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June 17, 2014

Why I Hate Soccer

By Selwyn Duke

This article will be a departure from my usual fare. I will not claim there is some Absolute Truth deeming soccer the bane of humanity’s sports. I do not contend that some objective, divine standard places it in Dante’s ninth circle of athletic arenas, though I wish I could. Sport is a matter of taste, and, as G.K. Chesterton said (okay, so this isn’t a complete departure for me — I’m quoting Chesterton), “There are no uninteresting subjects, only uninterested people.” I get it. And I, I confess, like golf. So mock away. But in this piece I’ll ditch the Mr. Spock act, let my human side emote, may even contradict myself, and will say something.

I hate soccer.

I hear there’s something going on right now called the World Cup. I hear it’s in Brazil. I hear other pundits, such as Stephen Webb and Rick Moran, are commenting on it, taking opposing views. And I hear that the score between the two is 0-0 after 2000 words. But I won’t claim that soccer is un-American as did Webb or like Moran, claim it’s fun. I’ll say something truly intellectual.

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June 14, 2014

Will the US One Day Force Same-sex “Marriage” on the Church?

By Selwyn Duke

Perhaps you haven't heard. If you take a position that has been the default for 2000 years, a position most of the world subscribes to today, you're intolerant, a hater, and a bigot. That would be the position in favor of marriage.

Britain's "equality minister," Lynne Featherstone, said that the Church of England's and Catholic Church's language in opposition to faux (same-sex) marriage "belongs in the Dark Ages." Britain's "justice and policing" minister, Nick Herbert, opined that opposition to legalized faux marriage is "not acceptable." Meanwhile, Denmark decided two years ago that it was acceptable to force churches to perform faux marriages. You see, Denmark is further down the road of secularism than is the UK. And why should this matter to us?

For one thing, point out many observers, America is on that road, too.

Read the rest here.
June 14, 2014

The Obama Birth Dearth: Why Are People Having Fewer Kids?

By Selwyn Duke

Call it the Obama birth dearth. While the immigrant-fueled birthrate of the United States had recently been fairly robust, it has now dropped below replacement level. And demographers are unsure as to why. Writes Joseph Lawler at Washington Examiner:

The fertility rate fell to a record low 62.9 births per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2013, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

… [T]he total fertility rate, or TFR, the average number of children a woman would have during her child-bearing years, fell to just 1.86, the lowest rate in 27 years. TFR is considered the best metric of fertility. A TFR of 2.1 represents a stable population, with children replacing parents as they die off.

Demographers expected the fertility rate to fall during recession, as financially strapped families put off childbearing. But what has surprised some demographers is both the depth of the decline and the fact that fertility has continued to drop even over the course of the country's five years of slow but steady recovery. The rate has fallen steadily each year since 2007, when it stood at 2.1 percent.

One factor in the fertility decline demographers did foresee was a falling birth rate among Hispanics in America.

Read the rest here.
June 10, 2014

Are Most Mass Murderers Really White?

By Selwyn Duke

Aside from attacks on the Second Amendment, there is a certain theme that’s now repeated after every massacre committed by an unhinged individual: that most all mass killers are white. After the recent Elliot Rodger murders, for instance, Michael Moore said that he no longer had “anything to say” before immediately saying, “Nearly all of our mass shootings are by angry or disturbed white males.” Not to be one-upped in the inanity department by a mass of male whiteness, one Brittney Cooper at Salon wrote, “How many times must troubled young white men engage in these terroristic acts that make public space unsafe for everyone before we admit that white male privilege kills?” Ironically, Cooper had mentioned, parenthetically, that “as many commenters have pointed out, [Rodger] had a white father and mother of Asian descent,” but, hey, you can’t let a minor detail get in the way of a good racial screed. And perhaps mass killing is such a Caucasian domain that perpetrating one bestows a person with honorary whiteness. Yet about this we should ask a question:

Before rushing to play pin the tale on the honkey, did anyone bother to check the history of mass killings?

Because I have — a comprehensive list dating from 1982 through 9/16/2013 is found at Mother Jones here — and guess what?

Of the last 20 mass killings of that period, 9 were perpetrated by non-whites.

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June 9, 2014

How Covering up Minority Crime Leads to Gun Control

By Selwyn Duke

Commenting recently on the Elliot Rodger killings, arch-leftist Michael Moore wrote that while “other countries have more violent pasts…more guns per capita in their homes…and the kids in most other countries watch the same violent movies and play the same violent video games that our kids play, no one even comes close to killing as many of its own citizens on a daily basis as we do….” From a man who used to take the simple-minded gun-control position “fewer guns=less homicide,” it was surprising evidence of growth. After making his point, however, Moore made a mistake in following up with, “and yet we don't seem to want to ask ourselves this simple question: "Why us? What is it about US?” It’s not, however, that we don’t want to ask the question.

It’s that we don’t want to hear the answer.

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June 8, 2014

The Marxist Attack on Kids’ Competition

By Selwyn Duke

Our society’s attack upon competition is intensifying, and it breeds some truly ridiculous policies. Years ago already, a soccer league in Massachusetts banned keeping score in 10-and-under tournaments in deference to the feelings police. Some schools have eliminated the designations “Valedictorian” and “Salutatorian” because they’re too non-egalitarian. More recently, a Rhode Island school canceled its long tradition of an honors night (the decision has since been reversed following an outcry) because it was too “exclusive,” and, not to be outdone, a Michigan elementary school just distributed a flyer stating that the “urge to win” at their annual field day should be minimized because all students are “winners.”

There are obvious points to be made here, such as how this anti-competition mentality unjustly denies achievers their due. It’s also true that if you reward something — and excellence is no exception — you get more of it; if you don’t, you get less. But in our effort to protect losers’ feelings, we forget the other victims in this lunacy:

The losers themselves.

Read the rest here.
May 27, 2014

Elliot Rodger: A Killer’s Journey From Hollywood to Hell

By Selwyn Duke

“I wanted to inflict pain on all young couples…. I was capable of killing them, and I wanted to. I wanted to kill them slowly, to strip the skins off their flesh. They deserve it. The males deserve it for taking the females away from me, and the females deserve it for choosing those males instead of me” — My Twisted World, The Story of Elliot Rodger, page 87.

On the surface, Elliot Rodger had it all. The son of a Hollywood director, he lived a life of opulence and opportunity, able to attend private schools, receiving VIP passes for special events and film premieres, and visiting six different countries by the age of four. He regularly bought expensive designer clothes, wore $300 Armani sunglasses, and could fly first class. And when he killed six people this past Friday in a rampage centered around the University of California, Santa Barbara campus, he was driving a BMW 328I coupe, a car most Americans can scarcely afford.

But it was Rodger’s unfulfilled desires for women’s attention and sex that truly drove him — to despair, jealousy and, ultimately, to murder and suicide.

Read the rest here.
May 27, 2014

A Question for those Who Believe in Homosexual Scouts

By Selwyn Duke

Not satisfied with having pressured the Boy Scouts of America into lifting their prohibition against openly homosexual scouts, activists now want homosexual scoutmasters to be allowed as well. Equality, you know, is the order of the day. Yet the truth is that virtually all of you who advocate this social change operate with a certain bias — you just don’t realize it.

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May 24, 2014

Michelle Obama in 1954

By Selwyn Duke

Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco — and Michelle Obama left her brain in 1954.

Addressing graduating high-school students the other day in the Topeka, Kansas, school district, the federal lunch lady said, referring to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, “[Y]our experience here in Topeka would have been unimaginable back in 1954….” And perhaps this is true.

It also would have been unimaginable back in 1554 or 954. After all, the institutions making that experience possible hadn’t been birthed yet.

You know, those institutions created by European/ European-descent civilization.

That civilization that Darth Vegan is tacitly impugning with her racial agitation.

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May 24, 2014

Leftists Cancel School Honors Night — Too “Exclusive”

By Selwyn Duke

It’s increasingly the case in America that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. A case in point is Archie R. Cole Middle School in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Writes East Greenwich Patch:

Citing concerns about the "exclusive nature" of the annual honors night at Archie R. Cole Middle School, school officials have decided to scrap the tradition.

Instead, students who would normally be recognized at the annual spring tradition will be honored during team-based recognition ceremonies and graduation.

The notice was sent to parents over the weekend in an e-mail signed by School Principal Alexis Meyer and Assistant Principal Dan Seger.

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