The Insidious Bond Between Political Correctness and Intolerance

by Lawrence A. Howard (March 2019)

Disagreement, Paul Sample, 1931

 

 

Introduction

 

This article is a follow-up to Culture, Morality, and Ethics: The Interplay between Belief, Behavior and the Objective World.

 

Given the heartfelt convictions on each side of the American left/right divide, how has the country’s political system survived? In recent history, Americans have weathered (a short list of) significant debacles:

• Lyndon Johnson and the undeclared war in Vietnam
• Richard Nixon and Watergate
• Roe v. Wade[1]
• Jimmy Carter, who gave us the disastrous foreign policy failure in Iran and stagflation
• William Jefferson Clinton, who gave us sex/perjury scandals and dubious enforcement actions[2]
• George W. Bush who gave us another undeclared war in Iraq and approved the first bailouts in 2008
• Barack Obama, whom some people consider “The Great Divider.”[3] 

That there have been only a few such incidents as Ruby Ridge, no mass rebellions, and no outright coups, testifies to the fact that the traditional value of tolerance persists in America, incorporated within a basic modus operandi underlying the society. That modus operandi is the agreement to disagree and the continuing chance to prevail, lose and recoup in the marketplace of ideas, politics, commerce, and individual interests. It is the rule of law.

 

Read more in New English Review:
• Our Irrepressible Conflict
• Why the U.S. Shouldn’t Abandon Syrian Kurdistan
• Fond Memories of ‘Repressive Tolerance,’ as Marcuse Called It

 

Every American, whether average citizen, entrepreneur, laborer, bureaucrat, or politician knows that he or she has a continuing chance, next election, to prevail if a majority of voters are persuaded to support his/her position. The electoral system reflects the underlying American value of liberty. Lose today and recoup tomorrow in the marketplace of ideas, politics, commerce, and individual interests. If conservatives did not know that, legally there is a chance for them to overturn Roe v Wade and revamp all that liberals have wrought, the incident at Ruby Ridge would be a minor footnote to major civil war. Similarly, if liberals had not known that they legally had the chance to remake society according to their agenda the turmoil of the 1960s would have been only a pale shadow of major civil war.

 

The chance to prevail, the rule of law, ultimately makes the whole society work, from business enterprises to religious institutions, from politics to the pursuit of happiness. Amend the written Constitution, but never alter the unwritten Constitution, the Agreement to Disagree, on pain of extremism run amok, societal dissolution and chaos. Political correctness and intolerance threaten the unwritten Constitution.
 

 

Diversity

 

I attended a mandatory training session on ‘diversity’ at the beginning of this academic year. The session made me reflect how dangerous political correctness has become; how insidious are the changes being wrought to the basic tenets of American culture by the purveyors of the ideology behind political correctness, and how innocent and positive it all seems to too many of my colleagues. The fact is that most people think they are doing something wholesome and beneficial to the community when they engage in activities like that mandatory training session; of course, the immediately begged question is, if it is a good thing, why must people be required to attend it?

 

Perhaps, at an instinctive level, most people have at least an inkling that we are treading down the wrong path.

 

The contemporary concept of diversity is an article of faith among the secular leftwing in the United States who use it to actualize political correctness. It affirms and accentuates toxic differences between us. Not relevant issues of character and merit, but rather differences, which should be irrelevant in a decent society. At one time, our society championed the cause of being blind to those same differences that we now accentuate and affirm, e.g. age, race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. The statue of blind justice once symbolized that championship; in 2019, the blindfold is off as activist courts, for example, try to legislate that it is more important to affirm Muslims than to recognize the danger of allowing into the country un-vetted travelers from origin countries that have inadequate systems for checking the bona fides of those travelers. Activists take the blindfold from Lady Justice[4] and demand trashing of the standard, innocent until proven guilty, for certain categories of accused, e.g. men.[5]

 

An examination of the concept of ‘diversity’ first encounters the fact that political activists have co-opted the original word and given it an altered, politically correct meaning. Such alteration is nothing new in the course of human events, the purpose being to create a favorable impression and ultimately make people conform. Vladimir Lenin, for example, changed the concept of democracy in Russia when he coined democratic centralism, i.e. the new phrase masked a process by which rule of the many became only ‘many’ in terms of manipulated masses of people who had no real input into decision-making. Instead, the ‘vanguard of the proletariat,’ the leaders at the top, made the decisions and the masses conformed and obeyed, continually monitored and intimidated by the apparatchik of a one-party state.

 

Below, compare the 2018 online Merriam Webster definition with the 1978 edition of Webster’s Encyclopedia of Dictionaries:[6]

 

2018 Definition:

1. the condition of having or being composed of differing elements: variety; especially the inclusion of different types of people (such as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization

2.  programs intended to promote diversity in schools

1978 Definition:

1. state of being unlike

The comparison shows that today, we concentrate on diversity as a means of supposedly including people of different races or cultures, paradoxically accentuating differences in order to be inclusive. The succinct definition of forty years ago stated a situation that American culture at that time had begun to reject in race and multi-cultural relations in favor of the idea that we are all equal before the law.

 

When differences are accentuated, it Balkanizes groups of people into identity-conscious constituencies, often at odds with other groups for one reason or another. Boundaries are set up; if a Caucasian of Irish descent dresses up as an Indian at Halloween or tries to sell tamales from a concession stand, he/she is guilty of ‘cultural misappropriation.’

 

The great American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., understood the Balkanization effect. He specifically eschewed identity politics in his profound ‘I have a dream’ speech, saying, ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’[7]

 

Promoting the co-opted meaning of diversity, accentuating differences based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc., has exactly the opposite effect of judging individuals based on character because people evaluate others as representatives of groups, not as individuals with their own merits and character. Stereotypes develop and persist because any individual member of a group is supposed to have a given set of features shared with all other members of the group.

 

For example, Camilla Martinez-Granata, a lesbian writer, found herself confronting her personal biases, based on identity politics, when she dated another lesbian who turned out to be a Trump supporter. Martinez-Granata had assumed that no lesbian could support Donald Trump and wrote, “My instinctive reaction on meeting a Trump voter gave me pause—If I didn’t want to date a Trump supporter, did that mean I had crossed into intolerance myself?”[8]

 

Martinez-Granata’s experience is not unique, witness the disapprobation experienced by three Americans, Candace Owens, Thomas Sowell, and Clarence Thomas, because each stepped out of the identity politics fold and voiced politically incorrect points of view and philosophy.

 

 

Candace Owens

 

Candace Owens first gained public attention when she was a senior in high school in Stamford, Connecticut. Some bullies made phone calls to her, leaving intimidating messages, complete with racial slurs, on her voice mail. The calls were traced to a car in which the son of then-Mayor (later, Governor) Dannel Malloy was a passenger. Owens and her family sued the City, accusing authorities of “failing to act in part because one of the callers is the son of Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy.”[9] The parties reached an out-of-court settlement; the local NAACP supported Owens in her suit, but a decade later when Owens made headlines as a supporter of President Trump, the Connecticut NAACP president Scot X. Esdaile, expressed dismay at her conservative opinions and called her a hypocrite. Esdaile likened Owens to Clarence Thomas:

 

‘It’s the same type of thing Clarence Thomas did,’ he said, referring to the black Supreme Court justice who critics say benefited from affirmative action when he attended Yale University before ruling against affirmative action cases as a judge. ‘[Thomas] reaped all the benefits of affirmative action and then tried to roll over on it. It’s that kind of mentality and disrespect.’[10]

 

In March 2016, prior to the dismay above-expressed by Esdaile, Owens wrote an open letter about her experience that, had Esdaile read and understood it, might have dissuaded him from the rude characterization he made of her. She wrote that she had been a 17-year old girl going through a traumatic experience, and nobody saw her as that. Instead:

 

Without my consent or involvement, political forces took sides. The NAACP held press conferences outside my high school, which I reluctantly attended. Malloy’s political enemies seized the opportunity to criticize him. Within my own family, lines were drawn. My father wanted to press charges. My mother just wanted to keep quiet so I could return to normal life. And all I wanted was an apology. I wanted someone to be accountable, admit they had made a mistake and just say ‘Sorry.’ But, to this day, no one has.[11]

 

The open letter by Owens takes me back to one of the exercises performed at that mandatory diversity training session that I attended.

 

The event facilitator asked a selected person to stand facing the front of the room holding an object. Three other people took positions, one to the left, one to the right, and one behind. Each person then described what he or she saw when looking at the person holding the object. Of course, the object of the exercise was to show that no one view captured the whole of the person facing the front of the room, and ostensibly, aggregating the individual views enabled all to see the whole.

 

One of the fallacies of the exercise is that there is no accounting for flaws (or merit) in each of the views. What if the person on the right is colorblind, the person behind is near-sighted, and the person on the left is daydreaming about being somewhere else and therefore inattentive? Aggregating, not integrating, flawed views creates a flawed whole. It also ignores the internal and invisible stuff, e.g. emotions, ideas, mental states.
 

In the case of Candace Owens, the internal stuff was her agony. Nobody saw her as a child, a seventeen-year-old girl going through a traumatic experience. The NAACP saw her as a black victim. The Mayor saw her as a political threat. The eventual monetary settlement derived from those contemporary paradigms of victim and threat. Owens never got the apology that she deserved, the accountability that would have set things right for her, and those who bullied her. Owens said in her open letter,

 

. . . I wasn’t the only victim . . . The four boys who left me those messages were labeled racists. They were labeled “no good.” Those are words that no child deserves to hear.”[12]

 

In fact, a significant strain in American culture, as it originally developed, is forgiveness and redemption. Those two cultural characteristics, once prominent, sadly are now on a downward curve.[13] Does a child, like Dannel Malloy’s son, carry the stigma of making a racist slur with him for the rest of his life? Some purveyors of political correctness would have it so; in their universe, young Owens is perpetually a victim and young Malloy is perpetually a racist. If Owens forgives Malloy, she crosses the line and becomes a pariah. If Malloy says, ‘I’m sorry,’ he is not to be believed. Moreover, for some on the left, all white people are racists and tigers cannot change their stripes.[14] In this regard, one of the 500 richest people in the world, Oprah Winfrey, opined:

 

As long as there are people who still—and there’s a whole generation, I . . . said this for apartheid South Africa, I said this for my own community in the south—there are still generations of people, older people, who were born, and bred, and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism, and they just have to die.[15]

 

There is no redemption in the worldview of the politically correct.

 

Candace Owens moved on from the Stamford incident, establishing for herself a career as conservative activist; she is now Director of Communications at Turning Point USA, a conservative advocacy group. She is constantly under fire from the left, from hostile critics who consider her a ‘race traitor,’[16] and/or question her honesty.[17]

 

 

Thomas Sowell

 

Disclosure: Dr. Thomas Sowell, who will be 89 in June this year, is one of the living people whom I most admire.

 

Because of deteriorating finances and domestic life, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School in Harlem at 17, joined the marines when he was drafted, serving in the Korean War. After the war, he passed the GED exam to go on and become a renowned economist, author, and student of American culture, politics, and society. Now retired in emeritus status, he holds a Rose and Milton Friedman fellowship at the Hoover Institute where he has been pursuing his quest for knowledge since 1980. He is reputed to have said that, in his early years, his contact with white people was so infrequent that he did not believe the stories about people with yellow hair.[18]

 

He did not support Donald Trump in 2016, stating his opinion that Trump was not a conservative, and instead supported Senator Ted Cruz.[19]

 

Sowell, like Martin Luther King, stands firmly in the classical tradition of civil rights, Lady Justice being blind, and not in support of discriminatory identity politics as is demonstrated in a recent quote on Thomas Sowell’s Twitter account:

 

If you believe in equal rights, then what do ‘women’s rights,’ ‘gay rights,’ etc., mean? Either they are redundant or they are violations of the principle of equal rights for all.[20]

 

Sowell’s saying is representative of decades of work that, according to left-wing critics, such as Professor James B. Stewart of the Penn State College of Liberal Arts, ‘denigrates’ African-American culture.[21] In the afore-cited work, Stewart objects to a 2005 book written by Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals.[22] In the book, Sowell discusses the ‘Identity Fetish,’ referencing as an example an argument between the white American socialist, Irving Howe, and the noted black author, Ralph Ellison:

 

Intellectuals in the 1960s began promoting the idea that those blacks who exhibited a culture different from the ghetto or black redneck culture were not ‘really’ authentic blacks. This issue was strikingly demonstrated in a controversy between Irving Howe and Ralph Ellison, growing out of Howe’s 1963 article criticizing such black writers as Ellison, whom Howe considered insufficiently authentic or militant. For Howe, the central character in Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son—a ghetto black epitomizing the black redneck culture—was authentic and the more sophisticated central character in Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, was not. Ellison rejected and derided the idea of a white man defining what a black man should be and attempting to confine individual blacks to that stereotype.[23]

 

The irony is that in his critique of Black Rednecks and White Liberals, and his attacks on Sowell, Stewart figuratively took the role of Howe in the afore-mentioned passage. Stewart never addressed the issue of the ‘identity fetish’ in his critique, instead preferring to accuse Sowell of having an ‘ideological mission’ of denigrating blacks in America. The closest Stewart comes to directly calling Sowell a ‘race traitor,’ is when he references the sociologist E. Franklin Frazier digging down into ‘the experience of the negro’ and concludes, ‘Perhaps Thomas Sowell will someday join us at those excavation sites to unearth ‘the experience of the Negro,’ rather than remaining on the sidelines and throwing dirt back in.’[24]

 

Sowell went on during that passage about the identity fetish to discuss some of the counterproductive effects of identifying certain types of behavior as ‘authentic’ and others as traitorous to the group. He particularly targeted the phenomenon of black students in integrated schools not spending as much effort and time on their studies as did descendants of other ethnic groups, because of peer pressure against ‘acting white.’[25]

 

Recently, a self-styled, ‘dissident feminist,’ Stefanie Stiles, describing herself as a ‘thirty-six-year-old white Canadian woman, mother, writer and erstwhile English professor,’ recounted the fact that Sowell is called by ‘the most unsavory critics . . . a traitor to his race.’[26] Sowell’s crime is that he cogently explains, ‘There are other factors besides discrimination and the legacy of slavery that perpetuate poverty in the African-American community.’[27] Stiles acknowledged that she faced the same kind of ostracism, in her case from other feminists, and found in Thomas Sowell inspiration because of his indifference to personal attacks not grounded in truth.

 

 

Clarence Thomas

 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas attended a Catholic seminary in the mid-1960s and during his matriculation encountered the first indication, that his individual success would draw disfavor from his peers. His family and friends found it disquieting, among other things, that Thomas was one of two black students attending an otherwise white, all boys’ school. Thomas, in turn, wondered, ‘If going to a predominately white school was bad, why were blacks putting their lives on the line to fight for desegregation?’[28]

Read more in New English Review:

• The Revolution of Evolution
• The Battling, Baffling Watergate Editor
• Bowdlerizing History

Desegregation once was a chief element of the vision of a color-blind society; today we have a push for race-exclusive venues in the name of a reformulated concept of civil rights.[29] In a macro sense, most citizens of the United States identify as ‘we Americans.’ Americans have accomplished that macro identity despite the heterogeneous human population in the United States. Look around our world; that macro-level accomplishment is almost unique. The ‘we’ of most other countries generally has a homogenous, ethnic base. It has not been an easy or peaceful development; but, to the extent that we accomplished it, Americans are nascently colorblind. We have built a foundation on which to proceed. It is on the micro-level of sub groupings within America that has occurred the country’s Balkanization by means of those who are stridently identity-conscious and want the rest of us to emulate them.

 

The epithet ‘race traitor,’ and its less explicit substitutes, derives from any identity-conscious group defined by race. White racists think of color-blind whites as race traitors in the same fashion as do black racists think of people like Candace Owens, Thomas Sowell, and Clarence Thomas. However, all groups, whatever defines them, are guilty, at some level, of the kind of negative peer pressure about which Sowell and Thomas write. I experienced an innocuous form of it myself; for example, shortly after getting my doctorate, I went home to my small hometown in northern Wisconsin where family and friends were unimpressed with my accomplishment. One old friend humorously opined that my PhD meant that I could now pile it on higher and deeper ‘than the rest of us.’

 

Such reactions against the individual are part of a natural tension between individuals and the groups claiming them as members. The more exclusive, pervasive, and accentuated the basis of the group, e.g. race, the harsher becomes the negative reaction against any individual that appears to be distinguishing itself apart from the group. It follows from this observable fact that the more a particular group values and assesses the intrinsic worth of individuals, including eccentricities, the more benign and understanding will be that group’s response towards an individual’s behavior, outlying behavior though it may be.

 

The review of Justice Thomas’s My Grandfather’s Son in the New York Times, by liberal William Grimes, demonstrated the difficulty experienced by people who have tightly embraced or been socialized into a group identity, in acknowledging the intrinsic worth of individuals apart from groupthink.[30] Thomas’s memoir is revealing of himself as a person, insightful in its analyses, and above all, genuine and honest. However, Grimes dismisses it as an ‘ultimately pointless effort to set the record straight and settle some scores along the way.’[31] Grimes grudgingly acknowledges that Thomas’s book gives the critics of the Justice ‘a man, not a caricature, to attack.’[32]

 

Another liberal, a political scientist, CUNY Graduate Center Associate Professor Corey Robin[33], is about to publish a book that based on advanced information, attempts to psycho-analyze Justice Thomas. In the forthcoming (September 2019) The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, Professor Robin purports to argue:

 

The hidden source of Thomas’s conservative views . . . is a profound skepticism that racism can be overcome. Thomas is convinced that any government action on behalf of African-Americans will be tainted by this racism, and that the most African-Americans can hope for is that white people will get out of their way.[34]

 

Liberals find it grueling to accept the genuine nature of those who articulate nonleftist beliefs, and experience similar difficulty in considering the value of said beliefs on their merits; i.e., there must be some ulterior reason that people like Owens, Sowell, and Thomas are stepping out of the fold! This handicap experienced by many liberals is particularly ironic for two reasons; classical liberals thought much the same way as do modern conservatives, and the word ‘liberal,’ until modern times, often connoted an open mind. Professor Robin is exemplary of this dual irony because he has made a career of writing about conservative thought and trying to explain it away, as he appears to be doing once more in his forthcoming book on Justice Thomas.

 

Interestingly, Justice Thomas explains in My Grandfather’s Son, that during the time in his life when he began to make the transition from leftwing ideology to independent thought, he found solace in the fact that he was not alone by re-discovering Thomas Sowell. While an angry student at Yale law school, he had once thrown Sowell’s Black Education: Myths and Tragedies in the trash, furious with Sowell ‘that any black man could think like that.’[35]

 

In my recent article to which this is a follow-up, I pointed out that morality is a subjective concept. On the other hand, ethics stem from objective truth, i.e. verifiable evidence. When humans are moral, they follow the learned precepts arising from their culture, their socialization. When humans are ethical, they try to step outside the box of their culture and discover that which is actually extant.[36] Journalists, politicians, and academics who try to identify ulterior motives behind the articulated reasoning of people like Owens, Sowell, and Thomas have failed to step outside their own boxes, and that is why they treat their subjects as suspect.

 

Political correctness is an iron box, an ideological chastity belt of the mind that constrains thought and intimidates individuals to conform to a subjective morality. Political correctness is exemplary, on a grand scale, of a certain framework of morality from within which people judge those who do not comply with its precepts as immoral; in effect, those who do not comply are ‘race traitors.’

 

This judgement of immorality is why the local NAACP leader in Stamford disparaged Candace Owens, why Professor Stewart disparaged Thomas Sowell, and ultimately, the reason why Justice Thomas does not have a place in the National Museum of African American History and Culture.[37] This judgement of immorality is today the basis of and justification for intolerance by the politically correct left wing.

 

 

On the Eve of Destruction

 

Back in the 1960s, in the midst of Cold War tensions bearing fruit, i.e. the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and expansion of the war in Vietnam, Barry McGuire recorded a popular song written by P.F. Sloan, ‘The Eve of Destruction.’[38] Today, the context is different, but the lyrics, especially in the third stanza, underscore a pervasive contemporary fear of civil war in the offing:

 

Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’,
I’m sittin’ here, just contemplatin’,
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation,
Handful of Senators don’t pass legislation,
And marches alone can’t bring integration,
When human respect is disintegratin’,
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.

 

America has both written and unwritten constitutions. The unwritten Constitution is that we agree to disagree and let the market place of ideas resolve contending political theories and issues. The agreement to disagree evolved out of the colonial period as the means of getting along with each other, supplemented by a frontier that allowed both groups and individuals to escape when the agreement unraveled. The unwritten Constitution unraveled in 1860 so catastrophically that the United States plunged into a civil war that exacted more casualties and death from its participants in a shorter amount of time than any war previously recorded in human history.

 

In recent months, a tsunami of leftist intolerance has ravaged and engulfed America, giving credence to the fear that another unraveling of the unwritten Constitution is in the making. Three explosive events are exemplary of the intolerance pushing the country to the brink, to another eve of destruction.

 

 

Charlottesville

 

On August 12, 2017, political violence erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia; the lives of three American citizens became forfeit, as ANTIFA, Black Lives Matter, and other extremist leftwing organizations converged on Charlottesville to attack extremist rightwing organizers of a so-called “Unite the Right” rally. The extremists caught up the rest of America in their clashes, further polarizing a country already divided.

 

Commissioned by the Charlottesville City Council, Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. Attorney appointed by President Obama, but at the time a partner in the Richmond-based law firm, Hunton and Williams, LLP, led an independent review team that conducted a month-long investigation, and wrote the “Final Report: Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville, Va”[39].  The preface to the report noted that the city council’s vote to remove statues in the city honoring two Confederate generals, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, triggered the violent events of May-August, 2017 in Charlottesville.

 

The vote by the council was in context of a national left-wing political wave that challenged not only the statues honoring confederate figures, but memorials to historical figures, Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Woodrow Wilson included, all deemed by the left to have been racist or worse.[40] A series of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in Charlottesville preceded the council’s vote to remove the statues, kicked off on January 31, 2017 by an unpermitted rally called by Mayor Mike Signor to make Charlottesville the ‘Capital of Resistance’ against newly elected President Donald Trump.[41]

 

The series of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations culminated in the bloodshed on August 12, 2017.

 

It was clear that ANTIFA and other leftwing organizations came to Charlottesville prepared to be violent provocateurs to the scheduled, permitted, ‘Unite the Right’ rally. According to the independent report, ANTIFA was well organized and its members had on ‘gas masks, padded clothing, and body armor;’ comrades-in-arms included medics, and the leftist counter-protestors carried shields and wore helmets.[42] There was clearly no evidence of a fundamental agreement to disagree on that day in August.

 

The violence on August 12 took the lives of three people; two Virginia state troopers died in a helicopter crash, and 32-year old Heather Heyer, a paralegal and ‘activist’ who was killed when James Alex Fields drove his Dodge Charger into a crowd. A jury convicted Fields, 21, of first-degree murder after only four hours of deliberation[43] A photo taken prior to the death of Heyer show Fields standing with members of a neo-Nazi organization.[44] The defense argued that Fields accelerated out of self-defense, in a hostile environment, after counter-protestors jostled his car, and had not meant to kill Heyer.[45] Indeed, a video that went viral on social media soon after the event gave some credence to the defense; the jury did not buy it. Testimony at the trial from counter protestors said there was no hostile environment after the authorities had told the ‘Unite the Right’ people to disperse.[46] Heaphy’s independent report gave no indication that the environment had become ‘peaceful,’ ‘joyful,’ and ‘celebratory,’ as witnesses recounted.[47]

 

The evidence is clear. Both rightwing and leftwing extremists, and associated individuals on each side of the political spectrum, were to blame for the violence at Charlottesville. Moreover, prior to the leftwing wave of attacks against historical monuments, the statues in Lee Park at Charlottesville never engendered any social or political disruption. According to Tim Heaphy’s independent report:

 

For much of their existence, the Lee and Jackson statues were relatively uncontroversial. In 1997, the City accepted funds from a private donor for the care of the statues. Restoration work was complete in 1999, and the City accepted the gift in a re-dedication ceremony.[48]

 

President Trump accordingly put the blame for the violence on ‘both sides;’[49] but clearly, his critics on the left were no more interested in apportioning blame on both sides than the jury that heard the case against Fields was willing to consider that he had acted in an environment that was other than ‘celebratory’ and ‘joyful.’ The President’s political adversaries jumped on his statement as a sign of racism. Liberals and others on the left in particular were interested only in blaming those for whom they had no tolerance. Media organs supported their intolerance by some of the most inflammatory bias seen up to that time in the post War American press.

 

John Hawkins, a well-known columnist for Townhall, PJ Media, and National Review, opined that the liberal press had, in effect, created Charlottesville by giving prominence to right wing extremist figures, magnifying their importance, in the months leading up to August 12:

 

The hardcore racists out there are pariahs everywhere except in the mainstream media, where they’re treated as incredibly important.

 

On the other hand, the same mainstream media that has elevated the Alt-Right has been silent as violence has increasingly become a mainstay at liberal protests, including the counter-protest of this event. A few shops getting looted or people getting hurt doesn’t stop the media from describing a liberal event as a peaceful protest. Even the counter-protests in Charlottesville were widely described as ‘peaceful.’ Yet, protesters chanted ‘From the Midwest to the South, punch a Nazi in the mouth,’ a female reporter was punched by one of those counter-protesters, the organizer of the rally was hit, and other people were attacked. That’s not peaceful. That’s something LIBERAL POLITICIANS should be asked to condemn.[50]

 

A year later ABC, marked the anniversary of the violence in Charlottesville by reiterating that the President’s statement was a ‘low point’ in his Presidency.[51]

 

 

The Covington Boys

 

There is great irony in the politically correct, ‘main stream media’s’ refusal to apportion the blame at Charlottesville when its reaction to a failed leftwing smear attempt on boys from a Covington, Kentucky Catholic high school is taken into account.

 

On Friday, January 18, 2019, in context of the March for Life that drew approximately three hundred thousand people to Washington, DC, (panned by most ‘main stream’ media outlets),[52] a group of boys from an all-male Catholic school in Covington, Kentucky visited the Lincoln Memorial. Unknown to them at the outset, present at the memorial would be a self-styled Vietnam War veteran who also claimed to be a Native American leader, and members of a religious cult, the Black Hebrew Israelites.[53]

 

Investigation later showed that the Native American, Nathan Phillips, was not a veteran of the Vietnam War.[54]

 

Video clips purported to show that the Covington boys, wearing Make America Great Again (MAGA) hats, harassed the Black Hebrew Israelites, surrounded them and Phillips, and mocked and chanted racial slurs at them. The charged video “evidence” of white racism and disrespect of a Native American veteran went viral; the Covington boys, their school and families immediately met with condemnation in a pile on of opprobrium. This story was a much juicier one for the ‘mainstream media’ to sink its teeth into, rather than factually reporting on the March for Life. On Sunday, January 20, the Democrat Chair of the House Budget Committee, John Yarmouth, tweeted:

 

I am calling for a total and complete shutdown of teenagers wearing MAGA hats until we can figure out what is going on. They seem to be poisoning young minds. [1/2]

 

And

 

The conduct we saw in this video is beyond appalling, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum. This is a direct result of the racist hatred displayed daily by the President of the United States who, sadly, some mistake for a role model. [2/2][55]

 

The school closed because death threats targeted people associated with the school.[56]

 

The smear might have worked had it not been for the fact that a full 2-hour video, shot by one of the Black Hebrew Israelites, encompassed the entire event and gave the lie to the edited videos, posted by leftwing sources on social media.[57] Press reports erroneously reported the Covington boys to all be white, but at least one boy was black, and the Black Hebrew Israelites disparaged and harangued him, calling him ‘Uncle Tom’ and ‘Sambo’.[58] They called the white students ‘crackers’ and worse. Other, unedited video evidence showed that Nathan Phillips walked directly up to the white students, pounding his drum in their faces, only to get a silent, impassive response from the 16-year old boy who was accused on social media of being smug, taunting, and racist.[59] The high school kids had been accused of chanting racial slurs; but the only chanting that they actually did was their school song, after they asked permission to do so from their chaperones.

 

There had been no racist harangue by the Covington boys against blacks, nor had they mocked a Native American Vietnam veteran, and as the truth became clear, those who had been quick to cry ‘racism,’ blame President Trump, and join the self-righteous cyber-mob, tried to save face.[60]

 

Later in the day, Representative Yarmouth walked back his first Tweet of Sunday, January 20, on the banning of MAGA hats, claiming that it was an “obvious” joke.[61] He did not walk back his Tweet about the President being a racist. He did not apologize.

 

The Archdiocese of Baltimore apologized for weighing in too hastily; it had tried to distance itself from an all-boys Catholic high school being accused of ‘racism’’ instead of investigating whether there had been any wrongdoing before issuing a public reprimand.[62] Parishioners circulated a petition calling for a personal apology from Bishop Roger Joseph Foys of the Diocese of Covington, and finally, on Friday, January 25, Foys apologized, explaining, ‘we…allowed ourselves to be bullied’.[63]

 

Two quick and straightforward apologies came from celebrities Scott Adams (creator of the Dilbert comic strip) and Jamie Lee Curtiss.[64] Adams gave a substantive, detailed, full apology. However, Curtis remained ensnared by the viral narrative that depicted Nathan Phillips as a Vietnam veteran when she followed up her apology with another Tweet, this time a suggestion:

 

Maybe the POTUS could invite the young man in the video and the Native American war HERO to the WH for a talk and a (root) beer like @BarackObama did with the Boston PD officer and @HenryLouisGates[65]

 

The great irony in the politically correct, ‘main stream’ media’s reaction to the truth of the Covington boys incident becoming known is that the media still tried to find some fault with the high school kids, and tried to apportion blame among all who had been at the Lincoln Memorial.

 

The Washington Post published a column in which, after recounting the faults and inaccuracies of the original pile-on of opprobrium, it stated:

 

Certainly, the boys could have moved, or ignored the abuse, rather than childishly outshouting their harassers. And at least one boy seems to make a tomahawk chop, which is horribly culturally insensitive.[66]

 

NBC Today Show co-anchor, Savannah Guthrie, interviewed Nick Sandmann, the 16-year old Covington student who had been prominently featured in the videos as Nathan Phillips pounded a drum in his face. Guthrie asked Sandmann if he thought he should apologize. Suddenly, after the full video was out, the mainstream narrative had become that, no matter who started the confrontation, Sandmann’s inappropriate response to Phillips was that he stared him down with a smug smirk. Leftwing critics went further and charged that NBC had committed an offense of white privilege by giving Sandmann a national platform from which to tell his story.[67]

 

The left’s ironic attempt to apportion blame, in contrast to its response to the clash of extremists in Charlottesville, demonstrated once again the intolerance of the politically correct. It conjures up the famous, ultimate excuse of disgraced journalist Dan Rather, when he and his production team were caught using forged materials on which to base a story highly damaging to the election chances in 2004 of President George W. Bush; Rather claimed that the story was true, even if the information on which it was based was false.[68]

 

The smear attempts by the left are unceasing. The failure of one does not deter others from being manufactured.

 

The attempt to bring down Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh created a new low for identity politics in its purveyors’ denial of the presumption of innocence; ultimately one of Kavanaugh’s accusers admitted to lying, and another’s story changed and could not be supported by evidence.[69]

 

As this article is going to press, another high-profile smear attempt on President Trump and his supporters appears to have been orchestrated by an actor in the television series Empire, Jussie Smollett. Smollett claimed that early Tuesday Morning, January 29, he was attacked by two assailants, gender unknown, but initially described as white and wearing wearing ski masks, who threw a rope around his neck, poured an “unknown substance” on him, and shouted ‘MAGA Country!’[70] Information then came to light that Smollett had apparently hired two brothers from Nigeria to stage the attack.[71] Smollett doubled down, claiming that he is being ‘further victimized’ by the allegations that he orchestrated the attack.[72]

 

Smear campaigns weaponize the passion and commitment of those who have embraced political correctness, and chop away at Lady Justice, rational discourse, and objective truth.

 

 

Legalization in New York of Abortion at Full Term

 

Charlottesville. the incident involving the Covington boys at the Lincoln Memorial, and the multiple smear attempts against President Trump and his supporters, are examples of recent and increasing attempts to deny the legitimacy of the modus operandi of the unwritten Constitution, agreeing to disagree.

 

Political correctness is all about the imperative, you must agree to what the left demands; a corollary is you then have to profess that you like whatever it is to which you agreed. Once agreed-to and liked, there must be acknowledgment that it is the good thing to do, whether it is attending diversity training or believing all women accusers of men. If you don’t like it, if you do not announce its goodness, you are evil and irredeemable, or in the words of Hillary Clinton, a ‘deplorable.’[73] Another, final corollary is that which must be accepted, must be liked, and must be embraced in its goodness, is sacrosanct and will always prevail. To think that Roe v. Wade, for instance, can be overturned, is with the secular left, on a par with blasphemy; the kind of blasphemy that gets you put on the political if not the proverbial rack.

 

Nowhere in American life are these four precepts of political correctness more apparent than when it comes to abortion. Abortion is the spear point with which the left prods the right and actualizes the eve of destruction.

 

On Tuesday, January 22, 2019, the Democrat-controlled New York State Legislature passed, and Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law the Reproductive Health Act.[74] The very title of the bill is doublespeak to pro-life Americans;[75] since when does infanticide become equivalent to health, reproductive or otherwise?

 

Governor Cuomo inaccurately framed the passage of the Act, which legalizes abortion through full-term at the discretion of an “authorized” health care practitioner, in context of a mythical Supreme Court bent on repealing Roe v. Wade. According to Cuomo, ‘We had to pass this law, to protect our state.’[76] He proposes to write similar provisions into the New York State Constitution to make it harder for any succeeding governor or legislature to repeal them.

 

Cuomo then trumpeted his victory and trolled the opposition to abortion by ordering the Freedom Tower in New York City to be lit in pink lights.[77] Although Cuomo is on record as favoring diversity in the leftwing sense of the word, he apparently does not think that pro-life people are part of those with whom he should be inclusive; in fact, he once said that conservatives are not welcome in New York.[78]

 

Several months prior to the events in New York, the female, Republican Governor of Iowa, Kim Stanley, in a political climate 180 degrees from that of New York, signed into law the so-called ‘Heartbeat Bill.’[79] Whereas in New York, children are not protected, legal persons until they are born, in Iowa, the law bans abortions at the detection of a fetal heartbeat, usually at about six weeks into a pregnancy. The fact that many women are pro-life (and Republican) does not deter the left from characterizing ‘the right to choose’ whether or not to kill a fetus as a ‘women’s rights’ issue. Three women in Congress, Representatives Virginia Foxx, Vicky Hartzler, and Senator Marsha Blackburn, all Republicans, introduced a bill in Congress to prohibit taxpayer funding of abortions.[80] True to the basic precepts of political correctness, the left explains away the Governor Stanleys of the country much as it explains away Candace Owens, Thomas Sowell, and Clarence Thomas.[81]

 

Actually, assuming that lawmakers want to protect and not take innocent human life, both the New York and Iowa laws defy scientific evidence that shows life begins at conception.[82]

 

An astounding comparison exists between one of the primary founders of Planned Parenthood, the ‘pro-choice’ organization that is constantly at the center of the war over the abortion issue and one of the primary founders of a major pro-life group, the National Right to Life (NRL) organization.

 

Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, in 1968 helped found the NRL and served as its President from 1975 to 1978. As part of her career-long efforts to promote her cause, she cut a powerful video promotion, still used today by pro-life advocates.[83]

 

Critics allege that Margaret Sanger, a founder of Planned Parenthood, believed that blacks were an inferior species and that birth control, sterilization, and abortion could be effective methods for controlling population and improving the quality of the human species. Although the left wing PolitiFact has adamantly claimed to have fact-checked attacks on Sanger,[84] there is enough documentary evidence of Sanger’s views to cast a cloud over Sanger and her supposedly benevolent interest in black people. The evidence includes a controversial letter that Sanger wrote to an associate in 1939, saying, in part:

 

There is only one thing that I would like to be in touch with and that is the Negro Project of the South which, if the execution of the details remain in Miss Rose’s hands, my suggestions will not be confusing because she knows the way my mind works

 

Miss Rose sent me a copy of your letter of December 5th and I note that you doubt it worthwhile to employ a full time Negro physician. It seems to me from my experience where I have been in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts. They do not do this with the white people and if we can train the Negro doctor at the Clinic he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results among the colored people. His work in my opinion should be entirely with the Negro profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County’s white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by us

 

The ministers work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members[85]

 

What did Sanger mean? It is an open question, debated by both sides to the controversy.

 

There exists in 2019 an anti-abortion organization, Black Genocide, which gets its rationale from the darkest interpretation of Margaret Sanger’s intentions.[86] Black Genocide states, on one of its web pages

 

Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America. Are we being targeted? Isn’t that genocide? We are the only minority in America that is on the decline in population. If the current trend continues, by 2038 the black vote will be insignificant.[87]

 

The opposition to abortion, and therefore, in the worldview of the politically correct, to women’s rights, of the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical school, a black Presidential candidate, and the organization, Black Genocide, stands in stark contrast to the basic precepts of identity politics and political correctness. The fact that contrast can occur in the United States is a basis for hope that the current unraveling of the unwritten Constitution will not completely degenerate into the Second American Civil war.

 

 

Conclusion

 

In order to have a successful marketplace of ideas, the society must tolerate the espousal of even the worst ideas so that all can freely weigh, evaluate, and exercise critical judgment. Dialog and competition must be free of censorship and intimidation; free speech, not correct speech, must prevail, or we lose that precious dimension of life known as liberty.

 

Political correctness, on the other hand, is all about imposing that which a certain group of people thinks is correct, however it is that they arrived at that state of “progress”; in the market place of ideas, persuasion by means of objective, factual basis and demonstrable evidence is the preferred means of competition. Imposing speech and behavior and using bullying attitudes is the road to totalitarianism, shown to the world in several harrowing instances during the twentieth century, and still with us in the twenty-first.

 

Will we be called to defeat the totalitarian beast one more time?

 

 

---

[1] 410 U.S. 113 (1973)

[2] The dubious enforcement actions include the tragedies at Ruby Ridge, Waco, and repatriation of young Elian Gonzalez.

[3] Pratik Chougule. “Barack Obama: The Great Divider.” The National Interest. Last modified January 7, 2017. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/barack-obama-the-great-divider-17791.

[4] “Lady Justice” was originally the Greek goddess, Themis, one of the original Titans, first Oracle at Delphi, and counselor to other Titans and mortal rulers. Her worship dates from about 800 BC. She was the “Goddess of the Natural World,” and organized the course of human lives as well as the flow of the seasons.

[5] Jenny Hollander. “Nice Guys Aren’t Nice If They’re Assaulting Other Women.” Bustle. Last modified November 21, 2017. https://www.bustle.com/p/why-believe-women-means-believing-women-without-exception-5532903.

[6] G. & C. Merriam Co. Webster’s Encyclopedia of Dictionaries, New American Edition: Large Type. G. & C. Merriam Co. (1978), 1978. Also, Dictionary by Merriam-Webster: America’s Most-trusted Online Dictionary. Definition of diversity accessed August 26, 2018 at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diversity

[7] Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have a Dream.” Speech, March on Washington, Washington, DC, August 28, 1963.

[8] Camilla Martinez-Granata. “My Date with a MAGA Lesbian Forced Me to Confront My Own Prejudices.” Vice (blog). May 14, 2018. Accessed January 10, 2019. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbkjg8/my-date-with-a-maga-lesbian-forced-me-to-confront-my-own-prejudices.

[9] Danbury News-Times. “Racist threats case filed by Stamford High student settled for $37,500.” January 23, 2008. Accessed January 16, 2019. https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Racist-threats-case-filed-by-Stamford-High-107476.php.

[10] Chauncey Alcorn. “NAACP Leader Who Defended Candace Owens from Racist Trolls Shocked to Learn She’s Conservative Now.” Mic | Breaking News, Opinion, Reviews, Analysis. Last modified April 28, 2018. https://mic.com/articles/189097/naacp-leader-who-defended-candace-owens-from-racist-trolls-shocked-to-learn-shes-conservative-now#.922l72iAL.

[11] Candace Owens. “An Open Letter from Candace Owens.” Stamford Advocate, March 5, 2016. Accessed January 16, 2019. https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/An-open-letter-from-Candace-Owens-6872591.php.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Boteach, Shmuley. “No Holds Barred: The Death of American Forgiveness.” The Jerusalem Post. Last modified July 2, 2018. https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/No-Holds-Barred-The-death-of-American-forgiveness-561374.

[14] See, for example the controversy recounted in, I.K. “Can White People Experience Racism?” The Economist. Last modified September 18, 2018. https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/18/can-white-people-experience-racism.

[15] Sarnac H. Spencer. “Oprah’s 2013 Quote on Racism, in Context.” FactCheck.org. Last modified January 31, 2018. https://www.factcheck.org/2018/01/oprahs-2013-quote-racism-context/.

[16] Eric Huber. “Eric Huber to Candace Owens on Facebook.” Facebook – Log In or Sign Up. Last modified July 24, 2018. https://www.facebook.com/realCandaceOwens/posts/fuck-you-race-traitor/2075059262565264/.

[17] Cathy Young. “The Problem with Candace Owens.” Quillette. Last modified August 23, 2018. https://quillette.com/2018/05/08/problem-candace-owens/.

[18] “Thomas Sowell, Economist and Author.” African American Registry. Last modified 2019. https://aaregistry.org/story/thomas-sowell-economist-and-author/?fbclid=IwAR3nWH7Ksf9GRth1o3-oSkBLTU07B22nJh1TRHmmbwnsAnARSVo1_na5-iU.

[19] Thomas Sowell. “Conservatives for Trump?” Creators Syndicate. Last modified April 26, 2016. https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/04/16/conservatives-for-trump .

[20] “Thomas Sowell on Twitter.” Last modified May 10, 2018. https://twitter.com/thomassowell/status/994729838169788416. The Twitter account is not actually Thomas Sowell, but the owner purports to tweet quotations from Sowell. The subject quotation can actually be found in Sowell, Thomas. “Random Thoughts.” Creators Syndicate. Last modified November 26, 2013. https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/13/random-thoughts-bbcfd .

[21] James B. Stewart. “Thomas Sowell’s Quixotic Quest to Denigrate African American Culture: A Critique.” The Journal of African American History 9, no. 4 (2006), 459-66. Accessed January 17, 2019. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064129.

[22] Thomas Sowell. Black Rednecks and White Liberals. New York: Encounter Books, 2005.

First Paperback Edition 2006

[23] Ibid, pp. 57-58.

[24] Stewart, op. cit, pp. 464-465.

[25] Sowell, op cit, p. 58.

[26] Stefanie Stiles. “What Thomas Sowell Taught Me About Being a Dissident Feminist.” Areo. Last modified January 7, 2019. https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/07/what-thomas-sowell-taught-me-about-being-a-dissident-feminist/.

[27] Ibid

[28] Clarence Thomas. My Grandfather’s Son. New York: Harper Collins, 2007. Pp. 36-37

[29] See, for example, Cheryl K. Chumley. “Evergreen College students back at it with ‘no white people’ day.” Washington Times, May 17, 2018. Accessed January 23, 2019. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/17/evergreen-college-students-back-it-no-white-people/.

[30] William Grimes. “The Justice Looks Back and Settles Old Scores.” The New York Times, October 10, 2007. Accessed January 26, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/books/10grim.html. The reviewer, William Grimes, has a long history editing and contributing to liberal magazines. See a short profile at Anonymous. “”William Grimes (journalist)” on Revolvy.com.” Trending Topics | Revolvy. Accessed January 26, 2019. https://www.revolvy.com/page/William-Grimes-%28journalist%29.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Ibid.

[33] See a profile of Professor Robin at “Corey Robin – Political Science | The Graduate Center, CUNY.” Political Science | The Graduate Center, CUNY. Last modified 2019. https://politicalscience.commons.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/corey-robin/.

[34] “The Enigma of Clarence Thomas: Corey Robin.” Amazon.com. Accessed January 26, 2019. https://www.amazon.com/Enigma-Clarence-Thomas-Corey-Robin/dp/1627793836/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548522580&sr=1-3&keywords=Clarence+Thomas

[35] Thomas, op cit, p. 107.

[36] Howard, op cit.

[37] Carter (R-Ga.), Rep. Earl L. “Buddy”. “Clarence Thomas’ Notable Absence from Museum: Where is the Justice?” The Hill. Last modified November 17, 2016. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/306583-clarence-thomas-notable-absence-from-museum-where-is-the-justice.

[38] Eve of Destruction. Recorded by Barry F. McGuire. 1965. Dunhill Records, m.
Lyrics written by P.F. Sloan, who along with Lou Adler and Steve Barri, produced McGuire’s record.

[39] Tim Heaphy. Final Report: Final Report: Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville, Va. Richmond, VA: Hunton & Williams, LLP, 2017. https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/c869fb_a573de9ad4f04b0491b927ca9d48252c.pdf.

[40] See for example, Ellen Brait. “Princeton students demand removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name from buildings.” The Guardian, November 23, 2015. Accessed January 28, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/23/princeton-woodrow-wilson-racism-students-remove-nameSmithsonian Magazine. Last modified November 1, 2002. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/founding-fathers-and-slaveholders-72262393/New York Post. Last modified January 12, 2018. https://nypost.com/2018/01/12/de-blasio-controversial-monuments-to-stay-but-will-be-altered/.

[41] Heaphy, op cit, p. 24

[42] Heaphy, op cit, p. 51

[43] Benjamin Hart, and Chas Danner. “3 Dead and Dozens Injured After Violent White-Nationalist Rally in Virginia.” New York Intelligencer. Last modified August 13, 2017. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/08/state-of-emergency-in-va-after-white-nationalist-rally.htmlhttps://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2018/12/11/jury-resumes-deliberations-white-nationalist-james-fields-jr-sentence/2275669002/.

[44] Al Jazeera. “Charlottesville: James Alex Fields Guilty of First-degree Murder.” Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera. Last modified December 7, 2018. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/charlottesville-james-alex-fields-guilty-degree-murder-181207221122049.html.

[45] Jack Moore, and Neal Augenstein. “Man Charged in Deadly Charlottesville Car Attack Acted in Self-defense, Lawyer Says As Trial Begins.” WTOP. Last modified November 30, 2018. https://wtop.com/virginia/2018/11/man-charged-in-deadly-charlottesville-car-attack-acted-in-self-defense-lawyer-says-as-trial-begins/.

[46] Al Jazeera, op cit.

[47] Al Jazeera, op cit.

[48] Heaphy, op cit, p. 23

[49] Donald J Trump. “President Trump Says ‘There is Blame on Both Sides’ for Violence in Charlottesville.” C-SPAN.org. Last modified August 15, 2017. https://www.c-span.org/video/?432633-1/president-trump-there-blame-sides-violence-charlottesville.

[50] John Hawkins. “How the Liberal Media Created Charlottesville.” Townhall. Last modified August 14, 2017. https://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2017/08/14/how-the-liberal-media-created-charlottesville-n2368137.

[51] Rick Klein. “Trump Said ‘blame on Both Sides’ in Charlottesville, Now the Anniversary Puts Him on the Spot.” ABC News. Last modified August 12, 2018. https://abcnews.go.com/beta-story-container/Politics/trump-blame-sides-charlottesville-now-anniversary-puts-spot/story?id=57141612.

[52] Malfucci, Maria M. “Media Afraid to Report March for Life’s Attendance, Youthfulness, Joy.” Newsmax. Last modified January 22, 2019. https://www.newsmax.com/mariamcfaddenmaffucci/march-for-life-washington-dc/2019/01/22/id/899350/.

[53] Black Hebrew Israelites are a religious cult, claiming to be descendants of a lost tribe of Israel. The cult originated in Chicago in 1967; most of the cultists now live in Dinon, Israel, where the Israeli government has agreed to build them a farm. Israel does not officially recognize the BHI as practitioners of Judaism. Converts take on Hebrew names; they are polygamous and vegan. It is hard to characterize their location on the traditional left/right political spectrum, but they are certainly radical in their religious views. See Jaynes, Gerald D. “Black Hebrew Israelites | Religious Community.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Last modified January 24, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Hebrew-Israelites .

[54] Tara Copp. “Tribal Elder in Viral Standoff Video Was Not a Vietnam Veteran, Military Records Show.” Military Times. Last modified January 23, 2019. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/01/23/tribal-elder-in-viral-standoff-video-was-not-a-vietnam-veteran-military-records-show/.

[55] John Yarmouth. “@Rep.JohnYarmouth.” Welcome to Twitter. Last modified January 20, 2019. https://twitter.com/RepJohnYarmuth/status/1087008930193162242.

[56] Fox News. “Covington Catholic Chaperone: Our Kids Were Targeted.” YouTube. Last modified January 22, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4L4jUgDQO8.

[57] James Williams. “Mirror of Shar Yaqataz Banyamyan Facebook Video – Covington Catholic Fake News.” YouTube. Last modified January 20, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xe1BOfF7JI.

[58] Ibid

[59] See, for example, Dinkelberry Crunch. “The Truth – Nathan Philips / Covington Catholic Kids.” YouTube. Last modified January 20, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8kxeFb84iw

Eddie, Ovation. “CNN BUSTED! Covington Catholic Students Falsely Accused by Fake News CNN Live – CBS & Fox News React.” YouTube. Last modified January 21, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9uSu-w3Uewhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1Wy4O2shc.

[60] James Murphy. “Some in Twitter Mob Delete or Apologize for Tweets About Covington Students.” The New American. Last modified January 22, 2019. https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/faith-and-morals/item/31266-some-in-twitter-mob-delete-or-apologize-for-tweets-about-covington-students.

[61] Yarmouth, John. “@Rep.JohnYarmouth.” Welcome to Twitter. Last modified January 20, 2019. https://twitter.com/RepJohnYarmuth/status/1087111704557875200.

[62] Bourne, Lisa. “Archdiocese of Baltimore Apologizes for Criticizing Covington Boys.” LifeSiteNews. Last modified January 23, 2019. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-archdiocese-of-baltimore-apologizes-for-criticizing-covington-boys.

[63] Freiburger, Calvin. “Covington Bishop Apologizes to Pro-life Students: ‘we…allowed ourselves to be bullied?” LifeSiteNews. Last modified January 25, 2019. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-covington-bishop-apologizes-to-pro-life-students-we…allowed-ours.

[64] See Scott, Adams. “Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays.” Periscope. Last modified January 20, 2019. https://www.pscp.tv/ScottAdamsSays/1YpKkVnDERmxj?fbclid=IwAR3_Fy519DuV09Volzl0jKU1qLuE2FqWQQjL27MfHRaRxO_9g0_7yZygeoM&t=48shttps://twitter.com/jamieleecurtis/status/1087187806739357696 .

[65] Jaimie Lee Curtis. “@jaimieleecurtis.” Welcome to Twitter. Last modified January 20, 2019. https://twitter.com/jamieleecurtis/status/1087356278433734656.

[66] Megan McArdle. “The Covington students failed to act like grownups. So did the adults.” Washington Post. Last modified January 22, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/adults-are-doing-the-covington-kids-a-terrible-disservice/2019/01/22/9495ea60-1e95-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3fcc1bf65ddf.

[67] Jessica Napoli. “‘Today’ Interview With Covington Student Nicholas Sandmann Sparks Backlash (VIDEO).” TV Insider. Last modified January 23, 2019. https://www.tvinsider.com/746501/nicholas-sandmann-covington-student-today-show-interview-video/.

[68] Mark Menchaca. “Black Eye: Dan Rather and the Birth of Fake News.” Fox Nation. Last modified January 10, 2019. https://nation.foxnews.com/black-eye-dan-rather-and-the-birth-of-fake-news/.

[69] Dinan, Stephen. “Another Kavanaugh accuser admits to fabricating rape story.” The Washington Times, November 3, 2018. Accessed February 17, 2019. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/3/another-kavanaugh-accuser-admits-fabricating-rape-/.

[70] See CNN. “Chicago Police Investigate ‘Empire’ Star’s Reported Assault: Latest.” CNN International – Breaking News, US News, World News and Video. Last modified January 30, 2019. https://edition.cnn.com/entertainment/live-news/jussie-smollett-attack/index.html, and TMZ. “‘Empire’ Star Jussie Smollett Tells Cops His Attackers Touted MAGA.” TMZ. Last modified January 29, 2019. https://www.tmz.com/2019/01/29/empire-star-jussie-smollett-attacked-hospitalized-homophobic-hate-crime/.

[71] “Police: New Evidence ‘shifted the Trajectory’ of Jussie Smollett Investigation, 2 Brothers Cooperating.” ABC7 Chicago. Last modified February 17, 2019. https://abc7chicago.com/police-new-evidence-shifted-the-trajectory-of-jussie-smollett-investigation-2-brothers-cooperating/5141900/.

[72] Gibbs, Adrienne. “Jessie Smollett Says He Is “Further Victimized” By False Rumors Regarding His Assault.” Forbes. Last modified February 17, 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adriennegibbs/2019/02/17/jussie-smollett-says-he-is-further-victimized-by-false-rumors-regarding-his-assault/#645082c1bcc5.

[73] Chozick, Amy. “Hillary Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers “Deplorables,” and G.O.P. Pounces.” The New York Times. Last modified September 10, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/us/politics/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorables.html.

[74] New York State Assembly. “Bill Search and Legislative Information.” New York State Assembly. Last modified January 22, 2019. https://nyassembly.gov/leg/?default_fld=&leg_video=&bn=S00240&term=2019&Summary=Y&Actions=Y&Committee%26nbspVotes=Y&Floor%26nbspVotes=Y&Memo=Y&Text=Y.

[75] See, for example, Barber, J. M. “Leftwing Extremists and the Unnatural Nature of Government-Mandated Moral Relativism.” CNS News. Last modified May 19, 2015. https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/j-matt-barber/leftwing-extremists-and-unnatural-nature-government-mandated-moral.

[76] Spector, Joseph, and Jon Campbell. “Abortion Laws in New York: How They Changed with the Reproductive Health Act.” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Last modified January 22, 2019. https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/albany/2019/01/22/abortion-laws-new-york-how-they-change-immediately/2643065002/.

[77] Kraychik, Robert. “One World Trade Center Lit Up in Pink to Celebrate NY Abortion Law.” Breitbart. Last modified January 22, 2019. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/01/22/one-world-trade-center-lit-up-in-pink-to-celebrate-ny-abortion-law/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0KkU5XGO32tzJY6vlUUDFGcgwsmYg1rvZ4TnbqahuB0leNnBFDkbymrIE.

[78] Long, Heather. “Conservatives Aren’t Welcome in New York, According to Governor Cuomo.” The Guardian. Last modified January 24, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/24/governor-cuomo-conservatives-not-welcome-new-york.

[79] Ingber, Sasha. “Iowa Bans Most Abortions As Governor Signs ‘Heartbeat’ Bill.” NPR.org. Last modified May 5, 2018. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/05/608738116/iowa-bans-most-abortions-as-governor-signs-heartbeat-bill?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR3hUpr5q81X-q2Ycf6b07POvRmJGjeRnPfIsimiV-X8g85TJM_XM3wuHyE .

[80] Staff Writers. “3 Women in New Congress Introduce Bills to Eliminate Federal Funding of Abortions.” World Tribune: Window on the Real World. Last modified January 11, 2019. https://www.worldtribune.com/3-women-in-new-congress-introduce-bills-to-eliminate-federal-funding-of-abortions/?fbclid=IwAR0-1ZVbj2mqIFm_7jNpOvw_6umzHzhbbv_Boq5fMH0_7mg9t02OvAYzmt

[81] I posted on Facebook the World Tribune story referenced in footnote #77. One comment from a leftwing correspondent: “These are not women, they are Republicans!”

[82] American College of Pediatricians. “When Human Life Begins.” American College of Pediatricians. Last modified April 17, 2017. https://www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements/life-issues/when-human-life-begins.

[83] Radiance Foundation. “Trailblazer: Dr. Mildred Jefferson.” YouTube. February 10, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxefrRccsbI&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR0tZ2oMAq7WF7Mek4T1Z5X4w4pbj0KbRbs7yYKr3QbckYAu66A6gw3spz0.

[84] See, for example, the “fact check” of a speech by Presidential candidate Ben Carson, Clay Wirestone. “Did Margaret Sanger Believe African-Americans “should be eliminated?”.” PolitiFact. Last modified September 30, 2015. https://www.politifact.com/new-hampshire/statements/2015/oct/05/ben-carson/did-margaret-sanger-believe-african-americans-shou/.

[85] Margaret Sanger. “Letter from Margaret Sanger to Dr. C.J. Gamble.” Jean Baker. Last modified December 10, 1939. https://genius.com/Margaret-sanger-letter-from-margaret-sanger-to-dr-cj-gamble-annotated.

[86] “The Truth About Margaret Sanger.” BlackGenocide.org. Last modified 2012. http://www.blackgenocide.org/sanger.html.

[87] “Planned Parenthood.” BlackGenocide.org. Last modified 2018. http://www.blackgenocide.org/planned.html.

 

 

«Previous Article  Home Page  Next Article»

 

 

__________________________________

Lawrence A. Howard, Ph.D is a co-founder of Jigsaw Global Associates and is currently a Professor in the Global Business & Transportation Department at State University of New York (SUNY) Maritime College.

NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast