IT'S HAPPENING HERE!

This comes courtesy of Mal Kline, of Accuracy in Academia.

From www.campusreportonline.net

Wanted: Conservatives (Not)
by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 26, 2005

You can get an idea of what conservatives on America's college campuses are up against by looking at a recent want ad posted on the University of Tennessee at Knoxville site.

The ad reads:

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR - Political Science - Ph. D. in Political Science required. Strong background in major conceptual, theoretical, and methodical approaches to comparative politics. Expertise sought in one of the following areas: Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East. Candidates must show promise of excellence in research and graduate and undergraduate teaching, and bring a strong cross-national perspective. Apply with a cover letter, three letters of recommendation, transcripts, a detailed curriculum vita, and a brief writing sample to: Dr. Robert A. Gorman, Chair, Comparative Politics Search Committee, Department of Political Science, 1001 McClung Tower, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-0410.

And what is a "cross-national perspective" and who is Dr. Robert A. Gorman? To get an idea, we went to the professor's home page.

"Dr. Robert A. Gorman is a professor of political theory at The University of Tennessee," his web site reads. "He enjoys teaching courses and ancient, medieval, and modern thinkers."

So far, so good. Then we find out the range of thought that he considers viable.

"Professor Gorman is also the author of six books and numerous articles dealing with what scholars often label critical theory," his web site explains. "This work encompasses a wide range of topics, including phenomenology, hermeneutics, methodology, structuralism, Marxism, democratic socialism, modernism, and post-modernism."

"These somewhat abstract theories can powerfully impact our everyday lives."

No doubt. But, what of capitalism, conservatism, libertarianism, objectivism and liberalism in all its forms—classical, neo, and modern?

"Professor Gorman is interested in how philosophy informs humanity's timeless search for justice," his web site informs us. "He hopes that his published work and his teaching will inspire others to join the quest."

This quest takes us through the writings and works of Karl Marx, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Michael Harrington. Adam Smith, John Locke, Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand don't make the trip itinerary.

Search committees, such as the one that Dr. Gorman heads, play a decisive role in choosing candidates to fill college and university teaching positions. Candidates who do not get past them do not get hired.

On the other side of the podium, students do not hear from search committee rejects either. If the rejected applicants are conservatives, as many search committee casualties tell us they are, that rejection, in turn, robs the student of an intellectual diversity most collegiates come to expect of a college education.

When those expectations are dashed, with them go the last chance of getting all points of view, and the facts that support them, in the lecture hall.

So, to come back to the want ad, conservatives who want to teach political science at UT-Knoxville have to make it past Dr. Gorman. It's a real roll of the dice.

Dr. John Cobin has sent two URLs on the topic of tax protesters:

http://www.dcfpd.org/2000seminar/BockKupersMartinez.pdf

http://www.quatloos.com/taxscams/meaning_of_IRS_terms.htm

Of the former Dr. Cobin says, "He has a very thorough rebuttal to nonresident alien, 14th amendment, Larkin Rose stuff, Schiff stuff, voluntary compliance stuff, 16th amendment did not include earnings, 5th amendment silence argument, labor is property argument, and more using many court cites. The purpose of the site is to give federal lawyers the ammo they need to beat down 'tax protesters.'"

"Comments welcome since I am writing my brief against the slime."

By "slime" I presume he means federal lawyers and not tax protesters! Be that as it may, legal-based arguments against the IRS probably just won't work. Expansionist government is now too deeply entrenched for that, as is the consequence that the feds own the fruits of our labors, not us.

(1) Beverly Eakman, "It's About Legitimacy, Stupid"

This article surveys reasons for the breakdown in confidence parents have had in the kinds of theories and methodologies touted by educationologists all these years. These theories have their roots in a combination of bad psychology and Marxian leftism, and its aim has been transformative: to prepare children for life under the New World Order (as I argued in "The Real Matrix"). This means that certain stances are unacceptable (Christianity, for instance), while others are quietly promoted (Marxism, to promote "legitimacy" for ideas and practices that don't merit real legitimacy). Yes, Virginia, Marxism is very much alive and doing very well in the circles where it has taken root and can thrive, such as educationology.

I should note my gratitude to Bev Eakman for citing me twice in her article, one of the citations to my long lost book Civil Wrongs which almost cost me my academic career.

(2) This is a good time to go back and read Bev Eakman's debut article for NewsWithViews.com, "So You Want To Be An 'Education Candidate'." She "fling[s] down the gauntlet" and poses the questions that ought to be asked of anyone running for public office regarding government-sponsored schools. Such as: "What do education experts consider the primary purpose of education?" (Answer, from educationologist Dr. Benjamin Bloom: "To change the students' fixed beliefs.")

(3) Joan Veon discusses the Davos Culture (or if one prefers, the Radical Capitalist Class or the Globalist Class) in "The World Economic Forum: Facilitating a New World Order." The rich and powerful--interested only in more money and more power, with no loyalty to nation or school of thought--meet in Davos, Switzerland annually to continue their efforts to take over the world by controlling more and more of its finances. Veon writes: "This year CEOs are being given a crash course in 'world government.' French President Jacques Chirac delivered the opening address and called for a global tax to pay for helping poor countries out of poverty." The United Nations continues to be the instrument of choice the global elites are using to further their agenda, via the Global Compact originally formed in Davos (1999).

