Perspective: Why everyone feels under attack right now

 

May 7, 2023

On March 27, six people were killed at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, by a former student who identified as transgender. Everyone was rightfully horrified — left and right, and whatever side of the sexuality and gender debate you are on.

A few days later, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre decried new bills emerging in state legislatures putting some restrictions on gender transition procedures for youth. Calling these bills “hateful” and threatening to “freedom,” she said, “Our hearts go out to the trans community as they are under attack right now.” 

Predictably, that remark provoked outrage from people who found the timing inappropriate. Former White House press secretary and Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany called out the White House for the “audacity” of choosing that moment to speak of attacks on the trans community. 

While Jean-Pierre’s comments were certainly misguided, they were not focused on Nashville at all. But their temporal proximity to the school shooting inflicted by a trans-identifying person was all it took. McEnany declared with emotion that it was the Christian community truly under attack, and her co-host Emily Compagno went on to insist that these state bills have “nothing to do with ‘anti’ or ‘hate’” and instead protect Christians from “this overbearing, overreaching government.”

Full Article

Every generation has been ‘doomed’ — yet we’re still here

 

May 7, 2023

Lamenting the challenges and culture of the succeeding generation is a phenomenon that dates back to the days of Aristotle, who claimed:

“(Young people) are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances.”

Why older generations seem to have a bleak outlook for younger generations is a question some social scientists have sought to answer. In 2019, researchers John Protzko and Jonathan Schooler did a series of tests to find why this phenomenon exists, naming it the “Kids these days effect.”

Generation Z and millennials are known for coming of age while smartphones are ubiquitous, which has presented them with their own set of challenges and even stereotypes. The current generation of young people has been referred to as “lazy,” “sensitive” and “materialistic,” and has been credited with contributing to the downfall of several major industries that had been standing strong for decades.

But the baby boomers faced their own set of criticism, being called “dirty, unlawful, immoral ... lazy, and we ‘don’t wanna work,’” Kelly Ellis Florez, who is a boomer, told the Deseret News. “It was the same exact stuff.”

Full Article

Unrigging Our Elections

 

May 6, 2023

Republicans need a serious counter-offensive if they want to stand a chance.

It might not matter whom Republicans run for president in 2024.

America’s propaganda press traffics in disinformation. Its Big Tech oligarchs censor news and information helpful to conservatives, while elevating biased news and information that helps the Left. And its election systems have been overrun by privately funded groups that run Democratic “get out the vote” campaigns to traffic ballots into ballot boxes. We catalogued this particularly complex problem in Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.

Instead of election day, we now have an “election season”—during which, over a period of months, we flood homes across the country with tens of millions of mail-in ballots, regardless of whether secretaries of state or local registrars have any idea if those ballots are being sent to the correct addresses. This in a country where 11% of residents move every year. We then wait for sophisticated partisan turnout operations funded by activist billionaires and run by ideological statisticians to round up those ballots in entirely selective ways.

This culminates with us all glued to our TVs on a Tuesday evening in November listening to “journalists” who spent the months leading up to the election smothering any accurate information about the state of the country with a pillow, making empty judgments about the health of American democracy based entirely on how much the results will further advance policies that favor a toxic admixture of their own corporate paymasters and woke Montagnards.

In this world, concerns about candidate quality are irrelevant. If we don’t fix this complete capture of election infrastructure, it might be impossible for anyone with a sincere desire to prioritize the interests of voters over the ruling class to win a national election.

Full Article

THE ILLUSION OF MORAL NEUTRALITY

 May 6, 2023

Nietzsche claimed that if men took God seriously, they would still be burning heretics at the stake. In the same spirit, one supposes, are the notions that if men really cherished moral truth, they would suppress all beliefs that they considered wrong, and that if men still cared about the sanctity of the marriage bed, they would go back to making adulterers wear the scarlet A.

Today two different groups of people agree with conditional statements of this sort. In the first group are the ordinary bigots, who are always among us. The second are a kind of modern backlash—call it the reaction—found principally among the “cultural elite.” For instance, whereas the bigots respond to Nietzsche’s conditional by saying, “Yes, that’s why we should burn heretics,” the reactionaries respond to it by saying, “No, that’s why we should suppress the public expression of belief in God.”

