What is wrong with these people? What is wrong with this culture, that it sees this as acceptable?

This is not a mere "cultural" difference. This isn't something that may be considered wrong in one society and not in another. This is wrong in essence; it is wrong no matter where, when, or to whom it happens. And the sad part is that the current law isn't nearly as, well, savage. //

Batta's story, should serve as a cautionary tale, as we have been importing thousands upon thousands of people from this part of the world, for who knows what reason, for years now. They are setting enclaves in places like Dearborn, Michigan, and Minneapolis, Minnesota - and some among them might agree with these Iraqi lawmakers and clerics.

It can happen here, and if you think some of these people might not try it, well, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Even when not in situations where violence is needed, men are excellent leaders and decision makers. They're solution-oriented and effective at implementing these solutions, even in the midst of pushback.

So the key to control is to kick that will to fight out of men, and to do that, you have to have a multi-front assault on masculinity and the inherent drives of men. It's something that has to be done over a long period of time, and if you look at our current situation in terms of the state of masculinity, you'll see this very plan has been in motion for a while. //

Our society, including our schools, have done a lot to both intentionally and unintentionally remove the fighting spirit and masculinity of men. Boys are treated like "defective girls" as psychologist Michael Thompson put it. Their natural energy and rambunctiousness is suppressed with rules and even drugs. Their preoccupation with action-based play, mock battles, and games that center on good vs. evil have become punishable offenses.

They tell young men that their masculinity is evil, and needs to be reduced if not eliminated entirely. It's "toxic," and needs to be reimagined to be softer, passive... and quiet. In media, the men are no loner displayed as strong, they're not put into leadership roles, and if they are, then there's always a female counterpart who is always better in every way that counts. Stars even go so far as to display themselves in women's clothing, showing that masculinity is just a social construct and men should embrace this new softer side of themselves by acting like women. //

Of course, then there's the way society comes down on masculinity in social situations. Commercials like the Gillette "We Believe" ad painted the very nature of men as ridiculous and awful, and while the pushback cost P&G billions, all it did was teach big stage tastemakers not to attack men directly and do it subversively instead. Corporations began promoting "transgender" people, celebrating males becoming females.

There were also legal punishments for being masculine, and you saw that recently in the form of Daniel Penny, a man who stood up for the innocent and took down a violent criminal, neutralizing him and saving others. Penny was thankfully found innocent in a court of law, but let's not pretend this wasn't an attempt to dissuade onlooking men from being a hero when the time came.

Carl Jackson brought up this very point in a recent program where he said, "if you abolish chivalry, you increase the nanny state." He brings up the fact that the left wants me to "tuck their testicles" and notes, as I have, that they've been "largely successful." //

We have to start celebrating masculinity. We have to start encouraging boys to be boys. We have to make men dangerous again.

Because a free, stable society cannot exist if dangerous men aren't there to protect and maintain it. There is no civilization if men aren't willing to fight for it. There is no order if dangerous men aren't willing to establish it. //

Magnus
8 hours ago
Dr Peterson has discussed this with details. Dangerous, disciplined, chivalrous men who are locked and loaded. Mr. Penny comes to mind.

We’ve gone from not trusting the feds to not trusting the local police in Altoona, PA.

But it is just asking questions. Can I ask one: Do any of the people just asking questions have monetized Twitter accounts?

It’s a social media-driven phenomenon. During the Dominion Voting v. Fox News case, we got the inside text messages of Fox News hosts, including Tucker Carlson. It turns out almost all of them thought Trump was full of crap and the “stolen election” stuff was a lie.

However, their public thoughts were more obtuse or contradicted their private thoughts. Surprisingly, people preferred to believe Tucker Carlson questioned the election and had Trump’s back rather than believe his private thoughts conveyed to friends and colleagues that both doubted Trump’s claims and said, “I hate him passionately.”

Now, everybody is just asking questions. It is a clever way of seeding doubt and then watering it.

