lewrockwell--2020-11-16--Stephen C. Meyer, Douglas Axe, Chuck Darwin, and Me

This is a much-updated version of a previous column on evolution , is atrociously long , criminally even , by internet standards but I post it anyway because I get occasional requests .
Few will read it , which is understandable .
Apologies .
The Devil made me do it .
I will get transcendently stupid email saying that I am a snake-handling primitive Christian in North Carolina with three teeth .
Actually , I do believe that all humans descend from one man and woman ( Deucalion and Pyrrha ) .
“ A scientist is part of what the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a “ thought collective ” : a group of people exchanging ideas in a mutually comprehensible idiom .
The group , suggested Fleck , inevitably develops a mind of its own , as the individuals in it converge on a way of communicating , thinking and feeling .
Signature in the Cell : ... Meyer , Stephen C. Best Price : $ 8.10 Buy New $ 12.19 This makes scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human social life : deference to the charismatic , herding towards majority opinion , punishment for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to error .
Of course , such tendencies are precisely what the scientific method was invented to correct for , and over the long run , it does a good job of it .
In the long run , however , we ’ re all dead , quite possibly sooner than we would be if we hadn ’ t been following a diet based on poor advice.
” How This Essay Came About I was in high school when I began to think about evolution .
I was then just discovering the sciences @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they offered themselves to be , a realm of reason and dispassionate regard for truth .
There was a hard-edged clarity to them that I liked .
You got real answers .
Since evolution depended on such sciences as chemistry , I regarded it as also being a science .
The question of the origin of life interested me .
The evolutionary explanations that I encountered in textbooks of biology seemed weak , however .
They ran to , “ In primeval seas , evaporation concentrated dissolved compounds in a pore in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life began its immense journey.
” Still , I saw no reason to doubt this .
If it hadn ’ t been true , scientists would not have said that it was .
In those days I read Scientific American and New Scientist , the latter then still being thoughtfully written in good English .
I noticed that not infrequently they offered differing speculations as to the origin of life .
The belief in the instrumentality of chemical accident was constant , but the nature of the primeval soup changed to fit varying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , life was thought to have come about on clay in shallow water in seas of a particular composition , later in tidal pools with another chemical solution , then in the open ocean in another solution .
This continues .
Recently , geothermal vents have been offered as the home of the first life .
Today ( Feb 24 , 2005 ) on the BBC website , I learn that life evolved below the oceanic floor .
( “ There is evidence that life evolved in the deep sediments , ” co-author @ @ @ @ @ @ @ UK , told the BBC News website.
” ) Darwinu2019s Doubt : Th ... Stephen C. Meyer Best Price : $ 9.99 Buy New $ 7.00 The frequent shifting of ground bothered me .
If we knew how life began , why did we have so many prospective mechanisms , none of which worked ?
Evolution began to look like a theory in search of a soup .
Fifty-five years later in 2015 , it still does .
What Distinguishes Evolution from Other Sciences Early on , I noticed three things about evolution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or , I could almost say , from science ) .
First , plausibility was accepted as being equivalent to evidence .
And of course the less you know , the greater the number of things that are plausible , because there are fewer facts to get in the way .
Again and again evolutionists assumed that suggesting how something might have happened was equivalent to establishing how it had happened .
Asking them for evidence usually aroused annoyance and sometimes , if persisted in , hostility .
As an example , consider @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misadventure .
By this they mean , I think , that they can not imagine how else it might have come about .
( Neither can I .
Does one accept a poor explanation because unable to think of a good one ? )
This accidental-life theory , being somewhat plausible , is therefore accepted without the usual standards of science , such as reproducibility or rigorous demonstration of mathematical feasibility .
Putting it otherwise , evolutionists are too attached to their ideas to be able to question them .
Or to notice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reason .
They defend furiously the evolution of life in earth ’ s seas as the most certain of certainties .
Yet in the November , 2005 Scientific American , an article argues that life may have begun elsewhere , perhaps on Mars , and arrived here on meteorites .
May have , perhaps , might .
Somewhere , somewhere else , anywhere .
Onward into the fog .
Consequently , discussion often relies on vague and murky assertion , or ignores obvious questions .
Starlings are said to have evolved to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t see them to eat them .
This is plausible and , I suspect , true .
But guacamayos and cockatoos are gaudy enough to be seen from low-earth orbit .
Is there a contradiction here ?
No , say evolutionists .
Guacamayos are gaudy so they can find each other to mate .
Always there is the pat explanation .
But starlings seem to mate with great success , though invisible .
If you have heard a guacamayo shriek , you can hardly doubt that another one could easily find @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me that guacamayos were at the top of their food chain , and didn ’ t have predators .
Or else that the predators were colorblind .
Return of the God Hypo ... Meyer , Stephen C. Buy New $ 28.99 On and on it goes .
On any coral reef , a scuba diver can see , or rather not see , phenomenally good camouflage in creatures such as octopuses , said to prevent their being eaten .
It does .
But many fish are garishly colored .
What is the advantage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ metaphysics or ideology than a science .
The sciences , as I knew them , gave clear answers .
Evolution involved intense faith in fuzzy principles .
You demonstrated chemistry , but believed evolution .
If you have ever debated a Marxist , or a serious liberal or conservative , or a feminist or Christian , you will have noticed that , although they can be exceedingly bright and well informed , they display a maddening evasiveness .
You never get a straight answer if it is one they do not want to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ established .
Fundamental assertions do not tie to observable reality .
Invariably the Marxist ( or evolutionist ) assumes that a detailed knowledge of economic conditions in the reign of Nicholas II substitutes for being able to answer simple questions , such as why Marxism has never worked .
This is the Fallacy of Irrelevant Knowledge .
And of course almost anything can be made believable by considering only favorable evidence and interpreting hard .
Third , evolutionists are obsessed by Christianity and Creationism , with which they imagine themselves to be in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .
Note that other sciences , such as astronomy and geology , even archaeology , are equally threatened by the notion that the world was created in 4004 BC .
Astronomers pay not the slightest attention to Creationist ideas .
Nobody does—except evolutionists .
We are dealing with competing religions—overarching explanations of origin and destiny .
Thus the fury of their response to skepticism .
I found it pointless to tell them that I wasn ’ t a Creationist .
They refused to believe it .
If they had , they would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would rather avoid .
Like any zealots , they can not recognize their own zealotry .
Thus their constant classification of skeptics as enemies ( a word they often use ) —of truth , of science , of Darwin , of progress .
The Lair of the Beast Undeniable : How Biolog ... Douglas Axe Best Price : $ 7.78 Buy New $ 8.59 I have been on several lists on the internet that deal with matters such as evolution , have written on the subject , and have discussed evolution with various @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost all of them are ) have frequently been very bright indeed , often Ivy League professors , some of them with names you would recognize .
They are not amateurs of evolution , or high-school principals in Kansas eager to prove their modernity .
I asked them questions , such as whether we really know what the primeval seas consisted of , etc .
I knew the answers ; I wanted to see how serious proponents of evolutionary biology would respond to awkward questions .
It was like giving a bobcat a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answers .
They told me I was a crank , implied over and over ( again ) that I was a Creationist , said that I was an enemy of science ( someone who asks for evidence is an enemy of science ) .
They said that I was trying to pull down modern biology ( if you ask questions about an aspect of biology , you want to pull down biology ) .
They told me I didn ’ t know anything ( that ’ s why I was asking questions ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ journalist ( the validity of a question depends on its source rather than its content ) .
But they didn ’ t answer the questions .
They ducked and dodged and evaded .
After thirty years in journalism , I know ducking and dodging when I see it .
It was like cross-examining hostile witnesses .
This is the behavior not of scientists , but of advocates , of True Believers .
I used to think that science was about asking questions , not about defending things you didn ’ t really know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the other way around .
I guess I was wrong .
As to the charge routinely made that I know “ absolutely nothing ” of evolution or the biological sciences , or any sciences , , I will point out that most things can be grasped by the application of modest intelligence and obsessive-compulsive disorder .
The apparent difficulty of most science consists more in forbidding terminology than in the simple ideas concealed therein .
At risk of inciting tedium , I note that , thanks to a good university grounding and considerable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of : Darwinu2019s Black Box ... Michael J. Behe Best Price : $ 4.12 Buy New $ 6.75 Prophase , metaphase , anaphase , telophase .
Descemet ’ s membrane , ciliary body , suspensory ligaments , retinal pigmented epithelium ( the eye being of evolutionary interest ) .
Peptide pituitary hormones , vasopressin and oxytocin .
Osteoclast , osteoblast .
Nephrons , glomerulus , Loop of Henle .
Axon , dendrite , sodium in-potassium-out depolarization , neurotransmitters , receptor sites .
Rough and smooth endoplasmic reticula , Golgi apparatus , lipid bilayers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ribosomes , epitopes , m-RNA , t-RNA , transcription , translation .
