Category Archives: Political Correctness

A mere two years ago, the world painted in this article by Nick Hudson of PANDA would have been perceived to be so fictional that it could comfortably have read as a prologue to George Orwells masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four. Published in 1949, Nineteen Eighty-Four examined the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated. Aclassic literary example of political and dystopian fiction, the book centred on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Today, our reality involves governments across the world implementing or seriously considering theimplementation of measures such as vaccine passports which are sold as a ticket to freedom, with the unfortunate downside thatthose without vaccine passportswill not be afforded these same freedoms. In the name of Zero Covid objectives, individual agency has been incrementally surrendered and dissenting voices have been silenced. How societies have managed to accept such radical regression is not hard to understand when one considers the ability of fear toincapacitate rational thinking. In this article, Nick Hudson looks at the forces at play which, he believes, are driving the world in the direction of centralist totalitarianism.

By Nick Hudson, PANDA

This is the fourth of a series of talks:

A false narrative about Covid has supported ineffective and highly destructive policies leading to the evisceration of individual rights, democracy and the rule of law in the name of a disease that presents negligible risk to most of the population. Virtually every element of the response has not been based on good science and the data prove that wherever you look.

The spectre has arisen of mandatory vaccination just yesterday called a conspiracy theory. The injections do not substantially hinder infection or transmission of the disease and present net harms to the young and the recovered, who represent the vast majority of the population and for whom the virus presents miniscule risk. They cannot eliminate Covid.

There is therefore no sound epidemiological or medical basis for mandating injections, even if violation of bodily integrity was not egregious, which it is, let alone not a violation of both the Nuremberg Code and the Siracusa Principles, which it is.

Our public health officials, most of whom sadly now carry water for pharmaceutical companies, justify mandates on the basis that the injections are safe and effective, ignoring the absence of long-term safety experience and unprecedented adverse event reports, featuring thrombotic events, heart inflammation and reproductive system irregularities. Even absent the latter, this is shamefullymaybe even scandalouslypoor logic. A banana could be called safe and effective, but that does not mean you should be forced to eat one at whatever interval for the rest of your life, especially when the only people telling you to do so are banana farmers.

This cultish behaviour was presaged by the Global Vaccine Action Plan, ratified by 194 governments back in 2012. In light of this plan, it is not surprising that in several countries mandates and vaccine ID or passport systems have been implemented, despite the lack of any logic for such measures. Some recognise natural immunity, for now, but that is beside the point. Such measures signify a very important thing.

A vision for our future is being implemented outside of any democratic scrutiny. And it is a dangerous vision.

At least three big forces are at play, driving in the direction of centralist totalitarianism. First there is the influence of China its propaganda, its infiltration, its influence and widespread fetishism in the West for its surveillance state.

Second, there is a drift to authoritarianism to a technocratic vision repeatedly referenced by political leaders, taking their cue from international organisations. We hear of Build Back Better, the New Normal, the New World Order, the 4th Industrial Revolution, and the Great Reset. This kind of talk long in the making re-emerged with the very first death in Italy, and has been a constant presence ever since. In France you already cant travel on a train without having your passport validated. We are on the cusp of having our behaviour and speech nudged by our vaccine passport, the aim of which is to bring about a tyrannical system of social credit scoring.

If the WEF has its way, by 2030 we are to eat bugs instead of meat, own nothing and be happy, have our identity read at checkpoints by heart rate scanners so that we dont have to take off our masks, not need vehicles as well never need to walk more than 15 minutes from our houses, connect to the internet only with government authorisation, benefit from a range of technological implants, and sacrifice bodily integrity to whatever injections authorities demand. Some say these are not goals, but predictions. Yet political agendas, as Marx showed us, are generally elucidated by way of predictions cast as inevitable outcomes to which the arc of history bends.

This techno-technocracy will apparently end not only viral pandemics, but all manner of perceived global threats, from climate change, gender-based violence, and toxic masculinity, to systemic racism, top soil erosion and other catastrophes du jour. A close working relationship between mega-corporations and a government of the global elite threaten to make it less important whom we elect at home than who is funded from abroad.

Our rights and liberties are in grave danger of being constrained in the interests of preserving the earths rights, as enshrined by the Terra Carta, squashing the Magna Carta back in its liberal box after eight centuries of escape.

Third, there is a background of financial unravelling, as decades of monetary mismanagement come home to roost, foreboding a financial crisis to make the last one look trivial. Central bankers are pushing for resolution by way of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which, in their programmable form, allow for unprecedented state control of transactions and hence society.

Covid measures are a first taste of what a detached class, truly enamoured of these ideas, would like to impose upon you and me. Permanently.

Weve just had our training wheels on.

Lockdowns and mandates arrived without precedent or any hint of due process, flagrantly disregarding time-honoured approaches to managing diseases with a wave of the hand. In the same way, the idea is that all of this should be imposed upon us without regard for our opinion. In this world, our opinions do not count.

The broad picture is one of an attempted concentration of power by powerful states and unaccountable organisations, segueing into the global level, of surveillance power in the mold of China. We can see clearly the ideology of centralism at work. Its bedecked in the language of top-down power and social engineering. A far-off political and corporate mandarinate aims to determine goals and trade-offs for you.

Centralism appeals to those who wield power. Events such as Brexit and Trumps election have made centralisers resentful of electoral democracy. But as a system for organising society at significant scale, centralism has an impressive failure rate think of the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Hitlers Third Reich. And the reasons for this are not too complicated.

At the most basic level is that most foundational of all subjects, epistemology the theory of knowledge. Anything we dont know about, every explanation we lack, is a manifestation of complexity by the standards of our times. In the face of this complexity, all knowledge creation is evolutionary. Nobody has the power to work it all out, so progress takes place by an endless cycle of very marginal conjecture and criticism. The analogy to biology is close. Whereas genes innovate by novel sexual combination and mutation, the evolution of knowledge, and hence of culture, occurs in a marketplace of ideas. Genetic evolution is tested over generations. Under the correct conditions, which only existed for brief periods in the ancient world, and for the last three hundred years in the West, knowledge creation can deliver swift and dramatic improvements in living standards. No sooner do we see a problem, than we solve it, even if somewhat imperfectly, and not always to everyones benefit. Those correct conditions are the ones which permit and protect innovation.

