The Beginning of Wisdom is to Call Things by Their Right Names, Mr. President

A point-by-point rebuttal of Obama’s June 14^th, ‘Why I don’t say “radical Islam”’ speech

Mark Charalambous

July 8, 2016

President Obama addressed the nation two days after the Orlando terrorist attack and gave a full-throated defense of why he forbids the use of the words “radical Islam” in his administration. Ostensibly giving an update on the war against ISIS and expressing his condolences for the victims, the real motivation became clear in the twelve-plus minute digression that ended the speech.

Due to mounting outrage from his critics, including Donald Trump, he clearly felt pressured to explain his policy now that the two parties have their presumptive nominees and he is actively campaigning for Hillary.

One might’ve expected the president to take a defensive, even apologetic tone, owing to the chorus of criticisms of the policy—not to mention unspoken conspiratorial growls of ulterior motives. In fact, Obama did the exact opposite. In full lecture mode, he at times waxed petulant and condescending, bordering on outright insulting. While his lips were saying one thing, his body language was unmistakable:

I should not have to be telling you this again!  I have already explained this! But since you still don’t get it, let me put this to bed once and for all, in language plain and simple enough that even you can understand it.

The digression began innocuously enough:

“And let me make a final point. For a while now, the main contribution of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this administration and me for not using the phrase "radical Islam." That's the key, they tell us. We can't beat ISIL unless we call them radical Islamists.”

...and then the tirade began:

“What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make ISIL less committed to trying to kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this?

“The answer is: None of the above. Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. This is a political distraction.”

It’s tempting to begin my answer to the President’s rhetorical question by quoting Confucius’ famous admonition against euphemisms:

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.”

... but before we go there, there is a more obvious point that needs to be made in rebuttal  to the president’s assertion that “calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away,” that doing so “is a political distraction.”

If you concur that the cause and inspiration for the Orlando nightclub massacre—

... and the slaughter at the San Bernardino government agency Christmas party in 2015

... and the Fort Hood “workplace violence” incident in 2009

... and the assault at the military recruitment center in Chattanooga in 2015

... and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013

... not  to mention the three simultaneous attacks at two airports and a train station in Brussels this year  

... and the horrendous massacres at the Paris music venue and restaurant (130 dead, 352 injured) in 2015

... and the Paris slaughter at the Charlie Hebdo office also in 2015 (20 dead; 22 wounded),

            ... or any of the other 28,781 Islamic terrorist attack atrocities worldwide since 9/11

—is indeed radical Islam, then by deliberately not calling it that, your strategy will not “make it go away” either. In fact, by deliberately calling it something else (“homegrown anti-gay bigotry” or “gun violence”), it is you who is attempting to create a “political distraction.”

You, Mr. President, are the one attempting to play with words, and moreover, the American people deserve to know your real motivation.

So, let me explain to you, Mr. President, in words simple and plain so that even you and your flatterers can understand, why it is imperative to call a threat by its real name... as Confucius advised centuries ago.

* *  *  *  *  *

The first step in combatting a threat is comprehending its nature. Misdiagnosing the threat will lead you astray. The tactics and weapons you choose might be ineffective. In finding a cure for a disease it’s possible that mixing potions willy-nilly will work, but there is no substitute for careful research and analysis.

Once the true nature of a threat is correctly identified and understood, only then can the correct response be formulated and the most efficacious course of action chosen. If the threat is misidentified, efforts to combat it will be minimally effective at best, and at worst, counterproductive... feeding the very beast you are trying to destroy.

Now you can husband your resources and band your allies to collectively chart battle plans in a spirit of mutual need and shared advantage.


Is there a better example of a problem exacerbated from a wrong diagnosis than the ‘racial disparity in the criminal justice’ narrative?

Gross overrepresentation of African-Americans in the penal system is attributed to racist policing and jurisprudence. But statistically the numbers are completely consistent with the massively disproportionate amount of violent crime committed by African-Americans. The disastrous effects of the misdiagnosis effect a vicious cycle:

·         White elites in the mainstream media and academia sign on to the Black Lives Matter narrative.

·         With this comfort blanket of legitimacy, African-Americans have no reason to doubt that it’s true... and shields them from having to confront the harsh reality of their own responsibility.

·         Refusing to acknowledge the real causes of what should honestly be recognized as nothing less than the sinking into outright barbarism of inner-city black communities, no effective real solutions are even presented.

·         Without the implementing of corrective solutions, black violent crime continues unabated, but now there is an added impetus due to a falsely-grounded sense of grievance.

·         Black Lives Matter protests increase in potency and number.

·         The violence threshold rises for black activists who believe cops get up in the morning fantasizing about whether they’ll get an opportunity this shift to execute a black man.

·         Increasing number of cop-killing events.

·         Increasing apprehension and tentativeness of cops on the beat in black neighborhoods.

·         Violence increases.

·         Respect for police continues to diminish as BLM-sympathizing media talking heads and politicians call for federal control of policing.

·         Increased lawlessness and civil unrest. 

The decreasing confidence in, and effectiveness of law enforcement isn’t the first sign of the collapse of civil society—it’s one of the last.

And in case you were wondering, Mr. President, exactly what is the cause of the incredibly disproportionate  levels of violence in the black community (e.g., 62% of all violent crime in New York City¹), it’s really very obvious. No, it’s not racism. It’s the breakdown of the nuclear family; its replacement with a new improved model:

mother + children + state social welfare programs and child support regime.

The institution of fatherhood is all but discarded in the African-American community, thanks to elite, feminist politically correct social policies.

The solution is to bring black men back into the family—as husbands and most importantly, fathers—where they can be socialized, rather than leaving them to learn the meaning of manhood from gangs.

Increasing race riots from BLM-inspired events coupled with the growth of Islam in the same community is an ominous trend.

Your policy of misdirection only muddies the waters of what should be the shared interest of the entire civilized world: eradicating the threat of global Islamic jihad.

* *  *  *  *  *

Next, you lectured us on the “real” nature of the global radical Islamist movement, dismissing their claim of perfect fidelity to Islam with this:

“Since before I was president, I've been clear about how extremist groups have perverted Islam to justify terrorism. As president, I have called on our Muslim friends and allies at home and around the world to work with us to reject this twisted interpretation of one of the world's great religions.”

It is an interesting choice of words, “... extremist groups have perverted Islam to justify terrorism.”  Yes, you have indeed claimed for many years that these “groups” are just “using” the religion of Islam as a smokescreen to commit violence and acts of terror, as though their devotion to Islam is just a convenience, even a fraud. But if the true motivation is not religious—what is it? Material? Or do you expect us to believe that they are all just violent psychopaths who enjoy extreme violence?

How do you explain the suicide bombings and other attacks that result in the jihadist’s certain death?  There has to be belief of a reward in the afterlife for someone to make the ultimate “sacrifice.” And how can someone believe that murdering innocent children serves a greater good, other than by accepting the “wisdom” of a higher spiritual authority who knows better, that even infidel children deserve death? Such acts cannot be motivated by any material, earthly desire.

* *  *  *  *  *

You continue:

“There has not been a moment in my seven and a half years as president where we have not been able to pursue a strategy because we didn't use the label ‘radical Islam.’ Not once has an adviser of mine said, ‘Man, if we really use that phrase, we're going to turn this whole thing around.’  Not once.”

Really?  This begs the question: Did your decision to specifically not use the words “radical Islam” come from any of your advisors—or do you take sole credit for that stroke of genius? Did any of your advisors tell you, “Man, if we never say “radical Islam” we’ll really nail this sucker!”?

You continue:

“So if someone seriously thinks that we don't know who we're fighting, if there is anyone out there who thinks we're confused about who our enemies are -- that would come as a surprise to the thousands of terrorists who we've taken off the battlefield.

“If the implication is that those of us up here and the thousands of people around the country and around the world who are working to defeat ISIL aren't taking the fight seriously? That would come as a surprise to those who spent these last seven and a half years dismantling al-Qaeda in the FATA, for example -- including the men and women in uniform who put their lives at risk, and the special forces that I ordered to get bin Laden and are now on the ground in Iraq and in Syria.

“They know full well who the enemy is. So do the intelligence and law enforcement officers who spend countless hours disrupting plots and protecting all Americans -- including politicians who tweet and appear on cable news shows.”

I think that all Americans, and people everywhere for that matter, know who we're fighting: radical Islamic terrorists. I'm sure that our soldiers and law enforcement officers know it. And certainly our intelligence officers know who we're fighting. But I wonder if this will always be so, in light of your deliberate attempts to scrub this information from the eyes of the public using your authority in the Executive branch and your abuse of the bully pulpit? 

You routinely advocate handcuffing local law enforcement, anti-terror efforts under the pretense of condemning "profliling." Following your lead, the surveillance of mosques has been curtailed. And in this most recent terrorist attack, you directed the FBI to redact the ‘banned words,’ as we shall refer to them henceforth, as well as the names of radical Islamist leaders and organizations, from any future transcripts from operations. Until a groundswell of outrage from all corners forced your hand, this included the transcripts of the 911 calls and numerous calls to media outlets made by Omar Mateen expressing his fidelity to Islam and his allegiance to ISIS and its leader Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi while he was committing the atrocities in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

By some miracle, the public’s utter shock at the FBI’s redacted transcripts provoked such a response that Attorney General Loretta Lynch was forced to roll it back within days. As to the question of where the initial order came from?—“I’m not going to go into the detail of the process behind it,” Lynch said.  As if we don’t know.

Her explanation for the reversed policy is classic doublespeak:

“The goal is of course the greatest transparency. The initial thought was we did not want to provide a further platform for the propaganda of the killer. Once it became an issue, we decided we would go ahead and release the full transcript.”

One local law enforcement lackey stooped to borrowing language from the victim-feminist playbook when he claimed that they didn’t want to “re-victimize the victims.”

Your pathological insistence that Islam must be prevented from any implications in Islamic terrorist attacks is largely responsible for the success of the Pulse Club slaughter. When Omar Mateen attempted to buy body armor and bulk ammunition from a gun store, pausing to use his cell phone where he spoke in an Arabic tongue, the owner wisely refused him—and then called the FBI. After all, you’ve told us, “If you see something; say something.”

Why did the FBI not immediately track him down and detain him, preventing this tragedy?  Is it because they have been schooled to walk on egg shells with a Muslim suspect? Why, soon after taking office in 2009, did you instruct the Department of Homeland Security to scrub the names of mosques and Muslims linked to terrorism, many that had been cultivated since 2003?2

You continue:

“They know who the nature of the enemy is. So, there is no magic to the phrase ‘radical Islam.’ It's a political talking point. It's not a strategy”

No, but apparently it’s your political strategy to avoid using the phrase “radical Islam.” 

It is not a political strategy, or a “talking point,” to call something by its real name—what it is.  It’s simply telling the truth. To avoid calling something what it is—that is political!  That is a strategy! ... and a truly perverted one, at that.

* *  *  *  *  *

Next you give us, explicitly, your rationale for banning the use of the words “Islamic terror,” or “radical Islam”:

“And the reason I am careful about how I describe this threat has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with actually defeating extremism.”

Not calling something by its real name in the service of identity politics is perhaps the essence of political correctness—though I don’t believe your motivations in this matter can be written off so innocently.

“Groups like ISIL and al-Qaeda want to make this war a war between Islam and America, or between Islam and the West. They want to claim that they are the true leaders of over a billion of Muslims around the world who reject their crazy notions.”

It does appear that an apocalyptic war with the US, or the West in general, may indeed be the goal of ISIS, but why should this be used as a constraint on how we fight them? Doesn’t it make more sense to take them at their word, to acknowledge their goal, and make it clear that we intend to stop them?

“They want us to validate them by implying that they speak for those billion-plus people, that they speak for Islam. That's their propaganda, that's how they recruit. And if we fall into the trap of painting all Muslims with a broad brush, and imply that we are at war with an entire religion, then we are doing the terrorists' work for them.”

Not so fast, Mr. President. It doesn’t logically follow that by acknowledging the threat of their poisonous strain of Islam we are “falling into the trap of painting all Muslims with a broad brush,” nor that “we are at war with an entire religion.”

“Doing the terrorists work for them.” This is the constant refrain. We hear it over and over from politically correct apologists from all walks of life, politicians, media pundits, college professors, Hollywood movie stars.

“Doing exactly what they want.”

“Following the ISIS game plan.”

Please, NO MORE!

What else shouldn’t we do to prevent ‘aiding ISIS’ Master Plan’? Perhaps we should ban all news coverage of any future successful terror attacks? Perhaps we shouldn’t engage them militarily at all, because acknowledging them as a legitimate enemy of the greatest military power on Earth only serves to elevate their status in the eyes of... others internationally... such as the “moderate Muslims” that we “don’t want to lose”?

Again and again, you warn us that we mustn’t offend the world’s “moderate Muslims.” That we need them on our side. But if anything is going to drive Muslims into the arms of ISIS it is the perception that they are successful because Allah is on their side and their opponents are not only morally depraved but craven and weak.

It is shocking how so many fools fall for this line of “reasoning,” Mr. President. Perhaps all those years of dumbing down education has finally paid some dividends.

* *  *  *  *  *

“Now, up until this point, this argument of labels has mostly just been partisan rhetoric, and sadly, we've all become accustomed to that kind of partisanship, even when it involves the fight against these extremist groups.

“That kind of yapping has not prevented folks across the government from doing their jobs, from sacrificing and working really hard to protect the American people.”

“Yapping.” The last time I heard that in a political speech was in a Jeb Bush commercial. Your attempt to dismiss our outrage over your doublespeak is equally laughable.

“But we are now seeing how dangerous this kind of mind-set and this kind of thinking can be. We're starting to see where this kind of rhetoric and loose talk and sloppiness about who exactly we're fighting, where this can lead us.

“We now have proposals from the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States to bar all Muslims from emigrating to America. We hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complicit in violence.”

“Loose talk and sloppiness about who exactly we’re fighting...”? 

You mean by calling the threat “radical Islamic terrorists”?  Is that what you call “loose” and “sloppy talk”?  No, Mr. President, that’s calling things by their real names. That’s reality, the facts.

Now we arrive at the portion of your lecture that the media seized on as “attacking Donald Trump.” Of all the trash talk that has spewed from the lips of The Donald, his suggestion to ban Muslims from immigrating until we “figure out what’s going on,” is actually one of his saner soundbites.

Of course should Trump become president and implement an actual Muslim ban it would be severely constrained. Businessmen, politicians, assorted kings and princes, etc., who have legitimate interests here will still be allowed to travel. The ban would affect immigrants, particularly refugees fleeing death and destruction in their homelands. CIA director Brennan established as recently as June 16 in his testimony to Congress that ISIS is using refugee immigration to infiltrate our shores, and that there are already many ISIS operatives here.

Polls consistently show that large fractions of Muslims worldwide would prefer to live under Sharia law. At least half of Muslims worldwide believe that Sharia law is the revealed world of God.3 It is also well established that huge majorities of Muslims living in Asia, Africa and the Middle East prefer to live under Sharia law. Though smaller percentages of Muslims in southern Europe have the same preference, fully 42% of Russian Muslims agree with the proposition.

In the UK, an extensive survey of Muslims found that more than 100,000 British Muslims sympathize with suicide bombers and other acts of terror. Only one-third of British Muslims would contact law enforcement if they knew someone close to them was involved with jihadists. Twenty-three percent of British Muslims agree that Sharia law should be imposed in areas with large Muslim populations⁴.

In another poll, 40% of British Muslims want Sharia law in the UK⁵. Is it any wonder that Britain just voted to leave the European Union?

Sixty-two percent of Canadian Muslims want Sharia law⁶.

A five-year study of Muslims in Europe found that 65% say Sharia law is more important to them than the laws of the country they live in⁷.

Sharia law prescribes the death penalty for apostasy, as well as for homosexuality, among other friendly provisions.

In light of these statistics, to not be afraid of Muslim subpopulations is irrational, and invites catastrophe. Not fearing Islam should be classified as a phobia—not fearing it. 

Islamophobiaphobia, anyone?

You, Mr. President, have done a masterful job of instilling in Americans the notion that what we have to fear the most from radical Islam is “Islamophobia.”  To you and your cabinet, fearing Islam is the greatest danger to Americans. “It’s not who we are.”

Here’s what your Attorney General, Loretta Lynch said following the San Bernardino terrorist attack:

"Now obviously this is a country that is based on free speech, but when it edges towards violence, when we see the potential for someone lifting that mantle of anti-Muslim rhetoric—or, as we saw after 9/11, violence directed at individuals who may not even be Muslims but perceived to be Muslims, and they will suffer just as much—when we see that we will take action...

“I think it’s important that as we again talk about the importance of free speech we make it clear that actions predicated on violent talk are not America...They are not who we are, they are not what we do, and they will be prosecuted."

Watch the video of Lynch’s remarks here⁸.

http://www.dailywire.com/news/1593/loretta-lynch-vows-prosecute-those-who-use-anti-james-barrett

To anyone with possession of the facts and a sane mind, to not have a fear of Islam is to suffer from a disorder. Yes, I have Islamophobia—though my fear isn’t irrational. I’m sane. I know what Sharia law means. It is fundamentally incompatible with our civilization—which by the way is called “western civilization,” emergent in whole cloth from ancient Athens, spread through Hellenism, nurtured in the Greco-Roman world that followed, enriched on the spiritual side by monotheism from the Abrahamic religions, and incubated through the middle ages in Europe from whence it flowered in the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment culminating in the founding of this great nation of ours.

To it we owe the ideas of self-rule, the rule of law—not of man, democracy, the  separation of church and state, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, property ownership, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and foremost of all: rationalism.  Ideas antithetical to the seventh-century codes of the Koran and Sharia law that remain unchanged to this day, awaiting the great reformation of the religion, if it is to ever become compatible with the modern world.

* *  *  *  *  *

Maybe this is the appropriate place to take stock of Islam. You routinely lecture us on how it is a “religion of peace.” Perhaps a reminder of some of its provisions is in order. Bear in mind there is no separation between church (“mosque”) and state; a concept inimical to western democracy:

·         Waging jihad (holy war) to spread Islam and force conversions. (No, Mr. President, “jihad” doesn’t mean merely “personal struggle.”)

·         Captives in jihad may be executed, enslaved, or ransomed for money.

