HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Ike was right: The Intellectual and Moral Decline in Academic Research.

In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that the pursuit of government grants would have a corrupting influence on the scientific community. He feared that while American universities were “historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery,” the pursuit of taxpayer monies would become “a substitute for intellectual curiosity” and lead to “domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment…and the power of money.”

Eisenhower’s fears were well-founded and prescient.

My experiences at four research universities and as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research fellow taught me that the relentless pursuit of taxpayer funding has eliminated curiosity, basic competence, and scientific integrity in many fields.

Indeed.

NEVER MISSING AN OPPORTUNITY TO MISS AN OPPORTUNITY: Palestinians angrily reject Trump Mideast peace plan.

SAVAGE: Superman Criticized As Unrealistic For Portraying A Journalist As Heroic. “Truth. Justice. The American way. That’s against everything journalism stands for.”

WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: The Washington Post cancelled its number one canceller. “What they don’t seem to understand is that the plight of Felicia Sonmez is an object and abject lesson about cancel culture. She has done this to others. She has called for the suspension of due process and the termination, of her own peers. Her voice has loudly denounced those who have been hit with allegations without evidence. Sonmez has helped us get used to the idea that accusations are enough to take you down. It’s a commonplace idea, now, thanks to her and her peers in thought crime. Once we are so long immersed in the sludge of it, turnabout seems like fair play.”

Fair or not, as a creature of the left, cancel culture eventually eats its own.

RUN, HILLARY, RUN! Hillary Clinton “Feels the Urge” to Run Against Trump Again.

THIS REALLY DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE: Gallup: Race Relations Better Under Donald Trump Than Barack Obama.

EVEN IN DEFEAT, THE AUTHORITARIAN INSTINCT IS STRONG: Failed Dem No One Remembers Says He’s Going to Make Sure Trump-Supporters Can’t ‘Show Their Face in Public.’

JOHN HINDERAKER: “In today’s academia, God help you if you are Asian. Your school’s administration certainly won’t.”

Plus: “I am old enough to remember when people thought George Wallace’s ‘Segregation forever!’ was a retrograde slogan that would soon be relegated to the dustbin of history. Little did we know that more than 50 years later, the Democratic Party and the liberal educational establishment would embrace racial segregation as an ideal.”

AND FROM AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD:  Democrats Warn That American People May Tamper With Next Election.

THE SAME GOES FOR CHURCHES. ALL THE MAINLINE CHURCHES ARE RUNNING AFTER THE PROGRESSIVE TRAIN, CONVINCED THAT’S WHERE THEIR CONGREGATION IS NOW, WHILE THE CONGREGATIONS HAVE LONG SINCE TURNED BACK AND ARE LOOKING FOR SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE:  Prohibition and the Great Society show that the government should not legislate vast social trends.

History has no arrow. Any institution that tries, consciously, to get in good with “the future” is guaranteed to be chasing a glamorously packaged past that someone wants to drag us all back to. They will never succeed, of course, but they can succeed in destroying the real present, and any hope of a decent future. For a while at least.

PARTICULARLY ON THE LEFT. AND NO ONE SEEMS TO NOTICE. I FEEL LIKE I’M WATCHING A MOVIE AND SCREAMING “THERE’S A MONSTER IN THE CLOSET” BUT THE MOVIE JUST GOES ON:  Holocaust Remembrance Day has become a meaningless ritual that the Western world engages in to cover for its virulent and rising anti-Semitism.

THIS. ABSOLUTELY THIS. THE STUPID PARTY NEEDS A SPINE:  With several Republicans apparently succumbing on impeachment witnesses, Mitch McConnell may need to go ‘nuclear’.

They need to realize — loud and clear — that if they roll over on this, they’re done. Not just as a party, but as politicians. They will also be consigning us to something far worse than the ballot box.

OUR BETTERS ARE TRYING TO PROTECT US FROM MAKING MONEY… AGAIN:  HR2474: Kills Right-to-Work, Takes AB5 Nationwide.

ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA:  China’s 2019 Novel Coronavirus: Don’t Panic, Prep!

DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT HAS SOME VALUE. DIVERSITY OF SKIN COLOR? NOT SO MUCH:  The-Verse.

AN IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, NO. IN FACT “FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITIES; TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS NEEDS” IS NOT A RECIPE FOR PARADISE:  Debit and Credit.

LOOK, IT’S SELF PERPETUATING: THE LEFT WILL DESTROY THE CAREER, INCLUDING THE ACADEMIC CAREER OF ANY CONSERVATIVE THEY CAN REACH. THEN THEY TURN AROUND AND PROVE THEY’RE SMARTER BECAUSE THEY HAVE MORE ACADEMICS AND MORE DEGREES:  My Biggest Pet Peeve.

I wouldn’t say it’s my biggest peeve, personally. My biggest peeve is the idea that even some people on the right buy into that “the left is more creative.”  There is also “the left are more independent of thought.” This is all based on several assumptions, one of them being that the current system is “conservative” and that the leftists are the “innovators.”  But in fact, our establishment is leftist and those of us on the right are the rebels, who step out of line. (Note about the Squad, adoring the system of thought of a dead white male — Marx — which has been pushed at you as the easy path to success doesn’t make you revolutionaries. You guys are, in fact, the most conformist of conformists.) More importantly with the art, and (still) the “respectable” publishing establishment almost uniformly in the hands of the left, the fact that most artists are leftist doesn’t prove they’re more creative. In fact, to break you of this illusion all you have to do is peruse the racks of “pushed” books and movies and find knock off after knock off after knock off. Only now with more of that stale wokeness pushed by every college.  (Where this this soap box come from? And what is it doing under my feet?)

IT NEVER WORKED. IT NEVER WILL:   My Experience of Communism.

WAIT, WHAT? Feinstein Leans Toward Acquitting Trump.

BRYAN PRESTON: Bellwether to Blowout: Texas House District Gets Redder to Lead Off 2020 Elections.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Shot: The test: Can Democrats flip the most watched Republican district in Texas?

—The Houston Chronicle, yesterday.

Chaser: GOP poised to dash Democratic hopes of bellwether win in Fort Bend, TX.

Republican Gary Gates on Tuesday appeared headed to a smashing victory over Democrat Eliz Markowitz in a special runoff election for a vacant state House seat in the Houston suburbs, where Democrats hoped an upset win would kick-start efforts to wrangle control of the Texas House in 2020.

In the early vote, Gates, with 10,707 votes, was leading Markowitz, who had 7,461 votes, 59% to 41%.

If he prevails when all the votes are counted, Gates will serve the unexpired term of state Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond, who announced in mid-summer that he was stepping down from representing House District 28 in Fort Bend County. The race for a full term in the House will take place in November.

The contest in Fort Bend, where Beto O’Rourke lost in his 2018 bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz by 3.14 points, was the 16th best prospect on a list unveiled by Texas Democrats on Monday. The list contains 22 seats that Democrats are targeting in hopes of flipping the nine they need to gain control of the House and the speakership ahead of redistricting in the next session.

Markowitz’s defeat was also a setback for O’Rourke, whose surprisingly strong run against Cruz has become the yardstick of success for heightened Democratic ambitions in Texas in 2020, but whose deep personal involvement in recent weeks working on behalf of Markowitz and drawing volunteers from across the state and the nation to Fort Bend County may have proved a mixed blessing at best.

* * * * * * * *

Gates was always the favorite to win the runoff. But his consultant Craig Murphy said that O’Rourke’s presence, as well as campaign appearances on behalf of Markowitz by former presidential candidate Julián Castro and presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, and endorsements by two other candidates — former Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — nationalized the campaign in unproductive ways for Democrats.

—The Austin Statesman, this evening.

Still though, don’t get cocky, to coin an Insta-phrase.

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