First, you cast doubt on the local police in Altoona, PA. Or just highlight Mangione’s questions. Then you sprinkle in doubts about federal prosecutors and investigators in something entirely different, tie it all together in the name of just asking questions, and hope your Twitter account is monetized for the traffic.

The Rubes will believe it, hopefully.

Too many are willing to believe it.

In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis wrote about men without chests. But he also had this:

[Y]ou will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.

People just asking questions are not trying to see through things. They are hoping to make you see nothing, so you must rely on them. Too many people are. In the end, we have a nation that trusts no one and nothing and, therefore, is unable to get answers while asking questions.

Luigi Mangione began his descent into rage by just asking questions. He saw through the system and saw through whatever might be on the other side and finally saw nothing except revenge. He explained away the explanation itself and, on the other side, found violence.

Now, people who just a few days ago insisted something must be wrong because the police should have surely arrested someone quickly because look at Lee Harvey Oswald will now question who got arrested because it just seems so damn convenient.

Our society is dangerously close to spiraling out of control. The people who intend just to ask questions are helping sow the seeds, and those who, because of their distrust of “the system,” cannot grapple with basic answers will be the tip of the spear.

Much has been made here at RedState about the growing progressive rot permeating various film franchises, most noticeably comic book-based ones such as the MCU and Justice League. While the incessant preaching and corresponding drops in box office revenue are well worth covering, another omnipresent yet overlooked element warrants further examination. Filling this gap, Ladd Ehlinger Jr.’s (FilmLadd on Twitter) latest installment of his excellent video series dissecting both pop culture and political grifters compares Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 Western “The Wild Bunch,” one of the first films made taking full advantage of the Hays Code’s discontinuation, with Joss Wheldon’s 2012 “The Avengers.” The latter comes out decidedly second best on multiple fronts. //

Ehlinger Jr.’s video focuses on how violence is depicted in each film, comparing “The Avengers” outlandish cartoon stylization to “The Wild Bunch” and its utilization of slow motion and quick cuts not solely for cinematic effect but also to depict as accurately as possible violence’s horrific consequences, the suffering and death that come with the real thing. As he comments:

There’s no violence in movies, video games, and the rest; only depictions of violence. It then becomes a matter of depicting violence in a moral or immoral way.

Ehlinger Jr. explains that while “The Wild Bunch” has vast quantities of spilled blood, it does so not to shock or titillate but to emphasize violence’s graphic, messy nature. There are no bloodless bullet holes or immunity to gunfire based on gender or age. Women and children bleed and die just as agonizingly as men. Ehlinger Jr. compares this to the cartoonish ways the humans in “The Avengers” pull off stunts that would, in real life, mean certain death without getting so much as a glorified paper cut. //

Peckinpah’s life was hardly a quiet one centered on Bible study and prayer. Yet ironically, his films are laced with a strong moral code straight from Scripture. What a person plants, they will always harvest. The Old Testament prophet Hosea said it best: They have planted the wind and will harvest the whirlwind. As Ladd Ehlinger Jr. shows us, noting that which was done better in bygone days is not the sole prerogative of previous dusty generations railing against the wind. It is the raw truth. Ignore it at your peril. //

INTJ
2 years ago edited
So, Sergeant York or The Longest Day, both Hays-era films, never inspired violence? What's the difference? What about Psycho? The issue is much more complex and nuanced than is suggested. I would argue that the lack of societal consequences for acts of violence - think Soros D.A.'s - has a far greater impact. //

Cafeblue32 Real GOP 690
2 years ago edited
The avengers isn’t a moral tale? Of course it is.

Shakespeare I believe pointed out long ago there are basically only six stories that are told to describe the human condition. I can’t remember what they all are now, but one is starcrossed lovers who find each other, or they almost find each other. There is the rescuing of the maiden, the slaying of the dragons, the fulfilling of the hero’s quest. All of it is based in morality or to otherwise reenforce values and ideas we used to commonly hold.

