Reality Beats PC
The real world fights back against misconceptions about the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of political correctness.
Big Science and Big Media continue their cozy relationship with leftist and libertarian groups that advocate free thinking, free loving, and freedom from moral restraint. That’s clear from a Science Daily piece that claims “School sex education often negative, heterosexist, and out of touch,” according to “researchers” who think teachers should promote the sexual revolution. Another piece on Medical Xpress advocates “lifting the stigma” on bisexual men and “mixed-orientation relationships,” portraying them as normal and happy. A third piece on Medical Xpress thinks people shouldn’t assume terrorists are mentally ill because that puts a stigma on them and on others who don’t like being called that.
Sometimes, though, facts don’t care about political correctness.
Youth crimes spike immediately after drinking age (Science Daily): The statistics don’t lie. “As soon as youth are given legal access to alcohol, there are immediate effects on their involvement in police-reported criminal behaviours,” a study author says. Alcohol takes a toll on the heart as well as the brain; see “Alcohol’s Toll on the Heart: Bigger, Not Better” (Live Science).
Guaranteed-tuition laws inflating college costs, study finds (Science Daily): Free college? Sounds like a great leftist political plank. But, “Guaranteed-tuition laws, touted by lawmakers as protecting college affordability and ensuring access to higher education for low-income students, have received failing grades from two experts in higher education finance.”
4 Hours in Huntington: how the heroin epidemic choked a city (Medical Xpress): What happens when people get easy access to drugs? This article begins with horror stories from Huntington, then says, “The string of mass poisonings stretched across Appalachia and the Midwest.” Drug overdoses, suicide, crime, poverty and chaos are plaguing communities with lax drug laws and enforcement.
Strong alcohol policies can help prevent suicide (Medical Xpress): Why hinder people from their own pursuit of happiness? Suicide is not exactly a happy ending to a potential life. “There is clear evidence that intoxication and chronic, heavy drinking are often associated with suicide,” a new study shows.
AI can join the fight back against the post-truth world (New Scientist): This article is clearly biased. Republicans and conservatives are the targets for accusations of lying, despite all the publicity about Clinton’s lifetime record of mendacity. That’s par for the course in New Scientist, an atheist publication that routinely bashes everything conservative and exalts Darwinism. What the editors yearn for, however, is truth. How exactly did that evolve?
Homeschooling Is on the Rise: Here’s Why (Live Science): A “teacher educator” tries to explain the rapid rise in home schooling. He notices that it’s not solely a movement among evangelical conservatives. Kyle Greenwit of Michigan State rightly says that home schooling was the norm in early America, but he seems to miss a main reason: parental dissatisfaction with failing public government schools and their slavish protection of teacher unions that results in American public schools spending the most per student but getting the lowest grades. Is he observing the effects and not the cause?
Unintended consequences of creating the world’s first semisynthetic organism (PhysOrg): Big Science wants no restrictions on research, including ethically-controversial procedures. If you can’t trust scientists, whom can you trust? This article about research with artificial base pairs in the genetic code reports a surprise: the artificial codons subjected cells to more UV damage. “Overall, the results illustrate the complexities involved in the ways that making even a small modification to an organism’s genetic code may have far-reaching and unforeseen consequences for the entire organism.”
Entitlement—a damning recipe for happiness (Medical Xpress): Left-leaning organizations and politicians are characterized by big government programs offering more entitlements to people. Does that make people happier? No, says a new study: “Entitlement—a personality trait driven by exaggerated feelings of deservingness and superiority—may lead to chronic disappointment, unmet expectations and a habitual, self-reinforcing cycle of behavior with dire psychological and social costs, according to new research by Case Western Reserve University.”
Look at the contrary values that emerge from the above stories: (1) responsibility, (2) frugality and thriftiness, (3) self-control, (4) faith, (5) unselfishness, (6) truthfulness, (7) responsible parenting, (8) caution, (9) humility, and (10) gratitude. Those sound pretty old fashioned. They may not be politically correct. They’re just correct.