Government Should Subsidize What Works, the Family | Pitirim Sorokin

This is the first time I have heard of Pitirim Sorokin, so naturally I went on a bender. After reading quite a bit this morning, I can see that he was in one sense an early Thomas Sowell. here are two small quotes from his work, THE AMERICAN SEX REVOLUTION (free PDF)

The reasons for this high evaluation of marriage are obvious. Marriage is a social evidence of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and civic maturity of the individual. It involves the momentous transformation of a boy into a husband-father, and of a girl into a wife-mother, with corresponding changes in their social position, privileges, and responsibilities.

[….]

Preceding chapters have shown a rapid increase of divorce, desertion, and separation, and of premarital, and extramarital relations, with the boundary between lawful marriage and illicit liaisons tending to become more and more tenuous. Still greater has been the deterioration of the family as a union of parents and children, with “fluid marriages” producing a super-abundance of the physically, morally, and mentally defective children, or no children at all.

As a consequence, in spite of our still developing economic prosperity, and our outstanding progress in science and technology, in education, in medical care; notwithstanding our democratic regime and way of life, and our modern methods of social service; in brief, in spite of the innumerable and highly effective techniques and agencies for social improvement, there has been no decrease in adult criminality, juvenile delinquency, and mental disease, no lessening of the sense of insecurity and of frustration. If anything, these have been on the increase, and already have become the major problems of our nation. What this means is that the poisonous fruits of our sex-marriage-family relationships are contaminating our social life and our cultural and personal well-being. They have already passed beyond the phase of being possibly dangerous, and have become ugly and deadly realities as solid and certain as any facts can be.

See another free resource from Sorokin: Contemporary Sociological Theories: A Popular Scientific Study

Here is a decent synopsis of The American Sex Revolution by Francis Russell:

In the mid-1950s the Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin published a provocative little book on The American Sex Revolution that would prove uncanny in its prescience. Indeed, Sorokin’s book makes for most engaging reading today as it may be the only work of social criticism written during the middle years of the 20th century that so accurately gauged the direction in which America and Europe were headed that its analysis is even more relevant to the social situation that exists at the present time than the one that existed when it was first written. A full half century after its appearance, hardly a page of The American Sex Revolution is dated, and readers today will look repeatedly at the publication date for reassurance that the book was actually written during the supposedly tranquil years of the Ozzie and Harriet era.

The harmful trends that Sorokin described in his book, many of which were cause for only moderate concern in their own time, would become much more extreme in subsequent decades, and today are generally acknowledged as a major source of social and cultural decline in what is not inaccurately described as a “”post- Christian”” West. These include declining birth rates and diminished parental commitment to the welfare of children; vastly increased erotic content in movies, plays, novels, magazines, television shows, radio programs, song lyrics, and commercial advertising; increased divorce, promiscuity, premarital sex, extramarital sex, homosexuality, spousal abandonment, and out-of-wedlock births; and related to these developments, a growing increase in juvenile delinquency, psychological depression, and mental disorders of every description. So extreme have some of these trends become, particularly since the late 1960s, that many today can look back nostalgically upon the 1950s when Sorokin issued his warnings as a period of great social stability, “family values,” and dedication to traditional Christian understandings of sex, marriage, and child rearing.

(INTERCOLLEGIATE STUDIES INSTITUTE)

Here is a VERY LONG quote from one of the sources Dr. Mohler is most likely referencing, of which the above quotes are taken from:

Birth, marriage, and death are the great events in the life of any individual, for they mark the be­ginning, middle, and end of each human existence. All societies have viewed them as of the utmost importance, not only for the individual, but also for the survival and well-being of the community. Thus every society has most carefully defined and regulated the customs concerning these events. And of them, marriage has been considered as important, and has been as carefully regulated, as have the mores relating to birth and death.

The reasons for this high evaluation of marriage are obvious. Marriage is a social evidence of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and civic maturity of the individual. It involves the momentous trans­formation of a boy into a husband-father, and of a girl into a wife-mother, with corresponding changes in their social position, privileges, and responsibilities. For a large majority of men and women, marriage is the most vital, the most intimate, and the most com­plete unification of body, mind, and spirit into one socially approved, indivisible “we”. In a good mar­riage, the individual egos of the parties merge. The joys and sorrows of one become the joys and sorrows of the other. All their values, aspirations, and life-experiences become fully shared. Their mutual loyalty is unconditionally pledged until death do part them. The bond of marriage is truly sacred and indissoluble.

Such an all-embracing union serves as the most powerful antidote against loneliness. It develops and expresses love at its noblest and best, in the moral ennoblement of the married and the true socialization of their children.

From the remotest past, married parents have been the most effective teachers of their children, and the family has been the most important school for the transformation of newly-born human animals into intelligent, socially responsible personalities. This decisive educational role is well summed up in the dictum: “What the family is, such will the society be.”

Furthermore, the cultivation of mutual love and the task of educating their children stimulate married persons to release and develop their best creative impulses. For surely the mission of molding their own and their children’s personalities is as ennobling as the creation of a masterpiece in the arts or sciences. And regardless of education, social status, religion, or economic conditions, each married couple derives from a good marriage the fullest satisfaction of this crea­tive urge which is in all of us. In this sense, marriage is the most universal and the most democratic school for the development of the creative potential of every human being. This creative urge is possibly the most distinctive mark of the human species, and its satis­faction is an absolute necessity for human happiness. 

Enjoying the marital union in its infinite richness, parents freely fulfill many other paramount tasks. They maintain the procreation of the human race.

Through their progeny they determine the hereditary and acquired characteristics of future generations. Through marriage they achieve a social immortality of their own, of their ancestors, and of their particular groups and community. This immortality is secured through the transmission of their name and values, and of their traditions and ways of life to their children, grandchildren, and later generations.

The fulfillment of these tasks explains why mar­riage has been regarded by all societies as the cul­minating point of human existence, and as the most decisive factor in the survival and well-being of the societies themselves.

In contrast to marriage, illicit sex relations cannot and do not fulfill these tasks. The relations between a prostitute and her client, between a mistress and het patron, and between all sorts of incidental “lovers”, have never been considered as evidence of mental, moral, or social maturity of the partners. On the contrary, they have been viewed as a sin, or as a crime, or as a symptom of moral and social degeneration of the partners involved. Usually, illicit sex relations rarely go beyond a shortlived “copulational” union. Each partner remains a mere sex apparatus for the satisfaction of the lust of the other. The partners remain largely unknown to each other; their egos are not merged into one “we” nor is their selfishness tempered by mutual devotion and love.

Incidental sex liaisons do not yield any consortium omnir vitae, divini et &maxi juris communicatio, as the Roman Law defined marriage. [Translation: the partnership of all life, the sharing of the divine and the greater right.] For a short moment of sensual pleasure the parties usually pay the costly price of frequent and lasting periods of anguish, anxiety, fear, remorse, hate, and pain. Frequently the evanescent sex pleasure wrecks their whole life. In many countries adulterers and fornicators have even been punished by death, mutilation, torture, dishonor, or imprisonment.

Nor, with the exception of common law “mar­riages”, are these liaisons schools of moral, mental, and social education of the partners. To the contrary they often lead to demoralization, social irresponsi­bility, mental disorders, and crime; and they thus do not contribute to the development of the creative potential.

Finally, these relations do not serve the vital task of procreation, of determining the qualities of future generations and the social immortality of the partners. Asa rule, they remain sterile and childless. If some­times they lead to the birth of children, these are stig­matized as “illegitimate” and “born-out-of-wedlock,” victims of animal passion and human folly.

Any considerable change in marriage behavior, any increase in sexual promiscuity, and illicit relations, is pregnant with momentous consequences. A sex revo­lution drastically affects the lives of millions, deeply disturbs the community, and decisively influences the future of society. If, therefore, the American nation and, indeed, Western society as a whole are passing through such a revolution, it deserves as much public attention as any political or economic change.

The questions now before us are: Is indeed our nation drifting toward an unknown destination, carried by the powerful undertow of a sex revolution? If so, what are the evidences of it? What are its possible consequences? And where might it carry us? A careful survey of the factual evidence gives fairly con­clusive answers to these vital questions.

A FEW TELLING STATISTICS

In 1870 there was one divorce for every 33.7 marriages contracted; in the last few years, one per 2.5 to 3. In 1890, we had three divorces per 1000 married females; in 1946, 17.8 per 1000. In 1867 we had 0.3 divorces per 1000 of our population; in 1947, 3.4. The supposedly sacred bond of marriage is now being broken several times more frequently than in preceding decades. And, with minor fluctuations, divorce has been and is steadily increasing.

Similar is the increase of “the poor man’s divorce.” According to the National Desertion Bureau, deserted wives comprise between 3 and 4 per cent of all married women. In 1953, desertion cost the American taxpayer about $252,000,000 for the support of aban­doned wives and children, about three and a half million of whom received little or no money from the father.

As a result of the mounting number of divorces, separations, and desertions, about 12,000,000 of the 45,000,000 children in the United States do not live with both parents. Due to no fault on their own part, these children are deprived of security and love, and forcibly exposed to all the indemencies of the half-parental and non-parental homes, or of no homes at all. If divorce and desertion mean the disintegration of marriage and the family as a union of husband and wife, these deserted children signify the disintegra­tion of the family as a union of parents and children.

Further disintegration manifests itself in the shrinking of the size of the family. The percentage of families with six or more members was 51.8 in 1790, 32.8 in 1900, 20.1 in 1930, and only 15.7 in 1940. The percentage of childless married couples has now reached between 15 and 20; these and one-child marriages comprise between 40 and 45 per cent of all families. In the childless marriage the family as a union of parents and children does not exist; in the marriage with only one child, it fails in the task of providing for the future of our nation, for to maintain the present population, the family must average 2 or 3 children.

These figures suggest that the candle of the American marriage and family is being burned at both ends,—both as a union of husband and wife, and as a. union of parents and children. And with their dis­integration, marriage and the family progressively fail in the performance of the tasks of maintaining the well-being of the individual and ensuring the survival of the nation itself.

[….]

If the present rate of decline of premarital virginity continues, this virtue is likely to become within a few generations a myth of the past. And the present increase of extramarital relations threatens to replace the monogamic marriage itself by some sort of polygamous, or polyandrous, or anarchic, or “communal” pseudo-marriage.

[….]

Philosophies viewing sex as one of the two main factors of historical processes; sociological theories of marriage as an institution established mainly or only for satisfaction of the sex drive; educational theories prescribing the teaching experimentally of the facts of life to children as early as possible; various yarns advocating in the name of science such practices as free love, experimental sexual relations for teen-agers, trial and companionate marriages, and so on and so forth,—these and similar gospels have successfully penetrated the disciplines of the social sciences and are regarded by many as “the last word”.

In spite of the utterly unscientific nature of these theories, and notwithstanding their extremely degrading effect; in spite of the fact that they drag into filthy sewers almost all the great values of humanity, beginning with love, marriage and parenthood, and ending with the fine arts, ethics, science, and religion; in spite of all this, these theories continue to be accepted by many so-called scientists, and to win an ever-growing public. Their outstanding success is a tragic sign of sexual obsession and of mental aberration, which now extend to a legion of our writers, artists, business men, government officials, teachers and preachers, social workers, and the public at large.

[….]

The growth of sexual anarchy, divorces, desertions, and orgies; of emancipation and “masculinization” of women and effemination of men, together with radical changes in marriage and family laws, which largely dis­solved their sacredness and inviolability, and an atten­dant decrease of birth rate, proceeded hand in hand with a growth of irreligiosity and of vulgar sensualist ethics and frame of mind. This demoralization spread over all classes of Roman society. In the time of Julius Caesar, about 600,000 of the proletarian population were sup­plied by the State with rations of oil, pork, wine, clothing and other necessities, and special “cards” (lasciva nomismats [playful coins]) entitling the bearer to the services of the Roman prostitutes.

The sensual ethic of this period is well illustrated by epitaphs on the tombstones of many an obscure person: “Horror does not seize me when I think of the putrefac­tion of my body; nothing further touches us.” “I was; I am not; I do not care.” “Es, bibe, lode, veni” (Eat, drink, play, come hither). “Indulge in voluptuousness, for only this pleasure wilt thou carry away with thee.” “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” “What I have eaten and what I have drunk,—that is all that be­longs to me.” “Baths and wine and love impair our bodies; but baths, wine, and love make life. While I lived, I drank willingly; drink, ye who live.” “The su­preme end is pleasure.” Such cynicism, skepticism, and sensualism must have been profound and widespread to have found expression on the tombstones of ordinary persons.

Subsequently, despite temporary improvements and minor fluctuations, sexual and sociopolitical disorders continued to undermine the dominant Sensate form of Roman culture, society, and Empire and brought them to their irretrievable decay. Salvation and regeneration came from Christianity with its anti-materialistic, anti-sensualistic, and anti-erotic system of values and moral commandments. Forbidding even a lustful look at a woman or man, declaring sinful all premarital sex rela­tions, extolling sexual chastity and continence, and allow­ing sexual life only in the form of the socially sanctioned marriage, Christianity was able to curb greatly the pre­vailing sexual anarchy and to restore the sanctity of marriage, and the family, and the normal or lawful forms of sex activity. During the subsequent centuries of European history the dose connection between the sexual and the sociopolitical disorders can be observed in the periods of almost all great upheavals and revolutions in practically all European countries.

[….]

During the French Revolution, the tidal wave of sexual anarchy swept over the whole nation. The divorce decree of September 20, 1792, eliminated practically all obstacles to divorce and lowered the minimum age of mar­riage to thirteen for women and fifteen for men. The di­vorce rates skyrocketed so high that in 1796-97 their number surpassed that of marriages. Still greater was the increase in desertions. The number of foundlings born out of wedlock and abandoned rose from 23,000 in 1790 to 63,000 in 1798. There was a similar increase in the number of prostitutes, whose “disorders and shameless behavior surpassed in heinousness all that can be conceived.” Not only grown-ups, but even children behaved in a scandalous way. “The restraints of sexual instincts were abandoned. In summer among the crowds standing in line before shops, abominable scenes of hu­man bestiality and of Paris impudence could be seen… . Many prostitutes brought their bedding and openly per­formed all kinds of sexual abominations.” The festivals of “Liberty” and “The Goddess of Reason” were ac­companied by orgies and saturnalia. After the Termidor, “the young men and women grew openly licentious, and ribaldry became a fashion…: All else was forgotten in the lust of pleasure. Next to the sans culottes we see the `shirtless girls’… . The family pot is overturned… . Women pass from hand to hand. Some married one sister after another, and their own mothers-in-law. The dregs of society resemble Sodom and Gomorrah.” And side by side with this common licentiousness, sadistic actions became daily occurrences. In brief, debauchery reached its maximum.

[….]

An increase of licentiousness occurred in the upper and to some extent the middle strata of Russian society before the Revolution of 1917. Rasputin and other sex gluttons corrupted the aristocracy, and their influence added powder to the gigantic magazine of accumulated antagonisms among the various classes and groups of Russia. There followed after the Revolution a period of sex anarchy, details of which will be given in a later chapter. Suffice it to say for the present that in the first phase of the Revolution, roughly from 1918 to 1926, the institutions of marriage and the family were virtually destroyed within a large portion of the urban popu­lation, and greatly weakened throughout the whole Russian nation.

These examples, corroborated by evidence from al­most every important revolution and social disturbance from the oldest Egyptian upheaval c. 2500 B.C. to the present time show the close connection between sexual and sociopolitical revolutions. It is for this reason that every debauchee is a contributor to social and political disorders, one of the “revolutionaries” undermining the existing system of values, institutions, and order. And conversely, political and social revolutionaries contribute to the spread of sexual anarchy.

