fivethirtyeight--2019-12-12--Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back

Millennials have earned a reputation for reshaping industries and institutions — shaking up the workplace, transforming dating culture, and rethinking parenthood. They’ve also had a dramatic impact on American religious life. Four in ten millennials now say they are religiously unaffiliated, according to the Pew Research Center. In fact, millennials (those between the ages of 23 and 38) are now almost as likely to say they have no religion as they are to identify as Christian. .  For a long time, though, it wasn’t clear whether this youthful defection from religion would be temporary or permanent. It seemed possible that as millennials grew older, at least some would return to a more traditional religious life. But there’s mounting evidence that today’s younger generations may be leaving religion for good.  Social science research has long suggested that Americans’ relationship with religion has a tidal quality — people who were raised religious find themselves drifting away as young adults, only to be drawn back in when they find spouses and begin to raise their own families. Some argued that young adults just hadn’t yet been pulled back into the fold of organized religion, especially since they were hitting major milestones like marriage and parenthood later on.  But now many millennials have spouses, children and mortgages — and there’s little evidence of a corresponding surge in religious interest. A new national survey from the American Enterprise Institute of more than 2,500 Americans found a few reasons why millennials may not return to the religious fold. (One of the authors of this article helped conduct the survey.) • For one thing, many millennials never had strong ties to religion to begin with, which means they were less likely to develop habits or associations that make it easier to return to a religious community. • Young adults are also increasingly likely to have a spouse who is nonreligious, which may help reinforce their secular worldview. • Changing views about the relationship between morality and religion also appear to have convinced many young parents that religious institutions are simply irrelevant or unnecessary for their children.  Millennials may be the symbols of a broader societal shift away from religion, but they didn’t start it on their own. Their parents are at least partly responsible for a widening generational gap in religious identity and beliefs; they were more likely than previous generations to raise their children without any connection to organized religion. According to the AEI survey, 17 percent of millennials said that they were not raised in any particular religion compared with only five percent of Baby Boomers. And fewer than one in three (32 percent) millennials say they attended weekly religious services with their family when they were young, compared with about half (49 percent) of Baby Boomers.  A parent’s religious identity (or lack thereof) can do a lot to shape a child’s religious habits and beliefs later in life. A 2016 Pew Research Center study found that regardless of the religion, those raised in households in which both parents shared the same religion still identified with that faith in adulthood. For instance, 84 percent of people raised by Protestant parents are still Protestant as adults. Similarly, people raised without religion are less apt to look for it as they grow older — that same Pew study found that 63 percent of people who grew up with two religiously unaffiliated parents were still nonreligious as adults.  But one finding in the survey signals that even millennials who grew up religious may be increasingly unlikely to return to religion. In the 1970s, most nonreligious Americans had a religious spouse and often, that partner would draw them back into regular religious practice. But now, a growing number of unaffiliated Americans are settling down with someone who isn’t religious — a process that may have been accelerated by the sheer number of secular romantic partners available, and the rise of online dating. Today, 74 percent of unaffiliated millennials have a nonreligious partner or spouse, while only 26 percent have a partner who is religious.  Luke Olliff, a 30-year-old man living in Atlanta, says that he and his wife gradually shed their religious affiliations together. “My family thinks she convinced me to stop going to church and her family thinks I was the one who convinced her,” he said. “But really it was mutual. We moved to a city and talked a lot about how we came to see all of this negativity from people who were highly religious and increasingly didn’t want a part in it.” This view is common among young people. A majority (57 percent) of millennials agree that religious people are generally less tolerant of others, compared to only 37 percent of Baby Boomers.  Young adults like Olliff are also less likely to be drawn back to religion by another important life event — having children. For much of the country’s history, religion was seen as an obvious resource for children’s moral and ethical development. But many young adults no longer see religion as a necessary or even desirable component of parenting. Less than half (46 percent) of millennials believe it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. They’re also much less likely than Baby Boomers to say that it’s important for children to be brought up in a religion so they can learn good values (57 percent vs. 75 percent).  These attitudes are reflected in decisions about how young adults are raising their children. 45 percent of millennial parents say they take them to religious services and 39 percent say they send them to Sunday school or a religious education program. Baby Boomers, by contrast, were significantly more likely to send their children to Sunday school (61 percent) and to take them to church regularly (58 percent).  Mandie, a 32-year-old woman living in southern California and who asked that her last name not be used, grew up going to church regularly but is no longer religious. She told us she’s not convinced a religious upbringing is what she’ll choose for her one-year-old child. “My own upbringing was religious, but I’ve come to believe you can get important moral teachings outside religion,” she said. “And in some ways I think many religious organizations are not good models for those teachings.”  Why does it matter if millennials’ rupture with religion turns out to be permanent? For one thing, religious involvement is associated with a wide variety of positive social outcomes like increased interpersonal trust and civic engagement that are hard to reproduce in other ways. And this trend has obvious political implications. As we wrote a few months ago, whether people are religious is increasingly tied to — and even driven by — their political identities. For years, the Christian conservative movement has warned about a tide of rising secularism, but research has suggested that the strong association between religion and the Republican Party may actually be fueling this divide. And if even more Democrats lose their faith, that will only exacerbate the acrimonious rift between secular liberals and religious conservatives.  “At that critical moment when people are getting married and having kids and their religious identity is becoming more stable, Republicans mostly do still return to religion — it’s Democrats that aren’t coming back,” said Michele Margolis, author of “From the Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity.” in an interview for our September story.  Of course, millennials’ religious trajectory isn’t set in stone — they may yet become more religious as they age. But it’s easier to return to something familiar later in life than to try something completely new. And if millennials don’t return to religion and instead begin raising a new generation with no religious background, the gulf between religious and secular America may grow even deeper.


