Jesus of Nazareth and White Evangelical Fragility
There is an article below by an atheist who is very hostile to evangelical Christianity. The points he makes are actually a fairly common critique of such faith. In essence, he is noting that Christians often don't act in a Christian way. They do not actually follow the teachings of Christ. They are too stern, too strict, too intolerant.
And there is no doubt some truth in that. Committed Christianity can be very demanding. And those demands upset our author. But I too am an atheist and I am not nearly as judgmental about evangelical Christianity as he is. Why?
I think there are two things missing in his story. He has no religious feelings and he is intolerant of human frailty.
He also does not understand the origin of Western Christianity as we have it today. Protestant Christianity arose in Germany through the efforts of Martin Luther and his King, Frederick the Wise of Saxony. There had been many other uprisings against Roman Catholicism in Europe before that, and from Giordano Bruno to John Hus to Savonarola, those rebellions resulted in the death of the rebels and no change to the dominance of the church.
So why did the rebellion of the Saxons led by Martin Luther succeed where others had not? It was because it took place in Germany. Germans were different. They were a warrior race and were, as such, fiercely self-confident and independent. Bowing down to priests was not congenial to them. So when the oppportunity arose, they eventually rejected Catholicism in favour of attitudes which were more congenial to them.
They embraced beliefs that centred around the sort of independent individuals that they personally were. The Germanic spirit of independence emerged in a form of Christianity that suited Northern Germans, a form that put power and responsibility for salvation right back on to the individual, with no intervening priest needed.
Luther was a learned Augustinian priest so he was able to find ample scriptural justification for the new faith. Ultimately, however, Protestantism was as much German as Biblical. Protestantism is a German faith
The Saxons in Germany today. For some history of the Saxons see here
And one might note that the other great Germanic country -- aside from Germany itself -- England -- was not so different. In England, Wycliffe was saying the same sort of things that Luther was saying long before Luther said them. And Wycliffe too had the protective support of the King and his court. Wycliffe was over a century before Luther in fact. Luther wrote his "Ninety-five Theses" in 1517 whereas Wycliffe was officially condemned in 1377 by Pope Gregory XI.
The difference with Wycliffe was that he tried to reform the church rather than replace it. He actually died while saying a mass. So Wycliffe might at first glance be seen as another failed rebel. He was not. What he did was set alight a fire in the minds of Englishmen that eventually consumed the church even more comprehensively than Lutheranism did.
He had awakened the old rebellious spirit of the Saxons and that spirit was the principal support for the actions of King Henry VIII. When Henry dispossessed the priests and rejected the Papacy, the people loved him for it. They supported their King, not their priests. Wycliffe had lit a slow-burning fuse that eventually gave rise to an explosion. And that fuse kept burning for so long because it was founded on a Saxon independence of mind among the people. Wycliffe died in 1384, Henry became king in 1509.
I have in a much abbreviated way raised above a large number of issues about Germans and the Germanic people, and I understand that some of my readers may have energetic criticisms of what I have said. So it may be of interest that I cover those issues elsewhere at much greater length.
So my point in all this so far is that looking to the Bible to understand Protestant Christianity is to miss half the story. To an extent what people of German and English ancestry do today reflects German values, not the attitudes of Jesus of Nazareth. If Protestants are demanding and unforgiving of others, they are so because of the Germanic faith that their ancestors devised and which still sounds right to them, the descendants. Their ancestry lives on in them.
And at that point I think I might add a personal note. In my mid-teens, I was an active member of probably the most evangelical Protestant faith in the Western world today -- _ Jehovah's witnesses. And they are very strict and Puritanical Christians indeed. So was I oppressed by them? Maybe but, if so, I loved it. My time as an extreme evangelical is still a warm and pleasant memory to me. The religion suited me. It was in my ancestry. I was true to my Germanic ancestors. And the large number of people with similar ancestry in America today is a major explanation for the prominence of evangelical Christianity there.
It is obvious that there is no one-to-one correspondence between Germanic ancestry and evangelical Protestantism. After all, Germany is still half Catholic to this day. But, as any German will tell you, Germany is not monolithic. As a very rough generalization,the South is Catholic and the North is Protestant. Be that as it may, however, there are many influences bearing on faith or the lack of it but my submission is that ancestry is one of the more powerful influences on it
So our author below is in my submission unsympathetic to evangelical Protestantism because he does not have the requisite religious feelings for it. He does not have the old tough and fierce Germanic attitude of mind that would give him an instinctive understanding of it. And for all his praise of tolerance and kindness he is intolerant of the failings of ordinary Christians. As Christians sometimes say, "We are saved, not perfect"
If Jesus of Nazareth was an actual human who actually existed, this is, apparently, what that man looked like, according to an artist and an algorithm and actual, historical, data (as opposed to a story that white people tell each other).
I am an atheist. I do not believe in god, or the devil, or heaven, or hell. But I like and respect this guy. He was a rebel, he was an antiauthoritarian, he dedicated his life to helping the poor, the sick, the indigent, the people who were discarded and rejected by society. He hung out with sex workers and lepers, and gave comfort to the sick and suffering, and he loudly and relentlessly called out the hypocrisy of the church and its leaders. As I understand it, he was like, “Hey, you’re a sinner. That’s a bummer. Let me help you be a better person. No, I don’t expect anything from you for that. I just want to be as loving as I can be.” He was a really cool guy. He was also a revolutionary, a rebel, a profound threat to the people who were in power at the time.
This guy, in this picture, is not the Jesus I was introduced to in parochial school. The Jesus I was introduced to was soooooo white, like super super super white, and he was keeping an eye on you so he could snitch on you to his dad, who was SUPER PISSED AT EVERYTHING YOU DID all the time for some reason. The Jesus I knew was, like, maybe going to be okay with you, as long as you knew what a giant fuck up you were. And he was absolutely not accepting of anyone who didn’t do exactly what the authority figures at school told us we had to do. And Reagan was essentially his avatar sent to Earth. If we didn’t worship Reagan the same way we were supposed to worship white Jesus, we were going to have a REALLY bad time. Did I mention that I was, like, 8 when all of this was drilled into me?
I deeply resent American Christianity. It has brought nothing but pain into my life. I deeply resent and despise evangelical Christians who turned this guy in this picture, who was reportedly a cool, loving, gentle, dude, who was a legit rebel, into someone who hates all the same things they hate, and who LOVES authoritarians the same way they do. I despise the people who do all sorts of cruel, hurtful, hateful things in this guy’s name. And they are EVERYWHERE in America.
