Category Archives: Liberal

Aaron Gunn would be the end of the BC Liberals. Thats not speculative; Gunn intends to change the BC Liberals name and much more. He repeated this during his official leadership campaign announcement on Saturday. Although not greenlit as a candidate yet, Gunn has the intentions and support to shake up and break up the BC Liberals.

The Victoria-raised Gunn is not shy about calling himself a small-c conservative. His strident right-wing politics stand out on the NDPs Vancouver Island stronghold. Unlike other BC Liberal candidates who doggedly avoid the culture war, Gunn is on its frontlines. He protested the 2018 removal of Sir John A. MacDonalds statue from Victoria city hall, he was cancelled by the University of Victoria in 2020, and has provided unfavourable ongoing coverage of the activists at Fairy Creek.

BC Liberal establishment figures like Mark Marissen have scorned him. Marissen has a long history of campaigning for both the federal and BC Liberals and is former BC Liberal premier Christy Clarks ex-husband. Despite the BC Liberals reputation for being the provinces centre-right party, many federal Liberals like Marissen support it. Joyce Murray once sat as a BC Liberal MLA and now sits as a federal Liberal MP and cabinet minister in the Trudeau government.

The party exists as a dtente between federal Liberal supporters like Marissen and Tory supporters like former deputy premier Kevin Falcon. Falcon even endorsed Maxime Bernier in the 2017 Conservative leadership race. The coalitions uniting purpose is keeping the NDP out of power in BC and it has failed at it for two consecutive elections.

Despite Falcons previous enthusiasm for right-wing figures like Bernier, the BC Liberal establishment is desperate to shred the evidence of conservative politics that goes beyond tax cuts and deregulation. Mark Marissen contended that the unabashedly right-wing Aaron Gunn has no place in the BC Liberals.

It makes sense for the enfeebled BC Liberals to shun the Gunn candidacy. The party teeters on the brink of becoming a rump in the legislative assembly. The frail free-enterprise enthusiast coalition of conservatives and centrists cannot coexist with Gunn at the helm. Much of Gunns media output consists of interviewing federal Tories and attacking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. BC Liberal supporters with connections to the federal Liberals like Mark Marissen will be in an impossible position.

The BC Liberals hemorrhaged votes in the last election. Polling websites give the NDP a 99-100% chance of winning the next one and few people would dispute that likely result. The BC Liberals are a complete and utter mess with no clear direction beyond being broadly pro-business and opposed to the NDP. Aaron Gunns candidacy promises a return to conservative politics that has not existed since Premier WAC Bennett. Gunn mentioned Bennett (16:14) as an inspiration in his Saturday speech.

More British Columbians voted Tory in the last federal election than any other party. Gunn is friendly with the Tories and could bring in a string of endorsements from Tory politicians and even public figures like Conrad Black, whom he interviewed among many more.

BC Liberal candidates signed up around 30,000 new members to vote in the partys last leadership election. Gunn has 80,000 followers on Facebook alone. For establishment figures like Mark Marissen, and MLAs running for leader like Michael Lee and Ellis Ross, their nightmare is Gunns supporters flooding the BC Liberals with new memberships to vote for him.

Gunns campaign is unmistakably a takeover attempt. Renaming the BC Liberals is just cosmetic. Aaron Gunn would end the free-enterprise coalition and turn it into a party by and for conservatives. Roughly 800,000 votes are needed to win a provincial election in BC. About 740,000 British Columbians voted Tory in Septembers federal election. Gunns ambitions for an explicit right-wing alternative to the NDP are more feasible than the BC Liberals want to admit.

If the BC Liberals approve Gunns candidacy, he has a good chance of winning and effectively destroying the party. If the party doesnt greenlight Gunn, they risk losing thousands of right-wing votes to a splinter campaign. That contest is years away and Gunn has ample time to build a breakaway movement. The choice and predicament is the BC Liberals fault alone for failing to offer a compelling alternative to voters. They roll the dice either way. The NDP probably doesnt mind.

Geoff Russ is a writer and journalist who has had his reporting featured in The Source, The Spec, The Tyee and The Times Colonist.

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Opinion: Aaron Gunn would be the end of the BC Liberals - CHEK

There is global debate on whether the rise of populist leaders is causing liberal democracy to regress. In India, early in the Modi government, it led to trolling by critics aligned with the regime to use coinages like the Khan Market gang. All manner of arguments have been developed to justify illiberal majoritarianism as the Indian way of life.

The debate was rekindled when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking at a function of the National Human Rights Commission, decried selective interpretation of breaches of human rights. The immediate provocation appeared to be the uproar over the ruthless running over of protesting farmers at Lakhimpur, Uttar Pradesh, by cars of the son of Ajay Mishra, Union minister of state for home, followed some days later by the lynching of a Dalit in Rajasthan. Firstly, the culprits were immediately nabbed after the latter incident, quite distinct from the foot dragging by police in UP. Secondly, the minister continues to hold his position in the council of ministers.

Echoing China

The Prime Minister also seemed to echo the arguments normally made by China that human rights are not just political but also economic. While that is correct as a general principle, it cannot be used to justify the downgrading of political and social freedoms. Globally, democratic regression has resulted precisely from this kind of gradual squeezing of formal and informal rules on which a democratic system rests.

The election in the Czech Republic this week has shown a fightback by a united opposition called Together to oust the populist government of Prime Minister Andrej Babis. Togethers leader Petr Fiala, a former professor, said that now they had a better chance of remaining a part of a democratic Europe. Poland and Hungary, two other members of the European Union, face similar criticism that their judicial and political systems are regressing below the bar that the European Union has set.

On October 7, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal ruled that European Union laws were incompatible with the Polish constitution. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen instructed that the commission must give priority to ensure that the rights of Polish citizens are protected.

Poland, Hungary

Poland joined the European Union in 2004. After excellent economic growth and initial commitment to liberal democracy, its government has been weakening institutions like the judiciary. In the name of judicial reform, the independence of the judiciary has been compromised. Nevertheless, according to a poll by United Surveys 88 per cent of Poles oppose leaving the bloc. Meanwhile, the EU is using levers short of suspending membership of errant members. It has withheld $40 billion in coronavirus recovery funds.

Hungary is another EU member that has challenged the democratic yardstick of the elite group. Freedom House has tracked it as having moved from liberal democracy in 2010 to a hybrid regime or electoral autocracy. When it joined the EU in 2004, it was assumed that it had moved decisively towards never being a one-party autocracy. But Viktor Orban has achieved the dubious distinction of turning it again into one.

US President Joe Biden assumed power early this year, promising to give an impetus to democracy. His disorderly withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and the latters rapid fall into the clutches of the Taliban has upended whatever freedoms had been made available to Afghans, especially the females. India has been wooed as a democratic counter-pole to China in Asia. The Quad, a quadrilateral security grouping of four democracies i.e. Australia, India, Japan and the US, advances the same idea of soft power of democracy.

The question that arises is where is India headed in terms of this debate? A malfunctioning democracy or potential electoral autocracy? The next two years, till the 2024 Lok Sabha election, are important to settle that debate.

The writer is former secretary, Ministry of External Affairs

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Globally, there is an expansion of shrinking liberal democracies, writes K C Singh - Free Press Journal

In the age of Trump, conservatives were told that resistance in the form of kneeling for the national anthem and disrespecting the American flag was really patriotism an effort to protest our nations racist past and to force it to live up to its ideals.

And, as the lefts narrative goes, white Americans, just by being white, were guilty of these sins, supporting, furthering and benefitting from Americas systemic racism and so they must accept the kneeling and flag desecration as free speech.

But, it seems, liberals are not so happy when their tactics are turned on them.

At Marist High School, a Catholic school in Chicago, Hispanic students complained that they were victimized by racism when other students kneeled or sat as Hispanic music was played at last weekends homecoming dance.

As the Chicago Sun-Times reported, About an hour into the dance, the DJ spun a Spanish-language version of Billy Ray Cyrus hit Achy Breaky Heart. As Hispanic students ventured onto the dance floor, a few dozen of their classmates then knelt together in the center of the dance floor, apparently in protest, while some students booed and jeered, while others purposely disrupted a line dance.

One of their classmates reportedly made a racist comment, saying, Ugh, its Mexicans.

Im trying to understand their point of view, junior Elizabeth Pacheco told the Sun-Times of her classmates. But when its something thats so wrong that just targets you and your community, its really upsetting. I kind of cant see them the same anymore.

In an Instagram post she made of the homecoming incident, Pacheco said, You send us emails asking for pictures of our families during Hispanic Heritage Month. You hang up our banners of papel picado [Mexican folk art] throughout the school. If you love our food, ethnic fashion, and energy so much why do you resent us. How would you like it if we kneeled to your country music?

Well, one might ask where these protesters learned that kneeling, jeering and mocking are acceptable forms of demonstration.

The answer is from liberals who maintain that their love for America leads them to kneel for its anthem, tear down or vandalize statues of its heroes, and demand that its buildings, schools, streets, parks, and other public assets be renamed.

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Liberal Illinois Students Upset Over Incidents Of Kneeling And Jeering As They Try To Celebrate Their Culture - The Free Press

Mr Baird was the NSW premier during the period. His former strategy director, Nigel Blunden, will also give evidence next week, along with other former and current bureaucrats. Mr Blunden, who is a former television reporter, was this year hired to work on the federal governments COVID-19 vaccine roll-out.

Despite the tight margin, Labor is not committing to running in Holsworthy. NSW Labor leader Chris Minns has already suggested to his shadow cabinet that they should not run a candidate in Monaro or Bega.

Mr Minns said the party needs to consider whether to run in Holsworthy; its going to be a hard ask to win.

Were weighing up the resources required and do we instead save our resources for the general election [in 2023], Mr Minns said.

A senior Liberal, who cannot be named as they are not authorised to speak on party matters, said Ms Gibbons decision had surprised party powerbrokers because it was understood that she did not have the support of local branches for preselection.

Everyone is very angry because it feels like a Gilmore situation where someone was imposed on them, the source said, referring to Warren Mundine being parachuted in as the Liberal candidate the NSW South Coast seat at the last federal election.

Ms Gibbons partner, former NSW Liberals vice-president and Sutherland Shire councillor Kent Johns, was involved in a preselection battle to run as the Liberal candidate in Hughes in 2019. Prime Minister Scott Morrison intervened to ensure Mr Kelly was preselected. Mr Kelly quit the Liberal Party in February this year.

Ms Gibbons released a statement late on Wednesday announcing her resignation after meeting with Mr Perrottet to inform him of her decision.

Given the recent speculation in the media and the community about the likelihood of me running, now is the right time for me to make this announcement, Ms Gibbons said in a statement.

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After a decade of service in the state parliament and two terms on the local council before that, I know that I am the best and most qualified person to fight for and care for the people of Hughes.

Ms Gibbons said she had been overwhelmed by the number of people in her community who had asked her to run for Hughes.

Even before the four looming byelections, the state government had already lost its majority with two Liberal MPs, John Sidoti and Gareth Ward, forced to move onto the crossbench after separate investigations were launched into them.

Mr Sidoti is the subject of his own ICAC investigation relating to property deals in his electorate and Mr Ward is being investigated by police accused of sexual violence-related offences dating back to 2013. Both men have denied any wrongdoing.

The Liberal Party will be under pressure to preselect women in the safe seats of Willoughby, held by Ms Berejiklian, and Bega, which is being vacated by former transport minister Andrew Constance.

Several Liberal sources have confirmed that the frontrunner for Willoughby is the citys mayor Gail Giles-Gidney, while Eurobodalla mayor Liz Innes is the favourite to be preselected for Bega.

The Nationals will contest Monaro, the seat held by retiring former deputy premier and party leader John Barilaro. Preselection for Monaro will be held on Saturday, with local historian Nichole Overall the favourite.

Ms Gibbons Holsworthy electorate was captured in the 12 local government areas of concern during the extended Delta lockdown.

She was among Liberal MPs who wrote to Ms Berejiklian calling for residents in some suburbs within her electorate to be released from the stricter rules because of lower case numbers and higher vaccination rates

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Perrottets byelection challenge grows as another Liberal MP quits - Sydney Morning Herald

The Oakland Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is seen in Oakland, Calif., on July 03, 2021. (Washington Post photo by Katherine Frey)

In August, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the religion colloquially known as Mormonism, issued a statement to its 19 million adherents around the globe: We want to do all we can to limit the spread of these viruses, wrote Russell Nelson, the churchs president, along with the two most senior apostles. (W)e urge the use of face masks in public meetings whenever social distancing is not possible. To provide personal protection from such severe infections, we urge individuals to be vaccinated.

To Lisa Mosman, a 59-year-old Latter-day Saint who drives a Subaru covered in anti-Trump bumper stickers around her neighborhood in Orem, Utah, the statement was a welcome surprise. Its actually kind of brave, because its going to p--- off a bunch of people that they normally dont p--- off, she told me.

In the weeks since, the statement has caused Latter-day Saints on the far right, long accustomed to having their beliefs reflected by church leaders, to face the kind of cognitive dissonance that liberal members have had to contend with for decades. Theyre having to ask themselves who they trust more the prophet or Tucker Carlson, Mosman told me, then sighed. This is new territory for them.

Her brother Matt Marostica, a Latter-day Saint high priest living in Berkeley, Calif., also welcomed the statement. Throughout his decades as a religious leader, his congregation has served as a home for people who dont always feel welcome in most Latter-day institutions. (The church requested in 2018 that the terms Mormon and Mormonism no longer be used to refer to the church or its members, though many adherents continue to do so.) Marostica, a soft-spoken political scientist who works as an associate university librarian at Stanford University, honed his liberal worldview as a church missionary in Argentina during that countrys dirty war. He told me that the Berkeley Latter-day Saint congregation, called a ward, welcomes everyone openly gay members, atheists, followers of other faiths, undocumented immigrants and even people with very conservative politics with acceptance and love. In Berkeley, the lunatics are running the asylum, he told me, smiling broadly. Thats a perfect way to describe our congregation.

His ward has long served as a liberal counterweight to many conservative pronouncements made by church leaders, which in recent years have predominantly concerned homosexuality. In 2008, Berkeley, along with other liberal communities in the San Francisco Bay area, was a site of severe pushback to the churchs push to pass Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that sought to limit marriage to a man and a woman. In 2015, when church policy was changed to prevent children of same-sex couples from being baptized, Marosticas community was outraged once again. (That policy was reversed four years later.) And more recently, there was a profound sense of betrayal when apostle Jeffrey Holland long considered one of the more liberal leaders of the church urged the faculty of Brigham Young University, the flagship campus of the university run by the church, to take up metaphorical musket fire against peers who show public support for gay Latter-day Saints.

In other words, liberal Latter-day Saints are accustomed to finding themselves outmatched in the church as a whole. Yet Marostica holds out hope that his communitys open-tent interpretation of what it means to be a Latter-day Saint might become more common a trend that could force the institution, thinking of its future, to play catch-up with its own members. The Mormon Churchs stance on this is damaging, Marostica said of the position on homosexuality, as we sat in the cavernous, redwood-lined chapel in Berkeley. But it will change. Its already changing.

Berkeley, of course, is an outlier one of the most left-wing communities in America and its therefore no surprise that it would play host to a progressive Latter-day Saint congregation. But when it comes to the direction of the church, its not as much of an outlier as you might think. Long identified with conservative theology and Republican politics, the church now finds itself at something of an inflection point. More so than in other conservative religious institutions, liberals or at least those disaffected from conservatism are making their presence known inside and on the perimeters of the church, provoking something of a Latter-day Saint identity crisis.

According to Jana Riess, author of the 2019 book The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church, fewer Latter-day Saints are following behavioral mandates like the prohibition against alcohol and coffee. Polling conducted by Riess and others has shown that the percentage of Latter-day Saints born after 1997 who do not identify as heterosexual may be 20% or higher. In perhaps the most dramatic break with the past, the partisan identification gap among millennial church members is narrow 41% Democratic, 46% Republican and a plurality of members under 40 voted for Joe Biden.

The church as an institution is by no means on the brink of reinventing itself as a progressive force. But it is struggling with how much and whether to accommodate liberals, and the result has been substantial internal division. I can see multiple futures for Mormonism, says Patrick Mason, chair of Mormon history and culture at Utah State University and the author of the 2016 book Out of Obscurity: Mormonism Since 1945. I honestly dont know which way its going to go. The one thing I know is that I think the church leadership is going to try and hold the whole thing together thats always been the impulse, to prevent schism. That is going to be increasingly difficult, but theyre going to try.

Artwork is displayed for sale at Deseret Books in Rexburg, Idaho, on June 28, 2021. (Washington Post photo by Katherine Frey)

Since its inception in 1830, the church has struggled with its image and relationship to the outside world. Proudly a peculiar people who are in the world but not of the world, Latter-day Saints have a theology distinctively focused on the history and symbols of the United States, whose Constitution it considers sacred; however, its relationship with the country at large has been marked from the beginning by conflict. Many historians argue that the modern church was established in 1890, when, under threat from the U.S. government, then-prophet Wilford Woodruff announced that he had received a revelation from God that polygamy could no longer be practiced by his followers. And it wasnt until 1978 that a prophetic revelation officially declared Black men equal to White men a move that had been previously considered doctrinally impossible.

Today, the church (which declined my request for an interview) has transformed itself from an iconoclastic band of scrappy outsiders to a highly organized, immensely wealthy and powerful institution, with 31,000 wards, 3,500 stakes (organizing chapters similar to Catholic dioceses) and 168 temples around the world. Its assets are worth more than $100 billion. In the United States, it has 6.5 million adherents, constituting 2% of the countrys population, and it is vastly overrepresented in the halls of influence: Latter-day Saints help lead corporations including American Express, Citigroup, Black & Decker, Dell, Deloitte, JetBlue and Marriott. And it wasnt long ago that the countrys most famous member of the church, Mitt Romney, was the Republican nominee for president.

Its an institution, in short, that has excelled at survival and, often, reinvention. Part of the reason may be a uniquely Latter-day Saint theological mechanism called personal revelation, by which individual members can receive direct divine instruction without having to go through the institution or its authority figures. Its a tool that, over the years, has enabled members to adapt the faith to their own circumstances as needed but it may now be driving the generational-political-cultural conflict within the church.

The Latter-day Saints display in microcosm what we see in the larger culture, Kathleen Flake, the Richard Lyman Bushman Professor of Mormon Studies at the University of Virginia, told me. There is political radicalization and a lack of confidence in the traditional sources of authority and, consequently, an anxiety about where people can look for truth, about either secular or religious things. The phenomenon is so pronounced, and so pervasive, she says, that the current moment in America might be described as the post-truth era. People have lost confidence in not only the traditional authority in society, but theyve lost confidence in the fact that one can actually know what is real or true.

One can see these tensions on display in even the most conservative places in the Mormon world. Rexburg, Idaho, is among the most reliably Republican towns in America. Its population is over 95% Latter-day Saint, and it is home to the Idaho campus of Brigham Young University. BYU-I semi-satirically known as BYU I Do because of the pressure undergraduates feel to get engaged is widely considered more conservative, both politically and theologically, than the schools flagship campus in Provo, Utah. (One alumnus told me: People act like We may not be smart enough to get into Provo, so well compensate by being more godly.)

In terms of its handling of social issues, the Idaho campus is often described as 20 to 30 years behind Utah. And yet even here, there are members who are asking big, tough questions about identity, belonging and faith both of their church and of themselves.

Once a week, a group of young Latter-day Saint men meet in an undisclosed location in Rexburg to process their attraction to other men. The group is affiliated with BYU-I and is church-affirming, meaning that its leaders cannot endorse that anyone leave the faith. The night I attended, there were 11 men sitting in a circle. Only two were White; the rest were Black, Asian or Latino. Some were public about their sexuality; others had barely begun to come out. All have a relationship with their religion that might best be described as complicated. As one member told me: Every good thing in my familys lives comes from the church. But the same thing that brings them a lot of good brings me a lot of turmoil.

The evenings topic was what the men used to hate about themselves and how they are working on not hating themselves anymore. As each man spoke, the others listened carefully, nodding often. My eyes were drawn to a slender young Latino man with a bold, asymmetrical swoosh of thick black bangs. When other men would mention difficult matters Being gay isnt exactly accepted in my country or I havent come out to my dad yet hed nod empathetically.

When it was his turn, he became visibly nervous. In a soft voice, he said his name, and then his hometown, and that he was in the beginning of his studies at BYU-I. He inhaled deeply. And " he began. I ... I like men. Like, Im interested in men, mostly. His face flushed. Im ... Im a homosexual. Later, he told me that, because he could not change his sexuality, he planned to stay celibate for life.

After the meeting, I was surprised that nearly all the men approached me, wanting to share their stories. The next day, I visited Jason Holcomb, a member of the group, at his airy, modern apartment in one of Rexburgs sprawling complexes. He is 24, with sparkling blue eyes, and he had decorated his space with LGBT symbols: a Pride-themed Lego set, a rainbow hat placed just-so on the living room couch. When I sat down in the living room, I noticed two artfully framed plaques, on which were inscribed the Family Proclamation, the churchs 1995 statement emphasizing that only heterosexual marriage could qualify a believer for the celestial kingdom, the highest tier of heaven and that disintegration of this traditional structure would result in calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

Jason saw me looking at it. I know, he said, shaking his head. He laughed cynically. But its the only thing I still have from my marriage. I asked him if he believed in its message. He thought for a long moment, then shook his head. No, he said. He let loose a single, hard laugh. Then he paused. No, I dont.

Jason told me about growing up in a large, devout family in Arizona: his persistent religious doubt and his understanding, even as a child, that there was something different unacceptable about him. Still, he served his mission, returned to BYU-I and soon married a fellow student. But the marriage was a disaster, he said, and his wife eventually found out he was gay. In June, he decided that, upon graduating, he would move to the outskirts of Salt Lake City and live as an openly gay man. As to what role, if any, the church would have in his life, Jason did not yet have an answer. Like many other members of the support group, he planned to continue to look only to God and not church leaders for guidance.

That perspective is shared by Jackson Taylor, a 19-year-old from nearby Idaho Falls who was not a member of the support group but had met many of its members through social activities for young gay Latter-day Saints. Despite growing up in a devout, politically conservative family, Taylor, an effervescent, baby-faced young man with a spiky blond haircut, told me he has always known he doesnt fit into what he describes as the LDS mold and he doesnt believe the church has the authority to tell him whether his identity will determine his ability to join his family in the celestial kingdom.

I dont believe in a God who will do that, he told me emphatically, explaining that he has had spiritual experiences confirming this belief. That may go against the churchs teachings, but I dont believe that a group of men can tell me that I wont have an eternal family.

Taylor told me that though he diverges from Latter-day Saint theology in major ways, he retains a social connection with the church. However, like many gay Latter-day Saints who eventually depart to one degree or another, he left behind family members who are committed to staying but who are also committed to using their power as rule-abiding congregants to attempt to change the institution from within. (As one support group member put it, Theres a saying that there are only two types of Mormons: Mormons who are against gay rights, and Mormons who have never met a gay person.) Because the institution is highly motivated to retain (and increase) its membership, Latter-day Saints who have competing loyalties to gay people in their lives, and to the institution that they see as acting in opposition to those people are not without leverage in their dealings with the church.

Taylors mother, Amy Manwaring Taylor, is one such person. Before her brother came out as gay and then, years later, learning she had a gay son she lived in a world where I wasnt aware of what other people are going through, she told me. In the context of the church, she says, I just fit right in. These are my people. Today, however, she finds herself on the outside of the church, of the restrictive political conservatism that defined the politics of her local ward, of the culture of her community. And now, she says, being outside of it partly because of our son, and partly because now Im able to see what its like from the outside Im grateful for it, because now I can see what changes need to be made.

In recent years, Manwaring Taylor and her husband have devoted much of their nonprofessional lives to advocating for gay people and their loved ones within the church. They recently designed and built a house in Idaho Falls to accommodate hundreds of people mostly Latter-day Saint parents with gay children who meet there regularly to learn about ways to support gay members and advocate for change. In the meeting room, they display typical iconography, like portraits of Joseph Smith and ornately bound copies of the Book of Mormon, as well as a large painting done by Manwaring Taylors husband that features 10 trees nine all white and one bedecked in rainbows in front of an Idahoan mountainous backdrop. One in 10 people are gay, Manwaring Taylor says. And we want to celebrate that. Life is more beautiful when its more colorful.

Around 1,000 people attend Rexburg's first Pride Festival in Rexburg, Idaho, on June 26, 2021. (Washington Post photo by Katherine Frey)

When Nancy Saxton, who is descended from the churchs pioneer founders, was growing up in a rural, conservative town in Northern California in the 1960s, the church had not yet become the powerful global institution or, in the United States, the avatar for the Republican Party that it is today. Saxton, a tall, boisterous woman with a loud laugh, now lives in Salt Lake City. Sitting on a wooden rocking chair overlooking her colorfully chaotic garden just a few blocks from global church headquarters, she told me that as a child, and then into her adolescence and young adulthood, she was devout, and she used her considerable charisma to spread the Gospel: On her mission, she said, her conversion numbers were consistently the highest, and she held multiple leadership positions.

After a few years living in Salt Lake City, Saxtons faith, and politics, began to liberalize. In the 1970s, she married a Presbyterian minister and went to her local ward with women active in feminist movements both within and outside the church: They were fighting not only for a more inclusive Latter-day Saint institution and theology, one that would celebrate a Heavenly Mother in addition to a Heavenly Father, but also to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. This put them at odds with church leaders, who were encouraging members to mobilize to defeat the amendment, crystallizing the churchs position as a deeply conservative institution tightly aligned with the Republican Party.

Such institutional opposition, however, did not deter Saxton or her fellow feminist Latter-day Saints. In Salt Lake City, she and her friends formed a discussion group that met in a church parking lot to talk about what she calls the rest of the story of Latter-day Saint history and doctrine: issues about the religion that didnt really make sense. They talked about racism in the church how scripture, and church leaders, had once taught that dark skin was a result of the mark of Cain, evidence of inherent sinfulness.

In the 1990s, however, church leaders cracked down on agitators, excommunicating many members of Saxtons group and other activists across the country, including scholars known as the September Six. These actions not only caused animosity and humiliation, but also had dire consequences in the eyes of believers: Those purged from church rolls are considered ineligible to enter the celestial kingdom and thus cannot be sealed to their families for eternity.

Despite some quiet and incremental changes to womens roles over the past two decades, some of the activists, like Saxton, simply gave up; she removed herself from church rolls in 2015. She now says she no longer believes in Latter-day Saint theology and proudly identifies as an atheist and a Democrat. But many others, and their daughters, have remained in the church, choosing to fight for their worldview from within.

In the past six years, many Latter-day Saint women took up another cause: fighting Donald Trump and what they see as the worrying direction of the Republican Party. In 2017, immediately after Trumps inauguration, a group of Latter-day Saint women formed a national organization called Mormon Women for Ethical Government, which now counts over 7,000 members and champions causes including immigration, anti-racism, sustainability and the environment, and voting rights.

Many in the group say that these ideas are aligned with values long championed by the church, which, for example, has always been outspoken in its support of immigration. Additionally, compared with other global faith institutions particularly the Catholic Church the LDS Church is somewhat more moderate on certain controversial issues; while it prohibits elective abortions, for instance, it allows more qualifiers than some other religions.

While Mormon Women for Ethical Government is officially nonpartisan, its founding was clearly a reaction to Trumps election, and many in the group are wrestling with their political identities. We formed as an all-female organization to give space for women to speak and not get drowned out by mens voices, as is often the case, especially in our culture, senior director Rachel Fisher Scholes, who lives in Tucson, told me. Until recently, Scholes, an energetic mother of seven who asked to be identified as a faithful member of the church, had been a staunch conservative her entire life. I used to listen to Gordon Liddy, she says. When he went off the air, I was like, OK, Ill listen to Rush (Limbaugh), like everybody. And I could not listen for more than two days.

About 10 years ago, Scholes began to question not only the direction of the Republican Party, but also whether some of the partys long-standing values matched her personal ones. In Tucson, she had become familiar with the challenges faced by undocumented migrants and felt that several new pieces of immigration legislation, all introduced and backed by Republicans, were unjust, even cruel. And she realized, in time, that other issues she cared deeply about, such as environmentalism and universal health care, were not represented by the men for whom shed voted without question all her life.

Eventually, she recalls, I couldnt call myself a Republican anymore. And I put more thought into voting than I ever have in my life. I actually took every single candidate, every single issue, and I studied and I looked at everything they had done and voted and said. And I made a list of the ideals that were important to me. I asked: What really is important to me? What do I believe? I really had to examine all of those things.

Scholess point of view is shared by many Latter-day Saint women whose accumulating life experiences, coupled with their visceral aversion to Trump, have caused them to realize that, despite their religions decades-long alliance with the Republican Party (and, in some cases, the unchanged political allegiances of their husbands), a number of social values theyve long ascribed to their faith just might place them squarely in tune with, well, Democrats. And so in 2020 many of these women found themselves voting for the Democratic nominee for the first time in their lives. In fact, this phenomenon was so pronounced in Scholess state that some political scientists, like BYUs Jacob Rugh, say that in addition to young Latter-day Saints, LDS women who voted for Democrats for the first time played a role in flipping Arizona from red to blue and changing the course of politics both there and in the country at large.

Dakota Short, left, and Kody Valentine wear gay pride flags as capes while swinging at Rexburg's first Pride Festival in Rexburg, Idaho, on June, 26, 2021. (Washington Post photo by Katherine Frey)

There are Latter-day Saint communities in which a progressive theology and way of life, and a strong allegiance to the Democratic Party, is nothing new. These tend to be in areas known for their liberal politics places like New York and Cambridge, Mass. Most, but not all, of these places are outside the Wests Mormon Corridor (exceptions include areas of Salt Lake City and Provo, which is home to theologically and politically liberal BYU professors). None of these places, however, is quite the same as Berkeley. And the kind of fiercely independent, nonconformist ideology the town is known for is embodied by the Latter-day Saints who have chosen to make their homes there.

When I attended Sunday services in Berkeley, I saw attire youd be hard-pressed to find in Latter-day Saint services in the rest of the country, from flip-flops to tank tops. Multiple men in attendance wore beards, which are prohibited for missionaries and on BYU campuses, and are controversial in many other Latter-day Saint circles. And in another conspicuous flouting of norms, the newly elected leader of the elders quorum, the wards organization of priesthood holders, wore shoulder-length hair.

Matt Marostica, who was the wards bishop from 2008 to 2015, sees his politics as inextricable from his faith. Mormons are like, We really, really value the Constitution. Like, God had a hand in creating the Constitution! Well, if you really believe that, then you cannot support the Republican Party, because the Republican Party is actively subverting the Constitution. So, you know, like, in terms of the question of how can you be a Latter-day Saint and support the Republican Party? You cannot.

When Marostica assumed his role as bishop in the Berkeley ward, those convictions as well as his duty to carry out the orders of his church superiors were put to the test. It was a month after church leaders in Salt Lake City had instructed all California clergy to read a statement urging members to campaign to pass Proposition 8 that is, to do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment.

At the time, Marostica used that language to his advantage. I got guidance from the stake president to say: Heres what the letter says: Do all that you can do, " he told me. He interpreted that liberally with his congregants. He told them, If all that you can do is to not do anything, thats fantastic youre doing all that you can do. If doing all that you can do means that you dont demonize the church leadership, that is all that you can do.

Dean Criddle, who was serving as the president in the Oakland Stake, of which Berkeley is a part, tried to influence church authorities toward more inclusive policies, hosting a panel of Latter-day Saints who felt personally wounded by the Prop 8 statement and bringing apostles to meet in private with church members who might touch their hearts, or even change their minds. Criddle told me that these actions reflect his view that change best comes from using levers within the institution never by publicly criticizing church leaders. Often, that doesnt seem to work the 2015 policy change regarding the children of gay parents, for instance, was the opposite of what Criddle had hoped for after he hosted an apostle at his home but other times it may have. Criddle believes that some of the churchs recent softening around gay issues came as a result of meetings he set up between members and visiting apostles.

However, what the church has not done and, according to Criddle and other church leaders, will likely never do is concede that it was ever wrong in the first place. I asked Criddle if he agreed with that approach. He laughed. Then he paused. You know, he said, my life experience has been that apologies can be very healing when theyre heartfelt.

People like Jason Holcomb, the 24-year-old recent graduate of BYU-Idaho, arent waiting for an apology. After Elder Hollands recent speech about musket fire, Holcomb told me that he had decided to identify as an inactive member. An organization is not needed for me to have a proper relationship with God, he told me.

Holcomb may have run out of patience and the church may not, as Criddle says, be inclined to offer apologies. But it is also true that perhaps the one constant in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been a certain degree of turmoil sometimes followed by profound change. The institution rocks and rolls, Kathleen Flake, the historian, told me. Everyone wants to call it the American religion, and America is always upset with it. Its always in tension internally and externally. Is there something different about today? As a historian, I can only say that time will tell.

Patrick Mason, the Utah State professor, offers a bolder forecast one that may give heart to liberal Latter-day Saints who are desperate for change within the church, as well as those who are quietly debating whether, or to what extent, they can justify staying. People have already started to do the work to sketch out a theological rationale that would allow for the kind of revelation that allows for womens ordination, for same-sex marriage, all kinds of things, he says. And, he adds, with the passage of time what was once possible then becomes probable.

___

Emily Kaplan is a writer in New York.

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The rise of the liberal Latter-day Saints and the battle for the future of Mormonism - Anchorage Daily News

(The winnerwas Thomas F. Eagleton, who would step down asGeorge S. McGoverns running mateafter it was learned that he had been treated for depression. He was replaced by R.Sargent Shriver Jr.)

Ms. Farenthold left electoral politics after her 1974 gubernatorial loss.

What I discovered, she told The Texas Observer in 2007,was that political office was a life ofconstant moral compromise. And I didnt enter politics with the purpose of compromising my morality.

In 1976 she became the first woman to serve as president of Wells College, a small liberal-arts college, thenfor women only, in Aurora, N.Y. During her four-year tenure, she balanced its budget, expanded student recruitment and founded thePublic Leadership Education Network, a national organization that prepares women for vital public-policy roles.

As if in fealty to her Texas roots, Ms. Farenthold also studied the feasibility of enriching Wellss coffers by tapping the vast reserves of natural gas that lay beneath the campus. In late 1980, after she had left, Wells College heeded her recommendation: It drilled and struck gas.

Returningto Texas, she practicedlaw in Houston and taughtat the University of Houston and at Texas Southern University, a historically Black institution in the city.

In 1989, heryoungest child, Jimmy, disappeared, at 33.Jimmy, who was Vincents identical twin, was said never to have gotten over his brothers death; by the time he was a young man he was addicted to drugs and drifting around Texas. Despite extensive searches, he was never found and is presumed dead. (The family held a funeral for him in 2005.)

Ms. Farentholds marriage ended in divorce. She is survived by her son George Farenthold II, who said the cause of death was Parkinsons disease; another son, Dudley; a daughter, Emilie C. Farenthold; a sister, Genevieve Hearon; three grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and a step-grandson, Blake, the son of Randy Farenthold. A younger brother, Dudley Tarlton, was killed in a helicopter crash in 2003.

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Frances T. Farenthold, Liberal Force in Texas and Beyond, Dies at 94 - The New York Times

The Schuler Education Foundation recently doled out tens of millions of dollars to a handful of liberal arts colleges to expand access for underserved students at their institutions. The money comes as a challenge grant, which will require the institutions to raise matching funds over a period of years to double the investment.

The 20-year-old foundation has long focused on supporting liberal arts students, said Jason Patenaude, executive director and chief operating officer at Schuler. Now, its supporting the colleges that educate them.

We realized a few years ago that we could also move up the value chain a little bit and support these schools directly, Patenaude said. Because if we want to make sure that students get the opportunity to experience this great education, you need to make sure that those colleges are financially stable, and that they have the seats available for low-income or undocumented students so that these students can attend.

Five institutions -- Bates College, Carleton College, Kenyon College, Tufts University and Union College -- have received grants via the foundations Schuler Access Initiative. Eventually, the foundation hopes to distribute $500million to as many as 25 liberal arts colleges to recruit and enroll more undocumented and Pell Grant-eligible students.

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All five institutions are predominantly white and located in the Midwest and Northeast.

Pell Grant eligibility is often used as a proxy for low-income status. The percentage of first-time undergraduate students that receive Pell Grants at each institution currently ranges from 9percent at Kenyon and Bates to 16percent at Union, recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics showed.

The foundation selected the first five institutions because they showed a history of supporting low-income students, according to Patenaude.

We wanted to work with schools that we felt had shown a real commitment to supporting low-income and undocumented students but had maybe not had the resources to accept as many as they wanted to just because they couldnt afford to, he said.

This is the case at Union, a private college in Schenectady, N.Y., that is set to receive $20million from the foundation, the college announced Tuesday. The college aims to raise another $20million over the next five years to meet the foundations matching grant, for a total investment of $40million.

Union is one of fewer than 100 schools that meets full demonstrated need, said David Harris, president of the college. That means that we get to a point where we just dont have more financial aid money, and so we cant admit exceptional students who need financial aid.

The college has already raised about $3million and received lots of interest from board members and other donors, Harris said.

Union enrolls about 2,000 undergraduate students, including about 75 Pell Grant-eligible students in each class, according to a college press release. During the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years, the Schuler investment will allow the college to increase that total by nine students each year. In subsequent years, the college will add 10 Pell Grant-eligible students.

The initiative is particularly exciting for Harris, who received a Pell Grant when he attended college.

I know firsthand what its like to think, Can I attend this school? Can I afford it? And then to see that -- thanks to the generosity of others and the government as well -- I actually can, Harris said. I've been excited to be able to extend that opportunity to others.

Bates, a private college in Lewiston, Me., received a $50million challenge grant from the foundation, tasking the institution with raising an additional $50million for a total $100million investment. The college had already raised $30million in pledges and matching gifts prior to the public announcement Tuesday.

The college hopes to increase the number of students who are Pell Grant eligible, undocumented and low income by 50percent over the next decade.

Bates enrolls about 1,870 undergraduate students. During the 2019-20 academic year, 47 first-year students received Pell Grants, according to NCES data.

This is a game changer for Bates, Clayton Spencer, president of Bates, said in a statement. Bates was founded by people who believed in the power of education to develop the full potential of every human being. This extraordinary investment from the Schuler Education Foundation, combined with the generosity of Bates donors, provides us with the means to renew this founding vision in a very real and tangible way. I am thrilled that we will be able to make the life-transforming experience of the liberal arts available to even greater numbers of talented students who might otherwise not have this opportunity.

Carleton, a private college in Northfield, Minn., will receive a $50million matching grant, a college spokesperson said Tuesday. If the college raises enough to match the grant, the endowed fund will total $100million. (This paragraph has been updated to state that Carleton could receive $50 million from the foundation.)

The Schuler Education Foundation is still deciding which liberal arts colleges will be included for the next round of grants, Patenaude said. College officials at interested institutions can reach out to the foundation for consideration.

The colleges that we work with are going to get a tremendous amount of value from increasing the representation at their schools for underrepresented students, for low-income students and for undocumented students, Patenaude said. We want that benefit to happen as quickly as possible.

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Foundation provides millions for equity in the liberal arts - Inside Higher Ed

BEIJING, Sept. 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- China Liberal Education Holdings Limited (Nasdaq:CLEU) ("China Liberal", the "Company", or "we"), aChina-based company that provides smart campus solutions and other educational services, today announced that its self-developed all-in-one teaching machine, AI-Space, was granted a utility model patent and an appearance design patent by the China State Intellectual Property Administration ("CNIPA"). The name of the utility model is multimedia integrated device, and the utility model patent certificate was obtained on September 24, 2021 (Patent Number: ZL 2021 2 0084718.9). The appearance design patent certificate was obtained on April 23, 2021 (Patent Number: ZL 2020 3 0730801.X).

Pursuant to the Patent Law of the People's Republic of China, AI-Space was granted a utility model patent due to the novelty, creativity and practicality of its functionality and was granted an appearance design patent due to its unique aesthetic design. AI-Space offers smart classroom, interactive teaching, and intelligent environment as its core functionality, and replaces the real-life teaching environment with a virtual environment that combines video and live teaching. Itadopts cloud platform management and other advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence and smart sensors, to achieve resource interoperability and online merge offline ("OMO") teaching.

Ms.Ngai Ngai Lam, Chairwoman and CEO of China Liberal, commented, "In recent years, education informatization has received strong support from the government and various education informatization applications have been developed and promoted to modernize education system. The two national patents showcase the strong research and development capability of the Company and recognition of its all-in-one teaching machine AI-Space. Al-Space provides a good experience for teachers and students in both on-site and remote teaching, and has won praises from schools such as Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing Language and Culture University, Straits Institute of Minjiang Universityand the Party School of Beijing Chaoyang District Committee of the Communist Party of China, all of which have adopted OMO teaching systems built with the Company's AI-Space. In the future, the Company will continue to develop education informatization applications by utilizing its patented technology and in-depth experience in the education industry of more than 20 years to better serve its clients."

About China Liberal Education Holdings Limited

China Liberal, headquartered inBeijing, is an educational services provider inChina. It provides a wide range of services, including those under Sino-foreign jointly managed academic programs; overseas study consulting services; technological consulting services for Chinese universities to improve their campus information and data management system and to optimize their teaching, operating and management environment, creating a "smart campus"; and tailored job readiness training to graduating students. For more information, visit the company's website atir.chinaliberal.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This document contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on our expectations and projections about future events, which we derive from the information currently available to us. Such forward-looking statements relate to future events or our future performance, including: our financial performance and projections; our growth in revenue and earnings; and our business prospects and opportunities. You can identify forward-looking statements by those that are not historical in nature, particularly those that use terminology such as "may," "should," "expects," "anticipates," "contemplates," "estimates," "believes," "plans," "projected," "predicts," "potential," or "hopes" or the negative of these or similar terms. In evaluating these forward-looking statements, you should consider various factors, including: our ability to change the direction of the Company; our ability to keep pace with new technology and changing market needs; and the competitive environment of our business. These and other factors may cause our actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statement. Forward-looking statements are only predictions. The forward-looking events discussed in this press release and other statements made from time to time by us or our representatives, may not occur, and actual events and results may differ materially and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions about us. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent occurring events or circumstances, or changes in its expectations, except as may be required by law. Although the Company believes that the expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot assure you that such expectations will turn out to be correct, and the Company cautions investors that actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results and encourages investors to review risk factors that may affect its future results in the Company's registration statement and in its other filings with the SEC.

Investor Relations Contact

China Liberal Education Holdings LimitedEmail:[emailprotected]

Ascent Investor Relations LLCMs.Tina XiaoEmail:[emailprotected]Tel: +1 917 609 0333

SOURCE China Liberal Education Holdings Limited

http://www.chinaliberal.com

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China Liberal Receives National Utility Model and Appearance Design Patents for Its All-in-one Teaching Machine AI-Space - PRNewswire

Charles W. Mills, a London-born, Jamaican-raised philosopher whose incisive criticism of liberalism and race both foreshadowed and framed contemporary debates about white supremacy and structural racism, died on Sept. 20 in Evanston, Ill. He was 70.

The cause was cancer, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he taught, said in announcing his death.

Dr. Mills argued that racism played a central role in shaping the liberal political tradition, a system that, he said, supposedly valued individual rights and yet for too long excluded women, the working class and people of color. He swung for the fences, writing critiques of Plato, the American political theorist John Rawls, a contemporary of Dr. Mills, and everyone in between.

He was one of the most important philosophers ever to treat race and racism as their primary subject, Chike Jeffers, a professor of philosophy at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a former student of Dr. Millss, said in a phone interview. He did so much to move the field forward, and to get people excited about thinking about race and racism.

Dr. Mills established himself as a leading critic of Western political theory with his first book, The Racial Contract (1997). In it he argued that white supremacy, far from being a bug in the Western political tradition, was one of its features, and that racism represented a political system every bit as coherent and intentional as liberal democracy.

White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today, he wrote in the books first sentence.

He posited that one of liberalisms core tenets, the social contract, a theoretical agreement in which individuals ceded some rights in exchange for protection by the government, was designed explicitly to exclude people of color. (He readily noted the debt he owed to feminist political theory, especially the philosopher Carole Pateman and her 1988 book The Sexual Contract.)

What Mills does is to deconstruct the domain of white political theory by showing that Black people and people of color were never meant to be included, George Yancy, a philosopher at Emory University in Atlanta, said in an interview. He is the singular figure to put his finger on the pulse of these contradictions, and to show how they are experienced in the lives of Black people and people of color.

If racism is so central to modern political theory, Dr. Mills asked, why do so few in the field talk about it? In part, he said, its because of what he called the epistemology of ignorance, or the learned aversion of white people to the racism inherent in their own privilege.

But, he added, it was also because political philosophy as a profession was almost entirely white.

If you go to a meeting of the American Philosophical Association, he said in a lecture last year at the University of Michigan, you have to put on dark glasses, or else youll get snow blindedness from the expanse of white faces.

Rigorous and persuasive, his work was also free of the jargon and obscurantism that bedevils so much of modern philosophy. He could also be disarmingly funny, often poking fun at himself or his profession.

If you are a member of the American Philosophical Association and you dont use the word ontology in a talk, theres someone from the A.P.A. sitting in the back of the room and your membership card will be yanked, he quipped during his lecture.

Yet for all his knife-sharp insight into the shortcomings of the liberal tradition, he was not willing to dismiss it entirely, in part because he believed the alternatives were so much worse including, he pointed out, the chauvinistic nationalism on the rise across Europe and North America over the last decade.

It was, he conceded, a position that sometimes got him in trouble with philosophers even further to his left.

One can readily appreciate why, given this history, some radical thinkers have given up on liberalism altogether, he said in his lecture, and have also given up on people like Charles Mills, who still insist that liberalism can be freed. So now theres a bunch of folks who cross the street when they see me coming.

Charles Ward Mills was born on Jan. 3, 1951, in London, where his Jamaican parents, Gladstone and Winnifred Mills, were graduate students. The family returned to Jamaica before Charles turned 1, and he spent the rest of his childhood in Kingston, the capital.

His father, who had been a leading Jamaican cricket player, became the head of the government department at the University of the West Indies, Mona, the schools Jamaican campus, and the dean of its faculty of social sciences. In the 1970s, the elder Mr. Mills chaired a government commission given the task of reforming the countrys electoral process.

Winnifred Mills was equally prominent. A nurse by training, she became head of the Jamaican Y.W.C.A.

Bookish as a child, Dr. Mills said he regretted spending more time reading the works of J.R.R. Tolkien than Frantz Fanon, the revolutionary Franco-Caribbean philosopher. But he also joked that his love of science fiction had prepared him for a life in philosophy.

It could just be that Im a nerdy alienated weirdo, and nerdy alienated weirdos are disproportionately attracted to both fields, he wrote in a biographical essay in 2002. Have you been to an A.P.A. meeting recently? I rest my case.

Dr. Mills entered the University of the West Indies in 1971 and studied physics there. He also became politically active, as did many of his classmates Jamaica in the 1970s went through a period of radical politics, similar to the one that swept across the United States and Europe in the 1960s.

After graduating, he briefly taught high school physics before moving to Canada to attend graduate school at the University of Toronto, which had one of North Americas best programs in Marxist philosophy. He received his doctorate in 1985.

Dr. Mills taught at the University of Oklahoma; the University of Illinois, Chicago; and Northwestern University before joining the CUNY Graduate Center in 2016.

His marriage to Elle Mills ended in divorce. He is survived by his brother, Raymond Mills.

After The Racial Contract, Dr. Mills wrote five more books; a seventh, The White Leviathan, is in production.

In his recent work, Dr. Mills went beyond his initial critique to search for ways to salvage aspects of liberalism human rights, dignity, the rule of law in a truly egalitarian way.

It was, he believed, an urgent project, given the growing strength of white supremacy in parts of the world, and he urged his fellow radical philosophers not to reject liberalism entirely.

This is no longer a time when self-styled post-Enlightenment critics taking for granted Liberal-Democratic guarantees can afford to be sneering at Enlightenment norms, he wrote in Artforum in 2018. The protections of those rights and freedoms can no longer be assumed.

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Charles W. Mills, Philosopher of Race and Liberalism, Dies at 70 - The New York Times

In todays New York Times, Robert Wexler, a longtime Israel advocate and former Florida Congressman, says what our site has been saying for a while the U.S. political debate over Israel/Palestine is veering left, and progressives are bringing an end to unflinching [American] support for Israel.

[T]he debate over the Iron Dome system represents a tectonic shift in the discourse among Democrats, one that is likely to shape U.S.-Israel relations for decades. Indeed, a small group of progressive Democrats have now forced a simmering debate within the party, and in their constituency, to the surface. . .

For a number of years now progressive activists, and some politicians, have challenged what was once orthodoxy: resolute U.S. support for Israel. Whereas previous congressional debates were characterized by bipartisan, reflexive support for Israels security interests, progressives have successfully infused Palestinian rights into the equation.

Wexlers answer to that simmering leftwing agenda of Palestinian rights is. . . .to double down on the two-state solution. This is now the liberal Zionist answer. J Street, Americans for Peace Now and other kindred groups are backing the Rep. Andy Levin legislation that says vaguely that U.S. aid should not go toward perpetuating a 54-year-long occupation.

Wexler is head of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, and his piece is typical of arguments by the more liberal wing of the Israel lobby. He congratulates the new Israeli government for taking steps toward supposedly easing life for Palestinians under occupation. He exalts the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel in religious, economic and strategic terms (a relationship deeply meshed into the U.S. economy in dozens of states and integral in ensuring the United States commands the new frontiers of security in cyberspace).

But the best thing about the article is that Wexler admits that Israel commits human rights abuses. Three times he refers to killings of civilians.

[T]here is increasingly vocal criticism of expanding settlements in the West Bank, housing demolitions and civilian deaths.

Yes Israeli snipers have killed 40 protesters there in recent months, to the point that the army chief told them to relax.

Wexler goes on to admit that Israeli raids against Hamas. . . have killed civilians. And he offers this twisted logic about why Israel kills innocent Palestinians in Gaza.

The [Iron Dome] system is defensive; it protects countless numbers of innocent Israelis from Hamas rocket attacks and saves numerous innocent Palestinians by avoiding even more punishing Israeli military responses to those attacks.

Notice the framing, it is a trap (says Donald Johnson who pointed this passage out).Hamas attacks; Israel defends itself and also hits innocent civilians. So Hamas isnt responding no, they are attacking, and Palestinians can be divided into categories of innocent civilians and guilty attackers.

Why dont we have those categories for Israelis? Are Palestinians ever justified in using force to defend themselves? Are there any guilty Israelis deserving of a military response?

In this framing (Johnson goes on), we are the civilized people who can work with the present civilized Israeli government in gradually nudging Israel towards treating Palestinians almost as though they had rights. So the U.S. should adopt the liberal Zionist view and continue trusting and supporting the Israeli government.

This just isnt good enough.Israel has decades of experience in pretending to move toward a two-state solution, while instead consolidating the occupation and strengthening the system of apartheid. Wexler says hes met with Palestinians, but he nowhere quotes the skepticism that most of them share. He wont or cant recognize that Palestinians must be central players in their own liberation.

Some day he and other liberal Zionists will have to concede that, too.

So where are the Palestinian voices in mainstream media?

Mondoweiss covers the full picture of the struggle for justice in Palestine. Read by tens of thousands of people each month, our truth-telling journalism is an essential counterweight to the propaganda that passes for news in mainstream and legacy media.

Our news and analysis is available to everyone which is why we need your support. Please contribute so that we can continue to raise the voices of those who advocate for the rights of Palestinians to live in dignity and peace.

Palestinians today are struggling for their lives as mainstream media turns away. Please support journalism that amplifies the urgent voices calling for freedom and justice in Palestine.

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Israel kills 'innocent civilians' in West Bank and Gaza liberal Zionist admits in 'NYT' - Mondoweiss