53percenter's Blog

The smirk heard around the world might just have the last laugh.

That smile, of course, was on the face of a high school student named Nick Sandmann who was confronted by a Native American protester in Washington, D.C.

“It’s weird to see your face on television…I’ve also been getting a lot of messages from people – both support and a lot of hateful things.” -Nick Sandmann pic.twitter.com/HbnIVx1YHd

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) January 23, 2019

As a chaotic scene played out with other groups hurling racial and homophobic slurs, Sandmann tried to keep his cool while protester Nathan Phillips uncomfortably pushed into his personal space.

TRENDING: Nathan Phillips’ Story Changing in ‘Sudden and Unwanted’ Fame After Narrative Quickly Crumbles

But that’s not how the establishment media reported it. In what is becoming one of the most infamous journalistic blunders of the last few years, countless outlets smeared Sandmann and the rest of his group from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky as bigots and racists, despite having no evidence to back this up.

That, in turn, led to countless online attacks and even death threats made against the Catholic boys from verified personalities on Twitter, which became so bad that the entire school had to shut down due to security concerns.

Now, a powerful attorney says he’s representing some Covington families, and he’s putting not just complicit journalists but even a Democratic member of Congress on notice.

Robert Barnes, a trial lawyer based in Los Angeles, said Wednesday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” that he has spoken to Covington families and is working on their behalf.

“I represent families in three different groups,” he said. “I represent families of kids who were at the Lincoln Memorial who have been libeled. I represent families of kids who have been in some of the photos where people like the New York Daily News have libeled them and made false statements about what the nature of those photos were from the school. And I represent alumni who feel that their entire school and everything associated with them has been libeled, and they too want to seek legal remedy for these people who refuse to correct, retract or make any apology for their false statements.”

On Sunday, Barnes issued a warning to The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman about her report on the Covington students.

I will represent the kids for free if they want to sue @maggieNYT for obvious libel. https://t.co/VmqVqIVNoe

— Robert Barnes (@Barnes_Law) January 20, 2019

The specific tweet Haberman referenced was one of many that jumped to staggering conclusions and called on kids to be expelled from their school based on scant — or nonexistent — evidence.

RELATED: Here’s CNN’s Jake Tapper Backpeddling as Fast as He Can from Fake Hate Story His Network Stoked

Barnes also has called out numerous other verified Twitter accounts, ranging from Kathy Griffin to USA Today, for spreading demonstrably false claims about the incident.

Here’s one example:

“The crowd of students, some of whom wore MAGA caps, mocked Native Americans while chanting ‘Build the Wall’ and using derogatory language,” USA Today tweeted.

This is libel, @USATODAY https://t.co/f2DMPfBtip

— Robert Barnes (@Barnes_Law) January 20, 2019

There’s absolutely no evidence that this is true. In fact, numerous videos show that the “wall” chant never occurred, and the hateful language was being directed at the Catholic students, not coming from them.

But Barnes didn’t stop there. He also singled out U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who recently made headlines as one of two new Muslim lawmakers, for spreading lies about the boys.

“The boys were protesting a woman’s right to choose & yelled ‘it’s not rape if you enjoy it.’ They were taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants,” Omar said in a tweet that she later deleted without an explanation or apology.

Almost everything in her post was false.

“This is libel. Retract, or get sued,” Barnes warned.

The unraveling of the Convington story is also the unraveling of the establishment media. As the fallout from the media’s eagerness to ruin lives over politics continues, pay close attention to who apologizes and who doubles-down on dishonesty. It matters, now more than ever.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

When Nick Sandmann, the 16-year-old Covington Catholic High School student, spoke to NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, she asked: “Do you feel from this experience that you owe anybody an apology?” and “Do you see your own fault in any way?”

This question came days after video footage showed Sandmann and his fellow students were not acting in the harassing manner they were first accused of over the weekend, and they had not gone up to a Native American protester and harassed him, as he originally claimed.

No one in the left-wing media has asked Nathan Phillips, the Native American protester, if he owes anybody an apology or sees his own fault in any way, even after he initially lied about the encounter and called the teenagers “beasts” and a “lynch mob.”

So, I did.

I had received a press release from the Lakota People’s Law Project for an article earlier today, and decided to ask their press director, Jesse Phelps, if Phillips believed he owed anyone an apology “for his behavior and statements throughout this entire episode.”

Phelps responded, saying he loves “easy questions.”

“Um…the answer is no. He’s an elder who was attempting to diffuse what he perceived as a dangerous situation — an objectively brave move given history both recent and past. He has nothing to apologize for. The kids who performed the tomahawk chop and greeted him with war whoops, on the other hand, most certainly do.”

I followed up by asking if Phelps was sure, considering what Phillips had called the students in print over the past few days. Again, Phelps said “no”:

“From his perspective, they apparently resembled a lynch mob, etc. That is his valid perspective — Native people are confronted with blatant racism, mostly from the right, every day. Given the sad history of this nation—built as it on colonialism, racism, slavery and the ongoing repression of people of color—the behavior of the students, and the gear they chose to wear, it’s not hard to understand—is it? Nevertheless, he went in to make peace.”

Phelps added that Phillips never defended the Black Israelite’s offensive statements and that “no mistake, the things they said to those kids were terrible. Awful.”

Phillips may very well believe — now, after his initial claim that he was just trying to get out of what looked a bad situation — that he was trying to “diffuse” the tension between the Covington Catholic teenagers who were singing school spirit songs and the Black Hebrew Israelites who were hurling racial and other slurs. Sandmann seems to believe he was trying to diffuse an awkward situation by remaining “motionless and calm.”

Both may be correct in their perceptions, and both appear to be wrong about their perceptions of the incident, at least in regard to each other.

Nathan Phillips now wants to meet the students. Nick Sandmann had already said he would be willing to meet. If Sandmann is asked if he should apologize, it’s only fair that Phillips is asked as well.

A small business owner in Syracuse, New York, is making his voice heard in standing up for the voiceless. Bookstore owner Jon Speed closed down his shop, The Book Scout, on Wednesday as an official “day of mourning” following the passing of New York’s euphemistically-named Reproductive Health Act, a law making abortion on-demand up to the moment of birth legal.

“The book store is closed today. It is a day of mourning in New York. In honor of the thousands of babies that will die in the years to come, we shall not be collecting sales tax for this tyrannical government today. We will on other days, under duress, but not today,” posted Speed to his business’ Facebook page.

An outspoken Christian and advocate for the unborn, Speed put a poignant sign on his store’s door to uniform any customers or passersby of his position: “CLOSED TODAY,” the sign reads. “Today is a day of mourning in New York State. We will not collect sales tax today for a tyrannical government that murders babies. We will resume regular business tomorrow, collecting sales tax under duress. End Abortion Now.”

Speaking to Live Action News, Speed said he decided to post the messages to “make an impact with our customer base.”

“It is a statement of my disgust with NY’s new law. My prayer for them all is their repentance and faith in Christ. Their hearts must change if their minds will change,” added the business owner.

The extreme law was passed and signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) on Tuesday, the 46th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision on abortion, and horrifyingly met with literal cheering from Democrats and pro-abortion advocates. Cuomo ordered the One World Trade Center to be lit pink in celebration of the law, which, again, allows for the murder of the unborn up to the point of birth.

Lila Rose, president and founder of national pro-life organization Live Action, called the law “no different than infanticide.”

“Convicted criminals aren’t subjected to the death penalty in New York state, but now children up until the ninth month of pregnancy can be given lethal injections and poisoned to death. This is no different than infanticide,” Rose said in a statement to The Daily Wire.

“New York pro-lifers fought successfully for more than a decade to defeat this radical pro-abortion bill. But the November election put pro-abortion Democrats in control of both state houses, and Democrat politicians have made abortion on demand a priority. While the pro-abortion zealots in New York have won this battle, they will ultimately lose the war on abortion,” the statement continued.

Speed also shared a link to a pro-life documentary called “Babies Are Murdered Here,” which he co-produced. WATCH, below:

Presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) appeared to not know how many branches of government exist during a Tuesday interview on CNN.

Warren joined CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “Anderson Cooper 360” to discuss a variety of issues, including the on-going government shutdown.

“Do you ever think, look, the realistic end game is that Republicans get two thirds of what they want and the Democrats have to settle for the shorter straw?” Cooper asked. “Is that how the balance of power really works?”

“Well, let’s talk about the balance of power,” Warren responded. “There are two coequal branches of government, the president of the United States and the Congress.”

There are three branches of the U.S. government: The legislative branch, which makes laws; the executive branch, which enforces laws; and the judicial branch, which interprets laws.

WATCH:

El Paso Sector Border Patrol officials say smugglers are using large groups of family unit migrants and unaccompanied minors to distract agents so they can move drugs across the border in other locations.

Camp Bounds Forward Operating Base agents apprehended another large group of migrants who illegally crossed the border in a remote part of New Mexico-Mexico border. The agents apprehended a group of 247 migrants shortly after they crossed the border near Antelope Wells, New Mexico, KFOX14 reported.

Border Patrol Agent Denisse A. Licon told the local Fox affiliate that most of the group were families and unaccompanied minors from Central America.

Officials said that at about the same time the agents engaged with this very large group of migrants, drug smugglers reportedly moved a load of 265 pounds of marijuana across the border west of Antelope Wells.

To complicate processing, agents reported that fifteen migrant families requested medical attention shortly after being apprehended.

Antelope Wells is the same area where a young Guatemalan girl, Jakelin Caal, and her father crossed the border. The young girl became ill hours later and died after being taken to an El Paso hospital.

Processing these large groups of migrants from the remote forward operating base to the Lordsburg Border Patrol station is a time-consuming task. The station is a 94-mile drive from the operating base and can be up to a four-hour round trip for the transport bus.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the pressure on Border Patrol agents due to the unsecured border is pushing the system “to a breaking point.”

Now it appears that drug smugglers are attempting to take advantage of the overwhelming nature of the crisis at our southern border by exploiting these families and children and pushing them to remote and desolate areas of the border to make their crossing.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for the Breitbart Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.

 

 

I had this dream.

And in this dream, I was sitting poolside up in heaven.  And, around this exquisitely beautiful pool were some very, very happy people, some I recognized, many I did not.

One person I definitely recognized, sitting comfortably in his tailor-made lounge chair sipping a very bright, sparkling beverage, was the Reverend Martin Luther King.  His robe was dazzling white (like everybody else’s), but it looked like there was a splotch of some kind on the front of it.  I was confused, until the Reverend King stretched out his arm as he replaced the empty beverage glass onto a small table.  The splotch was actually a face.  The face was that of Barack Obama.

