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Saturday, February 4, 2017

Welcome to the Counter-Revolution


(The following essay is excerpted from the book:
Notes from the 3rd Rail: Civilization in the Crosshairs
by Marcus Clintonius Americus, now available on Amazon


Part 1

Last year (2016) marked the 5oth anniversary of China’s Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong’s attempt to purge China of any and all vestiges of capitalist bourgeoisie contamination resulted in over one million dead and countless others brutalized, tortured, and humiliated. Millions were banished from their homes and communities. Those that weren’t killed were sent to “reeducation camps.” Children informed on their teachers and snitched on their parents. There are claims of the proscribed actually being eaten, with body parts distributed according to party rank.

Mao’s revolutionary fervor turned a nation against itself.  Confucianism, ancient cultural traditions, the very glue of the civilization, were all transmogrified into evils to be cast off. We look back today in amazement that such a self-destructive zeitgeist could take hold of an entire nation—the world’s largest, in fact.

It’s widely acknowledged that the U.S. is more polarized now than during the Vietnam War era. Then, the conservative side of the cultural divide coined “Silent Majority” to identify themselves and their cause: “We disapprove of your attacks on our values, particularly our patriotism. We are proud of our country. It is, after all, the greatest nation on earth—and by the way we just saved Europe in WWII.”

The next generation “boomers,” the demographic “baby boom” bubble arising from the soldier boys coming home to their sweethearts, apparently saw little value in that accomplishment. The children of the “greatest generation” instead rebelled against the material success their parents sacrificed so much to gain, and created a “counterculture” that rejected many of society’s normal values in the process. They mocked the “materialism,” the “consumerism,” the “tick-tacky” tract houses in the suburbs, the “plastic” lifestyles—all those accoutrements of a middle class that were the envy of the world, one never seen before and perhaps never to be seen again.

As they moved into adulthood the boomers brought their new values with them to inculcate the brave new world they would shape with their new superior moral clarity: tolerance, diversity, inclusion, multiculturalism, and moral relativism. The first target of their crusading zeal was the academic-educational complex. Finding little resistance, the Left took over the colleges and universities. From the safety of the classroom and the faculty lounge they indoctrinated their charges who in turn marched, diplomas in hand, into the streets, into the boardrooms of media and entertainment conglomerates, offices of government and private enterprise alike—and later their own classrooms—transforming our culture into one barely recognizable to their parents.

The first tremors of this bifurcation of cultural norms were heard in the 1990s. The term “Culture War” was coined in 1991[1] . Since then the battle lines have calcified. The Democratic Party wholly embraces the new “progressive” cultural values—which should now be acknowledged as the cultural norms. The Republican Party plays reluctant host to the conservative faction by default—though it is by no means uniformly wedded to traditional values. Republicans are also divided along the Culture War’s Maginot Line. This conflict within the Republican Party is the main reason why two parties are no longer sufficient to accommodate the full spectrum of the political landscape. Democrats from the Bernie Sanders “progressive” faction oppose capitalism and especially globalization, and argue similarly that their party is too ideologically constrained. It seems at least three political parties are necessary to represent a fuller spectrum of the political and cultural values held by Americans in the new century.

*  *  *  *  *

Are we in a “Culture War”?  If so, it is a cultural civil war—as we are fighting against ourselves. So, is America engaged in a cultural civil war? I question the use of tense. The war is over. The Left has won. On every contentious social issue they have emerged victorious. Abortion and homosexual marriage were among the most virulently contested issues. But the Left has prevailed in these two theaters, as they have in virtually all the others.

What has happened over the last half-century is better described as a revolution. Cultural norms that have existed—not just in modern times, not just since WWII, not just since the nation’s founding… but those that evolved over the course of centuries of western civilization itself—have been rudely upended and in many cases figuratively turned on their head.

The political struggle to reverse and correct what has happened is thus nothing less than a counter-revolution. We have just passed through our own “cultural revolution.”  Our “reeducation camps” are our very schools and universities, from whence emanates the new zeitgeist. Henceforth I will refer to our sixties-initiated cultural revolution as the Cultural Revolution.

*  *  *  *  *

Mary Anne Case, a professor from the University of Chicago’s Law School recently appeared on an NPR news magazine program[2].  She took issue with a letter to incoming freshmen penned by the school’s Dean of Students John Ellison. In it, he denounced the concepts of “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” as violating the school’s “commitment to academic freedom.”[3] Ms. Case criticized the use of those words as “jargon.” She argued that protecting students from freedom of expression that are “hostile,” for  example rescinding a speaking invitation to a Ben Shapiro, Condi Rice or even Ayaan Hirsi Ali, can be better expressed “without using politically loaded terms such as ‘trigger warnings’ and ‘safe spaces.’”

I am reminded of the first time I heard the expression “politically correct.” It was during the 1980s at a meeting of a left-wing “peace” group. Before the term was used mockingly in the pejorative, it was coined by leftists themselves to praise socio-political behavior and/or action that they deemed… correct.

Now that the politically correct groupthink that dominates our college campuses is finally exposed to ridicule, we are seeing the same reaction. “Trigger warnings” continue to be listed in course syllabi, and “safe spaces” are still promoted as selling points to potential students. Damage control, as exhibited by Prof. Case’s appearance on NPR, is now necessary only because enough outsiders have been exposed to the lunacy perpetrated by the “diversity” regimes running these asylums. To wit, a University of Chicago Law School professor now compelled to publicly classify “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” as “jargon,” in the hope of reassuring the world that our colleges and universities have not gone completely bonkers.

