The Obama EPA is the Primary Enemy of US Economic Growth

Even before Obama, the US EPA was an engine of demolition against US industry, jobs, and energy. EPA rules and regulations have been used to attack energy of all kinds, from oil to coal to nuclear and more. Obama is using the EPA to destroy the US domestic coal industry. He would have done the same to the shale oil & gas bonanza -- but the resulting jobs destruction would have assured his own defeat in the upcoming presidential elections.

The EPA was always bold, brash, and destructive. Under Obama, it has become even more so.

The EPA gets away with it because rather than employing the actual U.S. court system, it has created its own internal system of “administrative courts” whose “judges” are employees of the EPA and subject to promotion, transfer, or discipline by the agency. Not surprisingly, these EPA courts find in favor of EPA prosecutors in nearly every case, and when they don’t, their verdicts can be set aside by the EPA administrator. And while it is true that subsequent to exhausting their resources within this rigged process, defendants can appeal to the real court system, the EPA process itself can take years, during which defendants’ property can remain confiscated, their liberty endangered, and their credit and businesses wrecked. As a result, most prefer to settle and submit. _Bob Zubrin

Other bureaucracies of the US government also have their own "administrative courts" which are rigged in favour of the prosecution and against US citizens. But whereas other bureaucratic courts may unfairly injure civilians singly, by family, and small business, the EPA courts destroy economic opportunity across wide swaths of the American landscape.

In carrying out these vendettas, the EPA has acted without any sense of justice or environmental concern. For example, companies that chose to pay a certified waste-disposal firm to dispose of a small amount of waste for them in a certified manner have found themselves hit with huge fines when the EPA decided to reclassify the disposal area as a Superfund site and, regardless of how tiny was the firm’s contribution to the waste collection there, chose to penalize the company with the entire cost of the dump cleanup....

...The outrageous behavior, threats to liberty, and devastating harm to prosperity done by the EPA are so vast and varied that they cannot be adequately covered in an article of this length. To even get a handle on the problem, a book­length treatment is required. Fortunately, several are available.... _Bob Zubrin

Sources for further research on the US EPA and its damaging effects on the US economy and US liberty, can be found at end of the article linked above.

The shocking thing about Obama's EPA is that the destructive impact it is having is precisely the effect that Obama wanted to see. He promised to bankrupt coal companies, and seems to have always intended to shut down other fossil fuel industries as it became possible.

With all the problems being experienced by the US government under this president, you might think that he would have no chance to be re-elected. But with almost all of the US mass media willing to go to the wall to defend Obama -- and to attack anyone who criticizes their empty stool -- Obama receives a 15% to 20% handicap from the outset.

While the 2008 US election was a "make or break" election, the presidential candidate facing Obama was particularly weak, and the US voting public was never given a chance to see what kind of president Obama might be. In 2012, the opposition to Obama is stronger, and anyone who has a non-flatline EEG should have wised up to Obama and his regressive regime.

If Obama wins a second term, he will have no reason to hold back his EPA any longer. The islands of economic prosperity that have occurred across the US due to oil & gas fracking are likely to be submerged under a tsunami of Obama attacks -- via his EPA attack dogs.

And then, you might want to find a good, dry, warm, well-lighted place to hunker down.

Obama Takes His Wrecking Ball to US Science & Technology

Since its founding, the US has been a fertile ground for scientific and technological innovation. Increasingly over the past century and a half, the US economy has been driven by scientific and technological discoveries and advances. Still, it would be quite easy for bad government policies to change all of that.

Science and technology are male-dominated areas in the US and in virtually any other nation in the world. There is a good reason for the male preponderance in math, the hard sciences, and the technological occupations. But US feminists are unhappy about this "gender imbalance," and they want President Obama to do something about it.

Quotas limiting the number of male students in science may be imposed by the Education Department in 2013. The White House has promised that “new guidelines will also be issued to grant-receiving universities and colleges” spelling out “Title IX rules in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.” These guidelines will likely echo existing Title IX guidelines that restrict men’s percentage of intercollegiate athletes to their percentage in overall student bodies, thus reducing the overall number of intercollegiate athletes.

Obama hinted that Title IX quotas would soon come to engineering and techology, saying that “Title IX isn’t just about sports,” but also about “inequality in math and science education” and “a much broader range of fields, including engineering and technology. _OpenMarket

In American universities, science, math, and technology departments are relatively free of the leftist indoctrination which pervades most other departments and divisions of modern universities. If feminists can get their man Obama to bring those recalcitrant and untamed departments under control, they will have a virtual lock on all areas of the university -- faculty, staff, and students.

The fact that fewer women than men major in science and engineering is the result of their own voluntary choices, not sexism or sex discrimination by schools, notes researcher John Rosenberg, the proud father of a daughter who got a Ph.D. from CalTech. My daughter is bright, and I’d be happy if she got a graduate degree in engineering (or became a physicist, like her grandfather), but I can’t force her to do that if she doesn’t want to, and a college shouldn’t be deemed liable for sex discrimination against women if women like her don’t want to study engineering.

Gender disparities in a major are not the product of sexism, but rather the differing preferences of men and women. The fact that engineering departments are filled mostly with men does not mean they discriminate against women anymore than the fact that English departments are filled mostly with women proves that English departments discriminate against men. The arts and humanities have well over 60 percent female students, yet no one seems to view that gender disparity as a sign of sexism against men. Deep down, the Obama administration knows this, since it is planning to impose its gender-proportionality rules only on the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), not other fields that have similarly large gender disparities in the opposite direction. _OpenMarket

Such an overwhelming difference in interests between the sexes, statistically, hints at deeper differences within the biology. Social engineers would be wise to show caution when tinkering with deep biological differences which have evolved over many millions of years.

As Susan Pinker notes, “A mountain of published research stretching back a hundred years shows that women are far more likely than men to be deeply interested in organic subjects—people, plants and animals—than they are to be interested in things and inanimate systems, such as electrical engineering, or computer systems.”

Women are well-represented in scientific fields that involve lots of interaction with people. As The New York Times’ John Tierney noted, “Despite supposed obstacles like “unconscious bias” and a shortage of role models and mentors, women now constitute about half of medical students, 60 percent of biology majors, and 70 percent of psychology Ph.D.’s. They earn the majority of doctorates in both the life sciences and the social sciences.” By contrast, “They remain a minority in the physical sciences and engineering,” which deal more with inanimate objects rather than people.

These gender-based differences are not the product of discrimination, and manifest themselves at a very early age. As a book on the biology of male-female differences notes, “Girl babies in their cribs are especially inclined to stare at images of human faces, whereas infant boys are likely to find inanimate objects every bit as attractive”; “this difference persists into adulthood: when shown images of people as well as things, men tend to remember the things, and women tend to remember the people.” _OpenMarket

Obama intends to enlarge upon his already catastrophic program of experimental social engineering, using US citizens, businesses, and institutions as his experimental mice.

It would be nice if these experimental mice were well informed about Obama's intentions prior to the November US elections.

And You Thought There Was No Such Thing as Zombies!

We live in a time when zombies walk the Earth. This breed of zombie is proud of its lack of knowledge and its inability to think through complex issues. Simplifying the problems of societies to just a few emotion-laden slogans is the most that these addle-brained zombies can handle.

This zombie movement is spurred by a global economic recession without apparent end. And the zombie contagion is spreading...

Thousands of people across the world railed against corporate power, grinding poverty and government cuts Saturday as the Occupy Wall Street movement spread to the streets of Europe, Asia and Australia -- and took a particularly violent turn in Rome....

...Police said hundreds of anarchists in Rome moved in where peaceful demonstrators had gathered as part of the global Occupy movement. The anarchists -- some wearing ski masks and belonging to a group termed "Black Bloc" -- torched cars, broke windows and clashed with police.

...In London, protester Peter Vaughn, reflecting the mood of many in the crowd there, said people criticized financial institutions that have "gambled away our money."

...Europeans turned out amid debt troubles and austerity plans in Greece, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Germany.

United for Global Change -- the central site for the movement organizing worldwide protests -- said 951 cities in 82 countries were to take part in the demonstrations after online organizers called for a worldwide rally.

...Around the world, protesters marched, listened to speeches, and displayed banners reading anti-corporate slogans, including the now ubiquitous "we are the 99%," "Banks are cancer" and tax the rich 1%."

...Canadians turned out in Toronto, with placards jutting up from a crowd saying "Arrest the 1%" and "Stop ignoring the youth, we are your tomorrow." A sign on a dog said "99% against (corporate) fat cats."

...Australian cities of Melbourne and Sydney joined rallies against "corporate greed" as protesters aligned themselves with the global movement.

...The worldwide movement is galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement started last month as a backlash against the economy and what demonstrators say is an out-of-touch corporate, financial and political elite.