fortruss--2019-05-14--Promote Michael Parenti not Slavoj Zizek

Promote Michael Parenti, not Slavoj Zizek

In a blistering evisceration of phoney Marxists, ZOLTAN ZIGEDY excoriates those academics and their dupes who peddle trendy nonsense that was never a threat to capitalism – Morning Star  GOOGLE knows that I have an abiding interest in Marxism. Consequently, I receive frequent links to articles that Google’s algorithms select as popular or influential.  Consistently at the top of the list are articles by or about the irrepressible Slavoj Zizek.  Zizek has mastered the tricks of a public intellectual — entertaining, pompous, outrageous, calculatedly obscure and mannered.  The dishevelled pose and the beard add to a near caricature of the European professor gifting the world with big ideas embedded deeply in layers of obscurantism — a sure-fire way to appear profound. And a sure-fire way to advance one’s commercial entertainment value.  Close followers of the “master” even post videos of Zizek devouring hot dogs — one in each hand!  He is currently cashing in on a public debate with a right-wing gas-bag counterpart which reportedly brings in obscene prices for tickets. Marxism as entrepreneurship.  Zizek is one of the latest iterations of a long line of largely European academics who build modest public celebrity from an identification with Marxism or the Marxist tradition.  From Sartre and existentialism through structuralism, post-modernism, post-essentialism, post-Fordism, and identitarian politics, academics have appropriated pieces of the Marxist tradition and claimed to rethink that tradition, while keeping a measured, safe distance from any Marxist movement. They are Marxists when it brings an audience, but seldom answer the call to action.  The curious thing about this intellectual Marxism, this parlour dilettante Marxism, is that it is never all-in — it is Marxism with grave reservations.  Marxism is fine if it’s the “early” Marx, the “humanist” Marx, the “Hegelian” Marx, the Marx of the Grundrisse, the Marx without Engels, the Marx without the working class, the Marx before Bolshevism, or before communism.  Understandably, if you want to be the next big Marx-whisperer, you must separate yourself from the pack, you must rethink Marxism, rediscover the “real” Marx, locate where Marx got it wrong.  Previous generations of well-meaning, but class-befuddled university students have been seduced by “radical” thinkers who offer a taste of rebellion in a sexy academic package.  Student book packs carried unread but fashionable books by authors like Marcuse, Althusser, Lacan, Deleuze, Laclau, Mouffe, Foucault, Derrida, Negri and Hardt — authors who shared common features of exotic, provocative book titles and impenetrable prose. Books that promised much, but delivered murk.  With a new generation of radically minded youth looking for alternatives to capitalism and curious about socialism, it is inevitable that many are looking toward Marx. And where do they turn?  A Yale professor unabashedly offers a handy primer, featured in the hip Jacobin Magazine, entitled “How to be a Marxist.”  Professor Samuel Moyn is currently the Henry R Luce professor of jurisprudence. Apparently, Moyn feels no unease with holding a chair endowed by one of the country’s most notorious anti-communist, anti-Marxist publishers, while offering a guidebook to Marxism.  Moyn’s How to… presumption to guide the unknowing to Marxism is neither justified nor explained. Nonetheless, he feels confident to recommend two recently deceased academics, Moishe Postone and Erik Olin Wright (along with the still living Perry Anderson), as representing the last of “…the generation of great intellectuals whose 1960s experiences led them to adopt a lifework of recovering and reimagining Marxism.”  I confess that his choice of Moishe Postone had me baffled. Should I be embarrassed to say that I had never known Professor Postone’s work or known him to be a Marxist?  When I found a YouTube interview with the esteemed Professor Postone, I quickly discovered that he emphatically and without reservation denies being a Marxist.  Further, Postone contends that most of what we call Marxism was written by Frederick Engels. Postone concedes that Engels was “really a good guy,” but Engels never properly understood Marx.  Postone, on the other hand, does. And his Marx does not “glorify” the industrial working class.  I am, however, familiar with the other alleged exemplar of a “great intellectual” devotion to Marxism, Erik Olin Wright.  Wright was a long-standing, prominent member of the so-called “Analytic Marxism” school. Wright, like the other members of this intellectual movement, attempted to place Marxism on a “legitimate” foundation, where legitimacy was earned by subjecting Marxism to the rigours of conventional Anglo-American social science.  The conceit that Anglo-American social science is without flaws or that it has nothing to learn from Marx’s method is never questioned with this clique.  But to Wright’s credit, he struggled mightily to grasp the concept of social class.  In order “to save the left from going down various cul-de-sacs again,” Professor Moyn offers the latest book of his “brilliant colleague,” Martin Hagglund. Moyn assures us that “This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom is an excellent place to start for those who want to energise the theory of socialism, or even build their own theory of a Marxist variant of it.”  It takes only a brief moment to see that Martin Hagglund and his admiring colleague are taking us down other cul-de-sacs, just ones trodden by many earlier generations.  Hagglund’s journey would revisit existentialism, Hegel and Christian traditions in search of the elusive “meaning of life.”  Though many of us thought that Marx offered a profoundly informed analysis of social change and social justice, Moyn/Hagglund, following Postone, bring forward “the ultimate questions anyone must ask: what work should I do? How should I spend my finite time?”  Accumulating capital contrasts, they submit, with “maximising … each individual’s free time to spend as she pleases…”  Thus, the struggle for emancipation, in this rethinking of Marxism, is not the emancipation of the working class, but the wresting of freely disposable time from the grip of work.  The professors concede that this struggle is far easier for academics than for “the wretched of the Earth.”  “And finally,” Moyn concludes, “there is Hagglund’s proposal that Marxists can ditch communism — which in any event Marx described vaguely — in favour of democracy. It is not totally clear what Hagglund means by democracy, something which neither Marx himself nor many Marxists have chosen to pursue theoretically.”  So Hagglund distills “Marxism” into a rejection of communism and an embrace of a vague “democracy.”  I would have to agree with Moyn: “Indeed, it is remarkable how little of what most people have thought Marxist theory was about make it into Hagglund’s … attempt to restart it for our time.” Apparently, the now revealed secret of becoming a Marxist is to discard Marx.  Like many self-proclaimed “Marxists” who came before Postone, Hagglund, and Moyn, their intent seems to be to defang Marxism more than promote it.  The naked truth is that Marxism — from the time of Marx’s censorship and multiple expulsions from different countries — is a dangerous idea.  Marx’s inability to secure academic appointments and his constant surveillance and harassment by authorities proved to be a harbinger of the fate of nearly all authentic Marxist intellectuals.  Capitalism does not endow those who advocate the undoing of capitalism with academic honour or celebrity. And those “Marxists” who do rise to academic acclaim, who get lucrative book deals, who enjoy media exposure, seldom present much of a threat to the system.  It is a telling fact that, though history has produced many “organic” Marxists, Marxists with roots in the working class and in movements challenging capitalism, their contributions seldom populate the bibliographies of university professors, unless to deride.  University employment is rarely available to purveyors of dangerous ideas or the advocacy of a version of Marx that calls for revolutionary change.  A Marxist historian like the late Herbert Aptheker, who did more than any other intellectual to challenge the twisted Birth of a Nation/Gone With The Wind depiction of the benign South and its heroic defence of a noble way of life, could not find work in US universities.  Indeed, it took a free speech movement to get him to be permitted to speak at all on US campuses. His books have disappeared from circulation and few students of African-American history are exposed to his contributions.  No-one has created a history of the US labour movement to rival the late Marxist Philip Foner’s 10-volume History of the Labour Movement in the US.  Foner’s five-volume The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass re-established Douglass as a pre-eminent figure in the abolition of slavery in the US.  A historically black university, Lincoln University, courageously hired Foner after years of blacklisting. Sadly, today, his works are largely ignored in fields he pioneered.  The serious contributions of many other US Marxist intellectuals can be found in back issues of publications like Science and Society, Political Affairs, Masses, Masses and Mainstream, and Freedomways resting on out-of-the-way library shelves gathering dust, diminished by McCarthyism, blacklists, scholarly cowardice and blatant anti-communism.  The doors and public discourse of the academy and the mass media have equally been shut to working-class Marxists (unless they renounce their views).  Despite his leading of working-class movements and his writing prolifically, Marxist William Z Foster’s works on organising, labour strategy and tactics, and political economy are largely forgotten, unless they reappear as someone else’s thinking.  Other key Marxist figures responsible for and interpreting some of labour’s finest moments such as Len De Caux and Wyndham Mortimer are denied membership in the club.  Similarly, Marxist pioneers in the black and women’s equality movements like Benjamin Davis, William Patterson and Claudia Jones are neither hailed as such nor offered as examples of “How to be a Marxist.”  Marxist political economist Victor Perlo’s work in identifying the highest reaches of finance capital and the economics of racism are curiously missing from any relevant academic conversation.  What these Marxists all share is an activist political life in the US Communist Party, a proud badge, but one denigrated by most US intellectuals.  The best writing of the venerable Monthly Review magazine suffers the same marginalisation. Its founders were threatening enough to be victimised by the red scare. And co-founder Paul Sweezy, a serious Marxist political economist, never was enthusiastically welcomed into academic circles.  Today, Michael Parenti is the most dangerous Marxist intellectual in the US. I know this because despite countless books, videos, and speaking engagements, despite an uncompromising commitment to a Marxist interpretation of history and current events, despite a profound, but reasoned hatred of capitalism, and despite an admirably approachable style and manner with big ideas, he is otherwise unemployed by universities and denied access to all but the most left or marginal media.  Another impressive US Marxist scholar, Gerald Horne, though enjoying academic tenure, deserves to be studied by every “leftist” in the US for the integrity, accessibility and quality of his work.  Authentic Marxism, as opposed to fashionable, trendy, or faddish Marxism, is relentless, aggressive, and inspiring of action.  It diligently dissects the inner workings of the capitalist system. It is ruthless and unsparing in its rejection of capitalism. It challenges conventional thinking, making few friends in the capitalist press and rocking the gentility and collegiality of the staid liberalism of the academy.  Marxism is not a career move, but a thankless commitment.  Real Marxists are necessarily outliers. Until the conditions for revolutionary changes ripen, they are often subjected to scepticism, disinterest, even derision and hostility. Marxist poseurs are allergic to political organisations, activism and intellectual risk, while committed Marxists are compelled to seek and join movements for change; they are driven to serve Marx’s oft-quoted, seldom heeded eleventh thesis on Feurbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”


foxnews--2019-01-18--Socialism rising Universities and radical profs helping steer leftward shift in politics critics

Socialism rising: Universities and ‘radical’ profs helping steer leftward shift in politics, critics say

