By Colonel Andy of “A Colonel of Truth”
https://acoloneloftruth.blogspot.com/2020/10/americas-scales-of-justice-in-full-view.html
Is this the next statue that needs to come down?
Originally posted 2020-10-12 08:22:32.
A very well written piece, albeit there are some words the left may need a dictionary to understand what he saying. LOL. A mostly retired trial lawyer who began as a Marine JAG Officer 1975-1982.
He poses a great question we all should be asking today, and does a great job answering it. Worth the read! Thank you Michael for sending it to me.
Once the exclusive domain of deep thinking university professors, critical race theory became a part of our national conversation when the Trump administration ordered federal agencies to stop conducting workplace training based on critical race theory and opened an inquiry into the City of Seattle’s use of it. The training is in fact political indoctrination and the public ought to know what it is and why it should be resisted.
Critical theory sprung largely from the Marxist scholars of the Frankfurt School in 1930’s Germany. In 1848 Karl Marx had introduced the world to an analysis of social relations characterized by oppression when he argued in The Communist Manifesto and Capital that working class laborers were oppressed by those in power, the owners of capital. He argued for class consciousness, and in advocating radical change, he famously argued the workers had nothing to lose but their chains. The dilemma facing the Frankfurt School scholars was why after the Russian Revolution and the wide dissemination of Marx’s invitation to a workers’ paradise was it not being realized? Industrial organization and mass communications seemed to divert the oppressed workers from their liberation. Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School is credited with arguing a theory is “critical” if it seeks “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them”, and critical theory was applied to interrogate how power was used to perpetuate oppression.
Critical race theory is a variant of what began in the 1970’s as critical legal studies. Critical legal studies looked at our laws with the assumption that law oppresses people, especially minorities, and examined how power was used to create and enforce the law. Restrictive racial covenants in property deeds was an example of the use of law to perpetuate racial oppression. Denying women the right to vote and prosecuting women like Susan B. Anthony in 1872 when she defied the law and cast a vote was an example of the use of law to perpetuate gender oppression.
Women gained the right to vote in Washington in 1910, Wyoming before that, and the US Supreme Court declared restrictive racial covenants were illegal and unenforceable everywhere in 1948. Nonetheless, and not withstanding adoption of the 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments and a web of state and federal legislation outlawing discrimination based solely on race or gender, critical legal theorists concluded that the power of the oppressors was embedded in our political structures and infects our laws today to perpetuate bias and discrimination against minorities and other marginalized communities. As Samuel Gregg puts it in “Liberalism’s Civilization Problem,” Law and Liberty, September 7, 2020, the left’s “insistence that most of the West’s achievements are primarily masks for endless oppression largely flows from the left’s generally negative view of Western civilization” (emphasis mine). In this dystopia there is no arc of justice, instead, US history is irredeemably rotten to the core.
Critical race theory proceeds from the fallacy that a binary of white and black, or white and everybody else, is the only appropriate frame of reference for a discussion of race. Applying Ockham’s Razor to inconvenient facts, this binary ignores the history of racial bias against the Irish, Italian, Jewish people and many others ordinarily thought of as white. Starting with this assumed racial binary, the critical theorists contend racial bias is embedded not only in our laws, but also our language, media, political structures and culture, and they set out to look for it. Ignoring all the steps we have taken to eliminate racial prejudice from our laws and institutions, practitioners of critical race theory rediscovered what Stokely Carmichael described as “institutional racism” in his 1967 book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation.
It’s called systemic racism today, and its corollary theory holds that implicit bias exists even among those who deny any bias at all. Indeed, denial of bias is strong proof one is in fact sick with bias. This demand to override a person’s reluctance to accept the fact that she is in fact racially biased is one of the most pernicious and dangerous features of critical race theory. These are not mere thought crimes, they are unthought crimes. And the unrepentant ominously resemble dissidents in the former Soviet Union or the unruly psychiatric patients in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The Trump administration’s recent Executive Order and inquiry into Seattle’s work place training alleges that only White employees are required to admit to and denounce their racist impulses. At first blush the required training appears to violate state and federal laws prohibiting discrimination based solely on race.
Aside from the totalitarian impulse to control what people think and the words people speak, two fundamental issues should make us wary of the growth of this ideology. First, it is no accident these theorists too often are White academics and legislators. Robin Diangelo is a White academic whose popular 2018 book, “White Fragility,” is a lecture to White people about how they got race all wrong and ignorantly so.
White men legislated poverty programs in the 1960’s that in the end further impoverished Black communities. So much so that White men led by President Bill Clinton and then Senator Joe Biden legislated welfare and criminal justice reform that was directed against the Black community. The reform ended “welfare as we know it” as Clinton put it and incarcerated large numbers of Black men, “super-predators” who needed to be brought to heel as Ms. Clinton put it to an all White audience in New Hampshire. White folks telling Black folks what they need is a not so subtle form of oppression. White folks telling White folks what they shouldn’t think or say is almost as bad. Isn’t it time for White folk to stop telling Black folk what they need?
Second, the critical race ideology claims all White people are infected with the racism disease and need help regardless of who they are or where they grew up. In Diangelos’ world there are no individuals, no person is unique; instead, as a “race” we produce and reproduce racism in lockstep in every aspect of our daily lives whether we know it or not. All notions of freedom are illusory. The chains that bind us are no longer mere economic shackles, they define our very being which is, not coincidentally, not capable of redemption.
It is by definition a racist ideology, it divides our communities, and gives cover to those who want to destroy our history and institutions. No leap of imagination is required to draw a direct line from the claim that systemic racism infects our institutions and must be pulled out by its roots to the destruction of civic monuments, attacks on the police, looting of stores and burning buildings in our cities today.
As Galatians 6:7 taught us, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
Michael J. Bond
Copyright 2020
Postscript: I’ll be off the net for a week, going fishing. Need a break. Meanwhile,let’s all pray for President Trump and his bride!!!
Originally posted 2020-10-03 15:51:40.
Of course some of you do. Remember my “Open Letter to Mr. Mattis” post? Well, that post was on 5 June, and to this day it is still getting hits (43 just today). At my last count it has gotten nearly one million views, and that does not count those who shared it. Why is that happening?
Yesterday I posted one entitled: “The Coming Coup.” Folks that one is already going crazy as well.
Call me a conspiracy nut if you choose. that’s your prerogative. However, I firmly believe something big is awry. The current crop of generals and admirals are a sorry lot. The Commandant of my beloved Corps is shredding it apart piece by piece. Daily I read of instances that prove to me this election will be the biggest fraud we have ever seen anywhere in the world. The Dems are so confident and you know why? Take a quick gander of this.
Why are the Chinese making so many fake U.S. driver licenses? Why are they being shipped to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport? Why are ALL the names completely phony; yet ALL are Registered to Vote . . . and Registered as Democrats? That’s a disturbing little tidbit to discover, especially right before an election, right? Oh, and BTW, as best I can tell they are Illinois drivers licenses. I had one for way too many years, but no more! LOL
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the bulk of these fake U.S. IDs flooding into the country come from China and Hong Kong, with the rest coming in from South Korea and the U.K.
Officials in Chicago just confiscated a shipment of these fake IDs totaling nearly 20 thousand. Of course, the local news media in Chicago doesn’t see a connection to “voter fraud,” but most other people do. As a matter of fact, it’s the main thing that most people see with just three months before an election.
Okay, have I got your attention? Good, back to my favorite General, Mr. Mattis, who in my view is a POS, excuse me sir. No, I take that back, you don’t deserve a sir. You are not a retired Marine! in my view.
Hear comes a dozy of an article, -please and please comment, even if you think I am a nut case. Hell, I hope I am, but doubt it! LOL
September 10, 2020
With Bob Woodward’s anti-Trump book about to be published, the media is focusing entirely on the easily debunked claim that Trump mishandled the Wuhan virus by “lying” to the American people. What the media is ignoring, however, is a much more serious claim, which is that former Secretary of Defense General James Mattis plotted to overthrow Trump and his administration. This fact, if true, supports my long-time fear about the damage Obama inflicted on the upper echelons of the Pentagon.
The Conservative Treehouse caught the Mattis item:
According to a pre-release excerpt from the Washington Post Bob Woodward writes about a discussion between General James Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats about a plot to overthrow the elected government of the United States.
What do you call a conversation between the Defense Secretary and the head of the U.S. intelligence apparatus where they are talking about taking “collective action” to remove an elected President? That’s called sedition…. A seditious conspiracy.
It began to be clear last October that the Obama administration (with some help from Bill Clinton’s presidency) had seeded the Pentagon with leftist generals whose allegiance was to the Deep State, to cultural leftism, and to the infamous and profitable “military industrial complex” that Eisenhower warned about in 1961. In only five years, Obama had conducted a major Pentagon purge, firing almost 200 senior officers who held the old-fashioned belief that the military exists to protect America and should not be a social justice institution with limited firepower.
The upper-level officers who remained were hardcore Democrats. While still in the military, Admirable McRaven gave bin Laden a respectful, private burial. Once out of the military, he wrote an editorial for the New York Times, strongly suggesting a military coup against Trump. Barry McCaffrey, a Clinton White House officer, likened Trump to Mussolini because he canceled the White House’s newspaper subscriptions. And Obama’s Joint Chiefs Vice Chair, James Winnefeld, was deeply offended on behalf of ISIS terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi because Trump did the psychologically smart thing of telling al-Baghdadi’s followers that he died like a coward.
In November, Sundance, at The Conservative Treehouse, pointed out that, even though Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman used back channels to try to counteract his commander-in-chief’s foreign policy solely because Vindman disagreed with the policy, the Defense Department invited him right back to the NSC. To Sundance, there was only one takeaway: “The United States Military is collaborating with the CIA to remove a U.S. President from office.”
All of the above says that there is something rotten happening in the Pentagon. The implications aren’t just in the past. They’re also in the future. Michael Anton has written the best article spelling out the fact that the Democrats are openly planning a coup if Biden doesn’t win. One of the crucial points about this planned coup is that the Democrats have been explicit about military involvement.
Their plan in the event Trump wins in a given state is to send their Democrat electors to the Electoral College along with (or even in lieu of) the Republican electors. In the chaos that results, which will spill onto the streets, Democrats trust “that the military would take care of the rest.”
Anton also says that retired military officers, such as the ones I discussed above (and I’m willing to bet that includes Mattis and McRaven), have already said that they will support a coup. I’ll add that it’s likely that they have allies still within the Pentagon, people who benefit from the perpetual wars that Obama, a supposed anti-war president, nevertheless fought and instigated, and who also benefit from the pipeline flowing from the Pentagon to that profitable military industrial complex.
The laughable Atlantic article about Trump disrespecting the military was intended, not just to get military votes on November 3, but to get military coup participants after November 3. Critical Race Theory training and eight years of Obama’s social justice policies have shifted many of the enlisted ranks from strong conservatives to equally strong Democrats.
The only way to put the kibosh on all of this is for an overwhelming Trump turnout on November 3, one that reminds Democrats no matter where they are – the media, Hollywood, the military, the defense contractors, your neighborhood – that the people are behind Trump.
As I heard someone say, the Democrats have ensured that, after the election, unless a bizarre miracle happens and Biden wins overwhelmingly on (not after) November 3, there will be upheaval. However, we know from the street battles in Democrat-run cities that, if Biden does win, the disruptions will spread. If Trump wins, the upheavals will meet the full force of the law (and due process), and America can once again get down to the business of being the best, freest nation on earth.
With all this notoriety I’m getting maybe I should lock my doors at night. Nah, let em’ come, they’ll leave on a gurney. LOL Be safe and try to sleep well my friends. Keep your powder dry though.
Originally posted 2020-09-10 16:40:33.
Well, there is nothing I can add to the flowing video, except to say, he’s nailed it. Remember to send it to all your liberal friends, that is if you have any. I don’t!
Originally posted 2020-06-17 11:28:11.
Today being pre-Super Bowl Day, thought I’d throw out some things to give everyone some things to chew on.
First an excellent article by Tony Perkins. A Marine friend sent me the article and said,” The Left and its ideology are like termites, constantly eating away at the foundation of our society morals, values, ethics, and culture”.
January 30, 2020
By Tony Perkins
A recent review of U.S. special operations forces pointed to a leadership crisis in our military, concluding that leadership, discipline and accountability must be strengthened at all levels. West Point, which is supposed to be the Army’s preeminent leader development institution, hasn’t been immune to this breakdown in leadership. Earlier this month, West Point cadets attended “Honorably Living Day,” a mandatory event dedicated to promoting diversity and feminist thought where facilitators discouraged what they called “toxic masculinity.”
The curriculum featured the documentary Miss Representation, which was produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, first lady of California and wife of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.). The documentary included commentary from left-wing commentators such as Katie Couric, Rosie O’Donnell, and Jane Fonda. What does any of this have to do with fighting and winning wars? That was the question Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William G. “Jerry” Boykin asked when he joined Washington Watch yesterday to discuss this new initiative. “In no way does this help enhance the readiness of our military,” he told me. “It is a reflection of what was forced on our military in the Obama administration. The disappointing thing is that it’s still there…”
Instead of developing leaders, West Point is taking time to attack masculinity. The program even questions the phrase “be a man.” Yet, by attacking masculinity, mandatory trainings such as Honorably Living Day undermines the very characteristics our military desperately needs. General Boykin quoted George Orwell, who fought in the Spanish Civil War and observed the hardships of battle first-hand: “Orwell said, ‘We rest well in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence against those who would threaten us.'”
General Boykin argues that the campaign against masculinity inflicts a great deal of damage on society beyond the military. “This whole idea of ‘hyper-masculinity,’ which is one of the phrases that they’ve coined now… is absolute nonsense, has nothing to do with reality. It is about destroying men because they are the foundations of the family… The men are so important, and the men are walking out of their families today all over America. And this is a reflection of exactly what the crisis in masculinity is all about.” Indeed, a lack of male leadership has certainly taken its toll on American families. All the more, this highlights the importance of preserving strong and moral male leadership in the military, despite the Left’s effort to destroy it.
For centuries, men have largely been the ones fighting wars, protecting their countries, and defending their people. Instead of disparaging a perceived “toxic masculinity,” the U.S. military should be building the character of men and fostering their natural instinct to protect and defend. The strength of our military and the security of our nation depends on it.
Tony Perkins Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.
Second up. Don’t know how many of you follow the economy? I do very closely; that’s what my degree is in and I’m a hobby investor and have been for many years. Don’t make a lot of money at it, but for me, it’s fun. And I get the kicks hearing folks chat on about this and that within our economy as well as the global, when they haven’t a clue what they are talking about. I especially like the late great ads run by that billionaire for NY who considers himself a viable candidate for the upcoming election this year. Yes, I refer to Dumberg. Anyway, here’s some economic news from this past week that is simple to understand, even for a liberal.
On Thursday, the Department of Labor reported that initial jobless claims for the week ending January 25 were 216,000, a decrease of 7,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 223,000 (revised up from 211,000), however, 1,000 claims below expectations of 215,000. Importantly, the four-week moving average for claims (used as a gauge to offset volatility in the weekly numbers) was 214,500, a 1,750-claim decrease from the previous week’s revised average of 216,250 (revised up from 213,250). The low rate of layoffs reflects a strengthening labor market as claims have remained below 300,000 – the threshold typically used to categorize a healthy jobs market – for an incredible 255 consecutive weeks, the longest streak for weekly records dating back to 1967. The previous longest stretch ended in April 1970 and lasted for 161 weeks.
Thirdly, a touch of humor.
And one more for the road.
Dear Lord: The last four or five years have been very tough.
You have taken my favorite actor – Paul Newman;
My favorite actress – Elizabeth Taylor;
My favorite singer – Andy Williams;
My favorite author – Tom Clancy;
And now, my favorite comedians – Robin Williams and Joan Rivers.
I just wanted you to know that my favorite politicians are: Adam Schiff, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, Elizabeth Warren, Joe (touchy) Biden and Barry Sanders, and I also have a special place in my heart for George Soros, Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton and Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel and my favorite shoe salesman Colin Kaepernick. Amen”
Okay Gang, enjoy your weekend, and hope your team wins tomorrow. I have no dog in fight. I just hope it’s a good close game and not a blow out like some have been I heard on the news here in FL that upper level nosebleed seats are going for $7.000 each. Wow, is this a money game or what.
Originally posted 2020-02-01 11:58:45.
