Category Archives: Federalist

The attempt to cancel Joe Rogan has moved through its predictable stages. First, you had a slew of concerned doctors which included a large number of people who were not, actually, doctors raise their stethoscopes outside Spotify headquarters about Rogans meandering lengthy interviews with people they deem unacceptable sharing their perspectives regarding the Covid pandemic.

This was framed in the press without any regard for the actual expertise of those raising the claims. Nor was there any investigation into whether these people themselves held views now deemed dubious about masking, school shutdowns, economic lockdowns, treatment methods, or how effective the vaccines would be all of which would be relevant to the veracity of their Rogan critiques.

The approach was very obviously an activation of the Cathedral that is, the organized combination of elite power represented by a priesthood of media, academia, politicians and activist groups all funded by corporate tithes. They cracked open a similar playbook to the many open letters which assured the American people the powers that be possessed incontrovertible evidence that Donald Trump was elected via a Russian conspiracy, or that Hunter Bidens laptop was a fraudulent Russian creation.

The experts are concerned. The media dutifully reports. The institutes release their findings. And the people must listen for our safety and security and the sake of our democracy. The clerisy of the all-powerful woke religion has declared what reality is. So let it be written, so let it be done.

Whats so interesting about the Rogan attack is that, at least initially, it failed. It failed because Rogan occupies a seat of influence and power that is far above his station, from the Cathedrals perspective. There is power in numbers, and even if they view his listeners as rabble listening to the rambling queries of a barbarian Khan from the steppes, they are too numerous and engaged to not know whats going on and recognize the playbook for what it is.

Keep in mind, of course, that it is this rabble that is the problem. The Cathedral cant cancel them all, they are too numerous, so instead they seek to take down Rogan both to deny his followers a gathering point, and to send a message of any other lower tier podcaster or commentator lest they entertain ill-advised contrarian ideas.

The tactical failure of this attack of the nursing students is of a piece with why Rogan is popular in the first place his willingness to bring in interesting, contrarian guests who break with elite consensus on all manner of topics.

So they moved on to Spotifys business model. If the experts couldnt break things open, perhaps aging Boomer musicians can! Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and an assortment of corrupt has-beens dutifully went along as Boomers do. This had as much of an effect as the wind off a ducks back, except perhaps to inform Twitter that Mary Trump and Roxane Gay had Spotify podcasts, lost now to the mists of time. The Cathedral needed much bigger names, and they couldnt get them.

The failure of these initial sorties was driven in part by Spotifys investment in Rogan as the tentpole of their podcasting effort. The Swedes who own it (kind of) realize internal critics like Harry and Meghan are lazy entitled people who will never deliver on their contract, while Rogan, despite his wealth, still approaches his job with the blue collar values of a working stand-up.

Remember: This is how they do things. This is how they have always done things. In the very recent past, it worked. They are only frustrated now because they find that it no longer works.

So the anti-Rogan forces moved on to yet another new tactic in their campaign. If they could not cancel him for featuring the views of contrarian experts many of whom have vastly more experience in the areas of work at the center of debates about Covid, and who are trusted by audiences in part because they are far more humble in applying their perspectives than your typical paid CNN commentator the Cathedral would have to cancel him for something more conventional: in this case, being a racist.

They had to dredge up something else, and what they chose was his use of the n-word, frequently via quotations of other peoples work, but not always, and his affinity for racially insensitive jokes.

Of course, if this is the justification for taking Rogan down, it would create a blast radius that would envelop an enormous number of authors and comedians like King Kong teetering atop the Empire State Building, such a fall would crush those whose careers he helped launch and anyone who dared to laugh at his inappropriate humor. And any smart listener will notice that it was only after Rogan began to bring on guests who regularly challenged the Cathedrals Covid narrative that his past jokes became a problematic issue where celebrities of all kinds must take a side.

But its important to understand this is not the end of the playbook, not by far. Fans should expect him to be forced to face allegations of sexual misogyny, of inappropriate behavior backstage, of a litany of sins both understandable and predictable.

Rogan seems largely unprepared for this because he did not set out to become the most influential podcaster in the country. He didnt think in terms of what was acceptable to say in mixed company or while drinking with his comedian friends. He set out to bring an everyman quality to the interview process, and to talk to interesting people about things that interest him. But this is the way this works now. Run afoul of the Cathedral, and eventually the Grand Inquisitor shows up at your door, confident as always that the persecution you are about to receive is for the benefit of the people, and of you.

In this case, the target is big enough that he cannot be thoroughly eradicated, but his power can be diminished. The guest lists can be more restricted. The corporate sponsorships can disappear. Rogan can be forced from Amazon servers, his clips from Google and YouTube, sharing of his work banned by Facebook and Twitter, and all will be legal and allowable and fine according to all the people who dont know what time it is.

It is an approach particularly familiar to those who have engaged in lengthy court cases in recent years battling for their right to exercise their religious freedom. If you run any kind of business which achieves success without genuflecting to the right causes, the powers that be media, academic, administrative, bureaucratic, legal will be turned on you. Comply, or your access is cut off. Self-censor, or else.

As George Orwell wrote:

The chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films, and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is not done to say it Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

What is positive for Americans who favor freedom of thought is that the problem of the Cathedral is now a well-established fact, receiving universal recognition. The threat, once dismissed, is now known. What we lack are uniting solutions.

Some think that just being politically powerful enough that the threat merchants back down is the answer. They could cite a similar situation, though one with legal ramifications, which played out in the GoFundMe treatment of the fundraiser for the freedom-minded trucker convoy. But there, the threat of investigation from Florida and Texas was enough to put fear into the online fundraiser. If the only answer is win more elections, I remain unconvinced.

What we should consider now is: how do we prevent this from happening not for Rogan, for whom the rabble will still follow him wherever he goes, or for the convoy, because any effort that raises 10 million dollars will get attention for where the money goes (exception: BLM), but for the next Joe Rogan.

Somewhere, at this very moment, there is a podcaster doing their work with a tenth or a hundredth of his listenership, who labors without an audience and whose guests are nowhere as prominent but just as compelling, and this very day the Cathedral can, without any thought or ramifications at all, decide to crush them like a bug.

