One of the ugliest agit prop, street theatre tactics now being commonly used is the accusation: fascist, in effect, outlaw beyond the pale of civil protection. It is therefore appropriate to pause and seek clarification on what fascism really is about. But first, let us draw attention to a disturbing historical parallel to what we Read More…
Free Speech
The post-Brexit & post-Trump (etc.) “populism” canard
It seems the impact of Brexit followed by Trump [= “Amer-exit” ?] is stirring up a sharp reaction in global halls of power, leading for instance to resort to a loaded, one-word, barbed dismissal of the presumed ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked masses: U/D: Let’s add a clip on the wave of upcoming elections Read More…
Wikileaks hits the jackpot: “. . . an unaware and compliant citizenry”
This issue is directly relevant to the ID controversy, but also to much more of what has gone wrong with our civilisation and the utter, stark peril we now face because we ignored warning signs for decades: This has to be decoded a bit, as it is of course in the usual context of our Read More…
Society, Rights, and Self-Identification
Does a man have the right to identify himself as a woman and enter their locker rooms and bathrooms, demanding equal rights for their self-identification? Does a person have the right to identify herself as a native American and, when filling out forms for employment or college, indicate her ethnicity as such, even though she Read More…
Carpathian and ilk vs. the First Amendment to the US Constitution
Carpathian, sadly but predictably, in the face of remonstrance has continued his attempts to support ghettoising, stigmatising and silencing the voice of the Christian in public; making himself a poster-child of a clear and present danger to liberty in our time. For example: >>Religious activities should all be private. Any prospects for religious conversion should Read More…
FYI-FTR: Part 11, a paper on inducing mass pseudo-consensus
Today, I must postpone my intended next FTR, but I believe we will find very useful, the Olin Foundation paper as captioned, with abstract: >>Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation Timur Kuran* and Cass R. Sunstein** An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction Read More…
Increasing suppression of dissent
So if you are an American, you vote for it, you pay for it with your taxes, you support it with your discretionary spending, and it tells you to shut up.
Further off-topic but important
So the “free speech zone” would then be the United States and its territories, possessions, protectorates, and dependencies? Right?
Off-topic: Former New York mayor Bloomberg sort of gets it? Maybe not.
“On every issue you must follow the evidence where it leads and listen to people where they are,” the former New York City mayor told 6,000-plus undergraduate and graduate students who earned degrees.
An interesting defense of free will in Scientific American
Maybe the only way a Scientific American writer could support free will is to somehow link it with materialism. Better that than embracing tyranny!
Is there evidence that we have free will?
Random Brain Waves Save Free Will? The debate continues with a new publication. But the new study by Han-Gue Jo and colleagues of Freiburg makes a strong case that the “RP” is not really a ‘thing’ at all. They say that, in the two seconds before a button press, you see both negative and positive Read More…
FYI-FTR: “But, that’s CENSORSHIP!”
It seems that, in the interests of more responsible and responsive, on-issue commentary here at UD and elsewhere in the context of debates over design theory (cf. concerns here and here), participants in discussions in and around UD need to clarify some matters, especially the difference between fair comment dissent and defamation and that between Read More…
FYI-FTR, 5: A BA 77 update — Dr Jerry Bergman lectures on the longstanding career and reputation slaughter of Darwin doubters
BA 77 has found another vid on the Slaughter of the Dissidents that reminds us of what the sort of evo mat promotion stunts we see going on in and around UD can all too often end up as: [youtube T_nh0zDMwJA] A couple of stills can help us understand what Darwinist agit-prop enabling behaviour by Read More…
Journal of Medical Ethics, the ghosts of Francis Schaeffer and C Everett Koop have somewhat to say to you regarding “post-birth abortion” . . .
(In case you imagine this to be purely academic, cf. here) UD News has recently highlighted a debate on how the academy has reacted to objections to a bioethics paper that advocated “post-birth abortion.” (Cf. a noteworthy objection, here.) Including, “post-birth abortion” of the healthy but undesirable. A telling clip from the JME paper: we Read More…
How to Talk to Your Professors About Your Darwin Doubts
There are two regular tragedies in the Intelligent Design movement. The first tragedy is the student who airs his or her doubts about Darwin, and a faculty member then makes it their life mission to block that student from a degree, or, if they get a degree, prevent them from getting any further. This sometimes Read More…