Prior to the 1970s, a persons faith had little impact on the way they voted. Make no mistake, however, there have always been those who believed religion should play a larger role in American politics. Colonies were often ruled by strict religious observance prior to the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it could be said, the reason our country implemented the separation of church and state was because of the conflict and dissention caused by the rigorous and divisive theology within the colonies.

In New England for example, the civil government dealt harshly with religious dissenterswhipping Baptists or cropping the ears of Quakers for their determined efforts to proselytize. A religious revival came through the colonies between the 1730s and 1740s, called the Great Awakening. This movement challenged the clerical elite and colonial establishment by appealing to the poor and uneducated. It focused more on an emotional relationship with God than one based in reasoning. The Great Awakening was the basis for what would become the current fundamentalist, evangelical Christian faith.

Historian Patricia Bonomi noted that rationalism, nevertheless, remained the predominant religious underpinning and was often present in the religion of gentlemen leaders by the late colonial period. As American civilization progressed in scientific discoveries, modernists seamlessly wove their understanding of God and their holy texts together. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, found their beliefs contentiously out of step with rationalism and modernization.

Until the 1970s, religious fundamentalists primarily stayed away from politics, believing politics distracted them from their calling to bring people to Christ and deliver the message of salvation. But through the charismatic leadership of people like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson, and savvy political strategists like Paul Weyrich, Christian fundamentalist extremism found a new platform in American politics, unlike any time in history.

Most of the popular Republican candidates in the 2016 presidential election claimed God told them to run for president. What they share in common is a brand of Christianity, which is historically racist, homophobic, xenophobic, dangerously nationalistic, and exclusive. It is a form of Christian Sharia law, which forces those who believe differently into strict adherence to their version of religious freedom.

Fundamentalist Christian religious freedom laws allow for sweeping discrimination and removal of federal protections for people who believe differently. For example, Mississippi passed the Protecting Freedom of Conscience From Government Discrimination Act in 2016, which said public businesses, social workers, and even public employees cannot be punished for denying services to people who believe that sex should only be reserved between married people in opposite sex relationships. Additionally, if someones religious belief is different than those of an adoption agency, the agency can refuse the adoption of a child to that person. In many ways, it is stepping hundreds of years backwards in Americas history. The government isnt doing the punishing, per se, but laws prohibit it from equally protecting citizens.

At the beginning of Trumps presidency, he initiated an executive ordered called Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom. Most agree the order was little more than a nod to the fundamentalist Christians that helped elect Trump into office, and it has no teeth. However, the order essentially allows discrimination from the highest offices in the country, letting individuals deny health care, education, employment, government grants and even government contracts to people who believe or behave differently. If someone simply claims a strongly held religious belief, they can discriminate for virtually any reason without retribution.

The question is, why are Americans allowing this to happen? Surveys show that much of what Christian fundamentalists represent is out of step with what Americans want. Most Americans oppose Trumps immigration ban. Most Americans support gay marriage. Most Americans support abortion rights. Americans are religiously diverse, with more and more people disassociating with their evangelical roots. Trumps election to the White House has splintered evangelicals even further, with many recognizing the blatant hypocrisy of Trumps Christian supporters.

The fundamentalist chokehold on American politics seeks to destroy the religious and cultural plurality on which the country, and the Declaration of Independence, was based. These theological divisions which pit believers against non-believers, and those who believe correctly against those who dont are a major contributor to Americas sharply divided politics. When someone believes he or she holds absolute truth, there can be no compromise, no middle ground, and no discussion.

Fundamentalism - Christian, Islam, or any other religious ideology - is the antithesis of progression. Fundamentalisms dangerous anti-science stance threatens the worlds environment, reduces the efficacy of American education, and leaves citizens unprepared for life in a global economy. Fundamentalism is shrouded in ignorance, backed by authoritarianism, and places an enormous amount of trust in individual leaders. To free us of the religious chokehold, citizens must recognize, and actively vote against the powerful political machine of the Fundamentalist Christian right.

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The Fundamentalist Christian Chokehold On America - HuffPost

When I entered the accounting profession three decades ago, it was the preserve of middle-aged white males, conservative politics and the old school tie. I remember being expected to disclose my religion and school in order to win a graduate position at one of the big eight accounting firms in Sydney. And the cleanliness of my black lace-up Oxford-style business shoes (not brogues) was also a matter of considerable significance to the interviewer.

Comedian John Cleese reinforced this unattractive image of accountants in his description of them as appallingly dull, unimaginative, timid, lacking initiative, spineless, easily dominated, no sense of humour, tedious company, irrepressibly awful and whereas in most professions these characteristics would be considerable drawbacks, in chartered accountancy, theyre a positive boon.

While unkind observers might suggest that the personality traits of chartered accountants havent changed all that much, there is no doubt that the professional and business environment has changed a great deal. I was reminded of this when I received (circa 1985) an unusual letter from my professional body, the Institute of Chartered Accountants, about the future of our profession. The letter informed me that the accounting profession had entered a new world of technology, marketing and economic policy, in which we would become chief executives, entrepreneurs and thought leaders.

As a result, the letter claimed, traditional professional partnerships were finished. These would be replaced by multi-disciplinary consulting businesses. They would be built on the modern concepts of profitability and return on equity, rather than the quaint notion previous generations adopted of engaging in a trusted professional vocation in the public interest, irrespective of commercial reward. We were told that if we didnt get with the program we would be left behind, reduced by the end of the 20th century to low-value bookkeepers and compliance officers.

Free-market origins

Its hardly surprising that the accounting profession jumped onto the 1980s bandwagon. Those were the days in which powerful and compelling forces of deregulation, securitisation, free markets and globalisation were transforming much of the world. Societies became economies and economics faculties became business schools. And it was into this securitised free-market environment that the aspiring profession we now know as financial planning was born.

One of the strongest political supporters of this ideology was UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who famously declared: I think weve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, its the governments job to cope with it. I have a problem, Ill get a grant. Im homeless, the government must house me. Theyre casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. Its our duty to look after ourselves and then also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. Theres no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.

Over the following decades, the dominance of these ideas, often referred to as economic rationalism or neo-liberalism was assured. Australian academic Michael Pusey describes economic rationalism as a dogma that argues markets and money can always do everything better than governments, bureaucracies and the law. Theres no point in political debate because all this just generates more insoluble conflicts. Forget about history and forget about national identity, culture and society. Dont even think about public policy, national goals or nation-building. Its all futile. Just get out of the way and let prices and market forces deliver their own economically rational solution.

This view of the world was channelled by corporate cowboy Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, in the 1987 film Wall Street: Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

An improper role

So pervasive has been the influence of this ideology, especially in the Anglosphere, that many professional designations have taken on the characteristics of product brands. This has coincided with the employment in professional associations of marketing managers and customer service specialists, many of whom apply their considerable expertise in the promotion of consumer products to the selling and protection of professional designations as though they are brands of soap powder.

As a result, the focus of many professional associations has turned to image, membership retention and growth at the cost of their traditional emphasis on the articulation and enforcement of professional and ethical standards. The problem with this approach is that it leads to the conclusion that the reputation and commercial value of a professional designation must be protected and upheld, right or wrong, rather than to the conclusion that the public interest must be protected and upheld, even to the detriment of the commercial interests of association members whose behaviour has been found wanting.

This misunderstanding of the proper role of professions in society has also led to the expectation amongst members that their associations exist principally to protect and enhance their commercial interests in a free market (as would a lobby group), rather than to protect the public interest in society as a whole. I was surprised to observe this confusion in the documents supporting the creation of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (formerly the Institute of Chartered Accountants), in which the following statement appeared: Our aspiration is for the new Institute to be recognised as the leading trans-Tasman voice for business. The danger here is that by taking on the attributes of a vested-interests lobby group, the public will conclude that chartered accountants are hypocritical and untrustworthy. I suspect many financial planners already think that.

At the heart of any true profession must be its members duty to society. This is often called our duty to protect the public interest. It is a higher duty than our duty to act in our clients (or our employers) best interests and it must always receive priority in the ordering of our duties as professionals.

Simon Longstaff, executive director of the Ethics Centre, explained it this way: The point should be made that to act in the spirit of public service at least implies that one will seek to promote or preserve the public interest. A person who claimed to move in a spirit of public service while harming the public interest could be open to the charge of insincerity or of failing to comprehend what his or her professional commitments really amounted to in practice If the idea of a profession is to have any significance, then it must hinge on this notion that professionals make a bargain with society in which they promise conscientiously to serve the public interest, even if to do so may, at times, be at their own expense. In return, society allocates certain privileges. These might include the right to engage in self-regulation, the exclusive right to perform particular functions and special status.

We risk being devalued

Given this unique and privileged role in society, it follows that when aspiring professions such as financial planning choose to become involved in thought leadership and the development of public policy, our commentary must not be primarily motivated by a desire to engage in a public relations exercise or a brand management campaign. Furthermore, we should never allow commercially motivated pressure from vested interests to dictate our conclusions.

Sadly, we have seen the latter occur in recent years in our industrys compromised and misguided attitude toward the development of ethical and professional standards. In that regard, professional associations often refer to the importance of balancing stakeholders interests when, in truth, all they are seeking to do is maintain the commercial status quo of powerful members (or a section of powerful members). I accept that avoiding commercial pressures is not always easy, especially when they are sourced from our own profession. However, unless we do so, our members, government, the media and, most importantly, the public whose interests we are privileged to serve, will devalue or ignore our contributions to important debates in which our professions voice should be heard and respected and they will ultimately mistrust and devalue our advice.

Therefore, as we grow and evolve the profession of financial planning we must defend without fear or favour the fundamental ethical principles on which any true profession is built: namely trust, integrity, objectivity, conflict avoidance (not mere disclosure), technical competence, due care, confidentiality, professional behaviour and uncompromising support of the public interest. Of course, as individual financial planners, we are obliged to make important contributions to our clients wealth and financial independence, but that must never be at the expense of our overarching responsibility as a profession to create a fairer and more equitable society for all citizens.

TOPICS:Ethics and financial planning,Market forces,Professional associations,professional standards,professionalism

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A dangerous misunderstanding - Professional Planner

I can get myself into a lot of trouble sometimes by making a blanket statement, but Im not sure that anyone ever rejects the Bible or Jesus Christ on philosophical grounds. Israel certainly did not.Israels decision to reject Christ was based solely on moral grounds (Gods definition of holiness differed from that of Israel).

It is my observation that the man who continues in his rejection of Christ has some hidden sin somewhere, a sin that he has no intention of letting go.Hes in love with it. He wants to keep what God declares is reprobate, and the result is a personal, moral conundrum.

At that point, because there still remains some shame should the sin become public (unless, of course, you are beyond shame: Ephesians5:12; Philip3:19), man hides behind a straw man an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument.We call it a philosophical choice or an intellectual crisis and reject God, when the real problem is that man is morally reprobate.

Your rejecting God has nothing to do with Gods creating the world in six 24-hour days or the fact that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and lived to tell about it.

When we love our sin, we can come up with a thousand reasons to stay away from the cross.But when a person gives up his pride, puts away his sin and looks at the light that is in Christ and His gospel, that man will put away his rationalism and atheism.He will never be able to tell you why because psychology can never explain the new birth. But that man will smile and agree that the light of God has flooded his heart and soul.

A blind man can argue until he is blue in the face that there is no such thing as light but that doesnt make it so. Jesus said, For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved (John3:20).If that means anything, it means that people who reject God reject Him for His teachings on moral grounds.

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil(John3:19).

Disregarding the light God has given you is bad enough (man is condemned already John3:18).But to reject the light you were given is the ultimate slap in the face to a holy God. Jesus called the men of His day stiff-necked and hard of heart.They had a perverse hatred of light because it interfered with their sin.

And thats mans problem today.

Do you have a question? You can contact Pastor MacDonald by writing to this paper or New Testament Baptist Church, 150 E. Trinity Acres, Safford, AZ 85546; e-mail:info@ntbcsafford.org.

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Ask A Pastor: 'I reject the Bible on philosophical grounds.' What do you say to that? - Eastern Arizona Courier

Penn: Office of University Communications

Penn's Netter Center Expands Global Impact and Outreach Penn: Office of University Communications In the aftermath of the economic crisis, we face the emergence of populist politics and a rising tide of non-rationalism in which debate based on evidence and consideration is being displaced by arguments centered on emotion, which are then amplified ...

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Penn's Netter Center Expands Global Impact and Outreach - Penn: Office of University Communications

Reed Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, recently said that the first truth of entrepreneurship and investing is that the very big ideas are contrarian because being a contrarian is why other competitors haven't already done the same thing, which leaves the space for the creation of something. For entrepreneurs, that something is a company that can dominate its space and for investors its higher returns. This hero's journey isn't without risk as the pitfalls are plentiful, and sometimes the room to fail can seem large and lonely.

If this were a prom, not only has no one showed up, but we've also been stood up as the investment community abandoned the energy sector and energy stocks in droves these past two quarters. Energy has turned out to be the worst investments among the entire S&P this year, as the initial year-end celebration of oil cuts and inventory drawdowns gave way to the difficulty of actually seeing it come to fruition. We've seen the shares of our oil companies falter dramatically, and many famous oil investors have become apoplectic, abandoning their oil thesis and declaring that oil inventories will rebalance too slowly and that "lower for longer" is the new reality. Sentiment as they say turned negative:

As oil prices tumbled past 20% from the highs reached in Q1 to the lows reached in Q2, their sentiment became our reality, and yet . . . we're still bullish on oil.

We continue to test and retest our thesis because while we could be wrong, we just don't think we are at this stage. We frankly utterly failed to predict the sentiment shift, but the vagaries of emotions aren't where we've historically excelled at. Our advantage, if there ever was one, was in examining the fundamental data. So when you read that we're still "bullish" our conviction isn't borne of consistency bias or fear of reputation risk, it stems from the data.

For now, reality is that investors have effectively decided oil is worthless, but as capital retreats and stocks and bond prices fall, the bearish prophecies inevitably create a "new" reality (the opposite of "fake" news if there ever was one), one where the industry begins to contract, produce less and draw down inventories.

This is the nature of economics in the short term and the long; what's proven unprofitable will be starved of capital until supply and demand resets and profitability restored. It's an immutable law, and one of the few certainties in the capital markets. In the meantime when excessive inventories predominate, fundamentals and sentiment can dislocate. Prices first decline because that's what they do when there's too much of a commodity, but as the market tentatively begins rebalancing, the perception of if/when/how the market will/will not rebalance plays a much larger role. This perception change means prices can overshoot in either direction, and in times of plenty, it's usually down. Once fundamentalists abandon the sector, the energy market is increasingly left to traders and computer trading advisors (i.e., quant funds), which further exacerbates the momentum change.

Much of the recent fall is simply due to market sentiment, which turned from healthy skepticism to outright cynicism. Cynicism over OPEC/non-OPEC's production cuts, cynicism that the oil market can rebalance in the face of overwhelming growth in US shale production, and a creeping fatalism that oil will forever stay below $50/barrel because shale technological breakthrough means "this time it's different."

Our thesis has and continues to be that it's not. The logical frameworks are fairly simple. We're wagering that three historical rules that applied three years ago still apply today:

So unless economics reversed itself in the last few years, it will act as gravity to restrain and eventually constrain oil supplies and the downward spiral of prices we've seen the first half of this year will reverse.

Contrary to what you see in the price action, oil fundamentals are not that bad. There, we said it. Someone had to say it and we did -- italicized, no less.

"Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance." - Plato

Fundamentally, how the oil picture looks depends on how you interpret the data. Coming out of Q1 we updated our oil thesis and explained that the recent swoon in oil prices was caused by three factors that increased inventory and negatively affected sentiment:

These factors in Q1 rolled into Q2, masking the underlying demand and affecting the perception of rebalancing. For their part, OPEC and Non-OPEC also failed to inspire confidence. On May 25th, both groups decided to renew their 1.7M barrel per day (bpd) cut ("Vienna Agreement") for another 9 month (to now expire in March 2018) and rein in exports. Normally, you'd expect an extended production cut to lift prices, but the participants bungled the announcement. In an attempt to bolster the market a few weeks before the meeting, Russia and Saudi Arabia, the two key players for the agreement announced that they'd extend the cut by nine months, oil prices quickly rallied. This unfortunately heightened market expectations. It began expecting even better news such as a deeper or broader cut, but none materialized. Oil prices then fell after the meeting as the market was left with "only" a nine-month cut. In a nutshell it was a public relations disaster for OPEC and non-OPEC.

A week later, the calendar turned to June and sentiment deteriorated further. US oil data in early June showed light inventory draws, and the market began surmising that demand may have fallen off. A respite in domestic violence in Nigeria and Libya allowed both to increase productions, which negated close to 30% of the cuts in the Vienna Agreement. Faced with the additional prospect of increasing US production, investors lost faith and the sky promptly fell.

In our view though, all of the above, all of the shifting inventories, overproduction and subsequent "channel stuffing," OPEC and Non-OPEC's meeting and the market's bipolar sentiment is simply volatility caused by the ongoing rebalancing. If inventories continue to decline, then prices will rise. Everything else is noise. In the next series of articles, we'll look at what's happened, what's currently happening, and reasons we think the trend will continue to be favorable for oil bulls. In the meantime, keep the faith, being contrarian can be often dark at times, but we'll let the data and our rational mind lead the way.

As always, we welcome your comments. If you would like to read more of our articles, please be sure to hit the "Follow" button above.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Oil Today: When Emotionalism Trumps Rationalism - Seeking Alpha

Silicon Valley has a political theory problem: the failure to engage with it at all. From tech billionaires to its many residents who harbor bizarre worldviews, the tech industry prides itself on changing the world for the betteras they claim, always non-ideologically, always apoliticallythrough tech. But this success is invariably measured through economic efficiency. This is all a farce; there is no such thing as changing the world apolitically, and good is measured in more than utils.

In my first month living in San Francisco, a friend took me to a party of people who work in tech. One of them insisted to me that Chinas single-party government is superior to American democracy because it is more efficient. In response to my insistence that, though imperfect, American democracy preserves many of our political freedoms and secures rights of workers to an extent unknown in China, he pointed to the massive growth of the Chinese economy over the course of the past two decades.

Before I moved, many friends warned me to brace myself for precisely this. The Bay Area, they told me, is infested by a bizarre free market-corporatist scientism, rationalism, a worldview which valorizes laissez-faire economics and innovation and distrusts democratic process, all while pretending at neutrality. Those who subscribe to it proudly reject political theory; in their eyes doing so makes them free from the divisions that characterize our political scene, and allows them to posture as purely rational thinkers who arrive at non-political decisions. By implication, all other policy proposals, those from people with explicit political or philosophical commitments, are irrational, arrived at because they serve political interests, not because the proposals are worthwhile.

But as Ive said, there is no such thing as nonpolitical policy, and techs failure to take political theory seriously has led it astray. Rather than serving as the purely rational thinkers they believe themselves to be, rationalists have arrived at where they are because of their failure to take theory seriouslya hollowed-out version of libertarianism that embraces the most oppressive aspects of its worship of the private sector, most notably the totalitarian nature of the employer-employee relationship.

The figures who loom largest in the Bay Area are just as bad, if not worse. They are rarely shy to weigh in on political matters, their confidence buoyed by their belief that their wealth is indicative of their brilliance and the continued fetishization of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Mark Zuckerberg recently launched a listening tour, through which, ironically, which he has delivered numerous speeches across the United States. Some say he plans to run for president, despite the fact that he would barely meet the age requirement in 2020 and has not a single policy accomplishment to his name.

Elon Musk, even generally as a person, presents another example. He has repeatedly propounded the most implausible proposals. He wants, for example, to construct a hyperloop, which would transport commuters between New York and the District of Columbia in about thirty minutes. This is something he has pushed for years. When he first proposed it, he claimed a 100-mile portion of it would cost only $6 billion; in reality it would likely cost over $100 billion. Moreover, experts found the plan entirely implausible. One determined that theres no way the economics on that would ever work out. Others were skeptical of the technology itself.

Silicon Valley must contend with something deeper if it truly wants to meet its goal of changing the world. It is not enough to churn out half-baked policy ideas or run for president by force of having invented a social networking site; it is not enough to play policy. It is time to dispense with pretensions of neutrality.

Link:

Silicon Valley's Poverty Of Philosophy - HuffPost

Lucy Kirkwood is a playwright who tackles giant themes with a swaggering showmanship. Her 2013 work, Chimerica, meditated on US politics, Tiananmen Square, photojournalism, air pollution and much much more. Now comes Mosquitoes, a tale of sibling rivalry, set against a backdrop of particle physics at CERN. The production, directed by Rufus Norris, sometimes overreaches itself in its seemingly limitless ambition, but it is still a fascinating and provocative work which uses science as a way of questioning our humanity.

Alice (Olivia Williams) is a dazzlingly clever physicist working on the Large Hadron Collider. Her sister, Jenny (Olivia Colman), is based in Luton and sells health insurance to women with vaginal cancer. At the start of the play, Jenny is in the late stages of a longed-for pregnancy. Half an hour in and a year or so later, we learn that the baby is dead because her mother has followed some spurious online advice against vaccinating her. The two sisters represent success and failure, rationalism and emotion, perhaps even remain and leave. As Jenny tells Alice: Im Forrest Gump and youre the Wizard of F------ Oz.

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Olivia Colman is devastatingly good in Lucy Kirkwood's dazzling ... - Telegraph.co.uk

Yash Pal

New Delhi, July 25: The Manmohan Singh government had returned to power for its second term a month earlier, with a stronger mandate and without the Left's leash - intent on allowing foreign universities virtually unfettered access to India's domestic higher education market.

At 82, scientist-educationist Yash Pal was getting frailer. But on a June morning in 2009, Yash Pal, aided by a brown walking stick, walked into then human resources development minister Kapil Sibal's third-floor office at Shastri Bhavan, to tell him the government was wrong.

Singh had in February 2008 appointed Yash Pal to head a panel to prepare a blueprint for higher education reforms. Now, 16 months later, he handed in the panel's report, explicitly cautioning against throwing open India's education market without rigorous regulations.

Wavy-haired Yash Pal, a pipe-smoking cosmic ray physicist who pioneered satellite television in India, sought to propagate science and rationalism by transforming himself into a TV star, and coaxed universities to break out of silos to collaborate in research, died yesterday. He was 90.

His resume brimmed with standard markers of success - the first director of the Space Applications Centre (SAC) in Ahmedabad in the 1970s, secretary of the department of science and technology in the early 1980s and chairman of the University Grants Commission later.

Millions of Indians who watched television in the early 1990s recognised him through his appearances on a science TV show called Turning Point. And since 1991, successive governments turned to him for blueprints to reform school and higher education.

But to many who knew him the longest, Yash Pal was also a rebel - a man who would merrily breach protocol to assert his views, even at the risk of offending the day's political leadership.

"He never hesitated to speak what he believed in, to those in power," recalled Anita Rampal, veteran educationist and Delhi University professor who knew and worked with Yash Pal from the 1970s. "That's a trait we're going to miss even more in today's climate, where academic leaders are not so forthright."

Born in 1926 in a town called Jhang in what is now Pakistan Punjab, Yash Pal moved with his family to Jalandhar - where his father, a government employee, was transferred - and then to Delhi, where he witnessed the joy of Independence and the pain of Partition.

He bore the determination common to many of his generation, to study more despite the challenges of a young nation seared by violence and hobbled by poverty. As refugees from Pakistan poured in, he worked with Daulat Singh Kothari, fellow physicist and one of India's preeminent educationists in its initial years after Independence, to turn war-time barracks in the city into classrooms.

His passion to take science to the masses long preceded the official positions he held across governments of all hues. V. Siddhartha, a retired Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) scientist, was 10 years old when in the mid-1950s, Yash Pal visited his private school in New Delhi.

Yash Pal was those days flying weather balloons using cosmic ray lead plate array detectors.

"Yash was persuaded by the school principal to allow me to watch a flight," Siddhartha remembered today. Siddhartha stayed at the school overnight, woke up at 4 am, and sat in a jeep that took him to the launch site - the roof of a Delhi University building. The balloons were tracked by a World War II British military radar mounted on a truck-trailer.

By the 1960s, Yash Pal was working at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned his PhD, and then returned to TIFR to continue research before he was appointed director of the new SAC in Ahmedabad.

Rampal, who had started science teaching schools in Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh, in the 1970s, was surprised when Yash Pal, then at the TIFR, visited her.

They worked together to set up Eklavya, a rural science education programme that attracted scientists and teachers from premier universities across India, like the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institute of Science and TIFR.

"Scientists from the big science institutions didn't always think that much about linking their work to society," Rampal said. "Yash Pal was different, and his support was critical for the success of Eklavya."

As secretary of DST and then chairman of the UGC, he encouraged government funding for rural science education programmes like Eklavya, Rampal said. "He opened up these institutions that were closed before him," she said. "He was a collaborator, an ally, a mentor who went out of his way to encourage and promote those he believed in."

Bureaucracy frustrated Yash Pal, said Rampal, who recalled how he often told her about a sense of helplessness when he was at the UGC.

But he nevertheless succeeded in creating premier hubs of collaborative research like the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune and the Nuclear Science Centre in New Delhi.

Even those theoretically in his line of fire admired him.

"He would look at higher education in an integrated manner, and refused to accept walls between different streams of education," recalled Sukhdeo Thorat, who was chairman of the UGC when Yash Pal, as a part of his 2009 recommendations, suggested the body be merged with other regulators - like the All India Council for Technical Education and the Medical Council of India, and be reformed to ensure greater autonomy for universities and colleges. "Freedom and autonomy of higher education were critical to him."

The school education reforms Yash Pal proposed in the 1990s as head of a panel set up by the Narasimha Rao government remain a benchmark frequently cited by educationists. In the mid-2000s, when the Singh government asked him to help draft a National Curriculum Framework, he withstood bureaucratic pressure to propose new-age textbooks, Rampal said.

But Yash Pal was also open about his policy views even at times when they were sharply contrary to those of the political leadership of the day. Sibal wasn't the first to realize that.

In 1990, the Rajiv Gandhi government had been voted out of power, and Sam Pitroda, one of Rajiv's closest aides, was no longer welcomed the way he once was in government policy circles.

But Yash Pal, as President of the Indian Science Congress that year, used his address in Kochi to laud Pitroda's contribution to the spread of telephones across rural India, pleasantly surprising the US-returned technocrat who was present in the audience.

More than 25 years later, Yash Pal took on the Congress government in Chhattisgarh - at a time the party also ruled at the Centre - after it had pushed through a controversial law that had in two months spawned dozens of private teaching shops that could call themselves universities.

Yash Pal approached the Supreme Court, which struck down the Chhattisgarh law. "When he thought something was wrong, he acted on it," Thorat said.

As he aged, his hearing had started failing him. But the naughty twinkle in his eyes remained - as did the search for his approval among educationists.

Rampal recalled the comfort she felt each time he responded to her ideas with an approving nod and a hug. The last time they met was a year back, at a television studio where they were on a debate panel.

After the show, she recalled, she held his hand to walk him down the stairs. "'Aah,' he told me in his typical way," Rampal said today. '"You realize I need help.'"

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Scientist, rebel & reformer - Calcutta Telegraph

The growing religious-ideological discord and presence of an assortment of religiously inspired extremist movements and groups in Pakistan have complex socio-political implications. Where these processes of negative social change will lead Pakistan is a worrying prognosis.

The religious discourse in the country, though diverse in sectarian terms, is largely monolithic intellectually. Even ideological diversity is rare; historically two trends have remained dominant, ie a traditional religious-political discourse, and Islamisation.

Although the two trends have some common violent and non-violent expressions, Islamist movements have also nurtured certain rational tendencies. These rational tendencies acted as a catalyst for overall religious trends in the country. On the one hand, rationalists shaped their own movements and established their institutions and on the other, under their influence or in reaction the traditionalists and Islamists tried to amend their strategies. However, the rationalists have failed to completely transform the religious discourse in the country. Their desire to become distinguished among the religious discourse would be a reason for this failure. This is strange, that in South Asian intellectual discourse leading Muslim scholars, rather than contributing, established their own movements while being part of the mainstream tradition.

An examination of why post-Islamist movements are unable to transform into populist social movements

Scholar, researcher and professor Dr Husnul Amin argues in his doctoral thesis about why the rationalists could not develop a populist approach. He counts many reasons, including the countrys peculiar societal structures, rationalists comfortable relationship with the power elites and most importantly the rationalists larger focus on the middle classes and special interest in academic issues. These findings give an impression that the rationalists failed on a strategic level, but one can argue about their whole intellectual paradigm, which may be borrowed from the West and influenced by contemporary socio-political environments rather than be linked with philosophical tradition or evolution of Islamic thought.

In pursuit of alternative modernity, the rationalists are developing compatibility with Islamic text and democratisation. Amin has tried to understand the dynamics of this process in his book Post-Islamism: Pakistan in the Era of Neoliberal Globalisation. This is indeed an important contribution to understanding the construct of Muslim intellectual movements in contemporary societies. He takes Javed Ahmed Ghamidis blueprint as a case study to comprehend the phenomenon, but uses the term post-Islamism for Muslim rationalism.

Post-Islamism is not a new term. French scholar Olivier Roy, as well as Iranian Asef Bayat, have mainly constructed the framework of post-Islamism, which is taken as a transformative form of Islamist movements of post-world wars that emerged in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Bayat contributed more in shaping the conceptual framework of Amins thesis, as he has acknowledged, but Amin applied this framework in a different context and with some variation. Amin believes post-Islamism is not the dead end of Islamism. It may not be dubbed anti-Islamic or secular, but secularisation of state/society. Post-Islamism proffers a framework where political reform is linked to religious reform. The Islamist parties have shifted their focus to minorities, youth and gender concerns and adopted a rights-based approach this is a practical manifestation of post-Islamism.

As far as Islamism is concerned, Amin considers it a revivalist movement and lists three factors that contributed to the conceptualisation of Islamism: 1. Political interpretation of religious text and thus blurring of categories of collective obligation and personal obligation. 2. Socio-political struggle to enforce Sharia, pursuance of an Islamisation programme through the institutional arrangement of the state and re-affirmation of Islam as a blueprint of socio-economic order. 3. Islamists openness to adopt and deploy all modern means of propaganda machinery, technology, print, electronic and social media.

In that context, he distinguishes post-Islamism as a social movement with a retreat from the idea of creating an Islamic state and an outcome of neo-liberal globalisation inspirations on modern Muslim minds. The Ghamidi movement is a perfect manifestation of this phenomenon as it has succeeded in creating an interpretive community in Pakistan that engages with liberalism and democracy.

It is interesting that Ghamidi thought was promoted by military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf as his top-down project of enlightened moderation. It could be conceived as an enforced moderation project, that was part of a political tool and foreign policy agenda of the military government. Amin rightly argues, Ghamidi and his close associates received disproportionate media coverage on newly liberated private television channels. He became a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology in 2006 and remained in this position for two consecutive years. Despite an overwhelming emphasis on the status of democracy in their [Ghamidi movements] religious discourse, Ghamidi has hardly directly questioned the legitimacy of the system in place in which he gained the opportunity to flourish.

It is also interesting that Ghamidi does not subscribe to major Islamic schools of thought in the Indian subcontinent and places himself in a self-constructed category, Dabistan-i-Shibli. Amin believes that this imaginary school of thought has served the Ghamidi movement in multiple ways. It enables them to place themselves in the middle of two popularly known opposite poles, namely Deobands conservatism and Sir Syed Ahmed Khans rationalism. As a post-Islamist, Ghamidi has challenged the notion of the Islamic state projected by the Islamists including Maulana Maududi, who believes in the supremacy of Sharia over all aspects of social, political and religious life.

Amin also examines existing religious political movements in the country in the third chapter Islamism Without Fear. He argues that though the Jamaat-i-Islami is a well-structured and organised party in Pakistan and played a leading role in shaping the Islamism discourse in the country, compared to the Jamiat-Ulema-i-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), which is a loosely connected party, the latter remains more accommodative to religious minorities and in its political approaches. It can be assumed that despite its conventional credentials, the JUI-F has more flexibility to accommodate post-Islamism concepts of a social life.

Despite making some visible intellectual contribution, post-Islamist movements have failed to transform their ideas into a popular social movement. Amin is not hopeless and he agrees with Bayat that post-Islamism is an evolving concept and a conscious attempt to conceptualise and strategise the rationale and modalities of transcending Islamism in social, political and intellectual domains. Most importantly it provides an inward-looking approach, which may have a slow impact.

Amin is a fine scholar with exposure to the best international academic forums and his attempt will provoke healthy academic debate in Pakistan.

The reviewer is a security analyst and director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, Islamabad

Post-Islamism: Pakistan in the Era of Neoliberal Globalisation By Husnul Amin International Islamic University, Islamabad ISBN: 978-9697576050 198pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 23rd, 2017

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NON-FICTION: THE FAILED RATIONALIST - DAWN.com

Here we are with 2017 more than half over and weve got a lot on our plate to deal withour political system, our environmental problems, our federal and state debt, our infrastructure, our civil unrest, our dealings with domestic and international terrorism, our health care problems, and many more.

But one issue that is rarely brought up these days is education; specifically, where is education in terms of priorities, what are the issues and how will its shortcomings be remedied?

The people of the United States need to know that individuals in our society who do not possess the levels of skill, literacy and training essential to this new era will be effectively disenfranchised, not simply from the material rewards that accompany competent performance, but also from the chance to participate fully in our national life. A high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society and to the fostering of a common culture, especially in a country that prides itself on pluralism and individual freedom. That quote was taken from a report called A Nation At Risk and presented to president Ronald Reagan in April 1983.

The report goes on to enumerate the deficiencies of our school systems and to offer suggestions for improvement. But the negative findings in that very report are just as valid today as they were 34 years ago. Arguably, even worse.

Youve probably seen some of the statistics. The United States ranked 14th out of 40 nations in overall education. We are 24th in literacy and 17th in educational performance. In its 2015 report by the Program for International Student Assessment, the U.S. was ranked 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science and reading. Among the 35 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.

This lack of education has produced some disappointing results. For example, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs commissioned a civic education poll among public school students. A surprising 77 percent didnt know that George Washington was the first president, couldnt name Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence and only 2.8 percent of the students actually passed the citizenship test. Along similar lines, the Goldwater Institute of Phoenix did the same survey and only 3.5 percent of students passed the civics test. According to the National Research Council report, only 28 percent of high school science teachers consistently follow the National Research Council guidelines on teaching evolution, and 13 percent of those teachers explicitly advocate creationism or intelligent design. And 18 percent of Americans still believe that the sun revolves around the earth, according to a Gallup poll.

Another statistic that is alarming today is the result of a July 10 poll taken by the Pew Research Center in Washington, where 58 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning Americans said colleges and universities had a negative impact on the way things were going in the country. Two years ago, only 37 percent of that group said that. In recent months, that seems to ring true.

This decline of education in America has been going on for years. And problems engendered by this diminution have been and continue to show up in most of our institutions, our culture and our national conscience. As a result, we are losing respect from the rest of the civilized world along with our competitive edge. In short, we are facing a national tragedy.

As Susan Jacoby writes in a 2008 article in The Washington Post, The Dumbing of America, Dumbness, to paraphrase the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism. There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. Its the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.

So here we are at the beginning of the 21st century with too many of us dismissive of science and rational discourse. Literacy and critical thinking are becoming anathema to our future leaders.

For some time now, Ive been studying the Iroquois Confederacys political philosophy as set fourth in its constitution. A small excerpt from that document seems pertinent here.

In all of your deliberations in the Council, in your efforts at law making, in all your official acts, self-interest shall be cast into oblivion. ... Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground the unborn of the future Nation.

Time to wake up America.

HERB VAN FLEET, a former Joplin resident, lives in Tulsa.

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Herb Van Fleet: The sad state of education in America - Joplin Globe

Scientific atheism and intellectual contempt

I give you a quote from David Berlinski: "Has anyone provided proof of God's inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt ? Dead on."

Berlinski was a research assistant in molecular biology at Columbia University,[3] and was a research fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria and the Institut des Hautes tudes Scientifiques (IHES) in France. How is it that he has come up with a totally different outcome?

Blair Hancock, Downie St.

Vastly different viewpoints on Khadr

Talk about black and white! The two letters printed Wednesday show both sides of this argument, I'm sure.

Mary Liz Allen describes so beautifully the point of view of Mr. Khadr, as the situation presented itself to a child of 15. Marion Hanysh describes a point of view that the rest of our great country is somehow being left out of some prize bestowed upon Mr. Khadr unfairly.

A Canadian is a Canadian and as such deserves all the protection that we have been taught to expect. If you really want to know what a burgeoning "banana republic" feels like, Ms. Hanysh, may I suggest you relocate to Mr. Trump's jurisdiction. I, too, am on the downslide, and am most grateful that my children, grandchildren and great-grandchild are growing up in the best, most open, accepting country on earth.

I sincerely hope that they will be part of an ever-caring and just society, throughout their lifetimes, and beyond. Thank you, Ms. Allen, for helping us all to FEEL what young Omar had to endure for all those years.

Bev Miles, Omemee

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Letters to the editor, July 21, 2017 - Peterborough Examiner

Much has been made about how the rise of right-wing demagoguery today has roots in the sociopolitical aberrations of 20th-century fascism, a tragic detour in Western modernitys supposedly gradual road of infinite progress. This is much too truncated an analogy for Pankaj Mishra, a London-based Indian writer whose new book, Age of Anger: A History of the Present (to come out later this month), reaches back even further in the history of Western thought to argue that contemporary rage the kind thats being generated and exploited by opportunistic politicians around the world is actually a logical byproduct of liberal rationalism, the bedrock of our modern reality and philosophical backdrop to the now fraying fabric of globalization.

Mishra uses what the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called ressentiment an existential resentment of other peoples being, caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness to describe the origins of todays mass expressions of nativist rage, validated by President-elect Donald Trump and his equally insurgent cognates across the world. This ressentiment is caused ultimately by the inherent unevenness of modern politics and economics, which is constructed on the assumption that human nature can be perfected through rationalized self-interest. Those who directly or indirectly sense the illusory nature of this pervasive assumption find themselves in rigged systems that only pretend to an equal and fair playing field, be it money-making, political representation or even interpersonal relationships.

After all, not everyone can be a recipient of modernitys material promises. Not every family in, say, China and Indian can be the proud owner of multiple SUVs, swimming pools and spacious garages, regardless of what the flagbearers of liberal globalization proclaim. Any attempt to do so would collapse an already frail planet before its even halfway realized. Those whore beginning to feel this gap between modern realities and modern promises in places like Asia and elsewhere turning to the same sort of nativist inwardness thats currently being exploited by strongmen like Indias Narendra Modi and the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte.

The GOP having majority sway over all three branches of the US government is scary enough, but its the global metastasis of this angry pattern thats truly frightening, as Asia and Africa long heralded as the rising tigers of liberal globalism produce their own versions of ressentiment demagoguery. Mishra reminds us that these waves of humiliated masses who feel like modernity has let them down are not unique to history. Theyre a type whove long existed in the Wests own history of modernization, a process thathasnt come to terms with the imperfections and limits of human nature, the darker aspects of our tainted souls thatgive rise to resentment and angry humiliation.

When the young man of promise fails to be admitted into the club of modern aspiration, he responds with bitterness at those whove been more successful, or those who he thinks have prevented him from attaining his rightful piece of the pie: Muslims, immigrants, gays, etc. This is where the response to getting left behind eventually morphs into a nativist and often fanatical defense of ones own sociocultural sect.

It takes a less-than-optimistic voice like Mishras to remind and prove to the public that, far from being the results of social or historical aberration, ressentiment is the inevitable byproduct of the continuous application of the conclusions of Enlightenment rationalism. This is when humankind replaced God with the Self, thus positing just as their societies entered an industrial age that the direction of civilization can be controlled by mans own rationalized self-interest.

Mishra quotes 20th-century Austrian writer Robert Musil in a recent introductory essay to Age of Anger: Its not that we have too much intellect and too little soul, but that we have too little intellect in matters of the soul. It seems like a simplistic reduction of what looks to most of us like a whole universe of various problems, but Mishra is convincing in his demonstration of how modern problems arent the products of modernity-gone-wrong, but of modernity itself. This sounds awfully similar to the social critiques presented by a host of traditionalist and Muslim intellectuals, from Hamza Yusuf to Seyyed Hossein Nasr and, though Mishra may not agree, it seems that Age of Anger is pointing toward broader solutions (insofar as they exist and its not clear that Mishra thinks they do) that would have to make use of organized religion.

It turns out that as the global order frays, religion itself isnt going anywhere. The global experience of Muslim terrorism, for example, is also an aspect of todays ressentiment. It points out that, among other things, religions have retained their power despite secular modernitys insistence that faith itself belongs ultimately to the myopic and backward stupidities/superstitions of simple people. Todays proponents of radical modernism now morphing precipitously into a mean laicism thanks to the rise of ISIS and the ongoing war on terror would be hard pressed to come up with a workable solution to our global crisis, since the problem is to be found at the heart of their own derivative worldview.

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Pankaj Mishra's eloquent anger - The Islamic Monthly

When Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, even in Australia, in what was then the outer suburban offices of Penguin Books, fear changed the way we not only acted but also thought.

We debated the pros and cons and many of us believed that if people are put at risk by a book and by writing even by commenting on books and writing then maybe its better if we choose silence.

Twenty years on, British writer Kenan Malik took us back to that time in a book he called From Fatwa to Jihad, showing with measured and powerful analysis how that was a moment that changed the world.

Following the murders of journalists at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, Malik updated his book, reiterating his sharp criticism of Leftist support for dangerous identity politics.

The Rushdie affair, he wrote, gave early notice of the abandonment by many sections of the left of their traditional attachment to ideas of Enlightenment rationalism and secular universalism and their growing espousal of multiculturalism, identity politics and notions of cultural authenticity.

Maliknow campaigns in words to challenge what he sees is the odd situation where both Left and Right claim national identity must be defended.

Malik doesnt talk much about his background, although he recently wrote an article about growing up in Manchester and the killings at the music concert. That he was born in India to a Muslim father and Hindu mother and arrived aged five to live in England is not something he puts forward to justify his ethical and social thinking about identity politics.

He does talk at his Pandaemonium website about his interest in radical far-Left politics when he was younger, and about how the response to the Rushdie affair changed his mind. He now campaigns in words to challenge what he sees is the odd situation where both Left and Right claim national identity must be defended.

The consequences of identity politics and of concepts such as cultural appropriation is to bring about not social justice but the empowerment of those who would act as gatekeepers to particular communities, he says.

Hes been attacked, of course, for criticising multiculturalism policies that curtail freedom of speech, but he shows, in his magisterial new book, The Quest for a Moral Compass, how ethical thinking can provide a path down through history and hopefully into the future.

His books are not widely distributed yet in Australia, but his imminent tour may amend that a little: he begins his tour at Byron Bay Writers Festival from August 4 to 6, then speaks at the Seymour Centre in Sydney on August 8, State Library of NSW on August 10, and finally at Bendigo Writers Festival, August 11-13, where he is in conversation with Tony Walker for La Trobe Universitys Ideas and Society talks.

Rosemary Sorensen is director of Bendigo Writers Festival

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Kenan Malik on 20 years after the fatwa on Salman Rashdie - Daily Review

Introduction: The Tesla Freight Network

Following its strategy in passenger cars, I predict that Tesla (TSLA) will begin by selling semi trucks to customers before transitioning to an on-demand self-driving service. I believe that Tesla will launch a Tesla Network for freight like its planned Tesla Network for passengers. I anticipate that this service, which I call the Tesla Freight Network, will probably launch sometime in the early 2020s. Using some rough back-of-the-envelope math, I find that the Tesla Freight Network could eventually generate tens of billions or even hundreds of billions in revenue for Tesla.

This is not a new idea. Uber (UBER) already has launched a similar service, Uber Freight, although for now it still uses human drivers rather than self-driving trucks. Uber also acquired Otto, a self-driving truck startup, and continues to work on developing self-driving for long-haul freight trucking. Uber has made clear its service for passengers will go autonomous. Taking Uber Freight autonomous seems like a given.

In October, Tesla announced the Tesla Network for passengers, an autonomous ride-hailing service that will compete with Uber. With Tesla now working on self-driving freight trucks, the logical next step is to develop a competing service to Uber Freight. Tesla will have an edge over Uber, as well as over other competitors, if the all-electric Tesla semi can achieve a cost per mile than semi trucks powered by diesel engines. This should be achievable thanks to the lower energy cost, lower maintenance cost, and longer lifetime of electric powertrain technology. Tesla will have an additional advantage in machine learning for self-driving freight trucks if can build up a large fleet of primarily human-driven trucks with Autopilot that collect driving data.

Contrary to popular belief, Tesla is not already priced for perfect execution of its strategy. That could only possibly be true if Teslas strategy did not include self-driving, which CEO Elon Musk has stated is the companys No. 2 priority, behind only the Model 3 launch. Self driving for passengers would likely grow Teslas market cap several times over. Self driving for freight represents another opportunity for growth that ranges from around a 20% increase in market cap at 1% market share and a several-fold increase at higher market shares.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks about the Tesla semi truck at TED.

Let's spend a moment indulging in the dangerous game of linear extrapolation. If Tesla is successful in quadrupling its production volume in 2018, its share of the U.S. passenger vehicle market will be roughly 1%. At a 1% share of the freight trucking industry, Tesla would generate $10 billion in revenue. At the S&P 500s historical average price/sales ratio of 1.45, this revenue would add $14.5 billion to Teslas market cap. That's about 20% growth from Tesla's all-time high market cap of $63.6 billion.

By comparison, as of late last year Tesla's share of the U.S. large luxury sedan market is around 30%. It's a segment that includes the BMW (OTCPK:BMWYY) 7 Series and the Mercedes-Benz (OTCPK:DDAIF) S-Class, based on a combination of price, performance, and interior passenger volume. At a 30% share of the freight trucking market, Tesla would generate $300 billion in revenue and add $435 billion in market cap (at the same price/sales ratio).

However, I don't believe either of these precedents are a good guide to predicting Tesla's market share in the freight trucking industry. Freight trucking is purely about cost per mile, not about qualitative factors such as aesthetics, brand, or driver experience, which are important for car buyers. As such, Tesla's market share will be a function of 1) its cost per mile relative to the current industry average, 2) the degree of competition in the self-driving electric freight truck space, and 3) its production volume.

The economic rationalism of the freight trucking industry and the anticipated dramatically lower cost per mile of self-driving electric freight trucks means these vehicles will dominate the freight trucking industry. No other company is known to be developing this kind of vehicle.

Competition will no doubt arrive eventually, but right now it looks like Tesla might be the only company working on a self-driving electric freight truck. Until other manufacturers launch competing vehicles, there is theoretically no limit to Teslas share of the freight trucking market. The only limiting factor will be its production volume.

It's worth considering the following. At a 5% share of the U.S. freight trucking market, Tesla would generate $50 billion in revenue and add at least $72 billion to Tesla's market cap. That added $72 billion alone is more than 110% of Teslas market cap at its all-time high of $63.6 billion. As long as the Tesla Freight Network is successful, Tesla could lose revenue from all other sources and still grow 10% from its all-time high.

Tesla also will capture market share internationally. While statistics on the global freight trucking industry are not readily available, the U.S. has a 25% share of the overall global transportation industry. The international opportunity, then, may be several times larger than the opportunity within the U.S.

U.S. freight trucking already was a $726 billion industry in 2015 and its growing. The American Trucking Associations forecast a 35% increase in freight tonnage moved by trucks from 2016 to 2027 as its baseline scenario. A 38% increase in revenue would push the industry past the $1 trillion mark.

I anticipate that self-driving electric freight trucks will accelerate the climb to $1 trillion in revenue. Driver compensation accounts for 31% of the operating costs of a freight truck, with fuel costs at 25%, repair and maintenance at 10%, and insurance at 6%. Thats 72% of operating costs that can be reduced dramatically by a self-driving electric freight truck. Far lower costs mean that freight companies can offer far lower prices. This has the potential to unlock a new level of demand for freight transportation. Moreover, as Galileo Russell observes, self-driving electric freight trucks are likely to grab market share from rail.

This article is based on rough back-of-the-envelope math. High-powered research teams will release different estimates based on sophisticated mathematical models. These models capture subtleties back-of-the-envelope math cant. Its possible that due to factors Im not modeling in my rough math, Teslas opportunity is much smaller than I claim.

For instance, perhaps under conditions of dramatically lower costs and intense competition, aggregate freight trucking revenue could drop so low that Tesla would require a much larger market share to add $72 billion to its market cap. I am somewhat skeptical of this particular scenario because I dont see competition intensifying quickly and I suspect growth in freight volumes may offset the drop in costs. However, I cant rule it out and there may be other scenarios I havent considered.

A successful launch of the Tesla Freight Network will, I believe, eventually add a minimum of $14.5 billion in market cap to Tesla and more likely a multiple of that number. Investors who feel confident in Teslas technological leadership and ability to execute, as I do, should consider seizing on this opportunity. Since the Tesla Freight Network may not launch until years after the initial production of the Tesla semi truck currently planned for 2019 this is an opportunity for investors who are prepared to hold onto their stock for a long time.

My recommendation: Buy TSLA and hold on a very long-term basis, i.e. at least 10 years and ideally longer.

Disclosure: I am/we are long TSLA.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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The Tesla Freight Network: A $10 Billion Opportunity - Seeking Alpha

ThinkTV hasannounced that Bob Hoffman, the best-selling US author, speaker, blogger and advisor, will deliver the keynote speech at ReThinkTV 2017 when the advertising and marketing forum returns on September 14 at Luna Park in Sydney.

Hoffman is one of the most sought-after international speakers on advertising and marketing: Time, Inc calls him fabulously irreverent, The Wall Street Journal calls him caustic yet truthful, The Financial Times says he is responsible for savage critiques of digital hype and Fuel Lines calls him The most provocative man in advertising.

Renowned for his acid wit and entertaining style, Hoffman has titled his presentation Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey.

Marketers are living in a dream world of their own invention, he said. I will be speaking about three delusions that demonstrate how marketers have lost touch with consumers and to some degree, with reality.

Hoffman has been chief executive of two independent agencies and the US operation of an international agency. He has created advertising for McDonalds, Toyota, Pepsico, Bank of America, AT&T, and more companies than he cares to think about. Through his company, Type A Group, Bob advises advertisers, agencies, and media.

Kim Portrate, chief executive of ThinkTV, said: ThinkTV is delighted to have Bob deliver the keynote at ReThinkTV 2017. His wise-headed rationalism and entertaining delivery will be a draw card in a what is rapidly shaping up to be one of the key advertising and marketing events of 2017.

We have an exciting schedule which is designed to provide advertisers and their agencies with invaluable insights into advertising effectiveness and to help them to get the very best of todays multi-platform TV. Stay tuned for more announcements.

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Famed Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman To Deliver ReThinkTV Keynote - B&T

Whats the rush?

We should not rush and make errors for the sake of satisfying raised emotions.

Pakistan as a nation is driven more by emotions rather than rationalism, rule of law, or political tradition. This emotionalism is ingrained in us from an early age and critical inquiry is discouraged to build rational thought and logic. Every now and then there are cries of lack of moral authority and demands that an elected Prime Minister should resign because of that. As soon as Panama JIT report was made public then once again calls were made by opposition politician that the elected Prime Minister should resign. I have never understood what this moral authority is that is so frequently invoked in our politics and whether it is really very critical to use moral authority as a legitimate demand to seek resignation.

Since early days of Islam, the question of moral authority using concerns about legitimacy have been raised and became a cause for political division. Till this day, the question is hotly debated and even gave rise to a separate sect pursuing those arguments. The reality is that these questions of moral authority did not matter much as allegiance was given to the Caliph that ascended to the position as per tradition of the day. It is also a reality that Islamic political entity grew many folds during the tenure of first four Caliph and we dont know what would have happened if the allegiance was not given to them by the community. I dont think our present day politicians are in any ways equal to those great men of our history but Quran proposes that we should learn from history so I had to remind all of you about it.

Now lets suppose, since the majority of our nation is emotional rather than rational, that moral authority has to be applied then it should apply to everyone and should be codified in a legislation. If the moral authority has to be invoked then ISI and MI should have refused to become part of a JIT because there is a long history of a military takeover of governments. The military should have first apologised for the past transgression of the constitution as an institution and then sent their representative to sit on JIT. They should have also asked its former Chief General Musharraf to come back and face courts before they become the part of a legal process against an elected PM. If the moral authority has to be invoked then Imran Khan should not be the Chairman of his party because he violated the constitution of his party every day and even now holds an illegitimate title of party Chairman. He should also not ask for an elected PM to resign until he first clears his name in all cases against him because that has deprived him of moral authority. If the moral authority has to be invoked then Judges should have first tried their own brother judge named in Panama papers before they took up the case of a civilian politician. So moral authority should only be invoked by those that are themselves not encumbered by engaging in violating moral conduct. Bottom line is that moral authority has no place in politics.

The question of political authority does have to deal with the question of legitimacy. Anyrulerwhether a King/Queen, elected Prime Minister/President or a military dictator has to deal with the question of legitimacy. Legitimacy is provided by rules, procedures, laws, and constitution. A ruler that does not have legitimacy will always have to deal with uprisings and dissent. So moral important barometer for a government is legitimacy in realpolitik rather than any adherence to some invisible and intangible moral authority. First four Caliphs of Islam as soon as they took the oath of the office sought allegiance of the citizens. Since majority pledged their allegiance the rule became legitimate and enabled them to take actions against those that challenged their authority.

In our current political crisis many intellectuals, amateur politician, newspaper editorials, and power hungry opposition is invoking moral authority to push an elected Prime Minister out of office. My position has been consistent that the elected Prime Minister should go home through a due process which is the only way he will lose legitimacy to rule. PML-N decision to seek a vote of no confidence, as reported by some media, for their Prime Minister is a good political move. If the opposition has any support then they should defeat him on the floor of the assembly and throw him out of the office. While the other legal process of ascertaining disqualification of individual MNA Nawaz Sharif should proceed in the court of law as per the provisions of the constitution for a fair trial.

We have to become a nation of citizens that respect rule of law and strive for its application uniformly. Islams main message is also justice. The main purpose of Jihad is also to seek social justice. Selective justice does not help anyone but rather creates instability. We are a nascent democracy that is still trying to find its feet on the ground and deepen its roots. We cant be using intangible ideas like moral authority that has no precedence in law or history to seek removal of an elected Prime Minister.

I have faith in the nation that it has the ability to make a good collective decision. There is no evidence yet that PML-N or its government has lost support of majority of the nation which can only be established through a free and fair election. I also have faith that our judicial system has the ability to reform itself and ensure justice for all without favour or bias. I believe our democracy is slowly but surely taking root and a tradition building to guide future parliaments and governments. The process ofehtisabhas to continue and take its natural course as per constitution of the country. We should not rush into it and make errors for the sake of satisfying raised emotions.

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Moral authority, realpolitik and state craft - Pakistan Today

The Hindu

Fear of holy snakes is flushing out toilets in Malnad region The Hindu It is also the birthplace of enlightened writers such as Kuvempu, U.R. Ananthamurthy, and P. Lankesh, who advocated rationalism. Epidemics are known to break out regularly in villages of Udri-Vaddigeri, Aralasurali, Kudumallige, Bejjavalli gram ...

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Fear of holy snakes is flushing out toilets in Malnad region - The Hindu

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The son of Menachem Mendel, a Torah scribe, Moses Mendelssohn (son of Mendel) not only studied in yeshiva and became a promising rabbinic scholar, he also pursued secular learning, particularly languages and philosophy, studying the works of Locke and Leibniz and becoming friends with Immanuel Kant.

He published important philosophical essays in German and became known as the German Socrates; was awarded the prestigious status as a Jew under extraordinary protection by Frederick the Great (1750); and was awarded a prize by the Prussian Academy of Science for a treatise on Evidence in the Metaphysical Sciences (1763).

But he became best known for his personification of the conflict faced by the modern diasporan Jew seeking integration into broader secular society while maintaining a strong commitment to his Jewish identity.

Ironically, though Mendelssohn (1729 1826) was a great defender of traditional Judaism, he actually undermined it applying the intense rationalism test of the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment). His philosophical approach ultimately proved incapable of spanning the chasm between the traditional Judaism from which he emerged and the world in which he now found himself; between his inferior civil status as a Jew and his emancipated status as a recognized and respected intellectual; and between his loyalty to halacha on the one hand and his rejection of various fundamental religious beliefs on the other.

The great irony of Mendelssohns life was that while he always remained a faithful Jew whose basic beliefs included the Sinaic revelation and the centrality of mitzvah observance to Jewish existence, his radical ideas led to assimilation and to the loss of Jewish identity on a massive scale, and he is perhaps best remembered today as a progenitor of Reform Judaism whose children converted to Christianity and in whose ideas the early Haskalah reformers found justification for secularism and emancipation at the expense of their Judaism.

The fact is, he never intended to reform Judaism but, rather, to harmonize traditional Jewish life with the new world of emancipation. Thus, the harshness of Jewish historys judgment upon him is more a reflection of his philosophical approach to Jews in contemporary society than a critique of his Torah observance or his dedication to halacha.

Mendelssohns belief in a wise and merciful God and in the immortality of the soul as eternal truths are the themes of his two major religious/philosophical works Morgenstunden (1785), in which he demonstrates the rationality of the belief that God exists, and Phaedon (1767), in which he argues for the eternal existence of the soul.

Where his beliefs proved antithetical, even heretical, to Jewish thought, however, is in the realm of free will, which he argued is logically impossible; his rejection of schar vonesh (strict divine reward and punishment); his embrace of ultimate rationalism and moral autonomy, such that any external law even if from Hashem himself must be subject to mans own conscience and morality (i.e., man is the sole arbiter of right and wrong); and his belief that divine revelation is no longer a necessary source for truth, since religious doctrines are based upon mans pure reason.

As opposed to Spinoza, who bitterly criticized Judaism as religious behaviorism that idolizes external action at the expense of inner devotion and who became famous for his rejection of Jewish law, Mendelssohn praised Judaism for being a revealed law rather than a revealed religion. He maintained that whereas a Jew is free to adopt the philosophical approach of his choice spiritual, rationalist, chassidic, kabbalistic, etc. his actions must always be consistent with Jewish law freedom in doctrine but strict conformity in action. Thus, for example, he translated the opening words of Maimonidess famous Thirteen Principles of Faith as I am firmly convinced rather than the traditional I believe . . .

Mendelssohn bravely and eloquently defended the principles of Judaism in the face of Christian conversionary polemics, most famously in his response to a challenge by Lavater, a leader of the Lutheran Church, to either disprove the truth of Christianity or convert to it. He response was his monumental work Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism, in which he argued that Judaism is not a religion that uses dogma to coerce thought and belief and that, as such, no Jewish institution should use its power, including particularly the power to excommunicate, to compel theological faith and practice.

The leading fighter for Jewish civil rights in Germany, he used his respect and renown to assist individual Jews and entire communities in disputes with the German authorities and he facilitated the revocation of many anti-Semitic laws.

The Orthodox view of Mendelssohn is perhaps best summarized by Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, intellectual founder of the Torah im Derech Eretz school of contemporary Orthodoxy, who wrote in his Nineteen Letters:

And when the yoke from without began to be lifted, and the spirit breathed more freely, one eminently illustrious personality came upon the scene and influenced Jewish life to the present day. His freer intellectual development, indeed, owed much to the influence of forces extraneous to Judaism. In his personal life and practice an observant Jew, he showed his brethren throughout the world that a man could be strictly religious and yet enjoy the eminence and luster of a German Plato. But it was this and yet which proved decisive. His successors contented themselves with the zealous cultivation of Tanach on philological and aesthetic linesto the neglect of Judaism itself.

With the advent and growth of the Haskalah movement, the Jewish public became conversant with German literature, which led to significant dissatisfaction with traditional Judeo-German biblical translations. Moreover, most German biblical commentators had interpreted the Bible from a personal point of view rather than emphasizing pshat (making clear the actual textual meaning). Mendelssohn became the first to breach this divide when he compiled a literal German translation of the Pentateuch, important not only because it awakened in its readers an esthetic interest in literature but also because it led to the greater use of high German by German Jews.

Exhibited with this column is a page from an incredibly rare document, Mendelssohns original handwritten manuscript of his translation of Sefer Yirmiahu (Jeremiah), which was later published by Joseph Wolf and David Ottensosser (Frth, 1810). I have selected this particular page because it includes Jeremiah 2:2, one of most beautiful verses in all of the Prophets an expression of Hashems sublime love for the Jewish people which may be familiar to readers from the Rosh Hashanah Mussaf service (Gods name has been redacted from the document to prevent the creation of shaimos):

Go, and cry out in the ears of Jerusalem saying: So says Hashem, I remember for you the affection of your youth, the love of your betrothal, how you went after me in the wilderness, in an unsown land. Israel is holy to Hashem . . .

Its interesting to note Mendelssohns footnote explaining that Jeremiah 2:4 is the beginning of the Haftarah portion that is read on Shabbat Parshat Maasei. As with all his translation work, he strove to conscientiously reproduce the text to reflect the spirit of the original.

Though grounded in traditional exegesis, Mendelssohns biblical translations into German proved highly controversial. Immediately upon publication, his Pentateuch was severely criticized by mainstream rabbinical leaders, including Rav Ezekiel Landau. Fearing that the magnificence of the German language and Mendelssohns beautiful linguistic rendition of the Pentateuch would induce young Jews to first abandon the study of the Torah itself and then to forsake entirely the practice of Torah-true Judaism, the rabbis joined to issue a ban against the German Pentateuch of Moses of Dessau (June 1779).

Various writers and commentators who had been working on a German commentary to Mendelssohns translation including famed poet and grammarian Solomon Dubno were frightened by the vociferous rabbinic opposition and ceased their efforts. A determined Mendelssohn soldiered on himself to complete the Pentateuch commentary. He delegated some work to individuals unmoved by the rabbinical ban and ultimately completed the work, which he called Netivot Shalom (Paths of Peace) in March 1783. The translation was in High German, and he personally wrote a Hebrew introduction discussing the development and history of his Pentateuch and the rules of idiom and syntax he used in his translation.

Mendelssohns work led to the Biurist movement (from the Hebrew word biur, or commentary), which consisted of a class of Jewish biblical exegetes including Samuel Israel Mulder, who translated the Pentateuch and other biblical works into Dutch; I. Neufeld (Polish); J. L. Mandelstamm (Russian); Samuel David Luzzatto (Italian); and M. Rosenthal (Hungarian).

In America, Isaac Leeser translated the Bible into English according to the interpretations of the Biurists. (See my Jewish Press column Isaac Leeser: Father of Torah Judaism in America, January 27, 2017.)

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Moses Mendelssohn: Personally Observant Progenitor Of Reform Judaism - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

Did aircraft really exist at the time of the Vedas? Was there a plastic surgeon who expertly attached an elephant's head on Hindu god Ganesha's body, as claimed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi?

Well, India's scientists in the making could well go on to research on these ancient Indian 'scientific marvels' and enlighten the world about the Vedic sciences.

With several ministries on board and a pool of 10,000 scientists, Vijnana Bharati (VIBHA) the science wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) will soon launch a digital mentoring initiative for school students to promote scientific research.

Named the Science India Portal, the initiative will kick off 15 October, the birth anniversary of late President and India's 'missile man' APJ Abdul Kalam. It will be supported by the Union Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Earth Sciences and Department of Biotechnology while the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) Hyderabad will be the knowledge partner.

VIBHA boasts of former Atomic Energy Commission chairperson Anil Kakodkar and ISRO ex-chief G Madhavan Nair as patrons. It advocates the synthesis of physical and spiritual sciences, and spearheads the movement for swadeshi sciences, including vaastu-vidya.

The development of the country is dependent upon its scientific and technological advancement. Unless there is an environment and adequate infrastructure, the country cannot have good scientists. This initiative is aimed at creating that. It is to identify and nurture students into scientists, said VIBHA Secretary-General A Jayakumar.

As much as regular sciences, the mentoring initiative would also focus on Vedic sciences and traditional Indian practices like Ayurveda and Siddha.

The aim is to develop scientific temper in the country. But at the same time, the young generation should also know about traditional Indian sciences and the country's rich history in the fields of science and technology. So, the agenda is also to promote Vedic sciences, said VIBHA member Arvind C Ranade, who is also a scientist in Vigyan Prasar (VP), a Government of India initiative to promote and propagate scientific and rational outlook.

Besides the Centre pushing for promotion of Vedic sciences in leading educational institutions, Modi and the saffron brigade have increasingly been raving about the country's scientific prowess in ancient times.

At an event in 2014 Modi cited Karna and Ganesha's cases from mythology in his bid to highlight India's past achievements in medicine.

The Mahabharata says Karna was not born from his mother's womb. This means that genetic science was present at that time, he had said.

There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant's head on the body of a human being, and began the practice of plastic surgery.

His Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh prescribed 'yogic farming' to empower the seeds with the help of positive thinking.

We should enhance the potency of seeds by rays of Parmatma Shakti, Singh was quoted as saying by the Indian Express in 2015.

The Science India Portal programme aims to reach out to at least two million students between Classes 6 and 12, who will be able to digitally interact with scientists and technocrats from various fields.

The portal will also contain detailed information on various scientific and mathematical theories, with special emphasis on Indian contributions. It aims to provide verified and authentic information about the country's achievements, including the Vedic period.

There are only bits and pieces of information available about Vedic India's achievements in the fields science and technology. We will accumulate and compile all the information that is there on these subjects. The students, thus, will be able to access verified and authentic information about them, said Saibal Das, senior scientist at the IICT.

VIBHA will also conduct Vidyarthi Vigyan Manthan (VVM), an all-India examination for students of Class 6-12, to identify bright minds keen on taking up science.

With a syllabus based on study material provided by VIBHA, the VVM will be conducted on 26 November.

Rationalists though see this project as an attempt to saffronise the scientific community, and warn about the consequences of mixing religious ideology with science.

You can either promote scientific temper or Vedic sciences. They are diametrically opposed, said D Raghunandan of the Delhi Science Forum.

Besides being a blatant attempt to saffronise the scientist community, it is also an attempt to influence young minds with Hindutva ideology. People who believe existence of aircraft in the Vedic period, who swear by Mahabharata's plastic surgery, they are now talking about scientific temper. What can be more outrageous? said Raghunandan.

The team of scientists is likely to have Dr BG Matapurkar, who was awarded a US patent on adult stem cells used for organ regeneration. He had earlier claimed that the science of cloning and test-tube baby was known to Indians of Mahabharata age.

The Kolkata-based Science and Rationalists' Association of India (SRAI), which promotes rationalism, expressed concern over the initiative.

Instead of the Wright brothers, our students will now perhaps will read about Vaimanika Shastra. Instead of stem cells, they will be influenced to learn about how to create designer babies. After changing school text books to distort history, it's now science. The RSS-BJP brigade's march towards Hindu Rashtra continues, SRAI General Secretary Prabir Ghosh said.

Prof. Bikramaditya Kumar Choudhary from Jawaharlal Nehru University added: It is dangerous to mix religion with science, something which this project appears to be aiming to do. Students should be exposed to all kinds of knowledge. As much as one knows about a subject, he grows the ability to question it, analyse it and choose whether to believe it, follow it or otherwise.

The aim should be to foster and satiate students' inquisitiveness. But today, we see this tendency to kill this inquisitiveness. One might be killed for asking a question, and killers will justify it, saying the question hurt their religious beliefs.

It is about whether you want to make someone aware about a certain knowledge or imprint it on their minds.

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An explosive compound: RSS's latest plan to mix science and religion - Catch News

Evan Vucci, AP

President Donald Trump speaks at Krasinski Square at the Royal Castle, Thursday, July 6, 2017, in Warsaw.

The liberal reaction to Trumps Warsaw speech shows the element of truth in tribalism.

Trumps cheerleading for Western civilization in his recent speech in Poland might seem to be unremarkable boilerplate, anodyne boosterism in the service of uncontroversial platitudes. Certainly skepticism would be understandable concerning the messenger in this speech that included praise of women as pillars of our society and of our success and a pious reference to faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, (as) the center of our lives. The fundamental significance of the speech is clear only in light of the extreme liberal critiques that it provoked. If we had any doubt that Trump (or his speechwriter) was deeply right in calling for a defense of the West, such doubt was removed by the hollowness of the liberalism of his respondents.

Trumps speech connected somewhat vaguely, to be sure geo-political and military/security concerns with fundamental moral and cultural matters. He warned against forces from inside or out, from the South or the East, but judged our enemies to be doomed because our alliance is strong, our countries are resilient, and our power is unmatched. We are the fastest (?) and the greatest community. But beneath the economic and military power of the West he evoked a deeper strength of civilization: a fecundity that manifests itself in symphonies as well as in innovation, and that is grounded finally in the hope of every soul to live in freedom. The fate of our community of Western nations, he said, depends on the priceless ties that bind us together.

The liberal alarm in response to a speech that might not long ago have passed for pretty vanilla is a significant sign of the times. Peter Beinart in The Atlantic drives right to the extreme liberal judgment and minces no words: since Trump defends a certain civilization, the West, he is a religiously prejudiced racist. The West is a racial and religious term. Using what is becoming the liberals favorite term for lumping together all kinds of bigotry, Beinart concludes that Trump is speaking as the head of a tribe.

Well, that some tribe, isnt it! Socrates and Jesus, Dante and Dostoevsky, Aquinas and Einstein. But for our pure modern liberalism, any taint of identity, any preference, however reasoned and reasonable, for one way of life or one frame of thought over another puts the defender of civilization on the same level with the most vulgar ethnic nationalist or the most vicious racial supremacist.

The irony is that the openness and universalism that inspire the liberal critics of pro-Western sentiments are very much products of Western civilization, and specifically of the complicated alliance between Greek rationalism and Christianity. As Damon Linker noted in the most intelligent liberal assessment of the Warsaw speech, the West is a civilization that has come over the past century to identify the achievement of its highest ideals with the negation of its own distinctiveness. And that very tendency is itself an expression (in secularized and radicalized form) of a very Western idea that first arose with Christianity.

The reaction to Trump (and not only to this speech) demonstrates that we have now reached the limit of this self-negating capacity of the West, a key source of our unique richness and dynamism. The strength and diversity of the West has depended upon a certain equilibrium between its distinctive openness and universalism and its grounding in the traditions of distinct sovereign peoples. In however elementary a fashion, Trumps speech expresses this equilibrium. He praises innovation, free speech and expression, our tendency to debate everything challenge everything know everything.

At the same time, he hails the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are. The spirit of this delicate equilibrium that defines Western civilization is best captured in Trumps reference to the hope of every soul to live in freedom not just every person, or every individual, but every soul. Freedom is a transcendent spiritual and philosophical ideal before it is a political claim or individual assertion.

As Linker writes, democracy, moral universalism, and egalitarianism are goods very much worth defending, but they are not the only goods worth defending. There is no simple formula for maintaining the Wests equilibrium; being open to the new and different while cherishing and preserving what is tried and true will never be easy. One thing is clear though. Todays liberal elites have proved themselves incompetent and unworthy to nurture this equilibrium of Western greatness. By embracing a pure and therefore hollow liberalism that is hard to distinguish from self-hatred, they make it clear how right Trump was in Warsaw to tout the culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are. Thats my kind of tribalism!

Ralph Hancock is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University and president of the John Adams Center for the Study of Faith, Philosophy and Public Affairs. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of BYU.

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Ralph Hancock: Trump's speech in Poland hit the right balance between tradition and innovation - Deseret News