Thursday, December 28, 2017



Hate vs. Hate in the War to Whitewash History


The awful violence in Charlottesville is the inevitable culmination of the Left's goal of eradicating opposing viewpoints.

The despicable violence in Charlottesville is one predictable and inevitable outcome of the Leftist objective to eradicate opposing viewpoints. Whitewashing history (pardon the pun) and engaging in political violence are tools to that end.

As the Dallas Morning News observantly noted, “History is not easily compartmentalized. It isn’t simply right versus wrong, black versus white, or blue versus gray. But there’s an entire crowd of folks who want to do just that because they believe it is all those things, and most egregiously, they believe there is an individual right for all to go through life unoffended.”

Dr. Lee Cheek, senior fellow of the Alexander Hamilton Institute, concurred, noting, “The events in Charlottesville have no connection to understanding the political traditions of the American South, and everything to do with battles among professional ideologues without any attachment or knowledge of the historical situation.”

Millions of Southerners are proud of their heritage for reasons that have nothing to do with slavery. They revere Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who stated in 1856, five years before the commencement of the War Between the States, “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former.”

For the record, Lee was not a slave owner but was in charge of the estate of his wife’s father in 1857, who decreed that his plantation slaves should be freed in five years. In 1862, Lee did just that, and part of that former plantation is now Arlington National Cemetery. Similarly, but rarely mentioned, Union commander Ulysses Grant managed the 850-acre White Haven plantation of his wife’s father near St. Louis, and actually worked and had purchased slaves, whom he also later freed.

Lee is heralded as a brilliant military strategist who served America faithfully in the Mexican War and as Superintendent of West Point. However, when called upon by President Abraham Lincoln to lead Union forces against the seceding South, he declined, incapable of bearing arms against his family, friends and home state. He accepted the commission as commander of Confederate forces in order to defend his beloved state of Virginia. Following the war, Lee worked tirelessly to convince his fellow Southerners to seek peace and reconciliation.

None of this matters to the Left, though. There is no understanding of the complexities of history, no appreciation for context. Slavery has existed throughout human history, regardless of color or nationality. In fact, there are more people enslaved worldwide today than ever before, including slavery practiced by Muslims. Mohammad owned slaves. One wonders if American progressives will now call for banning all things Islamic.

Indeed, how far will this go? Historical monuments of the Confederacy are being removed in Memphis, Lexington, Baltimore, New Orleans and elsewhere to appease angry leftists. These fascists even desecrated an Atlanta monument dedicated to unity and reconciliation.

Violent leftists have rioted in recent years in Brooklyn, Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson, Charlotte, Berkeley, DC, Oakland and other cities, destroying businesses, setting cars on fire, and dragging people from their cars and beating them, declaring their right to do so because of past and current “injustices” — such as hearing words they don’t like.

As detestable as the KKK and white supremacists are, they have a right to speak and to peaceably assemble. Our First Amendment was written specifically to protect unpopular speech, and we show our own intolerance by silencing those with whom we disagree. The violence in Charlottesville would not likely have occurred had not the leftist agitators shown up looking to pick a fight, though the murderous Nazi thug is obviously responsible for his own actions.

So again we ask, how far does this go?

Do we eliminate all monuments to Democrat/progressive hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who opposed anti-lynching legislation, turned a blind eye to the Nazi eradication of Jews, and imprisoned 100,000 Japanese-Americans? What about progressive icon and racist Woodrow Wilson, who re-segregated the federal workforce?

Progressives have already declared war on Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, who owned slaves but sought to prohibit slavery in the newly formed nation. They now call for taking down the Jefferson Memorial.

Even Lincoln, author of the Emancipation Proclamation, is not immune to leftist hatred. The Lincoln Memorial was desecrated Tuesday. Is that because Lincoln, a staunch opponent of slavery, was willing to save it in order to preserve the Union, or because he also believed in the superiority of the white race?

If we truly want to rid our nation of its shameful history regarding racism, let’s start by abolishing the racist Democrat Party. After all, it was the Democrats who waged war to preserve slavery, founded the KKK, enacted Jim Crow laws, and fought against Republican efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act.

Democrat President Andrew Jackson owned slaves and signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

It was Harry Truman who wrote to his wife, “I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s not a n—er or a Chinaman.”

It was the Democrat Party that praised Senator and former KKK Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd until his death a few years ago, a man who filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 14 hours. It was Lyndon Johnson, a virulent racist but a political pragmatist, who told two Southern Democrat governors his signing of the Civil Rights Act would “have those n—ers voting Democrat for 200 years.” And it’s Johnson’s “Great Society” that has yielded today’s urban poverty plantations, where blacks slaughter other blacks without too much notice from the Leftmedia.

What about Bill Clinton, whining about the upstart Barack Obama: “A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags”? Oh, by the way, turns out Obama is the direct maternal line descendant of slave owners! Or the absolute devotion of Democrats to Planned Parenthood, founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger for the express purpose of exterminating blacks through abortion and sterilization? According to Tuskegee University, the KKK lynched 3,446 blacks in 86 years. Planned Parenthood is a white supremacist’s dream, killing more blacks in two weeks than the KKK killed in a century. And the Democrat Party fights to ensure that $500 million a year in taxpayer funds is funneled to Planned Parenthood to kill all of those black babies.

Oh, and no small irony, it turns out that Obama, who has stoked the fires of racial hatred for his entire political career, and been the loudest voice for black supremacy, is, himself, the direct maternal descendant of slave owners. (Oops.) Hard to erase that history, though references to Obama’s family ties to slavery are sparse because, again, that doesn’t fit neatly with the Left’s race-bait political narrative.

Can we at least agree to remove the Seattle monument to Vladimir Lenin? Anyone? Anyone?

As 20th century philosopher George Santayana concluded in his treatise, “The Life of Reason”: “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” English writer Aldous Huxley put it more succinctly: “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.”

How far do we go to whitewash history? When do they start burning books? Will the Left accelerate the violence in order to oppress of opposing viewpoints? If so, then Charlottesville is only a whistle stop along the road to national dissolution.

Footnote: Before tearing down statues became a Leftist fad, Virginia’s Clintonista Governor, New Yorker Terry McAuliffe, characterized the Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson statues on Richmond’s Monument Avenue “parts of our heritage.” After Charlottesville, McAuliffe now characterizes them as “flashpoints for hatred, division, and violence.” And speaking of “New Yorkers,” the latest Leftist to jump on the race-bait freight train is New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who has found some Lee and Jackson statues to remove in his state. Perhaps he should pick up a history book – New York is named for one of the most notorious slave traders in history, the Duke of York. Finally, on the subject of historical revision, longtime friend of The Patriot Post, distinguished George Mason University professor Walter Williams, has issued erudite warnings about the consequences of historical ignorance here and here, including the removal of historic markers to Confederate generals and the rewriting American history.

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Challenging the Racist Cops Myth

The petulant NFL kneelers are protesting a racism myth.

NFL players kneeling in protest during the national anthem was a movement steadily gaining momentum. It suddenly exploded after Donald Trump called out the protesting players for disrespecting the American flag. Now the Leftmedia elite are blaming Trump for causing “division.” But the truth is Trump hit upon an issue that has become deeply offensive to many Americans: Multi-millionaires are protesting supposed injustice and racism in America that is simply not backed up by the facts. Those protesting are demanding that Americans concede to accepting a reality that amounts to a lie. And what is that lie? That police across the nation are systemically racist against blacks. It’s the Democrat war on cops.

Any time an issue like racism is raised, it evokes high degrees of emotion and passion, because it hits at two fundamental truths. First, an individual has absolutely no control over their race; quite literally they are “born that way.” Second, people naturally gravitate toward and relate to those with whom they share the most in common. And neither of these truths are inherently wrong or evil. When these realities are raised as ultimate delimiters and primary identifiers between people, that’s when the ugly problem of racism emerges. In other words, friction happens when people are taught to attribute everything about themselves and others primarily to the lowest common denominator of race. For example, the reason you got in trouble was because you’re black, or the reason you got into a good school is because you are Asian, etc.

It is precisely this flawed race-based mindset that has been behind the current NFL anthem protests. When objectively looking at the actual data, an honest individual can easily see the flaw in these protesters’ objections. The truth is that police are not a bunch of racists running around seeking black men to kill or imprison.

