Founded in 1660, the Royal Society is one of the most prominent scientific organizations in the world with associations to such luminaries as Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. Despite that proud history, British scientists are pushing to politicize the society and expel Elon Musk because they disagree with his political views. It is not simply anti-intellectual but self-destructive for a society committed to the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
Few individuals in history have had a more pronounced impact on scientific and technological advances than Musk. His work on Space X alone has reshaped space technology. The upcoming mission to rescue the stranded scientists only highlights his transformative role and that of his company.
However, more than 2,700 scientists have signed an open letter that cited his public attacks on figures such as Anthony Fauci. They also noted that ‘The situation is rendered more serious because ‘Mr. Musk now occupies a position within a Trump administration in the USA that has over the past several weeks engaged in an assault on scientific research in the US that has fallen foul of federal courts.’”
It is unclear what cases are being referenced, since there have been several rulings against efforts to enjoin DOGE and Musk. More importantly, such litigation has only just begun. Whether the challengers or the Administration have “fallen foul” is yet to be determined.
Others made it clear that they simply disagree with Musk’s views.
Professor Dorothy Bishop, a University of Oxford psychologist, resigned earlier from the society, stating “I just feel far more comfortable to be dissociated from an institution that continues to honour this disreputable man.”
Others accused Musk of spreading “disinformation,” a much-abused category in the United Kingdom as a basis for censorship.
Many of these scientists seem selective in their outrage. I do not recall the Royal Society rushing to the defense of the many scientists who were fired or silenced over their dissenting views on COVID-19.
That includes the lab theory that led to scientists being denounced as conspiracy theorists or racists. Now, federal agencies agree that the theory is legitimate and indeed favored by some offices.
Some experts questioned the efficacy of surgical masks, the scientific support for the six-foot rule and the necessity of shutting down schools. The government has now admitted that many of these objections were valid and that it did not have hard science to support some of the policies. While other allies in the West did not shut down their schools, we never had any substantive debate due to the efforts of this alliance of academic, media and government figures.
Not only did millions die from the pandemic, but the United States is still struggling with the educational and mental health consequences of shutting down all our public schools. That is the true cost of censorship when the government works with the media to stifle scientific debate and public disclosures.
There is an alternative. The Royal Society could confine its review to the scientific contributions of figures like Musk. The subjectivity of this criticism should be antithetical to a scientific organization. Science is ideally a field that transcends political, social, and religious divisions. Few figures in history have advanced the cause of space travel and green technology as Musk.
I hope the Royal Society will decline to engage in such political exclusions, but I am hardly hopeful. However, in carrying out this expulsion, they will do far more harm to their society than to Elon Musk.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
In the Master and Commander series by Patrick O’Brian, set in the Napoleonic Wars, one of the main characters, Dr Maturin, traveled to France multiple times to attend Royal Society lectures. Even during the war between Great Britain and France, scientists still exchanged ideas with one another. This was during a time period when the torture of prisoners still occurred, and debtors went to prison.
I had assumed that modern society had evolved, but it appears I was wrong.
Karen S
The Master and Commander stories and Dr Maturin are entirely fictional.
The stories are not real.
They are made up.
Unfortunately, as a MAGA cult member you are completely disconnected from reality.
You live in a bizarre fantasy world.
I suggest you seek professional mental health advice.
The napolianic wars are not fiction. One of the things about historical fiction is that unless you accurately depict the rest of the time period it is completely fake and inauthentic and people sense that.
The fact that the lead characters and the events that happen specifially to them are fiction does not mean the historical context is not.
I would suggest that you might want to think more about your own views.
Just because you beleive someone is wrong about ONE thing, they are not wrong about everything.
Even when you can PROVE someone is wrong about one thing – does not mean they are wrong about everything.
As usual John Say drifts off into utterly irrelevant tangential thoughts that demonstrate his disordered thinking.
He is just as deluded as Karen.
The inability to distinguish fact from fiction is a universal feature of cults in general, and the MAGA cult in particular.
John Say seems to think that because the Napoleonic Wars were real, then the fictional portrayal of the characters in Master and Commander must also be real.
