“Racism” and American Cultural Decline

If words could explode one of them would be “racism.” Like a real explosion, this word serves no purpose but destruction.

Used over a century ago by communists to disparage regnant European (Western) bourgeois values, the accusation of “racism” has recently been deployed to demonize minor offences, intentions, preferences, even thoughts. You’re a “racist” if someone alleged to have once heard you utter an imprecation on the basketball court; you’re a “racist” if you want to live in a low-crime suburb; you’re a “racist” if you prefer metal to hip-hop; you’re especially a “racist” if you are skeptical about that ill-defined concept called “diversity” on college campuses, or the value in society of race-based preferential treatment, a.k.a. “affirmative action.”

Nowadays, you don’t actually have to do anything to be called a “racist.” Unlike the convicted rapist the alleged “racist” is often a person who someone, or some organization, doesn’t like. Someone once said a “racist” is someone with whom a liberal is losing an argument.

What do “racists” actually say or do? Probably nothing to merit such a malicious label unless, of course, what they say or do is just made up. Consider the incident with radio celebrity Rush Limbaugh, who tried to become part-owner of the NFL’s St. Louis Rams. Labeled a virulent racist and hater, he was prevented by a smear campaign led by Al Sharpton and, disturbingly, the NFL player’s union boss, DeMaurice Smith. The inconvenient truth: Limbaugh’s alleged “racist” statements were fabricated. In Limbaugh’s own words, his “controversial” racial views amounted to his “belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to race.” Sorry, Mr. Limbaugh, a compassionate and logical counter-argument won’t work. And no amount of bowing and scraping, wallowing, groveling, begging or pleading will help.

This is why crying “racism” to invoke Collective White Guilt is such fiendishly brilliant strategy.

White Guilt has given the “racist” label weapon its power. Who in his right mind wants to be called such names? Who are The Guilty, you ask? They include hundreds of millions of European-Americans, whose English, German, Italian, Greek, Polish, French, Scottish, Irish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Swiss, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian,… ancestors never profited one iota by Negro slave ownership or, indeed, had never seen blacks before they immigrated to the USA. In a stunning feat of historical disingenuousness, racial demagogues and shakedown artists have lumped them with a small caste of long-dead Southern slave-owners and labeled them “racists.” Their descendents, many of whom gave their lives to protect our freedoms, including some 15,000 Sons of Michigan in the Civil War, are now characterized on college campuses and in society as “oppressors,” “bigots,” and “haters.”

Frederick Douglass, born a slave, said “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” Part of “doing right” is to discuss all of the facts, no matter how inconvenient or politically incorrect they may be. As a member of the Conservative Faculty and Staff at Michigan State University (cfsatmsu@gmail.com) I concur with this sentiment. We should honor the contributions of all Americans who strive to propagate and advance the ideals and virtues of our culture and civilization.

Conversely, we should take a hard, clear-eyed and truthful look when persons use explosive accusations like “racism” either for their own financial gain or to smear their opponents in order to terminate discussion. No surer way exists for guaranteeing the destruction of civility, human amity and the dispassionate rationality required for good public policy and, indeed, for the propagation of civilization itself.

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I. S. Wichman is a professor at the Michigan State Department of Mechanical Engineering

The Need for a New Approach To Climate-Change Science (and climate-change reporting)

By: Fred Fico

The goal of science is to gain enough understanding of causal interconnections so that we can make deliberate changes in those connections to produce desirable outcomes for our lives. Climate Science, however, has evidenced a toxic quality in the “climate-gate” and “glacier-gate” scandals that has undermined its credibility and distorted the journalism reporting climate change.

The disaster for science and public confidence occurs when the scientists themselves cannot agree on the “facts,” when data are manipulated to support theories, and, more fundamentally, when the data themselves are withheld from scrutiny. So some explicit and transparent rules for conduct by climate scientists are necessary to produce both quality science and to restore the public confidence in such science if it is to underlay public policy decisions.

First, data, especially “raw” data, must always be shared and open to public inspection. In fact, both those who believe in human-caused global warming and those who most deny it should come together to inspect these data in order to best expose shortcomings and agree on the appropriate measures of climate change.

Second, all attempts to alter the peer-reviewed journal process that validates scientific research as competent must be stopped. The peer-review process depends on the anonymity of the researcher to the reviewers and the anonymity of the reviewers to the researchers. It is obvious from the East Anglia ”climate-gate” scandal that both researchers and reviewers compromised this process, resulting in the appearance if not the reality of a major breach in the process meant to validate the competence of climate-change research.

Third, scientists who may have hidden data (“climate-gate”) to buttress some research hypothesis or misrepresented it for political purposes (“glacier-gate”) should be appropriately disciplined. The special problem with such behavior in Climate Science is that the public policy stakes are very, very high. Climate change legislation and regulation should never be made on the basis of poor or biased science.

Moreover, the journalists who have been reporting Climate Science also need to consider the implications of these scandals for their own conduct.

Most fundamentally, if the peer-review process has been compromised in the Climate Science journals, then the only scientific basis on which journalists have chosen Climate Science sources to interpret research has also been compromised. Journalists need to make sure that journals employ proper peer-review procedures for validating the research of scientists they choose to interview.

But even with properly validated climate-science research, journalists need to look to the science rather than to the scientists for the basis for their reporting. First, “consensus” among scientists is no more a valid route to what’s true than consensus in any other area. Second, reporters should look more than they do to the science itself. Scientific work identifies hypotheses whose predictions enable assessment of the goodness of Climate Change models, and the conclusions sections of studies identify shortcomings as well as successes in this effort. Journalists must be familiar enough with actual studies to probe scientists more carefully not just on the implications of their work but also on the limitations of their work.

Related to this, journalists need to realize that science sources, like other sources, can and will “spin” what they tell journalists, especially when their money and prestige are at stake. Certainly, the East Anglia emails indicate the creators of the climate-change models privately had more doubt about the precision and reliability of those models than they publicly expressed. And the “glacier-gate” scandal illuminates deliberate attempts to influence publicity and opinion. And the admission of blatantly political motives to influence opinion on the part of the scientist involved in “glacier-gate” should give any journalist pause.

Finally, journalists need to remember to “follow the money” as part of their effort to find out what Climate Science targets. The grants in Climate Science are as much on the side of affirming man-made climate change as is the money on the opposing side of the debate. Reporters have been correctly been concerned about “industry” money biasing science; that concern must be balanced when it comes to the “government” money on the other side.

Both science and journalism seek to better understand reality. Science must take a skeptical view of theories in order to make them better at knowing and explaining that reality. Journalism would better inform citizens by restoring its skepticism in reporting the climate-change debate.

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Fred Fico is the Chair of Conservative Faculty and Staff at Michigan State University, he is also a Journalism professor.