences

Sounds very bad...but it's the Grauniad, so...