This is such a powerful piece about where we were with free speech and language just a few decades ago. Thank you Bari for putting this in perspective. As you have said - we are living in cowardly times - courage is the remedy. Thank you for being brave.
When you can’t criticize ideas this is what you get. The religious right pushed me away from the right in the 80’s. The difference is they were not bound by Marcus’s Repressive Tolerance and would simply get mad.
The Religion of the New Democrat party equates group identity with oppression and cordons off any of those groups from critics. Their religious doctrines (Repressive Tolerance) mandate violence.
"New Democrats" weren't beating cops and crashing through the Capitol on January 6; that was all MAGA and rightists. What religious doctrine compelled them to do that? And what part of Marcus' Repressive Tolerance mandated that Donald Trump order his security to beat and tear-gas people in a park so he could get a photo op in front of a church?
Leftists are absolutely responsible the violence they cause, particular during the Summer of Floyd. But they are hardly alone in using violence as a means to political ends.
We all need to tell them to put down the guns, knives, and lead pipes simply because they didn't get their way on X or Y. The Rushdie attack, January 6, and Seattle/Portland/Minneapolis are the only thing that come from it, and normal Americans should no longer tolerate this kind of political violence.
You’re right that none of us should tolerate violence, and on the right we don’t. Those few who rioted at the capitol and went inside were found and were prosecuted and wound up serving time, and the right supported it. The rioters on the left during 2020-21 were NOT held to account. Leftist groups defended their actions. Kamala Harris and others bailed out the rioters. People who stood in their way were either gunned down, like David Dorn, or were put on trial for murder like Kyle Rittenhouse. The perspectives here are like night and day.
The left has used violence for decades. The right has not. January 6th was a shock because it never happens. And for the record your swipe at Trump re: Lafayette Square was debunked long ago, it is false.
I'd agree with your statement on conservatives being appalled by January 6, except that the MAGA right still insists nothing criminal occurred and all the prosecutions were political. I wish they'd just say, "Yeah, the riots and siege were wrong, wish we hadn't done that, our bad." I'd be happy to forgive the excessiveness of emotion, but find that hard to do when they insist they didn't do anything wrong that day.
I agree completely that the Left was idiotic to support the riots, arsons, personal violence against innocent passersby, and takeover of public streets that characterized the Summer of Floyd. Were I in charge in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, etc., I would have sorted out the legitimate protestors from the criminal element, protected the former, and thrown the latter into jail, and used the National Guard to do it if my cops were too outnumbered. And CHAZ? I would have torn it down the first day. The first job of any government is to protect public safety.
Same with January 6. Were I president that day, I would have quadruped the police presence and also had the National Guard in place. When MAGA protestors arrived, I would have ensured the protection of the shouters and sign-carriers and legal protestors, but arrested everyone who threw a punch, tear-gassed a cop, or tried to breach the gates to enter the building. No sane society should ever allow rioters to rampage its Capitol.
The Kyle Rittenhouse case should have been thrown out at arraignment. That was a political prosecution, not a criminal one, and that it went as far as it did is scandalous.
But I'm a liberal, not a leftist, Woke, or MAGA.
P.S. Sorry, but Lafayette Square was not a hoax; photos and videos prove that law enforcement cleared the park with clubs and gas so Trump could get a photo op. Holding the Bible upside down just gave it comic relief.
Well I guess (especially in light of Biden's railing on "MAGA Republicans" now) it's important to describe the difference between "conservatives" and "MAGA Republicans" because Biden did not, nor do you. Trump got 74 million votes in the last election. So who are you talking about that thinks the Jan 6th prosecutions are unjust and political? I've been a Trump supporter and while I think the prosecutions in many cases have been unfairly harsh (i.e. solitary confinement for long periods for someone with no criminal record, etc.) and that aspect has been political, I really don't know of anyone on the right who has suggested that if we had it to do all over again we'd condone rioting in the capitol.
At the same time there is plenty of video from that event that gets no airplay that shows people walking into the building calmly, staying inside the ropes even, going in unauthorized but not looking to hurt anybody, just protesting. Still wrong, but hardly an insurrection. There is also, as one commenter pointed out, evidence of it being a "false flag" in that a guy like Ray Epps, who looks like an FBI plant who was openly encouraging people to go into the building, is not prosecuted at all. Understand that, as I pointed out earlier, conservatives rioting is not really a thing; the Jan 6th event was novel. Most on the right were horrified and condemn it.
Well said. Also, some say Jan 6th was a false flag to get at Trump and the MAGA movement. Lots of evidence to support this, but you won't hear that on #msm and the #normies have zero clue. Crazy times.
That "some say" January 6 was a false flag doesn't mean it's true . . . because it isn't. Some also say the Earth is flat, but that isn't true either. "Normies" have plenty of clue.
I am stunned by Bari's article. After all, Islam is the religion of peace. Don't pay attention to those wearing suicide vests or ISIS slaughtering, torturing, raping women and children and then burning them alive or the Taliban murdering women who venture outside without a male escort or not wearing the burka.
These are actions of a peaceful religion or so the PC, Woke left tells us and we all know they wouldn't lie. The question we should all be asking is, how come the feminist, left, Democrat Party never addresses this? All we hear out of the left is that "Islam is the religion of peace." Only an uneducated idiot would say that yet Democrats actually believe it and preach it.
Even more puzzling is why would anybody vote Democrat, the party of the dangerously ignorant.
As I am wont to point out, when a non-Muslim characterizes Islam as a "religion of peace" he is deluded, but when a Muslim claims Islam is a religion of peace, oddly he is not lying. He is betraying the fact that Islam has a defective concept of peace. In Semitic languages the consonants are the root of the word: note that salam (peace) and islam (submission) have the same consonants. In the Muslim mind, peace and submission are inextricably linked. The only peace Islam knows is the peace between conqueror and conquered, between master and submissive slave. There are no negotiated peaces in the Islamic conception of foreign affairs, only hudna, pauses or ceasefires which can be abrogated by Muslims whenever it is to their advantage with no moral stain for duplicity (indeed it might even be regarded as immoral to not reopen hostilities at an opportune moment).
That depends what Muslim sect you belong to. Shiite Muslims (Persians) have been killing Sunni Muslims (Arabs) and vice versa for centuries. It continues to this day between Iran (Persia) and the Arab states, most notably Saudi Arabia. Prodded by warmongering neocons like Dick Cheney, fools like George W. Bush wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and shattered tens of thousands of young American lives in the arrogant belief we could end the savagery by turning Iraq into a democracy. We all know how that turned out. I say let Allah decide. If it takes a few more centuries of them killing each other, so be it.
Evidently the Islamic man who killed other Muslim men in Albuquerque was very, very unhappy that his daughter had married a man from a different sect (can't remember whether he was Shiite or Sunni).
It's worth noting that Muslims started killing other Muslims over leadership issues within just a few years of Mohammed's death. And they've never stopped.
The second I saw about the murders in Albuquerque, i was questioning if it was really the wire supremacist leftists were jumping at blaming. I was not shocked at all to find out the real perpetrator.
My brother-in-law is a Middle Expert who has been called by news agency as an expert. He told me years ago that the Iranian fanatics weren't building an atom bomb to terrorize the west but to kill Sunnis.
The Islamic countries have been ruled by cruel bloody dictators for thousands of years. Islam is a fairly new religion but it was born in a culture of cruelty where absolute rulers stayed in power the same way Communist regimes stay in power through fear generate by murder and torture.
And the direction the Democrat regime is headed. They have the fear thing worked out to an art, and are beginning with the torture thing-emotional torture to start.
DNY, thank you for the engaging response. And the woke crowd in America is using the same tactics to create submissive followers who obey the commands of violent ideological leaders. The words are violence crowd are the greatest threat to democratic ideals because they encourage physical violence. The best thing that could happen to this country is for California to turn half red not in blood but in Republican.
In Mid-Eastern affairs, TRIBALISM is the very basic culture - much more than Islam. Hence the wars between Shia and Sunna.
Anyone who is not a member of our tribe is an enemy of our tribe - unless he is a member of a tribe with which we have a [temporary] alliance; in that case he is only a potential enemy, and we don't try to kill him.
Example: The Qur'an states explicitely the Allah designated the holy land to the Children of Israel. ALL learned Arabs [and all other Muslims] who actually read the Qur'an know this. The Qur'an is ignored when it goes against tribalism.
The thing that ties the Left and Islam together is hatred of Israel. And that hatred is so compelling that the Left carefully looks the other way when Muslims engage in practices that are misogynistic, homophobic, and theocratic. Likewise, Islamic leaders are careful to try to keep the most libertine behaviors of the Left out of sight of their populations. The alliance against Israel is too important to allow little things like clashing social philosophies to get in the way of it.
Celia, you’re forgetting the Abraham Accords Trump negotiated between the Arab (Sunni) states of UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco and Israel that decoupled the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from moving toward normalizing relations between them. Trump even had Saudi Arabia leaning in that direction but then we elected an imbecile that declared them a parish state. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia and Israel share a common foe in Iran. With Biden in office and Obama retreads running our foreign policy, any further overtures at formally normalizing relations will be met with the Saudi version of “let’s go Brandon”.
I'm not sure what to think of the Abraham Accords. I was impressed that Trump managed to negotiate them. But I am not convinced that the Islamic nations who signed on were doing anything except hiding behind a pretense of peace.
I visited Dubai recently... on a direct flight from Tel Aviv, and spoke to Emiratis who see the reality of "Palestine" and their leaders... many hearts and minds have been changed... for the better...
It is a strategic alliance of necessity that will increase revenue and stability of Arab States but there is no evidence it is motivated by a the populations becoming less anti-semitic. Most Arab states are autocracies governed by elites that have little in common with the hoi polloi. On the other hand...sometimes capitalist peace is a crucial stepping stone to other types of peace. Time will tell.
Actually, he pushed back on China and funded both our National Parks and HBCUs at unprecedented levels. In spite of leaning left, I was glad about these efforts.
There is more than that. They also both hate Christianity. The original Left in France committed genocide in the Vendee to put down an uprising of pious Roman Catholics against the new regime which destroyed relics of saints in the name of "Reason". The Bolsheviks created more martyrs for the Holy Orthodox Church than all the pagan Roman and Persian emperors combined.
The persecution may be softer and less bloody now here in America, but what is the point of seeking to require Roman Catholic nuns to pay for contraception and hounding pious Christian bakers and wedding photographers to force them to provide services they do not want to provide? Civil rights? Give me a break, it's to deny them the right to live according to their Christian faith. Both the Left and Muslims are following the dictum "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
But why does the Left hate Israel? I think it is because Israel is an ally of the United States and the Left hates the United States. For the same reason they embrace enemies of the United States, like Iran, Cuba and Nicaragua.
The Left hates Jews. Hating Israel is just the politically correct version of antisemitism.
The Jews have survived everything the rest of the world has thrown at them. For thousands of years. Maybe you can come up with a secular explanation for that. Personally, I'm going to stick with the religious explanation.
And yet the Left is becoming more and more antisemitic.
I can't account for the fact that some people manage to find common cause with people who are, in all reality, their enemies. A lot of LDS people are Republicans, despite the fact that their fellow Republicans--Evangelical Christians in particular--*despise* them.
The Left hates anything that makes a claim to loyalty independent of the state. The Jews on the Left by and large are Jewish only by ancestry, rather than by faith, and find the anti-Christianity of the Left attractive. Orthodox Jews tend to be center-right or flatly right-wing.
Tim - Classical Liberalism has been good to Jews in this country (the US) but the new left is a far different entity. I personally don't understand anti-semitism. I just really don't get it. But our society is changing and hopefully more people will start to see that old alliances aren't necessarily working for them any more.
Their Judaism is secondary to their leftist. An jnteresting question to pose is where does belief in God fit in for those Jews who seem to put their politics first. Exactly how do they define, "religion?" I would love to see Bari address these issues in the future. I raise these questions often with friends and it makes for a very interesting conversation.
Because the Jewish people, by and large, are successful and hard working. This sets them up as “the oppressor” class and the Palestinians as the “oppressed”.
Frog, a big part of this is that Israel by necessity must view itself as a sovereign nation. About half of the US supports the sovereignty of the US while millions of others view themselves as global citizens. I view much of the rest of the so called free world as in the global camp. Look at howctge UN, WHO ETC operate and imagine what would happen to an Israel or the US constitution if they if a world body had the right to determine how Israel or
The US should act or what rules they should be subject to.
Poor little Israel, it's so small, yet attracts soooo much attention from the brain dead. Luckily, Israel doesn't give a damn that the Left and Islamists hate it. It's not going anywhere no matter who bitches and moans "Ohhhh, the Zionists, I hate Zionists and I hate Israel but oh, no, I love the Jews, I just hate those Zionists," rinse and repeat.
I'm one of the many leftwing Democrats who is nauseated by the woke and the PC, and who are also appalled by the treatment of women in a lot of muslim countries. I'm equally disgusted by the GOP SCOTUS justices, and GOP politicians around the country for taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies. I certainly won't be voting for most members of a party that tried to deprive us of our democracy. (I would happily vote for my GOP governor, Charlie Baker, if only he'd run again, and if I could vote for Liz Cheney, I certainly would, but I'm not registered in Wyoming.)
I don't know what party Bari belongs to, but I'm here because I appreciate her perspective.
Appreciate the POV. To my eye, is is a mischaracterization to refer to SCOTUS justices as "GOP." The three to whom you refer are better characterized as "originalists" - they believe the Constitution should be interpreted as written and as intended at the time. Me, too. Why does it apply, hundreds of years after it was written? Because human nature does not change. If you want to change the Constitution, there are methods available.
Although you did not say it explicitly, many mischaracterize the overturning of Roe. It was IMHO not the "taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies." It was the correction of the Court's 1973 attempt to legislate from the bench. The Court does NOT make laws, but Roe was just that - even prescribing by trimester whether abortion was allowed. That is not their role; they knew it then, and they know it now. Overturning Roe simply said that it was not the Court's decision to make; that decision belongs to the People. The elected representatives of that People - "politicians" - in various states are making that decision now. That's the way it is supposed to work. I've always supported available abortion; it's not going away. I think the Fifteen-Week Rule is a decent compromise - and we are going to have to compromise - all of us.
Well said! The Democrat rag NYT headline: "...Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wasn’t All That Fond of Roe v. Wade" You are correct the courts are there for strict interpretation of the law not to make laws.
The next step is to rule Chevron Deference unconstitutional. Congress needs to write explicit rules for the executive, otherwise there will be the same problem of lawmaking outside of the legislative branch. This is precisely what the Constitution says should not happen.
I wouldn't want to end the Chevron Deference. If we did, governing would grind to a halt, because there is no way on Earth that Congress could (or should) micromanage to that degree. Our nation is too big and complex to require Congress pass a law every time a regulation needs to be issued by an agency.
Senators and representatives don't have time to read bills now; they vote blindly most of the time. Throwing the work of every federal agency and regulator on their desks on the notion that Congress must sign off on EVERYTHING? Not remotely possible in a country like ours.
Very well said about all of us needing to compromise. One of the biggest problems in modern politics is the inability to compromise on anything. Lawmakers want to hang onto their jobs, and to do that, they dare not set off their rabid bases (left or right). That turns every lawmaker into a Culture Warrior, rather than an honest broker of what's best for America.
That legislative fear makes life difficult for those of us who just want honest and reasonable solutions to our problems, and to otherwise be left to our own lives. We can't have because lawmakers are in the headlocks of the minority wings of their respective parties, and I resent that.
Agree with Jim. Abortion is an issue on which extremists on either side seem to have no respect for the other’s arguments. I would not outlaw abortion, but extremely restrict it. Most people in this country do not even realize that under Roe our laws regarding abortion had gradually become the most liberal- lax- permissive - whatever word you would use to characterize them in most of the world. Usually we take extra care in our society to protect the most vulnerable among us, yet even though the unborn is clearly the most vulnerable - the pro choice crowd talks only about the rights of the pregnant woman, even when she has conceived willing, even if unintended, through her actions. I would certainly leave early abortion legal even though it morally offends me, and certainly allow it in all cases of tape and incest since those pregnancies were unwilling and often involve extreme trauma for the women involved. Compromise is by definition never perfect for either side, but it can at times be the least divisive alternative.
Your comments are very fair. It is so sad that the pro choice people do not even talk about how horrific abortion is to the unborn baby. And they talk about the view of the women, but most of the prolife movement is made up of women who are fighting for the life of the baby.
Welcome David. We need dissenting voices on this very conservative BBS. I have said most of us are preaching to the choir. Hopefully we can debate instead of hollering at each other. I used to be pro-choice until I saw a sonogram of a friend's fetus. I saw the heartbeat and that was an epiphany for me and I thought that is a human being and to kill it is murder. There is a cavoite to this. I would never tell a woman what to do with her body.
This blog is not conservative. Bari is a self-proclaimed liberal. She is in a gay marriage. Her writing clearly comes from left of center. What she is NOT is a leftist. She is more of a classical liberal: Loves the country, seeks the truth, comes from a different perspective from us conservatives. The far left is her enemy just as much as it is mine. I read her because although I don’t always agree, she does seek truth and writes honestly and gets me out of my echo chamber without bashing me over the head. We used to have a lot of this kind of thing but the far left has been doing its best to quash it for decades. We need more of it.
I agree with you about Bari but from what I see, most of the posters here are conservatives and it seems most are right of center. I don't think I have ever seen a conservative on here that isa fanatic, passionate but not fanatic. Because the preponderance of posters are conservative is why I call it a conservative BBS. there use to be conservative Democrats but I don't think many exist now.
Compared to the radical left, which is running the Democrat Party now, Bari is a conservative. She left the NYT which has become a leftwing rag sheet. If she is liberal as she claims, she is a true liberal in the spirit of John Stuart Mill.
You’re right on all counts. In fact I was originally going to point out that the fact so many conservatives comment on here and make it feel like a conservative blog is a testament to conservatism, because Bari is not one. We want to hear those other voices. I think that in this far-left culture, even a liberal sounds sane to a conservative and so we like it.
You are right on many points, but the political situation has changed so much, I mean division and radicalization on both sides, that attaching labels and using traditional classification may no longer work. I for one have to confess that I flip-flopped a few times because the party I belonged to for many years had stopped representing my beliefs. I’d rather switch parties than stubbornly vote for something I no longer support. This type of realignment is happening to many people at the moment, and I think it includes Bari. Sort of a slow motion earthquake, which is defined as “occurs when the Earth's tectonic plates slide against each other at a slow rate without causing major ground tremors”. Except major ground tremors in our political life may very well be imminent.
I wouldn't characterize this blog as "conservative." To me it appears above all as a place that seeks the truth. Yes, individual commenters have their own POV, but the really great thing is that with few exceptions, everyone is willing to debate and consider others' views.
re: sonogram. I was staunchly pro-choice until I saw an actual abortion performed. I still support its availability, but there MUST be limits. As they say in the South, this ain't play.
"I was staunchly pro-choice until I saw an actual abortion performed. I still support its availability, but there MUST be limits"
This reflects what most of us want, I think: available early, limits later.
The irony is that under Roe, we had that: women were voluntarily making sensible and reasonable decisions about abortions without Big Daddy Government on their necks. Under Roe, 91 percent of all abortions were performed in the first twelve weeks. Only 1 percent were performed late-term, with virtually all of those for medical emergencies to woman or baby. (And turning "virtually" to "none" in late term abortions would have been a minor legal tweak at best.)
In other words, America already had the abortion policy that most of us want: abortion for any reason early, and none late except for medical emergencies. Our data reflected Canada's almost exactly: 91 percent early, 1 percent late, and Canada has zero abortion laws, its government having decided decades ago to leave abortion decisions to women and doctors.
Women know what they are doing with their abortion rights, and it's a shame that half our state governments don't trust them to keep on doing it.
Overturning Roe was (probably) legally correct, but nonetheless a disaster for women in total-ban states. I hope political pressure will make those legislatures and governors end their total bans for something far more in line with what most Americans think is reasonable.
A pro choice rallying cry recently is to equate gun rights with a woman's right to abortion. So when you write that you support abortion's availability, but that must be limits (of which I agree with), I wonder if gun rights can be looked at through the same lens - that there must be limits.
Abortion rights are in the Constitution nowhere. The right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Limiting that is a very different animal.
They were not interpreting the Constitution. They totally ignored the 9th amendment, and the fact that even early in our nation's history, abortion was accepted up until quickening, which generally does not happen before 16 weeks.
I believe that the court overturning RvW was enforcing the tenth amendment. basically, "powers not granted to the federal government belong to the states, or to the people. "
That's certainly a reasonable supposition. However, a major problem is precedence. It's very messy for women to have it yanked away after 50 years. Women are undoubtedly already dying, including women who weren't even seeking abortions, because MDs are afraid to remove fetuses, for example in the case of ectopic pregnancies.
The whole idea of “quickening” was the idea of determining when the soul is placed into the baby. It never was some scientific determination. In fact I think it was a religious concept. In any case we no longer try to determine such a thing, we know that science now tells us the life is human from conception and in the absence of anything telling us when the soul comes into the picture we presume it to be immediately.
Jews don't presume it to be immediately, and in any case, it's debatable whether there is a soul.
And if there is a soul, and if it enters the small collection of cells right after conception, who's to say that if those cells never become a human, that soul can't enter another embryo?
But I can tell you that when I was 8, my mother had a miscarriage when she was about four months along. For our family, which also consisted of my older brother, the miscarriage was a big disappointment, but not a death in the family. The disappointment dissipated completely when my sister was born around 15 months later.
From the founding of the US in 1776 to the mid 1800’s abortion was considered highly socially unacceptable and the numbers were so small there was little need for regulation.
It is hard to look at the Roe V Wade decision as being any better than the Dred Scott decision and many of the arguments supporting each are strikingly similar. Using the 9th Amendment as support for RvW is taking such a broad reading of the 9th Amendment, making any law regulating any behavior (for example environmental law) would be virtually impossible.
Leftwing Democrat you sure are when you write "I'm equally disgusted by the GOP SCOTUS justices .... for taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies". The Supreme Court did no such thing. As you can see around the country there exist a variety of STATES providing their own constitutional or statutory facility to abortion.
You are a good little leftie as you haven't the foggiest notion of what the US Constitution is about, nor what the decision in Dobbs is based on.
Don't get pissed off but did you really have to use the insult "You are a good little leftie"? You could have made you point without that. I'm really not someone to throw stones. I have done the same in the past but I am trying to change my ways. All though Matt Mullins inspires me to belittle him.
Yes, yes, yes. I'm not pissed at your comment and I should know better. It is just frustrating to see some of the stuff that passes through the comments.
Your advice is quite good and I hereby vow to do better. Much better.
Your "facts" are wrong. And the Ninth Amendment canard has been raised and beaten back countless times.
But there are just some who can't see reality. Here is a clue: If, in fact, some "right" existed pre-US Constitution, that "right" does not get US Constitutional protection. It is unaddressed by the Constitution. And left to the States to debate and decide. As they are now doing.
Put another way, the Ninth does not pull some gaggle of supposed "rights" into the US Constitution. It leaves them elsewhere.
You seem to believe there's no such thing as unenumerated rights. If so, why does the Constitution specifically mention them, and what is the point of the Ninth Amendment if not to protect them?
Your first and second paragraphs are risible. How would you feel if your rights were transferred to a fetus or embryo? I'm not even going to bother to argue with your second paragraph. No, there weren't any BLM people on hand for the insurrection. And nor was the law enforcement officer who killed Ashley Babbit a criminal.
I'm well aware abortion is still legal in my state. But other states where it is not legal are trying to pass laws preventing their citizens from coming here to get abortions.
Women's lives are at stake with these bans.
"In some cases, the infection can become severe or life-threatening, leading to sepsis, hysterectomy or even death. In 2012, a woman died in Ireland after her waters broke at 17 weeks and doctors refused to give her an abortion. The case spurred a movement that led to the overturning of Ireland's abortion ban in 2018."
Not to put a damper on your tirade, Lonesome - but our senile 'idiot' who is our current President just assassinated Al Qaeda's #2 (or perhaps that was the Deep State). I guess that doesn't matter. He was a bad Muslim.
Or that Obama was in office when #1 was hit (another BAD Muslim).
The point here is that the entire Democratic Party is not WOKE (but sadly, quite a lot of it is, I admit). Just like today's iteration of the GOP is not entirely MAGA (but close..).
The 'ignorant' are on both sides of this increasingly wide divide.
Christianity is also hailed as the "religion of peace," yet it spent 2,000 years libeling and murdering Jews for the fake crime of "they killed our Jesus." Christianity invaded and conquered lands not its own in order to "civilize the heathens," which in reality meant "kill their leaders and take their land." The Church ripped American and Canadian Natives from their families and condemned them to White Christian Re-education Schools to "beat the Indian out of them." Christianity conducted the Inquisition and the Crusades, and exiled American colonials from their communities if they were not sufficiently "pure." Christians murdered women as "witches." Christians merged the power of Church and State by becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, among others. "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before" is not a sonnet to peaceniks.
Yes, Islam commits every atrocity you list here. But so did Christians. Fortunately, Christianity seems to have grown out of its "kill them all, let God sort them out" phase, and could eventually live up to its "religion of peace" ideals. Islam will too, given enough time.
Meantime, any religionists who insist on using the "terrible swift sword" against people they don't like need to be smacked down good and hard by the rest of us. We can no longer allow them to use religion as a cover for crimes they could not otherwise commit.
Christianity softened its image because of the reformation and the rise of protestants sects. In the reformation there was a couple hundred years of bloody warfare between Catholics and the multiple forms of protestant sects. Protestants fought Catholics and protestants fought each other but in the end it all worked out and the killing stopped and we no longer have inter Christian Religion warfare. This has not happened with Islam and it looks like it will never happen.
The Muslims bitch about the Crusade but the Crusade only lasted 300 years but Islam has been assaulting the West for over 1000 years.
Agreed. It not only softened its image, it changed its way of dealing with the rest of the world. Christianity has, in my opinion, finally matured out of its blood-and-guts stage, and the world is better for it.
I don't know if Islam can make that leap. Christianity, being a religion that stands apart from government, can be as flexible as it chooses, and chose to abandon the sword. Islam, on the other hand, combines religion, government, power, and lifestyle into a single machine of submission that demands the rest of world obey. Islam doesn't recognize any other religion or government as valid, only as competitors to be crushed into submission.
Which is not to say a billion Muslims don't want what we want--a peaceful and prosperous life that includes getting along with neighbors. But the tribalists and true believers among them will not allow that to happen, and will kill their own to ensure "purity." There are a lot of those bonecrushers out there, and they have serious firepower to bring to bear.
I don't know how Western culture deals with that other than brute defensive force.
Agree -Shane. Religion has been a tremendous source of both good and evil. But I do think that one significant difference is that Christ explicitly espoused peace and forgiveness and never brandished the sword , while I believe Mohammed did in fact wield a sword himself.
Well said, KTA. Jesus was a guy I'd love to have a beer with, and a genuine prince of peace. The religion founded by Paul in his name, not so much, not until Christianity grew out of the bully-and-butcher stage to the peaceful maturity it enjoys now.
Islam is still in the bully-and-butcher stage, and needs to grow out of that. If it can, that is. Christianity is a religion, and propers with or without government. Islam is as a way of total existence that considers religion and government one and the same, rejecting any notion that other religions or forms of government are valid.
Christianity (and Judaism) were able to grow out of their dominate-and-conquer stages; I don't know if Islam can make that separation because the entire point of Islam is submission to Allah.
I hope Islam can do that, for all our sakes, and especially for the billion-plus Muslims who just want to live their lives without anger or violence.
Great piece, I agree! The only one question I personally have with this story - who are "We" in the name? There is a huge number of people raising alarms for years and they were ignored, called names and made fun off. I am very happy that Bari's eyes are opening to the things she and her friends were lied about for years, hope more people of her generation will start to look deeper into "other side" arguments and stop rejecting them outright.
The left-wing movement to label speech as violence is a perfect example of nominal fallacy - labeling things to avoid having to think about them, absolving yourself from listening. This is why so many progressives are bewildered by encounters with disagreement, which they find inexplicable.
My wife spent all last night unsuccessfully kicking me under a dinner table because I was arguing with a university professor about the failure of universities to protect their core values. She thinks I should self censor to be polite - I think it is important to discuss and debate these issues.
You are correct. We have been attacked for our opinions, or shut off or censored. These are opinions, words, ideas to which every person is entitled to,and should be allowed to express freely.
Civility is now weakness. Unless you scream until the veins on your neck pop out you just are not taken seriously. No one will listen to the reasoned voice, at least not until they are dead!
The Leftist freaks who show up in front of Supreme Court justices homes, and those protesting for the killing of babies certainly fit this description. They are the ones described by Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer."
There is the other liberal/lefty or uncommitted person standing in the background. They are the ones who can eventually be persuaded by a reasoned discussion done in a civil, non-threatening way. Dan Bongino has talked about this many times. Our object is to persuade the observer to take another look. They won't if you are screaming and intimidating them.
Interestingly, I own a bright red (of course) "Save America" hat, which I wear religiously. I've actually kept track of comments, and much to my surprise, I have over forty positive and only two negative. People do notice.
At Starbucks about a month ago, three girls - fairly young, with the shredded jeans and typical attire of late high-schoolers or young college age, kept staring at my hat. I thought, "Oh boy, here it goes."
Finally one came over and said, "We just wanted you to know, we LOVE your hat."
I could've kissed her. I said back, "And I just want you to know: the fact that somebody your age feels that way makes me believe there just may be hope for us all."
Such a terrific reply thanks Jim strangely enough I have had only positive responses when ever my hubby are out and I’m “maggering” everybody I encounter either gives me a thumbs up sign or tells me “a great hat you wearing there love” I believe after this raid on MaLthis current administration fate is sealed we will only have 2 years left of them please God!
It is incredible the power the Presidency now has. I don't think it was meant to be this way; Congress has transferred power to the executive and abdicated its responsibility in nearly every way possible. This "presidency" is the perfect example of why the founders limited the executive's powers; I think the nation will probably survive in some form until Alleged President Asterisk is carried out on a stretcher or in a strait jacket, but God - I wonder just how much more damage the puppeteers who pull his strings can do in the next two years.
I know many with his reaction to where we're at. That reaction is what makes me insist on posting what I think, and will not sit down and shut up. We cannot accept that it's OK to be frightened into silence. That is the sure road to the very things we fear the most.
Too many people afraid of what others will think and afraid of repercussions.
You are correct and you show bravery in your actions.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviet Union by speaking the truth. It starts with one brave person willing to say the truth.
You are correct. That is what has happened in essence with Tavistock in England, the clinic which did surgery on children (16 years +) because they claimed to be trans.
re: truth. I read "Cancer Ward" in college; I have not read "Gulag Archipelago." Lately I've read a few essays on Solzhenitsyn as we near the 50th anniversary of Gulag. What I keep taking away is his dedication to the TRUTH and the historical importance of the concept of truth. I never realized that the concept of truth has spawned over the centuries an entire philosophy. As I ponder on it, I believe that the labels conservative and liberal are irrelevant, obsolete. At the core, all that matters is What Is True.
I have a pretty good BS meter, and sometimes what I see from both sides of the aisle is nauseating - a thoroughgoing perversion of duty and submission to attaining Power, when it should be submission to Truth and dedication to their Nation - wherever it leads and whomever it hurts, even political allies. A nation where the leaders lie will always go off the rails; a nation where they speak the truth, cannot. Our "leaders" understand that we do not want globalism/socialism/communism/the Great Reset and that the only way to implement it is by lying. And that, I believe, is precisely why we are where we are.
The Cancer Ward BTW is considered by many his best novel. Gulag Archipelago is, of course, a different animal and cannot be overrated as a source of information on Stalin’s system of repression. Sadly, it may be relevant to study now to better understand where we are heading. The problem is, the younger generation, and especially left leaning crowd, are not interested in history, because they do not think history repeats itself. It does though.
You are right. But people like Solzhenitsyn are born one in millions. I mean both in literary genius and bravery. There were numerous people whose names we will never know who helped him hide from the KGB before he was exiled, copied his works and distributed via the underground system called Samizdat. They were harassed by the KGB, persecuted, jailed, some of them perished. They brought the system down too.
"This in turn raises the issue of the USSR and the role played by Gorbachev himself. Here most historians would concede that without a reformer taking over in the Kremlin, not only would there have been nobody with whom Reagan could engage, but there would have been no end to the Cold War either. The United States could raise its own military expenditures as high as it liked; it could have lent even more support to so-called “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan, but without a very different kind of Soviet leader responding to some very real Soviet problems it is impossible to envisage 1989 ever happening. The United States might have played its part in weakening the legitimacy of communism and exposing its weaknesses (of which Reagan was more aware than many American experts at the time). However, at the end of the day the corrosive work was not being done from outside the USSR but from within by an economy that could not innovate and an ideology in which fewer and fewer believed.
There is, in addition, another problem with the argument that an assertive Reagan fought the Soviets to a standstill and then wrestled them to the floor until they cried “Uncle,” and it is a problem that all teachers of history and world affairs confront on a daily basis in the classroom: complexity. What happens in history—as we all know—can never be explained in single-factor terms; and the end of the Cold War is no exception to this important rule. Indeed, this is why scholars from both sides of the Atlantic are still arguing about it. While some give Reagan his due (though it is never entirely clear which Reagan), they often go on to point out that one also has to take into account several other factors when thinking about 1989, including the central part performed by the ordinary people of Central and Eastern Europe in their own liberation; the important role played by some European leaders—among whom the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was key when it came to pressing for German unification in October 1989; and finally, the quiet but critical role performed by misperception and misunderstanding. Here, the evidence is now clear. Was Gorbachev prepared to loosen Soviet control over Eastern Europe and let the states there choose their own way (the “Sinatra Doctrine”)? Obviously so. Did he, however, think that this would lead to the rapid and complete collapse of socialism in all its forms? Apparently not. It was one thing seeking a looser, and hopefully less costly, relationship with countries like Poland and Hungary. This did not necessarily mean that Gorbachev actually intended to lose control of the USSR’s “cordon sanitaire” completely. In reality, Gorbachev miscalculated and it was this miscalculation that brought the Cold War to an end."
I suppose they'll make it easy on themselves by perusing the donations lists of conservative organizations, and congressmen. The donation lists for congressmen and senators are public information and include addresses, emails, and phone numbers.
The purpose of doing this is going to be to intimidate supporters before the 2024 election.
You bet it's terrifying especially as they are going to hire those people who want to carry firearms and will have no compunction about shooting. It was right there in the hiring criteria until it became publicized and they scrubbed the site.
Same. No more polite silence. Considerate disagreement for me and the occasional outburst on the internet. More if needs be. I’ve got young kids and I’ll be damned if I let them grow up in a place where they have to trade their peace of mind and perspective and self-respect for conformity and acquiescence.
Celia the silence is growing darker by the day. The deep state just raided President Trumps house after having him silenced on the internet by big Tech the last twenty months. That is just for starters
So has Obama, Bush and Clinton for very similar minor infractions.
There is little doubt this is 100% banana republic political driven singularly by the single minded emotion of hatred. Don’t forget, it was the DNC and the HRC campaign that manufactured the documents leading to 20 months of “Trump/Russia” nightly news narratives.
I've thought about your comment all morning. A couple of things occur to me:
First, when the Democrat machine gets its 87,000 armed IRS agents, I will probably be one of the first targeted because I've probably already said too much - and I use my real name.
Second, to my eye the entire purpose of weaponizing the FBI, the IRS, the whole DOJ is to intimidate and silence us all, so if we ARE silent we actually help ensure their complete takeover. They get exactly what they want; we get a jackboot on our necks. So, again, in my opinion, while speaking out is a risk, silence is a sure thing - and just not an option. Easy choice.
Third, the globalist/socialist/elites/Democrats are using every means possible to goad us into armed retaliation. Yes, we could possibly win - depending on whether the military and police join their side, but if we let them do that, everybody loses.
*************
I saw a small roundtable discussion a few weeks ago - some real intellectual heavyweights that included a guy probably heir-apparent to Thomas Sowell. He said that the greatest hypocrisy of BLM, Antifa, et al, was their invocation of Martin Luther King, Jr. while denigrating all the white thinkers of times past, but that in his writings, MLK freely acknowledged that he had read nearly all of their writings before starting on his crusade for civil rights. I read a couple of hours every morning; maybe it's time I read those old white guys. We are in a similar position to MLK now, and we need the wisdom of those Dead White Men to guide us, lest we be goaded by evil men and women into doing things that will ensure we lose everything that makes life worth living.
They'll get me too. I contribute on these threads and have made no bones about my conservatism. I have donated to candidates and organizations that are conservative. I support Trump and my illustrious governor, Don DeSantis.
I can't afford a defense so I'll just sit in prison. Hope they have a good library.
As a Canadian who lives in a country where millions are unable to travel freely in or out of the country, you might be very surprised at how many Canadians admire Trump. We're trapped in a WEF prison while our rights and freedoms are being eroded. Our corporate media is compromised and the effects of brainwashing are frightening. I like and follow Ron DeSantis and often wished I lived in Florida. My admiration for Trump is so great because he withstood pressure that would cause most to fall. I'm very sorry he didn't get all the support he deserved. His good works in the US gave investors confidence and rippled all the way into our economy in Canada, the stock market reflected that. Yes he calls them as he sees them but he didn't cause all the riots, they were planned and the bricks were delivered. It's hard to play nice when there are psychopaths behind the scenes. You don't want to end up like Canada or Australia. I wish we had a leader who didn't have an evil personal agenda like so many who have bankrupted the world. These really are the darkest times.
I'm a dual citizen G Gently, living in, well to be honest, trapped in Canada. US born and raised by Canadian parents in Canada Ive lived in a border city for 16 years now and have lived the life of Riley living, working and traveling for 65 years wherever my heart has taken me.
Until 2020. I've been very outspoken concerning everything to do with both Canadian and US politics my entire life.
Canada is going down faster by far than the US. And we despair that those few of us watching this happen will be the few that still remember what life was like before the Woke and WEF.
Much luck to us all as we continue this battle on both sides of the border. We need all the luck we can get.
I am glad we have Trump. He is just about the bravest man I have ever seen. 17 Republicans of high stature ran for the Republican presidential primary initially and he was the last one standing. In their heart of hearts I would guess most of them, if not all of them, are glad they didn't get the nomination. They have witnessed what the Left has put Trump through.
Then again, one has to wonder if Jeb Bush would have been more than cursorily attacked because he would not have challenged the Left, or gone back over improper things done under Obama. We forget that under Obama James Rosen's phone calls and texts and some AP reporters' were investigated, without a warrant. There was "fast and furious" and the misuse of the IRS. There is probably a lot more but the point is who among the 17 would have even questioned it. Who among the 17 would have tried regulatory reform? Etc.
They are still going after him to destroy him and his family so he can't run in 2024 and as a salutory lesson to any other Republican candidate who may try to root out the Deep State and the deep corruption.
They got all our names Naomi, and if they apply a bit of pressure to Bari and Nellie I’m sure they will hand over their data of us. I doubt if the library will be any good in prison. They have even managed to ban Dr Seus, wardens probably force us to read Michele Obama’s Becoming or Hillary Clinton’s biography it’s not an option we have to stand tall and stand strong!
Brilliant post Jim you write exactly like 95% of people’s thought process on this site. We cannot remain silent, if we do it’s going to be the end of the world. America is home it’s a great place to be and it’s well worth fighting for we just have to keep our heads at least until November.
Yes Jim. That is my thinking exactly. And we'll likely meet one another when they round us all up, as it feels inevitable they will. I've never written under any name but my own as well, we'll both be easy to find.
I agree with you on all points. Silence is not an option, not for me anyway.
And I pray (though I am an atheist) that it does not come to an armed conflict. Because the left fanatics will win, and because it will be a bloody tragedy for the whole country. Don’t underestimate the left. Power is in their hands, and they are better organized. Most of the Democratic political leaders have not held a real job but spent their entire lives as community organizers: Sanders, Biden, Di Blasio, Obama was a professor but not for long and focused on attaining DC power. The 2020 election also shows how well-oiled Democratic machine works. I have no knowledge or opinion on election fraud. They are just more goal oriented. Add to this a total absence of moral or ethical red lines, and we will have a national tragedy.
I do think they are engaging in a provocation That’s why we should resist being provoked.
I agree with you JAO we have to resist the provocation at every level. I’m not sure anymore if they are better organized, it’s just that the Democrooks have captured the airwaves like the Nazis and that’s where it’s going to be so hard to change the mindset of millions of Americans. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before you will be able to vote on FB or Instagram (for the younger voters), it’s not one man one vote it’s never been it’s about how to rig the system which the Democrats have mastered.
Oh yes, I didn’t mean he is paranoid or has a conspiracy theory. And if internet browsing is a wide net, it is easy to identify paid subscribers to CS or simply anyone registered to a social media site since we typically have to provide an email address and/or phone number. I see no reason the government would not take this path if the left stay in power. Not based on the recent events. But if there are enough people who want to tell the truth, then there is hope. So I am staying here and will share the most interesting posts with my husband!
I use to do the same thing (unsuccessfully) to my husband - I was wrong. We now get invited to fewer dinner parties, but you (and he) are right for speaking and fighting for truth.
That's rather harsh. Not all people are equally comfortable with speaking out. My husband and my kids (because they take after their dad in that regard) would often rather that Mom not speak out. It may be frustrating, but I'm not going to eject them from my life for it.
And why instead of explaining their position they immediately attack, call names, and seek in every way to shut down, demonize and pillory the person who questioned them.
That's obtuse. It's simpler than this. The reason for labelling speech as violence is to legitimize answering speech with actual physical violence. "Speech = violence" ignores the difference between a disagreement and a broken arm.
This technique of obliterating critical distinctions is an old trick of the left. For example: "Property is theft." What distinction is ignored here? It is that property is honestly earned or created by effort, as against being stolen or acquired by fraud. "Property is theft" legitimizes the unjust seizing of property by force.
Note that most if not all applications of this technique result in justifying the use of violence where violence is not actually justified. There are many more examples of this on the left, but many on the right too. Actual sanity is in very short supply.
That doesn't make sense and is not "simpler." People call speech violence so that they can use violence against people who say things they don't like? They don't use violence, they merely shout them down and use social pressure to get those ostensibly in power to impose an agenda on others. They throw tantrums and use digital mobs. These are not people looking for physical confrontation. They're cowards.
I guess the threat of mere 'social pressure' is why some controversial appearances require the presence of riot police? The mobs are not only digital. Many controversial speakers are shut down because the cost of providing protection against physical violence makes their appearance too expensive.
And a reminder: Defending free speech does NOT mean the defender agrees with the speech.
Sure, that happens on occasion. But the preponderance of examples have taken place online, where it's infinitely easier to gin up pseudo-outrage and get thousands of others to rally to the flag.
The word 'literally' adds absolutely nothing to your sentence and weakens its impact when reading it. "The 'Summer of Love in 2020' had nothing to do with speech." is a sentence with more impact.
Yes, the overuse of the word 'literally' drives me crazy.
How do you explain the violence of the antifa and blm rioters? Or the “CHAZ” group? Of course they use violence. If they can shout you down and cow you beforehand the violence is that much easier to effect.
Yes, I understand that and I 100% agree. But I'm talking about within the context of using "Your speech is violence" to justify violence. Those groups weren't committing violence in response to something someone said being equated to violence, they were using different, though no less wrong and idiotic, reasons to perpetrate violence. That's all I'm saying.
Punch a Nazi, comes to mind. What’s a Nazi. Someone that says something that isn’t part of the progressive doctrine. So, to me, oh, yes, the reason that words=violence, is an excuse to commit violence. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but that is the ultimate use of the term. And as long as there is no pushback today, the term will be ingrained into people’s minds, so when the day comes when physical violence is needed, everyone will be comfortable with the violence because words are just as violent as physical violence is, we’ve all agreed, for years that words are violence. It is an Incremental acceptance of the idea.
Paul, I agree what you describe has truth to it. I can’t fathom why you labeled Brad’s comment as obtuse. That didn’t add anything productive to the conversation here.
Because it isn't on point. It obscures what is actually going on. The nominal fallacy would be exemplified by mislabeling something truly serious with an unserious term, like the mafia's various euphemisms for murdering people. But please, I'm challenging the idea, not Brad Neaton personally. I'm not commenting here to demonstrate allegiance to any group. I would be against any such allegiance. I think such allegiances are very much the cause of distorted social discourse.
It's actually the exact opposite. For example, calling a murderer "evil" to explain their behavior absolves us of the need to confront the complex web of circumstances that led them to murder. Another example: Calling Trump supporters Nazis, fascists, racists, etc. to avoid actually thinking about all the complex reasons why someone might support Trump in the first place.
Brad - I think a murderer does commit evil to his/her victim and to the victim's family. Saying we must understand a murderer's circumstances is to, in effect, condone his behavior. We all have complex webs of circumstances. Does my complex web justify me killing you or vice versa? No!
Also, I don't think complex explanations are needed for someone to support Trump, in the first place or otherwise. It's called politics. People vote for whoever most closely supports their hopes for the future of themselves and the country, even if they have to hold their nose while doing it.
Very interesting comment about a wonderful article. I agree. Tragic about Rushdie, who I admire.
I am interested in the subject of fallacies in logical reasoning.
Regarding inexplicability, I found my first encounter with a STEM Ph.D. friend-of-friend bewildering. The subject of the Koch brothers came up. I was surprised at her vehement condemnation, and innocently asked what among their writings had led her to conclusions inconsistent with what I had read of their own statements. Her response was, "Oh, I would never read anything those people wrote!"
I concluded at the time that she was surely a poor scientist and surprisingly unintelligent, so I wondered how such a person could obtain a STEM Ph.D. But subsequently, this type of rejection of thought has become distressingly apparent among many otherwise intelligent people, judging from their credentials, which require at least some ability.
I wonder if my bewilderment could be explained by some fallacy in my own thinking. I welcome pertinent comments in this regard.
Would that people would actually defend their beliefs like lawyers defending their clients: presenting arguments and facts in support of their views. Far better that than calling anyone who disagrees a racist, sexist, abelist, ..., fascist, [fill-in-favored-group-or-notion-here]-phobe or [fill-in-notion-here] denier (one tribe) or a RINO, socialist, Marxist, one-worlder, or communist (the other tribe), then demanding they shut up or be shut up.
(Though I'll give a pass on calling someone a fascist if their policy prescriptions actually have a likeness to the original Fascist party's program, or a Marxist if their views are derived from Marx, even if by way of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Gramsci, Foucault and/or the Frankfurt school).
It's going to get worse in the STEM fields. Many universities and employers are demanding DEI, or DIE position papers before being let into programs or employment.
Good point. My spouse is a senior, highly cited STEM academic researcher and there is increasing pressure to complete DIE compliance activities. One can't prove it but there is reason to suspect that research funding is partly dependent on specific racial composition of the team.
You make a good point. One of the big agendas is ensuring public support for funding. Twenty-five ago, eminent, older scientists were already publicly drawing attention to the problem of funding skewing scientific integrity. My researcher spouse finds the same thing, though he personally has a remarkable track record of grants. People are strongly discouraged from pursuing research that will invalidate previous career-making work by others, who now sit on grant committees.
If scientists are encouraged to not pursue work that could invalidate prior work, then we don't have a scientific community. We have a group of people calling themselves scientists but allowing their egos to get in the way of actual scientific progress. There is a term for this, but it is too vulgar to use. I would hope that scientists would be happy younger scientists are testing their work. Imagine having someone test your work in an effort to prove you wrong only to find out you were in fact correct.
Future generations will look back at this period as the dark ages of the scientific community. Sad for humanity actually. Think of the problems that could be solved if we had the willingness to actually follow the science.
Alice - I think it's tribalism. I've heard the same thing from a few people, i.e. "He/She is awful/racists/etc-whatever and I have never and would never listen to anything they say!"
To which I reply that maybe they should listen just once and if they still don't like them, fine.
Jonathan Haidt in "The Happiness Hypothesis," describes the process of why this happens. He describes the duality of our beings as "the elephant" and "the rider." The elephant is automatic. It reacts. The rider is the lawyer, the spokesperson for the elephant. It tries to rationalize the elephant's automatic, unconscious, immediate actions after the fact.
This is how a well educated scientific person can find a way to bend themselves into pretzel loops to support a highly prejudiced viewpoint.
I admire Jonathan Haidt's reasoning, commitment to evidence and independence even when I am sometimes, rarely, unconvinced of his conclusions. The metaphor of elephant and rider are useful.
You make a very good point. Sperry's split brain experiments showed that people confabulate explanations for their own behavior when they do not have conscious access to the impetus for that behavior. This well applies to much behavior of the crowd whose convictions outweigh their commitment to evidence supporting those convictions.
When I observe people behaving apparently irrationally in specific situations, even if the overall function served is more general, as tribalism is, I find it useful to ask if I do the same thing in other contexts. This is a way around my own blind spots. It encourages empathy and humility, as it appears to me that the allure of one's own envisioned superiority is a significant blinder.
Haidt has recently spoken and written about his belief in the need to regulate social media, based on evidence that mental health issues and self-harm rates among young women have risen significantly, in lock-step with social media use. Even he admits that it is correlation. Yet he argues for the European model of duty of care for minors.
Strong argument, yet not convincing enough to argue for a step I believe would be ineffective, heavy-handed, and premature based on our understanding of the phenomenon.
Very recent data allegedly confounds the causality argument. I can't locate it and my recollection is that Haidt himself mentioned it at the end of a "Reason" Soho Forum debate. So, open mind on this.
There is an epidemic of self-harm ... specifically among young women who identify as progressive, according to the allusion I recall. Conservative-oriented young women who use social media heavily are not correspondingly exhibiting mental anguish and self harm. (There is readily available research at least compatible with this, that conservatives are consistently happier than progressives, lower in neuroticism, for understandable reasons, whether one happens to be progressive or conservative or other.)
Good article on the distinction between suicidal depression and the attention-seeking, antagonistic, histrionic behavior underlying much though not all self-harm. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6328319/
One might therefore argue that there could be something about the promulgation of the set of progressive convictions that induces a negative frame of mind or validates self-harm among vulnerable adherents. One might argue, therefore, that we must regulate social media expression of progressive ideas. I would not support this for the same reasons I do not support Haidt's current position.
It will be interesting to see how the data-driven and open-minded Haidt responds to this additional information if it is verifiable. He is an outstanding thinker, yes, yet his opinions are not written in stone. I draw my own conclusions ... and look for challenges to them, to continually correct my views if uninformed or mistaken.
The tone of your inquiry, as well as one can judge the written "voice," was more compatible with rhetorical dismissal, like a dare, especially the "Really?", than with genuine curiosity. Perhaps I am reading too much into it, yet it is feedback. I believe I have sincerely addressed the content of your question, as well. More coffee, now.
Alice, Wonderfully illustrative incident regarding the Kochs. I knew both David and Charles through joint public policy and charitable organizations, and was always amazed but not surprised by the vitriol directed at them. While I was not always in agreement, they were both informed, thoughtful, very generous individuals.
Brad, you speak of the left-wing movement where they don’t want to listen or think about certain things, which makes them unprepared for disagreement. I can’t help but think that’s why Salman Rushdie was once president of American PEN; they are fighting the right-wing movement, who are banning books across this nation. Books that upset them or they disagree with, Books that express ideas that frighten or anger them. Unlike the left, the right uses state power to exercise censorship (cancel culture), so I can see why Salman Rushdie was once president of PEN!
Have there been some examples of this recently? I know that some communities would prefer not to have some books in their community library. I also know of "kids" books with pictures of explicit sex acts that some people would prefer not to have in their childrens' schools. But what books have been removed from, say, Amazon lately? This is a genuine question and not a rhetorical one.
That is a fair question, but it is of course answering a question with a question. My point is a request to you to provide examples of books that have been banned by the right-wing movement using state power to exercise censorship. Your comment suggested to me that you might have a few specific cases in mind. I think focusing on these specific cases and why these books were banned will help us understand the subject of book bans more thoroughly. By the way, I just googled "banned books" and found quite a list, but it seemed to include bans on books in schools which to me is a separate issue as those "bans" may be to prevent inappropriate images or issues from being seen by young children.
Awilson, no specific book, no specific subject, just in general, book banning should be prohibited, even in K-12, there needs to be an overwhelming reason to ban.
"The Index lists 1,586 book bans that have occurred in 86 school districts in 26 states between July 1, 2021 and March 31 of this year. These districts represent 2,899 schools with a combined enrollment of over 2 million students."
After an event like this, I am convinced that the only people who are afraid of “words” and “ideas” and “free speech” are those who are ultimately afraid of what the truth will do to the world they built for themselves.
This was a powerful and important piece. Brava, Bari!
People who are scared of words are children - regardless of age. The VAST majority of people who have experienced real struggle, or real violence, have no patience for the nonsense that is our petulant society.
Those who wish to control how you speak are VERY different people with very different objectives. We should pray for wisdom for the first group. In regards to the second group, we should pray, and vote, for Freedom from their tyranny.
But we should be very, very careful not to conflate these two groups.
I agree with you except for one point: Children at least have a sense of curiosity. Petulant adults are closed-minded and can’t accept the possibility of being wrong.
You’re right. “Children” was probably incorrect. Adolescent is probably more accurate. I certainly remember the point in my life when I was certain I knew everything there was to know about the things I cared about. Until that day I realized I didn’t any longer. What life and experience taught me is how little I know to be certain. I expected, thus, that wisdom would be something we all pursue until the day we pass. That the pursuit of wisdom is the acceptance of how little we know, and how little we can ever know, but also why we should care so much to keep trying to accumulate wisdom and pass it down to the next generation.
I suppose that’s ultimately the point. There are those who seek to understand how and why they might be wrong and those who seek to understand why they’re right and ignore, or even go so far as to outright restrict, anything that may be contrary to that about which they’re sure they’re right.
I think we're missing the mark by describing leftist behavior as childish. They are not children. They're adults. We would not tolerate the bullying, lying, scapegoating and blame-shifting the leftists engage in if it came from our children - we would give our kids a time out and explain that such behavior is anti-social, abusive and will not help them make friends and get along in society when they grow up.
Leftists are not children waiting to grow up. We shouldn't be waiting for that either. Leftists use the tactics of chaos, riots, slander, obfuscation and censorship to attain a political goal. They are political operatives with an agenda and they are using the government and media to pursue that agenda.
As an example - Chesa Boudin is not a college student playing radical until he grows up and gets a job in the real world. He is a radical who was raised by radicals and his political goals are the same goals the leftists want to impose on this country.
I think “adolescent” is perfect! 😅 I certainly remember how moody, temperamental and insecure I was between 13 and 18. Those are the ages we learn to hoard knowledge, build up defenses and view people as enemies.
Tackling the world with childlike curiosity makes life so much better.
One of my favorite sayings is that “parenting is not judged by what you do for your children but what you teach them to do for themselves.” We’ve had almost 70 years of parents failing that test, and we should not be surprised by the outcome. And worse yet, the parents that failed that test are now horrified that younger generations are uncomfortable they’re hoarding power they didn’t earn and refuse to pass it to a generation they failed. Hopefully many have learned from a mistake that in many many cases was made with the best of intentions. Desiring for your kids to be “doctors and lawyers” was well intentioned but horribly misguided and we’re paying for it because the doctor and lawyer generation decided their kids should all be artists and PHDs in “thinking.”
We are desperate to put back in the power the people who spent their lives solving real problems with real solutions. Enough of people who have “thought about how to solve climate change” and more people who can actually install an air conditioner.
You put that better than I ever could. You should see if you can find a copy of Bernstein’s “Candide” — it’s a similar moral to the story. The last musical number really hits your point.
I would say.about children...they are an open portal of love...until life causes it's close....I am not sure what else to call them besides children. I do understand your point. And believe and hope my heart, and the hearts of others, have enough openness like the hearts of children to save this world from dark because.
I think that’s the process of growing up though. It hardens us when we forget childlike humility, love and curiosity. So many of us have to relearn it.
I won't say "Western civilization" has fallen. I'd say that we have tolerated a deviation from our basic norms in the name of "social justice" and this is the outcome. And the basic norm is this: Tolerance is our greatest strength, and tolerance applies to everyone equally. Some people are not more equal than others, and some people's opinions are not more valid than others. If you don't like an opinion, argue with it or walk away, but don't expect it to be silenced.
A most horrible part is that the illiberal, hard left is walking the same path walked by Hilter, Mao, Lenin, Xi and the other deluded totalitarians responsible for 100+ million deaths in the 20th century. I hope we are not next.
I agree with you in part. The illiberal, hard left is exactly as you describe, but they would not have the power they have if their antics were not useful to, at the very least, the power players of the Democrat Party and given cover and excused by the mainstream of that party and their media lackeys as a means to the end of maintaining their hold on the reins.
Western civilization falls when the Charlie Hebdo attack inspired explanation and not outrage at the absolute horror and viciousness of the attack. It crumbled when the ACLU along with book sellers apologize and object to the book, Irreversible Damage by Shirer. This is not one man's attack against an author, but a society erasing the violence of the attack starting with the blandness of NYT printing that there is no idea of the attackers motivation. Je suis Charlie, et Rushdie, et ....
How is anyone supposed to take the NYT seriously when they rush out a notification that the attacker’s motives weren’t clear? I swear, at some point, we’re all going to be told that smoke has nothing to do with fire.
Of course not, we are only allowed to rush to judgment when they know all the facts. Such as Jacob Blake was unarmed, Nick Sandmann and the Covington kids were racists and that Kyle Rittenhouse was a racist murderer. But, defining a woman, knowing how many genders there are or whether correlation exists between gay men having promiscuous sex and monkey pox are Herculean tasks they are not capable of lol.
My jaw dropped when I saw the headline about not knowing the attacker's motive. Rushdie is a man who has literally had a hit called on him, a hit order that is still active, and there are millions of people who would like the reward of performing the hit. If the attacker had been someone other than a young Muslim male, there might be some cause to wonder if there was another motive. Considering the identity of the attacker, the motive is 99.99999% clear.
Marie - I think I know the story you're referring to. The father must be mentally ill. It's just not normal behavior. I think mentally ill people attach religion as a motive to do what their mental illness compels them to do. That father will most likely spend the rest of his life in prison among people he would not choose to spend 5 minutes with. It makes no sense.
The concept of an "honor killing" is widely accepted in Islamic cultures. A person who would kill their own child is clearly not mentally well-balanced, but their culture provides an easy outlet in the most violent form possible. In another culture, parents might cut off contact with a child who is behaving in ways they consider shameful, but killing that child is not acceptable, so they don't.
Unfortunately it’s many stories and it’s not mental illness.
I worked with a woman from Baghdad some years ago. She was married off to an Islamic man in the US who seriously abused her, as in come to work bruised.
I and others tried to convince her to leave him. She lives in the United States!
She was terrified of her father killing her if she left her “chosen spouse.” Not an ocean’s distance would ease her fear of being murdered by her own father for leaving an abusive husband.
Eventually we all gave up, but not before she told us about schoolmates whose fathers had killed them for “disgracing the family” or “being unclean.”
I am grateful for this article because *this* is why I subscribed to Common Sense.
But at some point, we need to ask how this happened, not simply identify it as a phenomenon. Because until the people who caused this (and one very specific group has) are drug out into the light and made to own the situation and explain to those they have coddled and radicalized that they started this "words are violence" schtick because they wanted a way to shut up the other side and it's all gotten out of hand, we're not going to get anywhere.
Started reading this book just this week after seeing this comment. Pretty fascinating so far. I am about half way through. One minor thought that seems to keep coming up while reading....I really enjoy the book but I have a nagging thought: Based on his descriptions.....isn't everyone falling into a mass movement of one form or another? I have no idea the answer to this question but is not this Substack itself a form of mass movement?
Glad you got the book. You may be confusing "like minded" with mass formation. True it is increasingly difficult to discern what is truth and fact from propaganda. That is why most of us have found Substack. We get a different perspective through the content and through the threads.
I have another suggestion for you. Bryan Dean Wright has a daily podcast that is excellent. It is short, which is a blessing, and full of interesting facts and details you may not hear anywhere else. He was a CIA officer and has away of getting information. The President's Daily Brief:
By a factor of a gazillion I agree. Truly two honest, decent journalists who are creating something vitally important to society right now. A restoration of a marketplace of ideas that honors diversity of thought and gives a flying ‘duck’ about other characteristics that have no bearing. One that is filled by and large with a community of the sane who yearn for respectful dialogue among our own set of fellow travelers.
It’s an excellent point you make here. I so long for the days when our politics was like the relationship Reagan had with Tip O’Neil. When the concept of loyal opposition meant both things because at the end of the day we are ALL Americans.
A free marketplace of ideas allowed us to collectively decide on direction by way of our elected representatives. The media while always skewing left didn’t engage in nearly so many of the worst deceptions they do today. They more or less took their jobs as journalists seriously (like Bari and Nellie do) and allowed the facts to come out even if not the outcome they would necessarily prefer at a personal level.
Now, the American public (especially those on the right) are seeing the underbelly of the MSM, the deep state whom they are mouthpieces for and a complete disregard for fundamental values we once collectively cherished like Free Speech. The biggest reason I came to Common Sense is because of Bari’s resignation letter from the NYT. It was a breath of fresh air that a true insider was FINALLY affirming the media bias we had long complained of that the MSM refuses to acknowledge. Here was a self described liberal woman who was willing to pull back the curtain and show us the reality. That took guts and I cannot thank her enough for it and for creating this outlet where the best aspects of journalism and civil discourse would rein supreme and not ideology.
It is past time that those who have been undermining the norms we cherished do need to be called out and we collectively need to say no more…Stop lying to us, stop trying to force us to think like you do and start listening to us. Our voices, our lives and futures matter and I’ll be damned if I will not speak up against this.
Ronald Reagan was happy to get most of what he wanted. He let the other side get some of what they wanted as long as it didn't harm the country or derail his agenda.
Exactly! I should have included this massive point in my OP. Compromise, ladies and gentlemen is something we as a society desperately need to relearn. I will also include that we need to turn down the temperature in how we speak about rational members of the other side which I believe includes many both right and left. Don’t let the extremists define who we are. Being called a fascist, racist etc for having center right beliefs as I do really pisses me off and makes compromise damn near impossible. Talk respectfully to me about why you feel your position is correct and I will always do the same!
The greatest damage we’ve done to speech is “everyone” agreeing that “we must, of course, ban hate speech.” Hate speech has no definition, and no one but those seeking to control you, gain anything from limiting hate speech. Everyone should want ALL speech protected. If someone wants to cause you harm, shouldn’t you prefer that be made public so it can be monitored and investigated? This idea that some speech is okay and some is “wrong” is exactly the slippery slope those who wish to remove your liberties desire it to be.
I completely agree. Any law that seeks to create inequality of justice is, by definition, unequal. Every single human deserves equal liberty, and the law should respond to assaults on that liberty equally.
I believe the equally frightening counterpoint to Rushdie’s struggles, and those who have supported his right to freedom of expression, is the predilection by leading publishers and platforms, operating behind the protective wall of technology, to suppress books and stories not of the political stripe of a new hypersensitive and intolerant minority.
My daughter arrived home before returning to college for senior year. I said that either we speak openly and honestly with curious minds or I speak about nothing but the weather.
Who among the High and Haughty will denounce the assailant? Who among the Glitterati will speak against the assassin? Who among the Literati will lead protest on the violence?
None. They are accomplices, complicit in their silence.
Well Bari is speaking up. Someone has to go first. I’d say she is a great role model and has some chops. So hopefully others will follow. She didn’t mince any words that’s for sure.
here here!! Bravo!!! I'm a mental health clinician and I've been beating this drum for a while now. Words are NOT violence. They are words. The emotional reaction that they may provoke is the responsibility of the person reacting. I mean duh!! If we speak to a crowd of 100 people are we now responsible for 100 different reactions?? It's so UNBELIEVABLY illogical and emotionally unhealthy, I can barely stand it. It makes me want to scream lol
And yet. here we are. In a society that seems hyper-reactive, hyper-emotional, and unable to center itself around any organizing principle.
I want to applaud you Bari, for your courage in speaking out on this.
Free speech will be the one thing, more than any other factor that I see, that can save us from ourselves.
And the good news? Most people - on some sort of intuitive level - get the idea of free speech. Even if they can't articulate it clearly. It's something deep down in their gut.
Bari (if you are reading this) when you first started your news letter you had a piece that used the phrase (and i'm paraphrasing) "your soul is too valuable to be silenced." I echo that sentiment here.
Our lives, spirits, and souls are valuable to be squelched. Wishes for a good day to all:)
And then the the NYT and Adios citing “no know motive” showing complacency for these crimes.
Yes meanwhile, all this dramatic anguished sensitivity to any perceived slight... Ugh. It’s more than tiresome. It’s spawned a breed of non-stop self-absorbed victims ...
Yep. Quite the switch-er-roo from mom’s counsel to my tears as a kid. Mom said, Hey just tell’em, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
While not too impressive as a snappy comeback, it was an important perspective to think about.
(EDIT: this is sarcasm I am mocking the people who are panicked about Marjorie Taylor Greene taking over the banks and forcing them to go to church)
The real long game is being played by the Jan 6 Evangelical White Supremacists who control our society. Jan 6 Evangelical White Supremacists will soon dominate every facet of American life, if they don’t already, and they are the true threat!!!!!
But “Jan 6 Evangelical White Supremacists” is so wordy. Maybe we need an acronym for this powerful group that controls us nefariously from behind the scenes with their ill-gotten power……oooope nix the acronym idea.
I'm far from a leftist and I'm deeply concerned about the threat of White Christian Nationalists. Any religious extremism is alarming.
Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are at least as disturbing to me as AOC and the so-called "Squad" and I despise them with every fiber of my being.
I would argue that it has gotten even worse than "words are violence", because a common BLM chant was "silence is violence". Depending on the particular ideology or cult, non-conformity to the mob is considered violence now too. This is sophistry of course, cheap sophistry. But it leads to actual violence. I wonder if perhaps the current "culture war" may someday morph into an actual civil war for the right to free speech.
The silence is violence mantra made me sick, angry and frankly a bit fearful of what can come of it. “If you don’t believe in our cause hook line and sinker then you are a fascist”! What a dangerous mindset that is and sadly so many white liberals became among the most strident practitioners of it. I abhor actual racism and acknowledge our troubled history but so much of the modern day BLM movement is simply based on outright lies and a lack of critical thinking. These lies are amplified like wildfire by social media, the MSM and the hardcore ideologues and their destructive nature was seen over and over the past few years.
There is some excellent unbiased studies conducted by various exceptionally smart academics who have concluded this reality. Anecdotally speaking, it always seemed strange that this white supremacist country decided to have Asian Americans put into the highest income earners, the least incarcerated and the least fatal encounters with the police. Very clever indeed lol.
Bari , I am a 70 year old man , a product of apartheid South Africa who kept quiet because it was easier than standing up and objecting to what was going on around me. A regret I live with everyday.
It never ceases to amaze me how you state your position with such clarity but more importantly with such bravery .As you quote Rushdie “We are living in the darkest time I have ever known “.
I have been inspired by you and your actions and no longer allow the people around me to try and explain away the rationale that has brought us to this dangerous time ,when amongst other aberrations , words are violence - No , violence is violence.
Ideology is not a line, it's a horseshoe, or better, a clock face. You start at 12 o'clock which is fence-sitting moderation, and the further left or right you go, you will always meet at 6 o'clock which is authoritarianism.
It is unfortunate what happened to Rushdie. I pray he recovers.
They say you can kill a man, but you cannot kill what he stands for.
Free expression is not an ancient inheritance. It is a fairly recent Western tradition of the Enlightenment that is still not yet universal. It must be guarded jealously.
This is such a powerful piece about where we were with free speech and language just a few decades ago. Thank you Bari for putting this in perspective. As you have said - we are living in cowardly times - courage is the remedy. Thank you for being brave.
God speed to Salman Rushdie.
God damn the vile cult that facilitates this kind of act.
God help the Andy Rosses of the world who are on the front lines in the fight against its perpetrators.
God bless the likes of Bari Wiess for forcing us to look in the mirror and declare which side we’re on.
When you can’t criticize ideas this is what you get. The religious right pushed me away from the right in the 80’s. The difference is they were not bound by Marcus’s Repressive Tolerance and would simply get mad.
The Religion of the New Democrat party equates group identity with oppression and cordons off any of those groups from critics. Their religious doctrines (Repressive Tolerance) mandate violence.
"New Democrats" weren't beating cops and crashing through the Capitol on January 6; that was all MAGA and rightists. What religious doctrine compelled them to do that? And what part of Marcus' Repressive Tolerance mandated that Donald Trump order his security to beat and tear-gas people in a park so he could get a photo op in front of a church?
Leftists are absolutely responsible the violence they cause, particular during the Summer of Floyd. But they are hardly alone in using violence as a means to political ends.
We all need to tell them to put down the guns, knives, and lead pipes simply because they didn't get their way on X or Y. The Rushdie attack, January 6, and Seattle/Portland/Minneapolis are the only thing that come from it, and normal Americans should no longer tolerate this kind of political violence.
You’re right that none of us should tolerate violence, and on the right we don’t. Those few who rioted at the capitol and went inside were found and were prosecuted and wound up serving time, and the right supported it. The rioters on the left during 2020-21 were NOT held to account. Leftist groups defended their actions. Kamala Harris and others bailed out the rioters. People who stood in their way were either gunned down, like David Dorn, or were put on trial for murder like Kyle Rittenhouse. The perspectives here are like night and day.
The left has used violence for decades. The right has not. January 6th was a shock because it never happens. And for the record your swipe at Trump re: Lafayette Square was debunked long ago, it is false.
I'd agree with your statement on conservatives being appalled by January 6, except that the MAGA right still insists nothing criminal occurred and all the prosecutions were political. I wish they'd just say, "Yeah, the riots and siege were wrong, wish we hadn't done that, our bad." I'd be happy to forgive the excessiveness of emotion, but find that hard to do when they insist they didn't do anything wrong that day.
I agree completely that the Left was idiotic to support the riots, arsons, personal violence against innocent passersby, and takeover of public streets that characterized the Summer of Floyd. Were I in charge in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, etc., I would have sorted out the legitimate protestors from the criminal element, protected the former, and thrown the latter into jail, and used the National Guard to do it if my cops were too outnumbered. And CHAZ? I would have torn it down the first day. The first job of any government is to protect public safety.
Same with January 6. Were I president that day, I would have quadruped the police presence and also had the National Guard in place. When MAGA protestors arrived, I would have ensured the protection of the shouters and sign-carriers and legal protestors, but arrested everyone who threw a punch, tear-gassed a cop, or tried to breach the gates to enter the building. No sane society should ever allow rioters to rampage its Capitol.
The Kyle Rittenhouse case should have been thrown out at arraignment. That was a political prosecution, not a criminal one, and that it went as far as it did is scandalous.
But I'm a liberal, not a leftist, Woke, or MAGA.
P.S. Sorry, but Lafayette Square was not a hoax; photos and videos prove that law enforcement cleared the park with clubs and gas so Trump could get a photo op. Holding the Bible upside down just gave it comic relief.
Well I guess (especially in light of Biden's railing on "MAGA Republicans" now) it's important to describe the difference between "conservatives" and "MAGA Republicans" because Biden did not, nor do you. Trump got 74 million votes in the last election. So who are you talking about that thinks the Jan 6th prosecutions are unjust and political? I've been a Trump supporter and while I think the prosecutions in many cases have been unfairly harsh (i.e. solitary confinement for long periods for someone with no criminal record, etc.) and that aspect has been political, I really don't know of anyone on the right who has suggested that if we had it to do all over again we'd condone rioting in the capitol.
At the same time there is plenty of video from that event that gets no airplay that shows people walking into the building calmly, staying inside the ropes even, going in unauthorized but not looking to hurt anybody, just protesting. Still wrong, but hardly an insurrection. There is also, as one commenter pointed out, evidence of it being a "false flag" in that a guy like Ray Epps, who looks like an FBI plant who was openly encouraging people to go into the building, is not prosecuted at all. Understand that, as I pointed out earlier, conservatives rioting is not really a thing; the Jan 6th event was novel. Most on the right were horrified and condemn it.
Lafayette Square was not cleared for Trump. This was debunked a year ago by the IG. Even liberal news outlets reported this. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/police-clear-lafayette-park-area-trump-hold-bible/story?id=78171712
WELL SAID
Well said. Also, some say Jan 6th was a false flag to get at Trump and the MAGA movement. Lots of evidence to support this, but you won't hear that on #msm and the #normies have zero clue. Crazy times.
That "some say" January 6 was a false flag doesn't mean it's true . . . because it isn't. Some also say the Earth is flat, but that isn't true either. "Normies" have plenty of clue.
Bless you for saying these truths.
I am stunned by Bari's article. After all, Islam is the religion of peace. Don't pay attention to those wearing suicide vests or ISIS slaughtering, torturing, raping women and children and then burning them alive or the Taliban murdering women who venture outside without a male escort or not wearing the burka.
These are actions of a peaceful religion or so the PC, Woke left tells us and we all know they wouldn't lie. The question we should all be asking is, how come the feminist, left, Democrat Party never addresses this? All we hear out of the left is that "Islam is the religion of peace." Only an uneducated idiot would say that yet Democrats actually believe it and preach it.
Even more puzzling is why would anybody vote Democrat, the party of the dangerously ignorant.
As I am wont to point out, when a non-Muslim characterizes Islam as a "religion of peace" he is deluded, but when a Muslim claims Islam is a religion of peace, oddly he is not lying. He is betraying the fact that Islam has a defective concept of peace. In Semitic languages the consonants are the root of the word: note that salam (peace) and islam (submission) have the same consonants. In the Muslim mind, peace and submission are inextricably linked. The only peace Islam knows is the peace between conqueror and conquered, between master and submissive slave. There are no negotiated peaces in the Islamic conception of foreign affairs, only hudna, pauses or ceasefires which can be abrogated by Muslims whenever it is to their advantage with no moral stain for duplicity (indeed it might even be regarded as immoral to not reopen hostilities at an opportune moment).
That depends what Muslim sect you belong to. Shiite Muslims (Persians) have been killing Sunni Muslims (Arabs) and vice versa for centuries. It continues to this day between Iran (Persia) and the Arab states, most notably Saudi Arabia. Prodded by warmongering neocons like Dick Cheney, fools like George W. Bush wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and shattered tens of thousands of young American lives in the arrogant belief we could end the savagery by turning Iraq into a democracy. We all know how that turned out. I say let Allah decide. If it takes a few more centuries of them killing each other, so be it.
