If anyone still wonders how the Nazis were able to get millions of good, mostly nominally Christian, Europeans to round up and herd the Jews into railcars, to be shipped off to an unknown but obviously dire fate, just watch this video, and your eyes will be opened. Continue reading
Tag Archives: #FreedomOfSpeech
Today’s American left really, really hate our individual rights! Or at least they do when those rights are exercised by conservatives!
We noted, a year and a half ago, how President Biden and his leftist minions, proposed the creation of a Ministry of Truth ‘Disinformation Governance Board‘ within the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, and had chosen Nina Jankowitz, who for months told us that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, to head it.
On April 25th, she told us how she feels about #FreedomOfSpeech:
I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities . . . which are already shouldering . . . disproportionate amounts of this abuse.
Then came Helen Ubiñas, who has a very visible platform as a regular columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, claiming that Freedom of Speech is dangerous and harmful to people like her: Continue reading
Anti-Semitism is a serious problem, but restricting the Freedom of Speech and of the Press is not the way to fight it
We reported, on Thursday, how someone had distributed white supremacist flyers in Lexington’s Kenwick neighborhood, flyers contained in baggies, using rice to weigh them down enough not to be swept away by the wind. The Lexington Police Department was investigating, with Lt Dan Truex stating that the LPD were “very interested in identifying” “who possibly left those flyers,” yet, at the end of the Lexington Herald-Leader’s report, the Department spokesman was either unable or unwilling to specify just what actual crime had been committed or what charges the distributor of the flyers might face.
Now, thanks to a tweet from my good friend and occasional website pinch hitter, William Teach, I found this from WRAL News:
Hundreds of anti-semitic flyers distributed in at least 5 north Raleigh neighborhoods overnight
Hundreds of anti-semitic flyers appeared in at least five north Raleigh neighborhoods overnight.
Sunday, August 6, 2023 | 11:12 AM EDT | Updated 4:14 PM EDT
Hundreds of anti-semitic flyers appeared in at least five north Raleigh neighborhoods overnight.Anti-Semitic flyers distributed in Raleigh. Photo via WRAL News. Click to enlarge.
Someone really needs to educate the WRAL intern that subtitles are supposed to be significantly different from the main headline! 🙂
The flyers link to a website to an organization called Goyim Defense League, which is currently tracked as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law.
While I have exactly zero support for the so-called Goyim Defense League, telling me that the hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center — the name of which WRAL got slightly wrong — classifies an organization as a “hate group” doesn’t impress me in the slightest. The SPLC has similarly trashed Moms 4 Liberty, a group trying to protect children from the far-left transgender agenda, even though the ‘transgender’ lobby are trying to impose control of people’s speech.
One woman, who wished to remain anonymous, discovered a multitude of fliers left on neighbors’ driveways while taking an evening walk in Fairfax Hills. Just three minutes away, another woman reported more hate flyers in her own neighborhood of Hickory Hills. Just a few more minutes away, another neighbor near North Hills reported finding one of the flyers.
North Ridge also woke up to anti-semitic flyers in their driveways. According to neighbors, there’s a notable Jewish population in North Ridge due to its walkable distance to the Orthodox Synagogue on Falls of Neuse Road. The synagogue appears to be very close to all of the neighborhoods targeted.
Unlike the Lexington situation, in which the white supremacist flyers were distributed in the heavily white, as in 89.9% white, Kenwick neighborhood, the Raleigh incident was somewhat close to a Jewish neighborhood. Nevertheless, unless an actual threat was communicated, it should be protected speech.
Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said a person caught distributing these flyers could be charged with ethnic intimidation if the it contains a threat.
That’s a Class 1 misdemeanor, meaning someone convicted of that crime could face up to 120 days in jail.
Unlike the Lexington flyers, which, from the single image I could find of them, simply directed readers to a website, the Raleigh flyers shown in the WRAL report had a much larger variety of things printed. However, in the admittedly limited views shown, I could see no actual threat. Rather, the flyers made fanciful and stupid claims about Jews, including a reference to the long-debunked Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the creation of Russian anti-Semites around 1902-3, a time in which Tsar Nikolai II was still an absolute monarch. Laughably, the Raleigh flyers date the Protocols as 1897, before they were written. No one with any knowledge of this stuff who isn’t already anti-Semitic is going to swallow this junk.
Anti-Semitism is a serious problem, but the way to fight it is not to restrict the freedom of speech and of the press. If you find anti-Semitic, or in the Lexington case, white supremacist garbage, just pick it up and throw it in the trash.
Are the Lexington Police trying to stifle someone’s #FreedomOfSpeech? If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
My good friend William Teach’s website tagline is, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
Free Speech America tweeted, “The Left has turned America into a totalitarian society. This is a clear violation of the 1st Amendment,” as they retweeted another post, showing a “Young man (being) arrested for sharing the Bible on a public sidewalk. Blatant violation of the 1st amendment of The Constitution. Every one of those cops should be fired and sued.”
In something pathetically laughable, when I clicked on Free Speech America’s tweet, to get the tweet url, I got this instead: “This Tweet is from a suspended account. Learn more,” referring to the tweet showing the arrest.
I guess that I screen captured the original just in time!
Then there was this story, a few days old, from the Lexington Herald-Leader:
Lexington neighborhood wakes up to white supremacy flyers; police investigating.
by Taylor Six | Sunday, July 30, 2023 | 1:29 PM EDT
Lexington police are asking the public for help in identifying any individuals responsible for leaving Aryan Freedom Network flyers in one neighborhood.
Image from Kenwick Neighborhood Association. The Herald-Leader did not include this image in its story.
Some residents of the Kenwick neighborhood woke up to find baggies on their sidewalk that had white supremacy propaganda flyers inside with rice.The flyer reads: “You know who else was condemned for ‘hate speech?’ Jesus Christ” The flyer also advertises the “Aryan Freedom Network” and a website.
A post was shared on the Kenwick Neighborhood Association Facebook page asking for anyone to report the baggies to police, and check home security footage to identify possible suspects.
“(R)eport the baggies to the police”? The distribution of flyers is obviously not opposed by the Kenwick Neighborhood Association, as neighborhood member Leeann Murphy had this posted on the neighborhood association’s Facebook page, on August 2nd, after the ‘Aryan Freedom Network’s’ message was delivered:
Hi all – We are looking for someone to deliver upcoming flyers to the 3rd block of Bassett Ave. Our regular person is not available to deliver this time around. Please email me if you are willing to do this important task😀. Thank you in advance. Leeannmurphyky@gmail.com
Back to what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal:
“What we are interested in is who possibly left those flyers — that is what we are very interested in identifying,” said Lt. Dan Truex with the Lexington Police Department.
Really? Why are the police “very interested in identifying” who distributed the baggies?
Truex told members of the neighborhood that extra patrol will be out for all three shifts for the next two weeks to increase police presence.
“Hopefully this helps deter it from happening in the future,” Truex wrote on social media.
So, the Lexington Police Department want to “deter” someone from expressing his opinion? How is that not the government trying to restrict someone’s freedom of speech?
At the conclusion of Taylor Six’s report came what I see as the money line:
Truex was not able to share what charges a suspect could face for the flyers, citing an open investigation.
So, the police were unable to, or at least would not, specify an actual crime that they believe the distributor of the flyer committed. Littering, perhaps? But, if so, then wouldn’t Leeann Murphy’s solicitation for someone to distribute flyers, clearly approved by the Kenwick Neighborhood Association’s Facebook page, also constitute an attempt at littering?
And the Lexington Police Department will have an “extra patrol” in the neighborhood, on all three shifts, for the next 14 days, over littering?
The photo of the flyer that I have included contains no visible threat, though the bottom line is obscured by the rice weighing down the baggie. If there is more on the reverse side of the flyer, such has not been indicated in either Miss Six’s story or anywhere else I could find. An 89.9% ‘white’ neighborhood, it would not seem a likely target for racial threats.
The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.
