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  • Hugo Chavez: Sic Semper Tyrannis

    By Selwyn Duke

    At a former workplace many years ago, I learned that a
    certain fellow was cheating the business out of rental fees. So I confronted
    him, but he showed no contrition. Instead he replied, “I deserve it [the extra
    proceeds].” In case you haven’t guessed, he was a devout leftist.

    This story is brought to mind by the revelation that the
    late Hugo Chavez had amassed $2 billion during his tenure as president of
    Venezuela. Yes, that’s one of those nine-zeros figures. Now, unfortunately for
    Mr. Heat and Sulfur, the Big Theft technique doesn’t quite work like the Big
    Lie technique: if you steal a sum big enough, people don’t start to believe you
    earned it. But why would this man — a champion of the poor, critic of
    capitalism, and beneficent bestower of charity — steal so much for himself?

    Of course, given that ol’ Hugo should rightfully have ended
    up at the looped at of a rope, perhaps we can’t blame him for having wanted to
    create an exile-facilitating safety net. As to his justification, however, I’d
    bet dollars to doughnuts it was akin to that of my former colleague. His
    “feeling” likely was, “I do so much for the poor, I’ve fed so many people, and
    I’ve given away so much oil that I deserve it.”

    Read the rest here.

  • Raping the Language

    By Selwyn Duke

    Although the creation of the film Idiocracy evidences how
    we’re already halfway to an idiocracy — the work reflects decadent
    modern culture — it’s a good comedic warning about where we’re headed.
    For those too unsophisticated to imbibe such Hollywood fare, know that
    the movie presents a dystopian future America dumbed-down to a
    preposterous degree. One thing portrayed in the film is the degradation
    of language, with, for instance, a doctor character starting an
    interrogative with “why come” instead of “how come.” And it is a perfect
    example of art imitating life.

    Many today will rape the English language, taking pleasure in
    mangling and tangling it, confusing corruption with creativity. What
    follows are examples of such, starting with the relatively innocuous and
    concluding with the more dangerous.

    While journalists are supposed to be word men (those were the days,
    huh?), they often lead the charge toward idiocracy. It’s not just the
    news piece I read a few years back penned in pidgin English — obviously
    by someone to whom English isn’t his first language — but those who try
    to be “cute.” For example, Golf Channel’s Tim Rosaforte recently
    mentioned something that had been revealed and began his sentence with,
    “The big reveal is….” But unless he was about to apprise the audience
    of a large window jamb’s existence,
    “reveal” is a verb, not a noun. The word you’re looking for, Tim, old
    boy, is “revelation.” Likewise, let’s dispense with the new and budding
    practice of writing things such as “The tells are there,” which seems to
    have originated in the poker world. For unless we're talking about a
    raised mound at a Middle Eastern archeological site, “tell” is a verb,
    not a noun. If one wants to “tell” someone about a thing serving as a
    clue, the relevant term is “indication.”

    Read the rest here.

  • The Great Gun Debate: Duke Strikes Back

    By Selwyn Duke

    It’s easy to fall into the trap that ensnares liberals, that
    of thinking we can legislate ourselves to utopia. This occurs to me when pondering
    Mr. Brett Joshpe’s response to my
    last debate piece    . In his response he very graciously states that my
    article contains many reasonable points, yet he also claims it has a
    deficiency: “[I]t never actually proposes measures — whether specific new
    regulations or repeal of specific existing ones — that would improve the
    current system,” he writes.

    Now, I did address remedial measures in an earlier piece,
    ones that would reduce the chances of school shootings without any Second
    Amendment infringement. I’d also suggest having armed guards — or trained,
    armed teachers — on school premises; if we do this to safeguard jewelry stores,
    pawn shops, and armored cars, it’s the least we can do for our children. In the
    same vein, we must eliminate the suicidal and quite moronic “Gun Free Zone”
    signs at schools, which are nothing but an invitation to criminals. Yet all
    this misses the point. For Mr. Joshpe is correct: I didn’t propose specific
    remedial measures in my debate piece. There is, however, an even larger point.

    I didn’t have to.

    (more…)

  • Unmasking the Grim Reaper’s Foot Soldiers

    By Selwyn Duke

    One day back in high school, a very interesting English
    teacher asked our class a moral question: if you could press a button and get a
    million dollars, but a little old man — with no family, friends, or ties of any
    kind — in the backwoods of China would die, would you push that button?

    Approximately a third of the class raised their hands in the
    affirmative.