The U.S. really needs to get out of the United Nations and order it off our soil!

(4) The New American has interviewed top educationology watchdog Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt here. This interview has been around for a while, but is always worth revisiting. Iserbyt discusses how she got started, how as she learned more and more of the transformative nature of government-sponsored education and of the guiding philosophy of educationology--to prepare children for life under the New World Order--she determined to do something about it. The result was her masterpiece, the deliberate dumbing down of america.

(5) Silvia Ribeiro's "The costs of 'Walmartization'" is likely to be controversial. Some economic purists would describe Wal-Mart as the pinnacle of capitalist success, providing what people want at prices they can afford. The loss of locally owned 'Mom-and-Pop' stores all across America is the price paid for economic progress: the Schumpeterian term creative destruction applies. But there is always a choice to be made. Do we wish to remain economic purists--intellectuals living in a realm of pure economic theory--or do we wish to realize that the masses' choices, based indeed on their values--have larger causes and motivations we can understand (including in terms of the national dumb-down)? The latter invariably involves the realization that culture is important, too, including the progressive loss of anything resembling a distinctively American culture, including American-made products. Moreover, things I have occasionally bought in Wal-Mart have almost invariably fallen apart in a matter of months. Some think of many people's predilections for "shoddy products" as a sign of rising prosperity (Lew Rockwell illustrates this argument here, in a piece worth reading as a well-argued counterpoint to my thoughts here). I know that I, not inclined to be a purist in all things, considered the rapid deterioration of my glider rocker to be a colossal pain in the arse--as well as the need to locate a replacement (something I have not yet done). Perhaps I'm old fashioned in my predilection for products that last, as opposed to things that fall apart. Perhaps I'm not "prosperous" in the material since (philosophers seldom are, I've discovered). But perhaps this material "prosperity" will be discovered upon closer attention to be a chimera, as we realize that the masses' economic values can be evaluated and sometimes evaluated negatively. While I remain mostly within the fold of Austrian school economics, I am not altogether sure that the subjective theory of economic value is altogether correct. If some economic values are indeed superior to others for specifiable noneconomic reasons, that means that pure theory must be supplemented by incorporating cultural factors--including factoring the national dumb-down into the overall equation.

This comes to me courtesy of Wayne Young of Columbia, S.C.

Proud to be your Friend!
Make sure you read all the way down to the last sentence, and don't skip ahead.

I've learned....
That life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.

I've learned....
That we should be glad God doesn't give us everything we ask for.

I've learned....
That money doesn't buy class.

I've learned....
That it's those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.

I've learned...
That under everyone's hard shell is someone who wants to be appreciated and loved.

I've learned....
That the Lord didn't do it all in one day. What makes me think I can?

I've learned....
That to ignore the facts does not change the facts.

I've learned....
That when you plan to get even with someone, you are only letting that person continue to hurt you.

I've learned....
That love, not time, heals all wounds.

I've learned....
That the easiest way for me to grow as a person is to surround myself with people smarter than I am.

I've learned....
That everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile.

I've learned....
That there's nothing sweeter than sleeping with your babies and feeling their breath on your cheeks.

I've learned....
That no one is perfect until you fall in love with them.

I've learned....
That life is tough, but I'm tougher.

I've learned....
That opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss.

I've learned....
That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.

I've learned....
That I wish I could have told those I cared about that I love them one more time before they passed away.

I've learned....
That one should keep his words both soft and tender, because tomorrow he may have to eat them.

I've learned....
That a smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.

I've learned....
That I can't choose how I feel, but I can choose what I do about it.

I've learned....
That when your newly born child holds your little finger in his little fist, that you're hooked for life.

I've learned....
That everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.

I've learned ...
That it is best to give advice in only two circumstances; when it is requested and when it is a life threatening situation.

I've learned....
That the less time I have to work with, the more things I get done.

To all of you ... Make sure you read all the way down to the last sentence.

It's National Friendship Week. Show your friends how much you care. Send this to everyone you consider a FRIEND, even if it means sending it back to the person who sent it to you. If it comes back to you, then you'll know you have a circle of friends.

HAPPY FRIENDSHIP WEEK TO YOU!!!!!!

YOU ARE MY FRIEND AND I AM HONORED!

