Since When Is Joe Biden a ModerateLBJ Library Photo by Jay Godwin (297/1170)

Since When Is Joe Biden a ‘Moderate’?

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by Paul Gottfried

In an exultant commentary on Joe Biden’s victory on Super Tuesday, New York Post-syndicated columnist Salena Zito tells us: “The Dems’ silent majority, which doesn’t tweet, is finally crying out for moderation from the party.” Zito also quotes Dave Saunders, “a legendary Democratic strategist in Virginia,” who “finds it ‘ironic’ that southern voters are often criticized by the national party for being too moderate, but they’re the ones who saved the party from a left-wing candidate like Sanders.” Presumably Biden is the personification of “moderation,” as I’m reminded whenever I hear the Fox News All-stars praise him, while attacking the evil Bernie as a commie-loving radical. It’s been Joe’s accomplishment to rescue his party and nation from the “leftist demagogue” who is running against him. He is helping to return the country to “moderate” government, which presumably is not something that Trump has been doing because of his divisive personality.

Unfortunately, there is no indication that Biden will be practicing any kind of “moderation” if elected. For one thing, depictions of him as a moderate overlook the inconvenient fact that he is running well to the left of former president Obama, who was our most leftist chief executive up until his election in 2008. Candidate Obama publicly opposed gay marriage, favored strict border controls, and would never have announced, in contrast to Biden, that he wished to provide (…)

Read the rest in The American Thinker, March 20, 2020: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/since_when_is_joe_biden_a_moderate.html

Dr. Paul Gottfried is Distinguished Senior Fellow in Western Civilization and the History of Ideas.

The Politics of the CoronavirusImage by Gerd Altmann - Pixabay

The Politics of the Coronavirus

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by Paul Gottfried

A friend in Germany just wrote about how political correctness has persisted in his country despite the Corona Pandemic. Although Chancellor Angel Merkel spent years responding to critics of her generous welcoming policy toward Muslim migrants by insisting that borders are fluid, she has now sealed those very borders. Apparently German borders are no longer fluid because of the coronavirus, even to fellow-Europeans. But the German administration has kept its once-fluid borders open to migrants from the Third World, although assurances have been given that these prospective “new settlers” will be “tested” to make sure they are not carrying the virus. Not surprisingly, such “testing” will not be available to Frenchmen or Austrians trying to cross into Germany.

In the United States, political biases have also been evident in responses to the virus. Republicans are stressing the dire economic consequences of the shutdown and warn about doing irreparable destruction to our material well-being. Republicans have also played down gloomy predictions about the possible spread of the pandemic and note its obviously disproportionate impact on different sections of the country. Sometimes these messages downplay what is still a serious health problem. One might also notice that much of the party’s base consists of (…)

Read the rest in Chronicles magazine, March 2020: https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/the-politics-of-the-coronavirus/

Dr. Paul Gottfried is Distinguished Senior Fellow in Western Civilization and the History of Ideas.

Thomas Samson/AFP

Opposing the Transgender Movement

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by Amy Contrada

The transgender movement is one of the hammers the tyrannical elite is employing to condition us to keep silent in the face of outrageous assaults on our thoughts, speech, bodily integrity, and physical safety.

The transgender war on cultural norms is not just about restrooms and pronouns.  It’s about denying biological fact and quotidian reality.  It’s about an epidemic of irrationality, a cultural contagion, a mass delusion that is claiming more victims every day.  It’s about silencing free thinkers who refuse to bow to the radical “gender” ideology.

Absurd theories that deny scientific fact have been adopted by the mainstream press, entertainment industry, medical establishment, public schools, universities, corporate management, and government agencies.  People who fear social isolation and charges of bigotry are following along.

How do those of us still grounded in reality fight this insanity?  Not with misguided “compassion” or compromise, but with straight talk and tough love.  Let’s not waste our time analyzing or answering absurd gender theories with logical rebuttals.  Those ideas don’t deserve that respect.  And the useful idiots who swallow the trans lies – whether as promoters, allies, or victims – will not listen to reason or science.

Oppose trans activism

Refuse to go along with trans madness that declares:

  • “Sex is assigned at birth” by doctors.
  • Gender identity is inborn.
  • A three-year-old can know he’s “trapped in the wrong body.”
  • Some girls have penises; some boys have vaginas.
  • Blocking puberty in pre-adolescent trans children is sound medical practice.
  • A man can gestate and birth a baby.
  • Gender stereotypes are bad (unless you adopt one as your “authentic” trans identity).
  • A trans person’s choice of new name and pronouns must be respected.
  • A trans person determines their appropriate restroom, locker room, sports team, etc.
  • Transgender persons’ feelings take precedence over everyone else’s.

Recognize only biological sex classifications:  Male and Female.

Avoid using the politically loaded word “gender.”

Point out that there is no biological basis for transgenderism.  A trans person cannot be “trapped in the wrong body.”  We’re all in the bodies we were meant to be in.

Trust medical professional associations that oppose this anti-science ideology.  (See here, here, here, here, and here.)

Disseminate reliable research and commentary.  (See here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Do not affirm a person’s self-identification as transgender (or genderqueer, non-binary, gender non-conforming, neutrois, agender, two-spirit, etc.).  Affirmation normalizes this mental disorder.  True respect comes from recognizing a trans-identified person’s authentic, not costumed, humanity.

Emphasize that people who identify as transgender need psychological counseling to escape their delusion.

Show true compassion by encouraging trans-identifying persons to accept their natural bodies.  Help them avoid a lifetime of medical interventions (cross-sex hormones, surgeries, cosmetic procedures, counseling), infertility, stress-inducing efforts to “pass” as the opposite sex, suicidal thinking and attempts.

Explain there is no such thing as a transgender child.  There are children who are confused, emotionally neglected, even possibly abused.  Parents who affirm trans identities in children are themselves confused or needy, vulnerable to social pressures, or willfully misguided by health care professionals.

Speak out against the ghoulish medical procedures being inflicted on children, including puberty blockers.  To prevent puberty in a healthy young body is medical malpractice.  Halting the development of a child’s sexual organs, then adding cross-sex hormones, will guarantee sterility.  That is a violation of a child’s human rights.   “Gender” clinics for children should be shut down.

Oppose laws or policies granting special rights to trans-identifying persons.  They already have all the rights they need as biological males and females.  Non-discrimination policies protecting ill-defined “gender identity” are superfluous.

Demand that single-sex public restrooms and locker rooms allow only biological males or biological females.  Attempts at compromise (e.g., single-stall restrooms for trans-identifying persons) effectively concede that trans identities are legitimate.  And in any case, such compromise measures will be opposed as “discriminatory.”

Refuse to play trans language games, whether it’s using their new words (“cisgender”), silly pronouns (ze, zir, zirs), or saying ”they” or “he” when it’s really “she.”

Monitor and challenge trans-affirming policies in your local schools.

Schools are under “gender” assault – but there’s new hope

What’s happening in the schools is especially important.  Gender-identity non-discrimination laws or policies applied to schools are intended to disrupt and radically transform all of society, not just support “trans children” in school.  If children attend a school where boys can be girls and vice-versa, many of these future adults will have been effectively brainwashed.

The Obama administration attempted to force public schools to enforce “gender” ideology across the board (not just in restrooms and locker rooms; see here and here).  The Trump administration backed off from enforcing those regulations.  But while the tables may be turning at the federal level, this is not true in many locales.

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has devised guidelines that may help restore sanity in schools.  ADF explains that there is no federal law or regulation requiring schools to make allowances for trans-identifying students in restrooms and locker rooms.

ADF’s “Student Physical Privacy Policy” for school private facilities is online here.  The document commendably uses only the word “sex”; there’s no recognition of “transgender boys” (biological females) or “transgender girls” (biological males).

The Obama administration threatened schools with loss of federal funds if they didn’t implement radical trans-affirming policies.  But now ADF warns:  “Granting students access to opposite-sex changing areas could subject schools to tort liability for violating students’ and parents’ rights.”  This could mean legal challenges even in states with laws mandating transgender-affirming school policies.

(Let the ACLU bring its “discrimination” lawsuits against schools which refuse to kowtow to transgender demands!  With more conservatives being appointed to our federal courts, there is some hope we can bring an end to supporting trans-identifying children who upend the entire school environment.)

Let’s hope ADF’s clarification doesn’t stop with restrooms and locker rooms, but eventually expands to include resistance to other trans-affirming policies in the schools.

After all, rightly understood, a child’s trans identification is a family issue.  Parents should deal with their child’s mental health problem privately, outside of school.  It is unfair to drag the whole community into a family’s distress.  Communities need more outside support for that common-sense approach.

Speak out!

Don’t try to convince brainwashed trans allies to reject trans insanity.  But do embolden people who know in their hearts and minds that trans ideology is utterly false and destructive.  They will resist if they see others doing so.

What’s really at stake is thought control.  Government and institutions are forcing people to deny reality and accept a destructive, nonsensical ideology – accustoming us to obey the most idiotic directives.  If people can accept as fact that “some boys have vaginas and some girls have penises,” they’ll roll over for anything.

 

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­First published at American Thinker; reprinted at MassResistance and LifeSiteNews.


Amy Contrada is with MassResistance and author of Mitt Romney’s Deception (2011).  She has degrees from Tufts and Brown, plus a diploma in violin making.  See AmyContrada.com for some of her writing.

 

 

Jeffrey Nyquist’s New Book Published in Brazil

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The Brazilian publishing house Vide Editorial has just released a Portuguese translation of The Fool and Its Enemy by Jeffrey Nyquist, President of the Inter-American Institute and Distinguished Senior Fellow in Political Science. The book is a masterful analysis of the crisis of the Western liberal democracies and its refusal to defend itself against its enemies (since those societies also refuse to recognize they have enemies).

 

 

 

 

Important Clarification Note About Panel Discussion With Congressman Bolsonaro

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Brazilian media has been wrongfully reporting that the Inter-American Institute is organizing event with Congressman Bolsonaro in NYC

On August 25, 2017, the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo published an article reporting a trip of Brazilian Congressman Jair Bolsonaro to the United States and claiming that the congressman had been invited to participate in a panel discussion by philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, fellow of the Inter-American Institute.

Last week, on October 3, a letter written by the current president of the Inter-American Institute, Jeffrey Nyquist, was sent to Folha de Sao Paulo, clarifying that the Inter-American Institute is not in any way involved in the sponsoring or the organization of the event in NYC, and requesting that the clarification note be published by that newspaper in order to correctly inform the Brazilian public about the fact that the Institute is not responsible for the organization of the panel discussion.

Folha de Sao Paulo, however, has not yet published the clarification letter sent 7 days ago and continues to claim that the Inter-American Institute is sponsoring and organizing the event with Congressman Jair Bolsonaro.

Therefore, the Inter-American Institute has decided to publish the letter sent to that Brazilian newspaper so that its readership might be correctly informed about the matter.

 

 

 

 

Documentary Movie About Philosopher Olavo de Carvalho to be Screened at VCU

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Movie tells the story of homonymous book by Brazilian philosopher and fellow of  IAI

On March 23, 2017, the documentary movie “The Garden of Afflictions” will be screened at the Virginia Commonwealth University at 7 PM, in the building of the Academic Learning Commons, at 1000 Floyd Avenue, Richmond, VA. The documentary is about the Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho and his book “The Garden of Afflictions,” after which the movie was named.  Olavo de Carvalho is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of  the Inter-American Institute for Philosophy (IAI), Government, and Social Thought, and the most important Brazilian philosopher in action nowadays. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with the film director Josias Teófilo and Mr. Olavo de Carvalho himself.