Restriction enzymes , DNA polymerase .
The Breeder ’ s Equation , selection differential , pleiotrophy , epistasis , narrow heritability .
Purines adenine and guanine and pyrimidines cytocine and thymine ( well , uracil in RNA ) .
Degeneracy of the codon alphabet .
Nucleotides , nucleosides , adenosine triphosphate , indels , mitochondrial cristae , single-nucleotide polymorphisms , Shannon information versus specified information , polymerase chain reaction , restriction-fragment length polymorphism , electrophoresis .
Luciferin , ( and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ X chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA .
Peptide bonds -COOH to NH 2 , water molecule extruded .
Socially important compounds like 2 , 4 , 6- trinitrotoluene , toluene being benzene with an -CH3 group , bond resonance in benzene , pH , the negative log of the hydronium ion content .
Levo- and dextro- isomers .
Alkanes , alkenes , alkynes , al gore .
Cambrian , Ordovician , Silurian , Devonian , Carboniferous , Permian .
Purported transitional forms : The Ichthyostegids of , if memory serves , Devonian sediments of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; coelacanth , Marjorie Latimer , sort of 1937 I think ; and my favorite , Piltdown Man .
The amniote egg .
Saurischian and Ornithischian dinosaurs .
Sauropods , pseudopods , copepods .
Etc The intent of this essay is not to debate with the ardent of evolutionism .
To do so would be pointless .
The problem is one of underlying set of mind , of why people believe and disbelieve things .
The greatest intellectual divide is not between those who believe one thing and those who believe another , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to believe something fervently and those who can say , “ I don ’ t know.
” The former group comprises those tedious Darwinists and Creationists who hurl imprecations at each other like fans of rival football teams .
Each blockheadedly refuses to concede the slightest possibility that its doctrine might be other than infallible .
To my mind they constitute the best evidence that we did not descend from monkeys , but have not yet ascended to them .
Stupidity beyond a certain point is intractable .
I write here for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with curiosity and calm , divining what can be divined and conceding what can not , without regarding themselves as members of warring tribes .
To judge by the writing on evolution in the public prints , there may be as many as three of these .
“ The universe is not only queerer than we suppose , it is queerer than we can suppose.
” J .
B. S. Haldane Darwin Devolves : The N ... Behe , Michael J .
Best Price : $ 11.00 Buy New $ 11.24 “ Queer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suggesting more the world of Alice in Wonderland than the crisp , clean-edged , perfectly ordered and causal world of physics .
This paradigm holds that existence is like a vast crossword puzzle .
Some parts we have filled in , others we have not , but by its nature the puzzle is solvable , and it is only a matter of time before we know everything .
This is awfully optimistic .
Humans today are a puffed-up and overconfident species .
We believe that we know everything , or shortly will .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ only by that of teenagers .
For do we not have smart phones and Mars landers and PET scans , and do we not all speak wisely of DNA ?
We are , if not gods , at least godlings on the way up .
If you don ’ t believe this , just ask us .
It was not always so .
A thousand years ago , mankind cast a small shadow on the earth and lived in a dark and mysterious world .
Little was known , about anything .
Gods @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Spirits inhabited sacred groves .
Lightning , the moon , the stars were…what ?
We had no idea .
This brought humility .
We now believe that nothing is or can be beyond our powers .
A contemplative skeptic might advert to a few remaining details : We don ’ t know where we came from , why we are here , where “ here ” is , where we are going if anywhere , or what we ought to do .
These are minor questions .
We only think about them when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remember that we are not permanent .
We are kidding ourselves .
When people become accustomed to things that make no sense , they begin to seem to .
Though we no longer notice it as we peck at tablet computers and listen to droning lowbrow shows about the conquest of nature , we still live in a weird and inexplicable universe , an apparently unending emptiness speckled with sparks of hydrogen fire .
It is wicked mysterious .
More things in heaven and earth , indeed .
We are not as wise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ smarter than anything else we know about .
I reiterate Fred ’ s Principle : The smartest of a large number of hamsters is still a hamster .
Evolution in the Grand Scheme of Things The Theory of Evolution is not just about biological evolution .
It is part of a grand unified theory that seeks to explain everything ( except things that it can ’ t explain , which it ignores ) .
It runs briefly as follows : First came the Big Bang .
Subatomic particles flew in all directions , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stars .
Planets formed , then oceans , and then life came about by chemical inadvertence .
Evolution produced trilobites , dinosaurs , mammals , and us .
In the popular version , though not in the scientific , evolution produces ongoing betterment .
It is not particularly plausible .
As someone said , evolution writ large is the belief that a large cloud of hydrogen will eventually turn into Manhattan .
But , like a religion , it provides an overarching explanation of origins–the Big Bang–and destiny–we are getting better and better–and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world .
The theory is thus very much an expression of the need for certainty .
Note that while in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 , Christian fundamentalists tried to outlaw Darwin , today evolutionists appeal to the courts to outlaw mention of Creation in the schools .
This is not rational .
Can anyone believe that describing Creation in high schools will deter students from studying biochemistry , and turn them into intellectual loin-cloth wearers burning textbooks ?
Evolution is crucially important for biologists .
Without Darwin , biology would become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and horrors , with no explanatory structure , and the living world a realm of utterly inexplicable and often weird and even frightening creatures .
Interestingly , atheism has to be part of the evolutionist ’ s mental equipment since if any sort of god exists , or if there is life after death , or anything beyond the laws of physics , then these things might influence existence in a way outside of physics–and this can not be allowed .
Before going further , let us look at some of the questions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Large nothing exists but physics .
The Big Bang was physics , chemistry is the physics of the interactions of atoms , biochemistry a subset of chemistry and therefore also physics .
Everything that happens in a cell is physics ( to include biochemistry ) .
Everything that happens in a living body , from movement to thought , is physics .
Mutations are physical events .
The behavior of DNA follows the laws of physics .
Note that biological evolution is always regarded as an indivisible entity , yet in fact it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ logically separable .
First , that life came about accidentally in the ancient seas ( highly shaky and certainly not demonstrated ) .
Second , that evolution occurred ( as within limits can be shown ) .
Third , that natural selection drove evolution ( demonstrable in some cases , plausible in a great many , and highly unlikely in yet others ) .
Fourth , that random mutations drive natural selection ( very shaky , but crucial to evolutionism ) .
Fifth , that nothing else drives it .
The unwillingness to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a tendency to believe that when one of them can be demonstrated–natural selection , say–it is regarded as confirmation of the whole edifice .
It isn ’ t .
The Best of Fred Reed

This is a much-updated version of a previous column on evolution, is atrociously long, criminally even, by internet standards but I post it anyway because I get occasional requests. Few will read it, which is understandable. Apologies. The Devil made me do it. I will get transcendently stupid email saying that I am a snake-handling primitive Christian in North Carolina with three teeth. Actually, I do believe that all humans descend from one man and woman (Deucalion and Pyrrha).
The Bugs in Darwin
“A scientist is part of what the Polish philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck called a “thought collective”: a group of people exchanging ideas in a mutually comprehensible idiom. The group, suggested Fleck, inevitably develops a mind of its own, as the individuals in it converge on a way of communicating, thinking and feeling. Signature in the Cell:... Meyer, Stephen C. Best Price: $8.10 Buy New $12.19 (as of 03:09 UTC - Details)
This makes scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human social life: deference to the charismatic, herding towards majority opinion, punishment for deviance, and intense discomfort with admitting to error. Of course, such tendencies are precisely what the scientific method was invented to correct for, and over the long run, it does a good job of it. In the long run, however, we’re all dead, quite possibly sooner than we would be if we hadn’t been following a diet based on poor advice.”
How This Essay Came About
I was in high school when I began to think about evolution. I was then just discovering the sciences systematically, and took them as what they offered themselves to be, a realm of reason and dispassionate regard for truth. There was a hard-edged clarity to them that I liked. You got real answers. Since evolution depended on such sciences as chemistry, I regarded it as also being a science.
The question of the origin of life interested me. The evolutionary explanations that I encountered in textbooks of biology seemed weak, however. They ran to, “In primeval seas, evaporation concentrated dissolved compounds in a pore in a rock, a membrane formed, and life began its immense journey.” Still, I saw no reason to doubt this. If it hadn’t been true, scientists would not have said that it was.
Remember, I was fifteen.
In those days I read Scientific American and New Scientist, the latter then still being thoughtfully written in good English. I noticed that not infrequently they offered differing speculations as to the origin of life. The belief in the instrumentality of chemical accident was constant, but the nature of the primeval soup changed to fit varying attempts at explanation.
For a while, life was thought to have come about on clay in shallow water in seas of a particular composition, later in tidal pools with another chemical solution, then in the open ocean in another solution. This continues. Recently, geothermal vents have been offered as the home of the first life. Today (Feb 24, 2005) on the BBC website, I learn that life evolved below the oceanic floor. (“There is evidence that life evolved in the deep sediments,” co-author John Parkes, of Cardiff University, UK, told the BBC News website.”) Darwinu2019s Doubt: Th... Stephen C. Meyer Best Price: $9.99 Buy New $7.00 (as of 09:40 UTC - Details)
The frequent shifting of ground bothered me. If we knew how life began, why did we have so many prospective mechanisms, none of which worked? Evolution began to look like a theory in search of a soup. Fifty-five years later in 2015, it still does.
What Distinguishes Evolution from Other Sciences
Early on, I noticed three things about evolution that differentiated it from other sciences (or, I could almost say, from science). First, plausibility was accepted as being equivalent to evidence. And of course the less you know, the greater the number of things that are plausible, because there are fewer facts to get in the way. Again and again evolutionists assumed that suggesting how something might have happened was equivalent to establishing how it had happened. Asking them for evidence usually aroused annoyance and sometimes, if persisted in, hostility.
As an example, consider the view that life arose by chemical misadventure. By this they mean, I think, that they cannot imagine how else it might have come about. (Neither can I. Does one accept a poor explanation because unable to think of a good one?) This accidental-life theory, being somewhat plausible, is therefore accepted without the usual standards of science, such as reproducibility or rigorous demonstration of mathematical feasibility. Putting it otherwise, evolutionists are too attached to their ideas to be able to question them.
Or to notice that others do question, and with reason. They defend furiously the evolution of life in earth’s seas as the most certain of certainties. Yet in the November, 2005 Scientific American, an article argues that life may have begun elsewhere, perhaps on Mars, and arrived here on meteorites. May have, perhaps, might. Somewhere, somewhere else, anywhere. Onward into the fog.
Consequently, discussion often relies on vague and murky assertion, or ignores obvious questions. Starlings are said to have evolved to be the color of dirt so that hawks can’t see them to eat them. This is plausible and, I suspect, true. But guacamayos and cockatoos are gaudy enough to be seen from low-earth orbit. Is there a contradiction here? No, say evolutionists. Guacamayos are gaudy so they can find each other to mate. Always there is the pat explanation. But starlings seem to mate with great success, though invisible. If you have heard a guacamayo shriek, you can hardly doubt that another one could easily find it. Enthusiasts of evolution then told me that guacamayos were at the top of their food chain, and didn’t have predators. Or else that the predators were colorblind. Return of the God Hypo... Meyer, Stephen C. Buy New $28.99 (as of 03:09 UTC - Details)
On and on it goes. On any coral reef, a scuba diver can see, or rather not see, phenomenally good camouflage in creatures such as octopuses, said to prevent their being eaten. It does. But many fish are garishly colored. What is the advantage?
Second, evolution seemed more a metaphysics or ideology than a science. The sciences, as I knew them, gave clear answers. Evolution involved intense faith in fuzzy principles. You demonstrated chemistry, but believed evolution. If you have ever debated a Marxist, or a serious liberal or conservative, or a feminist or Christian, you will have noticed that, although they can be exceedingly bright and well informed, they display a maddening evasiveness. You never get a straight answer if it is one they do not want to give. Crucial premises are not firmly established. Fundamental assertions do not tie to observable reality. Invariably the Marxist (or evolutionist) assumes that a detailed knowledge of economic conditions in the reign of Nicholas II substitutes for being able to answer simple questions, such as why Marxism has never worked. This is the Fallacy of Irrelevant Knowledge. And of course almost anything can be made believable by considering only favorable evidence and interpreting hard.
Third, evolutionists are obsessed by Christianity and Creationism, with which they imagine themselves to be in mortal combat. This is peculiar to them. Note that other sciences, such as astronomy and geology, even archaeology, are equally threatened by the notion that the world was created in 4004 BC. Astronomers pay not the slightest attention to Creationist ideas. Nobody does—except evolutionists. We are dealing with competing religions—overarching explanations of origin and destiny. Thus the fury of their response to skepticism.
I found it pointless to tell them that I wasn’t a Creationist. They refused to believe it. If they had, they would have had to answer questions that they would rather avoid. Like any zealots, they cannot recognize their own zealotry. Thus their constant classification of skeptics as enemies (a word they often use)—of truth, of science, of Darwin, of progress.
The Lair of the Beast
Undeniable: How Biolog... Douglas Axe Best Price: $7.78 Buy New $8.59 (as of 08:30 UTC - Details) I have been on several lists on the internet that deal with matters such as evolution, have written on the subject, and have discussed evolution with various of its adherents. These men (almost all of them are) have frequently been very bright indeed, often Ivy League professors, some of them with names you would recognize. They are not amateurs of evolution, or high-school principals in Kansas eager to prove their modernity. I asked them questions, such as whether we really know what the primeval seas consisted of, etc. I knew the answers; I wanted to see how serious proponents of evolutionary biology would respond to awkward questions.
It was like giving a bobcat a prostate exam. I got everything but answers. They told me I was a crank, implied over and over (again) that I was a Creationist, said that I was an enemy of science (someone who asks for evidence is an enemy of science). They said that I was trying to pull down modern biology (if you ask questions about an aspect of biology, you want to pull down biology). They told me I didn’t know anything (that’s why I was asking questions), and that I was a mere journalist (the validity of a question depends on its source rather than its content).
But they didn’t answer the questions. They ducked and dodged and evaded. After thirty years in journalism, I know ducking and dodging when I see it. It was like cross-examining hostile witnesses.
This is the behavior not of scientists, but of advocates, of True Believers. I used to think that science was about asking questions, not about defending things you didn’t really know. Religion, I thought, was the other way around. I guess I was wrong.
As to the charge routinely made that I know “absolutely nothing” of evolution or the biological sciences, or any sciences,, I will point out that most things can be grasped by the application of modest intelligence and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The apparent difficulty of most science consists more in forbidding terminology than in the simple ideas concealed therein. At risk of inciting tedium, I note that, thanks to a good university grounding and considerable reading, I can speak with familiarity of:
Darwinu2019s Black Box... Michael J. Behe Best Price: $4.12 Buy New $6.75 (as of 09:54 UTC - Details) Prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase. Descemet’s membrane, ciliary body, suspensory ligaments, retinal pigmented epithelium (the eye being of evolutionary interest). Peptide pituitary hormones, vasopressin and oxytocin. Osteoclast, osteoblast. Nephrons, glomerulus, Loop of Henle. Axon, dendrite, sodium in-potassium-out depolarization, neurotransmitters, receptor sites. Rough and smooth endoplasmic reticula, Golgi apparatus, lipid bilayers, hydrophobic and hydrophilic tails, lysosomes, ribosomes, epitopes, m-RNA, t-RNA, transcription, translation. Restriction enzymes, DNA polymerase. The Breeder’s Equation, selection differential, pleiotrophy, epistasis, narrow heritability. Purines adenine and guanine and pyrimidines cytocine and thymine (well, uracil in RNA). Degeneracy of the codon alphabet. Nucleotides, nucleosides, adenosine triphosphate, indels, mitochondrial cristae, single-nucleotide polymorphisms, Shannon information versus specified information, polymerase chain reaction, restriction-fragment length polymorphism, electrophoresis. Luciferin, (and Luciferout?) luciferase, ATP. X chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA. Peptide bonds -COOH to NH 2, water molecule extruded. Socially important compounds like 2, 4, 6- trinitrotoluene, toluene being benzene with an -CH3 group, bond resonance in benzene, pH, the negative log of the hydronium ion content. Levo- and dextro- isomers. Alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, al gore. Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian. Purported transitional forms: The Ichthyostegids of, if memory serves, Devonian sediments of eastern Greenland; Archaeopteryx, Bavaria 1861; coelacanth, Marjorie Latimer, sort of 1937 I think; and my favorite, Piltdown Man. The amniote egg. Saurischian and Ornithischian dinosaurs. Sauropods, pseudopods, copepods. Etc
A Preamble
The intent of this essay is not to debate with the ardent of evolutionism. To do so would be pointless. The problem is one of underlying set of mind, of why people believe and disbelieve things. The greatest intellectual divide is not between those who believe one thing and those who believe another, but between those who have an emotional need to believe something fervently and those who can say, “I don’t know.” The former group comprises those tedious Darwinists and Creationists who hurl imprecations at each other like fans of rival football teams. Each blockheadedly refuses to concede the slightest possibility that its doctrine might be other than infallible. To my mind they constitute the best evidence that we did not descend from monkeys, but have not yet ascended to them. Stupidity beyond a certain point is intractable.
I write here for those who can look at the world with curiosity and calm, divining what can be divined and conceding what cannot, without regarding themselves as members of warring tribes. To judge by the writing on evolution in the public prints, there may be as many as three of these.