Socialism is on the rise, as Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez carry the torch in Congress and polls show young people and Democrats warming to the ideology.  Underlying that trend, some critics say, is a higher education system that has pushed these ideas for decades while stifling internal dissent.  A 2018 report from the National Association of Scholars found that among top-tier liberal arts colleges, 39 percent had zero registered Republican professors in the entire college.  “The academy is, in some sub-sectors, not very healthy right now,” Stephen Hicks, a philosophy professor at Rockford University, told Fox News.  Research in the humanities and social science fields, he said, has the biggest problems.  “For the last 20 years it's mostly been driven by ideological bias,” Hicks said.  A study from last year in The American Sociologist surveyed 479 sociology professors and found that 21 percent consider themselves "radical" while a mere 2 percent consider themselves "conservative."  The findings are in line with past surveys. A 2004 poll found that among sociology professors, 25 percent self-identified as "Marxist,” 49 percent identified as Democrats, and 5 percent as Republicans. It’s not just sociology – in social sciences broadly, more professors identified as Marxist than as conservative.  The lopsidedness of the social sciences impacts students on campuses.  On RateMyProfessors.com, where students evaluate professors, hundreds of reviews say things such as “you basically have to pretend to be a Marxist in order to get an A” and “as long as you show Marxist ideology in your papers you will pass.”  MOST DEMOCRATS IDENTIFY AS LIBERALS FOR FIRST TIME, UNDERSCORING LEFTWARD TILT OF PARTY  The tilt may be having real-world effects – students tend to move left in college, and are also more likely to move left when they major in fields with the most politically lopsided faculty.  A 2012 survey in the Journal of Higher Education followed thousands of college students from freshman to senior year, and found that the proportion of liberal arts students identifying as “liberal” or “far left” rose from 45 percent to 52.5 percent as they went through college.  Majoring in the humanities or social sciences was one of the biggest factors – doing so increased the odds of a student shifting left by about 50 percent. On the flip side, majoring in science or business reduced the odds of shifting to the left. So did being involved in a fraternity or sorority.  For those who do shift left, they’re generally being taught not just traditional socialism, but also a newer “postmodern” variant. The newer ideas focus on the relative “privilege” of different race/gender/sexual identity groups.  It was professors with that new focus who popularized concepts like "check your privilege," "microaggressions" and "intersectionality."  Promotors of such ideas say they are fighting against oppressive groups and trying to achieve “social justice.”  A typical college guide explaining the importance of such concepts reads: “Recognizing and understanding privilege is an important step to understanding individual and societal advantages and disadvantages.”  Such ideas only recently entered mainstream discussions, but have often rapidly found their way into laws, corporate policies and politicians’ statements all across the western world.  A handful of embattled academics warn that such ideas are tearing society apart by separating people based on group identities.  “We've been publicly funding extremely radical postmodern leftist thinkers who are hell-bent on demolishing the fundamental structure of Western civilization,” University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson said in an interview with the Epoch Times.  Peterson argues that identity politics evolved from the general ethos of Marxism, saying that when Marxist economics became unpopular in the 20th Century after failing in the Soviet Union, many leftist professors “played a sleight of hand” and shifted their focus away from a perceived battle between capitalists and workers – and toward a battle between “oppressor” and “oppressed” identity groups instead.  Professor Stephen Hicks, who wrote a book called “Explaining Postmodernism” on the connection between old-line Marxism and the newer “postmodern” leftism, says there are two major links in thought.  One is that both Marxism and the newer leftist ideas treat people as groups rather than as individuals.  “The other thing they have in common is the adversarial use of terms,” Hicks said. “The ideas of ‘microaggressions’ and group identity are being used as clubs, as weapons against people. They say, you have a certain group identity, and ... we want you to feel guilty and ashamed if you're not in the right group.”  Hicks noted that the newer ideas are not directly Marxist, but “coming out of, broadly, leftism. And since Marxism has been the most significant form of leftism for the last two centuries, it has a lot of Marxist roots in it.”  Fox News asked 10 professors who have supported Marxism or postmodern theories to weigh in on these issues, but none did.  Despite the many shared approaches, experts note that old-school Marxist and “postmodern” leftists often fight each other.  Hellen Pluckrose, editor of the academic Aero magazine, told Fox News that old-line Marxists often see identity-focused leftists as “economically-privileged elite academics abandoning the working class.”  The new leftist approaches have even given headaches to old-school socialists in national politics. Black Lives Matter protesters stormed the stage of a Bernie Sanders event in 2015, forcing him to cancel his speech. In 2017, Sanders also canceled a speech at a “Women’s Convention” after activists blasted allowing a white man to speak there.  Similar battles rage on the left within university fields where conservatives are almost non-existent – but both groups agree on the importance of socialist ideas. The professors who remain open to conservative ideas in such fields say the need for pushback against the new leftists is critical.  CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP  “People are afraid to speak up and oppose the radicals, but you've got a choice -- you can wait around until things get worse,” Peterson has said. “Or you can stand up now and speak.”  Maxim Lott is Executive Producer of Stossel TV and creator of ElectionBettingOdds.com. He can be reached on Twitter at @MaximLott.


freedombunker--2019-01-08--Steven Pinker Richard Dawkins Jordan Peterson Others Urge Portland State Not to Punish Peter Bogh

Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Jordan Peterson, Others Urge Portland State Not to Punish Peter Boghossian for ‘Grievance Studies’ Hoax

Several well-known academics wrote letters in support of Portland State University (PSU) philosophy professor Peter Boghossian, a co-author of the hoax "grievance studies" paper now facing academic misconduct charges.  As I reported on Monday, PSU administrators have claimed Boghossian's efforts to trick academic journals into publishing fake studies violated institutional review board (IRB) protocols because he did not seek approval to carry out experiments on human subjects. Boghossian and his supporters—co-authors Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay among them—have protested that they didn't need any such permission, and asking for it would have risked giving away the game.  To recap: Boghossian, Pluckrose, and Lindsay submitted hoax papers with social justice themes—animal sexuality, fat studies, etc.—to leftist academic journals in order to demonstrate that fake, jargon-filled treatises on oppression and intersectionality could easily pass for the real thing. By some measures, they were successful: Seven of the papers were approved for publication. But this little experiment has landed Boghossian—the only one of the three with an actual academic position—in hot water with PSU's IRB, which determined that he conducted unethical research.  Boghossian has asked his defenders to write letters of support to PSU's administration, and several prominent names have done so. Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now and The Better Angels of Our Nature, urged PSU not to seek revenge on Boghossian for raising legitimate questions.  "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 Pinker. "If scholars feel they have been subject to unfair criticism, they should explain why they think the critic is wrong. It should be beneath them to try to punish and silence him."  The author Richard Dawkins used even stronger language, accusing PSU of seeking to punish satire.  "To pretend that this is a matter of publishing false data is so obviously ridiculous that one cannot help suspecting an ulterior motive," wrote Dawkins.  And Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and leading thinker of the so-named Intellectual Dark Web, wrote that "any 'academic misconduct' that is occurring is being perpetrated by those who are raising and pursuing the allegations, and most certainly not on the part of Dr. Boghossian."  In the last 24 hours, I've interacted with many scholars, academics, and higher education experts with a variety of opinions about PSU's actions. Not all agree that the administration is in the wrong. Joel Christensen, an associate professor of classical studies at Brandeis University, told Inside Higher Ed that Boghossian "did commit academic fraud, by design, and that some professional sanctions might be warranted," but he believed that such sanctions should not include termination. (That was in line with what Jeffrey Sachs, a lecturer at Acadia University, expressed to me when I asked him for comment on Monday.) Others have furiously debated whether the IRB would have been likely to authorize the project.  The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's Robert Shibley worries that Boghossian's situation is evidence that IRBs in general have moved well beyond their original mandate, which was to protect test subjects from real abuse. The federal law requiring scientists to consult IRBs before gathering research dates to 1974, and was originally intended to prevent misconduct along the lines of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which researchers failed to give proper medical care to hundreds of black patients who had contracted the disease. According to Shibley:  Over time, the use of IRBs has become increasingly commonplace, and seemingly required, even for social science research or experiments that have a far less direct effect on the humans who might be involved. As Columbia law professor Philip Hamburger, a prominent critic of the current role of IRBs, has pointed out, even oral history projects and opinion poll research, which simply consist of asking people for their own stories or opinions, can be subject to change or simply forbidden by IRBs. (Oral history, at least, was relieved of this burden by federal regulatory changes that took effect just last year.) Particularly when removed from the medical context, it becomes all too easy for some fundamental IRB rules—such as the requirement that studies be done only with the informed consent of all human participants—to fail to work well. As Lindsay and Pluckrose point out, the Grievance Studies Affair is one of these situations, as "it is impossible to conduct a valid quality assurance investigation, which this audit was, after informing those being audited that they're under examination." Assuming it's correct to characterize the journal editors as subjects of an experiment who needed to be protected from its potential physical or psychological harm, the IRB process would at the very least have required that the authors inform all of the potential "subjects" that faked research papers were coming their way. Truly "informed" consent might have required rather more specificity than that. It doesn't take a scientist (or a whole group of them on an IRB) to understand that such a restriction would make this particular research effort pointless, but PSU nevertheless determined that the research violated its rules and was worthy of discipline.  Shibley concluded his post with this observation: "When it comes to this type of research…it's hard to avoid the conclusion that if the rules forbid it, it's the rules, not the researchers, that have gone wrong."


