The Latest ‘Hate’ Smear Target Is a Civil-Rights Group - WSJ

The Latest ‘Hate’ Smear Target Is a Civil-Rights Group - WSJ

SPLC Watch

Ed Meese III:

The headlines were both inflammatory and untrue: “Attorney General Jeff Sessions Criticized for Speaking to ‘Hate Group,’ ”reported NBC. Reports from ABC and other major news outlets used similar language. Readers might be surprised to learn that the group in question is the Alliance Defending Freedom, a respected civil-rights law firm.

So where did this scurrilous charge originate? With the Southern Poverty Law Center, which labels the ADF a “hate group.” The designation had nothing to do with the law firm’s policies or behavior. It’s just that the SPLC objects to its traditional views on the Constitution, the First Amendment and the meaning of marriage. No responsible media outlet should parrot the SPLC’s hate list without seeking to understand not only its motives but also the consequences of spreading false charges.

SPLC Watch

This is a post where I'm going to collect bits about the Southern Poverty Law Center as I find them, because in many cases, I'm having trouble finding them again.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449476/splc-dangerous-lies-alliance-defending-freedom-no-hate-group

Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivered a speech to an alleged hate group at an event closed to reporters on Tuesday night, but the Department of Justice is refusing to reveal what he said.

Sessions addressed members of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which was designated an “anti-LGBT hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2016, at the Summit on Religious Liberty at the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, in Dana Point, California.

I’m at that summit right now. I heard the attorney general’s speech, I delivered a speech myself, and I’m even now sitting right next to friends and former colleagues at ADF listening to a lecture on censorship in the European Union. Let me give you a peek under the curtain. I’ll let you in on the major themes of the week.

We heard from men and women who’ve long served gay customers and formed lasting friendships with gay neighbors who now face death threats because they simply refused to lend their artistic talents to celebrate a gay wedding. We heard one man’s voice break as he told the story of how his father fought across Europe and helped liberate a concentration camp from Nazi control — and now his son is called a “Nazi” in part because he wants all people to enjoy the same rights of conscience and wants no man or woman to be coerced into supporting events they find immoral.

....

Let’s be clear. The Southern Poverty Law Center, the “civil rights watchdog group” that ABC and NBC so prominently cite, has become a dangerous joke. It’s a joke because the very idea that Christians are members of a “hate group” merely because they advocate for orthodox Christian principles and the liberty to live those principles is so intellectually and ideologically bankrupt that it’s barely worth addressing.

Indeed, I’d encourage you to read the SPLC’s information page on the Alliance Defending Freedom. It consists of a collection of quotes where ADF attorneys explain the implications of an unrestrained sexual revolution on religious liberty, and it details how ADF files cases to protect the First Amendment rights of its clients. That’s it. No violence. No hate. Mere Christianity.

And this will be dismissed out of hand because it's Accuracy In Media:
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/southern-poverty-law-center-belongs-on-southern-policy-law-centers-hate-list/

Alliance Defending Freedom is representing Jack Phillips, the cake baker who declined to create a cake for a gay wedding and whose case the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear.

It pushed the case that forced public schools to provide equal access to after-school Bible clubs as to other organizations. And it convinced the Supreme Court to affirm an Arizona tuition tax credit program could be used for any schools parents choose, including those run by churches.

It got the court to affirm the rights of communities to restrict where sexually oriented businesses could locate. And it was the group behind the Supreme Court ruling upholding the ban on partial-birth abortions.

One can take issue with any or all these positions. But they are the positions of a Christian group, founded by preachers, that makes grants or provides pro bono attorneys to groups and individuals whose religious rights and rights to free association are threatened. They are not the positions of a hate group.

So how did this group end up in a thousand headlines proclaiming it a “hate group?” Because the Southern Poverty Law Center said so. And for the left and its handmaidens in the media, that’s all it takes.

Where Liberals Go Wrong on 'Discrimination'

Where Liberals Go Wrong on 'Discrimination'

Just Because Liberals Call Something ‘Discrimination’ Doesn’t Mean It Actually Is

The biggest problem with current sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) laws—including “Fairness for All,” which proposes a grand-bargain compromise between SOGI laws and religious liberty—is that they do not appropriately define what counts as discriminatory.

As I explain in a new report for The Heritage Foundation, “How to Think About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Policies and Religious Freedom,” these are the laws that are being used to shutter Catholic adoption agencies, fine evangelical bakers, and force businesses and public facilities to allow men into women’s locker rooms.

The problem is that liberals are calling anything they dislike “discrimination.” But liberals are getting it wrong. To illustrate this, consider several different cases of putative “discrimination.” The law must be nuanced enough to capture the important differences in these cases.

Invidious and Rightly Unlawful Discrimination

Racially segregated water fountains were one form of discrimination that took race into consideration—in a context where it was completely irrelevant—and then treated blacks as second-class citizens precisely because they were black. The entire point was to classify on the basis of race in order to treat blacks as socially inferior.

As a result, such actions were rightly described as invidious race-based discrimination, and—given the entrenched, widespread, state-facilitated nature of the problem—they were rightly made unlawful.

Likewise, throughout much of American history, girls and women were not afforded educational opportunities equal to those available to boys and men. This form of discrimination took sex into consideration and then treated girls and women poorly precisely because of their sex, barring them from education in certain subjects or at certain levels despite being otherwise qualified.

As with invidious racial discrimination, such treatment took a feature (in this case, sex) into consideration precisely to treat women as less than men. The law rightly deemed such actions invidious sex-based discrimination, and—again, given the entrenched, widespread, and state-facilitated nature of the problem—Title IX of the Education Amendments was enacted to ensure that girls and women received equal educational opportunities.

Appropriate and Rightly Lawful Distinctions That Are Not Classified as Discrimination

When Title IX was enacted in 1972 and its implementing regulations were promulgated in 1975, the law made clear that sex-specific housing, bathrooms, and locker rooms were not unlawful discrimination. Such policies take sex into consideration, but they do not treat women as inferior to men or men as inferior to women. They treat both sexes equally because they take sex into consideration (they “discriminate”—in the nonpejorative sense of “distinguish”—on the basis of sex) precisely in a way that matters: by appreciating the bodily sexual difference of men and women in things such as housing, bathroom, and locker room policy.

Would we really be treating men and women equally in anything but an artificial way if we forced men and women, boys and girls, to undress in front of each other?

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her majority opinion for the Supreme Court forcing the Virginia Military Institute to become co-ed, wrote that it “would undoubtedly require alterations necessary to afford members of each sex privacy from the other sex in living arrangements.” Yet we certainly would be treating people unequally if access to intimate facilities were based on factors wholly unrelated to privacy, such as race.

As a result, policymakers did not consider sex-specific intimate facilities as discriminatory in the first place, and laws explicitly reflected that commonsense understanding while rightly declaring racially segregated facilities to be unlawful.

The lesson here is that not all distinctions in fact should be deemed unlawful discrimination.

Not Discriminatory at All

If sex-specific intimate facilities are an example of lawful, legitimate policies that take sex into consideration, pro-life medical practices are examples of policies that are legitimate and lawful because they do not take sex into consideration at all.

That only women can get pregnant has no bearing whatsoever on the judgment of the conscientious doctor or nurse who refuses to kill the unborn. The insistence of LGBT activists that men actually can become pregnant highlights the point: Pro-life medical personnel refuse to do abortions on pregnant women and “pregnant men” (i.e. women who identify as men).

>>>For more on this, see Ryan T. Anderson’s new book from Oxford University Press, “Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination”

Thus, we can identify three different types of cases:

• Cases of invidious discrimination, in which an irrelevant factor is taken into consideration in order to treat people poorly based on that factor, as with racially segregated water fountains;
• Cases of distinctions without unlawful discrimination, in which a factor is taken into consideration precisely because it is relevant to the underlying policy and people are not treated poorly, as with sex-specific intimate facilities; and
• Cases with neither distinctions nor discrimination, in which a particular factor simply does not enter into consideration, as with pro-life doctors.

Any proposed policy intended to address the documented needs of people who identify as LGBT must take these categories into account without conflation.

SOGI Discrimination: Real and Imagined

Consider a florist who refused to serve all customers who identify as LGBT simply because they identified as LGBT. That would be a case of invidious discrimination because the mere knowledge that they identify as LGBT should have no impact whatsoever on the act of the florist selling flowers, because there is no rational connection between the two.

Now consider Baronelle Stutzman, the 71-year-old grandmother who served one particular gay customer for nearly a decade but declined to do the wedding flowers for his same-sex wedding ceremony.

Baronelle Stutzman lost her case and is appealing to the Supreme Court. (Photo: Alliance Defending Freedom)
Baronelle Stutzman lost her case and is appealing to the Supreme Court. (Photo: Alliance Defending Freedom)
The customer’s sexual orientation did not play any role in Stutzman’s decision. Her belief that marriage is a union of sexually complementary spouses does not spring from any convictions about people who identify as LGBT. When she says she can do wedding flowers only for true weddings, she makes no distinctions based on sexual orientation at all.

This is seen most clearly in the case of Catholic Charities adoption agencies. They decline to place the children entrusted to their care with same-sex couples not because of their sexual orientation, but because of the conviction that children deserve both a mother and a father.

That belief—that men and women are not interchangeable, mothers and fathers are not replaceable, the two best dads in the world cannot make up for a missing mom, and the two best moms in the world cannot make up for a missing dad—has absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation.

Catholic Charities does not say that people who identify as LGBT cannot love or care for children; it does not take sexual orientation into consideration at all. Its preference for placing children with mothers and fathers is not an instance of discrimination based on sexual orientation—and the law should not say otherwise.

Purported gender identity discrimination presents similar problems. The Washington Post recently reported on a woman who was suing a Catholic hospital for declining to perform a sex reassignment procedure on her that entailed removing her healthy uterus. In that report, the Post captures the conflation of real and imaginary discrimination.

“What the rule says is if you provide a particular service to anybody, you can’t refuse to provide it to anyone,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign. That means a transgender person who shows up at an emergency room with something as basic as a twisted ankle cannot be denied care, as sometimes happens, Warbelow said. That also means if a doctor provides breast reconstruction surgery or hormone therapy, those services cannot be denied to transgender patients seeking them for gender dysphoria, she said.

The two examples given, however, differ in significant ways. A hospital that refuses to treat the twisted ankles of people who identify as transgender simply because they identify as transgender would be engaging in invidious discrimination, but a hospital that declines to remove the perfectly healthy uterus of a woman who identifies as a man is not engaging in “gender identity” discrimination.

The gender identity of the patient plays no role in the decision-making process: Just as pro-life physicians do not kill unborn babies, regardless of the sex or gender identity of the pregnant person, doctors do not remove healthy uteruses from any patients, regardless of how they identify themselves.

As for the Human Rights Campaign spokesperson’s claim that emergency rooms “sometimes” refuse to treat the twisted ankles of transgender patients, there is no evidence—including on their own website—that it or anything similar in fact happens. Furthermore, insofar as this “sometimes happens,” it seems reasonable to think that the media would focus so much attention on it that the hospital would reverse course within hours. It therefore seems highly unlikely that this alleged problem merits a governmental response.

Need for Policy Shapes the Nature of Policy Response, Definitions, and Protections

My new Heritage report argues that any justified government policy must not penalize valid forms of action and interaction or burden the rights of conscience, religion, and speech. We can see this principle in action.

Because there was such widespread, entrenched systemic and institutional racism throughout American society in the 1960s, for example, and because social and market forces were not sufficient to remedy the problem, it was appropriate for government to respond. That response was properly tailored to meet this need. It defined discrimination to include racially segregated accommodations, places of employment, and housing providers while providing thin religious liberty protections.

Because the justification for antidiscrimination laws based on race was so strong and the need was so great, the law was appropriately broad with limited exemptions.

By contrast, consider laws that address discrimination based on sex. Because the nature of sex and the history of sexism did not represent an exact parallel to racism, the law did not treat them in entirely the same ways. Discrimination was legally defined so as not to include sex-specific intimate facilities, and much broader—and in some cases total—religious liberty exemptions were included. And to this day, sex is not a protected class for federal antidiscrimination law as applied to public accommodations.

In sum, because the justification for laws against sex-based discrimination was weaker than the justification for laws against race-based discrimination, the legal response was more modest: It covered less terrain, defined discrimination more narrowly, and provided greater protection for religious liberty.

Any proposed policies intended to meet the needs of people who identify as LGBT would need to be crafted in a similar manner. Without greater evidence of the justification for specific policy responses—greater documentation of what the needs truly are—it is hard to be specific. In general, however, the need clearly seems weaker than the need for policies designed to deal with discrimination on the basis of race and sex.

A policy response would therefore need to cover less ground, target discrimination more narrowly, define discrimination accurately, and avoid undermining the rights of conscience, religion, and speech. Alas, laws proposed by liberals today do not do this.

"Privilege" again

JJR-PC Watch

A major obsession on the Left at the moment -- particularly in the universities -- is "white privilege" It is alleged that just being born white gives you privileges not available to others. And whites are supposed to feel shamed and humbled about that and -- ideally -- give all their money to non-whites. It is part of the general and quite deranged attack on mainstream people that caused many Americans to become totally disgusted with the Obama/Clinton Left. They were ready to vote for ANYBODY who would stop the rot. So Donald Trump got the job, despite his hair and many other faults.

I pointed out recently that the "white privilege" concept is racist -- very similar to Hitler's thinking about Jews. In both cases we see hostility to people purely on the basis of their race.

So let me relate a true story about a privileged person I know. L. is an elderly Jewish man who recently had a bad turn. An ambulance was called to take him to hospital. When they were loading him on board, they asked him which hospital he wanted to go to. Brisbane has some big centrally located government hospitals plus a lot of excellent private hospitals scattered about. L. said to take him to WXY, a highly regarded private hospital with about 500 beds.

But after about 15 minutes the ambulance had still not driven off. The ambulancemen said that it was a very busy time with a lot of hospitals "on bypass" (full up) -- and WXY was one of those on bypass. So the ambulancemen had been ringing around to find a hospital with an available bed. L. said not to bother with that. Just ring hospital WXY and tell them whom you have got on board. The ambulancemen did that and L. was promptly whisked to his preferred hospital. He was taken in where others were not.

So was that Jewish privilege? Many people would leap to that conclusion. And Jews are often generous donors to all sorts of charitable causes. So that could have been it. It might have reflected gratitude to a donor. But that was not it at all.

Even though he is in his '80s and has had a stroke, L. has that restless energy we so often see in Ashkenazi (Western) Jews. After his stroke he could have just stayed at home all day and watched TV. He likes watching football on TV so that would have had some appeal.

But that was just alien to him. He wanted to be active and to contribute something to others. So he became a hospital visitor. With his own recent experience of stroke he felt sympathy for people lying in bed all day waiting to get better. So, by arrangement with the WXY hospital, he would spend days just walking around the wards and looking for people who felt like a chat. He is himself a cheery, flexible, positive person who is a good listener so he brightened the days of many.

So you see why everybody at the WXY hospital knew him, appreciated him and leapt to help him when he needed it. The "privilege" he had is the privilege of being a good man. He EARNED his privilege. He is just a good natured conservative man who likes to contribute to the society in which he lives.

And so it is with most privilege. What you do to earn privilege can vary greatly. You can even inherit it. But privilege is not random and is not assigned just by something as incidental as the color of your skin. There are many trailer park denizens -- poor people -- who just get by from week to week even though they are white. Where is their privilege? It doesn't exist because they have done nothing to earn it. Just being white earns you nothing -- JR

Students: Our liberal colleges made us more conservative - Red Alert Politics

Students: Our liberal colleges made us more conservative - Red Alert Politics

“If one group on the liberal side, say Black Lives Matter tells people who may generally agree with their concerns ‘you can’t comment on this issue because you’re white/male/Christian/come from a certain income level’, that person is going to go to the side that is open to hearing them,” said Matt Lamb. “One of my first days at Loyola, which I started as generally socially moderate, if not liberal, someone said during a discussion about abortion ‘if you’re a man you don’t get to talk on this issue’, thereby saying my views weren’t valid (even if I generally agreed with them.’ That leads me, and others, to look at who is willing to listen to them on issues, even if there’s some disagreement.”

Anti-Star Wars: Turning off & tuning out SJW drama

Anti-Star Wars: Turning off & tuning out SJW drama

We are also planning to respond with our recreational choices. In other words, “virtue signaling” stars will hurt the bottom line of any productions in which they participate, because a good portion of the intended audience will be “anger signalling.”

due process group | end Kangaroo Courts | college campuses

due process group | end Kangaroo Courts | college campuses

In recent years, driven in part by federal directives and radical leftist feminism, we’re at the point where college males who are accused of sexual misconduct are more likely to be tried in a campus ‘Kangaroo Courts’ than a court of law, as we wrote in Kangaroo courts for men on campus:

The media often wonders why young men are staying away from universities and colleges. Perhaps the hostile environment on campuses is part of the reason.

Universities, protected by law and compelled by a directive from the Obama Department of Education, have established a kangaroo campus court system in which young men regularly face life-changing quasi-judicial proceedings based on accusations of sexual misconduct at which they have little due process protection.


At College Insurrection we highlighted one such case at Brown University, University without shame: How Brown betrayed one of its students.

But these cases take place regularly as documented by The FIRE organization.

Democratic politicians and vocal feminist groups demagogue the fictitious “war on women.”

On campuses, there is a very real war on men, but few seem to care.

To make matters worse, conduct codes at many schools have been altered to greatly expand behavior which counts as sexual misconduct, including so-called “affirmative consent” requirements. In an essay for Time, Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War on Boys, vividly portrayed the problem facing male students in the “rape culture” environment:

On January 27, 2010, University of North Dakota officials charged undergraduate Caleb Warner with sexually assaulting a fellow student. He insisted the encounter was consensual, but was found guilty by a campus tribunal and thereupon expelled and banned from campus.

A few months later, Warner received surprising news. The local police had determined not only that Warner was innocent, but that the alleged victim had deliberately falsified her charges. She was charged with lying to police for filing a false report, and fled the state.

Cases like Warner’s are proliferating. Here is a partial list of young men who have recently filed lawsuits against their schools for what appear to be gross mistreatment in campus sexual assault tribunals: Drew Sterrett—University of Michigan, “John Doe”—Swarthmore, Anthony Villar—Philadelphia University, Peter Yu—Vassar, Andre Henry—Delaware State, Dez Wells—Xavier, and Zackary Hunt—Denison. Presumed guilty is the new legal principle where sex is concerned.

Now one group is looking to change that. Toni Airaksinen reports at The College Fix:

Due-process group launches campaign to ‘End Kangaroo Courts’ on campus, bring back ‘rule of law’

With the inauguration of a new president, a nonprofit group that advocates for students’ due-process rights is launching a campaign to take sexual-assault investigations out of the hands of college bureaucrats.

The campaign by Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), “End Kangaroo Courts,” calls for “a wide-ranging re-evaluation of the role of campus disciplinary committees in adjudicating allegations of felony-level sexual assaults.”

The intent is to “assure justice and fairness for both sexual assault victims and for the accused,” SAVE said in a press release.

It cited a University of Kentucky investigation that resulted in three internal appeals in favor of the accused student, owing to due-process violations.

The accuser sued the school for putting her through repeated proceedings, and a judge let her suit continue, blasting UK for having “bungled” the proceedings “inexcusably” and showing “deliberate indifference” to the accuser.

The campaign will include “meetings with state lawmakers, radio interviews, a whiteboard video” and other elements, SAVE said.

Here’s an official press release from SAVE:

SAVE Calls for End of Campus ‘Kangaroo Courts’

In the wake of continuing reports of incompetence and neglect, SAVE is calling for a wide-ranging re-evaluation of the role of campus disciplinary committees in adjudicating allegations of felony-level sexual assaults.

Last week, for example, it was reported that a rape tribunal at the University of Kentucky repeatedly violated the accused student’s due process rights, leading to three appeals and three re-hearings on the case. As the process dragged on for two-years, the woman’s mental health began to deteriorate. She eventually filed a lawsuit.

In response, District Court Judge Joseph Hood issued a strongly worded ruling, suggesting the University may have acted with “deliberate indifference.” The Judge concluded, “the University bungled the disciplinary hearings so badly, so inexcusably, that it necessitated three appeals and reversals in an attempt to remedy the due process deficiencies.” These problems “profoundly affected Plaintiff’s ability to obtain an education at the University of Kentucky.” (1)

Numerous expelled students have filed lawsuits as well, charging that their former universities ignored fundamental due process protections. In 30 cases, judges have ruled at least partly in favor of the accused students (2). Many of these lawsuits arose from schools’ use of “victim-centered” investigations in which the guilt of the accused party was presumed (3).

The American public supports the need for criminal justice involvement in campus cases. One national survey found that 91% of likely voters agreed with the statement that “The justice system, not colleges, should be primarily responsible for deciding if students are guilty of sexual misconduct or assault.” (4)

Today SAVE is launching its End Kangaroo Courts campaign to assure justice and fairness for both sexual assault victims and for the accused. The campaign will consist of meetings with state lawmakers, radio interviews, a whiteboard video, and more (5). SAVE is inviting state lawmakers to introduce the Campus Equality, Fairness, and Transparency Act (CEFTA), which seeks to involve the criminal justice system in campus sex cases (6).

National Urban Myths League: When Race Trumps Truth - Ryan Bomberger

National Urban Myths League: When Race Trumps Truth - Ryan Bomberger

Now, the National Urban…I’ll say it…National Urban Myths League has put out a bogus report card on Barack Obama’s performance as president. They’ve deemed his presidency “Excellent”. It’s a painful exercise in allowing race to trump truth. The liberal organization ends the embarrassing assessment with the words: “Scandal-free administration”. Sure. And Hillary Clinton never had an email erased.

Liberals tend to simultaneously dwell on and ignore history. National Urban Myths League’s short-term memory can be refreshed with this thorough report on the Obama administration’s scandals such as Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, Pigford, Iran nuclear deal, Iran hostage payment, and the IRS scandals. There are so many.

Most of today’s once honorable civil rights organizations have certain members of the public thinking they’re being empowered, but they’re being fooled by those in power instead. Truth means nothing. Propaganda is everything.

One only needs to look at the National Urban Myths League’s “EXCELLENT” rating for Obama on Poverty (pg 3). The League deceptively explains the poverty rate fell in the black community in 2015 “faster than in any year since 1999.” Perhaps they missed the fact that in 2010, more people were impoverished under the Obama administration (46.2 million) than in the 52 years the U.S. Census Bureau has kept track. In 2010, the national poverty rate (15.1%) was the highest since 1993. So Obama gets a gold star because he presided over poverty rates that were higher every year (hitting an apex of 27.6% in 2011) in the black community than during George W. Bush’s terms—the highest since 1996? And now, in 2015 they finally lower enough (24.1%) to nearly match what his administration inherited (24.7%) in January 2009 and that’s worth praise?

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Honesty and transparency really aren’t the National Urban League’s thing. They annually produce a disingenuous State of Black America report which details the challenges of Urban America and offers only liberal solutions. Many of the issues are the direct result of the one thing the League never, ever mentions—fatherlessness—an epidemic worsened by our culture of abortion.

When my organization, The Radiance Foundation, launched a pro-life billboard/social media campaign—TooManyAborted.com—to illuminate the racist history of eugenics and the abortion industry (Planned Parenthood) that it birthed, we were shocked by the response from so-called “civil rights” groups. Our TooManyAborted.com campaign, created as a Black History Month educational initiative, infuriated those who’ve been partnering with an industry that is the No. 1 killer of black lives. The NAACP (which later sued us for parodying them as the National Association for the Abortion of Colored People) called our Black & Beautiful campaign “racist” and that we were “creating an illusion that Planned Parenthood is an organization that is murdering black babies.”

What exactly would you call a business that kills over 266 black babies every day and an industry that kills more black babies than are born alive?

Fannie Lou Hamer called abortion in the black community “genocide”. So did Jesse Jackson, when he was passionately pro-life. Oh, but that was before he had to drop his moral convictions for political “prestige” in his 1984 run for the presidency in 1984.

The Marxist #BlackLivesMatter movement is always decrying “systemic racism” yet ignores it where it is most rampant—the abortion industry. What is more systemic than a taxpayer-funded population control organization—Planned Parenthood—killing unarmed black lives in the womb at a rate up to 5 times more than the majority population?

It doesn’t phase the National Urban Myths League, though. Led by president Marc Morial, they’ve put their allegiance in an abortion chain that fundamentally believes we are not equal. As a biracial individual, the irony crushes my heart. A few years ago, when The Radiance Foundation partnered with Pro-Life Wisconsin to place a billboard in the parking lot of Planned Parenthood in Madison, Wisconsin, I had no idea that the abortion biz was leasing space from the National Urban League. Yes. The National Urban League built the building in 2009 and leases space to Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, which commits 74.3% of the states 5,461 abortions (2015 stats). Of course, as is the case across the country, the black community is disproportionately targeted by the abortion giant which results in the huge disparity in abortion rates. In Wisconsin, although only 6.6% of the state’s population is black, 26% of the state’s abortions are black babies.

In New York City, where Planned Parenthood is headquartered, more black babies are aborted than born alive—the only demographic to have more induced deaths than births. For every 1,000 black babies born alive, there are 1,101 aborted.

This is black genocide. This is civil rights gone wrong.

Yet Marc Morial, signing on behalf of the National Urban League, joined the ACLU and dozens of other radical pro-abortion organizations in a letter vehemently opposing any effort to defund corrupt, taxpayer-defrauding Planned Parenthood. And don’t give me that whole “low-income, minority women need Planned Parenthood” garbage. No they don’t. They need real healthcare…comprehensive healthcare that they can find at over 13,000 federally qualified health centers and community health centers across the country that don’t make millions killing the most defenseless among us.

We can appreciate how far our nation has come by electing its first biracial president, but can we just be honest? Elevating race above all else gives us the legacy that Obama is leaving behind—a nation more racially divided than we’ve seen in decades and a government less transparent with each passing year. Barack Obama is no Messiah, and his failures will be felt for generations to come. Mainstream media has done, and will continue to do, all it can do to mythicize his presidency. National Urban Myths League, there is too much crucial work to be done to help those in need for you to be writing works of fiction.

Campuses buckle under Obama policies: Glenn Reynolds

Campuses buckle under Obama policies: Glenn Reynolds

One of Robert Conquest’s three laws of politics is that “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.” Odd as this may sound, it seems to have pretty good predictive power. And President Obama’s Department of Education seems like a good example.

Higher education, after all, is one of the Democratic Party’s biggest sources of support: Financial (according to Open Secrets, 4 of the top 10 organizations furnishing donors to the Obama 2012 campaign were universities: The University of California was #1, ahead of Google, and the others were Harvard, Stanford and Columbia), ideological (faculties lean far-left and the lefty faculty members tend to be much more outspoken, on average, than the conservative or libertarian faculty), and grassroots, with students, faculty and administrators serving as foot-soldiers (sometimes with university funding) for Democratic candidates and causes. And as Case Western University law professor George Dent notes, “Most state colleges and universities now serve as political action committees for the left, and their political spending dwarfs that of all other PACs.”

So you’d expect the Obama Department of Education to be doing whatever it could to nurture, support, and protect colleges and universities. But instead, it seems to be acting almost as if it were controlled by . . . a cabal of its enemies.

For example, in the area of Title IX enforcement Obama’s Department of Education has taken a statute that simply reads: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance,” and turned it into an Orwellian nightmare of what Harvard law professors Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk call "bureaucratic sex creep.”

As a new book by KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr., The Campus Rape Frenzy, makes clear, the results have been bad for victimized students (almost always male), but they’ve also been bad for colleges and universities, producing horrible publicity, a growing number of expensive lawsuits, and increased trouble recruiting male students for what is increasingly becoming a pink-collar higher education system. This “rape frenzy” wasn’t the product of anti-sex religious fundamentalists, but of hard-core gender-war feminists. And Obama has doubled down by, at the very last minute, appointing a new, hardline head for the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which oversees this debacle. She can be expected to double down, unless Trump replaces her.

And, in many other ways, the Department of Education’s pro-diversity efforts have — entirely deliberately — fostered a climate of racial balkanization and division on campus. Again, the results have empowered a small number of student “activists” and administrators, but with destructive, and sometimes genuinely disastrous results. That's that case at the University of Missouri which has seen enrollments and donations plummet by astonishing amounts, genuinely disastrous results.

Most recently, the Department of Education struck the Charlotte School of Law off the eligibility list for federal student aid, because of its graduates’ low bar passage rate. That’s pretty much a death blow. But why Charlotte, and why now?

Well, there’s a good argument, as education expert George Leef notes in Forbes, that we have too many law schools and that we should thin the herd. But as another expert I discussed this with noted, there are probably ten or fifteen other law schools that are just as strong candidates for this treatment as Charlotte. Charlotte is a for-profit school, and the Obama administration has been notably hostile to for-profit education in general, but the precedent set here is just as applicable to traditional “nonprofit” schools, many of whom also have lousy records at having their students pass the bar and find gainful employment.

Much of the hoopla about Trump education nominee Betsy DeVos has involved her views on K-12 education, though some critics have, absurdly, complained that her donation to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties outfit that has, among other things, opposed the Title IX kangaroo sex courts on many campuses, is somehow disqualifying. The critics fear that she’ll reverse course on Obama’s education program.

But if DeVos is really hostile to higher education, she should probably just double down on these Obama policies. Because that would probably do more damage than anything she has in the works.

‘My Fellow Liberals, I’m Tired Of You’ | The American Conservative

‘My Fellow Liberals, I’m Tired Of You’ | The American Conservative

I’m a secular/agnostic Californian and longtime reader of your blog. I’ve enjoyed your books beginning with Crunchy Cons, and have valued your insights over the years.

Though you don’t know me, I feel like I know you and your family. And I want to share with you, from the liberal bastion of Northern California, that I am officially tired of the type of people who have surrounded me my entire life. In the wake of Trump’s election, I am experiencing “tribe fatigue.” I’m not tired of The Other, Detestable Tribe. I’m tired of my own.

A bit about me: I am a [deleted] with two young children. My parents were non-religious Democrats, and my ex-Catholic mom loathes organized religion to this day.

So I was raised a secular liberal. My college professors were secular liberals. During my journalism phase, my newspaper colleagues were secular liberals. My law school professors and peers were – in the vast majority – secular liberals. Almost everyone at my corporate law firm was a secular liberal. My California neighbors and friends are secular liberals, as are my colleagues. My mother, siblings, and their spouses are all secular liberals.

By all rights, I should be a member in good standing of their tribe, “liking” their Facebook posts and joining their candlelight vigils against the evil Trump Administration. But November 8 and its aftermath revealed to me that I am just so tired of these people. I can’t be like them, and I don’t want my kids turning into them.

I am tired of their undisguised contempt for tens of millions of Americans, with no effort to temper their response to the election with humility or empathy.

I am tired of their unexamined snobbery and condescension.

I am tired of their name-calling and virtue-signaling as signs of supposedly high intelligence.

I am tired of their trendiness, jumping on every left-liberal bandwagon that comes along (transgender activism, anyone?) and then acting like anyone not on board is an idiot/hater.

I am tired of their shallowness. It’s hard to have a deep conversation with people who are obsessed with moving their kids’ pawns across the board (grades, sports, college, grad school, career) and, in their spare time, entertaining themselves and taking great vacations.

I am tired of their acceptance of vulgarity and sarcastic irreverence as the cultural ocean in which their kids swim. I like pop culture as much as the next person, but people who would never raise their kids on junk food seem to think nothing of letting then wallow in cultural junk, exposed to nothing ennobling, aspirational, or even earnest.

I am tired of watching them raise clueless kids (see above) who go off to college and within months are convinced they live in a rapey, racist patriarchy; “Make America Great Again” is hate speech; and Black Lives Matter agitators are their brothers-in-arms against White Privilege. If my kids are like that at nineteen, I’ll feel I’ve seriously failed them as a parent. Yet the general sentiment seems to be these are good, liberal kids who may have gotten a bit carried away.

I am tired of their lack of interest in any form of serious morality or self-betterment. These are decent, responsible people, many compassionate by temperament. Yet they seem two-dimensional, as if they believe that being a nice, well-socialized person who holds the correct political views is all there is, and there is nothing else to talk about. Isn’t there, though?

I am tired of being bored and exasperated by everybody. I feel like I have read this book a thousand times, and there are no surprises in it. Down with Trump! Trans Lives Matter! Climate deniers are destroying the planet! No cake, we’re gluten-free!

These are good people in a lot of ways. But there has got to be a better tribe.

That leads me to . . . drum roll . . . the Christian Right. It is no small feat, switching tribes. It feels stressful and weird to abandon your tribe for the Detested Other Side.

Since November 8, my husband and I have been taking the kids to church. (He is politically conservative with a religious bent, so no argument there.) I have come this close to buying a giant poster of the American flag for the living room. I may do it still.

Right now, I am struggling to accept the basic Christian doctrines (virgin birth, resurrection, second coming) because I feel the Christian tribe may be the right tribe for my family. We just finished watching a BBC miniseries about the birth of Jesus, which was so beautiful and moving compared to secular TV. My nine-year-old really enjoyed it. I want to prepare my kids to live according to some unchanging truth, not subject to every passing trend, and this felt like a start. But I worry that an inability to believe in the supernatural aspects of the faith will limit my ability to be a “real” Christian.

Last Sunday’s sermon mentioned 1 Peter:18-19, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors.” This may be obvious to you, but secular liberalism does seem empty in some way, despite all the things my educated, middle-class tribe has to be grateful for. If that’s what’s been handed down to me, I want more, especially for my precious kids. I’m trying.

Students’ Constitutional Rights on Campus: Time for Congress to Intervene | National Review

Students’ Constitutional Rights on Campus: Time for Congress to Intervene | National Review

Intent on establishing progressive utopias, universities and federal bureaucrats are together systematically violating the constitutional rights of students and professors. The stories are legion, the legal standards are unconscionable, and it’s past time for other branches of American government to step in and set things right.

Consider what just happened at the University of Oregon. Acting in response to student and faculty outrage after a white law professor dressed up as a black man at an off-campus costume party (she was attempting to protest racism), the university suspended the offending professor and then issued a lengthy report holding that wearing the costume constituted “discriminatory harassment.”

Why? Because the incident was race-based and caused arguments and controversy on campus. Here’s a key statement in the report: “Based on both the reaction and lack of reaction from other faculty and professors, students have also felt a sense of anxiety and mistrust towards professors and faculty beyond just Shurtz, with some students considering and seeking out transfers to other schools.”

Allow me to interpret. Offended students weren’t just angry at the professor, they were also angry that not all students and professors were sufficiently outraged at the offending professor’s actions. In other words, at Oregon if you speak on an issue of race, gender, religion, or sexuality, you are responsible not only for any anger your speech may cause but also for other students’ and professors’ reactions to that anger.

But of course identity politics don’t merely impact free-speech rights. They also lead to systematic anti-male sex discrimination and violations of the most basic due-process rights of students accused of sexual assault.

Then consider this legal complaint, directed at Indiana University. It is simply astounding. The university expelled a male student for sexual misconduct even though the female student allegedly admitted that she invited the male student into her bedroom, asked him to retrieve a sex toy, and asked him to have sex with her. She told the Bloomington police department, “I was, like, telling him, like, to have sex with me.”

The resulting university proceedings were allegedly a due-process horror show, featuring university hearing officers trained by an official “who admits that he starts each case believing the [defendant] is guilty.” The lawsuit points to news reports where this same official admitted to trying to “break” another defendant.

And speaking of due-process horror shows, this case from James Madison University shows how universities engineer the results they want. After an initial finding that the male defendant was “not responsible” on the charge of sexual misconduct, the female student appealed. The appeals panel reversed the finding and sanctioned the male student. The male student sued, and a federal judge ruled in his favor, finding that “no reasonable jury” could find that he was given a “fair process.” The reasons were legion:

In short, Doe [the male student] was given no opportunity to respond to some of the evidence . . . , was hampered by the rules prohibiting contact with witnesses or limited by time constraints in responding to others . . . , and was not permitted to appear before the appeal board. . . . Additionally, because the appeal board made no finding of responsibility by Doe and provided no reasons for its “Increased Sanction” decision, the appeal board decision and its review . . . were unfair to Doe.

I bring up these cases not because they’re unusual but because they’re becoming all too typical on campuses overrun by identity politics and governed by a federal educational bureaucracy that is lawlessly expanding Title IX and other federal statutes well beyond their intended scope. For disturbing chapter and verse on this sad and unconstitutional spectacle, I’d urge you to read Robert Shibley’s excellent Twisting Title IX.

The new regime mandates that universities conduct their own quasi–court proceedings to adjudicate criminal matters best left to real courts, sanctions and encourages “due process” that often denies legal assistance to defendants, and effectively shifts the burden of proof (through bizarre “affirmative consent” standards) to the accused. In a Title IX investigation, the accused is often prevented from adequately reviewing the charges against him and prevented from adequately questioning witnesses. University officials conduct themselves in a manner that would embarrass even corrupt or amateurish judges and prosecutors.

As for free speech, on campus the heckler’s veto is alive and well — with a student’s or professor’s First Amendment rights mainly dependent on the size of the outcry against him or her. Raise enough of a ruckus, and the Constitution fails.

A generation of litigation has inflicted loss upon loss on public universities, yet the campus climate is still rife with censorship and due-process violations. It turns out that administrators fear their own on-campus ideologues and the progressive education bureaucracy far more than they fear the federal courts. Indeed, the financial penalty for angering a bureaucrat — loss of federal funding — is far greater than any damage award imposed by any court. Judges are proving to be a poor check on campus power.

So it’s time to turn the tables. It’s time to readjust the incentives. Congress needs to intervene in two concrete ways. First, it needs to withhold federal funds from any public university that repeatedly violates the constitutional rights of its students or faculty. If a court of final jurisdiction finds that a public university violated the constitutional rights of a student or faculty member more than once in any five-year span, it should lose all federal funding for at least a year. Moreover, there should be a substantial, fixed financial penalty for each constitutional violation, no matter how infrequent.

Second, universities need to get out of the sexual-assault-adjudication business. Universities are educational institutions, not criminal courts, and they are poorly equipped to decide criminal cases or even civil liability. It is easy enough to separate students who are embroiled in pending criminal or civil proceedings, and universities should discipline or expel only students who are found guilty or liable by courts of final jurisdiction.

It’s simply too much to ask the Trump Department of Education to “fix” Title IX or to protect constitutional rights on campus. Any rulemakings or memoranda generated by a new administration can be just as easily undone by the next. It’s time to use sensible congressional majorities to pass sensible laws. Universities have proven they can’t govern themselves. Perhaps Congress can fill the breach.

Time to Reform the Kangaroo Courts on Campus - WSJ

Time to Reform the Kangaroo Courts on Campus - WSJ

The University of Minnesota football team’s dramatic walkout in protest of what they saw as unfair treatment of 10 fellow players in a campus sexual-assault investigation came to an end on Dec. 17. But it made national headlines for imperiling the team’s trip to the Dec. 27 Holiday Bowl and for the players’ demands that their accused teammates receive a “fair hearing” with a “diverse review panel.”

The solidarity shown by the University of Minnesota players and the attention the team’s protest drew could prove a powerful blow to the Education Department’s efforts to regulate sex and speech on campus through the abuse of Title IX, the federal law against sex discrimination in education.

In September, following allegations that Minnesota football players had sexually assaulted another student, Minneapolis law enforcement investigated and declined to charge any player with a crime. Yet the university’s Title IX investigation into the same incident—which lacked full access to some video evidence used by police—resulted in 10 players’ suspensions from the team, angering members and inspiring the walkout.

Such wildly divergent outcomes between campus and police investigations erode confidence in both systems. Yet they have become more common than ever since the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) began to do end-runs around the law five years ago.

In April 2011, the OCR surprised colleges by announcing in a “Dear Colleague” letter that, henceforth, campus tribunals involving sexual misconduct had to use a standard of proof known as “the preponderance of the evidence,” which requires that they be only 50.01% certain when determining whether a student committed an offense. Given that campus courts routinely deny students counsel, the right to face their accusers, access to evidence, and even the presumption of innocence, this mandate banned what was often a student’s only meaningful due-process protection: that fact-finders be more than just barely persuaded of their guilt.

Worse, in May 2013, in a settlement with the University of Montana that it labeled a blueprint for other colleges and universities, the OCR, joined by the Justice Department, determined that all “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including speech, should be deemed sexual harassment. Even a single, unwelcome, overheard dirty joke is “harassment” under this standard.

The results have been profound. My organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which has sponsored lawsuits challenging the OCR’s decisions, has identified more than 130 lawsuits filed by students who claim they were wrongly punished for sexual misconduct since the Dear Colleague letter was issued. Victims and accusers also routinely complain of bad investigations by college administrators who are poorly equipped to handle felony crimes.

The OCR’s debased definition of harassment, meanwhile, has led to absurdities such as a feminist professor being investigated for criticizing Northwestern University’s Title IX efforts in a newspaper column. Confidence in the system is low for very good reason.

The change of administrations in Washington offers a valuable opportunity to erase these failed policies. First and foremost, the OCR should officially renounce both its “preponderance of evidence” mandate and its wildly overbroad definition of sexual harassment. Because the agency chose to make these changes through fiat rather than the notice and comment procedures required by the Administrative Procedure Act, such a reversal is fairly simple.

The OCR should also change its definition of peer sexual harassment to exactly track the Supreme Court’s language in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999). Davis defines harassment as behavior that is targeted, discriminatory, and “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it can be said to deprive the victims of access to the educational opportunities or benefits provided by the school.” This standard fulfills the requirements of the First Amendment while giving schools the ability to combat real harassment. While the OCR has claimed that its standard tracks Davis, few schools treat it that way—and neither does the OCR.

If further rules are necessary, the OCR must work with Congress or go through the official regulatory process as required by law. Since 2011, defenders of the embarrassingly minimal standards of campus courts have argued that they are sufficient because schools find a student “responsible” for rape rather than “guilty” of it. Yet the ultimate determination being made—did the assault happen or not?—is exactly the same.

Campus courts might not be real courts, but sexual assault is equally serious whether it happens on campus or off and deserves to be treated as such. New leadership at the Education Department dedicated to equal justice for every student could do much to help schools like the University of Minnesota fight sex crimes on campus while improving the fairness and accuracy of campus discipline and respecting the Constitution.

why 53% of white women voted Trump

why 53% of white women voted Trump

There has been much bellyaching by liberal white women that 53% of us voted for Donald Trump in November presidential election.

After learning of this statistic, Sa’iyda Shabazz writes a challenge letter to her white friends in The Mary Sue:

So, you voted for Trump. You don’t have to admit it, I know you did. Granted, I think the fact that some of you won’t admit it is telling. Some of you have said that you have stayed silent because you didn’t want to get dragged for voting for him.

If you’re standing by your choice, why won’t you defend it? And to those of you who have been open with your admiration…what exactly do you admire about him?

She concludes: I may still be your friend, but our relationship will never be the same.

My response is below:

Dear Sa’iyda Shabazz,

While I am not your friend (and clearly won’t be anytime soon), I feel obliged to explain.

• I am the wife of a white husband (who is a kind, hard-working, devoted family man).
• I am the mother of a white son (who is the perfect mix of smart and sweet).
• I am the sister of a white brother (who has served this country honorably as a US Marine).
• I am the aunt of a white nephew (who has also served this country in the US Army).
• I am the daughter of a white father (who won a Pulitzer prize covering the race riots in Detroit, in an effort to support civil rights).
• I am the best friend of a white co-blogger (who has served in various hot spots across the globe as a Green Beret).
• I am the employee of a white, male employer (who is an awesome boss and a substantial taxpayer).

I see how hard all of these men work, how much they give to family and friends, and how much they give to this country. These are my primary relationships. When I vote, the quality of their lives are going to be a significant part of my decision matrix.

While life under Donald Trump may not be perfect for them, I anticipate that their lives will be better because of the policies that Trump plans to enact and the people he intends to put in charge. So will mine. And, so will those of progressives deriding those of us who voted for Trump…including you.

I am not going to vote so you feel “safe”. In fact, you voting your feelings is part of the problem.

After eight years of the Obama administration and its antics (e.g., global warming is more of a threat than terrorism), we will be safer only after January 20, 2017. I suspect there are many other Americans who are looking forward to that date as well.

As an extra bonus for my vote, I sense there is now an appreciation for the “alpha-male” that has been noticeably lacking for at least eight years. Dear Sa’iyda, please allow me to show you what that looks like:

I am so damned tired of the continuous white-man-bashing of social justice warriors. It seems I am not the only one, as the evidence suggests:

• There has been enormous backlash to MTV’s White Guy Resolution 2017 video, which is off-the -charts in terms of racism and sexism.
• White male college students are fighting back — and winning — when falsely accused of racism, sexism, and ginned-up crimes.
• Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said she doesn’t need to cater to male Star Wars fans, and it appears, and men are assessing the new film based on how much gender justice messaging is depicted.

I admit that Donald Trump is far from perfect. However, I have seen this man grow during the campaign. I anticipate he will learn rapidly, adjust readily to the conditions of the Office of President, and continue to be flexible and adaptable in pursuing the best interests of all the citizens in this nation (just not the special, protected classes like Obama administration has done).

Sa’iyda: I sure hope you’re tolerant and open-minded enough to acknowledge improvements in both Trump and the country that you will see in the next four years (at least).

In conclusion, the one thing I like best about electing Donald Trump: The era of the Beta Male is over.

I hope my explanation helps. Thank you for the opportunity to do so.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

How to Answer a False Accusation of Racism - Mike Adams

How to Answer a False Accusation of Racism - Mike Adams

The first thing to remember about responding to a false accuser is what not to do. Above all, you must resist the temptation to accuse the professor of harassment or of breaking the campus speech code. That is what leftists do and it is wrong. The best way to respond to bad speech is with better speech, not censorship.

Furthermore, you need to respond to accusations of racism with questions rather than assertions. Here are the three questions you need to ask. William Wilbanks, author of The Myth of a Racist Criminal Justice System, inspired the first two questions. Greg Koukl, author of the book Tactics, inspired the third:

1. What do you mean by racism? First of all, you need to realize that academic leftists rarely understand the terms they are using when they attack conservatives. Racism is a specific belief that races can be ranked according to genetically inherited characteristics. For example, when a white supremacist takes a racist view of blacks he is really saying that they are genetically inferior. This genetic inferiority allegedly manifests itself in lower intelligence, which, in turn, translates into other undesirable characteristics such as sloth and a propensity toward crime.

If the professor cannot supply the correct definition of racism after he has used the term then he makes a complete fool of himself. If he can supply the correct definition, this leads to an even bigger problem, which we will explore with the second question.

2. How does racism apply to the situation at hand? If the professor does happen to know the real definition of racism then he’s in quite a pickle here. You can ask the professor “How exactly does the assertion that ’all lives matter’ (read: all lives have equal value) translate into the notion that certain categories of people are genetically inferior to other categories of people?”

3. Have you ever considered the following? After showing that the professor doesn’t know the meaning of the words he is using and has no evidence to support his position his credibility is decimated. Now it is time to move in for the kill.

There are a lot of options here. For example, one could simply ask, “Have you ever considered that the statement ‘all lives matter’ is fundamentally anti-racist?” Asking, “Are you at all concerned that by opposing an anti-racist statement you align yourself with the true racists” would be a good follow-up question from which the professor could never recover.

In academia today, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish the mentors from the protégés. Fortunately, exposing these incompetent professors is never more than a few well-placed questions away.

Virtue Signalling: Game Theory's Cheat Code

Virtue Signalling: Game Theory's Cheat Code

Nonetheless, the gambling environment is instructive in human nature. People know that they will lose money, they know the odds are stacked against them, and they play anyway. Even if the house advantage is razor slim, as in Black Jack, repeated often enough the house still wins.

Democracy in America operates under a similar principle. The primary purpose of a biased media is not to prevent a right-wing victory per se, but rather to give the house (the Democrats) better odds. The same is true of our Leftist education establishment, celebrity figures spouting mealy-mouthed Marxist platitudes, and so on. Even now, with desperate plays by Jill Stein to force recounts in the Rust Belt, and with SJWs harassing Republican electors and fantasizing about the electoral college putting up John Kasich as an alternative… we are seeing nothing more than last minute, desperate plays by the house to recover from a loss they didn’t expect.

Yes, the house always wins the war in the end. But they still lose individual battles, individual hands, and this one cost them big time. You might even look at Donald Trump as a card counter. He knew the game the house plays, because he was part of the house.

So full media, education, and cultural control is sufficient to give the house an advantage, but not enough of one. Certainly not enough to bankrupt us as quickly as they would prefer. So another means was identified and created in recent years: Virtue Signalling.

If you are familiar with Game Theory’s Prisoners’ Dilemma, you know that the ideal result for the individual is to betray while the other sucker confesses. But the ideal result for both as a whole is to cooperate, and for each to receive very little punishment.

Virtue Signalling is the cheat code to Game Theory. It is how politicians, SJWs, and other assorted tyrants on planet Earth have managed to short-circuit the rational self-interest of people in Western countries. It uses political correctness as a bludgeon with which to force you into a default state of “cooperate”. Knowing that you will usually choose “cooperate” due to political pressure, they are then free to “defect” whenever they wish, leaving them with all the benefits, and you with all the costs.

It would be like playing poker where you had to show your hand (because Social Justice, or whatever excuse is in fashion at the moment), and the other player could keep his hand secret.

It must have been a consistent problem for tyrants throughout history. How do you get a theoretically democratic populace to vote consistently against their own rational self-interest, and in favor of your own? Control of education was one natural step, of course. If you fill the heads of impressionable young people with Communist “end of history” claptrap, they can be counted upon to vote your way for a while out of ignorance, at least. But reality quickly intrudes…

The quote falsely attributed to Churchill (it may have actually originated with Edmund Burke) explains for us:

If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.

So propagandizing education only works for a while. Virtue Signalling political correctness is a much more consistent weapon, because it can also be used against people who know better, but are merely afraid to speak up due to the probable consequences to career, family life, and friendship.

You better show your poker hand, pleb, or else you’re an evil-mean-bad person, and you’ll lose your job. Virtue Signalling is your warning that you are treading too close to “defect” and you better “cooperate”. No such restriction applies to the other side of the bargain.

Virtue Signalling forces a default setting of “Keep Faith” even when the person knows they will be betrayed. It forces “Keep Faith” with mass Islamic immigration even when most terror comes from an Islamic source. It forces “Keep Faith” even when illegal immigrants and Islamic migrants bring in diseases previously eradicated in America, when many use the people-smuggling routes for drugs, weapons, and cartel activities.
It forces “Keep Faith” with thugs, criminals and malcontents.

Why? Because anything other than Keep Faith is hate, bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, otherkinphobia, and whatever bigot buzzword bonanza the SJW Left decides is the cause-of-the-minute.

At this point, I cannot conceive of anything that any Leftist victim group could possibly do that would diminish them in any way in the eyes of the Left. If Islamists nuked an American city, they would still say that Islam is a religion of peace. If a repeat of the LA riots occurred, and another Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck and beaten near to death, the sympathies of the Left would still be with the poor, disenfranchised thugs, not the truck driver, who would still be accounted as having white privilege. And if a woman raped a man (yes, it is possible), radical feminists would celebrate the crime as a great step forward for women’s rights.

Keep Faith. Cooperate. Obey.

They may as well say: “always lose.”

Life is not a zero-sum game, or at least it shouldn’t be, but the Left plays it that way. Their entire ideology is built around it. Marxism is an economic zero-sum ideology. Social Justice is a social zero-sum ideology. And, as the house, they seek to maximize their personal gain from it. They are the house, The Man, the Establishment, whatever you want to call it. And we are the poor slobs dumping money into the slots by the bucket load. And on top of all that, they still cheat.

Democratic Party Hypocrisy on Racism, Sexism, Homophobia | National Review

Democratic Party Hypocrisy on Racism, Sexism, Homophobia | National Review

Progressive outrage should not be taken too seriously because it is not intended to be serious. When Barack Obama invites rapper Kendrick Lamar into the White House and announces that his “To Pimp a Butterfly” is the president’s favorite song of the year — whose album cover shows the corpse of a murdered white judge, with Xs in place of eyes, on the White House lawn, as African-American youth toast his demise with drinks and cash — do we really assume that progressives like Obama believe in stopping hate speech and imagery, or perhaps even believe in anything at all?

Donald Trump, to progressives, supposedly harmed the Constitution and threatened our democracy because he would not say, after the WikiLeaks revelations, that he would accept the outcome of the election if he thought it was rigged. Yet after Clinton’s defeat, suddenly irate progressives have lodged conspiratorial charges that voting machines (miraculously only in swing states Hillary lost) were supposedly rigged, that the Electoral College should be dropped, and that electors should be bullied to ignore their pledges. Did anyone ever believe their original outrage at Trump’s suggestion that election results might be rigged? Are we now to have recounts in Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire, and all the close states Trump lost, and then on into spring more recounts of recounts, until the last count achieves the desired result?

The Democratic party leadership is no longer an alternative to corporate wealthy America, but is corporate wealthy America, albeit in a new garb of jeans and flip-flops, Silicon Valley–style. The small-business person, assembly-line worker, and non-government wage earner mostly now vote Republican. Progressivism is a pyramidal capstone of wealthy elites who have the influence and money to embrace boutique positions and the cunning to profess egalitarianism, all while they lead private lives that would otherwise be condemned as illiberal and apartheid-like. So affirmative action ends up providing high-cheekboned Elizabeth Warren entry into Harvard Law School, the same way that progressive investigative journalism is reduced to Politico’s “hack” Glenn Thrush (who asked the Clinton campaign to fact-check and approve his article), and in the manner that philanthropy is reduced to the Clintons’ piling up of millions by selling influence. We are a long way from Harry Truman’s working classes.

What exactly is the Democratic criticism so far of Trumpism? That he is jawboning companies not to lay off thousands of workers and leave the country? That he is barring revolving-door lobbying for five years? That he raised and spent too little on his amateurish campaign, had too few bundlers, and did not hire enough professional handlers? That he met with the press too much and mouthed off on the record? That too many working-class people voted for him and not enough of their supposed Silicon Valley, Wall Street, beltway, and Hollywood betters did? That conservative pundits had their columns fact-checked and researched by the Trump campaign? That the Republican party sabotaged his primary competitors to give him the nomination? Or that he wants impoverished miners to work again and export coal?

The Democratic party for now is reduced to a loud racist/sexist/homophobe broken record that fewer and fewer are listening to — including many of the Democratic elites who continue to play it.

You Are Still Crying Wolf | Slate Star Codex

You Are Still Crying Wolf | Slate Star Codex

A New York Times article from last September that went viral only recently: Crying Wolf, Then Confronting Trump. It asks whether Democrats have “cried wolf” so many times that nobody believes them anymore. And so:

When “honorable and decent men” like McCain and Romney “are reflexively dubbed racists simply for opposing Democratic policies, the result is a G.O.P. electorate that doesn’t listen to admonitions when the genuine article is in their midst”.

I have a different perspective. Back in October 2015, I wrote that the picture of Trump as “the white power candidate” and “the first openly white supremacist candidate to have a shot at the Presidency in the modern era” was overblown. I said that “the media narrative that Trump is doing some kind of special appeal-to-white-voters voodoo is unsupported by any polling data”, and predicted that:

If Trump were the Republican nominee, he could probably count on equal or greater support from minorities as Romney or McCain before him.

Now the votes are in, and Trump got greater support from minorities than Romney or McCain before him. You can read the Washington Post article, Trump Got More Votes From People Of Color Than Romney Did, or look at the raw data (source)

Trump made gains among blacks. He made gains among Latinos. He made gains among Asians. The only major racial group where he didn’t get a gain of greater than 5% was white people. I want to repeat that: the group where Trump’s message resonated least over what we would predict from a generic Republican was the white population.

Nor was there some surge in white turnout. I don’t think we have official numbers yet, but by eyeballing what data we have it looks very much like whites turned out in equal or lesser numbers this year than in 2012, 2008, and so on.

Trump has gone from campaign stop to campaign stop talking about how much he likes and respects minorities and wants to fight for them.

And if you believe he’s lying, fine. Yet I notice that people accusing Trump of racism use the word “openly” like a tic. He’s never just “racist” or “white supremacist”. He’s always “openly racist” and “openly white supremacist”. Trump is openly racist, openly racist, openly racist, openly racist, openly racist, openly racist, openly racist. Trump is running on pure white supremacy, has thrown off the last pretense that his campaign is not about bigotry, has the slogan Make American Openly White Supremacist Again, is an openly white supremacist nominee, etc, etc, etc. And I’ve seen a few dozen articles like this where people say that “the bright side of a Trump victory is that finally America admitted its racism out in the open so nobody can pretend it’s not there anymore.”

This, I think, is the first level of crying wolf. What if, one day, there is a candidate who hates black people so much that he doesn’t go on a campaign stop to a traditionally black church in Detroit, talk about all of the contributions black people have made to America, promise to fight for black people, and say that his campaign is about opposing racism in all its forms? What if there’s a candidate who does something more like, say, go to a KKK meeting and say that black people are inferior and only whites are real Americans?

We might want to use words like “openly racist” or “openly white supremacist” to describe him. And at that point, nobody will listen, because we wasted “openly white supremacist” on the guy who tweets pictures of himself eating a taco on Cinco de Mayo while saying “I love Hispanics!”

But doesn’t this still mean there are some white supremacists? Isn’t this still really important?

I mean, kind of. But remember that 4% of Americans believe that lizardmen control all major governments. And 5% of Obama voters believe that Obama is the Antichrist. The white supremacist vote is about the same as the lizardmen-control-everything vote, or the Obama-is-the-Antichrist-but-I-support-him-anyway vote.

4. Aren’t there a lot of voters who, although not willing to vote for David Duke or even willing to express negative feelings about black people on a poll, still have implicit racist feelings, the kind where they’re nervous when they see a black guy on a deserted street at night?

Probably. And this is why I am talking about crying wolf. If you wanted to worry about the voter with subconscious racist attitudes carefully hidden even from themselves, you shouldn’t have used the words “openly white supremacist KKK supporter” like a verbal tic.

5. But even if Donald Trump isn’t openly white supremacist, didn’t he get an endorsement from KKK leader David Duke? Didn’t he refuse to reject that endorsement? Doesn’t that mean that he secretly wants to court the white supremacist vote?

The answer is no on all counts.

6. What about Trump’s “drugs and crime” speech about Mexicans?

Trump said that:

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

Note how totally non-racist this statement is. I’m serious. It’s anti-illegal-immigrant. But in terms of race, it’s saying Latinos (like every race) include both good and bad people, and the bad people are the ones coming over here. It suggests a picture of Mexicans as including some of the best people – but those generally aren’t the ones who are coming illegally.

Since everyone has been wrong about everything lately, I’ve started thinking it’s more important than ever to make clear predictions and grade myself on them, so here are my predictions for the Trump administration:

1. Total hate crimes incidents as measured here will be not more than 125% of their 2015 value at any year during a Trump presidency, conditional on similar reporting methodology [confidence: 80%]

2. Total minority population of US citizens will increase throughout Trump’s presidency [confidence: 99%]

3. US Muslim population increases throughout Trump’s presidency [confidence: 95%]

4. Trump cabinet will be at least 10% minority [confidence: 90%], at least 20% minority [confidence: 70%], at least 30% minority [30%]. Here I’m defining “minority” to include nonwhites, Latinos, and LGBT people, though not women. Note that by this definition America as a whole is about 35% minority and Congress is about 15% minority.

5. Gay marriage will remain legal throughout a Trump presidency [confidence: 95%]

6. Race relations as perceived by blacks, as measured by this Gallup poll, will do better under Trump than they did under Obama (ie the change in race relations 2017-2021 will be less negative/more positive than the change 2009-2016) [confidence: 70%].

7. Neither Trump nor any of his officials (Cabinet, etc) will endorse the KKK, Stormfront, or explicit neo-Nazis publicly, refuse to back down, etc, and keep their job [confidence: 99%].

8. No large demographic group (> 1 million people) get forced to sign up for a “registry” [confidence: 95%]

9> No large demographic group gets sent to internment camps [confidence: 99%]

10. Number of deportations during Trump’s four years will not be greater than Obama’s 8 [confidence: 90%]

If you disagree with me, come up with a bet and see if I’ll take it.

Rape, SJW, and virtue signaling

Rape, SJW, and virtue signaling


Facebook Heroism And The Decline Of Masculinity --Warden
One of my main problems with social media is that it tends to make me like people far less than if had I only interacted with them in meatspace. And this is because people tend to be less free with their big, dumb, annoying political opinions when they’re face to face with their audience, freeing me to pretend that most people don’t have big, dumb, annoying political opinions lurking behind their otherwise pleasant and reasonable public demeanor.

Last week was a case in point. A twenty-something adult male from my church posted an instructional video that purported to teach women how to protect themselves from rape with the following (paraphrased) commentary:

This rape prevention video is 6 minutes long. I have a better idea. Why don’t we instead simply spend 3 seconds on a video that tells men not to rape? God didn’t need long instructional videos for the 10 Commandments. "Thou shall not" is pretty direct.

Six women had "liked" this post by the time it came across my feed.

I stared at that bit of knee-jerk progressive virtue signaling foolishness for a good minute or more before breaking a personal social media rule and writing what I hoped was a polite correction.

But I couldn’t get that post out of my head because the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much there was to unpack. Just who are these men out there don’t understand that rape is wrong? Other than African and Middle Eastern Muslim immigrants, I can’t think of any.

Of course rapists know that rape isn’t okay, just as thieves know that stealing isn’t okay, just as murderers know that murder isn't okay. There is literally no other serious crime in America where we take the position that the criminals just need to be “taught” that their misdeeds are wrong.

And in no other case would a progressive be outraged at an instructional video that teaches people how to avoid victimization. No one angrily asserts that, instead of telling people to lock their car doors at the mall, we just need to teach people to not steal Christmas presents from other shoppers. This would be an insane position to take and everybody knows it.

So, what exactly is going on here? Well, the obvious difference between rape and almost every other crime is that it’s one where men are almost always the offenders and women the victim. This distinction provides a convenient cudgel for Cultural Marxists to shame and smear men generally as violent and beastly. (By way of evidence, you will notice that the very similar crime of child rape is handled completely differently because it is often a male on male crime, which invokes homosexuality, a protected and privileged class among progressives.)

But that’s not what this young fella was thinking when he made the post--that’s the evil, insidious nature of Cultural Marxism--he was not, in fact, thinking at all. Rather, he was subconsciously angling for approval by obliquely smearing other men. The implicit message of that post was, “I am against rape,” but the subtext was, “Other men are NOT against rape and I should be praised for this because I am uniquely opposed to rape in ways that other men are not.”

Remember, the message was, "Teach MEN not to rape." Not some men. Not rapists... MEN.

Teach men not to rape.

This is a social media trend that I’ve noticed among progressives. They position themselves as fighters against injustice, but only take public stands against things that earn them approval and praise. One way to really amp up your cred is to call out the group to which you belong, thereby absolving yourself of the your group's collective sin in doing so. It’s a particularly dishonest, cowardly and backstabby way to operate.

Note, too, that helping women protect themselves from rape is not even a secondary concern. Rather, the very idea of it is a source of anger. Pragmatic, real-world solutions are replaced with the strange and childish fantasy that less enlightened men just need a good scolding about all their rapeyness and all will be well.

Do progressives even believe this? Again, I don't think they've even considered it long enough to believe or not believe. At this point, they're just reacting to stimuli like a single cell organism reacting to a low voltage electrical shock. They've been swimming in Cultural Marxism for so long that they've lost their ability to think.

The most appalling part of his post wasn’t that it was so devoid of logic and common sense; it was that a grown man sought and received praise for the almost universally agreed upon position of-- being against rape.

Bold stance, bro. And truly outside the box. You've got us all thinking about stuff in, like, a whole new way.

This is where we are. Seeking and receiving praise for "taking a stand" against what is a universally despised crime.

What does that say about our standards?

I have a theory on this that as we become softer, weaker and more technologically dependent, men--who are genetically hardwired to hunters, risk takers, and physical protectors--will increasingly rely upon this kind of limp-wristed virtue signaling in absence of any sort of real masculine achievement.

Heroism used to be defined by deeds. Today it is defined by words--ones everybody in your tribe agrees with, and directed at phantom menaces who cannot do you actual harm.

It's safe. It's easy. And it's fake, just like everything else about the progressive left.

I find it to be incredibly sad, this state we're in. And deep down, I think that progressives also know how shallow and full of bullshit they are.

Ace recently had a post about the NFL that caused a bit of ruckus in the comment section. And while I loosely agree with him that watching a bunch of grown men compete from the comfort of your couch is not a truly masculine endeavor, I do think that football is an important aspect of our rapidly diminishing warrior culture and to see it violated and diminished by a bunch of bed-wetting SJWs is a net loss to the masculine spirit.

Football is a fantastic game for teaching boys toughness, teamwork and discipline. The fact that it is in decline while less violent sports like soccer ascend in America is no accident.

I started my 10 year old in tackle football this fall, not in spite of the football’s propensity to bang kids up, but partially because of it. And each time my wife freaks out from the stands because her boy is limping off the field, I nod my head and think, “Good.” I do not think this because I’m a sadist, but because I think that boys who learn to play through pain, to meet difficult challenges, and to get up after being knocked on their asses over and over again are more apt to become men who display genuine bravery and heroism rather than the phony take-a-stand-that-everyone-already-agrees-with Facebook kind.

And God knows we need more of that.