There is no neutral input to humans. Whatever we see and hear is internalized and filed away by the subconscious mind. We present tales of murder and violence to others and punishment for it so that we don’t do it in real life. Hollywood is doing its best to strip entertainment of moral considerations, and that is one big reason it sucks. If there is no overall stakes of losing right, wrong, justice and freedom, then there is no conflict, only bitchy people whining about not getting what they want. And the violence becomes a glorified street fight we aren’t invested in because it isn’t about us.

Hollywood removes the consequences of violence and produces movies where people are bloodfilled meat bags to be killed in various ways while we cheer the heroes carnage. They are seldom ever about a larger societal benefit. It is usually personal revenge, or restoration, or some other McGuffin that is their reason.

Violence in superhero movies is sanitized. What happened to all those people in those city buildings they so casually demolish? Or all the cars they smash, or bridges they destroy, etc? People play such a minimal role in the superhero genre anymore that the new Flash movie had him racing around city streets without a single car or person on them. We are just CGI representations of NPCs, bodies incidental to the action.

J.R.R. Tolkien did not write a story about why power is evil but about why domination is evil. //

For example, at the end of the story, Aragorn does not renounce power and wander off into the wilderness to smoke pipeweed. He claims the throne and with it the power that is rightfully his — and he does so with none of the reluctance that Peter Jackson added to the film adaptation. Likewise, characters such as Gandalf and Galadriel do not renounce power as such — indeed, they have and use great power — but they do renounce a certain sort and use of power.

What they reject is the domination that makes people into thralls and slaves. //

But French misunderstands Tolkien. Indeed, if anyone is disqualified on Tolkien’s terms, it is those such as French who reject natural law and the legitimate power of governments to make and enforce laws in accord with it. Unlike French, Tolkien did not urge us to embrace a relativistic legal pluralism that cannot distinguish between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, God and Satan.

Put simply, Aragorn would not have tolerated Uruk-hai story hour.

“Their moral calculus is as crude as you can imagine: They see Israelis and Jews as powerful and successful and ‘colonizers,’ so they are bad; Hamas is weak and coded as people of color, so they are good…,” she said. “This is the ideology of vandalism in the true sense of the word — the Vandals sacked Rome. It is the ideology of nihilism. It knows nothing of how to build. It knows only how to tear down and to destroy.” //

A father or mother deficit is one of the chief causes of systemic American social problems including crime, addiction, poverty, depression, early sexual activity, low achievement, and susceptibility to predators. Indeed, the decline of marriage and the Marxist denigration of men are chief sources of our culture’s decline. You only have to name any effect of Cultural Marxism to see almost instantly that stronger and better men and women would end or reduce it.

So while she speaks true and admirable words repudiating Marxist politics, in her own life, like other alleged anti-Marxists Rubin and Benson, Weiss enacts those same politics. Despite spending her entire professional life chronicling sexual politics, like most in our society Weiss is still blind to the full implications.

Weiss is clearly open to changing her mind and adopting counter-culture positions. So can others who share her current sexual preferences, and those sympathetic to them. If we truly want to save Western civilization, which protects us all, we must refuse to perpetuate Marxism no matter how much we want a child in our arms.

In Sex and Culture (1934), Oxford scholar J. D. Unwin studied 80 primitive tribes and 6 civilizations through 5,000 years of history and found a positive correlation between the cultural achievement of a people and the sexual restraint they observe. //

MCP
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sexual repression is the foundation of civilization.
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2008
That is the basic thesis of this unjustly forgotten book. According to Professor Unwin, who was influenced by Freud, it is the "limitation of sexual opportunity" which creates the "mental energy" necessary to build a civilization.

He backs this up with exhaustive examples of the historical cycle he proposes. The cycle goes as follows: in a primitive society, people take their pleasure at whim, without commitment or limits. Then the practice of monogamous marriage, including premarital chastity, is instituted. (How he believes this first arises would take far too long to summarize here; read the book!) The sexual repression required for this chastity and fidelity increases the "mental energy" and the inner strength of those who practice it, enabling them to embark on long-term projects such as monumental architecture, agriculture, and conquest. In this early stage, men have enormous power over their wives and children, even when the children have grown up. ... //

Cornelius
5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase
Brilliant and Shocking Exposition of Sexual Regulations and Cultural Advance
Reviewed in Canada on November 27, 2019
Unger surveys eighty so-called 'primitive' civilizations, as well as six advanced civilizations, and finds a stunning correlation between the extent of a society's pre-marital and post-marital sexual regulations, and its civilizational advance (conquest, exploration, abstract thought, industry, commerce, etc.). In general, the more restrained a society is when it comes to sex, the more repressed sexual energy is created; that repressed energy is then transformed into, and given full expression in, productive, outward endeavours. As an anthropologist, Unger is surprisingly careful; since this book was published in 1934, I expected a stereotypical Englishman's exaltation of the white man's superior intellect. Unger does not fall for such preposterousness; he even admits that there is no reason to believe that coloured men have inferior intellects or abilities. In fact, he argues against the racialism that prevailed in his day. Although Unger's correlation is interesting, and his causation convincing, I am not convinced by his proposed mechanism: Freudian sexual sublimation. In fact, there are more direct mechanisms that would explain why repressed sexuality translates into powerful outward displays of productive and expansive energy: 1. When sex is more difficult to procure, people engage in more productive activities. This is a simple opportunity cost formula. 2. Men won't invest resources in children that aren't theirs. Sexual restraint ensures that women are less likely to cheat and conceive children with other men. 3. Hypergamy is dominant: without sexual restraint, men and women expend energy in attaining unachievable sexual partners. Aside from these shortcomings, Unger's book is worth reading if you are interested in why sexual restraints come about, and how they relate to civilizational advance.

Hugh Brennan
11 hours ago
Sadly, our woke military and political command destroyed one of Arlington's most remarkable memorials this year. They dismantled Sir Moses Ezekiel's Civil War Confederate- Reconciliation memorial. Sir Moses ( knighted by the King of Italy) was a world famous sculptor, the first Jewish VMI graduate, and a veteran of the famous New Market charge of the VMI cadets. Due to the BLM/Floyd mania of 2020 that did so much harm, the memorial he had created and which stood over his grave and the grave of hundreds of Americans who were Southerners by birth and loyalty has been destroyed. I'm a thoroughgoing Yankee, but my history lessons taught me to respect the Southern soldier, and that grave desecration, the destruction of art, and the reneging on the post-war reconciliation movement are all crimes of people with low moral standards. It is so much harder to create something beautiful than it is to destroy it. Lincoln would never have done it. //

There was a stunning video I now cannot find that shows pictures of all the American military cemeteries in Europe - France, Luxemburg, Italy, etc. More than I knew, thousands of young men resting where they died, not sent home. The sacrifices of Americans for the freedom of others is stunning and unique in the history of the world.

Glenn Beck @glennbeck
·
.@RichardDreyfuss tells me he gave up acting "ONLY for something I loved as much, which was saving my country...It infuriates me that people don't understand what this place means."
1:24 / 1:24
11:00 PM · Jan 16, 2023
https://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/1615121851784593410

All The Right Movies @ATRightMovies
·
Years after Robert Shaw's passing, his JAWS co-star Richard Dreyfuss met his granddaughter and got very emotional.
1:43 / 1:43
12:00 PM · May 1, 2024
https://twitter.com/ATRightMovies/status/1785640322061811725

BUTKER: Our love for Jesus, and thus, our desire to speak out, should never be outweighed by the longing of our fallen nature to be loved by the world. Glorifying God and not ourselves should always remain our motivation despite any pushback or even support. I lean on those closest to me for guidance but I can never forget that it is not people, but Jesus Christ I’m trying to please.

(...)

For if heaven is our goal, we should embrace our cross, however large or small it may be, and live our life with joy, to be a bold witness for Christ."

My words will perhaps seem somewhat vintage in character rather than current or up-to-date. In that context, I admit to being unapologetically Catholic, unapologetically patriotic, and unapologetically a constitutionalist.

[...]

Let me offer you, this year’s graduates, a few brief suggestions about making your deposits in the account of liberty. Today is just the end of the beginning of your young lives, and the beginning, the commencement of the rest of your lives. There is much more to come, and it will not be with the guiding hands of your parents—indeed, they may someday need your hand to guide them. Some of you will most assuredly be called upon to do very hard things to preserve liberty. All of you will be called upon to provide a firm foundation of citizenship by carrying out your obligations in the way so many preceding generations have done. You are to be the example to others that those generations have been to us. And in being that example, what you do will matter far more than what you say.

Andrew Breitbart famously asserted that politics is downstream from culture, implying that cultural values and norms prefigure and shape political outcomes. The conventional interpretation seems true on its face, that by the time a political issue comes to the fore, it has already been shaped and conditioned by the cultural milieu.

This perspective resonates widely, particularly among conservatives, framing politics as a passive arena, shaped by the stronger currents of cultural change. However, this viewpoint, while compelling, merits a closer examination to explore the possibility that the relationship between politics and culture may be more reciprocal than it appears.

This conventional framing of Breitbart's claim implies a sequence where cultural values and norms evolve independently of political influence, subsequently molding political outcomes. //

As political mastery involves both the subtle nuances of personal skill and the broader application of power within institutions, it becomes a critical component in the bidirectional influence between politics and culture. This understanding reveals that mastery of political processes is essential for maintaining and expanding influence within any arena, political or otherwise. //

Whether dealing with ideological shifts, mundane administrative adjustments, or crafting overarching policies, the fundamental processes are consistent. This universality underscores that the strategies used to sway opinion, garner support, or suppress dissent in politics are akin to those used across all those where process itself applies.

Moreover, understanding "Culture" as a type of influence rather than a static set of values or norms reveals its dynamic nature. Culture is not just a backdrop against which politics happens; it is a malleable field that can be shaped and reshaped through deliberate actions. Recognizing culture as a learnable, manipulable, and masterable process allows for a more proactive approach to cultural engagement and political success, challenging the traditional perception of culture as merely a byproduct of societal evolution.

The notion that everything from casting a ballot to crafting a policy involves manipulable processes highlights the need for a deep understanding of these mechanisms. //

Andrew Breitbart famously posited that politics is downstream from culture, suggesting that cultural forces shape the political landscape. However, the evidence we've examined presents a compelling case for a more nuanced relationship, where political processes actively sculpt and redefine cultural realms. This dynamic interplay reveals that political actors, through deliberate strategies and mastery of processes, have not only influenced but reshaped cultural institutions to align with specific ideological goals.

The 'Long March Through the Institutions' and tactics like those outlined in Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals exemplify how deeply political mechanics can penetrate into areas once deemed apolitical, such as education, media, and even personal social networks. These strategic infiltrations demonstrate the capacity of political forces to engineer cultural environments that perpetuate their ideologies, challenging the notion that culture merely influences politics and underscoring that politics can, indeed, flow upstream.

This realization invites readers to reconsider the traditional views of cultural influence and encourages a deeper exploration into how political processes are intricately woven into the fabric of societal norms and values. The implications of this analysis are vast, suggesting that understanding and mastering these political processes is not merely an academic exercise but a necessary endeavor for anyone looking to build victory.

Sinistra Delenda Est! //

emptypockets
8 hours ago
"Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society."
-- Antonio Gramsci
(1891-1937) Italian Marxist theoretician and politician, “class warrior”
Source: 1915 //

Cafeblue32
18 hours ago edited
No, Breitbart was not wrong. The proof is in the people we elect from the culture. It's why everything Trump did was undone overnight once he left- you can change the leaders 50 times, but unless you change the culture that produces them and votes for them, nothing changes for long. Politics doesn't create culture, it capitalizes on it. Politics didn't create the divisions we have. It merely exploited them and grew them as a means to political power. The academics and elites who benefit from a divided culture are the ones who drive the culture, not politics that arise from it. Cultural problems are always made and fixed from the bottom up, never the top down. The government we get is a symptom of it.

American politics did not create the war in Ukraine nor the Gaza conflict. Both predate America by many centuries. But it does feed it and capitalize from it. When there is power and money to be found in division and conflict, there is every incentive to make sure it continues. //

emptypockets
19 hours ago edited
As one Leftist pundit phrased it, the Left, the "Democrats have mastered Process"...which is where you ended up. I hadn't looked at it that way till she said it but she...and you are right. They are collectivists, doing everything in groups attracted by "activists"/"community organizers"....or in plainspeak, rabble rousers. They pontificate how if you are with them in lockstep you, too are "on the right side of history". Those not there will find increasing discomfort at their hands...even unto lengthy prison sentences. Or worse. The history they believe they're directing tells us they always go too far. If we don't stop ours now, we'll be worse than Venezuela before another 4 years have passed.

The "cure" for the politicization of all that was never supposed to BE political but has been captured by the Left's processes is to shrink gov't, pull it out of areas completely. But that would gore herds of oxen, each with several elected and appointed "defenders". It will have to get worse yet before we can effect changes to make it better. //

Indylawyer
19 hours ago
I agree it works both ways. However, as conservatives we need to recognize that government provides a very clumsy tool for any building project. We are not going to be able to use government to rebuild a free society, but we do need to start attacking the government projects that are actively undermining the free society we inherited from our ancestors. Some of the most poisonous government projects at work are (1) "anti-discrimination" laws - these effectively force every institution to over-consider race in order to avoid being accused of "discrimination" or "bigotry". (2) Government schools - regardless of the curriculum, the existence of this institution establishes the principle that government is a provider of important services. It also does a lousy job of educating, and necessarily establishes some sort of religious views. (3) our byzantine system of welfare programs and tax credits which reward bad choices in the name of determining "need." Biggest impact of this is to discourage marriage, but it also punishes work and savings.

Swift is pop’s sullen Peter Pan, forever refusing to grow up. Regrettably, she is bringing a massive audience along for the ride. Artistically, “The Tortured Poets Department” is not bereft of value. Its fatal flaw is in offering no hope for the brokenhearted. And there is, indeed, hope. //

Real GOP 690
44 minutes ago
Self pity. Life's singularly most destructive emotion. And the belief that everything is always someone else's fault. Sadly, these are the predominant emotions of our current American culture, and they are not limited to the arena of teenage girls, or even Democrats.

“We just had a midair,” the pilot of the Hawker is heard saying in an audio recording posted on LiveATC.net, which shares live and archived recordings of air traffic control radio transmissions.

Someone in the control tower responds by saying, “Say what?”

“You guys cleared somebody to take off or land, and we hit them on a departure,” the Hawker pilot says.

The recent accident in Houston is just the latest noteworthy instance in what a major New York Times investigation this summer determined to be “an alarming pattern of safety lapses and near misses in the skies and on the runways in the USA.” According to internal records of the Federal Aviation Agency, the Times reported that these safety lapses and near misses occurred as a “result of human error.” The Times report further revealed that “runway incursions” of the sort described above have nearly doubled, from 987 to 1732, despite the widespread proliferation of advanced technologies. //

While the disturbing decline in aviation safety is complex and multifaceted, we identified two major contributing factors that have received scant media attention. The first such factor is the likely contribution of disastrous COVID-era policies to the staffing shortage of many air traffic control rooms. The second factor is that aggressive affirmative action policies implemented during the Obama administration have resulted in a catastrophic collapse in the quality of controllers. In short, COVID policies have gutted the quantity of air traffic controllers, and diversity policies have gutted the quality of air traffic controllers, creating unprecedented danger for the aviation industry. //

The implications of these findings reach far beyond the scope of aviation, as important as this industry is. Rather, the collapse of the aviation industry must be understood in the context of a broader collapse in our ability to maintain the infrastructure of a First World society. This is a major and significant trend that we highlighted years ago in our coverage of the repeated failures of Texas’ electric power grid.

J.K. Rowling is arguably the most successful author in the history of publishing, with the possible exception of God. And Harry Potter was a kind of bible for my generation. Since its publication beginning in the late ’90s, the series has taught tens of millions of children about virtues like loyalty, courage, and love—about the inclusion of outsiders and the celebration of difference. The books illustrated the idea of moral complexity, how a person who may at first appear sinister can turn out to be a hero after all. //

When she gave the Harvard commencement address in 2008, she was introduced as a social, moral, and political inspiration. Her speech that day was partly about imagination: “the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

“We do not need magic to transform our world,” Rowling told the rapt audience. “We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already.”

The uproarious applause that greeted her in 2008 is hard to imagine today. It’s hard to imagine Harvard—let alone any prestigious American university—welcoming Rowling. Indeed, I’m not sure she’d be allowed to give a reading at many local libraries. //

It all blew up in the summer of 2020.

“‘People who menstruate,’” Rowling wrote on Twitter, quoting a headline. “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

She continued: “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

It’s hard to capture the breadth of the firestorm that followed. //

I was born into the Westboro Baptist Church, a tiny congregation founded by my grandfather that was a world unto itself. From the age of five, I protested with my parents, siblings, and extended family on sidewalks across America—including outside the funerals of AIDS victims and American soldiers. //

But when I took the church’s message to Twitter in my mid-twenties, I encountered strangers who—through kindness, friendly mockery, and civil conversation—helped me see that it was me who needed to change.

Ten years ago, at age 26, I left the church and lost all of my family who stayed behind. Those strangers from Twitter became some of my dearest friends—among them, the man I would eventually marry, the father of my two children.

Like Rowling, I knew what it was like to be an object of intense hatred. But I also knew the value of good-faith conversation, and the role it can play in bridging even the deepest divides. //

But the story of J.K. Rowling is not just the story of one author, or one woman, or one issue. It is a microcosm of our time. It’s about the polarization of public opinion and the fracturing of public conversation. It’s about the chasm between what people say they believe and how they’re understood by others. It’s about what it means to be human—to be a social animal who feels compelled to be part of a tribe. And it’s about the struggle to discern what is right when our individual view of the world is necessarily limited and imperfect.

Libertarians aren't anarchists, we're minarchists. It's the general libertarian belief that there should be hard and fast rules for society, but not a lot of them. The vast majority of the rules that are created should be applied to the government which can easily spiral out of control the more room it's given. The government is like a child, and it has to be watched, monitored, and given strict boundaries, or else it will [wreak] destruction upon you, your home, and itself. //

I'm a big fan of basic rules. God gave us 10 that are conducive to a happy, healthy life and our American system is broadly based on these rules. A few more could be added here and there, but if I'm being honest, at the end of the day it's not the laws that matter.

It's the people's willingness to follow them.

In order for society to function we have to agree to have a functioning society. This means following, not just the laws, but the unwritten rules that usually come with tradition and societal expectations. If even a fraction of the population suddenly disagrees with these rules, society starts to collapse. //

America — and the Western world in general — seems to have gotten to a point where it's perfectly fine with shrugging off propriety and common decency. It puts endless laws on the books, empowers its own government, and is even now willing to ban entire platforms off the internet, but it has very little concern about enforcing many of the basic rules already on the books, especially if the person not following them is of a certain identity.

People in America aren't following basic rules anymore because they aren't being enforced. Even when someone defends people against someone willing to violate these rules, the defender gets in trouble. //

We're encouraged to be passive while aggressors roam around us.

Then we wonder why everything is so trashy and our society is degrading.

We've shrugged off the rules in order to avoid being labeled as one thing or another, but as we pat ourselves on the back for being "tolerant" and "inclusive," we crumble.

what the former high school grappler said in interviews afterward was equally impressive.

"I haven't really been turning down interviews because I do want to get this out there for the young men. There's a lot of talk nowadays of toxic masculinity, and I'm really trying to, you know, push this narrative that you should stand up for the people, innocent people, people in your local neighborhood. And, you know, that's kind of what I take from it," he said. //

anon-76r6
2 hours ago
"All glory to God". Awesome

I am in New York again, and I am sending you this postcard from a city I love and have loved; from a broken city. Broken; yet struggling to reimagine itself, as it has so many times before.

Are we better? Are we lost? Are we changed, changed utterly? //

We are post-Tower of Babel now.

The culture of New York is now completely fragmented, and this happened through language.

It used to be that while there were a million different languages and accents here, everyone was trying to communicate as best he or she could — all the time. New Yorkers were famous for this! Any given day was thrilling, because random strangers, from whatever part of the world, would say something silly or funny or wise to you in passing, and everyone would manage to get the gist of each other, whatever anyone’s level of English. We were all present in the joy of being Americans — New Yorkers!— together.

That commonality is simply gone. Culturally, this city could now be anywhere in the world — any globalist, polyglot city. The culture that was New York has been smashed right through. //

The fact that somehow, all at once, English has collapsed as even the remotest goal of New York City common speech, and that speaking English seems not to be important at all to many of the newest immigrants, means that there is a loneliness and sadness and boredom and homesickness, involved with getting around New York City and its boroughs — journeys that used to be thrilling because you met people from everywhere, through their English.

Somehow it has suddenly become acceptable completely to ignore people in ordinary human interactions, and not even to try to communicate with them in even very basic English. //

Even recent immigrants with very little English in New York used gladly to say “Good morning!” or “Have a nice day!” — whatever chit-chat their language levels allowed — as recently as just a few months ago. We were all participating in a common linguistic community, at whatever level anyone happened to be.

Now that effort of participation seems to have simply been dropped in many quarters. I don’t know how or why cultures suddenly shift in these ways or why the prestige of English suddenly collapsed; but the fact that many people in the City now have given up trying to communicate in English, and tend to ignore those who do not speak their languages, creates an anomie, a fractured civitas; atomization. And it weakens us as a city. We cannot speak to one another in a crisis, let alone create culture, dance, or music together, or even spark romance or build families together; we can no longer have those moments of humor or goofiness or the deep many-cultured into one-cultured exchanges, that I miss so much.

Christians are often labeled "intolerant" for their refusal to embrace destructive behaviors. I would argue that America could use more Christian intolerance and a lot less Western "acceptance." The reason we should is pretty easy to see at this point. //

It's time to start normalizing intolerance. Obviously with nuance and discernment, but intolerance should make a comeback nonetheless. //

frylock234 RSVP
16 hours ago
I've always said that tolerance is that I have to let you go your own way, even if I don't approve of it, but nowhere does tolerance mean that I have to support you in your ways or embrace them if I disagree. I only have to accept you have the right to go your own way, and you have to reciprocate or else there is no tolerance. //

My pastor during my growing up years once stated it this way:
"We dare not condone that which God seeks to redeem. It confuses the sinner." //

anon-608f
16 hours ago
Hear hear! Tolerance, discrimination, prejudice, these are words which have been weaponized.

The story of the Comanches and the Red River War, whose 150th anniversary we mark this year, shows the absurdity of the ‘noble savage’ narrative. //

The Comanche were just as much imperialists as the Europeans ever were. Though Europeans could certainly be violently cruel, their culture at least censured violence against civilians — indeed, when stories of federal troops massacring defenseless Indians traveled east, the American people were horrified. The same cannot be said of the Comanche, whose brutality was an indelible component of their cultural identity.

It’s true as much today as it was 150 years ago that the West can learn from indigenous peoples such as the Comanche, who were not only tremendous horsemen and students of the natural world, but incredibly resourceful in finding a use for practically every part of the buffalo, which, with the horse, served as the cornerstone of their society. But that doesn’t mean we should embrace a simplistic, starry-eyed conception of native peoples, or a benighted, self-hating understanding of our own civilization.