freedombunker--2019-01-12--What the APAs Report on Men and Masculinity Really Tells Us A Psychologists Perspective

What the APA’s Report on Men and Masculinity Really Tells Us: A Psychologist’s Perspective

Because we didn’t have enough to be angry about, this week brought us another subject for outrage: the American Psychological Association (APA) hates men. The APA’s Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men, published in August 2018, has come to prominence in the media, supposedly demonstrating psychology to be the latest social science to join the ranks of the war on men.  Upon deeper examination, however, this report should have served as a wonderful opportunity for dialogue regarding masculinity. The report reflects concerns raised by both sides of the political spectrum, and there is far more common ground than might be expected. However, rather than finding any opportunity for civilized discussion, the news media would rather engage in the typical strategies of oversimplification, exaggeration, and polarization that so define modern politics.  The APA report highlights a number of facts that many, such as Dr. Christina Hoff Summers, have raised previously. For example, men are more likely to commit and be the victims of homicide and are three times more likely to commit suicide. The report further outlines 10 guidelines for psychologists to consider in addressing these and similar issues.  The norms of “a real man” depend on factors like age, ethnicity, and culture, each of which may provide its own specific challenges.  Many of these guidelines should be uncontroversial regardless of your political orientation. Indeed, many of them have been talking points of the political right for several years, such as recognizing the importance of caring fathers in the family unit. Similarly, the report recognizes—and indeed emphasizes—that there is no single conceptualization of masculinity.  The norms of “a real man” depend on factors like age, ethnicity, and culture, each of which may provide its own specific challenges. The report focuses on psychologists learning to recognize and address these challenges in the treatment of men, as well as dealing with the antisocial phenomena that may result, such as unfettered aggression, misogyny, or emotionally restrictive norms like “boys don’t cry.”  Rather than calmly reporting the facts (heaven forbid!) or recognizing the common ground this report represents, both sides of the aisle seem hell-bent on making this into yet another divisive political issue. On the left, the response has been triumphant crowing about toxic masculinity and the dangers men pose to a civilized society. On the right, the response has been a reactive moral panic about how the left hates traditional manhood. Both of these responses are polarizing, oversimplified, and worst of all, useless.  One particularly worrying response from the right is the assertion that the masculine traits “maligned” in this report, such as aggression, dominance, and the desire to be breadwinners, are positive and even desirable traits in “real” men. This response is called reactance, and it seems to define modern political discourse.  It seems that many would rather blindly assert these traits to be positive, never stopping to consider the potential negative consequences raised by the APA’s report.  The fact is, almost no trait, masculine or otherwise, is inherently good or bad. Yes, some of the traits warned about in the APA’s report can have positive manifestations, which the APA report already admits. Aggression can be positive when used to defend the self, the home, or the family unit. Dominance, in the proper dosage, can be an important part of leadership. The desire to provide can be an important part of maintaining a healthy family unit. However, each of these traits also has a dark side.  I sincerely hope it is uncontroversial to say that aggression is maladaptive, harmful, and immoral when it takes the form of spousal or child abuse. Dominance is likewise undesirable when it causes a predilection to start bar fights over minor insults. Even the desire to be the “breadwinner” can also be maladaptive if a man is uncomfortable when his wife makes more than him and it harms their relationship.  Again, I hope none of these facts would be considered controversial. However, it seems that in their reactance-fueled ire, many on the right would rather blindly assert these traits to be positive, never stopping to consider the potential negative consequences raised by the APA’s report. With demonstrated potential risks like abuse, homicide, and suicide in play, such a reactive response seems foolish and dangerous.  Much of my own research focuses on a specific set of cultural norms known as honor ideology, which highlights the dangers of unchecked, badly focused masculinity. In an honor culture, a man’s worth is entirely measured by his willingness to engage in violent retaliation to insults or threats. Honor ideology has been consistently linked to many of the same phenomena raised by the APA’s report, including needless risk-taking, stigmatizing mental health treatment, violence against women, and increased risk of suicide. In each of these cases, the norms and requirements of being a “real man” have real, concretely deleterious effects for men who subscribe to them or live in a culture where they are enforced.  The phenomenon still serves as a concrete example of how masculinity and its associated norms can have severe risks for its adherents.  Honor ideology is a widespread phenomenon in America, despite what some on the right claim about the harmful effects of masculinity being “outliers.” Millions of men subscribe to these norms and suffer the negative effects of doing so, including the “gender role strain” mentioned in the APA’s report. Failing to subscribe to honor norms makes one less of a man, which can lead to everything from mental health crises such as suicide to taking dangerous risks in order to regain “lost” masculine honor.  While not all masculinity is tied up in honor ideology, the phenomenon still serves as a concrete example of how masculinity and its associated norms can have severe risks for its adherents. These risks are not simply for “outliers.”  Obviously, not everything in the APA’s report will be agreed upon by everyone of every political orientation. However, the report still contains a number of opportunities for finding common ground. The problems raised by the report are real, and they are not partisan. They afflict men across cultures, ethnicities, ages, and political persuasions. They are widespread problems, and they need a solution.  The goal of the report was to draw attention to the ways that masculinity can go wrong rather than to condemn masculinity outright.  The APA’s Division 51 has even issued a clarification, highlighting the positive elements of masculinity and stressing the fact that the goal of the report was to draw attention to the ways that masculinity can go wrong rather than to condemn masculinity outright. However, it seems both sides of the political spectrum would rather ignore these common issues in favor of continuing the anger and polarization that define modern politics.  If you have not read the APA’s original report, I encourage you to do so with fresh eyes. You may be surprised to find that your ideas, on either side of the political spectrum, will be challenged. Regardless, the problems raised by the APA report are not going away, and without finding common ground, it is likely that they will not be solved.


freedombunker--2019-03-21--Marveling at Captain Marvels Grit

Marveling at Captain Marvel’s Grit

The latest Marvel film has done well at the box office, and for good reason. It is a solid entry in the MCU, and an introduction to a new character that promises to be central to the ongoing narrative arc following Avengers: Infinity War (some spoilers follow).  There are quite a few notable themes in Captain Marvel, and I’ll highlight a couple here. First, we learn a fair amount more about the Kree, the civilization introduced in Guardians of the Galaxy. As Yon-Rogg leads his team into battle, he gives them a pep talk that essentially amounts to the mantra: Be ready to sacrifice yourself for the greater good. While in itself this is indeed a praiseworthy credo, the Kree seem to have taken this emphasis on the common good to an extreme form of collectivism. The Kree collectivist ideology is also combined, at least in some cases, with a sense of racial or civilizational purity.  Our society often emphasizes safety to the detriment of courageous, even risky, action.  By the time we get to Guardians, for example, Ronan the Accuser’s aims to cleanse the galaxy of undesirables is explicit (and the Kree conflict with the Skrulls also coheres with this). So there’s a lot of fodder for exploring themes of individualism, collectivism, and the common good in Captain Marvel.  And related to ideas of individualism and self-realization, a more striking theme throughout the film is Carol Danvers’ journey of self-discovery and actualization. We see in Danvers a woman who has fought her entire life to get to where she wanted to be. Every time she failed, she tried again. Every time she fell or was knocked down, she got back up again. Perhaps more than any hero introduced in the MCU thus far, Carol Danvers embodies the virtue of grit, or perseverance in the face of opposition.  The significance of grit is increasingly being recognized in social science research, and it makes sense. We see its importance in sports, where the truism that hard work often beats mere talent is often expressed. It is equally important in entrepreneurship, where a kind of survivorship fallacy can be manifest.  When we see someone successful, in business or sports or whatever, we don’t see all the failures that preceded that success. And there are many, many failures and falls, both big and small, that come before any achievement of significance. When something like 90 percent of startups fail, we want a culture that encourages and empowers people to get back up, learn from mistakes, and continue to take risks.  In a society that often emphasizes safety to the detriment of courageous, even risky, action, Captain Marvel’s grit may be the most salient feature of the film for our times.  This article is republished from the Acton Institute.


freedombunker--2019-03-22--Where Is the Language of Liberty

Where Is the Language of Liberty?