I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the world. What I do know is that, in America, this person has been perverted into a weapon, a cudgel, to be used against the same people the actual Jesus loved and stood up for. It’s disgusting.
And, look, if someone professes to follow the teachings of this dude, whose WHOLE FUCKING THING was “love everyone. Period. No exceptions”, and they don’t, like, do that? They are as bad as the money changers in the temple. I know that this dude loves them, because that’s his whole thing, but I suspect that, if this dude exists, he is disappointed and maybe a little embarrassed by them.
As an afterthought: I can’t stop thinking about how this dude was an immigrant, and poor. I keep thinking that, if he showed up in … let’s say Texas, today, how badly he would be treated by the very same people who use his name and pervert his teachings to exert control over the very same people Jesus spent his entire life looking after.
And, honestly, none of this would even matter if the American Christian extremists would keep their white Jesus out of our laws and government.
https://wilw.medium.com/jesus-of-nazareth-and-white-evangelical-fragility-144b1c19107
**********************************************
Have the Left broken America's backbone?
Americans are now entering uncharted, revolutionary territory. They may witness things over the next five months that once would have seemed unimaginable.
Until the Ukrainian conflict, we had never witnessed a major land war inside Europe directly involving a nuclear power.
In desperation, Russia’s impaired and unhinged leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, now talks trash about the likelihood of nuclear war.
A 79-year-old President Joe Biden bellows back that his war-losing nuclear adversary is a murderer, a war criminal, and a butcher who should be removed from power.
After a year of politicizing the U.S. military and its self-induced catastrophe in Afghanistan, America has lost deterrence abroad. China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia are conniving how best to exploit this rare window of global military opportunity.
The traditional bedrocks of the American system—a stable economy, energy independence, vast surpluses of food, hallowed universities, a professional judiciary, law enforcement, and a credible criminal justice system—are dissolving.
Gas and diesel prices are hitting historic levels. Inflation is at a 40-year high. New cars and homes are unaffordable. The necessary remedy of high interest and tight money will be almost as bad as the disease of hyperinflation.
There is no southern border.
Expect over 1 million foreign nationals to swarm this summer into the United States without audit, COVID-19 testing, or vaccination. None will have any worry of consequences for breaking U.S. immigration law.
Police are underfunded and increasingly defunded. District attorneys deliberately release violent criminals without charges. (Literally 10,000 people witnessed a deranged man with a knife attack comedian Dave Chappelle on stage at the Hollywood Bowl last week, and the Los Angeles County district attorney refused to press felony charges.) Murder and assault are spiraling. Carjacking and smash-and-grab thefts are now normal big-city events.
Crime is now mostly a political matter. Ideology, race, and politics determine whether the law is even applied.
Supermarket shelves are thinning, and meats are now beyond the budgets of millions of Americans. An American president—in a first—casually warns of food shortages. Baby formula has disappeared from many shelves.
Politics are resembling the violent last days of the Roman Republic. An illegal leak of a possible impending Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade that would allow state voters to set their own abortion laws has created a national hysteria.
Never has a White House tacitly approved mobs of protesters showing up at Supreme Court justices’ homes to rant and bully them into altering their votes.
There is no free speech any more on campuses.
Merit is disappearing. Admissions, hiring, promotion, retention, grading, and advancement are predicated increasingly on mouthing the right orthodoxies or belonging to the proper racial, gender, or ethnic category.
When the new campus commissariat finally finishes absorbing the last redoubts in science, math, engineering, medical, and professional schools, America will slide into permanent mediocrity and irreversible declining standards of living.
What happened?
Remember all these catastrophes are self-induced. They are choices, not fate. The U.S. has the largest combined gas, coal, and oil deposits in the world. It possesses the know-how to build the safest pipelines and to ensure the cleanest energy development on the planet.
Inflation was a deliberate Biden choice. For short-term political advantage, he kept printing trillions of dollars, incentivizing labor nonparticipation, and keeping interest rates at historical lows—at a time of pent-up global demand.
The administration wanted no border. Only that way can politicized, impoverished immigrants repay left-wing undermining of the entire legal immigration system with their fealty at the ballot box.
Once esoteric, crack-pot academic theories—“modern monetary theory,” critical legal theory, critical race theory—now dominate policymaking in the Biden administration.
The common denominator in all of this is ideology overruling empiricism, common sense, and pragmatism. Ruling elites would rather be politically correct failures and unpopular than politically incorrect, successful, and popular.
Is that not the tired story of left-wing revolutionaries from 18th-century France to early 20th-century Russia to the contemporary disasters in Cuba and Venezuela?
The American people reject the calamitous policies of 2021-2022. Yet the radical cadres surrounding a cognitively inert Biden still push them through by executive orders, bureaucratic directives, and deliberate Cabinet nonperformance.
Why? The left has no confidence either in constitutional government or common sense.
So as the public pushes back, expect at the ground level more doxxing, cancel culture, deplatforming, ministries of disinformation, swarming the private homes of officials they target for bullying, and likely violent demonstrations in our streets this summer.
Meanwhile, left-wing elites will do their best to ignore Supreme Court decisions, illegally cancel student debts, and likely by the fall issue more COVID-19 lockdowns. They will still dream of packing the court, ending the filibuster, scrapping the Electoral College, adding more states, and flooding the November balloting with hundreds of millions more dollars of dark money from Silicon Valley.
When revolutionaries undermine the system, earn the antipathy of the people, and face looming disaster at the polls, it is then they prove most dangerous—as we shall see over the next few months.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/05/13/last-days-of-the-republic-leftist-polices-could-push-america-to-its-breaking-point/
*************************************************
Economics is basic to public health
The dramatic shortage of baby formula underscores the point: a functioning economy is essential to public health. It’s the same with inflation and food shortages: if you cannot afford to eat or the shelves at the grocery are empty, that results in a diminution of public health. If products essential to life—parts to fix trucks or medical equipment—are unavailable due to supply-chain snarls caused by lockdowns, you have a public-health disaster brewing.
Similarly, if elites attempt to fix a public-health crisis without regard to economic considerations, they will create disaster. And they have, including the worst global food crisis in 70 years.
So there we have it finally, a clear demonstration that those who contrasted economics with “saving lives,” as if a functioning economy was only about Wall Street profits and nothing else, were deadly wrong.
I had to do a quick search to check my memory from early lockdowns but sure enough, it was everywhere: the claim that those who opposed the draconian response were merely putting economics ahead of life. Thousands of such posts were all over Twitter. It was a common putdown on all talk shows.
They wrecked social and market functioning and cannot fathom why we have a demoralized population, a mental health crisis, falling financials, soaring inflation, and shortages of goods and services that are essential to life. This is what the experts recommended and yet here we are today.
Early on, an edict came out in every part of the country to shut the hospitals to everyone who didn’t have an emergency reason to be there, while prioritizing covid in the name of ending the pandemic. This happened all over the United States. It was an action without precedent. And in the places without covid of any substantial degree hospital parking lots emptied, hospital revenue collapsed, and hundreds of nurses were furloughed. Healthcare spending (in a pandemic!) plummeted.
Is it not completely obvious that the medical system is part of the economy? Apparently it is not. And this is likely due to the ridiculous popular notion that economics is only about big shots flipping money back and forth and skimming along the way.
In fact, economics is the pith of life, the study and practice of our daily engagement with the material world, the delicate dance of balancing unlimited wants with nature’s scarce means while working toward the creation of more resources to be available for everyone. There is no getting rid of economics any more than we can put an end to pathogens in the air and in our bodies. It’s just part of reality and we need to learn to manage the challenge well.
The phrase public health is one I like, despite criticism I’ve endured for two years for deploying it. The phrase emerged in the late 19th century in dealing with cholera epidemics. Scientists came to learn that the source of spread was the water supply and hence found a path toward better living for everyone. So the phrase refers both to our health as individuals but also, crucially, the communities in which we live and the products and services we share together.
It does not necessarily mean “provided by the state.” It means literally that which impacts the public. Our longing to live in communities of healthy individuals with shared resources (air, water, roads, commercial sectors) requires that we think and act to live better as people both from a personal point of view and also with an eye toward the well-being of others. In that sense, the phrase is perfectly suitable.
It is precisely the same with economics, and has been this way since the discipline first came to formal attention in English-speaking countries with the works of Adam Smith. It is about individual interest and it is also about the well-being of the community. The core principles of economics are very similar to the principles of public health. It is not just about one pathogen or industry but all aspects of health and the economy, and not just for the short term but for the long term too.
The policies to deal with covid jettisoned not only economics but also traditional wisdom in public health, and we ended up sacrificing both in the long run. You cannot have a healthy society by the crushing of market functioning. That ended up ruining lives and it is still going on today.
Polls show that people say inflation is the number one problem and covid is the least of their concerns; but this disguises the common root of both: both issues trace to the radical mismanagement of the social order by the ruling class, at the expense of everyone else.
The shortage of baby formula underscores the point: it takes a functioning economy to feed the children. If you give that up, people will starve. That the likes of Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates did not think of that—and that the mobs shouted to throw out economics to maintain health—reveals a deep and dangerous ignorance of how a good society functions.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/can-we-now-see-that-economics-does-not-diverge-from-public-health_4474791.html
******************************************************
Support for sexual abnormality becoming compulsory?
A row about rainbows has broken out in football. Paris St-Germain players wore brightly coloured numbers — a show of support for this week’s ‘International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia’. But one player was missing from the line-up: Idrissa Gueye.
PSG’s manager Mauricio Pochettino said that Gueye missed the game against Montpellier – which his team won 4-0 – for ‘personal reasons’. It has now emerged that he refused to play to avoid having to wear the rainbow symbol.
Was Gueye, a devout Muslim who regularly shares messages about his faith on social media, entitled to take such a stand? Senegal’s president Macky Sall thinks so. ‘I support Idrissa Gana Gueye,’ he said. ‘His religious convictions must be respected.’
The French Football Federation sees things differently. In a letter to Gueye, the FFF has reportedly called for him to ‘issue a public apology’ or to clarify that the rumours he refused to play are ‘unfounded’.
Gueye at least has the backing of some other players: Crystal Palace’s Cheikhou Kouyate and Watford’s Ismaila Sarr have posted in support of their Senegal teammate. ‘We wholeheartedly support you brother,’ said Gueye’s fellow midfielder Kouyate.
Now both Kouyate and Sarr are in trouble, too. Crystal Palace manager Patrick Vieira said: ‘We are against any form of discrimination’ and has confirmed he will talk to Kouyate. Meanwhile Watford has reiterated ‘its long-term commitment to…Equality Diversity and Inclusion values’.
The rainbow flag is big business — it is used by corporations to signal their support for LGBT rights. Banks change their logos to display the rainbow. Burger King once flogged a ‘pride whopper’ to celebrate LGBT customers.
Even Newcastle United players, who turn out each week for a club owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, wear rainbow laces. But how does this benefit the Saudi homosexuals facing the death penalty 4,000 miles away from St James’ Park? Do colourful shoelaces help Suhail al-Jameel, a gay Saudi social media influencer who was thrown into prison – and remains behind bars, nearly two years on – after he posted a topless picture of himself wearing leopard-print shorts?
As for Gueye, should we be angry at him for not playing in rainbow colours? Might it be better instead to direct our focus on his club, PSG, which is owned by Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar? Male homosexuality remains illegal in Qatar and the death penalty hangs over Muslims who engage in same-sex relations. At least one gay footballer has spoken out over his fears of playing in the World Cup later this year, which will be hosted by Qatar.
PSG has said that they are ‘very proud to wear this (rainbow) shirt’. ‘The biggest stars of world football were on the field on Saturday and expressed the club’s commitment to the fight against homophobia and all forms of discrimination,’ it added in a statement.
That ‘fight against homophobia’ should start with helping those who have been locked up for being gay, not hounding someone who refuses to play decked out in rainbow colours.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/05/why-should-idrissa-gueye-have-to-wear-a-rainbow-shirt
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Friday, May 20, 2022
The troubling story of how trans activists 'groomed' girl, 17, before she was helped to transition into a man after a ONE-HOUR 'gender clinic' consultation... and at 21 she wants to be FEMALE again
A troubled teenage girl who was provided drugs to transition into a man after an hour-long consultation at a 'gender clinic' is now fighting to reclaim her adult life as a woman.
Tanya, not her real name, changed genders at the age of 18 while dealing with bi-polar, autism, anxiety and depression.
Now aged 21, the still young woman struggles with suicidal thoughts every day as she works to reverse the transition process.
Ms Hunter told Daily Mail Australia her daughter was 'beguiled, groomed and kidnapped' by the transgender community.
