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Why Do Most People in This Country Work, while Others Never Will?

It was with much trepidation that I planned a recent trip to Chicago. I was informed by many friends that Chicago was a great city and a great place to visit. However, Chicago is in the news for all the wrong reasons with daily reports of shootings and violence reaching historically high levels.

The Chicago you experience as a tourist is very different from the city being reported on daily basis in the news. Downtown Chicago was crowded with tourists and provided a visitor every impression of being a prosperous, vibrant and highly livable city

Visiting the areas around The Loop, the Magnificent Mile, and the neighborhoods located directly north of Downtown, we were impressed by the large numbers of young professional people that have made Chicago their home. For these selected few young educated elites, Chicago does provide opportunity for a good life in an appealing urban environment. The neighborhoods of choice for these mostly white and Asian American young people are located on the North side of the city in this most segregated of large cities in our country. 

On the other hand, for the poor and many middle-class residents a combination of very high state and local taxes and limited job opportunities for people without the adequate skills and education required for the new services dominated economy have driven a great number of people to leave Chicago and Illinois for states such as Texas that are judged by many as more attractive places to live and offer the prospect of a better life.

A society begins its decline when it loses confidence and gives up hope. President Obama’s true legacy is that he directed a transformation of America that diminished economic opportunity for large segments our country. Under Obama, many American workers in this country suffered a permanent lowering of their standard of living leading to a perceived future for them of limited prospects. The Obama Progressive policy driven economic agenda was primarily responsible for this decline.

Over his Presidential term, Obama was the pessimistic messenger and leader of the decline of American prosperity and economy opportunity and freedom. Like many on the left, he focused on what he believed were America’s short comings and implemented policies dependent on the growth of government. He attempted to change the very nature of our country by moving us closer to a Socialist model and thereby accelerated our economic decline. The motivation behind many of these policies is lack of faith and comprehension by people on the Left such as Obama in the promise of America and a lack of understanding of what is responsible for America’s greatness. Over recent years, the Left has focused on the issue of income inequity. In reality, it was never the most important issue. Limited economic growth under Obama was always the main reason behind America’s economic decline.

In President Obama’s home town, the south and west side neighborhoods of Chicago had long been decimated by the long-term effects of a stream of uninterpreted rule by Democratic Mayors. The people left behind in these neighborhoods have long ago given up hope of prospect of a better life and have been inevitably forced to rely on public assistance and making money in the unground economy including an unlawful drug trade dominated by violent gangs.

The overwhelming loss of high paying and often unionized manufacturing jobs previously located in these neighborhoods had devastating and permanently detrimental effects and was the main reason behind their rapid decline.

The Democrats focus on addressing the grievances of their coalition of constituent interest groups with the unfortunate effect of further dividing the American people by providing these groups special privilege and extra attention. It is one thing to gain equal rights under the law, however, Democrats continue to make the mistake in supporting the notion that positive outcomes for people can be enhanced by more government intervention in their lives. In fact, Democratic policies when implemented lead to greater dependence which often has negative long-term consequences.

These days the residents of the South and West side neighborhoods of Chicago have the same legal rights of any other American and are assisted by multiple government programs yet their lives remain bleak. What they lack is the opportunity to work at a job that will lead to a better life. Entire significant sections of America’s potential work force in certain segments of our society are now permanently disengaged.

With the election of Lori Lightfoot as Chicago’s new Mayor on April 2, the voters chose a candidate from outside the traditional and historically dominant Democratic Chicago political machine. The news media in their current prevailing practice of focusing in on Identity Politics; reported her win with national headlines of the fact she is an African American woman and gay. The most important commentary that was overlooked was that she was elected as an outsider candidate strongly indicating that voters wanted change in their city. Her win follows an emerging trend of the election of outsiders to offices in many key elections around the world.

President Trump is responsible for an impressive list of accomplishments in a relatively short period in office. His number one contribution is the series of steps he has taken with a very effective combination of tax reform, a cut-back in government regulation, trade policy that favors American interests over global interests and a pro-American energy policy that has led to resurgence in the American economy. It has included a grow in jobs across all segments and sectors of the economy and an impeding increase in earnings and productivity to such a dramatic point where we may be running out of qualified workers.

President Trump’s policies prove that American style Capitalism can work effectively to create an increased level of prosperity across the land. This is his greatest achievement so far. This has allowed the American people to regain confidence in our country and to gain an optimistic outlook for the future and restore the American Dream for so many of our citizens.

A just society is one that opens the doors and provides opportunities and more freedom for all people in our country no matter their background or so-called special challenges to become self-reliant individuals to participate in realizing the American Dream. This should be the new operative definition of social justice.

More freedom in America leads to greater prosperity and greater prosperity leads to more freedom. It is a virtuous circle made possible once again by President Trump moving quickly to reverse the damage caused by the Obama Agenda and the on-going progressive attempt to radically transform America. The only” green” revolution we require in this country is one that puts more “green” into all of our pockets.

Chicago’s scourge of violent crime is the number one issue facing that city. Let’s see if Mayor Lori Lightfoot understands that policies focused on job creation and generating economic opportunities for the people living in these neighborhoods as well as all of Chicago’s citizens must be her number one priority. Aided by the vibrant Trump economy, she has a reasonable chance of success.

It was with much trepidation that I planned a recent trip to Chicago. I was informed by many friends that Chicago was a great city and a great place to visit. However, Chicago is in the news for all the wrong reasons with daily reports of shootings and violence reaching historically high levels.

The Chicago you experience as a tourist is very different from the city being reported on daily basis in the news. Downtown Chicago was crowded with tourists and provided a visitor every impression of being a prosperous, vibrant and highly livable city

Visiting the areas around The Loop, the Magnificent Mile, and the neighborhoods located directly north of Downtown, we were impressed by the large numbers of young professional people that have made Chicago their home. For these selected few young educated elites, Chicago does provide opportunity for a good life in an appealing urban environment. The neighborhoods of choice for these mostly white and Asian American young people are located on the North side of the city in this most segregated of large cities in our country. 

On the other hand, for the poor and many middle-class residents a combination of very high state and local taxes and limited job opportunities for people without the adequate skills and education required for the new services dominated economy have driven a great number of people to leave Chicago and Illinois for states such as Texas that are judged by many as more attractive places to live and offer the prospect of a better life.

A society begins its decline when it loses confidence and gives up hope. President Obama’s true legacy is that he directed a transformation of America that diminished economic opportunity for large segments our country. Under Obama, many American workers in this country suffered a permanent lowering of their standard of living leading to a perceived future for them of limited prospects. The Obama Progressive policy driven economic agenda was primarily responsible for this decline.

Over his Presidential term, Obama was the pessimistic messenger and leader of the decline of American prosperity and economy opportunity and freedom. Like many on the left, he focused on what he believed were America’s short comings and implemented policies dependent on the growth of government. He attempted to change the very nature of our country by moving us closer to a Socialist model and thereby accelerated our economic decline. The motivation behind many of these policies is lack of faith and comprehension by people on the Left such as Obama in the promise of America and a lack of understanding of what is responsible for America’s greatness. Over recent years, the Left has focused on the issue of income inequity. In reality, it was never the most important issue. Limited economic growth under Obama was always the main reason behind America’s economic decline.

In President Obama’s home town, the south and west side neighborhoods of Chicago had long been decimated by the long-term effects of a stream of uninterpreted rule by Democratic Mayors. The people left behind in these neighborhoods have long ago given up hope of prospect of a better life and have been inevitably forced to rely on public assistance and making money in the unground economy including an unlawful drug trade dominated by violent gangs.

The overwhelming loss of high paying and often unionized manufacturing jobs previously located in these neighborhoods had devastating and permanently detrimental effects and was the main reason behind their rapid decline.