So for those of us who want to fight back in defense of freedom of thought the question becomes: What weapons do we offer her?

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When It Comes To Joe Rogan, The Real N-Word That Matters Is 'No' - The Federalist

It remains controversial 20 years later. In recent weeks, it arguably influenced the hiring of Josh McDaniels as Oakland Raiders head coach. Given that it helped launch the career of Tom Brady, who just announced his retirement, its as relevant as ever.

The latest installment of ESPNs 30 for 30 series, The Tuck Rule, examines the circumstances that led to the (in)famous incident in the waning stages of a game in the 2001-02 NFL playoffs. It also explores the way this one incident affected the lives of the two players involved.

In an ironic twist, they had played together a few years before the incident at the University of Michigan. The fact that the two came together for the documentary gave the film a subtle yet unmistakable signal about the value of sportsmanship and friendship in athletics.

The former Michigan Wolverines, Brady and cornerback Charles Woodson, reunited at Bradys mansion in Tampa to watch film of the game. The last game ever played at Foxboro Stadium, the Jan. 19, 2002 clash between Bradys New England Patriots and Woodsons Raiders took place in a winter wonderland, with several inches of snow falling during the game on a chilly New England night.

The snow made footing difficult, and both teams struggled to score. Late in the game, with his team trailing 13-10, Brady needed to lead his team down the field for a field goal to tie the match and force overtime.

With just under two minutes remaining in the game, Raiders cornerback Eric Allen heard Brady receive the call for the next play while lurking on the Patriots sideline. He then relayed the play call to his Raider teammates. Allen dropped back in coverage, trying to bait Brady into throwing an interception that would seal the game for Oakland.

Brady never got the chance. While misreading the defensive coverage, the then-young Brady admitted that he fell for the veteran Allens trap. Woodson came on a corner blitz to Bradys blindside. Brady had cocked his arm to pass, but upon discovering Woodson, attempted to pull the ball back. As he did so, the ball came out of his hands Oakland recovered, and officials awarded the Raiders possession.

Thats when things got interesting. The officials reviewed the play, and referee Walt Coleman called the play an incomplete pass, meaning New England would keep the ball. In calling the play an incompletion, Coleman cited a rule put into place in 1999:

NFL Rule 3, Section 22, Article 2, Note 2.When [an offensive] player is holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his arm starts a forward pass, even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body. Also, if the player has tucked the ball into his body and then loses possession, it is a fumble. [Emphasis added.]

Although he bungled the explanation of the rule to the crowd that day, Coleman said in the documentary that because Brady had not completed the process of tucking the ball, the rule meant the play had to be called an incomplete pass. In re-watching the game film with Woodson, Brady admitted that he wanted to tuck the ball, but had not yet done so while Woodson believed he had completed the process of tucking the ball, meaning the play should have been called a fumble under the rule then in effect.

Ironically enough, this same tuck rule had affected a Patriots game earlier in the 2001 season. In a game against the New York Jets that September, what officials first called a sack-fumble that New England recovered got converted into an incomplete pass upon review.

In the documentary, Patriots coach Bill Belichick said he knew Coleman made the correct call, because the Patriots had been on the other side of the rule months before. But to this observer at least, the September play appeared more clear-cut Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde hadnt yet begun the process of tucking the ball, whereas Brady had begun the process, and some could argue had completed it, which would have made the play a fumble.

Colemans ruling didnt give the Patriots the victory, but had it gone the other way and the Raiders received possession, they could have run out the clock, guaranteeing New Englands defeat. Instead, Brady led the Patriots into position for a game-tying field goal to send the game into overtime and upon winning the coin toss in overtime, led a drive for another Adam Vinatieri field goal to seal the New England win.

The documentary spends time pondering the many counter-factual arguments that have turned the tuck rule game into lore. What if the Raiders had successfully converted their fourth-and-inches with just minutes left in the game, rather than punting back to the Patriots? What if the Raiders and not the Patriots had recovered a Patriot fumble of that punt? In both cases, the controversial play would never have happened. The Raiders would have run out the clock, and Brady would never have gotten a chance for the game-tying, and eventual game-winning, drives.

But the most interesting counterfactuals involve Coleman ruling the play a fumble and not an incompletion. Under that scenario, Bradys misreading of the coverage would have cost the Patriots the game, and ended their season. Brady had only become the starter when Drew Bledsoe got hurt during the second week of that 2001 season, and Brady admitted to ESPN his belief that he would have returned to Bledsoes backup in 2002 had the tuck rule gone the other way.

Instead, the Patriots defeated the Raiders, and advanced to the Super Bowl after beating the Steelers in the conference championship game the following week (with an assist from Bledsoe, called on in relief after Brady suffered an injury). Bradys late-game heroics against the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI cemented his status as starting quarterback and began both the Patriots dynasty and Bradys legend. Instead of regaining his starting job, Bledsoe got traded to the Buffalo Bills in the 2002 off-season.

Belichick told ESPN that he would not have taken the starting job away from Brady had the tuck rule gone the other way something that is of course easier for him to say with the benefit of hindsight. The other participant in the tuck rule incident, Charles Woodson, eventually got a Super Bowl ring, but it took him nine more years and a move to the Green Bay Packers to do so. As for the rule, which received widespread derision following the Patriots-Raiders game, NFL owners finally agreed to nix it from the rule book in 2013.

For this observer, living overseas at the time of the tuck rule game, the documentary provided helpful context about an incident I had heard about, but not fully understood. The way it provided the launching pad to Bradys career means it will always stand as a turning point in sports history.

But ESPNs re-telling of this tale had a special quality to it, because it brought together the two participants who, though on different teams that day, continue to share a special bond as college teammates. Their banter while watching the game film Brady pointing out an uncalled penalty when Woodson hit Bradys helmet, Woodson jeering at Brady for tripping a Raider player trying to recover what Brady thought was his fumble showed the light-hearted side of a lingering controversy.

