America at a Rubicon Moment & MAGA Isn’t Enough

Author and speaker Os Guinness knows America is divided, but he has a different line of demarcation than some other cultural observers.  During an appearance at the Family Research Council in Washington to promote his new book: “Last Call for Liberty”, Guinness said the division is the difference between those who understand “the Republic viewed through the lens of the US revolution and those who view it through the lens of the French revolution.”

Rick Mckee, The Augusta Chronicle, GA

It’s a distinction between a successful revolution that was “profoundly biblical” here in the US and a revolution that was an “anti–biblical” failure in France.

Strangely enough, a rebooted French Revolution has seen remarkable success here. It’s now 50 years since German radical Rudi Dutschke called for revolutionaries to abandon violence and instead make a “long march through the institutions” and take over from the inside. Fortunately for the left their “long march” coincided exactly with conservative’s “long snooze.”

Since then the left has seized higher education and made potentially irreversible gains in government schools. The mass media serves as its propaganda arm, while the culture surrendered. Guinness acknowledges the left’s success and warns, “If they win, the American Republic is finished as the founders saw it.”

At the root of the conflict is the definition of freedom. Guinness believes America has failed to “wrestle with the paradox of freedom. Freedom tends to undermine freedom, because it carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.”

The second paradox of freedom, more important than the first although Guinness didn’t state it that way, is that the only framework strong enough to support freedom is that of individual self–restraint.

“Freedom is a challenge to responsibility,” he explained. “Today many of us want to be free, but don’t want to be responsible. The talk is always of rights and never of duties.” That line of thinking eventually leads either to the waiting room at Planned Parenthood, rehab clinics or Venezuela.

Guinness doesn’t believe either building the wall or Make America Great Again is enough. This doesn’t make him a never–Trumper exactly, but it does leave him skeptical. He’s disappointed that “no one at the highest level is addressing the founding principles of the nation” and one gets the feeling he doesn’t think President Trump is up to the task.

Guinness believes the underlying philosophies between the two sides are so divergent and the gulf between them so deep that America is at “a Rubicon moment.” Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army and entered Rome. For America’s “Rubicon moment” Guinness is less martial. He turns instead to Starbucks for inspiration and suggests the country “have a conversation.” Since no one at Starbucks is currently talking about race at the pickup counter, there may be room for that discussion on freedom, but I have my doubts.

Guinness other recommendation is equally futile. “Americans need to know the ‘unum’ that balances the ‘pluribus,” he observed wryly. I’m in agreement, but his method is fatally flawed.

Guinness wants the same government schools that can’t persuade teenagers to use the bathroom that corresponds with their sex to reemphasize civics education by “teaching what it is to be a citizen.” I would settle for teaching boys what it is to be a man.

My suggestion involves education, too, but not in government schools. Ideally, Congress would pass legislation where education funding follows the child — like Medicare funding does for his grandpa — and any school public or private the kid chooses gets the money. Unfortunately, under the leadership of Curator of the Senate Mitch McConnell the comfortable conservatives in Congress will never do this.

The alternative is to take what already exists and reinforce it, which has happened successfully before. After Roe v. Wade was imposed on the country the Catholic church lead a lonely fight against abortion while Protestants and other Evangelicals sat on the sideline. It took entirely too long, but Protestants finally joined the fight and together with Catholics that have made great strides in protecting the unborn.

The same can be done for the culture.

The Catholics have been running an efficient school system for decades. I suggest Southern Baptists, orthodox independent churches and the remaining orthodox members mainline churches offer to join the Catholics and set up a nationwide network of Bible–based schools that emphasize civics and responsibility.

The Catholics would have to agree to compromise and allow Protestants to attend Protestant religious education classes while the Catholics attended theirs. Protestants would bring more money and more students while the Catholics supplied the buildings and the infrastructure. This ‘umum’ would produce a new generation of youth that would understand what Guinness is stressing: Real freedom is “the permission to do as you ought” rather than “the permission to do as you please.”

2nd Becomes the ‘It Depends’ Amendment

Dick’s and Dunkleberger’s have decided the 2^nd Amendment contains a hitherto unknown age restriction on the sale of rifles. In the future only customers over the age of 21 will be able to buy a scary–looking long gun in those stores.

Walmart, L.L. Bean and Florida also are banking on age discrimination as a civil rights violation understanding judges will be happy to overlook. Or should turning a biased eye meet with too much pushback, our robed rulers will quickly discover a provision hidden between the lines of the Constitution that legalizes a 2^nd Amendment age qualification.

Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle

I’m opposed to knee–jerk ageism as currently proposed, but with just a few tweaks to the regime, I could become an enthusiastic supporter. And I don’t mean by limiting the age restriction. Indeed, I want to expand it.