[….]

The preceding chapters have demonstrated the far-reaching influence of excessive sexual freedom upon its devotees and upon society. We now come to a yet more momentous problem: What, if any, is the relationship between the disorderly and the tempered sexual life, on the one hand, and the creative growth and the decline of society, on the other? Does the sex factor appreciably condition the sociocultural progress or regress of groups: tribes, nations, religious bodies, empires, and other com­munities? If it does, then which of the prevailing modes of behavior,—free or tempered, restrained or unrestrained, —helps the society’s cultural growth, and which mode contributes to its decline?

TWO GENERALIZATIONS

The subsequent propositions tentatively answer these questions. We shall begin with two main generalizations, followed by several propositions of a qualifying character.

  1. The regime that confines sexual life within socially sanctioned marriage, and that morally disap­proves and legally prohibits premarital and extramarital relations provides an environment more favorable for creative growth of the society than does the regime of free or disorderly sex relationships which neither morally disapproves nor legally prohibits premarital and extra­marital liaisons.
  2. The regime that permits chronically excessive, illicit, and disorderly sex activities contributes to the decline of cultural creativity.

What are the proofs for these generalizations?

In the first place, all the detrimental effects,—physi­cal, mental, moral and social,—of illicit and excessive sex behavior given in the preceding chapters form a body of evidence clearly supporting these propositions. If sex gluttony and illicit sex activity are harmful to their devotees in all these respects, then they cannot but be harmful to the creative growth of societies which tolerate them.

Yet another set of proofs is highly important. It consists of a careful, systematic, inductive comparison of the prevailing modes of sexual life in: (a) preliterate so­cieties with more advanced, and those with less advanced cultural and social organizations; and (b) historical societies in the periods of their growth, and in the periods of their decline. This sort of confrontation shows that the more advanced or creative preliterate societies display greater restraint and more tempered sexual life than the more primitive or less creative groups. Further, the comparison demonstrates that in the life processes of historical societies, the periods of their cultural and social growth have been almost uniformly marked by a very tempered sexual regime, while the periods of their decline have been stamped by sexual anarchy.

A third set of evidence is supplied by recent “experi­ments” in this field, including the Communist regimes in Soviet Russia and China, and the verifiable increase of sexual freedom among Colonial peoples, a freedom resulting from the impact of Western culture.

When all three classes of evidence are considered, the resultant testimony is conclusive, especially when compared with the few fragments of uncertain “proofs” sometimes brought forward by the partisans of sex freedom.

[….]

To put the matter another way, reduction of sexual freedom is accompanied by a rise in cultural creativity. Among 59 preliterate societies investigated, in those where the young men and women were permitted pre­nuptial freedom, their mentality tends to be shaped into a Zoistic mould. If they are compelled to accept occa­sional continence, their mentality is moulded into a Deistic form. Finally, if besides prenuptial continence, monogamic faithfulness is required, especially from women, the mentality of the society tends to become Rationalistic.

Civilized societies which have most strictly limited sexual freedom have developed the highest cultures, In the whole of human history not a single case is found in which a society advanced to the Rationalistic culture without its women being born and reared in a rigidly enforced pattern of faithfulness to one man. Further, there is no example of a community which has retained its high position on the cultural scale after less rigorous sexual customs have replaced more restricting ones. Thus, when under the influence of Christianity the sexual freedom of the Teutonic tribes was limited, this restriction was one of the most important forces affect­ing subsequent cultural progress. And when the poly­gamous Moors in Spain married monogamous Christian and Jewish women, they progressed from a Deistic to a partly Rationalistic culture.

The explosions of creative energy in polygamous societies are due to two factors: to the previous existence of a strict postnuptial monogamy of several generations, as among the early Persians, the Huns, the Mongols, and the Macedonians; and to a strict prenuptial chastity and postnuptial monogamy of the women in the polygamous groups.

When the ruling group and the society as a whole relax their code, within three generations there is usually a cultural decline, as was the case in the later stages of the Babylonian, the Persian, the Macedonian, the Mongol, the Greek, and the Roman civilizations, as well as at the end of the Old and the Middle Kingdoms and of the New Empire, and during the Ptolemaic period, in Egypt. Considering that prenuptial chastity and strictly monogamous marriage, for women at least, are a maxi­mum reduction of sex freedom (next to absolute celibacy, which if general would lead to the extinction of the group) we find that among civilized societies those which have remained strict in their sexual codes for the longest period have reached the highest levels.

Unwin finds that the Babyions, the Egyptians, the Athenians, the Romans, the early Arabians, and the Anglo-Saxons had a strict monogamy during the early period of their social expansion and cultural and intel­lectual growth. The authority of the pater families over the members of his family, and of the husband over his wife (manus mariti) was unlimited. Sexual life was con­fined within marriage, and the mores were chaste and temperate. Violations of the prescribed rule of conduct did occur now and then, of course, but they were few, and were unanimously disapproved and severely punished. These limitations of sexual activity permitted such socie­ties to accumulate an enormous reserve of social energy which found its outlet in creative growth,—intellectual, aesthetic, religious and social. Hence there occurred a vigorous expansion of these societies, accompanied by an astounding ability to defend themselves against their enemies.

With the expansion and growth of these societies, however, the stern regulations of sex relationships were progressively replaced by weaker ones. Sexual freedom widened until it encompassed the whole society, and eventually turned into anarchy. Wives and children were emancipated from the absolute power of the pater familiar, and their newly won equality brought with it sexual freedom. Within three generations from the moment of significant expansion of sexual freedom, the cultural and social creativity of these societies began to decline.

This lag between the development of sex freedom and the decline of creativity is due to the fact that the younger generations need time to be “educated” in the new patterns of behavior. Thereafter, the decline proceeds hand in hand with the expansion of sex freedom. However, if the sex anarchy is checked, and replaced by new restrictions, the process of decline may be halted and within a century or so, may be replaced by a cultural and social renaissance. When it is not checked, the decline of the societies soon becomes irreversible and leads to their historical degeneration.

With unrelieved monotony this cycle has been re­peated many times.

Such are the essential conclusions of Unwin’s study. Though in some secondary points it is questionable, its main conclusions have been confirmed by other scholars, and are identical with the two propositions given at the beginning of this chapter.

The third set of evidence referred to earlier in this chapter is supplied by experiments in Soviet Russia in the 1920’s and by the degeneration of many preliterate colonial peoples.

Most instructive is undoubtedly the radical attempt of the Soviets to eliminate “capitalistic” monogamy and to establish complete sexual freedom as a cornerstone of the Communist economic and social regime.

During the first- stage of the Revolution, its leaders deliberately attempted to destroy marriage and the family. Free love was glorified by the official “glass of water” theory: if a person is thirsty, so went the Party line, it is immaterial what glass he uses when satisfying his thirst; it is equally unimportant how he, satisfies his sex hunger. The legal distinction. between marriage and casual sexual intercourse was abolished. The Communist law spoke only of “contracts” between males and females for the satisfaction of their desires either for an indefinite or a definite period,—a year, a month, a week, or even for a single night. One could marry and divorce as many times as desired. Husband or wife could obtain a divorce without the other being notified. It was not even necessary that “marriages” be registered. Bigamy and even polygamy were permissible under the new pro­visions. Abortion was facilitated in state institutions. Premarital relations were praised, and extramarital rela­tions were considered normal.

The old pragmatic test: “By their fruits ye shall know them”, provides the answer to the question whether this sex freedom was practical.

Within a few years, hordes of wild, homeless chil­dren became a real menace to the Soviet Union itself. Millions of lives, especially of young girls, were wrecked; divorces skyrocketed, as also did abortions. The hatreds and conflicts among polygamous and polyandrous mates rapidly mounted,—and so did psychoneuroses. Work in the nationalized factories slackened.

[….]

This vicious cycle has been repeated many times. Greece before the second half of the sixth century B.C. bad a strict code governing sexual life, which was con­fined to indissoluble marriage. All transgressors were punished, frequently by being outlawed from family and kindred. At the end of that century, however, a moderate relaxation of legal and factual restraints became notice­able, and during the fifth and the first half of the fourth centuries B.C., this freedom continued to grow without degenerating into sexual anarchy. These same centuries are marked by an explosion of creativity in many fields. This is the Greece of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in philosophy; of Polydetus and Polygnotus in painting; of Pheidias, Praxiteles and Scopes in architecture and sculp­ture; of Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophides, Euripides, and Ads-tophanes in literature; of Terpander, Simonides of Kios, Agathocles, Melanippides the Older, Phrynis, Bacchilides in music. The same period witnessed the greatest number of scientific discoveries and technological inventions made by the Greeks, (6 and 3 in the eighth and seventh centu­ries; 26, 39, 52 in the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries; 42, 14, 12 in the third, second, and the first centuries B.C.). Finally, in the same period Greece reached the zenith of her political creativity add influence (See the details in my Social and Cultural Dynamics, vols. 1, 2, 3, passim. See there also references to a vast literature on these problems. This note concerns also the subsequent cases.)

Beginning with the second half of the fourth cen­tury B.C., sexual freedom increasingly tends toward anarchy; and during the third, second, and first centuries B.C., it spreads throughout the entire Hellenistic world. This same period witnesses a rapid decline of Greek creative genius in all cultural fields, accompanied by depopulation, demoralization, and the loss of political independence.

A somewhat similar cycle occurred in Rome. There, until the third century H.C., sexual life was strictly regulated. However, under the impact of Greek influence, an expansion of sexual freedom begins and gains in the second and first centuries B.C. And exactly these cen­turies saw a notable growth of cultural creativity, led by Virgil, Lucretius, Varro, Cato the Younger, Ovid, Cicero, and other eminent writers and philosophers. While in the period preceding the first century B.C., the number of Roman scientific discoveries and inventions fluctuated from 1 to 5 per century, it rises to 20 in the first century B.C., to 35 in the first century A.D., and then rapidly subsides to 13, 6, 15, 4, 1, 0 from the second through the seventh centuries A.D.

The great flowering of Roman culture occurred during the age of Augustus. He tried to stem the drift toward sex anarchy, which was increasing especially among the upper classes of Rome, and through a series of rather stern law had some limited success. But all in all, he and his successors largely failed in this task. Debauchery continued rampant in the first three or four centuries A.D.; and with minor fluctuations this same period saw a decline of the creative power of Rome, and brought the Western Empire to irretrievable decay in the fifth century.

Still another example of this minor cycle is given by Italy and other European nations during the Italian Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. Before the thirteenth century, the behavior of their populations was restrained not only by the strict code of Christianity, but also by the family mores of their “barbaric” ancestors. The family was strong; marriage was a sacrament indis­solubly binding the parties, premarital and extramarital relations were prohibited and punished.

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are marked by an obvious relaxation of these restraining codes; and during the next two, the sexual freedom of the Italian, and in a lesser degree of the European, populations rapidly increased and spread until it became, especially in the upper and intellectual strata, sex anarchy. In the seventeenth century, thanks to the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the vigorous efforts of ascetic elements in the Protestant Reformation, the further spread of anarchy was prevented, and sex freedom was notably curtailed. Subsequently, for some hundred and fifty years, these countries were distinguished by a fairly liberal but orderly and limited sexual freedom.

The centuries from the thirteenth to the seventeenth were also a period of great creative energy. They gave us Giotto, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Gemini, and a vast galaxy of the great painters and sculptors of the Italian. Renaissance; Brunellechi, Alberti, and Bramante in Italian architecture; the “ars nuova,” A. and G. Gabrieli, Gesualdo, Palestrina, and other masters of the Italian school in music; Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Lorenzo Valla, Ariosto, Tasso, Boiardo in literature; Guicchiardini, Machiavelli, and other eminent social and political thinkers; St. Thomas Aquinas, Pico della ,Mirandola, G. Bruno, Marcilius Ficinus, and others in philosophy; Galileo and others in science. The number of scientific discoveries and inventions in Italy increased from two in the twelfth to 1.4 in the thirteenth century, and then to 27 in the fourteenth, 45 in the fifteenth, 114E in the sixteenth, with a temporary decline to 111 in the seventeenth, and 75 in the eighteenth—the decline due possibly to the delayed consequences of the sex anarchy of the sixteenth century.

Somewhat similar were the courses of increased sex freedom and of cultural activity in several European countries during the same period, but possibly in none did the populations morally degenerate to the extent that the people of Italy did during the Renaissance. As already mentioned, the vigorous efforts of both the Catholic and Protestant churches stemmed the tide of sex anarchy, and permitted the West, for at least two cen­turies, to continue creative activities in all fields of culture, although it should be noted that the least fruit­ful of these were religion and ethics.

After the Victorian age in England, and somewhat earlier in Europe and the United States, the expansion of sex freedom resumed, and in the twentieth century has progressed to the extent of being near to anarchy. In conjunction with other forces, it has already brought two world wars and many smaller conflicts; the gigantic Russian revolution and a legion of lesser civil wars; a chronic political and social anarchy; and an appalling increase in crime. It has also manifested itself in a con­spicuous decline of creativity in all fields of culture except those of science and technology, and even in these latter the creativity is becoming more and more destruc­tive rather than constructive.

Such are typical cases illustrating the supplementary propositions concerning minor fluctuations of sexuality and creativity,

[….]

Preceding chapters have shown a rapid increase of divorce, desertion, and separation, and of premarital, and extramarital relations, with the boundary between lawful marriage and illicit liaisons tending to become more and more tenuous. Still greater has been the deter­ioration of the family as a union of parents and children, with “fluid marriages” producing a super-abundance of the physically, morally, and mentally defective children, or no children at all.

As a consequence, in spite of our still developing economic prosperity, and our outstanding progress in science and technology, in education, in medical care; notwithstanding our democratic regime and way of life, and our modern methods of social service; in brief, in spite of the innumerable and highly effective techniques and agencies for social improvement, there has been no decrease in adult criminality, juvenile delinquency, and mental disease, no lessening of the sense of insecurity and of frustration. If anything, these have been on the increase, and already have become the major problems of our nation. What this means is that the poisonous fruits of our sex-marriage-family relationships are con­taminating our social life and our cultural and personal well-being. They have already passed beyond the phase of being possibly dangerous, and have become ugly and deadly realities as solid and certain as any facts can be..

Our trend toward sex anarchy has not yet produced catastrophic consequences. Nevertheless, the first syn­dromes of grave disease have already appeared.

[….]

To be successful, this disinfection requires the free cooperative participation of every responsible mem­ber of our society, and especially of its creative leaders. And this participation must be consistent, devoid of the prevalent hypocrisy and self-contradiction of many a dregs, by not sponsoring unsuitable programs of radio, television, movies or press entertainment, by contributing nothing to all the causes, persons, and institutions which breed and propagate the `sexual borers.’

[….]

Cleansed from the sexual poisons, our women and men will regain not only their vital, mental, and moral sanity, but also the full integrity of the total person, enjoying the grace of total love at its happiest, noblest and best. These total persons can hardly fail to develop and release a vast stream of creative forces for re­juvenating and recreating our culture and social life. The renaissance of our culture and social institutions in its turn will retroactively exert an ennobling and creative in­fluence upon the total personalities. Through this mutual invigoration of the personal, the cultural, and the social creative forces, the whole human universe will be im­proving and progressing from the initial kingdom of the human animal through the more and more ennobled kingdom of man, to the magnificent kingdom of the semi-divine Man-Creator.


Pitirim A. Sorokin, The American Sex Revolution (Boston, MA: Porter Sargent Publisher, 1956), 4-9, 14, 42-43, 96-98, 100-101, 101-102, 106-108, 110-114, 123-127, 132-133, 184-185, 185-186.

