Historian Niall Ferguson <a href="https://twitter.com/nfergus/status/1741547164529291327">says</a>, “It will seem obvious that by 2033, if not sooner, that the pax americana—” the idea of an American hegemony dominating the globe — “faced a well-coordinated challenge from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea in the early 2020s.”
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Future historians will marvel at all this. It will seem obvious by 2033, if not sooner, that the pax americana faced a well-coordinated challenge from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea in the early 2020s. The first move was the invasion of Ukraine. The second was the war of…
&mdash; Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) <a href="https://twitter.com/nfergus/status/1741547164529291327?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 31, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
He continues: 
<blockquote>The first move was the invasion of Ukraine. The second was the war of Iran&#8217;s proxies against Israel. The third will most likely be a Chinese challenge to American primacy in the Indo-Pacific, perhaps — if Xi Jinping is bold — a blockade of Taiwan.
<a href="https://twitter.com/nfergus/status/1741547168509665751" target="_blank" rel="noopener">If, in the course of 2024,</a> Ukraine&#8217;s position becomes so vulnerable that its forces must withdraw from some contested territory, three immediate consequences will follow. First, more refugees will flow from Ukraine to Europe. … Second, private investors will be even less likely to risk their money on Ukraine. Third, European governments will have to get a lot more serious about their own defense spending, with all the obvious political headaches that implies.
<a href="https://twitter.com/nfergus/status/1741547172338991531" target="_blank" rel="noopener">For NATO</a> as a whole, at 3.5% of GDP on defense spending would require $431 billion more per year — nearly twice the amount all countries have pledged to Ukraine since last year.
<a href="https://twitter.com/nfergus/status/1741547176273313976" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The pax americana </a>seems to be ending. The fate of Ukraine — of Israel and Taiwan, too — hangs in the balance. I cannot say I am surprised. It was always very likely the overreach of the Global War on Terror would be requited in this way: with a resurgence of isolationism.</blockquote>
And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening inside the Biden administration now. The realist foreign policy that Donald Trump pursued was not, in fact, an appeasement-oriented foreign policy. The idea that Europe should pay its own way when it comes to military spending and that the United States would still be a muscular player in the world was not a bad idea from Trump. The idea of getting rid of NATO entirely was a bad idea, but the idea that NATO should actually be paid for by many of our allies was, of course, entirely true. They were relying on us for years to pay the freight when it came to their military spending.
The problem is Joe Biden came into office and his strategy has basically been to make broad statements that don&#8217;t materialize in the way he would like them to.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1876-2024-the-year-of-the-reckoning-is-upon-us-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
For example, the Ukraine war: Joe Biden never made clear what the exact interest was in the Ukraine war. Let&#8217;s say, at the very outset, Biden had said, “Listen, the interest in Ukraine is not to reverse the gains Russia made in 2014 because those are not reversible at this point given the state of the war. The purpose here is to repel any future Russian invasion of Ukraine, and we will provide military support necessary to do that.”
Right now, the broad scale perception in Russia would be that Russia was losing the war — because they did. They tried to invade Ukraine. They lost. It didn&#8217;t work. The United States, through its proxy in Ukraine, was able to completely degrade the Russian ability to make large scale war in Ukraine. That is a victory for the United States, and yet somehow it has turned into a loss.
Why?
Because Biden never anticipated nor articulated what exactly his goal was. Instead, he basically said Volodymyr Zelenskyy will establish the goal over in Ukraine, and Zelenskyy&#8217;s goal is not the United States&#8217; goal. Zelenskyy&#8217;s goal is to repel Russia from the Donbas region, from Crimea. Push them out of all of those areas.
