SelwynDuke.com

The Hazards of Ensuring Safety

By Selwyn Duke

Back when my family vacationed in Miami Beach, it wasn’t uncommon for the hotels abutting the shoreline to have high diving boards. I mean sometimes really high — maybe even the kind you see on Olympics telecasts. It was a scary jump for me as a child, but I think I mustered the courage once or twice. But I couldn’t as an adolescent. You see, the boards were closed down by then (circa 1980), an obvious victim of our society’s increasing litigiousness. Insurance regulations, you know.

And it’s far worse today, as we’re being lawyered and insured into an antiseptic, killjoy state. As an example, it’s just been announced that elementary schools in Cabell County, West Virginia, are removing all swing sets for fear of litigation. A school official cited a recent lawsuit in which the district had to pay out $20,000 after a boy broke his arm jumping off a swing à la Superman.

Read the rest here.

The Islamization of Paris

This is an eye-opening video about the Islamization of Paris. Ahh, the French and the sweet smell of surrender. Charles Martel must be rolling over in his grave.

The Envious Feminist

By Selwyn Duke

People are emotional beings, often governed more by feelings than reason.  And this is never truer than with leftist people.

If you want to understand liberals, know that most of their ideology is simply a pseudo-intellectual justification for what feels right to them.  As for these feelings, the one stereotypically associated with the left is compassion, which supposedly manifests itself in mercy, charity, forgiveness and temperance.  In reality, though, a feeling that far better characterizes the left is envy.

How Liberals Reason

This video speaks for itself.  Give it a gander; I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Hat tip: Walt Holton

Muslim Soldier Refuses Deployment: Won’t be Part of Any War “U.S. Army would conceivably participate in”

By Selwyn Duke

Twenty-year-old Naser Abdo joined the U.S. Army more than a year ago.  Now that it’s time to be sent to Afghanistan, however, he’s having second thoughts.  He is refusing deployment, claiming conscientious-objector status.

The Truth about Obama’s Muslim “Faith”

By Selwyn Duke

Now that Barack Obama has decided to be for the Ground Zero mosque before being implicitly against it (perhaps), discussion about his faith has once again reached a fever pitch.  To many, his stance proves he’s a Muslim, with a recent poll showing that almost 20 percent of Americans hold that opinion; to others, it just reflects a desire to be faithful to the Constitution (now, that would be change).  The truth, however, is a bit more nuanced.  Obama is not religiously Muslim.  Culturally, though . . . well, that’s a different matter altogether.

Engineering Oblivion: Eugenics, the Remaking of Man and Unmaking of Morality

By Selwyn Duke

The year is 1941, and the Nazis are in the midst of their Lebensborn program. Men of pure Aryan stock — especially members of the Waffen-SS, thought the cream of the crop — have a special purpose. In many occupied countries, they are encouraged to mate with blonde-haired, blue-eyed women — those reflecting the very picture of the Aryan ideal themselves. And “mate” is the word; romance is not necessary here, nor marriage, nor moral constraints. For the program is to serve as a baby factory that will produce future Aryan supermen for the Third Reich.

Lebensborn grows out of what is central to the Nazi philosophy: eugenics, which is the improvement of the human race through the process of selective breeding. And the Nazis embrace it for a very interesting reason: They have a penchant for indulging ancient myths, and one of these is that they are descended from a race of Aryan supermen who lost their superhuman capabilities because they procreated with inferior races, thus visiting upon themselves a kind of biological devolution. And they aim to reverse the process by jump-starting and accelerating evolution in a sort of hothouse environment.

Read the rest here.

Lack of Intellectualism is Losing the Marriage Debate

By Selwyn Duke

Judge Vaughn Walker's legal ruling striking down California's Proposition 8 certainly was no triumph of intellectualism. But while it's easy to thus dismiss it, what's usually forgotten is that reasoning such as his flies only in a certain cultural milieu -- a milieu that, in part, has been shaped by conservatives. Let's examine the matter. 

Walker's lack of intellectualism is profound. Among other things, he said that opposition to faux marriage was ultimately based on "moral disapproval." While this is a rhetorically compelling argument in an age where "morality" has become a dirty word, it is also nonsense. This is not because he is wrong in his understanding of marriage's more cerebral defenders; it is because he is wrong in his understanding of law. For the fact is that all credible legal proscriptions and prescriptions are a matter of "moral disapproval." Don't believe me? I'll explain.

Generation Zero

By Selwyn Duke

While I certainly look back with fondness on the “Greatest Generation,” I can’t help but think that the superlative applied to it may be unwarranted. They did weather the Great Depression and defeat the National Socialists, but they also greatly empowered international socialists. These would be people such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who gave the big-government ball American history’s hardest push and made constitutional trespass an art form. And then there is something else: If we believe the truest measure of a person is how he raises his children, we should note that WWII-era Americans gave us Generation Zero.

This is a term coined by those who gave us the new documentary Generation Zero. Produced by David Bossie of Citizens United Productions and directed by Stephen Bannon, the work examines the causes of our financial crisis. But it is no plain-vanilla, statistics-addled snoozefest, as it looks beyond the usual one-dimensional political and economic explanations to that deeper realm: the moral. And, as its title suggests, its makers place the blame for the crisis squarely on the shoulders of the Baby Boomer generation — or, should I say, degeneration — which shed tradition and virtue at a rate theretofore unseen in American history.

Read the rest here.

Hello, I'm a Racist, Pleased to Meet You

By Selwyn Duke

There is such a thing as a conditioned response. Here's an example: Leftists call conservatives "racists." Conservatives cower and stutter some defense. Leftists call conservatives "racists" some more. Conservatives cower some more. Question: How do you think you break this pattern?

We've seen this again with the recent vitriol spewed by NAACP head Ben Jealous (a fitting last name). Speaking at the NAACP convention in Kansas City, Jealous accused the Tea Party of, take a guess...cue the "Jeopardy!" music..."racism." Just as predictably, many conservatives are running around trying to convince everyone that, by gum, they really are swell guys. No, really. I'm not a racist. I don't beat my wife. I don't kick my dog. I eat my organic vegetables and drive a Prius.