Cancel Culture gone awry: Mr. Glassman's retirement and how Mao's Cultural Revolution caused it

The words from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, a well-known 20th century novel warning of the dangerous times ahead, are appearing truthful by the day.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

This is showing its ugly culture with the Left's ideal of total conformance to their worldview or they will face severe penalties, has appeared. In 2014, businesses were mandated to support the erotic liberty worldview under an executive order signed by the Obama Administration as payback for Exxon Mobil shareholders rejecting the New York City city-state's plan to impose special rights for perversions, which was solidified by Obergefell and now the “Equality Act” bill. Now, businesses are being told to conform to the Left's other viewpoints, such as the anti-police “Black Lives Matter” organisation, and no dissent of the Party's view is permitted, as the Orwell novel would have noted.

According to Black Lives Matter, they are now demanding a total annihilation of police and replacement by “social workers”. A friend from elementary school served in the local sheriff's department and was hit with a career-ending injury by an assailant, who did not serve additional prison time after his conviction for the career-ending injury. Now we are seeing the activists push towards the entire playbook of the Left. Their Instagram photo glorified activist Malcolm Little, who was part of the massive push of indoctrinating Islam in the 1960's. The mission statement is pushing for sexual liberty activism and the murder of babies – regardless of race. Black Lives Matter has made it clear sexual liberty means people should have the right to kill children all the way up to the day of delivery, special protections for pedophiles, and special rights for sexual perversions, including the right for same-sex couples to adopt and teach their form of child abuse on the child. The Radiance Foundation, led by Ryan Bomberger, who spoke at the 2019 state March for Life, has posted a reason why the entire movement is inappropriate. He specifically calls out their support of erotic liberty, abortion, ignorance of fathers, the mandate certain groups pay taxes that go to selected other groups based on race, creating in effect free money for life and buying votes ("repatriations"), abolition of police and prison, and Communism. His article is mandatory reading.

The cancel culture mandating total support of the Left's causes has gone rampant. Just this week, CrossFit founder and CEO Greg Glassman, a Rand Paul-esque libertarian whose events I have competed for years, warned activists that want to deify George Floyd (which he is being proven correct) the way the Left has deified various “martyrs” to their cause – in fact, there is a push by the Left to make a sexual perversion martyr's birthday a federal holiday, replacing Memorial Day or Washington's Birthday as the Left wants to follow with the aforementioned article.

Mr. Glassman was well-aware of the SARS CoV-2 virus (which causes COVID-19) and numerous research that was proven faulty, most notably the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) reports on SARS CoV-2. On June 6, the IHME posted onTwitter, “Racism and discrimination are critical public health issues that demand an urgent response.”

Mr. Glassman responded back, “It's Floyd-19”. Various other supporters of Mr. Glassman called the IHME frauds based on what they said about the COVID-19 pandemic with an explanation of the IHME fraud, stating, “Your failed model quarantined us and now you’re going to model a solution to racism? George Floyd's brutal murder sparked riots nationally. Quarantine alone is ‘accompanied in every age and under all political regimes by an undercurrent of suspicion, distrust, and riots.’ Thanks!”

When you research Mr. Glassman's history of attacking health research sponsored by the three major soda companies of The Coca-Cola Company, Pepsico, and Keurig Dr. Pepper for spewing spin in support of the companies, it should be known those three companies' beverages are known for high amounts of refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and other dangerous chemicals (including caramel colour, aspartame, saccharin, and other chemicals that we know), he has seen enough of bogus science in health research. My dance friend has done many seminars on dangerous beverages where she takes packets of sugar you see at restaurants and tapes packets to show how dangerous a can of soda is in relation to chemicals in it Mr. Glassman saw a correlation of the IHME's inflated COVID-19 numbers that were disproven were a fraud and their push to declare racism a public health crisis to warrant massive government funding, and knowing how fraudulent the research would be to support leftist causes, forced him to respond in anger. How many times has bogus research results led to serious problems?

Almost immediately, the cancel culture struck CrossFit, with disaffiliation and cessation of sponsorship by bigger name firms because of Mr. Glassman's honest truth about bogus research. The fact people have deified Mr. Floyd the way Mr. Martin and others were deified for being crooks is disturbing. This cancel culture infuriated me when the local box, like many others including athletes, sent a statement denouncing Mr. Glassman. I responded by warning that we have become inundated with a resurgence of Mao Tse-Tung's Cultural Revolution of 1966 where any views opposite of the Left's worldviews were being eradicated based on the ideals of Chairman Mao. Our familly escaped cross-straits in the late 1940's. Why are we now glorifying the People's Republic when they created this major crisis we are currently enduring?

Mao's Cultural Revolution here has erased religious liberty and threatened churches while special rights are given to sexual deviancy movements. There are cases now where female athletes have complained over perversion activists allowing males to compete in their events, and costing them scholarships and prizes for unfair competitions. The Maoists are gloating with the Cooper River Bridge Run and Boston Marathon wins by default. They are turning the West into slaves of their wants. Yet, thanks to our leftist crybabies, these activists are following hook, line, and sinker the way of the Chinese Communist Party. Mr. Glassman's retirement is a byproduct of the Maoist Cultural Revolution the Left has imposed on us for anyone who opposes their worldview. No wonder my legislators ignore us because we do not fit their clique.

The real danger was exposed by Mr. Glassman, and it is the Maoist Cultural Revolution where, in the spirit of Nineteen Eighty-Four, only the Party has rights and they control everything. Mr. Glassman, in his description of junk science, offended “the party” as referenced by the novel of Mr. Orwell, leading to activists jumping lock, stock, and barrel into attacking him over speaking the truth that offends “the party”.

Works Cited:

The Radiance Foundation: http://www.theradiancefoundation.org/blm/

Annals of Internal Medicine: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1565

Dale Saran's statement: https://www.theabjectlesson.com/2020/06/09/in-defense-of-greg-glassman/

The Age of the Clueless White Guy

The current Hollywood crusade (well, one of them anyway) is inclusion and color-blind casting.

The live-action adaptation of Disney’s The Little Mermaid will feature an African American as Ariel; the new 007 will be a black female. Other characters originally established as one race and one gender have been played by those outside those groups in projects related to Harry Potter, Frozen, Marvel’s Thor, and nearly every other fictional construct introduced in times now rebuked as less enlightened.

As a result, though they would never dare say it aloud or post it on social media, actors cursed with the affliction of being Caucasian may wonder if there will now be fewer roles open to them.

But fear not – this shift in perspective has resulted in a new and flourishing growth segment in the lucrative field of television commercials: the clueless white guy.

If you choose to watch a few commercials instead of fast-forwarding past them, it won’t be long before you’ll spot one of the copious examples of this popular trope. Usually, the ad opens with our dim-witted protagonist saying or doing something no rational human being would ever dream of doing, until he is shown the error of his ways by a smarter, better-looking, and just plain cooler person of color.

I was going to list several examples, but watch TV for five minutes and you’re sure to spot one. Or check out this compilation that someone put together on YouTube.