But that was never realistic. That was never going to happen, no matter how much military aid America provides—unless the United States is willing to start sending over F-16s. If that&#8217;s not going to happen, there is no way to break the stranglehold Russia has on those areas.
So right now, Vladimir Putin is just waiting out Joe Biden because Republicans have correctly said we need to know what the plan is here. And Biden is not articulating a plan.
Over the course of last week, Putin said Russia would increase the strikes on Ukraine. Putin&#8217;s bet all the way along has been very simple, which is that he is going to outlast the United States. The history of Russian war-making is to expend way too much material and way too many men in pursuit of a military goal. The history of Russian military conquest says, “We don&#8217;t really care very much about our own citizens, and we are willing to throw hundreds of thousands and millions of people at a problem.”
In World War I, the Russians were perfectly willing to sacrifice millions of people charging frontally blocked positions, charging machine gun positions with no weaponry. That&#8217;s actually part of the Russian military mentality. The notion that their mentality is going to be pushed off the ball by Biden basically saying Zelenskyy can make the case is not going to do it. So Putin is going to continue to ratchet up the pressure.
Basically, Putin is betting the West is simply going to give up on this. And the reality is that because of failures to articulate the goals and strategies, the West may, in fact, give up on Ukraine.
Now, if that happens, it is much more likely that China is going to become ever more militant.
China is watching a West in retreat around the globe from powers that should not have the West in retreat. Forget about Russia, which is a nuclear-armed power. When you look at the Middle East, the fact that the West is being challenged by a bunch of ragtag pirates in the Red Sea is totally insane. The West is somehow hand-wringing over a democratic ally, Israel, trying to destroy a terrorist group, Hamas, that just committed the worst act of murdering Jews since World War II. “What do we do? What do we do? How far should the Israelis go?”
China&#8217;s watching all that, and they can see it: That is a West in retreat.
ABC News <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-navy-sinks-3-houthi-boats-attacking-merchant/story?id=106016731">reported</a> on Sunday:
<blockquote>U.S. Navy helicopters returned fire and sank three small boats carrying Houthi militants in the Red Sea on Sunday, after U.S. warships responded to a distress call from a merchant vessel, military officials said. A Maersk container ship, the Singapore-flagged Hangzhou, issued a distress call at about 6:30 a.m. local time, U.S. Central Command said in a <a href="https://x.com/CENTCOM/status/1741381969936834951?s=20">statement</a> on Sunday. The merchant vessel said four small boats were attacking it. … Helicopters from two U.S. ships &#8212; the USS Eisenhower and the USS Gravely &#8212; responded and issued verbal calls to the small boats, U.S. officials said.</blockquote>
Remember, the Biden administration delisted the Houthis as a terrorist group when they came into power.
And right now, U.S. military assets are basically sitting out there having to wait to blow up these tiny inflatables being driven by illiterate morons with badly programmed drones. It&#8217;s insane.
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Meanwhile, Iran is upping the game. Iran&#8217;s Alborz warship has now entered the Red Sea.
What is the Biden administration doing? According to the Jerusalem Post, a U.S. aircraft carrier was being removed from this area.
As the challenges are being upped against shipping in the Red Sea, the U.S. is removing the USS Gerald Ford. Instead, it&#8217;s heading out of the Mediterranean Sea. To go where exactly? Where else is there? A massive sea problem that requires the help of this U.S. battleship? Why is the Ford leaving? No one exactly knows. So Iran is upping its aggressiveness in this area.
China is looking on and thinking to itself, Man, we&#8217;re fools if given our current economic situation, we don&#8217;t make a move for Taiwan again. All of this could easily be the predicate to the idea that the Chinese window is closing and they need to move—and they need to move right now.
With Joe Biden as president, don&#8217;t be surprised if a lot of the hot spots around the globe start to heat up even more.

US-POLITICS-BIDEN-ARRIVAL

Biden Fiddles While The World Burns 

Ben Shapiro

China

Iran

NATO

Niall Ferguson

Opinion

Politics

Readers Pass

Taiwan

Ukraine-Russia War

Famed historian and author <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/niall-ferguson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Niall Ferguson</a> warned during an interview with CNBC late last week that the world was heading into a period that will potentially be worse than the 1970s, and that many are failing to see what is coming.
Ferguson compared current events to events that happened in the 1960s and 1970s, which led to war, financial turmoil, and mass civil unrest.
“The ingredients of the 1970s are already in place,” Ferguson <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/02/1970s-inflation-historian-niall-ferguson-has-a-warning-for-investors.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> while speaking to CNBC at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy. “The monetary and fiscal policy mistakes of last year, which set this inflation off, are very alike to the 60s.”
Ferguson noted how the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, which lasted only three weeks, sparked an energy crisis, and then he compared that to Russia&#8217;s invasion of Ukraine, which has also sparked an energy crisis.
“This war is lasting much longer than the 1973 war, so the energy shock it is causing is actually going to be more sustained,” Ferguson said.
“Why shouldn’t it be as bad as the 1970s?” he continued. “I’m going to go out on a limb: Let’s consider the possibility that the 2020s could actually be worse than the 1970s.”
“At least in the 1970s you had detente between superpowers,&#8221; he added. “I don’t see much detente between Washington and Beijing right now. In fact, I see the opposite.”
Ferguson said part of the problem is that people tend to be overly optimistic about the future, often thinking that too many bad things can&#8217;t happen at once because they see reality as a game of averages.
“The distributions in history really aren’t normal, particularly when it comes to things like wars and financial crises or, for that matter, pandemics,” Ferguson said. “You start with a plague — or something we don’t see very often, a really large global pandemic — which kills millions of people and disrupts the economy in all kinds of ways. Then you hit it with a big monetary and fiscal policy shock. And then you add the geopolitical shock.”
Ferguson, who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-historian-u-s-dealing-not-just-with-decay-of-traditional-religion-but-something-far-worse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">warned</a> last summer that “woke” culture is a “fake religion” that must be reined in or else it could have deadly consequences.
“The people on the Left didn’t really want to have a conversation about economics, because they had lost their arguments in the 1980s; they really hadn’t been able to make the case for socialism successfully,” Ferguson said. “And the conclusion was that there was more money to be made, or more power to be gained by exploiting identity politics and emphasizing cultural, racial, gender differences.”
Ferguson warned that Western society does not yet “fully realize, although it’s becoming more and more clear,” that “wokeism, is in fact, a religion.”
“It’s not a secular political ideology … it’s not really about economics,” he continued. “It is about salvation, membership of the elect of the woke. It’s about persecuting heretics. It’s about elaborate rituals of speech that can only be pursued by the believers. It’s rather cult like. Matt Yglesias is not somebody I usually agree with, but he called it the Great Awokening. This was a very astute observation. So we are dealing not just with the decay of traditional religion, but far worse, the rise of new fake religions, political religions, and one thing that’s very clear from the 20th century is that when people take their religious feelings and they apply them to political ideologies, terrible things can happen.”
“Central to what made communism so deadly, was it’s ultimately a religion, Marx is ultimately a prophet and Marxism is a kind of religion,” he continued. “The same was true of Nazism. The most ardent Nazis thought of Hitler and explicitly called him a redeemer of the German nation. So we’ve got to be very careful of political religions. Politics is not something that you should approach with a religious impulse. If you start feeling religiously about politics, take a lie down, you know, have some sleep, take a long walk and try again because politics should not be imbued with religious sentiment.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shameless-famed-historian-blasts-biden-for-blaming-inflation-on-putin-oil-and-gas-companies">‘Shameless’: Famed Historian Blasts Biden For Blaming Inflation On Putin, Oil And Gas Companies</a>

Key Speakers At The 2019 Milken Conference

Famed Historian Warns The World Is Sleepwalking Into Something ‘Worse Than The 1970s’

Famed Historian Niall Ferguson Warns The World Is Sleepwalking Into Something ‘Worse Than The 1970s’

