The Hockey Stick, the “Smoking Gun” for Man-made Global Warming, Miraculously Did Away with the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age

A team led by Professor Michael Mann of the University of Virginia (since departed for other, dare I say "greener" pastures) published a chart in Nature magazine in 1998 purporting to reconstruct global temperatures, showing a stable climate for six hundred years. In 1999 Mann extended the reconstruction to cover 1,000 years, showing temperature as having been stable throughout. This miraculously did away with well-established climatic phenomena known as the Medieval Warm Period, followed by a Little Ice Age. These phenomena, it turned out, actually did appear in his data, but didn't find their way into his representation.

The result was the "Hockey Stick" graph-so called because it appeared to resemble a hockey stick on its side, the shaft being a 900-year straight line followed by a spike in temperature-the blade. This confirmed everything the climate alarmists hoped for. It was touted as the "smoking gun" for Manmade global warming by establishing that, until human influence, climate was largely stable.

In 2001, the "IPCC Third Assessment Report" included the Hockey Stick, giving it prominent placement, in the Technical Summary, as well as the second page of the Summary for Policymakers (that section which has proven time and again to be the only one read by journalists or politicians and, as either a cause or effect of that truth, chock-full of alarmism not justified by the underlying work). In short, no one could possibly miss it. Of course, this reconstruction wildly contradicted the IPCC's own previous report, as well as extensive history and climate scholarship.

--Christopher C. Horner, Global Warming and Environmentalism (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2007), 120.

Cultural Marxists Understand that the Revolution Requires a Cultural War More Than an Economic War; Orthodox Marxism's Rigidity Prevented Revolutionary Changes in Marriage, Sexuality, and Family

For the neo-Marxists, orthodox Marxism was too limiting; it was too narrow, too restrictive, too reactionary even, too controlled by the Comintern that strong-armed national communist parties from upon high in Moscow with its ironclad party discipline. This rigidity prevented these more freewheeling neo-Marxists from initiating the cultural transformation they craved, including revolutionary changes in marriage, sexuality, and family. These Frankfurt leaders were left-wing intellectuals who looked to the universities as the home base from which their ideas could be launched. They spurned the church and looked to Marx and Freud as the gods who they believed would not fail them. Rather than organize the workers and the factories, the peasants and the fields and the farms, they would organize the students and the academy, the artists and the media and the film industry.

One can look at the Frankfurt school’s “cultural Marxism” not as a replacement for classical Marxism, but as the accelerator pedal that was missing from the wheezing, stalling vehicle of classical Marxism. It offered a gear shift into warp-speed. The cultural Marxist agrees with the classical Marxist that history passes through a series of stages on the way to the final Marxist utopia, through slavery and capitalism and socialism and ultimately to the classless society. But the cultural Marxist recognizes that the communists will not get there by economics alone. In fact, the classical Marxists would utterly fail to take down the West with an economic revolution; capitalism would always blow away communism, and the masses would choose capitalism. Cultural Marxists understand that the revolution requires a cultural war more than an economic war. Whereas the West—certainly America—is not vulnerable to a revolt of the downtrodden trade-union masses, it is eminently vulnerable when it comes to, say, sex or porn. While a revolution for wealth redistribution would be unappealing to the citizens of the West, a sexual revolution would be irresistible. Put the bourgeoisie in front of a hypnotic movie screen, and they would be putty in your hands. Thus, what was needed was a cultural Marxism.

--Paul Kengor, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Communism (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2017), e-book.

The Terms of Reference of the Classical Theory of Knowledge Included the Assumption that There WAS a Right and Wrong Way of Going about the Acquisition of Knowledge

Culture (which Descartes named ‘custom and example’) was, in the Cartesian programme, the source of error. That is of course an abomination to those imbued with the postmodernist spirit. What Descartes and his successors said, in effect, was that there are an awful lot of meanings and opinions about, that they cannot all be right, and that we’d better find, and justify, a yardstick which will sort out the sheep from the goats. For Descartes, the yardstick involved the exclusive use of clear and distinct meanings, so clear and distinct as to impose their authority on all minds sober and determined enough to heed them, irrespective of their culture. The path to truth lay through voluntary cultural exile. The terms of reference of the central, classical theory of knowledge included the assumption that there was a right and wrong way of going about the acquisition of knowledge: the problem was to find the difference, and, when it was located, to justify it. The contemporary idea is that there is no difference, that to set up ranking between kinds of knowledge is morally and politically wicked, rather like setting up one skin colour above another (with more than a hint that perhaps the two discriminations were linked to each other).

--Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London: Routledge Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2003), 37-38.

The Path Leads from Marxist Elimination of Opponents for Pseudo-Objectivity, to Frankfurt Castigation of Superficial Positivism to Postmodern Repudiation of Objectivity

So the path leads from Marxist elimination of opponents for alleged pseudo-objectivity, to Frankfurt castigation of superficial positivism equated with the amassing of surface facts, to postmodernist repudiation of the very aspiration to objectivity, and its replacement by hermeneutics: this is the one line of logical development which strikes me, whether or not it really corresponds to the participants’ own view of their intellectual ancestry, or to the actual historical links. That remains to be explored and documented. . . .

The point is that the great epistemological tradition in Western philosophy (now claimed to be overcome), stretching from Descartes to Hume and Kant and beyond, formulated the problem of knowledge, not in terms of a kind of egalitarian hermeneuticism, or of hermeneutic egalitarianism, but, rather, in terms of a discriminating cognitive Elitism. It did indeed hold all men and minds, but not all cultures and systems of meaning, to be equal. All minds were endowed with the potential of attaining a unique objective truth, but only on condition of employing the correct method and forswearing the seduction of cultural indoctrination.

--Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London: Routledge Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2003), 37.

Appealing to “Facts” or “the Truth” in Connection to the Study of Race, Gender, Violence, and Social Organization Is Just a Ruse, the Relativists Say, Because There Is No “Truth”

According to the relativistic wisdom prevailing in much of academia today, reality is socially constructed by the use of language, stereotypes, and media images. The idea that people have access to facts about the world is naive, say the proponents of social constructionism, science studies, cultural studies, critical theory, postmodernism, and deconstructionism. In their view, observations are always infected by theories, and theories are saturated with ideology and political doctrines, so anyone who claims to have the facts or know the truth is just trying to exert power over everyone else.

Relativism is entwined with the doctrine of the Blank Slate in two ways. One is that relativists have a penny-pinching theory of psychology in which the mind has no mechanisms designed to grasp reality; all it can do is passively download words, images, and stereotypes from the surrounding culture. The other is the relativists' attitude toward science. Most scientists regard their work as an extension of our everyday ability to figure out what is out there and how things work. Telescopes and microscopes amplify the visual system; theories formalize our hunches about cause and effect; experiments refine our drive to gather evidence about events we cannot witness directly. Relativist movements agree that science is perception and cognition writ large, but they draw the opposite conclusion: that scientists, like laypeople, are unequipped to grasp an objective reality. Instead, their advocates say,"Western science is only one way of describing reality, nature, and the way things work-a very effective way, certainly, for the production of goods and profits, but unsatisfactory in most other respects. It is an imperialist arrogance which ignores the sciences and insights of most other cultures and times,"! Nowhere is this more significant than in the scientific study of politically charged topics such as race, gender, violence, and social organization. Appealing to "facts" or "the truth" in connection with these topics is just a ruse, the relativists say, because there is no "truth" in the sense of an objective yardstick independent of cultural and political presuppositions.

--Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 198.

Only the State Obtains Its Revenue by Coercion; That Coercion Is Known as “Taxation,” although in Less Regularized Epochs It Was Often Known as “Tribute”

But, above all, the crucial monopoly is the State's control of the use of violence: of the police and armed services, and of the courts-the locus of ultimate decision-making power in disputes over crimes and contracts. Control of the police and the army is particularly important in enforcing and assuring all of the State's other powers, including the all-important power to extract its revenue by coercion.

For there is one crucially important power inherent in the nature of the State apparatus. All other persons and groups in society (except for acknowledged and sporadic criminals such as thieves and bank robbers) obtain their income voluntarily: either by selling goods and services to the consuming public, or by voluntary gift (e.g., membership in a club or association, bequest, or inheritance). Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion, by threatening dire penalties should the income not be forthcoming. That coercion is known as "taxation," although in less regularized epochs it was often known as "tribute." Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State's inhabitants, or subjects.

--Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 162.

Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco Were Moslem States and They Extorted Tribute from Europe through Terror; the Dutch, Danes, Swedes, and Venetians All Paid Annual Tribute to the Barbary States

Jay already had instructed Adams and Jefferson to make treaties with the Barbary States, authorizing them to pay up to $80,000 in borrowed money from Holland, or wherever they could get credit for the customary presents. However, before the ministers entered any negotiations, they wanted to learn what the European nations were paying, and they almost surely took time to review their small store of facts about the Barbary States.

It was widely known among educated Americans that Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco were Moslem states and extorted tribute from Europe through terror. Less well known was the fact that Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis were regencies of the Ottoman Empire, but Morocco was not. The three regencies were ostensibly under the rule of the sultan in Constantinople, but in truth they were virtually autonomous—and remained that way so long as they sent the sultan gifts periodically—and each regency had evolved its own succession. While the Barbary States, with Algiers historically predominant, presented a solid, menacing front to Christian Europe and America, they negotiated treaties independently, competed fiercely with one another and occasionally quarreled over territory, sometimes to the extent of going to war. And, confusingly, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli happened to be the names of the capital cities of their respective countries; Tangier was Morocco’s capital.

At the end of their inquiry into European tributary payments, Jefferson and Adams knew only that the Dutch, Danes, Swedes, and Venetians all paid annual tribute—Venice in jewels and gold coins called sequins, and the others in naval stores and ammunition—but not how much. What would it cost for the United States to buy peace? The American diplomats didn’t know. Consequently, by early 1786 the two ministers had not even attempted to open treaty negotiations with any of the Barbary States.

--Joseph Wheelan, Jefferson's War: America's First War on Terror, 1801-1805 (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2004), e-book.

Southerners Saw Their Political Circumstances As Being Parallel to Those of the Founding Fathers: Both Were Dissolving Lockean Compacts (The British Empire and the USA) Justified by the Lockean Right of Revolution

John Locke had been dead a long time in 1861. Southern secessionists, however, resurrected him and the American revolutionaries of 1776, for whom he was the essential political patriarch. Southerners perceived their political circumstances as being parallel to those of the Founding Fathers: both sets of revolutionaries believed that they were dissolving Lockean compacts—the British Empire and the United States of America. For a time, the secessionists argued, these compacts had served the best interests of the contracting parties. Then, just as George III and his Parliament threatened the well being of the American colonies, so Abraham Lincoln and his Republican Congress threatened the essentials of the Southern way of life. Similar problems called forth similar solutions—secession and independence—justified by the Lockean theory of the right of revolution.

--Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861-1865 (Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins e-books, 2010), e-book.

The Author Is Interested in Casting White Slavery in the Maghreb (the Arabic Name for Northwest Africa) in the Terms Developed to Cope with trans-Atlantic Slavery (the Bondage of Black Africans to Whites)

This book has come out of my desire to rethink the story of European enslavement in the early modern Mediterranean world - to place, as much as possible, this always rather neglected, even derided, form of slavery in the larger context of slave studies world-wide. I have been particularly interested in casting white slavery in the Maghreb in the terms that have been developed by historians and sociologists to cope with the much vaster and politically fraught topic of trans-Atlantic slavery - the bondage of black Africans to white Europeans or Americans that has become for many scholars the archetype and model of all slave studies. In part, I chose to do so because the topics and approaches that have grown up around American slavery provide such fertile conceptual ground fo r application to the Barbary Coast, where slavery is a hardly unknown, but still strangely neglected field in intellectual (as opposed to narrative) terms. In the course of my study of the so-called Barbary regencies and of the Italians who were caught up in the Islamic slavery practiced there, I was also increasingly impressed by other reasons that make these two arenas of bondage - black/ American and white/African - an especially appropriate intellectual and historical pairing.

--Robert C. Davis, introduction to Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), xxiv.

With So Few Jews in the South at the Time, It Is Astonishing that One Should Appear at the Very Center of Southern History

I first became curious about Judah P. Benjamin fifteen years ago when I began my research for The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South. I was intrigued with the ways n which Jews and Southerners were alike--stepchildren of an anguished history--and yet how different. Whereas the Jewish search for a homeland contrasted with the Southerner's commitment to place, Southern defenders of the Confederacy often used Old Testament analogies in referring to themselves as “the chosen people” destined to survive and triumph against overwhelming odds. Benjamin fascinated me then because of the extraordinary role he played in Southern history and the ways in which Jews and non-Jews reacted to him. He was the prototype of the contradictions in the Jewish Southerner, and the stranger in the Confederate story, the Jew at the eye of the storm that was the Civil War. Objectively, with so few Jews in the South at the time, it is astonishing that one should appear at the very center of Southern history. Benjamin himself avoided his Jewishness throughout his public career, though his enemies in the Southern press and in the halls of the Confederate Congress never let the South forget it.

--Eli N. Evans, prologue to Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate (New York: Press Press, 1988), xi-xii.

Attacking American Society and Western Civilization and Inducing Guilt to Extract Benefits from White Populations Are Greatly Enhanced by Making Enslavement Appear to be a Peculiarly American and White Crime

Slavery was an evil of greater scope and magnitude than most people imagine and, as a result, its place in history is radically different from the way it is usually portrayed. Mention slavery and immediately the image that arises is that of Africans and their descendants enslaved by Europeans and their descendants in the Southern United States—or, at most, Africans enslaved by Europeans in the Western Hemisphere. No other historic horror is so narrowly construed. No one thinks of war, famine, or decimating epidemics in such localized terms. These are afflictions that have been suffered by the entire human race, all over the planet—and so was slavery. Had slavery been limited to one race in one country during three centuries, its tragedies would not have been one-tenth the magnitude that they were in fact.

Why this provincial view of a worldwide evil? Often it is those who are most critical of a “Eurocentric” view of the world who are most Eurocentric when it comes to the evils and failings of the human race. Why would anyone wish to arbitrarily understate an evil that plagued mankind for thousands of years, unless it was not this evil itself that was the real concern, but rather the present-day uses of that historic evil? Clearly, the ability to score ideological points against American society or Western civilization, or to induce guilt and thereby extract benefits from the white population today, are greatly enhanced by making enslavement appear to be a peculiarly American, or a peculiarly white, crime.

--Thomas Sowell, “The Real History of Slavery,” in Black Rednecks and White Liberals (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005), 111.