The Democrats focus on addressing the grievances of their coalition of constituent interest groups with the unfortunate effect of further dividing the American people by providing these groups special privilege and extra attention. It is one thing to gain equal rights under the law, however, Democrats continue to make the mistake in supporting the notion that positive outcomes for people can be enhanced by more government intervention in their lives. In fact, Democratic policies when implemented lead to greater dependence which often has negative long-term consequences.

These days the residents of the South and West side neighborhoods of Chicago have the same legal rights of any other American and are assisted by multiple government programs yet their lives remain bleak. What they lack is the opportunity to work at a job that will lead to a better life. Entire significant sections of America’s potential work force in certain segments of our society are now permanently disengaged.

With the election of Lori Lightfoot as Chicago’s new Mayor on April 2, the voters chose a candidate from outside the traditional and historically dominant Democratic Chicago political machine. The news media in their current prevailing practice of focusing in on Identity Politics; reported her win with national headlines of the fact she is an African American woman and gay. The most important commentary that was overlooked was that she was elected as an outsider candidate strongly indicating that voters wanted change in their city. Her win follows an emerging trend of the election of outsiders to offices in many key elections around the world.

President Trump is responsible for an impressive list of accomplishments in a relatively short period in office. His number one contribution is the series of steps he has taken with a very effective combination of tax reform, a cut-back in government regulation, trade policy that favors American interests over global interests and a pro-American energy policy that has led to resurgence in the American economy. It has included a grow in jobs across all segments and sectors of the economy and an impeding increase in earnings and productivity to such a dramatic point where we may be running out of qualified workers.

President Trump’s policies prove that American style Capitalism can work effectively to create an increased level of prosperity across the land. This is his greatest achievement so far. This has allowed the American people to regain confidence in our country and to gain an optimistic outlook for the future and restore the American Dream for so many of our citizens.

A just society is one that opens the doors and provides opportunities and more freedom for all people in our country no matter their background or so-called special challenges to become self-reliant individuals to participate in realizing the American Dream. This should be the new operative definition of social justice.

More freedom in America leads to greater prosperity and greater prosperity leads to more freedom. It is a virtuous circle made possible once again by President Trump moving quickly to reverse the damage caused by the Obama Agenda and the on-going progressive attempt to radically transform America. The only” green” revolution we require in this country is one that puts more “green” into all of our pockets.

Chicago’s scourge of violent crime is the number one issue facing that city. Let’s see if Mayor Lori Lightfoot understands that policies focused on job creation and generating economic opportunities for the people living in these neighborhoods as well as all of Chicago’s citizens must be her number one priority. Aided by the vibrant Trump economy, she has a reasonable chance of success.

via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/

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The Ideological Roots of Modern Socialists

More often than not, socialism is associated with Marxism.  But this is a misconception, as Marxism is an ideology of communism, an extreme and exceptional current of socialism. Marxism left a significant ideological imprint in socialist doctrines; nevertheless, it did not constitute a mass movement of the Left.

The reality is trivial: Marxism belongs to the Left, but the mainstream of the Left ideologies is not Marxian.

Ironically, main currents of socialism emerged as a reformation, revision of Marxian thoughts.  Those revisionists can be divided into two groups: conformists and non-conformists.  To the latter group belongs, for example, revolutionary syndicalists and Bolsheviks that emancipated themselves from the determinism of Marxian materialist conception of history and saw a violent revolution as the only means to overthrown capitalism.  The former group—Social-Democrats—constitutes the majority of the socialist movement in Europe then and now.

Social-Democrats representing the flavor of the evolutionary socialism have been incorporated in the framework of the democratic state and sought to undermine capitalism from within.  In the beginning, they symbolized the labor and fought for improving its welfare on the sites of parliament by securing a wealth redistribution in the laws of the land.  At some point, an erroneous division of society on two classes—the proletariat and bourgeoisie—had vividly manifested itself as an emerging middle class, became a dominant stratum in the contemporary industrial countries.

It became inconvenient representing a proletariat as it made sense only in the framework of the Marxian theory of class struggle.  Therefore, contemporary social Democrats are on a constant search for a suitable electorate that they would fight for.  At present, they have managed to be representatives of amorphous strata of the “unfortunate,” “unprivileged,” “chronically oppressed,” and “minorities” organized as an underclass.  They stopped representing genuine and original labor in the way it was understood at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The vast majority of the socialist literature of the past was devoted to the resolution of the conflict between labor and capital.  Socialist intellectuals produced an enormous pile of ideas on how to achieve a fair and just society.  As good students of an old school system, they are eager to base their propositions on broad philosophical concepts; they tried to build their reasoning on the first axiomatic notions and infer logical conclusions as practiced in any viable scientific theory.  Modern leftists pale in comparison to their predecessors.  For the most part, they are mediocre and have not produced any sophisticated or novel philosophical and socio-economic analyses; they operate mostly by recycling old socialist ideas and slogans.

The contemporary Left in the United States managed to penetrate mainstream politics through the Democratic Party.  Like their counterparts in Europe, Democrats stopped representing the labor a long time ago.  They do not possess a coherent ideology that is based on the fundamental views about the universe, humans, and society.  Democrats are in the perpetual struggle to formulate issues that they could run on and to find people who support their agenda.  They need a constituency to vote them into the corridors of power; thus, they lured in a motley conglomerate of people who believed in the issues that Democrats supposed to defend.

Every election cycle, Democrats brought to the surface a different set of issues that is supposed to bring them electoral success.  At present, Democrats are very concerned with promoting a global warming hoax, free education, free healthcare, gay marriage, late-term abortions, the rights of illegal immigrants, and the immorality of closed borders.  Contrary to the notion of the proletariat that was designated to be an agent of the socialist revolution, Democrats assigned a class of victims that they rally to gain power.

As was pointed out earlier, the modern Left did not create any significant theoretical breakthrough in the field of socialism that would overshadow the works of their predecessors.  They are reduced to cherry-picking ideas, methods, and slogans from old socialist textbooks.  The modern Left in the United States entertains ideas predominantly taken from the archives of European Social-Democracy, Italian Fascism, and French Syndicalism.  It is difficult to say if leftists borrowed those ideas purposefully or arrived at them by chance.  Nevertheless, here they are:

  1. The modern Left subscribes to the Bernsteinian idea of evolutionary socialism.  Most likely, leftists have no idea about the origin of this particular current of socialism and simply adhere to its provisions. Evolutionary Socialists work within the framework of the democratic state and seek to chop off pieces of capitalism through legislation of laws undermining a free market and entrepreneurial initiatives.  The main effort is concentrated on wealth redistribution by all means and the promotion of a broad variety of social programs and state regulations.  Bernstein emphasizes a tendency to increase the role of ethics in the political struggle in contemporary society. The Left has capitalized on this idea and portrayed itself continuously as the moral authority of humanity.  Its modus operandi is to politicize and moralize about any issues facing society.

  2. The Left understands and appreciates the power of the state.  They seek to solve all problems through state interventions.  Democrats support the growth of the state’s influence, regulations, public property, and state generosity.  The Left either consciously or casually subscribed to the provisions of the theory of the totalitarian state developed by Italian Fascists.  The modern Leftists are, as a rule, atheists, yet they religiously believe in the power of the omnipresent and omnipotent state.  Intolerance of the Left to the opinions of their opponents is evidence of the adherence to the totalitarian state of mind, as well.

  3. The Left creatively adopted the theory of the political myth developed by the French revolutionary Georges Sorel.  He was a theoretician of revolutionary syndicalism and national syndicalism and a progenitor of Italian Fascism.  Moreover, again, it is doubtful that the majority of the Left has ever heard about Sorel’s work.  However, Sorel’s idea of myths as mobilizing and politicizing factors got transmitted from generation to generation of revolutionaries and reformers.  The vast majority of issues submitted for public discussion by the Left are political myths.  Some myths used to be a real thing, such as racial segregation, but in the contemporary setting, continuously playing a racial card is undoubtedly a political myth.  Evidently, the essential type of myths developed by the Left is the victimhood of the different strata of the population.  The leftist elites encourage the captivity of the people in the aureole of victimhood and link them to the wealth redistribution engine of the government.  Thereby, the elites generate a cohort of obedient electors, the whole purpose of whom is to guarantee the elites’ coming to power.

Capitalism was overthrown in dozens of countries, and something that was called “socialism” by revolutionaries was tried there with great failure.  All known socialist regimes failed to exceed the prosperity of capitalism and committed an assault on individual rights as well as freedoms.  The modern Left is employing an approach of partial socialization of property and partial collectivization of consciousness, at least in the beginning.  It is evident as they are promoting policies of over-taxation, over-regulation, wealth redistribution, government spending, the creation of a nanny state, the indoctrination of the youth in schools and colleges with leftist ideology, and outright rejection as well as ridicule of other points of view.

Socialism happens to be a political myth itself.  It is used by the contemporary Left as a vehicle to gain political power and exploit the state as a money-making machine for the enrichment of the chosen elites.  Meanwhile, their voters continue to be in a state of perpetual victimhood and are forgotten until the next election.

More often than not, socialism is associated with Marxism.  But this is a misconception, as Marxism is an ideology of communism, an extreme and exceptional current of socialism. Marxism left a significant ideological imprint in socialist doctrines; nevertheless, it did not constitute a mass movement of the Left.

The reality is trivial: Marxism belongs to the Left, but the mainstream of the Left ideologies is not Marxian.

Ironically, main currents of socialism emerged as a reformation, revision of Marxian thoughts.  Those revisionists can be divided into two groups: conformists and non-conformists.  To the latter group belongs, for example, revolutionary syndicalists and Bolsheviks that emancipated themselves from the determinism of Marxian materialist conception of history and saw a violent revolution as the only means to overthrown capitalism.  The former group—Social-Democrats—constitutes the majority of the socialist movement in Europe then and now.

Social-Democrats representing the flavor of the evolutionary socialism have been incorporated in the framework of the democratic state and sought to undermine capitalism from within.  In the beginning, they symbolized the labor and fought for improving its welfare on the sites of parliament by securing a wealth redistribution in the laws of the land.  At some point, an erroneous division of society on two classes—the proletariat and bourgeoisie—had vividly manifested itself as an emerging middle class, became a dominant stratum in the contemporary industrial countries.

It became inconvenient representing a proletariat as it made sense only in the framework of the Marxian theory of class struggle.  Therefore, contemporary social Democrats are on a constant search for a suitable electorate that they would fight for.  At present, they have managed to be representatives of amorphous strata of the “unfortunate,” “unprivileged,” “chronically oppressed,” and “minorities” organized as an underclass.  They stopped representing genuine and original labor in the way it was understood at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The vast majority of the socialist literature of the past was devoted to the resolution of the conflict between labor and capital.  Socialist intellectuals produced an enormous pile of ideas on how to achieve a fair and just society.  As good students of an old school system, they are eager to base their propositions on broad philosophical concepts; they tried to build their reasoning on the first axiomatic notions and infer logical conclusions as practiced in any viable scientific theory.  Modern leftists pale in comparison to their predecessors.  For the most part, they are mediocre and have not produced any sophisticated or novel philosophical and socio-economic analyses; they operate mostly by recycling old socialist ideas and slogans.

The contemporary Left in the United States managed to penetrate mainstream politics through the Democratic Party.  Like their counterparts in Europe, Democrats stopped representing the labor a long time ago.  They do not possess a coherent ideology that is based on the fundamental views about the universe, humans, and society.  Democrats are in the perpetual struggle to formulate issues that they could run on and to find people who support their agenda.  They need a constituency to vote them into the corridors of power; thus, they lured in a motley conglomerate of people who believed in the issues that Democrats supposed to defend.

Every election cycle, Democrats brought to the surface a different set of issues that is supposed to bring them electoral success.  At present, Democrats are very concerned with promoting a global warming hoax, free education, free healthcare, gay marriage, late-term abortions, the rights of illegal immigrants, and the immorality of closed borders.  Contrary to the notion of the proletariat that was designated to be an agent of the socialist revolution, Democrats assigned a class of victims that they rally to gain power.

As was pointed out earlier, the modern Left did not create any significant theoretical breakthrough in the field of socialism that would overshadow the works of their predecessors.  They are reduced to cherry-picking ideas, methods, and slogans from old socialist textbooks.  The modern Left in the United States entertains ideas predominantly taken from the archives of European Social-Democracy, Italian Fascism, and French Syndicalism.  It is difficult to say if leftists borrowed those ideas purposefully or arrived at them by chance.  Nevertheless, here they are:

  1. The modern Left subscribes to the Bernsteinian idea of evolutionary socialism.  Most likely, leftists have no idea about the origin of this particular current of socialism and simply adhere to its provisions. Evolutionary Socialists work within the framework of the democratic state and seek to chop off pieces of capitalism through legislation of laws undermining a free market and entrepreneurial initiatives.  The main effort is concentrated on wealth redistribution by all means and the promotion of a broad variety of social programs and state regulations.  Bernstein emphasizes a tendency to increase the role of ethics in the political struggle in contemporary society. The Left has capitalized on this idea and portrayed itself continuously as the moral authority of humanity.  Its modus operandi is to politicize and moralize about any issues facing society.

  2. The Left understands and appreciates the power of the state.  They seek to solve all problems through state interventions.  Democrats support the growth of the state’s influence, regulations, public property, and state generosity.  The Left either consciously or casually subscribed to the provisions of the theory of the totalitarian state developed by Italian Fascists.  The modern Leftists are, as a rule, atheists, yet they religiously believe in the power of the omnipresent and omnipotent state.  Intolerance of the Left to the opinions of their opponents is evidence of the adherence to the totalitarian state of mind, as well.

  3. The Left creatively adopted the theory of the political myth developed by the French revolutionary Georges Sorel.  He was a theoretician of revolutionary syndicalism and national syndicalism and a progenitor of Italian Fascism.  Moreover, again, it is doubtful that the majority of the Left has ever heard about Sorel’s work.  However, Sorel’s idea of myths as mobilizing and politicizing factors got transmitted from generation to generation of revolutionaries and reformers.  The vast majority of issues submitted for public discussion by the Left are political myths.  Some myths used to be a real thing, such as racial segregation, but in the contemporary setting, continuously playing a racial card is undoubtedly a political myth.  Evidently, the essential type of myths developed by the Left is the victimhood of the different strata of the population.  The leftist elites encourage the captivity of the people in the aureole of victimhood and link them to the wealth redistribution engine of the government.  Thereby, the elites generate a cohort of obedient electors, the whole purpose of whom is to guarantee the elites’ coming to power.

Capitalism was overthrown in dozens of countries, and something that was called “socialism” by revolutionaries was tried there with great failure.  All known socialist regimes failed to exceed the prosperity of capitalism and committed an assault on individual rights as well as freedoms.  The modern Left is employing an approach of partial socialization of property and partial collectivization of consciousness, at least in the beginning.  It is evident as they are promoting policies of over-taxation, over-regulation, wealth redistribution, government spending, the creation of a nanny state, the indoctrination of the youth in schools and colleges with leftist ideology, and outright rejection as well as ridicule of other points of view.

