Category Archives: culture

Religious Bigotry?

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North Dakota wants to let its high schools teach a Bible studies class, and the ACLU (among others) has gotten its institutional panties in a twist over it. State Congressman Aaron McWilliams (R) has a bill moving through the State’s legislature that would achieve that.  He said

The intention of this bill is to provide an option to schools to teach a class on the bible from a historical perspective.  My position is that no religious text should be excluded from being taught as it relates to the historical or philosophical influences in our history or on our society today.

The class would be an elective amounting to 1/6 of the total social studies requirement for graduating from a North Dakota high school.

The ACLU thinks that teaching a religious document even from a historical or philosophical perspective, even when it’s not a required course, is somehow the State establishing or supporting a particular religion.  That plainly isn’t the case; even the august personages of the ACLU know that—or American history wasn’t a safe space for them and they were triggered to unconsciousness by their grade school lessons and their junior high civics lessons.

Heather Smith, Executive Director of the North Dakota chapter of the ACLU does have a point, though.  Sort of.

A school could teach comparative religious classes, or you could talk about the Bible’s relationship to literature, art, or music[.]

But not its relationship with our history or culture, or with western civilization’s history or culture generally?  Not its relationship with our national philosophy, such as it is, or with philosophy generally?  Apparently, Smith was triggered by her high school logic class, too.

On the other hand, the comparative religion concern has some validity.  Perhaps McWilliams’ bill could include an option to teach an additional elective course, also worth 1/6 of the total social studies requirement, that teaches the Torah and the Talmud “from a historical perspective.”  After all, we are a Judeo-Christian nation, with a staunch Judeo-Christian history and underpinning.

Such a broadened perspective on who we are, how we began, and how we came to be where we are now—including these incessant attacks on our Christianity and Judaism—would strengthen our American culture, and it might inform even the members of the ACLU.

Side tidbit: the first Georgian patriot to die in combat in our Revolutionary War was a Jew.

A “Caravan” Participant’s Comment

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A Fox News piece centered on the refusal of some “caravan” participants’ refusal to leave a closed Tijuana warehouse and go to a better shelter facility—but a few miles farther away from our border—closed with this comment from 40-yr-old Honduran Norma Perez, who traveled with her 5-yr-old child.  She wants President Donald Trump to

personally go to Honduras so he can see with his own eyes that we simply can’t go back, that there are no jobs, no companies, nothing.

Never mind that all the foreign aid we’ve been sending to Honduras to help with precisely those conditions has been going into the pockets of Honduran authorities; very little of it has made it to folks like Perez.  Since she’s never seen any of the money or any of the economic benefits from the money, there’s no reason she would know of it in the first place.

However, it is well-known that the Mexican government has offered all of the “caravan” participants asylum and work permits.  Perhaps Perez should personally go to those Mexican authorities and accept the asylum and work permit offers.  And stop holding her child at risk.

Hiding Their Heads in the Sand

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Recall last Wednesday’s meeting among President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R, CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY), Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D, IL), Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and others.

Nielsen was there to present the current situation on our southern border as prelude to negotiations for funding for a border wall.

Pelosi refused to listen.  As Nielsen was laying out statistics related to illegal border crossings, Pelosi interrupted (among several interruptions by her and by Schumer, as they refused to listen):

I reject your facts[.]

Never mind that facts belong to no one; they exist in their own right.

Durbin also rejected simple facts.

It was preposterous.  At a time when we have the lowest level of apprehensions at the border—stopping people from coming in illegally—the lowest level historically, she is saying that we have all these terrorists and criminals and all these people on their way in.

As if per centages of criminals or terrorists won’t change—reductions in total apprehensions must mean there are fewer criminals or terrorists, thugs with entirely different goals in gaining entry, persons who by their nature want to hide the fact of their entry must drop by the same proportion.

Durbin knows better; he’s being disingenuous with his distortion.

And, as Pelosi said that Wednesday

This is not a wall between the United States and Mexico that the President is creating here.  It’s a wall between reality and his constituents.

Progressive-Democrats really do have nothing but contempt for the hundreds of millions of Americans, including the tens of millions of eligible voters who voted Republican in 2016, who disagree with them.

How is it possible to negotiate anything with persons who run screaming from the underlying facts?  How is it possible to negotiate anything with persons who won’t accept the reality underlying the negotiations?

Keep this in mind over the next couple of years, and especially over the summer and fall of 2020.

Walls and Negotiation

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Last Friday, President Donald Trump hosted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R, CA), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY), and a few others for another round of attempted negotiation over the border wall we so badly need.

The outcome?  Pelosi and Schumer continued their refusal to negotiate at all.  They demanded the government’s partial shutdown be ended before they’ll say a word about funding for a wall.  Never mind that, as they’ve made clear since last month, that word, their only word, is “No,” anyway.

Trump may be responsible for the partial shutdown’s initiation (that’s arguable, though, given Pelosi’s and Schumer’s opening position, even before Trump said he’d officially take the fall), but it’s plain that Pelosi and Schumer are responsible for keeping the partial shutdown going—they’re the ones refusing even to discuss funding for a wall, much less negotiate the matter.  This is the same pair that voted for a wall under both Clinton and Obama, and this is the same pair that supported $25 billion for a wall in return for protections not for just 800 thousand DACA persons, but for those 800 thousand DACAs plus a million more who are similarly situated, just a bit over a year ago.  Until Schumer welched on the deal.

Just after that meeting, we had this spectacle: on Fox News‘ Outnumbered Overtime program Progressive-Democratic strategist and ex-Hillary Clinton campaign advisor Antjuan Seawright disparaged Trump’s “shutdown” over his keeping a campaign promise (scroll ahead to about 2:48).

How is it possible to negotiate with those who refuse to negotiate?  How is it possible to negotiate with those who consider promises to be empty words?  Even were the former overcome, no agreement with Progressive-Democrats could be trusted—their agreement is only too likely to be just another ploy.

Of Course They Can

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President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China increased pressure on the Republic of China to surrender and be “unified” with the PRC.

Mr Xi said differences in political systems can’t be used as an excuse to resist unification.

Of course they can. Those differences are what makes the two nations separate from each other.  Never mind that the two have been independent of each other ever since the mainland under Mao Tse-tung won then-China’s civil war and drove the Kuomintang off the mainland onto the island of Taiwan, with Mao then creating the PRC.  The reason for the civil war was precisely those differences, differences over which the Communists were willing to kill those who opposed them.

Xi went on.

He promised Taiwanese people a peaceful and prosperous future with the mainland….

Right.  Just ask the folks on Hong Kong, who were the victims of the same promise and who now see their freedoms eroded and in many cases outright eliminated.  They’re not even allowed to elect their own political leaders; they must choose from a list the Communist Party of China provides them.

Xi’s word is worthless, and the citizens of the RoC, along with their government, know that full well.  RoC President Tsai Ing-wen: Xi’s

framework would place the island under China’s rule with limited autonomy, as has been done in Hong Kong.
…
“Taiwan will never accept ‘one country, two systems,'” Ms Tsai said. “The vast majority of Taiwanese public opinion also firmly opposes ‘one country, two systems.'”
…
“China must face the reality of the existence of the Republic of China, Taiwan,” she said…. She said [that] Beijing must “not reject the democratic system that the Taiwanese people have built.”

We need to stand loudly, overtly, and practically with the RoC.  We need to increase naval patrols of the Taiwan Strait, set up a naval basing right agreement for Kaohsiung City along with an Air Force basing agreement for Ching Chuan Kang and Tainan Air Bases.  We need to increase sales of modern air and naval weapons systems to the RoC.  We need to increase our trade ties with the nation, and we need to more actively support it diplomatically.

That’s just a start.