By Selwyn Duke
Have we descended into the “inhumanity of a hive or a heathen city,” as G.K. Chesterton wrote in 1926, where we’re starting to accept the proposition “‘Actions are only wrong if they are bad for society’”? Many would say this is the case, with British scientists having been granted permission to genetically modify unborn human beings.
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By Selwyn Duke
Shoot your daughter and save your "honor" — and win your neighbors' respect in the process. In a recent piece I pointed out a stark difference between Western and Islamic cultures:
Dr. [Nicolai] Sennels is a Danish psychologist who for years worked in prison with Muslim youth. Among other things, he points out that Islamic culture is radically different from what you’re used to: Muslims view displays of anger and violence as synonymous with manliness, and they respect shows of force.
And if you react to aggression with passivity and kindness, they view it as weakness and hold you in contempt. They not only will think you can be vanquished — but that you deserve to be.
A recent story I found at Jihad Watch illustrates this point about the Islamic conception of manliness well. It concerns a Pakistani father who shot his daughter in an attempted "honor killing" after she ran off and married her boyfriend without her parents' approval. And, apparently, he received pats on the back from the community. As the father put it, "After this incident, everyone says I am more respected.”
The New York Times actually reported on this story (will it open a few of its readers' eyes?), writing, "'She took away our honor,' [father] Maqsood said from his jail cell. 'If you put one drop of p[***] in a gallon of milk, the whole thing gets destroyed. That’s what she has done. … So I said, 'No, I will kill you myself.'" Of course, this savage wouldn't know honor if it took physical form and landed on his head from Pakistan's tallest building. Read the whole story, though, as the event took some interesting twists and turns — including one that allowed the father to avoid all punishment.
By Selwyn Duke
Perhaps she’s that rare woman not offended by being called catty. Going by the name “Nano,” she’s a young Norwegian lady who claims she wasn’t born in the right body. No, she doesn’t think she’s a man, but believes she’s of “the wrong species” and is really a feline.
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By Selwyn Duke
Perhaps it was a first: a man winning a debate by not showing up. That’s my take, anyway, that Donald Trump prevailed at Thursday night’s GOP debate. Although, something curious did happen after the event that gives me pause for thought, but more on that later.
The debate served to draw a significant and sharp contrast on today’s top (or almost so) issue, immigration — between Trump and the rest of the field. When the Fox News moderators showed Marco Rubio on video repeatedly saying he wouldn’t support amnesty, even by another name, and then Megyn Kelly pointed out that he went on to be part of scamnesty group the Gang of Eight, it was a stake-through-the-heart moment. Even more amusingly, Jeb Bush chimed in and tag-teamed with Kelly; he emphasized that not only did Machiavellian Marco support the amnesty, but repeated at least twice that Rubio asked him to support it as well. Bush said that he did so and that what Rubio did was the right thing, but then castigated the Florida senator for cowardly retreating from his position. So there you had one guy trying to wriggle out of supporting stupidly disastrous policy being cornered by another guy who was proud of his stupidity. I guess it’s what happens when a wholly resistible force meets a thoroughly movable object. But three things occur to me:
By Selwyn Duke
Is Christianity now a crime? Is teaching of sin now a sin itself? Some would say this is the case in Norway, where a couple has had their five children seized by the government based on charges of, their lawyer reports, “Christian radicalization and indoctrination.”
Marius and Ruth Bodnariu’s problems began late last year when their five children, three boys and two girls aged three months to nine years, were seized by Barnevernet, Norway’s child-protection agency. According to a December 3 communiqué sent by Marius’ brother, Daniel Bodnariu, the principal of the school attended by the Bodnariu’s daughters, Eliana and Naomi, “reported to Barnevernet that the girls had talked about being disciplined, that the family was ‘very Christian.’ She also reported that, in Daniel’s words, ‘the grandmother has a strong faith that God punishes sin, which, in her opinion, creates a disability in children’ and that the parents needed ‘help’ in raising their children,” wroteLifeSiteNews.
This led to the children being seized November 16 and 17 — without due process.
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By Selwyn Duke
The Devil entered American homes Monday night, at least in a sense. Oh, it wasn’t the first time, but usually it’s not so explicit. For Monday saw the premiere of Lucifer, the new Fox network series that makes Satan the main character. And this is no Devil with a pitchfork and horns but is precisely what the theologically sophisticated would expect him to be: attractive and alluring — a supernatural seducer.
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By Selwyn Duke
Ever since Donald Trump’s rise to 2016-contender prominence, the rap on him, and perhaps part of his broad appeal, has been that he’s not a conservative. And he’s not — he’s a nationalistic populist. Yet there’s another way to understand The Donald’s professed politics: as that of the first prominent “European-conservative” American presidential candidate. He’s not so much America’s next Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater, but her first Marine Le Pen.
By Selwyn Duke
Once again, a cynic might say that “no good deed goes unpunished.” Much of America was aghast at last year’s Planned Parenthood videos apparently showing the pro-pre-natal infanticide group coldly and cavalierly trafficking in babies’ body parts. And now indictments have been issued in the case — against the people who exposed the carnage.
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By Selwyn Duke
In today’s world, you could say that cries of “racism” are the last refuge of a scoundrel — and the first, too. One man who might agree is Gerald Molen, the Oscar-winning producer who gave usSchindler’s List. Reacting to the current brouhaha over this year’s Oscars featuring only white nominees, Molen called those screaming “racism” “spoiled brats” and said, writes the Hollywood Reporter, “There is no racism except for those who create an issue. That is the worst kind. Using such an ugly way of complaining."
This issue has become quite the tempest in a teapot. “Whiter than the Oscars” has now been made a headline, used already to refer to the major weekend snowstorm and a Bernie Sanders political ad. A potty-mouthed Daily Beast writer named Kevin Fallon called the situation “bull****,” and Vanity Fair opined that the “Oscars are way too white, again” without specifying what the proper degree of whiteness might be. Then there are those who stoked these racial fires, the figures boycotting the event: Michael Moore, Spike Lee, and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith (shown). And about them Molen minced few words. Writes the Reporter, "‘The only comment that might have some legitimate substance is the one from Jada Pinkett. I understand her disappointment for her husband, but that doesn't mean she is correct in her analysis,’ Molen said. ‘As far as Michael Moore is concerned, he is a socialist always looking to insert his brand of racist hatred. Spike Lee — haven't I heard this from him before?’"
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By Selwyn Duke
The presidency had LBJ — now meet LBG. That’s another presidential aspirant, known to this writer as Little Big Gulp. You probably know him as ex-mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg.
Little Big Gulp is a very small man with a very big wallet and an even bigger ego, but who doesn’t like big sodas. He successfully pushed for a 2012 ban on pop larger than 16 ounces, applicable to most businesses, but which was overturned by the courts as “arbitrary and capricious.” It certainly was. Perhaps, as comedian-cum-commentator Dennis Miller put it, Little Big Gulp didn’t like Big Gulps because he had to look up at the rim. Whatever the case, LBG also has big ambitions: he’s now considering a third-party presidential run.
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