This document is part of an archive of postings on Political Correctness Watch, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written.
My Home Page. Email John Ray here. My other blogs: "Tongue Tied" , "Dissecting Leftism" , "Australian Politics" , "Education Watch International" , "Immigration Watch" , "Greenie Watch" , "The Psychologist" (A summary blog). Those blogs are also backed up. See here for details
With particular attention to religious, ethnic and sexual matters. By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
This page is a backup. The primary version of this blog is HERE
31 December, 2023
Giorgia Meloni named ‘Man of the Year’ by right-wing Italian newspaper
Feminists say they want women to be able to do anything a man could do but conservative women such as Margaret Thatcher and Georgia Meloni don't count, apparently, showing that destructive policies are the sole aim of Leftist campaigns
An Italian right-wing daily newspaper provoked an outcry on Friday after naming the country’s first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, its “Man of the Year”.
Libero ran a lengthy tribute on its front page and featured a large portrait of Meloni wearing a double-breasted white blazer and a look of determination.
Under the headline “Man of the Year”, the article said Meloni had won “the war of the sexes” in Italy and had “not only broken the glass ceiling, she dissolved it”.
The article was quickly received as a snub by political opponents and women’s rights activists who have accused Meloni of not doing enough to protect women from violence and promulgating regressive views around their role in society.
On Thursday, a senator in her party said that a young woman’s “first aspiration” should be to have a child.
The article was written by Mario Sechi, the paper’s Rome bureau chief, who led the prime minister’s public relations team between March and September of 2023 before taking his position at the daily.
“In our society of weak thinking, we have recognised strong ideas,” Sechi wrote.
“In excessive diversity, we have reversed gender. In times of war, we have chosen someone who has shown she knows how to fight.”
Sechi said the prime minister had confronted two wars, multiple geopolitical shocks, a changing Europe and a world order that was now being reinvented.
She was elected as Italy’s first female prime minister in October 2022.
“Giorgia Meloni for Libero is ‘Man of the Year’ because above everything she has cancelled the war of the sexes by winning it, by thinking differently, being divergent, overcoming the arrogance of men and the defeatism of women. She has not only broken the glass ceiling, she has dissolved it.”
“This is a surrender”
Elly Schlein, secretary of the centre-left Democratic Party, criticised the newspaper’s editorial decision, saying the prime minister had abandoned Italian women.
Italian food historian cooks up carbonara controversy
“Today a right-wing newspaper is explaining to us that politics and power are for men,” Schlein said. “I don’t think my aspiration as a politician is to become ‘Man of the Year’. On the contrary, I think this is a surrender”.
Elisabetta Piccolotti, an MP from the Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra (Greens and Left Alliance), described the cover as “an affirmation of male superiority” and called on the prime minister to reject it.
“At this point, prime minister, please clarify: are you a woman, are you a man or are you non-binary?” Piccolotti wrote on Facebook.
However, the culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, a former deputy director of Libero, told journalists in Naples that the title ‘Man of the Year’ was well-deserved as he also took a swipe at the “barbarism” of “cancel culture”.
Since it was elected in 2022, the Meloni government has sought to defend the traditional family and national identity, protect cultural heritage and restrict migrant arrivals.
Meloni, a single mother who recently separated from her partner, TV presenter Andrea Giambruno, has been known for her strong stance on the concept of the traditional family.
She has so far made no comment on the Libero article.
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Georgia Police Officer Resigns After Being Put on Leave for Facebook Post on Traditional Marriage
A Georgia police officer has resigned after he was told by superiors that he could not share his personal religious views on social media.
“If someone somewhere considers an opinion I have—that isn’t a direct quotation from Scripture—to be offensive, then that would be a fireable offense,” Jacob Kersey, the former officer, told The Daily Signal.
Kersey, 19, who began working last May at the Port Wentworth Police Department in a jurisdiction just outside Savannah, says “everything was going well” until the start of the new year.
On Jan. 2, Kersey posted a 20-word message about his view of marriage on Facebook.
“God designed marriage. Marriage refers to Christ and the church,” he wrote, paraphrasing the Apostle Paul’s teaching in the Book of Ephesians. “That’s why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage.”
The next day, Kersey said he received a phone call from his supervisor, who told him that someone had complained about the post and to take it down.
When Kersey refused, the supervisor warned him that failure to delete the Facebook post on marriage could result in his termination.
Kersey said he then was contacted by Lt. Justin Hardy, who told him that the Port Wentworth Police Department didn’t want to be held liable in a “use of force” situation involving someone in the LGBTQ community. Kersey still refused to delete the post.
The police officer received a phone call later that day from the police department’s Maj. Lee Sherrod, ordering him to come to the office the following morning, Jan. 4, and turn in everything he had that belonged to the city.
Kersey told The Daily Signal that he believed he was going to be terminated.
When he arrived at the police station, the young officer met with Sherrod, Hardy, Capt. Nathan Jentzen, and Police Chief Matt Libby.
He was told that he was “being placed on administrative leave while the city investigated to see if I could keep my job,” Kersey said. “I was told that I was wise beyond my years, an old soul, and that they brag on me all the time, but that I couldn’t post things like that.”
Kersey said Libby told him that his Facebook post on marriage was the “same thing as saying the N-word and ‘F— all those homosexuals.’” Kersey said his captain told him that his free speech “was limited due to my position as … a police officer.”
The Port Wentworth Police Department, which serves a city with a population of just under 11,000 in 2020, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
After a week of paid administrative leave, Kersey met again with the leadership of the police department. He says he was informed that he no longer was on administrative leave and would not be fired, but that he could not share opinions on social media that could be considered offensive.
Kersey says he was told he could post Scripture verses, but could not work as one of the department’s officers if he continued to share his “interpretation or opinion on Scripture if it was deemed offensive.”
“Separation of church and state” was the reason given for why he could not post such views, Kersey said.
Kersey said police officials told him that they were developing a new policy to guide officers on what they were and were not allowed to post on social media.
Next, Kersey received a “letter of notification” from Sherrod dated Jan. 13. The letter explained that although Kersey is entitled to his own personal beliefs, he should be “reminded that if any post on any of your social media platforms, or any other statement or action, renders you unable to perform, and to be seen as [unable] to perform, your job in a fair and equitable manner, you could be terminated.”
Four days after the date on the letter, on Jan. 17, Kersey formally resigned from the Port Wentworth Police Department.
“I decided to resign … because I just didn’t think it wise to go back and play their game,” Kersey told The Daily Signal, adding that “the way things went down, I didn’t feel as if my command really had my back.”
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Mazi Melesa Pilip: A Fantastic Republican to Replace George Santos
A special election will be held in New York’s 3rd Congressional District on Feb. 13 to replace George Santos, world-class conman, who Republicans recently expelled on ethics charges.
Republicans have picked a uniquely exciting candidate to run for this now open seat in Mazi Melesa Pilip.
Pilip is a Black Orthodox Jew and a mother of seven children who arrived to Israel at age 12 from Ethiopia, grew up there, served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces and continued on to earn a degree in occupational therapy at Haifa University, where she met her husband, and then earned a master’s in diplomacy and security at Tel Aviv University.
Her husband immigrated to Israel from Ukraine, and subsequently they moved to the U.S. where he continued his medical studies and now works as a cardiologist. With five children and pregnant with twins, she ran two years ago for a seat in the Nassau County Legislature, won the seat — defeating a Democrat incumbent — and then was reelected, winning 60% of the vote.
Pilip effervesces her belief in the “American dream” and the importance to keep government limited, keep taxes low and fight crime. As an immigrant, she is particularly passionate about this issue and the importance to control our border.
She will run against Democrat Tom Suozzi, who held the seat for three terms before leaving in 2022 to enter the race for New York governor.
In an interview with Israeli newspaper Israel Today, Pilip explained that she became motivated to enter American politics when flare-ups with Hamas produced antisemitism endangering her children to walk freely and openly as Jews in their neighborhood in New York.
“My story is the story of America and Israel together. Israel is a diverse state, there is not just one color, and in the U.S., any dream can become reality. … This is my second immigration. I had to learn culture and a new language twice. It wasn’t easy for me.”
Pilip is a poster child who speaks forcefully, disabusing distortions and ignorance about Israel being spread, particularly on university campuses.
Recently, for instance, a program was held at UCLA labeled as an “Emergency Teach-In on the Crisis in Palestine.” One of the UCLA professors depicted Israel as a “colonial power driven by an exclusionary racial ideology.”
Just looking at this impressive Black Ethiopian Jewish woman, who grew up in Israel, who speaks warmly about her love for and the beauty of the country where she grew up, says everything about the absurdity of such outrageous allegations.
I recall on my own first trip to Israel noting the full spectrum of color in the population — white, brown, black.
Israel literally was founded as an ingathering of Jews dispersed in the four corners of the globe.
The parents and grandparents of today’s Israelis came from Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, North America, Latin America, North Africa and Asia. Pilip arrived to Israel as part of Operation Solomon in 1991 in which, over the course of 36 hours, Israel airlifted over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel out of concern for their safety as result of political instability in Ethiopia.
There is now an estimated more than 160,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel.
Around the same time, 1990-91, after considerable pressure, the Soviet Union released over 300,000 Jews to leave for Israel.
How Jews who returned to their historic homeland from all over the globe, after so many years of oppression, persecution and murder, could be accused of either racism or colonialism should give everyone great pause regarding what is happening on our college campuses.
Meanwhile, Mazi Melesa Pilip is a presence Republicans and all Americans need in the U.S. Congress.
Let’s hope and pray that in February she will be adding her important voice to those on Capitol Hill.
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Left/Right policy switches
TIMOTHY LYNCH notes below that what were once conservative policies have become Leftist and vice versa. So is there any condistency in ideologies? There is but it is not at the policy level. The lasting Left/Right identities are at the psychological level. The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger. Applying those attitudes to differing life circumstances will produce different policy preferences
The first woman I ever loved was an eco-feminist. She was radicalised by the 1984 British miners’ strike, listened to Billy Bragg on a C90 cassette tape, marched for women’s rights, admired communist East Germany and refused on principle to visit the US. In the 33 years since she dumped me, I don’t think she ever has.
In those decades, the left of which she was a proud and, I thought, typical member has been transformed.
Barbara (name changed) would now march not to keep coalmines open but to close them. Bragg would be too old/white male/working class (and thus need decolonising). The women’s rights marches Barbara joined in the 1980s she would now condemn as anti-trans. Only her anti-Americanism – the second most durable hatred on the left, after anti-Semitism – would endure.
The right has switched, too. Not as completely as the left but in important ways we often elide. This transposition of left and right conditions much of our contemporary politics but goes mostly unremarked.
In the ’80s, the Conservatives effectively closed the British coal industry. Barbara sent the picketing men blankets and goodwill. Today, “beautiful, clean coal” (Donald Trump’s phrase) is deified by those on the right. It speaks to man’s independence from the forces of cold nature. Scott Morrison held aloft a lump in parliament.
In the 2020s, it is the left that has assumed the four-decade-old Conservative position.
In Australia, Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen vilify coal. Like Margaret Thatcher and Ian MacGregor, Thatcher’s head of the National Coal Board, Labor is plotting to throw every miner out of work.
Then, the right stood for middle-class values: marriage, family, low taxation, strong defences. Now, Australian Liberals trade on their working-class bona fides. In the US, Republicans tell defenestrated coalminers that they will be their voice. Democrats blame them for climate change. Barbara wept with the injustice of Thatcher’s assault on mining communities. Hillary Clinton now derides them as deplorables.
The right stood against the sexual revolution, free love and the consequences of the pill. Now it is the left that polices sex. Brittany Higgins, a young conservative woman (at least until Network Ten got to her), has become a poster child of the left’s obsession with sexual misconduct. The sex re-education programs on every university campus, warning of the perils of physical intimacy, are mandated by progressives, not by conservatives.
It used to be the religious right that told us to avoid sex. Now it is the cultural left. It was conservatives who criticised feminism. Now it is trans activists on the left. Indeed, it is Liberal women (such as Moira Deeming) who have paid the highest price for upholding a traditional conception of women’s rights. Many left-wing feminists have gone missing in action.
The left-right transposition is especially evident when it comes to race. It was small-C conservatives (often southern Democrats) in the US who wanted to maintain racial distinctions. Now it is the left that upholds race as the basic determinant of societal relations.
Conservative segregationists scoffed at Martin Luther King’s vision of a colourblind constitution. Now it is the left that condemns the reverend for his colour-blindness. We should hire, fire, promote and condemn based on race. MLK, left-wing anti-racists now tell us, was guilty of “content of character racism”.
Yes campaigners for the Indigenous voice wanted race written permanently into the Australian Constitution. No campaigners, representing most conservative voters, wanted it written out. When I was growing up near Leicester, then and still one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Britain, the far right demanded rights for indigenous Brits. In modern-day Australia, it is the left that makes the equivalent claim for First Nations people.
In Britain, asserting “indigenous rights” is racist. Here it is anti-racist. I have never been able to hear an acknowledgment of country here without thinking how bizarre it would sound in the English Midlands. “Sovereignty was never ceded!” sounds like an anti-EU Brexit slogan.
Why this ideological transposition? Losing wars changes the loser. And the left lost the biggest in its history in 1989.
My year with Barbara began the night the Berlin Wall fell (the other 9/11: November 9). We drank Blue Smirnoff, she in bemused sorrow, me in joyous irony; vodka was one of the few things the Soviet Union did well.
That night, the left lost the key economic argument of the 20th century: command economies don’t work, free-market ones do. People crave the opportunities of the latter. They will flee the former when given the chance.
My bearded university lecturers spent the ensuing years in a state of deep agitation. For many, the fall of communism coincided with their own midlife crises. It was wonderful. Today, zealously held but weak arguments are protected by speech codes and de-platforming. Then, men and women who had backed the Soviet project were subject to debate. Many did not like it.
The game plan thereafter was to establish a leftist catechism, grounded in a cultural revolution, the challenging of which would be heresy.
This “long march through the institutions”, as Rudi Dutschke, the young disciple of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, described it, is reaching some sort of destination now. And what a scene of tedium and enervation it is.
Instead of debating big questions, we fly rainbow flags. Safe spaces have taken precedence over dangerous ideas.
When class war didn’t work, new kinds of oppression, to paraphrase the Communist Manifesto, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones, were found.
Climate, race and gender have replaced class as the source of left-wing fervour. These wars have been waged much more effectively. Their dialecticism – you are with us or against us, anti-racist or racist, pro-trans or transphobic – has enabled their colonisation of social media.
Marx claimed class war was inevitable. It proved not so. But culture war may well be. The US has been in a protracted one since Roe v Wade in 1973. Australia is flirting with its own version because of the voice debacle.
Climate denialism, structural racism, rape culture and transphobia. Collectively, these progressive priorities now have the quality of crisis. They are spectres haunting the West, to again adapt Marx’s rhetoric. Their negation now mobilises whole campuses and workplaces. Denying their salience, let alone standing against them, is hard to impossible.
In the US, if you want a university job, you will likely have to affirm, in writing and at interview, your contribution to their fighting. Australia is not quite there but we are inching closer. It is one of the forms of American cultural imperialism to which we are most susceptible.
I don’t know what Barbara would make of this transformation of the left. Sadly, dear reader, finding out would be a research project too far for me. I suspect she would be in sympathy with some of it. But much of it she would not recognise as the natural evolution from her 1989 platform.
She did teach me something vital, a lesson too few on the right imbibe. Those on the left are not bad people. They are not evil. But they are naive. They insist on realities that are fantasies. They seek final solutions to problems insoluble. They imagine better worlds while creating worse ones.
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28 December, 2023
This gender ideology is nothing less than a crime against a generation
By JULIE BINDEL
When I was a child in the 1960s and 70s, I wanted to be a boy. I could see from a very early age that boys were given very much more freedom than girls.
They didn't have to wear uncomfortable tights and dresses, they got better toys and, best of all, they didn't have to play within sight of their parents because of 'stranger danger'.
My brother, meanwhile, wanted to be a dinosaur and even used to tell people he was one. No one seemed to mind because everybody knows children have rich interior lives – which is why the fantasy worlds created by the likes of Roald Dahl and JK Rowling have attracted such massive followings.
This is all healthy and good as long as the children concerned are happy, loved and supported.
But I know from four decades of campaigning to end child abuse and hearing heartbreaking individual stories that children who are unhappy often try to run away from their pain by divorcing themselves from reality.
Such behaviour is often observed in girls who are being sexually abused. Others do it simply because they feel they don't fit in. If they have been picked on for being more interested in football than Barbie, they might convince themselves that all their problems would be solved if only they became a boy.
Similarly, many boys are not interested in the physical and stereotypically male world of rugby or climbing trees and might prefer being at home cooking or crocheting.
It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them, or even that these kids will grow up gay or lesbian, just that they think differently.
Over the last generation, our society has thankfully moved away from compelling children to be 'proper' boys and girls. But now all that has changed in a very disturbing way.
Because what is this current mania for gender reassignment, genital mutilation and harmful hormone treatment but a return to the bad old days of forcing children into gender-specific roles – only now, any sign of being 'different' is medicalised.
That's why yesterday's revelation in the Daily Mail that more than 70 children, aged just three and four years old, have been referred to the controversial NHS Gender Identity Development Service has shocked me to my core.
It's crazy to think that children of that age will have any clue about gender identity or gender dysphoria. Ask them what they identify as and they'll say the first thing that comes into their heads. Of course, some kids will say they want to be the opposite sex, life has always been like this. But it's simply wrong to think that 'tomboy' girls or boys who reject rough and tumble in favour of traditionally 'feminine' pursuits need medical intervention.
All they really need is care, understanding, support and the freedom to be themselves. Even those rare children with more serious problems need psychological help, rather than be sent on a path that almost always leads to being prescribed puberty blockers and subsequently cross sex hormones and surgery.
But shockingly these pre-school children are being set on a path that could ultimately lead to them being prepared for either castration or irreversible genital mutilation when they reach the age of 18. It's nothing less than a crime against an entire generation.
Advocates of early intervention point to the fact that the number of people seeking reassignment has increased more than 350-fold in the last few years as evidence of pent-up demand.
But it's nothing of the sort, it's a kind of social contagion fuelled by activists, right-on parents, social workers and, naturally, social media sites such as TikTok.
Do-gooding adults who refer their children for gender reassignment would hate to be described as back-to-the-1950s bigots. But what other explanation could there be for seeking to socially transition a child aged three and begin to refer to it as the opposite sex?
Even worse is the plight of troubled children whose social workers make the decision for them. The statistics show that the town with the most young people referred for gender dysphoria is not trendy Islington or Brighton, but working-class Blackpool.
The seaside resort has a lot of social problems, including very high numbers of children in care, shocking teen suicide figures and a disproportionate amount of children who have social workers supposedly looking after their best interests.
My research (and that of others) has found that social workers often buy into gender ideology, and therefore can seek to 'solve' the problems of troubled children by suggesting they might be trans.
It's hardly surprising that these impressionable, mixed-up youngsters would grab on to the latest fad they think can solve their problems – gender reassignment.
Sadly it's not surprising either that ideologically driven social workers push them towards the Tavistock Clinic, which seeks to pathologise their confusion and unhappiness and often suggests that pausing puberty with drugs is the answer when what they really need is support, love, understanding and help to work through their problems.
It's a national scandal that hundreds of our young people are being pushed towards irreversible surgery in the name of progressive ideology.
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Senator Blocks Air Force Colonel’s Military Promotion Over ‘Divisive DEI Policies
When the U.S. Senate unanimously approved 425 military promotions earlier this month, one person was missing from the list: Col. Ben Jonsson, the Air Force officer who espoused controversial views on race and diversity.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., stepped in to hold Jonsson’s ascension to brigadier general after a 10-month blockade of all military promotions by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. When fellow Republicans threatened to join Democrats to circumvent Tuberville by changing Senate rules, the senator withdrew his objection.
As a result, military officers who were singled out for their “woke” views on race, sexuality, and COVID-19 had their promotions swiftly approved Dec. 5—except for Jonsson and about a dozen other high-ranking generals. Senators then voted Thursday to give the promoted military officers retroactive pay for the time they waited.
The Daily Signal first reported in August on Jonsson’s views on diversity, equity, and inclusion—and his endorsement of a book on critical race theory. The story prompted The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project to request and obtain a Defense Department “climate” assessment of during Jonsson’s leadership of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.)
The assessment included blistering criticism of Jonsson from his subordinates at MacDill, where he served as commander from 2020 to 2022. It paints a picture of his tenure and concerns about his views on DEI and CRT.
Following publication of the November story, The Daily Signal obtained more information about Jonsson’s time at MacDill, including an official DEI policy memo and email from a field-grade officer promoting a diversity agenda to his wing. For the first time, both can be read in full below.
“I worked under Col. Jonsson when he was the wing commander at MacDill Air Force Base and witnessed many troubling things,” said a veteran Air Force officer, who asked for anonymity to speak openly without facing retribution. “When [President Joe] Biden was elected, he said elatedly in a meeting with all squadron commanders, ‘Now we can start doing diversity training again.’ He also forced the COVID vaccine and masking harder than any other commander I am aware of. At a time when no one in Florida was wearing masks off base, he routinely would keep the base in heightened state of Health Protection Condition.”
Missouri’s Schmitt, in a statement to The Daily Signal explaining his decision to block Jonsson’s promotion in the Senate, said he objects to military leaders who promote DEI.
“It is long past time to root out divisive DEI policies and their advocates from our apolitical military,” Schmitt said. “Leaders must emphasize unity of mission and purpose, not our immutable differences, if we are to maintain our military as the greatest meritocracy in the world. I cannot in good faith allow the confirmation of individuals who advance this divisive DEI ideology to proceed by unanimous consent.”
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Gender Dysphoria Is About Confusion. So Is Its Latest Claim for Disability Status
Many individuals who underwent gender-transition procedures are now warning others against using puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery.
Despite these warnings and the solid empirical evidence demonstrating the harms of “gender-affirming care,” there are those who insist upon mislabeling the psychological issue of gender dysphoria as a physiological disability that requires physiological intervention.
One of the latest twists in this unfolding story occurred in Missouri, one of 22 states whose legislators have enacted laws to protect children from irreversible medical interventions.
Even though Missouri’s law grandfathered in patients currently being treated, University of Missouri Health announced in August that it would no longer provide puberty blockers and hormones to minors for the purpose of “gender transition.”
That set the stage for a lawyer filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of two minor female patients in the midst of “gender treatment” to appear more like boys.
Filed on Nov. 16, the suit seeks to force MU Health to resume prescribing puberty blockers and testosterone for the “gender transition.” One girl has been taking testosterone for 18 months; the other has been taking puberty blockers since she was 9 years old.
Their prescriptions are running out, and neither MU Health nor any other provider in Missouri will refill them.
The suit argues that gender dysphoria is a disability causing “physical impairment.” But to be clear, the gender dysphoria diagnosis was created to describe a psychological condition, not a physical one. Those formally diagnosed with gender dysphoria are supposed to have been given this designation based on psychological distress, not a physiological condition.
In reality, the “physical impairments” associated with a simple determination of gender dysphoria are the result of the off-label use of drugs that are dispensed in service to the diagnosis, not because the body is missing a necessary chemical or because of an abnormal growth that must be removed.
Puberty-blocking medication and cross-sex hormones have never been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the treatment of gender dysphoria.
Its use is an experiment on children, based on speculation that it provides some benefit. In fact, recent studies have shown no benefit in minor patients who took them for this purpose. Instead, the drugs have shown to have serious and injurious side effects.
The lawyer and his clients in the Missouri case seem to be unfamiliar with those effects. The risks and harms of using puberty-blocking medication include the following:
Liver damage, bone thinning, and skeletal damage. Mental health problems.
Brain swelling and vision loss in children (FDA 2022).
Infertility, osteoporosis, and cardiovascular disease.
The risks and harms associated with cross-sex hormone use include:
For females taking testosterone: heart attacks and strokes, liver dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, male pattern baldness, deepened voice, and facial and body hair.
For males taking estrogen: blood clots, heart attacks and strokes, breast cancer, weight gain, and insulin resistance.
The effect of using puberty blockers followed by long-term use of cross-sex hormones is near-certain sterility.
Given these harms, the only real case to make for a disability claim is for detransitioners. Those are the girls and boys, men and women, who were subjected to “gender-affirming care” and must now live with the resulting damage to their bodies.
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Christianity is not dead yet
Here’s one way of looking at Christmas. In order to get our attention, eternity, in the person of Jesus, pierced the veil of time. CS Lewis said that God entered the world so quietly, so secretly, because he was, in entering the Roman Empire, the empire of temporal power and earthly cruelty, infiltrating behind enemy lines.
Theologian Teilhard de Chardin had a different image, that God came into the world as an artist enters his studio. GK Chesterton imagined human life as a play that has gone wrong, so the playwright comes on stage to get it back on track.
I take the first two images from a sublimely handsome volume, the Word on Fire Bible, produced by US Catholic bishop Robert Barron.
It’s a truism that in the West, Christianity is in social and statistical decline. In most of the rest of the world, religion is on fire. But the West, mainly North America, Western Europe and Australia and New Zealand, have trapped themselves in a strange, dark little oubliette of paradoxical credulousness, in which they’ll believe anything at all except the religious realities almost all humanity hungers for all the time.
Feminist Louise Perry, author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, argues that Western society is repaganising. The folks who typically do worst in pagan societies are the least powerful, the poor, the dispossessed, the weak, childless widows and, compared with men, women and girls generally.
But this strange, atomised, denatured cultural moment in the West produces its own prodigies and wonders. Among these are the countless green shoots of new Christian life.
One such wonder is Bishop Barron and his Word on Fire mission. No one, really, could be designed worse for becoming a social media sensation reaching hundreds of millions of people than an orthodox Catholic bishop whose habitual attire is the black suit and Roman collar of Catholic clergy, and who is, by profession, an academic, specialising in the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas, with a deep expertise in Augustine of Hippo, the fourth century North African bishop who wrote formative texts for Christianity. Though, to be honest, Barron is a pretty handy authority on Martin Luther King, Bob Dylan and Clint Eastwood too.
Remark these figures. Barron and his WOF mission have sold more than five million of their books, while they’ve had more than 150 million YouTube views, many more than 22 million WOF show video views. Barron has more than three million Facebook fans, 400,000 Instagram followers, nearly 700,000 YouTube subscribers, a quarter of a million X (Twitter) followers and more than half a million regular email recipients.
Those numbers don’t prove Barron’s message is true, or that he’s a super genius, or has stumbled on some secret formula. Lots of bad folks, spreading bad messages, have huge social media numbers. Nonetheless, Barron is the most successful and probably important Catholic communicator other than the Pope himself, and one of the half-dozen most influential Christian communicators of any kind.
The WOF media story started small, in 1999. It started with a complaint. Barron was grousing to a fellow priest that Catholics were rotten at media communication, the legendary Fulton Sheen, a bishop with a huge TV following in the 1950s and ’60s, was great but there hadn’t been much since then. The friend replied: so what are you going to do about it?
Barron was a seminary academic and working priest. He went to WGN radio station in Chicago and they told him for US $50,000 he could have a weekly sermon show of 15 minutes at 5.15am on Sundays. He raised the money to do it for three years.
It was an astonishing success. A colleague told him he should promote it through a website. Barron had no idea what a website was. Friends set one up for him and they agreed to call it Word on Fire. And it caught fire.
Barron still expected his life to be mainly that of an academic priest. Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George had different ideas and prevailed upon Barron to turn down prestigious academic posts at prestigious universities, to become instead head of his seminary and to keep on with Word on Fire.
I achieved an ambition of many years standing to meet and talk to Barron in London a few weeks ago. Barron was the surprise star at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, convened by Jordan Peterson and Australia’s John Anderson. Barron’s quite scintillating address argued that many contemporary social problems derive from old theological disputes.
The West, he argued, is obsessed with freedom but misunderstands its nature. Thomas Aquinas asked the question: if God is all powerful, can he sin? The answer is no because God’s will is perfectly attuned to his nature and his nature is goodness.
A later theologian, William of Ockham, stressed God’s unlimited power. He can do whatever he likes, even sin. Under Aquinas, freedom and goodness are united, under William, they’re divorced.
“Freedom,” Barron argued, “is about the discipline of desire to make the achievement of the good first possible, then effortless.”
He illustrates his point. If we speak English well we’re free to say anything we like. How did we get that freedom? Not by a lack of rules and purpose but by listening to good English spoken, reading good English well written, internalising its rules and rhythms. When we learn a language, at first we’re not free to say much at all because we haven’t learnt its inner rules. We don’t master them simply by being free of outside influence.
“Look at our culture today,” Barron told the conference.
“The default position is that I am the sovereign source of value, of meaning. Why are so many of our young people so lost, depressed and unhappy? It’s because freedom has become divorced from truth and from responsibility. If we’re the inventors of all value, we’ll live in an increasingly dull and dangerous world.”
These are deep intellectual waters but represent Barron’s characteristic style. He speaks clearly, in a conversational way, with great warmth and friendliness, but he doesn’t dumb things down, he gives you full value intellectually.
There are roughly 1.3 billion Catholics in the world. I thought the ARC conference was clever in picking the right one to address them. Barron is neither pompous nor unapproachable, or an egomaniac. But a lot of people want a bite of his time. He’s hard to get. He had just travelled to ARC from the Pope’s synod in Rome, which consisted mainly of selected bishops but with some lay people too.
I kidnapped him in the ARC green room and wickedly, ruthlessly, exploited his innate politeness and sense of compassion. Can we do the interview here, he suggested.
No, Bishop, we’ll be constantly interrupted. Let’s go across the road to a nearby hotel where we can talk better. I think there’s a lunch I’m supposed to attend, he offered plaintively to his aide. No, no, no, we can get some lunch at the hotel, I assured him.
Naturally, being London, and God always enjoying a mild joke, it poured with rain as we trudged across the open air to the nearest hotel. No good turn, as the bishop must surely know, goes entirely unpunished. He didn’t even get lunch, just coffee and a biscuit.
Barron is a normal sort of person. He’s learned, clever, very relaxed now in front of a camera, but he doesn’t come across as a force of nature hurled down from another planet. Many of the things he does could be emulated, in some manner, by other folks.
So here’s one question, among many, I’ve always wanted to ask him. What lessons does the astonishing success of his WOF mission offer for other Christians trying to win a hostile culture?
It’s a tribute to Barron that he doesn’t have a pat formula for that. Instead he thinks a bit, then offers this: “I’ve been talking and thinking about the rise of the ‘nones’ (those who express no religious belief). In the course of my lifetime (he’s 63) it’s gone from about 3 per cent of America to about 25 per cent claiming no religion.
“The (church) scandals of the last 25 years certainly haven’t helped. They’ve accelerated the institutional decline. And there’s a general decline of trust in institutions.
“But here’s where I find your question interesting. There are just so many people who do respond to something like the Word on Fire mission, to the work I’m doing. When you put religion out there in a fresh way, there’s still an audience. They might be sceptical, but yet they’re paying attention. There’s something so self-defeating about the self-invention culture, as I call it. There’s a responsive audience. People will return, they will come back, to these great values.
“Religion’s just got to be there, even though people are mocking us, and for ages they’ve been predicting our decline.”
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27 December, 2023
Two teenage girls visiting from South America were attacked and stabbed while having lunch in the dining concourse of Grand Central Terminal
This animal had a long record so should have been kept in jail. It is Leftist leniency towards criminals that is responsible for this attack. Fortunately, the victims lived
Two teenage girls on vacation from South America have been stabbed while eating at Grand Central Terminal's dining concourse by a suspect saying 'I want all the white people dead.'
The girls, aged 14 and 16, were touring the city with their parents when they were suddenly attacked.
The stabbing happened around 11:25am on Christmas when the family had stopped for an early lunch.
The suspect, identified as 36-year-old Steven Hutcherson of the Bronx, allegedly told the girls, 'I want all the white people dead.'
Hutcherson is believed to have gotten into an argument with staff at Tartinery who told him he could not sit in the restaurant's seating area. That argument led to the attack on the innocent girls.
When Hutcherson complained that the two victims were being allowed to sit in the restaurant, he allegedly pulled out a knife and stabbed them both.
Hutcherson was arrested in under a minute as MTA police swooped in from their nearby posts.
One of the girls was stabbed in the thigh while the other was stabbed in the back, nicking her lung.
Both victims were taken to Bellevue Hospital.
Hutcherson has an extensive criminal record and has been charged with attempted murder, assault, criminal possession of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child.
He is known as an emotionally disturbed person with an arrest record by both the MTA police and NYPD.
In his most recent brush with the law, Hutcherson was arrested twice in the last six months for intimidating people while brandishing a gun in the Bronx.
He pleaded guilty to both his weapons possession arrests from November 7 and July 24.
For his July office he was given a 15-day jail sentence, while for November he was given a conditional discharge together with a temporary restraining order against his victim.
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Old Glory Bank May Be More Necessary by the Day
In a recent telephone interview and some subsequent emails with its Chief Strategy Officer Eric Ohlhausen, I learned more reasons people might want to open accounts at this bank that says they won’t let you be cancelled financially.
As they write on their website, “We stand for you. No matter where you stand.”
This seems particularly important on Dec. 18, the day the Federalist’s Sean Davis wrote on X that the administration is taking down the Reconciliation Memorial (that celebrates national unity post-Civil War) at Arlington Cemetery—yet another sign, as Mr. Davis puts it, “The modern American left has zero interest in reconciliation with anyone in this country who opposes their political agenda.”
So mind your money. They could be coming for it next in a variety of ways.
Which leads me back to the Old Glory Bank.
But before I get into the latest additions to their offerings, I have to be clear I immediately asked Mr. Ohlhausen about what many regard as the most perilous financial danger of all—the looming specter of digital currency under which the government could arguably monitor and control all our spending.
The answer, unfortunately, was they were unable to do anything about that—thus far, anyway. It would have been a big ask for any private party.
On the positive side, however, there is this to report.
Old Glory now has a “Cash-IN” program through which, using their mobile app, one can deposit cash up to $2,000 per day at any of 90,000 retail locations across the country (Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, Dollar General, and others).
Mr. Ohlhausen argued this makes them considerably more convenient than traditional banks. The top five branch banks in numbers—Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, PNC, and US Bank—have fewer than 20,000 locations where cash can be deposited.
This should be particularly useful to those who earn significant portions of their income through tips, the gig economy, and so forth.
Regarding those big banks, there is much about which to be concerned. According to the New York Post (May 2019), JP Morgan Chase has been accused of purging the accounts of conservative activists Enrique Tarrio, Joe Biggs, Laura Loomer, and Martina Markota.
The same bank cancelled well known activist and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza’s business credit card.
But it’s more than Chase. Citigroup and Bank of America have cut ties to the gun industry.
A yet bigger problem may be the vaunted PayPal that is nearly ubiquitous.
Three of its hugely successful entrepreneur founders—Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks—have turned critical of the platform they helped invent, and for good reason.
According to Rupa Subramanya of the Free Press, PayPal has been cancelling such accounts as Freedom Phone, various COVID-19 and gender critics, including Gays against Groomers. I no longer use PayPal myself.
Old Glory Bank has come up with a solution, initiating their own system, Old Glory Pay. This is a closed-door loop, peer-to-peer payments platform for Old Glory Bank customers with no other financial institutions involved.
As the bank expands, and it is, nationally, this will become increasingly useful as no industries are excluded, as PayPal does with firearms manufacturers.
This system may end up the most important contribution of Old Glory Bank.
Mr. Ohlhausen reassured me his bank is doing the other normal things that banks do—make small business loans, have various checking and savings accounts, write mortgages and so forth.
Regarding the mortgages, I was told their rates were “competitive.”
No help there, alas.
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Hallelujah! Congress is barely passing ANY new laws — and that’s a good thing
The DC-obsessed crew at Axios just flagged the current, 118th, Congress as the “most unproductive in modern history,” having only passed 20 bills this year (with four more on President Biden’s desk).
Weirdly, they treat that as a bad thing.
Sure, the country has plenty of problems, but “more bills” almost always means more trouble for the American public — a conveyer belt of pork-filled legislation that increases the ever-growing debt and hands more power to government bureaucrats.
Just look at the highly “productive,” Democratic-led 117th Congress (2021-3), which enacted an eye-popping 364 laws while enabling Joe Biden to spend more than any president in history.
The hilariously misnamed American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act set taxpayers back several trillion bucks, triggering inflation unseen in this country for decades, to splurge on progressive priorities including “green” subsidies that alone could cost an estimated $1.2 trillion — largely enriching connected insiders without getting America significantly closer to the carbon-free utopia of lefty dreams.
There’s a reason Democrats from Biden on down have stopped using the word “Bidenomics.”
Plus, of course, voters in late 2021 chose a (barely) Republican House and an (also barely) Democratic Senate, an excellent recipe for standoffs that makes passing any laws beyond difficult.
That the prez generally refuses to compromise with the GOP except when it lets him spend more only further gums up the works.
The job of Republicans in Congress is to rein in spending, taxes and all other federal overreach — and if they can’t, to at least slap Democrats’ hands when they try to reach deeper into Americans’ pocketbooks.
Passing the bare minimum of bills to keep the country chugging along (along with more bills that the Dem Senate rejects because they’d shrink spending) is a pretty fine record for Republicans who only control half of a single branch of the federal government.
We’d love another Reagan Revolution, but the last thing America needs right now is Washington-business-as-usual booming.
By comparison, gridlock is great. Least productive? Take it as a compliment.
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‘Two-Parent Privilege’ author sounds off on concerning marriage trend’s harmful impact on children
One author is explaining why the ultimate privilege is being born into a two-parent household and why the decline in marriage should cause concern.
“This is something as an economic matter, not as a value-laden or moral proposition we should all be really concerned about,” Melissa Kearney stressed during her appearance on Fox News Thursday.
The “Two-Parent Privilege,” author and economist suggests that the decline of two-parent households is driving “class gaps in kids’ opportunities, experiences and household resources.“
“We have mounds of evidence and data and objective studies showing that kids who grow up with the benefit of two parents in their home, their homes are characterized by higher levels of resources,” Kearney told “America’s Newsroom.”
She went on to explain that “more parental supervision and more stability” yield better outcomes for children.
“This is why, from an inequality perspective, this matters so much, because the class and racial gaps in kids’ access really to having a stable, highly resourced two-parent home are driving a lot of these class and racial gaps in society,” the author said.
“If we don’t break this, we should not be surprised that we’re sort of cementing advantage and disadvantage across race and class groups in America.”
Kearney argued that the way to move forward is to “commit to strengthening families” so “more kids are set up on a path to reach their human capital potential.”
If given the opportunity to change this downward trend across the U.S., Kearney suggested an increase in public funding, research and throwing support behind a policy committed to helping families.
https://nypost.com/2023/12/23/lifestyle/new-book-details-economic-benefits-of-two-parent-households/
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21 December, 2023
< Is the Pope a heretic?
He blesses practices that are "an abomination unto the Lord" (Leviticus 18:22). There have been other bad Popes
Conservative Catholic bishops in various countries have objected to Pope Francis’ recent permission on blessings for gay couples, underscoring the divisiveness of the issue in the global church.
The bishops of Zambia, Malawi and the principal archdiocese of Kazakhstan prohibited their priests from offering such blessings. The bishops of Ukraine lamented what they called a recent Vatican declaration’s wording, which they warned could suggest approval of gay behaviour.
