Political correctness and such could well be the death of us

February 28, 2023

Colleges and universities are referred to as “higher education.” It is where many people go after they have finished high school to learn about the career they want to pursue. That is the idea, or at least, that was the original idea.

Long ago colleges and universities started sports teams as an activity for those who wanted to play on them, and for students who wanted to watch the games. Those who played on the teams were students first, and athletes second.

Over the last several decades athletics have taken on much greater importance for the institutions, athletes, and audiences. A vast number of Americans in and out of college rank college sports as one of their main interests. 

Colleges and coaches rake in huge amounts of money, and the people that make it possible for them to earn the big bucks get a free or reduced-cost education. 

This heavy influence from the sporting world has so far not affected the role that higher education is supposed to play nearly as much as the encroachment of indoctrination into the curricula.

But things are changing. As of July, 2021, “college athletes can profit from their name, image or likeness (NIL) under National Collegiate Athletic Association rules,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “It’s a new era for the sprawling, multibillion-dollar college sports industry, and in these early days it’s a messy one.” 

Looking at the current college athletics situation, The Hill offered the following: “In addition to debt-free college, which is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, student-athletes receive coaching and counseling that pays off throughout life,” the article said. 

“The economics literature recognizes that even a year of college has measurable benefits. Student-athletes learn the valuable life skills of discipline and teamwork,” The Hill article continued. “They learn to cooperate with people of diverse backgrounds. These activities shape character, with lifetime consequences. In addition, college athletics is a platform connecting students, academics, alums and fans more generally.”

Now there is talk of college athletes being paid outright, as if they have a job. But if you are paid to play a sport, aren’t you a professional athlete? 

Higher education has many problems: politics in the learning environment; very high and rising tuition rates; and also, recently focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

What exactly is DEI? The InclusionHub defines these terms:

Diversity: Acknowledges all the ways people differ: race, sex, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, religious beliefs, and more.

Inclusion: Is about diversity in practice. It’s the act of welcoming, supporting, respecting, and valuing all individuals and groups.

Equity: Is often used interchangeably with equality, but there’s a core difference: Where equality is a system in which each individual is offered the same opportunities regardless of circumstance, equity distributes resources based on needs. We live in a disproportionate society, and equity tries to correct its imbalance by creating more opportunities for people.

The InclusionHub also mentions Belonging and Justice.

Belonging: Infers that an equitable structure is in place and functioning to make all people, no matter their differences, feel welcome. When you reach for equity, you’re striving for a system that benefits everyone, no matter their circumstance. Belonging is when this not only works, but no one feels as if their inclusion is questioned.

Justice: Is the mission of equity, in which an equitable system works so well it eventually eliminates the systemic problems driving the need for the latter. In other words, everything is fairly and evenly distributed to people no matter their race, gender, physical ability, or other personal circumstances.

But how will DEI work as the method for forming teams? If this concept is put into effect in sports at any level, no longer will the 11 best football players, 9 best baseball players, 5 best basketball players, etc., necessarily be who is on the first team. All teams will be formed using the rules of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, balanced by Belonging and Justice.

America has experienced great success because of the idea of being the best you can be, and that the best student, athlete, company, military, or whatever wins. The best earned the prize, which is why they got the prize. They didn’t get the prize because it’s fair and right that everyone gets the same reward, despite how good or bad they are at whatever is being rewarded.

The term that should once again and forever be the focus is: merit! You get the prize because you earned the prize. Not because you entered the contest. You are the valedictorian because you had the highest GPA, not because everyone in the senior class should be valedictorian.

By focusing on everybody getting the same reward, regardless of their ability, there is no longer any reason to try to be better, to be the best you can be.

How long will the United States remain a free country before it is taken over by another country that is determined to rule the world, and focuses on that, rather than DEI?

DEI might not spell doom in small, limited circumstances. But it is the death knell if used throughout an entire country.

Only understanding, not rewriting, history will help us meet the future

Unless you have been living in a cave — or like so many these days, voluntarily isolated in a bubble — you have likely noticed the somewhat disturbing resemblances to George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” sometimes written as “1984.” Published in 1949, Orwell’s predictions were off by a few decades. But today, we see more and more how his vision was right.

Orwell’s dystopian story involves a government that controls everything people read, hear, say, eat, breathe and know. The story’s protagonist, Winston Smith, was one of many who had the job of rewriting history to fit the evolving narrative of the totalitarian government. His job was to “fix” every book, magazine or newspaper containing what used to be the truth to conform to what is the new truth.

Today’s political correctness (PC) may be the most recognizable feature from Orwell’s novel. PC mania has been around for several years, and is gaining strength these days. While PC comes from a non-government faction, rather than a totalitarian government like that of “1984,” the results from the non-governmental faction may be little different, as it converts what “used to be” into “what now is.”