·         Female captives of jihad may be forced to have to sex with their captors/owners.

·         Imposition of second-class submission tax, called the jizyah, must be imposed on Jews and Christians (and other religious minorities) living in Islamic countries.

·         Slavery allowed.⁹ 

·         Male owners may have sex with their slave-women, even prepubescent slave-girls.

·         Women’s testimony in law court is weighed at half that of a man’s.

·         Husbands may beat their wives.

·         Polygamy: A man can have up to four wives.

·         A man of any age may marry a prepubescent girl. (Mohammed engaged a six-year-old girl and the marriage was consummated when she was the ripe age of nine. Marriages with girls as young as ten occur in Saudi Arabia.)

·         Women must cover their bodies, including their heads.

And here are some crimes with their prescribed punishments:

·         Theft: Amputation of hand.

·         Assaults resulting in injury: literal “eye-for-an-eye” punishments.

·         Homosexuality: Execution, flogging or imprisonment.

·         Adultery: Death by stoning.

·         Blasphemy: Death.

·         Alcohol, gambling: Flogging.

·         Highway robbery: Crucifixion of amputation of hand or foot.

·         Fornication: Flogging.

·         False accusation of sexual crime: Flogging, eighty lashes.

There are over a hundred verses in the Koran that command Muslims to wage war with infidels for the sake of Islamic rule. Here are a few of them:

Quran (5:33) - "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement."

Quran (8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them." 

Quran (9:5) - "So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them."

Quran (47:3-4) - "Those who disbelieve follow falsehood, while those who believe follow the truth from their Lord... So, when you meet (in fight Jihad in Allah's Cause), those who disbelieve smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them, then bind a bond firmly (on them, i.e. take them as captives)... If it had been Allah's Will, He Himself could certainly have punished them (without you). But (He lets you fight), in order to test you, some with others. But those who are killed in the Way of Allah, He will never let their deeds be lost." 

* *  *  *  *  *

You continue:

“Where does this stop? The Orlando killer, one of the San Bernardino killers, the Fort Hood killer -- they were all U.S. citizens. Are we going to start treating all Muslim Americans differently? Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance? Are we going to start discriminating against them, because of their faith?”

Omar Mateen was raised in a Muslim household, the child of immigrants from Afghanistan. Until the threat of global jihad is curtailed, governments of the civilized nations of the world must do all they can to protect their people from harm.  We have yet to see a terror strike with a WMD.  It is naïve and foolhardy to believe our present efforts will prevent this from happening. The ramifications of a strike with a WMD in the U.S. are barely comprehensible.  9/11 brought the Patriot Act. The destruction of a city might herald the end of democracy as we know it.

Clearly, Muslims must be scrutinized. Profiling is essential. How many resources are misspent because of our fear of appearing to be politically incorrect? Is it really necessary to subject a wheelchair-bound Irish grandmother or Norwegian toddler to the same level of scrutiny at an airport as a Muslim arriving from the Middle East? Special attention must be paid to those who fit the profile of a jihadi terrorist: Muslim. This is not racism. Islam is not a race. Not all Muslims are terrorists but all the terrorists seem to be Muslim. What is by far the most common terrorist name?

This is common sense, and good policing. If no discrimination is allowed the resources are attenuated, and the likelihood of an Omar Mateen slipping through the net is magnified. Mathematicians call it “optimization.”  It’s standard practice in economics and technology.  There would be no insurance industry without it. It’s called actuarial science: modeling risk factors by analyzing characteristics of a population.

“We've heard these suggestions during the course of this campaign. Do Republican officials actually agree with this?

“Because that's not the America we want. It doesn't reflect our Democratic ideals. It won't make us more safe, it will make us less safe, fueling ISIL's notion that the West hates Muslims, making young Muslims in this country and around the world feel like, no matter what they do, they're going to be under suspicion and under attack.

“It makes Muslim Americans feel like their government is betraying them. It betrays the very values America stands for.”

There you go again. It’s “playing right into their hands,” right, Mr. President?

No, profiling Muslims will make us much safer. But let’s be real here, you say you oppose treating Muslims differently when it comes to investigations into suspected terrorist links. But what you’ve done is the exact opposite: you’ve actually mandated preferential treatment for Muslims. In every government sponsored video showing a dramatization of a terrorist attack, the terrorists are always Caucasians. You take great pains to avoid even the suspicion that a terrorist can be a non-white Muslim.

You directed the DHS to specifically delete files on Muslims suspected of terrorist links. In your idealized world, terrorists will be anything but Muslim. You prefer your terrorists to be right-wing, NRA “bitter-clingers,” Christian militiamen, etc. After all, how many times have you told us that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism? Here are some of your quotes:

·         “ISIL is not Islamic.”

·         “Al-Qaeda’s cause is not Islam.”

·         “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”  (Yes, I can’t believe you actually said that, but you did!)

·         “Islam teaches peace.”

·         “[The call to prayer] is one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

Here is a video of some of Obama’s statements on Islam.

Obama speaks on Islam

Here is a more extensive selection of clips of Obama speaking on matters relating to Islam.

Muslim in the White House?

If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were aspiring to be an emissary of Islam. Hmmm...

“We've gone through moments in our history before when we acted out of fear, and we came to regret it. We've seen our government mistreat our fellow citizens, and it has been a shameful part of our history.”

Aha, the obligatory reference to the Japanese internment during WWII. No surprise there.

“This is a country founded on basic freedoms, including freedom of religion. We don't have religious tests here. Our founders, our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, are clear about that.”

May I remind you again that Islamic Sharia law is inimical to freedom of religion? The penalty for apostasy is death. The rule of law—not man; self-rule; freedom of speech, thought and assembly; freedom to own property and the fruits of one’s labor: these are the gifts bestowed on humanity by western civilization. It is our culture that learned, painfully over the centuries, to accommodate our own religious heritage without trampling on the rights and freedoms of non-believers. It is our institutions that evolved to strike that delicate balance between liberty and freedom and the strictures of the Bible. Maybe it is true that these are strictly western concepts and simply not in the cultural DNA of the Muslim world?

“And if we ever abandon those values, we would not only make it a lot easier to radicalize people here and around the world, but we would have betrayed the very things we are trying to protect.”

This is where you are seriously confused, Mr. President. In opposing a belief system that rejects our values, one that holds as one of its goals the imposition of its law over all other peoples of the Earth, through violence and slaughter if necessary, we are not betraying our values, we are defending them!

Unlike the other religions of the world, Islam is both a political system of governance and a religion. If a nation voted in Sharia law, it would be an act of political suicide. The democracy would cease to exist.

In openly defending our values and rejecting Islamism we are not radicalizing “moderate Muslims.” We are placing the onus where it belongs: on peaceful Muslims who reject Sharia law. It is your message that serves to further radicalize the Muslim world. Your message of weakness in the face of adversity. The Left’s message of cultural “deconstruction,” of doubt and uncertainty in the virtues of western culture, in opposition to the brutal certainty contained in Allah’s literal word of Sharia law. Your message of cowardice and accommodation in the face of religious tyranny.

By answering calls for the implementation of Sharia law with pleas for “diversity” and “tolerance” you validate the argument of the Islamists that the West has been weakened by the internal corrosion of its moral decadence. Your appointed Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in the wake of Orlando, said the way to combat Islamic terrorism (though of course she didn’t actually use the banned “I” word) is through “compassion, unity and love.” Do you actually believe that once Muslims have more exposure to our “lifestyle choices,” our sexual freedoms, for example, they will grow to appreciate the flowering of the human condition as advanced by LGBTQ... RSTUVW... communities, and realize the error of their ways?

You’re right that we need Muslim allies to combat the jihadists. But you’re completely wrong in how to accomplish that. It’s the difference between pandering and leading.

In a classroom with an unruly child, the worst thing a teacher can do is demonstrate tolerance and accommodation by adjusting the classroom environment, in essence tolerating the miscreant. That will cause the bad behavior to metastasize among the other students. The correct remedy is to let the other students see that unruly behavior is not tolerated. Remove the child. Anyone who has taught knows the “one bad apple ... poisons the barrel” classroom dynamic.

The relevant analogy to Islam and the international community is a clear and convincing message from the civilized world that Sharia law is simply unacceptable. In a perfect world it might look like this:

1.      Extend the UN Declaration of Human Rights to expressly identify Sharia law as inimical to human rights, and put in place steps to enforce membership in the UN consistent with this declaration.

2.      A ban on immigration from nations under Sharia law.

3.      Economic sanctions on nations under Sharia law.

In other words, a united message from all nations that Sharia law is unacceptable within the company of the civilized world.

Putting aside the practical difficulties on implementing such a global program for the moment, consider the likely response of the world’s Muslims—particularly the rulers of Muslim nations.

Would this drive the 1.6 billion Muslims into the arms of ISIS? Would they interpret this as a global war on Islam, a “clash of civilization” that now forces them to engage the other non-Muslim 5.3 billion peoples of the world in an apocalyptic world war?

Or would they finally start the conversation with each other, the conversation that “moderate” Muslims must have, that begins:

“We have a problem. We have to solve our problem.”

* *  *  *  *  *

You continue:

“The pluralism and the openness, our rule of law, our civil liberties, the very things that make this country great. The very things that make us exceptional. And then the terrorists would have won, and we cannot let that happen. I will not let that happen.