Communist China

Economy

History

Recession

Famed historian and author Niall Ferguson blasted President Biden for his refusal to accept responsibility for his mistakes.
Ferguson, the author of 16 books, appeared on Fox News with host Brian Kilmeade, who accused Biden of only thinking about scoring political points.
Ferguson then launched into a comparison of Biden with former Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, “who owned failure in Vietnam so completely that he did not run for a second term which he could have done in 1968,” adding, “It is shameless of Joe Biden, and his administration to deny their responsibility for the epic inflation fail that is hurting every American household today.”
“Their attempts to blame that on Vladimir Putin are laughable or to blame it on price gouging corporations which is just economic imbecility,” he snapped.
In mid-April, Biden <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-blames-putin-for-70-of-the-increase-in-inflation-in-america">told a crowd</a> in North Carolina, “Putin&#8217;s invasion of Ukraine has driven up gas prices and food prices all over the world. Ukraine and Russia are the one and two largest wheat producers in the world. We&#8217;re three. They&#8217;re shut down. We saw that in yesterday&#8217;s inflation data.&#8221;
&#8220;What people don&#8217;t know is that 70% of the increase in inflation was the consequence of Putin&#8217;s Price Hike because of the impact on oil prices. Seventy percent,” Biden charged.
In early March, Biden <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/08/remarks-by-president-biden-announcing-u-s-ban-on-imports-of-russian-oil-liquefied-natural-gas-and-coal/">attacked</a> oil and gas companies vis-à-vis inflation, snapping, “To the oil and gas companies and to the finance firms that back them: We understand Putin’s war against the people of Ukraine is causing prices to rise. We get that.  That’s self-evident. But — but, but, but — it’s no excuse to exercise excessive price increases or padding profits or any kind of effort to exploit this situation or Ameri- — or American consumers — exploit them.”
Ferguson, once <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1970858_1970909_1971694,00.html">named</a> one of Time magazine&#8217;s 100 most influential people in the world, argued that inflation was triggered much earlier that Biden would admit, declaring, “This problem began right at the start of the Biden presidency with the superfluous overshoot in fiscal stimulus that led the economy to overheat in such a predictable way that a former Democratic treasury secretary Larry Summers in February 2021, just weeks after the inauguration said it was gonna be an inflation mess and here we are. They should own that.”
Ferguson even made the dreaded comparison to the infamous failed presidency of Jimmy Carter, pointing out, “Jimmy Carter, you could have mentioned him, too. Jimmy Carter owned malaise, the inflation that occurred during his presidency.”

‘Shameless’: Famed Historian Blasts Biden For Blaming Inflation On Putin, Oil And Gas Companies

Famed Historian Blasts Biden For Blaming Inflation On Putin, Oil And Gas Companies

