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An Amazing Conundrum

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By Bruce Bialosky

Editors Note: Further confusion from this story not mentioned, is that the mother of the child has said complimentary things about the rapist. Some news sources  have reported that the rapist was her boyfriend and that the mother is illegal as well. It is not uncommon for single mothers, who have a parade of boyfriends in and out of the house, to create a hazard for their children, especially if they were fathered by another man. What is clear though is that a child has been harmed and pro-abortion doctors and journalists have attempted to use the incident to advocate against reasonable legislation that limits “abortion rights”. But they trumped up the story without checking the facts and the President of the United States joined in the farce. However, the story reveals more about the problems with Progressive politics (support for illegal immigration, lionizing single motherhood, a casual attitude towards criminal behavior) than it does a reasonable law in Ohio. That the President is so eager to join in the fray and that he and his staff could not do basic fact-checking tells you more than you want to know. A little girl is being sacrificed on the altar of Progressive politics.

What happens when you have a quandary — a predicament of your own making that you never expected to happen and exposes you to be a fool no matter which way you turn. That happened in the last week when some people latched on to the story of a 10-year-old getting an abortion.

A story spread through the MSM that a 10-year-old rape victim had left Ohio to go to Indiana to have an abortion. Supposedly, a child abuse doctor called a colleague in Indianapolis to facilitate the procedure. This was because of the Dobbs ruling, where Ohio would no longer allow abortions after six weeks. The girl was now pregnant for six weeks and three days.

The Indianapolis Star published the story with no verification and there was no reported rape that anyone could find. Yet, the story spread because it fit an agenda. It spread all the way to President Biden. Biden cited the story last week after signing an executive order on abortion access, saying the 10-year-old “was forced to travel out of state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life.” Now it was a “lifesaving” procedure as the story took on greater urgency.

While the tale was tossed around without proof, a major component of the matter was being left out. Everyone appeared to forget A 10-YEAR-OLD WAS RAPED. Not exactly an inconsequential fact unless you are fixated on abortion. There was seemingly no concern for the fact there had been a crime of major proportions committed. Rape used to be a major concern for women concerned about women’s health. That became secondary when the story shifted to salaciousness due to the “dangers” of the new abortion environment, if not altogether incidental.

Women’s health. Wasn’t this all about women’s health? Where was the discussion of the health of this 10-year-old except for she supposedly had to cross state lines to obtain the abortion? What about her mental health after having forced sex with a man when she is still an adolescent?

But did she have to go to Indiana? Since when does anyone know the exact day that someone became pregnant? Yet, the referring doctor knew the victim was three days past the new six-week limit in Ohio. No one questioned that. A 10-year-old remembered the exact dates of the multiple rapes that occurred when reporting them weeks after the events. No one questioned the agenda of the doctor who declared the victim not six weeks pregnant, but six weeks and three days right after the Dobbs ruling came down and the six-week limit was imposed in Ohio.

Apparently, the referring doctor did not check the law in Ohio. Maybe she wanted to make this poor child a cause celebre? Ohio Attorney General David Yost stated that abortion would have been legal in the state of Ohio. Yost (who is a supporter of the ban after six weeks) made clear there are exceptions, and this would clearly have been one.

Then there was another matter here. The Indianapolis doctor, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, completely ignored HIPAA laws. You know, those laws protecting medical information from being shared without patient approval. The ones that stop you from getting info about your family members. Dr. Bernard has been “disciplined” for the violation (whatever that means) because we will never find out what happened to her. Let me assure you it was window dressing because she became a heroine for spreading the story.

Then the story takes another turn and creates another conundrum for all those who were using the incident for abortion politics. After a period of doubt about the rape, because the incident had not been reported to the state as required (there was no rape kit submitted or DNA evidence), matters became much clearer. There was an arrest for the rape.

27-year-old Gershon Fuentes, an illegal alien from Guatemala, not only was arrested; he confessed to the rape. Some must be confused about what should be done. He raped a young girl, but he is an illegal alien who obviously has challenges of his own. Should he have to face these criminal charges? And why did he have bail set at all let alone at $2 million? Another conundrum.

Now the city of Columbus and the state of Ohio have a dilemma. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have placed a detainer on Fuentes. That means they are going to return him to Guatemala. That means he will get off for this heinous crime. The question then becomes, how long will it be until he sneaks back into our country?

There should be no conundrum regarding him. He should not be given to those people. He should be sentenced. The appropriate sentence for someone who raped a 10-year-old in my book would be to hang him from his scrotum. That is the best I can express here. If we did more of that there would be fewer of these stories. Short of that, they should stuff him in a prison in the general population (gen pop) and let his fellow inmates know about what he did.

It is really challenging when you are making choices between the issue of abortion and other minor matters like illegal aliens, HIPAA violations, and most importantly, rape. It must be such a conundrum being an abortion warrior.

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Do Women Really Have Fewer Rights Than an Uzi?

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By Dr. Julius Decker

The recent United States Supreme Court decisions in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. resulted in a leftist tidal wave of histrionic personality disorder coupled with (mostly violent) demonstrations. An aristocracy of celebrities and opinion pundits all appear to be auditioning daily for roles in a reality television show that could be named “Biggest Leftist Virtue Signalers.” Their level of shallow knowledge and hyperventilating rhetoric would make a junior high school debating club blush. Not to be outdone, MSNBC’s own court jester Elie Mystal proved to the world that his bachelor’s and law degrees from Harvard University were wasted on him. Appearing on Joy Reid’s ReidOut television show, Mr. Mystal proclaimed that “if you want rights in this country under this conservative Supreme Court, you’d better be a cis hetero white man or an Uzi. Because those are the two things that this court believes have rights.” (https://tinyurl.com/4wjwt22k). Alan Dershowitz, Mr. Mystal’s professor at Harvard Law School, should make Mr. Mystal retake his Constitutional Law class.

To be informed citizens, Americans must first understand what rights mean. It is not necessary, though, for them to read Prof. Ronald Dworkin’s masterpieces, Taking Rights Seriously (1977) and Law’s Empire (1986). Stated succinctly, a right is a prohibition against a government from doing something to a person.

Rights are fundamental in a republic. It must be recalled that the United States is a constitutional republic and not a democracy, which is an important distinction. In a democracy, there are no individual rights. The majority in a democracy always wins because the utilitarian benefit to the many always outweighs the interests of the few or the individual. It is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for dinner, and the lamb always loses. In contrast, the lamb’s right to keep its own life in a republic always prevails over the wolves’ interest in lamb chops.

Rights are not gifts to the people from their earthly monarchs or governments. They belong to the people by natural law, given to them by God or by Mother Nature, by virtue of being human beings. Many of these natural rights are described in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution, whereas the remainder are alluded to in the Ninth Amendment. Rights are things that one already has that government must not take away without due process of law. A girl does not have a right to a pony that the government must provide to her at the taxpayers’ expense. But if she already owns a pony, she has a right not to have the government take it away from her.

Another point to remember is that rights are restraints and prohibitions only against the powers of governmental bodies, not against other individuals or groups. A child does not have an Eighth Amendment right against “cruel and unusual punishment” to forbid his parents from sending him to his room. Neither does a teenager have a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or a Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel when dealing with her parents. The First Amendment does not require me, as a private person, to provide people with statist and collectivist viewpoints with a forum in my house for spouting their absurd beliefs. Satanists may have a First Amendment right to assemble and practice their religion, but not under my own roof. But when predatory people victimize other people’s lives, liberties, and properties, these are not constitutional violations, but crimes, as defined by the laws of the states where they live.

So, is Mr. Mystal right that women and minorities really have fewer rights than an Uzi? Not by a long shot. Women and minorities are human beings and have natural and constitutional rights against governments. Uzis are inanimate objects that belong to people, and, despite aspirational Disney movies to the contrary, these inanimate objects have no consciousness, willpower, independent locomotion, thinking faculties, or any rights whatsoever. Rather, the Second Amendment recognizes the natural right of American citizens to (use weapons to) defend themselves, their families, their neighbors, and their nation against deadly attacks from foreign enemies, domestic criminals, and their governments, should the latter be ruled by tyrants like English King George III.

Contrary to Mr. Mystal, the Second Amendment does not discriminate between cis hetero-white males and other Americans. The Second Amendment prohibits the federal government and the various states from preventing human beings of all races, national origins, religious beliefs, genders, and sexual orientations from defending themselves. The irony is that the vast majority of the gun control laws relied upon by the dissenting justices in Bruen as precedents to disarm Americans were originally enacted by southern states in the aftermath of the Civil War to disarm the newly-freed African-American slaves to make them easy prey for the Ku Klux Klan. Contemporary leftists want to use the same post Civil War laws as stepping stones for enacting new gun control laws and even repeal outright the Second Amendment so that there can be no armed resistance to governments implementing radical social engineering diktats demanded by virtue-signaling celebrities, myopic academicians, and purple-haired shrieking activists with histrionic personality disorders.

There is a big distinction and difference between the right to keep and bear arms and abortion. The Supreme Court ruled in Bruen in favor of American citizens and against the State of New York because the right to keep and bear arms is a clear constitutional right that is explicitly written in the Bill of Rights. In contrast, the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs in favor of the State of Mississippi because abortion is not mentioned at all in the Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court reversed its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that discovered an unwritten right to an abortion because the Bill of Rights is completely silent on this issue, and, therefore, the Tenth Amendment permits each state to regulate it as it sees fit.

The left hates both Bruen and Dobbs because it lusts for ultimate government power to regulate every aspect of life, preferably at the federal level, uniformly throughout the United States (next stop, the world under the U.N.), regardless of what the Constitution actually states. If the left likes something like abortion, it believes federal law should mandate and fund it with federal taxes. If the left hates something like firearms in the hands of the so-called bitter people who cling to guns or religion, then it believes that federal law should outlaw it and federal agencies should enforce the prohibitions, again with funding through federal taxes. But, if federal law is unavailable, the left will be temporarily mollified with state laws prohibiting firearms—provided the states are enlightened coastal states like New York and California, not flyover states populated by bitter clingers and deplorables—and funded by federal taxes funneled to states as block grants. Supreme Court decisions that reduce federal powers by recognizing individual rights or allowing states to regulate themselves under the Tenth Amendment are anathema to the left, which explains leftist panic theater and mass histrionics.

TAKE ACTION

Are you concerned about election integrity? What informed United States citizen isn’t? Did the 2020 national election raise many questions about election integrity? Are you concerned about the current cycle of primaries and then the general election in November? No doubt the answer for The Prickly Pear readers is YES.

Click below for a message from Tony Sanchez, the RNC Arizona Election Integrity Director to sign up for the opportunity to become an official Poll Observer for the 8/2 AZ Primary and the 11/8 General Election in your county of residence. We need many, many good citizens to do this – get involved now and help make the difference for clean and honest elections.

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LGBT Ideology Über Alles

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By Rod Dreher

A civilization that destroys the family and the gender binary destroys itself.

Well, here goes another try to post under the new system. I hope it works. This is going to take some getting used to. I’m hearing from some of you concerned about the commenting system — not sure how it works, whether or not you have to subscribe to the magazine to be able to comment, and so forth. I’m trying to get answers for you, but it was my understanding that you won’t have to subscribe, but you will have to register. If that turns out to be the case, then I think that will be a good system, because it will probably mean that I don’t have to moderate the comments — that is, they can go up as soon as you post them. I’ve been passing along your questions to the Mothership in Washington. They’re overwhelmed, trying to get the new system implemented, working out bugs, and so forth, so we appreciate your patience.

Earlier today, I posted this to Twitter:

Here is the text from the Times:

I stand by what I said: stop living like a rutting animal, and maybe you won’t get monkeypox, you weirdo. Well, someone in Germany complained to Twitter about this tweet of mine, and under German law, Twitter has to let me know. Twitter reviewed my tweet and said it didn’t break any rules, so it stands.

I suppose to some people, it’s bigotry to say you should avoid having multiple sexual encounters with random strangers if you want to avoid catching a communicable disease. If we had a sane public health system, they would close the bathhouses. But we don’t, so they won’t. And we will all be expected to pretend that we don’t see what is right in front of our noses, because promiscuity is a sacred ritual among Americans, especially gay male Americans.

Meanwhile, some states and hospital systems are working to allow minor children to direct their own gender transition without parental consent or knowledge. This is not paranoia; it’s really happening:  

In Washington, children as young as 13 are now allowed to undergo gender reassignment surgery and other questionable medical treatments without parental consent.

More:

New York has hopped on the bandwagon of removing parents from the treatment room as well. New York-Presbyterian recently sent out emails to their patients explaining that accounts for 12-17-year-olds must be updated to reflect the adolescent’s personal email address as the primary contact as New York State law allows children “to keep their sensitive medical information private and to consent to some of their own medical treatment.”

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The Case Against Drafting Women Into War

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By Ellie Fromm

Women are not men, and vice versa.

Men and women are different physically, emotionally, and mentally. Their strengths and weaknesses were made to complement each other, not to be interchangeable.

Generally, women are generally are of less height, weigh less than men, and also possess less muscle mass.  Men are stronger than their female counterparts because of basic human biology. This does not in any way imply that women are weak because, in fact, they are not. Women conceive and  bring life onto this earth – a biologic fact and strength that men will never be able to claim (no matter how hard they try).  Men and women are born with different characteristics and qualities and because of innate physical, mental, and emotional qualities, men are better suited for combat war than women.

In addition to being physically demanding and brutal, war is also psychologically extremely threatening. As historical and social trends illustrate, men are better equipped to handle the trauma of war due to the differential mentalities seen in men and women.

Women are natural caregivers and multitaskers due to how their brains operate. In a sense, the woman’s brain is like a string, with everything somehow connected. This is why, especially in conversations, women start on one topic and end their thought on something completely different. To her, they are connected. All aspects of her life are incorporated into her day. She is everywhere at once, doing everything.

Meanwhile, a man’s brain seems like many little boxes. In a way, everything is compartmentalized, so wherever he is, he is completely there. Whatever men are focused on, or whatever box they are presently in, they tend to be highly focused on. While women’s brains are built for multitasking, men’s brains are built for compartmentalizing.

Men and women have different mentalities too, and this is all too apparent in sports. Men and women’s soccer, for example, looks completely different, as does every other male and female sport. Men’s soccer is faster and more aggressive, and there is a lot more dribbling. Meanwhile, women’s soccer is slower and the team passes the ball a majority of the time.

Don’t think, just do. This line is used frequently in military-based movies. While these are movies, and movies are not the reality, there is some truth to it. Military is not about thinking and analyzing  your combat actions but rather about executing directives and orders most effectively as possible. It is about going all in, with absolutely nothing else on a soldier’s mind other than the task at hand – being 110% committed to the task and mission.

For time immemorial, war is war. The purpose of war is to kill, and whoever does so most effectively wins. We are not speaking of sending America’s daughters to be nurses or hold office positions, but sending them to the battlefield, at the very heart of the battle, with bullets flying, artillery exploding and brutal death occurring often of close companions and friends. Not only sending them into hell, but forcing them into a place and circumstance that does not highlight their strengths and amplifies their differences with men. Through this misguided and politically driven policy, America’s daughters would be forced to become more masculine and man-like. While these are good qualities for men, it is not the same for women.

Men also have a natural biological inclination to protect, whereas women are more characteristically caregiving. Regardless of what those on Capitol Hill preach, there are natural differences between men and women, and those differences are especially evident in sports and on the battlefield.  On the battlefield, men will have the natural inclination to protect the women with them. Men in combat must be singularly focused on the mission to kill the enemy and protect their country, not the women alongside them.

Human nature does not change, and stating this is not misogynistic. Men protecting, or wanting to protect women is neither misogynistic nor patriarchal. It is simply human nature, and I believe our human nature, and the differences of men and women’s nature, derives from both our primitive nature and God’s creation of human beings. While our technologies and way of life may change, human nature does not.

Some RINOs cheer drafting women, claiming that if feminists really want equality, they now have it. They think this is a self-own, or a “gotcha!” moment. It is not. When lives are mortally threatening and taken in real combat and conflict, it is not the place to employ cheap political. The RINOs know this is wrong, but they continue to go along with the left’s self-destruction of the country. Will they still be laughing if their daughters, granddaughters, and nieces are drafted and thrown into the hell of real combat?

Senator Josh Hawley summed up his thoughts on this topic by tweeting “It’s one thing to allow American women to choose this service, but it’s quite another to force it upon our daughters, sisters, and wives”.

America needs to once again acknowledge that men and women are genetically and biologically different. Male and female sexes are not interchangeable, and we were made for different purposes. Men and women have different strengths and weaknesses which complement each other when used to their full potential.

For most women, the battlefield does not highlight their strengths and they feel inept to handle the demands of a combat involved military. As stated above, women have a natural inclination to caregiving and nurturing, which is why a majority of nurses and teachers are women. Women and men are both strong in their own ways. Pretending men and women are the same, and easily interchangeable, is entertaining an illusion and one that the nation can’t afford in terms of its military prowess, lethality and readiness in a dangerous world.

*****

Ellie Fromm is currently serving at The Prickly Pear as a Journalism Intern. Ms. Fromm is entering her senior year in high school and has been home schooled since preschool.

TAKE ACTION

Are you concerned about election integrity? What informed United States citizen isn’t? Did the 2020 national election raise many questions about election integrity? Are you concerned about the current cycle of primaries and then the general election in November? No doubt the answer for The Prickly Pear readers is YES.

Click below for a message from Tony Sanchez, the RNC Arizona Election Integrity Director to sign up for the opportunity to become an official Poll Observer for the 8/2 AZ Primary and the 11/8 General Election in your county of residence. We need many, many good citizens to do this – get involved now and help make the difference for clean and honest elections.

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Look How Even Democrat Opinion Shifts On Abortion Laws When Polls Stop Using Leftist Framing

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By Beth Whitehead

A new abortion poll from the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) out Wednesday illuminates how media and abortion activists are able to skew public opinion by keeping people in the dark about the practice. Once Americans understand the grisly details and what Roe v. Wade really entailed, their opinions change dramatically.

For instance, while the pro-abortion media routinely tout Roe as majority-supported, more than half of the poll respondents opposed Roe v. Wade once they learned it allowed for late-term abortions.

Fifty-three percent said they support, versus 31 percent who opposed, Roe v. Wade when it was presented to them as the keystone to recognizing abortion as a so-called “constitutional right,” which is the left’s framing of the issue. But when participants learned Roe allowed for late-term abortions, when unborn babies can feel pain, those numbers reversed, and then: 56 percent said they opposed Roe v. Wade, and only 28 percent supported it.

The trend of participants switching positions once they knew more facts continued throughout the poll. When asked if they supported or opposed late-term abortions, seventy-four percent of Republicans opposed compared to only 36 percent of Democrats. Almost half the Democrats surveyed said they support late-term abortions.

However, once participants were asked if a fetus counts as a human life when it has a heartbeat at six weeks, begins to move its eyes at 12 weeks, or can feel pain at 14 weeks, the Democrat position on late-term abortion shifted. Fifty-nine percent of respondents, including 49 percent of Democrats, now said they support abortion bans if there is an indication of life.

Sixty-eight percent of participants thought a fetus is a human life once it has a heartbeat at six weeks. And once they were reminded a fetus has a unique DNA blueprint as soon as sperm meets egg, a whopping 66 percent said a fetus is human life at conception. After answering questions about the humanity of unborn children, 55 percent of respondents said abortions should be prohibited between 0 and 6 weeks gestation.

It’s clear to see how public opinion changes where knowledge about human life and development increases, but left-wing activists and media have a vested interest in hiding the cruel realities of abortion from Americans. After all, the abortion lobby, led by the likes of Planned Parenthood, capitalizes on this ignorance. They have fought ultrasound requirements for years to keep women from seeing the undeniable baby boys or girls growing in their wombs and are now promoting the chemical abortion pill as a safe, easy way to simply undo a pregnancy, despite the grave danger it poses to women, another fact the poll highlighted.

“These polls are really important as they show what people think once they’ve been educated,” AAPLOG CEO-elect Dr. Christina Francis, a board-certified OB/GYN, said in a press meeting on Wednesday.

When it comes to abortion, Americans’ ignorance is the left’s bliss.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you concerned about election integrity? What informed United States citizen isn’t? Did the 2020 national election raise many questions about election integrity? Are you concerned about the current cycle of primaries and then the general election in November? No doubt the answer for The Prickly Pear readers is YES.

Click below for a message from Tony Sanchez, the RNC Arizona Election Integrity Director to sign up for the opportunity to become an official Poll Observer for the 8/2 AZ Primary and the 11/8 General Election in your county of residence. We need many, many good citizens to do this – get involved now and help make the difference for clean and honest elections.

Recovering the Path to Manhood

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By Rachel Lu

It may have been the worst Super Bowl commercial ever. Chelsea Handler and Sarah Silverman are competing with one another, trying to use their cell phones in preposterous places. Silverman, still talking to Handler, is delivering a baby in an underground bunker. Handing the baby to the mother, she glances down and sees the sex. “Sorry!” she tells the parents. “It’s a boy.”

I flinched. I’ve never heard these words in the delivery room, but the sentiment is familiar. I’ve made the “it’s a boy” announcement five times; some people just can’t resist offering their condolences. This poor woman! Will she ever “get her girl”? They probably had a mental picture of me buried in fire trucks and plastic soldiers, while baseballs crashed through my windows.

That’s not really so far wrong, but I don’t mind. Little girls are delightful, but I love my band of brothers. I am very conscious of the tremendous honor and obligation of being, at least for the present, the defining female presence in the lives of six males. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. My eldest sons are just reaching their teens. Already our conversations are vastly more interesting than most of the classroom discussions I remember from my days as a college professor. All five of them were born within nine years, so they’re truly growing up together, and their schoolteachers comment on what a tight-knit bunch they are. Some days, when I’m writing or working on dinner, I’ll break off for a few minutes, and step out on the back deck. The boys might be throwing a football, or fishing off our dock. They might just be sitting around laughing at one another’s dumb jokes. Who could witness that, and feel sorry? Life doesn’t get much richer.

I regret nothing, but I do fear. Young men as a group are struggling mightily in our day and age. Silverman’s tasteless joke has a frighteningly clear underlying logic. Parents who want their kids to make them proud—and who doesn’t?—are statistically better off having daughters. A daughter is likelier to become her school’s valedictorian. A son is likelier to drop out of school or get arrested. She is likelier to get into and through a good college, to find decent employment, and to live a stable life. He’s likelier to become addicted to drugs or alcohol, and six times likelier to commit suicide. I feel indignant when I read how adoption agencies are struggling to place boys, even in infancy. But I understand it. Boys may break your heart. And I have five.

This is why I read the “boy books”: literature discussing the struggles of boys. I need to understand this as fully as possible. I have a lot of “boy lit” on my shelf, but here I will discuss five significant figures in this conversation: Warren Farrell, Leonard Sax, Anthony Esolen, Jordan Peterson, and Brad Miner. Among these, only Peterson has not written an entire book specifically on the subject of manhood. I will mention him nevertheless, because his influence with young men is particularly noteworthy. 

I disagree with all of these writers at certain points, and in some cases the disagreements are serious. Nevertheless, I look on them all with a certain gratitude. They care. To me, they all feel like allies in what has become my primary life’s work: the task of raising boys into good men.

Farrell and Sax Raise the Alarm

For a quick read on the boy problem, Warren Farrell and Leonard Sax make a great pairing. Sax is a psychologist and family physician, who has written three books on gender and youth development. Boys Adrift is his latest. Farrell is harder to classify. In broad terms, it may be most helpful to describe him as a true-believing second-wave feminist (once deeply involved with the National Organization for Women) who ended up developing a masculinist counterpart to his 1970s feminism. He isn’t any sort of traditionalist; indeed, he clearly wants to dismantle traditional masculine ideals in at least some key ways. Still, he has been thinking about boys and men for several decades now, and I find his arguments helpfully challenging, even when I think he’s wrong. The Boy Crisis applies some of his long-developed thoughts on manhood to developmental issues for boys.

Sax and Farrell are interesting both for their similarities and for their differences. As social scientists, they both present a lot of data, giving rise to shared concern about boys’ mediocre performances in school. Worldwide, boys are falling behind girls, especially in reading. Their test scores are lower, and they are less likely to enroll in universities. The structure of modern schools seems uncongenial to boys’ developmental needs.

Sax and Farrell agree as well that fatherlessness is a huge problem in our time, in general, but especially for boys. The statistics on this subject are harrowing. Fatherless boys fare worse in virtually every measurable way. Of course, when that cycle of family breakdown is perpetuated, that means another generation of at-risk kids, as well as stressed-out single moms, and lower social productivity. 

Finally, both Sax and Farrell have many interesting things to say about the masculine loss of purpose. They understand that many men today are suffering from a kind of existential crisis. Men aren’t sure what role they are meant to play within society at large. Once, able-bodied men were genuinely necessary to keep their families and communities alive. Today, robots do much of our heavy lifting, and our meat mostly comes from factories, not forests. We do still need strong men to do a number of jobs, some of which are desperately seeking eligible workers. If a man wants employment, it’s still very possible to leverage bulging biceps, in more ways than one. Physical strength is no longer essential to the family’s survival though, nor does it command tremendous earning power. In market terms, manly muscle has lost its edge.

From here, Sax and Farrell diverge. Sax focuses on cultural phenomena that undermine discipline for boys: video games, pornography, and over-indulgent parenting. His book feels like the adolescent prequel to Nicolas Eberstadt’s Men Without Work, and recommends, stricter rules, fewer indulgences, and less coddling. Farrell’s focus is quite different. In broad terms, he thinks that boys’ social and emotional development has been stunted by maladaptive masculine norms, which send boys charging off on quixotic manhood quests while the girls are becoming prudent, socially savvy, and self-aware. Farrell is deeply suspicious of cultural messaging that teaches boys to aspire to heroic self-sacrifice. In his view, this understanding of manhood makes it hard for boys to navigate the complexities of interpersonal relationships, and the nuances of our complex workforce. They are incentivized to do dangerous and self-destructive things, instead of developing the workaday healthy habits that so often make the difference between success and failure in modern life. Farrell’s book is full of “conversation starters” for parents; he wants us to plumb the depths of our sons’ social and emotional lives. His larger goal is to give men the same range of options and possibilities in life that feminists have (in his view, rightly) demanded for women, moving them towards self-actualization and a comfortable life.

It can be hard for parents to make sense of seemingly contradictory advice, but in fact both men make some good points. Sax is certainly right to call our attention to distractions and cultural trends that undermine discipline, although I myself haven’t always had success with the authoritarian disciplinary approaches that Sax recommends. Sometimes a fruitful conversation is worth a thousand rules. Here, Farrell’s insights can actually be genuinely helpful, especially because we do live in a world in which social polish, emotional self-awareness, and prudent life skills are critically important for adults. If a young man is too socially inept to be presentable in a job interview, or too emotionally closed to cultivate intimacy with a wife, then he may end up bankrupt and alone.

Having said that, I think Farrell underestimates the extent to which boys are naturally attracted to heroism, honorable self-sacrifice, and the stiff upper lip. I don’t think it’s wise to jettison these chivalric impulses. If young men are indeed suffering from a loss of purpose, financial planners and radio shrinks may not be the ministers they need. 

Anthony Esolen Waxes Nostalgic

Anthony Esolen would agree with this point. His newest book, No Apologies: How Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men seeks “to return to men a sense of their worth as men, and to give to boys the noble aim of manliness, which is their due by right.”

Esolen wants to return men to their traditional role, as society’s protectors, providers, and citizens. He doesn’t see technology, market forces, or women’s education as significant factors in men’s changing social roles. Rather, he thinks men have been sabotaged by resentful feminists and equality-obsessed social planners.

Esolen proposes two remedies. First, we should renew our appreciation of men’s unique potentialities. Second, we should embrace the natural complementarity between men and women. The first will keep the lights on in society at large; the second will keep romance sweet and domestic life stable.  

Esolen’s ode to manhood is stirring, and at times quite beautiful. Is it credible, though? An economist would have some quibbles, and the historical narratives are a bit rose-tinted at points. But the biggest problem with No Apologies is its dependence on a false and degraded view of womanhood. Esolen loves the idea that men and women complement one another, but in his division of the sexes, virtue is mainly for the vir.

He obviously anticipates objections on this point, because he warns readers in his introduction that even if he appears to be disparaging women, in reality he is “doing nothing of the sort.” “Every strength in one respect,” he tells us, “is a shortcoming in another respect.”

I want my sons to be man enough to handle real womanly excellences as they find them, with grace and gratitude. I would like them to aspire as well to friendship with women, and especially their future wives.

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Post-Roe, Left Suddenly Remembers What a Woman Is

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By Douglas Blair

The radical left is in disarray after the Supreme Court decided [last] Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, ruling that there was no constitutional right to an abortion.

Angry protesters filled the streets and stormed the conservative justices’ residential neighborhoods, hellbent on getting so-called abortion rights back for … women?

That can’t be right.

The radical left reminds us daily that women aren’t the only people who can get pregnant. Biological women who say they’re “men” can get pregnant, they say, as can those who say they’re “nonbinary.” 

And besides, biological men can be women, too, these days.

But as Roe fell, the sea of protest signs outside the court referred not to “birthing people” or “people who menstruate,” but instead to women, losing their rights, or politicians trying to control women’s bodies.  

Gone were the endless lectures about the dozens of genders the left makes up. Instead, biological reality set in.

That would be the same biological reality that had, up until recently, been ignored by those situated in the left’s highest echelons.

Earlier in June, before Roe was overturned, Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, said she had a responsibility to all “menstruating people in Michigan” during a Zoom event.

In May 2021, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., tweeted, “Every day, black birthing people and our babies die because our doctors don’t believe our pain,” alongside a video of her testimony, in which she repeated the phrase “birthing person.”

And infamously, during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing to become a Supreme Court justice, federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson declined to define what a woman is. “I’m not a biologist,” she insisted, in response to a question from Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.

Women get pregnant, give birth, and tragically, get abortions. And the overturning of Roe represented a very real change in how women could deal with pregnancies. 

That’s not to say there weren’t true believers trying to spread the gospel of gender ideology around the court.  But many protesters recognize that women alone have the capacity to get pregnant. And they’ve adapted their messaging to reflect that truth.

That leads to an obvious question: Why did it take Roe getting overturned for the left to acknowledge the obvious reality that women and men are different?  

The answer is that it didn’t. The left didn’t suddenly wake up and realize they had been living a lie. They’ve known the whole time and cynically used gender ideology as a tool to club their political opposition and to virtue-signal.

While there are those far-out ideologues who think there is legitimately zero difference between a Lia Thomas-type “woman” and a real woman, far more likely is that these types of people are a disproportionally powerful minority that drives the narrative for the rest of the radical left.

Whether through fear or empathy, those left of center felt obligated to play into the “trans women are women” fantasy. But now that the stakes have been raised so sharply, the polite veneer of tolerance for this nonsense has faded away.

The left knows that men and women are different, and realizes the average American is aware of that fact, too. How can the left fight for women’s rights if they can’t even define what a woman is?

The demise of Roe also provides a vantage point to strike a coup de grace against gender ideology.

While conservatives must continue to cultivate a culture of life across the country, it’s also worth using some of our resources to buttress the reality that only women can get pregnant.

It’s a tough needle to thread, and we can’t give the left too much leeway to say abortion is exclusively a women’s issue.

The fathers whose children are slaughtered at Planned Parenthood clinics and lose out on their sons who are never born mean that, yes, men are affected by abortion, too.

But obviously, abortion impacts women more than men. And that’s why this is such a terrific opportunity. The left is stuck both ways.  

Conservatives can point to the left’s inability to accurately define what a woman is as proof they’re out of touch with the American people—not just on abortion, but on reality as well.

By forcing the left to acknowledge there are fundamental differences between the sexes on the issue of abortion, the stranglehold gender ideology has on America in other spheres also grows weaker.

Conservatives can follow up our monumental victory for life with a one-two punch on the weird gender stuff.

The left is losing ground every day. With each loss, they hopefully will be forced to move back toward normalcy.

If we must keep fighting the left, I’d rather fight a left that at least knows what a woman is.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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Killing Is Not OK

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By Neland Nobel

The recent Supreme Court decision to return abortion to the political realm, to be decided by the States and elected representatives, was a victory for the law and the Constitution. But this by no means supposes that those that hold human life to be valuable have won the argument. They will have to prevail in each of the 50 states and likely will fail in some, and win in others. For the Left, this has been a bruising experience. Although they have been losing in the court of public opinion for some time, the Left championed the idea that the way to advance their agenda was by non-democratic means, especially using unelected judges. Having failed that, they are getting hysterical and in some cases, their true motive and ideas are revealing themselves.

As such, you can expect them to re-tool some of their arguments again. You know, the baby is not really alive, is not human, it is part of the mother, and therefore part of the control one wishes to have of one’s body.

But as mentioned previously, those arguments were failing for some time to convince the public and it is likely most states will place some kind of control on abortion, especially after science has indicated viability at a much younger age than previously thought.

So, not surprisingly, we will likely see some new arguments develop, that perhaps reveal more about the Left’s agenda, and their view of life generally.

A good example is the feminist writer, Sophie Lewis, writing for the reliably left-wing The Nation Magazine. We don’t read the Nation very often, but when we do, it is always a deeply disturbing experience. Here are a few choice excerpts:

“There is something infantilizing about denying the fact that embryos die when we scrape them out of the bodies of which they are a part. It sentimentalizes pregnant or potentially pregnant humans as fundamentally nonviolent creatures to imply that we can’t handle the truth about what we are up to when we opt out. And it patronizes abortion-getters to insist that we are only making a health care choice, rather than (also) extinguishing a future child. In my view, recognizing that gestating manufactures a proto-person requires acknowledging that abortion kills a proto-person. A baby is completely dependent on human care in order to stay alive, but its needs could be filled by any person—whereas a fetus, a proto-person, is ineluctably dependent on specific person.”

As we interpret this, she is being frank with her readers. Quit kidding yourself. You are not making just a “healthcare” choice, you are killing a baby, or in her words, ” a proto-person.” Further, the baby takes control of certain biological functions of the mother, and therefore, it is not really a part of the mother’s body but has a body of its own that feeds off the mother. In a sense, she disposes quickly of two arguments often repeated robotically by abortion enthusiasts that attempt to obscure what is really happening. In a strange way, we admire her candor, but then it takes a deadly turn.

“We humans do kill, when necessary: Victims of assault sometimes kill in self-defense, targets of persecution sometimes kill for justice—or just to reduce the number of their persecutors—and the colonized sometimes kill for liberation. Mothers living in unspeakable conditions (including chattel slavery) have been documented to kill their children as an act of mercy. Of course, these examples are instances of necessary violence, generated by the conditions for which we struggle to render extinct. When it comes to abortions, it seems possible that the conditions that necessitate them may never be wholly eliminated, even if vasectomies become generalized, and perfected ectogenetic technologies become universally accessible. As long as people are performing pregnancy on this earth, they must be free to change their minds about seeing it through. The adoption industry could be revolutionized and child welfare lavishly subsidized; regardless of the available supports, no one should be pregnant involuntarily. The science of medicine dictates that when foreign organisms inhabit the human body unwelcomely, we tend to eject them.”

In a way, there are passages here of considerable confusion. As long as we humans are “performing pregnancy” as opposed to just having protected sex. With the wide variety of ways to avoid pregnancy; self-control, and birth control, where is all this forced pregnancy coming from? Is a baby an invasive species, like fungus?

She seems to be suggesting that killing a baby is like killing for self-defense. It is like hand-to-hand fighting at the Chosin Reservoir.  It is “kill or be killed”.

Or maybe it is like defending the home against an unwanted home intruder. In this case, killing an unwanted intruder who has hijacked her body. There is no recognition of the possible consequences of sex and that she created the intruder herself by her actions.

Moreover, she forgets that humans also kill for domination of others, to take other people’s stuff, and sometimes, just for the thrill of it. This killing instinct is not a good thing about humans and it has taken us a long time to control these primal forces. It is part of what one would hope civilized society would do. But she seems to be drifting toward the idea that killing is not such a bad thing. After all, it is done all the time for a variety of reasons. In fact, the title of her essay is “Abortion Involves Killing-and that is OK.”

What is involuntary pregnancy? Most pregnancies are not the result of rape. A woman chooses to have sex with a man, has lots of choices about drugs and devices to avoid getting sperm and egg together, and has the choice to give up the baby if all that does not work. She surely can’t believe that the abortion issue is about the very rare occasion of forced insemination. It is about women having casual sex and being angered that by the laws of nature, they carry the consequence, the child. It is not fair that they can’t walk away as a man can. So in a sense, it is “involuntary” to be bound by the rules and regulations of nature? It is a rage against either God or Nature, take your pick.

Well, for the past 50 years, women could always choose abortion to get out of pregnancy but society is changing its mind about whether that is a good thing, either for the mother and certainly the baby. However, the coldness of her argument that follows, and the choice of the verbiage of “gestator” and “gestatee” are so clinical that we lose sight of the fact it is mother and baby. All mothers, of all species, defend their babies, except it would seem animals that have come through women’s study programs.

“But what’s the point of acknowledging this now, at a time when abortion rights are so imperiled? For one thing, it would seem hard to deny that the euphemistic, apologetic, placatory “pro-choice” strategy hasn’t worked out thus far. So, why not risk coming out for what we actually want, namely, abortion—a clearly documented public good? The pending Supreme Court leak thrusts us into a situation in which we have little left to lose. Rather than cleave in desperation to the rearguard missions of defending the rights (to privacy, rather than abortion) enshrined in Roe v. Wade, we could consider this moment a chance to reset the terms on which abortion is fought.”

“What would it mean to acknowledge that a death is involved in an abortion? Above all, it would allow for a fairer fight against the proponents of forced gestating. When “pro-life” forces agitate against feticide on the basis that it is killing, pro-abortion feminists should be able to acknowledge, without shame, that yes, of course it is. When we withdraw from gestating, we stop the life of the product of our gestational labor. And it’s a good thing we do, too, for otherwise the world would sag under the weight of forced life. It is a hard pill to swallow for a misogynist society, sentimentally attached to its ideology of patriarchal motherhood, but the truth is that gestators should get to decide which bodies to give form to. This choosing is our prerogative. A desire not to be pregnant is sufficient reason in and of itself to terminate a gestatee.”

The reader is urged to read her complete article so you can satisfy yourself that we are not cherry-picking passages here.  In the previous two paragraphs, she gets stronger and stronger suggesting that killing a baby is completely justified or “the world would sag under the weight of forced life.”

She says to abandon arguments that are not working like “it’s my body”, “its privacy”, or “it’s not real life.” No, say it straight up. It is killing for convenience and women should be proud of that position?

She obviously has never been a parent. She sees pregnancy as an unbearable burden. But having a baby is just the first step in a long commitment to other people. In non-academic terms, we call this having a family. Ideally, both husband and wife are joint partners in a project that continues through to grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.

Those who have experienced this know it is a commitment that has great rewards and disappointments. It is part of the human condition.

She says basically in fancy language that if the mother is inconvenienced by pregnancy, you have a right to kill the baby. She adds we should acknowledge this without sentimentality. Killing is OK. However, most laws suggest lethal force can only be used to defend your life or another person’s life. Life is not ended with pregnancy so what are you defending against: Being inconvenienced, being distraught, being confused?

What if most of the inconvenience comes after birth? Do you still have that right to kill that which is bothering you?

My wife and I have three children.  Two wonderful girls who have become fabulous women. And we also have a son, profoundly autistic and developmentally challenged.  Oddly, we have learned a lot about life from him, even though some would view his life as a burden.

The Left has always had a thing for eugenics. The Left has always had a thing about abortion and the destruction of the nuclear family.

The problem is that once you justify killing a baby as a defense against inconvenience or extended responsibility, what do you do with all the handicapped folks that are not inconvenient for nine months, but can be inconvenient for life?

Not surprisingly, the logical conclusion has been in some societies to kill off the elderly, and kill off the handicapped.  That, however, was among primitive societies living on the edge of extinction. Have we reached a point in our highly educated and opulent society that we are ready to kill off the people that get in the way of having a life free of expense, emotional burden, and frustration?  Such a stress-free life could develop a new legal doctrine: your honor, I killed him because he got in the way of my narcissism.

We can think of only one advanced and wealthy society that thought it was OK to kill to make the race better and the world more convenient. I wonder if she has any sense of how close to sounding like a Nazi she comes.

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With an Actual Ruling, Let’s Discuss Abortion

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By Bruce Bialosky

I wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times 22 years ago defining my position on abortion.  They ran it because I am pro-choice, but I expressed limitations on how advanced the pregnancy is and was in favor of no government funding.  I favor parental notice.  Not much has changed since then and I still hold 80% of Americans agree with that position.

I expressed that abortion should be pretty much limited to the first trimester.  The idea of trimesters did not even exist until Justice Harry Blackmun made it up in Roe V. Wade. In 1973 we had medical standards that were much different than today.  Are we to believe that the science surrounding abortion and a fetus in the womb has not evolved?

It has as well as the diseases that would cause many mothers to abort their unborn child. Since that time, it has become scientifically clearer that late-term abortions rarely if ever are justified and that the babies are viable. “Rare” is not the estimated 10,000 late-term abortions currently performed every year. I have since written that for many on the Left, there are three issues about which they are concerned – abortion, abortion, and abortion.  Little has changed.

I also expressed that the argument that exists today was created because the Left does what it normally does.  “We won; the government should pay.”  That irked the people who are pro-life.  Not only are they against abortion, but now they were being forced to underwrite the cost. The Left always wants to spend OPM (other people’s money). 

It has become quite clear to anyone following this situation that Roe v. Wade resolved nothing in the country regarding abortion.  Many of us who are pro-choice have come to understand it was a terrible ruling with no basis in law or history and that the issue should be returned to the elected representatives in the states in accordance with our Constitution.  Now the U.S. Supreme Court has apparently agreed.

The hysteria that happened because of a leaked draft – written nearly three months previously — would have been the exact same hysteria that happened when the actual decision was handed down.  This means the leaker either thought they could possibly influence the Justices to change their votes, or they thought at worst there would be two moments of hysteria.

I read many of the commentaries across the spectrum and noted that not one commentary from the Left saw anything wrong with the leaker’s action.  In fact, there were columns about how the GOP wanted to go after the leaker as if there were something illegitimate in doing so.  This is another shining example of the Left believing that any action is fine when you have “righteousness” on your side.  The sanctity of our Constitution and a branch of government is minuscule when you are armed with your righteousness.

There is a very limited group of people that could have done this leak.  The fact the DOJ and FBI have not found the leaker shows that they are not attempting to do such and how broken our Justice System has become.  Just like their lack of prosecuting anyone for the violence against the facilities that encourage birth over abortion.  Don’t be shocked if we see more violence in the coming days and nothing is done about it.  It will be branded “righteous” violence.

The most fabulous take on the leak was from the deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post.  Ruth Marcus stated, “One theory — my leading theory — is that the leak came from the conservative side, possibly from a clerk for a conservative justice concerned that the seeming majority, ready to do away with the constitutional right to abortion, might be unraveling.” You must have a fantabulous imagination to dream up that one.

This does not have to do with women’s health.  This has everything to do with one thing – abortion.  In a prior column, I analyzed the materials of Planned Parenthood and the misleading information they provide about medical services such as pap smears.  They don’t really address alternatives to abortion.  At this time, they should more accurately rename themselves as Planned Non-Parenthood.

The most hilarious observation was supposed all the additional things next up for termination on the right-wing agenda.  The best is the one where the court would end inter-racial marriage.  Other than you would have to terminate millions upon millions of marriages in America, the great melting pot, they probably think the charge will be led by Justice Clarence Thomas, you know the black guy married to a white woman.  Gosh, these people can get hysterical in a flash.

Currently, various states are establishing their policies.  The Left has drawn a dark view of the states that haven’t yet touched the law.  They purported that states with abortion bans after fifteen weeks somehow ban abortion as if abortions are not allowed at all in those states. I read and heard people who otherwise could care less about the “flyover states” suddenly waxing poetic about the women of Alabama.  Who believes that they now care about them? Let’s see how this entire thing shakes out which will take a few years.

Legislators will now have to listen to the people of their state and legislate what their voters want on this issue.  Governors will have to decide whether to sign the bills and then enforce the law.  That is how this country works.  If all the howling people honestly believe most Americans are in favor of abortion, they should welcome this process. 

Amazon has already announced it will pay $4,000 for an employee to transit to another state for the procedure.  Other companies may do similar measures.  Maybe all these people who believe unfettered abortions are critical will have to pony up some money of their own.    That would be novel.

Repealing Roe V. Wade merely returns abortion policy to the states and to democratic debate where it properly belongs. Nothing else.

*****

This article was published in Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

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Fallout for Tucson: The Perfect Storm of the Supreme Court Decision

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By Craig J. Cantoni

At a minimum, it will lead to boycotts against my home state of Arizona and hometown of Tucson.

You aren’t interested in my opinion of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling or whether I’m pro-life or pro-choice. Likewise, I’m not interested in telling you.

But both of us should be interested in the fact that the decision will add turbulence to the existing perfect storm of a deeply divided polity, high inflation, unsustainable deficits, underfunded entitlements, a looming energy crisis, a broken border policy, skyrocketing drug addictions and deaths, global supply shortages, heightened geopolitical tensions, and an ossified central government that has become too big, bumbling and bureaucratic to do much about any of these problems.

At a minimum, the decision will lead to counterproductive boycotts.

I’m referring to companies being pressured by angry pro-choice employees and customers not to hold conferences or establish headquarters or major facilities in states that enact additional restrictions on abortion. Similar pressure will be put on sports leagues not to hold championship games in those states.

After all, politics now permeates the workplace and the sports field. 

Some rich companies have already decided to pay the travel costs of employees if they want to travel from a restrictive state to a less-restrictive state for an abortion.  It is not known if companies will try to cover this under a tax-deductible employee benefit plan. Should they try, and should the IRS permit the tax deduction, it would mean that pro-life taxpayers would be subsidizing the travel costs.  

If, as expected, my home state of Arizona were to enact a more restrictive abortion law, any resulting boycotts could hurt my hometown of Tucson. That would be ironic and particularly painful.

The pain would come from the fact that Tucson, which has a significant tourism industry, is a poor city with a poverty rate twice the national average. Boycotts would hurt it more than they would hurt wealthier cities.

The irony would come from the fact that Tucson is predominately Democrat and left-liberal, the very same political party/class that undoubtedly would lead a boycott effort. In that sense, the activists would be hurting their own people economically.

Complicating the politics is the fact that Latinos comprise 43% of the Tucson population. Most of them are Catholic and thus opposed to abortion, at least to the extent that they follow Church dogma. They also tend to be poorer than the general population.

It will be interesting to see how all of this shakes out politically. Even before the Supreme Court’s decision, the Tucson city council, at the urging of Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, had passed a resolution saying that the city will not make arrests at abortion clinics, even if abortion were to be declared illegal.

Three outcomes are certain: Abortion will be in the local and national news for years to come, will continue to be a fault line in American politics and will add turbulence to the perfect storm.

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Abortion Protest Locks Down Lawmakers Inside Arizona Capitol, Tear Gas Deployed

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By Cole Lauterbach

Protesters angry about Friday morning’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling released some frustration at the state Capitol building in Phoenix later that evening.

Several hundred protesters gathered at the doors of the Capitol as the Legislature was finishing up its legislative session.

A short time later, protesters could be seen on a video taken by Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, hitting windows and kicking open glass doors, prompting Arizona’s Department of Public Safety to intervene. 

From videos taken outside of the Capitol, police officers stationed on a balcony were seen deploying tear gas into the crowd.

Security could be seen informing lawmakers that they would have to take precautionary measures. Arizona DPS began ushering them and others into the Capitol lobby.

“While Arizona State Senate members were wrapping up passing important legislation for the session, extremist demonstrators made their way to the entrance of the Senate building and began forcibly trying to make entry by breaking windows and pushing down doors,” a statement from the state Senate read.

According to a statement from a Senate official, none of the protestors made it into the building.

Senate President Karen Fann celebrated law enforcement’s quick response to what could have been a dangerous situation.

“We are incredibly thankful for our local law enforcement who quickly intervened during what could have been a destructive and dangerous situation for our members, staff, and public inside the Senate,” said Fann. “Violence is never the answer, and we will not camouflage what was a blatant attempt at an insurrection as a ‘rally’ or ‘peaceful protest.’ We are calling on all state lawmakers to condemn these acts. There is a way to make your voice heard and violence is never the answer.”

Due to residual tear gas making it into the Senate chambers via the building’s ventilation system, lawmakers finished their business and ended the session in another room.

*****

This article was published by the Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

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Biden and Powell Are in Denial—A Recession Is Indeed “Inevitable” thumbnail

Biden and Powell Are in Denial—A Recession Is Indeed “Inevitable”

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By Dan Sanchez

And they are the ones who made it so.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve announced that it will “raise” interest rates faster than previously planned in order to “fight” worsening inflation.

In a press conference, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell tried to assure investors and the public that the Fed is, “not trying to induce a recession now. Let’s be clear about that.” As the Wall Street Journal reported, Powell “still believes [the Federal Reserve] can cool the economy and bring down inflation while engineering a so-called soft landing in which the economy and labor market continue to grow.”

On Thursday, President Biden was similarly hopeful, telling the Associated Press that a recession is “not inevitable.”

That same day, investors splashed cold water on Biden and Powell’s hopes. After the Fed’s announcement, markets briefly rallied before tumbling yet again.

Yet it’s not just traders who beg to differ with the rosy optimism emanating from the White House and the Fed, but economic reality itself. Biden and Powell are in denial. A soft landing is impossible, a recession is inevitable, and it is their own policies that made it so.

Media reports tend to leave out why the Fed thinks raising interest rates will fight inflation in the first place. First of all, it is grossly misleading to say that the Fed “raises” interest rates or “fights” inflation.

Imagine a bully pins down one of his victims. If the bully eases up, allowing the victim to stand up on his own, you wouldn’t say that the bully “raised” up his victim. Yet that is basically what the Fed is doing with regard to interest rates. The Fed has been holding down interest rates, and now it’s relenting a bit to allow them to rise somewhat.

And imagine an arsonist pumps gasoline on a fire. If the arsonist eases up on the pump, allowing the fire to die down a bit, you wouldn’t say that the arsonist is “fighting” the fire. Yet that is basically what the Fed is doing with inflation. The Fed has been driving up inflation, and now it’s relenting a bit to allow prices to moderate somewhat.

The way the Fed holds down interest rates is by “quantitative easing,” a euphemism for flooding the banking system with newly created dollars. The Fed has been holding interest rates down to near zero by injecting trillions of new dollars into the banks.

More money chasing the same amount of goods will tend to bid up prices. Federal Reserve bureaucrats are at least economically literate enough to be aware of that, so they know their money pumping is fueling the flames of inflation. And the inflation conflagration is getting dangerous enough to back them into a corner. They feel they have no other choice but to ease up on the pump, even if it means allowing interest rates to rise.

Fed policymakers are highly reluctant to do so, because the main reason they have been holding interest rates down has been to “stimulate” the economy, especially in the face of COVID and the lockdowns. Many investors and economists fear that an economy with less monetary stimulus will crash and fall into a recession.

But what almost nobody understands is what crashes and recessions even are and why they happen. And they have no excuse, because that was clarified way back in 1912 by the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises.

As Mises explained, crashes and recessions are made inevitable by monetary stimulus. Money pumping can only stimulate the economy by overextending it.

The extra money sloshing around the banking system lowers the interest rate by boosting investor demand for resources to use in new and expanded production projects. This means more investment opportunities, higher profits, more jobs, and higher wages: i.e., a “stimulated” economy.

New and expanded production projects would be fine and great if they were matched by new and expanded resources to support them—made available by higher savings. That’s what a natural drop in the interest rate would signify. But the infusion of new money only expands production; it does nothing to reduce present consumption and thus increase savings. So it results in an over-commitment of available resources.

It’s the simple logic of scarcity: we have (1) the same finite stock of resources, (2) more production demands for resources, and (3) the same (if not more) consumption demands for resources.

Eventually, something’s gotta give.

The Fed’s money pumping only “stimulates” the economy by deluding investors into behaving as if there are more available resources in the economy than there actually are. At some point, that delusion must run headlong into economic reality.

Generally, that happens when the Fed finally eases up on pumping money into the banking system. With less new money pumping it up, the effective demand of investors for resources collapses back down to a level compatible with consumer demand and the actual rate of saving. Deluded less by monetary stimulus, market actors start reckoning with economic reality. The interest rate spikes, stock prices collapse, and throughout the economy, production projects that looked like profitable winners are revealed to be unaffordable losers (“malinvestments”).

That is what a crash is.

Entrepreneurs then scale back or liquidate the loser projects, reallocating resources (including human resources) to uses that are more compatible with the now clearer economic reality. That reallocation can only happen through a mass change of partners throughout the economy. This means many painful “break-ups” of impractical economic relationships: lay-offs, contract cancellations, bankruptcies, etc.

That is what a recession is.

Those break-ups are prerequisites to the formation of new, more practical economic relationships: new jobs being filled, new contracts being signed, and new businesses being started.

That is what recovery is. The result is a healthier economy. And the only path from an unhealthy economy to a healthier one is through a recession.

That is why Biden and Powell are wrong. A recession is inevitable. It’s also necessary. It was made inevitable and necessary by their own policies: by Biden (as well as President Trump before him) crippling the economy with lockdowns and other destructive policies, and by Powell “stimulating” the crippled economy into a distorted, overextended, and unsustainable condition.

The only way to heal that condition is to let the economy heal itself through a recession. And the sooner that Biden and Powell let that happen, the better.

*****

This article was published by FEE, Foundation for Economic Education and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you concerned about election integrity? What informed United States citizen isn’t? Did the 2020 national election raise many questions about election integrity? Are you concerned about the current cycle of primaries and then the general election in November? No doubt the answer for The Prickly Pear readers is YES.

Click below for a message from Tony Sanchez, the RNC Arizona Election Integrity Director to sign up for the opportunity to become an official Poll Observer for the 8/2 AZ Primary and the 11/8 General Election in your county of residence. We need many, many good citizens to do this – get involved now and help make the difference for clean and honest elections.

Bill Maher Says Donald Trump Will Easily Win In 2024 If He ‘Can Just Let Go’ Of 2020 thumbnail

Bill Maher Says Donald Trump Will Easily Win In 2024 If He ‘Can Just Let Go’ Of 2020

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By Daivd Hookstead

Bill Maher thinks Donald Trump can cruise to a win in 2024 if he just lets the 2020 election go.

Why? Well, Drag Queen Story Hour might be enough to propel Trump to a victory, according to Maher.

“And I just thought, you know, if Trump could just let go of the election, which he can’t, he can win this so easy because he can win just on Drag Queen Story Hour…Again, if he could just let go of the election, but at this point, you know, he’s just like a hotel room that smells at some point you just want a new room, you know what I mean? And DeSantis, I mean, he’s just more is more vibrant, if you like people who don’t lose elections and, you know,” Maher said when talking about Trump’s election chances, according to Fox News.

It’s hard to argue with Maher’s comments about Trump and DeSantis. It seems like the crazy people on both fringes are dominating the narrative, but the difference is that one side definitely doesn’t think it’s okay for young children to be subjected to sexual material.

As we’ve seen time and time again, parents care about looking out for their children, and the justified outrage over the fact children were brought to a drag show shows people are not happy.

Maher has often said he hasn’t gotten more conservative but that liberals have just gone way too far to the left. Judging from his comments, he’d apply that mindset to Trump crushing the field in 2024 if he can just stop with the 2020 talk.

I think most rational observers will agree with his assessment. The crazier America gets with insane stuff, especially stuff targeted at kids, the better it is for politicians on the right.

*****

TAKE ACTION

Are you concerned about election integrity? What informed United States citizen isn’t? Did the 2020 national election raise many questions about election integrity? Are you concerned about the current cycle of primaries and then the general election in November? No doubt the answer for The Prickly Pear readers is YES.

Click below for a message from Tony Sanchez, the RNC Arizona Election Integrity Director to sign up for the opportunity to become an official Poll Observer for the 8/2 AZ Primary and the 11/8 General Election in your county of residence. We need many, many good citizens to do this – get involved now and help make the difference for clean and honest elections.

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What We Saw During ‘Night of Rage’ Pro-Abortion Protest

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By Douglas Blair

As the sun set over Washington, D.C., hundreds of pro-abortion demonstrators stood chanting and holding signs outside the Supreme Court.

Rally speakers called for protesters to “take to the streets” in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that overturned Roe v. Wade.

In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote: “Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided.”

The protesters outside the Supreme Court on Friday night appeared to disagree.

Below are videos and pictures from the “Night of Rage,” as it was dubbed by the pro-abortion demonstrators. Warning: Rude language ahead.

Around 8:30 p.m., a group of 30 protesters dressed in black and carrying an Antifa sign arrived at the Supreme Court and proceeded to march down Constitution Avenue toward downtown Washington.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you concerned about election integrity? What informed United States citizen isn’t? Did the 2020 national election raise many questions about election integrity? Are you concerned about the current cycle of primaries and then the general election in November? No doubt the answer for The Prickly Pear readers is YES.

Click below for a message from Tony Sanchez, the RNC Arizona Election Integrity Director to sign up for the opportunity to become an official Poll Observer for the 8/2 AZ Primary and the 11/8 General Election in your county of residence. We need many, many good citizens to do this – get involved now and help make the difference for clean and honest elections.

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Transgender Activists Manipulate Parents With Suicide Threats

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By Ginny Gentles

“Do you want a dead daughter or a live son?”

This question, which is really a threat, is the central tenet of the campaign selling gender ideology to parents.

Parents are often told that they are putting their gender-nonconforming child at risk of suicide if they don’t medically “transition” him or her to appear as the opposite sex or at least treat their child as the sex he or she chooses. The child then internalizes this information and believes that suicide is an inevitable outcome without transition, as opposed to an unhealthy response to internal distress.

The pernicious assumption behind this horrific question is that parents do not have the best interest of their children at heart and that the “experts” know better. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Parents who are not caught up in this social contagion know that children who threaten suicide are not born in the wrong body and that a risky regimen of puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries won’t bring children the peace and joy they desperately crave. A child who threatens suicide requires love, kindness, and therapy to address underlying struggles, not sterilization. 

The children captivated by gender ideology often have underlying conditions, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or autism spectrum disorder, which are associated with lagging social skills, obsessive rumination, depression, and anxiety. 

Both research studies and the stories shared by a growing number of those who have detransitioned reveal a tendency to self-harm and suffer from eating disorders. Life has been hard for these highly sensitive and emotionally intense young people, and they’re understandably seeking relief.

These vulnerable children, often girls, deserve their parents’ involvement as they struggle through puberty, and they need their parents’ emotional and financial support until they make it safely to adulthood.

At its horribly rotten core, the culture created by the question “Do you want a dead daughter or a live son?” intentionally drives a painful wedge between parents and children unless parents consent without question to immediate social and medical transition. Parents who would do anything to keep their children safe are shoved aside by arrogant and callous school staff, doctors, and therapists.

Rather than assuring children that no one is born in the “wrong” body, schools and many doctors and therapists choose to parrot activist slogans instead.

Children are told that doctors guess the gender when a child is born and sometimes get it wrong; that if they don’t feel like they fit into regressive stereotypes about males and females, they must be transgender; that a “safe space” is one that affirms fleeting feelings rather than biological reality; and that anyone who doesn’t immediately and fully embrace their new transgender identity hates them and wants to “erase” them. Most perniciously, children receive a steady drumbeat of messages focused on suicide and death.

These slogans are used like a giant switch that turns off critical thinking and forbids even gentle questioning. They are repeated over and over in colorful children’s picture books; at GSA (gender sexuality clubs) meetings; and in-classroom lesson materials created by organizations like Queer Kids, Gender Spectrum, Advocates for Youth, and, of course, Planned Parenthood, an organization that profits from this ideology by doling out cross-sex hormones at clinics across the country.

These slogans are also baked into local and state transgender policies adopted—often quietly or even without a formal vote—by school boards. 

Misguided advocates for so-called transition procedures may be familiar with the suicide-centered activist slogans that populate their social media feed and the materials distributed by the many professional associations captured by this ideology, but they definitely haven’t done the research to familiarize themselves with the irreversible damage that so many young people experience after transitioning to appear as the opposite sex.

That damage can include, according to a list compiled at The Federalist, “loss of bone density, increased risk of blood clots, premature brain aging and increased aggression, reduced capacity for sexual pleasure, future infertility, and increased risk of heart disease.”

Activists and misguided school staff, as well as an alarming number of doctors and counselors who have carelessly embraced the gender gospel, must stop making vulnerable students’ lives harder.

A recent analysis by Jay Greene of The Heritage Foundation found that “existing literature on this topic suffers from a series of weaknesses that prevent researchers from being able to draw credible causal conclusions about a relationship between medical interventions and suicide.” (The Daily Signal is the news and analysis site of The Heritage Foundation.)

I participated in a recent event discussing Greene’s conclusion that it is possible that “increasing minors’ access to cross-sex interventions is associated with a significant increase in the adolescent suicide rate.” The findings suggest that the “gender-affirming” policies and standards of care put in place in the name of protecting children from suicide must be reevaluated. 

It’s time to stop cruelly manipulating children with cult-like slogans. It’s time to stop driving a wedge between parents and their vulnerable children.

Our society must support parents, protect children, and keep families intact by turning away from propaganda centered around suicide threats. We must end secretive and destructive policies that harm children and instead pass laws that affirm that parents have primary responsibility for their children’s education and health.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Sorry Libs, You Can’t Replace Dads With Government thumbnail

Sorry Libs, You Can’t Replace Dads With Government

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By Kevin Roberts

It’s been said that America can always be counted on to do the right thing, once we have exhausted all the other alternatives. As of Father’s Day 2022, America has spent about 60 years exhausting the alternatives to fatherhood — and the collateral damage is all around us.

Broken families. Gutted communities. Betrayed women. Terrified children. Busy morgues. And overflowing prisons. (RELATED: LUKAS: Let Girls Be Girls. Protect Them From The Left’s Gender Agenda)

The evidence is so overwhelming that it’s not really controversial anymore. Children who grow up without their fathers — especially in communities where fatherlessness has become the norm —carry the heaviest social, economic, and psychological cross social science can measure. The mountain of data is nothing short of Himalayan.

Children raised in single-parent homes constitute:

63% of teen suicides;

90% of runaways and homeless children;

85% of behavior disorder patients;

71% of high school dropouts;

75% of teenagers in substance abuse rehab centers;

85% of young prison inmates.

This is what we have to show for the trillions of dollars spent and the decades of research conducted. If there was a way for a social worker or a bureaucracy or a government check to fill the Dad-shaped hole in America’s broken families, we would have found it by now.

It doesn’t exist. Three generations of elites — from Washington to Hollywood — have promised young Americans that severing the natural connections between sex, marriage, commitment, kids, and parenthood would be “liberating.” As the statistics above show, it’s been anything but.

The only solution to fatherlessness is fathers. And we have to figure out a way to say so, even in these hypersensitive times.

Our culture has gone to such laudable lengths to de-stigmatize single motherhood that we now accidentally denigrate married fatherhood. We work so hard to affirm non-traditional gender roles and family structures that we have forgotten just how valuable they have always been.

Fatherhood isn’t about being a male. It’s about being a man. Fatherhood harnesses masculinity for the good of society, so the community benefits along with the family, and each individual father as he grows into his vocation. The strength, courage, dependability, honesty, accountability, gentleness, toughness, and protectiveness that define real masculinity keeps children safe, wives happy, and trouble at bay. A fish may or may not need a bicycle, but women and children very much need men.

We know what actual toxic masculinity looks like. It looks like boys raised without men: insecure, vulgar, misogynistic, angry, ignorant, violent, confused, and above all, scared.

In every poor community in America, from opioid-riddled Appalachia to violent inner cities, every boy who doesn’t know how to be a man and every girl who doesn’t know she deserves one, is crying out into that empty void in their homes and in their hearts, “Father, father, why have you abandoned me?”

That question cannot be answered, or that agony soothed, with universal health care or a “Build Back Better” plan. The measurable, material benefits of intact families — the second income and additional caregiver — are the least important ones. What really matters is not what fathers do, but what they are.

For two generations now, America’s elite institutions have devalued what they are, through a welfare state that penalizes work and marriage, an education system that punishes boyishness, and a culture that scolds chivalry as abusive and masculinity itself as toxic. It turns out, that dads are just one more thing our failed elite class was wrong about.

Father’s Day is a reminder that what our broken culture, struggling single moms, and frightened kids need is not another program or policy, but a person.

Dads: accept no substitutes.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reprinted with permission.  Keven Roberts is President of the Heritage Foundation.

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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A Conversation About Gun Violence

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By Charles M. Strauss

We need to have a conversation about gun violence!

OK, you start.

You hate children!

That’s slander, not a conversation, but go ahead.

Schools should be Gun-Free Zones.

Those signs have been up since 1990. I said then that Gun-Free Zones wouldn’t work, and I was right, wasn’t I? What else?

Background checks!

We’ve had background checks since 1985. I said then that background checks wouldn’t work, and I was right, wasn’t I? Almost all of the mass shooters passed background checks. So, you want to do even more of what hasn’t worked; got it. What else?

Ban assault weapons!

We did that for 10 years; and as I predicted, it didn’t work, did it?

Yes, it did! The president said so!

The president also said he drove an 18-wheeler, graduated at the top of his class, hit a baseball off the wall in Nationals Stadium, was recommended for the Naval Academy, and was arrested in South Africa while protesting apartheid. The president is one of those people who say things that are not true. There is a word for such people; the president is a … you know, the thing. The Department of Justice study concluded the Assault Weapons Ban didn’t do a damn thing. What else do you want to have a conversation about?

If the shooter had not had an AR15, he would not have killed so many children.

Yes, he would have. In most mass shootings, the shooters have used handguns, shotguns, and hunting rifles. When victims are trapped and helpless, weapon type is irrelevant, because the shooter can take his time. What else?

Then ban all guns!

Yeah, that would work as well as banning alcohol did, and how is that War On Drugs coming along? Lots of people have been killed in those noble, well-meaning experiments. Anyway, when psychos don’t have guns, the body count goes up… way up. They use truck bombs (Murrah Building), pressure cooker bombs (Boston Marathon), fire (Happyland Social Club), and vehicles driven into crowds (Waukesha). Why are you proposing something that would cause more people to be killed? Whose side are you on? What else?

Red Flag Laws!

Those have failed just like background checks have. Many of the mass shooters and school shooters were already on the police radar with red flags flying all over the place. Many states already have red flag laws, and mostly they get used by vengeful ex-spouses and co-workers trying to make trouble with false accusations. Because (as you probably don’t know), the essence of a red flag law is taking somebody’s guns away without due process — just an accusation, no hearing, no right to deny the accusation or show exculpatory evidence. Somebody makes an accusation and that automatically makes someone guilty.

But we have to Do Something!

Something stupid and counterproductive, or something that might actually help?

Well, what are your child-hating ideas, you child-hater? Arming teachers?

Glad you have an open mind. Not “arming” teachers, but “allowing” teachers to carry guns if that is their choice. (You’re in favor of choice, right?) Take down those stupid Gun-Free Zone signs, and assure teachers they will not be arrested and fired if they are serious adults who actually want to protect their students.

You are crazy! What other crazy ideas do you have that I have already decided not to listen to?

Long-term, work toward encouraging families with fathers. Almost every mass shooter has come from a family with no father, an absentee father, or a father who was abusive and/or a criminal. There is no correlation between mass shooters and any particular gun or gun law, but there is a strong correlation with fatherlessness.

You hate children! Also, you are a racist.

Thanks for the conversation.

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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Disney Doubles Down On LGBTQ Programming With ‘Lightyear’ And More

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By Josh Sheperd

Same-sex romance is prominent in the latest ‘Toy Story’ entry, and Disney Plus has several LGBTQ-themed films and series coming out.

Disney is going all-out in joining leftists’ June celebration of Pride Month, making same-sex themes central to a new “Toy Story” feature film spin-off, and adding more than 100 hours of LGBTQ titles to family-targeted streamer Disney Plus. 

After advance screenings, critics say animated space adventure “Lightyear” — opening in theaters on June 17 — “takes queer representation to infinity and beyond,” to quote USA Today, highlighting that a lesbian couple “at one point [greets] each other with a kiss on the lips.”

Following backlash over Disney creative executives discussing their ongoing efforts at “queering” children’s entertainment, it seems Disney has decided to dismiss the concerns of many conservative parents. That collective shrug in Hollywood could be missing the big picture. A Harris Poll released in late May ranking the nation’s Top 100 brands found that The Walt Disney Company dropped from 37th to 65th place in reputation just since last year. 

“Disney’s about-face shows the reputational hit that comes when the public perceives you as being calculating rather than clear in what you believe in and stand for,” said Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema. Disney also recently reported less-than-stellar streaming subscription growth.

Entertainment critic for faith-based outlet Crosswalk Michael Foust says the clash of cultural mores between Hollywood and faith-driven families has been building for years. “Disney does not operate from a biblical worldview, so it is no surprise that it keeps offering content that frustrates many in the faith community,” he stated via email.

Melissa Jacobs and her husband, Jeremy, raising seven children in St. Louis, canceled Disney Plus this spring. While the family has enjoyed shows like “Bluey,” along with Star Wars and Marvel films, she stated that “the direction Disney was leaning” prompted their decision.

“Many of their programs no longer have a traditional family and instead highlight and celebrate queer, transgender, and homosexual characters,” she stated. “In many shows, kids are openly disrespectful to their parents. It’s all contrary to what we are trying to teach our children.”

Christians Object to Plot Twist in ‘Toy Story’ Franchise

The first Pixar production to hit theaters in more than two years, “Lightyear” is tied loosely to beloved “Toy Story” films. It’s billed as young Andy’s favorite movie, the one that compelled him to cast aside his cowboy Woody in the original 1995 film.

Reading between the lines of some critics’ effusive praise, families get the plot’s general drift. Sent on a peacekeeping mission, space ranger Buzz and his co-pilot Alisha face off against aliens on a strange planet. When subsequent damage to their ship maroons them for years, stranded Alisha meets a female romantic interest and the two “start a family together.”

For the Jacobs family, fans of past “Toy Story” films, “Lightyear” won’t be a summer outing to the multiplex. The mother of seven is author of “Livin’ the Dream,” which includes their story of adopting a daughter. She says the Bible guides their views on sex, marriage, and family.

“As a mom, I can see clearly that there are needs my children have that only I can fill,” stated Melissa. “Meanwhile, there are needs they have that only their dad can fill.” She added that single-parent friends of their family “seek out support” so their kids have “both a mother-type figure and father-type figure” involved in their lives.

Similarly, Foust, who is raising four kids with his wife in rural Illinois, observed cultural trends run counter to Chrisitan theology on marriage and sexuality. “Hollywood may consider us strange for even questioning the content of ‘Lightyear,’ but that shouldn’t surprise us,” said Foust. “After all, 2,000 years ago the Apostle Peter reminded us that we are ‘strangers’ and ‘temporary residents’ in this world.”

Two of the filmmakers behind “Lightyear” — director Angus MacLane and producer Galyn Susman — are “Toy Story” franchise veterans who say they’re eager to make something “exciting and awesome.” MacLane says they didn’t want the LGBTQ plotline to be “a superfluous thing” but an “accurate representation.”

If anyone is puzzled by this being the flick supposedly referenced in 1995’s “Toy Story,” while reflecting cultural mores far left of the mainstream in that era, producer Susman explained: “Though it’s the film Andy saw, we were still making it for today’s generation.”

Promoting Alternative Lifestyles to Children

Will many families forgo a much-hyped movie featuring favorite spaceman Buzz? For those who are Disney Plus subscribers, it’s merely the start of new additions to navigate during Pride Month.

In June, six seasons of “Glee,” three seasons of “Love, Victor,” and LGBTQ-themed “Trevor: The Musical” will be added to the streamer’s Pride Collection. (Last year, Pixar’s short “Out” with similar themes premiered.) Such a deluge of titles involving same-sex romance among minors could prompt some to readjust parental controls or bail on Disney Plus altogether.

Foust, an evangelical Christian, says believers uphold the dignity and worth of every person. It’s praising sin to children that is problematic. “We are to love our neighbors unconditionally — while not being conformed to this world by the entertainment we consume,” he stated.

No Christians Wanted

Disney’s leftist drift seems to be accelerating. As part of an initiative called Reimagine Tomorrow, Disney outlines its association with LGBTQ advocacy groups like GLAAD. Reporting on this initiative, the Los Angeles Times linked to a letter by current Disney employees who have chosen to remain anonymous. 

“As much as diversity and inclusion are promoted, the tomorrow being reimagined doesn’t seem to have much room for religious or political conservatives within the company,” state these Disney cast members. “This politicization of our corporate culture is damaging morale and causing many of us to feel our days with [Disney] might be numbered.”

Several players in family entertainment, such as Angel Studios and GAC Family, are working to produce and distribute films and shows that appeal to families who object to Disney’s direction.

This all reflects how entertainment continues to splinter to reach varied audiences, said Foust. “More and more, it is obvious that if the faith community wants entertainment framed within a biblical worldview, the faith community alone must produce it.”

*****

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Why Handwritten FBI And DOJ Notes The Special Counsel Just Released Are Huge thumbnail

Why Handwritten FBI And DOJ Notes The Special Counsel Just Released Are Huge

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By Margot Cleveland

Recently released handwritten notes reveal the FBI either lied or U.K. intelligence fed information to the U.S. agents investigating Donald Trump and his associates.

Recently released handwritten notes from a briefing of the acting attorney general on the status of Crossfire Hurricane reveal the FBI either lied about the source of intel or the British intelligence community fed information to the U.S. agents investigating Donald Trump and his associates.

As part of the pre-trial discovery in the government’s prosecution of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, the special counsel provided defense lawyers notes taken on March 6, 2017, during a high-level briefing of acting Attorney General Dana Boente about the then-ongoing investigation into supposed Russia collusion.

Boente, who held oversight of the DOJ and FBI related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation because of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal, received an update during the meeting from the FBI’s then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, then-assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap, and Counterintelligence Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok. DOJ officials Tashina Gauhar, Mary McCord, and Scott Schools took notes during the briefing, and those notes became public during the Sussmann trial that ended in an acquittal last week.

Soon after the release of the notes, Hans Mahncke and Stephen McIntyre detailed for The Federalist, several passages that indicated the FBI had lied to the DOJ during the March 6, 2017 meeting in numerous ways. From the cryptic notes, Mahncke and McIntyre deciphered and exposed several significant false storylines sold to the acting attorney general, making their article a must-read.

While any lies, misrepresentations, or material omissions matter—or should, especially when told to the acting attorney general related to an investigation connected to the president of the United States, the note’s references to “CROWN reporting” prove particularly significant because of the FISA court’s insistence that the DOJ included Christopher Steele’s background as an MI6 agent in the FISA application prior to the secret surveillance court issuing an order to surveil Carter Page.

The phrase “CROWN Reporting” appeared multiple times in one set of handwritten notes taken during McCabe, Priestap, and Strzok’s March 6, 2017, FBI briefing of the DOJ and Acting Attorney General Boente. Next to “CROWN Reporting,” the notes referenced “convention,” Crimea” and “NATO” and “soften stance for exchange of Russian energy stocks.” These notations fell under the header of points related to Manafort.

A second reference to “CROWN source reporting” came during the FBI’s briefing of Boente concerning the investigation of Carter Page, with the notation following the general discussion of Page.

Huge Implications No Matter the Source

The notes do not elaborate on the “CROWN source” or who provided the “CROWN source reporting.” There are two possibilities, both of which have huge implications for the ongoing special counsel investigation.

First, the claimed “CROWN source” could be former MI6 spy Steele. To date, Steele remains the only person with a connection to British intelligence publicly known to have provided the FBI with information related to Trump and individuals connected to Trump during the Russia collusion investigation.

But if by “CROWN source” the FBI meant Steele, the individual briefing Boente lied to him in several ways, did so in a material way, and there is likely a paper trail that can confirm an earlier, similar lie by FBI agents.

While Steele had at one time served in the British intelligence service, his MI6 status ended long ago, when he retired in 2009 to start the private intelligence service Orbis Business Intelligence. Further, as the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (OIG) reported more than two years ago, Steele told the OIG that the source network he used to compile the memoranda, referred to colloquially as the Steele dossier, did not involve sources from his time as an MI6 agent. On the contrary, his sources were “developed entirely in the period after he retired from government service.”

So not only was Steele not a “CROWN source, but” his supposed “intel” also lacked any connection to “Crown Source Reporting.” Accordingly, unless the FBI had a still publicly unknown “CROWN source” who provided the information on which agents briefed the DOJ during the March 6, 2017 meeting, they lied to the DOJ.

If They Lied, It Really Matters

Falsely attributing “intel” to a “CROWN source” proves significant, not merely for Boente’s oversight of Crossfire Hurricane, but also for Boente’s decision to approve the third application to surveil Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). And the DOJ’s representation of a connection between Steele and British intelligence in the FISA applications appeared dispositive to the FISA court’s decision to authorize surveillance of Page.

Two little-noticed passages, separated by some 50 pages in the OIG’s 478-page report on FISA abuse, revealed the importance the FISA court put on Steele’s connection to British intelligence in ordering surveillance of Page. According to the OIG, before filing its official FISA application, the DOJ submitted a “read copy” to the FISA court to obtain feedback from the FISA court’s legal advisor on whether the application met the statutory requirements and on any issues of concern raised by the legal advisor or the FISA judge handling the application.

In the first read copy submitted to the FISA court related to Page, the application “contained a description of the source network that included the fact that Steele relied upon a Primary Sub-source who used a network of sub-sources, and that neither Steele nor the Primary Sub-source had direct access to the information being reported.” The draft application “also contained a separate footnote on each sub-source with a brief description of his/her position or access to the information he/she was reporting.”

After reviewing the read copy, the FISA court’s “legal advisor asked how it was that Steele had a network of sub-sources.” In response, the government’s Office of Intelligence (OI) attorney “provided additional information to him regarding Steele’s past employment history.”

The FISA court’s legal advisor then requested that additional information be included in the final application, resulting in the final version of the October 2016 FISA application including a footnote detailing Steele’s prior work for British intelligence. The FISA court granted the revised FISA application, ordering surveillance of Page to begin in October 2016. The FISA court renewed the surveillance order three additional times, once in December, again in March, when Boente signed the application, and finally on June 29, 2022, when Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein signed the final FISA application.

All of the applications referenced Steele’s past service in British intelligence, but, as noted above, Steele’s source network was unrelated to his government work and came entirely from his private work. Given that the FISA court’s legal advisor questioned “how it was that Steele had a network of sub-sources,” and that the advisor directed the OI attorney to expressly include Steele’s previous work as an MI6 agent in the application, the FISA court clearly believed Steele’s network of sources came from his time as a British agent.

Further, given the significance the FISA court placed on that fact, it seems likely the FISA court would have denied the surveillance order had it been told the truth—that Steele’s network of sources had been privately acquired.

FBI Liars Could Still Be Held Accountable

The FBI’s representation during the March 6, 2017 meeting that the supposed intel related to Manafort and Page came from “CROWN sources,”—again, assuming the agent meant Steele—suggests the Crossfire Hurricane team deceived the DOJ from the beginning, resulting in the OI attorney representing to the FISA court that Steele’s network of sources were sources used by British intelligence. That deception also likely affected Boente’s decision to sign the second renewal application.

While these events occurred more than five years ago, and a five-year statute of limitations governs false statement offenses, the D.C. Circuit has held that if a defendant engages in a scheme “to falisf[y], conceal[], or cover[]up” material facts, the limitations period does not begin to run until the scheme ends.

In this case, then, any FBI agents involved in concealing from the DOJ during the final preparation and review of June 29, 2017, FISA application that Steele’s sources were not “CROWN sources” or connected to his work in British intelligence could still face criminal liability.

Go Get ‘Em, Durham

Further, while the Sussmann trial proved memories fail—sometimes conveniently—uncovering the individuals responsible for representing Steele’s source network as connected to his past life as an MI6 agent seems a relatively straightforward venture given what we learned from the special counsel’s conviction of Kevin Clinesmith.

Clinesmith pleaded guilty nearly two years ago to altering an email related to Page to make it appear that Page “was not a source” for the CIA. Clinesmith’s undoing came from the fact that in preparing the FISA application and renewals, the various government actors used email to confirm details, including Clinesmith.

The OIG report on FISA abuse detailed that process, noting there were many “back-and-forth exchange[s]” “between the OI Attorney and the FBI, during which the OI Attorney asked many questions about Page, as well as about Steele’s reporting and the structure and access of his source network.” “To further address reliability, the OI Attorney sought information from the FBI to describe the source network in the FISA application,” according to the OIG report. And that information-gathering process included email exchanges and written summaries of briefings.

Either that briefing left the OI attorney with the impression that Steele’s source network came from his MI6 work, or after the FISA court legal advisor asked, “how it was that Steele had a network of sub-sources,” the OI attorney pushed the FBI for more information. If the latter, emails likely memorialize the exchanges.

Whether the FBI agents affirmatively misrepresented Steele’s source network as connected to his British intelligence work in their communique with the OI attorney, and in turn, the OI attorney relayed that information to the FISA court, is unknown to us, but hopefully not to Special Counsel Durham.

Even if no one lied to the OI attorney and he merely assumed Steele’s source network carried over from his time with MI6, a misrepresentation to Boente during the March 6, 2017, briefing that Steele was a “CROWN source” still matters because the FISA surveillance orders were renewed two more times after that meeting.

That, of course, is assuming the FBI meant Steele when they referenced a “CROWN source”—something not entirely clear. More on that shortly.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

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Weekend Read: 5 Reasons America’s Birthrate Is Plummeting

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By Hannah Cox

The simple truth is, that there are fewer people who want to bring kids into the world. Though the reasons are diverse, 44 percent of non-parents between 18 to 49 say it is not at all likely they will procreate.

Elon Musk recently tweeted, “population collapse is the biggest threat to civilization.”

The tweet included a link to an interview Musk gave where he expanded on the subject. “Assuming there’s a benevolent future with AI, I think the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse,” Musk wrote. “Collapse. I want to emphasize this….Not explosion, collapse.”

Musk has been known to raise this concern in the past too. Last year he told the Wall Street Journal, “I can’t emphasize this enough, there are not enough people.” He also said that low and rapidly declining birth rates are “one of the biggest risks to civilization.”

That the wealthiest and arguably one of the smartest men on earth spends his days fixating on this issue should be a signal to others that things might be more dire than they think.

According to the US Census, “The US population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year since the founding of the nation.” And we’re not alone. According to reporting by the BBC, “Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed the global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in 2017 – and their study, published in the Lancet, projects it will fall below 1.7 by 2100.”

Population replacement rates are important for a society to sustain itself. We need people to be born so that there are workers to fill the various needs of the whole. Old men cannot do the labor young men can do, young adults are needed to care for the dying and aging. Fewer people mean less economic activity, smaller GDPs, less innovation, and less competition.

It also means we have less division of labor. As Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “The division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.“ That means people are less able to specialize and lean into their preferences or areas of expertise in their work.

As a whole, the machine slows and then stagnates when new firewood is not added to the furnace.

But while Elon Musk is absolutely correct about the problem and the potential threat it poses to society, he has not addressed (as far as I’ve seen) the underlying issues creating it or discussed how they might be solved.

So, in an effort to address these issues, here are five reasons people are increasingly choosing not to procreate, along with the free-market responses that could address them.

The simple fact is, that some people don’t want children. And there are legitimate reasons for that choice.

No matter what Sheryl Sandberg wants you to believe, women cannot have it all. “Leaning in” is a practice that has left most women who attempt it barrelled over in pain.

The reality is, while women tend to work outside the home in most partnerships now, the vast majority of childcare and household work continues to be laid at their feet. This is an ongoing issue that causes many women to choose not to have kids or not to have more kids.

In life, just as in economics, there are trade-offs. Most women realize they will likely not be able to be a successful career woman, a dedicated mother, and a jaw-dropping homemaker all at the same time. There are choices to be made here, and some women are simply deciding that motherhood is the role they can let go of.

It’s important to point out that these are choices that used to be harder to make. In generations past, women were shamed for not having kids, ostracized in society, or simply did not have the access to birth control they needed to determine their own pathway. We’re moving away from that kind of culture, and the advancements in women’s healthcare have empowered women to set their own course.

As a woman who has never wanted children, I’ve thought deeply about this topic. And I believe there are many others who are looking at the same factors I am and reaching the same conclusion.

Motherhood is hard, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I personally never wanted to go through the pain of childbirth, nor do I want to give myself the mental and emotional anxiety that comes with taking on this role. But as pointed out above, this wasn’t always a calculation afforded to women.

Furthermore, I love working—always have. And I’ve built a meaningful and impactful career I’d never be willing to give up. While some women choose to work and have kids, that’s not a situation I’d choose for myself. I’d never put my kids in government schools nor would I want them to spend their time with others in daycare. So when faced with the choice of pursuing my work or raising kids, I simply choose the former. It’s where I want to spend my time. I’ve met many others who feel the same way as me.

There are other factors as well. While the world has actually been improving (though you wouldn’t know it based on the media), there are many people (myself included) who look around and still don’t find the world to be one they’d want to bring kids into.

Thanks to birth control and the gains made under feminism, these are choices women now get to make that other generations simply were not afforded. As a whole, this is a choice that should be accepted and even celebrated by society.

Are there free market solutions to these factors? Sure. School choice would make it easier for women to homeschool or find other alternatives. Remote work would allow more people to balance child-rearing with their careers. And improvements in our social climate would likely make people more optimistic about procreating.

Still, the simple truth is, there are fewer people who want to bring kids into the world. Though the reasons are diverse, 44 percent of non-parents between 18 to 49 say it is not to or not at all likely they will procreate. And that’s ok. But for those who do want kids, we should strive to create a world where that option is as feasible as possible.

While some women and men are simply choosing not to have kids, others wish to and cannot find adequate partners.

It’s important to remember that we are still merely a few decades into a new normal: the sexes having equal rights and a fair playing field.

While this is long-overdue progress that should obviously be celebrated, it also means the social fabric of our society is still fraught with landmines. For all of human history, women and men have not been in a situation where they were equal under the law.

That means culturally and biologically women are programmed to look for partners who are stronger and wealthier than they are, because those elements were essential for survival for most of our existence. But in recent decades, women are largely surpassing men economically. They are more likely to obtain degrees, are catching up to men in their earnings, and in 37 percent of US households, women pay the bills.

To this, many will say women should just lower their standards or not be so picky. But it’s not that simple. Again, to do that requires overcoming significant evolutionary impulses on the part of women. And even when they do overcome these factors, it still isn’t working out. In fact, marriages with female breadwinners are 50 percent more likely to end in divorce. This illustrates that the power dynamic shift created between higher-earning women and lower-earning men is one our society has not yet learned to live with.

Furthermore, while men say they are fine with dating women who are smarter than them, psychological studies have revealed otherwise. Men are also biologically inclined to be providers and to be competitive. But for the first time in history, they’re having to compete with women, and outcome-wise, they’re often ending up in second place. It turns out they don’t find this so appealing in practice.

The fact that LDS and evangelical families are still having more children backs all of this up. Since gender norms are changing more slowly in these communities, it would seem their relationships are not suffering the same growing pains and therefore the number of children they are having is falling more slowly.

These are societal problems, not ones suited for public policy. And the harsh reality is that it will probably take decades for us to sort out this new landscape for romantic relationships and for people to evolve past the male provider/female nurturer gender stereotypes. But they are challenges worth examining and overcoming, and at an individual level, we can all look for ways to foster romantic relationships that take these factors into consideration.

Even for people who do want to have kids and manage to find the right partner, there is still a multitude of landmines they must overcome before they can comfortably procreate, and they all trace back to affordability.

A flourishing society would naturally incentivize people to procreate. But that requires a steady currency, a good job market, relatively safe communities, the promise of a good education, and economic factors that make it affordable to have and raise a child.

According to Merrill Lynch, it currently costs $230,000 to raise a kid to age 18. That’s a jaw-dropping amount, especially when one considers record-breaking inflation, wage stagnation, and economic uncertainty created by the reckless printing and spending policies of the US government.

The reasons for these high costs also trace back to the government. Childcare costs have been soaring for decades thanks to extreme government regulations and restrictions on these services. In one survey, 85 percent of parents reported spending 10 percent or more of their household income on child care.

Education is another major financial calculation in these decisions. There’s no way to sugarcoat it, government schools are atrocious and private schooling or alternative options can be expensive or unfeasible. Many parents are also hesitant to place their kids in government schools because of gun-free zones that make them sitting ducks.

And then there’s college. The price of higher education is astronomical, and that is solely due to government subsidies and loans. But while evidence increasingly shows college is not a good investment for most, many parents still desire to give their kids every opportunity they can and thus factor this in.

Additionally, healthcare costs continue to rise in the country thanks to the government increasingly taking over our system. Insurance prices shot up after Obamacare and there is no end in sight for many.

Finally, there are the costs of infertility. A growing number of Americans are having trouble getting pregnant when they want to. Some blame this on problems with our nutrition. Others say it’s because people are having kids later in life. Likely there are multiple reasons. But whatever the cause, fertility assistance is extremely expensive and a cost many cannot afford.

Relatedly, many economists point to the quantity-quality tradeoff theory which implies that a reduction in fertility would lead to more human capital investment per child. Meaning, people would rather invest their love, finances, and attention into a smaller number of children versus spreading it across a large family.

There are many public policy reforms that would bring these costs down. But for the time being it is understandable why for some the math is simply not adding up. People want to know they can give their kids a brighter and better future than they themselves had, and for now, that simply isn’t true for a lot of people.

Finally, many economists point to something called the demographic transition theory to explain the decrease in childbirth. In short, because child mortality rates have dropped so precipitously under capitalism people don’t have to have as many kids.

In generations past, as terrible as it was, parents would have a lot of kids with the assumption that several would die. That is no longer the case. People can plan how many children they want to have with a high level of certainty that those kids will live into adulthood.

Furthermore, as societies have become less male-centric, parents don’t have to keep having kids until they have a boy. For inheritance, property, and societal reasons, this used to be a goal for many people, but it is one that is quickly diminishing.

Many of these are issues we as a society can address through free-market solutions. It’s time we have that conversation.

*****

This article was published by FEE, Foundation for Economic Education and is reproduced with permission.

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