We must not abandon ourselves to a poisonous language that strangles our doubts and numbs our judgment. Instead, we need to cultivate a language that inspires fundamental doubt and unterrified inquiry.  In George Orwell's 1984, the state of Oceania is devising a new language out of the old, pre-revolutionary English: Newspeak. “When Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten,” Orwell wrote, “a heretical thought . . . should be literally unthinkable.” Modern cognitive science provides fascinating evidence for the influence of our language on our thinking. Unlike Oceania's Newspeak, our English is not the result of malicious (re)design. But does it serve us well in thinking clearly and critically about matters of politics and economics?  The compilers of the Newspeak dictionary in Oceania's “Ministry of Truth” first and foremost purge words for undesirable ideas from the new language. Indeed, it is difficult to think about ideas for which we lack words. Even today, there are Amazonian tribes that do not have words for numbers. People of an anumeric language fail even most simple arithmetical tasks. However, it seems that what they lack is not innate mathematical ability but a mathematical language—and culture—that we just take for granted.  It is difficult to think critically with words that carry hidden assumptions into our reasoning.  Economic thinking needs cultivation no less than mathematical thinking. This means not only developing an adequate terminology but also avoiding a misleading one. Not only is it difficult to think without suitable words, but it is also difficult to think clearly and coolly with ambiguous and emotionally loaded words.  Most of all, it is difficult to think critically with words that carry hidden assumptions into our reasoning. Calling a substance “medicine” means taking for granted that its effects are beneficial without explicitly stating and specifying this crucial premise. Thus, we may fail to even ask the question and start a genuine inquiry.  This is exactly the case with the term “regulation.” Traffic signs “regulate” the traffic, right? That's what they're supposed to do. But what if they don't? By now, there is ample evidence about the effects of removing all traffic signs from crossroads: fewer casualties and more fluidity. The real effects of such traffic signs are more casualties and less fluidity. Calling them “regulations” is like calling a poisonous substance “medicine.” It is a bad habit bred of ignorance before we have found out about its real effects. It turns into negligence or even fraud after we have.  Only the absence of such “regulation” allows safe and fluid traffic to emerge as a spontaneous order.  A red light hinders people when it would be perfectly safe to go, and a green light entitles them where consideration would be more appropriate. Without the lights, traffic is regulated by criminal and tort law, but most of all by people's desire to avoid accidents and a thousandfold individual on-spot knowledge of how to do so best.  More information is put to use than could be collected and processed in any centrally planned system of traffic signs. Only the absence of such “regulation” allows safe and fluid traffic to emerge as an unanticipated and unintended order of coordination—a spontaneous order.  The same is possible for all kinds of state decrees. Calling them “regulations” presupposes the answer to the very question the economist—and any critical mind—has to ask: What are their effects on the wealth of society? That is to say: the actual effects, not just the intended or declared ones, and all effects, not just the obvious ones, but also those that remain unseen.  The mere word “regulation” carries the creationist fallacy into our thinking, that there cannot be order without design.  In particular, what kind of spontaneous orders do the state decrees prevent from emerging? That which remains unseen is all the harder to imagine if it goes against our gut feeling. But if the task of science is to gain and convey insights that run counter to our gut feelings, its language must not confirm them at the outset of inquiry and instruction.  The mere word “regulation” carries the creationist fallacy into our thinking: the notion that there cannot be order without design. Life, language, customary law, money, and many more natural and social phenomena are all clear evidence to the contrary. The economist who criticizes “too much regulation” uses an anti-scientific language and makes himself sound self-contradictory. Who could be against “more regulation”—against a more regular, orderly, and desirable state of affairs? With the mere word “regulation,” the creationist fallacy is not only conceded but at once embraced and veiled from critical scrutiny.  Price decrees are a classic example of state interference that defies its real or declared intention. When selling a good above a certain price becomes punishable, the main effect is to impede and discourage its production.  The absence of state legislation by no means implies an absence of rules.  Greater scarcity, longer waiting lines, and even higher prices on the “black market” are the results, from the Pharaohs' Egypt over Nixon's America to Chavez's Venezuela. But calling such state-decreed punishments “price controls,” “ceilings,” “floors,” or “regulations” not only blinds us of these economic consequences but also blinds us of important ethical and legal implications.  The absence of state legislation by no means implies an absence of rules. In the absence of threats of punishment by state decree, prices are regulated by the rules of self-ownership and freedom of contract. These rules provide an extensive and strict legal regime. In particular, they criminalize all sorts of force and fraud. Nobody has the privilege to make offers that cannot be refused. Historical evidence and economic reason suggest that by this principle, a society gets the best offers humanly possible.  On these utilitarian grounds, many libertarians advocate “free markets.” But this choice of wording is unfortunate, too. There are markets for stolen goods, slaves, contract killings, and for the decisions of politicians and bureaucrats. What libertarians really advocate are the rules of self-ownership and individual property.  The dynamic process of trial and error, discovery, and cooperation that emerges from the observance of these rules contains much more than what is conveyed by the image of a traditional marketplace. Nor is it helpful to speak of “the market” as an acting being, paralleling the equally delusional image of “society” as some sort of higher collectivist creature.  There are many more instances of loaded and misleading language that is nonetheless accepted across the political map, including the libertarian corner. Consider the term “minimum wage law.” Not only does it obscure the use of force and punishment and falsely suggest that its effects will equal its declared intentions, but the noble and authoritative word of “law” has also experienced an outright perversion of its original meaning when generally applied to state legislation, and not just in the extreme cases of the racist “Jim Crow laws” or the anti-Semitic “Nuremberg laws.”  We are warned by the philologist Victor Klemperer, the crown witness of the corruption of the German language under National Socialism:  By liberty, libertarians understand a domain of individual sovereignty defined by the rules of self-ownership and individual property. They hold that if people act, cooperate, and trade on these ethical and legal premises, the results will by far surpass all forms of coercive central planning, whether under paternalist-authoritarian or democratic-egalitarian justifications and by standards of wealth for which most people would vote for with their feet.  We need to consciously cultivate a language that, in its precision and clarity, inspires fundamental doubt and unterrified inquiry.  To investigate the evidence both for and against the libertarian case, we need a language of precision and clarity in matters of politics and economics; a language that does not already in its vocabulary confuse intentions and results, embrace the fallacies of creationism, and obscure the use of force and punishment. We must not unquestioningly and unconsciously abandon ourselves to a poisonous language that strangles our doubts and numbs our judgment as if it were devised by Oceania's Ministry of Truth.  Instead, we need to consciously cultivate a language that, in its precision and clarity, inspires fundamental doubt and unterrified inquiry. If the case for liberty is sound, then its language is in an economic and social science worthy of the name. For the sake of truth and liberty, let us start speaking that language.


freedombunker--2019-03-29--The Problem with Universities Demanding Diversity Statements

The Problem with Universities Demanding "Diversity Statements"