“You know, two weeks ago I was at the commencement ceremony of the Air Force Academy, and it could not have been more inspiring to see these young people stepping up dedicated to serve and protect this country.

“And part of what was inspiring was the incredible diversity of these cadets. We saw cadets who are straight applauding classmates who were openly gay.”

Whether this is a good thing or not, let me remind you again that the punishment for homosexuality under Sharia law is death.

Eleven nations are governed strictly by Sharia law, and four more nations partially submit to Sharia law regionally.

“We saw cadets born here in America applauding classmates who are immigrants and love this country so much they decided they wanted to be part of our armed forces.

“We saw cadets and families of all religions applaud cadets who are proud, patriotic Muslim Americans serving their country in uniform ready to lay their lives on the line to protect you and to protect me.

"We saw male cadets applauding for female classmates who can now serve in combat positions. That's the American military. That's America. One team. One nation."

Yes, it sounds great. Now, how can we make sure we preserve that for our children? How do we save it from enemies foreign and domestic, those for whom these values are anathema, nothing less than the work of Satan?

“Those are the values that ISIL is trying to destroy, and we shouldn't help them do it. Our diversity and our respect for one another, our drawing on the talents of everybody in this country, our making sure that we are treating everybody fairly, that we're not judging people on the basis of what faith they are or what race they are or what ethnicity they are or what their sexual orientation is.”

Yes, but ISIL is not some rogue group of criminals who behead, crucify, burn alive, pillage and destroy just for the sheer delight of it. The “I” in the name stands for “Islamic.” They are the most visible part of a global movement. The movement is religious. It is fundamentalist Islam. A version of the religion that believes the Koran should be taken literally; that it is the word of God, and that its rules must be imposed on all the peoples of the world so that only then will the world be at “peace.” That is the true meaning behind your repeated parroting of “Islam is a religion of peace.”  Yes, it is—but only when everyone everywhere has submitted to it.

To accommodate, and even welcome, this belief system under praises of “diversity” and “tolerance” is sheer lunacy.

“That's what makes this country great. That's the spirit we see in Orlando. That's the unity and resolve that will allow us to defeat ISIL. That's what will preserve our values and our ideals that define us as Americans. That's how we're going to defend this nation, and that's how we're going to defend our way of life. Thank you very much.”

Actually, it will be a small miracle if our nation can survive the remaining months of your presidency. You are doing everything in your power to divert our attention from the threat posed by radical Islam, not only to ourselves, but to civilization itself. One shudders to think what will result once an Islamist jihadist terrorist gets hold of a WMD.

* *  *  *  *  *

And now we turn to the Why?—as in ‘Why do you deliberately and continually lie about Islam?’

The standard trope is to attribute the policy of let’s-pretend-that-this-global-menace-is-not-Islamic to “political correctness.” I’ll buy this for your typical college professor or CNN talking head. It’s Identity Politics 101. We know the script. They don’t know any better. Decades of politically correct indoctrination has taken its toll on the reasoning abilities of most Americans.

But you don’t get off so easy, Mr. President.

Obama at half-brother's wedding 1990s

You have just given us too many dots to connect. It’s almost like you’re daring us to state the obvious.

You claim to be Christian, yet whenever you mention Christians or Christianity, it is always in the pejorative. Here you are at the Presidential Prayer Breakfast, Feb 5, 2015, lecturing Christians on, believe it or nuts, their intolerance:

“And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.  In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

And why do you almost always fail to mention the Christian victims of ISIS? It’s almost pathological...

“We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism  -- terrorizing religious minorities like the Yezidis, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, and claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions.” 

For twenty-some-odd years you worshipped at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the church of your pastor, Reverend Wright. This church is more a political entity than a spiritual one, as Americans got to see those endless loops of fiery anti-white, anti-American, “the chickens have come home to roost,” excerpts from his sermons. What is preached in these churches for inner-city blacks is sometimes called “black liberation theology.” In your book, “Dreams of my Father,” you remark about one of the precepts that you found particularly attractive: “Disavowal of the Pursuit of ‘Middleclassness.’” This is one of the “Black Ethics” comprising the “Black Value System” adopted by these churches. None of them mention Christ. All of them relate to being black.

Quoting Trinity church literature, you wrote:

“While it is permissible to chase ‘middleincomeness’ with all our might,” the text stated, those blessed with the talent or good fortune to achieve success in the American mainstream must avoid the “psychological entrapment of Black ‘middleclassedness’ that hypnotizes the successful brother or sister into believing they are better than the rest and teaches them to think in terms of ‘we’ and ‘they’ instead of ‘US’!”

According to an article in Breitbart.com regarding your relationship with the Church:

“Obama’s only qualm was whether Trinity’s opposition to“middleclassedness” was sincere, given its    “disproportionate number of black professionals.” Eventually, Obama says, he embraced God–and Wright’s church.¹⁰

Your flavor of black political empowerment is not the MLK, Civil Rights 1960s variety. You are of a different generation. That movement was all about inclusion. "Stop keeping us out! We want admission to the middle class—and beyond. We want in. Stop discriminating against us!"

Your pedigree is the 1970s “black power” movement. The Black Panthers. Angela Davis. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Stokely Carmichael. It wasn’t about wanting what whitey had. It was about rejecting everything about whitey—including his “middleclassness.”

And his religion. The 1970s black power movement was also about Malcom X and the Nation of Islam. To truly reject whitey, and Satanic Amerika, Islam offered an answer that provided real historic roots, the answer to it all. A framework where Reverend Wright’s hatred of white America found its true home.

You are the son of a Shiite Muslim Kenyan father. After divorce, your mother married an Indonesian Muslim man and the family moved to Indonesia. Indonesia is home to the largest Muslim population in the world. It is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim. You lived there from the ages of six to ten. Though you initially attended a Catholic school for grades one and two, you switched to an exam school that welcomed all faiths. You were registered as a Muslim and received religious instruction accordingly. This was, after all, your heritage.

Are you really a Christian, Mr. President? If so, why do you struggle so when you have to say the word? Why do you avoid saying the word, as when speaking of ISIS’ victims?

President John Kennedy, the nation’s first and only Roman Catholic president, was compelled to publicly proclaim that should he be elected he would not “accept instructions” from the Pope. 

Similarly, Mitt Romney during his presidential campaign in 2007 publicly affirmed that his religion, Mormonism, would have no impact on his execution of presidential duties should he be elected. Romney is a pastor in his church.

But Islam is different from the other major world religions. Besides its religious component, it prescribes a rule of law. There is no separation of ‘church’ and state in Islam. Nations that are ruled under Islamic law are theocracies by definition. Any Muslim president has a clear obligation to clarify where his obedience to his religion ends and his duties as secular commander-in-chief and leader of the Free World begin.

There is only one Christian theocracy in the world: the Vatican city-state. The nations of Europe (and the U.S., though many are at pains to admit it) have Christian foundations, but they are in no way, shape, or form theocracies.

In the U.S., when a Christian bakery refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, there was figurative hell to pay. In Saudi Arabia, homosexuals caught in the act merit the death sentence. Beheading is the common method.

There exists a clear and abiding contradiction between Islam and a democratic republic.

Did you make a decision many years ago that in order to rise in US politics you could not do it as a Muslim? Did you make a pragmatic decision to hide your true faith and adopt Christianity? Does Reverend Wright know this? As your spiritual mentor throughout much of your adult life, did he advise you on this?

Islam allows Muslims to deceive non-believers when it is beneficial to the cause of Islam.  It’s called Taqiyya. Allah will not hold you accountable for recanting Islam if it is necessary.

Once elected, did you plan to be an emissary of Islam to America, and is the global jihad now frustrating your goals along these lines?

Are you a Muslim, Mr. President? If so, are you Shiite, like your step-father? How did it impact your desire for the nuke deal with Iran? What part did it play in your obvious deference to Iran? Does it account for your directions to have our naval officers submit to humiliation by their Iranian captors earlier this year while the negotiations were ongoing?11

These are the questions many Americans would like answered, Mr. President. If you have indeed deceived the American people with regards to your religion and the impact it has had on your decisions, what is the crime and the punishment?

Article 3, Section 3 - Treason

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. 

#  #  #

---

[1] Bratton, William J., Police Commissioner.  New York City. NYPD.  Crime and Enforcement Activity in New York City.  2015. http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/year_end_2015_enforcement_report.pdf

[2] “Bombshell: Whistleblower Claims DHS Scrubbed Records That Might Have Prevented Orlando And San Bernardino Attacks.” Staff.  The Sean Hannity Show. (Philip Haney, founding member of DHS, to Sean Hannity. In 2009 and again in 2012, DHS HQ issued orders to delete records.) 15 Jun. 2016. http://www.hannity.com/articles/war-on-terror-487284/bombshell-whistleblower-claims-dhs-scrubbed-records-14816541/)

[3] Pew Research Center. The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society  30 Apr. 2013.  
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/

[4] Kern, Soeren. “UK: What British Muslims ReallyThink.”  Gatestone Institute  17 Apr. 2016. http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7861/british-muslims-survey

[5] Hennessy, Patrick and Kite, Melissa. “Poll reveals 40 percent of Muslims want sharia law in UK.”  The Telegraph 19 Feb, 2006 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1510866/Poll-reveals-40pc-of-Muslims-want-sharia-law-in-UK.html

[6] Sims, Kris. “Strong support for Shariah in Canada.”  Atlantic Bureau, Toronto Sun  11 July 2016   
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/11/01/strong-support-for-shariah-in-canada

[7] Kern, Soeren. “Europe: Islamic Fundamentalism is Widespread.” Gatestone Institute   16 Dec. 2013  http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4092/europe-islamic-fundamentalism

[8] Barrett, James. “Loretta Lynch Vows to Prosecute Those Who Use ‘Anti-Muslim’ Speech That ‘Edges Toward Violence’”.  The DailyWire  4 Dec. 2015. http://www.dailywire.com/news/1593/loretta-lynch-vows-prosecute-those-who-use-anti-james-barrett

[9] (Some Islamic nations, such as Egypt, have outlawed slavery) Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam  8/5/90,  U. of Minnesota, Human Rights Library.  5 Aug. 1990 http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/cairodeclaration.html.