On Arrogance
“The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose.” J. B. S. Haldane Darwin Devolves: The N... Behe, Michael J. Best Price: $11.00 Buy New $11.24 (as of 03:09 UTC - Details)
“Queer”: Exactly the right word, suggesting more the world of Alice in Wonderland than the crisp, clean-edged, perfectly ordered and causal world of physics. This paradigm holds that existence is like a vast crossword puzzle. Some parts we have filled in, others we have not, but by its nature the puzzle is solvable, and it is only a matter of time before we know everything. This is awfully optimistic.
Humans today are a puffed-up and overconfident species. We believe that we know everything, or shortly will. We have a sense of near-omniscience equaled only by that of teenagers. For do we not have smart phones and Mars landers and PET scans, and do we not all speak wisely of DNA? We are, if not gods, at least godlings on the way up. If you don’t believe this, just ask us.
It was not always so. A thousand years ago, mankind cast a small shadow on the earth and lived in a dark and mysterious world. Little was known, about anything. Gods of countless sorts walked the earth. Spirits inhabited sacred groves. Lightning, the moon, the stars were…what? We had no idea. This brought humility.
We now believe that nothing is or can be beyond our powers. A contemplative skeptic might advert to a few remaining details: We don’t know where we came from, why we are here, where “here” is, where we are going if anywhere, or what we ought to do. These are minor questions. We only think about them when we wake up at three a.m. and remember that we are not permanent. We are kidding ourselves.
When people become accustomed to things that make no sense, they begin to seem to. Though we no longer notice it as we peck at tablet computers and listen to droning lowbrow shows about the conquest of nature, we still live in a weird and inexplicable universe, an apparently unending emptiness speckled with sparks of hydrogen fire. It is wicked mysterious. More things in heaven and earth, indeed.
We are not as wise as we think. We are just smarter than anything else we know about. I reiterate Fred’s Principle: The smartest of a large number of hamsters is still a hamster.
Evolution in the Grand Scheme of Things
The Theory of Evolution is not just about biological evolution. It is part of a grand unified theory that seeks to explain everything (except things that it can’t explain, which it ignores). It runs briefly as follows: First came the Big Bang. Subatomic particles flew in all directions, coalesced into atoms and into molecules and stars. Planets formed, then oceans, and then life came about by chemical inadvertence. Evolution produced trilobites, dinosaurs, mammals, and us. In the popular version, though not in the scientific, evolution produces ongoing betterment.
It is not particularly plausible. As someone said, evolution writ large is the belief that a large cloud of hydrogen will eventually turn into Manhattan. But, like a religion, it provides an overarching explanation of origins–the Big Bang–and destiny–we are getting better and better–and gives us a sense of understanding the world.
The theory is thus very much an expression of the need for certainty. Note that while in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, Christian fundamentalists tried to outlaw Darwin, today evolutionists appeal to the courts to outlaw mention of Creation in the schools. This is not rational. Can anyone believe that describing Creation in high schools will deter students from studying biochemistry, and turn them into intellectual loin-cloth wearers burning textbooks?
Evolution is crucially important for biologists. Without Darwin, biology would become a collection of anecdotes, observations, and horrors, with no explanatory structure, and the living world a realm of utterly inexplicable and often weird and even frightening creatures.
Interestingly, atheism has to be part of the evolutionist’s mental equipment since if any sort of god exists, or if there is life after death, or anything beyond the laws of physics, then these things might influence existence in a way outside of physics–and this cannot be allowed.
Before going further, let us look at some of the questions ignored by evolutionism.
In Evolution Writ Large nothing exists but physics. The Big Bang was physics, chemistry is the physics of the interactions of atoms, biochemistry a subset of chemistry and therefore also physics. Everything that happens in a cell is physics (to include biochemistry). Everything that happens in a living body, from movement to thought, is physics. Mutations are physical events. The behavior of DNA follows the laws of physics.
Note that biological evolution is always regarded as an indivisible entity, yet in fact it consists of several distinct components that are logically separable. First, that life came about accidentally in the ancient seas (highly shaky and certainly not demonstrated). Second, that evolution occurred (as within limits can be shown). Third, that natural selection drove evolution (demonstrable in some cases, plausible in a great many, and highly unlikely in yet others). Fourth, that random mutations drive natural selection (very shaky, but crucial to evolutionism). Fifth, that nothing else drives it.
The unwillingness to recognize that these are separable leads to a tendency to believe that when one of them can be demonstrated–natural selection, say–it is regarded as confirmation of the whole edifice. It isn’t.
Read the Whole Article
The Best of Fred Reed


lewrockwell--2020-11-16--The Future of Fox News and the Future of America

It happened on Saturday morning , November 14 , 2020 , at around 8:15 EST .
I had switched over to briefly catch some national news on the Fox News Channel .
All of a sudden I heard—and saw—Pete Hegseth stop in the middle of the sentence he was reading from his teleprompter : “ …there weren ’ t any substantiated cases of voter fraud in the swing states….
” And there , as he spoke that line , he interjected : “ I ’ m not sure I agree with that script on the teleprompter.
” Think of it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ television news network all of a sudden halting his narrative to publicly declare that he did not accept the party line—that he did not agree with what the news writers had set down authoritatively as gospel for him to say on camera .
And it was one more ominous piece of an unfolding drama—the evolving transformation of Fox—from the network that many conservatives and most Make America Great Again “ deplorables ” once may have thought was on their side , to something that seemed increasingly like only the slightly right wing of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fools : How a S ... Carlson , Tucker Check Amazon for Pricing .
It has been that Establishment all along that many if not most viewers believed Fox was standing against , offering an alternate news and information source to almost complete media control by the Progressivist Left .
Of course , there are other sources now , and they demand closer exploration .
There is Newsmax , as well as One America News .
But these televised media are not available everywhere , not like Fox .
And until recently they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ widespread following as Fox News .
Nor did they have—nor do they have—a fearless Tucker Carlson smashing all records for weekly prime time viewership .
So , settling back in their viewing habits cultivated for years , most MAGA folks watched Fox , even if certain doubts , both politically and culturally , arose over time , especially during the past several years .
There had been signals , alarms , along the way , especially since the later years of the Obama administration that Fox had acceded to a post-Christian morality as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on camera any number of conservative and traditionalist religious leaders from time to time—a Reverend Franklin Graham , a Pastor Robert Jeffress ( First Baptist Church , Dallas ) , and others—at the same time , since the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision ( 2015 ) essentially legislating that same sex couples have a constitutional right to marry , and the growing acceptance of homosexuality as normative , Fox accepted that new template without demurrer .
True , there were those on the network who continued to profess traditional belief and standards @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not permitted to get out of hand .
Over a year ago , June 30 , 2019 , I commented in a published essay : “ Consider the number of pundits who are involved in same sex unions who now appear regularly on the network and Fox ’ s apparent de facto acceptance of that assault on an essential belief of Western civilization.
” One can easily think of any number of “ married ” same sex personalities regularly highlighted by the network : a Guy Benson , for example , and former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Tammy Bruce ( for a time in such a relationship ) .
And there are others .
Not to mention Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA who has embraced ( literally ) transgendered “ conservatives ” and drag queens .
Such evolution has not gone unnoticed , nor has a comparison with the early days , pre-Obergefell , of Fox when its pundits seemed to uniformly defend traditional marriage and morality .
Those days are apparently gone , in the name of a new post-Christian template .
The Tucker Carlson Quo ... @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But it is not just the progressive acceptance of a new morality .
Increasingly , the network seems bent on echoing a progressivist agenda politically and historically , if perhaps not as blatantly or ferociously as its lagging competitors on CNN or MSNBC .
Again , in a previously published column I wrote : “ …consider Fox ’ s canonization of race hustler Martin Luther King Jr. and the disastrous civil rights revolution , and its eagerness to attack older traditions and figures of conservatism , in particular , of the Confederacy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ’ and ‘ reactionaries ’ .
( Remember Fox host Brian Kilmeade ’ s series on the ‘ Civil War ’ which could have been—and maybe was—taken right out of Marxist historian Eric Foner ’ s textbooks ? )
Or , consider the network ’ s nearly complete support for globalism and employing American arms ( and the lives of American boys ) to impose ‘ democracy ’ ( and thus current ‘ American values ’ ) on every poor , benighted desert oasis or impenetrable jungle in every God-forsaken corner of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that this internationalism is , both historically and philosophically , a leftist position and that it stands in direct opposition to traditional American conservatism.
” Those examples can be multiplied exponentially .
We need only cite perennial appearances on Fox by recovering Never Trumpers like Ben Shapiro or National Review editor Rich Lowry , not to mention Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes whose all-out globalism and disaccord with America First principles are openly expressed .
They are heralded by the network as conservatives—but , in fact , they propound an elitist “ ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ progressivist views on everything from America ’ s imperial destiny to force our form of egalitarian liberal democracy on the rest of the world to a firm adherence to a post-Christian ( im ) morality .
