This document is part of an archive of postings on Political Correctness Watch, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written.
With particular attention to religious, ethnic and sexual matters. By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
My Home Page. Email John Ray here. My other blogs: "Tongue Tied" , "Dissecting Leftism" , "Australian Politics" , "Education Watch International" , "Immigration Watch" , "Greenie Watch" , "The Psychologist" (A summary blog). Those blogs are also backed up. See here for details
This page is a backup. The primary version of this blog is HERE
30 March, 2023
Muslim antisemitism again
There are brisk sales for "Mein Kampf" in Muslim countries
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, has been stripped of the right to host its first major football event amid opposition to the participation of Israel.
The football-mad nation was scheduled to stage the men’s Under-20 FIFA World Cup from May 20 to June 11 and hoped the 24-team tournament would begin to repair its battered reputation after last year’s stadium tragedy in East Java.
Controversy over the qualification of Israel, however, has resulted in the event being removed from the South-East Asia’s largest nation by the game’s world governing body FIFA, which indicated it may also consider sanctions against the Football Association of Indonesia (PSSI).
“FIFA has decided, due to the current circumstances, to remove Indonesia as the host of the FIFA U-20 World Cup 2023,” FIFA said in a statement.
“A new host will be announced as soon as possible, with the dates of the tournament currently remaining unchanged. Potential sanctions against the PSSI may also be decided at a later stage.”
Indonesia was awarded the hosting rights in 2019 well before it was known which national teams would make it through the qualifying stages.
But the eventual presence in the draw of Israel – with which it has no formal diplomatic ties – threw a spanner in the works for a government that supports the cause of the Palestinians.
The issue escalated last week when conservative Muslims took to the streets of Jakarta to protest Israel’s involvement.
Bali Governor Wayan Koster then said he would refuse to host the Israeli team on the Hindu-majority island, as the organisers had planned. Koster cited Indonesia’s foreign policy amid the concerns raised about the event’s security.
The debate was ratcheted up further as Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, the frontrunner for next year’s presidential election, also called for the Israeli team to be excluded from the tournament.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo attempted to salvage the cup, urging that sport and politics should not be mixed. Erick Thohir, one of his ministers and the new head of the PSSI, was dispatched to Doha to meet FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
FIFA, however, decided the domestic furore over Israel had made a tournament in Indonesia untenable. Argentina has been suggested in Indonesian media as a possible alternative host.
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Rand Paul Makes Chilling But True Point on Crime in "Third World" D.C.
Crime is rampant in Washington, D.C., to the point where congressional staffers are being attacked in broad daylight. As Matt covered, a staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who himself has been the victim of violent assaults, was stabbed. He survived but was taken to the hospital in "a life-threatening condition," though is expected to make a full recovery. The office is asking "for privacy so everyone can focus on healing and recovery," but Paul has still made brief remarks, and they're quite telling when it comes to warning about what our nation's capital has become.
"It makes me think we're in the third world," he said, adding "I wonder whether Washington, DC should be listed on dangerous places to travel," mentioning such is the case when it comes to certain foreign countries designated by the State Department as dangerous places to travel to.
Paul's tweet highlighted the dangers of America's cities, as he also lamented "Many of our major cities are really gone." The senator was not only attacked at his home in Kentucky in 2017, but was harassed by crowds, along with his wife, Kelley Paul, upon leaving the 2020 Republican National Convention in August of that year. He also addressed the dangers of recidivism, as the suspect in this violent stabbing, Glynn Neal, had just been released from prison on Friday, with the stabbing occurring on Saturday.
Not only is crime rampant in D.C., but the city council somehow thought it made sense to put forth a soft-on-crime policy that would eliminate most mandatory minimum sentences, allows for jury trials in almost all misdemeanors, and has lesser penalties for burglary, robbery, carjacking, sexual assault, and illegally carrying a gun.
While Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) vetoed that crime bill, the council overrode her with a vote of 12-1 in January. Thankfully, since Congress has jurisdiction over D.C., there were still options. Republicans and Democrats came together to nix it, after the White House alerted that the president wouldn't veto it if it came before him, which it did, becoming law earlier this month.
Not only did the council put forth such a crime bill, they then tried to get away with pulling it back. Congress still overturned it earlier this month though, with a vote of 250-173 in the House and 81-14 in the Senate. While before the House Oversight Committee for a Wednesday hearing, Chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia Phil Mendelson claimed he wasn't looking to cover up anything.
Even the mainstream media is concerned with crime in D.C., as Spencer highlighted earlier on Wednesday, pointing to a piece from The Washington Post that noted how "startling" it is that more crimes aren't prosecuted in the district.
While many of them voted to overturn the soft-on-crime bill, we can't expect too much from Democrats. Many of them still want to grant D.C. statehood, which is absurd on constitutional grounds—though that hasn't stopped them from trying when they controlled the House—but even more so in the light of crime that is out of control
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Proposed S.686 law could be used to censor any website in America, foreign or domestic, not just TikTok
S.686, the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act or the appropriately titled “RESTRICT Act” could be used to censor any website in America, not just TikTok.
The legislation would authorize the Secretary of Commerce to “identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate, including by negotiating, entering into, or imposing, and enforcing any mitigation measure to address any risk arising from any covered transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States that the Secretary determines… poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States…”
Read that again. It says “by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States…” That could be anything.
Or any website that is determined to be “interfering in, or altering the result or reported result of a Federal election, as determined in coordination with the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Treasury, and the Federal Election Commission…”
Meaning, it would potentially become illegal to question the “reported result” of any federal election, since questioning the results could potentially “interfere” with public acceptance of the result. How else does one “interfere” with the “reported result” of a federal election?
Or any website that opposes a war with a foreign adversary by “steer[ing] policy and regulatory decisions in favor of the strategic objectives of a foreign adversary to the detriment of the national security of the United States…” since merely advocating against the war would “favor” the foreign adversary’s objectives.
By definition, this would prohibit anti-war activities on the internet
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Tory right wing ‘very optimistic’ Home Secretary will toughen asylum bill to block European judges
Right-wing Tory MPs are increasingly confident home secretary Suella Braverman will further toughen controversial legislation aimed at cracking down on migrants arriving in small boats.
The home secretary is considering changes to head off a rebellion by up to 60 Tory MPs on the right who want to stop British judges from following decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on deportations.
One senior Tory MP involved in the amendments told The Independent that the group was encouraged by talks with ministers that the bill could soon be tightened to allow British judges to ignore the Strasbourg court’s injunctions.
“We’re working closely together on reaching a position,” they said. “I’m very optimistic. We want the bill galvanised against challenge [by the ECHR]. There is room for compromise here.”
The MP added: “We could have pushed to end all involvement with the European courts and leave the convention. But that’s not a battle anyone wants at the moment.”
Tory MP Martin Vickers, who has backed the amendments, told The Independent: “We’ve got to have much more rigorous control over our immigration. So we’re trying to limit the power [of] European court judges intervening on these matters.”
Sir Bill Cash told the Commons on Monday that he expected ministers to consider a series of amendments so that judges “cannot prevent removal”, adding: “We do not want or need lawyers and judges to invent new blocks on removal with judicial activism.”
Rebel Tory MP Danny Kruger – another leading figure behind the amendments – told BBC Radio 4’s Today earlier that talks with ministers were ongoing. He later told the Commons he hoped there would be no more “pyjama injunctions in the middle of the night” from Strasbourg judges opposing orders.
Senior government figures reportedly believe the home secretary supports the rebel push to stop British judges using legal precedent from Strasbourg when considering deportation cases.
“She wants to use it to spook us to offer concessions to get them to drop their amendments because a big rebellion would be embarrassing,” one told The Times. “She has basically become a sock puppet for the right.”
But a source close to Ms Braverman said the claim was “totally untrue”, adding: “The people spreading scurrilous rumours like this about the home secretary should reconsider and refrain.”
In 2022, the ECHR granted an injunction – via its rule 39 – that effectively grounded a flight sending asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda. Ms Braverman said on her recent trip to Rwanda that she was “encouraged” by “constructive” talks with Strasbourg.
The government has requested a higher threshold for any rule 39 injunction on attempted deportation flights. But Ms Braverman is thought to be considering inserting a new clause into the bill banning rule 39 orders from applying in the UK if exemptions can’t be negotiated with the Strasbourg court.
However, Tory moderates and legal experts fear the Strasbourg court cannot be defied without breaching the UK’s obligation to uphold the ECHR.
Senior Tory MP Tobias Ellwood told The Independent that Ms Braverman should ignore the push from the right. “There is simply no way this bill will secure parliamentary support unless it’s fully compliant with international laws, including our commitments to the ECHR.”
Asked about speaking to Tory MPs seeking to toughen the bill, Mr Sunak’s official spokesperson said: “We will keep seeking to speak constructively with MPs ... We do want MPs to be involved in the process of creating legislation.”
Others on the liberal wing want to see Rishi Sunak and Ms Braverman commit to establishing new, authorised safe routes via which asylum seekers can come to Britain.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/suella-braverman-small-boats-tories-b2308606.html
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29 March, 2023
A transgender shooter! How inconvenient! Hush it up!
How to describe the gender of the now-deceased Nashville school shooter has quickly emerged as the latest controversy regarding transgender issues, with major media sources tiptoeing around the issue, often in tortured fashion, by avoiding gender pronouns as much as possible.
At the same time, trans activists are calling out what they say is bias against the trans community while prominent conservatives such as Donald Trump, Jr. and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene are invoking the tragic shooting as they denounce some positions of the trans rights movement.
At a press conference on Monday, the chief of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, John Drake, announced that the shooter did “identify as transgender.” Despite the disclosure, many media outlets continued to refer to Audrey Hale, the shooter, as a woman, leading some corners of social media to denounce the mainstream media for “deadnaming,”
In a statement, the Trans Resistance Network called the Nashville shooting “not one tragedy, but two.” After a short statement offering condolences to the family and friends of the six victims, the statement calls on the media to stop “pandering to the Right.”
“We remind the news media to respect the self-identified pronouns of transgender individuals that come across your desk,” the statement reads. “We also urge you to avoid pandering to those individuals on the Right who will use this double tragedy to foment fear and terror of transgender people.”
Many media outlets continue to refer to the shooter as “Audrey,” the shooter’s given name, which the trans community decries as “deadnaming” — wherein one refers to a transgender person by the name chosen by their parents rather than the name the person chooses for themselves.
Some conservative social media influencers, journalists, and podcast hosts have used the tragedy to denounce the mainstream media and some trans activists for their stances on trans issues.
Ms. Greene also weighed in on the shooting and coverage of the killer’s gender. She implied that hormone treatment could be responsible for the shooting.
News outlets have also seemed to be dancing around the subject of the shooter’s gender. The New York Times, in an addendum to their reporting on the rarity of female mass shooters, pointed out that officials used the pronouns “she” and “her” to refer to Hale.
Newsweek seemed to blame the state of Tennessee for banning drag shows and “gender-affirming care,” suggesting the possibility that politicians in the state had brought this on themselves. One CNN analyst believed the shooter’s gender to be irrelevant in this case, despite the fact it appears the shooter could have harbored some resentment against the school. “Pronouns do not kill children, people with guns kill children,” CNN’s Juliette Kayyem said on Monday.
ABC News anchor Terry Moran also seemed to imply that the shooting was an almost logical outgrowth of Tennessee’s prohibition on drag shows that cater to minors and surgery or hormone therapies for minors who seek to change their gender, despite the fact that the shooter was 28 years old.
“The shooter identified herself as a transgender person,” Mr. Moran said on Monday. “The state of Tennessee earlier this month passed and the governor signed a bill that banned transgender medical care for minors as well as a law that prohibited adult entertainment as well as male and female impersonators after a series of drag show controversies in that state.”
On Tuesday morning, CBS Detroit said it was still “attempting” to determine whether or not the shooter was transgender, despite the announcement from Nashville police. USA Today wrote that the police had “misidentified” the shooter’s transgender status.
The way in which legacy media outlets cover transgender issues has come under fire from the left in recent months, highlighted by a recent letter published by contributors to the New York Times.
In February, hundreds of contributors penned a letter to the Times’ associate managing editor for standards, Philip Corbett, about “editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non?-?binary, and gender nonconforming people.”
“The Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources,” they wrote.
The paper’s executive editor, Joseph Kahn, promptly responded in defense of his reporters, their research, and their professionalism. “It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism,” Mr. Kahn wrote in a memo to staff. “In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort.”
“We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.”
On Monday, the Daily Beast reported that staff reporters who signed the letter are being called into meetings with top editors where they are being reprimanded.
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Humza Yousaf’s election a bad day for Scotland
Scotland has been deprived of the opportunity for a fresh start. Humza Yousaf has been elected leader of the Scottish National party, and he is set to be confirmed as first minister today in the Scottish parliament.
In the end he defeated runner-up Kate Forbes by 52 to 48 per cent on second preference votes, which is ironic considering that when the UK voted to leave the European Union by the same ratio, the SNP argued this was not a sufficient mandate and there should be another vote.
Despite this, Scotland will now have to prepare for life under a new first minister. And Yousaf’s election should concern us all.
Yousaf has stated throughout the election campaign that he wants to push social justice and progressive values as first minister. He has disturbing form for engaging in personal attacks against those he disagrees with, accusing rivals who have raised serious and legitimate concerns about the impact his ideology will have on society as ‘lurching to the right’.
In the Q&A following his victory speech he made a point of accusing the UK government of engaging in a ‘power grab’ regarding their use of Section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 to block the SNP’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill. He went on to say that he will launch a legal challenge against the UK government to allow the Bill to go ahead.
It has been clear for some time that the Bill poses significant threats to safeguarding across the entirety of the UK. It would lower the age at which someone can legally change their sex in Scotland from 18 to 16; reduce the required period of time someone must have lived in their acquired ‘gender’ from two years to just three months; and would remove the requirement for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. In essence, it would introduce self-ID, watering down existing checks and balances designed to ensure that those who wish to ‘transition’ are genuine. All polling has demonstrated that it is opposed by most Scots. Yet Yousaf has now committed to championing the legislation, even if it throws women and child safeguarding under the bus.
For an individual who claims to oppose the ‘culture wars’, Yousaf has shown himself more than happy to stoke its flames
The ramifications of this ideological policy were made clear when the convicted male rapist Isla Bryson (formerly Adam Graham), was initially placed in a female-only prison. On this, Yousaf’s response was completely nonsensical. Despite supporting the Gender Bill, which would make it easier for biological men to be housed in female prisons, he also accused Bryson of not being a ‘genuine transwoman’.This, in and of itself, demonstrates the problem with self-ID. Who exactly is to judge whether someone is ‘genuine’ or not?
Yousaf has held senior cabinet positions (including health minister) in a government that has aggressively pushed gender ideology. In Glasgow, the Sandyford gender identity clinic has continued to operate without proper political or clinical scrutiny, despite recent shocking admissions within the clinic regarding child safeguarding. When treating those with gender dysphoria, the Scottish NHS continues to openly rely on guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a trans-activist organisation. Last year, the Scottish government even published educational guidance that purports to support schools keeping pupils’ gender transition secret from their parents.
It’s not just on gender ideology that Yousaf has a disturbing record. Equally worrying is his approach to free speech. He has committed to pushing forward with legislation to ban ‘conversion therapy’ in Scotland, notwithstanding the significant concerns many have about the chilling effect it could have on therapists, potentially forcing them to affirm a child who says they are trans into going through medical transition. This flies in the face of ethical therapy, which should be explorative in nature. We have already seen the serious ramifications of this type of legislation. In Victoria, Australia, where ‘conversion therapy’ was recently banned, it is now potentially a criminal offence if a parent does not affirm their child into taking puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.
As justice minister he introduced the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. This included provisions on ‘stirring up hatred’, which pose a significant risk to free speech, and may even criminalise private conversations in Scots’ own homes. Thankfully, the Bill was at least amended during its passage through the Scottish parliament to remove prosecution for cases of unintentionally stirring up hate, which could have criminalised libraries for stocking contentious books. It’s lucky for Yousaf as well that the legislation is not yet in force. He was reportedly referred to the police for ‘misgendering’ the rapist Bryson, which would arguably have fallen foul of his Hate Crime Bill if it had been law.
For an individual who claims to oppose the ‘culture wars’, Yousaf has shown himself more than happy to stoke its flames. In a speech in the Scottish parliament, he recently engaged in what can only be described as a rant, listing senior public positions in Scotland held by people who are white, seemingly forgetting the fact that 96 per cent of the Scottish population are white as well.
He has also been happy to cosy-up to the Scottish Greens, whose co-convenor, Maggie Chapman, has previously said that eight-year-olds should be able to change sex and that ‘sex is not binary or immutable.’
There are some silver linings to Yousaf’s leadership, at least. He is gaffe prone. Just six months into his brief as transport minister, he received a fine of £300 and six penalty points after he was stopped by the police while driving a friend’s car without holding the proper insurance. And just a few weeks ago, during the election campaign, he jokingly asked a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh ‘where are all the men?’before it had to be pointed out to him that their partners were in Ukraine fighting the war.
If Scotland is lucky, this could be a very short-lived premiership. Many are already calling for a general election. A significant proportion of both the SNP membership and the country as a whole are opposed to his leadership. Many prominent voices, including JK Rowling, have his card firmly marked, while those rushing to his support include organisations engulfed in controversy, such as Mermaids.
Last year, a clip of Yousaf went viral after he fell off a scooter he was riding through the Scottish parliament. For the sake of free speech and sanity in Scotland, it is hopefully only a matter of time before Yousaf and the SNP come tumbling down in the same way.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/humza-yousafs-election-should-concern-us-all/
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Do Conservatives Oppose Change?
If you Google "what is conservatism?" this is the definition you will receive: "Commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation."
This is but one more illustration of the lack of objectivity wherever the Left is in control.
The idea that conservatism means, by definition, "opposition to change or innovation" is nothing more than how liberals and leftists see conservatism. Why? Because the farther left you go, the greater the commitment to change and innovation. "Change" and "Innovation" are left-wing gods. That is why, for example, the mantra of the Barack Obama campaign and presidency was "hope and change."
Because the Left is so committed to change (for its own sake), people on the Left assume that anyone who opposes leftism opposes all "change and innovation."
Unfortunately, the Left's misapprehension of conservatism is almost equaled by conservatives' inability to define the term. For that reason, just as I recently defined another widely used term -- "Judeo-Christian values" -- I think it important to do the same for conservatism.
Conservatives conserve.
If you want a good definition of conservatism, don't Google "conservatism." Google "conserve." You will then find this definition: "To protect from loss or harm; preserve."
The first and most important characteristic of conservatism is that it conserves what is best from the past.
Conservatives have no issue with change or innovation -- when warranted or harmless. The American Revolution, which conservatives seek to preserve, ushered in a radically innovative blueprint for liberty and self-government. Our problem is with jettisoning past greatness and replacing it with mediocrity -- which is precisely what has been done for at least a century.
What could be more noble, uplifting, beneficial or altruistic than giving every generation the best that humans have ever created? A generation that deprives the next generation of Beethoven, Shakespeare and Da Vinci is committing a combination of child neglect and civilizational suicide.
Why, then, isn't everyone -- at least as regards conserving the best of the past -- a conservative?
Here is why:
Since so few people in any generation can equal, let alone excel, the greatest of the past, conserving the past does not allow almost anyone living at the present time to shine.
Therefore, if I can't compose great tonal music, I won't even bother trying. I might shine, however, if I write "atonal" music.
If I can't paint like a great classical artist, I will jettison all rules of art. I'll throw paint onto a canvas or place a crucifix in a jar of my urine and call such things "art" -- and demand that you, too, jettison all standards.
If I can't hope to match Shakespeare, I will dismiss Shakespeare as just another Dead White Male and replace him with living nonwhite females who possess exponentially less talent.
The same holds true for teachers. Many of them are bored at the thought of teaching Shakespeare every year. So, they, too, opt for "change" and "innovation" over excellence -- but thereby deprive their students of the best.
Likewise in the moral sphere. Why would I teach the moral roots of our society -- the Bible, the Ten Commandments, Aristotle, the American Constitution, the Founders? That would mean I have nothing particularly important to say regarding morality and society. Again, I won't shine. So, I will ignore or even reject those moral codes and devise a new moral system.
That's what Karl Marx did, quite consciously -- which is why he hated Christianity and Judaism. Only if he could overthrow Bible- and God-based morality could his new morality be taken seriously. So, he replaced God with man, and he replaced good and evil with rich and poor, oppressor and oppressed. Today we are witnessing another rejection of God- and Bible-based morality, replacing the moral categories of good and evil with racial categories -- white and black.
And talk about innovation. What could be more innovative than "men give birth"? While conservatives are boringly conserving the fact that men are men, women are women, and one cannot become the other, the believers in change and innovation insist that sex/gender is completely subjective.
A couple of weeks ago, Time Magazine inadvertently gave the game away.
In the introduction to its hundredth anniversary edition, the CEO and editor of Time described the purpose of the magazine.
You probably think they would write something like, "to report the news as truthfully as possible." But you would be completely wrong.
Here is what the CEO and editor wrote: "As we begin our second century, that spirit of innovation and disruption inspires us every day."
"Innovation and disruption." There you have it.
Reporting news as truthfully as possible is not just boring. It is worse than that. It is conservative.
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2023/03/28/do-conservatives-oppose-change-n2621190
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40 State Legislatures Have Passed or Introduced Legislation to Restrict Transgender Child Abuse
We undoubtedly are in the middle of one of the largest legislative pushes against child abuse in our nation’s history. This child abuse, masquerading as “gender-affirming care,” has been taken up as a banner of humanity by progressives over the past five years—and they encourage children to mutilate their own bodies if the kids feel they’ve been born in the wrong one.
In many cases, public schools have begun hiding gender transition information from students’ parents, with activist groups claiming that a child’s transition must be protected at all costs and demonizing disagreeing parents as “abusive.”
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been outraged at shocking videos and other images of permanently scarred children who have undergone “transgender treatments” as adults encouraged those children to abandon all reason in the pursuit of affirmation.
In response, 40 state legislatures have passed or introduced legislation to restrict the practice of transgender child abuse.
Although 10 states currently ban transgender experiments on minors, 21 others are considering legislation that would ban minors from receiving transgender hormonal “treatments” or surgery.
The American Civil Liberties Union has attempted to rally national support against these bills as attacks against all LGBTQ+ individuals, but the bills have gained incredible traction as the gruesome nature of the procedures has been exposed to the public.
“Treatments” include:
—Phalloplasty, in which girls’ forearms are stripped of muscle and skin to create a fake penis that doesn’t function. Videos of this procedure being used on minors played a major role in Tennessee’s outlawing the practice for minors.
—Castration and “Penile Inversion Vaginoplasty,” in which boys’ penises are cut off and a wound is created to simulate a vagina. These wounds must be kept forcibly open as the body attempts to close the hole—a serious risk for infection and cancer.
—Mastectomy and “Top Surgery,” in which incisions are made below the breasts and muscle, fat, and glands are removed. Before Florida banned the practice on minors, one surgeon, Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher, provided “top surgeries” to multiple children around age 15 every month—claiming to have operated on about 40 children a month.
—Feminizing/Masculinizing Hormone Therapies, in which teenagers are given heavy doses of estrogen and testosterone as well as experimental doses of other hormones to simulate levels of reproductive and stabilization hormones normally present in the opposite sex. Hormonal treatments pose a serious threat to several glands in the endocrine system, which can result in permanent sterilization, cancer, and gland failure in adults. No long-term studies have been done yet to show the impact of this “treatment” on minors with developing glands.
Additionally, the testimonies of several individuals who deeply regret their “gender transitions” have resonated with legislators and voters alike. They have begged Americans to stop allowing such a heinous practice.
The ACLU has tried flooding statehouses around the country with its own protesters to demand minors be given unfettered and private access to these medical experiments. These protesters often make false claims about what legislation does and doesn’t do to stoke emotional responses.
Hundreds of LGBTQ+ activists traveled to their state capitol buildings to protest, scream, and curse at legislators during public testimonies. If the ACLU and other LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations were attempting to persuade legislators to encourage children to be like those that showed up, they failed miserably.
Many legislators walked out of committee hearings on proposed bans of these experiments on minors convinced that many of the LGBTQ+ activists were mentally unstable. They witnessed yet another reason that minors should be protected from this abomination.
Certain state legislators have been making fools of themselves.
Nebraska state Sen. Megan Hunt, D-Omaha, threatened Friday to filibuster every future piece of legislation if the Nebraska Legislature were to pass a ban on transgender treatments for children.
“No one in the world holds a grudge like me,” Hunt told Republicans in the Nebraska Senate. “And no one in the world cares less about being petty than me. I don’t care. I don’t like you.”
Legacy media have attempted to classify these medical experiments as “gender-affirming youth care,” and consistently have painted the debate as a battle for freedom between young children wearing capes made of transgender flags and mean, old, religious bigots. These media outlets often obscure or ignore children and teens who detransition or heal from their gender dysphoria.
Such methods of news coverage have backfired, as social media posts by legacy media subtly praising transgender care find their comment sections flooded with images of double mastectomies, forearm lacerations, and other unhealthy examples of surgical “transgender affirmation.”
The matter hasn’t been settled yet, and Tennessee, Arkansas, Idaho, and Florida have encountered lawsuits from desperate activists attempting to hold the door open for child abuse.
As more evidence of the barbarism found in transgender “treatments” is presented, more legislation will follow to protect children from making a lifelong mistake.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/03/27/republicans-protecting-minors-from-trans-treatments
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28 March, 2023
National Geographic Permanently Canceled Geography Bee Over 'Equity' Concerns
Too many Indians and not enough blacks were winning
Had you heard about this? I had not, until writer Zaid Jilani highlighted it. It seems as though National Geographic's annual geography bee had been canceled in 2020 due to COVID -- and then permanently discontinued after "many conversations" about 'equity,' amid the identity-driven madness that consumed much of the country's elite institutions during that time frame.
Jilani clearly suggests that the 'equity' concern was about the (apparently) problematic nature of the winners' ethnic composition:
Here's how National Geographic announced the cessation of the bee in 2021:
The National Geographic Society is deeply proud of the 33-year legacy of the GeoBee and the millions of students, educators, parents, schools, and others who have participated in this iconic competition. In 2020, recognizing the difficult circumstances school communities found themselves in to safely educate students during the COVID-19 pandemic, we made the difficult decision to cancel the 2020-2021 GeoBee and instead focus on reimagining what a global geography experience for young people could look like entirely. After many conversations and reflections with students, educators, and community members, we’ve made the decision to permanently discontinue the National Geographic GeoBee to make way for new, transformative, and innovative geography education opportunities in which students around the globe can more equitably participate.
In the 'FAQ' section of the announcement page, we get further confirmation that this decision was fueled by (or at least publicly justified by) woke identity politics:
Why did the National Geographic Society choose to permanently discontinue the GeoBee?
While we are proud of the National Geographic GeoBee’s 33-year legacy, we believe that this moment presents an opportunity to reimagine geography education and empower young people around the world as solution-seekers to confront our century’s most pressing challenges. In addition to the drop in GeoBee registration in 2020, important shifts—from the COVID-19 pandemic to *an increased focus on racial injustice* —challenge us to find new, transformative, meaningful ways to engage young people globally in geography.
They claimed that they were "deeply proud" of the bee's decades-long history and legacy, but they had to permanently end it to help enable "an increased focus on racial injustice." They dutifully used the buzz word "reimagine," which has also been a favorite of the 'defund the police' crowd, which expresses vague desires to "reimagine" policing and criminal justice. And the National Geographic statement claimed a desire to "make way for" new forms of geography educational experiences in which students "can more equitably participate." It's not at all a stretch for Jilani to translate this into "too many kids with the wrong sorts of skin colors were winning this competition, so we're getting rid of it." Can you feel the progress? These are adults effectively telling children, "sorry kids, we've gotta 'equity' away this thing that you’re good at and work hard on! Your racial and ethnic backgrounds are kind of a problem. Something-something-representation. Thanks for the memories, though."
Relatedly, do Asians 'count' as 'people of color'? It's a complicated and uncomfortable question for the wokest in our society, with a few wild examples that come to mind. Are these expressions of frustration and concern legitimate? Or are they white supremacy adjacent, or whatever?
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In Brief: 42% of America’s Murders Occur in 1% of Democrat Counties
America doesn’t have a crime problem; it has a Democrat problem.
Most Americans know that crime isn’t epidemic in all of our nation’s counties. Journalist Daniel Greenfield makes a compelling case that the real problem is Democrats.
He begins by highlighting the Democrat effort to “spin high crime rates caused by their pro-crime policies” as being “a Republican problem.” Their lackeys in the media are all too happy to run interference. The truth, however, refutes this lie.
Take Oklahoma, for example, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently did. He claimed, “Oklahoma’s murder rate was almost 50 percent higher than California’s, almost double New York’s.”
Krugman, who somehow has a Nobel Prize, failed to note that most of the murders were coming out of Oklahoma City and Tulsa. In last year’s gubernatorial election, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt won most of the state while Oklahoma, Tulsa and Cleveland counties however went to leftist Democrat Joy Hofmeister. The ‘blue’ parts of Oklahoma are also red with blood.
“The fact is the rates of violent crime are higher in Oklahoma under your watch,” Hoffmeister had claimed in a viral gubernatorial debate attack. Oklahoma had 287 murders in 2020: 166 came out of Oklahoma County and Tulsa County, the two counties that supported Hoffmeister.
Oklahoma County and Tulsa are two of the 62 counties that were responsible for 56% of America’s murders in 2020. A groundbreaking study by John R. Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center, revealed that “1% of counties have 21% of the population and 42% of the murders” and “2% of counties contain 31% of the population and 56% of the murders.”
The 1% of bloody red counties include such Democrat strongholds as Philadelphia, New York City, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Dallas, D.C., Miami-Dade, Milwaukee, San Diego, St. Louis, Chicago’s Cook County, Houston’s Harris County, Detroit’s Wayne County, Memphis’ Shelby County, Phoenix’s Maricopa County, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, and many others.
Joe Biden easily won all of those counties, which account for huge percentages of their states’ murders. “There isn’t a red state murder problem,” Greenfield says, “red states have a Democrat crime problem.”
The CPRC study showed that while 2% of counties populated by Democrats were responsible for 56% of the country’s murders, 52% of counties had no murders and 68% of counties had at most one murder.
These numbers clearly show that America is not a violent country, that we do not have a crime problem and that gun culture is not the issue: crime culture in Democrat cities is the issue.
Why is this? Several reasons: Democrat politicians create more criminals by destroying families with government policy. They then cater to the criminals overrunning their cities by either going easy on them or by criticizing and defunding police — problems that got exponentially worse as they fomented division based on racial grievances after the death of George Floyd. This isn’t, contra Krugman, a mystery.
Greenfield concludes:
America could be a safe and pleasant place to live. And the majority of its counties, which are mostly Republican, are. Unfortunately many of its Democrat counties are broken places, packed with broken families, criminal cultures and leftist politicians who pander to the criminals.
And the party and its media cover it up with lies about systemic racism.
As David Horowitz warned in, ‘I Can’t Breathe: How a Racial Hoax Is Killing America’, the consequences of these lies is more of the same misery, more crime and more death.
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Did New Yorkers Die, So a DA Could Target Trump?
Than Htwe, a 58-Year-Old Asian American woman, was walking with her son up the stairs of a Chinatown subway station when they were violently assaulted by a violent thug. Than, who had been on her way to a Buddhist temple, had her head smashed into the ground and died. The thug responsible got a mere 1-3 years in prison which effectively amounted to time served.
This has become typical under Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.
Bragg’s office let a man accusing of raping a teenage girl go with 30 days and probation. A week before sentencing he went on a “sex-crime spree” attacking four different women. One woman stopped his attempt to rape her by hitting him on the head with a hammer: doing the job that the DA wouldn’t.
A gang member facing four grand larceny charges was set loose by Bragg’s pro-crime people before he mugged a 14-year-old boy.
A Muslim thug who took part in a brutal assault on a Jewish man near a pro-Israel rally boasted, “If I could do it again, I would do it again.” Despite that, Bragg’s office offered him a plea deal of six months.
When Bragg took office, he released a Day One memo which told prosecutors not to pursue prison sentences for many crimes including armed robberies and not to ask for life sentences.
As a result of his pro-crime guidelines, more than half of felony cases were downgraded to misdemeanors. Felony convictions fell from 68% to 51%, misdemeanor convictions from 53% to 29% and very few of those ever saw prison. Bragg’s pro-crime prosecutorial pipeline turned felonies into misdemeanors and then the offenders never served a day in prison.
Murders rose 10%, aggravated assaults were up 11% and robberies shot up 25%
Bragg justified his pro-crime policies by arguing that he was trying to use resources more efficiently. He claimed that his Day One memo refusing to prosecute many crimes was about freeing up “prosecutorial resources”. When Bragg’s office dropped most of the charges against a serial shoplifter, they claimed it would have been a “waste of resources” to go forward.
What was Bragg really focusing on?
In 2022, even as violent crimes shot up and the Manhattan DA’s office claimed that it wasn’t prosecuting criminals because it was shorthanded, it hired Matthew Colangelo, a former Biden DOJ appointee and Sotomayor clerk who had headed over to the New York State Attorney General’s office to go after Trump. Colangelo’s current salary isn’t listed, but he was earning $203,000 at the federal level and isn’t likely to have taken a pay cut to work for Bragg.
“Matthew Colangelo brings a wealth of economic justice experience combined with complex white-collar investigations, and he has the sound judgment and integrity needed to pursue justice against powerful people,” Bragg bragged. It was no secret whom Bragg had in mind.
While Bragg hired a legal hit man to go after Trump, crime victims were mourning as their attackers were cut loose because the Manhattan DA’s office claimed not to have the resources.
The investigation of Trump had been led by Susan Hoffinger, the head of the Manhattan DA’s office of investigations, at a salary of $208,600, along with a team of three others. The full cost of the pursuit of Trump and his associates on petty charges likely run well into the millions.
The Mueller investigation’s obscene $32 million price tag was bad enough, but at the federal level, millions and even billions come out of the petty cash drawer. DA Alvin Bragg however told crime victims that he had to free criminals because his office didn’t have enough resources.
Bragg didn’t have enough resources to help crime victims, but plenty to go after Trump.
How many people were killed, how many were robbed, beaten and raped because Bragg made targeting Trump into his priority? Most crimes are committed by career criminals who go in and out of the system until they’re finally prosecuted and locked up for good. Taking one criminal out of circulation for even a few years can save lives. The failure to prosecute however costs lives.
An extra 50 people were killed in Manhattan on Bragg’s watch. How many of those people really had to die?
An extra 159 women were raped.
An extra 3,524 people were robbed.
An extra 4,197 people were assaulted.
How much of that could have been prevented if Bragg had focused his “prosecutorial resources” on pursuing criminals, instead of giving perps a pass, while focusing on political crimes?
Bragg’s war against former President Trump is fully consistent with his attitude.
When Jose Alba, a bodega store worker, was assaulted and defended his life by stabbing the thug, Bragg hit him with the highest possible murder charges and $250,000 bail. Those charges were later dropped. A similar case involving fishmarket workers also played out more recently.
Soros DAs consider criminals to be victims and those who defend themselves to be criminals.
It would be a mistake to imagine that Bragg, like Soros DAs around the country, is reluctant to use the powers of his office. Despite all the chatter about “restorative justice” and “diversion programs”, they gleefully unleash ruthless force against their political opponents. That’s why St Louis’ Kim Gardner came after Mark and Patricia McCloskey who displayed firearms in order to deter an invasion by members of a BLM hate mob. It’s why Bragg is going after Trump.
Progressive prosecutors are really political prosecutors and Bragg is one of the worst of the lot.
Before Bragg, New York State Attorney General Letitia James calmly watched exploding crime rates while going after the NRA and then Trump with a view to running for governor. The Manhattan DA is just following in her footsteps by prosecuting political crimes instead of crimes.
Bragg hopes that maddened Manhattanites hate Trump enough to ignore the fact that he has allowed criminals to run free. And he expects to use the case to run for higher office.
For Manhattanites the question is whether they want public safety or a Trump prosecution.
DA Alvin Bragg is out to redeem a year of criminal terror with a Trump arrest. And if New Yorkers had to die, be beaten, robbed and raped to make it happen, that’s a small price to pay.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/did-new-yorkers-die-so-a-da-could-target-trump/
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Australia: Developers thrown huge tax incentives to fix housing crisis: Property developers who build affordable homes will receive a slew of tax concessions
The tax concessions are attractive so developers may grab them. The fact that only one out of 10 homes has to be "affordable" is a racket. The developer will provide minimal facilities in one propery and build the rest to an attractive standard. So the poor will still get only the most basic accommodation
Property developers who build affordable homes will received a slew of tax concessions including land tax slashed in half Treasurer Cameron Dick has revealed.
Owners of build-to-rent projects will have their land tax bill slashed in half for 20 years if they make one in every 10 units an “affordable home”.
Other available tax concessions include a full exemption on the 2 per cent foreign investor land tax surcharge also for 20 years.
A full exemption from the additional foreign acquirer duty for the future transfer of a build-to-rent site will also be available.
The concessions will come in on July 1, 2023.
Mr Dick said the private construction sector was “at capacity” across Australia, and the government was “working with industry to identify innovative ideas that create new pipelines of housing”.
It comes as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced hundreds more emergency hotel rooms across Queensland will be funded under a $28m boost to the state government’s housing response package for another year.
The announcement comes as the state government prepares to focus the parliamentary sitting week on housing, including the push to limit rent increases in Queensland to once a year.
The government will unveil the rent shake up as housing stakeholders gather on Tuesday to look at progress from last year’s housing summit, which the Premier called following The Courier-Mail’s Hitting Home series.
Under the changes, it is understood property owners and landlords will only be allowed to lift the rent on their property once every 12 months.
The move would bring Queensland in line with other states, such as Victoria and South Australia – where the rental price on a property can generally only be changed once a year.
Ms Palaszczuk on Tuesday morning also confirmed the state government would fund its immediate housing response package for an extra year to the tune of $28m.
The support would help “our most vulnerable Queenslanders facing homelessness and housing stress” and including funding more than 600 emergency hotel room spots, and help pay bond payments.
“Through our immediate housing response for families package we've supported more than 4000 families with over 44,000 nights of accommodation,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
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27 March, 2023
Why So Much Anti-Jewish Hatred?
The article below asks the question but provides no real answer to it. Yet the answer is as old as the hills: Envy of Jewish success and dislike of Jewish supremacism. I have been studying antisemitism since the 1970s and published my findings mainly in Jewish journals. My comprehensive paper on the subject is here
In Zur Judentum, even Karl Marx despised Jewish success in business and after Prussia emancipated the Jews in 1812, Jewish success spread into many other fields. In prewar Germany, Jews sat at the pinnacle of most endeavours in society, as they do to this day in the USA. It is a little less obvious in the USA today as few Americans recognize Askenazi names when they see them. The mames concerned are of German origin and they stand out if you know German, as I do: Fink, Blum, Bankman-Fried etc. So even to me it is slightly irritating to see the surnames of most of the prominent people that I read about. The names are overwhelmingly of Jewish origin and their frequency leaves the impression that you have to be Jewish to get anywhere these days. Hitler drew that conclusion.
So people have learned from Hitler what not to do but what irritated him still exists. Both blacks and many whites resent Jewish success and such resentment will almost certainly always be with us
In the words of New York City Jewish leader Eric Dinowitz, “hate is on the rise—and the high-profile cases on the news are often the endpoint of hate.” He continued, “We see the assaults in Hell’s Kitchen and Times Square. We see mass murders at synagogues and supermarkets. And what this report card shows us are those seeds of hate are the precursors to physical violence.”
Dinowitz was responding to a new report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Digital Terrorism and Hate. And he was speaking in particular about hatred and violence against Jewish people.
According to JNS, “The report warns of increased antisemitic, racist, anti-LGBTQ messaging and calls for violence against black, immigrant and Jewish residents.”
What motivates such attitudes and actions? Why is that, “Among all racial and religious groups, Jews remain the greatest hate crime target”? And why is it that Jews are targeted by both White Supremacists and Black Supremacists? (I began documenting this more than 30 years ago. It is even worse today.)
One group that received attention in the report was the Black Hebrew Israelites (or, just Hebrew Israelites as they call themselves today), whose views have been popularized by high-profile figures like Kanye West and Kyrie Irving.
Not only do they claim to be the true Israelites, they even supply a chart that purports to connect the 12 Tribes of Israel to various people groups in North and South America (seriously!). But they also deny that the Jewish people (which would include me) are true Jews.
In their eyes, we are the “synagogue of Satan” (based on a misinterpretation of Revelation 2:9 and 3:9) and “white Edomite devils.” (Yes, according to this cult, Jacob’s son Esau, also called Edom, was white, and White Jews today are actually his devilish descendants.)
On a regular basis, we receive comments like this on our YouTube channel: “Hitler is an Idumean [= Edomite] devil like yourself Dr. Brown. The holocaust never happened. So stop lying to the world.” And it was posted by – get this – “The Tribe of Levi”!
If that’s not enough, consider that, according to the Hebrew Israelite chart used by the Sicarii, which is the most militant sect among them, the people of Haiti today are the tribe of Levi. I bet you didn’t know that before!
I recently debated the leader of the Sicarii on the subject of “Who Are the Legitimate Children of Israel? Ashkenazi Jews or the 12 Tribe Chart?” (You can watch the debate here.)
And while we have interacted cordially since the debate, I did challenge him on his rhetoric, including lines like this from February 2022: “That's how this movie ends man all right. That's the future of this world. Black and Latino people ruling the world.
“[Jesus Christ] is a big angry black man, a black man whose eyes are red and he's ready to come and kill. He wants to stomp people’s brains out of their cranium. He wants to step on you people’s heads until your brains come out.
“Remember when 50 Cent [said], ‘and his brain came out the top like jack-in-the-box’? Remember? That’s one of my favorite lines, right? That's what Christ is coming back to do.”
You can be assured that “you people” includes those of us who are not people of color, especially White Jews.
Yet my quotation of these words at the end of the debate only brought a smile to his face, along with lots of affirmation from his followers in the large chat. (There were as many as 4,500 people watching at once on the host’s channel. And moments ago, when I went to the channel while writing this article, they were playing a clip from my recent YouTube video discussing the debate. A comment posted on the screen read: “Who is this pink devil?” So, I graduated from white to pink!)
In reality, though, this is nothing to joke about. It was reported one year ago that, “Antisemitic hate crimes were up 400% last month, according to new data released by the New York Police Department.”
Specifically, “Many of these incidents targeted Orthodox people dressed in distinctive clothing, like the Jewish man who was punched in Bed-Stuy on Feb. 7 while walking on Shabbat.”
And what is a typical, Hebrew Israelite response to such things, “This edomite [meaning me, when I referenced such crimes during the debate] showed himself to be a devil. He said *fake*Jews are being attacked by African Americans.”
The reality is that words have consequences, and attitudes of hatred will leads to acts of hatred. But the question still remains: Why? Why the Jews?
When I debunk the nonsense of the 12 Tribes Chart, I feel no animosity towards any of the peoples on the chart, including Mexicans (who are supposed to be the lost tribe of Issachar!) or the Seminole Indians (who are supposed to be the lost tribe of Reuben!) or African Americans (who are supposed to be the tribe of Judah!). And, based on the comments I see when I address these things, no one who agrees with me feels animosity as a result of these people being fake Israelites. (To be clear, there are Black and Hispanic Jews. No one is questioning that. What is being utterly rejected is the information on the chart.)
Yet when the Hebrew Israelites call Ashkenazi Jews (and other Jews) “fake Jews,” it triggers visceral hatred and anger towards us. Why?
I can only offer two suggestions. First, these Black Americans, who have historically suffered so greatly at the hands of White Americans in the past, have fastened their resentment and anger on White Americans today, in particular White Jews.
Second, antisemitism is demonic and needs no rational explanation. As Sigmund Freud commented in 1927, “With regard to anti-Semitism, I don’t really want to search for explanations; I feel a strong inclination to surrender my effects in this matter and find myself confirmed in my wholly nonscientific belief that mankind on the average and taken by and large are a wretched lot.”
What we can say with assurance is that we must confront these hateful attitudes and ideologies wherever we find them, since they will not go away on their own. And we must be determined to overcome hatred with love and lies with truth. It’s a long battle, but it’s a winning strategy.
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Understanding the uproar in France
The demonstrators at Place de la République in Paris were chanting, weirdly, in Italian: “Siamo tutti antifascisti,” — “We are all antifascists.” In French, they targeted their chief enemy, the president: “We are here, even if Macron doesn’t want it.”
Watching them were ranks of massed riot police, who, in the French policing tradition, made no effort to mingle with the crowd and defuse trouble, but instead stood waiting for the moment to unleash their tear gas and batons. The crowd were waiting for it, too. “ACAB,” they chanted, the English abbreviation for “All Cops Are Bastards”. “A-ca-buh”, it came out in French.
Then someone set a dustbin on fire — the perfect Instagram image — and other demonstrators began filming it. They knew they were taking their places in a glamorous Parisian tradition, stretching from 1789 through 1944 and 1968. At last the police advanced, and people began chucking bottles.
France was in turmoil even before Emmanuel Macron’s unilateral decision last week to raise the minimum general retirement age from 62 to 64, after he couldn’t get it voted through parliament. In Paris, following a winter of rolling strikes, the metro is becoming a theoretical concept, while rats pick through heaps of uncollected garbage. Peak Paris was arguably reached last Saturday, with a demonstration for the rats. “NO, rats are not responsible for all that’s wrong with France!” said the organising group, Paris Animaux Zoopolis.
French anger transcends pensions and Macron’s high-handedness. There’s a generalised, long-term rage against the state and its embodiment, the president. After 20 years living here, I’ve become used to the French presumption that whoever they elected president is a moronic villain, and that the state, instead of being their collective emanation, is their oppressor. But Macron’s unpopular ramming through of a higher retirement age without a vote increases the risk that the French will follow Americans, Britons and Italians and vote populist: President Marine Le Pen in 2027. The far-right’s vote in presidential run-offs has gradually risen this century, to 41 per cent last year.
France can’t go on like this. It’s time to end the Fifth Republic, with its all-powerful presidency — the closest thing in the developed world to an elected dictator — and inaugurate a less autocratic Sixth Republic. Macron might just be the person to do it.
The Fifth Republic was declared in 1958, amid the chaos of the Algerian war and fears of a military coup. The constitution was written for and partly by Charles de Gaulle, the 6ft 5in tall war hero, the “man of providence” whose very name made him the embodiment of ancient France. He consented to return as leader if France muzzled political parties and parliamentarians. (He even disliked his own party, the RPF, the Rassemblement du peuple français.)
So the constitution created a strong executive, albeit not centred on the president. Clause 49.3 allowed the executive to over-rule parliament, and pass laws without a vote. Triggering the 49.3 allows opposition parties to file a no-confidence motion. If the motion fails, the law is considered passed. The pensions manoeuvre was the 11th time that Élisabeth Borne, Macron’s prime minister, had invoked 49.3 in 10 months in power.
In the 1958 constitution, the president was still a relatively modest figure, elected by about 80,000 officials. But in 1962, de Gaulle enhanced the president’s status: he would be elected by universal suffrage. As de Gaulle later explained: “The indivisible authority of the state is entrusted entirely to the president.”
The Fifth Republic’s governing philosophy became a sort of French-Confucian rule by the cleverest boys in the class, plucked from all ranks of the population. Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France’s father sold affordable ladieswear, President Georges Pompidou’s was a small-town schoolteacher, and President François Mitterrand’s the stationmaster of Angoulême. Typically at G7 summits, the leader with the highest IQ and broadest hinterland beyond politics is the French president.
The republic’s technocrats gradually extended their writ to the most isolated villages. Almost everything that moved in western Europe’s largest country was administered from a few square kilometres in Paris. The various waves of “decentralisation” since 1982 never got far. The guiding belief of Parisian technocrats, says the liberal writer Gaspard Koenig, is “étatisme”, statism. He notes that they are typically described as “servants of the state”, rather than of the people.
The deal became that the French would hand over a big chunk of their income to the state, and navigate an often nightmarish bureaucracy, in exchange for free education, healthcare, pensions and often even subsidised holidays.
Into the 1990s, the system more or less worked. France experienced its “Trente Glorieuses” — 30 glorious years of economic growth, from 1945 until 1975. It built Europe’s fastest trains, the TGVs; co-created the world’s fastest passenger plane, Concorde; it went on to invent the proto-internet, Minitel, which French people used to book tennis courts and have phone sex; it pushed Germany into creating the euro; and became an independent actor in world affairs. The all-powerful presidency enhanced France’s international standing: the administration spoke with one man’s voice, and foreign leaders always knew which French number to call.
The moment when the Fifth Republic lost its sheen was possibly the oil shock of 1973, since when the economy has mostly stagnated. Or perhaps it was April 21 2002, when far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the run-off of the presidential elections. He lost to Jacques Chirac, but from then on, spurred by French disquiet over immigration and unemployment, there was a credible threat to the republic.
The disenchantment with the president showed in approval ratings. Mitterrand (president from 1981 to 1995) and Chirac (1995-2007) generally had ratings between 40 and 60 per cent, according to pollsters Kantar Sofres. But the last three presidents, Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande and Macron, have usually ranged between 20 and 40 per cent. Hollande’s rating in one poll hit 4 per cent (not a typo). These figures from the post-heroic age were too small for de Gaulle’s job. Few voters now even expect that the next president will be the national saviour. Although Marine Le Pen may become president, she too has lost her magic after years of scandals. It’s hard to attach fantasies to her today.
But the technocrats look tarnished too, especially since they have congealed into a self-perpetuating caste. Today’s ruling class consists disproportionately of white sons of the book-owning high bourgeoisie, who travelled together from Parisian Left Bank nursery school to Left Bank école préparatoire, where they crammed for exams for the grandes écoles, before acquiring their own Left Bank apartment. If they didn’t come from Paris, they generally moved there as teenagers, like Hollande, a rich doctor’s son from Normandy, or Macron, a neurologist’s son from Picardy.
It was as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, a south-western postman’s son, had warned decades earlier: the French elite was reproducing itself. (And nobody mastered elite self-reproduction better than Bourdieu himself: all his three sons followed him to the most intellectual grande école, the École Normale Supérieure on the Left Bank, which trains social scientists.)
French technocrats spend their working lives in a few arrondissements inside the Périphérique, the ring road that encircles the Parisian court like a moat. They treat the rest of France almost like a colony, inhabited by smelly peasants who failed to absorb the Parisian culture they had been taught at school, and who vote far right or far left.
The fundamental facts of life outside Paris escape many decision makers. Jean-Pierre Jouyet, an École Nationale d’ Administration (ENA) classmate and right-hand man of Hollande, realised that large swaths of the countryside had no broadband internet only because he suffered the experience in his second home (his parents’ old house) in Normandy. He never got around to alerting Hollande. “In my defence,” he notes in his memoir L’Envers du décor, “nobody in government was interested in the subject.” When Macron decided to add a few cents to the fuel tax in 2018, he had no idea it would spark a months-long nationwide uprising by the gilets jaunes, the “yellow vests”, because he and the technocrats around him hadn’t grasped how much people beyond the Périphérique relied on their cars.
When things go wrong, the French blame the technocrats — and above all the president, who decides without consulting them. Ordinary people’s lives feel determined, down to the day they can retire, by a Parisian pretend meritocracy from which they were excluded at birth. Three-quarters of people who identify as belonging to “popular classes” say they feel the object of social contempt and lack of recognition, reports Luc Rouban, an expert on politics at Sciences Po, an elite Paris university. This is particularly galling, given the country’s promise, proclaimed from the facades of every post office and primary school: “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”. France isn’t the UK or US, where the power of social class or money is frank.
While the French population defy the technocrats, so the technocrats defy the population, diagnoses Chantal Jouanno, who has just served five years as head of the National Commission for Public Debate. French “deciders” often describe society as “conflictual, uncontrollable, irreformable”, she told Le Monde. Perhaps she was thinking of Macron’s jibe about “refractory Gauls”. On Wednesday he lamented, “We have not succeeded in sharing . . . the necessity of doing this reform,” as if the problem were the public’s inability to understand reality.
Since Macron became president in 2017, popular anger has targeted him. It was said of US President George HW Bush that he reminded every woman of her first husband. Macron reminds every French person of their boss: an educated know-it-all who looks down on his staff. He understood that Hollande had lacked presidential grandeur, and cast himself as “Jupiterian”; but most voters just saw a jumped-up little ex-banker dressing up as king. Even many who voted for him never liked him, nor felt that they were endorsing his platform, with its pledge to raise retirement ages. In both the 2017 and 2022 run-offs, the other choice was Marine Le Pen. The French president has gone in 60 years from “man of providence” to “not the devil”.
Macron’s brief employment at Rothschild inevitably generated antisemitic conspiracy theories among people who confuse today’s boutique Parisian investment bank with the Europe-straddling behemoth of the 19th century. A common jibe is that Macron is “neoliberal” or worse, “ultraliberal”: busy dismantling the French social safety net to benefit the shady forces of global capital.
The charge is ludicrous: France remains about the least neoliberal place on Earth. Government spending in 2021 was 59 per cent of GDP, the highest in the OECD, the club of rich countries. The perennial French fear of losing entitlements — above all, their 25-year retirements — betrays how good their lives are. On the downside, people pay so much to the state that many run out of money at the proverbial “end of the month”. The French net median income — €22,732 in 2021 — is lower than in the northern European countries that France likes to see as its peers.
Especially after the gilets jaunes, Macron has tried to rein in the elite’s privileges. Sarkozy and his former prime minister François Fillon have both been sentenced for corruption, though neither has gone to jail yet and both are appealing. A new sobriety has been imposed on parliament: gone are the days of deputies taking pretty interns for Château Lafite-fuelled lunches on unregulated expenses.
Macron’s ministers have been taken off dossiers where they have conflicts of interest — though that has highlighted the sheer number of these conflicts within the tiny Parisian ruling caste: Marlène Schiappa, minister of state for the social economy, had to hand in much of her portfolio after shacking up with the boss of a big mutual health insurance provider. The minister for energy transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, cannot touch matters involving petrol company Perenco, which her dad used to run, nor deal with the energy company Engie, where her ex-husband is a senior director. And Jean-Noël Barrot, minister delegate for the digital economy, cannot handle matters involving Uber, where his sister is a communications chief.
