Ethics and morality have been systematically divorced from reason and human identity during the last fifty years.  Philosopher Allan Bloom in his book Closing of the American Mind and others have covered that already.  The impact on life and the future of humanity are enormous.  A Tower of Babel has been built, as usual, with no foundation.

For example, one might expect that academic physics would be well grounded in the reality of the natural world around us.  But that is not the case today.  Virtually all academic physicists (all but three I have found) in all physics departments subscribe to and/or profess string theory.  I won’t dig into string theory here except to say that string theory describes in the language of math and physics our universe as an almost infinite network of alternative dimensions to what we should recognize as objective reality.  The problem is that there is no physical evidence that these alternative dimensions exist.  There are no experiments, which is the hard core work of physics, which provide evidence that alternative dimensions exist.  Yet, almost the entire profession of physics professors subscribe to string theory.

Again, this is just one example.  I am not picking on physicists or their elegant string theory.  It’s fun, like reading Alice in Wonderland for the first time.

The connections between reason itself, ethics, morality and humanity are being divorced from natural laws by a metaphysics built on fantasy.  It is as if the philosopher Immanuel Kant returned and took over all physics departments.  We are now going to have buildings and islands and cities floating suspended in mid air as in the movies Avatar, Star Wars and Flash Gordon.  Or people will step through a door into another dimension.  But the knowledge to design a screw or a wing is being lost.

Hello!  You can write the software code and computer models to beam yourself aboard.  But back here in Kansas, where the sun still warms the planet, it is wrong, irrational, unethical and immoral to teach fantasy, dreams and unvalidated theory as reality, or to allow others to teach unvalidated theory as reality, or to allow the management in your associations to claim and influence others with their unvalidated theory.  And this is equally true in economics, political systems, psychology, climatology, physics or any field.  Whomever told you that there is no right or wrong, that your morals are no better than another person’s morals, well, that person was wrong or a liar.  Right and wrong are based on objective reality, not on subjective metaphysics, and not on the nostalgia of academic elites for Nietzsche and Godot, and definitely not on Hollywood or mainstream media.

The truth is your individual responsibility.  And, believe it or not, you need to be ready to die for truth at any time as well as to defend it intellectually.  You and other people that do that are the only thing that keep you free.  Maybe it feels good to parrot politicians and mainstream media as they fill your head with fake realities to sell their clicks.  In the real world, big government, minimum wages and guaranteed income result in lower standards of living.  Back here in Kansas, you look really foolish on that acid head trip.

As physicist Richard P. Feynman repeated, “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”    The metaphysical construct called social justice, (and its features like diversity, multiculturalism, open borders and moral relativity) which has been sold to us all for at least three generations, is divorced from reality and you look like the Mad Hatter if you support it.   Get your feet firmly planted on the ground in your area of knowledge and then pull your family and friends down with you.  Make it so.

Freedom of speech is being threatened in the United States by a nascent culture of hostility to different points of view. As political divisions in America have deepened, a conformist mentality of “right thinking” has spread across the country. Increasingly, American universities, where no intellectual doctrine ought to escape critical scrutiny, are some of the most restrictive domains when it comes to asking open-ended questions on subjects such as Islam.

Legally, speech in the United States is protected to a degree unmatched in almost any industrialized country. The U.S. has avoided unpredictable Canadian-style restrictions on speech, for example. I remain optimistic that as long as we have the First Amendment in the U.S., any attempt at formal legal censorship will be vigorously challenged.

Culturally, however, matters are very different in America. The regressive left is the forerunner threatening free speech on any issue that is important to progressives. The current pressure coming from those who call themselves “social-justice warriors” is unlikely to lead to successful legislation to curb the First Amendment. Instead, censorship is spreading in the cultural realm, particularly at institutions of higher learning.

The way activists of the regressive left achieve silence or censorship is by creating a taboo, and one of the most pernicious taboos in operation today is the word “Islamophobia.” Islamists are similarly motivated to rule any critical scrutiny of Islamic doctrine out of order. There is now a university center (funded by Saudi money) in the U.S. dedicated to monitoring and denouncing incidences of “Islamophobia.”