In 2015, the number of individuals killed by police was 995. That’s out of a total population of 318 million people. Obviously, the bare fact that an individual was killed doesn’t tell the whole story, but of those killed only 90 were determined to be unarmed. Of those unarmed individuals killed only 4% were black men killed by white cops. In the vast majority of all police killings (three-quarters), law enforcement officers were confronted by individuals who were armed. One statistic often left out of the conversation is the number of police killed. In 2015, 124 out of an estimated 900,000 full-time federal, state and local officers lost their lives in the line of duty.

The objective data simply does not support the protesters’ message of a pandemic of racist cops. It is merely a popular myth perpetuated by those who ply their trade by convincing people that they are helpless victims and targets of some massively unjust society, especially the police.

Why is it that none of these NFL players or owners has the courage to actually stand up and challenge the lie that is being perpetuated? The greater problem is not players kneeling during the national anthem, it’s that no one is willing to step up and challenge the lie of systemic racism.

SOURCE






Masculinity: Being a Man in a 'Pajama Boy' Age

Our culture has dumbed down and feminized men for decades.

One of the enduring symbols of the Obama years may be that of the “pajama boy.” In an effort to get younger people to sign up for health insurance, in December 2013 Organizing for Action tweeted out the now-infamous photo of a young hipster with the caption, “Wear pajamas. Drink hot chocolate. Talk about getting health insurance.” Whether it was a present-day indication or a sign of things to come, college-age men are now told about “toxic masculinity” and warned that “the ‘three most destructive’ words a boy can hear growing up are ‘be a man.’” In terms of biology, boys have little choice but to become men, but their behavior as such is influenced by their culture and role models.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, we were told that it was time for the first female president to break the “glass ceiling” men had created. Hillary Clinton was even set up with a heel suitable for a WWE event: an opponent in Donald Trump who made headlines from decade-old remarks about his prowess in grabbing women he desired as sexual objects — remarks that were kept on ice by the Leftmedia until they could be released to devastating effect as an October surprise.

Intentionally or not, Trump has fit himself into one of the primary stereotypes Hollywood has created for male characters — that of the boorish, bigoted cad with little redeeming social value. He’s an even less sympathetic version of Archie Bunker. When leftist Norman Lear created spinoff shows from the popular “All in the Family,” he also created similar male characters like Walter Findlay (husband of “Maude”) and George Jefferson. “Seinfeld” had a different take on this with Frank Costanza, George’s dad.

From that style of behavior, we go to another Hollywood favorite: the incompetent dad who screws everything up, leaving the female lead to solve the problems. (Think Ray Barone of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” Homer Simpson or “Family Guy” Peter Griffin.) Another variation of this: the complete loser. (Think Al Bundy of the ‘80s sitcom “Married With Children.”)

A second media creation about how to “be a man” comes from the hardcore rappers who endlessly work out rhymes that call women some equivalent of the b-word or another that rhymes with “so.” (Some raunchy female artists do this, too, and then richly complain about objectification of women.) Over the years that mentality has led to millions of children born to unwed mothers who have no father in their life — meanwhile, the “baby daddy” may have several other children by multiple women. It’s the virility of being “macho” but without the virtues of decency, maturity or responsibility.

With these portrayals of fatherhood, it’s obvious our mass media celebrates an era of “girl power” that leaves younger boys as afterthoughts bereft of good role models. They can’t even pretend to be a good male Disney character anymore — the media giant hardly crafts such male role models any more.

To be an acceptable man in our culture is to have those elements as a beta male, allowing yourself to get in touch with your feelings. Being a strong male — not necessarily the John Wayne caricature, but simply a man with the mental and physical strength to be a provider, husband, family leader and thoughtful Patriot — is now frowned upon, to the lament of those who recall a time when men weren’t so “vulnerable.”

Good male role models are a requirement, though, for a boy to have the best chance at leading a happy, fulfilling life. Yes, boys can have a strong single mother and succeed — and millions have done so despite the odds being against them. But in our worldly base of knowledge that shakes its fist at tradition and insists that an enlightened few know better, we’ve devolved to living like the pajama boy.

Changing that requires much more than a new president. It requires looking past those emasculating “experts” who would tell our boys how to be men and finding good role models and mentors who do it the right way every day. Fortunately, such role models are still out there — if we would only look for them.

SOURCE





Conservatives get canceled, liberals quit laughing: How Trump’s election killed comedy

National Public Radio host Jesse Thorn announced this year that his now 6-year-old child, who was born a biological male, is transgender and will be raised as a girl named Grace.

Some on the left praised Mr. Thorn for his openness and tolerance. Conservative comedian Owen Benjamin had different words for it: child abuse.

Mr. Benjamin said as much while performing at a college campus. In one of his routines, he quipped that he would have been labeled a girl as a child because he liked to weave and hated sports. Once puberty hit, he was clearly male because he wanted to have sex with women.

Within days, the University of Connecticut canceled Mr. Benjamin’s scheduled appearance, costing him a $7,500 paycheck. His manager and agent both dropped him. Comedy clubs canceled his appearances, and the comedian, who had been performing at nearly 20 colleges a year, suddenly had nothing on his schedule.

“I just got massacred,” Mr. Benjamin said of the backlash. “I had people telling me that I was bullying a transgender child. I was actually bullying an adult that was committing child abuse. If anything, I am the only one standing up for the child.”

Conservatives who work in comedy say his experience is not unusual. In an industry that has historically tilted left, they have been ridiculed for their views.

But since the election of Donald Trump, they have become pariahs.

“Comedy is dead, except for calling Donald Trump a Nazi,” said Rodney Lee Conover, a right-leaning comedian who got his start writing jokes for Rush Limbaugh.

The tectonic shift left is not just in comedy clubs’ brick walls but in our living rooms. Johnny Carson’s middle-of-the-road political comedy has been replaced with Stephen Colbert (host of CBS’ “The Late Show”), John Oliver (host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight”), Trevor Noah (host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”) and others bashing all things conservative on a nightly basis.

Jimmy Kimmel has turned his late-night program on ABC into a seminar on health care. Although his rants have been judged as inaccurate and misleading, it doesn’t stop them from being shared across social media, where they become gospel for many Americans.

Mr. Kimmel revealed that some of his pro-Obamacare monologues were based on talking points provided by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.

Mr. Kimmel told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in October that he has no problem losing Republican viewers over his political commentary. The interview occurred shortly after he abandoned another monologue to call for stricter gun control.

At the heart of the comedy is Mr. Trump, who is on pace to become the most ridiculed president ever, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University.

During his first 100 days in office, Mr. Trump was the subject of 1,060 jokes by late-night comedians — twice that of George W. Bush during his entire first year. Mr. Trump should easily shatter the full-year record for jokes, set by Bill Clinton in 1998 — the year of the Monica Lewinski scandal.

But the jokes go beyond Mr. Trump to include those who might have voted for him.

Samantha Bee was forced to issue an apology in March after mocking a Conservative Political Action Conference attendee for having “Nazi hair.” The target of her haircut joke had undergone radiation treatment for stage 4 brain cancer.

“There are no jokes anymore,” Mr. Conover said. “It’s just complete anger and rage.”

Steve McGrew nearly fell victim to the rage this year. The stand-up had always avoided politics in his act. But in March, he released a song parody mocking the left’s reaction to Hillary Clinton’s defeat. The song, “Friends in Safe Spaces,” featured Mr. McGrew playing “Liberal Larry,” a caricature of leftist stereotypes.

Released on social media, the song became a viral hit and was featured on Fox News. The MGM Grand in Las Vegas, where Mr. McGrew is a regular performer, was flooded with calls and emails demanding his firing. Some of those calls even came from friends in the industry.

MGM refused to bow to the pressure, but two smaller comedy clubs said they didn’t want Mr. McGrew back.

“I was not prepared for the backlash,” Mr. McGrew said. “I’ve felt it before as a conservative comic, but it was not nearly as bad until Trump got elected. I’ve been called a racist, Nazi, hate monger — and people are trying to interfere with my livelihood.”

No conservative Colbert

Conservatives have longed to have their own version of Mr. Colbert break through, yet no one has emerged.

Some conservatives say Hollywood’s progressive gatekeepers would never allow such a show on the air, but others claim it wouldn’t attract viewers.

“Networks’ golden rule is to allow anything that makes money,” said Ned Rice, a conservative who has written for Mr. Kimmel, Bill Maher and others. “But the audience isn’t there to support a whole show.”

The numbers appear to support that theory.

Mr. Rice and Mr. Conover both wrote for the “The ½ Hour News Hour.” The show, which aired in 2007 on the Fox News Channel, was promoted as the conservative alternative to “The Daily Show.” It was canceled after 17 episodes amid poor ratings and brutal reviews from critics.

Seven years later, Michael Loftus launched “The Flipside,” a second attempt at a conservative “Daily Show.” It lasted three seasons but was distributed to small cable networks such as Family Entertainment Television and aired in the early mornings.

The comics say network censors forced them to tone down their conservative beliefs, limiting the targets of their comedy.

“When you have a view that is labeled as hate speech, you are afraid of getting sued,” Mr. Loftus said. “I played it safe, and it wasn’t as artistically rewarding.”

Trump-bashing, though, has been a recipe for success.

Mr. Colbert was trailing rival Jimmy Fallon (host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show”) in the ratings war for more than a year. There was talk of replacing Mr. Colbert with “The Late, Late Show” host James Corden before he went full-throttle anti-Trump. Mr. Colbert surged ahead of Mr. Fallon in the week of Mr. Trump’s inauguration and hasn’t looked back since.

Mr. Fallon, meanwhile, has never recovered from the critical scorn of his interview with Mr. Trump. He was blasted for asking softball questions and accused of “trying to normalize” Mr. Trump by mussing his hair.

“If you can do one-sided comedy and increase your audience size, then that is what is going to happen,” said Robert S. Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University. “There was always a fear of limiting your audience, but that is not an issue anymore because the country is so polarized you can pick your audience.”

Playing to the platform

Dannagal Young, a communication professor at the University of Delaware, was studying the lack of conservatives in comedy when she noticed that both sides have different senses of humor. Her work suggests conservatives prefer more explicit kinds of humor, while liberals appreciate irony, the tool most used by late-night comedians.

Nonetheless, conservatives dominate on the radio and on political commentary shows such as Fox News’ evening lineup.

“There already is a conservative Stephen Colbert, and it is Sean Hannity,” Ms. Young said.

Liberal radio, meanwhile, hasn’t cut it.

Air America was launched in 2004 as a liberal talk-radio network. Plagued by low ratings and a lack of advertisers, it declared bankruptcy in 2006 and went off the air in 2010 after a second bankruptcy filing.

Mr. Rice said it’s tougher to do conservative comedy because it challenges commonly held views.

“If you do a show about Republicans being greedy, people will laugh because they believe that to be true,” he said. “But if you do a joke about how welfare has made poverty worse — which is a fact — people won’t laugh because they don’t know if it is true.”

But establishing a conservative late-night show is necessary if the movement wants to survive, Mr. Loftus said.

“If you are a kid and clicking around at night, you can’t even stumble across a conservative view by accident,” he said. “If a kid can’t find a different opinion and say, ‘I never thought of that,’ then the conservative movement is doomed.”

Mr. Benjamin, the comic who racked up cancellations after his transgender riff, had to change his business model. Now he asks fans in various cities to donate $20 for a ticket. Once the total donations for an individual city reaches $3,000, Mr. Benjamin will rent a theater in that town and perform for his supporters.

He doesn’t regret his comments, however.

“Now that the source of my income is the people I’m actually trying to entertain. I’m much happier for it,” he said.

Mr. McGrew said he now has fans who never heard of him until the outrage over his Liberal Larry character.

“As much as it was a horrible time because I lost friends and [was] attacked by people in the industry, it was a great time because I got discovered by middle America,” he said. “YouTube and social media has done more for me than a Hollywood executive ever could.”

Being a conservative in such a liberal-dominated industry has a special kind of allure, Mr. Loftus said.

“I became a comedian because I wanted to speak for the underdog, and conservatives are the underdog,” he said. “Being a conservative comedian is edgy, dangerous and kind of cool. I haven’t felt this way since I was in a punk band in high school.”

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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