Today marks the day that the Berlin Wall, an artifact of not only the Cold War but also the Allied victory in World War II, has been down―10,316 days―as it was up.
This is a testament to those who, during the Cold War, refused to accommodate Communism, but stood up against the Soviet menace and said “no more”.
There was no more stirring call against the Berlin Wall, and the Communist regimes that it came to symbolize, than Ronald Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate:
Aside from legitimate cases of mental illness and an increasingly larger number of young people who have been indoctrinated, the entire “trans” phenomena is, to a large degree, about legitimizing perversion.
A few years ago, a grown man claimed to literally be a little girl, begging the question: Can we finally call it perversion now? Now, the idea that one can be “trans-aged”, being a person of one age living in the body of a person of another age (much like a person identifying as a woman but actually being a man), is being used as a legitimate excuse by a thirty-eight year old man who molested three children as young as six years old.
“A Chicago man accused of sexually assaulting two six-year-olds and an eight-year-old on repeated occasions, told police officers that he’s really ‘a 9-year-old trapped in an adult’s body,’ prosecutors revealed on Wednesday.
“Thirty-eight-year-old Joseph Roman is charged with repeated predatory criminal sexual assault. The numerous attacks began in 2015 and continued until earlier this month.
“Roman has reportedly confessed to some of the attacks to authorities. His victims were the daughters of his friends.”
News of the Week for Feb. 4th, 2018
Rather than just be a spying device for Amazon, Amazon’s “Alexa” has gone full woke feminist:
“Last year, the tech-centric e-magazine, Quartz, sponsored a study which analyzed whether various home assistants like Alexa and her competitors, Google Home, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana, would respond when called vulgar names or confronted with feminist-defined sexist terms like ‘slut.'”
“…
“Amazon was, apparently, rather distressed by Quartz’s findings, even if regular, everyday Americans weren’t likely to ask Alexa whether she was a feminist, query her for her views on reproductive rights, or call her a ‘slut’ (especially given that she’s not a real person), so they made an effort to change Alexa’s programming, making her more ‘woke,’ and even giving her the option to rebuke sexist questions.
“Now, when asked if she’s a feminist, Alexa responds, eye-rollingly, that she is, ‘[a]s is anyone who believes in bridging the inequality between men and women in society.’
“When called a derogatory term like ‘slut,’ Alexa will now go into “disengagement mode” and refuse to answer a question, replying ‘I’m not going to respond to that.’
“Feminists are, of course, overjoyed at the faux achievement of programming a robot with no actual gender to respond to insults in a politically correct and wholly feminist way. And Amazon’s Alexa engagement team is patting itself on the back as a result.”
If Alexa is people’s main way of interacting with Amazon, then perhaps this may spur people to abandon Amazon for less politically correct climes. There are, after all, far more pleasing interfaces out there.
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: “Free Healthcare” is great… if you are healthy.
Hat Tip to Insureblog for bringing these items to our attention.
First, a little bit of mood music:
Carrying on…
We are often told that without nationalized healthcare, poor people won’t be able to get the treatment they need. Turns out that socialized healthcare is even worse:
“Waiting for treatment has become a defining characteristic of Canadian health care. In order to document the lengthy queues for visits to specialists and for diagnostic and surgical procedures in the country, the Fraser Institute has—for over two decades—surveyed specialist physicians across 12 specialties and 10 provinces.
“This edition of Waiting Your Turn indicates that, overall, waiting times for medically necessary treatment have in-creased since last year. Specialist physicians surveyed report a median waiting time of 21.2 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment—longer than the wait of 20.0 weeks reported in 2016. This year’s wait time—the longest ever recorded in this survey’s history—is 128% longer than in 1993, when it was just 9.3 weeks.
“…
“Patients also experience significant waiting times for various diagnostic technologies across the provinces. This year, Canadians could expect to wait 4.1 weeks for a computed tomography (CT) scan, 10.8 weeks for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, and 3.9 weeks for an ultrasound.”
It is a common trope in Science Fiction, and other works, for dystopian governments to enforce their power by forcibly drugging a populous to make it more docile and malable.
Now it is being seriously proposed in order to get Western Civilization to accept ceasing to be Western Civilization.
“A group of researchers from Germany and the United States have published a study which concludes that doping ‘xenophobic’ populations with massive quantities of the estrogen-linked hormone Oxytocin will cure nationalism – making native citizens more accepting and generous towards migrants who simply want free handouts from Western taxpayers while Islamic extremists peacefully rape and murder infidels.
“‘Accommodating the large influx of migrants not only challenges the humanitarian capacities of European countries but also requires their native populations to adjust to rapid growths in ethnic diversity, religious pluralism, and cultural differentiation. However, the impetus to adapt to changing social ecosystems is susceptible to considerable interindividual heterogeneity. Resistance to this transition often goes along with xenophobic sentiment, and as a consequence, recent elections in Europe have favored populist candidates who have openly expressed xenophobic attitudes toward refugees.'”
Perhaps even more disturbing, the United Nations wants in on the brainwashing:
“Our results imply that an OXT-enforced social norm adherence could be instrumental in motivating a more generalized acceptance toward ethnic diversity, religious plurality, and cultural differentiation resulting from migration by proposing that interventions to increase altruism are most effective when charitable social cues instill the notion that one’s ingroup shows strong affection for an outgroup. Furthermore, UNESCO has emphasized the importance of developing neurobiologically informed strategies for reducing xenophobic, hostile, and discriminatory attitudes … Thus, considering OXT-enforced normative incentives in developing future interventions and policy programs intended to reduce outgroup rejection may be an important step toward making the principle of social inclusion a daily reality in our societies.”
A slippery slope isn’t a fallacy when it happens over and over again, despite promises to the contrary. Oh, it is claimed that just because the promise for euthanasia to only be used on the terminally ill in excruciating pain at the end of their life to “die with dignity” was tosses aside once homicide was normalized as a medical procedure in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada doesn’t mean it’ll happen in the good ole U. S. of A, right?
Nope.
“[The Oregon Health] Authority very liberally construes the law in its regulatory approach. From ‘Oregon Health Authority Reveals Hidden Problems with the Oregon Assisted Suicide Model […]:
“‘The law is best seen as a permissive law, and states only that patients must have a terminal illness with six months or less to live. It does not compel patients to have exhausted all treatment options first, or to continue current treatment. ‘
“Here’s the thing: Assisted suicide was sold to Oregon voters as exactly the opposite–as a very restricted law that would merely serve as a safety valve when nothing else could be done to alleviate suffering. It was always baloney.”
Wouldn’t we know if this was being abused?
News of the Week for Jan. 28th, 2018
What is conservatism, and what makes a conservative? There are many different descriptions, from Burke and Stephens to Kirk and Meyer. This task is complicated by the fact that conservativism, in the Anglo-American vein, is not a proscriptive ideology, but a descriptive observation of what is already extant and inalienably so.
Soon to be former MEP Daniel Hannan opines on the subject:
The usual trope of intersectionality would dictate that “Whiteness” and “Heteronormativity” are partners in oppression. However, some would seem to disagree…
Somewhere in the bowels of hell, Ernst Röhm is nodding in slightly confused approval.
I’ll take one for the Volk…
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