Socialism happens to be a political myth itself.  It is used by the contemporary Left as a vehicle to gain political power and exploit the state as a money-making machine for the enrichment of the chosen elites.  Meanwhile, their voters continue to be in a state of perpetual victimhood and are forgotten until the next election.

via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/

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‘Extremely Non-Disruptive’ Middlebury College Students Disrupt Free Speech Speaker

On March 2, 2017, Vermont’s elite Middlebury College made national news when some of its students barred writer Charles Murray from speaking, because of a book (The Bell Curve) he’d written 23 years earlier.  It was bad for public relations, and in response, the college initiated a new program in its political science department, “The Alexander Hamilton Forum” intended “to engage scholars and thinkers with diverse points of view, including points of view that are uncommon at elite colleges.”

On April 17, 2019, Middlebury College was compelled to cancel one of The Alexander Hamilton Forum’s premier events.  This time, leftist opposition was directed at Polish author and politician Ryszard Legutko, and focused on his alleged “homophobic” comments from 2011 (though Legutko had been invited to address intolerance by the Left in liberal democracies, not homosexuality).

On the Middlebury protesters’ Facebook events page, remarks such as this were postedL “Ryszard Legutko is a f*cking homophobe (and racist and sexist),” the protest is advertised as “EXTREMELY NON-DISRUPTIVE.”  Yet within minutes of the cancellation, those who silenced Legutko disingenuously posted: “We are reiterating that it was never our intention to shut this event down, nor prevent the speaker from speaking.”  In an interview with local media, “Jason Duquette-Hoffman, assistant director of the Center for Community Engagement at Middlebury College, agreed. “I think [protesters] were very clear that that was not their intent….’ ”

But Jason Duquette-Hoffman (as “Assistant Director for Privilege & Poverty”) was a signatory, with some 830 others, to an open letter demanding that Middlebury’s Political Science Department and Rohatyn Center for Global affairs withdraw support for Legutko.  The letter insists that Legutko not be permitted a forum:

Students have voiced again and again that bringing speakers such as Legutko is not productive….A cornerstone of any kind of “thoughtful citizenship” should always be listening, and we urge you all to recall the events of March 2, 2017 where the administration, including President Laurie Patton and the PSCI Department failed to listen to the voices of students.

After the college was unswayed by this latent threat to repeat the Murray embarrassment, an addition to this letter ominously warned: “More decisive action will follow.”

The letter states “the PSCI department and the RCGA should be sending a strong message that bigotry of any form is unacceptable instead of giving bigots a platform at the expense of student well-being.”  Yet signatories still say it was “never their intent” to shut down the event, and as authority they invoke… a Middlebury assistant director who had demanded that the speaker be denied a platform.

More ironically, the speaker at issue is a professor of philosophy at the storied Jagellonian University in Krakow, whose recent book alleges that left-wing extremism in liberal democracies parallels the stifling of speech under totalitarian communist regimes, and that “…both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.”  Under Poland’s communist rule, Legutko served as editor of an illegal publication in that country. He was subsequently elected to the Polish senate, where he was deputy speaker, and later served as education minister, then secretary of state.  He is currently a member of the European Parliament, on the foreign affairs committee, where he is engaged in Brexit discussions.

What did this distinguished international dignitary do to merit such derision in Vermont? Chief among the complaints of students was his 2011 statement: “I don’t understand why anyone should want to be proud of being a homosexual…. Be proud of what you do, not of being a homosexual.”  Also, he allegedly “argued that gay marriage is an ‘unnecessary, destructive experiment.’ ”  A Catholic from a nation which is 96% Catholic, Professor Legutko’s views are not so extreme there, and his 2011 statement could be rephrased, with political correctitude: “I don’t understand why anyone should want to be proud of being a heterosexual…. Be proud of what you do, not of being a heterosexual.”

But the students were determined.  Opposition leader Taite Shomo declared “….I think it would be irresponsible not to protest against such a person’s presence…. I intend on exercising my own right to free speech and protest by refusing to allow Legutko to speak here without informing the community of his harmful ideas.”  Another protest organizer claimed that “…queer identity [is] ….something that we feel this institution is implicitly undermining by giving Legutko a platform to speak….”  The Rohatyn Center Student Advisory Board unanimously signed a letter expressing their opposition to the College’s sponsorship of the lecture.

Professor Legutko has some intriguing views unrelated to homosexuality.  His Society as a Department Store argues that “…with the triumph of liberalism over communism, these [Eastern European] intellectuals feel compelled to digest an ideology that shares many elements with the oppressive system from which they just liberated themselves.” In a 2013 essay he asserts that modern secular liberal democracy is disconnected from classical foundations and seeks an imaginary utopia based solely on an ill-defined rights-based ideology, leading to ‘misbegotten ideological enthusiasms incited by the prophets of a better world.’ 

President Trump recently signed an executive order protecting free speech on college campuses.  Not one of Professor Legutko’s alleged statements remotely approaches the limits of hate speech as established in numerous Supreme Court decisions.  And yet these students launched a vicious offensive in bad taste, once again employing the “my free speech is the denial of yours” mantra.

On its “Statement of Protest Event,” organizers pontificate that “Middlebury’s elevation of Legutko to a legitimate academic platform echoes that of Charles Murray in 2017 and once again represents an attack on Middlebury students of marginalized identities.”  That is, having a speaker about free speech must not be permitted any more than Murray, because his very speaking is ‘an attack.’  Organizers then lash out at a Middlebury professor’s appeal to ‘academic freedom’:

We feel that it is necessary to interrogate the nuances of “academic freedom,” as the academy has long been a sphere that reproduces and legitimizes oppressive rhetoric, action, and knowledge claims under the guise of “freedom”. We see the legitimization of Legutko’s speech as inseparable from other instances of unethical educational practice.

The Statement of Protest assures that “We are not protesting his right to say these hateful things.  We are protesting Middlebury’s decision to invite him to our campus, give him a bigger platform….”  Apparently he can say these things — that he last said in 2011, and that most any Catholic or Christian, or Muslim or Jew, might say — just not in public.  And he can’t say any new things, or unrelated things, or anything at all, at Middlebury, ever….

The day before the event, organizer Taite Shomo posted on her ‘Ryszard Legutko is a f*cking homophobe’ facebook page:

Hi everyone!  Middlebury College is bringing Ryszard Legutko, far right member of Polish party PiS and raging homophobe and racist, to speak!  Go Panthers!!!!!!!

If you’re as pissed off as I am, join us outside of Kirk Alumni Center to show Midd that we will not stand for blatant homophobia on our campus.  Signs, and informational pamphlets about Legutko’s homophobia will be provided, but feel free to make your own sign too!!

Also, PLEASE don your ~gay~ apparel!  We’re here, we’re queer, we’re ready to fricken educate.

Then, minutes after cancellation: ‘we are reiterating that it was never our intention to shut this event down, nor prevent the speaker from speaking.”

Someone needs an education.

Image credit: Middlebury College, via Wikipedia // CC BY-SA 3.0

 

On March 2, 2017, Vermont’s elite Middlebury College made national news when some of its students barred writer Charles Murray from speaking, because of a book (The Bell Curve) he’d written 23 years earlier.  It was bad for public relations, and in response, the college initiated a new program in its political science department, “The Alexander Hamilton Forum” intended “to engage scholars and thinkers with diverse points of view, including points of view that are uncommon at elite colleges.”

On April 17, 2019, Middlebury College was compelled to cancel one of The Alexander Hamilton Forum’s premier events.  This time, leftist opposition was directed at Polish author and politician Ryszard Legutko, and focused on his alleged “homophobic” comments from 2011 (though Legutko had been invited to address intolerance by the Left in liberal democracies, not homosexuality).

On the Middlebury protesters’ Facebook events page, remarks such as this were postedL “Ryszard Legutko is a f*cking homophobe (and racist and sexist),” the protest is advertised as “EXTREMELY NON-DISRUPTIVE.”  Yet within minutes of the cancellation, those who silenced Legutko disingenuously posted: “We are reiterating that it was never our intention to shut this event down, nor prevent the speaker from speaking.”  In an interview with local media, “Jason Duquette-Hoffman, assistant director of the Center for Community Engagement at Middlebury College, agreed. “I think [protesters] were very clear that that was not their intent….’ ”

But Jason Duquette-Hoffman (as “Assistant Director for Privilege & Poverty”) was a signatory, with some 830 others, to an open letter demanding that Middlebury’s Political Science Department and Rohatyn Center for Global affairs withdraw support for Legutko.  The letter insists that Legutko not be permitted a forum:

Students have voiced again and again that bringing speakers such as Legutko is not productive….A cornerstone of any kind of “thoughtful citizenship” should always be listening, and we urge you all to recall the events of March 2, 2017 where the administration, including President Laurie Patton and the PSCI Department failed to listen to the voices of students.

After the college was unswayed by this latent threat to repeat the Murray embarrassment, an addition to this letter ominously warned: “More decisive action will follow.”

The letter states “the PSCI department and the RCGA should be sending a strong message that bigotry of any form is unacceptable instead of giving bigots a platform at the expense of student well-being.”  Yet signatories still say it was “never their intent” to shut down the event, and as authority they invoke… a Middlebury assistant director who had demanded that the speaker be denied a platform.

More ironically, the speaker at issue is a professor of philosophy at the storied Jagellonian University in Krakow, whose recent book alleges that left-wing extremism in liberal democracies parallels the stifling of speech under totalitarian communist regimes, and that “…both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.”  Under Poland’s communist rule, Legutko served as editor of an illegal publication in that country. He was subsequently elected to the Polish senate, where he was deputy speaker, and later served as education minister, then secretary of state.  He is currently a member of the European Parliament, on the foreign affairs committee, where he is engaged in Brexit discussions.

What did this distinguished international dignitary do to merit such derision in Vermont? Chief among the complaints of students was his 2011 statement: “I don’t understand why anyone should want to be proud of being a homosexual…. Be proud of what you do, not of being a homosexual.”  Also, he allegedly “argued that gay marriage is an ‘unnecessary, destructive experiment.’ ”  A Catholic from a nation which is 96% Catholic, Professor Legutko’s views are not so extreme there, and his 2011 statement could be rephrased, with political correctitude: “I don’t understand why anyone should want to be proud of being a heterosexual…. Be proud of what you do, not of being a heterosexual.”

But the students were determined.  Opposition leader Taite Shomo declared “….I think it would be irresponsible not to protest against such a person’s presence…. I intend on exercising my own right to free speech and protest by refusing to allow Legutko to speak here without informing the community of his harmful ideas.”  Another protest organizer claimed that “…queer identity [is] ….something that we feel this institution is implicitly undermining by giving Legutko a platform to speak….”  The Rohatyn Center Student Advisory Board unanimously signed a letter expressing their opposition to the College’s sponsorship of the lecture.

Professor Legutko has some intriguing views unrelated to homosexuality.  His Society as a Department Store argues that “…with the triumph of liberalism over communism, these [Eastern European] intellectuals feel compelled to digest an ideology that shares many elements with the oppressive system from which they just liberated themselves.” In a 2013 essay he asserts that modern secular liberal democracy is disconnected from classical foundations and seeks an imaginary utopia based solely on an ill-defined rights-based ideology, leading to ‘misbegotten ideological enthusiasms incited by the prophets of a better world.’ 

President Trump recently signed an executive order protecting free speech on college campuses.  Not one of Professor Legutko’s alleged statements remotely approaches the limits of hate speech as established in numerous Supreme Court decisions.  And yet these students launched a vicious offensive in bad taste, once again employing the “my free speech is the denial of yours” mantra.

On its “Statement of Protest Event,” organizers pontificate that “Middlebury’s elevation of Legutko to a legitimate academic platform echoes that of Charles Murray in 2017 and once again represents an attack on Middlebury students of marginalized identities.”  That is, having a speaker about free speech must not be permitted any more than Murray, because his very speaking is ‘an attack.’  Organizers then lash out at a Middlebury professor’s appeal to ‘academic freedom’:

We feel that it is necessary to interrogate the nuances of “academic freedom,” as the academy has long been a sphere that reproduces and legitimizes oppressive rhetoric, action, and knowledge claims under the guise of “freedom”. We see the legitimization of Legutko’s speech as inseparable from other instances of unethical educational practice.

The Statement of Protest assures that “We are not protesting his right to say these hateful things.  We are protesting Middlebury’s decision to invite him to our campus, give him a bigger platform….”  Apparently he can say these things — that he last said in 2011, and that most any Catholic or Christian, or Muslim or Jew, might say — just not in public.  And he can’t say any new things, or unrelated things, or anything at all, at Middlebury, ever….

The day before the event, organizer Taite Shomo posted on her ‘Ryszard Legutko is a f*cking homophobe’ facebook page:

Hi everyone!  Middlebury College is bringing Ryszard Legutko, far right member of Polish party PiS and raging homophobe and racist, to speak!  Go Panthers!!!!!!!

If you’re as pissed off as I am, join us outside of Kirk Alumni Center to show Midd that we will not stand for blatant homophobia on our campus.  Signs, and informational pamphlets about Legutko’s homophobia will be provided, but feel free to make your own sign too!!

Also, PLEASE don your ~gay~ apparel!  We’re here, we’re queer, we’re ready to fricken educate.

Then, minutes after cancellation: ‘we are reiterating that it was never our intention to shut this event down, nor prevent the speaker from speaking.”

Someone needs an education.

Image credit: Middlebury College, via Wikipedia // CC BY-SA 3.0

 

via American Thinker

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Outbreak of Colorblindness Strikes Chicago Reporters

Chicago picked a strange time to go all colorblind on us. The occasion was the occasional riot in one of America’s premier high-end shopping districts: the Magnificent Mile. 

Wednesday night, 500 people rampaged through downtown looting, destroying property, attacking white people, defying police, stopping traffic, threatening tourists, and created lots of mayhem and chaos.

All on video. Some of which you can find here.

If local media is to be believed, race had nothing to do with the fact that every single one of the rioters was black. 

Strange behavior from a local media that is obsessed with race, especially white racism and black victimization. Every day, it is easy to find stories in Chicago about black schools, black politicians, black businesses, black neighborhoods, black income, black funeral homes, black mayors, black police chiefs, black district attorneys, black football players, black baseball players, black churches, black music, black television, black movies, black actors (wassup Jussie!!!), black history, black community activists, black nationalists and of course all the things that white people do to constantly aggravate them and force them into crime and violence wildly out of proportion.

Sorry about that. My check for reparations is in the mail.

This colorblindness may not be a permanent affliction, but it is at least the third time this year local media have come down with it. 

Last Saturday night, a couple of hundred of the fellas and lovely ladies did pretty much the same thing in the same place.

Ditto a few weeks before that.

To their credit, at least the Second City Cop blog and CWBChicago.com let us know about the violence and the official indifference to it. But even these usually stalwart sources of good info about Chicago just could not bring themselves to mention that, for at least the third time this year, Chicago had a good old-fashioned race riot.

The Fox affiliate did not even report the violence: They only real thing that happened was a large police presence “triggered,” apparently, for no reason whatsoever except for “monitoring.”

At least the NBC affiliate tried: Their crew said a large number of police where there for “crowd control,” and their ace reporter actually found an actual rioter to speak with. Though there is no video record of it, she said the “teen” told her they were down there doing something or other because they do not have anything else to do. Or anywhere else to do it.

Someone please notify the Pulitzer people.

Meanwhile, the Chicago captain in charge of explaining it all to us said the whole thing was about “socioeconomic” conditions.  And for that, we need a higher authority for some deeper understanding. Who better than the cast of West Side Story and their 1961 tribute to socioeconomic conditions:

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke

Ya gotta understand

It’s just our bringin’ up – me

That gets us outta hand

Our mothers all are junkies

Our fathers all are drunks

Golly Moses natcherly we’re punks

 

Gee, Officer Krupke, we’re very upset;

We never had the love that every

Child oughta get

We ain’t no delinquents

We’re misunderstood

Deep down inside us there is good!

This is probably a better analysis than the one tendered by the former police superintendent Gary McCarthy, who told a black radio audience that black violence in Chicago was caused by the racist “Pilgrims.”

But not quite as good as the explanation from the former head of the local teachers’ union, Karen Lewis, who told us Chicago “belongs” to black people. Not “rich white people.”

Whoever is causing it, black mob violence and denial in Chicago is thoroughly documented in good ol’ Colin’s scintillating bestseller White Girl Bleed a Lot.  Not that I was the only one who wondered about this periodic burst of colorblindness. Lots of people in Chicago were asking about it, just none who work for Chicago media.

The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman took a whack a few years ago at explaining it — not the black violence but the required colorblindness — after he got sick of all the readers wanting to know if he had sought treatment for his optical deficiencies.

“There are good reason not to identify the attackers by race,” opined Mr. Chapman. “It’s the newspaper’s policy not to mention race in a story, whether about crime or anything else, unless it has some clear relevance to the topic. My question to readers accusing us of political correctness is: Why do you care so much about the attacker’s race? If you fear or dislike blacks, I suppose it would confirm your prejudice. But otherwise it tells you nothing useful.”

This is worse that it appears. Not only are they experiencing periodic colorblindness, but these same folks are apparently also afflicted with acute amnesia.

Colin Flaherty has documented black violence in Chicago in three books, two of them bestsellers.  And let’s not forget all his videos and articles, many of which appear here. He also talks about it in his podcast, which you can get everywhere except iTunes, which took it down a few weeks ago. Guess why.

Chicago picked a strange time to go all colorblind on us. The occasion was the occasional riot in one of America’s premier high-end shopping districts: the Magnificent Mile. 

Wednesday night, 500 people rampaged through downtown looting, destroying property, attacking white people, defying police, stopping traffic, threatening tourists, and created lots of mayhem and chaos.

All on video. Some of which you can find here.

If local media is to be believed, race had nothing to do with the fact that every single one of the rioters was black. 

Strange behavior from a local media that is obsessed with race, especially white racism and black victimization. Every day, it is easy to find stories in Chicago about black schools, black politicians, black businesses, black neighborhoods, black income, black funeral homes, black mayors, black police chiefs, black district attorneys, black football players, black baseball players, black churches, black music, black television, black movies, black actors (wassup Jussie!!!), black history, black community activists, black nationalists and of course all the things that white people do to constantly aggravate them and force them into crime and violence wildly out of proportion.

Sorry about that. My check for reparations is in the mail.

This colorblindness may not be a permanent affliction, but it is at least the third time this year local media have come down with it. 

Last Saturday night, a couple of hundred of the fellas and lovely ladies did pretty much the same thing in the same place.

Ditto a few weeks before that.

To their credit, at least the Second City Cop blog and CWBChicago.com let us know about the violence and the official indifference to it. But even these usually stalwart sources of good info about Chicago just could not bring themselves to mention that, for at least the third time this year, Chicago had a good old-fashioned race riot.

The Fox affiliate did not even report the violence: They only real thing that happened was a large police presence “triggered,” apparently, for no reason whatsoever except for “monitoring.”

At least the NBC affiliate tried: Their crew said a large number of police where there for “crowd control,” and their ace reporter actually found an actual rioter to speak with. Though there is no video record of it, she said the “teen” told her they were down there doing something or other because they do not have anything else to do. Or anywhere else to do it.

Someone please notify the Pulitzer people.

Meanwhile, the Chicago captain in charge of explaining it all to us said the whole thing was about “socioeconomic” conditions.  And for that, we need a higher authority for some deeper understanding. Who better than the cast of West Side Story and their 1961 tribute to socioeconomic conditions:

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke

Ya gotta understand

It’s just our bringin’ up – me

That gets us outta hand

Our mothers all are junkies

Our fathers all are drunks

Golly Moses natcherly we’re punks

 

Gee, Officer Krupke, we’re very upset;

We never had the love that every

Child oughta get

We ain’t no delinquents

We’re misunderstood

Deep down inside us there is good!

This is probably a better analysis than the one tendered by the former police superintendent Gary McCarthy, who told a black radio audience that black violence in Chicago was caused by the racist “Pilgrims.”

But not quite as good as the explanation from the former head of the local teachers’ union, Karen Lewis, who told us Chicago “belongs” to black people. Not “rich white people.”

Whoever is causing it, black mob violence and denial in Chicago is thoroughly documented in good ol’ Colin’s scintillating bestseller White Girl Bleed a Lot.  Not that I was the only one who wondered about this periodic burst of colorblindness. Lots of people in Chicago were asking about it, just none who work for Chicago media.

The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman took a whack a few years ago at explaining it — not the black violence but the required colorblindness — after he got sick of all the readers wanting to know if he had sought treatment for his optical deficiencies.

“There are good reason not to identify the attackers by race,” opined Mr. Chapman. “It’s the newspaper’s policy not to mention race in a story, whether about crime or anything else, unless it has some clear relevance to the topic. My question to readers accusing us of political correctness is: Why do you care so much about the attacker’s race? If you fear or dislike blacks, I suppose it would confirm your prejudice. But otherwise it tells you nothing useful.”

This is worse that it appears. Not only are they experiencing periodic colorblindness, but these same folks are apparently also afflicted with acute amnesia.

Colin Flaherty has documented black violence in Chicago in three books, two of them bestsellers.  And let’s not forget all his videos and articles, many of which appear here. He also talks about it in his podcast, which you can get everywhere except iTunes, which took it down a few weeks ago. Guess why.

via American Thinker

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…And they say Trump is a jerk

Browsing the media will reveal the daily dose of stupid and gross things liberals say about Donald Trump.  Trump is Vlad the Impaler.  Trump is pimping America.  Trump is a narcissist. Trump is a Russian agent.  Trump is something so gross that only an addled adolescent boy could conceive of and then actually put the words in print.

Trump is Vlad the Impaler – “Tomorrow Donald Trump, with the aid of the Attorney General of the United States, will try to drive a stake through the heart of Democracy” — Rob Reiner

Archie Bunker overestimated this guy’s intellectual capacity.

Trump is pimping America — “Trump’s criticism of Rep #IlhanOmar is complete hypocrisy. Trump says “WE WILL NEVER FORGET (9/11)!” Yet it is Trump who’s been acting as al-Qaeda’s big brother and protector in Syria, and turned America into the prostitute of AQ’s biggest supporter — the Saudis #WeWillNeverForget” — Tulsi Gabbard

Gabbard is what happens when you take elocution cues from Rashida Tlaib, and it’s not pretty.

Trump is a narcissist — “In fact, the country in so many ways has been moving toward a profound narcissism. Which we see perhaps epitomized, some would say, in our president. But it goes beyond just this president. It’s the culture and the political conversation.” — Andrea Mitchell

The culture of political conversation is controlled by the left.  From smearing a MAGA-hat wearing teenager to banning conservative speakers from universities to labeling anybody who disagrees with Democrats a “deplorable,” leftists are the very definition of preening political vanity.

Trump is a Russian agent — “Certainly, he (Donald Trump) conspired with the Kremlin and with the oligarchs of Russia.” — Maxine Waters

I certainly wonder who coached Waters to phonate “oligarchs” — just imagine the crumpled pronunciation she would come up with if left to her own device.

Trump is something so gross that only an addled adolescent boy could conceive of and then actually put the words in print.  Warning — Democrats are often uncivilized when mindlessly choosing adjectives.  This is because Democrats are uncivilized and mindless.

