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Well...this will sure help out with the depopulation.
Just one more reason I beleive this was a planned disaster like many others.
Those people are doomed to a lifetime of war now. Be better off if they didn't have anything worth destroying their Country for.
Now they have minerals on top of drugs and oil? Kiss any hope for them to have a peaceful life goodbye.
After much deliberation I have decide on 2.24.48.
GLTA :)
And just because I still can't get it out of my head........
Yellow Submarine :)
Have to agree there....the Old Testament God did have quite the attitude didn't he?
Personally though, I think Man had his fingers in the works.
LMFAO Wouldn't it be awesome if you could get rid of some of the vermin on the planet and tell the cops that God smote them down and get away with it?
Wouldn't fly now, but back then it did.
Mystery Crop Damage Threatens Hundreds Of Acres
Shaun Chaiyabhat
6:21 PM CDT, June 1, 2010
FAST FACTS:
Small dots appear to "burn" through leaves
Area affected is along Tipton and Shelby County line
Farmers afraid they may lose their entire crop
(Memphis 6/1/2010) A mystery is unfolding across MidSouth farms.
Something is killing crops, trees, even weeds and nobody can explain why.
Farmers are scratching their heads and some are worried their crops may be lost to the mysterious plague.
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It's happening along a large swath of land near the Shelby and Tipton county border along Herring Hill Road and elsewhere near the Mississippi River bottoms.
Tiny dots appear to have burned onto leaves of all types of plants, and they appear different depending on the plant.
On corn stalks, the dots seem to turn white in the center.
On other plants, a white dust speckles the leaves and then destroys the green life underneath.
"We found it all in the herbs, in the flowers, in the plum tree, in the weeds," said organic farmer Toni Holt. "It's apparently in everything."
Holt grows organic produce that she sells at area farmers' markets.
As she and other farmers inspect the new growth covered in the perplexing plague, they fear their entire crop may be lost.
Less than ten miles from Holt's crops, the damage could possibly hit hundreds of acres of corn at Wilder Farms.
It appears to have hit everything in its path.
There does not seem to be anything in common with the affected plants.
The Holts raise organic crops, so they don't spray pesticides on any of their fruits and vegetables.
The first thought among some was a new parasite or insect caused the damage, but Wilder farms sprays pesticides and the damage there is exactly the same.
Farmers first noticed the damaging dots over the weekend.
Then Holt came home to find baby birds dead in their nests.
"There are two dead birds hanging out of two different bird houses, so we're concerned about that. We don't know if it's related, but it's alarming," said Holt. "We've got horses, we're concerned about the horses on the grass. We've got chickens. We sell our eggs at the market."
Farmers we spoke with are convinced something in the air caused this damage.
They're asking the USDA and other experts to look into the problem, and so are we.
Video.......
http://www.wreg.com/news/wreg-mystery-crop-damage%2C0%2C187535.story?track=rss
Is America Ruled By Psychopaths?
The Government uses the Law to Harm People and Shield the Establishment
By Prof John Kozy
June 08, 2010 "Global Research" -- Most Americans know that politicians make promises they never fulfill; few know that politicians make promises they lack the means to fulfill, as President Obama's political posturing on the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico makes perfectly clear.
Obama has made the following statements:
He told his "independent commission" investigating the Gulf oil spill to "thoroughly examine the disaster and its causes to ensure that the nation never faces such a catastrophe again." Aside from the fact that presidential commissions have a history of providing dubious reports and ineffective recommendations, does anyone really believe that a way can be found to prevent industrial accidents from happening ever again? Even if the commissions findings and recommendations succeed in reducing the likelihood of such accidents, doesn't this disaster prove that it only takes one? And unlikely events happen every day.
The president has said, "if laws are insufficient, they'll be changed." But no president has this ability, only Congress has, and the president must surely know how difficult getting the Congress to effectively change anything is. He also said that "if government oversight wasn't tough enough, that will change, too." Will it? Even if he replaces every person in an oversight position, he can't guarantee it. The people who receive regulatory positions always have ties to the industries they oversee and can look forward to lucrative jobs in those industries when they leave governmental service. As long as corporate money is allowed to influence governmental action, neither the Congress nor regulators can be expected to change the laws or regulatory practices in ways that make them effective, and there is nothing any president can do about it. Even the Congress' attempt to raise the corporate liability limit for oil spills from $75 million to $10 billion has already hit a snag.
