Author: Papa Giorgio

Ty Smith (aka Modern Renaissance Man) Slams CRT!

Published by Papa Giorgio

Ty Smith (aka Modern Renaissance Man) from “Cancel This” on Cities 92.9 spoke at the D87 school board meeting. He was met with opposing comments from students and other public commentators. Ty is a parent and says we need to protect our children when it comes to Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools.

Illinois Father Ty Smith joins “The Story with Martha MacCallum” and sounds off on CRT.

Glenn Loury on Tucker Carlson & w/John McWhorter

Published by Papa Giorgio

A QUICK CLIP w/McHorter

Glenn Loury recounts his experience as a guest on Tucker Carlson Today.

TWITTER QUICK CLIPS

Larry Elder Lambasts Joy Reid’s Historical Ineptitude!

Published by Papa Giorgio

Larry sets the record straight. Joy Reid effectively lied to her viewers. Let’s look at the actual history here.

PART ONE

Larry corrects Joy Reid’s ridiculous tirade where she inaccurately accuses Mitch McConnell and the Republicans of engaging in immoral, rotten behavior and blowing up the Filibuster Rule.

PART TWO

Social Dysphoria… Great Inner Battle Led To Detransitioning

Published by Papa Giorgio

(RIGHT SCOOP hat-tip) “I haven’t really had an issue with my body, in the sense of wanting to have the female parts to be removed, I was just in general insecure,” she says. “I think I had more social dysphoria than actual gender dysphoria.”

Examples of Racism and Bigotry from the Left

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Originally Posted February 2015)

  • 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.”

(SEE MORE)

The DAILY CALLER notes Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas’, observations on racism/bigotry:

Justice Clarence Thomas caused a firestorm last year when he said in a speech that northern liberals are more racist than southern conservatives:

“The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites,” he said. “The absolute worst I have ever been treated. The worst things that have been done to me, the worst things that have been said about me, by northern liberal elites, not by the people of Savannah, Georgia.”

Continuing:

…..“My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school,” he said. “To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up. Now, name a day it doesn’t come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them — left them out. That’s a part of the deal.”

Nowhere are Thomas’s observations on racial obsession more apropos than American university campuses. At the University of Michigan, for instance, minority students recently cited a black student feeling left out during group assignments as evidence of campus-wide racism…..

…read more…

See also:

Dr. Wallace is the founder and publisher of FREEDOM’S JOURNAL MAGAZINE, he writes the following about “Urban Legends: The Dixiecrats and the GOP“:

Which way did they go?

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, Jesse Helms and Mills E. Godwind, Jr….

Every segregationist who ever served in the Senate was a

Democrat and remained a Democrat except one. Even

Strom Thurmond—the only one who later became a Republican—

remained a Democrat for eighteen years

after running for president as a Dixiecrat. There’s a reason they

were not called the “Dixiecans.”

 

Ann Coulter, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America

(New York: Crown Publishing, 2011), 174. (Emphasis added) (via BLACK REPUBLICAN)

…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.

Eventually, politics in the South began to change. The stranglehold that white segregationist democrats once held over the South began to crumble. The “old guard” gave way to a new generation of politicians. The Republican Party saw an opportunity to make in-roads into the southern states appealing to southern voters. However, this southern strategy was not an appeal to segregationists, but to the new political realities emerging in the south.

Conservatives vs. Segregationists

Despite this, and other overwhelming evidence to the contrary, these same “revisionists” would have you believe that conservatives and segregationists are synonymous. This could not be further from the truth. By definition, conservatives today are what were once called  “classical liberals”, which Barry Goldwater clearly was. It should be noted here, that although in his latter years Goldwater sounded more like a Libertarian; “classical liberals” believe, among other things, in liberty to reach ones fullest potential, own property, start a business, vote and worship without the assistance or interference of the Federal Government. [FJM has dubbed these the R.I.S.E. principles, which stands for Responsible government, Individual liberty and fidelity, Strong family values and Economic empowerment (See R.I.S.E principles)].

As a matter of historical record, conservatives (classical liberals) have always taken seriously the US Constitution’s limiting of the scope and reach of government. This includes the very nature and letter of the Bill of Rights, especially the tenth amendment.

