Humanize From Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism
Topic

progressive politics

city-of-san-francisco-ca-downtown-business-district-seen-thr-227073999-stockpack-adobe_stock
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.

Read More ›
Kamala_Harris_on_the_phone_with_Justin_Trudeau_Lawrence_Jackson
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 ›
laboratory-with-team-of-microbiology-scientists-have-meeting-adobe-stock
Laboratory with Team of Microbiology Scientists Have Meeting

Bioethicists Want to Rule the World!

Bioethics has always been about granting "experts" in the field tremendous influence over public policy. And now, one of the most prominent practitioners in the field — the president and CEO of the Hastings Center Report, a prestigious bioethics journal — has urged that bioethicists expand their "expert" advocacy to issues of "global" importance. Read More ›