It’s obvious: all of the hullabaloo is over the content of the message delivered, but the content of the message is what is protected by the First Amendment. Protection of the Freedom of Speech isn’t required for pictures of kittens or advertisements for homes for sale; we have a specified Freedom of Speech to protect the objectionable messages, to protect people who say things with which others disagree from being persecuted by the government.
Today’s left really, really, really hate Freedom of Speech, and normality
There has been all sorts of leftist angst and hollering and combitching about laws, passed in several states, which ban hormone and surgical ‘treatments’ for minors who believe themselves to have been born the wrong sex. It’s discriminatory, it’s wrong, it will hurt people, and lead to suicides, we are told.
Yet, oddly enough, I never read one thing about this, in a single sentence from Newsweek:
Last week, Michigan banned conversion therapy, the controversial practice trying to “cure” LGBTQ+ people of their sexual orientation and gender identity, for minors in the state.
Research shows that lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) teens are at increased risk of suicide and mental health issues like depression and anxiety. One of the most startling statistics: LGBTQ teens consider suicide and make suicide attempts at about twice the national rate for all adolescents.
So, if the left are arguing that not allowing minors who believe themselves to be the opposite ‘gender’ from the sex they were born to receive ‘gender-affirming’ care increases suicide risk, why would they concomitantly want to ban homosexual minors from treatment for their homosexuality if being homosexual increases their risk of suicide?
The homosexual lobby contend that conversion therapy is both harmful and ineffective, and whether it is ineffective medically, those claims have certainly been effective politically. But the real issue is one of reproduction: since homosexuals cannot naturally reproduce without stepping into heterosexuality, ‘losing’ homosexuals to normal sex is an attack on all of them. They hate being called “groomers”, but what else is it when they try their hardest to keep every kid growing up sexually confused, and to reduce the societal stigma attached to homosexuality, what else can we call it?
And now we have this:
Michigan Pronouns Law Declared an ‘Abomination’ by Former Judge
by Giulia Carbonaro | Monday, July 3, 2023 | 9:00 AM EDT
Michigan’s recent bill making it a felony for people to harass or intimidate someone by misgendering them and using the wrong pronouns has sparked controversy in the state, with former judge and television personality Joe Brown calling the measure an “abomination.”
The new measure, House Bill 4474, is part of a package of legislation that would replace Michigan’s existing Ethnic Intimidation Act and would make it a hate crime to cause someone to “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened” with words.
It expands the existing law to cover sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity or expression, and physical or mental disability. Religion, ethnicity and race were already included in the previous legislation and will still be covered under the new law.
Michigan has recently been pushing reforms and new measures that would expand the protection of LGBTQ+ rights in the state, going against a nationwide trend that has seen other states moving to limit rights for transgender youth.
There’s more at the original.
Apparently the great state of Michigan, in which Governor Gretchen Whitless Whitmer, a Democrat of course, imposed illegal and draconian executive orders to fight the COVID-19 panicdemic, believes that the Freedom of Speech guaranteed to all of us under the Constitution of the United States can, should, and must be regulated to spare the precious feelings of the ‘transgendered.’ I wonder: while I do not live in Michigan, and have never set foot in that state, could I be punished because my website is available there?
Under the bill — which makes it a hate crime for a person to threaten another by deliberately using the wrong pronouns with an intimidating purpose — offenders would be guilty “of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 5 years, or by a fine of not more than $10,000.”
This is what today’s left do: they elevate ‘group rights’ over those of the individual, to support the goals of the State — at least, as long as they control the State — above the individual rights protected by our Constitution. If the law passes, which has not yet happened, it will take someone actually charged and convicted of this ‘crime’, appealing the conviction through multiple layers of courts, to get it reversed, even though simply referring to Bruce Jenner as Bruce Jenner doesn’t hurt anyone. Such a person could wind up serving a sentence in prison before it could ever be reversed.
If someone wants to refer to Bradley Manning as ‘Chelsea,’ that’s perfectly up to them, and no skin of my nose, even if I see it as both silly and stupid; that’s within their free speech rights. But the lower house of the Michigan state legislature would make it a crime to refer to Mr Manning as Bradley, or as Mr Manning.