For most of human history the evolution of knowledge was prevented by political arrangements that centralised power and caused hierarchies to ossify. Unless their lives were upended by turmoil, people died in households that were largely indistinguishable from the ones they were born into. All challenges to such stasis were greeted by gruesome violence. The stasis was entrenched, dreary, devoid of creativity. Errors lingered. As the philosopher-physicist, David Deutsch, has proposed, the greatest evil is destruction of the means of error correction. Or to put it another way, its a big problem when we destroy our ability to discover and correct our mistakes.

It is only to would-be rulers and the chronically coddled that centralism holds any appeal. People who confuse their wealth and success with omniscience attract a following of bureaucrats and academics, who as a class are happily ignorant about the productive world of commerce and labour that pays their salaries, and which affords the distinct possibility that they will die in a house much better than the one they were born to.

In recent decades,the time-honoured technique of entitled technocrats has been rolled out before our very eyes. The pattern is that they fabricate or exaggerate a collection of problems to which only centralised, top-down, technocratic solutions are admitted. Maintain a steady flow of propaganda to stoke fear, and you can disrupt the cognitive capacity of entire populations, leading them to partake in wild goose chases. Manipulated into a state of mass psychosis, societies can be stultified into abandoning vital features of their worlds that enabled their flourishing.

A convergent political agenda is powerfully propagandised, causing an ideology to distil. Marx observed that the elites are the most important targets for propaganda. What the man in the street thinks is far less important than the beliefs and conduct of those who occupy the higher echelons of society. If agendas are to be advanced, elites must be kept onboard and well-disciplined. And elites are readily disciplined, through fear of smearing and being ostracised; excommunicated so to speak, like Galileo. By cajoling a sufficient mass of them, you can thus create the appearance that there is a consensus and air of inevitability, even if it only exists in an elite bubble.

The current of centralist ideology merges with another great stream. Postmodern critical theory has been ascendent as a dominant social philosophy. In place of realism it honours lived experience, turning away from rational analysis of the facts. Ideas must be assessed not by virtue of their correspondence with reality, but in hegemonic termsthrough the lens of discourse and power structures. The search for truth is irrelevant, because there is no truth. What counts is how much of a platform you have and how loudly your voice sounds. Opposing ideas are now greeted not with debate and engagement, but with censorship and deplatforming. People who disagree with you should not be given a platform. Speech acts are important, not because they disseminate ideas, but only insofar as they signal tribal allegiance.

This lays the ground for the emergence of the phenomena of political correctness, wokeness and virtue signalling. When they speak of following the science, what they mean is follow the narrative. Moral valence is interpreted only in terms of loyalty to the narrative. Disagreement constitutes violence. If I disagree with you, you will question my agenda, call me a bigot, call for me to be deplatformed, and demand curtailment of my speech.

The adoption of this philosophy of critical theory has been promoted by the Geneva organisations, embedding itself in the syllabi of educational establishments over the decades. The culture of debate and engagement is fast disappearing.

In the world of commerce and economics, it is held as an article of faith that capitalism is failing, and that we need to impose on corporate oppressors stakeholder governance, ESG scorecards, sustainability, best practice, inclusivity and inclusive growth. These word salads and hollow buzzwords trigger a deluge of pointless compliance bureaucracy. Little attention is given to how the items on the long checklist of desirable attributes are to be traded off, and the resulting best practice decisions are often comically nonsensical.

With a flick of the wrist we call forth Modern Monetary Theory, facilitating gratuitous spending, absolving governments from balancing their books, whether nominally or substantively, and enabling financial repression of staggering proportions.

The temptation of the centralisers to say this time is different is tied up with the false notion that being able to control something complex, like the human race, has to do with how much information you have about it. The idea goes that if we put enough sensors into the field, uploading data all the time on our new 5G networks, then we will be able to design and manage our world towards better outcomes.

But it is not for want of information that social engineering fails. It fails for want of explanations understanding. Given the rich complexity of the world, we cannot foresee the second-order effects of central planning, the unintended consequences, or articulate coherent objectives or trade-offs. The centralists demonstrated this most comprehensively with Covid. Not only were their models way out in terms of the burden of the disease, but the effects of their policies were not just smaller than they had projected, but entirely non-existent. In some cases they even worked in the wrong direction. So too it will go with any other aspect of our lives to which they turn their attention.

The political analog of all of this indeed perhaps a root of it all can be found in the Sustainable Development Goals and in the proliferation of rights charters, that have expanded from tightly defined negative rights aimed at protecting the individual from the state, into a dazzling array of positive rights that afford tyrannical bureaucrats a claim against citizens in the interests of promoting whatever social agendas they find convenient. Apparently well intentioned attempts to improve the world are quickly exploited in damaging and even criminal ways. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but also haughty ones.

It was into these ideological waters of centralising arrogance that the notion of lockdowns and mandates as legitimate tools of public health were submerged, never to be subjected to challenge; instant axioms of woke dogma.

Lockdowns assault on lower income people, the young and small businesses amplified already pronounced injustices that had threatened economic collapse. The resource claims of retired people have long necessitated a default on those claims or progressive enslavement of the youth, or some combination of the two. Much of the West is insolvent in this sense. A story cloaked by the early noise of Covid was the perilous frailty of the US monetary system in March 2020, and unprecedented activity by the Federal Reserve, under the moniker Going Direct. In short, the US has both a solvency and a liquidity problem. It is hard to see how curtailment of quantitative easing will not provoke yet another market crash and banking crisis.

All of this threatens to topple many governments or at least provoke profound electoral shifts. What will rise from the ashes? Well, Illsay it again.A vision for our future is being implemented outside of any democratic scrutiny. And the vision is the global technocracy envisaged by centralists.If youve read some history or agree with even part of what Im saying, youll surely agree that any move in that direction needs to be fought energetically and with immense resolve.

Whats happening outside of the elite bubbles? They may not be alive to much of what Ive said so far, but on the street people are questioning large strata of people that do not participate in the elite consensus. While system-ensconced elites may believe that capitalism is failing, ordinary folk know that it is their governments and crony corporatists the centralisers that they need to be wary of. The sense of an emergent neo-feudalism is palpable, and they would concur with the sentiments of Shmuel Yosef Agnon:

The wise men do not partake in leading the world because they know there are even wiser men and wish the world to be led by them. Meanwhile, up jump the fools and evil men and come and take the world into their hands and lead the world according to their evil and stupid ways.

Who is the enemy? Facing an ideology and institutional capture so widespread, it is hard to work backwards through the propaganda to the source of the political agenda. This is a many-headed hydra. But the same names come up time and time again, corrupting our institutions of public health and medical science, channelling our media into a unison chorus, and corporate executives into unthinking subscription, and bribing both incumbent and opposition politicians into co-option or abeyance. The Gates, Open Society, Rockefeller, Blair and Clinton Foundations, and the WEF show up all the time but there is a long list of entities in whose cases it is difficult to tell whether they are primary actors, opportunists or simply part of the apparatus. The Geneva organisations; in the media space, Reuters, Associated Press, Project Syndicate and Publicis, and the creepily named censorship organisations, Trusted News Initiative and Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity.

We should not ignore significant propaganda disseminators Purpose, Global Action Plan, Common Purpose, One Young World and Global Citizens, and their various chapters and think tanks, preaching centralism behind a veil of virtue signalling and lofty ambitions. The world of Big Pharma and Big Tech, and large financial firms that effectively control them.

The array of actors doesnt constitute a shady conspiracy, but rather a broad, open ideological network. As perpetrators of the immense and destructive power-grab dressed up as the Covid policy response, this network must be fought on a broad front.

What can we do about this, faced with massively funded propaganda, rampant censorship, and elites befuddled by the manipulations of behavioural science?

We need to resist, to push back. This is not about a virus. Its about the battle between authoritarianism and real ground-up democracy, between centralism and localism. For people who have been terrorised by this bug, this is a difficult message to process. Its hard for them to accept that both the Covid outcome and the collateral damage would have been far better had we reacted like we did to the similar scale epidemics of the 50s and 60swhich is to say, by doing virtually nothing.

So we need to provide a unified alternative for people who have called bullshit on the whole narrative, even though they have had no platform to say they have done so. Mainstream media has buried the extent of such dissent, which comes largely from the people who actually kept society running during lockdowns. This last year witnessed the largest peaceful protests that have ever occurred, yet they have been downplayed as a few hundred antivaxxers who took to the streets. Religious groups are starting to get the picture, or at least to exhibit signs of internal conflict, as with the Catholic Church. We need to help them along by reminding them of the many who died to afford us valuable liberties.

We stand on the shoulders of giants. Should we now cower in the corner?

What kind of governance should we be aiming for? Many would veer to the other side of the spectrum, where we find the utopian dreams that are the opposite of the centralists those of the anarchists and radical libertarians. A more plausible way would be to consider the doctrine of subsidiarity the idea that sociopolitical issues should be dealt with at the most local level that is consistent with their resolution. This conceptualisation permits the diversity and decentralisation necessary to foster knowledge growth and economic growth, both of which we require to solve our real problems.It respects autonomy, thus limiting domination and injustice. It can appeal to civil liberty defenders from the non-authoritarian left, and to libertarians from the non-authoritarian right.

We need to shift the emphasis from Covid by highlighting the dystopian potential of centralists dreams, at the same time supporting people who are establishing decentralised platforms, whether in the domains of cryptocurrency or social media. We need to deploy these to create parallel societies, projecting a more attractive vision. We need to vote, if we ever do again, for political movements that genuinely push back. We need to demonstrate the courage and humanity that centralists never possess, and model the vigour and creativity that bureaucrats can only envy.

We need to become more vigilant, to tune our ears to the word salad. When we hear terms like sustainable, inclusive or best practice, we must not blindly accept the admonitions that follow them.

We need to have the courage to just say no, to insist that its time to move on. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage consists of overcoming fear. Its up to every individual out there to overcome fear. We need to turn away from mainstream media and listen to dissenting voices. Were going to have to find a more realistic, humane way for the sake of society and our children. This is going to require great courage.

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PANDAs Nick Hudson on the politics of Covid: We need to push back. This is not about a virus. - BizNews

Davies will also have to deal with even more hostility than initially faced in 2005. Theres a strange group within fandom who are hoping that the Woke agenda of Chibnalls approach will be gone when Davies returns, as if they have never read or watched anything hes written. They presumably dont remember the threads on Davies gay agenda on Outpost Gallifrey, or when the simple act of casting a black man in a recurring role in 2005 led to irate posts on right-wing forums. The political correctness gone mad buzzwords of yesteryear now mutated into complaints about woke nonsense. If youve read Davies novelisation of Rose its clear that his approach to Doctor Who now will result in headlines about polluting our childrens minds with ideas of tolerance, acceptance and compassion woke zealotry. Russell T. Davies isnt perfect, of course, but like Doctor Who itself, his storytelling is rarely without a political conscience.

One thing worth highlighting, raised initially by Alex Moreland on his blog, is that the show will be co-produced by Bad Wolf productions. This wont have raised many eyebrows as its assumed to be part of the package of bringing in producers Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter. However, as Moreland points out, changes to the BBC charter means it has to open up in-house properties to bids from external companies to produce them this is the start of that.

