Quote of the Day: Professor on Science Being Invaded by Leftist Ideology

 

And he would know. This is from a letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal on July 21, 2020:

I spent half of my life in the ex-USSR, as a researcher at the Academy of Sciences. I lived through the Great Terror, and my experience allows me to see the inevitable consequences of today’s onslaught on the institutions of the American Republic: its irreparable destruction.

Starting in the later 19th century, Russia’s cultural and business elites supported the revolutionary movement, and the enormous social pressure to topple the czarist regime greatly facilitated the victory of the Bolsheviks in 1917. Officially, the ex-Soviet Union was a country of the proletarian dictatorship, yet there was never even one proletarian, i.e., a factory worker, in the Soviet government.

The crowd advancing on us is not about upholding any minority rights — it is a crowd of zeros wanting unaccountable power. And the only barrier between them and us is President Trump.

The author is Emeritus Professor Igor Melcuk at the University of Montreal.

Published in Group Writing
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 16 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Dotorimuk Coolidge
    Dotorimuk
    @Dotorimuk

    He’s right. Like it or not, Trump is the barrier, until we find another.

    It’s not Biden, Bill Kristol, the son of a mailman or the ghosts of Presidents past.

    We play with the game pieces on the board. I see one.

    • #1
  2. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    He’s right. The Democrats right now are not Democrats, not anymore. They’ve been commandeered by Leftist Globalists who are using them and all the well-meaning white suburban liberals as pawns. They control BLM now, and anyone who thinks that organization cares one bit about black lives is blind. They care only about power, and to get it, they’re using every issue at hand to destabilize the country. The riots are not about a dead black guy. The shutdowns are not about a virus with a 99% survival rate.

    They’re progressing on their “Long March Through the Institutions” faster than even they dared hope. They’re destroying the NFL, NBA, and pro baseball. They’ve already destroyed our education system from kindergarten through university-level. They’re trying to alter our perceptions of everything in our culture that was once viewed as normal. Fat is beautiful, sex is a social construct. A man wearing a dress is a woman.

    Donald Trump is the only man who could have held them off for this long, and if he doesn’t win again, the Republic is lost. Anyone who doesn’t understand that had better get it through their heads right now. There will be no “sitting out” or “regrouping” during a Biden presidency. We will have no country left.

    • #2
  3. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Sandia Labs has been running indoctrination sessions on Modern Systemic Racism & White Privilege on their employees.

    They’ve been getting something that they generally don’t experience in their campus laogais: pushback.

    Note that I haven’t finished this video yet, but the guy is pretty levelheaded so far.

    • #3
  4. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Lots of people have seen it all before. Sort of like Maximo Alvarez also recognized his own set of signs. We know what is coming. Do we have the will to fight against it and win?


    This is the Quote of the Day, but you knew that. Here are links to August’s other quotations. Here is our September sign-up sheet. If you have a quotation to share, go there.

    • #4
  5. DonG (skeptic) Coolidge
    DonG (skeptic)
    @DonG

    Lysenkoism is a fascinating story of science being perverted by Leftism.   Russia fell generations behind in biology from their putting politics over science.

    Lysenkoism (Russian: Лысе́нковщина, tr. Lysenkovshchina) was a political campaign led by Trofim Lysenko against genetics and science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century, rejecting natural selection in favour of Lamarckism and exaggerated claims for the benefits of vernalization and grafting. Lysenko served as the director of the Soviet Union’s Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. In time, it has come to be identified as any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable.

    The government of the USSR supported the campaign, and Joseph Stalin personally edited a speech by Lysenko in a way that reflected his support for what would come to be known as Lysenkoism, despite his skepticism toward Lysenko’s assertion that all science is class-oriented in nature.[1] More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the campaign to suppress scientific opponents. The president of the Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, who had encouraged Lysenko, was sent to prison and died there, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed. Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines were harmed or banned.

    Other countries of the Eastern Bloc including Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the German Democratic Republic accepted Lysenkoism as the official “new biology”, to varying degrees, as did the People’s Republic of China for some years.

    • #5
  6. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Percival (View Comment):

    Sandia Labs has been running indoctrination sessions on Modern Systemic Racism & White Privilege on their employees.

    They’ve been getting something that they generally don’t experience in their campus laogais: pushback.