This is the kind of delusional “logic” employed by cult members
There is absolutely no evidence that the fictional account is accurate, and Say does not present any evidence.
As in all cults, unsupported assertions carry the weight of truth as long as they are consonant with the beliefs of the cult.
Does this mean Megladon and Mermaids aren’t real? The Obama rewriting of history campaign says they were, so it must be true! It was on Discovery channel, it has to be true…let me ask my 227 different gender group MAGA people.
Anonymous – I posted a link to a paper that discussed the exchange of ideas and who we would now call scientists between the academic societies of Great Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars. See above.
“Delusional.” You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Karen seems appropriate.
I suggest you seek professional mental health advice.
The Democrat psychiatric patient in the forensic mental institution that is their own mind is here to claim it is all the doctors and institution caretakers looking after it are the crazy ones – it’s the only sane person in its mind as it Speaks Its Democrat Truths.
Anonymous:
Why would you claim I thought this series was non fiction, when I referred to characters, and set in the Napoleonic Wars?
Patrick O’Brian’s mastery of British Naval Warfare, history, and even esoteric knowledge about Catalonia has earned him numerous accolades. His description of the battles were often drawn from direct contemporary accounts. He played with the timeline for his plot points, the characters were fictional, but the historical backdrop was authentic. There was an established protocol for a naturalist or other learned profession to get permission to visit the other country’s academic society.
Here is a paper on the exchange of ideas and scientists between Britain’s Royal Society, and France’s L’Académie des Sciences during the Napoleonic Wars, among other hostilities.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250902447_Relationships_between_the_Royal_Society_and_the_Academie_des_Sciences_in_the_late_eighteenth_century
“Harmonious relations and scientific exchange between Britain and France in the eighteenth century were undermined by a succession of wars. Nevertheless, The Royal Society and the Paris Academy of Sciences succeeded in a fairly consistent exchange of scientific news and publications, with intermittent visits by scientists. Joseph Banks PRS claimed that the sciences were never at war. Election to honorary membership of the other society also helped strengthen relationships. A proposal for cooperation in the reform of weights and measures was halted in 1791 by political events in France.”
Elon Musk is demonstrably the single most productive human in memory on this planet.
Leonardo da Vinci
He just cut off social security benefits to thousands of Revolutionary War veterans. The nerve!
It’s worse than that. Elon Musk’s team is cutting off the veterans’ benefits of Benedict Arnold. AOC chimed in today on this recent relevation. “It’s shameful that Trump and Musk are slashing Benedict Arnold’s veteran benefits. Those benefits were earned going back to 1780. This is America and it’s a travesty that his benefits were slashed merely because Trump and Musk disagree with Arnold’s politics,” Cortez commented.
Just watch the Putin-lovers, aka Trump-the-rapist supporters, reply by denigrating Zelensky and praising Putin. Or, just offering something moronic. Mark it down, there won’t be a single reply offering a cogent and intelligent defense of Trump’s words.
It must really suck to know that nobody’s listening to your unhinged rants.
You just did.
So obviously you are wrong.
COGENT and INTELLIGENT LIKE YOURS ANON? han ha nha ha ha
Are you prepared to fight in Ukraine yourself ? If so – then please go, quickly because they need you NOW.
Are you prepared to send your sons and daughters to ukraine NOW ?
If you are not – the rest of this is moot. There is no hope for a better outcome for ukraine without more soldiers,
Russia will win a war of attrition – and that is what we have. It will be bloody with corpses stacked high.
Three times as many of them will be russian. But Russia will still prevail.
The only other option is to negotiate peace. And Ukraine has ZERO leverage. Europe has a small amount of leverage – they can send soldiers.
But that is ALL that Europe has to offer in a negotiation and there is no evidence they are willing to do that.
The US has significant leverage. It is possible that Trump vcan get NK to cut off Russias supply of artilery shells – that MIGHT tip the balance to Ukraine, But only the US and possibly only Trump can do that.
