Tag Archives: culture

Free Speech in Illinois

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Particularly, free speech in Progressive-Democratic Party reigned-over Illinois. A charitable organization, Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender, wants to register as a charitable organization in Illinois, but it’s being blocked by the State’s Secretary of State, Alexi Giannoulias.

Giannoulias’ rationalization is that a State law, the General Not for Profit Corporation Act, bars the use of terms like “regular democrat,” “regular democratic,” “regular republican,” “democrat,” “democratic” or “republican”  in any organization’s name without the party’s prior permission. It doesn’t matter that these terms are entirely generic and not—nor being generic, can they be—trademarked or copyrighted in any way.

DIAG is being blocked from registering in Illinois because it opposes Party’s support for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions so they more closely resemble the opposite sex over those procedures’ permanent effects, especially in children. The use of “Democrats” in the organization’s name is just an excuse, and DIAG, along with Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, have sued the State and Giannoulis over the legitimacy of that part of the law.

This is the level of free speech that Party allows in Illinois: what is freely spoken is what Party says its subjects are free to speak.

Moderation in the Progressive-Democratic Party

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Recall how the Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Virginia governor, Abigail Spanberger, ran on a platform of moderation and left of center politics.

In the first weeks of her office, this is a small subset of what she and her Party allies, who have majorities in both houses of the State’s legislature, have on offer.

  • HB968: Requires the use of ballot scanning machines in elections and explicitly bans hand counts “for any reason or purpose not specifically authorized for by law”
  • HB82: Extends the deadline for receipt of absentee ballots until three days after the election
  • HB111: Bars the state registrar from removing voter registrations except by request of an individual voter or direct reports from the Department of Elections
  • HB965: Commits Virginia to an interstate compact requiring that its electoral votes go to the winner of the national popular vote
  • HB244: Limits and reduces criminal penalties for robbery
  • HB1070: Limits the ability of prosecutors to mention prior convictions of a defendant during trial
  • HB1359: Requires the issuance of a firearm permit for all purchases
  • HB217: Bans the sale, purchase, or transfer of so-called “assault weapons”
  • HB24: Allows state authorities to select which states to share concealed carry reciprocity with instead of all states
  • HB916: Imposes further restrictions on concealed carry permit acquisition
  • HB7: Bars law enforcement officers from wearing facial coverings

This is Party’s conception of “moderate.” Party has gone so far left that it no longer recognizes what moderation is; it has no idea where the center of our nation’s political spectrum is.

He’s Right

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Robert Woodson, Woodson Center Founder and President, wrote in the lede of his Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed this:

Black America must declare a one-year moratorium on whining about racism. Not because racism has disappeared, and not to soothe the sensitivities of white America—but because grievance has become a shield protecting predators within our own communities. Accusations of racism are routinely weaponized to silence accountability, excuse corruption, and reward moral cowardice.

That’s absolutely correct. One of the Critical Items in American culture, currently under direct assault by open borders and the detritus remaining from that, is that our republic can survive only with acceptance and action on personal responsibility. Government is a last resort in that, not the default solution.

Then Woodson expanded on that in a way that too few folks who should know better have the courage (or integrity, I add) to do.

Civil-rights leaders and politicians remain conspicuously silent, waiting instead for the next police shooting or racial controversy they can exploit for media attention and moral posturing. Call out this silence, and you will be accused of racism—bullied into retreat by those who profit from outrage while ignoring the suffering in their own backyard. This silence isn’t compassion. It is cowardice.

He’s especially right about that last. It’s also an especially cowardly form of cowardice. Bullies have only the power over their victims that their victims consciously, deliberately, choose to grant those bullies. These grown, adult, allegedly rational civil-rights “leaders” and politicians assuredly know that. Yet they still bow down and if not actively kiss the boots of their bullies, passively cower under their desks, hoping to go unnoticed.

These folks are unworthy of their civil-rights or political desks, and they should be disregarded by the rest of us.

Watching in Unanimity

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European leaders are unanimous in their position regarding Iran and that nation’s government abuse of the people over which the mullahs reign.

From Rome to Brussels and from Paris to London, leaders have criticized what the European Union’s foreign policy chief called a “heavy-handed” and “disproportionate” response from Iranian security forces toward protesters.

But….

…European leaders are clearly gauging how much regional uncertainty they can tolerate.

Translation: European managers [sic] are unanimous in their decision to watch the hell out of the mullah’s abuses of the Iranian people. Unfortunately, those same European managers are just as unanimous their being too timid to do anything concrete in opposition to those abuses. As we might say in Texas, those worthies are all hat and no cattle. Unfortunately, though, those worthies don’t even have the hat. Stetsons are made in Texas, not in the haberdasheries of Paris or Milan.

A Thought on “Firsts”

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Too many pundits, too many others, insist on commenting loudly (or quietly) on the first black man to do this, the first woman to do that, the first homosexual person to do the other. The loud current example is New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He is, according to these Wonders, the first Muslim, the first Asian American, the youngest to become the city’s mayor.

So what? What he is is an American citizen. All the rest is decidedly irrelevant to the point of meaninglessness.

Unfortunately, as long as pundits, and too many others, insist on pointing that someone is the first this to achieve something or the first that to achieve something else, as long as those pundits, et al., insist on these manufactured firsts, they continue to keep us divided from each other by claiming special accolades for their approved groups.

That divisive decision very closely approaches bigotry. At the very least, it’s insulting to those groups as the pundits insist that the groups cannot succeed on their own; they must be singled out for their immutable characteristics rather than applauded or decried for the material things they’ve done or not done.