Tag Archive for: TheWokeLeft

Racism in America Today

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Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

The woke lie that racism has gotten worse needs to be called out.

 

For many years, racism in America has been, to a very significant degree, a manufactured problem. When we speak about race, whether we admit it or not—and we usually don’t—we mean blacks. Black grievance largely ginned up, provides the fuel for the woke regime.

The woke Leftists, who lead the Democrats around by a nose ring, want to destroy America. We love America; the woke hate America.

The woke accusation that “America is systemically racist” is manifest nonsense. Wokeism is anti-white.

We owe individual black citizens—as we owe all citizens—fellowship and help when deserving. But to blacks as a group we owe nothing, just as no group is owed anything, nor is any individual owed anything simply by being part of a group.

The woke Left only incidentally wants to give blacks a hand up; their main goal is power. Outcome differences between blacks and others are not due to racism but to bad decisions on the part of black individuals.

As I just said, racism in America today is, to a very significant degree, a manufactured problem, crafted by woke leftists in order to overthrow the American way of life. They claim there exists an intolerable, all-pervasive system of white oppression. They call this “systemic racism,” by which they mean that racism is embedded into every nook and cranny of America life: its institutions, values, customs, and language. If you disagree, they cancel you. They may even inflict violence.

The woke tell us that racism has gotten worse, but this is drivel. As everyone can plainly see, the less actual racism there is in America, the more of it the woke Left insists it sees.

The charge of systemic racism is a propaganda trick intended to: Exploit our white guilt, demoralize us, and give moral cover to an anti-American, immoral revolution. This is no longer the well-intended effort of old-school liberals to improve America, but the evil scheme of woke revolutionaries to destroy it.

The woke Left accuses America of being “systemically racist” not because it’s true, nor even because they think it’s true, but because it is the most powerful weapon in their arsenal. After all, if they can convince us that the American way of life really is systemically racist—that is, evil—then we should throw it out.

Of course, America has sinned. Show me a country that hasn’t. The fact is, America is as good as it gets.

To the woke Left I say, “If you want to destroy America, then we will fight you and defeat you. America is not yours to destroy.”

The primary goal of the woke regime is group outcome equality. Most Americans, on the other hand, believe society’s goal should be merit. These two goals are utterly irreconcilable. You can’t offer admission to college, medical school, law school, flight training, or anything else according to race and other quotas and, at the same time, offer admission according to merit. It’s one or the other: merit or group quotas.

These irreconcilable goals make this struggle a war. It is, thankfully, a cold war, and we should hope it remains cold. But we should also not lose sight of the fact that the woke Left seeks total victory. Most Americans, and virtually all politicians, fail to notice. You cannot win a war if you don’t know you are in one.

Blacks commit more than 50 percent of the violent crime in America; yet are only about 13 percent of the population. The woke tell us this is due to racism, but Americans know better. We know that racism does not cause more crime, or out-of-wedlock births, or lower academic achievement. We know that patriotism, hard work, personal responsibility, secure borders, and moral virtue are not, as the woke Left contends, racist ideals. Rather, they are the means to a happy, free, and prosperous nation.

We know that by and large, it is not racism but culture that causes outcome differences. But the woke make it very difficult for the rest of us to say it, because if it’s culture that explains outcome differences then the blame rests not on whites but on blacks.

If differences in outcome persist, as they will if we remain on the present course, it is near certain the woke leftists will ban the measurement of the relevant statistics—crime rates for example. Naturally, these differences will not disappear just because we stop measuring them. It’s like a young child who puts her hands over eyes, believing the reality in front of her disappears.

The woke say they want to liberate black Americans; the truth is mostly they want to keep blacks on their knees. Why? To justify their ongoing revolution. If blacks are on their knees, then the need for radical reform never ends. The effect of this on actual black communities is disastrous. The woke Left wants to destroy the traditional mother-father family; yet such families are just what struggling black Americans need most. The woke openly discourage black Americans from joining the American way of life, teaching them that “white” values are all designed to oppress blacks.

The woke leftists call for more political programs, including reparations, to reduce outcome differences, even though we know after 60 years and trillions of dollars that such programs only make things worse.

When the woke are pressuring us to continue to adopt such programs we must say: “We will not surrender to your extortion.” Woke mayors in big cities rope off violent neighborhoods, make the police back off, and let criminal blacks shoot each other. Predictably, innocent blacks suffer the most. This is callous indifference of a high order.

The woke leftists assault our history: they make it a story of nonstop, hateful racist oppression to fan the flames of resentment. At the same time, their revisionist so-called “history” overstates black accomplishments to give self-esteem to black students. But no one, least of all blacks, is fooled. We all know genuine self-esteem can only be earned.

When we teach about America to our children of any race, we must keep in mind that one day we may need them to cross a foreign beach while exposed to enemy bullets raining down on them from above. For that, our children must learn to love and cherish their country.

The woke tell young black Americans they cannot succeed in America because there is so much racism. This is perhaps the cruelest part of the woke Left’s agenda: to actively discourage children from pursuing a life of moral, spiritual, and cultural excellence.

If we cannot say these things, then we’re abandoning the civilization that we have a duty to carry forward, a duty imposed by our glorious past, which includes the story of the many men who died under that hail of bullets from above while crossing exposed beaches at Normandy.

In order to stay in power, the woke leftists must continually remind white Americans how racist they are. So, every year or so there is a big racial incident—some invented, some not. The case of Jussie Smollett is an example of the invented kind. An actual incident was that of George Floyd. What supposedly justified the Floyd riots was based on three lies piled on top of each other: Floyd’s death was the work of a racist cop, white police looking to kill blacks, and America is racist.

In this case, as with all others, most of us confessed our sins of racism and announced in the most earnest of tones that at long last we need an honest reckoning with our racist past. And this time we really mean it. Enough already.

To my fellow Americans, I say, “I cannot prove to you that America is not racist. But perhaps you can prove it to me. Are you racist? Your friends, neighbors, churches, and police forces? Is the traditional mother/father family racist? A country with borders? How about patriotism, hard work, colorblindness, punctuality, and responsibility?” Are these racist? The answers to these questions, even by most Democrats, will almost always be “no.”

We must not buckle when they call us “racist.” If they call you “racist” tell them that is “horse manure.” Don’t debate them. They don’t want to debate; they want to criminalize debate.

