Don’t Let Liberals End Opinion Diversity Under Cover of ‘Fake News’ Campaign

The issue of fake news is very much in the news, as it were, and President Donald Trump is being compared to Stalin for his dismissal of journalists who are purveyors of it as “enemies of the American people.”

It may be good to jog our memory back to how the term “fake news” arrived among us.

Only then do we remember that it first was intended to be used as a weapon in a sustained campaign by liberals to regain their former monopoly over news delivery, and end one of the most important and hard-won victories by conservatives—the information diversity that arrived with the internet.

Disinformation, of course, has been among us since man first began to use language, sought to conceal something, and lied about it. So a very long time.

But the present use of the term fake news is of much more recent vintage, as we can see in this chart:

Internet searches for “fake news” really kicked up in early November 2016. It is to then that we can trace this Nov. 6, 2016, article by The New York Times’ media critic, Jim Rutenberg, credited with the first use of the term.

“The internet-borne forces that are eating away at print advertising are enabling a host of faux-journalistic players to pollute the democracy with dangerously fake news items,” Rutenberg wrote.

The purpose of Rutenberg’s jeremiad was to draw attention to the secular demise of mainstream newspaper outlets and decry the success of conservative outlets.

Rutenberg’s evidence was comprised of outrageous examples of conspiracy mongering by alt-right sites—content, he complained, that can “live alongside that of The Times or The Boston Globe or The Washington Post on the Facebook newsfeed and be just as well read, if not more so.”

But it is clear from his piece that his real target was opinion diversity.

“If you have a society where people can’t agree on basic facts, how do you have a functioning democracy?” Rutenberg quoted The Washington Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, as asking.

We heard a very similar version in former President Barack Obama’s complaint to David Letterman this month:

One of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy is the degree to which we don’t share a common baseline of facts. If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than you are if you are listening to NPR.

We know which planet our 44th president inhabits, and which he thinks is in a galaxy far, far away.

We also know whose “basic facts” Rutenberg trusted: In his seminal 2016 column, he mentions the hard-left and equally conspiracy-driven MSNBC as a normal, mainstream network.

The loss of the previous progressive monopoly on the dissemination of news and analysis has poisoned the liberal soul since the internet came on the scene.

The left’s “fake news” campaign began, then, as an attempt to smear all legitimate conservative news purveyors, from Fox News Channel to The Weekly Standard to the Washington Examiner and, of course, The Daily Signal, that provide an alternative news selection and interpretation.

This effort to delegitimize conservative outlets went horribly wrong, of course, when Trump appropriated the term and weaponized it. I must admit that when the president started doing it, I thought it wouldn’t fly. The current brouhaha proves that I was wrong.

As a former journalist, I don’t particularly like calling newsmen “the enemies of the American people.” It is indeed a term once used by Stalin. (Though it hardly makes Trump a Stalinist, a distinction that should be reserved for those who actually massacre millions and oppress those who survive.)

My friends in the media are not enemies of the American people. But they are mostly liberal.

Ask the more existential question, “Do liberals like America?” and that’s harder to answer. Many liberals don’t hide their contempt for the U.S. (there are many, many examples; find them yourself) and many others still proffer to like an America I don’t recognize.

Which is why we should all be present in the marketplace of ideas. After gaining this beachhead, conservatives must protect it against what will be sustained attempts to dislodge them.

In 2014, I had a celebrated exchange with Darrell West and Beth Stone at Brookings Institution over their frightening call in a paper for digital platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter to change their algorithms in a manner that would prioritize information from liberal sources.

But West and Stone won, and social networks are now “fact-checking” their content. As my colleague Katrina Trinko points out here, this is censoring the news.

Ending opinion diversity this way is the real threat to freedom of the press and the First Amendment, and what should keep those who worry about it awake at night.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Mike Gonzalez

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, is a widely experienced international correspondent, commentator, and editor who has reported from Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He served in the George W. Bush administration, first at the Securities and Exchange Commission and then at the State Department, and is the author of “A Race for the Fut ure: How Conservatives Can Break the Liberal Monopoly on Hispanic Americans.” Read his research. Twitter: .

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The Ugly Reason For Durbin’s Claim of Trump’s “Sh**hole” Comment

Lost in the ongoing poopy-storm surrounding what President Trump may or may not have said regarding the relative sanitary conditions of certain third-world countries, is this perhaps larger question:

Why did Sen. Dick Durbin do it? Why did the Illinois Democrat, with only a passing relationship with the truth, run to the media to claim Trump called some awful third-world countries poopy-holes?

Whether Trump said it or not, and whether this is more evidence that he is racist, has been debated and analyzed ad nauseum for what feels like an eternity in this era of a new news cycle every few hours. For a possibly fictional story about the President using a bad word in a meeting, it sure is hanging on. And for good reason — the same reason Durbin sprinted to the cameras with his tale.

Democrats don’t want an immigration deal. They do not want any immigration solution short of 100 percent of what they are asking for across the board.  What do they want?

The issue. Specifically, a galvanizing issue to inflame the Latino vote. In the same way they continually stoke racial tensions (and in this case, it’s a two-fer) to gin up black voter turnout and support, they need Hispanics angry and frightened to obtain their voter turnout and support. They believe that making Republicans look intransigent against “brown” people, and forcing “dreamers” out of the country will accomplish that. Based on how the media is guaranteed to dishonestly cover such an issue, they are probably right in their calculations.

Consider: If we seriously began solving race relations and immigration issues, how could Democrats drum up 70 percent of the Latino vote and 90 percent of the black vote? If those minorities did not feel the need for Democrats to alternately protect them from Republicans and give them other Americans’ stuff, why would they need the Democrats? Electorally speaking, without those margins, Democrats could not expect any chance of winning.

If this analysis is true — and it is for Democratic leadership based on all past and current actions, including Obama’s endless race-baiting when he had a chance to lead the nation in real reconciliation — that says something truly cold and ugly about Democratic leadership. (Democratic leadership as opposed to many rank-and-file Democratic voters we may know personally who follow the sound bites and spin and actually may want the best for minorities and not just electoral leverage. They just believe the spin on Republicans because they trust the media. Not their first mistake.)

What this says is that it appears Democratic leadership would rather Americans suffer, even Americans that make up their loyal voting base, than risk losing electoral advantage. It’s not like there are not Republicans who act this way, too. Of course there are. But this is just on marching display in front of us for Democrats.

Dick Durbin either saw or made up the chance to tank the negotiations. It’s hard to see any other motive. Making Trump personally look bad could have waited until the following day, or that afternoon, as that is pretty much all the media does now.

This was a different motive than simple anti-Trumpism. Far more cold-hearted and cynical. Sorry, loyal minority Democratic voters. Your party seems to be just using and abusing you.

EDITORS NOTE: In answering the charges made against the Obama administration’s targeting and seizing of private phone records of AP reporters and employees, and intimidation of Fox News reporter James Rosen by Obama’s Justice Department, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) defended Obama’s actions by in-essence stating the Constitution is out of date in regards to journalism.  He suggested to Chris Wallace of Fox News’ that he believes certain people should not have First Amendment Rights, and then went on to say that the Constitution is out of date in 2013.  He asks if the Constitution applies to Bloggers and Twitter Users;  “Are these people journalists and entitled to constitutional protection? We need to ask 21st century questions about a provision that was written over 200 years ago.””

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. Check out The Revolutionary Act’s Youtube Channel.

What Russian immigrants can teach us about Jewish identity

Russian Jews know from personal experience that leftist ideology leads to totalitarian dictatorship, suppression of individual freedoms, and denial of personal autonomy.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely was criticized a few months ago for opining that American Jews live “comfortable” lives and don’t know what it’s like to live under constant threat of attack, though she also acknowledged the continuing bond between them and their Israeli cousins.

