Dakota Beacon

Here's a question: how can we expect to have small government if we condemn Congress for not growing it?

It's always a disturbing experience when you're accosted with a picture of Harry Reid, as I was upon logging on to Drudge last Monday afternoon.　 But at least his image bore a fitting caption: "MOST FUTILE EVER."　 I then clicked the link and found myself at The Washington Times – normally a quite sane organ of the media – and learned the meaning of the caption: the Times was lamenting a do-nothing Congress and presented Reid as its poster boy.　 Writes the paper:

Writes Duke, "It's official: conservatives are completely confused about what begets big government."

The paper then expanded on its theme, pointing out that Congress set a record for "legislative futility" according to something called the "futility index."

I'll tell you what's futile: complaining about a loss of freedom while chastising legislators for not spawning enough bills.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but my understanding is that a "bill" that's signed by the president becomes a law.　 I also have this goofy notion that, except for certain housekeeping measures and repeals of old legislation, a law is by definition a removal of a freedom, as it states that there's something you must or must not do.　 Ergo, enslaved as I am by the old math, my figuring informs that the more laws we have, the less free we are.　 It then seems to follow – at least using my white male linear logic – that since we continually enact more laws but hardly ever rescind any, every year the progressives make us progressively less free.　

Thus, when I see "do-nothing" and "Congress" in close proximity, it occurs to me that "do" has many definitions.　 And when government doeth, I think of the definition in the following Lord of the Flies dialogue: "The Chief and Roger....　 They hate you, Ralph. 　They're going to do you."

So if you complain about a do-nothing Congress, I ask, what is it exactly that you want them to "do," whom do you think they'll "do" it to, and what do you think will be done to you?　 Our current Congress passed 80 bills.　 How many more do you want and how many more until we're done for?

The good news is that many of 2011's bills were simply housekeeping measures – such as spending reauthorization acts or extensions of already existing laws – so we probably didn't lose as many freedoms this time around as the bod...er...bill count would indicate.　 Really, though, what does it say about third-millennium America when Uncle Sam disgorges 80 pieces of legislation and we, like good little masochists, bend over and say, "Thank you, sir!　 May I have another?"?

The reality is that we should want a do-nothing Congress.　 In fact, we should want a do-nothing president, do-nothing bureaucrats and hope that our military, police, firefighters and judges have to do little.　 And let's just think about where we'd be today if we actually had a do-nothing government for the last many years.　

First and foremost, we wouldn't have ObamaCare.　 We wouldn't have had the bailouts that transferred trillions of dollars from the middle class to rich fat cats and Barack Obama cronies.　 Billions wouldn't have been wasted on Solyndra and numerous other green-energy scam companies.　 We wouldn't have McCain-Feingold, Dodd-Frank or the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.　 We wouldn't have the October 2009 federal hate-crimes bill, which, like all such legislation, is an effort at thought control.　 We wouldn't have No Child Left Behind. 　We'd be free of the new taxes and plethora of regulations that Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus said would make it impossible for him to start his company today.　 There wouldn't be the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which gives unelected bureaucrats at the FDA the power to regulate the tobacco industry.　 There wouldn't be the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, which gives Big Brother unprecedented control over the people's ability to grow food.　 And we wouldn't have the National Defense Authorization Act, which empowers the government to detain American citizens indefinitely without trial.　 Are we "done" yet?　　

Note that the above examples are just a (very) short list, are virtually all unconstitutional, and all cost us dearly in terms of money, rights or both.　 And how many freedoms did we lose, from No Child Left Behind to Obama's kicking of the Constitution's behind?　 I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it'd probably take Deep Blue or Rain Man to crunch those numbers.　 　

So should we really be lamenting a government that isn't "productive" when the word doesn't quite mean in government what it does elsewhere?　 When an auto company is more productive, you get more cars.　 When a footwear maker is more productive, you get more shoes.　 When yours truly is more productive, you get more sage and scintillating prose.　 And when the state is more productive?

You get fewer freedoms.

This is why congress' legislation count is just like a golf score: the lower, the better

But if the Times really thinks it's like a bowling score, don't blame Dirty Harry Reid for 2011's lack of liberty strikes.　 After all, I can assure you that he aspires to be a very "productive" man.　 And if he and his gang retain the Senate and presidency and regain control of the House, they'll "do" a lot.　 In fact, they may do ya' permanent.　　

One of the simplest rhetorical truths is that the side that defines the vocabulary of a debate wins the debate.  Yet, amazingly, we still see experienced conservative politicians with access to advanced polling operations and an array of advisors use the Lexicon of the Left.  And this election cycle is no exception.

I could almost cringe when I hear – as I did repeatedly during Monday’s South Carolina GOP debate – Republicans talk about “capitalism.”  “I believe in capitalism….”  “Barack Obama doesn’t believe in capitalism…..”  Capitalism this and capitalism that – look at me with my plump wallet, walking stick and tony top hat.  Oh, it’s not that I don’t believe in free enterprise; it’s that we shouldn’t use words that conjure up sentiments akin to the preceding rhyme.

And polls inform that this is precisely what “capitalism” does.  For example, Pew Research Center reports, “Slightly more than half (52%) react positively to the word ‘capitalism,’ compared with 37% who say they have a negative reaction.”  According with this is a 2009 Rasmussen poll showing that, shockingly, “only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.”  And the picture looks even worse with certain demographic groups.  Writes Pew, “Fewer than half of young people, women, people with lower incomes and those with less education react positively to ‘capitalism.’”

The shame of this is not just that 37 percent is a large minority to alienate every time you talk economic sense; it’s that it’s not necessary to alienate them at all.  And the reason why is hinted at by another 2009 Rasmussen poll, one finding that “just 35% of American voters believe that a free market economy is the same as a capitalist economy.”  What does this tell us?  It tells us that you could ask if a “free market” were better than socialism and more than 53 percent of Americans would say yes.  It tells us that “capitalism” needs a rebranding.  And the term all of us – especially the candidates – should be using is “economic freedom.”

This is such a no-brainer that it’s shocking how it still eludes presidential hopefuls.  It’s especially so when you consider that Frank Luntz, famed pollster and author of the book Words That Work, has recently been echoing the lexical anti-capitalist message.  Capitalism may put people to work, but the word doesn’t work with the people.

Some may now lament how we have allowed the left to demonize our terminology.  But “capitalism” in the modern sense was never ours – and the left didn’t demonize it. 

They spawned it.   

In point of fact, it was originated by communism’s founding fathers.

The two culprits were French socialists Louis Blanc and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.  True believers both, Blanc claimed that man’s evils were the result of pressures born of competition and gave us the principle “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” (Karl Marx stole it from Blanc), while the equally radical Proudhon believed that “property is theft.”  Of course, Marx the great imitator then popularized “capitalism.”

And, sadly, conservatives now pick up that red ball and run with it (sometimes for president).  The man on the street popularizes “capitalism” every time he utters the word.  Writers popularize it with their pens.  Talk-show hosts with their mouths.  Presidential candidates do so in their debates.  And every time we popularize the word, we depopularize what it represents.

Understand here the communists’ marketing technique.  Since they wanted to replace economic freedom with their ism (ism denotes “system”), they had to cast the former as just another ism itself, as this makes them seem more interchangeable.  But free enterprise isn’t a system in the sense that communism is because it’s what naturally results when people are afforded freedom: they will produce, sell, buy and consume.  Hence what I have dubbed it: the Natural Economy.  In contrast, what people typically view as a communist government requires a top-down, command-control, million-tentacled state to micromanage people’s lives.  It is what you could call Unintelligent Design.

Yet as far as propaganda triumphs go, the design of the term “capitalism” is anything but.  Since the best known synonym of “capital” is “money,” when you add the ism, it can easily be interpreted as “moneyism.”  Now, do we really want to be stuck defending moneyism?  And why should we accept such a one-dimensional term, anyway?  I mean, sure, the Natural Economy has a monetary system, but it also involves production and consumption.  Yet would we characterize it oh-so narrowly as “productionism” or “consumerism”?  Let’s not be guilty of suckerism.

For too long the side that has defined the vocabulary of our debates has been the left.  Social engineers in academia mint new terms (e.g., African-American) and co-opt old ones (e.g., gender), which are then transmitted to the populace and infused into common usage by the media and entertainment arenas.  And what is the effect?  Well, imagine that a French culture and a German one both vied for primacy within the same borders.  If the Germans could convince the French to adopt their tongue, wouldn’t they already have won half the battle?  Likewise, through the manipulation of language the left greases the skids for culture-war victory – and conservatives reflexively parrot their Libspeak.

Of course, the solution is simple, and we all have a part to play.  The left has sought to turn economic freedom into a dirty concept; we must turn “capitalism” into a dirty word.

Don’t say it.

Don’t write it.

Don’t use it – except to damn it.

If we want economic freedom to live, “capitalism” must die.

In a recent election piece, pundit Ann Coulter identified illegal migration as one of the two most important issues of our time. She writes that if we fail at halting it, “the country will be changed permanently.” She continues: Taxes can be raised and lowered. Regulations can be removed (though they rarely are). Attorneys general and Cabinet members can be fired. Laws can be repealed. Even Supreme Court justices eventually die. But capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California. There will be no turning back. She expands on this later in the piece: [W]e ought to be able to learn the perils of illegal immigration by looking at California. Massive legal and illegal immigration has already so changed the California electorate that no Republican can be elected statewide anymore. …If even Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, two bright, attractive, successful female business executives – one pro-life and one pro-choice – can't win a statewide election in California spending millions of their own dollars in the middle of the 2010 Republican sweep, it's buenas noches, muchachos.