Part of convincing us that we are racist requires that we swallow one of the Biden Administration’s biggest lies: America is about to be run over by white supremacists. Now, do you know a single white supremacist in a position of power in America? Indeed, do you know a single white supremacist anywhere? I don’t, and I bet neither do you. But beware: the woke Left will take every opportunity to bait Americans into acts the wokes can characterize as the work of white supremacists. And then crush them.

But the woke leftists are playing with fire. It’s clear to all who have eyes to see that wokeism is an attack on white males. But white males are sick and tired of the trillions being spent on civil rights to negative effect. Sick and tired as well of shakedown artists like Al Sharpton and Ibram Kendi. Of having their values mocked, and of being endlessly accused of “racism” and “white privilege,” as they see their children being taught that they are white oppressors and America is evil. This is an explosive combination.

Over our history we have vanquished many enemies, most notably the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. But we are losing the peace. We have allowed totalitarianism to be imposed from within.

Our republic was formally birthed in 1776, but it was thousands of years in the making. Our founders stood on the shoulders of many who had preceded them. Colorblindness; freedom of speech, conscience, and association; a government of laws, not of men; separation of church and state; a military subject to civil authority; the nation-state to name just a handful—these are monuments to moral and political wisdom that took centuries to be achieved.

But they are being ripped apart by fanatics who believe that the mere accusation of “systemic racism” will bring us to our knees. If we don’t fight back, we will be brought to our knees. Thousands of years of building, possibly gone in a single generation.

Fortunately, there are many patriotic Americans, Democrats as well as Republicans, who know that America is a gift to the world. There are many who know that America was built not on racism, but in spite of it. There are many who cherish America’s traditions and are grateful to have inherited them.

There are many who understand that our challenge today was Lincoln’s challenge: increased devotion to the principles of the founding. They know that these principles are the best antidote to racism. And they know as well that America fights for these principles on behalf of people everywhere.

Who will support the many? I will. And I am confident you will. We rightly love America; the woke leftists hate it, but they have the upper hand. It’s that simple and that dangerous. Thank you very much.

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This article was published by American Mind and is reproduced with permission.  This originally was a speech given by the author to the National Republican Women’s Club.

The New Ugly Americans

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Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The old cultural imperialism was supposedly greedy corporatism like Disneyland, McDonald’s, and Starbucks sprouting up worldwide to supplant local competitors.

But these businesses spread because they appealed to free-will consumer demand abroad. They were not imposed top down.

The U.S. presence in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021 amid the greatest American military humiliation in modern history. A billion-dollar new embassy was abandoned. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new infrastructure at the huge Bagram Airbase was dumped.

We still do not know how many billions of dollars of sophisticated new weapons were left to the Taliban and now are making their way through global terrorists’ marts.

Yet, in our skedaddle, the LGBTQ flag still flew high from our new Kabul embassy. A George Floyd mural was prominent on city streets.

And gender studies programs – to the tune of $787 million in American subsidies – were showcased at Kabul University, in one of the most conservative Islamic countries in the world.

Rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter banners have hung from our embassy in South Korea.

Such partisan cultural activism is a diplomatic first.

The woke Left has now weaponized the country’s diplomatic missions abroad to advance highly partisan and controversial agendas that can offend their hosts, and do not represent the majority of American voters at home.

American foreign policy toward other nations seems now to hinge on their positions on transgender people, LGBTQ promotion, abortion, climate change, and an array of woke issues from using multiple pronouns on passports to showcasing transgender ambassadors.

The Biden Administration in January 2022 stopped the EastMed pipeline. That joint effort of our allies Cyprus, Greece, and Israel sought to bring much needed clean-burning Mediterranean natural gas to southern Europe.

Apparently, our diplomats felt it violated our own New Green Deal orthodoxies. So we imperialists interfered to destroy a vital project of our closest allies.

The White House manifesto called the “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality” offers a blueprint for how to massage nations abroad to accept our values that are increasingly at odds with much of the world’s.

Do Americans really believe that embracing drag-queen shows at military bases, abortion to the moment of birth, transgender men competing in women’s sports, and the promised effort to ban the internal combustion engine are effective ways to ensure good relations with the United States?

No wonder the Biden Administration’s new cultural imperialism is proving disastrous for a variety of reasons.

One, these imperialistic and chauvinistic agendas are pushed abroad at the very time the respect for the U.S. military is at an all-time low. It was humiliated in Afghanistan. It is now unable to recruit sufficient qualified soldiers. Its stocks of critical weapons are depleted.

The Pentagon leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, along with Joe Biden, do not radiate competence.

But they do exude woke pieties.

While we offend Middle East oil exporters and Central Europeans, China allies with Russia and Iran. India and Turkey triangulate away from the United States. Sanctimonious hectoring while appearing weak is a bad combination.

Two, these warped standards are incoherent. Is an abortion-on-demand, totalitarian China therefore an ally? How could we damn supposedly non-woke Saudi Arabia as we begged it to pump more of its non-green oil before the 2022 midterms?

Some of our most loyal allies are in Eastern Europe – Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania. These countries have experienced traumatic histories on the front lines against Islamic Ottoman expansionism, czarist and Soviet aggression, and German Nazi bullying and invasion.

They are democratic and pro-American. Yet they are now targeted by our woke imperialists because they remain steadfast as the most religious and traditional of our European allies.

Yet these nations would be more likely to dispatch credible forces for NATO’s defense than many of our left-wing, woke, and militarily less capable Western European nations.

Three, most of the 7.9 billion people in the world are not woke. They are aspiring to obtain a modicum of the luxury and affluence taken for granted in America.

The rest of the planet worries whether it will have enough food, energy, security, and shelter to live one more day. For most, the incessant, woke virtue-signaling from affluent Americans comes across as the whiny bullying of pampered, self-righteous – and increasingly neurotic – imperialists.

Four, traditionally the party that controls the State Department does not politically weaponize its embassies with wedge issues that have not won majority support among Americans.

Such abject politicalization rattles and alienates foreign nations. They do not want to be drawn into the American Left’s internal propaganda efforts that they know are bitterly controversial inside the United States.

How odd that those on the Left who in the past decried “American imperialism” are now proving the greatest imperialists of all.

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This article was published by The Daily Caller and is reproduced with permission.