While mainstream liberals took offense, they could not dispute the substance of her comments.  It seems progressive Jews are always offended when moderate, conservative, or right-wing Israelis (i.e., much of the Israeli electorate) have the temerity to chastise those whose politics threaten Israel’s safety, security, and continuity as a Jewish state.  It’s easy to criticize Israel from the comfort of North America for those who define religious and ethnic identity not by Jewish values and history, but by allegiance to a political worldview that devalues both.

Though Hotovely’s words were taken somewhat out of context, the truth is many American Jews are indeed naïve – especially those who believe Israel should conform to a political vision that characterizes her as an occupier, demeans the Jewish spirit, and belittles traditional Judaism.  To the extent her words offended those who support an agenda that undermines Israel and empowers her enemies, they were words that needed to be spoken and should be repeated often.  No longer should the mainstream blindly vouch for the religious and cultural integrity of the Jewish left, or of nontraditional clergy who find common cause with BDS advocates and Islamist front organizations.

Much of the non-Orthodox establishment seems to care more about secular political values than traditional Jewish ones, and its support for Israel is often apologetic or conditioned on her presumed acceptance of liberal ideals. Too often, progressive organizations provide forums for left-wing ideologues and unbalanced critics who disparage the Jewish State and traditional Judaism, while denying equal time to pro-Israel advocates and political conservatives.  This dynamic frequently plays out in college and universities where liberal campus leaders often show greater concern about the hypothetical risk of Islamophobia than the very real incidence of progressive anti-Semitism, and frequently condemn Israeli policies while ignoring Islamist rejectionism.


There is nothing inherently Jewish about political values that encourage assimilation and undercut Jewish observance and national integrity.

That’s why it’s refreshing to see organizations like the Russian Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Boston thriving and celebrating Jewish identity.  In some ways, the RJCF is like thelandsmanschaften associations of the early twentieth century that provided communal support to Jewish immigrants who came from the shtetls of Eastern Europe.  The RJCF’s core membership hails from the former Soviet Union, where seventy years of Jewish suffering under the yoke of Communism instilled a survival mentality and loyalty to heritage.  Instead of facilitating assimilation, the experience of Russian Jews as a persecuted minority seems to have fostered a commitment to identity, devotion to democratic ideals, and passion for the Jewish State.

The RJCF’s ardor for Israel was on full display at its recent, annual end-of-the-year Gala, where the theme was “United with Jerusalem” in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the reunification of the ancient Jewish capital.  The keynote address was delivered by retired Lt. Colonel and former U.S. Representative Allen West, and the honoree for RJCF’s Jewish Advocacy Award was Rabbi Jonathan Hausman, who was recognized for his work on behalf of Israel and the international free speech movement.

The choices of Colonel West and Rabbi Hausman reflected the RJCF’s assertive commitment to Israel and to the free speech that is so essential for protecting democratic ideals and preserving Jewish identity in America.  Though both gentlemen have been attacked for their stances on radical Islam by progressive groups ambivalent or hostile towards Israel and traditional Judaism, and despite whisperings from some corners of the community that attendance would be hampered by their participation, the Gala’s organizers were resolute in choosing them as speaker and honoree.  And this resolve was rewarded by a tremendous turnout and enthusiastic audience response when the Colonel and Rabbi spoke.

The RJCF’s President, Alex Koifman, set the tone in his opening remarks by noting how Jews from the former Soviet Union strongly identify with Jerusalem’s reunification and draw strength and inspiration from Israel’s assertion of sovereignty over her ancient capital.  He also observed how bias against Israel and hatred of Jews is on the rise globally, and that the RJCF is committed to combatting both.  Because of their unique history and experience, it seems Russian Jews are particularly sensitive to the dangers of anti-Semitic hate speech and the need to confront it proactively.

These sentiments were echoed by Colonel West, who emphasized the importance of teaching and learning Jewish history – from Torah times to the present – and of understanding that the Jews’ presence in Israel is part of an unbroken historical continuum, while Palestinian claims have no history to back them up.  Organizations like the RJCF are important because they affirm Jewish history and the symbiotic relationship between the United States and Israel, he said, noting that Russian Jews know from personal experience that leftist ideology leads to totalitarian dictatorship, suppression of individual freedoms, and denial of personal autonomy.

Colonel West also emphasized the need to strengthen the American-Israeli relationship and undo the damage caused by the failed policies of the Obama administration, which gave billions of dollars to an Iranian regime sworn to exterminating Israel and bestowed moral legitimacy on the anti-Semitic BDS movement.  It’s up to the Trump administration to acknowledge the historical legitimacy of the Jewish State and influence other governments to do the same.  “There can be no peace in the Middle East without recognition of who [the Jews] are, and until Europe and the Arab nations stop shunning Israel,” he said.  This vision is not simply good politics, said West, but represents the fulfillment of the words spoken to Avraham by G-d in Sefer Breishit (Genesis).  “And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you.” (Parshah Lech-Lecha, Breishit, 12:3.)

In his remarks, Rabbi Hausman emphasized the Jewish tradition of debate, discussion and intellectual inquisitiveness, and that Jews thrive in societies that cherish free speech and critical discourse.  Freedom of expression and the exchange of ideas were once hallmarks of liberal democracy, but have come under attack in recent years by those who simply cannot tolerate disagreement and dissent, he said.  Though progressives claim to be the standard bearers of liberal ideals, they have turned their backs on classical liberalism, which in earlier generations had treasured critical thought and the interplay of opposing viewpoints.  “Societies where discussion becomes impossible are susceptible to totalitarianism, and nobody knows this better than Jews from the former Soviet Union,” Rabbi Hausman said to applause from the audience, noting further that such societies “are not conducive to the safety and security of the Jewish People or the State of Israel.”

Rabbi Hausman’s remarks gave perspective as to why Hotovely’s comments rankled liberals, especially those who tolerate or enable leftist totalitarianism, progressive anti-Semitism, and Islamist excess.  She clearly unnerved those whose political ideals are fundamentally incompatible with authentic Jewish values, but who nevertheless strain to claim consistency with Jewish tradition.  In redefining their identity according to politics that contravene Jewish religious and cultural continuity, liberal “social warriors” have lost the tools necessary for Jewish survival, and have politically aligned themselves – wittingly or not – with leftists who promote assimilation and Islamists who seek to eradicate Israel.

If the RJCF’s constituency is any indication, the Russian Jewish community has no tolerance for such religious and cultural suicide, as evidenced by its strong support for Israel in terms of both dollars and personal commitment.  Russian Jewish immigrants are extremely patriotic to the US and Israel, and they see more of their children serving as lone soldiers in the IDF than does the liberal mainstream.  Indeed, many lone soldiers from this community have parents who served before them – in sharp contrast to those progressives who disparage Israel and who shamefully condemned President Trump’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

One gets the sense that the RJCF’s members might stop identifying as Russian after a generation or two, but will never cease being Jewish.  For them, “Russian” is the adjective that describes where they or their parents were born, but “Jew” is the noun that defines their essence.  If they were to cease identifying as Russian, they would still be Jewish because of their self-awareness and historical connectedness.  In contrast, American progressives who lose their political faith are deprived of the only thing by which they define Jewishness.  Take away their liberalism, and you take away their validation as Jews.  The irony, of course, is that there is nothing inherently Jewish about political values that encourage assimilation and undercut Jewish observance and national integrity.

And this is something that the RJCF’s members understand – as do emigres from any society in which Jews have suffered persecution.  Those who must fight to maintain their religious and cultural identity have a similar mentality to Israelis who fight not only for their own survival, but for that of the Jewish People.  They know that Jewish continuity depends on loyalty to history and tradition, which is a lesson that many American Jews have either forgotten or never learned in the first place.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in Israel National News.

For Planned Parenthood, Abortion Is a Black and White Issue

Plenty of movements have tried to hitch their wagon to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. For years, people across the political spectrum have claimed him as one of their own — in part because it’s convenient and in part because he isn’t here to dispute it. But no cause is more antithetical to King’s than Planned Parenthood’s. And yesterday, when the group founded by an open racist tried to suggest otherwise, we weren’t the only ones who noticed.People across the social media spectrum lashed out at Cecile Richards’s group for daring to suggest that they were carrying on King’s vision.

The idea that Dr. King would have stood by — let alone embraced — Margaret Sanger’s legacy is outrageous. Yet still, @PPact had the audacity to tweet:

“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. dedicated his life to the idea that racial and economic justice are foundational to our democracy. Today we honor his courageous vision and radical action — and commit to furthering his dream by continuing the fight for justice.”

If you know anything about Planned Parenthood, you know that it was built on the back of Sanger’s eugenics.

Years later, her legacy lives on in the group’s business model, which intentionally preys on minority women. How do we know that? Simple: the majority of Planned Parenthood’s facilities have been built in urban areas within walking distance of African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods. And that’s no coincidence. Richards knows better than anyone that black babies are aborted at a rate five times higher than white babies. So while she likes to say “black lives matter,” she’s not telling the whole story. They matter because it’s a part of her business model.

Despite making up just 13 percent of the U.S. population, the CDC’s 2016 report points out, black babies made up a whopping 35 percent of the total abortions reported in 2013. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood, the group that profits most from that statistic, continues its scam as a defender of African Americans.

“Please tell us more about how you’re honoring his courageous vision,” one of many pro-lifers fired back. “Are you going to plant yet abortion clinic in a black neighborhood or something?” Alexandra DeSanctis piled on. “Your group was founded by a eugenics enthusiast who peddled birth control in black and impoverished neighborhoods “Today, more black babies are aborted than born alive in NYC, your headquarters. You have no business coopting MLK to push your propaganda.” Alexandra is right. With just a 40 percent survival rate, the womb is one of the most dangerous places for New York City’s African-Americans. Yet Planned Parenthood will cover up that statistic with the same proficiency that it’s covered up years of abuse, organ trafficking, partial-birth abortions, fraud, and countless other crimes against humanity.

The only connection Richards’s group has to MLK is its butchering of the basic civil rights for which Dr. King died.

“It’s not so much about labels — liberal, conservative and all of that,” his niece Alveda has said. “But he was someone who lived and gave his life to help all humanity. And so that definitely would include conception until natural death.” As she told reporters last December, “Martin Luther King Jr. never accepted the agenda of Planned Parenthood. They lie… They put their abortion mills on or near streets that are named after Martin Luther King, and they want to attach that to the civil rights movement of the 20th century — but it doesn’t belong.”


Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.


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VIDEO: Twitter Security Engineer, ‘It is a creepy big brother.’

Before you watch Part III of our investigation into Twitter, I have to warn you that the discussions held by these Twitter employees IS NOT family friendly.

If you’re at the office, turn down your speakers or put on your headphones.

If the children are in the room, ask them to cover their ears.

With that warning out of the way, here’s what you should be really worried about . . .

If you have held a private conversation on Twitter, and possibly any other social platform, your conversation was NOT private.

Even if you deleted sensitive discussions you held privately online, not only are they still there, the information you discussed — attached to your personal profile — is being traded like a commodity.

Have you discussed personal family matters with others over private messages?
Have you talked about your health or the diagnosis of a loved one?
Have your vented relationship challenges to a close friend?
Have you expressed intimate sentiments to your spouse or partner?

If you’ve done any of those things, and again, even if those messages have been deleted, they are now attached to your personal “virtual profile” and bought and sold thousands of times over.

As one Twitter employee called it, “it’s creepy big brother.”

WARNING GRAPHIC LANGUAGE BY TWITTER EMPLOYEES:

witter has over 300 million users across the world and in essence has turned itself into a giant database of virtual personalities with preferences, likes and dislikes all attached to each and every one of us . . . . even if you don’t use Twitter!

Clay Haynes, Twitter’s Senior Network Security Engineer, admits that “You leak way more information than you think… Like, if you go to Twitter for the first time, we have information about you.”

I’d guess that 99.8% of people never read Twitters terms and conditions, and those that do have a 99.9% chance of not understanding the depth and implications of them.

That’s why, as an avid Twitter user myself, I was shocked to hear what is really going on behind the closed doors of this tech giant.

Watch this video and tell others to do so, and we will wait and see how Twitter responds to this one.

Our video is already being featured at the top of the Drudge Report site, which has had over 890 million site visitors over the past 30 days alone.

Drudge Report

Thanks again for everything and as always . . . stay tuned.

In truth,

James O’Keefe
Project Veritas

Leftist Toilet Mouths Condemn Trump as They Corrupt Nation

President Trump denies having used a vulgar term last Thursday to describe dysfunctional Third World countries. Yet there’s no denying that the leftist media, believing he did, responded by repeatedly disgorging the term in a childish orgy of decadence. Of course, the media no doubt think they’re damaging Trump — but they’re actually damaging society.

Let’s be clear: Leftists certainly object to the substance of Trump’s comments, that we shouldn’t continually absorb poor, unskilled, often functionally illiterate and unassimilable people from Third World nations. But they also object to his alleged style, labeling as obscene the use of s***hole (toilet) to describe such places. So to show us how bad such language is, the Crude News Network (CNN), for example, used it at least 36 times on Thursday. It’s sort of like inveighing against animal abuse and then bludgeoning dozens of dogs to death on air to prove your point.

WARNING GRAPHIC LANGUAGE:

Let’s be clear about a few other matters:

  1. You probably wouldn’t lose money betting that all the leftists now complaining about the toilet term use vulgarity themselves off air.
  2. In reality, most media leftists actually have mouths resembling sewers.
  3. It’s the Left that, mainly via entertainment, has coarsened society, defining deviancy downwards and normalizing vulgarity. This is why the younger generations now use profanity, publicly, as a matter of course.
  4. This is very, very destructive to society.

Why it’s destructive I’ll explain momentarily. Note, however, that this article isn’t about immigration, which I take a hard line on and believe should be completely ended. Something else that should be ended, however, is our increasing tolerance for public crudity.

Let’s begin with what the Father of Our Nation and first president, George Washington, wrote about vulgarity in a 1776 order:

The General is sorry to be informed that the foolish, and wicked practice, of profane cursing and swearing (a Vice heretofore little known in an American Army) is growing into fashion; he hopes the officers will, by example, as well as influence, endeavour to check it, and that both they, and the men will reflect, that we can have little hopes of the blessing of Heaven on our Arms, if we insult it by our impiety, and folly; added to this, it is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense, and character, detests and despises it.

In point of fact, few of us had great-grandparents who wouldn’t have been at least somewhat appalled at today’s tawdry tongues. And whatever a few of them might have occasionally uttered in private, they certainly wouldn’t use bad language in polite company (does this even still exist?) or around children. Now note that every time we use profanity publicly — on the Internet, for example — we are using it in front of children.

This raises the matter of the blessed asterisk and its cloaking cousins. Many will ask what the point is, since kids have already heard every vulgar word we’re obscuring. Yet this is a bit like saying: If children know about serial killers, what’s the big deal about inundating them with snuff films?

We (should) use asterisks in print, bleep out words in broadcast and generally obscure the obscene because doing so sends an important message:

The obscured things are wrong.

Opening up the closet of the coarse, crude and carnal sends the message that such things are okay. Sure, kids have heard bad language. But the point is to not normalize and legitimize it through continual and cavalier adult use. The point is to instill in the young virtue, good moral habits, not the bad ones called vice. And habits are created via repetition — a fact that should make us think twice about on-air repetition of vulgarity.

Instinctively, many of us still sense vulgarity’s ugliness. This ugliness is best illustrated by putting it in the prettiest of mouths: Would you find a group of nine-year-olds cursing like a drunken sailor an uplifting scene? Would you think they were on a good moral path?

Well, as poet William Wordsworth put it, “The Child is father of the Man”; a youth’s well-learned dark lessons become adult transgressions. Yet some will still wonder why this matters, maintaining that vulgarities are “just words” (actually, they’re unjust words). For an in-depth exposition on this, I strongly urge you to read “Cussing & Cultural Decay,” a magazine piece I penned last year that I believe is the definitive short work on the subject (it’s hard to find online but is available here).

Put simply, though, an immoral society cannot yield a moral government. Echoing many great thinkers, British philosopher Edmund Burke warned, “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” (The Founding Fathers often expressed the same principle in different words.) Now, do people who habitually disgorge vulgarity — not to mention indulge decadence in general — strike you as men of temperate minds? Or do you think such habits reflect fetters-forging passions?

Too many suppose we can compartmentalize our virtue and vice. Like believing we can continually pollute one side of a lake yet swim in pure waters on the other, we act as if impurity intensely indulged in certain areas won’t bleed over into areas we’d like to keep pristine. But just as former labor secretary Lynn Martin said in 1992 that “[y]ou can’t be one kind of man and another kind of president,” we can’t be one kind of people and have another kind of polity. Do you really think we can embrace profound vice in language, entertainment and sexuality but then enjoy that for which profound virtue is necessary: fiscal restraint, respect for rights, honesty in government affairs, dutiful law-enforcement agencies, a Constitution-limited judiciary, sound schooling and truth-oriented media? As our second president, John Adams, put it, “Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private [virtue], and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.”

Thus is it distressing that even some conservative media outlets now lower standards, using terms such as a**, c**p, s***storm and WTF (with everyone knowing the acronym’s meaning). Perhaps they’re not mindful that it was yesterday’s leftists who normalized such vulgarity. Perhaps they don’t care. But it’s why I’ve long said that conservatives are the caboose to liberals’ engine of cultural decay. It’s why, ultimately, they lose political wars. For politics is downstream of culture, and conservatives never saw a culture-war battle they couldn’t lose.

As for Trump, his alleged potty-mouth moment was reported by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), a scoundrel with a history of lying about White House meetings, according to Daily Wire. But whatever the president said, he said in private. This is far different from Durbin, who introduced the story. It’s far different from ex-California Democratic Party chairman John Burton, who led a “F*** Donald Trump!” chant at California’s Democratic Party convention in Sacramento early last year. And it’s far different from CNN and the rest of the effluent-stream media, which, like an exhibitionist, just revel in the chance to flaunt publicly what excites them privately.

They are despicable. May they be the first to drown in the wave of tyranny they invite.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

EDITORS NOTE: In 2014 BlackAndRight published the below video titled “How Liberals Use Children.” It showed children using foul language to promote liberal causes. WARNING: Children using foul language.

Who died?

I started watching Miss America and Miss Universe competitions when I was a little girl, mostly because I loved the gowns. To this day, I still tune in, especially toward the end, when all the gowns are on display. A couple of years ago, I saw my all-time favorite! As the expression goes: TDF––to die for!

I also love the Country Music Awards shows because it’s the only time I hear genuinely thrilling voices without the caterwauling and preposterous over-production that camouflages the dearth of talent in the pop-music industry.

But with rare exceptions, I never tune in to the orgies of self-congratulation, self-importance, and self-indulgence known as the Golden Globes, the Emmy’s, and the Academy Awards, not only because the presenters and winners are so insufferably narcissistic and vapid but because movies and TV shows have devolved to such a point––with notable exceptions, of course––that this past summer, according to The Los Angeles Times, Hollywood suffered its worst-attended summer movie season in 25 years!

Apparently, this is because the moguls who now run Hollywood and TV and the print media are so out of touch with mainstream America––unlike their bête noire, President Trump, who has his finger on the very pulse of America’s wants, needs, and desires––and so obsessed with leftwing politics, and so hysterical that all their efforts to undermine and sabotage and defeat and impeach him have utterly failed, that they’ve done what millions of losers have done in the past, i.e., doubled down on their efforts.

Who are these desperate people? They are not just the moguls, but all the lefties, including the pussy hat women who have now given up that symbol because it’s too pink and not sensitive enough to perhaps darker colors of the female sex organ and not transgender enough to be “fair” to all women. Can’t make this up!

CHOOSING COLORS

Flag of Poland

When our Founding Fathers chose the colors of the American flag over 240 years ago, they chose white to signify purity and innocence, red to signify hardiness and valor and the blood they spilled in the cause of freedom, and blue to signify vigilance, perseverance and justice.

On Israel’s flag, the blue lines symbolize the stripes on a traditional Jewish prayer shawl and the Star of David is the widely acknowledged symbol of the Jewish people and of Judaism.

When Lech Walesa, who led the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, flew the red and white flag of his country, red stood for blazing a trail and white for the movement’s pure motives.

WHO DIED?

To let the world know that they were speaking out in solidarity with the #MeToo movement against the sexual harassment they had not said one word about for 20 years, and in some cases 40 years, they chose to dress in provocative, breast-baring dresses with skirts featuring split seams strategically displaying an entire leg right up to the crotch.

The message to the men in the worldwide audience and to the men in their lives––boyfriends, producers, directors, publishers, editors, et al––was clear:

“You can look, drool, desire, salivate… but don’t you dare tell me I look great or smile at me in any way I consider lascivious, or suggest, even subtly, that you have sexual interest in me––or else I’ll remember it and use it against you in a lawsuit with the express intention of ruining your career and your life.”

And what color did these angry feminists choose to wear to demonstrate their “solidarity” with their victimized sisters?

  • Not green, the color of renewal, nature, energy, growth.
  • Not blue, the color of trust, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, truth.
  • Not yellow, the color of hope, positivity, optimism, enlightenment, honor.
  • Not purple, the color of stability, power, wealth, creativity, dignity.
  • Not orange, the color of enthusiasm and determination.

Uh uh. They put their collective heads and, ahem, IQs, and evolved life experiences together and came up with––ta da––black, as in mourning.

Significantly, the oh-so-caring women of Hollywood could find not one microsecond in the entire evening to salute and support the freedom-loving, freedom-seeking women in Iran––whose black hijabs are the ultimate symbol of true oppression––many of whom have lost their lives in this struggle and now lie in coffins wrapped in black shrouds.

Come to think of it, where are the voices of the leftist women in the U.S. Congress in support of the female Iranian freedom fighters? Clearly, they have more important things to do, like announcing that they too will wear black to President Trump’s upcoming State of the Union speech on Tuesday, January 30, 2018.

I can just see the political cartoonists having their most energetic field day in years with this travesty!

Meanwhile, what will the net result of this moment in history be?

I predict that the glut of animated films will increase, to the point that fewer and fewer movies are made because of the disgust that movie producers have toward the women who willingly complied and got everything they wanted from them and then turned on them when the phony baloney #metoo movement came along.

Heads up, you starlets––look up the fate of the buggy whip!

I also predict that Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump and Tiffany Trump and KellyAnne Conway and Sarah Sanders and Hope Hicks and Nikki Haley and all the other fabulous women––many of whom occupy among the highest positions in our government––will not be wearing black to the president’s State of the Union address, but will be decked out in the gorgeous and colorful and optimistic colors that are emblematic of America!

#MAGA!

NY Times: Trump’s Immigration Remarks Outrage Many, But Many Others Quietly Agree

President Trump is trying to prevent America from the destabilizing immigration mistakes Europe made that they are now trying to correct.