Meanwhile, bishops in some European countries including Germany, Austria and Switzerland welcomed the new policy.
On Monday, the Vatican issued guidelines for the blessing of gay couples, saying that such ceremonies are permitted as long as they don’t imply that same-sex relationships are the equivalent of heterosexual marriage. Monday’s declaration confirmed and elaborated on a letter by the pope released in October.
The Zambian bishops declared in response that they would not implement the new Vatican guidelines, “in order to avoid any pastoral confusion and ambiguity as well as not to break the law of our country which forbids same sex unions and activities, and while listening to our cultural heritage which does not accept same sex relationships.” In his Christmas speech to Vatican officials on Thursday morning, Francis didn’t mention the policy on blessings, but called for vigilance “against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward.”
Francis has taken a conciliatory approach to LGBTQ people, without formally changing church teaching, which holds that gay acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.” In 2021, he approved a Vatican statement prohibiting blessings on the grounds that God “cannot bless sin,” but he reversed the ban this year.
Catholic priests in Germany and some other northern European countries have for years held ceremonies to bless same-sex couples, in defiance of the Vatican’s earlier ban.
In March, Germany’s Catholic bishops voted in favour of adopting formal ceremonies to bless same-sex relationships. Bishop Georg Bätzing, head of the German bishops’ conference, expressed gratitude for the new Vatican guidelines this week, even though they specify that blessings of gay couples must be spontaneous and not part of the official liturgy.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which largely opposes Francis’ liberalising agenda, issued a terse response to Monday’s guidelines from the Vatican, stressing that the document didn’t change the church’s teaching on marriage.
Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston, Minn., described the declaration as speaking “about offering blessings to people who currently live outside of the way of life commanded by Jesus.” Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, one of the progressive minority in the US episcopate, said: “Here in the Archdiocese of Chicago, we welcome this declaration, which will help many more in our community feel the closeness and compassion of God.” Some Catholic prelates have warned that the issue could provoke a schism, or permanent split in the church, pointing to the more stark divergences over homosexuality in the Anglican Communion.
Conservative Anglican churches, including some in Africa that include nearly half of the world’s estimated 100 million Anglicans, have broken off relations with sister churches that espouse liberal teaching and practice on homosexuality, including the Episcopal Church in the US.
In February, a dozen leading Anglican archbishops, mostly from the global South, called for a break with the Church of England, the historical progenitor of the denomination, after it decided to allow the blessing of same-sex relationships.
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Children of conservative parents are at lower risk of mental illness, study finds: Just 55 percent of adolescents with liberal guardians report 'good or excellent' mental health - compared to 77 percent of those from a right-wing household
Leftists are angry people who hate the world they live in. No wonder their children are unhappy too
A new report shows children raised by conservative parents are at a lower risk of having mental problems than those with progressive upbringings.
The nonpartisan study was conducted by the Brookings Institution, Gallup and the Institute for Family Studies and notes that while, ultimately, a parenting style most determines a relationship with kids, there are differences in liberal and conservative parents.
When asked, only 55 percent of the adolescents of liberal parents reported good or excellent mental health, whereas 77 percent of those with conservative or very conservative parents said they had good or excellent mental health.
'Adolescents with very conservative parents are 16 to 17 percentage points more likely to be in good or excellent mental health compared to their peers with very liberal parents' as a result,
There's is also a gap of 14 percentage points between 'very liberal' and 'very conservative' parents when it comes to whether they are in a good relationship with their adolescent child.
'Very conservative parents, on average, enjoy the strongest relationships with their adolescent children, and liberals experience the worst,' Rothwell claims.
The study tried to research the parent-child relationship from both sides, asking both parents and children survey questions.
'This relationship between conservativism and parenting remains significant even after controlling for an extensive list of parental demographic and socio-economic measures,' he writes.
Rothwell claims conservative parents are more likely to use more traditionally effective parenting strategies than liberals. Conservatives are more likely to 'effectively discipline their children, while also displaying affection and responding to their needs.'
The study believes conservative parents also value their own marriages more which provides a better relationship with kids as they grown into teens.
Parents who use an 'authoritative' parenting style have more mentally healthy kids, which conservatives are more likely to use.
There are two parenting styles that Rothwell says leads to bad outcomes, defined as 'authoritarian' and 'permissive.'
'Authoritative' is described by the study as 'warm, responsive, and rule-bound, disciplined parenting.'
'Authoritarian' is seen as more 'cold or harsh.'
The study was done after the Children's Hospital Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry declared 'a national state of emergency in child and adolescent mental health' in 2021.
They found that 42 percent of all high school students experienced 'persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness,' including 60 percent of teen girls.
From 2007 to 2021, youth suicide skyrocketed a staggering 62 percent.
They also argue that COVID has been detrimental to adolescent mental health, with teenagers dying 18 times more from despair than the virus between 2020 and 2023.
'Mental health problems in early adolescence predict mental health problems in adulthood, with wide-ranging implications for individuals, families, communities, and society,' Rothwell writes.
'One's capacity for developing and maintaining relationships and participating productively and competently in social affairs' is largely dependent on that individual's mental state during adolescence.'
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The Rise of Black Support for Trump
Fearing backlash, some black people feel they can only whisper, "I'm voting for Trump." But others are becoming louder and prouder in voicing support for former President Donald Trump.
Mark Fisher, co-founder of a Black Lives Matter (BLM) group in Rhode Island, made waves recently with his endorsement of the former president. "I knew I was going to pay a price for it," Mr. Fisher told The Epoch Times, "but I felt like the benefit of doing it far outweighed the cost of me playing it safe."
Mr. Fisher said he felt obligated "to clear a path" for those who think the way he does. He and other pro-Trump black people are considered renegades.
That's partly because President Trump's foes have tried to brand him as a racist unworthy of votes from black Americans. But it's also because he's a Republican.
For generations, black leaders and churches have encouraged black people to vote for Democrats, including President Joe Biden.
But the tide seems to be turning. Opinion polls are showing that more black people are willing to break rank, as Mr. Fisher did.
Since President Trump's win in 2016, black support for him has more than tripled, now exceeding 20 percent in some surveys.
Polling suggests that black people and other minorities who once spurned President Trump now appear willing to give his candidacy a fresh look—a trend that could help spell the difference between victory and defeat in the 2024 election.
Three main factors appear to be spurring black people to pivot toward President Trump, according to Mr. Fisher and others who spoke to The Epoch Times: the economy, the criminal justice system, and the influence of other black people going public with their support.
Americans are continuing to feel the pinch of economic conditions under President Biden. Just about everyone, regardless of skin color, feels the weight of higher prices for groceries, gasoline, housing, and other essentials; for months, polls have been showing that a vast majority of citizens disapprove of the president's economic policies, dubbed "Bidenomics."
People are also noticing the justice system's seemingly unjust treatment of President Trump—a fate many black people have experienced.
"They're saying to themselves: 'Now wait a minute; this looks very familiar,'" Mr. Fisher said. "Subconsciously, that's a powerful thing."
Black people also lament that authorities are letting violent crime and illegal immigrants run amok, while they're targeting President Trump and others for alleged nonviolent offenses.
Having prominent black people, including musicians, revealing pro-Trump opinions, has emboldened others to do the same.
Mr. Fisher said these endorsements made him feel he wasn't alone; those trailblazers inspired him to come out of the shadows.
"I saw other black people expressing themselves, displaying courage and independent thought, not being afraid of what other people think about them," he said. "And I felt that my community needed me to do that too."
Strong Reactions
Although Mr. Fisher said he "took a lot of heat" for endorsing President Trump, he also got "a lot of powerful, impactful, and profound messages from people all around the world," along with interview requests from as far away as Japan.
President Trump thanked Mr. Fisher with a surprise phone call and a dinner invitation. Some people excoriated the former president for doing so, considering Mr. Fisher's history with BLM.
President Trump and BLM have accused each other of sowing seeds of hatred and violence.
"I feel like the white racists hate me and the black racists hate me," Mr. Fisher said. "But what I'm doing is separating the wheat from the chaff. I'm creating a safe space for all those who want to be on the right side of history, who want to come together for the betterment of America and improvement of the people of America.
"People are welcome to join in on that vision, or walk away from it. It's that simple."
This fall, before Mr. Fisher revealed his support for President Trump, black rapper Waka Flocka Flame posted a profile picture of himself alongside President Trump on X, formerly Twitter. Separately, he posted: "TRUMP2024."
The photo attracted at least 13.5 million views. It also sparked controversy for the rapper, who had previously made derogatory remarks about the former president.
Top Trump adviser Bruce LeVell told The Epoch Times that the musical artist had quietly begun shifting toward the former president some time ago; Mr. LeVell and Waka Flocka Flame met in 2022 and posed for a photo together.
Being Informed
Other black people, whether prominent or not, are starting to realize that Big Tech companies and government agencies worked together to suppress and twist information about President Trump, other political figures, and many hot-button issues in society, Mr. LeVell said.
“This is, as I call it, ‘The Season of Exposure,’" he said. "And the great lies are being exposed."
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/the-rise-of-black-support-for-trump-5515133
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Mealy-mouthed slacktivists fail Israelis and Palestinians
On the night of April 14, 2014, Islamic terrorists stormed a government girls’ secondary school in Chibok, Nigeria, kidnapping 276 mostly Christian young girls aged between 16 and 18. This horrendous act gave rise to a global movement identified primarily by the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Oh, it was a thing all right. All of Hollywood and its hangers-on lent their names to the cause.
In a shocking plot twist, the terrorist group Boko Haram did not capitulate when confronted with the full force of highly stylised Instagram posts. #BringBackOur girls was a campaign stellar in visibility, negligent in terms of impact. It was also a powerful example of slacktivism at its finest. As of 2021, 112 of the Chibok schoolgirls were still missing.
Slacktivism: The appearance of standing for something but with absolutely nothing of substance at play and zero cost to the individual or organisation. It usually comes with a healthy dose of signalling virtue.
This is what we’re seeing play out in Australia and across the world as the war against Hamas continues. From a range of social media and reality TV stars who fancy themselves as geopolitically savvy, whose ignorance is matched only by hubris, to governments who talk a big game but can’t back it up.
Free Palestine. From the river to the Sea. All lives matter (more on that one in a moment).
Israel paid the greatest price on October 7 and continues to do so. What nobody seems to have the courage to say is that Israel is doing what the West has been to weak, possibly too lazy and too cowardly to do for decades – confront and eliminate Hamas. The same Hamas that hasn’t held an election in Gaza since 2006. The same Hamas that this government declared to be a terror organisation last year.
Free Palestine? Yes! From the tyranny of a terrorist government and if you think that will happen via diplomacy or without conflict, you are no student of history.
Israel is doing the world’s heavy lifting. To deny that is to deny the truth and by extension to say that countries such as Australia, Britain, New Zealand, the US, liberal Western democracies, would willingly invite Hamas to our shores, into our schools, homes and parliaments.
If that is your view, then you are not my countryman. You have a different hope for Australia’s future than I do.
Imagine if in the days following October 7 the global community had immediately demanded Hamas return all hostages, surrender those responsible and have them tried in The Hague for war crimes. This war would be long over and so many civilian lives in Gaza saved.
But slacktivism. The world said: we condemn this brutality. It also said: Israel, go easy on them because all lives matter. Sure, they do. Until of course they don’t. Do the lives of the 138 hostages still hidden in Gaza matter more than those of the Hamas animals keeping them captive? Did the lives of the slain Nova concertgoers matter more than those of the savages who gleefully filmed themselves committing wholesale rape and slaughter?
Does the life of a Palestinian child matter more than terrorists who use his school as a cover? I could go on.
Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people, displaced more than two million in the past decade. In Syria, the Assad regime systematically murders its citizens without so much as a hashtag to contend with.
According to the Syrian network for Human Rights, 501 civilians, including 71 children and 42 women were murdered by documented events of torture in the first half of this year. That’s before you go back over the past decade and count the thousands of victims, many being Palestinians.
Their lives mattered, but not enough to spark a global movement against Syria. No boycott, divestment and sanctions movement; no protests. Nobody saying that Syria shouldn’t exist.
Obviously, Palestinian lives matter. But Palestinian lives in Gaza matter more than the ones in Syria, and more than the Christian girls taken hostage in Nigeria – am I doing it right? The only lives that have been devalued are Israeli dead and the still languishing hostages.
It is unquestionably clear that there is a singular reason the professional activist class has galvanised behind Palestinian Gaza, post-October 7.
I want to propose it’s not for the love of a people, it’s because of an incomprehensible hatred of Israel. A free Palestinian people cannot happen without the end of Hamas and the only nation committed to that outcome is Israel.
Oh, but the fear and (self) loathing in Australia and elsewhere (Ie, writ large in word, deed and indefensible actions of hatred and anti-Semitism. The absolute nonsense, historically illiterate silliness coming out of the mouths of so many. It’s easy, I suppose, when there’s no price to pay.
This is a level of blindness that has nothing to do with the biological function of sight. This is what it looks like. It’s what causes people to say that Israel has no right to defend itself. What great price, their freedom.
There is always a cost, for everything. It’s like the person who wants to run a marathon but instead of training, lies on the couch eating chips, or the person who wants a loving healthy relationship but won’t face their own heart and do the work.
Life is full of these complex situations but rarely has one been so clear in the line between right and wrong. An email I received this week, one of many, broke my heart and I share it with permission.
“My kids have grown up thinking it’s normal to have armed guards and policemen manning the doors of our synagogue. How shocking is that in Australia? … Now I lie awake at night wondering how to keep my children safe. Racists will always be around. But when our government, academic, artistic and education institutes start apologising and enabling intolerance … it’s terrifying.”
Each day this war continues, there is more collateral damage like this family. Half a world away, innocent Palestinians are failed by an international community that has chosen words over action at every step.
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21 December, 2023
"Healthy" eating won't save you
The study below is very desperate to come to politically correct conclusions. They looked at extreme quintiles only, which means that they ignored the majority of their data. And even after that they found only minute Hazard Ratios.
The real conclusion of the study is that "healthy" eating confers no health benefits. It is doubtlful if anyone knows what healty eating is. There have been many records of people thriving on quite extreme diets -- Traditional Eskimos, for instance
Healthy Eating Patterns and Risk of Total and Cause-Specific Mortality
Zhilei Shan, MD et al.
Question Is there an association between Dietary Guidelines for Americans–recommended dietary patterns with total and cause-specific mortality?
Findings In this cohort study of 75 230 women from the Nurses’ Health Study (1984-2020) and 44 085 men from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1986-2020), greater adherence to several healthy eating patterns was associated with a lower risk of death. These associations were consistent in different racial and ethnic groups, including Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic White individuals.
Meaning These findings support the recommendations of Dietary Guidelines for Americans that multiple healthy eating patterns can be adapted to individual food traditions and preferences.
Abstract
Importance The current Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend multiple healthy eating patterns. However, few studies have examined the associations of adherence to different dietary patterns with long-term risk of total and cause-specific mortality.
Objective To examine the associations of dietary scores for 4 healthy eating patterns with risk of total and cause-specific mortality.
Design, Setting, and Participants This prospective cohort study included initially healthy women from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS; 1984-2020) and men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS; 1986-2020).
Exposures Healthy Eating Index 2015 (HEI-2015), Alternate Mediterranean Diet (AMED) score, Healthful Plant-based Diet Index (HPDI), and Alternate Healthy Eating Index (AHEI).
Main Outcomes and Measures The main outcomes were total and cause-specific mortality overall and stratified by race and ethnicity and other potential risk factors.
Results The final study sample included 75 230 women from the NHS (mean [SD] baseline age, 50.2 [7.2] years) and 44 085 men from the HPFS (mean [SD] baseline age, 53.3 [9.6] years). During a total of 3 559 056 person-years of follow-up, 31 263 women and 22 900 men died. When comparing the highest with the lowest quintiles, the pooled multivariable-adjusted HRs of total mortality were 0.81 (95% CI, 0.79-0.84) for HEI-2015, 0.82 (95% CI, 0.79-0.84) for AMED score, 0.86 (95% CI, 0.83-0.89) for HPDI, and 0.80 (95% CI, 0.77-0.82) for AHEI (P < .001 for trend for all). All dietary scores were significantly inversely associated with death from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and respiratory disease. The AMED score and AHEI were inversely associated with mortality from neurodegenerative disease. The inverse associations between these scores and risk of mortality were consistent in different racial and ethnic groups, including Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic White individuals.
Conclusions and Relevance In this cohort study of 2 large prospective cohorts with up to 36 years of follow-up, greater adherence to various healthy eating patterns was consistently associated with lower risk of total and cause-specific mortality. These findings support the recommendations of Dietary Guidelines for Americans that multiple healthy eating patterns can be adapted to individual food traditions and preferences.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2800411
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Lauren Sanchez shows off her enviable curves in an orange bikini and TINY tweed shorts as she strolls hand-in-hand with Jeff Bezos in St. Barts
Her boob job has certainly been a great investment for her
Lauren Sanchez showed off her toned physique in an orange bikini top and tiny shorts while enjoying a pre-holiday getaway in St. Barts with her billionaire fiancé, Jeff Bezos.
The former news anchor and the Amazon founder were spotted walking hand in hand on the French-speaking Caribbean island on Sunday, a few days before her 54th birthday.
Sanchez initially had on a Chanel Formula 1 T-shirt that retails for a whopping $4,450, which she had altered into a crop top to reveal her stomach.
She paired the tee from the French luxury label's Cruise 2022/23 collection with pink and tan tweet shorts that also appeared to be Chanel.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12882211/lauren-sanchez-bikini-st-barts-jeff-bezos.html
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Progressive Dem who defunded Austin Police ripped for requesting police patrols at home: 'Height of hypocrisy'
A progressive congressman associated with "The Squad" who proudly voted to defund the Austin Police Department as a city council member and blasted the department just last week for alleged racist practices is under fire after requesting a police patrol at his home from the same department.
"It’s come to our attention that Anti police king of the defund movement in Austin @GregCasar who only last week called APD an agency with racist practices has requested enhanced patrols around his house for the next week," the Austin Police Retired Officers Association posted on X Tuesday.
"We want everyone in Austin to feel safe," the post added. "But this seems to us as the height of hypocrisy from the congressman. Maybe he should hire private security like his fellow squad members do. Sure seems like he wants the police in his neighborhood just not yours."
Casar's request was made through the United States Capitol Police in Washington, D.C., which forwarded the request to the Austin Police Department.
Casar was perhaps the most vocal driver of defunding the Austin Police Department in 2020 while he was a member of the city council. It led to a police shortage and a wave of officer retirements that critics say the city has still not recovered from.
"We did it!!" Casar posted on X in August 2020. "Austin City Council just reduced APD's budget by over $100 million *and* reinvested resources into our community's safety and well-being."
Additionally, Casar sent a letter last week to the Justice Department criticizing practices within the Austin Police Department, highlighting the "need for systemic reforms to the Department's policies and practices of excessive and lethal use of force, racial discrimination, and discrimination against people with mental health conditions."
News of the request for the security detail, which was confirmed by Fox News Digital, drew immediate criticism from Austin residents on social media, many suggesting the request was an example of hypocrisy.
"So @GregCasar believes APD is a racist institution that requires DOJ oversight but then requests more APD patrols around his house," Austin personal injury attorney Adam Loewy posted on X. "Interesting juxtaposition."
"Greg Casar is a fraud," Travis County GOP Chairman Matt Mackowiak posted on X.
Dennis Farris, president of the Austin Police Retired Officers Association, told Fox News Digital he believes Casar should receive extra protection if there are officers available to do it and there is a credible threat but added the request is the "height of hypocrisy."
"A week ago, he was calling the Austin Police Department a racist department that targeted Black and brown people, and this week he's asking the exact same department to do enhanced patrols around his house," Farris said.
"It doesn't matter what political party they're in. If they ask us for our help, we will give it to them," Farris added. "The last thing we want is something happening to them. My issue with it and the issue that most of my members are going to have with it is the fact that this guy, you know, it's the whole squad thing, right? It's the whole, 'We hate the cops, we hate the cops, we hate the cops. Oh, please, come help us now.' He is the architect. He is the architect of defund the cops in Austin. He started this whole mess."
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Authoritarian? Conservatives Want to Restore the Constitution. The Left Can’t Handle It.
The Constitution created three branches in the federal government: the legislature to make the laws, the executive branch to enforce the laws, and the judiciary to settle disputes about the laws. Yet the federal government we know and very much do not love doesn’t operate the way the Constitution says it should.
Instead, unelected bureaucrats write more rules than Congress does, the president cannot fire bureaucrats who oppose his efforts to keep his promises to the people, and the Supreme Court has unilaterally rewritten the Constitution on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and gender ideology.
Conservatives have launched many efforts to restore the federal government to the way the Constitution says it should work, but the Left has increasingly demonized those efforts as backward, racist, or—more recently—a form of authoritarianism.
In The New York Times, Maggie Haberman wrote: “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First.” Among other things, Haberman warned that former President Donald Trump, were he to win the presidential election next year, “would seek to expand presidential power in myriad ways—concentrating greater authority over the executive branch in the White House, ending the independence of agencies Congress set up to operate outside of presidential control and reducing civil service protections to make it easier to fire and replace tens of thousands of government workers.”
Haberman seems not to remember how Trump’s administration fought against him in unjustified ways, operating as a “deep state” to prevent him from fulfilling his campaign promises. Preventing the executive branch from operating in this way is not a form of authoritarianism but an effort to bring bureaucrats back under the control of the voters’ elected representative.
Trump’s Agenda 47 and Project 2025, a conservative movement project led by The Heritage Foundation, aim to empower a conservative president to fire executive branch workers who would oppose the president’s goals. (The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundation’s news outlet.)
Another key conservative reform, the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, or REINS Act, would require Congress to pass regulations that would significantly impact the U.S. economy.
President Joe Biden’s White House pledged to veto the REINS Act if Congress were to pass it. The Office of Management and Budget said the act “would undermine agencies’ efforts by inserting into the regulatory process an unwieldy, unnecessary, and time-consuming hurdle that would prevent implementation of critical safeguards that protect public safety, grow our economy, and advance the public interest.”
While the Left frames these conservative reforms as “authoritarian,” Biden tried to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for certain borrowers, with the stroke of his pen. The Education Department estimated that this would cost $305 billion in the next 10 years. Had the Supreme Court not ruled the plan unconstitutional, the student loan bailout would have inflated college costs, hindered economic growth, rewarded increasingly woke universities, and benefitted upper-income earners at the expense of those who didn’t go to college or who paid off their loans.
Biden has made similarly unilateral moves to push his transgender orthodoxy and his climate alarmist agenda. Ironically, the president faces his own kind of “deep state,” bureaucrats who are opposing his pro-Israel rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the Left has orchestrated a campaign to delegitimize the Supreme Court, with outfits like ProPublica targeting justices such as Clarence Thomas.
The Left has attacked Thomas in part because the court’s majority now supports originalism, the view that the Supreme Court should uphold the original public meaning of the Constitution, as opposed to reinterpreting the text to achieve the Left’s goals.
Originalism grew as a reaction to the court’s decisions in cases such as Roe v. Wade (1973) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which twisted passages in the Constitution out of recognition to create new rights that the Founders and those who later amended the Constitution at the time of the 14th Amendment would have opposed.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., unwittingly revealed why the Left opposes originalism. He tweeted in 2020, “Originalism is racist. Originalism is sexist. Originalism is homophobic. Originalism is just a fancy word for discrimination.”
Markey’s problem isn’t Originalism—it’s that he isn’t willing to get his efforts opposing “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” and “discrimination” through Congress, the body that makes law, according to the Constitution. He’d rather have the Supreme Court dictate his preferred agenda, and he opposes the good-government reforms that make it harder for nine unelected judges to create new laws.
The Left’s attacks on the Supreme Court represent an obnoxious tantrum after the nation’s highest court has—at least for now—rejected its old modus operandi of writing the Left’s agenda into the Constitution. Now, the court increasingly calls balls and strikes, in ways that frustrate both sides of the aisle but more closely represent the Founders’ vision.
Efforts to rein in the deep state and encourage Congress to make laws, rather than passing off that duty to bureaucrats, echo the originalist movement in the judiciary. These reforms aren’t aimed at authoritarianism or gumming up the works—they’re aimed at making the federal government more accountable to the people once again.
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"Believe the woman": Innocent Australian men prosecuted as a result
The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions is a woman, Sally Dowling SC.
A third man accused of sexual assault by a woman who has made multiple “pattern” rape allegations will walk free after NSW’s Office of Public Prosecutions discontinued proceedings, just weeks after a damning court judgment called on prosecutors to re-examine her claims.
Charges against the accused – known as JM – are set to be formally withdrawn in court amid scrutiny on the ODPP, which has been accused of taking a “lazy and perhaps politically expedient” approach to prosecutorial decisions.
The prosecution of JM follows the acquittal of two other men who faced near-identical allegations they had sexually assaulted the complainant, who claimed she was too drunk to consent.
But a District Court judge earlier this month found the woman had an “idiosyncratic” and erroneous view of what constituted sexual assault which was not challenged by prosecutors, who put the cases before a jury in what was labelled a miscarriage of justice. The woman had earlier pursued other criminal complaints against a string of other men.
After confirming late on Monday that the case against JM was proceeding despite District Court judge Robert Newlinds calling on prosecutors to “join the dots” and critically analyse the woman’s claims, the ODPP has now confirmed the prosecution has been discontinued.
“The reasons for discontinuing an individual prosecution are privileged and will not be disclosed,” the office said in a statement. “The ODPP is not aware of further prosecutions currently on foot involving the same complainant.
“The decision to proceed with or terminate any prosecution is taken carefully and in accordance with the Prosecution Guidelines. Factors taken into account include matters relating to the victim, the accused and the offence.
“Factors which are irrelevant to the decision include political, individual or sectional interests, including media coverage or public sentiment.”
The discontinuance of the prosecution against JM comes after Judge Newlinds registered a “deep level of concern” over the abrogation of the prosecutor’s duty to interrogate complainants’ allegations amid concerns the ODPP was putting hopeless cases before juries and called upon prosectors to stop further prosecutions of men as a result of allegations levelled by the complainant who had gone to police about a string of men, at least six of whom faced charges in court.
“I think the prosecution took the lazy and perhaps politically expedient course of identifying that the complainant alleged she had been sexually assaulted and without properly considering the question of whether there was any evidence to support that allegation, and just prosecuted so as to let the jury decide,” he said in a costs judgment in the case of R v Martinez, which was dismissed by a jury after one hour of deliberation earlier this month.
“This must stop. Justice has not been served and will not be served by repeated cases being prosecuted based on obviously flawed evidence.”
In the Martinez case, the complainant had alleged she was sexually assaulted because she had been drunk and could not remember the evening in question. However, the court heard that she had initiated sex and enthusiastically consented.
Another case against a defendant dubbed AS also went before a jury in November, with that accused also acquitted. The case against AS involved a very similar scenario, and Judge Newlinds said the men could not receive a fair trial because the jury was prevented from hearing details of the complainant’s history of accusing multiple men.
NSW DPP Sally Dowling SC, responded angrily to the criticism levelled by Judge Newlinds, issuing a statement saying the ODPP would make a complaint to the Judicial Commission.
“The ODPP unequivocally rejects any suggestion that it makes prosecution decisions lazily or on the basis of political expedience, or that it operates according to ‘some sort of unwritten policy’, as the judge has speculated,” the ODPP said in a statement.
“Such remarks unfairly impugn the integrity of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the staff of the ODPP.”
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20 December, 2023
Gaza hospital director reveals secret Hamas base as death toll nears 20,000
The director of a northern Gaza hospital admitted under interrogation that Hamas turned his Jabaliya facility into a key military hub used to launch attacks against Israel and imprison hostages.
In a video released by the Israeli Defence Force, the Hamas-linked head of the Kamal Adwan hospital told interrogators that Hamas had offices in the building and that 16 hospital doctors, nurses and paramedics served in the militant Al Qassam Brigades.
Ahmed Kahlot, who claimed to be a lieutenant colonel in Hamas since 2010, made the admission under interrogation by the Shin Bet intelligence agency. It was unknown what interrogation conditions or questioning led to the apparent confession.
“They hide in hospitals because they believe that hospitals are a safe place,” Kahlot told the Shin Bet interrogator.
“They will not be harmed if they are inside a hospital.”
He added that members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades were also employed in the hospital.
The IDF seized about 90 prisoners and weapons after Israeli troops took control of the hospital on December 12. Some of those captured participated in the October 7 massacre, according to an IDF statement, with at least one hostage taken back to the hospital.
“There are places for senior officials. They also brought a kidnapped soldier there,” he said, according to a The Times of Israel translation.
“There is a designated space for interrogations, internal security and special security. They all have private phone lines within the hospital.
“The leaders of Hamas are cowards,” he said. “They left us in the field while they’re hiding in concealed places. They destroyed us.”
The Hamas terror organisation claims at least 19,667 people had been killed in the Israel-Hamas war in the Palestinian territory since October 7.
According to the ministry, 52,586 people in Gaza have been wounded in more than two months of fighting.
Israel’s says 132 troops have been killed in Gaza since its ground invasion began in late October.
The figures have not been independently verified.
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The Fight Against Gender Ideology Needs Strong Parents, Leaders, and Laws
Many detransitioners share that their parents...are told by doctors that social transition and medical interventions are the only way to protect their child.
The fight against gender ideology requires strong and courageous leaders who do not hesitate to use the legal power of the purse and the sword.
At Wednesday night’s GOP debate, presidential candidates Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Ron DeSantis faced off over numerous key issues, including the growing conflict with China, the high cost of living—and the fight against gender ideology. DeSantis, who passed multiple bills in Florida protecting children from gender ideology, hammered Haley and Christie on their seemingly hands-off legal approach.
In her appearance on CBS Mornings this week, Haley declined to take a stance on the federal role in protecting minors from medicalized gender treatments, instead deferring to parents. “What care should be on the table?” asked the host, “What should the law allow?” In response, Haley argued that “the law should stay out of it, and parents should handle it… And then when that child becomes 18, if they want to make more of a permanent change, they can do that.” It’s unclear if Haley is in favor of cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers—interventions that can cause irreversible damage to a developing body—with a parent’s approval.
Despite her soft answer on this issue, elsewhere Nikki Haley has indicated that she favors a federal ban on so-called sex change surgeries for minors. She also opposes taxpayer funding for transition surgeries.
Given her pro-woman platform, she signed the Concerned Women for America’s pledge to enforce sex-binary distinctions. Haley firmly committed to protect women in law and in women’s shelters, sports, prisons, and education. Her answer on women’s sports is particularly strong, calling the infiltration of male athletes “the women’s issue of our time.”
Still, DeSantis did not wait long in last night’s debate before criticizing her statement that the “law should stay out of it.”
In response to Haley’s initial rebuttal, DeSantis said,
She didn’t respond to the criticism; it wasn’t about the Parents Rights in Education bill. It was about prohibiting sex change operations on minors, they do puberty blockers, these are irreversible. Talk to Chloe Cole—she went through this, now [that] she’s an adult, she’s warning against it. She may never be able to have kids again. That is what Nikki Haley opposed.
DeSantis continued saying,
She said the law shouldn’t get involved in that, and I just asked you if you’re somebody that’s going to be the President of the United States, and you can’t stand up against child abuse, how are you going to be able to stand up for anything?”
Haley’s response illustrates the primary difference between her approach and DeSantis’s. “I never said that,” Haley responded. “I never said that. I said that if you have to be 18 to get a tattoo, you should have to be 18 to have anything done to change your gender.”
To some degree, it appears that DeSantis and others on social media may be misrepresenting Haley. Still, her “leave it to the parents” approach misses the point that doctors and a financially motivated pharmaceutical industry are among the biggest offenders in the fight against gender ideology.
Many detransitioners share that their parents—who in many cases are scared, working with limited medical resources, or whose second language is English—are told by doctors that social transition and medical interventions are the only way to protect their child. In many cases, as with Chloe Cole, the children are struggling with autism, poor mental health, sexual assault, or discomfort during puberty.
By saying the law should stay out of it, Nikki Haley is effectively giving doctors free reign to take advantage of vulnerable parents and children. Many doctors encourage cross-sex hormones, gender mutilating surgeries, or puberty blockers under the false claim that the latter is safe and reversible.
There is a big difference between a limited government and a weak government. Nikki Haley’s preference for the law to “stay out of it” puts the very parents and children she aims to protect at greater risk. We need the states and the federal government to protect the rights of both parents and children. Unless we have both, parents could lose custody of their children if they do not affirm their child’s stated “gender identity.” This is already happening in states like California.
The uncomfortable truth, too, is that some parents encourage their children to transition. As DeSantis argued in response to Chris Christie last night, “as a parent, you do not have the right to abuse your kids.” Parents have the right to use their God-ordained freedom for the best interests of their child; something parents are best equipped to understand and do. Still, the Bible places limits on such authority if they command someone to sin (Ephesians 6:1). The law should, too.
The fight against gender ideology requires strong and courageous leaders who do not hesitate to use the legal power of the purse and the sword to hold bad actors accountable for their actions.
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Why Inflation Hits Poor Americans Hardest
The difference in the composition of assets across the wealth distribution creates an uneven net inflation effect.
Accounting for these undesirable interactions shows that inflation hits poorest Americans the hardest, acting as a silent tax on those least able to pay it.
Eighty-two percent of Americans say that price increases are their biggest source of financial stress, according to a recent Financial Times–Michigan Ross poll. Only 14 percent, meantime, say that they are better off financially since President Joe Biden took office. Yet new data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances show that median household net worth grew 37 percent between 2019 and 2022, reaching the survey’s historical high. These seemingly contradictory data have commentators struggling to explain why strong wealth growth hasn’t translated into strong poll ratings for the president.
A new NBER working paper from Edward Wolff digs into the complex dynamics between inflation and wealth and helps resolve the paradox. While Wolff’s analysis is based on household data from 1983 to 2019, it is useful for understanding the popular reaction to the recent burst of high inflation.
Wolff’s results show that the “inflation tax”—defined as the difference between the nominal and real growth in income—falls unevenly across the rich, the middle class, and the working class because of differences in their asset composition. Some households near the median and at the top of the wealth distribution see a net benefit from inflation, while those with low wealth miss out on any opportunities to offset inflation’s costs.
Wolff tracks a new measure called net inflation gain, which divides household assets and liabilities between those that fall in value and those that rise in value due to inflation. Household assets that fall in value include wages, salaries, and other income sources set in dollar amounts. When the value of the dollar goes down, the real purchasing power of those income streams drops. That fall in value also hits liquid assets, which are short-term savings for upcoming spending. The drop in purchasing power is the most visible and recognizable effect of inflation.
Household assets that rise in value include real estate and business equity. The flip side of the dollar’s drop in value is that the same real assets can be sold for more dollars. That counts for businesses that produce real goods and services, and for the equity owners who get profits from those businesses. Households that own stock indirectly through mutual funds and pension plans benefit from this dynamic, as well.
Household debts that fall in value include student loans, mortgages, and consumer debt. When the dollar declines, debts with fixed dollar amounts are repaid in dollars that are worth less and thus cost the household less. Whether a household considers inflation a net positive or a net negative, therefore, depends on its net asset position, itself largely dependent on income.
Think about moving up the wealth distribution in four stages. At the first stage are those with low incomes and low net worth, who spend everything they make while taking on small amounts of debt and assets. To the extent that such households have assets, they are mostly cash.
In the second stage, the move to the middle class, households have sufficient income to take on larger debt to start building assets. Wealth here consists primarily of residential real estate. The middle three quintiles of the wealth distribution have 64 percent of their assets in their principal residences, financed by debt worth 28 percent of their assets.
Holding that high leverage is a calculated risk, though, so as households move to the third wealth stage, they pay down their debts and reduce leverage. While the middle three quintiles carry total debt worth 36 percent of assets, those between the 80th and 99th percentiles carry debt worth only 9 percent of assets.
At the highest levels of income and wealth, households start to accumulate significant assets without debt. The top 1 percent holds about 75 percent of its assets in stocks, securities, and unincorporated business equity, while carrying debt worth only 2 percent of assets.
The difference in the composition of assets across the wealth distribution creates an uneven net inflation effect. The inflation tax behaves as you might expect, increasing with each move to a higher wealth bracket. The inflation gain, on the other hand, displays an irregular pattern. Wolff shows that households in the bottom two quintiles gained little from inflation and suffered a net loss, but that Americans between the 40th and 80th percentiles benefitted, and the middle quintile experienced the most pronounced gain. With an inflation gain of $72,400 and a loss of $32,600, the middle quintile netted nearly $40,000 from inflation during the 1983–2019 period. The middle quintile sees this net inflation gain because of its high leverage: it owns assets that appreciate with inflation, financed by debt that depreciates with inflation. Households between the 80th and 99th percentiles, however, have less relative debt and thus were harmed on net by inflation.
But examining the top quintile reveals another interesting wrinkle: the top 1 percent of households had a net inflation gain of $63,400. So, while inflation saps the value of income and liquid savings, past a certain threshold of assets a household can become a net beneficiary from inflation.
The calculation of net inflation gain shows the power of real assets as a hedge against inflation. Unfortunately, many in the bottom two-fifths of the population haven’t earned enough to accumulate real assets and take shelter from the inflation tax.
The dynamics of net inflation gain help to explain the reaction to Bidenomics. While some in the middle class have happily watched the real value of their mortgages and student loans fall while their home values have risen, those on more modest incomes trying to stretch paychecks to afford rent, gas, and food see no silver lining. Inflation worsens the gap between the working class and the middle class.
Wolff’s working paper illustrates why more Americans need to start building wealth through owning capital assets. The housing market is more important than the stock market at the first rung of the wealth ladder because houses have relatively stable values and make good collateral for first-time borrowers. Ensuring a good supply of starter homes will help more Americans build assets and find protection from inflation.
Moreover, Wolff’s analysis shows the problems that arise when the government uses inflation to pay for spending beyond its tax revenue. The inflation tax distorts asset markets, revises the value of written contracts, and eats away at the real value of liquid savings. Accounting for these undesirable interactions shows that inflation hits poorest Americans the hardest, acting as a silent tax on those least able to pay it.
https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/why-inflation-hits-poor-americans-hardest
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Tennessee AG Promises Legal Action If Biden Admin Finalizes Transgender Foster Care Rule
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti says he “absolutely” will sue President Joe Biden’s administration if the Department of Health and Human Services finalizes a rule imposing gender ideology on foster parents.
“I’ll absolutely sue here if they go forward with this rule,” Skrmetti, a Republican, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. “Absolutely. We are not shy about suing to stop federal overreach.”
HHS’ Administration for Children and Families proposed a new rule Sept. 28 on “Safe and Appropriate Foster Care Placement Requirements” and allowed Americans to submit public comments by Nov. 27. Skrmetti submitted a comment, and 16 other state attorneys general signed on to it.
The HHS rule applies the idea that any lack of “affirmation” of a child’s self-declared gender identity constitutes a form of child abuse in foster care placements.
Before agencies place a child with a foster parent, known as a “provider,” that person must “establish an environment free of hostility, mistreatment, or abuse based on the child’s LGBTQI+ status”; receive training “to be prepared with the appropriate knowledge and skills to provide for the needs of the child related to the child’s self-identified sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression”; and must be able to “facilitate the child’s access to age-appropriate resources, services, and activities that support their health and well-being.”