Occupy Wall Street organizers say they are inspired by the Arab Spring that led to the toppling of regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. _CNN

Similar worldwide zombie movements have led to bombings in New York, London, Madrid, Bali, Israel, and across the zombie lands from the near east to the far east. Zombies are single-minded in their hunger and violent compulsions. Whether obsessed with global warming and peak oil, the "greed of the 1%", doomsday comets, or the need to spread Islam to every nation, zombies have one-track minds. Should these different breeds of zombies somehow join together for just a short time into a truly global movement, the resulting devastation could be the tipping point into the Idiocracy.

It is not so far from the obsessive-compulsive "occupy zombies" or the "islamosupremacist zombies" to the blood-thirsty zombies of legend and lore. Once societies let slip the autophagic forces of zombiehood, the fragile bonds that tie a society together are also "let slip."

Previously posted at abu al-fin

Debt and Demography: A Deadly Double Dose

Mish
Interest on the US national debt is scheduled to explode wildly out of control, faster than entitlements, faster than any other government expenditure. And yet the US government cannot bring itself to stop its suicidally profligate deficit spending, adding over US$1 trillion a year to the debt!.

This is clearly a global problem, not just a US problem. As the economic foundations of the world's military hegemon and economic powerhouse crumble under an overload of debt and collapsing demographics, the rest of the world is going to feel the pain as well. Just as US baby boomers can find no one to buy their accumulated lifetime wealth, so the US government is finding it harder to find buyers for its accumulating debt.

Across the advanced economies, demographics are collapsing. And the US is not even on the list of the 17 countries with the fastest-collapsing demographics. The deadly combination of exponentially rising debt on top of a quickly collapsing demographic, becomes irreversible after a certain point. But in order for welfare states to maintain their bloated social benefit spending schedules, they must go deeply into debt -- just at the time that their productive workers are disappearing in time.

At the state government level of the US, reality is slowly and spottily sinking into the minds of those who are tasked with keeping the pensions and benefits solvent. But the blowback from leftist government unions, communtiy organisers, and other leftist special interest groups is severe and verging on open violence. In Europe the leftist backlash against proposed austerity programs -- even very modest and minimal plans -- is likewise bordering on open insurrection.

Obama has a plan for a fundamentally different America. We know that Obama has a plan -- he must have a plan! But we cannot decrypt the US President's plan from his words or even his actions. We may have to wait a hundred years, and look back in time at what we can learn about Mr. Obama's plans, to finally understand.

Al Fin has been suggesting that readers should buy precious metals, acquire the capacity to grow their own food, develop the means to defend yourself, your loved ones, and your possessions, and more -- for years now. Some readers may still wonder what he is getting at....

Descent of Africa Tests the Honesty of the Politically Correct

There was a great global rejoicing over the death of the apartheid regime of South Africa, and the coming of majority rule in 1994. Media analysts -- regardless of political persuasion -- were genuinely ecstatic over the rise of democratic self-governance in South Africa, and expected great things from Africa's richest nation, after apartheid.

But something happened along the road to paradise for South Africa. Things got worse for everyone except the few corrupt insiders within the ANC. Crime, corruption, disease, poverty, human misery, all much worse -- and worsening with time, just as in Zimbabwe under Mugabe. But if you try to get a leftist's honest opinion about the ongoing descent of South Africa, you may find the going a bit rocky, to say the least.

The central problem of writing about South Africa is that it is almost impossible to explain the country's slow-motion catastrophe in terms that make sense to foreigners... All power concentrated in the hands of an over-mighty President who attempts to prolong his rule. The decay of infrastructure through poor maintenance alongside a pronounced taste for prestige expenditures. Power cuts for the people, the arrogance of power for the elite and an ever-growing chasm of inequality between...

...When Mugabe took power in 1980, Zimbabwe [formerly Rhodesia -- ed.] was regarded as one of Africa's jewels, a country with good infrastructure, deep soil, and a thriving agricultural sector, whose exports were the country's largest sources of foreign earnings....Mugabe turned nasty, organizing mobs to drive white farmers off their land—a move intended to restore the dictator's popularity with the masses. Instead, it destroyed the country's banking system, which in turn led to soaring inflation and generalized economic collapse. With most of his subjects facing starvation, Mugabe and his generals resorted to naked repression.

