Hope your Earth Day is going well. I've spent most of mine on the air, starting with Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends and then Steve Doocy on Kilmeade & Friends (Steve was guest-hosting on Brian's radio show. After that it was off to Fox Business for the always ebullient Stuart Varney. We talked about the new edition of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, and Nancy Pelosi's carboon footprint, among other critical matters. You can see the video here.
~Stuart's Tweet about our discussion on global warming was not universally well-received. Thomas Gordon made the devastating retort:
Remind me. What is Mark Steyn's degree in.
As you know, the view of the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee is that non-climate scientists should have "special clearance" from the government before they're permitted to give their views on climate change. But I'm with Mr Gordon; I think we need to go further. Climate change is such a clear and present danger to the planet only fully credentialed climate scientists should be allowed to vote in elections.
~Meanwhile, Mr Gordon's fellow Tweeter Jack Straw slaps me and Stuart down hard:
The debate is over. You lost. Welcome to reality.
Actually, no. Increasingly, the debate is never held - because intellectual colossi like Mr Straw and Michael E Mann lack the capacity to debate, and so it's easier just to declare it "over". There's a lot of that about. Over at Powerline today, Paul Mirengoff traces the-debate-is-over syndrome back to Hegelian historicism in all its unloveliness.
~The Jack Straw school of debating skill is also evident at Azusa Pacific University, which has just "postponed" tomorrow's scheduled talk by Charles Murray because of the likelihood of "hurting our faculty and students of color". In the Age of Diversity, the list of people who cannot be allowed near the delicate flowers of the academy grows ever longer. Charles writes:
Azusa Pacific's administration wants to protect you from earnest and nerdy old guys who have opinions that some of your faculty do not share. Ask if this is why you're getting a college education.
I would imagine many students would earnestly nod their heads and say yes, that's exactly why they're getting a college education - to acquire the correct social attitudes. On Sun News tonight, Ezra Levant and I will be discussing the strange death of the contrarian spirit among western youth, in relation to the eerie totalitarian sight of students in Regina applauding as peaceful pro-life demonstrators are dragged away by police. Maybe Azusa Pacific should have let Charles Murray speak and then have the college security SWAT team club him to a pulp to the cheers of the students.
~There's further commentary on my free-speech piece over at American Thinker.
~Aside from Ezra's show north of the border, I'll be back on the air this evening (south of the border with Sean Hannity on Fox News at 10pm Eastern.
