Chairman, Aspect Energy, Former Regent University of Texas System, Founder ACE Scholarships
Houston, Texas
Joined December 2012
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The case for affirmative action for faculty recruitment based on nonconformity of philosophical view is much stronger than that for affirmative action based on race. Provision of the latter is essential and not merely incidental to the University's mission.
This is very true. Because one of the very predictable and damaging effects of DEI is to place a cloud of suspicion on anyone thought to have benefited from DEI even if that suspicion is unvoiced it is both unfair and inevitable.
Guys, we need to have an honest conversation about DEI. And some fellow conservatives aren’t going to like this.
My son attends @ERAU_Daytona, arguably the top flight school in the world. He earned a 4.0 GPA last semester and just scored a 97 on his commercial pilot exam.
He’s 6’3”, confident, and has sailed with me through ocean storms so violent I probably should have been arrested for bringing him aboard. We’ve hiked deep into the wilderness for days with nothing but backpacks.
I don’t say this to brag. I say it because the kid is a rock star.
He’s exactly the kind of young man you’d want to see at the end of the jetway.
Now let’s talk about the tragic Learjet crash that killed nine people.
The captain was Jeff Gregory, 55, a white man with decades of experience and the gray hair and seasoned appearance that inspire confidence.
His copilot was Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, a 20-year-old woman.
And immediately people started screaming DEI.
That makes my blood boil.
I’m DEAD set against DEI quotas. I believe cockpit seats should be earned through competence, judgment, and merit. Not race or gender.
But if you look at a female pilot and automatically assume she’s a DEI hire, YOU ARE DOING EXACTLY WHAT YOU CLAIM TO OPPOSE.
Consider this:
My son is 20. She was 20.
My son has hundreds of flight hours. She reportedly had over 1,300.
My son is working on his commercial certificate. She earned hers as a teenager.
My son flies single-engine piston aircraft. She was flying a JET the military uses.
Put it in baseball terms: My son is the college phenom with every Major League scout in the stands, watching his every move and predicting a brilliant future.
But she? At the same age, she was already batting cleanup for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, the New York Yankees’ Triple-A team.
A the same age, she was operating at an entirely different level of professional aviation.
Was she a great pilot? YES. You don’t move up that fast if you suck. The testing is just too hard.
Bringing DEI into this is just wrong.
YES there are DEI pilots.
YES some airlines have pushed mediocre women too fast and too far.
But Nathalia wasn’t one of them.
I’ve discussed this extensively with @JavonPrice. I’m a proud dues-paying member of the Organization of Black Maritime Graduates.
What I love about them is they don’t give a damn about your skin color when it comes to joining or getting a scholarship. They want outstanding mariners.
Yet whenever I promote an exceptional Black graduate, someone inevitably says:
“We don’t need another DEI hire.”
Or, “Don’t tell me to hire him because he’s Black.”
I’M NOT.
I’m telling you to hire him because he’s a damn good mariner.
Here’s what conservatives need to understand:
You cannot demand a meritocracy while refusing to recognize merit because liberals have rigged the game.
You cannot condemn identity politics and then judge someone by their identity.
You have to be color blind but also make absolutely certain you give everyone a fair assessment and don’t swing the other way.
And if your first thought when you see a woman or minority is “DEI hire,” that does NOT make you racist. DEI has created legitimate concerns about merit. But it DOES mean you have a bias and it’s YOUR responsibility to recognize it, challenge it, and judge the individual on merit.
Do not compensate by giving the person extra points on their job interview but 💯 DO spend a little more time digging into their resume to see if they are a rockstar.
As a ship captain, I don’t care whether the officer standing watch beside me is Black, white, male, or female.
I care whether they can do the damn job.
ONE STANDARD. FOR EVERYONE.
Nine people died in that crash. Their families deserve answers, not political accusations.
The ocean doesn’t care who you are.
Gravity doesn’t care who you voted for.
If we’re going to fight for meritocracy, we’d damn well better defend merit wherever we find it.
Alex Cranberg retweeted
Minors have inalienable rights to taxpayer-funded puberty blockers, just as the Founding Fathers intended.
So true
This article is hot garbage and somehow worse than I expected.
It’s an actual hit piece with zero attempt at balance
The first quote is from Jeremi Suri who proclaims there is now “McCarthyism” on campus. This is the same Suri who called 40% of voters in ATX “racists” for voting for a pro LEO proposition. Also the same Suri who almost got arrested for mooning 🍑 APD. Totally unserious to use him as a source for anything
Then we hear from a Prof who believes Provost Inboden traffics in “White Supremacy” bc he rearranged some departments. 🙄
Then we get some quotes from Profs who left UT to go to places like
Michigan. Academics making lateral transfers to elite schools is a sign UT is strong, not weak. Academics do move around. And not a word on how many Profs are dying to come to UT!
There is not a SINGLE quote from a Professor saying things are good at UT. I’m sure @Forrest4Trees searched long and hard but couldn’t find anyone.
But the best part is Forrest has to grudgingly admit that UT is actually THRIVING under @JimDavis_UT !
Record applications ✅
Record admissions ✅
Record fundraising ✅
Elite brand recognition ✅
But of course the thinking goes all this may go away bc some Republicans have leadership positions
I get @TexasMonthly will always have a liberal slant on things but doing outright hit pieces with ZERO balance is gross
UT is thriving. 🤘🏼
#HookEm
Alex Cranberg retweeted
Atención. Esto es una declaración muy importante. La primera misión de un líder que espera enfrentar una transición es respetar los acuerdos concebidos y celebrados por el país tutor que viabilizó no sólo la inversión sino el camino a la democracia.
Revisando la historia de Rómulo Betancourt, tras la ruptura política de octubre de 1945, el gobierno comunicó a las compañías que no pretendía desconocer automáticamente las concesiones existentes ni expropiar la industria. La política consistió en conservar las operaciones y modificar la distribución de sus beneficios mediante la legislación fiscal. Por ejemplo: Creole Petroleum Corporation, filial de la estadounidense Standard Oil of New Jersey, posteriormente vinculada a Exxon; Royal Dutch Shell, de capital anglo-neerlandés; Mene Grande Oil Company, vinculada a intereses petroleros estadounidenses.
El pacto conocido como fifty-fifty se consolidó legalmente en 1948, bajo la presidencia de Gallegos.
En el periodo 1959-1964 . Betancourt no desconoció las concesiones petroleras existentes. Retomó la política de «no más concesiones» en febrero de 1959. Eso significaba que el Estado no seguiría entregando nuevas áreas bajo el régimen anterior, pero no que cancelaría unilateralmente todas las concesiones ya otorgadas.
El 19 de abril de 1960 se creó la Corporación Venezolana del Petróleo (CVP), concebida para que el Estado participara directamente en las actividades petroleras. En septiembre de ese mismo año, Venezuela impulsó junto con Arabia Saudita, Irán, Irak y Kuwait la creación de la Organización de Países Exportadores de Petróleo (OPEP), con Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo a la cabeza.
En conclusión la soberanía económica y la continuidad contractual coexistieron. Las inequidades contractuales o incluso aspectos leoninos para el estado, no se resolvieron con medidas autoritarias o legalistas. Se negociaron y se adoptaron teniendo mucho pulso con el momento histórico que enfrentaban como lo era alumbrar una democracia sostenible.
Este discurso de @MariaCorinaYA en la UCAB demuestra que está en sintonía con la historia y el camino correcto para refundar una república moderada y sostenible.
#AHORA | María Corina:
"A todos los inversionistas que han entrado a Venezuela o que están viendo a Venezuela: todo aquel contrato legalmente firmado se va a respetar. Pero no solo se va a respetar. Yo les voy a garantizar que todos quienes han firmado contratos en Venezuela van a pedir que los viejos términos de sus contratos pasen a ser los nuevos términos nuestros, que van a ser muy superiores".
Alex Cranberg retweeted
Delcy Rodríguez y su anuncio:
1. NADIE PODRÁ SEE DETENIDO SIN ORDEN DE CAPTURA, y el derecho a la protesta pacífica estará garantizado.
2.Todos los que estén privados de libertad o judicializados por la “ley del odio” deberán ser revisados sus casos para terminar el proceso penal en su contra.
3. Empresas no esenciales en manos del estado serán ofertadas al sector privado o devueltas a sus antiguos dueños que perdieron producto de la expropiación.
4. Habrá todas elecciones que mande la constitución con un nuevo CNE y garantías para todos los actores políticos.
5. Todo el que desea volver a Venezuela podrá hacerlo con todas las garantías y su documentación, esperándolos de brazos abiertos.
The alternative path for universities is to merely become breeding grounds for discontent.
The education establishment in America is bankrupt.
5 changes created the perfect storm:
1) In the first half of the 20th century universities slowly abandoned the historical goals of education. They traded human formation and the passing down of a civilizational inheritance for “skills”, credentials, and eventually the deconstruction of a civilizational inheritance.
2) In the 60’s and 70’s universities sounded the alarm about overpopulation and climate hysteria. America listened and the birth rate began to fall and the stage was set for the “demographic cliff” currently rocking college enrollment.
3) The dot com revolution of the 1990’s eliminated a chief value prop for higher education. For centuries universities quite literally owned the books and in doing so access to knowledge. They controlled access to the world’s accumulated wisdom. Then suddenly anyone with a desktop or eventually a smart phone had access to more than the libraries of Harvard or Oxford could ever imagine.
4) The housing market crash of 2008 caused parents to rethink the value prop of a college degree. This, combined with the collapsing birth rate put universities in an arms race to build campuses like resorts in an effort to win over the dwindling pool of students. Tuition soared.
5) 5) The AI revolution delivered the final blow. Universities had already abandoned the formation of human beings in favor of information delivery, credentialing, and job preparation. Now artificial intelligence threatens to outperform them at all three: it can deliver information instantly, teach technical skills on demand, and increasingly prepare people for (or perform) the very jobs universities promise to unlock.
The irony is that universities abandoned what would have made them irreplaceable in pursuit of what technology can now do better.
Their only path to survival is to return to the ancient telos and the timeless work of human formation, enculturation, and civilizational transmission.
If such universes need a fitting entrance exam for such an education I know a guy 😉
Alex Cranberg retweeted
What is the significance of Serbian election? I have been asked this by a lot of folks, so here is an unusually long post from me.
The significance is...
1. ...That this happened before…
2. ...That you have no idea that it happened before…
3. ...And that the West messed it up the first time too.
I am not an expert on Serbian politics. If you want to follow an actual legitimate expert, please follow Professor Dusan Pavlovic (@d_pavlovic) for proper analysis or my elementary school buddy Dimitrije Vojnov (@timjohnbyford) if you want the more anarcho-Hollywood commentary.
Nonetheless, I was born in Belgrade, I left at 13 years old, and am a geopolitical/investment strategist by trade (basketball coach at heart). As such, lots of folks are asking me what is going on in Serbia and what I think about it.
Well, here is what is going on… Serbia has yet again illustrated that it has the capacity for non-violent regime change. Incumbent leader Aleksandar Vucic conceded in a short and relatively sweet manner and the collective will of student protesters won. Pretty extraordinary outcome in today's jaded world.
If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, it is because it also happened exactly 26 years ago, back in October 2000. Then, student protest movement OTPOR – in part led by dear friend @SrdjaPopovic – managed to do the unthinkable: use non-violent protest to topple the Slobodan Milosevic regime. The degree of difficulty then was higher than today. Say what you will about Vucic, but his government was not autocratic or engaged in military adventurism.
But I don’t really want to talk about what happened in Serbia. I want to talk about how the West reacted to the extraordinary defeat of Milosevic in 2000 by a group of pro-West students.
Instead of embracing the new government, it sought to force it into compliance with a deluge of conditionality. Sure, the incoming Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica was not aligned with Western liberal values, but this is Serbia 26 years ago! Did Belgrade get a pass after it just toppled, peacefully, the so-called "Butcher of Balkans?" No. It got criticized for everything from LGBTQ+ policy to foreign policy towards Moscow. As if the country was supposed to transition from Serbia to Vermont overnight! It was all sticks all the time, very few carrots for the war-weary country.
The West then wrestled ~12% of Serbia’s territory – today’s Kosovo – without any real sweeteners and called the Belgrade government obstructionist for opposing it. I don’t want to get into debates of legality or normative justification for Kosovo independence. I think we can all simply agree that giving up ~12% of one’s territory is not an act most countries accept without some sort of constrenation. The US and the EU did not care. They gave Belgrade a fait accompli in a magnificent display of hegemonic arrogance. But hey, it was 2008... different world.
Underpinning this attitude has long been a general sense of antagonism by the liberal West towards conservative Serbia. In the mind of many foreign policy elites - a generation of elite "experts" for whom the first taste of geopolitics came from the wars in Yugoslavia - Serbia and Serbs are and always will be the "bad guys." Belgrade, effectively, has had to pay the price for the 1990s, even once the regime that underwrote that aggressive policy of that terrible decade was peacefully and extraordinarily toppled in 2000. The incredible enthusiasm and pro-West sentiment of that youth - the youth that stared Milosevic regime right in the face with no fear - was ignored and wasted. Many of that youth is no longer pro-EU or pro-West. It is jaded, nihilist, and very bitter.
I can see the same outcome on the horizon for Serbia today. The West is going to expect instant compliance, but 60% of Serbs do not want an antagonistic relationship with Russia. As such, expecting these students today to just throw away the country's relationship with Moscow is naive. Public support for accession to the EU is as low as 32%, according to some surveys, as high as a pathetic 45% in others. That is extremely low for a country that would objectively benefit from EU membership. The West’s brand has lost its luster.
If the West wants Serbia to actually change its geopolitical direction, it’s going to have to pay for that shift. No, Serbia will again not become Vermont overnight. It won’t be a bastion of liberal thought or values. So what? Judging by election results in the West, doesn’t seem like this should be a problem, now should it? The West appears to have approximated Serbia over the past quarter century. So, all should be good, no?
Serbia is also not going to give up its relationship with the Global South. Not unless Europeans and Americans pay for the shift. This is a multipolar world folks. If Belgrade stood by its geopolitical independence at the very height of American hegemony, the price for its compliance just went up, not down. You had your chance to "buy" Serbia cheap in 2000. If the students protesting in the streets of Belgrade listened to their game theory lessons, they should play hard-to-get this time around.
What the reaction in the West should be – and should have been in 2000 – is to celebrate the example that Serbian students just set. French students should, especially, get to studying the example set by the Serbs. As should young people in the Global South, India and elsewhere. This kind of change takes hard work, concentration, and an iron will commitment to non-violence. Now two generations of Serbian students – the generation from the 1990s and now this one 25 years later – have shown the world how to do peaceful change.
The question is not whether Serbs learned any lessons, but whether the West did. If the West actually cares which way Serbia leans – and it is not clear to me that it actually does – then it is going to have to stop trying to fight its own domestic ideological battles inside Serbian society. You want Belgrade to join the West? Then stop lecturing and start paying.
Alex Cranberg retweeted
I’m reading the Master and Commander novels which is 1800s Britain and they’re conquering the world blasting cannons on the high seas. Fighting Tyranny and freeing slaves and 200 years later they’re regulating playhouses. What on earth happened?
Alex Cranberg retweeted
We call on France to exercise restraint when dispersing the freedom fighters on the streets of Paris. These brave warriors for justice must receive immediate humanitarian aid, and their safety must be guaranteed in accordance with international law. Failure to comply will leave us no choice but to bring a case before the ICJ, in close cooperation with that renowned champion of human rights, Afghanistan.
Alex Cranberg retweeted
Premise:
Incentives drive all human behavior.
The corollary:
How to destroy a country:
A vast social security and support system that serves as a magnet for those who would rather not work.
An open immigration policy that does not screen immigrants to determine their ability and willingness to provide for themselves and their families.
An open immigration policy that does not screen for political and/or religious ideologies that are a threat to the country.
Economic incentives large enough to incentivize immigrants on the state dole to have large numbers of children, but insufficient for educated and economically productive mothers to be able to quit to raise a family.
The declining fertility of the most educated and productive women due to their delay to begin a family as a result of their desire and/or need to advance their careers, among other reasons, to live a life they deem consistent with their educational achievements and/or to repay their student debts.
Amnesty programs that give citizenship and voting power to illegal immigrants without consideration of their economic productivity or their threat to the country due to their religious or political ideologies.
The changing demographics and increased population due to the above factors.
The state responding to protests by increasing social support.
The continued failure to punish and hold accountable violent and looting rioters.
Government managed by a massive and growing unelected bureaucracy.
Government fraud, waste, and abuse contributed to ballooning budgets.
Anti-business legislation that makes it difficult for businesses to compete in a global marketplace being disrupted by AI, including restrictions on firing even poorly performing employees.
Overly burdensome, globally uncompetitive, corporate taxation.
Continuous increases in personal taxes to raise funds to provide for the rapidly growing welfare state.
The substantial majority of the tax burden levied on a small percentage of the population.
A growing percentage of the electorate paying no taxes and receiving welfare.
The introduction or threat of a wealth tax including the taxation of unrealized gains, i.e., taxes on paper wealth.
The flight of the most productive business builders and highest taxpayers to lower tax countries with lesser security concerns.
A growing percentage of the electorate voting for candidates that support increased welfare and laws favorable to, and/or that match the cultural and ideological needs and desires of a growing unproductive immigrant population.
The rapid rise in anti-semitism and inadequate efforts to address this hatred.
Increased borrowing by the state to fund the growing social burden.
Higher sovereign interest rates due to all of the above.
The resulting need to reduce expenditures to make the math work.
Increasingly violent protests that make life less livable for the productive and law abiding citizens leading to their accelerated departure.
And so on…
Alex Cranberg retweeted
GAWD, I hate the rich.
The top hats. The monocles. The dinner jackets. The way they twirl their mustaches while evicting orphans.
Before we drag them into the public square, though, we should probably define “rich.”
Amendment 87, the temporary “graduated” income tax, defines rich as earning $500,000 a year. #copolitics
And yes, it is temporary. Unlike the federal income tax brackets, 87’s brackets aren’t indexed for inflation, meaning over time all of us will creep into the new top 8.4% tax rate.
Clever scam. Con Coloradans who aren’t good at math that they’re getting a tax cut and then let inflation do the mugging.
Sell a tax increase on working families as a tax cut. You can almost hear the maniacal laughter.
Rich bastards
But back to punishing the rich — those trophy-wife-collecting, umbrella-drink-swilling bastards.
Why should they drive Maseratis while I putter around in my 2010 Nissan Altima?
Sure, we use the same roads, sit in the same traffic and can reach the same destinations. But that’s hardly the point. His cup holder has Italian stitching.
Henry Ford democratized the automobile. Before mass production, cars belonged only to the wealthy. Now ordinary people can live where they can afford a home and work where they can earn a living.
Unfortunately, Ford became rich in the process. Would we have been happier if he hadn’t? Of course we would have! We’d still be stuck in tenements, but he would have been poorer. Totally worth it.
The rich get private jets. Why? I mean, I fly private too. We all do. I simply have to share my private plane with 130 strangers.
While trapped in middle seat 34B, I use high-speed internet delivered by satellites launched on private rockets. Elon Musk uses the same service on his plane too, the showoff.
Fine, he puts satellites into orbit. Fine, his rockets have rescued astronauts stranded at the International Space Station. Fine, his satellite internet has connected every remote community around the world, empowering the poorest of the poor and least powerful.
But should he be rewarded for any of that — with money?
The iPhone in Elon’s pocket is the same as the iPhone in mine. Steve Jobs helped put a supercomputer, camera, map, library, newspaper, television studio and argument factory into billions of pockets.
But he became rich, so presumably the whole project was morally suspect.
Sam Walton drove down the price of countless things working families buy. Jeff Bezos built a system that can bring those things to our doors, sometimes in 30 minutes.
But Bezos is easy to dislike because his wife is mostly plastic, or rendered by Pixar or something.
Fine, he’s easy to hate. But does his wealth matter more than the value created for us?
Class envy on the ballot
Amendment 87 has generated plenty of talk about forcing rich people to “pay their fair share.” It has generated considerably less discussion about class envy, which is doing the political heavy lifting.
“Fair share” sounds principled. “I resent that guy’s boat and trophy wife” sounds childish.
Yet the boat is doing more campaigning than the tax tables.
We rarely stop to consider how much of modern life exists because somebody took an absurd risk.
That somebody might be a famous billionaire. It might also be the developer who built your home, the employer who created your job so you can afford it or the real estate agent who found your house.
Their success is part of your higher standard of living.
I am not claiming rich people aren’t douchebags. For efficiency’s sake, let’s stipulate that every last one of them is unbearable.
The question is whether our lives are nevertheless better because of what they created.
And do we want to chase them out of Colorado as progressive income taxes have chased them out of California, New York, Massachusetts and elsewhere? Massachusetts is now dead last in the nation for new business creation. That’s our future.
What have we sacrificed in exchange for the greatest improvement in quality of life throughout all of human history?
Mostly, we have had to endure the sight of successful people having more than us.
That seems like a remarkably small price to pay.
Amendment 87 asks you to treat envy as policy and punish people we dislike, while inflation quietly expands the definition of whom we’re punishing.
The sales pitch is “soak the rich.”
The fine print is “eventually, that means you.”
Alex Cranberg retweeted
IMPORTANT THREAD 🧵👇
Brave social justice activists such as myself are working tirelessly to expose *all* the racist elements within our society.
Sometimes it is difficult to keep up, so I thought it would be helpful to curate a comprehensive list...
Alex Cranberg retweeted
I didn’t really get the problem with gender ideology at first.
I’m liberal-minded about most things. ‘Live and let live’ has generally been my motto. I believed in inclusion, kindness and not causing unnecessary offence.
I knew some adults chose medical treatments or surgery to resemble the opposite sex. That seemed to me a matter of personal autonomy. Adults can do what they wish with their own bodies.
What I hadn’t realised — and I feel slightly embarrassed admitting this — was that I’d misunderstood what was being claimed.
I thought “transgender” meant a form of self-expression. A man who liked wearing women’s clothes. Someone changing their name. Gender non-conformity.
What I hadn’t grasped was that some activists weren’t just asking for tolerance. They were asserting that declaring yourself the opposite sex made you the opposite sex. Not metaphorically. Literally.
And that this wasn’t just cultural. It had legal consequences.
It meant men who said they were women were demanding access to women’s sports, prisons, domestic violence shelters and hospital wards.
It meant the rewriting of healthcare language — “pregnant people”, “bodies with cervixes” — to avoid saying “women”.
It meant children struggling with identity being affirmed onto medical pathways with lifelong implications.
And also redefining same-sex attraction. Lesbians called ‘bigoted’ for not wanting relationships with men who identify as women. Gay men accused of prejudice for saying they’re not attracted to female bodies.
I’d also overlooked how deeply this had spread into public institutions, schools and workplaces.
And how easily disagreement was framed as cruelty. Speaking up felt risky — because others were being publicly humiliated for doing so.
None of this is abstract.
Because sex is the basis on which safeguarding works. On which data is collected. On which cancer screening programmes run. On which fair sport and single-sex spaces depend. It’s written into law — including the Equality Act — because material differences matter.
If sex becomes a ‘feeling’ rather than a biological category, those protections become unstable.
And once reality becomes negotiable, everything does.
Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.
But I needed to be sure.
So I read. Books, research papers, policy documents. When I finally spoke publicly, there was backlash from all directions.
Many women thanked me, while some feminists criticised me for speaking too late.
Others were angry about a past interview I’d done with the parent of a transgender person, accusing me of promoting harm.
It takes courage to speak when you know your reputation, friendships or livelihood may be on the line — when you know raising your voice could strain, or even end, relationships you value.
Once I understood what was at stake, staying silent was no longer an option.
I lost my livelihood simply for saying I didn’t like the phrase “pregnant people”. That alone tells you something is deeply wrong.
It shouldn’t be this way.
I don’t expect praise for admitting it took me far too long to understand what was happening. Or to say so publicly.
I can only be honest about what I believed then and what I understand now.
But it does take courage to admit publicly that you got something wrong. All I hope is that by acknowledging I wasn’t paying enough attention, another woman (or man) might feel emboldened to do the same.
Because, as many of us know first-hand, there can be professional, social and financial consequences to speaking out.
And I won’t pretend I understood something before I did, simply to make myself more acceptable to those who got there sooner.
Which is why I will never judge another woman for how long it takes her to find her voice.
Because every voice matters. Whenever it is raised.
Great riposte to a predictably arrogant Ivy League academic post that chooses to suggest in effect that Iran doesn’t have any fundamental civilizational conflict with the West…
You begin by invoking your authority as an Ivy League educator, then proceed through accusations without establishing your central claim. The great Greek philosophical achievement was to subject authority itself to reason.
Rubio was discussing the virtues that form a civilisation, not denying cultural exchange with Persia. Cultural exchange does not erase civilizational distinction.
You substitute credentials for argument, accusations of racism for evidence, and an analogy with Nazism for historical analysis. The irony is considerable.
Rubio is defending the particular against abstract universalism. You seem unable to distinguish attachment to one’s inherited civilisation from hostility towards another.
That is precisely the problem with a liberalism that recognises cultural exchange more readily than the formative authority of inherited bonds.
Whether or not growth in co2 emissions is a material problem, panic-reporting is getting very old.
Get this. 🤣
Four years ago, The Guardian claimed that Spain and Portugal are becoming too dry thanks to anthropogenic climate change.
However, after the devastating floods in fall 2024, The Guardian said that Spain is becoming too wet because of climate change.
The observational data, however, tell a different story. A recent study published in Nature in March 2025 analyzed long-term rainfall data in the Mediterranean and found that no statistically significant long-term trends exist in the whole.
🗨️ “𝐻𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑀𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 1871 𝑡𝑜 2020, 𝑎𝑙𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑖-𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑑𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑣𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦… 𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑏𝑒 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑑𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑢𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠, 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑡𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑝ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐 𝑑𝑦𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑐𝑠, 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑣𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦.”
🔗 nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
Interestingly, in Spain, there has been little trend in rainfall since 1871. However, if the analysis starts in 1951, there is a significant decrease (p <0.05), while starting in 1981 yields a statistically significant increase (p <0.05).
This just goes to show that people (like the writers at The Guardian) can manipulate data to get a desired trend to suit a specific narrative.
Alex Cranberg retweeted
David, how can you claim to be a scholar when you come up with such misleading biased claims?
This is to pertinent to success, but also to political philosophy. In a sense America was founded on these principles and is threatened by forgetting about them. Yes we all have reasons to feel victimized by a system, and some a lot more than others. But it is a very harmful attitude to reinforce even if by well-meaning people.
Alex Cranberg retweeted
Nick Saban's Five Enemies of Greatness is always worth a read. He didn't write these, but they're a solid short list of his coaching philosophy throughout the years...
Ingest them for your team, and ingest them for yourself.
The 5 Enemies..keep them away from you.
This is a very sad story. I give Nikole-Jones a lot of credit for owning up to this in a public way. I’ve also always said that people like Obama who sent their kids to private schools while advocating against broader access to them were to be applauded for being good parents as opposed to merely hypocritical. And Nikole-Jones daughter illustrates the result of focusing non ideological alignment over attention to the individual child.
nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magaz…
Alex Cranberg retweeted
This is a very sad story. I give Nikole-Jones a lot of credit for owning up to this in a public way. I’ve also always said that people like Obama who sent their kids to private schools while advocating against broader access to them were to be applauded for being good parents as opposed to merely hypocritical. And Nikole-Jones daughter illustrates the result of focusing non ideological alignment over attention to the individual child.