freedom and reason

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months. The reflection is awful, and in this point of view, how trifling, how ridiculous, do the little paltry cavilings of a few weak or interested men appear, when weighed against the business of a world.” —Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

These two screen captures were curated by Colin Wright, an independent evolutionary biologist. These articles illustrate why I argue that academic publishing is dead. It’s why Wright left academic and established Reality’s Last Stand on Substack, a reality-based platform for the publishing of science and critique. It’s the same reason I established Freedom and Reason on WordPress. I wanted to establish a public platform for reality-based sociology. These platforms allow us to sidestep the gatekeepers who keep out reality-based knowledge while letting in the madness you see below.

Here’s the note. At this point, opinions that correspond to reality by those who advance the ideas of queer theory, and postmodernist nonsense generally, are correct only accidentally. Flat-earthers hold many reality-based positions. However, the flat-earthers did not arrive at their other opinions through the faculties of an objective mind. If they possessed such a mind, then they would not be flat-earthers. Therefore their judgment on all things are safely disregarded.

If readers remember that I am atheist (or are learning that right now), then they may be inclined to ask me whether I disregard the judgment of Christians, since their faith in God is not rational according to the strict rules of science. After all, regular readers will point out, I do classify queer theory as a neo or quasi religion. Indeed, I do, but there is a difference between queer theory and Christianity. Whereas Christianity is rooted in nonfalsifiable propositions—one cannot disprove the existence of God or angels—the central premise of queer theory, namely that gender is arbitrary, is falsifiable. Unlike the soul, gender is an observable thing. Either you have or the possess the potential to have big or small gametes. Either you have XX or XY chromosomes.

Gender is natural historical fact. In our species, it is binary and immutable. To believe that men can be or become women abandons reality in a way that believing in the soul doesn’t; it rests not only on faith belief but on the active disregarding of scientific truth—on verifiable belief. The existence of souls cannot be falsified by science. The existence of gender identity can and is falsified by science.

Here’s the hitch: As one can see from Wright’s curated screen captures, the flat-earthers not only populate the academic-industrial complex and the technocratic apparatus, they produce the “knowledge ” that finds its way into the textbooks and that informs law and policy. To be sure, the major expression of this, DEI, is waning, but the flat-earthers are finding news ways to subvert common sense. And we should not be too secure that DEI will go away entirely. I have written about the problem before, but this brief expose will suffice without sending you down that rabbit hole.

https://twitter.com/BillboardChris/status/1861225770393444707

This brings us to the mission: Team Reality won the 2024 election big league. But that’s only the beginning. Our task and purpose is to uproot from our institutions the ideological weeds that are corrupting popular sense-making, the integrity of our republic, and the sanity of our children. We do this in the long haul by making the victory of 2024 a generational moment. We do what the progressives did when Roosevelt won the Presidency in 1932: a completely makeover on the Executive Branch. The Democrats put democracy on the ballot. Now Republicans need to make good on November’s popular reaffirmation of democracy.

Here’s the way we need to think about things going forward. Yes, it will involve distinguishing between Americans and unAmericans—between reality-based thought, law, and policy, on the one hand, and the flat-earthers on the other. The Republic is not a blank canvas. The manifestation of Paine’s beginning again is a monument that must be defending against the defacers. That moment has an inscription: the American Creed. The Creed is a set of fundamental ideals and principles believed to define the American national identity and culture. These ideals emphasize democratic-republicanism, equality, individualism, liberty, rationalism, secularism, and the rule of law. The Creed is rooted in the Enlightenment principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution and the Supreme Court decisions that affirm those principles.

Here are key tenets of the American Creed: Equality of opportunity. This is principle that all individuals should have the chance to succeed based on their effort and talent, rather than their birth or social status. Any policy that takes into account race, ethnicity, or religion must be banished. The only equity-based laws and policies allow concern sex-based rights, the safeguarding of children, and consideration for the disable. Liberty. Liberty is the commitment to individual freedoms, including freedom of conscience, the freedom speech and publishing, religious freedom, the freedom of association and assembly, and the right to pursue one’s own happiness in a manner that does not tread on the happiness of others. Democracy. Democracy is essentially faith in governance by the people and for the people, ensuring representation and accountability. In the United States, democracy is republicanism, which involves federalism (relative autonomy for the states), and the separation of powers. Rule of law. This is the principle that all individuals, regardless of their status, are subject to the same laws and moreover that justice shall be impartial.

Equality of opportunity disallows equality of outcome. Liberty disallows authoritarianism. Democracy disallows technocratic government. The rule of law disallows the arbitrary prosecution of the defenders of reality-based knowledge and policy. Preserving the Creed for future generations means defending reality-based knowledge and practice from the anti-Enlightenment project that seeks to subvert the foundation of human freedom. Control over knowledge production is therefore central to reclaiming and securing the rational Republic. Our Republic was founded by men of the Enlightenment. The anti-Enlightenment project is antithetical to reason and science. It is follows from logic that the anti-Enlightenment crowd—the flat-earthers pushing queer theory, critical race theory, and all the rest of it—is unAmerican. It is not reactionary to tag the enemies of reason and science as such. It is observing the reality of the situation.

* * *

https://twitter.com/captivedreamer7/status/1860967652820185088

This is the moment it was over for social democracy in America. It wasn’t the right that wrecked it. It was what is popularly known as the “far left,” i.e., woke progressivism, that wrecked it. This is the crowd that believes men can be or become women. This is the crowd that believes the living are guilty of the misdeeds of the dead. This is flat-eartherism as politics. There is no future in flat-eartherism except its drive to destroy genuinely populist movements. It’s as if transnational corporations stood up these faux leftwing “movements” to undermine working people. Oh wait—that’s exactly what happened. I have documented this on the pages of Freedom and Reason.

Bernie supporters should still be livid over this. I voted for him in the Primaries. I would have voted for him for President in 2016. The corporate state and its street-level thugs stopped that. However, every individual who believes in a nation that establishes the preconditions for self-actualization should be livid over what the identitarians have done and aim to continue doing to this country. These people are toxic. Their ideas are reactionary and regressive. There is nothing genuinely progressive about any of this. But it’s more than reactionary and regressive. It’s mental illness. The sane are leaving the so-called left in droves because of the cluster B personalities you see in this video. Nothing they have to say is useful for the pursuit of truth or for the good of the people because what they are saying is madness. They’re crazy and we have to get them away from power.

“Trump Plans Tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China That Could Cripple Trade Bullshit.” This is from The New York Times. It’s fear mongering for the paradigm of corporate state media. In this essay, I tell the truth about tariffs and why the American worker needs them.

Ask yourself, do you see a lot of American-made cars in Europe? Not really. Why? Tariffs. Do you see a lot of European trucks in the United States. Not really? Again, tariffs. The European Union (EU) imposes tariffs on passenger vehicles imported from the United States to protect European industries. Does the United States put tariffs on EU passenger vehicles? Yes, but these tariffs are much lower than those imposed by the European Union. The EU tariff on passenger vehicles from the US is on average four times greater than the tariffs the United States imposes on EU passenger vehicles. That’s a lot of US cars not sold in Europe because the EU has made them cost prohibitive for a lot of European workers. There is a high tariff on light trucks (including pickup trucks and vans) imported into the US. The effect of these tariffs has been to protect those industries in America—and in protecting those industries, protecting manufacturing jobs for Americans.

What would be an effective way of compelling the EU to lower tariffs on US passenger vehicles? I think you can figure that out. The more fundamental question is whether you want your government to protect domestic automotive and other manufacturing and good paying jobs for Americans. Should Americans have good paying jobs? The corporate state doesn’t think so. Here’s why:

The progressive political class, which comprises the heart of the Democratic Party, serves those transnational corporate interests that seek lower wages in the United States because they benefit economically while spreading the myth than lower wages will correct the long-term fall in profits. To be sure, absolute and relative lower wages generate greater surplus value, but this occurs at the expense of aggregate purchasing power and hence undermines the system capacity to realize surplus value as profit in the market. This is the cause of periodic business recessions and overall lower standards of living, so it is no small matter.

Historically, tariffs had been a cornerstone of US economic policy, particularly for Republicans who saw them as a means to protect domestic industries. However, by the time Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933, the transnationalists—the same crowd that encouraged mass immigration—had convinced the masses that the Great Depression proved the harmful effects of high tariffs, particularly the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which had exacerbated global economic decline by reducing international trade. (You will note that the tariff of 1930 occurred after the Stock Market crash of 1929 that triggered the depression.)

Roosevelt’s approach to tariffs marked a significant departure from the protectionist policies of his predecessors. Under the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) of 1934, the administration gained the authority to negotiate bilateral trade agreements without requiring full congressional approval for each deal (not in itself a bad tool). The act shifted US trade policy from unilateral tariff-setting to a more multilateral, reciprocal framework. The RTAA allowed Roosevelt to reduce tariffs in exchange for similar concessions from other countries, fostering a climate of free trade hoping to revive global commerce during the depression.

Roosevelt’s tariff policies aligned with his broader New Deal goals of economic recovery and international cooperation (i.e., transnationalization). By reducing trade barriers, his administration aimed to open foreign markets to American goods, alleviate domestic overproduction, and strengthen ties with key trading partners. All this laid the groundwork for the post-World War II global economic system, eventually culminating in the establishment of institutions like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Everything the corporate class does—automation and mechanization, efficiency regimes, offshoring, mass immigration—undermines the capacity of the system to maintain a stable or growing rate of profit because it undermines effective organic demand by generating and exacerbating the redundancy of human labor. To be sure, the consumer can always spend beyond his means, but that amasses personal debt that enriches financial institutions, leading to greater concentration of wealth and providing more money capital for investments that advance the process of labor redundancy and wage suppression. Citizens who don’t have jobs, if a society is compassionate, drive up public debt as government becomes the provider for those who should (and could) be working. In this way, the costs of globalization are externalized, expecting the government to complete the cycle of capitalist production.

By reducing tariffs and encouraging international trade, Roosevelt aimed to alleviate overproduction in US industries by opening foreign markets to American goods. This may have temporarily bolstered profits in export-oriented industries that benefited from expanded markets. However, increased competition from imports compressed profit margins in industries facing foreign manufacturing. The reduction in tariffs and the resulting global economic integration led to intensified competition, which put downward pressure on prices and, by extension, profit rates. It also put downward pressure on wages. As international trade grew, US firms faced new competitive pressures that spurred capitalists to invest in labor-saving technologies.

A key factor contributing to the falling rate of profit is overproduction, where the market cannot absorb all goods at profitable prices. While freer trade may provide temporary relief by opening foreign markets, it at the same time integrates US capital more deeply into global cycles of production and crisis. The reduction in trade barriers exacerbated competitive pressures globally, contributing to an environment where profit rates continued to stagnate or decline.

Moreover, Roosevelt’s policies, including those reducing tariffs, were part of a broader New Deal agenda that included labor protections, wage increases, and social welfare programs. While these reforms improved domestic demand and stabilized the economy, they also increased labor costs for capitalists. This inorganic redistribution of surplus value from capital to labor also contributed to a compression in the rate of profit, especially in industries reliant on domestic market.

Tariffs did not cause the Great Depression. The perception that they did legitimized the transnationalist strategy of integrating the US work force into the global capitalist economy to the detriment of the American worker. We were tricked. We have pursued globalist economic strategies for long enough to know that it hurts American workers. Transnational corporations don’t care about American workers—and neither do the political elites that serve their interests. We need an economic nationalism focused on putting American workers first. We do that by raising tariffs on imports and forcing other economies to open their markets to our products.

It should have been obvious that a car and its parts manufactured in other countries creates few if any high-paying manufacturing jobs in America. Only cars and parts manufactured in the United States will accomplish that in any significant way. Tariffs will force other economies to allow our passenger vehicles to be competitive in other economies, and this will create more manufacturing jobs in America. So when Democrats tell you tariffs are bad, ask them who they are bad for. Obviously tariffs are good for European workers (who are still voting for the cultural elitism Americans rejected at the ballot box on November 5). If tariffs are good for European workers, why wouldn’t they be good for Americans workers, too? The answer to this question is obvious. And that’s precisely why the globalists don’t want tariffs.

The Daily Beast spins the practice of cerebral hygiene by blaming “MAGA trolls” for the exodus of progressives from X to Bluesky. Bluesky is a social media platform designed to be an alternative to centralized platforms like Twitter, initially aiming to create a more open internet. It was initiated by Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, to explore new models for social media that prioritize openness and user agency. The project gained traction in response to criticisms of centralized platforms regarding censorship, algorithmic control, and data privacy. However, what attracts progressives to Bluesky is the opposite of openness; they like its restrictive character and its focus on policing “rightwing” speech.

