Monthly Archives: July 2023

Un-American

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And cynically contradictory. That’s the new Inclusive Writing Guide just published by the Portland, OR, government’s Office of Equity and Human Rights.

[C]ity staff members are being told to adopt a more “culturally conscious” vocabulary that includes not using words such as “women,” “Caucasian” or “citizen.”

There’s nothing at all inclusive about erasing women from the city via erasing them from the city’s approved Newspeak lexicon.

And

The staffers are also told to capitalize the word “Black as an adjective in a racial, ethnic, or cultural sense,” while under the definition of “white,” they are told to “not capitalize when referring to one’s race.”
The guide defined “white and whiteness” as “a social construct that serves to reinforce power structures” and suggested avoiding use of the synonym “Caucasian” entirely.

Because “black” isn’t at all a social construct, especially one that serves to reinforce—in the Left’s fetid imagination—victimhood structures. Not at all.

Nor is there anything inclusive about erasing American culture from the city’s Newspeak vocabulary. Immigrants and most illegal aliens alike come to our country explicitly for the benefits of American culture: the concept of limited government, the ability (not just the legal right) to think and speak and worship (or not) freely, the equality of economic and political opportunity, and above all, the very idea of these benefits as the center of American culture.

And this:

According to the guide, the term “citizen” is also “not inclusive” and should not be used by staffers.

It’s especially non-inclusive, and outright unamerican, to deny the essentiality of American-ness: erasing the term “citizen” from their edition of the Newspeak dictionary.

Giving Up

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Our Father, a prominent, if not the prominent, Christian prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) is…problematic. No less a light than Anglican Church Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell says so.

I know the word “father” is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive, and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life.

I’ll leave the theological argument to others, other than to note that there was demurral from Cottrell’s claim, for instance Dr Chris Sugden:

Is the archbishop of York saying Jesus was wrong, or that Jesus was not pastorally aware? It seems to be emblematic of the approach of some church leaders to take their cues from culture rather than scripture.

My beef is more secular. Cottrell seems to be saying that, for those victims of abuse at the hands of their fathers there is no hope, no chance for recovery, there is no possibility of meeting a better man, a suitable father substitute. Their eyes and ears must be shielded.

I disagree. Far from helping such victims, this sham protection only further weakens them.

Contrary to Cottrell’s claim, aside from the ecclesiastic content of the prayer, it’s also a statement of earthly hope, and fact, that there is a better father—and Father—available to these victims, if only the members of the Professional Victimhood Guild would get out of their way and let them proceed through their recovery.

Instead, Cottrell and his guild have given up on these unfortunates and are telling them not to bother—to give up on themselves.

“No Undue Influence”

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An audit of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, done internally by AIIB audit personnel, found no evidence of undue influence from the Communist Party of China arm of Peoples Republic of China government.

The AIIB is not just PRC-backed, though, it’s PRC-led. That means that we can take the audit—which lasted all of 10 days—seriously and at face value.

The PRC audited itself, and over nearly a week-and-a-half period, but the outcome is completely believable.

Don’t look behind the curtain to see that the PRC holds 26.6% of AIIB’s shares, giving it an effective veto over major decisions, since AIIB’s major decisions require a 75% supermajority.

“Activist Judicial Opinion”

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“Legal analysts” don’t like the preliminary injunction issued by a Federal district court judge that bars much of the Federal government and many of the individuals in it from telling, or even merely attempting to pressure, social media entities what those entities must permit and must bar from their Web sites.

Legal analysts on both CNN and MSNBC attacked a federal judge who found that the White House likely violated the First Amendment by claiming that his decision was an “activist judicial opinion” that “goes too far.”

CNN legal analyst Ellie Honig:

Yes, it’s a dramatic decision by this judge, if you read through it. He’s citing to literature and George Washington, and Ben Franklin. Here’s what really is astonishing to me. This is a conservative ideology that clearly comes through in this decision. … But the ruling itself is the opposite of judicial conservativism. This is one of the most aggressive, far-reaching rulings you’ll ever see.

Because upholding our individual free speech rights, adhering to the supreme Law of the Land, isn’t at all judicial conservatism.

And on MSNBC, Tulane University Professor Walter Isaacson:

I think Judge Doughty’s decision goes too far.
I think this is a little bit of a corrective but I clearly feel that in the end the decision will be refined somewhat, because government has to have the right to have its own free speech to push back when they see things on social media they think are dangerous[.]

It would have been good had Isaacson actually read the ruling. There is nothing at all in it that bars the government from push[ing] back when they see things on social media they think are dangerous. Quite the opposite:

The Court finds…that a preliminary injunction here would not prohibit government speech.

And [emphasis mine]

A government entity has the right to speak for itself and is entitled to say what it wishes and express the views it wishes to express. The Free Speech Clause restricts government regulation of private speech; it does not regulate government speech.

And the government—the men and women who populate and animate government—have a plethora of outlets of their own:

the White House, for instance, the Senate, and the House all have their own Web sites, as do each of the several Federal Departments and agencies, and every Congressman in the Congress. And many of those Congressmen hold aperiodic town halls to talk directly with their constituents—all of them should, and those meetings should occur more frequently—but that’s the Congressmen’s choice. Nothing bars any Congressman from doing any of those direct-to-constituents conversations as often as a Congressman might wish.

And that doesn’t approach the interviews and op-eds each of those men and women are free to give and to write, along with the posts on the social media they tried to, and are now barred from, controlling.

This is how far Left the press is gone, that journalists actually think judges, and Justices, come to that, who adhere to the text of our Constitution as that Constitution and their oaths of office require, are “activist” while Justices, and judges, who rule in accordance with their personal views (or the press’) of societal circumstance are somehow…normal…and acting properly.

Ben Franklin and the Republic of China

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The good citizens of the Republic of China are watching the barbarian invasion of Ukraine, the so far successful attempt by the Ukrainians to beat back the barbarian, and the destruction the barbarian is inflicting on Ukrainian cities and its atrocities perpetrated on Ukrainian women, children, civilian men, and prisoners, and some of those RoC citizens are drawing the wrong conclusion.

Others draw the opposite lesson from the images of smoldering Ukrainian cities. Anything is better than war, they say, and Taiwan should do all it can to avoid provoking Beijing’s wrath, even if that means painful compromises.

Those painful compromises would accumulate to nothing other than preemptive surrender. These…compromisers…choose to ignore the lesson of an old dead guy who was part of an earlier generation that, in another part of the world, successfully resisted a conqueror—and that conqueror began the struggle with its army already in place among the colonies. That old dead guy’s lesson:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

More than that, they will have neither, and the RoC compromisers, instead, would exist—not live—under PLA jackboots, and as the citizens of Hong Kong are learning, that existence would be an uncertain one.

The Peoples Republic of China’s goal is the complete erasure of the RoC as a nation, as a polity, even as a people, and the slavery that a successfully conquering PRC would inflict on the citizens of the RoC would be nothing more than a living death.

Of course, the RoC’s ability successfully to resist a PRC invasion would be enormously enhanced if President Joe Biden (D) would get out of the metaphorical White House basement and quickly transfer modern arms to the RoC—beginning, but not stopping, with the weapons systems the RoC already has bought and paid for but are not yet delivered.