An element of PC today is “white supremacy,” or “white privilege.” All of the white folks in America, who had nothing to say about who their parents are, what color their skin is, or where they were born, are the current main target. Nothing is so disliked in America as white Americans.

Have you ever been to Spain? Or to Germany, France or Mexico?

The people in those and other countries are unconcerned with people of other nationalities that visit them. They are simply and naturally the Spanish, the Germans, the French, and the Mexicans. No doubt they like the money foreigners spend in their countries, but they continue to do what Spanish, German, French, and Mexican peoples want to do. 

This is so because those countries have relatively few people there who are not natives of that country. The natives comprise the vast majority of people, and therefore are the dominant element in their culture. And the dominant element in a nation determines what is important and not important.

So, some people say “I really like Spain, except for the Spanish people. They have this supremacy thing going on.”

Is it really surprising, then, that in America, where the white, non-Hispanic people are still the majority of the total population — about 61 percent — that the long-standing American values and ways still dominate the cultural norms of the country? 

The proportion of white Americans compared to others was much larger not so long ago. Our desirable national characteristics have always invited people from other places to come here, and they did, and do. But the culture the white American majority created decades ago still is dominant.

Yet some of those in other races/ethnicities are offended by “white supremacy” and “white privilege.” Somehow, living as the great majority of people have lived for decades is no longer legitimate to these folks.

Even some white Americans have jumped on this bandwagon, feeling the guilt that the others have convinced them they should have, merely because they were born with white skin.

Today, some people say, “I would like America better if it wasn’t for those darned white people.”

It is easiest to criticize something if you know very little about it. The less you know, the easier it is to disparage it. And this is what is the basis of much or most of the cancel culture mania now hobbling the country.

That applies to hating white people, and to removing vestiges of certain people of historical note.

People who have done great things in their lives, sometimes great things for their country, have now fallen into disfavor with the cancel culture faction for something not-good they did that these folks think obliterates all the good they did.

A person that has lived for 60, 80 or more years has had a long period of time to make decisions and take actions. Some of those may not have been good ones. Should we rate their entire lifetime based upon a couple of not-so-good, or even bad things, or should we take the more reasonable route of evaluating all they have done, rather than one or a few things?

It is also common these days for the cancel culture to apply the practice of “Monday morning quarterbacking” to things and people. Without a solid knowledge of what living in past times was like, these quarterbacks feel capable of judging the past using the standards of today. 

That is profoundly imprudent. Without a deep understanding of how things were at a certain time, it is not possible to make a sensible judgement about things that happened long ago. These folks are ill-equipped. It’s like going to play 18 holes of golf with only a putter.

History, the story of our past and how it built the present, is crucial to our future success. If we erase it over some discomfort based upon superficial understanding, we will substantially cripple ourselves.

Rather than erase history because it offends us, we need to study it and learn from it.

George Orwell’s vision is coming true, but his timing was off

In 1946, author George Orwell, fighting tuberculosis, isolated himself on the Scottish island of Jura to write his last book, “Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel.” The story describes a totalitarian state where the government — “Big Brother” — created the language — “Newspeak” — to control the thoughts of its citizens.

Published 71 years ago, and having gained great fame, Orwell gave us concepts like “Big Brother,” “doublethink,” “thoughtcrime,” “Newspeak,” “2+2=5,” and “memory hole.” Some of those concepts are relevant today, both in Orwell’s fictional account, and in reality.

Now, 36 years after 1984, Orwell’s dystopian society — a society in which individual freedoms suffer under government edicts and other forms of control — is forming in the United States.

It is becoming easier and easier to find evidence of the creeping impact of Big Brother-like control. Many instances go unreported, and are even unknown beyond the local area where they occur. Some, however, are reported for all to see.

The president of a libertarian think tank in Colorado, Jon Caldara, who also was the most-read opinion columnist of The Denver Post, lost his job with The Post because of a comment in a recent column. What could he have written that would deserve such strong action? “[T]here are only two sexes, identified by an XX or XY chromosome,” he wrote. “That is the very definition of binary.”

This comment is absolutely consistent with biologic science, but is a no-no in much of today’s America. You see, it does not conform to the politically correct “Newspeak” imposed on us by a relatively tiny minority of people, even though it is the scientifically correct position.

In 2018 a French teacher at West Point High School in West Point, Virginia was fired by the local school board after a four-hour hearing, an hour of which was a closed session, in a 5-0 vote. Why was Peter Vlaming fired?

Because he resisted administration orders to refer to a ninth-grade female student with male pronouns. The girl had undergone a gender transition, and insisted she be treated as a male. Vlaming resisted because it put him in conflict with his religious beliefs. He suggested to the student that he would instead use a first or last name, but that wasn’t good enough for the student. Or, apparently, the school board.

