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There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. IsaacAsimov

So Nicholas Kristof, whom I am fond of, recently wrote an article that argues that Liberals are intolerant because there arent many Christians or conservatives teaching in universities. There is so much to be exhausted about right now, but this article connects too much with several thoughts that have been swirling around in my soul.

They mostly have to do with false equivalency. And relativism. And gas lighting.

Growing up as a conservative Christian, I was warned about secular, liberal relativism. Nothings really bad, who knows, its all relative. We had to be careful about such slippery slopes. After the gays got us to buy into such poor logic, then would come the goats, then the children, then the Satan worship would follow. But it turns out that this sort of relativism is entirely a myth of the right. The only people who ever try to implore relative logic (at this sort of crass level) are conservatives. Trying to play gotcha with liberals. And its exhausting.

I have some difficult news for everyone: Progressives arent interested in diversity. We arent interested in inclusion. We arent interested in tolerance. The progressives I know give exactly zero shits about those things.

We have no interest in everyone getting treated the same. We have no interest in giving all ideas equal airtime. We have no interest in tolerating all beliefs. I dont know where this fairy tale comes from, but its completely disconnected from every experience Ive had with progressive liberal folks in my lifetime.

When conservatives cross their arms and glare and shout Its not fair! Youre supposed to welcome everyone but you arent being nice to me! it stings about as much as if they shouted, Its not fair, youre supposed to be wearing tutus and juggling flaming donuts!

The progressive liberal agenda isnt about being nice. Its about confronting evil, violence, trauma, and death. Its about acknowledging the ways systemic power, systemic oppression, systemic evil, work in our world around us. Im not fighting for diversity. Im not fighting for tolerance. Im fighting to overturn horrific systems of dehumanizing oppression.

Heres a great example of a liberal relationship to diversity: when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked how many women on the Supreme Court would be enough, she answered When there are nine. In response to the collective gasp of every conservative on earth, she elaborated. For most of the countrys history, there were nine and they were all men. Nobody thought that was strange.

Personally Im not interested in a female president for the sake of diversity. Putting a woman in the white house in 2020 wont mean that gender equality has arrived. Weve had 45 presidents. Its going to take 45 women serving as president before we even have a chance to reach parity.

Do you get it now?

If you want to pretend that the racial and gender horror in the world has already been righted, was righted in the 1960s, is almost righted now, or can hope to come close to being righted in your lifetime (45 female presidents), youre not getting the picture. We have a collective buildup of hundreds (thousands) of years of injustice to metabolize.

Take a few facts on race. White America is exhausted of Blacks invoking 200-year-old history as an excuse for their problems. Theyve had it just like whites since the Emancipation Proclamation. Or since MLK. Or since Obama made it into office.

Lets pause on this. I live in Seattle, Washington. A liberal city if there ever was one. Full of cheery whites with Black Lives Matter signs in their windows. But in Seattle, Washington, black residents make less money than white ones. 5% less, 10% less? No. The average black Seattlites income is less than half of the average white Seattleites income.

Less than half.

So, either there are unspoken forces at play that make it twice as hard for black people in Seattle to earn money, or black people are exactly half as intelligent and hard-working as white folks. Take your pick. But be honest about which one youre choosing.

Hows the country as a whole? Well, on average, white families have more wealth than black families. How much more? Is it 200%, like Seattles income disparity? 500%. No. White families in the US, on average have 1700% the wealth of black families.

How much progress have we made on racial equality in America? Well, apparently were 1/17 of the way there. Only 16/17 more to go.

I have a four-year-old white son. A black boy his age, in the same income bracket, same level of education, will live, on-average, 5 years less than him. Half a decade. Mysteriously.

That same black boy has a higher chance of spending time in prison than my son. How much higher? 110% the rate? 150% the rate? Nope, 500% as likely to be imprisoned.

So am I worried that not enough Christian professors are getting hired at universities?

No.

