Ramaswamy on CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currencies] thumbnail

Ramaswamy on CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currencies]

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By Alexander William Salter

Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate for President, has a strong position on central bank digital currencies (CBDC): “Hell no.”

His proposals for reforming the Fed have major problems, but his views on financial freedom and privacy are unimpeachable. A CBDC would give the government unprecedented access to and control over private transactions. Allowing the Fed to create one would take us dangerously far down the road to serfdom.

A CBDC is sometimes described as a digital dollar. This is true but incomplete. We already have trillions of digital dollars in the economy thanks to private banks. For example, checking and savings accounts take the form of electronic balances.

A CBDC is different. It’s a liability of the central bank (in the U.S. case, the Fed) rather than private banks. Transacting with a CBDC also means using the central bank’s attendant payments system: the process for clearing debits and credits.

Financial privacy would be the first major casualty of a CBDC. Uncle Sam would have an incredible amount of information about citizens’ transactions. Do you want to live in a world where the government knows who buys and sells which goods and services, and on what terms? The potential for abuse is obvious to anybody with a modicum of understanding about political power.

But that’s not all. Whether on their own initiative or under the influence of politicians, Fed officials could use a CBDC to micromanage the economy. If central bankers decide the public isn’t spending enough money, they could debit CBDC accounts to stimulate consumption. This is, in essence, a negative interest rate policy. And since the assets in question are a liability of the central bank, not tied to or redeemable for anything, they can do whatever they want with them. Your only recourse would be to exit your position—if the technocrats pulling the strings let you.

Then, of course, we must consider the risks of selective (and likely politically motivated) payment processing. We’ve already seen that central bankers are far too eager to meddle in policy areas like racial justice and climate change, which are beyond their legitimate mandate. It’s no stretch to imagine central bankers denying payments for firearms or fossil fuels. A CBDC would allow Fed officials to pick winners and losers based on ideological factors to an even greater extent.

Alarmingly, the government has already taken important steps towards implementing a CBDC. In cooperation with participating financial institutions, the Fed inaugurated Project Hamilton, which is basically a CBDC pilot program. Congressional Republicans have introduced legislation to prevent the Fed from going any further. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell says no final decision would be made without legislators’ approval. But given decades of Fed mission creep, this promise is not credible. GOP lawmakers absolutely should head CBDC efforts off at the pass, and the party’s presidential candidates should support that rejection.

Ramaswamy’s unequivocal stance sets a good example. He’s stimulating a public conversation about an issue that otherwise would be limited to white-paper wonks and think tank “experts.” Americans cherish their liberty and privacy and rightly will refuse to surrender them unless the stakes for the nation are existential. Let’s be clear: There is no problem, serious or otherwise, that CBDC is well-positioned to solve. It’s just a power grab, and it deserves a “hell no” from each of us.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research and is reproduced with permission.

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Taking Back America’s Colleges and Universities thumbnail

Taking Back America’s Colleges and Universities

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By Jim Banks

The Fairness in Higher Education Accreditation Act attacks wokeness at its core.

I started the House Anti-Woke Caucus in January to build a coalition that identifies and roots out wokeness from the federal government and American public life. Our first task has been to identify areas where a small action could have an outsized effect. The university system is a target-rich environment for our caucus, and the higher education accreditation cartel has helped make colleges a source and stronghold of wokeness.

Federal law requires Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) to receive accreditation from an agency or association recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Congress regulates federal regulators, federal regulators regulate accreditation agencies, accreditation agencies regulate colleges, and colleges teach your children.

Accreditation agencies act as pseudo-governmental entities, creating and enforcing the rules by which a college operates. By itself, regulating higher education isn’t a bad thing, as long as regulators incentivize patriotism and excellence. But under the current arrangement, accreditors are forcing schools into line with the woke revolutionary agenda. Congress must instead push accreditors and universities to inculcate American principles and practices.

In recent years, woke revolutionaries weaponized the accreditation cartel to impose Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and affirmative action mandates on schools. Schools that reject wokeness are rejected by accreditors. Universities that don’t implement DEI and affirmative action policies are being strong-armed by woke revolutionaries into doing so. And there’s no way out—federal regulations make it nearly impossible for schools to switch to a non-woke accreditor.

That’s why Senator Marco Rubio and I introduced the Fairness in Higher Education Accreditation Act. Our bill would reform the standards used to accredit universities. Instead of enforcing wokeism, accreditors would be prohibited from considering schools’ DEI and affirmative action policies and required to consider schools’ adherence to safeguarding First Amendment rights.

My bill would hold colleges accountable when they punish students or faculty for conservative beliefs. Last month, Northwestern University froze the funds of the College Republicans. The group’s alleged crime was publishing a flier for a speaking event that featured a rainbow flag with a skull and crossbones. Similar examples abound, but attacks on political speech should never be tolerated.

But it is not enough just to oppose DEI—we must be positively pro-American.

Institutions critical to forming our national character shouldn’t be allowed to suppress speech. Congress must hold Institutions of Higher Education to the same high speech standard we are all held to by guaranteeing First Amendment protections for students and faculty alike.

Speech suppression is anti-American and contributes to the overwhelmingly leftist tilt of our higher education system. Madera Community College recently suspended Professor David Richardson for passing out chocolate bars that satirize the Left’s pronoun obsession. It shouldn’t be surprising that among college professors, Democrats outnumber Republicans nine to one. Professors like Mr. Richardson are silenced or forced out. To break the leftist monopoly on the university system, we need to reassert our founding principles on campuses. Before universities consider discriminating against right-of-center faculty, they will remember that their accreditation depends on tolerating all political speech.

The Fairness in Higher Education Accreditation Act is just the beginning of what I hope will be a concerted campaign to reform or replace the accreditation cartel. Fixing our broken system of higher education will take ingenuity and work, but it’s a hard job that’s worth doing.

*****

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

 is a U.S. Congressman representing Indiana’s 3rd district.

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Observations on The Fourth of July thumbnail

Observations on The Fourth of July

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By Neland Nobel

We live in a time when our Founding is either taken for granted (it’s a day to picnic) or is degraded altogether.  Now popular is the notion that the Founding was in 1619 and the nation was born in the sin of slavery.  That is all that is important about our history, our failings.  That is not a particularly balanced view of either this country or the failings of the human condition.  It doesn’t matter as our failings are just fodder for the progressives’ attempt to divide our society along racial and sexual lines.

Lost on the latter school is that slavery was a universal institution and it was brought here by European powers and the African leaders involved in the trade.  Maybe one in ten African slaves made it to these shores with the overwhelming bulk going to Brazil and the sugar producing islands.  Funny, you don’t see Spaniards or Portugues consumed in guilt today.  Perhaps that is because the institution of slavery did not contradict their founding principles.

The Founders certainly understood the the contradiction between slavery and the notion of “all men are created equal”, but keeping the South in the War of Independence was a necessary expediency.  You have to win first before you can change the world. After all, you had 13 colonies, not particularly united, taking on the most powerful empire on earth.  Better stick together in the fight and sort out discrepancies and contradictions later.

After the Founding, steps were taken to end slavery but to be sure, it took much too long and should not have required a war.  America was always an experiment and we did not always get it right.  But that does not invalidate the principles themselves, it only demonstrates failure to embrace them.

However, it is interesting that those that complain most loudly about this failure to implement immediately and completely American ideals now attack those ideals more than they attack failures to implement them.  In fact, those most critical of America’s racial failings have long been supportive of racism as a public policy, as long as it is directed against “white people” and to some extent, Asians.

Progressives now embrace a racial spoils system, warmed over failed notions of socialism, and a belief in yielding our nationhood and sovereignty to unelected international organizations.  As a final touch, they believe in a revolutionary social order where Biblical tradition, on any control on the sexual appetites of people must be removed.  Whatever belief system they have, now seems more like a pre-Hebrew worship of the earth and flesh.  And, they wish to impose these beliefs on your children and grandchildren and will actively muzzle or cancel those who don’t agree.  Like elements of the French Revolution, it now appear to be not only a rejection of The Founding but a rejection of rationality itself.

Even after the most recent Supreme Court decision taking us back to the principle of a color blind society, universities are plotting ways to try to circumvent the ruling.  Many public statements by progressives suggest that without special treatment, they themselves are still peddling the noxious notion of the  natural inferiority of Blacks, that will keep them down unless white progressives are present to protect them.  Their only solution seems to be crude racial categorization that makes no logical  sense coupled with reverse discrimination against the majority “white”  and Asian population.

The recent Supreme Court decision, although somewhat limited to institutions of “higher ” learning, marks a welcome return to the principles of the Founding.  All people should be treated equally and there should be equal treatment under the law.

This ruling makes this particular July 4th somewhat special.

Progressives have also been busy attacking other principles of the Founding such as property rights, the right to free speech, the right to be free from warrantless searches, the right to bear arms, the right to assemble and travel, and religious liberties.

Indeed, the hatred of this  country oozing from our media and educational system is about as bad as the propaganda peddled by our external enemies.  This is even more ironic in that those hostile to American ideals are now largely in charge of our culture and politics.

That they have recently lost some major cases before the Supreme Court just enrages them more.  How dare a co-equal branch of government call the President on his unlawful student loan giveaway or tell Harvard their admissions politics are unconstitutional!

If you want to do something truly subversive this July 4th, be sure to put out the flag this year.  In fact, flying the flag all the time is now becoming a sign of resistance to the America haters.

Put the flag out for the 4th and keep it out for the duration of this struggle for the soul of America.  Remember to bring it in during bad weather, and if you leave it out at night it should be lighted. I just bought a solar powered spotlight for the flag, just for that purpose.

Flying the flag on the 4th of July was always a sign of solidarity with the Founding.  Now, due to the relentless culture war that we now find ourselves, this gesture is required every day.  So fly the flag this 4th, and everyday thereafter.

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The Surprising Origins of the ‘No Taxation Without Representation!’ Slogan thumbnail

The Surprising Origins of the ‘No Taxation Without Representation!’ Slogan

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By Lawrence Reed

The phrase that was popular during America’s own revolution owes a hat tip to a famous Englishman, who took a stand against King Charles I’s “ship tax”.

Ask most Americans where the slogan “No taxation without representation!” came from and the likely response will be “American colonists protesting against Britain in the 1760s.” But the spirit, if not the precise letter of the phrase, originated more than a century before. Moreover, we can thank the Brits themselves for it. It started with something called the “ship tax.”

Since the early Middle Ages, English custom allowed the monarch to impose a special levy in times of war upon citizens who lived in coastal settlements. They could meet the requirement by providing ships, shipbuilding materials, or money for the Crown to build ships (hence the name, “ship tax”). Kings and Queens levied the “tax” as a royal prerogative, meaning they skipped the annoyance of securing the consent of Parliament as required in the Magna Carta of 1215.

So long as the tax fell upon a small portion of the population and only in a “national emergency,” the monarchy got away with it for centuries.

King James I provoked a fuss in 1619 when he extended the ship tax to London but it was his successor, Charles I, who sparked a far bigger uproar over it just nine years later. Charles shut down Parliament and then, in 1628 and in peacetime no less, he imposed the ship tax on all counties in England. It was a tax on everybody, and nobody could do anything about it. In subsequent years, the King reaffirmed and increased it in the face of fierce and growing opposition.

Enter one John Hampden, a Buckinghamshire landowner first elected to Parliament in 1621. When he refused to pay the full balance of the ship tax the King said he owed, Hampden’s case proceeded to the twelve judges of the Court of Exchequer. The King, Hampden and his lawyers maintained, had no right to levy the tax in the absence of Parliamentary approval.

Though Hampden lost the case by a vote of 7 to 5, Charles was embarrassed that his victory was so narrow. When the English Civil War began in 1642, John Hampden was among the first the King unsuccessfully attempted to arrest. The issue on which he risked challenging the King, taxation without representation, proved to be a major cause of that war.

Hampden died in battle in 1643, six years before Charles himself was beheaded. Almost four centuries later, Hampden is remembered as a martyr for liberty and his name is honored eponymously by numerous towns and institutions. Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia is one of many examples.

James Otis of Massachusetts is usually credited as the first American to employ “no taxation without representation” in the run-up to the Declaration of Independence. He wrote in 1764 that “the very act of taxing, exercised over those who are not represented, appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights as freemen; and if continued, seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right.”

Liberty-loving patriots like John Hampden and James Otis went to war because their governments dared tax without the consent of elected parliamentarians. As bad as taxation without representation was in their day, I’ll bet at today’s rates with representation they might well raise a fuss again.

For Additional Information, See:

The Compact that Preceded the Magna Carta by Lawrence W. Reed

Edmund Burke’s Little-Known Speech that Eroded the British Monarchy’s Command of Money and Power by Lawrence W. Reed

The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 by Lawrence W. Reed

America’s Republic: How the Great Experiment Came About by Lawrence W. Reed

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

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Martha Washington: Remembering America’s 1st First Lady thumbnail

Martha Washington: Remembering America’s 1st First Lady

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By Virginia Allen

On Independence Day, Americans rightly honor our Founding Fathers for their courage and sacrifice. George Washington is arguably the most important figure in U.S. history, and his wife, Martha Washington, was a constant support during his career.

Martha Washington didn’t have an easy life. Her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, died after the couple had been married for just over seven years. They had four children together, all of whom died before Martha Washington did. Her first two children died before age 5. Her third child, John Parke Custis, died in his 20s; her fourth, Martha Parke Custis, died as a teen.

Her marriage to George Washington in 1759 was joyful, since the “attraction was mutual, powerful, and immediate,” according to Mount Vernon’s historical records.

But as was the case with her first marriage, life with the man who would become a new nation’s first president likely wasn’t what Martha expected.

George Washington left Mount Vernon in 1775 to lead the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Though he would not return home to Mount Vernon for six years, Martha traveled to her husband’s encampment each winter to stay with him while fighting was at a standstill.

When her husband was elected president after the Revolutionary War, Mrs. Washington was not pleased to see her husband again leave home and be drawn back to public life. Despite a likely longing for a quiet life with her husband after years of war and extended separation, she set a powerful precedent for the critical role of the nation’s first lady.

Martha Washington played a critical role in forming the schedule for official entertaining. Every Friday, she held a reception, giving the president the opportunity to speak with guests in a more private setting.

A portrait of Martha Washington as first lady. (Photo: Stock Montage/Getty Images)

A grandson “remembered that veterans of the Revolutionary War stopped by the executive mansion on an almost daily basis to pay their respects to the Washingtons,” according to Mount Vernon’s historical accounts. “It was Martha Washington who talked with these, gave them something to eat, and sometimes even a small token of remembrance.”

Mrs. Washington’s faithfulness to her husband, visiting him during the war and supporting him as president, serves as a beautiful reminder of the sacrifices, large and small, that so many men and women made nearly 250 years ago to form a government that would ensure “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all Americans.

In today’s edition of the “Problematic Women” podcast, we discuss the legacy of Martha Washington. Also on today’s show, drag queens say they’re “coming for” your children, but parents have something to say about that. Plus, two major Supreme Court cases will be decided as soon as today. We explain why those decisions will affect young people in particular.

Listen to the podcast below:

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

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No Quarter For Wrongthink: ASU Shuts Down Free Speech Center, Fires Faculty thumbnail

No Quarter For Wrongthink: ASU Shuts Down Free Speech Center, Fires Faculty

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By Corinne Murdock

Arizona State University (ASU) has shut down a prominent free speech center and fired several faculty members following the protest of the faculty who opposed its existence.

The university decided to shut down the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development within the Barrett Honors College following a controversial event featuring conservative speakers hosted earlier this year.

The contested speakers were nationally-acclaimed conservative pundits Charlie Kirk, founder and president of activist group Turning Point USA; Dennis Prager, radio talk show host and founder of PragerU; and Robert Kiyosaki, author of a bestseller personal finance book and PragerU presenter. As AZ Free News reported in February, a group of 37 left-leaning ASU Barrett Honors College faculty led a campaign to prevent the event from happening, which included recruiting students to protest the event.

The two faculty members to lose their jobs following the controversial event were the executive director of the Lewis Center, Ann Atkinson, and the events operator for the Gammage Theater where the event was held, Lin Blake.

AZ Free News spoke with both Atkinson and Blake about their ordeal. Earlier this week, Atkinson came forward in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece criticizing ASU for caving to leftist restrictions on free speech.

“I wasn’t trying to do anything but my job: to do it well, and to keep people safe.”

For ASU’s Gammage Theater, Blake handled the arrangements for events such as calendaring, contracting, and client meetings. Throughout her career, Blake said she always offered the same respect and professionalism to clients, regardless of who or what was behind an event.

“Over the years I have booked and managed many types of events. Every one of them received the same level of professionalism,” said Blake.

Yet, it was Blake’s commitment to equal treatment in a venue designed for free expression that ultimately cost her the job — even though her superiors signed off on the event.

“Basically, I was sacrificed because Gammage executive staff had to do something to satisfy or appease the staff of Barrett Honors College. I was a scapegoat, and was let go at the beginning of April,” said Blake.

Blake recounted that her superior initially praised her for handling the controversial event. A bulk of essential personnel — security officers, backstage crew, and front of house — all called out, and police availability was limited severely due to ongoing staffing shortages and the Super Bowl occurring that same week. It was up to Blake to fill the gaps to provide a safe and successful event. By all accounts, she said she did — even her boss reportedly told her so, using a favorite phrase of his to describe her: “rockstar.”

By the next Monday, however, sentiments shifted. Blake said she walked into work facing a line of questioning. She was reportedly asked by her superior, ASU Gammage executive director Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, why she booked a “white supremacist,” an accusation leveled against the event speakers by opposing faculty. Blake was then required to get pre-approval from both Jennings-Roggensack and management prior to booking any future events.

Blake said the pre-approval amounted to a micromanaging that ultimately served to filter out who could and couldn’t host an event at Gammage.

According to Blake, Jennings-Roggensack had a habit of telling staff that they were aligned in beliefs, that they all had voted for President Joe Biden and Gov. Katie Hobbs — even if they hadn’t.

At a faculty and leadership meeting following the upbraiding from Jennings-Roggensack, Blake said she was singled out to explain Gammage’s core values.

After that, Blake described her remaining months at ASU as a “slow decline.” She was let go in April for “not being a good fit.”

Blake says she’s applied and interviewed for three other ASU positions. Each time, HR has sent her letters that they’re no longer hiring for the position — even though the positions remained posted as available.

“[This is] what happens to those who don’t conform to the prevailing orthodoxy on campus.”

Atkinson retained her position several months longer than Blake did. It was at the end of May that Atkinson learned from Barrett Honors College Dean Tara Williams that her position would end, and that the Lewis Center would be no more.

In an official statement shared widely by the press following Atkinson’s Wall Street Journal piece, an ASU spokesman claimed that the primary donor behind the Lewis Center, the T.W. Lewis Foundation, would no longer be funding the program. ASU also praised the controversial event as a success.

“Ms. Atkinson’s current job at the university will no longer exist after June 30 because the donor who created and funded the Lewis Center decided to terminate his donation. ASU is working to determine how we can support the most impactful elements of the center without that external funding,” stated the spokesman. “Arizona State University remains committed to, in practice, not just rhetoric, all things that support free speech and all of its components. The event in question was held and was a success.”

It appears that demonization by the vast majority of Barrett Honors College faculty over the Lewis Center event was the breaking point for T.W. Lewis Foundation’s founder, T.W. Lewis. He told The Arizona Republic that ASU’s environment is hostile to conservative thinkers.

“The long story short is that conservative viewpoints are not welcome at ASU. Or, at most public universities in America,” said Lewis.

The T.W. Lewis Foundation funds a number of other major conservative organizations and enterprises, such as GreatHearts Academies, Museum of the Bible, The American Conservative, Alliance Defending Freedom, Conservative Partnership Institute, Young America’s Foundation, Foundation for Economic Education, and the Heritage Foundation. They also fund the organizations from which the controversial speakers hailed: Turning Point USA and PragerU.

However, the foundation wasn’t the only funding source possible as ASU implied. Atkinson offered a diversified group of donors to offset the lost funding; she reported that Williams wasn’t interested. Atkinson also collected 18 pages of testimonials from students, families, and past guest speakers. That wasn’t enough to persuade, either.

“What ASU did not say is that the Barrett dean expressed no interest in continuing the Lewis Center,” said Atkinson.

AZ Free News reached out to Williams about the alternative funding. She didn’t respond by press time.

Atkinson believes that, ultimately, ASU policies have allowed this stifling of free speech to take place. Come fall, there will be one less place for free thought on campus.

“I want the right to free speech to our universities to apply to all people. What happened appears to be within the policies of the university,” said Atkinson. “The students lose. I’m devastated for the students. For so many of them, the 7,000 students in Barrett, this has been their home. Now it’s gone.”

As for next steps, Atkinson said she is taking everything one day at a time.

“I’m hoping to show the world what happens to those who don’t conform to the prevailing orthodoxy on campus.”

*****

This article was published by AZ Free News and is reproduced with permission.

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Money Supply Growth Falls to Depression-Era Levels for Second Month in April thumbnail

Money Supply Growth Falls to Depression-Era Levels for Second Month in April

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By Ryan McMaken

Money supply growth fell again in April, plummeting further into negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years.  April’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.

Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since November, we’ve been seeing the money supply repeatedly contract—year-over-year— for six months in a row. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. 

During April 2023, the downturn accelerated even more as YOY growth in the money supply was at –12.0 percent. That’s down from March’s rate of –9.75 percent and was far below April’s 2022’s rate of 6.6 percent. With negative growth now falling near or below –10 percent for the second month in a row, money-supply contraction is the largest we’ve seen since the Great Depression. Prior to March and April of this year, at no other point for at least sixty years has the money supply fallen by more than 6 percent (YoY) in any month.

The money supply metric used here—the “true,” or Rothbard-Salerno, money supply measure (TMS)—is the metric developed by Murray Rothbard and Joseph Salerno, and is designed to provide a better measure of money supply fluctuations than M2.

The Mises Institute now offers regular updates on this metric and its growth. This measure of the money supply differs from M2 in that it includes Treasury deposits at the Fed (and excludes short-time deposits and retail money funds).

In recent months, M2 growth rates have followed a similar course to TMS growth rates, although TMS has fallen faster than M2. In April 2023, the M2 growth rate was –4.6 percent. That’s down from March’s growth rate of –3.8 percent. April 2023’s growth rate was also well down from April 2022’s rate of 7.8 percent.

Money supply growth can often be a helpful measure of economic activity and an indicator of coming recessions. During periods of economic boom, money supply tends to grow quickly as commercial banks make more loans. Recessions, on the other hand, tend to be preceded by slowing rates of money supply growth. 

Negative money supply growth is not in itself an especially meaningful metric. As shown by Ludwig von Mises, recessions are often preceded by a mere slowing in money supply growth. It is not necessary for the money supply to actually shrink to trigger the bust period of a boom-bust cycle.  But the drop into negative territory we’ve seen in recent months does help illustrate just how far and how rapidly money supply growth has fallen. That is generally a red flag for economic growth and employment.

The fact that the money supply is shrinking at all is so remarkable because the money supply almost never gets smaller. The money supply has now fallen by $2.6 trillion (or 12.0 percent) since the peak in April 2022. Proportionally, the drop in money supply since 2022 is the largest fall we’ve seen since the Depression. (Rothbard estimates that in the lead up to the Great Depression, the money supply fell by 12 percent from its peak of $73 billion in mid-1929 to $64 billion at the end of 1932.)

In spite of this recent drop in total money supply, the trend in money supply remains well above what existed during the twenty-year period from 1989 to 2009. To return to this trend, the money supply would have to drop at least another $4 trillion or so—or 22 percent—down to a total below $15 trillion.

Since 2009, the TMS money supply is now up by nearly 189 percent. (M2 has grown by 143 percent in that period.) Out of the current money supply of $19.2 trillion, $4.8 trillion of that has been created since January 2020—or 25 percent. Since 2009, $12.5 trillion of the current money supply has been created. In other words, nearly two-thirds of the money supply have been created over the past thirteen years.

With these kinds of totals, a ten-percent drop only puts a small dent in the huge edifice of newly created money. The US economy still faces a very large monetary overhang from the past several years, and this is partly why after eleven months of slowing money-supply growth, we are not yet seeing a sizable slowdown in the labor market.

Nonetheless, the monetary slowdown has been sufficient to considerably weaken the economy. The Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index is in recession territory. The Empire State Manufacturing Survey is, too. The Leading Indicators index keeps looking worse. The yield curve points to recession. Even Federal Reserve staffers, who generally take an implausibly rosy view of the economy, predict recession in 2023. Individual bankruptcy filings were up 23 percent in May. Temp jobs were down, year-over-year, which often indicates approaching recession.

Money Supply and Rising Interest Rates

An inflationary boom begins to turn to bust once new injections of money subside, and we are seeing this now. Not surprisingly, the current signs of malaise come after the Federal Reserve finally pulled its foot slightly off the money-creation accelerator after more than a decade of quantitative easing, financial repression, and general devotion to easy money. As of June, the Fed has allowed the federal funds rate to rise to 5.25 percent. This has meant short-term interest rates overall have risen as well. In June, for example, the yield on 3-month Treasurys remains near the highest level measured in more than 20 years.

Without ongoing access to easy money at near-zero rates, however, banks are less enthusiastic about making loans. This is not uniform across the economy, however, and the credit crunch is most acutely felt among smaller businesses and middle-class households. In the latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey from the Federal Reserve, researchers found that bankers believe lowered expectations for economic growth coupled with deposit outflows will lead to banks tightening lending standards. Banks have found that demand for loans has weakened as interest rates have increased and economic activity has slowed.

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The article was published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and is reproduced with permission.

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‘We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Coming for Your Children’: 6 Scenes From NYC Pride Events thumbnail

‘We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Coming for Your Children’: 6 Scenes From NYC Pride Events

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By Gigi De La Torre

Editors’ Note: There are uncomfortable scenes that we must share with you. If not, you might not know the extent to which sexual extremists are taking their argument. Otherwise, you might think we are mean and against gay people. Earlier, we had written about this subject (see Get Your Bedroom Out of My Government) and made the point that a proper concept of liberty suggests that you are free to do what you want to do as long as you do not harm others or use force or coercion. Society has reached its level of tolerance with “pride.” What consenting people do in private should be respected, but this invasion of our schools, and ghastly public displays deserves strong condemnation and resistance. Further, some 21 Federal Agencies and numerous local authorities have sanctioned “pride events” and the flying of pride flags on government buildings. We need to get the “bedroom” of the LGBTQ crowd out of our government and especially out of our schools. Their movement now is using coercion by hijacking the government and is doing harm to our children and to society at large. Enough.

New York City held its 53rd Pride parade Sunday.

Here are some of the scenes from that parade and related events shared on social media.

1. ‘We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Coming for Your Children.’

In a clip that has gone viral on Twitter, marchers at the New York City Drag March, which was held Friday, chanted, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”

One holds a sign that says, “Drag isn’t for CISsies.”

2. Twerking

Men wearing almost nothing but Speedos twerked and danced on a parade float sponsored by the Chinese Rainbow Network, an organization that claims to be the “largest Mandarin speaking LGBTQ+ network in North America.”

The float also featured a woman wearing a red dress and boot stilettos pole dancing.

At the end of the float, one woman fully dressed stood in the corner and filmed the others sexually dancing on her phone.

3. ‘Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Don’t Assume Your Kids Are Straight!’

Some marchers shouted, “One, two, three, four, open up the closet door! Five, six, seven, eight, don’t assume your kids are straight!”

Kids wearing pink shirts and rainbow gear marched along with the adults.

One little girl on a man’s shoulders wore a transgender pink, white, and blue flag as a cape.

4. ‘Stop Touching Me!’

K. Yang, an activist advocating for female rights, was verbally harassed and assaulted while protesting in the middle of a Pride gathering.

The video shows ralliers closely shouting in Yang’s face, swatting her signs down and stomping on them, and grabbing and pushing Yang. Yang repeatedly shouted, “Stop touching me.”

5. ‘Clothing Optional’ Water Party

A massive reportedly “clothing optional” water party took place in Washington Square Park. Attendees are seen wading in one of the park’s fountains.

6. ‘We’ll Love Our Son Even If He’s Straight.’

A couple paraded their child down the street, holding a sign saying, “We’ll love our son even if he’s straight.”

They were followed by a group of men clad in leather underwear.

*****

This article was published by DailySignal and is reproduced with permission.

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Genital Mutilation for the Masses

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By TT Exulansic

The gory details and irreversible horrors of “gender-affirming” surgery laid bare.

Gender identity ideology, the worldview surrounding the core belief that sometimes men are women and other times women are men, have gotten the foothold that it has because people naturally trust that medical authorities, especially surgeons, know what they are doing. We believe that if patients were being harmed, those patients would certainly speak up first. Proponents of gender ideology claim that fewer than one percent of people regret surgical sexual transition, often contrasted with the 20 percent regret rate for knee surgery. But is this purportedly low regret rate reflective of reality? Rather than prove that sex-organ origami is wildly successful, what this reflects is that patients who are subjected to these highly-experimental procedures are unable, for whatever reason, to express levels of regret one would reasonably expect from an evidence-based surgical intervention.

Could it be that other factors, including withdrawal of community support and loss of reputation and standing, once one becomes known as a “transphobe” who was “never really trans,” are discouraging patients from being open about their regret? Could mental illness or emotional immaturity be preventing these individuals from rationally evaluating their situation or acknowledging and naming their emotions? Having looked at dozens of these first-hand narratives of individuals who “do not regret their surgery,” yet take to the internet to warn others anyway, I have concluded that these patients fear backlash for saying their actual, authentic truth out loud. Even people who suffer horrific complications requiring unimaginable revisions—likened to open hot dog buns by the surgeons themselves, as Ashton Williams discovered—are loath to say, “I regret having my arm skin cut off, stitched up, and sewn to my pubic area, and it was foolish of me to dream of peeing standing up at all costs.” But instead, she dreams of the day when it will all have been worth it, when she will look back on this hardship as a “bump in the road.”

Gender-affirming surgery patients face community scorn if they discuss the harm being done to them, their bodies, their pain levels, their wallets, their career or educational advancement, and their sexual-urologic function. The opportunity cost of the time spent dilating, tending to a colostomy bag, or financing a revision, is significant. And yet, patients who discuss the cost are cast as contributing to the zeitgeist that is “taking life-saving healthcare away from trans kids.” A predictable comment on any such surgical narrative is, “Be careful! Your story might be used by a transphobe to hurt trans people.” “Regretters,” as some term them, detransitioned or not, are accused of being “cis” because only “true trans” benefit from these interventions (making them tests of faith). The same network which “doxxes” (publicizes documents containing identifying information about) activists pushing back against gender identity ideology is ready and willing to subject even members of the trans community who have given their literal pound of flesh to this same mistreatment. For a movement so focused on the importance of inclusivity and tolerance, they are quick to scorn and shirk those branded non-believers.

Doxxing ignites firestorms many of us, including myself, have been subject to. This behavior seeks to divest us of our jobs, our homes, and our sense of personal safety as punishment for misgendering and other crimes. I have had the names and addresses of myself and my family members identified and circulated. As a former trans person who has become a vocal critic of the ideology and its attendant policy demands, I have received threats and other attempts at intimidation, such as frivolous professional complaints from foreign nationals and harassing phone calls. I’ve had long-time friends condemn me as a bigot on the basis of my gender-critical views, despite knowing first-hand that I would aid and befriend a trans-identifying person.

Surgical Simulacra

So what are these surgeries? Let’s discuss them in more depth. Graphic description of genital modification surgery will follow. Reader discretion is advised. Many of these interventions were initially designed for and continue to be performed on people with disorders of sexual development, some of whom are minors. It is important that people with a medical necessity for obtaining these surgeries still have access to them, in light of legislative attempts to ban these interventions. However, these interventions have the same complications regardless of the reasons for obtaining them, and there is a significant complication rate for genital construction performed for any reason. The following will be a discussion of these surgeries as they relate to transgender-identifying individuals. These surgeries all fall under the general category of “bottom surgeries.”

Vaginectomy is performed on trans-identifying female patients alone or as part of another procedure. Using either a scalpel or a laser, the interior wall of the vagina is surgically excised, and the remaining flesh is then sewn together so that it scars shut. Patients are typically told this eliminates the need for routine pap smears to check for cervical cancer. Hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) including removal of the cervix may or may not be done at this time.

Hysterectomy is the removal of the uterus. For trans-identifying females, this is either for non-medically necessary alleviation of “dysphoria” (a Greek term meaning “bad mood”) or in many cases, it is made medically necessary through the administration of cosmetic doses of testosterone, which cause fibroids to form, resulting in pain. These fibroids can form after just a few years on testosterone, as confirmed via dissection of removed uteruses of trans-identifying women. A child put on testosterone in middle school may require a hysterectomy before she graduates high school. Testosterone (a known human teratogen, i.e., a substance which causes birth defects) can also change the endometrial tissue (the tissue which is excreted during menstruation), raising the risk of endometrial cancer. This has been confirmed by microscopic examination of uteruses removed from trans-identifying young women. The ovaries also become scarred due to exposure to high doses of testosterone. In addition to pain, fibroids can cause excessive bleeding and reproductive problems such as uterine-factor infertility and pregnancy loss. Oopherectomy, removal of the ovaries, may or may not be completed at this same time. Either procedure can put the trans-identifying woman into early menopause and place her in an increased risk category for early-onset dementia.

Metoidioplasty is a surgery performed on female-to-male transgender individuals. The vaginal tissue may be discarded or utilized in urethral lengthening (see below). The clitoris, which has been irreversibly enlarged through the use of cosmetic testosterone, is “released” from the connective tissue that holds it in place, allowing the head of the clitoris to point outwards from the body when erect. The inner labia are then sewn together, partially or fully, and connected to the elongated and “released” clitoral head, leaving a tube down the middle through which the individual can complete the holy trans rite of “standing to pee.”

Phalloplasty is a term that refers to the construction of a neophallus using skin from elsewhere on the body. This skin may be a transplanted radial forearm free-flap phalloplasty, a rotated (non-free) flap of skin from the abdomen, or transplanted from the leg or back. When transplanted from the leg, the thickness is typically excessive, resulting in a girth that has been likened by recipients to being the size of a soda can, requiring multiple “de-girthing” procedures that involve liposuction. Of course, if the person gains weight, their neophallus may again enlarge. The phalloplasty recipient also faces the issue of “shrinkage,” as the lack of connective tissue structure of a penis means that over time, the transplanted skin will change in size and shape to become smaller. This has been documented in photos by recipients and their providers, published in peer-reviewed journals and to social media platforms like Reddit. This lack of structure also makes the individual prone to pressure sores internally, which result in strictures where the skin inside the tube has become inflamed and scarred together, obstructing the flow of urine and requiring an individual to wear a second, suprapubic catheter that goes into the bladder through the abdomen, as well as a catheter inside the skin tube to keep it open.

Repeated insults to the bladder itself in some cases result in severe and recurrent bladder stones, all of which may contribute to the eventual loss of the bladder and need for a permanent urostomy bag. Additionally, individuals who get vaginectomy are vulnerable to fistula, which is an abnormal connection between two areas of the body. For one person I interviewed, “Ryan,” a fistula formed between the excised vaginal space, the “natal” (original) urethra, and the colon, allowing bacteria from the colon to repeatedly infect the urethra and bladder. To prevent sepsis, Ryan’s doctors re-routed the intestine to a stoma, or opening, cut in the side of the abdomen, to which a colostomy bag was attached to collect stool. This reduced the frequency of infections, but did not stop them. At the time of the interview, Ryan had been living half a life due to this imposed, severe digestive disability for a year and a half, with no end in sight.

Overall phalloplasty complication rates range from 60 percent to 100 percent higher when performed on females versus males, depending on the nature of the complication, with studies loath to provide an overall complication rate across complication subtypes. The studies that do provide such a figure estimate rates as high as 76 percent. “[C]urrent evidence of the various phalloplasty surgical techniques and their expected postoperative outcomes is weak.” Even without complications, “post void dribbling,” which many “trans men” liken to a “squirt gun” they have to “milk,” was found by one study to occur in 72 percent of female phalloplasty recipients.

One unfortunate phalloplasty recipient has needed eight surgeries (and counting) including the initial and all the revisions. She also spent five weeks in the hospital, of which two were spent in the ICU on a ventilator during COVID because her arm-skin phalloplasty had predictably become septic. She nearly lost her leg from a giant blood clot that formed as a result of a combination of factors, including the sepsis and the extended time spent immobile. The clot was likely partly a result of testosterone poisoning, which may have caused her, as she stated in a video response to me, to discontinue testosterone shortly after that incident. Yet this individual is still looking forward to having an erectile device implanted into this transplanted skin tube. These erectile devices, which are acting within floppy arm skin, are typically either balloon-based (requiring a pump to be implanted in the labial skin which has been revised to look like a scrotal sack) or a rod that clicks into place, similar to a futon frame. Romantic partners of phalloplasty recipients that have agreed to be in their videos state it does not work well for sexual intercourse, and this reality can leave recipients despondent.

In addition to phalloplasty, recipients often get additional cosmetic procedures so that the skin tube more closely mimics a real penis. These may include “medical tattooing,” which seeks to create the appearance of veins or the glans from a distance. They may also get additional surgical interventions to create the cosmetic shape of a penis via additional nips and tucks. Nerves from the location of the graft site may also be transplanted and joined (similar to soldering) to the clitoral nerve itself, which may require severing the clitoral nerve from the tip of the clitoris, resulting in loss of clitoral sensation (in addition to the loss that occurs when the phalloplasty “buries the clitoris”). This may result in some amount of sensation in parts of the skin tube. Since it is an arm or leg skin tube, however, it does not acquire the erogenous sensitivity or specificity that a real penis has. Recipients will describe having mild sensation at the tip or base, to the extent they can feel if something is touching it or not.

In both phalloplasty and metoidioplasty, patients are increasingly asking that their vaginas be left open and accessible, known as a “vagina-sparing” procedures. One metoidioplasty patient had her vagina “spared,” and subsequently, she became pregnant from having heterosexual intercourse with her male husband. She expressed in a video, “we did not think it was possible and were very shocked,” because in her mind, she was a gay man having sex with another man. Her baby was exposed prenatally to her cosmetic testosterone use, which she resumed against medical advice shortly after her infant had to be born prematurely. Her daughter has had developmental issues, including apparent motor and speech delays, as well as plagiocephaly (misshapen head), which required a prescription helmet.

Buccal grafts may be required during phalloplasty, metoidioplasty, or vaginoplasty (explained below), all with the aim of providing the mucous membrane lining that is present in normal genitalia. Consequences of this procedure include nerve damage, scarring, and impaired ability to chew, control the muscles of the mouth, or speak clearly.

Urethral lengthening is a procedure done during metoidioplasty as well as phalloplasty (explained below). The purpose is to connect what’s termed the “natal urethra,” otherwise known as the urethra, to the skin tube extension so that the individual can pee from the tip of the skin tube. This may be completed in various ways. The doctor may utilize tissue from the vagina. The doctor may also implant a straw in the arm of the patient for several months in hopes of creating a tube around the straw, which will then transplant with the rest of the arm skin during a radial forearm free-flap phalloplasty. The surgeon may also utilize skin from the inside of the cheek (buccal graft) or mastectomy (“top surgery”) to create this new urethra. Because this tissue did not develop for the purpose of carrying urine through a skin tube, the neo-urethra and neo-phallus lack the internal structure to sustain itself and have a tendency to scar together as well as create holes or cul-de-sac pockets in which urine collects and bacterial infections can thrive. This neo-phallus is not regularly flushed with semen as in a healthy male, nor does it have normal tension and pressure of a healthy male urinary stream, both of which make neo-urinary tract infections easier to develop and harder to eliminate. These infections create conditions which promote chronic bladder and kidney infections, and from there an infection can advance to one or multiple episodes of sepsis (systemic bacterial infection circulating in the blood throughout the body). Sepsis can result in brain and other organ damage as well as necessitate amputation of limbs.

Men’s Department

Transgender vaginoplasty is a procedure in which tissue from the penis, scrotum, mouth, other portions of the digestive tract (sometimes from a pig), or a tilapia fish is used to line an excavated hole in a man’s pelvis. Patients such as Jazz Jennings, child star of the show I Am Jazz, will often start with a penile inversion, in which the bulk of the internal portion of the penis and the glans is removed, the shaft skin is separated and inverted, and the urethra is split open and connected to the shaft skin to create a wider canal, all of which is then sewn to the posterior of the pelvic wall. Unlike a woman’s vagina, penis shaft and urethra skin is, of course, not very stretchy, which allows these structures to resist the pressures of urination as well as engorgement with blood occurring during erection. Once these tissues are removed, dissected, and inverted, the tendency of this tube is to become inflamed. Inflamed tissue that stretches scars and calcifies. The doctors want it to scar to the interior of the pelvis (or else the result is neo-vagina prolapse), but this tendency to scar means it will also try to shrink, reducing in length and girth.

To compensate for this, doctors advise vaginoplasty recipients to dilate using rods of a fixed length and graded girth. Dilation involves lying back and inserting this rod into the neo-vagina in an attempt to either expand the internal volume or at least prevent collapse. This process is extremely time consuming, and dilation regimens seem to vary greatly from patient to patient, ranging from one hour a few times a week to multiple hour-long sessions per day. This process is typically painful and may be ineffective. Like the strictures that form in the skin tube neo-urethra of the neo-phallus, this penile-inverted skin tube was not designed to be resting against itself for long periods. This is, however, unavoidable. Therefore, the tissue within this tube is prone to strictures, or what doctors will call “vaginal stenosis” to get insurance to pay for the revision as a result of pressure necrosis (the tendency of tissue is to inflame, die, and scar to surrounding tissue as a result of extended periods of pressure).

This can make dilation impossible, resulting in a warm, moist, non-self-cleaning pocket that is an ideal environment for bacteria which is now adjacent to a shortened urethra, capable of causing chronic infections and sepsis. Additionally, dilation, which is sometimes performed by physicians under anesthesia so that more force can be used, may cause tears or fistulas between the neo-vagina and other structures such as the urethra or rectum. One unfortunate vaginoplasty recipient I covered learned he had a recto-”vaginal” fistula when he farted through it. This fistula was allegedly caused by the anesthesia-enabled, surgeon-performed dilation.

At this point, gender doctors may recommend a revision. This revision may be what is known as a “colon vaginoplasty.” In a colon vaginoplasty, an eight-inch segment of colon is removed, and the remaining colon is rerouted to the rectum and recombined (creating a risk of fistulas and internal infection which may show up years later). This colon segment is then sewn shut at one end and is used to replace the scarred, shrunken, strictured, and fistula-ridden inverted penile shaft skin. It is advertised as “self-lubricating,” but as one recipient explained, what the doctors may not tell patients is that this lubrication is tied to food consumption, not sexual arousal.

Orchiectomy is the removal of the testicles. Orchiectomy is typically performed to eliminate a biological source of unwanted male hormones and to salvage the tissue present in the testicles, including a portion of skin called the “vagina” (Latin for “sheath”), to be repurposed to line the neo-vagina.

Nullification surgery is a term for a procedure performed on either male or female people that results in an outcome that is reminiscent of female genital mutilation. The penis, vulva, vagina, and testicles, as applicable, are completely removed, and the overlying tissue is sewn together to create a smooth surface with a small hole for urination. This may be done in the name of “eunuch” gender identity. Eunuch is a term which traditionally refers to a castrated male with no penis, but in this modern era, of course, sex is not gender and so “gender identity,” which would include “eunuch gender identity,” is not limited to any particular “sex assigned at birth.”

Cui Bono?

As if the horrors of the surgeries themselves were not enough, the reality is that these interventions are mind-bendingly expensive, entirely cosmetic, and medically unnecessary, yet are covered by insurance (including tax-funded insurance such as Medicaid and Medicare because not funding these surgeries demanded by the trans lobby is considered “discrimination” equivalent to not covering medically-necessary care for a car accident victim who happened to be Asian). Some recipients have posted medical bills totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars accrued in just a few years, sometimes months—even during the COVID-19 pandemic—of which they brag they paid up to their deductible of, for instance, $5,000. Many are rushing to get as many cosmetic modifications as possible before they age off of their parents’ policy (which typically occurs at age 26). The reader is encouraged to recall a time where they or a loved one were denied or delayed coverage for a medically-necessary treatment, such as one which returned mobility, independence, or reduced chronic pain. Did their insurance cover gender-transition related drugs and surgeries at that time?

Transgender surgeries are medically-unnecessary interventions, not intended to diagnose or treat a medical problem, performed on physically healthy tissues for reasons of gender identity or subjective psychological distress perceived to be related to a sense of gender identity (two distinct justifications, only one of which requires a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, a term referring merely to the distress a person with a perceived conflict may experience). Not every trans-identifying person receiving these interventions is professionally diagnosed or experiencing subjective distress. When no distress (“dysphoria”) is present, individuals are able to still access these procedures via an Orwellian process called the “informed consent model,” which does not require a psychological evaluation to rule out delusional disorders or confirm a gender dysphoria diagnosis.

When these interventions are performed on detransitioners, who no longer claim to experience a conflict in identity versus body, these interventions may not be covered. In fact, trans activists fight to remove guaranteed coverage for so-called detransitioners from laws guaranteeing “trans healthcare.” Gender-affirming surgeries, or as some call them, sex lobotomies, are as Byzantine as they are treacherous, an endless complexification of human-to-boondoggle body modification that the taxpayer and insurance purchaser, ultimately, have to fund, both directly at the time of the surgery, and forever after, as foolish and confused people purchase disabilities that are not as reversible as their good health once was.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.

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A Genealogy of Corporatism

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By Jeffrey Tucker

It’s not capitalism. It’s not socialism. The new word we are hearing these days is the right word: corporatism. It refers to the merger of industry and state into a unit with the purpose of achieving some grand visionary end, the liberty of individuals be damned. The word itself predates its successor, which is fascism. But the eff [fascism] word has become totally incomprehensible and useless through misuse so there is clarity to be gained by discussing the older term.

Consider, as an obvious example, Big Pharma. It funds the regulators. It maintains a revolving door between corporate management and regulatory control. Government often funds drug development and rubber stamps the results. Government further grants and enforces the patents. Vaccines are indemnified from liability for harm. When consumers balk at shots, government imposes mandates, as we have seen. Further, pharma pays up to 75 percent of the advertising on evening television, which obviously buys both favorable coverage and silence on the downsides.

This is the very essence of corporatism. But it is not only this industry. It evermore affects tech, media, defense, labor, food, environment, public health, and everything else. The big players have merged into a monolith, squeezing out the life of market dynamism. 

The topic of corporatism is rarely discussed in any detail. People would rather keep the discussion on abstract ideals that are not really operational in reality. It’s these ideal types that split right and left; meanwhile, the really existing threats sail under the radar. And that is strange because corporatism is much more of a living reality. It variously swept through most societies in the world in the 20th century and vexes us today as never before.

Corporatism has a long ideological history stretching back two centuries. It began as a fundamental attack on what was then known as liberalism. Liberalism began centuries earlier with the end of the religious wars in Europe and the realization that permitting religious freedom was overall good for everyone. It lessens violence in society and still retains the opportunity for the vigorous practice of faith. This insight gradually unfolded in ways that pertained to speech, travel, and commerce generally.

By the early 19th century, following the American Revolution, the idea of liberalism swept Europe. The idea was that the state could do no better for societies under its rule than to let them develop organically and without a teleocratic end state. A teleocracy is characterized by a centralized authority that seeks to achieve a specific goal or purpose, often seen as a greater good or common end that justifies the restriction of individual liberties. In the liberal view, in contrast, liberty for all became the sole end state.

Standing against traditional liberalism was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831), the German philosopher who explained the loss of territory at the end of the Napoleonic wars as merely a temporary setback in the German nation’s historical destiny. In his vision of politics, the nation as a whole needs a destiny that is consistent with his postulated laws of history. This holistic view was inclusive of church, industry, family, and individuals: everyone must march in the same direction.

The whole reaches its pinnacle in the institution of the state, he wrote in Philosophy of Right, which “is the actuality of the ethical idea, “the rationality of the ethical whole,” the “divine idea as it exists on earth,” and a “work of art in which the freedom of the individual is actualized and reconciled with the freedom of the whole.”

If all of that sounds like mumbo-jumbo to you, welcome to the mind of Hegel, who was trained in theology foremost and somehow came to dominate German political philosophy for a very long time. His followers split into left- and right-wing versions of his statism, culminating in Marx and arguably Hitler, who agree that the state is the center of life while only arguing about what it should do. 

Corporatism was a manifestation of the “right-wing” version of Hegelianism, which is to say that it did not go so far as to say that religion, property, and family should be abolished, as Marxism later suggested. Rather each of these institutions should serve the state which represents the whole.

The economic element of corporatism gained steam with the work of Friedrich List (August 6, 1789 – November 30, 1846) who worked as an administrative professor at the University of Tübingen but was expelled and went to America where he became involved in the establishment of railroads and championed an economic “National System” or industrial mercantilism. Believing that he was following up with the work of Alexander Hamilton, List advocated national self-sufficiency or autarky as the proper managerial trade for trade. In this, he stood against the entire liberal tradition that had long rallied around the work of Adam Smith and the doctrine of free trade.

In the UK, the Hegelian vision of the state was realized in the writings of Thomas Carlyle (December 4, 1795 – February 5, 1881), a Scottish philosopher who wrote books such as On Heroes, Hero-Worship, The Heroic in History, and The French Revolution: A History. He was a defender of slavery and dictatorship, and coined the term “the dismal science” for economics precisely because economics, as it had developed, had passionately inveighed against slavery.

The Tories got into the act by following the work of John Ruskin (February 8, 1819 – January 20, 1900) who was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, a philanthropist, and became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University. He founded the Guild of Saint George in opposition to commercial capitalism and mass production for average people. In his work, we could see how anti-consumerism generally meshed well with the aristocratic longing for a class-based society that prioritized wealth for the future over liberal egalitarian impulses.

In America, the work of Charles Darwin came to be abused in the form of eugenics in the 1880s and following, wherein one of the tasks of the state became the curation of the quality of the population. This movement also took hold in Europe. It was seen as utter chaos to allow human procreation to be left to the whims of human volition. The American Economic Association together with many other academic societies threw themselves into the task to the point that eugenic theorizing became part of mainstream academia. This was true only 100 years ago.

In Europe following the Great War, a new form of Hegelianism was taking hold that combined eugenics, autarky, nationalism, and raw statism into a single package. British-German philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain (September 9, 1855 – January 9, 1927) traveled around Europe and became highly enamored of Wagner and German culture, and then a leading Hitler champion. He advocated blood-thirsty anti-Semitism and wrote The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, which emphasized Europe’s Teutonic roots.

Other star players in the corporatist lineup included:

  • Werner Sombart (January 18, 1863 – May 18, 1941) German academic, historical school economist, and sociologist, who easily slid from being a proponent of communism to becoming a top champion of Nazism.
  • Frederick Hoffman (May 2, 1865 – February 23, 1946) was born in Germany, became a statistician in America, and wrote The Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro characterizing African-Americans as inferior to other races, but casting aspersions on Jews and non-Caucasians.
  • Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) graduated from Yale University and received a law degree from Columbia Law School, after which his interest in eugenics led him to study the “racial history” of Europe and write the popular hit book The Passing of the Great Race. He was a leading environmentalist and a champion of nationalized forests, for strange eugenic reasons.
  • Charles Davenport (June 1, 1866 – February 18, 1944) was a professor of zoology at Harvard who researched eugenics, wrote Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, and founded the Eugenics Record Office and International Federation of Eugenics Organizations. He was a major player in the construction of the eugenic state.
  • Henry H. Goddard (August 14, 1866 – June 18, 1957) was a psychologist, a eugenicist, and the Director of Research at the Vineland Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and Boys. He popularized IQ studies and turned them into a weapon used by the state to create a planned society, creating hierarchies determined and enforced by public bureaucrats.
  • Edward A. Ross (December 12, 1866 – July 22, 1951) received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, was part of the faculty at Stanford, and became a founder of sociology in the United States. Author of Sin and Society (1905). He warned of the dysgenic effects of permitting women freedom of choice to engage in commercial work and pushed laws to prohibit women’s work.
  • Robert DeCourcy Ward (November 29, 1867 – November 12, 1931) was a professor of meteorology and climatology at Harvard University and co-founded the Immigration Restriction League, fearing the dysgenic effects of Slavic, Jewish, and Italian intermarriage. His influence was key to the closing of borders in 1924, trapping millions in Europe to be slaughtered.
  • Giovanni Gentile (May 30, 1875 – April 15, 1944) was an Italian neo-Hegelian idealist philosopher, who provided an intellectual foundation for Italian Corporatism and Fascism and helped write The Doctrine of Fascism with Benito Mussolini. He was briefly beloved by the American press for his intellect and vision.
  • Lewis Terman (January 15, 1877 – December 21, 1956) was a eugenicist who focused on studying gifted children as measured by IQ. With a Ph.D. from Clark University, he became a member of the pro-eugenic Human Betterment Foundation, and was president of the American Psychology Association. He pushed strict segregation, coerced sterilization, immigration controls, birthing licenses, and a planned society generally.
  • Oswald Spengler (May 29, 1880 – May 8, 1936) graduated from Halle University in Germany, became a teacher, and in 1918 wrote Decline of the West on historical cycles and changes that sought to explain Germany’s defeat in the Great War. He urged a new Teutonic tribal authoritarianism to combat liberal individualism.
  • Ezra Pound (October 30, 1885 – November 1, 1972) was an expat modernist poet from America who converted to national socialism and blamed WWI on usury and international capitalism and supported Mussolini and Hitler during WWII. A brilliant but deeply troubled man, Pound used his genius to write for Nazi newspapers in England before and during the war.
  • Carl Schmitt (July 11, 1888 – April 7, 1985) was a Nazi jurist and political theorist who wrote extensively and bitterly against classical liberalism for the ruthless wielding of power (The Concept of the Political). His view of the state’s role is total. He admired and celebrated despotism, war, and Hitler.
  • Charles Edward Coughlin (October 25, 1891 – October 27, 1979), was a massively influential Canadian-American priest who hosted a radio show with 30 million listeners in the 1930s. He despised capitalism, backed the New Deal, and plunged into hard anti-Semitism and Nazi doctrine, publishing speeches by Goebbels under his own name. His show inspired thousands to protest in the streets against Jewish refugees.
  • Julius Caesar Evola (May 19, 1898 – June 11, 1974) was a radically traditionalist Italian philosopher who focused on history and religion and worshiped violence. He was admired by Mussolini and wrote adoring letters to Hitler. He spent a lifetime advocating for the subjugation of women and holocaust for Jews.
  • Francis Parker Yockey (September 18, 1917 – June 16, 1960) was an American attorney and dedicated Nazi who wrote Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, which argues for a culture-based, totalitarian path for the preservation of Western culture against the influence of the Jews. He said the fall of the Third Reich was a temporary setback. He killed himself in prison where he was being held for passport fraud. It was Yockey who had a powerful influence on Willis Carto (1926-2015), the postwar proponent of Nazi theory.

Such is a brief look at the intellectual roots and development of corporatist thinking, complete with its most noxious ideological elements. The focus on a teleocratic nationalism in each case comes through dividing and conquering the nation, usually by a “great man,” and allowing the “experts” to run roughshod over the desires of the common people for peace and prosperity. 

The corporatist model was deployed in most countries during the Great War, which was the largest experiment in central planning in cooperation with munitions manufacturers and other large corporations. It was deployed in combination with conscription, censorship, monetary inflation, and a large-scale killing machine. It inspired an entire generation of intellectuals and public managers. The US New Deal, with its price controls and industrial cartels, was largely managed by people such as Rexford Tugwell (1891-1979) who was inspired to rally around corporatism by his experience in this war. The same pattern repeated in the Second World War.

This brief genealogy only takes us only to the middle of the 20th century. Today corporatism takes a different form. Rather than national, it is global in scope. In addition to government and large corporations, today’s corporatism includes powerful non-government organizations, nonprofits, and huge foundations built by huge fortunes. It is as much private as it is public. But it is no less divisive, ruthless, and hegemonic than it was in the past.

It has also shaved off most of its egregious (and embarrassing) teachings, leaving in place only the ideals of world governments working directly with the largest corporations in media and tech to forge a single vision for humanity on the march, such as spelled out daily by the World Economic Forum. With that comes censorship and restrictions on commercial and individual liberty.

That is only the beginning of the problems. Corporatism abolishes the competitive dynamic of competitive capitalism and replaces it with cartels run by oligarchs. It reduces growth and prosperity. It is invariably corrupt. It promises efficiency but yields only graft. It expands the gaps between rich and poor and creates and entrenches deep fissures between the rulers and the ruled. It dispenses with localism, religious particularism, rights of families, and aesthetic traditionalism. It also ends in violence.

Corporatism is anything but radical. The word is a perfect description of the most successful form of statism of the 20th century. In the 21st century, it has been given new life and an ambition that is global in scope. But as regards the highest American ideals and enlightenment values of freedom for all, it really does represent the opposite.

It is also the single most vexing problem we face today, far more of a going concern than old archetypes of socialism and capitalism. Also in the American context, corporatism can come in forms that masquerade as both left and right. But make no mistake: the real target is always liberty traditionally understood.

(For more of my writings on this topic, see Right-Wing Collectivism.)

*****

This article was published by the Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

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University Erases ‘L’ in LGBTQ, Redefining Lesbians as ‘Non-Men’ thumbnail

University Erases ‘L’ in LGBTQ, Redefining Lesbians as ‘Non-Men’

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By Jarrett Stepman

The woke well is bottomless.

Johns Hopkins University recently updated the “LGBTQ Glossary” in its so-called inclusive language guide with a new definition for “lesbian.”

A lesbian, according to the famed Baltimore university’s guide, should be referred to as a “non-man attracted to non-men.” A broad definition, right?

The guide states that “while past definitions refer to ‘lesbian’ as a woman who is emotionally, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to other women, this updated definition includes non-binary people who may also identify with the label.”

No more “women” or “womyn” or any of that. Just complete erasure of the “L” in “LGBTQ.”

In the war on women, isn’t it ironic that the latest shots are being fired by that fanatical campus Left? One wonders how much longer the “G” has to keep its place in the gender ideology pantheon before the new letters come for the old.

The move by Johns Hopkins University was mocked by “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, a liberal feminist who has become “she who must not be named” to many of her once-adoring fans (or is that “not-he who must not be named?” It’s hard to keep track).

It’s important at a modern university to know what counts as blasphemy, you see. Saying “lesbian” isn’t nearly inclusive enough. Somebody, somewhere might be offended. And that somebody is likely to be a transgender man, who is in the upper echelons of intersectional hierarchy.

Wouldn’t you know it, the program director of “LGBTQ+ equity and education” at Johns Hopkins University is Paula Neira, a transgender man. That is, Neira was born a man, but now says he identifies as a woman.

I’d say this is an example of how an institution is returning to the Dark Ages, but that’s really an insult to the Dark Ages. We now live in the age of diversity, equity, and inclusion, when all common sense is abandoned for fanatical ideological commitment.

Johns Hopkins removed the LGBTQ Glossary after it gained online attention. As usual, when left-wing media picked up on the story, it became about how Johns Hopkins backed down to the backlash rather than the obvious absurdity of the university’s message.

The glossary page has been updated.

“While the glossary is a resource posted on the website of the Johns Hopkins University Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI); the definitions were not reviewed or approved by ODI leadership and the language in question has been removed pending review,” the page now reads.

This wasn’t even the only campus absurdity at Johns Hopkins in the past month.

On May 30, the New York Post reported that employees of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine “have been issued a new guidebook with a list of 50 different pronouns—including ‘aerself’ and ‘faerself’—that staff may use after a new ID badge policy was implemented.”

Among other pronouns in the guidebook were “xe, ve, per, and ae,” and it gives recommendations for using such a pronoun in a sentence, like “I gave faer the key.”

We’ve clearly hit the Newspeak stage of the revolution.

American higher education is consuming itself with absurdities and contradictions. Unfortunately, our ideologically compromised higher education establishment shapes and feeds into all other elite institutions.

This is the established, secular church of the modern West.

But maybe it’s time we disestablish this church. Once the power of the woke gatekeepers is broken—in universities, corporate America, and government—maybe then we can begin to restore our free society.

*****

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

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Weekend Read: The Other July 4th thumbnail

Weekend Read: The Other July 4th

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By Neland Nobel

We are all familiar with July 4, 1776, but did you know American Independence might have been quite different were it not for events on July 4, 1754?

It was on that date that a 21-year-old Colonel in the Virginia Militia led his men on a retreat out of Fort Necessity after tangling with a French force more than twice what he had under his command.  That young military man was George Washington.  He took casualties 10:1 to his adversary.

A brief historical backdrop is necessary to make sense of this.

The British and French were vying for control over North America.  American Indians were playing the two sides off against each other for their own strategic purposes.  Some would ally with the British, some with the French, and some played both sides.

Prominent families in Virginia made claims to western territories and Washington’s family were big investors in the Virginia company.  Young George at 19 both surveyed and was an active investor in these western lands which are now part of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Washington and others reported that the French were making attempts to wrest control of this area and were building a fort to control the major rivers, which served as the most important commercial highways and communications nodes in the area.  The most important was Fort Duquesne, present-day Pittsburgh, where several rivers converge to form the mighty Ohio River, the key to controlling the western frontier.

Washington volunteered to go back into the area and deliver a message to the French from the British Crown in essence to tell the French to kindly vacate the area.  Ironically, similar French units were looking for British authorities to deliver the same message.

Events remain shrouded even today as to what happened next, but basically, the two sides met near what is now Uniontown, Pennsylvania, high up on Chestnut Ridge in a place appropriately called Gloomy Hollow (now Jumonville Glen).

Most renditions have Washington’s forces surprising the French, a firefight broke out with Washington reportedly firing the first shot, with casualties on both sides.  After the French surrendered to Washington, Washington “lost control” of one of his Indian allies (Mingo chief Tanacharison). The French commander was murdered by a tomahawk attack, and the Indian washed his hands in the Frenchman’s brains which spilled from his split skull.

This was the cold-blooded murder of a French officer and diplomat named Jumonville.

It was an act of war.

At least one Frenchman escaped and made his way back to Fort Duquesne to tell of the dastardly attack.  A large force of over 800 men was dispatched to find Washington’s “raiders”.

Washington retreated to the Great Meadow not far away and threw up a crude temporary stockade and breastworks for his 293 men.  He called in Fort Necessity, a very apt name.

On July 3, they were attacked and took heavy casualties.  In a twist of history, the leader of the French retaliatory force was led by none other than the brother of the slain French officer, Jumonville.  He was not in a good mood.

Washington was forced to surrender and basically sign a document saying he and his forces were responsible for the murder of a French officer. Washington would later claim the translation was garbled and he admitted to no such thing. But otherwise, after 30 or so casualties, they were allowed to leave the area.

But grave implications were to follow.  The next time, the British would come back with substantial force.

Thus, a 21-year-old Virginia militia commander fired the shots that started the French and Indian War, or what is more broadly called the Seven Years War, considered by most historians as the first world war in history.  It was fought in North America, in the Caribbean, and even in India.

From the standpoint of the North American theatre of the conflict, the British would come back the next year with a very large force for the time under the command of Major General Edward Braddock.  Despite his logistical and road-building success (cutting hundreds of miles through a virgin forest), he would suffer a disastrous defeat attempting to take Fort Duquesne, mostly at the hand of Indians, the best light infantry in North America.

While much now lies on private property, portions of the famed Braddock road from the coast of Virginia to western Pennsylvania remain today.  Braddock was buried in the road, succumbing to his wounds suffered at Monongahela. Some of this road became Route 1, or the National Pike, the first real “interstate” road in America.  It was by far the largest engineering project in the colonies.

The defeat of Braddock at the Battle of Monongahela lead to a second successful attempt to take Fort Duquesne under General John Forbes, who then built Fort Pitt, hence Pittsburgh.

Almost all of the British officers were killed during the Battle of Monongahela and the retreat was largely commanded by a young George Washington, who seemed always in the mix of things.  His leadership was exemplary and his stamina was extraordinary (he had been gravely ill). After having musket balls go through his hat, through his coat, and having two horses shot out from underneath him, it seemed as if Providence had placed a hand on his shoulder.

Many at the time remarked on this, as did Washington himself in his personal writings.  That hand would remain on the man for the duration of the war, and the next big war, that for American Independence.  And it would seem, for even greater challenges ahead.

Who would have thought this young colonel, who hit the trip wire to start a world conflagration between great empires, would wind up becoming the first President of a nation that would become the most powerful on earth and the world’s longest-running democratic enterprise?

The implications of the French and Indian War are extensive, but here a just a few brief historical observations.

The war determined who would rule North America.  That is why we inherited the English language, English common law, and English notions of liberty.

American colonists developed a sense they were their own people as civilians were abused by British troops and officers who treated militiamen as inferiors. Yet, by fighting alongside the British, we discovered we were as good at warfare, or better, as they were.  All this would come in handy just 20 years later when upstart revolutionaries would take on the most powerful empire on earth.

Many Americans who fought at the Battle of Monongahela and other battles, learned warfare and about each other, and formed a cadre of experience for the coming Revolutionary War.  The American style of fighting, learned from combat with Native Americans, would serve them well at Lexington and Concord, and especially the British retreat back to Boston.

This would also come into play in subsequent battles with Native Americans over the control of the territory west of Pittsburgh.

Indian depredations of the frontier settlements, which exploded during both the French and Indian War, and the subsequent War of Independence, set hardened attitudes on both sides about the nature of their conflict that would extend for many years, but ultimately end in the conquering of native peoples.

Not long after Washington would become President, the Native Americans would hand the New Americans their worst defeat ever at the Battle of the Wabash, defeating American General St. Clair. Almost the entire Army of the new United States was lost(an astounding 97% casualty rate), allowing the Indian Confederacy and their British allies to continue control of the West in violation of the peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War.

Afterward, Washington wanted a permanent professional army, and he got it.  While he understood the anti-Federalist view, he had seen the deficiencies of the militia system firsthand.

This would lead to the founding of the United States Army, a professional military, long found objectionable by anti-Federalists who felt standing armies were a threat to liberty.  But such a professional army was needed and under “Mad” Anthony Wayne, he would initiate a long string of defeats for Native Americans.

The tremendous cost of the Seven Years’ War would destabilize the treasuries of both Britain and France.  After the war, the British wanted the colonies to help pay for the struggle and started to tax the colonies, while tightening political control over them without much consent from those governed.  The concept of “taxation without representation” was born.

As a result of this effort to raise money, and the colonial reaction to it, the British would eventually lose her American colonies and a new nation would be formed.

France limped along financially and then decided to aid the American Revolution, another drain on their treasury.  Subsequent financial pressures and inflation were economically and socially destabilizing and were factors leading to the French Revolution.  This revolution had its American sympathizers but it took a decidedly different course than the American one.  We got Washington, and the French got Napoleon.

The French Revolution echoes in our own “woke” politics even today and shaped much subsequent European history.

All this seems to have been set in motion in a heavily wooded glen just outside a small town in Pennsylvania. It occurred high up on Chestnut Ridge in the Laurel Highlands, in the mountains just south of Uniontown. This town, once a thriving center for coal and steel, was ironically founded on July 4, 1776, quite independently of the gathering taking place across the state in Philadelphia.

In the misty hollows on Chestnut Ridge, there was a giant of a man there, both in form and spirit.  Some 6 feet four inches at a time when most men barely made it over five feet, he also displayed a spine of steel with a commanding demeanor.  Even as a youth, he had an air of confidence and competence about him. Native American leaders at the time opined he would become a great leader of his people. But in these events, he lost control of his men, and subsequent developments led to the murder of a French officer.  That in turn led to the humiliating defeat at Fort Necessity on July 4, 1754.

Washington had no way of knowing he literally would start a world war, and all these subsequent events would forever change both American and world history.

Without all these strange happenings, would we have had George Washington, who would literally become “the indispensable” man? Without him, it is arguable that we would have never gotten to July 4, 1776.  Would not the world as we know it be vastly different?

And what can explain his many remarkable and frequent escapes from death?  Almost all of them simply defy rational explanations.

History, it would seem, reverberates in strange and significant ways, from the dark forests and quiet glens of Western Pennsylvania.

*****

Photos are courtesy of the author and were taken at Fort Necessity National Battlefield.

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EXCLUSIVE: GOP Women Introduce National Women’s Sports Week Resolution thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: GOP Women Introduce National Women’s Sports Week Resolution

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By Mary Margaret Olohan

Female Republican lawmakers are backing girls fighting to preserve the integrity of women’s sports by marking the observance of National Women’s Sports Week.

Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and Republican New York Rep. Claudia Tenney introduced a bicameral resolution this week to celebrate the contributions of individual female athletes and the coaches and parents who support them, promote “equal access to athletic opportunities for members of both sexes,” and “support the commitment of the United States to supporting female athletes.”

The effort is partnered with the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), “the leading national women’s organization” devoted to celebrating women’s rights and fighting to expand women’s opportunities.

“At a time when women’s sports are under attack, we must celebrate the remarkable progress we have made since the passage of Title IX and stand united to protect the future ability of women and girls to compete fairly in sports,” Tenney told The Daily Signal.

“As we celebrate this week, we reaffirm the importance of protecting Title IX and recognize the countless benefits that come from women’s active participation in sports,” Tenney added. “I urge my colleagues to support this resolution and join us in celebrating National Women’s Sports Week. Together, we can continue to uplift and inspire the next generation of female athletes, ensuring a bright future for women’s sports across our great nation.”

Ernst similarly told The Daily Signal: “We cannot and will not allow our daughters to be erased.”

“Doors that were opened over 50 years ago are being slammed in the faces of girls across the country because of the progressive left’s radical gender ideology,” she said. “I’m proud to work with Rep. Tenney to recognize the achievements of female athletes during National Women’s Sports Week and will continue standing arm in arm with Riley Gaines, Paula Scanlan, Payton McNabb, and countless others in their fight to safeguard life-changing opportunities for women and girls.”

The move comes as female athletes like Riley Gaines, a NCAA swimmer, push back against biological males competing in women’s sports. Gaines raced against a biologically male athlete, Lia Thomas, and has become a nationally known advocate for preserving the integrity of women’s spaces.

Gaines, who continues to speak out in the face of harassment and violence, testified Wednesday at a Senate hearing on “Protecting Pride: Defending the Civil Rights of LGBTQ+ Americans” where she accused the NCAA of “intentionally and explicitly” discriminating “on the basis of sex.”

“As an athlete, I am honored by the efforts of Independent Women’s Forum to celebrate National Women’s Sports Week and encouraged by our leaders in Congress who are filing resolutions to establish the week as a recurring national event,” Gaines, who is an IWF advisor, told The Daily Signal. “Doing so will ensure present and future generations of women will be rightfully honored for dedication to their sport and the strides women have made in athletics since the passage of Title IX in 1972.”

On Thursday, Gaines and other female athletes will speak at a press conference at the United States Capitol upon the introduction of Ernst and Tenney’s bicameral resolution. One of these athletes is Paula Scanlan, a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer and an ex-teammate of Thomas.

“Forcing females to compete against and with biological males on their sports teams threatens to undermine the progress that women have made in these spaces thanks to Title IX,” Scanlon told The Daily Signal on Wednesday. “Thanks to Independent Women’s Forum, members of Congress are moving to establish National Women’s Sports Week, which promises to bring continued focus to the unique opportunities, scholarships, and friendships that female-only sports teams can provide.”

Payton McNabb, another spokeswoman for the IWF’s Forum and a high school volleyball player injured while competing against a biologically male student who identified as transgender, told The Daily Signal that “allowing males to participate in female sports is a denial of the basic physiological advantages the average man has over the average woman.”

“Independent Women’s Forum stood by young female athletes like myself in inaugurating National Women’s Sports Week last year,” she shared. “Now, by sponsoring resolutions to establish National Women’s Sports Week, members in the House and Senate have the opportunity to affirm that we deserve to compete on a level playing field without fear of devastating injuries.”

*****

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

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Reparations thumbnail

Reparations

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By Bruce Bialosky

Anyone who has previously read my columns will quickly conclude that I believe reparations (as being currently discussed) are a tragically stupid idea. You have probably read a multitude of opinions telling you why that is so. You are about to get a significantly different take on the issue.

The first aspect comes from my reading of a novel years back which I believe is The Winner by David Baldacci. It is combined with my personal and concurrent experience. Remember a good novel often has a significant basis in fact.

The premise concerns a genius criminal who figured out how to fix the Powerball lottery. He realizes that if he fixed it for himself, he would soon get caught. He also realized that the vast majority of people who buy lottery tickets are financial underachievers, so to speak. He would hand-pick someone from that underachieving population and create a deal with them. He would rig the lottery so the person would win and then the person would turn the money over to him to manage, ultimately splitting the monies 50/50. That is basically how the story goes until a smart detective comes on the scene.

The smart detective noticed a pattern that there were these people who would win the lottery and retain their wealth many years later. Here is the true part: that just does not happen. Nearly all people who win these sums — unless it is the mega multi-million-dollar winners — have little winnings left in just a few years or less.

Every friend and relative comes out of every sinkhole to gladhand for money. Every con artist in the world surrounds them to separate them from their money. These “winners” are generally people who do not have a trusted financial advisor to protect them from the wolves and they have no means of determining who they should turn to as a trusted advisor. I have experienced people with money not knowing who to turn to. This part of the plot line was so true to me.

I had someone who was referred to me who had won $350,000 in the lottery. He came too late. By the time he came to me, he had invested almost all the monies: He bought public pay phones. This was right after I had gone to my annual continuing education class at the usual location. They always had an alcove packed with wall pay phones. When I arrived that year, I found the pay phones were all gone as no one was using them any longer. My thought was what a sucker this person was to put his money into this investment and why had he not come to me six months earlier so I could save him from himself.

For my money, the same likely outcome applies to reparations. You drop the kind of dough the reparations people are proposing for some Californians; and, considering their background in financial affairs, five years later for most of them it will all have gone poof.

If the recipients of reparations are not financial underachievers, then why would they be recipients of funds; obviously they have not been harmed by the perceived grievances. They have systems in place to protect their wealth with qualified and reliable personnel.

The amounts that are being talked about are just numbers that are being thrown around for attention. They are stalking horses for the real numbers which will be significantly reduced. Politicians can then say, “See how good we are? We cut those crazy numbers in half, a third or whatever.” The real answer should be “No, we are not committing taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars to this travesty.” That will not happen.

In addition, I believe this will just be the beginning. Different groups will come from all over fully sold on their rationale that they should be recompensed. A group is already stating they deserve money for the land that sits under Dodger Stadium. Without the building of Dodger Stadium on that site the land would be of little value.

Members of Congress led by Cori Bush have proposed $14 trillion for reparations as if it were a trivial amount.

For my money, there are three simple solutions to the conditions plaguing blacks in California as there are across the country:

1. Stop having 80% of children outside of marriage. Put a premium on fathers.

2. Rid the black community of the racist public school systems controlled by the racist teachers’ unions. Give them universal school choice.

3. Stop telling them they are victims. I grew up in a disadvantaged household and my mother never told us or permitted us to have a victim mentality. If you keep telling people they should believe they are victims, they will ultimately believe it.

Reparations will only reinforce in their minds that victim mentality. That is what the proposers of these plans want so as to achieve perpetual power over them. These proposals are as bad as they get for the reasons above, and a good deal more.

*****

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

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Arizona News: June 30, 2023 thumbnail

Arizona News: June 30, 2023

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By The Editors

The Prickly Pear will provide current, linked articles about Arizona consistent with our Mission Statement to ‘inform, educate and advocate’. We are an Arizona based website and believe this information should be available to all of our statewide readers.

Hobbs Doubles Down On Executive Orders For LGBTQ Community

Hobbs limits Arizona counties’ ability to prosecute illegal abortions

SCR 1015 Would Ensure That Our State’s Initiative Process Is For All Arizonans

Arizona legislators push human trafficking awareness

Wadsack Proposes Bill Removing BOS Ability To Choose Legislative Replacements

Phoenix Gets $10 Million In Federal Funding For Cultural Equity Corridor

Biden Administration Gives Arizona $993 Million To Establish High-Speed Internet

Tucson Outlaws Lawns, Reduces Water Flow In New Constructions

Corporation headquarters are moving to Florida, Texas and Arizona

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An Estimated 200K Babies Saved from Abortion Since Dobbs thumbnail

An Estimated 200K Babies Saved from Abortion Since Dobbs

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By Catherine Salgado

Once again in America do unborn babies have the right to life, as the Declaration of Independence said all men have. A recent estimate said around 200,000 babies have been born instead of aborted since the landmark June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision overruling the infamous Roe v. Wade and Casey. That’s 200,000 precious, irreplaceable human beings saved from brutal murder in the womb!

“An estimated 64,443,118 abortions were carried out during the 50 years after Roe v. Wade, according to National Right to Life,” a horrific death toll. I noted last year that the number of babies lost to abortion is 52 times more than the total of all US war casualties, combined. That’s mind-blowing genocide. But Dobbs was the first step toward a more pro-life America.

Across America, pro-life crisis pregnancy centers outnumber abortion clinics by an estimated 3 to 1, all those centers ready and eager to help mothers with supplies, medical care, adoption services, and other aid for their unplanned pregnancies. There’s a waiting list of literally millions of couples waiting to adopt babies—including down syndrome babies—in the US too. Having an abortion puts women at risk of mental health issues, suicide, drug abuse, and other serious issues, and it’s never necessary to save a mother’s life. Abortion is not a solution—it’s murder. But pro-death Democrats don’t want you to know that.

“[LifeNews, June 26] As the nation celebrates the first anniversary of the Supreme Court decision returning abortion to democratic control, national leaders celebrated the birth of tens, or hundreds, of thousands of unborn children saved by pro-life laws.

Although precise estimates vary, “the best guess that we have is about 200,000 children were born this year that would not have been born” apart from the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, said Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) at a news conference Tuesday. ‘That’s 200,000 kids. That’s 200,000 smiling faces on playgrounds. That’s 200,000 silly songs, starting in kindergarten. That’s 200,000 families that will be blessed with looking in the eyes of a child.’

The Dobbs decision, which took the shackles off voters and lawmakers to enact life-saving protections for the unborn, eliminated 96% of abortions in the 13 states that enacted pro-life protections between the June 24 decision and year’s end, The Daily Caller found. Although abortion rates had risen early in 2022, state pro-life laws prevented 32,260 abortions in the first six months following the ruling, according to the WeCount report from the Society of Family Planning released in April. A total of 25 states have since enacted some pro-life protections, since they ‘now have an opportunity in the United States to see this message in the hands of lawmakers and the people,’ Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told Newsmax on Friday.

Saving 200,000 babies — the upper end of an estimate analysis from Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America — would be enough people to fill a city the size of Grand Rapids, Michigan; Vancouver, Washington; or Chattanooga, Tennessee.”

Let us pray that babies will continue to be saved from abortion as Democrats try to bring back universal abortion on demand and infanticide (Democrat states are more pro-abortion than ever). Dobbs wasn’t the end of the fight, it was only the beginning.

*****

This article was published by Pro Deo et Liberate and is reproduced with permission.

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Supreme Court Bans Racial Preferences in College Admissions thumbnail

Supreme Court Bans Racial Preferences in College Admissions

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By Jonathan Butcher

On May 17, 1954, The New York Times reported that the U.S. Supreme Court “set aside” the “separate but equal” doctrine in education in its Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Racial segregation would no longer be permitted in K-12 public schools. On June 29, 2023, the court finally buried the doctrine once and for all, along with the prejudice that has haunted college admissions for more than 50 years.

The justices banned the use of racial preferences in college and university admissions programs. Students for Fair Admissions, an advocacy group representing Asian-American students, brought two lawsuits—one against Harvard University and another against the University of North Carolina—charging that the schools used racial bias in their admissions practices and discriminated against these students.

The Supreme Court agreed and ruled 6-2 in the Harvard case and 6-3 in the University of North Carolina case that the schools violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Since Title VI of the Civil Rights Act reflects the 14th Amendment within schools that receive federal taxpayer spending, the ruling applies to federal law as well as the Constitution.

The majority wrote, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” 

Americans have long supported the ideas in the court’s majority opinion. Surveys find broad opposition to the use of racial preferences.

Results from a Pew Research survey released earlier this month found that 82% of respondents do not think that race or ethnicity should be a factor in college admissions. Seventy-one percent of black respondents and 81% of Hispanic respondents agree.

State voters have also rejected racial preferences at the ballot box. Californians have twice rejected preferences, first with the passage of a measure known as Proposition 209 in 1996 and then again with the defeat of Proposition 16 (which would have overturned Proposition 209) in 2020. In 2006, Michigan voters also voted to ban racial preferences.

Now the high court has said university programs “may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and—at some point—they must end.” While citizens and taxpayers have been waiting for this court ruling, many college administrators have been devising ways to continue using race in admissions.

For example, research from law professor and well-known critic of racial preferences Richard Sander and others has documented how administrators in the University of California system defied Proposition 209 after its passage. More than a decade ago, the American Bar Association attempted to change its policies to require law schools to defy state and federal legislation if lawmakers chose to ban racial preferences (the ABA toned down the policy after some resistance, but only slightly).

Meanwhile, college administrators have helped so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” departments to spread across campuses nationwide. These offices serve as political outposts that rally support for racial preferences in university hiring, campus speakers, and other school activities.

The court’s ruling allows Americans to ask what, exactly, DEI intends, if not to continue the racial discrimination the justices just ruled illegal. Lawmakers in Florida and Texas have already adopted policies that defund these offices, recognizing the prejudice that has been in plain sight for years.

WATCH:

Yet if activists really want to help minority students, they should be interested in what racial preferences hath wrought. For example, the “mismatch” problem that the preferences cause is a notable one that critical race theorists and other radical activists do not care to discuss.

By putting a finger on the scales for or against students who are racial or ethnic minorities, racial preferences have caused black and Hispanic students, in particular, to be admitted to competitive institutions even if those students were unprepared for their academic rigor. A mismatch is created between students and schools, and these students earn lower grades, are more likely to drop out, and are less likely to be able to use their college experience to succeed in the workplace.

High-performing black and brown students succeeded at competitive colleges and graduate schools before and after California’s Proposition 209 and other bans on preferences—and will still do so after the Supreme Court’s ruling. But students across the nation who would have been mismatched at postsecondary and graduate institutions due to preferences are now more likely to enroll and succeed at colleges aligned with their skills.

Woke actors can no longer claim that discrimination has a place in college admissions. School officials must maintain high standards and make school admissions policies transparent so families and students know how they are being evaluated. Lawmakers should use the court’s opinion as justification to replace DEI programs with merit-based, colorblind departments and activities that work with students according to their academic abilities and needs.

This is the American Dream—one in which public officials cannot judge you based on the color of your skin. The Supreme Court has given all Americans, of all skin colors, more reasons to dream again.

*****

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

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16 Bombshells on Hunter Biden From The IRS Whistleblowers thumbnail

16 Bombshells on Hunter Biden From The IRS Whistleblowers

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By Chuck Ross, Joseph Simonson and Andrew Kerr

Two IRS whistleblowers leveled serious allegations about Hunter Biden and the government’s investigation of the troubled first son, according to transcripts of testimony released this week.

The whistleblowers, IRS supervisory criminal investigator Gary Shapley and a second unnamed IRS investigator, provided evidence to the House Ways and Means Committee that top Justice Department officials stonewalled an investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business ventures. They also call into question President Biden’s repeated denials that he has no knowledge of his son’s business dealings.

Here are 16 of the biggest revelations from transcripts of their interviews:

Hunter linked dad to Chinese deal in threat to business partner

Hunter Biden invoked his father’s name in a text message, threatening his Chinese business partner to come down on him with their full weight if the business partner did not fulfill his “commitment.”

Biden claimed he was sitting right next to his father in an encrypted message on July 30, 2017, to an associate at CEFC China Energy. While the message does not verify that Joe Biden was sitting with his son, the Washington Free Beacon obtained photographic evidence that places Hunter Biden at his father’s Delaware home the day of the text message.

“I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,” Hunter Biden wrote to CEFC official Henry Zhao. Hunter pressed Zhao to call him to discuss a delay in payment as part of the multimillion-dollar consulting agreement.

“I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. All too often people mistake kindness for weakness—and all too often I am standing over top of them saying I warned you,” Hunter wrote.

Joe Biden attended other business meetings with Hunter and his Chinese partners

Biden family friend and business partner Rob Walker told the FBI that the elder Biden often attended business meetings with his son, including when he was vice president.

The bombshell claim undermines Joe Biden’s claims to have never been involved in his son’s business ventures.

Walker said he was present when Joe Biden stopped by a meeting at the Washington, D.C., Four Seasons hotel with executives from CEFC China Energy.

The FBI authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop almost a year before we knew it existed

The FBI authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop as far back as November 2019 and knew the device was not part of a foreign disinformation campaign.

Democrats had questioned the authenticity of the laptop after it was released in October 2020. They cast doubt on Delaware computer shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac, who said Biden had abandoned his computer at his store in April 2019. The Biden campaign even orchestrated an initiative to portray the laptop as a Russian intelligence operation.

But FBI agents authenticated the laptop as Biden’s in November 2019 and found no evidence that its contents were manipulated, according to IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley.

Investigators also obtained evidence that placed Hunter Biden near Isaac’s computer shop on the day he allegedly dropped it off for repairs.

Hunter deducted hooker and sex club payments from his taxes

Hunter, who has been known to frequent strip clubs and pay for sex, deducted payments he made to prostitutes and a Los Angeles sex club from his 2018 taxes, according to Gary Shapley, who called the evidence a “slam dunk case” of tax fraud.

According to another whistleblower, Biden sent wire payments to a “West Coast assistant,” who was actually a prostitute. He also sent a $10,000 wire earmarked for a golf club membership that was actually a dues payment for a sex club.

The FBI division that investigates foreign spies was involved in Biden probe

The FBI’s national security division, which investigates foreign intelligence and espionage operations, took an interest in Biden’s dealings with China, according to Shapley.

“The FBI is considering a lot of national security type issues here,” Shapley said in a discussion about Hunter Biden’s work with CEFC China Energy, which had links to Chinese military intelligence.

Hunter Biden received at least $6 million from CEFC China Energy. The company approached Biden in late-2015 with an offer to donate to a charity affiliated with the first son.

Biden referred to one of his CEFC associates, Patrick Ho, as the “fucking spymaster of China” in a 2018 audio recording. CEFC had hired Biden to the tune of $1 million to represent Ho after he was indicted for trying to bribe African officials for oil rights.

The Justice Department and FBI obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to surveil Ho based on suspicion that he was acting as a covert agent of China.

Shapley said he does not know the status of the FBI’s national security probe.

The investigation into Biden had porn-related origins

The investigation into Hunter Biden has a strange but not entirely shocking origin given Hunter’s history of sex addiction.

“The investigation into Hunter Biden, code name Sportsman, was first opened in November 2018 as an offshoot of an investigation the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur online pornography platform,” Shapley testified…..

*****

Continue reading this article by Washington Free Beacon.

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Russia’s Crawling Neighbor

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By Doug Bandow

Would Europeans fight if NATO ends up in a real war with Russia?

The Vilnius NATO summit is approaching, and the alliance is focused on the war in Ukraine. Kyiv wants in on NATO. Many Europeans support Ukraine’s inclusion, including several whom I recently met when they visited America to press their case.

Of course, by NATO they really mean the protective umbrella provided by America—the only member with a military that matters. They are saying the U.S. should promise to go to war, if necessary, to defend Ukraine.

Why? Almost all of them insisted that if Russia’s Vladimir Putin “wins” he is sure to expand his ambitions. He will throw his vast legions at the Baltic States, Poland, and maybe even Germany and France, incorporating Europe into his new Soviet empire. This will require Washington to do even more in the future to protect its reliably helpless dependents, they warn. In this way the Ukrainians are fighting for all of us!

Yet the Russian leader, while capable of invasion, has demonstrated little interest in reviving the Soviet geopolitical corpse, which is beyond his means. Until February 2022, all he had managed was grabbing Crimea and establishing some control over disputed territories—Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Ukraine’s Donbas. Vlad the Conqueror he is not.

Unsurprisingly, Western officials continue to refuse to acknowledge their reckless post–Cold War treatment of Russia. Moscow long focused on the issues of NATO expansion, the dismemberment of Serbia, and regime change efforts in Georgia and Ukraine. That doesn’t justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But his treatment of the latter was sui generis and responded to multiple grievous allied missteps.

Moreover, the mess Putin and his military have made of the Ukraine invasion makes it highly unlikely that he would attack even the Baltic states, let alone Poland or Germany. Victory would be unlikely, and success would yield little gain.

My newfound friends responded that Ukraine has fought so well because it received a deluge of Western arms and cash. True, but that means Washington need not fight for other nations to bolster their defense. Military assistance can thwart Moscow’s objectives and make it pay a significant price for its actions.

The visiting Europeans also claimed to fear a change in the global balance of power. To not “defeat” Putin, whatever that means—the debate is largely between reclaiming just the territory lost since last February and recovering everything seized before as well—would “show weakness,” I was told, and would encourage aggression by China as well as Russia.

In fact, even a ceasefire along current lines would be a defeat for Moscow. Rather than cow Ukrainian nationalism, Putin’s war intensified it. Rather than keep NATO away from Russia’s borders, his “Special Military Operation” brought Finland (and also will presumably bring, at some point, Sweden) into the transatlantic alliance. Moreover, European governments now talk about spending more on the military, a dramatic turnaround for many—though whether they carry through on their promises remains to be seen.

More importantly, while the conflict is a terrible humanitarian tragedy, it involves no substantial U.S. security interests. Ukraine has never mattered militarily to America. It was part of the Soviet Union for the entire Cold War, and part of the Russian Empire before that. Ukraine’s status is no more important to America today. While it matters more for the Europeans, that should be their responsibility, not Washington’s.

Nor is Ukraine likely to change China’s security calculations. Beijing has desired to reclaim Taiwan ever since Japan seized the islands in 1895. Irrespective of Ukraine, Beijing is likely to dismiss the likelihood of the European allies taking a firm stand on the issue, which is so distant from them. The war may cause Xi Jinping to be more cautious about his military’s ability to back his threats. But Western support for Kyiv is unlikely to divert him from his basic objectives, along with his willingness to use military force if that is the only way he believes he can achieve them.

Playing to international sympathy for Ukraine, its advocates argued that the country not only has a right to join NATO but also wants to be part of Europe. Russia shouldn’t get to determine who joins the alliance or the West. Indeed, they insisted, the U.S. should prevent Moscow from establishing a sphere of influence.

Although Russia should not be able to decide Ukraine’s role in NATO, neither should Kyiv. Existing NATO members select who joins, and the purpose of the alliance is their safety, not other nations’ welfare. Military allies are not the equivalent of Facebook friends, with more always being better. The U.S. should agree to further NATO expansion only if the process makes America more secure. Thus, Washington should consider Moscow’s opposition. Adding Ukraine adds not only an existing conflict but one involving a hostile nuclear power.

Worse, the chief combatant in any hot war with Moscow would be America. Indeed, despite the fervent support for Ukraine by the European visitors with whom I spoke—mostly members of national governments and the European Parliament—several admitted that their public was growing weary of providing material support to Ukraine, which led me to ask: Would their people fight if NATO ended up in a real war with Russia? None said yes.

Three years ago a survey by the Pew Research Center found that more European people opposed going to war on behalf of their neighbors than fighting for them. (Naturally, majorities in those same NATO states assumed that the U.S. cavalry would ride to the rescue!) A recent poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations reported that “Europeans want to remain neutral in a potential U.S.–China conflict and are reluctant to de-risk from China—even if they recognize the dangers of its economic presence in Europe.” Apparently, the Russian invasion hasn’t stopped Europeans from asking, “What’s in it for us?” So much for allied solidarity and all that.

Although many Eastern Europeans are now pushing for some form of NATO promise to Ukraine of inclusion in the alliance, every member government played along with NATO’s ostentatious lies to Kyiv through last year. In truth, no NATO member wanted to fight for Ukraine. Nor was anyone willing to fight in 1994, when the U.S. signed the Budapest Memorandum formalizing Ukraine’s relinquishment of nuclear weapons. Washington and the other signatories promised in the event of war to go to the United Nations, the emptiest of threats. And so far no one wants to fight in the current conflict, despite the torrent of weapons delivered, money transferred, and praise offered.

My European interlocutors also claimed that the U.S. benefits as much from NATO as does Europe, which has spent more than seven decades underinvesting in its defense. After all, they pointed out, Article 5 has been invoked only once, and that was after 9/11. European soldiers died in America’s foolish Afghan and Iraq wars. Yet however welcome for Washington, inserting a limited number of troops, most with serious caveats or restrictions on their roles, does not compare with acting as chief guardian against a major conventional power that possesses nuclear weapons.

The Europeans also insisted that the U.S. needed their continent’s backing against China, both economic and military—that America could not go it alone. No doubt, both forms of support would be helpful. However, the first requires a close relationship, not a military alliance. And despite growing European disquiet with Chinese foreign policy, it will take much to convince the continent to sacrifice markets and profits in such a conflict with so little evident consequence for its people. So far European publics are not convinced.

The second is a fantasy aspiration unlikely to come to fruition for years or decades, if ever. After all, the Europeans won’t spend enough money to defend themselves; who seriously believes that they will construct a vast naval armada, filled with heretofore nonexistent marines, to speed eastward and join Washington in battling the Chinese hordes? Europe should provide for its own defense, relieving Washington of that burden. If that ever happens, then serious discussions about the continent’s military role in containing China could follow.

Moreover, Ukraine’s advocates claim that the war represents the broader struggle between democracy and autocracy. It is important that Ukraine wins, both for itself and for the rest of us. Indeed, the visiting Europeans insisted, victory for Ukraine could tip the global balance of power America’s way.

No doubt, Ukrainians feel, or at least want to feel, this way. However, this exalted interpretation has little to do with the conflict’s reality. Ukraine’s democratic credentials are considerably less than pristine. They look good only in comparison with Moscow’s. The U.S. and West more broadly have done much to crash their brands as well, which has led to significant reluctance in the Global South to join the U.S. and its allies against Russia.

Ultimately, Washington has no reason to fight for Ukraine. Most people’s sympathies naturally lie with Ukrainians. However, war should be an existential necessity rather than a charitable impulse. My European visitors insisted that Washington would not have to fight since NATO membership would prevent further conflict. That’s a comforting assumption, but who expected Russia to attack last February, Ukrainians included? Any peace is likely to be cold and dangerous. Both Russia and Ukraine, especially if the latter thought allied military intervention to be automatic, might soon be ready for a second round.

Never before have two significant conventional powers armed with nuclear weapons gone to war, which is the most important reason for Washington to say no to NATO membership for Ukraine. Even if the chances are small, the risks are enormous, too great for any justification offered. Especially by Europeans forever ready to fight to the last American.

*****

The article was published by The American Conservative and is reproduced with permission.

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PRESS RELEASE: Independent Women’s Voice Launches Keep Women’s Sports Female Open Letter Signed By Over 100 Female Athletes thumbnail

PRESS RELEASE: Independent Women’s Voice Launches Keep Women’s Sports Female Open Letter Signed By Over 100 Female Athletes

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By Press Team Independent Women’s Forum

Today, Independent Women’s Voice (IWV) launched an open letter and public sign-on campaign to keep women’s sports female. The letter is spearheaded by over 100 female athletes at the high school, collegiate, and Olympic levels of sports. The open letter calls upon athletic associations, policy makers, and government officials to enact policies and laws that keep women’s sports female.

The letter states, in part, “Title IX is under attack, and women’s spaces are being erased. Faced with this reality, we have no choice but to stand up for women by defending basic truth. We implore all athletic governing bodies and public servants to join us in our fight to protect women’s sports and spaces.”

The Keep Women Sports Female Open Letter responds to President Biden’s promise to veto the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which has passed the U.S. House of Representatives and has been introduced in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). The letter urges officials to reject calls to sacrifice female athletes on the altar of “inclusion,” and instead stand up for fairness, privacy, and safety for female athletes.

The Keep Women’s Sports Female Open Letter represents a growing movement of female athletes who recognize the importance of protecting single-sex spaces. IWV hopes the campaign will inspire tens of thousands of female athletes to sign on, joining the fight to protect female sports.

The open letter is a part of the second annual National Women’s Sports Week (June 19-25) celebration designated by Independent Women’s Forum (IWF). National Women’s Sports Week celebrates the incredible expansion of opportunities for female athletes since the passage of Title IX in 1972 and recognizes the role of Title IX in guaranteeing equal athletic opportunities.

Outkick covered this story exclusively HERE. 

The letter can be found HERE. 

To add your name to the letter, click HERE.

*****

This article was published by the Independent Women’s Forum and is reproduced with permission.

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