A grievous sinner, and a great American

Jeff Jacoby is fairly conventional below in what he says about MLK but I cannot agree that such a disgusting creature is a great American. The Dream speech was widely praised but ignored by everyone.  The Left in particular don't share the dream.  They constantly highlight group differences instead of ignoring them and campaign relentlessly for racial preferences.

And even if it was somehow still a good speech, so what?  Even Hitler said one or two wise things in his long career of speechifying.  Here they are:  "Widerstaende sind nicht da, dass man vor ihnen kapituliert, sondern dass man sie bricht" and "Es gibt keinen Sozialismus, der nicht aufgeht im eigenen Volk".  Even a stopped clock is right twice a day."


IT WAS March 3, 1968, and America's most influential pastor, the preeminent leader of the civil rights movement, was in the pulpit of Atlanta's Ebenezer Bapist Church. His theme that Sunday was the neverending tension between good and evil — a tension that exists not merely in the abstract, not just "out somewhere" in the "forces of the universe," but in the heart of every human being.

Including his own.

"You don't need to go out this morning saying that Martin Luther King is a saint. Oh, no," he exhorted the congregation. "I want you to know this morning that I'm a sinner like all of God's children. But I want to be a good man."

He spoke of the constant struggle to resist base impulses. "Every time you set out to be good, there's something pulling on you, telling you to be evil," King preached. "There is a schizophrenia . . . within all of us. And there are times that all of us know somehow that there is a Mr. Hyde and a Dr. Jekyll in us."

MLK's flock that morning didn't know just how sinful their shepherd could be. But the lurid details have long since been made public. Many first came out during the 1975 Church Committee hearings, a Senate investigation into abuses by US intelligence agencies. Those hearings exposed the obsessive quest for dirt on King by the FBI, which was authorized by Attorney General Robert Kennedy to tap the civil rights leader's phones and bug his hotel rooms. The bureau compiled salacious reports on King's sexual activity, peddling some of the information to reporters and politicians.

The FBI's quest to discredit King is one of the most shameful chapters in its history. But there is no denying King's seamier side. He was a compulsive philanderer, who cheated on his wife Coretta with numerous mistresses, including two in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis the night before his assassination. "We all understood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of marriage," King's devoted friend and fellow pastor, Ralph Abernathy, wrote in The Walls Came Tumbling Down, his 1989 memoir. "It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation."

Now this unpleasant topic is back in the news. In a long essay for the British magazine Standpoint, the respected historian David Garrow sheds new light on King's womanizing. Garrow — author of a Pulitzer-winning biography of MLK and a noted authority on the civil rights movement — quotes from newly released FBI surveillance summaries that "expose in graphic detail the intense focus on King's extensive extramarital sexual relationships with dozens of women." The most disturbing describes King's "presence in a Washington hotel room when a friend, a Baptist minister, allegedly raped one of his 'parishioners,' while King 'looked on, laughed, and offered advice.'"

The actual FBI tape of that episode still exists in a National Archives vault, and could presumably confirm or refute the FBI's shocking claim. But all of the MLK transcripts and recordings were put off limits for 50 years by federal court order in 1977, and won't become available to researchers until January 31, 2027. "When they are made fully available," writes Garrow, "a painful historical reckoning concerning King's personal conduct seems inevitable."

A number of Garrow's fellow scholars have squared off over his essay. Some suggest that it needlessly sensationalized allegations that may not be reliable; others argue that Garrow was professionally obliged to incorporate the new material into the record. Of course the debates over King and his legacy will go on, just as the debates over other historical giants go on. The treatment of women looms larger today as an element in assessing reputation than it did a generation ago; in a #MeToo environment, the disclosures of MLK's sexual dissipation are bound to affect the way historians judge him.

What will not change is King's status as one of the towering moral champions of the 20th century.

A flawed man he may have been, as he told his parishioners in Atlanta that day, but MLK was also a figure of almost inconceivable moral valor. He devoted his life to the worthiest goal in American history — the goal of racial fairness and freedom, of an end to oppression based on color, of a nation committed to the God-given equality of all its citizens.

