By Selwyn Duke
Maybe it’s their white privilege. Whatever the case, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — who now apparently has added “botanist” to her long list of qualifications — has just warned that growing cauliflower plants in nonwhite neighborhoods’ community gardens is akin to an act of colonialism.
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By Selwyn Duke
If people seem dumber than ever, as curmudgeons might complain, it may not be just your imagination. For studies show that in a number of Western countries, IQ scores are dropping notably.
As Science Alert reports, “A defining trend in human intelligence tests that saw people steadily obtaining higher IQ scores through the 20th century has abruptly ended, a new study shows.”
“The Flynn effect — named after the work of New Zealand intelligence researcher James Flynn — observed rapid rises in intelligence quotient at a rate of about 3 IQ points per decade in the 20th century, but new research suggests these heady boom days are long gone,” the site continues.
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By Selwyn Duke
More than two years after Austria’s so-called burqa ban, the nation has taken another half step to preserve its culture: It has enacted a law designed to stop Muslim girls from wearing Islamic headscarves in primary schools.
As DW.com reports, using the usual propagandistic terms (e.g., “far-right”) to describe conservative parties, “The bill passed with the support of the governing center-right People’s Party (ÖVP) and the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). Almost all of the opposition voted against it.”
“To avoid the impression that it targets Muslims, the text refers to any ‘ideologically or religiously influenced clothing which is associated with the covering of the head,’” the site continues.
Nonetheless, “Representatives of both parts of the governing coalition … have made it clear that despite its wide description, the law is targeted at the Islamic headscarf,” the Guardian states.
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By Selwyn Duke
Some may note about our country’s left-right divide that if our nation were a marriage, there’d have been a divorce long ago. And this is precisely the idea in certain states where large urban areas dominate politically, such as New York and Washington — and Illinois, where a movement has been brewing to kick Chicago out of the state.
At issue is the outsized political power of Cook County, home of the Windy City, and its five collar counties, heavily populated leftist bastions that dominate the literally dozens of conservative counties constituting most of the state. The result is that the majority of Illinois has unwelcome policies imposed upon it.
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By Selwyn Duke
Some California cities may be swimming in homeless, hypodermic needles, human waste, and garbage, but Golden State officials really truly do care about the environment, they tell us. In fact, they care so much that some have proposed banning gasoline-powered cars — even though reputable experts say that electric autos pollute more.
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By Selwyn Duke
Got adversity? If so, kid, you’ll be advantaged when your Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) score is assessed. That is, if you’ve experienced “adversity” as the social engineers define it.
It’s all part of a new scheme to increase “diversity” in college admissions and in what bachelor degrees are associated with: prestigious careers and higher-income brackets.
At issue is the new “adversity score” adopted by the College Board publishers of the SAT….
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By Selwyn Duke
Could 1939’s Gone With the Wind be gone with the winds of change? Will 1946’s Song of the South soon sing its swan song? Both films have already been suppressed. It’s all part of the phenomenon whereby politically incorrect classic movies may soon join Confederate statues, Columbus Day, and a George Washington mural as victims of our cultural revolution.
As they’re slowly purged, politically correct films — replete with vulgarity, sexuality, and gratuitous violence approved by the Thought Police — take their place. As The Hill’s Christian Toto writes, “‘The Hustle,’ a gender-swap remake of 1988's ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,’ rails against the patriarchy between sight gags. ‘Avengers: Endgame’ shoehorns a minor gay character into the story as a super-[value]-signal. ‘Long Shot’ shows Seth Rogen apologizing for the United States bombing Japan to help end World War II.”
Yet to be nixed a work doesn’t have to be unfashionable, just associated with the “wrong” person; and as in past cultural revolutions (Mao’s China, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, etc.), the “wrong” person doesn’t actually have to be a bad person. For the slightest perceived blemish in a long career can justify airbrushing an individual from history.
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By Selwyn Duke
“It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of decreeing accordingly.” So said Anglo-Irish essayist Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels in 1726. Unfortunately, something has changed almost three centuries later:
The decisions have perhaps become even more iniquitous.
By Selwyn Duke
Big tech companies absolutely can sway elections, warned an expert last year. And after suppressing conservative content during the 2018 election cycle, Facebook is now at it again. Just two weeks before the upcoming European elections, the “social media” behemoth has banned what Breitbart describes as “23 major populist Italian pages with 2.5 million followers.”
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By Selwyn Duke
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others,” as the saying goes. But those undefined “others” are precisely what Latin Americans may get, as their faith in “democracy” is waning along with their economies. Yet if people say they’re dissatisfied with representative government, isn’t it just another way of saying they’re dissatisfied with themselves (or with most everyone else)?
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