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)

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):

Israel Declared War… Day 2

POWERLINE:

  • Hamas’s 10/7 attack is something like Israel’s 9/11, only worse. Israel’s death toll has hit more than 350. Adjusting for population and measuring by the deaths inflicted so far, Israel has suffered (is suffering) an attack that is something like three times more damaging than 9/11.
  • Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization. It is waging war by atrocity, as it always does. The fire this time should be its last.
  • As I write on 10/8, Hamas’s attack continues and deaths mount. Israel seems not yet to have concluded the fighting on its own territory.
  • The Israeli intelligence, defense, and political establishments were caught napping. The complete failure of intelligence is comparable to the one that preceded the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago.
  • Speaking of the Yom Kippur war, we can infer that the attack was timed to coincide with its 50th anniversary. Given the planning and preparation that preceded the attack, disruption of Israel’s possible peace with Saudi Arabia must constitute an added benefit rather than its immediate object.
  • By comparison with the Yom Kippur War, it seems to me that the consequences of this war are more dire and the effects more difficult to contemplate. Last night Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that Hamas would be destroy Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities. What happens next?
  • Hamas has taken numerous hostages and removed them to Gaza. The Israeli embassy to the United States is reporting that 100 soldiers and civilians have been kidnapped. So long as Hamas holds these hostages, it will necessarily constrain Israel’s freedom of action to achieve its stated objectives, as does Israel’s meticulous compliance with the laws of war. The IDF is not free to combat savagery with savagery.
  • As Elliott Abrams puts it at NRO: “There is no way around the fact that Hamas has new assets and that future negotiations over the captured Israelis will be excruciating. That is one reason a government of national unity is called for — to stop opposition parties from politicizing tough decisions by making them partly responsible for Israeli policy in the coming months.”
  • Hezbollah aggravates Israel’s military challenge at present. Their forces and their arsenal exceed Hamas and hold Lebanon in thrall.
  • The intelligence and readiness failures underlying Yom Kippur War brought down the government of Prime Minister Golda Meir. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces the same after a commission of inquiry does its work.
  • Iran is of course behind this war: Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad tells the BBC that Iran gave its support to the Palestinian terror group to launch its surprise multi-front attack on Israel on Saturday. Yet the Biden administration remains in doubt about that.
  • Which raises the question of our own failure of intelligence. Thus spake National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan only a few days ago. This didn’t age well. Unfortunately, these people are incapable of shame.

Like POWERLINE….

  • When a country is attacked, the only appropriate course is to respond with massively disproportionate force, as we did against the Japanese in World War II. Israel should treat Gaza as the Allies treated Dresden and other German and Japanese cities to end that war. Israel made a mistake in withdrawing from Gaza, and Gaza has been a thorn in its side ever since. This should be the last time.

…. the FEDERALIST discusses overwhelming power to unconditional surrender. Here is a good addition by them:

What does unconditional surrender look like? Let history be our guide. As Allied forces swept into Germany in 1945, tin plates bearing this proclamation from Gen. Eisenhower were nailed to posts and walls in both English and German:

I, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, do hereby proclaim as follows:

  1. The Allied forces serving under my command have now entered Germany. We come as conquerors, but not as oppressors. In the area of Germany occupied by the forces under my command we shall obliterate nazism and German militarism. We shall overthrow the Nazi rule, dissolve the Nazi party and abolish the cruel, oppressive and discriminatory laws and institutions which the party has created. We shall eradicate that German militarism which has so often disrupted the peace of the world. Military and party leaders, the Gestapo and others suspected of crimes and atrocities will be tried and, if guilty, punished as they deserve.
  2. Supreme legislative, judicial and executive authority and powers within the occupied territory are vested in me as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces and as military governor, and the military government is established to exercise these powers under my direction. All persons in the occupied territory will obey immediately and without question all the enactments and orders of the military government. Military government courts will be established for punishment of offenders. Resistance to the Allied forces will be ruthlessly stamped out. Other serious offenses will be dealt with severely.
  3. All German courts and educational institutions within the occupied territory are suspended. The Volksgerichtshof, the Sondergerichte, the SS police courts and other special courts are deprived of authority throughout the occupied territory. Reopening of the criminal and civil courts and educational institutions will be authorized when conditions permit. All officials are charged with the duty of remaining at their posts until further orders and obeying and enforcing all orders or directions of military government or the Allied authorities addressed to the German Government or the German people. This applies also to officials, employees and workers of all public undertakings and utilities and to all other persons engaged in essential work.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, General, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force

Not only that, but you know there are non-thinking Lefties in the Biden administration’s Office of Palestinian Affairs when they deleted a post advising Israel not to retaliate after Saturday’s massive attack by the Islamist group Hamas, according to multiple reports.

The United States’ Office for Palestinian Affairs has deleted a post from their X account that called for Israelis to “refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks” in response to Hamas attacking Israel.

The post on X had said “We unequivocally condemn the attack of Hamas terrorists and the loss of life that has incurred. We urge all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks. Terror and violence solve nothing.”

(JERUSALEM POST | NEWSMAX)

Of course the anti-Israel schills on the media (MSNBC, CNN) are saying the quite part out load. But the DEMOCRAT SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA take the cake (BREITBART):

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) will host an “All Out for Palestine” rally in New York’s Times Square on Sunday, gathering in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that has claimed more than 500 lives and left several thousand more injured.

[….]

“The NYC-DSA is revealing itself for what it truly is: an antisemitic stain on the soul of America’s largest city.”

THE NEW YORK POST notes that the organizers are telling people “Wear a mask so you’re not recognized.” Kinda like the KKK. They go on to rightly note that “The DSA is the party of Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Rashida Talib — and oh yes, New York’s very own Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal ‘Fire Alarm’ Bowman.” RED STATE has a good post on this, and put the onus on these far-Left Democrats in office:

In case that isn’t clear, they’re not advising wearing a mask for COVID protection; they’re advising masks and not posting pictures so they can’t be identified by the police when the “action” starts to go potentially criminal. 

So here’s a good question for reporters: Ask AOC and her other DSA-associated brethren in Congress their opinion on this “action” by the DSA. Put them on the spot and hold them accountable for such actions. Ask if they will renounce this group that is now explicitly supporting such attacks. I doubt you will get any kind of honest response. Many people called out the association with the Democrats and called out this “protest.” 

[….]

Some worthwhile links over at LEGAL INSURRECTION on this war.

Democrat and Obama supporting Code Pink joins the Wall Of Shame designation as well:

Israel Declared War… Day 1

Hamas Fires 5,000 rockets Into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Israel declares ‘state of war’ — More than 100 Israelis are dead and 900 Israelis have been injured in the Hamas rocket and terror assault from Beersheba to Jerusalem, the Health Ministry said.

Israel Declared War…

“Since this morning, the State of Israel has been at war. Our first objective is to clear out the hostile forces that infiltrated our territory and restore the security and quiet to the communities that have been attacked.

The second objective, at the same time, is to exact an immense price from the enemy, within the Gaza Strip as well. The third objective is to reinforce other fronts so that nobody should mistakenly join this war.

We are at war. In war, one needs to be level-headed. I call on all citizens of Israel to unite in order to achieve our highest goal – victory in the war.”

— Benjamin Netanyahu

  • POWERLINE | ADVICE TO ISRAEL [UPDATED]
  • RED STATE | BREAKING: Hamas Fires 5,000 Rockets Into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Israel Declares ‘State of War’
  • RIGHT SCOOP | BREAKING: Benjamin Netanyahu announces Israel is at WAR after Hamas infiltrates Israel
  • RED STATE | WATCH: Horrifying Videos Out of Israel, as Biden Administration Delivers Shockingly Grotesque 
  • RIGHT SCOOP | Hamas terrorist group releases disturbing video showing Israeli women they have captured
  • JERUSALEM POST | Israel at War: IDF Confirms That Hamas Has Israeli Hostages
  • NATIONAL REVIEW | Israel at War: What We Know about the Barbaric Hamas Attacks

Homosexuality: Is It Good for Society? For The Individual?

(Originally Posted August of 2010)

This essay is borrowed from multiple sources and is dated as well…

the stats may have changed (NOT necessarily towards the best outcome either)

I want to preface this paper with the challenge from one of the board members to “prove” that homosexuality is immoral. In today’s pluralistic society, controversial public policy questions, such as homosexuality, must be decided on evidence rather than on sectarian religious belief. For what one person may find sinful according to his or her religious perspective, others may find perfectly appropriate according to theirs. However, our common morality – The Moral Law/Natural Law – tells us not to harm others or ourselves. Therefore, the best way of finding common ground and a sensible policy is to investigate the objective data (of which I will only briefly touch on. If you want a good chapter on the subject, I suggest the book Legislating Morality: Is it Wise? Is It Legal? Is It Possible?) on the healthfulness of the homosexual lifestyle. Just what does the evidence show? Is it really harmless, or is it actually harmful? [Take note that although I deal with the 1972 homosexual platform, I will show, as well, briefly the 1993 march on Washington’s demands.]

The 1972 gay rights platform contained the following:

  • Amend all federal Civil Rights Acts, other legislation and government controls to prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations and public services.
  • A presidential order prohibiting the military from excluding for reasons of their sexual orientation, persons who of their own volition desire entrance into Armed Services; and from issuing less than fully-honorable discharges for homosexuality; and the upgrading of fully honorable all such discharges previously issued, with retroactive benefits.
  • A presidential order prohibiting discrimination in the federal civil service because of sexual orientation, in hiring and promoting; and prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals in security clearances.
  • Elimination of tax inadequacies [favoring traditional families].
  • Elimination of bars to the entry, immigration and naturalization of homosexual aliens.
  • Federal encouragement and support for sex education courses, prepared and taught by [homosexuals], presenting homosexuality as valid, healthy preference and… a viable alternative to heterosexuality.
  • Federal funding of aid programs of [homosexual] organizations designed to alleviate the problems encountered by [homosexuals].

The document made similar demands of states, including:

  • Repeal of all state laws prohibiting solicitation for private voluntary sexual liaisons; and laws prohibiting prostitution, both male and female.
  • Legislation prohibiting insurance companies and any other state-regulated enterprises from discrimination because of sexual orientation, in insurance and in bonding or any other prerequisite to employment or control of one’s personal demesne.
  • Legislation so that child adoption, visitation rights, foster parenting, and the like shall not be denied because of sexual orientation or marital status.
  • Repeal of all laws prohibiting transvestitism and cross dressing.
  • Repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent.
  • Repeal of all legislative provisions that restrict the sex of the number of persons entering into a marriage unit; and the extension of legal benefits to all persons who cohabit regardless of sex.

Now the 1993 platform:

  • The implications of homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered curriculum at all levels of education.
  • The lowering of the age [12 years old to be exact] of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sex.
  • The legalization of homosexual marriages.
  • Custody, adoption, and foster-care rights for homosexuals, lesbians, and transgendered people.
  • the redefinition of the family to include the full diversity of all family structures.
  • The access to all programs of the Boy Scouts of America.
  • Affirmative action for homosexuals.
  • The inclusion of sex-change operations under a universal health-care plan.

As of today, most of these demands have been met. Nor do signs look good for a quick reversal of this trend: The descriptive word “homosexual” has been replaced by the perfectly nondescriptive word “gay.” Opponents of homosexuality are said to be afflicted with “homophobia.” “The love that dare not speak its name” is fast becoming “the love that no one dare question.”

Homosexuality and the Public Health

2014 UPDATE:

  • Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) have been rising among gay and bisexual men, with increases in syphilis being seen across the country. In 2014, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men accounted for 83% of primary and secondary syphilis cases where sex of sex partner was known in the United States. Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men often get other STDs, including chlamydia and gonorrhea infections. HPV (Human papillomavirus), the most common STD in the United States, is also a concern for gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. Some types of HPV can cause genital and anal warts and some can lead to the development of anal and oral cancers. Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men are 17 times more likely to get anal cancer than heterosexual men. Men who are HIV-positive are even more likely than those who do not have HIV to get anal cancer. (CDC)

While AIDS has destroyed the lives of non-homosexuals through intravenous drug use, blood transfusions, or promiscuity, until recently the disease has been primarily spread among homosexuals. The U.S. Department of Health of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control Reports that 65 percent of all adult/adolescent AIDS cases and 79 percent of AIDS cases among Caucasians in the U.S. were acquired through homosexual contact. Ninety-one percent of American AIDS cases have been traced to homosexual sex, intravenous drug use, or some combination of the two (Centers for Disease Control report, “HIV/AIDS Surveillance”; Also, “Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome – 1991,” Journal of the American Medical Association; and the book, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS).

Homosexuals also continue to contract and spread other diseases at rates significantly higher that the community at large. These include syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, hepatitis A and B, a variety of intestinal parasites including amebiases and giardiasis, and even typhoid fever (David G. Ostrow, Terry Alan Sandholzer, and Yehudi M. Felman, eds., Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Homosexual Men; see also, Sevgi O. Aral and King K. Holmes, “Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the AIDS Era,” Scientific American). This is because rectal intercourse or sodomy, typically practiced by homosexuals, is one of the most efficient methods of transmitting disease. Why? Because nature designed the human rectum for a single purpose: expelling waste from the body. It is built of a thin layer of columnar cells, different in structure than the plate cells that line the female reproductive tract. Because the wall of the rectum is so thin, it is easily ruptured during intercourse, allowing semen, blood, feces, and saliva to directly enter the bloodstream. The chances for infection increases further when multiple partners are involved, as is frequently the case: Surveys indicate that American male homosexuals average between 10 and 110 sex partners per year (L. Corey and K. K. Holmes, “Sexual Transmission of Hepatitis A in Homosexual Men,” New England Journal of Medicine; and, Paul Cameron et al., “Sexual Orientation and Sexually Transmitted Disease,” Nebraska Medical Journal).

Not surprisingly, these diseases shorten life expectancy. Social psychologist Paul Cameron compared over 6,200 obituaries from homosexual magazines and tabloids to a comparable number of obituaries from major American Newspapers. He found that while the median age of death of married American males was 75, for sexually active homosexual American males it is 42. For homosexual males infected with the AIDS virus, it was 39. While 80 percent of married American men lived to 65 or older, less than two percent of the homosexual men covered in the survey lived as long (Omega Study and Social Origins of Sexuality Study). To add to this problem of health, monogamous homosexual men tend to die earlier. Why? They feel that the exchange of fluids is the most compassionate act in the relationship. Ironically, this is the same act – (unprotected sex) – that infects their partner at a higher rate than “single” counterpart. The exact opposite is true for heterosexual men who are single. They tend to average 57 years old. But the monogamous American male, as stated above, lives a much healthier life.

In the face of these facts, it is reprehensible that Americans, and especially American schoolchildren are being told today that homosexual behavior can be safe (as a parent, I am furious!). Because smokers don’t live as long as nonsmokers, society considers smoking harmful and discourages the use of tabacco. By the same logic, aren’t homosexual practices deserving of social disapproval (considering that tax payers are footing the health bill that is considerably higher than that 75 year old American male getting ill and passing on?).

Civil Rights and Special Rights

The gay rights movement’s main rhetorical ploy is to liken itself to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. the extent to which is successful reflects a confusion about the meaning of “rights” in the public mind.

The charter of the American liberty, the Declaration of Independence, explains that human beings are born with “certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (not the pursuit of hedonism mind you). These rights belong to people equally. No human being is so superior to another that he may treat the other as he would treat an irrational beast. This is the argument that Abraham Lincoln hearkened back to during the Civil War, and Martin Luther King, Jr. during the 1960s. Unlike people in most countries, Americans have been able to enjoy these rights, because the American Constitution sets up a government that is limited in what it can do (this is itself a subject of controversy, and demands attention elsewhere).

Consider the claimed comparison between the gay rights movement and the civil rights movement in light of this. An obvious difference is that the former is centered around type of behaviors, namely sodomy. Is there a constitutional right to sodomy such as there is, say, to practice our religion or speak our mind? No.

