SelwynDuke.com

Barack Obama: the Liar’s Liar

By Selwyn Duke

If I had to credit Barack Obama with one thing, it would be knowing his market. He understands that with an America so dumbed-down, and a media so prostrate before him, he can get away with lies previous presidents wouldn’t dare contemplate.

A good example — but far from the worst — is the current battle over sequestration, a fancy word for fantasy budget cuts. Obama has been engaging in demagoguery, blaming Republicans for these impending “cuts,” calling them “brutal” and a “meat cleaver” approach. What is the truth?

Sequestration was Obama’s idea.

He proposed it in 2011 as part of the budget deal. Congress then passed it with the support of not just Republicans such as John Boehner, but also some colleagues named Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. And after the GOP-controlled House and Democrat-controlled Senate approved the bill, Obama signed this “meat cleaver” approach into law. But it gets worse.

Read the rest here.

Liberal CNN Panelists Defend Murderer Dorner

By Selwyn Duke

“Modern liberalism is moral dysfunction.” When I recently made that statement after citing leftist social-media support for murderer Christopher Dorner, some readers thought I’d gone overboard. Surely, the twisted rooting for a paranoid killer on Facebook and elsewhere is just the rambling of an odd minority; there are radicals “on both sides” and one in every bunch, right? But now more evidence has surfaced vindicating my statement that such feelings aren’t at all unusual among the passionate left — evidence provided courtesy of the “professionals” at CNN.

Killer Dorner’s Supporters are Par for the Left’s Course

By Selwyn Duke

While I was a conservative by age 12, for some time thereafter I viewed liberalism as most do, as just another ideology. Sure, it was an irritating ideology, but an ideology nonetheless. But then something happened. I don’t quite remember if I was 20, 21, or 22, but some experiences in my life and much pondering of the issues and the human condition led to an insight. It hit me like a bolt of lightning:

Liberalism is what evil is masquerading as in our time.

John McCain’s “Racist” Joke that Wasn’t

By Selwyn Duke

Being a conservative just ain’t what it used to be. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) was recently accused of tweeting a “racist” joke — by another Republican.

The issue arose when McCain, responding to Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s remark that he’d like to be sent into space (not, I assume, by an Israeli nuke), referenced Iran’s recent successful launch of a monkey into space and tweeted, “So Ahmadinejad wants to be the 1st Iranian in space — Wasn’t he just there last week?”

The Great Gun Debate: Joshpe Responds

By Brett Joshpe

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to debate and respond to Selwyn Duke's piece, which makes many very reasonable points. Its biggest deficiency is that it never actually proposes measures --whether specific new regulations or repeal of specific existing ones -- that would improve the current system. Instead, Mr. Duke says he would scale back gun laws from 22,000 to 5,000, two arbitrary numbers, neither of which bear any correlation to smart policy.

Before discussing potential policy responses, let me say that Mr. Duke is quite right that thousands of gun laws, unsurprisingly, did not eliminate crime (I am unaware of anybody who ever suggested that they would, or of any law that ever has). I find wholly unpersuasive the suggestion that laws -- particularly new laws -- are unnecessary because "bad guys" will not follow them or because they will fail to eliminate a problem completely.

Read the rest here.

The Most Interesting Career: Housewife

By Selwyn Duke

On the heels of my recent article on women in combat, in which I defend traditionalism, it’s perhaps a good time to also take up the cudgels for that bugaboo of women’s studies classes: the housewife. Thus do I provide you with the quotation below from G.K. Chesterton’s book What’s Wrong with the World. He wrote:

Women in Combat: Battling Nature, Battering Reality

By Selwyn Duke

Senseless advice and nothing nice; that’s what little-girls-in-combat policy is made of.

The obvious has already been said about placing women in front-line combat positions. Their presence will reduce unit cohesiveness; male soldiers’ natural instinct to protect women will influence battlefield decisions; there will be the problem of sexual impropriety within the ranks and of rape when women are captured; women will have more trouble measuring up to the physical and psychological demands of battle; special accommodations will no doubt be made so that women may tend to feminine concerns; and, as the high pregnancy rate aboard naval vessels has proven, having young men and women operate in close quarters is folly. Yet the truth is that it was just a matter of time before women were allowed in combat; it’s a piece that fits seamlessly into the modern sex-role puzzle. And it’s not surprising if a majority of Americans support the policy; they are sex-role puzzled.

The Great Gun Debate: Selwyn Duke vs. Brett Joshpe

The following is my first entry in a gun debate with Politico writer Brett Joshpe. I will post a link to his response when it is published.

By Selwyn Duke

A few weeks ago, author and Manhattan-based lawyer Brett Joshpe penned a pro-gun-control piece whose thrust was that conservatives need to be sensible with respect to firearms legislation. It’s not sensible, said he, to oppose any and all further restrictions on Second Amendment rights. Well, let’s discuss what’s “sensible.”

Is Man a Plague Upon the Earth?

By Selwyn Duke

First there was the anti-Western Westerner, the hate-America-first crowd, and the self-loathing white person. Now we have the anti-human human, who, like General Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, seems to think that “the only good human is a dead human!” Of course, the Kum-Gaia-singing misanthropes don’t actually say that; rather, as David Attenborough recently opined, they assert that man is a “plague” whose burgeoning population threatens to do to the planet’s resources what the feds do to the treasury. Now, I already pointed out in a recent piece that Attenborough is factually wrong: The world will in the foreseeable future likely face a population implosion, not an explosion. But he is philosophically wrong as well.

There is no doubt that we should be good shepherds of the Earth. We have a responsibility to conserve resources when possible and should cherish God’s creation. And while we can acknowledge that we all too often fail in that regard, it is quite another thing to call man a “plague,” which clearly implies that he is a troublesome life form deleterious to something more important. Yet the issue here isn’t just that some ascribe greater value to the Earth than to man, or at best equal value. It is the larger questions of why they believe the Earth has any intrinsic value at all and the basis on which that value is assessed.

Read the rest here.

Joe Biden: No Reason to Ban AR-15s

By Selwyn Duke

Okay, half-slow laughin’ Joe didn’t actually say that, but he might as well have. While defending his position a week ago that banning the rifles incorrectly called “assault weapons” won’t negatively impact upon Americans’ safety, he pointed out that you shouldn’t trouble yourself: shotguns would still be available — and they’re more effective, anyway. He said, reports the Daily Caller:

A shotgun will keep you a lot safer — a double-barreled shotgun — than an assault weapon in somebody’s hand who doesn’t know how to use it, even one who does know how to use it. You know, it’s harder to use an assault weapon to hit something than it is a shotgun.

[…]You want to keep people away in an earthquake? Buy some shotgun shells.

Alright, Joe; if you’re talking about close-quarters self-defense, you’ll get no argument from me. Now, would you again explain why you want to ban AR-15s?