TECH BLOG BEHIND THE BLACK REVIEWS my The Social Media Upheaval. “Reynolds has not only succinctly described in clear language the problem posed by these social media giants, he has outlined forcefully the best ways the problem can be addressed, both by our federal government and by we the citizenry.”

YES. NEXT QUESTION? “Is the British Empire Largely Misunderstood?”

Several years ago, while on a business trip to New Delhi, I remarked to an Indian colleague, a Hindu, on the beauty of his country’s Sansad Bhavan, or Parliament House. “Yes,” he remarked, “though we Indians didn’t design it. It was the British. And Taj Mahal was built by the Muslim Turkic Mughals. None of the best architecture in this country is truly Indian.”

I was a bit shocked by his frank willingness to appreciate his country’s debt to former conquerors. Later, after I noticed a worn copy of P.G. Wodehouse on his office desk, he acknowledged that he and his Indian colleagues all loved British literature above any other. Perhaps, I surmised, imperialism’s legacy is not as black and white as we are often told.

This is the central argument of University of Exeter professor of history Jeremy Black’s new book Imperial Legacies: The British Empire Around the World, which, according to the book jacket, is a “wide-ranging and vigorous assault on political correctness, its language, misuse of the past, and grasping of both present and future.” The imperial legacy of Great Britain is also, in a way, an instructional lesson for the United States, which, much like the British Empire of the early to mid-20th century, is experiencing a slow decline in influence.

* * * * * * * *

Yet, Black notes, “there is sometimes a failure to appreciate the extent to which Britain generally was not the conqueror of native peoples ruling themselves in a democratic fashion, but, instead, overcame other imperial systems, and that the latter themselves rested on conquest.” Take, for example, the Indian subcontinent, which was a disparate collection of kingdoms and competing empires—including Mughals, Sikhs, Afghan Durranis—during the early centuries of British intervention. All of these were plenty brutal and intolerant towards those they subjugated. Moreover, Hinduism promoted not only the oppressive caste system, but also sati, or the ritual of widow burning, in which widows were either volitionally or forcibly placed upon the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands. It was the British who stopped this practice, and others, with such legislation as the Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act of 1856, the Female Infanticide Prevention Act of 1870, and the Age of Consent Act of 1891.

As Mark Steyn has written:

In a culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of “suttee” – the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:

‘You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows.You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.’

India today is better off without suttee. If you don’t agree with that, if you think that’s just dead-white-male Eurocentrism, fine. But I don’t think you really do believe that. Non-judgmental multiculturalism is an obvious fraud, and was subliminally accepted on that basis. After all, most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don’t want to live in anything but an advanced western society.

“It can be difficult for those seeking to offer a different view to get their works published, a situation to which I can attest,” Black writes. “There is scant attempt by critics to explain why empires arose. There is almost a zeal to suggest that Britain was as bad as the most murderous regimes in history…. Individually, these criticisms largely rest on emotion and hyperbole instead of informed knowledge.”

Read the whole thing.

HEH: Women Who Don’t Believe Israel Has Right To Exist Not Sure Why They Got Banned From Israel. “What have we ever said against them, besides suggesting they are terrorists who deserve to be pushed into the sea?”

CLARENCE PAGE: ‘Toxic Masculinity’ Plays a Big Role in Mass Shootings.

It’s toxic, all right, but there’s nothing masculine about shooting up a bunch of unarmed civilians. But for Page, it’s any hot take to further the narrative, I suppose.

CHANGE: Zogby: ‘Poor performances’ of Democrats boost Trump’s approval to 51%, up with blacks and Hispanics.

President Trump’s approval rating has edged up, driven by long-term confidence in his economy and boosted by the lackluster performances of the two dozen Democrats trying to beat him in the 2020 election, according to the latest Zogby Analytics poll.

The contrarian survey, provided exclusively to Secrets, pushes back on some other recent polls showing a surge in Trump’s disapproval rating.

Namely, it found that recent issues portrayed as trouble for Trump haven’t hurt him and that he is growing in support among Africans Americans, Hispanics, independents, and younger voters.

“President Trump’s job approval has continued to rise the last few months,” said pollster Jonathan Zogby in his analysis of likely voters.

“It’s true Trump is riding high on positive economic news,” he said.

But, he added, “It’s also very plausible he is benefiting from poor performances by the Democratic presidential candidates who have continued to move very far to the left with their policies. The Democrats have floated nationalizing healthcare, strict gun control, ‘The Green New Deal,’ and raising taxes, all which are very unpopular in polling on a national level and in key battleground states.”

Trump is very lucky in his enemies.

THEN SHE’D BETTER FIGURE OUT A WAY TO GENERATE EQUAL REVENUES: Megan Rapinoe Says Women’s Soccer ‘Won’t Accept Anything Less Than Equal Pay.’

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Stacey Abrams PAC Pushed $1.2 Million Over to Dark Money Entity.

I remember when “dark money” was supposed to be bad.

JOHN TAMNY: Dear Catherine Rampell, the Former Soviet Union Had Many ‘Experts’ Too.

A frequent theme in this column is one about the fallability of the brilliant. Jeff Bezos regularly acknowledges how often his experiments prove much less than great, the best venture capitalists admit that more than nine out of ten capital commitments result in bankruptcy, and then the world’s best traders note that they’re wrong almost as often as they’re right. It’s incredibly difficult to predict the future, and that’s an understatement.

This truism came to mind while reading Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell’s lament about the Department of Agriculture’s recent decision to relocate the Economic Research Service (ERS) from Washington, D.C. to Kansas City. Rampell reports that in response to the announced change, only 116 ERS employees had agreed to move. The columnist is up in arms. Rampell claims that the “small-but-mighty ERS is arguably the world’s premier agricultural economics agency. It produces critical numbers that farmers rely on when deciding what to plant and how much, how to price, how to manage risk….” Someday Rampell will admit she overreacted here.

No, she won’t. But you’ll want to read the whole thing.

WHY IT’S AS IF A BUBBLE IN HIGHER EDUCATION ENROLLMENT HAS BURST*: Back to school statistics. College enrollment in fall 2019 is expected to be about 5 percent lower than the peak of 21.0 million in fall 2010.

* Who could have seen it coming?

CYBERSECURITY: Hackers just found serious vulnerabilities in F-15 fighter jet.

In a Cosmopolitan hotel suite 16 stories above the Def Con cybersecurity conference, a team of highly vetted hackers tried to sabotage a vital flight system for a U.S. military fighter jet. And they succeeded.

It was the first time outside researchers were allowed physical access to the critical F-15 system to search for weaknesses. And after two long days, the seven hackers found a mother lode of vulnerabilities that — if exploited in real life — could have completely shut down the Trusted Aircraft Information Download Station, which collects reams of data from video cameras and sensors while the jet is in flight.

They even found bugs that the Air Force had tried but failed to fix after the same group of hackers performed similar tests in November without actually touching the device.

This is exactly why it’s vital to hire white hack hackers from outside your own organization.

OUCH: David Harsanyi: Israel Has Every Right To Block Rashida Tlaib And Ilhan Omar. “In 2012, the Obama administration denied a visa to Michael Ben-Ari, a member of the hard-right Israeli Kach party [sic: At that point, Ben-Ari was a member of the more moderate National Union party]. Ben-Ari is no more radical than Tlaib or Omar. I don’t remember widespread angst about the state of American democracy. Surely we were secure enough in our beliefs to handle his presence, right?”

UPDATE: Jonathan Greenberg, @JGreenbergSez: “It’s totally different bc rage blargle!”-every leftist in my feed.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: The Environmental Disaster of Solar Energy.

SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE DECIDER: Canadian Health Care Refused to Pay for Disabled Father’s Care, but Happily Paid for His Assisted Suicide.

THE PEOPLE VS. THEIR UNIVERSITIES: How Popular Discontent Is Reshaping Higher Education Law. Higher Ed has taken sides, which makes it more vulnerable now that its prestige is falling.

AT AMAZON, save on Bras for Women.

Also, Men’s Swimwear.

AT AMAZON, save in Toys and Games.

Plus, deals in Kitchen and Dining.

OPEN THREAD: Hit it.

JEFF DUNETZ: The Real Reasons Israel Barred Reps Omar And Tlaib (It Wasn’t Trump).

BIOSCAM: Short on cures and cash – California’s stem cell agency to ask voters for billions more. I remember when this was going to be the answer to George W. Bush’s cruel refusal to unleash the easy miracle cures that were just waiting to be deployed via embryonic stem cell research. And yet, 15 years and billions of dollars later, all they’ve produced is a demand for more cash:

Californians voted in 2004 to shell out billions of dollars in taxpayer money to fund cutting-edge stem cell treatments.

Proposition 71 could lead to cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s and other devastating diseases, voters were told. Actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease, said in one campaign ad that the measure “could save the life of someone you love.”

But 15 years later, there are no readily available cures. And the state’s stem cell agency, which administered the bond money, is about to run out of funding.

And Michael J. Fox flushed his career with that commercial that basically said Republicans want people to die because they’re meanies.

Flashback: Adult Stem Cells Now the ‘Gold Standard.’ Related: MIT Technology Review: Will Embryonic Stem Cells Ever Cure Anything? “In fact, no field of biotechnology has promised more and delivered less in the way of treatments than embryonic stem cells.”

In 2004, of course, we couldn’t know how the science would turn out. But that didn’t stop Fox from making a mean-spirited ad for the Democrats. And how bad must he feel, to have flushed (at least) half his fan base for John Kerry?

DISPATCHES FROM THE LEFT’S WAR ON COWS: New York University Promotes Gender Studies Paper (Of Course!) Comparing Cow Insemination to “Rape” and Milking Cows to “Sexual Abuse.”

Why is the left such a cesspit of cow hatred? First AOC wanted to nuke them as part of the Green Nude Eel, and now this.

UPDATE: Just to clarify, the paper was published by a university in New York, but not the NYU, as Campus Reform makes clear: “Titled ‘Readying the Rape Rack: Feminism and the Exploitation of Non-Human Reproductive Systems,’ the paper was published Friday in a journal called Dissenting Voices, which is published and edited by the Women’s and Gender Studies program at the College at Brockport State University of New York.”

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: The Latest Beto Campaign Reset Will Be the One That Changes Everything.

Beto wants to be the all-white Obama, but he just doesn’t have it. Obama’s one and only talent was lying with a straight face, telling enormous whoppers smoothly enough to fool enough people enough of the time. I didn’t like him and he didn’t convince me, but he was not a complete spaz like this guy. Beto is just off-putting.

But what else is Beto going to do? This is all he’s got. He has no marketable skills and nobody really likes him. He has nothing to lose by staying in the race. He’s never going to win, so he may as well drag down as many of his rivals as possible. He’s like a Democrat version of John Kasich.

Just kidding. The Democrat version of John Kasich is John Kasich.

Analysis: True. Read the whole thing.

WAPO: A goal for Democrats: Make the White House boring again.

Good luck with that. I doubt very much the party whose last two presidential administrations were associated with the phrases “Stroke of the pen, law of the land, kind of cool,” and “I have a pen and a phone,” will be adopting the motto of Calvin Coolidge*, “Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business,” anytime soon.

* PBUH.

THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D — OH, WHO AM I KIDDING, EVERYONE EXPECTED THIS: Mind Control: Chip Implants Will Zap Obese People When They Think About Food.