If lawmakers and commercial interests think America would be safer if citizens under age 21 aren’t covered by the 2^nd Amendment, I can think of many ways the country would benefit from expanding this philosophy to other portions of the Constitution.

Let’s start with the 1^st Amendment. Think how much more mature and less profane culture would be if free speech rights were denied teens and pre–adults. Not being forced to listen to or read about Parkland media darling David Hogg is enough to convince me.

If that overly–opinionated and under–matured agitator for gun confiscation had to wait four years before free speech rights were conferred, it might give him time to cool off and grow up. Emphasis on the ‘might.’

Making free speech privileges a right–of–passage, like one’s first sip of Jack Daniel’s, would immediately eliminate lawsuits regarding obscene t–shirts in schools; along with obscene caps, dress codes, offensive posters, offensive chants, cleavage, yoga pants, thongs, saggy pants, baggy ideology — in other words, the whole works!

Parents and infants who identify as adults will be quick to point out you can’t shut a teenager up. 1^st Amendment or no. True, but if under 21s aren’t covered by the 1^st Amendment, then they also aren’t protected by case law regarding libel and slander. Add a provision specifying media outlets giving a platform to under–21s are liable for any slanderous or libelous statements and bingo, you’ve got a blackout!

I can’t think of any discussion of a major issue in our past where under–21s have brought new light to the debate. Mucho heat, yes, innovative thinking, no.

Besides spouting off, what other limitations do I want as a price for my support? Voting for one. Raising the voting age to 21 will eliminate all the tired, recycled, thumb–sucking news coverage of ‘the youth vote.’ People start voting regularly when they reach the age of 35. Before that time only a lunatic with a handout — Bernie comes to mind — will motivate youth to put their game controller down long enough to go to the polls.

With any luck a 21–year–old minimum voting age will also end that perpetual money–raising, results lacking racket: “Rock the Vote”.

The 4^th Amendment could also use an age limitation. The majority of American teenagers would benefit from a few random locker searches. The same goes for their cell phones and computers. Maintaining privacy at that age is usually a cover for activities parents forbid or discourage. Letting the sunshine in and completely eliminating this misplaced concern for Junior’s privacy, replacing it with a mild sense of paranoia, would go a long way toward reestablishing cultural and moral standards parents and other authority figures have allowed to degrade.

The left won’t agree to my proposal because to a large extent it has already silenced conservatives who are under 21. For that beleaguered class the 2^nd isn’t the only ‘it depends’ amendment. Young conservatives have discovered their 1^st Amendment rights are conditional, too.

Before his death Andrew Breitbart observed, “Politics is downstream of culture.” Conservatives are living in that fetid marsh today. The left runs higher and lower education. It controls Hollywood, cable TV and broadcast TV. It controls all the legacy networks with the exception of Fox. (There its control is confined to the entertainment side, while the news side skews conservative — for now.)

Music — country, rock and rap — is controlled by Cultural Marxists. Social media is another preserve of the left.

Conservatives are limited to radio, a handful of websites, even fewer publications and Trump’s twitter feed.

Gun ownership is witnessing the same kind of squeeze. During the Obama administration they tried to put an age ceiling on guns by using the Social Security Administration. This year’s goal is an age floor. If they continue to narrow the window, soon the ‘Productive Years’ and the ‘Golden Years’ will be joined by the ‘Gun–owning Years’ as brief periods during an individual’s life.

God Bless This Abortion Mill

(Author’s Note: If you have any question regarding just how badly conservatives and ProLife believers have lost the Cultural Civil War, ponder this: Not a single one of the newspapers and websites that normally run my Cagle Syndicate column ran this one.)

A Maryland abortion mill recently held an audition that was so important the Washington Post covered it. And this wasn’t one of the friendly Planned Parenthood ‘clinics’ where they are so busy providing mammograms, check–ups, flu shots and underage marital counseling that abortion customers practically have to deliver in the waiting room before someone will see them.

This performance was at the Carhart ‘clinic’ in Bethesda, MD. There chief executioner LeRoy Carhart terminates the life of viable, unborn babies up to five months old. Although that limit is self–imposed. In the People’s Republic of Maryland, a woman can execute her unborn child even in the ninth month.

There were four individuals present, each trying to out–do the others in their unqualified support for killing the unborn. What made this audition so newsworthy was all four claimed to be religious authorities. The Rev. Carlton Veazey, Rabbi Charles Feinberg, Rev. Cari Jackson and Rev. Barbara Gerlach were present but evidently the priest of Moloch had a schedule conflict.

None of the four are exactly mainstream clergy, the mainstreamers are the ones across the street leading prayer vigils trying to prevent abortions. Consequently, abortion mills can’t be picky when it comes recruiting spiritual help. If they own a Bible and know where to put the “amen” in a prayer, it’s good enough for the ‘Choose Death’ industry.

Veazey has been described by Tucker Carlson as “an abortion fanatic” who claims abortion “is part of the basic tenet of our church.” Veazey talks less about the photo where he was “in a nude embrace with a woman who had come to him for ‘spiritual help.’” And the Washington Post reporter didn’t inquire into the circumstances of her subsequent suicide and Veazey’s ouster as pastor of the Zion Baptist Church in Washington, DC.

Rev. Jackson is a ‘married’ lesbian and Rev. Gerlach is a widow and old–time feminist. None of the four currently have a church or synagogue that provides a salary. If they were going to generate any paid speaking opportunities from their butcher shop blessing, news coverage would be crucial.

They began with spurious ‘religious’ justifications for abortion that reeked of modern misplaced moral authority: Achieving the goal comes at someone else’s expense. In this instance, the baby.

Veazey proclaimed, “Keep them safe and keep them strong. And may they always know that all that they do is for Thy glory.” Feinberg was reassuring, “Judaism has always said abortion is never murder. It may not be permitted, depending on the circumstances…but it is never murder.” True as far as it goes. Feinberg failed to note one of those times abortion is not permitted is after 40 days. Up to 40 days a woman can go to any abortion clinic, instead of Carhart’s Last Gasp Gynecology.

After 40 days the only Jewish justification for abortion is to save the mother’s life. And saving women from homicidal ‘clumps of cells’ is exactly what late–term abortion apologists would have you believe Carhart does.

Only that’s not true either. The abortion–friendly Guttmacher Institute published a study that found “data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.” Late–termers get an abortion for the same reason first trimester women get one, only they aren’t as prompt or organized.

The other justification is late–term abortions are ‘only’ 2 percent of the total, which sounds small until one realizes in 2013 there were a total of 664,435 abortions reported to the feds. Two percent of that appalling total is 13,288 unborn children killed and as National Review points out, “To get a sense of scale, consider that the CDC reports that gun homicides claimed the lives of 11,208 people in the US that year.

Jackson may have won the audition with her rousing declaration, “We give honor to all of these women who choose to come to this space. We sanctify this space, and we honor this as holy.”

That proves these vile people most certainly not in the service of either God or Jesus Christ who said in Ecclesiastes 11:5: “As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.”

During the last 100 years the world has experienced two Holocausts. A quick one by the Nazis that killed in excess of 6 million Jews and a gradual accumulation of 60,166,484 unborn children killed by abortion since the Supreme Court decided Row v. Wade in 1973.

And when comparing the two one conclusion is inescapable: As bad as the Nazis were, to my knowledge, they never had a pastor bless the ovens.

The #MeToo Movement and Mike Pence

If women had only known all it took to shatter the glass ceiling was to accuse your boss of sexual harassment, workplace history would have been very different! Of course — much like a frontal assault on a machinegun nest — the first over the top aren’t getting the plum jobs, but their sacrifice makes it possible for rear echelon women to either achieve or guilt their way into the ‘C’ suites.

The bosses were all for wiping out the barriers that produced a serviceable work–life balance if it meant women were handy 24/7. For them, taking work home meant road testing the new intern.

All this is why it was so refreshing to find a man in a powerful position who had strict rules regarding workplace harassment. More important, he followed those rules to the letter. That meant he was permanently immune to Gloria Allred–type ambushes at Groping Gulch.

Those rules keep his reputation intact and, equally important and often overlooked, the rules keep the reputations of the women who work for him equally intact. His is an office run on performance and not pheromones.

In short, this man is nothing short of a paragon workplace ethics and respect for women. So, you can imagine my surprise when I visited the websites of the National Organization of Women, Emily’s List, the Feminist Majority and even Jezebel and found zero recognition for this pioneer in establishing workplace boundaries.

I soon got the impression you’d see Mitch McConnell attend a Roy Moore Victory Party before these feminist organizations would recognize Vice President Mike Pence.

Way back in March of this year, before our current runaway testosterone tempest, the Washington Post breathlessly announced that Pence had strict rules for his office. The commandments banned Lauer Locks on his office door, because he didn’t hold closed–door meetings one–on–one with women. No intimate after–work dinners with single women either and no attendance at functions where alcohol is served if his wife isn’t there with him.

Pence wouldn’t even wear a hotel bathrobe unless there’s a swim suit under it and he’s at the pool with his family.

Think of it. Following these four simple rules would have kept potted plants unmolested by sperm donors and saved the jobs of Harvey Weinstein, Leon Wiesletier, Michael Oreskes, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Bill O’Reilly, Mark Halperin, Garrison Keillor, Glenn Thrush, Harold Ford, Jr., Joe Barton, Al Franken, John Conyers and the rules probably would have salvaged Trent Franks, because I doubt he would have popped the surrogate question in a general staff meeting.

Optimist that I am, I even think if Bill Clinton had followed the rules Hillary would be a happier woman and Chelsea might have a sibling.

Think of the relief it would bring to a young woman knowing she could spend time with her boss without being sent an unsolicited souvenir cellphone photo of the star attraction or a brief personal exercise video after she got home.

Maybe the response of women at leftist media institutions was caused by the Stockholm Syndrome for it was uniformly negative. You’d have thought Pence had stated sex was determined at birth, rather than by a family meeting sometime around age five.

The truth is the feminist and sophisticate reaction to Pence’s refusal to sexually harass women or put them in an awkward situation was so extreme you’d have thought Charlie Rose invited them to join him in a three–legged race around his desk.

The LA Times asked, “Mike Pence won’t dine alone with a woman who’s not his wife. Is that sexist?” An angry UCLA gender professor (is there any other kind?) dredged up by the Times thundered, “I believe this is gender discrimination. If you don’t go out to dinner with a woman, it’s hard to have a woman be your campaign manager or your chief of staff or whoever you need to regularly meet with.”

Although I think she’s confusing a caterer with a campaign aide.

What woman in her right mind would want to miss the chance to network with Harvey Weinstein’s hands?

And Aaron Blake, a male at the Post jockeying for the role of feminist fraternizer, sniffed Pence’s rules “reeked of sexism.” Which I would think beats reeking of John Conyers’ cologne, but that’s just me.

And Vox, which is currently conducting an in–house purge of its own sex harassers, was ready for a special persecutor, “Vice President Pence’s ‘never dine alone with a woman’ rule isn’t honorable. It’s probably illegal.”

And I could find no evidence of any OpMedia change of heart.

All this leads me to conclude as far as our leftist cultural arbiters are concerned, when it comes to sexual harassment, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Any Chance Conservatives Will Finally Fight Back?

(This column was written before the deluge of sexual assault accusations hit the Roy Moore campaign in Alabama. At the time Codevilla’s advice was spot on, now I suppose now all conservatives are left is hope.)

The best moment for conservatives during the Claremont Institute’s panel discussion on “The Resistance and the Violent New Left” came at the end during the question period. An appeaser popped up and asked the panel how can “we” encourage more “leaders” like Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Lisa Murkowski to run for office instead of “embarrassing” candidates like Alabama’s Roy Moore?

His question was met with dead silence from the panel of William Voegeli and Angelo Codevilla (of the Claremont Institute), Michael Walsh (author and media critic) and Henry Olsen (Ethics & Public Policy Center).

After a lengthy pause Codevilla leaned over toward the microphone and observed Moore “hasn’t lost yet” and we can “vote and hope,” which was the conclusion of the optimism portion of the event.

In a single anecdote the audience saw the problem confronting conservatives today. We are assailed from without by, in Codevilla’s words, “a compact ruling class,” — where establishment Republicans are full participants — along with bike–lock swinging members of Antifa functioning as storm troops. While inside the GOP accommodationists and other Quislings want to restore tranquility by electing more politicians whose first instinct is preemptive surrender.

The situation doesn’t appear to hold much possibility for improvement in the panel’s view, in spite of or possibly because of the election of Donald Trump. Codevilla’s opinion is, “The Resistance has convinced itself Trump is a passing phenomenon.” And a brief one at that. “Trump was elected to be revolutionary against the ruling class and GOP establishment, but in office he has equivocated.”

It’s his belief that what he terms the Cold Civil War will continue to heat up.

Live–and–let–live conservatives are confused by the left’s increasing rhetorical and physical violence in what appears to be a Whittaker Chambers’ moment for the right. In sports, when one side appears to completely outclass its opponent, it’s not uncommon for the victor to display good sportsmanship and ease up rather than pad the margin of victory.

Conservatives see a cultural landscape where their moral positions have been routed. And an indifferent Big Government appears impervious to influence by average voters or election results.

Naturally, many conservatives assume they’ve lost. So why all the leftist violence? Isn’t it time to put the all–conference agitators on the bench?

As Mr. Dooley, not on the panel, said, “Politics ain’t bean–bag.”

“Cultural Marxists are sensing a win and it’s a fact movements get more violent the closer they get to ultimate victory,” explains Walsh. Voegeli posits that when a faction thinks it’s only a matter of time before total victory and the assumption of power in a permanent majority, any display of inhibition is a betrayal of the cause.

Furthermore, the left’s violence and the ideology isn’t likely to be coherent. “A [movement] united by impulse is likely to be impulsive,” Voegeli wryly observes.

The bad news for accommodationist Republicans, like the questioner, is when the left wins there aren’t likely to be many prisoners taken, ideological or otherwise. Academia’s cultural Marxists are marinated in aggressive outrage and moral arrogance. “The Left is taught they’re inherently superior,” Codevilla said.  And as ideologically superior beings, those who disagree are by default intellectual sub–humans with all the tender care and feeding the sub–human label encompasses.

Adapting to the left’s views is going to be difficult if not impossible for principled conservatives, although Lindsay Graham and John McCain may offer conversion therapy.

Olsen says the left defines America as “individual freedom. Anything that stands between desire and its fulfillment is null and void.” This leftist definition of America is intensely personal and subject to abrupt change (Voegeli’s “impulse”), while for conservatives the definition is institutional and relatively fixed. Olsen and Codevilla are united in their belief the differences between left and right are “intractable.”

Consequently, there’s no room for compromise in this ideological fight to the finish. Codevilla warns there are real consequences, “The Resistance expresses the evolving framework of ruling class thought.” The absurd and aggressive ideology one can read with distaste in the HuffPost is a harbinger of the next Democrat administration’s policy. Even Hillary Clinton, according to Codevilla, planned to “crush the deplorables and buy off the pitiables” on her way to victory.

With the exception of Olsen, the panel is united in a belief the left must be confronted and defeated in the street and in the voting booth. Conservatives need leadership, like Trump, that will get in the faces of the left and, not like Trump, be consistent in their opposition.

Walsh in particular has had it, “I can’t emphasize enough what miserable sods these people are. The left is an insane cargo cult of fascists. Until baby boomers are dead you will have no justice and no peace.”

Afghanistan Strategy Is the Only Hope for Education Reform

The federal government is currently enmeshed in two gigantic, expensive reform projects, one domestic and one foreign. Both are failures even though the tactics couldn’t be more different. In one — at a cost of $2.5 trillion — Uncle Sam is trying manfully to completely change a political culture.

In the other — at just under $1 trillion — Uncle Sugar won’t touch the culture. What is the same, and the ultimate source of failure, is the obstinate refusal of project architects to recognize their strategy isn’t working now and won’t be working in the future.

We’ll begin with the relatively cheap failure. Since 1980 the Dept. of Education has spent $872,519,440,000 on just primary and secondary education. The scores from the latest nationwide ACT college admission test are so bad that to forestall criticism of the entire effort, the focus has been shifted to the old perennial: The Achievement Gap.

The Washington Post reports, “Scores…show that just 9 percent of students in the class of 2017 who came from low–income families, whose parents did not go to college, and who identify as [minority] are strongly ready for college. But the readiness rate for students with none of those demographic characteristics was six times as high [at] 54 percent.”

Students with one of the three “handicaps” scored 26 percent college ready, while those with two of three came in at 15 percent.

It would be easy to look at the “six times” more successful and assume all was well in education, but don’t. These numbers indicate a failure so large Mitch McConnell could have been supervising the project.

There were 3.3 million high school graduates in the spring of 2017. Two million took the ACT test and of those 1,080,000 achieved scores indicating they are ready for college. The other 920,000 didn’t make the cut. When you add that number to the 1,333,000 graduates that already knew taking the test was a waste of time, the total of unprepared graduates was 2,253,000. So the feds spent $535 billion on these kids (not counting additional billions spent by state and local governments) during the 12 years they were in school and after that stupendous expenditure ($161,000.00 PER STUDENT!) only 32 percent were ready for college.

With those results its only natural the focus would be on the “achievement gap” between minorities and the other categories. In the understatement of the year ACT chief executive Marten Roorda said, “You could argue that those investments should have made a clearer difference and that’s not what we’re seeing.”

There is nothing intrinsically limiting about being a member of a minority. Genetics aren’t holding them back. Culture is holding them back.

This is where the really expensive culture–changing project becomes relevant. In Afghanistan the US is trying to install a modern democratic state in a land with a primitive, medieval, tribal culture whose only bow to modernity is a thin veneer of alternating current.

Yet there are similarities. US minority culture and Afghan culture feature strong tribal or gang–based loyalties. Both have impulsive honor/vengeance pathologies. And both feature poor education and a high illiteracy rate. Islamic fundamentalism is unique to Afghanistan as out–of–wedlock births are limited to the US example.

In Afghanistan experts ignore history and insist the country is just the breeding ground for the next showplace of democracy after the political culture is changed. In the US education experts ignore history and a culture change that’s responsible for education failure in the hope a few more Baby Einstein videos will do the trick.

Afghanistan has been corrupt for centuries and has absolutely no history of impartial representative government. Yet within living memory in the US the family culture, which is the root of education problems, was an asset to learning.

In 1950 the rate of out–of–wedlock births for black women was approximately 18 percent. Today the percentage is 72 percent. Ignoring this has real costs for the children. Spending billions at one end of the education cycle while ignoring the origin of the problem does nothing more than provide permanent, well–paid jobs for bureaucrats.

The feds should have no role in education in the first place. That’s a state and local responsibility. But if the money is going to be spent, spend it wisely. Try to change the dysfunctional culture of out–of–wedlock births and resulting poverty. Political culture change is destined for failure in Afghanistan, but there is a chance to revive the marriage culture here and in turn close the “achievement gap.”

Let’s try the Afghanistan strategy. Attack a dysfunctional culture directly. Emphasize marriage and finishing school before becoming a mother. After 17 years in Afghanistan we’ve made no difference. Here 17 years of culture emphasis could make a big difference.

Millionaires & Billionaires Fighting “Oppression”

Oppression certainly isn’t what it used to be. Instead of vicious police dogs, water cannon, billy clubs and Bull Connor, America is greeted with the sight of millionaires and billionaires kneeling in football stadiums trying to make white America feel guilty without so much as a Chihuahua yapping in the background.

And they aren’t alone. The Opposition Media, celebrity culture, leftist pastors, educators, politicians, various groin activists and Hollywood were all united in condemning the USA for the alleged subjugation of blacks. The protesters had no compunction about attacking the president and insulting the flag.

If this is “oppression” it’s news to Stalin, Hitler, Saddam and Kim Jong–Un. If I were a white supremacist, I think I’d demand my money back. From all appearances it’s whites, conservatives of all colors and taxpayers who are being told to sit down and shut up.

Instead of being a lonely and dangerous stand against institutionalized brutality and “oppression” the “take a knee movement” has rapidly become this fall’s Ice Bucket Challenge. The difference being the Challenge was a showy, self–involved effort on behalf of a real disease, while take a knee is a showy, self–involved effort on behalf of a grievance fantasy.

The left claims to own science, so lets look at the data. First of all the Us is one of the least racist nations on the planet. An investing and investment newsletter, with the credibility–dissolving name of Insider Monkey, performed an analysis of racism polls that included “responses of over 85,000 people from 61 countries” and found the USA didn’t even make the top 25 of the most racist countries.

The number one for racism was India with South Korea at number 25. What researchers did find was the US ranked #12 on a list of the Least Racist Countries in the World. The report concluded, “We believe America, on average, is one of the most racially tolerant countries on Earth.”

So much for “oppression.” But no protest implying malevolence on the part of whites would be complete without including “police brutality.” Data here proves there may be individually brutal cops of all colors, but there is no institutionally brutal police regime threatening blacks or anyone else.

Philippe Lemoine did an analysis of the Police ­Public Contact Survey (PPCS). It’s a 70,000 sample of US residents 16 or older that’s representative of the whole population. Participants are asked if they had an encounter with the police during the past year. If so they are asked for details, including any use of force.

This means data from the survey is based on personal encounters with law enforcement and not speculation on encounters other people have had with cops based on OpMedia reports or “community rumors.”

Lemoine found “just 16 unarmed black men, out of a population of more than 20 million, were killed by the police…These figures are likely close to the number of black men struck by lightning in a given year. The comparison illustrates that these killings are incredibly rare, and that it’s completely misleading to talk about an ‘epidemic.’ You don’t hear people talk about an epidemic of lightning strikes and claim they are afraid to go outside because of it.”

The case for routine police harassment is just as fraudulent. Black men have less yearly contact with police than whites: 17.5 to 20.7 percent. And as for injury, protesters in the stadium have a greater chance of getting a rug burn at the hands of Monsanto than they do a bruise at the hands of the cops.

“Actual injuries by the police are so rare that one cannot estimate them very precisely even in a survey as big as the PPCS, but the available data suggest that only 0.08 percent of black men are injured by the police each year, approximately the same rate as for white men.” Lemoine reports.

It would make more sense to accuse the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of brutality since black men are 44 times more likely to be injured in a car crash.

Lemoine’s conclusion: “The media’s acceptance of the false narrative poisons the relations between law enforcement and black communities throughout the country and results in violent protests that destroy property and sometimes even claim lives.”

So why are the knee people blaming ticket holders and the audience? There aren’t any billionaires, mayors or Members of Congress in the stands. All the people with real power are on the field insulting the blameless over a grievance that doesn’t exist.

During the Civil War black soldiers in the 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry — immortalized in the movie “Glory” — could distinguish between individual bigots and the flag of the nation that was fighting to free the slaves.

I wonder why privileged football players, and their enablers in politics and the media, can’t do the same.

Kaepernick: When Taking a Knee Is All About Me

Just think — if Tim Tebow had taken a knee for Antifa instead of God he might still be in the NFL. Or at least he could be a topic of conversation for people wondering why Tebow wasn’t playing. I find it ironic a league that is now encouraging “celebrations” after a touchdown, frowned on Tebow offering a quick word of thanks after a score.

Offering a word of thanks certainly isn’t a problem with Colin Kaepernick.

Kaepernick loses his starting QB job and decides to make himself a spectacle by kneeling during the National Anthem to protest racism in a league that’s 70 percent black.

Tebow loses his starting QB job and quietly accepts an insulting assignment as a blocker on the punting unit, where he suffers broken ribs as a reward for being a team player.

Kaepernick says he can’t “stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color” and “there are bodies in the street and [cops] getting away with murder.” How this squares with the fact he was adopted by white parents and felt comfortable wearing socks that depicted police as pigs while cops were standing only a few feet away went unexplained.

Both players aren’t particularly good pocket passers and both frequently resort to running with the ball when pressured.

Tebow isn’t offered another chance in the NFL even after spending an entire off–season working with a QB–whisperer to improve his throwing mechanics. Kaepernick evidently spent his off–season growing an Afro that rivals that of Angela Davis in her heyday. Tebow’s football career is over and no reporters are asking if he was blackballed because of his Pro–life Super Bowl ad.

Kaepernick appears to be done, too and the Opposition Media, which invaded the sports page, is convinced he’s being blackballed.

Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post condemns NFL owners, “They care that he is a disrupter–dissenter who refuses to play the stock character role assigned to him and might threaten a bottom line. As a result, they have blacklisted him — there is no other term for it — and in doing so have unintentionally underscored his message about pervasive injustice for blacks.”

Then she can’t tell the difference between being fired for an internal memo meant to stay inside the company and a public workplace insult that offends a majority of the customer base. Jenkins sees equivalence between James Damore, Google engineer who authored the memo, and Kaepernick, “You don’t have to agree with Kaepernick taking a knee during the anthem last season — or Damore’s reasoning and language — to be offended by the fact that they are out of jobs for speaking their well–intentioned minds.”

Her colleague, Jerry Brewer, appears to think Kaepernick is a modern Paul Revere warning America of a resurgence of the Klan as “racists feel empowered again.”

Neither of these hyperventilators gives any credence to what Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown said of Kaepernick. Brown knows something about racism. He played in the Jim Crow NFL before the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Brown knows about personally suffering systemic, government–imposed racism and he thinks Kaepernick is a poseur.

Brown told The Post Game, “I’m going to give you the real deal: I’m an American. I don’t desecrate my flag and my national anthem. I’m not gonna do anything against the flag and national anthem… this is my country, and I’ll work out the problems, but I’ll do it in an intelligent manner.”

That’s not a observation that’s going to generate coverage for Brown in the OpMedia, just as Green Bay Packers Safety Ha Ha Clinton–Dix wearing socks with the names of four Dallas police officers murdered by a Black Lives Matter assassin fell into the media’s memory hole.

I’ve never heard a reporter ask Kaepernick what country he prefers to the US? I doubt it’s China, even though white people have no privilege there. The People’s Republic just passed a law making it illegal to mock the Chinese national anthem and the offense is punishable by up to 15 days in jail.

Reporters also never ask Kaepernick how he will know he’s achieved success. Will it be when blacks are allowed the vote? When a black woman has a top–rated national talk show? When the US elects a black president?

The fact is Kaepernick is a marginal QB with a bad attitude who missed the limelight. He’s also a guy whose commitment to “racial justice” was so immutable he backed off the protests when he was trying to land another team.

It’s time for Kaepernick to find another line of work where insulting Americans is part of the company culture. I hear ESPN is hiring.

Left’s Policy on Guns & Mental Health Turns on a Stiletto

Up until quite recently the official policy on the left was to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally unstable. A CNN propagandist wrote, “If there’s anything both sides of America’s heated and polarizing gun debate may agree on, it’s the need to keep firearms out of the hands of people with serious mental illness.”

The gun control group “Before It Starts” asked petition signers to, “Support stricter gun control by giving law enforcement and mental health professionals the obligation for independent mental health screening for gun permits…It’s not the gun, but the people who are permitted to use them.”

And New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo neatly summed up the left’s former argument when he declared, “People who have mental health issues should not have guns.”

Bradley Manning: Posterboy (girl) for damage trannies do in the military.

So why is the left now demanding the mentally ill have access to the most dangerous weapons in the US arsenal while still in the grip of their psychosis?

I don’t want a man who thinks he’s Napoleon Bonaparte cruising in a boomer beneath the polar ice cap any more than I want a man who thinks he’s a woman sitting in a Montana missile silo.

GI Joe and GI Jane are different people, not different facets of the same person.

Normally the left assures a gullible public that it has science coming out of its ears, but in the case of “transgender” individuals they are going to let delusion set the agenda. And make no mistake — these poor, confused people are seriously deluded and mentally ill.

A 2016 Johns Hopkins Study points out the obvious: “The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex—that a person might be ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’—is not supported by scientific evidence.”

The science, to borrow a term, is “settled.” The American College of Pediatricians holds, “Humans are male and female, biologically. Science is straightforward about this: a person’s DNA either has two X chromosomes or one X and one Y…Scientifically, human sexuality is ‘binary by design’ with the aim of reproduction. Disorders of sex development (DSDs) are “rightly recognized as disorders,” and those who suffer from them ‘do not constitute a third sex.’”

A person’s sex is coded into every individual cell in the body at the chromosomal level. Believing otherwise doesn’t even qualify as superstition. It’s just nuts.

Decisions regarding gender aren’t a range of options anymore than Bulimia is a practical alternative to a balanced diet. These individuals need serious, sustained psychiatric help, not induction papers.

Trump’s ban on these unhappy sufferers serving in any capacity in the military is sensible, scientific policy.

If they had their way where the PC commissars of the left would draw the line? Would trannies be judged on a delusion spectrum? If a black man thinks he’s a black woman he’s (she’s) good to go, but if he starts thinking he’s also Michelle Obama it’s discharge time?

The basic absurdity and consequent moral erosion of the rank–and–file military that would be caused by mainstreaming the gender–confused is evidently not a problem for cultural Marxists. The command staff is ordered to pretend these femen are perfectly normal, aside from their fundamental rejection of reality, and troops are to obey their orders as if they came from a normal person.

Only they aren’t normal. Bi–gender individuals come with a host of pre–existing conditions that are a result of living a lie. The Johns Hopkins study: “Members of the transgender population are also at higher risk of a variety of mental health problems compared to members of the non-transgender population. Especially alarmingly, the rate of lifetime suicide attempts across all ages of transgender individuals is estimated at 41%, compared to under 5% in the overall U.S. population.”

That’s a comforting thought when one considers the firepower available to members of the US military.

Columnist Matt Barber asks, “If your daughter “identified” as a fat person…but, in reality, suffered from anorexia – would you affirm her ‘fatness’ and get her liposuction?”

No you’d get her mental help, but not in the Pentagon.

Up until Trump’s tweet, they were funding body vandalism with tax dollars, as disturbed femen demanded “gender reassignment surgery.” But why single reassignment surgery for special treatment? Wouldn’t a woman who thought she was Barbie trapped in Olive Oil’s body qualify for breast enhancement surgery on the tax dime?

If the left wants to conduct its insane social experiments in the Peace Corps it can be my guest, but taxpayers should completely reject gender experimentation in the Marine Corps.

Any general or civilian Pentagon official that thinks otherwise isn’t fit to serve either.

Get Out of Jail Free

“Social Justice” might warrant a more positive reception among the general populace if it wasn’t such a moving target. Why sign up for societal upheaval and condescending advice from your betters when the country has no chance of reaching the Promised Land?

The campaign for “bail reform” is a perfect example. That’s because bail used to be the reform!

Prior to the advent of bail, suspects were held until their trial date. Release after posting bail was seen as a “progressive” reform to the system that kept the innocent and guilty in the hoosegow awaiting trial.

That may have been fine for the last century, but now enlightened thinkers consider being poor a pre–existing condition like cancer. And just as not bothering to sign up for insurance before landing in the emergency room shouldn’t subject one to financial penalties, not bothering to obey the law and landing in jail should be a cost–free experience, too.

Social justice warriors agitating for bail “reform” disparagingly refer to bail as being “money–based.” This overlooks the intent of bail. The goal is not to gouge victims for extra money, like Ticketmaster “convenience” fees. The goal is to protect the public. Which in this case means showing up trial.

Financial bonds may not be perfect, but it certainly beats the House Lannister system of holding family members hostage.

 So what do the SJWs propose and what hapless “victim” do they exploit to make their case? You guessed it! All will be revealed when you click on the link below and are transported to the rest of my Newsmax column:

https://www.newsmax.com/MichaelShannon/bail-bond-financial/2017/06/07/id/794739/