Next ONLY the US can rebuild Russia’s oil infrastructure which has been greatly damaged by this war. And that is beyond the Nordstream and beyond the fascilities damaged by Ukraine. The reduced oil sales have resulted in Arctic or subarctic oil wells shutting down. They are very difficult to restart – and no one in the world but the US can do that.
Only the US can allow Russia back into the global trade markets and the global financial markets.
It is highly unlikely that is enough to get Russia to leave the eastern Oblasts and Crimea.
But it is all the leverage that there is.
Whether you like it or not, Putin has to receive an offer and/or credible threats that he is willing to take.
You can rant all you want, but failing to get peace now – means 10,000 more people dying every day with the near inevitable result of a Ukrainian loss.
Biden should not have killed the deal that was negotiated in May of 2022.
All the lives lost since then all the money wasted is on Democrats.
Biden wanted to be the guy who beat Putin.
Instead Biden is gone and Putin is still arround.
Negotiating a deal means having something to credibly threaten or something to offer that the other side wants.
What do you have ?
Butch and Sunny are not stranded, their ride home has been docked to the station since Crew 9 arrived (and if needed, they could have flown back with Crew 8).
NASA decided to have them stay and come back with Crew 9, which is supposed to be after Crew 10 arrives. The brand new Dragon that was supposed to fly Crew 10 has been delayed a couple of months for NASA certification, but thanks to reusing their Dragons, when it became a higher priority to get them back soon, SpaceX was able to substitute a different Dragon for the one still going through certification.
The whole ‘stranded’ narrative is a media hoax, shame on Elon (and Jared, the new NASA Administrator) for not correcting Trump when he fell for it.
ONLY supposed to be there a short time. The Boeing craft(broken) was not able to bring them back as scheduled. GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT ANON!!!!!!!!!!!
Elon Musk is restoring “Public Trust” with every reveal of the spent appropriations made. What his team found at the Social Security Agency was the: Last Straw, The AH-Ha Moment, The I Knew it, and I told You So, confirmation we all knew but did have the position or means to prove it. Evey bit of the Government needs to be on the ‘Chopping Block’, no stone un-turned. The Military branches will be the largest violators of these appropriations. ” They betrayed the Public’s Trust ”
All of Them, both sides of the Isle. Biden, Ms. Clinton, Obama, the ABC Departments, every single Branch of Government has fiscally ” Betrayed the Public’s Trust “.
-It’s Your Money they spent and Your Trust they Broke.-
https://www.undp.org/blog/corruption-criminal-immoral-and-ultimate-betrayal-public-trust
“Elon Musk is restoring “Public Trust” with every reveal of the spent appropriations made.”
Hopefully the upcoming audit of the gold in Ft. Knox will help restore public confidence, although if the gold is not there, the potential exists to detonate what little confidence in government that remains. Regardless of the outcome, this is a question to which we really need the answer. Kudos to the Trump administration for committing to so this so quickly.
Trump administration will check Fort Knox to ensure the ‘gold is there’
https://justthenews.com/events/trump-administration-will-check-fort-knox-ensure-gold-there
“There have been conspiracy theories around the gold and whether or not it is at Fort Knox. President Donald Trump says his administration will audit the gold reserves that are kept at Fort Knox in Kentucky.
“We’re going to go to Fort Knox, the fabled Fort Knox, to make sure the
gold is there,” Trump said Wednesday”
Musk has placed logistics directors at many National Guard posts on probation with the intent of building cases with them to find cause to fire them. The South African who’s billions came not from the private market selling products but through the financial teat of the gub’ment, knows how to run a military installation? No, he’s an idiot.
MUSK IS A GENIUS – ANON is the idiot!!!
The point of the comment is that “Public Officials as Fiduciaries” Laws were broken by these Bureaucrats, Officials, and Employees. Each and Everyone of them has a duty to uphold to the People of the United States. They have violated these responsibilities by failing their Governmental Duties and broken the Public’s Trust, as well as the Constitutional Social contract of the United States (Their Employer).. Wherefore the Law shall be applied and just rules be served upon them (Termination).
In his 1981 inaugural address, President Regan famously said “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
Well, just thinking about how the society treated Faraday and Harrison…
This, like similarly sad reports on the goings on in our ridiculous ‘west’, now very common, remind me of being pecked to death by a chicken. In isolation, the petition to remove Mr. Musk from the Royal Society is of relatively little importance to our civilization. Most of us will have all but forgotten about this in a day or two, but a million similar matters ‘of relatively little importance’ collectively do matter.
I’m not a highly educated, and have at best modest intelligence, but I can read the signs of a civilization in decline. When 2,700+ people with the qualifications necessary to be admitted to the (once) prestigious Royal Society have become so narrow-minded as to petition for the removal of a member for such ridiculous and trivial reasons, it can’t bode well.
Well, I am going home early, because it is another super cold night, and I have to make sure the dogs are taken care of, and I have plenty of firewood in the carport. Well, it’s kind of a carport, but more like a small pole barn maybe? Whatever, there is a firewood pile there close to the back door where it can stay dry. Anyway, I started a Parody Song today for all the so-called scientists and liars out there: To the Tune of Bob Dylan’s, Everybody Must Get Stoned –
Everybody Can Be Bought!
A Parody Song by Squeeky From
Well, they’ll fool you when they’re teaching you in class!
They’ll fool you blowing smoke right up your ass!
They’ll fool you when they go on CNN!
They’ll fool you once, and then fool you again!
But I would not get so overwrought!
Cause everybody can be bought!
They’ll tell you Biden is sharp as a tack!
Once they do, they never take it back!
Til Biden gets on air and acts senile –
Then they flip to plausible denial!
But do not get to feeling sooo distraught!
Cause everybody can be bought!
They’ll tell you that your car is killing Earth!
And that you’re better off not giving birth!
But they will go and buy a private jet,
While they’re hoping you will just forget!
But in their webs, I hope you don’t get caught!
Cause everybody can be bought!
They’ll tell you that the ocean’s gonna rise!
And every Polar Bear and Penguin dies!
In every single school, that’s what they teach
But then they build a house out on a beach!
But do not let your dreams all come to nought!
Cause everybody can be bought!
☺
Love your posts, Squeeky! They have a homey feel to them and contain great parodies. 😃 🐕
Thank you!!! I am glad you enjoyed it!
That was amazing! Let me try to add a verse or two, if I may!
They’ll tell you Elon Musk is just a tool!
And Donald Trump, well he’s a Fascist fool!
Here’s how you know that they are full of dreck!
‘Cause USAID gave them a check!
Isn’t that exactly what you thought?
‘Cause everybody can be bought!
Schiff and Raskin, they got pardons, too!
Makes you wonder just what did they do?
Was it Treason, or just misdirection?
Did they try to foment Insurrection?
What a shame, those two did not get caught!
But everybody can be bought!
California Newsome does it too!
Blaming all the fires on C O 2!
All the dough he wasted on that train,
Could have built some dams to hold the rain!
But he will do his best to dodge the fault,
‘Cause everybody can be bought!
(That was a lot harder to do than what I thought!)
Excellent!
Hi Floyd!!! That was a very good job you did!
Hold “Space X accountable for its slip slod safety violations and the mid-air explosions of its rockets.”
That’s how the slimy Left conducts a smear campaign. Pick a problem (real or imagined). Broadcast and amplify it (as the stooges here do).
Then evade the fact that Musk and SpaceX are about to rescue two astronauts stuck in space for some 8 months.
Those are the vultures pecking away at Prometheus.
Trump lies worse than catastrophic diarrhea.
Blah, blah, blah. You need to find a new routine. This one wore out a while back.
He hasn’t done anything wrong.
This entire hate campaign against him from the left is a construct of their own, the irony being they’re the ones always posting memes and wearing slogans saying they won’t give in to hate.
Yet here they are, .. launching a campaign of pure smear and hatred against Musk for absolutely no reason other than he decided Trump was a better option than Joe Biden.
What else has he done wrong?
He’s so competent and capable that our own government relies on him to launch our space equipment including communication and defense satellites, shuttles, etc.
Our governments calling on him along with our people to RESCUE our STRANDED astronauts, because our govt (under Biden) wasn’t capable of doing anything themselves, they had to rely on Elon Musk’s creations. And they still do.
He employs thousands and thousands of citizens, providing jobs and livelihoods to so many.
Yet here is the insane smear campaign where they get the lemmings on the left to start chanting in unison how they “don’t want Musk having access to our data”.
Are you kidding me? I mean are these people dolts?
He OWNS THE SATELLITES YOU ARE CONNECTING TO! He can see EVERYTHING already if he wants to. Everything you do you do on your phone, he has unfettered access to ALL that data already, and has for years.
Seriously you people really are stupid if you think him having access to Social Security somehow “jeopardizes” you.
And where do you dolts get off in the first place accusing him of being untrustworthy to access the info?
He can run the MILITARY AND DEFENSE SATELLITES AND ALL THE GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS but you’re afraid of him seeing you Social Security number?
Think about the idiotic contortions of logic some fool would have to craft just to make such a ridiculous stretch. I mean hundreds of thousands of govt workers have access to that data DAILY, right down to the IT guys, most of whom are CONTRACTORS not even working directly for the govt.
So WHY would it suddenly be this national crisis that Musk has READ ONLY access to view Social Security records?
Where is this fake umbrage and urgency being initiated? And why are these DOLTS perpetuating it?
Again, one more time, …think about it dummies.
He’s trustworthy to launch and maintain our national communication satellites, carrying and providing him with access to every cell call and text message in America, ….as well as our DEFENSE and MILITARY satellites which he launches, .. as well as our SPACE PROGRAM. He has a TOP SECRET Yankee White SECURITY CLEARANCE, … and is trusted with some of this nations TOP CLASSIFIED SECRETS.
Yet the “liberals”… are out in force chanting against him and filing lawsuits to keep him from accessing a low level security database (non DoD) for our Social Security system.
The liberals are screaming from the rooftops that they don’t want him to “access their data”.
Gee …. guess you ought to smash your smartphones dummies, …right now.
Because he’s had “access” to your data, …all along.
MUSK IS A GODDAMMED LIAR:
“On Tuesday, Trump said at a press briefing in Florida that “we have millions and millions of people over 100 years old” receiving Social Security benefits. “They’re obviously fraudulent or incompetent,” Trump said.
“If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old,” he said. He also said that there’s one person in the system listed as 360 years old.
Late Monday, Musk posted a slew of posts on his social media platform X, including: “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” and “Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as “ALIVE” when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem. Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second …”
How big of a problem is Social Security fraud?
A July 2024 report from Social Security’s inspector general states that from fiscal years 2015 through 2022, the agency paid out almost $8.6 trillion in benefits, including $71.8 billion — or less than 1% — in improper payments. Most of the erroneous payments were overpayments to living people.
In addition, in early January, the U.S. Treasury clawed back more than $31 million in a variety of federal payments— not just Social Security payments— that improperly went to dead people, a recovery that former Treasury official David Lebryk said was “just the tip of the iceberg.”
The money was reclaimed as part of a five-month pilot program after Congress gave the Department of Treasury temporary access to the Social Security Administration’s “Full Death Master File” for three years as part of the omnibus appropriations bill in 2021. The SSA maintains the most complete federal database of individuals who have died, and the file contains more than 142 million records, which go back to 1899, according to the Treasury.
Treasury estimated in January that it would recover more than $215 million during its three-year access period, which runs from December 2023 through 2026.
So are tens of millions of people over 100 years old receiving benefits?
No.
Part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system based on the COBOL programming language, which has a lack of date type. This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago. The news organization WIRED first reported on the use of COBOL programming language at the Social Security Administration.
Additionally, a series of reports from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general in March 2023 and July 2024 state that the agency has not established a new system to properly annotate death information in its database, which included roughly 18.9 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 or earlier but were not marked as deceased. This does not mean, however, that these individuals were receiving benefits.
The agency decided not to update the database because of the cost to do so, which would run upward of $9 million.
A July 2023 Social Security OIG report states that “almost none of the numberholders discussed in the report currently receive SSA payments.” And, as of September 2015, the agency automatically stops payments to people who are older than 115 years old.”
Man you are a foul, angry little troll.
Side effects from his rabies and TDS shot…
And you didn’t address one thing I said, troll.
So next time keep your little babies foul mouth shut on my post, until you actually have something to say that addresses it.
Make me you delusional MAGA loser.
It’s gigi.
🤣🤣🤣somebody call a waaaambulance!
Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are going to soon give you something to really cry about. You can’t stop it.
What’s going to happen, Traveler?
😃
I’m seeing some indictments in my crystal ball… perhaps some challenges to Presidential pardons when massive fraud and corruption makes the former president complicit?
Only time will tell… heebie geeebie roast some weenies!
Sounds like Q: no one can stop what’s coming🤣
I didn’t really follow Q but it’s eerie how much of the last post I did read has come to fruition.
My guess is just in hopes of justice being served to a corrupted cabal.
They may still be making payments to some unkn entity…
Wait and see
STOP watching CNN and the CARTOON CHANNEL ANON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“STOP watching CNN and the CARTOON CHANNEL”
Those aren’t the same channel?
Darren or someone needs to stop gigi from pulling down the quality and professional spirit of this blog. she is white trash.
Social Security and Medicare are irrefutably unconstitutional.
Please cite Article 1, Section 8, for any constitutional basis for a governmental retirement income or old age healthcare plan; indeed, neither constitutes “general welfare.”
ELON MUSK IS MADNESS
TRUMP IS HIS EVIL CLOWN
💩💩 THEY ARE FULL OF IT
I SHOULD BELIEVE A BIDEN/KAMALA voter??? ANON?
SURE WHY NOT?
#74 everyone has. He’s upgrading an antiquated COBOL system but that’ll require some interface with other institutions using COBOL.
ho hum…
Probably batch processing still
COBOL was the very first programming language I learned, 40 years ago, blt’s!
“COBOL was the very first programming language I learned, 40 years ago”
I have 4 years on you in that respect. I doubt that the front end is running COBOL programs, that code is likely only PERFORMing on back end database servers. Sorry, couldn’t resist…
Number 6- I was developing a database on a Clinical Information computer at Baylor College of Medicine in 1978-1979 but computers were so new a thing to me that I did not even know there were different names to programming languages. The computer center people just showed me how to use the commands and build various databases and set me in front of a screen to work. Wish I had asked a little more about those fundamental questions. It was fun but I was really a basic novice. Started my love for computers but did no get back to them until I got an Apple llc in the mid 1980’s.
I got one of the first McIntosh computers, a glorified word processor. My buddy got a IIC I think, had an 8088 chip, sounded like a popcorn popper when processing. Quattro pro and Lotus 123, before Excel…
“Started my love for computers but did no get back to them until I got an Apple llc in the mid 1980’s.”
I was probably one of the last to construct an IT career for himself without a formal degree. I had no profession (dropped out of college soon after HS because I had no passion for what i was pursuing). My new wife took an upholstery class 4 nights a week at the local vocational-technical school. I decided that I had better find something productive to do during those hours to avoid getting into trouble. I found an Electronics tech class on 2 of those nights that I thought might interest me and lead to a new career. I finally decided on a Programming in COBOL class for the other 2 nights, thinking I could nap if it was too boring. Turned out it was the Electronics that bored me, and I found the COBOL class fascinating. That led to an ascending series of IT (“Data Processing” at the time) positions beginning with keypunch entry of payroll and cost analysis input for subcontractors who were building the Atlantic City casinos in the late 1970s, and progressing through computer operations, then support, systems analysis and design/coding/debugging, and ultimately directing IT/Information Security and analyzing/recommending new Enterprise information technologies for a major international non-metallic mineral miner. I retired after nearly 40 years. I consider myself very fortunate, as very shortly after I gained entry to my profession, a 4-year Bachelor’s in Computer Science degree became a rigorous minimum qualification.
A BASIC attempt my dear Watson!
🤣
“A BASIC attempt my dear Watson!”
I foresaw the end of the IBM near-monopoly on business mainframes and minis early on (DEC held a similar market position re academic computing at the time) so I began fooling around with BASIC on a Sinclair 2000 (Timex clone, actually) in my spare time, but to make that hobby more interesting, I shortly went FORTH and multiplied (& added, subtracted, multiplied, etc.) I recommend that you concede the bad pun contest 😉
When will DOGE impose ENGLISH ONLY?
There are huge savings to be realized in the elimination of foreign language print, broadcast, and interpretation costs.
Not to mention the confusion engendered and the insult to Americans and their language.
English as the official language of government – the sooner the better
I think that Professor Turley has dropped the standards of what is acceptable to post on this site. I don’t care if you don’t agree with me. It’s quite clear that some of the people posting on this site have absolutely no class.
I dont disagree, but you do sound like a whiney little beotch
Western Europe, unfortunately, is now dead. Its corpse will, like a zombie, rise up in a new form: an Islamicized engine of global jihad. It made its body weak by feminizing the men and fearing everything including free speech. What better illustration than the chairman of the Munich security conference literally crying on stage because JD criticized Germany’s descent into censorship … and then all the other attendees cravenly applauding his childish tears. The jihadi terror masters worldwide are laughing with glee and derision at such weakness and dereliction from the very people charged with keeping the continent safe. They can hardly believe their good luck. This cowardly action by the Royal Society is of a piece with the German minister’s shameful tears.
you may or may not be familiar with the author George Weigel. You may enjoy the thinking of George Weigel because he identifies as a conservative Catholic theologian. He was also the biographer for Pope John Paul II. His writings are fairly heavy and academic in nature. He wrote an essay several years ago on the decay of the western civilization as founded in the writings of Pope John Paul II. The following piece is applicable to your comment re: Europe. You and others may wish to read more by George Weigel at his website link listed below.
John Paul II’s Political Lexicon: Seven Lessons for Today’s Struggling Democracies
Published May 16, 2020
Notes from Poland
By GEORGE WEIGEL
As John Paul II described it in his most important social encyclical, Centesimus Annus, the free society of the future would have three interlocking, component parts: a democratic political community, a free or market-centred economy, and a vibrant public moral culture.
Politics, John Paul II knew, is always downstream from culture. If our politics is divisive and rancorous, it is almost certainly because something is wrong with our public moral culture.
In his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, John Paul criticised theories of freedom that reduced freedom to wilfulness; that, he understood, was an infantile freedom, a concept of freedom that reduces human beings to the sum of their immediate desires. At the same time, John Paul II lifted up the idea of “freedom for excellence:” freedom as the moral habit of freely choosing the good. Thus Centesimus Annus stressed that an authentically human freedom – a freedom that reflects the true dignity of every human person – is a freedom founded in truth and ordered to goodness.
Throughout the democratic world today, the very idea of freedom is being infantilised, as if Frank Sinatra’s lyric, “I did it my way”, summed up the nature of freedom. But this is not the freedom that liberated central and eastern Europe from tyranny. The revolution of conscience that preceded and made possible the Revolution of 1989 was built on a much thicker, nobler concept of freedom: once again, freedom tethered to truth and ordered to goodness. The democratic world needs a rebirth of that mature, noble freedom today.
The civilisation of the West, John Paul argued, was born from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. Biblical religion, Greek philosophy, and Roman law, interacting over centuries, were the seeds from which what we know today as “the West” grew.
From Jerusalem, from biblical religion, the West learned that life is adventure, pilgrimage, journey: history is not circular or random; history is going somewhere. Thus the Exodus of Israel from Egypt remains, not simply a crucial metaphor in the spiritual lives of Jews and Christians, but the foundational metaphor for the Western ideas of both history and freedom.
From Athens, from Greek philosophy, the West learned to have faith in reason and in reason’s capacity to get at the truth of things – including the moral truth of things. That faith in reason, linked to the biblical idea of creation, explains why science flourished in the West: there are truths to be discerned in the world; those truths are, so to speak, “built in”; and our minds can grasp them. This conviction shaped the founding of modernity’s first democratic republic, the United States, as the American Declaration of Independence based the nation’s claim to independence from Great Britain on “self-evident truths” from which derived rights endowed in everyone by “nature and nature’s God”.