For example, conservative ideology differs from the segregationists in that segregationist used the tenth amendment to nullify the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, as well as the Declaration of Independence.  An often misrepresented fact is, that Dixiecrats, not Republicans, tried to exalt states rights over the rights guaranteed to African Americans challenging the merits of the 14th amendment section one, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This amendment granted former slaves full citizenship and equal protection under the law, which segregationist tried to deny Blacks through black codes, Jim Crow, lynching and/or a rigged jury.

Additionally, the 15th amendment gave African Americans the right to vote. It states in Section 1. “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” Segregationists denied this right through poll taxes and intimidation (the KKK).

The truth is, that “true” conservatives would (did) not agree with the segregationist interpretation of the Constitution, especially that of the tenth amendment. Conservatives, past and present, however do believe in responsible or limited government; but certainly not at the expense of turning the Constitution on its head to do so. Conservatives hold that the Constitution limits the Federal government to the enumerated powers explicit in the document, and therefore the Fed has no power when it tries to move past its constitutional restraints. All other powers belong to the states and the people. Bottom line, a person advocating for state’s rights should be able to do so without being labeled a segregationists. For conservatives, “the rights of the people” include all races, creeds, ethnicities and colors—all U.S. citizens….

…read more…

See the many “Urban Legends“ at Freedom’s Journal Institute

The following is from Discover the Networks:

Hoover Institution fellow Shelby Steele writes that after the 1960s, “[v]ictimization became so rich a vein of black power—even if it was only the power to ‘extract’ reforms … from the larger society—that it was allowed not only to explain black fate but to explain it totally.” A black conservative, says Steele, “is a black who dissents from the victimization explanation of black fate … when it is made the main theme of group identity and the raison d’être of a group politics.”

Black conservatives represent the antithesis of black leftists, who, for decades, have relentlessly cast African Americans as the perpetual victims of intransigent societal racism; who are intolerant of anyone rejecting the notion of universal black victimization; and who interpret as treason any deviation from their own intellectual orthodoxy. Some examples will serve to illustrate:

  • In 2002, NAACP chairman Julian Bond referred to Ward Connerly, a black California Board of Regents member who had led the fight to end affirmative action in California’s public sector, as a “fraud” and a “con man.” Bond likened black conservatives in general to “ventriloquists’ dummies” who “speak in their puppet-master’s voice.”
  • Jesse Jackson has called Ward Connerly a “house slave” and a “puppet of the white man.” He also condemned Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s vote to place limits on affirmative action programs, characterizing Thomas as an “enem[y] of civil rights” and likening his black judicial robes to the white sheets of Klansmen.
  • In November 1996 the front cover of Emerge, which billed itself as “Black America’s News Magazine,” featured a cartoon depiction of Clarence Thomas alongside the caption: “UNCLE THOMAS: Lawn Jockey for the Far Right.”
  • The late columnist Carl Rowan sarcastically suggested on July 7, 1991, “If you give [Clarence] Thomas a little flour on his face, you’d think you had [former Klansman] David Duke.”
  • San Francisco mayor Willie Brown called Justice Thomas not only “a shill and cover for the most insidious form of racism,” but also a man whose views are “legitimizing of the Ku Klux Klan.” Brown added that Thomas “should be reduced to talking only to white conservatives,” and “must be shut out” by the black community.
  • Time magazine correspondent Jack E. White, denouncing Thomas for his “twisted reasoning and bilious rage,” writes that “the maddening irony” of the Justice’s opposition to affirmative action—an opposition conceived within the confines of what White regards as a deluded “neverland of color-blind philosophizing”—is that “Thomas owes his seat [on the Supreme Court] to precisely the kind of racial preference he goes to such lengths to excoriate.”
  • The late political scientist Manning Marable asserted that Thomas had “ethnically ceased being an African American.”
  • Movie director Spike Lee claims that Malcolm X would call Thomas “a handkerchief-head, chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom.”
  • The late author June Jordan characterized Thomas as a “virulent Oreo phenomenon,” a “punk-ass,” and an “Uncle Tom calamity.”
  • The late Haywood Burns, who was chairman emeritus of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, called Thomas a “counterfeit hero” whose ideals had “crushed or forever deferred” the dreams of millions of blacks.
  • Columnist Julianne Malveaux told a television audience, “I hope [Thomas’s] wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter, and he dies early, like many black men do, of heart disease…. He’s an absolutely reprehensible person.”
  • From the podium of an NAACP convention, Thomas was denounced as a “pimp” and a “traitor” to the black community.
  • The Reverend Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference once said he was “ashamed” of Justice Thomas because he “has become to many in the African-American community what Benedict Arnold was to the United States, a deserter; what Judas was to Jesus, a traitor, and what Brutus was to Caesar, an assassin.”
  • Missouri Democrat William Clay smeared black conservatives as “Negro wanderers” whose goal is to “maim and kill other blacks for the gratification and entertainment of ultraconservative white racists.” Clay described black conservative Gary Franks—when the latter was a Connecticut congressman—as a “Negro Dr. Kevorkian who gleefully assists in suicidal conduct to destroy his own race,” and who exhibits a “‘foot-shuffling, head-scratching ‘Amos and Andy’ brand of ‘Uncle Tom-ism.'”
  • Former NAACP executive director Benjamin Hooks denounced black conservatives as “a new breed of Uncle Tom” and “some of the biggest liars the world ever saw.”
  • The late Afrocentric historian John Henrik Clarke called black conservatives “frustrated slaves crawling back to the plantation.”
  • In 2011, Ivy League professor Cornel West said that conservative black Republican Herman Cain, who had stated that racism was no longer an impediment to black progress in the United States, “needs to get off the symbolic crack pipe and acknowledge that the evidence [of racism in America] is overwhelming.”
  • Time.com contributor and author Toure Neblet said of Cain: “There is this constant minstrelsy aspect that [he] keeps bringing up…. And yet Cain allows the GOP to have this sort of force where it’s like: ‘Well, we’re not racist. We are supporting this black man.'” He also characterized Cain as a “Clown” and as the “black Sarah Palin.”
  • Los Angeles Times journalist and contributing editor Erin Aubry Kaplan wrote: “I don’t support conservatism in its current iteration, and I support black conservatives even less…. Here is a man [Herman Cain] who, like most black conservatives, has had to do an awful lot of personal and political rationalizing to pay dues…. It’s hard to imagine that such compromises and cognitive dissonance don’t exact a psychological toll at some point.”
  • On June 25, 2013, Minnesota state legislator Ryan Patrick Winkler used his Twitter account as a forum for deriding the Supreme Court’s decision (earlier that day) to strike down a section of the Voting Rights Act requiring states to obtain federal preclearance approval of any changes to their election laws and procedures—e.g., the enactment of Voter ID requirements. Tweeted Winkler: “VRA majority is four accomplices to race discrimination and one Uncle Thomas”—a reference to Clarence Thomas.
  • USA Today columnist Barbara Reynolds once derided Clarence Thomas for having married a white woman: “It may sound bigoted; well, this is a bigoted world and why can’t black people be allowed a little Archie Bunker mentality? … Here’s a man who’s going to decide crucial issues for the country and he has already said no to blacks; he has already said if he can’t paint himself white he’ll think white and marry a white woman.”
  • Howard University’s Afro-American Studies department chair Russell Adams directed a similar charge against Clarence Thomas: “His marrying a white woman is a sign of his rejection of the black community. Great Justices have had community roots that served as a basis for understanding the Constitution. Clarence’s lack of a sense of community makes his nomination troubling.”
  • In February 2014, State Rep. Alvin Holmes (D-AL) said of Justice Thomas: “I don’t like him at all because he’s an Uncle Tom.” He also said he disliked Thomas because “he’s married to a white woman.” When another reporter later asked Holmes to explain his remark, Holmes said that he had been misinterpreted: “I said some people might say I didn’t like him because he was married to a white woman.” At that point, he added the “Uncle Tom” comment.
  • California state Senate Democrat Diane Watson similarly mocked former University of California regent Ward Connerly: “He’s married a white woman. He wants to be white. He wants a colorless society. He has no ethnic pride. He doesn’t want to be black.”
  • In January 2014, Rev. William Barber II, the head of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, derided Senator Tim Scott (a black Republican representing South Carolina) as a pawn of “the extreme right wing.” “A ventriloquist can always find a good dummy,” said Barber.
  • In April 2014, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson called conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom.” When the congressman was subsequently asked by reporter Dana Bash to clarify his comments, the Democrat said that Thomas’s rulings had been “adverse” to the black community. Miss Bash then noted that the term “Uncle Tom” could be viewed as racist and inappropriate if used by a white person. Thompson responded, “But I’m black.” “That makes it OK?” asked Bash. To this, Thompson replied: “I mean, you’re asking me the question, and I’m giving you a response. The people that I represent, for the most part, have a real issue with those decisions — voter ID, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act — all those issues are very important and for someone in the court who’s African American and not sensitive to that is a real problem.”

Because of ubiquitous character assassinations like these, many blacks who otherwise would venture to challenge the prevailing leftist dogmas of our time are prevented from doing so by the fear that they will be branded as sell-outs, “Uncle Toms,” “Oreos,” and race-traitors. Shelby Steele puts it this way:

“Today a public ‘black conservative’ will surely meet a stunning amount of animus, demonization, misunderstanding, and flat-out, undifferentiated contempt. And there is a kind of licensing process involved here in which the black leadership—normally protective even of people like Marion Barry and O.J. Simpson—licenses blacks and whites to have contempt for the black conservative. It is a part of the group’s manipulation of shame to let certain of its members languish outside the perimeter of group protection where even politically correct whites (who normally repress criticism of blacks) can show contempt for them.”

…read more...

LARRY ELDER UPDATE!

The tactics of the Left have not changed a bit… just more people truly believe it. And they expect us to be civil, and unite — exactly when did Democrats practice the “civility” to which they wish to return?….

  • When Barry Goldwater accepted the 1964 Republican nomination, California’s Democratic Gov. Pat Brown said, “The stench of fascism is in the air.”
  • Former Rep. William Clay Sr., D-Mo., said President Ronald Reagan was “trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from ‘Mein Kampf.'”
  • Coretta Scott King, in 1980, said, “I am scared that if Ronald Reagan gets into office, we are going to see more of the Ku Klux Klan and a resurgence of the Nazi Party.”
  • After Republicans took control of the House in the mid-’90s, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., compared the newly conservative-majority House to “the Duma and the Reichstag,” referring to the legislature set up by Czar Nicholas II of Russia and the parliament of the German Weimar Republic that brought Hitler to power.
  • About President George Herbert Walker Bush, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said: “I believe (Bush) is a racist for many, many reasons. … (He’s) a mean-spirited man who has no care or concern about what happens to the African American community. … I truly believe that.”
  • About the Republican-controlled House, longtime Harlem Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel, in 1994, said: “It’s not ‘s—-‘ or ‘n——-‘ anymore. (Republicans) say, ‘Let’s cut taxes.'” A decade later, Rangel said, “George (W.) Bush is our Bull Connor,” referring to the Birmingham, Alabama, Democrat segregationist superintendent of public safety who sicced dogs and turned fire hoses on civil rights workers.
  • Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s presidential campaign manager, in 1999, said: Republicans have a “white boy attitude, (which means) ‘I must exclude, denigrate and leave behind.’ They don’t see it or think about it. It’s a culture.” The following year, Brazile said: “The Republicans bring out Colin Powell and (Rep.) J.C. Watts, (R-Okla.), because they have no program, no policy. … They’d rather take pictures with Black children than feed them.”
  • About President George W. Bush, former Vice President Al Gore said: “(Bush’s) executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations, from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. … And every day, they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.” Digital “brownshirts”?
  • About George W. Bush, George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor, said: “The Bush administration and the Nazi and communist regimes all engaged in the politics of fear. … Indeed, the Bush administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and communist propaganda machines.”
  • Former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, in a 2006 speech at historically Black Fayetteville State University said, “The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side.”
  • Former Gov. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2005, described the contest between Democrats and Republicans as “a struggle between good and evil. And we’re the good.” Three years later, Dean referred to the GOP as “the white party.”
  • After Hurricane Katrina, Democratic Missouri Senate candidate Claire McCaskill said George W. Bush “let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were Black.”
  • Feminist superlawyer Gloria Allred, in 2001, referred to Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as “Uncle Tom types.”
  • Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, in 2006, said, “The (Republican-controlled) House of Representatives … has been run like a plantation. And you know what I’m talking about.”
  • Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democratic National Committee chairwoman in 2011, said “Republicans … want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws.”……

I bet almost all of my family believes Trump mocked a disabled man’s handicap; think that when he said “there are fine people on both sides” he was saying there were “fine Nazis or white supremacists;” or think that racists and white supremacists have voted Republican in general; or that the bodies natural defenses in immunity are non-existent and only “vaccines” can bring immunity.

These are dangerous lies to believe.

BlackBloc & Antifa Lead Capitol Break-in (RPT)

Published by Papa Giorgio

First and Foremost, all the videos I add are to lead up to — or compliment — Bull Brand’s excellent video via his channel. All videos used I stamp the time they start and the date they were uploaded by said YouTube Channel or site.

VIDEOS USED

UPDATE

A video of some of the first individuals into the Capitol Building was uncovered that shows what appear to be the first individuals into the Capitol. These individuals appear to be from Antifa or BLM. These were not Trump supporters (GATEWAY PUNDIT). When they open the center door, that is when “horn boy” (Jacob Chansley) enters. Remember, just because I point out the first group of people into the Capitol were Antifa/Black Bloc, or that they were a heavy part of the violence, does not mean I deny Trump supporters were just as unlawful. I believe anarchists (right side of the political spectrum), like the pagan anarchist believer [Jacob Chansley — horn guy for example] who supported Trump – and – entered the Capitol building illegally.

And?

But then, you would have to admit Neo-Nazi Ukrainians (Sergai Dybynyn), i.e., “socialists” were in the violent mix as well…

left-hand side of the political spectrum [anti-Israel/anti-Semitic; BIG Government/Universal Healthcare; etc.] — anti-Trump policies in other words:

(The grey area are differing forms of Democracy)

…Right?

Here is video of the initial break-in at this part of the Capitol:

MORE

The lessons from Portland are simple—if destructive protests aren’t stopped and if career protestors aren’t leveled with serious charges and bails, those that participate in these attacks can easily move on to the next city and take their tactics and practices with them. This means that the violence occurring in one city can be quickly duplicated across the country.

Bottom line: don’t go to an Antifa protest where you can put yourself in that situation. And if you find yourself in that situation, expect them to employ tactics that take away your situational awareness, and complicate the use of force continuum.

MORE HERE!

R.R. Reno: “Why I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates”

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes by way of the WALL STREET JOURNAL:

  • Why I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates — Even those who aren’t woke seem damaged by the experience, and they’re deprived of role models.

I’m not inclined to hire a graduate from one of America’s elite universities. That marks a change. A decade ago I relished the opportunity to employ talented graduates of Princeton, Yale, Harvard and the rest. Today? Not so much.

As a graduate of Haverford College, a fancy school outside Philadelphia, I took interest in the campus uproar there last fall. It concerned “antiblackness” and the “erasure of marginalized voices.” A student strike culminated in an all-college Zoom meeting for undergraduates. The college president and other administrators promised to “listen.” During the meeting, many students displayed a stunning combination of thin-skinned narcissism and naked aggression. The college administrators responded with self-abasing apologies.

Haverford is a progressive hothouse. If students can be traumatized by “insensitivity” on that leafy campus, then they’re unlikely to function as effective team members in an organization that has to deal with everyday realities. And in any event, I don’t want to hire someone who makes inflammatory accusations at the drop of a hat.

Student activists don’t represent the majority of students. But I find myself wondering about the silent acquiescence of most students. They allow themselves to be cowed by charges of racism and other sins. I sympathize. The atmosphere of intimidation in elite higher education is intense. But I don’t want to hire a person well-practiced in remaining silent when it costs something to speak up.

The traditional Islamic world exhibited a modicum of tolerance. Christians and Jews were dhimmi, allowed to exist, but on the condition that they accepted their subordinate role in society. While studying this arrangement, sociologists coined the term “dhimmitude,” which refers to the mentality of those who have internalized their second-class status.

Haverford, like Harvard and other top tier schools, graduates fine young people, no doubt many with well-adjusted personalities and sensible views of the world. But in the past decade, dhimmitude has become widespread. Normal kids at elite universities keep their heads down. Over the course of four years, this can become a subtle but real habit of obeisance, a condition of moral and spiritual surrender.

Some resist. They would seem ideal for my organization, which aims to speak for religious and social conservatives. But even this kind of graduate brings liabilities to the workplace. I’ve met recent Ivy grads with conservative convictions who manifest a form of posttraumatic stress disorder. Others have developed a habit of aggressive counterpunching that is no more appealing in a young employee than the ruthless accusations of the woke.

In recent years, I’ve taken stock of my assumptions about who makes for the best entry-level employee. I have no doubt that Ivy League universities attract smart, talented and ambitious kids. But do these institutions add value? My answer is increasingly negative. Dysfunctional kids are coddled and encouraged to nurture grievances, while normal kids are attacked and educationally abused. Listening to Haverford’s all-college Zoom meeting also made it clear that today’s elite students aren’t going to schools led by courageous adults. Deprived of good role models, they’re less likely to mature into good leaders themselves.

My rule of thumb is to hire from institutions I advise young people to attend. Hillsdale College is at the top of that list, as are quirky small Catholic colleges such as Thomas Aquinas College, Wyoming Catholic College and the University of Dallas. In my experience, graduates from these sorts of places are well-educated. But more important, they’ve been supported and encouraged by their institutions, and they haven’t been deformed by the toxic political correctness that leaders of elite universities have allowed to become dominant.

Large state universities and their satellite schools are also good sources. In my experience, top-performing students at Rutgers are as talented but less self-important than Ivy Leaguers. They’re more likely to accept the authority of those more experienced. This allows for better mentoring, which in turn produces better results over time.

The biggest liability that comes with hiring graduates from places like Haverford and Harvard is that they have been socialized to panic over pseudocrises. Talk of systemic racism and fixation on pronouns inculcate in young people an apocalyptic urgency, a mentality that often disrupts the workplace and encourages navel-gazing about “diversity,” “inclusion” and other ill-defined notions that are far removed from the main work of my organization, which is good writing, good editing and good arguments.

A few years ago a student at an Ivy League school told me, “The first things you learn your freshman year is never to say what you are thinking.” The institution he attended claims to train the world’s future leaders. From what that young man reports, the opposite is true. The school is training future self-censors, which means future followers.

Mr. Reno is editor of First Things.

A Facebook Meme About the Soul

Published by Papa Giorgio

A friend posted the picture and statement regarding the soul… I thought it an opportunity to respond, here.

I SORTA agree with that statement in the pic. While the picture is riveting, and I believe in the soul… I assume many who do not adhere to the Judeo-Christian philosophy do not, or do not realize well WHAT they believe. I will explain. All of the world’s 10,000+ religions break down into seven worldviews at most…

WORLDVIEW DEFINED QUICKLEY

  • The German word is WELTANSCHAUUNG, meaning a ‘world and life view,’ or ‘a paradigm.’ It is a framework through which or by which one makes sense of the data of life. A worldview makes a world of difference in one’s view of God, origins, evil, human nature, values, and destiny” A worldview consists of a series of assumptions/presuppositions that a person holds about reality. A worldview, consciously or subconsciously, affects the way a person evaluates every aspect of reality. Every person adheres to some sort of worldview, although one person may not be as consciously aware of it as another person. These presuppositions affect the thinking of every person in the world. It logically follows that the way a person thinks affects what a person does. (I have more on this in my 1st chapter of my book — as well as my WORLDVIEW post)

…. Theism (Jews and Christians as an example); Poly-Theism (Mormons); Finite Godism (Witches, New Age, etc); Naturalism (Atheists); Pantheism (Hinduism, Janism, Buddhism, etc); Panenthiesm (Western mysticism [New Age] – and Hindu bhakti, etc).

While many have a belief in the soul, the only worldview that holds the “self” resides in and continues on ?? the soul is Theism. While neo-Pagans (like Wiccans) believe the soul goes through reincarnations – similar in some respect to Pantheists – in the end, we see that all this we experience is an illusion. Here, for instance, is a conversation I had with a ZEN apologist (this is taken from my 2nd chapter in my book):

MY INITIAL ENGAGEMENT:

Does the idea of “violence” as a moral good or a moral evil truly exist in the Buddhist mindset? What I mean is that according to a major school of Buddhism, isn’t there a denial that distinctions exist in reality… that separate “selves” is really a false perception? Language is considered something the Buddhist must get beyond because it serves as a tool that creates and makes these apparently illusory distinctions more grounded, or rooted in “our” psyche. For instance, the statement that “all statements are empty of meaning,” would almost be self refuting, because, that statement — then — would be meaningless. So how can one go from that teaching inherent to Buddhistic thought and say that self-defense (and using WWII as an example) is really meaningful. Isn’t the [Dalai] Lama drawing distinction by assuming the reality of Aristotelian logic in his responses to questions? (He used at least three Laws of Logic [thus, drawing distinctions using Western principles]: The Law of Contradiction; the Law of Excluded Middle; and the Law of Identity.)  Curious.

THEY CALL HIM JAMES URE, RESPONDS:

You’re right that language is just a tool and in the end a useless one at that but It’s important to be able run a blog. That or teach people the particulars of the religion. It’s like a lamp needed to make your way through the dark until you reach the lighthouse (Enlightenment, Nirvana, etc.) Then of course the lamp is no longer useful unless you have taken the vow to teach others.  Which in my analogy is returning into the dark to bring your brothers and sisters along (via the lamp-i.e. language) to the lighthouse (enlightenment, Nirvana, etc.)

I RESPOND:

Then… if reality is ultimately characterless and distinctionless, then the distinction between being enlightened and unenlightened is ultimately an illusion and reality is ultimately unreal. Whom is doing the leading? Leading to what? These still are distinctions being made, that is: “between knowing you are enlightened and not knowing you are enlightened.” In the Diamond Sutra, ultimately, the Bodhisattva loves no one, since no one exists and the Bodhisattva knows this:

  • “All beings must I lead to Nirvana, into the Realm of Nirvana which leaves nothing behind; and yet, after beings have been led to Nirvana, no being at all has been led to Nirvana. And why? If in a Bodhisattva  the notion of a “being” should take place, he could not be called a “Bodhi-being.” And likewise if the notion of a soul, or a person should take place in him.

So even the act of loving others, therefore, is inconsistent with what is taught in the Buddhistic worldview, because there is “no one to love.” This is shown quite well (this self-refuting aspect of Buddhism) in the book, The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha. A book I recommend with love, from a worldview that can use the word love well.  One writer puts it thusly: “When human existence is blown out, nothing real disappears because life itself is an illusion. Nirvana is neither a re-absorption into an eternal Ultimate Reality, nor the annihilation of a self, because there is no self to annihilate. It is rather an annihilation of the illusion of an existing self. Nirvana is a state of supreme bliss and freedom without any subject left to experience it.”

MY FINAL RESPONSE AFETR NO RESPONSE

I haven’t seen a response yet. Which is fitting… because whom would be responding to whom? Put another way, would there be one mind trying to actively convince the other mind that no minds exist at all?

Here’s another way to see the same thing, Dan Story weighs in again:

  • It may be possible that nothing exists. However, it is impossible to demonstrate that nothing exists because to do so would be to deny our own existence. We must exist in order to affirm that reality doesn’t exist. To claim that reality is an illusion is logically impossible because it also requires claiming that the claim itself is unreal—a self-defeating statement. If reality is an illusion, how do we know that pantheism isn’t an illusion too?

[The above beliefs found in neo-Pagan, Pantheism, Panentheism affects the idea of “beauty” as well]

So many belief systems struggle with the reality of a soul of a “person.” People who just believe it to be the case live in the West and have been influenced through Western culture that has come through the stream of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome.

In other words, for someone to say “if they could see the soul” are assuming a Judeo-Christian construct that they may not adhere to. They are “borrowing” something that they like from one religion and “quilting it together” illogically with another belief. The two cancel each-other out. Logically speaking.

It SOUNDS nice though.