...As for Mbeki, the godfather of the African Renaissance backed Mugabe from the outset, shielding him against condemnatory United Nations and Commonwealth resolutions and blocking the Human Rights Commission's attempts to investigate his atrocities. South Africans were told that Mbeki was working behind the scenes to prevent Zimbabwe's implosion, but the country imploded anyway, driving millions of refugees into South Africa, where they sat on street corners, attempting to exchange worthless billion-dollar Zimbabwe banknotes for bread crusts. Zimbabwe's implosion had become part of our implosion, and still Mbeki remained silent

...Elsewhere, we have FAILED BILLION-DOLLAR EDUCATION PROGRAM; WHISTLE-BLOWER MURDERED; WIFE OF NIA CHIEF ON TRIAL FOR SMUGGLING COCAINE, the NIA being our CIA. And finally, the story of the hour: The National Prosecuting Authority has abandoned its investigation into the whereabouts of $130 million in bribes generated by South Africa's notorious 1990s arms deal.

In the West, scandals of this magnitude would topple governments. Here, they are almost meaningless. Most will never be pursued or resolved satisfactorily. The electorate will not stand up and scream, "Enough!" In many cases, the alleged culprits won't even be investigated, and the incompetent bureaucrats who presided over the education fiasco will not be fired. In a week or two, these stories will be blown off the front pages by equally hair-raising scandals, most of which will also just fade away. It's been like this for years, and there comes a time when you stop paying attention lest the drumbeat of bad news drive you mad. _BookForum

NationsOnline
Africa was colonised by several foreign powers, whose nation-building badly disrupted the tribal and language infrastructure which had existed in pre-colonial times. But then, when maintaining their colonies proved too much for European powers after WWII, their African possessions were "dispossessed" and left largely to fend for themselves.

But oddly, Africa did not rise out of poverty like Japan and Germany had done -- after World War II, or like South Korea did after the Korean War, or like China did after it rejected Maoism in favour of a more pro-business economic environment. No, Africa went downhill after de-colonisation, rather than upward.

Yes, you will see numbers claiming that certain African nations are growing economically, and certain to rise from poverty "any day now." But if you look more closely, you will see that the oil and mineral dictatorships of Africa are selling natural resources to outsiders -- the leaders then stashing their profits in overseas bank accounts. Not the kind of prosperity a nation could actually build upon to benefit most of its citizens.

Corruption, disease, poverty, violent tribal and ideological conflict -- everything that was true of the rest of Africa except Rhodesia and South Africa, suddenly began becoming true for Zimbabwe and majority-rule South Africa. How does one explain this near-uniformity of poverty, hopelessness, disease, violence, and near absence of achievement across an entire sub-continent? If one is a leftist -- once euphoric over the emergence of majority rule in Zimbabwe and South Africa -- how does one explain the ongoing collapse of once-rich and once-proud nations?

If one is not a leftist, he might look at such things as "race, genes, and disparity." Such biologically-based factors involved in the study of evolutionary human biodiversity may correlate far better with the actual conditions on the ground, in Africa, than more abstract concepts which are far more popular with the leftists and proto-leftists of media, academia, popular culture, and most political organisations. But the modern intellectual world has little tolerance for demonstrable, evidence-based theories, if they contradict politically correct dogma.

And for at least that reason, one cannot truly hold an honest discussion about Africa with most leftists. Of course, many evidence-based theories contradict politically correct dogma, so Africa is not the only topic which is verboten, in terms of honest discussion.

Anyone who wants to make his way to the higher levels of achievement in the politically correct world, must needs adjust his crap detector to its lowest possible setting, so as to be able to tolerate the PC crap which passes for common wisdom among most pseudo-intellectuals in academia, media, culture, and politics.

Those of us who are unable to make such adjustments will just have to create something better on our own.

Vitriolic Language from Left Meant to Instigate Civil War?

It is difficult to understand the deluge of vitriol and hatred pouring out of US leftist media outlets, lefty blogs, and US Democratic Party politicians following the tragic killings and woundings which occurred in Tucson last week. Much of the outrageous language appears geared to trigger a stereotypical rage in the reader. It is as if these "leaders" and "journalists" want to instigate the very type of violence which they are pretending to decry.

During the George W. Bush presidency journalists, celebrities, opposition politicians, bloggers, and leftists of all stripes used incendiary language in discussing the idea that the president or vice president might (hopefully in their minds) be assassinated. Many of the very same "indignant leftists" who are opportunistically raising the threat of violence, were busy joking and talking about the possible assassinations of Bush and Cheney. The American left is a sick and putric cesspool of hatred, and has been for decades now.

In a sensitive and incisively worded video, Sarah Palin responds to the cynical and engineered outcry from the left. Predictably, the leftists -- caught in their contemptible misbehaviour and abuse of public trust -- are reacting to the video with howls of stiffly postured indignation.

Sarah Palin: "America's Enduring Strength" from Sarah Palin on Vimeo.

Palin's use of the term "blood libel" has proven particularly controversial, although it is quite understated in the way it was used in the video. Indeed, considering how Palin herself has been treated by the left, her tone on the video and elsewhere in public and professional life has been quite temperate.

Leftists have been poised for any possible incident which they could use for purposes of stirring up their lunatic fringe. Unfortunately, they jumped the gun on the Tucson tragedy, before any facts were in. And now they are committed to following it through to the bitter end.

Palin's video appears to be professionally produced, and was released in a very timely manner -- just before President Obama's trip to Tucson. The former governor's incisive video, along with the term "blood libel", appears to have forced the unhinged echo chorus on the left to "double down" on their public idiocy.

We can only hope that the Tucson wounded will recover as fully as possible, and that the family and friends of those who died will somehow find a positive meaning in their loss.

But on the political front, the insanity from the left appears to be deepening and broadening in a most astounding and sickening manner.

H/T News Alert

Obama Election Spells Big Trouble for US Jobs

The fact that Obama is not in office yet is irrelevant. Businesses must see "around the corner" and plan accordingly. Rightly or wrongly, business owners see a huge anti-business shift in motion and they are making preparations NOW. _AmThinker

Atlas is shrugging all across America. Jobs numbers are way down, and likely to dive even further unless the incoming Obama / Pelosi government begins making big concessions to business owners in a very public way. Continuing to spout leftist gibberish this long after the election is a certain sign of mental deficiency in the new government. It is almost as if they do not understand what makes the modern world work.

[Leftists] seem to be clueless as to where "the money" comes from. They love to tax, regulate and redistribute wealth -- all the while decrying the very profit motive that created it -- something they do not understand.

...It is no secret that owners circulated endless emails leading up to election day discussing lay off plans were Obama to win. Entrepreneurs instinctively understand the danger posed by larger liberal majorities in power. The risk-reward equation and fierce independence spirit of start up businesses are anathema to the class warfare, equality of outcome and spread the wealth mentality of the left.

We have very little appetite to have our lives run by elected or un-elected officials like Barney Frank and Jamie Gorelick. We have no appetite to be taxed even more by the likes of Charlie Rangel. These clowns destroyed Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and our entire economy as a result. Congress, by their own admission, cannot even run their own damned dining room with a captive customer base! Some of them refuse to pay their own tax burden. Why in the world would we subject ourselves to their ilk armed with the unchecked powers of the Oval Office and both houses of congress and a massive army of bureaucrats?

We got into business to be independent. We will get out for the same reason. _AmThinker_via_Instapundit

Al Fin's biggest problem with the new Obama / Pelosi government is its incredibly naive and destructive attitudes toward energy, and its unwavering belief in carbon hysteria and the great climate hoax. But the abysmal ignorance of business and market economics so proudly displayed by Obama and his cronies is just as bad. If you throw in Obama's antagonism toward the US Constitution and its protection of citizens from arbitrary oppressiveness of government, you begin to understand why Al Fin has taken such a negative stance toward the narcissist-elect and his corrupt gang of thieves.

Obama's only hope is to repudiate the corruption, collectivism, and big government fascism that have been central to most of his life. Good luck with that.

Egalitarianism: An Ideological Fallacy?

egalitarianism

[From French egalite: equality.]

(politics) The view that equality is the most important societal (and even ethical) value. Egalitarians usually focus on equality of results, rather than equality of opportunity or equality before the law, which are ideas usually associated with classical liberalism or libertarianism. In practice, egalitarian policies usually focus on the equal distribution [ed: redistribution] of wealth, sometimes verging on socialism.
the ism book

The type of egalitarianism defined above is the basis for most counter-productive leftist social policies. As the curve above shows, the closer society tries to get to the leftist ideal of egalitarianism, the more it falls into the characteristic "traps" that bedevil all attempts to implement socialism on the scale of large populations--particularly those with heterogeneous populations such as the US, New Zealand, and Australia.

The likelihood that different population groups can be characterized by different "Bell Curves of natural ability" makes it particularly difficult to achieve an ideal "Gini-curve" placement of a heterogeneous society, while simultaneously avoiding the traps above.

Ideological leftists tend to deny all scientifically measurable differences between population intellectual aptitudes. Physical aptitude differences between populations appear beyond dispute, and are generally ignored by egalitarian theorists and acolytes. But where population differences in physical aptitudes and characteristics exist, it is not unreasonable to also expect population differences in mental and intellectual (as well as emotional) characteristics and aptitudes.The blogger Half Sigma looks at an interesting way to study possible genetic contributors to IQ differences between populations:

There exists a publicly available gene database, The HapMap Project, that contains random samples of genetic sequences from people in China, Japan, Nigeria, and people in the United States with European ancestry. It’s now possible to search the HapMap database for genes that have been linked with intelligence in published scientific studies. In this manner, we can determine if high intelligence genes occur with greater or lesser frequency in the various races.

Now, here’s an interesting point. If even a single gene correlated with intelligence occurs with different frequencies in the different races, this alone proves that there are racial differences in intelligence. How is that? Well, the egalitarian theory holds that every race has identical intelligence. Therefore, whatever genes there are that affect intelligence, they must be distributed exactly equally in all human races. Once even a small race difference is proven, the egalitarian theory is proven false. At that point, it’s only a matter of determining which race has the higher average intelligence based on the genetic evidence.

Half Sigma

Of course it is really far too early to use the HapMap for a definitive demonstration of population genetic differences that may lead to IQ differences in populations. Only a few of the genes that contribute to IQ have been found, and far too few genomes have been sampled to provide representative comparisons of populations. Even so, the idea is promising, and within the next decade should begin providing results that go beyond twins studies, IQ test studies of schoolchildren, adoptees, and military members, and other methods currently used to compare population IQs.

True genomic and hapmap studies of population IQ and aptitude differences lie in the future. But they will be done, and there is no use for ideologues to attempt to stop them. And whether the race bigots and lobotomised ideologues like it or not some of the findings that emerge will make them all unhappy.

It is quite easy to get caught up in lazy arguments on this (and most any complex controversial) argument. One one extreme you find bitter and bigoted people with their minds made up, and on the other extreme you find people completely disassociated from reality with their minds made up. Anyone who uses either racially charged language, or ideologically charged language should not be trusted here. Their biases are already showing, even before touching on the substance.

Eventually the laws that force society into regressive, leftward positions on the Gini Curve will have to be changed. Reality, rather than ideology, will have to guide society into the future.



Among the blogs that follow these issues, GNXP, Audacious Epigone, and ISteve are among the best.

Academic Monkeys Defend Their Turf

Nothing is funnier than sinecured monkeys defending their turf. Greg Mankiw comments on Larry Summers' observations about the lack of ideological diversity on campus.

Question to think about: If right-wingers are underrepresented in universities relative to the population and discriminated against by the left-wing majority, as Larry suggests, should there be affirmative action for right-leaning academics? It seems that, on principle, those on the left (who favor affirmative action to promote diversity and correct past injustice) should endorse such a university policy, and those on the right (who more often oppose affirmative action) would be against.

Source

I am against affirmative action discrimination whether in hires, school admissions, government contracts, or whatever, and I am a libertarian leaning independent. But Greg is wrong about leftists. They are militantly against any process or procedure that would force them to release their monkey's grip on any peanut of power whatsoever. If you do not believe me, go and read the comments here.

The comments illustrate a point I have made many times: if students do not grow up with experience dealing with diverse ideologies and points of view, they become incompetent parrots repeating a single tedious point of view. Larger numbers of university graduates are becoming incompetent to argue simple points, beyond repeating rote phrases. This is disheartening to anyone who was hoping to see education raising the general state of thinking in the western world.

Rather than calling for affirmative action for conservative and libertarian professors, simply requiring that academic hires and tenure be based upon merit rather than good old boy and girl insiderism, would probably be sufficient.

Political Orientation of Faculty Members — 7 Categories

• Extremely liberal 9.4%
• Liberal 34.7%
• Slightly liberal 18.1%
• Middle of the road 18.0%
• Slightly conservative 10.5%
• Conservative 8.0%
• Very conservative 1.2%

But there is hope for the future in this table:

Percentage of Faculty Members, by Age, Identifying as Left Radicals or Activists

Age	Left Radicals	Left Activists
26-35	3.8%	1.3%
36-49	9.9%	11.5%
50-64	14.3%	17.2%

from The Social and Political Views of American Professors

The dying out of the extremists may eventually allow more thoughtful and inclusive hiring to take place. Students who go directly from their parents authority to today's campuses will need time to find themselves. They do not need to be pressed into autocratic classrooms presenting carbon-copy talking points regardless of the professor.

Idiocracy and Political Correctness--Reign of Error

The movie Idiocracy is a satire, portraying a dysgenic decline into societal idiocy occurring (euphemistically) a few hundred years in the future. The movie is now out on DVD, and movie critic Steve Sailer shares a few thoughts on why Fox decided to spike what could have been a successful film.