So, a teacher’s First Amendment right to freedom of religion takes a back seat to a female ninth-grader’s desire to change genders and be identified by everyone as a male. “Thoughtcrimes” are real and being punished.

This case is thought to be the first in Virginia. It likely will not be the last.

Today, on some college campuses, where the intersection of competing ideas was once a strong and valued concept, conservative speakers are shouted down or prevented from opportunities to speak, and this occurs with the unquestioned support of the school administrations.

Professors are urged, or ordered, to give prior “trigger warnings” when a topic that may upset students is scheduled. Some schools have mandated that some types of speech are restricted to “free speech zones,” so that students will not accidentally stumble on information that is at odds with their beliefs, which may upset them, or make them think. Students now have “safe zones” where they may hide from ideas differing from their own.

A fascist group called “Antifa” (short for “anti-fascist”) indulges in violence, and crosses the line of Constitutionally protected peaceful protests in public places. Members attack police, throwing eggs, bottles and other things at them. Yet the police often retreat, rather than arresting and jailing the law-breakers, and doing so forcefully if necessary. This is partly due to the generally false narrative that police frequently indulge in unnecessary violence, so they play it safe, and back off.

And Virginia’s government is now under control of the liberal/progressive elite from the DC-Richmond corridor, and the Democrat-led government has set about turning the state into California-East, despite the strong objections of a substantial portion of state residents.

This dystopian direction America is now traveling is fueled by liberal/progressive thinking, not the national government. Many people, both in and out of government, however, prefer majority rule — a strict democracy — which can be more easily turned against the people than the republican system our Founders developed.

John Adams reminded us: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

John Marshall, the highly respected fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

Thomas Paine said, "A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is."

The brilliant columnist Walter Williams notes that “We would no longer be a government ‘of the people.’ Instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states. It would be the kind of tyranny the framers feared.”

But this faction doesn’t understand the reasons our nation was created as it was; a large number of Americans have no idea how much damage their desires will impose on their country.

Will forces from within bring about the demise of America?

In this time when virtually all our standards and traditions are falling away or being scrapped, we should be concerned about what America will look like in another generation. Will America even be recognizable?

School-age kids aren’t being taught to write or read cursive. Like the kids in the UK, 80 percent of Oklahoma kids 6 to 12 years old also are having trouble telling time on an analog clock.

Much of public education seems to be in a crisis.

Columnist and economics professor Walter Williams wrote recently about the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is often referred to as “The Nation’s Report Card,” showing disturbing results.

“Only 37 percent of 12th-graders tested proficient or better in reading, and only 25 percent did so in math.”

He went on to report that America’s high school graduation rate is over 80 percent, which indicates that graduates’ math and reading skills are at a 12th-grade level. How can that be, he asks, when 63 percent are not proficient in reading and 75 percent are not proficient in math?

Combine that with the changes to the curriculum, where many schools no longer teach civics or properly emphasize American history, and we appear to be deliberately creating a generation of young people who are seriously under-educated, in general, and about their country in particular.

College once was a place where young people went to advance their education, prepare for their future work life, and evolve from a teenager into a mature adult. Now, many campuses are places where free speech, once strongly emphasized on campuses, is dead or dying, and instead of learning to cope with adverse realities, they are provided protection from them.

The successful imposition of political correctness and the over-the-top behavior of some people to push PC on the public have turned things upside-down. This may pose one of the most serious societal problems we will face, as so many people want to magnify tiny little “discomforts” into Earth-shattering events, and condemn those who are responsible for these minor “offenses” to a living hell.

Among the abundant examples of this silliness is the recent episode where an American high school girl chose as her attire for the high school prom a dress with a Chinese theme. The PC police quickly hopped aboard the Knee-jerk Band Wagon to label her a “racist” and scream that she was guilty of “cultural appropriation.”

The young lady brushed off the nutty criticism, and the Chinese reacted positively to her. But the PC crowd apparently believes that only Asians can enjoy sushi, and only Italians can order spaghetti, or go to Pasquales’ restaurant.

The profound goofiness of such ideas apparently escapes the understanding of the disciples of political correctness. Many of these folks are from the younger generations, thus this way of thinking does not bode well for America’s future, unless they experience an intellectual  renaissance.

America – the land of the free – a place where government was designed to serve the people, now has important agencies like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) straying from their constitutional roles and being run by people who are motivated by narrow political goals rather than their sworn duty to honorably serve Americans.

IRS employee Lois Lerner delayed applications and hassled applicants for non-profit status because they were conservative organizations. FBI agent Peter Strozk and his lover, agency attorney Lisa Page, used FBI email for partisan messages against Donald Trump’s candidacy. And then we have former FBI Director Jim Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and their numerous misdeeds. The list goes on.

