Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

A Prayer Meeting

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…for the purpose of bending religion to the will of the State:

The Obama administration has just put into force a new regulation under Obamacare that amounts to the most far-reaching instance of governmental religious intolerance since the Blaine Amendments. There is no other word but intolerance to describe what the rule aims to do: It doesn’t say that people should have the freedom to use contraceptive or abortive drugs —- which of course they do have in our country. It doesn’t even say that the government should facilitate people’s access to these drugs —- which of course it does today and has for many years, at great public expense. It says, rather, that the Catholic Church and others who have religious objections to the use of such drugs should facilitate people’s access to them. It says that we will not tolerate an institution in our society that, for religious reasons, is not willing to actively put into effect the views of those in power regarding contraception, abortion, and sterilization——that we won’t just let it be and find other ways to put those views into effect but will compel the dissenting institution itself to participate in the facilitation of access to these things on behalf of the people it employs, or else we will levy a heavy fine against it. We cannot abide even passive disagreement. That is a refusal to exercise even a moderate portion of toleration toward religious believers and institutions. It says, in effect, that the substance of religious convictions merits no regard from the state. And yet it seems that the forms of religious practice can be marshaled in the service of political objectives. The prayer vigil as PR stunt is expected to coexist with rank intolerance as public policy, and the White House itself is encouraging the stunt.

Without their hypocrisy and power hunger, they’d have nothing.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Obama-Bell Video

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Why it’s important:

Critical race theory, of which Bell was essentially the founder and the greatest proponent, is explicitly incompatible with “liberalism” as classically defined; in truth, it is more of a radical Leftist idea. As a result of the claims it makes, CRT is utterly incompatible with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and with American — and Western — ideals of equality, justice, and colorblindness, not to mention that its philosophical underpinnings stand in diametric opposition to that most cherished of conservative principles — belief in external reality. Ultimately, CRT relegates objective reality and our responses to it to a collection of human “constructs.” It is post-modern and it is radical. It is quite literally un-American.

Such suggestions would not, in fact, be rejected by advocates of CRT and other constructivist theories. If racism is ingrained into the fabric of American society, then our society inherently excludes those outside of the racial majority and the system needs smashing. But as a result, most of those who do reject wholesale the American “construct” do not seek its presidency. This is where is becomes relevant. It is fine for Americans to consider themselves outside of the system, but we should know about it if they are running the show. On CNN this morning, Amy Holmes — playing the sole voice of reason in a disastrous segment — correctly pointed out that Obama may well have changed his mind on various things since his college days, but that if he hasn’t it is important for Americans to consider the wisdom of his being president. Most of us have matured as we’ve got older, and the president may well have as well — we’ll probably never know, given the media’s double-standard on questions about Obama’s past — but, if he has not, then he is indeed a subversive, for it is one thing to look at the entire structure of government, law, and society, and claim it to be an intractably racist tool of white hegemony, and quite another to seek the highest office within it.

It pertains also to the conflict of visions.