The rule requires foster care providers to grant children access to LGBTQ reading materials, opportunities to socialize with “LGBTQI+ peers,” an ability to dress according to “self-declared gender identity and expression,” and access to transgender medical interventions such as hormone therapy and surgeries.
As attorney general of Tennessee, Skrmetti flagged numerous problems with the rule in his interview with The Daily Signal.
“Any failure to affirm gender identity should be treated with the same alacrity as allegations of physical abuse,” Skrmetti said, explaining the rule. “The natural outcome of that is you’re diverting resources and the state’s not going to be in a position to provide as much of a response to actual physical abuse. It’s steering the state away from protecting kids.”
Skrmetti’s written comment outlines three major legal difficulties with the rule. He argues that the rule exceeds HHS’ legal authority as established by Congress, trampling on states’ broad authority in family law. He also argues that the rule is “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. Finally, he notes various constitutional problems with the rule, such as violating the First Amendment’s free speech and free exercise clauses.
“A lot of people who participate in foster care do so because it’s a way of living out their faith,” Skrmetti told The Daily Signal. By asking people to “adopt the language and affirm the commitments of gender ideology, the federal government’s asking them to turn away from their religious beliefs,” he said.
Skrmetti’s formal comment on the rule notes that Tennessee contracts with or maintains relationships with faith-based agencies that serve over 400 foster children in the state.
“The commitments that people need to make in terms of pronouns, in terms of acknowledging that this is an ontological change and that people are their subjective belief and that there’s no objective grounding, is inconsistent with the idea of—in the Christian tradition—biblical creation,” the state’s attorney general noted.
Skrmetti’s public comment lays out a road map for a potential lawsuit challenging the rule, a lawsuit that the attorney general told The Daily Signal he would “absolutely” file should HHS finalize it.
“Family law has always been a state issue,” he said. “The states have developed a rich body of family law dealing with issues like foster care. This is a really heavy-handed intrusion by the federal government in pursuit of a political end but at the expense of kids. So constitutionally, there’s a structural problem with a federal agency making law in an area where the states should be making the law, and where the states have been making the law.”
The attorney general also noted that Tennessee, among other states, has banned experimental medical interventions that transgender activists refer to as “gender-affirming care.”
The Tennessee Legislature, he said, “considered the potential risks and the potential benefits, and—as a number of European countries have done—they determined that the risks of allowing kids to have access to these treatments, even puberty blockers, create the potential for long-term, lifelong negative effects, and the evidence just isn’t there to support the medical benefit of making these treatments broadly available.”
Skrmetti noted that many who formerly identified as transgender now desist from that identity, becoming “detransitioners.”
Although pro-transgender activist groups have filed a lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s ban of such treatments for minors, the attorney general noted that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld the law.
“The Constitution doesn’t require an experimental medical exception,” Skrmetti quipped.
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19 December, 2023
Boston ‘Electeds of Color Party’ Is Part of the Resegregation of America
The Left have always obsessed about race
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s office sent out an email earlier this week announcing an “Electeds of Color Holiday Party” to the Boston City Council. Seven of the council’s 13 members are white, which apparently meant they weren’t welcome at the party.
Conservative Boston radio host Howie Carr called it the mayor’s “Wu Klux Klan” party.
Wu, who is Asian American, sort of apologized, but more or less defended the event.
The mayor said it was all a misunderstanding. These kinds of parties have been going on for years, apparently.
“There are many events that are private events for all sorts of groups, so we’ve clarified that and look forward to seeing everyone at one of the dozens of opportunities to celebrate the holidays,” Wu told reporters, according to The Associated Press.
Wu, the daughter of immigrants from Taiwan, explained that people of all races could actually attend the festivities after all. How kind of her.
“We had individual conversations with everyone so people understand that it was truly just an honest mistake that went out in typing the email field,” Wu said.
And what exactly was that honest mistake? This wasn’t a typo; the language was clear. Is the mistake that the public found out?
This seems to be part of a pattern for the Boston mayor.
“I’m getting used to dealing with problems that are expensive, disruptive, and white … I’m talking about snowflakes, snowstorms, snowflakes!” she said at a St. Patrick’s Day prayer breakfast last year.
It hardly needs to be said, but if a white mayor had put out a Christmas party invitation saying something like “A White Christmas for Whites,” the meltdown in response would have triggered a “national conversation.” It would have sparked an endless number of corporate media op-eds about enduring racism in America.
No defense or apology would have sufficed. There would have been calls for resignation and possibly even riots in the city.
But the Boston mayor’s invitation was treated as just an innocent mistake and maybe not even a mistake.
In fact, the Boston mayor and members of the City Council basically doubled down. Was this a joke or actually part of a phenomenon that the Left now supports and approves of?
One councilor actually spoke about the need for segregated public spaces.
“It is not at all divisive, it is creating spaces for people and communities and identities with shared experiences to come together,” said Ruthzee Louijeune, councilor at-large, according to NBC News. “We are still breaking barriers, and it is so important for us to carve out and create that space.”
The Left often insists that the legacy of segregation in America is part of our generally racist legacy as a nation and what makes our history exceptionally bad. Their answer to this, apparently, is more segregation.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk was likely referencing this in a post Friday on X, his social media platform.
“DEI must DIE,” Musk wrote, referring to so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. “The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.”
The woke among us have determined that colorblind institutions and laws are racist. The “only remedy to past discrimination is current discrimination,” as the venerated high priest of anti-racism, Ibram X. Kendi, has said.
So the Left has adopted a form of racialized Marxism that boils people down to race and divides them into oppressor and oppressed groups. They mean to marginalize—they love that word—anyone who fits into one of the “baddie” categories or simply doesn’t get with the program.
Jews are one of the more recent “bad” groups, which is why the Left is willing to let vicious antisemites rage out of control on college campuses.
Marxism has been racialized and repackaged to consume America and the rest of the West.
Segregated spaces have become common on college campuses, where separate graduation ceremonies are conducted for different racial categories. This has been going on for years.
According to a 2019 report from the National Association of Scholars, 125 colleges held segregated graduation ceremonies. This is becoming the norm among our elite.
As with most of the awful societal trends plaguing our nation, what starts on college campuses doesn’t stay on college campuses. Of course, our elites will copy and paste their campus activities onto the government and corporate world.
DEI is the moral rot that has destroyed higher education and seeped into almost all aspects of our society.
Unfortunately, what we’re seeing is the resegregation of America, and it’s certainly not by mistake. Our society has been re-racialized by woke fanatics who now hold sway in our country’s most elite institutions.
Right now, what’s standing in opposition is the good sense of the average American—and maybe some civil rights laws. But how long will those things hold up when DEI has become a kind of established ideological religion in this country?
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This Moms for Liberty Leader Faced Trumped-Up Harassment Charges. Now, She’s Suing
Tyler O'Neil
A Pennsylvania Moms for Liberty leader will file defamation lawsuits to restore her good name after she was falsely accused of harassment in what she calls an orchestrated smear campaign.
Nicole Marie Prussman, chairwoman of the Monroe County, Pennsylvania, chapter of the parental rights group, received a citation for harassment in April, after news reports of the charge came out in March.
Although a magistrate court judge initially found Prussman guilty without a proper fair trial, the case was dismissed on appeal when the state ruled that Prussman’s accuser failed to corroborate her alleged evidence.
Yet the news outlets that reported the charges against Prussman have not reported her acquittal. Now, the Coalition for Liberty, a nonprofit dedicated to combating cancel culture, will represent her in court as she goes on the offensive. The Coalition for Liberty has not clarified which individuals or entities it plans to sue on Prussman’s behalf, but it has vowed to bring litigation against anyone who broke the law in defaming her.
Prussman became the target of “a very organized hit job by a group called Stop Moms for Liberty,” Doug Turpin, president and board chair of Coalition for Liberty, told “The Daily Signal Podcast.” “They planned this. You can even see online how they were getting their members to plot to file harassment charges against Moms for Liberty all across the country. This was a deliberate attempt to cancel Nicole [Prussman] simply because she was speaking out on behalf of children because of inappropriate and highly sexual content.” (The Daily Signal has reached out to Stop Moms for Liberty for comment and this story will be updated to include any response.)
“What they were looking to do was destroy her reputation, destroy her job,” Turpin said of what Prussman faced. “They had people organizing, hitting them with automated bots on her website and filling up the calendar for months and months on end just to deny her the ability to practice her business as a teacher, trying to help parents as a counselor with the issues that the children were having.”
“They just tried to destroy Nicole in every possible way,” he added.
“This started way back last February [2023], when my chapter started to share information about inappropriate texts that were being read in classes and poor performance rates that are sadly across our county,” Prussman herself recalled. “We were looking to inform parents and educate them so that we can begin solving problems, and we began getting a lot of pushback, to the point where we had to change locations and adjust our meeting location and all of that.”
The Moms for Liberty leader recounted receiving a call on a Friday night asking how she was feeling after a news outlet published an article about her. The article inaccurately claimed she had been arrested and charged, “and the first I was hearing about it was that moment reading a link through a text message from a friend,” Prussman said.
Since it was a Friday night, the courts were closed, and Prussman couldn’t get any information until after the weekend.
“No one ever contacted me,” she recalled.
“My charges were equivalent to a speeding ticket, and the worst penalty that could have occurred was a $400 fine,” Prussman explained. Yet, she said, “within a week, that article had spread not only out of my state, but across most of the country, and it took to social media like fire to tissue paper.”
“They actually had the gall to add molestation to the harassment accusation,” she noted.
Wally Zimolong, Prussman’s attorney, explained the situation in an interview last month with The Daily Signal.
“Contrary to some of the reporting, Nicole Prussman was never arrested,” Zimolong told The Daily Signal. “She was issued a ticket.”
“Nicole was charged with a summary offense of harassment, and she appeared before a magisterial district justice,” Zimolong noted. These justices, he said, represent “the lowest rung of the criminal court system in Pennsylvania. Many MDJs are not even lawyers.”
The justice who heard the case fined Prussman, but Zimolong explained that “all summary convictions are appealable to the state court system.”
“We appealed before a regular state trial court judge, and all charges were dismissed against Nicole,” he said. “The commonwealth could not authenticate any of the messages that she allegedly sent.”
Prussman explained that the purported evidence consisted of printed copies of Facebook Messenger communications that looked like a poorly done cut-and-paste job. She noted that her accuser had deleted any of her posts to try to prevent the judge from discovering the false accusations.
Although the judge dismissed the charges against Prussman, the Coalition for Liberty’s president, Turpin, explained that she’ll be heading back to court.
He said the only way to stop cancel culture attacks like the smear campaign against the Moms for Liberty leader is to hold the attackers accountable.
“Because there’s no consequences, the Left has been using this [strategy] to silence Americans, and it’s having a devastating impact,” Turpin argued. “So, the Coalition for Liberty believes that if people are starting to be held to account, and you go after them in a court of law … for defamation, slander, libel, malicious prosecution, anything that they can legally be held to account for, then that will stop cancel culture. That will stop these baseless attacks on people like Nicole all across the country, and we can return to a land where people are having civil and respectful discussions about our differences, not trying to cancel and silence people.”
This smear campaign arguably echoes the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left organization that brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups,” putting them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.
As I wrote in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC has leveraged its track record of suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy to develop the “hate map” it uses to smear enemies and raise money. Earlier this year, the SPLC placed Moms for Liberty and other parental rights organizations on the map, branding them “anti-student inclusion antigovernment extremist groups.”
In 2012, a terrorist used the SPLC’s map to target the Family Research Council for a mass shooting in Washington, D.C. The SPLC condemned the attack but kept the conservative organization on its map.
Despite a sexual harassment and racial discrimination scandal that prompted the SPLC to fire its co-founder in 2019, and a former employee revealing the SPLC’s “hate” accusations to be a “highly profitable scam,” many on the Left continue to use the SPLC as a political and ideological weapon to silence their opponents.
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UK: Couples getting married will be asked if they want to be called 'husband and wife' under new woke Church guidelines.
It is part of new 'inclusive language' rules published by The Methodist Church, which warns that old-fashioned terminology 'makes assumptions about a family or personal life that is not the reality for many people'.
The guidance also advises preachers to share their pronouns with congregation members 'to create a safe space for people to be themselves.'
According to the guide ministers can 'subconsciously use phrases that may be misinterpreted as us favouring one sex over another.'
Instead they should use 'gender-neutral language', opting for words such as 'folks, teammates, friends, colleagues, or simply people'.
It adds: 'People of different genders may choose to use a gender-neutral title such as Mx'.
In the section titled 'Disabled and Neurodiverse people' the guide states that requesting for people stand 'if they are able' can create a 'normalised expectation that people should stand'.
This may be dangerous for those who are 'pushing themselves physically'.
Explaining the reasons behind the new pamphlet the writers said: 'Speaking, worshipping and writing in an inclusive way is about engaging positively with as many people as possible.
Responding to the guide's controversy, the Methodist Church told The Sun: 'Our guide helps the church hold conversations without inadvertently causing upset.'
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Much to do before we close the gap
Australia's black/white achievement gap will NEVER be closed. Tribal Aboriginals are just too diffeent to adopt a white lifestyle. The nearest that was ever approaced was when missionaries managed the settlements. It has all been downhill since then. Being an old guy (aged 80) I have personally known Aborigines from the pre- and post-missionary eras and the difference is striking
The very low average IQ of Aborigines was rigorously established by McElwain and Kearney with the Queensland Test and IQ is a strong correlate of educational achievement.
In the aftermath of the divisive Voice referendum, advocates for both the Yes and No campaigns spoke about the need to continue to address the very real disadvantages faced by members of the Indigenous community.
It is important that the rejection of the constitutionally enshrined Indigenous advisory body was not seen as Australia turning its back on its first inhabitants, and is not used as an excuse to downgrade the importance of reconciliation.
The rejection of the Voice was more about the initial failure of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to explain his model, and the subsequent failure to convince a wary electorate that such a change should be constitutionally enshrined.
Thankfully, since 2008, Australia has had a mechanism to track efforts to reduce Indigenous disadvantage. The Closing the Gap strategy was introduced by prime minister Kevin Rudd’s government, in conjunction with his national apology for the forced removals of Indigenous children.
In his apology, Mr Rudd spoke of “a future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity”.
When expressed as pure data – life expectancy, education levels, incarceration – the gap was and is staggering. Targets have always been deliberately ambitious and as a result they are often missed.
The latest state government Closing the Gap report reveals we are likely to miss many major targets, but the one that has been met deserves to be celebrated.
Queensland set itself the goal of having 95 per cent of Indigenous children enrolled in preschool education by 2025. That has already been achieved, up from 82.2 per cent in 2016.
Hopefully, this one success will carry through to other targets.
At present, the following targets are on track – the proportion of Indigenous babies born with a healthy birth weight, the number of Indigenous adults in full-time employment, and increasing the total landmass controlled by Indigenous people.
However, the areas where we are lagging are shameful.
Life expectancy still lags behind the broader community – by 7.8 years for males and 6.8 for females.
Incarceration rates for adults are actually increasing, rising to 2047 per 100,000 in 2022 from 1815 per 100,000 in 2019, while the number of young people in detention has only decreased slightly.
Heartbreakingly, suicide rates are also increasing.
And year 12 or equivalent education, as well as tertiary education rates, continue to lag.
There are two things we must remember when dealing with such damning data.
Education is key. Once those targets are being met, others will inevitably follow suit over time.
And secondly, Closing the Gap is just data. It’s only through sensible policies that have the support of the broader community that this shame of Indigenous disadvantage will be erased.
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18 December, 2023
Heartwarming moment a woman nearly tackles her soldier to the ground as she takes a flying leap into his arms as he returns home from a long deployment
True love
The exhilarating moment was caught on camera by the Nebraska National Guard as soldiers with Troop C, 1-134th Cavalry Squadron were reunited with their loved ones on the tarmac at the Army Aviation Support Facility in Lincoln ahead of the holidays.
For the woman who spots her soldier among the troops coming off the plane, she can wait no longer, and races at full speed towards her beau.
The soldier barely has time to react and quickly manages to take off his backpack and put it on the ground while bracing himself to catch her in his arms.
The soldier can be seen beaming with delight as she rushed into his arms.
He momentarily loses his balance and is forced to take a couple of steps backwards to prevent himself from toppling.
The heartwarming hug was seen by dozens of soldiers family members, many of whom could be heard cheering as they celebrated the return of their loved ones back on home soil.
The soldier was one of 91 returning from the Middle East in support of Operation Spartan Shield.
The troops deployed last February and have been stationed in various parts of the Middle East but mainly Kuwait, where they performed security operations and training with allied forces.
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What’s driving former lefties to the right?
Michelle Goldberg
In a new essay in the progressive magazine In These Times, writers Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet grapple with the contemporary version of an old phenomenon: erstwhile leftists decamping to the right. There have been plenty of high-profile defectors from the left in recent years, among them comedian [and accused rapist] Russell Brand; environmentalist-turned-conspiracy-theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr; and journalist Matt Taibbi, a onetime scourge of Wall Street, who was recently one of the winners of a $US100,000 prize from the ultraconservative Young America’s Foundation.
What gives this migration political significance, however, are the ordinary people following them, casting off what they view as a censorious liberalism for a movement that doesn’t ask anyone to “do the work” or “check your privilege.” Joyce and Sharlet write, “We, the authors of this article, each count such losses in our own lives, and maybe you do, too: friends you struggle to hold onto despite their growing allegiance to terrifying ideas, and friends you give up on, and friends who have given up on you and the hope you shared together.”
Naomi Klein described similar losses in her great book Doppelgänger, which follows the exploits of one of the most infamous of recent progressive apostates, Naomi Wolf, a former liberal feminist who became an anti-vax influencer and a regular on Steve Bannon’s podcast. “Almost everyone I talk to tells me about people they have lost ‘down the rabbit hole’ — parents, siblings, best friends, as well as formerly trusted intellectuals and commentators,” wrote Klein. “People, once familiar, who have become unrecognisable.”
A key question for the left is why this is happening. For some celebrity defectors, the impetus seems clear enough: They lurched right after a cancellation or public humiliation. Klein writes that a turning point for Wolf was widespread mockery after she was confronted, live on the radio, with evidence that the thesis of the book she was promoting was based on her misreading of archival documents. Brand’s right-wing turn, as Matt Flegenheimer wrote in The New York Times Magazine, coincided with the start of investigations into sexual assault accusations against him. [In September, the 48-year-old was accused of rape, assault and emotional abuse between 2006 and 2013, following claims made against him in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary.] But that doesn’t explain why there’s such an eager audience for born-again reactionaries and why, in much of the Western world, the right has been so much better than the left at harnessing hatred of the status quo.
Part of the answer is probably that the culture of the left is simply less welcoming, especially to the politically unsure, than the right. The conservative movement may revel in cruelty toward out-groups -- see, for example, the ravening digital mobs that descended on podcaster Julia Mazur for a TikTok she made about the pleasures of life without children – but the movement is often good at love-bombing potential recruits. “People go where people accept them, or are nice to them, and away from people who are mean to them,” the Marxist Edwin Aponte, one of the founders of the heterodox but socially conservative magazine Compact, told Joyce and Sharlet.
But I think there’s a deeper problem, which stems from a crisis of faith in the possibility of progress. Liberals and leftists have lots of excellent policy ideas but rarely articulate a plausible vision of the future. I sometimes hear leftists talk about “our collective liberation”, but outside a few specific contexts – the ongoing subjugation of the Palestinians comes to mind – I mostly have no idea what they’re talking about.
It’s easy to see what various parts of the left want to dismantle – capitalism, the carceral state, heteropatriarchy, the nuclear family – and much harder to find a realistic conception of what comes next. Some leftists who lose hope in the possibility of thoroughgoing transformation become liberals like me, mostly resigned to working toward incremental improvements to a dysfunctional society. Others, looking beyond the politics of amelioration, seek new ways to shake up the system.
The right has an advantage in appealing to dislocated and atomised people: It doesn’t have to provide a compelling view of the future. All it needs is a romantic conception of the past, to which it can offer the false promise of return. When people are scared and full of despair, “let’s go back to the way things were” is a potent message, especially for those with memories of happier times.
One common interpretation of the sort of ideological journeys Joyce and Sharlet wrote about for In These Times is “horseshoe theory,” the idea that at the extremes, left and right bend toward each other. But plenty of the people who’ve followed a rightward trajectory were never particularly radical; Wolf was a fairly standard Democrat, as was Elon Musk, now king of the edgelords.
As Klein argues, a better framework is “diagonalism”, coined by scholars William Callison and Quinn Slobodian. Diagonalists, they write, tend to “contest conventional monikers of left and right (while generally arcing toward far-right beliefs),” be ambivalent or cynical about electoral politics, and “blend convictions about holism and even spirituality with a dogged discourse of individual liberties”. At the extreme, they write, “diagonal movements share a conviction that all power is conspiracy. Public power cannot be legitimate, many believe, because the process of choosing governments is itself controlled by the powerful and is de facto illegitimate”.
Such conspiratorial politics have rarely, if ever, led to anything but catastrophe, but that doesn’t lessen their emotional pull. Both Sharlet and Joyce are longtime chroniclers of the right – its ambitions but also its divisions and contradictions. “But in this age of Trump, his presence and his shadow, we’ve witnessed more right-wing factions converging than splitting, putting aside differences and adopting new and ugly dreams,” they write. “They, of course, do not see the dreams as ugly, but beautiful.”
To compete with them, the left needs beautiful dreams of its own.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/what-s-driving-former-lefties-to-the-right-20231217-p5eryu.html
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Debate over race relations rages in NZ as new government repeals key social policies
No more special privileges for minorities
After just three weeks in office, New Zealand's new Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is being accused of running a "scorch and burn" reform agenda that is responsible for the worst decline in race relations "since the early stages of colonisation".
For a country once lauded for its approach to racial inclusion, New Zealand's new government will now get to work on its 100-day plan against a backdrop of a protest movement that is galvanising and growing in strength.
M?ori Party co-leader and member for Te Tai Hau?uru Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told the ABC the government was unwinding policies designed to improve outcomes for M?ori and Pasifika people — including making changes Mr Luxon's National Party did not campaign on.
"What we have seen is the government taking us into a decline like we've never seen in race relations, certainly not since the earliest stages of colonisation," she said.
"It's extremely damaging, destructive and extremely concerning."
So far, Mr Luxon's government has announced it will repeal the legislation behind New Zealand's world-leading plan to make smoking tobacco illegal — a change community leaders fear M?ori and Pasifika people will "bear the brunt of".
The government has also disbanded the M?ori Health Service and minimised the use of M?ori language in the public service.
And most controversially, as part of his coalition negotiations, Mr Luxon agreed to indulge the ACT Party in its desire to question the interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand's founding document that underpins claims of M?ori sovereignty.
ACT leader David Seymour wants a referendum on the principles of the treaty, and so far Mr Luxon has allowed the idea to go to a committee — something that will fuel a divisive conversation about the recognition and rights of M?ori in New Zealand.
Ms Ngarewa-Packer said the National-led government had knowingly "created a new problem" for New Zealand by reigniting the race relations debate with its 100-day plan, something she described as taking a "scorch and burn" approach to current policies.
"It knows that Maori die more of lung cancer, but it has taken away the policy to stop that. It knows that Maori are dying earlier, but it's taken away the Maori Health Authority. It knows that our Maori language is at risk, but it has now removed the language from all government departments," she said.
"It knows that we have never ceded sovereignty — that we are the First Nations people — but now it wants to rewrite and review, and perhaps [hold a] referendum on our treaty, our sovereign documents, so there is a lot at stake."
The prime minister's office did not respond to the ABC's request for comment, but Mr Luxon has repeatedly said that, at this moment, his party only supports taking the idea of a referendum on the treaty to the committee stage.
Several opposition parties have questioned the value of that if he would stop short of supporting a referendum.
There is, of course, a political reality behind the policy agenda.
The governing coalition is made up of Christopher Luxon's National Party, the ACT Party and NZ First.
The ACT Party is led by David Seymour; Winston Peters leads New Zealand First.
Political analysts warned the trio would form a "coalition of chaos" if the electorate did not deliver National and its traditional right-bloc partner, the ACT Party, enough support to govern without NZ First.
In the end, National did need both parties to hold enough seats in the chamber to form government, and that kicked off several weeks of coalition negotiations.
It was more than 40 days after the October 14 election when the three men who lead those parties stood up in Wellington and announced they had reached a three-way coalition agreement — the first in New Zealand's history.
Now, New Zealand is seeing the results of that negotiation coming to pass.
There are always red lines in negotiation, and if the three parties could not come to an agreement, New Zealand would have been forced back to the polls.
It was something everyone wanted to avoid and so compromises had to be made.
David Seymour had previously said he would not sit at a cabinet table with Winston Peters, but he now does.
Before the election, Mr Luxon said it was not a National Party policy to review or redefine the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, but he also flagged it would likely come up in coalition negotiations with the ACT Party.
Mr Seymour is a libertarian, and while he acknowledges the Treaty of Waitangi is a M?ori taonga, or treasure, he described its principles as "vague, free-floating ideas for activist judges and officials to divine".
A poll jointly published by lobby group Taxpayers' Union and market researcher Curia in October found 60 per cent of New Zealanders supported ACT's proposal to clarify the definition of the treaty's principles, while 18 per cent opposed it.
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Libertarianism means: do no harm, take no excreta
I am (proudly) a Libertarian. When I tell people this, the responses are diverse:
Libertarian? Like Pete Doherty’s band?
‘No, that’s Libertine.’
Libertarian? Don’t they work with books?
‘No, that’s a librarian.’
I didn’t know I was a Libertarian until a few years ago. What I did know for certain was I was frustrated by government; decisions such as banning smoking in nightclubs and tanning beds seemed unnecessary and a waste of resources, but I was never too impacted by such decisions to make any noise. Until Covid.
Covid signified my great Libertarian awakening and Libertarian epiphany.
To be able to continue to work and provide for my family, my children, I was forced, against my better judgment and will, to be vaccinated.
Where were the feminists chanting about bodily autonomy? I believed their catch-cry ‘my body, my choice’? Until Covid.
Was I auditioning for Harvey Weinstein film? Or was I employed in the Victorian construction industry?
Where were the bleeding-heart lefties (which I had previously identified as) that claimed to care about the working class? A working class that had been unable to work throughout lockdowns, and was now being told they could work, but only if they were vaccinated. It was working class people that took to the streets and protested. It was the working class that was mocked. By the Left. Who abandoned them.
It was amongst the hypocrisy of the left that I found the Libertarians, then known as the Liberal Democrats (now Libertarian Party) – Tim Quilty and the unofficial Victorian Opposition Leader, David Limbrick – who consistently advocated for my rights and freedoms.
So what is a Libertarian?
Libertarians don’t fit in a box. We’re not ‘Left’ or ‘Right’. We sit on a political continuum which at its core is motivated by liberty.
But since the current political climate advocates oversimplification of complex issues (not only do I find this boring, but I believe such ignorance to be unnecessarily polarizing and damaging to community cohesiveness) let’s play the ‘Left’ vs ‘Right’ game where you can try to pigeon-hole Libertarian policies as ‘Left’ or ‘Right’:
Criminal Justice Reform
Lower Taxes
Access to healthcare
Individual Property rights
Equal rights
Entrepreneurship
Small Business
See how Libertarianism doesn’t subscribe to one or the other?
We represent the entrepreneurs working to create their business in the free market without the endless red tape. We are for the recreational cannabis users who want to indulge as they please without fear of criminal charge. We are for small business owners who want their business to flourish, and not be choked out by taxes. We are for families who want to choose the education they think is best for their family and have final say over their children’s wellbeing.
We are a party that advocates the Non-Aggression Principle – anti-war, pro-peace and pro-bodily autonomy.
But most importantly, we are for the people who just want the government to leave them alone. Libertarianism is the epitome of ‘you do you, just don’t hurt anyone’. (Gosh it sounds almost like … tolerance! Not sure if the left remembers what that word means!)
We don’t excuse political leaders for their misdeeds because it’s ‘our guy’ or ‘or team’. We are committed to holding both sides of politics to account in the interests of civil liberties and freedoms.
Once Libertarians seek to be elected, we want to enable you to take control over your own life. Society likes to use the word empowerment, yet how many political leaders and parties do you see advocate for policy and law reform which empowers the individual?
We are seeing these ideals spread around the world with the ACT Party in New Zealand and the new President of Argentina – Javier Milei.
Libertarians want you to be empowered to run your life because only you, the individual, knows what’s best for you. Not an overpaid bureaucrat that lives in the Canberra bubble.
If you want the government to leave you alone, maybe you are a Libertarian too.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/12/the-l-word-do-no-harm-take-no-shit/
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17 December, 2023
Nihilism is the religion of the Left. Anarchy is now at the core of the new Democratic Party
If the Left wished radically to alter the demography of the U.S., it could have expanded legal immigration through legislation or the courts.
Instead, it simply erased the border and dynamited federal immigration law. By fiat, nihilists ended the wall, and stopped detaining and deporting illegal aliens altogether.
Or was it worse than that when candidate Joe Biden in September 2019 urged would-be illegal aliens to “surge” the border?
As a result, through laxity and entitlement incentives, 8 million illegal entrants have swarmed the southern border under the Biden administration. They are swamping border towns, bankrupting big-city budgets, and infuriating even Democratic constituencies.
The same nihilism applies to crime.
In the old days liberals gave light sentences to criminals or reduced bail. But today leftist prosecutors do not even seek bail. They hardly prosecute theft or random assaults.
Criminals are arrested and released the same day. Is the nihilist plan to destroy the entire body of American jurisprudence, and to ensure “equity” in being victimized?
Is the woke idea that all Americans—inclusive of diverse Beverly Hills elites, Hollywood celebrities, or members of Congress alike—must share victim equity, and thus experience firsthand street robbery, car-jacking, smash-and-grab, and home invasion?
The United States can produce annually more natural gas and oil than any nation on earth. It once pioneered nuclear power. It has vast coal reserves and sophisticated hydroelectric plants.
The old idea was to use these unmatched resources to transition gradually to other cleaner fuels such as hydrogen, fusion power, solar, and wind. That way consumers would still enjoy affordable energy. And the United States could remain independent of coercion by the oil-producing Middle East.
But that was not the nihilist way.
Instead, the Left deliberately cut back on pipelines, new energy leases, and fracking. It bragged of an upcoming ban on fossil fuels. In drought-stricken, energy-short California, the state is blowing up, not building new dams.
Is the nihilist agenda to punish with bankruptcy the energy-using middle class?
Is the hope that Americans will have to beg the Saudis, Iranians, Venezuelans, and Russians to pump more of the hated goo for our benefit so we would not have to dirty ourselves helping ourselves?
When Biden entered office in January 2021 the U.S. was naturally rebounding from more than a year of COVID-19-enforced lockdowns.
Overtaxed supply chains were still fragile. Pent-up demand was soaring. Consumers were flush with government cash. Trillions of dollars had been printed and infused into the economy to ward off a feared recession.
All economists advised not to increase the deficit, spike further consumer demand, and expand entitlements.
Instead the Left did just the opposite. Four-trillion dollars were printed and distributed. In no time, Americans, recovering from COVID-19, next experienced the worst, but entirely preventable, inflation in 40 years.
Three years later prices on staples remain 30%-40% higher than when Biden took office. Mortgage rates tripled.
Abroad the nihilism is even more inexplicable and terrifying.
All nations suffer military setbacks. But none in memory have shamefully hightailed out of a theater as we did from Afghanistan.
Few countries could even imagine discarding billions of dollars of weapons and hardware into the hands of the terrorist Taliban, or abandoning a $1 billion new embassy, and a huge, remodeled air base.
Why did the administration simply allow a huge Chinese spy balloon to float and photograph leisurely over the continental U.S.?
Naive countries might endure two or three attacks on their overseas bases without serious retaliation. But how could the U.S. military permit 135 rocket barrages by Iranian-supplied terrorists on American soldiers without a major and sustained response?
Is the point to humiliate our own troops? To destroy what is left of U.S. deterrence?
Popular culture is especially captive to leftist nihilism. It is not enough to object to a statue or artwork. Instead, without deliberation or public input, they must be defaced or destroyed, all the better stealthily and by night.
After the massacres of Oct. 7—but well before Israel had even responded to the barbaric invasion—thousands of students swarmed their elite universities cheering on the violence.
And what so exhilarated them?
The nihilist, ghoulish beheading, torture, mutilation, mass rape, dismemberment, and necrophilia of unarmed, civilian Israeli elderly, women, children, and infants.
In sum, we are witnessing an epidemic of leftist nihilism similar to the 16th-century European mad wave of iconoclastic destruction of religious art.
Or is the better parallel the suicidal insanity that Mao Zedong unleashed during his cultural revolution of the 1960s?
The old politics of Right versus Left, and Republican opposed to Democrat have now given way to a new existential struggle: Americans must choose between civilization—or its destroyers
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/14/americans-must-choose-between-civilization-or-its-destroyers/
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Gaza could have been a Middle East Singapore. It dug tunnels instead
Singapore’s revolution from an impoverished Third World outpost with no natural resources, no industry, and that relied on its neighbours for energy, food and water was achieved in not much more than a generation. Gaza had the same opportunity, but chose to pass.
Much of Gaza is in smouldering ruin. And Gazans are to blame. They voted for Hamas and polls show they would do so again, not that they have had the chance lately. Hamas likes to present itself as a resistance movement, but its raison d’etre is the slaughter of Jews – and anyone else who would support Israel’s democracy. Most Gazans agree with that.
The Ramallah-based Arab World for Research and Development on November 14 published the results of a poll it had taken, one question of which was: How do you view the role of Hamas? A total of 48.2 per cent responded “very positively” while 27.8 per cent responded “somewhat positive”. That means 76 per cent of Palestinians support Hamas after its depraved foot-soldiers flooded into Israel in October incinerating families, killing babies, raping men and women they then shot dead, and decapitating with a shovel one woman who fought them off.
Gaza’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, 1800km away at the time, saw it all unfold on Al Jazeera, which he watched in his luxury office in Doha, the capital of Qatar. (The Qatari government funds Al Jazeera, which is best known for its anti-Semitic, anti-American broadcasts and its glorification of Islamic terror.)
The Hamas boss and his 13 children prefer Doha to the challenges of life in Gaza – which he is not-so-slowly destroying from a distance.
Haniyeh is so murderously vile that even Fatah leader and Palestinian National Authority boss Mahmoud Abbas can’t stand him – although they do meet irregularly, bonded by their mutual hatreds.
Abbas is often caught out telling lies about Jews and has done so all his life. He studied at a Russian university and his thesis was published as a book – The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism – thatbroke the news that the Jews were partners with the Nazis and as such were equally responsible for the Holocaust.
On September 6, Abbas helpfully explained that, in any case, Hitler killed the Jews because he believed them to be exploitative money-lenders. Abbas usually cynically apologises for such absurd comments but seems to have forgotten to do so this time.
Haniyeh reportedly is very wealthy. He is said to profit handsomely from the tunnel smuggling business, which can turn over $600m a year and circumvents the Egyptian and Israeli blockades of Gaza, so the status quo suits him fine. So far he has overseen five wars with Israel: 2008-09, 2012, 2014, 2021 and the one now under way. Every time, Haniyeh uses Gaza’s citizens as human shields – and thousands have died.
Martyrs, he calls these victims of his sinful barbarism.
Gaza has never been at this low an ebb. Rooting out Hamas – as Israel has pledged – will mean many unavoidable, non-combatant deaths, as Haniyeh fully understands, expects and for which he planned. It’s among the reasons he is hiding in Doha.
Things could have been so different for Gaza. There were proposals for its development that might have seen it on the trajectory that powered Singapore to economic prosperity after 1965.
And they have a few things in common. At independence in 1965, Singapore’s land mass (at low tide) was 578sq km – it has grown to 734sq km since reclaiming marshlands, mangrove swamps and mosquito-infested jungle. But it has many more inhabitants than Gaza with population density of 8330 people per square kilometre.
Gaza is 365sq km and had a population density of about 3600 people per square kilometre when Israel withdrew from the territory in August 2005. Despite constant claims of various genocides committed by Israel there since, Gaza’s population has rocketed and stands at 2,299,000 with a population density of 6507 per square kilometre.
Singapore’s gross domestic product per capita in 1965 was $US517. Last year it was $US87,884 and ahead of the US. The GDP for the West Bank and Gaza was about $US3100 last year – ahead of India but just below Sri Lanka.
Singapore’s revolution from an impoverished Third World outpost with no natural resources, no industry, and that relied on its neighbours for energy, food and water – does that sound familiar? – was achieved in not much more than a generation.
The future of the envied tiger economy was founded on racial and religious tolerance with a radical plan to invite foreign capital – which required political stability – and develop industrial land while investing deeply in education, basic at first but soon leaning towards the technical skills the new industries would need.
Last week the annual OECD Program for International Student Assessment results measuring the mathematical, reading and scientific literacy of 15-year-old students were announced. It rates the education performance of 81 countries: Singapore came out on top. Again.
By 1975 Singapore had achieved full employment. Industry was at first simple manufacturing including matches, fishing hooks and mosquito repellents. The transition to high-value manufacture, especially computer products, was swift. And it never scrimped on defence; like Israel, it introduced compulsory conscription and has a standing force of more than 50,000 personnel but can call on more than 250,000 reservists.
By the turn of the century Singapore was an affluent global city, having coasted through the Asian financial meltdown of 1998.
Israel’s disengagement with Gaza was announced in 2003 and by 2005 its remaining citizens were removed, many forcibly by Israeli soldiers, some dragged from their synagogues, which soon were desecrated. The departure had been on the cards for years, back to the day when a two-state solution still seemed possible, even if, as late as 2000, the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Yasser Arafat, when offered a historic and generous deal brokered by US president Bill Clinton and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, sabotaged the negotiations. Peace was the last thing on his mind.
Not long before Arafat’s death the Palestinians created laws to pay salaries for Palestinians jailed in Israel for terrorist offences and murder – cementing in a permanent incentive for young Palestinians to kill Jews. For Palestinians, crime does indeed pay and it reportedly costs 8 per cent of the Palestinian budget.
Nonetheless, much of the world saw promise in Gaza at this time and, with investors from Japan, Spain, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco, what became the Yasser Arafat International Airport – a good half the size of Sydney airport – was opened by Clinton in November 1998.
International airlines started arriving and 90,000 passengers, including would-be business investors, flew in the following year. But the runways were bombed by Israel in response to the Second Intifada that started in 2000, during which 1137 Israelis were murdered and more than 8000 injured by explosions at public places and suicide bombers while others were stabbed and shot.
Killed in this hate wave was 15-year-old Melbourne student Malki Roth who was at a pizza restaurant with her best friend, who also was murdered. (The Arab woman who arranged the bombing, Ahlam Tamimi, smiled when she heard 15 had died in the attack and said recently: “Allah granted me success … I would do it again today, and in the same manner.”)
Despite the unending, unprovoked violence from Israel’s enemies, particularly those in Gaza, plans to develop the strip sprouted as business thinkers saw the strategic advantages and possibilities of the land and the extraordinary number of locals of working age. The average age in Gaza is 18.
Nineteen days after Roth was murdered, the International Monetary Fund released a report on the economic prospects of the West Bank and Gaza, which it described as “favourable”. It spoke of the need for GDP growth of 8 per cent – a challenge, but it had been achieved before. In any case, the territories’ GDP had grown an average 6 per cent annually for three decades.
The IMF reported that were there political stability “the economy should be able to enjoy an extended period of high growth”. It also stated that “there is considerable scope for expansion of Palestinian trade with the rest of the world, in particular with the European Union and the United States”.
A more detailed plan for Gaza was drawn up by Rhode Island’s Roger Williams University (ironically, Williams was a 17th-century campaigner for religious freedom and the separation of church and state), the goals of which were job creation, sustainable economic development and environmental security. It saw opportunities in Gaza’s 41km of beautiful Mediterranean coast – in contrast, Monaco can claim only 3.8km of the Mediterranean. It proposed the establishment of a free trade industrial zone that would employ 30,000 and generate jobs for perhaps another 120,000.
Initially, the plan was to build near the Egyptian border. “Later the zone would be expanded inland and offshore in Palestinian waters on to a large artificial island with a connecting causeway, which will also serve as a jet aircraft runway and with a deep water port.”
The report’s authors believed start-up costs would be $300m to $450m. It is worth noting that today’s war reportedly is costing Israel an estimated $900m a week. (The Gaza conflict is a proxy war on Jews masterminded and funded by Iran whose plan it is to undermine the Israeli economy.)
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Can there ever be peace between Israel and the Palestinians?
If history is a guide, the answer is no. But we are right to believe in miracles.
The Israeli government has only weeks to finish, or at least change fundamentally, its operation to destroy the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza. International pressure on Israel is mounting drastically. The humanitarian cost in Gaza, though entirely the moral responsibility of Hamas, is unsustainably high.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be moved by the Albanese government signing a defective, one-sided UN resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire but not even mentioning Hamas by name, nor its October 7 atrocities.
It’s demoralising, of course, the defection, and confusion, of Australia, which was once at the centre of the Western alliance.
But much more important is the attitude of US President Joe Biden, who warns that Israel is losing international support. Biden himself is under immense pressure for solidly backing Israel.
The biggest operational problem for Israel remains the 500km of Hamas tunnels. Israel must destroy or disable these if it is to capture or kill top Hamas leaders and permanently disable Hamas militarily. The international pressure is immense. Israel will finish its operation by January or change its methods such that large-scale humanitarian aid can enter Gaza.
But it’s what happens the day after the operation ends that is where the biggest disagreement between Jerusalem and Washington (and Canberra, though Australia now has no influence at all with Jerusalem) comes in.
The Biden administration, like most international opinion, wants negotiations to resume towards a two-state solution, a Palestinian state living next door to Israel. Given that’s agonisingly distant, in the short term it wants the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank, to administer Gaza.
Netanyahu says no on both scores. He doesn’t want the PA in charge of Gaza and he now rejects the two-state solution. My guess is he’d compromise on having the PA back in Gaza. The two-state solution, however, extraordinarily complex and difficult, seems impossible operationally.
Nothing generates more ignorant cliches than the Israel-Palestine dispute. Much discussion of it just involves endless recycling of familiar cliches that mostly float clear of reality. The difficulty with the two-state solution is that Palestinians, and in the past their Arab neighbours, and now their Iranian sponsors, have rejected every single genuine offer of a Palestinian state.
Until recently, most Israelis wanted a two-state solution. As anyone who has visited Israel knows, it’s a successful modern democracy, with a vibrant society, ethnic diversity and great economic achievement. It yearns to live normally, in peace. But decades of relentless attack by regional enemies who don’t accept its right to exist has changed its attitude to the utility, and dangers, of peace negotiations.
Notwithstanding three regional wars aimed at Israel’s annihilation, and almost constant lesser attacks from a collection of enemies that would fill a fat phone book, Israel has on at least four separate occasions offered a full state to the Palestinians, who each time rejected it.
It starts in 1947. The last uncontested sovereign power over the land of Israel, before modern Israel was created, was the Ottoman Empire. Ditto for the West Bank and Gaza. After the Ottomans, Britain ruled under a mandate first from the League of Nations, then the UN.
In 1947 the UN decided to split the land between Jews and Palestinians, with Jerusalem belonging to neither state but administered internationally. The Palestinians could have had their independent state right then. Israel would have been much smaller. Instead the Palestinians, plus all their Arab neighbours, rejected the deal. In 1948, when Israel declared independence and was formally recognised by a vote at the UN, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan all attacked, planning to wipe the Jews out of existence.
There was terrible fighting. Several Jewish towns were massacred. Some 750,000 Palestinians left Israel. This had several causes. One is they expected Jewish soldiers to be as savage with them as Arab soldiers had been with Jewish residents. Another is they expected Arab nations to quickly overwhelm Israel. Then they would return. Some Arab leaders advised Arab residents to flee temporarily. Some Palestinians were certainly driven out by Jewish soldiers. Large numbers of Palestinians remained, and today 20 per cent of Israel’s population is Arab. About the same time, 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab and North African countries where Jews had lived for millennia, although often as a persecuted minority.
Israel’s Arab neighbours were determined never to accept a Jewish state. In 1967 they were making troop movements preparatory to attacking Israel, and declaring they were about to attack. So Israel launched a pre-emptive strike and in the process took control of the West Bank, which had been in Jordan’s possession, and the Gaza Strip, which Egypt had controlled, and the Sinai Desert, which also belonged to Egypt. Neither Jordan nor Egypt had ever tried to set up an independent Palestinian state in these territories.
Following this war the Arab states declared their policy of “three noes”: no peace, no recognition, no negotiation.
In 1973 Egypt, under Anwar Sadat, and Syria, with a degree of help from some other Arab nations, launched a surprise military attack on Israel that became the Yom Kippur war. At terrible cost, Israel won that war.
Despite his anti-Semitic past, Sadat made a historic peace with Israel in 1979. Critically, Israel returned the vast Sinai desert to Egypt, giving up all the strategic depth it had afforded Israel, and all its mineral resources, in exchange for a durable peace treaty. Israel evicted Jewish settlers who had moved to Sinai. But in terms of the politics of a subsequent Palestinian state, here is the most powerful lesson of all. Egyptian Islamic Jihad, enraged at Sadat making peace with Israel, assassinated him in 1981.
The Egyptian peace treaty demonstrated conclusively Israel would trade territory for peace, so long as it got real peace. The US underwrote the peace and it stands today. The Egypt-Israel treaty showed everyone peace was possible. Sadat’s assassination showed everyone it would always carry a high price.
The Oslo peace accords kicked off a process in the 1990s that led to Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, under the sponsorship of Bill Clinton, offering a full Palestinian state to Yasser Arafat.
Barak offered 96 per cent of the West Bank, some compensating territory from Israel proper, all of Gaza and the Palestinian neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem. Israel would keep only the large Jewish settlement blocs near Jerusalem, a couple of per cent of West Bank territory, and give territory from Israel proper in compensation. Barak wanted a full guarantee of peace and an end to all other Palestinian claims on Israel.
Arafat refused the deal. He tried to tell Clinton that Jews really had no historic connection to Jerusalem. He couldn’t meet the requirement to end all claims. And he demanded that all four million of the descendants of the 750,000 Palestinians who left in 1948 be allowed to return and live permanently in Israel, not in the new Palestinian state but in Israel itself. This is the so-called “right of return” and it’s an absurdity.
Every other refugee population that goes to live elsewhere is permanently resettled. But, of the neighbouring Arab countries, only Jordan offered Palestinians citizenship. Generally, Palestinian refugees and their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were kept as notional refugees so the UN would pay for them in perpetuity, and as a bargaining chip against Israel.
The Palestinians could have had an independent state from Clinton and Barak, flooded with international aid, sponsored by the US, the EU and the Arab world. But had Arafat taken this deal he would surely have been killed by his own extremists eventually, just like Sadat. It’s likely Arafat never remotely wanted a deal. Former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid once told me that Arafat had told him privately that it was his ambition “to throw all the Jews into the sea”.
Barak’s remarkably generous deal, which would have involved uprooting many Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, was improved and offered to Arafat again. But again the Palestinians rejected it, making the third clear time they refused to accept a state.
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Will Javier Milei’s ‘shock therapy’ work?
The Argentinian peso has been devalued by 50 per cent overnight. Controls on exports have been scrapped, and the country’s ministry of culture is to be closed down. The health, labour, social development and education departments are also facing the chop. Argentina’s president Javier Milei – who vowed to deliver economic ‘shock treatment’ in his first speech on Sunday after formally taking office – has started a radical overhaul of the economy and begun what is by far the most interesting experiment in economics in the world right now.
True, Milei may not have gone as far as some people might have expected. The plan to replace the peso completely with the American dollar has been shelved for now. So far, at least, the central bank has not been abolished, although given that it is currently presiding over an inflation rate of 140 per cent it could hardly complain if it was. By any normal standards, Milei is taking an axe – if not a chainsaw – to Argentina’s bloated state apparatus.
Milei is right to be bold. The currency markets, which will be by far his greatest point of vulnerability, can’t attack him. He has already trashed the currency, with a huge devaluation, and it was significant that the impeccably centrist International Monetary Fund quickly put out a statement supporting the move. Milei knows that the only time he can make deep cuts in public spending is right at the start of his term, when momentum is with him. Indeed, by abolishing ministries wholesale instead of trying to reform them, Milei may well have provided a template for other governments that win power on a free market platform.
He is right to be bold
The plan is high risk, and may well combust within weeks. It is Argentina, after all, a country that has specialised in economic chaos for more than a century. But if president Milei can control inflation, and unleash exports of agricultural products, and bring energy on stream, it could just work. Additionally, if wheat and maize prices rise, the country will soon have plenty of dollar earnings. Meanwhile Argentina holds 21 per cent of the world’s lithium supplies, crucial for batteries, and production is just starting to be stepped up. Its huge reserves of shale oil and gas are beginning to come on stream too, and could soon turn the country into a major energy exporter. With a little luck, Milei’s boldness could well pay off. And if it does, it will change the economic debate globally – by demonstrating there is an alternative to an ever expanding, activist state.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/12/will-javier-mileis-shock-therapy-work/
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14 December, 2023
My truth? What about the truth? From halls of learning to an intellectual wasteland
Instead of Oxford University Press language experts choosing an annual (and often ridiculous) word of the year, they could do something that might help stem intellectual darkness. The editorial staff at OUP should draw up a shortlist each year of the worst, most distorted words and phrases that are enemies of clear thinking. The worst of the worst could be named the Brave New World Word or Phrase of the Year.
I have a list to get us started. First is “context” – a word used many times by the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology when they were asked a simple question last week during a US congressional hearing into the rise of anti-Semitism on US campuses.
Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik asked Harvard president Claudine Gay, Penn’s Liz Magill and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth whether advocating for the genocide of Jews violated their universities’ code of conduct regarding bullying and harassment.
None among the three intellectual thought leaders said yes. Instead, they waffled about it being nuanced and context-driven, as if they are stuck in an ivory tower minus the Socratic dialogue.
There is nothing nuanced about Jewish students being harassed and intimidated on campus by pro-Palestinian protesters chanting the chosen slogans of Hamas terrorists. What context makes this legitimate?
Context is an entirely sensible word when used properly to explain complex issues. During three minutes of excruciating testimony last Wednesday, since viewed by millions of people, these well-educated university leaders from some of the most esteemed universities in the US used “context” to let pro-Palestinian protesters off the hook for knowingly or unknowingly advocating on campus for the genocide of Jews.
Alas, free speech was not their north star. Instead, as The Wall Street Journal noted this week, Harvard was 248th out of 248, and Penn was 247th, in the annual college ranking by the free-speech Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
In September last year, during a mandatory online Title IX training session, Harvard students were told that not using a person’s preferred pronouns could violate the university’s sexual misconduct and harassment policies.
Racial microaggressions are policed on campus; academics are sacked for committing “progressive” speech crimes. But if you chant the genocidal slogans favoured by a terrorist group, it’s a matter of context.
It’s welcome news that Gay has walked back from her context drivel, and Magill was forced to resign. But when the first instinct of university elites is moral pusillanimity, why wouldn’t university students feel free to intimidate Jewish students?
To understand how we got into this mess, let’s move on to the next contender for worst word or phrase of 2023: “from the river to the sea”. Why on earth are university students running around campus chanting Hamas’s genocidal plan to claim the state of Israel “from the river to the sea”? Do the kids know what it means? They may not have learned about it at Harvard, Penn and MIT, but there is the internet.
The terrorists who murdered 1200 Israelis on October 7, raping and mutilating women, beheading babies, and kidnapping 240 others enshrined this genocidal slogan in their 2017 constitution: “Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.” The terrorist organisation doesn’t mention where seven million Jews and two million Arabs living between the Jordan River, bordering eastern Israel, and the Mediterranean Sea, to the west, should go.
Students are shouting this violent slogan on campus, disrupting classes and intimidating Jewish students because more than a decade ago liberal values lost out to a new political order on campus.
Liberalism is a progressive project that depends on a marketplace of ideas, on people listening, on genuine tolerance and treating people equally and civilly. Instead, we have become a marketplace of outrage where groups claiming to sit on the lower rung of the oppression ladder, along with their supporters, insist on different and higher rights to groups they imagine are higher up the oppression hierarchy.
The oppressed groups, with their special status, have succeeded in convincing university elites that words and ideas they disagree with amount to a form of violence.
The reverse is true for the so-called oppressor class: when Jewish students face real intimidation with genocidal chants, we’re told it’s just words.
Today, ideas are no longer contested. In these dark anti-intellectual times, people are.
For thousands of years, different groups have hated each other on the basis of race or religion or some other tribal identifier. We were meant to be better than our forebears, understanding that judging people according to their individual character, not by group membership, would better unify us. Yet, in 2023, group hatreds continue, though under the new name of identity politics.
As Andrew Sullivan wrote in 2018, we’re all on campus now, with this new oppression hierarchy seeping into our broader culture. Our streets are full of protesters chanting “from the river to the sea”. Hamas enjoys unwitting support from ill-informed Westerners, the latest a group of Australian artists whose collective letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza included Hamas’s genocidal jingle.
If you think it’s unkind to call them useful idiots, University of California, Berkeley political science professor Ron Hassner published the results of a small survey of students that found only 47 per cent of them could name the river and the sea. Some thought it was the Nile and the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea (which is a lake) and the Atlantic.
More than a quarter of the chant’s supporters claimed the Oslo peace agreements were never signed. Less than a quarter had heard of Yasser Arafat; 10 per cent thought he was an Israeli prime minister.
“There’s no shame in being ignorant, unless one is screaming for the extermination of millions,” wrote Hassner. Importantly, the survey of 250 students from across the US found that students switched from supporting “from the river to sea” to rejecting the motto when they learned some basic facts.
When it comes to genocide, facts should matter. Which brings me to another contender for bullshit word or phrase for 2023.
In her end of week mea culpa, the Harvard president told student newspaper The Harvard Crimson she was sorry for not conveying “my truth”.
My truth? What about the truth? Is Gay an Ivy League university president or an angsty teenage girl at a counselling session wanting to speak her truth? When a university leader describes a judgment about those who advocate genocide as her truth, she opens the door for others to claim they have a different truth. Which is exactly what is happening on university campuses right now.
Universities aren’t just coddling the minds of students. They are messing them up. When “my truth” is used to win an argument, why wouldn’t universities become breeding places for anti-Semitism?
The issue goes deeper still, instilling an aggressive form of anti-intellectualism. Students ill-equipped to distinguish between facts and feelings will rely on their subjective truth to make demands of university administrators, including protection from words and ideas that offend them. When someone speaks of their truth, they ring-fence it from debate.
Worst of all, the foundational virtues of a liberal democratic society are, more often than not, being turned on their head by people who dare to call themselves progressive.
My nomination then for the Brave New World Prize for most disfigured word or phrase for 2023 is “progressive”. Practitioners of illiberal identity politics have no claim to this word. Progress means improvement. It is one thing to critique the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza by suggesting a better way forward to stop terrorism. How many of the pro-Palestinian protesters, be they screaming students or letter-signing artists, are doing this? Most of them are taking the low road, echoing chants for the annihilation of Israel. That’s not progress.
But congrats all around to the prize-wining faux progressives.
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‘Only the Beginning’: Lawsuits From Detransitioners Are on Rise
As the number of people who have chosen to detransition out of a transgender identity continues to grow, a parallel increase in lawsuits filed by detransitioners against gender clinics and medical professionals is also occurring.
In November of last year, 18-year-old Chloe Cole became the first detransitioner to file a medical malpractice suit against Kaiser Permanente as well as the doctors who advised her to undergo gender-transition procedures and performed them over a five-year period beginning when she was 13.
The lawsuit noted that as a result of undergoing “puberty blockers, off-label cross-sex hormone treatment, and a double mastectomy,” Cole experienced “deep emotional wounds, severe regrets, and distrust for the medical system” and has “suffered physically, socially, neurologically, and psychologically.”
In June, Kaiser was sued by a second detransitioner in California. At the advice of her doctors, Kayla Lovdahl began taking puberty blockers at age 12 and underwent a double mastectomy at age 13. Lovdahl’s doctors “did not question, elicit, or attempt to understand the psychological events that led Kayla to the mistaken belief that she was transgender, nor did they evaluate, appreciate, or treat her multifaceted presentation of co-morbid symptoms,” the lawsuit stated.
It appears that Cole and Lovdahl’s cases are just the tip of the iceberg.
Earlier this year, a new law firm was launched in Dallas that specifically serves detransitioners who are seeking recompense for being victims of what they say is medical malpractice. So far, Campbell Miller Payne has filed lawsuits on behalf of four clients, and the firm says that it is currently in discussions with 40 more potential clients. According to founding partner Jordan Campbell, it is “only the beginning.”
The firm’s clients include Prisha Mosley, who began testosterone injections at age 17 and had both breasts removed just one year later. Soren Aldaco was also prescribed cross-sex hormones at 17—without her parents’ knowledge—and also underwent a double mastectomy only two years later. A third client named Isabelle Ayala was prescribed testosterone at age 14, with her doctors keeping her on the drug despite a subsequent suicide attempt.
Lawsuits against medical practitioners who carry out gender-transition procedures are likely to continue surging due to the explosive growth in demand for the procedures and in the facilities that carry them out. In 2022, the U.S. market size for gender-transition surgery was estimated to be $2.1 billion and is estimated to grow to more than $3.1 billion by 2032.
The lawsuits come as new studies reveal that gender-transition procedures do not appear to be resolving the mental health issues of those struggling with their gender identity. A Finnish study published last month found that those with gender dysphoria “present with many more common psychiatric needs” than the general population, “even when medical GR [gender reassignment] interventions are carried out.”
Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, a licensed therapist and clinical researcher who has studied the effects of trauma on children, was encouraged by the increasing number of detransitioners who are stepping forward to file lawsuits.
“This is good news,” she told The Washington Stand. “We need to fight this from every direction. This whole ideology was introduced from multiple directions, so we need to fight it multiple ways. We’re fighting it legislatively, but now we’re fighting it through these individual lawsuits, and hopefully those will just continue to grow.”
Bauwens continued:
The other great thing about this is it really opens up a discussion and the impact that these individuals have experienced as a result of this so-called gender-affirming care. When you’re giving testimony to a legislative body, you’re just given a few minutes, but through these lawsuits we’re going to hear more of what these people have gone through and the tragedy that they have faced. A lot of the transgender activists say that there are so few minors that are undergoing ‘gender-affirming care,’ yet we are seeing these lawsuits from very young women. This is not an anomaly. The fact that there have been at least 40 people that have contacted this law firm should be raising alarm bells. We know that there have to be so many more. This is not just some one-off, one person who was pushed through these types of procedures.
“I also appreciate how they are bringing out the physiological harms that have happened to them,” she added. “They’re also bringing out the fact that when they went for help to the therapeutic and medical community, instead of getting an accurate assessment, they were just onboarded to these so-called treatments. I think that’s a really important thing that we will hear more about through these lawsuits, and I hope they get a lot of money for what they went through.”
Bauwens, who serves as director of the Center for Family Studies at the Family Research Council, went on to observe that the lawsuits could serve as a caution to institutions and medical professionals that push gender ideology.
“The good thing with these lawsuits is for those activists who are motivated primarily by money, this hits them where it hurts,” she noted. “I do believe that there are some people who are so ideologically driven that they will push forward regardless of how it hits their bank account, but I think that so much of this practice is tied up to money. When hospitals and universities and the profession itself starts losing money, they’re going to back away from this faster than even any legislation that’s put forward. It’s a good attack strategy.”
Cole, the first detransitioner to file suit, has in many ways become the face of the growing movement. At an event at the University of Utah last week, Cole was labeled “transphobic” by a professor, a label that has become a consistent line of attack against detransitioners from the Left. Bauwens remained unconvinced that the strategy will be effective going forward.
“I think the more the public learns about what’s involved with ‘gender-affirming care’ and what the long-term ramifications are, I think people are beginning to move away from it,” she said. “The line of ‘transphobia’ is going to carry less weight the more that people see the faces of those who have fallen prey to the ideology.”
As to the question of how those struggling with gender identity can achieve authentic healing, Bauwens highlighted the importance of homing in on underlying causes.
“Healing is going to need to take place where the original problem started,” she underscored. “It’s too bad that they were put on this other track that veered them away from dealing with whatever the root cause was to the distress. There’s going to be a layering of issues to deal with because now, they’re going to have to face the fact that those in authority—and those who were supposed to be experts and healers—have completely led them astray and actually were (perhaps unwittingly) part of re-victimizing them, their bodies, as well as their minds. But it’s not all hopeless, by any stretch.”
Bauwens further emphasized how those who have detransitioned are in a unique position to become peerless witnesses and role models for those wrestling with gender confusion.
“When someone who has been through a situation where the authority has so clearly violated them, as they heal, they can be a tremendous voice. They can be tremendously clear about what they believe and how they view the world,” she pointed out. “The potential for raising up other Walt Heyers and people who are able to help others and be a clear voice on this issue and many others is phenomenal.”
“People like Kathy Grace Duncan and Laura Perry have developed relational depth through their experience and have a clear understanding of their authentic self. They would have done some of the identity work that maybe others haven’t been forced to do. They have the opportunity to have a richer authentic connection with themselves and with others once they’ve actually treaded that hard road of grappling with their identity.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/07/only-beginning-lawsuits-detransitioners-rise/
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'Diversity Hires' and Progressive Hatred Highlight Everything Wrong With Democrats
I really hate racism and reject it in all its forms. It’s a big part of why I’m not a Democrat – I judge people as individuals and am disgusted by those who don’t do the same. The Democratic Party insists people be judged and treated differently based on characteristics that have nothing to do with who they are as people. They treat people differently based on their sexuality, their income, their “gender” declaration, and most importantly, their skin color. They are the heart and soul of hatred, the personification of bigotry, and everything wrong with our culture today.
Some white liberals love to self-flagellate about their skin color and what people who look like them did centuries before they were born. They’re free to do it. It’s wildly stupid, but you can’t teach dumb people to be smart any more than you can teach a fish to appreciate the desert. They are what they are. That doesn’t mean you have to play along. If someone wants to martyr themselves on the altar of grievances of the Christmas past, let them. Do not join in.
The concept of “reverse racism” is another thing that’s always been annoying to me. It would technically mean NOT discriminating against someone based on race, but it’s been bastardized into meaning discrimination against white people. This isn’t by accident – the left needs division to ascribe victimhood to control people, and for there to be victims, there must be perpetrators, too. Every dynamic set up by the left involves a victim and an oppressor, whether they exist or not. And white people can’t be victims for this tactic to work.
For this, Democrats created the asinine idea that “minorities can’t be racist” because they lack the “power” to do anything about it. Conversely, white people always have the power, so even a white, homeless, unemployed high school dropout with a heroin problem has more “privilege” than Oprah Winfree, and Oprah can’t be racist, but that junkie definitely is, though he may not know it. It’s wildly stupid and “progressive.”
This idiotic dynamic is how you end up with someone like Claudia Gay as the President of Harvard. Her only qualifications for the job were her political beliefs and skin color. She brought fewer credentials to her current job than Hunter Biden brought to the board of Burisma. If her resume were a person, it would have starved her to death. As Bill Ackman, billionaire former Harvard donor now experiencing the effects of the “red pill,” put it, “I learned from someone with first-person knowledge of the @Harvard president search that the committee would not consider a candidate who did not meet the DEI office’s criteria.”
The idea of Harvard firing Gay for her incompetence or bigotry is less likely than Hunter leaving a whore house with cash in his pocket.
It is a little surprising how these obvious truths and the bigotry of the left are only now becoming apparent to so many of the people who’ve funded it against everyone else for decades, but better late than never.
Ackman is Jewish, and he sees now what the campuses of these schools are. They’ve been it for a long time against white people, minorities who refuse to obey the progressive agenda, straight people who aren’t interested in dating someone “trans,” and anyone who doesn’t buy the climate change hoax.
Under it was always a hatred of Jews, but it rarely bubbled to the surface. The Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7th changed that.
The immediate aftermath saw “allies” for every victim group rallying to Hamas under the guise of caring about Palestinians. That anti-Semitism broke the dam, and everyone saw it.
Normal people recoiled, leftist activists embraced it, and Democrats tried to pretend it wasn’t really happening. They can’t do that anymore. Too many Democrats in Congress spent the last two months justifying Hamas’ terror for any rejection of hatred to sound believable to anyone who hasn’t recently suffered a closed-head injury or is a loyal MSNBC conspiracy theories addict.
Racism is the oxygen of the left; bigotry is their food, and it’s always been that way. Without both, they can’t live. In both, they thrive. It’s gross, it’s disgusting, it’s harmful to the country, it’s anti-American, and it is the very essence of “progressive.”
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Australia: Townsville cops ‘helpless’, residents terrified as young crims wreak havoc
Kid-glove treatment of young black offenders is the root of the problem
Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll will fly to Townsville after three weeks of unrelenting and violent youth crime leaving cops feeling “defeated” and locals terrified. SEE
On a single day last week in the space of six hours officers were called to 120 jobs, most involving stolen cars, as cops the North Queensland town battle the worst spate of crime many had ever seen.
One Townsville station has no police vehicles left, and is being forced to borrow cars from surrounding precincts. It’s understood eight of the region’s 139-car fleet are sidelined in Townsville.
In the last week alone more than 60 cars have been stolen and 150 homes broken into, with the young criminals turning on the police targeting their cars and the officers in them across multiple nights.
Townsville mum Melissa Young-Florence broke down in tears while talking about how she was chased and rammed by youths in a stolen car on December 7. Picture: Natasha Emeck
Townsville mum Melissa Young-Florence broke down in tears while talking about how she was chased and rammed by youths in a stolen car on December 7. Picture: Natasha Emeck
The conditions have become so bad, one officer speaking anonymously to The Courier-Mail said “it’s the worst it’s ever been in respect of the level of intended harm to emergency services,” a source said.
“Officers feel helpless and fear for their safety. They will keep turning up for work to keep the community safe, but they worry what is being done to keep them safe.”
Multiple police sources told The Courier-Mail how officers are afraid to go to work as juveniles target police cars – and now ambulances – night-after-night.
Sources say they are “fighting a losing battle” and were “torn apart” after a night of carnage last week where more than 120 jobs were called in over just six hours, most of those involving stolen cars.
So out of control has the issue become, officers from the specialist Public Safety Response Team (PSRT) have been flown into the city to catch the young criminals.
A terrified Townsville mum broke down in tears as she relived the terror she felt when a group of young criminals chased and rammed her across Townsville in a stolen car while she was out buying Christmas gifts.
Melissa Young-Florence has just left a Townsville shopping centre in her Land Cruiser when she was suddenly targeted by young car thieves in Aitkenvale last Thursday.
She said masked juveniles in a stolen Ford Everest — which also rammed two police cars last week — began ramming her car around 6.30pm and followed her through the streets of Aitkenvale as she desperately tried to lose them.
When she pulled up near a school to call triple-0, the youths rammed the driver’s side of her car, and one of them got out to confront her.
“He threatened me and said: ‘Don’t f**k with our gang, you f***ing b*ch,” she said.
“They took a weapon out and started smashing the glass of the back of my LandCruiser.”
The youths continued to tail her when she returned home to Vincent, and she began to scream at the top of her lungs as they rammed her again, pushing her car onto the kerb.
“Four kids hopped out of the car. My neighbour thinks one of them had a gun, and another came to my window with a wrench to hurt me,” she said.
“One of my amazing neighbours, Damien, chased them off.
“I’ve never been so scared in my life. You don’t know what it feels like. “They were ready to kill me.”
It’s understood the young criminals are a mix of seasoned juvenile offenders, and new crooks from places like Cairns and Palm Island who police hadn’t seen before.
“It’s a generation of kids who have no respect for anything,” a police officer said. “New kids, old kids, there’s no simple fix to a festering decline of parenting.”
On Monday night, sources say one police crew had three separate stolen cars drive at them. Another police car had their tyres slashed. “We feel useless and embarrassed,” another source said. “There’s nothing we can do after our pursuit powers were taken away.
“All you can do is just turn on your bodycam and record everything.”
While no officers had been seriously injured in the rammings, sources say the mental toll was more significant. “Mentally, we are f – ked.”
The Courier-Mail understands the Townsville Watchhouse was “chockers” on Tuesday, with staff calling for back-up and a “line of police cars” waiting outside to get in.
Townsville District Officer Chief Superintendent Chris Hodgman said they charged eight offenders on 138 charges within 24 hours on Monday, bringing the total arrests for Operation Victor Romney up to 20.
One of the recent arrests was a 13-year-old Wulguru boy allegedly linked to the stolen car ram raids on a number of businesses on Saturday.
The boy has been charged with 51 offences, including 13 counts of unlawful use of a motor vehicle, 11 counts of entering the dwelling, and one count each of robbery, arson and assault. He was refused bail and is due to appear in Townsville Children’s Court at a later date.
Chief Supt Hodgman said there were still “several” outstanding targets on their list that police would continue to target this week.
He said the level of offending had increased for many of the city’s high-risk youths. “When we talk about 13 and 15-year-olds out committing life imprisonment offences at night … It is absolutely terrible for the community,” he said.
Townsville Labor MPs Les Walker and Aaron Harper said they had raised the region’s crime issues with potential premier candidates this week.
Mr Harper – who supported Deputy Premier Steven Miles as the state’s new leader – said Mr Miles “understands the situation” in regards to youth crime in Townsville. “We know it’s a serious problem and we want it fixed.”
Police Minister Mark Ryan said the Commissioner would be in Townsville on Wednesday.
Commissioner Katarina Carroll said she was closely monitoring the situation in Townsville and is being briefed multiple times each day. She intended to visit police stations and the Operations Command Centre on her visit north.
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13 December, 2023
The Pure Evil of the Democrat Party
Derek Hunter
I’m not proud of this, but it is true – I am becoming more disgusted by, and therefore angrier at, the American left with each passing day. I don’t want to hate them, but there really isn’t a better word for it. The contempt in which I hold these people is boundless. Again, not proud of it, but I’m also not ashamed of it because they’ve earned it. They deserve my contempt, and yours.
I do have to give some people props. It takes a special kind of person to be able to respond to simple, basic questions in a way that doesn’t even come close to answering it. It’s evil, but it’s also a skill most people don’t possess.
If you were the president of a major university preparing for a congressional hearing and a lawyer you were paying told you that, no matter what, do not directly answer any questions about the disgusting campus culture your institution has fostered, you’d probably fire them. At a minimum, a good person would ignore their advice. Good people don’t play those games.
However, the presidents running Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania went to Capitol Hill this week to testify about the rabid anti-Semitism they’ve fostered on campus and, it turns out, they aren’t willing to talk about it in any serious way.
In one exchange with Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, none of these three diversity hires (be honest, that has to be how they got their jobs) could admit calling for genocide is against their university’s Jewish students constitutes “bullying or harassment” under their school’s codes of conduct. Invite a conservative to campus and it’s open season on you, mis-gender the “woman” at the urinal next to you and you face discipline. Call for wiping out Jews and “context” is needed, according to these people.
Even more hilariously, the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, said, “Anti-Semitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct, it amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct.” So, as long as you’re only calling for the wiping out of Jews, but don’t actually start killing as many of them as possible, and you’re cool at Harvard. Use the “wrong pronouns” for someone’s mental instability and you’ll face discipline.
Honestly, how Stefanik was able to not swear at any of these witnesses is amazing to me.
Being able to do that is a requirement of their jobs. To cancel conservative speakers invited by students because little progressive Nazis are so fragile they can’t handle them is common – the University of Pennsylvania canceled an event with the former head of ICE because students felt unsafe having someone disagree with them at an event they weren’t obligated to attend. They should have gotten their asses kicked, figuratively or literally, but instead were coddled by the administration.
That’s an administration that can’t say whether or not publicly calling for the extermination of Jews is bullying. Talk about enforcing the laws of our country and you’re a pariah, talk about finishing Hitler’s work and you’re well on your way to a tenured position on campus.
These people are under oath and refusing to answer direct and basic questions. How are they not held in contempt of Congress?
It’s not new – a few months ago the head of “Human Rights Campaign” couldn’t bring herself to admit there are differences between men and women because she’s a slave to progressive ideology. The consequences for her were nothing, except maybe a raise.
The presidents of those universities embarrassed themselves and their institutions. For that, they will face nothing. Maybe they’ll eventually be invited to leave, but not without a gold parachute and another job – high-paying board seats or other no-show jobs rich leftists invented to fund each other. Will you ever get something like that? I’d bet not.
The goons goose-stepping throughout the country are led by the university system’s version of the Hitler Youth; these institutions “trained” and inspired. Cities burn, people are harassed and assaulted, and they get to play word games with Congress because who’s going to hold them accountable, the Biden Justice Department? They won’t force immigration laws or even plain-to-read gun laws when the violator is the President’s junkie kid, why would they pursue contempt or even perjury charges against their fellow travelers?
Nope, they don’t care. They enable each other to get away with it while doggedly pursuing you for anything. They deserve your contempt.
Evil might not be the best word for what the Democrat Party has become, but until a more accurate one is created, evil will have to do.
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2023/12/07/the-pure-evil-of-the-democrat-party-n2632080
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‘Have You Apologized?’ Congressman Grills DOJ Official About Targeting of Catholic Father Mark Houck
Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy grilled the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice on Tuesday over the DOJ’s targeting of pro-life activists like Catholic father Mark Houck.
Kristen Clarke, who oversees investigations into violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, came before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government on Tuesday for a hearing on the “Oversight of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.”
The FACE Act protects both abortion clinics and pregnancy centers, but the Biden DOJ has largely used it to prosecute pro-life individuals.
During the hearing, Clarke told lawmakers, “Please know that the division is committed to even handed enforcement of the FACE Act.”
Roy drew attention to the fact that Clarke’s division charged at least 26 individuals with FACE Act violations in 2022 and more in 2023.
“Even under your watch, it’s at least 35 to 1 or 2,” Roy emphasized. “That is not even-handed. It’s far from even handed. And importantly, Mark Houck, who was targeted, had a raid of his home, prosecuted under this, was acquitted by a jury! Have you apologized to him on behalf of the Department of Justice for that grave violation of his civil rights? Having his family have to watch him being raided at his home? And then he’s acquitted by a federal jury? Have you apologized to him?”
“We follow the facts and apply the law, that is our job, and we welcome opportunities to engage with other pro-life groups that may be experiencing threats or acts of violence,” she responded.
“So the answer to that is no,” Roy said.
The congressman was referring to the Catholic father of seven who was arrested and charged with violating the FACE Act in September 2022. The DOJ’s FACE Act charges stemmed from a 2021 incident outside a Philadelphia-based Planned Parenthood where Houck pushed an abortion clinic volunteer who was repeatedly harassing his son, Mark Jr. Local authorities ultimately dismissed the matter—until the Biden DOJ re-upped it in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Mark Houck and his wife, Ryan-Marie Houck, believe they were targeted by the Biden DOJ in an effort to intimidate, silence, and scare the family for their pro-life work—praying outside abortion clinics for the women headed inside to abort their unborn babies.
In November, the Houck’s sued the Biden administration for “malicious and retaliatory prosecution.”
Since 2022, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has charged dozens of pro-life individuals with FACE Act violations. In 2023, the DOJ charged four individuals with FACE Act violations related to attacks on pregnancy centers in Florida, though at least 88 pregnancy centers and 218 churches have been attacked by pro-abortion vandals since the leak of the draft opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would be overturned, according to CatholicVote.
Clarke has openly supported abortion and condemned pro-life pregnancy centers, which offer aid to women who are pregnant and need help. In the past, Clarke called pro-life pregnancy care centers “predatory” and “fake clinics,” and claimed they are part of a “coordinated strategy to tear down Roe,” as The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross reported.
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Woke police madness as Scottish cops get rid of 'wall of honour' because it 'has too many men on it'
Given pride of place in a police station, it is intended as a ‘wall of honour’.
Yet a collection of portraits of former Chief Constables has been officially ‘cancelled’ by Police Scotland as an example of unacceptable ‘misogyny’.
As part of a drive to modernise and improve, officers are being invited to submit images which they feel reflect the ‘everyday sexism’ within the force.
Presented as a prime example is the gallery of historic – yet exclusively male – senior officers. Last night the force’s decision to disparage distinguished former officers who gave years of service to the public was branded ‘absurd’.
Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Russell Findlay said: ‘Police Scotland effectively cancelling these illustrious figures from its past is just plain petty.
‘Many officers will be incredibly proud to follow in the footsteps of those who served Scotland through often-difficult and challenging times.
It seems absurd of Police Scotland to circulate photos of former police chiefs to illustrate misogyny. Scotland’s police service should be proud of its rich history – and not judge it by today’s standards.’
Police Scotland recently appointed its first female Chief Constable, Jo Farrell.
Her predecessor Sir Iain Livingstone claimed the force is institutionally discriminatory. In the wake of this, the force created a Sex Equality & Tackling Misogyny Oversight Board, led by Deputy Chief Constable Malcolm Graham and Assistant Chief Constable Emma Bond.
The board has launched a consultation called Photovoice, which asks officers to send it pictures of examples of discrimination, stating: ‘Using this platform, we are inviting all colleagues from Police Scotland to submit photographs that highlight your everyday experiences of sexism and misogyny in the workplace (there is an example in the submission form for guidance).’
The example chosen is the collection of photos of previous Chief Constables in the north-east.
The portraits date back to the 19th Century, when former Army officers such as Major John Ross and Major Duncan Forbes Gordon were given the job of keeping the peace in raucous Aberdeenshire fishing communities.
Also included is Aberdeen’s inaugural Chief Constable William Anderson who, incidentally, hired its first female officer in 1928.
Another shows Alexander Morrison – the city’s final Chief Constable before Grampian Police was created in 1975 – who allotted equal duties to female officers and tried to curb domestic violence.
David Kennedy, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, said: ‘Sexism and misogyny are a societal problem so it does exist within Police Scotland and we have our part to play in putting a stop to it.
But picking out photos of former chief constables is way off the mark. The past wasn’t perfect but we must use history and learn from it, not delete it.’
Police Scotland yesterday said no decision has yet been taken on what to do with the gallery.
Ms Bond called it ‘an example of someone’s opinion of what could be regarded as misogyny’.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12845439/Now-police-CANCEL-Chief-Constables.html
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Major Australia Day event is cancelled over sensitivities around celebrating the national day
Anthony Albanese's high commissioner to the UK has scrapped the annual Australia Day fundraiser, citing 'sensitivities' over the controversial public holiday.