Coulter is, of course, right – but she only dare hint at the real problem. The fact is that halting illegal migration will do nothing to forestall the socialist electoral shift to which she refers.

Question: Do you really think the demographic earthquake that turned the Golden State blue was mainly the result of illegal migration?

Or do you think that the legal variety might have had something to do with it?

There certainly are a few differences between legal immigration and illegal migration. For instance, we can’t know if someone sneaking into our country is a criminal, a terrorist or is carrying a disease. But the reality is that in most respects illegal migration is not a separate and distinct problem. It

is an exacerbation of the problem.

Because demographically speaking, legal immigration and illegal migration are virtually identical. Most all illegal migrants hail from the Third World and Asia, and – owing to the Immigration Act of 1965 (Ted Kennedy’s handiwork) – 85 percent of legal immigrants do as well. I

n other words, yes, adding illegal migrants into the mix will help the statists take their California dreamin’ nationwide more quickly, but it will happen regardless unless we change our suicidal immigration model. So it really doesn’t matter if we “capitulate” on illegal migration or not, because we capitulated on the legalized version of it a long time ago. Now we’re only deciding whether Western civilization in the U.S. will get a death by 100 demographic cuts or 1000.

To be fair, Ann Coulter at least made passing mention of this reality when she slipped into her piece that “Massive legal and illegal immigration has already so changed the California electorate [emphasis added]….” Yet with the exception of Pat Buchanan, yours truly and a few others, this is an area where you’re more likely to hear the truth from leftist commentators – when they’re licking their chops over how successful they’ve been at importing their voters. Just consider, for instance, a 2011 NPR piece in which Mara Liasson cites a study by Ruy Teixeira at liberal feel tank Center
for American Progress and writes: Recent surges in the number of Hispanics in Arizona and Georgia could make those states potentially friendlier to Democratic candidates as well next year [2012]. Teixeira thinks similar population shifts could make holding on to Pennsylvania, where the president campaigned Wednesday, a little bit easier.

And if you think it’ll be a bit easier in 2012, wait till you see 2022.

And 2032 and 2042? Well, Orwell’s calling.

The fact is that upon being naturalized, our modern-day immigrants generally vote Democrat by wide margins – irrespective of whether upon arrival they were labeled legal or illegal.

And this isn’t hard to understand. Would you expect a devout Muslim to relinquish his faith upon setting foot on American terra firma? Would you suppose that mere passage across a border could magically transform a committed communist into a fan of free markets? My point is that ideology is much like religion: It is something deep-seated. It becomes part of a person’s self-image and gives his life meaning. And whether or not America is still the land of the free, it’s certainly not the land of the free from harsh realities.

And the reality is this: Most of today’s immigrants’ native lands have socialist-type governments because their peoples support socialist politicians. This is why Democrats import them: so these new arrivals can support socialist politicians here. They’re casting the votes Americans won’t cast.

Unfortunately, though, the closest we come to discussing this is when statists write banal election-analysis pieces. Otherwise, immigration is framed as purely an economic issue. Are immigrants supplanting Americans or merely doing jobs natives won’t? Are they contributing more in taxes than they use in services? In a nutshell, we just argue about money.

But what does it profit a nation to absorb the world but to lose its soul?

The fact is that the immigration debate is nothing less than a discussion about what kind of civilization we’re going to be. For the people make the culture – not the other way around – and the culture makes the government. In just the way that the Islamic invasion of Egypt in the seventh century turned it into a Muslim and Arab land when it had been neither, if you replace America’s population with a Mexican or Muslim one, you no longer have a Western civilization. You have Mexico Norte or Iran West.

It’s the culture, stupid.

But don’t expect a serious discussion about this anytime soon. For we are in the grip of Immigrationism, the belief that immigration is always good and must be the one constant in an ever-changing universe of policy. It really is one of the most effective brainwashing con-jobs in history: Statists have made talk of what ensures their ultimate victory taboo. And Americans have been conditioned to accept as axiomatic a policy that guarantees the destruction of Western civilization in the U.S.

So if to you immigration is just a matter workers and labor costs, hospitals and services, and dollars and cents, then, hey, pesos and dinars can fill a bank account just as well. But if you’re concerned about the entire country having a Golden State electorate and San Francisco values, you cannot separate legal immigration from illegal migration. It’s all or nothing.

To only argue against amnesty is to fight for a half-measure – one that, ultimately, will still leave your children America dreamin’ on a California day.

Contact Selwyn Duke

According to Department of Justice whistleblower J. Christian Adams, AG Eric Holder has a certain something in his wallet.  It is a quotation – and he has carried it for decades.  It essentially says, to quote Adams, “Blackness is more important than anything, and the black US attorney has common cause with the black criminal.”  It’s not surprising that Holder would feel this way about black lawyers and criminals.

Because in his case they’re one and the same.

Holder, the man whose misfeasance led him to drop the infamous Black Panther voter-intimidation case, now may have done what all corrupt men, sooner or later, eventually do.  He has tripped up in his efforts to hide his misdeeds.

The issue stems from the Fast and Furious scandal, which refers to a gun-walking operation in which ATF officials allowed thousands of firearms to make their way to Mexican drug-cartel criminals.  The operation was brought to light after a border-control agent named Brian Terry was murdered last December – and two US-government-supplied weapons were discovered at the scene.  And what was Holder’s involvement?  Writes CBSNews.com:

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.

Note, again, that these were “frequent memos.”

Of course, Holder is now trying to massage the issue.  The DOJ’s latest line is, writes CBS News, “Holder misunderstood that question [about when he learned of the operation] from the committee – he did know about Fast and Furious – just not the details.” 

This nonsensical cop-out speaks for itself, so let’s discuss the reality of the matter.  Holder could have lied to the Judiciary Committee.  The other possibility is that he is suffering memory loss and is so incompetent that he didn’t brief himself on a brewing major scandal on which he was going to testify in front of a congressional committee.  I’m betting I know which one is the answer.

The Republicans now want to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Holder and his fast-and-furious dance of deception.  And I say, dig long and dig deep.  Because with the amount of dirt in Holder’s closet, you’ll find that Obama has created at least one shovel-ready job.

As for my title, it may seem odd jumping from Holder’s bigotry to his alleged criminality.  But it’s as with powerful 1920s KKK leader D.C. Stephenson, who, while claiming to be a defender of morality and womanhood, ended up brutally raping and killing a lady named Madge Oberholtzer.  Bigotry is a sign of personal corruption – and it usually doesn’t end there.

And I’ll conclude by making a request of our post-racial president’s attorney general.  Mr. Holder, you once said that Americans were “cowards” in the area of race.  Well, then, brave man, do you have the sand to come out of the closet?  Produce that card from your wallet; proudly proclaim the beliefs you’ve long held so dear.  Or is it that, deep down, the color other than red that epitomizes you most is yellow?

Like the three monkeys who see, hear and speak no evil, our authorities seem intent on ignoring the true nature of yet another black-on-white racial attack.  In the New York City subway this past Sunday, 29-year-old Jason Fordell was attacked by a group of black men who taunted him for being white.  Yet NYC police “are unsure” if the incident is a bias crime.

The problem started when Fordell transferred to a crowded 4 train at 42^nd street, where he encountered four black men who began harassing him.  The New York Daily News reports on what transpired next, writing:

"People started saying stupid little comments - cracker this, white boy this, f----t this," Fordell said. "I told them the only reason they were saying this is there was four of them and one of me."

…As the train continued into the Bronx, the confrontation became physical, he said.

"I was in a headlock, punched and kicked on the floor," Fordell said.

Then a passenger decided to join in - declaring, "Oh, I get a few shots, too," before kicking and punching Fordell in the head, according to cops.

…"Everyone on the train was egging them on," said Fordell

Fordell suffered numerous injuries, which included head-bleeding, a badly swollen eye and internal injuries, as evidenced by blood in his urine.  The assailants also stole a bag he was carrying that contained $2900-worth of handmade leather accessories, which Fordell sells at an East Village nightclub.

Despite the epithets hurled by Fordell’s attackers, this crime hasn’t yet been transferred to the NYPD hate-crimes task force because, we’re told, the authorities aren’t sure if it was motivated by bias.  According to a Daily News source, “They have to look at whether that was the motivation before the robbery.”

 Really?  Do the police need evidence that the four sat in a darkened room laughing fiendishly while stating that they were going to attack a white guy because they hate crackers?  I always understood that the mere use of racial language during an attack was enough to classify it as a hate crime (or, at least, it seems to be when a white person is the accused).

And this brings us to yet another reason why I oppose hate-crime legislation.  Not only is it an attempt at thought control, as it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the extra punishment it mandates is for the thoughts expressed through the commission of the crime, but it will never be applied equally.  The government just has too much room to fudge when it’s assigned the role of mind-reader.  And in a politically correct time, it’s not hard to figure out what form that fudging will take.  Hate-crime laws are not designed to punish hate, but, rather, the thoughts, actions and groups the Left hates. 

And, I believe, they pave the way for hate-speech laws.  After all, if people can be punished for saying the “wrong things” within the context of the commission of a crime, how long will it be before they’re punished for saying the “wrong things” beyond that context?