To be clear, there have been clueless white guys in commercials dating back to the 1950s. Demonstrating the benefits of one product was frequently achieved by introducing some hapless soul still using ‘brand X,’ who has yet to realize what he’s been missing if he’d only switch.

But as everyone else in those commercials was also white, there was no association between his race and his obliviousness. Today these same scenarios play out with the same frequency, but when it comes to filling the role of the dumb sap, casting directors find themselves limited in their options. To have a white person explain to a person of color that the product they are using is wrong would clearly send an inappropriate message. Reversing the roles is the easiest way to avoid condemnation.

Is there anything wrong with this? I don’t know. If every role should be open to every actor, that should mean heroes and villains, geniuses and dullards, cool kids and nerds, can all be played as easily by a man from Hong Kong, Mexico City, or Somalia as they can by someone from Nebraska.

If this is penance for the stereotypes of decades past, then it’s apparently appropriate to right a wrong against one group by perpetrating it on another. Once everyone gets to be in the alpha class for a while, perhaps we’ll reconvene and figure out something else.

Either way, the Republic will survive. And as an observer of television I just find it interesting. If this writing gig doesn’t pan out, it’s good to know that I may have a future in commercials, as the guy who can’t figure out how kitchen appliances work.

"Christmas" music controversies: They aren't Christmas songs!

Recent controversies over the song “Baby, It's Cold Outside” being banned from radio stations in the “Me Too” movement that successfully conquered this country with another Pelosi Administration where she runs the nation and the “men are bad” mentality runs amok reminded me of the real problem in today's music for Christmas.

“Baby, It's Cold Outside” is a 1944 song by Frank Loesser for year-end parties in Los Angeles as a duet with his wife.  His daughter noted it was the song of the family, and gave licencing rights to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for usage in the 1949 film Neptune's Daughter, where it is used twice in duets, once between Esther Williams, a legendary swimmer whose career was destroyed by World War II when the Tokyo Olympics were initially moved to Helsinki but later cancelled by the war (the United States was not in battle at the time), and Ricardo Montalbán (an actor whose career was well-known;  I remember him as Mr. Rourke and we may remember the old Chrysler Corporation commercials regarding “Corinthian Leather”), and then by Betty Garrett and Red Skelton, which the roles were reversed.

The song won an Academy Award for Best Song in a movie for the 1950 Oscars.

And in a similar vain, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which we've referenced in the past after learning a minister exposed the truth of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer censoring the song against Hugh Martin's request, was used for Meet Me in St. Louis, a 1944 film inspired by the eponymous book that was based around a year in the life of a family towards the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (now retroactively recognised as Expo 1904 by the Bureau of International Expositions).  In its usage, a family was concerned as the father planned to move to New York for his job, leaving St. Louis just before the exposition.  In a scene on Christmas Eve, Esther (Judy Garland) sings it to encourage her sister Tootie, played by Margaret O'Brien.

Add to that numerous songs such as “Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman,” which were designed as television specials that can only work in the Northern Hemisphere, it has now spread to fad songs from Mariah Carey (see 2004 column, “Sing We Joyously Noel” for reference) and Kathryn Hudson (please see the 2008 “Cultural Rot: MTV Video Music Awards” for historical reference) that it seems have been overplayed and are not even Christmas tunes.  Note too the trend in the Grinch and other characters, none of which even observe the moment we celebrate on 25 December.  There are plenty of Grinches, Rockette wannabes, and others, but if you try to find the Baby in a Manger, it is long lost and unable to be found.

These songs, as I've learned over time, are not anywhere near Christmas when you're sitting in a bed of Part I with Händel's Messiah with the annual singalong coming Monday, Bach's Christmas Oratorio (which took place a few weeks ago with Dr. LaRoche as soprano, I skipped it because she was added as a last-minute substitution for an event 150 miles away), and numerous Christmas sacred masterpieces (Es Ist Ein Ros) that I have learned as a singer and also one who has gained an appreciation of sacred standards (“Still, Still, Still” and “Gesu Bambino”), along with the real “What Child Is This?” and “Stille Nacht,”  that are polar opposites to what is being pushed as “Christmas” tunes.  Even churches today have bastardised church Christmas music to the point churches buying a Warner Music kids musical that replaced studying the Bible on Sunday morning were inspired by a dirty movie and dirty song, and the evening service was the adult choir singing with the karaoke machine the latest tunes off the radio that were not Christmas but instead regular songs performed by the fad Life Enhancement Centres in Australia (Hillsong) and Redding, Californina (Bethel) known for their heresies.

What gives?  Has this world of “real Christmas and the Christ Child” given way to overt commercialism where the real material is being covered up, while we glorify every winter song?  When I think of it, these winter songs are appropriate to sing in Australia during June, July, and August.  Why no discussion of that?

Stupid is as stupid does

Earlier this month I posted a brief quote, usually (but incorrectly) attributed to John Wayne, that "Life's tough. It's even tougher when you're stupid."

Let us now welcome to the world of the stupid the Kimberly-Clark company (stupid number 1), which has caved to a social media campaign (stupid number 2) to rid the world of the sexist term "Mansize," as in "Mansize Kleenex."  I don't know that Kleenex, mansize or not, ever harmed anyone unless it was used to stuff the mouth of a kidnap victim, and even then it would take a lot of mansize to accomplish the deed.

I try not to be stupid, though, or any more stupid than I normally have, so I'll let Joe Bob Briggs do the heavy lifting on this critique.

Of 42,915 lore, and It doesn't sound right -- and churches are singing it?

Those who read this blog have seen our cases against Pope Francis and similar Protestant liberalism affiliated leadership (they are two peas in the same pod), and also have reached into the crevices of church music corruption.  Before we get to that, however, Sunday night after returning home, I had been out of town doing my annual test Saturday in a 42,195 metre challenge that took just over six hours and eight minutes (when calculated from the absurdly late start caused by traffic) and watching a Daytona 500 and Big Machine 400 winner relaxing somewhere on the island after "Big Mac" (his sponsor tags him that way) finished three hours earlier (now that means I've run a 12k with the most infamous of all Olympic athletics runners and I've run the marathon with a Daytona and Indianapolis winner in the event), which is the perfect reaction when I see people call binge watching an entire season of a premium pay television programme (six to ten episodes) in one setting as a place full of fennels that in Greek gives its name to the battle between the Greeks and Persians that the Greeks easily won.

Unfortunately, the logic of calling binge watching an entire season of shows in a setting a place full of fennels in Greece is lacking any rationale. The real story is  Greek soldiers marched from the plains back to Athens (roughly 40km) in an attempt to stop the Persians at Cape Sounion -- only to see a retreat of Persians to announce their victory.  Legend Plutarch wrote (italics) On the Glory of Athens (/italics) states that soldier ran from those fennels back to Athens, announced victory, and died, of which the story was later retold by Robert Browning through his poem "Pheidippides" that gave us the name of the Olympic, and now well known sporting event, that carries the name of those fennel plains.  How is an unhealthy habit of binge watching on the same level as running from the fennel plains to Athens?