These concessions haven’t appeased the population. Nor has the melting-away of the longstanding French scourge of unemployment. It’s now at 7.2 per cent, its lowest since 2008, without Macron getting any thanks. Such is the anger over ramming through the new pensionable age without a vote that he might struggle to pass any laws these next four years, unless he dares to resort to ramming them through without votes again.
The fruits of the Fifth Republic aren’t so bad. But the system itself has gone out of date, says Catherine Fieschi, founder of the think-tank Counterpoint. The state’s autocratic nature helps explain why the French are so angry despite living relatively well. You could describe the republic’s workings without mentioning the almost irrelevant parliament. France today has three branches of government: the presidency, the judiciary and the street. If the president decides to do something, only the street can stop him — by stopping the country through protests and strikes. Street and president rarely seek compromise. One wins, one loses.
Historically, the trade unions control the street. But as they too lose relevance — Macron barely consulted them over pensions — the street has become increasingly violent and undirected, from the leaderless gilets jaunes to today’s burning dustbins. My daughter’s lycée is intermittently blockaded by pupils waving banners with slogans such as “Against Capital”. At a neighbouring school, a group of pupils and teachers are conspiring to turn their own blockade into a week-long occupation, a sleepover with fun activities including designing banners and repainting buildings. My daughter’s friend there plans to participate till Saturday: “Then I’ll take my weekend.”
This is no way to run a country. In last year’s presidential elections, far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon campaigned on a promise of a “Sixth Republic”. He wanted a new constitution that shrank the powers of the “monarch president”.
But the person best-placed to usher in the Sixth Republic is Macron himself. He’s a politician who hunts big game, notes Fieschi. He has already variously tried to charm Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and to remake the French labour market, European defence and the EU. His schemes usually founder, but at least he aims high. A Sixth Republic is an idea on a Macronian scale. It could be his legacy, suggests Fieschi. It might just get the French train back on the rails.
On Monday his party, currently called Renaissance, sent an email to members headlined, “On the Reform of Institutions”. Members were invited to give their views on elections to parliament, the use or otherwise of referendums, and local powers. There was an open-ended question: “In a few words, on which subject(s) do you think it would be useful to organise a citizen’s convention?”
It’s a strength of France that it can update itself by revising its constitution — as it has done 24 times in the Fifth Republic. What might a Sixth Republic, or at least a reformed Fifth one, look like? Koenig recommends scrapping de Gaulle’s innovation of an elected president. That would deflate the role, and boost parliament’s status. Koenig also favours devolving powers to France’s 35,000 communes: in effect, local authorities. Surveys repeatedly show that the French have much more trust in their local representatives than in national ones.
Koenig made a symbolic run for president last year on a liberal platform of a shrunken presidency. Travelling around the country, he was enthused: many French people live in beautiful places, near mountains or beaches or sheep meadows. They are reasonably well off, eat well, and have the time to develop passions outside work.
They might function even better without some guy in Paris micromanaging their lives.
https://www.ft.com/content/b78f2a89-1062-4423-a4ba-fb4cdc56c683
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Barbie Kardashian and Ireland’s trans madness
Why are politicians so incapable of answering basic questions about biology? Yesterday it was Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s turn. A journalist asked him a yes or no question: ‘Do you believe that Barbie Kardashian is a woman?’ Barbie Kardashian, whose birth name was Gabrielle Alejandro Gentile, is a violent man who identifies as a woman. Last week he was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in jail – a women’s jail – for threatening to torture, rape and murder his own mother. He is, as the journalist who cornered Varadkar put it, ‘a violent biological male with a penis’.
So what was Varadkar’s answer to this easiest of questions? This was a straightforward query as to whether a person who was born male and has male genitalia and who issues violent threats against women is, as he claims, a woman. It wasn’t ‘No’. It wasn’t ‘Yes’, either. The questions seems to have stumped Ireland’s leader, which is bizarre given he studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin. Varadkar answered with a short, awkward silence followed by this statement: ‘Well, look, I, I, I, I don’t, I actually don’t know anything about the case yet, I saw, I first saw it reported at the weekend, erm, and, and, I’m going to have look into it.’
Look into it? All the facts were right there in front of him. The journalist laid them out. What’s more, if Varadkar had already heard about the case, at the weekend, that means he had plenty of time to come to the same conclusion that every other rational person in Ireland has come to: that this man is a man. That this biological male, who made vile threats against his own mum, is a bloke. And, furthermore, that he has absolutely no place in a women’s prison. Varadkar’s shirking of reason – presumably because he’s terrified of being targeted by hardline trans activists – was an embarrassment. He let down the women of Ireland. This is his Sturgeon moment.
To be fair to Varadkar, he did respond more sensibly to the follow-up question on whether he thinks violent biological men should be put in women’s prisons. ‘No, I don’t, quite frankly,’ he said. ‘If a situation that arose in Scotland has now arisen in Ireland,’ he said (referencing the notorious case of the female-identifying Scottish rapist Isla Bryson, who was initially put in a women’s prison before being moved to a male jail), ‘then we’re going to have to deal with it in a similar way.’ That’s promising. But huge questions still lurk. Including the question of why a clever, well-educated Taoiseach cannot say that an individual who threatened to use his penis to rape a woman is a man.
A man whose crime was to plot the atrocious torture and murder of a woman is being housed with women
The Barbie Kardashian case is deeply disturbing. Kardashian was convicted of seven counts of threatening to kill or cause serious harm to his mother. He hatched a plan to go to his mother’s house and overpower her with a knife, a screwdriver and boiling water. The judge described him as ‘unrepentant’ about his vile matricidal ideations. Perversely, Kardashian has been placed in the women’s section of Limerick prison. A man whose crime was to plot the atrocious torture and murder of a woman is being housed with women. This is a new low in the Irish state’s embrace of the transgender ideology.
It is nothing short of psychotic that someone like Kardashian has been put in a jail that will have many inmates who have experienced male violence. Gardai told Limerick Circuit Court that Kardashian poses a ‘significant threat’ to ‘the wider public’. One source told the Irish Mirror that Kardashian is considered ‘one of the most dangerous inmates in the system’. Prison authorities believe he is ‘far too dangerous’ to be allowed out to ‘interact with anyone else’, so he is currently in isolation. Apparently he’s taken out for one hour of exercise a day, during which he has to be ‘unlocked by several staff, as she [sic] poses that much of a threat’.
What madness is this? It’s like putting a fox in a henhouse and keeping a close eye on it to make sure it doesn’t attack the hens. Let’s be clear about what is happening here: the emotional and physical safety of female prisoners is being sacrificed to the narcissistic needs of a man who thinks he’s a woman. Kardashian’s desire to be treated as a woman is being elevated above the right of actual women not to be locked up with a violent man. The validation of this man’s gender identity is considered more important than the security of the women in Limerick’s prison estate. The reorganisation of the prison around flattering the identity of a dangerous man is a disgrace. It is state-endorsed misogyny.
Indeed, it is striking how much New Ireland – post-Catholic, politically correct – resembles Old Ireland. The religion might have changed – back then the state was beholden to old-world Catholicism, now it’s enamoured with the new religion of identity politics – but it is still women who lose out. In the past, the ruling ideology dictated that women should be incarcerated, in so-called laundries, if they committed sins of the flesh. Now the new ruling ideology, the furious insistence that every gender identity be respected and validated, dictates that women will sometimes have to be incarcerated with violent males, whether they like it or not. Then and now, ideological zealotry overpowers reason and subjugates the rights of women to the whims of men.
The Irish state and the Irish media need to get a grip. It is surely a type of delirium that media outlets are running with headlines like ‘Woman jailed for… threats to murder her mother’, and that so many in the Irish elite accept that Kardashian is literally a woman. Let us hope Kardashian is removed from Limerick Women’s prison with extreme urgency. But even then, Varadkar will have to answer the question that was put to him yesterday. Is Barbie Kardashian a woman: yes or no?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/barbie-kardashian-and-irelands-trans-madness/
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Woman Finds Out the Truth About Free Health Care the Hard Way: 'I Was in Excruciating Pain'
Leftists are often talking about how cruel it is that the United States does not have a free public health care system.
They say America should ditch its health care system in favor of the socialist universal health care provided in several European countries.
With that said, it would be interesting to hear what a European has to say when it comes to the benefits of free health care.
Now, we have a video that does just that, and it would be helpful for every American socialist to see it.
British model and reality TV star Chloe Veitch recently posted a video on TikTok in which she compared her experience at a U.K. dentist with her experience at an American dentist.
The beginning of the video left no doubt about where she was going.
“Health care in the U.K. is free,” she said, “but it’s rubbish.”
Veitch then described how she went to a dentist in the United Kingdom a few months ago as she was in “excruciating pain” because of a tooth problem. There, she said, the dentist told her nothing was wrong with her tooth.
“They didn’t do an X-ray. They didn’t do any checks,” she said in the social media post.
She then traveled to the United States, where she paid $700 for a visit to the dentist. Veitch said she was told her tooth was “rotten” and required a major procedure if she wanted any relief from the pain. She had it done, of course.
Obviously, this experience was very frustrating for Veitch, who ended the video by making an obscene gesture and saying, “F*** free health care.”
Many people on Twitter responded to the video saying it was unsurprising that a socialist health care system, which looks good in theory, would not work in practice.
Of course, Veitch is not the only one to notice the problems with the U.K.’s health care system. In December, amid a massive strike by nurses in the country, a 93-year-old woman in Wales was left on the floor with a broken hip for 25 hours waiting for paramedics to arrive.
Despite all the evidence of the failings of “universal health care” in other countries, there are still many in this country, such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who want to see a similar system in place in the United States.
Why does the left keep insisting on a system that has proven time and again to provide patients with poor care?
Veitch has the means to travel to see an American dentist, but what about the millions of people who cannot afford to do so? Don’t they deserve to have a good health service in their country?
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/woman-finds-truth-free-health-care-hard-way-excruciating-pain
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26 March, 2023
It's not hate to allow women to have their own spaces and their own events
The desperation of the elites to look good lies behind this suddenly invented "trans" war. The elite are aware that others envy and dislike them so grab at anything that will make them look good and wise and noble. So the poor old trannies have suddenly been elevated to an important group requiring support at all costs
For a while "women" were a big cause to the elites but women were just a convenient group for them to use to show that they cared. The fact that they all along did not care about women at all is now so clearly revealed that they are not even prepared to name them. It must be quite a shock to genuine advocates for women to find that they have gone overnight from friend to enemy in the minds of the insecure Leftist elites
And once the elites have set the ball rolling and given the latest issue big support, lots of other attention seekers climb on board in support of the issue in the hope of also becoming seen as good and wise and noble. They too seize the chance to be seen as virtuous
There are two issues at stake in the transwars that are again finding their way to our shores with ‘Posie Parker’s’ (aka Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s) Australian Let Women Speak tour. These are: children’s bodily integrity, and women’s rights including the need for single-sex spaces. These issues have very different histories, politics, and ontologies but they coalesce around transgenderism because this is the point at which the conflict of interest arises.
On social media and in the legacy media this week, this critique has been presented as tantamount to Nazi ideology. What we have is a classic case of reductio ad Hitlerum, defined by Leo Strauss as a type of ad hominem used to derail arguments by creating a ‘guilt by association’. In other words, ‘playing the Nazi card’.
This means if neo-Nazis are on the steps of the Victorian Parliament, ushered around by police and with excellent camera crews capturing their Sieg Heil, and you happen to be in the vicinity, you’re ‘guilty by association’.
If you’ve been so propagandised as to assume that there is no legitimate discussion to be had around these issues, then you’re a victim of a corrupt media that has ceased to do its job. The Third Estate has well and truly died if a smallish group of women, including MPs, teachers, doctors, and philosophy professors, can’t gather in a public place to discuss matters of cultural and political importance to women.
When Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and progressive party leaders such as the Greens’ Adam Bandt define these women (or their protest) as associating with ‘neo-Nazis’, we have a gross misrepresentation at play and one that anyone participating in this charade should be ashamed of.
This whole mess is an orchestrated misrepresentation that amounts to propaganda.
It is obliterating the legitimate concerns of women regarding the safety and privacy of women and girls in rape crisis centres, women’s shelters, women’s prisons, women’s changerooms, and toilets. It is sabotaging the discussion around how women can possibly compete against natal males in sport, and of the gross inequality of quotas, prizes, or shortlists for women being filled by trans-identifying males.
It is also about the loss of meaningful language for motherhood, including the removal and replacement of words such as pregnant woman, mother, and breastfeeding (with abominations such as ‘vulva owner’, ‘birthing people’, and ‘chest feeder’). These are important conversations, nothing more, but also nothing less. It is not and never has been about the violation of trans people’s legal, civil, or social rights. It is about the recognition of women’s rights.
Sure, feel free to disagree but don’t engage in this false and indeed defamatory characterisation of the gender-critical feminist voice. There are two sides to this discussion; not one legitimate side (trans) and a motley assortment of neo-Nazi bigots. Moreover, we have seen misogynist overtones from male leaders who appear to dismiss women speaking about issues of fundamental importance like equality, privacy, safety, and the well-being of children.
The neo-Nazi optics are undoubtedly appalling, and one can’t help but wonder how this came about. At the very least, this alignment serves the status quo very well, as every polite mainstream-media-reading centre-Left, small ‘l’ liberal who, having never left their media ecosystem, assumes that ‘Terfs’ are a bunch of scary bigots with radical ‘far Right’ views. Political goal achieved.
A quick lesson in protests: not all who attend a protest are in agreement. Some are widely divergent politically. Moreover, ‘outside agitators’ can and are planted to stir up trouble and/or to alter the public’s perception. A quick lesson in propaganda: the truth doesn’t matter if the lie has been accepted. Certainly, in the public’s mind, ‘gender critical feminism’ and the important political issues this argument represents, have been thoroughly besmirched.
In the public’s mind, Kellie-Jay has a kitsch Norma Jean aesthetic going on and seems to be showcasing more star-spangled nylon and sequins as her social media following grows (and concomitantly, as we descend into the ‘bread and circuses’ era of the culture wars). Moreover, in my opinion she has failed to overtly distance herself from the far Right, as some local feminist groups have rightly pointed out.
Nonetheless, her message is direct and simple, delivered in a working-class idiom: ‘men can’t have vaginas’, ‘men can’t give birth’, ‘men can’t be women’, ‘men shouldn’t be in vulnerable women’s spaces’, ‘men can’t (or shouldn’t) compete in women’s sports’, and ‘children aren’t old enough to surgically remove their primary and secondary sex organs, or make decisions about adult sexuality or fertility’.
These were all uncontroversial statements not long ago. Indeed, the first three statements were common knowledge in all cultures, in all places, and across all time until maybe five years ago (that’s a pretty big sample!). At this point, inner-urban, educated progressives extrapolated an obscure set of gender ideologies localised to arcane corners of university Arts departments and gaslit or bullied anyone who disagreed.
Magically, and in lockstep, governments the world over introduced legislation and policy to allow self ID, to outlaw ‘conversion therapy’ (i.e., newspeak for adopting an exploratory approach to gender dysphoria rather than uncritical affirmation), to update the protected category of sex in law, and to revise statutes regarding sex discrimination so that sex-category was replaced with gender identity.
This effectively created a mandate around the acceptance of transgenderism with no capacity – politically or socially – to disagree. If the ‘choice’ is to agree or be an incorrigible bigot with few job prospects, except perhaps as Mark Latham’s cleaning lady, then most people are going to shut up and go along with this agenda. This is the coward’s bargain; it is not agreement.
Let’s stop pretending this doesn’t have the full force of the corporate-state and captured media and academia behind it. Let’s stop pretending that there are two sides to this ‘debate’: there is one side and a maligned minority of women bravely fighting for the right to have a conversation. As I have said before, what we are owed is more and better disagreement, not slogans and abuse.
Until a moment ago we all understood what a woman was, and we understood that men were physically stronger than women. Most also understood that women had been historically excluded from political rights with ongoing ramifications for their civil standing in liberal democracies. Feminism was the movement for women’s rights that began with married women’s property rights and culminated in suffrage and access to education and the professions. It was the movement to end women’s legal and political subjection. From second-wave feminism onwards, larger questions were asked concerning women’s role in society, the family, sexuality, and psyche as women entered into paid work en masse and redefined what it meant to be women.
That the ‘category of woman’ is now being jettisoned (or revised beyond all recognition) at the precise historical hour that women in the West have gained a political and cultural voice is disturbing. Moreover, in redefining women’s rights almost entirely in terms of queer identity politics, crucial issues such as women’s poverty and homelessness, sexual and domestic violence, and mothering and care work, fade from view. These issues barely raise a mention as sex-class transmogrifies into gender ID.
Assuming this debate is like other debates between say, liberals, and conservatives, or between opposing philosophical paradigms like positivism and hermeneutics, is sadly mistaken. This debate, like so many in the contemporary culture wars, is on an entirely new epistemological terrain: what is at stake here is nothing short of reality itself!
The ‘priors’ therefore of either side are no longer shared; we need rather to understand this issue (as with several other contested political issues) as a disagreement, not on a shared understanding of reality, but rather a disagreement about the nature of reality itself. The question pivots, interestingly enough, on what it means to be a woman.
A poignant example to illustrate this point can be seen in the nomenclature used: one party refers to themselves as ‘gender critical feminists’ and sympathetic media outlets adopt this terminology, sometimes situating it in the longer history of feminism. This side suggests that ‘transwomen’ are better understood as ‘trans-identifying males’ to locate both the person’s natal or biological gender and their preferred identification.
However, the other side, the trans activists and their allies, refer to gender-critical feminists as ‘transphobic’ and as committing dangerous ‘hate speech’. These are such egregious accusations that, if true, require punitive action and redress. Thus, a position itself is defined by one side as ‘gender critical’ and based on women’s ‘sex-based rights’ and by the other as ‘hate speech’. The issue pivots on the ‘category of woman’ which is defined by one side (the gender criticals) as a political class – a ‘sex class’ – founded in biology and given its contemporary meaning in society.
That is, from a classical feminist perspective, the category of woman is a biological category with political implications, namely subjection within a patriarchal society. The newer definition replaces gender with sex and defines the category of woman (or man) as one that can be opted into, it is a subjective state or a feeling. Thus, we haven’t even made it out of the paradigmatic gate before we find ourselves fighting over the nature of reality itself. The category of sex is the site of the struggle. If we cannot agree that sex exists or is materially, politically, and linguistically distinct from gender, then we are not arguing about the same thing. To invoke Smith’s famous aphorism regarding the two women arguing from their respective balconies: they were arguing from different premises!
To suggest that any discussion which assumes natal women have a claim on the sex category woman is a priori an act of discrimination is effectively to quash the discussion. It is to define it as an abominable act of hate speech before it is even out of the gate. How is this a fair discussion? To suggest that gender-critical feminists are neo-Nazis is transparent bullying and it’s coming from the top – literally the leader of the Victorian government – not from minorities as we’re being told. It has the sanction of the mainstream media who are hacks failing in their duty to the electorate to fairly represent the issues from all sides.
Parker’s Let Women Speak Tour gives women an opportunity to speak about their experience of this inflamed political and cultural conflict without being silenced.
In the sinkhole of partisan politics and propaganda this act of discursive generosity is defined as ‘far Right’. In the real world of heterodox politics and culture, Posie Parker’s message cuts across the increasingly defunct Right/Left divide and indeed speaks to women and men across the political spectrum.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/guilt-by-association-2/
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The Grotesque Motives Behind Transgenderism
Concerned parents and politicians, as well as the rapidly growing group of outspoken detransitioners, have actively engaged in bringing to light the troubling practices behind the progressive version of “gender identity.” The reality is that, behind the curtain, this trend of abandoning binary gender labels is not about the love and tolerance claimed in the marketing.
Your child’s first grade classroom is decorated as a rainbow-flooded utopia, there are tampons in your son’s middle school bathroom, and there’s a boy in a dress who is now allowed to undress in your high school daughter’s locker room. Parents are being forced to battle between what their child says they want and being afraid to reel them back in by questioning it, not wanting to appear as the hateful presence in their lives that their activist teachers have told kids they are.
Parents have given in to what seemed to be a new trend of self-discovery, wanting to ensure that their child is learning about different lifestyles, believing that this exposure will contribute to a well-rounded generation of young adults who understand love and tolerance at a level that society had never previously achieved.
However, the brazen rantings of unhinged left-wing activist teachers, the recommendations by medical and psychological experts to introduce material beyond just the exposure of different identities to young children, and the aggressive agenda to influence every child’s sexuality before they’re old enough to grasp these concepts has mobilized numerous parents and investigators to expose the true intentions behind the slogans and flags.
The background of some of the “experts” who are at the center of the policies surrounding sex-change surgeries and puberty blockers for children has been exposed — and it is nothing short of grotesque. The organization that they convene under to form these guidelines is known as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH.
In September 2022, WPATH released new guidelines under “The Standards of Care” (or SOC8) for children seeking potent, life-altering drugs and surgeries. The guidelines changed the suggested ages for hormones from 14 to nine, and when it comes to procedures like mastectomies or the construction of a non-functioning penis on a biological woman, the guidelines reduce the recommended ages from 15-17 for the former and 18 for the latter to basically no recommendation or restriction at all.
As disturbing as the new SOC8 updates are, the motives that drove these supposed authorities to make such drastic changes should stop any parent in their tracks before they consider sacrificing their child to this mutilation campaign disguised as scientific proof that the youth of today just need us to “support” them in living as their “true selves.”
Several of the WPATH panel members reportedly have a decades-long involvement in a fetish site called The Eunuch Archive, a forum that holds over 10,000 pornographic stories, surrounding sadomasochistic themes such as child rape, castration, and torture.
To those of us who have been following the history of gender ideology, it should come as no shock that the movement of the last few years is just as motivated by the pedophilic fantasies of twisted adults now as it was at its inception.
Dr. John Money was a prominent and well-known figure in the sphere of gender identity. As a doctor in the 1960s, he became a leading voice pushing the idea that binary gender expression is a social construct, and that it’s possible to socially construct gender stereotypes out of human beings simply by nurturing them otherwise.
In 1965, Janet and Ronald Reimer brought their seven-month-old twin boys to be seen by Money after a botched circumcision left one of the boys with irreversible damage to his penis. Money’s “expert” solution to the issue was to have the parents raise the injured twin, Bruce, as a girl — insisting that doing so would eliminate any notion of the boy’s biological sex within himself.
The “care” provided throughout the twins’ childhood included annual checkups with Dr. Money to monitor the progress of each child; sexual experiments beginning at age seven, wherein Money had the boys role-play sexual activities that might be carried out between a husband and wife; and taking nude photographs of the children, for which they were provided very specific instructions by Money on how to pose.
The parents believed that this “expert” had their children’s best interests in mind. They trusted that the “care” he was administering was to achieve the objective of feminizing their biologically male son and to lead him to be content with who he was. However, it is unclear if these parents understood that Money was truly conducting his own social experiment to prove his theories about gender identity, with no compelling proof that what he was doing would result in the intended outcome, and to also act out his own fantasies of child sexualization under the guise of healthcare.
(Some might have called this “gender-affirming healthcare.”)
Later in life, when both boys were informed of the truth behind their life experiences, the unaltered boy developed schizophrenia from the trauma, eventually ending his own life — and the twin who had started life as Bruce, then renamed as Brenda, returned to his male identity and was able to live in true contentment for a time, knowing who he really was. But due to trouble stemming from the lies spread by Money of the experiment on his identity being a success; the suicide of his brother; instability in his marriage; and the underlying struggles of his childhood, he too ended his life at age 38.
The foundation of this ideology set 60 years ago, the experiences of the Reimer brothers and the motivations behind their “care” are eerily similar to the mindset of today’s current policymakers and the numerous stories of detransitioners that are flooding social media every day.
Most people who buy into the “love and tolerance” slogan have honest intentions for just that. But the love and tolerance the activists are trying to create is not for children as they’re trying to figure out who they are. The love and tolerance being sought after is for those who wish to indulge their own desires with the most vulnerable among us, to be carried out without restriction or judgment.
What John Money hoped to accomplish almost 60 years ago is being played out before our eyes: Pedophiles granted access to children in the masses, with their parents being the prime enthusiasts for handing them over.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/95854
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The Left’s Long March Into Despotism
Author and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis once wrote: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own consciences.”
We are witnessing the consequences of this insufferable and pernicious ideology, primarily on the political and cultural left. The American right and left have often disagreed about societal objectives, or the best method by which to achieve those objectives, but they at least shared a commitment to certain principles: the sanctity of life and of the nuclear family, the protection of children, the primacy of truth, the importance of the rule of law and due process, the punishment of criminals, freedom of speech, religion and other civil liberties, the dignity of work, and a free press charged with the responsibility for holding the powerful accountable.
Over time, however, the Left has become so certain of its moral superiority that those previously sacrosanct principles have been sacrificed, one by one, on the altar of whatever utopic visions Leftists have for perfecting society. The hills Leftists have decided to die on now include abortion and infanticide, pornography and gender confusion in schools, exploiting children in dangerous and irreversible medical experimentation, homeless encampments and drug use in our cities, incentivized theft and other unpunished crime, open borders and unlimited illegal immigration, lack of election integrity, censorship of medical professionals, scientists and journalists who dare to question the prevailing government narrative, the politicization of law enforcement, and political persecution.
An overly powerful government is eventually populated with arrogant, greedy and unprincipled people who will stop at nothing to get what they want. The Founders understood this, which is why they drafted the Constitution to leave most power within the state governments (and thus more accountable to the people), and to further diffuse federal power by dividing it between three more or less co-equal branches.
The moral busybodies on the Left, to their chagrin, are not omnipotent; they resent that their objectives for a perfected society are continually thwarted by the limitations imposed by the Constitution; therefore they seek to undermine the Constitution wherever possible: by eliminating the Electoral College, changing the composition of the United States Senate, “packing” the U.S. Supreme Court, federalizing elections and removing laws that protect election integrity, permitting illegal immigrants to vote, bypassing Congress and having a president issue countless executive orders.
The country’s descent into destruction and depravity is being facilitated by leftists in media who defend the crooks and malfeasors, even as they grab power and engage in oppressive and unlawful practices without fear of legal sanction or citizen pushback. Millions of law-abiding Americans who oppose the Left’s takeover nevertheless do not realize the risks of our current trajectory; ordinary people never think things will get that bad — until they do.
In fact, American media has a long history of cheering for leftist movements and ignoring or justifying their grievous human rights abuses. They supported Lenin and then Stalin in the former Soviet Union, covering for their political purges, mass imprisonment and murder, the starvation of their own people. (Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Walter Duranty infamously defended Stalin’s actions, saying, “To put it brutally — you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”) They cheered for Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution in China that cost tens of millions of Chinese people their lives. They celebrated Fidel Castro’s Communist regime in Cuba. They praised the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia — at least until that army of university-educated malcontents and barely post-pubescent adolescents armed with Kalashnikovs drove millions of their countrymen into rice paddies and Phnom Penh prisons, where they were starved, tortured and shot to death, their bodies left to rot in piles in the “killing fields.” They praise Venezuelan dictators Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, despite their socialist policies having driven the country into abject poverty.
So we should be suspicious when today’s Left — including and especially the media — demands support for movements dressed up in lofty language and pithy phrases like “antiracist,” “Black Lives Matter,” “diversity, equity and inclusion” and the big kahuna, “climate change.” These ideologies share a number of disturbing traits with their Marxist predecessors:
No. 1: Their adherents insist that implementation of these policies requires the dismantling of our constitutional order, including the elimination of freedom, individual liberties, private property and the rule of law.
No. 2: Their leaders do not live by the standards they demand of everyone else; instead, they grow rich on guilt-driven donations, corporate sponsorships, and book deals; they purchase expensive real estate, travel around the world on private jets and enjoy first-class accommodations.
No. 3: Argument, disagreement and proof of the failure of the proffered policies is never permitted; the theories are treated as religious dogma, and the authors are viewed as prophets.
C. S. Lewis was right — the moral busybodies never sleep. They already have too much power; history shows us what can take place if they acquire more.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/95969 ?
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Progressives’ ‘good cause eviction’ bill spells doom for NYC housing
It’s hard to imagine making New York City’s housing market even worse, but the progressives in charge of the Legislature aim to do just that.
The city has more public and subsidized “affordable” housing (both in total and per capita) than any other — yet it’s in a perennial housing crisis. Nearly a million apartments are “rent-stabilized” — under a regime so onerous and discouraging of investment that some 60,000 are just being left vacant by their owners, rather than lose money on them.
Nor is there a way up and out for squeezed tenants: Thanks to zoning and NIMBY-ism, New York state as a whole has built less new housing than even other Northeastern states, let alone Texas and Florida.
Now the progressives want to distort this housing “market” even more.
Their “good cause eviction” proposal threatens to discourage new housing and drive existing landlords out of the business altogether.
That would probably please the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Julia Salazar of Brooklyn, a proud Democratic Socialist.
But she’s far from alone: Both the Assembly and state Senate proposed budgets include the idea.
Obvious good causes for eviction include not paying the rent, or causing disturbances.
But that’s not what the “good cause” bill has in mind. It would prohibit evictions if rents become “unreasonable” — specifically, raised by more than 3% or 1.5% above the Consumer Price Index, as determined once a year.
This is statewide rent control by another name — with all the distortions it brings with it.
Beware NY progressives’ push for universal rent control
In a period of raging inflation, a snapshot of the Consumer Price Index may well not reflect a property owner’s rising costs over the course of the year. Not that progressives are concerned about the costs of the numerous small, “mom and pop” landlords, many of whom are new immigrants using property ownership to aid their upward mobility.
A 2019 law barred rent increases in regulated units even if owners have to make major capital repairs.
The cost of a new roof must come out of their profits — even if they have none.
That’s why units are being left vacant.
More broadly, controlling rents suppresses price signals, the means through which supply and demand are balanced.
It encourages tenants to stay longer in apartments larger than what they might need — limiting the turnover that a healthy market needs.
That’s why you can find aging Baby Boomers knocking around in Upper West Side apartments with empty bedrooms, while young New Yorkers are doubled up in shoeboxes.
New York University’s Furman Center has found that rent-regulated tenants remain in their units three times as long as those in non-regulated units — and are better off, as well.
Rent limits are also why there are long waiting lists for public housing units; more than a quarter of current tenants are “overhoused”— meaning they, too, have more bedrooms than they need.
Housing “advocates” believe we should effectively transfer property rights from owners to tenants and let the latter stay put as long as they’d like — and even pass along their apartment to younger family members.
Their model is the city’s dilapidated public-housing system, where tens of thousands of residents have lived in their units for more than 40 years.
Salazar and her fellow travelers have a dread of gentrification — the wealthier driving out the poor from the Brooklyn neighborhoods she represents.
Reality check: There are a limited number of hedge fund managers even in New York, and lots of them are following Citadel’s Ken Griffin to Miami, as New York has apparently made “tax the rich” its official state slogan.
Moreover, property owners in many parts of the state — think depressed Syracuse, Rochester or Utica — are not likely to be keen to evict a tenant having trouble paying the rent; there may not be another one ready to move in.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, to her credit, has promoted the idea of new housing construction in New York’s suburbs — a good way to lower prices when so many state residents are fleeing and the population has fallen.
But she pushed an idea guaranteed to inspire maximum resistance — a state super-zoning board that could override local decisions.
That’s predictably inspired pushback. She needs to find the right mix of incentives to persuade, rather than coerce — a challenge for tight housing markets across the country.
To her discredit, Hochul might cave to the Legislature and sign a budget that includes “good cause eviction” regulation to get the rest of her plan passed, too.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will seek the presidency on the basis of what he’s done to make his state a magnet for newcomers.
Meanwhile, Empire State lawmakers are doing all they can to make their state ever less attractive.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/24/progressives-good-cause-eviction-bill-spells-doom-for-nyc-housing/
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24 March, 2023
World Athletics votes to EXCLUDE transgender athletes who have transitioned from male to female after puberty
Transgender women have been banned from competing in the female category at international athletics events.
The decision was made by World Athletics today in order to 'prioritise fairness and the integrity of the female competition before inclusion'.
Seb Coe, the governing body's president, also confirmed athletes from Russia and Belarus would continue to be excluded from competition, including the Olympics, due to the war of Ukraine.
That puts World Athletics in direct conflict with the International Olympic Committee, who are exploring a pathway for Russian and Belarusians to compete at Paris 2024 as 'neutrals'.
On the new transgender participation rules, Lord Coe said at a press conference in Monaco: 'The World Athletics council has taken the decisive action to protect the female category in our sport.
'The council has agreed to exclude male-to-female transgender athletes who have been through male puberty from female world ranking competitions from March 31 this year.
'The decision that the council made is a primarily principle-based decision and that is the overarching need to protect the female category. This is what our sport is here to do.'
Under previous rules, transgender women could compete in the female category as long as their testosterone levels were below five nanomoles per litre over a one-year period.
In January, World Athletics announced they wanted to tighten their policy but said their 'preferred option' was only to reduce testosterone levels to 2.5 nmol/L and increase the transition period to two years.
That led to a huge backlash from female athletes and women's rights campaigners who wanted a blanket ban on transgender athletes competing against other women.
And yesterday, they were granted their wish following a vote of World Athletics council members, with the governing body admitting there was 'little support' for their original stance during a consultation period.
Coe said: 'The majority of those consulted stated that transgender athletes should not be competing in the female category. Many believe there is insufficient evidence that transwomen do not retain advantage over biological women.
'Where the science is insufficient to justify maintaining testosterone suppression for transgender athletes, the council agreed it must be guided by our overarching principle, which is to protect the female category.'
Asked if he expected a legal challenge, Coe said: 'It's possible. If that is the case, then we will do what we have done in the past which is vigorously defend our position. We will always do what we think is in the best interest of our sport.'
The decision by World Athletics follows that of swimming's world governing body, FINA, who announced a ban on transgender athletes from competing in elite women's races last summer.
The rules for trans women in other sports:
Cycling
Provided they have reduced their testosterone to a specific amount, transgender women can compete against other women.
Swimming
Transgender women are banned from elite female races if they have been through any male puberty. FINA, the governing body, is creating an ‘open’ category for transgender swimmers.
Rugby
Since 2020, trans women have been prevented from playing at the elite, international level of women’s rugby. World Rugby was the first international sports body to impose such a ban
Sharron Davies, the former British Olympic swimmer and leading campaigner on the issue, tweeted: 'Thank you @sebcoe & @WorldAthletics for standing up for female athletes across the world who are worthy of fair sport.'
She added: 'Protecting the female category must include young girls, masters females & schools too. They all deserve their right to fair sport. This cannot just be about elite. School girls, Club athletes & masters racers (as well protecting the pathway) is no less worthy of fair competition.
'Sport is for all. But it must be safe, fair & then inclusive. Not the other way round. Let's have respectful debate & find places for everyone.'
Coe added that a working group would be set up to do further research into transgender eligibility guidelines and insisted that 'we're not saying 'no' forever'.
He also announced stricter rules on athletes with differences in sex development (DSD).
Under previous regulations, DSD athletes only faced restrictions in events ranging from 400 metres to a mile, which prevented double 800 metres Olympic champion Caster Semenya from competing.
However, DSD athletes in all other events must also now reduce their testosterone levels to 2.5 nmol/L for at least six months, meaning Christine Mboma, the Olympic 200m silver medallist, is ineligible to compete at this summer's World Championships in Budapest.
It comes after years of rows of the position of transwomen in sports, with high profile cases including Lia Thomas's attempts to compete in women's National College Athletics' Association races.
Caitlyn Jenner, who performed in the Olympics as a man under the name Bruce, before transitioning later in life, criticised Thomas's desire to race against female swimmers, saying 'we have to keep it fair for women'.
She added it was 'just not fair' on other competitors given she has already gone through puberty as a male, and her Olympic quest 'the trans community look selfish'.
In the same press conference, Coe revealed that Russia's seven-year doping ban has now been lifted – but that their athletes, and those from Belarus, would still be excluded because of the invasion of Ukraine.
That is despite IOC president Thomas Bach insisting that Russians and Belarusians should be allowed to compete at next summer's Olympics in Paris.
Coe, who is also an IOC member, added: 'The IOC is not in any doubt about where I sit on that issue.
'The death and destruction we have seen in Ukraine over the past year, including the deaths of some 185 athletes, have only hardened my resolve on this matter.
'The integrity of our major international competitions has already been substantially damaged by the actions of the Russian and Belarusian governments, through the hardship inflicted on Ukrainian athletes and the destruction of Ukraine's sports systems.
'Russian and Belarusian athletes, many of whom have military affiliations, should not be beneficiaries of these actions.'
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Left-wing Young Turks commentator infuriates woke mob by blasting trans-friendly terms such as 'birthing person' and 'person who menstruates'
One of the hosts of The Young Turks faced intense outrage from a woke mob - which included some of her own loyal fans - after she criticized a series of 'trans-friendly' vocabulary.
Left wing commentator Ana Kasparian tweeted that she finds certain trans-inclusive ways of addressing 'women' - such as person with a uterus and birthing person - as degrading.
But Kasparian then found herself heavily criticized by the woke online mob - pinning her as being transphobic and trans-exclusionary for her mere opinions.
Earlier this week, the social commentator wrote: 'I'm a woman. Please don't ever refer to me as a person with a uterus, birthing person, or person who menstruates. How do people not realize how degrading this is?
'You can support the transgender community without doing this s**t.'
Her comments did not go over well with Twitter users on both the right and the left with one person saying: 'Ana, that might be one of the most TERF things you could say.'
A TERF is an acronym meaning 'trans-exclusionary radical feminist,' a term that most notably entered the public eye after Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling made anti-transgender statements.
Kasparian's tweet, posted just before 2.30pm on March 22, has been viewed on the social media app more than 20 million times.
One transgender journalist and MSNBC contributor called out Kasparian and told her to 'get a grip' on her tweets.
'Those words are meant for AFAB [assigned female at birth] people as a category, not individual people. Get a grip,' Katelyn Burns wrote.
One person who identifies themselves as a psychiatrist for transgender youth also called out the tweet.
'Who called you that? I've only ever heard that used when referring to a population, not an individual person,' wrote Jack Turban.
'Obviously, those terms are meant to be precise to include all people who meet one of those characteristics, when needing to discuss a relevant topic,' Turban tweeted.
Mike Figueredo, who goes by the 'The Humanist Report' on Twitter, said in a tweet that he believes Kasparian is playing into anti-trans rhetoric.
'I respect you a lot, but this notion that the mere existence of trans-inclusive terms (rarely used in casual convos) somehow degrades women comes right out of the right's anti-trans 'war on women' playbook,' Figueredo tweeted.
'There's a reason why they're praising you for this,' he continued.
Among those 'praising' Kasparian was former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who tweeted her support for the host's statements.
'A broken clock...' Lake wrote in response to The Young Turks' host's tweet.
Kasparian did not appear to want Lake's endorsement, however, responding: 'I think you're an embarrassment to this country and full blown lunatic.'
British rapper Zuby joined in, stating: 'Your side is going to roast you now. I hope you're ready for the tolerance.'
Kasparian also responded to that tweet, saying: 'They have the right to speak their piece, as do I.'
'A sensible, mainstream take... that is going to absolutely trigger the s**t out of Very Online progressives,' journalist Brad Polumbo responded in a tweet.
'Your comment section has turned into a lunatic asylum. Some people just can't accept your remarks,' Ian Miles Cheong said.
The backlash comes just weeks after Kasparian sat down with right-wing podcast host Ben Shapiro to talk about some of the biggest issues in the country.
At one point, Kasparian called out left-wing policies in Los Angeles in regards to the homeless crisis in the city. 'The approach that we have implemented is clearly not working; more people are dying,' Kasparian said.
'I get so much flack for saying this: I want an actual solution,' the host continued.
'It is insanely cruel to watch people die on our streets and then give yourself a pat on the back because you think you did something compassionate. That is not compassionate,' Kasparian continued.
After the sit-down where the pair discussed a myriad of topics, Kasparian received backlash for 'platforming' Shapiro, who he base vehemently disagrees with.
She fought back saying that Shapiro's audience didn't appear to have a problem with her talking to him and the issue seemed one sided.
'Ben has a bigger following than me. I can assure you he’s platforming me and his audience isn’t crying about it,' Kasparian said.
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White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo is accused of being pro-segregation after saying 'people of color need to get away from white people'
'People of color need to get away from White people and have some community with each other,' DiAngelo said during a March 1 webinar, 'Racial Justice: The Next Frontier.'
DiAngelo then went on to suggest that people who do not concede to antiracist teachings do not belong in modern workforces.
'In 2023, we have to see the ability to engage in these conversations with some nuance and some skill as a basic qualification and if you can't do that, you're just simply not qualified in today's workplace,' DiAngelo said.
The racially charged comments enraged conservatives on Twitter.
'Robin DiAngelo sounding like an old-line segregationist,' anti-CRT expert Chris Rufo tweeted in response to the clip.
Conservative podcast host Allie Beth Stuckey said DiAngelo's comments sounded like racial comments made by Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, that caused several newspapers to pull his long-running cartoon.
'When Robin DiAngelo says it, it's inspirational and she gets paid $20k. When Scott Adams says it, it's racist and he loses his job,' she tweeted.
Darrell B. Harrison, director of digital platforms at Grace to You Ministries, argued that DiAngelo's comments revealed her own racist attitudes.
'For people like Robin DiAngelo, it's always other white people who black people need to 'get away from,' but never her. DiAngelo is a woke Bull Connor, only instead of dogs and fire hoses, she uses the divisive and factious tenets of critical race theory to keep blacks in their place,' he tweeted.
The left-wing activist was on a panel with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) consultants Mary-Frances Winters and Mareisha N. Reese discussing the future of DEI when she made the comments.
Her most recent book title, 'The Facilitator's Guide for White Affinity Groups: Strategies for Leading White People in an Anti-Racist Practice,' also suggests she believes Whites should stay within their own racial social circles.
DiAngelo has published a number of academic articles on race, privilege, and education and written several books.
In 2011, she co-wrote with Ozlem Sensoy, 'Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Critical Social Justice Education.'
The book won the American Educational Research Association's Critics' Choice Book Award in 2012 and the Society of Professors of Education Book Award in 2018.
DiAngelo later that year published a paper titled 'White Fragility' in The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, thereby coining the term.
She defined the concept of white fragility as 'a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves'.
Since 2016, DiAngelo has regularly led workshops on the topic. In 2017, the term 'white fragility' was shortlisted by the Oxford Dictionary for Word of the Year.
An in June 2020, during the George Floyd protests, White Fragility reached number one on the New York Times list.
DiAngelo makes an estimated $728,000 a year from speaking engagements and workshops and is charging an average of $14,000 per speech to talk about 'utlra-woke' concepts.
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National Archives Sued for Shielding Documents Declassified by Trump
The National Archives and Records Administration is illegally withholding documents that were declassified by then-President Donald Trump, according to a new lawsuit.
The archives, or NARA, has repeatedly refused to provide the documents Trump declassified just before leaving office on Jan. 19, 2021.
The documents relate to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, a counterintelligence probe that examined purported links between Trump and Russian actors.
John Solomon, a journalist, and Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official, asked NARA for the documents in 2022 after being named Trump’s representatives to NARA.
Gary Stern, a NARA official, said the declassified records had been sent to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) per a memorandum from then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who directed on Jan. 20, 2021, the DOJ to review the materials and release them with redactions.
“I have asked DOJ to complete its review as quickly as possible, so that we can all have a fully releasable set of records,” Stern said in a message on Aug. 17, 2022.
NARA did find a box with about 2,700 pages but couldn’t ascertain the box’s classification status and is thus treating it as top-secret, Stern said in another email.
NARA is violating the Presidential Records Act, which states that presidential records of a former president “shall be available to such former President or the former President’s designated representative,” the new suit states.
The government defendants “have wrongfully taken or are wrongfully in possession of and/or detaining the subject records,” it states.
Solomon filed the suit in federal court in Washington.
He is asking the court to order the DOJ to immediately return the records to NARA and to order NARA to turn the records over once received.
“President Trump declassified these records so the American public could see for itself the abuses and failures of the FBI during the Russia collusion case. But at every step of the process, the public has been thwarted,” Solomon said in a statement. “These declassified records are clear records of the Trump presidency, have clear historical value, and have been wrongly kept from the Archives and its employer, the American people, by the DOJ for more than two years.”
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23 March, 2023
UK: When is a crime not a crime?
Toby Young
On Monday, Suella Braverman [Home Secretary] published draft guidance designed to rein in the police habit of recording a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI) against a person’s name whenever someone accuses them of doing something politically incorrect. You may think I’m exaggerating, but in 2017 an NCHI was recorded against Amber Rudd, then the home secretary, after an Oxford professor complained about her references to ‘migrant workers’ in a Tory party conference speech. NCHIs can show up on an enhanced criminal record check even though, by definition, the person hasn’t committed a crime.
The concept first surfaced in guidance published by the College of Policing in 2014 and within five years 119,934 non-crime hate incidents had been recorded by 34 police forces in England and Wales, according to FoI requests submitted by the Telegraph. Nine police forces didn’t respond, but if we assume they were logging NCHIs on the same scale, it’s likely that more than a quarter of a million have been recorded to date. Little wonder the police won’t send anyone round to your house if you report a burglary. They’re too busy investigating people accused of wrongthink.
So this new guidance – in reality, a statutory code of practice that requires the approval of both houses of parliament – is long overdue. Free-speech campaigners like me have been lobbying Conservative home secretaries about NCHIs for years, not least because they’re used as a weapon by political activists and religious zealots to silence their critics. A carefully worded complaint accusing your antagonist of being motivated by ‘hostility’ towards you on the basis of a ‘protected’ characteristic, e.g. your race, religion or sexual orientation, will result in a summons to the local police station. But Suella, God bless her, is the first one to sit up and listen. She recognises that meting out this punishment to anyone who challenges woke dogma is having a chilling effect. ‘We need a common sense approach that better protects freedom of speech,’ she wrote in the Times.
The Home Secretary is able to introduce this new code of practice thanks to an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act secured by Lord Moylan and other peers last year, but what seems to have tipped her over the edge is the recording of NCHIs against the four boys at the centre of the imbroglio involving a slightly scuffed copy of the Quran at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield three weeks ago. Even though the boy who brought the book into the school has a diagnosis of autism and the head-teacher said there was no malicious intent, a chief inspector for West Yorkshire Police proudly announced at the Jamia Masjid Swafia mosque, where a ‘community meeting’ had been convened, that the episode had been recorded as a ‘hate incident’. The terrifying thing about this is that ‘non crimes’, unlike crimes, aren’t automatically deleted from a person’s record when they reach 18.
Thankfully, schoolchildren will no longer have NCHIs recorded against their names when the new guidance comes into force. Paragraph 39 states: ‘If a report is made to the police about an incident that occurred in a school and does not amount to a crime, the appropriate police response would be to refer the matter to the school management team… An NCHI record should not be made on policing systems, and the personal data of the subject should not be recorded.’
One person who deserves some credit for this victory is Harry Miller, an ex-copper who got into trouble for tweeting a comic verse about trans women in 2019. When he was told an NCHI had been placed on his record, he took the College of Policing and Humberside Police to court. Had he lost, he would have faced an eye-watering bill for the other side’s costs, but luckily he won. The new guidance partly reflects this triumph, but he is worried some woke police officers will try to get round it by treating politically incorrect remarks as actual crimes, rather than NCHIs, and petitioning the CPS to prosecute.
That’s not all that fanciful. Last week, I was due to appear as an expert witness for a Christian street preacher called David McConnell who was appealing a conviction for causing harassment, alarm or distress. His crime? ‘Misgendering’ a trans woman. A judge at Leeds Crown Court overturned the conviction without needing to hear my evidence, but we can expect more such prosecutions in future once the use of NCHIs to shut people up has been curtailed. The Home Secretary should be congratulated for striking a blow in defence of free speech this week, but there’s more work to be done.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/when-is-a-crime-not-a-crime/
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Minorities Prefer Trump? Here’s Where Trump Gets Major GOP Primary Lead
By Manzanita Miller
Two recent polls could upset political assumptions about GOP primary voters going forward. While former President Trump maintains a double-digit lead over prospective GOP challenger Ron DeSantis in several national polls, Trump’s widest lead over DeSantis is with non-white voters. Trump also holds a substantial lead over DeSantis with lower-income voters who make under $50,000 a year and with younger voters under 50.
The average of two recent polls by CNN/SSRS and Quinnipiac University shows Trump’s lead over DeSantis widens substantially among non-white Republicans, who make up a larger share of low-income voters than whites do.
Trump is ahead of DeSantis by approximately 29 percentage points (55% to 26%) with voters of color but ahead by just one percentage point – and well within the margin of error – with white GOP primary voters.
Minority GOP primary voters are also more likely than whites to say it is more important for their GOP primary pick to share their values. By a two-to one margin minority GOP primary voters say it is more important for their GOP primary pick to share their values than to be “capable of beating Joe Biden.” A full 80% of minority GOP primary voters also say that it is “essential” that whoever is nominated for president in 2024 restores the policies of the Trump Administration.
Lower income voters continue to be key Trump supporters, while higher income voters favor DeSantis in polls, but CNN’s data shows non-white Republicans are more likely to fall into the lower-income group.
For instance, Trump leads DeSantis by 22 points among voters earning less than $50,000, but trails DeSantis by 13 points with those earning $50,000 or more. However, 45% of non-white Republicans fall into the group earning less than $50,000 while just 28% of White Republicans do. Race and class are both converging to create a block of working-class voters that skews heavily pro-Trump.
Young voters also favor Trump while older voters favor DeSantis, something Americans for Limited Government Foundation (ALGF) pointed out two weeks ago. Trump leads DeSantis by 18 percentage points with voters under 50, but trails DeSantis by 9 points for voters 50 to 64.
The minority shift toward Trump is not new. Latinos in particular have seen a significant rise in Trump support in recent months, with YouGov survey data showing the share of Latinos who say Trump should run again is up 14 points since he left office going from 22% to 36% today. Meanwhile, just 28% of Latinos want a Biden re-run and a solid 57% say Biden should not run again.
Looking back at the 2020 election, Black and Hispanic voters saw substantial shifts toward the right. Although Latinos still favored Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s share of the Hispanic vote rose ten percentage points from 28% in 2016 to 38% in 2020.
Trump also netted 12% of Black Americans nationwide, up from 8% in 2016. His most substantial gain was among Black men, 18% of whom supported Trump in 2020 up from 13% in 2016. Though his share of the Black female vote was small, it doubled from 4% in 2016 to 8% in 2020.
Minority voters have still favored Democrats in recent elections, but non-college-educated minorities are beginning to move to the right much like non-college whites. According to exit polls, the Democratic Party’s share of the non-college minority vote dropped eleven points between 2008 and 2020.
While Biden did win non-college minorities by 46 points in 2020, Trump increased his share of their vote by six points between 2016 and 2020. In 2016, Trump won 20% of the non-college minority vote and in 2020 he won 26%.
Non-college minorities also moved eight points to the right between the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections. In the 2018 midterms Democrats won minorities without a college degree by 76% to 22%. In the 2022 midterms Democrats won this block by 68% to 28%.
The midterms also showed a substantial shift toward the right among non-white men between 2018 and 2022. Democrats lost 21 points with Latino men between the two most recent midterm elections, going from winning them by 29 points in 2018 to 8 points in 2022.
Democrats also lost 14 points with Latino women between 2018 and 2022. Democrats lost 11 points with Black men, who supported Democrats by 76 points in 2018 and 65 points in 2022. Black women supported Democrats by 7 points less last year as well.
While education is growing among minorities, minorities without a college degree make up a substantial share of the electorate. In the 2022 midterms, minorities without a degree made up nearly a fifth of the electorate (18%) while those with one made up just 9%.
As ALGF pointed out last month, early polling shows Trump leads DeSantis on issues central to Latino voters including economic issues and border security. By a greater than two-to-one margin, Americans say they trust Trump more than DeSantis to handle the economy, taxes and government spending, foreign policy, and immigration.
Polls also show younger voters, who are more likely to fall into lower-income profiles largely prefer Trump to DeSantis. Over half of voters eighteen to twenty-nine (51%) have a very or somewhat favorable view of Trump, while just 43% have a very or somewhat favorable view of DeSantis. Voters over 65 are the opposite, with 37% saying they have a very or somewhat favorable view of Trump while 42% say they have a favorable view of DeSantis.
In the Republican party, as well as in the Democrat party, class is becoming a more divisive variable than almost any other metric. Lower income and lower educated voters prefer the GOP regardless of race, and within the Republican Party these voters gravitate toward former President Trump’s populist platform over DeSantis’ more conventional GOP agenda.
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A Genuine Heroine for Women’s History Month
Ever heard of Zoila Aguila, also known as “La Niña Del Escambray?” No?...And yet her story seems to check every box for a Woke feminist super-drama.
You mean to tell me that from the Mainstream Media (so abundant with “feminists”) you didn’t hear about this “Latina” girl who, when younger than Miley Cyrus, courageously took up arms as a guerrilla fighter against a murderous, terror-sponsoring (genuinely) Russia-colluding regime, was captured, horribly tortured in utterly dark, underground dungeons crawling with rats and roaches where she lost her baby and eventually her mind? She suffered 15 years as a political prisoner enduring horrible tortures, alongside the longest-suffering female political prisoners in modern history, in a locale absolutely infested with mainstream “news” bureaus and their intrepid “reporters” and correspondents. Finally she was released in a prisoner exchange and found refuge in the U.S.
You mean the U.S. Mainstream Media didn’t inform you of how her brother and husband, fellow guerrilla fighters against Soviet commanded oppressors, were also captured by Soviet–armed and commanded storm-troopers on orders of the regime whose historic rationale was the destruction of the U.S.—and were murdered by firings squads, well within earshot of the “latina” freedom-fighter, as the murderers taunted her with laughs and jeers?
Well, gosh? Doesn’t this story—involving events just 90 miles from U.S. shores and subsequent legal U.S. resident—seem to have all the villains, heroes, drama and plot the Mainstream Media/Democrat/Hollywood/Publishing-Complex could ever DREAM of—for a smashing, human-interest story, documentary, movie, etc?
AH! But here’s the kicker, amigos: the latina freedom-fighter in question, Zoila Aguila, who passed away in Feb. of 2021 in Miami, fought against and was tortured horribly till insane by the regime co-founded by the Left’s premier poster boys—Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
Need I say more about the media blackout?