Bill Blankschaen and Erick Erickson coined the phrase, “You will be made to care“. An issue about which most sensible people would not care — it’s none of my business if Harry wants to become Sally — is becoming one in which the homosexual/transgender lobby are trying to use the power of the State to force people to go along with their kinks and delusions; that makes it other people’s business.
We have pointed it out previously: the left are smart enough to know that if they can control the language used, they can subtly, and perhaps not-so-subtly, direct your thinking. If you can get acclimated to calling someone like Richard Levine “Rachel,” and referring to him with the feminine pronouns, the job of the left is half-way done. That some of us stubbornly insist on calling the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names — if we can find them; sometimes I cannot — and using the pronouns and honorifics appropriate to their actual sex not only fights back against the left, but angers them so much that at least some of them want to make it illegal shows just how important they believe it to be.
The ‘Wise Latina’ says the quiet part out loud.
At the annual Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at UC-Berkeley in 2001, Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Those words were fished out after President Barack Hussein Obama nominated her to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. What can those words mean other than, as a jurist, Hudge Sotomayor would take her decisions, at least in part, based not on the law, but on her race, sex, and ethnicity.
She backed away from that statement in her confirmation hearings, “declaring it ‘a rhetorical flourish that fell flat’ and stating that ‘I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judgment,'” and she was ultimately confirmed, 68 to 31.
Well, today Associate Justice told us, once again, that it isn’t what is written in the law, or the Constitution, that is important, but people’s feelings! In her dissent in 303 Creative v Elenis, she wrote:
The meaning of our Constitution is not found in any law volume, but in the spirit of the people who live under it.[1]303 Creative v Elenis, , page 38 of dissent, page 70 of the .pdf file.
This is rather remarkable. The Justice, utterly horrified by the decision that a Colorado web designer could not be compelled to create a website for a same-sex ‘wedding,’ cited precedent after precedent telling us that the government could, and has, gotten away with both restricting and compelling various forms of commercial speech, along with dozens of citations of laws and court cases concerning equal access to commerce and commercial enterprises. Yet, after all of that long dissent, she broke down and told us that what was written in the law just flat didn’t matter. What mattered, according to our ‘wise Latina,’ is how the people who live in the United States feel about things.
This is a hugely dangerous position, but one which is hardly unexpected. Justice Sotomayor voted against religious freedom in the cases of Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolak and South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, but railed against the decision, this time supporting the freedom of religion and assembly in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo. The cases were all about the same thing: the states forcing churches to close, due to the COVID-19 penicdemic, and Justice Sotomayor believed that the virus trumped the Constitution of the United States.
The good Justice also saw nothing wrong with restricting our Second Amendment rights in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen and McDonald v City of Chicago, or upholding equal protection under the law in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The plain words of the Constitution meant nothing to Justice Sotomayor, or the other liberals on the Court, as they went through all sorts of contortions to say that somehow, some way, the rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution just didn’t matter when it came to liberal policies.
The liberals on the Court are hardly the only ones who want to massage the words of the Constitution to mean something other than what they say. The Editorial Board of The New York Times opined:
In striking down affirmative action in higher education on Thursday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority said it had to do so because the Constitution forbids any form of racial distinction. With a single opinion, the justices overturned decades of precedents that upheld race-conscious admissions policies as consistent with the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and ignored the reality of modern America, where prejudice and racism endure.
The Editorial Board spend many words telling us why Affirmative Action is so desperately needed, yet never manage to give us a reason as to how it fits under the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Thursday’s ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by all of the Republican-appointed justices, takes a long time to make a simple — and simplistic — point: There is no real difference between the centuries of racial discrimination against Black people and targeted race-conscious efforts to help Black people. Both are equally bad, in this view.
Left unaddressed was one of the Chief Justice’s points, that, in the context of university admissions, which are a zero-sum game, helping black applicants has another effect, hurting white and Asian applicants.
There is so much more that could be said, but, in the end, it boils down to this: the left have programs in mind which elevate the programs of the government over the rights of individuals, and today’s left are fine with that. And that is why sensible people must fight the left, fight for our rights, because the left won’t help us.
References
| ↑1 | 303 Creative v Elenis, , page 38 of dissent, page 70 of the .pdf file. |
|---|
Today’s #woke left sure do hate Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, and democracy . . . when those things go against leftist values
I will admit it up front: when I saw the article on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page, and cited below, I expected one dripping with liberal bias, but it was actually mostly balanced reporting.
Why Moms for Liberty was designated an ‘extremist’ group by the Southern Poverty Law Center
Born out of opposition to COVID-19 mandates in schools, Moms of Liberty pivoted to targeting diversity education and how LGBTQ issues are handled by schools.
by Maddie Hanna | Wednesday, June 28, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT
Moms for Liberty calls itself a parent empowerment group. But as the polarizing organization arrives in Philadelphia this week for its annual summit, it’s being identified as something else: an “antigovernment extremist group.”
That’s according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the veteran civil rights organization that tracks domestic extremism. This year, the group added a number of “parental rights” groups — the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to them as “anti-student-inclusion” — to its tally of hate and antigovernment extremist groups.
Robert Stacy McCain has done a lot of reporting on the Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, and pointed out, in an article asking “What counts as hate?“, writing:
by continually expanding the definition of “hate” and “extremism,” and by encouraging censorship and suppression of anyone who dissents from their liberal agenda, the SPLC compels people with more or less mainstream beliefs to engage in the kind of activism practiced by Moms for Liberty. Furthermore (and, again, I think SPLC staff are too stupid to grasp this), by denoting mainstream groups as proponents of “hate,” the SPLC undermines its own credibility and causes people who are not remotely “extremist” to question the whole rationale of this type of “hate”-hunting enterprise. Like, why should we even care if someone is prejudiced against gay people or black people or Jews or whatever? So long as they are not engaged in any actual criminal behavior, or advocating violence against others, people are free to form their own opinions. This whole business of “exposing” people as holding allegedly dangerous beliefs — which is to say, acting as Thought Police — is antithetical to liberty. And I think more Americans are beginning to reject the type of Thought Police agenda that SPLC pursues.
Of course, in heavily Democratic Philadelphia, where so many seem to despise freedom of speech for the people they oppose, the staff at the American Revolution Museum in Philadelphia, a revolution against the British government spread by freedom of speech and of the press, don’t support allowing the Moms being allowed to speak.
Back to the Inquirer:
Moms for Liberty has accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of espousing “hate” toward its members. Here’s why the organization says Moms for Liberty warrants the designation:
What makes Moms for Liberty an antigovernment group?
Founded in Florida in 2021, Moms for Liberty was born out of opposition to COVID-19 mandates in schools and now claims 285 chapters across 45 states. It pivoted to targeting diversity education and how LGBTQ issues are handled by schools, as part of a broader conservative movement that has accused schools of indoctrinating students around race, gender, and sexuality.
Heaven forfend! Some parents are opposed to the public schools, which have, due to the compulsory education laws in every state, what is, in effect, a captive audience, been teaching, been indoctrinating, beliefs which are opposed to some people’s religious beliefs, and opposed to simple, common sense. It wasn’t so very long ago that girls who like rough-and-tumble, who would go out and get dirty and sweaty playing ball with the boys were called, sometimes admiringly and sometimes not, tomboys, but everyone knew that they were still girls. There was a time in which boys who liked to play with dolls or do somewhat ‘girly’ things were called, never admiringly, sissies, but everyone knew that they were still boys. Now? Now, they’re not what they were born, but one of 1 × 10n new ‘genders,’ you’ve got to call them that, and it’s time to reach for the puberty blockers and surgical scalpel. No one would ever say that public school libraries should have materials showing girls fellating boys, but today’s left — which includes a lot of public school teachers and administrators — are aghast that some people are opposed to having materials in public school libraries which depict boys fellating boys. Many concerned parents do not want this kind of stuff normalized, but if you are a parent who doesn’t want that, the SPLC says that you are a hater and an anti-government extremist.
That messaging is what landed Moms for Liberty on the SPLC’s list, said Maya Henson Carey, a research analyst with SPLC’s Intelligence Project.
“It’s really looking at their overall narrative: that public educators and public schools are attempting to indoctrinate and sexualize children through this radical Marxist agenda,” Carey said.
The SPLC notes statements from Moms for Liberty leaders, including the group’s slogan that “we do not co-parent with the government,” comments referring to “government schools,” support for abolishing the federal Department of Education, and accusations that teachers unions are responsible for indoctrination.
In one example flagged by the SPLC, Moms for Liberty said last year that “the K-12 cartel — also known as the national teachers union (NEA) — met and drafted a proposal to replace the word ‘mother’ with ‘birthing person.’” Describing the proposal as “insane,” Moms for Liberty said that “as the teachers union pushes an agenda focused on everything but educating our children, American parents are rising up, taking back our school districts and putting the focus back on educating our children.”
We have previously reported how The Washington Post kowtowed to the #woke by headlining an article with “pregnant people” in both the title and body, and a site search of the Inquirer’s website returned 2,905 references to “pregnant people,” 1,062 references to “pregnant person,” 1,643 references to “birthing person,” and 4,669 references to “birthing people.” Is that what the Inky’s stylebook now requires? Is it surprising that sensible people would note these assaults on language and attempts to normalize transgenderism and the notion that men can get pregnant and have babies?
Well, perhaps the SPLC were not surprised at that, but Maya Henson Carey said that the SPLC cited such objections as part of the reason Moms for Liberty was declared to be an “anti-government extremist” group.
After several paragraphs in which Dr Carey claimed that the Moms must be raaaaacist, comparing their objections to critical race theory, the education of which has a strong political component, she went on:
Moms for Liberty has also opposed policies accommodating transgender students and has referred to gender dysphoria as being “normalized by predators.” And while Moms for Liberty has said it’s focused on removing inappropriate sexual content, efforts to ban books from libraries have disproportionately targeted stories about LGBTQ people or people of color, Carey said.
It’s certainly true that the Moms are fighting the normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism in the public schools, but that’s what they should be doing. It’s an obvious question: why on earth would the public schools be pushing normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism in the first place? Why would the public schools be pushing something which is opposed by many religions, why would they be pushing something that is directly contrary to the religious faiths of many parents?
Is not the state pushing a particular issue which violates a lot of people’s religious faith in itself a state establishment of religion?
Carey said the education groups represent a trend of “a shift to public spaces” by extremist groups, that “comes with them showing up for school board meetings and running for public office. A lot of these antigovernment and hate groups are really infiltrating the lives of everyday Americans.”
And there you have it: an SPLC spokeswoman is complaining that conservatives are exercising their freedom of speech, and, in what must surely be a horrific attack on democracy, are doing something really radical like running for office in democratic elections!
The left really despise Freedom of Speech
The American Revolution was slowly being brewed by the resentments our colonial forebears felt for the really not that oppressive rule by King George III across the wide Atlantic Ocean, and Parliament’s desire that the colonists pay for the costs of their own defense in the French and Indian War. It was our freedom of speech and of the press, things His Majesty might not have liked all that much, but wasn’t in any real position to do much about them, which enabled disaffected colonists to come together in their opposition to rule by Great Britain.
Thus, you’d think that the staffers at the American Revolution Museum would have a great respect for freedom of speech. Well, if you thought that, you’d be wrong!
American Revolution Museum staffers are fighting to cancel a Moms for Liberty event
The Museum has sought to diversify the stories it tells about American history and staffers said that allowing such a group to rent its space undermines the progress the museum has made.
by Juliana Feliciano Reyes | Wednesday, June 7, 2023
Nearly 40 staffers at the Museum of the American Revolution are demanding that museum leadership cancel a scheduled event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a “parents’ rights” group recently classified as an “antigovernment extremist organization” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Can we tell the truth here? The SPLC sees every conservative organization as ‘extremist,’ and would undoubtedly list the American Free News Network as extremist if AFNN appeared on their radar. “Parents’ rights” would certainly qualify as “extremists” to them, because the apparently wholly radical idea that parents, whose children are subject to compulsory education laws, ought to have control of what public education teaches their children is just so, so, so wrong!
