By Selwyn Duke

It’s almost 20 years ago now that I wrote an essay, which raised some eyebrows and was even reprinted, titled “How We Will Lose Our Freedom of Speech.” What it predicts hasn’t yet come to pass, but we are well down the iron-muzzle rabbit hole. Good examples are a climate alarmist and a Harvard “dishonesty researcher” who are using process-is-punishment lawfare to silence critics. Now there’s another tongue-stilling effort on this front, too:

Letitia James, the notorious New York attorney general who tag-teamed with a judge to try to pummel President Trump, is destroying a conservative website.

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By Selwyn Duke

Whether you consider Satan sinister spirit or symbol, he’s assuredly in style. A good example is the 2016-2021 series Lucifer; a more recent one is a concert put on by aging pop star Madonna, an event including a reportedly blasphemous use of a prayer hymn that narrates Jesus’s crucifixion.

Of course, many will dismiss this as being more marketing than malevolence. But then there’s this:

There’s also an allegation that many of entertainment’s biggest stars are satanists.

Does this matter, that what symbolizes pure evil in Western tradition is being normalized as a source of pleasure? Is it not, some may wonder, like legitimizing Nazism and making it chic?

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By Selwyn Duke

Playing on the politics of fear, a major Democratic and media talking point has been that you’d better not vote for President Trump in November because he’s “a threat to democracy.” But not so fast, says a scion of a famed Democratic family: It is Joe Biden, not Trump, who truly threatens our Republic.

This is mainly because, says now-Independent White House contender Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Biden is the first American president to target and censor political opponents.

Kennedy ought to know, too — he’s been one of Biden’s targets.

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By Selwyn Duke

We’ve all heard the number: “There are 11 million illegal aliens in the United States.” Yet this figure isn’t just illusory, says an ex-U.S. Border Patrol agent — it’s laughable.

In fact, even the 22.1 million illegals a 2018 MIT study estimated were squatting in our country may be a low-end number, according to Mark A. Hewitt. After all, with approximately one million apprehensions and two million “GOT AWAYS” yearly, he calculates that there’ve been a whopping 40 to 60 million got aways alone since his time entering the USBP, in 1995.

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By Selwyn Duke

Liberalism, it is claimed, is associated with tolerance. But you wouldn’t know it from a new study finding that of the 10 states with the most religious-discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), eight gave their electoral votes to Joe Biden in 2020.

Not surprisingly, there’s a secularism connection, too: Of the 15 states with the most religious discrimination complaints, 11 are among the 15 most atheistic states. A prime example is Maine, which ranks one in religious-discrimination complaints and two in non-religious-population percentage.

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By Selwyn Duke

We discussed illegal migration and weird science. I was firing on all cylinders. 

By Selwyn Duke

A person obsessed with gambling may focus on it so much, and squander so much money, that his family’s needs remain unmet. Such is the result of obsession — including when that obsession is wokeness.

Some may wonder if this explains why San Francisco, which devotes time and money promoting political correctness, isn’t fulfilling basic government responsibilities — such as ensuring that billions of gallons of sewage and other waste don’t end up in its bay. This not only is happening, but has now resulted in the Golden Gate City being sued by an environmental watchdog organization.

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By Selwyn Duke

A shocking three-quarters or more of research studies in many fields are bunk, reported the Economist in 2013, illustrating the troubling fact that scientific fraud is far worse than most imagine. Thus is it also troubling that, if a Harvard dishonesty researcher’s actions are any guide, criticizing and ferreting out scientific fraud could become more difficult.

At issue is the work of one Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School. The academic fraud case against Professor Gino appears airtight, but that hasn’t stopped her from suing critics for defamation. The issue?

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By Selwyn Duke

A good way to frame the problem with “relying on experts” is to consider that a good number of Supreme Court opinions are 5-4. So all these people are supposedly juridical “experts,” but end up on opposite sides of many legal questions.

Another way of saying this is that roughly half of them are often wrong.

This should perhaps be considered by those bemoaning, in recent articles, how Americans’ trust in experts is at near-historic lows. For expertise may often be a necessary condition for good policy — but it's not a sufficient condition. More on that later.

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By Selwyn Duke

To modern ears, using the term “pagan” pejoratively may smack of a supposed medieval intolerance, conjuring up images of a robed monk praying in candlelight or, maybe, of a Bible-thumping 19th-century missionary. In fact, pagan status may be considered hip and edgy today, embraced by people who rarely if ever know that the ancient pagans never did or would’ve called themselves “pagans” (the word derives from a Latin term meaning, in part, “incompetent soldier”). But fashions often don’t collide with facts.

And here’s a fact, warn critics: The West has been regressing to paganism, with leftists leading the charge. It may seem like mere triviality, too, but it actually can end civilization.

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