You can imagine my surprise.  The Reverend King caught my look, and gave me a look of his own, a little smile.  He got up and turned to leave.  And as he set off, I saw the back of his white robe.  It read:  #NotMyPresident.

Unfortunately, down here on Earth, the dream of Barack Obama as president became an all-too-real nightmare.

I have often thought of the day that Barack Obama got nominated by his party to be the day that the Reverend King began spinning in his grave.  I could imagine him shouting from high above, “Didn’t you people listen to me?  I said it was ‘content of character,’ not ’color of skin’ that mattered!”

Bill Clinton certainly grasped what was happening back in the spring of 2008.  Bill made his feelings clear when the Democrats went full throttle for Obama that spring, jettisoning their love for Hillary at the time.  Bill made this apt observation:  “They played the race card on us!”

This utterance barely registered due to the excitement across the nation of this historic moment.  The clarion call had been sounded.  Here at last was the first truly electable black man to run on a major party’s ticket for president.

But Bill was right.  Race was the deciding factor in Obama’s selection to represent his party.  Think of it this way (the way both Bill and Hillary saw it at the time): If Barack Obama had been white, he never would have gotten the nomination of the Democratic Party.

If Hillary had been running against six white guys instead of five whites and a black, she would have been the Democrat’s nominee — and almost without question would have gone on to beat John McCain for the presidency.

Back in 2008, then, with Obama at the top of the ticket, history could be made — and, perhaps, racial wrongs righted.  But how did this “fundamental transformation” of America work out?  People went on to vote for a man who had no notable credentials, no accomplishments, no record of successful leadership.  His big claim to fame, as his future vice-presidential running mate Joe Biden put it, was that he was a well-dressed, well-spoken black man.

Barack Obama’s nomination and subsequent two terms in office ushered in the worst kind of racism:  acceptable racism.  It’s okay now to champion skin-color over character (for one of the major parties, at least).  And it’s okay to demand diversity, as long as it’s diversity of, most notably, skin color and sexual preference, not diversity of ideas.

True racism has gone unchallenged in almost every area of politics, academia, the culture, and unfortunately, the church.  Christians have become phobaphobic, afraid to challenge the advance from the aggressive left because they will be called all sorts of “phobic” — homophobic, Islamaphobic, transphobic — plus some phobics yet to be invented.

Racists are boldly making their accusations, and no one seems to be challenging them.  Not long ago, philosophy professor George Yancy was speaking at Wheaton College, a Christian college in Illinois, and he boldly proclaimed to the students and faculty in the audience that all white people are racist who have all profited from racism.  Did no one tell him that his statement was racist and that he himself is a racist?  Think of it like this: Yancy is a 400-pound obese person telling a guy ten pounds overweight that he needs to go on a diet.

Here’s another way to look at it, Professor Yancy:  There are plenty of racists in America today and, yes, some of them are white.

It’s not true that the answer to the movement “Black Lives Matter” is that “All Lives Matter.”  “All” is too general and impersonal of a statement.  The Declaration of Independence says that “all men are created equal,” which is what the Bible also tells us.  Each individual person is unique, created in the image of a loving God.  So, it’s better to say, “Individual Lives Matter.”  And since each person is unique, each is created equal; therefore, no person should ever be referred to as a “minority.”  Minor to whom?  If you call someone a minority you are raising your status above theirs.  If each person is a “majority of one” because of their uniqueness — not better or worse in worth and human dignity — then true diversity is defined as any two, three or more people in any gathering.  They can be any color, have any ideas, anything.  You don’t need representation by groups that have been described as “minorities.”

So, Reverend King’s dream was not realized with the election of a black man to the presidency.  With Obama’s election (and, sadly, re-election), Americans voted for their own punishment for the national sin of acceptable racism.

Will we wake up as a nation and color-correct so that the future can be based on a person’s individual integrity?  Can and will that happen?

I guess I can dream.

I had this dream.

And in this dream, I was sitting poolside up in heaven.  And, around this exquisitely beautiful pool were some very, very happy people, some I recognized, many I did not.

One person I definitely recognized, sitting comfortably in his tailor-made lounge chair sipping a very bright, sparkling beverage, was the Reverend Martin Luther King.  His robe was dazzling white (like everybody else’s), but it looked like there was a splotch of some kind on the front of it.  I was confused, until the Reverend King stretched out his arm as he replaced the empty beverage glass onto a small table.  The splotch was actually a face.  The face was that of Barack Obama.

You can imagine my surprise.  The Reverend King caught my look, and gave me a look of his own, a little smile.  He got up and turned to leave.  And as he set off, I saw the back of his white robe.  It read:  #NotMyPresident.

Unfortunately, down here on Earth, the dream of Barack Obama as president became an all-too-real nightmare.

I have often thought of the day that Barack Obama got nominated by his party to be the day that the Reverend King began spinning in his grave.  I could imagine him shouting from high above, “Didn’t you people listen to me?  I said it was ‘content of character,’ not ’color of skin’ that mattered!”

Bill Clinton certainly grasped what was happening back in the spring of 2008.  Bill made his feelings clear when the Democrats went full throttle for Obama that spring, jettisoning their love for Hillary at the time.  Bill made this apt observation:  “They played the race card on us!”

This utterance barely registered due to the excitement across the nation of this historic moment.  The clarion call had been sounded.  Here at last was the first truly electable black man to run on a major party’s ticket for president.

But Bill was right.  Race was the deciding factor in Obama’s selection to represent his party.  Think of it this way (the way both Bill and Hillary saw it at the time): If Barack Obama had been white, he never would have gotten the nomination of the Democratic Party.

If Hillary had been running against six white guys instead of five whites and a black, she would have been the Democrat’s nominee — and almost without question would have gone on to beat John McCain for the presidency.

Back in 2008, then, with Obama at the top of the ticket, history could be made — and, perhaps, racial wrongs righted.  But how did this “fundamental transformation” of America work out?  People went on to vote for a man who had no notable credentials, no accomplishments, no record of successful leadership.  His big claim to fame, as his future vice-presidential running mate Joe Biden put it, was that he was a well-dressed, well-spoken black man.

Barack Obama’s nomination and subsequent two terms in office ushered in the worst kind of racism:  acceptable racism.  It’s okay now to champion skin-color over character (for one of the major parties, at least).  And it’s okay to demand diversity, as long as it’s diversity of, most notably, skin color and sexual preference, not diversity of ideas.

True racism has gone unchallenged in almost every area of politics, academia, the culture, and unfortunately, the church.  Christians have become phobaphobic, afraid to challenge the advance from the aggressive left because they will be called all sorts of “phobic” — homophobic, Islamaphobic, transphobic — plus some phobics yet to be invented.

Racists are boldly making their accusations, and no one seems to be challenging them.  Not long ago, philosophy professor George Yancy was speaking at Wheaton College, a Christian college in Illinois, and he boldly proclaimed to the students and faculty in the audience that all white people are racist who have all profited from racism.  Did no one tell him that his statement was racist and that he himself is a racist?  Think of it like this: Yancy is a 400-pound obese person telling a guy ten pounds overweight that he needs to go on a diet.

Here’s another way to look at it, Professor Yancy:  There are plenty of racists in America today and, yes, some of them are white.

It’s not true that the answer to the movement “Black Lives Matter” is that “All Lives Matter.”  “All” is too general and impersonal of a statement.  The Declaration of Independence says that “all men are created equal,” which is what the Bible also tells us.  Each individual person is unique, created in the image of a loving God.  So, it’s better to say, “Individual Lives Matter.”  And since each person is unique, each is created equal; therefore, no person should ever be referred to as a “minority.”  Minor to whom?  If you call someone a minority you are raising your status above theirs.  If each person is a “majority of one” because of their uniqueness — not better or worse in worth and human dignity — then true diversity is defined as any two, three or more people in any gathering.  They can be any color, have any ideas, anything.  You don’t need representation by groups that have been described as “minorities.”

So, Reverend King’s dream was not realized with the election of a black man to the presidency.  With Obama’s election (and, sadly, re-election), Americans voted for their own punishment for the national sin of acceptable racism.

Will we wake up as a nation and color-correct so that the future can be based on a person’s individual integrity?  Can and will that happen?

I guess I can dream.

Martin Luther King and America’s major civil rights leaders fought an integrated and nonviolent war against racial segregation.  Their affirmation of “beloved community” emphasized their Christian notions of love being stronger than hate.  Remembering MLK is important in 2019 – especially in a society like ours, where the race card is deployed with such raw cynicism that it is killing people of all colors needlessly.  Radical Jacobin activists and scholars are deliberately misrepresenting King in an effort to instigate tremendous political damage to the United States.  MLK day ought to be a time to accurately remember who he was and attempt to repel the false hagiography that continues to recast King as a communist angry militant or a soft, anemic anachronism.  King was a great American leader true to the civic character of a nation that has done more to unite humanity beyond ethnic lines than any other nation present or past. 

It is hardly surprising that a Chinese architect hired to depict King on our National Mall misrepresented him with his arms defiantly crossed and an inaccurate quotation strongly implying a militant stance more common to the young Malcolm X: “I was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness.”  The American Civil Rights movement was both successful, strong and effective. King did not take a casual cooperative view of communism as supposed by his original critics or his contemporary revisionists.  In 1966, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, King explained his view of the important topic:

And if a man has not discovered something that he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.  The nonviolent method says that there is power in this approach precisely because it has a way of disarming the opponent and exposing his moral defenses.  Secondly, it is possible to work to secure moral ends through moral means.  One of the great debates of history has been on the whole.  I guess with the many philosophical differences I have with communism, one of the greatest is found right here.  Communism says in the final analysis that any method is proper to bring about the goal of the classless society.  This is where nonviolence would break with communism or any other system which argues that the end justifies the means.  For we recognize that the end is pre-existent in the means.  The means represents the ideal in the end in process.  And in the long run of history, destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

King not only understood American idealism, but understood at a profound level how cynicism cannot bring reform or human improvement.  One of the most central and famous contentions of his hallmark speech, “I Have a Dream,” contended that we should be aiming for a culture that judges people on the basis of the content of their character and not the color of their skin.  Our current social machinations intoning terms of “white privilege” and senatorial genetic testing to prove our political superiority in America is a profound attack upon King’s dream.  Those attacks are largely unrepentant among a growing cadre of Afro-pessimist scholars who view King’s dream as the same “farce” that Malcolm X said it was in 1963.

Remembering King should be about reclaiming his moral standing to define the standards of racial justice in 2019.  The Jacobins who seized the movement in his absence have defied his integrated view of America that he explained in Dallas in 1966:

And so if one is working for a just society, he should use just methods in bringing about that society.  If one is working for the goal of an integrated society, then he must seek to work with integration as a fact as he moves toward that.  This is why I’ve always insisted that in our demonstrations and in our work, it isn’t enough to have Negroes participating, but it is necessary to have white persons participating. …

There’s another thing about this method.  When it is true to its nature, it says that it is possible to live true to the love effort.  In other words, the love effort stands at the center.  Now I want you to understand me here when I speak about love.  People ask me all the time, what in the world are you talking about?  You certainly can’t be telling us to love these people who are oppressing us and who are killing our children and who are bombing our churches.  And I always have to stop and try to explain what I mean when I talk about love in this context.

I’m not talking about emotional bonds.  I’m not talking about some sentimental or affectionate feeling.  And I think it would be nonsense to urge oppressed people to love their violent oppressors in an affectionate sense. … When one rises to love on this level, he loves every man not because he likes him, not because his ways appeal to him, but because God loves him, and he rises to the level of loving the person who does the evil deed by hating the deed the person does.  I think this is what Jesus meant when he said to love your enemies.  And I’m so happy he didn’t say to like your enemies.  I must confess that there are some people pretty difficult to like.  But Jesus said love them, and love is greater than like.  Love is understanding, creative goodwill for all men – when you stand up against the evil system and yet understand the perpetrator of that evil system.

King theologically believed in an integrated society and that stands, as a challenge to our re-segregationist impulses to judge all people on the basis of race.  Moreover, the transcendent practice of love stands in contrast to our angry discourse pervading all of our political conversations.  Love as a political practice is largely unknown in 21st-century politics, as we have grown more secular and selfish. 

In our present time, the remembrance of King can be accomplished by challenging the cynical reactionary use of the term “racist.”  Our intellectual culture views the term “racist” as a political tool for enforcing blue privilege and attacking Republican political leadership in defense of Democratic political leadership.  President Trump is falsely said to be in alliance with the KKK, white supremacists, and white nationalists.  The use of this language by the media elevates these groups and gives them power.  Pretending to see an alliance legitimizes those who would never have such a platform.  Covering up profound racism in the Democratic Party as seen by President Woodrow Wilson, President Franklin Roosevelt, and even Hillary Clinton only reduces the real problem of racism to a political tool.

King sought to redeem his most hardened racist adversaries.  Today’s political leaders seek character assassination through the charge of racism.  This is neither fitting nor honoring to King.  This holiday must become a true honor to a leader who deserves this much from us.

Dr. Ben Voth is an associate professor of corporate communication and public affairs and director of speech and debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.  He has published three academic books about debate, including James Farmer Jr.: The Great Debater, about one of the four major Civil Rights leaders who worked alongside King and created the nonviolent direct action techniques used by the movement.

Martin Luther King and America’s major civil rights leaders fought an integrated and nonviolent war against racial segregation.  Their affirmation of “beloved community” emphasized their Christian notions of love being stronger than hate.  Remembering MLK is important in 2019 – especially in a society like ours, where the race card is deployed with such raw cynicism that it is killing people of all colors needlessly.  Radical Jacobin activists and scholars are deliberately misrepresenting King in an effort to instigate tremendous political damage to the United States.  MLK day ought to be a time to accurately remember who he was and attempt to repel the false hagiography that continues to recast King as a communist angry militant or a soft, anemic anachronism.  King was a great American leader true to the civic character of a nation that has done more to unite humanity beyond ethnic lines than any other nation present or past. 

It is hardly surprising that a Chinese architect hired to depict King on our National Mall misrepresented him with his arms defiantly crossed and an inaccurate quotation strongly implying a militant stance more common to the young Malcolm X: “I was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness.”  The American Civil Rights movement was both successful, strong and effective. King did not take a casual cooperative view of communism as supposed by his original critics or his contemporary revisionists.  In 1966, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, King explained his view of the important topic:

And if a man has not discovered something that he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.  The nonviolent method says that there is power in this approach precisely because it has a way of disarming the opponent and exposing his moral defenses.  Secondly, it is possible to work to secure moral ends through moral means.  One of the great debates of history has been on the whole.  I guess with the many philosophical differences I have with communism, one of the greatest is found right here.  Communism says in the final analysis that any method is proper to bring about the goal of the classless society.  This is where nonviolence would break with communism or any other system which argues that the end justifies the means.  For we recognize that the end is pre-existent in the means.  The means represents the ideal in the end in process.  And in the long run of history, destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

King not only understood American idealism, but understood at a profound level how cynicism cannot bring reform or human improvement.  One of the most central and famous contentions of his hallmark speech, “I Have a Dream,” contended that we should be aiming for a culture that judges people on the basis of the content of their character and not the color of their skin.  Our current social machinations intoning terms of “white privilege” and senatorial genetic testing to prove our political superiority in America is a profound attack upon King’s dream.  Those attacks are largely unrepentant among a growing cadre of Afro-pessimist scholars who view King’s dream as the same “farce” that Malcolm X said it was in 1963.

Remembering King should be about reclaiming his moral standing to define the standards of racial justice in 2019.  The Jacobins who seized the movement in his absence have defied his integrated view of America that he explained in Dallas in 1966:

And so if one is working for a just society, he should use just methods in bringing about that society.  If one is working for the goal of an integrated society, then he must seek to work with integration as a fact as he moves toward that.  This is why I’ve always insisted that in our demonstrations and in our work, it isn’t enough to have Negroes participating, but it is necessary to have white persons participating. …

There’s another thing about this method.  When it is true to its nature, it says that it is possible to live true to the love effort.  In other words, the love effort stands at the center.  Now I want you to understand me here when I speak about love.  People ask me all the time, what in the world are you talking about?  You certainly can’t be telling us to love these people who are oppressing us and who are killing our children and who are bombing our churches.  And I always have to stop and try to explain what I mean when I talk about love in this context.

I’m not talking about emotional bonds.  I’m not talking about some sentimental or affectionate feeling.  And I think it would be nonsense to urge oppressed people to love their violent oppressors in an affectionate sense. … When one rises to love on this level, he loves every man not because he likes him, not because his ways appeal to him, but because God loves him, and he rises to the level of loving the person who does the evil deed by hating the deed the person does.  I think this is what Jesus meant when he said to love your enemies.  And I’m so happy he didn’t say to like your enemies.  I must confess that there are some people pretty difficult to like.  But Jesus said love them, and love is greater than like.  Love is understanding, creative goodwill for all men – when you stand up against the evil system and yet understand the perpetrator of that evil system.

King theologically believed in an integrated society and that stands, as a challenge to our re-segregationist impulses to judge all people on the basis of race.  Moreover, the transcendent practice of love stands in contrast to our angry discourse pervading all of our political conversations.  Love as a political practice is largely unknown in 21st-century politics, as we have grown more secular and selfish. 

In our present time, the remembrance of King can be accomplished by challenging the cynical reactionary use of the term “racist.”  Our intellectual culture views the term “racist” as a political tool for enforcing blue privilege and attacking Republican political leadership in defense of Democratic political leadership.  President Trump is falsely said to be in alliance with the KKK, white supremacists, and white nationalists.  The use of this language by the media elevates these groups and gives them power.  Pretending to see an alliance legitimizes those who would never have such a platform.  Covering up profound racism in the Democratic Party as seen by President Woodrow Wilson, President Franklin Roosevelt, and even Hillary Clinton only reduces the real problem of racism to a political tool.

King sought to redeem his most hardened racist adversaries.  Today’s political leaders seek character assassination through the charge of racism.  This is neither fitting nor honoring to King.  This holiday must become a true honor to a leader who deserves this much from us.

Dr. Ben Voth is an associate professor of corporate communication and public affairs and director of speech and debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.  He has published three academic books about debate, including James Farmer Jr.: The Great Debater, about one of the four major Civil Rights leaders who worked alongside King and created the nonviolent direct action techniques used by the movement.

A social science term that describes narrow repressive type of ideas about the male gender role, that defines masculinity as exaggerated masculine traits like being violent, unemotional, sexually aggressive, and so forth. Also suggests that men who act too emotional or maybe aren’t violent enough or don’t do all of the things that “real men” do, can get their “man card” taken away.

I checked my wallet and found a credit card, a driver’s license, and a $20 bill, but no “man card.”  Perhaps I am a member of what Rush Limbaugh describes as the New Castrati.

Gillette’s ad, which they call a “short film,” asks the most pressing question of the day, “Is this the best a man can get?”  This has replaced previous deep questions such as, “Are the walls closing in on Donald Trump?” or “Will Robert Mueller indict Trump and his entire family?”

The video features the horrific male ritual of the barbeque. Men standing in front of a charcoal grill, cooking meat. How politically incorrect.

YouTube screen grab

Yahoo News proclaims, “Eating meat apparently makes you more likely to be a snob (and racist, too).” The barbeque is also destroying the planet, as the Mic blog explains, “Grilling with charcoal comes with a hefty environmental cost: heavy greenhouse gas emissions.”

The time-honored American tradition of a backyard cookout is elitist, racist, and environmentally destructive. Who knew? Such toxic masculinity.

Someone better tell the Detroit Free Press as they published, “More women are taking over the grill at home.” Or the Girls Can Grill website. Not to be confused with a competitor website, Girls at the Grill. Perhaps Revlon can make a video about “toxic femininity” featuring racist, elitist, polluting women barbequing chicken on the backyard grill.

Gillette concluded its ad with this, “The boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow.” What might they be watching besides their fathers and uncles grilling steaks? What about the “toxic masculinity” not featured in the Gillette ad? This is what the boys of today see on television regularly if mom and dad happen to be watching the news.

Start with a former president, Bill Clinton, credibly accused of rape, impeached over perjury about sexual harassment, and carrying on an affair with a young White House intern. Or his predecessor John Kennedy, with a string of affairs while president. Perfect examples of the “sexual aggression” in the Urban Dictionary definition.

Across town in Congress we have former Senator Al Franken, caught on film moving to grope a sleeping comely female. John Conyers resigned after reports surfaced of him attending staff meetings in his underwear. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner was chatting and sending selfies of his private parts to an underage girl, using the same laptop which contained thousands of classified emails belonging to his wife’s boss, the Secretary of State.

Keith Ellison, former Congressman, now Minnesota’s Attorney General, was credibly accused of beating up his ex-girlfriend. Going further, the Congressional misconduct database lists, “393 instances of misconduct and alleged misconduct by Members of the United States Congress from 1789 to the present.” I suspect most of the perpetrators are men, but I didn’t see any politicians featured in the Gillette ad.

Hollywood, the West Coast branch of the Democrat Party, has its own share of toxic masculinity. Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, to name a few. Raping, abusing, and harassing women or men in a manner that most would agree is toxic. Yet their faces and activities were not showcased in the Gillette ad.

Another branch of the Democrat Party, the media, has its own share of toxic masculinity. Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, and Bill O’Reilly are some names who come to mind. Gillette showed a brief clip of news shows mentioning sexual harassment, but ignored the prominent players involved, instead focusing on a few guys laughing in a movie theater. Why not show NBC news giant Matt Lauer with his under-the-desk door lock as an example of men not being “the best a man can get”?

The ad could have also mentioned the third rail of political correctness, the toxic masculinity of Islam. Starting with an increasing number of rapes in Sweden where “the proportion of foreign-born offenders was more than 80%” according to the BBC. Amnesty International reports, “1 in 20 women in the EU have been raped after the age of 15. That is around 9 million women.” They conveniently don’t mention any association between mass migration and rape, but the increase in rapes seems to parallel an increase in migration from countries where toxic masculinity is culturally acceptable.

Gillette did not feature any video clips of women being stoned to death for adultery, as occurs in Afghanistan and neighboring countries. How’s that for toxic masculinity?

The Women of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic group in Australia, tell us, “He [the husband] is permitted — not obliged, not encouraged — but permitted, to hit her [his wife].” Don’t forget female genital mutilation, common in many parts of the world, and recently given a pass by a US federal judge in Michigan. One of the accused in the Michigan case was a man. Does Gillette believe that any of these activities fall under their umbrella of “toxic masculinity”?

If Gillette really cared about toxic masculinity, it’s ad could have mentioned some of truly toxic examples of badly behaving men, beyond bullying and catcalls. When grilling burgers becomes toxic and rape is ignored, it upends the entire message.

Instead Gillette should celebrate the masculinity that won two world wars, rather than the new generation of “woke” metrosexual men who don’t know how to change a car tire. Despite the hopes and dreams of social justice warriors, there are two distinct genders, and have been since humans walked upright on the Earth.

Masculinity, and femininity, have served the human species well. Not perfectly, but humans are imperfect beings. Condemning and changing a successful formula is far more of a threat to human survival than the smoke of a charcoal grill.

Gillette lost an opportunity, and instead was mesmerized by the siren songs of social justice and political correctness.

Brian C Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn and Twitter

Most everyone has seen, or at least heard about, Gillette’s new ad targeting the ill-defined term “toxic masculinity.”  As with all of these new terms and causes, the best place to try to make sense of these new tenets of social justice is the Urban Dictionary.

Here is their definition.

A social science term that describes narrow repressive type of ideas about the male gender role, that defines masculinity as exaggerated masculine traits like being violent, unemotional, sexually aggressive, and so forth. Also suggests that men who act too emotional or maybe aren’t violent enough or don’t do all of the things that “real men” do, can get their “man card” taken away.

I checked my wallet and found a credit card, a driver’s license, and a $20 bill, but no “man card.”  Perhaps I am a member of what Rush Limbaugh describes as the New Castrati.

Gillette’s ad, which they call a “short film,” asks the most pressing question of the day, “Is this the best a man can get?”  This has replaced previous deep questions such as, “Are the walls closing in on Donald Trump?” or “Will Robert Mueller indict Trump and his entire family?”

The video features the horrific male ritual of the barbeque. Men standing in front of a charcoal grill, cooking meat. How politically incorrect.

YouTube screen grab

Yahoo News proclaims, “Eating meat apparently makes you more likely to be a snob (and racist, too).” The barbeque is also destroying the planet, as the Mic blog explains, “Grilling with charcoal comes with a hefty environmental cost: heavy greenhouse gas emissions.”

The time-honored American tradition of a backyard cookout is elitist, racist, and environmentally destructive. Who knew? Such toxic masculinity.

Someone better tell the Detroit Free Press as they published, “More women are taking over the grill at home.” Or the Girls Can Grill website. Not to be confused with a competitor website, Girls at the Grill. Perhaps Revlon can make a video about “toxic femininity” featuring racist, elitist, polluting women barbequing chicken on the backyard grill.

Gillette concluded its ad with this, “The boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow.” What might they be watching besides their fathers and uncles grilling steaks? What about the “toxic masculinity” not featured in the Gillette ad? This is what the boys of today see on television regularly if mom and dad happen to be watching the news.

Start with a former president, Bill Clinton, credibly accused of rape, impeached over perjury about sexual harassment, and carrying on an affair with a young White House intern. Or his predecessor John Kennedy, with a string of affairs while president. Perfect examples of the “sexual aggression” in the Urban Dictionary definition.

Across town in Congress we have former Senator Al Franken, caught on film moving to grope a sleeping comely female. John Conyers resigned after reports surfaced of him attending staff meetings in his underwear. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner was chatting and sending selfies of his private parts to an underage girl, using the same laptop which contained thousands of classified emails belonging to his wife’s boss, the Secretary of State.

Keith Ellison, former Congressman, now Minnesota’s Attorney General, was credibly accused of beating up his ex-girlfriend. Going further, the Congressional misconduct database lists, “393 instances of misconduct and alleged misconduct by Members of the United States Congress from 1789 to the present.” I suspect most of the perpetrators are men, but I didn’t see any politicians featured in the Gillette ad.

Hollywood, the West Coast branch of the Democrat Party, has its own share of toxic masculinity. Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, to name a few. Raping, abusing, and harassing women or men in a manner that most would agree is toxic. Yet their faces and activities were not showcased in the Gillette ad.

Another branch of the Democrat Party, the media, has its own share of toxic masculinity. Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, and Bill O’Reilly are some names who come to mind. Gillette showed a brief clip of news shows mentioning sexual harassment, but ignored the prominent players involved, instead focusing on a few guys laughing in a movie theater. Why not show NBC news giant Matt Lauer with his under-the-desk door lock as an example of men not being “the best a man can get”?

The ad could have also mentioned the third rail of political correctness, the toxic masculinity of Islam. Starting with an increasing number of rapes in Sweden where “the proportion of foreign-born offenders was more than 80%” according to the BBC. Amnesty International reports, “1 in 20 women in the EU have been raped after the age of 15. That is around 9 million women.” They conveniently don’t mention any association between mass migration and rape, but the increase in rapes seems to parallel an increase in migration from countries where toxic masculinity is culturally acceptable.

Gillette did not feature any video clips of women being stoned to death for adultery, as occurs in Afghanistan and neighboring countries. How’s that for toxic masculinity?

The Women of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic group in Australia, tell us, “He [the husband] is permitted — not obliged, not encouraged — but permitted, to hit her [his wife].” Don’t forget female genital mutilation, common in many parts of the world, and recently given a pass by a US federal judge in Michigan. One of the accused in the Michigan case was a man. Does Gillette believe that any of these activities fall under their umbrella of “toxic masculinity”?

If Gillette really cared about toxic masculinity, it’s ad could have mentioned some of truly toxic examples of badly behaving men, beyond bullying and catcalls. When grilling burgers becomes toxic and rape is ignored, it upends the entire message.

Instead Gillette should celebrate the masculinity that won two world wars, rather than the new generation of “woke” metrosexual men who don’t know how to change a car tire. Despite the hopes and dreams of social justice warriors, there are two distinct genders, and have been since humans walked upright on the Earth.

Masculinity, and femininity, have served the human species well. Not perfectly, but humans are imperfect beings. Condemning and changing a successful formula is far more of a threat to human survival than the smoke of a charcoal grill.

Gillette lost an opportunity, and instead was mesmerized by the siren songs of social justice and political correctness.

Brian C Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn and Twitter

A prominent American priest has dissed the Washington March for Life as “repulsive and futile,” denouncing the pro-life event as “basically a gathering for many right-wing anti-abortion hardliners.”

Franciscan friar Father Daniel Horan, a pro-LGBT priest and professor who will be speaking at the upcoming Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, took to Twitter this weekend to bash the March for Life and condemn without trial a group of white Catholic high school boys as “racists” for supposedly “taunting” a Native American man beating a drum.

Father Horan was one of the many voices from the Catholic Left who joined the mainstream media lynching of students from Covington Catholic High School this weekend, rashly judging them as racists without bothering to ascertain what actually happened, simply because some of the boys were wearing MAGA hats.

While the Jesuit-run America magazine claimed that a small group of Native American demonstrators had been “surrounded by a much larger band of teenagers” and that the boys had “heckled” and “mocked” elder Nathan Phillips, video footage told a different story.

Videos show the Native Americans approaching and confronting the youths, and Mr. Phillips himself begins playing his drum just inches from the face of one of the boys, who simply smiles at him. One of the boys later wrote that they had been confused by the behavior of the Native Americans and realized only later that they had been set up for a “publicity stunt.”

The perfect storm of white Catholic males wearing Make America Great Again hats and attending the March for Life to protest abortion was just too tempting for the mainstream media to pass up, even if the narrative was completely false.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, whoever “even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor” is guilty of rash judgment, and whoever, “by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them” is guilty of calumny.

Like many others on the left, Father Horan seemed convinced that the school boys must be racists because they were white and wore MAGA hats, and so the facts of the encounter were basically irrelevant.

The March for Life is just “a GOP rally,” he tweeted, which “includes parade of GOP political-speakers and racist high-school students in MAGA hats taunting Native Americans.”

Just one of many reasons I find the so-called “march for life” often repulsive and futile: It’s basically a gathering for many right-wing anti-abortion hardliners (not consistent ethic of life, i.e. true pro-lifers) and teens to get a free trip to goof off (at best) in DC. 2/2

— Daniel P. Horan, OFM (@DanHoranOFM) January 19, 2019

While vehemently anti-March for Life, Father Horan has praised the pro-abortion Women’s March as consistent with Catholic social teaching. The fact that pro-life women and organizations are not welcomed at the event seems not to bother his conscience in the slightest.

Horan Women’s March

According to the website of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where Father Horan teaches, he is a “systematic theologian who researches and teaches in the areas of constructive theology, spirituality, and the medieval Franciscan philosophical and theological tradition.”

He is also co-editor of New Theology Review.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome