By Selwyn Duke
Leave it to The Gay Lady to be a day late and a few brain cells short. The New York Times recently published an article by some journalism-school retread about the Cliven Bundy situation, a piece containing all the usual talking points about how the “racist” rancher’s reasoning is really risible. Rinse, wash and repeat. What interests me right now are not the facts of the case, however, but one particular line in the Times commentary.
By Selwyn Duke
Imagine you apply for a college program, only to be denied entry because you believe in God. And the kicker is how school administrators knew about your faith.
They asked.
This is precisely what happened to Brandon Jenkins when he applied for the Radiation Therapy Program at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) in Maryland. And now he’s suing in federal court for religious discrimination. Writes OneNewsNow.com:
Not long after Jenkins initially applied to CCBC's program as a very strong candidate, he was told by a faculty member that the "field [of radiation therapy] is not the place for religion."
But why — especially after scoring the maximum amount of points possible during his observation and meeting all the standards?
Jenkins later found that his response to a question asked by college officials during the interview process was the culprit. When asked, "What is the most important thing to you?" the Christian candidate simply replied: "My God."
Read the rest here.
By Selwyn Duke
We are witnessing, I believe, a turning point in geopolitical history, one future historians may analyze as we have the Roman Empire’s fall. Vladimir Putin is making a move — and it’s not just against Ukraine. It may not be just a move against Eastern Europe. It’s not even, perhaps, just a move against US world dominance.
There was a time when the USSR was the “evil empire, a godless Golgotha. But that was then. Now, in 2013-14, Putin has seen fit to say, in his December State of the Nation speech, “Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. …Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”
By Selwyn Duke
One day while serving as a fill-in host for radio giant Rush Limbaugh, black economist Dr. Walter Williams related an interesting personal story about affirmative action. He said that as a young man he declined an offer of a professorship at a prestigious Ivy League university, explaining to the institution that, since he wasn’t qualified on paper, it would be obvious he was hired only because of his race. And when he later accepted a position at George Mason University, he said to the interviewer (this is a close-to-verbatim paraphrase), “If I find out you hired me based on affirmative action, I will quit on that day.” What integrity.
Having said this, what Williams exhibited is perhaps what they call in informed theological circles “heroic virtue.” I don’t really blame minorities and women for availing themselves of opportunities offered. William F. Buckley once explained his reasoning behind participating in programs you disapprove of by saying he believed that, in a democracy, you accept the determinations of the majority — unless those determinations become tyrannical. My reasoning is a bit different: You have to suffer because of the ways in which the system is disadvantageous to you, so there’s nothing wrong with benefiting from the ways in which it’s advantageous to you (as long as you’re not committing a grossly immoral act in the process). But there is one condition:
You not vote to perpetuate the bad system.
Read the rest here.
By Selwyn Duke
You’re free in Sweden to be critical of immigration, those in power, or people identifying as “LBGT” — at least within the confines of your mind. But dare express those views, even on the Internet, and you can now be more easily prosecuted under a new law taking full effect after Christmas.
We recently learned about how anti-immigration Internet commenters in Sweden were tracked down and persecuted. As journalist Pamela Geller wrote:
One of Sweden’s biggest newspapers, Expressen, used criminal hackers to break into Disqus and get the email addresses and identities of commenters online, and to reveal the persons behind the nicknames or anonymous user IDs. The newspaper sent a reporter and a cameraman to one person’s home and asked them about things they had written on different websites. Expressen published the names and photos of some people, which led to at least one person losing his job.
But Sweden’s new law adds another layer of hate-speech prohibition to the social ostracism. As Fria Tider (Free Times) reported (translated electronically from Swedish and then edited for grammar and word usage) in a piece entitled “New Law Makes it Easier to Prosecute Those Who Offend Immigrants or Those in Power,” “The crime of ‘insult’ will be prosecuted — but only for giving offense to immigrants, LGBTQ persons or authorities … [under a] common insult to the public prosecution.” The law has been pushed by Swedish parliamentarian Andreas Norlén, who said, during what Fria Tider described as “an unchallenged debate on the issue in parliament,” “I do not think it takes very many prosecutions before a signal is transmitted in the community that the Internet is not a lawless country — the sheriff is back in town.”
