New York Magazine was slammed on Monday after it ran a cover story arguing that children should have the freedom to “change their sex” through irreversible and life-altering medical procedures. 
The <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trans-rights-biological-sex-gender-judith-butler.html#:~:text=We%20must%20be%20prepared%20to,of%20people%20already%20believe%20it." target="_blank" rel="noopener">article</a>, written by Andrea Long Chu, a man who identifies as a woman, argues that the “freedom of sex” should be expanded to children quickly drawing criticism from commentators pointing to the harmful impacts of transgender procedures on children. For example, putting children on things like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones can permanently impact their fertility, stunt bone development, and cause heart issues among other health problems. Genital surgeries and procedures to remove healthy breasts from girls who identify as boys also have irreversible impacts. 
“We must be prepared to defend the idea that, in principle, everyone should have access to sex-changing medical care, regardless of age, gender identity, social environment, or psychiatric history,” Chu wrote. “This may strike you as a vertiginous task. The good news is that millions of people already believe it.”
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.<a href="https://twitter.com/NYMag?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NYMag</a>&#39;s latest cover story is an essay by critic Andrea Long Chu, who makes the moral case for the right of anybody, at any age, to change their sex. <a href="https://t.co/Wxqds2ugj0">pic.twitter.com/Wxqds2ugj0</a>
&mdash; New York Magazine Communications (@nymagPR) <a href="https://twitter.com/nymagPR/status/1767159617212051568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 11, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Elsewhere in the article, Chu said that it doesn’t matter where some children get the desire to identify as transgender comes from. Many commentators have pointed to peer pressure and social media influence to explain part of the explosion in children who claim to be transgender.
“We will never be able to defend the rights of transgender kids until we understand them purely on their own terms: as full members of society who would like to change their sex. It does not matter where this desire comes from,” Chu wrote. 
The article comes after a think tank called Environmental Progress <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-secret-history-of-wpath-the-perverse-cult-that-pushed-gender-madness-into-the-mainstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">leaked files</a> from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health showing that doctors in the organization believe a 16-year-old girl may have developed liver tumors after being put on male hormones and that many recognize that children cannot give informed consent to transgender procedures.
Throughout the story, Chu also downplayed concerns about men entering women’s bathrooms, harming women during sports competitions, and parental influence over their children’s medical decisions. 
“The TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist] does not, after all, fear being assaulted by a Y chromosome in a women’s restroom,” he wrote. “Her paranoid fantasy is of a large testosterone-fueled body wielding a penis — an organ to which, as Butler points out, the TERF attributes almost magical powers of violence.”
Chu also claimed that it was a “fantastical idea” that males would perform better than females in sports competitions and that sex-segregated sports were meant to propagate “inequity.” 
“Widespread discomfort at the largely fantastical idea that trans girls will always dominate in their chosen sports reflects a basic patriarchal belief that the physical advantages of being male are perfectly acceptable so long as they are possessed by men. (In this sense, sex division in sport is meant to enshrine inequality, not to mitigate it.),” Chu wrote. 
Chue said that everyone, including children, should have the “right to change one’s biological gender.”
“What does this freedom look like in practice? Let anyone change their sex,” Chu said. “Let anyone change their gender. Let anyone change their sex again. Let trans girls play sports, regardless of their sex status. If they excel, this means only that some girls are better at sports than others. Let people use the gender-segregated facilities of their choice; desegregate whenever possible. Do not out children to their parents.”
Conservative commentators slammed the article saying that it was irresponsible and that it was impossible to change one&#8217;s sex. 
“You disgusting sadists,” Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro said. 
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You disgusting sadists <a href="https://t.co/602fMYMsQn">https://t.co/602fMYMsQn</a>
&mdash; Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1767197099249025437?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 11, 2024</a></blockquote>
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“What&#8217;s that line liberals always trot out about &#8216;when they tell you who they are, believe them&#8217;? They want to manipulate and surgically mutilate kids. This is evil, and I&#8217;m not going to even entertain the idea there&#8217;s nuance here,” Real Clear Investigations writer Mark Hemingway said.
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What&#39;s that line liberals always trot out about &quot;when they tell you who they are, believe them&quot;? They want to manipulate and surgically mutilate kids. This is evil, and I&#39;m not going to even entertain the idea there&#39;s nuance here. <a href="https://t.co/1JwJAvX1fx">https://t.co/1JwJAvX1fx</a>
&mdash; Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) <a href="https://twitter.com/Heminator/status/1767192305474146408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 11, 2024</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;The bad news is that no one, regardless of their age, CAN actually change sex. The destruction to children’s bodies is very real, the delusional pursuit of actually changing sex is not,” Inez Stepman said. 
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The bad news is that no one, regardless of their age, CAN actually change sex. The destruction to children’s bodies is very real, the delusional pursuit of actually changing sex is not. <a href="https://t.co/93tbkkf9um">https://t.co/93tbkkf9um</a>
&mdash; Inez Stepman ⚪️🔴⚪️ (@InezFeltscher) <a href="https://twitter.com/InezFeltscher/status/1767222292847685962?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 11, 2024</a></blockquote>
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NHS Healthcare Organisation Looks To The Future

‘Disgusting’: New York Magazine Slammed After Claiming That Children Should Have The ‘Freedom’ To ‘Change Their Sex’

