Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet certainly has a way with words — and he did not mince any when he delivered a blistering takedown of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-dei" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion</a> (DEI) standards that now limit him and others who share his profession.
Mamet made the comments during an <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-04-21/david-mamet-hollywood-diversity-dei-initiatives-festival-of-books" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interview</a> with Los Angeles Times deputy entertainment editor Matt Brennan and the outlet&#8217;s Festival of Books — hosted by University of Southern California — where he was promoting his memoir, &#8220;Everywhere an Oink, Oink.&#8221;
&#8220;DEI is garbage. It’s fascist totalitarianism,&#8221; Mamet told Brennan. His memoir, which was published last fall, tells his life story in a series of anecdotes — and follows his political metamorphosis as well. Mamet refers to himself as a &#8220;red diaper baby,&#8221; the child of two communists — and details how he made the journey from the far Left to his current position: supporting former President Donald Trump.
The award-winning playwright and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000519/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">screenwriter</a> — whose works include &#8220;Glengarry Glen Ross,&#8221; &#8220;The Untouchables,&#8221; and &#8220;Hannibal&#8221; — also took issue with the new &#8220;inclusion standards&#8221; that have been implemented by the Academy of Motion Pictures, noting that for films to even be considered for awards, they had to check certain boxes according to DEI standards.
&#8220;I can’t give you a stupid f***ing statue unless you have 7% of this, 8% of that,&#8221; Mamet complained. &#8220;It’s intrusive.&#8221;
He did not spare the feelings of those charged with implementing the new standards either, referring to them in his memoir as &#8220;diversity capos&#8221; and &#8220;diversity commissars.&#8221;
Mamet conceded that Hollywood had long been a place where discrimination had thrived — but argued that the executives dictating the new rules were better suited to &#8220;selling popcorn&#8221; than to creating a less restrictive environment.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1700760801843000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2PQrVSrJfhxNb4LcARqniG">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
&#8220;The [film industry] has little business improving everybody’s racial understanding as does the fire department,&#8221; he said.
Despite his long career in Hollywood, Mamet said that he&#8217;s been shuffled off the main stage in recent years — but he did not blame the shift in his political views for that. Instead, he said that his age was the likely culprit — and younger directors preferred to work with people closer to their own age.
&#8220;Nobody’s going to pay me a lot of money anymore. Nobody’s going to let me have a lot of fun,&#8221; he said.

2024 Los Angeles Times Festival Of Books

‘DEI Is Garbage’: Pulitzer Prize Winner Delivers Scathing Takedown Of Woke Hollywood

'DEI Is Garbage': Pulitzer Prize Winner Delivers Scathing Takedown Of Woke Hollywood

Celebrities

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Hollywood

Oscars

U.S.

Woke Culture

A group of children and adults staged an hours-long walkout at a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/utah" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Utah</a> middle school on Wednesday over an unusual issue — &#8220;furries.&#8221;
The protesters walked out of Mt. Nebo Middle School, which is about an hour south of Salt Lake City, claiming that students who dress as &#8220;furries&#8221; were being disruptive.
Furries are people who have an interest in animals with human qualities, <a href="https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-furry-sex" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to WebMD.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
What a time to be alive.
Yesterday, over 70 students walked out of Mt. Nebo School to protest the school for letting &quot;furries&quot; to bite, bark, &amp; lick them.
ABC even interviewed a &quot;member of the furry community&quot; (they/them) to give a comment about the situation: <a href="https://t.co/zIMjoy9U9b">pic.twitter.com/zIMjoy9U9b</a>
&mdash; End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) <a href="https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1780985197741121691?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 18, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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lifeisdriving <a href="https://t.co/hNxRLGJuPv">https://t.co/hNxRLGJuPv</a>
&mdash; Adam Bartholomew 🗨️ (@lifeisdriving) <a href="https://twitter.com/lifeisdriving/status/1780604433052901488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In video of the protests shared to social media, students accuse the alleged &#8220;furries&#8221; at Mt. Nebo of biting, scratching, barking at, spraying air freshener on, and pouncing on other students.
Some students who walked out complained that the furries wore masks every day, according to a video of the protest shared to social media.
&#8220;They think they&#8217;re so cool,&#8221; one girl <a href="https://twitter.com/lifeisdriving/status/1780612860957360200?t=bUQt3iyNbuqAGJ8PGor2LQ&amp;s=19" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
&#8220;We can&#8217;t talk or say anything to the furries or even look at them, but they can come look at us and say stuff to us and touch us,&#8221; said another girl.
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However, the school district&#8217;s public information officer, Seth Sorensen, <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2024/04/17/fact-check-nebo-school-district/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pushed</a> back on claims about students dressing up as animals. Students may wear headbands with ears, but they do not dress up in full-body animal costumes, he said.
“Today, we had some students and parents choose to exercise their right to assemble, and do a little protest for what they perceived was something that was happening in the school,” Sorensen <a href="https://www.abc4.com/news/wasatch-front/utah-student-furry-protest/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> ABC4. “It actually is not something that’s been occurring.”
“Interestingly enough, they really didn’t address us with anything they wanted changed,” he said. &#8220;We want every student to feel safe when they come to school, and we want students to get along. In fact, we want adults to get along.&#8221;
He <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2024/04/17/fact-check-nebo-school-district/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">added</a> that the protest may have been the result of a miscommunication via an email from the school about an altercation between two groups of students.
The school also said it has worked with some students whose dress and appearance might be disruptive to the school environment.
At Wednesday&#8217;s protest, children held signs reading “Compelled speech is not free speech,” as well as “I will not comply,” and “We just wanted to learn.”
A <a href="https://www.change.org/p/students-for-humans-at-school-not-animals-aka-furries" target="_blank" rel="noopener">petition</a> dubbed &#8220;Students for Humans at School, not animals aka furries&#8221; has garnered nearly 1,700 signatures so far. The petition asks the school to enforce a dress code, which the petitioners say prohibits students from presenting themselves in a way that disrupts the learning atmosphere or creates a welfare issue.
The online “furry” fandom often <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/desantis-law-forces-furry-convention-to-bar-children">has</a> sexual overtones, although some self-identified “furries” insist sex has nothing to do with their interest in the fandom.
A 2011 <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130308185939/https://sites.google.com/site/anthropomorphicresearch/past-results/international-online-furry-survey-2011" target="_blank" rel="noopener">survey</a> of “furries” found that about a quarter of “furries” said they felt less than 100% human.

Eurofurence 2016 Furries Gathering

‘Furry’ Claims Spark Walkout At Utah Middle School; School Pushes Back

'Furry' Claims Spark Walkout At Utah Middle School; School Pushes Back

Education

Gender

Public Schools

Transgender

Utah

Wokeness

If you don&#8217;t remember &#8220;Car Talk,&#8221; it was a radio show that lasted more than three decades on NPR, until it ended in 2012. The idea was that people called in with practical questions and dilemmas relating to their cars, and then the hosts dispensed advice — whether it was about car maintenance or repair or whatever. The show no longer exists, though, because the NPR that broadcast that show for 35 years no longer exists. The idea of a show that actually addresses people&#8217;s problems in real life, based on knowledge of how markets and automobiles or anything else actually works, has been unthinkable to the management of NPR for some time. Shows that cover the news from an objective factual perspective, to the extent possible, are also out of style. Instead, for the past decade, NPR has been controlled by activists who have devoted themselves to two primary pursuits. 
The first pursuit is blanketing the airwaves with identity politics at every conceivable opportunity. That&#8217;s why they run segments on diverse gender representation in <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/10/1104266396/lgbtq-communitys-battle-for-the-dinosaur-emoji-key-moments-from-jan-6-hearing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dinosaur emojis</a> for example. 
The second pursuit has been shutting down stories that are inconvenient for the politicians who are voting to spend your money to finance NPR&#8217;s operation. Infamously, NPR&#8217;s executive editor, Terence Samuel, claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop scandal wasn&#8217;t a &#8220;<a href="https://twitter.com/NPRpubliceditor/status/1319281101223940096" target="_blank" rel="noopener">real story</a>.&#8221; He said it was a &#8220;distraction.&#8221; And instead of firing Samuel, NPR promoted him. American University even invited Samuel to deliver a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFvV24PWfF4&amp;lc=Ugz7bLd9ECugl009UZF4AaABAg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lecture</a> entitled, &#8220;How Journalism Can Save Itself and Democracy.&#8221;
It&#8217;s harder to think of a better way to summarize what NPR has become. They aren&#8217;t simply bumbling propagandists. They&#8217;re also incredibly self-satisfied and narcissistic. They believe that they alone can save American democracy. And they think that, in order to do that, they need to control what kinds of information you can see. It&#8217;s not that they thought the Hunter Biden laptop story was &#8220;unvetted&#8221; or &#8220;Russian disinformation&#8221; or whatever the excuse was. They always knew it was factually accurate. But just because something is factually accurate, in NPR&#8217;s eyes, doesn&#8217;t make it true. According to NPR, truth is subjective; whatever&#8217;s most expedient politically for them is what&#8217;s true.
For a long time now, this position — which really amounts to nihilism — was unstated at NPR, at least publicly. But now it&#8217;s explicit, thanks to a new CEO and president by the name of Katherine Maher who recently took over at NPR. Maher very clearly does not believe that the truth is objective. She also doesn&#8217;t believe it&#8217;s worth trying to find out what the truth may be. This is an extraordinary position for the chief executive of a publicly funded news organization to have, but it&#8217;s what Katherine Maher believes. 
This is a speech of hers that&#8217;s been making the rounds this week. It&#8217;s from back when she was running Wikimedia, which is mainly known for Wikipedia. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Truth" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WWEiwvNwsGM?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
This is what passes for good public speaking these days. But she speaks in a robotic, sing-songy voice that makes it sound like she’s a kindergarten teacher lecturing a bunch of 5-year-olds. She has the tone of someone who believes firmly in the superiority of her own intellect, even though what she’s saying is so abjectly stupid. 
She says truth is subjective, and that everyone in the room has his or her own &#8220;truth.&#8221; But here&#8217;s the problem. Truth exists because reality exists. Either something is a part of reality or it isn&#8217;t. To deny objective truth is to deny reality. And you can&#8217;t even deny reality without asserting a reality — the reality that there is no reality. So the relativistic view is not only false, but so false as to be incomprehensible if you think about it for more than two seconds.
Maher&#8217;s remarks are the same idiot relativism that you can hear from any freshman philosophy student, but she goes to great pains to make her take seem nuanced and innovative. She talks in circles and ends back at &#8220;there are many different truths.&#8221; She says this even after acknowledging that the truth exists. Again, those are two contradictory ideas, but that doesn&#8217;t bother Maher for a second. Like most of our overeducated elite class, she&#8217;s incapable of speaking without a parade of cliches while making tedious and absurd ideas sound far more complex than they really are. 
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1350-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
Also according to Maher, we have &#8220;glorious chronicles to the human experience in many different cultures&#8221; because we have &#8220;many different truths.&#8221; But that&#8217;s not what these &#8220;glorious chronicles&#8221; show us. Instead, they show us that the truth is objective and eternal. Different cultures and people across time have had different ways of perceiving the truth — talking about it, accessing it, embracing it, or rejecting it, yes. But the truth remains the same. That is what makes the study of history, and different cultures through history, so fascinating. It is precisely because all of these different people across time and space lived in the same reality, and yet had wildly different ways of existing in it, and responding to it. 
Katherine Maher doesn&#8217;t seem to understand this, or at least she pretends not to. She repeats her theory of truth at every possible opportunity. Here&#8217;s some more footage from a conference two years ago. Maher begins by explaining that Galileo was prosecuted for saying that the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun, which is a basically accurate if wildly oversimplified retelling of that historical episode — although it doesn&#8217;t prove what Maher seems to think it does. Then she makes an incredible statement. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Truth is Changing" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dP5g369_nvs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&#8220;The truth, by definition, is malleable,&#8221; says Maher. Really? By whose definition exactly? You can make the case that postmodernists thinkers and their precursors — like Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Rousseau — might agree with that statement. But you won&#8217;t hear many traditional thinkers (prior to, say, Heidegger) saying that the truth is &#8220;malleable.&#8221; So why should we adopt the postmodern belief and not the traditional one? There has to be some reason to side with one school of thought and not another.
In any event, if truth is merely &#8220;malleable&#8221; — if there&#8217;s no knowable, essential structure to it — then definitions themselves are just language games. There&#8217;s no significance to any of it. It&#8217;s just a power struggle. When you get down to it, that&#8217;s really what Maher is saying. She&#8217;s asserting that &#8220;the truth&#8221; is &#8220;malleable&#8221; as an act of political will because she doesn&#8217;t believe in any objectively true definitions. She keeps saying, over and over again, the words &#8220;the truth,&#8221; only to make it clear that she has no idea what that is.
And from that very shaky foundation, Maher starts to derive some very shaky corollaries. At one point, Maher implies that people don&#8217;t trust the media anymore not because the media lied to them, but because people have different mistaken &#8220;truths&#8221; that they&#8217;re clinging to. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 Misinformation" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IqICz5BBR5A?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
It&#8217;s another revealing statement that Maher makes without any justification. She&#8217;s implying that democracies aren&#8217;t (or can&#8217;t be) xenophobic or nationalist. But the Greeks were both. Greek democracies were very much “xenophobic” — if that’s how you want to put it — and nationalist in nature. There&#8217;s no doubt about that. So why is democracy the goal here? Is that even her goal?
Really, her only given justification for thinking our traditional conception of truth is inadequate, and needs to be reworked, is that the &#8220;truth&#8221; we have now is the product of a history which is also political. &#8220;History is written by victors&#8221; is one of the many cliches she invokes throughout her speeches. And she says that excludes various potential sources of knowledge like &#8220;indigenous&#8221; perspectives and practices, or women with their &#8220;emotional intelligence.&#8221;
But that&#8217;s not incompatible with the reality that &#8220;the truth&#8221; is real, is universal, and many aspects of it have been uniquely uncovered by Western thought, science, and technology. Even if you bought into Maher&#8217;s talking points about a “plurality of perspectives” being better than &#8220;one alone&#8221; for getting at &#8220;the truth,&#8221; the fact remains that it took 2,000 years of Western, Eurocentric, supposedly white supremacist, heteronormative, misogynist history for us to reach the point at which these minor tail-end improvements she&#8217;s suggesting could be made. 
It took 2,000 years of history to create the civilization that Maher is now critiquing. And if she thinks this new approach will cause some kind of &#8220;scientific revolution,&#8221; it won&#8217;t. The more likely outcome is that it will destroy the civilization that was built over thousands of years. That is the point after all. And this is the essence of what we call wokeness. The Left likes to put conservatives on the spot by demanding a definition of “woke.” Well, here it is — the rejection of truth as a category. That’s what wokeness is, when boiled down to its most fundamental parts.
As for Maher, it&#8217;s tempting to dismiss all of this footage as the ramblings of a single woman who has no idea what she&#8217;s talking about. But it&#8217;s a bit more significant than that. Maher was selected to lead NPR, after an allegedly careful vetting process. There&#8217;s no way that NPR didn&#8217;t scrutinize her beliefs, which Maher has expressed many times over the last few years in public social media posts and numerous speeches.
On Twitter, Chris Rufo has exposed some of the more deranged posts from this woman. There are really too many to mention, but suffice it to say, she&#8217;s like a woke AI bot that churns out the least original woke liberal woman talking points you can possibly imagine. She uses the word &#8220;folx,&#8221; with the &#8220;x&#8221; at the end. She says &#8220;Latinx.&#8221; She called Donald Trump a racist and cried with joy when Biden took office, of course. She wrote that she once dreamed of going on a road trip with Kamala Harris eating &#8220;nuts and baklava.&#8221; She expresses her happiness when she logs into the public WiFi at a COVID clinic and the password is &#8220;HeSheThey,&#8221; recognizing the lived experience of nonbinary patients. She calls the Internet &#8220;sexist.&#8221; 
At one point, she apologized for using the phrase “people who identify as women,” because it&#8217;s a form of “trans-erasure.&#8221; She writes about the importance of &#8220;transit justice&#8221; and vegetarian Thanksgiving, and rants about the &#8220;male gaze&#8221; and &#8220;late-stage capitalism,&#8221; even as she drew a salary of $800,000 a year. There are many more examples; Chris Rufo&#8217;s feed has categorized many of them.
To burnish her intellectual credentials even further, Maher even <a href="https://x.com/njhochman/status/1780638504097022442">sat on a panel</a> with Lizzo at a Ted conference where tickets cost more than $10,000. The name of Lizzos&#8217; talk was, &#8220;The Black history of twerking — and how it taught me self-love.&#8221; 
But Maher doesn&#8217;t need lessons on self-love, she has that covered. What she&#8217;s looking for now is power. 
In a video posted by the Atlantic Council and unearthed by Rufo, Maher explains that the First Amendment — which you&#8217;d think journalists would support, since it&#8217;s the one thing keeping journalists out of prison — is not a sacred constitutional principle. Instead, she says, it&#8217;s a &#8220;challenge&#8221; to be overcome. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="005 Katherine Maher Vs First Free Speech" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MGpZJt5uU2s?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The only people who view the First Amendment as a &#8220;challenge&#8221; are government censors who want to shut down any dissent by force. And now that she&#8217;s running a state-funded media outlet, that&#8217;s exactly what Maher is. She&#8217;s a state-funded censor.
To that end, she no longer believes in transparency. The irony is that, when she was running Wikimedia, Maher kept talking about the importance of showing people everything that&#8217;s going on inside the company. Every edit on Wikipedia, she said, is public for a reason. Disclosure is sometimes &#8220;painful,&#8221; she said, but it&#8217;s necessary. 
Transparency is key, she said at the time. But apparently this is one of the malleable &#8220;truths&#8221; that Katherine Maher has decided to discard. As you&#8217;ve probably heard, she just forced out an NPR whistleblower who <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/04/17/media/npr-editor-uri-berliner-resigns-after-bombshell-expose-reveals-networks-pervasive-left-wing-bias/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> a damning <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust" target="_blank" rel="noopener">column</a> in the Free Press about the organization&#8217;s corruption and overwhelming bias. She <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/npr-suspends-editor-who-accused-network-of-bias-issues-final-warning" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suspended</a> this 25-year veteran of NPR without pay because he pointed out that the organization is now completely one-sided. 
For example, the whistleblower wrote:
<blockquote>Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.</blockquote>
That&#8217;s not the kind of transparency that the new NPR CEO appreciates, apparently. She&#8217;s happy to talk about how NPR employs too many white men. But she definitely doesn&#8217;t want to talk about political bias, or how useless NPR has become. It used to be that NPR at least pretended to be embarrassed about this. In 2011, NPR&#8217;s CEO at the time, Vivian Schiller, resigned after a Project Veritas sting exposed what she thought about conservatives in the Tea Party movement. To summarize: she didn’t like them. Schiller had to resign once her views came to light. Back then, NPR believed that the appearance of fairness was at least a little important.
But that was the &#8220;Car Talk&#8221; era of NPR. Now they believe their CEO can categorically reject the idea that there&#8217;s any truth to report on. This is a belief system that&#8217;s now in vogue in newsrooms all over the country. It&#8217;s a big reason for the rise of transgenderism, COVID hysteria, and all the media&#8217;s lying we had to endure under the previous administration. 
This is the belief system that insists that men can become women, because the meaning of the words &#8220;men&#8221; and &#8220;women&#8221; are subjective. And it will spell the end of Western civilization unless we reject it. That is, of course, the point of everything Katherine Maher is saying. In the absence of truth, there is only a struggle for power. And right now — and hopefully not for much longer — it&#8217;s people like Katherine Maher who have that power.

Day 2 – Web Summit 2019 Lisbon

New CEO Of NPR Is Everything Wrong With The News Media

Activists

Leftism

Legacy Media

National Public Radio (NPR)

Progressivism

Readers Pass

NPR&#8217;s president and CEO said she abandoned the idea of a &#8220;free and open&#8221; internet as the mission of Wikipedia, which she used to lead, because it is a &#8220;white, male, Westernized construct.&#8221;
In a newly resurfaced video clip, Katherine Maher, who took over as NPR&#8217;s chief executive in January says she found Wikpedia&#8217;s &#8220;free and open&#8221; ethos &#8220;inherently limited.&#8221; The clip was posted to X by Christopher Rufo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Maher served as chief executive at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, from 2019 to 2021.
&#8220;I have come to the opinion and the perspective that &#8216;free and open&#8217; was a way of looking at the world that was inherently limited relative to what we were trying to achieve,&#8221; Maher says in the clip.
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EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a &quot;free and open&quot; internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a &quot;white male Westernized construct&quot; and &quot;did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/Ved9mgGvJH">pic.twitter.com/Ved9mgGvJH</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1780929268949614848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 18, 2024</a></blockquote>
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EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher doesn&#39;t just want to &quot;stamp out bad information&quot; on the internet. She wants to replace it with &quot;good information&quot;—i.e., left-wing narratives—and force the public to &quot;sit within that good information&quot; as &quot;a collective.&quot;
Big Sister has arrived. <a href="https://t.co/7kfq8VYHfj">pic.twitter.com/7kfq8VYHfj</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1781009614584381486?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 18, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher says the &quot;the number one challenge&quot; in her fight against disinformation is &quot;the First Amendment in the United States,&quot; which makes it &quot;a little bit tricky&quot; to censor &quot;bad information&quot; and &quot;the influence peddlers&quot; who spread it.
NPR&#39;s censor-in-chief. <a href="https://t.co/0vY6hIpbmO">pic.twitter.com/0vY6hIpbmO</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1780597079439446250?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;&#8216;Free and open&#8217; has the best of intentionality, but in the end what &#8216;free and open&#8217; often ended up doing, and particularly in the case of Wikipedia, was recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics that exist offline, prior to the advent of the internet,&#8221; Maher said.
One of the problems with Wikipedia is the way it relies on a &#8220;written tradition&#8221; and &#8220;reliable sources,&#8221; Maher said.
&#8220;You see the exclusion of communities, of languages because of the ways in which Wikipedia is based on reliable sources. The idea of a written tradition, which is particular to some cultures and not to others,&#8221; the former Wikimedia CEO said.
&#8220;The ways in which we ascribe notability often really comes from sort of this white, male, Westernized construct around who matters in societies and who is elevated and whose voices. And so some of these ideas of sort of this radical openness really did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be,&#8221; she said.
X owner Elon Musk responded to the clip, <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1780962477011796287" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posting</a>, &#8220;That’s literally the point of Wikipedia.&#8221;
Maher has recently come under fire from conservatives after a former NPR editor blew the whistle on the outlet&#8217;s liberal bias. Former editor Uri Berliner resigned Wednesday after NPR suspended him.
In the wake of the NPR editor&#8217;s accusations, a slew of since-deleted tweets and previous statements from Maher have surfaced, adding fuel to the outrage.
In another clip posted by Rufo, Maher says she is interested in how we can &#8220;immerse ourself in good information,&#8221; not just &#8220;stamp out bad information.&#8221;
In yet another clip, Maher says the &#8220;number one challenge&#8221; for her in fighting disinformation is the First Amendment, which she calls a &#8220;fairly robust protection of rights.&#8221;
&#8220;It also means that it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from,&#8221; she said.
She has been accused of expressing explicitly biased views in her previous tweets.
In 2018, Maher <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/04/13/us-news/nprs-new-ceo-katherine-mahers-woke-tweets-arise-as-editor-claims-bias/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a>, “Donald Trump is a racist.”
In 2020 she wrote, &#8220;I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive. But it’s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property.&#8221;

Web Summit Lisbon 2023

‘White, Male, Westernized’: NPR President Said She Opposed Wikipedia’s ‘Free And Open’ Mission

'White, Male, Westernized': NPR President Said She Opposed Wikipedia's 'Free And Open' Mission

First Amendment

Free Speech

Wikipedia

It&#8217;s not every day that a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the Democratic Republic of Congo attracts international media attention. Normally, Congo flies under the radar, even though it&#8217;s actually one of the biggest countries in the world — it&#8217;s bigger than Mexico, believe it or not. But a couple of years ago, this incredible footage from the capital of Congo was picked up by the Western media. It&#8217;s from the grand opening of a footbridge that was apparently a big deal for the locals. Here&#8217;s how it went:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Bridge Collapses" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nerrMqtJbvQ?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
It&#8217;s a little like the collapse of that bridge in Baltimore, except in this case, a barge didn&#8217;t need to hit anything. All they had to do was cut the ribbon and stand on the bridge, and the whole thing came crashing down on them. Fortunately, no one was hurt in that incident. It got a few laughs on social media and everyone moved on.
In retrospect, however, the collapse of that footbridge in Congo&#8217;s capital was more than just a meme on the internet. It was a practical manifestation of something that Western academics now want to import into this country. There is a concerted effort underway in universities all over the world to &#8220;decolonize&#8221; mathematics, engineering, and science in general. It&#8217;s been generations since Congo was under Belgian rule, so presumably that footbridge is a great example of decolonized engineering. And now the West wants to emulate it.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1349-dumbing-down-education-in-the-name-of-decolonization" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
I first noticed this trend when I came across a recent <a href="https://science.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/maths-has-no-borders-professor-rowena-ball-brings-indigenous-mathematics-anu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">article</a> from Australian National University, which according to Wikipedia, is supposedly an impressive institution. The gist is that a professor in Australia named Rowena Ball is trying to get the concept of &#8220;Indigenous Mathematics&#8221; off the ground because Aboriginal people struggle with European mathematics, otherwise known as real mathematics. The article includes this remarkable line:
<blockquote>Numbers and arithmetic and accounting often are of secondary importance in Indigenous mathematics.</blockquote>
That seems to make as much sense as saying that words are of secondary importance in linguistics. Or that maps or of secondary importance in the science of cartography. How can you have mathematics without numbers and arithmetic, exactly? Read on, and Professor Ball will tell you: 
<blockquote>Mathematics is primarily the science of patterns &#8230; and recognising and classifying those patterns. &#8230; One interesting example that we are currently investigating is the use of chiral symmetry to engineer a long-distance smoke signalling technology in real time. If you light an incense stick you will see the twin counter-rotating vortices that emanate − these are a chiral pair, meaning they are non-superimposable mirror images of each other.</blockquote>
The article goes on to explain:
<blockquote>A memoir by Alice Duncan Kemp, who grew up on a cattle station … in the early 1900s, vividly describes the signalling procedure, in which husband-and-wife expert team Bogie and Mary-Anne selected and pulsed the smoke waves with a left to right curl, to signal &#8216;white men&#8217;, instead of the more usual right to left spiral. &#8230; To create and understand these signals, you have to be a skilled practical mathematician, Professor Ball says.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s not hard to see what&#8217;s been conflated here. Yes, it&#8217;s possible to argue that the act of lighting the incense stick and producing &#8220;counter-rotating vortices&#8221; does, in a way, implicate mathematics and particularly geometry. As does literally everything that happens in the physical world. It&#8217;s like saying LeBron James is a skilled mathematician because his three-pointers make nice parabolas. He&#8217;s not thinking in his head about the parabolic equation when he&#8217;s playing. He probably doesn&#8217;t even know what a parabolic equation is. 
In the case that Professor Ball is talking about, there&#8217;s nothing really &#8220;mathematical&#8221; in any traditional sense about generating smoke signals, and frankly, depending on the size of the vocabulary of the signaling system, it&#8217;s probably something you could train apes to do — even though they have no understanding of language, much less math. It&#8217;s like saying a child successfully flying a kite is doing math. It&#8217;s nonsense. You might as well say that simply by walking across the room you are engaged in mathematics.
These are very simple phenomena we&#8217;re talking about. Throwing a basketball and lighting an incense stick is not rocket science. Your brain is doing &#8220;complex calculations&#8221; when you shoot a basketball, sure. Or even when you walk across the room. And because our mathematics is so sophisticated and precise, we can describe the physical phenomenon to a great degree of sophistication and precision. But that&#8217;s only because our mathematics can penetrate reality to that degree. 
You don&#8217;t have to wonder how precise African folk math or whatever can get in describing that stuff — to say nothing of the math and mathematical physics required to build stuff like nuclear reactors, rocket engines, computers, et cetera. That stuff absolutely requires not just numbers, but advanced and highly abstract theories.
But highly abstract theories are out of style now — and not just in Australia. Braindead oversimplification is the name of the game. Here for example is a recent TedX talk delivered by a woman who teaches mathematics in Canada. She&#8217;s also a vice principal in the Ottawa school district. Listen to her understanding of what mathematics is all about:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Math" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qHRiYNSfcCY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Well, I guess there&#8217;s some good news here. I must be a genius mathematician myself because I made coffee and picked out my own clothes this morning. This will come as news to all of my grade school math teachers, who graded my math exams in a manner that conveyed a certain lack of faith in my mathematical prowess. But if only they’d known that I already passed the math test just by getting dressed before I came to school. If only I’d been as brain damaged as academic elites are today. Then maybe I would have thought to make that argument myself.
Anyway, a little over a year ago there was an <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-sinister-attempts-to-decolonise-mathematics/">in-depth column</a> in The Spectator about this movement to discredit and undermine serious academic disciplines, especially math. It was written by John Armstrong, who teaches at King&#8217;s College London and previously taught at Oxford. He&#8217;s an actual mathematician with actual credentials. And he summed up the problem with this whole push to &#8220;decolonize&#8221; math pretty simply.
<blockquote>The fact is that colonialism is irrelevant to the validity of mathematics. The Mayan civilization was doing sophisticated mathematics in the Americas long before Christopher Colombus arrived on the continent. &#8230; The digits 0123456789 we use today were first written in India and inspired by Chinese mathematics. They were popularised by Persian and Arab mathematicians and then made their way to Europe via the Moors’ conquest of Southern Spain. Admittedly the Moors’ conquest of Spain was a form of colonialism, but apparently not the type of colonialism we are meant to be interested in.</blockquote>
So what do these activists mean when they say they want to &#8220;decolonize&#8221; math, given that the entire idea of de-colonizing math is completely incoherent? The Arabs were colonizers, too. And why are Australians, of all people, so interested in promoting this idea?
One possibility is that by some estimates, as the Twitter account I/o points out, aboriginal Australians happen to have, on average, the second lowest IQ out of any demographic group on the planet. That&#8217;s the sort of thing that&#8217;s supposed to be unsayable, but it&#8217;s impossible to talk about certain groups struggling academically without bringing up the intellectual elephant in the room. There might be a reason why there aren’t many Aboriginals working at NASA. It&#8217;s an important point because it means that decolonization, practically speaking, entails dumbing down these subjects or destroying them altogether.
Mainly we see with the &#8220;decolonization&#8221; agenda the embarrassment that liberal Westerners feel about the fact that their ancestors were far more advanced — in just about every way, and by every available measure — than the native people they conquered. The liberal Westerner is constantly looking for ways to even out the score. And we&#8217;re seeing that more and more in this country as well.
The once-respected Nature magazine, for example, recently <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00240-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> an editorial (with no byline) that reads: &#8220;Why we have nothing to fear from the decolonization of mathematics.&#8221;
What&#8217;s amazing is that, if you read the whole editorial, you won&#8217;t actually find a definition of what &#8220;decolonization&#8221; means in this context. You won&#8217;t find anything close to a definition, actually. The most you&#8217;ll discover is that according to Nature, decolonization:
<blockquote>&#8230;shows that the roots of discovery and invention are shared between many world cultures, which can be particularly empowering for people from historically marginalized groups. Decolonizing science is the antidote to exceptionalism, the idea that any single culture or civilization possessed special abilities in advancing science.</blockquote>
But as we just established, some cultures and civilizations did, indeed, advance science and mathematics more than others. Some of them were colonizers, and some of those colonizers were not white. And regardless, none of this has anything to do with mathematics. Maybe you can argue this belongs in some elective history course somewhere. But it has no place affecting courses on the fundamentals of mathematics, which is exactly what&#8217;s happening in this country.
Pittsburgh Public Schools, for example, recently <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/pittsburgh-public-schools-change-math-instruction-more-equitable/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> a plan to make mathematics instruction more &#8220;equitable.&#8221; What does that mean? Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Pittsburgh Public Schools" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/egX-7nQ4Jt0?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
It&#8217;s not about getting the right answer anymore in Pittsburgh&#8217;s math classes. It&#8217;s about the &#8220;journey.&#8221; The next time your bridge collapses, remember that. Your death isn&#8217;t what&#8217;s important. What matters is that the incompetent engineer who built the bridge had high self esteem. Yes, you might be lying on the ground, mangled and dying, with a giant metal beam spearing you through your stomach, but as you lay there expiring, just think about the “journey” that those bridge engineers were on. That should give you comfort.
It&#8217;s the same thing the Canadian teacher said in her TEDx talk. The goal is for everyone to feel like a mathematician, regardless of ability. None of this has anything to do with actually teaching math, of course, which is the point. Students can fail math courses — and they&#8217;ve been doing a lot of that in Pittsburgh. But it&#8217;s harder to fail a course that begins with the assumption that every student is gifted in mathematics, no matter what their test scores or actual mathematical aptitude might say.
The other underlying factor that drives all of this superficial decolonization rhetoric and activism is a deep insecurity about actual knowledge on the part of those circulating this garbage. And it&#8217;s very well-founded insecurity, especially when it comes to ignorance regarding history.
Everything is a cartoon with these people: cartoon history, cartoon philosophy, etc. It&#8217;s barely high-school debate talking points stuff — it&#8217;s more elementary school level thinking — which does make it easier to incorporate into lower education, incidentally.
But to be clear, this isn&#8217;t just happening in Pittsburgh. It&#8217;s easy to pick on Pittsburgh, for a lot of reasons. As I&#8217;ve said <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxm9BTAJCBU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">before</a>, the city is falling apart. But this effort to &#8220;decolonize&#8221; math has serious financial backers, and schools everywhere are adopting similar approaches.
In 2018, Bill Gates&#8217; foundation <a href="https://lincs.ed.gov/professional-development/resource-collections/profile-8826" target="_blank" rel="noopener">created</a> something called the &#8220;Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,&#8221; intended for use in grades 6 through 8. The &#8220;pathway&#8221; <a href="https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">trains teachers</a> who:
<blockquote>In order to embody antiracist math education, teachers must engage in critical praxis that interrogates the ways in which they perpetuate white supremacy culture in their own classrooms, and develop a plan toward antiracist math education to address issues of equity for Black, Latinx, and multilingual students.</blockquote>
Why would Bill Gates want to promote nonsense like this? It&#8217;s hard to say. No one appears to have asked him. But we do know that, in the years since 2018, math literacy in this country has <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/us-students-math-scores-decline-pisa-assessment-mental-health-concerns-1849812#:~:text=Despite%20stable%20performances%20in%20reading,that%20participated%20in%20the%20assessment." target="_blank" rel="noopener">plummeted</a>. In 2018, something called the &#8220;Program for International Student Assessment&#8221; measured the average 15-year-olds&#8217; math aptitude in this country at a score of 478. By 2022, that score had dropped to 465. Meanwhile, data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that U.S. math and reading scores are at their <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/06/21/1183445544/u-s-reading-and-math-scores-drop-to-lowest-level-in-decades" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lowest level</a> in decades.
You can blame that on COVID and wonky gain-of-function research if you want (which Bill Gates also <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/rand-paul-bill-gates-ties-gain-function-research-funding-danger-mankind" target="_blank" rel="noopener">funded</a> through the W.H.O., by the way). But there&#8217;s not a serious person alive who thinks that any of this decolonization propaganda is actually helping these scores move in the right direction. It&#8217;s doing the opposite, by design.
This is every bit as serious an attack on this country as the airport and bridge raids that I covered yesterday. This is an attack on our ability to build airports and bridges in the first place. And unless we want our bridges to function like Congo&#8217;s in the near future, it needs to end.

professor writing on the board while having a chalk and blackboard lecture (shallow DOF; color toned image)

Dumbing Down Education In The Name Of ‘Decolonization’

Dumbing Down Education In The Name Of 'Decolonization'

Anti-Racism

Colonialism

Congo

Mathematics

Matt Walsh

Opinion

Pittsburgh

Comedian Bill Maher said over the weekend that if Americans wanted to see what would happen to the United States if it continued down the path to &#8220;extreme wokeness,&#8221; they should look no further than their neighbors to the north.
Maher argued — during Friday&#8217;s broadcast of &#8220;Real Time&#8221; on HBO — that Canada should serve as a &#8220;cautionary tale&#8221; for Americans who wanted the progressive utopian ideal and thought that they could see it just across the border.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
They say in politics, liberals are the gas pedal, and conservatives are the brakes, and I&#39;m generally with the gas pedal, but not if we&#39;re driving off a cliff. <a href="https://t.co/hutj3OUVQi">pic.twitter.com/hutj3OUVQi</a>
&mdash; Bill Maher (@billmaher) <a href="https://twitter.com/billmaher/status/1778989085362987082?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 13, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Maher began by saying that he agreed with those who said American liberals should learn from  progressive countries that were getting things right — but then he pointed out that it was equally important to recognize and acknowledge flaws when they were present.
Giving two examples, Maher noted that unemployment in the United States was 3.8% compared to Canada&#8217;s 6.1% — and that air quality in Canada was measurably worse than in the United States.
&#8220;They say in politics liberals are the gas pedal and conservatives are the brakes. And I’m generally with the gas pedal. But not if we’re driving off a cliff,&#8221; Maher said, adding, &#8220;Canada was where every woke White college kid wearing pajama pants outdoors who had it up to here with America’s racist patriarchy dreamt of living someday. I mean, besides Gaza.&#8221;
&#8220;There’s only one problem with thinking everything’s better in Canada: It’s not. Not anymore, anyway,&#8221; Maher said, arguing that the housing crisis in American cities was nothing compared to what was happening to the north. &#8220;The median price of a home here is $346,000. In Canada converted to US dollars, it’s 487. If Barbie moved to Winnipeg, she wouldn’t be able to afford her dream house and Ken would be working at Tim Hortons.&#8221;
Maher went on to note that the liberal dream of single-payer health care — which Canada has — is also not living up to its promise: &#8220;Their vaunted health care system, which ranks dead last among high income countries, and access to primary health care, and the ability to see a doctor in a day or two. And it’s not for lack of spending. Of the 30 countries with universal coverage, Canada spends over 13% of its economy on it, which is a lot of money for free health care. Look, I’m not saying Canada still isn’t a great country, it is, but those aren’t paradise numbers.&#8221;
&#8220;If Canada was an apartment, the lead feature might be America adjacent. And if America was a rental car, Canada would be America or similar,&#8221; Maher concluded. &#8220;And again, honestly, Canada, I’m not saying any of this because I enjoy it. I don’t because I’ve always enjoyed you, but I need to cite you as a cautionary tale to help my country. And the moral of that tale is ‘yes, you can move too far left, and when you do, you wind up pushing the people in the middle to the right.’ At its worst. Canada is what American voters think happens when there’s no one putting a check on extreme wokeness.&#8221;

Bill Maher

Bill Maher Warns Canada Is A ‘Cautionary Tale’ For U.S.: ‘We’re Diving Off A Cliff’

Bill Maher Warns Canada Is A 'Cautionary Tale' For U.S.: 'We're Diving Off A Cliff'

Canada

Donald Trump

Joe Biden

&#8220;Star Wars&#8221; actor Billy Dee Williams joined comedian Bill Maher on a recent episode of his &#8220;Club Random&#8221; podcast, and both lamented the state of today&#8217;s youth in America — a generation Maher referred to collectively as &#8220;house plants.&#8221;
Williams, who played the role of Lando Calrissian in the original George Lucas trilogy, said that he just didn&#8217;t understand the younger generations most of the time: &#8220;I don’t know what this generation is about.&#8221;
Maher argued that kids were being &#8220;raised wrong,&#8221; calling them &#8220;fragile&#8221; and comparing them to &#8220;house plants.&#8221; Williams was slightly more generous, noting that kids seemed to lack a real &#8220;sense of history&#8221; and asking whether it was possible that they were simply &#8220;misinformed&#8221; or not properly educated.
&#8220;They do not know anything, but it’s not their fault because, you know, it’s not the responsibility of the child to instruct themselves. I never had to worry about that in my little town, whatever color it was,&#8221; Maher said. &#8220;We just went to school. You went to school … they taught you the basics; they taught you the s***. I didn’t leave that school until I knew basically everything that a normal, intelligent person should know. Not anything from Nobel Prize winner in literature or science, just a regular person would know these things and kids today know nothing. You don’t have to know anything and they will sign that diploma and kick you out the door.&#8221;
One of the main issues Maher cited was the ongoing war between Israel and the terror group Hamas, saying that young people appeared to be uneducated on the history of the region – but they were getting involved in protests and political activism despite their lack of understanding: it &#8220;doesn’t sap their confidence.&#8221;
&#8220;That is what is so bad about the kids, getting back to that, not knowing anything. They think, oh, let’s give communism another try,&#8221; Maher said, coming back around to the topic a bit later. &#8220;No, kids! We did try it! We did try it. Vladimir Lenin took over Moscow in 1917, and it was a long experiment and it was horrible, so we don’t need to try that again.&#8221;
&#8220;Well, I don’t know, we got Lucifer in the world right now,&#8221; Williams said.
&#8220;Trump?&#8221; Maher attempted to get Williams to clarify.
&#8220;I’m just saying Lucifer,&#8221; Williams repeated.
Maher tried again: &#8220;Oh, you mean literally?&#8221;
&#8220;I’m just saying Lucifer,&#8221; was all Williams would say.
You can watch the podcast here: 
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Billy Dee Williams | Club Random with Bill Maher" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jEWNzLJJ0Jo?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The Kelly Clarkson Show – Season 5

‘Star Wars’ Actor Joins Bill Maher In Scathing Assessment Of ‘Fragile’ Kids Today: ‘House Plants’

'Star Wars' Actor Joins Bill Maher In Scathing Assessment Of 'Fragile' Kids Today: 'House Plants'

Hamas

Israel

Star Wars

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) slammed Republicans over the weekend for criticizing President Joe Biden&#8217;s decision to promote transgender visibility day on Easter Sunday, claiming that not being pro-transgender was the &#8220;opposite of Christianity.&#8221;
Warnock made the remarks during a Sunday CNN interview with Dana Bash on &#8220;State of the Union&#8221; after Bash teed up the senator to attack Republicans for daring to speak out against transgender visibility day which also comes a year after a transgender terrorist <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nashville-shooter-decried-crackers-and-white-privilege-leaked-manifesto-pages-reveal">murdered</a> six people at a Christian school in Nashville.
&#8220;The House Speaker called Biden&#8217;s announcement abhorrent and said he betrayed the central tenet of Easter,&#8221; Bash said. &#8220;What do you say to that?&#8221;
&#8220;Well, apparently, the speaker finds trans people abhorrent,&#8221; Warnock lashed out. &#8220;And I think he ought to think about that. The fact of the matter is, as you said, March 31 has been a day to lift up transgender people who endure violence and bigotry. Easter, the date changes every single day.&#8221;
&#8220;But this is just one more instance of folks who have — who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us. And this is the opposite of the Christian faith,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;Jesus centered to marginalize. He centered the poor. And in a moment like this, we need voices, particularly voices of faith, who would use our faith not as a weapon to beat other people down, but as a bridge to bring all of us together.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Sen. and Rev. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) on Speaker Mike Johnson using Christianity as a weapon to attack President Biden, &#8220;This is just one more instance of folks who have who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us. And this is the opposite of the Christian faith.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/FSAfMGXf9D">pic.twitter.com/FSAfMGXf9D</a>
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) <a href="https://twitter.com/PoliticusSarah/status/1774437536363942373?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 31, 2024</a></blockquote>

US President Biden campaigns in Atlanta, Georgia

Democrat Senator Warnock: Not Supporting Trans Visibility Day On Easter Is Anti-Christian

Christian

Easter

Raphael Warnock

Cartoon Network made sure to post in celebration of the Transgender Day of Visibility on Sunday, but made no mention of the fact that Easter Sunday also fell on March 31st this year — this despite the fact that <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1.6 million Americans</a> over 13 identify as transgender, and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-religious-composition-has-changed-in-recent-decades/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">over 200 million</a> identify as Christian and presumably celebrate Easter.
In a post on Instagram, the cable channel&#8217;s official account shared a picture of what appeared to be a rainbow in just the colors of the pink, white, and blue transgender pride flag. The same picture appeared several times in a carousel that included different affirmative captions for each frame:
<ul>
<li>I am growing into my fullest self.</li>
<li>My body belongs to me.</li>
<li>I love who I am, and who I will become.</li>
<li>I am not alone in my journey.</li>
<li>My existence is revolutionary.</li>
<li>I belong, just as much as everyone else.</li>
<li>Only I can decide who I am.</li>
<li>My identity is a process, not a race.</li>
<li>I am needed, and I am loved.</li>
<li>I deserve peace and safety.</li>
</ul>
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The post read, &#8220;Affirmations for our trans and gender non-conforming family. You are valid, just as you are&#8221; — and a follow up comment added, &#8220;We&#8217;re not doing hate today. Be kind or be blocked.&#8221;
The cable network, which typically gears the majority of its daytime programming toward an audience of children, has waded into the culture war in the past as well – and has routinely pushed radical gender ideology whenever given the opportunity.
For 2023&#8217;s Transgender visibility Day, Cartoon Network posted the following on X: &#8220;Addressing someone using their pronouns and name shows that you RESPECT them as their authentic self! We celebrate the journey of our trans and gender-non-conforming friends on this #TransgenderDayofVisibility!
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Addressing someone using their pronouns and name shows that you RESPECT them as their authentic self! 💖 We celebrate the journey of our trans and gender-non-conforming friends on this <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TransgenderDayofVisibility?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TransgenderDayofVisibility</a>! ⁣ 🎨: steeeeevn⁣/IG ⁣<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CartoonNetwork?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CartoonNetwork</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TransDayOfVisibility?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TransDayOfVisibility</a> <a href="https://t.co/fMcEBQtrGr">pic.twitter.com/fMcEBQtrGr</a>
&mdash; Cartoon Network (@cartoonnetwork) <a href="https://twitter.com/cartoonnetwork/status/1641533612569796610?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 30, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
An episode of &#8220;<a href="https://glaad.org/glaad-exclusive-watch-sneak-peek-of-non-binary-inclusive-episode-of-we-baby-bears/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">We Baby Bears</a>&#8221; that aired just a few months later included a &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kids-cartoon-we-baby-bears-to-introduce-they-them-pronouns-in-new-episode" target="_blank" rel="noopener">non-binary inclusive</a>&#8221; story line that focused on the usage of preferred pronouns and dropped just in time to coincide with PRIDE Month.

Burbank Exteriors And Landmarks – 2020

Cartoon Network Goes All In On Trans ‘Day Of Visibility,’ Makes No Mention Of Easter

Cartoon Network

Media

Howie Mandel first grabbed our attention by inflating a rubber glove over his head. Now, he’s making headlines for defending <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/comedy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">comedy</a> from the woke mob.
The comedian’s physical shtick led to a breakout role in “St. Elsewhere” as the medical drama’s cutup. He’s been gainfully employed ever since.
Mandel isn’t edgy by current standards. His brand of humor is perfectly suited for broadcast TV, witness gigs like “Deal or No Deal” and “America’s Got Talent.”
He hasn’t been “canceled” in any way, shape or form.
<div id="attachment_713047" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-713047" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-713047" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/GettyImages-1479885893-864x576.jpg" alt="PASADENA, CA - APRIL 04: Howie Mandel is seen filming &quot;America's Got Talent&quot; on April 04, 2023 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by thecelebrityfinder/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/GettyImages-1479885893-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/GettyImages-1479885893-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/GettyImages-1479885893-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/GettyImages-1479885893.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />thecelebrityfinder/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images</div>
So why did he attack woke comedy handcuffs on the “Stand-up World” podcast, hosted by Mike Binder? Mandel knows comedy better than many, and he sees what happens when a stand-up isn’t allowed to broach certain topics for fear of serious repercussions.
He compared the woke bylaws to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD6YBbLmyNw&amp;t=1306s" target="_blank" rel="noopener">being a painter with a limited palette</a>.
<blockquote>If you think of comedy as an art, they started telling us there are certain colors you can’t use. If you’re a painter you shouldn’t say, ‘you can paint anything you want, but don’t use black, don’t use any yellows and it’s really not right to use blue.’ Art suffers, and there isn’t anything we shouldn’t talk about.</blockquote>
Mandel also discussed an obvious problem with the woke agenda. Comedy can be cruel. It’s inherent to the art form.
<blockquote>All humor comes out of darkness. That’s why the Tragedy and Comedy masks are so close together &#8230; if you’re a little kid and you go to the circus you’re laughing at a clown falling down. You’re laughing at the misfortune of somebody you don’t know.</blockquote>
He’s exaggerating, but not by much. Think pies in the face, stepping on rakes and slipping on a well-placed banana peel.
Humor writer Andy Borowitz <a href="https://www.salon.com/2012/03/24/does_comedy_have_to_be_cruel/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shared something similar</a> in 2012, years before what Elon Musk dubbed the “woke mind virus” captured the culture.
<blockquote>There’s a strong vein of cruelty running through a lot of comedy.</blockquote>
Why would Mandel’s comments cut through the media noise? He still does stand-up comedy, but he’s better known for being a clean, TV-based entertainer.
His inoffensive style matters in this debate. It’s one thing for a professional firebrand like Ricky Gervais to attack woke critics. His brand is directly threatened by those easily offended (and willing to raise a stink on social media).
When a genial comic like Mandel takes a stand on the subject, it hits home. 
Remember how many headlines Jerry Seinfeld inspired in 2015 when he said college students of the era <a href="https://ew.com/article/2015/06/08/jerry-seinfeld-politically-correct-college-campuses/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">are too easily offended</a>. It’s why some of Seinfeld’s peers stopped playing university gigs. He felt their professional pain.
Seinfeld’s shtick was, and remains, squeaky clean. For a G-rated comic to grasp the larger issue of triggered college crowds means the problem is larger than anyone thought.
<div id="attachment_713043" style="width: 831px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-713043" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-713043" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/GettyImages-470827816-821x576.jpg" alt="NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 23: Comedian Jerry Seinfeld did a surprise set making an unannounced appearance at Gotham Comedy Club on April 23, 2015 in New York, New York. (Photo by Bobby Bank/WireImage)" width="821" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/GettyImages-470827816-821x576.jpg 821w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/GettyImages-470827816-300x210.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/GettyImages-470827816-768x539.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/GettyImages-470827816.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 821px) 100vw, 821px" />Bobby Bank/WireImage</div>
The creative community has been too silent for too long on the subject of woke restrictions. That is starting to change. 
Slowly.
Tom Hanks lashed out <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/tom-hanks-rewritting-modern-sensitivities-woke-b1080697.html">at so-called “sensitivity readers”</a> last year following the release of his first book, “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece: A Novel.”
In the past few weeks other stars have taken a stand against woke bylaws, putting their brands on the line in the process.
Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett blasted trigger warnings tied to art. The red flags have been attached to older animated films like “Dumbo” as well as comedy classics such as 1974’s “Blazing Saddles.’
She told The Sunday Times why they’re <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cate-blanchett-interview-the-new-boy-oscars-religion-husband-2lrc0rvpm">a terrible way to digest art</a>.
<blockquote>We are terrified of tough conversations &#8230; but we need the &#8230; We talk about radical candor, but when there’s a trigger warning in front of something you are implying that there is a lack of mutual respect or that the subject hasn’t been properly interrogated &#8230; It may offend you. It may challenge you. You may laugh uproariously. You just don’t know, but you are going to surrender to what is coming.</blockquote>
Her 2022 film “Tar” embodied that sentiment. The film features a Cancel Culture-style attack on Blanchett’s character, a musical superstar facing a professional crisis. A critical scene in the film finds her character, Lydia Tar, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/scene-cate-blanchetts-film-tar-praised-being-anti-woke" target="_blank" rel="noopener">berating a woke music student.</a>
&#8220;Don&#8217;t be so eager to be offended. The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.&#8221;
“Will &amp; Grace” alum Eric McCormack spoke to a similar woke constraint – straight actors being questioned for playing gay characters.
“There’s no part I’ve ever played where I wasn’t playing something I’m not. It’s part of the gig. And I’ve always said, if gay actors weren’t allowed to play straight actors, Broadway would be over.&#8221;
Would he land that part today given the current cultural climate? He’s hopeful.
&#8220;I would like to think in general that the best person for the role, the one that comes in and knocks it out of the park, is the one that gets the part.”
Meritocracy matters. So do prominent artists standing up for free expression and casting a withering eye on the woke movement.
* * *
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of <a href="http://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at <a href="https://twitter.com/HollywoodInToto?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@HollywoodInToto</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Standup Comedy at The Ice House Comedy Club

Howie Mandel Leads Mini Anti-Woke Comedy Revolt: ‘There Isn’t Anything We Shouldn’t Talk About’

Howie Mandel Leads Mini Anti-Woke Comedy Revolt: 'There Isn’t Anything We Shouldn’t Talk About'

comedian

Comedy

Entertainment

Jerry Seinfeld

&#8220;Harry Potter&#8221; author J.K. Rowling delivered a scathing translation of an X post written by a man who claimed to be an LGBTQ &#8220;ally&#8221; and warned her to delete posts referring to a trans-identifying male as a man.
Rowling exchanged a few posts with an attorney named Rajan Barot, responding first when he advised her to delete posts about a trans-identifying activist who goes by the name India Willoughby in order to avoid running afoul of a new law.
&#8220;It comes into force on 1 April 2024 and any posts up after that are amenable to prosecution in Scotland. You are best advised to delete the posts about @IndiaWilloughby as they most likely contravene the new law. Start deleting!&#8221; Barot posted.
&#8220;If you genuinely imagine I’d delete posts calling a man a man, so as not to be prosecuted under this ludicrous law, stand by for the mother of all April Fools’ jokes,&#8221; Rowling replied.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
If you genuinely imagine I’d delete posts calling a man a man, so as not to be prosecuted under this ludicrous law, stand by for the mother of all April Fools’ jokes. <a href="https://t.co/ZVZQ6CV47p">pic.twitter.com/ZVZQ6CV47p</a>
&mdash; J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) <a href="https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1769412494353678400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Rowling then took things a step further, sharing another of Barot&#8217;s posts along with her take on what it actually meant.
&#8220;I am a CIS male and an ally of the LGBTQ+ community,&#8221; Barot posted. &#8220;All my life I have fought for diversity and equality. I advised two Attorney Generals on race and equality issues and prosecuted on behalf of victims of crime. I know who I am and am proud of what I stand for.&#8221;
&#8220;&#8216;I am a man who wants to see girls and women stripped of their rights and protections for the benefit of my fellow men,'&#8221; the &#8220;Harry Potter&#8221; author wrote in her translation, mocking Barot. &#8220;&#8216;I know this makes me a really good guy and other guys I know agree with me. I am proud of being such a great guy.'&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
‘I am a man who wants to see girls and women stripped of their rights and protections for the benefit of my fellow men. I know this makes me a really good guy and other guys I know agree with me. I am proud of being such a great guy.’ <a href="https://t.co/qao5Xp2r6z">pic.twitter.com/qao5Xp2r6z</a>
&mdash; J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) <a href="https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1769436656572973560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Rowling followed that up with a post directed at Willoughby, who had complained about getting death threats from Rowling&#8217;s fans and supporters.
&#8220;Let&#8217;s compare what each of us has got over the past five years, @IndiaWilloughby, and see who&#8217;s had the greatest number of threats of murder, torture, burning, skinning, rape (in every possible mutation) and assault (again, in every possible variation) from the other&#8217;s allies,&#8221; Rowling said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Let&#39;s compare what each of us has got over the past five years, <a href="https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@IndiaWilloughby</a>, and see who&#39;s had the greatest number of threats of murder, torture, burning, skinning, rape (in every possible mutation) and assault (again, in every possible variation) from the other&#39;s allies. <a href="https://t.co/nluARy8j8W">pic.twitter.com/nluARy8j8W</a>
&mdash; J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) <a href="https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1769742872071336059?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 18, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Rowling has long been an outspoken advocate for biological women, which has resulted in wave after wave of online hatred from trans activists and so many <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/j-k-rowling-speaks-out-after-doxxing-so-many-death-threats-i-could-paper-the-house" target="_blank" rel="noopener">death threats</a> that she could &#8220;paper the house&#8221; with them.

“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald” UK Premiere – Red Carpet Arrivals

J.K. Rowling Delivers Hilarious Translation Of Woke Trans ‘Ally’s’ X Post

J.K. Rowling Delivers Hilarious Translation Of Woke Trans 'Ally's' X Post

J.K. Rowling

LGBTQ

If you’re a veteran like me, you will find it increasingly more difficult to watch the news. Lately, as current events pertain to the military, however, it’s becoming almost unbearable to witness the crumbling of the beloved nation we once donned the uniform to preserve and protect.
If you follow The Daily Wire, you know I recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/woke-u-s-military-more-dangerous-world" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote an article</a> addressing my concerns that a sense of “wokeness” is seeping into America’s armed forces. It is a seemingly conscious effort to chip away at American nationalism. This relentless shift to the Left is distracting our military from focusing on its true mission, which is to protect our homeland through lethal projection of power and the willingness to use this power if necessary.
With this said, imagine my dismay, along with many other veterans, when I read that the United States Military Academy at West Point is dropping the patriotic edict “Duty, Honor, Country” from its mission statement in favor of the more politically correct “Preserving Army Values.” At first, I thought it was “fake news” as I simply refused to believe that such an about face on American patriotism was taking place at one of the nation’s oldest and most revered military academies. To my dismay, as The Daily Wire has since <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/west-point-removes-duty-honor-country-from-mission-statement-replaces-with-army-values" target="_blank" rel="noopener">confirmed</a>, the initial report I read was, in fact, correct. 
I am not the only veteran in my family. My father served in the Korean War, First Marines, wounded in combat, whose hero was General Douglas MacArthur. Although not popular among the rank and file, my father always admired that MacArthur, an army chauvinist to the core, nevertheless chose his First Marine Division as the spearpoint for his brilliant Inchon landing behind communist lines in 1950 that saved South Korea from tyranny. And so, many of MacArthur’s dicta rang true with him. 
One of the General’s mantras was the hallowed West Point rallying cry of “Duty, Honor, Country.” Indeed, though my father was a hard man who’d seen war up close, who suffered personal loss during his life, the only time I ever saw him weep was when we watched the movie “MacArthur” and actor Gregory Peck recites to a group of actually assembled West Point cadets, the eponymous character’s final speech to his beloved academy in 1962, two years before his death. Audio recordings of the General’s actual speech can also be found on YouTube. It wasn’t the acting so much as the words, spoken verbatim, that so deeply affected my combat veteran father.
In his moving elocution, the old warrior again and again reverts to the three sublime words as the bedrock standards upon which they should base their future conduct as America’s first line of defense: “Duty, Honor, Country.” 
Says MacArthur, 
<blockquote>…great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night &#8211; Duty, Honor, Country. 
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come-the great captains who hold the nation’s destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words &#8211; Duty, Honor, Country.</blockquote>
To a member of the U.S. Armed Forces, this sacred credo is the summation of who, why, and what we serve. They are calls to commitment, morality, and belief in the national interest above the self. Indeed, no better words can sum up the ethos of the American fighting man and woman. 
And now these words which stood as a beacon in an institution that for over two centuries has produced some of the world’s most gifted captains have been scrubbed from the walls of the academy like so much politically incorrect graffiti.
During MacArthur’s soliloquy — a framed copy of which my father kept prominently displayed in our family room — the importance the great strategist and former West Point superintendent placed on those three words &#8220;Duty, Honor, Country&#8221; made an indelible mark on my psyche. So much so that offering my life up for military service was an easy decision. To this day, those three words still inspire me with a deep sense of American nationalism whenever I revisit them: “Duty, Honor, Country.” 
Now, I find that this new, progressive group of Army bureaucrats — I won’t call them generals because that is a title worthy of respect and admiration — who are “facilitating” West Point, not leading, are actually uprooting every fiber of the patriotic base that made West Point the wellspring from which the desire to preserve our American Constitution flows. Words have meaning; they inspire feelings, thoughts, and conduct. As such, to sterilize the powerful message found in those three words “Duty, Honor, Country” with a sanitized, anodyne PowerPoint slogan such as “Respect Army Values” is a blight against every patriot who died for this country, from Nathan Hale to the Unknown Soldier.
Words can inspire, and an inspired enemy is difficult to control and is capable of extraordinary bravery. The Left understands quite well that language can be a powerful tool of indoctrination. It is not by chance that our children no longer start off their school days by first reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Again, rousing words lead to extraordinary deeds, and evil people, who are trying to usurp a good and free nation, know this. Taking away the loyalty oath of “Duty, Honor, Country” has a desired, debilitating effect. I doubt very much, that the men who fought their way to the summit of Mount Suribachi to plant the flag atop Iwo Jima had the words “Army Values” running through their minds as the fierce battle raged around them. But they knew their purpose, they knew why they were fighting, and they knew for whom they were willing to continue engaging in a life-and-death struggle for freedom. It was their duty to honor their fallen comrades in order to save the country they loved so dearly. Again, I don’t see where saying “Army Values” would have motivated anyone to risk their lives for a nation that from grade school to even our military academies they are being taught to disdain.
No doubt, many a G.I. over many battlefields has garnered intestinal fortitude by whispering to themselves those same three words “Duty, Honor, Country” before lining up for the charge into the hell of enemy fire. The concept that “Army Values” could inspire such valor at a time when an American soldier needs it most in order to ensure a continuation of our free way of life under the Constitution is ludicrous and laughable on its face, and frankly insulting and offensive. “Army Values” indeed.
With every waking moment of his or her day, a West Point cadet is reminded that he or she is an integral part of The Corps whose core values were, &#8220;Duty, Honor, Country.&#8221; A cadet can take solace in the knowledge that the shiver of motivation he or she feels running down their spine is a natural outgrowth of such inspiring words. That is, until today!
If you had read one of my other articles about the reactions us boomer vets and myself were having to President Biden threatening to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/extreme-prejudice-at-the-texas-border" target="_blank" rel="noopener">call out the National Guard</a> on the Texas border agents, you will remember that we regularly debate this nation’s policies as we sit in the waiting rooms of the VA hospitals. The same scenario will happen the next time I show up at my VA, and I’m almost certain I can gauge what will be the reaction to the extreme alteration to West Point’s point mission statement.
In 1917, the Espionage Act was passed after the United States entered World War I. It was followed by the Sedition Act of 1918. Both of these pieces of legislation were designed to incriminate individuals who attempted to impede the war effort. Those who did so were punished since they were believed to be performing acts of anti-patriotism.
I can tell you with no uncertainty, that during the next discussion I have with a fellow vet, we will be deliberating who we feel is responsible for removing West Point’s more than a century-old motto. My conclusion would be that the individual bureaucrat in uniform, or even the entire committee if the decision were made in this manner, should be stripped of his/her rank(s) and brought before a court martial to face charges of sedition in accordance with the Espionage and Sedition Acts.
After all, unlike &#8220;Duty, Honor, Country,&#8221; these words are still on the books.
* * *
Brian Schaeffer served as a Naval aviator until his honorable discharge in 1985 with the rank of Lieutenant. Lt. Schaeffer has been in both the shipping business and involved in real estate ever since re-entering civilian life. Prior to heading off to Aviation Reserve Officers Corps, he graduated with honors from Indiana University, Bloomington.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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‘Duty, Honor, Country’: Political Correctness At West Point Leaves Our Military Distracted From Its True Mission

'Duty, Honor, Country': Political Correctness At West Point Leaves Our Military Distracted From Its True Mission

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