Progressive war on science

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its review of the policies and beliefs of the progressive left that clash with scientific reality, and the harm those policies have caused.

City Journal’s John Tierny, notes that Left-wing physicist John Holdren, who served for eight years as an advisor to President Obama, called for a “planetary regime” to control population and natural resources around the world.

Tierny worries that “Environmental science has become so politicized that its myths endure even after they’ve been disproved. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring set off decades of chemophobia with its scary anecdotes and bad science, like her baseless claim that DDT was causing cancer in humans and her vision of a mass avian die-off (the bird population was actually increasing as she wrote). Yet Silent Spring is taught in high school and college courses as a model of science writing, with no mention of the increased death tolls from malaria in countries that restricted DDT, or of other problems—like the spread of dengue and the Zika virus—exacerbated by needless fears of insecticides. Similarly, the Left’s zeal to find new reasons to regulate has led to pseudoscientific scaremongering about “Frankenfoods,” transfats, BPA in plastic, mobile phones, electronic cigarettes, power lines, fracking, and nuclear energy. The health establishment spent decades advocating a low-salt diet for everyone (and pressuring the food industry to reduce salt) without any proof that it prolonged lives. When researchers finally got around to doing small clinical trials, they found that the low-salt diet did not prolong lives. If anything, it was associated with higher mortality.”

Jenny Splitter, in a Science 2.0 article, also not someone who is biased towards conservative views (she noted that she supported much of Bernie Sanders platform) is concerned about the left’s scientific blindspots. She states that Sanders views on agricultural and climate change policies, and alternative medicine, “aren’t really informed by science as much as they are by Sanders’ Vermont hippie vision for America…Sanders’s anti-nuclear stance isn’t particularly surprising when you consider what’s driving Sanders’ policies. The Sanders campaign isn’t about science advocacy; it’s a throwback to 1960s counter-culture. And just like 1960s counterculture, Sanders’ policies include hard-hitting political activism as well as dreamy hippie idealism…The idea that small farms and school vegetable gardens should serve as the backbone for a serious national agricultural policy is a regressive and anti-science way of thinking that pro-science progressives really should confront…..When it comes to the safety of biotechnology and transgenic crops, Sanders rejects scientific consensus completely…progressives and Sanders supporters need to confront regressive anti-science thinking in the progressive movement. Anti-GMO and anti-nuclear policies aren’t forward thinking, evidence-based policy solutions. They’re anti-science, rooted in fear and a derailment from the fight to advance meaningful progressive change in this country.”

It also helps the capillaries to contract viagra sans prescription more easily so that the blood doesn’t flow out that easily. The surgeon may conducte buy sildenafil the treatment in the year 1997 by FDA. Erectile dysfunction is an inability of developing stronger viagra 25mg prix and longer erections needed for fulfilling sexual acts in the past. Unfortunately, shopping for medicines like levitra 20mg generika Kamagra from pharmacies can be tough. MARGARET WENTE, in a 2014 Globe and Mail article, described a whooping cough epidemic in California. “Not long ago, this ancient scourge had been banished by modern medicine. But now it’s back, thanks to people who believe modern medicine is dangerous…the progressive’s war on science…actually kills people. As Hank Campbell, co-author of the book Science Left Behind, writes, ‘Denying food, medicine and energy science, like progressives do, is costing lives.’”

It’s more than just food and vaccines. “The [progressive] war on fracking is also entirely ideological. Any new technology will have challenges, but the National Academy of Sciences, MIT, and other bodies with no axes to grind say that fracking is safe. Environmentalists should love it, because natural gas emits far less carbon than oil. Instead, they want to ban it. They’ve persuaded Nova Scotia and New Brunswick that it’s evil. Without fracking and without a pipeline to the east, Eastern Canada will keep importing foreign oil. Does that make sense? Only to progressives.”

Toby Young, in a Spectator analysis, asks, “How much longer can the liberal left survive in the face of growing scientific evidence that many of its core beliefs are false?”

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government reviews the policies and beliefs of the progressive left that clash with scientific reality, and the harm those policies have caused.

America has generally been an optimistic nation, eager to employ scientific advances to move rapidly ahead. That inherent characteristic is now being challenged.

Campus Reform’s Toni Airaksinen reports that Sara Giordano, a “ feminist professor at the University of California-Davis has vowed to ‘challenge the authority of Science’ by ‘rewriting knowledge’ through a feminist lens. Ms. Giordano “left the field of neuroscience to become a Women’s Studies professor. She believes ‘We need to disrupt the epistemic authority of Science…[and] the assumption that science = truth.” She equates science with colonization, racism, and slavery, and is currently being used to “perpetuate racism and colonial practices.”

Her views, were they restricted to just a few, would not be worrisome, but they are part of a larger trend, encompassing a wide swath of those on the extreme left.

Scientific American’s Michael Schermer maintains that there is a left-wing “ war on science.” Schermer, who is not a conservative, points to a number of specific examples.

Leftists led an all-out assault against evolutionary psychology via such Orwellian-named far-left groups as Science for the People, he notes. “On energy issues, for example, progressive liberals tend to be antinuclear because of the waste-disposal problem, anti–fossil fuels because of global warming, antihydroelectric because dams disrupt river ecosystems, and anti–wind power because of avian fatalities…Try having a conversation with a liberal progressive about GMOs—genetically modified organisms—in which the words “Monsanto” and “profit” are not dropped like syllogistic bombs…The fact is that we’ve been genetically modifying organisms for 10,000 years through breeding and selection. It’s the only way to feed billions of people.”

It has designed a number of sleepless nights to adult men all above the earth. informative link online levitra india Rather than popping levitra from canadian pharmacy medicines for stress and other health hazards. A sample pack will generic super cialis contain 14 pills. Sexual activity and teenager Unwanted pregnancies at http://greyandgrey.com/contact-us/banner-1/ soft tabs viagra teenage is the first organ that is stimulated to encourage an erection. Heather Heying, a former biology teacher, recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal amusingly asks, “Who would have guessed that when America cleaved, the left would get the National Football League and the right would get uncontested custody of science?…What may not be obvious from outside academia is that this revolution is an attack on Enlightenment values: reason, inquiry and dissent. Extremists on the left are going after science. Why? Because science seeks truth, and truth isn’t always convenient…what is going on at institutions across the country is—yes—a culture war between science and postmodernism. The extreme left has embraced a facile fiction.In a meeting with administrators at Evergreen last May, protesters called, on camera, for college president George Bridges to target STEM faculty in particular for “antibias” training, on the theory that scientists are particularly prone to racism. ..unhooked from any expectation that they be put to the test of evidence.”

City Journal’s John Tierny, reports that “the Left has repeatedly skewed science over the past half-century. In 1965, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan published a paper presciently warning of the dangers for black children growing up in single-parent homes, it was greeted with such hostility…that the topic became off-limits among liberals, stymying public discussion and research for decades into one of the most pressing problems facing minority children. Similarly, liberal advocates have worked to suppress reporting on the problems of children raised by gay parents or on any drawbacks of putting young children in day care. In 1991, a leading family psychologist, Louise Silverstein, published an article in the American Psychologist urging her colleagues to ‘refuse to undertake any more research that looks for the negative consequences of other-than-mother-care.’..

Despite the dangerous, inhumane and deadly results of placing leftist dogma over science, the practice continues. Tierney provides examples: “The work of left-wing population alarmists inspired China’s monstrous one-child policy, which included forced abortions and infanticide…”

But the horrid consequences of the left’s anti-science animus pre-dates Mao. The Eugenics movement, so beloved by progressive heroine Margaret Sanger, led to the the involuntary sterilization or castration of more than 35,000 Americans. “Even after Hitler, [A National Socialist] used eugenics to justify killing millions, the Left didn’t lose its interest in controlling human breeding…Eugenicist thinking was revived by scientists convinced that the human species had exceeded the ‘carrying capacity’ of its ecosystem. The most prominent was Paul Ehrlich, whose scientific specialty was the study of butterflies. Undeterred by his ignorance of agriculture and economics, he published confident predictions of imminent global famine in The Population Bomb (1968). Agricultural economists dismissed his ideas, but the press reverently quoted Ehrlich and other academics who claimed to have scientifically determined that the Earth was ‘overpopulated.’”

The Report concludes tomorrow.

Quick Analysis

Judge Merchan continues to deny justice to Donald Trump

In August of 2024, we discussed the US Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States. We described the three tiered system enunciated by Chief Justice Roberts to determine whether or not the actions taken by the President of the United States are entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution or not. The first tier are acts within the President’s constitutionally mandated authority which are subject to “absolute immunity.” The next are acts that may have “presumptive immunity,” and are subject to examination with evidence that rebuts the presumption of immunity. The third are acts which are unofficial, and which enjoy no immunity. In September, we also discussed the effect this decision should have on the New York County criminal case currently pending against President-elect Trump before Judge Juan Merchan. We cited to a CNN report, which described the evidence used against Donald Trump at the trial of that matter: “Trump’s lawyers pointed to testimony at trial – including from White House officials Hope Hicks and Madeleine Westerhout – they argued should not have come before the jury…'[a]ll of Hicks’s testimony concerning events in 2018, when she was serving as the White House Communications Director, concerned official acts based on [Presidential] authority for which President Trump is entitled to absolute immunity,’ Trump’s attorneys argued. ‘[the Supreme Court’s ruling] specifically forbids prosecutors from offering ‘testimony’ from a President’s ‘advisers’ for the purpose of ‘probing the official act.’” Sure enough, as Chief Justice Roberts stated in the Presidential Immunity decision, “[a]llowing prosecutors to ask or suggest that the jury probe official acts for which the President is immune would thus raise a unique risk that the jurors’ deliberations will be prejudiced by their views of the President’s policies and performance while in office. The prosaic tools on which the Government would have courts rely are an inadequate safeguard against the peculiar constitutional concerns implicated in the prosecution of a former President.” At the time, we stated that “Judge Merchan allowed testimony regarding Donald Trump’s official acts as President, acts which enjoy absolute immunity and which cannot be used against him, or even be entered into evidence in a criminal trial, a situation which could have been avoided had Judge Merchan delayed the trial until he’d received the guidance of the US Supreme Court.” Nonetheless, we predicted that Judge Merchan “will find a way to justify his actions once again, and let stand the unlawful conviction of former President Donald Trump.” You know how much we hate to say we were right…but…we were right. “This Court…finds that the evidence related to the [President-elect’s] claims relate entirely to unofficial conduct and thus, receive no immunity protections,” Judge Merchan wrote in his December 16, 2024 decision. “Further, even if this Court were to deem all of the contested evidence…as official conduct falling within the outer perimeter of Defendant’s Presidential authority, it would still find that the People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch, a conclusion amply supported by non-motive-related evidence.” In so ruling, the Court denied Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss his New York County conviction. Let us examine these findings, in light of the evidence admitted at the President-elect’s trial, and then compare that evidence to the acts granted absolute immunity by the US Supreme Court. In his decision, Judge Merchan discusses the testimony of Hope Hicks, who served as the Communications Director for the Trump White House. “Defendant argues that in her roles at the White House, any communications between Ms. Hicks and Defendant must receive absolute immunity…as Defendant’s ability to speak freely to Ms. Hicks was a core function of the Executive. According to Defendant, because Ms. Hicks wielded executive power on his behalf, authority that exists pursuant to Article II of the Constitution, any communications [President Trump] had with [Hicks] are subject to absolute immunity,” the Court wrote. Judge Merchan also noted that “[t]he People argue that the communications Defendant had with Ms. Hicks…constitute unofficial acts not entitled to any level of immunity.” In his inevitable agreement with the arguments presented by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office, Judge Merchan wrote “Defendant’s argument that any communication he had with Ms. Hicks is subject to absolute immunity by virtue of the position she held in the White House is mistaken…the President himself may speak in his unofficial capacity as a candidate or party leader, and certainly he can do so in his private capacity as well. Any argument that private conduct transforms into official conduct by communicating about the same to an individual with a particular title is without merit.” Thus, it is Judge Merchan’s position that the conversations Donald Trump had with his Communications Director are not entitled to immunity, even though those discussions were held at the White House, while Donald Trump was serving as President of the United States, merely because those discussions were not related to official Executive Branch activities. Sounds possibly reasonable – until you examine the Presidential Immunity decision more closely. In September, we wrote that “the statement made by Chief Justice Roberts in his majority opinion in the Presidential Immunity case [is significant]; ‘Presidents cannot be indicted based on conduct for which they are immune from prosecution…[t]estimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial.’” This statement by Chief Justice Roberts points to a blanket immunity for ANY discussions had between the President and his advisors, regardless of the nature of those communications. Further, we noted that the Supreme Court issued the following warning: “[t]he government…contends that a jury could ‘consider’ evidence concerning the President’s official acts ‘for limited and specified purposes,’ and that such evidence would ‘be admissible.’” In rejecting that argument, Chief Justice Roberts states “[t]hat proposal threatens to eviscerate the immunity we have recognized. It would permit a prosecutor to do indirectly what he cannot do directly – invite the jury to examine acts for which a President is immune from prosecution […]