By Selwyn Duke

How much face time will your news story get on Facebook? How many eyes will ogle it on Google? Too often, this is apparently determined not by whether the story is “fake” news or newsworthy, but by whether it’s politically correct. And it’s time to break up the Internet’s left-wing, information-conduit oligopoly. 

If “knowledge is power” and “The pen is mightier than the sword,” entities controlling what pens you see are powerful indeed. As to this, consider that Facebook and Google “account for 75% of all the referrals major news and entertainment sites now receive,” according to a Politico report in July. 

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By Selwyn Duke

If George Washington gives up power in the wake of American independence, “he will be the greatest man in the world.” Thus remarked our first president’s adversary, King George III, after being told that Washington would likely follow his victory by retiring to his Mount Vernon home. Yet the king’s incredulity would be met with a striking reality: Washington would relinquish power twice. Once “at the end of the revolutionary war, when he resigned his military commission and returned to Mount Vernon,” wrote the Cato Institute in its 2006 piece “The Man Who Would Not Be King,” “and again at the end of his second term as president, when he refused entreaties to seek a third term. In doing so, he set a standard for American presidents that lasted until the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose taste for power was stronger than the 150 years of precedent set by Washington.”

The reason my essay on “killing our heroes” was entitled “Where Have You Gone, George Washington?” (The New American, April 4, 2016) is that our first president is the closest thing to a real-life storybook hero we may find in American history. Though the Cherry Tree tale concerning a six-year-old Washington telling his angry father “I can not tell a lie: I cut the tree” is itself a fib, conjured up by Washington biographer Mason Locke Weems, there is a reason a woman, quoted by historian Karal Ann Marling, stated, “If the tale isn’t true, it should be.” For the  myth perfectly encapsulates the man.

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By Selwyn Duke

A United States naval midshipman, David Farragut, commanded a captured British vessel during the War of 1812 — at age 12. Now major universities provide “healing spaces” with Legos, coloring books, Play-Doh, and puppies for students who “can’t handle” Donald Trump’s election victory.

In 1798, Giocante Casabianca, who was 10 to 13, would not abandon his post without his commander’s word, and perished on his ship’s fiery deck during the Battle of the Nile. Today, undergraduates demand protection from “microaggressions,” which can include statements such as “America is the land of opportunity” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.”

Calvin Graham became the United States’ youngest decorated war hero, receiving the Bronze Star and Purple Heart at 13, serving heroically aboard the USS South Dakota during WWII. (He’d lied about his age to military recruiters.) Now college students demand “trigger warnings” when a professor might ­present something traumatizing, such as The Great Gatsby, whose “trespass” is that it portrays suicide, domestic abuse, and graphic violence.

Why, we might say today’s little snowflakes need to “man up,” but watch out! That term is verboten on some campuses because, supposedly, it’s “offensive” and distressing. But what’s really distressing is that many “adults” today aren’t half the boys our ancestors were.

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I wish you all a very merry & blessed Christmas. May the reason for the season infuse your minds, hearts and souls. 

Selwyn Duke

By Selwyn Duke

The increasing presence of Satanic displays during Christmas, permitted under the notion that all “religious observances” deserve equal space in the public sphere, is evidence of our country’s growing need for a separation of insanity and state.

This phenomenon is evident in Florida this month, where a pentagram next to a Nativity scene and a menorah in Boca Raton reads, “May the children hail Satan.” A pole for “Festivus,” a fictional holiday created by the television program “Seinfeld,” has made headlines in nearby Deerfield.

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By Selwyn Duke

Ah, liberals. They really are a breed apart (mostly from sanity). And a timely example of how we’re a divided nation concerns the conservative/liberal dispute over how to greet people at Christmastime.

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By Selwyn Duke

It sounds like the plot of an X-Files episode or something you’d read in a supermarket tabloid, but it’s actually a case of truth being stranger than fiction. It involves five Pakistani girls apparently murdered in “honor killings,” a happening not uncommon in their Muslim land. What occurred next, however, was truly bizarre.

The girls were replaced with imposters, in anticipation of an investigation by authorities.

One replacement even had her thumbs burned badly enough so that she couldn’t be identified, the result of a “cooking accident” according to her parents.

The strange saga began six years ago in the Pakistani hinterlands.

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By Selwyn Duke

“Islam is not the problem,” proclaims the Left. And if you say otherwise, you’re a “racist,” even though “Muslim” is not a race. Yet a fact remains: virtually all the world’s terrorists today claim Islamic motivations. So if Islam (belief) is not the problem, are we then left with a genetic explanation for this violence? Is there something inherent in the groups generally embracing Islam — Arabs, Persians, Punjabis, etc. — that would account for it? And, hey, I’m just asking; it’s the liberals who profess ideas suggesting this possibility.

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By Selwyn Duke

“Free us or you die, cracker!” This was among many incendiary comments made by armed Revolutionary Black Panther agitators marching through Milwaukee streets on Sunday. Calling themselves a “human-rights tribunal,” the men directed vulgar chants at police and complained of “genocide” against black people.

Although it isn’t “genocide,” blacks do constitute 50 percent of U.S. homicide victims despite being only 13 percent of the population. And while over 90 percent of these victims are murdered by other blacks, not surprisingly, this isn’t what inspired the Black Panthers’ march. Rather, they were incensed over the cause of the deaths of four percent of these black homicide fatalities: violent confrontations with police.

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By Selwyn Duke

A new bill introduced in the California Senate promises to guarantee “children’s rights.” But it really amounts to eviscerating parents’ rights and empowering the state — to raise your kids in its own image. And with 38-million-strong California being a trendsetter, the legislation’s success could mean it would soon appear in a government near you.

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