(As an aside, Threads is a text-based social media platform created by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. It’s integrated with Instagram and serves as a competitor to X. Threads allows users to share text updates, images, and videos, and it promotes public conversations using an interface familiar to Instagram users. This essay isn’t about Threads, but I thought if you didn’t know what it was, I would tell you. The Daily Beast needed to make Bluesky appear as if it is soaring; Threads is an easy target.)

Cerebral hygiene is a concept associated with the French sociologist Auguste Comte. It refers to the practice of maintaining intellectual purity by deliberately avoiding the influence of other thinkers’ ideas when developing one’s own theories or analyses. I hijacked the term years ago to describe the ideologue who deliberately avoids watching or reading the opinions of those with whom he thinks he will disagree, fearful that he might learn something and then change his mind on account of it. The problem isn’t the one thing he might learn, but the possibility that this one thing may cause his entire worldview to unravel.

This is a problem in today’s political scene: ideologues avoid engaging with opposing viewpoints out of fear not only of contamination, but of destabilization. Cerebral hygiene is a defensive posture: insulating one’s worldview against challenges that could force a re-evaluation of deeply held beliefs. It’s not about preserving intellectual autonomy (which is a silly idea anyway) but maintaining the coherence of an identity tied to those beliefs. The fear isn’t necessarily learning something new; it’s the domino effect that a single contradiction might trigger, potentially unraveling a carefully constructed ideological framework.

My reframing means to leverage psychological and sociological issues, such as cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. By avoiding dissenting perspectives, individuals protect themselves from the discomfort of confronting evidence that challenges their worldview, which would in turn imperil their identity. Of course, this insulation comes at the cost of genuine understanding, intellectual growth, and meaningful dialogue, all of which are necessary for functional democratic systems, means with which populations might build consensus over the important issues facing the nation. What begins as a strategy for intellectual “purity” can devolve into a form of intellectual stagnation, driven more by fear than by a commitment to truth.

I must clarify something; I do not wish the reader to think that I am accusing liberals of such a practice. The Daily Beast is not really talking about liberals; those leaving X are progressives. Liberalism and progressivism are opposites. (Online progressive rags like The Daily Beast like to confuse their readers and retard political IQs by making opposites synonyms and synonyms opposites.) Liberals believe in free speech and open information systems and the production of knowledge that aligns with reality. Progressives believe in none of those things. There’s too much truth on X, so progressives search for platforms that support their narrow worldview and desire for illusion. They found one in Bluesky.

One of the reasons Republicans won overwhelmingly on November 5 was the proletariat and the entrepreneur waking up to the realization that progressivism is an authoritarian corporatist tendency that stifles independent thought and smothers individual autonomy. Rather than run down rightwing rabbit holes, they listened to what progressives were saying and developed a compelling counterargument to their various and delusional opinions. They listened and heard the so-called left speaking in the language of collectivism and identitarianism and said “fuck that.” X users fleeing to Bluesky are only going to make harder for progressives to recapture lost ground. If they don’t confront the enemy, they will lose even more ground. After all, cerebral hygiene was why they lost so much ground in the first place—that and their ideas are shit.

Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and 2020 presidential candidate, has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The Establishment has raised concerns over her foreign policy positions, which have included criticism of US involvement in Ukraine, and her alleged alignment with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. From the standpoint of the corporate state, Tulsi’s strident opposition to Islamic terrorism notwithstanding, these views and actions make her unsuitable for the post to which she has been appointed.

It is no exaggeration to say that Gabbard is viewed by the Establishment as an enemy of the state. On August 4, 2024, whistleblowers with the Federal Air Marshal Service revealed that Gabbard and her husband were added to a secret Transportation Security Administration (TSA) program called “Quiet Skies,” effectively placing the couple on a domestic terror watchlist. This is remarkable not only given Gabbard’s political career, but also in light of the fact that she has served as a Lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve since 2021, having previously served in Hawaii Army National Guard from 2003 to 2020, seeing deployment overseas as both an Army military police platoon leader and a Civil Affairs officer.

The action against Gabbard and Establishment demands for FBI background checks on all of Trump’s appointees echoes past attempts by corporate state elites to discredit, harass, and suppress those whose ideas elites find threatening to the neoconservative and neoliberal status quo.

