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  • That Presidential Look: The Bad, the Beautiful and Voting-booth Realities

    American Mind By Selwyn Duke

    While there was more than one reason why John McCain was a long shot to win the 2008 general election, a big one was something almost no one talked seriously about: appearance.

    That is to say, when was the last time an old-looking, white-haired, half-bald man won the presidency?

    If you think this piece will be satire or fluff, think again.  It rather will be very serious commentary about a very silly – but painfully real – phenomenon.

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  • When love was a warm toy gun

    By Selwyn Duke

    In a way, commercials can tell you more about how we've changed than history books. The other day I came across the following 1960s TV commercial on YouTube; it's for a toy set called the "Gung Ho Commando Outfit" by Marx. And it's a perfect snapshot of the America that, sadly, no longer exists.

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  • The Naked Truth and Public Nudity in San Francisco

    Sex Symbols-Confusion By Selwyn Duke

    There currently is a debate raging over public nudity in San Francisco.

    It’s not what you think.

    It’s already entirely legal to parade about in the buff on the city’s streets, and no one is discussing the resurrection of indecent-exposure laws. Rather, the question is whether sanitary behavior — namely, posterior protection for public seating — should be required of nudists by law.

    Reports the Los Angeles Times:

    Retired math teacher David Goldman and his husband, Michael Koehn, were sharing a pleasant alfresco moment at a public plaza in the heart of the Castro district this week, passing a slender joint between them (medicinal, of course), as Eric Anderson sunbathed one table over. Naked.

    Resplendent in flip-flops, hoop earrings and a sheen of Coppertone, the out-of work retail manager, 44, had draped a lime-green sarong between flesh and public seating.

    Naturists call such posterior protection “normal etiquette.” But San Franciscans soon may call it the law.

    Read the rest here.

  • How to Restore Freedom of Association and End Government Tyranny

    2052845_low By Selwyn Duke

    Unfortunately, many Americans have become inured to the trampling of freedom of association. You can work your fingers to the bone starting a business, and the government becomes a partner that contributes nothing but extracts much. It not only shares your profits and regulates you to death, but, more to the point here, dictates whom you must serve and the bases on which you may hire and fire people. And woe betide he who doesn’t bow before Leviathan.

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  • Cherokee Nation Revokes Citizenship Rights of Black Slave Descendants

    By Selwyn Duke

    Just a week ago this Monday, the Cherokee Nation’s Supreme Court ruled that the tribe may revoke the citizenship rights of black members. The case stemmed from a 2007 vote in which the Nation amended its constitution to allow the expulsion of the descendants of Cherokee-held slaves; this inspired a lawsuit by the “Freedmen,” as the black Cherokee are known. A district court found in favor of the Freedmen, but the Supreme Court overturned that ruling, arguing that the Cherokee alone have a right to determine who is and is not a fellow tribesman. The result is that these erstwhile Cherokees, approximately 3,000 strong, will now be denied benefits that inclusion in the tribe affords, such as free healthcare and education, and voting and housing rights.

    The Freedman had enjoyed Cherokee citizenship status ever since it was granted through a treaty with the U.S. government after the War Between the States. Previous to this, the Cherokees, along with tribes such as the Choctaw and Creeks, kept thousands of African slaves (additionally, some Indians allied themselves with the Confederacy during the war).

    While these facts aren’t generally found in school textbooks, they should surprise no one. Slavery was once ubiquitous throughout the world, and North America’s indigenous people were no exception. For their embrace of the institution predated the white settlers’ arrival; moreover, this event presented new slaveholding opportunities: Some Indians made slaves of Europeans as well as Africans. 

    Read the rest here.

  • Statists Want to Force Priests to Reveal Confessions

    By Selwyn Duke

    First there were efforts to compel Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. Now statists in some nations want to force priests to violate the confidentiality of confession for, ostensibly, the purpose of uncovering sexual abuse. Adam Shaw at American Thinker provides some background and then explains the recent proposals, writing:

    [O]ne of the most important aspects of confession is what is known as the seal of confession. The seal means that the priest who hears confessions is bound by church law on pain of both mortal sin and latae sententiae excommunication (a type of excommunication that can be removed only by the Holy See) not to reveal by word or action any of your confession. This basically means that any priest revealing any part of any confession is essentially committing spiritual hara-kari [sic].

    …The seal of confession is something that has been attacked in many ways for centuries, from monarchs claiming it to be a cover for treason to communists claiming it can be a cover for spies to the modern-day trend of trying to blame it for the spread of child abuse within the Church. In Australia, parts of mainland Europe and most recently in Ireland, there have been strong moves to pass laws that would force priests to reveal confessions they may have heard from accused sex abusers.

    While a sincere person certainly could believe that some secrets are so dark that light must be shone upon them, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the proposed laws are motivated by anti-Christian bias. After all, therapists and attorneys also maintain confidentiality — even after hearing the confession of crimes — in their cases with their clients. So why is the priest-penitent relationship the only one targeted?

    Read the rest here.

  • New American Cover Story: Multiculturalism

    By Selwyn Duke

    It is 1991, and Yugoslavia, born of the ashes of WWI, is starting to break up. It is a violent affair that will be long, painful, bloody, and complex. Numerous wars in the multi-ethnic region will be fought, with Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia declaring independence from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia and, in turn, Serb minorities seeking independence from the last two regions. Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians (virtually all Muslim), and Albanians (largely Muslim) will battle Serbs. Croats and Bosnians will unite to battle them — then fight each other as well — then unite again; and Albanians will take up the sword against Macedonians. Muslims will burn churches, and minority populations will be purged from many of these regions. They are the first conflicts since WWII to be formerly deemed genocidal, and these wars will introduce English-speakers to a new term: ethnic cleansing.

    None of this was any surprise. Ethnic and cultural ties ultimately trump citizenship status just as family ties do. This is why East and West Germany were reunited two decades ago: Their peoples were both German and shared the same culture, making their separation artificial and, therefore, temporary. Yet artificial unity tends to be no less temporary; it teaches us that, sometimes, the sum of the parts can be greater than the whole. And while Yugoslavia may be the current poster boy for this phenomenon, many other states are similarly diverse and, to varying degrees, struggle with ethnic/sectarian turmoil. Some, such as Iraq and Rwanda, are still making history; others, such as the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, are history. And then there are yet other nations. These are not places conceived in the ashes of war or the minds of colonial masters, but lands, such as the United States, Britain, and France, in which unprecedented immigration is creating a situation described by another term born of that tumultuous part of southeastern Europe: balkanization.

    For most of man’s history, the norm was to keep foreign elements out of your land. When a people couldn’t, it often meant their conquest and subjugation — if not subsumption, as happened to the Ainus on the Japanese islands. Things have changed in modern times, however; the practice of inviting foreigners to your shores, known as immigration, has become a Western norm. But man’s nature doesn’t change. Thus, invitations cannot prevent the clash of civilizations that will inevitably result when a flood of new arrivals overwhelms a society’s ability to acculturate them.

    Read the rest here.

  • Mars Attacks: Scientists Say Aliens May Destroy Mankind Over Global Warming

    By Selwyn Duke

    Three years after the release of the remake The Day the Earth Stood Still, a team of American researchers has made the film’s theme a scientific theory: They are suggesting that an alien race might destroy man to stop our release of greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming.

    Writes Fox News:

    The thought-provoking scenario is one of many envisaged in a joint study by Penn State and the NASA Planetary Science Division, entitled "Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis."

    It divides projected close encounters into "neutral," those that cause mankind "unintentional harm" and, more worryingly, those in which aliens do us "intentional harm."

    While the idea of meeting our end at the green hands of anti-CO2 aliens may be more laugh-provoking than thought-provoking, another scenario in the harmful category is only slightly less amusing. Writes The Guardian, “They [the extraterrestrials] might invite humanity to join the 'Galactic Club' only for the entry requirements to be too bureaucratic and tedious for humans to bother with.”

    Call this the Barack Obama Scenario.

    Read the rest here.

  • Only National Collapse Will End America’s Spending Problem

    By Selwyn Duke

    While many are complaining about the recent debt-ceiling deal, is it really the issue? Sure, statists say that the Republicans steered us toward crisis with their initial unwillingness to compromise, while traditionalists complain that the GOP folded and “let us down again.” Our problems, however, lie not in our politicians but in ourselves.

    Just so you know, my solution to our spending woes would be to once again limit the central government to only that which our Constitution dictates it may do, which would cause its budget to immediately shrink by at least two-thirds — and probably far more. Of course, this would involve eliminating bureaucracies such as the Department of Education, Environmental Protection Agency, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and programs such as Social Security and federally provided food stamps. There would be nothing to fear, either, as there is much duplication here; for example, states have their own environmental and education agencies and other bureaucracies/programs that render the feds’ corresponding ones redundant. And why are we paying for two different levels of government to do the same thing? As for third-rail program Social Security, it could be devolved to the states, whose residents could then decide what its future would be.

    Oh, this is unrealistic and will never happen, you say?

    You’re right.

    And it was just as unrealistic to think that Republicans, who control only one-half of one-third of the government — and very little of the media, which shapes public opinion — would deliver a Tea Party plan in a spending-party culture.

    Read the rest here.

  • President Downgrade

    By Selwyn Duke

    When Barack Obama promised change that would transform America, most never suspected that he would make history by presiding over the nation’s first-ever credit downgrade.  But, well, yes – he can.

    And he did.

    Of course, the blame cannot be laid entirely at Obama’s feet.  Since Congress controls the purse strings, it allocates the money (the president does have a veto pen, however).  And, if in light of this we can still say that a president “spends,” for two terms Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, spent like a drunken sailor. 

    Yet the reality is that Obama has spent like three drunken sailors and a tipsy cabin boy.  And this isn’t just rhetoric.  According to a Weekly Standard piece featured at the very liberal NPR’s website, deficit spending under Obama is three and one half times what it was under Bush, as he has signed budget increases amounting to a whopping one trillion a year more in deficit spending.   So the reality is that, in a great measure, the president owns our economic woes. 


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