Mencius Moldbug continues his disquisition on progressivism.

The great power center of 2008 is the Cathedral. The Cathedral has two parts: the accredited universities and the established press. The universities formulate public policy. The press guides public opinion. In other words, the universities make decisions, for which the press manufactures consent. It’s as simple as a punch in the mouth.

Government is not a science because it is impractical to construct controlled experiments in government. Uncontrolled or “natural” experiments are not science. Any process which is not science, but claims to be science, or claims that its results exhibit the same objective robustness we ascribe to the scientific process, has surely earned the name of pseudoscience. Thus it is not at all excessive to describe 20th-century “public policy” as a pseudoscience. A good sanity check is the disparity between its predictions and its achievements.

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Why? Because it’s conclusions are Politically Incorrect, of course.

The board had delayed an April vote to approve the report after concerns were raised that findings were based on subjective measures, such as elementary report card data, and that they would fuel negative stereotypes.

Board member Phillip A. Niedzielski-Eichner (Providence) said yesterday that he plans to propose at a June 19 meeting that a vote on the report be postponed indefinitely.

Don’t like the facts you find? Sweep them under a rug and push on. That’s the government way.

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And where was the Washington Post when Mugabe was installed as President by the “international community”, including Bishop Tutu, thirty years ago? You know where.

Boy, it’s a good thing that Zimbabwe isn’t suffering under that oppressive white regime any more, isn’t it?

George Will points out that our government is keeping gas prices artificially high.

One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling there. One million barrels produce 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel. Seventy-two of today’s senators — including Schumer, of course, and 38 other Democrats, including Barack Obama, and 33 Republicans, including John McCain — have voted to keep ANWR’s estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil off the market.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Must be Global Warming. Wake up AlGore.

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Looks like they may have.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Boy, those Zimbabweans are sure lucky they no longer live under a repressive white regime.

Bet they really appreciate all the U.N has done for them.

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A new Crusade might be in order here.

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Smile for the camera, son.

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The United States owes a federal shield law not only to American journalists but to journalists around the world.

And it just gets sillier from there.

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Note that the author has stumbled upon an inconvenient truth — that the state’s case, although nominally about individual cases of abuse, is actually an attempt to persecute a “sect” under color of law.

The only safe place to be any more is working for the government. Better to be the hammer than the nail.

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SO over….

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It’s amazing how leftoids don’t like rules when it’s their ox being gored (no pun intended – I think).

For at least one priest, Kmiec’s support for a pro-choice politician made him a willing participant in a grave moral evil.

Well, duh. It has been the constant position of the Catholic church that abortion is murder. Supporting a politician who advocates freedom of abortion is morally equivalent to supporting a politician who advocates freedom to murder.

Would Cohen feel different if communion were denied to a politician who supported lynching black people? You know he would. Of course, he would whine that the situations weren’t comparable. Perhaps for him they aren’t. But for a Catholic, they are, and always have been.

Murder is murder. If supporting politicians who advocate freedom to murder isn’t “a grave moral evil”, then I don’t know what is.

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No wonder they’re still Communist.

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Apparently, no more so than we otherwise would be.

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Trust the Australians to have a name for it. “Cowgirl” just doesn’t have the same ring.

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Save the trees! Lay a carpet!

Be the first on your block to pick a side in this exciting new conflict.

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Imagine what would happen if a civilized country tried to do that to Muslims.

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It’s a good thing that we’ve got the U.N. and all those human rights groups, isn’t it?

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The site is Vegans of Color.

So the semester ended for me here at Vassar, and as all the seniors moved out of their on-campus apartments they threw out a lot food. So my friends and I did the reasonable thing for a bunch of broke students who are working on campus during the summer– we grabbed our backpacks and hit the dumpsters.

I am not making this up.

I don’t think it’s a parody site, but….

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This is your future under Islam. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

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Ponder this scenario, offered by the National Cultural Values Survey: “You lose your job. Your friend’s company is looking for someone to do temporary work. They are willing to pay the person in cash to avoid taxes and allow the person to still collect unemployment. What would you do?” Almost half, or 49 percent, of self-described progressives would go along with the scheme, but only 21 percent of conservatives said they would. When the World Values Survey asked a similar question, the results were largely the same: Those who were very liberal were much more likely to say it was all right to get welfare benefits you didn’t deserve.

Doesn’t surprise me.

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When the nation’s premier newspaper welcomes those who are breaking the law and denigrates those who attempt to uphold the law, then I suggest it is indeed time to panic.

Note what is not said: None of these problems would exist if these people had just stayed home. And the problems would disappear if they would go back where they came from. I have no sympathy for those who create problems for themselves by doing unlawful things — and, according to all the data I’ve seen, a lot of Americans agree.

On the other hand, perhaps this is an encouraging sign that enforcement is working. We can hope.

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Ponder the role of those whose shops involve no sweat.

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And ponder just who wants to turn the U.S. system into the European system. Hint: For whom would that change be better? You? Or AlGore?

Remember: Me and my chauffer can use the HOV lane.

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1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in Chicago.

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Give some to Nancy Pelosi — she’s the worst pickle-puss I’ve seen in ages.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

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DNA samples extracted from 3,000-year-old human hair excavated in Greenland indicate that the first humans to live in the far north were migrants from East Asia and were unrelated to Native Americans or the ancestors of modern Eskimos.

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Savor the irony of Black Panthers participating in a rally to protest violence. I guess we can expect the Saudi royal family to start investing in pork futures next.

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By far, the easiest way to befriend a large group of white people is to organize and then participate in a game that is normally played by children.

Forming cliques and backstabbing people, for example.

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One of the UK’s current favourites, according to a recent survey, is Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

No wonder Britain is falling apart.

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His top showed the Transformers film character Optimus Prime holding a gun.

I’m convinced that these people do this sort of absurd stuff just to amuse themselves, and don’t really care that it makes them look like pettifogging morons.

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Hey, whatever works.

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Wonder whether they ground him up and molded him into a body shape first.

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Of course, being the New York Times, he thinks this is a bad thing. Of course, being the New York Times, it doesn’t even cross his radar that continuing state spending at its current levels might be part of the problem.

Most of the “bad” in “bad economy” is because of government spending on top of stupid government energy decisions. But not, of course, to the New York Times.

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Doesn’t seem like something that I’d care to eat, but that’s just me.

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Well, it can’t be “the recession”, since there isn’t one. Wonder what it could be?

Gee, seems to me that Mark Steyn wrote a book about this not too long ago….

And since when do leftoids care about low birth rate? I thought that they were all worried about overpopulation?

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A real moral dilemma for the Church of Gaia.

Pardon me while I snigger…..

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A vast government effort to bring oysters back to the Chesapeake Bay has turned out so dismally that it has the ring of a math-class riddle. How do you spend $58 million to get more of something and wind up with less of it?

I’m glad they have nothing more important to do with that money.