Wednesday, April 11, 2018



The American Cultural Revolution

Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution seems to have become the model for America's Left

Kevin Williamson has been fired by The Atlantic. Williamson is one of the great conservative intellectuals of our times. He has a keen wit and frequently engages in heterodox opinions that make his writing and thinking intriguing. For a decade he wrote at William F. Buckley’s National Review until hired away last week by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic.

The Atlantic fancies itself a place of intellectual diversity where the best writers across ideologies can share their views. But Williamson’s hire drew burning rage from the Left. Williamson’s birth came from an unplanned pregnancy. Instead of aborting him, his birth mother gave him up for adoption. As you might imagine, Williamson has strongly held views on the matter of abortion. A week after hiring him, Jeffrey Goldberg bowed to the left-wing mob and fired Williamson for, in part, how he might make the pro-abortion women in the office feel.

Never mind Williamson’s feelings on abortion and that he could have been aborted himself; the editor took the brave stand of worrying about the hypothetical feelings of pro-abortion women in the office. The Left told us that the purges happening on college campuses were contained to the campus. Yet here we are today with one of the best voices of conservatism fired from a job for his conservative views.

It will only get worse. Just a few years ago, a liberal reporter walked into an Indiana pizza parlor to see if that parlor would cater a same-sex wedding. The owner said he was a Christian so he could not do that. The news set off a wave of antagonism against the pizza parlor, which had to close down for several days. It faced harassment online and in the store for the owner having the audacity to answer a reporter’s hypothetical question.

Elsewhere on the Left, there have been organized attempts to stop police from volunteering to manage traffic in front of large churches on Sunday. The Left has demanded bakers forcibly bake cakes for same-sex marriages or shut down. It has demanded businesses cease business with conservative organizations. It uses friends in the media to target banks and others who work with gun manufacturers and resellers. The peddlers of tolerance are especially good at intolerance, and the people with coexist bumper stickers really want the right to not exist in the public eye.

Just a few years ago in France, Islamic radicals sympathetic to ISIS stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satire magazine, and murdered the employees. Thankfully, in this country, the left-wing mob has not made the leap to taking the lives of those they disagree with. For now, at least, they are content just to ruin lives and businesses.

What we are seeing is an American Culture Revolution, unleashed by a narrow-minded group of leftists who have more in common with Mao than Washington. They have become dominant in the American media and have systematically purged conservative voices from the air and print. Conservative thought is more and more relegated to a ghetto, and should any prominent conservative try to leave the ghetto, the left-wing mob will take action to destroy them. Liberals like Chris Cuomo can have a show on CNN attacking a variety of conjured conservative straw men under the veneer of objective news, while a conservative like Kevin Williamson cannot even write columns in The Atlantic.

The result will increasingly be that fringe ideas grab hold of people’s imagination. The Left has continually reduced the window of what topics are acceptable to those it agrees with. Those ideas, in turn, change constantly depending on what group wakes up feeling oppressed on a particular day. They have exiled credible conservative voices, claiming that the most mainstream and innocuous are as racist and bigoted as the alt-right fringe. And if there is no difference between the two, more and more will gravitate to the truly extreme through emotional appeal. The Left’s insistence on determining who is reasonable on the Right will only help bolster the most unreasonable voices on both sides.

SOURCE





For Yorkshire’s chuffin’ Nazis, ze war is over

It is more than 70 years late but in a remote corner of North Yorkshire the war is finally over.

Every autumn for a number of years a station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway has been transformed into a German-occupied town in wartime France. Re-enactment enthusiasts have strutted around in Nazi uniforms, guns on their shoulders and SS flashes on their helmets as if D-Day had never happened and Hitler’s dream of a Greater Reich was still alive today.

Now organisers of the Railway in Wartime event have decided that all those Nazis are not such a good idea after all. The transformation of the village of Levisham into “Le Visham” has been going on for 12 years as part of a larger Second World War re-enactment weekend attracting thousands of people to the railway, which runs between Pickering and Whitby.

Passengers on steam and diesel trains enjoy a number of different scenarios at stops along the line, including the recreation of a wartime street at Pickering and Home Guard demonstrations staged in Goathland. Grosmont, meanwhile, has had an RAF theme, with a replica Spitfire and plotting room.

In Levisham last year there was a Café du Bois and re-enactment displays, and rather more people in coal-scuttle helmets than would normally be considered healthy. Now the railway, which is a charity, has withdrawn its invitation to the German re-enactors after a spate of negative publicity.

The Yorkshire Post has called the annual event “a weekend of pure nostalgia”. However, it has begun to attract unwelcome headlines. One year a family complained after seeing men in SS uniforms act out the beating up of a civilian. Last year an article in The Northern Echo questioned the need to relive the war.

“We dwell too much, in a celebratory way, on the Second World War,” it said. An article on Mail Online highlighted the controversy of Nazi uniforms in wartime re-enactments.

In a statement, the railway cited its need to protect its family image, saying: “Expectations currently reflected in the recent Equalities Act mean that the charity must avoid causing offence to any section of the public.” It added: “With this in mind, as we plan for this year’s Railway In Wartime event, we had to consider last year’s national media articles.”

Lee Hayward, 44, a history enthusiast and past visitor to the event, said: “This is a disgrace. I have some photos of the ‘German occupied’ Levisham a few years back. My kids were fascinated and educated. It was tastefully done with dedicated, forward-thinking people taking part. To be asked for my papers, in German, when I got off the train was a real palpable shock. The German soldier shouted it at us.

“It immediately transported myself and whole family into what it must have been like living in occupied France and made us grateful of the sacrifice made for the freedoms we currently have.”

Janet Sanderson, a North Yorkshire county councillor whose ward includes Levisham, said: “It began as a bit of fun and now we have people attending who travel from war re-enactment to war re-enactment. To some people it could be offensive, though it wasn’t to begin with. You do get comments from some such as, ‘My father fought in the war, what right does he have to wear that uniform?’ ”

The German forces have not, it must be said, put up much resistance. The re-enactors said they were very saddened by the news that they were not wanted, but agreed to go away and wished everyone good luck for the future.

One re-enactor, Neil Robertson, made clear that they did not sympathise with any Nazi cause. He said: “The re-enactment community and the station volunteers are saddened by the board’s decision but respect it.”

SOURCE






Black citizen's Righteous Rant Defending 2nd Amendment Goes Viral

A North Carolina gun rights advocate gave an impassioned speech defending the Second Amendment earlier this week, and the video of his speech quickly went viral. His passion was especially impressive considering the Greensboro resident isn't even a gun owner.

Mark Robinson's unplanned and unscripted comments came during a city council meeting Tuesday evening, where residents were debating whether a gun show should be canceled in the wake of the Parkland high school massacre. Although he does not currently own a firearm, Robinson passionately supports the rights of others to bear arms.

"I've heard a whole lot of people in here talking tonight about this group and that group, domestic violence and blacks, this minority and that minority," Robinson began. "What I want to know is -- when are you all gonna start standing up for the majority? Here's who the majority is -- I'm the majority! I'm a law-abiding citizen who's never shot anybody. I've never committed a serious crime -- never committed a felony," he added.

"It seems every time we have one of these shootings, nobody wants to put the blame where it goes, which is at the shooter's feet. You want to put it at my feet! You want to turn around an restrict my right -- constitutional right that's spelled out in black and white -- you want to restrict my right to buy a firearm and protect myself from some of the very people you are talking about in here tonight,” Robinson continued.

"It's ridiculous! I don't think Rod Serling could come up with a better script!" he quipped, referring to the creator of the Twilight Zone, the science-fiction, psychological-supernatural horror anthology television series that ran in the early sixties. "It doesn't make any sense!" he exclaimed. “The law-abiding citizens of this community, of other communities, we are the first ones taxed and the last ones considered.”

Robinson's rant is a thing of beauty:



SOURCE






Australian Aboriginal singer trolled on Instagram and called a 'TERRORIST' - for appearing at a Eurovision promotion in the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv

Muslim hate never lets up

Indigenous popstar Jessica Mauboy has been trolled by anti-Israel activists on her Instagram page after announcing she will be performing in Tel Aviv.

The 28-year-old Darwin-raised singer copped a barrage of abuse on social media when she told fans she had just touched down in Israel for a Eurovision promotion.

The abuse was vile, with a Muslim man accusing her of being a 'f***ing terrorist supporter' following the shooting last week of a Palestinian cameraman by Israeli troops on the Gaza border.

Another critic targeted Mauboy over her indigenous heritage on her mother's side, accusing her of ignoring the plight of Palestinians.

'Have you forgotten the treatment of your ancestors? Because that is what you are promoting right there,' one woman wrote on Sunday night.

Mauboy, who first shot to fame as the 2006 Australian Idol runner-up, is representing Australia next month at the Eurovision Song Contest in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon with her song We Got Love.

Ahead of her second turn as Australia's Eurovision flag bearer, she will be performing at Tel Aviv's Rabin Square on Tuesday as part of 'Israel Calling', an annual event where Eurovision contestants gather in Israel for a promotional campaign.

Several critics said she should have followed the lead of New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde, who last year cancelled a concert in Israel following a campaign by Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists.

However, Mauboy's supporters urged her to 'ignore the anti-Israelis' who had been 'brainwashed' by pro-Palestinian activists. 

Anti-Israel activists have ramped up their campaigning after Israeli snipers last week gunned down protesters at the Gaza border, killing Yaser Murtaja, 30, a cameraman for Palestinian Ain Media.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that the journalist wearing a press vest, who died on Saturday, had been flying a drone.

'Anyone who operates drones over Israeli soldiers needs to understand he's putting himself at risk,' he told a forum in Israel covered by the Haaretz newspaper.   

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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