Politicizing The Military Has Consequences (Ideas Have Consequences)

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INTRO

What lies below are three excerpts from articles I wish to highlight. There is much more below, but after reding The Washington Times article and the Monbattery post, this addition to my website was birthed.

I will end with Moonbat discussing the kid from the Air Force who lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy as a night-cap discussing our current military condition in regard to DEI, CRT, and WOKE ideology.

Also below is a 12-page excerpt of Richard Weaver’s book, IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES… a large chunk of his introduction. (INTERNET ARCHIVE has the entire 1948 edition for free.) The below is — I think — a good explainer for the phenomenon we are seeing, and if this culture continues, we will see more of.

HERITAGE FOUNDATION

Since the beginning of the Biden administration how the #WOKE/DEI agenda has been implemented in the military. Heritage Foundation notes this in a 2023 article:

The U.S. Armed Forces have one mission: to protect our nation from foreign enemies. Our troops are as committed to that mission as ever before. But according to a bracing new report, our warriors’ ability to do their job is being undermined by civilian leaders more interested in woke indoctrination and partisan politics than warfighting readiness.

“The Report of the National Independent Panel on Military Service and Readiness” is an urgent warning about creeping politicization at the Pentagon and its corrosive impact on America’s national defense. As the report details, the Biden administration’s whole-of-government embrace of woke politics is becoming a dangerous distraction for servicemen and women who signed up to protect and defend, not virtue-signal. 

The top-line statistics compiled in the report are jarring.

Last year, the Army missed its recruiting goal by 25 percent. They expect this year to be even worse. The Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps began the new fiscal year in October 50 percent below their normal recruiting numbers. Public confidence in the military is falling precipitously, and even military families—from which most recruits come—are less likely to recommend military life.

What explains the decline? According to a November poll, the most common explanations included “military leadership becoming overly politicized” and “so-called ‘woke’ practices undermining military effectiveness.” Another survey found that 65 percent of active-duty servicemen and women are concerned about politicization, including the woke training programs and equity-minded reduced physical fitness standards.

Troop retention rates are falling, too, and for the same reasons. As the report notes, “the perception that non-warfighting missions are distracting senior military leadership may alienate experienced, skilled and knowledgeable warfighters, incentivizing their early departure[.]” ….

For those that need some further confirmation… this is not good. And while there are two more articles to follow, here is a very long quote from an introduction to a book I read in the late 90’s — itself written in 1948, that goes a long way to explain the rotting roots of our current fruit.

  • “Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences.” — Steve Allen

Like I said, this is not a short/pithy post:

RICHARD WEAVER

INTERNET ARCHIVE has the entire 1948 edition for free. – PDF of below:

INTRODUCTION

This is another book about the dissolution of the West. I attempt two things not commonly found in the growing literature of this subject. First, I present an account of that decline based not on analogy but on deduction. It is here the assumption that the world is intelligible and that man is free and that those consequences we are now expiating are the product not of biological or other necessity but of unintelligent choice. Second, I go so far as to propound, if not a whole solution, at least the beginning of one, in the belief that man should not follow a scientific analysis with a plea of moral impotence.

In considering the world to which these matters are addressed, I have been chiefly impressed by the difficulty of getting certain initial facts admitted. This difficulty is due in part to the widely prevailing Whig theory of history, with its belief that the most advanced point in time represents the point of highest development, aided no doubt by theories of evolution which suggest to the uncritical a kind of necessary passage from simple to complex. Yet the real trouble is found to lie deeper than this. It is the appalling problem, when one comes to actual cases, of getting men to distinguish between better and worse. Are people today provided with a sufficiently rational scale of values to attach these predicates with intelligence? There is ground for declaring that modern man has become a moral idiot. So few are those who care to examine their lives, or to accept the rebuke which comes of admitting that our present state may be a fallen state, that one questions whether people now understand what is meant by the superiority of an ideal. One might expect abstract reasoning to be lost upon them; but what is he to think when attestations of the most concrete kind are set before them, and they are still powerless to mark a difference or to draw a lesson? For four centuries every man has been not only his own priest but his own professor of ethics, and the consequence is an anarchy which threatens even that minimum consensus of value necessary to the political state.

Surely we are justified in saying of our time: If you seek the monument to our folly, look about you. In our own day we have seen cities obliterated and ancient faiths stricken. We may well ask, in the words of Matthew, whether we are not faced with “great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world.” We have for many years moved with a brash confidence that man had achieved a position of independence which rendered the ancient restraints needless. Now, in the first half of the twentieth century, at the height of modern progress, we behold unprecedented outbreaks of hatred and violence; we have seen whole nations desolated by war and turned into penal camps by their conquerors; we find half of mankind looking upon the other half as criminal. Everywhere occur symptoms of mass psychosis. Most portentous of all, there appear diverging bases of value, so that our single planetary globe is mocked by worlds of different understanding. These signs of disintegration arouse fear, and fear leads to desperate unilateral efforts toward survival, which only forward the process.

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

One may be accused here of oversimplifying the historical process, but I take the view that the conscious policies of men and governments are not mere rationalizations of what has been brought about by unaccountable forces. They are rather deductions from our most basic ideas of human destiny, and they have a great, though not unobstructed, power to determine our course.

For this reason I turn to William of Occam as the best representative of a change which came over man’s conception of reality at this historic juncture. It was William of Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals have a real existence. His triumph tended to leave universal terms mere names serving our convenience. The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man; and the answer to the question is decisive for one’s view of the nature and destiny of humankind. The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses. With this change in the affirmation of what is real, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn, and we are on the road to modern empiricism.

It is easy to be blind to the significance of a change because it is remote in time and abstract in character. Those who have not discovered that world view is the most important thing about a man, as about the men composing a culture, should consider the train of circumstances which have with perfect logic proceeded from this. The denial of universals carries with it the denial of everything transcending experience. The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably—though ways are found to hedge on this—the denial of truth. With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relativism of “man the measure of all things.” The witches spoke with the habitual equivocation of oracles when they told man that by this easy choice he might realize himself more fully, for they were actually initiating a course which cuts one off from reality. Thus began the “abomination of desolation” appearing today as a feeling of alienation from all fixed truth.

Because a change of belief so profound eventually influences every concept, there emerged before long a new doctrine of nature. Whereas nature had formerly been regarded as imitating a transcendent model and as constituting an imperfect reality, it was henceforth looked upon as containing the principles of its own constitution and behavior. Such revision has had two important consequences for philosophical inquiry. First, it encouraged a careful study of nature, which has come to be known as science, on the supposition that by her acts she revealed her essence. Second, and by the same operation, it did away with the doctrine of forms imperfectly realized. Aristotle had recognized an element of unintelligibility in the world, but the view of nature as a rational mechanism expelled this element. The expulsion of the element of unintelligibility in nature was followed by the abandonment of the doctrine of original sin. If physical nature is the totality and if man is of nature, it is impossible to think of him as suffering from constitutional evil; his defections must now be attributed to his simple ignorance or to some kind of social deprivation. One comes thus by clear deduction to the corollary of the natural goodness of man.

And the end is not yet. If nature is a self-operating mechanism and man is a rational animal adequate to his needs, it is next in order to elevate rationalism to the rank of a philosophy. Since man proposed now not to go beyond the world, it was proper that he should regard as his highest intellectual vocation methods of interpreting data supplied by the senses. There followed the transition to Hobbes and Locke and the eighteenth-century rationalists, who taught that man needed only to reason correctly upon evidence from nature. The question of what the world was made for now becomes meaningless because the asking of it presupposes something prior to nature in the order of existents. Thus it is not the mysterious fact of the world’s existence which interests the new man but explanations of how the world works. This is the rational basis for modern science, whose systemization of phenomena is, as Bacon declared in the New Atlantis, a means to dominion.

At this stage religion begins to assume an ambiguous dignity, and the question of whether it can endure at all in a world of rationalism and science has to be faced. One solution was deism, which makes God the outcome of a rational reading of nature. But this religion, like all those which deny antecedent truth, was powerless to bind; it merely left each man to make what he could of the world open to the senses. There followed references to “nature and nature’s God,” and the anomaly of a “humanized” religion.

Materialism loomed next on the horizon, for it was implicit in what had already been framed. Thus it soon became imperative to explain man by his environment, which was the work of Darwin and others in the nineteenth century (it is further significant of the pervasive character of these changes that several other students were arriving at similar explanations when Darwin published in 1859). If man came into this century trailing clouds of transcendental glory, he was now accounted for in a way that would satisfy the positivists.

With the human being thus firmly ensconced in nature, it at once became necessary to question the fundamental character of his motivation. Biological necessity, issuing in the survival of the fittest, was offered as the causa causans, after the important question of human origin had been decided in favor of scientific materialism.

After it has been granted that man is molded entirely by environmental pressures, one is obligated to extend the same theory of causality to his institutions. The social philosophers of the nineteenth century found in Darwin powerful support for their thesis that human beings act always out of economic incentives, and it was they who completed the abolishment of freedom of the will. The great pageant of history thus became reducible to the economic endeavors of individuals and classes; and elaborate prognoses were constructed on the theory of economic conflict and resolution. Man created in the divine image, the protagonist of a great drama in which his soul was at stake, was replaced by man the wealth-seeking and-consuming animal.

Finally came psychological behaviorism, which denied not only freedom of the will but even such elementary means of direction as instinct. Because the scandalous nature of this theory is quickly apparent, it failed to win converts in such numbers as the others; yet it is only a logical extension of them and should in fairness be embraced by the upholders of material causation. Essentially, it is a reduction to absurdity of the line of reasoning which began when man bade a cheerful goodbye to the concept of transcendence.

There is no term proper to describe the condition in which he is now left unless it be “abysmality.” He is in the deep and dark abysm, and he has nothing with which to raise himself. His life is practice without theory. As problems crowd upon him, he deepens confusion by meeting them with ad hoc policies. Secretly he hungers for truth but consoles himself with the thought that life should be experimental. He sees his institutions crumbling and rationalizes with talk of emancipation. Wars have to be fought, seemingly with increased frequency; therefore he revives the old ideals—ideals which his present assumptions actually render meaningless—and, by the machinery of state, forces them again to do service. He struggles with the paradox that total immersion in matter unfits him to deal with the problems of matter.

His decline can be represented as a long series of abdications. He has found less and less ground for authority at the same time he thought he was setting himself up as the center of authority in the universe; indeed, there seems to exist here a dialectic process which takes away his power in proportion as he demonstrates that his independence entitles him to power.

This story is eloquently reflected in changes that have come over education. The shift from the truth of the intellect to the facts of experience followed hard upon the meeting with the witches. A little sign appears, “a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand,” in a change that came over the study of logic in the fourteenth century—the century of Occam. Logic became grammaticized, passing from a science which taught men vere loqui to one which taught recte loqui or from an ontological division by categories to a study of signification, with the inevitable focus upon historical meanings. Here begins the assault upon definition: if words no longer correspond to objective realities, it seems no great wrong to take liberties with words. From this point on, faith in language as a means of arriving at truth weakens, until our own age, filled with an acute sense of doubt, looks for a remedy in the new science of semantics.

So with the subject matter of education. The Renaissance increasingly adapted its course of study to produce a successful man of the world, though it did not leave him without philosophy and the graces, for it was still, by heritage, at least, an ideational world and was therefore near enough transcendental conceptions to perceive the dehumanizing effects of specialization. In the seventeenth century physical discovery paved the way for the incorporation of the sciences, although it was not until the nineteenth that these began to challenge the very continuance of the ancient intellectual disciplines. And in this period the change gained momentum, aided by two developments of overwhelming influence. The first was a patent increase in man’s dominion over nature which dazzled all but the most thoughtful; and the second was the growing mandate for popular education. The latter might have proved a good in itself, but it was wrecked on equalitarian democracy’s unsolvable problem of authority: none was in a position to say what the hungering multitudes were to be fed. Finally, in an abject surrender to the situation, in an abdication of the authority of knowledge, came the elective system. This was followed by a carnival of specialism, professionalism, and vocationalism, often fostered and protected by strange bureaucratic devices, so that on the honored name of university there traded a weird congeries of interests, not a few of which were anti-intellectual even in their pretensions. Institutions of learning did not check but rather contributed to the decline by losing interest in Homo sapiens to develop Homo faber.

Studies pass into habits, and it is easy to see these changes reflected in the dominant type of leader from epoch to epoch. In the seventeenth century it was, on the one side, the royalist and learned defender of the faith and, on the other, aristocratic intellectuals of the type of John Milton and the Puritan theocrats who settled New England. The next century saw the domination of the Whigs in England and the rise of encyclopedists and romanticists on the Continent, men who were not without intellectual background but who assiduously cut the mooring strings to reality as they succumbed to the delusion that man is by nature good. Frederick the Great’s rebuke to a sentimentalist, “Ach, mehn lheber Sulzer, er kennt nhcht dhese verdammte Rasse,” epitomizes the difference between the two outlooks. The next period witnessed the rise of the popular leader and demagogue, the typical foe of privilege, who broadened the franchise in England, wrought revolution on the Continent, and in the United States replaced the social order which the Founding Fathers had contemplated with demagogism and the urban political machine. The twentieth century ushered in the leader of the masses, though at this point there occurs a split whose deep significance we shall have occasion to note. The new prophets of reform divide sharply into sentimental humanitarians and an elite group of remorseless theorists who pride themselves on their freedom from sentimentality. Hating this world they never made, after its debauchery of centuries, the modern Communists— revolutionaries and logicians—move toward intellectual rigor. In their decision lies the sharpest reproach yet to the desertion of intellect by Renaissance man and his successors. Nothing is more disturbing to modern men of the West than the logical clarity with which the Communists face all problems. Who shall say that this feeling is not born of a deep apprehension that here are the first true realists in hundreds of years and that no dodging about in the excluded middle will save Western liberalism?

This story of man’s passage from religious or philosophical transcendentalism has been told many times, and, since it has usually been told as a story of progress, it is extremely difficult today to get people in any number to see contrary implications. Yet to establish the fact of decadence is the most pressing duty of our time because, until we have demonstrated that cultural decline is a historical fact—which can be established—and that modern man has about squandered his estate, we cannot combat those who have fallen prey to hysterical optimism.

Such is the task, and our most serious obstacle is that people traveling this downward path develop an insensibility which increases with their degradation. Loss is perceived most clearly at the beginning; after habit becomes implanted, one beholds the anomalous situation of apathy mounting as the moral crisis deepens. It is when the first faint warnings come that one has the best chance to save himself; and this, I suspect, explains why medieval thinkers were extremely agitated over questions which seem to us today without point or relevance. If one goes on, the monitory voices fade out, and it is not impossible for him to reach a state in which his entire moral orientation is lost. Thus in the face of the enormous brutality of our age we seem unable to make appropriate response to perversions of truth and acts of bestiality. Multiplying instances show complacency in the presence of contradiction which denies the heritage of Greece, and a callousness to suffering which denies the spirit of Christianity. Particularly since the great wars do we observe this insentience. We approach a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity to perceive it and degraded without means to measure our descent.

That is why, when we reflect upon the cataclysms of the age, we are chiefly impressed with the failure of men to rise to the challenge of them. In the past, great calamities have called forth, if not great virtues, at least heroic postures; but after the awful judgments pronounced against men and nations in recent decades, we detect notes of triviality and travesty. A strange disparity has developed between the drama of these actions and the conduct of the protagonists, and we have the feeling of watching actors who do not comprehend their roles.

Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil. Hope of restoration depends upon recovery of the “ceremony of innocence,” of that clearness of vision and knowledge of form which enable us to sense what is alien or destructive, what does not comport with our moral ambition. The time to seek this is now, before we have acquired the perfect insouciance of those who prefer perdition. For, as the course goes on, the movement turns centrifugal; we rejoice in our abandon and are never so full of the sense of accomplishment as when we have struck some bulwark of our culture a deadly blow.

In view of these circumstances, it is no matter for surprise that, when we ask people even to consider the possibility of decadence, we meet incredulity and resentment. We must consider that we are in effect asking for a confession of guilt and an acceptance of sterner obligation; we are making demands in the name of the ideal or the suprapersonal, and we cannot expect a more cordial welcome than disturbers of complacency have received in any other age. On the contrary, our welcome will rather be less today, for a century and a half of bourgeois ascendancy has produced a type of mind highly unreceptive to unsettling thoughts. Added to this is the egotism of modern man, fed by many springs, which will scarcely permit the humility needed for self-criticism.

The apostles of modernism usually begin their retort with catalogues of modern achievement, not realizing that here they bear witness to their immersion in particulars. We must remind them that we cannot begin to enumerate until we have defined what is to be sought or proved. It will not suffice to point out the inventions and processes of our century unless it can be shown that they are something other than a splendid efflorescence of decay. Whoever desires to praise some modern achievement should wait until he has related it to the professed aims of our civilization as rigorously as the Schoolmen related a corollary to their doctrine of the nature of God. All demonstrations lacking this are pointless.

If it can be agreed, however, that we are to talk about ends before means, we may begin by asking some perfectly commonplace questions about the condition of modern man. Let us, first of all, inquire whether he knows more or is, on the whole, wiser than his predecessors.

This is a weighty consideration, and if the claim of the modern to know more is correct, our criticism falls to the ground, for it is hardly to be imagined that a people who have been gaining in knowledge over the centuries have chosen an evil course.

Naturally everything depends on what we mean by knowledge. I shall adhere to the classic proposition that there is no knowledge at the level of sensation, that therefore knowledge is of universals, and that whatever we know as a truth enables us to predict. The process of learning involves interpretation, and the fewer particulars we require in order to arrive at our generalization, the more apt pupils we are in the school of wisdom.

The whole tendency of modern thought, one might say its whole moral impulse, is to keep the individual busy with endless induction. Since the time of Bacon the world has been running away from, rather than toward, first principles, so that, on the verbal level, we see “fact” substituted for “truth,” and on the philosophic level, we witness attack upon abstract ideas and speculative inquiry. The unexpressed assumption of empiricism is that experience will tell us what we are experiencing. In the popular arena one can tell from certain newspaper columns and radio programs that the average man has become imbued with this notion and imagines that an industrious acquisition of particulars will render him a man of knowledge. With what pathetic trust does he recite his facts! He has been told that knowledge is power, and knowledge consists of a great many small things.

Thus the shift from speculative inquiry to investigation of experience has left modern man so swamped with multiplicities that he no longer sees his way. By this we understand Goethe’s dictum that one may be said to know much only in the sense that he knows little. If our contemporary belongs to a profession, he may be able to describe some tiny bit of the world with minute fidelity, but still he lacks understanding. There can be no truth under a program of separate sciences, and his thinking will be invalidated as soon as ab extra relationships are introduced.

The world of “modern” knowledge is like the universe of Eddington, expanding by diffusion until it approaches the point of nullity….

Wow, wow, wow. Think of the movement on the Left to say, as one example, that men can give birth and menstruate. Weaver was prophetic in his noting how bad this zeitgeist was going to get.

Okay, pivoting BACK TO our military and consequences of ideas that harm it’s readiness and the type of young people applying. What I mean when I say that is that the young officer class have typically one through university and many have accepted the CRT/WOKE/DEI junk — what Weaver would call “hysterical optimism.”

WASHINGTON TIMES

Here is the WaTi article excerpt:

Recently, Ashish Vazirani, the Pentagon‘s acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness, testified to the House Armed Services Committee that the U.S. military missed its 2023 recruiting goals by 41,000.

Jake Bequette, an Army veteran and former U.S. Senate candidate from Arkansas, responded to this report by suggesting that no one should be surprised. Why? Because of what we’re teaching in our nation’s schools.

“In our education system today, so few young people are hearing real history,” Mr. Bequette said. “They’re hearing our American heroes being represented as evil racists … who were doing all these terrible things to disadvantaged people. And that really is shaping the views of America’s youth and making them have less respect for our institutions, have less respect for our history, and therefore making them less liable to want to put their lives potentially on the line to serve in our country’s military.”

Unless you’ve been sleeping through the past three or more decades, it’s virtually impossible for you to disagree with Mr. Bequette. Consider just a handful of examples of the intellectual malfeasance being foisted on the next generation of America’s leaders at your tax-supported schools, colleges and universities.  

At the University of Minnesota, a liberal arts professor named Melanie Yazzie has received national attention for leading a “teach-in” whereby she calls for her students to “dismantle” and “decolonize” America.

“We’re all indigenous people who come from nations who are under occupation by the United States government,” Ms. Yazzie said. “It’s our responsibility as people within the United Statesto decolonize this place. … [America] is the greatest predator empire that has ever existed. We want the U.S. out of everywhere,” including “Turtle Island” — a name used by some Native American tribes to describe North America.

She went on to say that “the goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States for the freedom and the future of all life on this planet. [We] need to lean into the fact that colonizers are scared. Lean into scaring them and making them feel uncomfortable!”

In Milwaukee, the public school system is touting “classroom resources for all ages” to support a curriculum called “Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.” A search of this organization’s website reveals the program’s 13 guiding principles. They include “Restorative Justice,” “Globalism,” “Queer Affirming” and “Transgender Affirming” as their primary goals.

The 11th principle, “Black Villages,” states: “We disrupt the narrow Western prescribed nuclear family structure. … We support each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another, especially ‘our’ children.” 

Tina Descovich, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, says it best in response to this BLM agenda:

“We are in a crisis in America in public education. We have the lowest test scores since the 1980s in reading and the lowest math scores ever. Yet we have organizations like Black Lives Matter that are setting aside a whole, entire week, the first week of February, to drive their ideology, [an ideology] that [is] divisive and [seeks] to destroy our culture and our country,” she said.

Ms. Descovich goes on to suggest that nearly all of our nation’s schools are pushing this divisive material as “a cover-up for public education’s failure.” 

Do you remember in 2020, when rioters from Minneapolis to Miami were chanting, “Death to Israel, death to America, from Gaza to Minnesota, globalize the intifada”? There’s a reason that thousands of young people marched like lemmings to the drumbeat of such blatant and undisguised antisemitism, anti-Americanism and anti-colonialism. That reason is found in what the schools, colleges and universities are teaching your children.

Call me crazy, but maybe the U.S. military is falling short of its recruiting goals by the tens of thousands because of the culturally suicidal propaganda being peddled by our country’s teachers unions and educational elites. 

When you indoctrinate one generation after another that America needs to be “dismantled” and “decolonized,” why would you think those same young people would want to make the ultimate sacrifice to defend it? ……

Which brings us to the most recent example of a person filled with lies, and it’s consequences in his life.

Aaron Bushnell’s LEFTISM

Now, this person was left leaning already, but I am sure his higher ed institution pushed him even further. What do I mean? The NEW YORK POST mentions he was attending Southern New Hampshire University. Here is the skinny on that institution:

The College Republicans at Southern New Hampshire University, along with a national free speech group, want clarity on the approval process to host speakers on campus this semester.

The controversy stems from comments that events administrator Denise Morin allegedly made to Kyle Urban, the president of the student GOP group, when the group hosted Republican congressional candidate Karoline Leavitt.

[….]

Morin allegedly told Urban that the “university must substantively review and approve all proposed speakers to ensure they are ‘not so controversial that they would draw unwanted demonstrators’ to campus,” according to a letter sent by Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

The requirement is “not new and does not ban controversial speakers,” SNHU spokesperson Siobhan Lopez told The College Fix on September 16.

“[SNHU] seeks to promote and facilitate the exchange of innovative and diverse ideas, and we welcome speakers with a broad range of viewpoints and backgrounds to foster a diverse and rich educational experience for members of the University Community,” Lopez wrote. “Our policies are compliant with both state and federal laws and allow for the free flow of information and ideas while ensuring campus safety.”

[….]

“Accordingly, the President, or his/her designee(s), reserve(s) the right to modify the circumstances (including time, location, public attendance, etc.) of an event or withdraw the invitation to speak in those cases where there exists a reasonably foreseeable risk of violence or substantial disruption of the essential operations of the University associated with an event.”….

(See THE COLLEGE FIX and FIRE for more)

Since all the violent interruptions of speakers come from the left, essentially no conservative speaker would be allowed according to this policy. I noted this one of my posts many years ago in trying to define and describe Fascism:

  • ….when people like Ann Coulter or David Horowitz go on campus, Democrat and leftist students ramp up the death threats and attempted takeover of the mic and stage. When people like Cindy Sheehan or Maureen Dowd go to a university campus, they are treated like heroes and no personal security is needed….

NEW YORK POST

The NEW YORK POST continues:

Aaron liked two Ohio-based anarchist groups — Burning River Anarchist Collective and Mutual Aid Street Solidarity — on his Facebook page.

He also gave the thumbs-up to an account belonging to the Kent State University chapter of the radical pro-Hamas group Students for Justice in Palestine.

In late December, Burning River touted two books for readers, including one titled, “Nourishing Resistance,’’ on its Facebook page.

On Oct. 17, 10 days after the Palestinian terror group Hamas launched its massacre in Israel, sparking the Gaza war, the anarchist group also linked to an interview by the Black Rose Anarchist Federation titled, “Voices from the Front Line Against the Occupation: Interview with Palestinian Anarchists.’’

It interviewed Fauda, “a small group centered in the West Bank that identifies itself as a Palestinian anarchist organization, to get their perspective on the current struggle.

“We hope that this interview will be a step in creating more connections between revolutionaries in the US and the militant youth in Palestine, and more knowledge and understanding of each other,’’ Black Rose said.

The Fauda member interviewed said during the conversation, “I want to tell all our brothers around the world, not just in the United States, to never trust what the global media empire tells you.

“I want you to know something else, which is that the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas do not represent us, the Palestinian people, at all. We reject authority and we reject Abbas and all his ministers.”

Burning River declined comment to The Post on Monday, saying in an email that “none of us knew’’ Aaron Bushnell.

[….]

Two people who claimed to be friends of Bushnell spoke to independent journalist Talia Jane, who posted their words to X on Monday.

“He is one of the most principled comrades I’ve ever known,” said a person called Xylem, who apparently had worked with Bushnell to support San Antonio’s unhoused residents.

Another friend called Errico, who said they had met Bushnell in 2022, added, “Aaron is the kindest, gentlest, silliest little kid in the Air Force.

“He’s always trying to think about how we can actually achieve liberation for all with a smile on his face.’’

Anarcho-Left Fascism

In fact… the entire “facade” of this conflict has it’s origins in communist propaganda and antisemitism. Of course whenever you see “anarchist,” especially in Western youth, know that is is collectivism of a communist type. Dennis Prager even mused on this years ago: “This is a recovered audio from my old Vimeo from April 2nd, 2011. It is Dennis Prager discussing how what the Left thinks is anarchy is nothing close to it.”

Which leads us to the most recent example of the state of our cultural decline, quoting Weaver from above:

  • It is easy to be blind to the significance of a change because it is remote in time and abstract in character. Those who have not discovered that world view is the most important thing about a man, as about the men composing a culture, should consider the train of circumstances which have with perfect logic proceeded from this.

Drowning In Lies

  • The thief comes only to steal, slaughter, and destroy. (John 10:10a, ISV)
  • Be clear-minded and alert. Your opponent, the Devil, is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8, ISV)

I noted to my boys the following regarding the topic MOONBATTERY will be bringing up (Air Force Member Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation/suicide outside the Israeli embassy):

  • The one positive that I can pull out of that whole Air Force kid is that at least he hurt himself. It’s tragic. I wish someone could have been able to talk him out of it. But, hurting himself versus hurting fellow service members to make a statement… I’m going with the the former.

My oldest responded in part: “I agree… I just am mad that the propaganda got to him. He fed on lies.” Yep.

To another friend I said something similar: “I wish someone was able to intervene in some way through conversation to get a ‘break through’.” To which he responded with a point I thought was sound, and a commentary that matches Weaver’s in some fashion:

  • your empathy is admirable. However, I’m confident it would have taken a lot more than conversation to persuade that guy. I don’t mean to go full armchair psychologists, but doing something like that suggests a fair degree of sociopathy as well as narcissistic delusion. — J.N.

Weaver notes on pages 53-54 this:

Obsession, according to the canons of psychology, occurs when an innocuous idea is substituted for a painful one. The victim simply avoids recognizing the thing which will hurt. We have seen that the most painful confession for the modern egotist to make is that there is a center of responsibility. He has escaped it by taking his direction with reference to the smallest points.

In one post I explain that much of the distorted view within the black community that harms it, and often leads to violence, is narcissism. So thinking through this this morning, I would add that this kid had the propensity to harm others as part of his statement based in lies and his egoism.

ON THE SIDE OF ANGELS

CUE MAMET:

One might say that the politician, the doctor, and the dramatist make their living from human misery; the doctor in attempting to alleviate it, the politician to capitalize on it, and the dramatist, to describe it.

But perhaps that is too epigrammatic.

When I was young, there was a period in American drama in which the writers strove to free themselves of the question of character.

Protagonists of their worthy plays had made no choices, but were afflicted by a condition not of their making; and this condition, homosexuality, illness, being a woman, etc., was the center of the play. As these protagonists had made no choices, they were in a state of innocence. They had not acted, so they could not have sinned.

A play is basically an exercise in the raising, lowering, and altering of expectations (such known, collectively, as the Plot); but these plays dealt not with expectations (how could they, for the state of the protagonist was not going to change?) but with sympathy.

What these audiences were witnessing was not a drama, but a troublesome human condition displayed as an attraction. This was, formerly, known as a freak show.

The subjects of these dramas were bearing burdens not of their choosing, as do we all. But misfortune, in life, we know, deserves forbearance on the part of the unafflicted. For though the display of courage in the face of adversity is worthy of all respect, the display of that respect by the unaffected is presumptuous and patronizing.

One does not gain merit from congratulating an afflicted person for his courage. One only gains entertainment.

Further, endorsement of the courage of the affliction play’s hero was not merely impertinent, but, more basically, spurious, as applause was vouchsafed not to a worthy stoic, but to an actor portraying him.

These plays were an (unfortunate) by-product of the contemporary love-of-the-victim. For a victim, as above, is pure, and cannot have sinned; and one, by endorsing him, may perhaps gain, by magic, part of his incontrovertible status.

David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 134-135.

Or, as one truth loving leftist professor explains the modern day classroom narcissism of his students, “we [leftists] are on the side of angels”:

TRANSCRIPT: Having a sort of one party state in the classroom is that it leads to certain kinds of intellectual laziness. People can be gestural, and they can make gestures. Everyone in the [class]room knows we’re on the side of the angels, so the gestures don’t get criticized, but you step outside of that room, and certain gestural leftism’s will be criticized, and you really need to know how to deal with them.

MOOONBATTERY

FINALLY, here is the post via MOONBATTERY , in full!

Twisted recruitment emphasis and indoctrination in leftist ideology may be having the effect you might expect on the US military:

US Air Force member Aaron Bushnell has died from his injuries after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, an official confirmed on Monday.

Bushnell offered himself up as a human sacrifice on behalf of Hamas in the aftermath of the October 7 terror atrocities.

“I will no longer be complicit in genocide [in Gaza]. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” Bushnell reportedly said, before setting himself ablaze and repeatedly crying out “Free Palestine.”

He died of moonbattery, in which he had been steeped:

“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now,” he wrote.

Let’s be thankful Bushnell was not a pilot carrying a nuclear payload. He might have decided to confront white privilege by dropping it on a US city deemed to be insufficiently diverse.

Upon taking power, moonbat apparatchik Lloyd Austin conducted an ideological purge throughout the military. Too bad its purpose was not to root out kooks like Bushnell.

Aaron Bushnell personifies the figurative self-immolation by moonbattery of Western Civilization. Its age-old nemesis Islam is delighted.

UPDATE!

THIS IS the article I knew would come, and I was waiting for. You don’t set yourself on fire in a vacuum (ideological [or literally]). You need the wind of lies in your sails to propel you to that act. As one of my boys said, “traitor thru and thru!” The beginning part is a of course they did! See my old post on Roger Waters. As well as a Cornel West post just updated:

When Aaron Bushnell, an Antifa member and Air Force Airman, set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C., Hamas supporters in this country made him into a martyr.

Cornel West praised Bushnell’s “extraordinary courage and commitment”, Roger Waters celebrated him as an “All-American Hero” and the media emphasized his military role.

In reality, Aaron Bushnell was a member of radical anarchist groups on social media, he wanted to leave the Air Force and cheered the killings of members of the U.S. military.

When three black Army soldiers were murdered in an Iranian-backed Islamic terror attack back in January, Aaron Bushnell posted it to the Antifa ACAB (All Cops are Bastards) Reddit group with a mocking “OhNoAnyway.jpg” meme.

“The cops are the domestic military and the military is the international police. They are bad for the exact same reasons,” Aaron Bushnell posted in the ensuing debate.

Bushnell believed that Islamic terrorists killing U.S. military personnel was justified, arguing that, “I work for the air force and would also have no right to complain about violent resistance against my actions.”

In a previous exchange he warned another user against joining the military and argued again that the murder of Americans was justified. “The US DoD is one of the most powerfully evil institutions to ever disgrace the face of this planet. You will have blood on your hands that you will never be able to wash off. There are many people who suffer under the imperial boot who would have every reason to wish you dead, and they would be justified. Don’t do it.”

When asked by another anarchist as to whether joining the military would provide him with the skills to conduct domestic terrorism, Bushnell appeared skeptical. “

It’s very unlikely that you get any kind of ‘proper training’ that would be useful in a revolutionary context,” he suggested. The military was “a neo-feudal institution plugged into the broader neoliberal system. It runs on nothing but coercion, toxic masculinity, and brainwashing.”

Aaron Bushnell’s comments reveal that he wanted out of the Air Force and believed it was evil.

“I joined thinking I was doing my part to make the world a better place. Then I realized we’re the baddies, and the only way to make the world a better place is to get out,”

Bushnell, who died in support of the Hamas war against Israel, not only supported the Islamic terror group, but also justified the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.

“Israel is a white supremacist, ethnonationalist, settler-colonial apartheid state….It has no right to exist,” Bushnell argued. He claimed that all the Jews could be killed because “there are no Israeli ‘civilians’” and that Israel was “the closest thing the world has to the Nazis”. Exterminating Israelis “wouldn’t be genocidal but actually perfectly reasonable, as Israelis are settler-colonizers” and described Hamas as  an “anti-colonial resistance organization”.

“Israel’s existence can’t be justified in the first place, it’s a colony of the US and UK. It has imposed apartheid, displacement, and extermination on the Palestinian people since its inception. No aggression against the Israeli colony can be condemned by non-Palestinians.”

The murdered Israeli families in nearby towns had it coming because they were “colonizers” and “I don’t get to claim it’s a violation of my human rights if some of those people come and kick me back out of that house or throw a molotov at it or kidnap me.”

Aaron Bushnell compared Hamas to the “diverse coalition in Star Wars” and dismissed people “clutching their pearls over” the killing and rape of young Israelis at the Nova music festival because there “are no innocent civilians in seller colonialism”.

“That music festival was happening just three miles from Gaza,” Bushnell contended. “Imagine a similar event happening in the early days of the colonization of North America. Can you or I really say that Indigenous people are wrong for retaliating against colonizers who are rubbing their domination in their face?”

Aaron Bushnell believed that the destruction of America was as justified as that of Israel.

[….]

His death will be used by Islamic terrorists and Antifa to recruit more young men like him.

The Bushnell case is a wake-up call about actual extremism within the military. Someone recruited him and someone encouraged him to kill himself. National security begins with finding and exposing the Islamic terrorists and extremists inside the United States Air Force.

The Bible as Life’s Instruction Manual (Dennis Prager)

  • “…we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness 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.”

John Adams, first (1789–1797) Vice President of the United States, and the second (1797–1801) President of the United States. Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull (New York, 1848), pp 265-6.

  • “Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!!’ But in this exclamation, I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in public company – I mean hell.”

Charles Francis Adams [ed.], The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. [Boston, 1856], X, p. 254. | Taken from They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George, p. 3.

This is the first two segments, truncated a bit, of hour three from Tuesday, January 4th, 2011 “Ultimate Issues Hour: Prager on the Bible, Part 1: ‘Says Who?!’”. Another analogy he uses is a VCS player with the flashing time that was always 12:00… you need an owners manual to get the VHS unit set up and working properly.

Nowadays, many people, particularly those living in Western civilization, no longer regard their society as morally superior to any other. In this video, Dennis Prager lays out how this view does not spring from intellectual rigor, but from intellectual laziness.

The influence of the Bible on every day speech as well is quite amazing. People often do not realize just how much the Bible has influenced the world. For instance, Shakespeare’s work referenced the Bible an estimated 1,350, as one example. Another are some of these well-known idioms/phrases:

  • “eye for an eye”
  • “land of milk and honey”
  • “forbidden fruit”
  • “bottomless pit”
  • “two-edged sword”
  • “God forbid”
  • “scapegoat”
  • “Land of Nod”
  • “by the sweat of your brow”
  • “apple of my eye”
  • “fire and brimstone”
  • “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”
  • “a man after my own heart”
  • “broken heart”
  • “wits’ end”
  • “bite the dust”
  • “put words in my mouth”
  • “put your house in order”
  • “nothing but skin and bones”
  • “by the skin of your teeth”
  • “Behemoth”
  • “You’re the man” (or Mensch)
  • “nothing new under the sun”
  • “a little birdie told me”
  • “rise and shine”
  • “can a leopard change his spots”
  • “eat drink and be merry”
  • “writing on the wall”
  • “drop in a bucket”
  • “fly in the ointment”
  • “four corners of the earth”
  • “see eye to eye”
  • “salt of the earth”
  • “go the extra mile”
  • “pearls before swine”
  • “fall by the wayside”
  • “straight and narrow”
  • “wolf in sheep’s clothing”
  • “blind leading the blind”
  • “the 11th hour”
  • “kiss of death”
  • “give up the ghost”
  • “wash your hands of the matter”
  • “the truth will set you free”
  • “twinkling of an eye”
  • “labor of love”
  • “live by the sword die by the sword”
  • “fall from grace”
  • “fight the good fight”
  • “the powers that be”

In another article, DENNIS PRAGER notes the following about Deuteronomy 22:5: “A woman must not put on man’s apparel, nor shall a man wear woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.

In the article he goes on to say:

This is an extraordinarily important Torah law—though one suspects its importance has not been appreciated over the past several thousand years, since wearing the clothing of the other sex was rare in societies rooted in the Bible. At the time of this writing, this is no longer the case: this law is widely reviled, regarded as not only archaic, but intolerant, and even immoral. It is therefore imperative to explain what it means, what it does not mean, and why it exists. We will begin with the latter.

As often noted in this commentary, the Torah is rooted in distinctions. Among these distinctions are:

  • God and man
  • God and nature
  • Man and animal
  • Good and evil
  • Life and death
  • Parent and child
  • Holy and profane
  • Male and female

In the Torah’s views, these distinctions reflect God’s design—and therefore a Designer. In the biblical worldview, recognition of this design makes civilization possible. The demise of these distinctions would mean the end of civilization as we know it. As I explain in Genesis, God spent most of the six days of Creation not creating, but making order. The second verse of the Bible describes the state of the world as chaos (“unformed and void” in this translation) when God began His work. The natural state of the world is chaos; the divine state of the world is ordered; and order means distinctions.

[….]

The most recent distinction to be erased is the subject of this Torah law: the distinction between male and female. Its purpose is to maintain this distinction. How we dress is the most obvious way we declare our sex. Therefore, when a man (who looks like a man, has a male name, etc.) publicly dresses as a woman, or a woman (who looks like a woman, has a female name, etc.) publicly dresses as a man, one of the most basic of God’s distinctions is blurred. The sex-distinction of the human being is so central to God’s plan that it is declared at the beginning of Creation in Genesis 1: “God created the human being in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27; emphasis added).

The Torah is not necessarily addressing individuals who identify as, live as, dress as, take the name of, and appear to others as a member of the opposite sex to which they were born—because such an individual is not publicly blurring the distinction between male and female. The Torah is addressing males who continue to appear male (and often even identify as such) but who publicly dress in female garb, as well as females who appear female (and often even identify as such) but who publicly dress as male.

To be clear, publicly blurring the distinction between man and woman is what is prohibited for individuals here. On the other hand, an individual who identifies as a member of the other sex (“transgender” or “transsexual”), appears to be a member of that sex, takes on a name associated with that sex, and dresses as a member of that sex is not necessarily blurring the distinction God made. The individual who truly feels estranged from his or her biological sex is to be given sympathy, not condemnation. If that person does not publicly blur the male-female distinction, that person would not appear to be violating this law.

What the Torah prohibits is the deliberate blurring of the male-female distinction. For example, the winner of the viewed-around-the-world Eurovision contest in 2014 was Thomas Neuwirth, a bearded Austrian man, who performed under the name Conchita Wurst as a drag queen—a man wearing women’s clothing (a floor-length formal gown). He has explicitly stated he is not transgender, but a male who identifies as a male. What he did at Eurovision would be prohibited by this Torah law. So would the practice in America beginning in the second decade of the twenty-first century of “Drag Queen Story Hours”—teachers inviting drag queens to perform in front of children, starting in kindergarten.

How God regards an individual who is convinced he or she is living in the wrong body is not addressed here. I believe God both has standards (that we never blur the male-female distinction) and compassion (for those few individuals who do not identify with their biological sex), and so should we.

The Bible is a bulwark against chaos, which the Left loves.

Millian vs Marxian Educational Goals | Jon Haidt

Rapid change… is the goal:

“Two incompatible sacred values in American universities” Jon Haidt, Hayek Lecture Series

On October 6, 2016, Professor Jonathan Haidt gave a Hayek Lecture at Duke. The event was co-sponsored by the programs in the History of Political Economy (HOPE), Philosophy, Politics, & Economics (PPE), and American Values and Institutions (AVI). The event was open to the public, but also served as a guest lecture in Professor Jonathan Anomaly’s PPE course.

Professor Haidt argues that conflicts arise at many American universities today because they are pursuing two potentially incompatible goals: truth and social justice. While Haidt thinks both goals are important, he maintains that they can come into conflict.

According to some versions of social justice, whenever we observe a disparity of outcomes between races, genders, or other groups, we should infer that injustice has been done. Haidt challenges this view of social justice and shows how it sometimes leads to violations of truth, and even justice.

Haidt concludes that universities should be free to pursue whatever goals – truth or social justice – they want, but that they should make it clear which of these two goals is their “telos” – their highest purpose. He ends with a discussion of his initiative, HeterodoxAcademy.org, to bring more viewpoint diversity to universities in order to improve research and learning.

The fuller article is worth your time – via Michael Nayna at the PROCESS:

Haidt used two quotes to exemplify the opposing perspectives, the first from liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill.

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…

… he must know them (opposing opinions) in their most plausible and persuasive form.”

– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

This quote reflects a liberal arts perspective. One that considers the discovery of truth as primary and is more concerned with accuracy than what’s to be done with the findings.

Embedded in this spirit of curious humility is a belief that objective reality exists and is accessible to all inquiring minds as long as they’re willing and able to overcome their subjective biases.

We recognize research conducted in this Millian disposition as scientific, with rigorous empirical methods, the development of testable hypotheses, and systematic observation, all being reflections of a striving toward the reduction of subjective bias.

Haidt contrasts this Millian perspective with that of Karl Marx, the father of communism, who was notoriously pragmatic in his pursuit of revolution.

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”

– Karl Marx, Eleven Theses on Feuerbach

This quote reveals an activist’s disposition that regards the effect of thought as its primary purpose. Embedded in this perspective is an eagerness to impose one’s will on the world and it would likely give rise to an eye roll if confronted with Millian appeals to dispassionate analysis….

A related couple posts:

Teachers’ Unions Push Progressive Ideology | Armstrong & Getty

Armstrong and Getty read from the WASHINGTON FREE BEACON’S article titled “From Court Packing to Climate Change, Teachers’ Unions Push Progressive Priorities as Test Scores Plummet”

MUST WATCH:

The Machine: The Truth Behind Teachers Unions

NEA general counsel Bob Chanin explained it well in July 2009:

  • It is not because we care about children, and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues

This upload of mine will marry well wit my post found here:

School District in Minnesota Call Native-Americans Racists

There was one customer at Whole Foods [when I worked in retail] who rocked an afro. She was firstly, very tall, very beautiful, and rocked a huge afro. She looked like a model. I mentioned to her that I grew up in the in Detroit from the 70’s to early 80’s, and that I missed the afro and was glad it was coming back into style. I then complimented hers as absolutely gorgeous.

So now, that is a micro-aggression? I equally compliment “white” women’s hair when it is on point. Both the black woman and white women I compliment seem to take it well. I will compliment a clothing item at rare moments as well. In the retail business making the customer feel good — as well as on a human perspective — is our communal nature as humans.

But now, I guess, I will not compliment black women’s clothing, hair, or any other aspect said person takes the time (often an hour or more) trying to accentuate. I will only compliment white  women from now on.

Wait…

Isn’t THAT racist?

  • “Your mosquito videos represent a disgusting, racist attempt to formulate hate. You should be ashamed, but Marxist sociopaths have no idea what that is. Take your hostility and buzz off.” (PJ-MEDIA has more commentary and links to other videos.)

….And there’s more.

Another video titled “Our Hidden Biases” paints a picture of a world where every white individual is inherently suspicious of black children. From store owners calling the police to doctors making baseless accusations, the narrative is clear: white people are the problem.

Superintendent Vollmuth, in his infinite wisdom, told Alpha News that these videos are all about creating an “inclusive opportunity” for students.

He claims they’re trying to “honor the uniqueness of each individual.” But aren’t they doing the exact opposite by painting an entire race as biased?

“The New Prague Area Schools is dedicated to creating a culture where all students have an equal and inclusive opportunity to thrive academically, socially and emotionally,” Superintendent Vollmuth told Alpha News.

“As a school system, we will honor the uniqueness of each individual and embrace diverse backgrounds, values and viewpoints that will build an empowered school community while acknowledging our differences as strengths.”

(MARTIN MAWYER)

A section that caught my eye @ the 44-second mark

The video notes — in a surfer/red-neck way — that keeping the Washington NFL team’s name, “The Redskins,” is a micro-aggression. Here is a recent story that caught my eye that shows Native Americans as racists. (I will repost below this an older post on the same topic.)

The Native American Guardians Association have filed a lawsuit against the Washington Commanders for defaming their organization after the name was changed from the Redskins in 2020.

Here’s the news:

The #Commanders have been sued by The Native American Guardians Association, which have been trying to get the Commanders to change their name back to #Redskins. “The logo on the Redskin’s helmet is an actual person, it’s Chief White Calf. Every time they go out on that field, they were honoring Chief White Calf and they were battling on the football field with the same honor and integrity and courage. They should continue to honor that.” They are suing after the team allegedly made defamatory comments attacking the association’s integrity.

Here’s more from NBC Montana:

The Native American Guardians Association (NAGA) have filed a lawsuit against the Washington Commanders after the team allegedly made defamatory comments attacking the association’s integrity.

]The suit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of North Dakota, alleges the Commanders have a “monopoly on the narrative” concerning Native American sentiment regarding the team’s 2020 name change which stripped it of its Redskins moniker. NAGA seeks $1.6 million in damages.

Included on the suit are the team owner Josh Harris, sales representative Matthew Laux and the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). These groups, NAGA says, are working in concert to suppress and defame their organization which represents Native Americans everywhere.

Chad LaVeglia, who is representing NAGA, told The National Desk (TND) Monday the group was given “no choice” but to file suit after the Commanders repeatedly ignored their demands to open a dialogue with the team.

We would like them to sit down at the table with NAGA and hear what they have to say and they also have to fix the harm that they’ve done to NAGA’s reputation by calling them fake and attacking their very identity,” LaVeglia said.

By changing their name, LaVeglia said, the Commanders dishonored many years of Native American tradition and heritage.

“The logo on the Redskin’s helmet is an actual person, it’s Chief White Calf. Every time they go out on that field, they were honoring Chief White Calf and they were battling on the football field with the same honor and integrity and courage,” LaVeglia said. “They should continue to honor that.”

A Commanders spokesperson told TND Monday the team plans to “address the matter in court,” but believes the lawsuit is “without merit.”

There have been over 100,000 signatures calling for the Washington organization to change their name back to ‘Redskins’…..


FLASHBACK


I was honored to be called an “ultra-rightest” and “racist” by an extremely liberal blogger,

The post referenced my excellent post, Thin-Skinned Over the Redskins ~ Warnings of Government Overreach. So I asked this blogger (we will see if I get a response) the following:

Navajo Code Talker Washington Redskins

Please tell me how I am an racist? A leader of the Navajo Code Talkers who appeared at a Washington Redskins home football game said Wednesday the team name is a symbol of loyalty and courage — not a slur as asserted by critics who want it changed.

Is this Navajo leader a racist?

Are the 90% of Native-Americans who are not maligned by the name racist? I am sure many of them vote Democrat… would that mean they [Democrats] are “ultra-leftists/racists”??

Maybe next you can push to rename Oklahoma ~ which is Choctaw, “okla humma,” which literally means “red people.”

I will let Napoleon Dynamite finish off my thoughts of your post:

Since most Native-Americans vote Democrat (as linked in the above text), and most of them support the Redskins name, thus, making them [Democrats] racist… are they not also racist for supporting Obama in the general election[s]?

Part of the following is from my post, Hot-Tub Conversations:

Bush Analogy

Walter, I will use Bush in my analogy. Let us say for twenty years Bush attended a church that twice prominently displayed David Dukes likeness on the cover of their church’s magazine which reaches 20,000 homes, and a third time alongside Barry Mills (the founder of the Aryan Brotherhood). Even inviting David Duke to the pulpit to receive a “lifetime achievement award.” Even selling sermons by David Duke in the church’s book store. Authors of sermons sold in Bush’s church’s bookstore teach in accordance with Christian Identity’s view that Jews and blacks are offspring of Satan and Eve via a sexual encounter in the Garden of Eden. In the church’s bookstore, the entire time Bush attended, books like Mein KampfMy Awakening (David Duke), and other blatantly racist books. Even members of the Aryan Brotherhood felt comfortable enough to sit in the pews at times… being that the pastor of the church was once a reverend for the group.

Now Walter, if Bush had gone to a church like that I would walk arm-n-arm with my Democratic comrades in making sure he would never be President. You would expect me to I am sure?

Here is the rest of the post, really, an actual conversation:

Obama Reality

I purchased from Obama’s church’s bookstore online 3-books: A Black Theology of Liberation, Black Theology & Black Power, and Is God A White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology. In these books Walter, God is said to be against white people, and mirror in their hatred of whites to that of Jews in Mein Kampf, calling both devils.


These 3 quotes I did not insert into the original conversation


  1. “The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” | Adolf HitlerMein Kampf
  2. “The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” | James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.62
  3. “White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality” | James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.64

Obama’s pastor not only was a minister in The Nation of Islam, an anti-Semitic/racist group, but the church’s book store sells sermons by Louise Farrakhan, who teaches that the white man was created on the Island of Cyprus by a mad scientist, Yakub. (Mr. Farrakhan also believes he was taken up on a UFO to meet God, and was told he was a little messiah, take note also that he was directly involved in the deaths of police officers as well.) Louise Farrakhan was featured twice on the church’s magazine which reach 20,000[plus] homes in the Chicago area. Even placing on the cover with Louise Farrakhan a third time the founder of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad. Elijah Muhammad likewise taught that the white man was created by Yakub 6,600 years ago. Walter, Louise Farrakhan teaches that the Jews in Israel do not belong there, and that the true Jews are the black people. Louise Farrakhan was invited into Obama’s church, to the pulpit and given a “lifetime achievement award.” In fact, the New Black Panthers and members of the Nation of Islam often times sat in the pews for sermons by Rev. Wright, whom Obama called a mentor.

Another was a montage of faces – black leaders, past and present, with the title “The legacy lives on” – that included Wright, Farrakhan, Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, Rosa Parks and even O.J. Simpson attorney Johnny Cochran. (Weekly Standard; and WND)

So I expect you, Walter, to join arm-and-arm with me on finding out why the media, and Democrats who are so concerned about racism let such a man into office, when, if the tables were turned, I wouldn’t want in office.

Do you know the next thing out of Walter’s mouth was?

“Didn’t Bush speak in a church that forbid interracial marriage?”

I responded that no, it was a speech at Bob Jones University…

….and you are making my point Walter. If that bugs you soo much to mention it during the course of a conversation, why doesn’t Obama’s history more-so irk you? Not to mention the university overturned its silly rule, even Bob Jones said he couldn’t back up that policy with a single verse in the Bible (CNN). Obama’s CHURCH OF TWENTY YEARS has made no such concession.

At least STTPML came-out and SAID it… unlike many who hide their thoughts but still malign you:

  • (She said) “Black people and white people weren’t allowed get married years ago either… if small minded, bigoted people had their way it would still be that way. Gay marriage Is NO different…. religious folks who believe and support same sex marriage ?? They must not be real religious people.”
  • (I Responded) In other words, a discussion to you is calling me and other readers here “bigots,” and impugning the character of religious gays by creating straw-man arguments of what I (we) say/mean? And when I politely point this out by not pointing out how you name call and use “cards” (sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted ~ S.I.X.H.I.R.B.)….

Via: “Unfriended” for Judge Judy ~ Traditional Marriage Now Bigoted

MORE:

★ BILL CLINTON: “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,”

★ JOSEPH BIDEN: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” continuinh he said, “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

★ DAN RATHER: “but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”

Since almost ALL of the Dixiecrats stayed Dixiecrats (only 3-of the 26 Dixicrats ever switched sides, often times 20-years later*), and the KKK type Democrats died of old age or finished their terms in Congress (or actually applied the Bible to their ignorance and changed their ways)we have a new style of “racism” on the left replacing leftist racist ideology.

For instance: We have a President that went to a church [for 20-yearswhat if Bush had gone to a similar church?] that sold books in its book store entitled: “A Black Theology of Liberation,” or, “A Black Theology of Liberation.” These books have some quotes I AM SURE you care deeply about since you are against racist ideology:

▼ “The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.62

▼ “White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.64

And here is Hitler in Mein Kampf: “The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” In this same church bookstore, you could walk in and buy sermons by LOUISE FARRAKHAN.

Remember he is the guy who preaches that the white man was created on the Island of Cyprus 6,600 years ago by a mad scientist Yakub. He teaches that a UFO will put up an invisible wall around America and kill all the white people with fire who reside in that invisible “air wall”. He also teaches that he [Farrakhan was taken up to a UFO and told by ELIJAH MUHAMMAD and Jesus] that he was the “little Messiah”. This same guy was placed on the front cover of the churches magazine 3-times (once with Elijah Muhammad). AND, he was brought in and received a lifetime achievement award at the church. Even Farrakhan’s ex-aid said Obama and Farrakhan’s ties are [were] close.

DEMOCRATS chose a racist to be the keynote speaker at the 2012 Convention. JULIAN CASTRO is a member of La Raza… the group CESAR CHAVEZ (founder of the founder of the United Farm Workers [UFW]) said was a supremacist group. Not only that, but CASTRO’S MOTHER is involved deeply in the MEChA movement. That is the group that wants Mexico to take back the portion lost in the Mexican-American war. These guys/gals ACTUALLY show up in brown shirts.

Many Democrats in the House have open ties to the New Black Panthers as well…CYNTHIA MCKINNEY in fact, when she was in Congress, had them for security. So if you are truly interested in racist ideology, do not worry about all the old and gone Democrats who were racist. Or that DAVID DUKE endorses current Democrats running for office or other leaders in the current KKK vote en large for Democrats —today.

BY ALL MEANS, speak out against it (new Democrats) instead of old Democrats.


* The strategy of the State’s Rights Democratic Party failed. Truman was elected and civil rights moved forward with support from both Republicans and Democrats. This begs an answer to the question: So where did the Dixiecrats go? Contrary to legend, it makes no sense for them to join with the Republican Party whose history is replete with civil rights achievements. The answer is, they returned to the Democrat party and rejoined others such as George Wallace, Orval Faubus, Lester Maddox, and Ross Barnett. Interestingly, of the 26 known Dixiecrats (5 governors and 21 senators) only three ever became republicans: Strom Thurmond [20-years later], Jesse Helms and Mills E. Godwind, Jr. The segregationists in the Senate, on the other hand, would return to their party and fight against the Civil Rights acts of 1957, 1960 and 1964. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower proffered the first two Acts. (URBAN LEGENDS)

(Did you guys/gals comment on this when it happened? So in St Louis they beat up a black man who was handing out buttons and flags as a protest against the runaway out of control federal government. President Obama has said that the “tea party patriots” who have questioned his plan for the takeover of health care by the government are using “mob tactics.” Here is a quick video of Moveon . org, SEIU, and DNC using “mob tactics.” — The Democrat Carnahan packed the event and attempted to prevent the opposition from attending. As the video below reveals, ACORN and SEIU activists also received preferential treatment at the stage-managed event: https://youtu.be/cFeUhSlHiUQ)

Free Speech Battles | California DEI Totalitarianism

Just as an aside, Leftists and Democrats are the ones pushing “institutional racism,” as the below notes. Also note, I use “totalitarianism” in the sense of “total thought.” Which is a forced “homogenization” of thought… or, state instituted/forced “total thought.”

UPDATED VIDEO

This is an interview by Lex Fridman of Greg Lukianoff of F.I.R.E. (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression). The entire interview, “Greg Lukianoff: Cancel Culture, Deplatforming, Censorship & Free Speech | Lex Fridman Podcast #397,” can be seen HERE (I grab from around the 1:10:50 mark). There are a few universities/colleges involved in legal action in California, but The Renegade Institute for Liberty at Bakersfield College is one this is made for.

DEI stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” — all of which sounds fine, right? But materials put out by the state of California show that in this case, DEI translates to highly contested and controversial views. The state’s definitions say that the idea of “color blindness” “perpetuates… racial inequities,” and even the idea of “merit,” is “embedded in the ideology of Whiteness” and “upholds race-based structural inequality.” FIRE has filed a lawsuit on behalf of six California community college professors to halt new, systemwide regulations forcing professors to espouse and teach these politicized conceptions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The regulations are now in effect in the State Center Community College District, and FIRE’s clients have already been forced to change their syllabi and teaching materials, lest they face repercussions. (More info on the lawsuit @FIRE)

Here is an article from THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE that is worth reading in it’s entirety. It is titled: “First Amendment lawsuits challenge state’s DEI rules for community colleges” If you encounter a paywall, grab the URL from the link and put it into this “hopper: REMOVE PAYWALL.

California’s new community college rules sound simple enough: As of this year, all instructors must teach in a way that is culturally inclusive and must prove during employee evaluations that they respect and acknowledge students and colleagues of diverse backgrounds.

But what if an instructor holds so-called color-blind [more on this idea after article excerpt] views and prefers to ignore people’s race, ethnicity, gender or other physical and cultural characteristics as a personal philosophy? Or if an instructor disagrees entirely with the “anti-racism” and “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility lens” that state’s college officials now require?

Seven instructors from four community colleges in the Central Valley are now testing that cultural collision on constitutional grounds, saying their views could get them fired under the new rules. With the backing of national advocacy groups, the instructors are suing state and local college officials in federal court to have the regulations tossed.

The suits echo another federal lawsuit, filed in May against the University of California, in which a psychology professor hoping to work at UC Santa Cruz ran up against a UC requirement that applicants submit a statement supporting “diversity, equity and inclusion.” The applicant likened it to a “modern-day loyalty oath” of the kind discredited in the 1950s, when those who wouldn’t sign might be labeled communist subversives.

[….]

Another group, the Institute for Free Speech, filed a similar lawsuit on July 6 on behalf of Daymon Johnson, a history instructor at Bakersfield College in Kern County.

“Almost everything Professor Johnson teaches violates the new DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility) requirements — not just by failing to advance the DEIA and anti-racist ideologies, but also by criticizing them,” the suit says, noting that compliance with the new rules would violate the instructor’s conscience and force him to surrender his academic freedom.

SEE MORE AT THE INSTITUTE FOR FREE SPEECH’S BLOG:

RPT is asking people to donate HERE.

In his U.S. History class this fall, for example, Johnson plans to have students read two books claiming to debunk the historian Howard Zinn’s work, which reveals less flattering versions of the American story, and the well-known 1619 Project, which digs deeply into the foundations of slavery.

His lawsuit contains a long list of things that the instructor “does not wish” to do. These include referring to transgender students by their preferred pronouns, acknowledging that social identities are diverse, and demonstrating “DEI and anti-racism practices” because he “rejects and even finds (them) abhorrent.”

Johnson is also a leader of the Renegade Institute for Liberty, a Bakersfield College group that opposes “political and ideological tyranny.” Its acronym is RIFL.

The suit claims that Johnson is already in the crosshairs of the college administration for his views and quotes a Kern college district trustee saying, in reference to employees holding anti-DEIA views: “They’re in that 5% that we have to continue to cull. Got them in my livestock operation and that’s why we put a rope on some of them and take them to the slaughterhouse.”

The Kern trustees did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The suit says that Bakersfield College already fired another instructor, who was Johnson’s predecessor at RIFL, and calls him “the first cullee.”

According to the suit, the person who oversaw the firing was the Kern district’s former chancellor, Sonya Christian, who has just become the chancellor of the California community colleges. With 116 schools and more than 2 million students enrolling each year, it’s the nation’s largest higher education system.  

On Friday afternoon, state Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office filed a response to Johnson’s suit on behalf of Christian, arguing that the instructor has not only failed to show that he’s been harmed by the rules, but because of that, he also lacks standing to complain about them. 

The response defends the diversity regulations and says the rules “do not restrict the free speech of any employee,” nor do they infringe on anyone’s academic freedom, “including Johnson’s.”

The system’s Board of Governors has the right to establish policies that “reflect its ideals and principles regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility,” the state argues. 

A spokesperson for Christian said the college system has not yet responded in court to the more recent lawsuit and would not comment on it.  

The new regulations require all 73 college districts to develop policies for evaluating employee performance and tenure eligibility in light of their “DEIA competencies.”

The rules follow a series of other DEIA guidance and messages from the chancellor’s office in recent years, and say that to ensure academic success, “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) and anti-racism remain at the heart of our work.”

The college system also posts a glossary of DEIA terms, which defines color blindness as a “racial ideology” that ignores “a large part of one’s identity and lived experience” and therefore “perpetuates existing racial inequities.”….

COLOR BLIND

Dennis Prager discusses a call about a gentleman disagreeing with his statement that he doesn’t see color, and others shouldn’t as well. After the discussion of the previous call, I include the call as well as the lead up to it.

MORE!

  • LINK to a Facebook video: Dennis Reacts: “I See No Color” Is Racist?” (FACEBOOK)

The Issue Is Values, Not Systemic Racism

Do you let your race, gender, or orientation define you? If you are on the left, everything is perceived through the lens of identity politics. Systemic racism is not the real issue plaguing America—it is our opposing values system. Dennis Prager offers some refreshing insight into how to heal our broken nation.

Should We Be Colorblind?

Nothing reveals the moral confusion of our time more than those who label the term “colorblind” racist. Who would want to see themselves in terms of their skin color? And what does a person’s skin color really say about who they are — their likes, dislikes, values, and so on?

Prager Notes The Left’s Proclivity Towards Racism

A girl is legally kidnapped in Santa Clarita by state authorities. The Left’s dogged emphasis on race, class, gender is destroying families, keeping them in poverty, and utterly failing our country’s motto, “out of many, one.” The Left has dumped out the melting pot and keeps us as divided as ever. This story is maddening!

Here is the what the main battle is over: “A battle over custody of a little girl who is 1/64th Choctaw has been in and out of the courts for three years now, and returns on Friday with a new appeal hearing” (ABC-7).

  • “Is it one drop of blood that triggers all these extraordinary rights?” — Justice Roberts

Keep in mind the racial science of NAZI Germany were concerned with a 1/16th racial mix… here we see the racial sciences of the Choctaw Nation and the State of California concerned over a 1/64th portion of heritage. Sick! Racist! Leftism!

  • In 1911, Arkansas passed Act 320 (House Bill 79), also known as the “one-drop rule.” This law had two goals: it made interracial “cohabitation” a felony, and it defined as “Negro” anyone “who has…any negro blood whatever,” thus relegating to second-class citizenship anyone accused of having any African ancestry. Although the law had features unique to Arkansas, it largely reflected nationwide trends. (source)


ONE DROP RULE


More from the LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS Opinion Page:

Five hundred years ago, the Incas sacrificed children.

They removed children as young as six from their families, transported them with great ceremony to a mountain location, and left them to die of exposure.

Did they have the moral right to do it?

Some people think so. “To their credit,” wrote Kim MacQuarrie, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, anthropologist and author, “the Incas did their best to ensure the survival of their people and empire by paying close attention to nature and doing their best to use every means at their disposal, including human sacrifice, to gain control over it.”

There’s something seriously wrong with any kind of reasoning that places human sacrifice in the category of “doing their best.”

SEE MY: “Mayan, Incan and Aztec “Terrorism

And there is something seriously wrong with what happened in Santa Clarita this week to a 6-year-old girl named Lexi and the foster family that has cared for her since she was 2.

Rusty and Summer Page tried for years to adopt Lexi but were blocked from doing so. The reason? The little girl has a tiny bit of Choctaw ancestry — just 1.5 percent — and under federal law the Choctaw Nation can decide her fate. The tribal authorities decided that Lexi will live in Utah with distant relatives. They issued this statement:

“The Choctaw Nation desires the best for this Choctaw child. The tribe’s values of faith, family and culture are what makes our tribal identity so important to us. Therefore we will continue to work to maintain these values and work toward the long-term best interest of this child.”

This is not human sacrifice, but it is closely related. It is collectivism, the opposite of individual rights.

Collectivism holds that an individual’s life belongs not to the individual, but to the group in which the individual is a member. Where other children would have the right to have a parent or guardian make decisions for them, Lexi’s future has been decided by group leaders seeking to preserve “tribal identity.”

On Monday, in a most disturbing scene, the 6-year-old was pulled weeping and frightened from the arms of her foster father on the driveway of the only stable home she has ever known.

Lexi is not the only child to be victimized by the enforcement of a federal law that, ironically, was intended to prevent children from being removed from their families.

In Arizona, a foster family’s adoption of a baby girl, who was placed with them at birth, is being blocked by the Gila River Indian Community, and the Navajo Nation is standing in the way of foster parents seeking to adopt a 5-year-old boy who has lived with them for four years.

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank based in Phoenix, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of these children and “others similarly situated” over this “separate and unequal treatment.”

The lawsuit argues that children of Native American ancestry are being unfairly denied their civil rights: “Alone among American children, their adoption and foster care placements are determined not in accord with their best interests but by their ethnicity, as a result of a well-intentioned but profoundly flawed and unconstitutional federal law, the Indian Child Welfare Act.”

The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978 in reaction to another government program, the Indian Adoption Project, which began in 1958 and continued until 1967.

The Indian Adoption Project was the result of an agreement between the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Child Welfare League of America. It encouraged the removal of Indian children from their families on reservations so they could be adopted and “assimilate” into “mainstream society.” By the 1970s, between 25 and 35 percent of all Indian children nationwide had been removed from their homes, and 90 percent had been adopted by white families.

Outrage over the Indian Adoption Project led to the Indian Child Welfare Act. It requires social workers to make an extra effort to avoid removing Indian children from troubled homes, a greater effort than they would make for non-Indian children. When foster care or adoption becomes necessary, the law requires an active effort to place the child with an Indian family.

The Goldwater Institute says these requirements are discriminatory and harmful, making it harder to protect Indian children from abuse and neglect, and forcing longer waits for permanent homes.

The foster care system has many challenges and many heartbreaking stories. We don’t need laws that cause more pain. The Indian Child Welfare Act should go. Give the kids a break.

Susan Shelley is a San Fernando Valley author, a former television associate producer and twice a Republican candidate for the California Assembly.

The parents of a six-year-old girl taken from her family due to her Native American heritage speak out in a statement after officials from the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services took their daughter, Lexi, away. Read more at SCV-NEWS.

George Will gets it right over at WA-PO:

Opinion | The Brutal Racial Politics Of The Indian Child Welfare Act

Lexi lived four of her first six years with a non-Native American California foster family, but because she is 1/64th Choctaw, tribal officials got her taken from the Californians and sent to live in Utah with a distant relative. On Friday, the Supreme Court will consider whether to hear a challenge to the law that made this possible — the Indian Child Welfare Act, which endangers many young Native Americans. It also is a repudiation of the nation’s premise that rights are inherent in individuals, not groups.

In 1978, before “Native Americans” became the preferred designation for Indians, but when racial “identity” was beginning to become the toxic political concept it now is, Congress enhanced tribal rights. This violated, among other principles, those of federalism: Congress thereby reduced the right of states to enforce laws on child welfare. And it plunged government deeper into making distinctions solely on the basis of biological descent.

The ICWA, an early bow toward multiculturalism, buttressed tribal identities by strengthening tribal rights. For example, tribes can partially nullify states’ powers to intervene against tribal parents’ abuse endangering children. And the ICWA conferred rights on tribes, rights adjudicated in tribal courts, including the right to require Native American children be adopted by Native Americans.

Equal protection of the laws? Not under ICWA.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has asked, “Is it one drop of blood that triggers all these extraordinary rights?” Indeed, the primitive concept of racial “blood,” recast as DNA, triggers tribal rights and extinguishes a state’s right to protect many children’s rights. Sometimes with dire consequences.

In 2015, this column acquainted readers with Declan Stewart and Laurynn Whiteshield. Declan was 5 in 2007 when he was beaten to death by his mother’s live-in boyfriend. Oklahoma had removed him from his mother’s custody after he suffered a fractured skull and severe bruising between his testicles and rectum. But when the Cherokee Nation objected to his removal, Oklahoma, knowing that the ICWA favors tribal rights, relented. Beaten again, he died a month after returning to his mother.

From the age of 9 months until almost 3, Laurynn was in a North Dakota minister’s foster care. When the minister tried to adopt her, the Spirit Lake Sioux tribe invoked the ICWA, and Laurynn was sent to a reservation and the custody of her grandfather. Less than six weeks later she was dead, having been thrown down an embankment by the grandfather’s wife, who had a record of child abuse.

The ICWA requires that “Indian children” be placed with “Indian” foster families. Because the ICWA allows a child to be yanked from a non-Indian foster home — and from possible adoption — it discourages non-Native American adults from providing care, including early infant attachment, which is a foundation of healthy child development.

Born with fetal alcohol syndrome, Antonio Renova was 3 days old when he was taken from his biological parents, members of the Crow tribe, and put in foster care. Five years later, the biological parents, both on probation following felony convictions (the mother’s included child endangerment), obtained custody of Antonio through a Crow tribal court. He suffered beatings by his parents, who have been charged in his death.

Antonio was a casualty of the ICWA’s form of identity politics — the allocation of legal status and group entitlements based on biology. The ICWA has insinuated into law a “separate but equal” test regarding Native American children in jeopardy. It demotes “the best interests of the child” from the top priority; it makes a child’s relationship with a tribe supremely important.

The nation has abundant reasons to regret its mistreatment of Native Americans, and the ICWA was perhaps motivated by an impulse to show respect for Indigenous cultures. But the cost, in broken bodies and broken constitutional principles, has been exorbitant.

Today, the nation is reverting — in the name of “social justice” and “equity” understood as improved social outcomes for government-favored groups — to a retrograde emphasis on racial identities. So, the ICWA’s sacrifice of individual rights to group entitlements probably has a diminished power to shock. Come Friday, however, the Supreme Court should be shocked into hearing the arguments against the federal government usurpation, through the ICWA, of the states’ responsibility for protecting children in jeopardy, regardless of their biological ancestry.

The Left Dominates Academic Institutions – Why? | Sowell

This Is Why The Left Dominates In All Academic Institutions Around The World | Thomas Sowell 

In this video, Thomas Sowell explains why the Left dominates all academic institutions around the world.

Olivia Jaber: How I Survived Berkeley

Growing up in Newport Beach, California, Olivia Jaber looked forward to college as an opportunity to stretch beyond her ideological comfort zone. She chose to attend UC Berkeley, once the epicenter of the Free Speech movement, but found Cal to be an intolerant left-wing echo chamber with no interest in diversity of thought. Emerging from the “conservative closet” after graduation, Olivia founded a publication reflecting her values called THE CONSERVATEUR and encourages young women to be vocal about who they are and what they believe in.

STORIES OF US

Annabella Rockwell: I Entered College Happy. I Left Angry.

Annabella Rockwell was raised in an America-loving home but became indoctrinated with leftist ideology when she went away to college. But in the summer of 2020, Annabella saw the hypocrisy of her new leftist worldview and sought out a different perspective. That’s when she stumbled on a PragerU video and realized she had been brainwashed.

STORIES OF US

Julie Hartman: Thank You, Harvard, for Making Me a Conservative

Upon entering the halls of Harvard in 2018, Julie Hartman found herself going along with the leftist ideology invading academia. But that changed in the summer of 2020. Shocked by the anti-American sentiment and calls to “defund the police” among her classmates and in the media, Julie began to seek alternative points of view. After discovering PragerU and Dennis Prager, she was transformed and found her voice within the conservative movement.

STORIES OF US

Why Self-Esteem Is Self-Defeating (Myths of Psychology)

(Originally posted Sept 2017, updated Aug 2023)

  • “There is no correlation between goodness and high self-esteem. But there is a correlation between criminality and high self-esteem. … Yes, people with high self-esteem are the ones most prone to violence.”

Is having high self-esteem key to happiness? That’s what children are told. But is it true? Or can that advice be doing more harm than good? Author and columnist Matt Walsh explains.

I am updating the original “simple” post with the below. What is the below? It is an expansion of the idea of Self-Esteem and the powers the Lefty educators try to embed in it’s fruits and goals/meaning. As with anything the Left touches, it destroys [speaking here of education], they also distort meaning of words and concepts beyond their useful parlance and application. What follows are forum discussions for an accelerated Masters degree in Education. (A friend had to go on a baseball trip with the high school team and had to take a break from his studies. I filled in.) While class was on “multicultural literature for the classroom,” in the class discussion forum there was a discussion on self-esteem which I jumped in to.

I posted the following knowing I would be the only person with ideas like this — “evolved” further along the thought process with resources foreign to most in the field chasing a degree. I will add two responses I got with added thoughts and resources for my readers. For Context, THIS PDF was one of my papers for this class… it was during the writing of this paper that “self-esteem” was being discussed.

SELF-ESTEEM

I have heard (read) a few here mention the importance of self-esteem.  In studies done on inmates (drug-dealers and rapists), self-esteem was high.

I think we as educators should be careful not to try and build self-esteem.  First, we do not have the right credentials to know or diagnose true self-esteem.  Secondly, the type that seems to pervade definitions today is the type that hinders the kids in academics.  I read an interesting book some years ago, and I would suggest everyone here gets it at some point during his or her journey to teach, and teach well.  The book is entitled The Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of American Public Schools, by Martin Gross.  I wish to quote a bit from a section on self-esteem:

  • “A large group of eager American 8th graders from two hundred schools coast-to-coast were excited about pitting their math skills against youngsters from several other nations.
  • “The math bee included 24,000 thirteen-year-olds from America, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland, and four Canadian provinces, all chosen at random and given the same 63-question exam in their native language.
  • “It was a formidable contest, and the American kids felt primed and ready to show off their mathematical stuff.  In addition to the math queries, all the students were asked to fill out a yes-no response to the simple statement “I am good at math.”
  • “With typical American confidence, even bravado, our kids responded as their teachers would have hoped.  Buoyed up by the constant ego building in school, two-thirds of the American kids answered yes.  The emphasis on “self-esteem” – which permeates American schoolhouses – was apparently ready to pay off.
  • “Meanwhile, one of their adversaries, the South Korean youngsters, were more guarded about their skills, perhaps to the point where their self-esteem was jeopardized.  Only one-fourth of these young math students answered yes to the same query on competence.
  • “Then the test began in earnest.  Many of the questions were quite simple, even for 8th graders.  One multiple-choice query asked: ‘here are the ages of five children: 13, 8, 6, 4, 4. What is the average age of these children?’  Even adults, long out of the classroom, would have no trouble with that one.  You merely add up the numbers and divide by 5.  The answer, and average age of 7, was one of the printed choices.
  • “How did the confident American kids do on that no-brainer, on which we would expect a near-100 percent correct response?  The result was ego-piercing.  Sixty percent of our youngsters got it wrong.
  • “When the overall test results came in, the Americans were shocked.  Their team came in last, while the South Koreans won the contest.  The most interesting equation was one of paradox.  The math scores were in inverse ratio to the self-esteem responses.  The Americans lost in math while they vanquished their opponents in self-confidence.  The South Koreans, on the other hand, lost the esteem contest, but won the coveted math prize.” (pp.1-2)

An article by one of my favorite authors Paul Vitz, who is Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Department of Psychology, New York University and Adjunct Professor, John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, Washington, D.C. can be found at:

I hope this refocuses us to zero in on what truly makes a person (child) succeed.

  • A 1989 study of mathematical skills compared students in eight different countries. American students ranked lowest in mathematical competence and Korean students ranked highest. But the researchers also asked students to rate how good they were at mathematics. The Americans ranked highest in self-judged mathematical ability, while the Koreans ranked lowest. Mathematical self-esteem had an inverse relation to mathematical accomplishment! This is certainly an example of a “feel-good” psychology, keeping students from an accurate perception of reality. The self-esteem theory predicts that only those who feel good about themselves will do well — which is supposedly why all students need self-esteem — but in fact feeling good about yourself may simply make you over-confident, narcissistic, and unable to work hard. (Paul Vitz)

I wish I had kept the original engagements written to me from Rachel, and Jodi. Unfortunately all I have are my responses — so context will be tough, but out of these responses and my additions there will be usable material for the religio-political apologist. First up is Rachel

Hi Rachel,

Did you read those articles I posted in my main post and other responses?  What are your thoughts on those articles?  I will give you another one to read that may address some of your worries about self-esteem.  http://www.cyc-net.org/today2002/today020208.html  (Trying to track down the article… will update when I find it.)

Unfortunately, you make my point when you say

  • “What do these kids have high self esteem about? Living below poverty levels?  Typically, being abandoned by one or both parents?  Having society in general believe that they will never succeed at anything?  Having the life expectancy of 21 either being in jail or dead?”

These items you mention have nothing to do with self-esteem. 

Maybe, just maybe, is it possible that you have a distorted view of self-esteem? Or in the least, a distorted view of what builds healthy self-esteem?

I may be wrong on my position as well.  But I have made a fifteen-year study of this on and off [as well as other accompanying issues], and I feel confident in saying I have a good grasp on the subject. Whereas most I meet haven’t heard about self-esteem as currently applied by educators as being harmful.

They merely defend the status quo or what they have accepted as the truth of the matter… without critically analyzing their own views on it.  So I am use to — when presenting this to others — getting an immediate visceral response.  When the person then goes and investigates the matter for themselves, usually their story changes over a year or two.

I want to give an example of two organizations, one that gives kids the proper tools to accomplish self-esteem for themselves and the other one who preaches defeat constantly.  This can be exemplified in the dichotomy between what a commentator calls “victacrats,” like Rainbow/Push Coalition with the guiding hand of Rev. Jesse Jackson and that of BOND with the guiding hand of Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson.  Two ways of dealing with one’s surroundings, one is optimistic (has hope and goals), one pessimistic (always trying to “keep hope alive,” because apparently it is always under attack).

Jordan Peterson – Self-esteem Doesn’t Exist

Here is an interaction with another gal, Jodi. I assume from the “quote marks” around “tolerant,” she was anything but.

Jodi,

I truly appreciate your boldness.  It is refreshing, and “tolerant” (see my other post).

I want to post some quotes from another article, which I kindly ask any here to read, it is quite interesting.  And tell me as you read this if this sounds like some of the more “hooligan” type kids on campus:

But a spate of recent articles suggests that the tide may be turning. When Senator Robert Torricelli failed to admit wrongdoing as he resigned, Andrew Sullivan’s opinion piece in Time magazine (October 7, 2002) blamed “the sheer, blinding brightness of the man’s self-love” on the self-esteem movement. An article by Erica Goode in the New York Times (October 1, 2002) proclaimed that “‘D’ students . . . think as highly of themselves as valedictorians, and serial rapists are no more likely to ooze with insecurities than doctors or bank managers.” Worse, the writer said, some people with high self-esteem are likely to respond with aggression if anyone dares to criticize them: “Neo-Nazis, street toughs, school bullies . . . combine preening self-satisfaction with violence.”

In the pages of the New York Times Magazine (February 3, 2002), psychologist Lauren Slater maintained that the self-esteem movement has produced a “discourse of affirmation” that ladles out praise regardless of achievement. She concluded that self-appraisal and self-control need to take the place of self-esteem in psychotherapy. In the Christian Science Monitor (October 24, 2002), conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza said of self-esteem that “unlike honor, it does not have to be earned.”

Most such media critiques draw on the well-publicized research findings of the same three social psychologists: Roy Baumeister, Jennifer Crocker, and Nicholas Emler. But, as we shall see, these psychologists rely on mistaken conceptions of self-esteem and on flawed research methods.

PSYCHOLOGISTS AGAINST SELF-ESTEEM

Roy Baumeister, a professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University, is the academic psychologist best known for claiming that “D” students, gang leaders, racists, murderers, and rapists have high self-esteem. Examining empirical studies on how murderers and rapists respond to self-defining statements, Baumeister and his colleagues have pointed out that these individuals consciously believe they are superior, not inferior—a belief that, Baumeister says, is characteristic of high self-esteem.

Baumeister does not claim that high self-esteem necessarily leads to aggression; in order to do so, it must be combined with an ego threat (a challenge to one’s high self-appraisal). In a study that has gotten less media attention, Baumeister and Brad Bushman tested this hypothesis experimentally. Participants were given the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which contains such items as “If I ruled the world it would be a much nicer place,” and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. (See below for more about these questionnaires.) The ego threat was a strong criticism of the participant’s intellectual competence. Participants were given the opportunity to aggress against the people who had criticized them, by delivering a blast of noxious noise. (Since this was a social psychology experiment, the noise was not really delivered to the critic.) What the results showed was that the narcissism measure, not the self-esteem score, predicted the strength of the aggressive response (the intensity and duration of the noise). But because those who scored high on the narcissism questionnaire also tended to score high on the self-esteem scale, it looked as though some people with “high” self-esteem are aggressive when their sense of self is threatened.

The research of Jennifer Crocker, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, has indicated that deriving one’s self-esteem from certain “external” contingencies, such as appearance, is associated with potentially destructive behavior, including alcohol and drug use, and eating disorders. Crocker and her colleagues conducted a study with applicants to graduate programs who based their self-esteem on academic competence. They found that such students showed greater increases in self-esteem on days of acceptance and greater decreases on days of rejection. The stability of self-esteem is an important area of investigation because several studies have found that people whose self-esteem is unstable (that is, fluctuates substantially on a daily basis) are more emotionally reactive to everyday events. They are more likely to become depressed when confronted with daily hassles and are more prone to anger when their self-esteem is threatened.

Crocker’s findings have led her to conclude that the pursuit of self-esteem has significant costs. Crocker has gone on to contend that self-esteem ought to be non-contingent: not based on any source at all. If people value themselves positively without conditions or criteria, Crocker maintains, they will be less likely to suffer from problem drinking, maladaptive hostile reactions, and depression.

Nicholas Emler, a psychologist at the University of Surrey, is a researcher whose work has garnered extensive media attention in Great Britain. He also believes that high self-esteem is a source of trouble. His 2001 monograph Self-Esteem: The Costs and Causes of Low Self-Worthreviews a wide range of published research, concluding that low self-esteem is not a risk factor for delinquency, violence against others, or racial prejudice. On the contrary, he suggests, high self-esteem is the more plausible risk factor. Relying on Baumeister’s and Crocker’s evidence about the pitfalls of self-esteem, as well as other research, Emler asserts that people with high self-esteem are more likely to engage in risky pursuits, such as driving too fast and driving drunk. Lastly, Emler finds little evidence that self-esteem and educational attainment are associated, since even failing students can show high self-esteem on questionnaires.

(ATLAS SOCEITY)

Does any of that ring true to youjust a bit?  And the question then becomes Jodi, do you have a degree that gives you the tools to delineate between proper (i.e., earned) self-esteem and narcissism?

I don’t, and when I look into who writes the textbooks and teacher resources on this matter, they do not either.  Instead, they merely accept the latest fad, like outcome-based education.  When I deal with other people’s kids I do not bet their kids to pop-psychology.  And I let their parents know that I don’t.

Thank you again for the thoughtful challenge.

I was trying to be as gracious as I could.

Parents want to do all they can to help their kids become happy, independent adults, but the question is, how do we do that? For the last 30 years, parents have heard that instilling “high self-esteem” is the secret to raising successful children. But the research does not support that. In fact, the quality of ‘high self-control’ is emerging as the most important trait. This talk by Heidi Landes, parent coach and mother of 4, looks at the research around these concepts, as well as giving parents simple ways to encourage their children to develop greater self-control, and a greater chance of success in adulthood.

Heidi Landes is a parent coach who started a coaching business called Courage for Parents with her husband, Gabe. Their mission is to help parents prepare their children for life. They also serve as a host family for medical mission children from Africa and travel with their family to Mexico several times a year to volunteer at an orphanage. Heidi received an undergraduate degree from Miami University and a MBA from the University of Dayton. Early in her career, she founded TeenWorks, Inc., a faith-based nonprofit that taught entrepreneurialism to youth, and served on the board of Her Star Scholars, an organization that sends young girls to school in underdeveloped countries. Heidi and her husband live in Dayton with their four children.

Dr. Paul Vitz notes the end result of what Dr. Baumeister confirms:

Finally, the whole focus on ourselves feeds unrealistic self love. What psychologists often call narcissism. One would have thought America had enough trouble with narcissism in the 70s which was the Me Generation and in the 80s with the yuppies. Today, the search for self-esteem is just the newest expression of America’s old egomania.

In giving school children happy faces for all their homework just because it was handed in or giving them trophies for just being on the team is flattery of the kind found for decades in our commercial slogans “You deserve a break today,” “You are the boss,” “Have it your way.” Such self love is an extreme expression of an individualistic psychology long supported by our consumer world. Now, it is reinforced by educators who gratify the vanity of even our youngest children with repetitive mantras like “You are the most important person in the whole world.”

This narcissistic emphasis in American society and especially in education and to some extent in religion is a disguised form of self worship. If accepted, America would have 250 million “most important persons in the whole world.” Two hundred and fifty million golden selves. If such idolatry were not socially so dangerous, it would be embarrassing, even pathetic. Let’s hope common sense makes something of a come back…..

(PAUL VITZ)

Here is more… a “for instance” via PSYCHOLOGY TODAY in an article notes the following:

As a culture, we are highly concerned with self-esteem. And this is a good thing. How we feel about ourselves determines how we treat those around us and vice versa. In 1890, William James identified self-esteem as a fundamental human need, no less essential for survival than emotions such as anger and fear. And yet, we often fail to measure the many distinctions between self-esteem and vanity, or we fail to understand how our actions and reactions can serve to bolster one as opposed to the other.

Terror management theorist Dr. Sheldon Solomon makes the point that self-esteem is “controversial as some claim that it is vitally important for psychological and interpersonal well-being, while others insist that self-esteem is unimportant or is associated with increased violence and social insensitivity.” He goes on to say that “those who claim that high self-esteem is problematic and associated with increased aggression are either willfully or unwittingly confusing and [equating] self-esteem with narcissism.”

The distinction between self-esteem and narcissism is of great significance on a personal and societal level. Self-esteem differs from narcissism in that it represents an attitude built on accomplishments we’ve mastered, values we’ve adhered to, and care we’ve shown toward others. Narcissism, conversely, is often based on a fear of failure or weakness, a focus on one’s self, an unhealthy drive to be seen as the best, and a deep-seated insecurity and underlying feeling of inadequacy. So where do these attitudes come from? And why do we form them?

[….]

Studies have shown that children offered compliments for skills they haven’t mastered or talents they do not possess are left feeling as if they’d received no praise at all, often even emptier and less secure. Only children praised for real accomplishments were able to build self-esteem. The others were left to develop something far less desirable–narcissism. Unnatural pressure or unearned buildup can lead to increased insecurities and anxieties that foster narcissism over self-confidence.

THE GUARDIAN expands on the emptiness of this modern educational push and the miapplication of it:

A widespread view among teachers and social workers that delinquency, violence and under-achievement can be blamed on people’s low self-esteem is debunked today in research commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Nicholas Emler, a social psychologist at the London School of Economics, claims to have exploded the myth that a limited sense of self-worth lies behind just about every personal and social ill – from drug abuse and racism to poverty and business failure.

“Widespread belief in ‘raising self-esteem’ as a cure for social problems has created a huge market for self-help manuals and educational programmes that threatens to become the psychotherapeutic equivalent of snake oil,” he says. “Unfortunately, many of the claims made about self-esteem are not rooted in hard evidence.”

Individuals with an unjustifiably high opinion of themselves often pose a greater threat to those around them than do people whose sense of self-worth is unusually low, Emler argues.

The research, Self-esteem: The Costs and Causes, is based on analysis of studies of children and young people, linking measurement of their self-esteem to their subsequent behaviour. Emler found relatively low self-esteem did not lead people into delinquency, violence (including child and partner abuse), drug use, alcohol abuse, educational under-attainment or racism.

On the other hand, young people with very high self-esteem were more likely than others to hold racist attitudes, reject social pressures from adults and peers and engage in physically risky pursuits, such as drink-driving or driving too fast.

The research identified a few areas where low self-esteem could be a risk factor. It made people more liable to suicide, depression, teenage pregnancy and victimisation by bullies. But in each case a low sense of self-worth was only one of several risk factors.

Emler found that parents had the most influence on young people’s level of self-esteem – both through genetic inheritance and upbringing. The effects of high or low achievement at school were relatively small.

All of this is of course rooted in Abraham Maslow’sHierarchy of Needs,” Carl Rogers’ Self-Image, or John Dewey’s “Whole Person. The progressive, humanistic endeavors give zero tools to the educator to distinguish between narcissism and a healthy value based and merit based self-esteem.

In this video I provide a short introduction to the ideas of humanistic psychologists Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. Maslow and Rogers both emphasized the role of an intrinsic drive towards self-actualization, or fulfilling one’s greatest potential, in shaping an individual.

What is Secular Humanism? Most teachers end up being engrained with this reductionistic religion, whether they realize it or not:

Secular Humanism is a well-articulated worldview. This is evident from the three Humanist Manifestos written in 1933 and revised in 1973 and again in 2000. According to their own pronouncements, Secular Humanists are atheists who believe that the scientific method is the primary way we can know about life and living, from understanding who we are as humans to questions of ethics, social issues, and politics.

However, apart from the specifics of what Secular Humanists believe, the pressing issue is this: is Secular Humanism a religion? This is important in light of current discussions surrounding the idea of “separation of church and state.” That’s because this phrase has been used by the courts and secular organizations (such as American’s United Against Church and State) in an attempt to eradicate all mention of God from the public square, including public debates over social issues, discussions in politics, and especially regarding what is taught in public/government schools.

To verify that a number of major tenets of Secular Humanism are taught in public schools, one only needs to compare Secular Humanist beliefs with what is actually being presented through public school textbooks. For example, any text on psychology includes what are considered the primary voices in that field: Abraham Maslow, Eric Fromm, Carl Rogers, and B. F. Skinner, to name a few. Yet, each of these men are atheists who have been selected as “Humanist of the Year” by a major Secular Humanist organization. So why are almost all the psychologists studied in school Secular Humanists? Why are no Christian psychologists included in the curriculum? Is this balanced treatment of the subject matter being taught?

Or when it comes to law, why are the Ten Commandments, historically known to be the foundation for English Common Law and American jurisprudence, judged to be inappropriate material to be hung on the school wall, in a courtroom, or as part of a public display on government property? The answer, of course, is an appeal to the “separation” principle.

But if this is how the courts are going to interpret the separation principle, we must insist that this ruling be applied equally to all religious faiths, not favoring some others. Therefore, for the sake of fairness under the law, if Secular Humanism is a religious faith, too, then teaching the tenets of this religious faith must also be eliminated from public school textbooks and classroom discussions. …..

(SUMMIT MINISTRIES)

And SUMMIT has more on sel-esteem worth reading:

Historically, the concept of self-esteem has no clear intellectual origins; no major theorist has made it a central concept. Many psychologists have emphasized the self, in various ways, but the usual focus has been on self-actualization, or fulfillment of one’s total potential. As a result, it is difficult to trace the source of this emphasis on self-esteem. Apparently, this widespread preoccupation is a distillation of the general concern with the self — found in many psychological theories. Self-esteem seems to be the common denominator pervading the writings of such varied theorists as Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, “ego-strength” psychologists, and various recent moral educators. In any case, the concern with self-esteem hovers everywhere in America today. It is, however, most reliably found in the world of education — from professors of education to principals, teachers, school boards, and television programs concerned with preschool children.

Self worth, a feeling of respect and confidence in one’s being, has merit, as we shall see. But an ego-centered, “let me feel good” self-esteem can ignore our failures and need for God.

What is wrong with the concept of self-esteem? Lots — and it is fundamental in nature. There have been thousands of psychological studies on self-esteem. Often the term self-esteem is muddled in confusion as it becomes a label for such various aspects as self-image, self-acceptance, self worth, self-trust, or self-love. The bottom line is that no agreed-upon definition or agreed-upon measure of self-esteem exists, and whatever it is, no reliable evidence supports self-esteem scores meaning much at all anyway. There is no evidence that high self-esteem reliably causes anything — indeed lots of people with little of it have achieved a great deal in one dimension or another.

For instance, Gloria Steinem, who has written a number of books and been a major leader of the feminist movement, recently revealed in a book-long statement that she suffers from low self-esteem. And many people with high self-esteem are happy just being rich, beautiful, or socially connected. Some other people whose high self-esteem has been noted are inner-city drug dealers, who generally feel quite good about themselves: after all, they have succeeded in making a lot of money in a hostile and competitive environment.

A 1989 study of mathematical skills compared students in eight different countries. American students ranked lowest in mathematical competence and Korean students ranked highest. But the researchers also asked students to rate how good they were at mathematics. The Americans ranked highest in self-judged mathematical ability, while the Koreans ranked lowest. Mathematical self-esteem had an inverse relation to mathematical accomplishment! This is certainly an example of a “feel-good” psychology, keeping students from an accurate perception of reality. The self-esteem theory predicts that only those who feel good about themselves will do well — which is supposedly why all students need self-esteem — but in fact feeling good about yourself may simply make you over-confident, narcissistic, and unable to work hard.

I am not implying that high self-esteem is always negatively related to accomplishment. Rather, the research mentioned above shows that measures of self-esteem have no reliable relationship to behavior, either positive or negative. In part, this is simply because life is too complicated for so simple a notion to be of much use. But we should expect this failure in advance. We all know, and know of, people who are motivated by insecurities and self-doubts. These are often both the heroes and the villains of history. The prevalence of certain men of small stature in the history of fanatical military leadership is well-documented: Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin were all small men determined to prove they were “big.” Many great athletes and others have had to overcome grave physical disabilities and a lack of self-esteem. Many superior achievements appear to have their origin in what psychologist Alfred Adler called “inferiority completes.”

The point is not that feeling bad about ourselves is good, but rather that only two things can truly change how we feel about ourselves: real accomplishment and developing “basic trust.” First, real accomplishment in the real world affects our attitudes. A child who learns to read, who can do mathematics, who can play the piano or baseball, will have a genuine sense of accomplishment and an appropriate sense of self-esteem. Schools that fail to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic corrupt the proper understanding of self-esteem. Educators who say, “Don’t grade them, don’t label them. You have to make them feel good about themselves,” cause the problems. It makes no sense for students to be full of self-esteem if they have learned nothing. Reality will soon puncture their illusions, and they will have to face two disturbing facts: that they are ignorant, and that the adults responsible for teaching them have lied to them. In the real world praise has to be the reward for something worthwhile: praise must be connected to reality.

There is an even more fundamental way in which most people come to genuine self-esteem — actually, to feelings of self-worth and what psychologists call “basic trust.” Such feelings come through receiving love; first of all, our mother’s love. But this foundational experience of love and self-confidence cannot be faked. When teachers attempt to create this deep and motivating emotion by pretending they “love” all their students and by praising them indiscriminately, they misunderstand the nature of this kind of love. Parental love simply cannot be manufactured by a teacher in a few minutes of interaction a day for each of thirty or more students. The child not only knows that such love is “fake,” but that real teachers are supposed to teach, and that this involves not just support but discipline, demands, and reprimands. Good teachers show their love by caring enough to use discipline. Thus, the best, most admired teachers in our high schools today often are the athletic coaches. They still teach, but they expect performance, and they rarely worry about self-esteem.

Similar problems arise for those who try to build their own flagging self-esteem by speaking lovingly to their “inner child” — or other insecure inner selves. Such attempts are doomed to failure for two reasons: first, if we are insecure about our self-worth, how can we believe our own praise? And second, like the child, we know the need for self-discipline and accomplishment.

Self-esteem should be understood as a response, not a cause. It is primarily an emotional response to what we and what others have done to us. Though it is a desirable feeling or internal state, like happiness it does not cause much. Also, like happiness, and like love, self-esteem is almost impossible to get by trying to get it. Try to get self-esteem and you will fail. But do good to others and accomplish something for yourself, and you will have all you need.

The subject is vital for Christians, partly because so many are so concerned about it and partly because the recovery of self-esteem has been touted as tantamount to a new reformation. We must note, however, that self-esteem is a deeply secular concept — not one with which Christians should be particularly involved. Nor need they be. Christians should have a tremendous sense of self-worth: God made us in His image, He loves us, He sent His Son to save each of us; our destiny is to be with Him forever. Each of us is of such value that the angels rejoice over every repentant sinner. But on the other hand, we have nothing on our own to be proud of, we were given life along with all our talents, and we are all poor sinners. There is certainly no theological reason to believe that the rich or the successful or the high in self-esteem are more favored by God and more likely to reach heaven, indeed there is far more evidence to the contrary: “Blessed are the meek.”

In addition, self-esteem is based on the very American notion that each of us is responsible for our own happiness. Thus, within a Christian framework, self-esteem has a subtle, pathological aspect: we may take the “pursuit of happiness” as a far more intense personal goal than the pursuit of holiness. Today self-esteem has become very important because it is thought to be essential to happiness: unless you love yourself, you will not be happy. But to assume that we must love ourselves, that God will not love us as much as we need to be loved, is a form of practical atheism. We say we believe in God, but we don’t trust Him. Instead, many Christians live by the very unbiblical “God loves those who love themselves.”

Another problem is that Christians have begun to excuse evil or destructive behavior on the grounds of “low self-esteem.” But self-esteem, whether high or low, does not determine our actions. We are accountable for them and we are responsible for trying to do good and avoid evil. Low self-esteem does not make someone an alcoholic, nor does it enable a person finally to admit his or her addiction and do something about it. Both of these decisions are up to each of us regardless of one’s level of self-esteem.

Finally, the whole focus on ourselves feeds unrealistic self-love, which psychologists often call “narcissism.” One would have thought America had enough trouble with narcissism in the seventies with the “Me Generation,” and in the eighties with the Yuppies. But today’s search for self-esteem is just the newest expression of America’s old egomania. And giving schoolchildren happy faces on all their homework just because it was handed in or giving them trophies for just being on the team is flattery of the kind found for decades in our commercial slogans: “You deserve a break today”; “You are the boss”; and “Have it your way.” Such self-love is an extreme expression of an individualistic psychology long supported by consumerism. Now it is reinforced by educators who gratify the vanity of even our youngest children with repetitive mantras like “You are the most important person in the whole world.”

This narcissistic emphasis in our society, and especially in education and religion, is a disguised form of self-worship. If accepted, America would have 250 million “most important persons in the whole world,” 250 million golden selves. If such idolatry were not socially so dangerous, it would be embarrassing, even pathetic.

How Trans Activists Conquered American Life | Christopher Rufo

This is an upload from RUFO’S TWITTER. A new, powerful, concise video by investigative journalist Christopher Rufo exposes the monied interests, activist intellectuals and influential doctors behind the aggressive “trans” revolution in America. Rufo’s SUBSTACK IS HERE.