Universities are Losing the Battle on Free Speech

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Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Is the era of woke censorship coming to an end on campus? The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN, among others, are heralding a new epoch in which university leaders stand up to snowflake students. While it’s encouraging that progressive legacy media outlets are nailing their free speech colours to the mast, these are counter-wavelets on the surface of a rising swell. Progressive illiberalism is not going anywhere because it is baked into the demography of tomorrow’s professors.

The Post cites a number of examples of institutional pushback, including Cornell’s refusal to implement a mandatory trigger warnings policy on academic freedom grounds. The paper and others note the encouraging defence of liberalism at Penn and Vanderbilt, along with Harvard’s new Steven Pinker-fronted Council on Academic Freedom, a group of over 50 faculty members who have robustly lined up against the culture of progressive conformity on campus.

The sceptic in me says it’s one thing to strike down a trigger warning for an innocuous book which doesn’t touch sacred progressive beliefs. Penn’s current trial of controversial law professor Amy Wax for legal speech will be a far more important barometer of the new administrative liberalism.

Still, the gradual emergence of a liberal centre willing to speak its name is cause for optimism. This came to broader attention with the Harper’s Letter in July 2020, continued with an Economist editorial in April 2021, and was followed by the first New York Times editorial in March 2022. Since then, the NYT has run a series of articles challenging campus conformity and has even been willing to court protests by running pieces sceptical of gender reassignment surgery. WaPo is late to the game, but confirms the trend.

Why the turnaround? Incentives explain a lot here. First, some of the energy in cancel culture has ebbed post-George Floyd, with the number of cancellation attempts dropping back to the (still high) levels of the mid-2010s (Figure 1). Second, the attacks on universities from the Right, encapsulated in Ron DeSantis’s campaigns against critical race theory and gender theory, permit liberals to use a “both sides” defence of liberalism. Conservative media attention also focuses centrist liberals on the need for internal reform rather than the prospect of further embarrassment. The Right has been a vital ingredient in the new liberalism…..

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Continue reading this article at Unherd/ThePost.

Wokeness And Conservative Economic Power

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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

As an observer of both the social scene and politics, it is interesting to see the reaction of Conservative Americans to two recent events.

One is the purported firing of Tucker Carlson from Fox News and the other was the transgender pandering marketing effort by Bud Light.  Related to the second, we could also add the parental revolt against transgenderism and the use of public schools to sexualize children.  In the latter case, parents are both moving their children out of public schools and becoming more active in local school boards.

For many years, the Conservative movement has been like herding cats.  The Left advances a radical agenda, and at first, conservatives seem to blink in disbelief and get knocked back on their heels.  By the time they regain their composure, debate the issue, and start to organize, the Left usually has solidified their position, and whatever they were pushing has become entrenched policy.

Think tanks on our side of the political spectrum crank out thoughtful papers after the fact, legacy conservative organizers rake in money, and we continue to lose.  We never seem to successfully strike back.

The chief reason for the rise of Trump, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy is they are willing to fight and take on both political and cultural issues.   And, they often win! As these men have succeeded, Conservatives have started to feel more comfortable flexing their cultural muscles using economic boycotts. 

The Left always seems to be able to coordinate their efforts better than we have, largely due to the collectivist nature of their thinking.  For sure they have had their internal debates, but they seem able to patch them up quickly and seize the initiative.

Of course, it really helps when you control the media, the schools, network news, Hollywood, and all the other cultural levers of influence.  The Left has always been great and starting social contagion and getting people to want to fit in with what they are doing and isolate anyone who resists.

It was amusing in the 1960s and 70s when everyone dressed like a hippy all the while professing their independence of thought.  The Left has been a master in setting cultural fashion since.

Conservatives usually are in a state of bewildered reaction.  I often think of William F. Buckley’s statement in the founding of National Review back in 1955 and his desire to stand athwart history yelling stop!  It is amazing how little has changed. And,  we haven’t stopped diddly squat, have we?  It has been quite a  slide downward since 1955.

If you look at the post-war history of the Conservative and Libertarian Movement, other than school choice, ending the draft, and electing Ronald Reagan; we don’t have much to show for our efforts.  We are still pretty much on the defensive although admittedly offering stiffer resistance.

What victories we have won seem like temporary political victories, but we rarely have changed cultural institutions in the direction we would like to see them go.  We are finally beginning to offer some competition to be sure, and that is good, but only on talk radio do conservative/libertarian views seem dominant.

Either the public does not hear our message, does not like our message, or we are poor salesmen of our ideas.  Which do you think it is?

This seems to be changing.  Almost like a school of fish or a flock of birds, Conservatives are starting to coordinate their cultural inclinations without any central political authority and without long delays for debate and consideration.  The tool of choice is the economic boycott, which might strike some as anti-market and hence contradictory to Conservative principles.  Not really.  It is simply exercising the economic choice NOT to do business with firms that attack your values.

We are starting to strike back and strike back hard.  

We admit, there is a risk in that.  It would be nice to consider all angles.  But in today’s world, the survival of the flock may have to rely on subtle political body language followed by swift action.

This has manifested itself in a catastrophic loss in business for InBev, the Belgian conglomerate that owns Bud Light, and Fox News, a genuinely conservative news network. 

News reports indicate key executives from the beer giant have been fired and the firm is spending millions in new marketing to try to staunch the bleeding.  They apparently think they can undo the damage by hiring some Republican lobbyists.

Oddly, social media, which has largely been hostile to conservative ideas, has played a large role in this reaction, both with speed and intensity.

In the case of Bud Light, the eruption of satire on social media about their transgendered spokesgirl/man/whatever…and other reactions, is a marketing nightmare for the company.  It is doubtful they can ever resurrect that brand.  As one commentator put it, Bud Light is a fake beer being promoted by a fake girl. But don’t worry, InBev is a monster that controls about 224 brands of beer.

I recently attended a function that offered an open bar and the comments about Bud Light were both hysterical and powerful.  Something had shifted almost instantaneously without much thought or any central coordination.  People are done with that brand…forever.  Deep down people felt they must strike back in the only way they know how.  Don’t buy.

If corporations want to go woke, they will go broke.  It doesn’t make good business sense to alienate over half the country.  Let executives express their political opinions on their own time and on their own dime.

It took quite a while for Bed Bath Beyond to fade after shunning My Pillow, but the reaction time seems to be shortening dramatically.  Some like Nike have hardly felt our anger. Others like Apple and Microsoft are protected by monopoly status.

But who among us cannot go without Bud Light for the rest of our lives?  Wherever there is competition, let the woke go broke.

In the case of Fox News, we have run several videos by Megyn Kelly going through the numbers and we advise you to view those videos for details.  Suffice it to say, it has been a dramatic 50% or so decline in viewership.  Cancellations of Fox Nation have also been torrential.

This is a shame in a way, because of all the news networks, Fox has been the most receptive to conservative-leaning talent.  All the remaining conservatives on Fox have been harmed as well because Tucker brought eyes to the network.  Unlike InBev, Fox does not have hundreds of brands under their label.  Their brand has been Conservatism, which was completely unserved by the other networks.  That was the insight from Roger Ailes that made Fox successful.  Has management at Fox forgotten that?  Yes, it would so appear.

This reaction is a necessary way of telling Fox that Conservatives don’t feel like being the “controlled opposition” even though they appreciate that Fox has helped spread conservative views. We are not a captive audience.  And, when Fox gets terribly out of line, we simply will spend time on other Conservative sites. 

Judging my own reactions, I will watch less of Fox for quite a while.  I want them punished but not destroyed.

I will watch more videos and podcasts and will follow Tucker wherever he reappears.

In both cases, it demonstrates that executives at both firms just don’t understand their customers and don’t understand the frustration and anger that Conservatives currently feel.  And it also shows that increasingly, Conservatives are getting over their hesitancy in using raw economic power. 

There is a large and varied independent media growing.  The Prickly Pear is part of a larger movement of decentralized news and opinion sources.  We hope you will spend more time with us until Fox makes some kind of concession, fires those responsible,  or makes some other move we can applaud.

Soon, The Prickly Pear will be offering our readers a variety of podcasts besides our articles and videos.

Like InBev, Fox will survive.  But both have severely tarnished their brands and conservatives are making them pay for their betrayal.  But the speed and ferocity of the reaction must now be noticed in the executive suites of every corporation.

We may finally be at peak wokeness and a slow retreat will begin.  The blowback has been just too costly.

Denialism: A Woke Way to Stifle Dissent

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Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

As with misinformation, labeling someone who disagrees with the current standardthink as a “denier” has become, pardon the term, endemic amongst the woke.

Covid denier, climate denier, election denier, science denier – are all bandied about to immediately end debate, tar any difference of opinion as literally insane, and depict anyone who ever disagrees with you as stupid and evil. This epithet is now even being used pre-emptively to makes sure that no matter what anyone who now or ever questions the move to ban gas stoves will not be doing so based on facts or logic but because of their “gas stove denialism.”

Like so much woke terminology, the initial meaning of the term is far removed from its current usage, though it has the distinct advantage of being generally familiar, allowing it to be “Trojan Horsed” (admittedly, some arise sui generis) into public discourse.

Common usage of the term “in denial” (besides the joke about the river in Egypt) seemed to come to the fore mostly in regards to an inability to face up to an obvious, almost always, personal truth.

In denial about your drinking, in denial about the fact that your kids are actually monsters, in denial about your sexuality (nothing to do with today’s genderpalooza) and on and on.

But, like in almost every case in which the woke have stolen a term from the self-help/therapy movements the term has been utterly bastardized. For example, trigger and safe space are now used in the opposite way of their initial intent – see here.

All of these terms started as ways to focus on personal responsibilities and actions and not in any way, shape, or form carried societal baggage and/or implications.

And then, in the 1980s, there was a shift, though a rather understandable one. There are those who, sadly and stupidly, deny that the Holocaust happened, that Hitler didn’t kill millions of Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals and the disabled and political opponents and, well, it’s a very long and terrible list.

Hence the term “Holocaust denier,” an accurate and correct description of someone who, despite the overwhelming physical evidence of the event, denies its occurrence, almost always because of their personal political ideology.

It is crucial to emphasize that denying the Holocaust happened is extremely different from the current crop of dissent-crushing “denials.” The former involves a very specific proven fact; the latter – climate, election, etc. – all involve differences of opinions and reasonable and appropriate debates over whether something did, or is going to, happen.

But the appropriately fetid stench attached to “Holocaust denier” intentionally and destructively is made to come along with all of the current “denials.” In other words, if you are an election denier or climate denier you are just as terrible as a Holocaust denier even though nothing could be further from the truth.

If used in its initial meaning, a climate denier would be one who claims the climate doesn’t exist, an election denier would a person who said the 2020 election never happened.

And no – that’s not what is being claimed.

The debate over climate change is one that should be taken seriously and done impartially; the discussion around the glaring voting security issues that appeared in 2020 should be considered similarly. The science denier epithet attached to anyone who wondered about the risk and efficacy of the COVID vaccines is especially egregious because “science” cannot, by definition, be believed or denied – while technically a noun it is in fact a verb, it is a process and one cannot “follow the science,” just as one cannot follow a car one is driving.

Climate denier/denialism implies ostrich-like stupidity – how can a person possibly disagree with the fact that we’re all either going to drown or burn or freeze or dehydrate or starve or flood or desert or disease or war ourselves to death in the next few decades unless we do something NOW? Never mind that doing most of the things proposed NOW are unnecessary, contradictory, contra-indicated, and could end modern civilization as we know it and that, considering the utterly scientifically shoddy if not outright fraudulent actions many in the climate brigade have taken, should not even be included in any rational discussion of the topic.

The same is true with election denier. The 2020 election was quite possibly the most unusual election in the nation’s history. Barriers put in place years ago to try to ensure secure and accurate voting were obliterated, massive numbers of ballot were mailed out practically willy-nilly, the unconscionable practice of ballot harvesting was normalized in many states, counts were stopped and started and dragged on for days and on and on. Just these undisputed facts alone are enough for intelligent reasonable involved citizens to legitimately wonder if the election was truly fair and honest.

And it should be noted that in all three cases – climate, election, and science – that those who toss the “denier” term about are also those same people who ignore, denigrate, and outright block any attempt to actually figure out what exactly happened. Remember: If you can evade any impartial investigation, you can declare with confidence that no investigation has ever found fault with your claims of the final and definitive and certain truth of your position.

There are people who benefit from advertising “denialism.” From last week’s private jet and meat and booze and hooker and billionaire-fueled Davos event to legacy media desperate to keeps its subscribers terrified and therefore more likely to continue to subscribe to the tastefully decorated hallways and board rooms of massive financial institutions and international foundations and agencies and organizations to academics desperate to secure grant funding and make a name for themselves to tech giants who wish everyone lived by their algorithms because that would make selling ads so much easier to people who yearn for the psychological comfort of social acceptance and the feeling of being right all the time – these are the people that benefit every time someone outside their circle is called a denier.

In the end, for the truth to prevail, “denialism” must be denied its power to stifle dissent, obfuscate facts, and intellectually segregate those with other opinions, those with legitimate questions, those who are not in denial of reality.

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This article was published by Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Elon Musk Nukes Scott Kelly Over Wokeness And Dr. Fauci

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Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

Twitter CEO Elon Musk slammed Scott Kelly, astronaut and the brother of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) in a tweet Sunday evening after Kelly called out the 51-year-old executive over mocking the use of pronouns.

“Elon, please don’t mock and promote hate toward already marginalized and at-risk-of-violence members of the #LGBTQ+ community,” Kelly tweeted. “They are real people with real feelings. Furthermore, Dr. Fauci is a dedicated public servant whose sole motivation was saving lives.”

Musk responded, “I strongly disagree. Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone.”

“As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people,” Musk added. “Not awesome imo.”

Kelly’s comments were in response to a tweet that Musk posted early Sunday morning, in which he stated, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” an hour after another tweet warning that things were about to “get spicy.”

Musk’s latest tweets could suggest damning information might soon be revealed about Fauci, the government virologist whose advice set COVID policies — including school lockdowns, economic shutdowns, and mask and vaccine mandates — under two administrations.

Fauci’s defenders have elevated him to god-like status over the last three years, with yard signs saying “In Fauci We Trust” and votive candles bearing his image. But a growing chorus of critics blame the octogenarian head of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases and current chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden for blocking investigation into the possibility that COVID leaked from a Chinese lab, where his office had funded dangerous bat virus research, as well as his heavy-handed advice to close schools and businesses during the pandemic.

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This article was published by The Daily Wire and is reproduced with permission.

NBA Suspends Phoenix Suns Owner Robert Sarver, Fines Him $10 Million After Probe Found he Used Racial Slurs, Made Sexist Comments Toward Female Employees

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Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Editors’ Note: We can’t determine whether the charges made against Mr. Sarver are true or not. It would seem the NBA thinks so and they are judge, jury, and executioner. However, it is worth noting sports owners have been at the forefront of promoting their sport as the spearpoint of left-wing social protest, especially on racial and sexual matters. In this world, the use of words is paramount and meaningless gestures grow in stature. This has largely ruined the entertainment experience of following sports, which is a diversion from the controversies of the day. Ironically,  sport is also one of the few areas remaining where merit and talent are rewarded. Merit and talent are devalued under the current smothering egalitarian ethos embraced by sports franchises, even though sport itself does just the opposite. Moreover, there is a point in revolutions when the movement begins to consume its own children. It would seem we have reached that stage in the process. Those who are punished by the mob often are selected on both irrational and inconsistent criteria. For example, rap artists like Cardi B use the N-word constantly as well as sexually denigrating language. Yet Cardi B gets interviewed by Hillary Clinton and no one is concerned. To read the lyrics to her hit song and get a sense of her erudition, click here. But should a white sports owner allegedly use such terms, banishment is not sufficient. Notice as well, that he is not being criminally charged with molesting anyone or physically harming anyone. He used “words” that others found “offensive” in his case, but then these same or worse words are not only ignored in other contexts but are praised as an artistic achievement by former feminist Presidential candidates. Sports are welcome to the contradictory left-wing world they helped create. Mr. Sarver is just one child of the revolution that must be sacrificed.

 

The NBA announced on Tuesday it suspended Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver and fined him $10 million after an investigation found he used the N-word at least five times and made ‘sexist’ comments toward female employees.

Sarver will be suspended for one year and must complete a ‘training program’ after a year-long investigation revealed his behavior created a ‘toxic’ work environment.

The probe into Sarver’s conduct began after ESPN published a November 2021 article based on dozens of current and former employees alleging he used racial slurs and made misogynistic comments.

Robert Sarver has denied the allegations…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Gateway Pundit.

If Conservatives are the New Punks, are Progressives the New Puritans?

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Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Conservatives, particularly those linked with the Moral Majority, have typically been viewed as the fun police. Every week, right-wing radio hosts and TV talking heads objected to the abundance of sex, violence, drugs, and decadence in the lives of Americans. Dungeons & Dragons weren’t just a kid’s game but rather a gateway to Satanism. Rock music wasn’t just fun to dance to but promoted free love and endorsed drug use. Violent movies weren’t just entertaining stories but were responsible for violent crimes. Whether it was on TV, at the movies, being played on the radio, or being sold in the stores, there always seemed to be something prudish conservative critics could point out that millions of normal Americans enjoyed, highlighting the moral decline of the United States. But for some, the days of Glenn Beck condemning the lyrics of My Chemical Romance and Cooper Lawrence decrying the sex scenes in the videogame Mass Effect on Fox News seem like a distant memory.

Today, it is rightwing personalities like The Daily Wire’s Michael J. Knowles, comedian and Fox News host Kat Timpf, Mary Katharine Ham and Vic Matus on the Getting Hammered Podcast, and Twitter sensation “Comfortably Smug,” who seem to be having all the fun. Shows featuring online shock jocks like Louder with Crowder and PragerU revel in entertaining their audiences by trolling liberals and mocking the bizarre beliefs held by extreme progressives. Between the copious amounts of Bang Energy drinks, the irreverent speeches, and the presence of adult film stars, companies like Turning Point USA have conferences that can almost resemble a rock concert. Further, compared to the straight-laced image of former Republican presidents, Donald Trump’s opulent lifestyle, crude demeanor, and ridiculous memeablity seem to have been attractions, not drawbacks, for many voters. All of this has led some commentators to declare conservatism the new “punk rock,” a sentiment that has been echoed and embraced across much of the MAGA right.

