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Obama’s and Holder’s Selective Constitutional Deafness

2013-05-06T11:54:09-04:00

By Selwyn Duke

Often a phenomenon of bad marriages, “selective deafness” is when one hears only what is convenient. The same failing manifests itself in government when politicians and judges hear the Constitution talk only when it sings their tune. Worse still, sometimes these people behave as if the document says things it doesn’t. This is the equivalent of hearing things.

Kansas governor Sam Brownback heard something recently. He received a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder stating that Kansas’ newly enacted legislation prohibiting government agents from enforcing federal gun laws in the state “directly conflicts with federal law and is therefore unconstitutional.” Unconstitutional, Eric? My, how antebellum of you.

Meanwhile, the South Carolina House just passed a law criminalizing the enforcement of ObamaCare within its state, a move that critics will also attack with talk of the Supremacy Clause.

Speaking of supremacy, AG Holder also told Brownback that the feds would litigate if necessary “to prevent the State of Kansas from interfering with the activities of federal officials enforcing federal law,” which means that the case would end up before the Supreme Court.

So now the administration that created ObamaCare, refuses to enforce immigration law, illegally bypassed the Senate to make recess appointments, and has a DOJ that won’t offer whites voting-rights protections cites constitutionalism in defense of its agenda. This is a bit like serial-killing abortionist Kermit Gosnell seeking to avoid the death penalty by preaching the sanctity of life.

For Brownback’s part, he defended Kansas’ law by pointing out that the right to bear arms is enshrined not only in the US Constitution but also the Kansas Bill of Rights. This is true, but as Cicero learned 2000 years ago and hate-speech apparatchiks insist today, the truth isn’t always a defense. And the truth is, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore. We now live in a place where the rule of law has been supplanted by the rule of lawyers.

G.K. Chesterton once noted that “[t]here are only two ways of governing: by a rule and by a ruler.” We should note that in our nation it increasingly is the latter and that the pretense of constitutionality is now often used as a pretext for unconstitutional designs. The contemporary left’s attitude is much like that of the Jim Carrey lawyer character in Liar Liar who, subject to a spell that precluded his lying for 24 hours, responded to a judge’s question about why he objected to an argument in court by saying “Because it’s devastating to my case!” While the left is never that honest, their definition of a proper legal argument is similar: whatever works for them at the moment. Unfortunately, they have also managed to appoint many judges who work for them.

Thus, when leftists such as Eric Holder say, “We’ll see you in court,” our response should be, “I’ll see your court and raise you a state executive branch.” After all, how else do you respond when dealing with a stacked-deck Supreme Court that, using the greasiest of lawyer-craft, rubber stamps blatantly unconstitutional ObamaCare? How can the High Court be ascribed deific infallibility when it reads the same document in different times and draws different conclusions?

First remember here that the Supreme Court is only meant to be supreme among courts. And what of judicial review, the principle that courts shall be the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution’s meaning for all branches of government?

It is found nowhere in the Constitution.

It originated with the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision in which Chief Justice John Marshall declared the right for the Court.

In other words, the Supreme Court was given big-kahuna powers by…the Supreme Court. So George Washington refuses to be made king, and shortly afterwards, like Napoleon crowning himself emperor, the Court makes itself an oligarchy. And we abide by this…why?

If thus characterizing the Court smacks of typical modern hyperbole, note that Thomas Jefferson warned that an oligarchy is precisely what the institution would become if judicial review were accepted. He said about the branches of government that it wasn’t correct to give “one of them alone, the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others…” and that if Justice Marshall’s opinion held sway, “then indeed is our constitution a complete felo de se” — this means a suicide pact.

Yet there is an even larger point. I am a staunch constitutionalist, but this is much like saying you’re an avid boxer: you can only indulge your passion with the cooperation of others. If your opponents refuse to abide by Queensbury rules, “boxing” becomes impossible as you’re reduced to a no-holds-barred, outlaw fight. And then insistence on unilaterally abiding by the rules only ensures painful defeat. Likewise, what happens when you play by constitutional rules despite your opponents’ subscribing to no-holds-barred, outlaw governance?

The point is that our constitution is the contract the American people have with one another. But when a party subject to a contract repeatedly violates its terms for the purposes of benefitting itself and disadvantaging the other parties, that contract is rendered null and void. For it has then become a suicide pact — especially for those who insist on fighting fair with barbarians.

This can be illuminated further by expanding on the boxing analogy, with the rules of boxing being the Constitution, your opponent representing the feds’ interests, boxing’s ruling body being the legislature, and the ringside judges being the Court. While the ruling body makes the rules, the judges’ role is to simply apply them, and your opponent has an obligation to follow them. But what if your opponent consistently violates them to gain an advantage? What happens when the judges, operating with an idea that the rules are “living,” only apply them in a way that suits whatever rooting interest they have at the time? Furthermore, what if your opponent has a majority of the judges in his pocket and they will ensure his victory? You’d have to be punchy to even step into that ring.

A prerequisite for any civilized endeavor — be it a game or government — is the necessary degree of civility on the part of those involved. Barring this, the wise move is to walk away and, in no uncertain terms, serve notice that you won’t play until there is agreement to follow the rules. And if your opponents are so intent on domination that they follow you outside the ring to fight, then you know it’s a back-alley brawl and proceed accordingly. Remember that when people will yield to neither reason nor law, there is only one thing left that can make them yield.

What we often forget when preaching constitutionalism is that the principle is conditional. As our second president John Adams explained, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” “Moral and religious” describe neither the leftists controlling our federal government nor those voting them into power. So love it though we may, our constitution is no more suited to much of modern America than it is to the Taliban. The sooner we accept this, the sooner we’ll free ourselves from the shackles of the left’s selective law just as it long ago freed itself from the guide rails of all law.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

American Arrested for Anti-homosexual Statements

2013-04-03T03:07:50-04:00

By Selwyn Duke

What does the Islamic world and Europe have in common? There are actually many similarities, but one is this: in neither place are Christians allowed to fully express their beliefs without fear of persecution.

As for Eurasia, its Ministry of Truth’s latest handiwork is the arrest and punishment of an American street preacher who dared speak of sin in that land once known as Scotland. The victim is 47-year-old New Yorker Shawn Holes, who was on a UK tour when he was arrested in Glasgow after running afoul of UK hate-speech laws. Writes Pink News:

He said that while preaching, a number of gay couples stopped to listen and asked him about his views, which he said seemed like a “set-up”.

…When asked about his views on homosexuality, Holes said: “Homosexuals are deserving of the wrath of God – and so are all other sinners – and they are going to a place called hell.”

For this Oldspeak transgression, Holes’ arrest was followed by the imposition of a £1,000 fine, which is a harsher penalty than even some Britons who commit violent crimes must endure.

I’ve said much about “hate speech” laws over the years, and I won’t rehash the old arguments except to again point out that all hate-crime law is an attempt at thought control. Instead, I’m going to shed light on another bias relating to this situation and others like it.

At a UK blog called Harry’s place, writer Peter Tatchell defends Holes, saying, “[I]n a democratic, free society it is wrong to prosecute him. Criminalisation is not appropriate.” Yet he also takes pains to polish up his politically correct credentials and writes, “Mr Holes is obviously homophobic and should not be insulting people with his anti-gay tirades. He should be challenged and people should protest against his intolerance.” And this attitude is reflected in the title of Tatchell’s piece: “Freedom of speech must be defended… even for homophobes.”

It’s also echoed in reader comments on the Holes case, where respondents focus on the man’s alleged “homophobia.” But, question: why the fixation on the preacher’s homosexual commentary? Note that what he said was, “Homosexuals are deserving of the wrath of God – and so are all other sinners….” In other words, it doesn’t seem that Holes is nearly as fixated on homosexuality as are his critics. After all, his frame of reference was all sinful behavior — so he is perhaps better described as “sinphobic” (as we all should be) — yet all the “homophiliacs” do is take issue with his condemnation of one particular sin.

Oh, I do understand the situation. Unlike homosexuals, adulterers, fornicators, and apostates aren’t “protected groups” under British law. It’s also true that homosexuality is the one sin Holes mentioned by name. Yet this might only have been because homosexuals were asking him questions about their behavior. What would have been the focus had the preacher been approached by militant adulterers?

But even this isn’t the point. It is rather that there are no militant adulterers to speak of, but there is an organized homosexual movement. And like all leftist causes, it has been very successful at framing the debate.

It works like this: the left takes something, in this case homosexuality, out of the closet and tries to normalize it. Then, when traditionalists simply play defense and try to preserve the status quo, the leftist social engineers shout, “Why are you so hung up on homosexuality!”

It’s as if a man comes up to you, starts wildly directing blows at your head and then, when you put your hands up to block, says, “Why are you getting so violent! You’re a hater!” Yeah, I guess I am. I hate having my head bashed in for no reason.

And some of us also don’t want Truth, tradition, and virtue bashed in for no reason. But it isn’t hate that drives the best of us, for we are true soldiers who, to paraphrase Chesterton, fight not mainly because we hate what is in front of us, but because we love what is behind us.

I don’t really know who is going to end up burning in hellfire, as that’s God’s judgment. I do know, however, that the left has set the whole West on fire — and then accuses traditionalists of being hung-up on flames when we simply attempt to douse the blaze. And with civilization threatened with being reduced to ash, it just makes one wonder if it isn’t time for another great flood.

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© 2013 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

Bill O’Reilly vs. the Bible Thumpers

2013-03-30T09:00:00-04:00

By Selwyn Duke

If an argument falls in a forest of confusion and nobody hears it, does it make an impact?

In a segment with Megyn Kelly on the Wednesday edition of the O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly lamented how traditionalists don’t have a “compelling argument” on the faux-marriage issue and that all we can do is “thump the Bible.” But if theistic thumping is all O’Reilly hears, he needs an ear for something other than the mainstream media.
O’Reilly’s assertion is, frankly, insulting. Many of us in the Brainstream Media have for years been propounding deep, intellectual, and sometimes novel arguments in defense of marriage. And they’re certainly compelling, yet it is true that they don’t compel. And how could they?
Virtually no one hears them because society’s primary conduits of information — the mainstream media, academia, and popular culture — are all controlled by the left.

The reality is that the above members of the Triumvirate of Evil are like the sentient programs in The Matrix: they guard all the gates and hold all the keys. If they don’t want your message to get out, it won’t. They can make you famous or infamous or keep you anonymous; they can cast angels as demons, truth as lies, and virtue as vice. And they do.

So is it fair to fault traditionalists for not being able to put compelling arguments in the public arena? It’s a bit like putting the onus on the Jews for not having been able to control the narrative used against them in Nazi Germany.

In fact, if anyone would imply that the right has been outshined by the left in intellectual heft, he has it exactly backwards. The right has actually been doing very little Bible thumping, while the left has been doing almost nothing but equality thumping. And this is the left’s advantage.

The person who offers reasoned, intellectual arguments always has an uphill battle against the demagogue, which is why man’s history is one of mainly bad men, not good ones, rising to power. The demagogue is selling vice — in the form of playing on people’s prejudices, envy, covetousness, etc. — whereas the wise leader is stuck peddling that unpopular product called virtue. And, to paraphrase Confucius, “I never met anyone who loved virtue as much as sex” (which could be why no one worries about his adolescent son getting hooked on theology sites).

As for marriage, it doesn’t take much synopsizing to characterize the left’s arguments as “Marriage Equality!” and “Equal Rights!” — with heavy, heavy emphasis on the exclamation points. And it works like a charm. As Adolf Hitler pointed out in Mein Kampf, the common man has a very short memory, so political success requires the use and continual repetition of brief, catchy slogans. Hey, it’s why we hear “Coke is It!” and “Just do it” as opposed to long expositions on the delights of drinking cola or wearing $120 sneakers. It is the technique of effective advertising — and the Way of the Demagogue.

Getting back to O’Reilly, an irony here is that he’s part of the problem. When has he ever had on his show a guest who has put forth those compelling arguments “that don’t exist”? He certainly has found time for fonts of intellectualism such as Marc Lamont Hill, retreads such as Bob Beckel, and a regular “Culture Warriors” segment with news-version Barbie dolls (CNN’s Margaret Hoover was a culture warriorette until recently). Oh, as to the last thing, I know that pretty faces sell in this superficial age of the image. But it’s a little ridiculous to complain about the alleged lack of traditionalist intellectualism when you’re ignoring traditionalist intellectuals in favor of something far closer to Idiocracy’s Hot Naked Chicks & World Report.

So I have some advice for O’Reilly. It you want find a compelling argument on an issue, don’t go to someone who is the leader of an organization devoted to that issue, or who simply has a relevant Ph.D., but who has never penned anything but boilerplate. Go to a person who has actually written something compelling — which, by the way, is just a mouse click in the right direction away. It’s not rocket science.

Anyway, the mainstream media will continue to act as if the Brainstream Media doesn’t exist, because what cannot be refuted must be ignored. But the fact is that we’re here doing the job un-Americans won’t do. And you ought to know that, Mr. O’Reilly. Heck, forget Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy, your next big book could be Killing Our Culture.

                                Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

                                                         © 2013 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

The Supreme Court and Faux-marriage Fallacies

2013-03-29T15:37:02-04:00

By Selwyn Duke

With cultural defenders such as some of our conservatives, who needs liberals? One could draw this conclusion when observing the Proposition 8 case currently before the Supreme Court.

So far we have we heard arguments about the “sociological” impact of faux marriage and, from pro-marriage (conservative) lawyer Charles Cooper, about awaiting “additional information from the jurisdictions where this experiment is still maturing,” as if the case is just a matter of whether the Court should be an agent of social engineering at this time and in this instance. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who could be the swing vote in the case, weighed in on both sides of the debate, saying, “There’s substance to the point that sociological information is new. We have 5 years of information to weigh against 2,000 years of history or more.” But he also claimed that California’s “40,000 children with same-sex parents…want their parents to have full recognition and full status” and asked Cooper, “The voice of those children is important in this case, don’t you think?” My answer?

No, it isn’t.
The only voice that matters is the Constitution’s. The whole point in having rule of law is that its application is not dependent upon what the “voice” of a given group of Americans might say at any given time (or upon some smaller group’s conception of what that voice demands), regardless of how sympathetic that group may be. Would you want First Amendment rights to be negotiable based on how a compelling “voice” may be able to tug on heartstrings?
And the Constitution is silent on marriage, meaning that the issue is the domain of the states. What, though, if the states legislate a marriage standard that has negative “sociological” impact? Well, what if a state institutes a poorly conceived driver’s test or productivity-stifling tax laws and regulations? The proper remedy is the ballot box. The Constitution prohibits unconstitutional ideas — not merely bad ones — and these two categories often don’t intersect. Thus, a justice’s legitimate role is not arbiter of sociological impact, but only of constitutionality. Yet many today behave as if “bad” is synonymous with “unconstitutional” and as if both are defined as “whatever I don’t happen to like.”

But then we come to the equal-protection matter. Shouldn’t homosexuals have the right to marry if other Americans enjoy that right? Yes, they should.

They have a right to form that union with a member of the opposite sex that we call marriage.

This isn’t just rhetoric. It is in fact a point that gets to the very heart of the matter, and traditionalists ignore it at their own peril.

Before you can debate whether or not there is a right to a thing, you have to know what that thing is. What is marriage? If we agree that it’s the union between a man and woman, then there is no argument because no one is trying to stop any adult American from entering into such a union. Ah, but the anti-marriage (liberal) side will reject this time-honored definition, and this brings us to the point: the marriage debate is not a matter of rights.

It is a matter of definitions.

It is also brings us to the Achilles heel of the anti-marriage side. They attack traditionalists with the notion that the time-honored definition of marriage is exclusive and discriminatory, but then defend themselves by saying that their agitation for faux marriage won’t lead to polygamy and other conceptions of “marriage” being legalized. But what is implicit in these claims is contradictory. For if they’re putting forth an alternative definition — such as marriage being the union of any two adults — they’re also being exclusive and discriminatory, as any definition excludes what doesn’t meet it. Yet if they don’t put forth an alternative definition and exclude something, they are including everything. And everything encompasses every conception of “marriage” imaginable. This definitional failure would also contribute to the destruction of the institution because the closer marriage gets to meaning anything, the closer it gets to meaning nothing.

This brings us to traditionalists’ great mistake: falsely accusing the other side of redefining marriage. They’ve done no such thing because they haven’t, in fact, consistently propounded any alternative definition. To do this would be, once again, to relinquish their illusory high ground of inclusivity and the bigotry hammer they use against traditionalists. So if the anti-marriage side isn’t redefining the institution, what are they actually doing?

They are “undefining” it.

To reiterate, this is a process by which marriage is rendered meaningless and is ultimately destroyed. This definitional problem is why the left has very smartly framed this issue as a matter of rights. And, tragically, traditionalists have fallen into the trap of arguing it on this basis, of letting the left define nothing — except the debate.

So the relevant questions here are obvious. If the left cannot say what marriage is, how can they be so sure about what it isn’t? If they cannot put forth what they’re sure is the right definition of it, how can they say with credibility that the time-honored one is wrong?

This also should inform judicial decisions. If the Supreme Court were to reflexively accept the time-honored definition of marriage, it would simply say that homosexuals already have a right to marry — to form a union with a member of the opposite sex — and that’s that. Barring this, however, it seems that before the justices could rule on laws pertaining to this thing called marriage, they'd have to rule on what this thing is in the first place, something clearly beyond their scope. And why should they even consider redefining the institution when the movement represented by the plaintiffs before them hasn’t even bothered to do so?

This is also why, when crafting pro-marriage laws and amendments, framers should not use language stating that “marriage will be limited to a man and a woman”; rather, it should read, “Marriage is defined as the union between one man and one woman.” This makes clear that it isn’t people being limited — but an institution. This matters because people have rights; institutions don’t. If you extend legal recognition to some Americans’ marriages, you may have to extend it to all marriages. But this doesn’t mean that if you extend legal recognition to one conception of marriage, you have to extend it to all conceptions.

Of course, winning the debate in the realm of reason won’t hold sway with people awash in the effluent of emotion. But it certainly doesn’t help if conservatives conserve nothing but yesterday’s liberals’ victories, one of which is to convince us to speak of “gay marriage” and “traditional marriage,” as if the former actually exists and the latter isn’t a redundancy. So remember that this debate isn’t about rights but definitions, and something that doesn’t meet the definition of “marriage” doesn’t exist as a marriage. And you cannot have a right to that which doesn’t exist.

                            Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

                                                  © 2013 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

If I Were a Governor….

2013-03-28T11:51:43-04:00

By Selwyn Duke

If I were a governor, the first thing I’d do is scrutinize the school curriculum in my state. For the teachings in the schools today will be the ideology of tomorrow, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln.

I’d review as much of the material as I could myself, and if the volume was too great, I’d appoint like-minded traditionalists to help with the task. But gone would be the revisionist history, radical environmentalism, feminism, multiculturalism, politically correct teaching models, and most other pseudo-intellectual “innovations” of the last century. Tradition would be resurrected and exalted, the classics would be taught, and the moral supremacy of the old Western civilization emphasized. I would be mindful of G.K. Chesterton’s words: “It ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the youngest children, the assured and experienced truths that are put first to the baby. But in a school today the baby has to submit to a system that is younger than himself.”
I’d also do everything in my power to identify and eliminate teachers and college professors who instill the young with soul-scorching lies. This task would be approached with unyielding fervor — just imagine the House Committee on Un-American Activities on steroids. If most all the educators had to be replaced with people lacking in formal education but overflowing with wisdom and actual education, that would be fine (those with “education” majors need not apply). You can have more degrees than a thermometer but not a lick of common sense.
If I were a governor, God would be in the public square, just as He was when the founders were there. Organizations such as the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State would object, I’m sure. But they’d have their hands full already, since I’d be doing to them what they’ve long done to American culture. You see, leftists are corrupt, and corrupt people generally have skeletons in their closets. So these organizations would be investigated relentlessly and their lives made very uncomfortable. Oh, I realize they know how to play hardball. I’d play harder-ball.

If I were a governor, I wouldn’t just oppose ObamaCare. I’d also inform the central government that henceforth my state will no longer abide by any unconstitutional federal laws, mandates, or regulations. Furthermore, any federal agent who crossed into my state to enforce such would be arrested, thrown in jail, and charged. And, yes, we’d find something to charge him with.

If I were a governor, illegal aliens would receive neither education nor benefits nor jobs. Most would then leave my state voluntarily, and the rest would be rounded up and bussed to Washington, DC. If the feral government complained, I’d just say that we’re doing the jobs un-Americans won’t do.

If I were a governor, foreigners would be guests, not guides. Government documents and services would be provided in English only, though I might offer the telephone option of pressing two for deportation. After all, if you love your culture enough to want to impose it, you’ll perhaps understand that we love ours enough to want to protect it. If this meets with your disfavor, there’s a simple solution: it’s rumored that there is more of your culture than you’ll know what to do with in the place you came from.

If I were a governor, life would be protected from conception to natural death. If your name was Dr. Kevorkian or Andrew Cuomo, you could take your ideology elsewhere.

If I were a governor, I’d ensure that there no longer was that one exception to the eternal law “It is easier to destroy than create.” Many big-government programs and bureaucracies would go the way of the dodo. The state “human-rights” commission and social services agencies would be first on the list, but, well, I’ll put it this way: I’d do to most government programs and bureaucracies what an asteroid might have done to the dinosaurs.

If I were a governor, I’d recognize that we’ve been gradually losing liberty through the continual institution of laws and regulations. Thus, if the total number of these removals of freedom wasn’t reduced during my tenure, I’d consider it a failure. I’d also want this to be mirrored by taxation levels. If government can’t get by on a reasonable amount of money, well, it’s time to say, “When in the course of human events….”

If I were a governor, the courts would be brought to heel. They’d surely object to most of my program, and I’d certainly take note of that. I’d then echo Andrew Jackson and say that the courts have made their decision — now let them enforce it. Lawyers exist to be made as unnecessary as possible, not to rule as an oligarchy over the people. Most of them are educated beyond their intelligence, anyway, and I’d remind them that, as Thomas Jefferson warned, judicial review is un-American and a threat to the republic. I’d inform them that judicial review has been reviewed — and ruled suicidal.

If I were a governor, I’d do what all governors should do: I’d build a future for all, not just a career for one. I’d stand up for truth, not bow down to tyranny. And I’d encourage people to cultivate the temperate minds that allow for freedom and that extinguish the passions that forge fetters.

If I were a governor, I might not last long. But I would certainly start a fire.

                              Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

                                                     © 2013 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

In Defense of Racial Humor

2013-03-28T01:07:49-04:00

By Selwyn Duke

If laughter really is the best medicine, it’s no wonder race relations are in a state of ill health.

Many years ago I spent quite a bit of time with a Zambian friend. He remarked one day that he found America’s hang-up with racial humor a bit strange, as racial jokes were not at all off limits in his country. And call it my one concession to multiculturalism, but neither were they off limits in our relationship. We would occasionally engage in innocent racial humor just as we would any other kind of jesting — and no hate-speech charges were contemplated.
The notion that racial humor is inherently damaging is utter nonsense. Whatever the type of humor, it can be innocent or cutting, good-natured or mean-spirited, and the difference is almost always obvious. And this is true of most any kind of expression. Political commentary, music, or art can be used to clarify or confuse, or to enlighten or benight, just as firearms can be used to protect innocent life or take it. It’s not the tools, but the intentions of the worker.
And what have we worked ourselves into? If you have a friend who is fat, skinny, blonde, bald, has curly locks, or possesses any other notable distinguishing characteristic, it will likely be a source of humor between the two of you (this is especially true among men). Making light of our differences is simply part of normal human interaction — and it is actually a strength. After all, should we be unable to laugh at ourselves?

This brings us to an important point. What kind of person would you not engage in this type of humor with?

A stranger.

Before we’re willing to poke even innocent fun at one another, we must have a level of familiarity. That wall between us must come down.

Now, if whites and blacks cannot poke that kind of fun at each other over their most obvious physical differences without bruising feelings, are they not, in a significant sense, damned to remain strangers? If that formidable wall between them will not come down, true friendship cannot grow up.

After all, platonic relationships are like romantic ones in that their quality depends on intimacy. The more two people can bare their souls with each other — without fear betrayal or rejection — the closer they’ll be. This brings us to a harsh reality, and I say it is true in general, though not always in the particular.

Whites and blacks cannot be friends.

This isn’t a statement of preference, only fact. Our society has made it this way through political correctness, which has erected a wall between blacks and whites the likes of which border-control advocates can only dream. As long as that wall exists, the races can never be close. And this means their average members can never truly be friends.

Yet there is even more to it. There is that infamous double standard, where in the public sphere blacks can tell jokes about whites, but the reverse is prohibited. What kind of relationship is reflected, however, when only one party can poke fun and the other party must just sit back and take it?

That between superior and subordinate.

It’s the relationship that would have existed between a pharaoh and his servants. A court jester might play the fool, but he’d never dare make fun of the king, lest his head and body end up with different zip codes.

The modern version of this for “disrespectful” whites is career decapitation. In 2007, shock jock Don Imus made a relatively mild joke (certainly by Chris Rock standards) about some black female college-basketball players and lost his CBS radio show. In 1997, golfer Fuzzy Zoeller made a quip about soul food and Tiger Woods’ choice for the next year’s Masters Champions Dinner, and he lost a Kmart contract. Both Imus and Zoeller made the obligatory groveling apologies, but this wasn’t enough to stop the racial hustlers from wanting their wrong-colored skin.

And although this is a tad off-topic, worse still is that this wall extends to serious commentary as well. I recently wrote about the article “Being White in Philly,” in which author Robert Huber provided the most tepid examples of whites’ experiences with blacks and black neighborhoods and of what they think about the racial situation in their city. Yet Huber couldn’t walk on eggshells carefully enough to prevent Philadelphia’s race kings from wanting to turn him into an omelet. Mayor Michael Nutter referred his case to the “Philadelphia Human Relations Commission,” recommended he be rebuked, and suggested that his article was tantamount to yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater. What apparently eludes Nutter is that you may yell “fire!” in a crowded theater…when there actually is a fire. But it seems that whites can’t issue such a warning even if most all of black sub-culture is ablaze.

Like Imus and Zoeller, Huber and his editor, Tom McGrath, did their share of groveling before their racial overlords — in their case during a Monday panel discussion on their article. But appeasement always seems a dead-end tactic, and the black/white racial divide is no exception. This isn’t just because people who are angry at you and see you through colored glasses will always want another pound of flesh, but for another significant reason: no one respects a doormat. Have you ever won respect — or friendship —by letting people wipe their feet on you? The most you’ll ever be is a sidekick, and either way the result is usually a kick in the derriere.

Moreover, when whites pander on race, blacks often sense the dishonesty, that they are dealing with people either too scared or too phony to speak their minds. This only validates the impression of whites many blacks are raised with, that they aren’t to be trusted. Blacks can get the idea that they’re confronted with phony, cowardly people — and nothing engenders less respect than that.

Unfortunately, nothing will change as long as whites risk scorn, ostracism, and career destruction by speaking their minds. Whites will stay behind their walls, getting angrier and angrier; and blacks will remain angry and isolated behind theirs. Those walls also may become higher and thicker over time…until time runs out. When those walls then come tumbling down, watch out — because harsh reality will become painfully clear in black and white.

                               Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

                                                     © 2013 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

Treasonous Obama Strikes Again

2013-03-25T13:39:31-04:00

By Selwyn Duke

The world is laughing at us. It has come to light that the Obama administration has allowed hundreds of Chinese nationals — who are closely associated with the Chinese Liberation Army — to work in a sensitive area of NASA's Langley Research Center. What could possibly go wrong?

Here’s what: one of these nationals, Bo Jiang, was arrested on Monday at Dulles International Airport for apparently attempting to take sensitive information out of the US. Don’t give our security apparatus too much of a slap on the back for apprehending him, though, as Jiang had previously succeeded in leaving the country with a laptop containing sensitive information.
And what’s in it for us in granting all this access to Chinese PLA operatives? Well, with stupidity you no get eggroll. In an interview on the subject with Washington DC’s WMAL-FM, Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) “revealed that the program is not meant to be a cultural exchange, as Americans are not invited to work in Beijing's counterpart facilities,” writes Breitbart.
But it is what we don’t know that is likely most damaging. If hundreds of Chinese PLA operatives have access to the Langley Research Center, how many are placed in other sensitive American facilities? And if Jiang has transferred sensitive information, how many other foreign spies have done so but haven’t been caught?

There was a saner time when an enemy power’s nationals would be viewed with suspicion. But I suppose that’s considered racial/ethnic profiling now, the kind of prejudice that Obama’s minions just won’t tolerate. Hey, why would Chinese citizens place the interests of their country ahead of those of a foreign power (that’s us), except for the fact that this is man’s nature and has been the practice of virtually everyone who has ever lived? Of course, though, since the internationalist left has no such allegiance to their country, this fact may elude them.

Vladimir Lenin once said that we would sell the communists the rope with which they hang us — little did he know that we’d end up giving it away. The Chinese regime is a foe, and a burgeoning, dangerous one at that. It has expressed a desire to be the world’s hegemon, and, of course, this isn’t surprising among nationalistic peoples (which is everyone except Westerners, it seems). China is perhaps the biggest external threat we face.

What Obama is guilty of here is nothing less than treason. No, I don't care to argue about whether he is purposely trying to undermine our nation or is simply acting in accordance with a multicultural, citizen-of-the-world mindset. Just because a doctor commits malpractice without malice doesn’t mean he won’t be hit with a devastating lawsuit.

But I guess Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, is just redistributing the technology. Hey, forget Vegetius. If you want war, prepare for peace.

                                Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

                                                    © 2013 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

White and Wrong in Philly

2013-03-22T01:45:14-04:00

By Selwyn Duke

When your article inspires a big-city mayor to refer your case to a "human-relations commission," you know you've hit a nerve. And when that article is the recent "Being White in Philly" piece by liberal Robert Huber, you know it doesn't take much truth to hit that nerve.

That's the scary part. Huber's article contains mostly tepid examples of whites' negative experiences with blacks and primarily black neighborhoods, such as a Philadelphia resident whose grill was stolen from her backyard but "blames herself" for not fencing it in. Its tone is basically apologetic, absolving a drug dealer of responsibility because he was just "trying to get by" and describing the US' racial history as "horrible and daunting." Yet this wasn't good enough for Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter and his comrades. They still want Huber silenced.
Oh, they won't get what they want...at least not exactly and not yet. But, nonetheless, writes Philly.com, "In a scathing letter, Mayor Nutter last week requested that the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission consider whether the magazine and Huber deserved to be rebuked for the article." Why is this significant? Well, when we hear about Englishmen, Canadians, Australians, Swedes, or other Westerners being imprisoned or fined for criticizing Islam or homosexuality — yes, this does happen — guess what the instruments of their oppression are.
Human-relations commissions.

Of course, they're usually called "human-rights" commissions, and the entities that actually judge those charged with "hate speech" are called "tribunals." And they have proliferated in the West. You can bet your state has one, and your county may, too. But, no, you won't be silenced by them — at least not exactly and not yet. We have that pesky thing called the First Amendment (for now).

But Huber certainly was rebuked. In a Monday panel discussion moderated by the editor of his Philadelphia Magazine, Tom McGrath, he was criticized by what appear to be promising future human-rights-tribunal judges. Fellow journalist Solomon Jones scored the publication for having a "history of racial insensitivity," while People's Emergency Center president Farah Jimenez said that the "[m]agazine, which has an all-white editorial staff, was not the right 'messenger' for a story encouraging racial dialogue," writes Philly.com. I wonder, does anyone ever say that the all-black NAACP or Congressional Black Caucus is the wrong agent of racial dialogue? Huber's goal was to bring white people's feelings and beliefs on race to light, and for this white people may be the ideal messengers.

Critics at the discussion even questioned whether the individuals cited only by first name (or pseudonym) in the article were real. I suppose they wanted full names, addresses, and telephone numbers, which surely would have encouraged honesty in racial dialogue. But when whites are portrayed in history as slave owners and oppressors, or when blacks charge discrimination today, do the powers-that-be question whether the stories are true? Why, there wasn't even the necessary skepticism in the Duke Lacrosse rape frame-up case. Of course, though, why even ask? White privilege ensures that whites never, ever have bad experiences with black people.

Not surprisingly, the magazine and its "defenders" responded to the lynch mob with deference. McGrath opened the discussion with an apology, and journalist Christopher Norris said, writes Philly.com, "that he understood the outrage over the article, but simply viewed the piece as the work of an older white man writing about his experience." Yes, and Nutter's actions are simply the outrage of an older black man airing his complaints. Jimenez' comments are simply a middle-aged Hispanic woman expressing her feelings. How did that sound? Should we try to discover truth or just dismiss messengers based on race?

Having said all this, Huber gets no sympathy from me. He says in his piece that white people are stuck being "dishonest by default" on race and that "[w]e need to bridge the conversational divide so that there are no longer two private dialogues in Philadelphia — white people talking to other whites, and black people to blacks — but a city in which it is okay to speak openly about race." Yet his expressed desire for open conversation rings hollow. When John Derbyshire was fired from National Review for speaking openly about race, or Rush Limbaugh lost his position as an NFL commentator for saying far less, did Huber defend them? Did he even defend their comments as part of that initiation of racial dialogue? I suspect that he was happy to see a political opponent twist in the wind. But if Huber now wants to have that conversation on race, okay, let's have it.

At the beginning of his piece, Huber speaks of a young woman he calls Susan and writes:

She lost her BlackBerry in a biology lab at Villanova and Facebooked all the class members she could find, "wondering if you happened to pick it up or know who did." No one had it. There was one black student in the class, whom I'll call Carol, who responded: "Why would I just happen to pick up a BlackBerry and if this is a personal message I'm offended!"

Huber explains that Carol assumed Susan targeted her because she was black and for a long time thereafter gave Susan the cold shoulder. Here is what Huber didn't have the guts to say: such paranoia is the result anti-white bigotry. It's just as when a person is irretrievably biased against someone in his personal life and then sees the individual through colored glasses. Every innocent misstep is then interpreted as a malicious act: "Why, that's just the kind of thing he would do!" is the thinking. With whites, they're always "racist" because that's just the way they are.

And this has consequences. It's easy to justify hatred of and discrimination against people whom you believe are inherently biased against you, and whites suffer as a result of this phenomenon all the time. Oh, Huber won't talk about this, and it is why, if you want the truth, forget his article. Read the comments under it. For while the anonymity of the Internet enables some ugly talk, it also encourages expression of some ugly truths.

Just about a year ago I investigated a racially motivated fire attack on a 13-year-old Missouri boy named Allen Coon, who was one of fewer than 20 white children attending East High school in Kansas City. During the course of extensive interviews with parents and students, I learned that Coon and other white children had been subjected to severe racial harassment not just by classmates, but also teachers. One teacher called the tow-headed Allen "Casper" and encouraged other students to participate in the teasing; other times students would initiate the harassment and the teachers would chime in. I also spoke with two sisters, ex-Texans, who were verbally attacked in front of their class by a teacher who said, "Everybody from Texas is ignorant rednecks" and that all white people were responsible for a 1998 attack upon a black man in Jasper, TX (the James Byrd killing) because "[their] skin is white."

And similar ugly truths are revealed in "Being White in Philly's" comments section. There's the white poster who said that in fifth grade in his primarily black school, the teacher would purposely ask him questions too difficult for his grade level and then, when he couldn't answer, make him stand in front of the class wearing a sign reading "White Dunce." And here are a few other examples (edited for punctuation and grammar), with respondents identified by screen name:

White kid in blackgradeschool

I was targeted daily throughout my childhood because of my race — that was made explicitly clear (verbally). Even teachers in my school were unsympathetic and would look the other way. And the manner in which race was spoken about in an all black school really inflamed students to the point where everything done to me was completely justified in their minds because, as a white person, I was finally getting mine, and some of the teachers I know felt that way too.

Under the bus

I couldn't open my mouth in class without half of the kids shouting "Shut-up, white boy," or many similar things. ... [T]he majority of my teachers just looked the other way, and many, though not all, black teachers seemed to support it.

SaraEdward45

The demographics at my daughter's school suddenly changed one year with black children becoming the majority, and she became a target.

Xena

I attended a small elementary school in Georgia. ...I was bullied daily by black kids. Several loudly expressed that they hated white kids, yet could not articulate WHY.

JenB

[T]here was the black librarian who joined in with the [black students'] bullying. I had never experienced a teacher who was openly hostile to the white students. ...I had to sit there surrounded by the librarian's favorite black bullies, while she bullied as well.

Of course, we'll now be told that these testimonials are invalid because, well, you know, these might not even be real people. It's always nice to have full names so that those who dare speak truth can be scorned, ostracized, condemned, and fired from employment. As SaraEdward45 put it, "No one wants to [air these problems] out loud because you are automatically labeled as a racist and your experience is invalidated, leaving you to feel bullied once more."

But, hey, it's great that we're having this conversation.

                                   Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

                                                    © 2013 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

Why the NRA is Right about Hollywood

2013-03-21T01:12:30-04:00

By Selwyn Duke

Upstate New York’s Catskill Mountain Range is a bucolic place near and dear to my heart. It’s where storybook character Rip Van Winkle enjoyed his legendary slumber, and its scenery hasn’t changed much since he was born of Washington Irving’s fertile imagination. Yet, like Van Winkle, if I’d fallen asleep for 20 years when first arriving in that verdant heaven, I, too, would have noticed some profound changes upon awakening.

About two decades ago, many rural Catskill teens — sons of farmers and hunters and fishermen — suddenly started donning baggy pants and reflecting “gangsta’” counter-culture despite living nowhere near any large urban center. The following generation of teens experienced today’s recent cultural evolution and often sport multiple tattoos and body piercings despite living nowhere near NYC’s grungy East Village. Yet I’m wrong in a sense: those places were actually very close — a television set away.
My old hinterland haunt was once place where, if you wiggled the rabbit-ear antenna just right, you could pull in one or two TV stations. And what could you see? Perhaps reruns of The Brady Bunch, perhaps the news. But about a quarter century ago came VCRs and video stores; then cable and satellite TV; and, finally, the Internet. The serpent had entered Eden.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, much fire has been directed at gun advocates in general and the National Rifle Association in particular. In response, the organization has implicated Hollywood and popular culture in general for mainstreaming mindless violence. Yet even many Second Amendment advocates part company with the NRA on this point. After all, blaming entertainment for crime smacks of blaming guns. Yet there’s quite a profound difference: guns don’t transmit values. But how we use guns— and knives, fists and words — on screen certainly does.

This message is often a tough sell, however, as it’s very natural to defend one’s entertainment. We grow up with certain shows, movies, characters and music and often become emotionally attached to them; in fact, we may identify with them so closely that an attack upon them can be taken personally. It’s the same phenomenon that causes an avid sports fan to defend his favorite team as if it’s his favored son. And it is then we may hear that old refrain, “It isn’t the entertainment; it’s the values learned at home” (they’re actually one and the same since entertainment enters the home with, in the least, the parents’ tacit approval).

Yet it appears few really believe that refrain. Sure, depending on our ideology, we may disagree on what entertainment is destructive, but that it can be destructive is something on which consensus exists. Just consider, for instance, that when James Cameron’s film Avatar was released, there was much talk in the conservative blogosphere about its containing environmentalist, anti-corporate and anti-American propaganda. At the other end of the spectrum, liberals wanted the old show Amos ‘n Andy taken off the air because it contained what they considered harmful stereotypes. Or think of how critics worried that Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ would stoke anti-Jewish sentiment or that Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ would inspire anti-Christian feelings, and how the Catholic League complained that The Da Vinci Code was anti-Catholic. Now, I’m not commenting on these claims’ validity. My only point is that when our own sacred cows are being slaughtered, few of us will say, “Well, yeah, the work attacks my cause, but I don’t care because it’s the values taught at home that really matter.”

The truth? Entertainment is powerful. This is why Adolf Hitler had his propaganda filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, and why all modern regimes have at times created their own propaganda films. It’s why the ancient Greeks saw fit to censor the arts and American localities traditionally had obscenity laws. And it is why, while “The pen is mightier than the sword” and a picture mightier still, being worth a “thousand words,” we have to wonder how many words moving footage coupled with sound would be. How mighty art thou, Tinseltown? Well, we worry that a child witnessing one parent continually abuse the other will learn to be violent, as children learn by example. Yet often forgotten is that while a person can model behavior seven feet away from the television, he can also model it seven feet away through the television.

And what effect do our entertainment role models have? Much relevant research exists, and the picture it paints isn’t pretty. For instance, a definitive 1990s study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association found that in every society in which TV was introduced, there was an explosion in violent crime and murder within 15 years. As an example, TV had been banned in South Africa for internal security reasons until 1975, at which point the nation had a lower murder rate than other lands with similar demographics. The country’s legalization of TV prompted psychiatrist Dr. Brandon Centerwall to predict “that white South African homicide rates would double within 10 to 15 years after the introduction of television….” But he was wrong.

By 1987 they had more than doubled.

Then the Guardian told us in 2003 that, “…Bhutan, the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan's first crime wave — murder, fraud, drug offences.” The serpent had struck again.

And exactly how it strikes is interesting…and scary. Lt. Col. David Grossman, a former West Point military psychologist and one of the world’s foremost experts on what he calls “killology,” explains the process well. In his essay “Trained to Kill,” he speaks of how the military learned that during WWII only 15 to 20 percent of riflemen would actually shoot at an exposed enemy soldier. Yet this rate was increased to 55 percent during the Korean War and then 90 percent in Vietnam. How? By applying psychological principles, says Grossman, identical to the forces our children are exposed to through entertainment. They are (all quotations are Grossman’s):

Brutalization and desensitization: this occurs in boot camp where the training is designed “to break down your existing mores and norms and to accept a new set of values that embrace destruction, violence, and death as a way of life.” Entertainment can perhaps be even more effective when doing this to children because the process often starts when they’re too young to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Grossman explains:

To have a child of three, four, or five watch a “splatter” movie, learning to relate to a character for the first 90 minutes and then in the last 30 minutes watch helplessly as that new friend is hunted and brutally murdered is the moral and psychological equivalent of introducing your child to a friend, letting [him] play with that friend, and then butchering that friend in front of your child's eyes.

Classical conditioning: the Japanese employed this during WWII. Soldiers would have to watch and cheer as a few of their comrades bayoneted prisoners to death. All the servicemen were then “treated to sake, the best meal they had had in months, and to so-called comfort girls. The result? They learned to associate committing violent acts with pleasure.” Likewise, today “[o]ur children watch vivid pictures of human suffering and death, learning to associate it with their favorite soft drink and candy bar, or their girlfriend's perfume.”

Operant conditioning: “When people are frightened or angry, they will do what they have been conditioned to do…. [It’s] stimulus-response, stimulus-response.” Thus, one of the ways the military increased riflemen’s willingness to shoot exposed enemies was to switch from the bull’s-eye targets of WWII training to “realistic, man-shaped silhouettes that pop into their field of view.” The soldiers have only a split-second to engage this new “stimulus” with the response of firing reflexively. As for kids, “every time a child plays an interactive point-and-shoot video game, he is learning the exact same conditioned reflex and motor skills.” This can help explain, says Grossman, why robbers under stress will sometimes reflexively shoot victims even when it wasn’t “part of the plan.”

If the above seems at all simplistic, note that it’s a life’s work boiled-down to 500 words. Suffice it to say, however, that entertainment has an effect. And do we really consider today’s entertainment benign? We’ve transitioned from a pre-TV America where boys sometimes brought real guns to school for target shooting to a TV-addicted America where boys bring toy guns to school and get suspended. And, of course, the reasons for this societal sea change are complex. But if we’re going to point to one factor, is it wiser to blame the AR-15 than PG-13?

                                Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

                                                    © 2013 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

Is Pope Francis Liberal or Conservative?

2013-03-20T12:15:03-04:00

By Selwyn Duke

With the election of Pope Francis, there has been an almost "catholic" attempt to determine if he is liberal or conservative. CBS claims he is a "staunch conservative" based on the fact that, as correspondent Allen Pizzey put it, he "opposes abortion, supports celibacy, and called gay adoption discrimination against children," not to mention his opposition to faux marriage. Tingle Central's Chris Matthews said that the new pontiff is economically "progressive," which, if we were to be informed by actual statistics, should mean he wouldn't give one red cent to anybody. But none of these analysts will peg the pope because they're using the provisional to understand a man defined by an institution based in the perpetual. And the reality is this: the terms "liberal," "conservative," and "moderate" are, in the truest sense, meaningless in Catholic circles. And understanding why holds a lesson for all of us.
Republican Ohio senator Rob Portman recently announced that he now supports faux marriage, and other self-proclaimed conservatives, such as CNN News' Margaret Hoover, have long done so. On the other hand, conservative Cliff Kincaid was recently scored by Michelle Malkin's site Twitchy for writing, "There is no such thing as a 'gay conservative,' unless the term 'conservative' has lost all meaning," prompting Renew America's Bryan Fischer to accuse the Malkinites of "trying to redefine conservatism." But Kincaid gets it close to right and Fischer is wrong.
Conservatism never had enduring meaning because it was never truly defined in the first place.

Understand that all places and times — that is, all modern times — have had their conservatives. Europe has its conservatives, but their general attitude toward faux marriage ranges from support to blithe indifference, and they don't trouble much over abortion. And conservatives in the 1950s Soviet Union were communists when ours were staunchly anti-communist. The lesson here? The only consistent definition of "conservative" is "a desire to maintain the status quo." Thus, what the average conservative is changes with the status quo.

This also means that as the status quo degrades, so will the day's conservatism.

This is why G.K. Chesterton once said, "The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."

Many conservatives bristle when I point this out. But it's nothing personal; hey, you may be as principled as St. Thomas More. But facts are facts, and they're illuminated by our American political history. Most all liberal programs and social innovations — Social Security, Medicare, the Department of Education, the principle that government may prohibit unfashionable discrimination in business, and many others — were opposed at their birth by their day's conservatives. Most are also supported by the majority of our day's conservatives. What happened? It's called operating based on ephemeral fashions and not timeless Truth.

Conservatives are the caboose to liberals' locomotive: liberals propose all the changes; extract incremental compromise; and, getting a slice here, a few crumbs there, and a morsel elsewhere, eventually have the whole loaf. The result is that tradition is starved to death and fertilizes the ground in which sprout the weeds of Wormwood.

And what will happen, barring some pattern-changing civilizational upheaval, is obvious. As you principled old-guard types die out, more malleable conservatives become further inured, and tomorrow's conservatives are born and mature, faux marriage will be taken for granted as it is in Sweden (US polls have already shifted on the issue), and ObamaCare will be considered as necessary as the NHS is in Britain.

The problem is that conservatism is like liberalism in that it reflects relativism. Conservatives are on one side of the political and cultural spectrum as defenders of the status quo, though it's a role they perform poorly; liberals are on the other side as the overthrowers of the status quo.

And they meet in the left-of-center.

That spectrum's middle point then moves further away from Truth as society's consensus views become increasingly corrupted. In other words, the spectrum is fluid because it's determined by man's whims, and the same is true of the definitions of the terms used to describe the positions on it: liberal, conservative, and moderate.

Of course, many conservatives are not in bed with relativism, though some have certainly fallen victim to that characteristic cultural disease of modernity. But the point is that if you're not a relativist — if you hold that your beliefs are eternally right and not just on the right — you're closer to Catholicism than to any consistent notions about "conservatism," whether you realize it or not.

The Catholic position is not conservative or liberal, but superior, and you don't have to be Catholic to understand that this is not a claim born of sectarian chauvinism. The Church does not define itself based on a given society's political and cultural spectrum, but based on Absolute Truth, which she recognizes to be transcendent, eternal, and unchanging. You may disagree with her conception of Truth, perhaps even profoundly, yet believing that Truth exists is the only rational position.

This relates to a conversion experience I had a long, long time ago. I realized that if there wasn't something deeper than the political, deeper than the cultural even — if man's opinions were all there is — then my "conservative" views were essentially meaningless. Sure, I liked them as I liked chocolate ice cream, but if they were just flavors of the day, how could I credibly say they were any better than liberal ones? To thus boast there had to a transcendent yardstick for judging such things. There had to be Truth.

This is the understanding of Catholicism as well, which, as Chesterton also said, "talks as if it were the truth; as if it were a real messenger refusing to tamper with a real message." Liberalism will tamper, and conservatism will, in the least, yield to the tampering. This is because while William F. Buckley said that a conservative's role was to "stand athwart history, yelling Stop...," at what should we stop? Where is the destination? We can be a caboose making ourselves heavier and harder to pull, but at the end of the day we're not striving for a definite destination; instead, we always behave as if there is no destination, but happiness perhaps lies in continual movement down that road to we know not where. And without an unchanging, eternal vision of our terminus, that will be our eternal error.

The Church has just such a vision. You may love it or you may hate it, but one thing you won't do is change it. And this is why virtually all the Church's secular critics, and even most of her secular fans, cannot understand her. They know of a world determined by man and his majority vote, a place where money and lobbying and protesting bend wills. But the Church bends to only one immutable will. This is why it's so silly when journalists run headlines such as the Huffington Post's "Pope Francis Against [sic] Gay Marriage, Gay Adoption." It may as well be thought newsworthy that he upholds "Thou shalt do no murder" or that he breathes air and ingests food. What the secular left finds so shockingly politically incorrect about the Church involves definitive teaching, which means that it has a basis in Truth, cannot change, and must be obeyed by peons and popes alike.

Note that this doesn't mean a given prelate can't have what we call liberal or conservative instincts, and I have my reservations about Pope Francis, with his being a South American Jesuit. But the point is that when the media anxiously wait for a "liberal" pope that will deliver the Church to evil, they don't realize that while such a man could exercise liberal tendencies, he could only do so outside the context of definitive teaching on faith and dogma. There is no "amendment process" for the commandments and their corollaries.

So while many in the media are trying to agitate against the Church, their relativistic understanding would preclude their covering her properly even if they wanted to. They're used to a world of provisional beliefs, such as liberalism and conservatism, which lack defined doctrine or even an institution that could credibly render such and thus are defined only by their adherents. This is much as how we learned the ways of ducks not by consulting a Duck bible or catechism, but by observing their behavior.

But the Church doesn't quack like a duck. She has a magisterium (teaching office) that has set certain doctrines in stone, and a Catholic's relationship with respect to them is neither conservative nor liberal. The relevant terms are orthodox and heterodox or, to use a less fashionable word, heretical.

This may offend modernistic ears, but it's the only way to not quack like a duck — and end up quacking differently in every time and place. The terms conservative and liberal are relatively new; in saner ages, there was no right and left, only right and wrong. That is the mindset we must recapture today, and it's why I long ago stopped calling myself a conservative. Why be devoted to conserving the decades-old victories of heretics — or as some today call them, liberals? Why be on the right side of the political spectrum when even that is well to the side of Truth? And there is only Truth…and everything else.

And everything else is nothing at all.

                         Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

                                                   © 2013 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved