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.

Conservative Misconceptions about Marriage, and Why It Matters

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The pivotal importance of Fatherhood needs to become increasingly evident, not only for a better understanding of some serious social problems, but also for an adequate knowledge of the real purposes of marriage, which is under attack in West’s political and cultural spheres. This was one of the main statements of Dr. Stephen Baskerville  in a lecture delivered at the Ordo Iuris Conference on “Marriage, its Identity, and Legal Recognition” (Warsaw, 29-30 September 2016).

Dr. Stephen Baskerville, Senior Fellow in Political Science and Human Rights of The Inter-American Institute, is the author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family and The New Politics of Sex.

https://www.stephenbaskerville.com/

 

(CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images

Bolsonaro and the presidential election in Brazil: an interview with Olavo de Carvalho

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Olavo de Carvalho is one of the primary voices of Brazil’s conservative revival. He is a writer, teacher, and critic of the political left in Brazil.

(Editor’s note: Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil 4 days after the publication of this interview in The Epoch Times, with more than 55% of the valid votes.)

J.R. Nyquist: It is a pleasure to speak with you, Olavo. Maybe you could tell us what is happening in Brazil.

Olavo de Carvalho: You know, the communists and Marxists always condemned the bourgeoisie, saying they defined democracy only by legal and formal traits, without taking into account the substance of the relations of power. They always said this. But now in Brazil, the communists are using the formal system of power and legality. They hide behind formalism to turn invisible the relations of power.

All the opinion research shows that most of the Brazilian population—around 70 to 80 percent—are extremely conservative, especially on the moral and religious points of view. In a country where the majority of the population is conservative, there is no conservative party (until recently), there is no conservative newspaper, there is no conservative TV channel, there is no conservative university, there is no conservative anything! So, most people have no way to express their opinion. This is a real relation of power. But formally, legally, we are a democracy—so the communists adopted the “bourgeois scheme” of hiding behind formalities to make the real relations of power invisible.

Mr. Nyquist: Are you saying the Workers’ Party is a front for the communists?

Mr. Carvalho: No, they are the Communist Party. We cannot hide it anymore. Recently, I read a book by the present Workers’ Party candidate, Fernando Haddad, called “In Defense of Socialism.” In 1998, he wrote a kind of update of “The Communist Manifesto.” He used some stuff from the Frankfurt School, and he proposed a new strategy for the Workers’ Party. It is not new. It is the same strategy proposed decades before by Herbert Marcuse and others. But he says it is new, and all he says is that the real practice of the Workers’ Party is following “The Communist Manifesto.” It is Haddad himself who says this, not me.

Mr. Nyquist: So Brazil is struggling against a communist power that has gotten inside the government.

Mr. Carvalho: But they don’t control only the government. They control all the media, with one or two small exceptions. They control all the universities. They control all the cultural institutions. They control practically everything. The people have no channel to express their opinion. The reason so many people went to the streets to scream and to protest is because it’s their only recourse.

Mr. Nyquist: And now Jair Bolsonaro is the candidate of a new political party, which is conservative, and he is threatening to overturn the communist control of the executive branch of Brazil’s federal government. Is that right?

Mr. Carvalho: Yes, that’s right. Of course, the communists are reacting violently, accusing Bolsonaro of being a fascist, a Nazi, and so on. They are even creating some false Nazi crimes in order to accuse him. These accusations are ridiculous and childish.

Mr. Nyquist: Are these accusations fronted by the Brazilian media?

Mr. Carvalho: All the media gives space to them. It is not only Haddad who is saying this. It is all the big newspapers, the big TV channels, and so on. They say there have been more than 50 Nazi crimes in recent days. But nothing like this has happened.

Mr. Nyquist: It is a campaign of slander, then?

Mr. Carvalho: A campaign of slander, not only in Brazil, but they have support everywhere—in the United States and Europe. There is a global slander campaign underway. Someone posted on my Facebook a list of more than 200 media organizations that have slandered Bolsonaro from around the world. It is a very serious matter. On the other side, Bolsonaro suffered an attempt on his life and the investigation does not appear in any media. Total silence.

Mr. Nyquist: Media reports here in the United States did not offer much detail. They said Bolsonaro was stabbed. That was all we heard.

Mr. Carvalho: The guy who attempted the murder, Adelio Bispo de Oliveira, was a member of the PSOL, which is the Socialism and Freedom Party. It is a kind of communist party.

Mr. Nyquist: First the socialists slander Bolsonaro, then they try to murder him.

Mr. Carvalho: Yes, yes, yes.

Mr. Nyquist: What are they so afraid of?

Mr. Carvalho: They have committed so many crimes while holding power that they cannot permit another party to take power now—because they know they’ll be punished.

Mr. Nyquist: Is there a threat of civil war in Brazil?

Mr. Carvalho: No, because the people have no weapons. They will be sitting ducks. This is not a civil war.

Mr. Nyquist: The army won’t protect the people?

Mr. Carvalho: I really don’t believe they will follow orders to shoot the people. But neither will they mobilize to defend the people. All the generals of the army have been very inactive during these years. In the ’90s, I made several lectures in military institutions in Brazil. I explained everything that was happening and everything that would happen. All my warnings came true. The Workers’ Party did everything I predicted. It was useless. The military remained inactive because they were so criticized in the media that they became inhibited. They are timid now.