The President has said that "if laws were broken, those responsible will be brought to justice" and that BP would be held accountable for the "horrific disaster." He said BP will be paying the bill, and BP has said it takes responsibility for the clean-up and will pay compensation for "legitimate and objectively verifiable" claims for property damage, personal injury, and commercial losses. But "justice" is rendered in American courts, not by the executive branch. Any attempts to hold BP responsible will be adjudicated in the courts at the same snail's pace that the responsibility for the Exxon-Mobile Alaska oil spill was adjudicated and likely will have the same results.
The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. In Baker v. Exxon, an Anchorage jury awarded $287 million for actual damages and $5 billion for punitive damages, but after nineteen years of appellate jurisprudence, the Supreme Court on June 25, 2008 issued a ruling reducing the punitive damages to $507.5 million, roughly a tenth of the original jury's award. Furthermore, even that amount was reduced further by nineteen years of inflation. By that time, many of the people who would have been compensated by these funds had died.
The establishment calls this justice. Do you? Do those of you who reside in the coastal states that will ultimately be affected by the Deepwater Horizon disaster really believe that the President can make good on this promise of holding BP responsible? By the time all the lawsuits filed in response to this disaster wend their ways through the legal system, Mr. Obama will be grayed, wizened, and ensconced in a plush chair in an Obama Presidential Library, completely out of the picture and devoid of all responsibility.
Politicians who engage in this duplicitous posturing know that they can't fulfill their promises. They know they are lying; yet they do it pathologically. Aesop writes, "A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth." Perhaps that's why politicians never do.
Government in America consists of law. Legislators write it, executives apply it, and courts adjudicate it. But the law is a lie. We are told to respect the law and that it protects us. But it doesn't. Think about it people! The law and law enforcement only come into play secundum vitium (after the crime). The police don't show up before you're assaulted, robbed, or murdered; they come after. So how does that protect you? Yes, if a relationship of trust is violated, you can sue if you can afford it, and even that's not a sure thing. (Remember the victims of the Exxon-Valdez disaster!) Even if the person who violated the relationship gets sanctioned, will you be "made whole"? Most likely not! Relying on the law is a fool's errand. It's enacted, enforced, and adjudicated by liars.
The law is a great crime, far greater than the activities it outlaws, and there's no way you can protect yourself from it. The establishment protects itself. The law does not protect people. It is merely an instrument of retribution. It can only be used, often ineffectively, to get back at the malefactor. It never un-dos the crime. Executing the murderer doesn't bring back the dead. Putting Ponzi schemers in jail doesn't get your money back. And holding BP responsible won't restore the Louisiana marshes, won't bring back the dead marine and other wildlife, and won't compensate the victims for their losses. Carefully watch what happens over the next twenty years as the government uses the law to shield BP, Transocean, and Halliburton while the claims of those affected by the spill disappear into the quicksand of the American legal system.
Jim Kouri, citing FBI studies, writes that "some of the character traits exhibited by serial killers or criminals may be observed in many within the political arena.;" they share the traits of psychopaths who are not sensitive to altruistic appeals, such as sympathy for their victims or remorse or guilt over their crimes. They possess the personality traits of lying, narcissism, selfishness, and vanity. These are the people to whom we have entrusted our fate. Is it any wonder that America is failing at home and world-wide?
Some may say that this is an extreme, audacious claim. I, too, was surprised when I read Kouri's piece. But anecdotal evidence to support it is easily cited. John McCain said "bomb, bomb, bomb" during the last presidential campaign in response to a question about Iran. No one in government has expressed the slightest qualms about the killing of tens of thousands of people in both Iraq and Afghanistan who had absolutely nothing to do with what happened on nine/eleven or the deliberate targeting of women and children by unmanned drones in Pakistan. What if anything distinguishes serial killers from these governmental officials? Only that they don't do the killing themselves but have others do it for them. But that's exactly what most of the godfathers of the cosa nostra did.
So, there are questions that need to be posed: Has the government of the United States of America become a criminal enterprise? Is the nation ruled by psychopaths? Well, how can the impoverishment of the people, the promotion of the military-industrial complex and endless wars and their genocidal killing, the degradation of the environment, the neglect of the collapsing infrastructure, and the support of corrupt and authoritarian governments (often called democracies) abroad be explained? Worse, why are corporations allowed to profiteer during wars while the people are called upon to sacrifice? Why hasn't the government ever tried to prohibit such profiteering? It's not that it can't be done.
In the vernacular, harming people is considered a crime. It is just as much a crime when done by governments, legal systems, or corporations. The government uses the law to harm people or shield the establishment from the consequences of harming people all the time. Watch as no one from the Massey Energy Co. is ever prosecuted for the disaster at the Upper Big Branch coal mine. When corporations are accused of wrongdoing, they often reply that what they did was legal, but legal is not a synonym for right. When criminals gain control, they legalize criminality.
Unless the government of the United States changes its behavior, this nation is doomed. No one in government seems to realize that dissimulation breeds distrust, distrust breeds suspicion, and suspicion eventually arouses censure. Isn't that failure of recognition by the establishment a sign of criminal psychopathology?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25652.htm
But it's so entertaining. :)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25650.htm
Stair stepping up quite nicely it is. I like predictable stocks. :)
Shaping up to look that way. :)
How often does he do a video? I'm liking what I heard.
Thank you for the link Larry. :)
Good video :)
And I have to laugh. I'm one of those waiting at the 50 ma. :)
emini's are up now.
IMO if 1060 doesn't hold then we see much lower fast.
ROTFLMFAO
And a good morning to you Stuffy. :)
Still a few hours til morning for me. LOL Just up checking the futures.
Very Quietly Obama's Citizenship Case reaches the Supreme Court
Date: Thursday, April 15, 2010, 7:28 PM
VERY QUIETLY OBAMA'S CITIZENSHIP CASE REACHES THE SUPREME COURT
AP - WASHINGTON D.C. -
In a move certain to fuel the debate over Obama's qualifications for the presidency, the group "Americans for Freedom of Information" has Released copies of President Obama's college transcripts from Occidental College . Released today, the transcript school indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate. The transcript was released by Occidental College in compliance with a court order in a suit brought by the group in the Superior Court of California. The transcript shows that Obama (Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program. To qualify, for the scholarship, a student must claim foreign citizenship.
This document would seem to provide the smoking gun that many of Obama's detractors have been seeking. Along with the evidence that he was first born in Kenya and there is no record of him ever applying for US citizenship, this is looking pretty grim. The news has created a firestorm at the White House as the release casts increasing doubt about Obama's legitimacy and qualification to serve as President article titled, "Obama Eligibility Questioned," leading some to speculate that the story may overshadow economic issues on Obama's first official visit to the U.K. In a related matter, under growing pressure from several groups, Justice Antonin Scalia announced that the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear arguments concerning Obama's legal eligibility to serve as President in a case brought by Leo Donofrio of New Jersey . This lawsuit claims Obama's dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. Donofrio's case is just one of 18 suits brought by citizens demanding proof of Obama's citizenship or qualification to serve as president.
Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation has released the results of their investigation of Obama's campaign spending. This study estimates that Obama has spent upwards of $950,000 in campaign funds in the past year with eleven law firms in 12 states for legal resources to block disclosure of any of his personal records. Mr. Kreep indicated that the investigation is still ongoing but that the final report will be provided to the U..S. Attorney general, Eric Holder. Mr. Holder has refused to comment on the matter...
LET OTHER FOLKS KNOW THIS NEWS, THE MEDIA WON'T !
Subject: RE: Issue of Passport?
While I've little interest in getting in the middle of the Obama birth issue, Paul Hollrah over at FSM did so yesterday and believes the issue can be resolved by Obama answering one simple question: What passport did he use when he was shuttling between New York , Jakarta , and Karachi ?
So how did a young man who arrived in New York in early June 1981, without the price of a hotel room in his pocket, suddenly come up with the price of a round-the-world trip just a month later?
And once he was on a plane, shuttling between New York , Jakarta , and Karachi , what passport was he offering when he passed through Customs and Immigration?
The American people not only deserve to have answers to these questions, they must have answers. It makes the debate over Obama's citizenship a rather short and simple one.
Q: Did he travel to Pakistan in 1981, at age 20?
A : Yes, by his own admission.
Q: What passport did he travel under?
A: There are only three possibilities.
1) He traveled with a U.S. .. Passport,
2) He traveled with a British passport, or
3) He traveled with an Indonesia passport.
Q: Is it possible that Obama traveled with a U.S. Passport in 1981?
A: No. It is not possible. Pakistan was on the U.S...State Department's "no travel" list in 1981.
Conclusion: When Obama went to Pakistan in 1981 he was traveling either with a British passport or an Indonesian passport.
If he were traveling with a British passport that would provide proof that he was born in Kenya on August 4, 1961, not in Hawaii as he claims. And if he were traveling with an Indonesian passport that would tend to prove that he relinquished whatever previous citizenship he held, British or American, prior to being adopted by his Indonesian step-father in 1967.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the American people need to know how he managed to become a "natural born" American citizen between 1981 and 2008..
Given the destructive nature of his plans for America, as illustrated by his speech before Congress and the disastrous spending plan he has presented to Congress, the sooner we learn the truth of all this, the better.
:) You got that right. LOL
Just because it looks like we are setting up for a relief rally doesn't mean the bottom can't or won't fall out today or tomorrow.
Yesterday looked like accum to me until the end. Bullish divergance on the 60 min mostly erased.
Still holding my $114 calls. But then again I have SDS as a hedge. A relief rally is sorely needed. Albet I think it will be short lived if we get it.
Moves on air it do. :)
"A woman called me from Chicago to tell me that she had been in England
when the "Mad Cow Disease" had been at its peak. She said that she had
seen a television news report that told people not to panic if they had
been using rape oil in their diet and were over 65 years of age. The
"experts" added that the effects of rape oil ingestion takes at least 10
years to manifest, and in all likelihood, most of these people would be
dead by then anyway. Comforting!"
How long has canola oil been pushed here in the States?
And it makes me wonder if mad cow disease only hit cows 10 years or older?
My wonderfully well thought out picks.
18-24-48
Someone needed $ for a Big Mac.
It'll get there. Not a drop of dilution that I can see. This is all retail. Liking it.
14-17-18-24-48
Here's my losing picks. :)
:) I'm still here too. I'm thinking this one will turn out to be very nice.
Lets just hope they don't all turn out like Brown did.
I don't try figuring anything out any more. 5 and 15 are my freinds. LOL
LOL Historically the SPY trades up during OEW. That's why I was liking them. :) Chart still looked broken friday so I stayed out and just tracked it on paper. Thankfully.
I don't know Langy. SPY trading down this week. OE. Tells me something is seriously broken here. I'm still a perma bear.
Excluding food and fuel. Last I looked everyone had to purchase those.
Low demand for anything else that's why the dropping prices.
JMHO
LMFAO I don't trust nuttin no way. In and out on the 5 and 15. I miss out on some big gains but I also miss out on those big losses too. I'm quite content with my 20 contract trades. LOL Trying for a GS spreadsheet.
Hmmmm (scratching head here) May see a bounce in those. Short covering?
Morning Stuffy :)
Looks like it's gonna be a bloody summer it do. Gerald Celente said it months back and here it is.
What is Political Correctness?
Jonathan I. Katz
Professor of Physics
Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
[my last name]@wuphys.wustl.edu
What is political correctness, where did it come from, and why is it so influential at universities? It is the object of widespread ridicule, usually a very powerful weapon, so why doesn't it go away?
I used to think it was a simple matter of conformism, but there is a lot more to it than that. Political correctness is also sometimes regarded as synonymous with ``left-wing'' politics, but I think it is a tool rather than a specific set of political positions, and it appears in apolitical contexts also.
Consider, for example, the indignant letters that appear (as did recently in my local paper) when a newspaper publishes a picture of someone bicycling without a helmet. These letters criticize the newspaper for publishing the picture. We may be justified in criticizing hazardous or reckless behavior, but why should a newspaper suppress the fact that people act that way?
One day I felt politically correct thoughts myself, and understood them better. My local newspaper ran a series of articles on the dangers to living donors of organ donations, illustrated with stories of donors who had suffered serious damage to their health, or even death, as a consequence of donating. My emotional reaction was ``They shouldn't have run those articles.'' Why? The articles were apparently factual (though unbalanced---there was no discussion of the benefits to the recipients). Why should the public be denied the facts on a matter of wide interest? The reason for my reaction was that I was afraid the articles would reduce the willingness of people to be living organ donors, which would cause the deaths of people needing and waiting for a transplanted organ.
My reaction (that I reject rationally) was that the truth should be suppressed because it might cause harm. This is a totalitarian impulse, and it is the root of political correctness. A democracy depends on the widest possible dissemination of facts, and the freest possible discussion of them.
I was reminded of an event that happened around 1980, in the early days of political correctness. I was at UCLA, and there was a controversy about the safety of the campus research reactor. I went out on the roof above it, stood in the exhaust of its ventilating system, had someone photograph me there, and sent the photograph to the student newspaper, which published it. Someone came to me and said ``You shouldn't have done that.'' Why? To those opposed to the reactor, the truth that it was not discharging radioactive waste threatened their cause, so they wanted to suppress it. The harm they were afraid of wasn't the real harm done to a patient unable to get an organ transplant; it was harm to their political cause. The only acceptable position was that the reactor was dangerous and had to go, and anything that might suggest that this was incorrect was socially unacceptable, even if truthful.
On all issues there is a range of opinions people are willing to consider, outside of which opinions are rejected without consideration. Sometimes this rejection is justified on grounds of common sense, independent knowledge, or morality. For example, it is possible to defend many positions about the causes and consequences of the American Revolution, but pretending it never happened is outside the range of reasonable discourse.
Political correctness is the narrowing of the range of acceptable opinions to those held by a small group that enforces it. It is a attempt, often successful, to coerce the majority to accept the opinions of the enforcing group by suppressing any contrary opinion and making independent thought unacceptable. The enforcing group may be afraid of the the consequences of open discussion, or of making the facts known. It generally has a practical motivation: it wants something of value (money, jobs, special privileges) to which it has a weak claim. So it attempts to enforce its claim by ruling any disagreement from it outside the bounds of acceptable discourse. This is unnecessary when the claim is self-evidently strong, but may be the only means of getting the claim accepted when it is weak.
Political correctness also comes with an admixture of moral indignation. It removes the issue from the ordinary give-and-take of rational argument or the political process by injecting intense emotion. In my personal episode of politically correct thought, thinking of people dying for lack of an organ aroused strong feelings. Political correctness uses language with strong connotations, such as ``discrimination'' and ``racism'', or evokes ancient wrongs in order to associate any disagreement with support of past abuses. This emotional blackmail is effective in a self-consciously privileged environment, and what environment is more self-consciously privileged than an American university, populated with undergraduates who have been spoiled for eighteen years by overindulgent and affluent parents and with tenured professors, many of whom are still racked with guilt for having dodged the draft during the Vietnam war?
A current example is the movement to get the legal and tax privileges of marriage for homosexual couples. Its advocates express their case in terms of ``discrimination'', a powerful term because it evokes the past history of racial discrimination in America. Use of this term is an attempt, often successful, to make discussion of the genuine moral and policy issues ``politically incorrect'', that is, outside the range of acceptable discourse. Few people want to be accused of supporting ``discrimination'', even though there is a strong case to be made, on grounds of public health as well as morality, for public policy to discourage and discriminate against homosexual behavior. Not all ``discrimination'' is Jim Crow.
The classic example of political correctness was the reaction to the book ``The Bell Curve''. The theses (there were several) of this book, which was essentially the popularization of several decades of psychometric research, may be summarized: 1. Intelligence (more particularly the quantity called ``g'' or general intelligence by psychometricians) is a meaningful description of mental functioning. Measures of it in an individual are reproducible and stable across time. 2. Intelligence is a key to success in life. More intelligent people have, on average, higher incomes and better jobs, and are less likely to commit crimes, use recreational drugs or have illegitimate children than less intelligent people. 3. Intelligence is strongly heritable. This is difficult to quantify, but at least half the variation in intelligence is explained by heredity. The remaining variation is environmental, in poorly understood ways. 4. The mean intelligence is different in identifiable racial groups, and this explains the large variation in their success in American society. The most successful groups (East and South Asians) have the highest mean intelligence, Americans of European ancestry have somewhat lower mean scores, and Americans of West African ancestry have the lowest.
The fourth thesis was, naturally, the most controversial and aroused the strongest attacks. In fact, the first three probably would interest few other than professional psychometricians were it not for the general belief that the fourth follows from them. Of course, it is consistent with popular belief (held by most people, including most members of the groups asserted to have lower mean intelligence). And it isn't a new idea: for example, the English explorer Francis Younghusband said in his book ``The Heart of a Continent'' (1896) recounting his explorations of Central Asia (p. 396): ``In mere brain-power and intellectual capacity there seems no great difference between the civilized European and, say, the rough hill-tribesman of the Himalayas; and, in regard to the Chinaman, I should even say the advantage lay on his side.''
Given the uncertainties and limitations of social science (even of psychometrics, which lies between social science and biology) it would be futile to try to decide if ``The Bell Curve'' securely demonstrated its conclusions. More interesting is why it aroused such a strong reaction.
The facts regarding the mean success or failure in life of the various American racial groups are well-known and are a matter of everyday experience. One can hardly open a newspaper without reading about them. Curiously, the people who dwell on them the most are the friends of the less successful who want compensatory action, but by dwelling on them they only strengthen the conclusion that their failures must be deeply rooted and that efforts at compensation are futile. If they have not been remedied by a generation of compensation, then they are nearly immutable, and it hardly matters whether they are a matter of heredity or environment.
Everyone knows that identifiable racial and ethnic groups differ, on average, in many ways even aside from defining racial markers such as skin color. Scandinavians are heavier and taller than people of Mediterranean ancestry, the world's best sprinters come from West Africa and its best marathoners from East Africa, Pygmies are short and the Masai tall (because of geography and climate Africa has more human diversity than any other continent), etc. Why couldn't differences extend to psychometric measures? More important, why should that suggestion arouse such a strong attempt to push it beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse?
To some extent, it is a matter of group pride (a fashionable euphemism for racism; recall that pride is one of the seven deadly sins). But do people really take more pride in intelligence than in athletic ability (how many people pay to watch chess matches, in comparison to professional sports?)? I doubt it. And group averages tell nothing about individuals---the fact that intelligence is correlated with income doesn't make Bill Gates smarter than you or I (judging by the quality of his software, he surely isn't). The question isn't injured pride, it is the attempt to exclude a hypothesis with significant empirical evidence in its favor (and some against, despite the failure to identify ``cultural bias'' in intelligence tests) from the field of acceptable discourse.
The reason is that accepting, or even seriously considering, this hypothesis would injure some people's material interests. There are many people in America who make their livings from programs to address the supposed racial imbalance in American society, and more who are beneficiaries. The justification for these programs is always that if members of a certain group aren't, on average, doing well this must be the consequence of ``discrimination'' (which seems to be lost in the mists of ``disparate impact'' theology, because actual examples in modern America are few and hard to find) that must be remedied by some ``affirmative action'' program, and, yes, I'll manage such a program for you. And if you don't agree I'll organize a demonstration and call you a racist and there will be lots of bad publicity. You really don't want that, and we can negotiate the price. If the reason members of that group don't do well is that their aptitudes or preferences extend in different directions then the justification for ``affirmative action'' and some people's careers evaporates, so the possibility must not even be thought of.
Of course, if people weren't intimidated by threats of being called racist (or of demonstrations) they might decide that the supposed ``imbalance'' was of no more significance than the fact that right-handers are ``underrepresented'' among baseball pitchers---that's just the way the world happens to be, we may not understand why, but as long as we treat each individual fairly we needn't be concerned with it. That would put a lot of affirmative action coordinators and diversity administrators out of work.
I observed another example when I posted on my web site an essay Don't Become a Scientist! arguing that the job prospects for scientists are so poor that young people should look for careers elsewhere. One of my colleagues, a quite distinguished man whom I formerly respected, said he wanted to censor this. Why? Because if young people realized how poor the job prospects are in science he wouldn't be able to find graduate students to work in his laboratory. The later fate of these students in a flooded job market did not concern him. Political correctness is found even in matters that aren't overtly political, when someone wants to further his interests by suppressing facts or opinions.
Universities are the institutions most vulnerable to this extortion and its most enthusiastic participants (though large corporate and government bureaucracies do it too). One reason is that it is almost impossible to measure their success (no sales or production figures), so their leaders can indulge their prejudices freely. Another is that many universities are very authoritarian institutions (my own, Washington University in St. Louis, may be among the most so) in which neither students nor faculty have any voice or influence. Students are vulnerable because they have few legally enforceable rights. They can be given bad grades or subjected to discipline on subjective grounds (this also leads to sexual exploitation, something that still happens, despite the near-hysteria about ``sexual harassment'').
Students have come to expect indoctrination in their classes. They often fear that disagreement with their instructors will bring reprisals in the form of bad grades and that disagreement with administrators will lead to disciplinary action. In this climate university administration and teaching attract bullies who enforce political correctness. Universities themselves are terrified of bad publicity, because what they are selling is chiefly an image. This makes them vulnerable to the tactics of external enforcers of political correctness, whose chief weapon is the threat of bad publicity.
A few years ago I posted a web page In Defense of Homophobia. The title was deliberately provocative; the content was a temperate and reasoned discussion of how homosexual promiscuity had caused, and is morally culpable for, the AIDS epidemic in America. I fear homosexuality because it has created a deadly epidemic. For some years no one seemed to notice. Then one of my students did, and published an opinion column in Student Life calling for its censorship. (To my surprise, the administration has not attempted to do so.) This was followed by a wave of similar calls, including an editorial. After this first wave, my critics, most of whom probably consider themselves liberals, seem to have realized that censorship is not a liberal position. The next wave consisted of a mixture of name-calling, irrelevancies (one girl wrote how much she loved her wonderful homosexual ``Uncle John'') and attacks on positions I did not take (most commonly, the erroneous idea that only homosexuals get AIDS). Most disturbing was the concern, voiced by several students, that disagreeing with a professor would bring reprisals. Apparently this abuse of professorial authority is so common that students expect it.
No one took issue with what I actually wrote; it was as if I had triggered a nervous reflex rather than thought. While the published comments were mostly negative, private emails have been running about 2:1 in agreement with me, suggesting censorship by social pressure of public comments. One favorable email follows:
[Identifying information removed from following message:]
Your personal web page tells it like it is.
I am a [institution deleted] faculty, not tenured, who finds your ability to frankly state the obvious refreshing. Unfortunately I do not feel the academic freedom within this system of higher learning to voice non polically correct sentiments.
For now I'll toe the line, make the papers, work for the rank and tenure to be free to once state my real beliefs without fear of repression, censure, or job loss from from the Right.
[End of anonymized message; presumably he means Left rather than Right]
The negative comments, both private emails and letters and columns in Student Life (from late September through October, 2005) were frequently near-hysterical tirades, filled with name-calling and insults. These don't bother me, and I take the fact that I aroused their rage (and that none of them has attempted to meet my actual argument) as a compliment. But people who care more about the opinions of others might be intimidated; this is one of the ways in which the ``thought police'' enforce political correctness among those who do not accept the official line. No one responded to my challenge to a public debate; insults and name-calling are the response of those who know their positions are too weak to defend.
Political correctness can be found any time people are afraid of the consequences of an idea or a fact, and use social pressure to suppress discussion of it. The intensity of their reaction is usually an indication that they know or fear that the objectionable opinion is valid, but that they are invested (emotionally or literally) in its falsity.
Political correctness can be resisted by insisting on free, open and public discussion of even the most sensitive issues. The more it makes some people uncomfortable, the more important it is. A healthy society requires a free marketplace of ideas. You have a right to your own opinions, and to express them freely.
http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/pc.html