In turn, the left—once the bastion of people eager to “stick it to the man” and preachers of anti-conformity—has become the home of “the new Puritans,” according to Commentary’s Noah Rothman in his new book. While moral panics have been constant fixtures of the post-New Left university campus, as Rothman highlights, they have now begun to manifest in parts of the food industry, the entertainment business, and the publishing world, just to name a few. As Rothman’s subtitle denotes, a “war on fun” is being raged by energized activists and nothing the average American enjoys can escape it. From the entertainment we watch, to the comedy we laugh at, to the clothing we wear, to even the food we consume, a new kind of fun policing has emerged over recent years to take issue with all of it. So many of the things Americans take for granted as sources of enjoyment, entertainment, and escapism are now deemed “problematic,” precisely because they remain avenues for fun. As evident from so many online outrages, those willing to dissent and criticize these everchanging progressive orthodoxies might soon find themselves at the wrong end of the Twitter mob and quickly jobless. But for Rothman, this isn’t just a kind of puritanical progressivism, but rather, a new manifestation of Puritanism itself.

Though The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum and plenty of others have likewise compared this anxiety wrought by social media’s call-out and cancel culture to a new kind of puritanism, Rothman’s assessment is distinctive in that he argues that “woke progressivism” isn’t just analogous with Puritanism, but rather has direct historical ties to it. Indebted to George McKenna’s The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism (2008), Rothman argues that far beyond the colonial period, the United States owes much of its cultural norms and traditions, on the left and the right, to the legacy of the Puritans, and the country has been continually shaped by their spiritual descendants. From evangelicals eager to Christianize 19th-century America to crusading efforts of the temperance movement to prohibit alcohol in the early 20th century, the United States has repeatedly seen the rise and fall of various Puritanisms.

Rothman’s analysis in many ways complements John McWhorter’s assessment that “wokeism” (loosely defined) has become a new religion for those on the left eager to force conversions, crush infidels, and punish heretics. But while McWhorter and Rothman agree that this intense zealotry has a religious component, Rothman does not go so far as to say “wokeism” is a new religion per se, due to the lack of a deity/deities (or “superhuman powers” as the University of Notre Dame’s Christian Smith would describe them). Even so, for Rothman, its ideological adherents manifest an enthusiasm that can only be compared to religious zealotry. While the new Puritans may not share the intense Protestant ethos of their 17th-century counterparts, what they do share according to Rothman is a commitment to “waging war on decadence, frivolity, and pleasure for its own sake” as well as a “seriousness” that “looks more to the uncommitted observer like fanaticism.”

Examples of this new Puritanism offered by Rothman are as frightening as they are funny, and troublingly frequent. The New Puritans recounts sagas of outrage and spectacles of progressives, from the fate that befell former host of The Bachelor Chris Harrison, the N.F.L. playing two national anthems (“the Star-Spangled Banner” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing”) to display its commitment to anti-racism, the championing of anti-comic Hannah Gadsby, as well as the rise and fall of the restaurant Holy Land. Though many of Rothman’s case studies are extreme, one does not have to go far to find similar instances of people being branded with a scarlet letter for bucking any given trend in activism.

Throughout the book, Rothman offers readers comparative case studies between the 17th-century Puritanism and today’s so-called new Puritans. Both dislike how sports distracted audiences from the more important subjects, namely the Gospel for the old and the work of antiracism for the new. Both held strong moralistic approaches to the consumption of food and alcohol, critical of those who would enjoy food for its own sake rather than devote their diets to higher ends. Also, both hold apocalyptic world views about the imminence of the end of days, with the new Puritans constantly warning about the fast-approaching dangers of climate danger rather than the Second Coming of Christ. In Rothman’s view, one would be hard pressed to see much of a difference between the dour op-eds stemming from BuzzFeed, The Guardian, and The New Yorker and the theological indictments of Cotton Mather, Benjamin Coleman, and Jeremiah Burroughs.

Many of Rothman’s comparative attempts between 17th-century Puritans and modern progressives, while interesting and at times humorous, do not go beyond surface level similarities.

But in attempting to directly link today’s progressives with historic Puritanism, Rothman’s arguments suffer from many of the same problems McKenna’s do. Rothman repeatedly labels almost every reformist movement from the 19th century onwards as “puritan” inspired or “puritanical” in effect, despite their dramatically different theologies and contexts. Many of Rothman’s comparative attempts between 17th-century Puritans and modern progressives, while interesting and at times humorous, do not go beyond surface-level similarities due to a rich and complex historical context that one cannot grasp in a book like this.

In doing so, the term “Puritan” is continually stretched well beyond its historical meaning and context which makes it difficult to keep the throughlines of Rothman’s argument straight. What is apparent throughout The New Puritans is Rothman’s familiarity with the excellent scholarship of Michael Winship, and Rothman does an exemplary job at dispelling many of the myths surrounding Puritans. But despite these attempts, one cannot help but see H. L. Mencken’s uncharitable view that Puritanism, at its core, is “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” underlying much of Rothman’s presentation.

Early on, Rothman confesses that he is preaching to the choir, acknowledging that his book will be most readily consumed by those already mindful of these intense cultural war actors. Because of this, it is doubtful that his warnings will reach those who probably should heed them the most. Though this complaint could be leveled at any number of conservative thinkers and commentators, Rothman’s goal is to apply an intellectual framework to an observable phenomenon, offering conservatives a means for analysis. Likewise, as with so many books designed for a culturally engaged conservative audience, terms like “the left,” “progressives,” and “liberals” quickly become unwieldy.

Because almost all these controversies (or non-controversies) begin on social media, particularly Facebook or Twitter, one quickly gets the impression that this phenomenon is reserved, for the most part, for the “very online.” We all might “live on campus now” as Andrew Sullivan puts it, but certainly not to the same degree or intensity as those hyper-engaged on certain corners of the internet. While The New Puritans is rich with anecdotes, it is short of hard data to comprehend how widespread and how encouraged this kind of “anti-fun progressivism” is. Even so, if Rothman is correct, most ordinary citizens will not be touched by the intensity of the so-called new puritans, but rather the subtle but creeping efforts of like-minded reformists. Furthermore, given the steady diet of online outrage being dished from the right, for example the decrying of LGBT representation in animated Disney movies like Lightyear or the lyrics such as Cardi B’s W.A.P., there is still plenty of conservative puritanism to go around.

Regardless of the gaps in Rothman’s thesis, his antidote, like other critics of online shaming is well taken: Log off (or even delete your accounts) and have fun in the real world with real friends and family. But for those braver, Rothman charges readers to mock the new Puritans into irrelevancy, the tried and true (though equally perilous) tactic used against the Puritans of yesteryears. Much like the scope, influence, and power of this new kind of puritanism, how many people will be willing to risk scarlet letters is an open question.

*****

This article was published by Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.

YouTuber J.P. Sears’ Skewering of Covid-19 Shamanism

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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Warning: This article describes crude adult humor.

 

YouTuber J.P. Sears’ skewering of Covid-19 shamanism seemed a bit dated to those at my table at one of his middle America standup shows this summer. We had moved on from those pagan rituals more than two years earlier.

Still, the sold-out flyover audience roared and cheered as Sears repeatedly sucker-punched the global ruling class’s irrational and authoritarian Covid response. It was that response, the long-haired redhead told the audience, that moved the oddball YouTuber’s mission “from making people laugh to waking them up.”

Before 2020, Sears was a YouTuber who pilloried other social tics, like psychosomatic gluten sensitivities and the narcissism of the “spiritual, but not religious” crowd. The ruling class’s Covid policies inflamed a hippie-projecting guy into a biting satirist of the woke left.

Pioneering a form of comedy that could be called “clapter for the right” also appears to have amped Sears’ career. His summer tour not only sold out repeatedly, but superfans also coughed up double to do a group Q&A with him after each show.

Sears’ AwakenWithJP YouTube channel is now at 2.7 million subscribers. His videos regularly rake in hundreds of thousands of views, sometimes millions. A video featuring his jacked male body in a female racing swimsuit is at nearly 5 million views. “How to Be a Woke White Person” has hit more than 3 million. YouTube has taken down a few of his videos, another indication of his success. It’s also likely one consideration — besides money and career leveling up — behind Sears developing his own email list and going on tour.

Laughing So Hard It Hurts

Onstage as online, Sears wasn’t nuanced about going for the political jugular. Although his press team politely declined an interview with The Federalist for this article (maybe they wanted me to cough up the extra $75 for the Q&A?), last year Sears told a lefty Spokane, Washington, newspaper interviewer that the ruling class’s Covid oppression transformed his political apathy into white-hot flames.

When COVID hit, I started realizing our freedoms are being taken away. … Pro-freedom became a conservative movement. Giving up freedom became a movement on the left.

I was never political before, but I’m insanely behind freedom. I have conservative values. During the spring of 2020, me being pro-freedom caused some backlash. I realized if I spoke of my personal truth, I would possibly lose some of my audience, but I had to follow my heart and be true to myself. What happened is that my audience has grown exponentially, since the majority of comics lean left. So few comics are conservative, and I play to a niche audience.

In his standup, Sears played directly to that niche, and his audience was there for it. Many came wearing Sears’ or other politically right shirts and American flag designs and after the show swarmed his merch table to buy more.

From the enthusiastic audience feedback to Sears’ overtly political show, it was clear attendees wanted backup for their repressed and belittled non-PC beliefs. They wanted some relief from America’s ever-present woke culture inside a little comedic dungeon where they could laugh at penis jokes for five minutes and the tightening leftist strangleholds on their everyday lives for much longer.

They laughed when Sears mimed shooting a hypothetical guy who introduced himself with his pronouns, and when he kept slipping in jokes about Joe Biden’s senility. They laughed at Sears rhetorically filleting Anthony Fauci, joking about transgender foods, and even implying that while performing at a private reception for 45 in Florida, he had encouraged the previous president to grab his wife’s genitals.

The fishnet-stockinged, well-endowed Gen-X waitresses and the trigger warning on the club’s background screen reinforced the generally left leanings of even this non-coastal comedy venue. But right-winger Sears filled the place to the fire marshal’s limit multiple nights in a row with patrons who bought plenty of beer and hard sodas to pay its overhead. Sears brought them in from watching his videos alone on their phones to eyeballing each other and a new scene.

The roughly even mix of Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials laughed instead of cringed, as I did, at Sears’ R-rated sex jokes, and were indistinguishable in appearance from the crowd at a Donald Trump rally. The evening’s vibes suggest Sears may be a gateway drug for the kind of people who get tattoos identifying with the political right, in the same way as Trump, lockdowns, and America’s general immiseration under unchecked Democrat rule.

It’s clear from his standup, videos, history, and few interviews that, like many Americans under one-party rule, Sears is still working out what it means to identify with the political right. With the Supreme Court returning abortion policy back to the states, for example, Sears released a non-satire video explaining that he used to support abortion but has moderated into now supporting limits after 15 weeks of gestation. It’s a stance pretty well in line with middle America’s current views, but not tolerated among the ruling class.

Home Birth Was Way Funnier than Fauci

Becoming a husband and father only in the last few years also certainly influenced the 40-year-old’s change of heart on abortion. In fact, to our table, Sears’ nonpolitical jokes were the funniest. Later in the show, he seemed to be trying out fresh material about his child’s birth — which occurred at home with his wife and their midwife.

I’m also granola enough to have birthed six kids outside of hospitals, but it’s not me who made those wild experiences wildly funny. Until Sears’ show, despite more experience with it than just about everyone who’s not a labor and delivery nurse, I never had laughed about childbirth until tears came out of my eyes.

I’d encourage J.P. to keep exploring nonpolitical themes and take his audience with him as he continues to grow. Doing so would require an exhibit more comedic skill. It would also help strengthen his mission of “expanding freedom” by catching more apolitical people like his former self in the way the ancients called the most effective: With honey, not vinegar.

Vinegar is how to catch nasty flies that accelerate decay, like politicians. Honey, however, is for the people who could come to their senses by experiencing new tastes. They do well together, and Sears’ acidic comedy has a lot of growth potential in the honey direction.

Leftists Are Following Their Hearts Too

According to his interview with the Spokane paper, Sears may have it inside him to develop in this direction, and just needs more time: “My message is to follow your heart. It sounds cliche, but when an individual follows their heart, the heart will never be misled.”

This statement has some truth to it, but it’s also missing something big: The people complying with Covid authoritarianism also followed their hearts. You see, mobs are emotion. They are what happens when wicked rulers manipulate people’s emotions to bring about the rulers’ perverted desires. Such mobs are what kill the liberty that Sears prizes with a love that has transformed his life and career.

So what’s lacking in our society is not feelings, but the existence of an objective standard that our society agrees to submit to and that guides those feelings towards a truth that we force ourselves to acknowledge no matter how we feel about it. Many of Sears’ videos demonstrate he knows this, even if he still has to work out the details in his head, like we all do. Here’s one recent example.

America’s tradition of ordered liberty is predicated on acknowledging external and unchanging realities, including each individual’s natural rights that our government is legally and morally bound to respect. It’s the erasure of these external and unchanging restraints on people’s feelings that are also erasing American freedoms. What will restore freedom, then, as Sears desires, is not merely awakening feelings, but aligning people’s feelings with reality?

Laughter can do that. That’s why authoritarianism crushes laughter, like YouTube cracking down on Sears and fellow conservative comedians such as Steven Crowder. Laughter represents the freedom to think outside the box. It causes a glitch in the matrix that can allow some to see what they wouldn’t or couldn’t see before. What will take J.P. out of being a niche comic to a great one would be letting humor do its own work on the people who hear him, without getting his developing politics too much in its way.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, December 2021

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Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Editors’ Note: The Prickly Pear welcomes this review by Ellie Fromm, a new citizen journalist and young patriot committed to the values we share as America-loving citizens: faith, family, a strong work ethic and devotion to liberty and individual sovereignty. Ellie represents the best in her generation who will lead this nation forward in the years and decades ahead and away from the progressive darkness and divisiveness that, for many, shrouds our political and cultural understanding of America.

 

Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest was was held in Phoenix, Arizona 12/18/21 – 12/21/21. AmericaFest is an event bent on inspiring and empowering young conservatives, especially those in Gen Z (born 1997-2012), to take back both our country and our culture. Turning Point USA spared no expense to create a truly inspiring event for attendees. Each day I looked forward to hearing the leaders of our movement speak and meeting other like-minded individuals. Seeing so many young conservatives there gave me hope. “U.S.A” chants were prominent, and being among so many patriots who stand for the flag at a time when kneeling for the flag is praised reminded me that many others my age are also extremely proud of our wonderful nation. At times I feel as if I am one of the few young conservatives fed up with the road our country is on. However, AmericaFest showed me that I am not fighting alone.

Hosted by Turning Point USA in Phoenix, Arizona, AmericaFest was an event for patriotic Americans, both young and old, from all over the States. 10,000 people from all 50 states attended this 4-day event. Speakers of the event include prominent conservative figures such as Kayleigh McEnany, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., Charlie Kirk, Congressman Madison Cawthorn, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, Senator Ted Cruz, Kyle Rittenhouse, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. There were also concert performances by Lee Greenwood, Adam Doleac, Russell Dickerson, Dustin Lynch, RaeLynn, Brantley Gilbert, and DEEJAY SILVER.

I was not expecting the show Turning Point USA put on. I was expecting everyone to be sitting in a big hall listening to these speakers but certainly not 10,000 people to be in attendance. In reality, there were lights, confetti, fireworks, and audio and visual displays introducing each speaker all held in a concert hall. AmericaFest is the largest conservative multi-day event in history. Also, every morning we sang the national anthem and a speech by Ronald Reagan played with images highlighting America’s history showing on the screens. It was amazing and blew everyone away. Outside the exhibit hall where the speeches took place was ‘media row’, with live media such as Fox News and TPUSA LIVE. The liberals are typically making false claims against this event, but one undisputed fact is that Turing Point USA knows how to impress their attendees and put on a show.

Although Donald Trump did not speak at AmericaFest, Donald Trump Jr. did. It has been rumored within conservative circles that, someday, Don Jr. will run for President. With how he presents himself in the political sphere, I certainly think he will. However, he is not the only potential future presidential candidate who spoke. Congressman Madison Cawthorn came on stage with passion and integrity. He believes in America first, not China first, and genuinely cares about his fellow Americans. The fact that he works for the People, not the government, was repeated and made clear throughout his speech. Congressman Cawthorn may not know this yet, but he sounded and acted as a presidential candidate.

Being a 4-day event, many “counter-radical” statements, which are just plain common sense, were made, such as “only woman can become pregnant” and “boys and girls are different”. Are you absolutely and completely offended yet by conservatives preaching this basic biology? I’m not. Ask any girl who plays high school sports – the boys are always faster and stronger than a girl who puts in the same amount of effort and hours. This is because men and women are different and are created with different purposes in mind. The fact that these are controversial statements is ridiculous. This shows how out of touch the left is with reality. While the right wants to empower young people to stand for their country and their flag, the left seeks to turn them into a fearful mob who will destroy out of fear. Young conservatives are proud of their flag, display it proudly, and never apologize for it. The conservative party is now the party of “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. We refuse to be governed by fear.

Esther 4:14 says “Perhaps you were born for such a time as this” and this message was shared multiple times throughout the conference. Generally, when God is trying to send a message, He shares the same verse through many different materials and people to get his point across. For example, Kayleigh McEnany’s book on sale at the meeting is titled ‘For Such a Time as This’. Apparel was being sold with ‘born for such a time as this’ printed on them, and many speeches revolved around this verse. I believe God was sending a message to Gen Z about their role in the world and in finding purpose. It has not been easy for us having school canceled, losing friends over the COVID nonsense, sports being canceled, forced muzzling, and the fear the media has been shoving down our throats. I believe God is telling us He put us here for a reason, that we were born for such a time as this in America. The fact that we are all on this earth, at the same time, in the same country, and the same generation is a miracle in itself. This is no coincidence. I also think God put George Washington, William Bradford, and Abraham Lincoln on earth at their specific times for such times as they were facing. They were not a stroke of luck – they were a stroke of God. As written in the Bible, perhaps we were born for such a time as this.

A sense of community was present at AmericaFest, a sense that we will fight this regime together because no one fights alone. Yes, the speakers were the faces, but we are the movement to take back America. True American patriotism is alive. Gen Z will continue to defend not only American freedom but traditional American culture. We will fight to make this country even better for our future children than it has been for us. The greatest generation has set the bar high, but we will, and must, become the next greatest generation and save this country from self-destruction. The baton of liberty will be passed on, but only if we fight and NEVER LET UP. As the great Dr. Suess wrote, “Unless someone like you cares an awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”. We care, and AmericaFest showed us that we cannot and should not wait any longer to take a stand.