Humanize From Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism
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Joe Biden

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City of San Francisco Ca. Downtown business district seen through the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge

2024: The Year “San Francisco Values” Finally Failed


San Francisco was once a conservative city. Oh, sure, it had its bohemian side. The Beats of the ’50s were at home in North Beach, and Harry Bridges, the suspected communist who served for years as head of the longshoremen’s union, had a definite influence. But for the most part, San Francisco was well within the cultural mainstream. Indeed, the city was so staid that the Republican Party’s nominee for mayor won landslides in 1955 and 1959, and the GOP nominated the archconservative Barry Goldwater as its presidential candidate from the Cow Palace in 1964.

Then, San Francisco changed. Radically. In 1964, the University of California, Berkeley, a few miles across the bay, became the center of the “free speech” movement. Civil rights and then militant anti–Vietnam War advocacy found great sympathy. The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood became a hippy haven and the focus of a growing drug culture. The gay-rights movement sprang energetically out of the Castro District, and the once predominately Italian working-class neighborhood was transformed into a radical front of the sexual revolution. By the 1980s, the term “San Francisco values” — wielded by conservatives to describe the cultural and political radicalism of the Bay Area — had turned the city into something of a national joke.

Over the years, policies enacted by the city’s ever more extreme progressive leaders slowly destroyed San Francisco. I lived in and around the city for almost 25 years, starting in 1992, and saw the decline happen in real time. It broke my heart.

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Image by Gage Skidmore at Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donald_Trump_(43627678700).jpg

Post-Election, “Nature” Publishes Yet Another Anti-Trump Screed

Sometimes the most intelligent people are the least smart. That sure seems true of the editors of Nature, once the universally respected British science journal. As I have noted before, Nature is becoming almost as ideological as it is scientific. It endorsed Kamala Harris for president and then, just before the election, doubled down on excoriating Donald Trump for somehow being anti-science — when most of the issues discussed in the article were blatantly political. Now that Trump is president-elect after an overwhelming electoral victory — and an apparent popular-vote victory — one would think that Nature’s editors would have the common sense to cease from excoriating him. But no. It just published another anti-Trump screed declaring that the world’s scientists are aghast that he won the election. Read More ›

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Public domain image from Wikimedia, by Lawrence Jackson

Science Journal Swoons Over Kamala

These days, scientific and medical journals are seemingly as much ideological — on the left — as scientific. Nature — perhaps the preeminent science journal in the world — has posted a piece swooning over Vice President Kamala Harris as a "historic" presumptive presidential nominee stirring "optimism" among scientists. Why? Read More ›
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young person with a transgender pride flag

No Increase in Suicides Among Gender-Confused Youths Since Puberty Blockers Blocked in U.K.

After the U.K. closed its major gender-transitioning clinic for youth as "not safe for children" — and later blocked the prescribing of puberty blockers — ideologues spread the rumor on social media that suicides among gender-confused youth had increased dramatically. Wrong. Read More ›
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Group Of People Parishioners in Cathedral Church

Trump Is Wrong: Democrats Are Not “Against Religion,” Just the Free Exercise Thereof

I woke up this morning to the usual fury of CNN commentators denouncing Donald Trump. This time, it was because he claimed in a speech that Democrats are "against religion." I don't think one can credibly say that Democrats are "against religion." But I do think it is fair to say that the Democratic Party, writ large, opposes the free exercise of religion. Read More ›