This is the moment Simon Breheny actually got a clap on Q&A on Monday night!
Who knew that the Q&A audience would be so enthusiastic to find out that the $60 billion being spent on renewables by 2030 could build 10 nuclear reactors that would reduce costs and emissions? Read Daniel Wild’s Parliamentary Research Brief on the folly of Australia’s renewable energy policies from February last year.
Everything you need to know about modern academia is in this poll of “politics experts” by the American Political Science Association this week. Respondents ranked Obama as America’s 8th best President ever. Ahead of Reagan! Trump, of course, came last. And when asked which President should be added to Mt Rushmore, 3% named Presidents that are already up there.
When I read that Hollywood’s elite gave new superhero film Black Panther a standing ovation before they’d even watched it, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to see it. But as Mark Judge wrote in Law and Liberty on Monday, Hollywood’s elite have been tricked – Black Panther is actually a celebration of classical liberalism.
This could actually be the worst piece of PC lunacy in western schools right now. Primary schools in America and Europe are considering banning ‘best friends’ to teach children to…you guessed it…be “more inclusive“.
And the hot issue being discussed on the ABC News website last Friday? ‘The case for a pregnant male emoji‘.
If that makes you want to leave the country, you’ve got options. Liberland is an unrecognised micronation in eastern Europe founded in 2015 on libertarian values including voluntary taxes! As reported in The Age on Tuesday, President Vit Jedlicka is about to launch the country’s legal system on the blockchain.
The IPA is hosting one of Britain’s foremost historians, Professor Robert Tombs. Professor Tombs will be delivering lectures on ‘Why Western Civilisation is our Future’ in Melbourne on 20 March and Sydney on 22 March. Book here.
Article of the week:Citing peer reviewed academic studies on gender characteristics is “discriminatory and constitutes sexual harassment” according to the US National Labor Relations Board. Uri Harris’ excellent 3,000 word piece in Quillette on Saturday details Google firing software engineer James Damore (which we told you about in August) and how critical theory is used to control what we can say. |
IPA Staff Pick:Each week an IPA staff member shares what they have enjoyed recently. Today: Daniel Wild On the 60 year anniversary of its beginning, it is timely to remember the sheer magnitude of the destruction of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. Ian Johnson’s fascinating 2,800 word piece in The New York Review of Books a fortnight ago details this infamous episode of social engineering that resulted in the biggest famine in history. |
Here’s what else the IPA said this week:
- Jennifer Marohasy, I dare an ABC journo to check just one fact of global warming – The Spectator Australia
- Peter Gregory, Doing Development Differently – IPA Review
- Georgina Downer, Paths to Democracy – IPA Review
