The American culture is in a state of crisis. The various values and beliefs that once provided some unity in the country are increasingly called into question, discarded and even vilified. Whether it’s the erosion of free speech, the shredding of our founding documents, the dissolution of gender or the redefining of universal truths, the connective tissue of the country is being torn apart. This collection breaks down the ways those who&#8217;d like to see America radically transformed are enacting their agenda and offers insight on how to push back against that destructive effort.

War rages again in the Middle East. Major fuel lines are disabled by shadowy groups of international hackers. Gas shortages ravage the East Coast. Inflation threatens to cripple the economy. Anarchists terrorize American cities at will. Police departments collapse. Public trust in government plummets to an all-time low. The country faces an unprecedented combination of crises all at once. 
But don’t worry. Everything is fine. The good news is that our government is run by a dementia patient, our intelligence agencies are mostly focused on promoting diversity, and the military is busy recruiting feminists to defeat the threat posed by intolerance and hate speech. On second thought, everything is not fine. We would appear to be — to use the technical phrase — totally screwed.
That brings us to the latest <a href="https://www.goarmy.com/the-calling.html">recruitment effort</a> from the Army. In a bid to top the CIA&#8217;s woke ad campaign, a new page on the Army’s website highlights the stories of “five young Americans” who “made the most important decision of their lives, for reasons as diverse as they are.” Most of the videos are basically unobjectionable, if somewhat odd. A lieutenant describes how he struggled in school, searched for his purpose in life, before deciding to pursue his lifelong goal of becoming a pilot. “It doesn’t take a genius to become an Army pilot,” he assures us. This is probably true — it doesn’t take a genius to learn almost any skill — but it still doesn’t fill you with confidence to hear the military making that kind of pitch for itself.
Another video tells the tale of a 1st Lieutenant who eventually decided to chase her dream of joining the Army after spending five years as a singer on a cruise ship. A scene at the end of the cartoon shows her staring out from the deck of a ship at sunset, singing about her soldiering dreams. I doubt that our adversaries will tremble in their boots when they see that our military recruitment ads so strongly resemble Disney princess films.
But that is all nothing compared to the profile of Corporal Emma Malonelord. She tells us about her childhood growing up in a home with two lesbian moms and her time spent marching for LGBT rights. Eventually, in college, she was inspired by her sorority sisters to pursue “her own adventure,” which is how she settled on a career in the Army, where, she says, she can “prove her inner strength” and “shatter stereotypes.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Army ad about a woman with two lesbian moms who joined the Army to “discover her inner strength” and “shatter stereotypes.”
We are the laughing stock of the world. 
 <a href="https://t.co/a69SuYiart">https://t.co/a69SuYiart</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1392528151939624967?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 12, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I am happy that Emma has found her inner strength, but do we want to promote the military as a forum of self-discovery for sorority girls? Whenever we next find ourselves in an armed conflict with a rival superpower — and we certainly will, eventually, probably sooner than later — will the military be better equipped and able to slaughter the enemy now that it has made diversity its first priority? It is quite telling that, out of all five of the soldiers featured in the video series, only one says anything about wanting to defend our nation from its enemies. National defense does not seem to be a major priority of the Department of Defense these days.
Perhaps that is not entirely fair. Credit where it is due: those entrusted to defend and secure the homeland are intent on defending and securing it from at least one physical threat: white supremacy. The Hill reports: 
<blockquote>The Biden administration&#8217;s top law enforcement officials on Wednesday pledged to dedicate their resources to combat domestic violent extremists amid questions over whether the agencies are equipped to monitor such threats in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Attorney General <a href="https://thehill.com/people/merrick-garland">Merrick Garland</a> and Homeland Security Secretary <a href="https://thehill.com/people/alejandro-mayorkas">Alejandro Mayorkas</a> appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee for a hearing on domestic extremism as Congress ramped up its scrutiny this week of the circumstances around the attack on the Capitol.
Both Garland and Mayorkas testified that white supremacist groups pose the most serious domestic national security threat in the U.S., reinforcing what analysts have long concluded about far-right organizations.</blockquote>
In other words, the greatest threat we face comes from violent extremists — but not the ones who have been rampaging through our cities, inflicting billions of dollars of damage, blocking traffic, harassing innocent people, and attacking random bystanders. Those extremists are often racially motivated themselves, but they are not the ones we should be worried about. Instead, according to the people at the highest levels of government, the racially motivated extremists that should attract our attention are the ones who aren’t doing much of anything and are almost nowhere to be seen. Black supremacists can whip up a mob of thousands and terrorize cities for weeks on end. White supremacists can’t do anything close to that, probably because they are hampered by the fact that they mostly don’t exist. This is a threat that guys like Garland have fabricated. Perhaps they really are up at night, frantically tossing and turning, screaming, “No! The white supremacists are coming!” But I doubt it. The people who invent the boogeyman don’t actually believe in it themselves. It is more that they are politically bound to this conclusion.
Whatever the motivations, we are left with the reality that the people running our government, and in charge of defending this country against enemies foreign and domestic, are either left-wing ideologues or useful pawns for left-wing ideologues. They recognize no duty more sacred and solemn than to fulfill that role and promote that ideology. They will not allow any institution — even the military — to have any priorities above and beyond the propagation of left-wing doctrine. No doubt, our enemies are watching this happen, and laughing to themselves, and licking their chops, and biding their time.
All of this is just a long way of saying, you can start a free trial of Rosetta Stone today if you want to learn Chinese. 
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Diversity and inclusion

WALSH: As The World Burns, Our Military Focuses On Promoting Diversity And Inclusion 

Department of Defense

Merrick Garland

U.S. Army

Pastor Artur Pawlowski will not genuflect before the high priests of public health, and so Canadian police dragged him on his knees down a highway and threw him into the back of a squad car. The cops did not arrest Pawlowski at his church — the last time they tried that, the pastor and his congregation chased them out with cries of &#8220;Gestapo&#8221; and &#8220;Nazi&#8221; — but rather waylaid him on the street as he returned from leading the religious service.
“Law enforcement recognizes people&#8217;s desire to participate in faith-based gatherings,” the Calgary police insisted, &#8220;However, as we find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic, we all must comply with public health orders in order to ensure everyone&#8217;s safety and wellbeing.&#8221; Canada recognizes the people&#8217;s &#8220;desire&#8221; to practice their religion, but not their right. When Christianity comes into conflict with the cult of secular progressivism, the state will side with the lab coat-clad bureaucrats over the cassock-clad priests.
Canada continues to disguise its persecution of Christians in the language of science. Officials in the United Kingdom, on the other hand, have admitted the fundamentally religious character of the conflict. In late April, police arrested a street preacher in London for causing “alarm and distress&#8221; by quoting allegedly &#8220;homophobic&#8221; verses from the Book of Genesis. And the putatively Christian Trent College near Nottingham recently fired its chaplain, the Reverend Dr. Bernard Randall, for discussing the differences between Christian and leftist sexual ethics.
&#8220;When ideologies compete, we should not descend into abuse, we should respect the beliefs of others, even where we disagree,” Reverend Randall explained. &#8220;Above all, we need to treat each other with respect, not personal attacks.&#8221; But Randall found himself the subject of just such personal attacks when he defended freedom of conscience against the sexual orthodoxies of the modern Left. &#8220;You should no more be told you have to accept LGBT ideology than you should be told you must be in favor of Brexit or must be Muslim — to both of which I&#8217;m sure you would quite rightly object.&#8221; The ideologues did not agree.
After Randall gave his sermon, Trent College&#8217;s &#8220;designated safe guarding lead&#8221; reported him not only to school officials, who fired him, but also to the British government&#8217;s anti-terrorism unit, which exists to protect young Brits from &#8220;radicalisation.&#8221; In the United Kingdom, the transgender ideology, which holds that men can become women simply by wishing it so, is considered common sense; the notion that men and women are different, radical.
But what happens when protected victim groups come into conflict? If a Muslim student quotes the Qur’an, which instructs, “Punish both of those among you who are guilty of [sodomy],” does he thereby victimize or stigmatize homosexuals on the basis of their sexual orientation? If the Muslim student faces criticism or punishment for quoting the Qur’an, has he been victimized or stigmatized on the basis of his religion?
Religious tolerance has limits, as liberals and leftists throughout the Anglosphere prove more clearly every day. Contrary to popular and hysterical fears of “theocracy,” all regimes necessarily recognize and pursue some conception of the good. Political correctness has promoted various slogans as euphemisms to just such an effect. Most recently it has exalted “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and it has installed deans and vice presidents of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” on campus, in government agencies, and throughout corporate America to perform the sorts of religious and ethical functions once reserved for chaplains and the episcopacy.
Christianity has long been the most persecuted religion in the world, as the Pew Research Center demonstrated in 2018. That trend, once largely confined to places such as China and the Arab states, appears to be spreading to the West. Perhaps Christendom will stand up to defend the faith of its fathers. In the meantime, the religion of the martyrs returns to its roots.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

KNOWLES: The Limits of Religious Tolerance

Christianity

Religious Freedom

After 27 years, three kids, and $130 billion dollars, Bill and Melinda Gates are calling it quits. “We no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in the next phase of our lives,” the couple explained in a joint statement. “We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.” Putting aside for a moment the insipid boomer twaddle about &#8220;growing&#8221; into &#8220;phases&#8221; as the raison d&#8217;être of marriage, the Gates’ request for privacy reads as equally ridiculous. Divorce is not a private matter.
A couple cannot wed in private. Even elopers at the Elvis Chapel in Las Vegas require the presence of a minister and witnesses to tie the knot. They recite vows before the King — if not the King of the universe, at least the King of Rock and Roll. And they make a promise to society as well that they will remain together “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death” do them part. Usually, the betrothed invite family and friends to watch the ceremony and afterward to take part in a reception. Weddings are public events because marriage is a political institution. It is the fundamental political institution, and as marriages collapse, so does society.
Divorce introduces disorder into the family and society, harming children and the deserted spouse. Moreover, by making a mockery of marriage vows, divorce undermines the institution of marriage itself, damaging the countless families to whom it spreads like a plague. For this reason, healthy nations discourage divorce. Until the mid-to-late twentieth century, divorce was illegal in Argentina, Brazil, India, Ireland, and Italy, among other places. Chile prohibited divorce as late as 2004. Malta held out until 2011. And in the Philippines and Vatican City, divorce remains illegal to this very day.
The United States has long maintained more lax divorce laws than our sometime-quasi-countrymen in the Philippines. But Americans always had to prove fault if they wanted to dissolve their marriage. Every state in the union prohibited so-called “no-fault” divorce until California in 1969, under governor Ronald Reagan — a decision he came to regret as one of the worst mistakes of his political career. Even liberal New York outlawed “no-fault” divorce until just over a decade ago.
As states liberalized divorce laws, the divorce rate predictably skyrocketed. But the subsequent dip in the divorce rate did not bode well for society either. Rather, it signaled an even more disturbing trend: people stopped getting married at all. In recent years, the marriage rate has dropped to all-time lows — understandably so, as politicians continue to rob that bedrock political institution of meaning. As marriage has collapsed, so too has the U.S. birth rate, which has generally remained below replacement levels since 1971 and hit an all-time low last year.
Broken homes beget broken homes, and eventually they break the country. Purportedly private sins cause public problems for the polity. But neither Left nor Right seems willing to take the political action necessary to stop the breakdown. Both sides embrace the “no-fault” fiction, and everyone suffers the repercussions.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates Wants ‘Privacy,’ But Divorce Is Not A Private Matter

Marriage

It is not as easy as you may think to find a simple definition of the term “systemic racism.” Given that we hear it so often, wielded with such blithe certainty, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the phrase actually, well, means something. But it takes some digging to discover that meaning, if there is any meaning to discover at all. 
An <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/15/systemic-racism-what-does-mean/5343549002/">article</a> in USA Today, published during the height of the BLM riots last summer, appears intent on answering the question. The headline says: “What is systemic racism? Here&#8217;s what it means and how you can help dismantle it.” The piece surveys various “civil rights leaders and advocates,” including the head of the NAACP and the president of the “racial justice” advocacy group Race Forward. Between these authoritative sources, the following definitions of systemic racism are offered:
“The complex interaction of culture, policy and institutions that holds in place the outcomes we see in our lives.”
“Systems and structures that have procedures or processes that disadvantages African Americans.”
“Systemic racism is naming the process of white supremacy.”
To summarize, systems and structures have procedures and policies which interact with cultures and institutions to create outcomes which lead to disadvantages caused by the process of white supremacy. Well, that clears things up. 
The ambiguity is the point, of course. If “systemic racism” has no clearly discernible definition, then the definition can be whatever the activist needs it to be in any given moment. “System racism,” like so many other terms these days (see: “gender,” “whiteness,” “privilege,” “human rights,” etc.) means anything, everything, and nothing, all at the same time. 
But if you are not satisfied with the fluidity of the term and would like to settle on something more solid, so that you can actually apply it to the real world in a meaningful way, then perhaps this <a href="https://www.aclrc.com/forms-of-racism">definition</a> from the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Center will suffice: “Systemic racism includes the policies and practices entrenched in established institutions, which result in the exclusion or promotion of designated groups.”
This is still wordier and vaguer than it needs to be, and seems to dissemble a bit with the word “includes,” but it gets us closer to the answer. All we really need is the last part, with a couple of additional qualifiers. Systemic racism, if it means anything, must mean the explicit and purposeful exclusion or promotion of designated racial groups by a powerful institution. That is a coherent and self-contained definition, which may render it useless to the “racial justice” activist but makes it useful to those of us who are actually concerned about finding and exposing true examples of systemic racism in our society. 
On that note, here’s one that may be worth our attention. Breitbart <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/05/04/biden-coronavirus-relief-prioritizes-funds-for-non-white-business-owners/?utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_medium=social">reports</a>: 
<blockquote>Restaurants and venues owned by white men will be last in line for federal relief under President Joe Biden’s “Restaurants Revitalization Fund” (RRF), prioritizing funds for women and minority groups first.
As part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the Small Business Administration (SBA) is opening the application process by which owners of restaurants, bars, and other venues can apply for federal relief to help make up for the loss of revenue as a result of economic lockdowns spurred by the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
The plan allows business owners to apply for relief of up to $10 million per business and no more than $5 million per physical location. Business owners do not have to repay the funds so long as the money is spent by March 2023.
The relief, though, is being prioritized based on race, gender, and whether or not business owners are considered “socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.”</blockquote>
We can refer to the Small Business Administration website to confirm Breitbart’s reporting. The website lays out the process and timeline for restaurant owners to apply for relief. The first three weeks are designated the “priority period” where only applications from “priority groups” will be processed and funded. To discover who qualifies as a priority group, we are told to “see below.” 
Down below, it clarifies that a “priority group” is “a small business concern that is at least 51 percent owned by one or more individuals who are: Women, or Veterans, or Socially and economically disadvantaged.&#8221;
Who counts as socially and economically disadvantaged? Once again, we are told to see below. Continuing the goose chase, we find this stipulation: 
<blockquote>“Socially disadvantaged individuals are those who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias because of their identity as a member of a group without regard to their individual qualities.
Economically disadvantaged individuals are those socially disadvantaged individuals whose ability to compete in the free enterprise system has been impaired due to diminished capital and credit opportunities as compared to others in the same business area who are not socially disadvantaged.”</blockquote>
In other words, as long as you’re not a white man who never served in the armed forces, you get to enjoy priority status. White men can go to the back of the line. How is it fair or legal to penalize business owners for their race and sex? And what in God’s name does any of this have to do with COVID? Those are questions you are simply not supposed to ask. 
The Small Business Administration is being straightforward in its discrimination against men here, but they’re being a bit more coy about the racial component. It doesn’t explicitly state that white people are excluded. You need to read the subtext, which is written in big, bold, blinking letters, to get that point. 
On the other hand, the USDA, handing out its own COVID relief under Biden’s direction, is not in the slightest bit shy about the racial bigotry embedded into the process. As CBS <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-farmers-loan-forgiveness-lawsuit-racial-bias/">reports</a>: 
<blockquote>A group of Midwestern farmers sued the federal government Thursday alleging they can&#8217;t participate in a COVID-19 loan forgiveness program because they&#8217;re White.
The group of plaintiffs includes farmers from Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota and Ohio. According to the lawsuit, the Biden administration&#8217;s COVID-19 stimulus plan provides $4 billion to forgive loans for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers who are Black, American Indian, Hispanic, Alaskan native, Asian American or Pacific Islander.
White farmers aren&#8217;t eligible, amounting to a violation of the plaintiffs&#8217; constitutional rights, the lawsuit contends.</blockquote>
Again, the agencies website confirms these claims. An article on <a href="http://USDA.gov">USDA.gov</a>, titled “FAQs on American Rescue Plan Debt Relief for Socially Disadvantaged Borrowers,” begins: 
<blockquote>Earlier this week, we posted important information about the American Rescue Plan debt relief payments for socially disadvantaged producers. The American Rescue Plan includes provisions for USDA to pay up to 120% of loan balances, as of January 1, 2021, for Farm Service Agency (FSA) Direct and Guaranteed Farm Loans and Farm Storage Facility Loans (FSFL). If you are a Black, Native American/Alaskan Native, Asian American or Pacific Islander, or are of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity, with one of the loans listed above, you are eligible for the loan payment.</blockquote>
Whites need not apply.
Of course, the claim that all minority farmers are socially disadvantaged, and that only minority farmers are socially disadvantaged, is absurd on its face. One of the plaintiffs joining the lawsuit is a man named Adam Faust, a disabled cattle farmer with spina bifida who lost one leg to a farming accident and the other leg to diabetes. The Biden Administration offers him no relief at all, on the basis that a legless, disabled, diabetic farmer has no social disadvantages because his skin pigment is slightly lighter than some other farmers. This is out and out racism — systemic racism, to be exact. A powerful institution (namely, the United States Government) is excluding one group based explicitly on their race while elevating other groups based explicitly on their race. 
In our country today, there are no policies or laws that expressly and intentionally elevate white people over racial minorities. There isn’t one current example of a law that reserves special privileges only for those who are white. There are plenty of examples of the reverse, and these are just two of the most recent. Systemic racism is indeed a problem in the United States. Just not the sort of systemic racism that the racial justice activists want to talk about.
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The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-VOTE-DEMOCRATS

WALSH: The Biden Administration Is Systemically Discriminating Against White People. Here’s The Proof. 

Biden Administration

Systemic Racism

We are losing the ideological war with the Democrats who are busily creating a one-party state by destroying the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College, eliminating voter I.D.s, flooding the polls with unsolicited mail-in ballots, demonizing opponents as “insurrectionists” and traitors, de-platforming presidents and prominent conservatives, banning books they find “offensive,” conducting witch-hunts of conservatives in the military, in the Capitol police, in the Department of Homeland Security, and turning our schools into indoctrination centers for anti-American, racist ideologies. Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project are now the curricula in thousands of K-12 schools. The crackpot racism of these theories turns our national heritage upside down, caricaturing Americans as slaveocrats and racists rather than as the leading defenders of freedom and equality in the world. 
These people cannot be stopped by calling them “liberals.” Nancy Pelosi has no compunction about calling all Republicans “enemies of the state.” Sixty-one percent of her fellow Democrats regard Republicans as racists and white supremacists thanks to the vindictive bigotry and lies of Democrat leaders and their media allies. Democrats are vindictive bigots and fascists. Call them that. Their goal is to criminalize their opponents and establish a one-party state. Their chief weapon is racist slander of anyone who opposes them – “white supremacy” if you’re white, “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/uncle-tim-trends-on-twitter-after-tim-scotts-rebuttal-to-bidens-sotu-address">Uncle Tim</a>” if you’re black. They are anti-black racists who conflate the criminal element in the black community with the black community itself. How sinister is that? Black Americans will be the chief victims of de-funding the police. The law-abiding black community has already rejected them. <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx">According to Gallup</a>, 80% of blacks support maintaining and increasing the funding of police. 
Why are Republicans so reluctant to confront Democrat racism? Why are they reluctant to use the word “traitors” for a party that funds Palestinian terrorists and favors Iranian Nazis, blows up America’s borders in the midst of a global pandemic and privileges illegal aliens and criminals over law abiding American citizens? Why isn’t it treason to systematically attack America’s constitutional order, and its revolutionary founding, aid and abet America’s enemies, and attack the integrity of America’s electoral system?
The racism of the Democrat Party is its achilles heel. Fight fire with fire. Focusing on Democrat racism will turn the political debate around and put the Democrat slanderers on the defensive. Democrats control every major inner city in America, and have for fifty to a hundred years; every killing field – Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Minneapolis. Every injustice, real or imagined, in the inner cities, Democrats are 100% responsible for. The oppressor of inner city minorities is not “white supremacy;” it’s the flesh and blood racist, pro-criminal officials of the Democrat Party. 
It’s time for Republicans to join their supporters in fighting back.
David Horowitz is founder of the <a href="https://www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org/">David Horowitz Freedom Center</a> (formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture) and author of many books and pamphlets published over the last twenty years. You can purchase his newest book, The Enemy Within: How A Totalitarian Movement Is Destroying America, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Enemy-Within-Totalitarian-Movement-Destroying/dp/1684510546">here.</a> His other works include: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hating-Whitey-Other-Progressive-Causes/dp/1441767150">Hating Whitey</a>; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Unholy-Alliance-Radical-Islam-American/dp/B0073MJRS4/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=david+horowitz+unholy+alliance&amp;qid=1620167751&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1">Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left</a>; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Professors-Most-Dangerous-Academics-America/dp/1596985259/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=david+horowitz+The+Professors%3A+The+101+Most+Dangerous+Academics+in+America%3B&amp;qid=1620167769&amp;s=audible&amp;sr=1-1">The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America;</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/End-Time-David-Horowitz/dp/1594030804/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=david+horowitz+The+End+of+Time&amp;qid=1620167785&amp;s=audible&amp;sr=1-1-catcorr">The End of Time</a>.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Holds Her Weekly News Conference On Capitol Hill

HOROWITZ: Fighting To Win

Democratic Party

Over the last decade, America&#8217;s intelligence community has focused on diversifying their workforce, purportedly in an effort to foster inclusion and match the nation&#8217;s demographic makeup. While this might sounds great in theory, it&#8217;s horrible in practice. Our intelligence community is focusing on trivial matters, like what gender or race an officer or agent is. And when they do that, the people who suffer the most are average Americans.
In 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey said his agency was dealing with a &#8220;crisis&#8221; because 83% of the agents were white.
“We have a crisis in the FBI and it is this: Slowly but steadily over the last decade or more, the percentage of special agents in the FBI who are white has been growing,’’ Comey said, according to a<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-director-comey-calls-agencys-lack-of-diversity-a-crisis-1468426138"> Wall Street Journal</a> report at the time. &#8220;I will have failed if I don’t change this.&#8221;
The agency launched the <a href="https://www.fbijobs.gov/career-paths/special-agents/diversity-agent-recruitment-program">Diversity Agency Recruitment Program</a> (DAR), aimed at recruiting more women and people of color. Through this program, Agents hold invite-only events in cities across the nation to introduce potential recruits to life in the agency. 
Even with this program in place, a Department of Justice inspector general report from October 2019 found the agency did little to actually increase diversity in their ranks. 
“According to [the Office of Personnel Management], law enforcement is an area where there is a critical need for civil servants who look like the people and communities they serve,” the report stated, according to<a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2020/02/fbi-has-failed-move-needle-diversity-over-past-decade-despite-efforts-recent-directors/163127/"> Government Executive. </a>
Data from the <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/745497/number-of-fbi-employees-by-gender/">Office of Personnel Management </a>found little change between FBI demographics from December of 2009 to March of 2019.
In December of 2009, 75% of the entire FBI workforce was white, compared to 74.4% in March of 2019. The number of men in the agency in December of 2009 was 56.1%, compared to 55.6% in March of 2019. 
Instead of focusing on national security and protecting our nation, the FBI continues to engage in performative initiatives like this. They’re busy bowing to the woke mob who demands their workforce be diverse enough to meet the radical left&#8217;s standards.
The FBI is so busy working to diversify their staff that they run the risk of failing to perform their actual job, which is to protect Americans and our national interests. They want to hold up a piece of paper and say, “We have so many people of color and women in our agency! It’s a great honor!” It’s as if they’re forgetting their entire purpose.
To make matters even worse, the CIA is now following the FBI’s footsteps. 
“At the CIA, we are striving to build a workforce that reflects the world in which we live and a workplace where all voices are heard, respected, and valued. Our national security mission demands a broad range of perspectives, ethnicities, backgrounds, and experiences,” the agency’s website <a href="https://www.cia.gov/careers/working-at-cia/diversity/">states</a>. “We’ve seen how an inclusive culture fosters new ideas, inspires innovation, and leads to success. At CIA, we don’t just leverage diversity, equity, and inclusion; we embrace and celebrate it.”
Earlier this week, the CIA <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-cia-releases-woke-recruitment-video-encouraging-americans-to-command-their-space">unveiled a woke recruitment video</a> encouraging Americans to “command” their “space.” The ad features a Latina CIA agent who is the daughter of immigrants. Instead of focusing on the experience which makes her qualified for the job, the agency focuses on using her to check off their various diversity boxes.
“I am a woman of color. I am a mom. I am a cis-gendered Millennial who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder,” the CIA official said. “I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise. I am a walking declaration, a woman whose inflection does not rise at the end of her sentences, suggesting that a question has been asked.”
According to the woman, she earned her position at the CIA and it wasn’t the result of “cracks in the system.”
“I used to struggle with imposter syndrome, but at 36, I refuse to internalize misguided, patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be. I am tired of feeling like I’m supposed to apologize for the space I occupy rather than intoxicate people with my effort, my brilliance,” she said. “I am proud of me, full stop. My parents left everything they knew and loved to expose me to opportunities they never had. Because of them, I stand here today a proud first-generation Latina and officer at CIA.”
The United States’ intelligence agencies are wasting valuable time and resources focusing on diversifying their workforce. The truth is most Americans don’t care about a person’s sex, race, creed, sexual orientation, or religion.
We don’t care if a person is male or female.
We don’t care if a person is black, white, Asian, or Hispanic.
We don’t care if a person is gay, straight, bisexual, or transgender.
We don’t care if a person is Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Muslim.
What most Americans are focused on is finding the best people for the job. We want competent people who can protect our homeland and our interests. We aren’t interested in checking off boxes on a diversity sheet. As long as the intelligence officer is qualified and knows what they’re doing, we’re on board.
Our intelligence agencies need to stop trying to appease everyone in a quest for wokeness. Their priority should be finding intelligent individuals who are willing to go to great lengths to defend our nation. 
Beth Baumann is a Political Reporter and Editor at The Daily Wire. Follow her on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/eb454">@eb454</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

US-CRIME-shooting-SUSPECT

The FBI’s Woke Undertakings Have Repeatedly Failed Our Nation. The CIA Is Quickly Following Their Lead.

Woke Culture

My surname is Haworth and, for my entire life, people have mispronounced it. &#8220;Hayworth,&#8221; &#8220;Whore-worth,&#8221; &#8220;Hanworth,&#8221; &#8220;Hanward,&#8221; &#8220;Hoe-earth.&#8221;
And those are just the examples that even slightly resemble the actual pronunciation: “How-earth.”
Yes, I understand that it’s not obvious. “Whore-worth,” for example, is an understandable interpretation which I try and correct as quickly as possible for obvious reasons.
The reason it’s not obviously pronounced &#8220;How-earth&#8221; is because our language doesn’t always portray the precise pronunciation of words, and particularly names.
When someone says my name incorrectly — which happens on an almost daily basis — I know that it’s not a big deal. The vast majority of people say it correctly when they find out how to say it correctly, and it’s obvious that their initial mistake was honest, rather than motivated by an underlying hatred for me — as a person — or “my kind,” whether that be males, white males, white British males, or white British Jewish males.
How do I know this? Because I am an adult who isn’t in constant search of opportunities for victimhood.
However, there are others among us who are in constant search of opportunities for victimhood. Earlier this month, for example, Ashley Lee wrote a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-04-06/mispronouncing-asian-names-racism-ovation-awards">column</a> for the LA Times titled, “The casual racism of mispronouncing an Asian person’s name.”
“Mispronouncing someone’s name, accidentally or on purpose, at the very least demonstrates a selective laziness to learn the correct way to address or acknowledge a person. The name is perceived as particularly difficult only because it’s beyond the white European names that have been deemed normal,” Lee wrote. 
This is far from a unique argument. Yewande Biala wrote for the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/yewande-biala-love-island-lucie-donlan-b1792717.html">Independent</a>, “‘My name is Yewande’: Mispronouncing or changing people’s names is just another form of racism” in January 2021, while David Lightman wrote for the <a href="https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/election/presidential-election/article246634238.html">Sacramento Bee</a>, “When is it racist to mispronounce Kamala Harris’ name?”
Social interaction is laced with the risk of causing offense, even in a homogenous region in which every citizen shares the same politics, culture, language and religion. Mix this up with a few different languages, dialects, and customs, and you’ve got a potential disaster on your hands&#8230;if you are looking for disaster.
Instead, why don’t we just calm down? “Yewande Biala” is a complicated name, presumably originating in the words of a different language. “Kamala” has multiple pronunciations, much like Haworth, and given that Joe Biden himself routinely uses different versions, is it a surprise that people “get it wrong?”
Instead, let’s not assume the worst in people by drenching every possible interaction with a layer of bigotry. 
Or, at the very least, perhaps you can explain how I should deal with people when they call me “Ian Whore-worth,” because maybe politely correcting them and happily getting on with my day is the wrong choice?
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/ighaworth">@ighaworth</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris Takes Campaign Bus Trip Across Iowa

No, Mispronouncing Names Isn’t ‘Casually Racist’

Racism

We all know what&#8217;s coming.
In Minneapolis, in anticipation of the jury&#8217;s verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the alleged murder of George Floyd, everything is shutting down. Minneapolis public schools announced that schoolchildren will be transitioned to distance learning from Wednesday through Friday. The NBA announced the possibility of canceling games. Businesses in major cities began to board up.
Meanwhile, elected Democrats continue to turn up the temperature. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, the cowardly nincompoop who hilariously tried to treat with Black Lives Matter protesters last summer, only to be berated for his white privilege, emerged to explain that &#8220;regardless of the decision made by the jury, there is one true reality, which is that George Floyd was killed at the hands of police.&#8221; Which is deeply inaccurate, of course, since that simple fact is what is at issue in the Chauvin trial.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who has a long and inglorious history of justifying mass violence dating back to the Rodney King riots — she termed them the &#8220;Los Angeles Uprising&#8221; — has now suggested that if Chauvin is convicted for manslaughter but not murder, protesters should get &#8220;more confrontational.&#8221;
It&#8217;s hard to imagine Black Lives Matter protesters becoming more confrontational than they were last summer, when BLM-associated riots did an estimated $2 billion in property damage. But a congresswoman can dream. And her Democratic allies can back her up: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi D-Calif., said that Waters should not apologize for her comments, despite the judge in Chauvin&#8217;s case positing the possibility of a mistrial on appeal thanks to Waters&#8217; jury intimidation.
The media, too, have turned up the temperature. The establishment media have treated Chauvin&#8217;s defense as an annoyance, or even an outrage; they&#8217;ve suggested that any rational jury should quickly convict Chauvin on all charges. And they&#8217;ve preemptively justified violence in the streets, too. That&#8217;s nothing new: Last year, the media routinely termed violent riots &#8220;mostly peaceful protests.&#8221; Many in the media are openly rooting for lawbreakers today, too. CNN&#8217;s Miguel Martinez told &#8220;Reliable Sources&#8221; host Brian Stelter that Black Lives Matter protesters had pelted CNN journalists with &#8220;whatever they could find&#8221; but that it wasn&#8217;t their fault — after all, the system had generated such anger. &#8220;I cannot blame them for being angry,&#8221; said Martinez. &#8220;A lot of people are very angry, suspicious of the press, the corporate media — all of those things that come into it at these places. &#8230; There were people who were angry at everything and everybody, and we happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.&#8221;
This is all the bigotry of no expectations.
If the establishment media and the Democratic Party agree with your divisive identity politics agenda — or if your story can be twisted to fit that narrative — you will be defended. You will be defended whether you throw bottles at reporters or ratchet up racial tensions in public protests, whether you loot the local Target or resist arrest while carrying a knife.
Which is why race relations are worse than they were even a decade ago, violence is at stunning new highs in America&#8217;s major cities and police officers are quitting at astonishing rates. The bigotry of no expectations creates horrifying results for everyone but particularly the most vulnerable. Everyone has a right to expect that the police will treat them in accordance with the law. American citizens also have a right to expect that when things go wrong, their cities won&#8217;t burn. Denying that simple fact means greenlighting brutality, viciousness, tribalism and violence.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi Holds Weekly Press Conference

SHAPIRO: The Bigotry Of No Expectations

Black Lives Matter

Nancy Pelosi

I recently re-watched the World War II film A Bridge Too Far.  It is the story of the largest airborne operation in history.  Although it was a serious defeat for the Allies, it did provide the material for Cornelius Ryan’s splendid book which director Richard Attenborough made into the epic war film of the same name in 1977. The movie featured an all-star cast that included Robert Redford, Sean Connery, Ryan O’Neal, Gene Hackman, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Maximilian Schell, James Caan, Elliot Gould and Lawrence Olivier, among others.
In the pantheon of great war movies, Attenborough’s ambitious three-hour epic is often overlooked. Yet, the sweeping cinematography and attention to historical detail make for some of the most realistic and well-crafted combat scenes you will find. But I think this film is special for another reason. It is an homage to distinctly male values much dissipated today: duty, honor, camaraderie, chivalry, and testicular grit rarely exhibited by men depicted in today’s Hollywood…wherein it seems the pasty-faced overly-sensitive coastal metrosexual vampire or the buff but caricatured superhero is what passes for manhood these days.
To say they don’t make ’em like they used to is cliché. But even some clichés are born from valid observation.
I Googled “50 Best Guy Movies” and for one list plucked at random, which ranges from The Searchers to The Bridge On The River Kwai, Dirty Harry, Cool Hand Luke, to The Dirty Dozen, the average year of production is 1976. Where have all the men gone? United Talent agent Louise Ward offers an explanation of sorts: “I believe there’s been a certain feminization of the American male. As a result, there are a lot of ‘mama’s boys.’ …That kind of nurturing softens what we’re used to seeing on the screen.”
Ms. Ward is partially right. Indeed, there are a lot of “mama’s boys” in this country. But I wish it was just in the pampered manner to which she refers. The real concern is there are a diminishing number of “papa’s boys” out there. 40% of kids in the United States, from the first grade to their senior year of high school, do not have a father at home. As such, any boys this entails lack fathers to instill in their sons proper values. It seems like more and more often when we see young boys today, it is usually on a police bodycam video brandishing a gun or knife, being shot for their efforts, and then eulogized as martyrs of police brutality, rather than the tragic byproduct of the collapse of the nuclear family.
In a refreshingly blunt interview a while back, Denzel Washington presented a stark assessment of the crisis of fatherless boys in ever greater numbers roaming our streets.  After relaying the story of an eleven-year-old Chicago boy who was already in a gang before being murdered by a fourteen-year-old, Washington said: “You blame ‘the system?’  Where was his father? It starts in the house. It starts in the home. ‘Yeah, well my father got locked up.’ Well where was his father?” In a personal reflection he then credited his not going down the wrong path — as did two of his childhood friends — with his having a relationship with his father while they did not. “Where’s the father?” is the most pressing sociological question of our time. And yet we are not allowed to discuss this obvious truth. But talk about it or not, the truth will be heard. It is heard every time a thirteen-year-old Adam Toledo is out on the Chicago streets at 2:30 A.M. brandishing a gun and inevitably dies by the sword of his choosing. Where was his father? That should be the first question we ask.
My own father died two days after I turned sixteen. That was 37 years ago, and there is not a day that goes by when I do not think of him. I often tell people that I feel like I stumbled blindly into my adult years, “under-cooked” so to speak. That was due to the hole in my life that only a stern male role model (in my case a combat veteran Marine) could fill. My mother did a terrific job, and she was my hero in this regard. But I wonder how many mistakes I have made in my life that I would have avoided just by virtue of my dad’s guidance and counsel, not to mention a well-deserved smack to the back of the head. The simple fact is, as any objective sociological study will reveal, a fatherless boy, no matter his race, is at risk in all aspects of life — be it incarceration, drug use, failing in school, emotional and social dysfunction, depression, violence, or overall poverty. Because no one is there in his formative years to keep him on the right path, and instill in him what it means to be an honorable man.
It has been said that politics is downstream of culture. And in the USA, culture for generations was most reflected in, and influenced by, Hollywood. And once upon a time, in films like A Bridge Too Far, what values and behaviors did Hollywood still feel comfortable celebrating?
In my favorite scene, we see a classic <a style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Li65P_3lvM&amp;playnext=1&amp;list=PL2432C1CFDF5A9980&amp;feature=results_main" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3D-Li65P_3lvM%26playnext%3D1%26list%3DPL2432C1CFDF5A9980%26feature%3Dresults_main&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1619016739171000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGLhaxqFtY3-r1i-K5VaS9Hu8dXXg">demonstration of old school bravado</a> when the tough-as-nails Col. John Frost (Hopkins) is called to the roof of his bombed out HQ by the umbrella-wielding Maj. Carlyle (Christopher Good). Stepping over the rubble, a German soldier (Lex van Delden) approaches the surrounded band of exhausted and ultimately doomed British 2nd parachute battalion troops bearing a white flag of parlay.
German: “My General says there is no point in continuing this fighting. He is willing to discuss a surrender.”
Frost (to Carlyle): “Tell him to go to hell.”
Carlyle (shouting down to the German): “We haven’t the proper facilities to take you all prisoner! Sorry!”
German: “What?!”
Carlyle: “We’d like to.  But we can’t accept your surrender. [Pause] Was there anything else?”
Ballsy stuff there. The Waffen-SS, not known for being softies on a battlefield, were so impressed by their gallant British foes that they permitted cease-fires for tending to the wounded.
When the Arnhem bridgehead is finally liquidated, in the film we see SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Bittrich (Schell) offer a gesture of kindness and respect to the wounded Frost, who is now his prisoner; he salutes him with clicking heels, and offers his brave captive a bar of chocolate.
Attenborough’s classic aptly demonstrates the respect among soldiers that only men of a more masculine age can understand. Though not depicted in the film, during the actual battle, an SS squad leader Alfred Ringsdorf took stock of his British opponents when reporting to his commander the delay in liquidating the stubborn Tommies still holding one end of the Arnhem bridge:  “Believe me these are real men!” he said.  “They won’t give up that bridge until we carry them out feet first.”
I mention A Bridge Too Far in today’s context as it is filled with such real men who did extraordinary real man things that would defy a modern soft-handed latte-sipping self-identified cisgender male’s imagination! One of the most intense American scenes is the 82nd Airborne’s Maj. Julian Cook (Redford) leading his band of paratroopers in collapsible canvas boats rowing across the Waal River under murderous German artillery and machine gun fire to successfully assault the Nijmegen Bridge. When the boats first arrive, the men, including Cook, are visibly shaken by their flimsiness. But he suppresses his fears and shouts, “What’d you expect? Destroyers? Come on, put it together!” Cook’s unit took over 50% casualties in this mini D-Day.
The men who fought our wars over the centuries are not superheroes. They would be the first to tell you this. Eugene Sledge, a Marine veteran, would remember candidly that what concerned him most as his landing craft headed for the boiling cauldron of the Peleliu beaches in 1944 were two things: one was “would you measure up in the eyes of your buddies” and the other was “I was afraid I was going to wet my pants.” But he went in anyway and would fight bravely throughout the Palau and Okinawa campaigns. Once the shooting starts any notion of fighting  for “King and country” as the old saying goes dies away. Men through the crucible of facing challenges together form a bond and ultimately fight for each other. One thinks of Henry V’s famous speech before Agincourt:
We would not die in that man&#8217;s company 
That fears his fellowship to die with us… 
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; 
For he today that sheds his blood with me 
Shall be my brother; be he ne&#8217;er so vile, 
This day shall gentle his condition;
In yet another famous reflection, from another war on another continent in another century, an American Civil War soldier in a letter to his wife lamented that should he die in battle he would not “see our boys grow up to honorable manhood” in his absence. (He was killed at First Bull Run).
We currently live in a culture in which that sublime phrase “honorable manhood” is often dissuaded, even ridiculed, by our cultural powers that be, only to be replaced by snarky admonitions against “toxic masculinity.” And we are seeing this mindset seeping into film. Alas, says The Dark Knight Rises casting director John Papsidera: “The ugly truth is that American leading men just aren’t terribly manly anymore.”
Not so the men in A Bridge Too Far. My son, who was barely ten when he first watched Attenborough’s magnum opus, was fascinated by this movie. My theory is that when he saw how these soldiers comport themselves with stoic valor that belies their genuine fears it tapped into his still developing, innate manhood; something primordial in him triggered a connection with alpha males like Col. Frost, the taciturn Gen. Gavin (O’Neal) the rock steady British Gen. Roy Urquhart (Connery), the no-nonsense cigar-chomping Col. Stout (Gould) and the fiercely determined Sgt. Dohun (Caan) – that last of whom risks court-martial to honor a promise to keep his severely wounded lieutenant alive.
I’m not saying there are no real men left in any war films. Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge and the new Midway do their parts. As did the fine HBO series Band of Brothers and its underappreciated companion piece The Pacific (in which Eugene Sledge’s experiences on Peleliu and Okinawa, and his post-war battle with PTSD,  was a storyline). Perhaps truth is braver than fiction. Whatever the case, I fear that a generation of boys is growing up with a terribly destructive void in their lives. Nature abhors a vacuum, and absent a real dad to keep a boy in his lane, a faux paternal substitute — gangs, drugs, crime, video games, the darker side of our culture — will step in to fill the gap. We are seeing that impact now.
Bona fide manliness is under assault from two flanks. The feminization on one side, (see: Drag Queen Story Hour) and the brutalization on the other (see: Chicago on a typical weekend). The former makes us vulnerable to threats from without, the latter from within. Neither bodes well for the country. As such, this generation of young American boys, lost and all-to-often fatherless, could use a dose of such undiluted old-fashioned machismo tempered in decency and character as displayed in films like A Bridge Too Far. If anything, to convey to them just what those two things below their belts really stand for. The way an engaged father might. Especially in an overly sensitive age in which genuine real men are needed to navigate an ever more threatening and chaotic world, on the screen and off.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader and writer whose articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, National Review, Celeb Magazine, Zerohedge, Frumforum, and other news outlets.  He is the author of the acclaimed World War II novel Of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630">Another Time And Place</a>. His newest novel, The Extraordinary, will be released on Aug 31 and is available for <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Extraordinary/Brad-Schaeffer/9781642939422">pre-order</a>. 
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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A Culture In Crisis

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