“Yo D**k Stain @realDonaldTrump the American People want that Full Mueller Report & We want it now Tubby”. — Michael Rapaport

Boy, am I glad I don’t know who this guy is.  Five minutes in Rapaport’s presence would drain a lifetime of ratiocination from Einstein’s brain. You could probably collect all of Rapaport’s thoughts on one 3×5 notecard, but handling it would be a toxic hazard.  

Democrats are like day-old cow pie after a morning rain; we have to clean them off our shoes every darn day.

Browsing the media will reveal the daily dose of stupid and gross things liberals say about Donald Trump.  Trump is Vlad the Impaler.  Trump is pimping America.  Trump is a narcissist. Trump is a Russian agent.  Trump is something so gross that only an addled adolescent boy could conceive of and then actually put the words in print.

Trump is Vlad the Impaler – “Tomorrow Donald Trump, with the aid of the Attorney General of the United States, will try to drive a stake through the heart of Democracy” — Rob Reiner

Archie Bunker overestimated this guy’s intellectual capacity.

Trump is pimping America — “Trump’s criticism of Rep #IlhanOmar is complete hypocrisy. Trump says “WE WILL NEVER FORGET (9/11)!” Yet it is Trump who’s been acting as al-Qaeda’s big brother and protector in Syria, and turned America into the prostitute of AQ’s biggest supporter — the Saudis #WeWillNeverForget” — Tulsi Gabbard

Gabbard is what happens when you take elocution cues from Rashida Tlaib, and it’s not pretty.

Trump is a narcissist — “In fact, the country in so many ways has been moving toward a profound narcissism. Which we see perhaps epitomized, some would say, in our president. But it goes beyond just this president. It’s the culture and the political conversation.” — Andrea Mitchell

The culture of political conversation is controlled by the left.  From smearing a MAGA-hat wearing teenager to banning conservative speakers from universities to labeling anybody who disagrees with Democrats a “deplorable,” leftists are the very definition of preening political vanity.

Trump is a Russian agent — “Certainly, he (Donald Trump) conspired with the Kremlin and with the oligarchs of Russia.” — Maxine Waters

I certainly wonder who coached Waters to phonate “oligarchs” — just imagine the crumpled pronunciation she would come up with if left to her own device.

Trump is something so gross that only an addled adolescent boy could conceive of and then actually put the words in print.  Warning — Democrats are often uncivilized when mindlessly choosing adjectives.  This is because Democrats are uncivilized and mindless.

“Yo D**k Stain @realDonaldTrump the American People want that Full Mueller Report & We want it now Tubby”. — Michael Rapaport

Boy, am I glad I don’t know who this guy is.  Five minutes in Rapaport’s presence would drain a lifetime of ratiocination from Einstein’s brain. You could probably collect all of Rapaport’s thoughts on one 3×5 notecard, but handling it would be a toxic hazard.  

Democrats are like day-old cow pie after a morning rain; we have to clean them off our shoes every darn day.

via American Thinker Blog

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Christians Observe Good Friday: Crushed for Our Iniquities

Christians all over the world today are observing Good Friday. It is the anniversary of the death of Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians believe died in place of sinners to pay the price to satisfy the justice of a holy God for all their sins, if that person would turn to God in faith and repentance, trusting in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on their behalf and believing in his Easter resurrection from the dead.

Each of the four gospels in the Bible devotes considerable space to this event outside the walls of Jerusalem in the land of Israel, an event that Christians believe reconciled creation to its Creator, recounting the same core facts, and providing additional facts from different eyewitness accounts of this epic drama.

When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor….

Now Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus said, “You have said so.” But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he gave no answer. Then Pilate said to him, “Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?” But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed.

Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream.” Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” And he said, “Why? What evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!”

So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” ….

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him.

As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom… When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdelene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.

The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember how that imposter said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.”

For 2,000 years, Christians have believed that three events that formed the pivotal point in human history. The first was Christmas. The second was Good Friday, more than 33 years later. The third came the following Sunday morning and changed the world.

via Breitbart News

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New York Times beclowns itself on ‘Body of Christ’ saved in Notre Dame inferno

Religious illiteracy is alive and well at the New York Times.

The Washington Free Beacon’s Alex Griswold reports a doozy of a Times correction around a flowerily written story (reported as if it were witnessed firsthand), about the priest who rescued the ‘Body of Christ’ from the burning Notre Dame cathedral in Paris Monday. To be fair, it was respectfully written. But it sure as heck got a big fact wrong. Griswold begins:

I was intrigued today by the mystery of a small Jesus statue that features prominently in a New York Times story on Father Jean-Marc Fournier, the Paris Fire Department chaplain who risked his life to save many of Notre Dame cathedral’s prized relics. “I had two priorities: to save the crown of thorns and a statue of Jesus,” Father Fournier supposedly said.

The statue continues to star in the story:

As the chaplain began removing a statue of Jesus, he said, his colleagues were fighting the fire from the cathedral’s towers. The flames had started to threaten the wooden structure around the belfry — putting the whole cathedral at even greater risk.

With the statue in hand, Father Fournier, alone in the nave, gave a benediction to the cathedral, he said.

After that, the Times made a correction stating that it had misstated the object the priest had recovered in the flames – the ”Blessed Sacrament” rather than a statue of Jesus. It was a weird error, and unavoidably pointed to a problem of the reporter thinking the words ‘Body of Christ’ had to mean ‘statue of Jesus,’ something that would seem logical to someone who had never heard of Catholicism.

Griswold observes:

Hooooo boy. I figured this was common knowledge, but Christians do this thing once a week where, as one modern-day saint put it, we drink our little wine and eat our little cracker. We call the bread the “Body of Christ” and the wine the “Blood of Christ,” a ceremony that dates back to the example Jesus himself set the night before he was crucified. Catholics in particular assign more importance to communion than most Protestants do, teaching that the bread becomes the literal body of Jesus Christ.

There’s the possibility of some sort of translation error, but the Times reporter in question appears to be fluent in French. No, something was lost in translation alright, but I suspect that it was just a case of good-old fashioned religious illiteracy. The guy assigned to report on the biggest religion story of the day was really that ignorant of one of the most important ceremonies in the dominant religion on both sides of the Atlantic.

Which would fit the New York Times and its smarmy urban hipsters on staff to a tee.

The problem of course is that the paper was covering the biggest religious story of the year, with a reporter who knew nothing about the religion, and an editing staff that apparently didn’t spot the discrepancy in its coverage compared to other news outlets’ coverage, so as to ask the reporter if he knew what he was talking about. New York Times reporters are among the best paid in the business – and have a reputation of being staffed by people who are always ‘the smartest kid in the class.’ Ummm…

Sounds like a case of style over actual substance.

I am struck by how the reporter wrote the story as if he did know what he was talking about because he was there – his on-the-ground descriptive details suggest someone who watched the whole thing unfold himself instead of glommed off other people’s reporting, misinterpreting the phrases.

That’s where the credibility killer is. Next time you read a New York Times report in this style, are you going to believe the paper knows what it’s talking about? They not only were not there, they didn’t understand what they were told by people who were there.

Hat tip: Instapundit’s Ed Driscoll

Image credit: Pixabay public domain

 

 

Religious illiteracy is alive and well at the New York Times.

The Washington Free Beacon’s Alex Griswold reports a doozy of a Times correction around a flowerily written story (reported as if it were witnessed firsthand), about the priest who rescued the ‘Body of Christ’ from the burning Notre Dame cathedral in Paris Monday. To be fair, it was respectfully written. But it sure as heck got a big fact wrong. Griswold begins:

I was intrigued today by the mystery of a small Jesus statue that features prominently in a New York Times story on Father Jean-Marc Fournier, the Paris Fire Department chaplain who risked his life to save many of Notre Dame cathedral’s prized relics. “I had two priorities: to save the crown of thorns and a statue of Jesus,” Father Fournier supposedly said.

