Julius Ruechel (@JuliusRuechel)

My latest: https://juliusruechel.substack.com/p/how-the-west-destroyed-science Virtually every classroom lesson, textbook, and television show portrays the constitutional protection of free speech as the essential ingredient underpinning all our scientific (and democratic) endeavours. But what if that view is wrong… not because freedom of speech doesn’t matter, but because the idea that constitutional protections can reliably protect our rights and freedoms is hopelessly naïve? Indeed, the ultimate historical example to prove that view wrong is that the Scientific Revolution emerged in central Europe at a time when there was NO freedom of speech whatsoever -- and yet heretical ideas flourished, and universities thrived. Why? They thrived because of the unique decentralized political conditions in Europe at that time, which allowed academic freedom to bloom and heretical ideas to spread like wildfire in spite of the extreme censorship of that era. The U.S. Founding Fathers understood these subtle yet powerful forces as they created their decentralized republic. But subsequent generations have clearly forgotten those lessons as they centralized ever-increasing powers in the hands of the federal govt — in doing so they have created all the conditions for a "woke Inquisition" to thrive in our society and especially in our scientific and academic institutions. ~ ~ ~ U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once emphasized the risks of centralizing power. He pointed out that the constitutional protections outlined in the Bill of Rights are nothing more than "parchment guarantees" (mere words on paper) -- even the Soviet Union had those even as it sent millions to the gulag. The true safeguard of individual rights and freedoms, he said, is a Constitution STRUCTURED to prevent the centralization of power. Today, at all levels of society and not least in our academic and scientific institutions, we are seeing the unintended consequences created by centralization, which has incentivized all the wrong things in society. Perhaps the time has come to try radical decentralization?