Courtesy of EdWatch:

Excerpts from: WHAT? ARE YOU CRAZY?
B. K. Eakman: [citation to be supplied later]

A new nationwide initiative has been quietly in the making since 2002...
The New Freedom Initiative ­ a plan to screen the entire U.S. population for mental illness and to provide a cradle-to-grave continuum of services for those identified as mentally ill or at risk of becoming so.Under the plan, schools would become the hub of the screening process ­ not only for children, but for their parents and teachers.There are even components aimed at senior citizens, pregnant women, and new mothers...
Recently, the New Freedom Commission designated TMAP a “model” medication treatment plan, whereupon President Bush instructed more than 25 federal agencies to develop a nationwide “implementation plan.” ...
Kevin P. Dwyer, president of the National Association of School Psychologists,... [is a] typical defender of early, mass screening. This “valuable information [is] almost impossible to obtain from any other source…,” Dwyer once complained. True, most adults would see right through such attempts.That is why he worries that the flood of lawsuits from parents over invasive, personal test questions under the cover of academic testing (in Virginia, Arizona, Utah, Pennsylvania, among other states) might result in a negative court ruling that would prompt legislators to nix all psychological surveys in schools.
Special interests as well as various social “service” agencies and universities all pitch “prevention” programs (many of them quasi-political, such as those on AIDS awareness), to federal agencies in an effort to get tell-all polls into America’s classrooms.Most are “What-would-you-do-if…?” questionnaires and self-reports that focus on sex, race, depression, drugs, and parents.These surveys are followed by a smorgasbord of nonacademic programs.The rationale is that it is in the best interests of the child and society to “[create] a State-level structure for school-based mental health services to provide consistent State-level leadership and collaboration between education, general health, and mental health systems.”The enabling vehicle for the New Freedom Initiative is the No Child Left Behind Act, ostensibly to “fulfill the promise of NCLB…by remov[ing] the emotional, behavioral, and academic barriers that interfere with student success in school.” ...
The commission aims not only to assess youngsters, but “to expand school mental health programs and evaluate parents”­ through Parts B and C of IDEA.
The commission advocates examining parents and homes for anything that might point to a “physical or mental condition [with] a high probability of resulting in a [child’s] developmental delay” ­ something way beyond the present capabilities of the mental health profession ­ beginning with a mandatory Nurse-Family Partnership component.
Why the extraordinary emphasis on parents?The Commission and, indeed, most of the mental health community believe that mental “disorders” of parents occurring before children reach the age of six “can interfere with critical emotional, cognitive, and physical development, and portend a lifetime of problems in school, at home, and in the community.”Therefore, “treating the parents’ mental health problems also benefits the child.”
“Treating parents” means psychotherapy and drugs, and the initiative calls for a mandate to provide “social and emotional check-ups” in all primary healthcare facilities.This means parents are supposed to be surreptitiously assessed for mental “illness” every time they walk into their physician’s office...
If you think the “coercion” scenario is too strong, consider:In August 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation announced the results of their $1.2 million, taxpayer-funded study. It stated, essentially, that traditionalists are mentally disturbed.
Scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford had determined that social conservatives, in particular, suffer from “mental rigidity,” “dogmatism,” and “uncertainty avoidance,” together with associated indicators for mental illness.Some conservatives and political pundits chortled over the so-called study, but the fact remains that nothing marginalizes a person faster today than a suggestion of being mentally unbalanced. The 20-year-long practice of psychographic (emotional-attitudinal) profiling under the cover of academic testing in schools is already intimidating conservative and Christian students and their parents into silence.

Dennis Cuddy's latest installment on social control and "mental health" is available at http://www.newswithviews.com/Cuddy/dennis21.htm, not to be missed. Also read the earlier installments of this important series.

Robert Locke describes the reasons for his reluctant conversion to a "conspiracy theory" of modern history--a theory of the Covert Coalition to Rule the World (CCRW) here. This article dates from last summer; I just ran across it this morning while searching for something else. I don't agree with everything Locke has to say, but this article deserves to be read.

Since I'll be on the radio later this evening to talk about The Real Matrix and Sustainable Development, perhaps a review of the latter is in order. Here is one of the best and most comprehensive short pieces on the subject. You can read Agenda 21 here. It really exists. None of this is simply made up, the product of paranoid "conspiracy theorists."

This comes courtesy of Rachel Layne. Although a bit off the beaten track from what I usually post here, having a parent who is an ongoing stroke-recovery patient has raised in my mind the seriousness of the possibility of stroke, of the importance of stroke prevention and recognition of the symptoms of stroke. I pass this along in that spirit.

Subject: Test for Stroke!

Identifying a Stroke FYI

The SAS test

Smile-Arms-Sentence

Symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness can spell disaster. The stroke victim may suffer brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke. Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

*Ask the individual to smile.

*Ask him or her to raise both arms.

*Ask the person to speak a simple sentence.

If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 9-1-1 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher. After discovering that a group of non-medical volunteers could identify facial weakness, arm weakness and speech problems, researchers urged the general public to learn the three questions. They presented their conclusions at the American Stroke Association's annual meeting last February. Widespread use of this test could result in a prompt diagnosis and treatment of the stroke and prevent possible brain damage.

A cardiologist stated that if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people, you can bet at least one life will be saved. Tell as many people as possible about this. It could save their lives!

A recent email enables this writer to highlight some of the issues facing us unless we can get better organized and find some real sources of financial support. It also might answer one or two questions puzzling some of my friends and former colleagues why I returned to school back in 1997 to get a health education degree or attempted to work in that field for a while.

L.B. writes:

"Believe it or not, I took the red pill and read your whole article. I knew most of this, from books like Secret Society, and free range home teaching for 8 years. I like that you have referenced it so well.

"My question is: if you have worked for and published reports for Cancer Societies, such as the Cancer Research Needs Report , how can you do this? Cancer is so embedded in the whole dumming us down, and don't teach them to think ideals - it is the modern epitomy of how we have all been sucked into the matrix - how do you write needs report on this? Comments appreciated."

I replied:

Note to [L.B.]:

Thank you for writing. I am glad you found the article helpful and well-referenced.

The answer to your question re the cancer group involves matters those of us working on these kinds of problems are forced to deal with on an almost-daily basis. Readers are often unaware that writers working to expose the "real matrix" are generally not paid for their work. Sites like NWV and LRC operate on a shoestring budget funded exclusively by reader donations. What little is left of the freedom movement (and the anti-NWO movement) in this society has no Ford Foundation or Rockefeller Foundation in the background.

I happen to have concluded that most cancer prevention and probably at least some cures as well involve primarily diet (nutrition), getting plenty of exercise, and the like. I attempted to get this into the report where I could (although a lot of the report itself involved just compilations of cancer statistics to indicate which populations seemed to have the most problems with which cancers). The group I was with involved people who also believed this and tried to integrate it into their overall presentation. The man who began the group and did all the legwork to raise money is a former professor who left the university setting because he did not believe he could accomplish what he wanted to accomplish in that environment. We worked together on a project involving systems theory; I have been attempting to sort out where it can prove helpful and where it is vulnerable to abuse. But we had little choice except to work with state agencies, other professors, etc., most of whom have far more conventional beliefs. Otherwise there would have been no grant money, no research network, and no jobs for guys like myself. Like it or not, without resources very little can be accomplished, which is why all the genuine freedom-oriented think tanks are constantly sending out materials begging readers to send contributions. Without money their doors close and their websites eventually get taken down.

As it was, the CDC pulled the plug on our group after one year. Everyone without very good connections was out looking for new funding sources (or, in my case, new work) the next week. For all practical purposes the group no longer exists.

There are Libertarians whose views are so uncompromising that they claim that driving on public roads and Interstate highways is fundamentally objectionable. This is absurd (Rothbard wrote something on this long ago, now on the LRC site)! You cannot live without making compromises, unless you want to end up living under a bridge somewhere. The problem is: which compromises is one to make, and for how long, especially given that a lot of companies are now administering "personality profiles" to prospective employees for "fit." Somehow, I managed to get through most of this screening to obtain a telephone-slave job for part of the second half of 2004 (after several months of seeking work).

It's taken me two years to get back into even steady part-time teaching! Many of my former friends (including Libertarians who do not believe the NWO really exists) are no longer supporting my efforts to find employment.

To a large degree, the NWO elites and their army of oblivious servants both in government and in companies have us over a barrel unless we can organize better and do more to expose what's really going on.

See Heidi Cappadocia's (sp.?) recent article or Betty Freauf's latest article on this week's NWV.

Have you considered making a donation to the NWV site, to help it survive?

I hope this responds adequately to your question.

Best,
Steven Yates
Adjunct Instructor, Philosophy
USC-Upstate
Spartanburg, S.C.
The Worldviews Project (http://www.worldviewsproject.org)
Stratia Corp. (http://www.stratia.com/nomorenwo/)
Greenville, S.C.
Blog/Archive at http://itshappeninghere.blogspot.com

Two recent NewsWithViews.com articles of note:

Heidi Cappadona's "The Weeding Out of Society's Misfits"
Betty Freauf's "Are Most Of You Misfits in Today's Society?"

The former actually pre-dates this blog (January 6), but is relevant to our issues, and referenced in the second. Heidi Cappadona provides a personal account of the "online assessment" she was given just to apply for a minimum-wage job as a sales clerk in a store, and how it turned out to be a psychological personality test. She failed the test--perhaps the sign of a person independent-minded enough to write this kind of article, beginning its final paragraph with the ominous warning: "This example of regular Americans willing and able to work but not meeting a mysterious set of guidelines is becoming the norm at an alarming rate in our society today." Especially in danger of being weeded out are Christians and those who believe in smaller, Constitutionally-limited government. She is aware of Theodor Adorno, the Frankfurt School neo-Marxist who linked belief in God and support for the traditional family to "the authoritarian personality."

Freauf's article continues in this vein, drawing out the inference that the "private sector" is no longer private in the sense of being independent from the New World Order mindset (centralization, internationalism, dumbing-down to achieve a docile workforce and mindless mass-consumption). We should have eliminated the unconstitutional U.S. Department of Education--but as Freauf points out, such organizations are part of UNESCO--and hence part of the New World Order's educational goals.

Both articles refer to a quote worth Archiving here, from a Dr. C.M. Pierce of Harvard University, who stated in 1973: "Every child in America entering schools at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward belief in a supernatural Being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you teachers to make all these sick children well by creating the international children of the future."

Hello! This is the New World Order speaking!

For more on efforts to connect mental illness with such traits as belief in God, support for the traditional family, belief in the Constitution and support for U.S. sovereignty, one should turn to Dennis Cuddy's extensive archive on NewsWithViews.com

This comes courtesy of J.K., of Easley, S.C.

Rush,

Two questions:

Where in our Constitution is Pres. Bush granted the power to go throughout the world into sovereign nations and change them to democracies?

Since we are a nation of laws, with federal power limited by our Constitutional
Republic, why does Pres. Bush want to make democracies out of the other nations; knowing that democracies cannot sustain governmental law, since the majority can change any law at any time, producing chaos. And then what?

You ignore the fact that Pres. Bush, while spouting his agenda of freedom for other countries has greatly lessened the freedom of the American people with his big governmental policies and spending, ie, NCLB and Senior Drug Program, and Amnesty for illegals.

His statement was "he would not use force alone in his quest to make all men free".

True freedom is found in being set free from the law of sin and death; being free from the power of sin. PRES. BUSH DISCOURAGES THAT FREEDOM WHEN HE BOWS AT THE SHINTO TEMPLE, CELEBRATES QUANZAA IN THE WHITE HOUSE, AND SAYS OF ISLAM THAT WE WORSHIP THE SAME GOD, PUTTING ALL RELIGIONS ON THE SAME PLANE, AND SHAMING THE FAITH OF CHRIST. CHRIST ALONE GIVES THE FREEDOM THAT MEN'S SOULS SEARCH FOR.

John 8:32 Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

From the Christian right, and not one who believes that our nations purpose is to fight Israels war for them.

Juliette Kozak, Easley, SC.

Courtesy of John Adam

Bush Makes Veiled 'New World Order' Reference In Speech
CNN | January 21, 2005
"We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner Freedom Now -- they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. "
A New Order of the Ages
The Latin motto novus ordo seclorum was suggested by Charles Thomson when he put together the final design for the reverse side of the Great Seal in June 1782:
"On the base of the pyramid the numerical letters MDCCLXXVI & underneath the following motto. 'novus ordo seclorum'"
The motto has been traced to Virgil, the renowned Roman poet who lived in the first century B.C. ? to a line in his Eclogue IV, the pastoral poem that expresses the longing of the world for a new era of peace and happiness.
"Magnus ab integro seclorum nascitur ordo."
Virgil's line has been translated in different ways, including:
The great series of ages begins anew.
The ages' mighty march begins anew.
A mighty order of ages is born anew.
The majestic roll of circling centuries begins anew.
"Novus" means: new, young, fresh, novel.
"Ordo" means: series, row, order.
"Seclorum, a shortened form of seculorum (sæculorum), is the plural of seculum (sæculum), means: generations, centuries, ages.
Thomson, a Latin expert, coined the motto: "novus ordo seclorum"
and explained its meaning:
"The date underneath [the pyramid] is that of the Declaration of Independence and the words under it signify the beginning of the new American Æra, which commences from that date."
The official English translation of "novus ordo seclorum" is:
"A new order of the ages"

America's Road to Communism by Robert Sentry.

This article provides a clear definition of communism (without citing Karl Marx, though) and compares the definition to our current system of government-economics in America and where it is heading, which is toward more and more centralized control over the individual with simultaneous unchecked internationalism. Only the naive, the author concludes, will scoff at such claims on the grounds that communism died with the Soviet empire went belly up.

It started in early December. I ran across the first article on Rense.com while looking for something else altogether; the article was entitled "Science and the Coming Dark Age." Potent quote from Thomas Henry Huxley: "The great tragedy of science--the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." Or range of them, which the hypothesis or theory cannot explain.

It was the problem of anomalies--verified facts that aren't explained by or which actually refute a favored theory--and what to do with them, what their implications for the status of scientific theories might be, that got me interested in the philosophy of science in the first place. That interest, now that I am teaching again, might be reawakening, along with a new project. That project: to answer the question: is big bang cosmology dead? And--given that no one in the mainstream science press has breathed a word of it--what are the implications within what is fashionably called the sociology of science, i.e., the problem of authority structures within the various scientific communities?

In this article, and in others sought out since, I have gained rudimentary acquaintance with the ideas of one Halton C. Arp, astronomer, one-time assistant to Edwin Hubble, and purported discoverer of redshifted objects (such as quasars) that appear to be connected to or even in front of galaxies known to be fairly close by in astronomical distances. Arp has written books with names like Quasars, Red Shifts and Controversies and Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science that argue the case (1) there are alternative explanations for redshift besides the conventional idea that redshifted entities are receding from us at very high speeds, and (2) the astronomical community has attempted to suppress evidence of this.

Of course, it is the redshift that supposedly constitutes the largest body of evidence for the expanding-universe model that is part and parcel of big bang cosmology. It is at least possible that if this model goes, then big bang cosmology goes with it. And then there remains far less evidence that the universe is either as large as or as old as conventional physics and astronomy would today have it. (Darwinism is threatened by this, since Darwinism too depends conceptually on a universe billions of years old.)

This, alone, won't support Intelligent Design. That must stand or fall on its own merits. But Intelligent Design hypotheses cannot end up worse off.

The late Sir Karl Popper developed in great detail the thesis that even our best scientific theories are but conjectures. He used the somewhat paradoxical notion conjectural knowledge to describe the status of the results of even the best empirical science. One of the most influential factors on the rise of twentieth century philosophy of science was the fall of the Newtonian empire. Newton's theory of universal gravitation was considered the best confirmed physical theory ever--yet it fell, replaced by Einstein (and there are now people who doubt that Einstein will have the last word).

It appears that the particular set of conjectures about the origin, age and even size of the universe known as big bang cosmology has also taken a fall, and the investigation should prove instructive both philosophically and sociologically.

Other articles worth consulting:
Cosmology and the Big Bang
Exploding the Big Bang
Redshift

More to follow.

Of course, any serious study will have to sketch the full conceptual background including discussing the full range of reasons why big bang cosmology was deemed acceptable in the first place, consult Arp's own writings and seek out whatever secondary literature exists on his work. Expect follow-ups.

I have signed this petition. Have you?

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Over the next 30 days, Grassfire is urging citizens from across
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http://www.grassfire.org/42/petition.asp?PID=5498514&NID=1

This issue poses a very real threat to every man, woman and
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We want our elected officials to know that the American people
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Once we reach our target goal, we will deliver these petitions to
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Hosea 4:6

We're a little behind, since this blog/archive is brand new, but getting caught up with the essentials. Most of what Ron Paul (R-Tx) says is indeed essential.

Paul Denounces National ID Card

From the Office of Rep. Ron Paul, MD
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD

Congressman Ron Paul today denounced the national ID card provisions contained in the intelligence bill being voted on in the U.S. House of Representatives,while urging his colleagues to reject the bill and its new layers of needless bureaucracy.

“National ID cards are not proper in a free society,” Paul stated. “This is America, not Soviet Russia. The federal government should never be allowed to demand papers from American citizens, and it certainly has no constitutional authority to do so.”

“A national identification card, in whatever form it may take, will allow the federal government to inappropriately monitor the movements and transactions of every American,” Paul continued. “History shows that governments inevitably use such power in harmful ways. The 9-11 commission, whose recommendations underlie this bill, has called for internal screening points where identification will be demanded. Domestic travel restrictions are the hallmark of authoritarian states, not free nations. It is just a matter of time until those who refuse to carry the new licenses will be denied the ability to drive or board an airplane.”

“Nationalizing standards for drivers licenses and birth certificates, and linking them together via a national database, creates a national ID system pure and simple. Proponents of the national ID understand that the public remains wary of the scheme, so they attempt to claim they’re merely creating new standards for existing state IDs. Nonsense! This legislation imposes federal standards in a federal bill, and it creates a federalized ID regardless of whether the ID itself is still stamped with the name of your state.”

“Those who are willing to allow the government to establish a Soviet-style internal passport system because they think it will make us safer are terribly mistaken,” Paul concluded. “Subjecting every citizen to surveillance and screening points actually bill make us less safe, not in the least because it will divert resources away from
tracking and apprehending terrorists and deploy them against innocent Americans! Every conservative who believes in constitutional restraints on government should reject the authoritarian national ID card and the nonsensical intelligence bill itself.”

January 13, 2005

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

Comment by John Adam:

Just remember this:

It's not the terrorists who have legislated your freedoms away, it's your Congress. (Patriot Acts I, II and III)

And if terrorism was real than the borders should be closed. Hence terrorism as defined by our US Congress is a lie, unless it is brought about by those who say it is real.

You know if someone can tell a lie long enough people will begin to believe it.

More importantly, if you don't stand up for your rights, you have none.

Harvard President Lawrence Summers has suggested that women, on the whole, lack the natural ability to excel at mathematics and science that men have. Naturally, this has radical feminists upset. Radical feminists have long believed that male and female roles are interchangeable because "gender" is "socially constructed." Of course, if Summers is right, this is nonsense.

Read the article here and decide.

This comes courtesy of John Plecnic:

Link to column

I would ask my College Republican readership to pass this column along. Many
campus conservatives are unaware of the full resources at their disposal to
protest liberal academia. This piece is something of an abreviated 'how to'
guide for the new protest movement.

Once again, thanks to Tech 5 Corporation for nationally syndicating my column.

Thank you all and God bless,

JTP

John T. Plecnik
Executive Editor, The Devil's Advocate
Featured Columnist, The Conservative Voice
Policy Advisor, Duke College Republicans
Duke Law, Class of 2006

Column republished:

Who's Looking Out for Campus Conservatives?

by John Plecnik

January 14, 2005

The dispute as to whether liberal bias on campus exists has become, pardon the pun, academic. Last year, the Duke Conservative Union crosschecked their school’s faculty listings against voter registration rolls and found the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was 32-0 in the History department, 11-0 in Literature, and 18-1 in English. Sadly, these breakdowns are typical of liberal academia.