 

 

A Brief History of Male Chauvinism

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Women have always been exploited by men. That is a truth that nobody doubts. From the solemn lecture halls in Oxford to popular TV shows, from Collège de France to pop music groups, the world reaffirms that certainty, maybe the most unquestionable truth that has ever crossed the human mind—that is, if it ever actually crossed it, for it might have come straight out of wombs into academic books.

Not desiring to go against such an august unanimity, I here intend to list a few facts that may reinforce, in the hearts of believers of all existing and yet-to-be-invented sexes, their hatred against heterosexual adult males, those execrable creatures that no one who was unlucky enough to be born as a male wants to be when he grows up.

Our narrative begins at the dawn of time, at some imprecise moment between the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons. It was in those dark ages that the exploitation of women started. Living in caves, the human communities were constantly ravaged by the attacks of wild beasts. Males, taking advantage of their prerogatives as members of the ruling class, hurried to secure for themselves the safest and most comfortable of places of the social order: they remained inside the caves—what rascals!—preparing food for their babies, while the poor females, armed only with clubs, went outside to fight lions and bears.

When the hunting and gathering economy was replaced by agriculture and cattle-raising, men took advantage of women again, always assigning them the hardest jobs, such as moving rocks and blocks of stone, taming wild horses, and cutting furrows on the ground with a plough, while they, those lazy pants, stayed home painting pottery and weaving. That is revolting.

When the great empires of antiquity dissolved, yielding their places to a bedlam of warring fiefdoms, feudal lords quickly formed their private armies, exclusively made up of women, while men took refuge in castles and remained there enjoying the good life, delighting in the reading of the poems that warrior women wrote, in between battles, to praise their manly charms.

When someone had the extravagant idea of spreading Christianity throughout the world, which required sending missionaries to all corners of the Earth, where they ran the risk of being impaled by heathens, stabbed by highway robbers, or butchered by an audience bored with their preaching, the heavy burden of that mission was laid upon women, while men Machiavellianly stayed home and made novenas before their family altars.

The poor women were victims of the same kind of exploitation on the occasion of the Crusades, where, clad in heavy armors, they crossed deserts to be run through by the swords of the moors (female moors, of course, since the partisans of Mohammed were no less sexists than we). And what about the great voyages of discovery!? Seeking gold and diamonds to adorn idle males, brave female seafarers crossed the seven seas and fought against ferocious indigenous male warriors whose only advances towards them were, alas, of a military nature.

Finally, when the modern state instituted military conscription for the first time in history, government armies were made up of women, and beheading at the guillotine was the punishment for those who insisted on resisting or dodging the draft. All of that, of course, so that men could stay home reading The Princesse de Clèves.

In short, for millennia women have been dying in the battle field, moving blocks of stone, erecting buildings, fighting wild beasts, crossing deserts, seas, and jungle, making all sorts of sacrifice for us, idle males, to whom no challenge remains other than that of getting their hands dirty in soiled diapers.

In exchange for the sacrifice of their lives, women, our heroic defenders, have not demanded from us anything except the right to raise their voices at home, make a few cigarette burn marks on tablecloths, and, occasionally, leave a pair of socks in the TV room for us to pick up.

 

Translated from the Portuguese by Alessandro Cota.

 

Olavo de Carvalho is the President of The Inter-American Institute and Distinguished Senior Fellow in Philosophy, Political Science, and the Humanities.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.  Translation from the Portuguese by Alessandro Cota.

The Truth About Alfred Kinsey

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Dr. Judith Reisman debunks Alfred Kinsey’s so-called scientific research on human sexuality and analyzes the social and cultural consequences of Kinsey’s works on American contemporary history.

6Dr. Judith Reisman is a Distinguished Senior Fellow in the Study of Social Trends, Human Rights, and Media Forensics.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute. You can buy Dr. Reisman’s book Sexual Sabotage on her website.