'There will be a tsunami of kids like our daughter,' she warned. 'It is like being brainwashed in a cult and if you don't go along with it you are punished.'
Tanya took the hormone testosterone for 18 months and was later supported by the trans community with crowdfunding to raise money for breast removal.
Three years after her journey to manhood began, Tanya admitted herself into a mental hospital on the verge of suicide.
Ms Hunter said her daughter begged her to help save her from what she had become.
By then, the testosterone that had pumped through her veins had wrought irreversible effects on Tanya's body. Her voice had deepened, her hairline receded and she had a significant redistribution of body fat.
Tanya's female body had become masculine, including a massive increase of body and facial hair. She now suffered ongoing vaginal atrophy and dryness, causing her significant pain and requiring constant medication.
Ms Hunter claimed her daughter's story was not unique, with countless other parents sharing their horror stories with her.
'The parents who say, "no it's not the right thing to do" are (attacked) by the kids and the online sites tell them to turn their back on their family. "Get rid of your family. We are your family now",' she said.
When Ms Hunter discovered the myriad of transgender videos and websites Tanya had been viewing online, she was horrified.
Tanya's mobile phone was littered with text messages from a militant transgender activist. 'Snip, snip the motherf**kers. Get rid of them', one read - in reference to Tanya cutting off her parents.
When Judith Hunter's husband messaged back asking him to stop contacting his daughter, the activist laughed.
Determined to see the troubled teen transition, the activist contributed money to Tanya's GoFundMe page for her 'top surgery'.
'They are bold as brass. They behave like thugs,' Ms Hunter said. The activist admitted to Daily Mail Australia they had sent a meme. 'It was like an online manual, what to do, what to say, how to treat your parents and tell them you are suicidal, so you'll end up in hospital where you'll be affirmed by hospital staff who will turn on your parents and take your side,' she said.
The Newcastle mum, north of Sydney in New South Wales, said while her daughter had struggled for three years through high school after being diagnosed with bi-polar, autism, anxiety and depression, she had no history of gender dysphoria.
Tanya's trans nightmare began in year 11 when her mother was forced to take her to a psychiatrist after she threatened suicide. The doctor immediately told the worried mum to take Tanya straight to hospital, where she was admitted to the mental health ward.
'When I went to the hospital the next day and asked to see my daughter, I was told I had a son and there was a male name above her bed,' Ms Hunter said.
'I said 'this is ridiculous' and was then called a hateful parent, bigoted and transphobic. I was told I had a live son and a dead daughter.'
The hospital referred Tanya to the John Hunter Hospital and after just two short appointments, allegedly without her parent's consent, Tanya was put on testosterone.
Juiced-up on the drugs, Ms Hunter claimed Tanya became so abusive her 14-year-old brother would curl up in the foetal position on the floor begging for her to stop. 'It was like living in a war zone,' she said. 'It has decimated our family.'
Over the next three years Tanya lived in filthy student accommodation or with a group of transgender people.
In December last year, she contacted her mum and asked to come home.
'She was deeply suicidal. It was the realisation that even though she'd stopped testosterone for 18 months that things weren't going to go back to the way they were,' Ms Hunter said.
Even while back in the safety of her own home, Ms Hunter claimed the trans community refused to let her go and had continued to harass her family. 'People would have no idea what we have been through since she's been home,' she said.
'Tanya was suicidal because she didn't want to live with what she had done to her body. She deeply regrets it.'
Ms Hunter remains livid the Newcastle clinic that treated her daughter continued to ignore her concerns.
'We went and knocked on their door. Finally, two doctors came out. They said they are not an emergency service. It was like talking to a brick wall,' she said.
'The medical professionals who are telling teenage girls to have double mastectomies before they have reached adulthood are evil.
'Telling our girls that being uncomfortable in puberty is a 'medical condition' have lost their moral and ethical compass. A generation of young people are being harmed and failed.'
Ms Hunter compared sections of the transgender community to an 'online cult', which had infiltrated the medical profession. 'It is a horrific medical scandal.'
President of the National Association of Practicing Psychiatrists, Professor Philip Morris AM, told Daily Mail Australia there had been an explosion in presentations of rapid onset gender dysphoria in the past five years - especially among young women presenting to be trans males.
'The problem is many of the early adolescents don't have a long history of gender issues going back to their early childhood. Many of these young adolescents are coming forward without a history of gender issues,' Professor Morris said.
Professor Dianna Kenny - a psychologist specialising in children - said it was a 'negligent and irresponsible practice of medicine' to approve cross-sex hormones on young people after a brief assessment.
'You don't subject young people to life changing and irreversible treatment without exploring all possible ideologies and options before resorting to radical, off label treatment of young people,' she said.
Professor Kenny said there needed to be radical oversight of gender clinics and more gateways and protections for young people. 'It's a medical scandal aided and abetted by the family court and woke politicians too gutless to speak out,' she said.
'We are now seeing the long-term outcomes with tens of thousands of people wanting to de-transition who have had double mastectomies and cross sex hormones that have changed their body for the rest of their lives.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10827755/Trans-teenage-girl-given-drugs-change-man-wants-FEMALE-life-transgender-activists.html
***********************************************
Is George Washington fit only for contempt?
Jeff Jacoby
"George Washington University needs a new name" was the eye-catching headline on an opinion column published by The Washington Post last week. The 750-word essay was written by Caleb Francois, a GW senior majoring in international relations who isn't happy with his alma mater. I read the column with particular interest: George Washington University is my alma mater.
Francois indicts GW for its "systemic racism, institutional inequality, and white supremacy," which he blames for such alleged shortcomings as the fact that the faculty is only 19 percent Black and that "no African languages are taught at GW." Although a majority of GW's students are nonwhite, Francois derides the admissions office for its failure "to ensure a student body with adequate minority representation."
Can GW be redeemed? Francois suggests four ways to achieve progress: "decolonizing" the curriculum, admitting more Black students, hiring a Black president, and — the marquee proposal — changing the university's name. Stripping all mention of George Washington from the university that Congress itself named in his honor "would cement the university's dedication to racial justice." Francois doesn't say whether Washington's name should also be stripped from the city where GW is located and the masthead of the prominent newspaper that featured his column.
You might expect a column calling for the cancellation of George Washington to offer a substantive critique of the man. But Francois mentions only one thing about him: that he was "an enslaver of men." About Washington the indispensable hero of the American Revolution, about the towering leader without whom independence would have failed, about the only American so highly regarded that he was unanimously chosen to be the nation's first president, about "the greatest man in the world," as George III called him when he learned that the general who had defeated the mightiest military power on earth intended to return to private life — about that Washington, the column says nothing.