    This story always comes to mind when I ponder the abortion
    question. The old line of the pro-abortion lobby was that they wanted abortion
    to be “safe, legal, and rare,” implying it’s some sort of necessary evil. Their
    reasoning always was, “Well, we don’t know when human life begins, so whether or
    not to end a pregnancy should be the woman’s choice.” Of course, this position
    was never morally or philosophically sound. After all, if what lies within the
    womb is just an “unviable tissue mass,” why worry about abortion being “rare”? Oh,
    yes, the pro-aborts aren’t sure about the intrauterine being’s status. All
    right, then what they’re essentially saying is that they’ll err on the side of
    recklessness. It may be murder, you know — so we’ll just do it a little bit.

    (more…)

  • Barack Obama: the Liar’s Liar

    Pinnochio2By Selwyn Duke

    If I had to credit Barack Obama with one thing, it would be knowing
    his market. He understands that with an America so dumbed-down, and a
    media so prostrate before him, he can get away with lies previous
    presidents wouldn’t dare contemplate.

    A good example — but far from the worst — is the current battle over
    sequestration, a fancy word for fantasy budget cuts. Obama has been
    engaging in demagoguery, blaming Republicans for these impending “cuts,”
    calling them “brutal” and a “meat cleaver” approach. What is the truth?

    Sequestration was Obama’s idea.

    He proposed it in 2011 as part of the budget deal. Congress then
    passed it with the support of not just Republicans such as John Boehner,
    but also some colleagues named Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. And after
    the GOP-controlled House and Democrat-controlled Senate approved the
    bill, Obama signed this “meat cleaver” approach into law. But it gets
    worse.

    Read the rest here.

  • Liberal CNN Panelists Defend Murderer Dorner

    Snake and AppleBy Selwyn Duke

    “Modern liberalism is moral dysfunction.” When I recently made
    that statement     after citing leftist social-media support for murderer
    Christopher Dorner, some readers thought I’d gone overboard. Surely, the
    twisted rooting for a paranoid killer on Facebook and elsewhere is just the
    rambling of an odd minority; there are radicals “on both sides” and one in
    every bunch, right? But now more evidence has surfaced vindicating my statement
    that such feelings aren’t at all unusual among the passionate left — evidence provided
    courtesy of the “professionals” at CNN.

    (more…)

  • Killer Dorner’s Supporters are Par for the Left’s Course

    Snake and AppleBy Selwyn Duke

    While I was a conservative by age 12, for some time
    thereafter I viewed liberalism as most do, as just another ideology. Sure, it
    was an irritating ideology, but an ideology nonetheless. But then something
    happened. I don’t quite remember if I was 20, 21, or 22, but some experiences
    in my life and much pondering of the issues and the human condition led to an
    insight. It hit me like a bolt of lightning:

    Liberalism is what evil is masquerading as in our time.

    (more…)

  • John McCain’s “Racist” Joke that Wasn’t

    Donkey-ElephantBy Selwyn Duke

    Being a conservative just ain’t
    what it used to be    . Senator John McCain (R-AZ) was recently accused of
    tweeting a “racist” joke — by another Republican.

    The issue arose when McCain, responding to Iranian leader
    Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s remark that he’d like to be sent into space (not, I
    assume, by an Israeli nuke), referenced Iran’s recent successful launch of a
    monkey into space and tweeted, “So Ahmadinejad wants to be the 1st Iranian in
    space — Wasn’t he just there last week?”

    (more…)

  • The Great Gun Debate: Joshpe Responds

    Ar15By Brett Joshpe

    I greatly appreciate the opportunity to debate and respond to Selwyn Duke's piece,
    which makes many very reasonable points. Its biggest deficiency is that
    it never actually proposes measures –whether specific new regulations
    or repeal of specific existing ones — that would improve the current
    system. Instead, Mr. Duke says he would scale back gun laws from 22,000
    to 5,000, two arbitrary numbers, neither of which bear any correlation
    to smart policy.

    Before
    discussing potential policy responses, let me say that Mr. Duke is
    quite right that thousands of gun laws, unsurprisingly, did not
    eliminate crime (I am unaware of anybody who ever suggested that they
    would, or of any law that ever has). I find wholly unpersuasive the
    suggestion that laws — particularly new laws — are unnecessary because
    "bad guys" will not follow them or because they will fail to eliminate a
    problem completely.

    Read the rest here.

  • The Most Interesting Career: Housewife

    Pregnant WomanBy Selwyn Duke

    On the heels of my recent
    article     on women in combat, in which I defend traditionalism, it’s perhaps
    a good time to also take up the cudgels for that bugaboo of women’s studies
    classes: the housewife. Thus do I provide you with the quotation below from
    G.K. Chesterton’s book
    What’s Wrong with the World. He
    wrote:

    (more…)

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