You can tell how Moms for Liberty work, from their statements on their website.
The Museum, located in Old City, has sought to diversify the stories it tells about American history — its current special exhibition, “Black Founders,” is a first-of-its-kind spotlight on James Forten, a prominent Black Revolutionary War-era abolitionist — and staffers said allowing such a group to rent its space undermines the progress the museum has made.
“We do not feel that any dollar amount is worth endangering the safety of the museum staff members in the building on the day of the event, serving as a host to a group that does not stand with our values, and damaging the museum’s reputation that we have all worked so hard to build,” a petition signed by 39 staffers reads. The museum employs 75 people full time and 37 part time.
“(E)ndangering the safety of the museum staff members”? Are they accusing the Moms of coming in armed, ready to shoot the staffers, or perhaps beat them with Louisville Slugger baseball bats?
They do hold some truly radical views, claiming that they do not ‘co-parent’ with the government, and they were early in on resistance to the forced masking of children due to the COVID panicdemic.
And horror of horrors, they fought against the long-term closures of the public schools, forcing students into the disastrous remote education policies. The public schools in Philadelphia stayed closed longer than many systems due to the resistance of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union resistance to reopening fir in-person classes.
Moms for Liberty, an organization that sought control over public education by banning books and removing curriculum related to race, gender, and sexuality, is hosting its national summit in Philadelphia at the end of this month. Featured speakers are to include GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. The site of the summit — the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown — has already been protested by queer and trans-led groups.
Heaven forfend! The Moms wanted to stop the politicization of race in the public schools and the indoctrination of children into acceptance of homosexuality and ‘transgenderism.’ As William Teach noted, there has been a significant upsurge in younger people identifying as homosexual, bisexual, and/or ‘transgendered’ in the past few years, something that could only be caused by ‘grooming,’ by making those things seem acceptable. If individual parents wish to teach their children that such things are acceptable, that’s on them, but what the left and the teachers’ unions want to do is to indoctrinate everyone’s kids to accept that s(tuff).
Naturally, Juliana Feliciano Reyes, the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who wrote the cited article, said that the Moms were “banning books”, without the qualification that they wanted those books out of public school libraries, period, and not trying to, or able to, prevent private libraries, bookstores, or Amazon.com from having and selling them.
(CEO R. Scott Stephenson) said no employees were required to work that night if they didn’t feel safe.
But for some employees, the damage has already been done.
“I don’t feel appreciated nor safe anymore,” said assistant curator Trish Norman, who is nonbinary. “I don’t feel the museum necessarily has my back.”
Miss Norman doesn’t feel safe anymore? Unless she is alleging that the Moms and their guests are going to assault her in some fashion, she is telling us that her precious little feelings might get hurt.
In a photo published in the article, one protester is carrying a sign saying “Free to Learn.” That’s absolutely right: she is free to teach her kids whatever she wishes. But what she apparently doesn’t want is other parents not wanting their children taught the same things the protester wants.
Well, in the American Revolution that the museum is supposed to celebrate, some American men fought and died to gain our freedom to say and believe whatever we wished, fought and died to give all Americans, even the Moms for Liberty, the right to say and advocate whatever they wished.
The left want to control your thoughts by controlling your language
To the surprise of exactly no one among The Philadelphia Inquirer’s dwindling readership, the Inky has gone all-in on the so-called Pride Month, with three out of five articles in the opinion section relating to homosexual and transgender activism.
Philadelphia Inquirer screen capture, 6-3-23 at 10:00 AM EDT.
At Central Bucks, transphobic slurs are common and adults are unwilling to intervene
Many faculty members refuse to defend LGBTQ students from the words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill-intent that other students throw their way.
by Leo Burchell and Ben Busick, For The Inquirer | Updated Thursday, June 1, 2023 | 11:00 AM EDT
We are two trans students in the Central Bucks School District, which the American Civil Liberties Union has alleged is a “toxic environment” for LGBTQ students. In our time at Central Bucks, both of us have endured homophobic or transphobic bullying from our peers.
This bullying and discrimination has impacted our ability to learn, and Central Bucks does nothing about it.
One of us — Leo — came out as transgender and changed his name at the beginning of his senior year at Central Bucks West last September. He emailed all of his teachers about his pronouns and name. However, throughout the entire school year, one teacher consistently misgendered him, while only occasionally correcting themself.
It is hard to learn in a classroom when your teacher misgenders you to all the students present.
The authors have written this as though “Leo” Burchell is actually male, and the teachers and students must accept her as being male. It’s clear from their first paragraph, in which they stated that “both of us have endured homophobic or transphobic bullying from our peers,” that many of their fellow students have not accepted such as reality.
When entering one of the very few gender-neutral bathrooms for students to use, Leo was called a “tranny” by a student passing by. That gender-neutral bathroom also frequently lacks toilet paper, paper towels, or both. Another student hurled a homophobic slur at Leo as he handed out flyers about a protest before school one morning.
It is a legitimate complaint if the school, which has gone to the effort to establish ‘gender-neutral’ bathrooms, is not servicing them adequately. But that’s about the only legitimate complaint the authors made.
Central Bucks South, for Ben, has unfortunately not been much better. Homophobic and transphobic phrases are commonplace, and often targeted at Ben. They came out as nonbinary in their sophomore year of high school in 2021. Fortunately, many of their teachers have made a real effort to get their pronouns right and use them correctly. Their lovely AP Spanish teacher even taught Ben’s class (with Ben’s permission) about the Spanish word for nonbinary and the gender-neutral pronouns and conjugations of gendered words. She will probably never realize what an impact that simple gesture had.
“They” is, of course, a plural pronoun, making the short sentence, “They came out as nonbinary in their sophomore year of high school in 2021”, grammatically incorrect and jarring to the ears of an English-speaking person.
However, some faculty members do not try to integrate their pronouns into everyday language. These faculty often use strategies like, “I am just going to use your name so I don’t have to get your pronouns wrong,” which seems like an attempt to be inclusive at first glance but is really just a cop-out. Most transgender and nonbinary people would much rather someone make a mistake, correct themselves, and move on. (If someone with good, inclusive intentions makes a mistake, no big deal.)
Some faculty and most students at Central Bucks South, however, do not appear to have good intentions and rarely use Ben’s pronouns correctly. Even worse, many teachers witness students using the incorrect names and pronouns for transgender and nonbinary students — and do nothing about it.
If “some faculty and most students . . . do not appear to have good intentions” in this, as Miss Burchell and Mr Busick wrote, that is a clear indication that those faculty and students do not accept the claim that Miss Burchell is now a guy and Mr Busick is something other than a male. The authors have an absolute right to claim to be what they are, and to say so publicly, but just as their freedom of speech allows them to do that, the freedom of speech of other people allows other people to not only disagree with the authors’ claims, but say so publicly.
Many faculty members refuse to defend their LGBTQ students from the words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill-intent that other students throw their way. As such, we know many LGBTQ students who often dread going to school.
Sticks and stones, we were once told, could break our bones, but names would never hurt us. However, for Miss Burchell and Mr Busick, “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” do hurt, and they are demanding protection from those words. One wonders: if the homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered are to be protected from “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” aimed at their sexual orientation and identity, from what other “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” should other students, normal students, be protected, because “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” occur all the time in schools, for a myriad of reasons and just general dislike.
Perhaps they could submit a Hurt Feelings Report Form?
This is, to me, serious, because there are all sorts of attempts to legislate, censor, or otherwise ‘do something’ about ‘hate speech,’ and while the OpEd piece I selected is by high school seniors, there are (supposedly) serious adults who want the government to somehow take action against speech the left don’t like. The attempt to regulate and control speech is an attempt to regulate and control thought: if the government can somehow compel people to use language that agrees with the claims of the ‘transgendered,’ it becomes an effort to legitimize transgenderism, to push the thoughts of people who have a perfect right to reject the cockamamie claim that people can change their sex into avenues which accept that claim. Not just no, but Hell no!