IF BY “UGLY” YOU MEAN “ENVIRO-FASCIST,” THEN YES: Richard Epstein: The Climate Wars Get Ugly.

IN DEFENSE OF OBJECTIVE TRUTH. At Commentary, Peter Wehner writes:

As it begins to dawn on students how ludicrous this all is – are they really unable to tell Backholm that he’s not a 6’5” Chinese female who should be able to attend first grade? — you can see, in their hesitation, how they are struggling with where the logical endpoints of their assumptions and worldview eventually bring them. And yet they are unable to offer any intellectual or moral stopping point. As one of the female students put it, “I feel like that’s not my place as like another human to say someone is wrong or to draw lines or boundaries.”

I understand the problems of legalism and censoriousness, the dangers that accompany a spirit of condemnation and lack of empathy, the temptation to mock those who struggle with problems we never even imagined. And I appreciate as an American the value of a live and let live attitude. But I know this, too: If a civilization cannot draw lines or boundaries – if it believes there are no objective truths, no givens to the human condition, no realities that transcend our own subjective interpretations – it will lead to chaos and eventually to great human suffering.

Revolutionary regimes that “Start from zero” and conclude that 2+2=5 will tend to do that.

WHY RICH CELEBRITIES LOVE DEMOCRATS:

Last week, my wife told me that Michael Stipe, the lead singer for one of the favorite bands of my youth, had opened a rally for Senator Bernie Sanders. I knew the guy was an insufferable lefty, but it still got me thinking about why rich celebrities love to support socialists, seemingly against their own interest.

And then I realized — like a snail coming late to a conclusion that everyone else has long since reached — that it actually is in their best interests to support these policies because “income redistribution” — as opposed to “property redistribution” — doesn’t impact the already-wealthy all that much. Rather, income redistribution is a tax against other people becoming wealthy.

Analysis: True. James Delingpole once dubbed it “the drawbridge effect” — “You’ve made your money. Now the very last thing you want is for all those trashy middle class people below you to have a fair shot at getting as rich as you are.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1076.

SARAH PALIN IS RIGHT: BILL NYE IS NO SCIENTIST. “Scientism Is Not Science.”

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Democrats, Not Republicans, Have Moved on Immigration.

A casual observer of the 2016 presidential election and immigration politics could be forgiven for thinking that Republicans have moved sharply to the right on the issue, while Democrats have stayed roughly where they have always been. But an interesting new Pew poll suggests the opposite is true: Republican voters’ views on immigration have held roughly steady over the past decade, while Democratic voters’ views have lurched sharply to the left. . . .

As the attached figure from Pew shows, in 2006, 34 percent of Republicans said that immigrants “strengthen the country”; today, 35 percent say the same. Democrats, on the other hand, underwent a massive (nearly 30-point) pro-immigration shift over the last 10 years. So while Trump’s rise probably reflects a stronger mobilization of anti-immigration voters than the GOP has seen before, it may not be the case that the average Republican voter is in such a different place on immigration than he was during the Bush years. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ lurch leftward on immigration—while not covered as extensively as Trump’s various immigration-related outrages—has been visible to anyone willing to look: at the Univision debate last month, for example, both Democratic presidential candidates essentially promised to suspend immigration enforcement altogether.

The standard media narrative holds that political polarization in the United States a GOP-driven phenomenon; that Republicans have gone off the deep end, and that Democrats remain sensible, centrist, and open to compromise. As we’ve said before, however, the truth is much more complicated. As much as many bien pensants would like to lay blame for our angry and polarized politics at the feet of racist Republicans, the Democrats’ dramatic leftward pivot—on issues from the $15 minimum to immigration to the culture wars—has clearly played a major role.

The media rule is that Democrats’ current positions always mark the Sensible Center. Republicans are always trying to turn back the clock. To, you know, the outdated, benighted views that dominated the nation six months ago. . .

RANDY BARNETT: Why Popular Sovereignty requires the due process of law to challenge “irrational or arbitrary” statutes.

BREAKING NEWS FROM 1973: Burgers Won’t Kill You: “A four-decades-old study — recently discovered in a dusty basement — has raised new questions about longstanding dietary advice and the perils of saturated fat in the American diet…The same critical-theorist scolds who are now trying to sell you coed bathrooms were busily trying to overturn several thousand years of human evolutionary and behavioral truth.”

Because they thought the science was settled, as all the cool fascists say these days.

JOHN SCHINDLER: Uncovering the Hidden Truths of 9/11: Why we need to discuss more than just Saudi Arabia.

WHY WE NEED MORE POLITICAL DIVERSITY ON FACULTIES: Professor: I don’t like the idea of writing a recommendation for a student who likes guns. “How can I say that I don’t want to support students who are gun enthusiasts, without getting put on some sort of list?”

Well, you were probably fine with lots of other kinds of lists, so don’t expect much sympathy.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE THAT BOTTOMLESS? MISSOURI MCDONALD’S WILL ROLL OUT AN ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT FRENCH FRIES OPTION AT NEW 6,500 SQ FT ‘MCDONALD’S OF THE FUTURE’ WHERE KIOSKS WILL TAKE YOUR ORDER. There’s no doubt that thanks to the left pushing $15 minimum wage, kiosks and automation are the future of fast food.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Could Facebook Swing An Election? Mark Zuckerberg’s open criticism of Donald Trump’s policies calls Facebook’s neutrality into question.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Are Fathers Becoming Less Manly?

Related: Let’s Hear It for the Bros – Mark Judge reviews Richard Linklater’s new film Everybody Wants Some!!

QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Can Amy Schumer defeat ISIS?

This is one hypothesis that should certainly deserves real-world testing, however — but perhaps it’s worth starting small. As Mark Steyn advises, “In a paradoxically witless suggestion to Congress this week, Bono proposed that we should fight ISIS with jokes — by dispatching Amy Schumer, Chris Rock and Sacha Baron Cohen to Syria. If introducing to comedy to Raqqa sounds a bit of a long shot, maybe Bono could try Germany first.”

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Yeah, so much for globalism.

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS ARTICLE MAY COUNT AS A SAFE-SPACE VIOLATION. SENSITIVE COLLEGE-AGE CHILDREN ARE REQUESTED TO INSERT BINKIES BEFORE READING: How university students infantilise themselves.

PRESIDENT PEACE PRIZE TO SEND MORE TROOPS AND APACHE HELICOPTERS TO IRAQ.

UPDATE [From Glenn]: Remember this?

WILL HISTORY ONLY REMEMBER THE FOUNDERS AS SLAVEOWNERS?

Whig history, and the variation of it that I was taught in school, in which all of history led to the glories of FDR, JFK, and midcentury liberalism was built around the notion that people in past centuries were far from perfect, but we need to study them carefully to understand how all of history led to today’s Wondrous Age. Black Armband History, as it was dubbed in 1993 by Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey to differentiate it from the Whiggish “Three Cheers” schools of history, implies that the essence of history is racism, colonialism, imperialism, and oppression in general. The people made famous by history are by their very nature nasty old evil racist oppressors and can be safely airbrushed out of history entirely, with the exception of a few flawed but benighted revolutionary souls such as Marx, Che and Castro.

You can’t “Start From Zero,” as Tom Wolfe would say, until the great PC cleanup is complete – at which point, 2+2 can equal five should the state wish it to be so, and “a 5’10” white man can tell you he’s a 6’5″ Chinese girl,” as Ace writes, “and you are required to believe him because each person constructs his own quantum reality moment by moment, it’s no difficult thing to also accept that killing the kulaks and putting the farms under inefficient state rule will result in a greater grain harvest.”

MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH: “For News Outlets Squeezed From the Middle, It’s Bend or Bust,” the New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg notes, in a piece built around the recent Buzzfeed stunt of streaming an exploding watermelon live, generating millions of views in what was basically a glorified 1980s-era Late Night with David Letterman segment. Rutenberg goes on to quote a downhearted freelance journalist who responds “the watermelon … is us,” and Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei who portentously adds, “journalists are killing journalism…[by] stubbornly clinging to the old ways.” That’s defined, Rutenberg writes, “as producing 50 competing but nearly identical stories about a presidential candidate’s latest speech, or 700-word updates on the transportation budget negotiations.”

But note the donkey in the room. At the start of his piece, Rutenberg writes:

Earlier this month, a couple of inventive young go-getters at Buzzfeed tied enough rubber bands around the center of a watermelon to make it explode. Nearly a million people watched the giant berry burst on Facebook Live. It racked up more than 10 million views in the days that followed.

Traditional journalists everywhere saw themselves as the seeds, flying out of the frame. How do we compete with that? And if that’s the future of news and information, what’s next for our democracy? President Kardashian?

Dude — if you’re wondering why, as AP recently noted, the vast majority of Americans don’t trust the MSM, it’s because President Kardashian is in the White House right now. And the Times, the Post, and the Politico and Buzzfeed (self-admitted Journolist member Ben Smith joined Buzzfeed as editor-in-chief in 2011) went all-in to both put him there and prop him up in 2012. So yes, journalists are killing journalism by stubbornly clinging to the old ways — the old ways of being Democrat operatives with bylines. They could change, but that would mean reporting White House scandals, instead of trying to whitewash them away. Until then, don’t be surprised if the public has caught on to the game.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Yes, man really did walk on the moon: Radio-Canada ombudsman debunks conspiracy theories.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: ‘LENA DUNHAM IS A BIG PILE OF PUDDING.’

Analysis: True. Paglia talks with Spiked Online about feminism, transgenderism and Hillary.

HONESTLY, I’D BE FINE WITH THAT: How Liz Cheney Could Pick The Next President.

Scenario: The Cleveland Convention is as wild as predicted — and the GOP splits with, say, Trump as the nominee and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse running on a third-party line as a mainstream Republican. Partly because of Hillary Clinton’s weakness as the Democratic nominee, no candidate gets the requisite 270 electoral votes and, under the 12th Amendment, the incoming House of Representatives must pick the next president.

This possibility, by the way, was widely discussed when George Wallace (1968) and Ross Perot (1992) ran as independent candidates. And Michael Bloomberg abandoned a third-party race this year, in part, because he didn’t see how he could ever prevail in the House of Representatives.

The 12th Amendment contains two wrinkles that could complicate the selection of the 45th president: Every state gets a single vote and the only candidates are the top three graduates from the Electoral College. As a result of this top-three rule, this will be the rare political scenario under which Paul Ryan doesn’t reluctantly end up as president.

It could happen, but I very much doubt it.

RESOLVING THE CONTRADICTION OF “PROGRESSIVISM.”