Caitlin Clark Inspires Blatant Racism at USA Today

Iowa women's basketball megastar Caitlin Clark--now the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer--is a major burr in the side of American leftists. This is especially true of the leftists in the sports media. The reason for this is simple: Miss Clark is white and is perhaps the greatest NCAA female basketball player of all time. In other words, Miss Clark is often targeted by the left due to the rampant and blatant racism that is so prevalent on the left. USA Today provides a recent and egregious example. Jason Whitlock does a great job of exposing and breaking down this recent attack against Miss Clark:

Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
trevorgrantthomas@gmail.com  

Cancel New York (UPDATED)

UPDATE: According to Michael Goodwin at The New York Post, “The family that owns The New York Times were slaveholders.” Mr. Goodwin writes,

It’s far worse than I thought. In addition to the many links between the family that owns The New York Times and the Civil War Confederacy, new evidence shows that members of the extended family were slaveholders.

Last Sunday, I recounted that Bertha Levy Ochs, the mother of Times patriarch Adolph S. Ochs, supported the South and slavery. She was caught smuggling medicine to Confederates in a baby carriage and her brother Oscar joined the rebel army.

I have since learned that, according to a family history, Oscar Levy fought alongside two Mississippi cousins, meaning at least three members of Bertha’s family fought for secession.

Adolph Ochs’ own “Southern sympathies” were reflected in the content of the Chattanooga Times, the first newspaper he owned, and then The New York Times. The latter published an editorial in 1900 saying the Democratic Party, which Ochs supported, “may justly insist that the evils of negro suffrage were wantonly inflicted on them.”

Six years later, the Times published a glowing profile of Confederate President Jefferson Davis on the 100th anniversary of his birth, calling him “the great Southern leader.”

Ochs reportedly made contributions to rebel memorials, including $1,000 to the enormous Stone Mountain Memorial in Georgia that celebrates Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. He made the donation in 1924 so his mother, who died 16 years earlier, could be on the founders’ roll, adding in a letter that “Robert E. Lee was her idol.”

In the years before his death in 1931, Ochs’ brother George was simultaneously an officer of The New York Times Company and a leader of the New York Chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The rest of Goodwin’s piece is a worthy read. And thus, it seems that my call to “cancel New York,” is even more valid than I first thought. Again, at least according to the “standards” the modern left has established. 

ORIGINAL COLUMN: 

When I say “cancel New York,” I mean every bit of it, including the state of New York, New York City, the New York Yankees, the New York Mets, the New York Giants, the New York Jets, and, of course, The New York Times. This is the only way to satisfy the standards already clearly established by the foolish cancel culture that currently plagues the U.S.

In fact, according to cancel culture standards, New York should have been cancelled years ago. As a Thomas Phippen—associate editor at the Daily Caller—piece put it in 2017, “New York Is Named After A Horrendous Slave Trader.” Mr. Phippen wrote,

New York, both the city and the state, is named after the house of York and particularly for James Stuart, then Duke of York, one of the most successful slavers in colonial American history…

James Stuart conquered the settlements between the Delaware and the Connecticut rivers from the Dutch in 1664, and the name of the principal port, New Amsterdam, was promptly changed to honor the new master. James’ brother, King Charles II of England, gave the territory to the duke in exchange for four beaver pelts annually.

The Duke of York, who later became King James II of England (and James VII of Scotland), created Britain’s greatest slave empire known as the Royal African Company, which transported between 90,000 and 100,000 African slaves to the Caribbean and American colonies between 1672 and 1689.

As Phippen also noted, according to Sir Hilary Beckles, the current vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies, after establishing ports along Africa’s Gold Coast, the Royal African Company “soon became the largest single company involved in the slave trade. Between 1680 and 1700 it supplied some 30,000 Africans to the Caribbean.” Beckles adds that, “Slaves purchased for the Royal African Company of England were branded ‘DY,’ Duke of York, after the president of the company.”

According to a 2005 article in The Nation, in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries, slavery was so profitable in the New York area that by 1703, 42 percent of New York households had slaves. Among early colonial American cities, this rate of slave ownership was second only to Charleston, South Carolina. In 2012, writing in the Huffington Post, Alan Singer noted that “Slavery was such a big part of early New York that during the colonial era one in five people living in New York was an enslaved African.”

Mr. Singer also revealed that,

The fact is that New York’s first City Hall was built with slave labor. The first Congress passed the Bill of Rights there and George Washington gave his inaugural speech there. Slaves helped build the wall that Wall Street is named for.

Business Insider notes that—along with Harvard Law School and Georgetown University, which, of course, are not in New York, but, based on current “standards,” also well deserve cancellation—multiple New York landmarks were built by slaves. What’s more, dozens of New York City streets are named for citizens who were prominent slaveholders or slave traders.

The New York Yankees—according to Forbes, the second most valuable sports franchise in the world—has a long history of engaging in real “systemic racism.” As David Marcus of The Federalist noted last year, “The Yankees systematically denied qualified black baseball players the right to make a good living for more than half a century.”

While pointing out the absurdity and the hypocrisy of cancelling Kate Smith and her seminal “God Bless America,” Marcus mockingly adds,

I am deeply offended by the fact that the New York Yankees refused to field a black player for the first half of the 20th century. Don’t tell me that’s just how it was. Don’t tell me it was the rule. Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers had the courage to break that rule in the 1940s, well before the beloved Yankees did. How can this be forgiven?

Of course liberals are quick to forgive—or at least forget—when the cancel culture might actually cost them something that they care about. This is why the Yankees remain—well, I guess they’re still out there somewhere, while the leftists running their league still pretend the Wuhan virus is a real danger—and Kate Smith had to go. As Marcus points out, this is just another example of the “empty virtue signaling” that American leftists are all too comfortable with.

Such “empty virtue signaling,” or cancel culture hypocrisy, is currently on full display all across the U.S., with liberals like those who dominate the media, politics, and culture of New York City leading the way. Their venom has fueled an ignorant rage that, not only has cost people their jobs, but has resulted in widespread death and destruction across the U.S.

As resigning New York Times opinion columnist and editor Bari Weiss put it, this “venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.” For example, when it comes to black lives, the “proper targets” are white cops. Never mind that the vast majority of black Americans who are violently killed are murdered by those who share their skin color, and that this almost always happens in U.S. cities where liberal (democrat) politics and worldview have dominated for decades.

Of course, democrats have long dominated New York politics, which is another reason for cancelling New York. Nothing in the history of the United States has a more racist past than the Democrat Party. As I note in The Miracle and Magnificence of America,

The Confederate States of America was formed at the Montgomery Convention in February of 1861. For the southern states—and anyone else in the world paying attention—the agenda of the newly formed (and electorally victorious) Republican Party agenda was clear. Every party platform since the creation of the Republican Party had forcefully denounced slavery. After the infamous Dred Scott ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857, the subsequent Republican platform strongly condemned the ruling and reaffirmed the right of Congress to ban slavery in the territories. Tellingly, the corresponding Democrat platform praised the Dred Scott ruling and condemned all efforts to end slavery in the U.S.