Calls to strip Washington's name and image from the public square because he kept human beings in bondage have proliferated in recent years. Not all those calls have been peaceful. In one notorious incident, a statue of Washington was toppled by rioters in Portland, Ore., who wrapped its head in an American flag that they set on fire.
Is Washington's complicity in slavery the only detail of his life that 21st-century Americans should care about? Does nothing he accomplished matter more? If so, then no school should bear his name and no statue should honor his memory, or that of any of the Founding Fathers who enslaved Africans. But not even the most passionate foes of slavery doubted that men like Washington — despite that terrible blot on their records — were entitled to esteem and gratitude.
In his Post column, Francois recommends renaming GW for the renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass, to honor "his work for social reform and equal justice." Yet Douglass himself was not blind to the imperfections or the greatness of Washington and the other Founders.
On multiple occasions, Washington spoke of his philosophical opposition to slavery. He wrote in 1786 "that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it." In his will he left instructions for the eventual emancipation of everyone enslaved by him and for those who had grown old or ill to be supported by his estate in perpetuity. That doesn't erase Washington's culpability in what he knew was an odious practice, but it earned Douglass's admiration. In his tremendous 1852 oration, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Douglass reminded his audience that "Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves." More significantly, Douglass extolled the heroism of Washington and the other Founders:
"They were statesmen, patriots and heroes," he said. "For the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory." Like all of us, Washington and his peers were diminished by hypocrisy and moral flaws. Yet "with them, justice, liberty, and humanity were final — not slavery and oppression," Douglass emphasized. "You may well cherish the memory of such men."
Washington's enslavement of other people was a grievous failing, the worst thing he did on this earth. But only someone blinded by ideology would contend that it nullifies everything about Washington's legacy that was so extraordinarily positive. Without him there would have been no Revolution, no United States, no new nation conceived in liberty, no growing pressure on America to live up to the ideal that all men are created equal.
"Rename George Washington University" may be a catchy battle cry. But whatever ails my alma mater will not be healed by repudiating its namesake
https://jeffjacoby.com/26219/is-george-washington-fit-only-for-contempt
**********************************************
Hong Kong and the surprising truth about the British Empire
George Lai
What would the world be like if the British Empire had never existed? Critics of British colonialism say that the countries that fell under its rule would have been better off without it; the Empire’s supporters say it brought progress and prosperity in its wake.
So who’s right? The truth is hard to find. After all, one of the difficulties in assessing the legacy of British colonialism in many ex-colonies is the lack of a counterfactual. Put simply, we don’t know what a place would be like if it hadn’t been colonised. But Hong Kong is a special case. Since the bulk of China, except tiny bits like Hong Kong, were never colonised by Western powers, a counterfactual for Hong Kong exists: just look across the border to mainland China for an alternative to colonial rule.
Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers have made their way to Britain in recent years as China’s crackdown continues. The affection they feel for the UK is nothing new: in 1997, when British rule was coming to an end, pollsters asked people in Hong Kong their views on the empire. The result was decisive: three quarters said Hong Kong would have been ‘worse off’ and only 5 per cent said ‘better off’ without it. Another poll found that 65 per cent of people in Hong Kong thought that British rule is more good than bad; only 3 per cent thought that it was more bad than good.
Even before Britain pulled out of the peninsula, many people in Hong Kong knew from their own experience what the alternative was – and how little it appealed. The 1961 Hong Kong census found that of the more than 3.1 million people in Hong Kong, half were born in mainland China and only 47.7 per cent were born in Hong Kong itself. Many had fled the mainland as Mao’s terror took hold. They escaped oppression and misery in China; these people – my grandparents were among them – and their descendants, found a better life in the British colony. It’s a story you don’t hear all too often nowadays when discussion turns to the legacy of empire.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that British Hong Kong would compare well to Communist China. But comparisons between China and Hong Kong painted the British Empire in a favourable light long before Mao came to power.
The 1931 Hong Kong census found that of the more than 840,000 people in Hong Kong, 66.7 per cent were born in mainland China and only 32.9 per cent were born in Hong Kong (including those born in the New Territories). The border between Hong Kong and China was much more open before the communists took charge, so migration to Hong Kong was easier in this early period. Similar patterns were true even in the 19th century. Indeed, throughout almost the whole existence of British Hong Kong, it was a hotspot destination for mainland immigrants. These people had the choice of where to live, and in huge numbers they opted to live under the British flag, rather than in China.
Why did they choose to do so? The reality is that while the British Empire was flawed in many ways, it offered a brighter alternative. It is easy to forget that the freedom, human rights and democracy we enjoy in various degrees nowadays are relatively recent developments, only being established in the Western and Western-influenced world in the last century or two. It is tempting to imagine that, before the arrival of Western colonisers, people lived peacefully in harmony, free and happy, in a land with no oppression and discrimination, ruling themselves. But this just isn’t true. In reality, those in China often lived miserable, unfree and powerless lives, under the fist of an emperor who ruled like a brutal dictator, and who in many cases were not even of the same ethnicity as them. Indeed, discontent was ubiquitous and rebellions common throughout Chinese history. Even before the Opium War (1839–1842), the Chinese government was troubled by rebellions and uprisings; the White Lotus Rebellion (1796–1804) and Eight Trigrams uprising (1813), in which some hundreds of thousands were killed, are just two examples. The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) was far more violent still: it resulted in the deaths of millions.
In such a charged atmosphere, the Chinese government routinely resorted to extreme measures to uphold its imperial authority. Summary executions without trial were routine. The summer of 1855 was one of the bloodiest: some 70,000 people – at least half of whom were probably innocent of the charge of rebellion – were beheaded in Guangzhou city alone.
This bloodshed was not unusual; such was the criminal justice system in China at that time. In contrast, in British Hong Kong in the same period, the most high-profile case was the Esing Bakery incident in 1857, where several hundred European residents were poisoned after eating bread from the Chinese-owned Esing Bakery in Hong Kong. The proprietor of the bakery, Cheong Ah-lum, was accused of plotting the poisoning. But he got a fair trial in the colonial court; due to lack of evidence, he was acquitted by the jury. The same is unlikely to have happened on the mainland.
If incidents like this serve as a comparison between the two respective justice systems, it is no wonder a large number of mainland Chinese migrated to Hong Kong in this period. Between 1841, the year the colony was established, and 1857, Hong Kong’s population rose from 7,500 to 77,100 (of whom 75,700 were Chinese). The relatively benign British legal system was one of the reasons that Hong Kong was so attractive to Chinese immigrants.
Of course, we shouldn’t forget the flaws in colonial rule in Hong Kong. Especially in the early period before World War II, racism and discrimination manifestly existed. For much of the time of British rule, the top level of government was dominated by white British except for a few ethnic Chinese appointed to the Legislative and Executive Council. In the 19th century, Chinese people were often treated differently and more harshly than Caucasians by the colonial law enforcement and justice system. And from 1904 to 1946, for ‘public health’ reasons (in response to the bubonic plague endemic that ran from 1894 to 1929, to protect Europeans from the ‘poor hygiene practices’ of the Chinese), ethnic Chinese people were banned by law from living in one area of Hong Kong. This was effectively a form of legalised segregation.
But how did life in China compare? The Chinese government was not democratic, so ordinary Chinese people hardly had more power in China. And while ordinary people in Hong Kong would not have seen their leadership as representative, the same was true on the mainland: up until 1912, Chinese people in China were not even ruled by people of the same ethnicity, nor were they treated equally.
Why? Because the Chinese government from which the British took Hong Kong was not, in fact, Chinese. Instead, it was Manchurian: a group of people who had conquered China in the 17th century. The Manchu ruled over China as alien conquerors, maintaining their power over the culturally different ethnic Chinese people with racist and discriminatory practices. The Manchus had set themselves up as a privileged minority separate from and superior to the Chinese people. Manchus dominated the top level of China’s government, despite only making up a little more than 1 per cent of China’s population. They received preferential treatment over Chinese people legally, politically and economically; they were dealt with more leniently under the law, had more opportunities to enter and advance in government service, and received stipends not available to the Chinese. What’s more, the Manchu and Chinese were administratively and residentially segregated, and they were banned from intermarrying. Indeed, imperialism and discrimination was not a European invention – it had been the norm throughout history until the arrival of modern Western ideals in the modern time.
Given the persistent flow of Chinese migration into British Hong Kong, what did those people who experienced both places at the time say? One of the most famous and respected figures in Chinese history, Sun Yat-sen, also known as the father of modern China, was someone who had such first hand experience. He moved to Hong Kong in 1883 in his youth to study; many years later he became the leader of the revolution which overthrew the Chinese monarchy in the mainland in 1912.
In 1923, he gave a speech at the University of Hong Kong, where he discussed the reason why he became a revolutionary. He recalled that when he came to study in Hong Kong more than thirty years before ‘Hong Kong impressed me a great deal’. He was struck by the order, safety and security in the peninsula, in contrast to the mainland where it was the opposite. And he noted how in Hong Kong, government corruption ‘was the exception’, while in China it ‘was the rule’. His time in Hong Kong led him to realise that a better way was possible – and ultimately took him on the path to seeking to implement a new government based on Western models. ‘We must carry this English example of good government to every part of China,’ he said.
Of course, Sun Yat-sen was no fan of colonialism. As one of the early proponents of democracy in China, he believed that the Chinese people should rule themselves. But the main target of his anti-imperialism was not the British leadership in Hong Kong, but the Manchu in mainland China.
His aim – to free China from the Manchus – ultimately came true. Yet he would have been sorely disappointed by what followed: a civil war between warlords; the Japanese invasion of China; and after that the communists seizing power only to carry out countless atrocities. For decades, waves and waves of Chinese migrants and refugees continued to flee to Hong Kong to find safe haven in the British colony. Now that China imposes its will on the peninsular once more, many now seek a new life in Britain itself.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/05/hong-kong-and-the-surprising-truth-about-the-british-empire/
***************************************************
UK: A bonfire of the quangos should start with the College of Policing
Toby Young
I welcome Jacob Rees-Mogg’s recent announcement that he intends to reignite David Cameron’s ‘bonfire of the quangos’ in his capacity as minister for government efficiency. I’m sure many Spectatorreaders will have a particular quango, or arm’s-length body, they’d like to incinerate and I hope they write to him with their suggestions. I’d like to nominate the College of Policing, which is responsible for overseeing the police in England and Wales.
The college made headlines last weekend when it emerged that it had urged the 43 different forces to ‘decolonise’ their training materials in order to recruit a more diverse workforce. It also advised them to ‘consider introducing gender neutral facilities’ and become ‘Stonewall Champions’ to make themselves more attractive to transgender applicants. In addition, training staff were warned that ‘not giving individuals the time to reflect on unconscious bias training may lead to unconscious bias’.
If you think chief constables will have the good sense to ignore this gobbledegook, think again. In 2014, the college issued its infamous Hate Crime Operational Guidance which introduced the novel concept of a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI). This is defined as ‘any non-crime incident which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice’ towards one or more of the victim’s ‘protected’ characteristics, i.e., their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity. The College advised chief constables that any reports their officers received of these ‘non-crimes’ being committed must be investigated and recorded – and the chief constables duly obliged.
According to the Telegraph, 34 police forces in England and Wales recorded 119,934 NCHIs in the five-year period following the introduction of the guidance, which by my reckoning is an average of 65 a day. If you assume the other nine forces have been recording them at a similar rate – and it’s continued at the same frenetic pace since – that brings the total to nearly a quarter of a million. This is an extraordinary number of man hours devoted to investigating ‘non-crimes’, particularly when you consider the police solved just over 5 per cent of burglaries in England and Wales last year. Such are the priorities of the College of Policing.
Rees-Mogg has written to his cabinet colleagues asking them to consider whether the arm’s-length bodies in their departments are offering good value for money, and by that yardstick the college isn’t faring very well. According to its latest annual report and accounts, available at Companies House, its total expenditure in the year ending 31 March 2021 was £71,078,000. In the same period it brought in £24,285,000 from contracts with customers for training police, meaning it made a net loss of £46,793,000. (The previous year it lost £41,642,000.) Fortunately, that’s a rounding error in quango-world.
‘The directors have a reasonable expectation that the college has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future,’ the report says. ‘The basis of this is continued support from the Home Office.’ Sure enough, in the same year the college lost £46,793,000 it received £49 million in grant-in-aid from the Home Office. Incidentally, one telling detail I noticed in the report is that only 2 per cent of the college’s employees, contractors and secondees in 2020-21 were black. Yet this is the organisation that presumes to lecture the police on how to diversify its workforce.
The accounts reveal that the highest–paid director of the college is on a salary of £207,500, which is a good deal more than the Prime Minister. Presumably, this is the genius who decided to fight tooth and nail when an ex-policeman called Harry Miller challenged the legality of the college’s guidance on NCHIs in the courts and won. (He was miffed when an NCHI was recorded against him for retweeting a comic verse about transgender people.)
The Court of Appeal ruled last December that insisting that police forces record all NCHIs, regardless of how serious they are, is an unlawful interference in the right to freedom of expression, given that they can show up on people’s records when prospective employers carry out Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service checks. Miller estimates that the College of Policing has run up legal fees in excess of £350,000 fighting and losing his case.
Needless to say, the unlawful guidance is still on its website and I expect police officers are still dutifully recording NCHIs to this day.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/05/a-police-farce
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Thursday, May 19, 2022
The plight of black women
I have been reading stories recently that were put up on medium.com. Medium is basically a place where people can put up thoughts and experiences that might not find a home elsewhere. It is primarily a place for opinions about the world or some part of it.
And there are quite a few stories put up by black American women in which they recount their experiences with relationships. And the stories are basically a tale of woe. Like many others, they use internet dating to meet potential partners and they do find that hard going.
Meeting a compatible partner is tricky at any age and always has been. And the big issue is what one finds attractive or acceptible in another person. And you will never get perfection in another person. The other person may lack attraction in most ways but there have to be a few things there that are positive. And what black women look for is not mysterious or unusual.
But they often find NOTHING attractive in black men. They find black men to be inconsiderate, violent, useless and parasitical. And the women say that loud and clear. Some of the entries on medium.com amount to a long hate session about black men
And there is no easy solution to that. The obvious solution is to find a white man in the hope that he will be more civilized. And black women do look in that direction. But white men who date black women are few and they are pretty fussy. They want a black woman with lots of desirable qualities. So at most a black woman has on average only a 5% chance of teaming up with a white man.
So almost all black women are stuck with black men if they are to have any kind of partner. So they are in an unusually unfortunate position. Because they live in a predominantly white society, they tend to acquire the attitudes, expectations and values of whites. What they want is black man who behaves accordingto white standards. And they will very rarely get that
I am not of course saying that white men are always good partner material. With my record of four marriages and many relationships, I would have to be one of the problem people. In the circumstances, I am very glad that at age 78 I do nonetheless have a loving lady in my life. And I met her through the internet! -- JR.
*************************************************
Judge: California’s women on boards law is unconstitutional
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles judge has ruled that California’s landmark law requiring women on corporate boards is unconstitutional.
Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis said the law that would have required boards have up to three female directors by this year violated the right to equal treatment. The ruling was dated Friday.
The conservative legal group Judicial Watch had challenged the law, claiming it was illegal to use taxpayer funds to enforce a law that violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution by mandating a gender-based quota.
David Levine, a law professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, said he was not surprised by the verdict. Under state and federal law “mandating a quota like this was never going to fly,” Levine said.
State Senate leader Toni Atkins, a Democrat from San Diego, said the ruling was disappointing and a reminder “that sometimes our legalities don’t match our realities.”
“More women on corporate boards means better decisions and businesses that outperform the competition,” Atkins said in a statement. “We believe this law remains important, despite the disheartening ruling.”
The decision comes just over a month after another Los Angeles judge found that a California law mandating that corporations diversify their boards with members from certain racial, ethnic or LGBT groups was unconstitutional.
The corporate diversity legislation was a sequel to the law requiring women on corporate boards. The judge in the previous case ruled in favor of Judicial Watch and the same plaintiffs without holding a trial.
The law voided Friday was on shaky ground from the get-go, with a legislative analysis saying it could be difficult to defend. Then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed it despite the potential for it to be overturned because he wanted to send a message during the #MeToo era.
In the three years it has been on the books, it’s been credited with improving the standing of women in corporate boardrooms.
The state defended the law as constitutional saying it was necessary to reverse a culture of discrimination that favored men and was put in place only after other measures failed. The state also said the law didn’t create a quota because boards could add seats for female directors without stripping men of their positions.
Although the law carried potential hefty penalties for failing to file an annual report or comply with the law, a chief in the secretary of state’s office acknowledged during the trial that it was toothless.
No fines have ever been levied and there was no intention to do so, Betsy Bogart testified. Further, a letter that surfaced during trial from former Secretary of State Alex Padilla warned Brown weeks before he signed the law that it was probably unenforceable.
“Any attempt by the secretary of state to collect or enforce the fine would likely exceed its authority,” Padilla wrote.
The law required publicly held companies headquartered in California to have one member who identifies as a woman on their boards of directors by the end of 2019. By January 2022, boards with five directors were required to have two women and boards with six or more members were required to have three women.
The Women on Boards law, also known by its bill number, SB826, called for penalties ranging from $100,000 fines for failing to report board compositions to the California secretary of state’s office to $300,000 for multiple failures to have the required number of women board members.
The Secretary of State’s office said 26% of publicly traded companies headquartered in California reported meeting the quota of women board members last year, according to a March report.
Half of the 716 corporations that had been required to comply with the law didn’t file the disclosure statements.
Supporters of the law hailed it for achieving more gains for women. Other states followed California’s lead. Washington state passed a similar measure last year, and lawmakers in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Hawaii proposed similar bills. Illinois requires publicly traded companies to report the makeup of their boards.
Deputy Attorney General Ashante Norton said alternatives to a law mandating seats for women had been tried in California to no avail. In 2013, for example, the Legislature passed a resolution to get companies to add women to their boards, but few did.
https://apnews.com/article/technology-government-and-politics-california-los-angeles-1ee602b76a4f9707c923a27da5805bcd
**********************************************
Victory for Ted Cruz as Supreme Court Rebuffs Biden Administration, Strikes Down Campaign Spending Rule
In a 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a campaign finance rule regulating the repayment of loans by a candidate to his own campaign, handing a win on May 16 to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who challenged the Federal Election Commission (FEC) regulation.
“[The decision] is a resounding victory for the First Amendment,” a spokesperson for Cruz told The Post Millennial.
“Sen. Cruz is gratified that the Supreme Court ruled that the existing law imposed an unconstitutional restriction on free speech that unfairly benefited incumbent politicians and the super-wealthy. This landmark decision will help invigorate our democratic process by making it easier for challengers to take on and defeat career politicians.”
