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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. 


    (more…)

  • “Why Has ‘Capitalism’ Failed?”

    Financial Crisis By Selwyn Duke

    While discussing socialism on a talk show recently, I was confronted with the question: If “capitalism” is so great, why has it failed? Of course, ever since our financial crisis hit, this query has become all too common.

    Now, after informing the host that I avoid the word “capitalism” — as it was originated by a communist — and instead prefer “Natural Economy,” I stated the obvious: Blaming our problems on the Natural Economy is like blaming airplane crashes on auto design. After all, there is a reason why Rogers Holdings CEO Jim Rogers said in 2008 that the United States was now “more communist than China.” With thousands of laws, regulations, and mandates and a multitude of bureaucracies that stifle the private sector, our system can hardly be called a Natural Economy. But more on that later. This issue is better illuminated by examining a truth hiding in plain sight.

    I have a little exercise for those who find the siren of socialism suddenly seductive.

    Read the rest here.

  • The Myth of White Privilege

    By Selwyn Duke

    Something must be wrong. My finances are in shambles; mainstream newspapers won’t publish my pieces; and, no matter how much I try to convince Fox News that they need male eye candy as well, they just won’t give me a show. Then I gaze into the mirror at my alabaster complexion and say “What’s wrong with this picture? I’ll have to address this at the next White People’s Meeting.”

    Of course, it isn’t really true that all we Caucasians get together in a big conference hall somewhere and, rubbing our hands together with devilish glee, conspire as to how we’re gonna get ourselves some ‘a that there white privilege. Yet you wouldn’t know it listening to egghead academics, media mouths and uncivil-rights agitators.

    (more…)

  • Defend It Like Beckham: Soccer Star Condemned for Having Too Many Children

    By Selwyn Duke

    Adorning an article in the Guardian is a picture you might think represented a prototypical family: a handsome couple standing behind three healthy, well-grown children. But according to the British paper, the parents — soccer star David Beckham and his wife, Victoria — are to be condemned. The problem is that, with the birth of a fourth child, the Beckhams have become “bad role models and environmentally irresponsible,” writes Guardian scribbler Tracy McVeigh.

    In reality, though, the irresponsibility lies with McVeigh.

    It’s hard to write an 850-word piece in which virtually every sentence serves to deceive, but McVeigh might have birthed just such an illegitimate bit of childishness. She quotes “campaigners,” environmentalists, a Green MP, and others who all bleat the same message: The sky is falling due to overpopulation. And we’ll all end up languishing in a Soylent Green sewer of endless humanity unless, as zoologist David Attenborough says, we eliminate the “absurd taboo” against discussing family size.

    Okay, let’s discuss it.

    Attenborough is right: There is a population problem in the world.

    It is that birthrates have been collapsing for decades, a phenomenon that has grave implications for society.

    Read the rest here.

  • Researchers Concerned About Creation of Human/Animal Hybrid “Monsters”

    By Selwyn Duke

    When we hear about the implantation of human genes in animals, it may conjure up images right out of the story The Island of Dr. Moreau. Of course, present-day experiments of this kind take a more modest form, such as the Chinese’s introduction of human stem cells into goat fetuses or U.S. scientists’ proposal to create a mouse infused with human brain cells. Yet the possibility that H.G. Wells’ nightmare could one day be made reality is troubling some researchers, prompting them to ask for new regulations governing the humanization of animals. Writes Reuters:

    Scientific experiments that insert human genes or cells into animals need new rules to ensure they are ethically acceptable and do not lead to the creation of "monsters," a group of leading British researchers [from Britain's Academy of Medical Sciences] said on Friday…. Extreme scenarios, such as putting brain cells into primates to create talking apes, may remain science fiction, but researchers around the world are constantly pushing boundaries.

    The academy also conducted a poll showing that the general public shares their concerns. As Reuters reports, “There were serious concerns voiced [by the respondents] about experiments involving the brain, the potential fertilization of human eggs or sperm in an animal, and giving animals human characteristics such as facial features or speech.”

    Read the rest here.

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