As with so much in our society these days, bar-room arguments over things like the tuck rule can often turn acrimonious. The 30 for 30 documentary shows how two Hall of Fame players (Woodson received the honor last year, and Brady will as soon as he becomes eligible) can argue over a play and a game with enormous real-world consequences for both of them, yet still remain friends. The value of this kind of relationship extends far beyond sports.

The 30 for 30 special The Tuck Rule will re-air on ESPN, and is available on demand via the ESPN+ app.

Continued here:

'The Tuck Rule' Explores The Controversial Call That Launched Tom Brady - The Federalist

My family was late to see Encanto and I had heard numerous positive reviews of the film. Having now seen the movie and finding much to enjoy, I nonetheless see problematic cultural undertones from the character of Luisa.

On the surface, the character trope is merely another tired example of Hollywood being unable to present womanly strength in any way other than This woman is literally physically strong. This particular storytelling rinse-and-repeat is both exhausted and exhausting. Hollywood has collapsed feminine strength into this singular presentation: one that most conceals the ways in which women are distinctly strong.

Luisas hulky physiology is the most immediate aspect of her characterization and the component of Encantos visual world that grabs the viewer most viscerally. The most superficial reading of her as a character is that her design is about representation for women who arent shaped like the typical Disney stereotype. This idea apparently carries some weight in the broader culture despite the simple reality that no one who sees Encanto has ever met a woman who looks like Luisa.

Now, that isnt to say that women do not exist who share some characteristics or even combinations of characteristics with Luisa. Luisa stands above not just the men in her life but even enormous natural features in her world. She has a jawline to rival Dick Tracy. Scouring the entirety of the internet for a handful of women who can resemble Luisa under special circumstances is to prove the rule by demonstrating how scarce the exceptions are.

We know what Disneys bigger-than-size-zero women look like. We also know what their muscular men look like. Below youll find an example of each. Which does Luisa most resemble?

That Disney is up to something no good with Luisas character design is easy to see within the narrative as well. Luisa is just one member of a magical family imbued with wonderful powers. Luisas uncle Bruno has the magical power of seeing the future. One cannot help but notice that his powers did not come with enormous physical eyes. (Bruno, as a man the family is comfortable exiling because he continues to tell the matriarchal community truths they find unappealing, must be reserved for another day.)

Luisas cousin Dolores can hear anything. Again, the viewer notes that her powers did not come with giant elephant ears on the side of her head. The other Madrigals look quite normal, all things considered for a cartoon, but Luisas gift, her great strength, is accompanied by an entirely unique physiology unlike anything seen in the real world she is alleged to represent.

The image of Luisa nonetheless does not account for all of the bizarreness of Luisas character. For my money, the two catchiest songs in Encanto are We Dont Talk About Bruno and Luisas Surface Pressure. Wouldnt you like to inject whoever at Disney made the voice-casting choice with truth serum and ask, Now, why did you conclude Luisa needed a husky-voiced actress?

The song Luisa sings that defines her character is filled with the imagery and angst of bearing responsibility for a family in the most masculine sense possible. Of course, it could have been a song from an eldest daughter about caring for her family as a woman. Twitter user Royal Blue Raptor has made this point exceedingly well here and I recommend you read it. But that isnt what Luisa sings about. She sings about doing combat with the world on behalf of her family.

Luisa is, in fact, regularly paralleled with Hercules. At one point in the story, Luisa is asked by a villager to redirect the course of a river, one of Hercules legendary labors. This parallel is made even stronger during the Surface Pressure song: Hercules is named, then seen running away from Cerberus. Who picks up the sword and shield to slay the beast? Luisa, of course.

Encanto clearly isnt ignorant of traditional female stereotypes. In fact, the portrayal of women drawn from the traditional family culture of Colombia, which woke Disney feels okay portraying is quite excellent otherwise. Mom heals people by feeding them.

Even stereotypical criticisms of women make it into the movie. One womans emotions swing wildly from sunny skies to literal storm clouds. Another woman hears everything and is seen as an untrustworthy gossip.

Then there is Luisa. I believe the best way to understand Luisas role in Encanto is to take a look at another, older story. C.S. Lewis 1945 novel That Hideous Strength has risen in recent years from a book that merely anticipated some of our contemporary challenges to an outright predictive prophecy of chilling accuracy. One of the facets of our cultural moment that Lewis saw coming is the insistence that the absurd be affirmed in order to maintain an individuals standing among societal elites.

In Lewis book, the character Mark Studdock is taken to a particular place within the progressive N.I.C.E. institute named The Objective Room, where Studdock is pushed to reject the idea of objective reality through an act of blasphemy. Completing the task in The Objective Room is the initiation ritual into the inner ring of N.I.C.E., an act that draws the participant into the institutes program of replacing humanity with a new, more evolved version set free by escaping embodied existence.

Writing about Studdocks crisis in The Objective Room for The Discovery Institute, Cameron Wybrow says:

[Mark] sees that the intellectual habits of his whole life of mocking traditional values, of belittling traditional institutions, of ignoring beauty, of regarding nature as purely stuff to be used or an enemy to be conquered, of preferring glib abstractions to the concrete reality of living people, of thinking that a reductionist science is the source of all truth and more important than humanity itself must lead to the insane doctrine of amoral, motiveless action which produces ex-human monstrosities

Readers might resonate with what Wybrow calls the intellectual habits of Studdocks life: mocking traditional values, regarding nature as merely moldable material to be shaped and reshaped according to human whims, and being powerfully pre-committed to the dictates of what travels under the name science. If the reader does not resonate with those habits, then surely those habits of mind can be readily observed in contemporary society. The question of how those particular habits the kind that Lewis says prepare us for a post-human future might be cultivated is exactly why, unlike her brother Bruno, we really must talk about Luisa Madrigal.

Luisa functions in Encanto like The Objective Room at N.I.C.E. did for Studdock in Lewiss novel. She pushes the viewer to affirm reality is plastic, free from all norms, and subjected to being formed and reformed as fashions shift.