    Note that I haven’t finished this video yet, but the guy is pretty levelheaded so far.

    This is one of the top defense department labs.  Think about this.  It’s going on all over DOD.   

    • #6
  7. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Kozak (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Sandia Labs has been running indoctrination sessions on Modern Systemic Racism & White Privilege on their employees.

    They’ve been getting something that they generally don’t experience in their campus laogais: pushback.

    Note that I haven’t finished this video yet, but the guy is pretty levelheaded so far.

    This is one of the top defense department labs. Think about this. It’s going on all over DOD.

    I’ve been through “diversity training” a number of times in the past. The basic message was “be nice.” The Sandia Labs stuff sounds like it was written by woke sociologists. P. J. O’Rourke once defined sociology as “journalism without news.”

    I can’t decide whether that makes it easier or tougher.

    The guy in the video picks apart a lot of the training’s facts and figures with sourced facts and figures.

    • #7
  8. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Kozak (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Sandia Labs has been running indoctrination sessions on Modern Systemic Racism & White Privilege on their employees.

    They’ve been getting something that they generally don’t experience in their campus laogais: pushback.

    Note that I haven’t finished this video yet, but the guy is pretty levelheaded so far.

    This is one of the top defense department labs. Think about this. It’s going on all over DOD.

    I remember about 10 years ago there was a lab, I forget where, with a Nobel Laureate at the helm. He was older, from a different generation than the young women they were hiring. One day he made an innocuous remark about how nice it was to see all those young women in white lab coats or some such. They banded together in righteous indignation, it went viral, and he was fired. These people will lose a Nobel Prize winner to preserve PC. It is just unbelievable. This was one of the first incidents of cancel culture I remember. There was not a name for it yet.

    • #8
  9. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Kozak (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Sandia Labs has been running indoctrination sessions on Modern Systemic Racism & White Privilege on their employees.

    They’ve been getting something that they generally don’t experience in their campus laogais: pushback.

    Note that I haven’t finished this video yet, but the guy is pretty levelheaded so far.

    This is one of the top defense department labs. Think about this. It’s going on all over DOD.

    I remember about 10 years ago there was a lab, I forget where, with a Nobel Laureate at the helm. He was older, from a different generation than the young women they were hiring. One day he made an innocuous remark about how nice it was to see all those young women in white lab coats or some such. They banded together in righteous indignation, it went viral, and he was fired. These people will lose a Nobel Prize winner to preserve PC. It is just unbelievable. This was one of the first incidents of cancel culture I remember. There was not a name for it yet.

    Women are good for the workplace. Because they are consensus builders. 

    • #9
  10. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    TBA (View Comment):
    Women are good for the workplace. Because they are consensus builders. 

    Until their consensus is t0 get rid of all the men? And then the women they don’t like? This is like Survivor, right? Who gets voted out of a job this week?

    • #10
  11. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    RightAngles (View Comment):
    I remember about 10 years ago there was a lab, I forget where, with a Nobel Laureate at the helm. He was older, from a different generation than the young women they were hiring. One day he made an innocuous remark about how nice it was to see all those young women in white lab coats or some such. They banded together in righteous indignation, it went viral, and he was fired.

    Two or three years ago, a not-so-young scientist was on an elevator at a scientific convention with a young woman scientist.  Being next to the floor control buttons, she asked him which floor he wanted…he said, “Ladies Lingerie, please.”  She complained, and he got in trouble.

    The joke (and a pretty lame joke it was) harks back to the days when elevators had controllers with advanced voice recognition, so you could tell them what you wanted and the controller would figure out what floor it was on!  These controllers were called ‘elevator operators’.

    It is said that the Victorians used to wrap piano and chair legs so that they wouldn’t make anyone think of human legs, which might in turn make them think about *sex*.  That may or may not have really been true, but the above story really happened.

    • #11
  12. James Gawron Inactive
    James Gawron
    @JamesGawron

    RushBabe49: The crowd advancing on us is not about upholding any minority rights — it is a crowd of zeros wanting unaccountable power. And the only barrier between them and us is President Trump.

    Rush,

    Great quote. He has it exactly. It isn’t that surprising that this is coming from a scientist. Ideology is the death of Science. Science is about nothing but the facts. Ideology cares only for the political narrative. The two can’t mix. As soon as ideology is insisted upon Science is dead.