It does not hurt that my reward for 42,195 metres of pain was a nice recital, a second time to see Renée Fleming (left), only to learn a current college student that was in front of me after the event knew Dr. LaRoche, as she knew students in the studio for college students singing there doing what I did a generation ago with the same voice teacher!

As for the other issue on church music, on the way home Sunday evening, an incident at church caught my attention for the wrong reasons.  The church had decided for both the morning (I was in a church near the city where I ran my 42,195 Sunday morning) and evening to substitute youth (morning) and adult (evening) karaoke performances by the respective choirs for church services.  The unprofessionalism of submitting to the large entertainment organisations for Christmas music was dastardly offensive to those who have worked over the years, considering how forgetful they have become in knowing the Advent season comes before Christmas, and how Big Entertainment and their Emergent colleagues have been at work hacking classic hymns and sacred songs to advance their cause.  One such case came from the classic "What Child Is This?," which we noted Easter references have been removed from hymnals, and pop singers will not sing those lyrics, even though we sing parts of the Easter motet in Händel's Messiah.  In Universal's latest Christmas "cantata" packet, which is deemed "Ready to Sing" and pushes choirs into using their karaoke accompaniment, including their featured video, the same hymn is drastically altered to fit their theme, which has the markings of Brian McLaren and other liberal leaders that change songs to fit their theme.

Here's the video that Universal offers (Courtesy Universal Music Group). Does this even sound correct, or does this fit to push Big Entertainment with the lyrics they wrote?  Those who know the song will see the mistake, but a generation in church that has only heard Big Entertainment wares with loud rock concerts will swallow it hook, line, and sinker, sadly.

Works Cited:
"Why the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and I No Longer Sing from the Same Hymn Sheet."

Reaping what we've sown

In comparing textbooks used in religious schools and humanist schools, the books used by humanist schools promote liberal propaganda endlessly.  One of the most notable examples was glorifying the single American legislator who objected to sending the troops to battle days after Pearl Harbor was attacked by the merciless Tojo's forces representing Japan.  Others have been creating new liberal heroes such as Milk and Obergefell, and even Barbara Lee (the Congressman who refused to send us to battle after we learned Saddam Hussein was a terrorist, especially when he funded families of homicide bombers with cash for performing the terrorist actions;  Fox News' Neil Cavuto said those who paid families of homicide bombers who killed as many Jews as possible were just as much terrorists as the bombers.  As we've seen with the initial starts of protests against the American flag as a symbol of slavery, it references what Jason Whitlock calls "San Francisco Values" advanced by these textbooks of propaganda, and denouncing American historical events such as the American Revolution, War of 1812, and the Civil War.

In a recent commentary marking the 20th anniversary of Rich Mullins' death (see "The Cruelest Irony" on this blog for a reference to "My Redeemer" winning the GMA Dove Award for Song of the Year, since he was thrown from his Jeep without seat belt when he and song co-write Mitch McVicker were thrown from a Jeep on their way to a concert; the presenter was a triple MENCS champion), a columnist noted how the latest top-40 hits from the entertainment giants quickly replaced all songs of the past.  In the same manner as that in many churches, we are seeing that with those who disregard American history.  They remove all references to US history of the past and replace it with their "new narrative" of new left-wing heroes as we've mentioned in order to teach new generations only their new narrative.  As the Young America's Foundation noted, "Many on the Left have tried to turn (Patriot Day) into a 'day of national service' or a celebration of tolerance, instead of remembering that radical jihad attacked this nation because of our western values. "  Both of these go hand-in-hand with the shameful erasing of the past (see Deconfederatisation) and advancing the new heroes.

As such, look at the attacks on Francis Scott Key and Fort McHenry even in Baltimore, and the entire change in the "new narrative" they want us to advance.  Has a generation taught the Left's new narrative given us this fiasco?



 WORKS CITED:

 Ian Kissell, "How Rich Mullins Changed the Way We Worship," Relevant Magazine, 19 September 2017.

Dr. Laura's point is being proven again

A video from the University of New Hampshire's Alpha Phi sorority is proving Dr. Laura Schlessinger correct regarding the cultural use of the N-bomb.

 In a moment that turned out to be the 72-year old Dr. Schlessinger's Waterloo on broadcast radio, she referenced the double standard with questionable language in an infamous 2010 incident.

Schlessinger:  Not everything that somebody says -- we had friends over the other day, we got about 35 people here -- the guys were going to start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. And my bodyguard and my dear friend, he's a black man. And I said, "White men can't jump, I want you on my team." That was racists? That was funny.  ("White Men Can't Jump" is a reference to a Woody Harrelson movie.)

Caller: How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around --

Schlessinger: Black guys use it all the time, turn on HBO, listen to a black comic and all you hear is November, November, November.  I don't get it. If anybody -- if anybody without enough melanin says it is a horrible thing, but when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing.

The video in question that reminds us of the Schlessinger incident was the sorority singing along with Kanye West's "Gold Digger" as it is playing on a jukebox.  The lyric in question they were singing was the chorus of the song, which goes, "Now I ain't saying she a gold digger, But she ain't messing wit no broke November, Get down girl go head get down".  That lyric is repeated often in the song, and the song also contains a few 25-point penalties for inappropriate language.

So the question is asked again -- why is the sorority being punished for singing along and playing a nasty song from Kanye West, but if certain groups play it, there is no problem.  Note too how many school choirs now sing the obscene ditty from one Cee-Lo Green known as "Foxtrot You" in their performances.

Is there a double standard in society?  This likewise is the same with certain groups.  How is it sexual perversion lobbyists have a right to write the laws, but everyone else is not allowed to play in the same sandbox?  As Antonin Scalia warned, how is it conservative Evangelical Christians are not permitted a seat at the legislative table when sexual perverts are?  The same goes with this incident at the University of New Hampshire.  How is it using the N bomb is acceptable for some groups, but not others?

Step one in getting rid of the racial divide: get rid of race

Those Ancestry.com commercials you see on TV all the time are a scam, according to the wicked satirist Joe Bob Briggs, because - and here is the scam part of it - race doesn't exist.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe for a second that these tests mean anything. If you believe that DNA patterns are so historically accurate that you can discriminate between, say, Ukrainian origins and Tatar origins—it depends on which Mongol horde in which century pillaged which village, right?—then you must also believe that the guys examining your cheek saliva in Twin Falls, Idaho, have an encyclopedic knowledge of human migration patterns that are still considered mysterious by experts at the British Museum.

But what I do believe is that something did occur several millennia ago, 59 miles southwest of Baghdad, at Babel, site of the most ostentatious tower in the world before it was surpassed by Trump Tower. Whatever happened at Babel may not be exactly what the Jewish scribes describe in Genesis 11, but some series of cataclysms caused the one race to disperse into many races, or at least appear to be many races.

But even if you do not believe this—even if you believe, like John C. Calhoun and David Duke and Louis Farrakhan and Baruch Goldstein, in the purity of certain races—aren’t we finding out that Americans are so genetically messed up that everybody is multiracial?

We’re mongrels and we know it.

