I’ll preface my commentary with the obvious: All
of the “mostly peaceful” protests by our “college educated” on campuses
nationwide that are clearly pro-Hamas and aimed at Jewish students are wrong,
illegal, and all involved should either go back to the classes their
parents and taxpayers are funding or be arrested and prosecuted to the
fullest extent of the law.
He went on to describe the unruly mob activity these leftist misfits have perpetrated, all of which has been tolerated by the rich, famous, powerful, and wealthy, because it's they're right to "free speech"! So we had to "suck it up"!
But now we're seeing moral outrage because their ox is being gored. Just like the antisemitic outrage at Harvard and Claudine Gay, triggered a series of events and the discovery of Gay's plagiarism, which based on my experience in life, I believe to be endemic throughout the academic world.
Let's
make sure this is clear as a mountain stream. He didn't give two
squats about all the corruption and plagiarism going on in academia
until his wife was attacked for her plagiarism, of which from all
indications, she is apparently guilty......
It's
revenge for exposing his wife's perfidy. So, I think it's
appropriate to ask this. If his wife hadn't been attacked, would he be
launching this crusade? And if wouldn't why not, since it seems clear
to me he must have already known this corruption was pandemic in
academic and scientific circles........
But
where was he and all the other prominent, wealthy, Harvard graduated
American Jews, and conservatives in general, before this? They were
giving money to Harvard, all playing the game, and yet this attitude and
mentality didn't exist in a vacuum! It was well known.
So, now some months have gone by, and what has Ackman produced? Nothing
I've seen of any consequence. The fact is Ackman will do nothing
because he's part of the culture, culture is king, and heterodoxy isn't
for the faint of heart. It takes guts and the willingness to suffer the
slings and arrows of your peers to stand against the group, and it
seems clear to me, that's not him, and when it comes to Democrats, Bill Ackman still doesn’t get it.
Well, I have the same view about the wealthy men mentioned in Parks' article, "Cooperman, Blavatnik, and Kraft, who've donated nearly $100 million in
total to Columbia", as I do about Ackman. Where were all these prominent, wealthy, American Jews, and wealthy conservatives in general who've been throwing away hundreds of million of dollars to these destructive academic fever swamps before this?
They were all playing the game, all being lauded and praised, and yet this attitude and
mentality they're so upset about didn't exist in a vacuum! It was well known. Academia is a fever swamp of cultural, intellectual, and morally corrupt inbreeding. They knew this crap was going on for years, and they deliberately ignored it.
These left wing fascist tactics aren't anything new. They've been used to destroy stable societies in order to attain power forever. Julius Caesar was a master of it. All of Caesar's destructive maneuvers were so obviously dangerous to the Roman
Republic, and obvious to many of Rome's leaders. But only a few of
Rome's leaders would listen, and fewer yet were unwilling to be rock's in the
current standing against the go along to get along crowd. By the time
they realized their folly, it was too late, Caesar was to be dictator
for life, which the sycophants in the Roman Senate begged him to
become. Then Caesar was murdered, civil war followed for thirteen years and Rome's republican days were over forever.
We're seeing this same gutlessness playing out now. The danger these leftist misfits represent is obvious to many in the nation, and many have spoken out, but there were very few in powerful positions who were willing to be rocks in the current and stand against the machinations of these vermin.
The corruption and cowardice they embraced has been mind boggling. But huzzah! Strike up the band! Now they've become enlightened, and have become vertebrates.
Unfortunately, it may be too late, and truth be told, just like Ackman, I doubt they really get it, and I doubt it will last. History is everything! The patterns of life play out over and over again, and culture is king.
A moronic liberal president opens up the borders to mass migration in order to change the nation’s demographics and win an election, but instead touches off a civil war when the governor of a conservative state refuses federal orders to let any more refugees inside.It’s not just the state of the Biden administration, but The Second Civil War, an HBO political satire from the era of the Clinton administration, that does what Civil War, a 2024 movie, won’t.
Civil War, currently number one at the box office, has a lot in common with its 1997 predecessor, both are civil war movies whose posters feature a battered Statue of Liberty and show the country being torn apart through the eyes of the media, but the difference between them is that The Second Civil War brought up issues while Civil War carefully avoids them.
In 1997 it was still possible for a prestige production to discuss issues like immigration from both sides, to take shots not only at the conservatives, caricatured predictably as hypocritical xenophobic buffoons, but also at an equally mindless liberal elite using immigration for political gain, while being blind to the economic and social damage that it’s inflicting on the country.
Such a position is inconceivable in 2024. That is why Civil War imagines California and Texas teaming up to topple an abusive president, but not the issues that would drive a civil war. The Western Forces militiamen are culturally coded as right-wing and xenophobic, and the reporters as liberals, but otherwise cannot touch on what would make Americans kill each other.
In The Second Civil War’s black comedy, the administration is importing millions of migrants “the lumps at the bottom of the melting pot” with the specific purposes of winning swing states. Faced with pushback from The Nation of Islam, representing black Muslims, who are fighting the Reconquista Latinos of California, the president plans to import millions of Koreans.
What was satire in 1997 is just politics in 2024. The nation’s foreign policy is being determined by a sizable Muslim minority in Dearborn, Michigan, which supports Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. The implausible demographic transformation in 1997 is a reality now as Muslims make up 10% of the Georgia State Senate delegation. Everything is diverse and in a state of perpetual war.
The Second Civil War’s Republicans don’t actually oppose immigration, they just posture for political reasons but have no intention of actually closing the border. Neither side in this bleak farce believes in anything, but is just falling into a civil war to gain a political advantage. The only truly implausible thing in the movie is that it depicts media people fighting each other over political issues. The media of 2024 is far too much of a political monoculture to ever dissent.
And so is the entertainment industry.
Hollywood today operates under codes stricter than anything in the Hays era. Everything from the number of minorities to the depiction of other cultures, religions and countries (especially China) is closely governed and passes through multiple layers of censorship. Much like in China, the only acceptable position is advocacy and the lack of it is its own sort of protest.
If Civil War, like The Second Civil War, were to address immigration in the current cultural climate, it would be impossible for the movie to do anything except take a militant open borders position and to spend its entire running time denouncing and demonizing anything else. And the same would be true for any other political issue or position. The only safe way to tell a story about a civil war that isn’t just going to be non-stop political scolding is to suppress the politics.
And that negative space may be more revealing than anything that actually is in the movie.
Liberal critics are not wrong when they point out that Alex Garland, Civil War’s director, has done little more than transplant a conventional civil war narrative that could have just as easily been set in the former Yugoslavia to America, and that it offers little substance beyond the obligatory celebration of the heroism and horror of war journalism and the shock at a nation tearing itself apart, but what they miss is that they are the reason for the civil war.
And for the obligatory silence.
Nations tear themselves apart when they can no longer talk to each other or about the issues at issue. Cautionary warnings about a civil war do no good when the political atmosphere is so totalitarian and stifling that we can’t even discuss why we might end up fighting one another.
Talk isn’t a remedy for everything. The North and the South understood each other pretty well and there was plenty of vigorous discourse before the onset of hostilities. And sometimes differences are indeed irresolvable. Or unlikely to be resolved. But there were actual efforts to find a compromise, like the redemption of the slaves, or a third option such as expanding America into Canada or Mexico, but there are no longer any efforts at a middle ground now.
The Left refuses to accept limits on anything. Borders must be fully open and every migrant must be allowed to come and live here. The most graphic kinds of pornography must be forced on children in public schools. Men must be allowed to pretend to be women. Terrorists must be allowed to kill without resistance. Money must be spent by the government without limit. DEI racial quotas must be imposed everywhere. All reliable energy sources must be banned.
There is no middle ground to any of this. Every institution in our cultural, intellectual and political life has been ideologically compromised and broadcasts the same absolutist position while insisting that any dissent is a “threat to democracy” that must be urgently suppressed.
How does that trajectory end in anything other than a civil war?
There are already two Americas separated by culture into mutually exclusive echo chambers. In the nineties, there were still debates, but by the late oughts, an iron curtain had fallen over the culture. Conservatives exist in the liberal echo chamber only as broadly stereotyped caricatures, racist idiots in red hats carrying guns, with no awareness of what they actually believe.
In that blind spot, Civil War can only conceive of a civil war, but not what might bring it about.
Garland suggests that the absence of clear motives provides a space in which people can draw their own conclusions, rather than being told what to think about the war. There’s something praiseworthy about a movie asking the audience to make up its own mind, but it’s also a calculated evasion. Ambiguity is the cultural dissent most present in totalitarian systems.
It’s one thing to let people make up their minds, another to be afraid of saying what you think.
Say what you will about The Second Civil War, a lopsided and fumbling political satire that crammed in everyone from James Earl Jones, a badly miscast Phil Hartman (coming off his Saturday Night Live portray of Bill Clinton) as a moronic president, and Dennis Leary, from the director of Gremlins and Looney Tunes: Back in Action, but it wasn’t afraid to offend anyone.
(Can you imagine any contemporary movie showing an LA mayor laying claim to the city in Spanish before being shot and killed by the Nation of Islam without everyone getting canceled?)
And that was as typical of 90s culture as the total political monoculture is of the current age.
Civil War is a movie about a civil war that is careful not to offend anyone. And in doing so it already offended the same leftists who complained that Don’t Look Up was only metaphorically, not literally, about global warming, and every show isn’t sufficiently committed to the cause.
Silence and ambiguity are evasive and ineffectual responses to such a totalitarian movement.
What’s driving us toward a civil war are not vague concepts like “divisiveness” and “polarization”, it’s that we have no hope of resolving conflicts that we can’t even talk about. One of the few relics of the vigorous debates of the 90s is Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect. And even it has been ghettoized as “right wing” because its liberal host sometimes dissents from the Left.
That’s why the civil war we’re in is mostly silent. At least to the Left which is incapable of even seeing the other side and is convinced that with enough pressure and open borders, it will disappear. The numbers, whether Biden’s poll numbers or national polls, show otherwise.
Faced with pushback, the Left embraces state repression and political violence, whether it’s the Trump trials or the rioting mobs in the street who alternate between terrorizing cities for BLM, abortion or Hamas, rigs elections and centralizes its authority all to “save democracy”.
But what is it saving democracy from except the other half of the country? Or democracy itself.
A generation later, The Second Civil War, can appear prescient about what is actually happening and more importantly about how we stopped being able to talk to each other. Its sendup of the follies of the media is in stark contrast to the humorless journalists of Civil War who are willing to die to report on what is going on for no other purpose than to bear witness.
The Second Civil War allowed us to laugh at each other which is about the best possible counter to a civil war. In the era of Civil War, satire like the rest of comedy is dead because it’s been replaced by partisan mockery aimed squarely at the other side. When there are no other perspectives, all that remains is a sanctimonious seriousness with no vision or imagination.
Civil War’s journalist protagonists travel the country to Washington D.C. to report back that war is violent. This kind of reductive narrative is what happens when we don’t talk about what’s actually going on and out of that silence, a civil war that will tear us apart really can come.
Regarding
a successful technique to solve major societal problems, I could speak
in generalities, but I think it will be more interesting (and
informative) to be more specific. I’ve written about our education
crisis multiple times, as that is the largest threat to America and its
values. So, I’ll pick an example in that field.
Specifically:
Education —> K-12 —> Subject area of Science —> State Science
Standards. To a concerned citizen, here are the basic facts for this
scenario:
FACT #1: Your State is one of 49 that has largely adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). [Florida is the lone holdout.]
FACT #2:
The NGSS is a Progressive set of standards that has numerous major
flaws (e.g., it doesn’t teach Critical Thinking, it has scrapped the
Scientific Method, etc., etc.) [See here, page six, for ten major issues.]
FACT #3:
Let’s assume that you (and allies) are requesting that your State
correct at least two of these serious NGSS errors — Critical Thinking and the Scientific Method omissions.
Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), the State’s K-12 Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is not receptive, and pushes back with a litany of excuses, like:
EXCUSE #1: The NGSS has been adopted by some 49 states — so how can they all be wrong?
EXCUSE #2: The NGSS was written by some academic experts.
EXCUSE #3: The NGSS has the support of important scientists (NAS), business people (Achieve), and teachers (NSTA).
EXCUSE #4: Your State’s academic experts support the NGSS.
EXCUSE #5: Their State Science Standards are better than some other states’ (as their DPI has made some improvements over the base NGSS).
EXCUSE #6: Making the changes you are advocating will require that teachers will have to attend Professional Development classes.
EXCUSE #7: Making the changes you are advocating will require that some textbooks be changed.
EXCUSE #8: Your State’s DPI has too much on its plate to be able to consider the changes you are recommending.
EXCUSE #9:
The State has been following the NGSS for 10± years now, and few
teachers, parents, citizens, or watchdog organizations have complained.
EXCUSE #10: The State Board of Education (SBOE) oversees DPI, and there has been no SBOE directive for DPI to fix any of the NGSS errors.
EXCUSE #11: The State Legislature has the authority to pass education bills, and no legislation has directed DPI to fix any NGSS errors.
EXCUSE #12: The State’s DPI has a schedule to review the Science standards every six years, and the next review is not until 2027.