The statue continues to star in the story:

As the chaplain began removing a statue of Jesus, he said, his colleagues were fighting the fire from the cathedral’s towers. The flames had started to threaten the wooden structure around the belfry — putting the whole cathedral at even greater risk.

With the statue in hand, Father Fournier, alone in the nave, gave a benediction to the cathedral, he said.

After that, the Times made a correction stating that it had misstated the object the priest had recovered in the flames – the ”Blessed Sacrament” rather than a statue of Jesus. It was a weird error, and unavoidably pointed to a problem of the reporter thinking the words ‘Body of Christ’ had to mean ‘statue of Jesus,’ something that would seem logical to someone who had never heard of Catholicism.

Griswold observes:

Hooooo boy. I figured this was common knowledge, but Christians do this thing once a week where, as one modern-day saint put it, we drink our little wine and eat our little cracker. We call the bread the “Body of Christ” and the wine the “Blood of Christ,” a ceremony that dates back to the example Jesus himself set the night before he was crucified. Catholics in particular assign more importance to communion than most Protestants do, teaching that the bread becomes the literal body of Jesus Christ.

There’s the possibility of some sort of translation error, but the Times reporter in question appears to be fluent in French. No, something was lost in translation alright, but I suspect that it was just a case of good-old fashioned religious illiteracy. The guy assigned to report on the biggest religion story of the day was really that ignorant of one of the most important ceremonies in the dominant religion on both sides of the Atlantic.

Which would fit the New York Times and its smarmy urban hipsters on staff to a tee.

The problem of course is that the paper was covering the biggest religious story of the year, with a reporter who knew nothing about the religion, and an editing staff that apparently didn’t spot the discrepancy in its coverage compared to other news outlets’ coverage, so as to ask the reporter if he knew what he was talking about. New York Times reporters are among the best paid in the business – and have a reputation of being staffed by people who are always ‘the smartest kid in the class.’ Ummm…

Sounds like a case of style over actual substance.

I am struck by how the reporter wrote the story as if he did know what he was talking about because he was there – his on-the-ground descriptive details suggest someone who watched the whole thing unfold himself instead of glommed off other people’s reporting, misinterpreting the phrases.

That’s where the credibility killer is. Next time you read a New York Times report in this style, are you going to believe the paper knows what it’s talking about? They not only were not there, they didn’t understand what they were told by people who were there.

Hat tip: Instapundit’s Ed Driscoll

Image credit: Pixabay public domain

 

 

via American Thinker Blog

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Fat Rich White Man Plays The Race Card Against Pelosi To Defend AOC

The opening shots of a bloody civil war between socialist fanatics and old guard Democrats have been fired…

The so-called resistance is swarming like a horde of angry hornets after Nancy Pelosi’s nationally televised smackdown of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during a “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday.

The leader of House Democrats has been sending signals that she may be at the end of her patience with the former bartender who has dominated the media and repeatedly embarrassed Pelosi who despite being a leftist herself, is a longtime member of the party establishment.

Ocasio-Cortez’s act may have crossed Pelosi’s red line after the PAC that was behind her candidacy – Justice Democrats – promoted a blacklist targeting the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and threatening to primary House members who didn’t bend to their extremist agenda.

Pelosi’s condescending remarks to Stahl about the size of AOC’s following and her firm rejection of socialism were only the beginning.

She continued her mockery of the 29-year-old freshman when she further punctured the thin-skinned Twitter diva’s bubble by remarking that a “glass of water” with a “D” next to it would have won New York’s 14th congressional district.

Fighting words!

Count Michael Moore among those who are really, really pissed off at Pelosi and true to form, the porcine propagandist took to Twitter to vent his displeasure with both ageist and racist remarks about Madame Speaker.

Moore invoked the left’s dog whistle term of “privilege” which is every bit as racist as the N-word and other slurs only the left continues to get a pass on such vile terminology.

Via The Hill, “Michael Moore slams Pelosi after ’60 Minutes’ interview: Her ‘old tired privileged ways are over’”:

Liberal activist and filmmaker Michael Moore slammed Speaker Nancy Pelosi Monday after she appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” saying the California Democrat’s “old tired privileged ways are over.”

Moore included a clip from Pelosi’s interview in his tweet where she said that the progressive flank of the House Democratic Caucus, including freshmen such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), is “like five people.”

The hypocrisy of Michael Moore is endless.

He himself is a wealthy white man who it could be pointed out would have personally benefited from such “privilege” were such a thing to actually exist outside of being a junk term bandied about by cynics and bitter losers looking for someone else to blame for their own failures.

One of those bitter losers would be the grumpy old man in the ratty baseball cap who used to be relevant. According to the most recent barometer of his success which was the heavily-hyped anti-Trump movie “Fahrenheit 11/9”  which bombed at the box office, is the one whose days are really nearing the end while he brays like a mastodon being sucked under in a tar pit in 280 characters.

via Downtrend.com

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2020 Democrats Line Up Behind Rabid Anti-Semite Ilhan Omar

The deterioration of what was once a legitimate party is gaining momentum…

Democrats are in complete lockstep with their defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar over her latest controversial outburst and that is especially the case with many of the contestants who are competing for the party’s presidential nomination next year.

Despite the simple fact that Omar just can’t keep her mouth shut and spare her party the indignity of having to defend her anti-Semitism and other insulting remarks, there is no distance between those seeking to run the country if they can beat President Trump.

The Somali-born freshman’s latest firestorm was set off when during a speech to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) which have been widely interpreted as being disrespectful if not dismissive to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

According to Omar:

“Here’s the truth: Far too long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen. And frankly, I’m tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it”

“CAIR was founded after 9/11, because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

She then doubled-down by trying to suggest that what she said was nothing that then-President George W. Bush didn’t say:

There is an unwritten rule in politics that “when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” but Omar continues to ask for a bigger shovel and her bigotry and hatred for the country that took her in as a refugee continues to be enabled by top Democrats.

Via Politico, “2020 Dems defend Rep. Omar from Trump amid controversy over 9/11 remarks”:

Several Democratic 2020 hopefuls have come out in defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) after conservative media and President Donald Trump attacked her for comments they portrayed as minimizing the September 11 attacks.

Omar has reportedly since received death threats for the remarks, but her fellow Democrats were quick to denounce Trump for going after Omar and taking the comment out of context.

“Ilhan Omar is a leader with strength and courage. She won’t back down to Trump’s racism and hate, and neither will we. The disgusting and dangerous attacks against her must end,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted Friday.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren both condemned the attacks against Omar as not only dangerous for the congresswoman, but Muslims in the U.S. in general.

“President Trump’s inflammatory and dangerous rhetoric towards Ilhan Omar is jeopardizing her safety. He is deliberately putting her and all Muslim Americans in harm’s way,” Inslee tweeted Friday.

Warren also tweeted Friday in a similar vein: “The President is inciting violence against a sitting Congresswoman—and an entire group of Americans based on their religion. It’s disgusting. It’s shameful. And any elected leader who refuses to condemn it shares responsibility for it.”

Whether Rep. Omar has actually received “death threats” as per the party talking points is likely viewed by many with appropriate skepticism in the aftermath of the Jussie Smollett hate hoax.

And some chatter from the “kid’s table” field of candidates:

The grandstanding is just more hypocrisy from the left who never expressed much outrage when a lunatic Bernie Sanders supporter attempted to massacre the entire Republican congressional baseball team when they were at practice in 2017 after he was pushed over the edge by Democrat and media hate mongering.

There should never be any doubt as to which side that these radicals are standing.

via Downtrend.com

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