An Environmental Split-up

If the Republicans were as split as the environmentalists are over wind power for Cape Cod, there
would be predictions all over of the end of the Republican Party as we know it.

But because environmentalists are battling environmentalists instead of evil conservative
Republicans battling not-so-evil moderate Republicans, the only reaction is a little
harmless chuckling.
Introducing the whole sordid affair Jonah Goldberg
invites his readers
“to take a Nestea Plunge into the swirling waters of limousine liberalism.”

[S]ome environmentalists and a company called Cape Wind want to build 130
windmills way out in the ocean to help offset energy costs in the region — and to satisfy
all those demands that we find substitutes for evil fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, other environmentalists and conservationists are eager to stop the wind
farm from being built, largely because it will mar the view from their extravagant
coastal homes. Leading this charge is Sen. Ted Kennedy,
whose famous compound would have a nice view of the turbines.

All in all, it would take a heart of stone not to enjoy the Battle of the Liberal Wind Farm.

Lying and Politics

Everybody knows that politicians lie. But there was a time in Britain when the Duke of Wellington
could say, according to
Paul Johnson
(subscription required), of Sir Robert Peel: “I have sat in many cabinets with him,
and I have never known him, in public or
in private, say anything which he did not believe to be the strict truth.”

We have certainly progressed a long way since then.

The question is: why do today’s politicians today lie so much? The answer is pretty obvious. We require
them to lie. We refuse to be contented with the truth. We want our politicians to tell us what
we want to hear and nothing less will satisfy us.

Perhaps we can understand why people are upset with President Bush for not talking up the economy
and not rallying the American people for the war on terror. They want him to tell them the things
they want to hear.

Maybe President Bush’s problem is that he just doesn’t like telling lies.

The Coalition between the Left and Islamic Terror

It still seems almost beyond belief: the coalition between the western left and
the Islamicists. Is it really possible that the champions of women, minorities,
gays, and lesbians could really be allied with the Islamic terrorists.

The answer is clearly: Yes. Judging from this article by
Douglas Davis,
there exists a formal alliance in Britain between the lsft and radical Islam.

You don’t have to search for them under rocks. They are organizing in the
open, holding conferences in Cairo, and have an official joint committee.

The steering committee of the Marxist-Islamist alliance
consists of 33 members — 18 from myriad hard-Left groups, three from
the radical wing of the Labour party, eight from the ranks of the radical
Islamists and four leftist ecologists (also known as ‘Watermelons’
‐ green outside, red inside). The chairman is Andrew Murray, a leading
light in the British Communist party; co-chair is Muhammad Aslam Ijaz,
of the London Council of Mosques. Among the major players from the
Left are Lindsey German, who resigned as editor of the Socialist
Workers’ party newspaper to become convenor of the Stop the War
coalition; John Rees,
also of the SWP, and, of course, George Galloway.

What could be uniting them? It’s hate, of course, the universal glue of
militant mass movements. And what the fundamentalist Muslims and secular Lefties
both hate is us:

Points of potential disagreement between the hard Left
and radical Islam — democracy, human rights, xenophobia, free-expression,
feminism, homosexuality, abortion, among many others — would seem to
pose insuperable barriers to the union. Not so. The hurdles have been
neatly vaulted in the interest of mutual hatreds: America, Israel,
globalisation, capitalism and imperialism.
Anti-Semitism is never far from the surface.

It’s breathtaking. America. Capitalism. Globalization. The three things
that have brought the billions of the world to freedom and prosperity are the very things
that these people have combined to assault and destroy.

Legislating The Morality of Health

How important is diet and exercise to a healthy life? Everyone knows, of course, that it
is very important. You can change your life by ending unhealthy eating habits and by
starting a program of moderate exercise.

Everybody knows this, but is it true?

TechCentral Station’s
Sandy Szwarc
and now
John Luik have been pulling out some research that says “not so fast.”

For instance, we all know that thin is healthy. But is it? Luik cites longitudinal research that
says that thin is dangerous:

Take, for example, one of the most extensive and publicized efforts in health
promotion of all time, the Mr Fit (Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial) which was
specifically designed to establish the truth of health promotion by showing that heart disease
and cancer could be reduced through reducing blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking. After
sixteen years of study, the intervention groups, which had received extensive assistance with
exercise, changing diet and smoking cessation, had results which were not significantly better
than the group that had received none of these "health promotion" interventions. Indeed, the
intervention group, despite lower rates of smoking, actually had higher rates of lung cancer.
What MR Fit showed was precisely how lifestyle interventions failed to reduce
mortality from multifactoral diseases like cancer and heart disease.

Then there is this:

Consider the Framingham study. Begun in 1950 as a longitudinal investigation of the
causes of cardiovascular disease, some 5,209 men and women aged 30-59 were followed for 30 years on
the assumption that those who were thinnest would have significantly lower risks for heart disease.
But in 1979 when three of the study’s lead researchers published their data it was found that for
men the highest risk -- that is the worst life expectancy -- was for the thinnest men; men who were
25-40% fatter than the ideal weight were living the longest. For women,
mortality was elevated only for the very thin and the very fat.

The bigger problem is that the health promotion movement is advancing a moral idea under the
color of science, the idea that longevity is a good thing. But is it? Is it worth adding a few
years onto your life by, for instance, avoiding spicy and fatty foods?

If, indeed, it is hard to
show that diet and exercise have much of an influence on longevity, then why should the government
be getting into the business of health promotion?
“When those in favour of getting the State involved in the lifestyle intervention
business begin to speak about what to do about these claims, they cease to speak as
exalted scientists and become simply moralists.” Or, as the left likes to say, they are legislating
morality.

And that assumes that a long life is a good thing. Is it?

Government Guts Gifted Kids

All you need to say about government education is: Why? When the working
class of the nineteenth century were crowding around the school house door,
when 90 percent of children were literate and 90 percent of them went to school, why
did government have to take over?

And why do liberals, who so famously celebrate diversity, want one size fits all
when it comes to the education of our children?

One thing they want is to keep gifted children back. They want to mainstream
everyone’s kids so that nobody gets left behind—or gets too far ahead. Even
President Bush has signed onto this pernicious notion.

Some people have been trying to do something about this.
Thomas Sowell marks the death of a longtime champion
of special education for gifted kids, Professor Julian Stanley of Johns Hopkins University.

Stanley ran a bunch of programs for gifted kids at Johns Hopkins.

He created special programs for unusually bright high school
students on weekends and during the summer at Johns Hopkins University.
The success of these programs
has inspired similar programs at Purdue University and elsewhere.

Such programs have not only produced academic benefits, the gifted
students in such programs have expressed an almost pathetic gratitude
for finally being in a setting where they are comfortable with their
peers and are viewed positively by their teachers.

In regular public school classrooms, these gifted students have
been too often resented by their classmates and their teachers alike.
Some teachers have seemed glad to be able to catch them
in occasional mistakes.

Yes. You can understand why many public school teachers wouldn’t be too fond of having bright
kids around. Students in graduate colleges of education usually come from the less
able students in undergrad school.

But the question is, why is the government in this business in the first place?
Can’t we trust parents to know what is best for their children?

The Corrupted University

One thing about big business. Whenever some CEO steps out of line, the whole nation
descends on him in unison. Americans are shocked, shocked, by corporate malfeasance.

But suppose there is corruption and malfeasance at a government university? What then?
For some reason, nobody cares.

So when a bright young law professor gets the shaft on tenure from his department because
he failed to sign a petition supporting the rights of the notorious plagiarist Ward Churchill of
the University of Colorado, we don’t get to hear about department heads being terminated and
Vice Chancellors resigning. Indeed, if anyone attacks the university they get the treatment. McCarthyism!
Freedom of Speech! And the rest of the liberal attack arsenal.

According to
Professor X
William Bradford is an untenured associate professor of law at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis with
“ a stunning record of publication, including a book, a forthcoming book, and 21 articles in law reviews or in books.”
But one third of the faculty of law recently voted against awarding tenure and against continuing his
position as untenured faculty.

Bradford believes that he was denied tenure because he refused to sign a
petition circulated in the law school this spring which supported Ward Churchill, the
Professor of Ethnic Studies at Colorado who described the victims of 9/11 as
"little Eichmanns" deserving what they got. The petition was circulated by Florence Roisman,
who is a full
professor holding a prestigious Chair in Law at the school.

Of course Florence Roisman is a left-wing professor with close ties to the administration. She is
a part of the march through the institutions that have reduced so much of academe to a left-wing
echo chamber. And the university administration is supporting her in the interests of
“protecting the institution.”

For us ordinary mortals that don’t get to play around with other peoples’ money in this way, there
are two sad aspects to this sorry affair. The first is the position of Professor Bradford, and his
victimization by the left-wing totalitarians. It is wrong for a government university to deny
anyone due process like this.

But the bigger issue is the damage that this sort of institutional decadence does to the nation. Everybody
gets worked up when a CEO betrays his trust, and rightly so. But the damage done
by 10,000 university professors abusing our trust is as bad or worse. After all, nobody thinks
of corporate executives as moral exemplars. But we do expect teachers and professors to rise above
petty politics and political agendas; that is why we privilege them with titles and with tenure.
Instead they have turned the university into a cesspool
of politics and intellectual marginalization

Eventually the university radicals will get their comeuppance. But not before they do a lot more damage.

Teacher Knows Best at Wal-Mart

How will the unions’ new strategy on increased organizing affect you and me? Well, here is how. The National Education Assocation, the teachers’ union, is organizing a boycott of Wal-Mart.

Er, just why would it be so important for the teachers to take their eye off the ball and their critical national role in educating our children to worry about Wal-Mart and its employees? That is what Michael Reitz is wondering too. Apart from the fact that the NEA is worried that “Wal-Mart employees are forced to seek government-subsidized health care benefits, which drains billions from public money that could be used to fund public education,”

The NEA even criticizes the Walton family, the founders of Wal-Mart, for contributing to “anti-public education efforts like private school voucher initiatives and anti-public educations PACs.”

What’s the problem, you say? Why stop the NEA when it starts worrying more about Wal-Mart than defending its own monopolies and privileges? Good point. The more “cycles” that the NEA puts into union boycott campaigns the less it can put into opposing education reform.