Inflation

Joe Biden

Oil and Gas

Vladimir Putin

A top historian is warning that so-called &#8220;woke&#8221; culture is a &#8220;fake religion&#8221; that must be reigned in or else it could have deadly consequences.
Hoover Institution fellow Niall Ferguson, a Scottish author and historian, appeared on Fox News host Tucker Carlson&#8217;s podcast &#8220;Tucker Carlson Today,&#8221; where he explained why the political Left does not focus on the economy very much anymore compared to the past.
&#8220;The people on the Left didn&#8217;t really want to have a conversation about economics, because they had lost their arguments in the 1980s; they really hadn&#8217;t been able to make the case for socialism successfully,&#8221; Ferguson said. &#8220;And the conclusion was that there was more money to be made, or more power to be gained by exploiting identity politics and emphasizing cultural, racial, gender differences.&#8221;
Later on in the podcast, Ferguson warned that Western society does not yet &#8220;fully realize, although it&#8217;s becoming more and more clear,&#8221; that &#8220;wokeism, is in fact, a religion.&#8221;
&#8220;It&#8217;s not a secular political ideology &#8230; it&#8217;s not really about economics,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;It is about salvation, membership of the elect of the woke. It&#8217;s about persecuting heretics. It&#8217;s about elaborate rituals of speech that can only be pursued by the believers. It&#8217;s rather cult like, Matt Yglesias is not somebody I usually agree with, but he called it the Great Awokening. This was a very astute observation. So we are dealing not just with the decay of traditional religion, but far worse, the rise of new fake religions, political religions, and one thing that&#8217;s very clear from the 20th century is that when people take their religious feelings, and they apply them to political ideologies, terrible things can happen.&#8221;
&#8220;Central to what made communism so deadly, was it&#8217;s ultimately a religion, Marx is ultimately a prophet and Marxism is a kind of religion,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;The same was true of Nazism. The most ardent Nazis thought of Hitler and explicitly called him a redeemer of the German nation. So we&#8217;ve got to be very careful of political religions. Politics is not something that you should approach with a religious impulse. If you start feeling religiously about politics, take a lie down, you know, have some sleep, take a long walk and try again because politics should not be imbued with religious sentiment.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Hoover Institution fellow Niall Ferguson (<a href="https://twitter.com/nfergus?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nfergus</a>), a Scottish a historian, warns about &quot;wokeism&quot;: &quot;We are dealing not just with the decay of traditional religion, but far worse, the rise of new fake religions, political religions&quot; <a href="https://t.co/3oP1xwLRHP">pic.twitter.com/3oP1xwLRHP</a>
&mdash; Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1404713958569918465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 15, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
TRANSCRIPT:
<blockquote>TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: So for the latest episode of Tucker Carlson Today, we sat down with perhaps the greatest historian of economic trends still alive, Niall Ferguson. And we asked him, why doesn&#8217;t anyone talk about the economy anymore? Here&#8217;s part of our conversation.
NIALL FERGUSON, ECONOMIST:  The people on the Left didn&#8217;t really want to have a conversation about economics, because they had lost their arguments in the 1980s, they really hadn&#8217;t been able to make the case for socialism successfully. And the conclusion was that there was more money to be made, or more power to be gained by exploiting identity politics and emphasizing cultural, racial, gender differences. And that&#8217;s where all the energy moved to. And it was bad luck for the working classes, I mean, hard luck for the economic losers from globalization and financialization, because they really cease to figure in the debates that were going on in the elite universities and then in the educational system, as a whole. 
So I think the answer is that partly, there was just a shift of strategy on the Left away from economics into what seemed like the more fertile ground of culture. But it was also partly because the people who lost out in that period that we could date from maybe 2001, that&#8217;s when China joined the World Trade Organization, the people who&#8217;d lost out, were of no interest to the academic Left, the working class of Middle America, just cease to figure. 
And I think one of the things that we don&#8217;t fully realize, although it&#8217;s becoming more and more clear, is that what the Left now offers, wokeism, is in fact, a religion. It&#8217;s not a secular political ideology. That&#8217;s why as you were saying earlier, it&#8217;s not really about economics. It is about salvation, membership of the elect of the woke. It&#8217;s about persecuting heretics. It&#8217;s about elaborate rituals of speech that can only be pursued by the believers. It&#8217;s rather cult like, Matt Yglesias is not somebody I usually agree with, but he called it the Great Awokening. This was a very astute observation. So we are dealing not just with the decay of traditional religion, but far worse, the rise of new fake religions, political religions, and one thing that&#8217;s very clear from the 20th century is that when people take their religious feelings, and they apply them to political ideologies, terrible things can happen. 
Central to what made communism so deadly, was it&#8217;s ultimately a religion, Marx is ultimately a prophet and Marxism is a kind of religion. The same was true of Nazism. The most ardent Nazis thought of Hitler and explicitly called him a redeemer of the German nation. So we&#8217;ve got to be very careful of political religions. Politics is not something that you should approach with a religious impulse. If you start feeling religiously about politics, take a lie down, you know, have some sleep, take a long walk and try again because politics should not be imbued with religious sentiment.</blockquote>

Top Historian: U.S. ‘Dealing Not Just With Decay Of Traditional Religion,’ But Something ‘Far Worse’

Woke Culture

Earlier this month, a group of Stanford University professors presented and published a memo accusing Hoover Institute fellows of being conservative, which they are, but argued they needed to be censured because the majority of the Stanford community disagreed with their views.
It appears the professors’ attempt to silence the Hoover fellows has failed, <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/01/stanford-mobs-attempt-to-cancel-hoover-institution-scholars-fails/">according to The Federalist</a>.
“Despite a months-long campaign of demonization directed at Victor Davis Hanson, Niall Ferguson, and Scott Atlas — amplified with support from The Stanford Daily — the assault ended without condemnation of the trio or Hoover,” the outlet reported.
As the three fellows <a href="https://stanfordreview.org/atlas-ferguson-hanson-stanford-free-speech/">wrote</a> last week, Stanford’s president, provost, and former provost defended the think tank and academic freedom in general.
Instead of the public condemnation and silencing demanded by the Stanford professors, Provost Persis Drell and Hoover Institute director Condoleezza Rice were asked to “to present a report to the body later this year about ‘increasing interaction’ between the university and the think tank,” The Federalist reported.
This is far from the “faculty-controlled committee” the professor’s wanted to “investigate Hoover” and its fellows.
As The Federalist noted, this “isn’t a victory for academic freedom over the forces of groupthink repression.”
“Rather, it’s a demonstration of the vulnerability of the vast majority of scholars who dissent from leftist orthodoxy and aren’t ensconced in a well-funded independent institution,” the outlet wrote.
As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-university-is-trying-to-silence-a-conservative-think-tank-because-the-liberal-community-disagrees-with-their-opinions">reported</a>, the professors’ accusations were able to malign the three Hoover fellows. It is also not the first time Stanford has attempted to cut ties with Hoover, a public policy think tank <a href="https://www.hoover.org/">focused on</a> “promoting the principles of individual, economic, and political freedom”:
<blockquote>In February 2019, for example, the university’s faculty senate heavily criticized Hoover for being conservative, calling its ideological adherence to conservative principles “intellectually bankrupt.” This month, the student-run newspaper Stanford Daily attacked Hoover fellows “without contacting them and giving them a reasonable amount of time to respond, in contravention of the paper’s own <a href="https://www.stanforddaily.com/our-policies-and-standards/">“Policies and Standards,”</a> the fellows wrote. In November, the paper’s editorial board <a href="https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/11/23/its-time-for-stanford-to-separate-itself-from-hoover/">called</a> on Stanford “to separate itself from Hoover.”
In addition to the public attacks, the fellows wrote, they are also excluded from Stanford’s Academic Council even though they are also fellows at Stanford. Hoover fellows are also not represented on the faculty senate “unless they hold a joint appointment with a Stanford department” and are therefore not able to defend themselves from faculty attacks.</blockquote>
The professors accused Atlas of violating “the American Medical Association’s standards for ethical medical conduct” while serving as an adviser to President Donald Trump and accused him of being helping to cause the deaths of “tens of thousands of Americans.”
They accused Hanson of writing articles that “formed the backdrop to an insurrection that cost 5 lives and threatened the lives of Representatives, Congressional staff, and the Vice President, as well as our constitutional democracy.” Those articles actually pointed out issues with mail-in and early voting and changes to state voting laws — problems they say were also acknowledged by scholars at Stanford University Law School. Hanson, they wrote, never questioned the legitimacy of the election and condemned the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
Finally, they accused Ferguson of “conspire[ing] with College Republicans to conduct ‘opposition research’ on a Stanford undergraduate.” The fellows note that the conspiracy never happened and the research was never conducted.