When the hacks who host and narrate programs on The History Channel, NPR, etc. call Che Guevara a "guerrilla fighter" they're quite correct, but unwittingly. After all, the term "Indian fighter" was used for cowboys who fought against Indians right? Well, did your history professor or The History Channel inform you that one of the bloodiest and longest guerrilla wars on this continent was fought - not by - but against Fidel Castro and Che, Guevara and mostly by campesinos (country folk)?
Didn't think so. Farm collectivization was no more voluntary in Cuba than in the Ukraine. And Cuba's Kulaks had guns, a few at first anyway. Had these rebels gotten a fraction of the aid the Afghan Mujahideen got, the Viet Cong got — indeed that George Washington's rebels got from the French — had these Cuban rebels gotten any help, some bandits named Fidel Castro and Che Guevara would probably merit less Wikipedia space today than Pancho Villa.
But JFK's Missile Crisis "solution" pledged to Castro and his Soviet sponsors that the U.S. pull the rug out from under Cuba's in-house freedom fighters. Raul Castro himself admitted that at the time of the Missile Crisis his troops and their Soviet advisors were up against 179 different "bands of bandits" as he labeled the thousands of Cuban anti-Communist rebels then battling savagely and virtually alone in Cuba's countryside, with small arms shipments from their compatriots in south Florida as their only lifeline.
Kennedy's shameful surrender to Khrushchev which “solved” the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis cut this lifeline. The Cuban freedom-fighters working from South Florida were suddenly rounded up for "violating U.S. Neutrality laws." The Coast Guard in Florida got 12 new boats and seven new planes to make sure Castro and his Soviet patrons remained utterly unmolested as they consolidated Stalinism 90 miles from U.S. shores. Think about it: here's the U.S. Coast Guard and Border Patrol working 'round the clock arresting Hispanics in the U.S. who are desperate to return to their native country.
Zoila Aguila was prominent among these lonely and virtually-unknown Cuban freedom-fighters. On the other hand the utterly bogus battles of the utterly bogus guerrillas (the Castro brothers and Che Guevara) had been trumpeted to high heavens by the U.S. media. And this relentless propagandizing was highly appreciated:
“Much more valuable than rural recruits for our Cuban guerrilla force were American media recruits to export our propaganda,” snickered Ernesto “Che” Guevara in his diaries.
This ferocious guerrilla war, waged 90 miles from America's shores, might have taken place on the planet Pluto for all you'll read about it in the MSM and all you'll learn about it from those illustrious Ivy League academics. To get an idea of the odds faced by those betrayed rural rebels, the desperation of their battle and the damage they wrought, you might revisit Tony Montana during the last 15 minutes of "Scarface."
Che had a very bloody (and typically cowardly) hand in this slaughter, one of the major anti-insurgency wars on this continent. Many of these anti-communist guerrillas were executed on the spot upon capture, a Che specialty. "We fought with the fury of cornered beasts," is how one of the lucky few who escaped described this desperate freedom fight against the Soviet occupation of Cuba through their proxies Fidel and Che.
In 1956 when Che linked up with Fidel, Raul, and their Cuban chums in Mexico City, one of them (now in exile) recalls Che railing against the Hungarian freedom-fighters as "Fascists!" and cheering their extermination by Soviet tanks.
In 1962 Che got a chance to do more than cheer from the sidelines. He had a hand in the following: "Cuban militia units commanded by Russian officers employed flame-throwers to burn the palm-thatched cottages in the Escambray countryside. The peasant occupants were accused of feeding the counterrevolutionaries and bandits." At one point in 1962, one of every 17 Cubans was a political prisoner. Fidel himself admits that they faced 179 bands of "counter-revolutionaries" and "bandits."
Mass murder was the order in Cuba's countryside. It was the only way to decimate so many rebels. These country folk went after the Reds with a ferocity that saw Fidel and Che running to their Soviet sugar daddies and tugging their pants in panic. That commie bit about how "a guerrilla swims in the sea which is the people, etc." fit Cuba's anti-Fidel and Che rebellion to a T. So in a relocation and concentration campaign that shamed anything the Brits did to the Boers, the gallant Communists ripped thousands of Cubans from their ancestral homes and herded them into concentration camps on the opposite side of Cuba.
One of these Cuban redneck wives (Zoila Aguila) refused to be relocated. After her husband, sons, and a few nephews were murdered by the Gallant Che and his Soviet-armed and led minions, she grabbed a tommy gun herself, rammed in a clip and took to the hills. She became a rebel herself. Cubans knew her as La Niña Del Escambray.
For a year she ran rings around the Communist armies sweeping the hills in her pursuit. Finally in 1964 she ran out of ammo and supplies and the communist storm-trooper rounded her up. All this was totally ignored by the foreign media.
On the other hand, Zoila Aguila’s torturers got no end of adulatory coverage from media “feminists.”
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The DiAngelo/Dilbert Double Standard
See if you can spot the difference in these quotes.
Quote #1:
If nearly half of all blacks are not OK with white people … that’s a hate group. And I don’t want anything to do with them. And based on how things are going, the best advice I could give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get the f*** away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. ‘Cause there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.
Quote #2:
I’m a big believer in affinity space and affinity work, and I think people of color need to get away from white people and have some community with each other. And I’ll let that go and maybe see if anyone else wants to pick it up.
The first quote was spoken by Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon. Just under a month ago, Adams made these remarks in response to a Rasmussen poll that questioned black people about the phrase, “It’s okay to be white.” Of the black respondents who answered, 53% agree, 26% disagree, and 21% are not sure.
What Adams said even in the context of this poll is still racism. As political pundit Ben Shapiro said at the time: “What Scott Adams said was racist. And here’s the thing: if you substituted the word 'white’ for ‘black’ in his rant, you would immediately be given a top editorial post at the New York Times.”
This is really quite prescient of Shapiro because on March 20, the Left gifted us Quote #2. This, however, isn’t top billing for The New York Times. In fact, there is a distinct mainstream media silence, which is telling in and of itself.
This second quote reverses the races but delivers the same racist messaging. Who, pray tell, was the architect of this atrocity? The reigning queen of the book White Fragility herself, Robin DiAngelo. She phrased it more “nicely,” dubbing this segregation “affinity space,” but really it is the same racism that got Adams canceled.
DiAngelo, however, probably will be applauded for her “wondrous insight” because she is one of the people “doing the work” to open all of our plebeian eyes to the racism inherent in our whiteness and in the institutions built up by white people.
In those comments, both Adams and DiAngelo displayed a worldview that separates people by their races. The big difference is that such racism is what made DiAngelo rich and famous.
As our Nate Jackson said when he wrote about the original Adams infraction, “Here’s a fundamental truth that 100% of Americans should agree with: It’s okay to be whatever color your skin actually is.” You can’t change your skin color any more than you can change your biology. God made us exactly who we are supposed to be. Using race as one more tool to divide us is inherently anti-human as well as morally repugnant.
Conservative pundits were quick to pick up on this double standard. Allie Beth Stuckey observed: “When Robin DiAngelo says it, it’s inspirational and she gets paid $20k. When Scott Adams says it, it’s racist and he loses his job.”
Christopher Rufo, who has the video of DiAngelo uttering her “affinity space” quote, had two things to say: “Robin DiAngelo sounds like an old line segregationist,” and “It’s amazing that, for an entire year, the libs scrambled to find their moral voice and settled on Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, who turned out to be two of the greatest midwits of our time.”
Dave Rubin responded to Rufo’s post with the question, “Isn’t this what they cancelled @ScottAdamsSays for?” To which Scott Adams interjected, “You’re not supposed to notice.”
As was mentioned earlier in the piece, this DiAngelo soundbite has gotten radio silence from all of mainstream media. When Adams said his bit about white people staying away from black people, that was in The New York Times for days.
Perhaps the mainstream media is hoping we all are sufficiently distracted by the potential indictment of Donald Trump or perhaps the Russia/China meeting in Moscow to notice.
Either way, this is an egregious double standard.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/95895-the-diangelo-slash-dilbert-double-standard-2023-03-22
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22 March, 2023
Tenured Professor Amy Wax, Under Siege for ‘Truth Telling’ on Race, Makes Her Case
She is both very bright and highly principled. She speaks the truth without fear. The moves against her are pathetic. If they succeed, the matter will just end up before SCOTUS, where she will win
The future of tenure in American higher education could turn on the fate of a septuagenarian professor who teaches law at the University of Pennsylvania who has an intense mien and history of inflammatory opinions of which she has no regrets.
Professor Amy Wax has catapulted to national attention because of comments about race and gender that have made her a truth telling seer to some and a bomb throwing bigot to others. In refusing to back down, she could break the back of tenure, the system of a job-for-life that in its modern contractual form has been the coin of the academic realm since 1940.
Ms. Wax has come to represent a test case because of both the extremity of her pronouncements — she has alleged to have made a series of controversial comments over the years asserting discrepancies in cognitive ability relating to race, has claimed that she has never seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of their class, and called India a “sh-thole” — as well as Penn’s effort to oust her.
“Universities,” Ms. Wax tells the Sun in the course of a nearly one hour conversation, “need to have room for people like me to explain the opposition and above all, to explain to students that there is another point of view” than the reigning one, which she regards as “lopsided, stunted, and inadequate.”
Ms. Wax speaks in the forceful tones of someone who has argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court. Her resume includes all the usual gold stars, plus a white coat; she graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed a residency in neurology before turning to the bar full time.
Now, Ms. Wax is facing what she calls “a formal attempt to take away my job,” notwithstanding that she secured tenure two decades ago and holds a named chair, another mark of distinction. The dean of her law school, Theodore Ruger, is initiating disciplinary action against her to determine whether her patterns of speech warrant a “major sanction.” This could include firing, despite her tenure.
For Dean Ruger, it appears personal. He told students at a town hall meeting in 2018 that he is “pissed off” that she remains on faculty, a reality which he says “sucks.” He explained that the “only way to get rid of a tenured professor” is a process that will “take months.” That effort is now underway.
Dean Ruger’s report, which reads like a criminal complaint, accuses Ms. Wax of a “callous and flagrant disregard for our University community” in the form of “incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic actions and statements.” He finds that faculty “call her presence demoralizing and disruptive” and students steer clear of her courses.
Ms. Wax asserts that this line of accusation heralds a dawning age where universities “can take away your job and your tenure just for what you said and for your opinions.” She calls Mr. Ruger “one of the worst deans in America” and accuses him of “groveling and pandering” to students.
Even some of Ms. Wax’s defenders have their doubts. The director of campus rights advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech stalwart, told the New York Times that “academic freedom has to protect the Amy Waxes of the academic world, so that it can be there for the Galileos of the academic world.” Ms. Wax allows that she is “unhappy” with that explanation.
Ms. Wax has, in turn, filed a grievance against the school, which she says is targeting the expressions of opinion that she is “fully and totally entitled to make by every tradition and standard in academia.” She calls Penn’s effort to sanction her a “direct attack” that aims to enforce a “rigid orthodoxy of permissible speech and expression.”
The grievance, which aims to arrest the disciplinary push against Ms. Wax, acknowledges that her opinions are “at times hard to hear or read” but asserts that they find support in “empirically based sources.” It adds that no Penn faculty member has “ever been formally charged with an infraction of University rules based on what he or she has taught, written, assigned to students, or opined in the media. No one.”
The lack of any accusation of sexual or behavioral misconduct sets Ms. Wax’s case apart from other instances where the shield of tenure has been pierced, such as the firing of a professor of the Classics, Joshua Katz, at Princeton. Mr. Katz was ostensibly dismissed over a lack of candor regarding a sexual relationship with a student, although he has claimed that was pretextual.
With Ms. Wax, it’s all about speech. She sees herself as a trespasser of an “unseen borderland” that cuts through campus, beyond which “dissent is not tolerated.” This zone is policed by academic hunters of “crimethink” that aim to “get rid of people or silence people or punish people” like her.
Not spared Professor Wax’s indignation is the “tea table gossip of modern journalism.” In particular, she calls the New York Times a “rag” and tells the Sun that their report that she describes herself as a “race realist” — asserted in the recent profile of her case — is “made up.”
The Sun asks Ms. Wax whether she feels that she has inflicted “severe harm” on her students, as Penn alleges. She rejects this “weaponized” notion of harm, where disagreement and offense have “transmogrified that harm into something that warrants discipline or ejection of a person who inflicts the harm.”
Ms. Wax is asked if it shows “discriminatory animus” to make the statement that “on average women are less knowledgeable than men?” She claims that “every study that’s been done worldwide” discloses that finding. Punishing her for statements like that one, she argues, will mean the “destruction of academic freedom.”
Ms. Wax acknowledges the utility of a “certain kind of restraint and decorum when talking about groups and comparing groups and making generalizations especially in a diverse society.” Alongside that caveat, though, is her aspiration to “defeat wokeism by developing a counter narrative.”
Ms. Wax’s account rejects the “premise that all groups are equal in their skills, ability, preferences, and talents.” That, she says, is both untrue and “not to be expected in a free and diverse society.” She sees the “core of wokeness” and its “central pillar” as the conviction that in the absence of racism “all groups are equal, equally capable and assimilated to positive norms.” She does not believe that.
Ms. Wax fiercely objects to Penn’s accusation that her pedagogy is marbled with bias and that her convictions compromise her classrooms. She tells the Sun that she has “never been biased against any student.” She elaborates that she treats “every student the same” in that she “responds to who they are as an individual” and demands from Mr. Ruger “forensic proof” to the contrary.
The Sun asks Ms. Wax if she misses teaching first year law classes, which are devoted to the basics of the legal canon. She was stripped of those duties in 2018. She responds that she’s told by colleagues that it is “no longer fun” to teach first year courses because “you’re always on your guard against committing some kind of violation or infraction of the progressive and woke rule book. ”
One particular flashpoint in l’affaire Wax was her invitation of the white supremacist and editor of American Renaissance, Jared Taylor, to speak to a seminar she was teaching on conservative thought. Mr. Taylor has written a book entitled “White Identity.” He was a contemporary of Ms. Wax at Yale.
The Sun pushes Ms. Wax on the merits of importing Mr. Taylor to her classroom. She responds that “whether you like it or not Jared Taylor is an educated informed articulate proponent of a far right position.” She explained that “students know nothing about this stuff” except that “they are supposed to condemn it and call it evil.”
Ms. Wax worries over this ignorance of both students and academic administrators of positions they find repugnant, saying how neither her pupils nor their instructors can “define a white nationalist,” which signals a state of “complete and total ignorance.” Spreading her arms and leaning forward in her chair, Ms. Wax declares “I am a teacher, I am a professor, and I am there to banish that ignorance.”
Within this condition of what she calls “educational malpractice,” Ms. Wax contends that she is a “very important person at the University of Pennsylvania” because of her “pastoral role” as mentor and confidant. She suggests that she is the only faculty member at Penn conservative students believe will not “turn them in” for contraband thought.
The professor casts back to her childhood to explain the distinction between “defending your right to say something” and “agreeing with what you say,” a difference that to her has been lost. She recalls sitting at the “dinner table when the Nazis marched through Skokie and my father said ‘I’m proud to live in a country where the Nazis can’” fly their flag. The American Civil Liberties Union defended the marchers then, but would be unlikely to do so now.
If Ms. Wax is a kind of pastor to the unwoke, her congregation stretches beyond Penn’s campus. She sees herself as channeling the thinking of an “enormous chunk of our democracy,” voicing opinions that are “discussed in living rooms and kitchens behind closed doors and at dinner parties” but have no place in the contemporary academy.
Reaching for examples of the kind of opinion she speaks that others wouldn’t, she cites Charles Murray’s “Facing Reality” for the persistent existence of a “one standard deviation difference in cognitive ability between blacks and whites.” She points to “differences in family structure and family stability and birth rates out of wedlock” as “really important.”
Speculating on her future, Ms. Wax calls the case against her “pathetic” but acknowledges the possibility that a “show trial” undertaken by a “kangaroo court” could oust her. She explains that she “would love to stay on” and that, aided by deep-pocketed backers, she is going to “fight the good fight to the death.”
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The Legally and Morally Flawed Case Against Trump
Although we don’t yet know entirely how it will be structured, enough of the Manhattan District Attorney’s case against Trump has found its way into the public domain so that we know the general parameters. The centerpiece of the case is a misdemeanor charge under Section 175 for supposedly falsifying his business records. The theory is that Trump paid his former lawyer $130,000.00 in a series of reimbursements to Cohen and labeled them as legal expenses to conceal that the money was really to pay Adult Film Actress, Stormy Daniels for a nondisclosure agreement and that somehow this scheme violated federal election laws.
From a legal perspective, this bizarre wielding of State prosecutorial power in pursuit of what is essentially an alleged federal crime is seriously flawed.
For starters, it is not a crime to be a philanderer, if in fact Trump did have an affair with Ms. Daniels. She has claimed publicly that there was no affair – but who knows. It is not a crime for Trump to pay so-called “hush money” either. I hate it when people call it that. It is a legal contract called a “nondisclosure agreement” and it is not in the least uncommon. Particularly for a celebrity who is a married man with many business interests. There are myriad reasons – unrelated to his Presidential Campaign – for Trump to pay the money to Ms. Daniels.
The case is legally flawed for a second major reason. Specifically the Manhattan DA has a major Statute of Limitations problem.
It’s worth noting that the Federal Elections Commission and the Department of Justice have already looked at all this and took no action back when it was fresh. Nevertheless DA Bragg is essentially trying to stuff a federal campaign finance crime into a state law business records charge. The business records case under Section 175 is a misdemeanor and the statute of limitations is two years. If DA Bragg manages to shoehorn an alleged violation of the federal campaign finance laws into the Section 175 charge – despite being a state DA and not a US Attorney – then the business records case becomes a felony and has a five-year statute of limitations. My iPhone tells me this is 2023 – nearly seven years after any such Section 175 business record crime would have occurred. So, the statute of limitations has clearly run. Nevertheless, I wait on pins and needles to see what whackado legal theory DA Bragg pulls out of his…..hat to claim the statute of limitations has somehow not expired.
Perhaps the biggest flaw in the potential indictment is on moral grounds. The whole thing is immoral and rotten to the core. This is a political weaponization of the criminal justice system. This expected indictment comes as the 2024 presidential election season is kicking into high gear. Donald Trump is leading in some polls as he seeks the Republican Nomination for President of the United States. If this indictment were truly grounded in good-faith, it could have been prosecuted back when it allegedly occurred. There’s no legitimate reason to bring it now. Only politics.
At its core, the justice system relies on trust. We must have faith and trust that the prosecutors we elect to serve our communities will wield the awesome power of their office fairly, objectively and without regard to his or her personal political biases. The public needs to have faith that prosecutors are using their power to objectively pursue legitimate crimes.
This indictment would represent a perversion of the justice process and will undermine public confidence. This blatant hyper-partisan abuse of power will undermine public confidence and poison the well for legitimate cases that truly do need to be prosecuted. New York is in the midst of a crime crisis the likes of which are unprecedented. One would hope DA Bragg would aggressively pursue and prosecute murderers, rapists, and robbers with the zeal with which he is pursuing the former President of the United States for a seven-year-old alleged bookkeeping crime.
Nobody who’s paying attention needs me to tell them that Trump is not in friendly territory. The DA and nearly all politicians in New York are democrats and Trump is the bane of every democrat’s existence. One hopes Trump will find a fair-minded and impartial judge who won’t be afraid to do the right thing and dismiss any legally defective indictment, but I am not holding my breath. I can’t even begin to ponder how Donald Trump would find a fair jury in New York.
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Goodbye America, Hello Banana Republic
America as the “shining city on a hill” is gone. It has been replaced by a country with a weaponized criminal justice system, a radicalized educational system, and a news media that is a mouthpiece for a tyrannical government.
It is difficult to be hopeful about America after twenty-six disastrous months of the Biden administration. All the progress of the previous administration has been reversed. Our country is no longer economically robust, energy independent or secure at our borders.
We face a border crisis, a crime crisis, an economic crisis, a banking crisis, an education crisis and are fighting a proxy war against Russia. To make matters worse, a “woke” leftist agenda has become dominant at our nation’s top corporations, universities, government agencies and media outlets.
At the forefront of this destruction has been the most radical presidential administration in American history. The Biden administration has weaponized the Department of Justice to attack its political enemies, including parents, pro-life activists, and supporters of President Donald Trump who participated in the January 6, 2021, protests in Washington D.C.
While plenty of Americans have been targeted by “blue state” prosecutors and Democrats in the Department of Justice, the individual who has received the most abuse is former President Trump.
In fact, the former president has been besieged from the day he descended the “golden escalator” at Trump Tower and announced his presidential campaign. What followed was an unrelenting assault on Trump including almost universally negative media coverage, the coordinated release of the “Access Hollywood” tape and actual government spying on his campaign.
Although the phony “Steele dossier” was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign, it was used to grant “FISA” warrants to surveil Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy advisor.
The mistreatment did not stop after Trump’s 2016 victory. His National Security Advisor, Lt. General Michael Flynn, was the target of an FBI sting operation and was forced to resign. The charges of “Russian collusion” led to the establishment of a Special Counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Despite the efforts of 18 Democrat prosecutors and a $32 million investigation no “Russian collusion” or obstruction of justice was proven.
Even though the Mueller investigation was a major waste of resources, deranged Democrats continued. The next obsession was the first impeachment of President Trump over a “perfect” phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky. Trump was trying to determine details about the corrupt relationship between the Biden family and Ukraine. The result was his impeachment and eventual acquittal.
Soon thereafter, COVID-19 struck, compliments of communist China, which led into the highly disputed 2020 election.
Recent polls show that 61% of Republicans believe that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected President of the United States. The following January 6th, millions of Americans held that view, including the large crowd of Trump supporters who gathered in Washington D.C. to protest. This led to the unprecedented second impeachment and acquittal of President Trump.
The demonstrators were not trying to overthrow the government, but to protest what they believed was a stolen election. The congressional committee that investigated the so-called “insurrection” was incredibly biased and partisan. Their target, not surprisingly, was President Trump.
Recently, new video footage has been shown to the American people which paint a different picture of what happened. Many of the protesters were not violent and were praising police officers and following their instructions.
Their next abusive tactic occurred last August. As President Trump was planning his 2024 campaign for the White House, FBI agents raided his Mar-a-Lago home and conducted a ten-hour search. While Trump’s attorneys were forced to wait outside, agents rummaged through his home, including his wife’s closet and his son’s bedroom.
Interestingly, classified documents were also found at the office and home of Joe Biden, but there was no FBI raid. In Biden’s case, everything was handled differently by the Department of Justice. The search was scheduled with Biden’s attorneys and conducted in an orderly manner.
In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate the classified documents recovered in the Trump raid and his involvement in the January 6th protests. According to reports, Smith has been aggressively spearheading this ongoing investigation.
As that probe continues, Trump is also being investigated by a Fulton County, Georgia Grand Jury for supposed efforts to pressure state officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The latest outrage involves an investigation in New York City that will reportedly lead to the President’s arrest this week. The District Attorney is resurrecting an old charge that President Trump improperly reported the payment of “hush money” to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged tryst between them. Trump denies the affair and calls the entire case “and old and fully debunked (by numerous other prosecutors!) fairytale.”
The vicious political persecution of Trump is akin to what occurs in “banana republics.” No longer is our country too advanced for such shenanigans to occur here. With partisan Democrats prosecuting in “blue states” and in the Department of Justice, there is an ongoing, ruthless campaign to obliterate Trump politically.
Their goals are not only to destroy Trump, but also to destroy what he represents, the “America First” agenda. The political establishment and Deep State do not want the needs of Americans at the forefront. Instead, their priorities include international affairs, global wars, and funding for the military industrial complex.
While our country suffers economically and has an open border, the political establishment is concentrated on the Ukrainian war, climate change and other issues of little importance to most Americans.
Trump jeopardizes the financial interests of his political enemies by focusing on the real desires of Americans. Instead of spending $6.5 trillion on unwinnable foreign wars, Trump wants Americans to prosper economically.
His “America First” agenda threatens very powerful interests. Thus, he has become the first American President to endure government surveillance, two impeachments, an FBI raid, and a presumed arrest. The banana republic has arrived.
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Muslim woman Exposes the Woke Army
We are all familiar with radical terrorist cells that once set in motion commit acts of mayhem destroying American life and property. But there is another kind of terrorist network operating in America. Rather than blow things up, these terrorists tear things down from within the institutions themselves. Rather than plant explosives, these terrorists infiltrate local, state, and national governments and businesses and use the power of acquired positions and the wealth given them by George Soros, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other enemies of the United States to incite opposition to and riot against American institutions and values. Whether driven by a bin Laden-kind of perverse theocratic hatred for Western freedom and religious pluralism or by far-left desires to transform our country into a communist state, these radicals want to put an end to America as the greatest bastion of liberty the world has ever known, and establish in its place dictatorship.
In her excellent new book, Woke Army, former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Q. Nomani reveals the identities, locations, and actions of this heretofore clandestine network of radicals. It exposes their plot to take over America and their methods. Her book is an eye-opener. A Muslim born in Bombay, India who has traveled throughout the Middle East, she spent her youth in Morgantown, West Virginia. Since her arrival in America and citizenship here, she has adored our foundational principles of individual liberty and religious pluralism. “I embraced liberal American values of freedom, self-determination, and secular government,” she writes. She is part of a Muslim reform movement which embraces conceptions of equal rights for men and women and acceptance of other faiths, including the Jewish faith and the state of Israel. For that, she has been condemned as worse than heretical by many in the same network of radicals she exposes in her book. “I have been viciously attacked as a ‘Zionist media whore,’ ‘racist,’ ‘American apologist,’ and ‘Islamaphobe,’” she writes.
Nomani strongly opposes all forms of racism and religious bigotry, including anti-Semitism. She has a long history of public defense of equal protection of the laws and equal opportunity regardless of race and gender. A professional journalist and author, she was the former colleague of Daniel Pearl who was abducted by radical Muslim terrorists from Nomani’s home in Pakistan and thereafter murdered. She is also, along with Suparna Dutta, one of the original founders of Parents for TJ (Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology), where she opposed race-based exclusion of Asians imposed as part of the school’s “equity” agenda.
Nomani defines these obscured threats to the survival and success of liberty this way: “The Woke Army is an organized, well-financed global network of Muslim radicals and leftist activists who exploit the freedoms of the West to promote a system of beliefs that runs counter to any values of freedom.” She explains how these radicals incessantly exploit means to destroy the United States, uniting with Marxists, among them those in BLM and Antifa, to maintain a constant assault and effort at erosion of everything from law enforcement to public education. Together, they subvert foundational American “values of democracy, meritocracy, and progress” and promote essentially self-destructive and divisive ideological concepts like critical race theory, cancel culture, and anti-Semitism as a means to shake and crush the United States, ultimately enabling the foment of a revolution to bring about, in the case of the radical theocrats, a Muslim theocratic dictatorship, and, in the case of the Marxists, a communist state.
They operate in political positions of power, such as on school boards, boards of education, high schools, and universities; local, state, and national political offices; non-profit organizations; and businesses large and small. The picture she paints is one of insinuation of radical elements into these institutions all over the United States.
In her first few pages, Nomani boldly lists by name and position and organization those who are a part of this radical network. She finds certain common sources of financing and activity behind them. She writes “the network’s national security influence” is “funded by . . . George Soros.” She explains that it is “counterintuitive that Soros, who survived the Holocaust as a teen born into a Jewish family . . . was financing a great deal of this network, most of them anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.” She explains that Soros has, for example, increased his support for the radical group Muslim Advocates from $78,000 in 2006 to $1.7 million in 2019.
She reveals that as far back as the 1950s radicals began plotting means to overthrow the United States and establish either a theocracy or a communist dictatorship. She documents the arrival in 1981 of the now deceased Ismail Al-Faruqui of the Muslim Brotherhood to Virginia and how he purchased buildings in Herndon at 500 Grove Street. That location would thereafter serve as the address and center for all sorts of radical groups and as the funding base for others nationwide and worldwide. She explains that Al-Faruqui even acquired a lucrative chicken slaughter house in Georgia to help fund their political operations, Mar-Jac Poultry, Inc. Nomani records the history of development of these groups and their alliances with Marxist entities. She also records their success in landing large donations again and again from George Soros’s funding entities, often to pay for political operations against American institutions by radical Muslim groups in conjunction with or as a complement to Marxist groups.
This kind of ever present, persistent terrorism is now big business in the United States. Nomani reveals that the radical agenda is being promoted across the country. Her book Woke Army is a wake-up call to all freedom loving Americans. It asks us to recognize that the terrorism threat is not limited to violent massacres but involves a persistent decades old and continuing effort to infiltrate essential American institutions and use them as bases for the elimination of all foundations of American liberty. Grave threats to the survival of our nation from Biden’s open border policies, Soros-baked prosecutors’ anti-incarceration agenda, and Marxist CRT indoctrination in the schools are exacerbated by this dedicated network of radicalsand Marxists who exploit those weaknesses at every opportunity. We must awake to the reality of the Woke Army and turn the power of local, state, and federal law enforcement against it. We must first remove those in office who stand in the way of defense of Americans’ rights to life, liberty, and property.
https://townhall.com/columnists/jonathanemord/2023/03/20/nomani-exposes-the-woke-army-n2620862
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21 March, 2023
Bible college fires theologian for tweet against homosexuality, threatens to report as terrorist: lawyers
A Bible college that disrespects the Bible! Amazing! See Romans 1:27; Jude 1:7; 1 Timothy 1:8-11; Mark 10:6-9; Matthew 19: 4-16; 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11; 1 Corinthians 7:2; Leviticus 18:22; Leviticus 20:13; Genesis 19:4-8. It sounds more like the Devil's college
A Methodist Bible college in the U.K. fired a Christian theologian and threatened to report him as a terrorist because of his tweets in opposition to homosexuality, his attorneys claimed.
Dr. Aaron Edwards, who taught theology at Cliff College in Derbyshire, England, was dismissed from the school after being accused of “bringing the college into disrepute” on social media last month.
In a series of now-deleted tweets, Edwards had criticized the Church of England’s stance on homosexuality and same-sex marriage. He also accused the church of “promoting perversion.”
Edwards’ attorneys said he was called into a meeting with Cliff College officials on Nov. 27 and told that his tweets had caused “distress” among members of Britain’s Methodist Church, of which the college is a part. He was then given two options: resign or be fired immediately.
When Edwards refused to resign, he was escorted off campus and told never to return. He was also warned that if he ever stepped foot on campus again, he would be reported as a terrorist under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
“The decision to summarily dismiss Dr. Edwards and ban him from campus is an outrageous attack on academic freedom and free speech,” Edwards’ attorneys said in a statement released Tuesday.
“This case also raises serious questions about whether Cliff College has acted unlawfully by discriminating against Dr. Edwards on grounds of his religion or belief.”
The statement continued: “We have advised Dr. Edwards to lodge formal complaints with both the police and the Equality Commission.”
A spokesperson for Cliff College denied that Edwards had been discriminated against, telling Fox News in an email Thursday that while they could not comment on individual personnel matters, they took any such allegations “very seriously.”
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British slackers: There are jobs galore, so why are 7million out of work?
With more than a million job vacancies in this country, it’s nothing short of a scandal that 7million people of working age are economically inactive – 5.9million of them on universal credit.
The total has risen by 300,000 since the pandemic, and while some may be incapable of holding down a job for reasons of poor health, others should surely be able to find employment. With so many technical aids available for home working, is it really possible that 2.5million people classed as long-term sick or disabled are incapable of doing any paid hours at all?
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt certainly thinks not and tells the Mail today of a new carrot-and-stick approach to coax the workless into employment.
Benefit payments for the disabled and long-term sick would be protected if they took on work for a trial period.
Meanwhile, those on universal credit risk losing money if they refuse to accept work or fail to turn up for interviews. Also, if they work less than 18 hours a week (up from 12), they will be obliged to seek more.
Getting benefit claimants back into the workforce is good for the country and good for those concerned. It saves public money and reduces the pressure to bring in migrants to fill the 1.1million posts which are vacant.
More importantly, work generally makes people healthier, while earning one’s own money rather than relying on the state should instil pride and confidence.
This is not the first time ministers have tried to tackle benefit dependency. Sir Iain Duncan Smith had great success during the coalition years in transforming the benefit system to make work pay.
But that resolve has slipped since and inertia has set in. We welcome Mr Hunt’s campaign and hope it will galvanise the workless into action. Poor productivity has held Britain back for far too long. This initiative can help turn the tide.
Passport to misery
Anyone who has waited three months or more for their passport to be renewed might be forgiven for thinking Passport Office staff were already on strike.
Amazingly, that was the sub-standard service when they were working normally. So Lord knows how long those delays will be now they are planning a five-week walkout.
The decision to punish the long-suffering public with this spiteful action is particularly tin-eared, at a time when almost every other union is seeing sense and calling off their strikes.
The Public and Commercial Services union plans to create as much disruption as possible, calling their strike for the peak April period, during which an estimated 250,000 applications come in every week.
The strike will cause widespread stress as people wait anxiously to see whether passports arrive in time for their summer vacation and could well lead to family holidays being ruined altogether. So much for public service.
Emotion trumps logic
Parliament's decision to ban the import of hunting trophies into the UK was sadly a victory for emotion and sentimentality over common sense.
Despite representatives of five African countries saying that regulated hunting of big game was an essential and lucrative part of their conservation strategy, MPs allowed hearts to rule heads.
Like deer in London’s royal parks, animals will need to be culled anyway to preserve the health of the herds and to ensure they don’t become too numerous. Only now it will cost money rather than generating it.
Supporters of this Bill are no doubt bristling with pride over their virtuous stand against the odious hobby hunters. But according to local conservationists, they have caused more damage than they know.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11874611/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-jobs-galore-7million-work.html
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We are not your victims, liberals: Slavery reparations are an insult
By Xaviaer DuRousseau (Reformed BLM activist)
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors “voiced enthusiastic support” after hearing 111 recommendations from the African American Reparations Advisory Committee.
The proposal includes giving every eligible black resident $5 million and the elimination of their personal debt and tax burdens.
Let’s be clear about one thing: Even in a liberal safe space like San Francisco, this absurd proposal is never going to come to fruition.
Who will pay for it?
It is wildly unrealistic to think that non-black San Francisco families can withstand the burden of an estimated $600,000 each to support the $5 million proposal alone.
This campaign for reparations is led by leftist grifters looking to sell their latest lucrative book about being oppressed and progressives who expect a gold medal for their virtue signaling.
Other noteworthy recommendations include a guaranteed annual income of $97,000 for 250 years for each of San Francisco’s 50,000 black residents and a home “for just $1 a family.”
Every American — especially Bay Area residents — should be repulsed by the latter recommendation.
California has an estimated homeless veterans population of more than 10,000. You’d be hard-pressed to walk through the Financial District of San Francisco without encountering multiple homeless veterans who are sleeping on the streets.
Slavery ended in 1865 — and was never legal in California! — yet we are overlooking the needs of veterans in 2023 in favor of “social justice.”
Crosshed here
No sane individual has downplayed the gruesome nature of slavery, but it is a slippery slope to attempt to compensate citizens for every injustice in our nation’s history.
Black Americans in 2023 were never slaves, and white Americans in 2023 were never slave owners.
Distributing reparations to the descendants of slaves may lead to various other communities who have complex, somber histories demanding that people who never themselves inflicted harm be forced to foot the bill.
The city-appointed reparations task force is still debating residency requirements.
There are glaring flaws within this criteria — such as what does this mean for biracial people? Will a mixed-race person be required to fund and receive reparations? How much African ancestry is required in order to qualify? Are we going to see the return of the one-drop rule?
Furthermore, this news may leave African immigrants and their descendants ecstatic, as there isn’t a clearly defined way to prove that a black American descended from slaves rather than from blacks living in free, northern states during the slavery era or from voluntary immigration to the United States.
In 2023, we are supposed to believe that our country is still systemically racist, as if affirmative action, university and occupational diversity quotas, a twice-elected black president, a black vice president and roughly a dozen black/biracial billionaires do not suffice to debunk the narrative.
The cry of systemic racism is exhausted, and the victim cards expired about 60 years ago. Nevertheless, the left continues to manipulate black Americans by keeping us dependent on a system of handouts.
It began with welfare, and the left is continuing its predecessors’ work today with the empty promise of reparation proposals.
Free from responsibility
The helpless-victim narrative clouding many black Americans’ judgment and perception of reality has hindered our growth as a collective.
Instead of directing our focus toward relevant issues — such as father absence, crime, illiteracy, and staggering abortion rates — we are told these problems are somehow the result of slavery and Jim Crow and, therefore, not our fault and only curable by someone else bailing us out.
I pray to see the day that more black Americans will recognize the way we are being gaslighted for political gain.
Until then, one thing is certain — these reparation recommendations are a tragicomical representation of how unserious the San Francisco Board of Supervisors are about fixing their drug-ridden city.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/17/we-are-not-victims-liberals-slavery-reparations-insulting/
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Corporate Media Works Against the Average American
The Right must fight back in the information war waged by left-wing media, the editor-in-chief of The Federalist says, adding that conservatives should take their cues from how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis treats “false reporting.”
“Because they’re combining with Big Tech to suppress conservative publications and outlets, we need to treat it like the information war it is, fund the information war properly, and invest in those people that are pushing against the fake news [and] who care about actually reporting real news,” Mollie Hemingway told The Daily Signal.
There’s nothing “mainstream” about corporate media, she said, adding that what she calls “propaganda media” works against average Americans by pushing radical ideology, suppressing information about elections, and more.
“They do not represent the views of average Americans by any stretch of the imagination,” she said. “They support really radical ideas, whether they’re economic or cultural that the vast majority of Americans, and even—in some cases—the vast majority of Democrats, don’t share.”
Woke media outlets use euphemistic language, such as “gender-affirming care” and “preferred” personal pronouns, to frame gender issues, Hemingway says.
“What that means is actual mutilation of healthy body parts or permanent sterilization of the reproductive system. It’s a criminally gross type of thing they’re talking about, but they use these euphemisms to describe it,” she said, adding:
People who want to be free need to fight very hard to make sure that they use proper words to describe reality.
Left-wing media outlets do not represent the majority of American women, Hemingway said in explaining the positive media coverage of, for example, the Equal Rights Amendment, which would erase distinctions between males and females.
“When conservative women destroyed the first attempt to pass this Equal Rights Amendment, they warned that denying the reality of distinctions between the sexes would be a bad thing for society,” she said.
Most women want families, Hemingway said.
“I think younger women are more aware of how the early waves of feminism were this false promise of happiness,” she said. “Over the last six or seven decades, women’s happiness has declined as men’s happiness has increased relative to women’s happiness. That makes sense, because what feminism teaches is false. It’s a false belief that not caring for family and not caring about having a family will make you happy, and that’s just not true.”
The media coverage of pregnancy resource centers, which provide care to mothers in need, is also malpractice, she added.
“They just don’t actually accurately report what happens in a maternal care center—how much of it is about helping young women in the early stages of becoming mothers, not just about helping them avoid making a decision toward abortion,” she said, adding:
Abortion is one of those topics that is among the worst in terms of bias and deception from the media, the language they use, the terms they choose. They are very committed to supporting abortion, and it shows.
Heading into the 2024 election, she said, candidates should not treat the lying media as legitimate.
“[DeSantis] refuses to treat them like they are legitimate, because they are not legitimate,” Hemingway said. “He won’t give them press credentials to allow them to blow up his events. He always questions the assumptions behind their questions. He calls them out for their false reporting.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/03/13/not-legitimate-corporate-media-works-american-public-mollie-hemingway-says/ ?
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20 March, 2023
Sexual politics is damaging young men
Masculinity has been in crisis for as long as anyone can remember. The usual explanation is that post-industrial society doesn’t much care for brawn. We’re all office dwellers now, mutely churning out spreadsheets for other spreadsheet producers. The theory makes sense as far as it goes. But something else has changed much more recently: a rejection of the very concept of masculinity.
The polling company YouGov found that just 8 per cent of people have positive views of white men in their twenties, by far the lowest of any ethnicity or age group. Males are routinely presented as inherently dangerous, aggressive and animalistic, incapable of controlling their own instincts. You can see it on public transport, where government adverts announce that staring is sexual harassment. Us blokes can’t even be trusted to use our eyes properly.
Teenage boys are routinely disciplined by their schools for even the most minor infractions of an insurgent sexual politics. A friend’s son at a smart English day school was recently hauled up for the crime of unprompted communication with a girl. The boy had sent a message introducing himself to a student from another school. There was, according to the friend, no sexual element to the message. It was a simple greeting. No matter. That kind of behaviour is unacceptable.
This moral shift has been encouraged by social media and an expansive higher education sector that delights in tearing down the old order. Things we once took for granted are merely ‘constructed’ – and anyone who disagrees is a misogynistic privilege-hoarder. The new believers are able to muster online, forcing their revolutionary worldview into the wider culture and on to institutions that simply want a quiet life.
Look at the ‘Global Boyhood Initiative’, which is writing a new curriculum – currently being piloted in a couple of London schools – on gender equality for children. Last year the GBI published a report on the state of UK boys that starts by suggesting that gender is ‘not tied to sex organs’ and then goes on to call families ‘gender and heterosexuality “factories”’.
A cottage industry of ‘toxic masculinity’ tutors has emerged following the Everyone’s Invited scandal, a wave of anonymous allegations of sexual impropriety at Britain’s top private schools that began in 2020. One such company is Beyond Equality, which sells its services to hundreds of UK schools, putting on workshops in which they tell boys to strip themselves of the ‘restrictive, burdensome armour’ of masculinity. The reason, they say, is to create ‘communities that are safe for everyone’ and to put a stop to ‘gender-based violence’. The implication is clear: men need to be reprogrammed.
‘Boys are now seen as potential perverts,’ explains one female former teacher, who quit the profession last year. ‘There was this obsession with the victimisation of women. I thought we had been getting somewhere with sex and relationships, teaching the children to treat people with respect, but that has been totally set back.’
A few weeks ago, a school in Essex sent a letter to parents telling them that their children were to be prohibited from having any romantic relationships with fellow students. All physical contact was to be banned, including a simple hug. In the letter, the school said the policy was designed to ‘keep your child safe. If your child is touching somebody else, whether they are consenting or not, anything could happen. It could lead to an injury, make someone feel very uncomfortable, or someone being touched inappropriately’. Who on earth really believes that children might injure themselves by holding hands?
This frantic prudery is a result not of a resurgence of conservative values, but of a progressive fear of men. Appalling behaviour is apparently everywhere. In 2021, Ofsted compiled a report that found 79 per cent of schoolgirls said sexual assault happened ‘a lot’ or ‘often’ at their school. But there seems to be an inability to hold two notions in our heads: that sexual assault is bad and that treating men as inherent sex pests is also bad. A reasonable worry about assault appears to have morphed into an institutional misandry. There is a lack of recognition that, as with all crimes, the proportion of perpetrators is vanishingly small. The awful behaviour of a few is leading to the mistreatment of all.
Another teacher, working at a London college, agrees: ‘The new sexual framework reaffirms the gender roles that boys are these really strong, insensitive masculine beings and girls are these wimpy things that need to be careful. We seem to be saying: “You’re a girl, you’re going to be taken advantage of, you need to be scared.”’ There’s a failure to contend with the idea that the awkwardness of young manhood – the playground scuffles, the stilted attempts at courtship – are the necessary growing pains of becoming a well-adjusted grown-up.
The result of all this over-policing is boys who feel uneasy, anxious and angry. Since 2017, the NHS has found that the proportion of boys with probable mental health issues has increased by more than 50 per cent, now at nearly one in five. The suicide rate for boys aged 15 to 19 has more than doubled over the past decade. The child psychologist Julie Lynn Evans supported the Everyone’s Invited movement, seeing it as a necessary response to decades of dodgy male behaviour. But now she worries the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. ‘The boys came out of lockdown into this slightly hysterical atmosphere of “Don’t touch, that’s inappropriate, that’s assault.” They are being treated as guilty until proven innocent. They can hardly move for fear of doing something wrong.’
I worry that boys are so browbeaten by activist adults that they are turning into purposeless young men. In the US, the proportion of males under 30 who haven’t had sex in the past year has tripled since 2008, now at a third. While data is still being collected, reports suggest the same trend is occurring in Britain. We have seen plenty of hand-wringing about ‘incels’ (‘involuntary celibates’), the uber-misogynists who rage against women. But I suspect that the same politics which frets about ‘toxic masculinity’ in part gives rise to the most toxic form of manhood. Tell someone enough that you dislike their character and they’ll naturally object. Resentment becomes mutual.
Inevitably, then, there has been a backlash from boys. It has come in the form of Andrew Tate, the British-American social media personality who projects an ‘ultra-masculine, ultra-luxurious lifestyle’. Tate was arrested at the end of last year at his garish Romanian party house where he is accused of exploiting trafficked women. His videos, in which he tells sad men to stop taking antidepressants and get to a gym, have caused something of a moral panic among Britain’s teachers. They fear that his self-professed ‘misogyny’ is turning boys into horrors. Female teachers have complained of teenagers writing ‘MMAS’ – ‘make me a sandwich’ – at the end of their homework.
Why are teenage boys so excited by Tate? According to the former teacher, boys would tell her: ‘I know this guy’s a tosser but he’s funny and he has a point. He’s challenging these ideas that really need challenging.’
Tate seems more symptom than cause. Young men have been moving away from progressive politics for at least the past few years. The political theorist Eric Kaufmann found that the young, specifically men, are turning to the right. In 2020, well before the likes of Tate came about, 18-year-olds were found to be as right-wing as people in their forties. Meanwhile, a majority of under-forties now believe that women’s equality has gone so far that it discriminates against men.
There’s certainly something going wrong with young men. For one thing, they are far more likely to be unemployed: a third of those aged 18 to 24 are not in work or seeking it compared with a fifth of the working-age population. Part of the problem is that British women have outperformed men in university applications since the mid-1990s. So the girls simply produce better CVs. Consider, too, the prospect of activist HR departments wanting to fulfil gender equality quotas: of course they’ll opt for the better candidate if she brings with her the glow of doing good. This explains why men on the cusp of adulthood are finding it harder to get not only jobs but girlfriends. Men tend to value physical attractiveness in partners, while women are interested in a wider set of attributes, including earning potential.
It’s almost a certainty, too, that these single, workless men are still living with their parents. After all, the enormous cost of housing means that two-thirds of people in their twenties do. So we come to a startling conclusion: young men are increasingly unloved, unemployed and unable to live independently.
Lynn Evans’s description of teenage boys could as easily apply to men in their early twenties: ‘They’re in their bedrooms and only really speaking to friends online. They’re also gaming and watching a ton of pornography. They’re living in a sort of fantasy world.’ Why bother going out into a hostile environment to find a job and a girlfriend when the need for a sense of achievement, along with sexual desire, can be sated in your childhood bedroom, however artificially?
What’s happening looks like the phenomenon of the Japanese hikikomori, adolescent males who resign themselves to their bedrooms for months, spending their days playing video games and kept alive only by sad mothers. We seem increasingly unwilling to accommodate any form of masculinity. The result is a breed of angry and unhappy young men, rejecting a world that rejects them.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/boys-in-a-bind
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Biden Bails Out The Rich And The Reckless
Once again, American families are worried that their bank deposits are no longer safe. Just a few days ago, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) became the second largest bank failure in American history. This was followed shortly by Signature Bank — now the third largest bank failure — with possibly more to come. While these banks have been reckless, government intervention set the stage for this disaster and threatens to compound it with bailouts.
SVB was the 16th largest bank in the country, but it engaged in highly speculative trades fueled by easy money and near-zero interest rates courtesy of the Federal Reserve. These speculations were profitable in the short run, yet doomed to fail as rates rose in the face of historic inflation. SVB actually seemed to recognize the risk and bought financial instruments to protect itself, but sold them off in 2021, leaving depositors unprotected.
This meant that when rates did rise, SVB’s entire business model collapsed. In response, the government is now bailing out SVB’s rich Silicon Valley depositors. (RELATED: BETSY MCCAUGHEY: Mr. President, Fire Your Woke Minions And Appoint Some Competent People)
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has long guaranteed all deposits up to $250,000. But because SVB catered to the Silicon Valley elite, 96 percent of its depositors were above that threshold. These depositors knew the risk; indeed, they could have purchased private insurance to cover the rest of their deposits. Most chose not to.
But now the Treasury department, Fed, and FDIC have stepped in to bail out these rich depositors, raiding the FDIC — intended to cover only smaller depositors — to do it. The administration is claiming these bailouts won’t cost taxpayers a penny, that they will be paid by a special “levy” on the FDIC, bolstered by $25 billion in freshly printed money.
This amounts to raiding every bank account in America, rich and poor alike, to bail out the Silicon Valley elite. And if the FDIC levies and Fed handouts can’t cover all the losses? Last time, in 2009, the FDIC simply got Treasury to give it $500 billion in borrowing authority as a direct cost to taxpayers.
Worse, the Fed is now expanding bailouts to even solvent banks by lending against their failed investments at the original purchase price. This is effectively pretending those losses never happened. Imagine buying a car, driving it for 100,000 miles then claiming it’s worth the original price. For you that would be illegal. For bankers it’s a friendly favor. Not only does this reward recklessness, it compounds the losses to Americans unless banks can miraculously reverse the very interest rate gambles that is sending them off the edge one by one.
Finally, markets are now saying the Fed’s fight against inflation is now crippled: Interest rate expectations have plunged in the past week, signaling that Wall Street expects a quick return to the same easy money that launched near-double digit inflation.
And so, in a repeat of 2008, reckless banks egged on by reckless policy have created catastrophic losses for the rich and powerful that, once again, will be torn out of regular Americans. This “heads I win, tails you lose” bailout cycle is a recipe for more risk, more failures, and more crises.
Without even an executive order, let alone an act of Congress, the FDIC — the bedrock insurance of Americans’ life savings — is being raided to bail out the rich and the reckless. Banks now have a green-light to assume any risk whatsoever, safe in the knowledge American families will cover the tab.
Taxpayers should not be forced to bail out millionaires, venture capitalists, and the reckless banks that cater to them. Imprudent banks should be allowed to fail according to the long-standing rules of the game: Covering depositors up to $250,000, leaving the rich to get what’s left after FDIC resolution, and letting failed banks be bought by more prudent competitors.
Bailouts beget more bailouts. It is far past time to stop the cycle.
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Facebook Hired Minorities and Paid Them Not to Work. "We were just sitting there"
In the last 5 years, Big Tech firms came under heavy pressure to publicize the racial and gender demographics of their workforce and to improve their numbers. That’s hard when your workforce is mostly white, Asian and Indian. This story may shed some light on how Facebook went about improving its numbers.
Meta (Facebook), like other tech companies, went on a hiring bonanza during the pandemic, as it faced enormous demand for its products and services while people were stuck inside.
Meta said it had 44,942 employees on December 31, 2019. By the end of 2021, the company listed 71,970 employees in its annual report and wrote it “expect[ed] headcount growth to continue for the foreseeable future.”
Meta then said that 2023 was going to be a “year of efficiency” after laying off 11,000 people in November. The company announced more layoffs this week that will affect another 10,000 people.
Levy, 35, was hired through Meta’s “Sourcer Development Program,” which attempted to recruit workers from underrepresented backgrounds. Levy, who is Mexican-American, said after being hired she was not given any work to do. She was let go in the first round of layoffs in November.
“We were just sitting there,” she added in the video. “It kind of seemed that Meta was hiring people so other companies couldn’t have us.”
Or so Facebook could claim to be diverse. People were hired to be diverse with no actual work for them to do. And then they were the first to be fired as is usually the case.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/facebook-hired-minorities-and-paid-them-not-to-work/
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On being working class
Cosmo Landesman
Pundits writing for a young audience are always telling readers to ‘stop pretending to be working-class!’ and stop ‘fetishising the working class’. They seem more angered by the imitation of class than the iniquities of class itself. Singer Lily Allen and the rap star Yungblud have both been denounced on Twitter for – to paraphrase E.P. Thompson – the faking of the English working class.
Personally, I don’t understand the fuss. For most of my youth I pretended to be working -class – and so did most of my middle–class mates (sorry, friends). And we were not alone. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the voices of youth all sounded working–class, especially the middle-class ones like Jagger, Bowie and, yes, that faux working-class hero himself, John Lennon. Today, with our fixation on cultural appropriation, they’d all be denounced on Twitter for class tourism.
My journey into working-class tourism began when my American parents moved to London in the 1960s and I ended up attending a local north London comprehensive school called Holloway. In the hope of fitting in, I began trying to pass as just another working-class kid. Believe me, it wasn’t easy with a name like Cosmo. At Holloway you were either a Kevin, a Gary, a Dave, or you were a ‘tosser’ with a funny name.
Matters weren’t helped by my macrobiotic parents’ insistence that I took a packed lunch of such exotic delights as miso and tahini sandwiches, umeboshi plums and tubs of seaweed. My working-class companions had not yet learned to love the smell of curry, so you could imagine the impact my lunch had. I still remember the trauma I suffered when a classmate found my hidden lunch and brought it to the attention of the rest of the class – there were cries of horror, loud sounds of gagging and much mock vomiting.
Still, I was determined to fit in. So I bought a pair of cherry-red Doc Martens bovver boots – then the popular footwear of every self-respecting skinhead. I wore Ben Sherman shirts, a green windbreaker jacket, and learned to swagger like a geezer and talk like a cockney. And when I made it into the school football team, I’d finally been accepted as one of the working class.
You may wonder why I practised this deceit of mine. Why not simply be my nice middle-class self? Because I would have been beaten up for being a ‘ponce’ who talked funny and acted superior, that’s why. No, it was a question of adapt or die. This was not simply about tourism or slumming; all adolescents want to fit in with their peers.
But it wasn’t just an act. I had a real affection and admiration for the home lives of my working-class friends. Compared with the middle–class bohemianism of my home – a place devoid of rules and boundaries, where weirdo artists and crazy writers roamed free – the orderly homes of my friends offered a kind of comforting normality. It was a refuge from the chaos of my liberal progressive upbringing. Their mums offered such forbidden goodies as thick slices of crusty white bread lacquered in butter and strawberry jam along with Wagon Wheels and endless cups of sweet tea. At my health–conscious middle-class friends’ homes, you’d be lucky to get a glass of organic apple juice with your slice of sugar-free buckwheat cake.
