Category Archives: Social Commentary

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

“Digging In Their Heels” On Climate

7 Comments

Note the implicit but potentially false assumption in this paper.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: Note to global-warming alarmists: You’re doing it wrong:

The arguments about global warming too often sound more like theology than science. Oh, the word “science” gets thrown around a great deal, but it’s cited as a sacred authority, not a fallible process that staggers only awkwardly and unevenly toward the truth, with frequent lurches in the wrong direction. I cannot count the number of times someone has told me that they believe in “the science,” as if that were the name of some omniscient god who had delivered us final answers written in stone. For those people, there can be only two categories in the debate: believers and unbelievers. Apostles and heretics.

This is, of course, not how science works, and people who treat it this way are not showing their scientific bona fides; they are violating the very thing in which they profess such deep belief. One does not believe in “science” as an answer; science is a way of asking questions. At any given time, that method produces a lot of ideas, some of which are correct, and many of which are false, in part or in whole.

Yup.

[Update Wednesday morning]

The Democrats’ War On Science:

The name-calling, divisive “debate” around climate change is not just bad science and bad public policy making, but as I noted yesterday, it’s not even good political tactics. If either side could point to a lot of progress and say “Yes, it’s unsavory, but it works” — well, I still wouldn’t like it, but I’d have to concede that it was effective.

But throughout decades of increasingly angry delegitimization of the skeptics, decades in which the vilification has actually increased in volume even as most of the skeptics have moved toward the activists on the basic scientific questions, the net result in public policy has been very little.

And hopefully, will continue to be.

Business, Economics, Law, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Disappointing Libertarian Ticket

14 Comments

I agree with Tim Carney; they seem to be running against conservatives more than in favor of liberty:

Weld and Johnson held their first post-nomination joint interview on Tuesday, on liberal network MSNBC. “We’ve never bought into this anti-choice, anti-gay…sense of the Republican Party,” Weld said, as his first comment to the national television audience.

The message was clear: We don’t need those backward Christian Right bozos as much we need as you MSNBCers.

Johnson has sent similar signals, suggesting that his love of liberty is second to his revulsion to religion. In January, for instance, Johnson said he would make it a federal crime for women to wear the Burqa, the full-body covering worn by women in certain strains of Islam. Johnson recanted a day later, while continuing his warnings about the threat of Sharia — Islamic law — in the U.S.

This spring, Johnson pushed aside freedom of conscience. When asked in an Oregon about laws and lawsuits requiring caterers to participate in gay weddings, Johnson took the big-government side — for coerced baking in the name of gay rights. When later asked about this anti-liberty view, Johnson made the standard liberal conflation between selling off-the-shelf cupcakes to a gay customer (which is straight-up discrimination against a person) and refusal to participate in a ceremony (which is a freedom of conscience issue, a freedom of association issue, and often a free speech issue).

The dress-code libertarianism and bake-me-a-cake libertarianism Johnson has embraced isn’t libertarianism at all — it’s left-wing social engineering enforced at gunpoint. Coming from Johnson and Weld, it reeks of raw identity politics. The only consistent theme is that religious people are bad.

Yes. It’s disgusting. This sort of thing is why I’ve never been a Libertarian, despite the fact that I’m generally libertarian.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Political Correctness

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It’s the main issue driving support for Trump:

when “respectable” people won’t talk about things that a lot of voters care about, the less-respectable will eventually rise to meet the need. That’s what Trump’s doing. And a lot of people are cheering him on not so much because they’re fans of Trump personally as because they’re happy to see someone finally stand up to the PC bullies.

I agree. His willingness to ignore the faux political pieties that have protected corrupt Democrats (most of all, the Clintons) from criticism is pretty much the only thing I like about him. He’s a bloviating vain, lying asshat and con man, and will probably be a terrible president, but at least he’s forcing the media to finally do their job.

[Update a while]

Trump states the obvious about the leftist (not “liberal”) media.

Law, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

In A World Of Self-Driving Cars

36 Comments

…we’ll still need the Miata.

Yes. Two counterpoints, though.

First, I don’t think I’d be able to read or write while being driven; in my experience that can make me car sick. I have to be in control.

Second, I very much fear that in a world of self-driving cars, it will be considered socially irresponsible and dangerous to drive yourself, and probably made illegal.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Hiroshima

55 Comments

I agree with Glenn:

All this talk about the Hiroshima bombing being a war crime is just virtue-signaling, mostly by people who would regretfully acknowledge the unfortunate necessity of obliterating, say, Texas…

[Update a while later]

No, Brian Williams, we did not use atomic bombs against Japan “in anger.”

As I said, second-guessing historically ignorant moral midgets.

[Update Saturday morning]

Hiroshima as gun control:

It is instructive to consider that if president Obama had been transported to 1945 nobody in the audience would have understood what he was talking about. By the same token Harry Truman would be scarcely comprehended if sent into the 2016 future to address the modern Democratic electorate. That is because these men, separated by 70 years, saw the arrow of causality as working in a manner opposite to the other.

To the World War 2 generation threats to mankind came from ideologies which once allowed to spread would automatically find the things necessary to effect destruction. The Atomic Bomb was incidental. An ideology on the loose in the 21st century would invent something else far more deadly. To that way of thinking a creed which vowed to destroy “the American way of life” would be seen as a menace with the same fervor that moderns would regard it as harmless. The ideas would be central, the things secondary.

Who is right time will tell. Truman’s record now speaks for itself. His legacy, the Pax Americana also known as the Long Peace, has prevented a general war for three generations, the length of living human memory. Some will say his achievement was accidental. By contrast the record of the man who now promises a world without nuclear weapons — his synonym for peace — has only just embarked on his plan.

It has been far from auspicious; according to a former secretary of defense the world is today closer to a nuclear conflict than at any time since the height of the Cold War. From the South China Sea to Ukraine, to the Middle East, the shadow of war is everywhere one looks. Perhaps one should give it time, as socialism and other sure-fire schemes should be given time, and we will not be disappointed.

It is ironic to consider that today’s generation perhaps has more blind faith than the men who 70 years ago defeated Hitler and Tojo. Moderns know what’s going to happen much more than people in the past. They read it in a book. They saw it on social media. They know it will be specified in talking points memos. We forget sometimes that by contrast the World War 2 generation had no certitude of triumph. They did not even know the Atomic Bomb was going to work or that they would perfect it before Hitler did. They could not have seen it as evil with the same retrospective certainty that Obama can. At each step of the way these young men won victory — can the word still be used without embarrassment? — with none of the certainty which today’s generation possess in such abundance.

RTWT.

But it’s worth noting (as he does not) that traditional Islam (and sharia) is a creed which vows to destroy the American Way of Life. You may not be interested in ideology, but ideology is very much interested in you.