Read the rest here.
By Selwyn Duke
While most people aren’t aware of it, there’s a movement afoot to completely change the way we elect our president — and its success would have serious consequences for our nation’s future.
The plan is a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that would neuter the Electoral College and give the presidency to the winner of the popular vote. Under this agreement, your state would award its electors to the candidate winning the most votes nationally — even if a majority of your state’s residents voted for a different candidate.
Read the rest here.
By Selwyn Duke
If you were wondering where liberals’ world view was going to take them, would you believe it was to the conclusion that racial bias is natural and good? As CBS News reports:
According to a recent study, babies tend to play with others that look more like them.
Researchers from the University of Washington noticed that babies were more willing to share their toys with others who shared their ethnicity.
Well, hey, the other kids had already shared their ethnicity, so the babies were just returning the favor. Really, though, we’ve always known that people, being tribalistic, tend to gravitate toward those who look like themselves (which may explain why liberals often prefer pets to having children). But now it has the imprimatur of science and, apparently, the approval of the left.
By Selwyn Duke
If you thought the “educator” who saw “racist” intent behind offering someone a peanut-butter sandwich was a loon, consider Western Washington University (WWU) president Bruce Shepard. Always on the lookout for ways to improve his institution’s academic integrity, he recently circulated a school-wide questionnaire and asked, “How do we make sure that in future years ‘we are not as white as we are today?’”
By Selwyn Duke
If the Mozilla fiasco made you think that supporting marriage in America was risky, try opposing immigration in Sweden. You may remember the story involving The Journal News in New York, which in 2012 published the names and addresses of two counties’ handgun-permit holders. Now a Swedish newspaper has done the same with some of its anti-immigration citizens. But whereas The Journal News received harsh criticism for its actions, in Sweden it’s the victims being persecuted. Reports journalist Pamela Geller:
One of Sweden’s biggest newspapers, Expressen, used criminal hackers to break into Disqus and get the email addresses and identities of commenters online, and to reveal the persons behind the nicknames or anonymous user IDs. The newspaper sent a reporter and a cameraman to one person’s home and asked them about things they had written on different websites. Expressen published the names and photos of some people, which led to at least one person losing his job.
It’s not surprising that Swedish immigration is controversial. Once a homogenous land with one of the world’s lowest crime rates, waves of Muslim immigration are now transforming Sweden into, according to one United Nations report, what will soon be a Third World country. Frontpage Mag’s Daniel Greenfield reports on this sea change, writing:
Read the rest here.
By Selwyn Duke
If a famine befell us and you couldn’t save everyone, would you withhold the food you had and let every citizen starve rather than endure the inequality of just saving some? If recent history is any guide, certain leftists just might say yes.
A good example of this phenomenon involved a multiple sclerosis patient in Gothenburg, Sweden, who was denied a more effective and expensive medication — even though he was willing to pay for it — because, wrote columnist Walter Williams in 2009, “bureaucrats said it would set a bad precedent and lead to unequal access to medicine.” No wonder Winston Churchill said that socialism’s “inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
And another example just reared its ugly head in Plymouth, Michigan, where the locality’s high school is tearing down newly constructed bleachers in deference to the equality police. MyFoxDetroit.com reports on the issue, writing:
A new set of seating is being torn down outside the Plymouth Wildcats varsity boys' baseball field, not long before the season begins, because the fields for boys' and girls' athletics must be equal.
A group of parents raised money for a raised seating deck by the field, as it was hard to see the games through a chain-link fence. The parents even did the installation themselves, and also paid for a new scoreboard.
So what happened? Some unnamed malcontent lodged a complaint with the feral government, at which point U.S Education Department Office for Civil Rights overlords decreed that the seating must go. Ain’t equality grand?
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