Stephen Smith, Australia's highest-ranking diplomat to the UK who previously served as defence minister and foreign affairs minister under the Rudd and Gillard governments before retiring from frontline politics in 2013, has put an end to the popular Australia Day Gala dinner.
It was held annually for the past 20 years in the marble-clad Exhibition Hall of the Australian High Commission on the Strand on the Saturday closest to January 26.
The black-tie evet, which is run by the not-for-profit Australia Day Foundation, has previously attracted some of Australia's biggest exports, including singers Kylie Minogue, Natalie Imbruglia, Tim Minchin and entertainer Barry Humphries and broadcaster Clive James.
A spokesman for the High Commission of Australia told The Sydney Morning Herald it was 'well known that Australia Day touches on sensitivities for some Australians'.
'The high commissioner is happy to acknowledge that was part of the decision-making process with respect to the various alternative dates suggested by the foundation,' the spokesman added.
Leader of the opposition Peter Dutton called on Mr Albanese to 'reverse this bad decision'. 'Australia Day is our national day and it shouldn’t be cancelled like this,' he said.
Mr Smith told the organisers that it would not be appropriate to hold the 2024 event around January 26, which marks the First Fleet's landing in Sydney in 1788.
The High Commission of Australia reportedly wanted to charge the charity £29,000 ($55,000), impose a curfew of 11pm and proposed the event be held in March instead.
Phil Aitken, founding member of the foundation told the paper, the lack of support for the event after 20 years was 'very sad'.
'I was very disappointed to be told that it was not appropriate to have a function around Australia Day that might be interpreted as insensitive back in Australia,' he said.
Advertising titan Bill Muirhead, who was also a founding member of the foundation, slammed the decision as 'un-Australian' .
'The last time I checked, January 26 was still Australia Day,' Mr Muirhead told the paper.
The event has turned a profit in recent years which has been used to fund scholarships for Australians to study in the UK.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham called on the federal government to overturn Mr Smith's decision.
'It's not a high commissioner's place to unilaterally change the date of Australia Day,' Mr Birmingham told the paper.
'Stephen Smith doesn't just look like a killjoy who's ashamed of Australian history but is also trashing a prime event that promotes investment, travel and trade with Australia.
'Penny Wong and Don Farrell should overrule this ridiculous decision that burns the goodwill and reputation of an event built up over many years by proud expats happy to give their time to promote our nation.'
Mr Smith was believed to be the Prime Minister's third choice for the ambassadorial role as the government struggled to fill the post for nearly a year.
Earlier this year, he stoked controversy when he said it was 'inevitable' that Australia will become a republic and remove King Charles as head of state.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12847861/Major-Australia-Day-event-cancelled.html
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12 December, 2023
Conservative revolution in New Zealand
New Zealand has a track record for this. After leftism gets destructive enough, conservatism comes back with a rush. The Lange/Douglas government in the 1980s was very capitalist. Roger Douglas abolished whole government departments
It took 40 days for a three-party coalition to form government in New Zealand but, now that it has arrived, it’s not wasting any time in unwinding many of the progressive policies of its former leader, Jacinda Ardern.
The three-party coalition of NZ National Party, ACT New Zealand and NZ First has committed to reverse a number of key Labour policies that made headlines around the world during Ardern’s 5½ years in charge.
The new government – a coalition between centre-right National, libertarians ACT and populists NZ First – has already made global headlines for abandoning world-leading smoke-free laws. But changes are also coming to electric vehicles, sex education and hard-fought gains for the Maori community.
The new coalition is the most reactionary government Mark Boyd, a political researcher at Auckland University, has seen during his 40 years covering New Zealand politics. He said the vast majority of the policies announced by the government are taking things “back to the way they were” before Ardern’s election in 2018.
“By reactionary, what I really mean is reacting to Labour: they have very few policies, they just want to roll back what Labour have done,” he said.
“If you argue that the government of the last six years was more ‘woke’ or ‘radical’ and the previous was more conservative – its like: ‘take us back’. Not to the ’50s, like Donald Trump wants to do in America – but it’s almost like there’s a nostalgia for the [John] Key years, which was only six years ago.”
World-first smoking ban
Late last month, the government announced it would roll back a landmark smoking policy that banned the sale of tobacco to anyone born after 2009. That ban was among a raft anti-smoking measures that also included reducing the amount of nicotine allowed in smoked tobacco products and cutting the number of retailers able to sell tobacco by over 90 per cent.
They marked some of the toughest anti-tobacco rules in the world. A ban on smoking for future generations was subsequently proposed in the United Kingdom, with other countries also considering similar rules.
But axing the world-leading legislation was among the 49 priorities listed by Prime Minister Chris Luxon’s first 100 days.
“A 36-year-old can smoke, but a 35-year-old can’t? ... That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said when asked about the decision.
The ACT party, then represented by sole MP David Seymour, was the only party to oppose Ardern’s gun law reform in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosques massacre.
Now, with ACT part of the governing coalition, (with Seymour to become deputy prime minister halfway through the term as part of their agreement), it has won several concessions from the National Party to deregulate firearms. This includes rewriting the Arms Act and go to a “graduated system not unlike the way you get a driver’s licence”, according to Seymour.
A legally binding target to lower New Zealand’s jail population is also being abandoned. Labour had pitched the policy during its ill-fated campaign, but new policing minster Mark Mitchell says the policy was focused on “emptying out New Zealand’s prisons rather than trying to reduce crime”.
Incumbent Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has conceded defeat to Christopher Luxon in a decisive election victory as Kiwis vote for a change after six years of a liberal government.
The deputy political editor of the New Zealand Herald, Thomas Coughlan, said the recent election result was more about the Labour government being “voted out more than the new government was voted in”.
“It’s very difficult to say this is the policy agenda that people wanted,” Coughlan said. “There was certainly a sense under Labour the pace of change was too fast but the new government, and particularly some on the coalition’s fringe, has perhaps misinterpreted that as a desire for rolling back those changes rather than just slowing them up.”
The new government has also vowed to rebrand dozens of government departments that use Maori names, which could reportedly cost millions of dollars, a move quickly adopted and rolled out by Labour.
“Under Labour there was an explosion of new departments and agencies and they usually had a Maori name first and English second, if they even did [have English] at all,” Coughlan said.
“It seemed like that was a straw that broke the camel’s back. The last 20 years, the use of Maori language has been widespread, no reaction to it – all of a sudden over the last couple of years the reaction has exploded.”
The new government’s Indigenous policies saw thousands of protesters rally this week as the parliament convened for the first time since the October election.
Organised by the Maori Party, its co-leader Rawiri Waititi said the new policies of Luxon’s administration would take New Zealand “back to the 1800s”.
The most controversial aspect would introduce a bill that reinterprets the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi – the country’s founding document – which outline the need for the government to partner with Maori, protect Maori resources and address the impact of colonisation.
Sex education
Also included in the new government’s agenda was the move to scrap gender and sexuality education, known locally as RSE.
The pledge to “refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines” is one that has drawn particular outrage.
“My initial reaction was dismay,” education union NZEI president Mark Potter, a Wellington-based primary school teacher, told AAP. “The one thing our children don’t need is less education in the area of relationships and health.”
The inclusion of the clause to scrap gender and sexuality education in the coalition deals caught the eye because the issue did not feature in the election campaign.
Electric Vehicles
Labour’s incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – which offered rebates of up to $NZ7015 ($6500) for electric vehicles and slapped $NZ6900 fees on high-emissions vehicles – are gone.
The coalition parties had framed the legislation as unfairly targeting farmers and tradies and successfully relabelled the policy as the “ute tax”. Scrapped too are plans to install 10,000 new electric vehicle charges across New Zealand.
Work has stopped too on the Auckland Light Rail, an embattled project that was intended to have already been completed but was labelled “a white elephant” by Luxon during his election campaign.
The changes represent a return to an earlier status quo. Like many other democracies, through, controversy frequently centres on cultural issues. The uptick in Maori names for government departments under Labour, for example, has topped the incoming government’s agenda.
“That’s one of the areas where the pace of change was a bit fast for people,” Coughlan said.
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A woman said she felt “betrayed by feminism” after deciding she wanted to settle down, have a family and a husband as she approached 39th birthday.
At one point during the interview with Fox News Digital, she broke down crying describing how she feared she would end up alone and childless.
Melissa Persling recently wrote an essay for Business Insider titled, “I’m 38 and single, and I recently realised I want a child. I’m terrified I’ve missed my opportunity.” She said after it went viral in November, hate began to pour in from men telling her that she’s lived a selfish life. Persling has a much different account of her story.
When Persling was 22, she married a traditional man and moved to a rural community in Idaho, where she grew up.
“He wanted a simple life with children and home-cooked meals,” she said. However, Persling – despite coming from a religious Christian background – made it clear to her husband-to-be that she did not want children.
“At that time I felt very strongly I did not want children, that I wasn’t going to be like the traditional housewife. I knew I did want to pursue a career,” she told Fox News Digital in an interview. “And I felt very strongly that that would never change. And I guess I was wrong.”
Persling said both her and her ex thought that love could conquer everything, but after 10 years, it was clear their differences in life goals were irreconcilable. Persling said she became resentful when he would ask for dinner or for his laundry to be done.
“I did little to hide my disdain for our small-town life. He was a good and hardworking man, but I don’t think I made him feel that way,” she said.
At 30, Persling and her ex divorced; she swore off the idea of marriage.
“I told my friends and family I’d never get married again. I needed independence, a fulfilling career, and space to chart my own course, and I didn’t think marriage fit into that vision. I was content to look toward a future without a husband, children, or the trappings of a ‘traditional’ life,‘” she wrote.
As she grew older, however, the fun, carefree lifestyle – being wined and dined, going to parties – began to get old. The pursuit of comfort and self became dull, she said.
When she turned 38, terror began to take over.
“I was panic-stricken. I really thought I’m going to be alone forever. It really scared me. I almost wrote [the article] as sort of a warning to other women. I don’t want people to miss out on the important things in life because they’re just enjoying themselves because I don’t think that that’s ever going to really make you happy,” she said.
She wrote in the article how she felt “urgency” to find a stable relationship and was rethinking about wanting marriage and children.
“I hardly recognised myself,” she wrote in the article. “I also began to feel selfish for spending so much time focusing solely on myself … My very existence started to feel shallow and hollow.”
In retrospect, Persling believed she had some self-discovery and work for herself to do, and it took time to sort through previous trauma. Her parents’ divorce, which she described as coming from “a broken home,” took time to heal and sort through to find out what she really wanted.
“I grew up in a fairly traditional family, but my parents were divorced. And I would say that probably had some effect on my feelings about having a family coming from a broken home certainly has its hardships,” she told Fox News Digital.
At one point, she recalled a man coming over to her in a coffee store who randomly told her not to lose hope – that God had a plan for her.
And then a happy turn to Persling’s story arrived, which she describes as the exception and not the rule for women in her age group. Shortly after penning the article, she dated a man who she previously befriended. They’re already talking about marriage and a future.
She dished on the details: “So it’s a guy that I’ve been friends with, and we’ve always just sort of stayed in touch. And we did go on one date about a year ago, and I told him, ‘I just want to be friends with you.‘”
After her epiphany that she wanted a traditional life – the realisation that he was “the one” hit her like “a ton of bricks.”
“This guy is the one that God’s been preparing for me,” she said.
“I’ve had these relationships since where there were so many butterflies and so many like, ‘Oh my gosh, checking my phone. Did he text?’ And I realised, that’s not love. That’s anxiety. I never knew where I stood with those people. I could never envision a future with those people.”
Persling said she is looking forward to a modest, meaningful and happy future.
“Moving into my future, I’m not going to be travelling. I’m not going to have a lot of extra money. I’m not going to be going out for fancy dinners and I’m OK with that,” she said. “I’m ready for that. I think that’s what’s really going to make me happy. Like I’m so done just making myself happy.”
“You think you’re happy when you’re doing all these things [when you’re single] to make yourself happy. I don’t think you really are. It’s the relationships that make you happy. It’s building something with another person. It’s creating a life with another person, having goals and plans with another person. It’s making other people happy. Making people you love happy. That’s happiness. I really don’t think I will know true happiness until I’m in that place.”
While Persling doesn’t consider herself a feminist, she attributed feminism – in part – as the reason she had thought negatively about marriage.
“I feel unbelievably betrayed by feminism, and I don’t want to put it on the movement [entirely] because I believe you make your own choices … But I was constantly fed this idea that women can do everything. We don’t really need men … I kind of want to go back to some of those teachers and coaches and say, ‘What did you mean by that? Because we can’t do it all.’”
“I feel like I’m in such a different place now. And I’m so ready for that now. I understand what the sacrifice of marriage is and what the beauty of marriage is now, and I don’t think I appreciated what family means for a long time. I don’t think I truly understood,” she said during the interview. “I don’t care if I ever put on heels and go to a fancy dinner again. That stuff does not matter. I promise you young women it will never make you happy.”
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Biden/Buttigieg DEI Policies Endanger the Country. They Don't Care
The FAA is seeking people suffering from "severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities" to be air traffic controllers.
The country currently is in the throes of an epidemic of mass insanity and irrationality. The manifestations of the disorder are too numerous to cite, but the explosion of the DEI plague being pushed by the government, many businesses, and the intellectual pigmies in most of the media, must be included in any list of the most egregious. As currently advocated and practiced by our leftist “elites,”1 it is incompatible with rationality, common sense, and morality, among other things, and, as the Wall Street Journal, not to mention the Supreme Court, have pointed out, the U.S. Constitution.
There is a brand of this particular wokeness that is relatively unknown to the general public, but that is particularly irrational and dangerous. It is the Federal Aviation Administration’s relatively young DEI mandates. These Biden/Buttigieg DEI commands now apply to the employment of FAA air traffic controllers in an insidious way, a way that threatens the safety of our skies and of anyone who flies.
To understand how insidious and dangerous the FAA's DEI policies are, it is necessary to examine briefly just what air traffic controllers do and the nature of the job. The description that follows includes some detail about their tasks. Bear with me because it shows that being an ATC is not a job for dummies, or even for intellectual giants who cannot make crucial decisions in a short amount of time while under great stress.
First, just to be considered for possible employment, an ATC candidate must first pass a battery of seven tests covering numerical calculations, progressively difficult memory tests, problems involving rapidly changing image relationships, visual computer problems simulating collision avoidance, reading comprehension, logical reasoning, and a personality test. A description of the tests and sample problems are here. Take a stab at some of the sample problems to see how difficult they are and the built-in time limitations and pressures.
By the time they finish their training, ATCs must be experts in a number of areas that affect safety. These include weather, types of aircraft and their characteristics, navigation and the use of multiple types of navigational aids, effective communications with pilots, and radio and radar operations. To ensure pilot and passenger safety, ATCs must be skilled in, among other things, math, including the ability to make quick calculations in a dynamic environment, problem-solving, effective communication, and split-second decision making.
The ATCs at a local airport must monitor not only aircraft in the air, but personnel and vehicles on the ground, planes both on the runways and those taking off, as well as approaching aircraft that will be landing soon. They coordinate both inbound and outbound aircraft to assure that they are safe distances apart, vertically and horizontally.
At any given time, there can be many scores of aircraft within the airspace controlled by the local ATC. Atlanta’s controlled airspace, for example, extends thirty nautical miles from the airport. There is over 3,700 square miles under that airspace that they must control. In this airspace, the ATCs must maintain safe distances between aircraft that are flying at wildly varying airspeeds. For example, a small single-engine private plane may have a cruising speed of 90 - 150 knots/hour, while commercial airliners typically are flying at hundreds of miles per hour.2 Performing this analysis and giving the necessary instructions to pilots may be particularly difficult in the traffic landing pattern, when a small single-engine Cessna is sandwiched between, perhaps, a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air and a commercial airliner, all with different approach speeds.
In short, the ATCs’ role is complex and stressful, sometimes requiring split-second life-and-death decisions. An error, inattention, or even hesitation can cost the lives of hundreds of people both in the air and on the ground.
The FAA has eagerly embraced the extreme DEI strategies that are now oh-so-popular in “progressive” leftist and socialist circles. On its webpage, the FAA clearly sets out how it will discriminate against the wicked white males. As this article will show below, it does so by seeking to employ people who are clearly less qualified than the general applicant pool. Less qualified, that is, unless you believe that the average applicant suffers from, for example, a “severe intellectual disability.”
The FAA makes clear the tribes that it includes in the Diversity Nation: It touts that it specifically “targets” for “special emphasis,” in both recruiting and hiring, people with disabilities in “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”
Wait. It gets worse. Such disabled applicants get even more special treatment because they are eligible for preferential hiring. The FAA calls this “On-the-Spot hiring.” That is exactly what it sounds like – the FAA admits that it is a “non-competitive hiring method.” They are eligible for this non-competitive hiring even if their intellectual or psychiatric disability is “severe.”
https://johnalucas6.substack.com/p/bidenbuttigieg-dei-policies-endanger
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First Amendment Right to Religious Freedom Applies to Everyone but Jews
The First Amendment no longer applies to the openly Jewish. As antisemitic rallies, chants, and violence skyrocket in the United States and the Biden administration shifts focus to Islamophobia, many Jews have been forced to take their safety into their own hands.
In America, rallies and other activities in support of the Hamas terrorist organization that are often met with little resistance or protection from local authorities and a neutral passing glance from political leaders and celebrities have driven many Jews to change how they travel, dress, and express their worship.
Columnist and commentator Bethany Mandel told The Daily Signal that her family was no longer allowing her kids to walk to synagogue without protection.
Mandel said that she and several colleagues also have been forced to stop keeping the Sabbath in order to stay up to date on threats and to cover the Israel-Hamas war and its effects abroad.
Heritage Foundation research fellows Jason Bedrick and Jay Greene both canceled plans to travel to conferences where they didn’t feel safe as Jews. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.)
Several Jewish students at MIT told The Daily Signal that they’ve changed how they dress to avoid being targeted again by pro-Hamas students on campus—for example, swapping yarmulkes for baseball caps.
Countless synagogues, Jewish day schools, museums, and community centers have increased armed security drastically.
Why change your behavior in a nation where your right to religious liberty is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution? Because pro-Hamas protesters from Pennsylvania to California continually chant threats such as “Israel, Israel, you can’t hide; we charge you with genocide.”
Heaven help the Jew who is noticed acting a little too Jewish near a progressive university or pocket of fundamentalist Muslims. He might find his business, synagogue, student center, or cemetery protested, surrounded, and vandalized, as happened in New York, California, Florida, and Ohio.
The pro-Hamas protesters never explain how an Israeli Jew owning a coffee shop or retail store is equivalent to funding “the war against Palestine.” But like most other conspiracies steeped in antisemitism, sound data and logic are absent on principle.
In true American fashion, many Jews are preparing for the increased threats to the safety of their families and communities by arming themselves and taking firearms and self-defense training courses.
Chris Radcliff, a police officer in rural Indiana, told The Daily Signal that a large number of local Jews who didn’t carry prior to Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis have been filling up his classes on personal defense and firearms safety—and encouraging their friends to do the same.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew living in Florida, consistently reports the same. On his daily podcast, Shapiro has reported that gun stores and shooting ranges are packed with Jewish individuals who don’t wish to be the targets of the racial lynch mobs that have begun to form in urban areas such as New York City.
In the past month, two distinct groups of pro-Hamas protesters, one made up of college students at Cooper Union and the other of high school students in Queens, surrounded Jews until police officers had to escort the Jews to safety.
In both cases, the mobs of young people screamed the genocidal chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as they beat on doors separating them from terrified Jews inside.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, dispatched counselors from a “diversity, equity, and inclusion” group to lecture the mob of violent students in Queens, in place of any real consequence.
Jewish students have been harassed at MIT, Columbia, Penn State, Harvard, and NYU. Antisemitic incidents in the U.S. rose by over 400% in the first two weeks after Oct. 7.
Paul Kessler, a 69-year-old Jewish man, was beaten to death with a megaphone in Thousand Oaks, California, by a pro-Hamas protester, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office reported.
A California middle school forced four 11-year-old Jewish students to sign a gag order after they were harassed by a pro-Hamas student who told them that “all Israelis and Jews should be killed.”
Community leaders also have altered their behavior to avoid offending pro-Hamas groups at the expense of Jews.
The Second Sundays Art and Music Festival in Williamsburg, Virginia, canceled an annual menorah lighting scheduled for Dec. 10 after the founder of the festival said the event “seemed very inappropriate” in view of the Israel-Hamas war and might indicate the festival had chosen a side in the conflict.
The event organizer later offered to allow the menorah lighting, if it were done “under a banner calling for a cease-fire.”
This action drew severe condemnation from the United Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula, which labeled as antisemitic this pandering and singling out of an apolitical religious event:
We should be very clear: It is antisemitic to hold Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s policies and actions, and to require a political litmus test for Jews’ participation in community events that have nothing to do with Israel. Those standards would never be applied to another community.
After being heckled by pro-Hamas protesters, Brown University President Christina Paxson altered her speech to omit a student’s right to safely wear a yarmulke or the Star of David on campus—choosing only to mention a student’s right to wear a keffiyeh or hijab.
Jews in the United States are under attack, and the Left only has eyes for Islamophobia.
This isn’t new—only a different flavor of disgrace. After a transgender shooter slaughtered six, including three children, at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre mourned transphobia.
Racial crimes in which a black individual kills a white individual are often left without the FBI’s “hate crime” label.
There isn’t a single reason that the full weight of our federal government—the same government that found Jan. 6 protesters in mere moments—shouldn’t be brought down on those who cause our fellow Jewish citizens to live in fear.
Where is the social justice crowd now?
On paper, you have the freedom of speech, assembly, and religion. But after the cowardly responses to the blatant antisemitism that has become so common following Oct. 7, it’s clear that the First Amendment is extended only to a few select groups. Jews need not apply.
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11 December, 2023
The enduring relevance of natural law
The lawyers below are undoubtedly correct in saying that concepts of natural law have been very valuable in restraining tyranny. They do not however attempt to answer the basic philosophical conundrum involved: How do we know what the natural law is? If there are two claims about what the natural law is, how do we decide which one is right? The answer has to be abitrary. So concepts of natural law may be useful but they are not authoritative
It is impossible to understate the malaise that has engulfed Australia in 2023. Indeed, it has been a tumultuous year because, economically, Australians have suffered from spiralling inflation, deteriorating living standards, and elevated levels of unsustained immigration with its concomitant housing problems. In addition, governments (federal, state, and local) have sought – unsuccessfully – to divide the population along racial lines by entrenching The Voice in the Constitution, and by adopting social engineering legislation that is inimical with human nature and plain common sense. Such legislation includes, but is not limited to, the prohibition of gender-affirming conversion practices; the adoption of gender identification laws that facilitate transitioning to a gender, different from a person’s biological gender; inability or unwillingness of politicians to define a ‘woman’; unrelenting pressure to ban religion from the public forum; the adoption of free speech unfriendly legislation such as the proposed law to compel internet providers to police speech on their platforms; and, of course, the unrelenting zero emissions pursuit and the silencing of those who are climate sceptics. Really, the list of legislative abominations is unending.
Although these developments appear to be disparate projects, they do have one thing in common: they are all based on the assumption that humans possess the power to change ‘human nature’ developed over millennia. However, this assumption fails to recognise that the arrogation by social engineers and left-wing ideologues of God-like powers is futile. For example, how feasible is it for humans to transition to another gender? How could humanity hope to control the temperature on Planet Earth? And yet, Australia’s illiberal elites push their social engineering reform agenda without ever considering the natural limitations dictated by human nature.
The transgressions of Australia’s illiberal elite, to the extent they are incompatible with human nature, have resulted in a discernible deterioration of the nation’s fabric. This deterioration is visible in the fracturing of society into those who still believe in the proper role of humans, and those who usurp God-like powers. Although proponents of these transgressions may have been well-intentioned, the sustained and ongoing attacks on the integrity and cohesiveness of Australian society have blighted the nation and transformed Australia into ‘the unlucky country’ – which is also the title of our forthcoming book about Australia’s transformation from a ‘lucky country’ into an ‘unlucky country’.
The cumulative effect of the promotion and imposition of illiberal societal developments that disregards ‘human nature’ has been the growing disrespect for, and even repudiation of, the continuing importance of ‘natural law’ for a mature legal system. It is simply impossible to deny or underestimate the enduring relevance of natural law in the development of our legal system. This idea of natural law, which can be traced to the classical philosophy of the ancient Hebrew, Greeks, and Romans, through several Christian medieval writers, is enshrined, inter alia, in the English Magna Carta (1215), the UK Bill of Rights (1689), and the American Declaration of Independence (1776). People’s natural human rights, which derive from human nature, have thus a historical foundation, which has never been refuted, although it has been obscured in the passage of time.
Unfortunately, the principles underlying natural law, have been seriously undermined by the arbitrary actions of governments. During the last four years – but culminating in a turbulent 2023 – Australian governments have exerted powers over its citizens on a scale never previously attempted. Sometimes, especially during the Covid pandemic, governments oppressively controlled every single aspect of people’s lives: where they could go, whom they could meet, what they could do, even within their own homes. These intrusive measures created angst and discomfort among a compliant population, and it has done irreparable damage to Australia’s fabric.
Hence, the question is: what could be done to fight, or even to reverse, this inexorable slide into a Marxism-inspired leftist abyss that disregards ‘human nature’ and ‘common sense’?
The fundamental error of Marxist-inspired ideas is anthropological in nature. Personal freedom which detaches itself from objective standards, and consequently the moral duty to respect the basic rights of others, becomes narcissistic behaviour that is now carried to its illogical extreme; an autonomous form of ‘license’ that leads to unbridled self-affirmation and refuses to be limited by any requirement of the natural moral law.
There is no point looking to the legislative branch of government to seek relief from the oppressive and inexorable trend towards the defenestration of ‘human nature’. Instead, we need to rely on ‘common sense’ to protect humankind against the barbaric assault on our Western Civilisation. Some scholars argue that this fight-back requires a return to ‘natural law’ theory. However, it is challenging to rely on ‘natural law’ because our legal landscape is dominated by positivism as the prevailing legal philosophy. Although the rejuvenation of ‘natural law’ still offers the best prospect to successfully fight the present legislative abominations, it would certainly raise intractable questions regarding the origin of its basic legal principles (God-given or historically developed?). But, at least, it would make people reflect on ‘human nature’ and acknowledge its obvious limitations.
While the idea of natural law implies that the validity of law depends on its moral status, positivists claim that the main factor in determining the validity of law is whether the proper authority enacts such law. Positivists do not regard the immorality of a law as essentially relevant to its validity. According to the ‘Father of English Positivism’, John Austin, ‘The existence of law is one thing, its merit or demerit another.’
The revival of ‘natural law’ has been inspired by the views of Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, who in Dr. Bonham’s case, decided in 1608, said that, if legislation is ‘against common right and reason, or repugnant, or impossible to be performed, the common law will control it and adjudge such act to be void’.
Coke’s statement implies that it is problematic to consider legislation, regardless of whether it offends ‘common right and reason’, as the final arbiter of what people are allowed to do. This is because legislation that violates Australia’s natural law tradition often offends against rights that are deemed to be ‘inalienable.’ This view seems to have been accepted by some members of the High Court. For example, in Re Bolton; Ex Parte Beane, Justice Brennan admitted, ‘Many of our fundamental freedoms are guaranteed by ancient principles of the common law or by ancient statutes which are so much of the accepted constitutional framework that their terms, if not their very existence may be overlooked until a case arises which evokes their contemporary and undiminished force.’ Justice Deane agreed with Brennan’s sentiment when he stated that these principles ‘are the fabric of the freedom under the law, which is the prima facie right of every citizen in this land. They represent a bulwark against tyranny’.
Often, social engineering legislation excessively interferes with the life, liberty, and property of the citizen. For example, emergency powers – eagerly adopted by Australian politicians during the Covid pandemic – imposed extra-constitutional measures that undermined the principles of equality before the law and the right of citizens to object to any form of medical treatment, including vaccine mandates. This imposition constituted a gross violation of the natural law, the ultimate goal of which is to protect citizens against the power of the State.
As noted by Joseph F. Johnston, Jr. in an article entitled Natural Law and the Rule of Law, ‘Many if not all of the basic principles that we usually include under the rubric ‘rule of law’ can be derived directly or indirectly from natural law sources.’ He bemoans the fact that ‘the connection between natural law and the rule of law, which formerly was so close as to amount to virtual identity, is largely neglected by the law schools and the legal profession’. First coined by Plato and later refined by Aristotle, the concept of the ‘rule of law’ was further elaborated by St Thomas Aquinas, who stated: ‘Once the government is established, the government of the kingdom must be so arranged that opportunity to tyrannize be removed. At the same time, his power should be so tempered that he cannot easily fall into tyranny.’ According to the late American legal philosopher Charles Rice, who taught at the University of Notre Dame, ‘Aquinas’ analysis is a prescription for limited government, providing a rational basis on which to affirm that there are limits to what the state can rightly do.’ His insistence that the power of the human law be limited implies a right of the person not to be subjected to an unjust law.
It is difficult therefore to estimate the extent to which our legal and political systems developed as a result of the use of such concepts as ‘natural law’, ‘natural rights’, and ‘the rule of law’. These concepts are inextricably connected to a particular way of thinking about law that, according to Justice Clarence Thomas of the US Supreme Court, is ‘far from being a license for unlimited government and a roving judiciary. Rather, natural rights and higher law arguments are the best defense of liberty and of limited government’. To ignore this fact results in a diminished understanding of the rule of law and principles that underpin it. Australians continue to do so entirely at their peril.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/12/the-enduring-relevance-of-natural-law/
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Liberal Parenting Contributes to Mental Illness in Kids
A widely ignored study from Gallup and the Institute for Family Studies shows that children who are raised in politically liberal households are more likely to suffer mental health problems than kids from conservative homes.
In the study synopsis Parenting is the Key to Adolescent Mental Health, author Jonathan Rothwell focuses on different parenting styles and how they affect child development. The study then correlates these styles with political ideology and mental illness among children.
“Conservative and very conservative parents are the most likely to adopt the parenting practices associated with adolescent mental health. They are the most likely to effectively discipline their children, while also displaying affection and responding to their needs,” writes Rothwell. “Liberal parents score the lowest, even worse than very liberal parents, largely because they are the least likely to successfully discipline their children.”
The parenting style spread between liberal and conservative parents is not small. “Just 40% of liberal parents scored above average on the index, whereas 71% of very conservative parents and 56% of conservative parents did,” notes the report. Researchers also found that, “Very conservative parents are also somewhat more likely to report giving their child hugs and kisses every day. Generally speaking, political conservatism is associated with more responsive and discipline-oriented parenting.”
The study does a good job of exploring the ‘what’ of different parenting styles and their impact on the mental health of kids. But it doesn’t look as closely at the ‘why’ that underlies different approaches to parenting. The exception is a passing hat-tip to, “the prevalence of routine experiences including... participating in religious experiences (like church).”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, political conservatives are more likely than liberals to identify as religious. Gallup released a study on politics and religion on September 1, 2023, and found that 81% of Republicans are Protestant or Roman Catholic, while 61% of Democrats similarly identified. The study also revealed that 26% of Democrats reported no religious affiliation at all compared with just 11% of Republicans.
What is it about faith and political ideology that correlates so strongly with the mental health of children? One factor that deserves attention is the presence or absence of biblical principles that define the respective worldviews of parents.
The Bible contains a great deal of wisdom on child rearing and it stands to reason that scripture, to a greater or lesser degree, informs the parenting style of Christians. Some of the most venerable tips on child rearing are thousands of years old, including those in the Old Testament book of Proverbs which recommends, “Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart.”
Modern research affirms this ancient guidance. The Gallup/IFS study reports, “The percentage that an adolescent is in good mental health is 8 percentage points lower when the parents agree that they ‘find it difficult to discipline their child.’” The words of King Solomon and his successors are as true today as they were in the 10th century BC.
Fast forward to the 1st century AD and we read in Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” This too is reflected by current research. “Both harsh and overly permissive parenting predicts higher risk of mental health problems and problematic behaviors,” observes Gallup/IFS.
The issue of marriage and the attitude of parents toward it also contribute to a child’s mental health. According to the Gallup/IFS report, “Parents holding more pro-marriage attitudes are more likely to engage in best practice parenting.” The authors of the New Testament epistle to the Hebrews summed-up the value and importance of this institution simply and completely in writing, “Let marriage be held in honor among all.”
The rules of science and empirical research don’t allow for the supernatural in drawing conclusions, and that’s fine. But both increasingly support biblical truths, including this current study on parenting and the mental wellness of our kids. There’s a correlation between good parenting, good adolescent mental health and the Bible, and it ought not be dismissed or ignored.
It’s the latest example of how Nobel Prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg was right when he observed, “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.
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GOP-Led States Demand Major Firms Stop Backing Efforts to ‘Debank’ Conservatives
Nearly two dozen state attorneys general signed onto a letter Wednesday demanding major firms that provide voting advice to corporate shareholders stop backing efforts to “debank” conservatives.
Republican Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird led 22 other state attorneys general in sending a letter to the two companies that control 97% of the proxy advisory services market, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, whose advice they say shapes “the choices and activity of businesses and ultimately the United States’ and global economy.”
The letter warns them against opposing shareholder resolutions to hold financial institutions accountable for restricting services based on clients’ religious and political beliefs, noting that viewpoint discrimination comes with “legal liabilities.”
“They have advised big banks to keep quiet about why they’ve closed people’s bank accounts,” Bird told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We’ve seen banks targeting accounts for Second Amendment groups, like the NRA, or religious groups, including Christian nonprofits.”
“They say they want transparency, but when it comes to the fact that some of the big banks are debanking conservatives or conservative causes, they don’t want that transparency,” Bird said.
Banks often use “reputational risk” or “hate speech” policies to target customers based on politics, the letter states. Bank of America canceled the accounts of Indigenous Advance, a Tennessee-based Christian nonprofit, earlier this year because it “no longer aligns with the bank’s risk tolerance,” according to Alliance Defending Freedom.
The attorneys general are concerned Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis are opposing resolutions that seek to hold banks accountable for such instances of “politicized debanking.”
“These firms support a vast majority of left-of-center, pro-[environmental, social, and governance] shareholder proposals and effectively block proposals from conservative shareholders seeking to hold companies accountable for the anti-free speech and anti-religious behavior that ESG demands,” ADF Senior Vice President of Corporate Engagement Jeremy Tedesco told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Last year, shareholder resolutions on viewpoint diversity at JPMorgan Chase and PayPal received 2% or less of the vote, which the attorneys general wrote “would not have happened had [the advising firms] recommended voting for it.” They push for “more transparency,” asking ISS and Glass Lewis to provide explanations of their decision-making processes.
“Investment managers should be focused on getting Americans a return on their investment, having sound pensions, not playing politics with investments,” Bird told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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A Troubled 75th Anniversary for Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Sunday marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but many of those most loudly celebrating are doing the most harm to its legacy.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains the foundation on which the United Nations’ human rights framework is built. The contribution of the declaration to human rights was and remains immense.
After deliberations focused on distilling universal human rights and values common to all humanity, the drafters, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, proposed 30 articles expressing universal rights, including the freedoms of expression, religion, movement, and assembly.
It also affirmed the right to life, the right to own property, the prohibition of slavery, and the concepts of dignity, equality, and due process.
But around the globe, those rights are increasingly under assault.
No doubt governments around the world will issue statements recognizing the anniversary and affirming their commitment to human rights.
But governments flout rights with little consequence. Democracy has been overthrown with alarming frequency in the Sahel region of Africa and has been in slow retreat globally for years, according to Freedom House.
Religious persecution and violence is increasingly common. Authoritarian governments, led by Beijing, seek to control speech and police their populations via increasingly omnipresent surveillance. In China, perhaps 1 million Uyghur Muslims are imprisoned and subject to forced labor. In fact, the U.S. has determined that Beijing is committing genocide in Xinxiang.
The U.N. conducts human rights kabuki theater, but no one seriously expects it to act in defense of human rights. The premier human rights body at the U.N., the Human Rights Council, focuses much of its time on condemning Israel, but has no time to condemn China, Cuba, or the many other human rights violators.
Likewise, governments dishonestly spin tales of their fidelity to human rights in the Human Rights Council during the universal periodic reviews. Other governments disingenuously nod along with those falsehoods and assert that the process is helpful.
Meanwhile, human rights advocates too often ignore violations of basic human rights and freedoms and instead seek to expand the number of rights and distort their interpretation in ways never envisioned by those who drafted the Universal Declaration.
As noted by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the original 30 rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have proliferated into more than 1,300 rights provisions in 64 agreements.
Those new rights encompass a variety of matters, including rights to a healthy environment, peace, development, and sexual orientation and gender identity, among many other issues.
What’s so wrong with expanding the scope of human rights? Unfortunately, more rights do not translate into more justice, more freedom, or more protection for individuals.
But the proliferation of rights and the desire to advance all of them without preference dilutes the attention and resources that can be applied to strengthening any one of them.
The sad reality is that the multilateral system has too frequently fallen short of fulfilling the promise in the U.N. Charter to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, equality, and the dignity and worth of the human person.
The evolution of the human rights discourse over the past few decades has made this challenge harder, not easier.
Pursuing new, increasingly esoteric rights claims, while ignoring the fact that much of the world’s population has yet to enjoy the rights laid out in the Universal Declaration, does a huge disservice to the billions of people who face jail or worse for speaking their opinions, protesting their government, or practicing their religion.
That was a key takeaway from the First Principles on Human Rights Series that The Heritage Foundation published in 2020. In that series, experts assessed in detail threats to basic human rights and fundamental freedoms, and made recommendations for policymakers. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
For instance, professor Tom Finegan, a lecturer in theology and religious studies at Mary Immaculate College in Ireland, urged states to reject faulty interpretations of treaties, warning that if states are passive toward, or acquiescent to, faulty pronouncements by treaty-monitoring bodies, those pronouncements could attain the status of customary human rights law.
In another essay, Notre Dame law professor Paolo Carozza, who served on the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, urges policymakers to be cautious in the use of the concept of dignity in the law in ways that generate new rights or aggressive new understandings of rights. He emphasizes that need for broad consensus when assessing rights claims.
Lawyers Michael Farris and Paul Coleman caution that efforts to limit free speech in the name of combating “hate speech” (and the recent proposals to combat misinformation or disinformation) pose an existential threat to freedom of expression.
On the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the best tribute would be to return the focus to human rights that have universal consensus. Unless those fundamental rights and freedoms are secure, other human aspirations will be forever vulnerable.
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The Left's Criminal Neglect of Law and Order
Crime in Washington, D.C. is surging beyond last year's record: Homicides are up 32 percent with 253 so far this year and robberies have increased 70 percent to 3,280 year-to-date. Motor vehicle thefts have risen 91 percent to more than 6,400, and crime across the board in the nation's capital has increased 27 percent in 2023 with a few weeks before the new year.
Across the river from D.C. in the Commonwealth of Virginia, there's a relatively new sheriff in town, and Attorney General Jason Miyares — elected in November 2021 — isn't taking the threat of rising crime in the District or elsewhere lightly — especially when it's affecting Virginians.
