Should all journalists be college graduates, asks Kevin Mims in "Journalism's Ivory Towers"? Because back in the day they weren't. Not Mark Twain, for sure. Not even Harold Ross, founding editor of The New Yorker who was born in a prospector's cabin in Colorado. But now, of course almost every journalist has a college degree. Some of them write sympathetically about the lower orders, but there's a fat chance that any of the lower orders will get to work at The New York Times.
Look out drivers, writes Eric Peters in "No More Camaros For You". In California they are regulating high-performance Chevy Camaros out of existence because they emit too much copper.
The fade-resistant, high-performance pads used in these models “emit” trace amounts of vaporized/powderized heavy metals such as copper and asbestos during braking.
And in five years "California law will require that all brake pads be zero emissions." It's a cunning way of forcing the move to electric cars, because electric cars use much more engine braking than internal combustion cars.
OK, then here is Tom Chivers on "The perils of liberals politicizing science." Yes, of course we've got to take moral positions on bigots and racist-sexist-homophobes, he writes. But major science journals should not be endorsing Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Hey, we already know that nearly all scientists are Democrats!
Of course science is political: its findings have political implications; its practitioners have political beliefs. But its questions are fundamentally different from moral and political questions: What is real? vs What do we want?
To which I say, yes, of course. Ruler gotta rule; gentry gotta pursue a life of "ambition, honor, and vanity." Case in point, Joe Biden's wife, who wants to be addressed as "Dr." even though she's not a medical doctor but a Doctor of Education. See, she is a true Gentry, interested in honorifics.
Yes. I get it. Gentry gotta gent. And that seems to involve a lot of virtue-signaling and rent-seeking. You know, as in my liberal neighbors putting out Black Lives Matter signs and buying subsidized electric cars.
No doubt nearly all journalists have college degrees these days. And no doubt nearly all college graduates these days have been carefully taught the moral ins-and-outs of critical race theory. But maybe, just maybe, a few journalists at elite prestige titles should tumble to the notion that not everybody thinks like them, not everybody wants what they want, not everybody has the same moral calculus as them, and that maybe people should be allowed to be different and have a different moral calculus, and that the elite should ease up a bit on sneaking its agenda in the back door by, e.g., mandating zero-emission brakes by 2025.
Here's a group I had never heard of, "Atheism+" that has a very clear moral agenda.
We are:
Atheists plus we care about social justice,
Atheists plus we support women’s rights,
Atheists plus we protest racism,
Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia,
Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.
Well, I don't know that you chaps at Atheist+ do much critical and skeptical thinking, because the first thing is to decide, well, what do we do about people that don't believe in social justice, or feministm, or anti-racism, or don't want us to cast gay and bi and trans characters in all the movies, and don't want to enforce critical race theory on the world?
Yeah? What do we do about them? Send them to reeducation until they recant? Fire them from their jobs? Name, shame, and shun them? Imprison them? Exile them? Execute them?
Do we force everyone to pay to support the Atheist+ agenda?
See, for me, it comes down to this. If you believe that the world is composed of "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors," then of course the only thing to do is to exile the oppressors to Outer Slobbovia.
But if you believe, like me, that there are three kinds of people in the world: Subordinates that just want to be told what to do; Responsibles that believe in an Axial Age god, and want to live as God directs; and Creatives that believe in creativity for everyone; then you think, OK. That Atheist+ agenda might be just great for Atheists, but whatabout people that disagree with the Atheist+ agenda? What is their place in the world?
And this brings be back to my basic line, about "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything." The reason that Douglas Adams rehearses this line in his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is that he is making a joke about the fact that we don't know the meaning of life and all the rest of it. So we make it up.
What everyone has to do is to sign up to some faith tradition that says: "This is the meaning of life." Like the Atheist+ chappies. And then a satisfying moral calculus falls out naturally.
But supposing you Atheist+ chaps are wrong? Suppose that social justice results in concentration camps and millions of dead, like in the USSR and Maoist China? Suppose that women's rights end up with women not having children and that leads to the decline and collapse of civilization? Suppose that anti-racism ends up in irreconcilable conflict between woke liberals and bigoted deplorables and the breakup of the United States? Suppose that gays and transes are just mixed-up kids wanting out of the heavy-duty life of work and marriage and children? And suppose that Atheist+ chaps are deluded if they think that they are critical and skeptical thinkers? What then?
That, of course, is the moral basis for the notion of tolerance. Cromwell's Rule.
I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.
Only, of course, in reality, Cromwell was pretty well convinced that he was right, and that King Charles should be executed, if that is what it would take. Oh, and the Irish should be taught a lesson.
Yep, this is not that hard, and it is part of the reason for the separation between church and state, including the Church of Atheist+.
But it is apparently way beyond the comprehension of our liberal friends.
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