President Trump Is Not A Racist. One can not say the same about a number of his critics who seek to impeach him.

While President Trump’s immigration remarks outrage many, many others quietly agree. Unfortunately most Democrats and a number of Republican hypocrites like to use confusing diplomatic language to obfuscate their true feelings and meaning. Trump doesn’t choose to use language to obfuscate reality and they don’t like it.

There is no reason to believe that if the subjects of immigration came from a lawless uneducated white nation who don’t speak English with many contagious health problems and seek to immediately go on welfare Trump would oppose such immigration as well. Would his opposition call Trump a Black racist?  No they wouldn’t. Trump’s position all along is that he welcomes people who can contribute to America.

People who use racism for political or personal gain are more likely to be the racists themselves.

Based on the New York Times report most of Europe who have been inundated with immigrants from countries that are destabilizing their societies are taking steps to stop  such immigration. Europeans are reevaluating their immigration policies based on what is happening and thus must also be labelled ‘racists.’

Read what’s happening in Europe now  trying to correct its mistakes:

Trump’s Immigration Remarks Outrage Many, but Others Quietly Agree

LONDON — The Czech president has called Muslim immigrants criminals. The head of Poland’s governing party has said refugees are riddled with disease. The leader of Hungary has described migrants as a poison.

This week, Austria’s new far-right interior minister suggested “concentrating” migrants in asylum centers — with all its obvious and odious echoes of World War II.

So when President Trump said he did not want immigrants from “shithole” countries, there was ringing silence across broad parts of the European Union, especially in the east, and certainly no chorus of condemnation.

In fact, some analysts saw the remarks as fitting a pattern of crude, dehumanizing and racist language to describe migrants and asylum seekers that has steadily edged its way into the mainstream. Coming from the White House, such words may be taken by some as a broader signal that racism is now an acceptable part of political discourse.

“What we see now is a conscious policy to reintroduce language that was previously not acceptable in debate,” said Gerald Knaus, the director of the European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based research organization that has played a leading role in forming recent European migration policy.

Read more.

Cartographers Scrambling to Rename Countries as Trous de Merde [Sh_t Holes]

Cartographers around the world are rethinking how they currently categorize countries. Since WWII the world has been described by cartographers, politicians, financial institutions and historians as First World, Second World and Third World.

The First World consisted of industrialized nations roughly aligned with the United States and its allies post WWII. The Second World consisted of those nations aligned with the former Soviet Union. French demographer, anthropologist and historian Alfred Sauvy, in an article published in the French magazine L’Observateur, August 14, 1952, coined the term Third World (French: Tiers Monde).

These designations may dramatically change.

The International Cartographic Association (ICA) will be holding its 29th International Cartographic Conference and 17th General Assembly in Tokyo, Japan, from 15–20 July 2019.

An unnamed CNN source suggests the ICA will take a new look at these three categories of countries that make up the global community. It is possible, according to the unnamed CNN source, that during the 2019 ICA General Assembly meeting a motion will be made to create two new categories.

The new categories being considered are Pas de Trous de Merde (not sh_t holes) and Trous de Merde (sh_t holes).

It is unclear at this time which of the National ICA members will introduce this change. An unnamed MSNBC source reports that Argentina’s Instituto Geográfico Nacional may be behind this effort given its close proximity to Venezuela, a country many consider a sh_t hole.

A proposed map of the world has been leaked to CNN. The map does away with the three designations and reduces them to two, Not Sh_t Hole and Sh_t Hole.

Aileen Buckley who heads the U.S. National Committee for ICA was asked about this new designation. Her office released the following brief statement:

We are looking forward to the 2019 meeting of the International Cartographic General Assembly in Tokyo. We will be consulting with the White House on reshaping how we look at the world. #MAGA

Dr. Alireza A. Ardalan from the Iranian National Cartographic Center stated that these proposed new designations are racist and Islamophobic. Iran’s National Cartographic Center has since 1979 designated America as the gros trou de merde (big sh_t hole) and Israel as the petit trou de merde (little sh_t hole).

The Fertilizer Institute, the voice of the fertilizer industry, notes that without sh_t we would not be able to feed the world.

RELATED ARTICLE: Top 10 Shi*holes Nobody Wants to Visit

EDITORS NOTE: This political satire has appeared in New World Fertilizer Magazine.

DACA: The Immigration Trojan Horse — Cost $25 Billion

How the original DREAM act was designed to cover 90% of the illegal alien population in the U.S.

Today DACA (Deferred Action-Childhood Arrivals) is a major issue for the Trump administration, with politicians from both parties attempting to persuade President Trump to provide lawful status for the illegal aliens who had been granted temporary lawful status in an ill-conceived and, indeed, illegal program that had been implemented by President Obama, a politically adept manipulator of language and a master of deception.

On December 18th I participated in an interview on Fox News to discuss DACA and the fact that according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) legalizing the estimated population of “Dreamers” would cost an estimated $26 billion.

On January 9th President Trump conducted a bi-partisan White House meeting to consider a compromise that would provide lawful immigration status for the approximately 800,000 illegal aliens who enrolled in DACA. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, Trump seeks a “bill of love” from Congress for “Dreamers”

The “deal” would require funding a border wall, ending “chain migration” and perhaps, making E-Verify mandatory.  Of course without an adequate number of ICE agents, mandatory E-Verify would be of limited value since unscrupulous employers could simply hire illegal aliens “off the books” and without agents to conduct field investigations these criminally deceptive employment practices would not be discovered.

President Trump’s previous call for hiring an additional 10,000 ICE agents was not mentioned by the participants in the meeting.  This is extremely worrisome.

A lack of effective interior enforcement of our immigration laws, has for decades, undermined the integrity of the immigration system. In fact the 9/11 Commission cited the lack of interior enforcement as a key vulnerability that terrorists, and not only the 9/11 hijackers, had exploited to embed themselves in the U.S. in preparation to carrying out deadly attacks.

DACA was a travesty foisted on America and Americans by the Obama administration, from its inception, was a scam based on lies and false suppositions. Legalizing these 800,000 illegal aliens would, in point of fact, legitimize Obama’s illegal action.

Obama claimed that he was invoking “prosecutorial discretion” when he stood in the White House Rose Garden on June 15, 2012 and announced that “since Congress failed to act” (to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform) he was going to act by creating DACA. But in reality Congress did act: it voted down legislation known as Comprehension Immigration Reform and, in so doing, took an action that is consistent with the role of Congress as established by the U.S. Constitution that created the system of “checks and balances.”

For Mr. Obama, however, the problem was that Congress did not act the way he wanted it to act.

Two days after that speech in 2012, I wrote an Op-Ed, “Obama Invokes Prosecutorial Discretion to Circumvent Constitution and Congress,” in which I noted that what Obama had referred to as “Prosecutorial Discretion” should, in reality, be referred to as “Prosecutorial Deception.”

Legitimate use of prosecutorial discretion can provide a pragmatic solution to real-world limitations of law enforcement resources in a manner comparable to a triage.  For example, law enforcement officers frequently ignore relatively minor violations of law so that those limited resources can be available to address more serious violations of law.  Consider, for example, the police officer operating speed radar who ignores cars that exceed the speed limit by a small margin, but are being otherwise driven in a safe manner.  This enables the police officer to focus on vehicles that are being driven dangerously.

Under DACA, however, illegal aliens were not ignored to conserve limited resources.  In fact, limited resources were not conserved but were squandered to provide temporary lawful status to a huge number of illegal aliens without legal authority or justification.

Moreover, DACA constituted the de facto creation of law without the legislative process, but by unconstitutional executive fiat.

Let’s now consider the notion of “deferred action,” the foundation upon which DACA was purportedly created.  There are legitimate provisions in the immigration system to provide aliens with “deferred action” when it is a matter of compassion, for humanitarian purposes.  The key word is “deferred.”  What is deferred is the ultimate required departure of non-immigrant aliens.

For example, if a family from another country lawfully came to the United States as non-immigrants for a temporary visit with friends or relatives in the United States and one of the members of the family was injured in an accident or became ill, those aliens could apply for deferred action so that they would not have to leave the United States until the family crisis was resolved.

As an INS agent I dealt with such cases.  Generally the doctor who was treating the injured or ill family member would provide documentation to immigration authorities to verify the medical situation, with periodic updates.

As an INS special agent I was responsible for conducting investigations to make certain that applications were not fraudulent.

Generally these aliens would not be granted employment authorization except under the most extraordinary of circumstances if they needed to remain in the United States for a protracted period of time. However, DACA essentially “dropped a net” over 800,000 illegal aliens, not out of humanitarian concerns because of an unforeseen emergency but as a means of achieving a political objective.

Obama claimed that his action was to help young people who were brought to the United States by their parents and, consequently, were the victims of their parents’ actions over which they had no control.

Obama was counting on the fact that Americans are among the most compassionate people in the world, especially where children are concerned.  Media reports furthered this narrative and, to this day, many ill-informed Americans believe that all aliens who participated in DACA were teenagers. But in fact, the age cutoff was actually 31.  These aliens simply needed to claim that they had been brought to the United States prior to their 16th birthdays.  Those aliens today might now be as old as 36 years of age.  DACA should have been called DACCA (Deferred Action- Claimed Childhood Arrivals).

There were virtually no interviews or field investigations to verify any information or claims contained in the applications.

(The DREAM Act would have allowed aliens as old as 35 years of age to apply to participate in the amnesty that would have been created had the legislation passed.)

It is vital to note that even the term DREAM Act and the derivative term “Dreamers” is hypocritical.  Ever since the administration of Jimmy Carter, the term “Alien” has been eradicated from the immigration debate, not out of supposed “political correctness” but as a means of Orwellian thought control and Newspeak.

However, the “DREAM Act” is an acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act.  It is maddening that when the imagery of the “American Dream” can be exploited, the term “alien” becomes palatable — but only when used in conjunction with this bit of Orwellian deception.

If the purpose of the DREAM Act was to help young illegal aliens, why did the politicians and “Gang of Eight” not simply limit it to aliens who had not yet attained the age of 21 and who could provide immigration authorities with their current school transcripts and report cards to verify their status as students in good standing?

What was never discussed in the mainstream media is that the whole point to the DREAM Act, pushed by some members of Congress and particularly the “Gang of Eight,” was to construct a legislated immigration “Trojan Horse.”

The DREAM Act established 35 years of age as the cutoff age for this amnesty because it would have covered an estimated 90% of the illegal alien population in the United States.  Furthermore, without the ability to conduct interviews, let alone field investigations, aliens could easily lie about their identities, their dates of birth and even their dates of entry into the United States.

There would be no way for adjuration officers to refute the claims of the aliens who participated in the program.

The DREAM Act was a carefully disguised version of failed legislation known as Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

In 2007, after I testified about Comprehensive Immigration Reform before several hearings in the House and Senate, I wrote an Op-Ed for the Washington Times, Immigration bill a ‘No Go’ in which I suggested that the legislative disaster be renamed the “Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act” because under that legislation, millions of illegal aliens who had entered the United States surreptitiously and without inspection, would have been provided with lawful status and official identity documents.

This would have violated the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, to which I provided testimony.

I was gratified when then-Senator Jeff Sessions quoted my Op-Ed from the floor of the U.S. Senate during the contentious floor debate on Comprehensive Immigration Reform on three separate days, in which he shared my concerns and my proposed new name for that legislation.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) created a massive amnesty program that ultimately led to the greatest influx of illegal aliens in the history of our nation.  It has been said that insanity is doing the same things the same way and expecting a different outcome.

As a highly successful real estate magnate, President Trump must especially understand that just as it is unwise to erect a building on a swamp, legislation must be constructed on morally and legally solid ground.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.

Another Liberal Activist Judge Rules — Congress Can Stop The Madness

In another striking judicial development, Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee from San Francisco, issued an injunctive order Jan. 9 prohibiting President Trump from moving forward rescinding President Obama’s DACA order.

Although it only applied to established DACA applicants, and left untouched the ban on future applications, the order is offensive nevertheless, and demonstrates the terrible problem plaguing our country resulting from the actions of activist judges.

Essentially, the plaintiffs, which included the State of California, argued that President Trump had acted randomly and capriciously in removing the DACA order because, among other reasons, he did not give notice and did not allow for a period of public commentary prior to issuing his rescindment.

But here’s the thing, neither did Obama.

Obama himself issued his own DACA order single-handedly, without due process, and outside any compliance with any statutory requirements — and after saying he did not have the Constitutional authority to do so. Therefore, when President Trump acted to discontinue the DACA order, he was actually rescinding an illegal act, making Alsup’s ruling even more egregious — and overtly political.

The inescapable conclusion of all these actions is that Judge Alsup was less informed in his ruling by the law, than by his disdain for the President’s policies, and possibly, for the President himself. Relevant to this: Just two weeks before this political ruling, the Supreme Court overturned a different DACA-related Alsup order.

Additionally, the judge applied his order to the whole nation. This latter issue is particularly problematic as it is allowing individuals in the judiciary to paralyze policy decisions on a national scale even though the district of any particular judge does not encompass a large geographical area.

This latter problem is actually one that can be fixed by Congress.  Congress has the authority to create and define the powers of the lower courts.  As evidenced by the results of this case, it is time for Congress to limit the scope of judicial orders to only the geographical extent of their district.

And as for the greater problem of an overzealous judiciary, it is high time that the American people enact some sort of check on America’s increasingly partisan courts.

EDITORS NOTE: This column appeared on The Revolutionary Act. Also, check Dr. Gonzalez’s YouTube channel.

God Forbid the Further Oprahizing of America

The American Left’s Oprah-mania about her running for president in 2020 is truly absurd. What on earth qualifies Oprah to run our country? I do not consider myself White House material. But if Oprah qualifies, I am a far superior candidate.

Years ago when Oprah became a national phenomenon, I coined the phrase, the Oprah-lizaton of America. It seemed like Oprah seduced many Americans into placing feelings above facts and logic.

Fake news media and most politicians have become Oprah-rized, behaving as though feelings trump everything. For example. Rather than honestly dealing with the negative consequences of illegals invading our country, Leftists and politicians are most concerned with the emotional side of the issue. God forbid we hurt the feelings or harm the self-esteem of illegals who do not give a rat’s derriere about our country or assimilating.

So now, the American Left is giddy over the thought of Oprah becoming our first queen. We’ve seen this horror movie before titled, “Eight Years of Obama”. Fake news media and wimpy republicans would allow Oprah to behave as queen, free to overrule the Constitution; given full reign to cram extreme liberalism down our throats. Opposing or disagreeing with Oprah would be deemed racist and sexist.

In 2008, over 90% of my fellow black voters were hypnotized by Obama’s skin color. I tried to warn black family and friends that Obama was not black in terms of being one of us. Obama was first and foremost a liberal Trojan Horse disguised in black skin; totally focused on furthering the liberal agenda rather than dealing with issues plaguing black Americans

Consequently, blacks moved economically and culturally backwards during Obama’s reign. Yes, Trump has been economically “mo’ better” for us blacks than Obama

Oprah’s presidency would be a continuation of Obama’s with more touchy-feely mindless emotion driven stupid punish-America policies. Our ultra-Oprah-rized America would give away everything to everybody; confiscating the earnings of achievers to spread to deadbeats.

In 1976, I worked with Oprah at WJZ-TV in Baltimore. As a graphic designer in the art department, I provided graphics for our morning talk show, “People Are Talking” which Oprah co-hosted with Richard Sher.

Psychic Jeane Dixon was a guest on “People Are Talking”. After the show, Oprah, Ms Dixon, other staffers and I were gathered chatting. Ms Dixon took Oprah’s hand and enthusiastically predicted that Oprah would achieve huge success. I am not saying I believe psychics. I am simply reporting what happened.

Oprah’s rise to fame was truly remarkable; evidence of the good heart of the American people. From her early days of co-hosting “People Are Talking”, I thought Oprah’s gift was an ability to be herself on camera. In those days, blacks on TV seemed overly concerned with convincing white America that they were intelligent. Oprah was simply herself and viewers related to her, an average looking, overweight dark-skinned black woman. Blacks are only 12% of the U.S. population. Therefore, it is obvious that white America made Oprah a billionaire.

And yet, on several occasions, Oprah has passionately helped her fellow America-hating Leftists’ sell their lie that America is a hell-hole for blacks.

While promoting her movie, “Selma”, Oprah despicably claimed that blacks are still suffering the same persecution today as they did in the 1950s. 

Clearly, selling movie tickets and furthering Leftists’ America-sucks narrative trumped the truth about how truly far we have come regarding race and being fair to the country that has practically worshiped her.

Oprah no more belongs in our Oval Office than Donald Duck. The idea is totally absurd. We all know how fake news media would treat Democrat presidential candidate Oprah Winfrey. Every word out of her mouth would be deemed the height of brilliance, wisdom, fairness and compassion. Fake news media would brand the Republican presidential nominee the secret head of the KKK, a white supremacist and a sexual predator.

Make no mistake about this folks. Along with changing America by flooding America with a tsunami of illegals, Leftists are obsessed with furthering their sexual revolution; making deviancy normal. Oprah would surely champion her fellow Leftists’ government mandated sexual transformation of America.

A lot of American voters would once again be hypnotized by Oprah’s skin-color and fake news media hype, ignoring Oprah’s instincts to punish-America. I pray that a majority of American voters would learn from their mistake of electing extreme Leftist Obama solely because of his skin-color.

RELATED VIDEO: Oprah for President? Obama 2.0?

Hollywood’s Crown Jewel of Hyperbole — The Golden Globe Awards

PopSugar.com ran a column titled “These Badass Women Stood Up to Sexual Harassment by Wearing Black to the Golden Globes.” The column was written by Victoria Messina who wrote that the actresses, “wore black for the patriarchy-smashing occasion.” The article contained an extensive slide show of actresses posing for the cameras wearing black dresses. The message was by wearing a black dress they will somehow stop sexual abuse. 

Melanie Phillips wrote a column about the Golden Globe awards titled “Hollywood Protest Was Another Vanity Parade.” Ms. Phillips wrote:

It’s hard to recall a more egregious display of vanity signalling than the black dress protest. It was “please snap me while I pose in my conscience”. MeToo! MeToo!

Hollywood is the crown jewel of hyperbole.

Hyperbole is defined as:

Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

The black dress attired actresses at the Golden Globe Awards have no idea what sexual oppression is all about. You see there is another group of women who are required by law enforced by their “patriarchy” to wear black, from head to toe, every minute of every day of their lives.

Kelsey Harkness, senior news producer at The Daily Signal, in a column titled “As American Women Put Their Pink Hats Back On, Women in Iran Rip Off Their Hijabs” published the below video:

Harkness wrote:

As American women prepare to put on their pink hats for a second time to protest President Donald Trump on the anniversary of his inauguration, women in Iran are taking off their hijabs, protesting an oppressive theocratic regime.

For nearly 40 years since the 1979 revolution, Iranian women have been forced to follow the country’s mandatory dress code, which includes long, loose garments and headscarves known as hijabs. While wearing a hijab here in the United States is a sign of female empowerment, taking them off in Iran is the ultimate sign of defiance.

Hollywood views the patriarchal oppression of women differently than do those who are truly oppressed.

Hollywood has now reached the pinnacle of hyperbole.

Their protest has no meaning nor impact for those women across the globe who are facing cruel abuses from their fathers, husbands, brothers and in some cases slave owners.

Hollywood actresses have turned a blind eye not only to the abuses of their fellow actresses but to the plight of women in countries that treat them as chattel. Hollywood actresses wearing black has not dented let alone smashed the patriarchy in certain countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

These actresses would be strangers in a strange land if they felt the pain of just one little girl married off to an older man.

May we humbly suggest that the real “badass women” are ripping off their black burkas in countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Ben Ritter.

How to beat the cis-culture by making up prog-words

Technological innovations have brought us many new words. We need new words not only to identify new things, but also to rename some of the old things in order to avoid confusion. For example, people have been playing the guitar for centuries without calling it “acoustic” until the electric guitar entered the stage; that’s when the old guitar was retroactively renamed into acoustic. Traditional clocks with a face and rotating hands were retroactively renamed “analog” to distinguish them from “digital,” along with displays, signals, recordings, and so on. The new words for such retro-naming are called retronyms.

Innovations in social engineering affect our language in much the same way.

When Karl Marx laid out his blueprint for communism and socialist ideas began to engulf Europe, the normal way of doing business was retroactively renamed “capitalism.” Rational behavior became “oppressive” and people who preferred normalcy to “isms” became apologists for a reactionary socio-economic ideology. The advent of communist propaganda caused any non-communist discourse (e.g., Adam Smith) to be retroactively known as “capitalist propaganda.”

In the U.S., the advent of progressivism in the 1930s caused a retroactive renaming of mainstream believers in the American Revolution into “conservatives.” When the progressives decided to call themselves “liberals,” the real liberals renamed themselves “classical liberals.”

The general rule is that when new things become mainstream, the existing things have to give way and move to the margins, sometimes under new names. This is a natural order of things. But here’s the kicker: what if this change can be induced artificially, with a trick of the eye, by pretending there is a vibrant new mainstream when there really isn’t? Can we retro-name and marginalize the undesirable people and things ahead of time, pending a viable alternative? Can we popularize a futuristic media illusion that there is a better progressive reality, and retro-name the existing reality into something old-fashioned and not worth saving? Yes we can!

This wouldn’t be a fraud because, thanks to Marx’s blueprint, we are experts in knowing the future. We know it’s inevitable. We know what’s on the right side of history and what isn’t. We know where its arc bends. We have seen the future and it works. So there’s nothing wrong with a little futuristic retro-naming to speed up the process. Marxist morality teaches us that “good” is anything that advances our cause and “evil” is anything that stands in its way. Whatever we do, we can never go wrong. So there.

An example of such futuristic retro-naming is “fossil fuels.” Previously known as simply “fuels,” they received a stigmatizing retronym when we expected a massive arrival of renewable alternatives to replace the “fossils.” Decades later, the use of renewables remains marginal and “fossils” take center stage. People still burn the same fuels, only now they feel guilty about it. Which is just as well, since a guilty electorate is a pliable electorate, and the heavier the guilt, the more willingly they donate to progressive causes.

A similar, more recent example is “cis-gendered.”

In Latin, the prefix “cis-” is the opposite of “trans-” in identifying direction, as in Trans-Jordan (that side of Jordan) versus Cis-Jordan (this side of Jordan). Since the word “trans-gendered” implied “on the other side of the norm,” the academic community fought back with the word “cis-gendered” to imply that “this side” and “that side” are only a matter of perspective and the norm doesn’t really exist. If there’s no norm, there’s no deviancy. With the “cis” and “trans” groups having equal status, both sides also have equal rights to call one another weirdos. The only difference is that the “trans” people have at least questioned their identity and made a conscious decision to change it, whereas the “cis” people have cowardly succumbed to societal pressure, which in the book of trans-virtues makes them freaks.

In academic usage “cis-gendered” is a strategic putdown to troll the general population who have accepted their gender roles based solely on the visual assessment of their genitals. This goes way beyond the traditional “gay agenda,” as “cis-gendered” describes not only heterosexuals, but also gays who identify as men and lesbians who identify as women.

This isn’t your grandfather’s Marxism either, even though the word is loaded with Marxist presumptions.

Presumption 1. Cis-gendered people are “fossils” who found it easier to submit to the pressure from the archaic bourgeois society and accept the gender role imposed on them at birth, rather than prove to one’s family and friends that just because you were born with a penis or a vagina, that doesn’t give them a right to assume your pronoun.

Presumption 2. The human mind is a social construct: there is no such thing as immutable human nature, and everything we know, feel, and believe is acquired through social conditioning. Neo-Marxists believe that gender is an archaic illusion imposed on us by the oppressive bourgeois society, and that once this pressure is removed, people will no longer commit to the rigid binary gender roles and instead will choose one or more from the unimaginable variety of genders discovered by progressive science.

Presumption 3. The society of the future will be brimming with multi-gendered or non-gender-committed people picking their diverse sexual roles and preferences at will. Those sticking to the old binary gender system without questioning their identities will be moved to the margins. Those misfits never had a collective name because they used to be the norm; now they’ll have to be retroactively labeled to distinguish them from the new norm. This new group label is “cis-gendered.”

Presumption 4. We can expedite the arrival of this imaginary world if we convince enough people that it already exists. We will work to create a media illusion where the mainstream culture already consists of cool gender-fluid people, and where the gender-rigid radicals known as “cis-gendered” exist on the societal margins, wallowing in their dying, narrow-minded culture. As a minimum, it will make the majority feel guilty about being cis-gendered fruitcakes, which should make them more submissive and willing to give to progressive causes.

In fact, this “cis-” prefix has so much potential that the progressive movement shouldn’t just stop at gender. We can retroactively rename everything that is normal around us and usher in social progress by replicating the above model.

If it’s not what you are but how you were conditioned that matters, then the prog-science would do well to hurry up and introduce more cis-terms to encourage the rebellion and stigmatize the potentially dangerous non-rebels. Below is a short list of possibilities.

  • Cis-gendered: those who have unquestionably accepted their assigned gender.
  • Cis-racial: those who have unquestionably accepted their assigned race.
  • Cis-planetary: those who have unquestionably accepted their assigned planet.
  • Cis-species: those who have unquestionably accepted their assigned species.
  • Cis-temporal: those who have unquestionably accepted their assigned historical period.

The real revolutionaries are those who always question their cis-status. Become one and your life will be full of surprises. You may wake up being a 50-year-old Hispanic lesbian professor trapped inside a 20-year-old Papua warrior inside a pregnant 40-year-old Palestinian mother of 12 children inside a promiscuous 19th-century Russian ballerina inside a gay German Shepherd inside a drunken Babylonian hillbilly inside an ageless queen of Vulcan – and so on – all living in different historical eras, continents, and even planets, existing as one academically impeccable intersectional nesting unit.

The more new identities you take on, the less likely you will miss the one you have lost. In a way, it’s the opposite of phantom pain: instead of spasms in a missing limb, you will lose all sensation and any interest in a limb which you still have and could very well use.

Soviet Marxists put a lot of faith in social conditioning. They believed that capitalism and private property conditioned people to engage in crime and violence, and that in the absence of capitalist exploitation and without private property, all crime and violence would cease to exist. They also believed that the conditioning of Soviet children through a common-core-type public education would produce the New Man – the ultimate multi-talented altruist who is dedicated to social justice and is fit to live in a futuristic communist society.

That worked out pretty well; the formerly Soviet territories are swarming with completely selfless, honest, and non-violent geniuses who are ready to do anything for a little social justice. It’s now our turn to do the same for America and condition the cis out of its conservative culture.

EDITORS NOTE: This column was first published in FrontPage Magazine.

My Quest to Help Americans Rediscover the Bible

I won’t make any assumptions about how many readers noticed I took a three-month break from column writing.

Nevertheless, I want to explain why.

I needed the time to finish the first volume of the biggest project of my life as a writer, a commentary on the first five books of the Bible, or what are called the Torah in Hebrew.

The commentary is addressed to people of every faith and, especially, to people of no faith.

I have believed all my life that the primary crisis in America and the West is the abandonment of Judeo-Christian values, or, one might say, the dismissal of the Bible.

Virtually everyone on the left thinks America would be better off as a secular nation. And virtually all conservative intellectuals don’t think it matters. How many intellectuals study the Bible and teach it to their children?

And yet, from the time long before the United States became a country until well into the 1950s, the Bible was not only the most widely read book in America—it was the primary vehicle by which each generation passed on morality and wisdom to the next generation.

Since that time, we have gone from a Bible-based society to a Bible-ignorant one—from the Bible being the Greatest Book to the Bible being an irrelevant book.

Ask your college-age child, niece, nephew, or grandchild to identify Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, or the ten plagues. Get ready for some blank stares.

I recently asked some college graduates (none of whom were Jewish) to name the four Gospels. None could.

But what we have today is worse than ignorance of the Bible. It is contempt for it. Just about anyone who quotes the Bible, let alone says it is the source of his or her values, is essentially regarded as a simpleton who is anti-science, anti-intellectual, and sexist.

Our society, one of whose mottos is “In God We Trust,” is becoming as godless as Western Europe—and, consequently, as morally confused and unwise as Europe.

Just as most professors regard most Bible believers as foolish, I have more or less the same view of most college professors in the liberal arts.

When I hear that someone has a Ph.D. in sociology, anthropology, political science, or English, let alone women’s studies or gender studies, I assume that he or she is morally confused and bereft of wisdom. Some are not, of course. But they constitute a small minority.

Whenever teenagers call my radio show or I meet one in person, I can usually identify—almost immediately—the ones who are receiving a religion-based education. They are far more likely to act mature and have more wisdom than their Bible-free peers.

One of our two greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, rarely attended church, but he read the Bible daily. As he said while president, “In regard to this great book, I have but to say, I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man.”

Were he able to observe America today, Lincoln would be shocked by many things. But none would shock him as much as the widespread ignorance of and contempt for the Bible.

I have taught the Torah, from the Hebrew original, for 40 years. Of the many things I have been blessed to be able to do—from hosting a national radio show to conducting orchestras—teaching Torah is my favorite.

When asked how it has affected my life, I often note that in my early 20s, when I was working through issues I had with my parents, there was nevertheless not a week during which I did not call them.

And there was one reason for this: I believe that God commanded us to “Honor your father and your mother.”

In my commentary, I point out that while the Torah commands us to love our neighbor, love God, and love strangers, it never commands us to love our parents. It was sophisticated enough to recognize that love of parents may be impossible but showing honor to a parent is a behavioral choice.

In America, there is an epidemic of children who no longer talk to one or both of their parents. In a few cases, this is warranted. But in most cases, adult children are inflicting terrible, unfair pain upon their parents.

This is one of a myriad of examples where believing in a God-based text is transformative.

Secular callers tell me that they hardly need the Ten Commandments to desist from murdering anyone. That may well be true. But apparently, a lot of people could use the Ten Commandments to avoid inflicting terrible pain on (admittedly, flawed) parents.

The title of my work is “The Rational Bible” because my vehicle to God and the Bible is reason. If you have ever wondered why all of America’s founders revered the Bible, let alone why anyone today might do so, this book should provide an explanation.

My ultimate aim is to help make the Bible America’s book once again.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio show host and creator of PragerUniversity.com. Twitter: .

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