When I was a teacher, many years ago, the Times Higher Education Supplement was on every staffroom table and was considered the voice of the progressive establishment. Perhaps I should not be surprised to see its modern incarnation, Times Higher Education, receive the sort of treatment that was once reserved for the tabloids when they got too nosey about people in power. Progressivism always has the progressivism of a generation ago among its prime targets. Jack Grove of Times Higher Education writes, “I was reported to police over Arday case. I was just doing my job”:

[…] I decided, on second thoughts, to take the voicemail at my desk, about 10 minutes away in Holborn.

I was shocked to hear it was from the Metropolitan Police, asking me to call them back. Why? Nothing remarkable had happened to me in the previous year. When I rang back the officer explained a complaint had been made against me regarding the University of Cambridge professor Jason Arday, but the matter was now closed.

But it was important, the officer explained, that I didn’t contact him again, because it was affecting his mental health.

However, I hadn’t emailed Arday in four months – my last direct email had been in September, offering formal right of reply to allegations that he had plagiarised his PhD.

That allegation was not made lightly: I had assembled a 63-page report which detailed how he had apparently used, without proper citation, huge chunks from a thesis written in 2009 by another student, Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, now a highly respected education academic at Brunel University of London. Further checks found passages that seemed to be lifted from the work of researchers based in the US, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere in the UK. In total, I submitted 97 pages of evidence to both Cambridge and Arday’s awarding institution, Liverpool John Moores University, for their investigation.

Serious allegations, certainly. Deeply embarrassing and distressing, definitely. Although Arday was eventually cleared of plagiarism by an LJMU review, a frenzy of coverage led to Cambridge opening an investigation into Arday’s academic record and CV, followed shortly afterwards by Arday announcing his resignation.

But were my inquiries grounds for a criminal complaint? That was hugely troubling to me as a reporter who specialises in examining issues of research integrity and ethics.

“We are Jason Arday,” say the Cambridge faculty.

They are all correct.

– Dinesh D’Souza

Peggy Noonan is not a columnist I agree with on everything but she seems at times to have a knack of getting to the nub of a trend, a cultural shift, or however else one wants to call it. She has this WSJ ($) article out about the socialists now pushing – successfully it seems – to take over control of the Democratic Party. It means that the US will at some point face an unappealing choice if, say, JD Vance, who appears to be quite hostile on the free market, is the Republican Party nominee. (For what it is worth, that’s not a foregone conclusion in my view.)

A few paragraphs:

Socialism is not a passing thing but an arriving thing. It must be taken seriously as a factor in our politics and the Democratic Party. A CNN/SSRS poll issued this week reported 34% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults identify as “democratic socialists.” That number won’t be depressed by the success of Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in Michigan on Tuesday by racking up huge margins in progressive enclaves and university towns.

Socialism’s most enthusiastic promoters are quick and clever—comparatively well-educated, very online. Their talent lies primarily in media, having been immersed in it from birth—the internet, its apps, its entertainment and information flow. They know all about how people get and absorb a feeling, an impression; they know how to produce a sensation, as opposed to a thought. One of the great tricks in life is to have a talent suited to your times, and they do.

I am sorry to say these democratic socialists  never strike me with their warmth, as, say, your great-uncle Billy was warm when he spoke about the Industrial Workers of the World. Today’s socialists strike me as colder, less human, fiercer and occasionally sociopathic. In general, they appear to have an idea of history rather than attachments to existing people and institutions. Most strike me not as people who love America and wish to make it better, but people ready to exploit its freedoms to build a movement that if successful would transform America’s fundamental nature. It will no longer be the freedom place but something else, and more common.

I think the lack of empathy and a sense of rootedness to the realities of most people is what will hopefully be fatal to these folk (consider that lout, Hasan Piker, with his apologetics and even open admiration for the Soviet Union, Mao and even N. Korea and his hatred of Israel). But the implosion of this trend is not a given. It has to be argued against, unpacked and exposed. My worry is that too few are doing it. (In Piker’s case, I see him as someone who is trying to be more and more disgusting and outrageous in pursuit of attention. However, there is a chance that he actually believes what he writes and says, and that he has gone psychotic, which is where I think the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are now these days.)

Noonan identifies what she thinks are three causal factors behind this resurgent socialism, or at least a desire by socialists to proclaim that is what they are, rather than use euphemisms:

A voter who is 25 was in grade school during the 2008 economic crash, and saw everything—frightened parents, lost jobs. In the years after, he saw bailouts and no one on Wall Street paying a price. It lessened his allegiance to the free-market economic system.

A voter who is 25 also sees AI rising, and wonders if the economy as it exists today has a place for him. Will he be able to afford a house someday? Widespread home ownership brings a feeling of investment, of stability and satisfaction. What does its absence bring?

The Cold War has receded as a living memory. The enforced communism and socialism of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact was a disaster—shortages, drabness, economic lifelessness. Censorship, secret police, all the bad things big unaccountable governments bring. That was long ago. “Socialism” now is a dream of Scandinavia—national healthcare, generous benefits, equal enjoyment of resources.

As religion recedes, politics takes its place. The young have been educated within a general framework of assumptions and language of the left—structures of power, oppressor groups, critical theory, intersectionality.

Towards the end of the article Noonan (a former speechwriter for Reagan), has this:

It’s our view here that free-market capitalism is organic and flows upward from the human person—man wants to build, trade, invent, provide for and rise, and he erects laws and a way of economic being that allows the realization of those desires. Economic freedom works with human nature. The rules and regulations it produces, the economic framework it creates, are like what Churchill said of democracy: the worst system except for all the others. Socialism is a more abstract and ideological vision of justice that doesn’t flow up but must be imposed from the top down. It isn’t based on the natural, or on man as he is; it’s a construct that involves coercion.