"I think you have a huge problem in DC — it's clear," Miyares told me this week. "You could see from what's happening, just where the carjackings are taking place, is literally right over the border," he said of the relatively narrow Potomac River dividing line between his state and the nation's capital. "They're not coming into Virginia, but it's affecting Virginia," he explained. "It's Virginians that are being carjacked — you just had your third FBI agent this year that got carjacked."
D.C. is anything but an island, and it's filled with non-residents every day of the week for work, sightseeing, sports, or other entertainment, including a large number of Virginians. "It is absolutely impacting people that live in the Commonwealth," Miyares said. "You have the beautiful young woman that was a recent graduate of James Madison University that had come into the District to see a concert, and within hours of her being in the district she was brutally murdered in her hotel room by someone that should never have been on the street," he recalled of the suspect who'd been arrested many times before and had multiple warrants out for his arrest after he was released over objections he posed a danger to others.
Beyond tragic attacks that endanger the lives of Virginians in D.C., Miyares warned that the "organized crime element" also poses a threat to law and order in the Commonwealth and "doesn't just stop at the border."
For example, "what you're seeing with the Sinaloa [Cartel] that is making inroads in Virginia," Miyares explained. "We know they have basically popped up in Richmond," he said. "My expectation: they're probably already in the DC, Northern Virginia area — you have MS-13 already here," added Miyares. "Generally what happens is, whenever you have it, is always a fight with the drug distribution network, and it gets really, really bloody," the attorney general warned. "That's one of my big concerns is, what happens in DC, if there's suddenly an ongoing feud or fight over distribution of narcotics."
Beyond Virginia's border with D.C. is the U.S. border with Mexico, another major factor in rising crime that's worrying Miyares. "What's happening on our border is, it is almost borderline criminal neglect," he explained. "With the amount of fentanyl that crosses the southern border, it can kill every man, woman, and child three times over."
Almost "everything" about the drug war has "fundamentally changed — just almost overnight," Miyares said of changes in the last half-decade. "It used to be that you needed acres of land, you needed good weather, and you needed a distribution network," explained the AG. "Now you don't need any of that. All you need is a chemistry lab."
The old ways are gone, added Miyares, because of "the absolutely massive quantity of fentanyl available to manufacture" and the fact that producers "already have a distribution network" in place to spread their deadly product to American streets. "It's getting much more deadly," Miyares said of the drugs hitting streets around the country. "And then the conflicts that are happening behind the scenes are a grave concern of mine where we are," he added of the violent fights over distribution.
Even before he was Virginia's top law enforcement officer, then-state House of Delegates member Miyares was focused on upholding law and order and enhancing penalties for those peddling deadly fentanyl. He and Virginia Republicans have been consistent in this goal, but Virginia's Democrats have lurched to the left to the detriment of the Commonwealth's safety.
Governor Glenn Youngkin, Miyares explained, "has been begging for legislation that says if you're a fentanyl dealer and somebody overdoses, you can be charged with felony homicide." That bill, coincidentally, was carried by Miyares when he served in the House of Delegates under then-Democrat Governor Ralph Northam. Then, despite passing with the support of "close to 20 Democrats" as Miyares retold, Northam vetoed the bill.
Fast forward a few years and, when Republicans in the legislature brought the bill back to the floor with the aim of having Governor Youngkin get the bill at his desk to finally sign into law, the legislation "died in a party-line vote" as Democrats who "had voted for the exact same bill four years ago voted against it," recalled Miyares. That reality "tells you how much they've shifted to the left — the overdose crisis has gotten worse, the fentanyl crisis has gotten worse — yet they couldn't vote for the same bill they'd voted for just a couple years ago."
Democrats' leftward lurch, Miyares added, is caused by their mindset that "anything that has enhanced penalties is something that puts a real target on the back in the Democrat primaries — they won't do it."
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10 December, 2023
'Trad wife' who quit her optician career to be a stay-at-home wife and 'serve' her husband insists it is her 'DUTY' as a woman to do ALL of the cooking and cleaning - as she slams critics who say she is 'oppressed' and 'lazy'
Feminists LOATHE all talk of biology but it exists nonetheless. And this woman has a head-start on happiness because she has chosen a role in line with her biology. My wife Jenny was delighted to be a full-time wife and mother. Feminism is a biological aberration
A trad wife has revealed how she quit her career as an optician to stay at home and 'serve' her husband by cooking and cleaning for him - as she shrugs off trolls' criticism that she's 'oppressed.'
Mikayla Herrmann, from Oklahoma, spends hours each day cooking, cleaning and tending the farm animals at home while husband Samuel Herrmann, 31, works as a blacksmith machinery company boss.
The 26-year-old homemaker quit her optician role in a big city to move to the countryside and became a full-time housewife after getting married five years ago.
Mikayla is the sixth generation of women in her family to stay at home.
The couple met at a church function in 2017 and 'immediately' hit it off, before getting engaged in May 2018 and marrying just three months later.
Dedicated Mikayla admits she loves the satisfaction of serving her husband meals made from home-grown vegetables, butchered meat from their farm and bread made with flour milled at home.
But Mikayla says she often receives Instagram comments from strangers branding her as 'oppressed' and 'lazy,' but says she chose to dedicate her life to being a housewife.
'I was always looking forward to meeting my husband and becoming a housewife because that's what I've always seen women in my life do and what I've always wanted to do,' Mikayla shared.
'My mom and [my husband's] mom have done the same thing, our grandparents have done the same thing. We're probably the fifth or sixth generation of home-making wives.
'We had always known that once we got married that [my husband] was going to be the provider for me and I would be the stay-at-home wife and take care of everything around the home.'
Mikayla's 'typical day' revolves around getting up 'fairly early' and catering to the farm and their animals.
She explained: 'In the spring and summer I have to get out there very early, take care of everything, milk our goats, hay the animals and work on the garden.
'I also try to cook everything from scratch from my home so that takes quite a while too to prepare for each meal.'
Mikayla continued: 'My husband comes home and he has breakfast here, he has lunch here and comes home for dinner, so I've got all of these different meals that I cook from scratch.
'It usually takes an hour or more of preparation before he comes home to be ready for when he comes home for it.
'I definitely feel like it is my duty to serve my husband and for him to be the breadwinner of my house.
'But he is such a kind person that he will never be frustrated at me if I'm having a bad day and I'm not able to get food on the table whenever he walks through the door.
'I try to do as much of that as I can because I feel like it is my job as his wife to make sure that he comes home to a nice house that has been cleaned.'
The content creator documents her life as a housewife on social media where she promotes homemaking to other wives but says she often receives 'hateful' comments.
'Someone had commented on one of my videos that I was a "tradwife" and I had to Google it because I didn't know if this was a bad thing or a good thing.
'I am definitely a tradwife. Our values are very traditional and pretty much every video of tradwife things that I saw, I can relate to.
'I love it because I get to promote homemaking to other wives who maybe don't have that multiple generation family, that are also homemakers.
'They don't really have somebody that they can relate to and I like being that person for them because it's something I've always grown up knowing that I want to do.
'I have gotten some hateful comments on my social media about being a homemaker.
'It's mostly just comments about being lazy and that I sit at home and let my husband take care of everything and I'm not doing anything that's fulfilling here.
'But this is really the most fulfilled I have ever felt because it's all I've ever wanted to do.
'People think I'm "oppressed" but I am definitely not. I chose to have this job. My husband isn't forcing me into serving him in any way.'
Mikayla and Samuel don't have children but hope to expand their family in future - and they plan to have home births and homeschool their kids.
'We do not have children yet. That's something we have been praying about for several years and we hope that God blesses us with children soon,' Mikayla shared.
'I absolutely cannot wait to become a mom. I think it will be so wonderful to instill these values in my children and help out with some of the farm things.
'We will most likely homeschool and do a lot of the traditional homemaking, homeschooling, homesteading type of things and hopefully have a home birth as well.'
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Liberal Parenting Contributes to Mental Illness in Kids
A widely ignored study from Gallup and the Institute for Family Studies shows that children who are raised in politically liberal households are more likely to suffer mental health problems than kids from conservative homes.
In the study synopsis Parenting is the Key to Adolescent Mental Health, author Jonathan Rothwell focuses on different parenting styles and how they affect child development. The study then correlates these styles with political ideology and mental illness among children.
“Conservative and very conservative parents are the most likely to adopt the parenting practices associated with adolescent mental health. They are the most likely to effectively discipline their children, while also displaying affection and responding to their needs,” writes Rothwell. “Liberal parents score the lowest, even worse than very liberal parents, largely because they are the least likely to successfully discipline their children.”
The parenting style spread between liberal and conservative parents is not small. “Just 40% of liberal parents scored above average on the index, whereas 71% of very conservative parents and 56% of conservative parents did,” notes the report. Researchers also found that, “Very conservative parents are also somewhat more likely to report giving their child hugs and kisses every day. Generally speaking, political conservatism is associated with more responsive and discipline-oriented parenting.”
The study does a good job of exploring the ‘what’ of different parenting styles and their impact on the mental health of kids. But it doesn’t look as closely at the ‘why’ that underlies different approaches to parenting. The exception is a passing hat-tip to, “the prevalence of routine experiences including... participating in religious experiences (like church).”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, political conservatives are more likely than liberals to identify as religious. Gallup released a study on politics and religion on September 1, 2023, and found that 81% of Republicans are Protestant or Roman Catholic, while 61% of Democrats similarly identified. The study also revealed that 26% of Democrats reported no religious affiliation at all compared with just 11% of Republicans.
What is it about faith and political ideology that correlates so strongly with the mental health of children? One factor that deserves attention is the presence or absence of biblical principles that define the respective worldviews of parents.
The Bible contains a great deal of wisdom on child rearing and it stands to reason that scripture, to a greater or lesser degree, informs the parenting style of Christians. Some of the most venerable tips on child rearing are thousands of years old, including those in the Old Testament book of Proverbs which recommends, “Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart.”
Modern research affirms this ancient guidance. The Gallup/IFS study reports, “The percentage that an adolescent is in good mental health is 8 percentage points lower when the parents agree that they ‘find it difficult to discipline their child.’” The words of King Solomon and his successors are as true today as they were in the 10th century BC.
Fast forward to the 1st century AD and we read in Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” This too is reflected by current research. “Both harsh and overly permissive parenting predicts higher risk of mental health problems and problematic behaviors,” observes Gallup/IFS.
The issue of marriage and the attitude of parents toward it also contribute to a child’s mental health. According to the Gallup/IFS report, “Parents holding more pro-marriage attitudes are more likely to engage in best practice parenting.” The authors of the New Testament epistle to the Hebrews summed-up the value and importance of this institution simply and completely in writing, “Let marriage be held in honor among all.”
The rules of science and empirical research don’t allow for the supernatural in drawing conclusions, and that’s fine. But both increasingly support biblical truths, including this current study on parenting and the mental wellness of our kids. There’s a correlation between good parenting, good adolescent mental health and the Bible, and it ought not be dismissed or ignored.
It’s the latest example of how Nobel Prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg was right when he observed, “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.
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Was this the moment the Pendulum of Insanity reached the height of madness?
Will the pendulum of sanity swing back in our lifetime? When will the insanity that has infected every echelon of society – from schools to college campuses, politics, the media and beyond – reach its unbearable zenith? When will we really 'wake up' and walk back from the newfound McCarthyite hysteria that is sending us all mad with rage and injustice?
The wonderfully eloquent yet disturbing concept of the 'pendulum of sanity' was coined on Twitter this week by actor James Woods after a breathtaking moment of clarity in Congress.
A moment that didn't just shock America – its utter shamelessness captured headlines across the world.
The presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT (attended by Woods himself) testified to Congress about on-campus antisemitism — downplaying, denying, minimizing, and excusing.
All three presidents are women. All three, one would assume, are aware of the systematic rape, torture and mutilation of women, children – and men – by Hamas.
Yet here was Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a Harvard graduate, questioning Penn's president Liz Magill on Wednesday. 'Ms. Magill: At Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?'
Magill took a beat and openly smirked. 'If the speech turns into conduct', she said, smiling widely, 'it can be harassment, yes'.
Stefanik: 'I am asking: Specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?'
Magill: 'If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment'.
Stefanik: 'So the answer is yes'?
Magill: 'It is a context-dependent position… If the speech becomes conduct. It can be harassment.'
'"Conduct" meaning "committing the act of genocide"?' Stefanik asked. But Magill couldn't give a straight answer.
Fire her. But then, she should have been gone well before this disgusting display, holding her nose above an elected official she so clearly deems beneath her.
Magill was sent an open letter in September by The International Legal Forum, expressing 'grave concern' over the speakers Penn was hosting at its three-day 'Palestine Writes' event — scheduled during Yom Kippur.
Noted antisemite Roger Waters was one invited guest. Another, Randa Abdel-Fattah, 'has previously claimed that "Israel is a demonic, sick project and I can't wait for the day we commemorate its end",' the letter said.
Speaker Marc Lamont Hill was also quoted as saying that 'calls for Palestinians to 'reject hatred and terrorism' are 'offensive and counterproductive'.
Magill allowed the festival to proceed. No speaker was reported to have been disinvited.
Back on the Hill, MIT president Dr. Sally Kornbluth testified that anti-Jewish chants on her campus calling for an intifada 'can be antisemitic, depending on the context when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people'.
Harvard's Claudine Gay said much the same.
'We embrace a commitment to free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful,' she testified. 'It's when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying, harassment and intimidation.'
Can you ever imagine this response regarding hate speech directed at black, gay or trans students? Actually, that's impossible, because there's not one college campus that would brook the slightest hint of such bigotry.
As my esteemed Mail colleague Andrew Neil tweeted Thursday: 'Almost 30 years ago the top executives of Big Tobacco appeared before Congress in a performance from which they and their industry never recovered. This week's disastrous appearance by three Ivy League bosses looks [to be] doing equivalent damage to them and America's top universities.'
Indeed. The suspicion and distrust average Americans have long held regarding $60,000-a-year educations has now been borne out. And a sane-thinking world is lashing back.
Because the examples of insanity don't now come weekly or monthly. They arrive hourly.
Let's just start with academia – a toxic modern breeding ground of indoctrination which impresses on young minds to narrow, not broaden, their thinking.
In September, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranked Penn third-to-last among American colleges for freedom of speech. Harvard, meanwhile, received 'the lowest score possible, 0.00, and is the only school with an 'Abysmal' speech climate rating.'
Dr. Devin Jane Buckley, who holds a PhD from Duke, was 'deplatformed' — Ivy League slang for 'go f**k yourself' — from a speaking engagement at Harvard last year because she does not adhere to trans orthodoxy.
Here's an excerpt from an email, signed by 'X' — courage of convictions, that signatory — informing Buckley she was no longer welcome:
'Dear Devin, I have some bad news... my co-coordinator looked you up on google... [and] was surprised to find that your public profile is largely rooted in controversial issues regarding trans identity and that you're on the board of an organization that takes a public stance regarding trans people as dangerous and deceptive.'
And Buckley wasn't even speaking about trans issues. She was scheduled to talk about British romanticism!
So don't believe it when Magill, Kornbluth, Gay and their ilk say there's nothing they can do, that they would never prohibit free speech, and that antisemitism is contextual.
Here was the New York Times headline: 'Republicans Try to Put Harvard, MIT and Penn on the Defensive about Antisemitism'.
Yes, the self-righteous Gray Lady, which hasn't learned a thing since it routinely buried coverage of the Holocaust in its back pages, is now framing antisemitism as a partisan issue.
The same Times – contemporaneously describing those rounded up by Nazis and sent to concentration camps as 'persons' or 'refugees' rather than Jews — spent the days after Oct. 7 politely calling Hamas terrorists 'militants'.
Should we be surprised that Gen Z, in a TikTok frenzy, has adopted Osama bin Laden's 'Letter to America' as their new favorite treatise?
That a mass murderer, an antisemite who believed there is no such thing as rape, that women exist only to serve men, that any and all members of the LGBTQ+ community should be put to death, whose end goal was for the entire world to live under this barbarism — who wrote, in that letter, that America 'is the worst civilization witnessed by mankind' — has young American fans?
Young Americans who also believe that the United States, as much an idea as a country, is the worst place on earth? How do they square that assessment with the hundreds of thousands of migrants pouring through our borders seeking a better life?
This wrongthink is the direct result of a cultural rot that defines all white people as racist colonizers and all brown and black people as powerless, subjugated victims. Hence the Jews and Israel had it coming.
Tell that to the father of Emily Hand, the girl who turned 9 while held hostage by Hamas. Freed after eight weeks, Emily still speaks only in a whisper. 'She'd been conditioned not to make any noise', her father Thomas told CNN.
'Last night she cried until her face was red and blotchy,' he said. 'She couldn't stop. She didn't want any comfort. I guess she's forgotten how to be comforted.'
And these ostensible top minds, these advocates for social justice at America's top universities, defend such horrors with their silence, their refusal to unequivocally denounce this second Holocaust.
It's an infestation, a malignant cancer, and perhaps our greatest existential threat — truly, McCarthyism for the new millennium.
Most of us now live in one of two Americas — red or blue, bigoted or woke — but almost all of us are afraid to say what we really think or feel.
It's why Trump's election in 2016 and Brexit in the UK took the establishment elite in both countries by surprise.
The electorate is sick of being made to feel that because they may question DEI, trans orthodoxy, COVID regulations, or illegal immigration that they must be unenlightened, uninformed, hateful, dumb.
That if they're not seeing racism and transphobia everywhere, then they are the problem.
For anyone wondering why Trump is posting the numbers he is: This is the silent majority he's speaking to, the Americans worried about inflation, the destruction of major cities, soft-on-crime policies, a porous Southern border, resulting threats to national security, and a biased media that still insists Hunter Biden's laptop was a Russian plant, that his lurid hiring of sex workers and alleged financial fraud are unprovable (despite damning new indictments) and that Joe Biden is totally fit to serve another term.
It's a reaction, too, to a cultural orthodoxy that tells us only certain stories matter now — and if you're a straight white male, no one wants to hear from you.
In an incredible recent piece for The Free Press, Cuban-American author Alex Perez wrote about the crisis in American book publishing, controlled by the so-called Big Five houses and already near-impossible to break into.
'The new dogma, industry insiders told me, is two-pronged', Perez writes. 'Books should advance the narrative that people of color are victims of white supremacy; and nonblack and non-Latino authors should avoid characters who are black and Latino — even if their characters toe the officially approved narrative.'
After George Floyd was murdered in 2020, the Big Five went on a DEI-led hiring spree, which resulted in editors 'who were out of their depth', Perez writes.
He quotes one insider as shocked by 'young people without previous publishing experience who struggled to write a professional email'.
This newfound ethos extends to what books now get published and heavily promoted. Perez reports that 'Pageboy', the memoir by trans actor Elliot Page, was bought by Flatiron Books for $3 million.
It has sold fewer than 68,000 copies – a mere fraction of the number required to recoup that cost.
Random House spent $500,000 on 'Lucky Red', a queer-feminist Western that has sold 3,500 copies. The novel 'Dear Miss Metropolitan', concerning three black and biracial girls held hostage in a Queens basement, went for more than $250,000 and has sold just over 3,000 copies.
'All the while', Perez writes, 'according to some prominent writers and editors, these publishing houses appeared to be discriminating against white male writers'.
Blockbuster author James Patterson said as much – before inevitably having to denounce himself. 'I strongly support a diversity of voices being heard', he said.
Of course. But that's not the point — just as you now can't be a biological woman advocating for your right to compete in sports against other biological women without being transphobic.
Riley Gaines, the former UCAA swimmer turned activist, also testified before Congress this week.
It was a consequential appearance, one that will inform the vote on Biden's proposed rule changes to Title IX, which would no longer protect biological women in sports.
Here was the greeting offered by 'Squad' member Rep. Summer Lee: 'It's disappointing to me that although the title of this hearing implies a much-needed discussion, we're likely going to be forced to listen to transphobic bigotry'.
I'm sorry — this is either a discussion or it's not. Lee contradicts herself here with amazing sophistry. She is basically saying she will not listen to Gaines or any woman who shares her concerns.
And this is in a week where two transgender cyclists, who present quite clearly as biological males, placed first and second in a major women's race.
But for biological women to question this — well, we are told we must sit down and shut up, lest we too be considered evil transphobes.
Gaines refused to be unfairly maligned by Lee.
'Ranking member Lee', she said, 'if my opening testimony makes me transphobic then I believe your opening monologue makes you a misogynist'.
Lee tried to have Gaines's comments stricken from the record. Yet another insufferable, hypocritical example of the left's 'rules for thee, not for me'.
Let's look at the cover of last Sunday's New York Times Opinion section.
'Who You Are is a Choice', reads the headline. 'The panic over transgender children is driven by the fear that they'll regret transitioning. But the freedom to make mistakes is core to discovering your identity'.
What? No one is saying that kids shouldn't be free to make mistakes. But there's a difference between having ice cream for dinner and medicalizing yourself into permanent infertility before the age of 18 — not to mention that the human brain doesn't reach adulthood until age 25.
It's shallow, specious arguments like these — presented with moral surety and philosophical self-congratulation — that have left a silent majority feeling insulted and abandoned.
People like the nine-year-old boy, in face paint and Native headdress at a recent Kansas City Chiefs game, who was publicly shamed as 'hating black people and Native American people at the same time', by Deadspin writer Carron Phillips. Nine years old.
'He is Native American', the boy's mother wrote on Facebook. 'Just stop already'.
Yes.
That's the lament of Americans everywhere, outraged by the bosses of top universities quick to assail everything but outright hatred of Jews, that what we're seeing with our own eyes — be it biological male athletes trouncing women who can't compete, or a president so feeble he falls up staircases, or terrorism justified as anti-colonialist comeuppance — can't be believed.
Just stop already.
We see it all. And so the pendulum hopefully begins its swing back to the center of rational, commonsense thinking.
After this week's deplorable testimony regarding campus antisemitism, major Penn donor Ross Stevens threatened to withhold $100 million unless Magill resigns. I have no doubt she will be the first to go and not the last.
After all, even those of us without Ivy League educations know real prejudice and hatred when we see it.
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The Tragic Aftershocks of ‘Gender Affirming’ Care
What happens when gender-confused children who have been persuaded either by the Internet, their schools, their psychologists, or their physicians that they are transgender discover in their late teens or early 20s that they were lied to? That they cannot change their gender and, in fact, they prefer their biological gender to the facsimile they came up with for themselves?
We are starting to see a litany of these older teens and adults coming forward with their testimonies, and they are going after the medical industry that led them down the veritable garden path. They are called “detransitioners” and they are the “lucky” ones.
“Gender affirmation” treatment and the medications and surgeries that go with it are big business. As The Daily Wire reported last year: “The industry surrounding transgender surgeries is expected to reach $5 billion by the end of the decade. According to a recent report from Grand View Research, the sector saw a $1.9 billion valuation last year and is forecast to expand at a compound annual growth rate of more than 11% through 2030.”
To provide Big Medicine with the cover needed to keep raking in the dough, transgenderism was adopted by the cultural Marxists and progressive feminists (but we repeat ourselves). Transgenderism became part of the intersectional coalition and therefore a protected political class. Soon no one was allowed to question the movement, and medical professionals bolstered by the LGBTQ activists began their experiments on young girls and began to manipulate their parents.
Some of these detransitioned young women who are coming forward with lawsuits were put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones after their first visit to the mental healthcare provider. One was only 12 when they started messing with her body chemistry.
Chloe Cole, the first of these brave women to come forward and sue her abusers in the medical profession, was convinced to do a double mastectomy at 15 years of age. Since her lawsuit, a dozen more people have come forward to sue the unethical physicians and mental health professionals who took advantage of their fragile state and youthful ignorance, convincing them to harm their bodies.
Hitting Big Medicine right in the pocketbook might prove the key to knocking the whole castle down. The Washington Times, paraphrasing one of the lawyers representing three detransitioners, wrote that “the medical community would one day look back on medicalized gender transitions with the same contrition as lobotomies and the overprescription of opioids.”
LBGTQ activists love to claim that the number of detransitioners is relatively small, though the studies they use to back up these claims only follow “trans”-identifying patients for a year after their treatments have started. Larger studies like those conducted in Europe (no shock there) found that many regret their choices and, even more frightening, their suicidality does not diminish even after all the “affirmation.” Some studies even found that as many as 20% of people who decide they are the opposite gender detransition. That number may become even higher as other women hear about their peers’ disillusionment with transgenderism and that ideology.
The Rainbow Mafia, left-wing media, progressive politicians, and leftists abhor the existence of detransitioners. These brave souls (mostly women at this point) are living proof that gender ideology is a big fat lie. Their abusers are aided and abetted by activists, media, and politicians, and they deserve better than that. As National Review so aptly notes, “Detransitioners now deserve advocates whom they never had during their gender-identity crises.”
Detransitioners deserve justice. Those of us with voices and platforms need to elevate their plight and put an end to the madness that is gender ideology. Because in the interim, young children — many of them girls — are heading down the same horrible path.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/102728-the-tragic-aftershocks-of-gender-affirming-care-2023-12-08
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7 December, 2023
Men marrying or having children with younger women is a big 2023 trend
Mary Madigan, writing below, could be condemned as "ageist" but she is one of many women who are censorious about older men who team up with young women. I am something of a sinner in that regard. I have a female friend (NOT a partner) whom I see a lot of who is 35. I am 80. So I see another side of the picture.
You CAN be geninely non-ageist. As an example, I once married a lovely lady who was 11 years OLDER than I was. I was 32, she was 43. A photo of her from our honeymoon below.
A huge factor in pairing is common attitudes and it would be very shallow to claim that all attitudes are wholly age related. I shared a lot of attitudes with my older wife and I share a lot with my younger friend.
There are undoubtedly a variety of influences on attitudes that are not tied to age but a big one is IQ. I am a certified high IQ person and ALL my ladies have also been pretty bright. A high IQ does cause you to see the world a lot differently and it can be very pleasing to find someone else who shares such perspectives. It can be quite a relief
I am certainly not claiming that all age imbalanced relationships are between high IQ people but it an example of something important and unifying that is not age-related.
Micro miniskirts, baggy jeans, and old men marrying or having children with women far younger than them are the most significant trends 2023.
The tiny skirts that are impossible to walk upstairs in without flashing someone and the baggy jeans that sit awkwardly on anyone with hips are things we can all learn to accept.
The famous men in droves hooking up with women half their age need to be stopped and rejected like a pair of skinny jeans being ignored in your wardrobe.
A huge number of men have partnered up with women young enough to be their daughters this year … or at the very least they look like their daughters.
Actor Al Pacino, 82, welcomed a fourth child with his 29-year-old girlfriend Noor Alfallah and acclaimed actor Robert DeNiro, 80, had a daughter with Tiffany Chen, 45.
Actor Rufus Swell, 54, got engaged to Vivian Benitez, 26 and here’s a fun fact: Swell’s 21-year-old son is closer in age to Benitez than he is.
If that wasn’t enough to confirm, there’s a real ancient man trend suddenly taking over the world with the same rapid succession that Paris Hilton did in the early 2000s.
Early 2000s comedian Dane Cook, 51, married his fiancee, Kelsi Taylor, 24, and Leonardo DiCaprio, 48, has kept his streak of never dating a woman over the age of 26 and has been spotted with Vittoria Ceretti, 25.
Something is unnerving about seeing a man date a woman that is young enough to be his daughter.
Usually, that kind of relationship seems to provoke a mass eye roll, but seeing it become so trendy in 2023 is just depressing.
I’m no relationship expert and have the blocked numbers to prove it, but I think the best romantic partnerships are formed on equal footing.
When you’re both in similar life positions, when you create a life together as a team and when you enter the relationship in equally powerful positions.
You want to meet someone you can build a life with …. Not end up with some man at the end of his life, where you have to fit into whatever world they’ve already created for themselves.
Sure, there’s a case to be made that age is just a number, but is it? I think the older you get, the more you realise age does matter.
Age gives you experience, your Medicare card, time to feel confident in yourself and time to know yourself.
You get old enough to realise that a tattoo in a language you can’t read isn’t clever and sophisticated but rather a bit trashy.
Eventually, you work out your Mum was right, and people don’t tell you how much they love you via some cute text messages; they show you by actually turning up to help you move house.
Maybe these men just happen to find their soulmates in women half their age … but have you ever met anyone half your age and thought … wow we really connect? No.
At best you have a laugh at worse you have to google the word “slay” afterwards, so you can understand what they were saying.
The dating younger women trend is born from the concept of men wanting not to find equal partners but women to pamper them, and the last thing we need to be doing in 2023 is pampering more powerful white men.
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Our Ticking Ethnic Time Bomb
The new projections for the U.S. population from the U.S. Census Bureau show dramatic ongoing changes in the ethnic makeup of the nation.
In 2022, the percentage of the U.S., per the report, that was non-Hispanic white was 59%. In 1980, the U.S. population was 80% white.
The report projects the percentage of the nation that is white continuing to shrink, dropping to 45% by 2060, 37 years from now.
Aside from concluding that, over time, the American population will be increasingly culturally diverse and colorful, there are profound political implications to this ongoing ethnic shift.
The Republican vote is disproportionately white. The Democratic vote is disproportionately not white. An ongoing shift of the population toward non-white demographics means that, assuming no change in voting behavior of these various groups, electing Republicans will become harder and harder.
Consider that in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected president, 88% of voters were white. Reagan captured 56% of the white vote, and Jimmy Carter got 36% (there was a third party candidate in that election, John Anderson, who got 8%).
In the last presidential election in 2020, 67% of voters were white.
Donald Trump captured 58% of the white vote, and President Joe Biden 41%. Biden won majorities in all other ethnic categories: Black, Hispanic, Asian, other.
If the electorate in 2020 was 88% white, as it was in 1980 when Reagan was elected, it is most reasonable to assume that Trump would now be serving his second term.
It is also reasonable to assume that the ongoing shrinking of the white vote was one relevant factor in Trump's loss in 2020. When he won in 2016, flipping five battleground states by razor-thin margins, the white vote nationally totaled 70%. This dropped 3 percentage points in 2020 to 67%.
Recommended
It's clear that if Republicans, and those who care about the Republican agenda, want a future, they are going to have to pick up more support among non-white Americans. Is this possible?
One core factor separating Democrats and Republicans is belief in government.
In a recent Gallup poll, 64% of Democrats, compared to 20% of Republicans, expressed "a great deal or a fair amount of trust" in the federal government to solve domestic problems.
We may conclude that non-white Americans, compared to white Americans, choose more rather than less government to solve their problems.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation recently compiled comparative household median income data for the nation.
In 2022, median national household income was $74,580.
Median white household income was $81,060. Median Hispanic household income was $62,800. Median Black household income was $52,860. Lagging income is clearly a major problem in America's communities of color.
Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane calls "sclerotic growth ... America's overriding economic problem" and points out that it's economic growth that drives income.
The U.S. economy grew at an average rate of 3.5% annually from 1950 to 2000, per Cochrane. If it grew over those 50 years at 2% per year, around where it has been for the last 15 years, income would have been 54% lower.
What causes "sclerotic growth"? Too much government.
We need major reeducation in the nation's communities of color that big government is not their friend.
The federal government is now sucking up 25% of the U.S. economy. The Congressional Budget Office now projects average growth over the next 30 years at 1.6% per year.
Not a pretty picture, and lower-income Americans will suffer the most.
The title of one of my books is "Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It."
The Civil Rights Movement was a fight for freedom. Unfortunately, too many Black Americans have used their freedom to choose the government plantation.
Now this is a challenge not just for Blacks but for the whole nation.
https://townhall.com/columnists/starparker/2023/12/06/our-ticking-ethnic-time-bomb-n2632031
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Now Defending the Homeland: Wokespeak Grants to Arts Groups
Founded in 2020 in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests, the Black Legacy Project describes itself as “a musical celebration of black history to advance racial solidarity, equity and belonging.” It brings together artists of all backgrounds “to record present day interpretations of songs central to the Black American experience and compose originals relevant to the pressing calls for change of our time.”
A similar arts group, Nu Art Education Inc., an offshoot of the NorCal School for the Arts, says it is “following the theory of change that utilizing theater arts” can be “a tool to teach and practice conflict resolution in the classroom.”
While both outfits share a mission of using the arts to inspire social change, they have something else in common: counterterrorism. Or rather, both have received taxpayer grants through the Department of Homeland Security’s “Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention” (TVTP) program. Together, the two groups have received more than $1.4 million since the Biden administration doubled the program’s annual budget, to some $20 million per year.
Grants to arts cooperatives and educational initiatives strike some as odd for a department charged with protecting the United States -- including its southern border, now viewed by many as virtually open to illegal migrants. Against that backdrop, FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned Congress of the heightened threat of terror in the U.S. at a time of wars raging on two continents with America involved on the sidelines.
On Tuesday, Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee the "threat matrix" is "blinking red lights everywhere."
"The threat level has gone to a whole other level since Oct. 7," he said.
Given such concerns, Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, a critic of Biden policies, said the DHS grants are misplaced. "It’s kind of hard to see how all that is going to help stop terrorism,” he told RealClearInvestigations.
DHS declined to discuss the TVTP program, or answer questions about how competitive the grant process is or who makes final decisions on where the money will go.
The program has its roots in the Obama administration under the concept of “countering violent extremism” and has drawn criticism ever since from both left and right – albeit for different reasons. During the Trump administration, the leftist Brennan Center for Justice faulted the “anti-Muslim and xenophobic rhetoric and policies” in such programs, which “also target refugees, asylum seekers, and Black Lives Matter activists.”
The Brennan Center said “the reality is that these programs, which are based on junk science, have proven to be ineffective, discriminatory and divisive.”
That was then. Now, having doubled the program’s budget, the Biden administration is using the money to advance parts of its agenda not directly related to terrorism. Increasingly the DHS grants, like much larger ones at other departments, are part of the administration’s “whole of government” effort to promote “diversity, equity and inclusion” and quash what it considers misinformation.
While proclaiming that that the grants are designed for “local communities across the country to develop targeted violence and terrorism prevention programming in their communities,” the Department of Homeland Security also stresses its focus on DEI.
“Ensuring equity is a key priority of the TVTP Grant Program and 41 percent of this year’s grant recipients are devoted to underserved populations, compared to 25 percent last year,” the DHS website says, noting grants have gone to historically black colleges and universities, seven “Minority Serving Institutions (MSI),” a Native American group and another serving the LGBTQIA+ community.
The program uses keywords to note favored characteristics of approved grants. Ones used often include “raising societal awareness,” “bystander training,” and what advocates call “media literacy.”
“Media literacy involves the critical evaluation of media messages, as well as their authors and audiences, and it includes the ability to differentiate between original, evidence-based reporting and commentary or propaganda,” said Seth Ashley, a communications professor at Boise State University, which has received nearly $400,000.
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Donald Day Jr has been arrested in connection with the Wieambilla terror attack. Here's what we know
The religious aspect of this matter is interesting. Chiliastic religions are as old as the hills. Dire prophecies were widely made throughout Europe concerning the approach of the year ONE thousand. Modern day chiliatic religions best known are the Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's witnesses. They both believe that Christ will return in glory SOON to put the world to rights.
But followers of such religions are usually pacifist if anything, not violent. So the Wieambilla cultists were unusual. Their difference seemed to revolve around a suspicion of all governments as oppressive, with a concomitant right to "strike back" at oppressive authorities. That is not without scriptural warrant. Christ said:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household” (Matthew 10:34-36).
And from a conservative viewpoint it can indeed be said that we have a lot of oppression from governments these days. We are probably fortunate that the conservative view does not usually ally with chiliastic beliefs Wieambilla shows that that can be a very deadly alliance
An Arizonan extremist linked to the Wieambilla attack was a figure in the shooters' lives for more than two years before they murdered three people, a police investigation has revealed.
Donald Day Jr, 58, was arrested at Heber-Overgaard near Phoenix on December 1 and indicted on two charges. One relates to inciting violence online several days after the 2022 shooting in rural Queensland.
Constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold, and neighbour Alan Dare, were killed on December 12, in what police have described as a religiously-motivated terrorist attack.
The shooters — Stacey, Gareth and Nathaniel Train — also died.
Police said the Trains subscribed to a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system known as premillennialism.
Their online activity has been a key part of the investigation.
How was Donald Day Jr connected to the Trains?
Police said Gareth Train began following Mr Day's YouTube account in May 2020. A year later, the men began commenting on one another's videos.
"We have evidence to show the Trains subsequently accessed an older YouTube account created by the same man in 2014, and viewed that content," Queensland Police Service (QPS) Assistant Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon said at a joint press conference with the FBI on Wednesday.
Between May 2021 and the month of the attack, Mr Day "repeatedly" sent the Trains what police have described as "Christian, end-of-days ideological messages".
"The man repeatedly sent messages … to Gareth, and then later to Stacey," Assistant Commissioner Scanlon said.
What is he accused of doing?
Documents released by the US District Court in Arizona outline two charges against Mr Day.
Only the first charge is connected to the Wieambilla shooting. The second charge concerns an unrelated threat made to the head of the World Health Organization.
The first charge centres on a YouTube video that Mr Day allegedly posted on December 16 – four days after the shooting.
The video was titled 'Daniel and Jane'. These were pseudonyms used by Gareth and Stacey Train on YouTube, according to the court documents.
In the video, Mr Day allegedly said:
"It breaks my f***ing heart that there's nothing that I can do to help them. These are a people that are not armed, as we are in America, that at least have that one resort to fight against f***ing tyrants in this country. And here, my brave brother and sister, a son and a daughter of the Most High have done exactly what they were supposed to do, and that is to kill these f***ing devils."
He allegedly went on to say:
"Like my brother Daniel, like my sister Jane, it is no different for us. The devils come for us, they f***ing die. It's just that simple. We are free people, we are owned by no-one."
Prosecutors allege that last comment was a threat of violence towards any law enforcement officials who could come to Mr Day's home.
Assistant Commissioner Scanlon said evidence had been seized from a remote property about 30 kilometres north of Heber-Overgaard and was being analysed by the FBI.
"QPS will make formal requests to the FBI for any evidential material removed from the Arizona property for analysis," she said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-07/donald-day-jr-wieambilla-terror-attack-what-we-know/103197118
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6 December, 2023
California Mom Urges Supreme Court Review After Child Lost to Suicide
A California mother who lost her daughter to suicide after transitioning and was removed from her custody for not supporting her gender identity filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case from another mother in Indiana facing the loss of custody for not supporting her daughter’s gender transition.
Abigail Martinez is a Salvadoran immigrant who raised four children in California, one of whom began questioning her sexuality amid a struggle with depression in high school.
School staff told her daughter to join the school’s LGBTQ club, where the mother claims in her amicus brief the school club “persuaded that the only way to be happy was to change her gender,” and that the school psychologist encouraged her daughter to do the same.
With a new policy at the school requiring staff to use students’ pronouns and preferred names for students without parental notification or permission, Martinez was not informed of her daughter’s new identity, and feels “the school staff should have helped me, but they became my worst enemy.”
After Martinez’ daughter was hospitalized for attempting suicide, Martinez says the school psychologist told her daughter to accuse her mother of abuse so “she would lose custody and the state would pay for gender-transition treatments without parental consent.”
As a result, the California Department of Child and Family Services took her daughter and placed her in a group home, after which a judge ordered Martinez’ daughter be allowed to receive cross-sex hormones to further her transition.
While Martinez fought against the allegations of abuse and ultimately was exonerated and removed from the child abuse registry, soon after the court found her to be a fit parent her daughter committed suicide by lying down on tracks in front of an oncoming train.
Martinez had sought that her daughter be treated for her underlying depression instead of receiving cross-sex hormones, a lack of treatment that she blames for her daughter’s suicide.
In Indiana, the case of M.C. and J.C. v. Indiana Department of Child Services follows a similar contour: A child was removed from custody of parents nonetheless found “fit” by the state for the parents’ religious beliefs about gender identity and decision not to support the child’s transition.
In their case, the parents allege Indiana failed to follow the free exercise clause of the First Amendment by preventing them from raising their child according to their faith, and that the Indiana Department of Child Services censored the parents’ First Amendment speech rights by limiting what they were allowed to speak about with their child during their limited visitations.
“When governments usurp the essential role of parents in the lives of their children, tragedy ensues,” said Kayla Toney, associate counsel for First Liberty Institute, who is representing Martinez and filed the amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to take the Indiana case.
“The Constitution ensures that states cannot target parents because of their religious beliefs, interfere with the religious upbringing of their children, or impose prior restraints on speech in their own homes. We hope the Supreme Court will act to prevent state officials from committing any more violations of parental constitutional rights with impunity.”
With Indiana courts upholding the Department of Child Services’ decisions, the writ of certiorari filed by the parents seeks review by the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court hears the case and rules against Indiana, the result would be to overturn state laws in California, Washington, and Oregon, and court decisions in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois that lead to parents losing custody if they do not seek or affirm gender-transition treatments for their child.
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One Blue State Will Fine Stores That Do Not Offer ‘Gender-Neutral’ Products for Children
This week, Townhall covered how a slew of students in one Democrat-leaning state have began identifying as “non-binary.” This year showed an increase for the fourth year in a row, and an almost 57 percent increase from the previous year.
Additionally, Townhall has reported how some schools have pushed the LGBTQ+ agenda on children as young as preschool.
A California law slated to go into effect in the coming weeks will require some stores that sell children’s items to implement a gender-neutral section.
According to the California government’s website, the law will “require a retail department store that is physically located in California that has a total of 500 or more employees across all California retail department store locations that sells childcare items or toys to maintain a gender neutral section or area, to be labeled at the discretion of the retailer, in which a reasonable selection of the items and toys for children that it sells shall be displayed, regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys.”
Beginning January 1, 2024, stores that do not comply with the law will be subject to a “civil penalty not to exceed $250 for the first violation or $500 for a subsequent violation.”
The law defines “children” as a person 12 years of age or younger. A “childcare item” includes “any product designed or intended by the manufacturer to facilitate sleep, relaxation, or the feeding of children, or to help children with sucking or teething.”
Earlier this year, Target faced intense backlash after unveiling its Pride collection, which included “gender neutral” and “transgender”items, including “tuck friendly” bathing suits for men to appear more feminine. As a result, Target held an “emergency meeting” over the collection. Some stores moved their Pride sections as a result. Matt covered how Target lost billions of dollars due to boycotts over the products.
In addition, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill into law that will fine schools that ban textbooks based on their teachings on race, sexual orientation and gender identity. In a statement about the legislation, Newsom attacked states like Florida, where parental rights are protected.
“From Temecula to Tallahassee, fringe ideologues across the country are attempting to whitewash history and ban books from schools. With this new law, we’re cementing California’s role as the true freedom state: a place where families — not political fanatics — have the freedom to decide what’s right for them,” Newsom said in a statement.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Newsom said that Republicans are pushing “extremist book bans” and described it as “discriminatory.”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/12/05/california-gender-neutral-toys-n2632036
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105 House Democrats Refuse to Condemn Antisemitism
Illustrating Democrats' very real problem supporting Israel and condemning antisemitism, 13 members of President Joe Biden's party in the U.S. House of Representatives voted "no" and another 92 voted "present" on a resolution "[s]trongly condemning and denouncing the drastic rise of antisemitism in the United States and around the world."
The 105 Democrats (plus one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky who objected to the resolution on semantic grounds) couldn't bring themselves to agree with the following resolution:
Whereas acts of hate, intimidation, discrimination, and violence based on ethnicity or religion have no place in our country nor in the global community;
Whereas the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism is widely accepted and serves as a critical tool to help individuals comprehend and identify the various manifestations of antisemitism;
Whereas, since the massacre of innocent Israelis by Hamas, an Iran-backed terrorist organization, on October 7, 2023, antisemitic incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault in the United States have spiked 388 percent over the same period last year, according to reports from the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center on Extremism;
Whereas drastic increases in antisemitic activity has also been seen in Jewish communities around the world since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks;
Whereas the slogan “From the River to the Sea”, which is a rallying cry for the eradication of the State of Israel and the Jewish people, has been used by anti-Israel protesters in the United States and globally;
Whereas, on October 8, 2023, a car with individuals holding Palestinian flags appeared to intentionally swerve out of its lane, nearly hitting a visibly Jewish family in Clifton, New Jersey;
Whereas, on October 15, 2023, an individual in New York, New York, punched a Jewish woman in the face at Grand Central Terminal solely because she was Jewish;
Whereas, on October 28, 2023, a Jewish man in Sydney, Australia, was severely injured by 3 anti-Israel rioters, in which he was punched in the head at least 12 times, suffered a concussion, 2 black eyes, and 4 spinal fractures;
Whereas, on November 3, 2023, a Jewish woman’s store in New York City was attacked by a mob of anti-Israel protesters all because she hung posters of Israeli hostages in the store window;
Whereas, on November 3, 2023, 4 masked men walked into a restaurant in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and proceeded to tear down an Israeli flag and yelled “Free Palestine”;
Whereas, on November 4, 2023, an Arizona man was arrested by Federal authorities for threatening to execute a local Rabbi and “every other JEW I can find tonight at midnight of your Sabbath”;
Whereas, on November 4, 2023, during an anti-Israel protest in Washington, DC, rioters shouted their support for Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023, and other acts of terror targeting Israel, called for the end of the State of Israel, and spewed hateful and vile language amplifying antisemitic themes;
Whereas, during that same protest in Washington, DC, rioters stormed and tried to scale the White House fence, vandalized property by staining blood-red handprints onto the side of the White House pillars, and spray painted “Death to Israel” and “Glory to our Martyrs” on buildings in DC;
Whereas, on November 6, 2023, Paul Kessler, a 69-year-old Jewish man, tragically died due to injuries sustained when an anti-Israel protester struck him in the head with a megaphone in Los Angeles, California;
Whereas, on November 11, 2023, as part of a massive anti-Israel protest, rioters set off smokebombs in front of a synagogue in London, England;
Whereas, on November 12, 2023, police found several headstones at the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Brooklyn, Ohio, were desecrated with swastikas;
Whereas, on November 13, 2023, a mezuzah was torn off the doorpost of a Jewish person’s apartment and a knife was stuck into the wood in its place in Milan, Italy;
Whereas, on November 13, 2023, the evening before the March for Israel in Washington, DC, anti-Israel rioters vandalized a Jewish medical tent by spray painting “Free Gaza”, “Palestine Will Be Free”, and “Gaza Will Win”; and
Whereas, on November 15, 2023, anti-Israel protesters illegally blocked and violently attacked the Democratic National Committee headquarters, endangering the lives of individuals inside, including Members of Congress, and injuring 6 Capitol Police Officers; Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives—
(1) strongly condemns and denounces all instances of antisemitism occurring in the United States and globally;
(2) reaffirms and reiterates its strong support for the Jewish community at home and abroad;
(3) calls on elected officials and world leaders to condemn and fight all forms of domestic and global antisemitism;
(4) clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism; and
(5) rejects all forms of terror, hate, discrimination, and harassment of members of the Jewish community.
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How Private Is Private?
The Fourth Amendment secures our right to be secure against unreasonable searches, right? Not anymore, explains Naomi Brockwell on her popular YouTube channel.
In my new video, she explains how tech companies spy on us and then sell our information to the government.
But some of us actually find that tech companies prying can be a good thing.
Neil Chilson of the Charles Koch Institute says, "It's not only good for the companies; it's good for the user because it makes for a much more seamless experience."
Apps can recommend places to eat, stores to shop at and much more. These apps "make my life easier," I tell Brockwell. "Convenience matters."
"Convenience absolutely matters," Brockwell agrees, "but privacy is important. ... The U.S. government knows what color underwear you like to buy and what kinds of videos make you scroll a little bit slower."
"So, what?" I say.
"That data is forever," she points out. "Stored in permanent records associated with your identity in databases in Utah."
Brockwell says, "You have no control over what regime might come to power tomorrow, over which hacker might get access to that data. You have no control over what societal norms might change in the next 10 years and that data suddenly becomes incriminating. You're basically making a bet that you and the people with the guns (the government) will always stay on good terms."
"What if they made cryptocurrency illegal? Made guns illegal? Everyone who partakes in that suddenly becomes a criminal," she says, adding, "Look at what happened in China. Hong Kong used to be a bastion of freedom."
When China crushed that freedom, they used people's phones to track and punish protesters.
"Think about all the apps on your phone you've given permission to access your camera, location permission, microphone permission."
"So they work better," I reply.
"You are happy with these obscure apps, where you know nothing about the developers, to be able to look through your private photos?" she asks, incredulously.
I tell her, "I don't think they want to look at my private photos."
"That's a presumption," she replies.
"If they know where I am," I push back, "They can recommend a 'car repair shop near me' or 'restaurant near me.' I like that."
"I think it's creepy, personally, but it goes further than that." She replies, "These companies have a whole business model of selling that data. You have no idea where it ends up. ... It could be ending up in the hands of hackers on the dark web who want to target you with phishing scams, in the hands of political regimes who want to target you with specific content to get you to think in a certain way. ... And you're probably oblivious that any of this stuff is going on."
I'm oblivious unless I notice how specifically they market to me. I get creeped out when I'm talking about something and suddenly see an ad promoting something that addresses exactly what I was talking about. I think, "Oh, my God, were they just listening to me? How did they know to send me this?'"
"They know," says Brockwell. "Did you give them permission to access your microphone?" she asks.
"Probably," I say.
"They might be listening to you," she says. More likely, they just know because they know where I've been, what I do, and who my friends are.
Brockwell then looks at my phone and tells me to delete most of my apps.
"But I like them," I say.
"I know you like them," She says, "but you are taking your phone around with you everywhere you go. ... The government is purchasing all this data about us, creating records about all of us. That's a really scary thing."
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2023/12/06/how-private-is-private-n2632048
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5 December, 2023
Surprise: Capitalism makes people happier and more giving
John Stossel
“Capitalism is Making You Lonely,” says Jacobin magazine.
Vox claims, “Capitalism makes us feel empty inside.”
As usual, the media are just wrong.
“There’s no empirical data that actually shows that we feel more lonely now than we did in the past,” historian Johan Norberg points out to me. “When researchers compare people with previous generations at the same stage of life, they don’t find evidence of increased loneliness.”
“But more people live alone now,” I say. “I would think that would make people lonelier.”
“What they never tell you in the reports,” Norberg replies, “is that people who live alone and spend less time surrounded by other people are also more happy with those relationships.”
In addition, “When people around the world are asked, ‘Do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you?’ people in countries [like America] where more people live alone usually say, ‘Yes.’”
But in India and China, more people say they have no one.
“It’s the complete opposite of what people expect,” Norberg says. “In less market-based societies, 20% to 40% say they have no one to count on if they need help. In the richest and most individualist societies, it’s in the low single digits.”
On a YouTube channel with 1.7 million subscribers, a socialist says, “Material incentives of capitalists isolate us from nature, each other and ourselves.”
Norberg replies, “I understand why those charlatans get an audience, because at times we all feel lonely.”
But his new book, “The Capitalist Manifesto,” points out how capitalism makes life better, including making people less lonely.
“Every poll shows that people say that they’re less lonely in the most market-oriented societies.”
I push back. “Under capitalism, people compete. Sounds divisive. Sounds like it would pull us apart.”
“Feudalism, communism, fascism, that’s divisive,” he replies. “All are based on getting resources by taking them from somebody else. Capitalism forces us to think, ‘What does the other guy want?’ The most important aspect of capitalism is cooperation.” That’s “why every time you buy something, you hear this double, ‘Thank you.’”
It’s true yet kind of odd. When I pay, both the salesperson and I usually say, “Thank you.” It’s because I get the product I want, and they get my money. I want their product more than the money. They want my money more than whatever they are selling. We both feel we win.
“In the market economy, we do each other services constantly. That’s how we get richer,” adds Norberg. “No deal ever happens unless both parties think that they benefit.”
And here’s another twist to that. He says capitalism makes us generous.
“It sounds surprising [but] for many years, lots of researchers around the world have looked at how generous people are when they’re playing different economic games.”
In one such game, the experimenter gives a person a sum of money and tells him to divide it with a stranger any way he chooses. The only condition: The stranger must accept the offer. If the other person refuses, nobody gets anything.
In capitalist economies, writes Norberg, “the most common offer is to split the amount 50-50; the recipient is so offended by bad offers that they usually say no if offered less than 30%.”
Researchers have now done this test all over the world, and to their surprise, they discovered, “People are most generous in capitalist societies.”
In fact, on average, they offer twice as much as those in the least-capitalist societies.
“The closer people live to marketplaces, the more generous they are,” explains Norberg. “If they constantly buy and sell and negotiate, they begin to take other people’s interests into consideration. That’s what markets do. They do affect our character, but not in this way that the critics say. They don’t make us more divisive and aggressive. They make us more generous.”
Capitalism is good in many ways.
https://nypost.com/2023/12/03/opinion/surprise-capitalism-makes-people-happier-and-more-giving/
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In defence of a ‘British culture’
From time to time, a would-be edgy Tweeter or columnist will shock us all by stating or suggesting that the boring white people who until the last third of the twentieth century made up almost the entire population of the United Kingdom, have no real culture to speak of. There is a twofold implication to this rhetorical ploy: that indigenous Britons should fall on their knees in eternal gratitude for the hitherto unknown liveliness and dynamism of the various diaspora communities who have made their homes here, and also that the demand that newcomers integrate into our way of life is meaningless because there is nothing into which the new Britons can integrate.
As a matter of objective reality Britain, and its constituent parts, have one of the richest, most consequential and deepest cultures on the planet
Well. Many white Britons are happy to participate in this self-abnegation. Pathologically anti-patriotic Tweeters love to point out that much-loved aspects of British culture, from fish ‘n’ chips to St George, have been influenced by foreigners. They also love to emphasise how dull Britain was in the bad old days before Windrush or Tony Blair. A classic recent example was provided by George Monbiot, who said a year or so back, ‘I was brought up in a village that was almost exclusively white and Christian. It was the most boring and stifling place I’ve ever known.’
Yet as a matter of objective reality Britain, and its constituent parts, have one of the richest, most consequential and deepest cultures on the planet.
England has existed as an organised unitary state within more or less its current borders since long before the Norman Conquest; Athelstan, who reigned from 927 to 939, was the first English monarch to exercise meaningful political authority over almost all the country. The English nation as a coherent polity is therefore 1,100 years old. The cultural unity of the English can be plausibly traced to two centuries before Athelstan, to the time of Bede (d. 735). Our religious continuity goes even further back, with organised Christian communities appearing in the late Roman period. Parts of St Martin’s Church in Canterbury date to Roman times. It does not seem to have been a place of Christian worship in Roman Britain, but it was being used for that purpose by 597, as the private chapel of Queen Bertha of Kent. She was the wife of Ethelbert, who had married her while he was still a pagan but later converted to Christianity under the influence of the Augustinian mission. St Peter’s-on-the-Wall in Essex was probably built in the 650s, and its original stonework is substantially intact.
The first known English poet, Caedmon, lived and wrote in the second half of the seventh century, 1350 years ago. Most English counties and many towns have origins in the Anglo-Saxon period.
I am not going to rehearse the long span of British history. This is an article not a 20-part book series. But the point needs to be made that there is a very solid answer to the question ‘What is British culture?’, even if it is not the pat, easy answer that the (usually bad faith) posers of the question expect.
It is not the twee, trite nonsense about tea and biscuits and queuing and grumbling about the rain and liking the Queen. Fundamentally British culture is the various products and components of the highly-developed civilisation that a largely homogenous and settled population achieved over a thousand years.
There are different spheres to this, of course. In literature, we have Beowulf, Chaucer, Malory, Milton, Donne, Austen, Wordsworth, Dickens, Trollope, Scott, Wodehouse and Eliot, to say nothing of a certain gentleman from Stratford. There is the Robin Hood legendarium with its uproarious celebration of tradition and liberty against the greed and stupidity of bad rulers. In religion, take your pick from medieval Books of Hours, The Imitation of Christ, The Book of Common Prayer, the Authorised Version of the Bible, the heroic courage of the Reformation martyrs on both sides, the Methodist revival, the Oxford Movement, the Catholic literary flowering, and the flourishing Jewish life of London. The whole fabric of Britain speaks of its long, fascinating history, and the genius and innovation of its people. The Welsh castles, the cathedrals, the parish churches, the country houses, the Box Hill tunnel, the Iron Bridge, Edinburgh New Town, the Forth bridge, the mills and factories of the industrial revolution.
Go to Portsmouth historic dockyard and see HMS Victory. During the Napoleonic wars Britain was building, maintaining, manning and supplying a vast global fleet of such ships, dominating the seas by force of will, national organisation, determination, and economic sophistication unmatched anywhere in the world. She continued to do so for another century after the defeat of Napoleon, winning and maintaining a global empire.
A few hundred yards away from Victory is HMS Warrior, the first ironclad warship, which on her completion in 1860 rendered almost all existing warships obsolete.
Britain was not unique in developing constitutional and accountable forms of government. But we were early adopters and shapers of the tradition of liberal, limited government. Freedom of speech, thought, assembly and religion have been observed and respected here – albeit imperfectly – for a very long time. The same is true of due process in the criminal justice system, while the flexibility of our partially unwritten constitution has meant that throughout the modern period we largely avoided the revolutions, political instability and civil strife that blighted almost every other comparable country.
The whole fabric of Britain speaks of its long, fascinating history, and the genius and innovation of its people
The most successful and prosperous nation in the world, the United States of America, was founded on political principles that had been given their clearest and most compelling exposition by British philosophers. America’s founders were mostly of British extraction, as many of its great men have been. The same is true of many of the most peaceful, orderly and free places in the world – Australia, New Zealand and Canada being the most obvious examples. The British political tradition has been a huge boon to the world. Adam Smith, for example, was not the first advocate for the free economy, but he was one of the most brilliant and most sophisticated.
I could spend thousands of words listing the scientific and technological breakthroughs made in Britain, or describing at length the learned societies and debating clubs and scientific institutes that grew up from the seventeenth century onwards, taking advantage of our free, orderly, well-organised society to push science forward. I could fill a dozen books with details of the tens of thousands of gentleman amateurs and underemployed clergy who produced monographs on every subject from astronomy to entomology. I could name painters – the Van de Veldes, Gainsborough, Turner, Lucian Freud, David Hockney – who will be enjoyed as long as there are people who wish to look at paintings, or composers like Purcell, Holst, Vaughan Williams and James MacMillan.
Britain has long provided a home and a refuge for those persecuted elsewhere, starting with the Huguenots more than 400 years ago. Between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the start of the second world war we accepted something like 400,000 Eastern European Jews with very little violence or unrest. Indeed, we had a Jewish Prime Minister 155 years ago.
Twice in the span of three decades, we devoted vast resources – human, financial and material – to defeating huge threats to the peace and freedom of Europe. By so doing we practically bankrupted ourselves, but we were in the fight on the side of decency, humanity, freedom and democracy.
There are so many aspects of British culture that I haven’t mentioned – I’ve not even approached sport or folk culture or cinema or TV – but before I finish, I would like to return briefly to the George Monbiot comment I mentioned earlier.
The place where he grew up was Rotherfield Peppard in Oxfordshire. One can see how it might have seemed rather claustrophobic and limiting to an independent-minded, incipiently socialist teenager growing up in a well-off and well-connected Tory family.
And yet the very stability, order and quiet of Rotherfield Peppard represented – still represents – an extraordinary civilisational achievement. Safe streets and trustworthy neighbours are not the norm for human societies; they are the exception, even today. They did not arise by accident in Britain. They are the product of many centuries of hard national graft, of tough decisions, of sacrifice. They arise from a particular Christian context, a specific national character: the brilliance of a particular people in a particular place.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/12/in-defence-of-a-british-culture/
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Democrats Embrace Mental Illness in the Name of Diversity
In the most technical sense, if you were to celebrate diversity for its own sake, you would have to celebrate things that are, to put it mildly, counter-productive. Normal people celebrate accomplishments, progressive Democrats celebrate only certain kinds of existences, while condemning others (but weirdly electing them to high office, like President Old, Straight, Rich White Guy). But “diversity” is a meaningless word, which makes celebrating it even odder. Yet, that’s what Democrats do. At a certain point, however, shouldn’t they care enough about the people they deem worthy of “celebrating” to try to help them?
That’s a rhetorical question, obviously. The progressive power structure in this country, and the world, has no use for individuals beyond them being weapons and props. So, when discussing things like “the trans community” they ignore the reality surrounding the suicide rate and drug abuse problems throughout it.
Instead, you get meaningless pap like the meme tweeted out by a group called “Pride UK” which read, “Respecting a person’s pronouns is suicide prevention.”
Might I suggest that, if you are genuinely concerned with the well-being of any person or group of people, you might want to focus on whatever issues are causing them to teeter on the edge of suicide, not indulging them in their delusions. Because, whether out of malice or simple reality, sooner or later someone is going to point out how odd it is that the bearded person in a dress is using a urinal. If that’s enough to send someone over the edge into harming themselves or others, early intervention is needed.
That’s not what Democrats do. They insist we lie, that we play along and indulge people. That we deny reality because reality upsets some people. That serves no one and, like pretty much every policy idea Democrats advance, it helps no one either.
Somewhere along the line, the Democrat Party turned into the Brewster sisters from “Arsenic and Old Lace,” who coddle their mentally ill brother who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt to the point they make everyone else indulge him too. They also murder single men because they think they’re sad to be alone, draw whatever conclusion you like from that.
Did they really do their brother any favors by indulging him? No. And they all ended in an insane asylum, so… (Watch the movie, it’s actually hilarious.)
But Democrats aren’t about to voluntarily check themselves into a mental hospital. They aren’t actually mentally ill, they’re evil. There’s a very important difference between the two.
The left is content to let the suicides of people they claim to care so deeply about continue because they serve a larger purpose – those deaths enable Democrats to peacock around claiming moral superiority and a deeper sense of caring than anyone else. That moral superiority is the lifeblood of the left.
How many people have to die in their pursuit of power? Well, more than 100 million were murdered in quest for progressive dominance in the last century, why would anything be different in this one?
The thing about chasing power for its own sake is there is finish line. If the answer to “How much?” is “More,” there’s no end to that pursuit.
Democrats want power so they can control people and impose their will on them. But their policies fail, which they use to push for newer, larger policies that allot them more power…lather, rinse, repeat.
To people thinking straight, the idea of “Big government has failed us, what we need is bigger government” seems insane and would be rejected out-of-hand. However, if you muddy the waters to the point that opposing an action isn’t about that action, but about, say, well-being of others, and you are required to do or act a certain way, lest you drive others to harm themselves, then suddenly you’re painting critics as monsters and discrediting what they’re trying to do. Never mind the fact that the people harming themselves were inclined to do that anyway and are in desperate need of help; help those Democrats are denying them, by the way, because not getting it is useful to those Democrats.
Indulge, don’t help. Weaponize, don’t solve.
The last century showed individuals are disposable to the left; Democrats care about nothing but their own power and agenda. As the White House and the rest of the left celebrate things like “Transgender Day of Remembrance,” make sure to remember what’s really going on here and why.
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Dear 'Legacy Media,' the Calls of Authoritarianism are Coming from Inside the (White) House
Activist journalism is a scourge to our nation. It flies in the face of the marketplace of ideas that once made our country great. Both activist journalism and the growing “critical thinking crisis” in our schools have the potential to set back our great nation decades in the name of “progressivism” or “equality.” Leftist outlets like The Atlantic (that just announced a series of 24 op-eds dedicated to “warning the public about the consequences if Trump wins a second term”) are aware of this – yet it does nothing to stop them from transcribing Biden White House talking points and crafting anti-democratic narratives.
They are political operatives, not journalists. Their practices undermine trust in the media, increase divisiveness, and weaken civic discourse. The duty of journalism is to report the truth - not manipulate public opinion to advance a partisan cause. What is absolutely baffling is that for a publication that has covered the topic of “disinformation” ad nauseum, they’ve failed to examine the current authoritarian occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Let’s look at the facts.
Joe Biden is the only United States President to ever attempt to jail his political opponents using the power of the State. He has spent the better part of three years calling his opponent’s supporters “extremists,” and “threats to Democracy.” He’s locked away Trump supporters and thrown away the key while drug dealers and murderers freely roam the streets of our Capitol. Biden wants to grow the federal government to it’s largest size ever, attempting to overhaul and invest heavily in agencies such as the IRS, that can be mobilized against his opponents.
Biden essentially owns the media, big tech, and social media, and has wielded them as weapons against conservatives for many years. From colluding with big tech to censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story, to attempting to build a briefing room for left-leaning TikTok content creators, the administration has proven there is no limit to how far the Biden apparatus will go to manipulate the facts. Additionally, having been a communications professional in Washington D.C. for the better part of a decade, I can assure you there are no such things as coincidences as far as legacy media is concerned, yet we’re supposed to believe that the Atlantic rolled out ten op-eds about an authoritarian Trump on the same day that the New York Times and Washington Post also decided to publish articles about how a second Trump administration would be “radical,” and a “dictatorship”? The State-owned and manipulated media feels awfully authoritarian to me.
Maybe the most important tell of all is that time after time the Left has been found guilty of everything they accuse Donald Trump of being or doing. They want you to believe his son is a degenerate? Well, Hunter Biden cannot stop himself from doing cocaine and buying prostitutes, all caught on film mind you. They want you to believe Trump and his family have been selling influence? Well, Joe Biden has been personally profiting off Hunter Biden’s business dealings with China and the Ukraine as House Oversight Committee subpoenas indicate. They want you to believe that Trump is the only person to ever question the results of an election? There are literally 12 minute long supercuts of Democrats doing just that all over the internet after the 2016 election.
Once again, the leftist, activist journalists at places like The Atlantic are focusing on what they deem “mean words” instead of the horrific policies the Biden regime enacted that harm millions of Americans daily. As the American Dream lies bleeding out in the gutter, they toil away extrapolating conclusions from President Trump’s every syllable, completely ignoring his actions, and empowering those that wish to carry out violent acts as we approach election season next year. The 45th President touched on this briefly during a speech in Iowa this past weekend, by calling Joe Biden the “destroyer of American democracy.” He’s right.
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4 December, 2023
Leftist moral claims forever punctured
Leftists routinely champion groups seen as underdogs as it makes them seem heroic and caring, so their championship of Palestinians is routine for them. They have goofed this time, though. These underdogs are amoral monsters. Had the left had any real moral anchors they could have mourned BOTH Israeli and Paletinan deaths. But they did not. They have consciously aligned themselves with moral monsters. Know them by the company they keep. It's their need to look heroic and wise, not ethics, morality or caring that lies behind their apparently moral concerns
Oct. 7 should have been an open-and-shut case of moral condemnation.
During peace and holiday, invading Hamas gunmen murdered, tortured, mass-raped, decapitated, and mutilated some 1,200 Israelis. The vast majority were unarmed women, children, infants, and the elderly.
The cowardly murderers proudly filmed their atrocities and then fled back to Gaza—to cheers from the Gaza street.
Before Israel even retaliated, the mass murdering of Jews earned praise from the Middle East, the international hard Left, and especially the faculty and students of elite Western campuses.
When the Israel Defense Forces struck back, the killers dispersed to the safety of their multibillion-dollar subterranean cities. The cowardly elite architects of the mass murder fled to Arab sanctuaries in Lebanon and Qatar.
From its headquarters burrowed below hospitals, mosques, and schools, Hamas bartered hostages for a reprieve from the Israel Defense Forces and the release of its own convicted terrorists in Israeli jails.
Hamas shot any of its own supporters who refused to shield Hamas gunmen.
It continued launching rockets at Israeli civilian centers. It serially lied about its casualties, expropriating intended relief food and fuel for its underground tunnel city of killers.
Abroad, Hamas supporters also emulated the methods of the pro-Nazi demonstrators in Western cities of the 1930s. Unlike their pro-Israel critics, the pro-Hamas demonstrators in the U.S. and Europe turned violent.
They took over and defaced private and public property. They chanted genocidal antisemitic slogans calling for erasure of the nation of Israel.
They interrupted shoppers, blocked highways, attacked businesses, and swarmed bridges. They assaulted police.
The majority wore masks to hide their identities in the fashion of antisemitic Klansmen.
Why did the doctrinaire Left, the youth of the Democratic Party, and the campuses outdo each other in their antisemitic venom toward Israel?
For the first time in their lives, many of the ignorant protesters suddenly professed concern about refugees, colonialism, disproportionality, innocent civilians, and the rules of war.
But none could explain why the Palestinians who fled Israel in 1947-48 still self-identify as victimized “refugees” when 900,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Middle East Arab cities about the same time do not.
The 200,000 Greek Cypriots driven out from northern Cyprus by Turkey apparently do not warrant “refugee” status either.
Few protesters knew that Jews have lived in present-day Israel for over three millennia. The longest colonialist presence there was Muslim Turks who brutally ran the Holy Land for 300 years until they lost in World War I and were expelled.
How exactly did it happen that the eighth-century A.D. Al-Aqsa Mosque was built within King Herod’s earlier Second Temple enclosure?
The pro-Hamas crowd has little appreciation that colonizing Arab Muslims have one of history’s longest records of “settling” other countries far from their historic birthland.
They “settled” and “colonized” the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Middle East, Berber North Africa, and southern Spain. Millions of Middle Easterners migrated to—“settled?”—supposedly infidel European cities, where they often self-segregate and do not assimilate fully with their magnanimous hosts.
As far as “disproportionality”—it is the goal of every power at war, Hamas included.
What protesters are furious about is that Israel is more effective at being disproportionate in retaliation than Hamas and its Iranian supporters were in their preemptive mass murdering.
Targeting innocent civilians? Hamas is among the current greatest offenders in the world.
It rockets Israeli cities without warning. It mass murders Jews in their beds during peace. It exposes Gazans to mortal danger by impressing them as human shields. Hamas shoots those who refuse.
The “rules of war” are violated by Hamas daily. Such protocols require combatants to wear uniforms so as not to blend in with civilians, not to use them as shields, not to murder noncombatants, not to rape them, not to mutilate them, and not to execute civilians without trial.
Why then would millions ally themselves with this odious reincarnation of the SS?
Are they ignorant of the history of the Middle East?
Are they arrogant since few challenge their hate and threats?
Are they opportunists who feel mouthing anti-Western shibboleths gains them career traction in leftist-run media, academia, and popular culture?
Are they bullies who count on the Western silent majority remaining quiet as they disrupt lives, trash Western tolerant culture, and commit violence?
Like Hamas that they support, do they despise Jews? Why else do they express an existential hatred toward Israelis that they never display to any other group?
Those now on the street utter not a peep about the Sudanese Arab mass killers in Darfur; Chinese oppressors of the Muslim Uyghurs; Russians targeting civilians in Ukraine; or ISIS, Syrian, and Yemeni murderers of fellow Muslims.
Yet all of these terrorist killers are guilty of the very charges the protesters falsely attribute to Israel. But they are all not Jewish—and that explains the pass given them by our antisemitic, pro-Hamas street.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/01/the-unhinged-among-us/
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Chauvin: A Sacrifice to the Social ‘Justice’ Mob
It’s been an awful stretch of days for Derek Chauvin. Chauvin, the Minneapolis cop who’s now serving a 22.5-year sentence for the death on May 25, 2020, of a drug-fueled noncompliant career criminal named George Floyd, was recently denied by the U.S. Supreme Court his appeal for a new trial and a new venue due to jury bias.
It wasn’t just jury bias that plagued the Chauvin case, though. As we noted last month, when a key witness says “the actual evidence doesn’t match up with the public narrative that everyone’s already decided on,” you know you have problems. How so? The chief medical examiner in the case says that Floyd had a severely enlarged heart; that the autopsy showed no physical signs of neck injury or strangulation; and that if Floyd had been found alone in an apartment building, his death would be certified as an overdose without a second thought due to the lethal level of methamphetamines in his system.
Adding injury to that constitutional insult, Chauvin was stabbed and gravely injured Friday afternoon by a fellow inmate at a federal prison in Arizona. As the Associated Press reports: “The attack happened at the Federal Correctional Institution, Tucson, a medium-security prison that has been plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages. … The Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an incarcerated person was assaulted [and] said responding employees contained the incident and performed ‘life-saving measures’ before the inmate, who it did not name, was taken to a hospital for further treatment and evaluation.”
Does it strike anyone else as reckless for the prison to have exposed a convict as notorious as Chauvin to the general population? Is there a prisoner in all the United States with a bigger bullseye on his back than this guy?
As for Chauvin’s case, if you haven’t yet seen the documentary film “The Fall of Minneapolis,” you’re doing the truth a disservice. Indeed, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
The film wasn’t produced by one of the major studios, wasn’t directed by one of Hollywood’s best and brightest. Instead, it’s a free-of-charge crowdfunded documentary from a committed local journalist. As the New York Post’s Miranda Devine writes, “‘The Fall of Minneapolis’ reveals a shocking tale of injustice and perfidy, and a ruthless political operation that contained the seeds of the January 6 Capitol riot eight months later and the consequent hyperbolic crackdown on Trump supporters.”
But perhaps before watching “The Fall,” you should first ask yourself why you’re only now hearing about so many of the facts of the case — only now, more than three years after the long hot summer of 2020 and the riots that spread outward from Minneapolis to urban centers nationwide, killing more than two dozen people, causing more than $2 billion in property damage, and fueling a Democrat-driven crime wave whose effects continue to plague us today.
The reason you haven’t heard of this documentary is because it tells an inconvenient truth: that Derek Chauvin was railroaded.
You haven’t heard of this film because Hollywood, and the mainstream media, and social media, and Big Tech more broadly, and Democrats all across the country — none of them want you to know about it. As Devine continues, “The film was produced by Liz Collin, a former anchor at a CBS affiliate in the Twin Cities who was taken off air during the riots and demoted because her husband, Bob Kroll, was the Minneapolis police union chief at the time.” Despite having had their home terrorized by The Mob, Collin drives the narrative matter-of-factly and with “shocking new evidence,” and she interviews Chauvin in prison, Chauvin’s mom, and many of the Minneapolis cops who’ve since resigned from the force.
“From false testimony in Chauvin’s trial,” writes Devine, “to police bodycam footage of Floyd’s arrest that was withheld for two months, to the autopsy report that was altered after the FBI got involved, Collin presents a damning forensic record that needs avenging.”
Among the film’s hardest-hitting moments is the disgraceful abandonment of the city’s Third Precinct police station by local Democrat leaders to rioters who eventually torched it. In a better America, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey would’ve been tarred and feathered for gross dereliction, and the city’s police would’ve had permission to use deadly force to defend their building.
As for the officers on the scene during Floyd’s arrest, who knew they called for an EMS ambulance just 36 seconds after they pulled an increasingly agitated and uncooperative Floyd out of their squad car and put him face down on the pavement?
Who knew that Floyd had a similar interaction with police a year earlier, in 2019 — an interaction in which he appeared agitated and uncooperative, and appeared to be eating drugs in order to keep them from being discovered by the officers.
During the film, one Minneapolis cop after another — black cops, white cops, male cops, female cops — agree that they were all taught the MRT, the maximal restraint technique that Officer Chauvin used on Floyd on May 25, 2020. And yet their own police chief, Medaria Arradondo, took the stand in Chauvin’s trial and claimed that he didn’t recognize the MRT and that “it was not” a trained technique within the Minneapolis Police Department. “Yes, I heard him say that,” said one incredulous officer. “It’s tough to hear people lie, just straight lie.”
The more we learn about the Chauvin case, the more troubling it becomes. And the more unavoidable is the conclusion that a white male police officer was sacrificed to the social justice mob as a means of appeasement. To hell with his Sixth Amendment rights.
“What’s been done is done,” says Alex Kueng, the black cop who helped Chauvin detain George Floyd on that fateful day and is serving a three-year sentence for it. “I just hope, at the very least, people in the future keep an open mind and not let instances like this happen. Use my case as an example to not jump the gun, not knee jerk, not fall to this race bait, to the social media, to the media, and not let them get away with what they do.”
https://patriotpost.us/articles/102370
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School District Discussed ‘Chest Binder’ Fundraiser With Students, Documents Show
This month, Townhall reported how an investigation showed that LGBTQ+ clubs are infiltrating America’s public schools as early as pre-school. This report came after a poll showed that almost half of all respondents indicated that lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity are receiving too much attention in schools.
Documents obtained by parental rights organization Parents Defending Education and shared with Townhall show that a Colorado school district discussed creating a fundraiser for “chest binders,” which flatten a women’s chest. Women who believe they are “transgender” are known to wear chest binders to appear more masculine.
This year, PDE requested information from Littleton Public Schools in Colorado about a number of groups and curriculum surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity. In addition to the chest binder fundraiser, it was discovered that children as young as middle school were taught to keep parents in the dark about students’ gender transitions.
At the high school level, PDE obtained documents about Arapahoe High School’s Sexual and Gender Alliance (SAGA) club. Resources that were available to students last year included links to organizations such as the Trevor Project and Gender Spectrum. And, the SAGA club's website previously featured books that students had access to in the “SAGA meeting room,” including “The Gay Revolution,” “David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music,” and “All Boy Aren’t Blue” (via PDE):
The organization Gender Spectrum previously offered resources specifically targeting “youth” and even teachers. Gender Spectrum offered resources to educators on a page titled “Integrating Gender Diversity Into Everyday Curriculum.” This page explained that the discussion of gender can be integrated into subjects like history, science, mathematics, and even physical education. In targeting the youth, Gender Spectrum offered online chatrooms for children as young as 10 years old who identify as “trans” or “non-binary.”
The Trevor Project is an organization specifically known for providing children with resources such as the “Understanding Gender Identities” guide. This resource states that “gender is actually a social construct.” The organization’s resource also appears to encourage children to question their gender and mentions the possibility of having surgery to transition:
If you decide that your current gender or sex just isn’t right for you, you may want to make your gender identity fit with your ideal gender expression and presentation. This is called transitioning, and can include social (like telling other people about which pronouns you like), legal (like changing your name), or medical (like taking hormones or having surgery).
In the SAGA club’s meeting slides for the 2022-2023 school year, it showed that the group discussed a “binder drive/fundraiser.”
Another high school in the district, Heritage High School, asked for the preferred pronouns of students, along with other questions about the students’ parents (via PDE):
PDE additionally received over 160 pages of material from Heritage High School’s GSA club. Page 73 of the first group of documents appears to show a Google form for students to complete. This form asks for the preferred pronouns of students. One question specifically asks: “Can I use your pronouns in front of parents?” Other documents include presentations on “neopronouns” and “different types of attraction.”
The second group of documents include resources for “National Coming Out Day,” the “Gender Unicorn,” and the “It Gets Better Project,” which is an organization that provides grants to schools for LGBTQ causes.
In September, PDE shared that Littleton Public Schools provided students with a survey that asked students their “preferred name” and “preferred pronouns.” The pronouns students could choose were “She/Her,” “He/Him,” “They/Them,” and “Other.” A member of the school community told PDE that students in a high school class were “forced” to complete the survey.
Additionally, PDE revealed that Littleton schools stated that parents can be left in the dark regarding their children’s gender identities.
“In general, a student should not be required to disclose information about their transgender status or gender identity to anyone until they are ready for others to know this information,” the school district’s guidance stated. “In situations where the student is requesting use of a new name or gender pronouns by staff and peers at school and/or access restrooms or locker rooms of a new gender but does not want to inform their parents/guardians, the school mental health professional will meet with the student to proactively discuss parental involvement, resources for support, limitations to privacy due to school being a public place and to clarify that school staff will not lie to parents / guardians if asked about this information.”
Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Parents Defending Education, spoke about this with Townhall.
"Schools say they want parents as trusted partners while deliberately deceiving them at the same time. There is no justification for a school facilitating psychosocial or physical interventions without the knowledge or consent of parents,” she said.
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Australia's male suicide problem
Toxic feminism at work
Australia’s suicide prevention policies are failing. We are falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to suicide prevention. From 2000-19 global suicide declined by 11 per cent. In Australia, rates increased by 31 per cent.
The reason? For many decades our health authorities have blatantly refused to target the group most at risk – men. Seven of the nine people who end their lives each day in Australia are male.
In 2019, the female suicide rate in Australia (5.6 per 100,000) while tragic, was similar to the rest of the world (5.4 per 100,000). However, male suicide rates in Australia (17.0 per 100,000) are now much higher than elsewhere (12.6 per 100,000).
The discrepancy is stark, and yet funding initiatives and bodies appear to fall short when it comes to targeting men who are most at risk.
Just look at the $1.8 billion of funding allocated in the 2022 National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement. This includes:
$735 million for adult mental health services that generally reach twice as many women as men.
$300 million for youth mental health services, which generally reach twice as many young women as young men.
$465 million for aftercare support for people who attempt suicide, a model with a track record of helping more women than men.
$35 million for suicide postvention support providing suicide bereavement services that predominantly support women.
It is hardly surprising that men feel as if they are being left behind. And when these programs do manage to support vulnerable men as a priority, the tend to invoke the toxic masculinity model in which men are told it is their fault the system is failing them because they are too stoic to reach out for help with mental health issues.
Yet here too there is big news.
There’s now statistical data to show that mental health problems are no longer considered the key risk factor for one of our major groups of vulnerable men. For the first time, this year the Australian Bureau of Statistics published statistics based on coroners’ reports showing relationship/family breakdown is the major suicide trigger for family men – men in their peak child-raising years from 25-44.
Here’s what the ABS said:
‘The top risk factor for males aged 25-44 years was problems in spousal relationships circumstances, present in over one-third of suicides. Problems in spousal relationships overtook mood disorders as the top risk factor in this age group for the first time and can include separation and divorce as well as arguments and domestic violence situations.’
We’re talking family law issues, men under fire in our increasingly hostile family law system, facing the risk of losing their children, home, and assets. Men who are facing the stress of monstrous legal costs. Plus we have the sad reality that ‘domestic violence situations’ often include false allegations.
Last month there were 2,500 empty shoes on the lawn in front of Parliament House representing the men who have lost their lives by their own hand this year. This powerful memorial event was sponsored by the Zero Suicide Community Awareness program which aims to educate Australia about what needs to be done to reduce these shocking suicide numbers.
Here’s a brief video giving an overview of the memorial – produced by Dads4Kids, one of the many men’s groups who came together to make this all happen.
Listen to Mary O’Brien, who runs a rural suicide organisation called Are you Bogged, Mate? O’Brien started speaking out about the high suicide rate in rural areas many years ago, pointing out how many of these blokes were driven to take their lives by family law battles. She’s touring the country speaking about rural suicide – rural men are twice as likely to take their lives as metropolitan men. Five times more likely than metropolitan women.
We lose a farmer every ten days in this country – and this crisis has led O’Brien to give up her work as an agricultural scientist to devote herself to calling out the health authorities’ failure to tackle male suicide properly. ‘Everything I read was bullsh*t,’ she says, spelling out the misguided approach being taken to male suicide.
She’s also concerned about the way statistical bodies report male suicide. For example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics graph below clearly shows the glaring difference in male and female suicide rates.
The ABS highlighted this telling graph in their reports on suicide trends until 2020 when it suddenly disappeared, to be replaced with two separate graphs – one for men and the other for women. The net effect of this change in the display of data obscures the reality that suicide is overwhelmingly a male problem.
What’s left in a prominent position is this graph, where the gender split is no longer obvious.
The gender disparity has not gone away, it is obscured by the choice of display. Here, the suicide rate for 35-39-year-old males and females appears comparable when the reality is suicide rates for males are more than 3 times higher.
Instead, the suicide figures for each age group are shown as a proportion of total suicides in each gender, rather than for all suicides. Therefore, in the 35-39 age bracket, the figure of 9.2 per cent for women represents 73 individuals, while the figure of 9.2 per cent for men represents 227 individuals. The graph makes these figures look the same.
The Zero Suicide event attracted various Opposition and One Nation MPs and Senators, speaking out about the male suicide crisis. As usual mainstream media did a brilliant job ignoring the event – despite the organiser Paul Withall having sent over 1,000 emails to media groups seeking publicity.
Male suicides are 35 times as numerous as deaths from domestic violence.
How come we are willing to spend millions of dollars each year to try to protect women from domestic violence while working so hard to ignore the tragedy of all those dead men?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/12/the-tragic-story-of-2500-empty-shoes/
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3 December, 2023
The Differences Between Social Class In The US And Britain
It's a pretty good essay below but he falls into the common trap of not asking what underlies class differences. Why is it so? The elephant in the room is IQ. Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein set it out decades ago -- in 1994 -- but nobody wants to know it.
But Murray was right. I have experienced it personally. I am a top scorer in IQ and I had a dream run through the British class system when I was there. Details of that below:
https://memoirsjr.blogspot.com/2022/07/a-disgraceful-sabbatical-in-london.html
For an extended coverage of IQ and class, see
http://jonjayray.com/toby.html
In any class system, high IQ people rise to the top -- even in the hereditary British system. Upper class males are very desirable to women so have their pick of women. And whom do they choose? Good-looking women. But good-looking women also tend to be smarter.
Sometimes it works out badly, with a vacuum-brained but pretty woman being chosen and giving birth to a scapegrace son who eventually blows the family fortune. But he in turn will look for the daughter of a rich family in order to restore his income -- so both the fortunes and the IQ of the family will tend to be restored
Sorry if that sounds glib but that is roughly how it works. My aristocratic girfriend wanted to marry me so if I had agreed it would have enhanced both the IQ and the wealth of her bloodline
America: the land of baseball, freedom, and “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”. It doesn’t matter if you spent your childhood summers at a vacation home in Nantucket, or collecting recyclables and washing cars to help your parents pay the bills; with enough hard work and a sprinkle of ambition, everyone can expect a better life than their predecessors.
Britain: the country with a Royal family, and a working-class only slightly removed from Victorian chimney-sweeps. Everybody stays in their lane, or gets beaten back into it by the legendarily rigid British class system.
The truth in both countries, of course, is much more complex — however, these stereotypes are a great springboard for starting a discussion about the very real differences between their perception of social class.
Money has fairly little to do with social class in Britain
Nearly everywhere in the world, social class is a concept that involves far more than just money. Speech, skin colour, clothing, diet, and many other factors play a role.
In Britain, there is still a very real aristocracy. There are people who wear crowns, lords who still have direct political influence, and feudal estates that have been lived in for centuries. “Upper-class” does not mean “rich” or “powerful”; you can be both, but still not upper-class.
Take Rishi Sunak. He is the reigning British prime minister; he and his wife are worth hundreds of millions of pounds; he was privately educated, graduated from Oxford, got an MBA from Stanford, and amassed a fortune as an investment banker. He is most definitely “posh”.
He is not, however, upper-class, because he is the son of a doctor and a pharmacist rather than of dukes or earls.
The defining examples of American “old money” dynasties are families like the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts. According to the traditional British class system, neither family would be considered upper-class. Indeed, there are no British equivalents of these industrial dynasties, and even though the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, it had remarkably little impact on the composition of society’s elites.
In the US, fame and celebrity are what make the upper-classes. People as diverse as Bill Clinton (son of a traveling salesman), Eminem (grew up in a trailer park) and Mark Cuban (son of a car upholsterer) might be described as “the elite” or the upper-class. Eminem could get a meeting with a senator quite easily; Kim Kardashian probably could too.
By contrast, nobody in Britain would mistake football legends Wayne Rooney or David Beckham for members of the upper-class. Beckham hasn’t been able to obtain a knighthood, even after years of elocution lessons and relentless philanthropy and quiet campaigning.
On the other hand, Britain has upper-class people with no money. Many people are familiar with the cliché of aristocrats who can no longer afford to heat their homes (and indeed, many of Britain’s upper-classes have had to flog their family manors to hotel groups or museum trusts to clear their debts).
Without money as a reliable indicator of social class, Brits have to get more creative. One class trait I’ve always found fascinating is accent.
If you’re from Texas, you probably have a Texan accent. If you’re a very rich “old-money” Texan, maybe you have a slightly more restrained accent, but you certainly don’t speak with a New York or Chicago accent. The same is true of most of the world: accents tell you what region somebody is from.
And that is sometimes true in Britain as well. If you’re from Liverpool, you have the famously strong Scouse accent. Ditto for Newcastle (“Geordie”) and Birmingham (“Brummie”).
However, someone from the prosperous town of Chester (only 25 miles from Liverpool) will sound nothing like a Scouser; someone from Durham (11 miles from Newcastle) will sound nothing like a Geordie. Instead, the people from these rich little cities will sound like they come from southern England, hundreds of miles away.
When I studied in England, I was genuinely baffled at how people from Harrogate and Wakefield sounded so different. They’re 30 miles apart. Why did the people I knew from Harrogate sound like BBC presenters? As one friend helpfully explained, “Wakefield is a shit-hole and Harrogate isn’t”.
The effect is so extreme that you can find people from the same city, who grew up only a few neighbourhoods apart, but sound completely different just because one was privately educated and the other wasn’t.
Sports are another great dividing line. You play football? Working-class. Rugby union? Middle-class at the very least? Rugby league? Very working-class. You’re a girl who plays field hockey? Your parents are accountants. You’re a girl that plays lacrosse? Your parents own the accounting firm.
The US has some sports which are class-codified (golf, horse-riding), but many more which aren’t (American football, baseball). That’s largely due to high school and college sport being a much bigger deal in the US., and so there are more established systems to find talent regardless of background.
Education is also a clearer symbol of class in Britain than in the US. Oxbridge and the Ivy League have roughly equivalent social prestige, but the upper echelons of British society are much more dominated by private schools than in the US. 20 of the 55 British prime ministers attended Eton College (a high school). Only 11 prime ministers were educated at free state schools.
Going to a private school is widely seen as a dividing line between the bog standard middle-class (teachers, nurses, social workers) and the upper-middle-class (judges, surgeons, professors, politicians).
University is also a firmer class threshold in Britain than in the US.
America’s economic miracle was built on the back of well-paid, prosperous manual labourers like factory workers. These factory workers often consider themselves middle-class. In Britain, however, that doesn’t fly. To be in the middle-class, you need an education, preferably a university one (and nowadays, preferably a “redbrick” or Russell Group university).
Factory workers, no matter how materially well-off, are just fundamentally different to teachers or lawyers.
Middle-class pride (or lack thereof)
According to most measures of equality, Britain is more equal than America.
With a universal healthcare system, decent public transport, and comparatively generous welfare benefits, it should be harder to starve or go homeless in Britain than in America. On the other hand, higher taxes, smaller markets and less economic dynamism make it harder for an ordinary Brit to become a millionaire or billionaire.
You might therefore expect that Brits are more likely to fall into the middle-class than Americans. Yet, Brits themselves don’t seem to agree. Surveys in both countries suggest that Americans are much more likely than Brits to see themselves as somewhere in the broad middle. So why are Brits so hesitant to see themselves as ordinary?
Part of the answer is that class has been a driving force in British life more much longer, so people have created much narrower sub-categories.
You’re a construction worker? Working class.
You’re a skilled tradesman (like a plumber) and own your van? Upper-working class.
You’re a plumber but own your home and have a few employees? Lower-middle class.
You have a degree and are a manager at a construction company? Middle-class.
To an American, none of these people are homeless, and none are billionaires, so they’re all different shades of middle-class. But to a class-conscious Brit, there’s a huge difference between some dirty plumber who drives a white van, and the surveyor who studied geography at university and speaks “the Queen’s English”, and it has nothing to do with who owns the bigger house.
British society offers more material mobility than America, although that material prosperity brings fewer social rewards because Brits are so attuned to subtle cues like voice or hobbies.
But Britain is no longer living in the Victorian era. We can point to at least 3 great turning points in modern British history that have eroded the traditional class system.
Firstly, World War 2. With the introduction and expansion of welfare tools like the National Health Service and universal schooling, pretty much everyone in society was given the raw tools to climb up. Grammar schools in particular led to a generation of working-class Brits entering university, professional work and therefore the middle-class.
Secondly, Thatcher. Her capitalist reforms created a Britain that cared just as much about money as it did about social class. Investment poured in, the public sector was sold off, and London became the financial capital of the world. Suddenly, studying Latin poetry at Cambridge and snagging a lifetime job in civil service was no longer the clearest route to a successful life.
Furthermore, Thatcher’s “right-to-buy” scheme (which allowed long-term social housing tenants to buy their homes at a steep discount) seriously blurred the lines between the working and middle-classes. Plumbers and electricians could now be well-to-do: they could own their homes, send the kids to private schools, bring the family on regular holidays, and maybe even buy a vacation house in Spain or Portugal. You would never be posh, but your kids could be.
And finally, we have Tony Blair’s decision that over 50% of high school leavers should be going to university. That has seriously devalued one of the most powerful signs of the higher social classes, and created a sort of new working-class: whereas the working-class archetype of the 1970s was a Welsh or Yorkshire coal miner, today’s working-class is better exemplified by middle-class Isabella.
Isabella studied philosophy at a mid-ranking university and is now working part-time at a local bookshop, considering doing a master’s degree in communication to become more employable. She has a “neutral” accent, was privately educated, and grew up riding horses and playing tennis. Unless she settles down with someone richer, her kids will probably only inherit the accent.
So as Britain becomes a more modern country, class becomes an increasingly imprecise way to stratify society. It is still a very real feature of British social life, and will remain so for some time, but things have really changed. Today, electricians can marry doctors, and privately-educated diplomats might be the children of plumbers and hairdressers.
Meanwhile, in an increasingly unequal US, class is taking a new importance. As Trump professes his love for “the poorly educated” and every journalist in the country scrambles to talk with authentic “non-college-educated whites”, Americans are re-discovering the importance of education, family background, vocal mannerisms and hobbies — in short, class.
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After Cruz Applies Heat, Intuit Sees Light and Backs Down on Anti-Gun Policy
Intuit—a company best known for its QuickBooks financial management software for businesses—earlier this year announced a cessation of services for firearms dealers, along with manufacturers of firearms or firearms components.
The latest attempt at woke corporate activity resulted in another embarrassing about-face, demonstrating left-wing social policies do not reflect American values and undermine the business interests of the companies that advance them. The threat this time came from Intuit, a software company that manages personal, business, payroll, and tax finances, but denied its services to gun makers, gun dealers, and even gun-parts manufacturers.
After Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, launched an investigation as ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Intuit dropped this woke, discriminatory policy.
The sharp reversal under Cruz’s spotlight demonstrates the deep unpopularity of the woke anti-gun cause. Intuit’s decision to harm law-abiding businesses does not reflect American values and, in fact, harms its own shareholders.
Dawson Precision is a Texas-based manufacturer of firearms parts and a firearms dealer. Like many American small businesses, the company used Intuit to manage its payroll.
Suddenly and without warning, Intuit terminated the company’s payroll-service subscription—deeming the gun-parts maker in violation of Intuit’s “acceptable use” policy prohibiting services for gun manufactures. To no avail, Dawson appealed the termination, arguing that its business as a small firearm-parts manufacturer—rather than a manufacturer of firearms—did not violate the acceptable-use policy.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first woke discrimination policy employed by the company. In 2018, Intuit incorrectly classified Arizona-based Gunsite Academy as a gun seller. Despite clear proof of Gunsite Academy’s compliance with the policy—and that the business does not sell directly to consumers—Intuit denied the company an appeal, leaving it without payroll software.
As the investigation continued, Cruz found Intuit’s banking providers—JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America—were instigators of these discriminatory practices. These financial institutions demanded Intuit refuse to provide payroll services for gun manufacturers and retailers. As a result, Intuit terminated its relationship with scores of companies such as Dawson Precision and Gunsite Academy.
Thanks to Cruz’ investigation, Intuit acknowledged the unfair policy, its subjective application, and lack of a fair appeals process.
The subsequent removal of Intuit’s discriminatory gun-related payroll policies is a step in the right direction, but this denial of essential financial services to law-abiding businesses should sound alarm bells for Americans.
The risk to individuals, institutions, and businesses of being “debanked” simply for being on the “wrong” side of a woke creed continues to rise. Freedom-loving Americans are fighting back.
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Men and women are becoming increasingly unequal—and in one of the most basic measures of well-being, it's men who keep falling further behind
Equality always has been an American preoccupation, right from the words “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence.
Yet even that phrase is not egalitarian enough by today’s lights; feminists long have objected to the gendered language of “all men.”
Thomas Jefferson didn’t mean to commit a microaggression; in 1776, “all men” meant women, too.
We know this because the Founding Fathers—must we say Founding Parents?—argued about the mismatch between their universal philosophy and the endemic inequalities of their time, with Abigail Adams asking her husband John to “remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors” when the time came for America to declare independence.
Today, however, men and women are becoming increasingly unequal—and in one of the most basic measures of well-being, it’s men who keep falling further behind.
Life expectancy has declined for all Americans in recent years. It’s fallen more for men than for women, though, producing the largest gender gap in nearly two decades.
According to a study in JAMA Internal Medicine, as of 2021 women were outliving men by 5.8 years.
As much as postmodern academics and progressive political activists may deny it, there are natural differences between the sexes, and the mere fact that women live longer is not so surprising.
For one thing, men are disproportionately employed in the nation’s most hazardous jobs, including as loggers, roofers, construction workers, aircraft pilots, and steel workers.
And if a male propensity for risk-taking makes men more successful in certain executive and entrepreneurial roles, it also leads to more men and boys dying young of misadventure and accident.
But the gap in longevity has widened by a full year since 2010, when it was at an historic minimum of 4.8 years.
Human nature hasn’t changed in that time; rather, something has changed in America to make it a deadlier place for men.
COVID-19 contributed twice over, to the extent that the disease may have affected men more severely and they, in turn, were less inclined to take its flu-like symptoms seriously.
Deaths from despair have ravaged both sexes, but suicide and overdose do exacerbate the gender disparity, with men at greater risk of dying from each of those causes.
Unsurprisingly, men are also more likely to die by homicide, and when violent crime escalates, male life expectancy predictably will fall.
But there are less obvious forces in play, too.
Men are less likely to go to college or complete a degree, which in an increasingly service-oriented and knowledge-based economy translates into worse life and career prospects—conditions that foster deaths from despair.
Whether ironically or cynically, progressives can be conservative and hidebound in their assumptions about inequality: They presume that whoever was more-than-equal in the past must still be privileged today, and so the one kind of inequality that doesn’t prick the progressive conscience is whatever harms groups that were formerly better off.
Income inequality and racial inequality are outrages that fill the streets with protesters from Occupy Wall Street or Black Lives Matter—but there won’t be any protests over men’s worsening life prospects.
Then again, the last thing men need is to be designated as another victim group.
Right now, the very concept of manhood is under attack from two directions: from those on the left who see masculinity as inherently “toxic” and those on the right who idolize the likes of Andrew Tate—overgrown adolescent hedonists without an ounce of self-control, let alone any traditionally manly moral responsibilities for family or others.
If life is unfair to men, the masculine remedy is not to complain about unfairness but to be tough enough, and mature enough, to endure and prosper despite inequality.
That doesn’t mean that men don’t need help, especially when facing despair, but a sense of social or political victimhood is only destructive; what kills men is not something that can be solved with another equality-demanding movement.
As dedicated as our Founding Fathers were to equality—even to the point of recognizing in principle, if not in practice, that the words of the Declaration of Independence applied to women and black people as well as to white men—they did not believe that everyone could or should be equal in every way.
Men and women will forever be different, and the ways they differ will not always be favorable to men.
Rather than seeing this as a betrayal of equality, or overlooking it as a politically incorrect fact, the best response is to treat men as men and women as women in their virtues and hardships alike—and look to men’s strengths for the answer to their plight.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11/21/when-inequality-is-fatal-for-men/
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The present Australian Leftist federal government: Ideology, idiocy and incompetence
Peter Dutton has committed his party to a return to government at the next election. This development is welcome. The damage being inflicted upon this nation by the Albanese government, which we pointed out over a year ago comprises a core group of some of the least impressive individuals to ever run this country, is immense and needs to be stopped.
Mr Albanese presides over a government of the ‘three i’s’: every policy can be explained within the parameters of ideology, idiocy and incompetence.
Take climate change. This week Chris Bowen flies off at taxpayer’s expense along with 70,000 other globalist jet-setters to Dubai for the annual climate gabfest, Cop28. (Why any self-respecting politician would attend these events is beyond us – it was a Cop that heralded the beginning of the end for Kevin ‘rat-f-ckers’ Rudd and of course it was at Glasgow’s ignominious Cop26 that Scott ‘net zero’ Morrison sealed his own fate).
Mr Bowen’s trip is fuelled not only by an abundance of fossil fuel (of course) but also by Labor’s flawed and foolish climate ideology. In Mr Bowen, the climate zealots have a man of limited work experience outside of Labor party undergraduate politics and of limited ability who is the perfect patsy for implementing hugely expensive and almost certainly futile green climate measures at the behest of the renewables industrial complex. His career to date boasts a litany of failed and destructive policies in every portfolio he has been gifted, from the silliness of GroceryWatch to the deaths at sea during his time as immigration minister to the money-grabbing, vote-losing franking credits fiasco. Mr Bowen’s ideology is compounded by idiocy.
The fact that the USA and the UK at this climate meeting are pushing for nuclear to be a key component of reaching net zero means that instead of us being in lockstep with our most important Aukus allies, and instead of using Cop28 as the perfect launchpad for an Australian nuclear industry, Mr Bowen will be standing on the sidelines, a ‘nuclear Nigel no-friends’. The idiocy is then shrouded in incompetence.
Having vandalised vast swathes of agricultural land with his transmission-lines madness and touted offshore wind farms as the solution to his renewables quest, Mr Bowen has met stiff resistance from many of Labor’s natural constituency and is now running around proposing silliness like floating windmills miles out at sea or even greater taxpayer expenditure on solar farms. Future nuclear-powered generations will look back on his hare-brained follies, along with Snowy 2.0, green hydrogen, carbon capture and so on, with a mixture of incredulity and amusement.
Next, take Labor’s hapless immigration and home affairs ministers, both clearly floundering and out of their depth; hardly surprising from a party that brought us over a thousand deaths at sea and an endless flotilla of leaky people-smuggling boats. Following the chaos surrounding the release of long-term detainees (including rapists, murderers and pedophiles) by the increasingly activist left-wing High Court, the Albanese government is now voluntarily importing hundreds of Gazan refugees into this country, despite the fact hat a recent survey showed a terrifying 75 per cent of Palestinians support Hamas and the 7 October atrocities. How are Australians, and more specifically Australian Jews, meant to feel secure with Labor in power?
On the economy we clearly see the three i’s hard at work as well as on industrial relations and especially on Labor’s defence policy, which expert Greg Sheridan derides as ‘criminally negligent’.
Meanwhile, everyday Australians increasingly struggle to make ends meet as the Prime Minister jets around the globe with no discernible benefits to the nation. Back at home, emboldened by the absence of any moral leadership and moral clarity from the government, foolish youth (urged on by teachers and unions) and imbecilic actors don keffiyehs to parade their obscene ‘support for Palestine’, in the process terrifying Jewish communities and giving succour and encouragement to the vile rapists, torturers and murderers of Hamas and their acolytes.
From a purely political level, the self-evident failures of the Albanese government, including the huge own goal of the Voice referendum, make a change of government increasingly likely, as the trend in current polls suggests. But there is a long hard slog ahead and there is certainly no room for complacency.
Peter Dutton himself is an impressive opposition leader, exuding an air of common sense and mainstream values. The Voice victory and the way he stood back to allow Senator Jacinta Price to shine bodes well for his prime ministership.
Arguably, it is only the Liberals themselves who stand in the way of a Coalition victory at the next election. If the so-called ‘moderates’ – the Birmingham-Leeser-Bragg brigade – repeat the errors of the past and attempt to water down or ditch conservative policies, the Libs will lose.
Left to his own devices and political instincts and free of any stupidity or sabotage from the Teal-soaked bed-wetters, Peter Dutton will likely be our next prime minister. And it can’t come soon enough.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/12/the-three-is/
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1 December, 2023
New study reveals very bad news for bread lovers
The Chinese authors of this study deserve credit for a very careful and thorough study. In the end, however the results are no different from less well-contolled previous studies: Weak effects. All the relationships were marginal, meaning that it would be a rare person who suffered ill effects from (say) eating bread. A bread enthusiast living to be 100 could be expected
There are few things in this world as comforting as a fresh piece of bread straight from the oven.
Spread with some lashings of butter, a dollop of jam or a scrape of vegemite, most of us have grown up with this delicious snack and many enjoy it as part of our daily diet.
While most of us can admit that consuming nothing but bread may leave us with more vitamin deficiencies that a scurvy-riddled pirate, we may not realise the impact our carboholic tendencies are having on our health.
According to a brand new study featured in Nutrients medical journal, the humble loaf of white bread has sadly been found to increase the risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC), also known as bowel cancer, regardless of genetic factors.
Alcohol was also found to be a contributing factor in a person’s chance of developing this cancer, in addition to the other negative impacts of the drug.
Researchers from the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China analysed 139 dietary factors and their impact on the risk of developing bowel cancer.
The 118,210 participants from the UK Biobank cohort completed online questionnaires about their food intake.
Following up with their clients after an average of 12.8 years, researchers identified that both white bread and alcohol increased the risks of bowel cancer, while six other vitamins and minerals – fibre, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, manganese, and carbohydrate – decreased the risk of developing CRC.
The study found that the overall risk was influenced by both a mix of some genetic characteristics, as well as diet and lifestyle habits.
“After a mean follow-up of 12.8 years, we identified 1466 incidents of CRC among 118,210 UK participants,” the study read.
“Of these, 842 were colon cancer and 359 were rectal cancer. The mean age of the 1466 CRC patients was 55.87 years and almost 44.6% of the study population was male.
“Compared to the general population, CRC cases were more likely to be male and white, older, and less educated, and to have a higher TDI (tolerable daily intake), more family history of bowel cancer, a high BMI, less physical activity, more smoking, and a higher prevalence of diabetes at baseline.”
Misagh Karimi, M.D., a medical oncologist and colorectal cancer specialist, was not involved in the study but offered his reaction to its results.
“The findings of this study reaffirm the well-established connection between lifestyle and dietary choices and the prevention of colorectal cancer,” he told Fox News.
“These findings emphasise the critical importance of adopting a healthy lifestyle and dietary habits, which include limiting alcohol consumption and choosing a diet rich in high-fibre foods to mitigate the risk of cancer.”
While the doctor praised the study for involving a large amount of people, he pointed out that it was focused on a European population and further studies might be needed.
“This study also stands out because of its size and design,” Dr Karimi said.
“It involved a large sample population of 500,000 middle-aged people, a long follow-up period and a comprehensive assessment of dietary factors.
“As the researchers state, analysis was limited to a European population. To ensure the applicability of these findings to diverse populations, further studies are needed to validate these results on a wider population.”
Bowel cancer was the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in Australia in 2018, according to Cancer Australia.
In 2020, bowel cancer was the second most common cause of cancer death in Australia, with 5354 (2847 males and 2507 females).
Some common symptoms include a change in bowel habits, blood in stools, abdominal pain, cramping, bloating, weight loss, lumps in the rectum, unexplained fatigue and blood in the urine.
Earlier this year, another study published in the PNAS journal from a research team in Hangzhou, China, found that hot chips and other deliciously fried carbohydrate-laden foods may have a negative impact on mental health.
The study found that these types of meals may be linked to higher rates of anxiety and depression, with the impact found to be more pronounced in “young men, and younger consumers in general”.
The research demonstrate that the frequent consumption of fried foods – especially fried potatoes – was linked with a 12 per cent higher risk of anxiety and a 7 per cent higher risk of depression, compared to people who did not eat fried foods.
However, nutrition experts explained that the results are preliminary, and it is not necessarily clear whether the fried foods were driving mental health issues, or people experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety turned to fried foods for comfort.
Fried potatoes specifically were found to have a 2 per cent increase in risk of depression over “fried white meat”, such as fried chicken.
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Hair Salon Faces Discrimination Charge After Refusing to Serve ‘Transgender’ Customers
A Michigan hair salon is facing a discrimination charge over a now-deleted social media post stating that customers who believe they are “transgender” are not welcome and should “seek services at a local pet groomer.”
In July, Townhall reported how Studio 8 Hair Lab refused to serve patrons with “preferred pronouns,” according to The Kansas City Star.
“If a human identifies as anything other than a man/woman, please seek services at a local pet groomer,” the hair salon owner, Christine Geiger, said in the post. “You are not welcome at this salon. Period.”
“Should you request to have a particular pronoun used please note we may simply refer to you as ‘hey you,’” the post continued. “This small business has the right to refuse services. We are not bound to any oaths as realtors are regarding discrimination.”
On Wednesday, the state’s Department of Civil Rights claimed that the post violated the state’s civil rights act by discriminating against three claimants, according to the New York Post:
Salon 8 Hair Lab could face fines and suspension or revocation of its business license if the charge is adopted by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission after a hearing before an administrative law judge.
The salon owner filed her own complaint against the city of Traverse City and the three individuals on Oct. 25, accusing each of violating the salon’s First Amendment rights for filing civil rights complaints.
Traverse City over the summer announced the salon was under investigation for discrimination over the claims.
Reportedly, Geiger posted that she has “no issues with LGB,” which are lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.
“It’s the TQ+ that I’m not going to support,” she added, referring to transgender people.
In an interview with the Associated Press, she reportedly said that she does not “want the woke dollar.”
“I’d rather not be as busy than to have to do services that I don’t agree with,” she reportedly said.
https://townhall.com//tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/11/16/michigan-hair-salon-update-n2631255
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The Pop Psychology Notion of ‘Self-love’ Is Actually A Recipe for Self Hate
The message that the world’s greatest religions and cultures taught young people: Seek the truth, do your duty to your family, eat healthy, don’t drink your youth away, honour the gods and your ancestors, marry and have children, and serve your people.
The message that social media and pop music teaches young people today: live for yourself, don’t settle or sacrifice, drink, smoke, party, sleep with whoever you want, God is an interpretation, family is a farce, you don’t need a man, you go girl!
If young people do not live a life with purpose, mental health is bound to suffer. The consequences of poor decisions cannot be fixed with pharmacological solutions. Of course, it goes without saying that not everyone who has poor mental health is doing something wrong.
Many of the codes to a well-lived life, a life of meaning and purpose, are actually quite simple. Religious and cultural values taught us ways to achieve good ‘mental health’ before science had even taken its first steps. It has more to do with what we offer others, and less to do with embracing oneself unconditionally.
The most popular value today among the young, educated urban population is ‘self-love’. As a concept, this one has had many proponents on its side, ranging from counsellors to hippies, from philosophers to third wave feminists. Each group of supporters have expanded the application of the notion, sometimes to distorted proportions.
Consequently, (one of) the most unpopular values of today is the antithesis of self-love. That is, loving someone else as much, or even more than yourself. The most unforgivable is when one loves one’s romantic partner more than oneself.
Fewer people want to get married or have children, and even if they do, they delay it as much as they possibly can. Even fewer have more than two children. An extended bachelorhood is all anyone wishes for any more. Meeting or spending time with one’s parents, siblings or grandparents has become less frequent for adults. Aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews are no better than strangers. Neighbours do not even exchange smiles. Of course, one might replace these invaluable relationships with friendships or colleagues, but there is far less responsibility to be taken there. Long-term, serious, monogamous romantic relationships “scare” people, so that has been replaced with hookups, one-night stands, friends with benefits, and all manner of why-label-anything pseudoships. This incompetence to handle anything with commitment, responsibility or obligation also looks better disguised as “self love”.
“Love yourself. Focus on your own needs first. Whatever you do: work, dress, write, earn, travel, it should be for yourself and not for others.”
But what’s wrong with putting someone else first? What’s wrong with working a job that may not be your dream, if it helps you to provide for your aged parents? What’s wrong with doing what your boyfriend wants once in a while? Or your parents? Or your brother? What’s wrong with choosing to leave your job to take care of your kids? What’s wrong with making sacrifices for those you love? Are they even sacrifices if they further your own people’s interests?
Are we so insecure about our independence that we feel threatened if someone else tells us what to do or what’s good for us? Is the assertion of the self (its needs, desires, rights, freedoms) the only way we feel we love ourselves?
Does ‘self love’ mean mindless indulgence of every whim and fantasy? Does it entail prioritising one’s dreams or hobbies or grooming no matter the cost? Does it involve chasing hedonistic pleasures?
Self love should be redefined to include love for our loved ones. It includes teaching your son to fix a faulty shower head, helping your wife do the dishes or your nephew with his math homework. Sometimes, these tasks call for sacrifices like missing a career-altering work conference, failing to meet your monthly salon appointment, or losing your place in a beloved novel because you didn’t get weeks to pick it up. What’s wrong with that?
Some of this has to do with Western culture. In India, we have what we call a “joint family” system (although family structures in urban India are becoming increasingly nuclear). I grew up in such a family. Typically, this would consist of a man and his wife (with or without kids), who live with his parents under the same roof. Or maybe the parents live with their son. It doesn’t really matter who lives with whom. If the man has a brother, he too lives in the same house with his wife and kids. It might sound outlandish, but it has its benefits.
Festivals and special occasions are celebrated together. Children inherit a diverse collection of values from the lived experiences of multiple parental figures. The women go to work at greater ease, leaving their children at home to be watched by the grandparents. The kids grow up listening to stories told by their grandfather, and enjoying sweetmeats cooked by their grandmother.
They do not see much difference between their siblings and their cousins. They not only learn to cooperate and share, but also to depend. The man provides for his parents in their old age, and he may even share some household expenses with his brother(s). ??
I do not advocate returning to the joint family system. Times have changed, and logistical problems arise. What I advocate is, returning home. Home to family. Home to cultural roots. Home to sanity.
The concept of ‘self’ is also different from that in the West. It may not be carved in stone, but I’d daresay that the definition of ‘self’ includes the family in almost every context. And the working definition of family includes not just wife and kids, but also parents and siblings and nieces and nephews. This working definition matters when one makes decisions. But ‘self love’ as it is understood to be today, has outlived its worth.
“Love yourself. Make sure you forgive yourself for everything. You are valid. You are valuable.”
How can it be so absolute? You are valuable, period. No conditions whatsoever. Who decides this value? ‘Self love’ would say you do. But isn’t value also decided by the role we play in the lives of others, or how well we play it? How valuable are you if you bring nothing to the table? How about if you have a drug problem? Or if you drink and drive and kill someone in the process? Or if you never bothered to fix your strained relationship with your parents?
Even if it is not as extreme as all that. How can you forgive yourself for everything you say or do? If forgiveness is inevitable, then all actions are equal, whether it is as egregious as walking out on your wife and kids or as harmless as passing notes in class.
If I ask my grandparents, relatives, or even some of my friends as to how they could redefine self love, they would say:
Love yourself, sure. But terms and conditions apply.
Love yourself. But only when you deserve it. Dislike yourself when you don’t. Live with that discomfort long enough to make amends for your mistakes.
Love yourself. So accept no freebies. Take yourself seriously enough so as not to congratulate yourself just for existing.
Love yourself. You don’t deserve everything, simply because you exist. That’s entitlement.
Love yourself. But even better, get over yourself.
Identity is not only what you decide by yourself. If someone asks you: who are you?
You are a person. You can attach adjectives, what you do for a living, what you do for leisure, your political affiliations, a list of books you read, movies you watch, music you listen to, the art you appreciate, whether you like tea or coffee, whether you are a cat or a dog person, morning or night person, or anything else you choose.
But more than those individual embellishments, you are someone’s son or daughter, someone’s brother or sister, someone’s husband or wife, someone’s father or mother, someone’s employee, the citizen of a country, the participant in a community. This is where identity is to be found; this is where character is forged. You love yourself when you play these roles well.
This is where you derive your confidence. Not by sending flowers to yourself on Valentine’s Day because no man is good enough.
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I'm raising my daughter to be 'traditional wife' one day - and that it is perfectly acceptable to serve and depend on a man
This mother is actually ensuring that her daughter has a balace of influences. Her daughter will get plently of feminist propaganda at school
My own experience of a traditional wife has been very good. When I married Jenny I told her to ditch her job and enabled her to become a full-time wife and mother. She was grateful for that and embraced the role enthusiastically. And just yesterday -- 40 years later -- she told me that I am her highest priority. Beat that!
An Australian stay-at-home mum has caused a stir by saying she is teaching her young daughter to 'serve' her family and 'depend' on her future husband.
Jasmine Dinis is a self described 'traditional wife' who is raising her daughter to want the same instead of getting a university education or career of her own.
Many were quick to criticise Jasmine's old-fashioned parenting style and pointed out while there is nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mum, the notion of a woman 'serving' her husband could be 'anti-feminist'.
'I'm teaching my daughter that it's perfectly acceptable to depend on a man and that serving her husband and bearing children will be her greatest joy,' the mum-of-one wrote in an online video.
Jasmine has more than 145,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram as she posts snippets of her life 'encouraging traditional motherhood and marriage'.
'In a world full of women teaching their children that their only goal is to go to university, get a good job and make money, I'm teaching my little girl to live a slow life, to be a biblical women that wants a husband and a beautiful family that she can serve daily,' she captioned the video.
'That joy comes from God and family, not from a career.'
The controversial video was seen more than 3.4million times with viewers quick to slam Jasmine for 'deciding' her daughter's future.
'I hope you will support her in other career options if she expresses she doesn't want what you wanted,' one woman said.
'Ah yes. What could go wrong here???' asked another.
'You don't know what her biggest joy will be. Let her decide on her own,' a third wrote.
'Girls - don't depend on anyone else but YOU! You are your own rock, your own foundation, your own future,' added a fourth.
But not everyone was outraged by Jasmine's sentiment.
'This is absolutely beautiful,' one woman said.
'You're an incredible mother and living this way is fulfilling in the deepest level,' a second agreed.
'She's teaching her daughter there is still empowerment in creating a home. If it doesn't apply to you that's fine,' another replied.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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