*  *  *  *  *

There’s no difficulty in recognizing political correctness when we see it—which is virtually everywhere. A terrorist in an instructional video is portrayed as anything but a middle-eastern Muslim. A political campaign manager expresses his dismay that the names of the latest terrorist shooter, and the reporter announcing it, weren’t reversed[4]. Every television political drama from Designated Survivor to The West Wing. The 6 o’clock news catches a child running up to embrace a returning female soldier while her doting husband looks on with admiration. The New York Times chooses a gay couple to feature in an article about a sinking skyscraper in San Francisco to represent the disaffected tenants, just so they can show a mature gay couple in a photo and use the words “his husband” in the first sentence.[5] A politician crafts a photo-op carefully selecting people of the correct “identities” for the backdrop.

And it’s not just the Left that employs political correctness. To counter the stereotype of being a refuge for white-male conspiracy theorists, the NRA will look for a woman or an African-American to make their case in a television commercial. Likewise a pro-charter schools ballot initiative will seek a person of color to advertise their cause to counter the implication that charter schools are just another manifestation of “white flight.”

The goal is to place people into roles in which their group identity (sex, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation) is underrepresented in real life. A college career advising center displays pamphlets on “non-traditional” careers to pursue. Women are encouraged to enter automotive technology or policing and firefighting. Men are encouraged to enter nursing and human services. No one thinks to ask, “Why?”

*  *  *  *  *

I am reminded of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous explanation of pornography: “I know it when I see it.”  We recognize pornography because of its intent: it’s designed to sexually stimulate. Likewise we recognize political correctness when we see it because it is always used to produce an outcome favored by the Left.

Ninety-nine percent of political correctness is identity politics. Any political issue not directly related to conflict between groups that has a clear left-right dichotomy accounts for the remainder, things such as renewable energy, global warning and animal rights. The Cultural Revolution is implicitly defined by political correctness. In order to understand the Cultural Revolution we have to understand political correctness.

Only in the past several years have we seen the term proactively co-opted by Republicans and used as a cudgel against its practitioners. Dr. Ben Carson was one of the first conservative protagonists to recognize and publicize its virulent and deadly nature, most famously with President Obama sitting only a few feet away at the President’s Prayer Breakfast in 2013[6].  When Carson entered the presidential sweepstakes in 2015 he made it a cornerstone of his stump speeches. His competitors began cautiously peppering their own talking points with references to it—though treading cautiously, wary of possible voter repercussions.

But the repeated, though usually mild, criticisms of political correctness by several of the Republican presidential hopefuls did constitute a major breakthrough to those of us anxious to see the nation roused to its senses. Predictably, only FoxNews among the major TV media outlets gave this “new” narrative any substantial air time. We watch with amusement as the rest of the mainstream news media continue to ignore it. Seriously, how can Chris Matthews or David Gregory conduct a discussion on political correctness? They are charter members of the politically correct elite! How is it possible to criticize political correctness when it provides the framework for your worldview? One could just as easily imagine a Mafia Don complaining about being shortchanged on a restaurant tab.

*  *  *  *  *   *


[1]  James Davison Hunter,  Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America  (Basic Books, 1991).

[2]  The Take Away, NPR radio program hosted by John Hockenberry,   29 August 2016,   <http://www.wnyc.org/story/trigger-warnings-do-they-support-or-infringe-academic-freedom/>.

[3]  John Ellison wrote: “We do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speaker because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

[4]  John Podesta,  email purloined by Wikileaks dated 2 December 2015, in response to the San Bernadino terrorist attack on the same day:Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter.”

[5]  Thomas Fuller,  “San Francisco Sues Over Sinking Skyscraper, Symbol of a Rush to Build,”  New York Times,  4 November 2016.

[6]  Dr. Ben Carson,  Speech at President Obama’s National Prayer Breakfast,  7 February 2013, YouTube video:  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFb6NU1giRA>.

*  *  *  *  *   *

Part 2


In a speech that will live in infamy delivered to an adoring crowd at an LGBT gala fundraiser in Manhattan this year[1], presidential Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton identified half of Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” She then specified in no uncertain terms what she meant: “The sexists… the racists… the homophobic… the xenophobic… the Islamophobic.”

The following weekend on Meet the Press those comments were described by one of the (liberal) panelists as “politically incorrect.”[2] But these very words—the ’isms and ’ophobias—are the very watchwords of political correctness. When used by liberal politicians and pundits they are an instruction to stop thinking: “Do not listen to anything that person has to say; banish them from our moral universe. We have done the thinking for you.”

According to this worldview, if you prefer to see pretty women in your television programs—that’s sexist. If you perceive affirmative action as a liberal’s idea of “good” discrimination, and thus oppose it on principle, you are racist. If your mind recoils at the thought of a weepy toddler clutching his teddy bear, creeping to his parents’ bedroom for comfort after a scary dream, and opening the door to discover his ‘dads’ engaged in anal sex, you’re a homophobe. If you believe the government has a responsibility to control immigration with a secure border, subject to robust and strictly enforced laws, you may be a xenophobe. If you fear Islamic terrorism, or disagree with President Obama and Hillary Clinton that ISIS has “nothing to do with Islam,” (after all, “Islam has been woven into the fabric of country since our founding”[3]), you suffer from Islamophobia.

Is it any wonder that Hillary’s “deplorables” responded overnight with “Proud to be Deplorable” T-shirts and Facebook memes? Hillary has unwittingly attacked mainstream America.

These words, “sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobe,” are the very passwords into the cultural left’s zeitgeist. Using such words is a very clever tactic. Destroy your opponent’s legitimacy by defining him as suffering from an irrational fear of your particular self-identification or deviancy.