Evidently the Islamic man who killed other Muslim men in Albuquerque was very, very unhappy that his daughter had married a man from a different sect (can't remember whether he was Shiite or Sunni).
It's worth noting that Muslims started killing other Muslims over leadership issues within just a few years of Mohammed's death. And they've never stopped.
The second I saw about the murders in Albuquerque, i was questioning if it was really the wire supremacist leftists were jumping at blaming. I was not shocked at all to find out the real perpetrator.
This isn't the first time the left fanatics have done this and it won't be the last.
My brother-in-law is a Middle Expert who has been called by news agency as an expert. He told me years ago that the Iranian fanatics weren't building an atom bomb to terrorize the west but to kill Sunnis.
The Sunnis and the Shias hate each other.
In that case it might be an idea to give them both bombs.
Except they'll soon enough get around to infidels, whom they hate almost as much as apostates.
We need a modern day Rodrigo Diaz or Charles the Hammer.
Huh, I guess I stopped following this story too early. Last I heard it was a 'white nationalist' doing what Huffpo says white nationalists do.
Of course that's what the media was claiming, because they wanted it to be true.
The Islamic countries have been ruled by cruel bloody dictators for thousands of years. Islam is a fairly new religion but it was born in a culture of cruelty where absolute rulers stayed in power the same way Communist regimes stay in power through fear generate by murder and torture.
And the direction the Democrat regime is headed. They have the fear thing worked out to an art, and are beginning with the torture thing-emotional torture to start.
DNY, thank you for the engaging response. And the woke crowd in America is using the same tactics to create submissive followers who obey the commands of violent ideological leaders. The words are violence crowd are the greatest threat to democratic ideals because they encourage physical violence. The best thing that could happen to this country is for California to turn half red not in blood but in Republican.
I remember Khrushchev and Kennedy shaking hands and agreeing to seek world peace. Of course, "peace" to Khrushchev meant "world socialism".
In Mid-Eastern affairs, TRIBALISM is the very basic culture - much more than Islam. Hence the wars between Shia and Sunna.
Anyone who is not a member of our tribe is an enemy of our tribe - unless he is a member of a tribe with which we have a [temporary] alliance; in that case he is only a potential enemy, and we don't try to kill him.
Example: The Qur'an states explicitely the Allah designated the holy land to the Children of Israel. ALL learned Arabs [and all other Muslims] who actually read the Qur'an know this. The Qur'an is ignored when it goes against tribalism.
Well said.
The thing that ties the Left and Islam together is hatred of Israel. And that hatred is so compelling that the Left carefully looks the other way when Muslims engage in practices that are misogynistic, homophobic, and theocratic. Likewise, Islamic leaders are careful to try to keep the most libertine behaviors of the Left out of sight of their populations. The alliance against Israel is too important to allow little things like clashing social philosophies to get in the way of it.
Celia, you’re forgetting the Abraham Accords Trump negotiated between the Arab (Sunni) states of UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco and Israel that decoupled the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from moving toward normalizing relations between them. Trump even had Saudi Arabia leaning in that direction but then we elected an imbecile that declared them a parish state. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia and Israel share a common foe in Iran. With Biden in office and Obama retreads running our foreign policy, any further overtures at formally normalizing relations will be met with the Saudi version of “let’s go Brandon”.
All true. One rarely encounters anyone who even knows about the Abraham Accords, let alone appreciates what it accomplished.
One small quibble: we did NOT elect Alleged President Asterisk. He was installed by a cabal of evildoers via massive fraud. Never forget that.
I'm not sure what to think of the Abraham Accords. I was impressed that Trump managed to negotiate them. But I am not convinced that the Islamic nations who signed on were doing anything except hiding behind a pretense of peace.
I visited Dubai recently... on a direct flight from Tel Aviv, and spoke to Emiratis who see the reality of "Palestine" and their leaders... many hearts and minds have been changed... for the better...
It is a strategic alliance of necessity that will increase revenue and stability of Arab States but there is no evidence it is motivated by a the populations becoming less anti-semitic. Most Arab states are autocracies governed by elites that have little in common with the hoi polloi. On the other hand...sometimes capitalist peace is a crucial stepping stone to other types of peace. Time will tell.
If I were to guess, the common denominator of the Accords is their shared hatred of Iran with Israel. The enemy of my enemy is now suddenly my friend.
The only thing the Trump Admin did that I can say was smart.
It wasn't so much Trump admin's doing as a reaction to Obama empowering Shiites across the levante.
Actually, he pushed back on China and funded both our National Parks and HBCUs at unprecedented levels. In spite of leaning left, I was glad about these efforts.
There is more than that. They also both hate Christianity. The original Left in France committed genocide in the Vendee to put down an uprising of pious Roman Catholics against the new regime which destroyed relics of saints in the name of "Reason". The Bolsheviks created more martyrs for the Holy Orthodox Church than all the pagan Roman and Persian emperors combined.
The persecution may be softer and less bloody now here in America, but what is the point of seeking to require Roman Catholic nuns to pay for contraception and hounding pious Christian bakers and wedding photographers to force them to provide services they do not want to provide? Civil rights? Give me a break, it's to deny them the right to live according to their Christian faith. Both the Left and Muslims are following the dictum "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
But why does the Left hate Israel? I think it is because Israel is an ally of the United States and the Left hates the United States. For the same reason they embrace enemies of the United States, like Iran, Cuba and Nicaragua.
The Left hates Jews. Hating Israel is just the politically correct version of antisemitism.
The Jews have survived everything the rest of the world has thrown at them. For thousands of years. Maybe you can come up with a secular explanation for that. Personally, I'm going to stick with the religious explanation.
You seem to ignore that there are a lot of Jews on the left
And yet the Left is becoming more and more antisemitic.
I can't account for the fact that some people manage to find common cause with people who are, in all reality, their enemies. A lot of LDS people are Republicans, despite the fact that their fellow Republicans--Evangelical Christians in particular--*despise* them.
The Left hates anything that makes a claim to loyalty independent of the state. The Jews on the Left by and large are Jewish only by ancestry, rather than by faith, and find the anti-Christianity of the Left attractive. Orthodox Jews tend to be center-right or flatly right-wing.
Tim - Classical Liberalism has been good to Jews in this country (the US) but the new left is a far different entity. I personally don't understand anti-semitism. I just really don't get it. But our society is changing and hopefully more people will start to see that old alliances aren't necessarily working for them any more.
Their Judaism is secondary to their leftist. An jnteresting question to pose is where does belief in God fit in for those Jews who seem to put their politics first. Exactly how do they define, "religion?" I would love to see Bari address these issues in the future. I raise these questions often with friends and it makes for a very interesting conversation.
Because the Jewish people, by and large, are successful and hard working. This sets them up as “the oppressor” class and the Palestinians as the “oppressed”.
Frog, a big part of this is that Israel by necessity must view itself as a sovereign nation. About half of the US supports the sovereignty of the US while millions of others view themselves as global citizens. I view much of the rest of the so called free world as in the global camp. Look at howctge UN, WHO ETC operate and imagine what would happen to an Israel or the US constitution if they if a world body had the right to determine how Israel or
The US should act or what rules they should be subject to.
Poor little Israel, it's so small, yet attracts soooo much attention from the brain dead. Luckily, Israel doesn't give a damn that the Left and Islamists hate it. It's not going anywhere no matter who bitches and moans "Ohhhh, the Zionists, I hate Zionists and I hate Israel but oh, no, I love the Jews, I just hate those Zionists," rinse and repeat.
I'm one of the many leftwing Democrats who is nauseated by the woke and the PC, and who are also appalled by the treatment of women in a lot of muslim countries. I'm equally disgusted by the GOP SCOTUS justices, and GOP politicians around the country for taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies. I certainly won't be voting for most members of a party that tried to deprive us of our democracy. (I would happily vote for my GOP governor, Charlie Baker, if only he'd run again, and if I could vote for Liz Cheney, I certainly would, but I'm not registered in Wyoming.)
I don't know what party Bari belongs to, but I'm here because I appreciate her perspective.
Appreciate the POV. To my eye, is is a mischaracterization to refer to SCOTUS justices as "GOP." The three to whom you refer are better characterized as "originalists" - they believe the Constitution should be interpreted as written and as intended at the time. Me, too. Why does it apply, hundreds of years after it was written? Because human nature does not change. If you want to change the Constitution, there are methods available.
Although you did not say it explicitly, many mischaracterize the overturning of Roe. It was IMHO not the "taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies." It was the correction of the Court's 1973 attempt to legislate from the bench. The Court does NOT make laws, but Roe was just that - even prescribing by trimester whether abortion was allowed. That is not their role; they knew it then, and they know it now. Overturning Roe simply said that it was not the Court's decision to make; that decision belongs to the People. The elected representatives of that People - "politicians" - in various states are making that decision now. That's the way it is supposed to work. I've always supported available abortion; it's not going away. I think the Fifteen-Week Rule is a decent compromise - and we are going to have to compromise - all of us.
Well said! The Democrat rag NYT headline: "...Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wasn’t All That Fond of Roe v. Wade" You are correct the courts are there for strict interpretation of the law not to make laws.
It's true. She wasn't. Among other things, she foresaw quite accurately that it would be messy politically.
I just think that after nearly 50 years, it was a huge mistake to expunge it.
It's true. She wasn't. Among other things, she foresaw quite accurately that it would be messy politically.
I just think that after nearly 50 years, it was a huge mistake to expunge it.
The next step is to rule Chevron Deference unconstitutional. Congress needs to write explicit rules for the executive, otherwise there will be the same problem of lawmaking outside of the legislative branch. This is precisely what the Constitution says should not happen.
I wouldn't want to end the Chevron Deference. If we did, governing would grind to a halt, because there is no way on Earth that Congress could (or should) micromanage to that degree. Our nation is too big and complex to require Congress pass a law every time a regulation needs to be issued by an agency.
Senators and representatives don't have time to read bills now; they vote blindly most of the time. Throwing the work of every federal agency and regulator on their desks on the notion that Congress must sign off on EVERYTHING? Not remotely possible in a country like ours.
Very well said about all of us needing to compromise. One of the biggest problems in modern politics is the inability to compromise on anything. Lawmakers want to hang onto their jobs, and to do that, they dare not set off their rabid bases (left or right). That turns every lawmaker into a Culture Warrior, rather than an honest broker of what's best for America.
That legislative fear makes life difficult for those of us who just want honest and reasonable solutions to our problems, and to otherwise be left to our own lives. We can't have because lawmakers are in the headlocks of the minority wings of their respective parties, and I resent that.
Yes. Me, too.
Agree with Jim. Abortion is an issue on which extremists on either side seem to have no respect for the other’s arguments. I would not outlaw abortion, but extremely restrict it. Most people in this country do not even realize that under Roe our laws regarding abortion had gradually become the most liberal- lax- permissive - whatever word you would use to characterize them in most of the world. Usually we take extra care in our society to protect the most vulnerable among us, yet even though the unborn is clearly the most vulnerable - the pro choice crowd talks only about the rights of the pregnant woman, even when she has conceived willing, even if unintended, through her actions. I would certainly leave early abortion legal even though it morally offends me, and certainly allow it in all cases of tape and incest since those pregnancies were unwilling and often involve extreme trauma for the women involved. Compromise is by definition never perfect for either side, but it can at times be the least divisive alternative.
Your comments are very fair. It is so sad that the pro choice people do not even talk about how horrific abortion is to the unborn baby. And they talk about the view of the women, but most of the prolife movement is made up of women who are fighting for the life of the baby.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Ditto
Welcome David. We need dissenting voices on this very conservative BBS. I have said most of us are preaching to the choir. Hopefully we can debate instead of hollering at each other. I used to be pro-choice until I saw a sonogram of a friend's fetus. I saw the heartbeat and that was an epiphany for me and I thought that is a human being and to kill it is murder. There is a cavoite to this. I would never tell a woman what to do with her body.
Again, welcome.
This blog is not conservative. Bari is a self-proclaimed liberal. She is in a gay marriage. Her writing clearly comes from left of center. What she is NOT is a leftist. She is more of a classical liberal: Loves the country, seeks the truth, comes from a different perspective from us conservatives. The far left is her enemy just as much as it is mine. I read her because although I don’t always agree, she does seek truth and writes honestly and gets me out of my echo chamber without bashing me over the head. We used to have a lot of this kind of thing but the far left has been doing its best to quash it for decades. We need more of it.
I agree with you about Bari but from what I see, most of the posters here are conservatives and it seems most are right of center. I don't think I have ever seen a conservative on here that isa fanatic, passionate but not fanatic. Because the preponderance of posters are conservative is why I call it a conservative BBS. there use to be conservative Democrats but I don't think many exist now.
Compared to the radical left, which is running the Democrat Party now, Bari is a conservative. She left the NYT which has become a leftwing rag sheet. If she is liberal as she claims, she is a true liberal in the spirit of John Stuart Mill.
You’re right on all counts. In fact I was originally going to point out that the fact so many conservatives comment on here and make it feel like a conservative blog is a testament to conservatism, because Bari is not one. We want to hear those other voices. I think that in this far-left culture, even a liberal sounds sane to a conservative and so we like it.
You are right on many points, but the political situation has changed so much, I mean division and radicalization on both sides, that attaching labels and using traditional classification may no longer work. I for one have to confess that I flip-flopped a few times because the party I belonged to for many years had stopped representing my beliefs. I’d rather switch parties than stubbornly vote for something I no longer support. This type of realignment is happening to many people at the moment, and I think it includes Bari. Sort of a slow motion earthquake, which is defined as “occurs when the Earth's tectonic plates slide against each other at a slow rate without causing major ground tremors”. Except major ground tremors in our political life may very well be imminent.
I am left of center (voting mostly for Democrats at a national level up to 4-6 years ag) but considered alt-right by many (most) Democrats.
right on!!
I wouldn't characterize this blog as "conservative." To me it appears above all as a place that seeks the truth. Yes, individual commenters have their own POV, but the really great thing is that with few exceptions, everyone is willing to debate and consider others' views.
re: sonogram. I was staunchly pro-choice until I saw an actual abortion performed. I still support its availability, but there MUST be limits. As they say in the South, this ain't play.
"I was staunchly pro-choice until I saw an actual abortion performed. I still support its availability, but there MUST be limits"
This reflects what most of us want, I think: available early, limits later.
The irony is that under Roe, we had that: women were voluntarily making sensible and reasonable decisions about abortions without Big Daddy Government on their necks. Under Roe, 91 percent of all abortions were performed in the first twelve weeks. Only 1 percent were performed late-term, with virtually all of those for medical emergencies to woman or baby. (And turning "virtually" to "none" in late term abortions would have been a minor legal tweak at best.)
In other words, America already had the abortion policy that most of us want: abortion for any reason early, and none late except for medical emergencies. Our data reflected Canada's almost exactly: 91 percent early, 1 percent late, and Canada has zero abortion laws, its government having decided decades ago to leave abortion decisions to women and doctors.
Women know what they are doing with their abortion rights, and it's a shame that half our state governments don't trust them to keep on doing it.
Overturning Roe was (probably) legally correct, but nonetheless a disaster for women in total-ban states. I hope political pressure will make those legislatures and governors end their total bans for something far more in line with what most Americans think is reasonable.
Well said.
An interesting reply, Jim.
A pro choice rallying cry recently is to equate gun rights with a woman's right to abortion. So when you write that you support abortion's availability, but that must be limits (of which I agree with), I wonder if gun rights can be looked at through the same lens - that there must be limits.
Already plenty of limits on gun rights. If we actually enforced them, it might translate to real lives saved.
Abortion rights are in the Constitution nowhere. The right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Limiting that is a very different animal.
Jim, this BBS may not be conservative but it is certainly not left wing.
Precisely. We all seek the truth.
Thank you LonesomePolecat. I'm all for respectful debate.
I find it interesting you believe it is the role of SCOTUS to make law and not interpret The Constitution.
They were not interpreting the Constitution. They totally ignored the 9th amendment, and the fact that even early in our nation's history, abortion was accepted up until quickening, which generally does not happen before 16 weeks.
I believe that the court overturning RvW was enforcing the tenth amendment. basically, "powers not granted to the federal government belong to the states, or to the people. "
Exactly.
That's certainly a reasonable supposition. However, a major problem is precedence. It's very messy for women to have it yanked away after 50 years. Women are undoubtedly already dying, including women who weren't even seeking abortions, because MDs are afraid to remove fetuses, for example in the case of ectopic pregnancies.
The whole idea of “quickening” was the idea of determining when the soul is placed into the baby. It never was some scientific determination. In fact I think it was a religious concept. In any case we no longer try to determine such a thing, we know that science now tells us the life is human from conception and in the absence of anything telling us when the soul comes into the picture we presume it to be immediately.
Jews don't presume it to be immediately, and in any case, it's debatable whether there is a soul.
And if there is a soul, and if it enters the small collection of cells right after conception, who's to say that if those cells never become a human, that soul can't enter another embryo?
But I can tell you that when I was 8, my mother had a miscarriage when she was about four months along. For our family, which also consisted of my older brother, the miscarriage was a big disappointment, but not a death in the family. The disappointment dissipated completely when my sister was born around 15 months later.
Early in our nations history, slavery was legal.
From the founding of the US in 1776 to the mid 1800’s abortion was considered highly socially unacceptable and the numbers were so small there was little need for regulation.
It is hard to look at the Roe V Wade decision as being any better than the Dred Scott decision and many of the arguments supporting each are strikingly similar. Using the 9th Amendment as support for RvW is taking such a broad reading of the 9th Amendment, making any law regulating any behavior (for example environmental law) would be virtually impossible.
You're wrong about abortion being considered highly unacceptable back then. And about the 9th amendment.
Leftwing Democrat you sure are when you write "I'm equally disgusted by the GOP SCOTUS justices .... for taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies". The Supreme Court did no such thing. As you can see around the country there exist a variety of STATES providing their own constitutional or statutory facility to abortion.
You are a good little leftie as you haven't the foggiest notion of what the US Constitution is about, nor what the decision in Dobbs is based on.
Don't get pissed off but did you really have to use the insult "You are a good little leftie"? You could have made you point without that. I'm really not someone to throw stones. I have done the same in the past but I am trying to change my ways. All though Matt Mullins inspires me to belittle him.
But he does have a point. The statement:
"I'm equally disgusted by the GOP SCOTUS justices .... for taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies"
Is exceedingly factually incorrect and the repetition of the lies propagated by most media channels to inflame hatred.
Yes, yes, yes. I'm not pissed at your comment and I should know better. It is just frustrating to see some of the stuff that passes through the comments.
Your advice is quite good and I hereby vow to do better. Much better.
I'll try too. But at times I get so frustrated, I go over the edge.
see what I wrote in response to Steven N, currently directly above your comment.
Your "facts" are wrong. And the Ninth Amendment canard has been raised and beaten back countless times.
But there are just some who can't see reality. Here is a clue: If, in fact, some "right" existed pre-US Constitution, that "right" does not get US Constitutional protection. It is unaddressed by the Constitution. And left to the States to debate and decide. As they are now doing.
Put another way, the Ninth does not pull some gaggle of supposed "rights" into the US Constitution. It leaves them elsewhere.
You seem to believe there's no such thing as unenumerated rights. If so, why does the Constitution specifically mention them, and what is the point of the Ninth Amendment if not to protect them?
The 9th leaves open the fact that there are a lot of rights that didn't make it into the Constitution. That was its purpose.
You are “equally disgusted” by vastly unequal things. People like you are part of the problem.
Your first and second paragraphs are risible. How would you feel if your rights were transferred to a fetus or embryo? I'm not even going to bother to argue with your second paragraph. No, there weren't any BLM people on hand for the insurrection. And nor was the law enforcement officer who killed Ashley Babbit a criminal.
I'm well aware abortion is still legal in my state. But other states where it is not legal are trying to pass laws preventing their citizens from coming here to get abortions.
Women's lives are at stake with these bans.
"In some cases, the infection can become severe or life-threatening, leading to sepsis, hysterectomy or even death. In 2012, a woman died in Ireland after her waters broke at 17 weeks and doctors refused to give her an abortion. The case spurred a movement that led to the overturning of Ireland's abortion ban in 2018."
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/07/26/1111280165/because-of-texas-abortion-law-her-wanted-pregnancy-became-a-medical-nightmare
I don't know what planet you're on, but it's not Earth.
A change of pace:
The worlds shortest books
THINGS I LOVE ABOUT MY COUNTRY
By Jane Fonda, Cindy Sheehan
& Michelle Obama
Illustrated by Michael Moore
Foreword by George Soros
______________________________ __________
MY CHRISTIAN ACCOMPLISHMENTS
& HOW I HELPED AFTER KATRINA
By "The Rev Jesse Jackson" & "The Rev Al Sharpton"
______________________________ ________
THINGS I LOVE ABOUT BILL
By Hillary Clinton
_________________
Sequel: THINGS I LOVE ABOUT HILLARY
By Bill Clinton
_________________
THINGS I CANNOT AFFORD
By Bill Gates
______________________________ ______
THINGS I WOULD NOT DO FOR MONEY
By Dennis Rodman
______________________________ ___
THINGS WE KNOW TO BE TRUE
By Al Gore & John Kerry
______________________________ _______
GUIDE TO THE PACIFIC
By Amelia Earhart
______________________________ ______
HOW TO LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST
By Dr. Jack Kevorkian
______________________________ ____
__________________
GUIDE TO DATING ETIQUETTE
By Mike Tyson
______________________________ ____
THE AMISH PHONE DIRECTORY
______________________________ _________
MY PLAN TO FIND THE REAL KILLERS
By O. J. Simpson & Casey Anthony
______________________________ ___________
HOW TO DRINK & DRIVE SAFELY
By Ted Kennedy
________ _
MY BOOK ON MORALS
By Bill Clinton
With introduction by
The Rev. Jesse Jackson
And foreword by
Tiger Woods with John Edwards
______________________________ _____________________
HOW TO WIN A SUPER BOWL
BY THE MINNESOTA VIKINGS
______________________________ _____________________
AND, JUST ADDED:
My Complete Knowledge of Military Strategy
By Nancy Pelosi
______________________________ ____________
Famous Eskimo Surfers
By Sgt Preston
______________________________ ____________
SPOTTED OWL RECIPES-by the EPA
______________________________ ____________
And the shortest book of them all..................
THINGS I DID TO DESERVE THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
By Barack Obama
Not to put a damper on your tirade, Lonesome - but our senile 'idiot' who is our current President just assassinated Al Qaeda's #2 (or perhaps that was the Deep State). I guess that doesn't matter. He was a bad Muslim.
Or that Obama was in office when #1 was hit (another BAD Muslim).
The point here is that the entire Democratic Party is not WOKE (but sadly, quite a lot of it is, I admit). Just like today's iteration of the GOP is not entirely MAGA (but close..).
The 'ignorant' are on both sides of this increasingly wide divide.
They are shared.
Personally, I find there's a lotta similarities between the Woke and the MAGA crowd here. That's just me.
Agreed. 100%. They just pull in opposite directions. But the fervour is the same.
Christianity is also hailed as the "religion of peace," yet it spent 2,000 years libeling and murdering Jews for the fake crime of "they killed our Jesus." Christianity invaded and conquered lands not its own in order to "civilize the heathens," which in reality meant "kill their leaders and take their land." The Church ripped American and Canadian Natives from their families and condemned them to White Christian Re-education Schools to "beat the Indian out of them." Christianity conducted the Inquisition and the Crusades, and exiled American colonials from their communities if they were not sufficiently "pure." Christians murdered women as "witches." Christians merged the power of Church and State by becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, among others. "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before" is not a sonnet to peaceniks.
Yes, Islam commits every atrocity you list here. But so did Christians. Fortunately, Christianity seems to have grown out of its "kill them all, let God sort them out" phase, and could eventually live up to its "religion of peace" ideals. Islam will too, given enough time.
Meantime, any religionists who insist on using the "terrible swift sword" against people they don't like need to be smacked down good and hard by the rest of us. We can no longer allow them to use religion as a cover for crimes they could not otherwise commit.
Christianity softened its image because of the reformation and the rise of protestants sects. In the reformation there was a couple hundred years of bloody warfare between Catholics and the multiple forms of protestant sects. Protestants fought Catholics and protestants fought each other but in the end it all worked out and the killing stopped and we no longer have inter Christian Religion warfare. This has not happened with Islam and it looks like it will never happen.
The Muslims bitch about the Crusade but the Crusade only lasted 300 years but Islam has been assaulting the West for over 1000 years.
Agreed. It not only softened its image, it changed its way of dealing with the rest of the world. Christianity has, in my opinion, finally matured out of its blood-and-guts stage, and the world is better for it.
I don't know if Islam can make that leap. Christianity, being a religion that stands apart from government, can be as flexible as it chooses, and chose to abandon the sword. Islam, on the other hand, combines religion, government, power, and lifestyle into a single machine of submission that demands the rest of world obey. Islam doesn't recognize any other religion or government as valid, only as competitors to be crushed into submission.
Which is not to say a billion Muslims don't want what we want--a peaceful and prosperous life that includes getting along with neighbors. But the tribalists and true believers among them will not allow that to happen, and will kill their own to ensure "purity." There are a lot of those bonecrushers out there, and they have serious firepower to bring to bear.
I don't know how Western culture deals with that other than brute defensive force.
Agree -Shane. Religion has been a tremendous source of both good and evil. But I do think that one significant difference is that Christ explicitly espoused peace and forgiveness and never brandished the sword , while I believe Mohammed did in fact wield a sword himself.
Well said, KTA. Jesus was a guy I'd love to have a beer with, and a genuine prince of peace. The religion founded by Paul in his name, not so much, not until Christianity grew out of the bully-and-butcher stage to the peaceful maturity it enjoys now.
Islam is still in the bully-and-butcher stage, and needs to grow out of that. If it can, that is. Christianity is a religion, and propers with or without government. Islam is as a way of total existence that considers religion and government one and the same, rejecting any notion that other religions or forms of government are valid.
Christianity (and Judaism) were able to grow out of their dominate-and-conquer stages; I don't know if Islam can make that separation because the entire point of Islam is submission to Allah.
I hope Islam can do that, for all our sakes, and especially for the billion-plus Muslims who just want to live their lives without anger or violence.
Thanks Shane. Good to hear from you and see you on this thread. Love Bari. Hope that all is well.
Thanks much for this kind note, and back at you!
Lol.
Agreed 100%; thank you Bari and KittyKatz.
Great piece, I agree! The only one question I personally have with this story - who are "We" in the name? There is a huge number of people raising alarms for years and they were ignored, called names and made fun off. I am very happy that Bari's eyes are opening to the things she and her friends were lied about for years, hope more people of her generation will start to look deeper into "other side" arguments and stop rejecting them outright.
"courage is the remedy".
Courage is not a pill, not medicine one swallows or injects.
Courage is the willingness to lose all, including one's life in defense of a principle.
There is little of that today and few if any are celebrating the rare demonstration of it.
Bari and Nellie, you might try finding some authors who write inspiringly about folks who exemplify courage in a host of matters.
Salman Rushdie continuing to make public appearances over the last 30 years is a certain measure of courage.
You bet. He didn't seek "safe spaces", he sought out places to "speak"!
Today's medical update made me happy---it looks like he'll pull through. He faces a long and tough rehab, but he seems to be out of death danger.
As for his attacker, I hope there is a dungeon into which we can throw him and never hear his name again.
Oh wow, so well said, "we are living in cowardly times - courage is the remedy."
you nailed it with that.
I must borrow that phrase.
This was indeed a powerful piece.
You wrote what I was thinking, KittyKatz. I got chills reading Bari’s article.
The left-wing movement to label speech as violence is a perfect example of nominal fallacy - labeling things to avoid having to think about them, absolving yourself from listening. This is why so many progressives are bewildered by encounters with disagreement, which they find inexplicable.
My wife spent all last night unsuccessfully kicking me under a dinner table because I was arguing with a university professor about the failure of universities to protect their core values. She thinks I should self censor to be polite - I think it is important to discuss and debate these issues.
Next time, wear shin guards.
🤣🤣🤣
We've done far too much self censoring. It's time we did speak up. Do it as politely and civilly as possible.
You are correct. We have been attacked for our opinions, or shut off or censored. These are opinions, words, ideas to which every person is entitled to,and should be allowed to express freely.
Civility is now weakness. Unless you scream until the veins on your neck pop out you just are not taken seriously. No one will listen to the reasoned voice, at least not until they are dead!
The Leftist freaks who show up in front of Supreme Court justices homes, and those protesting for the killing of babies certainly fit this description. They are the ones described by Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer."
There is the other liberal/lefty or uncommitted person standing in the background. They are the ones who can eventually be persuaded by a reasoned discussion done in a civil, non-threatening way. Dan Bongino has talked about this many times. Our object is to persuade the observer to take another look. They won't if you are screaming and intimidating them.
Not possible at this stage you silenced if you own a MAGA hat
Interestingly, I own a bright red (of course) "Save America" hat, which I wear religiously. I've actually kept track of comments, and much to my surprise, I have over forty positive and only two negative. People do notice.
At Starbucks about a month ago, three girls - fairly young, with the shredded jeans and typical attire of late high-schoolers or young college age, kept staring at my hat. I thought, "Oh boy, here it goes."
Finally one came over and said, "We just wanted you to know, we LOVE your hat."
I could've kissed her. I said back, "And I just want you to know: the fact that somebody your age feels that way makes me believe there just may be hope for us all."
Such a terrific reply thanks Jim strangely enough I have had only positive responses when ever my hubby are out and I’m “maggering” everybody I encounter either gives me a thumbs up sign or tells me “a great hat you wearing there love” I believe after this raid on MaLthis current administration fate is sealed we will only have 2 years left of them please God!
It is incredible the power the Presidency now has. I don't think it was meant to be this way; Congress has transferred power to the executive and abdicated its responsibility in nearly every way possible. This "presidency" is the perfect example of why the founders limited the executive's powers; I think the nation will probably survive in some form until Alleged President Asterisk is carried out on a stretcher or in a strait jacket, but God - I wonder just how much more damage the puppeteers who pull his strings can do in the next two years.
My husband takes it one step further- he thinks I should never write what I think anywhere online because one day all of us will be tracked down.
I know many with his reaction to where we're at. That reaction is what makes me insist on posting what I think, and will not sit down and shut up. We cannot accept that it's OK to be frightened into silence. That is the sure road to the very things we fear the most.
Too many people afraid of what others will think and afraid of repercussions.
You are correct and you show bravery in your actions.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviet Union by speaking the truth. It starts with one brave person willing to say the truth.
You are correct. That is what has happened in essence with Tavistock in England, the clinic which did surgery on children (16 years +) because they claimed to be trans.
First they convinced them they were "trans" through counseling.
Amen
re: truth. I read "Cancer Ward" in college; I have not read "Gulag Archipelago." Lately I've read a few essays on Solzhenitsyn as we near the 50th anniversary of Gulag. What I keep taking away is his dedication to the TRUTH and the historical importance of the concept of truth. I never realized that the concept of truth has spawned over the centuries an entire philosophy. As I ponder on it, I believe that the labels conservative and liberal are irrelevant, obsolete. At the core, all that matters is What Is True.
I have a pretty good BS meter, and sometimes what I see from both sides of the aisle is nauseating - a thoroughgoing perversion of duty and submission to attaining Power, when it should be submission to Truth and dedication to their Nation - wherever it leads and whomever it hurts, even political allies. A nation where the leaders lie will always go off the rails; a nation where they speak the truth, cannot. Our "leaders" understand that we do not want globalism/socialism/communism/the Great Reset and that the only way to implement it is by lying. And that, I believe, is precisely why we are where we are.
The Cancer Ward BTW is considered by many his best novel. Gulag Archipelago is, of course, a different animal and cannot be overrated as a source of information on Stalin’s system of repression. Sadly, it may be relevant to study now to better understand where we are heading. The problem is, the younger generation, and especially left leaning crowd, are not interested in history, because they do not think history repeats itself. It does though.
You are right. But people like Solzhenitsyn are born one in millions. I mean both in literary genius and bravery. There were numerous people whose names we will never know who helped him hide from the KGB before he was exiled, copied his works and distributed via the underground system called Samizdat. They were harassed by the KGB, persecuted, jailed, some of them perished. They brought the system down too.
"This in turn raises the issue of the USSR and the role played by Gorbachev himself. Here most historians would concede that without a reformer taking over in the Kremlin, not only would there have been nobody with whom Reagan could engage, but there would have been no end to the Cold War either. The United States could raise its own military expenditures as high as it liked; it could have lent even more support to so-called “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan, but without a very different kind of Soviet leader responding to some very real Soviet problems it is impossible to envisage 1989 ever happening. The United States might have played its part in weakening the legitimacy of communism and exposing its weaknesses (of which Reagan was more aware than many American experts at the time). However, at the end of the day the corrosive work was not being done from outside the USSR but from within by an economy that could not innovate and an ideology in which fewer and fewer believed.
There is, in addition, another problem with the argument that an assertive Reagan fought the Soviets to a standstill and then wrestled them to the floor until they cried “Uncle,” and it is a problem that all teachers of history and world affairs confront on a daily basis in the classroom: complexity. What happens in history—as we all know—can never be explained in single-factor terms; and the end of the Cold War is no exception to this important rule. Indeed, this is why scholars from both sides of the Atlantic are still arguing about it. While some give Reagan his due (though it is never entirely clear which Reagan), they often go on to point out that one also has to take into account several other factors when thinking about 1989, including the central part performed by the ordinary people of Central and Eastern Europe in their own liberation; the important role played by some European leaders—among whom the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was key when it came to pressing for German unification in October 1989; and finally, the quiet but critical role performed by misperception and misunderstanding. Here, the evidence is now clear. Was Gorbachev prepared to loosen Soviet control over Eastern Europe and let the states there choose their own way (the “Sinatra Doctrine”)? Obviously so. Did he, however, think that this would lead to the rapid and complete collapse of socialism in all its forms? Apparently not. It was one thing seeking a looser, and hopefully less costly, relationship with countries like Poland and Hungary. This did not necessarily mean that Gorbachev actually intended to lose control of the USSR’s “cordon sanitaire” completely. In reality, Gorbachev miscalculated and it was this miscalculation that brought the Cold War to an end."
https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/age-reagan/essays/ronald-reagan-and-end-cold-war-debate-continues
No one ever talks about John Paul II’s role in the USSR’s dissolution. History “teachers” avoid that like the plague but I remember it well.
My grown children are of the same opinion.
It's my way of lighting a candle. I can't do much but I can do that.
I am concerned about the same. With thousands of new IRS men on the loose. Lists of how each one voted?
I suppose they'll make it easy on themselves by perusing the donations lists of conservative organizations, and congressmen. The donation lists for congressmen and senators are public information and include addresses, emails, and phone numbers.
The purpose of doing this is going to be to intimidate supporters before the 2024 election.
Knowing the lengths they will go to is definitely concerning.
Terrifying!
You bet it's terrifying especially as they are going to hire those people who want to carry firearms and will have no compunction about shooting. It was right there in the hiring criteria until it became publicized and they scrubbed the site.
The first order of business of the new red wave must be to repeal this part of this law and direct the monies to severance packages for bureaucrats.
I confess that I worry about that sometimes. But I do not have it in me to be silent.
Same. No more polite silence. Considerate disagreement for me and the occasional outburst on the internet. More if needs be. I’ve got young kids and I’ll be damned if I let them grow up in a place where they have to trade their peace of mind and perspective and self-respect for conformity and acquiescence.
Celia the silence is growing darker by the day. The deep state just raided President Trumps house after having him silenced on the internet by big Tech the last twenty months. That is just for starters
Trump flouted the law. It’s called detective work.
So has Obama, Bush and Clinton for very similar minor infractions.
There is little doubt this is 100% banana republic political driven singularly by the single minded emotion of hatred. Don’t forget, it was the DNC and the HRC campaign that manufactured the documents leading to 20 months of “Trump/Russia” nightly news narratives.
I've thought about your comment all morning. A couple of things occur to me:
First, when the Democrat machine gets its 87,000 armed IRS agents, I will probably be one of the first targeted because I've probably already said too much - and I use my real name.
Second, to my eye the entire purpose of weaponizing the FBI, the IRS, the whole DOJ is to intimidate and silence us all, so if we ARE silent we actually help ensure their complete takeover. They get exactly what they want; we get a jackboot on our necks. So, again, in my opinion, while speaking out is a risk, silence is a sure thing - and just not an option. Easy choice.
Third, the globalist/socialist/elites/Democrats are using every means possible to goad us into armed retaliation. Yes, we could possibly win - depending on whether the military and police join their side, but if we let them do that, everybody loses.
*************
I saw a small roundtable discussion a few weeks ago - some real intellectual heavyweights that included a guy probably heir-apparent to Thomas Sowell. He said that the greatest hypocrisy of BLM, Antifa, et al, was their invocation of Martin Luther King, Jr. while denigrating all the white thinkers of times past, but that in his writings, MLK freely acknowledged that he had read nearly all of their writings before starting on his crusade for civil rights. I read a couple of hours every morning; maybe it's time I read those old white guys. We are in a similar position to MLK now, and we need the wisdom of those Dead White Men to guide us, lest we be goaded by evil men and women into doing things that will ensure we lose everything that makes life worth living.
