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  • Gandhi Reconsidered: When Paganism Met Progressivism

    Angel vs. Demon By Selwyn Duke

    When an Indian-born man I knew a couple of decades ago expressed an intense dislike for Mohandas Gandhi, I found it a bit surprising. Wasn’t the “Great Soul,” that quintessential 20th-century icon, India’s George Washington?

    That certainly is the narrative created by historians — who, history has taught us, can tell a lie — and works such as Richard Attenborough’s award-winning 1982 film Gandhi. But there is a reason why Indian-born novelist Salman Rushdie responded to that movie by lamenting, “Deification is an Indian disease. Why should Attenborough do it?” And with Gandhi back in the news owing to a newly published biography about him, it’s fitting to examine what that reason might be.

    Any discussion of Gandhi should start with what most characterizes his image: non-violence and respect for all peoples. And the image certainly is a bit different from the reality. Everyone knows, for instance, about how Gandhi advocated non-violence in India’s struggle against the British; what is less well known is that, after the British’s 1906 declaration of war against the Zulus in South Africa, Gandhi encouraged that nation’s Indians to support the military effort, writing, “If the Government only realised what reserve force is being wasted, they would make use of it and give Indians the opportunity of a thorough training for actual warfare.” And while the British weren’t amenable to this — thus, ironically, doing more at that time to ensure Indian pacifism than the drum-beating Gandhi — he was appointed a Sgt. Major in the British army and allowed to lead a stretcher-bearer corps.

    Read the rest here.

  • Illegal Aliens Get More Welfare Benefits Than Citizens

    Greater Mexico By Selwyn Duke

    Whether or not illegal aliens are doing jobs Americans won’t do, they’re certainly getting benefits Americans don’t get. This is the finding of a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) report stating that a whopping 70 percent of illegal-immigrant households with children receive handouts via a government program. The rate for immigrant households with children overall (both legal and illegal) is 57 percent, versus only 39 percent for such native households.

    This puts the lie to open-border advocates’ claim that immigration is a net plus for our nation. While this might have been true prior to the nanny state’s rise, when immigrants had to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, today’s statist, entitlement culture has changed that equation. As pressing one for English and Mexican flags waved in street protests evidence, many today come here not to assimilate but because “America, land of the free” has come to mean free stuff for non-Americans.

    Read the rest here.

  • Socialized Medicine Director Dies After Waiting Nine Months for Operation

    By Selwyn Duke

    It’s a bit like a supermarket manager dying of starvation or a bottled-water distributor dying of thirst: In the U.K., a former National Health Service (NHS) director died because she was forced to wait for medical care — at her own hospital. The Daily Mail reports:

    Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.

    But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery.

    Her devastated husband, Jim, is now demanding answers from Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust — the organisation where his wife had served as a non-executive member of the board of directors.

    He said: "I don't really know why she died. I did not get a reason from the hospital. We all want to know for closure. She got weaker and weaker as she waited and operations were put off."

    Not to be cruel, but the reason is simple.

    It’s called government-run health care.

    Read the rest here.

  • Yes, Violence Can be the Answer

    By Selwyn Duke

    It was the body slam heard around the world.  When some Australian schoolboys decided to videotape themselves bullying 15-year old Casey Heynes, one of them got more than he bargained for.  Casey, who had been pushed around and humiliated for years, responded to a punch in his face and other attempted blows by hoisting his tormentor WWE style and introducing him to the pavement.  The result was a video that went viral in a way the bullies had never imagined and for a reason they certainly had never hoped: Casey has become a hero worldwide.

    That is, a hero to everyone except the “experts.”  Ah, the experts, uncommon people you can rely on for all-too-common senselessness.  As The Sydney Morning Herald writes:

    (more…)

  • Barack Obama’s Paycheck Unfairness Act

    By Selwyn Duke

    If you’re a stay-at-home mom, I don’t think you’ll like a policy that makes it harder for your husband to support your family. Yet Barack Obama is advocating just such a policy — it’s called the “Paycheck Fairness Act” (PFA).