The Left use the words “diversity” and “inclusive” to establish the moral high ground from which to launch attacks on retrograde “sexist,” “racist,” “homophobic,” etc., Americans. Thus they stand in defense of the helpless victims of the various ‘isms and ‘ophobias. Diversity is also a device to justify a hiring or admission decision based on something other than merit—plausible deniability for rejecting the most qualified applicant. As employer non-discrimination clauses grow to absurd lengths, the same goal could be more easily met by specifying the one group it is okay to discriminate against, the one group not identified in any list of the “oppressed,” the one group not in the “Obama Coalition”: white non-Hispanic males… oh, and now, Asians.
In the identity politics sweepstakes, a scorecard is needed to make correct hiring and school admission decisions.

Identity Politics Scorecard
Black
+1
White
-1
Hispanic
+1
Asian
-1
Female
+1
Male
-1
LGBT
+1
Heterosexual
-1
non-Judeo-Christian
+1

By this tally, I am a “negative-three-fer.” As a college applicant I would need an SAT score 320 points higher than an African-American to gain acceptance to a private university[4]. As a job applicant I would be passed over by any female, black, or homosexual candidates that otherwise satisfied the minimum job requirements—especially in academia.
*  *  *  *  *

Is there a driving philosophy behind political correctness?

The guiding principle behind political correctness appears to be an omnipresent and abiding fear that things should not be as they are— that something has gone horribly wrong. “Social engineering” is required to redress the wrongs inflicted on a hapless humanity by … Nature? Why should women have their career aspirations handicapped by the burdens of childbearing? Why not men? Who ordained that men are more likely to pursue athletics and physically demanding work? Ph.Ds. in STEM fields should be distributed equally between the sexes as well as among the races. The fact that this is not so is proof of sexist and racist social constructs and “privileges.” 

Some have tried to decode political correctness by tracing it back to an academic artifice of the sixties known as “Deconstruction,” attributed to the French philosopher Jacques Derrida[5]. His ideas of meaning and words in language were extended into the socio-political sphere in the 1980s.

Others trace it back further to the “Critical Theory” philosophy developed at the Frankfurt School, an institute founded in 1923 to advance Marxism in Germany. Critical Theory seeks to confront the social, historical and ideological forces and structures inherent in our pathological, unreconstructed (along Marxist lines) societies. The Institute was closed by Hitler in 1933 and forced to relocate, finding fertile ground at New York’s Columbia University. It’s believed that much of the leftist turn in academia in the U.S. can be attributed directly to this transplanting.

There is no doubt that today’s identity politics and political correctness owe a debt to the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory as well as to Derrida’s Deconstructionism, but are they the sine qua non? When Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton concocts a new government initiative to address racial iniquities, are they really consulting Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals? Is the feminist deconstruction of third-person pronouns into gender-neutral ones really all a communist plot?[6]

C’mon. Regardless of its origins, political correctness is a movement that now has a life of its own. It no longer matters which historical antecedents you prefer to cite or whom you wish to blame. Today’s social justice warriors aren’t thinking about Karl Marx or the roots of Critical Theory, they’re busy transforming their personal spheres of influence and landscaping our world, one binary-gender challenging pronoun at a time.
*  *  *  *  *

In practice, decisions based on political correctness require choosing the unfamiliar or underrepresented over the expected and conventional—or, dare I say it?—normal. Jobs requiring physical strength are traditionally dominated by men. Soldiering, policing, firefighting, construction. Under today’s diversity regimes, the physically weaker sex must be encouraged to fill these positions. Why? Because. In fields where nurturing, patience and empathy are at a premium, traits traditionally associated with women (for good reason), men are encouraged to apply.

Regarding race, the new paradigm is not a strict reversal of norms.  Anything dominated by whites should be incentivized for people of color. However, there are no inducements for whites in any field dominated by African-Americans. There is no affirmative action policy for the NBA or NFL.

These are all examples of identity politics point-scoring. Black favored over white. “LGBT” preferred over heterosexual. Female trumps male (except in U.S. presidential elections). Muslim before Christian (embarrassingly evident in refugee immigration policy[7]). Is there a pattern here? Is there a grand design behind this, or is it simply random mass insanity?

Cultural self-othering

Social scientists describe the process of “othering” as: the human tendency to believe that the group (race, religion, ethnicity, culture, gender, country, sexual orientation etc.) that they are a part of is inherently the “right” way to be human. This often results in hostility towards those not part of a group, as they can be seen as a threat or liability that is detrimental to the group's existence, creating an “us vs. them” mentality.[8] 

We in the West are undergoing a cultural self-othering. Our culture is “othering” itself! This is the unifying principal underlying political correctness that afflicts not just the U.S., but Western Europe. A culture turning against itself. Is this where civilizations go to die... like reality show Survivor “tribal councils” of attrition: the fittest eliminated after their contributions deemed no longer essential; their advantages outweighed by the threat they pose to the collective mediocrity of the remaining group?

Let’s take a preliminary look at each of Hillary’s “deplorables”—the cultural left’s toxic ‘isms and ‘ophobias, before they are further explored in the essays.

*  *  *  *  *

“The sexists …”

Feminist provocateur Alison Bechdel coined the “Bechdel Test” in 1985 to rate movies according to a feminist litmus test.[9] The three criteria for a movie passing the test are:

(1) it has to have at least two women in it, who have names, and
(2) talk to each other, about
(3) something besides a man.

But the actual trend in film and television with respect to gender has an entirely different complexion than that which causes Ms. Bechdel such angst. Feminists target “gender stereotypes” in the popular culture. Gender roles are being intentionally reversed. The strong, silent male lead has been replaced with the “strong,” often emotionally detached, female lead. The Hunger Games, Gravity, The Force Awakens. In each there must be a doting, weaker, man-in-waiting—or two of them in competition for the heroine (“hero?”). Speaking of heroines, feminists have convinced Hollywood that using the female genderized form of “actor” is sexist. “Actresses” no longer exist. Now there can no longer be any binary distinction; there are only “actors”—male, female, or presumably any of the other 31 flavors of “gender.”

Unfortunately, it is not just the male hero’s traditional manly virtues of strength, integrity, independence and his familial roles of builder and protector that have been transplanted to female roles. Often today’s female lead exhibits one or more of the baser traits usually associated with men: callousness, brutality, licentiousness, sociopathy and selfishness, and particularly sexual aggressiveness coupled with cavalier treatment of bed partners. Even James Bond displayed tenderness to his many sexual conquests. Today’s “strong woman” lead is often not so encumbered. “Do me hard… and there’s the door. I don’t do cuddling.”

Alison Bechdel may think she has seized upon a clever example of how our culture undervalues women, but the transformation of the entertainment industry under the prescriptions of feminism is far more pervasive and insidious.

Social critic Billy Taylor has countered with the Taylor Test, to rate the suitability of movies that don’t pander to politically correct feminist gender “corrections” as described above.

Taylor Test

(1) A movie passes if it has a positive portrayal of a father—and the mother is also an existing, active character in the story.
(2) An action/comic book movie is approved if it doesn't have a token scene where the lead female—unarmed and single-handedly—beats up a team of armed men, demonstrating superior martial prowess to the male main character/hero.

To clarify and underscore (1), he adds: “There are movies with positive father figures, but try to find one where he isn't essentially just a surrogate mother—i.e., the mother in the story has died or is nonexistent for some other reason.”

When the delusional feminist narratives of female superior physical prowess are repeated often enough, they are eventually believed. Until, that is, some intrepid researcher finds funding to study the correlation between police fatalities—both cops and perps—and female police officers.
   
*  *  *  *  *

The drumbeat of victim-feminism is never-ending. There must be an unwritten rule at NPR that a morning’s news isn’t complete without at least one story highlighting female empowerment triumphing over some manifestation of patriarchal oppression, or some other aspect of female victimization.

One of feminism’s more successful political memes has been the “war on women.”  It is repeatedly used to bludgeon male politicians and to specifically target the Republican Party. Once “war on women” is invoked the offender is immediately put on the defensive by a news media culture that reflexively panders to any claims of female victimization.

But the myth of a war on women is a fallacy of ginormous proportions. This egregious lie is in fact the exact opposite of the truth. Logic counters: It is impossible for there to be a war on women. Why? Because a war on men has been waging for decades, and if there was also a war on women, there is a war on everyone. This renders any “war on women” narrative nonsensical.

That there is a war on men, however, is indisputable once the politically correct blinders are taken off. Choose any domain: school, family, the workplace, the legal system. All are now arguably dominions of female empowerment. The “feminist jurisprudence” that proliferates throughout civil and criminal law arms a woman with the legal weapons to destroy a man, and virtually guarantees it in the gladiatorial arena of family law. (Refer to “Getting to ‘No’”.)

Feminism’s two highest priorities are the “freedom to choose,” i.e., the right to kill their unborn babies, and the promotion of sexual deviancy (aka “sexual freedom”). The line between pop culture and pornography is blurring. Before too long it will disappear altogether. Pop culture idols Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian, adored by millions of teens and tweeners, have both made explicit pornographic videos, freely available to anyone with an internet connection. It’s no wonder that “making a sex tape” is now a rite of passage for many young women. Compare with its counterpart of past generations: losing one’s virginity.

Having already achieved the goal of economic control over men via draconian child support laws and full legal ownership of the “means of reproduction,” the ultimate objective of overthrowing “the patriarchy” is exposed. The dismantling of the biological nuclear family, the basic building-block of society and the bedrock of civilization itself, may prove to be the ultimate act of the West’s self-othering.

We see the first fruits of the feminist War on Fatherhood in our African-American communities where two-thirds of black children are raised without their fathers. This leads us directly to …

*  *  *  *  *

“The racists …”

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) narrative holds that police use deadly force disproportionately with blacks because their lives are disposable —specifically, of less value than whites’. But the facts show that blacks are not killed by police in disproportionate numbers. Furthermore, the implied “racist” police are just as likely to be black or Hispanic.

According to Heather McDonald writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Four recent studies show that if there is a bias in police shootings, it works in favor of blacks and against whites Officers’ use of lethal force following an arrest for a violent felony is more than twice the rate for whites as for black arrestees, according to one study. Another study showed that officers were three times less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed whites.[10]

On the rare occasion that BLM is held to scrutiny by news pundits—or, even rarer, politicians—the counter-argument invariably used is that the number of African-Americans killed by police is miniscule compared to the number killed in inner cities like Chicago, by criminals.  The gotcha question then posed to BLM is: “Since the overwhelming majority of victims of inner-city violence are African-American, why do you ignore this violence against blacks?”

It is an odd way to argue, as the same crime data can be used to point out the obvious: that blacks commit a hugely disproportionate amount of killings and violent crime nationwide overall. The shocking numbers of blacks killed in inner cities are not being killed by roving bands of white punks from the suburbs. They are killing each other. Time magazine somberly reports that 40% of deaths at the hands of law enforcement are black men—“though they make up only 6% of the U.S. population...”[11]  Peculiarly absent is the far more significant fact that this same 6% of the population is responsible for almost 40% of the nation’s murders.

The raw crime data (not statistically sampled) compiled by the FBI can be examined—to ends that would never be tolerated by CNN or The New York Times—to produce stats showing that the BLM black victimization narrative is a fallacy of ginormous proportions.

The 2010 census provides the following estimates for the U.S. population in 2015[12]:  

  •   Non-Hispanic whites were 63.9% of the estimated population.
  •   Non-Hispanic blacks were 12.3% of the estimated population.

