SelwynDuke.com

Obama’s Henchmen

By Selwyn Duke

The big questions now surrounding Barack Obama’s triumvirate of scandals is “How much did he know?” and “When did he know it?” Former presidential advisor David Axelrod made the point that the government is “so vast” that the president can’t possibly know all that transpires. Of course, this is one of the best arguments against big government a leftist ever put forth, yet the truth is that Axelrod is right. But this brings us to an important, and usually ignored, point.

Obama knew what his underlings were (or should have known) when he picked them up.

My phraseology references an old American Indian tale about a little boy who, after doing a rattlesnake a series of good turns, was nonetheless bitten by the serpent when the charitable endeavors were complete. When the lad registered shock and asked why the snake would do such a thing, the rattler replied, “You knew what I was when you picked me up.”

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Bill O’Reilly vs. the Bible Thumpers

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.

In Defense of Racial Humor

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.

White and Wrong in Philly

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.

Why the NRA is Right about Hollywood

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.

Revealing Gun-owners Names Reveals Truth

By Selwyn Duke

A birdcage liner in my county of Westchester, NY, The Journal News, has made national headlines by releasing the addresses of county residents licensed to own a handgun. The paper claims that in the wake of the Newtown shooting, citizens want to know more about the arsenals their neighbors may possess. Of course, the rag’s real motivation is obvious: it wants to “out” firearms owners. The thinking is, “Hey, you want to own a gun? Then we’re going to put you in the pusillanimous people’s pillory, where all things manly and traditional belong.” Hence the title of the Journal piece, “The gun owner next door,” which could be followed with “The pedophile next door” or “The terrorist next door.” Ooh, scary. I’m more worried about the journalist next door.

Not surprisingly, the paper is taking a lot of heat for revealing who is packing heat. And one of the more common criticisms reveals a truth.

Proof the Left Wants All Guns Outlawed

By Selwyn Duke

It has been said that to identify a liar, look for contradiction, because it’s hard keeping lies straight.

It’s no revelation that leftists would like to effect gun confiscation (except for themselves and their bodyguards, of course), but they generally maintain plausible deniability so that the world’s Dirty Harry Reids can convince the flyover-country bitter clingers that they believe in the Second Amendment. And they certainly do — the way the Devil believes in God. Nonetheless, leftists sometimes tip their hand, and such is the case with a recent New York Post editorial.

Conservatives Rationalize as America Circles the Drain

By Selwyn Duke

It’s often hard to accept the truth, especially when that truth is scary, when reality seems to offer you no solutions, only poison from which to pick.

It’s as with a man I once knew who insisted it couldn’t be proven that smoking was bad for you. He knew better in his heart, but his available choices — giving up cigarettes or accepting the danger of their use —were both emotionally unpalatable to him. Enter the rationalization.

We’re seeing the same thing with Republicans in the wake of Barack Obama’s re-election. Radio host Sean Hannity, citing changing American demographics, stated a while back that his position on immigration has “evolved”: we now must offer illegals some kind of pathway to citizenship (a.k.a. amnesty). Other conservatives are warning that we must dispense with social issues or the Republican Party will be dispensed with.

Ten Liberal Lies People Believe about Guns

By Selwyn Duke

In the wake of the tragic Newtown massacre, we’re hearing all the usual lies and misconceptions about firearms. And since it’s wise to be educated on a topic before advocating policy on it, this is a good time to explode the gun myths being bandied about.

1. The issue is automatic weapons.

Boston mayor Thomas Menino and CNN’s Don Lemon both recently repeated the common mantra that we have to get “automatic weapons” off the streets. Automatic weapons, however, are machine guns, which, except for individuals who receive special permission from the federal government, have been illegal to own since the passage of The National Firearms Act in 1934. In addition, the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986 made it generally illegal for any civilian to own an automatic weapon manufactured after that year.

2. Assault Weapons

“Assault weapon” is certainly a menacing, rhetorically effective term, which is why the media use it so much. In reality, though, the guns in question (such as the AR-15-type rifles and AK-47s available to the public) are not machine guns but simply semi-automatic firearms; this means that one bullet is released with each trigger pull. And virtually every gun sold in America is semi-automatic.

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Election 2012: Sound Bites vs. Reality

By Selwyn Duke

Any good advertising man knows that a catchy slogan is worth a thousand words. A lot more customers are won by “Coke is It!” or “Just Do It” than are lost by the tedious expositions on side effects rendered at the end of drug commercials. Unfortunately, sound bites, true or not, are also effective in politics. They can even trump reality.

Consider, for instance, the rallying cry “A woman makes only 72 cents on a man’s dollar!” This is a  compelling message even though it’s wholly deceptive. As I explained here, if you dig into the statistics behind that statistic, you learn that this disparity is explained not by unjust discrimination but by career and lifestyle choices the sexes make, such as entering different occupations, working different numbers of hours, and taking on different amounts of responsibility. But digging is difficult and people’s attention spans are short; thus, even conservative politicians choose to mouth platitudes about women’s rights rather than dare explain the truth on the wage gap.

Another sound bite bandied about this election cycle is that Mitt Romney pays only 14 percent in tax, a class-warfare message that’s supposed to make us believe the rich don’t pony up their “fair share.” What this bit of propaganda confuses, however, are income-tax rates with the capital-gains tax rate.

Read the rest here.