They'll get me too. I contribute on these threads and have made no bones about my conservatism. I have donated to candidates and organizations that are conservative. I support Trump and my illustrious governor, Don DeSantis.
I can't afford a defense so I'll just sit in prison. Hope they have a good library.
As a Canadian who lives in a country where millions are unable to travel freely in or out of the country, you might be very surprised at how many Canadians admire Trump. We're trapped in a WEF prison while our rights and freedoms are being eroded. Our corporate media is compromised and the effects of brainwashing are frightening. I like and follow Ron DeSantis and often wished I lived in Florida. My admiration for Trump is so great because he withstood pressure that would cause most to fall. I'm very sorry he didn't get all the support he deserved. His good works in the US gave investors confidence and rippled all the way into our economy in Canada, the stock market reflected that. Yes he calls them as he sees them but he didn't cause all the riots, they were planned and the bricks were delivered. It's hard to play nice when there are psychopaths behind the scenes. You don't want to end up like Canada or Australia. I wish we had a leader who didn't have an evil personal agenda like so many who have bankrupted the world. These really are the darkest times.
I'm a dual citizen G Gently, living in, well to be honest, trapped in Canada. US born and raised by Canadian parents in Canada Ive lived in a border city for 16 years now and have lived the life of Riley living, working and traveling for 65 years wherever my heart has taken me.
Until 2020. I've been very outspoken concerning everything to do with both Canadian and US politics my entire life.
Canada is going down faster by far than the US. And we despair that those few of us watching this happen will be the few that still remember what life was like before the Woke and WEF.
Much luck to us all as we continue this battle on both sides of the border. We need all the luck we can get.
I am glad we have Trump. He is just about the bravest man I have ever seen. 17 Republicans of high stature ran for the Republican presidential primary initially and he was the last one standing. In their heart of hearts I would guess most of them, if not all of them, are glad they didn't get the nomination. They have witnessed what the Left has put Trump through.
Then again, one has to wonder if Jeb Bush would have been more than cursorily attacked because he would not have challenged the Left, or gone back over improper things done under Obama. We forget that under Obama James Rosen's phone calls and texts and some AP reporters' were investigated, without a warrant. There was "fast and furious" and the misuse of the IRS. There is probably a lot more but the point is who among the 17 would have even questioned it. Who among the 17 would have tried regulatory reform? Etc.
They are still going after him to destroy him and his family so he can't run in 2024 and as a salutory lesson to any other Republican candidate who may try to root out the Deep State and the deep corruption.
They got all our names Naomi, and if they apply a bit of pressure to Bari and Nellie I’m sure they will hand over their data of us. I doubt if the library will be any good in prison. They have even managed to ban Dr Seus, wardens probably force us to read Michele Obama’s Becoming or Hillary Clinton’s biography it’s not an option we have to stand tall and stand strong!
Brilliant post Jim you write exactly like 95% of people’s thought process on this site. We cannot remain silent, if we do it’s going to be the end of the world. America is home it’s a great place to be and it’s well worth fighting for we just have to keep our heads at least until November.
Yes Jim. That is my thinking exactly. And we'll likely meet one another when they round us all up, as it feels inevitable they will. I've never written under any name but my own as well, we'll both be easy to find.
I agree with you on all points. Silence is not an option, not for me anyway.
And I pray (though I am an atheist) that it does not come to an armed conflict. Because the left fanatics will win, and because it will be a bloody tragedy for the whole country. Don’t underestimate the left. Power is in their hands, and they are better organized. Most of the Democratic political leaders have not held a real job but spent their entire lives as community organizers: Sanders, Biden, Di Blasio, Obama was a professor but not for long and focused on attaining DC power. The 2020 election also shows how well-oiled Democratic machine works. I have no knowledge or opinion on election fraud. They are just more goal oriented. Add to this a total absence of moral or ethical red lines, and we will have a national tragedy.
I do think they are engaging in a provocation That’s why we should resist being provoked.
I agree with you JAO we have to resist the provocation at every level. I’m not sure anymore if they are better organized, it’s just that the Democrooks have captured the airwaves like the Nazis and that’s where it’s going to be so hard to change the mindset of millions of Americans. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before you will be able to vote on FB or Instagram (for the younger voters), it’s not one man one vote it’s never been it’s about how to rig the system which the Democrats have mastered.
He’s not wrong. It’s already happening.
https://tech.co/news/fbi-access-browsing-history-patriot-act
https://www.csis.org/analysis/fact-sheet-section-215-usa-patriot-act
Oh yes, I didn’t mean he is paranoid or has a conspiracy theory. And if internet browsing is a wide net, it is easy to identify paid subscribers to CS or simply anyone registered to a social media site since we typically have to provide an email address and/or phone number. I see no reason the government would not take this path if the left stay in power. Not based on the recent events. But if there are enough people who want to tell the truth, then there is hope. So I am staying here and will share the most interesting posts with my husband!
I post as well but I am also aware that should Big Brother decide I’m of interest, my online activity is an open book for them.
Awareness is the first step in prevention.
Think your husband is correct think they tracking us already
Time to start tracking them.
More of us, we're smarter and tougher.
Just not as malevolent.
I am familiar with that under the table kick
I use to do the same thing (unsuccessfully) to my husband - I was wrong. We now get invited to fewer dinner parties, but you (and he) are right for speaking and fighting for truth.
This is war - war for the very survival of the West and Western values and nothing less. The operative phrase is, "I don't care about your feelings."
Self-censor or get rid of your sheeple wife!
That's rather harsh. Not all people are equally comfortable with speaking out. My husband and my kids (because they take after their dad in that regard) would often rather that Mom not speak out. It may be frustrating, but I'm not going to eject them from my life for it.
And if they really love you they shouldn't reject you for speaking out. That is not love, but FEAR!
And why instead of explaining their position they immediately attack, call names, and seek in every way to shut down, demonize and pillory the person who questioned them.
Yes.
Social media and particularly Twitter normalized that. The likes validate it.
That's obtuse. It's simpler than this. The reason for labelling speech as violence is to legitimize answering speech with actual physical violence. "Speech = violence" ignores the difference between a disagreement and a broken arm.
This technique of obliterating critical distinctions is an old trick of the left. For example: "Property is theft." What distinction is ignored here? It is that property is honestly earned or created by effort, as against being stolen or acquired by fraud. "Property is theft" legitimizes the unjust seizing of property by force.
Note that most if not all applications of this technique result in justifying the use of violence where violence is not actually justified. There are many more examples of this on the left, but many on the right too. Actual sanity is in very short supply.
That doesn't make sense and is not "simpler." People call speech violence so that they can use violence against people who say things they don't like? They don't use violence, they merely shout them down and use social pressure to get those ostensibly in power to impose an agenda on others. They throw tantrums and use digital mobs. These are not people looking for physical confrontation. They're cowards.
All I can say is the first person to call me “a person with a vulva” will need serious dental orthotics services.
So. . ..
I guess the threat of mere 'social pressure' is why some controversial appearances require the presence of riot police? The mobs are not only digital. Many controversial speakers are shut down because the cost of providing protection against physical violence makes their appearance too expensive.
And a reminder: Defending free speech does NOT mean the defender agrees with the speech.
Sure, that happens on occasion. But the preponderance of examples have taken place online, where it's infinitely easier to gin up pseudo-outrage and get thousands of others to rally to the flag.
Now do Antifa and BLM during the 2020 "Summer of Love."
Literally had nothing to do with speech.
Andy Ngo would disagree (look him up if you don't know who he is). He was beaten almost to death by Antifa for writing about them during the riots.
The word 'literally' adds absolutely nothing to your sentence and weakens its impact when reading it. "The 'Summer of Love in 2020' had nothing to do with speech." is a sentence with more impact.
Yes, the overuse of the word 'literally' drives me crazy.
It's a pointed turn of phrase. It was not overused in this instance.
Sure it didn't, Brad.
You are the unserious people we often talk about here. You're such a Chad, Brad.
Cute. Are you going to say something of substance or just embarrass yourself?
How do you explain the violence of the antifa and blm rioters? Or the “CHAZ” group? Of course they use violence. If they can shout you down and cow you beforehand the violence is that much easier to effect.
Yes, I understand that and I 100% agree. But I'm talking about within the context of using "Your speech is violence" to justify violence. Those groups weren't committing violence in response to something someone said being equated to violence, they were using different, though no less wrong and idiotic, reasons to perpetrate violence. That's all I'm saying.
Gotcha.
Punch a Nazi, comes to mind. What’s a Nazi. Someone that says something that isn’t part of the progressive doctrine. So, to me, oh, yes, the reason that words=violence, is an excuse to commit violence. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but that is the ultimate use of the term. And as long as there is no pushback today, the term will be ingrained into people’s minds, so when the day comes when physical violence is needed, everyone will be comfortable with the violence because words are just as violent as physical violence is, we’ve all agreed, for years that words are violence. It is an Incremental acceptance of the idea.
Please, rather that automatically include the "right", please give some valid and EQUAL examples. Fairness, after all, requires it.
Paul, I agree what you describe has truth to it. I can’t fathom why you labeled Brad’s comment as obtuse. That didn’t add anything productive to the conversation here.
Because it isn't on point. It obscures what is actually going on. The nominal fallacy would be exemplified by mislabeling something truly serious with an unserious term, like the mafia's various euphemisms for murdering people. But please, I'm challenging the idea, not Brad Neaton personally. I'm not commenting here to demonstrate allegiance to any group. I would be against any such allegiance. I think such allegiances are very much the cause of distorted social discourse.
It's actually the exact opposite. For example, calling a murderer "evil" to explain their behavior absolves us of the need to confront the complex web of circumstances that led them to murder. Another example: Calling Trump supporters Nazis, fascists, racists, etc. to avoid actually thinking about all the complex reasons why someone might support Trump in the first place.
I get your point here. This is certainly a "thing". It's just not the principle motive behind calling speech violence.
Brad - I think a murderer does commit evil to his/her victim and to the victim's family. Saying we must understand a murderer's circumstances is to, in effect, condone his behavior. We all have complex webs of circumstances. Does my complex web justify me killing you or vice versa? No!
Also, I don't think complex explanations are needed for someone to support Trump, in the first place or otherwise. It's called politics. People vote for whoever most closely supports their hopes for the future of themselves and the country, even if they have to hold their nose while doing it.
Very interesting comment about a wonderful article. I agree. Tragic about Rushdie, who I admire.
I am interested in the subject of fallacies in logical reasoning.
Regarding inexplicability, I found my first encounter with a STEM Ph.D. friend-of-friend bewildering. The subject of the Koch brothers came up. I was surprised at her vehement condemnation, and innocently asked what among their writings had led her to conclusions inconsistent with what I had read of their own statements. Her response was, "Oh, I would never read anything those people wrote!"
I concluded at the time that she was surely a poor scientist and surprisingly unintelligent, so I wondered how such a person could obtain a STEM Ph.D. But subsequently, this type of rejection of thought has become distressingly apparent among many otherwise intelligent people, judging from their credentials, which require at least some ability.
I wonder if my bewilderment could be explained by some fallacy in my own thinking. I welcome pertinent comments in this regard.
People often grow so attached to their beliefs that they defend them like lawyers defending clients, doing everything they can to keep on believing.
"Beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be guarded."
Would that people would actually defend their beliefs like lawyers defending their clients: presenting arguments and facts in support of their views. Far better that than calling anyone who disagrees a racist, sexist, abelist, ..., fascist, [fill-in-favored-group-or-notion-here]-phobe or [fill-in-notion-here] denier (one tribe) or a RINO, socialist, Marxist, one-worlder, or communist (the other tribe), then demanding they shut up or be shut up.
(Though I'll give a pass on calling someone a fascist if their policy prescriptions actually have a likeness to the original Fascist party's program, or a Marxist if their views are derived from Marx, even if by way of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Gramsci, Foucault and/or the Frankfurt school).
Very true.
It's going to get worse in the STEM fields. Many universities and employers are demanding DEI, or DIE position papers before being let into programs or employment.
Good point. My spouse is a senior, highly cited STEM academic researcher and there is increasing pressure to complete DIE compliance activities. One can't prove it but there is reason to suspect that research funding is partly dependent on specific racial composition of the team.
That’s been true for at least a couple of decades.
Part of the reason a lot of us no longer trust “science.” When you have an agenda you aren’t a scientist.
You make a good point. One of the big agendas is ensuring public support for funding. Twenty-five ago, eminent, older scientists were already publicly drawing attention to the problem of funding skewing scientific integrity. My researcher spouse finds the same thing, though he personally has a remarkable track record of grants. People are strongly discouraged from pursuing research that will invalidate previous career-making work by others, who now sit on grant committees.
If scientists are encouraged to not pursue work that could invalidate prior work, then we don't have a scientific community. We have a group of people calling themselves scientists but allowing their egos to get in the way of actual scientific progress. There is a term for this, but it is too vulgar to use. I would hope that scientists would be happy younger scientists are testing their work. Imagine having someone test your work in an effort to prove you wrong only to find out you were in fact correct.
Future generations will look back at this period as the dark ages of the scientific community. Sad for humanity actually. Think of the problems that could be solved if we had the willingness to actually follow the science.
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
Richard P Feynman
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18867459-the-pleasure-of-finding-things-out
True and I can’t bring myself to “like” the comment ;-)
Alice - I think it's tribalism. I've heard the same thing from a few people, i.e. "He/She is awful/racists/etc-whatever and I have never and would never listen to anything they say!"
To which I reply that maybe they should listen just once and if they still don't like them, fine.
Nope. It’s not you. It’s them. The project of the Left is destruction. End of story.
Alice - I think this study will help explain it. It did for me. https://rcgd.isr.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/motivated_numeracy_and_enlightened_selfgovernment.pdf
That explains a whole lot.
Jonathan Haidt in "The Happiness Hypothesis," describes the process of why this happens. He describes the duality of our beings as "the elephant" and "the rider." The elephant is automatic. It reacts. The rider is the lawyer, the spokesperson for the elephant. It tries to rationalize the elephant's automatic, unconscious, immediate actions after the fact.
This is how a well educated scientific person can find a way to bend themselves into pretzel loops to support a highly prejudiced viewpoint.
I admire Jonathan Haidt's reasoning, commitment to evidence and independence even when I am sometimes, rarely, unconvinced of his conclusions. The metaphor of elephant and rider are useful.
You make a very good point. Sperry's split brain experiments showed that people confabulate explanations for their own behavior when they do not have conscious access to the impetus for that behavior. This well applies to much behavior of the crowd whose convictions outweigh their commitment to evidence supporting those convictions.
When I observe people behaving apparently irrationally in specific situations, even if the overall function served is more general, as tribalism is, I find it useful to ask if I do the same thing in other contexts. This is a way around my own blind spots. It encourages empathy and humility, as it appears to me that the allure of one's own envisioned superiority is a significant blinder.
Unconvinced by his conclusions? Really? Such as?
Haidt has recently spoken and written about his belief in the need to regulate social media, based on evidence that mental health issues and self-harm rates among young women have risen significantly, in lock-step with social media use. Even he admits that it is correlation. Yet he argues for the European model of duty of care for minors.
Strong argument, yet not convincing enough to argue for a step I believe would be ineffective, heavy-handed, and premature based on our understanding of the phenomenon.
Very recent data allegedly confounds the causality argument. I can't locate it and my recollection is that Haidt himself mentioned it at the end of a "Reason" Soho Forum debate. So, open mind on this.
There is an epidemic of self-harm ... specifically among young women who identify as progressive, according to the allusion I recall. Conservative-oriented young women who use social media heavily are not correspondingly exhibiting mental anguish and self harm. (There is readily available research at least compatible with this, that conservatives are consistently happier than progressives, lower in neuroticism, for understandable reasons, whether one happens to be progressive or conservative or other.)
Good article on the distinction between suicidal depression and the attention-seeking, antagonistic, histrionic behavior underlying much though not all self-harm. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6328319/
One might therefore argue that there could be something about the promulgation of the set of progressive convictions that induces a negative frame of mind or validates self-harm among vulnerable adherents. One might argue, therefore, that we must regulate social media expression of progressive ideas. I would not support this for the same reasons I do not support Haidt's current position.
It will be interesting to see how the data-driven and open-minded Haidt responds to this additional information if it is verifiable. He is an outstanding thinker, yes, yet his opinions are not written in stone. I draw my own conclusions ... and look for challenges to them, to continually correct my views if uninformed or mistaken.
The tone of your inquiry, as well as one can judge the written "voice," was more compatible with rhetorical dismissal, like a dare, especially the "Really?", than with genuine curiosity. Perhaps I am reading too much into it, yet it is feedback. I believe I have sincerely addressed the content of your question, as well. More coffee, now.
PatriotD, This study looks fascinating. I am just diving into it. Thank you!
You're absolutely right!
Alice, Wonderfully illustrative incident regarding the Kochs. I knew both David and Charles through joint public policy and charitable organizations, and was always amazed but not surprised by the vitriol directed at them. While I was not always in agreement, they were both informed, thoughtful, very generous individuals.
I never understood where the hate came from. It was unjustified as far as I knew.
Brad, you speak of the left-wing movement where they don’t want to listen or think about certain things, which makes them unprepared for disagreement. I can’t help but think that’s why Salman Rushdie was once president of American PEN; they are fighting the right-wing movement, who are banning books across this nation. Books that upset them or they disagree with, Books that express ideas that frighten or anger them. Unlike the left, the right uses state power to exercise censorship (cancel culture), so I can see why Salman Rushdie was once president of PEN!
Have there been some examples of this recently? I know that some communities would prefer not to have some books in their community library. I also know of "kids" books with pictures of explicit sex acts that some people would prefer not to have in their childrens' schools. But what books have been removed from, say, Amazon lately? This is a genuine question and not a rhetorical one.
Awilson, I’m quite perplexed as to why you asked me instead of simply asking Google. You say it’s not a rhetorical question, so what is your point?
That is a fair question, but it is of course answering a question with a question. My point is a request to you to provide examples of books that have been banned by the right-wing movement using state power to exercise censorship. Your comment suggested to me that you might have a few specific cases in mind. I think focusing on these specific cases and why these books were banned will help us understand the subject of book bans more thoroughly. By the way, I just googled "banned books" and found quite a list, but it seemed to include bans on books in schools which to me is a separate issue as those "bans" may be to prevent inappropriate images or issues from being seen by young children.
Awilson, no specific book, no specific subject, just in general, book banning should be prohibited, even in K-12, there needs to be an overwhelming reason to ban.
"The Index lists 1,586 book bans that have occurred in 86 school districts in 26 states between July 1, 2021 and March 31 of this year. These districts represent 2,899 schools with a combined enrollment of over 2 million students."
https://pen.org/?s=book+bans+list
https://pen.org/press-release/report-1586-school-book-bans-and-restrictions-in-86-school-districts-across-26-states/
And in which progressives show very little tolerance.