This is not the first time our nation has been here. Remember the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations (AGLOSO), a tool of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) created during the early years of the Cold War? The list was established in 1942 under Executive Order 9835, signed by President Harry Truman in 1947, as part of the federal government’s broader efforts to root out “communist influence” and ensure the loyalty of federal employees. The list included organizations deemed subversive due to their ties to organizations considered dangerous to US security. The list was made public in 1948. At that time, it included 78 organizations. Over time, the list expanded to include 154 organizations, with 110 identified as communist or communist-front groups. These groups ranged from explicitly political organizations, like the Communist Party USA, to groups accused of covertly advancing subversive agendas.

AGLOSO was a mark of the period popularly known as “McCarthyism” (so named after Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy who famously kept lists on subversives)—witch-hunts with vague and sweeping criteria leading to overreach and infringement on civil liberties. With limited evidence and plenty of innuendo, the Establishment used AGLOSO and other lists to suppress dissent and punish individuals for their political affiliations and opinions.

The lists contributed to a broader atmosphere of fear and political repression, and while the use of AGLOSO waned in the 1950s and 1960s as the Red Scare subsided and public opposition to such measures grew, and one would have hoped that the lessons of Cold War-era excesses in the name of national security would have been internalized and future excesses avoided, the FBI’s CointelPro programs of the 1960s-70s targeting such leftwing organizations as the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, some of which enjoyed a limited hangout in the high-profile Church Committee hearings of 1975, demonstrated that lessons were not learned. (See The Black Panthers: Black Radicalism and the New Left.)

Nor were lessons learned from the CointelPro scandal. The current actions of the DOJ, the Attorney General, and the FBI echo the AGLOSO and CointelPro, only now they are aimed at allegedly right-leaning groups and individuals, a new iteration of political repression where dissenting voices, particularly those from conservative, libertarian, or populist movements, are subject to heightened scrutiny under the pretext of national security or public safety.

Conservatives and liberal allies point to federal agencies targeting individuals and organizations associated with political movements that oppose the current administration’s policies or challenge mainstream narratives. This scrutiny involves labeling groups as threats due to alleged ties to domestic terrorism and the spread of misinformation (see Church 2.0). Examples cited include investigations into organizations promoting election integrity, opposition to COVID-19 policies, or criticisms of progressive social agendas. (See The “Control of Misinformation” and the Deterioration of the Integral State; The Hi-Tech Custodial/Surveillance State.)

The FBI—the same agency political elites are demanding Trump subject his political appointees to via background checks—has pursued certain right-wing entities, such as parents protesting school board policies, as potential domestic terrorism threats under the USA PATRIOT Act. Similarly, the DOJ’s focus on groups involved in the January 6 Capitol riot lumped thousands of peaceful political activists with a handful of violent offenders. (See MDM is the New WMD: DHS Issues a New NTAS Bulletin; Establishing the One-Party State.)

Like AGLOSO, these measures create a climate of suspicion that undermines civil liberties and democratic freedoms. Government agencies have weaponized their authority to stigmatize political opposition and silence dissent, effectively chilling the exercise of free speech and assembly. The double standard in enforcement, such as the lack of equivalent attention to left-leaning groups, for example those involved in violent protests during the summer of 2020, demonstrates the ideological bias at work. (The same double standard is at work in the UK; see EngSoc—Jail Time for Gendering in the UK? Indigenous English Rise Against Modern-Day Colonialism.) This selective approach mirrors the undemocratic nature of AGLOSO, targeting political affiliations and ideologies rather than specific illegal activities.

The modern iteration of AGLOSO represents a broader struggle over the boundaries of governmental power and the right to dissent. The targeting of right-leaning groups is part of a larger campaign to marginalize movements that challenge the influence of elites, corporate power, or centralized authority, particularly within a framework of managed democracy (see Sheldon Wolin). Such actions have eroded trust in federal institutions, deepened partisan divides, and undermined the democratic principles of fairness and equality before the law. This is why deconstructing the Administrative States and abolishing the Deep State are imperatives in the struggle to reclaim the American Republic. (See Tasks for the Rebel Alliance.)

https://twitter.com/2ETEKA/status/1859684934308270412?fbclid=IwY2xjawGwP_lleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHWWx0E4lRBbc9zqtinhr8zdO1fnRFtIN0Enx_N1G8_7z4WGbzw5-uBbc7Q_aem_bCaYr2q1ebRguF15zebryA

I don’t see progressives here or on Twitter or in the Cathedral condemning the Biden administration for authorizing Ukraine to fire long-range missiles into Russia or for Ukraine using that authorization to actually fire long-range missiles into Russia, thus bringing the world to the brink of WWIII (see Will WWIII Begin in Eurasia?).

