Category: ideological culture

Categories
folly ideological culture national politics & policies Popular

Skepticism in Order

denier, climate change, globlal warming, skepticism, science

It is not a question of “belief,” says Anastasios Tsonis. 

In “The overblown and misleading issue of global warming,” this emeritus distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee explains that in a “scientific problem ‘believing’ has no place,” going on to clarify: 

“In science, we either prove or disprove.”

And regarding climate there is no “settled science.” Lacking unquestionable experimental context — “we have only one realization of climate evolution” — no matter how strong our opinions, skepticism is always in order.

But let us admit the obvious, the “global warming”/“climate change” debate has been frustrating for just about everybody. And much of this is the result of dogmatism.

“The fact that scientists who show results not aligned with the mainstream are labeled deniers is the backward mentality,” Tsonis insists. “We don’t live in the medieval times, when Galileo had to admit to something that he knew was wrong to save his life.”

He argues that our lack of knowledge means that we should be circumspect about whether humans have caused the bulk of recent climate change. “Climate is too complicated to attribute its variability to one cause. We first need to understand the natural climate variability” — which, he says, “we clearly don’t.” 

Tsonis concludes talking about problems more urgent than climate change. We can (and should) quibble with his list, but we should be open about our reasoning.

One reason for concentrating on these other issues is that we might be more likely to gain clarity on them.

And thus might be able to do something not foolish.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

denier, climate change, globlal warming, skepticism, science

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts


Categories
folly ideological culture

War Lust Flags

soldiers, foreign policy, war, peace, Syria, Afghanistan

A new poll shows that a narrow majority of Americans would support the President were he to pull troops out of Afghanistan. Less than a quarter of those polled said they would oppose it. 

“The survey also indicates Americans remain unconvinced that the United States has a clear purpose in Afghanistan,” explains the January 10 press release of the Charles Koch Institute, which commissioned the poll. “Almost half of respondents, 45 percent, said the United States has no strategic objective, while only 21 percent said it does. About one-third (34 percent) said they did not know.”

However you slice the public opinion data, the wars in the Mid-East are not gaining in popularity. A plurality of Americans polled want out of Syria, too — no matter “whether the conflict was framed around the Syrian civil war or to counter-ISIS.”

Lucy Steigerwald, writing at Reason, highlights the incoherence in the White House and Pentagon: “no one seems to know what the hell is going on.” Which just shows how far we have come, after all these years. “The long life of the Afghan war makes it hard to remember how popular it was when it began.”

But back then it all seemed so clear: get Osama bin Laden, destroy his training camps, and punish the Taliban for harboring him.

All that was accomplished long ago. Now our leaders fear pulling out because . . . we haven’t established a western democracy there?

That was never going to happen.

It is foolish — even immoral — to keep a war going with impossible and incoherent goals.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

soldiers, foreign policy, war, peace, Syria, Afghanistan
Categories
ideological culture too much government

Worse Than Her Faux Pas

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress,” stumbled U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-N.Y.), “uh, rather, all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate, and the House. . . .”

The Daily Wire, where I encountered this particular snippet of inanity, could be caught gloating between her lines. And it is funny (amidst the fear) when politicians prove themselves ignorant, clueless, unprepared. Politicians rarely come across as masters of their subject.

But we who are subjected to their lack of mastery should worry about their substantive flubs more than their trivial technical errors.

As the newly elected solon herself had the wit to notice.

“Maybe instead of Republicans drooling over every minute of footage of me in slow-mo, waiting to chop up word slips that I correct in real-tomd [sic],” she went on, “they actually step up enough to make the argument they want to make: that they don’t believe people deserve a right to healthcare.”

I am not a Republican, but I’m here to help. The only rights we “deserve” are those we can have without enslaving and exploiting others. My right to freedom requires only your duty to leave me alone, not systematically taking from others or running their lives. But a right to “healthcare”? The corresponding duties are vague and ominous, potentially limitless.

And thus oppressive. 

A government big enough to give Ocasio-Cortez everything she wants is too big to leave any freedom for the rest of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts


Categories
education and schooling ideological culture

Administrators Strike Back

Peter Boghossian, Portland, postmodernism, academic research, education

The academic world is filled with “scholars” who write papers that are almost never cited, and which are so filled with gobbledygook and periphrasis that they are almost impossible to read.

Without cracking up, anyway.

A year and a half ago I wrote about one team who authored fake papers to show up postmodernist academics for the phonies they are. But the sad truth is that even serious papers prove to be nothing more than “cryptic, pretentious, prolix nonsense.” 

Since then, the team that wrote the infamous “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” went on to successfully place some incredibly goofy papers into prestigious journals — and even garner earnest praise from peer reviewers.

Now, the humiliated academic world is striking back. One of the japers, Professor Peter Boghossian of Portland State University, is facing academic censure and misconduct charges.

“This strikes me (and every colleague I’ve spoken with) as an attempt to weaponize an important [principle] of academic ethics in order to punish a scholar for expressing an unpopular opinion,” wrote Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, entreating PSU not to persecute their philosopher. Biologist Richard Dawkins and psychologist Jordan Peterson joined Pinker in support of the rogue-but-reasonable academic.

PSU administrators say that Boghossian, by trying to trick academic journals into publishing fake studies, has violated Institutional Review Board protocols. You see, he did not seek approval to carry out experiments on human subjects!

The thing is, the whole post-structuralist, post-modernist, “‘Studies’ studies” mob has been experimenting on their alleged clients, the students, for decades. And the results have been . . . enlightening if not praiseworthy.

It is hard to see Boghossian’s antics as anything but heroic.

And hysterical.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Peter Boghossian, Portland, postmodernism, academic research, education


Categories
Common Sense First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

Ideas, Online and Ongoing … with Help

Benjamin Franklin, We must all hang together, quote

In recent years there has been a great burgeoning of public debate about ideas. Politics. Ethics. UFOs. You name it.

This “burgeoning” has mostly taken place online.

Some people are so good at it that they have made their whole livings at it, parlaying advertisements and donations into successful careers.

But this has not gone unnoticed.

They are under attack.

A cabal of highly connected financial and Internet platform professionals have coordinated their attention against Alex Jones, “Sargon of Akkad,” and others. Patreon is the latest to get involved, having ousted Lauren Southern off the company’s donation intermediary service, and now the aforementioned Sargon (Carl Benjamin, an Englishman). And behind all this there lurks the shadowy decisions and machinations of PayPal and Mastercard.

I have covered some of this in the past, here at Common Sense. But too much of it has passed by, as if in my peripheral vision. I know these de-platformings have taken place, however, and am somewhat alarmed. 

Not for myself, so much, as my main gig is political activism: helping citizens place ballot measures before voters through Liberty Initiative Fund and protecting the ballot initiative process with Citizens in Charge Foundation. Common Sense was not conceived to be a profit center, but a herald, a communication platform.

Still, like everything, the program does cost money and must prove its worth. Which is why I cherish my many donors to Common Sense. Thank you. You really do help keep the Common Sense coming — after nearly 20 years!

Something big is brewing. In our culture. In our country. Across the globe. Free speech is under attack. Corruption is rampant at all levels of government. Socialism seems on the march. 

From assisting the police camera ballot measure that passed in Ferguson, Missouri, to last November’s ballot initiative on “citizen only voting” that prevailed in North Dakota, Liberty Initiative Fund knows that real change can better come from the grassroots and the ballot box than from the halls of Congress in Washington.

Those of us who cherish individual freedom must work together to change laws and policies. We have to hang together — or, as Ben Franklin reminded, “most assuredly we will all hang separately.” 

How long will we be able to speak out politically?

I do not know.

But here is something we do know for sure. It is the last day of the year. If you have been planning on making a charitable donation for the cause of limited and accountable government, freedom of speech and press and association, this site, “Common Sense with Paul Jacob,” gratefully accepts donations . . . and could not carry on without the help of “people like you.”