King, the 1964 Nobel laureate for peace and a singular advocate of nonviolent civil disobedience, never wavered from his absolute commitment to peaceful change. He was repeatedly targeted by enemies wielding knives, guns, and dynamite — he had a premonition that he would be assassinated — yet he steadfastly rejected violence. He deployed his extraordinary power as a speaker not to enrage or mock, but to elevate and ennoble. His 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech ranks with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" as some of the most indelible and affecting rhetoric in American history.

Like everyone who has ever lived, MLK had his ignoble side. He should have been a better man, a better husband, a better Christian. For all that, he was one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, and a hero for the ages.

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Disney And Netflix Embrace Corporate Fascism

A few weeks ago, we explained the new phenomenon of corporate totalitarianism where corporations campaign against their customers and betray their shareholders in pursuit of Leftwing political goals. Now, with their announcements that they are boycotting Georgia and Alabama over their adoption of pro-life legislation, it appears that media giants Disney and Netflix have become the latest members of the league of corporate totalitarians.

According to CNN Business Netflix, Disney have said they will join WarnerMedia in a boycott of Georgia if the state's new abortion law takes effect.

The state became a hub for entertainment industry production, in part because of generous tax breaks Georgia offers filmmakers and producers. But the companies are prepared to betray their fiduciary obligations to shareholders and give up those tax incentives and leave the state in pursuit of the Left’s morally bankrupt abortion agenda.

Reporting for CNN Business, Brian Stelter and Shannon Liao claim prominent celebrities and some production companies have vowed to boycott Georgia as a result of the state’s pro-life legislation. But, say Stelter and Liao, the deep pockets of Netflix and Disney “mean the companies have louder voices.”

Citing the concerns of the predominantly liberal-leaning stars and producers who make their comedies, dramas and other productions. Disney CEO Bob Iger told Reuters that the studio will find it "very difficult" to film in Georgia if the new law takes effect. "I think many people who work for us will not want to work there, and we will have to heed their wishes in that regard. Right now, we are watching it very carefully," Iger said.

When the bill was signed into law, report Stelter and Liao, the heads of several production companies said they would not film in the state. They included Christine Vachon, chief executive officer of Killer Films; David Simon, creator of "The Wire" and "The Deuce" who heads Blown Deadline Productions; and Mark Duplass of Duplass Brothers Productions.

Director Reed Morano canceled plans to scout locations in Georgia for a forthcoming Amazon series. Director Ron Howard has also threatened to boycott if the law survives a legal challenge. And actor Kristen Wiig said that a comedy project had pulled out of the state.

Then came Netflix's statement on Tuesday.

"We have many women working on productions in Georgia, whose rights, along with millions of others, will be severely restricted by this law," Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos told Variety according to Stelter and Liao. "It's why we will work with the ACLU and others to fight it in court. Given the legislation has not yet been implemented, we'll continue to film there, while also supporting partners and artists who choose not to." But — here's the but — "should it ever come into effect, we'd rethink our entire investment in Georgia."

Stelter and Liao report AT&T's WarnerMedia, which is the parent company of HBO, TNT, TBS, CNN, and other brands, also said the company may stop making "new productions" in the state if the bill takes effect.

"We operate and produce work in many states and within several countries at any given time and while that doesn't mean we agree with every position taken by a state or a country and their leaders, we do respect due process," WarnerMedia said according to Stelter and Liao’s reporting. "We will watch the situation closely and if the new law holds we will reconsider Georgia as the home to any new productions. As is always the case, we will work closely with our production partners and talent to determine how and where to shoot any given project."

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee tweeted a sentiment shared by many saying:

So Disney thinks most of its customers for its children's movies and toys are women who aborted their babies rather than the ones who have a house full of kids? Disney CEO isn't real smart.

Huckabee’s tweet came as conservatives began to organize a counter-boycott on social media, with Twitter handle @Jennifercc777 tweeting:

Another one!  Ironic on this one as their main target audience is children. Time to Boycott Disney and let them know why!  #BoycottDisney

Of course, the totalitarian impulses of these media companies are somewhat selectively directed – they shoot films in Tunisia where homosexuality is against the law and women are second class citizens,

Bolivia, where abortion is illegal, Croatia, where abortion is illegal after 11 weeks and the UAE, where abortion is illegal and homoosexuality are illegal, but object to protecting the lives of unborn children in Georgia and Alabama.

Then again, they happily take investments from, and distribute their products in, Red China where freedom of expression is harshly suppressed, religious persecution is state policy and abortion is not just legal but often required, so maybe there is a certain totalitarian consistency to their policies.

And pro-life conservatives were quick to nail the hypocrisy.

“Whatever happened to the tolerant left? Is there no room for people who peacefully and respectfully voice their opposition to the loss of nearly one million innocent lives each year?” Focus on the Family president Jim Daly asked in a statement to LifeSiteNews. “When it comes to Netflix’s threat to boycott our friends in Georgia, the company’s tagline – ‘See What’s Next’ – seems to work both ways. To the company’s executives: Go ahead and turn your back on the good, decent and hardworking people of the Peach State – and we’ll see what’s next for a company that relies on the hard earned income of those of us who believe every life is precious and deserving of protection under law.”

“Quite frankly, I see this as more bluster from business just as we saw in North Carolina — all the companies threatening to pull out. Look, bottom line is they're in it for the money," Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said Tuesday on his radio show. “If you still have a subscription to Netflix – I got rid of mine because the content is becoming increasingly objectionable; that's beyond their conduct as a business – contact them."

“I think that Georgians and pro-life advocates canceling their Netflix subscriptions can do Netflix far more harm than Netflix boycotting Georgia,” Iowa pro-family activist Shane Vander Hart wrote. “I don’t care if a company is neutral on an issue I care about, but I do care when they work against me.”

We agree with Jim Daly, Tony Perkins and Shane Vander Hart – it’s time for a counter-boycott of Disney, Netflix and other media companies that work against the moral and religious choices of their customers and betray the interests of their shareholders in pursuit of Leftwing political causes.

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Rev. E.W. Jackson: Gay-Rainbow Flag is Blasphemous, 'Shaking Your Fist in God's Face'


Pastor E.W. Jackson, who is a Marine, the great-grandson of slaves, and a graduate of Harvard Law School, denounced the fact that some U.S. embassies around the world are defying the order of the president to not fly the gay-rainbow flag next to or below the U.S. flag, an act in itself that is blasphemous, he said, and the equivalent of "shaking your fist in God's face."

“Most people don’t know that these State Department folks are defying the president of the United States and flying the rainbow flag," said Rev. Jackson during his June 9 sermon. 

"That’s an accursed thing," he said, in reference to the homosexual flag.  "The rainbow was given to us by God as a sign that He would not destroy the Earth by water again, and you’re going to appropriate that as pride in homosexuality? Are you kidding me? Talk about blasphemy. Talk about arrogance. Talk about boldness. Talk about shaking your fist in God’s face.”

Earlier in his remarks, Rev. Jackson said, “The president of the United States, President Donald J. Trump gave an order and contradicted the order of President Obama. President Obama, eight years ago, gave an order to the State Department that during June, ‘Gay Pride Month,’ you may fly the rainbow flag in every embassy in the world."

"So, the rainbow flag under President Obama flew under the American flag at every embassy in the world, under President Obama," said Jackson.

He continued, “President Trump said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that. You’re only going to fly the American flag at embassies. We’re not going to fly the rainbow flag during June.’"

“Well, guess what?" said Jackson. "You’ve got people in the embassies saying, ‘We don’t care what the president says and flying them [flags] in some places anyway.’"

For June, which homosexuals celebrate as "Gay Pride Month," the State Department ordered that the gay-rainbow flags should not fly alongside or under the U.S. flag on flagpoles at U.S. embassies.

However, the State Department left open the option for homosexual employees to display the rainbow flag outside windows, on walls, in hallways, etcetera.

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Invisible conservative women    

Who’s the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court?

My guess is that most Americans would answer: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She’s so famous now that she is often referred to just by her initials – RBG.

Elevated to the high court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, the left-leaning Justice Ginsburg was the subject of not one, but two movies in 2018 alone. But she isn’t the first female Supreme Court justice. She’s the second. The first doesn’t have a movie named after her. That’s because Sandra Day O'Connor was appointed by a Republican president, Ronald Reagan.

We hear a lot about “the year of the woman,” “the women’s march,” and “the war against women.” But if the major media – the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, CBS and others – were more interested in accuracy than advocacy, it would be that they are promoting “the year of leftist woman” or “the leftist women’s march.” The major media like to pretend that all women think alike and that conservative women are just the exception that proves the rule. But according to a 2018 Pew Research study, about a third of women are Democrats; a little less than a third are Republican; and a little more than a third are independents. So if there are all these conservative women around, how does the media make it seem like they barely exist?

They use three strategies.

The first is Omission: If you don’t see something, you don’t have to deal with it.

Open up a glossy magazine. Every liberal woman is glamorized. Stylishly dressed, beautifully photographed, their personal stories are almost always an inspirational version of Joan of Arc: they have overcome overwhelming obstacles to make the world a more compassionate and tolerant place.

Glamour magazine recognized eleven Democrat women among their 2018 Women of the Year. No Republican made the cut.

First Lady Michelle Obama was on the cover of Vogue three times.

First Lady and former fashion model Melania Trump? So far, not once.

Every now and again, the major media will do a story about a female conservative to “balance things out.” But, let’s be honest, it’s not balance – it’s tokenism.

The second strategy the media uses to diminish conservative women is Mocking: Making fun of a woman’s appearance discounts what she says.

You would think the major media would resist this kind of objectification. But they don’t. Not if the target is a conservative woman. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, and Kellyanne Conway, the first woman to run a winning presidential campaign, are routinely belittled for their hair, their eye makeup, or their weight. Their significant accomplishments, in contrast, are rarely acknowledged.

Why? Because the media doesn’t like their boss. And it treats women who work for him as traitors to their sex.

The third strategy the media uses to demean conservative women is Labeling: Using stereotypes precludes there being a valid reason for conservative women to hold the positions they do.

The major media simply can’t accept that conservatives have serious and important reasons for their beliefs. So they have to come up with answers to explain this seeming anomaly to themselves: these women must be racist or self-hating or just weak-minded.

Here’s how Barbra Streisand put it to the Daily Mail in England: “A lot of women vote the way their husbands vote; they don’t believe enough in their own thoughts.”

Labeling, like the strategies of mocking or omission, is just another way to display contempt and demonize conservative women. Its purpose is to persuade you to not treat those being labeled with respect, to ignore their ideas, and to even avoid associating with them.

Not surprisingly, the vilification that results discourages a lot of conservative-leaning women from running for political office. Or even from speaking up. Who needs that grief?

It takes a strong person to swim against the media tide.

But here’s the thing about swimming against the tide: it makes you stronger. Maybe that’s why Nikki Haley can stand up in the UN and tell the truth. Or why Candace Owens can question the devotion to progressive policies that have so hurt blacks. Or Ayaan Hirsi Ali can take on the cause of truly oppressed women: those living in radical Islamist societies.

We need these voices–and more like them.

That’s why it’s so important to encourage a more respectful, inclusive debate. We should want everyone at the table – both sides of the political spectrum – listening with civility. That way we can be better informed and make better decisions.

So if you hold conservative views, you have a particularly important role to play.

You need to speak out – to your friends, your family, and your co-workers. Let them hear your thinking. And then let them make up their own minds.

The media may pretend you don’t exist; they may even mock or label you. They want to intimidate you into silence. That’s not fair, and that’s not right.

Don’t let them.

I’m Heather Higgins, chairman of Independent Women’s Forum, for Prager University.

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Signs of resistance to the woke gang’s war on reason

Comment from Bernard Lane in Australia

Will we ever wake up from the “woke” activist nightmare? This week, Kmart insisted it was a software glitch in photo printing ­kiosks — not some PC edict — that erased the “offensive” word Jesus from captions. Maybe, but the suspicion of journalists is hardly surprising. The grim reality of offence-activism keeps racing ahead of parody.

In Britain, transgender folk angry at being “misgendered” go running to the bobbies, who may be distracted by an epidemic of knife crime. Two years ago a biology professor at a US liberal arts college, Bret Weinstein, objected on moral grounds to a diversity “day of absence” when whites were told to stay away from campus. Harangued as a “white supremacist”, Weinstein was forced out of his job after the college president pandered to “courageous” students fighting racism with more racism. Some days the outlook seems bleak, and we may miss the filaments of hope. So, at the risk of being a politically incorrect Pollyanna, here’s a handful of reasons for optimism.

Planet Peterson

Had a gutful of anti-social media? On Sunday, Jordan Peterson, the most famous psychologist on the planet, gave a sneak preview of Thinkspot, his new online venue for people to speak their minds. “Once you’re on our platform, we won’t take you down unless we’re ordered to by a US court of law,” he said. “We’re trying to make an anti-censorship platform.” Unlike Twitter, where unwoke posts can get you banned. Ever on the lookout for white supremacists and other malefactors, Twitter last month suspended Ray Blanchard, a psychologist who helped write the diagnostic bible on “gender dysphoria”. He’d posted “hate speech”, namely his clinical opinion that sex-change surgery was less than ideal for children who might grow up to bitterly regret it. This won’t happen on Thinkspot. Peterson’s social media play may shake things up. He has 1.2 million followers on Twitter. Others in the loose grouping known as the intellectual dark web — united by the belief that without free speech and honest debate, society can’t correct its errors — also command big audiences. To join Thinkspot, you’ll have to pay a subscription and forswear mindless blurts of abuse. “If the minimum content (for posts) is 50 words, you’re going to have to put a little thought into it,” Peterson said. “If you’re being a troll, hopefully you’ll be a quasi-witty troll.” Thinkspotters will be able to tag a point of interest in a podcast, attaching their own remarks, audio comments or video clips. “We can really add dialogue to the podcast and YouTube world (with) continual running conversations.” Peterson is also plotting a private, online university to bypass what he sees as a corrupted academy.

Smarter than we look

Entrepreneurs are twigging to the podcast secret: a vast, hitherto unsuspected audience hungry for long-form debate of deadly serious stuff, plus jokes. Likewise the appetite for that crusty old form, the 90-minute public lecture. Peterson’s rather severe self-help book, 12 Rules for Life, has filled halls in 150 cities around the world with more than 300,000 people. And their pay-off is to be told that life is suffering and malevolence made bearable by the meaning that comes with willingly shouldering a heavy burden of responsibility. Peterson: “It’s almost inconceivable the degree to which people are starving for encouragement, how little they get and how little it takes to make a massive difference in their life, to say to them, you are a sovereign individual … and you can put your life together with truth and courage.”

Name your grievance

Believe it or not, dog-humping is good news for the intellect. Canine rape culture, Hitler’s Mein Kampf as an influence on “intersectional feminism”, “fat-exclusionary” bodybuilding, a plan to put white students in “light chains” to teach them about their “privilege” — all this and more went into a booby trap sprung upon activists disguised as journal editors. Even insiders couldn’t tell the difference between hoax gibberish and genuine gibberish. The credit for this expose goes to three left-leaning scholars (two Yanks, one Brit) fed up with repulsive excess in “grievance studies” — critical race theory and kindred identity politics on pseudo-­academic steroids. Helen Pluckrose, the Brit of the trio and a medievalist, will be in Sydney on Tuesday night at the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation to give a lecture against woke rewriting of higher education’s “colonialist” curriculum. She and her co-conspirators in the grievance studies hoax — mathematician James Lindsay and philosopher Peter Boghossian — have been alert for any sign that this academic victimology might fall out of fashion, as happened to the skull bump mumbo jumbo of phrenology. Pluckrose: “(Grievance studies has) got so dominant, it’s overreaching and so much of it now is so ridiculous that even the best intentioned left-liberals, who really want to support identity-based politics, are having to say, oh come on, this is a bit much.” From the US state of Tennessee, Lindsay thinks he can already discern what looks like sanity up-in-arms. “A rapidly increasing number of people are sick of the ultra-woke,” he says. “Most people don’t want to focus on race and sex all the time and be told they’re never doing it right, and they’re sick of what is pretty clearly racist attitudes (against whites).” In Portland, Oregon, Boghossian is less sanguine: “My guess is that things will get a lot worse before they correct.” He’s the only one of the three employed at a university, and may lose his job after being found guilty of an ethics breach for failing to alert journal editors to the hoax. Of course, this would have sabotaged the hoax, sparing universities the spectacle of ­scholarship deranged by activism. But this is a story with staying power. Mike Nayna, a Melbourne-based filmmaker, has documented every move in the grievance studies saga. Coming to a screen near you this year, with any luck.

Bad ideas mean well

Universities are an ideas incubator for society, so their vices matter. Next Friday and Saturday, 300-plus pointy heads will converge on the Sheraton New York Times Square hotel for seemingly yet another academic conference. But this is different because the host, Heterodox Academy, wants universities to choose between truth-seeking and political activism. Diversity is a higher education fetish — more women and people of colour, please — but “viewpoint diversity” is an awkward topic because of progressive groupthink in the social sciences, humanities and university administration. Heterodox Academy has put viewpoint diversity on the agenda, challenging the dishonesty that prevails when noisy activists intimidate the sensible majority. For authorities to preside over this campus culture — of “safe spaces” and “deplatformed” speakers deemed to offend groupthink — is a form of malpractice, according to American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, a prime mover in Heterodox. “To teach students to see society as a zero sum competition between groups is primitive and destructive,” he says. The brutal tribalism of social media has compounded errors of judgment by administrators who ignore the findings of psychology. If you want to make young people resilient, the worst thing possible is to shelter them from different views, to play along when they equate unwelcome words with injury, allow feelings to trump reason and abandon all nuance for moral warfare. It has grown rapidly and the underlying conditions are present throughout the Anglosphere. It’s not just scary, it’s a threat to the very purpose of the university. “We can’t do higher education with no nuance,” says Haidt.

Our friend, dissent

It’s welcome news that next month Haidt will make his first tour to Australia, speaking about “Moral psychology in an Age of Outrage”. It should boost Heterodox membership Down Under, which is small. One graduate affiliate is Monica Koehn, a mature-age student at Western Sydney University with a business background. She is doing her doctorate in evolutionary psychology and mating behaviour, a field where gender politics sometimes denies inconvenient science. Koehn says: “If universities had more viewpoint diversity, I believe people would be more willing and able to listen to evidence from differing points of view.” Like Haidt, her politics happen to be on the left but she opposes the shutting down of debate. “If people don’t have the ability to hear a speaker or understand both sides of a controversial topic, how are they able to make up their own minds?” Another Heterodoxer is Kevin Carrico, now at Monash University in Melbourne but American-born and a seasoned visitor to China, the object of his scholarship. “A considerable amount of my thoughts about viewpoint diversity and orthodoxy very much grew out of my experiences in China, where I was not always particularly impressed by the vitality of political debates,” he says. “Coming back to the US after living in China — I don’t want to be too hyperbolic, but I suppose I did recognise the dangers of a situation in which everyone agrees on something and nobody raises any questions about it.” He, too, regards himself as progressive. “But sometimes in academia, critical engagement is too often simply equated with a far left or Marxist viewpoint, which in my perspective … don’t actually provide us with any real understanding of the sheer complexity of the world.”

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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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