Category Archives: Political Correctness

Aid to the Church in Need reports a rise in religious persecution worldwide in the past year, but points to a ray of hope for Christians and Muslims in the Arab world.

By Linda Bordoni

Expressing gratitude for the support that allows the Pontifical Foundation to continue to fulfill its mission drawing attention to victims of religious persecution and provide economic and humanitarian assistance, the Executive President of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) said Pope Francis visit to Iraq in March gave solace and hope to local Christians and drew attention to the plight of so many Christians in the Middle East.

Although the Christians are a constituent part of their native countries, far too often they are treated as second-class citizens. In Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, they are also suffering from the after-effects of the war and desperate economic situations. The exodus of the Christians continues unchecked, he said.

Thomas Heine-Geldern also pointed to this months consecration of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia, whose construction was sponsored by ACN. He described it as a ray of hope for the coexistence of Christians and Muslims in the Arab world.

Unfortunately, Heine-Geldern said, violence against Christians is on the rise as demonstrated by weekly reports of violence. Priests, religious and laypeople are being killed, kidnapped or abused as they carry out their service. In particular, the current situation in India and Nigeria fills us with deep concern and we are standing by should our assistance be needed.

He also raised the alarm for Christians in the African Sahel region and in Mozambique where terrorism is spreading, not only killing and kidnapping people but also preventing the Church from carrying out its pastoral and social work.

Heine-Geldern noted an increase in the number of subtle acts of violence against religious organisations in the West, a phenomenon that is leading to the gradual eradication of religious beliefs from public life under the cloak of supposed tolerance.

He recalled that Pope Francis has described it as polite persecution, which involves legislation that purports to implement political correctness by recommending the use of language which avoids Christian terminology and symbols.

ACNs head expressed satisfaction for an overwhelming response to the foundations Religious Freedom in the World Report 2021, released in collaboration with international journalists and experts.

The report not only covers religious persecution in many countries of the world, but is also a sign and proof that all of us Churches and religious communities, NGOs, politicians and public figures have to stand up together for the human right to religious freedom, which is deeply rooted in human dignity. The freedom of religious denomination is a gauge of our humanity, he said.

The ACN executive also mentioned the foundations initiative November Red Wednesday/Red Week that, he said, has become a worldwide symbol for the plight of Christians, with tens of thousands of people participating with initiatives to raise awareness and to pray for our beleaguered brothers and sisters.

Heine-Geldern concluded by commemorating the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, whom he said, include many religious sisters, bishops, priests and catechists who have died from the disease while carrying out their service.

They sacrificed their lives to be close to the people who had been entrusted to their care, in spite of the dangers to their own health," he said. "A remarkable witness of their devotion.

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Religious persecution on the rise in 2021 amid signs of hope - Vatican News

After a failed pilot starring Greta Gerwig,How I Met Your Fatheris finally a feasible reality. Set in the same fictional universe (the MotherVerse!? No? Okay), its essentially a gender-swapped version of its beloved predecessor, How I Met Your Mother. While Greta Gerwig has gone on to greater things (including directing the 2019 remake of Little Women), Hillary Duff is taking center stage as the protagonist looking for her soulmate.

That said, with all the excitement surrounding this impending release, what better time is there to look back at the cast ofHIMYM? The iconic sitcom is host to an array of memorable characters, both quirky and heartfelt. It made Neil Patrick Harris a household name and showed us Allison Hannigan was far more than Buffys Willoworthe girl from Bandcamp.

With that said, let us rank the characters of How I Met Your Mother in terms of likeability. Sit down, kids, and let us take you back to the years 2005-2014

Oh man, oh man, oh man. What can be said of HIMYMs protagonist? Not much, because lets face it, hes kind of a bore. Teds Norman Rockefeller-esque white-picket-fence dream feels tediously dated even back in 2005 when the show initially aired. However, his character adds detestable to his resume once you think about him for a few minutes. He spends the series narcissistically prioritizing his own needs before his various romantic partners. How he stalks on-off-again love interest Robin Scherbatsky is also ominous, pressurizing her to consummate a relationship she isnt sure about. Ted is forever lost in flights of fantasy that can never be truly realized. This, alongside his lacking character development, ranks Ted the least likable character in How I Met Your Mothers main cast.

Robin is a compelling character for a sitcom, at least. She is a Canadian who was brought up to be masculine by herverymasculine father. Because of this, Robin often subverts traditional romantic tropes in her relationships, being the masculine to her boyfriends feminine. As a result of this unique interplay, Robin ends up being very endearing, her peculiar interests in guns and dogs making her a novel character. That said, she is often brought down by her Ross-Rachel dynamic with Ted Moseby. The pair are frequently presented as incompatible due to their highly differing values (Ted wants to settle down and have kids. Robin doesnt). This makes their season finale romantic reunion feel forced and unnatural. Especially so, given the show built up her relationship with Barney, only to nix it at the last minute. If not for this, she may have ranked higher in our list ofHow I Met Your Mothercharacters.

If one thing can be said of Barney Stinson, its that he was a sign of the times. Following the exposure of Harvey Weinsteins antics in 2017, its hard to watch some of Barneys scenes without cringing. That said, Barneyisa very fun, outgoing character, championing some of HIMYMs most iconic lines (Haaave you met Ted?) and his obsession with suits as endearing as it is strange. Barney is redeemed greatly by his character development in the series he eventually gives up his womanizing ways to be with Robin. And while this development is swiftly nixed in Season 9s last few minutes, his story for the series majority earns him a high spot on this ranking. There is no doubt after all, despite his lack of political correctness, that Barney is responsible for the gangs most memorable misadventures.

Lily is smart, quirky, and fun. She is Marshalls series-long partner and you can see why. The pair of them have seamless chemistry due to their similar sense of humor (she is the Lily-Pad to Marshalls Marshmellow) as well as genuine trust in one another. However, one thing that distinguishes her from Marshall is her role as Teds girlfriend-overseer. Thus quirky characteristic has her put Teds various girlfriends through the Front Porsche test to see if she can picture the woman gelling with the gang as elderly people. While her amusing inability to understand boundaries can be her curse, Lily is still an endearing sitcom icon who ranks among How I Met Your Mothers best characters.

Who can deny the manchild lawyer Marshall Erikson? While poor Jason Segel tired of his antics later in the show, we simply couldnt get enough of him. He and Lily bounce off each other so naturally, not merely because of their shared humor (for example, nicknaming her Lily-pad while she calls him Marshmellow), but also because of his genuine affection for her. Despite his silliness, Marshall is also there to support his friends (i.e. Ted) when they need him. This appealing combination of humor and compassion makes Marshall the second most likable character in How I Met Your Mother.

Despite only being part of the main cast in the shows final season, the Mother herself, Tracy, is easily the most likable character of the cast. This is truly amazing since the cast was around eight years before her full appearance and somehow somehow she outshines them all. What makes Tracy so likable (nay, lovable) are numerous. From her musical abilities, her humor, her unshakeable charm despite her past tragedy as well as her compassion, Tracy rules. Additionally, her strength and independence are the cherry-on-top of a woman who lets face it deserves better than Ted Mosby. For us, its a no-brainer that Tracy ranks top among How I Met Your Mothers characters.

That said, this is just our take. Do you agree or disagree with our ranking ofHow I Met Your Mothers main cast? Who is the most likable out of the gang? And given the controversial season 9 finale, how would you change the conclusion to the story? Be sure to check out our article on why How I Met Your Mother is a great sitcom here.

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How I Met Your Mother Main Characters Ranked By Likeability - The Nerd Stash

Love it or hate it, the new 'Sex and the City' (SATC) reboot is here to stay. By killing Chris Noth's character in its opening episode, the show has certainly got fans hooked right from day 1, and now there's plenty more drama making its way out. In a new interview, Cynthia Nixon, who starred in the original series came out to call it "tone deaf" on race and gender issues, something she was clear she wanted to change.

Nixon's "woke agenda" certainly hasn't gone down well with fans, who claimed after episode 4 of the 10-episode series it "wasn't working". The forced inclusion of more diverse characters has left many unhappy with the reboot. Even non-fans are taking a dig at the show, with Peloton releasing an ad trolling the show after the death of Mr Big. Needless to say, things aren't that great right now for a show that's struggled to get out amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Now, Nixon has rubbed some salt on the wounds of producers by slamming the old show and appearing to take credit for some of the changes in the reboot. While not everyone may enjoy the super woke reboot of SATC, Nixon doesn't appear to be shying away from it.

Speaking to The Herald Sun, the 55-year-old said she was "reluctant" to return, saying, "I couldnt go back without a real sea change in terms of the lack of diversity in the original series." She even admitted "I really didnt think I was going to do it," but changed her mind after speaking to Michael Patrick King, and Kristin Davis. But, despite not being as "woke" as the reboot, Nixon said she was "very proud" of the original series.

"Im very proud of the original series despite it being occasionally tone-deaf on race and gender... Sex and the City gave me an adult career. And Ill always be grateful for that." It appears that the feelings were what ultimately caused her to return, but only after she was promised some changes. "I was floored by how hard everybody listened, and how collaboratively we worked together to, not just redecorate the house, but to build a whole new house that had us in it but new characters, too," she said.

Of course, Nixon stopped short of claiming full credit for the changes in the reboot, but from the interview, she makes it clear she played a key role. Some of those changes include nods to the political correctness of the post-Trumpian world, with the characters discussing racial microaggressions, gender identity, and sexuality. Other changes include a more diverse cast, such as the addition of Sarita Choudhury and Sara Ramirez to the cast.

While Nixon may back the changes, it's clear fans don't. Many have been let down by the reboot's focus on political correctness, but there's little that can change now. Maybe next season, if there is one.

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'And Just Like That': Was Cynthia Nixon behind panned super woke reboot of SATC? - MEAWW

Cobra Kai spoilers follow.

There have been four films, a remake and four seasons of a reboot series, but it's time to admit it the Karate Kid franchise has a girl problem.

The beloved collection of kickass karate champions and underdogs remains a staple of 80s nostalgia. From the moment Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) was taken under the wing of Mr Miyagi (the late Pat Morita), fans everywhere became devoted quicker than you can say "Wax on, wax off".

Now, in its own underdog tale, Cobra Kai has proven able to stand on its own foot, crane kicking its way into becoming a trusted and enjoyable progression of the story.

Back in 1984, The Karate Kid was unashamedly a boys' club kind of movie, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The tale of finding your inner strength and overcoming obstacles was universal regardless. It made karate cool. It gave the bullied viewers aspirations of overcoming their tormentors.

37 years on, it's remained that way, and it's time to do better.

There's no denying the fourth film, the gender-swapped The Next Karate Kid in 1994, ground the franchise to a halt. To date, it has a gut-wrenching score of 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, with People's reviewer labelling the film "a desperate attempt to keep the franchise alive and kicking" using "backhanded political correctness".

This was somewhat echoed by Entertainment Weekly, who commented in a passive-aggressive dismissal of the movie: "There is something bitchin' about seeing a babe give a bully a good thwack. Not that girls will go see this or boys will care."

The Next Karate Kid's only real achievement was giving Hilary Swank her first leading role as Julie Pierce, who Mr Miyagi decides to train in order to curb her anger issues.

But it seems the film has left The Karate Kid franchise with a bit of a war wound, and in a "once bitten, twice shy" move, it's reverted back to leaving women with one of three jobs: a) a love interest, b) a damsel in distress or c) a combination of the two.

This happened in Karate Kid with Johnny and Daniel over Ali Mills (Elisabeth Shue), and in Karate Kid II with Kumiko, who was kidnapped and held at ransom by Chozen to lure Daniel to him. In Karate Kid III, it's Jessica Andrews (Robin Lively), who has a will they/won't they friendship with Daniel until she's dragged into the karate feud.

But The Next Karate Kid didn't fail because it was a girl in the lead role, it failed because it was forcing a female character into a boys' franchise in a way that felt unnatural. Where's LaRusso gone? Why is there no one we recognise apart from Miyagi? The emotional tie was cut, and so too was the franchise's lifespan. That is, until Cobra Kai came along in 2018.

Cobra Kai, which was bought from YouTube Red by Netflix after season two, works because the heart of the movie remains strong, and it's just self-aware enough of its own ludicrousness to get away with it. Rather than start from scratch, the show reangled itself, taking on the point of view of Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), the original villain who, as it turns out, has his own perspective on how the original film's plot played out.

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Over the course of four seasons, it's developed a unique style of storytelling that is faithful to the teachings of Miyagi himself. There are two sides to every story. There's always a yin to your yang.

Cobra Kai's plot has also allowed the reintroduction of more old faces, giving old enemies a shot at redemption, old friends the goodbye they deserved, and the All-Valley tournament the battle they craved. In the modern day, it also allows for more diversity.

However, while former foes such as Chozen who literally almost killed Daniel in a deathmatch fight back in Karate Kid II are given a shot at being a good guy, sadly, even after four seasons, Swank's Julie Pierce is yet to be offered the same.

And once again, the women have been relegated to the sidelines.

As it stands, the new generation of Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do dojos have a grand total of one (1) major female character each Tory Nichols (Peyton List) and Samantha LaRusso (Mary Mouser). Their initial introductions seemed promising, perhaps a little complicated, tales of who they're assumed to be by their peers, over who they want to be.

But by season four their arcs have become stale, with their only main conflict now being with each other, over their romantic entanglements with the two lead boys, Robbie (Tanner Buchanan) and Miguel (Xolo Mariduea).

Tory's troubled backstory is there, but has been stretched out now for three seasons, and only seems to be mentioned when she has done, or is about to do, something potentially irredeemable. This girl has threatened flat-out murder on Samantha over the course of the show, and brought spiked knuckle dusters to a school brawl. Yet we're actually no closer to finding out that much about her history than when we first heard about it, other than the stony sensei Kreese feeling some sympathy and protectiveness towards her.

In turn, Samantha lived in her father Daniel's shadow as a karate champion, and after finding herself dragged back into that world, became more headstrong for it. But this has somehow morphed into a character who believes she can do no wrong and, like Tory rightly points out, doesn't understand the word no.

With the exception of 'mom' roles Carmen and Amanda, who are there to provide exposition and a quippy comment about how ridiculous karate battles are respectively, that's pretty much it. Others have been cut out. Samantha's gal pals practically don't exist any more.

Actress Nichole Brown, who played fan favourite Aisha, had to take to Instagram to confirm she'd been dropped from the show, seemingly without explanation, between the second and third seasons. The outcry this caused no doubt played a hand in her season four cameo, which explained her parents had decided to move them away following a school fight that left one kid in hospital with a broken back. To be fair, that's a great real-life parenting decision, but a flimsy excuse in the world of Cobra Kai.

Somehow Cobra Kai, instead of finally giving girls the platform in the Miyagi-verse they deserve, and one boys will actually pay attention to, has fallen back to their old format.

It's a shame to see Tory and Samantha being led down the same path when they weren't initially set up to.

It's 2022. Time for the girls to fight their own battles and be more than a subplot.

Cobra Kai is available now on Netflix.

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Cobra Kai has a major problem that needs to be fixed - digitalspy.com

The outgoing president of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, wrote to colleagues saying "best wishes for happy holidays, joy and peace" in a festive card. For the second consecutive year, it failed to mention the seminal Christian holiday - leading to claims the EU Parliament is obsessed with political correctness.

The news came just weeks after the bloc was again accused of cancelling Christmas when a leaked internal document asked for the word not to be used.

It also said not to use the name Mary or John because they are Christian or to use the expression "ladies and gentlemen" before a conference.

The EU Commissions file on inclusive communication was subsequently withdrawn after sparking an outcry amid accusations of cancel culture and political correctness.

Mr Sassolis card drew equal condemnation.

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Former EU Commissioner Dacian Ciolos wrote: "I don't need the Commission to tell me if I can say 'Merry Christmas'."

Others accused the supposedly progressive left of being anything but inclusive with its politically correct language.

German MEP Manfred Weber, president of the EPP group, raged: "Citizens have asked themselves what is the reason for formulating guidelines of this kind.

For us, having a creed is important. Religion should not be pushed only into the private sphere.

The DNA of Europe is Christian and two-thirds of citizens consider themselves Christians.

The EU has a long history of political correctness.

In 2012, it sparked fury with an abstract light installation that replaced the traditional Christmas tree in the centre of Brussels.

Critics accused officials of opting for the installation for fear of offending non-Christians.

Thousands of people signed a petition opposing it and it was later removed just days after Christmas over fears of vandalism.

Additional reporting by Maria Ortega

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We must save it! Outcry as EU chief 'cancels' Christmas amid fears it could offend - Daily Express

San Francisco has had enough. Thecitys mayor recently declared that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end, and she promised to take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement.

Her get-tough pledge is, of course, shameless if only there had been a municipal leader who could have done something before now! but when wokeness has lost the mayor of San Francisco, it has a public-relations problem.

Following electoral defeats in Virginia, and facing a likely wipeout in next years midterm elections, many Democrats are scrambling away from identity politics. From crime to education to the workplace, it poisons everything, and Americans are sick of it.

Thus, we may hope that Scott McConnell is correct in predicting that wokeness will be rolled back, its practitioners and cultural preferences first widely mocked and then ignored, its victims rehabilitated and in some cases honored. But we should not be too sure; even if wokeness is politically toxic now, it might nonetheless win in the long run.

Identity politics likely resilience was highlighted in a response by Ed West as well as in a Reason article by Greg Lukianoff chronicling how the first wave of political correctness in the 1990s persisted despite its unpopularity. Put simply, identity politics holds power in key institutions, especially in tech, academia, education, the media, and Big Business. While voter anger might spook politicians on issues such as crime, wokeness in all its forms will be hard to root out of its institutional fortresses.

Thus, identity politics will remain as a powerful force in American life even if Democratic politicians avoid and downplay its more unpopular ideas (and they arent all giving up yet). Like a weed, snicking the head off wokeness will not kill it. Unless it is actively uprooted, wokeness will continue to embed itself within powerful institutions, just as it was doing before it broke into public view over the last few years.

Thus, defeating wokeness will require more than ballot-box triumphs. The campaign against it will be long and must be sustained at multiple levels of government. To win, the conservative movement will need leaders who will persevere until leftist strongholds are reformed. We will also need bureaucratic knife-fighters who can grind through the trench warfare of administrative law.

Otherwise, wokeness will advance even if Democratic politicians disavow its most destructive ideas. After all, identity politics is now big money, offering jobs, jobs, jobs for the boys (and girls, and non-binary they/them/theirs). There is an entire industry of well-paid diversity, equity, and inclusion experts and consultants.

College administrators are making six figures to push wokeness on campus, and they are not going away just because some Democrats sidle away from critical race theory after losing a few elections. And in the long run, controlling the Ivy League and Silicon Valley may matter more than controlling Congress.

But Congress has a say, if it is willing to act. Wokeness is parasitic, subsisting largely on government time and the taxpayers dime. Thus, to defeat identity politics, we must defund it.

The GOP has regularly failed at this, even when government money is going to groups that use it to undermine conservatism and shill for Democrats. This must change, and identity politics must be made into a liability, rather than a status symbol and career enhancer. If wokeness is the job, the position should be eliminated. If wokeness is not part of the job, then those who make it part of the job should be fired.

The legal tools to do this are available because wokeness is racist, misogynist, and religiously bigoted, and therefore frequently in violation of federal civil rights laws. What is needed is the political will and perseverance to excise wokeness from government and from private companies and organizations that depend on the government. Put simply, woke bigots engaged in discrimination shouldnt be employed by the government or get government contracts.

There are many obvious cases of woke abuse, such as teachers and school administrators organizing racially segregated events and classrooms, or grooming a preteen girl into transgenderism without even telling her parents. In such cases, teachers and administrators should be fired and possibly prosecuted and the school district should be sued into oblivion. Wokeness is an elite affectation that will struggle in front of a jury of ordinary Americans.

Politically, there is much to do. For instance, Republicans must recognize that wokeness is a national security vulnerability, so they must prioritize cleansing the military of woke apparatchiks who care more about winning diversity plaudits than winning wars.

Likewise, the next Republican president should have the Department of Justice relentlessly pursue legal action against woke violators of civil rights law. The next Republican secretary of rducation should reverse the perversion of civil rights laws that Biden is using to treat racial discrimination as anti-racist and to refuse to protect women against men pretending to be women.

State legislatures should cut university funding for woke initiatives and positions, and they should prohibit the use of ideological diversity statements in faculty hiring. Parents should take back control of local school boards and clean house, dumping administrators and teachers who have abandoned excellence and equality for identity and equity.

Conservatives need skilled leadership to accomplish these and other measures against identity politics. At the national level, we should look for a presidential candidate who can run an effective administration, rather than one who excels at annoying the woke on Twitter. In the meantime, there are victories available at the state and local levels. We will not win everywhere San Francisco may crack down on crime, but it is unlikely to totally abandon wokeness but we can win in a lot of places.

What is essential is turning the electoral backlash against wokeness into effective action in government. The way to beat wokeness is to defund it, and so we need to choose savvy leaders who will act, rather than just bluster.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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It's Time To Defund The Speech Police - The Federalist

Claudio Grass (CG): We often refer to inflation as ahidden tax or asilent thief, due to the fact that most of the time, its effects are hardly noticed by the average household in real time. However, this time appears to be different. Food, electricity, fuel, cars, and so much more, are all getting more expensive by the minute, while central planners are blaming the private sector andcapitalist greed. Do you think thats an accurate explanation? (Click here to read Part I)

Fernando del Pino (FdP):Politicians will blame everyone except themselves. There is one important point I would like to highlight: when people talk about thefree market, they tend to focus on themarket part. Wrong. They should focus onfree, because when you attack the free market you are really attacking personal freedom, and there is a trend towards the destruction of personal freedom, often under the alibi ofallowing people to vote every four years. Democracy has been sold as synonym of freedom, and thats certainly not the case. Dont trust me: trust your own eyes, both in the obvious reduction in personal freedom suffered in the last few decades or in how Westerndemocracies are crushing their own people with the excuse of a run-of-the-mill epidemic, by historical standards. Look atAustralia, Canada, Germany, Austria, Italy, Francethe detention facilities, the covid passports to help cover up the vaccine fiasco, etc.

Those who cherish freedom should always be on alert towards political power, be it of one individual, of one oligarchy or of themajority (which in practice is always the power of an oligarchy), because all of them will tend to abuse it. Free market means that you can fulfill your God-given talents with the aim of moving towards personal perfection and rendering service to others, that you are independent from the State and depend only on your efforts and gifts and the support of your loved ones, that you can work and live wherever you choose and be able to buy the cheapest or best product or service provided by free competition that is, the antithesis of Communism or its heirs.

Power junkies do not want rich societies, where individuals are financially independent. Not at all! Theyd rather rule over poverty-stricken societies where everyone depends on the State, that is, on the politicians and bureaucrats that control the States machinery. The whole Great Reset totalitarian lunacy is about reducing personal liberty and thereby impoverishing the world for the sake of the power of the few. Therefore, yes, they might perfectly well blame capitalism or any other innocent scapegoat that happened to pass by.

CG: Staying on the topic of skyrocketing prices, we recently witnessed a mainstream media frenzy and wall-to-wall coverage of the COP26 climate summit. Lots of grand promises and commitments were made, however, most citizens arguably fail to realize what any of that means for them, on a practical level. Do you think the public will keep supporting a vague idea ofsaving the planet once that translates to higher taxes, heavier regulatory burdens and higher energy prices?

FdP:After 15 years studying climate science, reading and getting in touch with renowned experts and academics from around the world, I have no doubt whatsoever that the whole Anthropogenic Global Warming mania as it is promoted in the media and by politicians is a hoax (I hope that doesnt make me a bad person). Up until now, it was a question of social virtue and political correctness to say that you also wanted to save the planet from the very food of trees, cereals and plants without thinking twice. Most people were led to confuse the innocuous, wonderful CO2 with other pollutants that might pose a risk on health. Now, I have hardly found anyone that does not want blue oceans and greenforests or that doesnt admire nature and its awesome diversity, myself included, but this a completely different story from the mainstream narrative, that has to do with power and ideology rather than with science or with preserving nature for future generations.

That we might think that man is so important and powerful that a) he can control the planets climate with a CO2 (0,04% of the Atmosphere) button and b) that he can understand how a complex, non-linear, chaotic and multifactorial system works with a few computer models and even dare to make accurate predictions decades and centuries in advance when he cannot forecast next weeks weather, is completely laughable. The Earth is a small planet in a small solar system in a medium-sized galaxy in the middle of the Universe, but modern mans arrogance is limitless.

It is true that once people understand that the current deceptive climate agenda has clear, present and very specific dire consequences in their daily lives and economies, they will start wondering whether the price to pay for a feverishly speculative idea which is not rooted neither on common sense nor on scientific evidence is worth it. The huge increase in the cost of electricity is a case in point. Blackouts might be an even better deterrent. We owe so much to fossil fuels that this madness of crowds still amazes me. This whole story reflects the sinister nature of the power junkies, the emptiness of Western societies, devoid of the notion of God, or good and evil, having lost their moral compass and therefore their capacity for sound judgement. It also reflects the huge force of human gregariousness the need to belong and consequently the efficiency of the threat of being expelled from the tribe for not complying withpolitical correctness. Finally, we have witnessed the sad corruption of science and scientists, of media and journalists and, of course, of global institutions. We need better accountability, more transparency and less naive citizens, but above all, we need a moral Renaissance.

CG: Overall, if there is one common denominator among all these issues, is that dissenting voices are often smothered and expressing doubt is equivalent to heresy.From monetary and fiscal policy to climate change, there appears to be only one acceptable opinion. Do you see an existential threat to free speech and to open debate and what would be the implications of that?

FdP:Todays aggressive offensive on personal liberty is beyond anything I would have imagined even just a few years ago. Big Techs censorship, self-censorship and the persecution, demonization and silencing of the dissident, bloodless as they are, would make Stalin and Hitler pale in comparison. We should wake up to the reality that free speech is being openly persecuted, and that the new totalitarianism takes no prisoners. However, to my dismay, people remain to a large extent unaware or indifferent.

People should understand that a lie always needs violence to be imposed, because the truth makes its way through on its own weight. So the obvious violence of Big Techs and themedias shameless censorship is a sign that a huge deception lies behind. By default, the logical starting thought should be: if they dont allow me to say this or read that it is because its true. Otherwise, why the fear mongering, why the prohibition, why the coercion? The fact that so many people simply accept that a group of megalomaniacs dictate what can be said or opined and just move on with their day, instead of signing out en masse from their clone-creating platforms as a protest is a worrying sign of the times.

But then again, not thinking is easier than thinking, and we cannot take for granted that the average individual actually values liberty or personal responsibility he might simply prefer to follow orders and live under the illusion of safety provided by his masters; a new form of comfortable slavery. The new chains might be instant material gratification, the creation of apocalyptic fears, and social medias, carefully crafted, addiction to narcissism and intermittent reinforcement from complete strangers, which make individuals particularly vulnerable to manipulation.

However, I think the best days of social media might be behind us. The very deficit of focused attention they create on their users accelerate their usersboredom and the need to move on. In a way, they were the architects of their own destruction. Also, at some point in time, people will miss the personal, real, true relationships they once had before screens controlled their lives and will seek to recover them.

CG: Theres one particular group in our societies that always pays the price of monetary expansionism and of aggressive fiscal policies, namely business owners, ordinary middle class families and responsible, long-term investors and savers. Taxes, inflation and all kinds financial repression measures target them first and hit them the hardest. During these uncertain times, what would be your advice to them on how to preserve their savings and protect what they worked for, for the next generation?

FdP:We are living such Orwellian times that sometimes I feel that the apparition of a pack of aliens on UFOs would be a breath of fresh air. Rudyard Kiplings wonderful poemIf starts with the following verse:If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you The whole poem, and particularly the first strophe, should be required reading nowadays.

Preservings ones wealth today is no easy feat not easier than preserving ones mental health amidst the madness of crowds. My advice is nothing especially original nor worthy of a Nobel Prize: hold a diversified portfolio of gold, cash, and global value stocks, lower your expectations and fasten your seat belts. I have never seen anyone valuing gold in a way that made complete sense to me, but of course gold has a value despite the fact that it is a sterile asset with no cash flow attached, as critics usually from the US or countries that have never experienced a currency crisis like to point out without too much thought.

Saint Bernardino of Sienna, a 14th century Catholic priest, a very interesting economic thinker, stated that value was composed of three elements: usefulness (in Latin, virtuositas), scarcity (raritas) and desirability (complacibilitas). Scarcity is objective, usefulness is usually objective, sometimes subjective, while desirability is completely subjective. Now, gold has one inherent element of value, which is its scarcity, and will have, in my view, an increasing share of desirability in the midst of currency destruction and utter craziness from political, fiscal and monetary authorities currently in place. I remain more doubtful on its usefulness, in the sense of returning to some sort of gold standard. Todays uncertainties should be reflected on a moderate and prudent asset allocation decision.However, I would like to end this interview by bringing in a beam of hope, which can never be tarnished by external circumstances, harsh as they may be. This too shall pass, socially, politically and financially, and we should try to live through the current turbulence with inner peace, focused on the important things in life, on our real world around us, which is our circle of loved ones, withstanding these times together with fortitude and keeping our faith in a loving God that remains the Lord of History. I am a Christian, and I suggest these upcoming Christmas to listen to the beautiful Michael Cards song Immanuel, full of hope and joy, and find that Love always wins, as St. John Paul II used to say. Merry Christmas to everyone.

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Fernando Del Pino Calvo-Sotelo: 'We Are Witnessing The Mother Of All Bubbles' (Part II) Interview - Eurasia Review

With President Joe Bidens approval rating down to 36%, he is now more unpopular than his two predecessors ever were in office.

But, beyond politics, the very idea of America is losing luster. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (and rising) believe their country is not headed in the right direction. For decades, it was assumed America is the place to be an entrepreneur. The U.S. economy was synonymous with the American Dream. No longer. Upward mobility may bemore alive in Canada than in America.

Indeed, upward mobility has been disincentivized, while the climbers are punished for daring to succeed. Government benefits are plentiful, while taxing the rich is the easiest refrain in politics. Under Bidens Build Back Better plan, the average top tax rate on personal income would reach 57.4% in the United States the highest rate in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development. All 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., would impose top tax rates on personal income exceeding 50%.

Todays experiment in Big Government wont end well for the United States. But it will make entrepreneurs, investors and other wealthy Americans reconsider their place in the world and reevaluate their options and thats a good thing. Countries should compete for residents. If people arent treated well in one country, why shouldnt they go where theyre treated better?

People with means ultimately go where theyre treated best, and Americans are reaping the benefits of globalization more than ever before. FromCroatiato theCaribbean, digital nomads across the socioeconomic spectrum are leaving one lifestyle for a better one.

As an offshore consultant who guides clients to where theyre treated best, I regularly advise high-net-worth individuals on second citizenship and residences. And, in recent months, I have seen a 300% increase in wealthy Americans seeking better tax climates and brighter futures. They have had enough of 50% tax rates.

While tax policy is a top complaint, there are other gripes. One is woke culture, which tightens the parameters of free speech and forces people into submission through political correctness. In a world of seemingly endless cancellations and contrived apologies, the First Amendment is under attack from all sides, while its public defenders are fewer and farther between.

Put it all together, and the result is a less appealing America to those with options. Other than patriotism and personal allegiance, why should a New York entrepreneur remain in a city with rising crime and legal drug injection sites? Why put up with constantly changing COVID-19 policies in Washington, D.C., when foreign governments may be more transparent? Why stick with 50% tax rates when tax climates are better in dozens of Asian, European and South American countries?

I have lived in dozens of countries around the world, and its reassuring to escape the radical lefts grasp abroad. In some Eastern European countries, wokism doesnt even exist. Politics isnt a fact of everyday life. People treat each other like human beings, not Twitter bots. In many Latin American countries, you can live more affordably and retain your individualism free from government overreach. The same goes for certain Asian countries that continue to value entrepreneurship and upward mobility with no disincentives, no punishments.

This is not to be alarmist for alarmisms sake. But Americans need to ask themselves, and they are: Am I treated well here? Can I live better elsewhere?

With each passing day, more and more Americans are rethinking the meaning of home. Theongoing exodus to Floridais a perfect example. If people can move from New York to the Sunshine State for a better tax climate and brighter future, why cant they move abroad too?

They can, and they are. The American exodus is here to stay and growing by the day.

Andrew Henderson is the founder of Nomad Capitalist, an international offshore consulting firm. This column was provided by InsideSources.

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Henderson: These days, Americans going where theyre treated best - Boston Herald

By Wonderwall.com Editors 8:23am PST, Dec 19, 2021

Brad Pitt is 58! The Academy Award winner celebrated his birthday on Dec. 18 and according to a People source, he was planning to keep things "low-key" as he marked the day. The insider says Brad's also "staying positive" and looking forward to 2022, despite recent setbacks in his ongoing custody battle with Angelina Jolie. "It was a challenging year for everybody with COVID and filming amidst that," the source explains. In addition to filming "The Lost City" and "Bullet Train" with Sandra Bullock, Brad released a new champagne via his Chateau Miraval winery in France this year. He also announced he's reopening the legendary music studio that was built on the estate in 1977. (According to Wine Spectator, Pink Floyd recorded "The Wall" in the space. Sting, AC/DC, The Cure and Sade have also recorded there.) "[Brad is] trying to stay positive and think about next steps and look ahead and hopefully have an even more positive year," the source says. As for his conflicts with ex, Angelina, over the six kids they share, the insider admits "it's still a difficult situation," adding, "His kids matter the most to him. But there are just processes you have to go through." In the meantime, he reportedly has "a strong circle supporting him."

RELATED: See which stars are celebrating milestone birthdays in December 2021

Five years after George Michael was found dead in his home on Christmas Day, his gravesite has been marked with a headstone. It's unclear when the marker was finally placed on his grave, but British tabloid The Sun reports it was left unmarked for years to avoid it becoming "a tourist attraction." The headstone is a rectangular marble slab that sits beside that of his mother, Lesley, in North London's Highgate Cemetery. George's late sister, Melanie, has a headstone in the same style placed at her gravesite on the other side of their mother. The simple inscription on George's stone reads, "Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou," his real name, followed by the dates he lived, June 25, 1963 Dec. 25, 2016. Below that, the inscription says, "Beloved Son, Brother, Friend." George was 53.

Keep reading to find out how Brad Pitt's spending his 58th birthday and more

RELATED: Stars we lost in 2021

In her memoir, "The Meaning of Mariah Carey," the singer opens up about feeling controlled and taken advantage of by the music industry when she was starting out. She also makes bombshell claims about family members she felt betrayed by. Asked those experiences made her feel "an affinity" to Britney Spears as her conservatorship battle played out in the headlines this past year, Mariah recently told NME she got in touch with the pop star to support her in her fight for freedom. "I think everybody on this planet deserves to be free and what they did to her, what I saw, was horrific," Mariah told the outlet. "So I reached out to her through a mutual friend because I wanted her to know: 'Guess what? You're not alone.'" In a way, she was paying forward the support she got when she was younger from another huge music star. "I remember when I was going through a lot of stuff years ago, Prince reached out to me and gave me a Bible and he talked to me for hours," Mariah revealed. "He's an amazing person and he cared about the music business and the industry being so screwed up which it is. You've got to be a giving person. It doesn't matter whether they're my best friend or whatever, I just felt like it was the right thing to do."

RELATED: Celebs react to the termination of Britney Spears' conservatorship

Chris Noth now faces sexual assault allegations from a third woman and has been dropped by his agent in the wake of assault claims made by two women last week. The first two allegations were published by The Hollywood Reporter, which noted that the women do not know each other and approached the magazine separately about incidents they said happened in New York in 2015 and Los Angeles in 2004, respectively. On Dec. 17, the Daily Beast published a report featuring a third allegation by a woman the outlet called Ava to protect her privacy. Ava claims Chris, 67, sexually assaulted her at a restaurant where she worked in New York City in 2010 when she was 18. Chris had previously denied the first two stories, saying the interactions were "consensual." A rep for Chris later denied the third claim, telling People: "The story is a complete fabrication, and the alleged accounts detailed throughout read like a piece of bad fiction. As Chris stated yesterday, he has and would never cross that line." According to Ava's account, she worked as a hostess and singer at Da Marino and Chris was a regular who was "often intoxicated." She says one evening Chris told her boss she would "sing with" him. She did, after which she said as they talked at a table, he began "groping" her and "pulling" her on top of him. She said he later followed her into the office after her shift, where he allegedly pressed up against into a desk and assaulted her. Ava said she told the Sex and the City" star no" repeatedly and tried to push him off her so hard her "limbs hurt" the next morning. Chris' agent, A3 Artists Agency confirmed to People they dropped him as a client on Dec. 17.

Birthday girl Billie Eilish clearly has a bestie for life in her big brother and producer, Finneas O'Connell. Billie kicked off her 20s on Dec. 18 with a sweet and gushing birthday tribute from Finneas, 24, who shared an old video of the singer pretending to eat her mom's hair while cracking up laughing. "20!!!!!!!!!" Finneas wrote in the caption on Instagram. "Watching you grow and become the thoughtful, incredibly kind, talented, hilarious and hardworking person that you are today has been the joy of my life!" He went on to promise, "I'll be your #1 fan till the day that I die," then told his sis, "There is truly nothing I love more than being your big brother. Happy birthday!!!" Last week, Finneas joined Billie onstage for her "Saturday Night Live" performance, backing her on the song, "Male Fantasy" from her new album, "Happier Than Ever."

Cardi B's team has put the brakes on the rapper's limited edition Cardi B dolls and it doesn't sound like there's much hope they'll see the light of day in the future. A rep for Cardi tells TMZ the lookalike dolls, designed by the rapper, were being made by fashion doll brand Real Women Are. The $35 toys have also been "pre-selling" since March. But as of Dec. 18, "the dolls will not be released as a result of COVID-related manufacturing and shipping delays," TMZ reports. Sources also told the outlet Cardi "had concerns the dolls wouldn't meet her high-quality standards." Fans who already shelled out money in the pre-sale stage are reportedly now bring reimbursed.

Shortly before Jeff Garlin exited "The Goldbergs" in the wake of an internal investigation into complaints about his allegedly inappropriate behavior on set, the comic talked trash about the series and ABC in a stand-up set. According to Variety, the bulk of Jeff's Nov. 24 performance at Hollywood Improv in Los Angeles focused on his criticism of the show and his problem with political correctness interfering with comedy. He reportedly said he couldn't stand working on "The Goldbergs" and was "fed up" with ABC for chastising him. Jeff reportedly expressed pride and gratitude for his involvement with the long-running series, but said its comedy vibe "is not for me," telling the "supportive" audience that he prefers the comedy on Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Asked why he was still on "The Goldbergs" if he hated it so much, he reportedly told an audience member he was only in it for the "money." Jeff's exit was confirmed last week after the actor himself confirmed to Vanity Fair that he was investigated by the show's HR department for things he said and did that allegedly made his coworkers uncomfortable, including a habit of hugging cast and crew members. As of Dec. 18, Larry David had not yet commented on his longtime friend and producer's situation.

Barack Obama's presidency may be over, but his annual playlist tradition continues. On Dec. 17, the former president shared his top songs and movies of 2021 on Instagram, shouting-out Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Benedict Cumberbatch's "Power of the Dog" and Questlove's "Summer of Soul" and the new "West Side Story," among other films. In the music department, Barack said he "listened to a little bit of everything this year," but the tracks that made his playlist cut included Lil Nas X's "Montero (Call Me By My Name)," Lizzo and Cardi B's "Rumors" and "Freedom" by "The Late Show" bandleader and Jon Batiste, who leads this year's Grammy nominees with 11 nods the most of any artist.

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How Brad Pitt is feeling on 58th birthday amid never-ending custody battle with Angelina Jolie, more news - Wonderwall

The 1994 moviePCU, about a rebellious fraternity resisting its politically correct university, was a milestone. Not because the movie was especially goodit wasn't. It was a milestone because it showed that political correctness had officially become a joke.

The derisive term "P.C." had referred to a genuine and powerful force on campus for the previous decade. But by the mid-1990s, it had become the butt of jokes from across the political spectrum. The production of a mainstream movie mocking political correctness showed that its cultural moment had passed.

At the same time, punitive campus speech codes were being struck down. Among the most prominent cases was Stanford Law School, which boasted a notorious speech code banning "speech or other expressionintended to insult or stigmatize" an individual on the basis of membership in a protected class arguably including every living human. You don't have to be a lawyer to see how a ban on anything that "insults" would be abused: Even showingPCUitself, which makes fun of campus activists, feminists, and vegetarians, could potentially get you in trouble under such a broad and vague rule. The 1995 court defeat of the Stanford speech code marked the end of the First Great Age of Political Correctness.

Some assumed this meant political correctness was a fad that was gone forever. On the contrary, it gathered strength over the next two decades, rooting itself in university hiring practices and speech policing, until it became what people now refer to as "wokeness" or the much-abused term "cancel culture."

Political correctness didn't decline and fall. It went underground and then rose again. If anything, it's stronger than ever today. Yet some influential figures on the left still downplay the problem, going so far as to pretend that the increase in even tenured professors being fired for off-limits speech is a sign of a healthy campus. And this unwillingness to recognize a serious problem in academia has helped embolden culture warriors on the right, who have launched their own attacks on free speech and viewpoint diversity in the American education system.

We've fully entered the Second Great Age of Political Correctness. If we are to find a way out, we must understand how we got here and admit the true depths of the problem.

In the decades that followed the First Great Age of Political Correctness, you could be forgiven for assuming that campus attacks on free speech were a thing of the past.

Professors and administrators dismissed concerns, claiming there was no shortage of viewpoint diversity (and that those who suggested otherwise had sinister, probably racist motivations). Speech codes had been roundly defeated wherever they were legally challenged. The P.C. movement had been reduced to a punchline. Indeed, it was such a common punching bag that some pundits rejected the whole idea as a kind of right-wing hoax. Problem solved, right?

Hardly. In reality, the major change after the mid-'90s was that professors were less openly enamored of speech codes. The campus speech wars entered their Ignored Years, during which far less attention was paid to campus speech even as the underlying problem grew worse. It was during this period that the seeds were sown for a deeper change just one generation later.

After the Stanford policy was defeated in court in 1995, speech codes should have faded away into legal oblivion. Instead, their number dramaticallyincreased. By 2009, 74 percent of colleges had extremely restrictive codes, 21 percent had vague speech codes that could be abused to restrict speech, and only eight of the top 346 colleges surveyed had no restrictive code. Unlike in the '90s, many of these policies were championed by a burgeoning administrative class rather than by faculty.

Meanwhile, viewpoint diversity among professors plummeted. In 1996, the ratio of self-identified liberal faculty to self-identified conservative faculty was 2-to-1; by 2011, the ratio was 5-to-1, according tothe Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

More recent statistics paint a starker picture. A 2019 study by the National Association of Scholars on the political registration of professors at the two highest-ranked public and private universities in each state found that registered Democrat faculty outnumbered registered Republican faculty about 9-to-1. In the Northeast, the ratio was about 15-to-1.

In the most evenly split discipline, economics, Democrats outnumber Republicans "only" 3-to-1. The second most even discipline, mathematics, has a ratio of about 6-to-1. Compare this to English and sociology, where the ratios are about 27-to-1. In anthropology, it's a staggering 42-to-1.

In the Ignored Years, higher education became far more expensive and considerably more bureaucratized. From 199495 to 201819, the inflation-adjusted cost of public college tuition nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the administrative class expanded, from roughly one administrator for every two faculty members in 1990 to nearly equal numbers of faculty and administrators in 2012.

What's more, preliminary research showed a "12-to-one ratio of liberal to conservative college administrators," wrote Samuel J. Abrams of Sarah Lawrence College inThe New York Timesin 2018. His conclusion: "It appears that afairlyliberal student body is being taught by averyliberal professoriateand socialized by anincrediblyliberal group of administrators." Following theTimesarticle, Abrams was targeted twice by students in an unsuccessful campaign to get him fired for speaking out.

The '00s also brought the popularization of "bias-related incident programs," commonly known as "bias response teams" or "BRTs." These programs exist to root out "bias" (once called "prejudice") on campus by empowering anyone within the community to file complaints with the administration, often anonymously. They are attempts to enforce campus orthodoxy in ways that might be (just barely) constitutional. By 2016, nearly 40 percent of surveyed colleges had BRTs.

Early versions of BRTs involved policing inside jokes and pop culture references. Eventually, reported speech included everything from a "snow penis" at the University of Michigan to a humor magazine at the University of California San Diego that had satirized the idea of safe spaces to an incident at John Carroll University in Ohio, where an "anonymous student reported that [the]African-American Alliance's student protest was making white students feel uncomfortable."

It was also in the '00s that ideas such as "trigger warnings" and "microaggressions" burrowed their way into everyday campus parlance. Meanwhile, the number of speaker disinvitations, in which speaking requests were rescinded because of protests or other objections, slowly crept up.

Education schools, in particular, became even more activist, which had an outsized impact on where we are today. The early 2000s began with the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE)the accreditor of over 600 graduate education programs"recommending" that education students be required to demonstrate a commitment to social justice. The extremely influential Teachers College at Columbia University adopted the requirement, as did others. In 2005, in the face of protest from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), where I am president and CEO, NCATE removed the recommendation. But many schools, including Columbia's Teachers College, did not.

Education school graduates who had been steeped in social justice activism went on to dominate not only K-12 teaching but also the swelling ranks of campus administrators. A random sample taken by Sarah Lawrence's Abrams indicates that 54 percent of college administrators have degrees from education schools.

Two education school graduates helped develop and popularize "orientation" programs, implemented in various forms around the country, that could be described as efforts at thought reform. At the University of Delaware in the late '00s, for example, students were subjected to interrogations by student leaders about all manner of personal topicstheir views on gay marriage, their own sexual orientations, when they discovered their sexuality, whether they would consider dating members of other races and ethnicities, and more. The program then sought to provide students with "treatments," such as mandatory one-on-one sessions with their resident advisers, meant to inculcate them with "correct" moral beliefs.

