In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
In 1984, President Reagan won every state except Minnesota (and the District of Columbia), though the Democratic Party was still dominant in the House of Representatives and on the state level. In this two-part episode, Buckley, along with guests Mark J. Green, Murray Kempton, and Richard Brookhiser examine the prospects of the Democrats in June of 1984.
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Drive out the unbelievers of wokeness!!1!
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
An old but still relevant protest against racial discrimination under appellation of “affirmative action“
“College Republicans at the University of Washington held an ‘affirmative action bake sale’ last week, voicing their opposition to a new law that allows affirmative action policies at public universities in the state. The bake sale generated controversy and even a rebuke from the school’s president.
“The Washington state legislature last week reversed a decades-old anti-discrimination law, revoking a ban on affirmative action and once more permitting schools to factor race and sex into their admission policies.
“Initiative 1000 overturns a 1998 law, Initiative 200, which prohibited ‘government entities from discriminating or granting preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.’ The text of the now defunct I-200 legislation clarifies that public universities and colleges were included under these regulations.
“Affirmative action is the process by which officials consider factors like skin color and sex when making admission and hiring decisions. Initiative 200 insisted on blind admissions policies for public entities; now, under the new rule, schools may admit individual students in part because of the color of their skin.”
If you have the funds, I’d definitely recommend hiring a sensitivity editor (someone from the communities in question who you pay to read your notes and tell you what’s offensive)
Poe’s Law is invoked when it is impossible, absent other evidence, whether something is a parody or a sincere expression. Considering the paganization of many Christian churches, the Swedish church diocese declaring deranged eco-moppet Great Thunberg a successor to Jesus Christ falls squarely into the purview of this law.
🔔Lucka 1❄️ Kungörelse! Jesus från Nasaret har nu utsett en av sina efterträdare, nämligen Greta Thunberg.🌟
Proclamation! Jesus of Nazareth has now appointed one of his successors, Greta Thunberg.
🌟
Hmmm, someone comes along and says we must follow them if they want to be saved… or else. Kinda sounds like the Anti-Christ from the Book of Revelations. Well, the “Seventh Seal” was Swedish, after all.
However, this seems to be from a legitimate twitter account that links to a legitimate looking diocese, and was covered by The Daily Wire.
“The Church of Sweden Malmö announced that they would ring their church bells in conjugation with the Global Climate Strike, of which Thunberg is the face.
“In conjunction with the Global Climate Strike, church bells ring and we gather for prayer for the future of the earth,” the church announced. ‘We pray that we believe that man is responsible for nurturing and managing Creation so that children are given the opportunity for a future. We pray that we know that climate change affects the most vulnerable — poor, children and women. We pray that we believe in man’s ability to change and change.’
“’When the Amazon burns, we gather to fight for Mother Earth together,’ the site reads, adding, ‘WELCOME’”.
Mother Earth? This isn’t about Thunberg being a successor to Jesus, but about her becoming next chief Druid of the Gaia cult.
In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
Feminism has changed over the better part of a century over which it has evolved from “first wave” to “intersectional”. An all female array of guests (Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, Helen Alvare, Betty Friedan, Karen S. Burstein, Camille Paglia, Kathryn Kolbert), coving both sides of the question of if the women’s movement being disastrous, from 1994 shows not only how it changed from its nascent beginnings to that point, and highlights just how much has changed since 1994—for example Ariana Huffington was on the “anti-feminism” side while Germaine Greer (who is condemned as transphobic today), was on the “pro-feminism” side.
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: You will be made to affirm transgenderism.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Doctor’s are supposed to “first do no harm” and refuse to harm a patient even if the patient wishes for it. Doctors in California, now, must put aside their faith in order to validate the sympathetic magic of those who believe that by mutilating their bodies they will transform into the opposite sex.
“A Catholic hospital known as Dignity Health refused to perform a hysterectomy on a transgendered male, as against Catholic moral teaching. The patient sued for discrimination, but the case was dismissed on the basis that the hospital was legally following its faith principles. Alas, a Court of Appeals reversed, reinstating the case to the active docket. Why am I not surprised?
“Dignity Health’s faith-based policies require that the institution “protect and preserve the bodily and functional integrity” of patients and that the “functional integrity” of the patient “may only be sacrificed to maintain the health or life of the person when no other morally permissible means is available.”
“Dignity Health also forbids any sterilization procedure, as against Catholic moral teaching. Surgeries that would have that effect are permissible only to cure or alleviate “a present and serious pathology.” Obviously, the hysterectomy would render the transgendered patient sterile.
“But the Court of Appeals ruled that under California law, this can constitute illegal discrimination. From Minton v. Dignity Health:
“’The pleading alleges that Mercy allows doctors to perform hysterectomies as treatment for other conditions but refused to allow Dr. Dawson to perform the same procedure as treatment for Minton’s gender dysphoria, a condition that is unique to transgender individuals. Denying a procedure as treatment for a condition that affects only transgender persons supports an inference that Dignity Health discriminated against Minton based on his gender identity. This is true even if the denial was pursuant to a facially neutral policy.’
“In other words, a Catholic hospital can potentially be held to account for refusing to violate Catholic dogma by removing a biologically healthy organ — thereby, sterilizing the patient — as a “treatment” for a biologically non-pathological condition.”
Japan, the land of 猫耳 (AKA Catgirls), has now legalized and approved of making human-animal chimeras. Though planned research involved rats and mice, such techniques aimed at eventually at growing human (or at least human compatible) organs, such techniques would lay the groundwork (and fiscal resources) to create other such hybrids including catgirls and other kemonomimi.
However, Japan may be behind in the genetics race that could lead to the creation of catgirls: In the People’s Republic China, researchers have already createdhuman-monkey hybrids. Since humans and monkeys are both primates, this could provide a better starting point for fine-tuning the science and technology to make catgirls, and other kemonomimi, that are suitable for domestic ownership!
Throughout most of Australia, Australians can magically change their sex or have no sex at all, at least according to laws which have been passed in four of Australia’s as well as their Capital Territory and Northern Territory.
The Registrar will still register the sex of a person at birth as either male or female. However:
– Parents will be allowed to choose whether that sex is registered in their child’s birth certificate
– People aged 16 and older will be able to change their sex by making a declaration.
– Sexual reassignment surgery will not be required.
– People under 18 must have had counselling that supports the declarations
– People are prevented from using former identity documents to ‘deceive’
– People who are not legally female can terminate a pregnancy
– People subject to strip searches can request the gender of the person carrying out the search
And yes, they don’t mean “gender”, but one’s sex (which the link above treats as synonyms, same as the vast majority of English speaking people).
The Left has gotten away with pushing for transgenderism by declaring it to be separate and distinct from biological sex, and then take advantage of the fact the most people know the word “gender” as being just a synonym for one’s biological sex to then erase that distinction and declare biology to be biologically irrelevant in an attempt to ignore the fundamental truth that we are a sexually dimorphic species with physical and actual physiological differences both explicit and statistically relevant.
The impetus to grant human rights to nature is well known, in both theory and in actualimplemented practice. But this is not just some secular legal technical equivalence for the purpose of preventing pollution and the like, but a form of magic and throwback to animism, which is increasingly being adopted by denominations of a certain monotheistic religion: Christianity.
Now, a seminary in Harlem is having people, in chapel, offer confession—not to a priest or directly to God—but to plants, describing payer to… plants (which are described as “beings”).
Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.
Plants and animals, let alone nature more broadly, don’t have souls according to even the most heretical of Christian sects in the past. Yet these Christians are compromising their faith by mixing it with animism, much in the same way that Santaria incorporated voodoo and other such beliefs into a veneer to Catholocism. Union Seminary goes so far as to justify this by a call for, not only Christians but those of other faiths, to “develop new liturgies” and using the excuse the “[m]any faiths and denoms have [such] liturgy” for atoning for harm.
This further, equivocates humans and plants as “divine Creation”. This is one step away from outright admitting that plants have souls.
This seminary isn’t teaching pastors; this seminary is teaching Shamanism.
