By Selwyn Duke
If a major American political party had lost its collective mind, would anyone notice?
Given how tight midterm polling is currently, one could wonder, critics may say. Of course, some do notice. An example is one of those critics, commentator Becket Adams. Sounding an alarm Monday, he wrote:
“The American left has lost its mind, and the media seem unbothered.”
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By Selwyn Duke
The Soviets tried creating ape-human hybrids and embraced Lysenkoism, which held that acquired traits could be inherited. Nazi academics, such as Philipp Lenard, promoted the idea that science itself had racial character. Looking back on such pseudo-science, we now just shake our heads. Yet those who shake their fists at the heavens of research objectivity haven’t disappeared; they’ve just rebranded.
In 2024, for example, the Biden administration announced that its bureaucracies could soon incorporate “indigenous knowledge” into their research. What could possibly go wrong? Try this on for size:
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By Selwyn Duke
“Education is useless without the Bible,” stated Noah Webster (1758-1843), known as the “Father of American Scholarship and Education.”
“The Bible was America’s basic textbook in all fields,” he continued. “God’s Word, contained in the Bible, has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct.”
Texas is now taking this to heart. In fact, it has just approved a plan to require its five million-plus government school students to study Bible stories. This has, not surprisingly, inspired controversy. Among the criticisms, too, are claims — by figures such as Senate candidate James Talarico (D-Tex.) — that the proposal is “un-American.” This is an interesting response. After all, Webster perfectly reflected his time, as Bible teaching was essentially the norm in colonial and early American education. And it remained a foundational element well into the 19th century.
Now, were all the Founders and the generations that created America un-American?
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By Selwyn Duke
After a series of primary wins in NYC and other parts of the country, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are poised to spread their wings. Some Democrats are unhappy about this, too — often privately and occasionally overtly. Comedian and commentator Bill Maher has asserted that “democratic socialists” are “not Democrats.” (Of course, Democrats aren’t democrats, either.) And joining him now is veteran Democratic strategist James Carville.
“These people are not Democrats,” he said recently, referencing the DSA.
Perhaps not — but they are the Democrats’ demon children, critics may counter.
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By Selwyn Duke
“Republicans are conservatives,” said author and CEO Kenin Spivak recently. “Conservatives are conservative.” This tautology was uttered to answer a question: Why do Republicans lose social and cultural wars despite winning elections?
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By Selwyn Duke
It was in 2014 that the Obama administration sued the Pennsylvania State Police for treating women equally. No, that’s not a typo. Already dumbed down fitness standards, applied to applicants of both sexes, were deemed discriminatory for applying equality. How?
It was nothing new even back then, but the product of long-embraced “disparate-impact theory.” This states that if different groups perform differently vis-à-vis even a fair test or hiring process, that yardstick is by definition “unjustly discriminatory.” It’s a way of trying to enforce equality of outcome when meritocracy would otherwise allow the cream to rise to the top.
Now, though, after decades of bureaucratic embrace, disparate-impact theory (DIT) is finally being rejected. President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has declared it unconstitutional (yes, it can do that). This means that federal bureaucracies will no longer enforce any discretionary applications of the principle.
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By Selwyn Duke
“You know, people say that demographics are not destiny,” said American “civil rights” attorney Judith Browne Dianis in 2019. “Well, we’re trying to make it destiny, so that’s the work that we are doing.”
Among those who already considered it destiny was late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, speaking in 2006. “There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe — without swords, without guns, without conquest,” he stated. “The 50 million [Muslims] in Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”
Then there was a warning issued by the group Migration Watch UK, addressing how (im)migration is Britain’s main population-growth driver:
Rapid population growth will continue to have a significant impact on public service provision, from the queue for social housing… to hospital, maternity and GP services as well as education, the environment and transport… Immigration may reduce access to social housing for the UK-born.
These statements were made in different countries and directly referenced different places and different implications of immigration. Different people will disagree, too, on whether the immigration referenced/alluded to is beneficial or detrimental. Yet all the statements share one commonality:
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By Selwyn Duke
“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money” goes the apocryphal saying. This satirizing of government’s spendthrift ways is more appropriate than ever, too. After all, our projected 2026 federal budget is $7.4 trillion and our national debt $39 trillion. Our federal tax revenue this year is projected to be $5.6 trillion. But the Washington leviathan’s minions always crave more — and now they’re targeting the world’s first one-trillion-dollar man.
By crossing that $1 trillion threshold, industrialist and visionary Elon Musk has attracted renewed attention from statist money-grubbers. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) again passionately called for a “wealth tax.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) can’t be too happy, either, as last month she insisted, “You can’t earn a billion dollars.” Whether or not she believes the government “earns” the $5.6 trillion in taxes it’s seizing from Americans was not reported.
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By Selwyn Duke
When thinking about poor Austin Metcalf, I sometimes wonder about his reactions during those last fatal moments on April 2 of last year. When murderer Karmelo Anthony drew that knife, could he not, being young and athletic, have avoided at least a deadly strike? Perhaps Anthony was just too quick. But then I realize something:
The two boys were from vastly different worlds.
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By Selwyn Duke
“Is it better to be loved or feared?” the main mobster character, Sonny, was asked in the film A Bronx Tale (1993). His answer was that he’d like to enjoy both. But if he had to choose one, it would be fear, he stated, because “[f]ear lasts longer than love.”
Of course, these are the sentiments of a criminal. Yet as such they’re most relevant to a recently asked question:
“Should cops be feared or respected?”
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