[10] Pollak, Joel B. “Obama a Muslim? No. Joined Racist Church? Yes.” 18 Sept. 2015 Breitbart.com http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/18/obama-a-muslim-no-joined-racist-church-yes/

[11] Larter, David,U.S. “Navy rebukes Iran after propaganda viseo shows sailor crying.” 10 Feb. 2016  NavyTimes   http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2016/02/10/iran-images-riverine-crying-strong-condemnation-navy/80186322/

Book Review: "Style as Ideology / Ideology as Style" by Pierce Timberlake

“Style as Ideology, Ideology as Style” is one of four “meditations”—as I call them—penned by Pierce Timberlake. It is the second of the four that I have read, having previously reviewed "The Art of Living Forever."

In this outing, Timberlake delves into the way we develop our political leanings. Along the way he detours to the mechanics of history’s great political conundrum: Left vs Right, vis-à-vis how they each view the “other,” and offers suggestions for developing a balanced and nuanced approach to forming opinions about the various issues of the day that confront us. We get a fair and balanced in-depth observation of the political spectrum—all the while digging deeper into the theme of the book, an exploration of why and how we form our opinions.

“Style as Ideology...” is divided into three parts. The first deals with Timberlake’s experience at a heavy metal concert that he attended as chaperone for his young (at the time) son.  It’s these observations of the crowd behavior that initially led him to this particular philosophical journey. He is drawn to the sociological implications inherent in being in a crowd of like-minded enthusiasts. Their shared realities. The need to conform? Can even a heavy-metal “artistic” milieu serve as a reference point to discovering how we form our ideological worldviews?

The second part of the book begins with Timberlake’s experience judging a high school debate contest.  Sure enough, one from the Left and one from the Right prove to be the choices Timberlake has to choose between.

Using this school debate over the military presence of the US in Europe as a springboard, Timberlake eventually wades into the ultimate debate between “liberal” and “conservative” viewpoints.

This leads to comparisons between two single mothers of Timberlake’s acquaintance: Janey and Maria. Two women of vastly different character; each serve as caricatures for Left and Right tropes of liberal indulgence on the one hand and righteous compassion for the working poor on the other.

“Janey,” the deadbeat abuser of the system is everything that is wrong with the welfare mentality, according to conservatives.

“Maria,” on the other hand, the hardscrabble single mother working multiple jobs to make ends meet for her and her brood, epitomizes the raison-d’être of the Left’s social compact.

From these observations, Timberlake launches into an in-depth analysis of liberal and conservative worldviews.

He cuts to the nub with his this bit of analysis:

The conservative’s ideal person is the self-reliant rugged individualist.

and,

The liberal’s ideal person is the beneficent sharer.

It is hard to argue with this, seemingly simplistic reduction. It rings true. And perhaps it is here that the dissection can be most fruitful.

The beneficent sharer. An ideal. Can there be anything inherently wrong with this? But what happens when there is not enough to share? Where does the sharer’s obligation end? A Randian (Ayn Rand devotee) might argue that every iota of energy spent not producing inevitably detracts from the total availability of goods and services. What about those that are selfish and don’t want to share? Do the sharers then have to overcompensate, further diluting their own productivity?

As far as the conservative’s ideal man, the self-reliant rugged individualist, I find this too utopian. The problem with libertarians is that they envision a world of self-enlightened, individualist ‘type A’ performers who are always looking to create something. But supposedly the “mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Aren’t there more people in the world who just want to have a “job,” with all life’s securities that used to come with one, rather than an opportunity to explore their own capabilities and leave a mark on the world?

The realist has to acknowledge this mass of people. I don’t think libertarianism does.

I do have one bone to pick with Timberlake’s analysis of liberal vs. conservative.

The Left now eschews the label “liberal,” in favor of “progressive.” Because of this, the waters have been muddied. Are today’s “progressives” really “liberal,” in the classical meaning of the word?

Timberlake claims that liberals are, generally speaking, opponents of censorship (while acknowledging their favoring of government control in other matters such as gun control).

But is this really the case? Many conservatives argue that it is the Left that is the overwhelming threat to freedom and free speech in particular. Just look at any of the myriad cases of college campuses silencing dissenting voices on any speech that contradicts the accepted politically correct narratives on any of the “social justice” issues du jour.

This new anti-free speech movement is chilling, and has led to a new phrase bandied with growing frequency: “liberal fascism.” Classic liberals should be appalled at how their offsprings’ generation has misappropriated their philosophy.

The middle section of the book includes a thoughtful examination of communism versus capitalism, and raises good questions regarding our own mixture of socialism and capitalism in relation to such critical concerns as health care.

The last section of “Style as Ideology...” begins with a frightening hiking experience. Timberlake uses his experience getting lost on the trail to illustrate a fundamental feature of the human condition: the need to make sensory information conform to our own predetermined thought patterns—and how that serves as a metaphor for how we collate and filter information to fit our preconceived worldviews. 

Timberlake uses a childhood experience viewing homes in the distance from his window as another metaphor for how the mind misplaces and misjudges distances, both physical and ideological.

How can we develop balanced, measured opinions? How do we walk the line between self-examination and self-corroboration? It is the latter which we do far more often, as people

endlessly cross the t’s and dot the i’s of what they think they already know, further refining their ideology without ever questioning it

as Timberlake eloquently puts it.

Timberlake does arrive at a solution for avoiding ideological purity. But you’ll have to read the book to find the answer.

-- Mark Charalambous

The Banner Falls on Academia in America

Daryl Kane

There’s a classic scene in Jurassic Park where the park’s banner falls over the T-Rex as he roars in the main lobby. It’s certainly not the subtlest of visual puns but it’s a powerful one nonetheless, and the image has since become an icon for the flawed hubris of man.

Today a similar scene is unfolding before the eyes of the public on campuses all across the country. The monster behind the current carnage is a group of academic elites who have instituted a bizarre form of politically correct fascism on their campuses that comes equipped with a massive brainwashing apparatus as well as a rather large stick for silencing dissent. The installation of this apparatus is not news to anyone who has set foot on a college campus in the last 50 years. What is news is that this story is finally being reported on, at least by any news sources not completely in the tank for the anti-American zealots otherwise known as “social justice warriors.” But even those weaponized news sources are now being forced to report on what is happening, even if their slant can be predictably found exactly 180 degrees away from reality. On this both sides can agree: something is happening.

After the communist revolution stalled in Europe after World War II, the Marxists sought to regroup in Germany and established a massive think tank called The Frankfurt School. The general thrust of what emerged from their discourse was that the reason why the revolution failed to manifest across Europe was because the emphasis had been placed on economic issues rather than cultural ones. Only after dismantling a people’s ethnic, religious and national identities could they be made to accept the ideas of communism. Thus Cultural Marxism was created, an idea so radical that it was rejected in Moscow. Eventually they were forced to flee Germany and were unfortunately granted a safe haven at Columbia University. Before long they had spread their views to most of the prominent universities in the country.

Cultural Marxism in academia would manifest itself in many ways. One was in the formation of the various ethnic, gender or sexual identity-based studies that litter the current curriculum. While the subjects of the studies differ, they are all essentially cloned versions of one another. The story is always the same, a minority group victimized by America and Western Civilization. The heroes change but the villains remain constantly, white, male and Christian. “Critical Theory” is applied to the various ways in which human beings characterize one another until all of human history is deconstructed so it can be rebuilt to fit the narrow lens of political correctness. The same process and principles used by earlier communists to reduce all of human history to a struggle between classes now being applied to the cultural identity of America. This leads to the creation of the various victim groups that we currently understand to be the base of the Democratic Party.

But these are not the people we are dealing with today. We are dealing with second and third generation Cultural Marxists that are the unfortunate byproduct of intellectual inbreeding. Hired by, answering to, and surrounded by people that view the world exactly the same way they do. People that value “diversity” over merit and to whom the term “tolerance” means the mandatory and passionate embrace of political correctness. And they’ve dutifully passed on these values to the current generation of students.