These reactionaries claim to love tolerance, but, misunderstanding it, they strangle it in their embrace. Their creed is that intolerance is born at the same moment as public moral commitments; that morality must therefore be a “private” affair; that in order to say that tolerance is a good, we must forbear to say aloud that anything else is good or evil. Their god is Neutrality. In certain intellectual regions he travels under other names such as Autonomy and Rights.

Full Article

Why So Many ‘Tolerant’ People Are Actually the Opposite

 

May 6, 2023

It’s become common to point out that those who most preach “tolerance” are often themselves highly “intolerant.”

But why is that?

As University of Texas professor and ethics expert J. Budziszewski explains, it may have a lot to do with tolerance’s character as a virtue.

Let me explain. Or rather, I’ll explain Budziszewski’s explanation from his excellent article, “The Illusion of Moral Neutrality.” This explanation involves three steps:

1) Tolerance is a virtue.

A virtue is a behavioral disposition that lies between the extremes of deficiency and excess and assists one in pursuing the good. Despite the messiness in its application today, authentic tolerance is a virtue through which one puts up with something in order to—in the words of Budziszewski—either “prevent graver evils” or “advance greater goods.” Thus, for instance, we may tolerate someone voicing a wrong opinion because suppressing it: 1) could lead to further, more insidious suppressions of free speech; 2) could eliminate the chance for truth to shine through when pitted against error.

Full Article

If greed good or bad, or does it mean how you define greed?

 

May 5, 2023

Thomas M. Miovas, Jr.

B.A. in both in Physics & Philosophy, University of Dallas (Graduated 1987)6h

Greed is good, so long as it is wanting more and more of something that is beneficial to you in context. In other words, food is good for you, but if you eat too much, you become fat and nearly immovable. Greed for money is good, so long as you earned it all and didn’t steal it. Money is a means of exchange for goods and services, and in the context of your personal life having more of that is good, so long as you traded value for value to get it. Greed basically just means wanting more of something, and that is not bad if it enhances your life rationally. If you want to read a book that goes into details of the benefits of greed, then I would recommend Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. She outlines a new and objective morality based on man’s nature as a rational animal. And she points out that so long as your greed does not harm you (like eating too much or drinking too much water or breathing too deeply and repetitively (hyperventilate) and other things like that). Greed could be understood as wanting the best life can offer, and that is not bad at all. Here is what Ayn Rand had to say about greed:

“Capitalism has been called a system of greed—yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.”

America's civics crisis means too many students don't even know the Declaration of Independence

 

May 5, 2023

If civics is the what of American political life, history is the why

Only 60 percent of American 8th graders have a basic understanding of U.S. history, according to the new Nation’s Report Card scores recently released, and only 13 percent of them are proficient in the subject. Roughly three in every ten of them lack a basic understanding of civics.

In context, this means that much of the rising generation likely doesn’t know who wrote the Declaration of Independence or why the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution. They cannot tell you the reasons each side fought the Civil War or in which war the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. They don’t know about Congressional veto power or how the Electoral College works. (All of these examples are pulled from sample Nation’s Report Card questions.)

These students, who are now high school freshmen, are four years away from being voters; maybe less if certain politicians succeed in lowering the voting age. We face the very real possibility of our future presidents and members of Congress being elected by people who have no idea what those jobs entail.

These students deserve to participate in the civic life of this country, but they are being robbed of the tools that would let them do so in a constructive way. The problems extend beyond the ballot box: Our entire political discourse, both in the news media and in our own neighborhoods, will be swayed by people with no understanding of the American system of governance.

Full Article

Work Ethic

 May 4, 2023

I didn’t write this, but I certainly agree. 

I need to rant for just a moment. I'm getting old and I’ve worked hard all my life. I have made my reputation, the good and the bad, I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I have worked hard to get where I am in life. I have juggled my job, my family, and made many sacrifices up front to secure a life for my family. It wasn’t always easy and still isn't, but I did it all while maintaining my integrity and my principles. I made mistakes and tried to learn from them. I have friends of every walk of life and if you’re in my circle, it should be understood that I don’t have to remind you of what I’d be willing to do for you. 

However....

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. People who have sacrificed nothing and feel entitled to receive everything.

I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it themselves.

I'm really tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which, no one is allowed to debate.

I'm really tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of all parties talk like their opinions matter to the common man. I’m tired of any of them even pretending they can relate to the life and bank account that I have.

I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

I’m upset that I’m labeled as a racist because I am proud of my heritage. I never stole any ones land, the government did that..

I’m tired of being told I need to accept the latest fad or politically correct stupidity or befriending a group that’s intent on killing me because I won’t convert to their point of view.

I'm really tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. Especially the ones that want me to fund it. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination, or big-whatever for their problems.

Yes, I'm really tired. But, I'm also glad to be in the twilight of my life. Because mostly, I'm not going to have to see the retched, depressing world these young useless idiots are creating. And lastly, because even though I shouted from the rooftops, no one listened or seemed to give a rat's behind. You reap what you sow, and so do your children.

No one is entitled to anything. You have a choice to work, a choice to stay off drugs, a choice to make something of yourself. I have nothing to do with your choice. That's all on you. You are entitled to what you earn.

There is no way these thoughts will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on! Surely, the politically correct police censors will try to quiet us.

The Fight of Two Wolves Within You

 

May 4, 2023

The Fight of Two Wolves Within You

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life:

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

”It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.

One is evil–he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued,

“The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

The same fight is going on inside you–and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Feeding Both Wolves

In the Cherokee world, however, there’s another version of the story and it ends this way:

The old Cherokee simply replied, “If you feed them right, they both win.” and the story goes on:

“You see, if I only choose to feed the white wolf, the black one will be hiding around every corner waiting for me to become distracted or weak and jump to get the attention he craves. He will always be angry and will always fight the white wolf. But if I acknowledge him, he is happy, and the white wolf is happy, and we all win. For the black wolf has many qualities – tenacity, courage, fearlessness, strong-willed and great strategic thinking–that I have need of at times. These are the very things the white wolf lacks. But the white wolf has compassion, caring, strength and the ability to recognize what is in the best interest of all.

“You see, son, the white wolf needs the black wolf at his side. To feed only one would starve the other and they will become uncontrollable. To feed and care for both means they will serve you well and do nothing that is not a part of something greater, something good, something of life. Feed them both and there will be no more internal struggle for your attention. And when there is no battle inside, you can listen to the voices of deeper knowing that will guide you in choosing what is right in every circumstance. Peace, my son, is the Cherokee mission in life. A man or a woman who has peace inside has everything. A man or a woman who is pulled apart by the war inside him or her has nothing.

“How you choose to interact with the opposing forces within you will determine your life. Starve one or the other or guide them both.”

NAEP scores show kids have terrible understanding of US history

 

May 4, 2023

The eighth graders who took these tests last year are finishing ninth grade in the coming weeks. We have a lot of ground and just three years to make up before they graduate, head to college or the workforce, and are asked to fully participate in civic life.

Students read a lot in my class and even practice their math skills, for example when we analyze polling and look at percentages in our elections unit. But this isn't just about boosting student achievement in tested subjects. There is magic that happens in a strong social studies classroom, a magic that kids badly need to experience now. With a growing awareness about problems related to chronic absenteeism and concerns around a lack of student engagement, education leaders and policymakers need to bring joy and a purpose to learning to schools. When taught well, history and civics are subjects that foster excitement and inspiration while honing essential life skills.

My teachers conveyed history with passion and insight

When I was a kid, growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, I studied world history with a teacher who still inspires me today. Mr. Pickle drew us into lively debates, for example asking us to put ourselves in Harry Truman's shoes and weigh his decision to use the atomic bomb. This debate was relevant given my hometown’s role as a key Manhattan Project site, and by tackling a challenging topic, Mr. Pickle helped students exercise the “civic muscles” of discourse and debate.

Continue Reading and Video

3 Traditional Skills Young Men Should Learn

 

May 3, 2023

It seems that no matter where we turn in modern life we can see how modern conveniences have chipped away at the skills so many used to pride themselves on. Of course, in and of themselves, modern conveniences aren’t bad—I’m grateful for many of them—but when so many of us young people today don’t know the skills of our forefathers, I can’t help but think that we are losing that hardy, independent mindset that early Americans often embodied.

In a previous article for Intellectual Takeout, I wrote on several traditional skills young women should learn. In that article, I said:

“I greatly admire the men and women, particularly those among the younger generations, who have taken the time to learn the skills of their forefathers. Certainly, the pioneers didn’t have sewing machines to use or cars to repair, but the hardy attitude of these individuals lives on in those who take up traditional skills that can improve their lives. Not to mention a potential new hobby, a way to help out those around us, and even monetary savings.”

Now, as a companion to that piece, here are three skills for young gentlemen.

Continue Reading

Native Americans United

 

May 3, 2023

Native Tribes of North America Mapped

The ancestors of living Native Americans arrived in North America about 15 thousand years ago. As a result, a wide diversity of communities, societies, and cultures finally developed on the continent over the millennia.

The population figure for Indigenous peoples in the Americas before the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus was 70 million or more.

About 562 tribes inhabited the contiguous U.S. territory. Ten largest North American Indian tribes: Arikara, Cherokee, Iroquois, Pawnee, Sioux, Apache, Eskimo, Comanche, Choctaw, Cree, Ojibwa, Mohawk, Cheyenne, Navajo, Seminole, Hope, Shoshone, Mohican, Shawnee, Mi’kmaq, Paiute, Wampanoag, Ho-Chunk, Chumash, Haida.

Below is the tribal map of Pre-European North America.

The old map below gives a Native American perspective by placing the tribes in full flower ~ the “Glory Days.” It is pre-contact from across the eastern sea or, at least, before that contact seriously affected change. Stretching over 400 years, the time of contact was quite different from tribe to tribe. For instance, the “Glory Days” of the Maya and Aztec came to an end very long before the interior tribes of other areas, with some still resisting almost until the 20th Century.

At one time, numbering in the millions, the native peoples spoke close to 4,000 languages.

The Americas’ European conquest, which began in 1492, ended in a sharp drop in the Native American population through epidemics, hostilities, ethnic cleansing, and slavery.

When the United States was founded, established Native American tribes were viewed as semi-independent nations, as they commonly lived in communities separate from white immigrants

30 years ago, one decision altered the course of our connected world

 

May 3, 2023

30 years ago, listeners tuning into Morning Edition heard about a futuristic idea that could profoundly change their lives.

"Imagine being able to communicate at-will with 10 million people all over the world," NPR's Neal Conan said. "Imagine having direct access to catalogs of hundreds of libraries as well as the most up-to-date news, business and weather reports. Imagine being able to get medical advice or gardening advice immediately from any number of experts.

"This is not a dream," he continued. "It's internet."

But even in the early 1990s, that space-age sales pitch was a long way from the lackluster experience of actually using the internet. It was almost entirely text-based, for one.

It was also difficult to use. To read a story from NPR, for example, you would need to know which network-equipped computer had the file you wanted, then coax your machine into communicating directly with the host. And good luck if the computers were made by different manufacturers.

But 30 years ago this week, that all changed. On April 30, 1993, something called the World Wide Web launched into the public domain.

Continue Reading

ETSU Doubles Down On Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Efforts After Acknowledging Lack Of Positive Outcomes

 

May 2, 2023

East Tennessee State University (ETSU) is “shooting for the moon” with updated diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts outlined in the institution’s strategic plan through 2026.

Strictly based on The University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s DEI infrastructure trajectory over the last several years, it looks like ETSU could achieve a fully built-out DEI infrastructure within the next three years. 

It was recently reported that in ETSU’s April 3rd edition of their Office of Equity and Inclusion Newsletter, the school’s VP for Equity and Inclusion, Dr. Keith Johnson, reflected on the lack of positive outcomes regarding DEI efforts and suggested that there should be consequences if an institution does not achieve DEI performance goals. 

This year, the Tennessee General Assembly considered a few pieces of legislation, including HB1376/SB0817 and HB0158/SB0102, to combat DEI efforts in both higher education and K-12 education. 

HB2670/SB2290 was also passed back in 2022 with the same goal in mind. 

Continue Reading

People Are Increasingly Unaware of Their Ignorance, and It’s a Problem

 

May 2, 2023

“Has there ever been a time in the world’s history when people were more sure of their opinions?” asks Jim Ferrell of the Arbinger Insitute.

Ferrell observes, “We become set in our opinions precisely because we have lost sight of the fact that they are merely opinions…our culture is suffering from what one might call ‘opinion creep’—the elevation of unsupported thoughts to the status of opinions and opinions to convictions.”

We don’t know how to have civil disagreements anymore. We fail to recognize that having a thought doesn’t make our thinking the truth. Ferrell writes, “We tend to have convictions about many things and to have opinions about almost everything else. We blind ourselves to the enormity of our ignorance.”

Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Phillip Fernbach in their book The Knowledge Illusion, put it this way: “In general we don’t appreciate how little we know; the tiniest bit of knowledge makes us feel like experts. Once we feel like an expert we start talking like an expert.”

We take that tiny bit of knowledge and, as Ferrell observes, elevate it to a conviction. Sloman and Fernbach write:

“The feeling that overwhelms us is ‘if only they understood.’ If only they understood how much we care, how open we are, and how our ideas would help, they would see things our way. But here’s the rub: While it’s true that your opponents don’t understand the problem in all its subtlety and complexity, neither do you.”

Continue Reading

Conformity Experiment - Great Lesson

September 7, 2022

The Work of Virtue

A free republic depends on citizens who can take their prosperity into their own hands.

Daniel J. Mahoney

Mark T. Mitchell has written a book that addresses the specter haunting our decayed and decaying American republic. The title of the book gives that specter an apt name: “plutocratic socialism.” This two-headed creature combines the worst of an imperious oligarchy with the illusions of a socialism that is at once paternalistic, woke, and despotic. The principles of our republic remain admirable and choice-worthy, to be sure, but their presence in our common life has become attenuated with each passing day. The soul of our great republic has become hollowed out, because we have lost touch with the virtues that animate responsible citizenship in a free society.

More fundamentally, we have lost an appreciation of self-government in the most capacious sense of the term. The plentiful rights guaranteed by our constitutional order (and by “Nature and Nature’s God”) too often degenerate into excuses for self-destructive hedonism, veering inconsistently between impulsive self-assertion and debilitating passivity. As Mitchell persuasively argues, rights must be accompanied by the self-limitation that makes political liberty—what Aristotle called “ruling and being ruled”—possible and sustainable. There can be no self-government in the political sense without the governance of the self, and some self-conscious effort to put order in the human soul. Here the classics, Christians, and the American founders have more in common than we sometimes realize. Despite their elevation of rights as the central political category, the founders never broke with the Great Tradition’s understanding that “statecraft is inescapably soulcraft,” to cite the old locution of a more conservative George F. Will.

Read Full Article

 

August 29, 2022

The Medlock Post Ep. 44: If we lose John Locke, we lose America

The English philosopher and political theorist John Locke (1632-1704) laid much of the groundwork for the Enlightenment and made central contributions to the development of liberalism. 

Listen Now

 

August 18, 2022

The Medlock Post Ep. 40: The Value of Good Education

Brigham Young:

“Will education feed and clothe you, keep you warm on a cold day, or enable you to build a house?  Not at all.  Should we cry down education on this account?  No.  What is it for?  The improvement of the mind; to instruct us in all arts and sciences, in the history of the world, in the laws of nations; to enable us to understand the laws and principles of life, and how to be useful while we live.”

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/themedlockpost/2022/08/18/the-medlock-post-ep-40-the-value-of-good-education

 

The Medlock Post Ep. 37: The Proper Role of Government

August 15, 2022

The Medlock Post Ep. 37: The Proper Role of Government

The Medlock Post introduces "Fifteen Principles Which Make for Good and Proper Government" by Ezra Taft Benson

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/50919491