It's that business about America being a melting pot - remember that from your grade school history books? Probably not; I doubt they teach anything that politically incorrect anymore. But it does seem as if so much of what we face in this country today is based on fault lines created over the centuries by what have now become artificial distinctions. What's the answer? Here, the satirist Briggs becomes provocative - and also, I think, serious:

So here’s an idea. What if we declared, by law, that all Americans are the same race? We’ll call the race “American.” It’s a nationality, it’s an ethnic group, and it’s a race.

As part of this law, we would make it illegal to subclassify or hyphenate anyone. Therefore, no more Asian-Americans, no more African-Americans, not even any Native Americans, because that word would become redundant.

Wouldn’t this be the most egalitarian thing we’ve done since 1787?

Provocative indeed. Briggs goes on to savage the ways in which current (and future) census policies not just recognize, but exacerbate, these divides, which is like prodding the lion behind bars. And what happens when it turns out the lock on the door comes free?

Read the whole thing. As is the case with the best satirists, Briggs makes some very serious points, not only about the hypocrisy of the whole thing, but about the elegy we might just as well offer, as we head for the Independence Day weekend, for the quaint notion of an American nation and an American culture, populated not by hyphens, but by - Americans.

Wish I'd written that: What doesn't kill you...

About 20 years ago, a magazine carried an article which I remember vividly.  In fact, I thought it so clever, I clipped it, and used it for several years as required reading in a journalism course I gave, to illustrate originality in the use of research.  The reporter involved was struck, one day, by the realization that almost everything on earth was dangerous to somebody.  So he reviewed all the medical literature he could get his hands on, and came up with the most incredible list of dangerous products anyone had ever seen.  It turned out that practically everything touched, breathed, tasted or swallowed caused disease and death in somebody, somewhere.  The reporter's straight-faced moral was this: If you want to stay alive, don't touch, breathe, taste, or swallow anything.  The magazine's editors, at the time, thought it was hilarious, readers thought it was hilarious, and it was hilarious.  Twenty years ago, semi-literate hysterics had not acquired a dominant voice in the culture, and did not see an apocalyptic threat to existence under every bush.  What's more, all sane human beings knew that the very act of daily living involved risk."

- TV Guide writer Edith Efron, who wrote these words in 1976, meaning that the article she's referring to was written in 1956. What a bunch of wimps we've become.

Phyllis Schlafly, R.I.P.

The first time I ever heard of Phyllis Schlafly, I was in high school and she was fighting against the Equal Rights Amendment. I didn't really understand the moral dimensions of it back then - it was more the political struggle that interested me. And I didn't have the advanced understanding of just what "equal rights" meant either, but I knew ERA wasn't passing the smell test for me. Almost alone at the time, she spoke out courageously against it, she fought it tooth and nail, and she won. I admired her greatly for it.

The last time I heard about Phyllis Schlafly, she was embroiled in a battle with the organization she'd founded, and was stumping for Donald Trump. I don't think Trump would have been her first choice, but as was the case with ERA, she took a look around, saw the society in which she lived crumbling around her, and decided that something needed to be done. In this case, it was a battle she was not able to fight personally, so I think she looked around and saw that there was at least one person out there who was willing to stand up to the tidal wave. I admired her greatly for it.

It was reminiscent of her struggle against ERA - at the time, the amendment had steamrolled through state after state, and its approval seemed a foregone conclusion. Nobody was really opposing it, and it you believed the words coming from its supporters, there was no reason on earth why any rational human being would. And then when Schlafly, in the best tradition of American conservatism, stood athwart history and yelled Stop. She rallied thousands and eventually millions to her cause, and ERA was stopped - even after it received an unprecedented time extension. Whatever misgivings she may have had about Trump (and I don't have any inside information that she had any), she saw in him someone similarly willing to yell Stop at those who sought to take over the country and its culture.

History will ultimately tell us - in about three months - how successful Trump will be in his efforts. We need not wonder about the efforts of Phyllis Schlafly, though. Far, far more than the feminist icons whom the media trumpeted, she represented the "silent majority" of women and influenced the American political scene. Comparing her to, say, Gloria Steinem is like comparing a giant and a pygmy. And yet if you were to depend on the media and our schools for your education, you might figure Schlafly was little more than a gadfly with a meager following, nothing like the giants of radical feminism.

Well, I suspect she was used to that, as all conservatives are. She understood that ultimately victory would be decided not in this world, but in the next, and that here the best she could do was to pray and fight for what her faith and her political instincts told her was right. She died at the age of 92, a good and faithful servant with a life well lived

Wish I'd written that: on psychological myopia

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,”

- Abraham Maslow, from "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs."

Microaggressions

There are some stories appearing on the wires that will amuse you.  One that had me thinking for a bit on this Tax Week was the University of Oklahoma human relations theory class that stated a white man cannot be singing songs from pop diva Robyn Fenty (see December 2010 commentary on Grammys) or he would be causing "microaggressions."

What type of indoctrination is happening in our schools now?  This reminds of a very popular sexual deviant male, British pop singer that at the time was well-known for his cover of another (now deceased; her daughter died in a similar suspicious behaviour) female pop diva of the 1980's hit (he has since been known for singing the theme to a Bond film).  We'd charge microaggressions for him singing that diva's hit under the logic of the Sooner Schooner.  And don't get me started on the numerous numbers of "wailing women and moaning men" who sing certain Top 40 songs on "religious radio" via the karaoke machine when men sing women's and women sing men's hits under this logic.  Can you imagine a big 90's femme hit I loved for many years being sung by a mixed quartet (which could fit)?  Pre-LaRoche Era Bobby would be guilty, but LaRoche and Beyond Era Bobby understands this tenor isn't designed to sing soprano songs!

That absurdity on the news reminded me of this in England a while back, where a man sang as the lead singer of their Life Enhancement Centre's rock band (it's no church, we know what these Warrenist types and Perry's House of Heresy do) a song from a 90's femme supergroup that I remember from college days seeing numerous times, resulting in a nickname for the venue where they performed the night before the first game of the ECHL championship series, the same venue where in January I attended the Fox Business debate well organised by Bartiromo and Cavuto. Knowing this is a femme song, I just had to wonder would he be guilty of a microaggression considering two members of that group at the time have sons who are gridiron-playing seniors, one of whom is signed to play at a top FCS school in 2016?

The April Fools

April Fools Day has never been a favorite day of mine. I don't have much time for April Fools jokes myself, and the attempts that one runs across online are seldom very funny. Most of them are either too labored or not labored enough, stupid or just lame, with the result that at least a third of the people who read them are sucked in and have to have it all explained to them. (Just ask Google.) They really are monuments to people who aren't as clever as they think they are.

That's not to say I don't enjoy a good joke or bit of satire; I think those of you who read "This Just In" when it appears on this blog will understand that. I was looking for one that might be good to offer as a "Flashback Friday," but the best of them have been rerun recently, so I don't think I'll dip into that well just now. One of the very best bits of April Foolery I've read today was this one from the F1 blogger par excellence Joe Saward, who offered this outrageous one on the new sport of bus racing. It made for a terrific way to start the day. (UPDATE: This one from the University of Oregon isn't bad either.)

One of the problems with good satire, which is what a lot of these April Fools jokes try to be*, is that the world itself has become so ridiculous and absurd that what passed for satire even a few years ago has become plausible enough that it loses its sting, and winds up looking no different than the hour's headlines on CNN. Then, in order to get your laugh, you have to explain to your readers that they shouldn't panic, it's all just a joke, and at that point you might as well throw your hands up and walk away.

*For example, when I was a kid (and maybe it's still the same way today), the quintessential April Fools joke had to do with a green and yellow bug, or something like that, crawling up your back. I suppose the equivalent in today's digital world is be telling people that opening this post has given them a virus that will wipe out their entire hard drive, but nowadays you'd probably get shot before your readers got to the punch line.

Jokes of any kind also run the risk of being labeled politically incorrect, which nowadays is a crime worse than murder, equal to treason, and falls just short of child molestation. It is tragic that humor, which is, according to the good Bishop Sheen, a divine attribute, has fallen victim to this purging of anything that deviates from the new norm, the norm that has been declared for us by our new thought police. I don't know where this is going to end; if the people simply roll over and accept it with docility, that would be the effective end of America as the Founders knew it, If, on the other hand, it is met with the same verbal and physical violence with which it is being administered, which seems increasingly likely, that could bring us civil unrest the likes of which we haven't seen since 1968 - or 1861, if you want to take it to its logical conclusion. The people responsible for this atmosphere are surely April Fools.

One of the truly disturbing aspects of today's world is that there does not seem to be any support coming from those we usually turn to. Literally all of our institutions have failed us: politicians, of course, are useless - they're the ones responsible for most of this in the first place. The one man running who ostensibly isn't a politician, Donald Trump, is thought by many to be a cure worse than the disease, although in truthfulness it's hard to see how he could be any worse than what we already have. Our courts and jurists are a joke, finding rights that were never thought of before while ignoring the Constitution meant to keep things together. Religious leaders are no better: the Church is being run by a man who seems bent on destroying eternal truths. Our law enforcement officials seem more comfortable establishing a police state than anything else, and often cause more fear in law-abiding citizens than they do criminals. Our schools have completely capitulated, either giving in to the PC fascists or promulgating their beliefs in the first place.* Bankers, investors, businessmen - all of them are seen as caring more about lining their own pockets than doing anything for those less fortunate, who are just a speed bump on the way to wealth. The streets themselves are jungles in many of our large cities, and there seems to be no standard American culture anymore. Speaking of which, what passes for culture couldn't fill a petri dish, and merely panders to the lowest common denominator. What's not to be depressed about? Our institutions are run by April Fools.

*Leading to the new aphorism that no student's mind is safe as long as schools are in session.

No amount of April Fooling with paper over this fact, that America seems to be at a crossroads, with the choices being the frying pan or the fire. That's not to say, as I find myself telling people, that we should be living as nihilists; even in Communist countries, people often found a way to live without attracting the attention of the authorities, and if it was a life that is unlike what we've become accustomed to, it did nonetheless allow for a certain degree of security and satisfaction. We've seen the persecution of Christians throughout Christianity, and yet Christianity persists. For those Christians remaining firm in their beliefs, Christianity will remain until there are no Christians left*, in which case there likely will be no world left either. The world may be run by Fools, but Paul reminds us that we can be fools as well, fools for Christ. Every generation has imagined the world would end, for one reason or another, during their lifetimes, and while this era has new and disturbing qualities which others lacked, we've managed to hang on so far.

*Although the truth of Christianity exists whether there's anyone to acknowledge it or not.

We too are fools, in April or any other month, if we don't acknowledge how bad things are. We shouldn't let it get to us, though; capitulation is the worst thing we could do. If America is no longer worth fighting for, no longer worth saving, it remains the case that many of the people living in it are worth saving, and that's what we have to do, however we can. It starts with your family, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers, the people in your church. Some call it the Benedict Option, others have different words for it. It exists, however, and it's up to us to make sure it comes to fruition.

I started out talking about how April Fools Day isn't my cup of tea, and neither are the biggest fools of all, who try to fool us all with the world they're creating. Ultimately the joke will be on them, but until then, no matter what we've done before, hang firm. I won't channel my inner Dan Rather and urge "courage" for everyone, but I will offer this piece of advise: you know who the Fools are - don't let them fool you again.

Entitlement generation

Much has been said of a nationwide campus walkouts by college students starting in Missouri and Yale, claiming discrimination and demands of equality, which includes "sexual" equality (re: men in women's bathrooms, elimination of prohibitions on sex offenders, and of course, illogical thinking that requires us to pay for all forms of sexual perversion), racial equality (certain people are allowed to loot, dismissal of leaders opposed to their extremist views, and permanent repatriations that everyone else must pay certain people for slavery from over 150 years ago, and other types of absurd ideology that we are seeing in academia from such wicked worldviews.  They are demanding a "safe space" for their antics -- and the courts have forced the entire country to be a "safe space" for sexual perversion though majorities nationally (and over 75% in many states) have said no.  Now they are pushing it on every view they demand.  This is why ENDA and other "discrimination" laws are designed to force conformity with the sexual elites' demands for sexual freedom as the only freedom, and create a worldview apartheid that is worse than racial apartheid of South Africa.

The unruliness of the left's activists everywhere shows no boundaries.  They have automatic excuses for everything, and anyone opposed to them must be removed from campus.  In effect, they are using the campus to develop, in accord with the courts on their side packed with urbanites as noted by Justice Scalia, a dictatorship where all opposing views must be erased from the area and replaced with the one view these crybabies demand must be obeyed by everyone else, even if over 85% oppose it.  Isn't this what led to the Declaration of Independence?

The latest in protest rage has been against college professors such as Carol Swain, who called the modern extreme Islam a threat to security (see the rash of homicide bombers in Paris, Hannover, and other European cities), and other similar professors.  The protesters do not want anyone to read and think about the issues. Rather, they demand a total obedience to the left-wing orthodoxy that they see in Hollywood and certain academics, and most notably, the Executive and Judicial Branches of the government.  And if you do not believe in their ideology, you will be shouted down by the left wing activists in ways you would never believe.    It has become an expansion of Occupy Wall Street to a new generation of college students.

As I simmered over dinner, it dawned on me.  For the past 25 years, since Zell Miller's victory in Georgia, and his idea of expanded government by making the state a bookie through the form of state-run gambling, called a "lottery for education," where the money does not go to academics but instead goes more to the gambling service providers, states have been riding the bandwagon of "gambling for education".  Many states voted a certain way to push the state-run gambling racket.  They have been massive failures, and the result is with more "free" money for kids to attend college, the price of graduate schools and tuition for college as a general rule has gone up considerably because of gambling money funding certain students.  Add to that the Obamacare funding ruse where the government controls all student loans, and we have the perfect storm for disaster in academic funding.  This entitled generation that has been told government is everything demands the government forgive their loans.