The now notorious and fraudulent Trump dossier was used as evidence to get a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Trump officials Carter Page and Michael Flynn. And the FBI and Department of Justice are withholding documents legally subpoenaed by a congressional committee with oversight authority.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to find a crime in the Trump campaign in the 2016 election had cost taxpayers nearly $7 million as of last December, producing only meager results, thus far.

One year on, two people associated with Trump have been charged: Former campaign chief Paul Manafort, over alleged bank fraud many years ago, and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI, after FBI officials said that he was not suspected of lying. Flynn plead guilty to the charge, apparently to end the crippling legal fees that drove him to near bankruptcy.

And then there’s the $20 trillion national debt – $62,500 per American – that no one seems serious about reducing, that threatens the nation’s future.

Young people who are inadequately prepared through their education to understand America and the realities of life, and people both inside and outside the government, and in the news media, who are willing and eager to cheat to achieve their political goals may bring about the demise of the country.

Are Abraham Lincoln’s words coming true? “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

The softening of America is becoming a rampant social ill

America has many problems these days, and some of them are very serious. Among those on the long list are: a serious drug problem, international anxieties, the strong division between the political left and right, and our once stable, but now collapsing cultural environment.

Another troubling thing that doesn’t reach the crisis level of some of the aforementioned is that some individuals take themselves way too seriously, and believe that their personal opinion deserves national attention or perhaps even demands some immediate action. This is the height of self-absorption, egomania, and it is a rampant social ill.

This malady expresses itself in different ways, such as through people whose name is well known within a certain limited area of life – like actors, media personalities, entertainers, athletes – who have allowed themselves to believe their own PR, and think that because they have a group of adoring fans that appreciate their pretty face, latest hit song or film, recent great athletic accomplishment, late night TV show, or whatever, that they are endowed with ultimate wisdom about everything, and are therefore required to share it with the world.

In another scenario, some think so highly of their opinion and beliefs that they isolate themselves from things they don’t agree with, refusing to face opposing ideas and, frequently, dodging reality itself. They insist on being able to avoid contact with things that cause discomfort – a long and confounding list of things – anything that interferes with merrily going on their way through an imaginary world that must submit to their every wish.

For example, if an historic person or event traumatizes some people, like a statue or a memorial to someone or some thing, they then protest to have it removed, disregarding the broader historical value of the offensive thing that is far more important than their feelings of pique.

Sometimes, when faced with someone holding a different opinion they cannot abide, instead of discussing their differences like mature adults, they resort to vilification, hurling slurs and epithets, and name-calling.

Once upon a time the process of growing up in America took a course that did not include this pathology, or even imagine there could be such a thing. When one reached adulthood, the learning process had guided her or him to maturity through good parenting and informal education in the home or formal education in school or, ideally, a combination of the two.

Our system of education begins at a young age and progresses through high school, each successive level presenting material suited to the developing mind. After that, some go out into the world, while others head for vocational/technical training or head for college. College is where more intense subject learning takes place, but it also develops the thinking process and aids in learning to live in the real world where all is not always pleasant or agreeable, and at one time a college education could be counted on to do this.

Obviously, some families and some educational institutions have failed to maintain the tradition of guidance that is necessary to assist young people in maturing properly. The “everybody gets a trophy,” the “no person should ever feel uncomfortable” foolishness and other similar things have had a deleterious effect. This is not about real bullying and other serious problems, but things have deteriorated into a condition where personal offenses that once were laughed off or quickly forgotten now cause major trauma to young people, and some who are not so young.

Some colleges have lost their luster as mind-expanding influences, and instead of aiding the maturing process they have become bastions of protecting the hypersensitive, where instructors are required to issue trigger warnings prior to discussing “troubling” material, and where free speech can only be indulged in and enjoyed in special “free speech zones.”

Where once the idea of free speech was eagerly defended, we now find conservative speakers banned from campuses because their mere presence sends students scurrying for their safe spaces or into sometimes-violent protests, and where liberal/socialist faculty band together to attack their conservative colleagues for disagreeing with the “proper” thinking (political correctness) at the same time they are transferring their ideology onto their students along with subject matter, or perhaps in place of it.

Many of them push an agenda in proper thinking instead of aiding the development of the process of critical thinking, turning students into delicate little creatures who are frightened by the very idea that some people do not agree with them, or become angry in response. The art of civil and intelligent debate has been banned from some of the country’s once-fine institutions where free speech was celebrated. Is an education at one of these wayward institutions actually worth the tens of thousands it costs?

Perhaps the softening of the American mind does not rise to the urgency of the deadly drug problem or the potential for a nuclear attack by some foreign maniac or despot. But if not gotten under control pretty soon, we face the very strong likelihood of living in a country run by these folks, who are incapable of dealing maturely with complex and unfriendly circumstances that life throws at us.

Signs of a culture that is collapsing: higher education in disarray

Higher education today is a mess. Many institutions are involved in an arms race, strongly competing to attract students with scholarship and student loan money they bring with them. Institutions are building facilities that are much more fancy, thus more appealing, than ever before. New dorms, sports and fitness centers, student centers, dining facilities; the list goes on.

And the “everybody needs to go to college” craze has put thousands on campuses that don’t need a traditional college degree.

Those of us who went to college many years before this arms race began endured sparsely appointed dorms and other comparatively plain-Jane facilities, but managed to come out with a solid education. That austere environment is not good enough anymore.

A 2014 survey by the University of California Los Angeles showed that there are five times more liberal professors than conservative professors on college faculties these days. The worst aspect of this is that many of them have taken on the role of proselytizers, forsaking their duty to guide learning and maturation in their subject area in favor of indoctrinating students into the poisonous world of leftist politics, which they now refer to as “progressivism,” since “liberalism” is no longer credible.

The liberalization of the college campus has led to a disintegration of the traditional college atmosphere at many institutions, where students once were exposed to and challenged by a broad range of ideas. That healthy environment has become an intellectually stultifying atmosphere where students are afraid of their own shadows, and ideas differing from their narrow range of acceptable ideas send kids running to hide under the bed in their hotel-like dorm room.

“Trigger warnings” are expected or required to protect those who desire only peace and harmony in their environment from “unsuitable” content, and “safe zones,” where students may seek refuge from the rigors of life, are routine. Student demands played a part in these developments

The recent focus on transgenderism, and the bending-over-backward efforts to accommodate it, has produced a policy at West Virginia University, where anyone failing to use the personal pronoun preferred by each and every person who claims to be transgender is breaking a federal law on sexual discrimination, and will be treated as a lawbreaker by the university, despite that transgenderism has absolutely no grounding in science whatsoever.

Two questions arise: (1) How does someone know which of WVU’s 29,000 students claims to be transgender, and (2) in the event they actually are able to discern this, how are they supposed to know which of the 30 different pronouns approved by WVU applies to which person?

“According to one study of the 2010 census,” notes breibart.com, “the population of transgender people amounts to one in every 2,400 Americans, or 0.03 percent of the adult population.” Another question: How few people are too few to propel the politically correct into action, spawning another uproar over some thought or action that has virtually no affect?

Back in the 60s and 70s a long and often-troubled struggle to desegregate schools and put black and white students in the same learning environment reached its peak. Forty years later, some want to reverse that. Everything old is new again.

Columnist and professor Walter Williams writes, “Hampshire College will offer some of its students what the school euphemistically calls ‘identity-based housing.’ That’s segregated housing for students who — because of their race, culture, gender or sexual orientation — have ‘historically experienced oppression.’” This idea extends to racially segregated classes where students will feel better when surrounded by those just like them.

In his column titled “College Campus Lunacy,” Williams supports that title by listing some course titles that if completed successfully confer college credit on students: “Philosophy and Star Trek,” “Demystifying the Hipster,” “Recreational Tree Climbing,” and “Kayne vs. Everybody.” Such courses, he said, are the work of faculty, to whom college presidents and trustees have apparently surrendered the running of those institutions.

Now, however, an institution of higher education has decided that it’s time to call a halt to political correctness. University of Chicago Dean of Students John Ellison warned incoming students in a letter that there is no tolerance for the kind of student demands that have emerged recently. “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

“Members of our community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn, without fear of censorship,” Ellison wrote. Noting the importance of civility among and between parties, he stated, “We expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement. At times, this may challenge you and even cause discomfort.”

A college education should help prepare young people to cope with life, not to fear it. Political correctness is an infection threatening the nation. Getting rid of it on campuses is a big step toward producing young Americans that are educated, grown up, and prepared to experience life.

Clearing the air on fossil fuels: Here is the rest of the story

A few years ago Hal Willis, a scientist from the University of California, Santa Barbara, resigned from the American Physical Society after 67 years as a member, citing the global warming/climate change issue and the blind allegiance to global warming theory by so many of the Society’s members, as well as the organization’s failure to challenge these members in the name of true scientific investigation, and citing trillions of dollars of research funding as a major reason the practice of true science on climate change has been replaced by ideological advocacy.

Of the climate change issue Willis said, “It is the greatest pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a scientist.” His position has support from other scientists, among them Dr. Ivar Giaever, a 1973 Nobel Prize-Winner for physics.

Giaever joined more than 70 Nobel Science Laureates in signing an open letter in October of 2008 expressing strong support for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, who had said “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” Seven years later he believes Obama’s warning was a “ridiculous statement.” He told a Nobel forum last July, “I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem.”

Dr. Richard Lindzen is emeritus professor of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT. Citing the growing shrillness of the cries about “global warming” during his 30 years there, during which time he says “the climate has changed remarkably little,” he notes that the less the climate changes, the louder the warnings of climate catastrophe become.

In a recent video presentation by Prager University, he said that participants in the climate change debate fall into one of three groups.

Group One, he says, is associated with the scientific part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Working Group 1), and are scientists that generally believe recent climate change is due to burning fossil fuels, which releases CO2 (carbon dioxide) and might eventually dangerously harm the planet.

Group Two is made up of scientists who, like Lindzen, don’t see the problem identified by Group One as an especially serious one. They say there are many reasons why the climate changes – the sun, clouds, oceans, the orbital variations of the Earth, as well as a myriad of other inputs, none of which are fully understood.

Group Three is made up of politicians, environmentalists and the media. Climate alarmism provides politicians money and power and environmentalists also get money as well as confirmation of their religious zealotry for the environment, while the issue satisfies the media’s need for a cause to support, money and headlines. Said Lindzen, “Doomsday scenarios sell.”

From the climate alarmists’ point of view, virtually every problem on Earth stems from climate change, as Lindzen said, “everything from acne to the Syrian civil war.”

The Director of the Center for Industrial Progress, and author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex Epstein, shows us in a Prager University video presentation that contains thorough sourcing for his assertions that burning fossil fuels has improved the lives of millions in the developed world by helping solve their biggest environmental challenges, purified their water and air, made their cities and homes more sanitary and kept them safe from potential catastrophic climate change.

Could we have built reservoirs, purification plants, and laid networks of pipes to bring clean water to homes without fossil fuels, he asks? Fossil fuels can do the same for those in the developing world, if the powers that be will allow it. More fossil fuel use equals more clean water, he said.

He further shows that despite an increase in fossil fuel use from 1.5 billion tons in 1970 to around 2.0 billion tons in 2010, emissions dropped from about 300 million tons to about 150 million tons during the same period. This resulted from using anti-pollution technology powered by … fossil fuels.

If CO2 emissions cause harmful changes in the environment, and if emissions have increased, then more people must be suffering “climate-related deaths,” due to things like droughts, floods, storms and extreme temperatures. But no, Epstein said. “In the last eighty years, as CO2 emissions have rapidly escalated, the annual rate of climate-related deaths worldwide has rapidly declined – by 98 percent.”

“In sum,” Epstein said, “fossil fuels don’t take a naturally safe environment and make it dangerous; they empower us to take a naturally dangerous environment and make it cleaner and safer.”

A large segment of the public has bought into the “we are killing our environment” idea put forth by the climate alarmists, and now meekly accept it when the United Nations and their own government advocate harmful solutions to climate change, ignoring the mounting pile of contrary data. Consequently, the economic damage done to regions of the U.S. and the thousands of American workers put on the unemployment line by the foolish policies of the Obama administration basically are accepted as necessary.

A strong case has been made that fossil fuels aren’t significantly harmful, and that they have been and will be extraordinarily helpful to the people of the world, if only we will listen.

Higher education under attack from within, by disaffected students

College campuses – once the bastion of diverse opinion, a garden where ideas thrived, where contrary viewpoints were freely expressed – are fast becoming cesspools of narrow-mindedness that stifle free speech, where political correctness rules over common sense, where free thinking is discouraged, and they are occupied more and more by students offended because someone expressed a different opinion, didn’t pay proper deference, or wore the “wrong” costume on Halloween.

Student protests are returning to 1960s/70s levels, and arise because some students think that there aren’t enough minority professors on campus while others decry a lack of “social justice,” and some have called for hunger strikes over what they perceive as a lack of support for students of color.

If students don’t like a professor’s point of view, or they detect “microaggressions” in the classroom, they feel led to demand the professor resign or be fired. You are a Hispanic kid and someone wears a sombrero and a poncho on Halloween, it’s time for a protest.

And did you know that the First Amendment makes some college kids feel unsafe? Would you ever have imagined that such an idea could take hold on an American college campus?

The vice president of the Missouri Students Association, Brenda Smith-Lezama, told MSNBC last week, "I personally am tired of hearing that First Amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment for myself and for other students here." Poor little thing must be terrified listening to rap or watching television or movie drama. And she suffers under the delusion that her comfort is more important than someone else’s.

While these kids have yet to accomplish much, they believe the world must work to calm their fears, perceptions that may be adequate to drive protests and hunger strikes, but their perceptions do not necessarily reflect reality. The concerns expressed by these students are precisely the types of things the liberal attitudes that prevail on campuses today work to eliminate.

Many of the complaints have a racial element, but they really center on hypersensitive feelings about things that have always been normal aspects of life. Suddenly, these normal campus happenings that students – white students, black students, Asian and Hispanic students, female students – have dealt with successfully for decades and with little or no difficulty, are now scary and threatening.

College once was a place where kids learned to think. Today, many of them seem to know only how to feel; emotion rules rationality. Listening to different ideas used to be enlightening, mind-expanding. Now, it makes the kiddies cry for their mommies.

Missing from these children-in-adult-bodies is even the suspicion that not everything revolves around them, that they are not the be-all and end-all of the known universe.

And they also want someone to pay their college loans off for them, because … well, just because.

The process of gaining entry to an institution of higher learning is long established and has worked well for decades. Colleges and universities are places where the qualified my go to advance their education, and most of the onus is on the student to fund their education through parental help, scholarship assistance, student loans, the GI Bill, or good old hard work. And then it is the student’s responsibility to perform as expected academically to complete their degree requirements, and then go out and get a job and become a productive member of society.

That is called “life,” and life is not a smooth ride, most times. But tens of millions of Americans have successfully navigated the sometimes-troubled waters successfully without being coddled and nursed along the way. Conquering challenges and facing adversity head-on build character.

The whining behavior demonstrated on several campuses recently shows a fundamental failure of thousands of young people to have learned the basic rules of life, and have their minds grow up at the same rate as their bodies.

However, bowing to the whims of students is letting the inmates run the asylum. College is a place for learning, or once was. Professors led the learning process, administrators ran the school, and the students worked hard and did what they had to do to master the material at a satisfactory level. If students weren’t happy in a particular environment, or couldn’t hack it, they were free to leave. Or they could simply adapt. If that dynamic isn’t restored very soon, we may as well shut down colleges, because they will no longer provide a benefit.

As bad as this is for higher education, it is much worse for America. A generation or two with millions of young people among them who can’t cope with the simplistic problems of going to college surely won’t be able to be good citizens, to hold down jobs in a productive economy, or staff a strong, able military capable of defending the country, or even make sensible decisions about for whom they will vote. They can hardly be expected to weigh complex arguments rationally, when anything that doesn’t agree with their narrow ideas makes them hide under their beds.

This is what liberalism hath wrought, and it will most likely get worse.

Cleanse the language and culture so that we offend no one

Aliens can be “aliens” no longer. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) wants to refer to them in federal matters as “foreign nationals.” And if they are in the country illegally, we cannot refer to them as “illegal aliens,” they now must be transformed into “undocumented foreign nationals.”

Never mind that the proposed new designation is longer and more cumbersome, a larger problem is that the old designation is more accurate.

An “alien” is defined as: A resident born in or belonging to another country who has not acquired citizenship by naturalization, a foreigner. “Illegal” is defined as: By law or statute, contrary to or forbidden by official rules, regulations, etc.

Ergo, someone from another country who is not a citizen, who is in the country without having gone through appropriate legal processes to be here, is an “illegal alien.”

This proposed change in our use of language is being insisted upon because Castro thinks the label “illegal alien” is demeaning and hurtful. This idea ought to have linguists concerned. If words with specific meaning can no longer be applied to people or situations that precisely fit that meaning, then we have a problem that we may not be able to survive.

Frankly, if you are in this country illegally, you do not deserve any special consideration in how we describe you. If you are offended by the designation you have earned for yourself by being in the country illegally, well then, go back home, and then if you want to return, do it the right way.

The solution to removing the hurtfulness of the term “illegal alien” is to be a legal alien or a legal immigrant by following immigration and/or visitation laws, not by changing a term used in federal documents since 1790 that accurately describes the person and the circumstance.

America once was about individual freedom. You could think what you wanted, pretty much say what you wanted, and within fairly limited legal bounds do what you wanted, and you didn’t have to spend an inordinate amount of time worried about whether what you thought, said or did might offend someone, somewhere.

America did not become the country so many of us grew up in and loved by worrying about offending someone by observing long-standing traditions, or doing normal, everyday things. It also did not become the great nation it once was by accommodating people whose life consists primarily of searching out things that offend them.

One right that is not guaranteed in the Bill of Rights or by the U.S. Constitution is the right to not ever be offended. And thank goodness it isn’t. Part of being an adult is being able to cope with less-than-ideal circumstances, and each of us has an obligation to the rest of us to “just deal with it” sometimes.

Instead, many people believe that when they are offended by something, others must change to suit their preferences.

A good example of over-reaction in the name of being non-offensive is that at least two school districts banned Halloween activities, one of them because 20 percent of the students could not or would not participate.

Milford, Conn. parents and other residents were angered when the school district decided to ban the popular Halloween parades at the city’s elementary schools, due to fear of excluding children who can’t or won’t participate in the tradition.

An official of the school district told the local newspaper, the Connecticut Post, “Milford Public Schools do have many children from diverse beliefs, cultures and religions. The goal is for all children to feel comfortable and definitely not alienated when they come to school.”

A petition opposing the decision read, in part: “These are our American customs and traditions and we should not have to give them up because others find them offensive!” And a school parent added, “I’m so tired of my kids missing out on some of the things we all got to do as children and are some of the greatest childhood memories I have due to others saying they find it offensive.”

The school district reversed the decision, however, some obvious questions arise: What about the vast majority who could and probably would participate? Is 20 percent the red line beyond which traditions that some don’t like can no longer exist?

Where does it stop? How few people who are offended by some activity should be able to end to it? We Americans love and treasure our traditions, and some of them have been around since before the birth of the nation.

And, finally: Is it even possible to assure, as the Milford school district intends, that all children, or adults, will always feel comfortable and never feel alienated?

President Barack Obama was likely not involved in the actions of these school districts, but these actions fit comfortably within the idea of his pledge “to fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

Fortunately, there are tens of millions of Americans who want none of it, and will fiercely resist efforts to erase treasured traditions from our lives, and further are disinclined to go crazy trying to avoid offending the terminally offended.

Religious beliefs take a beating in today’s politically correct world

Issues of religious freedom have been in the news a good bit lately. Primarily, these news events occur when someone finds their religious beliefs in conflict with another person’s secular desire. A baker or a florist who regularly sells their wares to gay/lesbian customers declines to bake a cake or make floral arrangements for their wedding because their religious beliefs do not approve homosexual marriage. Despite the fact that there are many, or if not many, at least some alternatives to those bakers or florists, those who refused to provide services were persecuted and some driven out of business by the uproar the offended gay/lesbian couples instigated because these people held to their religious beliefs.

More recently, a county clerk in Kentucky refused to sign marriage licenses of gay/lesbian couples after a court ruled that treating gay/lesbian couples differently than heterosexual couples is discrimination, and therefore illegal. A judge jailed the clerk for refusing to act, despite the commonly observed practice by judges of using the least radical punishment for such problems first, and then proceeding to more stringent punishment and ultimately jail as the last resort.

This last episode is a much different situation than those previously mentioned, as it involves a government employee refusing to do her sworn duty. But the attention it received and the way the judge handled the clerk does illustrate the size of the schism between people following their religious beliefs and social preferences or legal mandates.

If there were options other than punishing these Americans for following their religious beliefs, why were bakers, florists, and others who have had similar misfortunes singled out for what may rightly be termed persecution. This point is particularly relevant in a nation in which the first right among four specifically enumerated rights in the first of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights is the free exercise of religion?

It is also relevant to note the degree to which these events attract media coverage, which highlights how unpopular traditional religious practices have become to the media and many Americans in the 21^st century.

Combine a media mindset apparently hostile to religious practices with a tendency to try to tear down Republican presidential candidates and you find Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson being given rough treatment after saying that a Muslim shouldn’t be President of the United States. "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that," he said a while back on NBC's "Meet the Press."

A bit later in the interview, he said, when asked about a Muslim running for Congress, that it would depend upon the individual in question. "Congress is a different story, but it depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just like it depends on what anybody else is," Dr. Carson said. "If there's somebody who is of any faith but they say things and their life has been consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed and bring peace and harmony, then I'm with them."

Host Chuck Todd also asked him whether a president's faith should matter to voters. "I guess it depends on what that faith is," he said. "If it's inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter. But if it fits within the realm of America and consistent with the Constitution, no problem." Asked whether he thinks Islam is consistent with the Constitution, Carson said: "No, I don't – I do not."

Clearly, Dr. Carson believes that anyone subjugating their religious beliefs, whatever religious beliefs they may hold, to the requirements of our Constitution is the key element.

He appeared on ABC News’ “This Week” last Sunday where reporter Martha Raddatz grilled him on that same statement, either ignorant of his other comments further defining his view on the issue, or unwilling to acknowledge them. Here is part of that interview:

Raddatz: “I want to go back to your controversial comments on the possibility of a Muslim president. The question seemed quite clear. The question was: Should a president’s faith matter? You said, I guess it depends on what that faith is. The question was: So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the Constitution, and you said no, I do not. I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that. 

Do you stand by that now?”

Carson: “Well, first of all, you know, what I said is on a transcript and it’s there for anybody.”

Raddatz: “I’m reading the transcript, Dr. Carson, that’s exactly what you said.”

Carson: “No – read the paragraph before that where I said anybody, doesn’t matter what their religious background, if they accept American values and principles and are willing to subjugate their religious beliefs to our Constitution. I have no problem with them.

Why do you guys always leave that part out, I wonder?”

Political correctness – or opposing unpopular things in favor of popular things – is the order of the day, in life and in the media.