After an event like this, I am convinced that the only people who are afraid of “words” and “ideas” and “free speech” are those who are ultimately afraid of what the truth will do to the world they built for themselves.
This was a powerful and important piece. Brava, Bari!
People who are scared of words are children - regardless of age. The VAST majority of people who have experienced real struggle, or real violence, have no patience for the nonsense that is our petulant society.
Those who wish to control how you speak are VERY different people with very different objectives. We should pray for wisdom for the first group. In regards to the second group, we should pray, and vote, for Freedom from their tyranny.
But we should be very, very careful not to conflate these two groups.
I agree with you except for one point: Children at least have a sense of curiosity. Petulant adults are closed-minded and can’t accept the possibility of being wrong.
You’re right. “Children” was probably incorrect. Adolescent is probably more accurate. I certainly remember the point in my life when I was certain I knew everything there was to know about the things I cared about. Until that day I realized I didn’t any longer. What life and experience taught me is how little I know to be certain. I expected, thus, that wisdom would be something we all pursue until the day we pass. That the pursuit of wisdom is the acceptance of how little we know, and how little we can ever know, but also why we should care so much to keep trying to accumulate wisdom and pass it down to the next generation.
I suppose that’s ultimately the point. There are those who seek to understand how and why they might be wrong and those who seek to understand why they’re right and ignore, or even go so far as to outright restrict, anything that may be contrary to that about which they’re sure they’re right.
So, I guess, whatever that’s called 😀
I think we're missing the mark by describing leftist behavior as childish. They are not children. They're adults. We would not tolerate the bullying, lying, scapegoating and blame-shifting the leftists engage in if it came from our children - we would give our kids a time out and explain that such behavior is anti-social, abusive and will not help them make friends and get along in society when they grow up.
Leftists are not children waiting to grow up. We shouldn't be waiting for that either. Leftists use the tactics of chaos, riots, slander, obfuscation and censorship to attain a political goal. They are political operatives with an agenda and they are using the government and media to pursue that agenda.
As an example - Chesa Boudin is not a college student playing radical until he grows up and gets a job in the real world. He is a radical who was raised by radicals and his political goals are the same goals the leftists want to impose on this country.
And they never hesitate. Or self-reflect. There is no reasoning. Which is why it’s so dangerous.
Always spot on kjmac!
Your comment is one of the reasons why I subscribe to Bari’s Commonsense… so that I can continue to learn and get other viewpoints!
I think “adolescent” is perfect! 😅 I certainly remember how moody, temperamental and insecure I was between 13 and 18. Those are the ages we learn to hoard knowledge, build up defenses and view people as enemies.
Tackling the world with childlike curiosity makes life so much better.
One of my favorite sayings is that “parenting is not judged by what you do for your children but what you teach them to do for themselves.” We’ve had almost 70 years of parents failing that test, and we should not be surprised by the outcome. And worse yet, the parents that failed that test are now horrified that younger generations are uncomfortable they’re hoarding power they didn’t earn and refuse to pass it to a generation they failed. Hopefully many have learned from a mistake that in many many cases was made with the best of intentions. Desiring for your kids to be “doctors and lawyers” was well intentioned but horribly misguided and we’re paying for it because the doctor and lawyer generation decided their kids should all be artists and PHDs in “thinking.”
We are desperate to put back in the power the people who spent their lives solving real problems with real solutions. Enough of people who have “thought about how to solve climate change” and more people who can actually install an air conditioner.
You put that better than I ever could. You should see if you can find a copy of Bernstein’s “Candide” — it’s a similar moral to the story. The last musical number really hits your point.
But even that aspect of human life is being exploited by libs.
Only a five year old would be curious why teacher said there’s no such thing as boys and girls.
I would say.about children...they are an open portal of love...until life causes it's close....I am not sure what else to call them besides children. I do understand your point. And believe and hope my heart, and the hearts of others, have enough openness like the hearts of children to save this world from dark because.
I think that’s the process of growing up though. It hardens us when we forget childlike humility, love and curiosity. So many of us have to relearn it.
So true...and some never do...and maybe never can....
Hear, hear.
well said
Great piece. The horror of Salman's stabbing brought home how far our western civilization has fallen from the ideals that made it great.
I won't say "Western civilization" has fallen. I'd say that we have tolerated a deviation from our basic norms in the name of "social justice" and this is the outcome. And the basic norm is this: Tolerance is our greatest strength, and tolerance applies to everyone equally. Some people are not more equal than others, and some people's opinions are not more valid than others. If you don't like an opinion, argue with it or walk away, but don't expect it to be silenced.
A most horrible part is that the illiberal, hard left is walking the same path walked by Hilter, Mao, Lenin, Xi and the other deluded totalitarians responsible for 100+ million deaths in the 20th century. I hope we are not next.
I agree with you in part. The illiberal, hard left is exactly as you describe, but they would not have the power they have if their antics were not useful to, at the very least, the power players of the Democrat Party and given cover and excused by the mainstream of that party and their media lackeys as a means to the end of maintaining their hold on the reins.
Yeah, I agree. It’s complicated and I don’t understand it.
Please God not
Such an important and well-stated point - thank you!
Western civilization falls when the Charlie Hebdo attack inspired explanation and not outrage at the absolute horror and viciousness of the attack. It crumbled when the ACLU along with book sellers apologize and object to the book, Irreversible Damage by Shirer. This is not one man's attack against an author, but a society erasing the violence of the attack starting with the blandness of NYT printing that there is no idea of the attackers motivation. Je suis Charlie, et Rushdie, et ....
Done largely by our home grown saboteurs.
This will not cease until the left pays a price and feels genuine fear.
Sorry this sounds harsh but I believe there is no other way.
How is anyone supposed to take the NYT seriously when they rush out a notification that the attacker’s motives weren’t clear? I swear, at some point, we’re all going to be told that smoke has nothing to do with fire.
They needed to consult with Schumer to see what he says about the motive.
🤣
Of course not, we are only allowed to rush to judgment when they know all the facts. Such as Jacob Blake was unarmed, Nick Sandmann and the Covington kids were racists and that Kyle Rittenhouse was a racist murderer. But, defining a woman, knowing how many genders there are or whether correlation exists between gay men having promiscuous sex and monkey pox are Herculean tasks they are not capable of lol.
My jaw dropped when I saw the headline about not knowing the attacker's motive. Rushdie is a man who has literally had a hit called on him, a hit order that is still active, and there are millions of people who would like the reward of performing the hit. If the attacker had been someone other than a young Muslim male, there might be some cause to wonder if there was another motive. Considering the identity of the attacker, the motive is 99.99999% clear.
It’s the same when an Islamic father murders his young daughter.
“Why would he do such a thing??”
Seriously?
Marie - I think I know the story you're referring to. The father must be mentally ill. It's just not normal behavior. I think mentally ill people attach religion as a motive to do what their mental illness compels them to do. That father will most likely spend the rest of his life in prison among people he would not choose to spend 5 minutes with. It makes no sense.
The concept of an "honor killing" is widely accepted in Islamic cultures. A person who would kill their own child is clearly not mentally well-balanced, but their culture provides an easy outlet in the most violent form possible. In another culture, parents might cut off contact with a child who is behaving in ways they consider shameful, but killing that child is not acceptable, so they don't.
Unfortunately it’s many stories and it’s not mental illness.
I worked with a woman from Baghdad some years ago. She was married off to an Islamic man in the US who seriously abused her, as in come to work bruised.
I and others tried to convince her to leave him. She lives in the United States!
She was terrified of her father killing her if she left her “chosen spouse.” Not an ocean’s distance would ease her fear of being murdered by her own father for leaving an abusive husband.
Eventually we all gave up, but not before she told us about schoolmates whose fathers had killed them for “disgracing the family” or “being unclean.”
That’s how one recognizes intellectual bankruptcy.
I stopped taking the New Woke Times seriously when they jumped on the bandwagon to invade Iraq 20 years ago.
I am grateful for this article because *this* is why I subscribed to Common Sense.
But at some point, we need to ask how this happened, not simply identify it as a phenomenon. Because until the people who caused this (and one very specific group has) are drug out into the light and made to own the situation and explain to those they have coddled and radicalized that they started this "words are violence" schtick because they wanted a way to shut up the other side and it's all gotten out of hand, we're not going to get anywhere.
"The Psychology of Totalitarianism."
Good place to begin to find answers.
Then move on to "The True Believer."
Which True Believer, the one by Eric Hoffer?
Yes, of course.
Started reading this book just this week after seeing this comment. Pretty fascinating so far. I am about half way through. One minor thought that seems to keep coming up while reading....I really enjoy the book but I have a nagging thought: Based on his descriptions.....isn't everyone falling into a mass movement of one form or another? I have no idea the answer to this question but is not this Substack itself a form of mass movement?
Glad you got the book. You may be confusing "like minded" with mass formation. True it is increasingly difficult to discern what is truth and fact from propaganda. That is why most of us have found Substack. We get a different perspective through the content and through the threads.
I have another suggestion for you. Bryan Dean Wright has a daily podcast that is excellent. It is short, which is a blessing, and full of interesting facts and details you may not hear anywhere else. He was a CIA officer and has away of getting information. The President's Daily Brief:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-presidents-daily-brief/id1617887885
Look interesting. Downloaded a few other episodes. What other book recommendations do you have in terms of society in general?
Agreed. The best posts here are the ones Bari and Nellie write themselves.
By a factor of a gazillion I agree. Truly two honest, decent journalists who are creating something vitally important to society right now. A restoration of a marketplace of ideas that honors diversity of thought and gives a flying ‘duck’ about other characteristics that have no bearing. One that is filled by and large with a community of the sane who yearn for respectful dialogue among our own set of fellow travelers.
It’s an excellent point you make here. I so long for the days when our politics was like the relationship Reagan had with Tip O’Neil. When the concept of loyal opposition meant both things because at the end of the day we are ALL Americans.
A free marketplace of ideas allowed us to collectively decide on direction by way of our elected representatives. The media while always skewing left didn’t engage in nearly so many of the worst deceptions they do today. They more or less took their jobs as journalists seriously (like Bari and Nellie do) and allowed the facts to come out even if not the outcome they would necessarily prefer at a personal level.
Now, the American public (especially those on the right) are seeing the underbelly of the MSM, the deep state whom they are mouthpieces for and a complete disregard for fundamental values we once collectively cherished like Free Speech. The biggest reason I came to Common Sense is because of Bari’s resignation letter from the NYT. It was a breath of fresh air that a true insider was FINALLY affirming the media bias we had long complained of that the MSM refuses to acknowledge. Here was a self described liberal woman who was willing to pull back the curtain and show us the reality. That took guts and I cannot thank her enough for it and for creating this outlet where the best aspects of journalism and civil discourse would rein supreme and not ideology.
It is past time that those who have been undermining the norms we cherished do need to be called out and we collectively need to say no more…Stop lying to us, stop trying to force us to think like you do and start listening to us. Our voices, our lives and futures matter and I’ll be damned if I will not speak up against this.
Ronald Reagan was happy to get most of what he wanted. He let the other side get some of what they wanted as long as it didn't harm the country or derail his agenda.
Exactly! I should have included this massive point in my OP. Compromise, ladies and gentlemen is something we as a society desperately need to relearn. I will also include that we need to turn down the temperature in how we speak about rational members of the other side which I believe includes many both right and left. Don’t let the extremists define who we are. Being called a fascist, racist etc for having center right beliefs as I do really pisses me off and makes compromise damn near impossible. Talk respectfully to me about why you feel your position is correct and I will always do the same!
The greatest damage we’ve done to speech is “everyone” agreeing that “we must, of course, ban hate speech.” Hate speech has no definition, and no one but those seeking to control you, gain anything from limiting hate speech. Everyone should want ALL speech protected. If someone wants to cause you harm, shouldn’t you prefer that be made public so it can be monitored and investigated? This idea that some speech is okay and some is “wrong” is exactly the slippery slope those who wish to remove your liberties desire it to be.
“Hate crimes” also have to go. It’s an absurd idea. Who murders a stranger out of love?
I completely agree. Any law that seeks to create inequality of justice is, by definition, unequal. Every single human deserves equal liberty, and the law should respond to assaults on that liberty equally.
I believe the equally frightening counterpoint to Rushdie’s struggles, and those who have supported his right to freedom of expression, is the predilection by leading publishers and platforms, operating behind the protective wall of technology, to suppress books and stories not of the political stripe of a new hypersensitive and intolerant minority.
My daughter arrived home before returning to college for senior year. I said that either we speak openly and honestly with curious minds or I speak about nothing but the weather.
Who among the High and Haughty will denounce the assailant? Who among the Glitterati will speak against the assassin? Who among the Literati will lead protest on the violence?
None. They are accomplices, complicit in their silence.
Well Bari is speaking up. Someone has to go first. I’d say she is a great role model and has some chops. So hopefully others will follow. She didn’t mince any words that’s for sure.
here here!! Bravo!!! I'm a mental health clinician and I've been beating this drum for a while now. Words are NOT violence. They are words. The emotional reaction that they may provoke is the responsibility of the person reacting. I mean duh!! If we speak to a crowd of 100 people are we now responsible for 100 different reactions?? It's so UNBELIEVABLY illogical and emotionally unhealthy, I can barely stand it. It makes me want to scream lol
And yet. here we are. In a society that seems hyper-reactive, hyper-emotional, and unable to center itself around any organizing principle.
I want to applaud you Bari, for your courage in speaking out on this.
Free speech will be the one thing, more than any other factor that I see, that can save us from ourselves.
And the good news? Most people - on some sort of intuitive level - get the idea of free speech. Even if they can't articulate it clearly. It's something deep down in their gut.
Bari (if you are reading this) when you first started your news letter you had a piece that used the phrase (and i'm paraphrasing) "your soul is too valuable to be silenced." I echo that sentiment here.
Our lives, spirits, and souls are valuable to be squelched. Wishes for a good day to all:)
Terrible unforgivable murderers.
And then the the NYT and Adios citing “no know motive” showing complacency for these crimes.
Yes meanwhile, all this dramatic anguished sensitivity to any perceived slight... Ugh. It’s more than tiresome. It’s spawned a breed of non-stop self-absorbed victims ...
Yep. Quite the switch-er-roo from mom’s counsel to my tears as a kid. Mom said, Hey just tell’em, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
While not too impressive as a snappy comeback, it was an important perspective to think about.
"The emotional reaction that they may provoke is the responsibility of the person reacting."
Exactly. This needs to be said over and over.
Muslims play the long game. Always have. The West will never understand this, to our detriment.
I think you mean Muslim extremists, but you are correct. Religious fantacism is a powerful tool and is very patient.
(EDIT: this is sarcasm I am mocking the people who are panicked about Marjorie Taylor Greene taking over the banks and forcing them to go to church)
The real long game is being played by the Jan 6 Evangelical White Supremacists who control our society. Jan 6 Evangelical White Supremacists will soon dominate every facet of American life, if they don’t already, and they are the true threat!!!!!
But “Jan 6 Evangelical White Supremacists” is so wordy. Maybe we need an acronym for this powerful group that controls us nefariously from behind the scenes with their ill-gotten power……oooope nix the acronym idea.
They’re the ones controlling us from deep state jail, right?
The Oath Keepers control the universities and the Fortune 500!!!!
Ooh, what a clever anti-Semitic post! DERP
I was mocking and criticizing the people targeting and isolating evangelicals for having a mindset that mirrors anti-Semitism.
Read it again.
Kinda hard to get the sarcasm, bud.
Not when he prefaces it by saying “this is sarcasm”.
No that was an edit not there originally
Huh? So you thought I actually was a leftist expressing hysteria about the fake threat of White Christian Nationalism? I don’t understand.
I'm far from a leftist and I'm deeply concerned about the threat of White Christian Nationalists. Any religious extremism is alarming.
Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are at least as disturbing to me as AOC and the so-called "Squad" and I despise them with every fiber of my being.
Do you understand now?
Cringe
I’m reporting you to the FBI which is secretly controlled by Matt Gaetz and Franklin Graham.
A handmaid tale is right around the corner! To Canada and freedom!
Uggghh. Yes.
So then .... you are just being sarcastic?
I would argue that it has gotten even worse than "words are violence", because a common BLM chant was "silence is violence". Depending on the particular ideology or cult, non-conformity to the mob is considered violence now too. This is sophistry of course, cheap sophistry. But it leads to actual violence. I wonder if perhaps the current "culture war" may someday morph into an actual civil war for the right to free speech.
The silence is violence mantra made me sick, angry and frankly a bit fearful of what can come of it. “If you don’t believe in our cause hook line and sinker then you are a fascist”! What a dangerous mindset that is and sadly so many white liberals became among the most strident practitioners of it. I abhor actual racism and acknowledge our troubled history but so much of the modern day BLM movement is simply based on outright lies and a lack of critical thinking. These lies are amplified like wildfire by social media, the MSM and the hardcore ideologues and their destructive nature was seen over and over the past few years.
There is some excellent unbiased studies conducted by various exceptionally smart academics who have concluded this reality. Anecdotally speaking, it always seemed strange that this white supremacist country decided to have Asian Americans put into the highest income earners, the least incarcerated and the least fatal encounters with the police. Very clever indeed lol.
Bari , I am a 70 year old man , a product of apartheid South Africa who kept quiet because it was easier than standing up and objecting to what was going on around me. A regret I live with everyday.
It never ceases to amaze me how you state your position with such clarity but more importantly with such bravery .As you quote Rushdie “We are living in the darkest time I have ever known “.
I have been inspired by you and your actions and no longer allow the people around me to try and explain away the rationale that has brought us to this dangerous time ,when amongst other aberrations , words are violence - No , violence is violence.
Far be it for me to tell you how to feel but I think you can stop beating yourself up for your youth.
With age comes inevitable regrets but the past can cripple if one allows it.
Hope you’re having a great weekend!
It’s okay, we all have our crimes in our hearts and in our heads. Your life may have touched lives, changed hearts and you don’t know it.
It's interesting that left-wing lunatics and right-wing islamist fascists have come together in their beliefs and principles, isn't it? Thanks Bari.
Ideology is not a line, it's a horseshoe, or better, a clock face. You start at 12 o'clock which is fence-sitting moderation, and the further left or right you go, you will always meet at 6 o'clock which is authoritarianism.
I alao like the horseshoe theory https://imgflip.com/m/politics/tag/horseshoe+theory.
It's about the hatred of Israel. It's powerful enough to bring ideologies that are polar opposites together.
"It is why we can count, on one hand—Dave Chappelle; J.K. Rowling—those who show spine."
And Bari Weiss.
It is unfortunate what happened to Rushdie. I pray he recovers.
They say you can kill a man, but you cannot kill what he stands for.
Free expression is not an ancient inheritance. It is a fairly recent Western tradition of the Enlightenment that is still not yet universal. It must be guarded jealously.