Where does principle exist in this crowd? To be sure, any side that will erase women as a sex class can be presumed to lack principle altogether, but I have in the past heard a lot of antiwar noise from the folx. When it was Bush and Cheney doing the warmongering, they were in the streets raising a ruckus. Of course, that was before the Democratic Party made perfectly clear that they had become the party of Bush and Cheney.

Anthony Blinken, US Secretary of State, and Jake Sullivan, US National Security Advisor, are behind this and both should stand before a tribunal to answer for their crimes against humanity. Biden should stand before the same tribunal, except that he’s a potato who doesn’t know what room he’s in at any given moment. For the same reason the government didn’t bring him to trial for his theft of classified documents, they would likely leave him be for authorizing a state the CIA and State Department installed in Ukraine in 2014 to fire US-made missiles into Russia.

However, Barack Obama is still of sound mind and body. Since Obama was President when the CIA and State overthrew the democratically-elected government of Ukraine in the Maidan Revolution (see History and Sides-Taking in the Russo-Ukrainian War), he should stand before the tribunal and made to answer for his wicked deeds.

Update:

https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1860861004822806897

There is a correlation between states that shield criminal aliens from Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE), voter ID laws, and states won by Kamala Harris in the 2024 Presidential Election. Most states with policies shielding criminal aliens went for Harris; the correlation between voter ID laws and Blue states is particularly robust.

Could it be that states Democrats control eschew voter ID knowing that illegal immigrants will vote for Democrats because of all the support Democrats lavish upon them? Could this be why Democrats want open borders—so they inflate their votes?

The continuous stream of votes weeks after the election has pushed Trump slightly below the 50 percent mark; according to Cook’s Political Report, Trump’s percentage share of the popular vote is 49.9 percent. California and New York still have three percent of the votes left to count.

Third Party candidates collectively racked up 2.9 million votes in November, with Green Party candidate Jill Stein winning 775,186, independent candidate RFK, Jr., 748,235 (RFK, Jr., endorsed Trump), Libertarian Party’s Chase Oliver 639,252, and various other candidates collecting 754,925. Excluding these votes (not one electoral vote among them), the two major party candidates garnered a total of 151,428,086 votes between them, Trump received 50.8 percent of these votes. Yet, progressives are desperate to manufacture the illusion that Trump’s victory was something less than significant.

Trump presently has 76,957,993 votes recorded. His vote count will almost certainly exceed 77 million, which would be not only the largest number of votes ever won by a Republican, but exceed any reasonable vote total attributed to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. By how much would require an audit, but 81.3 million is a rather incredible number. (Harris’ 74,470,093 figure is also like inflated, again because her votes were driven up in those states that do not require voter ID, where immigrants are groomed to vote in elections.)

Trump won the popular vote, 58 percent of electoral votes, including all the swing states. Republicans captured the Senate and retained the House. Republicans control 37 of 50 governors’ mansions. Eighty percent of countries shifted red or towards red. Democrats have lost at all levels. Yet here’s Representative Jim Clyburn denying that Donald Trump won in a landslide and has a mandate:

https://twitter.com/DemocraticWins/status/1859733769151971381

Remember when Bill Clinton won 43 percent of the vote and Time magazine called it a “mandate for change”? If not, here’s the cover:

Humans have an innate capacity for language. Our species has evolved over tens of thousands of years of natural selection the capacity, variable as all traits are, to acquire and process language. But this doesn’t mean that the man with a keen linguistic facility is an intelligent man.

It is important to understand that intelligence and language are distinct things. Intelligence in humans refers to cognitive abilities that involve abstraction and reasoning, while language is the faculty for the transduction and processing of symbolic and semiotic information.

People can speak well and know a lot while not being very intelligent. People can be highly intelligent and have difficulty in conveying thought in speech and writing or both. Put another way, those who lack the capacity for higher-order abstraction and reasoning often sound intelligent when they are really not very intelligent at all; then there is the neurodivergent individual who struggles to express himself but who can readily see and accept the truth.