There is a problem with the Noonan article, however, which slightly taints it. I would dissent from saying that capitalism, or open market economy, is the “worst possible system except for all the others”, to borrow from Churchill, because I think that concedes too much to those who want to tap into the idealism of youth. That sort of perspective does not appeal to people with ideological fire in their belly. It also sells free market capitalism and several private property short. “The free market“ is a term that covers the idea of people using their skills and talents to obtain their wants and goals in voluntary interactions with their fellows, recognising that ownership of property – an extension of the of idea of humans as owning their own lives. This is not just the “least-worst” state of affairs. It is a positive, glowing, glorious good set of values to set out and defend. Defenders of the classical liberal tradition, to use that term, need to stop the throat-clearing urge to half-apologise for this worldview before getting going. When they do that, they’ve already lost people.

There is intriguing paragraph, regarding a biography of the French political figure Andre Malraux, about whom a biography has been written:

At a Gaullist campaign rally in 1968, Malraux put his finger on a weakness of conservative economic thought. “ ‘Capitalism’ does not carry us in its heart,” he said. By inference, it’s also hard to carry capitalism in your heart. It isn’t a great belief, only an economic system. Socialism is a belief, and it summons feeling. Capitalism is a thing of reason, a disadvantage in an age of sensation.

Definitely one of the better articles on what has been going on in the US, in my view.

When a thinker publicly changes his mind on major questions, neutral observers normally interpret it as a sign of courage and maturity. Almost no one enjoys admitting they were wrong — and “I changed my mind” is tantamount to “I was wrong.”

On reflection, however, this favorable interpretation is premature. Yes, changing your mind because you discover surprising new evidence or arguments is courageous and mature. But what if you change your mind for purely emotional reasons, like “The idea that murderers shouldn’t be punished started to disgust me”? Or because you have a falling out with friends who share your views? “My girlfriend dumped me, so I left the church.”

Neither of these intellectual paths even hints at courage or maturity.

The situation only slightly shifts if you change your mind because you “discover” blatantly obvious evidence or arguments. True, belatedly acknowledging the blatantly obvious is more courageous and mature than denying them in perpetuity. “I realized that if incomes were fully equal, it would be hard to hire garbage collectors” or “I now concede that people in the U.S. are richer than in Russia” are both intellectual improvements. Strategically, you might want to condescendingly praise such concessions as “courageous” and “mature.” But the brutally honest reaction, however, is “Why should I praise you for finally abandoning your childish nonsense?” Plus: “Now that you’ve confessed your propensity for terrible judgment on major questions, you should probably stop talking like an authority and spend some years humbly learning from those of us with better judgment.”

This is exactly my reaction when former socialists announce, “I stopped being a socialist because I realized that incentives matter.” Yes, incentives do matter, and it’s better to concede this fact than deny it. However, the fact that a person until recently denied this obvious truth remains damning. Since they exhibited awful judgment for years, their judgment probably remains poor. Until they proverbially “do the work” of mastering the obvious from those of us who knew that incentives matter all along, we shouldn’t take their further reflections seriously. And neither should they.

If you protest, “What a straw man! Smart socialists have long been aware that incentives matter,” I happily agree. But don’t commit the Straw Man Straw Man. Plenty of socialists really do deny that incentives matter. Some of them eventually recant. My point: Such former socialists clearly have terrible judgment. If you welcome them with open arms, it’s mercy, not justice.

You should have exactly the same reaction when former libertarians announce, “I stopped being a libertarian because I realized that culture matters.” Yes, culture does matter, and it’s better to concede this fact than deny it. However, the fact that a person until recently denied this obvious truth remains deeply damning. Since they exhibited terrible judgment for years, their judgment probably remains poor. Until they proverbially “do the work” of mastering the obvious from those of us who knew that culture matters all along, we shouldn’t take their further reflections seriously. And neither should they.

If you protest, “What a straw man! Smart libertarians have long been aware that culture matters,” I once again happily agree. In fact, a large majority of libertarians have been aware that culture matters for as long as I can remember. But once again, we should avoid the Straw Man Straw Man. A minority of libertarians really are oblivious to the role of culture. A minority of this minority eventually recants their libertarianism on cultural grounds. And when they do, the right lesson to draw is not, “Heed well the words of these visionaries!” but “These people are self-confessed fools.”

You could reply, “You’re just name-calling. Address their arguments.” But as I’ve often insisted, life is too short to address more than a tiny fraction of all arguments, so wise thinkers apportion their attention based on speakers’ track records. To admit that you’ve spent years mired in elementary errors is to admit that the world is right to spend years ignoring what you have to say next. Instead of trying to swiftly regain the limelight, accept that given your poor track record, you need to rebuild your intellectual credibility brick by boring brick.

Imagine someone tells you, “I stopped being a libertarian because I realized the sky is blue.” Your reaction shouldn’t be, “Wow, libertarians are a bunch of fools.” Your reaction should be, “The speaker is a fool.” He’s not just a fool because he spent so many years denying the blueness of the sky. He’s a fool for failing to realize that most libertarians always accepted the blueness of the sky. He’s a fool for failing to understand that liberty and blue skies are compatible. And he’s a fool for thinking that correcting his elementary errors makes him epistemically worthy of attention. Sure, you might humor the speaker to be polite, or to encourage others like him to admit that the sky is blue. But remember that the main thing he’s managed to do is leap from one error to a pile of other errors.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A committee from the United States Senate announced today that they were finally joining the rest of the nation in holding Anthony Fauci in contempt.

HOLLYWOOD, CA — A defunct Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket crashed into a Hollywood sound stage on Wednesday night, leaving an enormous crater almost 75 feet wide.