Even on the more Old Right Tucker Carlson Tonight ( and on the Laura Ingraham program ) , the omnipresent Neoconservative Victor Davis Hanson ( whose expertise is in ancient Hellenic history ) shows up with regularity as an expert witness on just about every topic which has anything to do with current politics .
Yes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but his liberal egalitarianism is never far from the surface .
For Hanson noble figures like Robert E. Lee are comparable to Nazis , and he is quick to implicitly condemn the largely Southern constitutionalists who actually created the American federative republic as slaveholding racists .
How , we must ask , is this view any different substantively from the “ woke ” position of the revolutionaries and BLM/Antifa activists on the extreme Left ?
Yet , Hanson is Fox ’ s “ go-to ” authority .
Donald Trump Coin 2020 ... Buy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many MAGA “ deplorables ” came with how Fox covered the 2020 presidential election .
Not just the always-skewed pro-Biden polling results , but in a sense a realization that indeed something was happening , something disconcerting and very troubling at the network .
And that , I suggest , has much to do with the Fox ’ s general adherence ( with a few notable exceptions ) to a globalist Neoconservatism and an unwillingness to actually sever ties to the Washington Establishment , in this case , the Republican and “ conservative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dominated the acceptable “ opposition ” to the Deep State , but in fact , don ’ t really want to be left behind as its minions return to full power and march triumphantly and devastatingly through what remains of our inherited institutions .
Perhaps the first major public row or ruckus came with Fox News announcing early on election night , November 3 , that with hundreds of thousands of votes outstanding and Trump leading , Joe Biden had carried Arizona .
There were immediate protests from viewers and the Trump campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prediction based on fragmentary returns ?
How , indeed ?
For in North Carolina with about 117,000 votes potentially to be counted and Trump leading Biden by around 76,000 , Fox and the other networks refused to call the Tar Heel State for Trump , even though Biden would have had to receive at least 97,000 of those remaining votes , more than 83 % of the total ( assuming all ballots came in and there were no election shenanigans ) .
In the end , North Carolina did go for Trump , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outrage concerning Arizona was so intense that the network trotted out on election night for a short interview Arnon Mishkin , head of the team running Fox ’ s Decision Desk .
Mishkin is a staunch registered Democrat who has worked as a campaign consultant for Democrats such as Ed Koch , Tom Bradley , and Mike Bloomberg .
As the Jewish Telegraph Agency detailed in its reporting : “ Mishkin , 65 , would seem an unlikely election analyst for the news network that is closely associated with the Republican Party….The [ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Biden campaign , which was reeling as it watched tallies in swing states such as Ohio and Florida grow insurmountable Trump leads.
” About Mishkin there is this from the Wikipedia : “ The New York Times published an article about Mishkin a month before the election entitled ‘ Trump Wants to Discredit the Election .
This Nerd Could Stop Him.
’ In the lead up to the election , Mishkin and Dana Blanton were the main voices at Fox News doubting the chances of Trump being re-elected to the Presidency in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two were involved in creating the new VoteCast alternative to exit polls , alongside the Associated Press .
Mishkin ’ s model has been supported by other pollsters such as Ariel Edwards-Levy of the [ far Left ] Huffington Post.
” Tucker Carlson Coffee ... Buy New $ 20.39 This was the man directing polling at Fox and how it would call the election on November 3 .
It was not the first time during his tenure at Fox when he generated controversy and disturbing questions .
From several years back , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , claim [ ed ] that Mishkin and his team were highly dismissive of Donald Trump ‘ s chances to beat Hillary Clinton during the 2016 United States presidential election.
” Why is such a partisan Democrat like Mishkin in charge of Fox ’ s election and polling operation ?
On November 9 , Neil Cavuto interviewed Trump campaign spokesman Kayleigh McEnany ; it was intended to provide details on the ongoing election litigation taking place in Pennsylvania .
But abruptly , as McEnany made the case that much of the voting in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ declared the interview ended and cut her off : “ Whoa , whoa , whoa .
I just think we have to be very clear , ” Cavuto moaned .
“ She ’ s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and illegal voting , unless she has more details to back that up , I can ’ t in good countenance continue to show you this.
” End of story , guillotine for Kayleigh .
Later that day Carlson , in a not-so-veiled response to Cavuto , as well as to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ You can ’ t just cut away from coverage you don ’ t like .
You can ’ t simply tell people to accept an outcome… because force doesn ’ t work in a democracy .
That ’ s a dictatorship , Carlson said .
“ In a free society you have to convince the public of your legitimacy .
You have to win them over with reason .
Democracy is always a voluntary arrangement .
Telling voters to shut up is never enough.
” Of course , there remain a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Britt Hume , Fox ’ s senior political analyst , appears the most balanced ( unlike Chris Wallace , securely tied to the Washington Deep State establishment ) .
And Tucker Carlson continues with his highly rated prime time program .
Carlson , if not always free from network constraints ( he still calls on Victor Davis Hanson for opinion ) , is usually fearless and informed , almost alone in willing to break through the media and tech authoritarian iron curtain which increasingly strangles America and shapes what we think and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vote .
The pressure on Fox pundits and reporters to accept without too much grumbling a Biden administration will only grow , and like at other supposedly conservative news outlets ( e.g.
, The Wall Street Journal ) , the new Millennial hires and writers , educated at Leftist hothouses called colleges , may well finally vanquish any dissent .
The Neocons—the slightly more demure wing of Progressivism , broadcasting their message of liberal democratic globalism and post-Christian morality—dominate Fox and have paved the way for what is coming .
They have successfully @ @ @ @ @ @ @ except occasionally on the Carlson program .
( Remember his detailed coverage of our horrendous missteps in Syria , his dismantling of the “ Russia Hoax , ” and his incredible reporting on the Hunter Biden scandal ? )
But when was the last time you saw an intelligent defender of the Old South and its symbols on Fox ( and there are many ) , or an internationally known Old Right conservative scholar like Dr. Paul Gottfried or Pat Buchanan on the network ?
If his ratings were not so high , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voice , too , would be exiled ?
True , there has been a reaction , and it seems that other , smaller conservative media ventures , including online , are gaining .
Newsmax TV surpassed Fox Business in viewership the day after the election .
And Fox market shares have dipped .
Yet , longstanding viewing habits are difficult to change , even if the general drift and flow seems to inevitably carry those glued to the network farther to the Left .
If the Deep State should finally complete its theft @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump should invest his fortune in a genuinely populist traditionalist television network ?
Of course , he ’ d have to first divest himself of all of the various subversive Republican and establishment conservative apparatchiks who have surrounded him and undermined his presidency .
And fight vigorously Big Tech , Big Media , and Big Government .
A capital idea ?
Yes ; but is it already too late in a decadent and dying America ?
Is there life yet in the Framer ’ s dream ?

It happened on Saturday morning, November 14, 2020, at around 8:15 EST. I had switched over to briefly catch some national news on the Fox News Channel. All of a sudden I heard—and saw—Pete Hegseth stop in the middle of the sentence he was reading from his teleprompter: “…there weren’t any substantiated cases of voter fraud in the swing states….” And there, as he spoke that line, he interjected: “I’m not sure I agree with that script on the teleprompter.”
Think of it: a major newscaster on a major television news network all of a sudden halting his narrative to publicly declare that he did not accept the party line—that he did not agree with what the news writers had set down authoritatively as gospel for him to say on camera.
And it was one more ominous piece of an unfolding drama—the evolving transformation of Fox—from the network that many conservatives and most Make America Great Again “deplorables” once may have thought was on their side, to something that seemed increasingly like only the slightly right wing of the Washington DC Establishment. Ship of Fools: How a S... Carlson, Tucker Check Amazon for Pricing.
It has been that Establishment all along that many if not most viewers believed Fox was standing against, offering an alternate news and information source to almost complete media control by the Progressivist Left.
Of course, there are other sources now, and they demand closer exploration. There is Newsmax, as well as One America News. But these televised media are not available everywhere, not like Fox. And until recently they did not command the same clout and widespread following as Fox News. Nor did they have—nor do they have—a fearless Tucker Carlson smashing all records for weekly prime time viewership.
So, settling back in their viewing habits cultivated for years, most MAGA folks watched Fox, even if certain doubts, both politically and culturally, arose over time, especially during the past several years.
There had been signals, alarms, along the way, especially since the later years of the Obama administration that Fox had acceded to a post-Christian morality as its operational model.
Although Fox heralded on camera any number of conservative and traditionalist religious leaders from time to time—a Reverend Franklin Graham, a Pastor Robert Jeffress (First Baptist Church, Dallas), and others—at the same time, since the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision (2015) essentially legislating that same sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, and the growing acceptance of homosexuality as normative, Fox accepted that new template without demurrer. True, there were those on the network who continued to profess traditional belief and standards, but their voices were modulated and not permitted to get out of hand.
Over a year ago, June 30, 2019, I commented in a published essay: “Consider the number of pundits who are involved in same sex unions who now appear regularly on the network and Fox’s apparent de facto acceptance of that assault on an essential belief of Western civilization.” One can easily think of any number of “married” same sex personalities regularly highlighted by the network: a Guy Benson, for example, and former Director of National Intelligence Rick Grenell, and Tammy Bruce (for a time in such a relationship). And there are others. Not to mention Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA who has embraced (literally) transgendered “conservatives” and drag queens.
Such evolution has not gone unnoticed, nor has a comparison with the early days, pre-Obergefell, of Fox when its pundits seemed to uniformly defend traditional marriage and morality. Those days are apparently gone, in the name of a new post-Christian template. The Tucker Carlson Quo... Eastman, Dan Buy New $7.95 (as of 03:10 UTC - Details)
But it is not just the progressive acceptance of a new morality. Increasingly, the network seems bent on echoing a progressivist agenda politically and historically, if perhaps not as blatantly or ferociously as its lagging competitors on CNN or MSNBC. Again, in a previously published column I wrote:
“…consider Fox’s canonization of race hustler Martin Luther King Jr. and the disastrous civil rights revolution, and its eagerness to attack older traditions and figures of conservatism, in particular, of the Confederacy, as ‘racists,’ ‘segregationists,’ and ‘reactionaries’. (Remember Fox host Brian Kilmeade’s series on the ‘Civil War’ which could have been—and maybe was—taken right out of Marxist historian Eric Foner’s textbooks?) Or, consider the network’s nearly complete support for globalism and employing American arms (and the lives of American boys) to impose ‘democracy’ (and thus current ‘American values’) on every poor, benighted desert oasis or impenetrable jungle in every God-forsaken corner of the world. I would argue strenuously that this internationalism is, both historically and philosophically, a leftist position and that it stands in direct opposition to traditional American conservatism.”
Those examples can be multiplied exponentially. We need only cite perennial appearances on Fox by recovering Never Trumpers like Ben Shapiro or National Review editor Rich Lowry, not to mention Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes whose all-out globalism and disaccord with America First principles are openly expressed. They are heralded by the network as conservatives—but, in fact, they propound an elitist “(neo)conservatism” deeply infected with progressivist views on everything from America’s imperial destiny to force our form of egalitarian liberal democracy on the rest of the world to a firm adherence to a post-Christian (im)morality.
Even on the more Old Right Tucker Carlson Tonight (and on the Laura Ingraham program), the omnipresent Neoconservative Victor Davis Hanson (whose expertise is in ancient Hellenic history) shows up with regularity as an expert witness on just about every topic which has anything to do with current politics.
Yes, he is supportive of President Trump, but his liberal egalitarianism is never far from the surface. For Hanson noble figures like Robert E. Lee are comparable to Nazis, and he is quick to implicitly condemn the largely Southern constitutionalists who actually created the American federative republic as slaveholding racists.
How, we must ask, is this view any different substantively from the “woke” position of the revolutionaries and BLM/Antifa activists on the extreme Left? Yet, Hanson is Fox’s “go-to” authority. Donald Trump Coin 2020... Buy New $5.35 (as of 05:19 UTC - Details)
The breaking point for many MAGA “deplorables” came with how Fox covered the 2020 presidential election. Not just the always-skewed pro-Biden polling results, but in a sense a realization that indeed something was happening, something disconcerting and very troubling at the network. And that, I suggest, has much to do with the Fox’s general adherence (with a few notable exceptions) to a globalist Neoconservatism and an unwillingness to actually sever ties to the Washington Establishment, in this case, the Republican and “conservative” elites who have more or less dominated the acceptable “opposition” to the Deep State, but in fact, don’t really want to be left behind as its minions return to full power and march triumphantly and devastatingly through what remains of our inherited institutions.
Perhaps the first major public row or ruckus came with Fox News announcing early on election night, November 3, that with hundreds of thousands of votes outstanding and Trump leading, Joe Biden had carried Arizona. There were immediate protests from viewers and the Trump campaign: how could Fox make such a prediction based on fragmentary returns? How, indeed? For in North Carolina with about 117,000 votes potentially to be counted and Trump leading Biden by around 76,000, Fox and the other networks refused to call the Tar Heel State for Trump, even though Biden would have had to receive at least 97,000 of those remaining votes, more than 83% of the total (assuming all ballots came in and there were no election shenanigans). In the end, North Carolina did go for Trump, and the margin was maintained.
The outrage concerning Arizona was so intense that the network trotted out on election night for a short interview Arnon Mishkin, head of the team running Fox’s Decision Desk. Mishkin is a staunch registered Democrat who has worked as a campaign consultant for Democrats such as Ed Koch, Tom Bradley, and Mike Bloomberg. As the Jewish Telegraph Agency detailed in its reporting: “Mishkin, 65, would seem an unlikely election analyst for the news network that is closely associated with the Republican Party….The [Arizona] call injected life back into the Biden campaign, which was reeling as it watched tallies in swing states such as Ohio and Florida grow insurmountable Trump leads.”
About Mishkin there is this from the Wikipedia:
“The New York Times published an article about Mishkin a month before the election entitled ‘Trump Wants to Discredit the Election. This Nerd Could Stop Him.’ In the lead up to the election, Mishkin and Dana Blanton were the main voices at Fox News doubting the chances of Trump being re-elected to the Presidency in his contest with Joe Biden. The two were involved in creating the new VoteCast alternative to exit polls, alongside the Associated Press. Mishkin’s model has been supported by other pollsters such as Ariel Edwards-Levy of the [far Left] Huffington Post.” Tucker Carlson Coffee ... Buy New $20.39 (as of 03:10 UTC - Details)
This was the man directing polling at Fox and how it would call the election on November 3. It was not the first time during his tenure at Fox when he generated controversy and disturbing questions. From several years back, “Eric Bolling, former Fox Business host, claim[ed] that Mishkin and his team were highly dismissive of Donald Trump‘s chances to beat Hillary Clinton during the 2016 United States presidential election.”
Why is such a partisan Democrat like Mishkin in charge of Fox’s election and polling operation?
On November 9, Neil Cavuto interviewed Trump campaign spokesman Kayleigh McEnany; it was intended to provide details on the ongoing election litigation taking place in Pennsylvania. But abruptly, as McEnany made the case that much of the voting in the Keystone State was illegal, Cavuto declared the interview ended and cut her off: “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I just think we have to be very clear,” Cavuto moaned. “She’s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and illegal voting, unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue to show you this.” End of story, guillotine for Kayleigh.
Later that day Carlson, in a not-so-veiled response to Cavuto, as well as to the guiding lords at Fox, declared:
“You can’t just cut away from coverage you don’t like. You can’t simply tell people to accept an outcome… because force doesn’t work in a democracy. That’s a dictatorship, Carlson said. “In a free society you have to convince the public of your legitimacy. You have to win them over with reason. Democracy is always a voluntary arrangement. Telling voters to shut up is never enough.”
Of course, there remain a few highly professional newscasters and pundits at Fox. Britt Hume, Fox’s senior political analyst, appears the most balanced (unlike Chris Wallace, securely tied to the Washington Deep State establishment). And Tucker Carlson continues with his highly rated prime time program. Carlson, if not always free from network constraints (he still calls on Victor Davis Hanson for opinion), is usually fearless and informed, almost alone in willing to break through the media and tech authoritarian iron curtain which increasingly strangles America and shapes what we think and how we act…and how dodo-brained soccer moms vote.
The pressure on Fox pundits and reporters to accept without too much grumbling a Biden administration will only grow, and like at other supposedly conservative news outlets (e.g., The Wall Street Journal), the new Millennial hires and writers, educated at Leftist hothouses called colleges, may well finally vanquish any dissent.
The Neocons—the slightly more demure wing of Progressivism, broadcasting their message of liberal democratic globalism and post-Christian morality—dominate Fox and have paved the way for what is coming. They have successfully squelched Old Right traditionalist conservative voices, except occasionally on the Carlson program. (Remember his detailed coverage of our horrendous missteps in Syria, his dismantling of the “Russia Hoax,” and his incredible reporting on the Hunter Biden scandal?) But when was the last time you saw an intelligent defender of the Old South and its symbols on Fox (and there are many), or an internationally known Old Right conservative scholar like Dr. Paul Gottfried or Pat Buchanan on the network?
If his ratings were not so high, does anyone doubt that Carlson’s voice, too, would be exiled?
True, there has been a reaction, and it seems that other, smaller conservative media ventures, including online, are gaining. Newsmax TV surpassed Fox Business in viewership the day after the election. And Fox market shares have dipped. Yet, longstanding viewing habits are difficult to change, even if the general drift and flow seems to inevitably carry those glued to the network farther to the Left.
If the Deep State should finally complete its theft of the 2020 election, perhaps Donald Trump should invest his fortune in a genuinely populist traditionalist television network? Of course, he’d have to first divest himself of all of the various subversive Republican and establishment conservative apparatchiks who have surrounded him and undermined his presidency. And fight vigorously Big Tech, Big Media, and Big Government.
A capital idea? Yes; but is it already too late in a decadent and dying America? Is there life yet in the Framer’s dream?
Reprinted with the author’s permission.


lewrockwell--2020-11-16--First Comes a Rolling Civil War

First Comes a Rolling Civil War

The massive psyops is ongoing .
Everyone familiar with the Transition Integrity Project ( TIP ) knew how this would imperatively play out .
I chose to frame it as a think tank gaming exercise in my Banana Follies column .
This is a live exercise .
Yet no one knows exactly how it will end .
US intel is very much aware of well-documented instances of election fraud .
Among them : NSA software that infiltrates any network , as previously detailed by Edward Snowden , and capable of altering vote counts ; the Hammer supercomputer and its Scorecard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ points of state election computer systems and outside third party election data vaults ; the Dominion software system , known to have serious security issues since 2000 , but still used in 30 states , including every swing state ; those by now famous vertical jumps to Biden in both Michigan and Wisconsin at 4am on November 4 ( AFP unconvincingly tried to debunk Wisconsin and didn ’ t even try with Michigan ) ; multiple instances of Dead Men Do Vote .
THE HAMMER is the Key ... Jones , Alan Buy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Deep State , which decides what happens next .
They have weighed the pros and cons of placing as candidate a senile , stage 2 dementia , neocon warmonger and possible extorsionist ( along with son ) as “ leader of the free world ” , campaigning from a basement , incapable of filling a parking lot in his rallies , and seconded by someone with so little support in the Dem primaries that she was the first to drop out .
The optics , especially seen from vast swathes of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terrible .
Dodgy elections are a prerogative of Bolivia and Belarus .
Yet only the Empire is able to legitimize a dodgy election – especially in its own backyard .
Welcome to the New Resistance The GOP is in a very comfortable position .
They hold the Senate and may end up picking up as may as 12 seats in the House .
They also know that any attempt by Biden-Harris to legislate via Executive Orders will have…consequences .
The Fox News/ New York Post angle is particularly enticing .
Why are they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family squabbles worthy of the Succession saga , Rupert Murdoch made it very clear , via the laptop from hell caper , that he has all sorts of kompromat on the Biden family .
So they will do whatever he wants .
Murdoch does not need Trump anymore .
Five Swing States to Decide US Presidential Election Nor , in theory , does the GOP .
Former CIA insiders assure of serious backroom shenanigans going on between GOP honchos and the Biden-Harris gang .
Trade-offs bypassing Trump – which most of the GOP @ @ @ @ @ @ @ important man in Washington will be in fact GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell .
Fraud : How the Left Pl ... Eggers , Eric Best Price : $ 7.24 Buy New $ 12.43 Still , to clear any lingering doubts , a vote recount would be absolutely necessary in all 6 contested states – WI , MI , PA , GA , NV and AZ .
Through hand counting .
One by one .
The DoJ would need to act on it , immediately .
Not gon na happen .
Recounts cost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s no evidence Team Trump – on top of it short of funds and manpower – will be able to convince Daddy Bush asset William Barr to go for it .
While relentlessly demonizing Trump for spreading “ a torrent of misinformation ” and “ trying to undermine the legitimacy of the US election ” , mainstream media and Big Tech have declared a winner – a classic case of pre-programming the sheep multitudes .
Yet what really matters is the letter of the law .
State legislatures decide whose electors go to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Here it is – Article II , Section 1 , Clause 2 : Each state shall appoint electors “ in such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct.
” So this has nothing to do with governors , not to mention the media .
It ’ s up to GOP state legislatures to act accordingly .
The drama may roll out for weeks .
The first step of the Electoral College procedure takes place on December 14 .
The final determination will only happen in early January .
Meanwhile , talk of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Trumpism , with 71 million + votes , is firmly established as a mass movement .
No one in the GOP commands this kind of popular appeal .
By sidelining Trumpism , the GOP may be committing seppuku .
So what will Deplorables do ?
Conspiracy Theory in A ... Lance deHaven-Smith Best Price : $ 5.66 Buy New $ 13.40 The always indispensable Alastair Crooke hits the nail on the head in a powerful essay : Trump is the President of Red America .
And depending on how the scripted ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Deplorables are bound to become The Ungovernables .
Crooke references a crucial parallel evoked by historian Mike Vlahos , who shows how the current American saga mirrors Ancient Rome in the last century of the Republic , pitting the Roman elite against the Populares – which today are represented by Red ( Trumpist ) America : “ This was a new world , in which the great landowners , with their latifundia [ the slave-land source of wealth ] , who had been the ‘ Big Men ’ leading the various factions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ senatorial archons that dominated Roman life for the next five centuries — while the People , the Populares , were ground into a passive — not helpless — but generally dependent and non-participating element of Roman governance : This sapped away at the creative life of Rome , and eventually led to its coming apart.
” So as much as the Dem machine had wanted it , Trump is not yet Imperator Caesar Augustus , whom the Greeks called Autokrator ( autocrat ) , but was a de facto monarch .
The American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Caligula is still further on down the road .
He will definitely be a benign , humanitarian imperialist .
In the meantime , what will imperial Big Capital do ?
The West , and especially the American Rome , is on the edge of a double precipice : the worst economic depression ever , coupled with imminent , myriad , uncontrollable explosions of social rage .
Follow the Money : The ... Bongino , Dan Buy New $ 25.20 So the Deep State is reasoning that with Biden – or , sooner rather @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Maa Durga Kamala – the path gets smoother towards the Davos Great Reset .
After all , to reset the chess pieces , first the chessboard must be knocked over .
This will be one step beyond Dark Winter – which not accidentally was evoked by teleprompter-reading Biden himself on the final presidential debate .
The script gets ominously closer to the Rockefeller Foundation ’ s 2010 Lock Step .
Meanwhile , Plan B is kept in ready , steady , go mode : the lineaments of a global rampage , focused on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of influence to satisfy a “ revived ” NATO and the military-industrial complex , which selected the now media-appointed President-Elect in the first place because he ’ s no more than a pliant cardboard figure .

The massive psyops is ongoing. Everyone familiar with the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) knew how this would imperatively play out. I chose to frame it as a think tank gaming exercise in my Banana Follies column. This is a live exercise. Yet no one knows exactly how it will end.
US intel is very much aware of well-documented instances of election fraud. Among them: NSA software that infiltrates any network, as previously detailed by Edward Snowden, and capable of altering vote counts; the Hammer supercomputer and its Scorecard app that hacks computers at the transfer points of state election computer systems and outside third party election data vaults; the Dominion software system, known to have serious security issues since 2000, but still used in 30 states, including every swing state; those by now famous vertical jumps to Biden in both Michigan and Wisconsin at 4am on November 4 (AFP unconvincingly tried to debunk Wisconsin and didn’t even try with Michigan); multiple instances of Dead Men Do Vote.
THE HAMMER is the Key ... Jones, Alan Buy New $4.99 (as of 08:40 UTC - Details) The key actor is the Deep State, which decides what happens next. They have weighed the pros and cons of placing as candidate a senile, stage 2 dementia, neocon warmonger and possible extorsionist (along with son) as “leader of the free world”, campaigning from a basement, incapable of filling a parking lot in his rallies, and seconded by someone with so little support in the Dem primaries that she was the first to drop out.
The optics, especially seen from vast swathes of the imperial-interfered Global South, may be somewhat terrible. Dodgy elections are a prerogative of Bolivia and Belarus. Yet only the Empire is able to legitimize a dodgy election – especially in its own backyard.
Welcome to the New Resistance
The GOP is in a very comfortable position. They hold the Senate and may end up picking up as may as 12 seats in the House. They also know that any attempt by Biden-Harris to legislate via Executive Orders will have…consequences.
The Fox News/ New York Post angle is particularly enticing. Why are they suddenly supporting Biden? Way beyond internal family squabbles worthy of the Succession saga, Rupert Murdoch made it very clear, via the laptop from hell caper, that he has all sorts of kompromat on the Biden family. So they will do whatever he wants. Murdoch does not need Trump anymore.
Five Swing States to Decide US Presidential Election
Nor, in theory, does the GOP. Former CIA insiders assure of serious backroom shenanigans going on between GOP honchos and the Biden-Harris gang. Trade-offs bypassing Trump – which most of the GOP hates with a vengeance. The most important man in Washington will be in fact GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. Fraud: How the Left Pl... Eggers, Eric Best Price: $7.24 Buy New $12.43 (as of 07:20 UTC - Details)
Still, to clear any lingering doubts, a vote recount would be absolutely necessary in all 6 contested states – WI, MI, PA, GA, NV and AZ. Through hand counting. One by one. The DoJ would need to act on it, immediately. Not gonna happen. Recounts cost a ton of money. There’s no evidence Team Trump – on top of it short of funds and manpower – will be able to convince Daddy Bush asset William Barr to go for it.
While relentlessly demonizing Trump for spreading “a torrent of misinformation” and “trying to undermine the legitimacy of the US election”, mainstream media and Big Tech have declared a winner – a classic case of pre-programming the sheep multitudes.
Yet what really matters is the letter of the law. State legislatures decide whose electors go to the Electoral College to appoint the President.
Here it is – Article II, Section 1, Clause 2: Each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct.”
So this has nothing to do with governors, not to mention the media. It’s up to GOP state legislatures to act accordingly. The drama may roll out for weeks. The first step of the Electoral College procedure takes place on December 14. The final determination will only happen in early January.
Meanwhile, talk of a New Resistance is spreading like wildfire.
Trumpism, with 71 million + votes, is firmly established as a mass movement. No one in the GOP commands this kind of popular appeal. By sidelining Trumpism, the GOP may be committing seppuku.
So what will Deplorables do? Conspiracy Theory in A... Lance deHaven-Smith Best Price: $5.66 Buy New $13.40 (as of 04:25 UTC - Details)
The always indispensable Alastair Crooke hits the nail on the head in a powerful essay: Trump is the President of Red America. And depending on how the scripted (s)election tragicomedy develops next, the Deplorables are bound to become The Ungovernables.
Crooke references a crucial parallel evoked by historian Mike Vlahos, who shows how the current American saga mirrors Ancient Rome in the last century of the Republic, pitting the Roman elite against the Populares – which today are represented by Red (Trumpist) America:
“This was a new world, in which the great landowners, with their latifundia [the slave-land source of wealth], who had been the ‘Big Men’ leading the various factions in the civil wars, became the senatorial archons that dominated Roman life for the next five centuries — while the People, the Populares, were ground into a passive — not helpless — but generally dependent and non-participating element of Roman governance: This sapped away at the creative life of Rome, and eventually led to its coming apart.” So as much as the Dem machine had wanted it, Trump is not yet Imperator Caesar Augustus, whom the Greeks called Autokrator (autocrat), but was a de facto monarch. The American Augustus, Tiberius and most of all Caligula is still further on down the road. He will definitely be a benign, humanitarian imperialist.
In the meantime, what will imperial Big Capital do?
The West, and especially the American Rome, is on the edge of a double precipice: the worst economic depression ever, coupled with imminent, myriad, uncontrollable explosions of social rage.
Follow the Money: The ... Bongino, Dan Buy New $25.20 (as of 06:00 UTC - Details) So the Deep State is reasoning that with Biden – or, sooner rather than later, Supreme shakti and Commander-in-Chief Maa Durga Kamala – the path gets smoother towards the Davos Great Reset. After all, to reset the chess pieces, first the chessboard must be knocked over. This will be one step beyond Dark Winter – which not accidentally was evoked by teleprompter-reading Biden himself on the final presidential debate. The script gets ominously closer to the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2010 Lock Step.
Meanwhile, Plan B is kept in ready, steady, go mode: the lineaments of a global rampage, focused on “malign” Russia’s sphere of influence to satisfy a “revived” NATO and the military-industrial complex, which selected the now media-appointed President-Elect in the first place because he’s no more than a pliant cardboard figure.
Reprinted with the author’s permission.


Electoral Theft

NEW YORK—Election-night parties are usually dreadful affairs , with the idiot box blaring and hysterical listeners screaming out the latest info .
American TV pundits are smug trained seals with too much makeup and blow-dry , and they all sound the same with their rehearsed stentorian voices .
Brian Williams , or the hero of Iraq as I call him after he got caught lying about a missile attack on the chopper he was riding—he was safely on the ground and trembling—sounded somber announcing that South Dakota had been called for The Donald .
These so-called anchors no longer even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had long faces when the predicted Biden landslide was gone with the dawn .
I too had predicted a Biden landslide , and was also wrong about a more important subject than the election—my dinner party .
I had written that I would be the only pro-Trump diner , but it turned out we were six for the president and barely two for the man who lives in a basement and forgets his name at times .
My guest of honor , Prince Pavlos , is required to be apolitical , although I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arki Busson is also apolitical , so I spent dinner asking him about Hollywood beauties he has known ; but Arki is a sphinx when it comes to conquests , like the gent that he is .
Bartle and Claudia Bull are a beautiful couple straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald , and they didn ’ t mince their words .
Bartle is a writer , filmmaker , and adventurer , and is often teased by us that he ’ s a top CIA operative .
( He goes to places like Fallujah @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suspicion . )
My buddy Michael Mailer , needless to say , is to the left of Felix Dzerzhinsky , so no guessing was required as to whom he was rooting for .
Two beautiful young women , Enga and Emilie , were too polite to express their choice , which suited me just fine .
History of the Deep St ... Stone , Jeremy Buy New $ 14.99 Exit polls showed that Trump won 18 percent of black men , 36 percent of Latino men , and 58 percent of white men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many black votes was when the man who lives in a basement could actually remember his name , back in the early ’ 50s .
The media hysteria against Trump reached its apotheosis as the vote neared .
I actually believe that no foreign adversary of Uncle Sam ’ s has ever received such abuse as The Donald has .
After it was obvious that Biden had won , an MSNBC anchor by the name of Joy Reid complained of a “ great amount of racism , anti-blackness , and anti-wokeness.
” What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ name of Charles Blow of the Bagel Times went a step further : “ It confirmed the power of White Patriarchy.
” Just imagine if the wokes had lost , what the rhetoric would sound like .
One Jane Mayer , who hates rather a lot and would have envied but despised my dinner guests , writes in the magazine whose star writer was caught in flagrante masturbating on Zoom a couple of weeks ago , how Trump must feel like “ a terrified little boy ” because he will soon be “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calculates that The Donald will abscond to a foreign country that has no extradition with the U.S .
Hers is a long-winded article of hate and speculation about preventing a president from pardoning himself and how a corrupt president is a danger to the country .
The Best of Taki Theodoracopulos

NEW YORK—Election-night parties are usually dreadful affairs, with the idiot box blaring and hysterical listeners screaming out the latest info. American TV pundits are smug trained seals with too much makeup and blow-dry, and they all sound the same with their rehearsed stentorian voices. Brian Williams, or the hero of Iraq as I call him after he got caught lying about a missile attack on the chopper he was riding—he was safely on the ground and trembling—sounded somber announcing that South Dakota had been called for The Donald. These so-called anchors no longer even pretend to be objective, and they had long faces when the predicted Biden landslide was gone with the dawn.
I too had predicted a Biden landslide, and was also wrong about a more important subject than the election—my dinner party. I had written that I would be the only pro-Trump diner, but it turned out we were six for the president and barely two for the man who lives in a basement and forgets his name at times. My guest of honor, Prince Pavlos, is required to be apolitical, although I can guess where his sympathies lie. Arki Busson is also apolitical, so I spent dinner asking him about Hollywood beauties he has known; but Arki is a sphinx when it comes to conquests, like the gent that he is. Bartle and Claudia Bull are a beautiful couple straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and they didn’t mince their words. Bartle is a writer, filmmaker, and adventurer, and is often teased by us that he’s a top CIA operative. (He goes to places like Fallujah in Iraq for holidays, hence the suspicion.) My buddy Michael Mailer, needless to say, is to the left of Felix Dzerzhinsky, so no guessing was required as to whom he was rooting for. Two beautiful young women, Enga and Emilie, were too polite to express their choice, which suited me just fine. History of the Deep St... Stone, Jeremy Buy New $14.99 (as of 06:14 UTC - Details)
Exit polls showed that Trump won 18 percent of black men, 36 percent of Latino men, and 58 percent of white men. The last Republican to get as many black votes was when the man who lives in a basement could actually remember his name, back in the early ’50s. The media hysteria against Trump reached its apotheosis as the vote neared. I actually believe that no foreign adversary of Uncle Sam’s has ever received such abuse as The Donald has. After it was obvious that Biden had won, an MSNBC anchor by the name of Joy Reid complained of a “great amount of racism, anti-blackness ,and anti-wokeness.” What the hell? A blowhard by the name of Charles Blow of the Bagel Times went a step further: “It confirmed the power of White Patriarchy.”
Just imagine if the wokes had lost, what the rhetoric would sound like. One Jane Mayer, who hates rather a lot and would have envied but despised my dinner guests, writes in the magazine whose star writer was caught in flagrante masturbating on Zoom a couple of weeks ago, how Trump must feel like “a terrified little boy” because he will soon be “running from the law.” She then calculates that The Donald will abscond to a foreign country that has no extradition with the U.S. Hers is a long-winded article of hate and speculation about preventing a president from pardoning himself and how a corrupt president is a danger to the country.
Read the Whole Article
The Best of Taki Theodoracopulos