New York Magazine

Transgender

Transgender Athletes

transgender surgery

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas triggered laughs from his audience when he uttered a terse statement regarding the way those in the media do their job.
Thomas spoke at the Old Parkland Conference in Dallas, Texas, last Friday.
Prior to the remark that triggered laughter, Thomas was asked about a statement from then-Missouri GOP Senator John Danforth, who said regarding the way Thomas had been treated at his nomination for the Court, “If we ever get a chance to do to that side what they have done to us we should never do it.”
“And we have never done it,” Thomas said of conservatives’ treatments of Supreme Court nominees. “You would never visit Supreme Court justices’ houses when things didn’t go our way; you wouldn’t throw temper tantrums.”
“It is incumbent on us to always act appropriately and not to repay tit-for-tat,” he contended. “And I have to thank all the people, the regular people &#8230; the regular people showed up. It was always us against the elites. And that’s the way it has been for the last 40-plus years I’ve been in public life: us against the elites.”
“And one of the things you will see in my opinions is I never go after anybody personally,” he stated. “There’s nothing insulting in there; it goes after the argument. But you’re right: we are to conduct ourselves better than they conduct themselves.”
Then came the remark eliciting laughter. Thomas quipped, “One of the things I say in response to the media is when they talk about, especially early on, is about the way I did my job. I said, ‘&#8221;I will absolutely leave the Court when I do my job as poorly as you do yours.’”
“And that was meant as a compliment, really. It really is good to be me; it really is,” he laughed.
Some recent examples of the media attacking Thomas include <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/opinion/clarence-thomas-supreme-court.html">The New York Times</a> writing that he and other conservatives SCOTUS justices have been “whining about public outrage at their rulings,” <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/05/clarence-thomas-decries-irreparable-damage-of-roe-leak.html">New York Magazine</a> claiming Thomas “was credibly accused of sexual harassment by former colleague <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/anita-hill-clarence-thomas-joe-biden.html">Anita Hill</a> during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991,” and The Washington Post sniping that Thomas was “the black justice whose rulings often resemble the thinking of white conservatives.”
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This is the most disgusting thing I can remember seeing in a newspaper in sometime. 
The Washington Post and <a href="https://twitter.com/MariannaReports?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MariannaReports</a> should apologize. 
Unbelievable<a href="https://t.co/WTL8SPe9nG">https://t.co/WTL8SPe9nG</a> <a href="https://t.co/SMke8Iu8vk">pic.twitter.com/SMke8Iu8vk</a>
&mdash; Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) <a href="https://twitter.com/ComfortablySmug/status/1494328827455045634?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 17, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Justice Thomas to the media:
&quot;I will absolutely leave the Court when I do my job as poorly as you do yours.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/2V7h9vtoLt">pic.twitter.com/2V7h9vtoLt</a>
&mdash; Townhall.com (@townhallcom) <a href="https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1526215424874008576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 16, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Danforth was Thomas’ great champion during the confirmation hearings. He <a href="https://www.emkinstitute.org/resources/john-danforth-oral-history">recalled</a> years later that Thomas was “terribly upset” about the vicious attacks leveled at him and told Danforth, “You know what this is, Jack? This is a lynching. This is a high-tech lynching.”
Danforth replied, “Well, Clarence, if you feel that way about it, when you go up to the committee, you say that.”
He added, “The Thomas thing was sui generis and it was just a totally out of the blue, grotesque thing. It was really bad. And to know somebody as well as I know Clarence, and know what it did to him and to see it.”

Justice Thomas Attends Forum On His 30 Year Supreme Court Legacy

Clarence Thomas Triggers Laughs With One Sentence Targeting The Media

Clarence Thomas Tells Audience About Line He Uses Targeting Media

Clarence Thomas

Media

New York Times

Washington Post

On Tuesday, Andrew Sullivan <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/sullydish/status/1283100440683479043">announced</a> his resignation from New York Magazine.
“This will be my last week at New York Magazine,” Sullivan <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/sullydish/status/1283100440683479043">tweeted</a>. “I’m sad because the editors I worked with there are among the finest in the country, and I am immensely grateful to them for vastly improving my work. I’m also proud of the essays and columns I wrote at NYM – some of which will be published in a collection of my writing scheduled for next year.”
Sullivan noted in subsequent tweets that he has “no beef” with his “colleagues, many of whom I admire and are friends,” and that “the underlying reasons for the split are pretty self-evident, and I’ll be discussing the broader questions involved in my last column this Friday.”
On Friday, Sullivan’s <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-see-you-next-friday.html">column</a> went live.
“The good news is that my last column in this space is not about ‘cancel culture.’ Well, almost,” Sullivan writes before noting that NYMag has “every right to hire and fire anyone it wants when it comes to the content of what it wants to publish.”
He continues, praising some of the “wonderful” people with whom he’s interacted at the publication. That said, Sullivan offers the reason he believes he was no longer a fit at NYMag:
<blockquote>A critical mass of the staff and management at New York Magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me, and, in a time of ever tightening budgets, I’m a luxury item they don’t want to afford. And that’s entirely their prerogative. They seem to believe, and this is increasingly the orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to <a href="https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-theory/">critical theory</a> in questions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity is actively, physically harming co-workers merely by existing in the same virtual space. Actually <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/andrew-sullivan-you-say-you-want-a-revolution.html">attacking</a>, and even <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/02/we-all-live-on-campus-now.html">mocking</a>, critical theory’s ideas and methods, as I have done <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/03/is-intersectionality-a-religion.html">continually</a> in <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/andrew-sullivan-is-there-still-room-for-debate.html">this space</a>, is therefore out of sync with the values of Vox Media. That, to the best of my understanding, is why I’m out of here.</blockquote>
Sullivan continues, seemingly comparing the dearth of ideological diversity in the mainstream news media to that of academia. He also notes that his brand of conservatism includes many positions with which mainstream conservatives would disagree – including the legalization of drugs, and support for same-sex marriage, among other things.
Sullivan even states that he “opposes” Trump and plans to cast his vote for Joe Biden on November 3.
“It seems to me that if this conservatism is so foul that many of my peers are embarrassed to be working at the same magazine, then I have no idea what version of conservatism could ever be tolerated,” writes Sullivan.
He adds that he’s okay with that severance as he supports freedom of association, adding that the internet has largely swept away the old “gatekeepers” that once stood in the way of broad ideological dissent in the media.
After telling readers about his new venture, Sullivan sounds the alarm, writing that it’s up to the “non-mainstream” press to “pick up the slack” if the mainstream media rejects ideological diversity, places agenda above objective reporting, and views journalists as one-dimensional characters defined by certain immutable characteristics.
“Instead of merely diagnosing the problem of illiberalism, I want to try to be part of the solution,” Sullivan states.
Andrew Sullivan’s resignation comes on the heels of the resignation of another prominent journalist.
On Monday, New York Times opinion writer and editor Bari Weiss resigned, offering a lengthy <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gadfly-bari-weiss-quits-new-york-times-savages-them-if-you-speak-your-mind-youll-be-hung-out-to-dry">explanation as to why</a> on her personal website.
Weiss slammed the Times as a paper beholden to the social media mob:
<blockquote>Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.</blockquote>
Weiss also alleges that she was bullied and maligned by her colleagues at the paper for her “wrongthink,” a seeming nod to the Thought Police in George Orwell’s “1984.”
“Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times,” she adds.
The resignations by both Sullivan and Weiss come amid escalating discussion pertaining to freedom of expression. On July 7, Harper’s Magazine published an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jk-rowling-over-100-others-sign-letter-condemning-cancel-culture-one-caves-apologizes-rowling-responds">open letter</a> condemning cancel culture.
The letter, which was signed by more than 150 public figures, including Malcolm Gladwell, J.K. Rowling, Kmele Foster, Jonathan Haidt, Steven Pinker, and many others, received significant backlash. Following the outcry, “two of the dozens upon dozens of academics, writers, and artists who originally signed the letter &#8230; distanced themselves from it, and one has apologized,” The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jk-rowling-over-100-others-sign-letter-condemning-cancel-culture-one-caves-apologizes-rowling-responds">reported</a>.
After The New York Times’ Jennifer Finney Boylan apologized for signing the letter, saying she wasn’t aware of “who else had signed” it, author J.K. Rowling called her out, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jk-rowling-over-100-others-sign-letter-condemning-cancel-culture-one-caves-apologizes-rowling-responds">tweeting</a>: “You’re still following me, Jennifer. Be sure to publicly repent of your association with Goody Rowling before unfollowing and volunteer to operate the ducking stool next time, as penance.”
Rowling has been the target of an ongoing cancel campaign after <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rowling-pens-essay-defending-herself-against-trans-blowback-i-refuse-to-bow-down">refusing to back down</a> from her beliefs surrounding certain transgender issues, and the ways in which the transgender movement has impacted women.
Rowling’s position has caused several actors from the “Harry Potter” film franchises to publicly distance themselves from Rowling.
Eddie Redmayne, who plays Newt Scamander in the “Fantastic Beasts” film series, told <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daniel-radcliffe-eddie-redmayne-denounce-j-k-rowlings-transgender-stance">Variety</a>: “As someone who has worked with both J.K. Rowling and members of the trans community, I wanted to make it absolutely clear where I stand. I disagree with Jo’s comments.”
Daniel Radcliffe made similar remarks, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daniel-radcliffe-eddie-redmayne-denounce-j-k-rowlings-transgender-stance">stating in part</a>: “To all the people who now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you.”
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rowling-pens-essay-defending-herself-against-trans-blowback-i-refuse-to-bow-down">Rowling Pens Essay Defending Herself Against ‘Trans’ Blowback: ‘I Refuse To Bow Down’</a>
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/publishing-staff-threatens-to-strike-if-company-keeps-j-k-rowlings-book">Publishing Staff Threatens To Strike If Company Keeps J.K. Rowling’s Book</a>

Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan Leaves NYMag, Criticizes A Certain ‘Orthodoxy In Mainstream Media’

Cancel Culture

Media Bias

On Tuesday, Andrew Sullivan, a former editor of the New Republic and currently a writer-at-large for New York Magazine, announced he will leave the magazine at the end of this week.
Sullivan issued a <a href="https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1283100444865290240">Twitter thread</a> in which he wrote:
<blockquote>This will be my last week at New York Magazine. I’m sad because the editors I worked with there are among the finest in the country, and I am immensely grateful to them for vastly improving my work. I’m also proud of the essays and columns I wrote at NYM &#8211; some of which will be published in a collection of my writing scheduled for next year. The underlying reasons for the split are pretty self-evident, and I’ll be discussing the broader questions involved in my last column this Friday. I&#8217;ve been preparing for this eventuality, and the column will continue elsewhere. See you on Friday, when I&#8217;ll detail some exciting news.</blockquote>
On Tuesday, noting Bari Weiss’ <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gadfly-bari-weiss-quits-new-york-times-savages-them-if-you-speak-your-mind-youll-be-hung-out-to-dry">blistering resignation letter</a> to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger in which she delineated the hostile environment she had to endure at the Times, Sullivan tweeted, “The mob bullied and harassed a young woman for thoughtcrimes. And her editors stood by and watched.”
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The mob bullied and harassed a young woman for thoughtcrimes. And her editors stood by and watched. <a href="https://t.co/P4cNBvpgI4">https://t.co/P4cNBvpgI4</a>
&mdash; Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) <a href="https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1283091489904459776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2020</a></blockquote>
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In mid-June, Sullivan published a <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/andrew-sullivan-is-there-still-room-for-debate.html">column</a> in which he disputed the current narrative that believes, as Sullivan wrote, “America is systemically racist, and a white-supremacist project from the start.” Sullivan, who was born in the United Kingdom but later became an American citizen, countered, “There is truth in it, truth that it’s incumbent on us to understand more deeply and empathize with more thoroughly. But there is also an awful amount of truth it ignores or elides or simply denies. It sees America as in its essence not about freedom but oppression. It argues, in fact, that all the ideals about individual liberty, religious freedom, limited government, and the equality of all human beings were always a falsehood to cover for and justify and entrench the enslavement of human beings under the fiction of race.”
Sullivan continued, “This view of the world certainly has ‘moral clarity.’ What it lacks is moral complexity. No country can be so reduced to one single prism and damned because of it. American society has far more complexity and history has far more contingency than can be jammed into this rubric … a country that actively seeks immigrants who are now 82 percent nonwhite is not primarily defined by white supremacy… Nor is a country where nonwhite immigrants are fast <a href="https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2019/10/income-and-wealth-in-the-united-states-an-overview-of-data">catching up</a> with whites in income and where some minority groups<a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2018/demo/p60-263/figure1.pdf"> now outearn</a> whites.”
He concluded:
<blockquote>“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values,” President Kennedy once said. “For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” Let’s keep that market open. Let’s not be intimidated by those who want it closed.</blockquote>
New York Magazine editor-in-chief David Haskell responded to Sullivan’s news by claiming he and Sullivan agreed that Sullivan was not “the right match” for the magazine. Haskell stated, “I will continue to push us to publish work that challenges the liberal assumptions of much of our readership. But publishing conservative commentary, or critiques of liberalism and the left, is difficult to get right, and thoughtful, well-meaning people can come to different conclusions about it …”
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NY Mag Editor-In-Chief David Haskell emails staff about <a href="https://twitter.com/sullydish?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sullydish</a>&#39;s departure. <a href="https://t.co/gOBjT8LShM">pic.twitter.com/gOBjT8LShM</a>
&mdash; Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) <a href="https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1283116719591038978?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Andrew Sullivan, Former Editor Of The New Republic

Andrew Sullivan Announces He’s Quitting New York Magazine

Bari Weiss

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced he was running for president on May 16. He must have done some focus-group testing to show that he had a chance at the Democratic nomination, but people in his own state &#8212; in the city where he is mayor, even &#8212; don&#8217;t seem to think he would be a good president.
Shortly after he announced, MSNBC posted <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/stephanie-ruhle/watch/watch-new-yorkers-rip-mayor-de-blasio-after-2020-announcement-59732037605">a video</a> of New York City residents bashing their mayor. Now comes New York Magazine&#8217;s Eve Peyser, who tried to find someone, anyone, <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/i-tried-to-find-a-new-yorker-who-wants-president-de-blasio.html">who supported him for president</a>.
Peyser started by casting a wide net. She posted on Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter asking for anyone who supported de Blasio for president. As she wrote, this was an &#8220;admittedly lazy journalistic practice,&#8221; but had yielded results in the past, including someone who tattooed Chelsea Clinton&#8217;s face on his body (yes, Chelsea).
Peyser wrote that she received just one response, from a man in Prospect Heights who said he was &#8220;neither for nor against Mayor de Blasio&#8217;s run.&#8221;
Peyser then asked her own mother, a diehard liberal who had voted for de Blasio for mayor. This woman no longer supported the mayor after seeing him speak each week on WNYC&#8217;s &#8220;The Brian Lehrer Show.&#8221;
&#8220;Whenever he&#8217;s challenged, he responds with indignation and an underlying hostility that seems designed to intimidate the person asking him,&#8221; Peyser&#8217;s mother told her. &#8220;He&#8217;s a bully.&#8221;
None of her mother&#8217;s friends supported the mayor for president either.
Peyser decided to see if the people at the gym where de Blasio works out would support him. Again, she came up empty. One man said de Blasio was &#8220;the worst mayor we&#8217;ve ever had.&#8221; A few others said they like him as a mayor and didn&#8217;t want him to give up his term to be president &#8212; or didn&#8217;t think he&#8217;d be a good president.
Peyser&#8217;s last-ditch effort was to contact the mayor&#8217;s presidential campaign and ask for names of supporters. The campaign provided two (obviously, that doesn&#8217;t mean those are the only two people the campaign knows who support de Blasio).
Farah Despeignes, one of the two names provided by the campaign, told Peyser she supported de Blasio because of his willingness to discuss &#8220;taboo&#8221; subjects, such as his &#8220;commitment to challenge the educational system.&#8221;
The other name provided was Alain Berrouet, who works for the NYC Department of Education and was featured in the mayor&#8217;s campaign video. He supported the mayor because de Blasio took the time to talk to him about his policies after a campaign event. Despeignes, like Berrouet, also said she supported de Blasio because he took the time to talk to her and was willing to listen.
As Peyser concluded, &#8220;Two down, Mr. Mayor. Only tens of millions more to go. You have a lot of chatting-up to do.&#8221;
De Blasio is currently polling at <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html">an average 0.5%</a>, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average. A <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2622">Quinnipiac University poll</a> released on May 21 showed de Blasio has the worst favorability rating of any of the other Democratic candidates, with just 8% seeing him favorably and 45% saying they had an unfavorable view of him.

New York Magazine Struggles To Find A Single New Yorker Who Wants De Blasio To Be President

Bill de Blasio

In his interview with New York Magazine, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio offered some insight into his views and his tenure as mayor of the largest city in the United States. The interview, which seemed like an attempt to mitigate the mounting concerns about de Blasio&#8217;s <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/16525/two-thirds-bundlers-new-york-mayor-bill-de-blasio-elliott-hamilton">corruption</a> and his constant <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/18356/nyc-mayor-de-blasio-flies-germany-join-anti-joseph-curl">virtue-signaling</a>, shed some light on one of his biggest pet peeves: private property.
When asked by Chris Smith about his fight to reduce income inequality and where it was hard to make progress, he said the following:
<blockquote>
What&#8217;s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. I think there&#8217;s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that&#8217;s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development.
</blockquote>
In other words, he slammed the concept of private property in order to pursue the Communistic dream of government planning &#8220;according to everyone&#8217;s needs.&#8221; This quote is attributable to Karl Marx himself, who popularized it in his 1875 <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm">essay</a> &#8220;Critique of the Gotha Program.&#8221; Marx&#8217;s entire quote is as follows:
<blockquote>
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life&#8217;s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly&#8212;only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
</blockquote>
Notice some similarities?
Marx&#8217;s umbrage with private property is centered around the belief that it opens the door to exploitation and taking away various opportunities from others who cannot afford to acquire it. The solution, therefore, is to abolish private property and to have the government allot parcels of property according to the abilities and needs of the collective. This deliberately contrasts the Lockean view of private property as being a hallmark of freedom. Locke explores this in <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr05.htm">Chapter V</a> of &#8220;The Second Treatise of Government&#8221;:
<blockquote>
God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life, and convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. And tho&#8217; all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of nature; and no body has originally a private dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state: yet being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular man. The fruit, or venison, which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so his, i.e. a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his life.
Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.
</blockquote>
As Locke eloquently points out, private property is the extension of the individual self. By removing the ability for one to own their own property, it takes away their freedom. This concept of freedom is one of the foundations of the <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fifth_amendment">Fifth Amendment</a>&#8216;s Takings Clause as well as its Due Process Clause:
<blockquote>
&#8230; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
</blockquote>
Bill de Blasio&#8217;s belief that income inequality cannot be achieved in part due to the existence of private property is a direct assault on one of the fundamental freedoms that the United States of America was founded upon. The Constitution laid out a plan for a government limited in scope whose structure intended to protect the individual liberty to own private property.
Rather than championing policies that create better incentives to increase private property ownership, the Democratic Party and de Blasio, specifically, seem more adamant on wanting to limit the ability for developers and individuals to own private property when it does not suit their political agendas.
In summation, de Blasio appears to have turned full Communist and exposed his true colors.
It is important to note that issues surrounding private property are not solely propagated by the Left. President Trump and his camp have occasionally skewered the concept. During the primaries, Trump expressed a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/08/19/donald-trumps-abuse-of-eminent-domain/?utm_term=.3affb3c39bfe">problematic view</a> of eminent domain, and one of the main issues with his notorious &#8220;border wall&#8221; is whether he would need to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/05/potential-pitfalls-of-building-trumps-great-wall-of-eminent-domain/?utm_term=.f742cf2aa550">impose eminent domain</a> in order to make it a reality.
When push comes to shove, it is incumbent on conservatives to call a spade a spade on issues of private property and to proclaim that in the presence of complicated policy choices, it remains prudent to remain on the side of freedom.
Follow Elliott on <a href="https://twitter.com/ElliottRHams">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ElliottRHams/">Facebook</a>.

NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio Goes Full Communist, Chastises Private Property

Communism

Marxism

New York City

Every night, between May 23 and June 18, The Public Theater proudly presents a Shakespeare In the Park production of Julius Caesar, which depicts the ghoulish and bloody assassination of President Donald J. Trump. Yes, that is correct, in a world where an obscure rodeo clown is personally and professionally destroyed for wearing <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/17021/cnn-got-rodeo-clown-fired-cnn-still-employs-kathy-john-nolte">an Obama mask</a>, every night in New York&#8217;s Central Park, this happens &#8230;

<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe loading="lazy" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-qfzqBr1qh0" width="560"></iframe></div>

And it happens in large part thanks to corporate sponsorship.
No joke, some of America&#8217;s largest corporations fund the nightly assassination of the American president. In a couple of instances, I should use the past tense &#8220;funded,&#8221; because in apparent disgust over having no idea that this production of Julius Caesar was really a production of Death Wish for Sore Loser Progressives, Bank of America and Delta Airlines have finally announced the end of their sponsorship:

<div class="image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" alt height="507" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/delta_tweets.jpg" width="594" /></div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
We are withdrawing our funding <a href="https://t.co/MlaONF82FN">pic.twitter.com/MlaONF82FN</a>
&#8212; Bank of America News (@BofA_News) <a href="https://twitter.com/BofA_News/status/874079447909052417">June 12, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
And yet, days and days and days after the news publicly broke about the objectively despicable contents of this production, a whole lot of corporate sponsors are standing firm, this includes Time-Warner (parent company of CNN), New York Magazine, and, well, <a href="https://www.publictheater.org/About/Sponsors/">look for yourself</a>:
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" alt height="478" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/trump_assassination_sponsors.jpg" width="440" /></div>
Wasn&#8217;t it just yesterday that the entire institution of the media used usual-usual crosshairs on a political map to blame former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for a massacre in Arizona? And need I add that the actual murderer never even saw Palin&#8217;s map?
And now two media-related companies &#8212; CNN-owner Time-Warner and New York Magazine &#8212; are sponsoring, SPONSORING the staging of the brutal and bloody assassination of President Trump.
The <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/13245/assassination-dogwhistles-media-ramps-dangerous-john-nolte">media wants Trump dead</a>, y&#8217;all (<a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/12606/no-joke-cnn-regularly-encourages-assassination-john-nolte">especially CNN</a>); something <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/14170/crosshairs-cnn-points-what-looks-sniper-scope-john-nolte">I&#8217;ve been</a> warning you about <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/14568/wake-cnns-increased-hate-coverage-trump-two-john-nolte">for months</a>.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/NolteNC">@NolteNC</a>. Follow his Facebook Page <a href="https://www.facebook.com/JohnNolteNC/?skip_nax_wizard=true">here</a>.

delta_tweets

Delta Airlines, Bank of America End Sponsorship Of Trump Assassination Play — Many Companies Stand Firm

Delta Airlines

Donald Trump

CNN <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/08/22/fareed_zakaria_plagiarism_copying_and_pasting_in_the_post_american_world.html">serial plagiarist Fareed Zakaria</a> went to see a production of Julius Cesar in New York&#8217;s Central Park, a play that we now know depicts the gruesome assassination of President Trump. Nothing wrong with that. Zakaria might not have known what he was in for. But after it was over, Zakaria so enjoyed the bloody spectacle, was so enthused, he declared the play a &#8220;masterpiece&#8221; and publicly recommended it to others.
&#8220;If you&#8217;re in NYC, go see Julius Caesar, free in Central Park,&#8221; Zakaria tweeted 13 days ago, &#8220;brilliantly interpreted for Trump era. A masterpiece[.]&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
If you&#8217;re in NYC, go see Julius Caesar, free in Central Park, brilliantly interpreted for Trump era. A masterpiece: <a href="https://t.co/RiJJnW3g8V">https://t.co/RiJJnW3g8V</a>
&#8212; Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) <a href="https://twitter.com/FareedZakaria/status/869951908689137664">May 31, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
Last week The Daily Wire <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/17252/proud-sponsor-president-trumps-nightly-john-nolte">broke the news</a> that Zakaria&#8217;s employer, Time-Warner, parent company of CNN, is one of the sponsors of Trump&#8217;s nightly assassination.
And if you are wondering what exactly it is that a prestigious CNN star and anchor is praising as a &#8220;masterpiece&#8221; and is eager for others to see, here is video &#8212; and yes, it is as bad as you thought:

<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe loading="lazy" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-qfzqBr1qh0" width="560"></iframe></div>

Already <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/17416/delta-airlines-bank-america-end-sponsorship-trump-john-nolte">two high-profile sponsors have dumped their sponsorship of this assassination porn</a>, Delta Airlines and Bank of America. As of this writing, though, most (including American Express and New York Magazine ) continue <a href="https://www.publictheater.org/About/Sponsors/">to stand by the idea</a> that it is acceptable to stab the American president to death every night on stage.
And naturally, so does Time-Warner, owner of a CNN that has spent the last year <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/13245/assassination-dogwhistles-media-ramps-dangerous-john-nolte">not being very subtle</a> in <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/12606/no-joke-cnn-regularly-encourages-assassination-john-nolte">expressing its desire</a> to see <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/14170/crosshairs-cnn-points-what-looks-sniper-scope-john-nolte">Trump assassinated</a>.
CNN is a left-wing hate machine, and over the past two weeks some of those chickens finally came home to roost. After two years in second place in the ratings, not only did CNN fall into last place behind MSNBC in May, but only after sponsors threatened to leave <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/17021/cnn-got-rodeo-clown-fired-cnn-still-employs-kathy-john-nolte">did CNN find it necessary to fire an employee who staged Trump&#8217;s decapitation</a>. Just a few days later, CNN was finally pressured into cutting ties with <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/17250/rodeo-clown-values-cnn-anchors-want-people-raped-john-nolte">Reza Aslan</a> for smearing Trump as a &#8220;piece of sh*t.&#8221;
Worse still, high-profile CNN stars Jake Tapper and Gloria Borger (along with three other fake journalists) were forced to <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/17301/cnn-forced-issue-humiliating-correction-after-john-nolte">issue a humiliating correction</a> on a Huge Anti-Trump Story that turned out to be as absolutely wrong as a story can be.
And now we find out that CNN&#8217;s parent company is not only sponsoring President Trump&#8217;s nightly assassination, but that Fareed Zakaria, an elder statesman at the network, hails and recommends this assassination porn as a &#8220;masterpiece.&#8221;
I would just like to close by reminding everyone that CNN is one of the primary news outlets responsible for getting a rodeo clown fired &#8230; because the rodeo clown wore <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/17021/cnn-got-rodeo-clown-fired-cnn-still-employs-kathy-john-nolte">an Obama mask.</a>

Follow John Nolte on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/NolteNC">@NolteNC</a>. Follow his Facebook Page <a href="https://www.facebook.com/JohnNolteNC/?skip_nax_wizard=true">here</a>.

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria Hails Trump Assassination Play As ‘Masterpiece.’ (His Employer Sponsors It)

Fareed Zakaria

It&#8217;s not as though abortion champions on the leftist in are in a frenzied delirium over Donald Trump&#8217;s election or anything like that; it&#8217;s simply that they think with the advent of Trump women will be forced to abort their babies via the time-honored practice of using coat hangers.
Case in point: <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/01/reproductive-rights-abortion-access-in-america.html">New York Magazine</a>, which wept last week that Trump &#8220;has since surrounded himself with&#8212;and appointed to power &#8212; ferocious opponents of both abortion rights and contraceptive access.&#8221;
Those opponents included: Mike Pence, <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/what-will-womens-health-care-look-like-under-trump.html">who passed</a> some of the nation&#8217;s most restrictive abortion laws as governor of Indiana and, in Congress, co-sponsored so-called personhood legislation that defines life as beginning at conception and would thus make several forms of birth control illegal. Tom Price, Trump&#8217;s nominee to lead Department of Health and Human Services, who &#8220;has supported a nationwide ban on abortion after 20 weeks and is a proponent of so-called conscience clauses that would permit doctors and insurance companies to refuse to provide health-care services they don&#8217;t personally believe in.&#8221; Jeff Sessions, AG nominee, who &#8220;voted to ban Health and Human Services grants to organizations that perform abortions and against a bill to reduce teen pregnancy through sex education and contraceptive access.&#8221;
NY Mag pointed out that Trump has suggested that women should be punished for having illegal abortions and stated that some abortion providers &#8220;rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.&#8221;
Worse yet, according to the distraught article, Trump <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/09/donald-trumps-new-anti-abortion-letter-should-terrify-you.html">himself wrote a letter</a> promising to sign a nationwide ban on abortions after 20 weeks, defund Planned Parenthood, and nominate &#8220;pro-life justices&#8221; to the Supreme Court.
After a series of anecdotes delineating the abortion procedures of days past and repeated attempts to argue for keeping abortion just the way it is, the article burrows down into abortion hell: women will be prosecuted for taking matters into their own (bloody) hands:
<blockquote>
If all other options fail, some women will take matters into their own hands. &#8220;I think you&#8217;re going to see more DIY abortions,&#8221; says Peg Johnston, a manager of an abortion practice in upstate New York. &#8220;And whether they&#8217;re punished or not is going to be an interesting question.&#8221;
</blockquote>
The article cites three women who were charged with a crime for aborting their babies; the article is horrified by the fact that in three states &#8220;doctors are required to provide a verbal, detailed description of fetal anatomy to women seeking abortion.&#8221;
Finally, the author reaches her climax: women will be forced to kill their babies with coat hangers:
<blockquote>
The first march I ever attended in Washington was a pro-choice rally in 1989 that drew half a million people. I was 13 years old, and I didn&#8217;t understand why the protesters wore pins and carried signs with pictures of coat hangers on them. That&#8217;s when I was told, by women for whom illegal abortion was just 16 years in their past, about how women, desperate to end pregnancies in days when it was not legal, untwisted coat hangers, inserted them into their vaginas, into their cervixes, cutting themselves, causing bleeding, infections, and often infertility.
Fifteen years later, at the <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?181451-1/march-womens-lives">2004 March for Women&#8217;s Lives</a>, I watched Whoopi Goldberg take the stage, gripping a coat hanger and yelling accusatorily: &#8220;You understand me, women under 30? This is what we used!&#8221; At the time I thought this was unfair: The whole point was that young women shouldn&#8217;t have to know about coat hangers. The not-knowingwas its own victory. But in 2015, Anna Yocca tried to self-abort by using a coat hanger in Tennessee. Our past is reaching into the present.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
&#8220;Even if people don&#8217;t like abortion, they like the things that it brings them.&#8221;
Katha Pollitt
</blockquote>
Then the author makes inadvertently clear exactly how depraved abortion-rights activists are, quoting Peg Johnston, an abortion-clinic administrator in upstate New York: &#8220;Thirty percent of all women are going to have an abortion in their lifetime, most of them already mothers. This is a normal reproductive experience.&#8221; Echoing that is Katha Pollitt, the author of 2014&#8217;s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pro-Reclaiming-Abortion-Katha-Pollitt/dp/1250072662/">Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights</a>:
<blockquote>
Abortion and birth control are part of the fabric of American life. They&#8217;re the reason you can have later marriage, and why women can have a sex life and also go to college and graduate school and have professions; they&#8217;re how there can be the small families that most people want and most people can afford. It&#8217;s why marriage is better! You don&#8217;t have to marry some guy who got you pregnant. That&#8217;s all part of a package that people like . . . Even if people don&#8217;t like abortion, they like the things that it brings them.
</blockquote>
The babies certainly like it a lot.

Hysterical Leftists Afraid Trump Will Make Hanger Abortions Great Again

Abortion

Cool! Feminists have found a new way to make women look superficial and weak. 
According to a <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/12/women-make-dramatic-beauty-moves-after-trumps-victory.html">report</a> from New York Magazine, females in the D.C. area have resorted to chopping off their hair and reaching for black hair dye to cope with the new reality of a Donald Trump presidency. Some feminists say their new &#8216;dos show their &#8220;autonomy&#8221; in uncertain times; while others hilariously think their rushed hair change is an act of defiance, &#8220;send[ing] a message to the Trump presidency.&#8221;
Boy, the president-elect sure is going to lose sleep over a few D.C. women rocking sassy bobs. 
Hillary Clinton backer Julianna Evans, 45, told the mag that she &#8220;cried for three days&#8221; after Trump won. &#8220;I felt like it was the worst thing, politically, that ever happened in my lifetime. It was catastrophic,&#8221; she said.
But then, this brave soul &#8220;put on her big-girl panties and dragged herself to the drugstore.&#8221;
&#8220;Literally without thinking, I grabbed the Natural Black box by Garnier,&#8221; explained Evens. &#8220;I was like, f** it! The election deadened my soul. I think I wanted to do something defiant to feel stronger.&#8221;
Brave. Strong. Beautiful. Etc. 
One client told her stylist: &#8220;Think of Melania Trump and go in the opposite direction.&#8221; She added, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to be that person people see as sexual, I want to be seen as strong.&#8221;
Dr. Kristian Henderson, a George Washington University teaching instructor, was &#8220;battling with her hair for years, but after the election, she finally took off her weave and cut it all off.&#8221;
&#8220;The election results felt like an attack on minorities, women, and marginalized people in general. Having long hair was my attempt to fit into society, so after the election, I felt a need to exert my &#8216;uniqueness&#8217; and not tie my femininity to the length of my hair,&#8221; she said.
A self-described &#8220;minority in every way possible,&#8221; Vegan chef Mya Zeronis, explained that she &#8220;clipper-cut&#8221; her hair in November &#8220;to send a message to the Trump presidency.&#8221;
That will show &#8217;em! 
Evans explained her and her fellow feminists&#8217; reactions to the magazine: 
&#8220;You have to live here to understand that we are immersed in politics every day,&#8221; she said. &#8220;For many of us, with this election, it&#8217;s like your boyfriend dumped you in a really shocking way with no explanation and then moved in next door.&#8221;
Apparently Evans believes that her new hairstyle will help combat this perceived, yet totally nonexistent, comeback of sexism and misogyny: &#8220;Now, I feel like my hair says you can&#8217;t bring me down. This misogyny will not persevere. The bumper sticker for me is, &#8216;I am woman, hear me roar.'&#8221;
Feminists are so inspiring.

LOL: Frail Feminists Chopping Hair to Cope with Trump Win

Feminism

On Wednesday, I wrote a piece for <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436312/donald-trump-barack-obama-tribalism-hobbesian-politics">National Review</a> in which I critiqued the newfound victorious tribalism of American politics. Here was my basic case:
<blockquote>
Obama, like it or not, leads a coalition of tribes. Trump, like it or not, leads a competing coalition of tribes. The Founders weep in their graves&#8230;.President Obama&#8217;s tribal politics have crippled America. Americans hoped that Obama &#8212; after campaigning on the notion that he would provide the capstone to America&#8217;s non-tribalism &#8212; would heal our wounds and move our country beyond racial politics. He, in his own persona, was to be a racial unifier. He represented the hope that America could reject tribalism in favor of American universalism. Instead, Obama has rejected checks and balances as a matter of principle, and has used tribalism to grow his own power. By cobbling together a coalition of racial and ethnic interest groups, Obama knew he could maximize the power of the government to act on their behalf&#8230;.Donald Trump is the counter-reaction. 
</blockquote>
On Thursday, Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine argued that I got Obama all wrong. Chait characterized my view of Obama as unfair, and what&#8217;s more, emblematic of &#8220;the very white racial paranoia that enabled Trump to conquer the Republican Party.&#8221;
Obama, Chait seems to argue, isn&#8217;t tribal. But he promptly concedes the point: Obama is indeed tribal, but according to Chait, his tribalism is justified. &#8220;It is true, of course, that Democrats do appeal to different members of their coalition on the basis of their interests,&#8221; writes Chait. &#8220;If you believe that racial discrimination against white people is as serious a problem in American life as discrimination against racial minorities, as Republicans overwhelmingly do, then you&#8217;re inclined to view any specific appeal to minorities as the odious dangling of special favors.&#8221;
But this misses the point. You don&#8217;t have to believe that discrimination against whites is as widespread as discrimination against minorities to believe that all discrimination is wrong, and that reactionary tribalism on the basis of race is wrong. Morality doesn&#8217;t distinguish between &#8220;bad racism&#8221; and &#8220;good racism.&#8221; Racism is bad.
But according to Chait, there is such a distinction. If your group is victimized, then racism is justified. Blacks, to take Chait&#8217;s example, are supposedly victimized by stand-your-ground laws (<a href="http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/11/stand-your-ground-racial-bias-study-used-media-definition-not-legal-definition/">an evidence-free contention</a>, given that most of the situations in which the media cites stand-your-ground are not in fact stand-your-ground cases, and given the fact that invocation of stand-your-ground is up to private parties&#8217; defense, not up to the state). This justifies politicians appealing to blacks as a racial group.
This misses the crucial point: disparate impact does not imply institutional racism. All laws have disparate impact. It is telling that Chait does not bother to cite the most often cited disparate impact racism argument used by President Obama and the left: the criminal justice system. Presumably he doesn&#8217;t because he understands that the criminal justice system targets criminals, not innocents on the basis of race. But Obama doesn&#8217;t care about such niceties: he routinely equates disparate impact with racism without evidence, forwarding tribalism.
Chait continues by stating that Republicans are more tribal because they&#8217;re disproportionately white, as though anti-white tribalism is impossible. Again, this confuses ideology with race &#8211; a constant problem for Chait, who seems to think that if you have a black guy and a Latino guy both voting for racial reasons, that&#8217;s somehow better than two white people who don&#8217;t. The only verifiable indicator of why people vote for a given candidate is their explanation of why they vote for a given candidate &#8211; and very few white Americans say they vote for their candidate because he&#8217;s white. There are far more minority Americans representing majority white districts than there are white Americans representing majority black districts. Does that mean that the white districts are still more racist, since they&#8217;re chock-full of whites?
Finally, Chait objects to my narrative about President Obama&#8217;s racial story:
<blockquote>
[T]he most bizarre element of Shapiro&#8217;s charge is his insistence that Obama &#8220;constantly suggests that America has an inborn, unfixable problem with racism.&#8221; If Obama truly does this &#8220;constantly,&#8221; Shapiro would be able to offer up many examples of him doing it, but he offers zero&#8230;But it&#8217;s a complete fantasy. Obama&#8217;s account of racism in the United States is just the opposite.
</blockquote>
That&#8217;s a supremely shallow gloss. Obama tells a double story, allowing his white liberal allies to thrill to his fairy tale of racial progress but his minority followers to hear the message that America can&#8217;t be cured of its racism without big government. Here&#8217;s a perfect example, from Obama&#8217;s interview with NPR in June:
<blockquote>
I always tell young people in particular: &#8216;Do not say that nothing&#8217;s changed when it comes to race in America &#8212; unless you&#8217;ve lived through being a black man in the 1950s, or &#8217;60s, or &#8217;70s. It is incontrovertible that race relations have improved significantly during my lifetime and yours, and that opportunities have opened up, and that attitudes have changed. That is a fact. What is also true is that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives &#8212; you know, that casts a long shadow. And that&#8217;s still part of our DNA that&#8217;s passed on. We&#8217;re not cured of it.
</blockquote>
Leftists like Chait read the first half of this statement, and think it&#8217;s Obama&#8217;s main message. Minorities read the second half. And the second half counts. There&#8217;s a reason that every major poll shows racial tensions rising dramatically during the Obama administration. Spouting vagaries about the arc of the moral universe fades into the wallpaper when you say that every black man in America has been mistaken for a valet because of American racism.
Yes, America is increasingly tribal. One of the reasons for that is the unwillingness of Chait and Co. to see tribalism on their own side. Tribalism is apparently fine so long as Democrats are the ones exploiting it.

New York Magazine’s Chait Says Democrats Aren’t Tribal. He’s Dead Wrong.

Barack Obama

Racism

The New York Times published a story on Nov. 25 in which they referred to someone as &#8220;Mx.&#8221; instead of &#8220;Mr.&#8221; or &#8220;Ms.&#8221;
The gender-neutral language is in the first two paragraphs of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/nyregion/at-bluestockings-a-manhattan-bookshop-and-activist-center-radical-is-sensible.html?_r=0">story:</a> (emphasis bolded)
<blockquote>
&#8220;Are we anarchist?&#8221; Senia Hardwick asked. &#8220;Technically, yes.&#8221; Mx. Hardwick, 27, who prefers not to be assigned a gender &#8212; and also insists on the gender-neutral Mx. in place of Ms. or Mr. &#8212; is a staff member at Bluestockings, a bookshop and activist center at 172 Allen Street on the Lower East Side. Mx. Hardwick was explaining that the ethos of Bluestockings, which is run by a collective of volunteers, is difficult to classify. But if you must: &#8220;Anarchist is O.K.&#8221;
Bluestockings opened in 1999 and then reopened in 2003 after a financial downturn caused the original owner to sell it. The collective is made up of volunteers who work three-hour shifts once a week; staff members who work more hours and have had more training; and a third tier of people who handle logistics. Ages range from midteens to late 30s. &#8220;Nobody gets paid,&#8221; Mx. Hardwick said. &#8220;All money made goes back into the store.&#8221;
</blockquote>
New York magazine <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/new-york-times-throws-mx-into-the-mix.html">pointed out</a> that this not the first time the Times has used the gender-neutral term. The first time they used it was in this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/nyregion/barnard-college-to-accept-transgender-women.html">story</a> from the summer: (emphasis bolded)
<blockquote>
Caleb LoSchiavo, a student leader who was born female but does not identify with either gender and prefers the honorific Mx., said there was less of a generational divide than some expected.
&#8220;I think the thing that was most surprising was how supportive and gung-ho a lot older alums were,&#8221; said Mx. LoSchiavo, who graduated this year (and would have been admitted under the new policy, having identified as a female at the time of application). &#8220;I thought: &#8216;Oh, they&#8217;re older. A different time, a different generation, raised with different ideas.&#8217; But a lot of them were like, &#8216;No, we need to do this.&#8217; &#8221;
Mx. LoSchiavo was one of those who felt that those who identify as men should not apply to Barnard, which remains a space for women in a way most of the world is not.
</blockquote>
The Times&#8216;s style typically involves using &#8220;Mr.&#8221; or &#8220;Ms.&#8221; to refer to people on second reference in the story. They still use these terms, as evidenced by this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/us/chicago-police-rahm-emanuel-laquan-mcdonald.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=first-column-region&amp;region=top-news&amp;WT.nav=top-news">story</a> from Tuesday. But as NY Mag points out, the Times is using &#8220;Mx.&#8221; when people request them to. &#8220;Mx.&#8221; is becoming trendy to the point where it is now in Dictionary.com and under consideration for the Oxford English Dictionary, according to NY Mag.
Breitbart&#8217;s John Nolte <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/12/01/anti-science-new-york-times-uses-gender-neutral-mx/">called</a> the Times&#8216;s use of the term &#8220;stupid.&#8221;
&#8220;The media is supposed to be fact-based. Reporting is supposed to be fact-based,&#8221; Nolte writes. &#8220;If I told a New York Times reporter that I &#8216;identified&#8217; as a Sesame Street Muppet named Hildegard, the reporter would not kow-tow and patronize to me and take me seriously. Truth matters.&#8221;
Later on his piece, Nolte says, &#8220;The road to fascism is paved with sensitivity. We don&#8217;t alter objective truth to spare the feelings of others. And if we are willing to alter it for gender, what is stopping people from identifying themselves however they like? Why can&#8217;t I identify as black or as an illegal alien or as gay or as a lovable Tribble named Witherspoon?&#8221;
It is indeed <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change">biologically impossible to change one&#8217;s gender.</a> But the Times has a <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/aaronbandler/2015/07/24/ny-times-puts-cruz-behind-carter-in-book-sales-even-though-cruz-sold-more-copies-n2029893">history</a> of not caring about facts, including:
<ul>
<li>Reporter Walter Duranty being an apologist for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin</li>
<li>Reporter/editorialist Herbert Matthews being a mouthpiece for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro</li>
<li>Burying the Holocaust in their coverage out of fear of being labeled as a &#8220;Jewish newspaper&#8221;</li>
</ul>
So using the gender-neutral term &#8220;Mx.&#8221; is right in line with their leftist ideology.

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