Requiring "diversity statements" as a condition of faculty hires and promotions is yet another way colleges enforce ideological conformity on campus. These statements effectively require faculty to affirm and provide examples of their commitment to the values of diversity, equity, and inclusionwhich, of course, are rarely defined. Like NCATE's recommended social justice requirement, they function as political litmus testsdemonstrations of one's commitment to prevailing orthodoxies.

The University of California, Berkeley, uses a rubric to score prospective faculty on adherence to specific ideological positions. Candidates are scored negatively, for instance, for attesting to the position that one should "ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and 'treat everyone the same.'"

During the Ignored Years, then, university administrators created infrastructure to keep P.C. alivemoving from speech codes to BRTs as speech codes were shot down in court; encouraging the hiring of even more politically homogeneous professors and administrators; and reframing speech policing as a crucial part of protecting students' mental health.

If a single piece of writing marks the end of the Ignored Years, it's Jenny Jarvie's "Trigger Happy," a March 2014New Republicarticle critical of campus trigger warningsthe practice of alerting students anytime a potentially sensitive topic is about to come up in class conversation if the teacher thinks it may "trigger" a trauma response in students or just upset them in some way. Jarvie's piece presaged a marked increase in coverage of such issues beyond conservative media. Other milestones included Jonathan Chait'sNew Yorkmagazine article "Not A Very P.C. Thing to Say" and Jon Ronson's bookSo You've Been Publicly Shamed, both published in 2015. Suddenly, people were paying attention to speech on campus again.

But it wasn't just an increase in coverage. Something else had changed on campus. During the previous two decades, administrators were usually the leaders of campus censorship campaigns. Students, in turn, resisted those efforts. In late 2013, however, there was an explosion in censorship that was student-led. The infrastructure built during the Ignored Years was producing downstream effects.

The generation hitting campuses in 2013 had been educated by the graduates of those activist education schools. In some cases they were literally the children of the students who had pushed for (or at least were OK with) speech codes in the '80s and '90s.

This generation also grew up with social media; it had a genuine awareness of how hurtful and nasty speech can be, especially when anonymous and online. But it had not been taught that freedom to engage in nasty speech is necessary to the functioning of our democracy and to the production of knowledge.

In 2015 alone, there were multiple high-profile free-speech blowups on campus. Perhaps most famous was the confrontation between sociologist Nicholas Christakis and students at Yale that began over school guidance about inappropriate Halloween costumes.

In 2017, there was outright violence at Berkeley and Middlebury College, with activist students using force in response to speech they opposed. (At Middlebury, a professor named Allison Stanger was permanently injured in a melee during an appearance by the author Charles Murray.) Then came 2020, with hundreds of high-profile examples of attempts to get professors and students canceled, all across the country.

One might assume that the increased media attention and the numerous high-profile incidents of campus speech crackdownsincluding violent confrontations caught on videowould have definitively demonstrated that the campus free speech situation has become dismal. Yet not only were there debates about whether campus speech was really in crisis but new arguments appeared insisting that campus censorship and academic freedom simply weren't problems at all.

Netflix's The Chair is a smart, well-written, well-acted show. The series examines the many challenges facing an English professor and her department at an elite liberal arts college with dwindling admissions. One of the series' main throughlines occurs when a tenured professor is pushed out of his job after giving a satirical Nazi salute during a lecture on modernism. Students call him a Nazi and demand his resignation.

It's not quite as overtly comic, but it could be seen as this era'sPCU, in that it signals that it's OK to mock and resist the illiberalism we've seen emerge on campuses over the last five or six years. And it might be taken as a sign that people are finally willing to address the repressive atmosphere at many colleges.

But not all viewers saw it that way.New York Timescolumnist Michelle Goldberg wrote that "a real-world tenured professor like Bill would be extremely unlikely to lose his job for making fun of Nazis in the wrong way." She also posited that concern about the climate on campus isreallyabout people over 40 feeling ashamed of being "repelled by the sensibilities of the young."

In fact, polling finds that Generation Z (the cohort of young people born in 1996 or after) has the most negative outlook on cancel culture of any generation. And Goldberg's assertion thatThe Chairused an implausible example of a threat to free speech on campus is undermined by the fact that something very similar actually happened earlier this year.

In January, University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Robert Schuyler was pushed into retirement after he reacted to being silenced in a departmental meeting by giving a mock Nazi salute. Critics characterized this one-second gesture as "heinous acts" and called on the university to punish Schuyler in order to demonstrate its opposition to "all forms of prejudice." The student newspaper dutifully reported that Schuyler told it "he does not endorse Nazism," as if his sarcastic reply to the rigid enforcement of faculty meeting rules could legitimately be interpreted as an expression of support for the National Socalist philosophy.

For those who defend free speech on campus, a case involving a Nazi salute would be among the less sympathetic cases in a given year. (The fact that Schuyler's gesture was sarcastic barely registers in an age when the alleged effect of speech is deemed more important than the intent.) But it doesn't take an accusation of Nazism to get you in trouble these days. Professors have been targeted for quoting James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr.; for asking students to analyze the consequences of the historical shift in trading and travel patterns known as "Columbian exchange"; and for speculating on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, University of Illinois Chicago law professor Jason Kilborn was placed on leave and subjected to months of investigation after students complained about aself-censoredreference to two epithetsliterally, "N_____" and "B____"in a law school exam hypotheticalaboutworkplace discrimination.

If anything,The Chairmade the students demanding the professor's resignation look more reasonable than they often do in real life. The series features a confrontation with students evocative of Christakis' confrontation in 2015, an encounter I witnessed. There, students surrounded Christakis, screamed at him, broke down in tears, called him disgusting, and told him he shouldn't sleep at night. The cause? Nicholas' wife, Erika, had argued in an email that students should be able to decide which Halloween costumes to wearan argumentin favor of student autonomythat was surely less offensive than a Nazi salute.

Since 2015, there have been at least 200 attempts to get speakers disinvited from campuses; 101 of those were successful. But even when the events go on, student protesters sometimes physically block the entrance to speeches deemed problematic or chant, bang drums, or pull the fire alarm so the speeches can't be heard. A few speakers have actually been assaulted, including unknown chemicals sprayed at conservative podcaster Michael Knowles at University of MissouriKansas City. Riots at Berkeley in 2017 over a Milo Yiannopoulos speech included smashed windows, bloodied spectators, and fire bombs.

Goldberg's article was premised in part on the claim, advanced byLiberal Currentseditor Adam Gurri, that only a small number of professors have been targeted for cancellation. "If any other problem in social life was occurring at this frequency and at this scale," Gurri wrote, "we would consider it effectively solved."

Gurri's count of targeted professors comes from data collected by FIRE. In context, it does not show a problem effectively solved.

From 2015 through mid-October 2021, FIRE identified 471 attempts to get professors fired or punished for their constitutionally protected speech, with almost three-quarters of them resulting in some type of sanction. In 106 of those cases, the sanction included the loss of a job. The frequency of these attempts has risen dramatically, from 30 in 2015 to 122 in 2020. And the list includes 172 tenured professors who were punished, 27 of whom were fired.

Tenure was designed to be a nearly invincible protection from termination for one's speech, beliefs, teaching, or research. Until very recently, even a single fired tenured professor for anything related to his or her speech or scholarship was a huge deal. Twenty-seven tenured professors fired in a handful of years for their expression is unprecedented. It undermines the whole function of tenure, which is to protect academic freedom by assuring professors they won't find themselves unemployed for exercising it. Contrary to Gurri's framing, this number is not small.

His argument resembles another misleading argument made by those who say campus speech culture is not a problem. It typically starts by noting that there are 6,000 colleges in the country and then shrugs off the hundreds of attempts to push out professors as a small number. This makes the problem look diffuse. In reality, it's quite concentrated.

Of the top 100 schools according toU.S. News & World Report, 65 have had a professor targeted since 2015. Meanwhile, the top 10 schools had an average of seven incidentseach.

In fact, if you start with the top 100 universities and then eliminate the schools that appeared in FIRE's Scholars Under Fire database, schools with severely restrictive "red light" speech codes, schools where FIRE intervened on behalf of a student or faculty member, schools with a successful disinvitation campaign, and schools with a Bias Response Team, you are left with only two institutions: the California Institute of Technology and the Colorado School of Mines. If you eliminate schools with vague "yellow light" speech codes as well, there would be no colleges in the top 100 left.

But the problem is disproportionate in some places. Take the "most influential university in the world," Harvard, which educates a notably large share of America's ruling class. Keep in mind that the Harvard faculty, as at most elite colleges, is politically homogeneous: Just 2.5 percent of its faculty of arts and sciences identifies as "conservative" and 0.4 percent as "very conservative." Despite that overwhelming ideological unity, there have been 12 public attacks on professors just since 2015.

In 2017, Harvard rescinded the admission of 10 would-be students over offensive memes in a Facebook group. In 2013, the school surreptitiously scanned resident deans' email accounts in the wake of a cheating scandalnot to find the cheaters but to sniff out who had leaked an emailaboutthe scandal, a gross violation of faculty privacy.

By downplaying the scale of such problems, Gurri and others are wishing away the "chilling effect," the well-recognized fact in both law and psychology that when people have to guess as to which opinion, joke, or idea will get them in trouble, they tend to self-censor. Indeed, professors have been telling us they are chilled for years. As far back as 2010, when the Association of American Colleges & Universities asked professors to respond to the statement, "It is safe to have unpopular views on campus," only 16.7 percent strongly agreed.

According to a 2021 report from Eric Kaufmann at the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, 70 percent of conservative academics in America say that there is a hostile climate toward their beliefs, and 62 percent of conservative graduate students agree that "my political views wouldn't fit, which could make my life difficult." Meanwhile, 1 in 5 faculty members openly admit to having discriminated against a grant proposal because it was perceived as conservative or "right-leaning," and slightly more than 1 in 10 faculty members say they have discriminated against conservatives on both paper submissions and promotions.

Perhaps the saddest story of a targeted tenured professor is that of University of North Carolina Wilmington criminology professor Mike Adams, whose struggles at the school spanned nearly 20 years. After Adams was denied tenure because of his conservative writing, he filed a successful lawsuit, which not only won him tenure but also resulted in an important 4th Circuit appeals court decision protecting academic freedom in five states. Nonetheless, last summer, Adams was pushed into early retirement after he tweeted a sarcastic comparison of COVID-19 restrictions to slavery. In the weeks that followed, he killed himself.

Of the 471 incidents mentioned above, most have come from the left of the targeted scholar. But 164 of them have come from the scholar's right. In fact, many of the efforts by conservatives to turn the tide on campus have mutated into approaches that look uncomfortably like the very speech codes they battled for decades.

In one case, researchers trying to determine whether liberals were becoming more comfortable with political violence were targeted by conservative author Todd Starnes, who insisted that a survey to discover student attitudes was equivalent to endorsing violence. In another case, the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party demanded that the University of Virginia investigate professor Larry Sabato for tweets that were critical of former President Donald Trump.

Across the country, conservatives trying to reduce the influence of campus-style identity politics have passed laws banning what they dub "critical race theory" (CRT), a catchall term for a constellation of ideas that encompass a certain perspective on race and its intersections with society. For most of its history, critical race theory was a niche area of study within the academy. But since the George Floyd protests of 2020, it has gone mainstream with the political left and become a villain to the political right.

The laws that Republican lawmakers have written in their effort to counter CRT are almost always unconstitutional as applied to higher education. What's more, they're likely to backfire. Giving campus administrators permission to get rid of professors who teach or subscribe to a particular ideology will almost always be used to get rid of dissenters. And conservatives who honestly express their opinions are, by definition, dissenters on most campuses today.

What's remarkable about this debate, asThe Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf has pointed out, is that the right and the left have swapped places. Two of CRT's leading thinkers, Richard Delgado and Mari Matsuda, were two of the strongest proponents of hate speech laws and campus speech codes in the '80s and '90s. And both have contributed to books with titles such asWords That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment. By relying on the idea that ideas are dangerous, the anti-CRT laws now being promoted by activists on the right are direct descendents of the speech policies long favored by Matsuda and Delgado.

Pennsylvania H.B. 1532 bans requiring "a student to read, view or listen to a book, article, video presentation, digital presentation or other learning material that espouses, advocates or promotes a racist or sexist concept" in public K-12 schooling and higher education and bans hosting or providing a venue for a speaker that "espouses, advocates or promotes any racist or sexist concept." Laws in Arkansas, Iowa, and Oklahoma ban courses that teach that "any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex"; bills in eight more states would impose the same language; and a federal bill referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform proposes restraining Washington, D.C., schools in the same way.

As with Matsuda and Delgado's work, the underlying notion is that some discomforting speechespecially speech that causes discomfort about race or genderis harmful and should be prohibited.

Defenders of anti-CRT laws usually concede that the legislation's language is overbroad and poorly crafted. Almost invariably, they then insist the laws' vagueness should be ignored because of the scale of the problem and because those crafting the laws are on the side of the angels. I have seen this exact same argument made for decades to defend speech codes aimed at addressing racism and sexism on campus: In the face of such a terrible problem, the specifics of the law don't matter; only the intentions do.

As anti-CRT laws have proliferated, many on the left suddenly became aware of how broad and vague speech codes can be used to punish ideologies, and educators, they are fond of. Meanwhile, many on the right suddenly began to embrace the same sorts of codes they had fought for decades, hoping such codes could be the weapon they've long needed in order to turn the ideological tide on campus.

True believers from across the political spectrum seem to believe that some weapons are good if they're wielded by the right people and bad if wielded by the wrong people. That's a problem that needs to be solved, lest campus culture become a tit-for-tat race to the proverbial gutter.

Amid the Second Great Age of Political Correctness,American higher education has become too expensive, too illiberal, and too conformist. It has descended into a period of profound crisis wrought by shifts in hiring, student development, and politically charged speech codes developed during the Ignored Years, when too few were paying attention. American campuses should be bastions of free expression and academic freedom. Instead, both are in decline.

We cannot afford to just give up on higher ed. College and university presidents can and should do the following five things:

Those who donate to colleges should refuse to do so without demanding these changes.

But we need to do more than reform our existing institutions. We need alternative models to traditional higher education.

In early November 2021, an upstart called the University of Austin announced the intention to create a new academic institution on the principles of radically open inquiry, civil discourse, and engagement with diverse perspectives. Publicly available information is sparse, but according to Pano Kanelos, the incoming president of the University of Austin and a former president of St. John's College, it plans to launch masters programs in 2022 and 2023 and an undergraduate program in 2024.

Meanwhile, Khan Academy is an online program where anyone can watch free, high-quality instructional videos on a variety of topics and receive an assessment of their abilities in return. Minerva University is an ambitious hybrid model offering brick-and-mortar facilities in San Francisco and several foreign cities and online instruction to students around the world. It focuses on teaching "critical wisdom" to top-tier students and claims to be more exclusive than the most elite colleges. It's not too hard to imagine a future in which employers value a mastery level from the Khan Academy or a degree from Minerva more than a degree from a middling traditional university.

The bottom line is that the opinions of professors and students should be ferociously protected, and that those who run universities must reject the idea that colleges and universities exist to impose orthodoxies on anyone. Over the past decade, too many academic institutions have grown used to promoting specific views of the world to incoming students.

Radical open-mindedness would be wildly out of place at most contemporary universities. Getting there will take substantial cultural and political change.

That starts with self-awareness. One lesson of the First Great Age of Political Correctness and the P.C. wars of the 1980s and '90s is that it was a huge mistake to think that because a movie likePCUskewered campus culture, the problem had already fixed itself. As a result, the problem was allowed to grow worse.

We can't make that mistake again. The ideal time for achieving real change in higher ed was 30 or even 40 years ago. The next best time is now.

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The Second Great Age of Political Correctness - Reason