Only something has suddenly gone terribly wrong. The ideological inbreeding has created a degree of intellectual deformity so severe that the students have reverted to cannibalism and are eating their professors alive as we speak. Recently, students complaining about “micro aggressions” and other imagined (and often times deliberately fabricated) offenses have called for the resignations of any and all faculty that did not apply enough lipstick before kissing their asses. The great irony here is that the very people who have aggressively, and often times violently harassed and attempted to silence others, are the ones claiming to be bullied. The student spit on, cursed at or punched by hooligans is not the artsy lesbian with piercings and tattoos. It’s the Christian girl who quietly decided to opt out of the LBGT rally. The still greater irony is that the very assholes who endowed these delinquents with their sense of entitlement are the very same people whose resignations they are now demanding!

The PC chickens have finally come home to roost at the original scene of the crime. Ultimately, what you are watching is the ugly death of the American college. First and foremost it no longer offers education. It does not even offer an environment conducive to exploring ideas on your own, either. Hell, you can’t even get laid in college anymore without a signed contract. Well, not unless you’re OK with being accused of sexual assault by an angry ex a few weeks later and ready to face prosecution, guilty until proven innocent.

On top of all of this, the cost of this dangerous and degrading experience is increasingly exorbitant. To paraphrase Matt Damon in “Goodwill Hunting,” you’re much better off getting a library card. Or perhaps enrolling in an online course where you can get a degree for a fraction of the cost and considerably less hassle. You’ll also miss out on a heavy dosage of leftist brainwashing which has long been the primary function of academia in this country. And that is precisely why I predict that this “free college” initiative from the Left will soon be the central item of the Democratic Party’s platform. Their survival as a party may well depend upon it. Because we’ve given them unilateral control of education and they have utterly destroyed it, and because without the college campus there will be no one to train the next generation to vote for them. The cost of the atrocious product now being offered simply is not sustainable anymore, which is precisely why they will need to make it free, if not mandatory.

# # #

GOP Post-Debate Power Rankings

Daryl Kane

1. Scott Walker. Despite a generally underwhelming debate performance and a slight slide in polls, Walker remains the candidate likeliest to thread the needle and satisfy the various wings of the party.

2. Donald Trump. On the one hand, it’s extremely early in the race and it remains far more likely that the Trump bubble will burst than not. Nevertheless, he is the undisputed front runner at this particular point in time and has earned that place by repeatedly bitch slapping political correctness and mastering Nixon’s madman thesis. Hint to the establishment: your attempts to sabotage Trump all inevitably backfire; legitimate questions on policy prove to be his Achilles’ heel. Treat Trump fairly and trust in primary voters to figure out where he belongs.

3. Ted Cruz. Cruz may not be polling particularly well at the moment but he is first in line to receive the most Trump votes should his bubble burst. He also has arguably the strongest social media presence save Rand Paul, whose campaign is going nowhere fast as I’ll address several numbers down.



4. Marco Rubio. Rubio performed well during the debate and remains a safe pick for a general election due to his appeal to Latinos and his ability to shore up Florida.

5. Jeb Bush. Many might place Jeb higher on this list but if anything I feel this placement is generous. Jeb has an extremely low ceiling amongst conservatives. Put another way, as the bottom half of this list drops off, whose votes will be going to Jeb? The only candidates whose voters might have Jeb as their second guy are Rubio, Walker and perhaps Kasich, all of whom look to go deep into the primaries. The current size of the field works to Jeb’s advantage and his inability to get a bigger share of voters at this stage does not bode well for him moving forward. As for his debate performance? Well, ehh... it was “Jebby.”

6. John Kasich. Kasich remains my top dark horse candidate. Being able to deliver Ohio is the single most substantial asset of all the GOP candidates. Add to that his common touch, likability and appeal to moderates and you have the makings of a very formidable general election candidate.



7. Ben Carson. Despite having a relatively small amount of speaking time during the debate Carson managed to stand out with his wit and charm. Carson has a tremendous platform and his ability to turn the board on its head by liberating the African-American community from the destructive worldview of political correctness makes him another potential dark horse.

8. Carly Fiorina. Fiorina emerged as the clear winner of the little kid debate and was quickly catapulted to the grown-ups’ table.  I respect her candidacy hence her placement on the upper card, but my gut tells me she will prove to be more of a flavor-of-the-month candidate than someone that goes deep into the primaries.

9. Mike Huckabee. I’ve never been a big fan of Huckabee but no one can deny that he performed very well at the debate. He also has a great platform for a general election. That being said I ultimately think his lack of intellectual depth holds him back in a field this deep.



10. Chris Christie. The man who was four years too late. Christie did well during the debate but it remains to be seen if he will be able to overcome the scorn he has drawn from conservatives since 2012. My suspicion is no.

11. Rick Santorum. It certainly doesn’t look like Santorum’s campaign is going anywhere—but then again it didn’t look that way in 2012, either. Santorum remains a principled advocate of blue collar Americans and his proven track record of winning states and delegates give him the tie breaker over the bottom portion of the pack.



12. Rand Paul. Whether or not you think Paul got the better of Christie during their 4th amendment tiff is irrelevant. Rand Paul had the worst debate performance, by far. He came off as testy, erratic and a little bit weird. With foreign policy primed to play a strong role in 2016 the libertarian party ceiling continues to sink. My advice to the Rand Paul fan boys: do yourself a favor and put your bitcoins on someone else.



13. Bobby Jindal. Last week I blasted Jindal for being a generally bland and generic candidate. That being said, his line about “assimilation vs. invasion” proved to be best line of the night. That alone puts him ahead of Perry.



14. Rick Perry. Perry was clearly disappointed he didn’t make the cut but he was actually rather lucky not to. Glasses or not, the man simply is not intelligent enough to be president and the more people hear him speak the less likely it is that he will ever be taken seriously.



15. The rest of the list has such low chances of winning there’s not much point in trying to rank them. Here we have a tie for last place between candidates Gilmore, Pataki and Graham.

# # #

The DOLEZAL POINT: Rachel Dolezal, Political Correctness, and the 2nd Derivative

Mark Charalambous

Since everyone is riffing on Rachel Dolezal, I figured I’d get my licks in, too. After all, how could the Third Rail shy away from a story about a woman from the “Privilege” class who chooses to disguise herself as a member of the ethnic class that occupies the bottom rung of virtually every measure of societal success?

Keywords: Political Correctness, Identity Politics, Transracialism, Transethno-something?...

You get the idea. Yes, this is ripe for a ride on the Third Rail.

To the question of “Why everyone everywhere is so captivated by this story?”  well, after some false flags, the truth has actually emerged into the general consensus. It’s this:  This case of identity politics is so absurd that not even the leftist loons can avoid acknowledging it. Bill Maher gets it.   Even Jon Stewart gets it.

The Left has been indoctrinating us for decades that all identities we used to consider immutable, those that constitute conditions of birth, basically your sex and your race, are in fact. . . not so!  We’ve been wrong all along!  They are now recognized as “social constructs.”

Rachel Dolezal, now-and-then

 

Yep, “Society’s to blame,” in the words of Monty Python (comedic references are unavoidable and de rigueur when discussing these matters).  It is the consensus of society and your own volition that determines your sex, race, or ethnicity.

Well, the upshot of all this from the Third Rail is this: 

REJOICE!   I bring good tidings!

Rachel Dolezal is The Tipping Point.  We are finally there!  The absurdities and inherent paradoxes of political correctness have reached their zenith.  Political correctness is officially beyond parody. You cannot make up stories that are both funnier and more preposterous than this one.

What’s The Onion going to do—write a fake news story about a dad who “self-identifies” as a mother?  That’s not as funny as Rachel Dolezal pretending to be black.

Now that you’re laughing, I’m going to teach you some math. Seriously. I’m going to explain to you, mathematically, what a tipping point is. Its formal name is an inflection point.

Before we do that, just a little background and more editorializing on political correctness is in order.

Most if not all politically correct notions are built on a foundation of quicksand. Gay marriage, for example, is predicated on the ridiculous notion that procreation is not implicit and irrevocable in the meaning and definition of marriage. Transethnicity, this latest farce, is predicated on the notion that race is a social construct, not biological.  Transgenderism is woven from the same identity-politics cloth: the inherent biology of one’s sex is meaningless; what matters is what sex you feel like, your “gender.”

Political correctness had a beginning in time. I might put it at around 1970. A good case could be made that it falls within a few years in either direction of that year. This is clearly arbitrary, but bear with me. It’s as good a year as any to pick. The first Earth Day was held in 1970, the same year the EPA was created. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with these events, but they were harbingers of a “new consciousness.”  It was the consciousness of the sixties generation beginning to be implemented, as we precious, sanctimonious folks embarked upon adulthood and our mission to remake the world in our image.

As time went on, political correctness (henceforth abbreviated to “PC-ness”) increased. There was more and more of it.  There was more in say, 1984 than there was in 1983. And the amount of that increase was greater than the increase from 1982 to 1983.  What we are talking about here is a rate; a rate of increase: how much PC-ness is increasing over a given period of time.

Time for the math.

A function is a math formula (or read: equation) for describing how something changes due to some other quantity.

For example, weekly pay could be a function of a fixed rate of hourly pay and the number of hours worked in the week. If the rate of pay was $10 per hour, and we used the variable h to count the number of hours worked, the function would look like this: P = 10•h  In math, we typically don’t write multiplication crosses or dots, and so this equation would actually be written like this:   P = 10h.

To find out your pay (P) for a given week, you multiply the number of hours worked, h, by 10. Bingo.