As for the police’s willful blindness, it should surprise no one.  Being human, cops respond to powerful social pressure like anyone else.  Add to this the fear of being labeled bigots, career damage and rioting that could result from actually enforcing the law with minority perpetrators, and it’s easy to see why the thin blue line looks awfully yellow when the matter is black-on-white crime.

If this keeps up, soon we’ll be like Britain.  In that once-proud civilization, the police are so afraid to tackle Muslim criminality that their efforts to cover it up have reached comical proportions.  And it will keep up unless we experience a deep cultural renewal.  This means pulling leftist ideology up by the roots in academia, the media, the entertainment arena and beyond.  Mere political victory won’t change a thing.

                                                               Contact Selwyn Duke 

It really is a shame when a media watchdog has a twisted nose that mistakes putrescence for floral aroma – and vice versa.  In a piece published Monday, self-proclaimed media watcher MediaMatters (MM) criticizes Fox News for running the supposedly “misleading headline”: “Cambridge, MA set to Pay Gay Employees More Than Straight.”  MediaMatters takes issue with Fox because the headline doesn’t explain that the reason for the measure is to compensate homosexuals for a tax that married couples don’t have to pay.

Of course, a headline is a hook, designed to draw readers in, not an explanation.  But Fox offered no such explanation – at least that’s what MM leads its readers to believe.  The attack dog writes that Fox “excerpted an article from The Daily Mail, which has a similarly misleading headline.  However, the Daily Mail article clearly explains that the city is offering gay employees a stipend to offset a federal tax that does not apply to straight employees.”  The Daily Mail “clearly explains” this, so, obviously, Fox doesn’t.

Except that it does.

Fox’s very first sentence is, “A Massachusetts city will start paying its gay employees a stipend so it can offset an unequal federal tax.”  In fact, Fox devotes five of the six sentences in its piece to this explanation. 

Notice that MM is smart enough to not actually lie, instead relying on implication.  It juxtaposes two media outlets, Fox and The Daily Mail, without mentioning that they offered the same exact presentation (headline serving as introduction followed by elaboration).  Then, by mentioning that the Mail has “a similarly misleading headline” while crediting the paper for “clearly” explaining the policy, it leads the reader to think that Fox does not.  It’s the Big Lie technique. 

And it works.  Many readers will be so appalled at Fox’s supposed deception that they’ll never bother to click through to the news outlet’s article and learn that it is their trusted (mainstream) media lap dog, with its title “Fox Nation Takes Another [sic] Shot At Stirring Up Anti-Gay Outrage,” that is peddling propaganda.  

In contrast, Fox’s headline is wholly accurate.  In journalism, there is that old guide stating that you should explain the who, what, where, when, why and how of a story.  Well, Cambridge will be paying its homosexual employees more, and the higher pay scale is the “what.”  And whether or not the “why” justifies the “what” is secondary. 

Yet leftists often confuse – and want to confuse others about – the “what” when it makes them uncomfortable or is contrary to their agenda.  For example, I once was talking to a very liberal woman (a mistake, I know) and the topic of discussion brought us to a point at which it was necessary for me to cite the higher crime rate in minority neighborhoods.  As soon as I did this, the woman shifted her lips into high gear and peppered me with reasons for it; it was “social causes” this and “environment” that.  And there might even have been some truth to her explanation, but it was nevertheless off-topic.  The woman was obviously so uncomfortable with the truth in question that she instinctively wanted to run over the “what” with the “why.”  But the “why” should never obscure the “what.”  And if you won’t meet the “what” face-to-face, there’s no reason to believe you can reliably diagnose it.

As for leftist “watchdogs” such as MM, there’s a good reason why they lie:

Because the right generally doesn’t.

While there are exceptions, the right is more likely to seek Truth and be accurate in its reportage and commentary.  Thus, the left can’t demonize the right without using deception.

And the left does this without batting an eye.  As I often point out, leftists are relativists, meaning that they don’t believe in Absolute Truth.  Because of this, the Truth means nothing to them, and they lie like they breathe.  And the more relativism has imbued them on a visceral level, the more they’ll be able to lie without compunction, without reservation, without guilt.

This mindset is hard for many people to grasp.  After all, the average person isn’t a moral philosopher; he may not even be able to define moral relativism.  But the Truth likely occupies a special place in his mind.  Oh, he may sometimes lie, but he nevertheless senses that Truth possesses special value.

To a hard-core relativistic leftist, there is no Truth, only “truths.”  And a person’s “truth” is just his own perspective.  It thus possesses no special status.  This failure to recognize transcendent Truth – that great author of morality – causes the leftist to become his own source of right and wrong.  His desires then take on the character of Truth in his own mind, and, consequently, whatever contradicts them takes on the character of a lie.  This is what enables a leftist to condemn those who speak the Truth as liars.  They have contradicted the only god the leftist knows – himself.

Of all idiots, none is so useful as he who can masquerade as a genius.

MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky recently denounced Hugo Chavez, accusing the Venezuelan strongman of making an “assault” on his nation’s democracy and of cruelty with respect to a female judge he imprisoned for issuing an unwelcome ruling.  The criticism made headlines, as the “renowned scholar” had long given aid and comfort to Ego-and-Mouth Chavez.  In fact, when the leader denounced President Bush in an infamous 2006 U.N. address, it was Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance that he waved and used as a prop.  And Chomsky often praises Venezuela’s socialist revolution, most recently saying, “It's hard to judge how successful they [the Venezuelan socialists] are, but if they are successful they would be seeds of a better world.”

Well, socialism has only failed every time it’s been tried, but I guess Chomsky’s renowned intellect has finally figured out a way to do the same thing over and over again and achieve different results.

But some people never learn – and in our time they’re known as leftists.  It’s bad enough when a starry-eyed teenager gloms onto a demagogue and then registers surprise when the scorpion acts in accordance with his nature, but it’s downright pathetic when an old man behaves as if he was born yesterday. 

And Chomsky, it seems, is continually born again yesterday.  In the late 1970s, he defended the Khmer Rouge at the very time that those Cambodian communists were in the midst of a genocidal campaign that ultimately claimed 30 percent of their nation’s population.  He steadfastly refused to believe reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities, calling them part of a “disinformation” campaign targeting a group that, he said, could usher in not only “national liberation but also…a new era of economic development and social justice.”

Now, understand that the Khmer Rouge weren’t “just” genocidal maniacs – something not unusual in the annals of communism.  They formed what was perhaps the most cruel, bizarre, twisted and incompetent government in history.  Immediately upon taking power, they initiated their agrarian revolution, ordering the evacuation of Phnom Penh and other major urban centers; they even emptied hospitals and created a situation in which patients had to be pushed through the streets on hospital beds.  They abolished the practice of religion; separated families; started history anew with their “Year Zero”; and murdered citizens who showed signs of Western influence, such as the wearing of eyeglasses.  And this is just a small sampling of what was a complete rending of every Cambodian tradition and institution (for more, click here).

Of course, Chomsky didn’t “know” about this.  Oh, if he had actually walked the Cambodian killing fields, stepped over the thousands of human skulls and retched at the stench of rotting flesh – and, most particularly, if he had found himself in a re-education camp – he would have “known.”  But he was too busy rationalizing.  After all, he understood the facts of life: Communists are nice, social justice-oriented people.  And they were being targeted by the big bad United States, the source of all the world’s woes.  So it was obvious that all the negative stories about them were Western propaganda.  Renowned intellectuals know these things.

Admittedly, today Chomsky acknowledges reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities.  He just denies reports of Chomsky Khmer Rouge support.  He has his own Year Zero, I suppose, and it started when reality became sufficiently weighty to make rationalization seem like Holocaust denial.  Hey, that fellow in 1977 was a different Chomsky.  Renowned intellectuals just don’t make such mistakes.

Or, they don’t learn from them, anyway.  And this brings us back to Chomsky on Chavez.  Rory Carroll in The Guardian writes:

He [Chomsky]…faulted Chávez for adopting enabling powers to circumvent the national assembly. "Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo [authoritarianism] and it has to be guarded against.  Whether it's over too far in that direction in Venezuela I'm not sure, but I think perhaps it is.  A trend has developed towards the centralisation of power in the executive which I don't think is a healthy development."

Well, Noam, you let us know when you are sure.  We’d like the heads-up.

Then there are Chomsky’s comments relating to the persecuted female judge, María Lourdes Afiuni.  Carroll writes:

Chomsky said Chávez, who has been in power for 12 years, appeared to have intimidated the judicial system.  "I'm sceptical that [Afiuni] could receive a fair trial.  It's striking that, as far as I understand, other judges have not come out in support of her … that suggests an atmosphere of intimidation."

Interestingly, Chomsky was never this measured in his statements condemning the U.S.  As with all leftists, the worse his judgments, the more sure of them he is.

The great Roman orator and statesman Cicero once said, “Any man is liable to err; only a fool persists in error.”  Chomsky exhibits that seemingly irremediable leftist inability to discern good from evil, friend from foe.  If he’d been a rabbit, he would have hopped into the fox’s lair well before getting so long in the tooth.  And if he didn’t live in the West’s cocoon of safety and comfort, he would ages ago have been swept away in a whirlwind of his own design.  He just doesn’t learn.

Of course, we all can learn.  But it requires that you’re humble and sincere enough to admit error (at least to yourself) and are receptive to Truth.  It also helps if you realize that, no matter how many people call you a “renowned” intellectual, you’re perhaps not all that smart.

                                                             Contact Selwyn Duke

In 2007, Kevin L. Monday Jr. was convicted for the murder of Francisco Green and received 64 years in prison.  The incident ad been caught on a 3-minute video recording shot by a street performer, and the footage clearly showed Monday coolly and calculatingly firing 11 shots at Green on a crowded Seattle, Washington, street corner.  Thus, despite the reluctance of witnesses to testify, it was an open-and-shut case.

But now the Washington Supreme Court, in an 8-1 ruling, has overturned the conviction and a lower court that upheld it – thus forcing a retrial – claiming that the prosecutor used “racist” arguments.  What is the supposed problem?  While questioning witnesses, veteran King County deputy prosecutor James Konat cited a no-snitching street code in the black community and made references to the “PO-leese.”  Writes Jennifer Sullivan of The Washington Times:

During the trial, Konat questioned witnesses, many of them black, about a purported street "code" that he claimed prevented some from talking to the police, according to the Supreme Court's majority opinion written by Justice Tom Chambers.  In questioning some witnesses, Konat made references to the "PO-leese," the justices found.

During his closing argument to jurors, Konat also said that while witnesses denied the presence of such a code, “the code is black folk don't testify against black folk.  You don't snitch to the police….”

Question: Can something be “racist” if it’s true?  The street code in question isn’t just “purported”; it is real.  And everyone, save the most sheltered and culturally naïve, knows of its existence.  But I guess that the truth, if dare uttered today, will set criminals free.

The lone dissenting justice, James M. Johnson, placed matters in perspective in his dissent, writing:

[T]he majority misconstrues what the prosecutor said and does not consider the context of the statements, as our case law requires.  This is what [sic] prosecutor said:

 [T]he only thing that can explain . . . why witness after witness. . .is called to this stand and flat out denies what cannot be denied on that video is the code.  And the code is black folk don’t testify against black folk.  You don’t snitch to police.

…The prosecutor’s reference was made in the context of a month-long trial in which several witnesses recanted earlier statements made to police and expressed reluctance to testify. Indeed, the trial court noted, “[V]irtually every lay witness has been very reticent to testify in this case, and the memory of virtually every lay witness has had significant holes in places where one would not expect….”

Johnson also addresses the prosecutor’s pronunciation of the word “police,” writing:

The transcript has the prosecutor saying “po-leese” after the prosecutor had difficulty interacting with [witness] Ms. Sykes throughout her direct examination, and the prosecutor said “we’ll use your term then” once before in an unfortunate effort to elicit Ms. Sykes’ testimony. See VRP (May 22, 2007) at 14 (using the word “arguing” instead of “confrontation” in describing the surrounding events).

Johnson lastly points out that the justices in the majority have cast long-standing precedent to the winds:

[P]erhaps most vexing, the majority fails to honestly apply the holding of tried, tested, and controlling precedent.  Appellate courts do not assess “‘[t]he prejudicial effect of a prosecutor's improper comments . . . by looking at the comments in isolation but by placing the remarks ‘“in the context of the total argument, the issues in the case, the evidence addressed in the argument, and the instructions given to the jury.’’” State v. Yates….

The majority disregards the context of the total argument.  The majority does not look to the issues in the case.  The majority does not look to the evidence or to the instructions given to the jury.  The majority looks to several comments in isolation.

Let’s be blunt: The majority has been brainwashed and is insane.  Like so many today, they have “racism” on the brain and will subordinate everything to it. 

This brings us back to my earlier question: The Left does say that something can be “racist” even if it’s true.  And it is yet another reason why the r-word has been rendered meaningless.  A prerequisite for “bigotry” or “prejudice” always was that a given belief must not only be negative, but also untrue.  But “racism” was originated by the Left; it is their word and they define it.  And in their relativistic fantasy-world – in which their feelings have usurped morality’s position as the yardstick for judging behavior – “racism’s” dictates trump all: It matters not if something is true, only whether it’s “racist.”  This is why, in places such as Canada, we will hear nonsense about how the truth is no defense against a hate-speech charge.    

And this is why I avoid using the word “racism”: The side that defines the vocabulary of a debate wins the debate.  Thus, when we use the Lexicon of the Left – originated on university campuses and spread through the media – we have fallen into a Newspeak trap.  The Right needs to watch its collective tongue and maintain the integrity of our language.  Why walk to the beat of the civilization destroyers’ drummer?  If the left wants to manipulate the language, we should let them descend into a parallel universe of linguistic insanity without us.

As for the subordination of Truth to agendas, to do it is to confess error.  For a man who cannot stand on Truth is one who is standing behind a lie.  It is a compulsion born of a very dark spirit, indeed.

                                                                Contact Selwyn Duke

There is no better way to proclaim your lack of spiritual and philosophical depth than by, two decades after the fall of communism, disclosing that you’re Marxist.  Yet this is precisely what Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama did during a speech before 150 Chinese students at the University of Minnesota this month.  Journalist Tsering Namgyal reports on the story at Religion Dispatches, writing, “‘as far as socio-political beliefs are concerned, I consider myself a Marxist.’  ‘But not a Leninist,’ he [the Lama] clarified.”

Well, that’s a relief.  Those Leninists can really kill ya’.  Marxists will just murder you.

This isn’t the first time the Lama indicated that his soul is as red as the robes he wears.  During a lecture in NYC on May 19, the Tibetan leader credited “capitalism” with bringing new freedoms to China but then said, “Still I am a Marxist”; he then explained that Marxism has “moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits.”  That’s some deep thinking right there.

Now, I have the word “capitalism” in quotation marks because it was originated by a communist, and we shouldn’t allow enemies of the good to define the vocabulary of the debate.  I prefer to call the mostly free market in question a “natural economy,” as it is what naturally occurs when people are afforded economic freedom; they will buy, produce, sell and compete.  In contrast, communism (in the real world, not in the stateless utopia of textbook fantasies) requires a large, intrusive, freedom-squelching government to micromanage people’s endeavors and quash the yearnings of man’s spirit.  And because the Natural Economy does allow people the most freedom practical (we still must have courts to enforce contracts, for instance), it is infinitely morally superior to Marxism.

Having said this, the Natural Economy doesn’t have “moral ethics”; it just is.  It is, again, what naturally occurs when man is permitted to spread his wings.  And it will be as moral as the average people who operate within it.

In contrast, Marxism will be as immoral as the worst people who operate within it.  This is because, while the Natural Economy is governed by those hundreds of millions of consumer votes called the market, communism is ruled by the unscrupulous few who can claw their way to the top in an inevitably corrupt political system.

But while Marxism is morally inferior, it cannot be said to have “moral ethics” any more than the Natural Economy does – not in the true sense of the term.  This is because it is atheistic.  And a belief in morality – “morality” properly understood, that is – correlates to a belief in God. 

Why?  Because what we call “morality” can originate with only one of two possible sources: Man or something outside of him.  If it’s something outside of and infinitely superior to him (i.e., God) – if “Absolute Truth” exists, in other words – then we can say that morality has an existence unto itself and is, therefore, real.  But what if, as wanting Greek philosopher Protagoras said, “Man is the measure of all things”?  Then morality doesn’t really exist; the word is then just a confusing redundancy, a water-muddying term that we apply to what is nothing but man’s consensus tastes.  After all, we wouldn’t say that chocolate ice cream was “bad” or “wrong” and vanilla “good” or “right” simply because we found out that the greater mass of humanity preferred the latter, would we?  Yet is it any more logical to proclaim murder bad or wrong if the only basis for doing so is that the vast majority of the world prefers that we not kill in a way labeled unjust?  If, as with ice cream, our attitude toward murder is just a matter of man’s collective preference, then it lies in the same realm: taste.  This is, by the way, what people of faith mean when they equate atheism with amorality.  Secularists such as Christopher Hitchens take umbrage at this, but they misunderstand the concepts involved; no one is saying that an atheist cannot act morally – only that atheism cannot, logically, involve “morality.”

As for Marxism’s atheism and anti-religious passions, the Lama explains them away.  Writes Namgyal:

The Tibetan leader answered that the [sic] Marx was not against religion or religious philosophy per se but against religious institutions that were allied, during Marx’s time, with the European ruling class.  He also provided an interesting anecdote about his experience with Mao.  He said that Mao had felt that the Dalai Lama’s mind was very logical, implying that Buddhist education and training help sharpens [sic] the mind.  He said he met with Mao several times, and that once, during a meeting in Beijing, the Chinese leader called him in and announced: “Your mind is scientific!” — an assessment that was followed by the famous line, “religion is poison.”  

Well, I guess that with the Lama, flattery will get you everywhere.

I’ve never heard the above interpretation of Marx before, and I very much doubt that he was a man of even private faith and non-institutionalized religion.  Regardless, one of the most important points about Marx is never made: He was most likely what we would today call mentally ill.  Note that he was notorious for not washing, and this is not uncommon for people who manifest crippling depression and other psychological/spiritual problems.  And would it be surprising if Marx had been thus afflicted?  “There is a fine line between genius and insanity,” they say, and Marx was a classic case of a brilliant mind that was twisted enough to conjure up a truly batty theory.