The quotation of the day on university corruption and the lack of diversity when it comes to ideology is from Walter E. William’s column this week "More University Corruption":  For most of the 20th century, universities were dedicated to the advancement of knowledge. There was open exchange and competition in the marketplace of ideas. Different opinions were argued and respected. Most notably in the social sciences, social work, the humanities, education, and law, this is no longer the case. The most important thing to today’s university communities is diversity of race, ethnicity, sex and economic class, on which they have spent billions of dollars. Conspicuously absent is diversity of ideology. Students are taught that all cultural values are morally equivalent. That’s ludicrous. Here are a few questions for those who make such a claim. Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is currently practiced in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan; is it morally equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limitations placed on women, such as prohibitions on driving, employment and education. Under Islamic law in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning. Thieves face the punishment of having their hands severed. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death in some countries. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to Western values?  The latest diversity trend in higher education is the increasingly frequent requirement of including a “diversity statement” when applying for an academic position, and in some cases when applying for tenure and/or promotion. Here’s what Dr. Jeffrey Flier, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Higginson Professor of Physiology and Medicine, and former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University said on Twitter last November:  Along with Dr. Flier, here are some reasons I find those diversity uniformity statements objectionable.  What is called a “diversity statement” is essentially a pledge of allegiance to higher education’s orthodox and uniform agenda in its ongoing battle against a color-blind, gender-blind, merit-driven academia. Successful diversity statements will be expected to support an unspoken ideology that emphasizes group identity, an assumption of group victimization, and a claim for group-based entitlements. Diversity statements compromise both academic freedom and academic standards as “purity tests” of an applicant’s worthiness in adherence to a uniform, leftist-liberal-progressive view of “diversity.”  In reality, “diversity statements” will be in practice “uniformity statements” of adherence to a uniform view of diversity.  Diversity statements will serve to weed out politically incorrect opinions and politically incorrect candidates because only leftist-oriented statements will be acceptable, reinforcing an ideologically uniform and monolithic professoriate. In reality, “diversity statements” will be in practice “uniformity statements” of adherence to a uniform view of diversity.  Overall, only diversity statements that adhere to a uniform statement of allegiance to a uniform leftist/liberal/Marxist/progressive view of group identity, group victimization, and a claim for group-based entitlements in higher education will enhance and advance a candidate’s application. Failure to profess allegiance and conform to a uniform, orthodox diversity agenda, an agenda that ignores the most important diversity in higher education—intellectual and viewpoint diversity—will doom an applicant’s job prospects.  Diversity statements will actually be anti-diversity statements of uniform, leftist-liberal-progressive thought that completely ignore the diversity of viewpoints, ideology and thought, and are therefore dangerous and misguided efforts that are threats to academic freedom and will weaken true intellectual diversity.  This article is republished with permission from the American Enterprise Institute.