Is that the problem in a nutshell?  An entitled generation protesting in college today has not had to work for their tuition; they have had their college allegedly paid by the state-run casinos and the the state-run bank under the socialised medicine programme that prohibits your local First Citizens Bank (North Carolina), South State (the only two banks where I live, I hold shares in both), Toronto Dominion, credit unions, or other well known banks from financing education.  When they learn they must work for it, they refuse and demand more.  Now think about it.  A state-run casino funds students' education, and state-run student loan financing is a monopoly.  They are taught government is their deity, and no education into the free enterprise system, but the virtues of the CCCP by the state-run everything, has created an entitlement generation.  When will they learn the government is the problem?

These students protesting need to be expelled, and the federal monopoly on student loans imposed in Obamacare must be abolished, along with the state casinos that fund education.

Flashback Friday: It's not what he said, but what it says about us

Let's start with this, from Bernard Goldberg yesterday.

But now that [L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling's] gone, I’m wondering who else among us has said things in the privacy of our homes that would get us in trouble if somebody recorded them and made our remarks public.

Rest assured, I’ve never ever said anything that might even vaguely be construed as politically incorrect.  But I’ll bet you have.

And I’ll bet a lot of players in the NBA have.

I’ll bet a lot of politicians have, too.

I’ll bet white people have and black people have and Latino people have and straight people have and gay people have.

So what lesson should we take of the public flogging of Donald Sterling, as deserved as it was?

How about this:  If anyone – an accountant, a garbage man, an MSNBC host, a college professor, an attorney general, a president, a truck driver … anyone! … says something racist in the privacy of his or her home, and if it somehow becomes public information, that person should lose his or her job and his or her livelihood – because racist words cannot be tolerated in America, not in 2014.

Exactly.  I'm no friend of Sterling; he's been one of the worst owners in sports for a good long time, and the recent success of the Clippers seems more in spite of rather than because of him.

But just where do we draw the line?  Is everything that everyone says, public or private, now subject to review?  And by whom?  And why stop at the spoken word - after all, the First Amendment absolutists assure us that burning the flag is an act of free speech, so shouldn't other acts be liable for our distain as well? Goldberg goes on:

I am confused, however, about why there is no universal condemnation of athletes who father children in every city in the league.  Or of athletes who beat up their girlfriends.  Or of athletes who drive drunk and kill people.  I guess none of those things warrant the moral outrage that bigoted words uttered by a foolish old man in private warrant.

But let me be clear:  I’m outraged over what Donald Sterling said.  Really, really outraged.  I say this because if anyone thinks I’m less than really, really outraged because of anything I’ve written here, I might get in really, really big trouble.

Let's suppose, for example, that I'm outraged by an owner who "had discriminated against Hispanics, blacks, and families without children in housing."  He said, among other things, that "black tenants smell and attract vermin.”  Mind you, he didn't stop with saying things; he acted on them as well.  Well, that owner would be none other than Donald Sterling - back in 2009.  Why suspend him now?  As Ben Shapiro notes in that article, "words speak louder than actions."

What about an owner who was recently spotted at a game wearing a "necklace medallion for the Five Percent Nation, which sees black men as gods and white people as devils."  And who freely uses the "N-word" for fun and profit?   Try Jay-Z, sports agent and former part-owner of the Brooklyn Nets.

And then there was at least one owner who publicly supported the right to abortion, including the grizzly partial-birth procedure, and even voted against requiring that a woman view an ultrasound before having an abortion?  That's former U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, who supported those issues while he was also owner of the Milwaukee Bucks.  I know abortion is a polarizing issue, but that stand sure as hell offended me.  It's one thing to talk down to your fellow man, to dehumanize him with insult and discrimination - but is it worse than killing him?

But why limit the discussion to sports?  If you're looking for people who know how to denigrate through their speech, we could cite virtually the entire on-air staff of MSNBC, some of whom have in fact lost their jobs over their comments, while others - cough-cough-Al Sharpton-cough - continue to thrive.  And I won't even get into that whole kerfuffle about Brendan Eich - I can only expect my blood pressure medication to do so much, after all.

The line between public and private, already blurred beyond recognition, is pretty much gone at this point.  In order to be really safe, to make sure that nothing you say can ever come back to haunt you, the best thing is probably to say nothing.  At all.  Ever.  Even in the bathroom.  Just keep your mouth shut.  As Rod Dreher points out when talking about the latest - whether or not the DeVos family, owners of the Orlando Magic, should be in trouble for funding ads in marriage referendum states - "Error has no rights."

I'll close this mild screed with a quote from Ben Stein, who after saying that "I hate, hate, hate racism," adds this:

But I also love individual liberty. I would much rather have a system where people are free to hate me because of my race as long as they don’t lynch me than one in which the government or the media tell me who I can and cannot hate. I loathe Donald Sterling for his comments and I do not want him near me. But I am terrified that a man can have such a level of media rage directed at him even though he violated no law. He expressed a hateful opinion and that’s a bad thing. But in a world where there are as many horrible things going on as in our world, the private conversations of one drunken old man would not seem to me to be worth this level of fury. Isn’t this “Thoughtcrime”? Does it scare you? It scares me. And I am really terrified that “anti-racism,” like “saving the earth” and “income inequality struggles,” will legitimate any level of anger. Isn’t there such thing as “the law”? Aren’t we supposed to be more worried about violence than private nutty conversations?

I can sum this up easily: Isn’t Mr. Sterling being punished for his privately expressed thoughts and not for any action? Isn’t this deeply unsettling? When did privately expressed thoughts become fair game for punishment? Where does it end? In “1984.” 

That's it.  What the Donald Sterling fiasco provides us is not a glimpse into him, but into ourselves, and an America that with every passing day seems to stand for nothing at all.  Donald Sterling has served his purpose - he's given us the opportunity for our Two Minutes Hate, and now we're ready to move on, feeling just great about ourselves.

Until we find the next person to hate, and a spare couple of minutes.


Originally published April 30, 2014

Throwback Thursday: The Platinum Rule

Ever heard of The Platinum Rule?

"Treat others the way they want to be treated."

Hmm, you're thinking. It sounds kind of familiar, but there's something just a little off, isn't there?

The Platinum Rule is one of those behavioral style assessments that Human Resources departments are so wild about nowadays. And it perfectly illustrates the point I've made time and time again about the insidious nature of Corporate America, about the growing influence of New Age philosophy in HR departments, and why we ought to be concerned about these trends.

The Platimum Rule is the brainstorm of one Dr. Tony Alessandra, who describes it as follows:

We have all heard of the Golden Rule - and many people aspire to live by it. The Golden Rule is not a panacea. Think about it: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Golden Rule implies the basic assumption that other people would like to be treated the way that you would like to be treated.

Ah yes, after two thousand years or so, we discover that the Golden Rule (which comes from the Beatitudes, Luke 6:31) just isn't good enough anymore. Alessandra goes on to say "The Platinum Rule accommodates the feelings of others. The focus of relationships shifts from 'this is what I want, so I'll give everyone the same thing' to 'let me first understand what they want and then I'll give it to them.' "

OK, so The Platinum Rule is not some new type of credit card. It's a new way of thinking about life. "Treat others the way they want to be treated." This would be laughable if one treated this with the seriousness which it deserved (or rather, the way in which it wants to be treated). Just think about it for a moment. If I'm a criminal, woudn't I want people to treat me with leniency when I'm captured? Therefore, shouldn't you give me a free pass out of jail?

And that's only the beginning. Suppose you walked into your bosses office this morning and told him, "Boss, I want to be treated like the CEO of the company. From now on, I think you should do what I tell you to do. Now that you understand what I want, don't you think you should give it to me?" He'll give it to you, all right, and pretty soon his HR department's going to be using The Platinum Rule to assess the person taking over your job.

At the very least, Alessandra shows that he really doesn't understand the depth of the Golden Rule, at the layers which go into its true meaning - Tobit 4:15, "What you hate, do not do to anyone," for example. I'd suspect that Christ (who fulfilled the Old Testament, after all) might possibly have been familiar with this passage. If you read this into the Golden Rule, as most sensible people do, then most of Alessandra's arguments fall apart. And as for treating people the way they want to be treated, as St. Augustine pointed out, we must "do many things against the will" of certain people, because they need to be "punished with a certain kind of harshness." (For that passage, thanks to Robert Louis Wilken's review in the November First Things of Robert Dodaro's Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine.)

If people really did laugh this ridiculous theory into oblivion, then we wouldn't have much trouble. Alessandra would be a stand-up comedian, since he succeeded so spectacularly at making people laugh at him, and we'd be on our merry way.

But that isn't the case. This guy writes books, has a speaker's bureau, and influences HR departments and corporate executives. A quick Google of "The Platinum Rule" shows it appearing at sites of groups such as the "School for Champions" that provide keys on how you can "increase your performance" in both your business and your personal life. The subtitle of Alessandra's book is "Discover the Four Basic Business Personalities -- and How They Can Lead You to Success." (In fact, its classification is under "Business & Money") It boasts that you too can:

• Predict the behavior of others and adapt your own for the best possible outcome
• Identify the many "mixtures" -- people whose styles embrace more than one type
• Get people together who enhance each other's potential -- for dynamic work groups, a better balanced staff, better company-client relations, and more "sell by style" -- using five essential Platinum Rule steps
• Defuse conflict and dissatisfaction -- and boost energy, productivity, and profits.

In other words, everything that the modern HR department looks to maximize. Ah, they must love this stuff.

I think my favorite sentence of all, the one that really crystalizes what this is all about, is the one that The Platinum Rule "accommodates the feelings of others." And of course there's the key. In this day and age where we can't offend anyone, where we have to be sensitive to the point of banality, when we serve our love with soft edges so as to not hurt anyone's feelings, it's natural that something like this would catch on. And it's particularly appropriate that HR departments would adopt it for their "diversity" training programs.

We all know that the principal of diversity, as preached by HR, is that everything is equal, that all philosophies, all cultures, all ethical standards, are equally valid. (Look no further than the "Diversity Luncheon" that we encounter every December as proof of this.) Benedict XVI, as Joseph Ratzinger, spoke of the dictatorship of relativism, and the ideas contained in The Platinum Rule are prime examples of this school of thought.

This kind of thing really is dangerous. As Fr. Mitch Pacwa has pointed out, new-age personality tests such as the enneagram are directly contrary to Catholic teaching. And I'm always suspicious of anyone who tries to improve on Jesus' teachings - "well, that Jesus guy, he had some good things to say, but his statements aren't a panacea, you know."

We shouldn't be surprised that this kind of thinking would be popular in Corporate America, where over the last hundred years or so we've seen religion go from being recognized (Christmas Day as a vacation) to tolerated (well, you can have Good Friday off, but you have to take a vacation day) to shunned (no Christmas decorations in the workplace) to scorned (schoolteachers who can't wear green or red during December) to out-and-out hated (employees fired for failing to toe the corporate line on celebrating homosexual "diversity"). (Of course it's no wonder that HR departments are apprehensive toward religion; after all, in God they see a rival to the control they presume to have over the employee's life.) Perhaps Augustine has the answer for why so many people in the workplace seem unhappy, for in looking at the Psalm verse, "Happy the people whose God is the Lord," he concludes, "It follows that a people alienated from that God must be wretched."

It's hard to know how much of a point to put on this; you'd like to think that people can see through this kind of rubbish, but Corporate America has a way of jumping onboard the latest trends, and The Platinum Rule is certainly sexy enough to cause executives to salivate. It reeks of political correctness, which makes it a prize of any HR department - well, not any, because I actually know one or two that take their jobs quite seriously. And it provides another way of assessing personality types that dehumanizes the individual.

But in the end, I get uncomfortable with someone who tries to trump Christ. It's really kind of a zero-sum game, like trying to outdo your Boss. One can imagine Jesus slapping His head, thinking to Himself, "The Platinum Rule! Why didn't I think of that?" And Alessandra, like all ambitious people, should fear the consequences of this game of oneupsmanship. Because when this Boss calls you to His office, it's a one-way trip. And being dismissed from His presence is eternal.


Originally published October 21, 2005

The sinister moves

Last month, I sang in the Summer Chorus performance of Haydn's Missa in tempore belli (Mass in Time of War), also called Paukenmesse (The Kettledrum Mass), which in Haydn catalogues is Mass No. 10 in C Major (H: XXII:9).  During the concert day, as the movement to remove the Confederate Battle Flag from the Soldiers Monument began to be rampant, funded by George Soros in an utter victory of the liberal activist, the second major victory against the state in seven months (striking down the state constitution's marriage definition amendment was the first, also supported by his minions) that effectively gave him control of the state, I talked to our tenor soloist, a college professor, who was befuddled at the discussion against the Confederacy.

Based on historical references I had researched, I informed him that the deconfederatisation movement has its roots in the denazification efforts of post-WWII Germany in 1946, but more sinister was Mao Tse-Tung's Cultural Revolution in the 1960's.  Mao purged anything that was against the Communist empire, as we learned, and following a further discussion on The Kelly File, a guest noted the deconfederatisation effort's roots within Soviet Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, ironic considering one top organisation leading the new Cultural Revolution of the Left is the Americans United Against Militarism (as it was known at founding), which protected Bolsheviks.

He was shocked and said there was no reason for the deconfederatisation efforts.  What I know now was the Soros activists began the movement with signs placed near Mother Emanuel in the days after the shooting, trying to blame everything on a flag, and create racial tension when the real problem was, as we previously mentioned here, nihilism, a worldview of nothingness, which proved itself because the target was a church.  And with the sad state of affairs after the New York Court (as Justice Scalia called out for its one-city bias), the worldview of the atheists was in control of the nation.  When our Governess was soundly defeated in court to protect the state's constitution against Soros and other Bolshevik minions, and the pressure was up again, she sadly caved and let other cities push deconfederatisation.