And from Rome, the West learned that the rule of law is superior to the rule of brute force or raw coercion in human affairs.
To ignore any of these component parts is to misread the ongoing story of the West, John Paul II insisted. Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome are all necessary for the future. A loss of faith in the God of the Bible leads to a loss of faith in reason, and a loss of faith in reason is lethal to the democratic project, for argument based on reason and on the moral truths embedded in the world and in us is the lifeblood of democracy. Thus democratic renewal in the 21st century will give serious attention to all three of these sources of the civilisation of the West – and it will rid itself of the shallow idea that the roots of the 21st-century democratic project go back no farther than the 17th-century continental Enlightenment.
https://eppc.org/publication/john-paul-iis-political-lexicon-seven-lessons-for-todays-struggling-democracies/
Thanks Estovir, I’ll look into this.
-OMFK
“Thus the Exodus of Israel from Egypt remains, not simply a crucial metaphor in the spiritual lives of Jews and Christians, but the foundational metaphor for the Western ideas of both history and freedom.”
Estovir, I cannot say what the Exodus means to others, but it means a great deal to me. Among other lessons, it serves as a powerful reminder of the evil of slavery, forbidding the kidnapping and selling of human beings, the very foundation of the eighth commandment. Beyond that, it teaches compassion, reinforcing the moral imperative to recognize the dignity of every person, including the stranger.
“Western Europe, unfortunately, is now dead.”
Interesting take on this by Gilbert Doctorow
Transcript of ‘Dialogue Works’ edition of 19 February
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/02/20/transcript-of-dialogue-works-edition-of-19-february/
“I think all my peers were taken in. We were all discussing, gee, you know what happened? Trump is getting the same false intelligence from the CIA as Biden was getting. They got a complete wrong reading. They’re saying the war is a stalemate, as Kellogg did. They’re saying, as Kellogg was saying, we’ve got to have a stick and a carrot for the Russians, we’re going to beat the hell out of them if they don’t sit down on the table and conclude a peace as we think it should be, or we’re going to raise the arms into Ukraine, we’re going to raise the sanctions against Russia, we’re really going to show who’s boss. Well, that was Kellogg before his wings were clipped. He was saying what Trump wanted him to say, to make all of Trump’s enemies quiet, and allow him to proceed with what would overwhelm them all before they had a chance to react.”
#74. The gov systems run on COBOL. It’s really open to hacking.
It’s a good example of disruptive innovation. Switching to new technologies is disruptive.
😂 the FBI probably does, too. Don’t tell anyone.
Maybe the Royal Society ‘canceled’ Elon to make room for the Royal Pain In the Arse Society’s new member: Rachel Maadow
That the trolls are out in such force today tells us we are on top of the truth. It is obvious and pathetic. Still, though, we are missing, ‘Oliver’. Did someone not get paid, hm?
Are you looking to take Oliver Clothesoff to HR?
So why has Trump’s federal OSHA department fined Tesla over safety violations in Austin, Texas? Then today Trump criticized Musk for planning to build a factory in India, saying Musk would hurt Trump by off-shoring.
OSHA is unconstitutional, as are the Labor Department and “labor” laws. Americans are constitutionally free to operate an enterprise, accept or reject employment, and sue for damages in civil court. Nowhere in Article 1, Section 8, is there an enumerated power to regulate “labor,” whatever the —- that is.
The Communist Manifesto is antithetical and unconstitutional. Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then, and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
somehow I am quite confident that Elon is not losing sleep over this tempest in a teapot.
The very idea that a “scientific” organization would take umbrage to any political belief is antithetical to the stated purpose of that organization. Facts are not political. If The Royal Society decides to exclude Musk or any other science personality over political matters, they effectively end their reason for being.
I doubt Elon Musk gives a damn either way.
Ah, the Royal Society’s raison d’être!
Clearly politics is preeminent and science ancillary.
Typical Marxist activity. If you don’t agree with the ideology you are excluded.