At the time of the American founding, and following the tradition of English common law, sodomy was a criminal or common law offense in each of the 13 states. Until 1961, all 50 states considered sodomy a punishable offense. It remains illegal today in 23 states and the District of Columbia, and in many of these stands as a felony offense. At the federal level, the question was dealt with in the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision, Bowers v. Hardwick. The defendants in the case had asked the Court to proclaim, in effect, “a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy.” “This,” wrote Justice Byron White in developing the Court’s decision, “we are quite unwilling to do.”

More deeply, sodomy is unnatural and, as such, incompatible with any notion of natural rights. We know that human beings are entitled to their liberty because they are, by nature, capable of reasoning and choosing. This is precisely the faculty that identifies a human being, among all other beings in nature. We are entitled to civil rights, because we are the one creature equipped by nature to exercise them.

Human beings also have other aspects to their nature, aspects that are not such noble features of their makeup. One is their method of sexual reproduction. And make no mistake: despite astonishing denials of organized homosexuality, human beings, as surely as deer or elephants, come equipped with a natural method of reproduction. Unlike in other species, however, these lower aspects in man share in man’s higher aspect, reason. The result is the virtue of temperance or self-control. The Founders of America understood that our rights stem from this capacity, the capacity for moral virtue.

Homosexuals like to argue that, since people are by nature free to choose, the choice of sodomy should be protected, at least as much as any other choice. However, the fact that people are free by nature to make choices does not mean that any choice they make is good or that all choices should be equal before the law. Some people choose to steal and lie. Some abandon their children or their wives or husbands. Some sink into the grip of drugs. Some evade the draft at their country’s need, or abandon their duty in the face of battle. These are bad choices, and when they are made, the rest of us must bear part of the cost. These things are wrong in a constitutional democracy, as much as they are wrong anywhere else.

On the other hand, liberal societies recognize that all sins cannot be, and must not be, punished under the law. A state powerful enough to do that is too powerful to control. That is why we are cautious in a free country, about telling others what to do. That is why Presidents often appeal to us to be upright, moral citizens, but they do not bring charges against us unless we break the law.

Still, we must not forget that democracies have the greatest in the practice of virtue by citizens, because in democracy the citizens themselves are the rulers. So it is that George Washington, one of the greatest moral examples in history, said in his First Inaugural Address: “There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness…”

A liberal society might, then, find it prudent to ignore homosexuality. It might well deem it unwise to peer into private bedrooms. However, this is not the issue before us. Today the demand is that homosexuality be endorsed and promoted with the full power of the law. This would require us to abandon the standard of nature, the one standard that can teach us the difference between freedom and slavery, between right and wrong.

Once we abandon the standard of nature, what is to forbid us from resorting to any violation of nature that we please? Why should we not return to slavery, if we find it convenient? Or the practice of incest or adultery or cannibalism? Without an understanding that there is a higher law that limits human will – whether divine law or the “law of Nature or Nature’s God” which we can grasp through our reason – there is no basis to prohibit any activity. Anything becomes possible (which is why some [me included] refer to murder and homosexuality in the same stroke of the pen/keyboard, this analogy is now detailed in a more exhaustive manner above).

In fact, the rights sought by homosexual activists are not natural or constitutional rights (for the best chapter on this subject – why homosexuals should be fighting to keep the traditional definition of family – I suggest the book Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air). They are the special rights granted ethnic minorities by affirmative action policies. These special rights would force businesses, schools, and virtually every institution in the land, public and private, to open their doors to homosexuals, and allow lawsuits to be brought against those that refuse.

To be considered a specially protected minority under the law, a group must meet several tests, as determined by a series of Supreme Court decisions. Its members must be identifiable by an unchanging physical condition (I’ve known ex-gays, but I have never met an ex-black… well, maybe except for Michael Jackson) – e.g., skin color, gender, handicap. They must be able to demonstrate that they suffered discrimination to the extent that they are unable to earn an average income, receive an adequate education, or enjoy a fulfilling cultural life (see appendix). In addition, they must show that their members are politically powerless to change their predicament. [The gay lobby was one of the most powerful in Washington for the 1992 elections, giving multiple millions to the Democratic National Committee and having homosexual[s] put into key positions in the Clinton Cabinet.]

To date, the homosexual lobby has been unable to prove that its members meet these requirements. There is no evidence – statistical or otherwise – that homosexuals are suffering any practical or political disadvantages. They have never been denied the right to vote or other constitutional rights, nor have they suffered segregation under the law, nor have they been denied access to public facilities. Several U.S. Congressman, Senators, and prominent state legislators are openly homosexual, as are high-level members of recent presidential administrations. Statistically, homosexuals enjoy higher economic status than average Americans do. Any claim to political powerlessness is belied by how politicians today – especially Democratic politicians – court the “homosexual vote.”

It is easy to see the difference between civil and constitutional rights and the special rights sought by homosexuals by considering the controversy over “gays” in the military. People are refused entrance for numerous reasons, e.g., age, intelligence, physical handicap, criminal record [me! And broken bones in my past, broken neck and fractured back!]. Second: the racial integration of the armed forces (to which proponents of “sexual preference integration” like to point) was part of the proper expansion of constitutional rights because race was an irrational (hence unconstitutional) basis of discrimination. Those who thought blacks were different in behavior were simply prejudiced – they were wrong. Those who think homosexuals behave differently are self-evidently right. The word “homosexual,” unlike the words “black” or “brown” or “yellow,” denotes precisely a different behavior. In this case, those who deny a difference are being irrational.

As summed up by a veteran of the civil rights movement: “The road to Selma was not the road to Sodom.”

Conclusion

The case against organized homosexuality is twofold. First, nature rewards healthy living habits with good health. It is abundantly clear that homosexuals behavior is unnatural and unhealthy. Secondly, Americans are exceedingly tolerant. They are not as a rule inclined to dig around in each other’s private lives. Nevertheless, they reject the absurd claim that the Constitutional principle of equality before the law means that all behavior, no matter how heinous, is equally okay. And on no basis of this distinction [e.g., I could claim to be gay at my next job interview and they would have to accept my testimony, but a black person is evidently black], they can be mobilized against laws that give homosexuals special legal standing to bully the rest of us, thus forcing their moral position on us, which is the claim they make against us.

Appendix

Average Household Income:

Homosexuals – $55,430      /      African Americans – $12,166

Percentage of College Graduates:

Homosexuals – 60%      /      African Americans – 5%

Holding Professional Positions:

Homosexuals – 49%      /      African Americans – 1%

Taken Overseas Vacations:

Homosexuals – 66%      /      African Americans – 1%

Ever Denied the Right to Vote:

Homosexuals – No      /      African Americans – Yes

Ever Faced Legal Segregation:

Homosexuals – No      /      African Americans – Yes

Ever Denied Access to Public Restrooms:

Homosexuals – No      /      African Americans – Yes

Ever Denied Access to Businesses and Restaurants:

Homosexuals – No      /      African Americans – Yes

(Wall Street Journal, 7/18/91, B1)


Biography


Some recommended reading (* means source material for paper, you can find in-depth references in these two texts):

  1. *Legislating Morality: Is It Wise? Is It Legal? Is It Possible?, by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek.
  2. Are Gay Rights Right?: Making Sense of the Controversy, by Roger Magnuson.
  3. *Do the Right Thing: A Philosophical Dialogue on the Moral and Social Issues of Our Time, Francis Beckwith, editor.  (Part of this paper is from a chapter from this book, however, the entire chapter can be found on the Internet if you use a good search engine.)
  4. Gays in the Military: The Moral and Strategic Crisis, George Grant, editor.
  5. Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, Jeffrey Satinover.
  6. Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air, by Francis Beckwith.

Steven Calabresi Now Says Trump Excluded from the 14th

This is a large “Sploosh” as a Part Three to the question of Trump’s ability to be on the ballot for the 2024 election. In my Part Two  dated Sept 7th, based on a great couple readings that: “I see nothing in the 14th Amendment including the President or Vice President in the outcome. In fact, I see language excluding them.” (Also Part One is worth reading through as well.)

The guy who popularized the article noted by the #NeverTrumpers and the Left is the co-founder of The Federalist Society, Steven Calabresi. And when he came out in support of by a couple Federalist legal scholars [as well as some Leftist scholars], the Left and said #NeverTrumpers were quick to memorialize it:

THE NATIONAL PULSE nails it with this link fested post!