    While pushing the legislation in a radio address this past Saturday, Obama said, “Today, women still earn on average only about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns. That’s a huge discrepancy.” It certainly is, and the implication is that it’s a function of discrimination. But is this true?

    Read the rest here.

  • Obama’s America: Bureaucracy Fines Theater $80,000 for Racism

    By Selwyn Duke

    When you hear that a movie theater was fined $80,000 dollars for discrimination, you might wonder if it refused to hire blacks or promote women. But this wasn’t the case with the Carmike 14 cinema, in Dover, Delaware. What was its Bull Connor moment?

    Its manager asked patrons to refrain from cellphone use during a Tyler Perry movie.

    Seriously.

    The ruling against the theater was made by the Delaware “Human Relations Commission” (HRC) in 2007 and was just overturned by the state’s Supreme Court, but it should serve as a shot across the bow to all of us: Human-rights-commission tyranny has come to America.

    Read the rest here.

  • Review of “Trickle Up Poverty”

    By Selwyn Duke

    As I was listening to Michael Savage’s radio show no more than a year ago, I heard something that might have caused his faithful listeners to scurry for the anti-depressants. (That is, if the host weren’t so steadfast in counseling against their use.) Dejected over his unfair inclusion on a list of individuals banned from travel to Britain, Savage expressed an intention to leave the airwaves in the not-too-distant future. Since then, however, certain events have changed his mind. Not the least of these, I believe, is his desire to fight the good fight against the statist advance under the Obama administration. And the result of this patriotic motivation is his latest book Trickle Up Poverty (TUP).

    While TUP is Dr. Savage’s latest book, it is no more the first than radio is his first career. The many-hatted host — who holds a doctorate in epidemiology and nutritional science — actually spent a good part of his life as a botanical Indiana Jones, traveling the South Pacific in search of plants with medicinal qualities. Considered a pioneer in the field, he wrote 17 books on health and herbal medicine and, upon transitioning to nutrition for the mind, wrote numerous best-sellers on politics and social issues.

    Read the rest here.

  • Wrestling with Morality: Boys vs. Girls on the Mat

    By Selwyn Duke

    Imagine that you’re a young adolescent boy.  Like many your age, you’re shy around girls, perhaps to the point at which even talking to one might make your heart race.  You also like sports, so you go out for your school’s wrestling team.  Then, lo and behold, you’re at a meet, and something hits you like a load of bricks.

    Your opponent is going to be a girl. 

    You’re going to have to grapple with her.  In front of spectators.  Touching—and being touched in—intimate places.

    (more…)

  • Now Marriage Is Above Obama’s Pay Grade, Too

    By Selwyn Duke

    Ever since a campaigning Barack Obama dodged an abortion question by saying it was above his pay grade, Americans have learned that economics, foreign policy, constitutionalism, and voting-rights equity, among other things, are as well. And now marriage has joined that list.

    After the February 23 announcement that Obama had ordered the Justice Department not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, there was no word on whether he was motivated by a belief that matrimony is a state matter. It was mentioned, however, that the President is still “grappling” with his “personal views” on marriage. And Obama has said himself that they continue to “evolve.” No doubt. You Intelligent Design folks may not want to hear it, but politics is one arena in which God may be absent but evolution is absolutely a fact; politicians adapt to their environment like water takes the shape of its container.

    Read the rest here.

  • Journalist in France Convicted for Anti-Muslim Hate Speech

    By Selwyn Duke

    We’ve heard a lot about Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian whose warnings about Muslim influence in his nation place him in the crosshairs of the powers-that-be.  But while the tow-headed modern-day Templar has thus far dodged the hangman on Truth-speech charges, another intrepid defender of Western civilization has not been so lucky.  And we haven’t heard much about him.

    He is French journalist Eric Zemmour, and he was just convicted this week of “inciting racism.”  Writes The New American’s R. Cort Kirkwood:

    (more…)

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