Campus conservatives know who to watch out for: deans, provosts, professors…professors who happen to be Democrat congressmen. The only job more fulfilling than teaching liberalism is legislating it, right Dr. Price? (U.S. Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) is a member of the Political Science department at Duke University.)

However, too few are aware of the growing support network available to abused, conservative students. The first line of defense is always on campus. Conservative student publications like Berkeley’s California Patriot or UNC’s Carolina Review have given a voice to the next generation of conservative leadership. Religious, Republican, and Libertarian student organizations allow campus conservatives to coalesce; there’s truth to the old adage of strength in numbers.

When I entered Duke Law at the age of 19 and found societies for Democrats, gays and trial lawyers, but none for Republicans, I asked my friend and fellow Belmont Abbey alum Patrick McHenry (now the youngest member of congress) how to cope. He recommended that I join the College Republicans, and so I did. I never regretted my decision. Ever since James Francis Burke, a 24-year-old law student, joined with his colleagues at the University of Michigan to found the College Republicans in 1892, our organization has served as a bulwark against the worst abuses of liberal academia.

That said, most students are fleeting members of the campus community. Professors and administrators spend a lifetime in the ivory tower. When the time comes to take a stand, the Stalinists have home team advantage. They also have years of experience in quieting their opposition. When bias gives way to outright discrimination, campus conservatives need to call for backup.

To quote Justice Louis Brandeis, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." Most bullies, liberal or conservative, are cowards. The average card-carrying member of liberal academia would love to indoctrinate the next generation, but fears exposure. As such, student protests, coupled with a little media attention, can work wonders on any campus. Unlike the old days, when hippies ruled the world, some news outlets will give a fair and balanced look at instances of college abuse. For instance, Fox News Channel’s Brit Hume has been known to televise the protests of campus conservatives, even airing the aforementioned study by the Duke Conservative Union.

Beyond getting a fair shake with Fox News, campus conservatives have advocates in the media. Organizations like Accuracy in Academia were founded to return higher education to its traditional mission of seeking and teaching the unbiased truth. Led by Executive Director Mal Kline, Accuracy in Academia produces Campus Report, a monthly newsletter aimed at publicizing political bias in education. Just contacting Kline can put liberal academia on notice.

Sometimes big names are needed to draw the media’s attention. Believe it or not, there are public figures that care enough to get involved. A shining example on Capitol Hill is U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.). While pushing for legislation to end liberal bias on campus, Jones has been instrumental in protecting the First Amendment rights of campus conservatives across North Carolina. He challenged one occurrence of discrimination after another at UNC, bringing national attention to the continuing abuse.

David Horowitz, Editor-in-Chief of FrontPageMag.com, has also been a strong, if controversial, ally to campus conservatives. A radical Leftist before converting to conservatism, Horowitz became famous arguing against ‘reparations’ for slavery. Today, he is best known for fighting campus speech codes and advocating his Academic Bill of Rights (proposed legislation that explicitly prohibits political discrimination on campus). Working with state Sen. John Andrews (R-C.O.), Horowitz virtually forced the University of Colorado system to adopt his Academic Bill of Rights.

Dr. Christina Jeffrey, president of the South Carolina Association of Scholars, is another must-know conservative. No stranger to liberal bias in any forum, academic or otherwise, Jeffrey rose to the position of U.S. House Historian under the auspices of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-G.A.). Shortly thereafter, she was the victim of vicious attacks from liberal U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-M.A.), who falsely accused the conservative educator of being an anti-Semite. Fired for political convenience, Jeffrey has long been vindicated. She returned to her career as a professor and became a leader in the movement to end liberal bias on campus. Currently, Jeffrey is working to create a foundation in Charlotte, N.C., to protest liberal academia and advocate reform.

Even with media coverage and powerful pundits lobbying on your behalf, sometimes the Stalinists won’t back down. Perhaps your protest was too successful and injured your professor’s pride or reputation. Perhaps your dean just refuses to admit a mistake, regardless of how bad the press is. Either way, campus conservatives can do a lot more than simply embarrass bigoted academics. Thanks, in part, to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), students can respond to the most egregious cases of liberal bias by resorting to the courts. Led by President David French, FIRE has successfully challenged countless campus speech codes and cases of liberal harassment.

If all else fails, you may need to give French a call and remind your professor that no one is above the law.

John T. Plecnik (JTP) is a 21-year-old law student at Duke University and a featured columnist at the Conservative Voice, Lincoln Tribune, a weekly newspaper in Lincolnton, NC., and various other online and print publications. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting with a Minor in Mythology and graduated summa cum laude, sharing the title of Valedictorian, from Belmont Abbey College.

With this post, Steven Yates has rejoined the bloggosphere. This is intended to be more of an electronic archive than a blog, however. While no doubt I will have an occasional rant to put here, I receive huge quantities of information each day, much of which I cannot print and save if for no other reason than lack of any good place to put it. An electronic archive might be the best place for it. And what is most worth archiving? The struggles continue against control of higher education by the politically correct hard left, and with organizations like FIRE and Accuracy in Academia, as well as individuals such as David Horowitz and Dr. Christina Jeffrey, things are looking better today than they were a few years ago. Leftists are being embarrassed into relinquishing total control of the academic stage. There are also science-religion questions, some of them spurred by my recent discovery—I wasn’t going to get it from the mainstream science press, after all—that so-called big bang cosmology has collapsed, having faced empirical refutation. This leaves many of our ideas about the age of the universe up for grabs. Perhaps we live in a quite young universe after all—as the Bible intimates! There are other philosophical issues, such as the reasonability of apriorism in epistemology—an interest of mine since realizing a number of years ago that Descartes’s reasoning to the cogito contains a logical error. (Have other philosophers detected this? Does anyone care? These are the questions I will explore when I read a shortened version of my paper “Descartes and Methodological Doubt: Was the Cogito Necessary?” at the South Carolina Society for Philosophy Meeting at Furman University near the end of February.

This, though, is not the Major Problem of our time. The United States of America was founded to be a Constitutional republic. Yet it has developed into a system encouraging various forms of dependency, whether the dependency is that of the welfare state, dependency on a job one hates but is afraid to leave because there are no other jobs, or simply dependency on technology no one but the geeks who programmed it really understands. The Major Problem of our time: is it possible to stop the continued rise to power of the New World Order? By the New World Order I mean the coterie of international bankers and financiers, internationalist-leaning politicians and bureaucrats of the sort that fill the Council on Foreign Relations in this country and the Royal Institute of International Affairs in Great Britain (the Bilderburgers on continental Europe), and the entire network of internationalist organizations beginning with the UN and moving on down to the local Chambers of Commerce, many of whose members do not realize they are promoting an agenda that will eventually undermine U.S. sovereignty. The twin-aims of the New World Order: world government, and the production of populations that will submit to living under a world government. The world government would be authoritarian, not Constitutionally-based. Our own government has “evolved” from its Constitutional base to the point where we can say that it differs only in matters of small degree from all other governments that have ever existed. Nearly all have been totalitarian systems of one form or another. Nearly all have been led by opportunists who wrote the rules to benefit themselves, to ensure the continuity of their own power. Today, in the halls of Congress, the primary aim is the next election, not the good of the country (or one’s constituency).

In short, IT'S HAPPENING HERE! Our one-time Constitutional republic is in the verge of becoming a police state. We are very close to being given national IDs--see below. So much for, "It can't happen here." We are very close to seeing official Congressional approval of the next so-called "free trade" agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which would unify the economies of most of the Western hemisphere under a globalist bureaucracy that could trump the U.S. Constitution. President George W. Bush is all for the FTAA; so was John Kerry. It has very few opponents in the centers of power, although Ron Paul (R-Tx) is one. He opposes it on the correct grounds that it is not a genuine free trade agreement. You do not need a mammoth, multi-thousand page tome to have free trade, but you do need such a volume to have micromanaged trade involving the World Trade Organization, environmentalist pressure groups, etc., all of which will favor huge multinational corporations and help put more little people out of business, so that they may work at temp jobs or as clerks or at whatever else they can find.

The New World Order, of course, may collapse amidst the financial chaos precipitated by a dream world of economic theory in which wealth may be generated out of thin air via central banking and government printing presses, and in which all peoples may live for today and pay for it tomorrow (this is called living on credit). Its collapse, at this point, would plunge the entire globe into the worst depression in history.

There is more, much more, which we will come to in due time. To frame some of the discussion: my two most recent publications on the web are The Real Matrix and National ID Red Alert. The former is a seven-part discourse on the rise of the New World Order—or to use Terry Hayfield’s term, the Permanent Revolution—and the fantasy world comparable to the world of the movie The Matrix woven to hide the truth. The latter exposes one of the dangers facing a population of Americans who are going to be given the electronic equivalent of cattle brands if they do not wake up.

Projects underway:

*a review of Bruce Shortt’s recent book The Harsh Truth About Public Schools, written from an evangelical Christian point of view and explaining why Christian parents should remove their children from government schools at once. Of course, the dumbing down of America is part of the preparation of a population that either won't mind sacrificing the Constitution in the name of security to live under a global government, or won't care.

*a follow-up to The Real Matrix, based on correspondence between myself and Terry Hayfield on the nature of the Permanent Revolution. In my article I neglected the Fabian Society, which stands at equal if not greater importance than those groups and entities I did discuss. The Fabians believed in gradualism, and may be behind the build-up of global capitalism, so-called, which under the collectivist ethic being promoted in the government schools and throughout society, can be expected to evolve into global socialism. Hayfield’s startling thesis: real communism (in the sense Marx originally intended that term to be used) has not come yet, and still represents the greatest danger we face. Real communism would be the intent of the New World Order.

It may be worth noting that many of these entries will be written by authors other than myself. In each case I will credit the author and also provide, where possible, the URL where the original may be found.