SelwynDuke.com

Our Freedom-squelching, Time-sucking Nanny State

By Selwyn Duke

“A government big enough to give you everything you want,” goes a paraphrase of an apocryphal saying, “is big enough to take everything you’ve got.”

This includes too many free minutes.

As to this, we’ve all probably had the kind of experience commentator Kevin R. Kosar describes in an article recently featured on MSN.com. In “Our nanny state and the loss of everyday freedom,” Kosar details how he spent hours trying to help his teen son obtain a learner’s permit; this ordeal included being told, upon arrival at the DMV, that a passport was not acceptable identification. You can read all the excruciating minutiae here if interested, but his larger point is this:

Having to jump through such red-tape hoops isn’t unusual now — it’s today’s norm.

Caitlin Clark and the Psychology of WNBA Racial Hatred

By Selwyn Duke

It’s not hard to understand why Caitlin Clark, the record-setting white ex-NCAA women’s basketball standout, is enjoying attention and endorsements like no WNBA player before her. And, no, it’s not because of (mythical) “white privilege.”

The Anti-beauty Brigade Asks: Can We Learn to Love Ugliness?

By Selwyn Duke

Beauty and the beast…. We invariably know which is which.

But should we be able to?

And if we will always be capable of discerning the difference (hard to imagine otherwise), will we ever value ugliness as much as beauty?

Some activists apparently want us to. Yet just as with the fat-liberation movement and so many other social phenomena today, is this just another attack on objective reality, or at least on ideals?

Ex-White House Doc Reveals What Drugs Might be Jacking Up Biden for Tonight’s Debate

By Selwyn Duke

Five years ago already, in 2019, Joe Biden appeared to forget Barack Obama’s name during a campaign town hall meeting. That would be the Barack Obama whom Biden worked under for eight years, the Obama he once famously said was the “first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Yet a half a decade later Joe is still out there, functioning — sort of.

Oh, he’s mumbling and stumbling and fumbling for facts, but he’s out there. It’s just amazing what you can accomplish, many may conclude, with the absolute best medical care. And now ex-White House physician Ronny Jackson, M.D., who served under three presidents, has weighed in on how this medical miracle is worked.

Overloaded With Left-wing Propaganda, Is Gen Z Starting to Flee the Democrats?

By Selwyn Duke

That senior citizens support Republicans while young Americans vote for Democrats by wide margins is one of those old truisms in politics.

Or is it?

Shockingly to many, polls show that Joe Biden is bleeding support among Gen Z (those born after 1996). What’s more, they also find that he’s doing better among seniors than most Democrats do.

In addition, if a couple of Gen Zers interviewed recently by Fox News are any indication, some of these young people are getting “red-pilled”: They’re waking up to and are disgusted by the left-wing propaganda they’ve been fed.

Woke LEGO: Toy Company Offers Drag Queens and Furries for “Pride” Month

By Selwyn Duke

“With LEGO you can build buses and houses and bridges and helicopters — even the new safety rail on the Sunnydale Bridge,” went a 1973 TV commercial for the popular building blocks. Fast-forward a half century, and the appeals are a bit different. To wit:

“These dazzling minifigures are ready for Pride with their very own spectacular Pride celebration!” LEGO stated on its social-media accounts last week.

This celebration, do note, features drag queens and “furries,” among other deviant identities. This isn’t the first time LEGO has encouraged sexual devolutionary behavior, either.

Two years ago the toy maker ran a commercial titled “The A-Z of Awesome” in which a man masquerading as a woman proudly stated, “What I built here was a transgender garden, so all these different aspects of gender have their place in that garden.”

Whether there was a clever snake in that garden was not reported.

Bump-stock Bunkum: Chicken Little Media’s “Sky Is Falling” Narrative

By Selwyn Duke

“Clarence Thomas has a bump-stock death wish for Americans,” reads a Raw Story title.

“Clarence Thomas’ signature will be on death certificates,” goes an overwrought quotation from an MSNBC Reidout segment.

“The Supreme Court’s Bump Stock Decision Will Prove Fatal,” The New York Times chimes in.

This seems like an awfully frenzied response over a device that’s hardly ever used in crime. In fact, given that illegal aliens pose a greater threat to Americans than people with bump stocks do, you might think the bump-stock batty should be laser focused on the “death wish” that is our open border.

Is Crime Down Under Biden? The Truth About FBI Crime Statistics

By Selwyn Duke

It’s that old chasm between the pseudo-elite and the street. More than three-quarters of Americans believe that crime has gotten worse in recent times, according to a November 2023 Gallup poll. In contrast, mainstream media and other pseudo-elites tell us that crime is down, citing FBI statistics to make their case. But here’s what they don’t tell you (often out of ignorance):

We can’t really know if crime up, down, or the same — not based on FBI data, anyway.

Why? Because FBI statistics appear highly suspect, to say the least.

Moreover, much as with how the CDC redefined the definitions of “vaccines” and “vaccination” in 2021, certain police departments redefined the classifications for certain violent crimes — especially after 2020, in the George Floyd riots’ wake.

Minimal Thinking Kills: California’s Minimum Wage Continues to Destroy Restaurants

By Selwyn Duke

Would you rather have some jobs available at $12 an hour or no jobs available at $20 an hour? The answer may vary depending on whether you’re a business owner or job seeker — or politician or bureaucrat.

Regardless, the opening question, which is of the kind late economist Walter E. Williams often asked, should be pondered with news that California’s new $20 minimum wage is continually claiming victims. The latest is a San Francisco McDonald’s franchisee who’d been in business for 30 years.

This pales in comparison, though, to one of the new minimum wage’s first victims: Rubio’s Coastal Grill. That chain is closing 48 Golden State locations — more than a third of its 134 remaining restaurants across California, Arizona, and Nevada.

Nuclear War: Risk Has Perhaps NEVER Been Greater, Harvard Expert Says

By Selwyn Duke

As a child of the ’70s and ’80s, I, along with my age mates, remember Cold War nuclear annihilation fears well. Oh, I was born after “duck and cover” days, but we did, for example, have the post-apocalyptic 1983 film The Day After, which portrayed a nuclear war’s consequences. Watched by 100 million-plus Americans — more than half our adult population at the time — it’s credited for creating impetus for policies that reduced the atomic threat. Even then-president Ronald Reagan was “greatly depressed” by the movie, as he wrote in his diary, and it stiffened his resolve to, as he put it, ensure “there is never a nuclear war.”

That was then. Judging from people’s concerns today, you could think nuclear weapons had gone the way of the dodo. Americans are focused elsewhere, with young people worried about “climate change” and many doomsayers sounding an alarm over artificial intelligence (which may be problematic). But the atomic threat still very much looms. In fact, says a Harvard academic, nuclear war may be closer than ever.