Now the pressure is turning up with victory on one end of the deconfederatisation efforts where the next stage – removing Confederate monuments, including names of places, and even war venues, including Fort Sumter, Gettysburg, Bull Run, and historical places such as the CSS Hunley – is beginning.  As I've read over the years, the next stage in the left's revisionist history is to develop new heroes to fit their narrative – and advancing the sexual deviancy agenda that lost in 30 states and could only win with the President and his minions in packed courts to overturn majorities over 75 percent is one such way.  When our Civil War dead, war tactics that were 50 years ahead of the Germans (see the CSS Hunley), the first ironclad battle between the CSS Virginia (fka USS Merrimac) vs USS Monitor,  Battles of  Fort Sumter, Bull Run, Vicksburg, and Gettysburg, the Burning of Atlanta (where the Calgary Flames' nickname is sourced), and even Memorial Day (for Union War Dead) are purged from our history books under this effort, the replacement will be to advance the sexual deviancy elites' agenda down where a certain sexual deviancy leader's birthday would replace Memorial Day, as seen in California already.

Will the Gettysburg Address be banned because of its Civil War reference and be replaced by Dear Leader's celebration of throwing Christians to the Lions?

What type of whitewashing are we allowing with deconfederatisation?  The flag is only the beginning.  Do not be fooled – the sinister gooool is an elimination of all Confederate heroes and leaders – Davis, Lee, Stevens, Jackson, and other heroes of the Confederacy.  No wonder the Left demands “Stonewall” refer to a sexual deviancy bar that turned into victory for their movement when every Southerner knows Stonewall is the nickname for General Thomas Jackson, whose death on May 10, 1863 is observed as Memorial Day in many states.

Are we headed to 1924 Russia, where Petrograd and Yekaterinaburg, among others, had their Czar names replaced by Communist leaders' names, which was prominent in all of the East Bloc (Chemintz, and Saigon are two other cities where such Communist whitewashing happened – Yekaterinaburg and Chemintz has since been restored to its original name, while Petrograd has since been restored to its pre-World War I name)?  I fear that every Confederacy related name and battle field will be purged for the celebration of the current Dear Leader and his social justice efforts.

Kyrie eleison.  Why the hate of the Civil War?  Are people trying to associate the war with racism as in this shooter's moves?  By doing so, they are associating the Confederacy with the shooter – which was never true.  Enough with this false narrative in order to push a new revisionism.

The Big Ten and political correctness -- #B1GPC rampant in attacks on the Kyles and the Cathys.

Political correctness on campus has become a weird situation after all.  Yet, it seems one of the "Power Five" conferences has been the centre of the political correctness controversy with the misnomer tag of the Big Ten being at the heart of the issue.  #B1GPC has shown the ugliness of political correctness this spring in three cases, with two appeasing to terrorists of one type, and a third member appeasing to "terrorists" of another type.

Two full-time members of the conference, the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland, have become full examples of the former.  The popularity of the movie "American Sniper," based on the biography of legendary American soldier Chris Kyle, at the box office and sales of the book, was not enough to reward the film at the highest levels of Academy Awards glory, especially in an era of the out of touch Hollywood where judges for award shows have become a Politburo to impose their wanted Communist values.  These Politburo and Supreme Soviets have infiltrated college campuses, where a lack of thought has developed from indoctrinating the students into the values of the progressive mind, which works when you consider how strong-left the urban areas and college towns have become compared to the rest of the state.  In Ann Arbor, Michigan planned to screen the film in the student union, until an Islamic student association complained about the film, which is described from the narratives in Mr. Kyle's biography.  The complaints forced the school to shut down the plan, until the leader on the gridiron, Jim Harbaugh, proved he was more popular than student leaders by effectively overturning the cancellation, forcing the school to show the film as promised.

In College Park, Maryland also planned showing the film, and once again complaints from the Islamic associations erupted.  Cancellations were made, and even a former gridiron star vowed not to support his school because of their behaviour towards the film by appeasement.  The result was the same, as they had to show the film.

But that's not the only place of attack in the college campus world.

Brothers Dan and Donald (Bubba) Cathy, along with sister Trudy White, and their children continue the legacy of their late father, Samuel Truett Cathy, with the Chick-fil-A quick-service restaurants.  Popular in many places (malls, schools, et al), the firestorm that Big Sexual Deviancy has created by attacking the values of the family (many of whom teach Bible studies at their own churches, and believing in the classic "He rested" on the seventh day) and the Bible, has infiltrated Johns Hopkins University, a Division III school that plays lacrosse at the Division I level (schools are allowed to play one sport at the Division I level if they are Division II or III;  this rule excludes sports that are in Division I but not Division II, such as ice hockey and men's volleyball).  As a Division I school in lacrosse, they are associate members of the Big Ten for the sport only, which is often used for "stragglers" who play certain sports in conferences that do not sponsor them, for example the men's Football Association in Conference USA has two Southeastern Conference schools because FA is not a sport offered by the SEC, and both schools play in C-USA.

The Big Ten membership puts them at the forefront of the Political Correctness in the Big Ten issue.  The students, infiltrated by left-wing propaganda taught in schools and popular culture that showed itself in a recent report from The Washington Times, passed a resolution demanding a ban on the faith and family restaurant chain from campus if the local franchisors wanted to come.  It was clear that the erotic liberty folk is doubling down with more hate of Chick-fil-A, just like the hate of American Sniper.

The base of the Left's new tolerance is the college town where thought is replaced by forced obedience of the lobby, and the urban areas.  It is now showing with the examples at the Big Ten.  Is there truly something in the water in Big Ten territory?

Some days I just shake my head...

The University of Michigan - a state-run institution, of course, spending tax dollars with the utmost wisdom:

The University of Michigan reportedly spent $16,000 plastering its walls with posters telling students they shouldn’t use “offensive” language such as “crazy,” “insane,” and “gypped.”

The posters are part of the school’s new Inclusive Language Campaign, which “aims to encourage the campus community to consider the impact of their word choices on others,” according to the official college website.

An advocate says it's a great idea, because it's “helping individuals understand that their words can impact someone.”

Do I need to tell you this is crazy and insane, and that taxpayers in the Great Lakes State ought to feel gypped?  Or is that like fishing in a barrel?  I hope those words do impact someone, at least someone who can stop it.

Columbus Day, whether you like it or not

LANDING OF COLUMBUS, BY JOHN VANDERLYN, 1842-47

It's Columbus Day today, or as it's called in Minneapolis*, "Indigenous Persons Day."  This is all such dreck; to think that taxpayer dollars go to support a City Council that has time to delve into the PC naming of holidays instead of, you know, something important.  Do they actually think they're accomplishing something with this kind of stupidity?  Or perhaps they're making the case that government really isn't that important after all, that this is the kind of issue that they consider a good use of time.

*And California, I think.

There are many, many reasons I'm glad I don't live in Minnesota anymore, and this is one of them.  Actually, while it's only one of many reasons, so many of them spout from the same font as that.  I think one can go too far in allowing politics and ideology to shape where they live, but when this is the kind of garbage one has to deal with - well, I'm surprised that any conservatives live in Minnesota at all.

Let's face it - this is the only good reason anyone has for not recognizing Columbus Day.