freedombunker--2019-04-30--On the American Ideology

On the American Ideology

“We paint the world to ourselves as we like – until everything breaks down and no longer holds.”  We live in the age of the American Empire. It can be that this empire will someday crumble. In the foreseeable future, however, it is here to stay, not on account of its military strength but first and foremost because of its ideological power. For the American empire has achieved something truly remarkable: the internalization of its core belief system as an intellectual taboo into the minds of most people.  Granted, all states rest upon aggressive violence, and the USA is no exception. The United States as well do not hesitate to annihilate everyone who opposes their legislative despotism. Though the USA had thus far employed little actual violence to have its orders submissively followed because the overwhelming majority of the population and especially of the opinion-forming intellectuals have accepted the system of values and convictions which makes up the American empire.  According to the official, USA approved belief system, we are all equally intelligent and reasonable people, who are confronted with the same “harsh reality” and are bound to the same facts and truths. Of course, it is true, that even in the age of the American empire, in the USA, people do not live in the best of all worlds. There are many more problems to be solved. Though with the American system of a democratic state, humanity has found the perfect institutional framework which makes the next step in the direction of a perfect world possible; and if only would the American system of democracy takeover worldwide, would the way to perfection be clear, smooth and free.  The single legitimate form of government is democracy. All other forms of government are worse, and any government is better than none. Democratic states like the USA are of the people, by the people and for the people. In democracies no one rules over the other; instead, the people rule over themselves and are thus free. Taxes in democratic states are therefore contributions and payments for governmentally provided services; accordingly, tax avoiders are thieves, who take without paying. To provide shelter for fleeing thieves is thus an act of aggression against the people, from whom they are trying to escape.  Though there are still other forms of governments around the world. There are monarchies, dictatorships, theocracies, and there are feudal landowners, tribes, and warlords. And for this reason, democratic states often must necessarily deal with non-democratic states. Eventually, all states must be converted to the American ideal, because only democracy allows for a peaceful and continual change for the better.  Democratic states like the USA and its European allies are inherently peaceful and do not wage war against each other. If they must fight any wars all at, then these are preventive wars of defense and liberation against aggressive and undemocratic states, that is, just wars. All countries and territories that are presently in war with or occupied by American troops or its European allies – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libyan, Syrian, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen – were therefore guilty of aggression and their war waging and occupation on behalf of the democratic West were an act of self-defense and liberation. However, there is still much to be done. Especially Russia and China still pose a huge threat and must be liberated, in order to make the world finally safe.  Private property, markets, and profits are useful institutions, but a democratic state must ensure that with the appropriate legislation, private property and profits are acquired and used in a socially responsible manner and that markets function efficiently. Moreover, markets and profit-seeking entrepreneurs cannot produce public goods and are thus incapable of satisfying any social needs. And they cannot take care of the truly needy. Only the state can take care of social needs and the less fortunate. The state alone can, through the finance of public goods and aid to the poor, increase the public welfare, and diminish poverty and the number of the needy, if completely not eliminate.  Especially the state has to put the private vice of greed of the pursuit of profit under control. Greed and the pursuit of profit were the leading causes of the most recent large financial crisis. Reckless financiers generated an irrational exuberance among the public, which ultimately had to crash into reality. The market was wrecked, and only the state stood ready to save the day. Only the state, through appropriate regulation and supervision of the banking industry and financial markets, can prevent such a thing from happening again. Banks and companies went bankrupt, yet the state and its central banks held ground and protected the money and jobs of the workers.  Advised by the leading and best-paid economists in the world, states and especially the USA have discovered the causes of economic crises and realized that in order to get out of an economic mess, the people must simultaneously consume more as well as invest more. Every cent under the mattress is a cent withheld from consumption and investment, which in turn impairs future consumption and investment expenditure. In a recession, spending must first of all and under all circumstances be increased; and when the people do not spend enough of their own money, the state has to do it instead. Prudently, states have this option, for their central banks can produce any necessary liquidity. If billions of Dollars or Euros are not enough, then trillions will do; and if trillions do not meet the goal, then surely quadrillions will. Only massive state expenditure can prevent an otherwise unavoidable economic meltdown. In particular, unemployment is the result of low consumption: people who do not have enough money to buy consumer goods; this problem must be remedied by providing them with higher wages or higher unemployment benefits.  When the last financial crisis is finally overcome, the democratic state can and must devote itself once more to the really urgent remaining problems of humanity: the battle against inequality, the elimination of all unjust discrimination, and the control of the global environment and the global climate in particular.  In principle, all people are equal. Differences are only apparent, shallow and meaningless: some people are white, some brown, some black, some are big, others are small; some are fat and others thin; some are male, and some are female; some speak English and others Polish or Chinese as mother tongue. These are accidental human traits. It is a coincidence that some people possess these and some do not. But accidental traits like these have no influence whatsoever on and do not correlate with mental properties like motivation, time preference or intellectual abilities, and they do not contribute to the explanation of economic and social success, especially of income and wealth. Mental and psychic properties have no physical, biological or ethical basis and are limitlessly malleable. In this regard is everyone, except for a few pathological individual cases, equal to the other, and every nation has made in the course of history a contribution to civilization of equal value or would have done so, if only it would have gotten the same chance. Seemingly obvious differences are solely the result of different external circumstances and education. All differences in income and achievements between Whites, Asians, and Blacks, women and men, Latins, Anglos-Saxons and Thais as well as Christians, Hindus, Protestants, and Moslems would disappear, if only equality of opportunity would be established. If instead it will be discovered, that all these different accidental groups are unequally represented in and distributed across different levels of income, wealth, or professional status, some are richer and more successful than others, then this demonstrates unjust discrimination; and such discrimination must be counterbalanced through appropriate, targeted affirmative action on behalf of the state, in which the discriminators have to compensate the unjustly discriminated.  And the studies of the leading and best paid social scientists have clearly shown, who, above all, are the discriminators. The people in question are first and foremost white heterosexual males and the institution of the traditional, patriarchal organized family. It is, therefore, most notably this group of people and this institution which must compensate all other groups and apologize to all other forms of social organization.  But this would not do. The reparations to all disadvantaged, to all victims of inequality and discrimination, require likewise strong governmental support of multiculturalism. The highly developed and white male dominated countries of the Western world have obtained their wealth at the expense of the inhabitants of all other regions of the world and are caught in a disastrous and prejudiced particularism and nationalism. This situation lends itself to be overcome through the promotion and systematic incentivization of immigration of people from different, foreign countries and cultural environments, in order to ensure that the foreign immigrants could finally unleash their full human potential and simultaneously replace the Western parochialism with an authentic cultural diversity.  And with the victory over the disastrous particularism and nationalism through a systematic policy of multiculturalism is one finally able to turn to the crucial stride toward a solution to the undoubtedly biggest global, borderless and world-encompassing problem of climate change. Divergent particularistic and nationalistic interests have thus far lead to the fact that the production and the consumption of non-renewable energy sources were left mostly unregulated and worldwide uncoordinated. And that is why, as the leading and best-paid climate researchers have undoubtedly proven, is the whole globe threatened by unimaginable catastrophes: floods, strong and sudden rising sea levels and the emergence of fatal ecological disequilibria and instabilities. Only through a worldwide, concentrated action by all states, and ultimately the establishment of a supranational world government under the leadership of the USA and an enforced systematic regulation of any production and consumption activities, can this life-threatening danger be avoided. “The common good comes before the individual good” – this is above all, what the problem of climate change shows, and it is on the states and especially on the USA to permanently implement this principle.  Now, I tell you no secret when I admit that I hold this for a massive pile of rubbish, for complete nonsense and a highly dangerous one at that – but I also do not belong to the leading and best-paid economics and social scientists, and of climate research, I understand nothing at all! Except that I know, for example, that a global climate warming is no global problem, but one that affects people in different places of the globe entirely differently, a curse for one is a boon for the other, and insofar downright forbids a global solution.  Question: who are we to thank for this nonsense, whom does it benefit, and how is it that we are fed daily with it by the official media?  Here I want to hint at the answer only very briefly. It has two parts. One has to do with the institution of a state, and especially of a democratic state, with its occupants and representatives. And the other has to do with the intellectuals.  The state is a monopoly of legislation and law enforcement. In all conflicts, including those which it or its representatives are involved in, the state or people appointed by the state decide who is right or wrong. The predictable result is: the state is always right, in everything that does. Whether robbed, plundered, killed, lied to and threatened in the name of the state – or summarized in single sentence: when force is exerted on other people and violence is used against other persons – everything can and everything will be painted by it and its agents as just and assigned with another, deceptive and attractive name. This makes the institution of the state naturally attractive for all people who would like to rob, plunder, kill, lie, defraud other people, that is, use violence against others. Above all, it is these kinds of people who therefore try to infiltrate and take over the institution of the state. And if, as under democratic conditions, the entrance in and the occupation of the state stands free and open for everyone, that is, when it becomes a downright competition for votes between power thirsty crooks, then it is to expect, that the persons who will get to the top of the state are those who possess the greatest talent of rhetorically covering up their own predatory, treacherous and murderous intentions and selling these as good deeds to the voting masses. In short: The best demagogues, the best pied pipers, and corrupters get to the top.  Though when one looks at these democratically elected politicians and members of parliament, whom day by day impose their obvious megalomaniac will though law or decree on millions of people– can one only marvel. Because these people are as a rule not some kind of formidable, impressive alpha males or females, but an epitome of mediocracy or merely a collection of losers, idiots and failures, who have never in their entire life produced a product or rendered a service which someone would have voluntarily bought with his own money.  And faced with these tragic figures, who grandiosely claim to be “our” highest representatives, the question then arises, whether such light-calibrated people are even in the position of conceiving by themselves the entire nonsense which they tell us every day, and furthermore, whether they have what it takes to come up with the diverse justifications and rationalizations for this nonsense which they everywhere feed us.  There one surely has a considerable doubt! And that leads me directly to the second part of my answer to the question of the originators and beneficiaries of the above described “politically correct” view of the world and the nature of things: the intellectuals, or put more precisely, those intellectuals who occupy themselves with social, economic and philosophical question and problems, and their connection to the state and its leaders.  As in the case of the politicians, so is there in the case of the intellectuals hardly a person who through her intellectual work, her writings and speeches, for these are what she produces, that could secure a comfortable livelihood and income. The market demand for such products is low and is furthermore subject to large deviations. Only a small number of intellectuals would succeed in making a profession out of their writings and speeches. The vast majority of actual or alleged intellectuals would be advised to conduct their scientific interests as a mere inner vocation and to earn their livelihood elsewhere, by the practice of a normal civilian profession. But this naturally contradicts the feeling of self-esteem of an intellectual, and all those who view themselves as such. The intellectuals are convinced of the importance and value of their work like no other group and are accordingly resentful when the alleged appropriate high social recognition fails to materialize.  What is then left for them instead? They are usually not suitable for politics, for they are typically too honest and wonkish, too shy, awkward, introverted and particularly antisocial. And for this reason, they mostly lack the desire for power, which is precisely what makes a politician.  But the intellectuals are naturally smart enough to know that even if they are not made to be politicians, they nevertheless need the politicians to get the money required for a comfortable living. And they obviously also know what they must offer as a service in return so to get the biggest possible cut of their pillage: namely well-sounding justifications for continually expanding the powers of the state, and “bold” visions and programs with noble, well-intentioned goals, for example, that of “equality of all people” which cannot ever be achieved, no one can ever achieve, but precisely because of this one never has to give up on, but can repetitively revive and ceaselessly renew.  And so it comes to an unholy alliance: that of the early, monarchical times between church and crown, and that of today, in the American age, between democratic politicians and intellectuals. The result? Never before were there so many politicians and above all so many alleged intellectuals as well who live and indulge in luxuries at the expanse of an ever-decreasing number of productive persons. And never before, in order to stay among the intellectuals, have the numerous and large universities, as the publicly funded and supported citadels of intellectual power and influence and the breeding ground of future politicians and intellectuals, produced so much horrific intellectual nonsense and contributed to the misleading of the public as in our times.  In light of this fact, what can one do? I am afraid that not much – except to repetitively and openly call out the whole hoax. This means that for one thing, to recognize and describe the politicians for what they really are: a band of liars, crooks, robbers, murderers, and associates to murder; and treat them accordingly with contempt, scorn, and ridicule. But also their intellectual masterminds and assistants, without whom the politicians could never carry out their evil work, must be targeted, and as the first step toward a return to normalcy and sound human understanding, to common sense, it is imperative to push for the financial draining of the universities. Not only should all centers for Blacks, Latins, women, gender, and Queer-studies, and everything else that there is of this then unheard of exotica, be closed, but also the social science departments altogether, starting with political science and history, through sociology and up to economics and social and economic statistics (whose statistics also serve the goals of uncovering ever new “inequalities” and to call for redistribution or reeducation!) And likewise should the profession of the academic literary studies and criticism and, as much as it hurt me to say, the profession of the academic philosophers as well be thinned out. And the people who believe, that they know how one controls the climate, one should issue them a certificate of illness and send them for treatment in a psychiatric clinic.  This does not mean that one should have anything in principle against the work of political scientists, sociologists, economists, statisticians, literary critics, philosophers or climate scientists, or wish that they should cease to exist. Without a doubt, there will be people who genuinely occupy themselves with questions and problems of all disciplines. And that is good and necessary. But surely would the number of such scientists be much smaller. But quantity is not the same as quality, and the reduction in the number of tax-funded social scientists of all kinds is by no means tantamount to an intellectual descent. Completely the opposite. Freed from the intellectual pollution which is currently produced by the universities, appear once more the possibility of a rise of a class of new and better intellectuals, characterized by firm stance and authentic understanding of reality.  Yet all of this lies, if it is even possible to arrive at, in the far future. But thank god one need not wait for it any longer. For in the niches of the present madhouse, totally apart from today’s universities and schools and the ongoing charade, there is, in any case in Vienna, around Vienna, and all around Vienna in the German-speaking region, still – or even better: once more – a place in which though one cannot earn any professional credentials or governmental certificates, but in which man can acquire real education and learn and practice critical thought and argumentation: Rahim’s Scholarium.  [1] Ohad Osterreicher is studying undergraduate economics at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.  The post On the American Ideology appeared first on LewRockwell.


freedombunker--2019-05-20--Why Im Lukewarm on the ALIs Principles of the Law Policing

Why I’m Lukewarm on the ALI’s “Principles of the Law: Policing”

For the last four years, I have been serving as an Adviser to an ongoing American Law Institute project, Principles of the Law: Policing.  This week, the ALI membership is considering key parts of the Principles at its Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. I can't make it to the Annual Meeting, so I figured I would explain here some of my concerns with the Principles.  My concerns leave me lukewarm on the project, including some of the key parts to be considered this week.  Let me start with the big picture.  The ALI is perhaps best known for its Restatements of the law and the Model Penal Code.  The Principles is more like the Model Penal Code than Restatements.  It is an effort to develop normative principles of how police agencies should do their jobs.  That's a tricky goal because the law of policing in the United States is primarily federal constitutional law—and in particular Supreme Court interpretations of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.  Federal constitutional law sets the floor, and legislatures, state courts, and policing departments are then free to add additional restrictions as they feel appropriate.  The basic goal of the Principles is to set out ways in which the ALI thinks that the police should restrict themselves beyond what existing law requires.  And I think it's fair to say that the Principles reflects the views of its Reporters, and selected Advisers, that the Supreme Court's interpretations of the Constitution don't go nearly far enough in restricting police practices.  The Principles therefore set out to recommend a set of best practices that they feel the police should follow that go beyond the restrictions that the Supreme Court has required under the Constitution.  That basic idea of recommending non-constitutional limits on policing practices is certainly commendable.  Indeed, the role of non-constitutional limits on policing is a theme of my own academic work.  But my main difficulty with the Principles is that it tries to impose a one-size-fits-all answer on some really hard problems.  It reflects a particular view of what limits would be appropriate for all policing, and it recommends that all police departments adopt those limits.  My own view of policing is more cautious.  I'm not sure that one-size-fits-all works beyond the constitutional floor.  There is an incredibly broad range of police agencies in the United States.  There are federal agencies, state agencies, and local agencies.  Some agencies are enormously large, and others are very very small.  Some have broad mandates, and others have very narrow ones.  In some areas, like eyewitness identification, we have social science that leads to useful rules to recommend.  But in most areas, we don't.  And I'm skeptical that it works to recommend a single set of rules for every agency outside that context.  My concerns often leave me unsure of whether a significant number of the rules proposed by the Principles are wise.  Some of the rules strike me as sound.  Others are probably useful in some settings.  A few of the rules may be good guidance in some settings but I think go too far in other settings.  All of this leaves me playing Justice Harlan to the Reporters' criminal procedure revolution, unable to be on board some of the key recommendations that the Principles make.  This is all rather abstract, so let me turn to examples.  The draft under consideration this week is 162 pages long, and the ALI may threaten legal action if I post it, so unfortunately I can't show the full draft.  But I want to run through the provisions that most implicate the concerns I have.  I'll start with some of the sections on search and seizure. I'll then turn to the Miranda interrogation rules.  Let's start with Section 4.03, which discusses when the police should stop and arrest individuals and how they should interact with people when they do.  This section reflects the concerns of procedural justice theory, which focuses on perceptions of police legitimacy and trust in policed communities. In light of those concerns, this section contends that police citizen encounters should generally be limited.  "[A]gencies should limit the overall use of initial encounters, stops, and arrests, to circumstances in which they directly promote public safety and minimize harm to the public."  And when officers take such actions, they should explain to individuals what they are doing and why to ensure that the police action is likely to be deemed fair:  This is usually good advice.  But should it always be required?  Procedural justice is important, but I'm not sure it needs to apply to every police citizen interaction to achieve its benefits.  Similarly, Section 4.04 limits police questioning during a Terry stop to inquiries "necessary to investigate the crimes or violations for which the officer has reasonable suspicion, or as necessary to ensure officer safety."  The officer shouldn't stop a person for one reason and then ask questions that aren't necessary to investigate the matter that provided the constitutional justification for the stop.  This is done to prevent pretextual stops, the comments explain.  Without such limits on questioning, "those secondary intrusions may themselves become the goal of  the stop, leading to unnecessary and perhaps unnecessarily intrusive encounters between officers and the public." (The Reporter's Notes suggest that section is merely a summary of existing Fourth Amendment law, but that's not correct: The Supreme Court expressly rejected this rule in Muelher v. Mena.  This limit on questioning would be a major shift in practice.)  I understand the concerns with pretextual stops.  But I would think there are at least some circumstances when we would want them, and when we would want questioning outside the justification for the stop.  For example, say there has been a string of recent robberies in the neighborhood, and the officer pulls over a car for speeding.  The driver seems to match the rough description of the participants in the robbery, but there isn't enough evidence that creates proper reasonable suspicion to detain the driver for those crimes.  Is it clear that we don't want the officer to ask any non-speeding questions in that situation?  Next, the black letter rule of Section 4.06 suggests that police agencies should consider adopting a rule that officers cannot ask for consent unless they first have reasonable suspicion.  The comments to the rule replace this suggestion with a more categorical rule: "Officers should not seek consent to conduct a search unless they have reasonable suspicion to believe that the search will turn up evidence of a crime and unless they can explain to the individual why they would like to conduct a search."  Again, this is often a good approach.  But won't there be many circumstances when an officer has suspicions that don't amount to "reasonable suspicion"?  And should we want officers to be categorically barred from asking for consent in those circumstances?  Similarly, Section 4.07, on search incident to arrest, would prohibit full searches of a person incident to arrest unless "there is reasonable suspicion to believe that the arrestee is concealing a weapon or evidence that would not be uncovered through a pat-down search."   Again, the goal seems to be to avoid pretext searches: Agencies should enact policies on searches incident to arrest so that such searches "are not used as pretext to  look for evidence of a crime or violation that is unrelated to the offense for which the individual was arrested."  I agree that, in some cases, such pretexts will be harmful.  But are they always harmful?  I wouldn't think so.  The materials on interrogations take some steps that I find troublesome.  Let me focus on two.  Section 11.03 discusses when Miranda warnings should be given.  The rule states: "Officers should inform suspects of their right to refrain from answering and their right to counsel, and ensure that any waivers of those rights are meaningfully made." At first that seems unobjectionable, as it's basically Miranda law but with a higher pre-Berghuis  waiver standard.  But if I'm reading the materials correctly, there appears to be something very different going on.  As I understand Chapter 11, officers are supposed to inform people of these rights whether or not they are in custody, and indeed whether or not they are suspects at all. That's a rejection of the basic idea of Miranda, which was that warnings were required only when a suspect is in custody.  Here's what the comments say, in Section 11.01, about why, as the Reporter's notes put it, the Principles aim to "move beyond the unwieldy concept of custody" in interrogation law:  A detailed body of constitutional law applies to police questioning of suspects. One important area of constitutional law—the Miranda doctrine—draws a line by asking whether a person is deemed to be in "custody." See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444 (1966). . . .  The focus in constitutional law on the issue of "custody" can be quite formalistic, and remote from the concerns that motivate these Principles. For example, an innocent person who is not formally in custody still may face great pressure to confess falsely. A vulnerable person, such as a juvenile or mentally ill person, may receive unfair treatment that implicates concerns of legitimacy, even if not considered a suspect and not formally deemed to be in custody during the questioning. That said, the concerns with accuracy, coercion, and legitimacy may well be greater in the settings in which more formal custodial questioning occurs. No matter in what form or setting questioning occurs, police professionals ought to have an abiding interest in getting it right. Thus, these Principles do not take as their starting place the line between custodial and noncustodial interviews. Rather, the focus is on obtaining accurate statements with minimal coercion.  So if I'm reading the Principles correctly, everyone gets Miranda warnings.  It seems that suspects and non-suspects,  those in custody and those out of it, all receive the same warnings.  And people questioned are required to be informed that they have a right to counsel to be present for questioning even when they have no such rights—as they don't unless they're being interrogated in custody, when Miranda provides it.  Do we really want the police to always give Miranda warnings any time they ask questions to people?  That seems a quite remarkable legal rule.  One last example.   Section 11.04 explains how interrogations should be conducted.  It states:  The comments to the rule explains that the point is to minimize the coercive nature of police questioning, both to avoid false confessions and to respect the dignity of those questioned.  And some of these are certainly good rules.  But others seem overly restrictive, at least assuming the requirement to "avoid" those facts is meant as a serious limit and not just a small thumb on the scale.  For example, is it necessarily problematic for the police to ask leading questions?  ("You killed him, didn't you?") Isn't it often useful and unproblematic to provide details that are not publicly known?   ("Your husband was shot today in his driveway by someone at point blank range. I regret to tell you that he died. Do you know anything about it?") Are deceptive techniques that might "pressure" suspects necessarily problematic?  ("Your friend just confessed and says you pulled the trigger, what do you have to say about that?")  Of course, interrogators should be aware of the risks that these techniques may pressure suspects in ways that lead to problematic interrogations.  But those same techniques may be very effective, and I'm skeptical that the right line between permitted and banned is a general rule that those techniques should be avoided.  I don't know if my concerns will resonate with the broader ALI membership.  But I thought I would raise them for members and others who may be interested.