By Selwyn Duke
It’s common, and tempting, to dismiss one’s political opponents as “stupid.” Liberals may call conservatives “mouth-breathers” or “MAGA-billies,” while conservatives may hurl pejoratives such as “libtards” or “Dumbocrats.” This can be emotionally pleasing and sometimes, perhaps, even rhetorically effective. But does conservatives’ “stupidity” narrative blind them to darker realities and deeper dangers?
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By Selwyn Duke
It was 20 years ago now that three Duke University lacrosse players were indicted on rape and other charges after a stripper, Crystal Mangum, claimed she was attacked at a team party. It became a real media cause célèbre, with pseudo-elites everywhere condemning the male undergraduates. But the case blew up in the accusers’ faces. The charges were dropped the next year, in 2007, and the prosecutor was disbarred. And Mangum, who later went to prison for murdering a boyfriend, confessed in 2024 that she fabricated the rape allegations.
Now, today, almost a generation later, we have the “Cornell 7,” a septet of college frat boys accused of rape. It all stems from an incident at the Chi Phi fraternity house on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York, on October 19-20, 2024. And why are we hearing about this only now? Why did the accuser, identified only as “Jane Doe,” wait until just last month to file a civil suit?
And why are Democratic politicians now making this case big news? Well, those are the real questions.
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By Selwyn Duke
The identity of the co-pilot who tried to violently take over a flydubai jet Wednesday hasn’t been released. Yet there’s now information indicating he was, as a source puts it, a “religious extremist.”
And, no, this doesn’t mean a Quaker or Anabaptist.
Many officials believe the Omani co-pilot, presumably a jihadist-minded Muslim, intended to crash the plane à la 9/11. The incident brings to mind, too, a 1999 affair in which a Muslim co-pilot purposely crashed an EgyptAir Boeing 767.
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By Selwyn Duke
It was during the French Revolution, that bloody 10-year affair, that modern “leftism” was officially born. We’re seeing shades of it, too, in France currently, with widespread rioting, arson, vandalism, and looting.
This is the result of what are called “protests,” ostensibly motivated by a desire for better school conditions. (And, of course, nothing says “I want better schoolhouses” like … burning down schoolhouses.) But, well, as a 1960s SDS radical reportedly put it, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”
President Emmanuel Macron’s government may agree, too. Though left-wing by our standards (it’s technically described as centrist or “center-right” — ahem), even national French officials are blaming the rioting on the “hard left.”
Yet often ignored here is something else hard, a quite un-woke truth: The violence is, many observers assert, predominantly Islamist-driven. And the rioting did begin in areas with large non-native-French populations. The reality may be, too, that the mayhem actually results from a red-green (Islamist/left-wing) alliance.
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By Selwyn Duke
“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” a woman asked Ben Franklin in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention’s close. “A republic, if you can keep it,” he sagely replied.
This exchange has been quoted widely. So has a line written in 1798 by our second president, John Adams. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” he warned. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Yet can we say about these admonitions that they’re known more than taken seriously? After all, even many Americans who’ve approvingly quoted the above don’t heed those Founders’ words.
Just consider “the rules of the game.” As famed psychologist Jordan Peterson once pointed out, athletic competition is inherently cooperative. For it to work, all parties involved must cooperate in abiding by the sport’s rules. Refuse to do so, and everything breaks down. Is it any different in the game of life — or of government?
That is to say, in our case, can our government — a constitutional republic — work if we don’t cooperate and abide by the “rules of the game”? I’m talking about the Constitution, which could be conceptualized as our national rule book.
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By Selwyn Duke
About 10 years after I graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, I drove by the old place to see how it was doing. The kids were out for lunch, and a profound difference was apparent. Asian-descent (AD) pupils, well represented already when I attended, appeared to be at least 50 percent of the student body.
This was no illusion. At Bx Sci (as it’s known) today, AD enrollment routinely ranges from 60 to 65 percent.
Is this a problem, though, that AD students dominate numerically at a school you must qualify for via testing?
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By Selwyn Duke
Much of what governs how people vote isn’t reality, but perception of it. Just consider the economy. We’re supposedly experiencing an “affordability crisis.” It is true, too, that Iran-conflict disruptions have raised oil prices. Yet there’s also much good economic news — though you wouldn’t know it listening to the legacy media.
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By Selwyn Duke
A story in the news some days ago held that Noah’s ark’s resting place had been “100% confirmed.” This wasn’t actually true. What is, however, is that science is proving something else: “New Atheism’s” ship has sailed — and maybe even sunk.
Almost a generation ago now, in 2006, biologist Richard Dawkins boosted the New Atheism with his book The God Delusion. This was followed the next year by late “anti-theist” Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great. Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss, and Daniel Dennett were part of this fad, too. Now, though, their arguments are starting to seem a little stale.
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By Selwyn Duke
Would you pay for your child to be “educated” with “Is the Rectum a Grave?” or “Sex in Public”? How about “Trans, Feminism: Or, Reading Like a Depressed Transsexual,” “Homonationalism in Queer Times,” or “AfroQueer Art Worlds”?
No, this isn’t satire. The above are actual readings/courses in the University of Texas’ Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Yet they’re also now about to be something else: de-emphasized.
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By Selwyn Duke
Here’s a point to ponder: Why would the Indonesian government want to censor speech about the Great Replacement of Western peoples via suicidal (im)migration policies?
Because it apparently does, and I should know — the Jakarta regime just targeted my content.
I log on to my computer Monday morning and, as usual, check my email. Lo and behold, there’s a message from X’s legal department (twitter-legal@x.com). They’re notifying me that they’d received a complaint that some of my content violated “the law(s) of Indonesia.” They state that the complaint was filed by Kementerian Komunikasi dan Digital RI.
So I look that up and learn it’s Indonesia’s national Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs — “RI” means Republik Indonesia. I then say to myself, “OK, what did I post about Indonesia or its officials?” Some countries do, after all, have laws against criticizing their leaders.
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