Either way, Doctor Who is no longer going to be produced entirely in-house by the BBC, and its possible that the same forces that complain about wokeness in the show have driven the organisation to this point. Beneath the decisions over who gets to run a television programme are reflections of the current political situation, the endless churn of Interesting Times. Given this, then, its possibly a case of damage limitation by the BBC: if they have to pick an external company to co-produce, at least Bad Wolf can be relied upon to treat the property with respect and Davies has fiercely defended the corporation in the past.

Davies appointment can be interpreted as a conservation measure, both in the wider sphere of politics and regarding the show itself. Fan talk (at least in the circles Im in) is dissatisfied with Doctor Who, seeing it as a show needing a rest or reinvention. Chibnalls departure felt like a chance to try someone new, with names like Sally Wainwright and Nida Manzoor mentioned alongside former writers like Jamie Mathieson and Sarah Dollard.

The least positive interpretation of RTDs return is that, for all its talk of diversity and inclusion, British television has failed to develop anyone new to a position where they could take over Doctor Who. Or even that they have done this, but then potentially ignored them for this role.

What we can be positive about, however, is that Russell T. Davies writing is better than ever. Januarys Its a Sin is widely considered his masterpiece, and hes clearly still fizzing with ideas and passion. He loves Doctor Who, hes hardly going to take this job just for the money. The hope is that this is a transitional period for the show, the passing from a period of uncertainty to an exciting, unknown future.

See the original post here:

Doctor Who: What Does the Second Coming of Russell T. Davies Mean For the Show? - Den of Geek

Today, higher education has serious problems. Between political correctness, wokeness, equity and diversity issues, there are now many problems in classrooms and administrative offices.

Professors, who are the source of many of the classroom problems, are sometimes on the receiving end of political correctness and wokeness mania.

One such example involves veteran University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) law professor Jason Kilborn.

Just before the first class on the first day of the spring semester this year, UICs administration abruptly suspended Kilborn from teaching. He said the administration would not explain what the basis for the indefinite suspension was when he asked.

This hits you like a ton of bricks, he said. It was totally unexpected. Youre totally isolated.

When he finally learned the reason behind this extreme administrative action, Kilborn learned that UIC had violated his rights to academic freedom.

On an exam the preceding semester he had posed a hypothetical matter to which the law students were to respond. That issue set off alarms among some hypersensitive members of a student organization. Without discussing their concerns with their teacher, they complained to the law school dean, the university administration, and the media, calling his use of certain language inexcusable.

Just what momentous transgression had Kilborn committed? He had employed a long-used hypothetical issue in the law school exam that contained two redacted slurs.But even redacting the terms didnt save Kilborn from being targeted by his university.

Undergrad teaches students to think, but law schools, medical schools they have to teach students how to do, Kilborn said. As someone who has taught law for 21 years, he understands that concept, and had structured his curriculum to accomplish that goal.

Explaining his technique, he said, In virtually every one of my law classes, I try to put that scalpel in my students hands and ask them: What do you do? These hypotheticals, he explained, really force students, future lawyers, to be confronted with the messy reality theyll be faced with in the outside world.

Kilborn was eventually reinstated through action by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), but this occurrence paints a very clear picture of some of what has driven higher education at many institutions in our country from being a valuable asset, to being a politically-driven wasteland.

This is not the only case where a professor has been targeted for controversial expression. FIRE research into the rise in collegiate scholars punished for their constitutionally protected speech reveals that fully 74 percent of targeting incidents are successful. What that means is that the target professor ends up with some type of punishment, such as investigations or suspension. And FIRE noted that one in four targeted scholars lose their job.

Working hard to not upset students while trying to help them learn how to deal with the real world they are preparing to enter has become, in far too many cases, more important than the actual process of preparing them to survive and prosper after college.

Another professor trying to cope with this new upside-down campus environment was not suspended. Instead, he decided he had had enough.

Professor Peter Boghossian had taught philosophy at Portland State University for the last decade. He quit his teaching post, submitting his letter of resignation to the schools provost, and also publishing that letter.

His problems began, he explained, because he started asking critical questions. Unlike my colleagues, I asked these questions out loud and in public. The more he spoke out, the more push-back he got. So, he began publishing articles with two other people demonstrating how critical thinking had gradually faded from importance at Portland.

These articles resulted in him being attacked and verbally harassed by both students and faculty. This harassment included being spit on, and being threatened as he walked to and from classes.

When he went to Portland, he believed he was joining a group of professional people that were committed to growing critical thinkers, not machines. He believed his job was not to tell students what to think, but to teach them how to think, he said. But Portland no longer pursues its original mission.

In his letter to the universitys provost, Boghossian, explained, But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division.

He continued, Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions based on rigorous research, critical thinking and listening to diverse voices.

The education and degrees so many have sought and benefitted from for so long have, in many institutions, become little more than a certification of successful adopting of a political attitude that challenges Americas fundamental principles.

Helping young adults grow intellectually and gain needed skills isnt their goal. Turning America into another socialist failure is their goal. And the movement is expanding.

James H. Smokey Shott, a resident of Bluefield, Va., is a Daily Telegraph columnist. Contact him at shottcommentary@gmail.com

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FROM THE OPINION PAGE Political correctness is one of many serious higher education problems - Bluefield Daily Telegraph

In case you missed it - and if you did, I going to guess you spend every moment of your free time away from cable news, the internet, YouTube and the podcastosphere, and to that I say I envy your peaceful existence - last week Joe Rogan recovered from Covid. He then went on his No. 1 in the world podcast to talk about the experience.

In short, he has made it abundantly clear he's not telling anyone not to take the vaccine (you can't, otherwise YouTube and the other socials will demonetize you, if not deplatform you altogether), but has been upfront that he's skeptical and refuses to take it. And described on his show how, once he felt symptoms, went to his doctor who prescribed some therapeutics. One of which, Ivermectin, he wanted because he had a medical expert on his show who recommended it and mentioned some public health official from Tokyo who touted its efficacy. And Rogan told his guest Tom Segura that he was back on his feet in three days and feels fine. But they laughed about how CNN and some other outlets referred to the drug he took as a "horse dewormer" and debated whether he can sue them.

OK, maybe that wasn't so short. But necessary in order to set the scene.

God knows, Rogan has had his critics for years. You can't talk into the most listened to microphone in the country and steer into every hot button issue, from political correctness to cancel culture, gender identity to politics, race to religion, sex to drugs and comedy, without creating a standing army of haters. It comes with the territory you've chosen to stake out. And ultimately, good for business.

What's ironic is that since Rogan talked about his treatment, his angriest and most vocal critic is pretty much the Columbus who discovered the territory Rogan rules over. The man I could've written that above paragraph about at any point in the last four decades. At least until the last five years or so. Ever since he's come out and repudiated everything he's ever done or said that might have offended anyone. In other words, the very humor upon which he built the greatest empire in the history of radio.

New Howard Stern hates Joe Rogan worse than anyone ever hated Original Recipe Howard Stern.

Source - Stern mocked the anti-vaccine sh*theads who accuse people of worshipping Dr. Anthony Fauci while they take horse dewormer from a doctor. ...

Stern, who remarked that Rogan could have also gotten a vaccine which Stern heralded as a cure and skipped the whole ordeal.

"I heard Joe Rogan was saying what are you busting my balls [for]? I took horse de-wormer and a doctor gave it to me. Well a doctor would also give you a vaccine, so why take horse-dewormer?"

Stern went on to muse about what the situation would have been like if Covid anti-vaxers were around to reject the vaccine for polio. He also once again mocked how all this anti-science goes out the window when people wind up in the emergency room for Covid.

Theres never been one that said Im so glad I refused. Im so happy that I cant breathe. This is a wonderful way to die, it was worth it because I didnt take the vaccine,' Stern said.

At another point, Stern tripled down on his lack of sympathy for imbeciles whove been hospitalized for Covid after refusing to get vaccinated. ...

We have no time for idiots in this country anymore, Stern said. We dont want you. We want you to all, either go the hospital, and stay home, die there with your Covid. Dont take the cure, but dont clog up our hospitals with your Covid when you finally get it. Stay home, dont bother with science, its too late. Go f*ck yourself, we just dont have time for you.

Just to get this out of the way, I'm not advocating for either argument. These are two comedians with differing opinions on medical treatment. And personally, I prefer getting my advice from the nice primary care man I'm signed up with. The guy who's never done stand up or fed hot dogs to chicks in bikinis from the end of a fishing rod but who has a degree in how to treat the human body. Your results may vary.

I'm just here to watch this battle play out. In the way that 1914 Jerry (No, I wasn't around yet. And I find your ageism offensive) would've watched with fascination as Serbia and Austria-Hungary went to war. Because I believe ultimately, this is where the battle lines of our time are being drawn. Two strong personalities with legions of followers that number in the millions. Each with tons of money and influence. Who are both virtually cancel proof, given that many have tried and none have come close to succeeding.

And if I had to handicap it, I can't see any way Rogan doesn't win this battle in a rout. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which is his greatest strengths are his curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Whatever else you think about Ivermectin, he talked to a doctor who told him he believes in its efficacy. The last I looked, Stern was talking to Jimmy Kimmel and Elton John.

Besides that, there's not a Stern fan I know who doesn't see him as a sellout. Someone who's disavowed everything that made his show the best thing on the air. His two SiriusXM stations are next to one another. I defy anyone to sit through the current one where he's talking to Drew Barrymore about how great her daytime talk show is, then flip to Classic Stern having a guest queef "Flight of the Bumblebee," and not want to stick with Howard in his prime.

More to the point (and I say this as someone who got the shots as soon as I was eligible) I can't imagine that Peak Howard would've been screaming about other people's personal decisions. Sure, he openly rooted for some people to die. Don Imus and the religious zealots that were always trying to get him thrown off the air, just to name a few. But that Stern was a small "l" libertarian to the extreme. I can't imagine him demanding people take a drug they (for whatever reason) don't trust or not take one that they do. For certain he would've been putting Jenna Jameson on a Symbian instead of giving off big "Old Man Yells at Clouds" energy.

The bottom line is, this is a battle Stern might have won 20 years ago. But his audience has aged out of fights like this. And he doesn't stand a chance against the King of All Podcasts.

Link:

The New Front Line of the Culture War: Howard Stern vs. Joe Rogan - Barstool Sports

One interesting note from our not always rational Chief Executive's Office, they are withdrawing their nomination of David Chipman (wildly anti-2nd Amendment) to Director of ATF. After his debacle at his hearings I guess the CEO thought better of his qualifications? This in no way means the Left is one bit less determined to take the 2nd away from honest gun owners while at the same time doing nothing to curtail violent criminal drug gangs running rampant, killing one another along with a new element of just picking some innocent citizen to shoot and kill just for the heck of it. A new gang initiation perhaps?

Now I believe I made the case recently that the Left is consistently inconsistent and this is just another example of that. Government (FBI) statistics, if anyone cares to check, show conclusively that "Gun Violence" is both gang related and it is with the use of hand guns by a huge percentage. Yet the Left keeps insisting the problem is "assault guns," which are not assault guns nor by any means the choice of criminals, period.

Typically more interested in the optics of a problem then addressing the problem itself, this speaks to their obsession with vote harvesting rather then public safety. Take away every law abiding citizen's every weapon and it would not put even a scratch in our gun violence in this country. The problem is criminals with guns nothing else, yet the Left, pushing political correctness ignores reality.

I may have mentioned, philosopher Ayn Rand said, "You can avoid reality, but you can not avoid the consequences of ignoring reality." Boy was she right!

If you are a resident of Laconia or the local towns around, it is obvious crimes are rising even in our out-of-the-big-city environment. The spillover comes largely from the illegal drug industry and gangster wanna-be's looking for the fast buck. That and the Left's all-cops-are-racist narrative pushed by the terrorist BLM thugs hiding behind an antiracist screen sounding so appealing to many.

No one wants to be perceived as a racist but look at BLM's actions. Most destruction by them is in Black community's, including the killings.

I again point you back to Ayn Rand.

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Steve Earle: The Left unconcerned about consequences of their narrative - The Laconia Daily Sun

Thanks to the ongoing pandemic and lockdowns, millions of Australians are cowering under their doonas, desperate for distraction.

Sensing an opportunity, the book industry is rushing out a swathe of new and repackaged books reflecting recent local and global developments. Are they any good?

The old adage Write what you know is advice that has served former defence minister Christopher Pyne well in his first dive into airport fiction.

Drawing heavily from his time in government,The Hunt for Dud Octobertell the story of The Fixer, a plucky able-bodied seaman who, against great odds, establishes a new submarine base in Lake Burley Griffin. Whether hes battling naval top brass, ACT town planners or his own personal demons, readers can rest assured hell fix it.

In this part memoir, part DIY handbook, Porter explains the dark art of not knowing the things you need to know and knowing the people you do but being able to say you dont.

A must-read for anyone on a fixed salary and stuck in a legal or ethical bind, Strangers is a rollicking read of legal derring-do, political intrigue and the gift of moral ambiguity.

This tell-all blows the lid on the high times of football wives and Instagram influencers. It is a rip-snorting, wags-to-witches tale that delivers line after line of chatty, erratic and occasionally overconfident prose. It will leave readers wanting more. Heaps more.

This reprint includes a new foreword by the author in which she apologises for the way her work has unintentionally inspired and emboldened oppressive chauvinists from Texas to Kabul. The book was always intended to be a warning. Sadly, for too many men, my speculative fiction has become a kind of Misogyny for Dummies, Atwood said.

Similar rereleases are expected for The Plague by Albert Camus, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

A trenchantly, non-rhetorical follow-up to How Good is Scott Morrison, Van Onselens new work is a pithy and well-told tale, although the central characters unreliable narration can grate.

Marie Kondos world-conquering debut The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was carefully constructed around a single powerful idea: if your stuff doesnt bring you joy, bin it. For this book, the core message appears to be: Dont just do something, sit there.

It explores the languid allure of indolence, sloth, prevarication, avoidance, denial, lethargy and meh. Essential reading, particularly during a third wave.

Its hard to know if Mark Mansons follow-up to Everything is F*cked is a carefully calibrated satire on the vagaries of modern-day book marketing, or a cynical cash-in. Either way, there are plenty of laughs as Manson drops f-bombs into classics such as: Pride and F*cking Prejudice, Moby F*cking Dick, The F*cked Gatsby, F*cker in the Rye and F*cking Boy Swallows F*cking Universe. Not too f*cking shabby.

In 12 Rules for Being Incel Catnip, public thinker and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson attempts to understand why so many of his readers are sad and broken misogynists and why they use his books to justify their terrible memes and poor hygiene. After 674 long pages, and several quixotic tilts at political correctness and feminism, Peterson concludes absolutely none of it is his fault.

Often referred to as Australias best storyteller, and not just by himself, Peter FitzSimons has crash-tackled some of our nations tallest tales Gallipoli, Kokoda, James Cook, Ned Kelly and, um, Kim Beazley. Now hes set his sights on the biggest target yet: himself.

In this hard-hitting expose, FitzSimons asks: Should I have done more to stop Malcolm Turnbull screwing up the republic referendum?, Is there anyone who doesnt know Ive given up the grog? and How funky do those bandanas get under studio lights?

A worthy addition to the canon.

Its more than a newsletter. Its where readers expect more fearless journalism from a truly independent perspective. We dont pander to anyones party biases. We question everything, explore the uncomfortable and dig deeper.

And now you get more from your membership than ever before.

Peter FrayEditor-in-chief of Crikey

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The best (totally real) books to extend your lockdown misery - Crikey

Culture warriors will hate what PwC is doing. I can almost hear them, as I write this, fulminating about the woke accountancy firm on the back of the measures it is taking to improve diversity.

Let me explain: The business already voluntarily reports its ethnicity pay gap along with the mandatory gender pay gap reporting that is required of all employers above a certain size. But this year it has also added disability pay gap reporting and has provided a number based on its employees socioeconomic background too.

Were doomed, I tell you, doomed. Before too long you wont be able to get in the office cafe for all the bally wheelchairs and therell be guide dogs sleeping in the corridors. Britain will soon be on its knees, swamped by a tide of political correctness, if this catches on.

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PwC's bid to improve diversity is not woke. It's shrewd business - The Independent

Have you heard about the Saint Joseph Summit taking place September 30th through October 3rd? Bishop Barbarito invites you to join with him on this virtual pilgrimage in this video,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS_2n-6SQ-8. Visithttps://www.spiritfilledevents.comto learn more!

Editors note: The following is the homily offered by Bishop Gerald Barbarito at the ordination to the Permanent Diaconate, celebrated at Cathedral of St. Ignatius Loyola Sept. 11, 2021

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you (Jer 1: 45).

These words from the prophet Jeremiah, spoken in the first reading, are addressed to you, my brothers, Francis and Mark, in a particular way as you are ordained deacons for the service of the People of God here in the Diocese of Palm Beach. We are all grateful to you for carefully listening to and discerning the call of the Lord and for your faithful devotion to your program of preparation at St. Vincent de Paul Seminary, bringing you here today. Likewise, we are grateful to your families for their support and to all in our diaconate preparation program who walked with you and assisted you during the preceding years. Indeed, the Lord knows you personally and affirms the particular identity He has given to you.

We read in the second reading from the Acts of the Apostles this morning, that seven men were chosen by the apostles so that, as apostles, they could continue to carry out the ministry particularly entrusted to them. By the laying on of hands, as will occur today, the first deacons were ordained for the Church. While the ministry of the deacons would be different from that of the apostles, they both would be complementary to each other in order that the word of God would continue to be proclaimed.

That word, shared by the apostles and the deacons, is basic to all men and women as indicated by Jeremiah so clearly, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I dedicated you. It is an essential word spoken to all of us, no matter what our vocation may be, which reminds us of our basic identity as created in the image and likeness of God and called by Him for a particular relationship with Him.

Every single person is known by God before being formed by Him in the womb and known by Him before being born. We cannot change the person God has created us to be. We must accept, love and respect that person, and every other person that we encounter who has the same origin. My brothers, as deacons, that is the basic message of the Gospel which you are to proclaim in your ministry and by your lives.

As you are ordained this morning, it is on the day on which we remember the terrible portrayal of violence which occurred 20 years ago. Sept. 11 was a day that expressed the original sin of humanity that flies in the face of the words of Jeremiah and places Gods creation and the gift of human life out of His hands and into hands which intend to destroy it. We saw the evil that can occur through the boldness of sin manifesting itself in human pride. We also saw, in the days to follow, the goodness that can manifest itself through the virtue exercised by men and women following their call as made in the image and likeness of God.

Unfortunately, 20 years later, with all the good that is in our world, we still experience the evil that can come from the human heart by not recognizing who we are as made in Gods image and likeness with a particular identity and dignity proper to us. The horrible situation of Afghanistan, the political unrest within our world, the lack of respect for people, their particular race and the ability to condone the taking of an unborn childs life called into existence by God are but some of the manifestations of evil among us.

There is still the inclination not to accept who we are, and others, as created by God with a particular purpose and identity, but to re-create ourselves in the image of likeness of our own preference. Two opposing forces present themselves. One places political correctness as the supreme good, proclaiming that it was not God who formed us in the womb and gave us an identity but we who form ourselves. The other is a warrior attempt to correct this position, but which makes the warrior into God Himself, deciding how God created you.

Francis and Mark, as you are ordained deacons today, it is the Gospel just proclaimed which is at the center of your service. It is the Gospel of humility and warrants repeating: You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be the great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so the Son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His love as a ransom for the many (Matt 20:25b-28). The virtue of humility goes hand-in-hand with the service you are to carry out as deacons.

Humility is something that is often misunderstood, and an unhealthy understanding of it is not beneficial to us. The proper understanding of humility not only deepens our relationship with God, but is the very foundation of it. In reality, humility is part of the life of God Himself who has made us in His image and likeness. Not to be humble is not to live as God.

The word, humility is derived from the Latin word, humilis, which means near to the ground humus. Its basic meaning is that we have not given existence to ourselves but reminds us that God has given us existence from the earth He created. To be humble means to have our feet on the ground and to recognize that our existence, and that of every person, revolves around our relationship with God who created us precisely for that relationship.

It is especially significant to realize that God, the author of all creation, showed Himself humble in the person of Jesus Christ. The richness of the great hymn from Saint Pauls Letter to the Philippians is one that can never be exhausted and one that needs to always be reflected in our service. It is the Magna Carta of the virtue of humility which tells us that we must have the same attitude of Jesus Christ, who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, He humbled Himself becoming obedient to death, even death on the Cross (Phil 2:68). These words are the heart of the Order of the Diaconate and so at the heart of Holy Orders in general.

Continually in the Gospels, Jesus calls us to humility and invites us to Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart (Mt 11:29). He gives us the sterling example of humility when He washes His apostles feet at the Last Supper, which is the sign of service for all those in Holy Orders

During this month of September, we celebrate many feasts in honor of our Blessed Mother. Her Nativity, her Most Holy Name and her Sorrows are a part of this month during which you are ordained. Mary presents to us an example of humility paralleled to her Sons. Always in the background, she rejoices in the relationship she has with God which is what brings her joy and exalts her above all others. Humility deepened Marys relationship with God.

My brothers, as you are ordained deacons today, continue to preach the Gospel in a world that needs to hear the Gospel more than it needs anything else. Be at the service of those who need your ministry by proclaiming the word of God in word, and in action by the example of your lives. Always strive to help others realize their identity as made in the image and likeness of God with a particular purpose and dignity which only God can bestow upon us. It is important to understand that one of the qualities of humility is that we have no pretension about ourselves and that others are able to feel at home in our presence. This is why Jesus invites others to come to him, because He is humble of heart.

May you know always the joy of the special gift of Holy Orders which you receive today in the diaconate. May your service to others help you better understand the unique identity which God has given to you. May we all realize that our lives are gifts from God and that they only make sense through a living relationship with Him. He is the supreme good and through Him, especially in the person of Jesus Christ, we come to know the fullness of life. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you (Jer 1:4-5).

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Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you - Florida Catholic

Violence against women is a manifestation of an eternal war for power.

The dominance of patriarchy is the dark mark of an atavistic struggle, through which women try to conquer their independence each time with better weapons and build a life of freedom. This eternal confrontation is not about customs or traditions, but about a guerrilla war waged by one sector of the population armed with all kinds of weapons: legal, physical and doctrinal against another that possesses only the certainty of its reason. And so the centuries have passed.

To begin to understand the scale of this system of domination, it is necessary to go beyond appearances and measure the enormous impact on the lives of more than half the worlds population. This not only translates into apparent violence in the form of physical, social and psychological abuse, whose constant presence impedes the full development of girls, adolescents and adult women, but also in the underhanded way in which they are condemned to economic dependence thanks to the harmful influence of a distorted vision of motherhood and family, marked by illegitimate authority.

From such a scheme of historical injustice, it is understandable how societies tolerate abuse, torture, marginalisation and extreme cruelty against women just because they are women. A glance at the statistics is enough to show how fragile their status is and how they are prevented from achieving full control over their lives and bodies. In underdeveloped countries, this reality is overwhelming and paints an aberrant picture of the feminine as weak physically and intellectually and naturally subordinate, both in legal and religious doctrines.

Hence, every attempt to advance and clear the way for the full development of the female sector has encountered the greatest obstacles, even from within its own sphere. The fact that, having found it necessary to conquer every bit of freedom by breaking often violently religious, social and legal obstacles in order to occupy a place in the real world, they have been mocked, rejected and condemned, is reason enough to reflect on this absurd power structure. In the domestic, work and social spheres, women still occupy a space subject to condescension and political correctness rather than full entitlement.

This portrayal is not a distorted view of reality. It is evident in the aberrant figures of femicides, kidnappings, disappearances, trafficking and rapes against girls, adolescents and women, crimes that go unpunished and rarely, if ever, reach the stage of investigation and conviction. They are the ones who are absent in societies indifferent to their condition as human beings, with all that this implies in terms of respect, autonomy and capabilities. They are the ones who have experienced firsthand the contempt of their peers and the abandonment of society.

Underlying this drama of injustice is the eternal struggle for power. From it emerges the enormous machinery of patriarchy, whose pre-eminence rests on an authority imposed by force and the enormous advantages of having at its disposal a whole contingent of women capable of contributing, by the force of tradition, their unpaid work, their creative wealth and their endless resistance to pain. The struggle to claim their rights faces for obvious reasons fierce resistance.

The place of women in society is still a pending issue.

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The absent ones - PRESSENZA International News Agency

Those impossible-to-ignore and hard-to-define white " evangelicals" have, for decades, been the largest and most dynamic sector in U.S. religion. Are we finally witnessing an evangelical crack-up as so long anticipated -- and desired -- by liberal critics?

That's a big theme for the media to affirm or deny.

To begin, The Religion Guy is well aware that millions of these conservative Protestants quietly attend weekly worship, join Bible and prayer groups, try to help those in need, fund national and foreign missions and are oblivious to discussions of this sort on the national level.

For years we've seen a telltale slide of membership and baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention, that massive and stereotypical evangelical denomination. At the same time, its clear (follow the work of Ryan Burge for background) that many of those Southern Baptists have simply moved to independent, nondenominational evangelical megachurches of various kinds.

But more than numbers, analysts are pondering insults to cultural stature, which greatly affect any movement's legitimacy, respect, impact and appeal to potential converts, especially with younger adults.

The Scopes Trial to forbid teaching of Darwinian evolution nearly a century ago continues to shape perceptions of evangelicalism and its fundamentalist wing, especially due to the fictionalized 1955 play and 1960 movie "Inherit the Wind." No doubt ongoing evangelical enthusiasm for Donald Trump has a similar negative impact among his critics, but this is not merely a political story but involves evangelicalism's internal dynamics. The Trump era exacerbatesdivisions that already existed despite unity in belief.

Turn to former GetReligion writer Mark Kellner, who is already making his mark (pun intended) as the new "faith and family" reporter for theWashington Times. Here is an essential recent read: After scandals, is evangelical Christianity's image damaged?"

The immediate cause behind the question was an odd little incident that spoke volumes, the sacking of Daniel Darling as spokesman for National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). Realize that to a great extent trade shows for evangelical broadcasters and for retailers, plus events surrounding the Fellowship Foundation's Presidential Prayer Breakfast, have functioned as the major gatherings for influencers and celebrities in the motley evangelical movement.

Darling's sin was to tell MSNBC he got the COVID-19 vaccine and considers that a good idea for other Christians. The Guy caught that interview and confesses Darling's words were so mild, and so respectful of evangelical anti-vaxxers, that there seemed to be no news. But then NRB handed Darling a demotion at lower pay so he left. For background, see Darling's recent interview (Fired After Getting Vaccinated And Encouraging Others to Do So) with the always-interesting Emma Green of theAtlantic.

Whatever the back-and-forthing, Darling was penalized for ignoring NRB "neutrality" on vaccination, in an unpalatable example of conservative "cancel culture" and "political correctness." As Kellner further observed, this followed unseemly scandals at such evangelical powerhouses as Liberty Universityand Willow Creek church.That's but the beginning of the recent public squalor of evangelical hypocrites and sexual predators.

Then there's the disillusionment of hyper-popular Bible teacher Beth Moore,and the remarkable private 2020 letter to Southern Baptist executives from the Rev. Russell Moore (no relation), leaked after he resigned as head of the SBCs national Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.Moore lamented the denomination's moral failures on sexual abuse of youths and women, and also on treatment of racial minorities and immigrants.

Darling, a bit player in that protest letter, was formerly on Moore's staff. Commenting on the NRB fuss in a recent email-only newsletter, Moore marveled that a life-saving medical advance "is now considered controversial in our subculture" and recalled hosting evangelical radio whose callers were far more interested in "scaremongering" than, say, how to make evangelism more effective. He sees great damage from evangelical media "marketers of rage" who inflame controversy rather than offer nuanced discussion of current moral problems.

In subscribers-only columns forTheDispatch.com, commentator David French also frequently grieves over evangelical trends and leaders. (Though he's anti-Trump, it's important to recognize that French is strongly old-style on evangelical theology and in his past strategic legal efforts defending religious liberty.)

As Kellner observes, the overriding issue has become "how evangelical Christianity is perceived in an increasingly secular culture" when its Gospel outreach faces far more resistance than in the Billy Graham days.

A final question: Aare the recent events transient hiccups or a new direction that demands substantial analysis?This is, of course, a question that has been asked several times in recent decades.

[Disclosure: The Religion Guy was the news editor of the evangelical magazineChristianity Todaybefore covering the beat forTimemagazine and The Associated Press.]

Read more from the original source:

Are we finally witnessing the long-anticipated (by journalists) evangelical crack-up? - GetReligion