Almost 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. In this video, Thomas Sowell explains the cause of this rise in the black communities, which many attribute to the legacy of slavery

Lesbians Make Up 72% of Gay Divorce

Three recent stats regarding homosexual divorce:

    1. LGBTQ+divorce rates have increased by 20% in the past decade.
    2. Same-sex couples are 1.5 times more likely to divorce than opposite-sex couples.
    3. The average duration of a same-sex marriage before divorce is 4 years.

In this video, take note that out of homosexual marriages/divorce statistics, 72% of divorces [again, in the gay community] were by lesbians.

(The stats used in the very short clip did not do justice to the real set of statistics and whom they apply to. A proper dealing with them can be found in last video of this post [JUMP]):

In two excellent posts and pulling together some excerpts regarding the stats of the topic is via THE WENTWORTH REPORT:

Domestic violence in lesbian relationships, by Wikipedia.

The [US] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey reports on the lifetime prevalence of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner, focusing for the first time on victimization by sexual orientation. It finds a victimization prevalence of 43.8 percent for lesbians, making it the second most affected group after bisexual women (61.1 percent), ahead of bisexual men (37.3 percent), heterosexual women (35 percent), heterosexual men (29 percent) and homosexual men (26 percent)

The fear of reinforcing negative stereotypes has led some community members, activists, and victims to deny the extent of violence among lesbians. Social service agencies are often unwilling to assist lesbian victims of domestic violence. Victims of domestic violence in lesbian relationships are less likely to have the case prosecuted within a legal system.

Domestic violence a ‘silent epidemic’ in gay relationships, by Belinda Kontominas. There is even acknowledgement even in the PC press, in this case the Sydney Morning Herald, though it seems to be mainly just anecdotes, of which none are of women using violence.

Domestic violence has become a “silent epidemic” in the gay and lesbian community despite being the subject of increasing scrutiny in heterosexual relationships, according to the AIDS Council of NSW.

Roughly one in three lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) couples experience domestic violence. …

Within the LGBTI community abuse is more frequently reported by women and transgender males than by gay men but Parkhill says more research is needed to determine the full extent of the problem.

2 Studies That Prove Domestic Violence Is an LGBT Issue, by JD Glass.

The National Violence Against Women survey found that 21.5 percent of men and 35.4 percent of women living with a same-sex partner experienced intimate-partner physical violence in their lifetimes, compared with 7.1 percent and 20.4 percent for men and women, respectively, with a history of only opposite-sex cohabitation. Transgender respondents had an incidence of 34.6 percent over a lifetime according to a Massachusetts survey. …

These studies refute the myths that only straight women get battered, that men are never victims, and that women never batter …

“Abuse is not about violence; it’s about control,” says Beth Leventhal, executive director of The Network/La Red in Boston. “You can be just as controlling of someone if you are small — as if you’re large. It’s about using violence or any other means of gaining and maintaining control.”

In an update to the above THE WENTWORTH REPORT brings the topic up to date (2023):

Rate of Domestic Violence Highest in Lesbian Relationships. It’s a PC myth that domestic violence is all about men hurting women in heterosexual relationships. It’s not. Women dish out a lot of violence too, including against kids. Despite convincing studies for decades now, this still seems to surprise people — once again demonstrating the willingness and power of the media to propagate a PC agenda. Keep an eye out for how the domestic violence meme is used — such as to put down straight men.

Lesbian domestic violence proves it’s not just a male problem. By Augusto Zimmermann.

As the studies of lesbian violence demonstrate, women are capable of being as violent as men in intimate relationships. Violence among same-sex couples is apparently two to three times more common than among married heterosexual couples. …

That violence comes out more frequently in lesbian relationships both as resistance and as aggression should put aside our preconceptions of gender socialization and roles. …

Compelling stats:

For example, about a decade ago the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey reported on the lifetime prevalence of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, focusing for the first time on victimization by sexual orientation.

It found a victimization prevalence of 43.8 per cent for lesbians, making it the second most affected group after bisexual women (61.1 per cent), ahead of bisexual men (37.3 per cent), heterosexual women (35 per cent), heterosexual men (29 per cent) and homosexual men (26 per cent). …

It’s been known for decades:

Erin Pizzey set up the first refuge for battered women, in 1971. Her own experience is that women are just as capable of intimate partner abuse, in both the physical and emotional sense, as men. When she opened her refuge for battered women, 62 of the first 100 women to come through the door were as abusive as the men they had left. And when the feminists started demonizing fathers in the early 1970s, she felt morally obliged to state:

    • ‘Women and men are both capable of extraordinary cruelty. … We must stop demonizing men and start healing the rift that feminism has created between men and women. This insidious and manipulative philosophy that women are always victims and men always oppressors can only continue this unspeakable cycle of violence. And it’s our children who will suffer.’

(READ IT ALL)

BERNARD RILEY notes these issues as well in his YouTube upload titled “Lesbian Divorce Rate Higher Than All Others | Women Don’t Like Women Either.”

THE SPECTATOR helps us visually:

  • By 2020, 2,900 same-sex couples, of whom nearly three-quarters were female, had divorced. The same trend can be seen in the Netherlands, the first country to allow same-sex marriage: in the ten years from 2005, 15 per cent of gay civil partnerships failed, compared with 30 per cent of lesbian ones. The latest research showed that overall, women are much more likely to instigate divorce proceedings than men, with two-thirds of divorces initiated by women in the past ten years.

Other issues in the homosexual lifestyle is one of drug and alcohol abuse. Substance misuse is a significant problem among members of the LGBTQ+ community.

LGB adults are more than twice as likely as heterosexual adults to experience a mental health condition. Transgender individuals are nearly four times as likely as cisgender individuals (people whose gender identity corresponds with their birth sex) individuals to experience a mental health condition.

LGB youth also experience greater risk for mental health conditions and suicidality. LGB youth are more than twice as likely to report experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness than their heterosexual peers. Transgender youth face further disparities as they are twice as likely to experience depressive symptoms, seriously consider suicide, and attempt suicide compared to cisgender lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and questioning youth.

(NAMI)

Of course the politically correct reasons are offered as to why. Stigma, support, etc. OR, maybe there is a mental health issue underlying the lifestyle to varying degrees. These gay men and women need Jesus just like everyone else on the planet.

This video looks at the statistics more properly.

The Real Reason 70% of Divorces are Initiated by Women

College of the Canyons Hosted Shelby Steele | My Many Thoughts

For the person that could care less about what this retired felon has to say, most of the points made at College of the Canyons (COC) by Dr. Shelby Steele were made in this video (HERE) speaking at the Old Parkland Conference.

Below were the thoughts running through my head and me taking light notes during the time Dr. Shelby Steele’s time being interviewed. In fact, I have proof of my note taking: head down, tapping away. The following section will allow the reader to jump to topics or thoughts.

Any of the links in this next part will allow you to jump down the page to a section below. To get back to the menu, hit the back arrow in your browser.

JUMP TO THOUGHT/TOPIC

Dr. Shelby Steele spoke about some of the following – which inspired much thought and now this post:

INTRODUCTION – I have some Walter Williams going on as well as a link to my post on Angela Davis, whom C.O.C. had as a speaker in April. 

  • UPDATE: C.O.C. has excluded Shelby Steele from their Facebook, whereas the person he was coming in to add some balance to, Angela Davis, has announcements up before her event as well as the day of.

RACE HUSTLERS – “Follow the Money” | The D.E.I. grift (PART ONE) and how it backfires by John Stossel. I include a short “how many billions fat is DEI programs”? And keep in mind there is no winning with these folks.

INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE – This was a connection of sorts for me. Not quite as intimate as Doc Steele’s, but it helped me through a time in my young life where bigotry surely could have stained my heart. A short bio by me many years ago helps explain my outlook.

POWER, NOT WEALTH – Today we hear quite often that slavery made our country wealthy. Slavery, in fact, kept a good portion of our country poor. I include a quote from Thomas Sowell audio from Larry Elder as well as a quote from Frederick Douglas. The end of this section are some helpful article links for more information.

POWER & WEALTH – This is a quick reminder of the DEI grift (PART TWO) | Glenn Loury, John McWhorter & Dan Subotnik discuss the grift of Ibram X. Kendi with new revelations about missing monies. | And Douglas Murray discusses his noting the Kendi grifting a while back.

COERCION I – Historic religious Democrat segregationists changed the Bible to fit slavery | Alternatively, when the Bible was unleashed, the British and American abolitionist movement fought and ended slavery for the first time in world history… giving birth to the RepublicanParty. – save Muslim countries.

COERCION II – The fear of being accused of being a racist, or against the equality of others is a way the Left has weaponized modern censorship. This section features some Machosauce (Rachel Zo) commentary. And a graphic I made defining what a “Victicrat” is; followed by a video [one of my favorites] explaining how the Democrats get votes out of such coercions. Then another example of this maligning by Hillary Clinton,

COERCION III – Doc Steele mentions racism is over with. True. BUT, the media and politicians would lose power if this were understood to be the case, so I share a short montage of the media inflaming the SIXHIRB rhetoric: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted. (I link to a longer, 22-minute upload of mine).

HISTORY (A) – Knowing history is a good vaccination against the statements we often run into on campuses and social media. Even simple things like “…not every Democrat was a KKK’er, but every KKK’er was a Democrat.” Or the reasoning behind the 3/5ths clause in the Constitution. In fact, at one point Frederick Douglas thought the Constitution was a pro slavery document, partly due to the 3/5ths Clause. But later, he came to realize that in fact it was an anti-slavery document, because of the 3/5ths clause. I explain how people like to use earlier beliefs in a person’s life and use them as support when later these beliefs were rejected by said person themselves. This is done with Augustine as well. After the Prager U and David Barton videos, there is a “Lincoln Bonus”.

HISTORY (B) – “Stepping outside your lived experiences” | This just came to me today and sets up well the three [out of the many] videos of black YouTubers doing just that. These are channels that have previously commented on all sorts of things (sports clips, songs, interviews with icons, etc.). For whatever reasons, these Channels started to watch videos by the likes of Thomas Sowell, Carol Swain, and others. I love them because they catch real time revelations through well-reasoned evidence and histories they have never heard before.

HISTORY (C) – In this history section I deal a bit more with whom the KKK were terrorizing. Members of the KKK caried “playing cards” on their person with pictures of their targets to intimidate or kill. And bringing this to today I use an example of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich being chased out of the company he co-founded for the simple act of donating to Proposition 8 in California. I end this section with Bill Maher explaining how #WOKE is indistinguishable from the KKK.

COURAGE – When Doc Steele mentioned “courage” throughout his speech I remembered Dennis Prager saying the same thing, often. I happened to find one upload of mine with the admonition in it.

MAKING AN IMPACT – The left notes all the racists, sexists, and the like, out in the world. I also often hear Democrats and media personalities talk about the racist right or the racist Republicans. They never name them though, save Trump. (And if anyone thinks he is a racist and has evidence, please send it to me.) A question always on my mind is this regarding my first point, “okay, say it’s true that there are all these racists ‘out there,’ how do you fix that?” Do they have a plan to change hearts and minds? Or do they have no plan like they cannot name racists in the GOP? Which leads me to a small portion of my testimony. I was blessed to go to jail a third time and make an impact on these people the Left complains about.

MENTORING or TEARING DOWN? – This leads me to other questions. Do these accusers build? Do they mentor? I know they know how to tear things down. The Boy Scouts being one example, among others. I use an article and Prager U video to drive this point home.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION – Doc Steele also discussed racial profiling and how affirmative action uses racial markers to prematurely force black men and women into institutions they may not be ready for. I got a video of Doc Steele talking about this that is quite old. Following that are short videos and audio from Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Mark Levin, using common sense and evidence of the complete failure of this program.

CONVERSATION – A point I thought was the most important was when Shelby Steele noted that grouping yourself with communities is a way to avoid individual relationships. These one-on-one encounters are powerful to show how a narrative can be wrong. I have been able to have tuff conversations with racists, cultists, leftists, atheists over the course of many years. I share one example of two of my son’s Facebook friends who were giving him some grief over Mitt Romney at the time. I discussed some current events with the two younger people, well. One gal unfriended my son, the other says he has changed his thinking on the matter. I link to another post of mine where a friend’s mother unfriended me over Judge Judy. I end this section with Dennis Prager interviewing Ken Sterns, former CEO of National Public Radio (NPR) and his traveling to “fly over country” and changing his view on conservatives… through conversation.

QUESTION TO DOC STEELE – I simply ask some advice on how to capture our Unum again.

APPENDIX – Just two excellent quotes from David Mamet’s book, “The Secret Knowledge.” I also throw in a small excerpt from “The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say’

UPDATE  Candace Owens, in her first public comment on George Floyd on June 5th, 2020 invoked Shelby Steele.

Enjoy my opining.

For the record, Lena Smyth does the interviewing — which was easy because Doc Steele likes to talk.

INTRODUCTION

Our local college here, College of the Canyons (COC), had a wonderful event that was centered around Shelby Steele sitting down for an interview. I found out late about the event, but there were still free tickets available. And sadly, the sitting area was not packed at the time of the event.  I also was unaware of the controversy. I assumed there would be some, as Doc Steele is a controversial figure IN THAT he speaks with the freedom conservatives have [“conservatarians,” I prefer “Paleo-Liberal”] – which is controversial now-a-days.

The late, great, Walter Williams noted that the “true test of one’s commitment to liberty … comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.”

This idea of allowing freedom of thought outside of an imposed “total thought” – that is: you must express yourself thus – is at the heart of the topic Shelby Steele was invited to speak on. And it is this type of totalitarianism [total thought] that California will soon learn it cannot impose openly and will surely revert again to “behind the scenes” violence to our liberty.

ANGELA DAVIS

UPDATED ISSUE | over at College of the Canyon’s Facebook, there is no post on their wall that they hosted Shelby Steele. I found Angela Davis’ visit noted prior to the event and on the day. Even events after Shelby Steele’s visit are posted. But not an inkling of Shelby Steele’s visit.

Our local radio station had an opinion piece by Carl Goldman that stated plainly in the piece’s title: “College of The Canyons Make Good On Its Promise.” This is what Mr. Goldman wrote:

College of the Canyons choice of selecting Shelby Steele to speak, after the community outcry in the colleges selection of controversial political activist, Angela Davis, to speak at the college this past April. The school paid Davis $25,000.00, plus expenses for her appearance.

[See my post on Angela: The Left LOVES Radical Murderers | Angela Davis and Kathy Boudin]

Pressure was placed on the college to balance Ms. Davis’s appearance with a representative holding a different set of beliefs. Shelby Steele certainly fits that criterion.

Steele is being hosted by COC’s Intercultural Center, not the same group that paid to have Angela Davis appear. But that is inconsequential. The bottom line is the college heard the protests from our community and took action to achieve a balance.

KHTS hopes the school learned its lesson and will continue to create a balance with future guests.

RACE HUSTLERS

Follow the Money

The event was put together by COC’s Intercultural Center, and introductions were by [I believe] Diane Fiero, Deputy Chancellor/Chief Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) Officer. And a woman letting people know COC was built on stolen land. What Carl Goldman said in the title, “College Of The Canyons Make Good On Its Promise” is a good commentary in and of itself. Why? Because people like Diane, and the almost insurmountable edifice of administrators that crop up overnight to get paid, what Doc Steele called a hustle, would be out of jobs. And even THE ATLANTIC knows it is an affront to freedom in their piece: “The Worst DEI Policy in Higher Education: At stake: the First Amendment rights and academic freedom of 61,000 professors who teach 1.9 million students”

Under the changes to California’s education code, all community-college employees will be evaluated in a way that places “significant emphasis” on “antiracist” and “DEIA competencies.” […] For professors, that means all will be judged, whether in hiring, promotion, or tenure decisions, on their embrace of controversial social-justice concepts as those concepts are understood and defined by state education bureaucrats

[….]