Every single president of this country has been a Christian. Every. Single. President. Barack Obamas presidency now means that its about 20 times easier to become president if youre white than black. But its still infinitely easier to be president of the United States if youre a Christian. 92% of the House and Senate are Christians. Try throwing a rock in either building and not hitting a Christian.

When your religion is represented by every President in history, and 92% of the governing body that rules your land, Id say youre doing okay in the whole representation thing. When conservative politicians have control of the White House, Senate, House, of the country with the most economic and military power in the history of our planet, I think crying persecution of conservatives might be suspect.

But crying persecution is what conservatives do with every single step towards gender equality, racial equality, any movement that seeks to treat all humans with the same dignity currently conferred on white men. The conservatives definition of a war on their rights is that gay people are allowed to get married and Latinx people are allowed to live in the same zip code. The false equivalency of straight white Christian mens feelings with everyone elses lives is absurd.

Poor Nazi soldiers, getting rounded up into prisoner of war camps while those Jewish people are getting let out of prisons by the same Allied soldiers! Jewish people get all the preferential treatment

Furthermore, conservative Christians have allied themselves with racism, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, mass incarceration, war crimes, death sentences, and gun culture. These Christians work actively to undermine scientific thinking. Anti-evolution, anti-global warming, anti-intellectual, and anti-factual. None of these line up with the values most universities share.

Yes, its important to intellectual growth to have variety. Its important that unpopular ideas get a hearing. Its important for there to be debate, and changes of heart, and to allow sincere disagreements to continue to wrestle with one another for clarification. I have no interest in our universities being populated by people who think like me. But I do have an interest in them being populated with people who think.

All world views are not inherently equal. Conservative thinking is, by definition, bent on conserving the status quo. It is often regressive. A shrinking, a backward movement, a return to previous points in cultural, political, and intellectual development.

Universities arent bereft of conservatives and Evangelicals because of a vast left-wing conspiracy. Theyre bereft of those people because people committed to those world views so rarely have anything to offer to an open-minded, inquiring, growing community. Universities are lacking in conservatives and fundamentalist Christians because the amount of education that it takes to become a professor is likely to expose Evangelicals and conservatives to enough good ideas that theyre no longer fundamentalist or conservative.

The fact that humanities departments are exceptionally lacking in conservatives and dogmatically religious people highlights this reality. Psychology, poetry, sociology, political science. People who have wrestled with the human condition, the human soul, literature and art, are the least likely to give credence to backwards ideas that are diminishing to human value and human dignity.

When liberals storm the cities streets to protest, rally, and yes, riot, in response to a Trump election, conservatives cry foul. They cry double-standard. Liberals expect conservatives to accept election results they dont like; why wont the liberals accept election results that didnt go in their favor? Why wont the liberals be relativists, like we want them to be, and treat all outcomes as equally valid?

Because all political decisions arent equally right. Arent equally moral. Arent equally recognizing of human dignity and justice and freedom. Because liberals recognize that there are wrong and right decisions, because they parse good and evil, contrary to what my church taught me about them.

Because democracy isnt the only value we hold. We dont accept the 51% enslaving the 49% by popular vote. We believe in human rights. We believe in the Bill of Rights. Because we balance the will of the people with the sanctity of each individual life. And no, your right to not sell flowers doesnt outweigh someone elses right to get married. Because not all rights are equal.

Because Hitler was brought to power by a democratically elected government. Because American slavery was legal.

The Right is also willing to confront the government with action more direct than voting, holing themselves up with assault rifles to maintain unpaid access to grazing on public lands, or just because the government might seize those assault rifles. If the government takes our guns, well have no way of stopping the government from taking our guns!

The Left meanwhile is roaring in the streets about the countless deaths of unarmed black Americans by the people charged with keeping them safe. Roaring in the streets about environmental devastation that the smartest humans among us agree poses a threat to all human life. Roaring in the streets about an admitted sexual predator being appointed as administer over our nations federal law enforcement.

Conservatives not having taken to the streets to riot when Obama was elected doesnt prevent us from taking to the streets to direct as much resistance to Trump as humanly possible. Because Trump and Obama arent equal. Conservatives being deeply outraged and fearful when Obama was elected doesnt negate or somehow counterbalance the outrage and fear on the Left right now. Because the Right was afraid of ridiculous, imagined fantasies of end times persecution and wildly inaccurate information. When the primary source of terror in living under an Obama administration is that hes a Muslim, you dont have one ounce of sympathy from me.

Meanwhile the Left is dealing with Donald Trumps actually announced plans. To commit war crimes. To imprison his political opponents. Compel a religious minority to register themselves. To gut the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments. Donald Trump is actually appointing white nationalists to top positions. Actually sexually assaulting women. Hes a man who openly admires the most despotic regimes in the world. His vice president has actually worked to jail homosexuals for applying for a marriage license. Actually worked to redirect HIV treatment funding to Pray-The-Gay-Away conversion therapy.

Trump calls Mexicans rapists, liberals call Trump racist. The Right jumps in to defend poor Trump from liberal slanderers. Conservatives want to cry Free speech! Free speech! Forgetting that your right to swing your fist ends at your neighbors nose. Forgetting that shouting Fire! in a crowded theater is both illegal and immoral.

Hillary Clinton thought Trumps supporters were racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic. Trump cant believe Clinton would attack, slander, smear, demean those people with those comments. Well, I guess its a deadlock. Theres a 50/50 chance that eithers comments are actually harmful. Or Trump may be bad, but Hillary is bad too, dont forget. She called racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and Islamophobia deplorable. Trump supporters might be racist, but at least they arent calling anyone racist.

Trump says were in the middle of a crime wave! I say crimes the lowest its been in decades. Well darn. Back to that 50/50 chance either of us is right. We may never know.

Trump says undocumented immigrants are dangerous! I say theyre more law-abiding than citizens. Trump says theyre destroying our economy! I say theyre a benefit to our economy.

Well just have to agree to disagree. Because theres no way to establish concrete facts or objective reality. Shucks.

This exactly the shoddy relativistic thinking my church warned me about growing up

Here is the original post:
Intolerant Liberals Tucker FitzGerald Medium

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with airline executives in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

When the term "fake news" burst onto the scene during the presidential election, most of the examples the media referred to came from right-wing sites and networks, alleging all kinds of horrible things done by Hillary Clinton and/or the left: murders, child sex-abuse rings operating underneath pizza parlors, and more.

If Donald Trump was mentioned in these fake stories, it was usually in a complimentary way, like the one about Pope Francis endorsing his campaign, or one that said he sent his private plane to pick up 200 starving Marines.

But liberal sites and networks are no strangers to fabricated news for the simple reason that the desire to believe something that caters to our existing prejudices isn't restricted by political ideology. And according to an editor who works for the fact-checking site Snopes, liberal versions of fake news are growing in popularity.

Of course, the term "fake news" has also grown to encompass not just outright hoaxes created by dubious websites, but also stories in the mainstream media that turn out to be based on inaccuracies or suffer from extreme ideological spin.

In the latest example, former journalist and Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal wrote an essay in the highly-regarded London Review of Books, in which (among many other things) he described how Donald Trump's father Fred had commissioned a couple of racist TV ads during his run for mayor of New York in 1969.

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Blumenthal talked about how the first ad portrayed a black drug addict terrorizing a neighborhood. But as both the Washington Post and Politico have pointed out , the videos are fakes, created by a husband-and-wife team of videographers as an exercise in social commentary. Also, there's no evidence that Trump's father ever ran for mayor.

Clinton's former aide isn't the only one to fall for this kind of fake related to Trump's father. During the election campaign, an image was circulated on social media that allegedly showed the senior Trump (who was also a New York real estate developer) wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe. That picture is also a fake.

Why were people so quick to believe the photo? Because Fred Trump was once arrested after a KKK rally, and is also said to have held racist views, so the photo seemed to confirm something that was already widely believed by critics of Trump. The same goes for Blumenthal and the videosthey appeared to confirm something that many people already believed was true.

Many of the other "fake news" stories believed and shared by critics of Trump fall into a similar pattern. One that got a lot of play on social media was a New York Times story that claimed Rick Perry didn't really understand the office he was about to assume, after Trump named him Secretary of Energy.

The Times ' story alleged that Perry didn't know the Department of Energy also had responsibility for nuclear weapons. But the only quoted source in the story later said his comments were taken out of context, and a statement was later produced that was signed by Perry in which he appeared to be well aware of the department's nuclear responsibilities.

The New York Times has said that it stands by its reporting on that story, and that it had other sources besides the one named in the piece. But even if it was inaccurate, many people clearly wanted to believe it, because it fit their existing preconceptions about how unfit for office many of Trump's nominees are.

Apple CEO Tim Cook Says Fake News Must Be Tackled

More recently, a story was widely shared on Facebook and other social networks that claimed police officers had burned a camp of indigenous activists protesting the Dakota Access pipeline. The story included a photo that appeared to show hundreds of tipis burning. The story was completely untrue, however, and the picture was from an HBO film from 2007.

The immigration order that President Trump signed blocking travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries also caused a rash of fake stories, including one that showed a 5-year-old in handcuffs at an airport. But the picture was from 2015.

A number of stories shared both during the campaign and after purported to show evidence of racist attacks or abuse as a result of Trump's candidacy, including a student who had her hijab stolen on the subway, and a man who said he was thrown off an airplane after speaking with his mother in Arabic. The woman lied, and the man turned out to be a well-known YouTube prankster.

A Washington Post story that claimed the Russians had hacked into the U.S. electrical grid also turned out to be untrue.

Another story that was widely shared involved a Jewish family that said they had to leave their home and go into hiding after their son asked to be excused from performing in a Christmas nativity play, and they were subjected to abuse. As it turned out, the family had gone on a vacation trip that was previously scheduled.

As Snopes editor Brooke Binkowski noted in her interview with The Atlantic , if a story triggers a strong emotion in you, like rage, "then you probably need to check it against something else," because it may have been deliberately created to have that effect. And that's advice that applies to readers and social-media users across the political spectrum.

Read more here:
Liberals Are Just as Guilty of Falling for Fake News as Conservatives - Fortune

Welcome to #First100Days!

The #First100Days series will bear witness to the next 13 weeks of the Trump administration and the climate in America and then respond openly in writing, dialogue, and debate in the hopes of fostering better communication among writers and partisans alike (although the essays and pieces do not have to be political in nature). Were looking to help give voice to honest and thematic essays from all layers of the political spectrum and across all GMP sections.

All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily of Good Men Media, The Good Men Project, or our editors.

Snowflake.

Libtard.

Trump that Bitch.

Coastal elites.

In the months since the election weve read and researched all of the polling data, articles, and profiles of the election and talked with scores of conservative voters regarding why they wanted Trump.

But liberals and moderates havebeen hard pressed to get the same in return.

Why is that?

Where is the Understanding the Hillary Voter or How can Liberals think that way expose and articles?

Instead its been the oppositeliberals reaching out to understand the electoral college and why Americansespecially low-educated white menchose what liberals feel is the worst President ever.

So whats going on?

Is this the case of the nerds wondering why the bully is the bully (and the bully not caring) or a case of the bully getting beat and the nerds not caring to understand why the bully feels shame and embarrassment?

Or is it something completely different, like the brains, lifestyle, and hard-held beliefs of voters?

Let us in on your truthwrite for us.

See original here:
Why Don't Men Care Enough to 'Figure Out' the Liberals? (#First100Days) - The Good Men Project

During the fall campaign, supporters of Hillary Clinton charged that there would be violence in the streets after the election. They were right, but it's not the violence they had in mind. They thought that angry Donald Trump supporters would riot, assault people they thought were Clinton supporters or Muslims or immigrants. But we haven't seen much of that, and not just because Trump won the election; it turns out that several highly publicized reports of post-election attacks on Muslims by apparent Trump supporters were hoaxes, without a grain of truth (including this one).

But there's been plenty of violence coming from the anti-Trump left side of the political spectrum. The most shocking violence came on Feb. 1 at and near the campus oft the University of California at Berkeley, where 150 masked demonstrators destroyed an estimated $100,000 of property, assaulted individuals and caused the cancellation of a speech by the gay conservative provocateur and Breitbart writer Milo Yiannapoulous while the Berkeley police cowered inside a building, a procedure the University of California Police Department director lamely defended. She noted that complaints came from outside the East Bay area, but that the locals an overwhelmingly left-wing constituency seemed content with the police non-performance.

What the police failed to confront was an organized riot involving an estimated 150 or more black-masked people armed with bricks, sledgehammers, smoke bombs, fireworks and pepper spray. The rioters did additional damage to private property adjacent to the campus; those sledgehammers come in handy if you are out to smash ATM machines. Alleged organizers, including a Berkeley law school graduate, expressed satisfaction with the results, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "We are happy with the results. We were able to meet Mr. Yiannapoulos' fascist message with massive resistance." In other words, freedom of speech is not to be allowed; violence to shut down free speech is to be applauded.

One organization claiming credit for the violence is called By Any Means Necessary; one spokesman, Berkeley middle school teacher Yvette Felarca, called the riot "a stunning achievement." As she told KTVU, "I was there, and there were thousands of people out there who were united. It was a mass protest, it was a militant protest, and everyone was there to shut him down. And so whatever it was going to take to do that, we were all there with a united cause, and we were stunningly successful."

Stay abreast of the latest developments from nation's capital and beyond with curated News Alerts from the Washington Examiner news desk and delivered to your inbox.

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As Glenn Reynolds of instapundit.com, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, suggests, this organized violence violates federal civil rights statutes, which authorize suits for money damages from conspirators to deprive others of their civil rights. And don't think it was only property that suffered. Here's an account from the indefatigable John Leo of how a woman and her husband with tickets to the Yiannapoulos event were beaten up by black-masked thugs.

Riot leaders like those quoted above justify their violence as a response to fascism. But if there is anything that looks like fascism in America today, it's what happened on the campus and in the streets of Berkeley, right down to the dark uniforms of the thugs.

The response of liberal politicians? So far as I know, there has been almost none. At the Powerline blog John Hinderaker links to a Grabien video showing Democratic politicians and celebrities making statements that some may take as endorsements of violence, such as Sen. Tim Kaine's urging followers to "fight in the streets." I suspect he would claim that he was speaking metaphorically and only urging peaceful protest. But it would be nice if he could find time to condemn the violence we have seen at Berkeley and which is increasingly unsurprising on our college and university campuses, which have become the part of our society most hostile to free speech.

Perhaps I have missed some statements by liberal politicians or entertainers denouncing Berkeley-style violence; I would be grateful to readers who could pass along any examples. But I fear they will be hard to come by.

Also from the Washington Examiner

"The Republican Party's plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act is in chaos," they wrote.

02/11/17 10:28 AM

Top Story

The executive order gives departments 90 days to review screening measures.

02/11/17 12:33 AM

Read more:
Do liberals care about fascist-style violence in Berkeley ... - Washington Examiner

THE fragile alliance between Colin Barnett and Brendon Grylls was at breaking point last night after it emerged the Liberals had put a preference deal to One Nation which potentially delivered Pauline Hanson the balance of power in the WA Parliament.

Details of the controversial deal were confirmed by senior Liberals yesterday, with Nationals claiming privately they had been double crossed.

Under the plan, the Liberals would preference One Nation above the Nationals in the Upper House country regions, and in return, they are demanding One Nation would preference the Liberals above Labor in all Lower House seats they were contesting.

The Liberals will preference the Nationals first in every Lower House seat they are running, but have promised One Nation they will not be placed last on their ballot papers.

A Liberal source said the party had learnt a lesson from the 2001 election, when then Liberal leader Richard Courts administration put One Nation last on its ballot papers.

Pauline Hanson retaliated in that election by preferencing against Liberal incumbents a move which cost the Liberals government. Nationals leader Brendon Grylls yesterday refused to comment.

But National sources told The Sunday Times yesterday that some MPs were so incensed by the Liberals preference deal that they believed the alliance should be broken.

Nationals sources said the preference deal could result in them losing one or two of their current five seats in the Legislative Council, potentially delivering Pauline Hanson the balance of power in the six-region Upper House.

But Liberals were unsympathetic to the plight of their Government partners.

Liberals remembered with clarity how Mr Grylls demanded that $1 billion-a-year be spent in the bush as part of his demands to form an alliance with the Liberals in 2008.

And they were still fuming that Mr Grylls had at one stage also sought to form Government with Labor in 2008 something seasoned Liberals have never forgiven him for.

Liberals also pointed out that in the 2008 election the Nationals in all country Upper House regions had preferenced the Christian Democrats, Family First and One Nation ahead of the Liberals and that in 2013 both the Nationals and Liberals preferenced the Christian Democrats, Family First and Shooters and Fishers ahead of each other.

Liberals told The Sunday Times the preference deal was designed to stem the bleeding in Lower House seats, which would determine whether Mr Barnett retained government.

Current polling shows the Liberals could lose 14 Lower House seats on March 11 enough to hand Labor leader Mark McGowan victory.

This is a ballsy move by the Liberal Party after four years of being held captive by the WA Nationals, a senior Liberal source said.

This is an important first step in ensuring the Nationals are no longer relevant at a State or Federal level.

And in another slap in the face for the Nationals, a senior Liberal source said one idea which could be seriously looked at was commissioning Liberal operatives to hand out how-to-vote-cards to voters on behalf of One Nation.

You have to have the manpower to distribute how to vote cards on election days and during pre-polls, a source said.

If this is to be a winning strategy we will have to man up and get people on polling booths and in the pre-poll, which is during the two weeks running into the election.

If the Liberal Party gets really desperate, it will ask its polling booth people to hand out One Nation how-to-vote cards.

Preferences are expected to play a major role in this knife-edge election.

As revealed by The Sunday Times last month, Ms Hanson had been courted by senior Liberals for months, with WA Liberal senator Michaelia Cash and her husband even taking Ms Hanson and her chief-of-staff to dinner when she arrived in Perth in December, later driving her to the airport.

While Labor was adamant it would not do a preference deal with Ms Hanson, Liberal State director Andrew Cox and State president Norman Moore had met with her on several occasions to hatch a deal.

So important are preferences this election, that Preference Whisperer Glen Druery flew to Perth this week to speak to a swarm of independents and micro parties who are keen for success.

Mr Druery yesterday warned a Liberal move to preference One Nation might actually backfire by alienating their voters.

Polling that I have seen suggests that 20-30 per cent of Liberal (voters) will desert the party if they deal with One Nation, Mr Druery said.

A desperate and wounded animal is often a dangerous one and is often dangerous to itself.

I think any preference deal that the Liberals, or any of the major parties do with One Nation, will be very dangerous for the party which perpetrates the deal.

Mr Barnett, who in February warned voters against voting One Nation, yesterday declined to comment.

But an unrepentant Andrew Cox told The Sunday Times the Liberal Party will leave no stone unturned to ensure Colin Barnett and the Liberals are returned.

Original post:
WA Election 2017: WA Liberals do preference deal with One Nation - Perth Now