Your Friday cartoon

Bob Gorrell’s cartoon seen on Townhall:

 click to embiggen or click at link above

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Fighting fascism

 

J.B. Shurk at American Thinker offers a glimmer of hope:

Surely the victors over communism, fascism, and Nazism cannot then fall victim to the madness of those same philosophies collapsing their systems from within.  This "Us/Them" self-delusion has kept the citizenry from recognizing tyranny inside its gates.

. . .

The growing tyranny in the West has not happened overnight.  It did not suddenly arrive at our doorsteps with the Chinese Flu.  It has been a nightmare decades in the making.  The difference today is that previously slumbering citizens once sublimely content in the normal humdrum of their lives are waking up to realize that the enemies from our past have returned with a vengeance.  Free speech is treated as dangerous.  Western governments, corporations, and social media platforms engage in rampant censorship.  Race and sexual identity are used as the defining attributes of a person to the exclusion of talent, character, and achievement.  Teachers' unions openly demand the right to indoctrinate children according to the interests of the State.  Parents are threatened for believing that their children belong to them.  The criminal justice system is used as a place to punish political opponents and to protect political friends.  Religious expression is outlawed.  Leftists' "secularized religion" is imposed.  Freedom is disparaged as "right-wing."  Coercion has replaced consent.  Victimhood has replaced virtue.  Conformity has replaced individuality.  "Correct" thinking has replaced freethinking.  "Social justice" has replaced real justice.  And the protection of government has become more important than the protection of human rights.

For the newly awakened, there is a tendency to see all this carnage for the first time with fresh eyes and become overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the rot.  The corruption, criminality, and chaos have infiltrated everything once held dear, and the future seems hopelessly lost.  That hopelessness, however, is not based in reality but rather the "Us/Them" self-delusion that tyranny could not happen here.  It's not easy to accept that the great sacrifices of the past made in the struggle for human freedom have once again been squandered by a new generation of despots.  It is a necessary first step, though, before the righteous can throw themselves into the fight and get back to work.  And once people come to terms with the fact that tyranny not only could happen here but that it is happening here, then they will realize that the struggle has only really begun in earnest.

. . .

Now consider all of the slogans we daily encounter from government and corporate mouthpieces alike: Black Lives Matter!; Build Back Better!; Trans Rights Are Human Rights!; The Science Is Settled!; Save the Earth!; Stop Global Warming!; The War on Women Is Real!; We're All in This Together!; Abortion Is Health Care!; My Body, My Choice!  It doesn't matter how vapid, factually incorrect, or contradictory the political slogan.  What matters is that all of us repeat them obediently to prove our allegiance to and faith in the system.  And therein lies the key to our salvation.  

Lots more here.

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David Horowitz's The Enemy Within

 

David Horowitz is a recovering red-diaper baby;  his background is here.  Today on FrontPage, Jason D. Hill reviews Mr. Horowitz’s latest book:

. . .  David Horowitz has identified the nature of that second virus. I think that he reasons that it is deadlier than COVID-19, and that its deleterious consequences are far more destructive and long-lasting than any biological infection.

… This latest book, The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement is Destroying America, Horowitz locates the political ideology destroying every democratic and Enlightenment value on which our constitutional republic was founded. The invasive virus identified by Horowitz is a left-wing reactionary politics ensconced within the Democratic Party.

The philosophical root of this ideology which ties it to several movements that suffuse our culture, whether it be radical feminism, Black Lives Matter, Islamic Jihadism, the equity movements, reparation movements, the trial by media of Justice Brett Kavanaugh or, what Horowitz describes as the racist anti-racist rhetoric of Ibram X. Kendi and Ta-Nahesi Coates, is: “Identity Politics.”

Horowitz defines it as a radical ideology that is “racial and collectivist, and that privileges groups over individuals and demonized those who fall on the wrong side of its social equation. As a worldview Identity Politics is fundamentally at odds with America’s core principles of individual freedom, accountability, and equality, which have been the foundation of the nation’s progress for more than two hundred years.”

. . .

The rest of this article is here.  Mr. Horowitz was a guest on OAN's Tipping Point this evening. He is always outstanding. 

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What is Critical Race Theory?

 

Our household subscribes to Imprimis, the newsletter of Hillsdale College.  Every month, we receive their publication which features an article adapted from a lecture on campus.  It is always good value.  This month’s edition features Christopher F. Rufo’s insights into Critical Race Theory.  It is an eye-opening discussions, and here is a very short extract.  

Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, over the past decade it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human resources departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks, and school curricula.

There are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality. But the distinction is vast and important. Indeed, equality—the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, defended in the Civil War, and codified into law with the 14th and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—is explicitly rejected by critical race theorists. To them, equality represents “mere nondiscrimination” and provides “camouflage” for white supremacy, patriarchy, and oppression. 

. . .

On the grassroots level, a multiracial and bipartisan coalition is emerging to do battle against critical race theory. Parents are mobilizing against racially divisive curricula in public schools and employees are increasingly speaking out against Orwellian reeducation in the workplace. When they see what is happening, Americans are naturally outraged that critical race theory promotes three ideas—race essentialism, collective guilt, and neo-segregation—which violate the basic principles of equality and justice. Anecdotally, many Chinese-Americans have told me that having survived the Cultural Revolution in their former country, they refuse to let the same thing happen here.   

Read the rest here.

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The Democratic party, Progressive outrage, and post-election fallout

image credit: highfieldtales.wordpress

Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and classicist. He also contributes columns to PJ Media and National Review online. Although he started off in the NeverTrump camp in the now infamous Never Trump issue of National Review, I decided to give him another look today.

His column today (“A Party of Teeth-Gnashers”) is about the fallout from the election and what has become of the Democratic party and the Progressive agenda. Here are a few paragraphs:

After the Democratic equality-of-opportunity agenda was largely realized (Social Security, Medicare, overtime, a 40-hour work week, disability insurance, civil rights, etc.), the next-generation equality-of-result effort has largely failed. What is left of Democratic ideology is identity politics and assorted dead-end green movements as conservation has become radical environmentalism and fairness under the law is now unapologetic redistributionism. The 2016 campaign and the frenzied reaction to the result are reminders that the Left is no longer serious about formulating and advancing a practical agenda. In sum, for now it is reduced to a party of teeth-gnashers.

. . .

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.

. . .

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.

Hanson is not completely sold on Trump, though, as you will gather if you read the rest here.

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