FBI crime data (again, raw data) reveals there were 6,137 single-victim/single-offender murders in 2015[13]. For 112 of these (1.8%) the offender’s race is listed as unknown. If we crunch the numbers relative to the remaining 98.2% (6,025) of the known-identity single-victim/single-offender murders in 2015 we arrive at the following murder statistics:

  •  Non-Hispanic whites committed 48.1% (2,897).
  •  Non-Hispanic blacks committed 48.7% (2,934).

Blacks committed more total murders than whites even though the white population is 5.2 times the size of the black population. This means blacks commit more than five times as many murders as whites, in proportion to their populations. A little over twelve percent of the population is responsible for almost half the nation’s homicides (single victim-single offender).

If the numbers are broken down further by sex they produce a staggering indictment of black men. Black males commit 38.2% of the total murders, yet they make up only 6% of the population.  Black men are committing murder at a rate 6.4 times their proportion of the population.

(Note: The reason single-offender/single-victim data are used is because the data for all murders (15,326 in 2015)[14] has a very high percentage of “unknown” offenders: 31.2% (4,787). Presumably many or most of these are unsolved murders—which is a scary thought.  But more importantly this number is comparable in size to the raw numbers for murders known to be committed by whites (4,636) and blacks (5,620), rendering any statistical comparisons essentially meaningless.)

It is indefensible that these facts about black violence are completely ignored while the nation is self-flagellating over the supposed persecution of young black males.  In our inner cities the police are dealing with a deadly subpopulation. These young black males, usually bereft of a nurturing home environment with mother and father present, are often a hair-trigger away from lethal combustion. Of course there are going to be incidents where police officers react with fatal force due to rational fears.

The sad truth is that the African-American community in the inner cities is largely a broken one. Norms of civil behavior and moral conduct, including the simple intrinsic value of human life, have fled from the predominately African-American inner cities like Chicago and Detroit along with whites. The riots in Baltimore, Ferguson, Louisville and Charlotte revealed to television audiences nationwide the stark reality of a broken African-American culture. Looting, trashing and burning down their own neighborhoods, with callous disregard for the merchants who invest their fortunes to service the needs of these communities, these miscreants are stoking the fires of racial animus BLM is ostensibly trying to stamp out.

The statistics of social pathologies in black communities are legion. In the U.S. two out of three African-American children are raised without a father in the home[15]. In 2004, 8.4 percent of black males age 25 to 29 were in prison[16]. One in six black men have been incarcerated since 2001[17]. On any given day, 30% of black males between 20 and 29 are “involved” in the criminal justice system[18].  The dreary list is endless. The cause isn’t poverty. It’s not lack of “school choice.” Nor is it decades of Democratic Party local governance. And it’s not a racist criminal justice system that treats blacks disproportionally harsher. It is the direct result of the breakdown of the nuclear family with a male bread-winner, specifically, the absence of fathers. Men are socialized within the family unit. This isn’t rocket science. What has happened to the African-American communities in the last several decades should set off alarm bells for everyone supposedly concerned about “social justice” as well as public safety.

Ultimately the blame for the dire state of the inner city black communities must rest upon the principals themselves. However, the secondary cause, the one that guarantees its insolubility, is the response of the white liberal establishment. By reinforcing the sense of victimization in the black community ostensibly to conscious and unconscious “institutional racism,” they effectively prevent blacks from owning responsibility for their actions and choices.   As long as “racist policing” and “white privilege” can be blamed, why look at the relationship between fatherless households and gang violence? The message to African-Americans from the white liberal elites in the New York Times editorial office and the ivory towers of academia is that they are victims of institutional racism. Exhibit A: almost universal support among the liberal elites for Black Lives Matter.

Black violence matters. Unfortunately, we can expect politicians to continue to pretend it doesn’t exist, but we should demand more from responsible social scientists (what few there are). Alas… a cursory google search on “black violence causes” reveals the extent to which social scientists will go to avoid assigning blame where it belongs. Here are some of the “causes”:

  •   legacy of slavery
  •   poverty
  •   public housing
  •   joblessness
  •   failing schools

Following the Baltimore riot in April 2015, a video went viral of a black mother publicly assaulting her son after she recognized him as one of the rioters from the TV news reports. Cable news talking heads roundly applauded her. FoxNews court jester Greg Gutfeld cheerfully suggested to his The Five co-hosts that she be acclaimed “mom of the year.”[19]  But take off the PC blinders and a different truth emerges. Sure, few people would argue with the “ass-whooping” for what he did—but does anyone seriously think that this instance of corporal punishment was an isolated event? Does anyone even bother to wonder, ‘Where’s the dad?”  Not to suggest that this boy would not have joined the rioting if only his dad was in the home—though it might’ve positively affected the probabilities of same. But a single-parent maternal household is a severely stressed one.

Here’s the sensible take-away: This boy has probably been beaten by this “mother of the year” throughout his entire young life. Violence has probably been a lifelong companion largely because it has been modeled for him by his mother. The African-American culture is one with more than its share of violence, and it is evident in practically every aspect of it. Rap and hip-hop music is stylistically confrontational and assaultive; readily displaying in its musicality the belligerent nature of African-American social habits. (Refer to “Janay Rice and the Domestic Violence Narrative,”)

White liberal elites pander to the aggressive and even criminal popular black cultural memes. Witness Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins boogieing to “It’s hard out here for a pimp,” at the 2006 Oscars when it won the award for Best Original Song[20]. Contrary to all logic, such endorsement by whites of the baser elements of black culture is no longer welcomed—it’s attacked as “cultural appropriation.” African-American college students are demanding—believe it or not—to be segregated from whites to protect their cultural integrity. And colleges across the nation are actually accommodating these requests, introducing segregated dorms to alleviate the sensitive feelings of black students for whom the overall white, systemic racist culture on campus is just too… oppressive.[21]

Pandering to the false myth of black victimization and its corollary, the campaign against “white privilege,” is just one more example of our cultural implosion. Our great national heritage built from the founding principles of European colonialists is regularly pilloried by academics, its virtues replaced with the cults of multiculturalism and victimology.
Eschewing the role of fatherlessness as the chief cause of social pathology in black communities can rightly be blamed on feminism. To admit that children, especially black boys, suffer immeasurably without the father role model, is to admit the fraud inherent in the feminist myth of single-motherhood and the disposability of men.  And that, of course, could never be countenanced. Go to “the sexists…” Rinse and repeat. 
*  *  *  *  *

The homophobic …”

A bakery in Portland, Oregon is harassed, fined and eventually driven out of business because their Christian owners wouldn’t bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple[22]. Sweet Cakes by Melissa closed its doors in September, 2016 after being fined $135,000.

A similar case with a Lakewood, CO bakery, Masterpiece Cake Shop, is being appealed to the Supreme Court after the state’s highest court refused to hear the appeal.

An individual who believes they were born the wrong sex demands the right to be publicly accommodated according to his/her “true” “gender.” A nationwide campaign ensues to end the concept of male and female—i.e., “binary-sexed”—bathrooms.

The movement for “LGBT” rights is the latest of the cultural left’s seemingly never ending social justice movements. But I make no distinction between the LGBT movement and feminism—the former is the love-child of the latter, and would not exist without it. Destabilizing the biological nuclear family, the atomic unit of civil society, by attacking its weakest link, fatherhood, was always a prerequisite for a successful homosexual movement. There would be no gay marriage, “gender-neutral” bathrooms, or disfiguring of the English language by legal force if not for the “women’s liberation” movement. “Pro-feminist” males (in this instance it is appropriate to eschew “men” in favor of “males”) in the movement are only too happy to play subordinate roles to women as a further demonstration of their defiance of the masculine role inflicted upon them by Nature. As would be expected, the overwhelming number of gay married couples establishing families with children are lesbian.

The rise of feminism in a culture directly correlates with declining birth rates for a multitude of reasons. In Massachusetts, the birthplace of gay marriage in the U.S., homosexuals now account for 40 percent of all adoptions. The state agency that oversees adoptions, DCF (Department of Children & Families; formerly the notorious DSS), proactively promotes homosexuality. In 2006 they selected a gay (male) couple as Parents of The Year. Recently they issued new guidelines asserting they are now "setting new expectations; we are weeding out some of the ... destructive behaviors that are occurring," regarding foster parents who hold “traditional values.”[23]
Is it any wonder that Russia banned U.S. adoptions of its orphans in 2012?[24]

Recognizing that the promotion of homosexuality to children—largely as a consequence of the legalization of gay marriage and adoption—is one of the last wheels to fall off in our descent into social and moral chaos, we can exercise our imaginations to speculate on what leavings of normalcy remain to be jettisoned. Polygamy and pedophilia come immediately to mind.

*  *  *  *  *

The political successes of the gay rights movement rest largely upon the principle that human rights should never be subject to a popular vote, the so-called “tyranny of the majority” argument. That is, without any safety check, democracy allows a majority of citizens to effectively disenfranchise a segment of the population that is in disfavor for some reason or another. Sounds reasonable. What could be worse than the majority of the people voting in some law that targets a selected minority?

A lot.

Try a tyranny of the minority. This is when a minority segment of the population imposes an alien set of values on the majority, enforced with new rules. And this is what we have today, one more expression of self-othering. One more poisoned fruit from the tree of political correctness. A striking example is the disfigurement of the English language with thirty-one flavors of new personal pronouns, and imposition of criminal sanctions for noncompliance with same, coupled with bizarre rules for bathrooms, all to accommodate the mental illness of the teeny-tiniest fraction of the population.

Meanwhile, not resting on their laurels, our brahmins of normalcy in the APA continually float trial balloons to normalize adult-child sexual relationships.[25] Eventually, those that oppose it will be branded with another scarlet letter, another toxic “ism” or “ophobia” and cast into Hillary’s basket of deplorables. “Pedophobic,” perhaps?

Word to the wise: A people that can be convinced that procreation isn’t a prerequisite for any rational definition of marriage can be convinced of anything.
*  *  *  *  *

“The xenophobic … the Islamophobic …”

Turning to religious “deplorables,” our Christian heritage is regularly under attack by cultural leftists. When addressing the deadly toll on innocent human life due to ISIS and Islamic jihadism (or in his words, “global terror”), President Obama rarely mentions Christian victims. But he takes great care to offer accommodation to the sensibilities of Muslims. (Refer to “The Beginning of Wisdom is to Call Things by Their Right Names, Mr. President”.) In our brave new multicultural world, religions other than Christianity and Judaism are given special preference. One atheist’s contrived injury is sufficient to prevent a town hall Christmas Nativity display, while Muslims are increasingly accorded special public privileges, from prayer rooms to halal meals.

Proponents of embracing Muslim immigrants and refugees argue it is un-American—even unconstitutional—to oppose it (“That’s not who we are”—Obama, Hillary, Merkel, any progressive leader, take your pick). Their claim rests on one of the Left’s tenets of political correctness: the “commitment to diversity.”  But freedom of religion under the First Amendment, freedom from discriminatory treatment due to one’s religion, is guaranteed to U.S. citizens. Not Syrian or Somali refugees.  Edward Erler, political science professor at CSU San Bernadino, handily destroys these spurious arguments:

Rights and liberties exist only in separate and independent nations; they are the exclusive preserve of the nation-state. Constitutional government only succeeds in the nation-state, where the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.
With respect to the commitment to diversity, the tolerance of those who are willing to tolerate you does not earn you much credit—it doesn’t require much of a commitment or sacrifice. If, however, you are willing to tolerate those who are pledged to kill you and destroy your way of life, tolerance represents a genuine commitment. Only such a deadly commitment confirms that tolerance is the highest value in a universe of otherwise equal values. Only such a deadly commitment signals a nation’s single-minded devotion to tolerance as the highest value by its willingness to sacrifice its sovereignty as proof of its commitment.

The common-sense citizen is forgiven for thinking this train of thought insane. But what other explanation could there be for the insistence of so many of our political leaders on risking the nation’s security—in light of what we see in Europe, one might even say their willingness to commit national suicide—by admitting refugees without regard to their hostility to our way of life and their wish to destroy us as a nation? [26]

I have often said that the West’s embrace of Islam is the crowning achievement of political correctness. We reject Christianity, a religion that certainly has its share of historical atrocities, but has evolved over the centuries along with secular humanism to the point where its good vastly outweighs any remaining defects. Gone are the days of the Inquisition, the burning of witches, the slaughter of infidels. The last Crusade ended in 1350. There are no Christian “Holy Wars.” No western nation imposes Christianity on its people. The sole Christian theocracy is a tiny vestige of the Holy Roman Empire, Vatican City in Rome, 0.17 sq. miles with a population of 840.

Yet the leftists that dominate the marketplace of social politics in the West have no problem embracing a religion that is the very antithesis of their own moral relativist cultural norms, one that promotes rules and punishments that are literally medieval. How is it possible for someone to champion her daughter’s lesbian marriage, endorse a campaign to destroy a business because its Christian owners won’t bake a cake for a gay wedding, yet passionately defends the “religion of peace” that, today, enacts the death penalty for homosexuality, among other atrocities too numerous and ghastly to mention?

In 2011 Robin Wright waxed effusively over the Arab Spring in the pages of The Smithsonian:[27]

For Muslims, that history now includes not only Facebook and Twitter, but also political playwrights, stand-up comics, televangelist sheiks, feminists and hip-hop musicians …
The youth-inspired upheavals of the euphoric Arab Spring have stunned Al Qaeda as much as the autocrats who were ousted. In Egypt and Tunisia, peaceful protests achieved in days what extremists failed to do in more than a decade.
“Today, Al Qaeda is as significant to the Islamic world as the Ku Klux Klan is to the Americans—not much at all,” Ghada Shahbender, an Egyptian poet and activist, told me recently. “They’re violent, ugly, operate underground and are unacceptable to the majority of Muslims. They exist, but they’re freaks.”
“Do I look at the Ku Klux Klan and draw conclusions about America from their behavior? Of course not,” she went on. “The KKK hasn’t been a story for many years for Americans. Al Qaeda is still a story, but it is headed in the same direction as the Klan.”

Not if ISIS has anything to say about it.

The Economist now dismisses the grass roots rebellions in Europe against Muslim immigration as “refugee-phobia.”[28] One wonders, how many thousands of YouTube videos of random Muslim violence on the streets of Europe can these people avoid?
*  *  *  *  *

In the U.S. the rebellion against political correctness first found expression with the Tea Party, and now Trumpism. The Trump partisans make no bones about what they hope for: they want Donald Trump to destroy establishment politics and with it the Republican Party, and replace the latter with something more aligned with the commonsense values of “Flyover America’s” working men and women. But owing to the Demo-publican duopoly’s vise-grip on electoral politics, it will take a force of nature for one, let alone two, new political parties to emerge. This is not the case in the European democracies and the UK, where their parliamentary systems accord greater flexibility.

Demographics is history. And history has no conscience. As a direct result of the Muslim inundation of Europe, nationalist populist parties have emerged to challenge the various social democrat-type parties that have dominated since WW II.  The political landscapes in Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden are all undergoing seismic changes. Establishment parties now compete, and even collude, to determine which will emerge to challenge the insurgent populist-nationalist candidate in the final election. There is no ambiguity whatsoever as to the cause: their governments have systematically ignored the realities of (1) the martial nature of political Islam as underscored by global Islamic jihadist terrorism, and (2) the disastrous effects of the influx of Muslims who make no attempt to hide their antipathy to the liberal western values of their host countries nor to restraining themselves from flaunting their opposition, up to and including violently, as well as sexually, assaulting native citizens. (On top of that, European governments have imposed a new, alien set of moral values conjured by feminists and sexual deviants, but I repeat myself.)

This willful blindness to what is happening in the streets of their cities has made the rise of populist-nationalist alternative parties inevitable. From the perspective of the self-flagellating European “progressives,” the logical, and karmic end to their misery would be their eventual submission to Islam. Here in the U.S. we have bought a little more time with the election of Donald Trump.
*  *  *  *  *

In the US we have pop star Moby, who hopes for a future child to be homosexual (though he himself is not)[29]. In Hamburg, Germany, a City Council member demanding more Muslim immigration predicts that her city, and country, will be non-German in “20, 30 years,” and proclaims “This is a good thing!”[30] The first is an unconscious wish for self-extermination—to rid the planet of this human pestilence once and for all. The other a semi-conscious, half-baked desire for cultural suicide.

If political correctness is an unconscious expression of societal suicide, such a thought contagion most closely resembles a religion—perhaps a death cult. Adherence to rigid thought control. Intolerance for heretic, anti-PC viewpoints. “Othering” of non-believers.

Our colleges and universities are the temples of political correctness. From them, the poison spreads into every corner of the polity. They are ideologically closed systems where the high priests and priestesses that inculcated the progressive “virtues” into their student vessels are now being excommunicated themselves for being insufficiently devout[31]. Like Robespierre, they are learning too late that the ever-spinning “moral” compass of social justice and identity politics takes no prisoners.

*   *   *




[1]  LGBT for Hillary Gala,  Cipriani Club,  New York City,  9 September 2016.
[2]  Meet The Press,  ABC,  Hosted by Chuck Todd, panelists included Tom Brokaw, David Brooks, Audie Cornish, and Stephanie Cutter,  11 September 2016.

[3]  Remarks by the President in closing of the summit on “Countering Violent Extremism,”  The White House, Office of the Press Secretary,  18 February 2015, <https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/18/remarks-president-closing-summit-countering-violent-extremism>.

[4]  “The model minority is losing patience,”  The Economist,  3 October 2015.
[5]  Jacques Derrida,  Of Grammatology,  (Original) Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1967,  (English translation)  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,  Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
[6]  Jessica Bennett,  “ She? Ze? They? What’s in a Gender Pronoun.”  New York Times,  30 January 2016,  <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/fashion/pronoun-confusion-sexual-fluidity.html>.
[7]  Patrick Goodenough,  “1,037 Syrian Refugees Admitted in May: Two Christians, 1,035 Muslims,”  CNCNews.com,  1 June  2016, <http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/1037-syrian-refugees-admitted-may-two-christians-1035-muslims>.
[8]  “The Process of ‘Othering’,” Anthropology & the Human Condition, WikiFoundry <http://sc2218.wikifoundry.com/page/The+Process+of+'Othering'>.
[9] Dykes to Watch Out For: The Blog,  16 August, 2005,  <http://alisonbechdel.blogspot.com/2005/08/rule.html>, &
“The Bechdel Test for Women in Movies,”  Feminist Frequency ,  7 December 2009,  <
https://feministfrequency.com/video/the-bechdel-test-for-women-in-movies/>.
[10]  Heather MacDonald,  “The Myth of the Racist Cop,”  Wall Street Journal,  24 October 2016,  <http://www.wsj.com/articles/themythoftheracistcop1477261025>.
[11]  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,  “The truth about police violence—and the heroes and villains are among all of us,”  Time,  25 July 2016.
[12]  U.S. Census Bureau , AmericanFactFinder,  <https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_15_5YR_DP05&src=pt>
[13]  U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS),  Expanded Homicide Data Table 6,  2015 FBI crime data,
<https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2015.xls>.
[15]  Louis Jacobson, Politifact.com,  29 July 2013, <http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/29/don-lemon/cnns-don-lemon-says-more-72-percent-african-americ/>.
[16]  Race, Ethnicity, and the Criminal Justice System,  American Sociological Association - Department of Research and Development,  September 2007, <http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/images/press/docs/pdf/ASARaceCrime.pdf>.
[17]  “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet,”  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, <http://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/>.
[18]  Paul Street, “History is a Weapon – Race, Prison, and Povery,” <http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/streeracpripov.html>.
[19] Josh Levs, AnneClaire Stapleton and Steve Almasy, “Baltimore mom who smacked son at riot: I don’t play,” CNN.com, 29 April 2015,  <http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/28/us/baltimore-riot-mom-smacks-son/>.
[20]  YouTube videos,  Award: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du_01sqzsck>,  Performance: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB1tqACl9Rg&list=RDOB1tqACl9Rg#t=103(18>  (November  2016).
[21]  Jeremy Beaman,  “Cal State LA offers segregated housing for black students,”   thecollegefix.com,  6 September 2016,  <http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/28906/>.
[22]  “Oregon bakery in gay wedding cake case closes,” The Register-Guard (Associated Press),  7 October 2016,  <http://registerguard.com/rg/news/local/34872958-75/oregon-bakery-in-gay-wedding-cake-case-closes.html.csp>.
[23]  Amy Contrada,  “Massachusetts ‘weeding out’ foster & adoptive parents who won't support children's LGBT identities,”  29 July  2013, <http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/contrada/130729>.
[24]  “Russia’s Putin signs anti-U.S. adoption bill” CNN Staff, CNN.com, 28 December 2012,  <http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/28/world/europe/russia-us-adoptions/#>.
[25]  Judith Reisman,  “Is Pedophelia the Next Sexual perversion to be Normalized?”  lifeissues.net,  Winter, 2011, <http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/reis/reis_49pedophilianormal.html>.
[26]  Edward J. Erler,  Imprimus, October 2016,  <https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/who-we-are-as-a-people-the-syrian-refugee-question/>.
[27]  Robin Wright,  “The Struggle Within Islam – Terrorists get the headlines, but most Muslims want to reclaim their religion from extremists,”  The Smithsonian,  September 2011,  <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/the-struggle-within-islam-49960526/?no-ist>.
[28]  “State of disunion – Cheerleading for Europe has become an almost impossible job,”  Charlemagne (featured columnist),  Economist,  17 September  2016, <http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21707217-cheerleading-europe-has-become-almost-impossible-job-state-disunion>.
[29]  Brandon Voss,  Advocate,  “Big Gay Following: Moby,”  26 March 2008. From the interview: “… if and when I ever have children, I want gay children.” 
[30]  On Nov. 11, 2015 in Hamburg, Germany, Green Party councilwoman Stefanie von Berg addressed the city council on an issue regarding immigration and said: “Our society will change. Our city will change radically. I hold that in 20, 30 years there will no longer be (German) majorities in our city ...We will live in a city that thrives on having many different ethnicities; that we have plenty of people and live in a supercultural society. This is what we will have in the future. And I want to make it very clear, especially towards those right-wingers: This is a good thing!”,   YouTube video: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMDWAaxFnCA>. 
[31] Edward Schlosser, “I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me,”     Vox.com,  3 June 2015,  <http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid>.