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  • Daycare Teacher Babysits Low-tech, “No Screens” Kids; Learns a Scary Lesson

    By Selwyn Duke

    If a child “vegs” in front of a TV five hours a day, we’ll consider it problematic. But what about when that child is on other screens — i.e., electronic devices — five hours daily? Is that any less troubling? And what’s the ultimate result?

    Are smartphones yielding stupid kids?

    A childcare professional gleaned some insight into this recently after babysitting a couple of “no-screens” toddlers. These tykes have never watched a movie, used an iPad, or viewed pictures on a phone. Their parents don’t even own a TV. And, well, the babysitter’s experience wasn’t just eye-opening. It also aligns with the findings of a growing body of research. To wit:

    Excessive screen time impairs children’s cognitive development and can cause emotional and behavioral difficulties.

    In fact, some experts have called the high-tech devices “digital heroin.”

    (more…)

  • Re-educating America: Classical Schools and “Old Ideals” Can Bring New Success

    By Selwyn Duke

    “Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals,” wrote philosopher G.K. Chesterton in 1910. “They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.” Really, though, what gives worthwhile “old ideals” their value is not that they’re old — it’s that they’re eternal.

    So many in our time exhibit chronological chauvinism, the idea that something new is better simply because it is new. Of course, Covid-19 was new in 2019, and the Black Plague was new in 1347 Europe. In fact, it’s hard to think of anything new we can’t live without. Yet necessary for both life and health, physical and spiritual, are many ancient things, such as water, food, shelter, Truth, and love.

    This could come to mind with a movement back toward the eternal in American education. That is, rejecting modern schooling, with its bells, whistles, and wokeness, many parents are embracing “classical education.”

    (more…)

  • Lindsay Clancy: One Hung Jury — One Hanged Jury System?

    By Selwyn Duke

    In the legendary 1957 film 12 Angry Men, one holdout juror initially prevents a conviction in a murder trial. “Juror 8” (played by Henry Fonda) says he’s just not yet convinced of the defendant’s guilt. Through persuasion, reasoned analysis, and a little shaming, he leads an effort that eventually results in a not-guilty verdict. He’s a quiet hero.

    This comes to mind with the Lindsay Clancy trial, even though the latter is not quite the same. In it, there also was one holdout juror, now identified as Michael P. Desronvil, 48, of Bridgewater, Massachusetts. There likely was prejudice influencing the proceedings, too. There additionally was an 11-1 split — though favoring “not criminally responsible” and at the trial’s end, not beginning. Most significantly, while Desronvil may qualify, we don’t know with certainty if there’s any hero in the Clancy story. We do know this, though:

    There certainly are villains.

    We needn’t know precisely what happened during jury deliberations to say this, either.

    (more…)

  • Feminist Icon Billie Jean King Needs a Man—FAR More Than a Fish Needs a Bicycle

    Image created with Grok AI.

    By Selwyn Duke

    Feminist sports icon Billie Jean King is at it again, oblivious to economics and banging on about “equal pay” for female tennis players. It apparently never occurs to her that there’s one way to get the men’s money.

    The same way the men do: Compete on the men’s tour and succeed.

    Oh, that’s too much to ask? The women couldn’t cut it there?

    Well, look at that: You just learned, Billie, why they’re not making the men’s money.

    I know how the gals feel, too. A long-retired tennis pro, I also couldn’t cut it on the men’s tour (and in my day there was no such thing as donning a dress and identifying as Billie Jean Duke to cash in). So I didn’t get their money, either.

    See how that works?

    (more…)

  • The Slow-boiled Frog: Creeping Tyranny Becomes Normal

    Image created with Grok AI.

    By Selwyn Duke

    “Inurement” is one of those lesser-known but interesting words. It references the process of accustoming people to a thing, generally something unpleasant. And what’s scary for many to contemplate — freedom lovers particularly — is that man can become inured to most anything. This includes tyranny.

    (more…)

  • Democratic Candidate Wants MAGA Members Burnt to Ashes? If So, She’s Not Alone

    Shelly Headen The News & Observer/X

    By Selwyn Duke

    Call it a somewhat different version of Zohran Mamdani’s “warmth of collectivism.” Candidate Shelly Headen, a North Carolina Democrat seeking a state House seat, believes that Trump supporters belong in death-camp crematoria. And that’s not all.

    Headen has also called for an attack on United States soil. This should “preferably” happen in “Alabama, Louisiana,” she wrote — “where the stupid people live.”

    Whether they’d be stupid enough to post such comments while harboring political ambitions, Headen didn’t say.

    The kicker: The candidate has boasted on her campaign page that she’s “running to restore human decency.”

    (more…)

  • School Secretly “Transitions” Girl, Parents Object — State Then Abducts the Girl

    By Selwyn Duke

    Try this on for size: Massachusetts law restricts cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Part of the justification for this, they say, is avoiding “family separation.” Yet the same state has just separated a family — stealing a daughter from her parents. And why?

    After the girl’s school “socially transitioned” her without her parents’ knowledge or consent, the devout Catholic couple objected. In thrall to “transgender” ideology, Massachusetts then kidnapped the girl, insisting that her “transition” must be supported.

    In other words, it’s problematic to transition an illegal alien back to his home country. But you must “transition” your daughter into a boy if she suffers from the delusion she should be male. (This is despite such a transformation’s impossibility.)

    The kicker: Massachusetts reportedly is now seeking court approval to give the girl high-dose testosterone. This would, of course, permanently distort her femininity and cause irreparable harm.

    (more…)

  • Lindsay Clancy Et Al.: Are Women “Children of a Larger Growth”?

    Image created with Grok AI.

    By Selwyn Duke

    “How do you write women so well?” novelist Melvin Udall was asked in the 1997 film As Good as It Gets. “I think of a man,” he replied, “and I take away reason and accountability.” This comes to mind while pondering the Lindsay Clancy situation.

    Oh, I’m not currently editorializing on whether she had a psychotic break when brutally killing her three little ones. What I find more interesting, as I often do, is a bigger picture. It relates to a line from a letter Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, wrote to his son in 1748. To wit:

    “Women … are only children of a larger growth…”

    I know, he was a “dead white male” opining when America was still a colony. But here’s the thing:

    This is precisely how many men and women treat females today: as “children of a larger growth.”

    (more…)

  • Sweden Has Been Moving From Immigration to Remigration. Will Sunday’s Election Restart the Deluge?

    By Selwyn Duke

    In 2015, Sweden had the highest (im)migration rate in Europe relative to population. The country became infamous, with stories about failed assimilation, Muslim-controlled “no-go zones,” and immigrationist persecution of nationalists. But then the worm began turning. For almost the first half of 2024 (through May), the nation actually had more emigration than immigration. This resulted from an attitudinal change that had vaulted the anti-immigrationist Sweden Democrats (SD) to influence in 2022.

    But there was just another election on Sunday — and, for the first time, the SD lost ground. And why?

    (more…)

  • “Trans” Molestation in Girls’ Wrestling. Can We Thank the Feminists?

    By Selwyn Duke

    “The end goal of feminist revolution must be … not just the elimination of male privilege,” wrote feminist Shulamith Firestone in 1970, “but of the sex distinction itself.”

    “Genital differences between human beings,” she added, “would no longer matter culturally.”

    Firestone doesn’t get much credit for it, but her standard became feminist dogma for decades. Beginning in the 1980s and continuing a bit beyond 2010 perhaps, the doctrine was this:

    The sexes are the same except for the superficial physical differences; therefore, if you raise boys and girls identically, they will end up identical in inclination and capacity.

    This dogma’s intensity was related well by a story contrarian feminist Camille Paglia once related. Other feminists would corner her on college campuses in the ’70s, she said, glaring at her over her dissenter status. They’d then insist that hormones didn’t even exist — and, even if they did, they couldn’t possibly influence human behavior.

    From this sameness doctrine grew the idea, “A woman can do anything a man can — and maybe better!” Why, this was even applied to sports. The feminists claimed that females lagged behind males only because they hadn’t had “as much chance to develop themselves athletically.” Give them time, they insisted, and women would equal or even surpass men. Exaggeration?

    (more…)

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