Mr. Nyquist: Given the situation you describe, Bolsonaro and those supporting him must be very brave.

Mr. Carvalho: Very, very brave. And another thing, they have no money! The other side has lots of money. They are financed by Brazilian banks, by international banks, and so on. There is no limit to the amount of money they can use. And Bolsonaro has no money at all! Most of his campaign was made via the internet—by blogs and by Facebook.

Mr. Nyquist: And he’s ahead in the polls?

Mr. Carvalho: Yes! He is ahead in the polls. And the first round of voting shows a larger turnout than expected.

Mr. Nyquist: Was there cheating in the first round of presidential voting?

Mr. Carvalho: There were 16,000 cases of irregularities in the voting. And all of these irregularities were against Bolsonaro. The voting machines have some prejudice against him.

Mr. Nyquist: Were those the voting machines from Venezuela?

Mr. Carvalho: Yes, yes, exactly—the Smartmatic machines. And the government has announced that whoever speaks of fraud will be punished. So you dare not speak of fraud. Election fraud itself is not a crime in Brazil. The crime is in exposing the fraud. So now they will have to arrest 16,000 people for reporting election fraud.

The Workers’ Party gives itself the right to commit fraud and remain unpunished. How can people believe we are in a democracy when the government threatens to send to jail anyone who discovers voting fraud?

Mr. Nyquist: Yet Brazil has witnessed the creation of a conservative political party when none existed, and the conservative candidate is leading in the polls. It seems, despite everything, that the Brazilian people have risen to the occasion.

Mr. Carvalho: For the first time, between 2013 and 2015, the people rose as if they were one man, against all these things. It was a very heroic moment. A very beautiful thing to see. And now Bolsonaro’s candidacy is a natural continuation of that movement—a second chapter of this movement. I call this the Brazilian Revolution.

Mr. Nyquist: How did the Brazilian elite come under Marxist control?

Mr. Carvalho: In the 1960s, the communists adopted Antonio Gramsci’s strategy: Occupy the [cultural] spaces. They worked bit by bit, very patiently, occupying all the [cultural] spaces and expelling all their enemies. It took them more than 50 years. For a long time, I was a lone voice. But not anymore. Many of my readers and students write books and blogs. Some of them are very good.

Mr. Nyquist: And the elite media will not recognize them.

Mr. Carvalho: Yes, because all the history of this leftist power in Brazil is also the history of the destruction of high culture in Brazil. They destroyed everything. In the ’60s, we had great thinkers and writers.

The Workers’ Party, when it was born, promised to destroy the elite—what they called “The Establishment.” They read a book by the great Brazilian sociologist Raymundo Faoro, “The Owners of Power.” He showed that Brazil is a country where the people have no chance. And the Workers’ Party appeared promising to destroy the elite.

But, at the same time, they adopted Gramsci’s strategy. This strategy consisted of the Party becoming the elite. They wanted to make Faoro’s revolution using Gramsci’s methods. This is impossible.

Mr. Nyquist: And what about communist Chinese influence in Brazil?

Mr. Carvalho: Yes, the Chinese are buying everything in Brazil. We cannot measure the extent of Chinese power in Brazil. It is something huge.

Mr. Nyquist: Are the Chinese supporting the Workers’ Party?

Mr. Carvalho: Sure, sure, and also the Iranians.

Mr. Nyquist: And if Bolsonaro wins the election, what changes will he bring?

Mr. Carvalho: First, he will have to repress the drug dealers. The drug dealers make a lot of money. They bribe everybody. They control a huge part of the country. This is the first problem. Brazil has 70,000 murders a year. This means three Iraqi wars in a year.

Mr. Nyquist: And that’s due to the [drug dealers]?

Mr. Carvalho: Yes, and the [drug dealers] are protected by the Workers’ Party and the government.

Mr. Nyquist: So the communists are using drug trafficking and organized crime?

Mr. Carvalho: Yes. Almost a monopoly on drug trafficking in Brazil belongs to the FARC, [which is] the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces. The Brazilian drug dealer Fernando Beira-Mar confessed that every year, he bought weapons for the FARC and exchanged them for 200 tons of cocaine to distribute in the Brazilian market. So you can conclude that the FARC has the monopoly of the drug market in Brazil.

Well, the FARC is a member of the São Paulo Forum, which is an organization of 200 parties that are all communist. It is the new Communist International in Latin America. It was founded and presided over by Lula da Silva, the Workers’ Party president. So they are all partners—the FARC, the Workers’ Party, and so on.

Mr. Nyquist: So their objective, as the new Communist International of Latin America, is to repeat what they did to Venezuela in Brazil, and in Colombia, and in Bolivia, and in Argentina …

Mr. Carvalho: In the whole of Latin America. And no other country, after Venezuela, is in so dangerous a position as Brazil.

Mr. Nyquist: If you could advise U.S. President Donald Trump, and tell him one thing about Brazil’s situation, what would you say?

Mr. Carvalho: I would tell him that you cannot permit the whole of Latin America to fall to the communists. This would be the death of the United States. It’s a very dangerous situation, even for Americans.


J.R. Nyquist has been a columnist for WorldNetDaily, SierraTimes, and Financial Sense Online. He is the author of the books “Origins of the Fourth World War” and “The Fool and His Enemy,” as well as co-author of “The New Tactics of Global War. He is a former fellow of  The Interamerican Institute.

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

Originally published in The Epoch Times.

 

 

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.