For six consecutive party platforms—from 1840 through 1860—the Democrat Party defended and promoted the evil institution of slavery in the United States.

Clearly, if one looks hard and far enough, the history of New York is as racist as any other part of America that one might want to cancel. Thus, according to the "standards" of today's left, it is time for New York—and all institutions that share that name—to go the way of all those Confederate statues. Now, if you are part of this cancel culture that is currently sweeping the U.S. but you are not for cancelling New York, you are clearly a hypocrite. If New York, in spite of its history and the history of its namesake, is allowed to stay, then virtually everything else in America targeted by the cancel culture should be left alone as well.

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

George Floyd’s Death is Not “Normal” in America [Updated]

At The Stream, Josh Shepherd notes that George Floyd is remembered as a Christian “person of peace” who helped perform baptisms on a basketball court. Christianity Today reports that Mr. Floyd “left a gospel legacy in Houston.” By many indications, Mr. Floyd’s tragic death brought to a terrible end the life of a man who spent much of his time helping others. What Mr. Floyd’s death is most certainly not is “normal.” 

[UPDATE: As time has shed more light on this ugly incident, Candace Owens--a black American--offers some powerful insight into George Floyd's life and what are the real problems of black America. And by the way, Ms. Owens VERIFIES EVERYTHING I say here, and EVERYTHING I've said in the past (I've written frequently about the foolish, ignorant views of Colin Kaepernick, and the like), on these issues.] 

After Mr. Floyd’s death, Barack Obama issued a statement. In it he declared that,

It’s natural to wish for life “to just get back to normal” as a pandemic and economic crisis upend everything around us. But we have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly “normal” — whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park.

This shouldn’t be “normal” in 2020 America. It can’t be “normal.” If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up to its highest ideals, we can and must do better.

Of course, the implication is that America is rife with racism, and it was this racism that led to the death of George Floyd, and such racism is all too “normal” in America today. Few things are further from the truth than this absurd and dangerous lie. In other words—living up to his title of “America’s Chief Racial Arsonist,” as Tucker Carlson recently described him—instead of dealing with the real problems faced by black Americans, Mr. Obama gave cover to the rioters and thugs that looted, smashed, and burned their way through several American cities recently.

When it comes to America’s “racial arsonists,” Mr. Obama is far from alone. Politicians and pundits across the left helped fan the recent riotous flames burning across the U.S. As I noted recently, not long after the arrest of two men in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, Georgia, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms called the shooting “a lynching” and laid blame at the feet of President Trump. She was given voice for such foolish ignorance by the like-minded leftists at CNN.

Leftists at CNN and The New York Times also gave cover to the rioters and looters by comparing the criminal thugs to those participating in the Boston Tea Party. According to Newsbusters, “CNN Newsroom, sports journalist LZ Granderson seemed to justify the rioting, looting, and arsons happening in Minneapolis and all over the country Friday as akin to the American Revolution. Speaking to host Brooke Baldwin, Granderson compared the violence to the Boston Tea Party and claimed that was a ‘riot’ as well.”

Granderson went on to claim that violent riots are sometimes the way that things get “done” in America. He added,

And there is one other thing I would like to share. There is a lot of people that I've read over social media who say they understand why people are upset but don't agree to taking to the streets and don’t agree with the protests. The Boston Tea Party, despite its name, was not a party. It was a protest. It was a riot. What I’m saying is the very foundation of this nation is based upon what is happening right now.

The New York Times’ Charles Blow shared Granderson’s foolish sentiments.

After Mr. Floyd’s death, in an interview with TMZ—fully masked of course, because who knows what one can catch via the air waves—Democrat Representative Maxine Waters accused President Trump of “dog-whistling” to police officers in order to let them know that what happened to George Floyd was okay, and that they could “get away” with such behavior.

The idea that America’s police departments are—or our nation in general is—filled with racism and racists is one of the ugliest—and as we again see, one of the most dangerous—lies in America. Just so we’re clear, here’s the left’s narrative on the police in America: There’s widespread and institutionalized racism inside America’s law enforcement agencies, and black Americans are especially targeted. This racism has led to the deaths of a disproportionate number of innocent black Americans. In order to stop this heinous activity, we need more gun control legislation, more wealth redistribution (usually in the form of some welfare program), more job and education programs, and thus Americans need to elect more Democrats.

So far, there’s been no evidence that racism was involved in George Floyd’s death. What we do know is this: Minneapolis has LONG been controlled by the Democrat Party. At Powerline, John Hinderaker—a Minnesota resident—notes,

The City of Minneapolis has been governed exclusively by liberals for decades. The current mayor, Jacob Frey, who was quick to denounce his own police department, is a left-wing Democrat. The Minneapolis City Council consists of Democrats and Green Party members who think the Democrats are not radical enough. Under left-wing leadership, Minneapolis has been governed abysmally for a long time.

Replace “Minneapolis” with just about any other large American city, and Hinderaker’s claims are still true. Additionally, the current Minneapolis Chief of Police is a black man. He’s far from alone. Of the 50 largest cities in the U.S., 40% of them have black police chiefs (six of these are women), and another 10% have minority (white female or Hispanic) police chiefs. Thus, half of America’s 50 largest cities—including Minneapolis, Baltimore, and Chicago—have a minority in charge of the police force.

The unpopular fact is that many black Americans are much safer in the presence of law enforcement than they are in many black communities, especially when such communities—because of things like the “Ferguson Effect”—have little or no police presence. The statistics make this clear.

• According to the CDC, the leading cause of death among black males ages 15-34 is homicide.
• According to the FBI, the vast majority (over 90%) of black homicide victims were killed by other blacks.
• For decades, black Americans have been more likely to be victims of violent crime (almost always at the hands of other black Americans) than are white Americans.
• Time and again it is revealed: when police stop policing, crime increases, and black citizens suffer disproportionately.
• The most dangerous neighborhoods in America—all with large (usually majority) black populations—are dominated by Democrats and liberal politics.

What’s more, according to Heather MacDonald, a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black perpetrator than an unarmed black person is to be killed by a cop. In other words, it’s much more dangerous to be a police officer staring down a black perpetrator than it is to be an unarmed black suspect encountering a cop.

One of the reasons the deceptive liberal narrative about black lives is so doggedly defended and regularly repeated is that the truth about the very real suffering in the American black community runs counter to modern liberal dogma. The biggest reason for the rampant lawlessness and poverty that is so prevalent in many black communities is the breakdown of the family.

It has been widely reported for years now that the out-of-wedlock birth rate among American blacks is around 70 percent. Almost always, mothers are left to raise their children alone. In U.S. cities, where the violence and poverty among U.S. blacks is most pronounced, the out-of-wedlock birth rate is even worse. For example, in Chicago about 80 percent of black children are born to single mothers.

Single-parenthood (the vast majority being single mothers) is linked to a whole host of negative outcomes for children, not the least of which is poverty and crime. The absence of a father in the home is the single greatest cause of poverty in the U.S. and also strongly correlates to criminal behavior in adolescents and young adults. With its perverse LGBT agenda and devotion to the welfare state, the left in America has waged a long and tragically effective war on the family.

The destruction of the family, and all the tragic outcomes that result, is a far greater problem in the U.S. than racism. Yet, where’s the outrage? Where are the protests? Where’s the demand for change? If he were still with us, I think that George Floyd would wonder the same.

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Hate Crime Hysteria in Georgia

Since the shutdown apologists seem to be losing their argument—because the vast majority of us are in little to no more danger from the Wuhan virus than we are from other such illnesses, because the number of Wuhan virus infections is a near-useless metric, because “social-distancing” is pseudo-science quackery, because more and more of us are getting the proper context on Wuhan virus numbers, and because the hand-shake police really are out there—democrats are now resorting to their favorite political fallback: “Racism!”

No doubt you’ve probably heard of the death of Ahmaud Arbery that took place recently in a small South Georgia town near Brunswick. Mr. Arbery, a black man, was shot and killed after suspicious behavior in a neighborhood and a 911 call led two armed citizens—Gregory and Travis McMichael, both white—to give chase. According to multiple reports and video evidence, at the time of the shooting, Arbery was not armed and was in possession of no stolen property.

After a brief investigation, the McMichaels were initially not charged. Several weeks after the shooting, video of the event went viral and charges of vigilante murder, an unjust cover up, and racism ensued. The McMichaels have since been arrested. I’m not going to argue here the guilt or innocence of anyone involved in this ugly incident. I’m praying and hoping for truth and justice for all those involved.

However, as is often the case when someone white (or “white Hispanic”) kills someone of color, many others are not content with mere justice. Some folks want to make political hay out of such events. And, as often happens when we go down this foolish road, truth and justice get set aside for ugly politics.

A few days after the McMichaels were arrested, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms—whose jurisdiction lies about 300 miles north of the Arbery, McMichael incident—called the shooting “a lynching” and laid blame at the feet of President Trump. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Bottoms said, “With the rhetoric we hear coming out of the White House in so many ways, I think that many who are prone to being racist are given permission to do it in an overt way that we otherwise would not see in 2020.” Left-wing pundits galore have been using similar ignorant, inflammatory, and deceptive rhetoric.

In addition to such foolishness, Arbery’s death has led to rampant calls for hate crime legislation in Georgia. Of course, this is unsurprising from the left, but many on the right in Georgia have signaled that they are at least open to the possibility of such legislation, and some have even directly called for it.

The most notable individual in the latter group is no less than Georgia’s Speaker of the House, republican David Ralston. Just days ago, in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), Ralston said that once Georgia’s legislative session resumes in June, he would “challenge and implore” the Georgia Senate to pass the hate crimes bill already adopted by his chamber, House Bill 426, “with no delay and no amendments.” Ralston added,

The time for being silent ended last week. It’s time to do what’s right. It’s going to take some leadership and some courage, but I think it’s time to act…It’s a shame that it took a video of this to engage many leaders, but our responsibility is threefold: to demonstrate that Georgia and Glynn County will not be tarnished by this act of evil. It’s time that we bring our law into the 21st century and make it more just, and it’s time to do what’s right.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has indicated that he’s open to signing a hate crime law. Georgia is one of four U.S. states that don’t have hate crime legislation, and for good reason. Hate crime laws are unnecessary, and they do nothing to deter hate.

According to FBI data, in 2018, there were only 7,120 hate crime incidents involving 8,496 offenses in all of the U.S. More than half of the offenses (52.2%) involved property damage or “intimidation.” About two-thirds of the offenses (5,566) were crimes against persons. Of these, 80% were crimes of intimidation or simple assault. In 2018, there were 24 murders that were classified as a hate crime.

One murder is too many, but if you take just three U.S. cities—say Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis—there’s around 24 murders nearly every week of the year. Most of these murder victims are black Americans. Shockingly, the CDC reveals that for U.S. black males, from birth to the age of 44, the leading cause of death is homicide. As has been often reported (but also often ignored), the vast majority (over 90%) of these homicides are the result of black-on-black violence.

Using the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of criminal victimization (2018), Manhattan Institute researcher Heather MacDonald reveals: “There were 593,598 interracial violent victimizations…between blacks and whites last year, including white-on-black and black-on-white attacks. Blacks committed 537,204 of those interracial felonies, or 90 percent, and whites committed 56,394 of them, or less than 10 percent.”

MacDonald adds that, “Blacks are also overrepresented among perpetrators of hate crimes – by 50 percent – according to the most recent Justice Department data from 2017; whites are underrepresented by 24 percent. This is particularly true for anti-gay and anti-Semitic hate crimes.” In other words, in spite of the narrative so often perpetuated by hate crime apologists, America does not have a problem with white on black hate crime.

Of course, in spite of its lack of hate crime legislation, this is true for the state of Georgia as well. North Carolina and Michigan both have a total population that’s almost exactly equal to Georgia’s—about 10 million. In addition, both North Carolina and Michigan have hate crime laws. According to the FBI, in 2018, North Carolina had 142 hate crime incidents. Michigan had 431. Georgia had 35. And despite having half the number of black Americans as does Georgia, Michigan had 10 times more incidents of racially-based hate crimes than Georgia. North Carolina has two-thirds the number of black Americans as does Georgia yet had three times the number of racially-based hate crimes.

What’s more, hate crime laws are predicated upon someone’s idea of what is “hate.” As they have done with most everything else they have had their hands in, the modern left has even perverted hate. Sadly, in today’s America, a “hate crime” is often nothing more than the “heinous” act of disagreeing with a leftist.

This is especially true when it comes to anything or anyone that runs afoul of the evil LGBT agenda. For example, many on the left today consider it an act of “hate” to declare that marriage is only the union of one man and one woman, to note that biology determines sex, or to refer to acts of homosexuality as sin. More than half of democrats want to criminalize such “hate speech.” Last year, The Washington Post ran an editorial (from the former editor of Time magazine!) that declared “Why America needs a hate speech law.”

America doesn’t need a “hate speech” law. America doesn’t need hate crime laws, and neither does Georgia. Most violent crime is motivated by some sort-of “hate.” The effort to get hate crime legislation passed in Georgia is nothing more than the Georgia left trying to elevate themselves politically. E.g. “Because we support ‘hate’ crime legislation, we ‘hate’ crime like this more than those who don’t support ‘hate’ crime legislation, thus vote for us!” Shame on Georgia conservatives for not realizing such.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Foolish Liberals Accuse Army, Navy Cadets of Flashing “Racist” Hand Signs

Of all the ridiculous, baseless charges of racism taken seriously by people who ought to know better, the claim that cadets used a racist hand gesture at the Army-Navy Game last weekend is among the worst, because it slimes the best among us, who are part of the least racist institution in the United States (and the world).

I started teaching in the early 1990s. This is my 27th year of teaching high school mathematics. I’ve taught at two public schools, both of which have a large majority of students that are Hispanic or black (the population of white students at both are well under 25%). The vast majority of students at both schools qualified for free or reduced lunches.

I’ve taught at one private military academy (annual tuition around $30k). At this school there was a large population of international students—around 25%—who hailed from over two dozen foreign countries. One thing in common over all my quarter-century plus of teaching high school students, whether the twentieth century or the twenty-first century, whether rich, middle-class, or poor, whether American or foreign, and whether black, white, or brown, teenage boys love playing the silly “Circle Game.”

In case you’re unfamiliar, in this game, a person makes a circle with his thumb and forefinger, exactly as if you’re making the “okay” sign, except this finger circle is usually held low, near one’s waist, or off to the side, or wherever is needed. The circle-maker then attempts to get their target, usually a friend, to look at the finger circle. If one looks, then one gets punched in the arm.

But don’t just take my word for it. According to KnowYourMeme.com,

The Circle Game is a game of peripheral vision, trickery and motor skills. The game starts out when the Offensive Player creates a circle with their thumb and forefinger somewhere below his waist. The goal is to trick another person into looking at his hand. 

If the victim looks at the hand, he has lost the game, and is subsequently hit on the bicep with a closed fist, by the offensive player. Online, people have begun hiding hands making the circle symbols in various images to trick people into finding it.
According to Vice, the Circle Game was invented by Ohio resident Matt Nelson in the early 1980s. Nelson claims to have devised the game while in elementary school as a way to punch his friends. 

The game was popularized on November 15th, 2000 in the fourth episode of the television sitcom Malcom in the Middle's second season. In the episode, characters play the Circle Game, introducing to the show's millions of viewers.

As a teacher, I’ve even had students play the game with me. They would say something silly—“your shoe is untied”—to try to get me to look down, and they would place their finger-circle in my line of sight. If I fell for it, they wouldn’t try to punch me, but they would playfully deride me. I know, it’s dumb as dirt, but it’s a harmless, silly game—except, of course, to those corrupted by a liberal worldview.

If you need proof that modern liberalism corrupts virtually everything it touches, consider the silly game described above and the Army-Navy football game played over this past weekend. As reported by even USA Today, cadets who were merely playing this silly game are being accused of making the “White Power hand symbol during a pregame broadcast of the Army-Navy game.”

Students appeared to make the White Power hand symbol during a pregame broadcast of the Army-Navy game. https://t.co/YYoxioCwsk

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) December 15, 2019

Watch a video of the so-called “disgusting act”:

#ArmyNavyGame nothing like seeing a bunch of cadets throwing up the white power symbol on national television. pic.twitter.com/Lb8usLjryq

— Fella (@BruthaManTho) December 14, 2019

Note the young cadet with the finger circle on his shoulder (made by the gloved hand) is trying hard not to look and not to laugh. I have the same feeling as I investigate for this piece and as I encounter the liberal narratives surrounding this silly, stupid saga. The libtard—yes, liberalism retards one’s thinking—outcry was so loud that, according to The Wall Street Journal, West Point and Annapolis officials are “investigating” the “possible ‘White Power’ hand sign.”

Someone with some sense and the authority to do so should instruct both academies to tell those offended to rethink their worldview, and find something better to do with their time. Our service academies certainly have better things to focus on!

Countering the evil attempts by Twitter leftists to smear these cadets, many right-minded Twitter users rightly mocked the leftist narrative of this incident:

pic.twitter.com/68JW5M9Wu5

— Robert (@IgG1purifier) December 15, 2019

Look at these racist mofo’s flashing the #WhitePower symbol. WTF? pic.twitter.com/t8BiQKuFAd

— I Yam What I Yam (@Nvr4Get91101) December 15, 2019

BREAKING: LEAKED photographs show Democrat Presidential Candidate Joe Biden doing a White Power hand symbol.

These photos are from multiple occasions.

A pattern is a pattern.

He must drop out immediately. pic.twitter.com/n9kiEoGX5r

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 15, 2019

Also, Kurt Schlichter rightly went on the warpath, declaring “This bullsh*t where liberals attempt to define innocuous gestures as hate crimes is simply their way of asserting power by causing others to take their lies seriously.” Mr. Schlichter is exactly right, and his conclusion here is exactly why the academies at West Point and Annapolis should do nothing but ignore the outcries of liberals here.

Of course, as many of us here at American Thinker have spent years revealing, liberalism is littered with lies. As we learned in the case with the Covington Catholic students, the safest bet in all of these situations is to assume the left is lying, or at least, is grossly deceived.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Again: They Kneel for a LIE!

I remember when taking a knee in football was one of the most satisfying things in this life. It used to mean one of two things: a well-deserved respite from the grueling grind of sweltering practices during the hot and humid late summer weather of the pre-season or the final magnificent moments before a looming victory in America’s most popular sport.

I was privileged to play organized football only from 7th grade through 12th grade. (I’ve always said that I had NFL hands, but my place-kicker size, and tackle—or maybe tight-end—speed kept me out of “The League.”) My middle school coach was “Rolling Thunder” Roger Thurmond. He was dubbed such because he was a Vietnam veteran who lost both of his legs and thus (usually) coached from his wheel chair, and because he was perfectly fiery and fierce as he coached us to near-perfection—at least in my 8th grade year when we went 4-1.

Interesting anecdote: I’ve had a broken bone only twice in my life. It was the same bone both times: my right collar bone. The second time it happened was during tackling drills when I was in 10th grade. The first time it happened was when I was wrestling on the playground in first grade. The best part of the story: the same guy broke it both times! Even his name—Bart Black—rings of villainy! And the perfect conclusion to this anecdote: when we slinked off the playground in first grade to let our teachers know something was amiss, we were immediately sent indoors. In addition to robbing us of our playground privileges—and unaware of my broken bone (she thought I was trying to get out of trouble)—our teacher paddled both of us! How I miss those days!

There are more than a few men in the NFL these days who could use a good paddling and more than a few leftist talking-heads who could use a good lesson in the limits of “free speech.” As we must continue to endure the ongoing debate about NFL players taking a knee during the National Anthem, the commentary from sports pundits—who notoriously lean left, especially sports writers—is the most telling.

Of all people observing and commenting on this debate, sports journalists should understand better than most what are the boundaries of their First Amendment rights. This is especially true of sports talk-show commentators on TV and radio. Their ownership won’t allow them to say anything they want on any topic—especially when it comes to things deemed politically sensitive. Otherwise, viewers and listeners may tune out and there might be harm to the “infamous” bottom line. More than one such host has been let go from his or her job, suspended, demoted, or otherwise punished because he or she crossed a line on speech that ownership did not support.

In other words, anyone working for a private company has limits placed on his or her “free speech rights.” Yet as the debate over NFL players kneeling just won’t end, many pundits, NFL players themselves, and even ignorant and hypocritical (the NBA already has a ban on Anthem protests) NBA coaches have made this an issue about free speech. Just another sad consequence of the government’s virtual monopoly on education, I suppose.

No, this isn’t really about “free speech.” If a group of NFL players used the field to protest against same-sex “marriage,” abortion, or some other wicked perversion held dear by the left, I’m almost certain that many of those now yammering about “free speech” would quickly revert to “shut up and play.” Also, where are these First Amendment champions when it comes to real speech infringement—such as what we are witnessing all across America’s college campuses?

What this is really about is why a group of attention-seeking, privileged multi-millionaires have decided to use company time to disrespect their fans and their country. In other words, why do they kneel? If these kneelers decided to heed sound advice and use their own time to make their political and “social” points, would it make their cause any more honest? In short, no. It would make their league more profitable, but their cause would still be foolish and misguided.

Again—as shockingly few are willing to point out—they kneel for a lie! As I’ve noted before, the lie is this:

There’s widespread and institutionalized racism inside America’s law enforcement agencies, and black Americans are especially targeted. This racism has led to the deaths of a disproportionate number of innocent black Americans. In order to stop this heinous activity, we need more gun control legislation, more wealth redistribution, more job and education programs, [and the like] and thus Americans need to elect more Democrats.

The unpopular fact is that black Americans are much safer in the presence of law enforcement than they are in black communities, especially when such communities—because of things like the “Ferguson Effect”—have little or no police presence. The statistics makes this clear.

• According to the CDC, the leading cause of death among black males ages 15-34 is homicide. 
• According to the FBI, the vast majority (over 90%) of black homicide victims were killed by other blacks. 
• For decades, black Americans have been more likely to be victims of violent crime (almost always at the hands of other black Americans) than are white Americans. 
• Time and again it is revealed: when police stop policing, crime increases, and black citizens suffer disproportionately. 
• The most dangerous neighborhoods in America—all with large (usually majority) black populations—are dominated by Democrats and liberal politics. 

What’s more, according to Heather MacDonald, a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black perpetrator than an unarmed black person is to be killed by a cop. In other words, it’s much more dangerous to be a police officer staring down a black perpetrator than it is to be an unarmed black suspect encountering a cop. And perhaps the most shocking statistic of all: Black men in the U.S. are half as likely to die if they are in prison than if they are not. As Yahoo News noted,

Less than one percent of men (more than half of whom were black) in total died while in prison, and there was no difference between black and white inmates in that regard.

As Yahoo also points out,

If prisoners are better off in prison, then what does that say about the conditions plaguing low-income communities and the services being offered to people of color?

What it says—and what many have long been saying, including some wise members of the NFL— is that, when it comes to violence and crime in our communities we don’t have a skin problem—as in the case with our schools—we have a sin problem.

Specifically, we have a breakdown of the family problem. The fatherlessness that plagues our urban areas—especially black families—has led to a myriad of problems, not the least of which is criminal activity. This is the real problem we should all be on our knees about, and to which high-profile athletes should devote their attention.

(See this column at The Black Sphere.)

Copyright 2018, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

On President’s Condemning Racial Violence, Some Perspective

On the protest in Charlottesville this past weekend, Pajama Media’s Roger Simon, a self-described “Jewish fella,” put it well:

[T]he types who surfaced in Charlottesville on Saturday are certainly human beings of the most repellent and disgusting sort, murderous too—pretty much violent, evil sociopaths. I wouldn’t mind if they were all rounded up, put in a space ship, and sent on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri.

Offering some “perspective,” Mr. Simon continues,

[F]or the sake of argument, let's say there are as many as 100,000 white supremacists in America today. (This is undoubtedly a vast exaggeration, but let's use it, as I said, for the sake of argument.) 

Meanwhile, since the 1920s, our population has more than tripled to some 325 million. Using the figure of 100,000 white supremacists (not many of whom made it to Charlottesville fortunately), this puts the percentage of white supremacists in the U.S. at a puny 0.03%. Terrible people, yes, but no epidemic by any stretch of the imagination… 

More to the point, are there more of these white supremacists than members of the equally violent and disgusting Antifa movement? Again statistics are hard to come by. (Both sides like to wear masks.) But I tend to doubt it. If anything, Antifa has been far more active, until Saturday. 

Obviously, none of this is to exonerate in the slightest the human excrement that descended on Charlottesville. It's just to put them in perspective.

On President Trump’s condemnation of the violence in Charlottesville, Thomas Lifson at American Thinker offers some more perspective:

[The] critics [of President Trump’s condemnation] were going to slam the president no matter what he said or did… 

I am sorry, but maintaining that a president of the United States must shape his actions according to what the media and his critics (but I repeat myself) might say is an abject surrender. This is the standard operating procedure of Republicans pre-Trump, and it has brought us to our current mess… 

I hope and expect the president will have more to say, and while condemning Nazis, remain even-handed. I condemn everyone that seeks to oppress others on the basis of race, no matter which race is being demonized.

I, too, hope that President Trump has more to say on this matter, but then again, U.S. Presidents have often disappointed when it comes to matters involving the hate-filled violence and rhetoric of a small number of their supporters. Take the last President, for example. Whether Ferguson, Missouri (more than once), Baltimore, St. Paul, Baton Rouge, Dallas, Oakland, and so on, time and again, President Obama refused to condemn the violent racists of Black Lives Matter (BLM). On the contrary, Obama and the Democrat Party regularly encouraged the perverse cause of BLM and gave them political cover.

In spite of their regular use of violence, destruction, and racist rhetoric, in August of 2015, the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution “affirming” BLM. In July of 2016, at the funeral of five Dallas police officers murdered by a BLM-inspired racist, President Obama continued to defend the BLM movement. After the Dallas shootings, law enforcement leaders accused President Obama of helping to encourage a “war on cops.” Politico reported,

I think [the Obama administration] continued appeasements at the federal level with the Department of Justice, their appeasement of violent criminals, their refusal to condemn movements like Black Lives Matter, actively calling for the death of police officers, that type of thing, all the while blaming police for the problems in this country has led directly to the climate that has made Dallas possible,” William Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said in an interview with Fox on Friday morning.

Additionally, BLM has long made it clear what they were all about. As Katie Pavlich noted in 2015,

It's time to expose the Black Lives Matter [BLM] movement for what it is: a racist, violent hate group that promotes the execution of police officers. The evidence is in their rhetoric and written on their shirts.

Miss Pavlich goes on to chronicle how BLM has elevated individuals like Assata Shakur, “otherwise known as Joanne Chesimard, who shot and killed a New Jersey State Trooper back in 1973.” Last year National Review’s David French highlighted a “sickening” essay by BLM that expressed support and admiration for—in addition to Fidel Castro—Michael Finney, Ralph Goodwin, Charles Hill, and Huey Newton. All were cop killers.

French rightly asks, “How many despots and murderers must Black Lives Matter praise before it’s consigned to the fringe of American life? How many riots and murders must it incite — often through lies and hoaxes?” Not yet enough, it seems.

In spite of all of this, a single incident by White Nationalists in Virginia—with not a hint of support from President Trump or his administration—and all of a sudden the Charlottesville racists are Trump’s “people.” Of course, eager to paint anyone on the right as a racist, describing the Virginia fools as “Trump’s people” has been a regular refrain from pundits on the left. In spite of all of the evidence linking Obama, the democrats, and BLM, as far as I can recall, the liberal mainstream media never sought to label black racists as “Obama’s people.”

Of course, this should surprise no one, and I expect the double-standard in this matter (and many others) to continue. Instead of proving Trump a racist, more than anything else, the events in Charlottesville reveal again reveal the depths of corruption of the left-wing media.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Racists and Transgender Apologists Both Reject Basic Biology

My wife’s mother was born and raised in Nigeria. Her parents were Baptist missionaries from America. Thus, in spite of the fact that my wife Michelle is almost as pale as I am, I sometimes (lightheartedly) tell people that I’m married to an “African-American.” This is (barely) humorous because of the modern left’s obsession with skin color and what is typically denoted as “race.”

It’s rare that Ken Ham (an evangelical Christian) and Bill Nye (a devoted Darwinist and secular humanist) agree, but when it comes to the issue of race, both rightly conclude: “There’s no such thing as race.” As Ham puts it,

As a result of Darwinian evolution, many people started thinking in terms of the different people groups around the world representing different “races,” but within the context of evolutionary philosophy. This has resulted in many people today, consciously or unconsciously, having ingrained prejudices against certain other groups of people.

However, all human beings in the world today are classified as Homo sapiens sapiens. Scientists today admit that, biologically, there really is only one race of humans. For instance, a scientist at the Advancement of Science Convention in Atlanta stated, “Race is a social construct derived mainly from perceptions conditioned by events of recorded history, and it has no basic biological reality.”

Bill Nye concludes,

We’re all the same, from a scientific standpoint. There’s no such thing as race — but there is such a thing as tribalism.

Many biologists avoid the term “race” and prefer a phrase such as “continental ancestry.” Thus, to prefer one “race” over another, or to declare one “race” superior to another, is biologically ignorant. Or, put another way, the “racists”—or “race-baiters”—of any era, of any color, on any continent, who battled against the cause of human rights of those of another skin color are guilty of contradicting the laws of basic human biology.

Likewise, those who fight to further the cause of the gender-confused (“transgenders”) are also guilty of contradicting the laws of basic human biology. Only in a world corrupted by liberalism must we debate who is a male, who is a female, and what restroom they get to use. The next time you encounter a liberal—especially one claiming the mantle of “champion of science”—who wants to lecture you about global warming—I mean climate change—or stem cells, or evolution, or the ignorance of Christians, conservatives, and the like, remind him that, when their side can settle on what is a male and a female, then you might only consider them ignorant and lost. Otherwise, tell them you have no time for madness.

And consider the ignorant irony: the modern liberals championing the cause of the gender-confused are on the same (wrong) side of science as those who fought against the civil rights of black Americans. As I began this piece, I encountered the following on the front page of the website of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution—the largest newspaper in my home state of Georgia:

When I clicked on the link, I was taken to a page headlined, “7 African American museums to visit with your kids for an unforforgettable (sic) history lesson.” The image above is taken from the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. It’s from a display that depicts the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike.

Barely a week into the strike (it lasted over two months), at a rally with the strikers (black sanitation workers), The Rev. James Lawson declared, “For at the heart of racism is the idea that a man is not a man, that a person is not a person. You are human beings. You are men. You deserve dignity.” Rev. Lawson’s uplifting words became the message on the iconic placards seen above. In other words, there was a time when liberals knew what was a man. No more.

Chris Cuomo of CNN, and—being the son of Mario Cuomo, former New York Governor, and the brother of Andrew Cuomo, current New York Governor—of strong New York liberal stock, provides the perfect anecdote here. After President Trump this week reversed the Obama administration’s perverse decree that instructed public schools to allow the gender-confused to access the bathrooms and locker rooms they prefer, Cuomo (Chris) went on what David French called “one of the strangest tweet exchanges I’ve ever seen.” (The Blaze provides a good summary of the tweets.)

As Cuomo attempted to promote the transgender agenda via Twitter, he was voluminously challenged. His retorts are telling. Most revealing is Cuomo’s response when one tweet asked, “What do you tell a 12-year-old girl who doesn’t want to see a penis in the locker room?” To this, Cuomo answered:

Only a mind and heart corrupted by liberalism could “wonder” about a young girl in a locker room with boys, and her “intolerant” father who merely wants to guard the eyes (not to mention, the rest of her body) of his 12 year-old daughter. Amazing, but not surprising.

On “tolerance,” G.K. Chesterton declared: “Tolerance is a virtue of a man without convictions.” As the debate over bathrooms and gender reveals, what better describes a modern liberal than “a man without convictions?” Thus, we see again that liberalism corrupts not only sound science, but common sense and morality as well.

What’s more, the “tolerance” of which Cuomo speaks is little more than a self-refuting system of thought that attempts to impose liberal values onto any culture unable or unwilling to recognize the fallacy. The United Nations’ Declaration of Principles on Tolerance (which Cuomo has probably memorized) instructs, “Tolerance … involves the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism.”

How about that, a dogmatic and absolute statement decrying “dogmatism and absolutism.” How intolerant! Given that its foundation is filled with lies—and as Cuomo, and his fellow gender-denying apologists well demonstrate—liberalism is filled with such contradictions. The fact is, we’re all intolerant. It’s just a matter of who’s right.

Again, some things deserve no debate. The great C.S. Lewis alludes to this as he rather bluntly declares, “An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy.” More plainly put, one would have to be an idiot not to recognize that certain things—like a person’s gender—are settled for all time.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2017, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the brand new book The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

I'm Now Married to an African-American

Summertime in Georgia--even the mountainous northeast part of the state where we reside--is typically an exercise in ways to avoid or endure the humidity. Thus, with a six year-old, nine year-old, 11 year-old, and 13 year-old, we make as many trips as possible to the pool or lake. We usually also make one trip to Six Flags over Georgia and one trip to the Georgia coast.

In spite of what the title here implies, each of our four children--along with my wife and I--are as pale as paper plates. Thus, as we spend June, July, and part of August baking in the Georgia sun, a healthy layer of sunscreen is vital to our survival. Otherwise, we look like a six-pack of defectively striped peppermint candy-canes. Yet, in spite of our deep whiteness, my wife Michelle has decided to embrace her mother's birth heritage and now identify as an African-American.

My mother-in-law was born and raised in Nigeria, thus by any reasonable measure, my wife is half African-American. And of course, our children are one-quarter such. As would any reasonable parents who have embraced our type of thinking, we will allow our children to decide how to identify themselves.

Michelle (on the right) with her sister Suzanne.

Shamefully, it seems that the parents of Rachel Dolezal have not embraced such thinking. In case you missed it, Dolezal is the Nordic-Aryan, born in Montana, who for years now has identified as an African-American. Ms. Dolezal's African-American identity runs so deep that she has developed a stellar record as head of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the NAACP. She also teaches "Africana Studies" at Eastern Washington University.

(The photo on the left shows Ms. Dolezal as a girl. The photo on the right is a more recent picture of the 37 year-old.)

In spite of being born to parents about as white as Michelle and me, it seems that Dolezal has lived as an African-American for nearly a decade. According to the Daily Mail, "As time went on, their daughter began sounding African American on the phone and then she started to 'disguise herself' from around 2007, her parents said." Dolezal's father told the Washinton Post, "When Rachel applied to Howard University to study art with a portfolio of 'exclusively African American portraiture,' the university 'took her for a black woman' and gave her a full scholarship." Her identity change has been so convincing that CNN described her as "one of the most prominent faces in Spokane, Washington's black community."

Of course, in the world where the children in the womb aren't really human, where humans with a penis and the y-chromosome aren't really men, where marriage is not the union of one man and one woman, where student loans don't have to be repaid, and where blizzards are evidence for global warming, it seems that Rachel Dolezal would fit right in.

However, many on the left are not happy with her. Sean Davis of The Federalist asks, "If Rachel Dolezal Isn't Black, How Is Caitlyn Jenner A Woman?" When Davis got into a Twitter debate with the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart, Capehart condescendingly declared, "FTLOG ('For the love of God'), Caitlyn Jenner is not 'pretending' to be a woman. Move along..." Given who looks more the role of who they're "pretending" to be, I hope Mr. Capehart has no aspirations of becoming a TV or movie critic.

Capehart went so far as to call Dolezal "mentally disturbed." The headline at Salon read, "Stop making excuses for Rachel Dolezal: The Spokane NAACP official’s fraud is unforgivable." Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway said that those equating Jenner and Dolezal are not making "serious arguments." He adds, "[It's just] another attempt by social conservatives to demean transgender people, a phenomenon that has been quite prevalent on that side of the political spectrum over the past two weeks."

Expect such rhetoric to continue. However, also expect continued nonsense like ours and Ms. Dolezal's to reveal the lunacy of liberal thinking. As Winston Churchill put it, "The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may distort it; but there it is."

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

For Liberalism, It's Always About "The Narrative"

After members of the Fellowship of Ferguson Fabricators, also known as the Congressional Black Caucus, gathered on the floor of the U.S. House on Monday to showcase the St. Louis Rams’ new touchdown signal, otherwise known as the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” gesture, Thomas Sowell likened the display to Nazi propaganda.

I don’t usually like allusions to Nazism tossed around in our political debates—it’s too often used simply as hyperbole—but liberals today certainly are following the messaging strategy famously articulated by Joseph Goebbels: repeat a lie often enough and loud enough and people will believe it.

Defending the actions of his congressional cohorts to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, Democrat representative Al Green brashly argued that, “It’s not enough for things to be right, they must also look right.” The Houston congressman (Is there any surprise that the place where pastors’ sermons are subpoenaed—because they contradict the current liberal narrative on marriage and sexuality—would elect the likes of Congressman Green?) also accused Kelly of telling only “one side of the story.”

In a stunning display of hypocrisy, the looters and rioters in Ferguson, Missouri accused CNN of promoting a “certain narrative.” In other words, while shining a bit of light into darkness (It seems that even CNN can sometimes stumble onto the truth, even when it doesn’t mean to!), CNN was doing damage to the liberal narrative in Ferguson. And for liberalism, “the narrative,” not truth, is essential.

As has been demonstrated for decades now, liberalism is quite adept at creating “narratives,” i.e. making its own “truth,” which can easily change as soon as it’s advantageous. Such skill and flexibility is very necessary when one needs political power to make sure the preferred notion of “truth” rules the day.

This skill has been keenly tested with the events in Ferguson. The liberal apologists at Time Magazine went so far as to pen a “Defense of Rioting.” Sounding like the puppet of President Obama and the ally of the immoral that she is, Time’s Darlena Cunha instructs us that, “When a police officer shoots a young, unarmed black man in the streets, then does not face indictment, anger in the community is inevitable.”

Seemingly desperate to show off her liberal cred, Ms. Cunha evokes Darwin and adds, “Riots are a necessary part of the evolution of society.” Such an ignorant statement must be born of desperation; otherwise we must conclude that Time is in the habit of employing ignoramuses. She painfully continues, “Unfortunately, we do not live in a universal utopia where people have the basic human rights they deserve simply for existing, and until we get there, the legitimate frustration, sorrow and pain of the marginalized voices will boil over, spilling out into our streets.”

Ahh, the ever elusive liberal utopia. It seems hopelessly lost on Cunha and her ilk that the decades of pursuit of such nonsense by liberalism is ultimately what has yielded Ferguson and other such dystopic nightmares. To distract from the nightmares, and even to excuse them, the narratives continue. Instead of actually dealing with what is wrong in Ferguson, liberals give us vague lectures about “justice,” “structural inequality,” a “culture of oppression,” and, of course, “racism.”

The khaki-creased “conservative” at The New York Times, David Brooks, demonstrates that his intellectual palate prefers modern liberal narratives to the notion of absolute truth when he spoke on Ferguson. He said, “This is not a question of good versus evil, right versus wrong. Racial inequality has become entangled in all sorts of domestic problems…”

Brooks’ editorial colleague at the “newspaper of record,” Nicholas Kristof, devoted a five-part series recently to explain why “Whites Just Don’t Get It.” Democrat Representative Eleanor Holmes said that the facts in Ferguson don’t matter to her. And on and on it went and continues.

Just prior to the second dose of Ferguson riots, in order to help sell abortion and sexual promiscuity, and in a spectacularly failed attempt to elect Democrats, liberals all across the U.S. saturated the media with the “war on women” narrative. So violently is this narrative protected and sold, the unborn are dehumanized to the point that no limits on the age of the mother or the unborn child are tolerated.

Demonstrating their continued penchant for calling evil good and good evil, and in a sad attempt to take the moral high ground on abortion, Katha Pollitt, author of Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, writes, “Terminating a pregnancy is always a woman’s right and often a deeply moral decision. It is not evil, even a necessary evil.”

Late this past summer, in the Washington Post, pro-abortionist Janet Harris said that abortion should never be considered “difficult” or “immoral.” In order to de-humanize the baby, and thus make us feel better about killing it, Harris declares, “To say that deciding to have an abortion is a ‘hard choice’ implies a debate about whether the fetus should live, thereby endowing it with a status of being. It puts the focus on the fetus rather than the woman.”

That’s right Ms. Harris, because it’s all supposed to be about you. In order to promote big government, liberals deftly lecture us about how they care about those in need, and about how, if we would only give them the power, they would make a better world for all of us. Ms. Harris’s above conclusion reveals what liberalism is really all about: a “Dictatorship of Pride.” In other words, under liberalism each of us is “free” to do “what is right in our own eyes.”

“Pride leads to every other vice,” the great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis reveals. “It was through pride that the devil became the devil…it is the complete anti-God state of mind.” This is why I find liberalism so repulsive. In almost every moral issue of our time, liberals stand opposed to the truth.

The narrative that says that an unborn child is not a life worth protecting is one of the most enduring lies of liberalism. In order to sell this lie, we now must suffer the “heart-warming” tales of women who’ve decided to kill their unborn children. And of course, the mainstream media is only all too eager to help. In October of this year, the pro-abortion media was beside itself celebrating the “beautiful,” “brave,” “powerful,” and “heartwarming” letter written by an anonymous Reddit user that revealed her plans to abort her unborn child.

The abortion narrative has its roots in the sexual narrative preached during the sexual revolution of the 1960s: that we all have the right to do whatever we wish in the sexual realm, which has also “given birth” to the unconditional acceptance of homosexuality. To promote this perversion, and distract from the truths of homosexuality, liberals again employ those heart-warming tales that are supposed to distract us from the darker side of whatever it is they are promoting.

Liberals have been recently put to the test on this narrative as well. Terry Bean, the co-founder of the largest pro-homosexual advocacy organization in America, the Human Rights Campaign, was recently arrested and indicted on two felony counts of third-degree sodomy and one count of third-degree sexual abuse after allegedly having sex with a 15-year-old boy he met online last year.

Bean is also co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and is a major donor to the National Democratic Committee and a major financial supporter of Democrats across the U.S., including Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. Bean has made multiple trips to the White House and has even been on Air Force One. In other words, on issues related to homosexuality, Bean has the ear of virtually every leader in the Democrat Party.

In this case liberals are forced to protect their narrative. This too is a common approach taken by liberals when “inconvenient truths” come to light. Very little is being written or spoken when it comes to Mr. Bean. Of course, it’s not as if liberals are incapable of reporting when it comes to homosexuals and crime. How many Americans are still under the illusion that Matthew Shepard was the victim of a “homophobic” hate-crime?

In order to push the homosexual agenda, for nearly two decades liberals have continued to promote this lie. Author Stephen Jimenez, himself a homosexual, has been instrumental in helping to reveal the truth in this matter. In 2013 Jimenez published The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard. Shepard’s life, it turns out, is a sad tale of drug addiction, drug trafficking, child molestation, and rampant sexual promiscuity. Shepard’s murderer, Aaron McKinney, was his drug partner/rival as well as his homosexual lover. Both Shepard and McKinney were heavy meth users as well as dealers.

Though Shepard was killed in 1998, for over 10 years his narrative thrived to the point that Democrats passed major legislation in his name. The Congressional Democrats passed, and President Obama signed the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crime Prevention Act in 2009. A few brave souls attempted to point out the lie that is the Shepard narrative. On the floor of the U.S. House, North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx attempted to point out the Shepard hoax.

The left went nuts. The nuts at MSNBC went even nuttier. Keith Olbermann named Foxx his “World’s Worst” and called her “criminally misinformed.” In his typical angry-anchorman speak, Olbermann continued to spread the Shepard myth by telling his audience that Shepard’s killers lured him away by “pretending to be gay.”

After Jimenez’s book came out just over a year ago, the pro-gay publication The Advocate finally asked, “Have We Gotten Matthew Shepard All Wrong?” No matter though. As the piece puts it, “There are valuable reasons for telling certain stories in a certain way at pivotal times, but that doesn’t mean we have to hold on to them once they’ve outlived their usefulness.” And there you have it: it’s okay to lie; it’s okay to promote “the narrative,” as long as the end justifies the means.

Of course, the most recent offspring of the sexual narrative that came out of the sexual revolution is the lie that is same-sex “marriage.” So swiftly has this narrative taken off that what just barely a decade ago would have caused even the most ardent liberal politician to squirm to defend, is now openly celebrated and promoted. Though there is nothing in the 200-plus years under our Constitution to suggest any idea that our Founders would have been anything but repulsed by the mere mention of two men or two women marrying, judges across the U.S. are rushing to declare same-sex marriage “constitutional.”

Although polling data shows an increase in the acceptance of same-sex “marriage,” when put before voters, the vast majority of states have overwhelmingly rejected same-sex marriage. Rogue judges deceived by the liberal narrative on marriage and sexuality are overturning the will of the U.S. electorate.

One issue that, again, at least according to most polls, the liberal narrative has yet to sway many Americans on is global warming—I mean climate change. The left is undeterred, however, and as is almost always the case, the narrative continues.

The narrative here is so powerful that many liberals have made their devotion to the climate into a religion. Ian Plimer, a geologist, author, professor of earth sciences and mining geology, as well as an ardent atheist and Darwinian evolutionist—which, normally would make him a darling of the political left—calls global warming “the new religion of First World urban elites.”

Plimer adds, “Environmentalism has many of the hallmarks of failed European socialism and [failed] Western Christianity. It has a holy book which few have read [IPCC reports], has prophets [Al Gore, et al] who cannot be challenged, relies on dogma, ignores contrary evidence, has armies of wide-eyed missionaries...; imposes guilt, has a catastrophist view of the planet, and seeks indulgences.” Leave it to an atheist to recognize a religion when he sees one.

Whether polar bears and the always “disappearing” arctic ice (that continues to set records for volume), or blizzards, cold-snaps, droughts, heat-waves, hurricanes, tornadoes, wild-fires, etc. that always have useful human (and animal) victims, and dramatic television footage, the left again employs sympathetic stories to sell the narrative. It’s also quite useful when virtually any weather disaster can be written into the climate change narrative.

Again, like with virtually every issue discussed here, liberals are using the climate change narrative to push significant legislation and official government policy. Because, for liberals, the solution almost always lies with government and political power.

In this case, such legislation and policy is usually aimed at fossil fuels. Operating under the myth that man-caused carbon emissions are warming the planet, liberals are waging war on oil, coal, and natural gas. President Obama, yet unable to win over American voters with his lofty climate rhetoric, has made it a mission to use his executive power to foist the left’s climate agenda upon the world. As with the federal judges and same-sex “marriage,” (and for that matter abortion as well), the oligarchs of the left know best, and as long as they have the power, it will be used.

For a man who is supposedly one of the smartest, if not the smartest, men ever to be president of the United States, Obama’s climate agenda has painted him into a political corner from which there is no escape. Oil prices are currently just below $70 a barrel, down over $40 per barrel since June of this year, and it continues to fall. The price is less than half of what it was just prior to Obama taking office.

The drop is due to major growth in U.S. production, which is due to American innovations such as hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling, which the left hates. In 2012, to help further the pro-climate change, anti-fossil fuel narrative, Warmist Matt Damon even made a movie about the “horrors” of fracking. In a bit of twisted irony, Damon’s anti-fracking film was funded in part by foreign oil wealth.

The drop in oil prices has led to a significant drop in the price of gasoline across the U.S. The price is well below $3 a gallon and, like oil, is expected to continue to drop. Such a drop in energy costs for Americans is helping to invigorate the U.S. economy, but because of their war on fossil fuels, liberals can’t take credit even if they wanted to. Instead, we are warned about “The Trouble With Cheap Oil.”

“We are awash in cheap oil” laments the uber-liberals at the New Yorker. Liberals love higher oil and gasoline prices because, “High oil prices would force governments, corporations, and consumers to find another way to power the world.” Did you see that? We need to be “forced” to find another way to power the world. Most liberals are far too comfortable “forcing” their agenda upon America. “Force” is at the heart of liberalism, and that is why so often false narratives can be justified, and why so often a big government agenda is pursued. After all, what better instrument to force an agenda than big government?

And thus we see, whether climate change, same-sex marriage, homosexuality, abortion, racism—and for that matter, immigration, gun control, education, and so on—liberalism is not concerned with the truth, but with whatever narrative will put liberals in power.

Copyright 2014, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com