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May 24, 2015

Louisiana Gov. Jindal Signs Religious-freedom Executive Order

By Selwyn Duke

Taking a stand for religious liberty, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (shown) signed an executive order Tuesday granting new protections to businesses that do not wish to service faux weddings. The move came mere hours after the Louisiana House Civil Law and Procedure Committee killed a religious-freedom bill that would have accomplished the same goal.

Commenting on the legislators’ failure to act, Jindal said in a statement, "We are disappointed by the committee's action to return the Louisiana Marriage and Conscience Act to the calendar….

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May 20, 2015

Proposed Federal Law: Don’t Sway People from Homosexuality — or Else

By Selwyn Duke

In the beginning, the homosexual agenda was about the right to be an “out” homosexual without government interference.

Now it’s about using the government to prohibit efforts to get out of homosexuality.

And the latest attack on this front is the ominously named “Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act” (TFPA), which would ban same-sex-attraction and “gender identity” reparative therapy. This is psychological counseling whose goal is to help people mitigate or eliminate unwanted same-sex attractions or the phenomenon whereby a person’s perceived sex doesn’t match his actual one.

The TFPA was introduced in Congress today by Representative Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), who authored his state’s 2012 ban on reparative therapy. After the Golden State’s action, D.C. and New Jersey (with Governor Chris Christie’s signature) followed suit in prohibiting the therapy, and a similar ban is in front of openly bisexual governor Kate Brown of Oregon.

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May 20, 2015

Was Politician Forced Into Mental Institution for “Islamophobia”?

By Selwyn Duke

One tactic Soviet-bloc countries would use to stifle dissidents was involuntary confinement to mental institutions. After all, you have to be crazy to oppose state ideology, right? Now, though, 26 years after the Berlin Wall’s fall comes a similar shocking story — from well west of where the wall stood.

It is alleged that a French mayor has been involuntarily confined to a mental asylum for “Islamophobia.”

The story involves Robert Chardon, mayor of the southern French town of Venelles; the problems began when, participating in a public Twitter discussion initiated by former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, the mayor proposed a prohibition against Islam in France.

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May 18, 2015

The U.K. Election and the Myth of Dying Liberalism

By Selwyn Duke

When someone describes his location and says he’s right or left, the obvious answer is “Of what?” It’s interesting that we never ask this in politics.

This could occur to one given the recent headlines after U.K.’s May 7 election, in which the Tories defied pollsters and won a resounding victory. Business Insider wrote, “Liberal Britain just got slaughtered,” while the Independent lamented, “Election results: Britain has become a bluer, looser and less liberal country.” Note that while blue in the U.K. is the color of the “conservatives,” in the United States it’s the color assigned to the liberal Democrat Party — and this similarity is fitting. This brings us to the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley, closer to correct in his election analysis in writing:

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May 14, 2015

Obama Plays Class-warfare Card — Calls Wealthy “Society’s Lottery Winners”

By Selwyn Duke

Resurrecting his “You didn’t build that; somebody else made that happen” theme, Barack Obama called for higher taxes on people whom he characterized as “society’s lottery winners.”

The comments were made Tuesday at a poverty summit at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where, alluding to his longstanding proposal to raise taxes on “carried interest,” Obama said, “If we were able to close that loophole, I can now invest in early childhood education that will make a difference. That’s…where the question of compassion and ‘I’m my brother’s keeper’ comes into play. And if we can’t ask from society’s lottery winners to just make that modest investment, then, really, this conversation is for show.”

Using the “isolate … personalize … polarize” Alinsky tactic he has relied on ever since winning society’s lottery and attaining the presidency, Obama singled out one specific group for scorn. After claiming that “where a previous CEO of a company might have made 50 times the average wage of the worker, they might now make a thousand times or two thousand times,” he lamented that “The top 25 hedge fund managers made more than all the kindergarten teachers in the country.” And according to a Washington Post analysis, this statement is accurate. Yet what’s implied may not be.

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May 14, 2015

Boston U. Professor: White Males a “Problem Population”

By Selwyn Duke

“White masculinity is THE problem for America’s colleges,” opined the professor, a person who also believes undergraduate white males are a “problem population.” These weren’t the only anti-white comments sent in tweets by new Boston University hire Saida Grundy, an assistant professor of sociology and African-American studies. Despite this, the school’s initial response was that Grundy was merely exercising “free speech.”

As the Washington Times reported, “The tweets were first discovered by University of Massachusetts Amherst student Nick Pappas, who compiled them on his website ‘SoCawlege.com’” in order to “show the rest of America how nasty people on the far left can get at colleges.” Pappas also questions Grundy’s fitness to teach a diverse student body, writing, reports Fox News, “You have to teach college aged white males eventually, no?… This seems like you are unqualified to grade their work as you clearly demonstrate some kind of special bias against them.”

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May 12, 2015

Survey: U.S. Christians in Decline; Atheists Rising

By Selwyn Duke

The number of Christians has declined precipitously in the United States during just the last seven years, while atheists have almost doubled their share of the population. So discovered the Pew Research Foundation via a massive study involving more than 35,000 Americans.

Those identifying as Christian lost almost 8 points in population share between 2007 and 2014, declining from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent. In contrast, the religiously “unaffiliated” now comprise almost a quarter of the U.S. population, with their share increasing 6.7 points from 16.1 percent to 22.8 percent. Within that group are atheists, whose population share rose from 1.6 to 3.1 percent; and agnostics, whose share grew from 2.4 to 4.0 percent.

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May 12, 2015

Killing Pamela Geller in a Dying America

By Selwyn Duke

Hey, isn’t creating sacrilegious images brave? That’s what we heard years ago when at issue was “art” such as a crucifix immersed in a glass of urine or a Virgin Mary picture smeared with feces. But that wasn’t quite the response to pundit Pamela Geller’s Mohammed cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, was it?

Instead, after her affair was attacked by two AK-47-wielding Muslim jihadists, everywhere was the implication that she brought it on herself. As The New American’s Charles Scaliger reported, “New York Times foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi tweeted, ‘Free speech aside, why would anyone do something as provocative as hosting a ‘Muhammad drawing contest’?’” Donald Trump was likewise befuddled, asking, “What are they doing drawing Muhammad? Isn’t there something else they can draw? … They have to be in the middle of Texas and on Muhammad? … I don’t know, maybe she likes risk. What the h— is she doing?”

Of course, a fellow smart enough to make and lose and make untold millions of dollars ought to be able to figure it out. Agree or disagree with her methods, Geller appears to have two goals: to illustrate the problem of violence in Islam and to send a message that First Amendment rights won’t be stifled in deference to what is essentially a foreign faith. And let’s be clear on something:

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May 8, 2015

Schools Using Millions in Tax Money to Teach “White Privilege” and Black Stereotypes

By Selwyn Duke

It was no surprise that Cedric the Entertainer, a black comedian, could get away with doing a comedy skit about “Colored People’s Time,” playing on the stereotype of tardiness in the black community. But in an example of life imitating art, a group helping to shape teaching in American schools is now actually instructing that tardiness is a legitimate part of certain “minority” cultures. It’s just one of many stereotype-related behaviors that the San Francisco-based Pacific Educational Group (PEG) says should be accepted and unquestioned — in teacher training paid for with millions of your tax dollars.

Plumbing the politically correct depths to explain why black and Hispanic students lag behind whites academically, the PEG identifies the supposed culprit: “white privilege.” The idea is that our educational system is based upon white culture and norms and thus is not conducive to minority success. And what are “white norms” according to the PEG? Qualities such as industriousness, punctuality, and civilized classroom behavior. Of course, it’s phrased a bit more euphemistically than that.

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May 7, 2015

The Real Racism in the Freddie Gray/Baltimore Affair

By Selwyn Duke

Did you hear about the white cops indicted in Freddie Gray’s death? You likely did.

Did my opening question cause you to take exception? It likely didn’t — but it should have.

Because half the officers (shown) charged in Baltimore drug dealer Freddie Gray’s April 12 death are black.

Yet in a case all about race — with the chant and hashtag “Black Lives Matter” and with vows to attack white police officers — this racial fact has been conspicuously absent from most reportage. But given that the Gray story has been a white/black thing, isn’t the knowledge that his arrest was actually a black/white/black thing relevant to it? Might this knowledge have quelled at least a bit of the racial unrest and perhaps saved some property and people from an ill fate in Baltimore? Could the omission of this fact be seen as an attempt to rub resentments raw?

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