Steven Calabresi – the law professor who co-founded the conservative Federalist Society legal organization – has conceded that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not in fact bar former President Donald Trump from the presidential ballot, despite claiming in a much-hyped op-ed from August that this was the case.

The Northwestern University law professor had been an outspoken proponent of the legal theory that Trump was barred from running for office on the grounds that he incited an insurrection on January 6th, 2021 – in violation of a Civil War era constitutional provision. It’s an initially floated by law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, with Calabresi quickly popularizing it.

[….]

The three men were originally in agreement that “an officer of the United States” included individuals elected as either President or Vice-President. However, Calabresi now says he believes that the President and Vice-President are not, due to “a technicality in the drafting of the disqualification clause of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment”, “officers” – that term being reserved for positions appointed by the President, rather than the President himself.

Additionally he concedes the events of January 6th do not constitute an ‘insurrection’. Calabresi credits former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey with changing his mind.

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan has already rejected calls to disqualify Trump, via the 14th Amendment, from the state’s ballot.

The VOLOKH CONSPIRACY notes the change of mind: “Calabresi now agrees with Tillman that the President is not an “Officer of the United States.” And YAHOO NEWS also notes that last week professor Calabresi made an about-face

  • In a letter to The Wall Street Journal, he said he had been persuaded by an opinion article in that newspaper that the provision — Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — did not apply to Trump.

So I wanted to help out the #NeverTrumpers and pre-empt their correcting themselves:

Here is the WALL STREET JOURNAL “quick clip” by Professor Calabresi:

Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s op-ed “Was Trump ‘an Officer of the United States’?” (Sept. 8) has caused me to change my mind about an argument that I have had with Prof. Seth Barrett Tillman for 25 years. Mr. Mukasey is right: Looked at in the context of the Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment, the president is neither an “officer of the United States,” nor, obviously, a “member of Congress.” That must be why the Constitution prescribes a separate oath for the president.

As a result, former President Donald Trump isn’t covered by the Disqualification Clause, and he is eligible to be on the ballot in the 2024 presidential election. I am correcting the public record on this important issue by sending you this letter.

Prof. Steven G. Calabresi

Northwestern Law School

VOLOKH continues:

  • Last week, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. He contended that the President is not an “Officer of the United States.” Many of Mukasey’s arguments track a 2021 article that Seth and I wrote in the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty. Long-time readers may remember that Tillman persuaded Mukasey on this issue back in 2015. (This issue also came up with the Mar-A-Lago raid.)

Here is key point from that WALL STREET JOURNAL article:

Was Trump ‘an Officer of the United States’?

A careful look at the 14th Amendment’s Insurrection Clause shows that it doesn’t apply to him.

….A good deal of attention has focused thus far on whether the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an “insurrection or rebellion” and, if so, whether Mr. Trump “engaged” in it. Those questions, however, need not be answered until two preliminary questions of law are addressed: Is the presidency an “office . . . under the United States,” and was the presidential oath Mr. Trump swore on Jan. 20, 2016, to support the Constitution taken “as an officer of the United States”?

The latter question is easier. The use of the term “officer of the United States” in other constitutional provisions shows that it refers only to appointed officials, not to elected ones. In U.S. v. Mouat (1888), the Supreme Court ruled that “unless a person in the service of the government . . . holds his place by virtue of an appointment . . ., he is not, strictly speaking, an officer of the United States.” Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated the point in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010): “The people do not vote for the ‘Officers of the United States.’ ”

Article VI of the Constitution provides that senators and representatives “and all executive and judicial Officers . . . of the United States” take an oath to support the Constitution. But the presidential oath is separately provided for at the end of Article II, Section 1, which would be superfluous if the president’s oath were required by the general language in Article VI. Mr. Trump took an oath as president pursuant to Article II, not as an officer pursuant to Article VI. Because the Insurrection Clause applies only to those who have taken an oath “as an officer of the United States,” he can’t be barred by that clause from serving in any capacity.

As for the former question, the language disqualifying a rebel from holding “any office . . . under the United States” follows the language disqualifying the rebel from office as “Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President.” If “any office . . . under the United States” is broad enough to cover the president, it is certainly broad enough to cover senators, representatives and perhaps electors. Such a reading would make reference to those specific offices superfluous.

[….]

As for the former question, the language disqualifying a rebel from holding “any office . . . under the United States” follows the language disqualifying the rebel from office as “Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President.” If “any office . . . under the United States” is broad enough to cover the president, it is certainly broad enough to cover senators, representatives and perhaps electors. Such a reading would make reference to those specific offices superfluous.

Is it plausible that the authors of the 14th Amendment specified senators, representatives and electors but meant to include the presidency and vice presidency under the general term “any office . . . under the United States”? Note that the term is “any office,” not “any other office,” which implies that the positions listed before it aren’t “offices under the United States,” because they are elected not appointed.

But that conclusion is uncertain. The phrase “office under the United States” appears four other times in the body of the Constitution, at least two of which—one barring officeholders from accepting a foreign title or emolument, and one barring anyone impeached and convicted from holding such an office—may well apply to an elected official, including the president. Also, if a holder of an “office under the United States” meant the same thing as “Officer of the United States,” why weren’t the same words used to specify it?

That may be puzzling, but as applied to Mr. Trump it is irrelevant, because—again—he didn’t take and thus didn’t violate an oath as an “Officer of the United States,” and so cannot be barred by the 14th Amendment from seeking re-election.

Even a criminal conviction wouldn’t bar him from seeking and winning the presidency. The Constitution specifies only that a person seeking that office be at least 35, a natural-born citizen and a 14-year U.S. resident. If Mr. Trump is to be kept from office, it will have to be done the old-fashioned way, the way it was done in 2020—by defeating him in an election.

Mr. Mukasey served as U.S. attorney general, 2007-09, and as a U.S. district judge, 1988-2006.

How Feds ‘Skirted’ Constitution to Censor Content Online

See my previous post on this topic:

REASON-TV

These two shorter video clips are taken from a longer conversation with Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya and New Civil Liberties Alliance senior counsel John Vechionne.

By focusing their sights on government actors instead of private companies under their boot, the Missouri v. Biden plaintiffs have chosen exactly the right target.

YouTube removed this March 2021 roundtable organized by Florida governor Ron DeSantis because of the views Bhattacharya and others expressed about masking children in school. Was this part of an illegal censorship campaign, as a lawsuit in federal court alleges?

JOHN SOLOMON

(Oct 1, 2022) “Anyone who’s concerned about free speech… this ought to scare you.” John Solomon joins Dr. Gina with his report on a private group that worked with the government to submit requests for censorship online during the 2020 election AND THEY’RE DOING IT AGAIN!

WALL STREET JOURNAL

The WALL STREET JOURNAL writes about the ruling as well:

  • 5th Circuit finds Biden White House, CDC likely violated First Amendment — The three judge panel found that contacts with tech companies by officials from the White House, the surgeon general’s office, the CDC and the FBI likely amounted to coercion

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Friday ruled that the Biden White House, top government health officials and the FBI likely violated the First Amendment by improperly influencing tech companies’ decisions to remove or suppress posts on the coronavirus and elections.

The decision, written unanimously by three judges nominated by Republican presidents, was likely to be seen as victory for conservatives who have long argued that social media platforms’ content moderation efforts restrict their free speech rights. But some advocates also said the ruling was an improvement over a temporary injunction U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty issued July 4.

David Greene, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the new injunction was “a thousand times better” than what Doughty, an appointee of former president Trump, had ordered originally.

Doughty’s decision had affected a wide range of government departments and agencies, and imposed 10 specific prohibitions on government officials. The appeals court threw out nine of those and modified the 10th to limit it to efforts to “coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.”
The 5th Circuit panel also limited the government institutions affected by its ruling to the White House, the surgeon general’s office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI. It removed restrictions Doughty had imposed on the departments of State, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services and on agencies including the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The 5th Circuit found that those agencies had not coerced the social media companies to moderate their sites.

Read the 5th Circuit’s ruling

The judges wrote that the White House likely “coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences.” They also found the White House “significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment.”

A White House spokesperson said in a statement that the Justice Department was “reviewing” the decision and evaluating its options.
“This Administration has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections,” the White House official said. “Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but make independent choices about the information they present.”

The decision, by Judges Edith Brown Clement, Don R. Willett and Jennifer Walker Elrod, is likely to have a wide-ranging impact on how the federal government communicates with the public and the social media companies about key public health issues and the 2024 election.

The case is the most successful salvo to date in a growing conservative legal and political effort to limit coordination between the federal government and tech platforms. This case and recent probes in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives have accused government officials of actively colluding with platforms to influence public discourse, in an evolution of long-running allegations that liberal employees inside tech companies favor Democrats when making decisions about what posts are removed or limited online.

The appeals court judges found that pressure from the White House and the CDC affected how social media platforms handled posts about covid-19 in 2021, as the Biden administration sought to encourage the public to obtain vaccinations.

The judges detail multiple emails and statements from White House officials that they say show escalating threats and pressure on the social media companies to address covid misinformation. The judges say that the officials “were not shy in their requests,” calling for posts to be removed “ASAP” and appearing “persistent and angry.” The judges detailed a particularly contentious period in July of 2021, which reached a boiling point when President Biden accused Facebook of “killing people.”

“We find, like the district court, that the officials’ communications — reading them in ‘context, not in isolation’ — were on-the-whole intimidating,” the judges wrote.
The judges also zeroed in on the FBI’s communications with tech platforms in the run-up to the 2020 elections, which included regular meetings with the tech companies. The judges wrote that the FBI’s activities were “not limited to purely foreign threats,” citing instances where the law enforcement agency “targeted” posts that originated inside the United States, including some that stated incorrect poll hours or mail-in voting procedures.

The judges said in their rulings that the platforms changed their policies based on the FBI briefings, citing updates to their terms of service about handling of hacked materials, following warnings of state-sponsored “hack and dump” operations.

[….]

The 5th Circuit ruling reversed Doughty’s order specifically enjoining the actions of leaders at DHS, HHS and other agencies, saying many of those individuals “were permissibly exercising government speech.”

“That distinction is important because the state-action doctrine is vitally important to our Nation’s operation — by distinguishing between the state and the People, it promotes ‘a robust sphere of individual liberty,’” the 5th Circuit judges wrote.

Yet Friday’s order still applies to a wide range of individuals working across the government, specifically naming 14 White House officials, including five who are no longer in office. The order specifically names Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy and another member of his office, three CDC staffers and two FBI officials, including the head of the foreign influence task force and the lead agent of its cyber investigative task force in San Francisco.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is among the White House officials named.

Stanford Law School professor Daphne Keller said the 5th Circuit’s ruling appeared to allow “a lot of normal communications as long as they are not threatening or taking over control of platforms’ content decisions.”

“But it also says they can’t ‘significantly encourage’ platforms to remove lawful content, so the real question is what that means,” she said.

Friday’s decision came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri who allege that government officials violated the First Amendment in their efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts that they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic or upend elections.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey celebrated the decision as a victory in a statement.

“The first brick was laid in the wall of separation between tech and state on July 4,” he said. “Today’s ruling is yet another brick.”

ACLJ: WILL END UP IN FRONT OF THE SUPES

ACLJ make the point that it will end up in front of SCOTUS.

We’re celebrating a massive free speech victory as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling that President Joe Biden cannot censor conservatives on social media. We also give an update on our newest legal battle on behalf of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA against digital censorship. We must not allow the Biden Administration to interfere in future elections as it did with President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election by censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. 

“Ukraine’s Asymmetric War” (WSJ | Armstrong n Getty)

Armstrong and Getty read from the Wall Street Journal about Ukraine’s success in fighting a more tech-savvy war. Pretty interesting.

Here is the WSJ article, but unlocked:

Ukraine’s Asymmetric War — Moscow has more firepower, but Kyiv is using digital technology better.

Reports from Ukraine are filled with stories of Javelin antitank missiles and Turkish Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles taking out Russian tanks and armored vehicles. The Biden administration has announced $800 million in defensive weapons for Ukraine, including Javelins, Stinger antiaircraft weapons and Switchblade drones. More amazing is what Ukraine has also been doing on the cheap. And I don’t mean Molotov cocktails.

Wars are increasingly asymmetric—the lesser-armed side can put up a strong fight. The U.S. learned this in Iraq with insurgent use of improvised explosive devices, basically roadside bombs triggered with cellphones. Similarly, Ukraine has been deploying inexpensive, almost homemade weapons and using technology to its advantage.

The Times of London reports that Ukraine is using $2,000 commercial octocopter drones, modified with thermal imagers and antitank grenades, to find and attack Russian tanks hiding between homes in villages at night. Ukraine’s Aerorozvidka, its aerial reconnaissance team, has 50 squads of drone pilots who need solid internet connections to operate.

When the internet was cut in Syria in 2013, enterprising techies set up point-to-point Wi-Fi connections to bring internet access from across the border in Turkey. You can do this with Pringles potato-chip cans and $50 off-the-shelf Wi-Fi routers. Ukraine may be spared this ad hoc setup as

Elon Musk and his firm Starlink have donated thousands of satellite internet-access terminals to Ukraine, including to the Aerorozvidka squads, which come with warnings to camouflage the antennas. They typically cost $499 each and $99 a month for service.

Ukraine also effectively jammed Russia’s long-in-the-tooth wireless military-communication technology, which apparently uses a single-frequency channel to operate. Former Central Intelligence Agency Director

David Petraeus told CNN that Russians were then forced to use cellphones to communicate until Ukraine blocked the +7 country code for Russia and eventually took down 3G services that Russia uses for secure connections. Russian soldiers were forced to steal Ukrainian cellphones to communicate with one another. That’s no way to fight a war.

Ukraine also has taken advantage of crowdsourcing. The Journal told the story of Russian tanks that would fire on the city of Voznesensk and then back up a few hundred yards to avoid return fire. Civilians and Territorial Defense volunteers would then message the tanks’ new coordinates via the Viber social-messaging app.

The propaganda war is also being fought on the cheap, from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Zoom call with the U.S. Congress to Ukraine’s work spreading news inside Russia. The Russians have blocked Facebook and Twitter, independent media has been shut down, and on Russian television no one is allowed to say “invasion” or “war.” But no country can completely filter and firewall real news. The Telegram and WhatsApp messaging apps encrypt their communications. Ukraine has begun using facial recognition to identify killed and captured Russian soldiers, even contacting their families and posting their photos on Telegram channels. Twitter now is using a service to disguise its origin and restore service to Russian users.

Most surprisingly, after much hype and many warnings, Russian cyberwarfare has been deemed fairly ineffective. Hours before the invasion, someone, presumably the Russians, launched a Trojan.Killdisk attack, disk-wiping malware that hit Ukrainian government and financial system computers and took down Parliament’s website. Cyberattack tracking firm Netscout called the attack “modest.” A Ukrainian newspaper then released a file with details on 120,000 Russian soldiers, including names, addresses, phone and passport numbers. Where the information came from is unknown.

But we have a hint. Ukraine is filled with smart coders, and the government set up an “IT Army of Ukraine” Telegram channel to coordinate digital attacks on Russian military digital systems. As many as 400,000 have volunteered so far. An officer of the Ukraine State Service of Special Communications said they were engaged in “cyber-resistance.” This digital flash mob has taken down Russian websites, though I doubt we will ever fully know the damage it may have inflicted. This is definitely a social-network-influenced conflict.

In the fog of war, stories and disinformation swirl. Most are impossible to verify. I’ve heard of foreign volunteers swarming to Ukraine who then post photos on Instagram. Both Facebook and Instagram strip GPS location coordinates from smartphone photos, but they allow these volunteers to tag nearby locations, potentially giving away refugees’ hiding places. These could be targeted by Russian missiles and may have been the reason the Mariupol theater was destroyed.

New technology for use in commerce often emerges after the smoke of battle clears. World War I produced tanks, field radios and improved airplanes. World War II brought radar, penicillin, nuclear power, synthetic rubber, Jeeps and even duct tape. What we are seeing in Ukraine is the asymmetric power of pervasive inexpensive commercial technology, especially citizen-empowering social networks and crowdsourcing. So far these tools have been altering the war’s outcome. Welcome to 21st-century warfare.

As Russian invasion continues, Makariv may be small in size, but it has big strategic value as it blocks Russia’s armed forces from encircling Kyiv. Ukrainian volunteer fighters use drones in the area for reconnaissance that can be used by Ukrainian artillery units to strike back.

Footage out of Ukraine shows the impressive accuracy and timing of an air-to-ground anti personnel operation by means of a quadcopter dropping a small point-detonating explosive.

Delusions of Gender | Matt Walsh (WSJ Article Added)

There’s no doubt about it, the Left has transformed gender from a biological fact into an ideological opinion, but how did we get to this point? Why is everything the Left tells you about gender wrong?

Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh dispels the Left’s delusions of gender during a special event from The University of Texas at Austin. This event is part of Young America’s Foundation’s Robert and Patricia Herbold Lecture Series.

YAF makes every effort to host in-person campus events. Unfortunately, administrators at the University of Texas at Austin limited attendance to only 99 for this event.

Here is an excellent WALL STREET JOURNAL article (via TOP TECH SOLUTIONS):

‘What are your pronouns?” is a seemingly innocuous question that has become increasingly common. Pronouns are now frequently displayed prominently in social-media bios, email signatures and conference name tags. Vice President

Kamala Harris

features “she/her” pronouns in her

Twitter

bio, and Transportation Secretary

Pete Buttigieg

includes “he/him” in his. Then there are the singular “they/them” pronouns used by “nonbinary” people who identify as neither male nor female, as well as a growing list of bespoke “neopronouns” such as “ze/zir” or “fae/faer,” and the even stranger “noun-self” neopronouns like “bun/bunself” which, according to the

New York Times,

are identities that can encompass animals and fantasy characters.

A recent survey of 40,000 “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth” in the U.S. found that a full 25% use pronouns other than she/her and he/him exclusively. The Human Rights Campaign, which claims to be the “nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization,” recently tweeted that we should all begin conversations with “Hi, my pronouns are __________. What are yours?” We are told that asking for, sharing and respecting pronouns is “inclusive” to trans and nonbinary people, and that failing to do so may even constitute violence and oppression.

If this all sounds confusing and makes you uncomfortable for reasons you find difficult to articulate, you’re not alone. While being subjected to constant rituals of pronoun exchanges may seem silly or annoying at best and exhausting at worst, in reality participating in this ostensibly benign practice helps to normalize a regressive ideology that is inflicting enormous harm on society. To understand why, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with its core tenets.

Proponents of gender ideology have completely decoupled the terms “man,” “woman,” “boy” and “girl” from biological sex. Gender ideology teaches that the terms “man/boy” and “woman/girl”—and their corresponding “he/his” and “she/her” pronouns—refer to a person’s gender identity, while “male” and “female” refer to biological sex. While you may define a woman as a female human adult, gender ideology contends that a “woman” is an adult of either sex who simply “identifies” as a woman.

But what does it mean to “identify” as a man or woman?

Gender activists believe that being a man or a woman requires embracing stereotypes of masculinity or femininity, respectively, or the different social roles and expectations society imposes on people because of their sex. Planned Parenthood explicitly states that gender identity is “how you feel inside,” defines “gender” as a “a social and legal status, a set of expectations from society, about behaviors, characteristics, and thoughts,” and asserts that “it’s more about how you’re expected to act, because of your sex.”

A recent New York Times piece refers to “men, women and gender nonconforming people,” as though gender nonconformity were incompatible with being a man or a woman. According to the Genderbread Person, a popular educational tool for teaching young children about gender identity, the properties of “man-ness” and “woman-ness” include certain stereotypical “personality traits, jobs, hobbies, likes, dislikes, roles, [and] expectations.”

The clear message of gender ideology is that, if you’re a female who doesn’t “identify with” the social roles and stereotypes of femininity, then you’re not a woman; if you’re a male who similarly rejects the social roles and stereotypes of masculinity, then you’re not a man. Instead, you’re considered either transgender or nonbinary, and Planned Parenthood assures you that “there are medical treatments you can use to help your body better reflect who you are.” According to this line of thinking, certain personalities, behaviors and preferences are incompatible with certain types of anatomy.

So when someone asks for your pronouns, and you respond with “she/her,” even though you may be communicating the simple fact that you’re female, a gender ideologue would interpret this as an admission that you embrace femininity and the social roles and expectations associated with being female. While women’s-rights movements fought for decades to decouple womanhood from rigid stereotypes and social roles, modern gender ideology has melded them back together.

Coercing people into publicly stating their pronouns in the name of “inclusion” is a Trojan horse that empowers gender ideology and expands its reach. It is the thin end of the gender activists’ wedge designed to normalize their worldview. Participating in pronoun rituals makes you complicit in gender ideology’s regressive belief system, thereby legitimizing it. Far from an innocuous act signaling support for inclusion, it serves as an implicit endorsement of gender ideology and all of its radical tenets.

Let me offer an analogy. Consider the Human Rights Campaign urging people to begin conversations with “Hi, my pronouns are ________. What are yours?” Now imagine a similar request from the American Federation of Astrologers encouraging everyone to begin conversations with, “Hi, I’m a Sagittarius. What’s your sign?” To respond with your own star sign would be to operate within and signal your tacit agreement with the belief system of astrology. If you reject astrology and respond to the question with “I don’t have a sign,” the reply might be “Of course you do! When were you born?” But that’s a completely different question.

Similarly, if you reject gender ideology’s claim that men and women are defined by their willful adherence to masculine and feminine roles and stereotypes, and so refuse to answer a request for pronouns, your interlocutor might say, “We all have pronouns! Do you identify as a man or a woman?” But because that concept of man and woman is nothing like yours, stating pronouns will only further normalize the ritual and validate a radical worldview.

The redefining of “man,” “woman,” “boy” and “girl” around sex-related stereotypes has serious real-world implications. The rejection of these stereotypes is now commonly viewed as a medical condition (gender dysphoria) to be treated with puberty blockers (for children), cross-sex hormones and surgeries that result in permanent sterility and consign patients to a lifetime of medical bills. The redefinition is also threatening the safety of women in prisons, as well as compromising the safety, fairness and dignity of women and girls in sports, as males who simply “identify” as girls or women are allowed access to these protected spaces.

The effort to resist gender ideology is reality’s last stand. We simply can’t ignore fundamental realities of our biology and expect positive outcomes for society. Pronoun rituals are extremely effective at normalizing and institutionalizing the abolition of biological sex in favor of gender identity. These rituals take advantage of people’s confusion and compassion to achieve compliance. But the time for politeness has long passed. The only proper response to the question “What are your pronouns?” is to reject the premise and refuse to answer.

Mr. Wright, an evolutionary biologist, is managing editor of Quillette.

 

 

Coercion Made the Pandemic Worse (WSJ + AIER)

I wanted to make sure this WALL STREET JOURNAL article was saved in my feed (Hat-tip to Todd A):

Freedom is the central component of the best problem-solving system ever devised.

By David R. Henderson and Charles L. Hooper

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “anti-vaxxer” as “a person who opposes the use of vaccines or regulations mandating vaccination.” Where does that leave us? We both strongly favor vaccination against Covid-19; one of us (Mr. Hooper) has spent years working and consulting for vaccine manufacturers. But we strongly oppose government vaccine mandates. If you’re crazy about Hondas but don’t think the government should force everyone to buy a Honda, are you “anti-Honda”?

The people at Merriam-Webster are blurring the distinction between choice and coercion, and that’s not merely semantics. If we accept that the difference between choice and coercion is insignificant, we will be led easily to advocate policies that require a large amount of coercion. Coercive solutions deprive us of freedom and the responsibility that goes with it. Freedom is intrinsically valuable; it is also the central component of the best problem-solving system ever devised.

Free choice relies on persuasion. It recognizes that you are an important participant with key information, problem-solving abilities and rights. Any solution that is adopted, therefore, must be designed to help you and others. Coercion is used when persuasion has failed or is teetering in that direction—or when you are raw material for someone else’s grand plans, however ill-conceived.

Authoritarian governmental approaches hamper problem-solving abilities. They typically involve one-size-fits-all solutions like travel bans and mask mandates. Once governments adopt coercive policies, power-hungry bureaucrats often spout an official party line and suppress dissent, no matter the evidence, and impose further sanctions to punish those who don’t fall in line. Once coercion is set in motion, it’s hard to backtrack.

Consider Australia, until recently a relatively free country. Its Northern Territory has a Covid quarantine camp in Howard Springs where law-abiding citizens can be forcibly sent if they have been exposed to a SARS-CoV-2-positive person or have traveled internationally or between states, even without evidence of exposure. A 26-year-old Australian citizen, Hayley Hodgson, was detained at the camp after she was exposed to someone later found to be positive. Despite three negative tests and no positive ones, she was held in a small enclosed area for 14 days and fed once a day. Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says quarantine can end after seven days with negative tests. Why didn’t the government let her quarantine at home? And why doesn’t it exempt or treat differently people who can prove prior vaccination or natural infection?

Although U.S. authorities haven’t gone nearly that far, early in the pandemic the Food and Drug Administration used its coercive power to discourage the development of diagnostic tests for Covid-19. The FDA required private labs wanting to develop tests to submit special paperwork to get approval that it had never required for other diagnostic tests. That, in combination with the CDC’s claims that it had enough testing capacity, meant that testing necessitated the use of a CDC test later determined to be so defective that it found the coronavirus in laboratory-grade water.

With voluntary approaches, we get the benefit of millions of people around the world actively trying to solve problems and make our lives better. We get high-quality vaccines from BioNTech/ Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna, instead of the suspect vaccines from the governments of Cuba and Russia. We get good diagnostic tests from Thermo Fisher Scientific instead of the defective CDC one. We get promising therapeutics such as Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck’s molnupiravir.

With authoritarian approaches, we get solutions that meet the requirements of those in power, regardless of how we benefit. Consider this hypothetical example:

Policy A ends with 1,000 Covid-19 cases, 5,000 people who have completely lost their liberty for two weeks, 1,000 lost jobs, and 300 missed key family events, such as the funeral of a loved one.

Policy B ends with 1,020 Covid-19 cases, 4,000 who have lost some of their liberty for one week, 1,000 who have completely lost their liberty for two weeks, 300 lost jobs, and 100 missed family events.

The government may prefer Policy A because it is focused on one aspect of the problem. You might prefer Policy B because many aspects of life matter to you—not only coronavirus cases—and B is much better on the other dimensions. But your preferences don’t count.

With coercive solutions, you’ll often deal with an official who will absolve himself of responsibility by pinning the rule on those giving the orders. With voluntary solutions, if it doesn’t make sense, we usually don’t do it. And therein lies one of the greatest protections we have to ensure that the solution isn’t worse than the problem.

The supposed trump card of those who favor coercion is externalities: One person’s behavior can put another at risk. But that’s only half the story. The other half is that we choose how much risk we accept. If some customers at a store exhibit risky behavior, then we can vaccinate, wear masks, keep our distance, shop at quieter times, or avoid the store.

Economists understand how one person can impose a cost on another. But it takes two to tango, and it’s generally more efficient if the person who can change his behavior with the lower cost changes how he behaves. In other words, to perform a proper evaluation of policies to deal with externalities, we must consider the responses available to both parties. Many people, including economists, ignore this insight.

By what principle do we throw out the playbook of the more successful country, ours, and adopt one from less successful, more authoritarian countries? The authoritarian playbook has serious built-in weaknesses, while solutions based on free choice have obvious and not-so-obvious strengths. Freedom is beneficial in good times; it’s even more crucial in challenging times.


Mr. Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He was senior health economist with President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Hooper is author of “Should the FDA Reject Itself?” and president of Objective Insights, whose clients include pharmaceutical companies.


AIER Bonus


A Perfect Storm of Incentives

It is not yet clear whether history will remember the 2020s more for an outbreak of a deadly virus, or for an outbreak of mass psychosis. No doubt, both were at play, the former because the virus was novel and deadly, the latter because we had no idea how much so. In March of 2020, the World Health Organization estimated Covid’s case fatality rate to be over 3 percent. Some outlets reported case fatality rates above 10 percent. By comparison, the case fatality rate for the common flu is a mere fraction of a percent.

But the early information ranged from sketchy to biased. In the early days, the number of Covid tests was limited, so physicians only tested those who were sick enough to show up at hospitals. This skewed the early data toward showing Covid as being deadlier than it actually was. With no randomized testing, the actual lethality was impossible to know. 

This bias interacted with the media and politicians’ incentives to create a perfect storm of incentives. The media had an incentive to repeat the worst fatality projections and to play down the bias behind the projections because bad news attracts viewers, and viewers attract advertising dollars. Heavy media coverage of the worst Covid projections alarmed voters, and that forced politicians to respond. But the politicians’ incentives were skewed toward a heavy-handed response.

[….]

By late 2020, it became clear that early case fatality rates were overstated, but it was too late for politicians to change course. A feedback loop had ensued wherein the media sold advertising by spotlighting the Covid danger. This made people fearful, and the people pushed politicians to act. Politicians acted and then hid the potential error of unnecessary lockdowns by emphasizing the danger of Covid. This gave the media more material to spotlight and more advertising to sell. Social media then jumped into the fray by anointing itself the arbiter of what was and wasn’t “misinformation.” But social media was as motivated as the mainstream media to attract eyeballs and sell advertising, and so anything that contradicted the official line on Covid was deemed “misinformation.”

The result was mass psychosis in which people’s behaviors toward the real threat of Covid became inconsistent with their behaviors toward other real threats. 

[….]

As with all things, lockdowns do not come without tradeoffs. Some people died of cancer, kidney disease, and other non-Covid causes because they were afraid to go to hospitals out of fear of contracting Covid. In Canada, cancer screening was suspended so that hospital resources could be devoted to Covid care. Early estimates show up to a 10 percent increase in cancer deaths as a consequence. In the US in the early days of Covid, there was a 30 percent decline in the number of people seeking initial treatment for kidney disease.

At the start of the pandemic, calls to suicide hotlines spiked across the country, as did instances of domestic violence. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that the total number of deaths in the US was 450,000 larger than it should have been in 2020. That 360,000 of those were directly due to Covid means that the remaining 90,000 were due to Covid only indirectly or due to the lockdowns themselves.

In addition to the lockdowns costing lives, we expended unprecedented resources maintaining them. These came initially in the form of unemployment and business closures, and later in the form of supply chain problems and inflation and higher taxes to pay for massive stimulus spending. In late 2020, economists estimated that, provided it ended by the fall of 2021, the pandemic will cost the United States around $16 trillion over the next decade. That’s around $40 million for every life saved. 

But how many more lives might we have saved had we done something different with those resources? Around 660,000 people die each year of heart disease in the US. The National Institutes of Health spends around $5 billion each year researching cures for cardiovascular diseases. Americans spend another $330 billion each year for hospitalization, home health care, medication, and lost productivity associated with cardiovascular diseases.

Suppose that, over the next decade, it turns out that the 2020-21 lockdown saved a total of 1.1 million US lives (including people who may have contracted Covid in 2020-21 but died over the subsequent decade from lingering complications). This is three times the 370,000 the lockdown appears to have saved in 2020 alone. We will have spent $16 trillion in direct costs and lost productivity to save those 1.1 million people. But, over the same decade, 6.6 million people will have died of cardiovascular diseases. To save them, we will have spent $3.3 trillion. We are dedicating one-fifth the resources to fighting a disease that kills six times the number of people. That makes no sense.

Of course, Covid and cardiovascular diseases are very different in that heart disease isn’t contagious. And yet, that criticism cuts both ways: because heart disease isn’t contagious, we can’t develop a herd immunity, and so heart disease will remain with us for generations whereas Covid will not.

[….]

As Omicron looms, and as surely as Pi, Rho, and Sigma will follow, voters should meet their fears with reason, view the media with a skeptical eye, and demand that politicians discuss tradeoffs openly and honestly.


Antony Davies is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education, and associate professor of economics at Duquesne University. He has authored Principles of Microeconomics (Cognella), Understanding Statistics (Cato Institute), and Cooperation and Coercion (ISI Books). He has written hundreds of op-eds appearing in, among others, the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, New York Post, Washington Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, US News, and the Houston Chronicle.

The Effectiveness of Ivermectin via The Wall Street Journal

If Ivermectin is effective against Covid and all indications suggest that it is, why aren’t we making it more accessible? Why does the medical establishment dismiss it and even suggest that it’s harmful? Dennis Prager discusses two articles in his monologue. One from The Wall Street Journal, the other from Slate:

  • Why Is the FDA Attacking a Safe, Effective Drug? (WSJ)
  • The Noble Lies of COVID-19 (SLATE)

The Slate article deals more with masks.

Via THE WALL STREET JOURNAL’s article, Why Is the FDA Attacking a Safe, Effective Drug?(via The Burning Platform)

Ivermectin is a promising Covid treatment and prophylaxis, but the agency is denigrating it.

The Food and Drug Administration claims to follow the science. So why is it attacking ivermectin, a medication it certified in 1996?

Earlier this year the agency put out a special warning that “you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19.” The FDA’s statement included words and phrases such as “serious harm,” “hospitalized,” “dangerous,” “very dangerous,” “seizures,” “coma and even death” and “highly toxic.” Any reader would think the FDA was warning against poison pills. In fact, the drug is FDA-approved as a safe and effective antiparasitic.

Ivermectin was developed and marketed by Merck & Co. while one of us (Mr. Hooper) worked there years ago. William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering and developing avermectin, which Mr. Campbell and associates modified to create ivermectin.

Ivermectin is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines. Merck has donated four billion doses to prevent river blindness and other diseases in Africa and other places where parasites are common. A group of 10 doctors who call themselves the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance have said ivermectin is “one of the safest, low-cost, and widely available drugs in the history of medicine.”

Ivermectin fights 21 viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19. A single dose reduced the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in cells by 99.8% in 24 hours and 99.98% in 48 hours, according to a June 2020 study published in the journal Antiviral Research.

Some 70 clinical trials are evaluating the use of ivermectin for treating Covid-19. The statistically significant evidence suggests that it is safe and works for both treating and preventing the disease.

In 115 patients with Covid-19 who received a single dose of ivermectin, none developed pneumonia or cardiovascular complications, while 11.4% of those in the control group did. Fewer ivermectin patients developed respiratory distress (2.6% vs. 15.8%); fewer required oxygen (9.6% vs. 45.9%); fewer required antibiotics (15.7% vs. 60.2%); and fewer entered intensive care (0.1% vs. 8.3%). Ivermectin-treated patients tested negative faster, in four days instead of 15, and stayed in the hospital nine days on average instead of 15. Ivermectin patients experienced 13.3% mortality compared with 24.5% in the control group.

Moreover, the drug can help prevent Covid-19. One 2020 article in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications looked at what happened after the drug was given to family members of confirmed Covid-19 patients. Less than 8% became infected, versus 58.4% of those untreated. Among 200 healthcare workers and others at high risk of exposure, only 2% of those given ivermectin developed Covid-19. But 10% of the control group did.

Despite the FDA’s claims, ivermectin is safe at approved doses. Out of four billion doses administered since 1998, there have been only 28 cases of serious neurological adverse events, according to an article published this year in the American Journal of Therapeutics. The same study found that ivermectin has been used safely in pregnant women, children and infants.

If the FDA were driven by science and evidence, it would give an emergency-use authorization for ivermectin for Covid-19. Instead, the FDA asserts without evidence that ivermectin is dangerous.

At the bottom of the FDA’s warning against ivermectin is this statement: “Meanwhile, effective ways to limit the spread of COVID-19 continue to be to wear your mask, stay at least 6 feet from others who don’t live with you, wash hands frequently, and avoid crowds.” Is this based on the kinds of double-blind studies that the FDA requires for drug approvals? No.

Mr. Henderson, a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, was senior health economist with President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Hooper is president of Objective Insights, a firm that consults with pharmaceutical clients.

Most important in this post is this, WHERE CAN I GET Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin? AMERICA’S FRONTLINE DOCTORS has a consultation sign up HERE! See also FLCCC ALLIANCE (Click Pic)

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Ben Shapiro Discusses Vaccines and Kids

Some Covid Fodder (Reason) via Ben Shapiro

This comes by way of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

The Flimsy Evidence Behind the CDC’s Push to Vaccinate Children | The agency overcounts Covid hospitalizations and deaths and won’t consider if one shot is sufficient.

A tremendous number of government and private policies affecting kids are based on one number: 335. That is how many children under 18 have died with a Covid diagnosis code in their record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the CDC, which has 21,000 employees, hasn’t researched each death to find out whether Covid caused it or if it involved a pre-existing medical condition.

Without these data, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided in May that the benefits of two-dose vaccination outweigh the risks for all kids 12 to 15. I’ve written hundreds of peer-reviewed medical studies, and I can think of no journal editor who would accept the claim that 335 deaths resulted from a virus without data to indicate if the virus was incidental or causal, and without an analysis of relevant risk factors such as obesity.

My research team at Johns Hopkins worked with the nonprofit FAIR Health to analyze approximately 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with Covid in health-insurance data from April to August 2020. Our report found a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia. If that trend holds, it has significant implications for healthy kids and whether they need two vaccine doses. The National Education Association has been debating whether to urge schools to require vaccination before returning to school in person. How can they or anyone debate the issue without the right data?

Meanwhile, we’ve already seen inflated Covid death numbers in the U.S. revised downward. Last month Alameda County, Calif., reduced its Covid death toll by 25% after state public-health officials insisted that deaths be attributed to Covid only if the virus was a direct or contributing factor.

Organizations and politicians who are eager to get every living American vaccinated are following the CDC without understanding the limitations of the methodology. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky claimed that vaccinating a million adolescent kids would prevent 200 hospitalizations and one death over four months. But the agency’s Covid adolescent hospitalization report, like its death count, doesn’t distinguish on the website whether a child is hospitalized for Covid or with Covid. The subsequent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of that analysis revealed that 45.7% “were hospitalized for reasons that might not have been primarily related” to Covid-19.

Hospitals routinely test patients being admitted for other complaints even if there’s no reason to suspect they have Covid. An asymptomatic child who tests positive after being injured in a bicycle accident would be counted as a “Covid hospitalization.”

The CDC may also be undercapturing data on vaccine complications. The CDC’s risk-benefit analysis for vaccinating all children used rates of complications extrapolated from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database, known as Vaers, which contains raw, self-reported data that is unverified and likely underreports adverse events. The CDC or the Food and Drug Administration should expeditiously assign doctors to research each of the thousands of vaccine complications reported to Vaers.

Authorities should also consider whether a single-vaccine dose is a safer option for healthy kids. Researchers at Tel Aviv University reported that a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine was 100% effective against infection in kids 12 to 15. Not only has the CDC refused to examine the possibility of a one-dose regimen for minors; Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff told me he was kicked off the advisory committee working group on Covid-vaccine safety after he expressed a dissenting opinion.

The CDC’s poor performance isn’t limited to kids or vaccine safety. Early in the pandemic the CDC left us all flying blind by not reporting the medical conditions of those who died of Covid. Collecting this information early would have made it easier to protect nursing-home residents and patients with renal failure or diabetes. It took until March 2021 for the CDC to report that 78% of Covid hospitalizations were among overweight or obese patients.

Most striking, the CDC has never systematically collected and reported the No. 1 leading indicator of the pandemic—daily new hospitalizations for Covid sickness. Instead, the CDC offers the lagging indicator of hospitalization for anyone who tests positive for Covid.

The CDC data on natural-immunity rates is similarly disappointing. The CDC reports this measure in fragments on their website, but it’s outdated and some states are listed as having “no data available.” The low priority given to this indicator is consistent with how public-health officials have played down and ignored natural immunity in their drive to get everyone vaccinated.

Given the tremendous resources of the CDC and FDA, which together employ 39,000, these agencies ought to be able to report the statistics needed to make informed policy decisions. If the data are incomplete or flawed, so too will be the decisions derived from them. The vaccine’s benefits may outweigh its risks for healthy kids, but the government shouldn’t try to push that conclusion based on faulty data.

Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health and Carey Business School. He is author of “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care—and How to Fix It.”

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

This comes by way of the WALL STREET JOURNAL:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Reno is editor of First Things.