On supremacies and equality: the Reverend Martin Luther King, 1960

The New Neo Posted on by

From a speech Reverend Martin Luther King delivered at DePauw University in September of 1960:

Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy, and God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men. God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers, and all men will respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality.

It’s enough to make you weep, if you think of the fact that such a statement would now be highly controversial and unlikely to find a home on any college campus.

It would probably be problematic on three fronts at least. The first is its use of the phrase “black supremacy” as similar to “white supremacy,” when we all know that according to the Gospel of Marx they are totally different in every way because of the power differentials. The second is the idea that white lives matter too, and that we are one human race who are brothers (actually, come to think of it, MLK’s use of the term “brothers” and “men” to mean “humanity” would probably be a huge no-no as well). The third is his assertion that God is a large part of the reason that all people are one and all need to be respected.

You know what I mean: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Note, also, that the words say “the pursuit of happiness” – that is, the opportunity to seek it, not the right to have it. All people are not going to be happy, and they are not going to be equal in their life conditions. But they are created equal, and given liberty to, among other things, pursue happiness.

It is no accident that King was a minister. The black community has long been an especially religious one (statistics for 2014 can be found here; I’m not sure what’s been happening in the ensuing years). Also, the underpinnings and strength of the idea of equality has inherent religious dimensions. Without religion, it’s certainly possible to believe the same thing – or at least pay lip service to it. But for many people, leftism has become their religion and leftism says that people must be regarded as different and judged by different standards, according to a hierarchy of victimhood, class, race, and gender that the left sets up.

Also, some religions have been taken over by leftism. One only has to look at Barack Obama’s own church in Chicago, which was headed by another Reverend, Jeremiah Wright, to see what I mean.

Speaking of Obama, remember this sort of thing? It’s a fascinating segment of a speech, because Obama is stating the application of the Declaration to all in inhabitants of the US and quoting the document, but cites the doctrine of equality while leaving out the Creator as the one doing the “endowing.” It’s a significant omission, I believe, and no accident:

Certainly, a person can believe in these truths without believing in God. Also, there are churches and other religious groups that have embraced leftism and its racial blaming and hierarchies. But Martin Luther King’s vision loses much of its potency when its religious underpinnings are weakened. I believe that is at least part of what has happened to it in the last few decades.

Why was King addressing “black supremacy” back in 1960, when there was still not just de facto discrimination in the US but also de jure discrimination? It’s because there has long been a tension and an argument even in the black community and the civil rights community (including white people) between inclusiveness and separatism, love and rage. It’s not new. In the late 60s, not too long after that speech of King’s, it reached a fever pitch. Now the temperature of the fever is even higher.

Some alternatives to Twitter

The New Neo Posted on by

We certainly need them.

Perhaps there are too many choices for one to have really caught on, because forums like Twitter need to reach a critical mass to work well. Twitter was the first to come up with the format, and now it’s a behemoth that’s interested in stifling conservative thought as opposed to leftist thought.

I don’t tweet. I look at Twitter now and then when someone calls my attention to something interesting that’s happening there. But if you like the idea of Twitter but you hate Twitter itself, here’s a post about an alternative called Parler.

In the comments, several people have mentioned that Gab is getting popular, too.

You might want to give one or both of them a whirl.

Another abolitionist’s statue bites the dust…

The New Neo Posted on by

…in Madison, Wisconsin. And no one seems to have the will to stop it:

In Madison, statues of Wisconsin’s motto “Forward” and of Col. Hans Christian Heg were dragged away from their spots guarding the statehouse. Heg was an anti-slavery activist who fought and died for the Union during the U.S. Civil War. His nearly 100-year-old sculpture was decapitated and thrown into a Madison lake by protesters.

More details can be found here, including the fact that a Democratic state senator was assaulted and beaten by the crowd:

“I don’t know what happened … all I did was stop and take a picture … and the next thing I’m getting five-six punches, getting kicked in the head,” Carpenter told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel following the attack.

I doubt the crowd had a clue that this was a state senator. Not that they would have cared. And it’s interesting that his offense was taking pictures.

Statues, photos – representations of the past and of the present.