Stanford University

Stanford University Tries, Fails To Silence A Conservative Think Tank

Cancel Culture

Condoleezza Rice

Scott Atlas

Victor Davis Hanson

A group of Stanford University professors is trying to silence fellows of its Hoover Institution simply for being conservative.
Hoover Institute fellows Scott Atlas, Niall Ferguson, and Victor Davis Hanson <a href="https://stanfordreview.org/atlas-ferguson-hanson-stanford-free-speech/">wrote</a> of the attempt in The Stanford Review, the university’s independent newspaper:
<blockquote>In a recent meeting of the Stanford Faculty Senate, four professors (Joshua Landy, Stephen Monismith, David Palumbo-Liu and David Spiegel) presented and then subsequently <a href="https://www.activatestanford.org/actions/report-on-the-hoover-institution-and-stanford-university">published</a> a farrago of falsehoods directed against various fellows of the Hoover Institution. Their complaint was, first, that the Hoover fellows’ views were unapologetically conservative and, second, that they appeared antithetical to the majority of those of the Stanford community—and were therefore properly subject to some sort of institutional and personal censure.</blockquote>
The three fellows wrote that the professors wanted to create a “faculty-controlled committee to investigate Hoover” in an attempt to intimidate the institute into silence. Thankfully for the Hoover Institution, Stanford’s president, provost, and former provost defended the think tank and academic freedom in general.
Damage was still done, however, as the faculty members were able to manage “maligning” the three fellows “as individuals.” The president, they wrote, left the impression that the fellows had “behaved inappropriately” or “spoken untruths.”
As the fellows wrote, this is not the first time Stanford has tried to cut ties with Hoover, a public policy think tank <a href="https://www.hoover.org/">focused on</a> “promoting the principles of individual, economic, and political freedom.” In February 2019, for example, the university’s faculty senate heavily criticized Hoover for being conservative, calling its ideological adherence to conservative principles “intellectually bankrupt.” This month, the student-run newspaper Stanford Daily attacked Hoover fellows “without contacting them and giving them a reasonable amount of time to respond, in contravention of the paper’s own <a href="https://www.stanforddaily.com/our-policies-and-standards/">“Policies and Standards,”</a> the fellows wrote. In November, the paper’s editorial board <a href="https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/11/23/its-time-for-stanford-to-separate-itself-from-hoover/">called</a> on Stanford “to separate itself from Hoover.”
In addition to the public attacks, the fellows wrote, they are also excluded from Stanford’s Academic Council even though they are also fellows at Stanford. Hoover fellows are also not represented on the faculty senate “unless they hold a joint appointment with a Stanford department” and are therefore not able to defend themselves from faculty attacks.
“The accusations against us three last week were as various as they were untrue. And all were presented regardless of clear and published evidence to the contrary,” the fellows wrote.
The faculty members accused Atlas of violating “the American Medical Association’s standards for ethical medical conduct” while serving as an adviser to President Donald Trump and accused him of being helping to cause the deaths of “tens of thousands of Americans.”
“Those serious charges were based on straw-man arguments and gross distortions of Atlas’s words, as pointed out by <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/atlas-mugged/">others</a>. In misrepresenting Atlas’s statements, Stanford faculty members intended to delegitimize him and his analysis,” the fellows wrote.
The faculty members accused Hanson of writing articles that “formed the backdrop to an insurrection that cost 5 lives and threatened the lives of Representatives, Congressional staff, and the Vice President, as well as our constitutional democracy.” Those articles actually pointed out issues with mail-in and early voting and changes to state voting laws &#8212; problems they say were also acknowledged by scholars at Stanford University Law School. Hanson, they wrote, never questioned the legitimacy of the election and condemned the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
Ferguson was accused of “conspire[ing] with College Republicans to conduct ‘opposition research’ on a Stanford undergraduate.” The fellows note that the conspiracy never happened and the research was never conducted.
Some of the faculty members who launched the latest attacks against them, the fellows wrote, have previously advocated for free speech and diversity of viewpoints.

Stanford University Is Trying To Silence A Conservative Think Tank Because The Liberal Community Disagrees With Their Opinions

Censorship

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This past Friday, Niall Ferguson debated Fareed Zakaria over the destiny of the post-WWII set of international institutions; deemed the &#8220;liberal international order&#8221; (LIO). Ferguson took the position that the LIO was fated to collapse, with Zakaria arguing that the LIO would endure.

Hosted by Munk Debates in Toronto, the debated <a href="https://www.munkdebates.com/debates/Future-of-Geopolitics">resolution</a> read as follows: &#8220;Be it resolved, the liberal international order is over &#8230;&#8221;

Munk Debates added the following contextual description to its motion:

<blockquote>
Since the end of World War II, global affairs have been shaped by the increasing free movement of people and goods, international rules setting, and a broad appreciation of the mutual benefits of a more interdependent world. Together these factors defined the liberal international order and sustained an era of rising global prosperity and declining international conflict. But now, for the first time in a generation, the pillars of the liberal internationalism are being shaken to their core by the reassertion of national borders, national interests, and nationalist politics across the globe. Can liberal internationalism survive these challenges and remain the defining rules-based system of the future? Or, are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the liberal international order?
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
To engage with the geopolitical issue of our time, the Spring 2017 Munk Debate will move the motion: be it resolved, the liberal international order is over&#8230;
</blockquote>

Ferguson challenged the description of the Bretton Woods system and its progeny as a &#8220;liberal international order,&#8221; describing the series of international institutions as illiberal, not particularly international, and disorderly. 
Seemingly heralding nation-states as the preeminent contemporary institutions of political organization and worthy of preservation, Ferguson claimed that the LIO erodes national sovereignty via increasing the distance between governors and the governed.
Zakaria credited the LIO with having ushered in greater global prosperity across the 20th and 21st centuries, with the largest beneficiaries being formerly impoverished cohorts in lesser developed societies and states. He also credited the LIO with thus far having averted a third global war.
International and supranational institutions, said Ferguson, had failed to fulfill their most basic duties and promises:
<blockquote>
&#8220;At every level, the most basic roles that we expect a state to perform &#8212; from economic management to the defense of borders &#8212; were flunked comprehensively by the European Union over the last ten years, and the British response was, &#8216;We need to take back control.&#8217; That&#8217;s a really important idea, here. Because control by sovereign states is vital if they are to retain legitimacy.&#8221;
</blockquote>
At no point did Zakaria use the words &#8220;sovereign&#8221; or &#8220;sovereignty.&#8221; He made no acknowledgment of the erosion of national state sovereignty via increasing centralization of political power within supranational institutions.
Zakaria alleged that resistance to the status quo of globalization &#8212; particularly with respect to population flows and resulting demographic changes across the West &#8212; was partly motivated by racism, xenophobia, and assorted bigotries.
Zakaria omitted any mention of the stultification of commerce wrought by expanding regulations and taxation flowing from the LIO&#8217;s institutions. He argued that institutions such as the European Union (EU) had expanded prosperity and facilitated more rapid economic growth across Europe than would have been the case in the absence of such a political union.
Ferguson exposited on what he described as the EU&#8217;s hindering of free markets via its bureaucratic economic management:
<blockquote>
&#8220;Calling [the European Union] a free trade area is a stretch, Fareed. Because what the European Union has become, and this has been true since the Treaty of Maastricht, is an endeavor to create a quasi-federal system, What Angela Merkl calls the Federal Republic of Europe &#8230; Meet the people who run it, they live very good lives. You know, Eurocrats don&#8217;t even pay tax &#8230; It&#8217;s extremely bureaucratic, highly centralized &#8230; It&#8217;s predicated on an extraordinarily complex system of regulation &#8230; Those people who run it have become almost completely disconnected from the ordinary people in what I&#8217;ll call &#8216;Provincial Europe.'&#8221;
</blockquote>
Watch the debate below.
 
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="540" width="960"></iframe></div>

The debate&#8217;s audience found Zakaria&#8217;s arguments more compelling, with <a href="https://www.munkdebates.com/debates/Future-of-Geopolitics">71% voting</a> in agreement with his position.

Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k">Twitter</a>.

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