When I left Holloway school and moved into adult life, I thought I’d left my working-class affectations behind. But it was my first wife – a working-class girl from Bristol – who one day asked me: ‘Why do you always talk to working people with that ridiculous Dick Van Dyke cockney accent of yours?’ ‘Dunno,’ I said, ‘I fink it’s because I want them to accept and like me.’
Those who rage against working-class tourism seem to believe that we’re still living in a pre-1960s Britain, where we were all in our own separate and distinct cultural worlds. Yes, the class system is still alive but there’s so much more cultural cross fertilisation that that kind of talk makes no sense.
When a typical middle-class kid professes a love of football or going to the pub, or shows off his latest tattoo, is he trying to pass for working-class? When a working-class kid wants to go into higher education, enjoy foreign travel and go into therapy, is he trying to be middle-class? We live in a much more mix-and-match culture that makes talk of class as a foreign country redundant.
Yes, call people like me fakes and phoneys, but isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/common-knowledge/ ?
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New Bill Would Curb Law Enforcement’s Use of ‘Civil Forfeiture’ To Seize Assets
Not before time. There have been tremendous abuses of the seizure power
A bipartisan bill in the House signals the potential for a deal on federal civil forfeiture laws, changes to which would be a major victory for property rights in America.
The Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration or FAIR Act, reintroduced by Representatives Tim Walberg, a Republican, and Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, would overhaul federal civil forfeiture law.
Under current law, the civil forfeiture process allows law enforcement officials to seize personal and private property of individuals — and then keep or sell that property — by simply alleging it was involved in a crime, even if charges are never brought.
Civil forfeiture stories have often spurred outrage over their unfairness, such as in 2010, when one Alabama computer repair shop owner had more than 150 computers confiscated by police. Reportedly acting on a tip that the owner was receiving stolen goods, police confiscated the computers, some of which were customers’ property undergoing repair, and never returned them despite dropping charges.
The new measure before Congress is squarely aimed at ending civil forfeiture as it currently exists and removing the profit motive for law enforcement in seizing property. “The lawless seizure and ‘forfeiture’ of people’s private property by police officers is becoming standard operating procedure in many parts of the country,” Mr. Raskin said. “We want to restore the presumption of innocence, fair judicial process, and the opportunity to be heard.”
According to the senior attorney for the National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse, Dan Alban, the act would take “an even stronger stand against abusive forfeitures” than past measures. “Protecting Americans’ property rights isn’t a partisan issue and we’re glad to see lawmakers from across the aisle working together to pass true reforms,” Mr. Alban said.
The law would altogether end administrative forfeiture, or the forfeit of property seized by federal agencies, and instead require that only federal courts could order civil forfeiture to the federal government. The act would also provide for those seeking a return of property from the federal government to have access to legal counsel throughout the process.
The act would also reroute funds from civil forfeiture away from the budgets of federal agencies and toward the treasury’s general fund, meaning Congress would have control over the money instead of executive agencies. It would also eliminate “equitable sharing,” a program that allows federal agencies to evade state forfeiture laws by paying state and local law enforcement officials.
The burden of proof for civil forfeiture would also be raised to require the government to provide clear and convincing evidence that property owners knew their property was being used in crimes.
Currently, all that the government needs to do is show that it is more likely than not that the property is connected to a crime. Property owners can also have their property seized if it is implicated in a crime committed by someone else.
This legislation would be a milestone in the protection of property rights in the arena of civil forfeiture, which has attracted an increasing amount of attention in recent years due to examples of civil forfeiture abuse.
One example comes from 2017, when a Wyoming man had more than $91,000, money he intended to use to purchase a recording studio at Madison, Wisconsin, confiscated by police. After police pulled over the would-be studio owner for the way he was wearing his seat belt and an alleged lane violation, the man consented to having his car searched.
The police found the money in cash, stashed in a speaker in the back of his car, and said he could go if he signed a waiver giving up the cash. He was only given a $25 ticket. Although the musician eventually got his money back, cases like his have led to outrage over the practice, with many people in his position never seeing their property returned.
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19 March, 2023
The hidden cost of sex for women
Katie Jgln often mocks the current heterosexual singles scene. She is bisexual so part of that unhappiness could reasonably be construed as the effect of living in a world into which she does not fit. Normal women might see the situation differently. And I think she misses two major points below.
1). She describes modern-day relationships between the sexes as unequal and oppressive towards women. Most of what she says is probably pretty true in her environment. But it is surely not true of all male/female relationships. There are relationships in which the woman is dominant and some relationships in which men treat women lovingly and considerately.
Negotiation is the secret to getting things right. All human relstionships involve the striking of bargains. They all have to be negotiated in some way. To take a very simple example, a bargain that still exists to this day is one where the wife does most of the housework while the man does various outdoor chores such as taking out the trash.
I am of course neither recommending nor criticising that "bargain". The point is that bargains of that general sort are routinely entered into. Division of labor between men and women goes back deeply into our evolutionary past. And some degree of compromise will be needed for such bargains to be entered into. Large numbers of married couples do succeed in finding agreements that suit them.
So what jiggling Katie is describing is the situation of a woman who has not or cannot find a bargain that suits her. She is far from alone in that. There is much complaint of dating failures
But if individual negotiation cannot deiver a comfortable heterosexual relationship, is there an alternative?
2). There is. What Katie describes is a common modern situation but she appears to miss competely how it all came about. Traditional society once offered a balance of its own. It had all the unequal treatment of women that Katie deplores but it had something else as well. It had ways of treating women which recognized and compensated for inequaity.
I am of course talking about something that feminists fiercely mock: Chivalry towards women. Women did not personally have to negotiate a fair deal with men because men were brought up to believe that they must give women a favourable deal in some ways.
Male violence towards women is a real and great concern for women these days and no-one seems to have found any way of preventing it. The usual hilarious "solution" offered is to tell men to be more like women (!). But violence WAS prevented once -- by the traditional attitude that violence towards women was shameful and a great weakness. Such beliefs were not always effective in protecting women but often they were. Traditional society had answers where the modern world has none.
So the world Katie knows is one where women get treatement that is still unequal but shorn of the protections that once went with it. Feminists took away chivalry and have offered nothing to replace the very important functions it had. Women are much the poorer for that. They still have typical female burdens but none of the support that once went with it.
There are still some men with traditional attitudes. Women would be well advised to seek them out. Feminism has stripped women of important protections and thrown them to the wolves but, fortunately, not all men are wolves. Christians in particular tend to have a traditional orientation
In my notes here about relationships, I often add personal anecdotes by way of illustration of my points. And I am pleased on this occasion to relate that I did personally do very much as recommended above in my own life.
I had a long marriage in which I did nothing about the house while my wife did it all. I seemed to do nothing. Yet at the time she regarded me as the love of her life. Why? What was the bargain involved? What did she get out of it?
Simple. I enabled her to give up work and become a full-time wife and mother. That is about as traditional as it gets. She was also a single mother of three lively kids when I met her so the chance to spend lots of time with her kids was a a huge boon to her. Most mothers want that. I also treated her kids as my own. So a very traditional marriage can be a very good one from the viewpoint of both parties involved.
In an ideal world, hook-up culture would likely work just fine for those who genuinely want to participate in it.
But we clearly aren’t living in one now. At least not yet.
Our society is still saturated with gender inequality, rife with patriarchal double standards and filled with men who are socialised to disrespect and dehumanise women. And all of that, unfortunately, shows up in many aspects of our lives — including hook-ups, relationships and sex in general.
And it’s the reason why there’s a hidden cost of sex for women.
On a societal level, the still existent purity culture implies that women ‘lose’ something while having sex with men, making the social stakes for women to engage in it much higher. Because while for men having a high ‘body count’ is a point of pride, for women, it continues to be a point of shame. And even something that can damage their reputation.
Even if you aren’t religious or don’t subscribe to sexual double standards, you obviously can’t control the fact that many people do and will judge you on it. (Ironically, that often also includes the men who want to sleep with you in the first place.)
Thanks to patriarchal social norms, women also bear most of the financial and health-related costs of birth control. We’re the ones who are expected by our male sex partners — casual or not — to stuff our body with hormones and risk its many side effects, ranging from depression and breast cancer to diabetes.
And then there’s, of course, the fact that depending on where you live, you might not even be able to access it. Or reproductive and sexual health care in general, including emergency contraception and abortions.
Women also face a much greater burden — and more severe health consequences — than men when it comes to getting diagnosed and dealing with sexually transmitted diseases. And it doesn’t exactly help that some straight men — according to some surveys among Millenials, as much as a third — never even got a full STI test, meaning they could be spreading HPV or other infections that rarely cause symptoms without knowing about it.
(Without the HPV vaccine, you might even develop cancer from contracting it. So if you’re a woman who’s never got it and hasn’t done a pap smear in a while, perhaps it’s time to book it now.)
Heterosexual women are also the least likely to orgasm out of… literally everyone else. According to one recent study, while heterosexual men orgasm nearly all the time, and lesbian and bisexual women about 86% and 66% of the time, respectively, heterosexual women only reach orgasms at a 62% rate.
There’s also a far greater taboo around female pleasure than the male one, and both men and women often grow up believing it simply doesn’t matter.
Not to mention that sexual violence and intimate partner violence both affect women disproportionately more than men — according to some global estimates, as many as 1 in 3 women experience it across their lifetime — or that thanks to a myriad of rape culture myths, rape remains one of the least frequently persecuted crimes.
And if all that wasn’t enough, many men now believe that feminism has ‘gone too far’ — in the UK, for instance, half of the young men do — and are being increasingly groomed by violently misogynistic online ‘gurus’ that equate women with…. animals. Or men’s property.
https://thenoosphere.substack.com/p/why-women-are-sick-and-tired-of-having
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‘Trad Wives’ Are Triggering Feminists
What started out as a BBC joke/skit wherein working women complain about having to work has blossomed into a trend on TikTok called #tradwife. “Trad wife” is slang for traditional wife (i.e., a stay-at-home wife with kids), and the videos are generally of these women going about their day. Many of them are religious. The more theatrical among this set have chosen to go the extra mile (it is TikTok, after all) and actually dress up like 1950s housewives. And it’s making the radical feminists and the wokesters angry.
How dare these women post about being satisfied being wives and mothers? Women fought hard for the right to work and be outside the home. This trend, to feminists, is like a social contagion that needs to be suppressed at all costs.
What happened to women supporting women? Why are they so threatened?
Here are some thoughts.
Trad Wives Are Great!
By this we mean that traditional wives are great, not necessarily the hashtag trend on TikTok (every trend has its wackos). But here in the real world, society needs women who, if they have the means and inclination, are homemakers. We need women who are cooking, cleaning, and raising children. It is dignified good work.
Not all women have this option. It is very hard to survive financially on one income. Some moms are hybrids who stay at home with children but also work. This is also good and necessary.
Not all women have the inclination or desire to marry. Not all wives are called to have children. That is also okay.
What is ridiculous is that instead of respecting the choices these women have made — a good and societally necessary choice — the screaming masses are tearing these women to shreds.
Critiques of the Trend
It is interesting that the mainstream media have been reacting so strongly to this TikTok trend. The usual mudslinging ensued. This trend is racist, sexist, homophobic, and trans/gender-nonconforming-phobic.
It’s racist, you see, because many of the women in these videos are white. It’s also particularly racist because some of these trad wives dress in 1950s clothing — didn’t you know that during the ‘50s there was Jim Crow and segregation?
Honestly, some of these people need to get off their screens and go outside and touch grass. Being traditional doesn’t mean retrograde. These critics are looking for something sinister in something that simply is not.
It also overlooks the fact that there are plenty of women of color who are also traditional wives. We suppose, though, according to the woke, that adhering to and agreeing with an institution such as heteronormative marriage is akin to being a racist, but you’re still going to have to square that circle.
The sexist accusation is baffling. Can women be sexist against themselves? Leftism is so confusing. On the one hand, they tell us if women/girls don’t act girly enough, we must actually be men. Then when women embrace their femininity in a traditional way, they are raked over the coals for not being like men. Honestly, we can’t win. Perhaps that’s the point of this circular illogic.
According to them, trad wives are homophobes, transphobes, and/or nonbinary-phobes because being in a traditional nuclear marriage (one man, one woman) is bad.
Conversely, being in a monogamous traditional marriage is fulfilling a purpose — family and security — and is satisfying to both partners.
The Tell That #Tradwife Is Actually on to Something
The fact that these radical feminists and leftists are reacting so strongly to this TikTok trend is a tell that the trad wives might be on to something.
Perhaps these women looked too happy. Because “traditionalism when it comes to homemaking has a particular magic to it that seems fulfilling,” argues political analyst Brandon Morse. “Men love being breadwinners and having loving, caring wives. Women want to feel safe, provided for, and admired.”
Perhaps these women’s choices threaten the Left because they’re subversive to the woke rhetoric, upholding the institution of marriage and family at the most basic units. Being a wife, mother, and homemaker throws a wrench into the works of this ideological takeover. If a wife is at home carrying out everyday duties, she might notice if something awful comes home from her child’s school (like a pornographic book from the library). She might not be as reliant on convenience items and instead she might garden, bake, create, and sew. She might even be teaching her children to be religious like herself. This, of course, is probably the greatest threat.
Being a religious wife and mother in a committed marriage is now an act of extraordinary courage. Sharing it on TikTok is an act of rebellion to the woke.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/95775-trad-wives-are-triggering-feminists-2023-03-17?mailing_id=7350
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Leftist agitators in Fascist black
About 100 protesters at the University of California, Davis, surrounded a venue attempting to disrupt an event Tuesday evening headlined by conservative personality and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. The event was organized by the school’s Turning Point chapter.
The protesters, who were mostly wearing black, clashed with law enforcement officers and other students, including attendees of the event, as they smashed windows, hurled eggs, used pepper spray and blocked people from entering the University Credit Union Center, where the event was held.
There were at least two arrests.
"Not a peaceful protest at all," Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted after photos and videos of the protest surfaced on social media.
Several people responded to Musk's post agreeing the protesters were violent and some made comparisons to the Jan. 6 Capitol protest.
UC Davis said in a statement after the event that one police officer was injured during the incident.
"Outside the UCUC, about 100 protesters gathered and for brief times blocked the main event entrance and the pathway to the entrance," the school said, admitting there were "minor incidents."
It added: "One officer sustained an injury when he was jumped on from behind and pushed to the ground, and two people were arrested and taken to Yolo County Jail for allegedly painting graffiti on an exterior wall of the University Credit Union Center, or UCUC, where the event was held."
The school also said protesters near the northeast entrance broke 10 glass window panes in the doors. Protesters did not gain access to the building, however, and eventually left the area.
There were no arrests related to the breaking of the glass, the school said.
The protesters held signs supporting trans and queer people and had umbrellas that they used primarily to cover their identities, videos and photos taken at the school show.
Other protesters threw eggs and other objects.
"There were some reports of people being pepper sprayed by others in the crowd. Aside from these pepper spray reports, no major physical injuries were reported and no one requested treatment for injuries," UC Davis said.
The protesters also physically blocked a bike path and made entry more difficult for others.
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Our Christophobic Ruling Caste
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley last week persistently questioned Attorney General Merrick Garland about the FBI’s over-reaction last September in its heavily armed arrest of pro-life Catholic Mark Houck at his home––for an alleged assault that local law enforcement had already declined to prosecute. Houck was tried, and a jury acquitted him in just an hour.
For citizens of faith, the raid and trial demonstrate how many “public servants” in our federal agencies have an animus against Christians, a peculiarity given that the DOJ and other agencies are so vigorous in protecting Muslims from alleged Islamophobic persecution. Christophobia, on the other hand, apparently is okay, and Christians’ First Amendment rights can be violated to serve partisan political agendas.
Once again, the self-styled “brights,” the technocratic, progressive ruling elite who “follow the science,” are abusing their power to intimidate and marginalize Christians while violating their 1st and 14th Amendment rights in order to discredit Christianity, long a threat to the technocracy and its authority.
The Houck case is not an outlier in the Feds’ sorry record of targeting Christians. In January there surfaced an FBI field office’s report called “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” which was disavowed only after an FBI whistleblower exposed it.
Or consider the FBI’s double standards in pursuing attacks on reproductive services offices, which are violations of the FACE Act used to charge Houck. According to the Heritage Foundation, “The DOJ charged 26 pro-life activists with FACE Act violations in 2022 alone, but did not charge a single pro-abortion activist with FACE Act charges in 2022, despite over 100 apparent pro-abortion attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and churches across the nation, according to Catholic Vote trackers.”
Nor is this a recent development. During the Obama administration, starting in 2010 the IRS targeted conservative and Christian non-profits. Losing a subsequent lawsuit did not slow the IRS down. In 2021, the agency pulled a Texas prayer group’s tax-exempt status because it “benefits Republicans.” As Ohio Senator Jim Jordan commented, “The Obama/Biden IRS targeted conservatives for their political beliefs. It looks like the Biden/Harris IRS is already up to no good as well. Every American should be concerned, but sadly, not surprised.”
This disdain for Christianity has been intensifying for a century, and goes back even farther to the 18th century Enlightenment. When not atheists, many of the new rationalists were Deists, reducing God to the “first mover” responsible for the created world. The theology of Christ’s divinity, incarnation, death, and resurrection, and the miracles attending Christ’s mission, was rejected. Christians, when not decried as tyrannical, intolerant instigators of slaughter, were patronized as “shamans or witch doctors from savage tribes whom one humors until one can dress them in trousers and send them to school,” as Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz satirized this attitude.
By 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche memorably expressed this new sensibility and its cause: “Wither is God?” the madman in a fable asks. “I will tell you. We have killed him––you and I. All of us are his murderers . . . . God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” The only question left is, what will take God’s place as the foundational source of our ideals like virtue or human rights, if these can even survive.
The progress of science and the new technologies that followed, and the spread of political structures like political freedom and equality, human rights, and social justice gave one answer: The new authority of science based on its material improvements changed radically human existence, and disproved the Christian doctrine of mankind’s innate corruptibility. The dream of endless progress brought on by education and scientific new knowledge, took hold and started the long process of secularization. The new knowledge and “human sciences” could now improve human nature and usher in an age freed from the destructive behaviors that once blighted human life.
It didn’t take long for that dream to become a nightmare. Yet not even the 20th century’s gruesome catalogue of industrialized slaughter, genocide, and gulags written by political religions like fascism, Nazim, and communism has weakened this faith among our cognitive elites.
For Americans in particular, this growing authority of science and distaste for religion began to erode the 1st Amendment’s rights of free speech and religion. The provision was distorted to mean a “wall of separation of church and state,” a phrase created by Thomas Jefferson. The “establishment clause” proscribed a church established the federal government with authority over the whole nation, like England’s Anglican Church. State-level established churches already existing in many states were left alone. Now they are forbidden by Supreme Court rulings that extended the 1st and 14th amendments to the states.
Today this misreading of the Constitution has been used to justify banning any public connection of politics to religion, which of course violates the 1st Amendment’s freedom of religion and speech. But this unwarranted interpretation conflicts with the thinking of the Founders about the viability of the Constitution’s freedoms given the destructive “passions and interests” and lust for power that all humans are prey to.
As John Adams expressed this importance of religion for the new nation’s success in his 1798 “Letter from John Adams to Massachusetts Militia”:
“Because we have no government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by Morality and Religion, Avarice, Ambition, Revenge, or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Indeed, even atheists like Voltaire acknowledged the utilitarian value of religion in his famous quips, “If God didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him,” and “God is dead, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night.” Or as Napoleon put it, “Religion is a kind of vaccination, which, by satisfying our natural love for the marvelous, keeps us out of the hands of charlatans and conjurers. The priests are better than the Cagliostros [famous occultists and frauds, Andrew Roberts’s gloss], the Kants, and all the visionaries of Germany.”
As advanced materially as we are, as successful as our science has been at unlocking the secrets of nature and using its powers to create life-changing technologies, our science still can’t give us an answer to the question why we shouldn’t just follow our impulses and appetites, no matter how evil. Instead, it falls back on dubious Darwinism like the “God gene,” or various forms of determinism like Freudianism or Marxism, both of which have been dead-ends in the attempt to find a substitute for God. At least Nietzsche was honest, acknowledging that God’s death has undercut all our virtues like charity and empathy for our fellow humans that make us humane rather than just clever chimps.
Finally, the discrediting of faith and the idealization of science as the royal road to ultimate happiness on earth, has created an emptiness in our civilization, which lacks a convincing story of who we are and what is best for us, how we should live and act, what is good for us and what we are good for.
Into that void have stepped cults and political religions like Marxism, which has co-opted much of Christian salvation theology. Only now, original sin is called the “alienation” of people from nature, their fellow man, and their labor, a fallen condition that the abolishing of capitalism and private property will redeemed. And the “born-again” Christian will be the “new man” communism creates through revolution, inheritors of a new “salvation” here on earth––“a higher sociobiological type, a superman . . . . Man will become incomparably stronger, wiser, more subtle,” as Leon Trotsky preached. As the Catholic thinker Andre de Lubac asked, “On which side are the miracles greater?”
We know the cost of this low-rent religion––100 million killed by famine, torture, gulags, and mass murder. Yet still the Left promotes the false knowledge about people and their natures that contributed to such carnage and cruelty. The history of communism alone answers the question that Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov raises: whether “without God and immortal life . . . all things are permitted.”
Yet science still has not been able to give a convincing answer to that question, as all around us belief in more and more secular “miracles” proliferate.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-christophobic-ruling-caste/
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BLM Movement Received $82.9 Billion From Corporations - Is This the Most Lucrative Shakedown in History?
In what could be considered the most lucrative shakedown of all time the Black Lives Movement has extorted received over $82.9 billion from corporations as Breitbart reports:
“The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and related causes received an astonishing $82.9 billion from corporations, a new funding database from the Claremont Institute has found.
The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life explained the necessity of their report in an article published in Newsweek, where the Center asserted that the 2020 BLM movement was about more than just “rioting and destruction.”
The Center explained that “The BLM pressure campaigns, harassment, and moral blackmail also amounted to possibly the most lucrative shakedown of corporate America in its history.”
“As a point of reference, $82.9 billion is more than the GDP of 46 African countries. In 2022, the Ford Motor Company’s profits were $23 billion,” they also noted. The sum of $82.9 million includes “more than $123 million to the BLM parent organizations directly,” as well as much more to other organizations supporting BLM’s agenda.
The list reveals that several popular corporations from a wide range of different industries supplied the movement with large sums of cash. Walmart, for example, which is based in Arkansas, gave a whopping $100 million in support of BLM and related causes focusing on “racial equity.” Amazon gave even more, supplying the movement with an astonishing $169.5 million. Silicon Valley Bank gave the movement $73.45 million.”
Have to admit the people who are running the Black Lives Matter movement are brilliant at raising money from corporations and from government entities as well.
Who knew asking corporations for free money to support a racist and hate filled organization would generate billions and billions in donations?
We also know that several of it’s former leaders have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar as well.
“Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors is stepping down as executive director of the organization amid controversy over her $3 million property portfolio.
Cullors, who has been at the helm of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation for nearly six years, announced the news on Thursday.
The 37-year-old activist told The Associated Press that she is leaving to focus on other projects, including the upcoming release of her second book and a multi-year TV development deal with Warner Bros.”
Guess when there is that much money floating around there is bound to be some level of corruption, especially when the thing is being run by leftists.
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17 March, 2023
Why I do not celebrate International Women’s Day (and what I propose in its stead)
Janice Fiamengo
International Women’s Day has come and gone once again. March 8 is the day we are exhorted to turn our attention to women: to their achievements and struggles, their courage and their suffering, their indispensable roles in our societies – and to what more can be done, mostly with men’s tax dollars, to promote and advantage them. When I say ‘turn our attention,’ I am speaking only metaphorically, of course. Our attention is always turned toward women, perpetually and ceaselessly: in praise, in awe, in defence; with outrage and indignation.
This year, as the International Women’s Day (IWD) website informs us, we are to focus on the concept of ‘equity,’ accepting that ‘equal opportunities aren’t enough’ and that ‘equal isn’t always fair.’ After 40 years of affirmative action hiring for women, special legal status, targeted promotions, and ceaseless affirmation – and at a time when women are already faring far better than men in education and employment – the promoters of IWD demand yet more women-only opportunities, special benefits, set-asides, hiring targets, start-up monies, government grants, and other gender perquisites in addition to all the accompanying pro-female hoopla. To add a dollop of ludicrous dolour, the IWD website announces ‘sadly’ that, ‘Gender parity won’t be attained for well over a century.’
To say that I do not celebrate International Women’s Day is to put it too mildly. I not only object to it but believe that the day – and all of its nauseous ideological, political, legal, and economic baggage – should be immediately retired and blotted from the calendar.
International Women’s Day exacerbates the combined self-glorification and self-pity too many women already exhibit when they think of themselves as women. Though the 1960s was supposed to free women from regarding themselves first and foremost as ‘the Other’ in Simone De Beauvoir’s words, IWD instead heightens the constant dreary self-regard, telegraphing that women’s experiences, sorrows, and triumphs – simply because they are women’s – deserve special recognition and massive wealth transfers. The rigged game is revealed by the fact that International Men’s Day (November 19) has at best a nominal existence, passing every year in near-complete oblivion.
The Marxist theorist, writer, and labour activist Clara Zetkin, who is generally credited with inaugurating IWD in 1910, at least made clear that women would necessarily work in concert with men to achieve ‘the social emancipation of labour’. In her 1909 essay German Socialist Women’s Movement, she explicitly opposed ‘the bourgeois women righters’ credo’ that women should join with other women to ‘strive exclusively for women’s rights’. Zetkin favoured a ‘class-war of all the exploited, without difference of sex, against all who exploit, without difference of sex’. That she also favored special meetings and measures to advance women suggests a contradiction in her ideology, but at least her platform did not depict all women as all men’s victims.
Today, any emphasis on cooperation and shared endeavour, any recognition of men’s humanity, achievements, and needs (aside from their need to overcome ‘toxic masculinity’ and defer more perfectly to women) – is strikingly absent from IWD pronouncements, which continually equate ‘gender equality’ (or ‘equity’) solely with advancing women.
In this, IWD is, of course, merely a microcosm of our culture generally. Whether the issue is suicide or drug addiction, employment or incarceration, homelessness or homicide, our societies always emphasise the impact on women, even when men are the vast majority of suicides, drug overdoses, workplace fatalities, prison inmates, homeless, or homicide victims. The IWD website speaks continually of ‘gender parity’ without once mentioning that in education, employment, health, and longevity, women have been doing better than their male peers for decades.
This is rank prejudice, and no civilised country should endorse it. IWD should be labelled a relic of an outmoded era in which women’s humanity was wrongly valued above men’s. School children should be taught that countries where IWD is still observed are strange and dangerous places for men and children because of their antiquated, irrational, and unjust practices.
Along with the cancellation of IWD should come a concerted effort to challenge and, ultimately, stamp out related manifestations of female supremacism and feminist bigotry. Expressions of preference for female humanity, such as ‘The Future is Female,’ should be held up to ridicule and contumely. Indications of anti-male animus, now an all-too common currency in our elite and public cultures, should become as unacceptable as statements of anti-Semitism and anti-black racism. All people of good will should loudly boo any such statements when they occur. Anyone who lobs around statistics about female victimisation should have lobbed back at them, with force, the multitudinous evidence of male disadvantage.
In place of International Women’s Day, a new day might be instituted to stress intersexual cooperation and harmony rather than division and animosity. It could be called International Men and Women’s Day. Men could pledge their support for women, and women could pledge their support for men – only the latter would be anything new or unusual. Politicians could speak of men’s and women’s distinctive needs and contributions. In particular, women could come forward to celebrate the men in their lives, enumerating the satisfaction and joy of giving back to men and loving them.
Dignitaries at the United Nations as well as in various non-governmental organisations would make speeches about the importance of amity, trust, and cooperation between men and women. School children could do projects about how each sex can better understand the other, and could learn about how men and women have cooperated and depended upon each other throughout history. Advertising and popular culture could be mobilised to spread a positive message about the new day.
For too long, International Women’s Day has been open and unabashed about its sex-based exclusions, actively channelling energy, resources, and compassion away from men towards women with a raft of false claims to support its chauvinism. Anyone genuinely interested in social flourishing should reject it without apology.
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Democrats Really Do Hate America
Derek Hunter
Honestly, if you’d told me just a few years ago that the Democrat Party would become a party that literally hates the United States…well, I probably would have believed you because they do and have for a very long time. However, if you’d also told me they would proudly proclaim that hatred with regularity, that entire cable networks would be dedicated to preaching that hatred, you probably would’ve lost me there. Not anymore.
I would not have believed any political organization would proudly proclaim they despise that which they seek to lead, but that’s where we find ourselves now. There are countless examples of this, everywhere you look. Even the President of the United States calls half the country monsters and transphobes simply because we don’t think children should be subjected to sexualization of any kind, let alone having an adult grind their crotch in their face, or have their body butchered in the name of some weird “progress.”
There are literally hundreds of examples on a weekly basis of some leftist on cable news smearing everyone and the country and “fundamentally this” or “that to the core.” Hell, Joy Reid makes a living simply burping out “this person is a racist” or “that thing is racist.” She’s so oppressed she’s paid millions of dollars per year to chase away the audience from the show before hers. If merit mattered, Joy would be homeless. But she has her job for different reasons, ability be damned.
Then we have this piece from the New York Times, it really boils everything the left is now down to its essence. Democrats are only close to honest when dealing with other Democrats, and the Times is the ultimate choir-preacher.
It’s entitled, “Can We Put an End to America’s Most Dangerous Myth?” Is it about the idea that country was founded on and for racism? No, the Times makes too much money off that one.
So, what is this “myth”? “Our most toxic myth is our “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” individualism,” the piece contends.
Yes, that’s right, individuality is “toxic.” The idea that Americans are independent, able to live within their means and stand on their own is a huge problem…says the Communist Manifesto, er, this column.
“So, yes, some independence is worth honoring,” the author allows. “But other strains are not as positive. For instance, being required to be ‘independent’ when we are ill and without adequate health insurance coverage is not to be recommended. Neither is having to take care of our children entirely on our own, in the silo of our immediate family, without a state-supported nursery in sight. And going into debt for simply covering the cost of our own or our children’s college education is far from salutary.”
Socialism, essentially, is what she’s pushing for here. Never mind looking at why some many of those “problems” exist (Democrat policies), just know that you shouldn’t have to deal with them because…progressive, or something.
What the column is complaining about isn’t individuality, really, it’s responsibility. That your actions have consequences and you should maybe consider them when making choices. No, Democrats would rather absolve you of the consequences for your actions – a political priest – as long as you obey them. They’ll give you just enough to get by, bless away your mistakes, and never look back at the destruction in their wake.
Meanwhile, people will be so dependent on government for their existence, and desperate for more absolution, that a blind loyalty will be created in the voting booth. Like a junkie always in need of another hit, people hooked on the concept of no personal responsibility are always in need of being told it’s not their fault, especially when it is.
The conclusion of the piece reads, “Dependence is, if you think of it, a form of connection and social cohesion. It brings us closer to others, which at this moment in America might be the thing we need most.” That’s exactly the opposite of reality, of what we need. Unless, of course, your goal isn’t to empower people or get out of their way so they can make their lives better, but rather to make people serfs; junkies who will do your electoral bidding if you just give them another hit. I’m not saying that’s what Democrats want to do, but it’s what Democrats want to do…
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2023/03/16/democrats-really-do-hate-america-n2620635
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The fanatical foot soldiers of feminism
So, another International Women’s Day has come and gone, and the usual plethora of dubious statistics, socialist ideology, and tendentious history, coupled with unrelenting virtue signalling, back-slapping, and the obligatory passive aggression, has been foisted on an innocent and unsuspecting public. And once again women the world over have fallen for the idea that International Women’s Day is simply a celebration of women and their achievements – and not the public face of a radical movement intent on overthrowing almost everything the average woman (or man) holds dear. It’s simply astonishing the disparity between the ideological reality of modern feminism and it’s benign perception by the public. This is particularly so in relation to women who have been propagandised into believing that feminism and women’s rights are the same thing. Or, to use a big word, coterminous.
Feminists, to give the members of an ideological cult a backhanded compliment, have been unrelentingly clever. They’ve weaponised an evolved female personality trait that privileges appearance (and sexually attracts men) – makeup, clothes, pretence, coquettishness, charm, sexual innocence – and which disguises reality (the female will to power) and made it into a grand political strategy.
This apparently benign, civilised, temperate trait disguises the feminist ambition of overthrowing the ‘patriarchy’, that unfalsifiable conspiracy theory, which is as irrational as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and is the ideological motivation behind a host of invented or imaginary discrimination. Feminists claim that everywhere, at all times, in every situation, there is systemic oppression of women that is invisible to all but the elect, who are currently, and because of feminism, the woke. The contemporary problem for feminists, though, is while the foot soldiers of Woke feminism are fanatical, they aren’t particularly bright.
For example, the guileless theme of this year’s International Women’s Day, ironically, was ‘equity’, which is an incongruous idea for feminists to champion, because, after half a century of female-positive discrimination, what equity implies is that women cannot compete with men on a level playing field. Moreover, what the concept of equity ignores, paradoxically, is the fact that women are absolutely the equal, or are superior, to men in multiple ways – women do hold up half the sky, but perhaps, in contrast to feminist ideology, not in the ways that feminists have been shouting, or shrieking about, sorry, we’re not supposed to say that, for decades.
This is the root of the problem. Because, while biology, to be clear, is not destiny, it is definitively an aspect of what the philosopher Martin Heidegger, to give one example of common-sense reasoning, called ‘facticity’: the reality of age, strength, intelligence, attractiveness, sex, stature, personality, etc., that delimits life’s possibilities for people in the reality-based world in which we live. (What Heidegger poetically called the Worldhood of the World.) There is no denying this truth, no matter how many feminists claim that everything is socially constructed. We are, to paraphrase that modern-day sage, Kenny Rogers, dealt cards in the game of life, and each of us play the game to the best of our ability because there’s no alternative. Equity, then, is a chimera or a strategy for social control.
Two broad subterranean ideas, though, hide under the benevolent surface of modern feminist activism: the divisive ideas of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the more important, but ignored, idea that the anti human rights, anti science, and the anti fact-based epistemological agenda of Wokeness is the culmination of feminist theory. We’ve reached peak feminism and it’s an ugly, repellent vision of society, one which brooks no dissent, idiosyncratic thought, or eccentricity – the fundamentals, in other words, of freedom, justice, and democracy.
What feminists have done is brought the virtues and vices of an all-female high school to the international stage and put the head girl in charge. In the same way that too much masculinity is ugly, too much femininity is toxic. When feminists are not being malicious, they’re being passive-aggressive, crying, or saying the proverbial ‘it’s fine’. Culture is now so dominated by female personality traits that mental strength and competence are derided while weakness is celebrated, which is the opposite of what feminists have relentlessly told us about the psychology of women. Neuroticism and anxiety, personality traits that feminists claimed the patriarchy falsely ascribed to females, are now the modus operandi of institutions, because of feminism, in western democracies. Woe betide any man who doesn’t bow down to these strictures. A trembling upper lip, the emotion of the moment, or the invocation of unkindness or hate speech, in other words, anything a woman doesn’t want to hear, in any situation, overrides facts and evidence.
The current feminist zeitgeist in which we unwittingly find ourselves is also a recipe for civilisational collapse, because no society can survive on a diet of never-ending emotional incontinence. From women marching wearing ‘pussy hats’, which definitively ensures that you won’t and can’t be taken seriously; to the unequivocal statement that ‘all men are rapists’; to the sheer idiocy of making an issue of ‘manspreading’; to the factually provable statement that ‘believe all women’ is the epitome of dishonesty and injustice; to claiming, correctly, that men commit most violent assaults, while simultaneously saying there’s no biological difference between men and women, but that women need protection from men because women and men are different; to the idea that biological males should be allowed to play women’s sports or allowed in women’s spaces (the small number of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists doesn’t invalidate the overarching theme). There is an endless list of peevish, envious, malicious examples of feminist ‘theory’ masquerading as intellectualism. We now live in the world of feminism and feminist ‘knowledges’. Everything is upside down, inside out, and illogical, which is ironic, because feminists have claimed that female irrationalism is a millennia-long conspiracy of the patriarchy. But, as the saying goes, here we are.
Happy belated International Women’s Day. Remember, though, when International Men’s Day comes around, you’ll hear nothing except a lone cricket or the silence of the grave. Then again, men don’t need to be constantly reminded how stunning, brave, strong and powerful they are. The future, of course, in case you’ve forgotten for five seconds, is female.
Welcome to the asylum.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/the-fanatical-foot-soldiers-of-feminism/
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Racist pantries?
If you ditched cereal boxes for uniform glass containers and opted for plexiglass storage bins in your fridge, you may be engaging in classist, racist and sexist behaviors, one Chicago professor contends.
Dr. Jenna Drenten, an associate professor of marketing at Loyola University, argued Tuesday that the recent obsession with organizing kitchen and pantry spaces — a TikTok trend she dubbed “pantry porn” — is pushing societal standards the average American cannot keep up with while tricking consumers to spend more money.
The “new minimalism” approach is just a thinly veiled excuse to entice people to buy more items — containers, labels and storage space — that give off the decluttered appearance of simple living, Drenten wrote for The Conversation.
“Storing spices in coordinated glass jars and color coordinating dozens of sprinkles containers may seem trivial. But tidiness is tangled up with status, and messiness is loaded with assumptions about personal responsibility and respectability,” the professor stated.
“Cleanliness has historically been used as a cultural gatekeeping mechanism to reinforce status distinctions based on a vague understanding of “niceness”: nice people, with nice yards, in nice houses, make for nice neighborhoods.
“What lies beneath the surface of this anti-messiness, pro-niceness stance is a history of classist, racist and sexist social structures.”
According to Drenten’s research, the social media influencers who push pantry porn are “predominantly white women who demonstrate what it looks like to maintain a ‘nice’ home by creating a new status symbol: the perfectly organized, fully stocked pantry.”
Even celebrities have joined the trend, further peddling it.
Kim Kardashian showed off her massive walk-in fridge in 2020 — and two separate average-sized others — that was peppered with glass jars filled with different condiments for frozen yogurt.
Last year, sister Khloe Kardashian bragged about her extravagant pantry that is packed with items on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Photos show most of the items — pastas, fig newtons and goldfish — are stored in glass containers while other plastic, wrapped foods are stowed in wicker baskets.
Drenten emphasizes that orderly pantries have been a status symbol since the late 1800s when only the wealthy could afford the space to hide both the food and the people who prepared it.
In the centuries since, pantries have evolved to be part of the open floor plan. How well the homeowner maintained the pantry and organized the space served as a new status marker instead.
She believes the recent trend of “pantry porn” was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic when shortages in the supply chain surged: “Keeping stuff on hand became a symbol of resilience for those with the money and space to do so.”
The Kardashians and other “pantry porn” celebrities have set the societal standard for an ideal mother, wife or woman, Drenten argues, but the aspiration falls apart for those who can’t afford the money or time to maintain the upkeep.
“Pantry porn, as a status symbol, relies on the promise of making daily domestic work easier. But if women are largely responsible for the work required to maintain the perfectly organized pantry, it’s critical to ask: easier for whom?” Drenten questioned.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/16/pantry-porn-rooted-in-racist-sexist-behavior-loyola-doctor/
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This Jerusalem-Based Pregnancy Center Is Fighting to Help Women and Their Unborn Babies
Efrat sits in a quiet Jerusalem neighborhood, a pregnancy center housed in a modest-looking building with a noble goal: to give Jewish women the resources necessary to choose to save their babies.
Efrat has saved the lives of 83,467 children since its founding, according to the cheery signs on the wall in the pregnancy center’s storage center, where center Executive Director Nir Salomon energetically explained the pregnancy center’s mission to our visiting group of American Catholics.
The pro-life organization has helped at least 100 more babies come into the world since my early March visit to the center, Salomon shared in a phone interview Monday. He emphasized that Efrat aims to empower women to make their own choices about their babies without pressure from husbands, boyfriends, parents, or other outside influences.
“When a woman comes to us, we tell her, ‘You have an option to abort. It is legal in Israel. But you also have the option to have a child,'” he said. “And that is the unique proposition of Efrat.”
Efrat was founded by the late Holocaust survivor Herschel Feigenbaum, who believed “that our children are our future.” Feigenbaum wanted to create a nonprofit encouraging childbirth to replace the many Jewish children slaughtered throughout the Holocaust, the organization’s website explains.
That dream didn’t take off until Dr. Eli Schussheim came along in 1977 and officially launched the organization now known as Efrat, intending to offer women professional consultations on their pregnancies. Schussheim’s goal evolved into offering women even more than that—giving them the choice not to abort their unborn babies, and empowering them to choose life through resources and opportunities.
Many Israeli women considering abortion already have children, Salomon said, noting that 56% of the women Efrat helps are married. Often, a woman’s husband has told her that they cannot afford another child. Efrat wants these families to know that they can, in fact, afford another baby—and Efrat will help make that baby’s entry into the world smoother.
“We will provide everything they need so that an additional baby is not an additional financial expense,” Salomon said. “We can’t solve all of your money problems, but the baby won’t be an additional expense.”
A family’s fear may boil down to something as simple as a crib, Salomon said. The family cannot afford a crib and thus feel like they cannot afford a child. That simple act of providing Israeli families with that crib, or even with diapers or formula, is a major game-changer.
“We bring them to this room and we show them, this is what you are going to get when the baby is born,” Salomon explained, as he walked about the storage room, pointing to diapers, baby formula, strollers, bath basins, and more.
Concerns do not end there, of course. Many families want to know how they will afford their baby after he or she is born. Here Efrat also has an answer—for the first two years after the baby’s birth, Efrat sends the families a box of baby products and food every month.
Those packages are put together by volunteers, many of whom are Israeli youth. According to Efrat’s estimates from a few years ago, the center sends eight to 11 baby packages a day and over 3,500 food packages every month.
The center plans to soon provide free housing to take in pregnant women whose families have turned them away. Expectant mothers can live in the rent-free lodgings during their pregnancy and for six months afterward.
Efrat also wants the mother to become physically, emotionally, and financially secure—through the center’s new “Working Moms” program, Efrat performs vocational assessments for the women and seeks to connect them with government bodies and place them in jobs where they can flourish.
“We started these programs because we felt responsible for the next stage,” Salomon said.
The pregnancy center’s volunteers offer emotional support and counseling as well as the aforementioned financial support. If a doctor has recommended that a woman abort her unborn baby, Efrat’s team of medical professionals will offer her a free second opinion—a service informed by one of the babies that Schussheim saved earlier in his career by offering a mother a second opinion (an occurrence that helped Efrat come into conception).
“When a woman dials our number, it’s because poverty has cornered her into believing that abortion is her only option,” one of the center’s pamphlets reads. “For thousands of women and their babies, your help can mean the difference between terrifying hopelessness and a joyous, independent future.”
Abortion is legal in Israel, but women must first go through an “abortion committee” to receive permission to get the abortion, Faydra Shapiro, a senior fellow with The Philos Project, shared with The Daily Signal.
“In order to get an abortion funded through the public system in Israel, a woman needs to present her case to a committee that must authorize the procedure,” Shapiro said. “The committee is made up of social workers and doctors.”
Schussheim, who died in 2021, reportedly wanted one of those committee members to be a dentist.
“They said, ‘Why should it be made up of a dentist?’” Salomon recalled. “He says, ‘Because dentists try to do anything before they uproot a tooth.’”
Shapiro, a specialist in contemporary Jewish-Christian relations, said that “criteria to authorize an abortion include being young (under 18), being older (over 40), severe medical problems with the unborn child, and the pregnancy as a result of an illicit union (being unmarried, adultery, incest etc).”
Almost all requests are granted, even if married women lie and say they got pregnant as the result of an affair, Shapiro said.
“This up to 24 weeks gestation,” she noted. “After 24 weeks, the committee process is different and more stringent.”
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Israel’s former health minister, Nitzan Horowitz, called for abolishing the committees in an attempt to “show how liberal he is,” Salomon explained. “They brought us in to counter him.”
Efrat suggested an alternative to the committees: a mandatory 72-hour cooling off period that begins after the mother meets with a social worker, who will listen to her and find out if the abortion is truly what the woman wants.
“We are not willing to rubber-stamp abortions,” Salomon emphasized, noting that Efrat encouraged the health minister to create pamphlets (from the state, not from Efrat) showing women the wide range of options available to help them care for their child—including things like day care.
In spite of Efrat’s efforts, Israel ultimately made it easier for women to obtain abortions through a policy approved in late June giving women access to abortion pills through the country’s universal health system, allowing women to abort their unborn babies at local health centers rather than at hospitals and surgical clinics, and exempting women from appearing before the special committees.
The committees will review women’s requests for abortions digitally and will only have an in-person hearing if they deny a mother an abortion, according to The Washington Post. The publication noted that it is highly unlikely the committee will deny a woman an abortion.
Salomon took issue with the Israeli politicians who latched on to the reversal of Roe v. Wade and portrayed Judaism as pro-abortion. Their representations are not true, he insisted.
“It is unfortunate that that is the position they have taken,” he said. “By no means is Judaism a pro-abortion religion.”
Israelis also view abortion differently than citizens in the United States, where demonstrations took place for months following the leak of the draft opinion indicating Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned.
Shapiro notes that abortion in Israel is “officially controlled” in the sense that “there is no ‘abortion on demand.’” But at the same time, most women who want to abort their babies are allowed to do so.
“First, Judaism not only permits but in some cases actually requires abortion if the life of the mother is at actual risk from her unborn child,” she said. “Second, there is a desire on behalf of the religious establishment to avoid children of illicit unions: a child born as a result of adultery or incest (this does not include a child born to an unmarried woman) is mamzer in Jewish law and only allowed to marry another mamzer.”
“Third,” she continued, “Israel is generally a country that both has strong pro-natal policies and values and at the same time has a quite liberal sense of personal freedoms and choice. These issues make the situation quite complex and unlike that of the U.S.”
According to Shapiro, “abortion is simply not part of the political landscape” in Israel. “The religious Christian pro-life arguments about when life begins and the murder of the unborn simply do not work here,” she said.
American and Israeli thoughts on abortion may differ, but Efrat has had its fair share of support from pro-life politicians. Near the entrance of the building, on the inside walls, pictures depict Schussheim with a slew of lawmakers, including Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, Republican Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer, Republican Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee, and former House Speaker Paul Ryan.
“I wish I were as successful here in the United States as you are in Jerusalem,” former Republican Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning, who died in 2017, is quoted saying. Salomon told The Daily Signal that some of these politicians visited Efrat themselves, while others attended an Efrat event in Washington, D.C.
Efrat seeks to serve women outside Israel as well. The organization has fundraising arms internationally in Brooklyn, New York, and in Toronto, according to the center’s literature, and Salomon said that Efrat plans to put down roots in Hollywood, Florida—and hopefully either New York City or Los Angeles next.
He pointed to the thousands of pregnancy resource centers throughout the United States, noting that many of these centers are Christian or religiously inclined. For Jewish women, Salomon said, it can be confusing and alienating to go to hear rhetoric about Jesus Christ—even though he acknowledged that such rhetoric comes from an incredibly loving place.
“Christians have become more and more interested” in the idea of Jewish pregnancy centers, he explained, adding that the common sentiment he hears is, “We want to support Israel and we want to support life.”
“I don’t see any other greater meeting of those two things than what Efrat is,” he said.
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16 March, 2023
The Fascist Manifesto
By Vox Day
There are few words the American Left loves to fling around with such abandon as the word "fascist." According to them, social conservatives, libertarians and the Religious Right are all various brands of fascism, that political ideology which came into such disrepute following the demise of il Duce, Benito Mussolini.
And yet, is the accusation legitimate? Who better to judge than Mussolini himself, not only the founder of the Fascist movement, but also the author of its manifesto. The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle is not so well-known as the Communist Manifesto – and deservedly so, being markedly lacking in memorable phrases such as "a spectre haunting Europe" – and is not even as well-known as the Munich Manifesto of Germany's National Socialists.
In fact, one can seldom find a direct translation of the Fascist manifesto, as it is usually summarized quickly before being swept aside in favor of contorted explanations of how its socialist theoreticians, including D' Anunzio, Gentile and Mussolini himself, are actually right-wing extremists influenced by the Catholic Church. It is fortuitous, then, that I happen to speak Italian, and so I present herein an original translation of The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle, published in The People of Italy on June 6, 1919.
Italians! Here is the program of a genuinely Italian movement. It is revolutionary because it is anti-dogmatic, strongly innovative and against prejudice.
For the political problem: We demand:
a) Universal suffrage polled on a regional basis, with proportional representation and voting and electoral office eligibility for women.
d) The convocation of a National Assembly for a three-years duration, for which its primary responsibility will be to form a constitution of the State.
e) The formation of a National Council of experts for labor, for industy, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made from the collective professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a General Commission with ministerial powers.
For the social problems: We demand:
a) The quick enactment of a law of the State that sanctions an eight-hour workday for all workers.
b) A minimum wage.
c) The participation of workers' representatives in the functions of industry commissions.
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d) To show the same confidence in the labor unions (that prove to be technically and morally worthy) as is given to industry executives or public servants.
e) The rapid and complete systemization of the railways and of all the transport industries.
f) A necessary modification of the insurance laws to invalidate the minimum retirement age; we propose to lower it from 65 to 55 years of age.
For the military problem: We demand:
a) The institution of a national militia with a short period of service for training and exclusively defensive responsibilities.
b) The nationalization of all the arms and explosives factories.
c) A national policy intended to peacefully further the Italian national culture in the world.
For the financial problem: We demand:
a) A strong progressive tax on capital that will truly expropriate a portion of all wealth.
b) The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations and the abolition of all the bishoprics, which constitute an enormous liability on the Nation and on the privileges of the poor.
c) The revision of all military contracts and the seizure of 85 percent of the profits therein.
As with National Socialism and Communism, it is easy to see that far from being a right-wing ideology, fascism is simply another variant of leftist worship of the State.
In 1925, Mussolini encapsulated the heart of fascist philosophy in a memorable phrase:
Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato. This means "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Now, I ask you, does that sound more like a Libertarian, a Republican or a Democrat?
https://www.wnd.com/2004/06/25291/
America’s Death Tax Has Caused Far More Problems Than It Has Solved
“I have no respect for the passion of equality,” Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., one of America’s great jurists, once declared, “which seems to me merely idealizing envy.”
But envy, and its sister vice, greed, are very much back in fashion today when it comes to the left. Just listen to President Biden, who wants $2 trillion of new taxes, mostly paid by millionaires, so that the rich will “pay their fair share.”
In seven blue states, including California, Illinois and New York, new wealth taxes and higher income tax rates on people such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Taylor Swift have been proposed by liberal lawmakers.
Mr. Biden said billionaires aren’t “paying their fair share” and shouldn’t be paying a lower tax rate than a firefighter. That’s a ridiculous claim. The richest 1 percent of Americans pay 42 percent of the income taxes in America. That’s near an all-time record high.
The Tax Foundation reports that if all the new wealth, capital gains and income tax surcharges under consideration were to be enacted, the government could snatch up to as much as 70 percent of a millionaire’s savings or assets. Does taking two-thirds of someone’s lifetime savings sound “fair” to you?
Liberals seem to forget that we already have had a grand experiment with a wealth tax in America: It’s known as the “death tax.” This tax on gifts and estates has been around for a century. And it has caused far more migraine headaches and problems than it has solved.
The current tax rate is 45 percent on estates above $12 million. When including state levies, this means the government can help itself to nearly half the assets of a family-owned business at the time of the owner’s death.
The estate tax was originally proposed by Karl Marx. It was and still is touted as a Robin Hood plan to redistribute the “great hoards of wealth” amassed by the Rockefellers, the Fords, and the Carnegies to the lower-income Americans.
But guess what? It has never come close to working. Over the past 50 years, it has never accounted for more than 3 percent of total federal revenues. Amazingly, in 2020, the latest year for which we have complete and accurate IRS data, the estate tax raised $17.6 billion out of the $3.5 trillion in federal revenue. This is roughly enough revenue to pay one day’s worth of federal spending.
Another way to appreciate how fiscally inconsequential this wealth tax is, it represents a microscopic one-half of 1 percent of all federal revenue collections. The preliminary numbers for 2021 show the same pattern. Roughly $20 billion was raised out of a $4 trillion budget, or again close to 0.5 percent of tax collections.
Yet America’s tax on estates and gifts is nearly three times higher than the charge in most other industrial nations. Sweden, even with its large welfare state, abandoned its estate tax many years ago as counterproductive.
Why don’t wealth taxes work? Because the rich don’t generally get rich by being stupid. They have found myriad ways around paying it. They hire the planet’s best estate tax planners, lawyers and lobbyists to keep their fortunes two arms’ length away from the tax collector.
The most obvious example is that multibillionaires Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Buffett and Gates have stashed almost their entire fortunes in perpetual foundations from which the government will never collect a penny.
More to the point: There is a moral and ethical reason to hate greed and envy taxes such as this. What is wrong with achieving the American dream and getting rich?
Accumulating wealth by building a world-class business and, on the way, employing thousands of your fellow citizens or achieving new heights of greatness in arts, entertainment, sports or medicine is not a vice to be punished but a virtue to be celebrated. Taxing the rewards of that pursuit of excellence is a fool’s errand.
The real-world harm of this “wealth tax” is immense. Family businesses get clobbered by this tax because oftentimes, the founder of the enterprise, who spent his waking hours building up the business, typically never gave a second thought to “wealth tax planning.”
Remember: Every successful big business started as a small business. As a consequence, many heirs have to sell the family business, farm or ranch just to pay the taxes. That’s un-American.
Let’s get rid of envy taxes that punish those who chase their dreams and catch them. Biden wants a $7 trillion government and wants the rich to pay for it all. That doesn’t seem very fair, and it doesn’t seem very democratic. And history proves it never works.
https://www.nysun.com/article/americas-death-tax-has-caused-far-more-problems-than-it-has-solved
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The Tooth-Fairy Economics of Slavery Reparations
The reparations movement has gained tremendous ground in recent years by offering promises of compensation to the descendants of slavery’s victims in the United States. The proposal forms the centerpiece of the New York Times 1619 Project, which is now a multi-million-dollar docuseries on the Hulu streaming service. A reparations task force in San Francisco recently recommended $5 million payments to African-American residents, and several Democratic members of Congress have pressed the Biden administration to prioritize the same cause at the federal level. Reparations have even made their way into children’s programming, with a recent episode of the Disney cartoon “The Proud Family” depicting them, angrily and self-righteously, as society’s obligation to African-Americans.
The rhetoric around these proposals often adopts a moralizing tone about restitution for past injustices, many of which are all too real. As a matter of economics, though, reparations advocates offer surprisingly little in the way of viable solutions. If the US government tried to implement the reparations program that the 1619 Project espouses, we would get huge increases in both taxes and inflation. Yet the key economist advising on this proposal denies that any taxes would have to increase.
In the climactic conclusion to the Hulu series, 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones explains that “reparations is not just about slavery, but about decades of government-backed legal apartheid deployed against the descendants of the enslaved.” As we pointed out in “The 1619 Project Vindicates Capitalism,” in the Wall Street Journal on February 22, 2023, “almost every example presented is the result of government policies that, in purpose or effect, discriminated against African-Americans.” The particular interventions we highlighted were eminent domain, racial redlining of mortgages, and enforcement of union monopolies that excluded black people.
But the only remedy for the mislabeled track record of government-inflicted injustice, viewers are told, is a massive government redistribution program with a price tag of $13 trillion. Let’s put this in perspective in two ways. First, $13 trillion is over half of current US GDP. Second, it amounts to $312,000 per black man, woman, and child. If you gasp at San Francisco’s $5 million and think $312,000 is no big deal, realize that $310,000 in reparations per person, multiplied by about 41.6 million African-Americans, is quite a big deal.
Ms. Hannah-Jones interviews Duke University economist William A. Darity, one of the most prominent academic voices behind the $13 trillion number. Darity has advanced similar dollar amounts in his scholarly work, including a 2022 article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. As with the Hulu episode, he offers this figure while eliding difficult questions about financing this redistributive payout.
Vaguely sensing that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, Hannah-Jones asks where the federal government would get the money to pay such a massive amount. Wouldn’t taxes have to be raised, she queries. Mr. Darity confidently asserts that no such action is necessary.
“It’s a matter of the federal government financing it in the same way that it financed...the stimulus package for the Great Recession” and the COVID-era CARES Act, Darity continues. To do so, the federal government need only “spend the money but without raising taxes.”
This verges on tooth-fairy economics.
The cold reality of public finance means that every government outlay must be paid eventually, whether through taxes in the present, higher inflation, which is also a tax, or higher taxes on future generations. The federal government has no good option when it comes to just “spending the money.”
If the Federal Reserve monetized the whole amount, base money, which is currency in circulation plus bank reserves, would increase by $13 trillion. M2, the conventional measure of the money supply, is 3.96 times the monetary base. If that relationship held, then increasing the monetary base by $13 trillion would increase M2 by 3.96 times $13 trillion, which is $51 trillion. M2 is currently $21 trillion. $51 trillion is a whopping 245 percent increase. So if the spending occurred all in one year, inflation would be about 240 percent. Critical Race Theory would unite with Modern Monetary Theory in an inflationary spiral.
What if the Fed didn’t buy any of the new debt? Then future taxpayers would be on the hook. In a given year, the federal government raises about $4.8 trillion in revenues. So paying off just the new $13 trillion debt would require almost three years of federal revenue.
The only other alternative to increasing current taxes, creating massive inflation, or increasing future taxes would be to enact massive cuts in other programs. Remember earlier this month when, in his State of the Union address, President Biden accused congressional Republicans of wanting to sunset Social Security and Medicare? If the $13 trillion reparations were paid, sunsetting those programs, or reining them in by a double-digit percent, would almost certainly be on the table.
Almost everyone who designed the government’s discriminatory programs is long gone from office; most are dead, as are all plantation owners who perpetrated the original atrocities of slavery. So the vast majority of people who would shoulder the financial burden of reparations are people who had nothing to do with either slavery or the century of discriminatory policies that followed.
How about instead going through the various federal programs, and state and local programs, for that matter, that intervene in markets or violate property rights, often in discriminatory ways, and ending them? It would be great if Nikole Hannah-Jones and William Darity signed on to this 2023 project.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14441&omhide=true&trk=title
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‘Good’ Rioters and ‘Bad’ Ones
The difference in sentencing between Capitol trespassers and anti-Trump rioters and leftist firebombers is glaring.
“I hope they burn everything down,” said Urooj Rahman to Colinford Mattis in a message hours before they took to the streets of Brooklyn to rage on behalf of George Floyd. “Need to burn all the police stations down … probably all the courts too.”
It was strange sentiment for one lawyer to express to another — especially that last part. Some might even call it violent insurrectionist sentiment.
But here they were, these two lawyers — Rahman, then 31, having graduated from Fordham University Law School, and Mattis, then 32, a proud graduate of both Princeton and NYU Law School — talking about burning down the instruments of civilized society that they’d sworn to uphold.
When Rahman joined protesters that night, she wrote to Mattis: “Throwing bottles and tear gas … lit some fires but were put out … fireworks goin and Molotovs rollin.”
The highlight of this night of mayhem was when Rahman stepped out of Mattis’s tan minivan and Rahman hurled one of those Molotov cocktails into an empty NYPD vehicle outside the 88th Precinct station house, torching it.
For this, she was sentenced to 15 months, while Mattis got one year and one day. Nice sentencing if you can get it.
Then there were the hundreds of rioters who burned cars and smashed storefronts in DC in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s inauguration — and had their charges dropped altogether by the Department of Justice. All of them. Think we’re exaggerating? Go ahead, look it up.
And then there’s Navy veteran Jacob Chansley, 33, the guy best known as the fur-bearing, horn-helmeted QAnon Shaman of January 6 infamy. Indeed, his was the very face of that mostly peaceful non-insurrection that took place inside the Capitol — as opposed to the thuggish behavior of those outside the Capitol grounds who climbed walls, broke windows, and skirmished with cops.
“Virtually every moment of his time inside the Capitol was caught on tape,” said Tucker Carlson upon revealing video of that day which, thanks to the rigged January 6 Committee, had never been seen before by the public.
“The tapes show the Capitol Police never stopped Jacob Chansley,” Carlson continued. “They helped him.” Indeed, they walked him past seven other cops milling around outside the Senate chamber, who barely give Chansley a second look. And yet, as Carlson continues, “Jacob Chansley became the face of January 6, a dangerous conspiracy theorist dressed in an outlandish costume who led the violent insurrection to overthrow America’s democracy.”
“The one very serious regret that I have,” said Chansley in a jailhouse interview, “is believing that when we were waved in by police officers, that it was acceptable.”
There are conflicting accounts of Chansley’s activities that day. As the Washington Examiner reports: “The footage, released by Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday, does not include most of the evidence that is damaging to Chansley, according to the filing by prosecutors of Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola, who was also sentenced for his involvement in the Capitol riot. Of the footage that Carlson has shown, the 10-page filing read, all of it took place between 2:56 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Jan. 6, even though Chansley had already breached a police line at 2:09 p.m. and then entered the Capitol.”
One thing we’re not hearing from credible sources, though, is that Chansley behaved violently. In fact, he’s on video tape reading then-President Donald Trump’s tweet and telling the crowd: “Everybody go home. We made our points.”
And for that, Jacob Chansley got 41 months in prison. And that was after having done 10 months in solitary confinement.
As free-thinking independent journalist and one-time leftist Glenn Greenwald put it at the time, “Only a sick, punitive society imprisons non-violent protesters for years in harsh conditions — or one that regards particular ideologies as inherently criminal.”
Just think: Chansley would’ve been better off tossing a Molotov cocktail into a cop car.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/95668-good-rioters-and-bad-ones-2023-03-14
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Another false rape claim in Britain
There was rash of them some years back
A fantasist whose lies about being raped by an Asian grooming gang drove three men to attempt suicide was today jailed for eight and a half years - as CCTV footage revealed the moment she bought a hammer which she used to beat her own face in.
Eleanor Williams, 22, was found guilty of perverting the course of justice earlier this year after accusing several innocent men of raping, trafficking and abusing her in a Facebook post that included graphic images of injuries she claimed to have sustained.
The post, made during lockdown in May 2020, was shared more than 100,000 times and sparked national outrage, leading to dangerous racial unrest and a protest in her hometown of Barrow-in-Furness attended by Tommy Robinson, founder of the far-Right English Defence League.
But evidence would reveal her allegations were entirely made up. CCTV showed her in Tesco buying the hammer she would use to harm herself and a packet of Pot Noodles she ate in a hotel at the same time she claimed she was being held captive.
The fallout from her elaborate tissue of lies saw three of the wrongly accused men try to take their own lives, a curry house attacked by thugs and a Muslim takeaway owner chased down the street by men who poured alcohol on his head.
Sentencing, Judge Robert Altham said there was 'no explanation' for Williams's lies as he criticised her for showing 'no significant sign of remorse'. He said she was not racially motivated and chose to accuse Asian as well as white men to copy 'other cases of national prominence'.
Preston Crown Court heard she had been with others at Cameron Bibby's house in November 2017 when she was sick after drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.
Mr Bibby and his friends contacted Williams's sister and mother, who came to collect her and later took her to hospital, where she alleged she had been raped.
In March 2019 Williams had been on a night out with Jordan Trengove when she was taken home after becoming intoxicated.
She would later allege Mr Trengove raped her that night, and then on two later occasions, claiming he came to her flat, attacked her and threatened her with a knife.
Judge Robert Altham said: 'She caused [the injuries] to herself to support her allegations. As we will see this was to become a feature of her conduct.'
Williams claimed she had been groomed since the age of 12 or 13 by local business owner Mohammed Ramzan, who she falsely claimed took her across the region and persuaded her to have sex with other men.
She described punishment beatings, rape, a girl nearly dying as a result of a beating and another having a dog set on her.
Williams told police she had been taken to Amsterdam by Mr Ramzan, forced to work in a brothel and sold at an auction for 25,000 euros, but the buyer did not go through with the deal.
During the trial, Jonathan Sandiford KC compared the account to a scene from the Liam Neeson film Taken, in which an ex-Secret Service agent's teenage daughter is abducted by human traffickers.
At the time Williams was in the Netherlands Mr Ramzan's bank card was being used at a B&Q in Barrow, police discovered.
Williams said she was taken to Ibiza by Mr Ramzan and made to have sex with men. She admitted this was not true when officers suggested they check flight documents, but at trial she maintained the allegation.
When police investigated Williams's account of being taken to addresses in Blackpool and forced to have sex with men, they found she had gone to the seaside resort alone and, after buying a Pot Noodle from a nearby shop, spent most of her time in her hotel room watching YouTube.
After a chance encounter with Oliver Gardner in Preston city centre, Williams initially claimed he was a trafficker who forced her to take cocaine, sold her to two Asian men and raped her.
Judge Altham said: 'This was a complete fabrication, much of it would be disproved from CCTV.'
In what the prosecution called her 'finale event', in May 2020 Williams was found by police with injuries including a swollen eye, cut finger and injuries to her legs and abdomen which were 'too numerous to count'.
She would later post pictures of the injuries on Facebook with a description of being beaten, groomed and trafficked by Asian men.
But, evidence from a pathologist found the injuries were consistent with being caused to herself.
A hammer found at the scene had her DNA on and was identical to one she had purchased from Tesco earlier in the month.
The judge said: 'It is troubling to say the least that she shows no significant signs of remorse.'
Describing the allegations she made as 'complete fiction', he added: 'Unless and until the defendant chooses to say why she has told these lies we will not know.'
Williams, whose case drew attention from high-profile figures including Geordie Shore's Holly Hagan-Blyth and Countdown presenter Rachel Riley, looked straight ahead and thanked the judge after he sentenced her.
Mohammed Ramzan, a business owner who was accused of grooming Williams, told the court his life had been made 'hell on earth' by false allegations.
Earlier, the court heard that 150 extra crimes were recorded in Barrow amid the backlash prompted by Williams' Facebook post.
Speaking outside court following the hearing, Mr Ramzan said: 'There's no winners here today, I feel no sense of triumph, only sadness. 'I'm not sure how the family and I are going to recover from this. Mud sticks and I fear it may take some time.'
Mr Ramzan, who was in tears as he spoke from the witness box, said two weeks after he was arrested following Williams's claims he attempted to take his own life. He said: 'I still bear the scars to this day.'
Mr Ramzan said his property had been damaged and his businesses had been 'ruined' after he and his family were targeted 'in the most horrendous way'.
'We had messages like people are going to rape my wife in front of me. From Islamophobia, to racism, to just general hate - people wishing me dead,' he said.
'My children had fire extinguishers, baseball bats next to their beds for their safety because we had threats. People were going to burn the shops down, burn us down.
'We had rental properties in town smashed in. Is that the type of persecution that goes on today in a town where there's only a handful of Asians, and everybody knows these Asians?
'They've all dealt with me. I've fed them all because I've been in the food industry. I've fed them all, from the children to the adults to the grandparents... and they turned on me.'
Jordan Trengove, who spent time in custody after being falsely accused of rape by Williams, told reporters he planned to take action against the police.
He said he does not believe Williams has shown any remorse, adding: 'I don't think the sentence is long enough, in my opinion, for what she's done to us all.'
Mr Trengove said his life was 'utterly destroyed' by William's allegations. The word 'rapist' had been spray-painted across his house and his window was smashed. After he was charged following Williams's claims, he said he spent 73 days in prison, where he shared a cell with a convicted sex offender.
He said: 'Things had calmed down a bit until the Facebook post in 2020. 'This made things even worse for me. There were big protests and marches in Barrow. The lowest point was when I tried to end my life in August 2020.'
He said he will 'move out the area' when Eleanor Williams is released from prison in four years, having served half her sentence.
Oliver Gardner said his chance encounter with Williams in Preston led to him being sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Mr Gardner, who was accused of rape after he met Williams in the city centre, said it was a 'real shock' when he was contacted by Cumbria Police and told of her claims, adding: 'It was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.'
In his statement, he said he tried to end his life before being sectioned, saying: 'This whole period in my life has been totally overwhelming.'
Cameron Bibby, who was the first man accused of rape by Williams in 2017, said he had to remove himself from most social media. Because of the online abuse, he also became scared to pick his son up from nursery because of the way people looked at him.
He said after Williams posted her account on Facebook, his neighbours displayed 'Justice for Ellie' stickers in their windows, which 'intimidated' him.
Superintendent Matthew Pearman, of Cumbria Police, said Williams's allegations led to 'public displays of mass anger' in Barrow, with protests held outside the police station and on a retail park.
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15 March, 2023
Mediterranean diet rich in nuts, oils and leafy veg slashes risk of an early death in women by a QUARTER, study suggests
This study is greatly over-hyped. For a start it is about WOMEN ONLY. Applicability of the findings to men is unknown.
Secondly, only extreme groups were studied. I cannot see whether they used quartiles or quintiles, but, either way, they threw out at least half of their data BEFORE analysing it. What the relationships in the whole data body were is unknown -- almost certainly no significant correlations
Even after that surgery on the data, the hazard ratios were still very low -- less than 1.0 -- meaning that the relationships were not strong enough to support policy recommendations. In a word,the conclusions below are rubbish
The original journal article is here
Following the Mediterranean diet can slash a woman's chance of an early death by nearly a quarter, a study suggests.
In the study of more than 700,000 women, the famed diet decreases a woman's chances of dying from any cause by 23 percent. Australian researchers also highlighted similar drops in deaths from heart disease and stroke.
Rich in whole grains, vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts, fish and olive oil — the diet has been lauded in recent years for its brain-boosting and heart-helping effects.
A study just last week found it could even drop a person's risk of suffering dementia.
The Mediterranean diet has been described as a 'gold standard' by experts. Some have even declared it as a form of preventative medicine.
It appeared on the radar of American doctors in the 1950s, when reports of low rates of chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's and hear disease began to arise.
Further exploration found that the typical diets of people in the region were playing a role in their great health.
In the time since, a growing body of research has continued to confirm the benefits of the diet rich in vegetables and healthy fats.
Whether one gender may benefit from the diet more than the other has not been explored much, though.
For their research, published in the journal Heart, a team from the University of Sydney combined data from 16 studies published between 2003 and 2021.
The studies, mainly from the US and Europe, included data from hundreds of thousands of women aged 18 and above.
Their cardiovascular health was monitored for an average of 12.5 years.
Sticking closely to a Mediterranean diet lowered the risk of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent, researchers found.
It also dropped the likelihood of death from any cause by 23 percent. The risk of coronary heart disease was 25 percent lower and they were less likely to suffer from stroke.
However, the reason why this diet is particularly beneficial for women is unknown.
The study author, Dr Sarah Zaman, of of the study's authors, said: 'Mechanisms explaining the sex-specific effect of the Mediterranean diet on cardiovascular disease and death remain unclear.
'Female-specific cardiovascular risk factors, including premature menopause, pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes, or female predominant risk factors, such as systemic lupus, can all independently increase cardiovascular disease risk.
'It is possible that preventative measures, such as a Mediterranean diet, that targets inflammation and cardiovascular disease risk factors, impose differing effects in women compared with men.'
Cardiovascular disease accounts for more than a third of all deaths in women around the world.
However, many clinical trials and research include relatively few women and do not often report results by sex.
The current guidelines on how to best lower cardiovascular disease also do not differentiate by gender.
This latest study calls for more sex-specific research to help guide clinical practice in heart health.
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Orthodox Rabbi Debunks Left’s Claim That Conservatives Want to Force ‘Christian Values’ Down Americans’ Throats
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, whose organization represents more than 2,000 Orthodox Jewish rabbis on public policy, told The Daily Signal that his group constitutes living proof that social conservatives aren’t trying to force “Christian values” down Americans’ throats, as many on the Left claim.
When conservatives speak up, “the Left will immediately claim that only Christians believe this; therefore, you’re trying to shove Christian values down America’s throat; therefore, it’s a violation of [the separation of] church and state to be pro-life, or to be pro-family, or any of these things,” Menken, managing director of the Baltimore-based Coalition for Jewish Values, said in an interview at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.
He recalled that “the Jewish Left” attacked his organization early on by describing it as “espousing positions more often associated with evangelical Christians. To which our unwritten response was, ‘Well, yeah, where do you think the evangelicals got them from?'”
Menken noted that conservative values “need a Jewish voice,” and his organization emerged because a group of Orthodox rabbis realized that “there was nobody speaking out on behalf of Jewish tradition.”
“All you were hearing was partisan leftism disguised as if it were Jewish values,” he recalled. The rabbi noted that many on the Jewish Left cite the notion of Tikkun Olam, or “Repairing the World,” as an excuse to advocate for whatever political goals they espouse and claim it is a part of their faith.
“Anything I want to do is ‘repairing the world’; so, my own personal ideology is therefore Judaism, which means you can be on two sides of an issue and both claim to be representing Jewish values,” Menken said. “It doesn’t work that way, obviously, and the whole point of the Bible is there is a moral standard that everybody’s supposed to follow, and you don’t get to remake it on the fly.”
The rabbi noted that on “certain issues,” in order to be “a traditional rabbi, you have to come out a certain way, and people don’t realize that the overwhelming majority of rabbis in America are on the right wing, very conservative in their values, as compared to the average Jew.”
Menken explained that, while Christians who reject Christianity are no longer referred to as Christian, but make up the atheist Left, “you could be a Jew and not believe in Judaism.” This leads to the phenomenon where “you have this image of the Jews as being all on the Left, whereas the involved Jews and the rabbis, those who actually know Judaism and those who let Judaism drive their values, are on the Right, and they needed to have a voice.”
The rabbi also countered what he called the “asinine” idea that abortion is a religious freedom issue for Jews.
“The idea that an elective abortion is a religious obligation is obviously asinine,” Menken said. “It doesn’t begin to make logical sense.”
He mocked the idea of “Jews for feticide” and warned that weaponizing religious liberty in this way is “profoundly dangerous” because “if everything becomes a religious liberty issue, then nothing is a religious liberty issue.”
The Coalition for Jewish Values claimed credit when House Republicans, led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., booted Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., from the Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this year.
The coalition had sent letters to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., but she never acted on them. “This is tolerating antisemitism in Congress,” Menken argued. He recalled that when he sent a similar letter to McCarthy, “the [House majority] whip’s office sent it out to every legislative director on the Republican side, who had a copy of our letter.”
“It looked like Speaker McCarthy did not have the votes, and then it turned out that he did, after our letter,” Menken said. “So, at least according to others, we were somehow responsible, or partially responsible, for that happening.”
The Coalition for Jewish Values also sent a letter to Amazon, urging the Big Tech company to stop relying on the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center for its Amazon Smile program. The SPLC routinely brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups,” putting them on a map alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. A terrorist used the SPLC map to target the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian nonprofit, in 2012.
Menken recalled that someone referred to him as the “Jewish Tony Perkins,” referring to the Family Research Council’s president.
“Well, I take that as a compliment,” Menken said. “I mean, he’s out there fearlessly espousing basic traditional values, and he does it on the Christian side, and I’m doing it on the Jewish side.”
“We are Orthodox Jews. Anything the woke left calls ‘hateful,’ ‘bigoted’ and ‘racist,’ we do,” he added.
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Bye, Democrats: I’m leaving party that disgracefully supports censorship
By Maud Maron (Maud Maron is an education advocate and a former Democratic congressional candidate)
I can no longer be a Democrat after watching my party of three decades ignore the serious implications of vast governmental censorship and desperately, sometimes comically, try to shoot the messengers.
Last week’s hearing was meant to take testimony on the implications of government censorship reported in the Twitter Files — a series of articles, released on social-media platform Twitter, outlining the “censorship-industrial complex.”
But what it actually did was draw an astonishingly clear distinction between today’s Democrats and Republicans when it comes to our most fundamental and important right: freedom of speech.
After Elon Musk purchased Twitter, he gave several journalists an open invitation to look at the company’s internal emails.
They discovered and exposed a truly shocking number of politicians’ and government agencies’ requests to censor, silence, de-platform and de-amplify everyday Americans who expressed ideas the government did not like.
It should be one of the biggest stories of a generation: uncovering the government’s coordinated efforts to violate the First Amendment rights of so many Americans.
But with a few exceptions, the mainstream media have ignored the reporting or ridiculed the factually undisputed reports of large-scale government censorship — the kind most Americans would have told you does not happen in our country.
Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were a credit to their profession and to all Americans who genuinely care about a free press and the First Amendment.
And Democrats — who questioned, mocked, belittled and scolded them for not meekly accepting government knows best and Americans should just unquestionably accept what the fearsome threesome of “security state-Big Tech-Democrat ruling elite” thinks we should be able to say, read and hear — were an embarrassment.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) decried the censorship for affecting his ability to have an honest conversation with his constituents about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s inaccurate vaccine information.
Twitter — working “in partnership” with the CDC — flagged Massie’s factually correct tweets about the superiority of natural immunity to the available COVID vaccines as “misinformation” and, worse, disabled comments.
The congressman pointed out that this made it impossible for his constituents to engage with him on the topic — in effect silencing them as well.
Democrats uniformly disgraced themselves by refusing to acknowledge the significance and severity of the censorship but also by: shrilly belittling the legally protected right to not reveal sources; laughably asserting good journalism should not turn a profit (an assertion never leveled at The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN or other Democrat-friendly media outlets); and routinely insisting the censorship was actually for the best — because they know best.
New York’s newly elected Rep. Dan Goldman was the most insistent on this point.
He demanded Taibbi acknowledge the “evidence” in two federal indictments coming out of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation. Goldman declared the FBI was right to try to prevent Russian election interference.
Taibbi correctly pointed out that indictments, like all charging documents, are governmental allegations — allegations that have not been proven. One of the indictments was in fact dropped — so not only was the “evidence” not proven, it was never even subjected to the adversarial process designed to uncover the truth.
Goldman doubled down on his authoritarian impulses in a subsequent Twitter exchange with Taibbi, petulantly proclaiming that those who do not agree with him and national-security agencies “don’t belong” in the conversation.
Goldman is wrong, of course. All Americans have the right to join the conversation about matters big and small in our democracy.
And agreeing with the congressman or the sprawling national-security apparatus is not a precondition to chiming in.
The hearing may not have changed anyone’s mind about whether the Twitter Files are a journalistic juggernaut or just another entry in the culture wars. But it did change my registration.
I am now, after 33 years as a registered Democrat, an independent. And I like it.
I can no longer vote in the primaries that usually send my representatives to City Hall, Albany and Washington, DC. But I can vote in the general elections, and I look forward to doing so.
I will not vote for representatives who make light of my First Amendment rights or demand obeisance to my betters in the censorship-industrial complex.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/13/bye-democrats-im-leaving-party-that-disgracefully-supports-censorship/
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NYPD rules crackdown on beard length, time sheets and more has cops crying foul: ‘Pathetic’
The Leftist elite WANT chaos in the streets
The NYPD has decided to crack down on its already-thinning, overworked ranks by rooting out cops who grow their beards too long, drink coffee on the job and don’t empty their garbage cans quickly enough, The Post has learned.
The burgeoning effort to police the police – ordered up by Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell – is being led by the Standards and Assessment section of the two-month old Professional Standards Bureau, according to the NYPD.
“If somebody is non-compliant with the beard procedure – they’ll look into that,” said Chief Kevin Maloney, commander of DCPI. “It’s really anything the cops are supposed to adhere to … their job is to make sure they’re doing that. It’s just enforcing the rules.”
In addition to making sure cops don’t grow their beards past the departmental limit of one-quarter of an inch, the section is tasked with investigating improprieties such as officers who keep inaccurate memo books, tint their windows too dark on their personal cars or fail to comb their hair properly.
The unit — led by Inspector Robert O’Hare — will also make sure cops wear their body cameras on the right piece of clothing, update roll calls promptly, show up on time and don’t leave their posts early.
Officers who cross the sergeants and lieutenants assigned as monitors will be hit with command disciplines, or internal write-ups that could lead to lost vacation time, usually five to 10 days depending on the infraction.
And that’s been happening at precinct roll calls throughout the city — though the NYPD declined to say how many command disciplines it had issued so far.
One example would be a cop showing up for a detail without their hat, an NYPD spokesman said. “Everybody should look professional,” Maloney told The Post.
Cops said the new initiative, which was made official on Jan. 17, has left them stuck somewhere between an eye roll and an outright rebellion.
“It’s pathetic – everybody’s talking about it,” said one Brooklyn cop, a 20-year veteran. “Guys are saying they’ve never seen morale so bad. The attitude is [the bosses] want to get you for something … Why would you go above and beyond to do anything at this point?”
According to another officer, some of New York’s Finest have been taking it with a dose of dark humor, dubbing the new unit the “suicide squad” because it is “the type of s–t” that pushes cops to the brink.
“Like we don’t have enough stress,” the officer said. “I’m already never seeing my family and you’re taking more time away from me? It’s a very stressful situation.”
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said the new inspections will only worsen “the NYPD’s historic staffing crisis. “It is absolutely mindboggling that monitoring beard length and sock color are the NYPD’s top priorities right now,” said Lynch.
“New York City police officers can’t pay their bills. They never get to see their families. They are battling every day against perps who have no fear and a justice system that delivers no consequences,” he added.
The department has remained unapologetic. “Follow the rules, you have no problems,” a police spokesman said. “It seems simple enough … We can’t have a double standard.”
The brass’s decision to drop the hammer on the rank-and-file comes at a particularly fraught time – the NYPD is facing a historic shortage of officers as cops continue to turn in their badges at an alarming rate.
The NYPD roster of 33,822 uniformed cops is already 1,208 below the budgeted headcount, The Post reported last week.
During January and February of this year, 239 officers resigned – a 36% spike from the 176 who left during the same span in 2022. And it’s a shocking 117% higher than 2021’s numbers, according to NYPD pension data.
But the numbers track with last year’s mass exodus: New York’s finest lost 3,701 cops to retirement or resignation in 2022, the most since 3,846 left the year after 9/11.
Cops say it’s not just the light paychecks or department politics that are to blame. One source previously told The Post that cops are being forced to work an “inhumane amount of overtime,” which includes sacrificing their days off.
The standards bureau’s crackdown is unlikely to help stem the tide.
Precinct supervisors were sent a memo by higher ups in recent weeks alerting them of the new unit, according to police sources.
The memo warned that cops working Friday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade should be particularly fastidious — because O’Hare’s eagle-eyed teams will be watching to ensure they’re “properly uniformed, with presentable shoes, clothing and properly groomed including hair and facial hair.”
They’ll also be scouring waste baskets — the memo states “teams will check to ensure there isn’t garbage overflowing and littered about on all levels of the command.”
Especially vulnerable will be late tours and weekends, which are “more likely to be unkempt,” according to the memo, obtained by The Post.
The monitors will also review bodycam footage from 311 calls, as well as overtime requests for crime reduction posts and individual officer’s memo books documenting their break times and location.
“This is the supervisor’s responsibility to inspect the cop’s memo books for these details, and they will be held responsible along with the cops if deficiencies are found,” the memo said.
Officers say this will only force more burned-out officers to drop from the ranks.
“They’re just adding on the stress, so people are saying f–k it and leaving,” one source said.
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Democrats Are Clearly Terrified Of An Educated And Informed Public
It’s a strange time in the United States, where one political party is actively engaged in a series of actions to keep as many people as possible ignorant. Ignorant not of one particular event, study, or story, but of so many topics that reality itself” is what they’re ultimately attempting to obscure. It’s evil, honestly, and it begs the question "What are Democrats so afraid of?” The only answer is simple: an informed public.
Communists in the old Soviet Union were terrified that their citizens would discover how well people in the free west were living. There were no bread lines, there were options – lots of options, for everything. This reality worried the communist leadership and would have confused their subjects, much like Bernie Sanders in 2015 lamented the idea that there were too many choices for deodorant and shoes. “You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country,” he famously said.
The great thing about capitalism is you can have both choices and charity. Options matter, and an educated public, free from government tyranny, make choices about those options that is best for them rather than a faceless bureaucrat thousands of miles away imposing what they think is best for you.
The only way that second prospect gains any traction is ignorance. Ignorance of history and how that model has failed every time it’s been tried, and ignorance of information where people are kept in the dark about reality and, therefore, draw manipulated and pre-selected conclusions and act accordingly. This is where Democrats live.
I’ve known Tucker Carlson since we met back in 2008, and I never noticed the horns. Granted, I’ve never touched his head, but next time I see him I will pat it down since I need to know if I’m hanging out with the Devil, as I’ve been told by Democrats, and, while it would be awkward to run my hands through his hair, it beats patting his ass to check for a tail.
What was his sin? Providing more information to the American public on something Democrats do not want us to have more information on: January 6th. He played more video, un-Democrat-approved video, of people in the Capitol building. He exposed truth that contradicted what Democrats have gotten so much political mileage out of, thereby exposing them as liars, both by commission and omission.
You’d think this would be a big story – Nancy Pelosi’s January 6th committee manipulated the public, weaponizing Congress and its subpoena power to influence an election. The Democrats were Putin without invading Ukraine.
Nope. The media – the people who throw out their shoulders patting themselves on the back over their “speaking ‘truth’ to power” tramp-stamp tattoo – had no interest.
Rather than demanding answers from Democrats, who so obviously lied that even Stevie Wonder could see it, the press-credentialed class were incredulous toward Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy for releasing the footage. Journalists upset over the public gaining access to more information, which used to be what they lived for. No questions for any member of the committee, Pelosi, or prosecutors who put a guy away for 4 years claiming he was some sort of violent ringleader, when new footage proved he was escorted by police alone and confronted exactly no one. Cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal is a figure worthy of sympathy and support – hell, he’d have a show on MSNBC right now if he were out of prison – but Jacob Chansley needs to spend every second of his sentence in prison because he dressed weird and upset Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin.
To call the press the flying monkey army of the DNC is to insult fictional flying monkeys.
But it’s not just January 6th the left is circling the wagons to keep people ignorant of, it’s everything. Not a single Democrat asked any serious questions designed to gain information about the origins of COVID at a hearing this week. Those who bothered to show up did all they could to protect Tony Fauci’s reputation. Not a single Democrat expressed any concern for government bureaucrats pressuring social media companies to censor American citizens because they found what they were saying to be inconvenient or wrong. None gave a damn about the express violations of the First Amendment, not one.
It’s not that they do not care – indifference isn’t nefarious, and what Democrats are doing is evil – it’s that they benefit from the lies and ignorance. Most of the left-wing attacks on Tucker and conservative media aren’t on substance – Democrats don’t engage in substantive arguments, they simply dismiss with contempt and move on, preaching only their ignorant choir – they are designed to prevent people from consuming unapproved information. They couch it as “We watch conservative media so you don’t have to” but it’s really “We watch conservative media and lie about it in the hope you never do it yourself.”
Make up your own damn mind. I encourage you to flip on MSNBC every once in a while, if only to keep up with what the enemy is doing. Like visiting a zoo when you’re likely never going to run the risk of being trampled by an elephant, you should at least know what one looks like and is capable of. And when it comes to politics, Democrats are capable of anything. There is no bottom for them, no line they won’t cross. And the only way that works is with an ignorant public. Explains the schools in every left-wing stronghold in the country, doesn’t it?
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14 March, 2023
Defendant Moves to Dismiss Jan. 6 Case Based on Newly Disclosed Footage, FBI Testimony
The Left tried to make a mountain out of a molehill where the Jan. 6 events were concerned. But now that more of the evidence has come out, the accusations are revealed as a typical Leftist pack of lies
A defendant in the Proud Boys trial over Jan. 6, 2021, charges moved on March 9 to dismiss the case, after some footage from the day of the breach was shown for the first time.
Dominic Pezzola is one of the Proud Boys members on trial for obstruction of an official proceeding and other charges. The newly disclosed footage, shown on Fox News this week, “is plainly exculpatory,” Pezzola’s lawyers said in the new motion.
“It establishes that the Senate chamber was never violently breached, and—in fact—was treated respectfully by January 6 protestors,” the motion reads.
Among the clips Fox’s Tucker Carlson broadcast was one of Jacob Chansley, another defendant who’s serving a jail sentence after pleading guilty, walking around accompanied by police officers. The officers didn’t stop Chansley and even tried to open doors for him.
He eventually made it into the Senate chamber, where he and others later knelt and prayed. Chansley, during the prayer, gave thanks to the officers for “letting us into the building.”
Pezzola also entered the Capitol, and prosecutors have argued that he and others being inside forced Congress, which was certifying electoral votes from the 2020 election, to go into recess.
However, the new footage shows that members “could have continued proceedings,” Pezzola’s attorneys said.
“It was not Pezzola or codefendants who caused the Congress to recess,” the attorneys said. “Congress interrupted its own proceedings.”
The lawyers are asking U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, to dismiss it. He’s asked in the motion to declare a mistrial if he rejects that request.
Prosecutors must not withhold evidence that can be exculpatory. The rule was crystallized in Brady v. Maryland, a 1963 Supreme Court decision.
“Suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused who has requested it violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution,” the decision states.
Zachary Rehl, another Proud Boys defendant, requested all information regarding Congress going into recess on Jan. 6, 2021, in late 2021.
“While Brady obligations do not extend to the entirety of the government, they do include investigative agencies or agencies closely related who knew or should have known that information would be material to a prosecution arising from their direct involvement. Here the U.S. Capitol Police are directly related and fully aware of the events of January 6, 2021,” lawyers for the defendants said.
They cited previous court decisions, including one that found that a prosecutor “has a duty to learn of any favorable evidence known to the others acting on the government’s behalf in the case, including the police.”
“We will respond through the court,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia told The Epoch Times via email.
The U.S. Capitol Police didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Attorney Albert Watkins, who represented Chansley, said on Fox on March 8 that the footage the media outlet aired this week hadn’t been provided to him.
“The government knew that Jake had walked around with all of these police officers. They had that video footage. I didn’t get it. It wasn’t disclosed to me. It wasn’t provided to me,” Watkins said. “They had a duty, an absolute duty, with zero discretion to provide it to me so I could share it with my client.”
Another development supports a dismissal, according to the new motion. FBI special agent Nicole Miller is being accused of hiding a tab in a spreadsheet that showed some of her emails.
Miller was testifying on March 8 when Nick Smith, a lawyer representing Proud Boys member Ethan Nordean, revealed the secret tab, leaving more than one thousand hidden rows of messages, Nordean’s attorneys said in a separate filing.
Miller wrote in one email, “My boss assigned me 338 items of evidence i [sic] have to destroy.”
In another, an agent wrote to Miller that she should go into a confidential human source report and “edit out” that an agent was present, according to the filing.
The hidden emails show that Miller “admitted fabricating evidence and following orders to destroy hundreds of items of evidence,” Pezzola’s lawyers said. “If justice means anything, it requires this case to be dismissed.”
The FBI declined to comment.
Erik Kenerson, an assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, said in court on March 8 that even if there were missing messages, the defense could have asked the government to produce them. He said prosecutors decide which messages to provide to the defense, so it wasn’t appropriate to imply that the agent hid them.
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What Andrew Tate teaches us
Catrina Prager
No, this is not an essay in defense of Tate. Nor is it denunciation. It’s an analysis of what his rise means for our society, and to an extent, how we can prevent others in his image from dominating our virtual space in the future.
Personally, I think Tate had some good points, but also some terrible ones. Obviously, there are those who lean quite heavily toward either side. According to CNET, Andrew Tate’s official @cobratate Instagram account boasted 4.5 million followers, with more than 600,000 on YouTube (before being taken down). Those are big numbers.
So the question we should be asking is, why did 4.5 million people (and countless more non-followers) relate so heavily with Tate’s “teachings”?
A sizable chunk of his following can be surely attributed to money-hungry youth. In a sense, Tate rose to be an “idol” for many young men because he represented what they wanted to have. Tate’s ethos seemed to be “look at all this luxury”, and that’s not new. It’s been the driving principle of tabloids and celebrity press for generations. We’re enthralled by the bling, and automatically assume it lends one authority.
However, it wasn’t Tate’s luxurious fast-cars-pretty-women lifestyle that sparked controversy. It was his concept of masculinity.
Tate rang the alarm for the masculine man.
It’s not me saying it. It’s almost five million people. It’s the countless fan pages abounding on the Internet. While still in good standing, Tate was a big proponent for more clearly defined gender roles. He embodied the persona of a manly man. Muscular and authoritative. Strong and confident in his masculinity.
And I believe that’s what his followers responded to most keenly. After all, if all he’d been was an entrepreneur/success guru, I don’t think Tate would’ve had such roaring success. There are simply too many of those, already.
But he drew an audience by reminding us of previous generations, and people seemingly liked what he had to say.
What the Tate critics get wrong
This is the part where every Tate-hating keyboard warrior goes “oh, but he only attracted the toxic, abusive, sexist men”. That’s a simple-minded take, though, and we should be aiming toward a more nuanced discourse.
I’m sure some of Tate’s followers were sexist assholes. It’s highly likely. Except not all of them could have been. And even beyond those 4.5M, many more non-followers only agreed with some of Tate’s reasoning. In other words, some resonated with his understanding of the “manly man”, without thinking women were in some way inferior.
And that’s what we need to take into account. In a society starved of traditional gender roles, particularly one in which old-school masculine men are vilified and ostracized, we risk breeding monsters.
If masculinity had been the evil, destructive force that modern voices claim it is, then people like Tate wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Obviously. In modern rhetoric, one can hardly speak the word masculinity without the rider ‘toxic’. It has become an evil, cruel thing that everyone will be better off without. Including the men.
Not to mention the women.
Yet it seems both men and women resonated with Tate’s idea of the more traditional, masculine man, for some reason. Were they brainwashed? Blind to the toxicity of manliness? Or were they driven toward an extreme figure like Andrew Tate by an equally extreme and polarizing society?
Andrew Tate is why we need to reintroduce and decriminalize masculinity in our world. Clearly, there’s a need for it. Like a petulant, recalcitrant adolescent, the modern Western world tends to cast off any and every thing the past has to teach us. Very rarely does it stop to consider that maybe our species developed in a certain way for evolutionary purposes, and not just for the love of patriarchy.
Right now, the argument pro-masculinity has been deceptively reduced to “oh, you support wife beaters, and rapists, do you?”. But it’s naive, not to mention offensive, to assume that’s all masculine men are. For a very long time, women have taken great offense at being reduced to dishwashers, and homemakers. For good reason. We have so much more to give, our personalities infinitely more nuanced than those two reductive, discriminating terms.
Why, then, knowing this struggle and this hurt, are we so keen on subjecting the men to the same? An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. It’s an old phrase, so of course, we’ve thrown that out the window as well.
Except I’d alter it.
An eye for an eye makes the world turn to extremist, unhelpful social figures, like Tate. It might not have the same ring, but it’s true. Our youth doesn’t need people like Tate. What it does need is good masculine role models who strive to benefit the community.
And feminine models. And models that say it’s okay to be a manlier girl or a more effeminate man. That’s what the 21st century was supposed to be about, showing people it’s okay to be a bunch of things. It seems so far, we’ve only traded one oppressed group for another. It doesn’t take a historian to see that didn’t turn out so great the last time. For anyone.
The reason Andrew Tate was so wildly successful was that he was not a nice man. But guess what, we alienated and derided all the nice manly men. We shamed them and bullied them until only the nastier ones like Tate could brave the vitriol. We still have time to turn the 21st century around. Though not as much as we might like to think.
Even now, somewhere out there, a new Andrew Tate is amassing followers. Think about it.
https://catrinaprager.medium.com/what-andrew-tate-teaches-us-a78e57cba81f
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Democrats Are Clearly Terrified Of An Educated And Informed Public
It’s a strange time in the United States, where one political party is actively engaged in a series of actions to keep as many people as possible ignorant. Ignorant not of one particular event, study, or story, but of so many topics that reality itself” is what they’re ultimately attempting to obscure. It’s evil, honestly, and it begs the question "What are Democrats so afraid of?” The only answer is simple: an informed public.
Communists in the old Soviet Union were terrified that their citizens would discover how well people in the free west were living. There were no bread lines, there were options – lots of options, for everything. This reality worried the communist leadership and would have confused their subjects, much like Bernie Sanders in 2015 lamented the idea that there were too many choices for deodorant and shoes. “You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country,” he famously said.
The great thing about capitalism is you can have both choices and charity. Options matter, and an educated public, free from government tyranny, make choices about those options that is best for them rather than a faceless bureaucrat thousands of miles away imposing what they think is best for you.
The only way that second prospect gains any traction is ignorance. Ignorance of history and how that model has failed every time it’s been tried, and ignorance of information where people are kept in the dark about reality and, therefore, draw manipulated and pre-selected conclusions and act accordingly. This is where Democrats live.
I’ve known Tucker Carlson since we met back in 2008, and I never noticed the horns. Granted, I’ve never touched his head, but next time I see him I will pat it down since I need to know if I’m hanging out with the Devil, as I’ve been told by Democrats, and, while it would be awkward to run my hands through his hair, it beats patting his ass to check for a tail.
What was his sin? Providing more information to the American public on something Democrats do not want us to have more information on: January 6th. He played more video, un-Democrat-approved video, of people in the Capitol building. He exposed truth that contradicted what Democrats have gotten so much political mileage out of, thereby exposing them as liars, both by commission and omission.
You’d think this would be a big story – Nancy Pelosi’s January 6th committee manipulated the public, weaponizing Congress and its subpoena power to influence an election. The Democrats were Putin without invading Ukraine.
Nope. The media – the people who throw out their shoulders patting themselves on the back over their “speaking ‘truth’ to power” tramp-stamp tattoo – had no interest.
Rather than demanding answers from Democrats, who so obviously lied that even Stevie Wonder could see it, the press-credentialed class were incredulous toward Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy for releasing the footage. Journalists upset over the public gaining access to more information, which used to be what they lived for. No questions for any member of the committee, Pelosi, or prosecutors who put a guy away for 4 years claiming he was some sort of violent ringleader, when new footage proved he was escorted by police alone and confronted exactly no one. Cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal is a figure worthy of sympathy and support – hell, he’d have a show on MSNBC right now if he were out of prison – but Jacob Chansley needs to spend every second of his sentence in prison because he dressed weird and upset Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin.
To call the press the flying monkey army of the DNC is to insult fictional flying monkeys.
But it’s not just January 6th the left is circling the wagons to keep people ignorant of, it’s everything. Not a single Democrat asked any serious questions designed to gain information about the origins of COVID at a hearing this week. Those who bothered to show up did all they could to protect Tony Fauci’s reputation. Not a single Democrat expressed any concern for government bureaucrats pressuring social media companies to censor American citizens because they found what they were saying to be inconvenient or wrong. None gave a damn about the express violations of the First Amendment, not one.
It’s not that they do not care – indifference isn’t nefarious, and what Democrats are doing is evil – it’s that they benefit from the lies and ignorance. Most of the left-wing attacks on Tucker and conservative media aren’t on substance – Democrats don’t engage in substantive arguments, they simply dismiss with contempt and move on, preaching only their ignorant choir – they are designed to prevent people from consuming unapproved information. They couch it as “We watch conservative media so you don’t have to” but it’s really “We watch conservative media and lie about it in the hope you never do it yourself.”
Make up your own damn mind. I encourage you to flip on MSNBC every once in a while, if only to keep up with what the enemy is doing. Like visiting a zoo when you’re likely never going to run the risk of being trampled by an elephant, you should at least know what one looks like and is capable of. And when it comes to politics, Democrats are capable of anything. There is no bottom for them, no line they won’t cross. And the only way that works is with an ignorant public. Explains the schools in every left-wing stronghold in the country, doesn’t it?
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Our Christophobic Ruling Caste
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley last week persistently questioned Attorney General Merrick Garland about the FBI’s over-reaction last September in its heavily armed arrest of pro-life Catholic Mark Houck at his home––for an alleged assault that local law enforcement had already declined to prosecute. Houck was tried, and a jury acquitted him in just an hour.
For citizens of faith, the raid and trial demonstrate how many “public servants” in our federal agencies have an animus against Christians, a peculiarity given that the DOJ and other agencies are so vigorous in protecting Muslims from alleged Islamophobic persecution. Christophobia, on the other hand, apparently is okay, and Christians’ First Amendment rights can be violated to serve partisan political agendas.
Once again, the self-styled “brights,” the technocratic, progressive ruling elite who “follow the science,” are abusing their power to intimidate and marginalize Christians while violating their 1st and 14th Amendment rights in order to discredit Christianity, long a threat to the technocracy and its authority.
The Houck case is not an outlier in the Feds’ sorry record of targeting Christians. In January there surfaced an FBI field office’s report called “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” which was disavowed only after an FBI whistleblower exposed it.
Or consider the FBI’s double standards in pursuing attacks on reproductive services offices, which are violations of the FACE Act used to charge Houck. According to the Heritage Foundation, “The DOJ charged 26 pro-life activists with FACE Act violations in 2022 alone, but did not charge a single pro-abortion activist with FACE Act charges in 2022, despite over 100 apparent pro-abortion attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and churches across the nation, according to Catholic Vote trackers.”
Nor is this a recent development. During the Obama administration, starting in 2010 the IRS targeted conservative and Christian non-profits. Losing a subsequent lawsuit did not slow the IRS down. In 2021, the agency pulled a Texas prayer group’s tax-exempt status because it “benefits Republicans.” As Ohio Senator Jim Jordan commented, “The Obama/Biden IRS targeted conservatives for their political beliefs. It looks like the Biden/Harris IRS is already up to no good as well. Every American should be concerned, but sadly, not surprised.”
This disdain for Christianity has been intensifying for a century, and goes back even farther to the 18th century Enlightenment. When not atheists, many of the new rationalists were Deists, reducing God to the “first mover” responsible for the created world. The theology of Christ’s divinity, incarnation, death, and resurrection, and the miracles attending Christ’s mission, was rejected. Christians, when not decried as tyrannical, intolerant instigators of slaughter, were patronized as “shamans or witch doctors from savage tribes whom one humors until one can dress them in trousers and send them to school,” as Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz satirized this attitude.
By 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche memorably expressed this new sensibility and its cause: “Wither is God?” the madman in a fable asks. “I will tell you. We have killed him––you and I. All of us are his murderers . . . . God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” The only question left is, what will take God’s place as the foundational source of our ideals like virtue or human rights, if these can even survive.
The progress of science and the new technologies that followed, and the spread of political structures like political freedom and equality, human rights, and social justice gave one answer: The new authority of science based on its material improvements changed radically human existence, and disproved the Christian doctrine of mankind’s innate corruptibility. The dream of endless progress brought on by education and scientific new knowledge, took hold and started the long process of secularization. The new knowledge and “human sciences” could now improve human nature and usher in an age freed from the destructive behaviors that once blighted human life.
It didn’t take long for that dream to become a nightmare. Yet not even the 20th century’s gruesome catalogue of industrialized slaughter, genocide, and gulags written by political religions like fascism, Nazim, and communism has weakened this faith among our cognitive elites.
For Americans in particular, this growing authority of science and distaste for religion began to erode the 1st Amendment’s rights of free speech and religion. The provision was distorted to mean a “wall of separation of church and state,” a phrase created by Thomas Jefferson. The “establishment clause” proscribed a church established the federal government with authority over the whole nation, like England’s Anglican Church. State-level established churches already existing in many states were left alone. Now they are forbidden by Supreme Court rulings that extended the 1st and 14th amendments to the states.
Today this misreading of the Constitution has been used to justify banning any public connection of politics to religion, which of course violates the 1st Amendment’s freedom of religion and speech. But this unwarranted interpretation conflicts with the thinking of the Founders about the viability of the Constitution’s freedoms given the destructive “passions and interests” and lust for power that all humans are prey to.
As John Adams expressed this importance of religion for the new nation’s success in his 1798 “Letter from John Adams to Massachusetts Militia”:
“Because we have no government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by Morality and Religion, Avarice, Ambition, Revenge, or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Indeed, even atheists like Voltaire acknowledged the utilitarian value of religion in his famous quips, “If God didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him,” and “God is dead, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night.” Or as Napoleon put it, “Religion is a kind of vaccination, which, by satisfying our natural love for the marvelous, keeps us out of the hands of charlatans and conjurers. The priests are better than the Cagliostros [famous occultists and frauds, Andrew Roberts’s gloss], the Kants, and all the visionaries of Germany.”
As advanced materially as we are, as successful as our science has been at unlocking the secrets of nature and using its powers to create life-changing technologies, our science still can’t give us an answer to the question why we shouldn’t just follow our impulses and appetites, no matter how evil. Instead, it falls back on dubious Darwinism like the “God gene,” or various forms of determinism like Freudianism or Marxism, both of which have been dead-ends in the attempt to find a substitute for God. At least Nietzsche was honest, acknowledging that God’s death has undercut all our virtues like charity and empathy for our fellow humans that make us humane rather than just clever chimps.
Finally, the discrediting of faith and the idealization of science as the royal road to ultimate happiness on earth, has created an emptiness in our civilization, which lacks a convincing story of who we are and what is best for us, how we should live and act, what is good for us and what we are good for.
Into that void have stepped cults and political religions like Marxism, which has co-opted much of Christian salvation theology. Only now, original sin is called the “alienation” of people from nature, their fellow man, and their labor, a fallen condition that the abolishing of capitalism and private property will redeemed. And the “born-again” Christian will be the “new man” communism creates through revolution, inheritors of a new “salvation” here on earth––“a higher sociobiological type, a superman . . . . Man will become incomparably stronger, wiser, more subtle,” as Leon Trotsky preached. As the Catholic thinker Andre de Lubac asked, “On which side are the miracles greater?”
We know the cost of this low-rent religion––100 million killed by famine, torture, gulags, and mass murder. Yet still the Left promotes the false knowledge about people and their natures that contributed to such carnage and cruelty. The history of communism alone answers the question that Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov raises: whether “without God and immortal life . . . all things are permitted.”
Yet science still has not been able to give a convincing answer to that question, as all around us belief in more and more secular “miracles” proliferate.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-christophobic-ruling-caste/
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Panelist calls out Australian TV for being too white as local shows are branded a 'neo-Nazi's wet dream'
The rave below offers no statistics or evidence. It is in fact a very strange thing to say about Australia's politically correct media
By contrast, Malcolm Smith has given examples to show that minorities are OVER-represented on Australian TV.
So the unhappy lady is probably peeved only because HER minority group is little mentioned. She is simply over-generalizing. Ironic that the the host of the TV program where she made her accusations is in fact an Aborigine, a dark minority group
In any case Australians are overwhelmingly of European ancestry so that is the group that advertisers or others would reasonably aim to reach. Targeting such people is simply what you have to do if you want your messages to have maximum reach and impact
And the big irony is that the Arab population that produced the angry lady REALLY IS NAZI. The antisemitism of Islamic countries is well known.
A guest on ABC's Q+A has branded Australian television a 'neo-Nazi's wet dream' after Indigenous host Stan Grant slammed it for being dominated by white faces.
Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf - whose parents moved Down Under from Lebanon in the 1970s - blasted networks for being stuck in the era of the 1960s' White Australia policy.
Ms Lattouf lashed out at the representation of multicultural Australia on mainstream local television shows, saying it was now badly lagging behind the rest of the world. 'Australia's really far behind the UK or the US,' she raged on Monday night's show.
'We still have networks or programs that look like a neo-Nazi's wet dream. We still do despite the fact that more than half of the population are culturally diverse. '[But] we're just gonna kind of ignore those voices.'
Her comments came after Grant hit out at the lack of representation for people of colour on local television.
Monday night's show featured an otherwise all-white line up of 80s British pop star Billy Bragg, Labor MP Josh Burns, economist Gigi Foster, and Senator Perin Davey.
Grant claimed the lack of diversity was giving viewers a false impression of the multicultural society they actually live in.
'People like you and I are still rare on our screens,' the veteran broadcaster and outspoken racism activist told Ms Lattouf. 'And stories are still told by people who look like other people on the panel here tonight. 'What does it take to break through, because the world doesn't look like that? It looks like us!'
Grant, along with Ten's The Project host Waleed Aly and Malaysian-born ABC newsreader Jeremy Fernandez, are among the few people of colour regularly seen on mainstream Australian TV.
Ms Lattouf, a mother-of-two who founded Media Diversity Australia in 2017, said it required grit-teethed determination to succeed as a non-white in Australia. 'It takes patience. It takes a thick skin,' she told Grant. 'It takes having to fight the urge to go into Tourette-style swearing spiel when you get the opportunity. 'Because sometimes it's frustrating that the change is glacial. You take one step forward, four steps back.
'Even in the year of the referendum [on the Voice to Parliament], we still have all-white panels discussing things like the referendum. 'We still have all-white panels talking about refugees and asylum seeker policy - that baffles me.'
She added: 'At least in the UK, when you see politicians when you flick on the telly, even the Prime Minister, though arguably he's not a great win for progressive politics.