Figure 1.  Function over time

We now consider a function that represents a quantity changing over time. If we want to graph how a function is changing over time we first establish what we call the time axis. We usually draw a horizontal line at the bottom of the graph that represents the time axis.  It will have some scale drawn on it so specific times and time intervals can be noted or measured.

This establishes that the “picture” of the function’s behavior, typically a line or curve, is “read” from left to right indicating how the function changes going forward in time. The value of the function at the left end of the line occurs before its value at the right end, or for that matter any point on the line to its right. Refer to Figure 1.

Figure 2.  Constant function

If the line is flat (horizontal), the quantity that the line is describing (the function) is not changing over time. As you move right or left on the line (forwards or backwards in time), the line does not go up or down. The quantity is neither increasing or decreasing in time. In math we refer to this as a “constant” function. This is shown in Figure 2.

If the quantity increases as we go forward in time, the line goes up.  A line describing PC-ness would necessarily go up (to the right) because it is always increasing (over time).

If a quantity is decreasing over time, such as water evaporating in a pot, the line will go down (to the right).

From this point forward, I’ll use PC-ness as my example function. Any point on a line or curve that represents PC-ness shows how much PC-ness there is at that point in time.

Figure 3. Linear function

PC-ness has been increasing over time. If its picture were in fact a (straight) line and not a curve, it would imply that for all durations of time of the same length (for instance the time frame could be yearly, or every 5 years, or every day), the amount of increase over that time frame would be the same. In other words, it would increase by the exact same amount from 1977 to 1978 as from 1992 to 1993; or, the increase from June 1982 to July 1982 would be exactly the same as the increase from September to October 2007. We say the rate of increase is constant. We would then call the graph of PC-ness the graph of a “linear” function; because its graph is a straight line. An increasing linear function is shown in Figure 3.

If the rate of increase was not always the same, but was getting bigger all the time, the graph would not be of a line going up—it would be a curve going up, as in Figure 4. This would correspond to the situation that the increase in PC-ness from 1984 to 1985 was more than the increase in PC-ness from 1983 to 1984. And the increase from 1985 to 1986 was greater than from 1984 to 1985. The rate of increase is increasing.

Figure 4. Exponential function

There are many functions that correspond to something increasing in this manner, at an increasing rate. They are all curves that go up. One of the most common is called the exponential function. When we say that something is “growing exponentially” we are describing behavior like this, something that is getting bigger and getting bigger by bigger amounts all the time. Figure 4 shows an exponential function.

If there is nothing to arrest this increasing rate, we call this “exponential or uninhibited growth.”  Generally, population growth is exponential until there are mitigating environmental (or human) factors that throw a wrench into the works. One such example is the growth of mold on bread. There is only so much bread. The mold grows very quickly at first, but eventually it slows down as there is less bread to grow on. Eventually the mold reaches a maximum value. No more can grow. And that is what leads us to our final growth picture, shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5.  Logistic function

What if there was exponential-like behavior in some human endeavor, but something happened to derail it? A good example of this is the introduction of new technology.

When CDs were first produced the technology was new. The cost to switch over to the new music medium was expensive.  Both the CDs and the machines you needed to play them on cost more than the current music media, records and cassettes. As more and more people gradually discarded their old relics of the previous technology, dubbing-cassette boomboxes and record players and the like, the sales of CD players and CDs went up. As sales went up, the costs went down. As the cost went down, more people switched to the new media. Rinse and repeat.  What you have here my friend is an exponential-like growth pattern.

But would it go on forever?  Of course not!  The technologists never rest. When the second wave of the digital revolution arrived, the need for a physical medium for the music was replaced with software, a file of 1s and 0s that could be downloaded from the internet and played on a new device, the iPod.

What happened to the sales of CDs and CD players then?  They started to decrease. The growth in the number of CDs and CD players purchased would slow down. The rate of sales would slow down. As shown in Figure 5 on the top half of the “S-shaped” curve, eventually the sales will come to a crawl and the total amount of CDs and CD players sold will approach a maximum, fixed value. The picture of this growth pattern shown in Figure 5 describes what is called a “logistic” function.

We’re now ready to understand the tipping, or inflection point. The inflection point is the point where the picture changes from going up rapidly to a slower and slower rate of increase. Note, it is still going up, but at the far right the curve looks like it actually wants to become flat; meaning:  no change.  This is important; until a maximum value is eventually reached, no matter where we are on the curve the quantity being measured is always going up. But after a certain amount of time has passed a tipping point is reached where the curve bends toward the other direction. At this inflection point, the rate of increase slows down, until it crawls almost to an eventual stop at what is called the “carrying capacity” of the function, the point of maximum saturation, when no new CDs and CD players are purchased.

If the inflection point for PC-ness occurred in say, 1991, the increase from 1992 to 1993 would have been less than the increase from 1991 to 1992, and so on.

Granted, we sensible Americans don’t just want the rate of PC-ness to slow down and the total amount of it to eventually level off at some “acceptable” amount—we want PC-ness gone.  Period. As in zero. Ideally we’d like all the PC mischief that has plagued the body-politic over the past 45 years or so to not just stop, but reverse and eventually evaporate.

Eventually we’d like to see the curve that represents the amount of PC-ness become a flat line at the very bottom of the graph. But before we get there, the rate of growth of PC-ness has to start slowing down. The curve has to bend.

Question: Where is the inflection point?

I assert that Rachel Dolezal is that very inflection point. The rate of increase of political correctness that infects our world is going to begin to slow down now. Why do I make this claim?

One of the properties of the logistic function is that at the inflection point the rate of increase is at its maximum value (actually, just before the inflection point the growth rate is virtually exponential).  The tipping point for PC-ness will come at the point of its maximum madness.

I think we are at that point. The absurdities have reached hilarious proportions. Days before the Dolezal story broke the media was abuzz with accounts of Bruce Jenner’s sex change. For the past 8 years Jenner has been a reality TV whore. But ESPN, the nation’s preeminent sports network, chose to celebrate the “heroic” action of this Olympic athlete of 40 years ago by awarding “her” their Arthur Ashe Courage Award.

As this goes to press, the President has used the latest Islamist beheadings as an opportunity to once again lecture the nation on the dangers of “Islamophobia;” the White House has been bathed in rainbow colors celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing homosexual marriage; and the latest list of college “microaggressions” is making the rounds on Facebook.  I know it’s a tired cliché, but you can’t make this stuff up.

After the fallout form Dolezal from such disparate quarters—not just the expected conservative talking heads but also sources on the Left such as Maher and Stewart—it’s hard to believe that everything will soon go back to “normal.” I look for increasing ridicule as “Check out this latest case of political correctness...” becomes a frequent (and welcomed) narrative.

I hope it becomes an issue in the presidential debates on the Republican side. Some of the candidates should recognize that bashing PC-ness will be a vote-getter. To date, the candidate that has showed the most proclivity for attacking PC-ness head-on is Ben Carson.  People forget that while speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2013, the event where he made his political bones by attacking Obamacare right under the nose of the President sitting a few feet away, he spent the first five minutes of that speech railing against PC-ness.

Once the Democratic race opens up after the recalcitrant Democrats realize that the “Hillary coronation” is a Jedi mind trick, watch for a candidate to test the waters by dropping a relatively innocuous but carefully contrived “spontaneous” joke or two mocking PC-ness.

If someone were serious about mathematically analyzing PC-ness to see if in fact it could be modeled by a “logistic” growth model or some other mathematical model, from which the inflection point could then be determined, two things are necessary.

First, a mathematical algorithm would have to be developed to actually quantify PC-ness. We would have to be able to measure it.  That is, we would need to produce a specific number for say, 2005, that measured the amount of PC-ness in that year, and the corresponding numbers for all the years since our starting point, 1970.

A disclaimer and cautionary note here: The notion of actually quantifying PC-ness in a mathematically rigorous way is, quite frankly, ridiculous. It depends on mutually agreed upon definitions and is inherently subjective. This wouldn’t stop academicians in the behavioral sciences from pursuing nonsense like this, however, as they’re always seeking ways to justify the “hard science” of their discipline.   Someone who believes that a differential equation from fluid dynamics can be applied to a measure of how positive, affirming statements can lead to better decision-making in the boardroom, is not going to balk at measuring PC-ness...

We, on the other hand, are just doing this mainly for fun and the opportunity to explain some cool math.

Figure 6.  Comparison of Exponential and Logistic function 

The second thing needed to demonstrate that PC-ness follows the logistic (or other) growth model is an indication that a turning point has indeed passed and the rate of PC-ness has begun to slow down.

Perhaps two years from now our hypothetical measuring system will show the increase in PC units from 2016 to 2017 is less than it was from 2015 to 2016. If no such evidence is forthcoming, then unfortunately we are still in an uninhibited growth model (Figure 4) with no end in sight—or we are still on that bottom half of the “S” curve. A side-by-side comparison of exponential and logistic growth is shown in Figure 6.

If these two conditions were met it would be possible to see if the data fits a logistic function. Once the actual function was found we can determine several things. We could find out exactly when the inflection point occurred; we could predict what the growth rate will be in a given year; and we could predict the maximum value at which PC-ness will eventually top off (mathematically speaking, the “carrying capacity”... of how much PC-ness we Americans can stand before, hopefully, starting the cleanup operations...).

