By Selwyn Duke

“Libertarians and conservatives talk a lot about freedom,” writes Jacobin magazine, “but the most important kind of freedom is freedom from domination — and if you take that seriously, you should oppose capitalism.” This article, running Friday and titled “Socialism Is All About Expanding Freedom,” might hardly warrant mention, except that MSN.com saw fit to publicize it on its homepage.

The “freedom” bit is all about a rebranding. One might think that 200 years of abject failure, punctuated with 100 million dead bodies in socialism’s wake, would be enough to bury the misbegotten ideology. Not at all. In fact, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is helping lead its latest reincarnation, with a new book titled It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.

According to historian and sociologist Rainer Zitelmann, Sanders’ new effort reads like Marx and Engels, except that they actually had some positive words about “capitalism” — the senator has not a one.

Sanders “calls for a political revolution in which working people come together,” which, of course, is just a rephrasing of Marx’s “Workers of the world, unite!” He also, Zitelmann informs, demonizes the rich, stoking envy by infusing his book with numerous tales of the wealthy’s opulent lifestyles. Yet he doesn’t mention that they generally made their money by, as late economist Dr. Walter Williams would put it, “serving their fellow man” through the market system.

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

“A pox on both their houses,” we may say, when wishing both sides in a contest could lose. I surely feel this way, too, with the “transgender” vs. feminist debate over men masquerading as female entering women’s sports and private spaces.

Oh, I don’t fence-sit. Not only have I likely written more pieces on preposterous “transgenderism” than most any other commentator, but I even reject the term and coined a more accurate characterization of the phenomenon — the MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status) agenda. Yet I also know this:

While leftists may call that agenda a men’s-rights-movement monster, the foundation for it absolutely was laid by feminists.

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By Selwyn Duke

Gen Z and Millennials may be known for their leftist passions; some may not even be able to answer the question, “What is a woman?” Nonetheless, a majority are taking at least one very “conservative” position:

They say that “women’s rights” have gone too far, according to a recent study.

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

The standard liberal line, smacking of arrogance but also projection, is that conservatives are dark, dorky, and, most significantly, dumb. Yet one somewhat-disheartened liberal has learned through personal experience as a Bill Moyers staffer that the last notion may be dumb itself.

For our younger friends unacquainted with Moyers, know that he’s a now 88-year-old liberal journalist who for decades hosted a series of Public Television shows featuring, ostensibly, the crème de la crème of leftist intellectual elites. Yet writing at Substack under the pseudonym The Ivy Exile, the former Moyers staffer reveals that this was illusion: Their guests were strikingly unintellectual and incoherent, a defect overcome only through high-tech, cut-and-paste editing.

What’s more, as time progressed, the job became harder because finding truly intellectual left-wing guests was like seeking a unicorn.

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

The face masks many Covid ritualists still wear may not filter out viruses too well, but they do stop authorities from filtering out different pathogens: criminals.

So warned New York City mayor Eric Adams recently when, in perhaps the ultimate Captain Obvious moment, he told Big Apple shop owners Monday that they should “not allow people to enter the store without taking off their face mask” — because it makes it impossible for police to identify shoplifters.

Ironically, Adams is the man who not even a year ago went to court to try to perpetuate NYC school mask mandates for children under five years old. This itself is a moral crime because masking children is more dangerous for them than the coronavirus ever was, as ex-child-mask advocate and CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen learned after masking caused her young son developmental problems.

What type of developmental problems cause prominent politicians and medical figures to apprehend the obvious only years too late has not been reported. 

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

Fevered and fearful, or perhaps fearsome, media claimed that Daily Wire podcast host Michael Knowles said in a CPAC speech that “transgender” people should be “eradicated.” While he made no such remark, there’s not even the slightest possibility such a quasi-genocide could occur, for a simple reason:

You can’t eradicate people who don’t exist.

Oh, “transgenderism,” which is a political and social movement, certainly exists.

What should be called sexual identity disorder also exists.

And people masquerading as the opposite sex exist.

But no one is “transgender” because humans don’t have “gender” (words do) but the quality called “sex” — and you can’t transition from one sex to the other.

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

Just click on the player, and my appearance will begin after the host's introduction. I think it went well and was a fruitful discussion. 

"While it has become fashionable to find fault with Western civilization,
a world without the West would not be a pleasant place for anyone
accustomed to peace, prosperity, and personal liberty."

030723SelwynDuke

By Selwyn Duke

“The future is female,” the feminist rallying cry goes. If this is true, the future is “now” in academia, and if academia is any indication, the future is also something else: bleak.

This conclusion could be drawn from a recent article, “In Loco Masculi,” by Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald. In it she reports on a most ironic development: While the university system was created by men and for men, its feminization is now “all but complete.” The problem is that, far from the “gentler” sex’s dominance creating a kinder, gentler, college experience, research shows that female faculty are fostering academic tyranny.

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

My magazine cover story "A World Without the West" has attracted quite a few eyeballs. And here, I discuss it with the man who encouraged me to write the essay, New American editor in chief Gary Benoit.

By Selwyn Duke

My appearance begins at 52:20. 

Note: If you want to fast-forward to my segment, you must right-click on the in-line MP3 player below and then click "Open link in new tab."

Talkback-03-03-2023