The developing human brain is a sponge, and its ability to uptake complex patterns of information is remarkable. Disney executives know their stories shape what children think of as normal. Can we hope that parents who rightly control what media shapes their childrens sense of normal are equally aware?

Women are wonders of Gods creative goodness and wisdom. As part of an ongoing assault on reality, Luisa masks that truth by substituting masculinity for femininity. Women are strong, indeed, in uniquely feminine ways, and in ways that contrast with currently fashionable destructive nonsense.

Families who want to see their children live well (and come out healthy on the far side of our cultural descent into actual madness) better get on this: Decide where Disney gets to come into your house, and how to talk to your kids in a way that helps them love the true, good, and beautiful while recognizing and rejecting the kind of dehumanizing messaging Luisa represents.

We live in a constant propaganda onslaught. This isnt the time to get lax.

Jeff Wright is a family man, teacher, and pastor. He co-hosts The Pop Culture Coram Deo Podcast and regularly writes for Servants and Heralds.

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'Encanto's' Luisa Is Way Too Beefy For A Woman, And It's Wrong - The Federalist

This article contains obscene quoted material.

Its been less than two months since an associate professor teamed up with a pro-pedophile organization in an attempt to normalize the most repugnant crimes imaginable. Now, yet another unhinged professor has been caught advocating for pedophilia, this time even more brazenly.

Stephen Kershnar is a professor at State University of New York at Fredonia, and a pedophilia apologist.

Heres Kershnar on video saying that an adult male having sex with a 12-year-old girl is not obviously wrong, and that calling it wrong is a mistake. In the same clip, he refers to pedophilic rape as adult-child sex, another euphemism that, just like minor-attracted person, is being used in an attempt to run cover for evil.

It gets worse. Twelve isnt young enough for Kershnar. He continues to defend pedophilia, remarking The notion that its wrong even with a one-year-old is not quite obvious to me. He goes on. I dont think its blanket wrong at any age.

Kershnar even argues that children can consent to sex with adults, comparing it to a child willfully engaging in kickball or participating in bar mitzvah lessons.

What are the legal ramifications of such an unspeakably vile perspective? Kershnar lays it out. Since hes not sure if raping infants is good or bad, the thumb on the scale should go to liberty. Liberty for who? Moral monsters who want to rape infants.

Kershnar is open to the idea that pedophilia is deeply harmful to victims, but he just cant put his finger on why. He thinks it could be because of bigots like you and me, who go berserk when pedophiles rape kids.

He even argues that we often make children do things they dont want to do, like go to church or go to temple or go to their sisters ballet recital. His perspective is backed up by podcast host Thaddeus Russel, who makes an equally monstrous argument when he says all a childs life is, is coercion by adults often to make the child do something for the adults pleasure only.

Its also telling that these dangerous viewpoints have found their way into the mainstream through left-wing outlets. At one point, Russel boasts that he authored an article in The Daily Beast that argued for lowering consent laws.

If SUNY Fredonia would like to right this wrong, it can begin by correcting Kershnars bio, which adopts the language of child groomers by calling pedophilia adult-child sex.

Thus far, SUNY Fredonias response has been swift, although incomplete. In a statement, the university remarked that Kershnars views are reprehensible and do not represent the values of SUNY Fredonia in any way, shape or form also noting that The matter is being reviewed.

Only one moral decision can be made following such a review. Half measures, or any other move to placate those who are correctly outraged at the situation rather than remedy the crisis, are entirely unacceptable and unbecoming of any institution that hopes to maintain a shred of legitimacy.

Although SUNY Fredonia may in fact come to the correct decision, it must be recognized that these sentiments did not come out of nowhere. The institution is responding to a high-profile case thats just now been exposed.

Some of the schools alumni werent the least bit surprised. After all, were talking about a professor who published a book titled Pedophilia and Adult-Child Sex: A Philosophical Analysis all the way back in 2015. That SUNY at Fredonia is only now responding to this moral crisis in response to public outcry is disgraceful and deceptive.

When hearing about such an outrageous situation, it can be easy to believe that it is an isolated experience, that such insane notions couldnt possibly have taken root elsewhere. Unfortunately, this would be a misconception.

As mentioned previously, it hasnt been long since a former professor at Old Dominion University rebranded pedophiles as minor-attracted persons. Even this instance was not unique.

A professor at Yale University by the name of Joe Fischel publicly argued that children should be shown nudity, thereby victimized by acts of indecent exposure, at LGBT pride parades. His article was replete with the same strategies that child groomers use, as I outlined previously.

These handful of pedophilia apologist professors are just the tip of the iceberg, one facet of a wider campaign to normalize pedophilia. The logical results of these sentiments have trickled down into K-12 institutions, with gay pornography being featured in school libraries, while other government-run schools host LGBT clubs for four-year-olds, all while refusing to reveal if parents were required to be present on these clubs Zoom calls.

The crisis isnt relegated to education, either, with similar themes popping up in a number of totally different sectors. A commercial from Twix featured child cross-dressing, just one more example of the elite attempt to groom children.

A YMCAs LGBT center hosts youth-only events, and hosted a man who creates drawings that feature characters from childrens shows having sex. Meanwhile, a broader push to foist transgenderism on children has a dark and storied history of pedophilia, child abuse, and psychological torment.

Make no mistake, there is a broad and deliberate push in nearly all areas of public life to normalize pedophilia. This push must be fought wherever it is found, without reservation.

Lets be abundantly clear: this is not a complicated issue. In fact, there can be no simpler issue. Pedophilia is evil. Thats it. We shouldnt accept the notion that pro-pedophilia sentiments are valid ideas to be contended with in the marketplace of ideas by the use of rhetorical flourish or superior philosophizing.

Illiberalism is no crime when your opponent uses bad-faith arguments to justify moral atrocities that target the most vulnerable among us, victimizing them in ways they cant even comprehend.

These ideas, just like those who use their institutional positions to normalize this horrid evil, must be ostracized, shamed, shunned, stigmatized, and mocked out of any and all forms of socio-political or academic influence. This is not extreme. Its the natural immune system response that any healthy society enacts when confronted with a rising tide of danger and evil.

