By Selwyn Duke
Football player Ray Rice’s video-captured February attack on his then-fiancée has once again brought domestic violence into the public’s consciousness.
Or has it?
Critics would say that while it has placed a spotlight on violence against women, that isn’t at all synonymous with “domestic violence.”
Because studies show that most domestic violence may actually be violence against men.
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By Selwyn Duke
"Is that all you got, George?” “You punch like a sissy,” Muhammad Ali said, taunting George Foreman during their 1974 heavyweight title fight. Little did anyone know, however, that Ali’s words were stinging women like a bee, making violence against them more likely. That’s a theory, anyway, disgorged by football commentator James Brown on CBS’ 9/11 pre-game show while addressing the Ray Rice domestic violence incident.
As most now know, Rice was seen on a February 15 Atlantic City hotel surveillance video striking his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer, knocking her unconscious. These actions, not surprisingly, earned him an indefinite suspension by the National Football League.
They’ve also brought to light the indefinite suspension of common sense in America. And perhaps the most ridiculous reaction to the Rice incident was Brown’s aforementioned remedy, which, he said, involves “an ongoing, comprehensive education of men about what healthy, respectful manhood is all about.” He then continued, “Our language is important. For instance, when a guy says, ‘You throw the ball like a girl,’ or, ‘you're a little sissy,’ it reflects an attitude that devalues women. And attitudes will eventually manifest in some fashion.”
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By Selwyn Duke
“Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers,” said then-Minnesota governor and ex-professional wrestler Jesse Ventura in 1999. It’s a common idea. Atheism’s point man Richard Dawkins has called even disorganized religion a crutch, author Robert Heinlein expressed this secular tenet through one of his characters, and heavy metal band Iced Earth screamed the thought in a song. In fact, the notion is expressed so much, it could occur to one that the idea religion is a crutch is a crutch.
Now, you could think the world’s Dawkinses should be taken just as seriously as the late Robin Williams was when, expressing a sentiment Iced Earth might agree with, he quipped, “Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.” But since the issue here is no laughing matter, let us start with a very serious acknowledgment about religion being a crutch: It certainly can be.
Not true, however, is what the religion-as-crutch theory invariably implies and is commonly taken to mean: Since faith’s supposed crutch status would indicate it is embraced out of convenience, religion must be false and destructive and God must not exist. Playwright Tom Stoppard could be correct in saying, “Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God,” but I doubt this would make unbelievers question the reality of atheism. A young child may instinctively use his father as a crutch — deriving a feeling of security and stability from him — but that is not why he believes his father exists; it just gives him another good reason to be happy his father does. Nothing is a truer crutch than an actual crutch, and it not only exists but is the most necessary thing when needed temporarily to buttress a broken bone. And the same can be said of faith, that it is needed for a broken race and is required only temporarily, during that transitional phase between birth and death.
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By Selwyn Duke
If I pointed out that involvement in every major 20th-century conflict the US was part of occurred on liberals’ watch, it might not be entirely fair. True, there was WWI under Wilson, WWII under FDR, Korea under Truman, and Vietnam under Kennedy and Johnson. But the second Great War needed to be fought, four conflicts aren’t exactly a scientific sample, and some could contend that these men were, to some extent, victims of timing and circumstance. It also should be said that with modernity’s characteristic flaw of relativism causing ever shifting social visions, yesterday’s liberals aren’t like today’s. As to this, some may mention that it’s a tad tendentious to limit the conflict timeframe to the 20th century, with George W. Bush getting us into Iraq and Afghanistan. But like his father, Bush was always a traditional statist, an old-line liberal in the mold of JFK. Moreover, our Middle East adventures weren’t quite like Korea or Vietnam: the wars were won fast. The problem was winning the peace.
But, fair enough, the historical record itself isn’t sufficient to indict liberals as warmongers. No matter, though, because I don’t claim liberals are warmongers. They are ignorance and naïveté mongers.
By Selwyn Duke
We’re supposed to be living in the era of consolidation of power. There’s the European Union and the euro, NAFTA and ambitions for a North American Union, and former Israeli president Shimon Peres even floated the idea of a UN-style Organization of United Religions. And isn’t this the tide of history? Just as the Brythons, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Normans, and others all became amalgamated into the “English,” just as the same happened in other parts of Europe with different “barbarian” tribes, doesn’t everything move toward oneness?
That’s the theory. The reality today is a bit different: Secession is all the rage. There are the Basques and Catalonians in Spain, the Kurds in the Middle East, Belgium’s Flanders region, Venice and other areas in Italy, and no small number of U.S. counties want to separate from their states. All talk? Right now, yes. But a lot of this talk wasn’t heard a decade ago, and the rest of it has gotten noticeably louder. And then there’s Scotland. It’s perilously close to turning talk into action with a referendum on independence next Thursday and a recent poll showing the “yes” contingent ahead — for the first time ever. What’s happening here in our Kumbaya world?
Human nature is happening.
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By Selwyn Duke
With a southern border so unguarded that even a federal bulletin has warned that it may be the source of an imminent terrorist attack, there is strong suspicion that another threat has crossed it: disease.
News stories have appeared recently about a strange outbreak across the Midwest of Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), which is related to the common cold but causes severe respiratory illness. The disease has sent a multitude of children to the hospital, with some requiring treatment in intensive-care units. And while the Center for Disease Control (CDC) is blaming the outbreak on “seasonal allergies” and the school year’s start, many critics are asking an obvious question: Is it a coincidence that this outbreak occurred right after the Obama administration allowed tens of thousands of illegal-alien minors to cross our border and then shipped them all over the United States?
And this thesis seems ever more valid with reports that the federal government has coerced schools into accepting possibly sick illegal-alien children. Writes the Daily Caller’s Eric Owens, “The Obama administration has not subjected a large number of these children to proper medical screening processes. Instead, the federal government has sent the unaccompanied minors to various U.S. locations to live with relatives or, in some cases, to live as foster wards. The children then enroll in local, taxpayer-funded public schools with no questions asked — by law.” Professor of medicine at New York University’s Langone Medical Center Dr. Marc Siegel warned about this as far back as July, writing in Slate, “As many as 50,000 children, mostly from Central American countries … are not being detained for the purpose of identifying illness, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement relying on self-report of symptoms, and many have already been sent to other states, where disease can spread.”
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By Selwyn Duke
Imagine you’re an 11-year-old working-class girl. Like so many children in this troubled world, maybe you don’t get the attention you crave at home. Or perhaps you’re just a normal early adolescent yearning to feel like an adult. So along comes a boy, older than you are but still a lad, who takes an interest in you. He makes romantic overtures, showering you with gifts and sweet-talking you. You’re flattered by his attention and intrigued by his exoticism; he’s a Muslim, a “foreigner” — just the kind of status the multiculturalism you’ve imbibed tells you is superior. And the boy uses manipulation. “What, you don’t like Pakistanis?” he might say. “You’re not a racist, are you? Is it that your parents wouldn’t let you date a Muslim? Aren’t you grown up enough to make your own decisions?”
And you do decide — to make him your “boyfriend.” You bond with him; you feel love for him. But then something happens: He introduces you to drugs and alcohol. He then pressures you into having relations with his family. His friends come next. And then, as the descent continues and the mask comes off fully, you’re being raped and pimped out for money, sometimes abused, tortured, and terrified into submission. And the threats are substantial. You may be told that, should you talk, your mother will be raped. Or your brother killed. Or your house burned down.
Groomed to Doomed
By Selwyn Duke
If you thought discriminating against women could get you in trouble today, try treating them equally.
The Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) is learning this the hard way. The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit in late July to end the PSP’s practice of requiring that all state-police applicants, be they male or female, pass the same exact physical fitness test to be admitted for cadet training. Now it has been announced that the PSP will challenge the federal lawsuit, with State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan saying that dumbing down the standards “would be insulting to those men and women who already strove to achieve those standards…. We should not be bullied into lowering our standards for any applicants.”
The DOJ’s problem, it appears, with the PSP’s equality of opportunity is that it doesn’t create equality of outcome, as female applicants fail the physical test at higher rates than do their male counterparts. This inspired the Obama administration to launch an investigation of the PSP in 2009 and then file its lawsuit on July 29 of this year. CNSNews.com’s Susan Jones provided more detail at the time, writing:
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By Selwyn Duke
“You must never [again] refer to Asian men,” and your “awareness of ethnic issues” needs to be raised. This chastisement was given to a UK Home Office researcher who, apparently, was thought guilty of “racism.” Her offense?
She blew the whistle on a pedophilia ring in the English town of Rotherham.
One in which the girl victims were white — and the abusers Muslim Pakistanis.
Read the rest here .
By Selwyn Duke
“Same sex marriage leads away from polygamy, not for it,” said the Brookings Institution’s Jonathan Rauch in 2012. Joining him was the Economist, which wrote just last year that “gay marriage” to polygamy was “A not-so-slippery slope.” But more and more it seems that these and other crystal-ball watchers have slipped on their own prognostication.
Headline Aug. 28, 2014: “Federal Judge Opens Door Further to Group Marriage.” That’s from Breitbart’s Austin Ruse, who reports:
The polygamist reality TV stars of "Sister Wives" can sleep easy tonight as a Federal Judge in Utah has struck down at least part of the State's ban on polygamy.
The Utah ban made it illegal and punishable by up to five years in prison for anyone to cohabit with someone they are not legally married to. This part of the law was struck down by Federal Judge Clark Waddoups last December. At the time, the Judge let stand the part of the statute that makes it illegal to have more than one marriage license.
In his latest ruling this week, the Judge found that Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman had violated the constitutional rights of the Brown family [of the “Sister Wives” show] when he investigated them for bigamy.
Of course, this opening of a door to polygamy was entirely predictable and had been predicted, by me and many others. How could anyone know? Because ideas have consequences, arguments accepted get recycled, and precedents are called precedents because they precede.
Read the rest here.