“Under the previous faculty contract, faculty were evaluated for their ‘demonstrated ability to successfully teach students from cultures other than one’s own,’” the FIRE lawsuit notes. “Under the DEIA Rules, however, they are now evaluated on their ‘demonstration of, or progress toward, diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) related competencies and teaching and learning practices that reflect DEIA and anti-racist principles.’” Before, professors were judged on whether they “successfully teach students.” Now they’ll be judged on whether they show progress toward abstract competencies that are theorized to help them successfully teach students.

That is a degradation, and Chancellor Christian should reverse course. Many First Amendment experts believe that the new guidelines will be found to violate the civil rights of faculty members. And even if they are upheld, their language and implementation suggestions are so incompetently drafted that even a leading proponent of equity-mindedness can’t quite endorse them as written. Whatever one thinks of social-justice ideology, there are far stronger versions of it.

This is the worst version of DEI.

Sick. But “conservatives are the fascists… gotchya.” (I already linked to my post on the matter, but here it is again: Free Speech Battles | California DEI Totalitarianism)

So while I am sure Miss Fiero is a wonderful woman, intelligent, amiable, a friend to many, beloved to family, and the like…. she and others receive their sustenance for a particular viewpoint that must be protected at all costs.

  • “That DEI is a $9 billion industry only makes the whole movement all the uglier.” (NEW YORK POST)

So, inviting someone that counters that “in situ” worldview in the “collective” campus, is not a recommended course of action. At least by “total thought ‘officer’” standards.

All big companies now require “DEI” training for employees, but studies say that often BACKFIRES.

It’s impossible to appease these people by the way, as Ibram X. Kendi says on page 10 of his book “How To Be An Anti-Racist

  •  I use to be racist most of the time. I am changing. I am no longer identifying with racists by claiming to be “not racist.”

Ahh — the “Ol’ Switcheroo.” If you say you are not racist, you are.

INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES 

A Shared Experience

Mr. Steele discussed his parents’ marriage at a time when interracial marriage was not looked upon, well, kindly — to say the least. In fact, this marrying those outside one’s “ethnic background” was one of a few examples Larry Elder used to show that the America today is not the bastion of racism that the Professional Left would have us believe — in his Prager U video, “Is America Racist?“.

My grandpa married a black woman (his second marriage) and she had a large impact on me. For one, she relayed the history to me that this marriage was during a time not friendly to their choice. Both from the white and black community. And her love towards me surely kept a possible racial bias from finding a home in my heart. You see, I lived for some time in the Jefferson/Chalmers area of Detroit. In an area, let’s say, not on the higher income level. I was one of very few white kids at the local school, and the only one in my area.

While all my friends were black, all the kids crossing the street to fight me, chase me, kick me while I was on the ground in the fetal position, were black as well. So, to say that my grandmother was a healing influence with her love towards me was one of many positive influences in my life. Later in life other factors played a role as well, as this “auto-biography” notes:

This is the opener to a longer video I did in 2008, a month before the election of President Obama: “ObamaCon – Twenty Years In A Racially Cultic Church“.. A few months after I studied this topic well I was confronted with an opportunity to discuss it with an older (cantankerous) Democrat in a hot tub with another co-passenger (an L.A. Sheriff I had met) on a cruise ship/vacation my wife and I were on. That discussion outline can be found here: “Hot-Tub Conversations | Discussing Politics on Vacation“.

So hearing how his early life experiences shaped him was in some way similar to my own.

POWER, NOT WEALTH

Holding On To Power Is Their End-Game, At Any Cost

Shelby talked about the motive behind slavery. Many think it is wealth. It was not, as the below shows well:

  • Not only in societies where slaves were more often con­sumers than producers of wealth, but even in societies where commercial slavery was predominant, this did not automatically translate into enduring wealth. Unlike a frugal capitalist class, such as created the industrial revolution, even commercial slaveowners in the American antebellum South tended to spend lavishly, often ending up in debt or even losing their plantations to foreclosures by creditors. However, even if British slaveowners had saved and invested all of their profits from slavery, it would have amounted to less than two percent of British domestic investment. (RPT: Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals [San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2005], see pages 157-159.

This is the article Larry Elder was referencing: “INDUSTRY AND ECONOMY DURING THE CIVIL WAR” (Also see “The Truth Behind ’40 Acres and a Mule’) —  here is the excerpt from chapter 22 of MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM: by Frederick Douglas:

The reader will be amused at my ignorance, when I tell the notions I had of the state of northern wealth, enterprise, and civilization. Of wealth and refinement, I supposed the north had none. My Columbian Orator, which was almost my only book, had not done much to enlighten me concerning northern society. The impressions I had received were all wide of the truth. New Bedford, especially, took me by surprise, in the solid wealth and grandeur there exhibited. I had formed my notions respecting the social condition of the free states, by what I had seen and known of free, white, non-slaveholding people in the slave states. Regarding slavery as the basis of wealth, I fancied that no people could become very wealthy without slavery. A free white man, holding no slaves, in the country, I had known to be the most ignorant and poverty-stricken of men, and the laughing stock even of slaves themselves—called generally by them, in derision, “poor white trash.” Like the non-slaveholders at the south, in holding no slaves, I suppose the northern people like them, also, in poverty and degradation. Judge, then, of my amazement and joy, when I found—as I did find—the very laboring population of New Bedford living in better houses, more elegantly furnished—surrounded by more comfort and refinement—than a majority of the slaveholders on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. There was my friend, Mr. Johnson, himself a colored man (who at the south would have been regarded as a proper marketable commodity), who lived in a better house—dined at a richer board—was the owner of more books—the reader of more newspapers—was more conversant with the political and social condition of this nation and the world—than nine-tenths of all the slaveholders of Talbot county, Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a working man, and his hands were hardened by honest toil. Here, then, was something for observation and study. Whence the difference? The explanation was soon furnished, in the superiority of mind over simple brute force. Many pages might be given to the contrast, and in explanation of its causes. But an incident or two will suffice to show the reader as to how the mystery gradually vanished before me.

My first afternoon, on reaching New Bedford, was spent in visiting the wharves and viewing the shipping. The sight of the broad brim and the plain, Quaker dress, which met me at every turn, greatly increased my sense of freedom and security. “I am among the Quakers,” thought I, “and am safe.” Lying at the wharves and riding in the stream, were full-rigged ships of finest model, ready to start on whaling voyages. Upon the right and the left, I was walled in by large granite-fronted warehouses, crowded with the good things of this world. On the wharves, I saw industry without bustle, labor without noise, and heavy toil without the whip. There was no loud singing, as in southern ports, where ships are loading or unloading—no loud cursing or swearing—but everything went on as smoothly as the works of a well adjusted machine. How different was all this from the nosily fierce and clumsily absurd manner of labor-life in Baltimore and St. Michael’s! One of the first incidents which illustrated the superior mental character of northern labor over that of the south, was the manner of unloading a ship’s cargo of oil. In a southern port, twenty or thirty hands would have been employed to do what five or six did here, with the aid of a single ox attached to the end of a fall. Main strength, unassisted by skill, is slavery’s method of labor. An old ox, worth eighty dollars, was doing, in New Bedford, what would have required fifteen thousand dollars worth of human bones and muscles to have performed in a southern port. I found that everything was done here with a scrupulous regard to economy, both in regard to men and things, time and strength. The maid servant, instead of spending at least a tenth part of her time in bringing and carrying water, as in Baltimore, had the pump at her elbow. The wood was dry, and snugly piled away for winter. Woodhouses, in-door pumps, sinks, drains, self-shutting gates, washing machines, pounding barrels, were all new things, and told me that I was among a thoughtful and sensible people. To the ship-repairing dock I went, and saw the same wise prudence. The carpenters struck where they aimed, and the calkers wasted no blows in idle flourishes of the mallet. I learned that men went from New Bedford to Baltimore, and bought old ships, and brought them here to repair, and made them better and more valuable than they ever were before. Men talked here of going whaling on a four years’ voyage with more coolness than sailors where I came from talked of going a four months’ voyage

See also:

  • Slavery Did Not Make America Rich: Ingenuity, not capital accumulation or exploitation, made cotton a little king (REASON)
  • No, Slavery Did Not Make America Rich: The historical record of the post-war economy demonstrates slavery was neither a central driving force of, or economically necessary for, American economic dominance (FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION)
  • Slavery Did Not Make America Richer (AMERICAN INSITUTE OF ECONOMIC RESERCH)
  • NEW: IMPERIAL MEASUREMENT: A Cost–Benefit Analysis of Western Colonialism (PDF) | Hat-tip: BREITBART

POWER & WEALTH

But it was about power

The End of Ibram X. Kendi? | Glenn Loury, John McWhorter & Dan Subotnik | The Glenn Show ~ Starts at the 40-minute mark:

  1. 39:58 The schadenfreude of the Ibram X. Kendi scandal
  2. 51:00 John: “I’m embarrassed for Boston University”
  3. 56:40 Glenn: Kendi is just a cog in the fraudulent antiracist machine
  4. 1:04:31 The shame of the Kendi scandal

Douglas Murray – Ibram X Kendi Is A Race Hustler | Douglas Murray gives his opinion on Ibram X. Kendi. Is How To Be An Antiracist a good book? What does Douglas Murray think about fixing past prejudice with present prejudice? How does Douglas Murray see Ibram X. Kendi’s contribution to modern racism?

COERCION

Coerced by Distortion

A POWER that Democrats have utilized since almost their founding is distortion. Especially “religious” Democrats who have historically distorted the Bible to make it a “pro-slavery” document to gain power. Take for instance what was known as the, “The Slave Bible,” which illustrates this distortion perfectly:

  • Published in London in 1807, its full title is Select Parts of the Holy Bible, for the use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands. In presenting the Books of Moses, the Slave Bible leaps from the end of Genesis 45, where Jacob learns that Joseph, the son he had thought to be dead was actually alive in Egypt and the right-hand man of Pharaoh, to Exodus 19, where, under the leadership of Moses, Israel receives the Ten Commandments. Totally missing from the Slave Bible is story of the enslavement of the Hebrews after Joseph’s death, and the rise of Moses as God’s spokesman sent overturn this slavery and to order Pharaoh “to let my people go.” The letters of Paul fare no better. For defenders of slavery, Galatians 3:28 contains an inconvenient message: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” The Slave Bible handles this passage by ignoring it, skipping from chapter one Galatians to chapter five. (LIBERTY FUND NETWORK)

Using race and religion then to control a working population is seen in a mirror as using race and still distorting God’s Word to control voting patterns of minorities.

What Does The Bible Intimate?

And when slavers during the Atlantic Slave Trade included the full Bible and set out to rekindle their faith, did that embolden their slaver ways? Or change their outlook?

(Please note where John Newton’s faith was sparked at the 3:05 mark)

The historic Christian faith and the Bible had to be suppressed for the actions in America to be acceptable. When it is unleashed, it changes hearts, minds, and the direction of the world. More in the HISTORY section.

COERCION II

Coerced by Fear of Being Accused

I’m black. You know that and I know that, but there are many who insist I’m not. According to the Afrocentrics and those who patronize them, I’m whitewashed. It’s funny when I’ve got liberal, white people trying to tell me they’re blacker than I am. Wow! How is it that white people trying to be black can accuse me of trying to be white? That’s some hypocrisy that’s just too funny! They’re taking blind shots, hoping to get a nod from the black community to sedate their white guilt.

Don’t you love it when white liberals insult anybody white, male, and heterosexual, feeling like they get a pass because, after all, they claim to fight for minorities? These white liberals do not intend to legitimately help these minorities, they just don’t want those minorities to turn against them.

So, the only thing these white, liberal democrats (the true white devils, mind you) do for the so-called minorities is pander. Lib­erals manipulate many non-whites and women with one simple tool—the tool that can turn even loved ones against you. The very tool that changed Adam and Eve’s perception of God—a deadly tool—accusation.

The very name Satan does not translate to mean Evil One, Deceiver, Prince of Darkness, or even Tempter. His name liter­ally means Accuser.

When Satan spoke with Eve, he accused God of not wanting them to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil because God didn’t want them to be like God. That was the statement that broke Eve. That was what damaged the relationship between God and humanity.

Satan’s accusation made it sound like God was trying to keep Adam and Eve down, doesn’t it? This caused Eve to be envious of God and to distrust Him. Satan made it look like God was holding out and hoarding power—it made it look like He had arrested humanity’s development.

What if we apply that truth to our political situation? The Repub­licans are just trying to arrest the development of the black com­munity. They don’t care about blacks, or women, blah, blah, yap, yap, etc. It’s fitting that women would be easily manipulated by liberalism because Satan, the biggest liberal of them all, went to Eve first, and manipulated her by causing her to not trust another male figure. Just like Adam and Eve trusted the accuser who wanted them destroyed, the majority of minorities—the black community, Hispanics, women, and secular Jews—trust the party that would see them destroyed.

So check this out. Before Lucifer became the Accuser, he was God’s most anointed cherub. Now, just as there was a Civil War because Democrats didn’t see blacks as worthy to be considered human, God’s most anointed cherub did not see humans as worthy of the position for which God created us.

As Lucifer became Satan, he formed a confederacy. He used accusations and discourse such as, God wants only to control us! We should be allowed to live out our own destiny, outside of His design! God has this idea of humans having authority in our society. What about our authority? What about our great society that God wants to stain with these humans by bringing them into existence with us? We’re superior. They have no place among us! They’re not fit to even look on us!

Man, what a hater!

These accusations rallied a third of the angels behind the rebel­lious cherub, and he led an attempted coup against the Throne. He fell, and (as is typical of Satan) he used another accusation to bring a curse upon humankind in Eden. That curse still affects us, and the Democrats have learned to manipulate this weak­ness. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” is a command the Democrats depend on breaking in order to gain power. They do just as the Accuser does.

Now, Satan didn’t (and still doesn’t) know how good he had it, crying about oppression in heaven. Liberals are the same way today—crying about oppression in America. Hey, wanna have some fun? Ask some liberals why they’re Democrats. Chances are real good that the first thing they’ll give you is an accusation. I’m a Democrat because the corporations are corrupt, and because republicans are destroying the earth. They are against equal rights! They are bigoted, sexist homophobes, rabble, rabble, rabble.

Hey! Liberal! I didn’t ask you why you’re not a Republican. I asked why you are a Democrat. Accusations made by Demo­crats encourage prejudice and animosity against Republicans—the people that fought for the freedom of blacks and the equal­ity of women. What have Republicans gotten in return? Hatred.

Alfonzo Rachel, Weapon of A.S.S. Destruction (Powder Springs, GA: White Hall Press, 2012), 37-39.

The Zo Loft : Four Blacks in Chicago Kidnap White Male: In my disgust at the actions by these four, I explore the effects of the the democrat and how their ideals are making racial tensions get worse, and how they have always been at the root of it. (MORE)

At one point Doc Steele noted:

  • “Here’s the big mistake we made. We were victims, but what we did is we took that victimization and turned it into an identity.”

This brought to mind my graphic I made a few years back:

And it is this “victim mentality” that keeps a large group of people hooked. What Bill Whittle calls THE VOTE PUMP.

This power is acquired by deception, false accusations, hand-outs, and the like. It is almost a formula.

DENNIS PRAGER’S version:

  • sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted (S.I.X.H.I.R.B.)

HILLARY’S version:

  • “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

Fear is in the mix as well.

COERCION III

Coerced by Fear of Racism

  • Smyth: “I want you to kind of define this idea of white guilt, just kind of break it down so that our audience can understand what you mean by that.”
  • Steele: “White Guilt is not actual guilt. You don’t feel it, unless you are alive during slavery It is simply a knowledge, not a piece of information, in and of itself, that America participated in slavery …  America (has) participated in the subjugation of an absolutely innocent people.”

During the discussion around this topic, THE SIGNAL (our local paper) noted the true liberation of the Conservatarian by Dr. Steele, the rejection of fear

“Racism is over with,” said Steele.  

In modern America, Steele feels free now.  

Smyth asked Steele what conservatism meant to him and he answered by saying that conservatism is a devotion to that freedom.  

“I say this to Blacks, you can be free, if you are not afraid to be free,” said Steele.  

Dr. Steele went on to say he is a Patrick Henry type person, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

But the MSM won’t let the fear of racism go, as this short montage of mine notes. Setting up this video I wish to call attention to the very first clip in it:

As an aside, the first clip is my favorite because the host states:

  • “The three front runners in most polls are all white menis sexism playing a role, still?”

Okay, my rewriting of the embedded bias:

  • The three front runners are al white men, so obviously racism has a role to play here which we have discussed a lot here… but let’s zero in on the other charge against these ‘front runners,’ and that is they are male.”

He assumes everyone is picking up what he is laying down. Everyone just “agrees” with him. It is a truism that racism and patriarchy are at work.

HERE IS A 22-MINUTE VERSION

Or others on Facebook called the message racist and Shelby Steele an Uncle Tom… but not in so many words… as a way to solidify their view, ward off blacks curious about true empowerment, and malign whites and Republican’s and Republican voters (20% of black male voters voted for Trump in 2020… darn those racists!):

A recommended post of mine on this issue is this one, no need to watch the Vivek video, my thoughts on racist Democrats are under that:

So, they enjoy accusing, as MACHOSAUCE noted. They are in that sense like Lucifer in front of God keeping fear and lies front and center in our lives…

HISTORY (A)

Histories Vaccination

  • virtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat.” — Bruce Bartlett, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), ix;
  • not every Democrat was a KKK’er, but every KKK’er was a Democrat.” — Ann Coulter, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama (New York, NY: Sentinel [Penguin], 2012), 19.

While this topic wasn’t mentioned, I wanted to include it as I am sure the C.O.C. student has been brainwashed with this untruth.

What “untruth” am I speaking of?

THE 3/5ths CLAUSE

What follows is an older post of mine


(Originally posted in November of 2010)

Description under video:

I spoke with the owners of the video that I grabbed this clip from. They were kind enough to allow this to stay up — ??????? — if you enjoyed this clip, please visit and consider subscribing to EncourageTV (website).The channel is built with positive, wholesome, and religious viewership in mind. (Which is better than the drivel we get elsewhere.)

(REALLY this is young vs. old Douglass, Kaepernick merely takes him out of a lifetime of thought) Kaepernick quoted Frederick Douglas in “bashing” July 4th. FIRST, Ted Cruz does a bang up job in responding to this here (DAILY WIRE). But the mistake I see here is that people evolve.

Let me explain.

  • I have heard many people over the years quote St. Augustine to support their understanding of a Church Father supporting old-earth creationism (OEC). But in fact, as Augustine matured in his faith and thought about the competing worldviews (remember, he was a Pagan before being Born Again) he became a solid young earth creationist (YEC). So the quote people choose pre-dates his ending up as a YEC’er. In other words, as he moved further away from his Pagan roots he came closer to God’s clear work. (See my post entitled “Taking Physicist Stephen Barr to Task Over St. Augustine“)

The same applies here, Douglas was newly freed, he fell into being tutored by someone who viewed the Constitution as a “slave document,” but after spreading his wings further, reading the Constitution (and the Civil War) — he matured to believe the Constitution was an anti-slavery document. The book pictured and I highly recommend is this: “Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White“.

See as well my page on my site with many resource recommendations on various topics: “U.S. RACIAL HISTORY

Also see my post, “What Was the Civil War Over?

Is racism enshrined in the United States Constitution? How could the same Founding Fathers who endorsed the idea that all men are created equal also endorse the idea that some men are not? The answer provided in this video by, Carol Swain, former professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, may surprise you.

More of David Barton talking about the Constitution and Frederick Douglass:


LINCOLN BONUS


Because Abraham Lincoln kept meticulous notes, we have these notes that were never used, but ready to be referenced if he needed them during one of his many debates with Douglas (TIME):

“If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B — why not B snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?

You say A is a white, and B is black. It is –color–, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be the slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color exactly? — You mean the whites are –intellectually– the superiors of the blacks, and therefore, have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.

But, say you, it is a question of –interest; and, if you can make it your –interest–, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.”

Stand to Reason (STR) puts it into terms of the “abortion debate”
Even earlier than this, on July 1, 1854, Abraham Lincoln wrote this small fragment that seems to address some of the popular arguments put forward by slavery-choice advocates of his day. Should whites have the right to enslave blacks based on color, intellect, or interest? Lincoln responds:

You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.

But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.

The importance of Lincoln’s logic should not be overlooked. Lincoln understood that if you attempt to establish human rights or personhood by appealing to a set of arbitrary, degreed properties such as color and intellect, properties which carry no moral weight or significance and which none of us share equally, then you end up undermining human rights for everyone….

A must watch video presentation about the debates and the issues of slavery, this presentation is excellent: 2018 Winter Lecture Series – The Lincoln – Douglas Debates” (YouTube, 1hr)

HISTORY (B)

Stepping Outside Your Lived Experience

Really, This Is Also an Extension of the “conversation” section as well. I have recently become aware of quite a few black owned YouTube Channels starting to watch and comment on some Thomas Sowell and Carol Swain videos, as well as others. In fact, I dedicate a post to this:

Thomas Sowell and Carol Swain Slinging Red-Pills

You see, reading or watching viewpoints that counter yours is a form of conversation in that your mind is engaging in something offering new, dynamic experiences and evidence you may not have been privy to previously. One of my favorite Channels are these young men in college not only soaking up new information but discussing it with each other.

Oh, how I would love to be a fly on the wall when they go out and eat at the cafeteria and discuss these things around those who disagree.

WOW! THOMAS SOWELL – FACTS ABOUT SLAVERY THEY DIDN’T TEACH IN SCHOOL!

And I like these following two videos because the conservative leaning people had a left leaning friend over. So, you can see in real time the struggle some have in hearing new information.

OUR CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERAL FRIEND REACTS TO THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

*WTF! THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY! (A MUST SEE)

HISTROY (C)

KKK TERRORISTS

Whom were they terrorizing? Blacks? Or Republicans who were allowing freedom of voting and thought to be a reality. Either by black Republicans declaring the freedom to vote, or white Republicans pushing for this.

In the early days of the Democrat power structure, the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party, the KKK lynched those who had free thought and courage enough to vote against Southern Democrats:

  • One study found that there were “4,467 total victims of lynching from 1883 to 1941. Of these victims, 4,027 were men, 99 were women, and 341 were of unidentified gender (although likely male); 3,265 were Black, 1,082 were white, 71 were Mexican or of Mexican descent, 38 were American Indian, 10 were Chinese, and 1 was Japanese.” (They were most probably ALL Republicans.)

Here is a more recent example of the “terrorist type arm” of the same political party in intimidating those who would have the temerity to think other thoughts than those of Democrats:

Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich resigned under pressure after gay rights activists demanded that he step down or recant his support of traditional marriage laws. Eich donated $1,000 to support Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that amended the state’s constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. “I don’t want to talk about my personal beliefs because I kept them out of Mozilla all these 15 years we’ve been going,” Eich told The Guardian. “I don’t believe they’re relevant.” That wasn’t an option. “CEO Brendan Eich should make an unequivocal statement of support for marriage equality,” a Credoaction petition signed by almost 75,000 people said, per The Inquirer. “If he cannot, he should resign. And if he will not, the board should fire him immediately.” When asked if his beliefs about marriage should constitute a firing offense the way racism or sexism does, Eich argued that these religious beliefs — and beliefs popular as of 2008 — should not be used as a basis for dismissal. “I don’t believe that’s true, on the basis of what’s permissible to support or vote on in 2008,” he told CNET. “It’s still permissible. Beliefs that are protected, that include political and religious speech, are generally not something that can be held against even a CEO

How wrong he was. Eich is out on his ear for the unpardonable sin of subscribing to a moral and political belief so mean-spirited and close-minded that it was shared by President Obama back when the fateful contribution was made. (Obama was never actually against gay marriage, but it was his public stance for awhile). Indeed, a majority of California voters endorsed Proposition 8 that year, including substantial majorities of Hispanics and African-Americans. When Eich’s private beliefs recently came to light, online petitioners demanded that he either renounce them or be fired. Think about that. “Renounce your beliefs and agree with us, or else” is not a sentence that should be uttered lightly, if ever, in a free society. Scalp collected, and message received. They didn’t even seriously allege — let alone try to prove — that Eich’s tenure as CEO would be marked by discrimination in any way. It was his mere presence that was intolerable…..

(TOWNHALL)

Robert George (via First Things) hits the nail on the head by showing the outcome of such policies — whether in the private or governmental arena (hat-tip to Denny Burk):

Mozilla has now made its employment policy clear.

  • No Catholics need apply.
  • Or Evangelical Christians.
  • Or Eastern Orthodox.
  • Or Orthodox Jews.
  • Or Mormons.
  • Or Muslims.

Unless, that is, you are the “right kind” of Catholic, Evangelical, Eastern Orthodox Christian, observant Jew, Mormon, or Muslim, namely, the kind who believes your religious or philosophical tradition is wrong about the nature of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and the view now dominant among secular elites is correct. In that case, Mozilla will consider you morally worthy to work for them. Or maybe you can work for them even if you do happen to believe (or should I say “believe”) your faith’s teaching—so long as you keep your mouth shut about it: “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

You are disqualified from employment, however, if you reveal your alleged “bigotry” and “cause pain” by stating your convictions. And you are certainly disqualified if you do anything to advance the historic understanding of marriage as a conjugal union in the public square.

[….]

You can bet it’s not just Mozilla. Now that the bullies have Eich’s head as a trophy on their wall, they will put the heat on every other corporation and major employer. They will pressure them to refuse employment to those who decline to conform their views to the new orthodoxy. And you can also bet that it won’t end with same-sex marriage. Next, it will be support for the pro-life cause that will be treated as moral turpitude in the same way that support for marriage is treated. Do you believe in protecting unborn babies from being slain in the womb? Why, then: “You are a misogynist. You are a hater of women. You are a bigot. We can’t have a person like you working for our company.” And there will be other political and moral issues, too, that will be treated as litmus tests for eligibility for employment. The defenestration of Eich by people at Mozilla for dissenting from the new orthodoxy on marriage is just the beginning.

Catholics, Evangelicals, Orthodox Christians, Mormons, observant Jews and others had better stand together and face down the bullies, and they had better do it now, or else they will be resigning themselves and their families to a very unhappy status in this society. A very unhappy status indeed. When tactics of intimidation succeed, their success ensures that they will be used more and more often in more and more contexts to serve more and more causes. And standing up to intimidation will become more and more difficult. And more and more costly. And more and more dangerous.

read more

If you are a Republican, you need not speak at a university commencement or convocation. If you are a conservative Republican, you need not apply for a job, as a waiter or an CEO

All in the name of what?

Tolerance!

So in the historical example you see Republicans being terrorized by Democrats to the point of death for thinking that a person has the freedom to vote and have freedom of thought. In the example of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich we find Democrats still terrorizing people for the freedom to vote to the point of not being able to work and make a living.

Rogan & Maher Discuss Today’s Woke Progressives — Bill Maher Just Leveled Woke Progressives With the Most Damning Comparison Ever: “They believe race is first and foremost the thing you should always see everywhere, which I find interesting because that used to be the position of the Ku Klux Klan.”

(From the above)

“I’m always trying to make the case that liberal is a different animal than ‘woke,’ because it is,” according to Maher. “You can be ‘woke,’ with all the nonsense that that now implies, but don’t say that somehow it’s an extension of liberalism because it’s most often actually an undoing of liberalism.”

The traditional liberal view of a “color-blind” society, which was held by figures such as President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is a prime example, Maher said.

“That’s not what the ‘woke’ believe,” according to the comedian. “They believe race is, first-and-foremost, the thing you should always see everywhere, which I find interesting because that used to be the position of the Ku Klux Klan, that we see race first-and-foremost everywhere.”

“You can have that position, but don’t say that’s a liberal position,” he added. “You’re doing something very different.”

YEP, STILL THE SAME HIT CARD

COURAGE

….But It Takes Courage To Change Our Course or to confront today’s culture.

In fact, Shelby Steele said it multiple times: “we have to have moral courage” […] “moral courage is needed.” Here is Dennis Prager talking about “courage” in a clip I came across of an old YouTube upload of mine:

MY RUMBLE DESCRIPTION: At a recent event with Shelby Steele, he repeated many times throughout the interview that people have to have “moral courage”, he also said “courage.” This is something that Dennis Prager has said for many years. Here is one clip/excerpt from a longer/old YOUTUBE upload of mine titled:Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio) Reveals His Reason Behind His Change of Heart on Same-Sex Marriage #SSM (from March of 2013)

MAKING AN IMPACT

If this racism truly exists, is dividing more the answer?

Do they know how to confront the evil of racism in a way to change hearts and minds?

Or will they fire and impoverish financially and societally their opponents. Doesn’t this make them more likely to become isolated and desperate? And in their lies maligning people as racists who are not, do they open roads to unity? Or tear down opportunities to heal. By heal I mean to realize that many of the Left’s “labels” are in fact straw-men arguments.

The reason I asked that emboldened question above is because in putting together “how I have changed over the years” since my three felonies as part of a package of paperwork to have my felonies expunged (see my bio), I wrote down some examples of my evolution from “felon” to a “retired felon” in the shadow of the Cross. Here is a small excerpt from my rough draft.

CLARITY: In 2004 I was 13-years past my last felony conviction, accumulated around 3,500 books in my library, and was well studied in apologetic topics (I had yet to go to seminary). But in 1994 I had an “interference with a peace” officer that I never went to court for… so in 2004 at a routine traffic violation stop, the warrant popped up and I spent about 23-days in jail. While I was yet to get a master’s in theological studies (2009), this short time in jail was really my “full circle,” so-to-speak.

SMALL PART OF MY TESTIMONY ~ Coming Full Circle

1994 Trouble Settled in 2004. In 1994 I was out with friends from my high school days, and we were collectively drunk and disorderly. This was my last real run-in with the law. However, this turned into a blessing of sorts… not for me but for others. Let me explain, please.

In 2004 I was pulled over by a CHP officer for driving too long in a center area of a 4-lane thoroughfare. When the officer ran my record she found I was driving on a suspended license as well as having a 10-year old warrant. Mind you, by this time I was knee deep in church, working, raising kids, and I had a large library and knowledge of various topics by then. This officer was kind enough to allow my wife to come and grab our car before taking me in. I spent close to 20-days in detention. (This was the catalyst to deal with my old issues – license and a warrant I had forgotten all about.)

  • It was my short time in jail that I will never forget.

“El Oso Negro”. My 1st stay was in a small dorm at the end of a cell block, floor 4 if I recall, in Central Jail. It was days before Easter, I had already talked to the Chaplain and had a Bible. There were maybe 18 people in this dorm. I was sitting on the top bunk, reading my Bible, and my bunk mate – a giant of a man from Hawaiian Gardens gang who was called “el oso negro,” black bear, on the account that he was huge [many prison yeas of working out], extremely hairy, and turned very dark when in the sun on the yard in Tehachapi prison.

He asked me why I was reading the BibleI explained how I got there and a bit of the above info (past stints). We started talking and before you know it, we were sitting on his bunk and he said he was saved many years ago at Calvary Chapel, I asked if we could pray. While I prayed for him, he started crying like a baby – tears rolling down his cheeks, snot and all. All the other young Hispanic gang bangers were watching this “OG” open up to the active power of the Holy Spirit. When Sunday came everyone* held hands in a circle – the center two bunk beds and pillar in the middle of the circle – I prayed a blessing over these men and their loved ones, and we said the Lord’s prayer to finish. Not everyone was saved obviously just by holding handsbut maybe it sparked either a renewal of faith in some, or at least an optimism about it not garnered before. Wow.

*One young kid expressed his atheism and commitment to his gang. When I talked to him and answered his skeptical challenges, he just became angry; so, I stopped engaging to keep the dorm’s cohesiveness going. He did not join the circle.

That was not the end of this short stint however hold on to your seat, there is more.

North @ Wayside (Pitchess). I was moved to the North Facility at Pitchess Detention Center on the account that I have a shaved head (balding) and I look like a white supremacist. (North was where they largely segregated guys that looked like me.) I talked to the Chaplain, the husband of the owner of a local Christian bookstore owner I knew and got another Bible as I had given the previous one to “The Black Bear.” (I wish I remembered his real name.)

While discussing topics with a few people inquiring about why I was reading the Bible, a young kid, skinhead looking fellow, started to engage me in some Biblical topics. During further discussion I found out he was a member of the racist cult, Christian Identity.

Your Honor, I had recently done a large study on four racist cults/movements – this being one. So I was familiar with its founders and relationship to the aberrant theology of British Israelism. Steering the conversation thus (a rough draft I keep) with the afore mentioned knowledge and the basis that he showed an interest in what the Bible had to say about our topic:

The Bible does not even use the word race in reference to people, but it does describe all human beings as being of “one blood” (Acts 17:26). This of course emphasizes that we are all related, as all humans are descendants of the first man, Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), who was created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27). The Last Adam, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:45) also became a descendant of Adam in His incarnation. Therefore, any descendant of Adam can be saved because our mutual relative by blood (Jesus) died and rose again. Therefore, the Gospel can (and should) be preached to all tribes and nations.

Genesis’ word for Adam means “red clay,” and out of the 200[+] flood stories from around the world from different cultures separated by seas and time and culture, almost half have the first man being created red. Also, when Moses was going to marry an Ethiopian woman, Miriam spoke out against this interracial marriage. God struck her with a disease that turned her skin ashen until she repented of this BECAUSE God blesses marriage between all ethnicities.

The young man upon me asking, said that all the authors of the New Testament had to be “Aryan,” which according to British Israelism were the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. I brought him to Philippians 3:3-8 where the Apostle Paul clearly says he is from the tribe of Benjamin. A “no-no” in these aberrant theologies. 

At the end of my time in North this kid had thrown his literature (booklets) away he had gotten by mail from Richard Butler’s “organization.” I left that Bible with him as well.

Do Leftists attack real problems when given an opportunity through discussion? Or do they merely malign and label anyone who disagrees with them to keep power by their self-imposed grip of ignorance?

MENTORING or TEARING DOWN?

Do my accusers build?

Do they build people up?

Do they mentor?

Here is what I mean — Dennis Prager has made this point for years and uses the Boy Scouts as an example:

Watching the left attempting to undo the greatness of American medicine and dismantle the unprecedentedly powerful American economic engine built almost entirely on non-governmental entrepreneurial effort, I realize once again that the left is far better at destroying than building.

I first realized this as I watched the left — and here I sadly include the whole organized left from liberal to far left — do whatever it could to destroy one of the most wonderful organizations in American life, the Boy Scouts of America. From Democratic city governments to the New York Times and other liberal editorial pages to the most destructive organization on the left, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), there has been the most concerted effort to break the Boy Scouts.

When challenged about this, fellow Americans on the left respond that this is a false accusation, that they have no desire to destroy the Boy Scouts, only to coerce the organization into accepting as scouts and scout leaders boys and men who have announced they are gay.

This is not an honest response, however, because the left is in fact doing whatever it can to destroy the Boy Scouts until the Boy Scouts change their policy on gays. The left-wing position is that if the Boy Scouts do not change a policy that has been in place since the inception of the organization, they do not deserve to exist.

Therefore it is entirely accurate to state that the left wishes to destroy the Boy Scouts as that organization now exists. No matter how much good the Boy Scouts have done and continue to do for millions of boys, for the left, all this good amounts to nothing.

For the left in this instance, as in most instances, the attitude is: Destroy the imperfect in order to build the perfect.

There is no left-wing Boy Scouts. The left knows best how to crush the non-left Boy Scouts, but it has never made a boys organization of its own….

Again, do they change the hearts and minds of those they encounter and disagree with that they believe to be racists? Or are they merely dividing along race-class-gender to hold on to POWER?

affirmative action

Does It “Affirm?”

Or Set Up People To Fail?

Doc Steele goes on to discuss the deleterious FX of race-based preferences in college and university “ivory tower” educational institutions. Doc Steele notes that a new battle awaits the black student walking the campus of Harvard or Yale, which is: everyone there knows you made it not by your merit but by other forces. And so, Dr. Steele notes that the black student must relitigate racial battles and prejudices created by school administrators and government interference.

Below are some audio from past posts here on my site where people make a similar point of a new category of “suspicion” of “did they really make it because they are good?” I heard Larry elder tell a story about a law firm wanting the best and brightest and going to Yale or Harvard to find new lawyers for their top-rated firm. Do you think they have a suspicion of the quality of the minority candidate?

Even if not publicly stated, I bet even black law firms hire the best from Columbia or University of Virginia rather than an affirmative action graduate from the Ivory Tower Schools.

…TO WIT…

In a short clip Dan Bongino reads from the WALL STREET JOURNAL in which he notes the following paragraph:

  • The complaint, filed by a coalition of 64 organizations, says the university has set quotas to keep the numbers of Asian-American students significantly lower than the quality of their applications merits. It cites third-party academic research on the SAT exam showing that Asian-Americans have to score on average about 140 points higher than white students, 270 points higher than Hispanic students and 450 points higher than African-American students to equal their chances of gaining admission to Harvard. The exam is scored on a 2400-point scale. The complaint was filed with the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights.

(Keep that WALL STREET JOURNAL article book marked in your head. I will come back to it in a bit.)

Larry Elder plays audio from now VP Joe Biden being shut down by an educated black man with facts and knowledge about the deleterious affects of race preference in education, e.g., affirmative action.

Here is part of a LOS ANGELES TIMES article regarding the above

(hat-tip, CONSERVATIVE TREE HOUSE):

“Let’s talk about Asians,” she says.

Lee’s next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term “bonus” to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant’s race is worth. She points to the first column.

African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 points, Lee says.

She points to the second column.

“Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points.”

The last column draws gasps.

Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.

Remember the section above speaking about having moral courage?

Well, what do you think it took to fight the “narrative” by these Asian students? Here are the last two paragraphs of that WSJ article:

Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton University sociologist who has done work on race in college admissions, said the complaint was the result of long-simmering anger in the Asian-American community.

“Up until five or 10 years ago the response has been, ‘Well we just have to work harder,’ ” Mr. Espenshade said. “But over the last decade, more groups are starting to mobilize, saying we don’t have to just accept his, we can push back against it.”

Shelby Steele noted this Frederick Douglas story early in his interview (adapted, not a direct quote):

When Frederick Douglas was asked as a free man by the media “WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE NEGRO?” Frederick responded: “Do nothing with us,” Douglass suggested. Leave African Americans alone. Give them a chance to be men. “If you see him on his way to school, leave him alone; don’t disturb him,” Douglass entreated. Similarly, if you saw a Black man having dinner at a hotel, or casting a ballot, or practicing his craft, just let him be. Allow him to pursue his inalienable rights in peace. If the Black man failed, surely it would be the fault of his Maker and perhaps give lie to the universal principle of the American founding.

Shelby Steele later noted this similar thinking:

  • Smyth: “Let’s talk about the Supreme Court decisions to disallow race as a consideration for university admission. What are your thoughts about that? And what is your advice for diverse students seeking admission?”
  • Steele: “Leave me alone. Really, really, really stop it. STOP CALIBRATING AND TAKING STATISTICS AND LOOKING FOR SOME GAP AND WHETHER I FIT. Treat me exactly like law, the Constitution, requires that you treat every other citizen. I’m a citizen.”

(THE SIGNAL)

That takes courage.

Which brings me to another thought… how do you defeat, defeatism — AKA — fear?

How do you counter the dogma of group think?

How do you thwart attachments to a narrative by bands of people trying to separate themselves by communal group think?

CONVERSATION

Conversations is how.

A point Doc Steele made was that “individual relationships” should be a goal. I love this because it is the only way to separate yourself from group thinking. In other words, the viewpoint of a group narrative is often curated. tailored to fit an outcome. I already gave one example of conversating leading to break throughs in my Testimony above, here is another example. This second example of conversation shows what a difference a conversation can make… even in social media.

During the run-up to the 2012 election, my son was in a conversation about Romney being called a bigot due to his stance on homosexuality and abortion. I jumped in as a post of mine linked in conversation was determined to be “racist” by these young minds. In discussing the issues with two separate “yutes”, one unfriended my son, the other wanted to meet up for coffee after thoughtful discussion that included ideas found in these linked posts:

And a couple points like these from a post where my son’s friend asked a question of me; “Is Marriage Hetero“:

  • take gold as an example, it has inherent in its nature intrinsic qualities that make it expensive: good conductor of electricity, rare, never tarnishes, ease of use (moldability), and the like. The male and female have the potential to become a single biological organism, or single organic unit, or principle. Two essentially becoming one. The male and female, then, have inherent to their nature intrinsic qualities that two mated males or two mated females never actualize in their courtship… nor can they ever. The potential stays just that, potential, never being realized…..
  • ….Think of a being or animal or even an insect that reproduces, not by mating, but by some act performed by individuals. Imagine that for these same beings, movement and digestion is performed not by individuals, but only by the complementary pairs that unite for this purpose. Would anyone acquainted with such beings have difficulty understanding that in respect to movement and digestion, the organism is a united pair, or an organic unity? They thus become an entirely new organism when joined together — fulfilling what was only ‘potential’ when apart.”

We also discussed my time spent with Conservatarian gay men and women:

For some time, a few years back, I and about 10-20 gay men and women… and at times their extended family would meet monthly. All were lovers of the Constitution — what brought us together was the website GAY PATRIOT (gaypatriot . net – now defunct, sadly) and admiration of what Bruce Carroll and other gay writers boldly forged in countering current cultural trends.

Some of these people I met with and have communicated with over the years [friends] held the position that same-sex marriage should not be placed on the same level in society as heterosexual marriage, as, the family pre-dates and is the foundation for society. All, however, held that what is not clearly enumerated in the Constitution for the federal government to do should be left for the states. And thus, they would say each state has the right to define marriage themselves. Speaking out against high-court interference – as they all did about Roe v. Wade. (All were pro-life.)

As an aside, we met once-a-month at either the Sizzler in Hollywood or the Outback in Burbank, exclusively on Mondays. (All coordinated by “GayPatriotWest” – Daniel Blatt). Why? Those two CEOs gave to Mitt Romney’s campaign. And on Mondays because the L.A. City Council asked people not to eat meat on Mondays to help the planet.

A joint “hetero [me]/gay [them] ” thumb in LA City Councils eye. Lol.

What I respect are men and women (gay or not) who protect freedom of thought/speech. Like these two-freedom loving lesbian women I post about on my site.

I shared ideas like this that struck a nerve with him:

“If homosexuality is really genetic, we may soon be able to tell if a fetus is predisposed to homosexuality, in which case many parents might choose to abort it.  Will gay rights activists continue to support abortion rights if this occurs?”

Dale A. Berryhill, The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals (Lafayette, LA:  Vital Issues Press, 1994), 172.

So why did this young man change his mind? He stuck around for tough dialogue. In other words, he showed courage. He was introduced to some reasonable, historical arguments that showed what is being considered the norm today is something brand new in human history. And he never thought of the fact that, yes, there are gays who do not support same-sex marriage. So, when he was maligning people as homophobic… he then had to draw the conclusion that he was calling gays “homophobic.” And he rightly deduced that for that to happen his argument must be skewed wrongly. This is what he eventually said:

Although I do not agree [on all your points], I retract my statement that Romney is a bigot. I feel very differently on these moral issues, but I will avoid sixhirb-ing in the future, thank you for pointing it out. Good video, but this issue hits too close to home for me to continue this discussion.

Id like to have more conversations with you in the future, it’s not often someone makes me rethink my entire approach to a topic. Caught me a bit off guard, because I usually talk circles around people. I’ve been hearing so much idiocy from people with opposing view points, that I’ve lost a bit of my receptiveness. Paul still has my vote, but thanks for opening my mind a bit more.

That is how a healthy, well-balanced exchange is supposed to happen. Information never heard before is presented, one’s ideology either blocks it at the door of the heart, or, it allows it in to be weighed and considered. Another conversation I was involved in shows how the Left distorts things and are the divisive ones who use myths to unfriend people:

What do conversations Do? They route the false edifice of communal narratives because the person is told by the group that these people are like “this,” but after you discuss weighty topics with “those people,” you come to realize just how wrong what you were told about them — was.

A woman that I sat near at the event told a story of her daughter, whose father is law enforcement as well as her uncle. She said that her daughter’s school acquaintances would talk the typical narrative about law enforcement. Which I can imagine falls somewhere in the race card arena. She is around a narrative that a communal whole ~ tries to pawn off as truth. But the daughter knows and converses with these people maligned by the narrative. So, she knows the claims she is presented with at school are false.

Likewise, if people insert themselves into conversation with “the other,” often the narrative falls apart.

Dennis Prager interviews Ken Sterns, former CEO of National Public Radio, regarding his new book, “Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right”. In all his interviews he makes the point that he hasn’t changed his mind about all his previous positions, but he has on some.

If this were a Q&A, I would have stated this followed by a question:

QUESTION TO DOC STEELE

All the above thoughts and ruminations led me to formulate some questions that if I were in Professor Smyth’s shoes I would ask. Here is one if this were a Q&A;

“A quick statement and then a question Doc Steel. Your defining of ‘white guilt’ and the genuflecting of some before a, so called, oppressed class of people reminded me of David Mamet’s book, The Secret Knowledge, where he notes that there is an idea that the victim is pure, and cannot have sinned; and that the current ‘worship-of-the-victim’ is a way of transferring their ‘sainthood’ to themselves.APPENDIX If you wish to comment on that, that will be a bonus, however, my question is this:

  • “Justice Clarence Thomas has said that his generation, even though separated and kept apart by laws, had an Unum… something to bind everyone together. He noted that today’s generation have Pluribus, but what is our Unum. I know you said you do not have a solution to our ills; however, can you recommend some “Unum ideas” that a young person can equip themselves with?”

That is it. If you took the time to brave the above. God Bless You for your “moral courage.”

If you have never read David Mamet’s book, these quotes come from, it is worth the time.


APPENDIX


Two Mamet quotes speaking to “sainthood”

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.

There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)

The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government.

We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.

But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….

….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….

….“Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immediately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….

…. I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government pro-grams, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a program, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the pro-prietor a bad business decision.)*

Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority contracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men.


*No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”

As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.

David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 116-117, 122, 151, 154.

If there is indeed a social revolution under way, it shouldn’t stop with women’s choice to honor their [own] nature. It must also include a newfound respect for men. It was New York City’s firemen who dared to charge up the stairs of the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The death tally of New York City’s firefighters was: men 343, women 0. Can anyone honestly say you would have wanted a woman coming to your rescue on that fateful day?

Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 181-182.

A while back Candace Owens invoked Shelby Steele in her 1st comment on George Floyd (June 5, 2020):

A Worldview/RPT Rant On a Reasonable Zuby Quote

I think the below is applicable to many things. Like masks, mandatory vaccines for colds. etc. But I can also see how the below will be used to counter life and the freedom the Founding Documents of this nation afford. This is to say I like the quote, but can see it being misused as well.

That is the reason for the post — just to counter what I can see others using it for.

So, how does this play out with the Left? [Or, strict Libertarians.] Below I will use some personal experience as well as some legal interpretation and thought experiments – with a dash of religious philosophy to get us started.

WORLDVIEWS IN THE MIX

Before we begin, many who know the site know that I speak with informed knowledge in my Judeo-Christian [theistic] worldview to those of other adopted worldviews [known or unknown] to change hearts and minds. Often people do not know what a worldview is or if they hold one, or that knowing of it even has purpose. Nor do they know that higher education just a couple generations ago thought it educations purpose to instill it. A quote I came across in seminary that I kept discusses this:

Alexander W. Astin dissected a longitudinal study conducted by UCLA started in 1966 for the Review of Higher Education [journal] in which 290,000 students were surveyed from about 500 colleges.  The main question was asked of students why study or learn?  “Seeking to develop ‘a meaningful philosophy of life’” [to develop a meaningful worldview] was ranked “essential” by the majority of entering freshmen.  In 1996 however, 80% of the college students barely recognized the need for “a meaningful philosophy of life” and ranked “being very well off financially” [e.g., to not necessarily develop a meaningful worldview] as paramount. [1 & 2]


[1] Alexander W. Astin, “The changing American college student: thirty year trends, 1966-1996,” Review of Higher Education, 21 (2) 1998, 115-135.

[2] Some of what is here is adapted and with thanks to Dr. Stephen Whatley, Professor of Apologetics & Worldviews at Faith International University… as, they are in his notes from one of his classes.

I wish to highlight the “a meaningful philosophy of life.” This is known as a worldview, or, tools to dissect life and define reality. So the question becomes, what then is a worldview? Why do we need a coherent one?

WORLDVIEW: People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently based on these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize.  By “presuppositions” we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic worldview, the grid through which he sees the world.  Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists.  People’s presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world.  Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.  “As a man thinketh, so he is,” is profound.  An individual is not just the product of the forces around him.  He has a mind, an inner world.  Then, having thought, a person can bring forth actions into the external world and thus influence it.  People are apt to look at the outer theater of action, forgetting the actor who “lives in the mind” and who therefore is the true actor in the external world.  The inner thought world determines the outward action.  Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles.  But people with more understanding realize that their presuppositions should be chosen after careful consideration of what worldview is true.  When all is done, when all the alternatives have been explored, “not many men are in the room” — that is, although worldviews have many variations, there are not many basic worldviews or presuppositions.

— Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1976), 19-20.

So, even if one isn’t necessarily aware they have a worldview, they operate as if they do — borrowing from what they perceive as truths but are often a patchwork of interpretations that if questioned on, the self-refuting nature of these personally held beliefs are easy to dissect and show the person is living incoherently. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “worldview” this way:

1) The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world; 2) A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.” 

What are these self-refuting aspects people find themselves moving in-between? What are the worldviews? Here are some listed, and really, that first list of seven is it. That is as broad as one can expand the worldview list:

  1. theism
  2. atheism
  3. deism
  4. finite godism
  5. pantheism
  6. panentheism
  7. polytheism[1]

Others still reduce it further: Idealism, naturalism, and theism.[2] C.S Lewis dealt with religious worldviews much the same way, comparing: philosophical naturalism (atheism), pantheism, and theism.[3]


[1] Doug Powell, The Holman Quick Source Guide to Christian Apologetics (Nashville, TN: Holman Publishers, 2006); and Norman L. Geisler and William D. Watkins, Worlds Apart: A Handbook on World Views (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers);

[2] L. Russ Bush, A Handbook for Christian Philosophy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1991).

[3] Mere Christianity (New York, NY: Macmillan Inc, 1943).

Knowing what “rose-colored-glasses” you are wearing and if you are being internally coherent in your dissecting of reality is important because of the cacophony of what is being offered:

Faith Founded on Fact: Essays in Evidential Apologetics (Newburgh, IN: Trinity Press, 1978), 152-153.

Joseph R. Farinaccio, author of “Faith with Reason: Why Christianity is True,” starts out his excellent book pointing a way to this truth that a well-informed public should know some of:

  • This is a book about worldviews. Everybody has one, but most individuals never really pay much attention to their own personal philosophy of life. This is a tragedy because there is no state of awareness so fundamental to living life. — (Pennsville, NJ: BookSpecs Publishing, 2002), 10 (emphasis added).
  • “A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our well being.” — James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004), 122 (emphasis added).

Is this part of the reason so many today, especially young people, do not have “well-being”?

(More on worldviews can be found in my first chapter of my book titled:INTRODUCTION: TECHNOLOGY JUNKIES” — PDF | As well as my WORLDVIEW POST on the matter)

The Law of Non Contradiction

I bet many reading this will have used the phrases or ideas below without realizing it was incoherent at best. I link to my chapter above, but here is an excerpt from it to better explain why a person’s worldview should be internally sound:

The law of non-contradiction is one of the most important laws of logical thought, in fact, one textbook author goes so far as to say that this law “is considered the foundation of logical reasoning.”[1]  Another professor of philosophy at University College London says that “a theory in which this law fails…is an inconsistent theory.”[2]  A great example of this inconsistency can be found in the wonderful book Philosophy for Dummies that fully expresses the crux of the point made throughout this work:

  • Statement: There is no such thing as absolute truth.[3]

By applying the law of non-contradiction to this statement, one will be able to tell if this statement is coherent enough to even consider thinking about.  Are you ready?  The first question should be, “is this an absolute statement?”  Is the statement making an ultimate, absolute claim about the nature of truth?  If so, it is actually asserting what it is trying to deny, and so is self-deleting – more simply, it is logically incoherent as a comprehensible position[4] as it is in violation of the law of non-contradiction.  Some other examples are as follows, for clarity’s sake:

“All truth is relative!” (Is that a relative truth?); “There are no absolutes!” (Are you absolutely sure?); “It’s true for you but not for me!” (Is that statement true just for you or is it for everyone?)[5] In short, contrary beliefs are possible, but contrary truths are not possible.[6]

Many will try to reject logic in order to accept mutually contradictory beliefs; often times religious pluralism[7] is the topic with which many try to suppress these universal laws in separating religious claims that are mutually exclusive.  Professor Roy Clouser puts into perspective persons that try to minimize differences by throwing logical rules to the wayside:

The program of rejecting logic in order to accept mutually contradictory beliefs is not, however, just a harmless, whimsical hope that somehow logically incompatible beliefs can both be trueit results in nothing less than the destruction of any and every concept we could possess.  Even the concept of rejecting the law of non-contradiction depends on assuming and using that law, since without it the concept of rejecting it could neither be thought nor stated.[8]

Dr. Clouser then goes on to show how a position of psychologist Erich Fromm is “self-assumptively incoherent.”[9] What professor Clouser is saying is that this is not a game.  Dr. Alister McGrath responds to the religious pluralism of theologian John Hick by showing just how self-defeating this position is:

The belief that all religions are ultimately expressions of the same transcendent reality is at best illusory and at worst oppressive – illusory because it lacks any substantiating basis and oppressive because it involves the systematic imposition of the agenda of those in positions of intellectual power on the religions and those who adhere to them.  The illiberal imposition of this pluralistic metanarrative[10] on religions is ultimately a claim to mastery – both in the sense of having a Nietzschean authority and power to mold material according to one’s will, and in the sense of being able to relativize all the religions by having access to a privileged standpoint.[11]

As professor McGrath points out above, John Hick is applying an absolute religious claim while at the same time saying there are no absolute religious claims to religious reality.  It is self-assumptively incoherent.  Anthropologist William Sumner argues against the logical position when he says that “every attempt to win an outside standpoint from which to reduce the whole to an absolute philosophy of truth and right, based on an unalterable principle, is delusion.”[12]  Authors Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl respond to this self-defeating claim by showing that Sumner is making a strong claim here about knowledge:

He says that all claims to know objective moral truth are false because we are all imprisoned in our own cultural and are incapable of seeing beyond the limits of our own biases.  He concludes, therefore, that moral truth is relative to culture and that no objective standard exists.  Sumner’s analysis falls victim to the same error committed by religious pluralists who see all religions as equally valid.[13]

The authors continue:

Sumner’s view, however, is self-refuting.  In order for him to conclude that all moral claims are an illusion, he must first escape the illusion himself.  He must have a full and accurate view of the entire picture….  Such a privileged view is precisely what Sumner denies.  Objective assessments are illusions, he claims, but then he offers his own “objective” assessment.  It is as if he were saying, “We’re all blind,” and then adds, “but I’ll tell you what the world really looks like.” This is clearly contradictory.[14]

Philosopher Roger Scruton drives this point home when he says, “A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely negative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.”[15]


[1] Manuel Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text with Readings (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001), p. 51.

[2] Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (New York, NY: Oxford Univ Press, 1995), p. 625.

[3] Tom Morris, Philosophy for Dummies, 46.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 40.

[6] Ibid., 38.

[7] Religious Pluralism – “the belief that every religion is true.  Each religion provides a genuine encounter with the Ultimate.” Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 598.

[8] Roy A. Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2005), 178 (emphasis added).

[9] A small snippet for clarity’s sake:

Fromm’s position is also an example of this same dogmatic selectivity. He presents his view as though there are reasons for rejecting the law of non-contradiction, and then argues that his view of the divine (he calls it “ultimate reality”) logically follows from that rejection. He ignores the fact that to make any logical inference — to see that one belief “logically follows from” another — means that the belief which is said to “follow” is required on pain of contradicting oneself. Having denied all basis for any inference, Fromm nevertheless proceeds to infer that reality itself must be an all-encompassing mystical unity which harmonizes all the contradictions which logical thought takes to be real. He then further infers that since human thought cannot help but be contradictory, ultimate reality cannot be known by thought. He gives a summary of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist expressions of this same view, and again infers that accepting their view of the divine requires him to reject the biblical idea of God as a knowable, individual, personal Creator. He then offers still another logical inference when he insists that:

Opposition is a category of man’s mind, not itself an element of reality…. Inasmuch as God represents the ultimate reality, and inasmuch as the human mind perceives reality in contradictions, no positive statement can be made about God.

In this way Fromm ends by adding self-referential incoherency to the contradictions and self-assumptive incoherency already asserted by his theory. For he makes the positive statement about God that no positive statements about God are possible.

Ibid., 178-179. In this excellent work Dr. Clouser shows elsewhere the impact of logic on some major positions of thought:

As an example of the strong sense of this incoherency, take the claim sometimes made by Taoists that “Nothing can be said of the Tao.” Taken without qualification (which is not the way it is intended), this is self-referentially incoherent since to say “Nothing can be said of the Tao” is to say something of the Tao. Thus, when taken in reference to itself, the statement cancels its own truth. As an example of the weak version of self-referential incoherency, take the claim once made by Freud that every belief is a product of the believer’s unconscious emotional needs. If this claim were true, it would have to be true of itself since it is a belief of Freud’s. It therefore requires itself to be nothing more than the product of Freud’s unconscious emotional needs. This would not necessarily make the claim false, but it would mean that even if it were true neither Freud nor anyone else could ever know that it is. The most it would allow anyone to say is that he or she couldn’t help but believe it.  The next criterion says that a theory must not be incompatible with any belief we have to assume for the theory to be true. I will call a theory that violates this rule “self-assumptively incoherent.” As an example of this incoherence, consider the claim made by some philosophers that all things are exclusively physical [atheistic-naturalism]. This has been explained by its advocates to mean that nothing has any property or is governed by any law that is not a physical property or a physical law. But the very sentence expressing this claim, the sentence “All things are exclusively physical,” must be assumed to possess a linguistic meaning. This is not a physical property, but unless the sentence had it, it would not be a sentence; it would be nothing but physical sounds or marks that would not) linguistically signify any meaning whatever and thus could not express any claim — just as a group of pebbles, or clouds, or leaves, fails to signify any meaning or express any claim. Moreover, to assert this exclusivist materialism is the same as claiming it is true, which is another nonphysical property; and the claim that it is true further assumes that its denial would have to be false, which is a relation guaranteed by logical, not physical, laws. (Indeed, any theory which denies the existence of logical laws is instantly and irredeemably self-assumptively incoherent since that very denial is proposed as true in a way that logically excludes its being false.) What this shows is that the claim “All things are exclusively physical” must itself be assumed to have nonphysical properties and be governed by nonphysical laws or it could neither be understood nor be true. Thus, no matter how clever the supporting arguments for this claim may seem, the claim itself is incompatible with assumptions that are required for it to be true. It is therefore self-assumptively incoherent in the strong sense.

Ibid., 84-85 (emphasis added).

[10] Metanarratives, or, Grand Narratives – “big stories, stories of mythic proportions – that claim to be able to account for, explain and subordinate all lesser, little, local, narratives.” Jim Powell, Postmodernism for Beginners (New York, NY: Writers and Readers, 1998), 29.

[11] Alister E. McGrath, Passion for Truth: the Intellectual Coherence of Evangelicalism (Downers Grove, IL: IVP,  1996), 239.

[12] William Graham Sumner, Folkways (Chicago, IL: Ginn and Company, 1906), in Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Planted firmly in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1998), 46-47.

[13] Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1998), 47.

[14] Ibid., 48

[15] Modern Philosophy (New York, NY: Penguin, 1996), 6.  Found in: John Blanchard, Does God Believe in Atheists? (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2000), 172.

This is part of a larger audio piece on Relativism:

Okay, that should get us all prepped for the next section…

….which is slightly more historical.

THEISM & AMERICA’S FOUNDING

Theism was the basis for our Founding Documents that undergirded our nations birth. For instance the phrase in the Declaration of Independence,Law of Nature and Nature’s God.” AMERICAN HERITAGE EDUCATION FOUNDATION discusses this phrase a bit, of which I excerpta portion of:

The Declaration of Independence of 1776 tells much about the founding philosophy of the United States of America.  One philosophical principle that the American Founders asserted in the Declaration was the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God.”  This universal moral law served as their moral and legal basis for creating a new, self-governing nation.  One apparent aspect of this law is that it was understood in Western thought and by early Americans to be revealed by God in two ways—in nature and in the Bible—and thus evidences the Bible’s influence in America’s founding document.

The “Law of Nature” is the moral or common sense embedded in man’s heart or conscience (as confirmed in Romans 2:14-15).  It tells one to live honestly, hurt no one, and render to everyone his due.  The law of “Nature’s God” as written in the Bible and spoken by Jesus Christ consists of two great commandments—to love God and love others (as found in Deuteronomy 6:5, Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 7:12, Matthew 22:36-40, Mark 12:28-31, and Luke 10:25-28).  The first commandment, first found in Deuteronomy 6:5, is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.”  The second commandment, often referred to as the Golden Rule and first found in Leviticus 19:18, is to “love your neighbor as yourself” or, as expressed by Jesus in Matthew 7:12, to “do to others as you would have them do to you.”  Thus the content for both the natural and written laws is the same.

The law of Nature and God can be traced through the history and writings of Western Civilization.  This principle is found, for example, in medieval European thought.  In his 1265-1274 Summa Theologica, published in 1485, Italian theologian Thomas Aquinas acknowledged a “two-fold” moral law that is both general and specific:

The natural law directs man by way of certain general precepts, common to both the perfect [faithful] and the imperfect [non-faithful]:  wherefore it is one and the same for all.  But the Divine law directs man also in certain particular matters….  Hence the necessity for the Divine law to be twofold.[1]

Aquinas explained that the written law in the Bible was given by God due to the fallibility of human judgment and the perversion of the natural law in the hearts of many.  In the 1300s, medieval Bible scholars referred to the “Law of Nature and God” as a simple way to describe God’s natural and written law, its two expressions.  The phrase presented this law in the same order and timing in which God revealed it to mankind in history—first in creation and then in Holy Scripture.

During the Reformation period, French religious reformer John Calvin affirmed this two-fold moral law in his 1536 Institutes of the Christian Religion, observing, “It is certain that the law of God, which we call the moral law, is no other than a declaration of natural law, and of that conscience which has been engraven by God on the minds of men.”[2]  He further explains, “The very things contained in the two tables [or commandments in the Bible] are…dictated to us by that internal law whichiswritten and stamped on every heart.”[3]  Incidentally, Puritan leader John Winthrop, who led a large migration of Calvinist Puritans from England to the American colonies, identified God’s two-fold moral law in his well-known 1630 sermon, A Model of Christian Charity, delivered to the Puritans as they sailed to America.  He taught,

There is likewise a double law by which we are regulated in our conversation one towards another:  the law of nature and the law of grace, or the moral law and the law of the Gospel….  By the first of these laws, manis commanded to love his neighbor as himself.  Upon this ground stands all the precepts of the moral law which concerns our dealings with men.[4]

During the Enlightenment period, British philosopher John Locke, who was influential to the Founders, wrote of the “law of God and nature” in his 1689 First Treatise of Civil Government.[5]  This law, he further notes in his 1696 Reasonableness of Christianity, “being everywhere the same, the Eternal Rule of Right, obliges Christians and all men everywhere, and is to all men the standing Law of Works.”[6]  English legal theorist William Blackstone, another oft-cited thinker of the American founding era, recognized the two-fold moral law in his influential 1765-1769 Commentaries on the Laws of England.  This law, he believed, could be known partially by man’s imperfect natural reason and completely by the Bible.  Due to man’s imperfect reason, Blackstone like Aquinas observed, the Bible’s written revelation is necessary:

If our reason were always, as in our first ancestor [Adam] before his transgression, clear and perfect, unruffled by passions, unclouded by prejudice, unimpaired by disease or intemperance, the task [of discerning God’s law and will] would be pleasant and easy.  We should need no other guide but this [reason].  But every man now finds the contrary in his own experience, that his reason is corrupt and his understanding is full of ignorance and error.

This [corruption] has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of divine providence which, in compassion to the frailty, imperfection, and blindness of human reason, has been pleased, at sundry times and in divers manners, to discover and enforce its laws by an immediate and direct revelation.  The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures.[7]


[1] Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, pt 2/Q 91, Article 5, trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Benziger Bros., 1947) in Christian Classics Ethereal Library, ccel.org <https://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/home.html >.

[2] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 3, bk. 4, trans. John Allen (Philadelphia, PA:  Philip H. Nicklin, 1816), 534-535.

[3] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion:  A New Translation, vol. 1, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh, Scotland:  Printed for Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 430.

[4] John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity, 1630, in Puritan Political Ideas, 1558-1794, ed. Edmund S. Morgan (Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing, 2003), 75-93.

[5] John Locke, First Treatise of Civil Government, in Two Treatises on Government, bk. 1 (London:  George Routledge and Sons, 1884), 142, 157, 164.

[6] John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, as delivered in the Scriptures, Second Edition (London:  Printed for Awnsham and John Churchil, 1696), 21-22.

[7] William Blackstone, Blackstone’s Commentaries in Five Volumes, ed. George Tucker (Union, NJ:  Lawbook Exchange, 1996, 2008), 41.

The researcher may benefit from my “The Two Books of Faith – Nature and Revelatory

I also wish to commend to you an article by James N. Anderson (Professor of Theology and Philosophy, at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte) in the Reformed Faith & Practice Journal (Volume 4 Issue 1, May 2019).

Abraham Williams preached a sermon where he drilled down on the idea at an “election day sermon” in Boston Massachusetts’s, New-England, May 26. 1762.

  • “The law of nature (or those rules of behavior which the Nature God has given men, fit and necessary to the welfare of mankind) is the law and will of the God of nature, which all men are obliged to obey…. The law of nature, which is the Constitution of the God of nature, is universally obliging. It varies not with men’s humors or interests, but is immutable as the relations of things.” 

Amen pastor.

A good resource for resources on this topic is my bibliography in a paper for my class on Reformation Church History in seminary — and I steered the topic to the Reformations influence on America. The paper is titled, REFORMING AMERICA (PDF), the bibliography is from pages 16-19. I commend to the serious reader Mark Noll’s book, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln.

Moving on from the “do you even worldview bro?” section to the application process.

One area I see the Left saying YES! to Zuby is on Same-Sex Marriage (SSM).

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

SSM, I argue, flouts Natural Law in many respects, and becomes an utennable special right.

The “potentials” in the male-female union becoming a separate organism is not found in the male-male or female-female sexual union. Nor is this non-potentiality able to be the foundation [pre-exist] for society (Is Marriage Hetero?). The ideal environment – whether from Nature or Nature’s God – to rear children, sorry Hillary. Etc. Or religious: No Religious or Ethical Leader in History Supported SSM (does wisdom from the past matter?). [I would add until very, very recently.] Even gay men and women oppose SSM being normalized LIKE hetero-marriage:Another Gay Man That Opposes Same-Sex Marriage #SSM.

Another Example via Personal Experience.

Many Gays Reject Court Forced Same-Sex Marriage

For some time, a few years back, I and about 10-20 gay men and women… and at times their extended family would meet monthly. All were lovers of the Constitution — what brought us together was the website GAY PATRIOT (gaypatriot[dot]net – now defunct, sadly) and admiration of what Bruce Carroll and other gay writers boldly forged in countering current cultural trends.

Some of these people I met with and have communicated with over the years [friends] held the position that same-sex marriage should not be placed on the same level in society as heterosexual marriage, as, the family pre-dates and is the foundation for society. All, however, held that what is not clearly enumerated in the Constitution for the federal government to do should be left for the states. And thus, they would say each state has the right to define marriage themselves. Speaking out against high-court interference – as they all did about Roe v. Wade. (All were pro-life.)

As an aside, we met once-a-month at either the Sizzler in Hollywood or the Outback in Burbank, exclusively on Mondays. (All coordinated by “GayPatriotWest” – Daniel Blatt). Why? Those two CEOs gave to Mitt Romney’s campaign. And on Mondays because the L.A. City Council asked people not to eat meat on Mondays to help the planet.

A joint hetero [me]/gay [them] “thumb in LA City Councils eye.” Lol.

What I respect are men and women (gay or not) who protect freedom of thought/speech. Like these two-freedom loving lesbian women I post about on my site.

Here is a Christian, conservative, apologist — Frank Turek — making a point (in an article titled: “Freedom: Another Casualty of the Gay Agenda”):

  • …. Imagine a homosexual videographer being forced to video a speech that a conservative makes against homosexual behavior and same sex marriage. Should homosexual videographers be forced to do so? Of course not! Then why Elane Photography?”

Now, here is a gay “Conservatarian” site, Gay Patriot’s, input (in a post, “New Mexico Gets It Wrong” – now gone in the ether of the WWW):

  • it’s a bad law, a law that violates natural human rights to freedom of association and to freely chosen work. It is not good for gays; picture a gay photographer being required by law to serve the wedding of some social conservative whom he or she despises.”

However, I also live in a Constitutional Republic — even if by a thread. So, items not clearly enumerated in the Constitution are reverted to the States to hash out. So, I get an opportunity to vote on items or influence state legislatures to come down on, say, marriage being between a man and a woman. So, as a Conservatarian, what I call a “paleo-liberal,” I get to force my morals on others for lack of a better term. (See my Where Do Ethics Come From? Atheist Convo | Bonus Material | and Norman Geisler and Frank Turek’s book, Legislating Morality: Is It Wise? Is It Legal? Is It Possible?”)

What those freedom loving gay men and women and I have in common is the rejection of Judicial Activism. We all agreed that in California, the H8 bill passed by a slight majority of Californians should have been law defining marriage as between male and female. Why? Because this is what the Constitution in the 10th Amendment clearly stated:

  • The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And that like Roe v. Wade, the courts interfering with the body politic hashing these things out on the state level. This Court interference created more division and lawfare down the road. As well as bad law. Some examples of this rather than just my statement:

Roe v. Wade — which ruled that the U.S. Constitution effectively mandates a nationwide policy of abortion on demand — is one of the most widely criticized Supreme Court decisions in America history.

As Villanova law professor Joseph W. Dellapenna writes,

  • “The opinion [in Roe] is replete with irrelevancies, non-sequiturs, and unsubstantiated assertions. The Court decides matters it disavows any intention of deciding—thereby avoiding any need to defend its conclusion. In the process the opinion simply fails to convince.”

Even many scholars sympathetic to the results of Roe have issued harsh criticisms of its legal reasoning. In the Yale Law Journal, eminent legal scholar John Hart Ely, a supporter of legal abortion, complained that Roe is “bad constitutional law, or rather … it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” He wrote:

  • “What is unusual about Roe is that the liberty involved is accorded a protection more stringent, I think it is fair to say, than that the present Court accords the freedom of the press explicitly guaranteed by the First Amendment. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-a-vis the interests that legislatively prevailed over it. And that, I believe is a charge that can responsibly be leveled at no other decision of the past twenty years. At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking.”

Below are criticisms of Roe from other supporters of legal abortion.

  • “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” — Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard law professor
  • “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose.Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the years since Roe’s announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.” — Edward Lazarus, former clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun
  • “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.” — Archibald Cox, Harvard law professor, former U.S. Solicitor General
  • “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As a constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.” — Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania law professor
  • “Roe, I believe, would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the Court. Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
  • “In the Court’s first confrontation with the abortion issue, it laid down a set of rules for legislatures to follow. The Court decided too many issues too quickly. The Court should have allowed the democratic processes of the states to adapt and to generate sensible solutions that might not occur to a set of judges.” — Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago law professor
  • “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy). … [C]lear governing constitutional principles are not present [in Roe].” — Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor
  • “[O]verturning [Roe] would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary. … Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself.” — Jeffrey Rosen, legal commentator, George Washington University law professor
  • “Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference.” — William Saletan, Slate columnist, writing in Legal Affairs
  • “In the years since the decision an enormous body of academic literature has tried to put the right to an abortion on firmer legal ground. But thousands of pages of scholarship notwithstanding, the right to abortion remains constitutionally shaky. [Roe] is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” — Benjamin Wittes, Brookings Institution fellow
  • “Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching.” — Michael Kinsley, columnist, writing in the Washington Post.

Abortion and Gays… Why Manny Are Pro-Life

Some gay men and women oppose abortion for religious reasons. Other view this as a life issue. Here is an example of what I am thinking of:

“If homosexuality is really genetic, we may soon be able to tell if a fetus is predisposed to homosexuality, in which case many parents might choose to abort it.  Will gay rights activists continue to support abortion rights if this occurs?”

— Dale A. Berryhill, The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals (Lafayette, LA:  Vital Issues Press, 1994), 172.

THE BLAZE has a flashback of Ann Coulter saying pretty much the same thing: “The gays have got to be pro-life. As soon as they find the gay gene, guess who the liberal yuppies are gonna start aborting” — yep

Ann Coulter has a penchant for making controversial statements that often lead to snickers, jeers and plenty of other reactionary responses. In an upcoming episode of Logo’s “A List: Dallas,” the well-known conservative pundit told Taylor Garrett, a gay Republican and a cast member on the show, some things about liberals and abortion that will surely get people talking.

The general premise of her words: Gays and lesbians should become pro-life, because liberals may start aborting their unborn gay children once a homosexual gene is discovered.

“The gays have got to be pro-life. As soon as they find the gay gene, guess who the liberal yuppies are gonna start aborting,” she said. Watch her comments, below: ….

“All Gays Should Be Republican” | Ann Coulter Flashback

The rule of nature in this situation would be to always promote and protect innocent life. Once you start deviating from that rule that is the foundation of our Constitution found in the Declaration:

  • We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

You start to create “special rights,” and these “special rights” are then put under the jurisdiction of politicians and special interest groups. And we all know what happens to the integrity of an issue or topic when that happens. Here is one example:

Feminists, Gays, Abortion and Gendercide | Ezra Levant Flashback

So as much as the quote by Zuby at the outset is a good one in a universe governed by reason and natural law and Nature’s God…. the progressive Left will always destroy what it touches… life and family being two issues exemplified above. So to adopt a quote wrongly is on the easier side of the Left ruining an idea.

From the Boy Scouts to literature, from the arts to universities: the left ruins everything it touches. Dennis Prager explains.

An example of the BOY SCOUTS via PRAGER:

…. Take the Boy Scouts. For generations, the Boy Scouts, founded and preserved by Americans of all political as well as ethnic backgrounds, has helped millions of American boys become good, productive men. The left throughout America — its politicians, its media, its stars, its academics — have ganged up to deprive the Boy Scouts of oxygen. Everywhere possible, the Boy Scouts are vilified and deprived of places to meet.

But while the left works to destroy the Boy Scouts — unless the Boy Scouts adopt the left’s views on openly gay scouts and scout leaders — the left has created nothing comparable to the Boy Scouts. The left tries to destroy one of the greatest institutions ever made for boys, but it has built nothing for boys. There is no ACLU version of the Boy Scouts; there is only the ACLU versus the Boy Scouts.

The same holds true for the greatest character-building institution in American life: Judeo-Christian religions. Once again, the left knows how to destroy. Everywhere possible the left works to inhibit religious institutions and values — from substituting “Happy Holidays” for “Merry Christmas” to removing the tiny cross from the Los Angeles County Seal to arguing that religious people must not bring their values into the political arena.

And, then there is education. Until the left took over American public education in the second half of the 20th century, it was generally excellent — look at the high level of eighth-grade exams from early in the 20th century and you will weep. The more money the left has gotten for education — America now spends more per student than any country in the world — the worse the academic results. And the left has removed God and dress codes from schools — with socially disastrous results.

Of course, it is not entirely accurate to say that the left builds nothing. It has built vast government bureaucracies, MTV, and post-1960s Hollywood, for example. But these are, to say the least, not positive achievements.

In his column this week, Thomas Friedman describes General Motors Corp., as “a giant wealth-destruction machine.” That perfectly describes the left many times over. It is both a wealth-destruction machine and an ennobling-institution destruction machine.

“Heteronormativity” – Dennis Prager Discusses Hallmark

Dennis Prager takes a call from someone who brought up the “Hallmark Channel” controversy (see PJ-MEDIA for more). It is instructive because Prager is good at arguing politely for the ideal to be defended. Which is instructive for us all. (THE COLLEGE FIX has an interesting “Notre Dame” story on this very topic of “heteronormativity”):