Here are some simple ways you can reject it:

By using euphemisms, you fight the battle against child groomers on their terms. You must completely reject phrases like minor-attracted person, or adult-child sex, both of which seek to grant sympathy and dignity to these atrocities and those who commit them. Maintain the moral high ground with terms that accurately identify evil.

Tolerance is a vice, not a virtue, when you are asked to tolerate unspeakable moral crimes. Our society has begun to see tolerance as the mark of an enlightened person. Reject this faulty framing, and all the degeneracy and spiritual rot that has followed closely behind it.

If there was ever a time to be uncompromising, to cling to your beliefs with unrelenting zeal, this is it. The only proper response to situations such as this is action backed by righteous anger. Root out attempts to normalize pedophilia anywhere and everywhere you find it. Publicize it. Send examples like this to The Federalist. Demand that institutions that are home to these sentiments condemn it wholeheartedly in speech and in action. Fight, fight, fight.

Kershnar did not respond to a request for comment.

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Another Unhinged Professor Has Been Exposed As A Pedophilia Apologist - The Federalist

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry weighed in on the Spotify controversy this week, expressing concerns about Covid misinformation as the censorship police endeavor to deplatform Joe Rogan. Prince Harry, who declared the First Amendment bonkers last year, also serves on the Aspen Institutes Commission on Information Disorder, avehicle for corporate donors to generate items justifying censorship.

On Sunday, the couple released a statement from the Archewell Foundation, which the pair founded in 2020, raising alarm over hundreds of millions of people who are affected by the serious harms of rampant mis- and disinformation every day. The couple signed their own exclusive multi-year podcast partnership with the streaming service when they launched their latest venture, with only one episode published to date.

Last April, our co-founders began expressing concerns to our partners at Spotify about the all-too-real consequences of COVID-19 misinformation on its platform, they said. We have continued to express our concerns to Spotify to ensure changes to its platform are made to help address this public health crisis. We look to Spotify to meet this moment and are committed to continuing our work together as it does.

While not mentioning Rogan by name, the statement came on the heels of Spotify announcing it will add a content advisory to podcasts discussing Covid-19, including Rogans, after other artists pledged to strip their content from the service absent outright censorship of Rogan. Longtime music star Neil Young was the first major name to offer Spotify an ultimatum last week over fake information about vaccines.

They can have Rogan, or Young. Not both, Young wrote in an open letter. Spotify chose Rogan.

Youngs call for censorship, however, ignited a movement among left-wing content producers, who offered their own ultimatums to drop the Rogan podcast, which the Swedish company bought the rights to for $100 million in the summer of 2020.

The Aspen Institute did not respond to The Federalists repeated inquiries about whether the Institute would stand by its members perceived attacks on Rogan in an environment where narratives contrary to the media-manufactured consensus are labeled misinformation.

Other members of the commission include Katie Couric, who co-chairs the group and admitted in October to selectively editing a 2016 interview with now-deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Couric toned down Ginsburgs criticism of the NFL kneeling protests led by 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in an episode of routine manipulation by the legacy journalist.

In January last year, Couric also called for efforts to deprogram Republicans.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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Harry And Meghan's 'Concerns' About Joe Rogan Could Drive Anti-Speech Aspen Institute Project - The Federalist

I wrote yesterday about the Joe Rogan problem our elite faces today, where even such leading intellectual lights as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle must take up the solemn duty of condemning their Spotify colleague who actually does the work his contract demands. Of course, the companys decision to essentially add a dangerous, do not ingest warning to Rogans interviews is just a prelude to more crackdowns, as Zaid Jilani recognizes:

As Jilani notes, there has been a demonstrable increase in the number of leftists who favor censorship by any entity necessary including private corporations all in the cause of shutting down speech that they find irritating or inconvenient to the narrative they favor:

Youngs transformation from countercultural champion of freedom of speech to corporate censorship advocate and defender of the public-health bureaucracy didnt occur in a vacuum. Progressives have become increasingly censorious over the past few years. A majority of Democrats now believe that both private tech companies and the U.S. government should take steps to restrict false info online.

This is the reality based community coming home to roost: where once the counterculture spoke of dying to defend the right to disagree, now they will bring down the entire house of individual liberty to shut you up. But what is a leftist to do when someone like Rogan cant be shut up? When his work bizarrely coming in the form of interviews so long they outpace Doctor Zhivago is so defiantly popular that it attracts the eyes and ears of a nation hungry for more information?

In this case, they are turning into a mob appealing to the elites in this case, The Cathedral to shut down this troublesome talk. The network of power from the corporate media to the academy to big tech to the Aspen Institutes Commission on Information Disorder must act to save us all, before its too late!

This problem brings to mind a piece from two years ago, published at the onset of the pandemic in Commentary, by James B. Meigs, former editor of Popular Mechanics:

Disaster researchers call this phenomenon elite panic. When authorities believe their own citizens will become dangerous, they begin to focus on controlling the public, rather than on addressing the disaster itself. They clamp down on information, restrict freedom of movement, and devote unnecessary energy to enforcing laws they assume are about to be broken. These strategies dont just waste resources, one study notes; they also undermine the publics capacity for resilient behaviors. In other words, nervous officials can actively impede the ordinary people trying to help themselves and their neighbors.

As in war, the first casualty in disasters is often the truth. One symptom of elite panic is the belief that too much information, or the wrong kind of information, will send citizens reeling. After the 2011 tsunami knocked out Japans Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, officials gave a series of confusing briefings. To many, they seemed to be downplaying the amount of radiation released in the accident. In the end, the radiation risks turned out to be much lower than feared, resulting in no civilian deaths. But, by then, the traumatized public had lost faith in any official statements. As one team of researchers notes, any perceived lack of information provision increases public anxiety and distrust.

The oddity of all this is that Rogan himself is not actually the source of the troublesome information the Covid authoritarians seek to quash. Instead, his show is merely the vehicle for them to express their opinions. He asks open-ended and often meandering questions before driving down to a point, seeking an answer from the person sitting across from him in ways that are, given the marathon length and intellectual breadth of the show, impossible to filibuster.

It is the rumbling host of intelligent guests with whom Rogan has these discussions often with impressive credentials in multiple spheres, but with well-earned reputations for contrarian perspectives that run afoul of the dominant narratives in their field of choice who are the real problem. And because CNN and Anthony Fauci and Prince Harry and his Hogwarts Ministry on Information Disorder cant shut them all down, they are instead seeking to shut down the popularizer.

Joe Rogan isnt the messenger. Hes just the interlocutor inviting the wrong people on an enormous stage. And how interesting it is that when he invites the right people, like Sanjay Gupta, they end up looking very foolish.

There is a tale told about Galileo Galilei that comes to mind here one that is almost certainly apocryphal, given that there is little indication it was printed until a century after his death. Galileos heliocentric heresy, published in 1632 in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, resulted in a firestorm of reaction from the church. Intentionally or not there is evidence Galileo never intended to offend his friend and ally Pope Urban VIII the episode obviously resulted in his being brought before inquisitors, threatened with torture, and subjected to condemnation and imprisonment under house arrest for the duration of his life.

The legend is that, in the process of being transferred from one home to another, Galileo engaged in an act of defiance:

The moment he was set at liberty, he looked up to the sky and down to the ground, and, stamping with his foot, in a contemplative mood, said, Eppur si muove, that is, still it moves, meaning the Earth.

The inquisitions suffered by those who have defied the Covid narrative at very great risk to their careers are for the most part not comparable to anything suffered by Galileo, but they share certain commonalities. Pope Urban VIII was in some sense afraid of the machinations of court insiders and his foes who saw advantage in the moment, and cowed into going along with the persecution of an intellectual he admired.

There are similarly minded individuals today, largely silent, scattered around the heights of industry and politics. Their book recommendations and listening tendencies act as secret handshakes. They hold these views against the tide. They just dont have Elon Musks F-you money.

The motivation of the Cathedral now to protect their power against what they view as an unruly, prideful, and disobedient rabble is not without basis. The people are indeed fed up with the elite panic. They have, as the Monmouth poll indicated this week, moved on they believe its time we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.

But the Cathedral does not accept that theyve lost control. They still think they can crush the revolt and re-establish the narrative. And they are too short-sighted to see the long-lasting and institution-destroying ramifications they are creating by engaging in such an obvious crackdown on people brave enough to tell the truth.

Read more:

Elite Panic In The Cathedral! - The Federalist

Foreigners are voting in our elections. It isnt just in the sanctuary city of New York, where 800,000 foreigners just got the power to vote in municipal elections.

Foreigners voting occurs all over the country. Over the past few years, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, of which I am president, has uncovered government records showing foreigners voting in Pennsylvania, Texas, New Jersey, and California.

Voter fraud deniers do not want to talk about the fact that foreigners are registering and voting in U.S. elections. They forget that the foreigners voting in American elections are sometimes victims of third-party voter registration drives that jeopardize their immigration status. These voter registration drives sign anyone up without regard to eligibility.

States are also victimizing these foreigners. Pennsylvania let aliens register to vote for more than two decades on a broken department of motor vehicles registration process.

Unwitting aliens often dont know they arent allowed to register and vote. Meanwhile, committing an election crime such as illegal voting subjects them to deportation. The only winner is the political party that reliably gets their votes.

Just this week, we uncovered more evidence of foreigners voting in our elections, this time in the swing state of North Carolina.

In 2019, the North Carolina State Board of Elections denied the foundation access to documents relating to foreigners registering and voting, so the foundation sued the board. Following a ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirming that the National Voter Registration Act requires disclosure of these documents, the board agreed to settle the case.

In the settlement, the board agreed to disclose the records relating to foreigners registering and voting. There have already been 38 indictments of foreigners registering to vote and some casting ballots. These records will conclusively show how many foreigners have been voting in North Carolina elections.

Inspecting these list maintenance documents serves an important purpose by allowing one to identify how foreigners are getting registered to vote. That is a key first step to improve the system and ensure that these errors do not continue to happen.

Often, it is the fault of the government. For example, a voter registration form will have a question at the top asking if the potential registrant is an American. One may check no and, due to errors by local elections officials, still get registered to vote.

The same mistakes can happen when the potential registrant leaves the checkbox blank. The mistake may also be on the part of the potential registrant, incorrectly checking the box attesting that he or she is a U.S. citizen. The bottom line is, foreigners are registering and voting in states across the country.

Nobody should want this. Only Americans should be electing American leaders. States need to examine their voter list maintenance procedures and ensure they are keeping non-citizens off the voter rolls.

We will continue the effort to catalog and expose government mistakes and election malfeasance. Americans have a right to know about the vulnerabilities in our election system.

J. Christian Adams is the President of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a former Justice Department attorney, and current commissioner on the United States Commission for Civil Rights.

Link:

The Real Foreign Election Interference Is Happening At Your Local DMV - The Federalist

When Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history last quarter, he blamed TikTok. And why shouldnt he? The young platform is both the most downloaded app and most visited website in the world. Its addicting and profitable, which also makes TikTok a tool of cultural control.

Beijing understands this, which is why the apps Chinese counterpart Douyin is run much differently by ByteDance. Indeed, the Chinese government recently acquired a 1 percent stake and a seat on the board of one of the Beijing-based companys domestic subsidiaries.

Andrew Schulz explained this perfectly in a clip he posted to Instagram this week.

You dont have to crush an opposing nation to convince them to crush themselves, Schulz wrote in the caption. If China seeks to undermine the power of the United States, controlling the algorithms that captivate its children isnt a bad place to start.

If you browse this BuzzFeed roundup of the top trends on TikTok in 2021, youll find explicit dances, songs, and gender-bending alongside adorable dogs and easy recipes. In 2020, Seventeen included the WAP dance on its roundup of the apps most popular trends, meaning millions of American kids were watching and making video after video of a song about wet ass p-ssy.

Its of course true that American culture is decaying on its own. But it doesnt help that a company based in and legally under the control of China is in charge of a place our kids spend hours a day, talking about politics, family life, and culture. It would be like Moscow owning our film studios during the Cold War, except worse because TikTok is omnipresent in every teens pocket.

TikTok is known for its sophisticated algorithm, which one expert told the New York Times tries to get people addicted rather than giving them what they really want. Theres mounting evidence that TikTok is having negative effects on users health, which you can read more about here. Beijing seems to understand this because the government is taking steps to prevent the app from addicting its own users.

In China, Douyin is subject to government control intended to make the app a force for cultural good and a vehicle for propaganda. Users under 14 can only access the app at certain times of day for a capped period of time, and are delivered interesting popular science experiments, exhibitions in museums and galleries, beautiful scenery across the country, explanations of historical knowledge, and so on.

All users are subject to mandatory five-second pauses after spending a certain amount of time on the app, during which theyre delivered videos that tell them to put down the phone, go to bed, and work tomorrow. The app censors political content that transgresses Beijings boundaries. It was fined last year for spreading obscene, pornographic, and vulgar content.

None of this is to say the U.S. government should start curbing free expression on TikTok. I think theres a good argument to be made that social media is a public health emergency and demands more transparency. The point is that ByteDance owns an app thats controlled by a government seeking to undermine us, and that app is designed to be less harmful than the one peddled in America.

We can talk about what kind of government action that might warrant, but it should immediately change the way we approach TikTok. Beijing knows the app can stoke discord and worsen the health of our teenagers. Why would we willingly give that tool to an opposition government? (Thats not even to get into the potential national security concerns.)

The simple answer is because were addicted.

Emily Jashinsky is culture editor at The Federalist. She previously covered politics as a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner. Prior to joining the Examiner, Emily was the spokeswoman for Young Americas Foundation. Shes interviewed leading politicians and entertainers and appeared regularly as a guest on major television news programs, including Fox News Sunday, Media Buzz, and The McLaughlin Group. Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Real Clear Politics, and more. Emily also serves as director of the National Journalism Center and a visiting fellow at Independent Women's Forum. Originally from Wisconsin, she is a graduate of George Washington University.

More:

Beijing-Based ByteDance Knows TikTok Is A Cultural Weapon - The Federalist

University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, a man, has smashed records and shocked sensibilities. Thomass performance illustrates the effects and absurdity of denying differences between the sexes, especially mens obvious bodily advantages in sports.

Thomas presumably fulfilled the NCAAs policy requiring trans athletes to suppress testosterone levels for a designated time before competing on the womans team. In January, the NCAA tweaked the rules to place sport-specific limits on testosterone levels. The policy still falls short by ignoring the unchanging enhanced muscle strength and endurance amassed during male puberty.

Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce), an elite Olympian athlete, weighed in on the Thomas controversy, saying him competing as a woman isnt fair to women athletes. Jenner says his physical advantages are still apparent many years after transition.

In Lia Thomass case, I dont care about her testosterone levels now for the last year or two, Jenner said. Honestly, I care about her testosterone levels for the first 16, 17 years of her life. Thats what we are fighting against here.

As a man who formerly identified as a woman, I now clearly see with the benefit of 30 years of hindsight and reflection a similar flaw in my thinking that led me astray. Like the people setting NCAA policies, I neglected to consider that it was categorically impossible to biologically change my internal male morphology: my skeletal structure, body mass, muscle strength, and myriad other sexually determined attributes.

This flawed and foolish thinking results in real-life consequences. Changing sexes is a myth and trans folklorists who promote it are harming people, especially children vulnerable to believing fairy tales can come true. Here are some of these trans myths at play in the Thomas story.

The entire folklore of transgenderism rests on the artificial construct that gender is separate from biological sex, and that sex doesnt matter, gender identity does. Its a house of cards built on the flimsiest of foundations, a feeling. Feelings can, and do, change.

Who we are cannot be separated from our bodily reality. We live our lives in our bodies. Our identities are rooted in our bodies. The whole body is organized around either being male or female, a sexual binary. Who we are is not based on a feeling but rooted in physical reality.

Sex does not come from an ideological vending machine filled with multiple choices. Starting at conception, sex is absolute, innate, and immutable: male or female.

During intercourse, approximately 250 million sperm cells start the journey from the testes of the man to the fallopian tube of the woman, where one lucky sperm cell joins the egg in the hours or days following sexual intercourse. The sperm and the egg each contain mitochondria and DNA. When the sperm fertilizes the egg, the nuclei from each fuse together, and a baby is conceived. The babys sex revealed in the DNA is fixed for life.

Now were told sex is assigned at birth. This phrase popped up out of nowhere and now has infiltrated everywhere. No one has ever had his or her sex assigned at birth. Its fixed nine months before birth, at conception.

The truth since the dawn of time is that a look at the babys genitalia reveals his or her sex. With todays ultrasound technology, parents can know the sex of the baby during pregnancy. Sex is innate and unchangeable, not assigned by a doctor after the baby exits the womb.

The deceitful language creates the foundation for an even bigger lie: Because sex is assigned at birth, it can be reassigned later.

Transitioning is a myth. Its not possible. Sex is unchangeable. That is not a transphobic smear; its biological fact.

No amount of female hormones forced into a mans bloodstream can transition him biologically into a woman, or vice versa. Sure, each can identify as the other if they want, but they do not magically become the other sex. Thomas did not magically change bodies, replacing male with female, by suppressing testosterone and ingesting estrogen.

The same goes for surgery. Surgeons may use their operating prowess to fashion a convincing replica of a man or a woman, but their efforts are feckless to change anyones biological sex. I have thought for years that lawyers should be having a field day jumping all over the medical fraud that has been perpetrated by surgeons who claim they have changed a persons sex. Thats an outlandish lie of biblical proportions.

Trans folklore requires us to ignore the ample, obvious evidence of physiological and structural differences between males and females, suppress any intellectual rational discussion, and swallow whole the lie that cross-sex hormones and surgery can flip sex. Reality goes out the window and we enter a world of Orwellian dystopia, where language gets distorted and free speech is dumped in the trash. Skeptics are bullied. Good people are canceled, and careers are ended by the slightest infraction in speech or thought.

Lawmakers, medical societies, and school boards disregard these biological facts and therefore make nonsense policies. Opportunistic males cloaked in cross-sex identities are permitted to invade womens spaces and sports, threatening womens safety and undoing the level playing field women have fought so hard to attain.

The truth is: God makes male and female; surgeons and hormone dispensaries dont.

The media paint a rosy picture of a transgender persons life after the so-called change of gender. Life will be rainbows and lollipops, they convey; everyone lives happily ever after. The trope they disseminate implies no one has ever regretted it. This myth leads gender-distressed individuals to think, Why not go for it? What do I have to lose?

The truth is, they have a lot to lose. Ive heard countless heartbreaking stories from people who lost years of their lives trying to erase who they are in a futile attempt to become someone they can never be. People need to hear the truth. Regret is not rare. My book, Trans Life Survivors, features the experiences of 30 such survivors, told in their own words. I could have included hundreds, perhaps thousands.

Regret can hit months, years, or decades after surgery. The survivors come to realize that a surgically fabricated and hormonally induced persona didnt cure what ailed them, and they want help to go back to living in authentic biological reality.

Gender discomfort exists, but like any pain, its purpose is to alert you of something wrong.It used to be that a counselors job was to methodically pinpoint the probable cause and work through it. Thats no longer the case. People who want to reclaim their lives tell me therapists diagnosed them with gender dysphoria after one or two visits, then encouraged them to transition socially, take cross-sex hormones, and undergo surgery. Parents report similar sessions with their childrens therapists. The therapist considers nothing else.

Yet gender distress is a symptom of other difficulties: adverse childhood experiences, or psychiatric or psychological issues such as panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociative disorders, and substance abuse. None of these benefit from cross-sex hormones and surgery.

For me, the desire to escape my male existence was the result of years of cross-dressing at the hands of my grandmother starting at age four, after which I was molested by my uncle. Deep psychological pain caused me to want to be female.

My transgenderism was a hiding place until I received proper psychotherapy, then set my sights on God. Slowly but steadily, Gods love healed the pain of childhood experiences and redeemed my life, and the desire went away. I no longer needed a hiding place.

Today, due to the successful efforts of transgender folklorists, successful talk therapy like I received is against the law in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Affirmation is the only treatment allowed for patients who utter the magic phrase gender distress.

It especially crushes my heart to see children and teens ensnared in this ideology. The American College of Pediatricians, one of the few medical associations not given over to woke indoctrination, has spoken to the experimental nature of transgender intervention for children and the many ways it impairs their mental and physical health.

Panicked parents contact me. One mother succeeded through loving intervention to divert her 10-year-old daughter from going down the transgender path. Other parents want to reach their older teenagers who are blind to the difficulties awaiting them with hormones and surgery. I hear from those teens after transition, in their later teens or early 20s when reality has dashed their dreams of living happily ever after.

Women bemoan their permanently lowered voices and scarred chests. Men mourn the loss of potency and prospects for future romance. From my experience and the testimonies of the thousands who have written me, I know these myths harm innocent people and that the path to freedom starts with acknowledging the truth.

No therapist, no doctor, and no surgeon has been effective in biologically changing anyones sex, full stop. Sex is not assigned at birth and cannot be reassigned later. Regret is real. Harm is done, no matter what trans folklorists claim.

Therein lies the hope for people who want to go back: you never really changed.

Walt Heyer is an accomplished author and public speaker with a passion for mentoring individuals whose lives have been torn apart by unnecessary gender-change surgery.

Excerpt from:

3 Myths Trans Folklorists Want You To Believe That Lia Thomas Smashes - The Federalist

While California schoolchildren remain muzzled with face masks and pay the price through speech impediments, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom is enjoying the high life that comes with flouting his own rules.

On Sunday, the California governor was caught maskless again just more than a year after a similar sighting fueled a statewide effort for a recall. Newsom was pictured with former Los Angeles Lakers star Magic Johnson at the NFL 49ers-Rams game despite a statewide mask mandate in place through Feb. 15. In L.A., masks are required for outdoor mega events with more than 5,000 in attendance regardless of vaccination status.

Hanging out at SoFi Stadium today! Johnson wrote in a Twitter post featuring pictures of himself with Newsom as well as L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and San Francisco Mayor London Breed. SoFi Stadium requires masks at all times in compliance with the health order, unless, apparently, youre a prominent politician or major celebrity.

This latest episode of Newsoms hypocrisy, however, comes after nearly 8 million California voters gave the governor their blessing to disregard public health orders under the Democrat-directed COVID caste system.

In September, Newsom maintained his grip on power when he survived a statewide referendum over his leadership nearly 62 percent to 38 percent. The effort to force a recall was sparked when the governor dined maskless at a luxury, three-star Michelin restaurant in the heart of Napa Valleys wine country in violation of his own orders.

When Newsom was caught maskless in November 2020 at the French Laundry, where prices run $300 a plate, the published photos plunged the governors office into scandal. At the time, Newsom was seeking to ban residents from gatherings of more than three households ahead of Thanksgiving.

While our family followed the restaurants health protocols and took safety precautions, we should have modeled better behavior and not joined the dinner, Newsom said afterward, before cracking down with even tighter restrictions days later.

By September 2021, voters would dismiss the episode and send him back to the governors office emboldened to do the same without consequence.

Update, Monday afternoon:

Newsom defended his routine hypocrisy following the online outcry claiming he was very judicious wearing a mask.

Magic was kind enough, generous enough to ask me for a photograph, and in my left hands the mask and I took a photo, Newsom said during a press conference. The rest of the time I wore it, as we all should, not when I had a glass of water or a thing, and I encourage everybody else to do so.

Except another photograph apparently from the same game shows Newsom maskless grinning ear to ear with no food or drink in sight.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

Originally posted here:

Gavin Newsom's Latest COVID Hypocrisy Came With The Voters' Blessing - The Federalist