Did the crowd realize who Heg was? Perhaps not. Perhaps the urge was merely to destroy a statue of a white guy who looked heroic. Off with his head!

But perhaps they did know his identity, at least some of them. I have a theory (unproven) that part of this statue-wrecking impulse is to destroy all record that in the struggle for black freedom there were many white people who fought and died for that cause.

Obama and Biden engineered the war against General Flynn

The New Neo Posted on by

No surprise at all.

What is at least somewhat surprising is that a terse note actually has surfaced from our good friend Peter Strzok describing the event, which apparently occurred (also not a surprise) a couple of weeks before Trump’s inauguration.

If this is “by the book” (as per Susan Rice), I think I know what book it is and the author’s name is Machiavelli:

Late this morning, Twitter lawyer “Techno Fog” posted a copy of [Strzok’s] notes…They reveal former President Obama, Sally Yates, James Comey, Susan Rice, and Joe Biden discussing the transcripts of Gen. Flynn’s phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and how to proceed against him. Obama made it clear that “the right people” must be assigned to the case.

According to the notes, then-FBI Director James Comey said that Gen. Flynn’s phone calls with Kislyak “appear legit.”

The notes also show that it was Biden who brought up the Logan Act…

The video in the tweet below shows Biden denying any part in the Flynn investigation in an interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell in May. He says, “I was never a part or had any knowledge of any criminal investigation into Flynn while I was in office, period. Not one single time.”

To watch the video, go here.

I doubt anyone not already on the right gives a hoot about that lie by Biden, as well as the magnitude of the offense that occurred here.

And of course, Biden can always say he was telling the truth because he doesn’t remember the January 2017 meeting in which he suggested employing the never-successfully-used Logan Act against someone who is obviously entitled as a high-rank member of the transition team to have a talk with Kislyak.

How very badly they wanted to get Flynn! He was a twofer. They wanted to get him for revenge and self-preservation, and they also wanted to try to force him to turn on Trump. I think that Flynn was their “insurance policy.” Turns out he has exposed their own plottings.

Is General Flynn’s long nightmare over?

The New Neo Posted on by

Perhaps. At least, he’s certainly gotten closer to that goal:

The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has ordered Judge Emmet Sullivan to grand the government’s motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Michael Flynn.

You can read the decision here.

Shipwreckedcrew at Red State points out something that has concerned me for quite a while, which is that the Appeals Court may end up hearing the case en banc – that is, the full court rather than the 3-judge panel. The composition of the court is heavily Democrat-appointed.

Since judges now seem to be almost utterly political in their rulings – particularly on the liberal side – it is possible that if the case somehow goes to the full court, this could continue to be strung out and the ruling could go for Sullivan. There certainly are strong political motives on the left for doing so, and I retain no illusions about the ability of such judges to find a reason for doing whatever it takes to get to the desired result.

Predictably, the “legal experts” on the left are up in arms, and clamoring for an en banc hearing. Their partisan “reasoning” is astounding; they ignore the fact that what Sullivan has tried to do is not only exceedingly partisan (somethihg of which they almost undoubtedly approve) but would up-end our entire criminal justice system as well as the balance of powers. No biggee, I guess, in order to get the nefarious Flynn.

By the way, these “experts” all profess to be “stunned” by the ruling against Sullivan, because they all made the error (a common one, I might add) of putting too much stock in the judge’s questions during the hearing. The fact that such questions and comments are often misleading is one reason I tend not to make predictions based on such information.

One of these lawyers states the method by which the case could be heard en banc, and since I have no reason to think it’s incorrect, I’ll assume it would be this way: it only takes one judge to request a vote on whether to hear it, and then six judges must vote “yes” in order to actually have such a hearing. The basis for the hearing en banc would be the legal importance of the case.

I believe it would not be difficult to get six judges to vote “yes,” considering the predominance of liberals on the full court. And then, all bets would be off.

But for the moment, today’s ruling is a cause for celebration.

As they say in “The Mikado,” modified rapture.

Trained Marxists

The New Neo Posted on by

Most people who have watched this video of one of the founders of BLM focus on the fact that she says that she and one of the other three founders of BLM are Marxists. And although that’s certainly of interest, what interests me more is her use of the word “trained” to modify “Marxists.” It’s an interesting word to use for yourself, isn’t it? She doesn’t say who “trained” her, but it would be instructive to learn the answer.

I don’t think most of the people supporting the movement BLM are aware of the Marxist “training” and aims of its leaders. It has been pitched as a grass roots organization opposing police brutality against black people. Almost everyone opposes that, as well. As such, it has gained tremendous goodwill and support, and the peaceful demonstrators are just following in an old and protected tradition which most Americans think is fine. But unfortunately, the organization itself and in particular its leaders have a much broader – and extremely radical leftist – agenda.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a summary of some of the demands of the less-well-known organization “Movement for Black Lives,” which is an umbrella organization of which BLM is a member. It is obviously a radical far-left movement. Here’s the M4BL website.]

Black Lives Matter and Jonestown

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night I was talking on the phone to a friend on the right (I have one or two). I mentioned something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately, which is that the current BLM/Antifa movement brings to mind many aspects of the Peoples Temple, the cult that culminated in Jonestown (I’ve previously written at some length about Jonestown, here).

You may or many not recall that Jonestown was a leftist operation through and through. It grew in strength once it based itself in San Francisco. Its founder and leader Jim Jones was actually not especially religious, but used religion as a way to found an allegedly Utopian multi-racial community that tuned into a nightmare. He appealed to struggling low-to mid-income black people who wanted a better life, and to the guilty feelings of white people, some of whom were more well-to-do. They were requested to donate their money to the organization on joining, and many did just that.

Jonestown turned into a nightmare, but it was aided and abetted by a combination of the leftist Democratic Party in charge of San Francisco and a pack of even more leftist activists such as Angela Davis. Most people remember the horrific suicides – which in my post I explain were less suicides and more like a massacre – and consider the episode to have been the result of a religious cult. But what is often forgotten is the leftist origins of the entire operation, and the totalitarian mind control and Stasi-like tactics of Jim Jones and his inner circle.

And most people don’t remember that this was done with the help and approval of the Democratic Party. And notice how many of these people are still powerful, or only retired from politics fairly recently (the linked article was written in 2018):

Willie Brown, later speaker of the California assembly and mayor of San Francisco, compared Jim Jones to Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. Dianne Feinstein joined the rest of the San Francisco board of supervisors in honoring Jones “in recognition of his guidance and inspiration” in furthering “humanitarian programs.”

Jerry Brown, California governor…actually spoke at Peoples Temple. George Moscone, who owed his position as mayor of San Francisco to Jones, appointed Jones to San Francisco’s Housing Authority Commission, where he quickly became chairman…

Before Jim Jones’s victims drank the lethal Flavor Aid in South America, the powerful in San Francisco had already drunk the Kool Aid themselves. In fact, the latter facilitated the former.

I interviewed a number of Temple survivors as part of researching my new book, Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco. They reflected that Jones’s associations with the mighty both legitimized him and struck fear into them. Without powerful politicians, in the U.S. and Guyana, running interference for him, Jones could never have been so bold with the murders he committed. And the politicians cozied up to Jones because Jones provided rent-a-rallies for free. He flooded campaign headquarters with “volunteers.” He spoke forcefully for fashionable causes.

He preached the gospel according to Karl Marx. “I call capitalism the devil,” Jones said from the pulpit, “and socialism is God.” The Symbionese Liberation Army, Jones maintained, “moved us a little closer to change.”

And now we’re a lot closer to change, are we not?

I’m apparently not the only one seeing a Jonestown comparison. Today I was alerted to this article by Daniel Greenfield saying much the same thing:

The mad mob scenes in Oakland and across California with the power of the Democrat establishment behind them, the viral videos of white millennials kneeling and confessing their privilege, are the People’s Temple writ large on a nation. Jones, the son of a Klansman, who was inspired by a Communist-allied cult to build a following as a Marxist preacher of interracial brotherhood, joining the California Democrat establishment before going down in flames, has once again become the future.

Jones ran a leftist cult of white leaders who called themselves black and exploited their mostly black congregation, endorsing the Black Panthers and other black nationalist terror groups, while serving as a core political organization for California Democrats, including former Governor Jerry Brown.

The stain of Jim Jones is still all over California. A generation of California Democrat leaders either allied with Jones or were mentored by Jones’ political allies like Willie Brown. That includes both Senator Kamala Harris and Governor Newsom. That’s why, decades later, California is still stuck in Jonestown.

Jim Jones is “what you should see every day when you look in the mirror”, Governor Jerry Brown gushed. It’s not what we see. But it’s what Brown saw. And what so many Democrats see…

The Jonestown model is also the model for the Democrat Party which, like Jones, lures in upscale whites by playing on their idealism and guilt, humiliating them to keep them from seeing that the whole thing is a scam, and using the black people it lured in with promises of a social safety net to claim moral superiority. Add in a streak of terror and thuggery to keep everyone in line, along with a dash of sexual sadism to compromise and destroy the moral integrity of core cult members, and you have utopia…

The ultimate victims of Jonestown were largely black. That’s also true of the Democrat Party.

And it is, unfortunately, already true of Black Lives Matter – not the bona fide protestors, but the violent wing that unites with Antifa to cause major destruction.

Yes, COVID cases have risen

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve had several conversations about this topic recently. A friend mentions worriedly that COVID is on the rise, and I point out that such a statistic has no real meaning. I mention that it was expected, that it’s partly a function of increased testing, that the numbers in most states are down rather than up, and that even in states where cases have risen the death toll doesn’t seem to have risen.

My listeners seem somewhat skeptical, but in general they haven’t been able to counter what I’m saying. Their worry doesn’t surprise me, though, given the obvious efforts of the MSM to keep stoking the panic.

I get the impression, also, that COVID has either gotten somewhat less likely to cause serious illness and death because of some change in the virus itself, and/or because we are getting better at treating it.

All of this makes sense, and is as expected. It could change, of course. But so far these trends have held.

Here’s an article that says much the same thing:

A dozen states have seen record highs in new coronavirus cases, blares the news media, accompanied by dire warnings of a “second wave” of the disease because those awful Republican states reopened too soon. Once again, however, the mainstream press is needlessly scaring the public by hiding the relevant context…

Even if there is a “second wave,” it doesn’t mean anything in and of itself…

For one thing the Centers for Disease Control has long predicted that coronavirus cases would increase as the country reopened, for the simple reason that the lockdowns were never intended to stop the spread of the disease, only to slow it down. Remember? Flatten the curve?…

What’s more, the increase in coronavirus cases matters only if they are going up faster than expected, and whether this is resulting in a second wave of deaths.

Neither of those appears to be true…

So far this month, in fact, the number of new cases on June 21 was 16% higher than on June 1, but the daily number of deaths was 63% lower.

Still, won’t the current spike in cases lead to a subsequent spike in deaths?

That’s unlikely. As Michael Fumento has repeatedly pointed out in these pages and elsewhere, death rates are higher at the start of an outbreak for the simple reason that the disease claims the low-hanging fruit first. This, he says, is known as Farr’s Law.

That there was always a good possibility that COVID would end up resembling a bad flu year, and this was obvious to many people quite early on, although hardly a certainty. But too many institutions – the Democratic Party, most of the health officials in charge of making predictions, and the MSM – were heavily invested in worst-case scenarios. The reasons? Anti-Trump fervor, the lust for greater power, and the desire for clicks.

Don’t be fooled by what the media choose to emphasize…

The New Neo Posted on by

…or by what a small group of attention-getting radicals want.

In the turmoil we’re now experiencing, many people are afraid. That certainly makes sense – it’s frightening. Just a few short months ago things seemed relatively “normal.” Then COVID came, and now the country seems gripped by riots orchestrated by leftists.

Yesterday I posted a video of black conservative Candace Owens. In it she asks – among other things – what do black people want? I don’t profess to know the answer, and I realize the question is mostly rhetorical. But one thing in particular about the question bothers me: “black people” are not a unitary group just because they are in that racial category. It would be just as misleading to ask “what do white people want?”

My guess, though – and it’s completely a guess – is that the majority of black people want the same things the majority of white people or people of any other race want. That is, they would like to live their lives without violence, support their families, have children whom they love and protect, work at jobs, have a decent place to live, see friends now and then, and a host of other “normal” aspects of life in the US in the 21st Century.

Yes, there is a higher percentage of criminals among black people, and a higher rate of father absence (two things that are not unrelated). But the vast majority of black people are not burning their cities down. For that matter, the vast majority of white people are not antifa thugs. As I wrote yesterday, the majority of people of all races prefer “all lives matter” to the phrase “black lives matter.” That’s pretty amazing, considering the full court press to push the latter phrase to the exclusion of the former, and to even demonize those who would advocate “all lives matter” as racists.

When last I checked, Americans reject socialism as well, at least in polls.

The problem is not what the majority thinks. The problem is the power and dedication of that minority of leftists, black and white, and what they are willing to do and how far they are wiling to go to get their way, as well as the wholehearted cooperation of many institutions of US society in recent years, in particular the MSM, the educational system, and the Democratic Party.

So, just to take one example, the MSM is determined to support the rioters, and to make it seem as though Antifa is either a bunch of do-gooders who only want to stamp out real facism, and/or completely uninvolved in riots in which they are quite obviously involved. And to take another example, the Marxist affliation of BLM is hushed up by the media, and any disagreement with BLM or even criticism of it is now labeled as evidence of racism.

I have long believed that the two most dangerous and powerful institutions in our country are education and the press. They are powerful because they shape minds, and if minds are shaped in a certain way there is no real need for armies or a hot war or even a revolution in the classic sense of bearing arms against the government. If minds are shaped to hate the US and to gravitate towards the left, the left can win at the ballot box or intimidate through mild violence (such as arson, for example, and the destruction of national monuments).

Much of this work has already been accomplished, and the hour is very late. But the forces of sanity still have the majority, although those voices are muted and often frightened, as well as confused. For quite some time I’ve thought the 2020 election would be – as Victor Davis Hanson said recently – an existential one to determine which way the country will turn and whether it will survive in any recognizable way:

It’s an existential question, a Manichean choice between whether you want civilization and you believe that America doesn’t have to be perfect to be good and we are not … going to destroy all that people died for, or [whether] you feel it was inherently flawed with a cancer and we have to use radiation and chemotherapy and kill the host to kill the cancer.

Well, yes. But even more than that, the election is only a very small part of it. Trump was elected in 2016, but he has spent way too much of his presidency fighting fabricated attacks from his enemies, amplified by MSM coverage wholly dedicated to removing him. Whether he wins or loses in 2020, the struggle between left and right in the US will not end.

It’s going to be up to the right to become more activist in fighting against the MSM and the entire system of educational propaganda in this country, and it won’t be easy. I don’t have many practical suggestions, but I do think that it’s time to speak up rather than be silent with liberal friends and relatives. Choose a few of the more moderate ones to begin with, stay calm, and see what happens. They may even be more in agreement with you than you might expect about certain issues – for example, defunding the police.

This is what gets a Vermont high school principal booted these days

The New Neo Posted on by

This is scary stuff. They’re getting rid of the blasphemers to the BLM religion, and we’ll be left with no one who thinks for him/herself – or is willing to express thoughts that go against the prevailing memes. Of course, that’s probably what the SJWs want [emphasis mine]:

School officials moved to fire Windsor School Principal Tiffany Riley on Friday after she wrote a social media post seen as critical of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The post, written Wednesday on Riley’s personal Facebook page, said she believes “black lives matter” but “I DO NOT agree with coercive measures taken to get this point across; some of which are falsified in an attempt to prove a point.”

Riley, who became principal of the K-12 school in 2015, wrote, “I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose black race over human race.”

“While I understand the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law enforcement?” Riley added, before saying, “just because I don’t walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I’m a racist.”

Ah, but apparently it does.

More (emphasis mine):

[Riley’s] comments, which were shared widely among Windsor community members this week, led to calls for Riley’s resignation, while a group of recent graduates called the message “insanely tone-deaf.”

Outrage culminated in an emergency meeting of the Mount Ascutney School Board on Friday afternoon, where members voted unanimously to place Riley on paid administrative leave, according to Superintendent David Baker.

Baker said the school district will work in the coming weeks to craft a “mutually agreed upon severance package” with Riley.

“They don’t see any way that she’s going to go forward as the principal of that building given those comments and that statement,” he said during a phone interview Friday afternoon. “It’s clear that the community has lost faith in her ability to lead.”

…Baker said he received about a dozen letters from community members and parents expressing concern over Riley’s post. At first, he assumed her account had been hacked.

“I felt like a post like that, with those kinds of racial overtones and what I define as pretty much outright racist in my values system, she would have never posted that,” Baker said, adding that he later confirmed Riley wrote the post.

Among the letter writers were 12 members of the Class of 2020, who signed a joint letter calling on the district to take action.

“I have seen so much good happening in our community lately in conjunction with the Black Lives Matter movement and it has filled me with a sense of pride,” Belle Moulton, the class valedictorian, wrote in an email to Baker. “However, to read such a post immediately made me realize how ignorant some people in our community still are.”

“I would like to see Windsor schools take (the) lead in our greater Vermont community and demonstrate dedication towards inclusivity,” she added. “This means having leaders that value every being and bring awareness and respect towards demographics that are less valued as a whole in our country.”

Oops, Ms. Moulton, class valedictorian! Did you just slip and say that “every being” should be valued? Doesn’t that kinda sorta almost mean that All Lives Matter? Your fellow SJWs may forgive you this time, but watch it in the future. No more mistakes for you!

Our very own little Red Guards are out in force in Vermont, I see. I guess Loyalty Oaths are back in as well, only this time the required loyalty is to BLM.

Certainly not to the US:

Iyanna Williams, 2015 Windsor High graduate, also said she was dismissed when bringing concerns and suggestions to district officials.

She initially contacted the school district earlier this month after noticing an American flag spray-painted into the Windsor School lawn.

“I just thought that that was out of character and given the current circumstances and climate of the world right now, I just wasn’t sure how comfortable I felt with that,” she said.

Williams expressed those concerns in an email, with officials later telling her they would be open to a similar Black Lives Matter display and that the American flag had been planned before the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota sparked national protests. When no BLM flag was displayed by graduation, she penned another email saying she was “saddened” by the district’s response.

“I am unfortunately not surprised. You chose not to hear me much like America has chosen to hear black and brown people across the nation,” she wrote…

…Baker added that the school district had earlier planned to hand out American flag T-shirts and water bottles on graduation day, but abandoned that effort after Williams reached out.

What’s particularly interesting about this is that it seems to be the work of a small group of SJWs. What the community thinks is unclear, but this being Vermont perhaps they’re all far-left and in agreement with Williams that handing out American flag T-shirts and water bottles would be a racist abomination.

Jonathan Turley weighs in here. In the first sentence of the quote, he mentions something I was wondering about (although it’s not clear to me whether Riley is fighting this or not):

As a public employee, Riley could seek judicial relief rather than a severance package under the First Amendment.

As we have previously discussed (with an Oregon professor and a Rutgers professor), there remains an uncertain line in what language is protected for teachers in their private lives. There were also controversies at the University of California and Boston University, where there have been criticism of such a double standard, even in the face of criminal conduct. There were also such an incident at the University of London involving Bahar Mustafa as well as one involving a University of Pennsylvania professor. Some intolerant statements against students are deemed free speech while others are deemed hate speech or the basis for university action. There is a lack of consistency or uniformity in these actions which turn on the specific groups left aggrieved by out-of-school comments. There is also a tolerance of faculty and students tearing down fliers and stopping the speech of conservatives. Indeed, even faculty who assaulted pro-life advocates was supported by faculty and lionized for her activism.

However, there was nothing whatsoever in Riley’s quoted statements (at least, those statements I’ve read so far) that is the least bit racist. If she is racist, then Martin Luther King was racist, and Muhammad Ali’s son is racist. To me, what Ali’s son says in that article is just a common sense point of view that would have been standard and completely non-controversial even as recently as a few years ago.

But now it’s heresy.