The term “Islamophobia” is used against critics of political Islam, but also against progressive reformers within Islam. The term implies an irrational fear that is tainted by hatred, and it has had a chilling effect on free speech. In fact, “Islamophobia” is a poorly defined term. Islam is not a race, and it is very often perfectly rational to fear some expressions of Islam. No set of ideas should be beyond critical scrutiny.

To push back in this cultural realm—in our universities, in public discourse—those favoring free speech should focus more on the message of dawa, the set of ideas that the Islamists want to promote. If the aims of dawa are sufficiently exposed, ordinary Americans and Muslim Americans will reject it. The Islamist message is a message of divisiveness, misogyny, and hatred. It’s anachronistic and wants people to live by tribal norms dating from the seventh century. The best antidote to Islamic extremism is the revelation of what its primary objective is: a society governed by Sharia. This is the opposite of censorship: It is documenting reality. What is life like in Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Northern Nigerian States? What is the true nature of Sharia law?

Islamists want to hide the true meaning of Sharia, Jihad, and the implications for women, gays, religious minorities, and infidels under the veil of “Islamophobia.” Islamists use “Islamophobia” to obfuscate their vision and imply that any scrutiny of political Islam is hatred and bigotry. The antidote to this is more exposure and more speech.

As pressure on freedom of speech increases from the regressive left, we must reject the notions that only Muslims can speak about Islam, and that any critical examination of Islamic doctrines is inherently “racist.”

Instead of contorting Western intellectual traditions so as not to offend our Muslim fellow citizens, we need to defend the Muslim dissidents who are risking their lives to promote the human rights we take for granted: equality for women, tolerance of all religions and orientations, our hard-won freedoms of speech and thought.

It is by nurturing and protecting such speech that progressive reforms can emerge within Islam. By accepting the increasingly narrow confines of acceptable discourse on issues such as Islam, we do dissidents and progressive reformers within Islam a grave disservice. For truly progressive reforms within Islam to be possible, full freedom of speech will be required.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the founder of the AHA Foundation. 

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/free-speech-threat-united-states/

This article is republished here:

Dear Senators,  Dear Congressman;

Where is the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Creamer and the others who were caught on camera admitting to planning violence at Trump /Pence campaign rallies, acknowledged vote fraud, acknowledged coordination with Democrat National Committee, and on official White House records meeting Obama admin people many times and with Obama himself?

Sincerely,

References:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/project-veritas-action-robert-creamer-donald-trump-rallies/index.html

http://joeforamerica.com/2016/10/felon-organized-violence-trump-rallies-visited-white-house-342-times-yep/

“The [Project Veritas] investigation, which was released in a four-part video series throughout the months of October and November, exposed political corruption within the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign. The video investigation– which received media coverage from every single mainstream media outlet, trended on social media worldwide, and was a topic of debate during one of the Presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton– had a monumental effect on the 2016 presidential election.”

http://projectveritas.com/2017/06/01/democracy-partners-attacks-veritas-launches-1-million-federal-lawsuit/

The actions of Hawaii’s governor will financially harm the poorest citizens of our state, further limit business opportunities in the state and produce no change in the climate. He is not proposing to send money outside of Hawaii and so far he is not negotiating with any foreign entities. He proposed to reduce CO2 emission from human sources in Hawaii by moving away from fossil fuels, and to further promote their understanding of “sustainability.” Note, there is no effort or comment about research or methods to reduce the 8,500 tons per day of CO2 that the Kilauea volcano emits into the air everyday, nor to reduce the actually harmful sulfur gas emissions…which tells you this is not about greenhouse gases but “social justice” … and no effort I can see to develop the obvious geothermal resource here. The governor is probably committing a felony federal crime under the Logan Act, a law which was intended to prevent the undermining of the federal government’s position. Hawaii’s one party government policies are indoctrinated in “social justice” dogma and its cronyism.