As for the Lama’s mind, it doesn’t seem as if he has to worry much about a slight misstep landing him in insanity’s realm.  A few years ago he was asked if he took exception to a highly sexualized image on a magazine cover, and he dodged the question politician-like, saying (I’m paraphrasing), “This world isn’t real, anyway.”

Really?

Then why is he concerned about what the Chinese are doing in Tibet?  What does it matter if the Chicomms oppress its people and quash its culture?  Hey, if the Lama and some fellow Buddhist monks are hauled off to a Chinese concentration camp, they can just mediate on how it’s all an illusion.

The real illusion is the Lama’s image.  A man of authentic faith seeks Truth and doesn’t deny reality, either the moral variety or the physical (“Am I a man who dreamt he was a worm or a worm dreaming he is a man?!”).  The reality here, though, is that the Dalai Lama is, like Gandhi (about whom I recently wrote), just another overrated Eastern spiritual leader whom elites glom onto because he is quite liberal and not Western.  He should stick to playing golf with Bill Murray on the bag.

                                                           Contact Selwyn Duke

Increasingly, it seems that the American flag is joining toy guns and dodgeball on the banned-from-school list.  And the latest story on this front involves The Butterfield Elementary in Orange, Massachusetts, where a teacher told an 11-year-old boy that he may not hang his depiction of Old Glory because it might “offend” another student.

The boy, Frankie Girard, had drawn the picture in art class but then found that his teacher didn’t share his patriotism.  Says his father, John, “He was denied hanging the flag up. And he asked if he could just even hang it on his desk, and he was told no.  He could take the picture that he drew and take it home and be proud of it there.”

I guess patriotism has joined piety as a “private matter.”  (Leftists tend to confuse closets with shelves.  Everything that should be in the former, they display; everything that should be on the latter, they hide.)

There is a bit of a back story here, too.  It is claimed that this incident followed an altercation in which the offended one struck Frankie after Frankie asked him why he didn’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

As for the accusation leveled against the teacher, it’s denied by the school superintendent, Dr. Paul Burnim.  He refused to go on camera, but, reports WWLP.com’s Matt  Caron, “told 22News over the phone that nobody ever told Franklin the drawing was offensive, and said the only reason it wasn't hung was because Franklin was supposed to be doing other work; [sic] not drawing a picture.”

Nose growing much, doctor?

The reason why I don’t believe this man for a second is this: What 11-year-old is going to concoct a story that his teacher said his flag drawing was “offensive”?  Oh, I understand that kids can lie almost as well as educators, but such a fabrication would require a level of cultural knowledge and sophistication beyond the grammar-school set.  No, what we have here is a guilty teacher and a superintendent doing damage control and hiding under his desk.

As to this, Frankie’s father – who has contacted the ACLU (which makes me wonder about his cultural knowledge) and gotten a lot of press – said that Dr. Burnim asked him if this would “go away” if his son were allowed to hang the flag now.  Obviously, this educator is worried about being hanged himself.  Doctor, the time for that is past.

And you are a coward. 

If you were any kind of man, you would have been offended that a teacher would look askance upon the flag.  If you were any kind of a man, you would have leapt into action without hesitation.  If you were any kind of man, you would have defended our culture.  But you’re something other than a man.

It’s called a leftist.

And this is typical of leftists.  They persecute traditionalist students in thousands of schools and universities nationwide (see Campus-Watch.org), and, when occasionally caught with their hands in the commie jar, don’t even have the guts to come on camera and defend their “beliefs.” 

This is because they operate based on popularity, not principle.  They are pack animals, fawners over the fashionable.  In 1936 Germany, they would have been doing the goosestep; and in 1917 Russia, they would have sported the hammer and sickle.  This malleability isn’t surprising, either.  “Left,” like “right,” is a relative term.  Left of what?  In the case of these folks, the only constant is that they’re left of sanity.

Now, in the comments section under Caron’s article, someone in the community accused Frankie of being a bully.  But this is irrelevant.  It would be a mistake to conflate a defense of the flag with a defense of a flag-waver.  If the boy misbehaved, punish him, but you don’t prohibit the flag’s display because it’s “offensive.”  You hang the flag – and then “hang” the child if necessary.

Speaking of which, was the little offended offender punished for striking Frankie?  Or is that allowed now when someone has the temerity to express patriotic sentiments?  

And who is offended by the flag, anyway?  Is this classmate a budding al Qaeda member?  A La Raza Reconquista type?  Is his last name Chavez?  (Actually, Frankie’s sister claims he’s a Jehovah’s Witness.)  Whatever the case, if the American flag offends him, I suggest that he’s in the wrong country.

The thing I find most irritating about this story is the ridiculous idea that “offensiveness” should be a guide for anything.  And it not only shouldn’t be.

It cannot be.

This is because it is completely relative and subjective: Most everything offends someone and most everyone is offended by something.  Yet we won’t prohibit everything.  Would we kowtow to a child who was offended by sitting next to a black classmate?  Thus, we have to discriminate among people’s feelings.  And what will be the yardstick that we use to judge?  Unless it is the “feelings” of the given authority figure – in which case the judgments are completely arbitrary – the standard of right and wrong must be applied.

Once you recognize this, the offensiveness argument goes out the window.  It can only pass muster in a relativistic universe in which, without a conception of Truth as a yardstick for making decisions, people use the only thing they have left: emotion.  Yet this reduces society to the law of the jungle: We fight, using fists, votes or words (maybe lies), and those who prevail see their will done.  And that higher one, and civilization, are casualties.

The truth is that when people take offense, it’s usually just a ploy.  They’re not really offended.  

They just don’t happen to like what you’re saying.

But if they were honest and said just that, they’d seem intolerant.  So they try to seize the moral high ground by putting the onus on you and claiming you’re “offensive.”  Yet they usually have neither the high ground nor anything moral.  If they had the latter, they’d likely be able to mount an argument as to why you’re wrong in a real, absolute sense.  Instead, all they’re saying, properly translated, is that they don’t like how you taste.  If they looked to Truth, however, they might find that the problem actually lies with their palate.

Something else that can only exist in a relativistic universe is the spiritual disease that today wears the label “liberalism.”  Get people to believe in Truth, and it will die as surely as fungus that is exposed to the light.

                                                          Contact Selwyn Duke

At a gathering some years ago, I had a political conversation with a man who had recently arrived here from Denmark.  He was advocating his home country’s socialist system, which, of course, led to profound disagreement.  He was good natured and cordial, however, so the debate ended on a polite note.  Yet it also ended on an ironic one: When asked if he wanted to return home, his answer was no.

This is a common phenomenon.  We see it, for instance, in liberal northerners who move to the South for the lower taxes and cost of living and greater freedom but then continue to vote for the kind of politicians who made the Northeast a nice place to leave.  And while this befuddles many, it’s simply man’s nature.  Of course people want that which is good, such as a better lifestyle, but wanting and attaining are two different things.  Everyone wants good health, for example, but many nevertheless are too attached to unhealthful foods and practices to relinquish them.  Oh, they might move into your healthy body if they could, but they would likely do to it what a government–subsidized project does to a good neighborhood.

Now, there is a reason why I’m talking about how a change in location doesn’t equate to a change in ideology.  In the Financial Times recently, Richard McGregor reported on the latest population data, writing:

The electorate has become less white and more Hispanic more rapidly than predicted, according to the national census, two trends that will influence elections for decades.

…Mr Obama and the Democrats have long had a significant lead among minority voters, [and these demographic changes are] lifting their chances of taking states such as Nevada, Georgia and Arizona [which were] lost in 2008.

As to the rate of this change, McGregor writes:

The non-Hispanic white population dropped from 69.1 per cent in 2000 to 63.7 per cent in 2010. By contrast, the minority population, which includes African Americans and African Asians [sic], jumped from 30.9 per cent to 36.3 during the same period.

Ironically, while McGregor cites whites’ lower fertility rate, he doesn’t even once mention the 800-lb statist in the middle of the room: immigration.  I guess being flooded with unassimilable foreigners is now taken so for granted that it no longer even warrants mention.

What McGregor does do is discuss immigration’s effects, as he, quoting the National Journal, asks “whether Republicans can increase their advantage among whites enough to overcome what is likely to be a growing share of the overall vote cast by minorities [in 2012].”

The answer?

It doesn’t matter.

As long as we continue our suicidal immigration policies—where 85 percent of newcomers hail from the Third World and Asia (thanks, Ted Kennedy)—the only thing that will be in question about our descent into socialism, and perhaps beyond, is the rate.

Despite this, like McGregor, all most conservatives talk about is 2012 this and 2012 that.  Yet, what good is fighting for momentary political success if you don’t secure the cultural foundation of which it’s born?  And how can you enjoy the latter when the rate of cultural invasion greatly exceeds the rate of assimilation? 

Remember that people create the government; government doesn’t create the people.  If you replace Westerners with Muslims, you no longer have Christendom (or even the shell of it we now inhabit) but Iran West.  And if you replace apple-pie Americans with I-want-your-piece-of-the-pie socialists, you no longer have the US but the USSR redux.  Oh, of course, our immigration scheme isn’t replacing us in one fell swoop; instead, it’s happening incrementally, which all the frogs in the frying pan of water don’t really seem to notice much.  But as the aforementioned census data demonstrates, those increments are becoming bigger—and more rapid.  And a death by a thousand cuts is still a death.

So we may talk about how Tea Parties are “waking people up,” but conservatives are asleep; the reality they’re ignoring is that there are fewer who can be woken up all the time.  While you’re attempting the daunting task of re-education, the statists are importing ready-made voters.  You’re fertilizing the tree in the hope it will bear more fruit.

The statists are chopping it down and are planting a new tree. 

And it never seems to occur to conservatives that we should try to take the axe away.  Virtually every time someone complains about illegal migration, it’s accompanied by the disclaimer, “Now, I have no problem with legal immigration….”  In fact, this blind devotion to our colonization (I call this devotion “immigrationism”) is so great that warnings about it are usually met with crickets chirping.  So I will spell it out.

According to my calculations, on average, groups descended from the new immigrants in question vote for leftists approximately 79 percent of the time.  This means that 79 percent of 36.3 percent of the population now supports statists (on top of the whites who do), and the latter figure is up almost 6 points in just 10 years.  Soon it will be 79 percent of 40. 

Then 79 percent of 50.

Then 60.

And 70, and, well, does anyone get it?

Or do I still hear crickets?

So what does this mean for the future?  Well, in the 1990s, we had Bill Clinton and many people thought it couldn’t get any worse than the Wizard of Is.  Eight years after he left office, however, we got Barack Obama, and now, once again, some think it can’t get any worse.

But they are wrong.

Just wait until Malia Obama is running.

On the right.

And who might be running to her left?  Well, since our imported socialists come not from Denmark but south of the border, that is where I’ll look for possibilities.

Perhaps he will be like the new president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, who was a Marxist guerrilla.

Maybe like Bolivia’s Evo Morales, whose Movement towards Socialism Party has given the nation the “Law of Mother Earth” legislation, which grants human rights to nature (animals, trees, insects, etc.).  This resurrection of Bolivia’s pagan past will be enforced by a bureaucracy called the “Ministry of Mother Earth.”

Or that future candidate could reflect Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, who has called for a socialist Latin America and has nationalized the assets of “uncooperative” oil companies.

He could also look like the man against whose socialist government we fought a proxy war in the 1980s, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega. 

And then there is Mr. Ego and Mouth himself, Hugo Chavez.  ‘Nough said.

Of course, we could get lucky and just end up like Mexico, a kleptocratic, drug-cartel-plagued state with socialist tendencies.

And we’re well on the road to such Third Worldism.  Many conservatives are waiting for the next Ronald Reagan, but they miss the point.  The question is not “Where are all the leaders?” but something else:

Where are all the followers?

Answer: dying off and being replaced.

In 1984, Reagan enjoyed a 49-state landslide victory, losing only Walter Mondale’s home state, Minnesota, by a narrow margin.  Today, however, he not only would likely lose states such as Massachusetts, Hawaii, Vermont and New York, to name a handful, he wouldn’t even carry his home state of California.  And consider who Americans elected a mere 20 years after Reagan left office: a man who spent those 20 years sitting in a bigoted, anti-American church; a man with a 2007 voting record to the left of that of the Senate’s only avowed socialist (Bernie Sanders).  “And imagine,” some will say, “that man, Barack Obama, was elected by the same nation!”

But he wasn’t.

Just by people residing within the same borders.

And these are the consequences of not controlling the cultural elements that come into your land and, through the process the Soviets called “demoralization,” are raised up out of it.

Of course, my predictions are based on certain assumptions, not the least of which is that there will be an intact American republic to elect a leader in the future.  But with how balkanized we are—the left-right and secular-religious divides, groups such as La Raza (the Race) and MEChA and the desire to “reconquer” Ca. and the Southwest in Mexico’s name—this is not a given.  And, you know what, it might not be a bad thing.  Because what is a given is that the nation’s dissolution may represent the only chance, albeit a small one, to establish a traditionalist bastion.  Why?  Well, just remember 79 percent of 36.3, 40, 50, 60 and 70.  If traditionalists have to compete against a national tide like that, the crickets will soon be chirping over Western civilization in North America.

                                                            Contact Selwyn Duke      

The American Thinker’s Rick Moran recently wrote a blog piece about how some Catholics in France destroyed two of Andres Serrano’s creations, excreta that some euphemistically refer to as art.  Moran opened by saying that his topic would make for lively debate among commenters, and he was right.  And it has also provoked a lively response from me.

In his piece, Moran states, “Art, as we learned when growing up, is in the eye of the beholder.”  Yes, most of us did learn this growing up—and we learned wrong.  That is to say, unless “art” doesn’t really exist. 

Now, when the eye/beholder proposition is made, let us be clear on what’s being said.  If we accepted that art were simply a physical representation of something—that is, it could be beautiful, ugly, uplifting, degrading or anything at all—the truth would be plain: If it were a physical representation of a thing, it would be art.  And it certainly would not be in the eye of the beholder.   

But we argue about art precisely because it is defined by a more elusive quality.  We are talking about a certain, more esoteric value it must have to qualify as art.  And what might that be?  Well, while what I’m about to explain applies to any quality, the most common answer here is “beauty.”  And, of course, Moran’s proposition is a variation on the famous saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  Yet it is an illogical statement and a very, very grave philosophical mistake.  (Mr. Moran shouldn’t take this personally, as it’s a universally made mistake.  It just so happens that his piece inspired me to finally address it.)

If we can rightly use the word “beauty,” a noun, it’s because the quality it describes has an existence unto itself.  It is then a real thing, not simply whatever we feel it is.  It’s as with a person: We wouldn’t say, “Rick Moran is in the eye of the beholder,” that he could be black, female, a turnip or whatever we fancy him to be.  He has an existence unto himself; he is a real, specific entity.

Thus, as with anything, to say that beauty is in the eye—that it is relative—is to say it doesn’t exist.  And if this is the case, we should dispense with the confusing terminology.  We should then just call it what it is: taste.  We furthermore should also accept the implications of our belief.  For example, we could not then rightly label a woman beautiful; all we could really say is that we happen to like her appearance.  If we’re merely talking about our feelings, we should be clear about it.

This is, of course, precisely as with the matter of moral relativism vs. Moral Truth.  To say that morals are relative is to say they don’t exist; once again, we are then just talking about taste, consensus or otherwise.  If “morality” has any meaning, it is only because it has an existence unto itself.  And if we don’t believe this, we ought to stop fooling ourselves with water-muddying terminology such as “values.”  Taste is taste is taste is taste, no matter how you dress it up with what, if the relativists were correct, could only be meaning-lending linguistic Trojan Horses.

And now I’ll take a break from the philosophy and say something about our modern “artists.”  Two other things that aren’t in the eye of the beholder are the statuses “coward” and “jerk.”  That is to say, I have to laugh at all these “brave artists™” who puff up their chicken chests about “tackling tradition.”  Not only is bragging about a stand against tradition in an apostatic, irreverent secular age a bit like bragging about burning churches in Egypt, but also ask whose traditions they’re attacking.  It’s easy to target Christians because it’s all reward and no risk: The media give you lots of attention, and you’ll taste neither the steel of political correctness’ career-rending blade nor that of those who would slowly cut your brave little head off.  Want to really be courageous?  Try mocking the Religion of Peace™.  Come on, Serrano et al., I dare you.

I double dare you.

Cowards.

Really, I don’t know of any brave contemporary artists (alive, anyway).  If they do exist, however, I suppose they’re the ones you don’t hear about because they get arrested for hate speech by the tolerant set.   

The acceptance of the relativistic nonsense “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is precisely why we have a proliferation of garbage masquerading as art and public funding for it.  And, as with morality, we ought to think matters through to their logical conclusion.  There was only ever one good reason to fund art: “Good” exists, and society has a vested interest in promoting good.  Thus, since beauty is a real thing that is a good, it behooves man to beautify his surroundings.  As soon as we embrace the notion that beauty doesn’t exist because it’s all a matter of perspective, however, this line of reasoning collapses.  We then are confronted with the proposition that we’re using tax money to promote and fund certain people’s tastes.

This would be no different from having the government promote chocolate ice cream over vanilla.  And there’s a reason why we don’t see people protesting violently for cherry lollipops and against grape ones or why armies don’t face off over which spice shall be used in stew, turmeric or thyme.  When we fight about things, it presupposes that there is something worth fighting for.

And if we fund something, it presupposes that there is something worth funding. 

And the reason why the West no longer knows what to fund or fight for—or fear—is that it wallows in a relativistic morass of moral confusion.  This is why we fund deviancy but tear down the Ten Commandments, abort children in the womb but insist they mustn’t drink soda outside of it, and promote Islam while punishing those who speak against it.

If the West wants to survive, relativism has got to go.  This won’t happen any time soon, however.  You see, regrettably, stupidity isn’t in the eye of the beholder, either.

                                                           Contact Selwyn Duke

It was the body slam heard around the world.  When some Australian schoolboys decided to videotape themselves bullying 15-year old Casey Heynes, one of them got more than he bargained for.  Casey, who had been pushed around and humiliated for years, responded to a punch in his face and other attempted blows by hoisting his tormentor WWE style and introducing him to the pavement.  The result was a video that went viral in a way the bullies had never imagined and for a reason they certainly had never hoped: Casey has become a hero worldwide.

That is, a hero to everyone except the “experts.”  Ah, the experts, uncommon people you can rely on for all-too-common senselessness.  As The Sydney Morning Herald writes:

[P]olice and bullying experts are concerned by…the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the older boy's retaliation against his attacker.

"We don't believe that violence is ever the answer," Mr Dalgleish [John Dalgleish, head of research at Kids Helpline and Boys Town] says. "We believe there are other ways that children can manage this."

Yes, Casey could have done a ‘50s-style duck-and-cover.  Hey, kid, don’t you know you should just cower and curl up into a ball?  And, for sure, violence is never the answer…except with the Nazis, Mussolini, and Napoleon; during the American Revolution, the Barbary Wars, and the Battle of Tours; and when stopping the criminals during the North Hollywood Shootout, University of Texas Tower Shooting, and incidents every single day in which someone, somewhere uses physical force to thwart a crime.  It’s never the answer—except, sometimes, when you actually have to deal with reality.

It’s hard to say what is more irritating about the “Violence is never the answer” nonsense, the stupidity or the insincerity of it.  It’s much like the mantra “Our strength lies in our diversity.”  It’s something people say because it’s a repeated big lie that has become “truth” and is politically correct; it’s a reflexive platitude uttered politician-like because that’s what “experts” are expected to say.  But if Mr. Dalgleish’s wife or child is attacked on the street, will he not find violence a very good answer? 

Perhaps he’ll take the advice of another expert, child psychologist Susan Bartell, and find some other way to “manage” it.  When analyzing Casey’s response, she said, “A better course of action…would have been for him to walk away.  Would have been for him to immediately take the power away from the bully, who was punching him in the face, and just run away, walk away….”  “Take the power away from the bully….”  Good psychobabble that.  Lady, Casey did take the power away from the bully by making sure the bully couldn’t walk away. 

The problem today is that we elevate experts above wise men.  And one of the signs of a decaying civilization is when those in authority prescribe unrealistic rules for the population, rules that they themselves would never, and could never, follow.  As to this, here is the rest of Dr. Bartell’s advice: “…walk away, and go and find the principal, the guidance counselor, teacher and tell them what had just happened to him.  Because those adults are really in a position to stop a child who is a bully….”

Again, this is ideology; it’s what she learned to say in psychology class.  And let’s apply this to the adult world.  If Mr. Dalgleish tried to “manage” an attack on his child by walking away and finding a police officer, the help he’d need might be in the area of forensic medicine.  And even if he were alone, it’s not always possible to walk away.  This is why billions of dollars are made off self-defense classes.

Another bit of obligatory-utterance advice offered by psychologist Bartell is the nonsense that “those adults [school officials] are really in a position to stop a child who is a bully.”  What bunk.  It’s hard to even call these adults authority figures anymore, as handcuffed by the law and their own ideology as they are.  These are people who think that “punishment” is a dirty word and a “time out” is enough to forestall dirty deeds.  And, even insofar as they may possess a hidden firm hand, they’re too shackled by education’s “rules of engagement” and the fear of lawsuits to exercise it.  Why do you think educators have, outrageously, sometimes responded to a bullied pupil by telling him to leave school?  The truth is that the only time punishment doesn’t fail to measure up to the behavior today is when a student violates a code of political correctness, such when a little boy doodles a gun on a piece of paper, gives a willing six-year-old girl a peck on the cheek or politely holds open a school door for an adult.  As far as real transgressions go, however, it’s see, hear and speak no evil; keep your head down; and punch the time clock.

And all you have to do is ask Casey.  A nice, extremely articulate boy, as this interview shows, he had been bullied virtually every day for many years now.  And where were the “adults”?  Perhaps they didn’t know—and for sure they didn’t act.  Either way, they were incompetent and guilty of a grave sin of omission.  And the kicker is that, after failing to secure a safe environment for their students, these educators turn around and tell the kids that they also may not save themselves.  They’ll say that “violence is never the answer” and then punish the victim the same as the victimizer.  But would they want to be subject to the same standard?  If they’re assaulted on the street, perhaps they should go to prison for as long as the assailant.  I mean, it takes two to tango, right?

And understand that this is the gun-control mentality, the mind-set that disempowers the people.  It’s much as during Hurricane Katrina.  Like declawing a cat and then throwing him to the wolves, the New Orleans police confiscated weapons from law-abiding citizens while doing nothing about the roving gangs that would prey upon those citizens (hey, gangs might actually shoot back).  

As for law enforcement, while I generally defend cops, they’re much the same as school administrators.  They make the same politically correct statements, such as saying they’re “concerned” about the support for Casey’s actions or responding to an obvious anti-white “hate crime” by claiming that they’re unsure of the motive.  They will tell citizens not to take matters into their own hands and instead call the proper authorities, yet, when people do the latter, they find that they sometimes end up like the gun-doodling little boy.  (There recently was a New Jersey case in which a social worker called the police because she was worried that her son might be suicidal, and the man ended up being arrested and going to prison for possession of legally obtained firearms.) 

So we’re not supposed to take the law into our own hands even though, increasingly, the law isn’t handling things.  Students have to deal with do-nothing teachers and citizens with do-the-wrong-thing cops, and we’re supposed to lay down our fists and arms and have confidence in the powers-that-be?

And this brings me back to violence never solving anything.  If the Dalgleishes of the world really believed this, they would dissolve the military and trade the police for social workers.  But it’s not surprising that people famous for situational values (i.e., liberals) would also subscribe to situational pacifism.  If a criminal resists arrest, they will expect the cops to use violence to apprehend him; moreover, they will actually relish it, I’m sure, if some miscreant is imperiling them.  And this is fine.  But here is what isn’t fine: saying that what is often valid for people inside government is never valid for people outside government.  Their real message is that violence is never the answer—for the subjects.  It’s just peachy for the state, though.   

And this way lies tyranny.  There is a balance to things, and as citizen courage wanes government power inevitably waxes.  G.K. Chesterton spoke of this phenomenon, writing, “[T]he Pretorian guard became more and more important in Rome as Rome became more and more luxurious and feeble.  The military man gains the civil power in proportion as the civilian loses the military virtues.”  And when pondering this, I think of the parents who called the police to deal with an unruly prepubescent child.  Like so many today, perhaps spanking was anathema to them as “violence is never the answer.”  But it was the answer.  All their weakness did is ensure that the government would become the agent of it.

The reality is that, like amputation and many other unpleasant things, physical force has its place.  After all, to paraphrase Chesterton, violence is not the best way to settle differences.  Sometimes, however, it is the only way to prevent them from being settled for you.

                                                             Contact Selwyn Duke

Imagine that you’re a young adolescent boy.  Like many your age, you’re shy around girls, perhaps to the point at which even talking to one might make your heart race.  You also like sports, so you go out for your school’s wrestling team.  Then, lo and behold, you’re at a meet, and something hits you like a load of bricks.

Your opponent is going to be a girl. 

You’re going to have to grapple with her.  In front of spectators.  Touching—and being touched in—intimate places. 

You’d have to be touched to think this is okay, but it’s precisely the situation that confronted sophomore wrestler Joel Northrup at the recent Iowa State Championship.  His response, as many of you already know, was to default his match against 14-year-old Cassy Herkelman and relinquish the chance to win a coveted wrestling title in deference to his moral convictions.

While this story made national news, it wasn’t even close to the first time a schoolboy wrestler found himself pitted against a girl.  A product of Title IX, the phenomenon usually occurs in the low weight classes (Northrup’s is 112 lbs), where the boys are generally quite young and not very developed, which accounts for why the exceptional girl can sometimes make headway.  It also isn’t the first time a boy defaulted rather than engage in impropriety.

And every time it illustrates how reality has been turned on its head in today’s America.  Sure, many in the media applaud Northrup—a stellar athlete with a 35-4 record who was a favorite to win the Iowa championship—for sacrificing success for principle.  Yet few will unabashedly say what should be said: Having girls and boys grapple on mats in front of spectators is nothing short of social perversion.

This is where many, imbued with equality dogma, will be outraged.  How can you deny kids opportunities just because of their sex?  I mean, “She wants to wrestle,” we have heard.  ESPN columnist Rick Reilly, in a remarkably stupid piece, even went so far as to say that Northrup was morally wrong to not treat Herkelman just like one of the guys.  So let’s talk about equality.

After golfer Annika Sorenstam was given a sponsor’s exemption to play in a PGA Tour event in 2003, struggling golf professional Brian Kontak tried to enter the qualifying rounds for the United States Women’s Open.  Yet he was denied the opportunity.  But why?  He worked hard.  He had a dream.  And he wanted to do it.  Why was there a grass ceiling?

This is where many will roll their eyes and say that while men don’t need protection from female competition, women do need protection from male competition.  But not so fast.  Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like chivalry?  Haven’t we been told that equality is the overriding principle here?  And equality is this: Everyone competes in the same arena—and the chips fall where they may.  

Given the gap between the sexes in sports—boys’ American high-school records in track and field are better than women’s world records—this would suit thousands of struggling male athletes just fine.  They would then have access to the millions of dollars in women’s athletics, an earning opportunity currently denied them solely because of their sex.  So let’s eliminate the separate tours, leagues and teams for women.  Equality demands it.

It really would be for the best, too.  After all, to use a variation on Lincoln’s famous saying, the best way to get an unrealistic social norm eliminated is to enforce it strictly.  If the equality-on-the-brain types had to live with the results of complete equality of opportunity—instead of just the rhetoric of it—the principle might start to lose its allure.

Of course, the above will never happen.  Our modern “equality,” you see, is much like that thing that promises economic equality, communism: It can be praised but never practiced because it’s fatally unrealistic.  Yet it’s even more insidious because it’s ill-defined.  Equality has taken on the flavor of a ploy; it is an ever-morphing weapon of mass destruction.  When a wall of tradition needs to be breached, it is that oh-so noble Equality of Opportunity.  When this yields favored-group failure and a level field must be tilted, it becomes Equality of Outcome.  It is a mercenary of the social moment in the service of the Man Who Would be Queen.

Getting back to my proposal, however, the point is that to reject it is to admit that “equality” is neither the only priority nor an all-trumping one.  It is, in fact, to admit that it is a lie.  Once you support divisions based solely on sex—something we don’t do based on race or ethnicity—you cannot castigate someone else for doing the same.  You are then acknowledging that the sexual distinction is a unique one, which of course it is.  Oh, this doesn’t mean that, like Muslims who’ll cloister a woman in a seventh-century drape, every sex-specific norm is just.  But it does mean that there is a good reason why we have two standards: We have two sexes.  It also means that if you want to eliminate a sex-based double standard, crying “inequality!” isn’t enough.  You’ll need to mount a mature argument.

As for allowing girls and boys to wrestle, it’s only a degraded society that has to even debate the issue.  First, such contact is plainly immoral, and this was widely understood until relatively recently.  Also note that this is part of a phenomenon whereby the relationship between the sexes is being undermined.  For example, it’s the ultimate mixed message to instruct boys to be gentlemen but then say, in the name of “equality,” “Oh, remember, you little chauvinist piglet, girls are just like you.  Treat them exactly like anyone else.”  We put boys—whose natural desire to be a knight in shining armor and protect girls should be cultivated—in an unreasonable position: They either have to contribute to the defeminizing of the fairer sex or the emasculation of their own. 

Then there is the other half of the equation, almost universally ignored because the Western man has been emasculated: At the level of population, a prerequisite for men being gentlemen is that women are ladies.  To expect otherwise is like someone supposing that you’ll abide by Queensberry Rules in a fight against a no-holds-barred opponent.  Yet what happens if you dare talk about teaching girls to be ladies today?  You’re cast as a bearded mullah with an iron burka.

The result of this sexual confusion is that we have boys going to school pretending to be girls and girls acting like boys.  I won’t shrink from saying that a girl who wants to engage in organized wrestling simply hasn’t been raised correctly.  And, by the way, the Herkelmans’ case only supports this assertion.  Note that when Bill Herkelman, Cassy’s father, addressed his daughter’s wrestling ambitions he said, “She's my son.  She's always been my son.” 

Huh? 

Although I don’t support it, it’s one thing to give a nod to a girl’s tomboy tendencies.  But to characterize her as your “son”?  Does it occur to this man (who looks like a hippie, mind you) that his daughter will grow up and have to find happiness as a woman?  And is it a stretch to say that little Cassy might have gotten the message that to get the approval of a father who perhaps wanted a boy, she’d have to act like one?  Sorry, folks, but I won’t mince words: What we have here is twisted and a form of child abuse.  

But child abuse is now de rigueur.  To be honest, I find it a tad embarrassing being an adult nowadays with the guidance we’re giving the young.  Can you look a Joel Northrup in the eye, point to our decadent culture and say we are proud to bequeath it to him?  We don’t teach boys to respect girls or girls to respect boys—and kids don’t respect adults.  And who can blame them?  An older generation will not be respected if it’s not respectable.  

The good news, and the bad, is that this will end.  The consequence of undermining traditional sex roles is what has beset the West: Career-driven women, frivolity-obsessed men and demographic-death-spiral birth rates.  I would say that this portends the death of civilization, but that’s not entirely accurate.  In reality, it only happens when civilization has already died.

                                                             Contact Selwyn Duke

Well, Justin Bieber has lost his political virginity.  And it was taken by, of all people, the stoners at Rolling Stone magazine.

Excerpts released from an upcoming interview with the teen star included political statements that, as some reading this will know, have earned him criticism in conservative circles.  What fewer in the right-blogosphere may realize, however, is that they also brought him lashing from the left.  Attacked from the right, attacked from the left…yikes.  Just call him Bill O’Reilly, Jr.

Conservatives noted Bieber’s negative comments about the US healthcare system, but is such an opinion really notable?  Remember, we’re talking about a 16-year-old Canadian pop star here.  Far more notable is what raised the ire of the womyn on The (wrong) View and the capons at The New York Times: the singer’s views on the left’s sacred cow, abortion.  As to this, Rolling Stone writes:

"I really don't believe in abortion," Bieber says.  "It's like killing a baby."  How about in cases of rape?  "Um.  Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason.  I don't know how that would be a reason.  I guess I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that."

Demonstrating an inerrant grasp of the obvious, The New York Times’ John Caramanica observes that Bieber’s “reply wasn’t the clearest or most sophisticated distillation of that position.”  Well, John, you may have to wait till his voices finishes changing for that.

Now, I’ll note that a “sophisticated distillation” of the pro-life position never seems to make it onto the Times’ pages, and Caramanica’s objection to any distillation of it was apparent in his commentary.  He asks, “[W]hat has Mr. Bieber done for [his] fans apart from inspire crushes?  Does his music speak to their needs and interests as young girls?”  Here’s a clue, John: These tweens and barely teens don’t have much idea what their needs are as young girls.  They just know what they want.  And you have no idea about either.

More blunt was The View’s very dull Joy Behar, who may be even less qualified to discuss adult matters than Bieber himself.  She said that his views were “insulting to people who have been raped” and that she was concerned because he is “influencing young girls.”  Well, better him than the government schools, anyway.

While I may seem like an unlikely candidate to defend Justin Bieber – my tastes in music tend more toward Gregorian chants than modern pop – I find this criticism, both from the left and right, a bit much.  Remember that we’re talking here about someone who also gave Rolling Stone a quotation worthy of Kids Say the Darndest Things.  When asked about what party he’d support were he of voting age, the singer offered a true common-ground reply: “I'm not sure about the parties.  But whatever they have in Korea, that's bad.”  Well, can’t argue with that.

Really, one of my first thoughts when I heard about the Stoners’ interview with Bieber was, “Where were his handlers?”  After all, wading into the stormy waters of politics isn’t exactly the best way to sell records.  

As for why the Stoners asked a boy not far removed from puberty about hot-button political issues, the interviewer, Vanessa Grigoriadis, insisted that a kid who “has control over a large population should be asked all questions.”  Well, I’d have to be stoned to believe that.  I think Grigoriadis just wanted to capture headlines and attention.  And she succeeded.

This is in much the way the Stoners succeeded with their story on General Stanley McChrystal.  As you may remember, the general had to resign last year from his position as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan after scathing comments he and some of his aides made about the Obama administration appeared in Rolling Stone magazine.  (And he deserved it, too.  McChrystal is no 16-year-old pop star, but he acted like one.  I mean, what kind of naivety does it take to allow a Stoner reporter to embed with you?  Answer: The kind you don’t want in a leader of the armed forces.)

But while both Justin and the general fell victim to Stoner ambush, the difference is that Bieber will survive.  Caramanica titled his article “Twilight of the Teen Idol” and concluded with, “By taking a stand against abortion, Mr. Bieber risks finding out how frail and tenuous that bond [between him and his fans] might be.”  This is nonsense.  Baby-killing isn’t generally a top priority with tween girls – women have to get a bit more “sophisticated” before embracing such ethereal pursuits.  Besides, unless Bieber says he likes kicking cats and eating puppies, his 10 to 14-year-old fans will accept whatever he may say.

As for what he said about healthcare, yes, it was silly.  And many of the points made in relation to it are valid.  It’s ridiculous that the Stoners would ask such a person about matters so beyond his depth (of course, it’s equally ridiculous that the Stoners are writing about matters so beyond their depth).  And we’re definitely heading toward Idiocracy when the opinions of Stoners and Behars are treated like they matter.  But then there is something else.

Like most politics wonks, when I hear a singer make an inane political statement, one of my first emotional reactions is, “Stick to singing”; this is in the same way that, when seeing biologist Richard Dawkins campaign against religion, one may think, “Stick to science and leave philosophy to philosophers.”  But it’s an unreasonable idea.

When the Illustrated London News hired G.K. Chesterton as a columnist in 1905, the paper said that he could treat anything he wanted except religion and politics.  His response was that there was nothing else worth writing about.  What he meant was, it may be that singing is just for music lovers, art just for art aficionados and biology just for biologists, but morality/philosophy – which is at the heart of religion and politics – isn’t just for moral philosophers.  Whether our craft is music, science, medicine, law or plumbing, we cannot do it and our fellow man justice unless we are moral people.  And we cannot become a moral society by avoiding discussion of morality.

This is why we can never get away from the only two issues worth talking about.  We have the injunction, “Never discuss religion or politics,” but it is a prescription for superficiality.  Properly interpreted, it means “Never discuss anything of importance.” 

So my advice to the Justin Biebers of the world is, by all means, concern yourselves with what really matters.  But as ancient sage Confucius said, “Wisdom is, when you know something, knowing that you know it, and when you do not know something, knowing that you do not know it.”  Seek Truth before seeking an audience.

                                                               Contact Selwyn Duke