Conservative: Name the Islamist Threat

“Frankness is essential,” argues Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill after the mayhem at the Berlin Pride Parade, yet despite the attacker being “known for having connections to Islamist circles,” his Muslim identity and terrorist sympathies have been downplayed by the “self-righteous” who are “self-gagging” in the general “muffling of public opinion” that attends every such outrage. When will the “self-hating freaks” of “Queers for Palestine” and the other “suicidal simps” for “the most violent homophobes on Earth” finally “wake up” and recognize that we are fostering “religious extremists who would happily put them to death for their sins of the flesh” along with “networks of ideologues devoted to the violent dismantling of our civilization.”

From the left: Suicide of the West

“Berlin-born Abdel Ballout,” shot dead amid an attack on a Pride parade, “was practically escorted to the site by German authorities,” snarks Racket News’ Matt Taibbi. He “left Germany last year to join the ISIS militia, failed to reach Mauritania, failed to reach Syria, got arrested and sentenced in his family’s home country of Lebanon for ‘incitement to religious and sectarian conflict,’ then successfully returned to Germany to be arrested again. He was convicted for planning a serious act of terrorist violence, but released . . . and put into ‘deradicalization counseling,’ which was about to report him for being ‘inscrutable,’ evasive, and a threat.” The West has “overcorrected” for its overreaction to 9/11 etc., embracing “a different psychosis,” where it feels “phobic about protecting itself.” “The road to sanity remains long.”

Campus watch: Outing Academia’s Cancers

As higher education is “going over the long-awaited demographic cliff, with declining enrollments and shrinking endowments,” a recent report by “Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis gives some hope,” note Alex Joffe & Asaf Romirowsky at The Hill. Scholars examined “the roots of academia’s many self-made crises,” pointing to “the adoption of ‘scholar-activism’ ” and “ ‘social justice’ in place of an apolitical search for objective truths.” The survey found “a deterioration in scholarly standards,” due to “relativism” and “the outsized role of left-wing foundations.” Academia exploded: “Unhinged comments have called the report ‘diabolically evil’ and ‘McCarthyism,’ and warned of ‘witch hunts’ ”; “the American Association of University Professors has even demanded that the two universities ‘rescind the report’ ” — adding up to “as close to a confession as we could ask for that the report’s conclusions are completely accurate.”

Iran war: Trump’ Unwise About-Face

Last Thursday, “America appeared on the verge of a major escalation in Iran” — but by noon Friday, the plans for “ ‘Epic Fury 2: Electric Boogaloo,’ were paused,” grumbles The Free Press’ Eli Lake. Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, says “the new pause is ‘giving diplomacy some space’ ”; Lake counters: “Trump has been giving diplomacy a chance since April and he has little to show for it.” The best strategy is to “play a longer game”: Quit “trying to get the Iranians to admit defeat and surrender the remains of their nuclear program” and “keep the military and the blockade in place.” The nuke program is “largely rubble and ash” due to “Israeli and American arms,” but a cycle of hollow threats and more negotiations “risks turning that victory into submission.”

Libertarians: Sacramento’s New Gift to Wildfires

“Wildfire risk just got a lot worse in California, where some of the state’s most effective fire prevention specialists — goats — are under regulatory attack,” warn C. Jarrett Dieterle & Shawn Regan at Reason. Despite the work’s “round-the-clock” nature, the state has decided to apply standard wage and overtime laws to goat-herding companies, “whose animals clear brush and reduce fire danger” — so “Golden State goat herders are now set to be paid $20,000 per month, which works out to $240,000 annually.” That leaves herding companies like Western Grazers the choice of bankruptcy and selling “goats for slaughter,” or “using technology like drones and all-terrain vehicles to replace workers,” as Australia does.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board