By which I mean patriots. Thoughtful people concerned about the future.

And donations to Common Sense are fully tax deductible!

Please help us in this important work. Support us with dollars if you can. And keep forwarding my daily commentary, telling friends, and taking a stand for FREEDOM.

This is Common Sense. Common effort is the key. Oh, and I’m Paul Jacob.


See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts


Categories
education and schooling ideological culture

Why Fire the Dean?

Dean Ellis, diversity, racism, quotas

Students and faculty at the University of Southern California are upset because a popular dean of the Marshall School of Business, James Ellis, has been fired by interim USC President Wanda Austin. Hundreds have rallied in protest and petitioned for his reinstatement.

Why the ouster? 

The administration has offered a vague indictment about “lack of diversity” and problematic handling of racial- and gender-bias complaints. There’s apparently a commissioned report, the Cooley report, about the complaints. But few have seen it.

 “Jim has not been allowed to see the Cooley report, despite repeated requests to do so by him, his legal counsel, a trustee, and me,” says donor and USC board member Lloyd Greif. “Nobody has seen it.” 

Greif argues that no complaint dealt with by Ellis’s office “alleged any egregious conduct, and none of them involved inappropriate behavior by Jim.”

Was old white male Ellis expelled for presiding over a too-little-diverse student body (and perhaps for being inadequately “diverse” himself), as determined by an arbitrary standard?

Without transparency or due process, who could know? 

But lack of any official accountability suggests some warped notion of “diversity justice” is being applied here, a notion that dismisses rational goals and relevant facts to focus only on whether the ethnic/gender/other-unchosen-trait makeup of a sub-population sufficiently mirrors that of the general population. 

If so, is this a standard that should be applied universally? 

No matter how you answer that question, note what is not being focused upon: providing a good education.

This is not Common Sense. 

I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Dean Ellis, diversity, racism, quotas, protest, blacklisting

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts


Categories
ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall

Who Rules the French?

yellow vests, jackets, France, protests, taxes, nationalism

The petition that Priscillia Ludosky posted on Change.org many weeks ago was labeled “For a Drop in Fuel Prices at the Pump!” Now more than a million people have signed it. 

“Taxation as a whole represents about two-thirds of the price of fuel,” the French activist informed.

Sparked by the tax hike, working people have joined massive weekend protests in Paris and throughout France — five weeks running— against the Macron government.

The Gilets Jaunes or “Yellow Vest” movement has already forced the removal of the fuel levies. While French President Emmanuel Macron’s approval rating has plummeted down into the low 20s, polls show support for the protesters by two out of three French citizens.

“[E]lected officials take advantage of power to become aristocrats of public money,” Ms. Ludosky told protesters via bullhorn last weekend.

This movement is about a lot more than the price of fuel. 

“The citizens’ initiative referendum,” noted France 24, an English language news channel, “now one of the main demands of Yellow Vest protesters in France. The RIC [Référendum Initiative Citoyenne] would in theory allow the people to propose a law, get rid of one, change the constitution or demand the resignation of an elected official.”

For the last ten years, France has had a national initiative and referendum process, but citizens are dependent on the support of legislators, none of whom have taken the initiative — pun intended.

“The idea is that once 700K people ask for it,” the report continued, “there would have to be a national referendum on the issue.”

An essential democratic check on power that the French — and all people — must have. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

yellow vests, jackets, France, protests, taxes, nationalism

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
ideological culture too much government

Fields of Schemes

stadium, pork, waste, spending

Hopes, wishes and cinematic sentiment are not a business plan.

A baseball stadium in Camden, New Jersey is being shut down three years after the team for which it was built has left town.

At the groundbreaking in 2000, then-Governor Christine Todd Whitman said she’d “heard the message from the movie Field of Dreams: ‘If you build it, they will come.’ Well, soon we will see a field of dreams right here in Camden, and my prediction is ‘they will come.’”

So it’s the movie’s fault?

Officials had hoped that crowds would steadily come to see the Camden Riversharks play ball, boosting the local economy and enabling repayment of the taxpayers’ “investment” of $18 million.

Didn’t work out.

The minor-league team threw in the towel in 2015 after missing several lease payments. The Camden government bought the property. They couldn’t find a successor team, so now the stadium is going. It will cost another million in taxpayer dollars just to tear it down.

Lesson learned? Er, no. Another taxpayer-funded development will replace the stadium.

Of course, private investors can also err when spending their own money. But they’re less likely to throw millions at projects with little prospect of profit. When their investments do fail, companies tend to cut their losses much faster than government officials who are ladling out other people’s money.

Unlike many government planners, private investors of private capital are also not eager to keep repeating their worst blunders.

Meanwhile, perhaps best of all, when private investors misjudge a project, non-investors lose nothing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

PDF for printing

 

» See popular posts from Common Sense with Paul Jacob HERE.

 

Categories
ideological culture term limits

Hating the Senate

House, Democrat, John Dingell

The longest-serving politician in Congress — ever — thinks he has the perfect reform to put American government back on track.

Former House Democrat John Dingell wants to abolish the Senate.

According to him, the United States should go unicameral.

The ancient bicameral tradition — which goes back to Sumer — is so old hat. He thinks that, these days, “in a nation of more than 325 million and 37 additional states, not only is that structure antiquated, it’s downright dangerous.”

Dangerous? Well, he has always hated the Senate. He sees it as a place where “good bills go to die.”

His new book explains this at length, but I confess: it would go against my principles to put any money into that man’s pocket by buying The Dean: The Best Seat in the House (2018). He almost personifies everything I’m against. His very career is an atrocity. In 1955, John Jr. took over the House seat from his father, a 22-year incumbent, and then six decades later, in 2015, basically bestowed it on his wife.

That’s 86 years and counting.

How many times did he swear to uphold the Constitution? And yet he doesn’t seem to understand that Article V, governing the amendment process, establishes one specific limitation: “no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.”

Jettisoning the U.S. Senate would seem to be such a deprivation.

The opposite of this Dingelldorf reform would be more in keeping with the spirit of our system: term limits.

To keep anything like a John Dingell Sixty-year Stretch from ever occurring again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

PDF for printing

 

Photo credit: University of Michigan

» See popular posts from Common Sense with Paul Jacob HERE.

 

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture Popular

Creeping Bernie-ism

Bernie Sanders, Walmart, Tucker Carlson, socialism

If you have been watching Tucker Carlson, recently, on Fox or in his bizarre interview with Ben Shapiro, you might have noticed something peculiar: the conservative newsman-commentator sometimes sounds awfully similar to Bernie Sanders.

Both think that if some of Amazon’s and Walmart’s employees are not paid “enough” to live without government assistance, that means the companies are being subsidized by taxpayers. 

Ryan Bourne finds this odd, too, judging it “peculiar” to suggest that, “when setting wages, a company employing low-skilled workers should ignore the value of the tasks the employee actually undertakes for them.”

It’s almost as if these guys haven’t thought it through.

“If Sanders is right that programs such as food stamps modestly subsidize employers who pay low wages,” Bourne argues, “then his hugely expensive Medicare-for-all and free-college-tuition proposals would constitute a massive subsidy to low-wage employers.”

Similarly, when Donald Trump and his allied Republicans push for what we used to call “workfare” requirements, that would mean that the jobs the recipients get also constitute subsidies.

Both Carlson and Sanders apparently assume that companies pay workers according to the needs of the workers determined by subsistence levels — presumably by the old Marxian Iron Law of Wages — and not according to their competitive productivity. That is, what they are worth.

As is common with demagogues, Sanders and Carlson both blame the only companies that are at least paying low-skilled workers something, rather than all those other companies and potential benefactors who aren’t paying them at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

PDF for printing

 

» See popular posts from Common Sense with Paul Jacob HERE.