Even the most ardent education reform advocates will likely capitulate when facing this daunting list of excuses. But, does Critical Thinking help here?
YES!
You could probably eventually win by arguing each and every excuse
listed above, but having twelve different fights is exhausting and
time-consuming. Further, by the time you’re done, everyone will have
forgotten what this war was about.
The Critical Thinking solution is to change the battlefield.
DPI is giving you bureaucratic answers. Bureaucratic arguments are based on: what makes them look good, what expands their power, what justifies a larger budget, etc., etc. It’s unlikely that you can change that mentality, as it is baked in.
On the other hand, there is something also baked into bureaucracies that is in your favor: they are employees of the public. If there is public disapproval of their job performance, they: will not look good, will not be able to expand their power, will not be able to have a larger budget, etc. In other words, this is a Public Relations (PR) war.
One of the most powerful PR tools that exists, is to CHANGE PERSPECTIVE. The problem is the same, but we look at it differently.
For this education issue, we are at a fork in the road, and the choices are: a) do we continue with second-rate State Science Standards, or b) do we quickly make some meaningful improvements? The bureaucratic response from DPI is “a”, turn Left.
A suggested different perspective for turning Right, is this:
PERSPECTIVE #1: Which option is in the best interest of the K-12 children?
PERSPECTIVE #2: Which option is in the best long-range interest of the State?
PERSPECTIVE #3: Which option is in the best long-range interest of America?
In
other words, every time one of the twelve excuses above is put forward,
the appropriate response is: “Yes, I understand what you are saying,
but which option is best for our children, state, and country?”
If that does not result in action on DPI’s part, then it may be necessary to go public, as the public will know which direction is best for our children, state, and country.
So the takeaway here is: don’t get tricked into responding to bureaucratic excuses. Move the fight to a winning battlefield.
In
this example, correcting consequential K-12 state education subject
standards’ errors quickly is indisputably in the best interest of
students, and ultimately the state and our country — so none of the 12
excuses have any merit…
Here are other materials from this scientist that you might find interesting:
Media Balance Newsletter:
a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media
does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education,
renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?
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(Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
A pair of biotech behemoths are shedding light on the aggressive
courting of Chinese corporate money by local US elected officials
despite clear-cut dire national security concerns. The China cash chase
has thus far not had serious political ramifications, but all that may
be about to change in the radioactively partisan atmosphere of Election
Year 2024.
“For more than a decade, Chinese biotech pioneers WuXi AppTec and
BGI Group have forged close scientific and financial relationships
developed by US drugmakers, research scientists, and start-ups around
Philadelphia and across the United States,” The Philadelphia Inquirer
reported April 16. “Now, Congress is threatening to cut off federal
funding to companies that do business with WuXi and BGI, citing links to
the Chinese military that some US officials say makes it hard for such
companies to keep the data of their US customers private and therefore
creates a national-security risk.”
The extent of the Chinese biotech footprint in America is alarming. And it’s not just Philadelphia.
‘Welcomed as Job and Revenue Generators’
“WuXi AppTec and WuXi Biologics have also received millions of
dollars in tax incentives to build sprawling research and manufacturing
sites in Massachusetts and Delaware that local government officials have
welcomed as job and revenue generators,” The New York Times reported April 15.
(Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
“WuXi AppTec said it has about 1,900 US employees,” The Times
added. “Officials in Delaware gave the company $19 million in tax funds
in 2021 to build a research and drug manufacturing site that is
expected to employ about 1,000 people when fully operational next year,
public records and company reports show.”
State and municipal elected officials pining for China investment largesse
heedless of the grave threat posed to the nation at large are a dirty
secret of American politics that may finally fully come out in 2024. The Philadelphia Inquirer,
a Democrat-aligned ruling progressive establishment media outlet, has
discovered the beat at a very convenient time for its purposes. Dave
McCormick, who has just captured the Republican nomination for a US
Senate seat, has a track record on the issue that is astonishing, yet
hardly unique.
Mitch McConnell’s Senate China Dolls
As Liberty Nationdocumented
on April 8, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “has
cleared a path for GOP nomination for not one but two former top
executives of Bridgewater Associates, a private equity behemoth so
deeply invested in China that it manages state money for the Asian
communist superpower.”
Along with McCormick, the former CEO of Bridgewater, the firm’s
ex-chief financial officer Nella Domenici, daughter of longtime GOP Sen.
Pete Domenici, is expected to claim the party’s Senate nod in New
Mexico.
Dave McCormick (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Democrats and their big-box media allies are ready to pounce. The Inquirer launched a journalism nuclear strike against McCormick on April 12.
“Republican US Senate candidate Dave McCormick led a hedge fund that
invested millions in Chinese companies that produced military
equipment,” the paper related. “While McCormick was CEO or co-CEO of
Bridgewater Associates, the hedge fund held more than $200 million in
stock in at least 20 Chinese companies that were later sanctioned by the
United States for being part of China’s military industrial complex, Bloomberg Government reported.”
Shockingly, active involvement with industrial branches of Chinese
military expansionism has been par for the course in US politics for
years. Democrats and Republicans are both involved. Perhaps the most
outrageous examples in recent years involve prominent governors for each
party.
Rocketry, Aerospace, Mining, and Ores
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who ran for the Democrat presidential
nomination in 2020, gave an interview in 2015 with China state-run media
outlet CGTN in which he begged Chinese companies to come to the
Evergreen State and take advantage of its high-tech offerings, including
rocketry.
“Because of our great growth in computer science, we now have
biotechnology, bioinformatics, aerospace, rocketry, global health, video
gaming. And what we’re finding [is] we’re reaching critical mass where
those industries are giving you a portfolio of intellectual talent
that’s really unsurpassed,” Inslee crowed in his sales pitch to the
Asian communist superpower.
Not to be outdone, Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in 2017 sought
to woo China by touting the Grand Canyon State’s vital military-grade
natural resources.
“We just had a great meeting with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce just now,” Ducey told state-affiliated publication China Daily.
“And, very exciting, lots of opportunities, including public-private
partnerships. I’ve mentioned semiconductors, electronics, aerospace, our
defense industry, mining and ores that we do … So I think from the
franchise business to the aerospace and defense business, we would like
to do more business with China, with Chinese business people.”
McCormick replied to the blistering Inquirer report on his China canoodling by saying it is up to US government officials to take the lead on shutting down this dangerous business activity.
“The private sector follows the government’s lead, and in the case of
Bridgewater, once the government issued its executive orders,
Bridgewater complied with all its terms,” McCormick told the paper. “I
continue to fully oppose US investments in Chinese companies that the US
government has determined are threats to US national security and I
think we now need to decouple our economy from China’s in strategically
sensitive industries.”
But what happens when the people running the government are also grabbing the Chinese money as fast as it is being doled out?
With summer approaching, one of the busiest travel seasons of the year, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took time from...well, we still don’t know what he does...to answer your travel questions.
Dear Mr. Secretary,
My wife and I are planning a car trip to show the kids some of our nation’s great history. Any suggestions?
History Buff
Dear Buff,
Consider the “George Floyd ‘Mostly Peaceful’ Riots” tour. You stop in all the cities that were burned, looted, and ransacked during the peaceful 2020 riots. The tour includes excursions into burnt-out mom-and-pop stores that the peaceful rioters destroyed. You can meet small business owners who lost everything they worked decades for, even as they have yet to be fully compensated by the same local governments that are giving freebies to illegal aliens.
Dear Sir/Him/You/Um/He/Him/Hey,
My husband and I are planning a cross-country trip but wonder if we should wait until after the summer when there are fewer crowds.
USA Traveler
Dear Traveler:
Take your trip in early November. Then, you both can vote in every city and state you drive through. Remember the Democrat party slogan:
Re-elect the old goat
Frequently cast your vote!
Dear Mr. Secretary,
I have never been to Washington, DC. What are “must-see” stops?
DC Fan
Dear Fan:
There is so much to see in DC! You’ll want to tour the Internal Revenue Service building, where nearly 90,000 new agents (some armed) are being hired to threaten...er, make certain that every U.S. taxpayer pays every penny of tax owed to Uncle Sam. From there, you’ll want to head over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to learn how your tax dollars are used to give illegal alien invaders free housing, free medical, free education, free transportation, free clothes, free food, free iPhones, and so much more!
Please note that if you are a Republican and tour the U.S. Congress, you are likely to be arrested in the future.
Dear Sir/Him/Hmx,
I am planning a road trip this summer. Should I drive my electric vehicle?
Roadie
Dear Roadie,
To help the environment, you should definitely take your trip in your EV! Some helpful suggestions to make your trip more fun:
Allocate several hours each day to charge your car.
Hire someone along your route to reserve a charging station for you.
Avoid routes that have heavy traffic, as that could dramatically alter your car’s charging allowance.
Don’t get caught in any rainstorm, as water could severely damage your electric vehicle.
Stay at hotels with charging stations.
Know where there are other charging stations in case your hotel’s charging stations are occupied.
Have a large credit card limit in case your EV’s battery dies and needs to be replaced.
Have a fun trip!
Dear Mr. Secretary,
Since you are a parent of twins, do you suggest taking children on vacation? My son recently turned 37. However, since he can’t find a job with his master’s degree in “Psychedelic Poetry During the Roman Empire,” he still lives at home.
Mommy
Dear Mommy,
Take your son! I am not sure why he is having difficulty finding work. Certainly, with that degree, he should be able to find a high-paying government job.
Dear Sir,
My husband and I are planning an international trip this summer and need to get passports for our three kids. But...Frank is androgynous, so he sometimes thinks he’s a girl. Rita/Ralph is bi-gender and changes sex daily, usually after watching The View. Mary is genderfluid but could go back to being Mark. Will this be a problem in our travels?
Happy Mom
Dear Happy Mom,
You have a delightful family! If there are any problems in your travels, visit the U.S. embassy, which has a full staff that understands the challenges that come with 132 different genders. One suggestion, though: If you are traveling to any Muslim country, avoid roofs.
Dear Secretary Pete,
Where do you suggest for international travel to meet other Americans?
Passport ready
Dear Passport,
Visit Afghanistan as Joe Biden left behind about 200 Americans following his hasty exit in August 2021. The Biden administration still has no idea how many are being held by the Taliban, but we assume they’re having a wonderful time learning the Koran.
Another stop that has Americans would be Gaza. Following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, where about 1,400 innocent Israelis were killed, injured, or kidnapped, the Biden administration thinks there are about five Americans still being held captive. We assume they are having a grand time learning to speak Arabic.
If you prefer going to Africa, there are more than 1,000 U.S. troops in Niger who are in a hostage-like situation. The military junta-controlled government has told the troops to get out. However, the Biden administration isn’t keen on letting them go home. We’re sure these American soldiers would love to chat with you.
Dear Mr. Secretary,
Is it safe to travel on a Boeing Max plane?
Frequent Flyer
Dear Flyer,
Of course, the Boeing Max is safe! Let’s put it in perspective: When a door falls off a Boeing Max jet in midair, that’s just one piece of the huge plane. The remaining 98% of the plane has not fallen off. Americans should have full confidence flying Boeing Max planes!
Dear Sir Buttigieg:
Do you travel on Boeing Max planes?
Flyin’ Man
Dear Flyin’ Man:
No.
Thank you to Secretary Buttigieg for sharing his transportation insight with us. In our next issue, we will hear from Senator Bernie Sanders, who will share his favorite gulags in communist countries.
I'm really sick of hearing how conservatives and Christians, especially white Christians, are all white supremacists working unendingly to impose fascist tyranny on America and put blacks back into chains.
The group called Antifa reeks of stupidity and hypocrisy claiming to be antifascist, and to prove they're against fascism and tyranny they violently burn down large parts of cities, rape women, attack innocent people, and at times murder innocent people. All to prove they're against fascism and tyranny.
Remarkable how that works.
I've been a history buff my whole life and I've read a great deal about the Roman Empire over the years, including Julius Caesar. Let's forget Shakespeare's version of Julius Caesar. He was absolute scum, as were most of the political leaders of Rome, but Caesar went beyond the pale.
I recently watched a three part PBS series on Prime Video, Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator, discussing his rise to power. Much is left out, but their focus wasn't on his entire history, just on his rise to power, and how he did it. I recommend it. Perhaps PBS didn't realize it, but what they're presentation of how he got power is in effect a text book demonstration of what the left in western civilization is doing right now, and especially here in America.
Pushing mob violence against anyone who disagrees with them. Caesar did it.
Rioting to intimidate the ruling authorities. Caesar did it.
Murdering adversaries. Caesar did it.
Violating the rule of law. Caesar did it.
Side stepping and corrupting the legislative process. Caesar did it.
Voter corruption. Caesar did it
Overturning the people's rights. Caesar did it.
Convincing the people that destroying their rights was necessary to save the nation. Caesar did it.
And the mob loved him for doing it.
Yet everything he was doing was so obviously dangerous to the Roman Republic, and it was obvious to many of Rome's leaders, but few of Rome's leaders would listen, and were unwilling to be rock's in the current standing against the go along to get along crowd. By the time they realized their folly, it was too late, Caesar was to be dictator for life, which the sycophants in the Roman Senate begged him to become.
Caesar's rise to power is a text book example on how to destroy democracy, and impose an all powerful government on a free people, and in his case the power was entirely in his hands. Remember, Rome had been a republic for 500 years up to that point. Yet he was still able to corrupt the system in it's entirety, a system with numerous checks and balances to prevent such an occurrence, all of which he overturned. All the while he committed crimes he was never tried for because he always managed to be appointed, or elected, to a government position making him immune to prosecution, so as long as he remained one, and he made sure he was one, and when that play was running out, he was in command of an army that had just conquered Gaul. Does any of this have a familiar ring?
The end result? I'll tell you what, we'll come back to that.
Out of all the despotic leaders the
world currently has to offer, the winner might come from the one place
no one would expect, the United States of America. And while Gavin
Newsom and Lori Lightfoot would give stiff competition, New York City
Mayor Bill de Blasio, formerly known as Warren Wilhelm, would
undoubtedly come in first place and be crowned Supreme Leader.
If this were a game show to find the
next great totalitarian leader, the players would do things like recite
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and memorize the pages of Rules for
Radicals by Saul Alinsky. The creative ones would even go so far as to
create laws and edicts to resemble something one might see coming from
the former USSR. I can see it in
my mind’s eye right now, Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World
Economic Forum and grand guru of the Great Reset, would be given the
honors of crowning the new leader and giving him complete control of New
York City to do as he pleases.
I save an inordinate number of articles
dealing with every issue facing humanity. I save them with the
intention to use them in my own commentaries as source material, and some of them go back a way in order to show historical patterns.
Let's try and get this once, please, just once,
the left hates America, the American identity, the American culture,
American freedoms, and the Constitution. And make no mistake, Biden and his regime are at war against the American people.
Why else would they feel they need to spy on Americans, and in
violation of the Constitution. And worse yet, both parties are in
collusion on this.
In America property rights are sacrosanct according to the Constitution, unless squatters take up residence in your home,
especially in New York where legitimate owners will go to jail if they
dare to turn off the electirciy these thieves are using, and they're
being forced to pay for. And it turns out suburbia is far too white, so it must be destroyed. All this has been going on for decades, and now, finally, America is "willing" to recognize it, but is this like Rome and it's too late.
There's no end to the demands the
left will make on society because America once tolerated slavery, which America sacrificed 620,000 young white lives to end. A practice
that was world wide throughout history, and is still being practiced in
Africa. The Cancel Culture is a corrupt political scam to destroy any
form of cultural harmony in America, including destroying and/or
misrepresenting the nations history. The left isn't about freedom, it's
about obedience. Your obedience! While the left rails against Trump
and conservatives claiming they'll imposed tyranny, the left has proven beyond a doubt they are the authoritarians, and that includes academia.
Fear
mongering is foundation to leftists. We must save the nation, so give
up your rights, give us total power to save America, and what ever
happens, never ever allow those conservatives to contradict the leftist
narrative. Therefore, censorship is now righteous, and freedom of speech must be squashed. To save America of course!
Education
must be made to conform to the narrative, other wise children might
grow up to think capitalism, democracy, and America have provided the
most acceptable imperfection the world has ever known, bringing more
people out dystopia, suffering, misery, disease, poverty, and early
death, than any system the world has ever existed, including, and
especially, every leftist government that has ever existed. So,
education must be destroyed at all levels.
The
police arrest people who are committing crimes, and since blacks per
ratio commit far more crimes than any other group in America, and cops
are arresting far more blacks than other groups. Ergo, cops must be
racists. Destroy the police. And if more money is need to fund medical
care, food, and housing for illegal aliens, destroy both the police and the fire departments.
The military has been far too white, for too many believe in America, and far too conservative. Destroy the military.
One of the ways the Deep State has corrupted the Constitution is through regulations via what' known as the Chevron Doctrine,
which hopefully may come to an end soon. The federal government has
violated the foundational values of the Constitution with their
regulations, and made a mess of virtually everything they touch
And this isn't anything new. There's just no limit on how far ranging and stupid their views can be. During WWII the U.S. Government banned sliced bread,
"even America’s “greatest thing” wasn't safe." Banning sliced bread to
save America. That turned out to be stupid. Imagine that.
The corruption and dereliction of duty being demonstrated daily is mind boggling, as one writer called it, dereliction of duty on steroids.
Whether it involves immigration, crime, or foreign relations, the
nation is being destroyed by Joe Biden and his leftist cabal in the
White House, the bureaucracy, and the Congress.
The end result of all of this? They're goal is a socialist form of
governance, and this isn't just for America. They want a tyrannous
socialistic worldwide form of governance.
What is the Democrat, Progressive Socialist End State for America? -The choice we have in America is simple: Live Freeor
live as serfs. Our domestic, national, border, economic, and energy
security is all under assault by these deranged maniacal tyrants. Yes,
they are my fellow Americans, but I know my Oath...“to
support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all
enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to
the same.”It
was an oath that I took freely without any mental reservation or
purpose of evasion. I know what the progressive socialist leftists have
as anend state for my America, and they believe their ends justify their means, and they will do so by any means necessary.
Harsh Winds of Evil Are Blowing Across Our Nations . . . Don’t Miss Any Opportunity - My wife tells wonderful stories of being raised on a steady diet of
simple Sunday School songs that were not only doctrinally rich, they
also stuck in your mind like glue. I didn’t encounter such songs until I
was in my early 20’s but their simple message and catchy tune can bring
a smile to a believer of any age. One of my early favourites was
called “The Countdown Song”. In one of the verses, it reads: “Soon will
the trumpet sound, and we’ll rise off the ground; with Christ forever
will we be. Children, where will you be, throughout eternity? The
countdown’s getting lower every day!”
Flirtation With Evil Will Not End Well for Leftists - By Roger Kimball - Israel
is the canary in the coal mine. Hamas is a direct representation of
all that ails the West and the USA, in particular. Israel's war has
brought the cockroaches out in the open. First, some historical
perspective. Communism/Socialism visited upon the US about the same
time as it did in Czarist Russia. By the twenties to mid-thirties, it
reached a high point of acceptance in the US. Many went to the Soviet
Union to relish the beauty of Stalin's governance and came back
disillusioned. Meantime, Communists infiltrated our govt., yes, Joe
McCarthy was right. FDR embraced socialist ideas as solutions to the
Depression. IMO and others, they lengthened it in the US.
Everyone wants perfection, but the best we can hope for is the most acceptable imperfection. Unlike
these utopian nitwits, America never offered perfection, it offered the
most successful imperfection the world has ever known, and these
misfits hate it. That's not only stupid, it's insane.
Which brings us back Julius
Caesar who used exactly the same kind of corrupt tactics being used
against the rule of law now. That led to a civil war, and ultimately an
end of the Roman Republic. I struggle to see any kind of sane
recovery from all this betrayal.
For
years, the political left has tried to associate anti-Semitism with the
right. As it turns out – and it shouldn’t really come as a surprise –
the bastions of progressive thought in the United States are also
hotbeds of anti-Semitism. New York University, Columbia, Yale, and other
colleges across the country have been plunged into chaos by violent
anti-Jewish mobs. For the most part, college presidents and senior
faculty members are facilitating the chaos – or not doing very much to
end it, while issuing tepid responses.
Certain prominent left-wing newspapers are now referring to the
rioters as “anti-war demonstrators.” This lines up with the left’s false
narrative that it’s all about protesting Israel’s invasion of the Gaza
Strip and nothing at all to do with anti-Semitism.
The facts paint a different story, however. Jewish students have
reported being harassed and, in some cases, even physically assaulted.
The mobs besieging these universities and colleges are not solely
focused on condemning Israel for its military actions in Gaza, they are
using much broader anti-Semitic rhetoric. If they are trying to pretend
that this is about being anti-war and not anti-Jewish, they don’t seem to be fooling anybody.
Anti-Semitism Washes Over Columbia
New York City Mayor Eric Adams on April 21 referred to one example: a
young woman at Columbia holding a sign with an arrow pointing to Jewish
students, with the caption “Al-Qasam’s Next Targets” – Al-Qasam being
the military wing of the terrorist group Hamas. “I am horrified and
disgusted with the anti-Semitism being spewed at and around the Columbia
University campus,” Adams said.
The riots have divided the left and the Democratic Party. While
moderates and more traditionally liberal Democrats are roundly
condemning the rampant anti-Semitism displayed by the campus rioters,
progressives are openly siding with pro-Hamas agitators. Minnesota
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar praised her daughter who was suspended from
Columbia University’s Barnard College after taking in a pro-Palestinian
protest. Omar once infamously said “some people did something” as a way
of describing the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
Joe Biden,
as usual, is not leading by example. When asked by a reporter about the
issue on April 22, he couldn’t bring himself to condemn anti-Semitism
without immediately adding, “I also condemn those who don’t know what’s
going on with the Palestinians.”
Meanwhile, in what amounts to a slap in the face for those not taking
part in the violent demonstrations, Columbia has informed its students
that the university will be switching to virtual or hybrid classes. In
effect, the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, has given
anti-Semitism her blessing, one could argue, instructing students not to
attend class in person so that the demonstrations can continue. New
York Rep. Richie Torres, a Democrat, said Shafik’s decision to suspend
in-person classes was a choice to “surrender control of Columbia to an
anti-Semitic fringe.” Blasting Shafik’s apparent capitulation, Torres
said, “If you cannot ensure the safety of your students, then you have
no business serving as president of any university, let alone the alma
mater of Alexander Hamilton.”
At 10:45am on Monday the 20th August 2023, I was sat at
the desk in my teaching room, thinking about what electro-junk to pack
for a family holiday in Greece. All of a sudden, I came over queasy.
“I don’t feel very well,” I said to Mrs Gabb.
“How don’t you feel very well?” she asked.
The answer was that I was feeling queasy, and then queasier than ever I could remember.
I am told that I lurched forward and stopped breathing. My own
recollection, between looking down at a USB stick and sitting in a
different position with an aspirin in my mouth, is of absolutely
nothing. There had been no blackness with a continued perception of
time. It had been like no kind of sleep. There had been a minute or so
of nothing. As I began wondering what had happened, my wife was shouting
into the telephone, arguing with the emergency services. I blinked and
suggested that I was perfectly fine. I promptly blacked out again. This
time, I remained semi-conscious. I was aware I had stopped breathing,
and I told myself to start again. My wife tells me I was taking in
terrible gasps and looked as if I were dying.
Almost at once, an ambulance arrived, and two women gave me an ECG
examination. They said my heart was going at about thirty beats a
minute, and that my blood pressure was dangerously low. I asked if there
was any evidence of a stroke or heart attack. They said there was none,
but that I might die unless they took me straight to hospital. I
thought about this. I had suffered no pain in my chest or left arm, nor
any confusion or loss of vision. But the assurance of possibly immediate
death was alarming. So I went off in their ambulance to the nearest
main hospital, where I spent eight hours with my women and a shifting
cast of kind and attentive but broadly incompetent persons of diversity.
At last, someone who spoke English came into the room to confirm I had
suffered neither a stroke nor a heart attack, and that I showed no signs
of diabetes or anything else in the blood tests. After this, I
announced that we were going home.
No holiday to Greece the next day. Instead, my women lectured me on
how everything was somehow my fault, and that I should drink less coffee
and sleep more. Over the next week, I visited half a dozen medical
specialists. They all confirmed that I was in apparently perfect health.
After the last set of tests, they agreed with my own explanation, and
told me to be more careful in future.
We did eventually get to Greece, for a very nice fortnight at the end
of October. The weather was more like a good English summer than my
usual experience of the Mediterranean. There were almost no other
tourists. We drove about the Peloponnese on empty roads, and walked for
hours through empty museums. We climbed to the top of Mistra with no
company but a busload of Chinese students, to whom I gave a lecture on
Byzantine history.
But this is a digression. I have mentioned my own explanation of what happened. I suppose I should give this now.
At the end of July, I had asked my dentist to put a crown on one of
my crumbling teeth. He did this, and it hurt almost at once. I took the
pain as something that would pass in a few days. But we went off almost
at once to Slovakia, where the pain continued and grew steadily worse.
It was the worst pain I had ever suffered, and words fail to describe
how bad it was. It grew so bad that I began to wake up in the middle of
the night when the painkillers had worn off. I would then stay awake for
an hour, reading Homer until the next dose of aspirin began to take
effect. After a week of this, I went to a Slovak dentist, who ignored my
clear instructions and pulled out the wrong tooth. After this, I
decided the painkillers were a better option than having all my teeth
extracted one after the other.
On the journey back to England, the pain grew even worse. I had made
an emergency dental appointment for the one day between returning from
Slovakia and setting out for Greece. Back home on Sunday evening,
though, I decided to give myself some relief from the pain by going to
bed with a cocktail of codeine, paracetamol, aspirin and ibuprofen. The
pain went away, but I woke up covered in sweat and feeling
sick. I repeated the dose, ignoring all prior evidence that ibuprofen
did not agree with me. Sure enough, the dose took effect and I fainted.
I think it was the ibuprofen – though the codeine may have helped.
The other day, I woke up with a stiff neck. I took the opportunity
presented. I rubbed in a small amount of muscle cream that contained
five per cent ibuprofen. Within half an hour, I had turned red all over,
and was fighting for breath. Before then, I felt as sick as on the day
of the fainting attack. Mrs Gabb was displeased, though it was useful
confirmation of my own earlier diagnosis.
So, I can sit here, reassured of better health than many men of
advanced years and sedentary habits can boast. But does this explain why
I have given up on libertarian activism? Not really. The reason for
that is that the possible window for libertarianism that opened in
England during the 1970s has closed. If the national collapse we now
face is to be avoided, it will need less gentle solutions than I have
spent my life recommending. I do not plan to remain silent forever, but
think silence a sensible choice until after the next election.
The Conservative Government that came in after the 2010 election was
led by men whose only plan was to get into office by lying to their
electors, and then strike a deal with the Blairite Establishment. They
would let this Establishment continue ruining the country in ways I do
not need describe. In return, they would be left alone to grow rich from
bribes and insider trading. They and their parasites wanted as easy a
life as they could arrange. These arrangements involved a purge of real
conservatives and of libertarians, who might otherwise embarrass the new
project.
I was not the only victim of this purge. But it was souring to have
my novel contracts cancelled and my existing novels remaindered, and
almost to lose my teaching position when someone who later became a
person of importance in the affairs of this realm – perhaps the same
person who had approached my publisher – told the senior management at
my place of work that I was a “right wing extremist.” Because I am one
of the few people alive who can read and explain classical texts on
sight, I have not been put out of work. Even so, the easy circumstances I
had reasonably expected from my writings have not returned, and, while
my health continues, I must earn my daily bread as a teacher of Greek
and Latin.
As often as I look at the news, I burn with outrage. I choose for the
moment, though, to say very little. I recent years, I suspect, I have
been forgotten. I have no wish to be remembered now by men who never had
much scruple when I knew them, and are now part of a network that shows
decreasing respect even for the lives of those who get in their way.
The next election, it seems, will be a wipeout for the Conservatives.
I cannot see any recovery from the scale of the betrayal they have
delivered since 2019. There will then be reckoning with the projectors
and agents of this betrayal, and I will join in the denunciations with
spotless hands. Until then, I will remain as silent as I can manage.
As
the first days of another Passover conclude with the echoes of "Once we
were slaves and now we are free" and "Next year in Jerusalem" recited
at the Seder nights ringing in our ears, we know that freedom is a lot
more than being able to board a plane and fly off to Jerusalem.
Slavery
did not end with the fall of Pharaoh. Since then we have become slaves
again, lived under the rule of iron-fisted tyrants and forgotten what
the very idea of freedom means. And that will likely happen again and
again until the age of oppression ends. What is this freedom that we
gained with the fall of a Pharaoh, his drowning armies, and the last
sight of his pyramids?
Freedom, like slavery, is as much a state
of mind as a state of being. It is possible to be legally free, yet to
have no freedom of action whatsoever. And it is possible to be legally a
slave and yet to be free in defiance of those restrictions. External
coercion alone does not make a man free or slave.
Slavery, as all our ancestors learned at one time or another, is a state of mind.
What
is a slave? A slave is complicit in his own oppression. His slavery has
become his natural state and he looks to his master, not to free him,
but to command him. He does not want to be free and he resents the very
idea of freedom. The Jews in Egypt were not merely restrained by chains
and guards. If they had been, then the task of their liberation would
have been much simpler. But just as an addictive drug crosses the
barrier from physical to psychological dependency, they were enslaved
not just with external, but internal chains. They moaned not at the fact
of slavery, but at the extremity of it. When their taskmasters
complained to Pharaoh, it was not about being enslaved, but of not being
given the straw with which to build the bricks that had become their
duty.
The worst slavery is of the most insidious kind. It leaves
the slave able to think and act, but not as a free man. It leaves him
with cunning, but not courage. He is able to use force, but only to
bring other slaves into line. And most hideously, this state of affairs
seems moral and natural to him. This is his freedom.
The true
slave has come to love big brother, to worship at the foot of the system
that oppresses him. It is this twisted love that must be torn out of
him. It is this idolatry of the whip before which he kneels, this
panting to know who his superiors and who his inferiors are, this love
of a vast order that allows him to be lost in its wonders, to gaze in
awe at the empire of tomorrow which builds its own tombs today, that
must be broken. These are his gods and he must kill them within himself
to be free.
The Exodus is not the story of the emergence of free
men who were enslaved, but the slow painful process by which slaves
became a nation of free men, a long troubled journey which has not yet
ended. That is why we celebrate Passover, not as an event of the past,
but as of a road that we still travel on our long journey from slavery
to freedom. Not just the journey of the Jews, but of humanity.
Having
escaped from Pharaoh, the Jews built a glittering calf, and having left
the desert behind, they sought out a king. Every idol and tyrant was
another token of slavery, a desire to put one's ear up against the
doorpost and become slaves for life. The idols have changed, but their
meaning has not. There is still the pursuit of the master, the master of
international law, of a global state, the expert gods of the superstate
who rule over the present and the future and dispose of the lives of
men.
There are far too many synagogues that worship the
Democratic Party, rather than G-d, that bow to the ghost of FDR, and
whose scriptures are to be found in the smeared ink of the New York
Times. And in Jerusalem far too many eyes look longingly to Washington
and to Brussels, to the cities on the hill which offer order, truth and
peace.
It is easy to slip into this kind of slavery. The pyramids
are grand, the slogans are clever and the future seems assured. It is
only when the dusty messenger comes along to whisper that "He has
remembered". that those who have not forgotten gather and some among
those who have forgotten, remember that they are slaves.
In Egypt
the system of the state had to be smashed, not just smashed, but
discredited. The war between slavery and freedom could not end until the
system of slavery had become ridiculous, until Pharaoh appeared a
buffoon and his power no more than organized madness. And yet even so
for a generation liberated from slavery, this majestic system, the only
one they had ever known, remained their template, and in times of
crisis, their immediate instinct was to retreat back to the only
civilization they had known.
The slavery of the present is a more
subtle thing. It grips the mind more tightly than the body. It still
remembers that men enslave themselves best. It knows also that true
power comes from making all complicit in its crimes so that they are
also complicit in their own degradation. The system only asks that each
man enslave himself and kill his own children. And once he has done
that, he will only feel it right to demand that everyone else do
likewise.
Do it for the environment, for social justice, for the
Pharaoh of every age and his ideology. Enslave your mind. Kill your
children.
This is the slavery of the
system. It requires few whips and many words. It nudges men to be their
own taskmasters and to reach out their hands to the new Pharaoh in the
hope that he will save them. It is this slavery which is so pervasive,
which Passover wakes us from, if it has not already been perverted into
the Passover of the slave, into civil rights seders and eco-matzas with
donations to Planned Parenthood which will do what the midwives did not.
"Once
we were slaves," the ancient words call on us to remember that we have
been freed. That it is no longer Pharaoh who enslaves us, but we who
enslave ourselves. "Now we are free men." But what is freedom really? Is
it the freedom to worship G-d or to worship the system? The system
proclaims that it is god. And that is the great lie which ends in the
death of the system and its slaves.
Like the slaves of ancient
Egypt, we are shaken, dragged out of our everyday routine and commanded
to be free. But how do you command men and women to be free? You can
lead them through the habits of free men and women who think of
themselves as kings and queens, who drink wine while reclining, who sing
loudly in defiance of all oppressors, who boldly proclaim "Next year in
Jerusalem" while the pharaohs and czars of D.C. and the EU bare their
teeth at the Jews living in Jerusalem.
You can unroll the scroll
of history and show them how they were taken out, but all this routine
is useless unless they understand and are sensible that they are free.
Free not in their habits, but in their minds. Ritual is the gateway to a
state of mind. A ritual of freedom only succeeds when it invokes a
state of mental freedom. Otherwise it is a rite, a practice, a habit
whose codes may help some future generation unlock its meaning, but
which means little today.
Passover is the beginning and the end.
It is the start of the journey and the end of it and we are always in
the middle, on the long road out of Egypt, discovering that there are
more chains in our minds than we realized a year earlier or a hundred or
a thousand years ago. Each step we take toward freedom also reminds us
of how far we still have to go.
It is the ritual that reminds us
that we are still on the journey, that though we have been lulled by the
routine of the system, the trap of the present that like the soothing
warmth of an ice storm or the peaceful feeling of a drowning swimmer,
embraces us in the forgetfulness of the dying moment, concealing from us
the truth that the journey is not over. The desert still lies before
us.
This journey is the human journey. It is the recreation of
what mankind lost when it defied G-d, when it turned with weapons on
each other, when it built towers, created systems and tried to climb to
heaven on the backs of slaves and pyramids. It is a transformative road
that requires us to not only endure, but to learn.
Surrounded by
willing slaves who preach the creed of slavery, we must speak for
freedom. Though few seem to remember the journey or the chains, it is
our duty to remind ourselves. The message of Passover fully begins only
when the holiday ends and its habits carry over into our daily lives.
Once we were slaves, now we are free.
Daniel Greenfield is a columnist, an investigative journalist and a
Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Katherine
Maher was likely the perfect choice for CEO of National Public Radio
(NPR) when she was appointed to that position a month ago. She is a
dyed-in-the-wool leftist with a gilded professional pedigree plying her
trade at organizations such as the Wikimedia Foundation, the World
Economic Forum, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others.
She’s blonde, beautiful, and thoroughly steeped in the elite leftism
that has overtaken American institutions.
Maher (no relation to TV personality Bill Maher) is a rabid
anti-Trumpist who has called the former president a “deranged racist
sociopath,” worked to “get out the vote” for Joe Biden in Arizona, and
has the hard left lexicon down pat. Why does this make her perfect for a
taxpayer-funded American broadcast outlet? Perhaps because she embodies
what NPR has morphed into since its debut more than 50 years ago.
In heralding the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, President Lyndon
Johnson intoned: “So today we rededicate a part of the airwaves – which
belong to all the people – and we dedicate them for the enlightenment of
all the people.” Notice the repeated phrase “all the people.” How could
such a noble concept go so awry?
NPR: Going, Going, Gone
NPR’s former senior editor, Uri Berliner, had been with the company
for half its existence. Having watched the illustrious aspirations of a
public broadcaster ground to dust, he could take it no longer and
finally blew the whistle on what we already knew: that NPR stopped
considering all things – a la their famed morning program All Things Considered –
and determined to consider only some of them. Fairly adept at seeing
the handwriting on the wall, Berliner left, resigning after a five-day
suspension for writing an article that pointed out a lack of diversity
that no longer represented America in an organization run entirely by
Democrats. This is what makes NPR a perfect fit for its new CEO.
Hats off to Christopher F. Rufo,
who has written an illuminating article about NPR’s new CEO by digging
into the weeds of her Twitter/X posts. It appears Ms. Maher has used
this platform as a cathartic friend who listens to her frustrations,
joys, and all the emotions one would typically communicate to a human
being. What Rufo found among this plethora of personification, i.e.,
attributing human characteristics to an inanimate social media platform,
is very disturbing if one believes that a taxpayer-funded organization
should display at least a modicum of balance.
Katherine Maher’s tweets indicate that she is a very partisan actor. As Rufo explains:
“The most troubling of these conclusions is her support
for radically narrowing the range of acceptable opinions. In 2020, she
argued that the New York Times should not have published
Senator Tom Cotton’s op-ed, ‘Send in the Troops,’ during the George
Floyd riots. In 2021, she celebrated the banishment of then-president
Donald Trump from social media, writing: ‘Must be satisfying to
deplatform fascists. Even more satisfying? Not platforming them in the
first place.’”
In one of the videos she made while working at the Atlantic Council,
Maher explained how the First Amendment is a roadblock to censorship
because it is “a fairly robust protection of rights.” She firmly
believes it is the job of a public platform to “regulate what kind of
content they want on their sites.” One must wonder if she would feel the
same way had Twitter censored some of her 29,400 tweets.
In his article on Maher, Rufo concludes:
“The new CEO of NPR, then,
is a left-wing ideologue who supports wide-scale censorship and
considers the First Amendment an impediment to her campaign to sanitize
the world of wrong opinions.”
This makes her the arbiter of what is
right and what is wrong.
All this would be well and good if the taxpayer could check a box and
decide whether to fund public broadcasting or not. That, however, is
not the case. Instead, conservatives are left with no choice: You will
fund it, and you will like it.
Maher is certainly entitled to her opinions. She may spew her leftist
lingo far and wide. However, as CEO of a public broadcasting entity,
she has a responsibility to extend a hand of fairness, cover all sides
of an issue, and let Americans decide for themselves. There is room for
plenty of conservative news outlets as well as leftist ones, but
National Public Radio adhering to leftist ideology goes against the very
grain of its purpose.
If her Twitter/X account is any indication – and it is – then putting
Ms. Maher atop a tax-payer-funded public broadcasting outlet is
anathema to its original purpose and abominable to the American public.