I am now going to discuss in a more general way the mathematics involved in finding the rate of change and the inflection point of a function. These are standard operations of calculus and are not specific to logistic functions.

The algebraic form of a logistic function is fairly complicated, and the typical reader would not have the math background to understand it. It has a time variable in it along with several special numbers, along with exponents and cool things like the number e. 

So rather than tackle an actual logistic function to demonstrate the actual math to do these things, I am going to use as my function something understandable to anyone familiar with basic algebra.

Here is the algebraic expression that I am going to use as my function for PC-ness:

5x³ – 3x² + 7x + 1

A logistic function does not look like this (though there are similarities), but we are going to use this simple algebraic expression to illustrate the mathematics of finding the inflection point. The process is the same.

Let’s pretend that this expression is the function that represents the amount of PC-ness in years after 1970. If you wanted to find out how much political correctness there was in 1970 you would replace the variable x with 0 (1970 is 0 years after 1970), and then do the math. We “plug in” 0 to the expression.

   

5(0)³ – 3(0)² + 7(0) + 1 = 1

The answer would be 1. That would be the amount of political correctness in 1970. We might use that as a benchmark and name it 1 PC unit, or PC1.

If we wanted to find out how much PC-ness there was in 1971 we would replace the variable x with 1 (1971 is 1 year after 1970). Then we’d “plug it in” and eventually arrive at the value of 10.  We might say the amount of political correctness in 1971 was 10 PC units or 10PC1, that is, 10 times the amount of political correctness in 1970.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. What follows is one of the things you learn how to do in calculus. Yes, calculus is needed to find inflection points. It is higher math.

What if you wanted to find out the rate of change at any of the years?  Or, for that matter, at any point in time. (Note, with calculus you can find the rate of increase at any day, hour, minute—any instant—of your choice.)

What you have to do is what we call “take (or find) the 1^st derivative” of the function. When a derivative is taken, what you get is another function which describes the rate of change of the original function. This is something you learn how to do in calculus, and obviously I’m not going to show the various rules for doing this here, but I will show you what it is in our example so that you see it just produces another (occasionally simpler) mathematical expression.

The first derivative of 5x³ – 3x² + 7x + 1  is 

15x² – 6x + 7

By the way, if you’ve never seen calculus before but you’re good with numbers, you might be able to discover the pattern that produced the 1^st derivative here. Go ahead, try.  I won’t tell. You’ll have another opportunity in a minute.

Now that you have the 1^st derivative, if you wanted to find how much PC-ness was increasing in 1971, you would replace x with 1 (again: because 1971 is 1 year after 1970, and we established 1970 as being Year 0). Then, plug it in to the 1^st derivative,  15x² – 6x + 7 . 

The rate of increase in PC-ness in this model would give 16. You would interpret that as “PC-ness was increasing at a rate 16 PC units per year in 1971.”

We’re almost there. Remember, what we actually care about is how fast the rate of increase is changing. We are looking for something that will indicate that it has begun to slow down; that is, that the rate of the rate of increase in PC-ness is slowing down. As stated above, a derivative of a function gives the rate of change of the function. When you take the derivative of the 1^st derivative you are finding a function that describes the rate of change of the 1^st derivative—yes, a rate of change of a rate of change! 

Guess what we call the derivative of the 1^st derivative? You guessed it:  the 2^nd derivative, of course! The first derivative we found above was the rate of change of the function, specifically: how much the amount of PC-ness was changing over time. To find out how much that quantity changes, we are taking its derivative. We take the derivative of the 1st derivative, or in other words, the 2nd derivative of the (original) function.

Here it is, the 2nd derivative. The derivative of the 1st derivative 15x² – 6x + 7  is:  ­­­­­­­­­­­­­

30x – 6

(If you think you figured out the pattern for taking derivatives before, this may confirm it for you; or, give you another clue with which to work.)

( Here is a link to a KahnAcademy video that shows exactly how to do this. )

SIDEBAR

Driving: Distance, Speed and Acceleration

Another example of functions and derivatives

An everyday experience that is often used to explain the concept of the derivative, a fundamental concept in calculus, is driving. You go for a drive. You drive a certain distance. The (main) function corresponds to your position.  How many miles had you driven at some particular point in time on the trip? It will be a line/curve going up. As the line moves to the right we are going forward in time, and we are moving, so our overall distance traveled is always increasing. The 1st derivative of this position function gives the rate of change of the distance traveled over time, the rate of our motion: our speed. How many miles per hour were you driving at that particular time? The 2nd derivative of the position function is the derivative of the 1st derivative; the rate of change of the 1st derivative. The rate of change of your speed. That’s acceleration.  Acceleration is the 2nd derivative of the position function. When you find the 2nd derivative you can plug in a number for the time variable and it will tell you what your acceleration was at that instant in time, how many miles per hour per hour, or miles per hour2. This will be a positive number if you are speeding up or a negative number if you are braking or slowing down. #  #  #

If you want to find out how much the rate of increase in political correctness was itself increasing, in say, 1984, you would replace x with 14 (1984 -1970 =14), and get 414 PC units. (The actual dimensions of the 2^nd derivative of a function measuring total PC-ness over time would be PC units per year per year, or PC units per year².) 

And now, finally, the magic is revealed. How do we find out where the inflection, or tipping point is, i.e., when it occurs?  How do we find the date when the rate of increase begins to decrease?

What is actually happening at the inflection point?  Look again at Figure 5.  Look at the rate of increase to the left of the inflection point. If we cut the graph at the inflection point and throw away the top of the “S” part, we would have a graph similar to the one of exponential, uninhibited growth (Figure 4). Getting bigger and bigger all the time.

Just before the inflection point the rate of change of PC-ness has its maximum value!  Just beyond the inflection point the change in PC-ness has a slightly lower value. What has happened in between is that the rate of change of the increase in PC-ness has gone over from a tiny positive number to a tiny negative number. It has crossed the threshold of zero change in the rate of increase in PC-ness. 

This is analogous to stepping on the gas pedal to accelerate when passing a car on the highway. After you’ve passed the car you let up on the pedal. You are then decelerating. The moment where you let up on the pedal was the inflection point. In that instant you were neither increasing your speed nor slowing down. Your acceleration was zero. (Refer to the sidebar, Driving:  Distance, Speed, and Acceleration, for further insight into the driving analogy.)

( Here is a link to a KahnAcademy video that explains inflection points. )

The point of inflection comes at the point of maximum increase of the function.  That is at the most extreme point of increase in PC-ness. Which I claim is right now!

To find out exactly when it is, you have to find the point where the second derivative is exactly zero. You solve an equation. In our little example, we would have to solve the equation

30x – 6 = 0

The answer to this, the solution to this equation, is the fraction 1/5, or 0.2 as a decimal number.

Please remember that the algebraic expression we have been using is not a logistic model that describes the behavior we are talking about here, either sales of CDs or PC-ness. It was provided as a simpler example to show you how derivatives work. Clearly, sometime in March 1970 (the date corresponding to x = 0.2 when 1970 = 0) could not be the tipping point of PC-ness!  

(However what we did is sound, and there is an inflection point in the graph of  5x³ – 3x² + 7x + 1 at  x = 0.2 .  If you’re curious, you can enter the function into a graphing calculator and look.)

But if PC-ness could be quantified, then a function for it could be formulated. And if that function is logistic, if it fits the “S” pattern, then an inflection point could be found (See NOTE 1). And it might very well have been in June 2015.

Henceforth: the Dolezal Point.

There is one irrefutable argument to be made in support of the contention that PC-ness must turn around. Has there ever been a time when one generation so enthusiastically pursued and promoted the tastes and value system of its parents'?  Whatever happened to “Question authority,” my generation’s watchword?  The blowback is coming. 

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NOTE 1

In reality PC-ness would not follow the strictly logistic model. The inflection point would be higher up on the “S”.  In a logistic function the inflection point lies exactly midway between the minimum and maximum values of the function. 

If Dolezal were the tipping point in a logistic model where we established 1970 as the starting point for PC-ness, we would have another 45 years of gradually diminishing new PC-ness to endure before the maximum value would be reached!  We would only be halfway to our collective “carrying capacity” for PC-ness. Now that’s a scary thought!

A better fit can be found from a function that coincidently is of the same form as our simpler example:  a cubic polynomial function.  See Figure 7.  Its leading coefficient would be negative, and we would restrict its domain to begin at its first local minimum, which should also be a zero of the function, to a point on the graph that lies somewhere beyond the local maximum and before the next (and last) zero.

Figure 7. Cubic Polynomial function

I have tried to fit some speculative data values to such a model using cubic regression, using 0 as the beginning value of PC-ness in 1970 (x = 0), an inflection point value of PC-ness of 400 occurring at 2015 (x = 45), and setting a maximum value of PC-ness of 550 occurring in 2020 (x = 50); yes, the eternal optimist...

Here is the model it produced:

 

PC-ness= 

–0.0176x³ + 1.44x² – 19.17x + 37.34

(after some rounding which had negligible effect on the graph). The model fails before about 1985, and from that point does only a fair job of matching the speculative points that I created for 5- or 10-year intervals from 1970 to 2030.

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Copyright 2015  Mark Charalambous / The Third Rail