Insidious...and absurd....

Dafydd on the Royal Society's attempts to suppress "groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change."

...Those of you who have always thought of the British Royal Society as a "scientific body" can perhaps be excused for being gobsmacked at its conversion to a leftist activist group; but in fact, this is just a stage in the Left's gradual and insidious takeover of all manner of previously nonpartisan, apolitical, but patriotic American and British organizations (a non-exhaustive list in vaguely chronological order):

• It started with civil-rights organizations during the 30s, 40s, and 50s, such as the Civil Rights Congress;
• Then it was civic organizations;
• Many Protestant and Lutheran churches and Reform and "Conservative" synogogues;
• Charities;
• The Red Cross;
• The USO;
• The entire court system;
• The news networks;
• Trade unions;
• The music industry;
• The television industry;
• Science-fiction publishing;
• The great universities, especially the Ivy League (the rot spread from Berkeley and Harvard outward);
• The national newspapers;
• The Democratic Party, which used to be chock-a-block with patriotic war hawks like Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, Scoop Jackson and Al Gore sr., is now run by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and soon-to-be minority leader John P. Murtha;
• The literary establishments and awards organizations (from the Pulitzer to the Nobel to the MacArthur Awards);
• The primary and secondary government schools;
• Libraries;
• The JAG corps;
• Walt Disney (especially during Michael Eisner's "de-Disneyfication" of Disney);
• The Girl Sprouts (they're still working on the Boy Sprouts... but what they can't take over, they must destroy);
• The Catholic Church (see above about what they can't take over);

So it should be no surprise that leftism and political correctness has taken over first the medical establishment, and now the great science bodies: remember the FDA banning silicone breast implants, primarily because feminists objected to the very concept of breast augmentation? Well, now the AAAS, the NSF, Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, Science Magazine, Scientific American, and many other scientific organs have toed the PC line on such issues as the Strategic Defense Initiative, nuclear power, artificial sweeters and artificial fat, second-hand smoke, AIDS, pesticides (DDT), preservatives, and yes, global warming (especially global warming)...

He's got more on the bogosity of the global warming "scientific consensus," which is actually a leftist consensus that many scientists do not agree with.

I myself am mostly interested in the more general question of leftist takeovers of groups and organizations. And the way each of those takeovers has generated opposition, and various interesting work-arounds and by-passings. That's a pretty depressing list Dafydd's come up with, when you look at them all together. Perhaps it means that there isn't much hope, that rot will keep spreading indefinitely.

On the other hand, there's also a common thread of deadness about all those groups. They are not where the new ideas and trends are coming from. And they are all on the defensive. Many are simply dying—big newspapers, Democrat Party, oldline churches...

The Catholic Church is kind of a world in itself, and it is interesting in this context because it contains a myriad of groups and enclaves, some of which have been taken over by leftists. Dafydd could have made a long sub-list under that line! And the lefty parts are definitely the ones that are dying, and the non-lefty ones are where we see growth and renewal. And, just as in the larger world, the lefty groups have strongholds in the academy, and publishing and education. And in the bureaucracies! And they are obstacles that people "route around," often with the help of the Internet...

And I'd guess that there's none of those taken-over groups on Dafydd's list where you would not find people looking back to the 60's and 70's as the time when things were "normal." As a baseline to measure the world by. Imagine guys with gray pony-tails and weedy garb—still wearing jeans, and T-shirts with messages. And rusting Volvos with stickers. And Che posters and Grateful Dead albums....