Facts, Jason Arday, Western civilization, and the Overton window

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” — John Adams, closing argument in defense of the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre, Rex v. Wemms (1770)

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Objective facts are not racist, nor are they ideological. They are neutral. Yet today, the public revelation of the facts about “Professor” Jason Arday causes a furor, with many on the left claiming that merely noticing objective facts is an -ism worthy of punishment.

Objective facts show, beyond any doubt, that Arday, late of Cambridge University, was a plagiarist and a fabulist, on his own merits, should never have held any academic position:

Arday owed his success wholly to leftists who ignored the objective facts of his life and capabilities. They saw Arday as a useful mascot, ignoring all else. Meanwhile, his students suffered, and people whose merit earned them a professorship at Cambridge were rejected for no other reason than reverse racism:

The leftist backlash to public airing of those facts has been stunning. The universal response, rather than addressing the facts, has been to condemn exposing them as evil acts of racism. It is a measure of how utterly toxic academia in particular—and the left as a whole—has become in the West. Every one of them has earned cancellation at a minimum.

In Ghent, in Belgium, the man who exposed Arday has been suspended and will be fired for his alleged racism. The man in charge of this decision claims he is a woman, a sign of mental illness. It is worth noting that the Trump administration has responded forcefully to this obscene act by a university being run, in relevant part, by a hard-left transsexual.

Picking up where it cuts off:

…exchanges, and other engagements with overseas universities.  Dishonest, corrupt institutions that engage in, or reward, scapegoating mob behavior are not desirable partners for us.  This is particularly true where the purpose and effect of the scapegoating is to punish accurate journalism unearthing academic dishonesty.  We are therefore reviewing any relationships we have with Ghent University.

Bad-faith idealogues will try to make this a referendum on the content of Cofnas’s scholarship – or polemical distortions of it.  That’s wrong.  Free speech means that controversial views are protected.  And Cofnas’s views were known to Ghent University when he was hired.

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The ultimate purpose of freedom of speech is to overturn lies, fraud, and false ideologies.  This is precisely what Cofnas was doing, and precisely the reason his home institution wants to silence him.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Objective facts are necessary for making rational decisions. Access to all facts relevant to an issue is the feedstock of a democratic society, where voters must decide on the available facts, who shall represent not merely their interests in life, liberty, and property, but perhaps more importantly their descendants’ God-given rights to the same.

Yet, the socialist “left,” born in the crucible of the French Revolution of 1789, has repeatedly tried to censor and limit access to facts and opinion contrary to a tyrannical government’s goals. In 1792, the Jacobin rulers of France readily executed anyone who expressed contrary thought. Today’s leftists—but only for the moment—are restrained by law from being so bloodthirsty. Instead of the guillotine, the left merely cancels you and destroys your life, silencing your voice almost as effectively and acting as a clear example to any who would do likewise.

Continuing:

…qualified and was rightly criticised for lying.

Cofnas, on the other hand, is actually being denied jobs and fired from them for bring Arday’s lying to light.

(What a joke that the 1960s “free speech” movement began at UC Berkeley, a once-premier academic institution. Once the radical leftists in academia gained power, they immediately became the worst censors.)

In whole contrast, America’s Founding Fathers explicitly protected a free press and speech in the Bill of Rights as the bedrocks of our republic. As Thomas Jefferson explained:

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

It is quite fair to say that all of history since 1792 has been a battle in the West to see what will win: The American Revolution, a revolution based on Judeo-Christian beliefs, liberalism, and a free press, or the French Revolution, the obscene event that ended the Enlightenment as it birthed socialism, the police state, and radical atheism.

We are nearing the denouement on this existential issue. The stakes could not be higher. The Jason Arday affair is both the exemplar and the ultimate test. Are we free, in the West, to raise objective facts on any issue, or has the Overton Window—that is, the realm of legitimate political discourse—shifted into French Revolution territory?

If the latter, then the end of Western civilization is nigh. It is time to make your voices—and your votes—heard. Anyone sitting on the sidelines of the next election out of pique on whatever basis is as foolish as a homosexual advocating for Palestine…or a chicken advocating for KFC. Act—and choose—accordingly.

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