Idiocracy on DVD: I've seen it three times now and my wife has watched it four times. If Fox had promoted "Idiocracy" the way they promoted "Borat," courting controversy, they would have had a near-"Borat"-sized hit.

Unfortunately, when watching it at home on DVD, you miss experiencing the horrifying Charlton-Heston-and-the-Statue-of-Liberty moment when "Idiocracy" is over and you emerge from the theatre into the mall full of shiny logos and sniggering pedestrians and you realize that reality today looks just like 2505 does in the movie.

Source.

Of course in the current climate of politically correct censorship, any profitable franchise has to beware of PC motivated prosecution (Duke U. Lacrosse?). This is particularly true now with PC devotees such as Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer exerting such strong political force in the US currently.

How can a society descend into the stupidity portrayed so satirically in Idiocracy? Political correctness is an excellent start. By telling yourself that red is green, and two is five, you are well on the way to a voluntary pre-frontal leukotomy. Re-defining words with nonsense definitions works well in academia and the media.

DIVERSE (adj.)- Having a significant percentage of people who are not of European descent and/or are not heterosexual. Ex- "This party is very diverse!" trans. "This party has a relatively large proportion of black skinned, Muslim, Hispanic, east Asian, and/or gay people". Note that 'diverse' usually does not apply to gender. A party with an equal amount of Irish men and women is not diverse. Cf. leftspeak 'Diversity', where gender is considered.

DIVERSITY (n.)- A skin-color based quota. Sometimes expanded to include gender and/or sexual orientation. Ex- "Solomon Smith Barney is committed to diversity in the workplace" trans. "Solomon Smith Barney uses a skin color based quota when hiring new applicants". Ex- "This college lacks gender diversity" trans. "This college has too many men and thus requires a quota to admit more women".
.....
FREE SPEECH (n.) a/k/a 'Freedom of Speech'- 1. Expression that agrees with and/or promotes left-wing dogma in public, whether through public speaking, music, movies, television, or in the news media. Ex- "We applaud Michael Moore for his commitment to Free Speech, but we find Mel Gibson's hateful movies to be offensive"; 2. Expression that is carefully crafted as to not offend non-Christians or anyone who is of non-European descent. Ex- "Art featuring dog poo smeared on the Virgin Mary is valuable free speech. A cartoon drawing of Muhammed is just plain hate speech". Ant. Leftspeak 'Hate Speech'.
.....
HATE SPEECH (n.)- 1. Expression that disagrees with and/or challenges left-wing dogma. Ex- "Ann Coulter's book should be banned because we should not allow people to profit off of hate speech in New Jersey"; 2. Speech that could offend non-Christians or anyone of non-European descent. Ant. Leftspeak 'Free Speech'. See also: Leftspeak 'Hateful' (adj.)
....
MULTICULTURAL (adj.)- Multiracial. Leftspeak often confuses the concepts of 'culture' and 'race'. Not to be confused with the mod. Eng. 'multicultural', literally meaning "of many cultures". Syn. Leftspeak 'Diverse'.

MULTICULTURALISM (n.)- 1. The ideology that any person, place, thing, or concept related to the Western tradition is inferior to any person, place, thing, or concept related to any non-Western tradition; 2. The systematic subversion of Western Culture and Civilization though the media, schools, and the university system.

PROGRESSIVE (n., adj.)- 1. A Marxist, communist, or socialist (n.); 2. Inspired by Marxism, communism, or socialism (adj.) Syn. Leftspeak 'Liberal'. When the word 'liberal' began to become to closely connected with Marxism and socialism (and thus became unpopular among the public) during the late 1980s and 1990s, many 'liberals' abandoned that label in favor of 'progressive', which derives from the English word 'Progress', meaning to forge ahead. Cf. mod. Eng. 'Regress' (v.), meaning to go back or revert to an old form or way- perhaps a more apt description.

Source.

If one looked at the overall policy aims of leftists in academia, the media, and in political circles, one would almost suspect they had a backhanded genocide in mind. There is plenty of support for that suspicion in public view. But for now, let us just say that they are helping to bring about an Idiocracy.

Brainwashing, Consciousness-Raising, and Cult Indoctrination

"Brainwashing" came to be recognized as a term around 1950, in Mao's attempts to transform revolutionary China. The term came into use in the western world in the USA during the Korean War of the 1950s, when it became known that the Chinese communists were using brainwashing techniques on western prisoners of war.

What is brainwashing?

In the late 1950s, psychologist Robert Jay Lifton studied former prisoners of Korean and Chinese war camps. He determined that they'd undergone a multistep process that began with attacks on the prisoner's sense of self and ended with what appeared to be a change in beliefs. Lifton ultimately defined a set of steps involved in the brainwashing cases he studied:

1. Assault on identity
2. Guilt
3. Self-betrayal
4. Breaking point
5. Leniency
6. Compulsion to confess
7. Channeling of guilt
8. Releasing of guilt
9. Progress and harmony
10. Final confession and rebirth

Each of these stages takes place in an environment of isolation, meaning all "normal" social reference points are unavailable, and mind-clouding techniques like sleep deprivation and malnutrition are typically part of the process. There is often the presence or constant threat of physical harm, which adds to the target's difficulty in thinking critically and independently.

Source.

These methods should be familiar to anyone who has experienced indoctrination into a cult, or the political indoctrination known as "consciousness raising." Consciousness raising is a method of "programming" a person into an extremist philosophy--and is common practise in many leftist and nazi-type organisations. In fact the original method of programming for radical feminists was consciousness raising. It is important to separate the individual from her previous "program", in order to program her into the new ideology.

Our study groups were radicalizing our own consciousness and it suddenly became apparent that women could be doing on a mass scale what we were doing in our own group, that the next logical radical action would be to get the word out about what we were doing. This kind of study would be part of what was necessary to achieve the liberation of women on a mass scale. Source.

Cult indoctrination and indoctrination in muslim extremism follows much the same form as the other types of brainwashing.

* Breaking sessions: that pressure a person until they crack.
* Changing values: to change what is right and wrong.
* Confession: to leave behind the undesirable past.
* Entrancement: open the mind and limit rational reflection.
* Engagement: that draws a person in.
* Exhaustion: so they are less able to resist persuasion.
* Guilt: about the past that they can leave behind.
* Higher purpose: associate desirability with a higher purpose.
* Identity destruction: to make space for the new identity.
* Information control: that blocks out dissuading thoughts.
* Incremental conversion: shifting the person one step at a time.
* Isolation: separating people from dissuasive messages.
* Love Bomb: to hook in the lonely and vulnerable.
* Persistence: never giving up, wearing you down.
* Special language: that offers the allure of power and new meaning.
* Thought-stopping: block out distracting or dissuading thoughts.

Source.
Anyone reading the above list of characteristics of "conversion techniques" will notice similarities between cult techniques, political ideological techniques, and techniques used against prisoners of war in the Korean and Vietnamese wars.
The sad truth is, in leftist dominated universities in the western world, as in muslim and extreme fundamentalist religious schools, such "consciousness raising" types of brainwashing are routinely used in many classes given by women's studies, ethnic studies, political science, and many other departments where political and religious indoctrination is considered more important than preparing the students to be fit to meet the future.

Communists Only Killed 100 Million, But They're Not Finished Yet

In The Black Book of Communism, we learn from leftist scholars about the brutal crimes of the heirs of Marx and Engels. We learn about the vile murderous crimes of ideologues and their minions. Communists have minds for murder, and murder is what they do. Whether this follows naturally from the ideology of Marx, or whether Marx has simply been perverted--time, after time, after time, after time--well, let it simply be a matter of judgment.

Communism is not finished, because there will always be stupid people in the world who cannot learn from history. Islamism is making an effort to be the mass killer of the 21st century, to rival what communism did in the 20th. But again, communism is not finished yet.

Communists made a mess of every country they have gotten their bloody grip on. From the USSR, to the bloodied pulp of eastern europe, to Mao's China, to Pol Pot's Cambodia, Ho's Vietnam, Castro's Cuba, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, Chavez' Venezuela, Ortega's Nicaragua--all turned to bloody ruin. China's reform movement, to the extent that it negates communist/marxist dogma, may neutralize the worst effects of the mindless doctrine temporarily.

Marx was clearly a fool, and anyone who still bothers to study Marx is unwittingly the worse fool for that. Yet we know that university faculties are populated by legions of unimaginative conformists who never had to face opposition to their inbred philosophies. Thus Marx still prospers within the ranks of insular drone minds that populate the social science departments of universities. Journalists are another breed that are unintelligent enough to take marxist ideas seriously.

These professorial circle jerkers never look to the real world to see the results of their malbred deformity. They pretend as if the utter failures of their ideas, and the cost of hundreds of millions of lives--when the total cost is computed--never happened. To the extent that philosophy departments have been taken over by post-modernist morons and marxist die-hards, philosophy is dead. Fortunately, there are five other branches of cognitive science that are growing strong enough to carry the load without missing the lagging sixth.