The appeal to the Supreme Court was brought by the FEC after a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia unanimously ruled against the agency last year.
The legal provision in question is in Section 304 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, which imposed restrictions on post-election contributions by limiting the amount that a candidate may be repaid from such funds to $250,000.
Cruz lent his campaign committee money, and the committee deliberately failed to categorize the unrepaid part of the loan—$10,000—as a campaign contribution in order to launch a First Amendment-based challenge to the rule.
The case grew out of the 2018 election cycle that culminated in the Republican U.S. senator’s victory over Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, by 2.6 percentage points. O’Rourke raised more than twice as much money as Cruz in the high-profile, record-breaking $115 million Senate race.
Cruz wrote in a brief that Section 304 unconstitutionally deters candidates from lending money to their campaigns by restricting the campaign’s ability to repay.
The $250,000 repayment limit, “by substantially increasing the risk that any candidate loan will never be fully repaid—forces a candidate to think twice before making those loans in the first place.” As the district court found, this limit burdens a candidate’s right to speak freely in favor of his own election and “runs afoul of the First Amendment.”
The Biden administration had argued that disallowing the rule would open the door to bribery in elections, but the high court found that the restriction on candidates’ post-election use of political contributions to recover personal funds lent to the campaign ran afoul of First Amendment speech protections.
The decision (pdf) in FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate, written by Chief Justice Roberts, was joined by the court’s five other conservative justices. Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissenting opinion that was backed by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.
“The question is whether this restriction violates the First Amendment rights of candidates and their campaigns to engage in political speech,” Roberts wrote.
“There is no doubt that the law does burden First Amendment electoral speech, and any such law must at least be justified by a permissible interest.”
Roberts then directly quoted the 2014 plurality opinion in McCutcheon v. FEC, saying that “when the government restricts speech, the government bears the burden of proving the constitutionality of its actions.”
The government “is unable to identify a single case of quid pro quo corruption … even though most states do not impose a limit on the use of post-election contributions to repay candidate loans.”
The government failed to demonstrate that Section 304 of the BCRA “furthers a permissible anti-corruption goal, rather than the impermissible objective of simply limiting the amount of money in politics,” according to Roberts.
The rule “burdens core political speech without proper justification.”
Kagan wrote that the Supreme Court, which in recent years has been weakening campaign finance restrictions, was making a mistake.
“In striking down the law today the court greenlights all the sordid bargains Congress thought right to stop. … In allowing those payments to go forward unrestrained, today’s decision can only bring this country’s political system into further disrepute,” she wrote.
Kagan embraced the bribery argument advanced by the Biden administration.
“Repaying a candidate’s loan after he has won election cannot serve the usual purposes of a contribution: The money comes too late to aid in any of his campaign activities,” she wrote. “All the money does is enrich the candidate personally at a time when he can return the favor—by a vote, a contract, an appointment.
“It takes no political genius to see the heightened risk of corruption—the danger of ‘I’ll make you richer and you’ll make me richer’ arrangements between donors and officeholders.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/victory-for-ted-cruz-as-supreme-court-rebuffs-biden-administration-strikes-down-campaign-spending-rule_4468762.html
*****************************************************
Southwest Flight Attendant Fired Over Pro-Life Views to Have Her Day in Federal Court, Judge Rules
A federal judge has ordered that fired Southwest Airlines flight attendant Charlene Carter’s religious discrimination lawsuit against the company and its union would proceed to trial, after the judge denied a request to dismiss the lawsuit.
The case, known as Carter v. Transport Workers Union of America Local 556, civil action 3:17-cv-2278, is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. On May 5, Judge Brantley Starr, a Trump appointee, denied (pdf) a motion for summary judgment brought by the union and the airline.
Starr ruled that the suit should go to trial because “genuine disputes of material fact preclude summary judgment” on all claims.
National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix, whose organization is representing Carter in court, hailed the court ruling.
“This decision is an important step towards long overdue justice for Charlene,” Mix said in a statement. “The ruling rejects several attempts by Southwest and union officials to deny Ms. Carter’s right to bring this case in federal court and enforce her RLA-protected speech and association rights.
“Further, the decision acknowledges that, at its core, this case is about an individual worker’s right to object to how forced union dues and fees are spent by union officials to take positions that are completely contrary to the beliefs of many workers forced under the union’s so-called ‘representation,’”
Carter’s story goes back to 1996 when, as a Southwest employee, she joined the Transportation Workers Union of America (TWU) Local 556. A pro-life Christian, she quit the labor union in 2013 upon learning her union dues were being spent to promote social causes that violate her conscience and religious beliefs.
Despite resigning from the union, Carter was still required to pay fees in lieu of union dues as a condition of her employment. State-level right-to-work laws don’t exempt her from forced fees because airline and railway employees fall under the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA), which permits union officials to have a worker fired for refusing to pay union dues or fees. Despite this, the RLA protects the rights of employees to remain nonmembers of the union, to criticize the union and its leadership, and to advocate for changing the union’s current leadership.
When Carter discovered in 2017 that TWU local President Audrey Stone and other union officials used union dues to attend a pro-abortion event in the nation’s capital and that the company had accommodated local members wishing to attend by rearranging their work schedules, she took to social media to challenge Stone’s leadership. The airline demanded a meeting with Carter, informing her that Stone felt harassed by Carter’s activism.
A week later, the airline fired Carter. Not long after, Carter sued.
“Forced unionism, in all of its manifestations, including this one, is wrong and a violation of individual freedom and liberty,” Mix told The Epoch Times in an interview.
“In this case, we have an employee who is forced under the representation of a union that she does not support, and yet they claim to speak for her in all aspects of her working-conditions life, and when she found out that they were basically promoting causes and ideals that she opposed, she spoke up against it and then she lost her job,” he said.
“This is the coercion that workers across America, whether it be in the government sector, in the private sector, or in the rail, light railway, or railroad or airline industries, face when union officials get monopoly control over working conditions.
“And what we have here is Southwest Airlines, which is really a bad actor in this particular case, and the Transport Workers Union basically teaming up to thwart the political and ideological views of one of their employees.
“Notwithstanding Southwest’s branding that they love their employees, they don’t love Charlene Carter, because she has different political views than the union officials that claim to represent her.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/southwest-flight-attendant-fired-over-pro-life-views-to-have-her-day-in-federal-court-judge-rules_4467430.html
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
