Free Republic

The internet represents an extraordinary opportunity for democracy. Yet despite the scientific consensus that global warming is real and primarily due to human activity, studies show that only about half the population in some countries with among the highest CO2 emissions per capita understand that human beings are the driving force of our changing climate. Even fewer people are aware of the scientific consensus on this question. Climate Feedback intends to change that. It brings together a global network of scientists who use a new web-annotation platform to provide feedback on climate change reporting. For the first time, Climate Feedback...

In the face of a monolithically climate alarmist academia, media and government, several courageous individuals are working to unsettle the purportedly “settled science” of climate change, arguing that carbon dioxide atmospheric enrichment provides manifold benefits for mankind, that flawed economic models are being used to justify anti-capitalist and destructive public policies, that mild warming of the planet ought to be celebrated and fighting back courageously against those who wish to chill free speech by using the law to litigate science. This is their story. Featured speakers include Mark Steyn, international bestselling author and commentator, Dr. Craig Idso, Founder Former President...

For the New Criterion, Ben Weingarten, commentator and Founder & CEO of ChangeUp Media sits down with Mark Steyn, international bestselling author, political pundit, cultural critic and hardened climate change dissenter Mark Steyn for an in-depth interview. During their discussion, Weingarten and Steyn discuss the chilling of free speech by the climate alarmists and their enablers in the political and legal system, the stakes of the defamation suit filed against Steyn by climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann over a critical blog post, why it is the scientific community that resembles a racket rather than demonized “Big Oil,” the misogyny...

On the possibility of a forthcoming political revolution.The United States has been shaped by three far-reaching political revolutions: Thomas Jefferson’s “revolution of 1800,” the Civil War, and the New Deal. Each of these upheavals concluded with lasting institutional and cultural adjustments that set the stage for new phases of political and economic development. Are we on the verge of a new upheaval, a “fourth revolution” that will reshape U.S. politics for decades to come? There are signs to suggest that we are. In fact, we may already be in the early stages of this twenty-first-century revolution.The great recession that began...

We are all rockers now. National Review publishes its own chart of the Fifty Greatest Conservative Rock Songs, notwithstanding that most of the honorees are horrified to find themselves on such a hit parade. The National Review countdown of the All-Time Hot 100 Conservative Gangsta Rap Tracks can’t be far away. Even right-wingers want to get with the beat and no-one wants to look like the wallflower who can’t get a chick to dance with him. To argue against rock and roll is now as quaintly irrelevant as arguing for the divine right of kings. It was twen- ty years...

“You don’t roll out a new product in August,” said President Bush’s aide, Andrew Card, apropos Iraq in the summer of 2002. But in this seventh September of a no longer new war a somewhat battered product is in need of a rebranding. It was launched in the days after 9/11 as a “war on terror,” an artful evasion deemed necessary on the grounds that a war on any enemy beginning with “Islamist,” “Islamo-,” or “Islamic” might give the impression we had some, ah, issues with Islam itself and only complicate things further with various “friends” like Mubarak and the...

"What sorts of garbage have proliferated in the past twenty-five years? To alter Shakespeare, Let me count the scraps. If the garbage had to be segregated..."

The New Criterion, a little magazine with a big punch, will begin a season-long celebration of its 25th year of publication this month. The silver anniversary will be marked by a special expanded September issue and a gala dinner and art auction on September 21.

Should he have spoken? By Roger ScrutonIn 1968 the products of the postwar baby boom decided to seize the European future and to jettison the European past. In that same year Enoch Powell delivered to the Birmingham Conservatives the speech known forever after as “Rivers of Blood”: a speech that cost him his political career, and which, on one plausible interpretation, made the issue of immigration undiscussable in British politics for close to forty years. It is a speech that raises in its acutest form the question of truth: What place is there for truth in public life, and...

Craven at the BBC In their continuing effort to raise consciousness, spread enlightenment, and deprecate the traditions that made Britain Britain, the BBC has posted extensive information on major world religions on their internet site (www.bbc.co.uk/religion). A friend directed us to the section on Islam. It makes instructive reading for anyone wishing to chart the progress of the virus of multiculturalism—that odd compact of self-righteousness, nihilism, and pusillanimity—in elite British society. The site offers some standard historical exposition about the origin and doctrines of Islam as well as some inadvertently comical items such as the entry “Muslim internet matchmaking,”...

Martin Heidegger once said that the fundamental metaphysical question is “Why is there something rather than nothing?” While waiting for an answer to that query, we would like to offer for the consideration of our readers a less fundamental, but perhaps no less pressing, metaphysical question: “How is it that cultural coverage in The New York Times, which yesterday seemed as awful as it was possible to be, is today even worse?” This ever-fresh question deserves serious thought. How do they do it: each week a little more tawdry and demotic, more politically correct, less intellectually nimble and journalistically serious....

True lies [Posted 12:15 PM by James Panero] Some amusing responses to this post over at Free Republic, including --"If you prepare people well enough to believe a lie they will believe it as if it were true" Isn't that the DNC's strategy going into the 2004 election?