'All our all our storytellers, all our institutions of power - they have all been largely white men. 'There's a bit of progress now. We've got white women. And so there is a lot more work to be done.'
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13 March, 2023
Ibuprofen Kills Thousands Each Year, so What Is the Alternative?
This is a conventional assertion but it is poorly founded. It is true that there are some studies that show excess deaths among users of Ibuprofen but what does that prove?
People who took Ib did so for a reason: pain. And what caused the pain? In some cases serious diseases. So did those who died do so because of the Ib or because of what they took it for? We don't know.
A randomized placebo controlled trial among healthy people would answer that question but I can see no example of such a trial being undertaken. All the studies seem to be of people who were already ill. So I can see no reason NOT to take Ib. I take one dose of it on rare occasions for arthritic pain and I will continue with that
Pain and unhealthy levels of inflammation are fast becoming default bodily states in the industrialized world. While in most cases we can adjust the underlying pro-inflammatory conditions by altering our diet, and reducing stress and environmental chemical exposures, these approaches take time, discipline and energy, and sometimes we just want the pain to stop now. In those often compulsive moments we find ourselves popping an over-the-counter pill to kill the pain.
The problem with this approach is that, if we do it often enough, we may kill ourselves along with the pain…
Ibuprofen really is a perfect example of this. As mentioned above, this petrochemical-derivative has been linked to significantly increased risk of heart attack and increased cardiac and all-cause mortality (when combined with aspirin), with over two dozen serious adverse health effects, including:
Ibuprofen is, in fact, not unique in elevating cardiovascular disease risk and/or mortality. The entire category of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) appears to have this under-recognized dark side; cardiovascular disease and cardiac mortality score highest on the list of over 100 unintended adverse health effects associated with their use.
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DeSantis Plays 'Pornographic' Video of Books Removed from School Libraries, It Was Too Graphic for the News
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis got help from an unlikely source in his seemingly never-ending fight against the indoctrination of minors — the establishment media.
During a news conference Wednesday in Tampa, DeSantis, presumed by many to be a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate, shared a graphic video to illustrate the presence of sexually explicit books in Florida schools.
The governor displayed the material as part of an effort to “set the record straight, debunking the mainstream media, unions and leftist activists’ hoax” about the “‘book ban’ hoax,” DeSantis’ office said in a news release.
So graphic were these images — again, readily available to schoolchildren in the Sunshine State — that Twitter slapped a warning on one Florida outlet’s coverage of them.
But the social media platform still allowed the content to be shared with those who wished to see it.
That wasn’t the case with WFLA-TV in Tampa, which deemed the material so explicit that it pulled the video of the news conference from the airwaves.
The NBC affiliate apparently did so at the behest of reporter Mahsa Saeidi. Saeidi said on Twitter that she asked for the feed to go down because she doesn’t “show sexually explicit content” and all “questionable material must be reviewed.”
Well. Yes. Nobody should be disputing Saeidi’s account that “sexually explicit content” shouldn’t be made readily available to the masses — let alone schoolchildren.
Taryn Fenske, DeSantis’ communications director, tweeted the video that the governor showed, asking the very salient question of why such sexually explicit material is OK for children but not OK to air on television.
The video shows graphic depictions of oral sex and gay sex from books that had been available to children before they were removed. It should not be controversial to suggest such books have no place in Florida public schools.
And yet, if you’ve been keeping a moderate eye on DeSantis, you know the liberal media is treating him as the new leader of the Third Reich for wanting to remove sexually explicit content from schools.
In fact, it hasn’t even been a full week since far-left comedian and late-night host John Oliver dedicated the majority of the latest episode of his HBO show “Last Week Tonight” to demonizing the governor for a litany of laughable faults (how dare the pro-life DeSantis sign a 15-week abortion ban) — including the oh-so-sinister decision to remove the above material.
The entire segment, an abomination masquerading as humor, isn’t worth the 25-minute runtime. But this writer still combed through the humorless video so you don’t have to and can confirm one thing: Not once did Oliver even attempt to cover the graphic content available in some of these books.
The reason is pretty simple: There’s nothing to justify. If parents don’t want their children exposed to sexually graphic content, that’s it. There’s nothing more to say.
“We believe in the rights of parents to be involved in the education of their children and therefore have enacted curriculum transparency legislation, so that the parents know what books are being used in the classroom, what books do their kids have access to, and then they have procedures where they can say, ‘Wait a minute’ – you know, some of the stuff you saw up there – ‘that is pornographic,” DeSantis said on Wednesday. “Why would we have that in a media center with 10-year-old students?
“It’s just wrong.”
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Once again, the ADL puts Leftism ahead of the welfare of Jews
Orthodox and other right-leaning Jews who attended the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, near Washington, D.C., last weekend criticized the Anti-Defamation League for its article attacking “anti-transgender hate” at the conference and for singling out an Orthodox Jew, Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, for criticism.
Raichik also returned fire at ADL in comments to The Daily Signal.
“The ADL, an organization purportedly founded to combat Jew-hatred, has now reached the new low of rebuking a publicly Orthodox Jewish woman for her defense of male/female biological and sexual complementarity, as it is reflected in Genesis 1:27,” Newsweek’s Josh Hammer, a religiously traditional Jew, told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. “We have reached peak parody. The left-wing hack Jonathan Greenblatt has taken the ADL through the looking glass.”
The ADL’s Center on Extremism published an article Monday titled “At CPAC 2023, Anti-Transgender Hate Took Center Stage.” The article’s featured image showed Raichik, the Orthodox Jewish woman behind the popular Libs of TikTok Twitter account that shares TikTok videos exposing teachers, doctors, and activists pushing agendas such as transgender identity in schools, hospitals, and elsewhere.
The ADL article did not mention Raichik’s faith, but described her as an example of the “anti-LGBTQ+ extremists” at the conference. It also did not quote Raichik’s remarks, but claimed that “the conference has previously welcomed white supremacists, right-wing nationalists, and other extremists” shortly after mentioning her name. It went on to describe a “dangerous trend of anti-LGBTQ+ extremism in the U.S.,” and described the notion of the “‘objective truth’ of womanhood” as advocacy for the “marginalization of trans people.”
“For me, this really crosses a line,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values, an organization that represents more than 2,000 Orthodox Jewish rabbis in public policy, told The Daily Signal. “Just weeks ago, we praised the ADL, but to demonize biblical values and highlight an observant Jew as an example of ‘extremism’ and ‘hate’ is simply projection on their part.”
Menken, who was speaking in his personal capacity as a CPAC attendee, added that “the extremists are those who call it ‘normal’ to mutilate minor children and put [intact] biological men in women’s private spaces, and by siding with that, the ADL helps encourage antisemitism on all sides.”
Nachman Mostofsky, executive director and vice president at the Amariah, an organization dedicated to promoting Torah values, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday that ADL has become “a self-fulfilling prophecy of the creation of antisemitism.”
He criticized ADL for creating “this mystique” that antisemitism is everywhere. “When you call young men ‘Nazis,’ and they’re not, and you keep doing that, they become ‘Nazis,’” he warned.
ADL’s promotion of transgender identity “has nothing to do with antisemitism,” he argued. “Clearly, the ADL either wasn’t there at CPAC or they were there and they’re lying. I didn’t hear any transphobia. What I did hear was anti-grooming.”
Mostofsky noted the irony that progressive activists—some of whom previously condemned circumcision as child abuse—now champion cutting “the whole thing off and turning it inside out.”
David BenHooren, publisher of The Jewish Voice and a CPAC attendee, called the ADL article “beyond deplorable.”
“Besides creating Libs of Tik Tok, Ms. Raichik … deeply cares about her family and families throughout this country,” the publisher told The Daily Signal in a Wednesday statement. “I can tell you that she is definitely not homophobic or anti-gay in any way, shape, or form.”
BenHooren warned that “the gay rights movement” is now “exploiting” its status “by fostering and supporting the trans movement and its nefarious agenda of attempting to groom young children for a sexualized lifestyle.” He cited the promotion of “Drag Queen Story Hour,” the growing push for transgender identity in schools, and Disney’s promotion of a transgender character as evidence of a “paradigm cultural shift” tracing back to the “woke, progressive movement.”
“They are interested in cultivating and indoctrinating the new generation of youth with a perverted set of values that flies in the face of the Judeo-Christian morality that has been the backbone of this nation,” he warned, condemning the ADL for jumping on this “woke agenda bandwagon.”
BenHooren said ADL has shifted from fighting antisemitism to advocating “for the rights of those who seek to poison the minds, hearts, and souls of our children,” which “can never be tolerated or accepted.”
Justine Murray, a Jewish producer for Newsmax, also condemned ADL in comments to The Daily Signal.
“The smug Tikkun Olamist JINOS (Jews in Name Only) at the ADL continue to do more harm than good for Jewish Americans,” said Murray, who attended the conference. She was referring to the concept of tikkun olam, the notion of repairing the world that left-leaning Jews use to advocate social justice causes.
“What used to be a noble mission to combat antisemitism has turned into an adoption of all the trendy left-wing causes,” Murray said, condemning the ADL for “patting themselves on the back for spending their entire day tying every single incident of a swastika etched in a toilet stall to white supremacy.”
“When it comes to actual threats from groups they refuse to name pummeling Jews in the streets of New York daily, the ADL remains silent because it doesn’t fit their political narrative,” she added. “The ADL is only successful at throwing fellow Jews under the bus in an attempt to virtue signal to some of the very people who wish for our extermination.”
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Collapsed bank was Woke
Collapsed lender Silicon Valley Bank operated without a chief risk officer between April 2022 and January 2023 while the operation's United Kingdom-based CRO stands accused of prioritizing pro-diversity initiatives over her actual role.
This revelation comes after the firm became the largest bank to collapse since the 2008 financial crisis - disclosing a $1.8 billion loss in its finances.
SVB's former head of risk, Laura Izurieta, who formerly performed a similar role for Capital One, left the bank in April 2022. She wasn't replaced until January 2023 when the bank hired Kim Olson, formerly of Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui.
While Jay Ersapah, who acts as CRO for the bank in Europe, Africa and the Middle East and who describes herself as a 'queer person of color from a working-class background' - organized a host of LGBTQ initiatives including a month-long Pride campaign and implemented 'safe space' catch-ups for staff.
In a corporate video published just nine months ago, she said she 'could not be prouder' to work for SVB serving 'underrepresented entrepreneurs.'
According to a press release announcing Olson's hiring in January, she brought 'thirty years of financial services experience.'
'SVB has an impressive track record of sound growth and remaining true to its strategy of serving the innovation economy. I am excited to lead SVB’s outstanding risk management team and continue to build SVB’s risk management framework and capabilities in this important next chapter of the firm’s trajectory,' Olson said at the time.
The bank's CEO Greg Becker credited Olson's 'deep and multi-faceted financial services experience as a senior risk leader and former regulator and bank supervisor positions her perfectly to actively manage SVB’s financial and non-financial risks.'
The bank's website says that the CRO at the bank reports to a seven-person committee made up of board members and the CEO.
Meanwhile, last year professional network Outstanding listed Ersapah as a top 100 LGTBQ Future Leader.
'Jay is a leading figure for the bank’s awareness activities including being a panelist at the SVB’s Global Pride townhall to share her experiences as a lesbian of color, moderating SVB’s EMEA Pride townhall and was instrumental in initiating the organization's first ever global "safe space catch-up", supporting employees in sharing their experiences of coming out,' her bio on the Outstanding website states.
It adds that she is 'allies' with gay rights charity Stonewall and had authored numerous articles to promote LGBTQ awareness.
These included 'Lesbian Visibility Day and Trans Awareness week.'
Separately she was also praised in a Facebook post by the group 'Diversity Role Models,' a charity which campaigns against homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in UK schools.
In a corporate document for the bank she said: '"You can't be what you can't see" has always been a quote that stuck with me.
'As a queer person of color and a first generation immigrant from a working class background, there were not many role models for me to 'see' growing up.
'I feel privileged to help spread awareness of lived queer experiences, partner with charitable organizations, and above all create a sense of community for our LGBTQ+ employees and allies.'
Ersapah hails from the UK where she studied an undergraduate Economics degree at the University of Warwick.
She has worked for several high-profile names in the finance sector including Citi, Barclays and consultancy firm Deloitte, according to her Linkedin profile.
She describes herself as having 'proven competency in demanding roles.'
Her profile also boasts of her 'interpersonal skills,' 'growth mindset' and ability to lead 'high-performing teams.'
Last year she featured in a corporate SVB video which purported its pro-LGBTQ credentials.
'We proactively make it our mission at SVB to ensure that our clients, employees and partners feel listened to and that their voices matter.
'From funding underrepresented entrepreneurs to having multiple employee resource groups, I could not be prouder of working for a company like SVB.'
This weekend critics hit out as Ersapah's apparent preoccupation with LGBTQ issues.
One Facebook user, Paul Tucker, wrote: 'The [SVB] Board of Directors is filled with diversity hires who are there because of their woke credentials.
'They all have pronouns in their bios, which are filled with corporate newspeak.
'The Head of Financial Risk and Model Risk Management was this nutbag: Jay Ersapah.
'This is what happens when you allow people to manage your money based on woke principles instead of on their actual skill and competence.
'I hope the depositors at this failed bank enjoy all of that diversity, because diversity is your strength, eh?'
He signed off the post: 'Get woke, go broke.'
Another Twitter user said: 'Head of Financial Risk at SVB Jay Ersapah might’ve been busy with more important projects at the bank, such as LGBTQ issues, rather than assessing risk.'
Panic rocked the financial sector Friday after the sudden collapse of SVB.
The bank was sensationally shut down by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation which placed its remaining assets under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's control.
The crisis was sparked after it disclosed a $1.8 billion loss on its bold holdings this week.
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Youngkin Defends Transgender Policies From the Woke Mob
During a CNN town hall, a 17-year-old transgender student named "Nico" asked Youngkin about his policies requiring students to use bathrooms and locker rooms and join sports teams based on their sex at birth, not their gender identity.
"Look at me. I am a transgender man," Nico said. "Do you really think the girls in my high school would feel comfortable sharing a restroom with me?"
In response, Youngkin stressed the need for schools to try "very hard" to accommodate their students, calling for adding extra bathrooms in the buildings.
"We need gender-neutral bathrooms so people can use the bathroom that they, in fact, are comfortable with," Youngkin said.
However, the Republican governor said his position on transgender athletes, which blocks transgender students from participating in sports that align with their identity, was not up for conversation.
"I don't think biological boys should be playing sports with biological girls," Youngkin said. "I think that's pretty, that's non-controversial, and something that I think is pretty well understood."
Youngkin has previously defended his viewpoint on his state's policies against transgenderism, stating that parents have the right to be involved in their children's lives, whether in or out of the classroom.
"Parents have a fundamental right to be engaged in their children's lives. And oh, by the way, children have a right to have parents engaged in their lives. We needed to fix a wrong," Youngkin said during a CNN interview in October. "The previous administration had had a policy that excluded parents and, in fact, particularly didn't require the involvement of parents. And let's be clear — parents have this right, and children don't belong to the state; they belong to families."
The Republican also defended his executive order that blocked Virginia public schools from teaching "inherently divisive concepts, including critical race theory."
"CRT isn't a class that's taught. It's a philosophy that's incorporated in the curriculum," Youngkin said, adding, "the key point is how we teach it. We need to teach it honestly and transparently, but we shouldn't teach it with judgment."
https://townhall.com//tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/03/10/youngkin-defends-transgender-policies-n2620483
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12 March, 2023
The great androgyny myth rides again
It is a central feminist claim that we should aim at a mix of sex-related psychological characteristics. Women should have some male characteristics as well as female ones. Men too should be more female in their thinking and attitudes. "Androgyny" is the goal
Needless to say, there have been various attempts to prove the functional superiority of androgyny. The work of Sandra Bem was prominent in that connection long ago. In the '70s, she put together a set of questions (the BSRI) that identified male and female characteristics and showed that a combination of such characteritics was "healthier".
I did a survey back in the '80s to look at the issue. The BSRI had already by the time been shown not to measure what it purported to measure so I used an alternative questionnaire that offered the prospect of being more valid than the BSRI. I applied it to a community sample rather than the much more customary student sample
I found that in the comunity at large, feminine attitudes correlated strongly with neuroticism, lack of assertiveness, and lack of self-esteem, which is pretty bad. Masculine orientation, however, also went with low self-esteem and low assertiveness. It was concluded that the best mental health was shown by undifferentiated respondents (those who tended to say that sexually polarized self-descriptions were inapplicable to them). Those who were androgynous (mixed attitudes) were generally LOW scorers on three indices of mental health.
My demonstration that androgyny in the community at large was NOT a good thing was thoroughly ignored however. I was not surprised. Leftists believe only what they want to believe and damn the evidence.
So the myth of androgyny lives on. Writers on the subject are still characterizing it the way Sandra Bem and others did many years ago. The theory rides high on a foundation of what feminists WANT to beleve and nothing much more.
The latest attempt to prove the wonderfulness of androgy is abstracted below. It is as ludicrous as the work of Sandra Bem. This time they decided to go directly into the brain, not examine what was in it via questionnaires.
What they found was that male brains are more complex. That was their basic finding. But that was NOT what was wanted. It made male brains look more versatie and efficient and that would never do.
So amid a flurry of complicated statistics they looked at what went with varying degrees of brain complexity. Female brains were the least complex but what about people who were half way along the continuum? Could they be the wonderful androgynes? Is medium complexity better than high complexity?
They predictably found that it was. Such people "had fewer internalizing symptoms", whatever that means. They don't define "internalizing symptoms" anywhere in their article. Generally, however, internalizing means keeping your feelings or issues inside you and not sharing your concerns with others. Extremes can be associated with poor mental health (depression etc) but there was no evidence of that in this study. "Externalizers" would not be too good either. Extremes of that would be neurotics.
So support offered to feminist beliefs by this study is negligible. If anything, it shows that male brains are superior in important ways. Horrors!
The Human Brain Is Best Described as Being on a Female/Male Continuum: Evidence from a Neuroimaging Connectivity Study
Yi Zhang et al.
Abstract
Psychological androgyny has long been associated with greater cognitive flexibility, adaptive behavior, and better mental health, but whether a similar concept can be defined using neural features remains unknown. Using the neuroimaging data from 9620 participants, we found that global functional connectivity was stronger in the male brain before middle age but became weaker after that, when compared with the female brain, after systematic testing of potentially confounding effects. We defined a brain gender continuum by estimating the likelihood of an observed functional connectivity matrix to represent a male brain. We found that participants mapped at the center of this continuum had fewer internalizing symptoms compared with those at the 2 extreme ends. These findings suggest a novel hypothesis proposing that there exists a neuroimaging concept of androgyny using the brain gender continuum, which may be associated with better mental health in a similar way to psychological androgyny.
https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/31/6/3021/6104776?login=false
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Fox news gave early warning of vacine problems
Negative reporting on Covid-19 shots that aired on Fox News was linked to increased vaccine hesitancy, according to a new study that shows how the nation’s No. 1 news network influenced viewers during a pandemic that has killed more than 1.1 million people in the US.
Concerns about the safety of Covid vaccines as measured in reported side effects increased following heightened periods of negativity in Fox News coverage of vaccines, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Political Communication. Public opinion surveys also showed Fox viewers reported elevated levels of vaccine hesitancy throughout the pandemic compared to regular viewers of other programs.
“When Fox News’ negativity about vaccines goes up, so too does vaccine hesitancy. When it goes down, so too does vaccine hesitancy,” said Matthew Motta, a professor of health policy at the Boston University School of Public Health.
Earlier research has demonstrated that viewers of Fox viewers were less likely to be vaccinated than people who got their news elsewhere. Exposure to online misinformation has been linked to vaccine hesitancy, as has consumption of information from conservative and fringe sources. But the new findings highlight the power the network and other information sources have had to sow distrust among viewers.
To demonstrate this, Motta and his collaborator Dominik Stecula, a political scientist at Colorado State University, turned to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a government-run monitoring program that helps spot problems with shots early on. For example, the rollout of the Johnson & Johnson Covid shot was paused after nearly 7 million doses were administered because just six cases of blood clots were reported to VAERS.
Anyone can report adverse reactions to the clearinghouse — whether or not they’re associated with vaccination — and they’re published without fact-checking to show they really occurred. Anti-vaccine groups at times have encouraged followers to file reports to VAERS, aiming to sow doubts about safety. Facebook videos of people reading lists of these reported side-effects have gone viral.
Measuring Opinion
Motta and Stecula used the database as a proxy for public perception of Covid vaccines. Typically, you would expect to see reports of side effects distributed regularly over time as the vaccines rolled out and more Americans were immunized.
Instead, the analysis found that increases in reports of side effects tended to follow negative coverage of the vaccines on Fox News. Public opinion surveys conducted by the pair backed up their findings.
“There’s a remarkable correlation between VAERS reports and use of the anti-vaccine themes and the reporting that's done on the virus on Fox,” Stecula said.
Fox News didn’t respond to requests for comment. Fox has said that the network has aired pro-vaccine public service announcements and that a number of its on-air personalities have supported vaccination. The outlet reaches more than 2 million weekday primetime viewers daily.
In the early days of the vaccine rollout, huge numbers of Americans delayed getting vaccines, keeping the virus in circulation and putting the most vulnerable at increased risk. Today, while 81% of eligible Americans have received at least one shot, less than 70% have completed their primary vaccine series and only 16% have received the updated bivalent booster that became available last fall.
Fox News did not respond to requests for comment. Fox has said that the network has aired pro-vaccine public service announcements and that a number of its on-air personalities have supported vaccination. The outlet reaches some 2 million weekday primetime viewers daily.
Usually, when viewers have direct experience with a disaster or another event news programming generally holds less influence. People don’t need a news anchor to tell them what’s going on when they’re in the middle of it.
But in this case, living through the pandemic didn’t diminish the power that Fox held over its audience.
“Content matters,” said Motta. “It matters what folks say on the airwaves, because those words can change people's attitudes and behaviors. It's a little scary.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-10/fox-news-content-led-to-covid-vaccine-hesitancy-among-viewers .
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Charles Barkley Eviscerates ESPN Host for Anti-White NBA Claims: 'Asinine, Silly, and Stupid'
Charles Barkley eviscerated ESPN talking head and former NBA player Kendrick Perkins after the latter implied the league’s MVP award has been given to Denver Nuggets center Nikola Joki? in consecutive years because he is white.
In response to a pretty clear consensus that Joki? could be deserving of being crowned the NBA’s most valuable individual player for a third year, Perkins used ESPN’s airwaves to promote a racist conspiracy theory: The voters might be motivated by race.
Perkins’ absurd opinion led to a Tuesday morning argument on “First Take” between him and former NBA star JJ Redick, who challenged the assertion.
Clips of the segment have gone viral online.
Barkley weighed in on the controversy Wednesday when he called into Denver’s Altitude Sports Radio, where he shredded Perkins as any one of three not-so-flattering adjectives.
Of course, Barkley opened with some self-deprecating humor about his golf game. “Hey, man, I’m trying to work on my golf game, and y’all are bringing me on the radio to talk about stupid stuff,” Barkley said.
In regard to Perkins’ comments, he continued, “That’s asinine and silly. Asinine, silly, and stupid. Pick one of the words, whatever one you want.”
“It’s a regular-season award,” Barkley added. “It ain’t who the best player is. It’s who had the best regular season. But every year ESPN gets these fools on the radio and TV, talk about who’s the best player.”
He concluded Joki?’s MVPs are “well-deserved” and slammed ESPN’s “fools” over the “silly” debates they engage in on shows such as “First Take.”
He also pointed out that you could count out how many “white guys” had won the MVP award over the last three decades.
Only three have won it since Larry Bird took it home for three consecutive years in the mid-1980s. Steve Nash won it in 2005 and 2006 while Dirk Nowitzki won it in 2007.
Joki? is the only “white guy” to have done it since, and both awards were after stellar seasons — much like the one he’s having right now. Barkley cited that as evidence Perkins was full of it.
“If that was the case, we’d have a lot more white MVPs. This crossed the line, in my opinion … It’s just total BS,” Barkley said of the race-bating.
After Barkley was asked by Altitude Sports Radio if he even watched the ESPN clip in question, his response was gold.
“I got a life,” the TNT NBA commentator said. “I don’t sit around and watch television.”
Leave it to Barkley to be the voice of reason. His impeccable rationale is probably why he doesn’t work for ESPN.
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Stanford Law Students Scream at Federal Appellate Judge, Call Him ‘Scum,’ because of his conservative judgments
A conservative federal judge on the Fifth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals was screamed at on Thursday by dozens of Stanford Law School students who disagreed with his rulings, bringing new light to the conversation about freedom of speech at America’s elite universities.
At an event titled “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter,” Judge Kyle Duncan was met by an angry crowd of students and faculty. The judge had been invited to speak by the Stanford chapter of the conservative Federalist Society.
A video of the event — posted by the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center — begins as dozens of students are yelling at the judge. Judge Duncan had apparently requested an administrator to calm the crowd, and he allowed the assistant dean for diversity, equity and inclusion to address the room.
Judge Duncan told the dean: “so, you’ve invited me to speak here and I’ve been heckled nonstop, and I’ve asked for an administrator —” before being cut off again by the crowd. One student yelled “your racism is showing” because Judge Duncan was speaking over the dean, who is Black.
The dean then took the podium to address the crowd. “I had to write something down because I am so uncomfortable up here,” she said. “Your advocacy, your opinions from the bench land as absolute disenfranchisement of their rights,” she said as she turned to face Judge Duncan.
“Is your speaking here worth the pain that it has caused, the division it has caused?” she asked.
After she concluded her remarks, most of the protesters left the room and walked by Judge Duncan, calling him “scum” and asking him if he felt safer now that the protesters were leaving.
It is not immediately clear if the judge finished his prepared remarks.
Before taking his seat on the federal bench, Judge Duncan litigated conservative causes, including an argument against gay marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Judge Duncan has received attention for issuing a number of controversial opinions on abortion, the death penalty, and vaccine mandates since taking the bench in 2018. He also announced his refusal to using a transgender inmate’s “assumed name and preferred pronouns.”
Elite institutions like Stanford Law School have come into the national spotlight in recent years for events like the one Judge Duncan faced — students yelling at invited speakers with whom they disagree as their protests are either permitted or encouraged by the school’s bureaucracy.
Yale Law School is another one of those institutions. In response to similar events, Judge James Ho — also of the Fifth Circuit — announced that he would no longer hire clerks from Yale, saying “disruptions seem to occur with special frequency.”
Judge Elizabeth Branch of the Eleventh Circuit told National Review that she would follow Judge Ho’s lead. “Like Judge Ho, I am gravely concerned that the stifling of debate not only is antithetical to this country’s founding principles, but also stunts intellectual growth,” she said in an interview.
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10 March, 2023
Rowling was right all along! Even critics admit suspicion of puberty blockers, surgery on kids and men in women's sport is NOT transphobia
JK Rowling is explaining herself. It's time her detractors listen. Her message, as she says in the fourth episode of 'The Witch Trials of JK Rowling' podcast: Transgender identity is real. She is sympathetic.
You'd think this would generate headlines — JK Rowling, public enemy number one of the trans community, countering her critics. But no.
Rowling offers her nuanced thoughts in this podcast, informed by voluminous reading and research and her own past as well: an abused wife, pregnant and in fear for her life, her baby, and her first Potter manuscript, which she says was held hostage by her then-husband.
As a tortured teenager who questioned her own femininity and sexuality. As a woman worried for other women who feel they are being systematically marginalized, threatened, and silenced, but who cannot afford — literally, financially — to speak up.
'Did I want to join the public conversation?' she asks. 'Yes... because I was watching women being shut down. And it was as though there was no woman perfect enough to say her piece.'
She knew well what would happen.
'There were people close to me,' she says, 'who were BEGGING me not to do it . . . they'd watched what had happened to other public figures and there was certainly a feeling of, 'This is not a wise thing to do; don't do it.'
We've never heard Rowling reveal so much of herself and her thought processes, and it's fascinating. What she has to say can't be boiled down to a tweet or a like on Instagram, and hallelujah — someone in the public square courageously demanding conversation and debate. As grown-ups should.
Apparently, the Potter books are no longer regarded as proof, so it must be said: Rowling possesses a sharp, unique, provocative mind. She is all too self-aware. She deserves much more than being treated as a caricature in much of mainstream and social media. Yet even this podcast, a valuable addition to what should be respectful and informed debate, has been dismissed in the usual outlets.
'Exhausting,' said Monica Hesse in the Washington Post. Hesse couldn't point to any one thing Rowling has ever said that's transphobic, but the author, Hesse wrote, nonetheless has 'a fuzzy aura of harmful rhetoric.'
New York magazine, Vulture: 'Can Anyone Trust the Witch Trials of JK Rowling?' Podcast critic Nicholas Quah, after listening to just the first two episodes, decried the concept of actually letting Rowling explain herself: 'That Rowling's perspective so utterly dominates the podcast's opening stages is incredibly frustrating,' Quah writes.
Wow. The whole point of this podcast is to examine how the most beloved author of our era has become the subject — I doubt Rowling would ever use the word 'victim' — of an international witch hunt, online and off.
Would Quah have written the same sentence about a complicated, misunderstood man? Displayed — ostensibly anathema to a critic — an already closed mind?
Episode four delves into the surging rates of tweens and teens transitioning — a sudden surge in biological girls identifying as boys especially — and a medical community all too willing to put these children on puberty blockers or remove breasts or alter genitalia without comprehensive psychological evaluations.
Teenagers who later decide to de-transition face very real consequences: Biological girls face infertility. Biological boys may never experience an orgasm. But to investigate social contagion, the valorization some parents take in having a trans child, the phenomenon of detransitioning — the numbers, the reasons why, the ages at which this is most common — is to be transphobic.
Frankly, that's insane. Rowling's not alone here, and there's no doubt her outspokenness is encouraging others.
Take Jamie Reed, a 42-year-old self-identified queer woman, politically to the left of Bernie Sanders, married to a transman, and a recent whistleblower who quit her job at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Hospital last November.
'I could no longer participate in what was happening there,' Reed wrote in the Free Press. 'By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to 'do no harm.' Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.'
Then there's former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, speaking out about the essential unfairness of competing against those born biologically male and biological female athletes no longer having their own locker rooms — their own safe space. She said last month that she has received multiple private messages of thanks and endorsement from elite male and female athletes, but is disheartened by their reluctance to go public.
'Now I realize these private thanks,' Gaines said, 'make them responsible for this continuing and advancing as it has.'
You only need to look at the faces of any female swimmer competing against Lia Thomas, a trans female, as they lose and lose again to someone with greater wingspan and lung capacity and upper body strength: The futility, the pain, the utter disconsolation at never having a chance in their chosen sport, one that required enormous personal and financial sacrifice, afraid to express their anger because the mainstream media is cheering this on as a heartwarming story.
JK Rowling is shifting the conversation. The BBC, which airs the series 'Strike' based on Rowling's adult detective novels (published under her pen name Robert Galbraith), apologized twice to the author last month for not defending her against charges of transphobia. They have renewed 'Strike' for a sixth season and have made it clear: The BBC stands with her.
In Finland, Sweden and the UK, there has been a sharp pullback on medical interventions for kids who identify as trans. Last July, Britain's National Health announced Tavistock, the UK's only clinic for transgender youth, would close in favor of new, smaller centers and protocols. Too many children, said Dr. Hilary Cass, head of the Tavistock review, are 'at considerable risk' of depression and impaired mental health. One clinic alone, Cass said, is not 'a safe or viable long-term option.'
Even The New York Times is coming around, recently publishing an op-ed titled 'In Defense of JK Rowling.'
'The campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd,' columnist Pamela Paul wrote last month. 'The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling's case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn't square with her actual views.'
The notion that the Times would publish such a defense, rather than fold to woke junior staffers having philosophical seizures on Slack, would have been unthinkable a year ago. Now, top editors at the Times, it seems, have begun regenerating their spinal columns, telling staff that there is now zero tolerance for its own journalists protesting the way the Times covers this issue in all its complexity.
Thank JK Rowling. She's not just encouraging others to summon their courage. She's forcing them to admit -- she has some valid points
In this podcast episode, Rowling addresses the costs not just to biological women but to young kids. Here she shares her own private torment as a confused young girl and adolescent:
'I grew up in what I would say was quite a misogynistic household,' Rowling says. 'Like all young girls, I grew up with certain standards of beauty and ideas of femininity, and I felt I didn't fit into either of those groups. I didn't feel particularly feminine . . . I looked very androgynous at 11 and 12. I had short hair.'
She says she felt the very common anxiety young girls do as their bodies change, as they develop and get their periods, as their bodies become something boys and men observe in new ways — ways that can carry shame or ambivalence, a wish to stop what's happening.
'It's very difficult to cope with that,' Rowling says. 'I questioned my sexuality. I'm thinking, 'Well, I can tell my friends are pretty — does that mean I'm gay?' Which I think is very common. I grew up to be a straight woman, but I've never forgotten that feeling of anxiety around my body . . . Having felt like an outsider in several different ways in my life, I have a real feeling for the underdog. And I have a real feeling for people who feel that they don't fit. And I see that, hugely, particularly, among younger trans people. I can understand that feeling only too well.'
JK Rowling is speaking. The tide is turning. Will her most vehement critics begin to admit fault?
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"Our Father"
The Church of England is considering scrapping centuries of Christian teaching to give God gender-neutral pronouns. The church has confirmed that its Liturgical Commission has launched a special project to examine updating future teachings. Some priests have already made such changes, rewriting the ‘Our Father’ that starts the Lord’s Prayer to ‘Our Father and Mother’.
The problem here is whether they wish to remain Christian or not – whether they wish remain followers of Jesus Christ, or whether they have decided they are smarter than Jesus. In Matthew 6:9 Jesus says ‘pray like this – Our Father…’ And in Luke 11:2 when Jesus is asked by his followers to ‘teach us to pray’ he says the same thing: ‘Father…’
The words of Jesus were recorded in Koine Greek (the global language of the first century) so the New Testament uses pater the Greek word for ‘father’ at this point. On other occasions Jesus told his followers to address God as abba – a word of family intimacy for a father. It sounds disrespectful, but the nearest English equivalent might be ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy’. This concept of fatherhood is fundamental to humanity. Essentially it is a relational word. It is a parental word.
If Jesus wants us to address God as ‘Our Father’ then no Church of England liturgical commission has a licence to change it in the interest of being more woke. The Rev. Ian Paul, a member of the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, is among those decrying it as a step too far. He stressed that ‘male and female imagery is not interchangeable’ adding, ‘the fact that God is called “Father” can’t be substituted by “Mother” without changing meaning, nor can it be gender-neutralised to “Parent” without loss of meaning.’
Fathers and mothers (he stressed) are not interchangeable but they relate to their offspring in different ways. For some people this is a problem because they didn’t know their father, or had a difficult relationship with their father. There are others who have (or had) a really good Dad. But in both cases we need to get over the hurdle of human, fallible fathers – and see a bigger picture of God’s Cosmic Fatherhood beyond that.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/language-51/
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Terrorism everywhere (except among Muslims)
UK government has named an inquiry into the causes of terrorism ‘Prevent’ when, as has now been revealed, only 20 per cent of the inquiry’s budget was spent on the surveillance of Muslims, known to be responsible for 90 per cent of UK terrorist attacks (including the Manchester Arena bombing which triggered the inquiry), and 80 per cent of it on the surveillance of non-Muslims known to hold the odd conservative opinion.
Prevent’s credibility has been further undermined by its assertion that the books people read and the films and TV they watch can identify them as potentially dangerous extremists. This would be understandable if the inquiry had revealed that a disproportionate number of British cleaners have reported seeing copies of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on their employers’ coffee tables and swastika or Isis flag screensavers on their laptops.
But according to William Shawcross, the journalist brought out of retirement to head up Prevent, it is books like Lord of the Rings, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Complete Works of Shakespeare we should be concerned about, as well as films like Bridge On the River Kwai, The Dam Busters and The Great Escape, not to mention TV shows like Yes Minister, The Thick of it and – perhaps most worryingly – Great British Railway Journeys, presented as it is by that most sinister and subversive influencer Michael Portillo.
If such tomes and titles really are, as Prevent asserts, ‘key texts for white supremacists’ and ‘likely to encourage far-right sympathies’, the next generation of British suicide bombers and shopping mall stabbers will come not from the madrassas of Peshawar but the aged care facilities of Tunbridge Wells.
But compared with the people who actually make books and films, British politicians have rather dragged their heels in their attempts to impose a prophylactic snowflake agenda. The decision by Puffin, Penguin’s children’s imprint, to substantially rewrite Roald Dahl’s oeuvre to make it more inclusive is just an unusually conspicuous example of the woke paternalism which has gained controlling traction in most Western publishing houses and production companies. Penguin is by no means the only publisher which submits all its manuscripts to a ‘sensitivity reader’, and for years now, film and TV casting directors have had to observe increasingly stringent ethnic diversity quotas whether the job is a washing powder commercial or a Regency drama, the often Pythonesque results of which can be seen in Netflix’s otherwise quite watchable Bridgerton and the BBC’s utterly unwatchable Sanditon.
Meanwhile the presence on sex-scene sets of an ‘intimacy coordinator’ has become such a Hollywood commonplace that Steve Coogan made it a plotline of Chivalry, his latest post-modern vanity project.
The corporate world, never slow to tick ideological boxes, has formalised at boardroom level its commitment to creating and maintaining ‘safe spaces’. Not long ago, only the largest companies who could afford to employ HR managers, most of them sociology graduates whose job was restricted to mediating sexual harassment claims. Today, HR is the front line in the war against every kind of ethnic and gender discrimination in the workplace, and the role of HR managers has evolved from corporate introspection to PR.
And just as publishing companies now employ sensitivity readers to make sure authors who express views which do not chime with the prevailing orthodoxy don’t get read, it cannot be long before the purview of HR Managers will extend to recruitment, where they will be responsible for ensuring that people with political, social or cultural views which are inconsistent with the twitter-proof banality of the company’s home page don’t get hired.
The only large institutions which don’t need to invest heavily in HR are, of course, our universities. This is because their bosses know they can rely on even the lowest paid faculty member to police the opinions of their co-workers as efficiently as any HR manager, and that anyone who is already on the payroll, but who strays from the official narrative on anything from climate change to personal pronouns, can be fired with impunity.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/aussie-life-108/
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Musk Says FTC Probe of Twitter Is ‘Weaponization’ of Government and ‘Serious Attack’ on Constitution
Elon Musk is calling efforts by the Federal Trade Commission to force his company Twitter to release details about the journalists with whom it collaborated on the “Twitter files” exposés an effort in truth suppression by the Biden administration and a violation of the First Amendment.
Following reports that the FTC has sent more than a dozen demand letters to Twitter since he took over the company in October 2022 asking it for internal communications about layoffs, the company’s new Twitter Blue service, and Mr. Musk himself, the tech entrepreneur called the letters a “shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and the suppression of truth.”
“This is a serious attack on the Constitution by a federal agency,” he added.
Portions of the letters were released by a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee that is investigating the so-called weaponization of the federal government. The committee said the FTC’s more than 350 demands are an attempt to harass the company and pry into deliberations that are outside the FTC’s mandate.
“The timing, scope, and frequency of the FTC’s demands to Twitter suggest a partisan motivation to its action,” a report by the Republican-controlled committee stated.
“There is no logical reason, for example, why the FTC needs to know the identities of journalists engaging with Twitter,” it added. “There is no logical reason why the FTC, on the basis of user privacy, needs to analyze all of Twitter’s personnel decisions. And there is no logical reason why the FTC needs every single internal Twitter communication about Elon Musk.”
Among the information demanded by the FTC was details about the journalists’ work on the Twitter files that focused on government collusion with tech companies to suppress content about the Covid pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. The agency also demanded “every single” internal communication relating to Mr. Musk, details about whether the company is selling office equipment, why it terminated a former FBI official who had been working at the company, and when it first conceived of the new Twitter Blue subscription plan. The agency also said it wants to depose Mr. Musk on the matters.
Twitter has been in the FTC’s crosshairs since 2010 over complaints about users’ privacy and who has access to their content and private messages. The company settled its dispute with the agency in 2022 by agreeing to pay a $150 million civil fine and to take a number of steps to protect users’ phone numbers and email addresses. The FTC maintains that the terms of that agreement allow them to intervene in the company’s internal affairs.
“Protecting consumers’ privacy is exactly what the FTC is supposed to do,” an FTC spokesman, Douglas Farrar, told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the existence of the letters. The agency is “conducting a rigorous investigation into Twitter’s compliance with a consent order that came into effect long before Mr. Musk purchased the company,” he added.
After being criticized for years by conservatives who believe the company, under its previous leadership, routinely censored right-leaning users and viewpoints, Mr. Musk’s takeover of the company was heralded as a chance to return it to its free speech roots. Since he took it over, Mr. Musk has reinstated accounts — including that of President Trump — that previously had been banned and dialed back its efforts to suppress certain viewpoints.
Mr. Musk also allowed a number of independent journalists access to the internal communications of its previous owners documenting widespread collusion between politicians, public health authorities, the intelligence community, and others with Twitter’s content moderators. The subsequent articles came to be known as the “Twitter files.”
The loosening of Twitter’s censorship regime and disclosures about collusion have rankled many Democrats and liberals in the Biden administration who are avid users of the platform. In November, within weeks of Mr. Musk’s purchase of the company, seven Democratic senators sent a letter to the chairwoman of the FTC, Democrat Lina Khan, urging her to crack down on the company.
“In recent weeks, Twitter’s new Chief Executive Officer, Elon Musk, has taken alarming steps that have undermined the integrity and safety of the platform, and announced new features despite clear warnings those changes would be abused for fraud, scams, and dangerous impersonation,” the lawmakers said.
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9 March, 2023
Musk Has the Best Response to McConnell's Criticism of J6 Footage
Twitter chief Elon Musk, a champion of free speech and transparency, had the perfect response to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s criticism of the previously unseen Jan. 6 footage Fox News’s Tucker Carlson aired this week.
“With regard to the presentation on Fox News last night, I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6th,” McConnell said, referencing Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger’s memo earlier in the day, which said the coverage was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions.”
Commenting on a clip of McConnell’s remarks, Musk said he keeps “forgetting which party he belongs to.”
Carlson addressed the “hysteria” from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, McConnell, and other Republicans about the footage on Tuesday, pointing out "they're on the same side."
"The Senate majority leader joins the Senate minority leader. [Sens.] Thom Tillis, Mitt Romney, they're all on the same side, so it's actually not about left and right, it’s not about Republican and Democrat," Carlson argued. "Here you have people with shared interests, the open borders people, the people like Mitch McConnell who are living in splendor on Chinese money, the people who underneath it all have everything in common are all aligned against everyone else…"
Conservatives were quick to inform musk the real party they believe McConnell belongs to.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/03/08/elon-musk-on-mcconnell-n2620362 ?
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Leftists Don’t Get to Control What We Say
The ruling caste is soft and weak, yet it still holds tremendous power solely because we let it do so. Somewhere along the way brute force got replaced by sissy shaming as the main mode of oppression. We need to stop allowing this – we need to give these nerds a figurative wedgie. Also, academia has fully outed itself as less concerned with education than with gatekeeping for the elite.
The Ruling Caste Seeks to Shame You Into Silence
There was a great example at CPAC during the media bashing panel. The regime media is just too juicy a target not to kick now that it is on its back spazzing out like a dying roach, so we went after it. During the panel, I told the (true) story of how a sergeant in my Gulf War platoon asked if he could shoot reporters. I told the audience that a good officer always listens to his NCOs. Lots of laughs. Then the panel, including our own Larry O’Connor, totally called it and said that I was going to get trashed by the media for wanting to kill journalists. I then laughed and denied that I was advocating hunting them for ‘sport. More laughs. You can watch it here on this commie lie site.
Well, we called it perfectly, though it was hardly a hard call. After lol, the regime media lies all the time. It’s just hilarious that this time they literally did it exactly as we predicted. I mean exactly.
Their mediocre mendacity aside, let’s assume I was joking about shooting journalists. Why can’t one joke about shooting journalists? What’s the rule on joking about harm to people you dislike? Because I am not sure there is a rule. A caveat: There can only be one rule. Now, I’ve heard some Ashli Babbitt jokes from the scumbag communists, and I’m wondering why if that is not against the rules. Or are there special rules that apply to the privileged caste that is journalists but not to, well, the rest of us? I think that’s it. I think they think they’re special, and they think that I should have recognized that my joke was not allowed. Their jokes are fine. In fact, their cheerleading to the death and/or disenfranchisement of people like us is cool. That’s the rule, apparently.
I’m not interested in their rules or their fussy outrage except to the extent that I can mock them about it. Don’t like what I have to say? Too bad. Lump it, toadboy Aaron Rupar and the rest of you dorks.
Uh oh, now they are going to think I am a bad person.
See, this is one of their most potent weapons, and at the same time one of the easiest to defeat. Their dumb spasm was designed to toss me outside of the range of accepted blue opinion and cause me to govern my speech accordingly in the future. But I am not going to do that. If you comply with their puny shaming play, it works great because you will then police your own expression. But it only works if you choose not to tell them to pound sand. And pound sand they must.
You get this all the time. One of the classics is “You’re racist!” How many Republicans have backed down in the face of that classic losers’ battle cry knowing it’s a lie but trying to prove themselves innocent? Here’s the thing. You can’t, not ever. First, it’s not even a real claim - they know it’s meaningless slander. And regardless, remember the systemic racism nonsense? That applies, so even if you eschew pointing out some objective fact that hurts leftists, you are still racist under their dopey definition. You can’t win, but then again it is not something you could even escape through your naive use of objective facts and evidence. Neither facts nor evidence matter to them. It’s all about shutting you up. And when you care what they say, they win.
So stop caring.
Academia Is a Scam
So, Columbia University – which people associated with Columbia University will tell you is a very, very impressive place – has decided to stop pretending it is in the education business. Columbia is in the ruling class hiring business. You know because it just got totally rid of standardized tests for admission. Without the burden of objective proof of merit, their admissions flunkies will be free to employ a “holistic” and “nuanced” approach to admitting students. That means they will choose people they consider worthy of entering our ruling elite, and those are not your kids. And the rest of the allegedly prestigious colleges are going to do this too.
The purpose of merit, and therefore standardized tests, was to allow that smart, hardworking kid with no connection and who checks no particular box to get access to the conveyor belt into the ruling caste. And it worked, which is why standardized tests must be abandoned. Too many uppity outsiders were getting in, and this meant too many unwanted types were being allowed to rise. This move is all about curating the ruling class.
Legacies? Oh, they will get it, and so will the odd athlete. So will the donors’ brats and the celebrity nepotism babies. But if you look for some smart middle-class kids on one of these Ivy campuses, good luck. Not happening. You have the rich and connected scions, and the diversity gang. Why do you think the LGBTQ#%X*() contingent makes up a double-digit portion of the student bodies? Because an essay with “I was a straight-A Eagle Scout active in my church” gets trumped by “As a trans non-binary neuro-atypical furry of color, I got straight-Cs because of patriarchy.”
And we suckers pay to support this. We hand these places tons of money, we fail to tax their endowments, and we treat them as if they were turning out geniuses instead of barely literate weirdos, losers, and mutations. This must stop. But there remain far too many unbased Republicans who are afraid to slap the schools around. But the Ivies have a glass jaw. They folded to a bunch of freaks who shouted at them, so think how fast they will come around to our way of thinking if we pass laws requiring blind merit admissions if a school takes a cent of federal dough.
Time to break them before they break our society.
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Major Defeat for Women Powerlifters as Court Rules It Is 'Discriminatory' to Bar Men from Females' Competition
An activist judge in Minnesota has ruled that men who declare themselves to be female must be allowed to compete in women’s powerlifting.
USA Powerlifting was sued by transgender activist JayCee Cooper in 2021 over a policy that prevented people such as him from competing against women.
Cooper alleged his ban from competing with women violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act — and Ramsey County District Court Judge Patrick Diamond agreed with him.
According to a Feb. 27 ruling by Diamond, men who claim to be transgender have the same right to compete in women’s powerlifting as women. That is in spite of the fact they are naturally more physically imposing and have bodies that were designed to be stronger.
The judge ruled that someone’s feelings are likely to be hurt if men who claim to be women are told the truth — which is that they are different.
“The harm is in making a person pretend to be something different, the implicit message being that who they are is less than,” Diamond said in a ruling obtained by Fox News. “That is the very essence of separation and segregation, and it is what the [Minnesota Human Rights Act] prohibits.”
He further ruled USAPL must “cease and desist from all unfair discriminatory practices.”
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The feminists have won
International Women’s Day is a day when women of the chattering classes parade their virtue and moral superiority to the rest of us. If you were listening to the ABC last Thursday and expected your favourite male presenter, tough. And if you wanted a provocative, balanced read from the Age’s opinion pages, you were greeted instead by woman polemicists including ex-ABC broadcaster Virginia Hausegger and Fairfax’s resident feminist, Clementine ‘Fight Like a Girl’ Ford.
‘Are you done with women yet? Sick of hearing about them?’ were the first words of Hausegger’s Age piece. Her argument, however, boiled down to warning like-minded readers to beware ‘the brewing whiff of backlash’. ‘As women continue to push for progress’, she wrote, ‘men are clearly disoriented by the demands for change’.
The premise of International Women’s Day is that women need to be empowered, to lead, to shatter the glass ceiling. So Peta Credlin, herself a very powerful woman before she found her voice at Sky News, writes in the Australian decrying the Liberal party for not changing as fast as she wants. Tanya Plibersek and other grandstanding progressive politicians, male and female, brand feminism as a progressive Left triumph. Labor talks 50:50 gender quotas for its MPs; Credlin and other Liberals talk affirmative action and mentoring within the party’s preselection processes.
Credlin and Plibersek make a surreal unity ticket, but on one thing they’re indeed very much united: the final triumph of the feminist revolution in politics isn’t coming quickly enough for their liking. Yet they overlook the fear of a feminist backlash helps keep poor political performers who happen to be women, like Michaelia Cash, in post where men who blunder as royally would be sent packing. It means the sisterhood not condemning the bad examples of female politicians already in leadership, like Tasmanian Labor leader Rebecca White, whose petulant and deluded concession speech on election night made Turnbull’s ugly and spiteful 2016 effort look tame.
Labor’s much-touted seat quotas are tokenistic. That they simply guarantee more mediocrities enter parliamentary ranks under the guise of gender equality doesn’t matter to Emily’s Listers. And the Liberals mentoring women candidates is pointless when factional and personal loyalties now count more than ability in picking MPs of either gender.
But feminist polemicists and Q&A panellists should be honest about just who’s on top. Every day is now International Women’s Day. Feminist issues, feminist values now shape and frame what’s appropriate and what’s not in public discourse, especially in politics and the media. Public and business figures who once would have got away with louche personal behaviour towards women are now called out and broken. Not that some men in power don’t deserve what comes: Barnaby Joyce’s selfish disregard for his wife, daughters, mistress and even unborn child makes middle-aged white blokes look more pathetic and ludicrous than even Clementine Ford could assert in a fire-snorting Fairfax column.
Thus the #timesup and #metoo movements enthusiastically call out male sexual harassers and predators, their starting premise that every man is by nature a predator on women, and preternaturally disposed to aggression and violence. Thomas Hobbes’s dark vision of men’s natures is as nothing to that of Hollywood virtue-signallers and their political allies.
Consequently in politics, business and the media, men are being denounced and rooted out, and the ideology of the gender revolution benchmarks public life. Middle-aged white men in authority positions and ‘traditional’ male occupations particularly are fair game: we are a generation of Calibans to be tossed aside for fair, enlightened Mirandas. The progressive media, not just the ABC and Fairfax, are willing arbiters of what’s acceptable in this brave, new world. Ever-angry feminist pundits like Ford and Hausegger rage as if the struggle’s all before them, when it absolutely is not. They deny what straight middle-aged white bloke dinosaurs like me already know: the gender revolution is not a work in progress, but already won.
The social and cultural norms of 10,000 years of Western civilisation, that always have presumed men, with our physical strength, are the hunter-gatherers, warriors and natural leaders and protectors of families and communities, have been overturned in not quite two generations. That’s astonishing, but in this age of technology manpower counts for little. Brain is the new brawn and it’s not gender-specific: men’s natural advantage over women is obsolete. Women now have the upper hand and set the gender agenda. What is happening now is not, therefore, the feminist revolution, but its mopping-up operation. High-profile naming and shaming like #metoo is the revolutionaries consolidating victory, the new regime denouncing and purging pre-revolutionary leaders and hate figures, and all they represent. The vile behaviour of ogres like Harvey Weinstein simply makes their task easier.
Revolutions happen because the evils of what they replace can no longer be ignored or tolerated. Endemic sexual harassment and one person’s abusing personal power over another rightly deserve calling out. But in correcting the perceived excesses of millennia, and in the heady thrill of toppling the likes of Weinstein, Don Burke and now Robert Doyle, revolutionary zeal and a desire for vengeance can create dictatorships potentially as bad, even worse, than the regimes they topple. Think Jacobin France, Soviet Russia and post-Shah Iran.
For feminist elites, International Women’s Day is their May Day in Moscow, showcasing themselves and consolidating their revolution. Establishment acts of solidarity like the ABC’s unnecessarily ostentatious, all-female International Women’s Day ensured the rest of us got the message.
Instead of securing their equality goal, the media and political Revolutionary Guards of Australian feminism are creating a new, permanent gender imbalance. The new matriarchy is here. We men have lost.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/03/australian-notes-160
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8 March, 2023
Baby boomers warm to casual sex after ‘following the social norm’
Interesting that Australia is by far the most accepting country when it comes to casual sex. I am actually (just) a PRE-baby boomer but I have had sex with many women over the years. I stopped counting when I got to 50. So I guess I am simply a good Australian. But I DID come of age in the free-wheeling '60s
A one-night stand, fling, tryst or even a dalliance – whatever the name – casual sex is often seen as the preserve of the young.
Yet nearly a third of baby boomers now approve of no-strings-attached sex, according to a new academic study.
Data from The Policy Institute at King’s College London show that UK attitudes on casual sex has changed not just over time but also between the generations, with researchers concluding that, when it comes to casual intimacy, “the social norm has changed and the boomers have just followed that.”
The researchers collated data from an international survey conducted across the past four decades and found that in 2009, just eight per cent of baby boomers (who are born between 1946 and 1964) found casual sex was “justifiable”. But by 2022, this had jumped to 30 per cent.
However, younger cohorts such as Gen Z, which captures anyone born between 1997 and 2012, and millennials, who are born between 1981 and 1996, are still far more likely to hold this view at 67 per cent and 55 per cent respectively.
The researchers also found that in 1999, overall, one in 10 Britons thought having casual sex was justifiable.
However, more than four times as many (42 per cent) held this view in 2022, with a considerable rise from as recently as 2018 (27 per cent).
This shift means the UK is now the fourth most accepting country when it comes to casual sex, ahead of France (26 per cent) and Norway (33 per cent) – and not far off Australia (48 per cent), which tops the list.
‘Moral concerns’ now ‘simple facts’
Professor Bobby Duffy, director of The Policy Institute, said: “It’s easy to lose sight of just how much more liberal the UK has become over a relatively short period of time, and how liberal we are relative to many other nations.
“What were once pressing moral concerns – things like homosexuality, divorce and casual sex – have become simple facts of life for much of the public, and we now rank as one of the most accepting countries internationally.
“This mostly isn’t just driven by younger generations replacing older generations. All generations have changed their views significantly, although the oldest pre-war cohort now often stand out as quite different, and on some issues, like casual sex, there is a clear generational hierarchy, with the youngest much more accepting.”
The researchers also surveyed attitudes around other subjects and found that increased support for euthanasia and divorce marks the UK as one of the most socially liberal countries overall.
Attitudes towards assisted dying in Britain have changed gradually since data was first collected in 1981, but there was a clear acceleration in acceptance between 2009 and 2022, when the proportion of the British public who found it justifiable rose by around 20 per cent.
This attitude shift comes alongside a rise in the number of British members of Dignitas. The assisted dying association reported that there had been an 80 per cent rise in British members in the past decade, from 821 in 2012, to 1,528 by the end of 2022.
The UK had the second highest proportion of people who believed euthanasia was justifiable, just below France, at 19 per cent. Other European countries ranked much lower on this issue, with Italy at nine per cent, and Greece at two per cent.
The UK also ranked highly for acceptance towards divorce, as 68 per cent of Britons said it is “justifiable”.
However, Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said while it is “encouraging to see the British public becoming more libertarian over time among all age groups … I suspect that if it was extended to ask about free speech and lifestyle issues such as smoking and obesity we would find that tolerance is on the wane.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/07/baby-boomers-warm-casual-sex-following-social-norm/
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Southern Poverty Law Center Complains About ‘Heavy-Handed’ Arrest of Its Lawyer for Domestic Terrorism in Molotov Cocktail Attack on Atlanta Police
The pretty boy himself
A prominent Alabama non-profit at the forefront of efforts to name-and-shame what it calls right-wing extremists in America, the Southern Poverty Law Center, finds itself under the microscope after one of its staff attorneys was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism during an Atlanta protest Sunday night.
Thomas Jurgens was among 34 people arrested — 23 of whom were subsequently charged — after black-clad protesters hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at police officers and equipment at a police training facility under construction outside Atlanta that protesters have come to call “Cop City.” Like Mr. Jurgens, most of those charged were from outside Georgia, including two foreign nationals from Canada and France.
Atlanta’s police chief, Darin Schierbaum, called the incident a coordinated attack. “This was a very violent attack, very violent attack,” he said. “This wasn’t about a public safety training center. This was about anarchy.” Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, said Monday that the people involved “chose destruction and vandalism over legitimate protest, yet again demonstrating the radical intent behind their actions.”
Police offered no further details on what exactly Mr. Jurgens is accused of doing during the protest, but his employer said he was at the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center as a legal observer under the auspices of the National Lawyers Guild. The non-profit called his arrest an example of “heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters.”
“This is part of a months-long escalation of policing tactics against protesters and observers who oppose the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest to build a police training facility,” the center said. “The SPLC has and will continue to urge de-escalation of violence and police use of force against Black, Brown and Indigenous communities — working in partnership with these communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance the human rights of all people.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971 and based at Montgomery, Alabama, began as a civil rights organization focused on mounting legal campaigns and compiling dossiers on the Ku Klux Klan across the United States. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the group expanded its tracking efforts beyond white supremacist groups to what it called “right-wing extremism” in the country.
In the years since that transition, the center has come under increasing criticism from conservatives in America who say it demonizes legitimate right-of-center political debate in the interest of furthering its liberal agenda and growing its donor base. It has labeled such groups as the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the American Family Association as “SPLC designated hate groups.”
Most recently, the center came under fire after an FBI field office report was leaked that warned of a growing domestic threat from “violent extremists in radical traditionalist Catholic ideology.” These radical Catholics, the FBI report stated, frequently embrace “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.” The FBI, which later recanted the report, cited publications from the Southern Poverty Law Center as evidence of the threat.
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Business Tycoon Criticizes Democrat-Run States: 'They Are Punishing People Who Are Successful'
Investor and Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary is ready to take on any Democrat in a debate claiming that the party is ruining the country: "sorry, don't shoot the messenger. Just telling you the way it is."
During an interview with CNN, O'Leary said he no longer puts his money into Democrat-led states because they are "uninvestable" and "punishing people if they're successful."
"I don't put companies here in New York anymore, or in Massachusetts, or in New Jersey, or in California. Those states are uninvestable. The policy here is insane; the taxes are too high," O'Leary explained, adding, "the regulatory environment is punitive. I had a project in Upstate New York behind the grid in Niagara Falls for electricity — a global data center we were building. Eventually, it got so bad with the politicians in the local region and the state policy we moved it to Norway and all the jobs."
O'Leary recalled a recent debate with socialist-leaning Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), telling her that her state is handing out hefty consequences to successful people by overtaxing them.
"I say, 'look, senator, we've got to move the companies out of your state because you are not investable anymore. You are punishing people if they are successful, you overtax them, you hit them with a super tax. New Jersey, what a mess! New York, uninvestable," he told the Democratic Senator.
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Republicans eye ‘disinformation’ group that said NY Post too ‘risky’ for ads
Congressional Republicans are probing federal funding of a UK-based organization that falsely declared The Post and other major news outlets “risky” possible spreaders of false information.
House and Senate sources say that investigators are trying to get to the bottom of how the London-based Global Disinformation Index secured federal funds before creating a December blacklist of 10 outlets, including The Post, that boast conservative or libertarian-leaning opinion sections.
“Congress can bar the use of funds for efforts to combat disinformation through censorship or suspension of accounts. It can also bar the funding of groups that create these types of blacklists,” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.
Three sources told The Post that’s exactly what legislators are looking into. One congressional aide said, “that could be something that results from the investigation — [but we] need to get all the facts first.”
Two other sources said legislators are studying how to achieve that remedy — noting that the GDI reportedly secured $100,000 from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center and $545,000 from the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy.
Both entities have said they don’t plan to provide additional funding to the group, but the past spending has raised alarms on Capitol Hill.
The GDI calls itself “the world’s first rating of the media sites based on the risk of the outlet carrying disinformation” and issued its blacklist aimed at advertisers without providing any evidence that The Post actually spread disinformation.
“No program or office like this should be receiving any federal funding; I can tell you that much,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), who serves on the House Judiciary Committee’s select subcommittee on the “weaponization” of government.
“My office is currently looking at all possible avenues to defund these rogue agencies violating Americans’ rights and working to investigate them,” Bishop said.
“US taxpayer dollars should never be funneled to left-wing disinformation groups that are trying to blacklist American news outlets like The New York Post,” said House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.). “Freedom of speech and the press are core American values and must be protected against radical progressives seeking to censor opinions and facts that don’t fit their political narrative.”
Comer, who demanded more information on the funding from Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a Feb. 23 letter, added, “The House Oversight and Accountability Committee is pressing the Biden Administration for answers about this attack on the First Amendment.”
“It is extremely concerning that the US government is allegedly funding the Global Disinformation Index, which is being used to target conservative media outlets,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). “We’ve seen recently how the US government has tried to use the tech sector to control the narrative on many issues. Outlets such as the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed are among the biggest pushers of disinformation, yet are ranked as very trustworthy by the index.
“No taxpayer funds should ever be used to censor or suppress speech,” she added.
At least one prominent ad firm, Microsoft-owned Xandr, said it “stopped using GDI’s services” in response to an investigative reporting series by the Washington Examiner, but it remains unclear how widely the rubric has been adopted by either third parties that place ads or individual companies.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/07/gopers-eye-disinformation-group-that-said-post-too-risky-for-ads/
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7 March, 2023
Global GDP Could Jump by $7 Trillion by Closing Gender Gap
This is just a stupid numbers game with no awareness of what is behind the numbers. Yes: If women behaved like men, there would be bigger incomes for them. But they do NOT behave like men so the results are different
The global economy is losing out on at least $7 trillion of economic gains each year due to a failure to reach gender parity in the workforce, according to a new analysis that comes as progress on equal pay stalls.
That’s based on estimates by Moody’s Analytics, which assumes a scenario where there’s no gender gap in labor force participation, as well as management, in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development nations.
Yet these 38 nations, which include some of the largest developed economies in the world, such as the US, UK and Japan, have seen the development on equal pay for women fall behind.
A recent report by Pew Research Center found that pay parity has stagnated in the US for the last two decades, with women in 2022 earning an average of 82% of what men earn. The comparative pay was 80% in 2002. Meanwhile in the European Union, women may be waiting until 2086 for equal pay.
“There has been progress, but it’s not going nearly fast enough,” said Dawn Holland, director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics and co-author of the report. “There are a lot of complex sort of issues behind these gender gaps” such as social norms which take a long time to shift, she said.
The gap is particularly apparent among upper-management, with only 23% of executive roles globally held by women, according to Moody’s Analytics. While women are more likely to make further investments in education, they tend to land lower-level and lower-paid jobs, the report said.
While the authors caution that they are making “back-of-the-envelope” calculations with caveats, gender parity in the labor force for people aged 25-64 across OECD nations could raise global economic output by 6.2%, they said. That could rise a further 0.7% if the share of female managers and professionals increased to match men.
Holland said measures such as paid maternity and paternity leave, as well as more affordable childcare could help close the gender gap and suggested the world may be at a turning point. “Equality is sort of on the radar of all countries in a way that it hasn’t always been,” she said.
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‘They Think They’re God,’ Tulsi Gabbard Says of People ‘Trying to Erase Us as Women’
Former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard condemned certain powerful elements in the modern Democratic Party, telling The Daily Signal on Friday that some Democrats undermine Americans’ “God-given rights” and weaponize federal agencies against the “very people they’re supposed to be serving.”
Speaking of the Democrats and others pushing transgender ideology, Gabbard said, “they think they’re God,” able to define the very nature of truth itself.
The notion that biological males are truly women if they claim to identify that way is “insane on its face,” the former Democrat said in an interview with The Daily Signal at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, outside Washington, D.C.
“Anyone who has any common sense recognizes the insanity of what is happening before our very eyes,” she said. Yet the transgender movement also reveals “a deeper problem,” that “people in positions of power deny that there is such a thing as objective truth, such as the difference, the biological difference between a male and a female.”
Gabbard warned that some powerful people “deem themselves as the arbiter of what is true and what is not,” which leaves “no guardrails” in American society. “We have no floor and no ceiling if there is no such thing as truth, and if the only truth that exists is whatever the people in power say it is. This points to the dangerous path of where this ideology leads us, goes far beyond the trans ideology and the erasure of women that we’re seeing in our society right now, and it should be concerning to everyone.”
The Daily Signal asked why some people have adopted an ideology at odds with truth and biology.
“Well, because they think they’re God and they think that they are the ones who get to determine what is true and what is not,” she said.
Gabbard rejected the Democratic Party due to this ideology and this abuse of power, she said.
The party of President Joe Biden is “wildly out of touch with the people of this country, with the Democratic Party that I joined 20 years ago,” she explained. An “elite cabal of warmongers” controls the party, and “they are intent on undermining our God-given rights and freedoms that are enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They are rejecting the reality of objective truth and biology and trying to erase us as women, as an entire category of people, undermining the rule of law.”
She further warned that the party “has led us to the brink of nuclear war.”
Gabbard also addressed the FBI’s recent memo urging agents to develop “sources with access,” including in “places of worship,” to probe an alleged relationship between “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and “radical-traditional Catholic ideology.” The memo cited the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing group notorious for branding mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits “hate groups.” The FBI retracted the memo after a whistleblower published it, but questions remain about why the bureau published the memo in the first place.
The episode episode reveals how “agencies within our federal government” are “being weaponized against the very people they’re supposed to be serving, all to advance political ambitions and goals,” the former Democrat said. She recently testified before a U.S. House committee on this topic, warning that the weaponization of federal agencies “directly undermines the people’s faith and trust in the rule of law.”
“Once we lose that, then we start looking a hell of a lot more like a banana republic than a democratic republic,” she warned.
The problem extends far beyond the FBI, Gabbard argued. Citing the government-Big Tech collusion revealed in the “Twitter Files,” she said “just about every federal agency” has been “used for political purposes rather than the purpose that they exist, which is to serve all Americans.”
She urged the American people to “do something about it,” to exercise their free speech rights and vote against the status quo. “Fire the people who are abusing their power, who are serving only themselves and elect people who are truly committed to the Constitution,” who will put “the people’s interests above their own.”
Gabbard recently traveled to East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a train derailment and a toxic chemical spill. She recalled the “incredible pride” that the residents had for their “little village,” and their sense that the Biden administration had abandoned them.
“It’s important for us to stand up for our fellow Americans, whether they come from big cities or small towns, from blue states or red states,” she said. Gabbard lamented that residents of East Palestine are questioning whether there are “political motives for why they’ve been left behind.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/03/05/think-god-tulsi-gabbard-says-people-trying-erase-women
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Swimmer Riley Gaines Tied With Lia Thomas, but Only 1 Person Received a Trophy
Swimmer Riley Gaines wants to know, “Where are the feminists” in the fight to protect women’s sports?
“I think it’s extremely ironic that the people advocating for this are the same party, the same people who were once advocating for the empowerment of women,” Gaines said.
Gaines, a 12-time All-American and three-time Southeastern Conference champion, gained national attention last year after she tied with male swimmer Lia Thomas in the 200 freestyle at the NCAA Division I Women’s Championships.
Since having to swim against Thomas, Gaines has continued to share her story and advocate for the protection of women’s sports as a spokeswoman for Independent Women’s Forum. But Gaines says she is weary of being one of the few collegiate and professional female athletes proclaiming that men should not be allowed to compete with women and girls.
“Where are the people who once believed that women, real women in all of their uniqueness, could conquer the world and deserved respect and deserved equal opportunities?,” Gaines asked during an interview with The Daily Signal at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington, D.C., Saturday.
When it comes to sports, Gaines says she knows where some of the “feminists” are.
“Where’s Billie Jean King, who’s a trailblazer? She’s fighting for trans inclusion. Where’s Megan Rapinoe, who fought relentlessly for equal pay and equal resources and equal access for women’s sports? Oh, she’s fighting for trans inclusion,” Gaines said, adding that it is “worth mentioning that neither one of these women have daughters, and both of these women are done with their careers, so they have nothing to lose. They would rather virtue-signal than do what’s right and what’s moral and what’s fair.”
King, now 79, was a prominent female tennis player, winning 39 major titles during her career. In the 1960s and early 1970s, King advocated for the passage of Title IX, a portion of the Education Amendments of 1972 that prevents discrimination on the basis of sex within public education. King even “took to Capitol Hill to testify on behalf of Title IX and to speak to its need in order for girls and women to advance in their sport,” according to King’s website.
In 2021, King spoke out in support of a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference rule that allows men who identify as women to compete on women’s sports teams.
“I’m proud to support all transgender athletes who simply want the access and opportunity to compete in the sport they love,” King said in a statement. “The global athletic community grows stronger when we welcome and champion all athletes – including LGBTQI+ athletes.”
Female soccer player Rapinoe, 37, plays on the United States women’s national soccer team and the OL Reign, a professional women’s soccer team based in Seattle.
Rapinoe, a two-time Women’s Wold Cup winner, has long been a vocal advocate for equal pay, arguing that professional female soccer players should be paid the same as men. Rapino’s advocacy paid off last year when U.S. soccer agreed in a settlement after a legal battle to pay female players at an equal rate to the men.
While Rapinoe was a leading voice for equal pay in women’s soccer, she is also a vocal supporter of allowing males who identify as female to compete in women’s sports.
“Show me the evidence that trans women are taking everyone’s scholarships, are dominating in every sport, are winning every title. I’m sorry, it’s just not happening,” Rapinoe told Time when asked about her view on “transgender inclusion in sports” during an interview last year. “So we need to start from inclusion, period,” the soccer player added.
When Gaines tied with Thomas at the NCAA Division I Women’s Championships, she says she was told the trophy would be given to Thomas. When Gaines questioned the decision, she remembers the NCAA official telling her, “Well, for photo purposes, Lia has to have it. You can pose with this one, but you go home empty-handed. Thomas takes the trophy.”
In that moment, “it hit me across the head… this is not progress, this is not progressive,” Gaines said. “We are not moving forward. We are moving 50 years back in time to before Title IX, when women didn’t have equal opportunities in sports, by allowing men to infiltrate into our sports, into our locker rooms.”
The Biden administration has proposed changing the definition of the word “sex” in Title IX to include gender identity and sexual orientation.
Under that proposed change, men who identify as women would be permitted to use women’s restrooms, locker rooms, and participate on women’s sports teams. The proposed rule change remains under review.
“We [are] taking those opportunities away from women in the same lifetime as some of these trailblazers for women’s sports,” Gaines said. “In their same lifetime, they saw the benefits of Title IX and now they’re seeing that being taken away.”
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The Long March Through the Museums
Americans trust museums even more than history books and history professors as reliable sources of information. But is that trust warranted? Some museums are now telling a grossly distorted version of American history.
This is a deliberate extension of the long march through America’s institutions. The capture of our historic sites has been the concerted effort of interconnected organizations with considerable resources and part of the downstream impact of our biased higher education system.
As I have documented previously, James Madison’s home of Montpelier is one example of how historic sites have become ideological battlegrounds. Madison himself is now missing at Montpelier, as there are no exhibits dedicated to his significant accomplishments. The sole exhibit for children aims to teach them about race and slavery. This is done through books featuring “imagination exercises” for blacks and whites; one such exercise encourages children to imagine themselves not as the victim, but as the aggressor, whipping a fellow human being. Using state funds, Montpelier is also developing anti-racist curriculum for Virginia public schools. They are making a concerted effort to teach America’s children radical ideas.
And they are not alone. The Lincoln Cottage has developed social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum and programming. According to Max Eden, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, the SEL curricular approach is infused with critical race theory (CRT). As Eden explains:
In “Transformative SEL,” “self-awareness” encompasses “identity,” with “identity” defined now through the lens of “intersectionality.” “Self-management” encompasses “agency,” with “agency” defined through “resistance” and “transformative/justice-oriented” citizenship. “Transformative SEL” also embraces “culturally relevant/responsive” pedagogy.
This approach was pioneered by Gloria Ladson-Billings, the professor who brought Critical Race Theory to K-12 education.
Both Montpelier and the Lincoln Cottage are owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns 27 historic sites around the country. Diversity and inclusion are two of their core values, and their Black Lives Matter statement asserts that historic preservation must “actively advance justice and equity” and “confront and address structural racism within our own institutions.” The Trust has $412 million in assets. The U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Secretary of the Interior serve on their board, and they lobby to influence how taxpayer preservation funds are spent.
Another notable organization within the space is the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), an alliance of 35,000 museums and museum professionals. The AAM also engages in advocacy efforts with policymakers, the press, and the public. They believe that museums should not just depict and preserve history, but also “champion an anti-racist movement” to create a “more just and equitable world.” Promoting diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) and anti-racism is one of their four strategic priorities. The alliance recently assembled a task force of museum leaders, co-chaired by Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch, to embed DEAI practices across the industry. The resulting report begins: “DEAI is integral to excellence in museum practice. FULL STOP.” The report further recommends that leaders and museum experts shift away from “white-dominant characteristics of perfection, risk aversion, and conflict avoidance.”
At the end of the report, the task force endorses additional resources, including Montpelier’s and the National Trust’s guidelines for teaching slavery and engaging descendants (which encompasses anyone who feels “connected to the work the institution is doing, whether or not they know of a genealogical connection”). In those guidelines, Montpelier and the National Trust contend,
Influential individuals and corporations are supporting these groups with considerable resources. The AAM’s DEAI working group was co-chaired by a representative of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which in 2020 launched a $250 million Monuments Project “to reimagine and rebuild commemorative spaces and transform the way history is told in the United States.” The Excellence in DEAI report by the task force was made possible by Mellon, Alice C. Walton, and the Ford Foundation. McKinsey & Company acted as a pro-bono partner to produce the AAM’s Strategic Framework that prioritizes DEAI and anti-racism. The National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund also received funding from Ford, Mellon, and others, including George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
Museum leaders and employees are exploiting the symbolic value of the sites under their stewardship. The chairman of the board at Montpelier has remarked that people go there to “worship” a president and a document, and that Montpelier should “leverage the meaning that [Montpelier] holds for the nation and for the world,” “reinterpret an iconic institution,” and “challenge its history.” Montpelier’s longstanding director of archaeology reportedly said that he “had no interest in honoring a ‘dead white president and a dead white president’s Constitution,’” and “that he needed to act ‘less like a bulldozer and more like a termite that undermined a building’s foundation, destroying it from within before tearing it down.’”
At an annual conference hosted by the American Association for State and Local History, participants were brainstorming about how to protect Critical Race Theory in classrooms. Noelle Trent from the National Civil Rights Museum encouraged her peers to subvert parents and legislatures by establishing partnerships with educators to teach CRT at museums through field trips and guest speakers.
These comments are revealing of the ideological capture of America’s museums and historic sites. Museum leaders are comfortable having such relatively public conversations because they are confident the vast majority of people in the room share their political views. Biased colleges and universities have been churning out graduates with museum studies and archaeology degrees for some time, and we are now experiencing the impact of those efforts.
Museums and historic sites are taking advantage of America’s trust to teach our children radical ideologies. Telling the complete story of America doesn’t mean we ignore our shortcomings, but it also doesn’t mean we gloss over our triumphs. Those triumphs include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the ensuing “government for which philosophy has been searching, and humanity been sighing, from the most remote ages.” Demoralizing our children will at best make them indifferent to our country’s demise, and at worst ready revolutionaries in the project of tearing it down. That is what is at stake here.
https://www.heritage.org/american-founders/commentary/the-long-march-through-the-museums ?
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6 March, 2023
Nazism is alive and well in the Democratic party
My ears always perk up when I hear an ex-Democrat talk about why they left the party. Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who did just that, joined Fox News’ Jesse Watters last week to weigh in.
She told Watters that Democrats’ “philosophy of identity politics” is one of the main reasons she left the party.
“You’re seeing how their agenda of identity politics is directly undermining the traditional Democratic values that were expressed so beautifully and clearly by Dr. Martin Luther King. That we should judge each other not based on the color of our skin, but based on our character. “
Gabbard emphasized the point that they are proud of it, which she finds alarming. She’s not wrong.
She said, “They’re proud to be judging people, hiring people, selecting people based on race, which is really, let’s be clear how serious of a problem this is. It’s based on genetics, race, based on your blood, your genes, and where do we see that connection? Well, these are the very same geneticist core principles embodied by Nazism and Adolf Hitler. This should be something that is sickening and alarming to every single Democrat and every single American. We have seen where this philosophy can lead. … We need leaders who will select people based on their character.
“You look at the core values and core principles of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. What is it based on? It’s based on genetics. This is that philosophy of geneticism and discriminating against people based on their genes. And that’s the issue here, really, when you cut to the core of it.”
According to Gabbard, they select candidates based on “these immutable characteristics that we’re born with. This goes against, again, the very vision our founders had for us. It goes against traditional Democratic values and, most of all, the American people deserve to know that those in positions of power and leadership are putting their interest first regardless of race or gender or religion or politics or anything else. That’s the responsibility of our leaders and that’s what we, the American people, deserve.”
Identity politics was always part of the Democratic playbook. Affirmative action has been around for a long time. But it didn’t become an obsession until August 2019, when The New York Times unveiled its “1619 Project.” This was a deliberate rewrite of U.S. history which put slavery at the center of the American story.
The 1619 Project helped set the stage for the cultural upheaval that took place after the death of George Floyd in May 2020, during which terms such as “systemic racism,” “white supremacy” and “equity” became commonplace. Suddenly, wokeism, which has been bubbling beneath the surface for years, especially in academia, became mainstream.
These woke principles, which are rooted in Marxism, have now worked their way into every aspect of American society, including our government, the media, Hollywood, corporations and our public school system.
What’s especially ironic is that Democrats, starting with President Joe Biden, refer to MAGA Republicans as fascists when their own behavior is so transparently fascist. Just as it was with the Nazi Party in Hitler’s Germany, the gene-obsessed are on the left.
I applaud Gabbard for her insight and honesty. Democrats have put our country on a very perilous path which, left unchecked, will spell the end of America as we know it.
Conservative commentator Candace Owens appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson’s show to discuss the sheer insanity of today’s Democratic Party. She called on Republicans to start pushing back aggressively and boldly because, “If they win this battle, there is nothing left.”
Sadly, she is right.
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Organizations that claim to represent minority groups are really working for the managerial elite
New York City’s Stuyvesant High School, the crown jewel of the city’s public education system, was once 90% Jewish. By the time I entered Stuyvesant in 2013, it was 70% Asian. In the black-and-white photos that adorned the walls, rows of Steins and Cohens looked upon the newest crop of children from working-class immigrant families. Asians are ascendant in many once heavily Jewish domains: specialized high schools; elite colleges; medical schools. Like the American Jewish community, debates now rage within Asian American communities over whether we are “real minorities” or white-adjacent, and we even write Tablet articles about being the victims of violent hate crimes.
American Jews and Asian Americans share something else in common: Both have been sold out by activist organizations that are more interested in catering to the sensibilities of the wealthy elite that dominate the Democratic Party than in advocating for ordinary working-class constituents. Leading Jewish and Asian American organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) have demonstrated their real priorities in how they have responded to two of the biggest issues in their respective communities: a wave of violent hate crimes and discriminatory education policies.
“In New York, street harassment, minor assaults, and even full-on beatings of visible Jews are almost a banality now, too frequent over too long of a period to be considered an active crisis, even in the communities most affected,” wrote Armin Rosen in the summer of 2022. Virtually the same thing could have been said about Asians. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, there emerged one grainy video after another of Asians on the streets of American cities being beaten, occasionally to death. The victims were typically senior citizens or women, and they usually lived in coastal metropolises with high Asian populations. One attack involved an elderly Asian woman being called an anti-Asian slur before being punched in the head 125 times.
As The Scroll pointed out last year, “the rise in hate crimes [in New York] targeting highly visible and vulnerable groups like religious Jews and Asians tracks to the increase in the overall level of violent crime and disorder in the city.” Many working-class members of minority groups have reacted by advocating for stricter criminal justice policies given crime disproportionately affects them. But the groups that claim to speak for these vulnerable working-class Jews and Asian Americans, such as the ADL and AAJC, don’t advocate for these policies because they’re afraid to risk alienating the donor class and progressive base of the Democratic Party—groups that have consistently called for “restorative justice” policies and to defund the police. The ADL and AAJC has chorused those calls, virtue-signaling instead of fighting for the interests of the communities they claim they represent.
Take, for instance, the main targets of the ADL’s activist campaigns. Despite the ADL’s own statistics showing that in 2019 more than 55% of the attacks on Jews in New York City were carried out by individuals affiliated with “black supremacist” ideologies like the Nation of Islam and Black Hebrew Israelites, the ADL, echoing New York City’s former mayor, Bill de Blasio, has focused on white supremacy—an important issue, but not the one most plaguing New York City or San Francisco’s Asian American or Jewish communities. When de Blasio wanted to signal that he was “doing something” about the explosion of violence against Jews, he appointed an ADL veteran, Deborah Lauter, to head a new Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes focused on finding a “holistic approach” to the problem.
Of course, Lauter’s office did nothing to stop the violence because New York’s court system appears unwilling to pursue hate crime convictions, which would signal the city’s seriousness about combating the issue. In one instance—the killing of a 62-year-old Asian woman who died from injuries sustained when she was beaten outside of her Queens home—the murder was not prosecuted as a hate crime “even though it seemed to have no other motive besides hatred of Asians,” as Armin Rosen put it. As the Crown Heights Jewish activist Devorah Halberstam explained to Rosen, the lack of hate crimes prosecutions is a systemic issue. “It’s not against the Jewish community. It’s not against the Asian community … It’s the broader picture.” On the issue of the city systematically ignoring hate crimes, the ADL and AAJC have been silent.
With hate crimes increasing and hate crime charges nowhere in sight, what were these organizations busy advocating for? In the midst of this sustained wave of violence, Jewish and Asian advocacy groups were more preoccupied with chanting fashionable social justice slogans than with actually trying to prevent and punish hate crimes. In 2020, for instance, the AAJC tweeted “today we observe the National Day of Mourning in solidarity with all who have lost loved ones due to police violence or white supremacy.” This is not a good way of supporting those Asian American communities relying on police protection for their safety and sense of security. Also in 2020, the New York-based Asian American Federation (AAF) backed the creation of a special Asian Hate Crimes task force in the city. The group’s executive director, Jo-Ann Yoo, said the move was necessary “to help raise safety awareness in the pan-Asian community.” In a city that refuses to prosecute hate crimes, raising awareness is perhaps the best that can be hoped for.
If you were one of the people being beaten in the streets or walking them in fear, however, you would have wanted—indeed needed—more from these organizations. This gets at the fundamental problem: The people who run the advocacy NGOs do not view themselves as potential victims of such attacks. Orthodox Jews in New York City, whose attire makes them highly visible, are the prime targets of antisemitic violence. Most have little social capital outside of their neighborhoods, which are often side-by-side with other immigrant enclaves. Secular, progressive Jews who make careers in “social justice advocacy” tend to see the Orthodox community as a relic.
A similar dynamic applies to the relationship between the working-class Asian American immigrants who are the victims of hate crimes and their professional class spokespersons. Recent immigrants from Asian countries often lack English fluency and hold no social or cultural capital. Many struggle with America’s labyrinthine immigration system and are prime candidates for group-based lobbying efforts. Meanwhile, the NGOs that represent Asian Americans are staffed by the kinds of highly educated members of the managerial class who choose to go into the nonprofit sector. The more powerful these organizations become, the more they draw from a national network of affluent individuals and families that have the social and economic capital to let their children study arts and humanities at America’s top colleges.
American Jews and Asian Americans have been sold out by activist organizations that are more interested in catering to the sensibilities of the wealthy elite that dominates the Democratic Party than in advocating for ordinary people.
The same thing is happening in America’s fights over access to education. High Asian enrollment at New York City’s specialized high schools like Stuyvesant has become a problem for the city’s progressive politicians. In 2020, the chancellor of the Department of Education under Mayor de Blasio, Richard Carranza, commented that “I just don’t buy into the narrative that any one ethnic group owns admission to these schools,” suggesting that Asians, like the pushy Jews of previous generations, had somehow gotten their spots unfairly. Never mind the open tests they took to get in, that a full three-quarters of Stuyvesant’s students are immigrants or the children of immigrants, and that Asians are, on average, the poorest racial group in New York City.
While there were local organizations fighting to preserve fair and colorblind access to schools like Stuyvesant, at the national level the major Asian and Jewish advocacy organizations have actively supported policies that are biased against their own constituents. Take the affirmative action case now before the Supreme Court, Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Progressive organizations have attempted to frame SFFA as a white-led effort, which erases the Jewish background of the lawyer spearheading the suit, Edward Blum, and the historical legacy of quotas limiting Jewish access to Harvard and other elite institutions.
As Jacob Scheer has written in Tablet, the leading American Jewish organizations once opposed affirmative action, as numerus clausus quotas were once used to keep qualified Jewish applicants out of elite institutions. The “big three” Jewish advocacy organizations (the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress, and the American Jewish Committee) filed amicus briefs in Regents v. Bakke (1978) taking a firm stand against affirmative action policies. But now the leading Jewish organizations have changed their tune on affirmative action, and the ADL filed an amicus brief supporting Harvard’s admissions policies. Similarly, the AAJC has filed two amicus briefs supporting Harvard’s de facto anti-Asian discrimination.
The truth is that “our” organizations have become empty mouthpieces parroting affluent liberal talking points in the interest of getting more donations and mainstream media coverage.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/double-crossed
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When hate speech is OK
When it emerged that a 2022 Sydney Festival dance production was being supported with a $20,000 grant from the Israeli embassy, more than two dozen performers boycotted the festival and demanded it be shut down for “normalising apartheid”.
When it was revealed that this month’s Adelaide Writers Week would feature authors who have published what reads like violent abuse towards supporters of Israel, mocked Jews over the Holocaust and expressed support for Vladimir Putin, the response from festival organisers and participants was of a different kind.
The show must go on.
In the past fortnight, Adelaide Writers Week has become a national flashpoint for those who believe that, far from being challenging spaces which invite the exchange of multiple ideas, arts festivals are now captive to fixed left-wing orthodoxies, including questioning whether the state of Israel has the right even to exist.
The furore invites broader questions. Are there limits to free speech? At what point does robust free speech descend into hate speech? Do the social media ramblings of a person count towards an assessment of their output and character?
Key Jewish-Australian organisation have been appalled by the conduct of Adelaide Writers Week and its director Louise Adler, the former chief executive of Melbourne University Publishing, in crafting a line-up which they say gives a platform to bigots.
Adler is curating her first Adelaide Writers Week under a three-year deal, having taking the reins from previous director Jo Dyer, who ran unsuccessfully as a teal candidate for the SA seat of Boothby at last year’s federal election.
Critics of AWW say that not only is the festival stacked in favour of the Palestinian cause, it has rolled out the red carpet to people they regard as extremists.
Their anger is shared by Australian Ukrainians, who in the lead-up to the first anniversary of Russia’s illegal invasion were dismayed to learn Adelaide was playing host to an author who believes the continuing war is the fault of the Ukrainian government and people.
The fallout so far has been significant – three authors have cancelled in protest, sponsors have threatened to pull funding, The Adelaide Advertiser has removed all its staff from the daily “Breakfast with Papers” program, and Premier Peter Malinauskas has been urged to intervene.
The two authors who sparked the dramas are Jerusalem-based Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd and Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa.
Aged just 24, El-Kurd is hailed by his supporters as one of the most important new voices in Palestinian literature, his 2021 debut collection Rifqa credited with “laying bare the brutality of Israeli settler colonialism”. He also works as the Palestine correspondent for The Nation and in 2021 was named, with his twin sister Muna, as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine.
El-Kurd’s grace as a poet is less evident in his tweeting, where he has described supporters of Israel as “sadistic barbaric neo-Nazi pigs” with an “unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood”.
“I hope every one of them dies in the most torturous and slow ways,” he has tweeted. “I hope that they see their mothers suffering.”
He has ridiculed Jews for having to wear so much sunscreen – suggesting it proves they don’t belong in the Middle East – and made Holocaust references, including accusing Israel of “kristallnachting” the Palestinian people.
With this back catalogue of vitriol, it’s not surprising that the Anti-Defamation League and Executive Council of Australian Jewry have both written to the Adelaide Festival arguing that El-Kurd is not so much the Wordsworth of the West Bank but a peddler of anti-Semitic abuse.
His fellow author Abulhawa is also well regarded as a writer; her latest book Against the Loveless World lauded as a moving exploration of statelessness and resistance in the context of the Palestinian struggle.
But again, less elegant on Twitter, where she has written “It’s possible to be Jewish and a Nazi at the same time” and described Israel as “the only ‘nation’ that systematically kidnaps and tortures children daily”.
It is Abulhawa’s views on Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine that have caused the most blowback for AWW. In multiple tweets, Abulhawa has declared the war is Ukraine’s fault for trying to join NATO and parroted the Moscow line with a tweet which simply read: “Denazify Ukraine.”
She has described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “a depraved Zionist trying to ignite World War III” and said: “This man is no hero. He’s mad and far more dangerous than Putin.”
It was for this reason that three Ukrainian authors have withdrawn from the festival, all of them writing to Adler saying they would not share a platform with someone who peddled Russian propaganda in defence of genocide.
“I feel saddened that calls to be sensitive in relation to Ukrainians who have been attacked in this genocidal war and to not give a platform to voices that repeat Kremlin propaganda are not always heard,” author Olesya Khromeychuk wrote.
Fellow author Kateryna Babkina wrote to Adler: “I’m afraid I can’t participate in any kind of event that gives voice to the person considering Ukrainians should give up their right to decide what to do with their destiny and their independent country and just become a ‘neutral nation’ pleasing Russian ambitions in order not to be killed.”
The fallout from all this has been acute for the Adelaide Festival. Board members have been lobbied urging them to intervene; sponsors Minter Ellison, PwC and IT firm Capgemini have demanded their signage be removed as they weigh future support for the festival; Malinauskas vowed not to attend any sessions involving the offending authors, despite grudgingly honouring a pre-made commitment to speak at the opening of the event.
But Malinauskas, who has Lithuanian ancestry from his refugee grandfather, has made no secret of his concern at the presence of the pair on the AWW line-up.
“There is a distinction between provoking thought and facilitating the spreading of a message that simply does not accord with basic human values,” he said. “That is worthy of contemplation for Writers Week.”
Adler has now made several public statements saying authors at AWW have been reminded that hate speech or bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated.
But she is sticking to her guns with the line-up on free speech grounds, arguing that it is vital that different ideas be put forward and contested.
“I am interested in creating a context for courageous and brave spaces where we can have civil dialogue and discussion about ideas that we may not all agree on,” Adler said.
“If we all gather together just to agree with one another or with people who share our views, well some people might enjoy that, but I don’t think that’s the point of a literary festival.”
Adler’s detractors laugh at the assertion of diversity, with former federal Labor MP Jewish-Australian Michael Danby noting there are seven Palestinian authors and not one Israeli at the event.
A quick look at the AWW political line-up does little to bolster Adler’s claims to it being a freewheeling orgy of disagreement. From the world of politics, Liberal moderate Amanda Vanstone will be joined at AWW by Bob Carr, Wayne Swan, Bob Brown, Steve Bracks, Gareth Evans, Sarah Hanson-Young, Maxine McKew, along with ACTU secretary Sally McManus and teals founder and funder Simon Holmes a Court.
If this is diversity, it is a brand of diversity which extends all the way along the ideological spectrum from the rabidly left-wing to considerably left-wing to somewhat left-wing.
In defending the presence of El-Kurd and Abulhawa, Adler has tried to draw a distinction between their published works and their social media posts, as if the tweets can almost be expunged from the record.
“Twitter is more for succinct targeted polemic rather than nuanced discussion,” she told this newspaper.
It’s a defence which is rubbished by the third Ukrainian author to withdraw from the festival, Kharkiv-born Australian author Maria Tumarkin, who in a withering blogpost made it clear she regarded AWW as an intellectual indulgence while an actual war was going on.
“I’m a Ukrainian Jewish Australian, no hyphens or hyphens, I don’t care. My world (as I knew it) ended on February 24, 2022. I have no connection to any ‘interest groups’, ‘sponsorship money’, ‘Zionist lobby’, ‘pearl-clutching’ (snort!), ‘attempts to silence marginalised voices’, ‘propaganda’ propagation – what else have you got for me?
“I’d rather not be lectured on developing a higher tolerance for ‘confronting ideas’. All good on that front, thanks.
“In the last 12 months I’ve learned a lot and changed my mind a lot. Perhaps the most salient lesson is that anti-war can mean pro-genocide. It means pro-genocide right now in Ukraine.
“Statements in which Zelensky (who’s Jewish) is called a Nazi, fascist, someone responsible for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and/or WWIII are not anti-Zelensky and/or pro-Putin. They are forms of genocide cheering (a step up from genocide apology). They do not exist in the space of discourse only and do not represent something that can be classified as merely a contentious political opinion. If only.
“And while we’re on the subject, I see no difference between Twitter feeds and books if tweets are pro-genocidal and knowingly so.”
Adler is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. As such, she invites a degree of awe with her bulletproof commitment to free speech principles. But she is clearly out of step with a great number of Jewish and Ukrainian people who regard this not as free speech but hate speech. And her promise of diverse speech is not backed up by the AWW program.
In the broader context of the cultural arc of these modern-day festivals, one wonders if he were alive today what kind of reception the Italian chemist and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi would receive were he scheduled to appear in Adelaide this week at the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.
Would If This is a Man be hailed for what it is, the definitive first-person chronicle of the high point of human evil, or a tendentious sob-story aimed at bolstering Israeli hegemony? The answer would probably be the latter, especially if the Israeli embassy dared sponsor Levi’s appearance.
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‘Sick of it’: Catholic women vent frustration over sex, power and abuse
Sometimes I regret being an academic with long experience in survey research. It means that much of what I read stinks of dishonesty. The survey reported below is a case in point. The originators of the survey say bluntly that "the survey does not claim to be representative of all Catholic women" yet you get no idea of that in the report below. You get the impression that what was found DID represent what Catholic women think.
But it is a basic axiom of survey research that to find out about a given population by survey research you have to draw the sample in such a way that it IS representative of the population you want to study, otherwise it could tell you all sorts of untrue things about the population concerned.
And sampling or the lack of it is not the only problem on this occasion. We read here that the questions in the survey were largely leading questions, not fair ones. So the survey tells us only what its authors wanted to hear. To be blunt about it, it is nothing more than Leftist propaganda. It tells us nothing truthful
The largest study of Catholic women in the church’s 2000-year history has found they are hungry for reform. They resent their lack of decision-making power, want to follow their consciences on sex and contraception, and think the church should be more inclusive of the diverse and the divorced.
Australian researchers led the global study, to be presented at the Vatican on International Women’s Day, which also found women want to be allowed to preach, dislike priests promoting political agendas, and are concerned about a lack of transparency in church governance.
Theologian and sociologist of religion at the University of Newcastle Tracy McEwan co-authored the study, which surveyed 17,200 women from 14 countries.
Theologian and sociologist of religion at the University of Newcastle Tracy McEwan co-authored the study, which surveyed 17,200 women from 14 countries.CREDIT:FLAVIO BRANCALEONE
“There was this underlying sense of hurt, and certainly this feeling of being voiceless and ignored,” said co-author Tracy McEwan, a theologian and sociologist of religion at the University of Newcastle. “These are not women on the edge. These are women in the church. Being Catholic is important to them, and they are struggling.”
The study, which surveyed 17,200 women from 140 countries, comes as Pope Francis leads the church in a discussion about whether women should have a greater role in its governance and ceremonies. He has ruled out female priests, but the deaconate – someone who assists priests during mass and can preach the homily – is a possibility.
McEwan will present the findings to female ambassadors to the Holy See on Wednesday. They will include Australia’s representative, Chiara Porro, who helped organise the presentation. The first woman ever to be allowed to vote with the Vatican’s synod of bishops, Xaviere sister Nathalie Becquart, has also been briefed on the research.
The survey results show 84 per cent of women supported reform in the church, and two-thirds wanted radical reform. Almost three in 10 said there would be no place for them without it. There was significant concern about abuses of power and spiritual harm, particularly by male clerics. “I cling on to the church by my fingernails,” said one respondent.
Almost eight in 10 agreed women should be fully included at all levels of church leadership, and more than three-quarters agreed that women should be able to give the homily, a commentary on the gospel during services. Two-thirds said women should be eligible for the priesthood. “I’m ashamed of my church when I see only men in procession,” said one respondent.
More than four in five said LGBTQ people should be included in all activities, and just over half strongly agreed same-sex couples were entitled to a religious marriage. Seven in 10 said remarriage should be allowed after civil divorce, and three-quarters agreed that women should have freedom of conscience on their sexual and reproductive decisions.
Some respondents pointed out that they do much of the work in the church, but get no recognition or say. “If every woman in every parish stopped cleaning, cooking, dusting, typing, directing ... for just one week, every parish would have to close,” said one. “Yet, why do women have so little real power?”
Co-author Kathleen McPhillips, a sociologist at the University of Newcastle, said she was surprised at the enthusiasm with which women embraced the survey. “What it showed is they’re really sick of it,” she said. “They want to be there, but they’re sick of not being able to contribute. In their secular lives, they can do so much more.
“It’s still the largest religion in the world. It’s hugely important we understand it. The church itself hasn’t been interested in studying its own population.”
The results varied between countries. Australia was more conservative than the global average on some of the indicators; 74 per cent of women said they wanted reform, compared with the global average of 84. Appetite for change was strongest in the Catholic strongholds of Ireland and Spain, as well as Germany.
But the tension has been evident in the Australian church and boiled over at a historic plenary council meeting last year, at which bishops failed to pass two motions aimed at empowering women in the church. About 60 delegates staged a silent protest. The motions were re-worded and passed.
Younger women were also more conservative than older ones, with the 18- to 25-year-old age group least likely to want reform, according to the survey, and the over 70-year-olds most likely. The eldest women were also more likely to support same-sex marriage and the homily being preached by women.
But even among conservative women, there was concern about having their contribution respected. “They were articulating the idea that you want women to be a certain way, that’s OK, but give us our due, give us our voice,” said McEwan.
The church is a hierarchical patriarchy, but McEwan hopes the results will get through to those who will ultimately make the decisions. “I’m hoping that presenting this major report to the women ambassadors and to the more senior women in the Vatican will have an impact, and it will feed through,” she said.
Catholicism is the largest religion in Australia. They make up 20 per cent of the population (women make up slightly more than half), and Sydney is its most Catholic city. The church is the country’s largest non-government provider of health care, education and welfare, and employs almost two per cent of the nation’s workers.
Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher was contacted for comment, but a spokesman declined, saying he was in Rome.
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5 March, 2023
Revisiting the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis: A meta-analytic review
I have myself written rather a lot on this topic so I am pleased to see that Thomas H Costello and his colleagues below have done another good iconoclastic article in the area. I think however he gave too much credence to the idea that there is such a thing as a trait of psychological rigidity. .
There is not. There are rigid behaviours of various sorts but they are often not correlated. A person who is rigid about one thing is not particularly likely to be rigid about something else.
There have been findings to that effect since the 1950s but the datum demonstrating it that I particularly like is the fact that the two halves of the widely used Budner scale of rigidity do not correlate (r = .08 in a general population sample). The scale purports to measure one thing but is a mixed-up measure of two different things. See here and here. What it supposedly measures does not exist. Pychological rigidity is a unicorn concept. You can describe it but it does not exist. Its existence is a failed theory
Insofar as there has been some coherence in rigidity research, it is probably traceable to IQ. Those whom researchers called rigid were probably just a bit thick
The rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis (RRH), which posits that cognitive, motivational, and ideological rigidity resonate with political conservatism, is an influential but controversial psychological account of political ideology. Here, we leverage several methodological and theoretical sources of this controversy to conduct an extensive quantitative review—with the dual aims of probing the RRH’s basic assumptions and parsing the RRH literature’s heterogeneity. Using multi-level meta-analyses of relations between varieties of rigidity and ideology measures alongside a bevy of potential moderators (s = 329, k = 708, N = 187,612), we find that associations between conservatism and rigidity are tremendously heterogeneous, suggesting a complex—yet conceptually fertile—network of relations between these constructs. Most notably, whereas social conservatism was robustly associated with rigidity, associations between economic conservatism and rigidity indicators were inconsistent, small, and not statistically significant outside of the United States. Moderator analyses revealed that non-representative sampling, criterion contamination, and disproportionate use of American samples have yielded over-estimates of associations between rigidity-related constructs and conservatism in past research. We resolve that drilling into this complexity, thereby moving beyond the question of if conservatives are essentially rigid to when and why they might or might not be, will help provide a more realistic account of the psychological underpinnings of political ideology.
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Diversity roles disappear 3 years after George Floyd's death inspired them
Diversity, equity and inclusion leaders, who were hired in waves to help companies achieve an ethnically balanced workforce after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, are being phased out, surveys indicate, leaving experts in the field concerned that corporations’ talk of affecting change was just empty words.
DEI roles increased by 55% following demands for broader racial equity and justice after Floyd’s murder, the Society for Human Resource Management reported in 2020. But instead of creating fair opportunities and a comfortable work culture for Black employees, a pair of recent reports indicate, DEI professionals are losing their jobs, as layoffs across the economy have gained momentum.
The attrition rate for DEI roles was 33% at the end of 2022, compared to 21% for non-DEI roles. Amazon, Applebees and Twitter lead the way with DEI layoffs since July 2022, according to Revelio Labs, a New York-based company that uses data to analyze workforce dynamics and trends.
Another survey showed that Black employees represent only 3.8% of chief diversity officers overall, with white people making up 76.1% of the roles. Those of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity make up 7.8% and those of Asian ethnicity make up 7.7%
Reyhan Ayas, a senior economist at Revelio Labs, which surveyed DEI layoffs, said the data shows the pledge to impact change was not followed by genuine effort.
“I always say that it is so easy to make public statements and commitments because no one will eventually check if you’re committed to the things that you committed to,” she said. “I can say: ‘I will be fully vegan by 2025’ because no one will ever call me in 2025 and ask me if I’m actually fully vegan. And that’s really what is going on here. In 2020, a lot of companies made big commitments, big statements around the DEI roles and goals. And as we are observing a turning of that tide, I think it’s very timely that we actually look into companies to see if they have kept up with those big statements they made.”
DEI professional Nika White, author of the book, “Inclusion Uncomplicated,” said the studies also reveal “the harsh reality” of many companies’ commitments to diversity. “This is very disheartening, especially after so many of us were hopeful after George Floyd’s murder that organization leaders would be sensitized and committed to equity and inclusion.”
But the opposite has happened. Revelio Labs’ 2023 report on the state of DEI and the impact of last year’s layoffs, found that DEI-focused roles “experienced a nearly 40% churn rate at companies engaged in layoffs, as compared to about 24% for non-DEI roles.”
The stunning absence of Black people in chief diversity officer roles in companies makes DEI professionals cringe.
“This is a role that is essential to advocating and advancing the progress for underrepresented talent at these organizations,” said Wade Hinton, founder of Hinton and Co., a DEI firm in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “And so, you want to make sure that it reflects the diversity of our communities and this country, and it’s clear that we’ve got work to do on this.”
Together, the studies mean something more to Chris Metzler, senior vice president, corporate DEI and environmental, social and governance strategies at the National Urban League. The influx of DEI officer hires in 2020, he said, was disingenuous and the positions have largely been weakened to the point of being toothless.
“Most of your diversity professionals at these companies report to human resources, which are headed by white women and in some cases, white men,” he said. “So, it doesn’t surprise me that Black diversity officers . . . are being moved out. It’s increasingly becoming a dead-end job. Corporations are saying one thing and demonstrating something else. It’s going back to checking the box versus hiring and keeping qualified workers who can impact change in the company.”
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NYC Paying Out Millions to Rioters
Unbelievable
The riots that rocked American cities in the summer of 2020 have been seared into the country’s memory.
Now, in New York City, they’re going to be taking a big chunk of taxpayer dollars that will go to protesters allegedly abused by the city’s police department as it tried to control the violence.
More than 300 individual protesters will be paid more than $20,000 each under the settlement of a class-action lawsuit reached late Tuesday, with the total bill, with other provisions, coming come to more than $10 million, according to The Associated Press.
According to the report, the settlement involves protesters who were in the streets in New York’s Mott Haven neighborhood in the Bronx on June 4, 2020, amid the riots that followed the death of suspected counterfeit-bill passer George Floyd in Minneapolis late the previous month.
According to the New York Post, the crowds that gathered were called by “two activist groups who taunted the NYPD with a flyer of a burning cop vehicle and incendiary phrases that encouraged demonstrators to break the 8 p.m. curfew that had been imposed in the city in the days prior.”
Police surrounded the crowd, using bicycles and other means, and made it impossible to leave before 8 p.m., according to the Post. Officers began making arrests about 8:10 p.m.
The tactic of corralling and confining potentially dangerous crowds to a small area is called “kettling,” and one police officer in the Bronx interviewed by the Post defended it.
“Kettling? That’s what we do. It’s not like they do it because these guys are model citizens. They’re doing it because they’re committing crimes or not following orders,” the officer told the newspaper.
“One or two of them might have been swept in there just because of wrong place, wrong time,” the officer said. “But people were looting stores and causing mayhem at some of these protests.”
Critics were outraged at the news of the multimillion-dollar settlement.
“Not only does BLM destroy cities, they get cities pay them to do it,” conservative commentator Armstrong Williams wrote in a Twitter post, referring to Black Lives Matter rioters.
Advocates for the protesters, naturally, had a different view.
“The violence unleashed upon us that night was intentional, unwarranted, and will be with me for the rest of my life,” one of the plaintiffs claimed in a statement, according to the AP. “What the NYPD did, aided by the political powers of New York City, was an extreme abuse of power.”
And, according to the AP, the cost to taxpayers is going to be extreme, too.
Under the terms of the settlement, the report said, the city “will pay $21,500 each to at least 200 protesters who were detained, arrested or met with force by NYPD” during the incident.
The city will also pay $21,500 in legal fees for each of the covered protesters, and $2,500 to protesters who received tickets to appear in court.
The settlement will not go into effect until a judge signs off on it.
In a statement, according to the Post, the NYPD said it had “re-envisioned” its tactics in the aftermath of the 2020 upheaval.
“Two-and-a-half years after the protests of 2020, much of the NYPD’s policies and training for policing large-scale demonstrations have been re-envisioned based on the findings of the department’s own, self-initiated analyses and on the recommendations from three outside agencies who carefully investigated that period,” the statement said.
“The NYPD remains committed to continually improving its practices in every way possible.”
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/city-paying-millions-protesters-faced-police-george-floyd-riots
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Losing Our Future By Destroying Our Past
Jerry Newcombe
There is a growing war against the past. Our heroes of yesteryear, even George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, are under attack.
I was disheartened to see ads for Hulu presenting a series based on the discredited 1619 Project. As I noted in a column many months ago, the 1619 Project postulates that America began in 1619, when the first enslaved Black people were brought here—not 1776, when the founders declared independence.
Dr. Ben Carson writes on his website, www.americancornerstone.org : "In recent years,…many people in politics, academia, and the media have questioned the values of the American founding. They have focused on the faults of certain Founding Fathers— along with the undeniable fact that the rights they championed were not originally enjoyed by all Americans—and cast doubt upon whether any of their fancy words are important today."
Let's take the issue of Slavery. Unfortunately, the rewriting of American history is becoming increasingly commonplace. America's founders, hailed by generations of Americans as heroes (albeit flawed ones), are today viewed as nefarious evildoers because of the sin of Slavery.
Without question, chattel Slavery is a horrific evil. But it is often treated by revisionist historians as if America invented it. Tragically, Slavery was virtually universal at the time of the founders—and it existed in America despite some of the positive Christian influence among many of the late colonies.
As the late Dr. Walter Williams said in our Foundation of American Liberty series of films for Providence Forum: "Slavery has been mankind's standard fare throughout his entire history. And even the word, slave, in most languages, is Slav because the Slavic people are among the first to be enslaved. And Africans were among the last to be enslaved. And the great thing about the Western world is that we spent many resources on eliminating Slavery."
What made the western Judeo-Christian systems in America and England unique is that they abolished Slavery—something that still exists in many other places even today.
Founding father Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, which says that we are created equal and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. Yet, when I visited his estate in Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia, the tour guide seemed to throw our third president under the bus because he enslaved people.
I once asked Rabbi Daniel Lapin about Jefferson and Slavery in my television interview with him for the Foundation series.
He said, "It's always very disappointing that the intellectual level of those who constantly pose this question to me, it's just frankly disappointing when people say, 'Oh, you know, Jefferson was a slave owner' or speaking of many of the other founders, as well as Jefferson, as if somehow to discredit these people." Indeed, attempted discrediting has become commonplace today. That's why they tear down statues of him.
The rabbi concluded, "[I] t's almost a childish and pathetic attempt to discredit these giants by the pigmy-like behavior of suggesting that, because their behavior at the time corresponding to the values at the time, that somehow retroactively from the vantage point of 200 years later, we can declare these people to have been invalid or we can cancel them…. This reflects far more on the critics than it does on the founders."
Imagine saying to someone, "You're under arrest." "What for?" "For violating a law that will go into effect a century from now."
Dennis Prager of PragerU told me this in an interview for the Foundation series: "People say, 'Well, Jefferson had slaves,' but that's not the question. The question is: did Jefferson create a society that would abolish Slavery? That's the only intelligent question to ask. Not what did that person do that contravened their ideal."
Prager said, "When he wrote, 'all men are created equal,' he meant it, even though he enslaved people. Did he violate his own beliefs that he had about blacks? Yes, he did, but…look at what he unleashed, the freest country in human history. The least racist country in human history is the United States of America. This was unleashed by these people."
Slavery was uprooted ultimately because of the framework the founders created to give us self-rule under God.
I wonder: How will future generations view us since so many treat so cavalierly the issue of abortion---the deliberate taking of baby's lives by the millions? And we have 4-D sonograms to boot.
In my view, it's time to stop this ongoing attempt to erase our history and dethrone our heroes-- flawed ones, no doubt, but heroes, nonetheless. Historian Dr. James S. Robbins wrote a book a few years ago called Erasing America. The subtitle of that volume speaks volumes, "Losing Our Future by Destroying Our Past."
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3 March, 2023
‘Taxachusetts’ surprise
More than one surprise below.
* As Attorney General, Maura T. Healey was notable for a raft of lawsuits against the Trump administration so any degree of conservatism from her is surprising.
* Someone in a Northern State has finally taken notice of people voting with their feet and moving South. She has acknowledged that tax is a big driver of that and done something about it. NYC has also become tax conscious over their big flow -- to Boca Raton, mostly. It is a bit sad that people have to up sticks just to keep more of what they have earned.
* The response from the Left is revealing. I and others have often said that the Left is not trying to lift up the poor. Their real motive is to punish the rich. And, on cue, the Left have wailed about the Healey tax cuts. Why? because it would give "an enormous windfall to the richest members of our society". Who cares about the poor?
Massachusetts’s new Democratic governor is proposing something her party rarely does: a large tax cut for wealthy individuals, businesses, and families in the state.
Business groups and budget hawks — once fearful of Governor Healey’s liberal leanings — have praised her effort, with the conservative Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance calling the proposal a “welcome surprise.”
Ms. Healey was elected last November after serving for eight years as the state’s attorney general. Just eight weeks into her term, she has proposed the largest tax cut since the 1990s in order to make the state more competitive and hospitable to families, high earners, and corporations.
The three pillars of the plan are an increase in the estate tax threshold, a cut in short-term capital gains taxes by more than half, and a tax credit for children and seniors.
In a statement announcing her plan, Ms. Healey said she wants to attract new businesses and make the Bay State more affordable for its residents. It delivers “relief to those who need it most and makes reforms that will attract and retain more businesses and residents to our great state,” she said.
“Governor Healey has taken a positive first step with this tax proposal,” the statement from Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance said. “The reform of our estate tax in particular is much needed to remedy our state from its outlier status,” adding that the tax “certainly contributes to the outflow of taxpayers from our state.”
The plan is made possible by strong revenue growth in recent years, a trajectory that is expected to continue. Between 2021 and 2022, the Bay State saw tax revenue increase by 21 percent, and the state now enjoys a budget surplus of about $5 billion. The previous administration sent more than $3 billion in tax rebates to Massachusetts taxpayers.
Currently, Massachusetts taxes estates worth more than $1 million after a person’s death. Oregon is the only other state to tax estates worth that amount. In all, nine states tax estates at higher thresholds and 39 states do not tax them at all.
Ms. Healey wants to raise that threshold to $3 million. Her plan is even more ambitious than a proposal from Democratic legislators last year, which would have raised the threshold to $2 million.
A longtime Democratic fundraiser and former Boston city council member, Larry DiCara, told the Sun that the tax relief plan will make Massachusetts more competitive.
“The most important piece is bringing the estate tax in line with the rest of the nation. We have the lowest threshold for the estate tax of any state. As a result, anyone who has a house in Hingham,” a wealthy suburb, “is subject to it” after the homeowner passes away, Mr. DiCara said.
Ms. Healey’s capital gains tax cut is a carbon copy of the plan offered by her Republican predecessor, Charlie Baker. If adopted, the short-term capital gains tax would be slashed to 5 percent from 12 percent.
A key pillar of her campaign was a tax credit for children, but her new proposal goes even further than her campaign pledge. The plan includes a $600 a month tax credit for any child under the age of 13 and for any dependent senior over the age of 65.
Currently, Massachusetts offers a $300 a month tax credit for children under the age of 6, and a $250 tax credit for children between the ages of 6 and 17.
The proposal also includes increases in tax deductions for renters and low-income seniors, as well as increased funding for schools, transportation, and housing.
In total, the tax cut would be even larger than the plan offered by Mr. Baker last year. He came to the negotiating table with a proposal for $693 million in tax relief. Ms. Healey’s tax plan would cost $742 million this year, and about $1 billion annually beginning next fiscal year.
According to a nonpartisan journal, the World Population Review, Massachusetts ranks seventh among the states for total tax burden, which is a measure of all income, property, sales, and excise taxes paid by citizens.
Ms. Healey’s proposal leaves some of her liberal allies disappointed. During her 2022 campaign for governor, she never mentioned changes to the estate tax or the capital gains tax, though she did highlight the child tax credit during her run.
A liberal public policy organization, Raise Up Massachusetts, questioned the tax cuts. “We are deeply concerned that proposed changes to the estate tax and short-term capital gains tax would deliver an enormous windfall to the richest members of our society,” the group said in a statement.
It said the estate tax “would give a few thousand of the wealthiest families in the state a six-figure tax cut” and the capital gains tax reform would “reward day traders” for “risky financial maneuvering.”
Mr. DiCara said the tax relief bill is exactly what the state needs. “The renters credit and the child tax credit make tons of sense to me,” he said. “I’m a big fan of Healey’s. I think she’s going to govern from the middle, and I think she’s going to be a great governor.”
https://www.nysun.com/article/democratic-governor-of-taxachusetts-embraces-big-tax-cuts
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Biden Choking Prosperity With Big-Spending Industrial Policy
We’ve been talking about President Biden’s regulatory war against America’s economy, with a big hat tip to the Wall Street Journal editorial page and American Action Forum for reminding everyone that in two years the Bidens have slapped on 517 regulatory actions totaling roughly $318 billion in economic costs.
Bad as that is, the socialist central planners in Washington have another 311 regs in the pipeline for another nearly $200 billion in costs. That’s well over $500 billion of regulatory costs on American business. Just think of that: $500 billion.
What does that mean? Lower profits, lower wages, less productivity, and a crushing blow to small business.
A chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Trump administration, Kevin Hassett, told us last night that if we got rid of all the new regs, you could conceivably increase real GDP by as much as 1 percent over the longer term. Think of it.
If you extended the Trump tax cuts, or even better went for a modified flat-tax of 20 percent for personal and corporate income, the Tax Foundation figures you could add almost another half percent in the long run, and that would get you well on your way to a 3.5 percent growth rate — which is what we had between 1947 and 2000, before it slumped to only 1.8 percent over the last 22 years.
Think of the prosperity: Not only more growth from the supply side of the economy, but less inflation. Think about a happy blue-collar middle class family workforce. Think how much easier it would be to slow federal spending, balance the budget, and stop the debt assault.
Yet now we have to contend with the exact opposite.
New information from the so-called Chips act — remember that industrial policy aimed at the semiconductor industry? It will cost $284 billion, and Republicans and Democrats signed up for it.
It’s the exact opposite of my 3.5 percent growth dream. Know what’s in there? Mandated day care, Davis Bacon pay scales, sharing corporate profits with the federal government. Also, total coordination with unions and National Environmental Policy Act compliance, where the Bidens repeal the Trump reforms and now stretch out permits basically for years and years spanning every agency in government.
So, in other words, nothing new will be built.
Between the greenies and the unions and the social welfarists and various interest groups — oh, yes, did I forget that one semiconductor requirement will be diversity, equity, and inclusion? Of course it will be.
Nothing passes the Bidens without DEI or some crazy woke idea that will stop investment, stop new jobs, stop productivity, and stop progress.
This is a perfect illustration of the stupidity of setting industrial policy through massive spending, and as I said it was authorized by a third of the Republican senators along with all the Democrats.
You know, in Washington you get what you pay for. Big spending bills nowadays lead to big woke policies, and that in turn blocks everything. Steve Forbes many months ago labeled this “modern socialism” through the regulatory state.
The Biden central planners working overtime had their way with free enterprise last summer. Republican senators who voted for this monstrosity should still be ashamed of themselves. Big-spending industrial policy never works.
Save America. Stop industrial policy. Promote growth and prosperity, not central-planning modern socialism.
https://www.nysun.com/article/biden-choking-prosperity-with-big-spending-industrial-policy
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The Woke Wrecking Machine
Almost everything that has followed from the woke mass hysteria gripping the nation since 2020 has proved disastrous.
Wokeism destroys meritocracy in favor of forced equality of result - history's prescription for civilizational decline.
If we continue with the woke hiring of administrators, air traffic controllers, ground crews, pilots, and rail workers, there will be even more news of disasters and near-miss airline crashes.
Wokeness demands a McCarthyite suppression of free expression. No wonder a woke FBI recently hired out social media censors to suppress stories it deemed unhelpful.
Soviet-style, wokeism mandates strict ideological party-line narratives under the cover of "science." No wonder a woke government lied that requiring vaccines would prevent both infection and infectiousness.
Woke substitutes race for class in its eternal neo-Marxist quest to divide permanently the nation along racial lines, between victims and victimizers.
Yet wokeism recently has embarrassed itself as never before.
Take the COVID pandemic.
The Department of Energy has joined the FBI and is now attributing the origins of the pandemic to a leak of a likely engineered virus from the top-security virology lab in Wuhan, China.
Wokesters had long suppressed that reality, demonizing any who rejected its orthodox lies and spoke a larger truth: A dystopic China is not our global partner in greening the planet. Criticizing Stalinist China is not "racist." China is not building a progressive society that is a model for others.
The ongoing environmental catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio, following the train derailment revealed more woke moral bankruptcy.
Ostensibly the ensuing toxic spill and noxious plume have poisoned a poor and working-class small town. It should have galvanized the old Democratic Party that once voiced loud support for all green causes and championed the lower American classes.
But woke ended all that - substituting racial chauvinism for class concerns and ideology for genuine worry over the environment.
Woke dogma mandates that pollution and poverty are no longer concerns - if they affect the white poor who are stereotyped collectively as privileged victimizers.
Wokesters insisted that California is the greatest casualty of "climate change" defined as permanent drought.
Purported climate change required radical new bureaucratic rules and antidemocratic mandates over irrigation supplies, ground water, and contracted water deliveries from public reservoirs.
But then it rained. And it snowed. And it became terribly cold in supposedly scorching California. Southern California is blanketed in snow.
Even so, for much of this cold, wet winter, state officials continued to claim the man-made drought was in full force. But finally, the most recent frigid, wet weather strangled the woke drought - and with it the credibility of our climate change Cassandras.
Americans sympathize with Ukraine's plight as Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to destroy its autonomy. But woke brooked no deviation from the party line that Ukraine's Volodomyr Zelenskyy is a saint, while Russia is near bankrupt due to sanctions, and doomed to lose the war.
Accordingly, the United States was obligated to give Ukraine a veritable blank check given Kyiv's commitment to freedom. Zelenskyy's team now even talks of a victorious Ukrainian armored counteroffensive into Moscow's Red Square.
This week, however, we are learning the Russian economy is nearly as strong now as it was before the war. It has mobilized 700,000 troops to ensure that eastern Ukraine becomes a Verdun-like killing field where tens of thousands more will be ground up.
Ukraine bars dissidents and maintains a government media monopoly. And the more President Joe Biden promises another $2-3 billion in biweekly aid, the more Zelenskyy acts as if it is a pittance given what supposedly stingy Americans should be capable of supplying.
Meanwhile, at home, new woke protocols mandate race as essential rather than incidental to the human experience. Supposedly such fixations will heal racial wounds.
Under the new reparatory and compensatory diversity, equity, and inclusion rules, those deemed non-white were to be hired and admitted to colleges in greater numbers than their demographics. Even the old mandated proportional representation quotas were no longer enough.
But racial chauvinism, nonstop talk of reparations, and the new campus segregation have not resulted in better racial relations.
Polls show that there are greater racial tensions than ever before.
Data on interracial and hate crimes show even sharper racial disproportionalities. The incidence of both Black violent criminal perpetrators and Black crime victims are near historical highs.
Woke policies of no cash bail, downgrading felonies, and no jail time only spiked violent lawlessness.
Our elite universities are now fully woke. Almost weekly an embarrassing story further erodes their credibility and reputation.
Ridiculous lists of taboo words are issued on woke campuses, barring incendiary words like "American" and "immigrant."
Bragging of segregated dorms, graduations, and safe spaces recalls Jim Crow, not woke racial utopias.
Grades and standards are deemed counterrevolutionary, even as incompetent graduates increasingly fail to impress employers.
Someday wokeism will disappear because it is inherently nihilistic and cannibalistic.
But in the meantime, Americans should end it now before it ends America first.
https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2023/03/02/the-woke-wrecking-machine-n2620138
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'Why does Hershey's hate women?': Fans threaten to boycott chocolate maker after it puts a trans woman's face on its candy wrappers for International Women's Day
Hours after Hershey's Canadian brand launched its HER for SHE campaign in conjunction with International Women's Day, social media activists began calling for a boycott of the iconic chocolate maker.
The ad features trans woman and activist Fae Johnstone as one of the five faces of the campaign. Johnstone and five others will adorn five different wrappers during March.
This is the third year that Hershey's has marketed a product to celebrate International Women's Day. Its 2022 campaign was fronted by woke actress and comedian Mindy Kaling.
'Why does Hershey's hate women?' pondered one conservative Twitter account on Thursday.
While Johnstone, the executive director of consulting business Wisdom2Action, tweeted on Wednesday that the was 'honored' to be in the campaign. By Thursday, Boycott Hershey's was one of the top trending topics on Twitter in United States and Canada.
The other women featured in the ad are Kelicia Massala, the founder of Girl up Quebec, Naila Moloo, a climate technology scientist, Rita Audi, a gender and education equality activist and an Indigenous rights activist Autumn Peltier.
According to a post from Hershey's Canada, the campaign will 'shine a light on the women and girls who inspire us every day.' Hershey's has partnered with the North Carolina-based Girls on the Run this year for the promotion.
The confectionary giant will be donating $10,000 to each the respective causes represented in the ads and $30,000 to Girl Up.
'You get the feeling that these companies always despised women — they were just waiting for the right moment to stick it to us. Here's the thing about real women, Hershey's. We have long memories,' tweeted Abigail Shrier, the author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.
While Oli London, who announced his plans to detransition in 2022, tweeted: 'A biological MAN fronts the new Hershey's campaign celebrating women for International Women's Day. This is misogyny at its finest! A real slap in the face to actual women!'
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Australia: The authoritarian Left goes nuts over a conservative speech
Free speech and debate are important cornerstones of democracy. History demonstrates that they are the first to go when bad, experimental agendas are supported and common sense turns to madness.
This past week, newly minted Victorian MP Moira Deeming used her maiden speech to highlight the need for critical legislative reforms, including restoring sex-based rights for women and girls, amending the Sex Work Discrimination Act 2022 to ensure minors and babies are not permitted in brothels, and an inquiry into the ethics of medical gender affirmation practices on minors.
All perfectly reasonable to anyone with a straight moral compass, it has sent the extreme left in the media and political class into meltdown.
An onslaught of tabloid-style articles followed using slurs such as ‘extreme’ and ‘far-right’ questioning how Deeming ended up in parliament in the first place. Hint: democracy.
Conservatives are no more ‘far-right extremists’ than progressives are Stalin-style communists.
The media attacking and inciting hatred towards Deeming for her faith is Christophobic and no different from antisemitism or Islamophobia.
The real threat to our society and culture comes from the authoritarian left.
Leader of the Greens Samantha Ratnam took to Twitter to describe Deeming’s speech as ‘utterly vile’ and something ‘the Greens won’t stand for’. It’s not the first time Ratnam has pulled out such antics against a political opponent, and it won’t be the last. However, it is clear that when policies are indefensible, they are off the table for debate.
The authoritarian left and their allies in the media have succeeded in running aggressive campaigns across a range of issues with very little, if any, debate by verbally beating their opponents into silence. Increasingly, if you do not support the status quo, your employment or business will be targeted by anonymous online mobs, your family threatened, and you will become untouchable by society. Deeming is an example of this cancel culture, having to sacrifice her teaching career to speak out against the radical politicisation of the school curriculum. Activists now aim to see her kicked out of the Liberal Party and, in the long run, Parliament.
You might not have thought so reading the clickbait headlines in the Herald Sun, but Deeming has been a prominent campaigner across many issues for several years. Her views were widely and publicly known before she was elected in a democratic Liberal Party preselection followed by an election from the public at the ballot box.
While not everyone will agree with everything she stands for, there are significant issues facing ordinary Australians today, particularly women and children, and a shortage of advocates strong enough to withstand the lynch mob for speaking out, which makes her an appealing elected representative.
The authoritarian left fails to see that the public is seeing through the propaganda of ‘tolerance and inclusiveness’. It wants nothing less than the unconditional acceptance and endorsement of all their bad ideas. Anything that stands in the way, such as free speech, freedom of faith, thought, and debate, must go.
Males, let alone male rapists, do not belong in female prisons, and children should not be permitted anywhere near the sex industry, commercial or residential. Given the increasing cases of transition regrets, especially amongst females, there should be an inquiry into the ethics of the ‘affirmation only’ approach to transitioning minors with gender dysphoria, especially when it includes irreversible medical procedures and drugs.
These positions are not outrageous, bigoted, or phobic. They are common sense.
History will condemn those who fail to act, particularly those in positions of power or with a platform.
Ex-MP Fiona Patten accused Deeming of ‘not telling the truth’ when Deeming revealed that babies 18 months and under are permitted in commercial brothels. Minors of any age are allowed in residential brothels.
‘Unless Deeming has a crystal ball and can see what WorkSafe and other regulatory bodies are planning to implement, she’s guessing. Brothels will remain adult-only spaces.’ Ms Patten said.
The Age failed to report that Deeming is correct. It is written into section 47 of the Sex Work Decriminalisation Act 2022, of which Patten is the architect.
Like all bad ideas written into policy, when the public scrutinise the legislation, they often find it morally repugnant.
Despite what the media would have the public believe, there is strong support for Deeming in the public domain. For every nasty tweet and tabloid-style article, there’s an outpouring of support from feminists, men and women from all walks of life, and political persuasions. The loud cheers and standing ovation after her speech showed how strongly her message resonated across the chambers of parliament.
As Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price commented after Daniel Andrews offered his criticism, ‘Mark my words, this will be the first of many attempts of character assassination. That’s all this misogynist has when faced with a strong woman who undermines his leadership with reality.’
Left-wing authoritarians do not care if you are a left-wing feminist, conservative or libertarian; if you question the status quo, you are a threat. They will throw whatever label they can, hoping one will stick and cause damage.
By and large, men escape the scrutiny that women like Deeming and Senator Price face. Strong male leadership is absent in parliament on many of these issues, with a small number of exceptions. It is women who are leading the charge, unafraid to put a spotlight on the ugly truth our legislators are desperate to hide as they implement their radical policy agendas. I hope these women inspire courage in other like-minded MPs hiding nervously in the shadows, to rise up and do the job they have been elected to do in accordance with their convictions, rather than pacifying the noisy few and appeasing the media (all in an effort to retain a pay cheque at our expense).
Like a growing number of women in state and federal Parliament, Deeming has answered the call to stand up against the gross injustice and erosion of rights inflicted by the authoritarian left despite the consequences. For the sake of our children’s future and to safeguard the hard-earned rights of women and girls, so must we all.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/the-vilification-of-moira-deeming/
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2 March, 2023
A Defender of Faith Emerges at New York
The mayor of New York is making waves as a rare Democrat in public office to stand up for religious liberties. Mayor Adams made this position clear yesterday at an interfaith brunch where he described himself as a “servant of God” much to the disappointment of secularists. Most remarkably, however, Mr. Adams stood up for the traditional view of religious liberties, eschewing the view dominant in his party.
“Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state,” the mayor was reported as saying by Daily News. “State is the body, church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.” Hizzoner was promptly pilloried by the left for what liberals see as a violation of the First Amendment. “It is odd that Mayor Adams would need a refresher on the First Amendment,” says the ACLU’s Donna Lieberman.
“The very opening passage of the Bill of Rights makes clear that church and state must be separate,” Ms. Lieberman adds. She’s trying to palm off on our noble public the idea that the First Amendment says something about separating church and state. What it does is prohibit Congress — Congress — from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” Why does she think the Framers worded the sentence that way?
If the Framers’ plan was to deny Congress the power merely to establish a religion, they would have said, “Congress shall establish no religion.” Instead it said, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Scholars have concluded that what it was saying was that not only may Congress not establish a national religion but it may not disestablish religions established by the states, of which there were several.
So it’s Ms. Lieberman and her camarilla who strike us as off point. Neither the word “wall” nor “separation” appears anywhere in the Constitution. Yet this confounded wall was used by the state of Maine to exclude students in a voucher program from attending their choice of a school if their choice was a religious school. It was used by Montana to do the same, as well as the state of Missouri to deny funds for playground safety at a religious school.
In each of these cases, the Supreme Court has struck down the statutes — which it has called “discrimination against religion.” So Mr. Adams’ remarks meanwhile could start steering his party toward a constitutional path. We once did an informal survey of law firms specializing in religious liberty to ask how many religious freedom cases are alive in our courts. Estimates ran from 200 to several thousand.
Yet we have been unable to find in any of those cases a major Democratic politician siding with the religious party. We might have missed someone. The silence, though, is deafening. It strikes at the heart of New York, where beleaguered chasidic Jews face attacks from the state itself, demanding they educate their children in profane subjects and prohibiting the most orthodox of Jews the right of free exercise.
So congratulations to Mr. Adams for his remarks. He expresses a modern Washingtonian view of religion and citizenship — a positive vision of the role of faith in American life. “When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools,” Mr. Adams said. He reminds us of George Washington’s farewell address, in which he urged the American people to ensure the flourishing of religious life to guarantee the wellbeing of the nation.
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” the first president told the nation. “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Washington sought no persecution of secularists. Neither would he brook religious exclusion, and it’s nice to hear the Mayor of New York echo his sentiments.
https://www.nysun.com/article/a-defender-of-faith-emerges-in-new-york
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No me digas! Spain is leading Europe’s feminine swing to the right
After almost three winters of discontent, Europe is swinging to the right and – reminiscent of the UK’s response to the economic disaster of the 1970s – it is women who are leading the charge. Anti-Woke female leaders from Italy to Sweden are offering economic solutions after years of draconian lockdowns. Writing from one of the most continually locked down cities on the planet, Melbourne, I can certainly see the appeal.
Europe’s latest rising star is a 44-year-old member of Spain’s People’s Party and President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso. Six months after her inauguration, the Covid pandemic reached Spain, however, Ayuso’s common-sense approach to the virus preserved freedoms and kept small business alive. Reflecting on a rise in cases in the Autumn of 2020, after cases had previously fallen and a sense of normality returned in much of Spain over the summer, Ayuso summed up her response thus: ‘When everyone was asking to close, with no alternatives, we decided to go against the virus, not the people.’ And it was the people she won. With the most relaxed restrictions in the country, Ayuso became the unofficial patron saint of the capital’s theatres, shops, and hospitality industry. Acknowledging that life in Madrid can be expensive and difficult during the pandemic, she maintained that the one good thing about the city was that you could go for a beer with family and friends at the end of a hard day’s work (something lost on Victoria’s Daniel Andrews).
Leading up to May 2021’s snap regional election, posters of her accompanied by the word libertad! became a common sight behind the bars in Madrid’s watering holes. Her face appeared on the label of an artisanal beer and Ayuso-style papas became a popular dish – they came with two extra huevos: eggs, but also a reference to the expression’s other meaning: ‘with a pair of balls’.
Stylising herself as the ‘freedom’ candidate, Ayuso pitched the election as a fight against the national government of Pedro Sanchez, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, and its months-long application of pandemic emergency powers. The lockdown-fatigued public rewarded Ayuso with a landslide victory – she won almost 45 per cent of the vote. The PP fell only four seats short of an overall majority and secured more votes and seats than all three main leftist parties combined.
Almost two years on and Ayuso is running for re-election this May in a campaign that could see her ultimately face off with Sanchez and become Spain’s first female Prime Minister. The Madrilenian election is seen as crucial before the battle for Spain’s future is fought in December’s general election. Having already established herself as a more credible opposition figure to the central government than the PP’s previous national leader Pablo Casado, ‘Saint Isabel’, as her supporters praise her, is tipped to challenge the PP’s current leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo, and if she does, she has a serious shot at the top job.
It is not just a prudent response to the pandemic that has Madrid gripped by ‘Ayusomania’. Post-Covid, Ayuso cut taxes and red tape in a suite of open market policies that saw Madrid attract US$15.3 billion in foreign investment, growth climbed two points above the national average of 5.7 per cent, and Madrid overtook Catalonia as Spain’s richest region. Further, Ayuso vows to be tough on an increasingly ‘Woke’ Spain and has taken aim at the government’s social program. She has condemned the recently passed law that allows 16-year-olds to change their gender without parental consent arguing that while Spain was the first country to offer publicly funded sex changes and ‘Madrid is the capital of Pride’, this new law is ‘radical’ with the power to harm ‘adolescents who don’t have their sexual identity clear’ as well as whole families. ‘Its type is doing much harm all over the world…’ she observed.
And it seems much of the world, or at least much of Europe, agrees with her. As I pointed out in the lead-up to last year’s Italian general election won by the Brothers of Italy’s sorella Giorgia Meloni, many of Europe’s right wing politicians are united by an aversion to Woke ideology, and many of them are women. Over the past ten years the effects of unregulated immigration from majority Muslim countries and a divisive Woke identity politics have been critical issues for female politicians on the right. As Marine Le Pen has argued, in the face of mass immigration and subsequent attacks on women in France, ‘every woman must be protected in their right to wear shorts or a miniskirt’. When she was the gender-equality spokeswoman for the nationalist Sweden Democrats, and the youngest MP in Swedish Parliament, Ebba Hermansson echoed Le Pen by identifying keeping women ‘safe from sexual violence’ as her main concern. Drawing attention to the changing face of Western Europe, she stated bluntly: ‘If you come from a from a country where women are not worth as much as men, or women don’t have the right to live their lives as they want, when you come [to Sweden] there’s a shock.’
Women seem to agree across the board. Le Pen won 41.5 per cent of the vote in last year’s election – a record both en masse and for female voters. In Germany FridA, or Frauen in der AfD (Women in the AfD), is gaining traction, and Alice Weidel, the recently re-elected leader of Alternative for Germany, who is a strong opponent of what she calls ‘gender idiocy and early sexualisation classes’, led the party to record their strongest performance yet in the states of Saxony and Thuringia in 2021’s federal election. Of note is that Alice Weidel is opposed to the legalisation of same-sex marriage, stating that she supports protection of the ‘traditional family’ while also supporting ‘other lifestyles’. Weidel herself is a lesbian in a civil partnership with another woman. This brings me to the question the Left may ask: why is it that women are leading the Right?
The answer, I think, lies in their unwillingness to be typecast, their commitment to freedom in an increasingly ideologically Woke world, and their unmatched tenacity, or huevos. When the radical feminist activists of Spain’s left criticise her, Ayuso retorts that they reveal their hypocrisy in hating that as a free woman she chose the Right side of the political spectrum. She has also dismissed death threats as things not to ‘make a song and dance about’, echoing the views Afd MP’s Nicole Höchst and Morinna Miazga who are both tough-skinned. ‘I could kill every man in the party’ karate champion Höchst has joked. On the male-female divide in the AfD Miazga laughs, ‘It takes only 10 of us to keep the 82 men in check.’ All quip that as women they can ‘do two things at once’. All have also predictably been called fascists. But as Ayuso states ‘When they call you a fascist, you know you’re doing it right […] and you’re on the right side of history […] In Spain they call anyone a facha who disagrees with the most authoritarian people.’ Unlike Jacinda Ardern and Nicola Sturgeon, I don’t see these women leaving politics anytime soon.
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Leftist racists focus on Nikki Haley
If there is one thing about herself that Nikki Haley has constantly emphasized, it is her pride in being the daughter of Ajit and Raj Randhawa, who emigrated from India in the 1960s.
THE OPENING line of "Can't Is Not An Option," Nikki Haley's 2012 autobiography, is a forthright proclamation of her South Asian roots: "I am the proud daughter of Indian parents, who reminded us every day how blessed we are to live in this country."
It was with those words, wrote Haley, who was then in her first term as South Carolina's governor, that she had begun every speech she delivered during her gubernatorial campaign. It was with similar words that she addressed the Republican National Convention in 2020, describing her childhood in the small town of Bamberg, S.C. "My father wore a turban; my mother wore a sari," she told the delegates. "I was a brown girl in a Black and white world."
And it was with those words that Haley launched her bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, repeating them in her formal announcement video and at her kickoff rally in Charleston, S.C., on Feb. 15.
If there is one thing about herself that Haley has constantly emphasized, it is her pride in being the daughter of Ajit and Raj Randhawa, who emigrated from India in the 1960s. And yet because she goes by "Nikki" she has repeatedly been accused of trying to whitewash her ethnic identity and downplay her Indian background.
Of all the reasons for which Haley can be criticized, that has to be the stupidest and most contemptible.
Haley's first name is Nimarata, a Punjabi word meaning "humility." Nikki, which means "little one" in the same language, is her middle name. She has gone by that name all her life, and when she married Michael Haley, she took his last name.
Nothing about that is unusual, of course. Millions of people have always been called by their middle names. Among them: Willard Mitt Romney, Olive Marie Osmond, James Paul McCartney, and Rachel Meghan Markle. But to some chauvinists and haters, Haley's preference for "Nikki" has long been grounds for attack.
During her first run for political office in South Carolina, her opponent — a 30-year incumbent named Larry Koon — ran ads deliberately mislabeling her as "Nimrata N. Randhawa," depicting her alongside her father in his turban, and labeling her a "Buddhist." (In fact, Haley's father is Sikh; she converted to Christianity decades ago and attends a Methodist church). In case anyone missed the point, the ad dismissed her as not a "REAL Republican." Voters weren't swayed by such xenophobia. Haley trounced Koon in the final by 10 percentage points.
More frequent, however, has been the malice aimed at Haley from progressives, who sneer that she uses "Nikki" to hide her origins and win favor with white supremacists.
"Are you afraid the white folks you're kowtowing to won't vote for someone named Nimrata?" tweeted Talbert Swan of the Greater Springfield NAACP when Haley announced her presidential bid. "You not only want to erase the history of Black people to satisfy racists, you want to erase your own. You're a disgrace."
On ABC's "The View" last fall, cohost Sunny Hostin described Haley as one of those "chameleons" who "decide not to embrace [their] ethnicities" so that they can "pass" for white. She asked, mockingly: "What's her real name again?"
What especially seems to trigger the poisonous barbs about Haley's name is her conviction that America is not a racist nation. When Haley repeated that message during her campaign kickoff last month, the popular podcaster and The Atlantic writer Jemele Hill taunted: "So why did she change her name then?"
Such boorish attacks are more than just another example of the ugliness to which public discourse has descended. They also reflect a resentment toward non-white Americans who reject left-wing dogma. Like those who slur Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as "Uncle Clarence" and Senator Tim Scott as "Uncle Tim," the Haley-haters regard her as illegitimate because she makes her political home on the right.
Happily, there are liberal Democrats who reject such bigotry. "I think the fact that she got to be the governor of South Carolina with brown skin is a very impressive accomplishment," Paul Begala, the longtime Democratic Party strategist, said on CNN last week. "I don't think it's something people ought to be attacking or ridiculing her about."
Whatever else may be said about Haley, jeering her for her name is juvenile and shabby. She has shortcomings aplenty, but they don't include hiding from her Indian identity. As a candidate for office, her record and her views are certainly fair targets. Her foes have every right to aggressively challenge her ideas. But when they go after Nikki Haley's name, they demean only themselves.
https://jeffjacoby.com/26791/let-nikki-be-nikki
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A promising employment opportunity for Australian blacks
Last week the ABC broadcast one of its routine, not news, news stories about the labour shortage in the bush (‘Northern Territory workforce shortages force government, industries to seek employees across globe’). Recently a Four Corners episode presented a similar story focusing on the Griffith region (‘A visit to the town of Griffith tells you everything you need to know about Australia’s worker shortage crisis’).
The ABC routinely produces stories lamenting the absence of workers in rural areas and in Darwin and is not alone in presenting such stories. A quick search of the internet reveals dozens of similar tales of woe across most media outlets.
Meanwhile, a close competitor in frequency of publication are the recurrent stories about the absence of jobs for Aboriginal Australians in rural areas. The federal and state governments have, for decades, been regularly churning out earnest reports investigating the reason why unemployment levels for Aborigines remain much higher than those of any other group in Australia. The reports routinely note that the absence of job opportunities in the bush for Aborigines is a major cause of anti-social behaviour in places such as Wadeye.
What I have been unable to find in any of the hundreds of articles and television documentaries published recently on these two topics, is anyone who attempts to seriously link the two issues. The recent Four Corners episode reported on problems in the orchard industry around Griffith where the general manager of a local orchards said, ‘There should have been 200 workers at the vast orchard, picking fruit from its half-a-million citrus trees.’ The Four Corners report continued, ‘Mr Ceccato found just 20. The award wage for fruit picking is $26.73 an hour, but Mr Ceccato pays his workers $29. He says he couldn’t find more workers even when he offered $45 an hour.’
The absence of backpackers and Pacific Island workers has undoubtedly created a crisis in the rural labour market and the question of why no one is trying to use this crisis as an opportunity to get unemployed Aboriginal youths into work requires examination. Why do horticulturalists prefer to recruit gangs of Pacific Islanders to pick fruit rather than gangs of unemployed Aborigines? Why is the NT government currently sending no less than 20 delegates from the hospitality industry to the UK and Ireland to recruit workers for the NT hospitality industry when there is, theoretically, a pool of unemployed workers already here and, more importantly, why is no one in the mainstream media addressing these questions?
The standard redneck racist answer to questions like these is that the Aborigines don’t want to work and would rather hang around in remote settlements living on welfare. A more sophisticated explanation for the reluctance to offer work to unemployed Aborigines is found in a recent parliamentary inquiry into poverty where we are told, ‘It is etched on the collective psyche of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today that social and economic exclusion was arbitrarily enforced upon us. The ramifications of this exclusion have set the platform for the tragic circumstances experienced by [Indigenous] people in Australia.’
The Diversity Council Australia published a major report last year in which it said that high unemployment among rural Aborigines is due to several reasons including racism and the lack of culturally safe workplaces. (‘Gari Yala Speak The Truth’). To remedy this situation the authors suggested a variety of approaches including, ‘Consult with Indigenous staff on how to minimise cultural load while maintaining organisational activity’, ‘Recognise and remunerate cultural load as part of an employee’s workload’, and ‘Recognise identity strain and educate non-Indigenous staff about how to interact with their Indigenous colleagues in ways that reduce this’.
The fact that employers have to remain mindful of ‘identity strain’ and ‘cultural load’ should they wish to employ Aboriginal staff to pick oranges might go some way to explaining why Pacific Islanders and backpackers are preferred employees.
I can find no evidence that any of the thousands of academics, government officials and Land Council officials whose job it is to solve the issue of rural Aboriginal unemployment has suggested putting together teams of Aboriginal fruit pickers to gather experience in the horticultural industry. This is despite the fact that it offers a unique opportunity to enable unemployed Aboriginal youths to gain work experience and an income.
Instead, the whole of government approach to solving the problem of labour shortages in rural and regional Australia is twofold. Firstly the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme which, now that Covid is behind us, aims to bring even more unskilled and semi-skilled workers to Australia and, secondly, a decision to increase by 30 per cent the number of working holiday visas issued to backpackers.
It is difficult to accept that no one, from all the relevant expert bodies, has considered using unemployed Aboriginal youths to fill the current labour shortage. Possibly the experts are all racist and believe it is a waste of time trying to get Aboriginals involved in low-skilled seasonal work. Possibly they recognise that the challenges involved in creating culturally safe workplaces in orchards are insuperable.
But the failure to link the two issues of rural Aboriginal unemployment and the desperate shortage of unskilled labour in rural enterprises speaks volumes about the hypocrisy and dishonesty in the debates emanating from people who make a living in the Aboriginal grievance industry. Possibly they are all too busy fighting for the establishment of the Voice to focus on concrete steps to get Aboriginal youths into the workforce. Possibly they believe that until culturally safe workplaces are established, it is too dangerous for young Aboriginals to earn a living.
The endless supply of ‘sit-down money’ has to be replaced by a get-up program which will teach the young adults in remote communities less about traditional culture and more about the psychological value of being able to support a family. The story of Nabi Baqiri, the illiterate Afghan refugee who arrived with nothing and is now a multi-millionaire part-owner of several orchards, should be better known.
He shows what can be achieved in this country and, instead of the hoo-ha of establishing a Voice to parliament, his voice is one we should all listen to.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/the-hypocrisy-of-culturally-safe-workplaces
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1 March, 2023
India shows how rotten identity politics can become
Ramesh Thakur
In the UK, where the Conservatives have been in power for over twelve years, the Royal Air Force illegally discriminated against 160 white men in the woke effort to meet its ‘aspirational diversity targets’. Why do we ignore the pathology of sectarian affirmative action policies in the world’s biggest laboratory? After 73 years of constitutionally mandated preferential policies, India is ever more sharply conscious of caste identity at every level of society and in every sphere of public activity.
I am currently with family in India. In my home state Bihar, the most caste-conscious in the country, anytime someone outside the immediate family drops a name into the conversation, it’s accompanied by that person’s caste identity. Where the British divided and ruled, Indians have subdivided and misruled. Politicians find caste identity the most potent tool of mass mobilisation. The president, vice-president, governors, heads of government, party leaders and election candidates are chosen on the basis of caste alignments with constituency demographics. This fuels the victimhood industry among the target group at the expense of merit, application and hard work, while creating fresh grievance among others. What should be earned becomes a matter of entitlement, from school admissions to jobs. Moreover, reservations have steadily expanded to cover an endlessly growing number of subgroups, with even Muslims and Christians demanding quotas for the ‘dalit’ (oppressed) among them despite the caste system being peculiar to Hinduism.
And caste calculations have moved from recruitment to promotion. Over time the dead hand of the state has also intruded into the private sector. Sound familiar with respect to calls for gender quotas in boardrooms, parliaments, cabinets, vice-chancellorships, police chiefs and other high profile positions? But not the low-status, poorly paid, physically demanding and most dangerous jobs.
The very fact of the endless expansion of identity-based reservations is proof of the failure of the scheme. As group-based programs permeate the public institutions of a country, they institutionalise the very divisions they were meant to eradicate. Marketed as temporary expedients, they persist and proliferate. Quotas for the historically disadvantaged castes and tribes were prescribed in the constitution in 1950 for 15 years. Had they worked, they would have fallen into desuetude. Instead they kept multiplying and expanding. On its own internal logic, after more than seven decades of the reservations system being in force, the number and proportion of the disadvantaged has risen alarmingly. If this is not failure, what is? One is reminded of Einstein’s definition of insanity.
Every affirmative action produces an equal and opposite sectarian reaction. The motive underlying preferential policies – to atone and compensate for past group-based discrimination and injustice – is noble. But it implies guilt and compensation are inheritable. By institutionalising affirmative action in favour of some groups, the government effectively discriminates against others, alienates them and feeds their sense of grievance, without necessarily helping the most needy. In conditions of scarcity, the number of aggrieved is several times more than could have got the job or admission.
Every year, about one million Indians apply for the federal civil services, the peak of which are the Indian foreign, administrative and police services. Even after retirement, officials will proudly put IPS/IAS/IFS on their calling cards and house nameplates. In the three-stage process, under one per cent make it to written test, around 2,000 are interviewed and 1,000 selected. The best indicator of their value is the marriage market, literally, in terms of the dowry the men command (long illegal, but that’s another story). Now, consider this. If 1,000 candidates apply for every vacancy and half the vacancies are filled by caste quotas, then for every successful recruit 499 disappointed people will feel hard done by because of the system of reservations. Yet only one of them could have been successful in open competition.
Faced with government-created obstacles to educational and career aspirations, the best and the brightest among the upper- caste ‘elites’ are migrating to countries more hospitable to their talents. India’s loss is the West’s gain. Furthermore, if one’s chances of being admitted into prestigious institutions or getting good jobs are improved by being able to claim a particular identity, the requisite documentary proof will always be available at the right price. The cycle of preferential entitlements and the need to ensure against fraudulent claims lead to an expanding role for government, when the need is to reduce government intrusion into the economy and society.
Preferential policies create and nurture vested interests. Caste is used in India today for capturing political power and distributing political spoils. Meant to reduce and eliminate intergroup disparities, these policies create dependency of group leaders on the perpetuation of perceived disparities. A solution of ethnic or gender problems would deprive the leaders of a platform and a role. Upping the ante by raising ever-expanding demands enlarges the role of group activists and gives them a bigger stage from which to manipulate still more people. Benefits are captured by the better educated, more articulate and more politically skilled urban elite among the ‘disadvantaged’ groups. With regard to gender quotas in politics, for example, there’s been a proliferation of the ‘bibi, beti and bahu’ (wife, daughter and daughter-in-law) brigade. When I was at Otago University, one of my students with a parent who held one of the country’s top three public offices won a scholarship for Maoris to a highly desirable American university. Disadvantaged background? Yeah, right.
Preferential policies foster the values of solidarity based on the cult of victimhood – instead of thrift, hard work, self-improvement and property ownership. Resting on the assumption of superiority in non-target groups, they reinforce the sense of inferiority in target groups. There’s another distasteful consequence. The quota beneficiaries can never escape the taint of unmerited preferment. With the recent Project Veritas exposé of the Pfizer practices on Covid vaccines, how many people thought ‘diversity hire’ without the courage to verbalise this in the current censorious climate?
Like tinpot dictators who rob and bankrupt their countries but send their own kids to Western schools and park themselves in Western hospitals when ill, the top echelons of the Indian ruling elites too have made provisions for education and health services in the West, of course at public expense. If I had my way, they would be forced instead to use the domestic public education system and consult the quota-qualified doctors and specialists for all health needs for their families. Let’s see how long the preferential policies last after that.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/the-perils-of-preferential-politics/
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Christian college takes Biden admin to SCOTUS
Although the Biden administration continues to brazenly mandate gender identity ideology on Christian college campuses, one brave college has just asked the U.S. Supreme Court to protect its rights.
The College of the Ozarks is a religious school in Missouri, and the Christian faith is integral to how it operates.
Not surprisingly, the college believes that sex is created by God and unchangeable. And it runs its dorms accordingly.
Why is the college asking the U.S. Supreme Court for justice?
We’re asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the college’s case because a radical Biden administration mandate would FORCE colleges and universities to open their dorms, bathrooms, and showers to members of the opposite sex.
Colleges that refuse to comply—the ones that hold to fundamental values and refuse to bend the knee to the Biden administration—risk paying massive fines and, in extreme circumstances, even prison.
This is blatantly unconstitutional. And the College of the Ozarks has stood up against this edict.
But three lower court judges have said the college does not even have the right to ask courts for an order protecting their students from this illegal mandate. So the college has just appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to give the college its day in court.
The federal government’s directive that Alliance Defending Freedom is fighting applies to dorms at all colleges where any student can apply—even private, religious colleges, whether or not they accept federal funds.
This case is about countering the Biden administration’s agenda that is at direct odds with religious freedom. It’s about ensuring that a radical gender identity ideology isn’t forcefully imposed on anyone.
The outcome of this case could be a landmark decision for the right of Christian institutions to operate according to their beliefs, not the government’s ever-changing demands.
https://adflegal.org/article/meet-college-standing-biden-administration?sourcecode=10026552_r200
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Political correctness in sport contributes to obesity
For a country crippled by obesity, it's not hard to see where Australia might be getting it wrong. Aside from a tendency to shut down playgrounds and lock every citizen indoors, the discriminatory state of our sports should take the brunt of the blame. In NRL, religious beliefs have practically become grounds for termination, with offending athletes subjected to ridicule and public shame for any case of wrongthink. Even choosing to sit aside while Pride gestures take place has become unthinkable within the game after the abhorrent treatment of seven Manly Eagles players who refused to wear LGBTQ+-themed jerseys.
Not be undone, the A-league recently forced children playing friendly kick-arounds to wear rainbow colours too. Any child that refused was excluded in order to make the event more inclusive [sic]. The prevailing message hammered by our sports has become clear; talent, work ethic, and ability count for nothing if your beliefs don't align with Woke corporate forces.
With over 50 per cent of Australians holding religious views, this means more than half of our population is no longer welcome in our national sports, while public voices continue to ask why obesity or sedentary lifestyles are so prevalent. It's hardly a mystery - if children cannot aspire to reach the same level as their idols on merit, why would they spend time training or practicing? Worse yet, no loving parent would encourage their child to pursue a career path at odds with their values and identity in the first place.
Blocking the prospect of fame and success only disincentivises future generations from leading an active lifestyle, especially in low-income demographics where religious beliefs tend to be stronger and the risk of obesity is higher. Sadly, trusting the Science is not an option on this one; there is no room for medical advice or empirical evidence that dares to question the behaviour of LGBTQ+ activists, a replica of the silence among health experts during the Monkeypox outbreak.
While preventing obesity is possible without farming professional athletes, there is little hope of Australia improving public health if we continue to put politics ahead of practical solutions. Religious beliefs have prevailed through war, genocide, and systemic oppression for thousands of years, they will not cease at the will of hard-Left voices in our sports. Governing bodies must learn to put their bigotry aside and tolerate religious players as a condition of the generous public funding they rely on. There is no reason why taxpayers should continue to subsidise institutions that discriminate against them.
In the meantime, progressive zealots should learn that dress codes and public uniforms share an indistinguishable history with fascism. Mandating Pride colours for the sake of a cultural statement is no better than mandating oppressive religious garb for the same purpose. Such tribalism has no place here.
In freedom, democracy beats culture. It's time for Australia to put true progress ahead of Pride and open our national sports to the entire country.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/a-big-fat-problem/
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Is ‘woke’ dead?
If you don’t live online, you may have missed the controversy over "Hogwarts Legacy", the latest computer game to have been spun out of the multi-billion Harry Potter franchise.
A small but amazingly vocal band of activists launched a vicious campaign against the game because of its connection to ‘transphobe’ J.K. Rowling. Then the game came out and was instantly a phenomenal success – the most popular game ever on the streaming platform Twitch, physical sales of 12 million in its first two weeks of release, earning its makers $850 million (£709 million) in revenue. These cold, hard, commercial facts are like a glass of cold water in the face. The balance sheet shows that we have a very skewed understanding of the popularity and reach of ‘woke’.
Pandering to the young is always a pitiful, undignified spectacle
Elsewhere, we see the smash West End success of Steven Moffat’s play The Unfriend, despite its star turn by notorious ‘Terf’ (‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’) Frances Barber. A friend showed me a hilarious social media post from a true swivel-eyed woke believer who apologised to his followers for attending, and said that, though he’d loved the show, he’d made a point not to applaud Barber at her curtain call. Outside the worlds of showbiz and entertainment, we have recently witnessed the spectacle of Nicola Sturgeon self-destructing after her gender reform bill smashed into reality.
One dares to hope: is woke dead? We keep waiting for a tipping point that never tips. There have been so many false dawns, hefty straws that you think will surely break the camel’s back then don’t.
A global pandemic, it was believed, would make people appreciate that gender pronouns are not humanity’s most pressing concern. But Covid-19 quickly established its own culture wars, as keyboard warriors began arguing about which marginalised groups were suffering most. A major land war in Europe should have been serious enough to bind the progressivist fist for a month or two. But the conflict in Ukraine has barely touched the sides. Even the recent possibility of an alien invasion doesn’t seem to be having much effect on concentrating the crazed human hive mind.
But hang on. Maybe it’s a case not of sudden death, but of a gradual recalibration, a slow unwinding of the sense that ‘woke’ matters that much.
According to a recent YouGov survey, only a small majority of British people say they know what woke means while 30 per cent say they have ‘never heard the term being used’. The same poll showed that, as public awareness of the word has slowly risen, the number of people who consider themselves not to be woke has increased. Of the quarter of respondents who admitted to using the term, around three-quarters said they employed it in a pejorative way. So, for all the undeniable media Sturm und Drang, most Britons don’t think much of ‘wokery’ if they think about it at all.
Recent research from Policy Exchange shows very clearly that woke corporates are viewed with cynicism. Only 10 per cent felt that such entities made political statements because ‘they genuinely believe in them’.
And there was extreme distaste for the practice of firing employees for expressing legal political beliefs on social media out of work hours, with only 12 per cent in support. Again, we see the chasm between the executive class, which takes woke concerns seriously, and the punters, who do not.
Lots of us would like to reclaim our culture from the insane progressivists who have hijacked it over the past two decades. But there remain big obstacles. The biggest is that almost every western institution, public or private, big or small, has a cell of woke activists in it, enabled by their elders.
Our increasingly ageing population is, bizarrely, characterised by this deference to youth. Older people seek out the political validation of teenagers and young adults, even children, when it really ought to be the other way around. Think of middle-aged people wearing ‘ally’ badges, burly policemen shying away from upper-middle class Extinction Rebellion protestors, or the publishing execs who tell authors: ‘We couldn’t get it past our junior members of staff.’
Pandering to the young is always a pitiful, undignified spectacle. The formulation ‘the wrong side of history’ is a factor here too. Netflix has shown the way ahead, letting staff go who noisily objected to the money- spinning output of Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle. As Douglas Murray and others have argued, giving in to these people only encourages them.
Things seem to be changing at the macro-level; the micro-level, not so much. In the past couple of weeks we have seen the cancellation from an arts festival of a show by comedian Samantha Pressdee because two ‘queer’ comedians said they find her ‘very scary’. The suspicious stifling of the new album from Morrissey, which features an angry song about the Manchester Arena bombing; Waterstones shortlisting for its Children’s Book Prize a graphic novel (Welcome To St Hell by Lewis Hancox) in which a teenage girl’s naked breasts are labelled ‘fatty lumps that need to be gone’ and her vagina ‘my imaginary willy’. Chunks of Roald Dahl’s books being rewritten by idiots. If woke is receding, it is a slow and painful process.
But the reason these things continue to happen is that we can’t deal with the reality of the actually tiny numbers of aggrieved activists – in the low hundreds of thousands at most, and existing almost exclusively in the highly developed world. The power of the internet is that it amplifies small but noisy groups and makes them sound like public opinion. We are allowing ourselves to be dictated by a handful of hooligans, a gang that even the other kids don’t like.
Perhaps the best cause for hope is simply time. New things will be needed to stimulate the new young. Firebrand wokeists who came of age in the 2010s are now in their forties. Those junior publishing staff will be senior staff soon, and maybe they’ll have to deal with young upstarts who think (often correctly) that they are barmy and bigoted.
In the UK, an incoming Labour government might be a factor in the dying of woke. You may think this unlikely, given the party’s love of taking the knee and diversity ‘training’, but let me explain. The defenestration of Margaret Thatcher and the coming of Tony Blair led to our pop culture, populated as it is by middle-class bien pensants, unclenching its socially concerned muscles and expressing itself. Look at the joy of daft Reeves and Mortimer after the grim Ben Eltony political shoutiness of 1980s comedy. And not for nothing were the scabrously incorrect League of Gentlemen and Catherine Tate Show the products of a time when the Tories had been ‘seen off’. That’s a silly way of looking at the world, yes, but it’s how TV commissioners think.
Right now we stand at a crossroads. Let’s consider two futures. In Future A, people look back on the 2010s and early 2020s with bemusement. ‘How mad that time was!’ celebrity talking heads will tell the nostalgia shows of 2043. ‘What were we thinking!’
Or we might get future B: the gradual degradation and collapse of western civilisation as this cultural awfulness snowballs through it, as personal liberties taken for granted for centuries evaporate, as crazier and crazier grievances are indulged, as the pillars of the institutions rot, as the state becomes nothing but a gigantic simultaneously totalitarian and crumbling HR department.
I’m very much hoping for A. The numbers are very definitely pointing to A, after all. If it’s B, what a sad society it will turn out that we were, to have been brought down by such a negligible bunch of ninnies
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/is-woke-dead/ ?
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