SelwynDuke.com

“Gender-neutral” Childrearing: When a Sexual Hang-up Leads to Child Abuse

By Selwyn Duke

First there was “Pop” in Sweden, then “Storm” in Canada. Now out of Britain comes Sasha, a boy, we hear, who is being raised by his parents in a “sex-neutral” fashion. And this isn’t just your modernistic grandmother’s neutrality, where she didn’t want to push toy guns and trucks on her son. Sasha’s parents, Beck Laxton and “partner,” as he’s described, Kieran Cooper, are going the full feminist monty. 

On Sasha’s birth announcement, there was no indication of sex; and for years Laxton wouldn’t use the pronoun “he” when referring to him on her blog, but instead just indentified him as “the infant.” She explained why in an interview with the Cambridge News, stating, “I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping. Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?” Therefore, writes Piper Weiss at Shine:

Sasha dresses in clothes he likes — be it a hand-me-downs [sic] from his sister or his brother. The big no-no's are hyper-masculine outfits like skull-print shirts and cargo pants. In one photo, sent to friends and family, Sasha's dressed in a shiny pink girl's swimsuit. "Children like sparkly things," says Beck. "And if someone thought Sasha was a girl because he was wearing a pink swimming costume, then what effect would that have?"

Laxton clearly doesn’t know — and doesn’t seem to care. After all, writes Weiss, “[Laxton is] open to her son pursing any career or sexual preference he chooses….” Yes, well, as long as, I suppose, it’s not “hyper-masculine.” This brings me to my first point.

Read the rest here.

Liberal Greed: Barack Obama and the Real One Percent

By Selwyn Duke

Forget Mitt Romney and Bain Capital. If you want to find the real greedy one percent, you need look no further than Barack Obama.

According to tax returns released yesterday, Barack and Michelle Obama earned $1.2 million from 2000 through 2004 yet managed no more than $10,772 in charitable donations. This amounts to less than one percent of their income. Upon becoming public figures, there was hope and some (spare) change, as they did a lot better in earning and a little better in giving. In 2005 and 2006, they donated $137,622, which was just over 5 percent of the $2.6 million that free enterprise distributed their way.

In contrast, Romney appears the Santa Claus to Obama’s Scrooge. According to the former Massachusetts Governor’s tax returns, he donated almost $3 million to charity in 2010, just under 14 percent of his $21.7 million income; he did even better in 2011, donating $4 million to charity — almost 20 percent of his $20.9 million income.

In other words, while Obama talks a good game about redistributing wealth, he seems to want his to stay right where it is.

Read the rest here.

In Praise of a Do-nothing Congress

By Selwyn Duke

Here's a question: how can we expect to have small government if we condemn Congress for not growing it?

It's always a disturbing experience when you're accosted with a picture of Harry Reid, as I was upon logging on to Drudge last Monday afternoon.  But at least his image bore a fitting caption: "MOST FUTILE EVER."  I then clicked the link and found myself at The Washington Times – normally a quite sane organ of the media – and learned the meaning of the caption: the Times was lamenting a do-nothing Congress and presented Reid as its poster boy.  Writes the paper, "It's official: Congress ended its least-productive year in modern history after passing 80 bills – fewer than during any other session since year-end records began being kept in 1947."  

Writes Duke, "It's official: conservatives are completely confused about what begets big government."

How You Can Tell if a Candidate Is Serious About Ending Illegal Migration

By Selwyn Duke

Imagine that your son has a habit of sprinkling copious amounts of bird seed and setting up impromptu birdbaths in your yard. You then notice that your property is starting to seem like an aviary, and, as beautiful as the birds are, they’re becoming bothersome. So you approach your husband and ask him to remedy the problem. He then promises to build a scarecrow, but doesn’t complete the job.

And, when the situation persists and you again ask him to help, he simply scratches his head and replies, “You know, it’s just not realistic to remove all these birds from our property; it’s time-consuming, expensive, and uncompassionate to boot. Besides, every time I chase a few away, more come a little while later.” Now, given that he’s not even hinting at the obvious solution, let alone addressing it, would you think he was very serious about remedying the problem?

On illegal migration, our politicians are for the birds. When pressed on it, the best of them will talk about building fences, beefing up the border patrol, and, sometimes even, militarizing our southern border. And these measures are all well and good. But when asked what we should do about the 12 to 25 million illegals already on our shores, the issue suddenly becomes more complex than high-temperature superconductivity. The politicians will scratch their heads and then utter something to the effect of, “Well, we can’t deport 12 million people.” It’s a response that some say is a reason and others call an excuse. But I say that, in certain cases at least, it’s something else: a dodge. How do I know? Because obvious solutions can’t elude everyone.

Read the rest here.

Romney’s Whiteness and the Times’ Lightness: Both a Liability

By Selwyn Duke

It’s interesting that liberals accuse traditionalists of wanting to turn back the clock. For they themselves live in 1952. To be precise, where those on the right want to resurrect the virtues of ages past, leftists think that vices long buried never died. It’s enough to make me want to bang my head against a wall; only, neurological damage has bad effects like uncontrollable drooling and a desire to read The New York Times.

Speaking of which, the Old Gay Lady recently published an opinion piece by one Lee Siegel titled "What's Race Got to Do With It?” Discussing the presidential campaign, Mr. Siegel advances the thesis that far from Mitt Romney being at a disadvantage because of what he is (a Mormon), he has an advantage because of what he is: “the whitest white man” running for the presidency. Writes Siegel:

[T]here has yet to be any discussion over the one quality that has subtly fueled his [Romney’s] candidacy thus far and could well put him over the top in the fall: his race. The simple, impolitely stated fact is that Mitt Romney is the whitest white man to run for president in recent memory.

Of course, I’m not talking about a strict count of melanin density. I’m referring to the countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways he telegraphs to a certain type of voter that he is the cultural alternative to America’s first black president. It is a whiteness grounded in a retro vision of the country, one of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms and fathers unashamed of working hard for corporate America.

Read the rest here.

If Republicans Want to Win, They Must Shed the Communist-inspired Word “Capitalism”

By Selwyn Duke

One of the simplest rhetorical truths is that the side that defines the vocabulary of a debate wins the debate.  Yet, amazingly, we still see experienced conservative politicians with access to advanced polling operations and an array of advisors use the Lexicon of the Left.  And this election cycle is no exception.

I could almost cringe when I hear – as I did repeatedly during Monday’s South Carolina GOP debate – Republicans talk about “capitalism.”  “I believe in capitalism….”  “Barack Obama doesn’t believe in capitalism…..”  Capitalism this and capitalism that – look at me with my plump wallet, walking stick and tony top hat.  Oh, it’s not that I don’t believe in free enterprise; it’s that we shouldn’t use words that conjure up sentiments akin to the preceding rhyme.

The Hypocrisy and Foolishness of Warren Buffett

By Selwyn Duke

Despite his advanced age, it appears Warren Buffett has never heard the admonition, “Practice what you preach.” And it seems that some of his apologists haven’t, either.

As you may know, Buffett has long been urging the government to seize more money from the rich, with the rationale that they have an obligation to pay more. In response, many traditionalists have told him to put up or shut up: If he truly believes in what he says, there’s nothing stopping him from writing a check to Big Brother as large as his socialism-espousing mouth.  And now Buffett has a response:

He will if his critics will.

Read the rest here.

The Myth of Bad Republican Candidates

By Selwyn Duke

Repeat a big Democrat talking point often enough, and it becomes the truth.  There is a certain liberal narrative that has recently filtered down to many independents and even some conservatives: the idea that the current crop of Republican candidates is weak, wanting and worrisome.  The lament is, “Hell’s bells, the guy in the White House is out of his depth, but what alternatives does the GOP offer?”  The idea, I suppose, is that we might as well just re-elect Barack Obama.  At least he has four years of golfing, government-growing and greenback-gobbling experience.

Silly Things We Hear: “Communism Works on Paper”

By Selwyn Duke

While discussing on The View recently how North Korean heir Kim Jong Un enjoyed the luxury of being sent to a Swiss boarding school, Whoopi Goldberg said the following, “This is what happens with communism. It’s a great concept; on paper it makes perfect sense. But once you put a human being in power, it shifts. We saw it in Russia; we’ve seen it all over the world.”

Not surprisingly, this earned Goldberg some criticism. Yet, to be fair, her sentiment is a common one. It’s that supposedly enlightened, nuanced opinion stating that communism works great in theory — it’s just the practical application that’s problematic. And while Goldberg seems to accept that man’s nature will always ensure communism’s unworkability, others entertain a corollary of the above opinion: that the ideology could work if only the right people were at the helm.

The first thing we need to debunk is the on-paper-validity myth. Could you imagine a scientist, after observing a theory consistently fail when applied over decades, insist that it works on paper? Unless he was a climate-change warmist, he’d be laughed out of his field.

Read the rest here.

What conservatives and the GOP dare not say about immigration

By Selwyn Duke

In a recent election piece, pundit Ann Coulter identified illegal migration as one of the two most important issues of our time.  She writes that if we fail at halting it, “the country will be changed permanently.”  She continues:

Taxes can be raised and lowered.  Regulations can be removed (though they rarely are).  Attorneys general and Cabinet members can be fired.  Laws can be repealed.  Even Supreme Court justices eventually die.

But capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California.  There will be no turning back.

She expands on this later in the piece:

[W]e ought to be able to learn the perils of illegal immigration by looking at California.

Massive legal and illegal immigration has already so changed the California electorate that no Republican can be elected statewide anymore.

…If even Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, two bright, attractive, successful female business executives – one pro-life and one pro-choice – can't win a statewide election in California spending millions of their own dollars in the middle of the 2010 Republican sweep, it's buenas noches, muchachos.   

Coulter is, of course, right – but she only dare hint at the real problem.  The fact is that halting illegal migration will do nothing to forestall the socialist electoral shift to which she refers.