    Regards,

    Jim 

    • #12
  13. CarolJoy, Thread Hijacker Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Thread Hijacker
    @CarolJoy

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Kozak (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Sandia Labs has been running indoctrination sessions on Modern Systemic Racism & White Privilege on their employees.

    They’ve been getting something that they generally don’t experience in their campus laogais: pushback.

    Note that I haven’t finished this video yet, but the guy is pretty levelheaded so far.

    This is one of the top defense department labs. Think about this. It’s going on all over DOD.

    I remember about 10 years ago there was a lab, I forget where, with a Nobel Laureate at the helm. He was older, from a different generation than the young women they were hiring. One day he made an innocuous remark about how nice it was to see all those young women in white lab coats or some such. They banded together in righteous indignation, it went viral, and he was fired. These people will lose a Nobel Prize winner to preserve PC. It is just unbelievable. This was one of the first incidents of cancel culture I remember. There was not a name for it yet.

    I had never heard that story before. Thank you for sharing it.

    Cancel culture is a cancerous take over of the logical and common sense portions of  humanity’s grey matter.

    • #13
  14. CarolJoy, Thread Hijacker Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Thread Hijacker
    @CarolJoy

    James Gawron (View Comment):

    RushBabe49: The crowd advancing on us is not about upholding any minority rights — it is a crowd of zeros wanting unaccountable power. And the only barrier between them and us is President Trump.

    Rush,

    Great quote. He has it exactly. It isn’t that surprising that this is coming from a scientist. Ideology is the death of Science. Science is about nothing but the facts. Ideology cares only for the political narrative. The two can’t mix. As soon as ideology is insisted upon Science is dead.

    Regards,

    Jim

    One huge example of how ideology and science cannot mix is the recent failure of society in Venezuela.

    It is possible to create a hybrid economy taking the best of what capitalism offers and the best of socialism, especially if one’s society has tremendous oil reserves. A person only needs to look at Norway to see what I mean.

    But if the control of all a nation’s industries is only offered to the individuals who are the best at snitching, and the best at sloganeering, you end up with party fanatics running major industries into the ground.  Venezuela is the most recent example of this.

    If the US  continues to allow communist insurgents to loot, burn, commit murder and mayhem across the cities of our land, and if officialdom will not move out of the way and admit COVID is a big nothing, far less injurious than pneumonia, the normal flu, tuberculosis and vaccines’ adverse effects, we will end up wishing we did as well as Venezuela did. Right now, especially in Calif, we are headed for far worse.

     

    • #14
  15. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    CarolJoy, Thread Hijacker (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    I remember about 10 years ago there was a lab, I forget where, with a Nobel Laureate at the helm. He was older, from a different generation than the young women they were hiring. One day he made an innocuous remark about how nice it was to see all those young women in white lab coats or some such. They banded together in righteous indignation, it went viral, and he was fired. These people will lose a Nobel Prize winner to preserve PC. It is just unbelievable. This was one of the first incidents of cancel culture I remember. There was not a name for it yet.

    I had never heard that story before. Thank you for sharing it.

    Cancel culture is a cancerous take over of the logical and common sense portions of humanity’s grey matter.

    I found it, and it was only five years ago. This man’s whole life was ruined:

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/17/nobel-laureate-at-centre-of-women-scientist-row-to-leave-uk-for-japan

     

    • #15
  16. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    Kozak (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Sandia Labs has been running indoctrination sessions on Modern Systemic Racism & White Privilege on their employees.

    They’ve been getting something that they generally don’t experience in their campus laogais: pushback.

    Note that I haven’t finished this video yet, but the guy is pretty levelheaded so far.

    This is one of the top defense department labs. Think about this. It’s going on all over DOD.

    Sandia falls under the Department of Energy but the DoD is bad too. Some feedback in the past has affected DoD training. About five years ago the sexual harassment training was that men are evil brutes attacking women. People pushed back that men aren’t always the bad guys. Now the scenarios mention women being the aggressors and same-sex attacks.

    I haven’t been back to church, where some Sandia employees attend, since this hit the news but I want to get some firsthand knowledge from them. Thinking back, I might have overheard some discussion at choir practice a year ago but wasn’t part of it.

    • #16
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.