Working in academia for more than thirty years, I am constantly reminded of the fact that people can obtain advanced degrees, publish in scientific journals, and give talks without notes and without stammering, while at the same time believing the most absurd and impossible things, for example that men can be or become women.

It is important to be aware of this distinction so as not to be beguiled by the glib individual. I am talking about the man who speaks or writes in a way that is confident and fluent but insincere and superficial. The glib individual might come across as overly smooth or persuasive, but he is shallow or dismissive of complex issues and obvious things. He lacks a genuine concern for others or a depth understanding of the subject matter.

A chief indicator that an individual is not very intelligent is the easy resort to sophistry rather than a serious effort to use valid logic and sound inference. When a person attempts to affirm the absurd or impossible he exposes his lack of intelligence, since facility in valid logic and sound inference would cause him to reject the absurd and impossible whatever his facility in language.

You may be wondering why when you type “transwoman” your device may (and this is typical) separate it in two words, rendering “trans woman.” Your device may also (typically) underline the term in red as if it is a mispelling.

You may object to the auto splitting because it suggests that transwomen constitute something like “black women,” etc.—that is, not a prefix but a modifier, as if transwomen constitute a subclass of women instead of what they are, namely men.

This is indeed the point of your device separating the term into two parts (or flagging it as a misspelling): your device is automatically substituting the rules of queer ideology for reality-based understanding.

It’s a conditioning action in which a device trains its user to write and think in a particular way—in a way the user may not wish to, indeed in a manner contrary to reality-based understanding. The objective is to entrench the habits of doublethink by changing grammar and the meanings of words. (See Neutralizing the Gender-Detection Brain Module.)

I didn’t think about this until recently, and I have been separating the words for months in several essays on Freedom and Reason. They got me.

If you think I am imaging this, and this is how I learned that they got me, the GLAAD directive makes it clear: “A woman who was assigned male at birth may use this term to describe herself. She may shorten it to trans woman. (Note: trans woman, not ‘transwoman.’) Some may prefer to simply be called women, without any modifier.” (See Glossary of Terms: Transgender.)

GLAAD is a major queer lobbying group. GLAAD and other queer lobbying organizations have colonized Big Tech and compelled them to program the systems we use in our daily lives in a way that rewires our brains.

The construct “authentic self,” currently circulating on social media as Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina’s 1st District announces her resistance to the transgressive praxis of the gender project, is a paradigm of what George Orwell warned about in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the Party turns words into their opposites to chill the air and manipulate the populace. What is identified as the “authentic self” in gender ideology is in reality a simulated sexual identity. Its desired function is not only to dissimulate misogyny—demanding that men be permitted to invade women’s spaces and assume opportunities reserved for that sex class for purposes of genuine equity—but to disorder organic common sense by disrupting the human being’s evolved capacity to see the real.

The simulation is never the reality, yet the populace and its representative are expected to engage in doublethink, at least flawlessly appearing to accept the simulation as real. Doublethink is the ability Orwell identified of the indoctrinated ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accept both as true. If transwomen were women, then the prefix means nothing. At the same time, in its actual meaning, “across from” or on the “other side of,” in this case literally the “opposite of,” all men are transwomen in the sense that they stand opposite of women. As slogan, the construct is a form of cognitive dissonance institutionalized by a totalitarian regime to control thought and suppress dissent. The term is thus an instantiation of the process by which individuals reconcile conflicting realities to align with the Party’s official narrative.

The folx work from the blindness of doublethink. The “folx” are the woke progressives who failed to deceive the majority of Americans on November 5, 2024. There is a lot of be excited about the fact that Donald Trump and his “Team of Rivals” won the popular vote, winning the largest number of votes than any GOP candidate in history (closing in on 77 million votes, more than two and half million more votes than the major opponent). Trump won 58 percent of electoral votes—the majority of states—including every swing state. Republicans retook the Senate and retained control the House. Republicans now control 37 of 50 governor’s mansions. The political realignment is deep and profound, with eighty percent of counties across the United States trending red in the voting. It’s clear that a majority of Americans want to uproot the woke progressive sensibilities that are upending their lives. In the face of deep and profound corporate state hegemony, the will of the reality-based citizen prevailed. Common sense is still alive and kicking.

But the woke progressive ideologue still controls the apparatus—the Academic-Industrial Complex, the Cathedral, the Culture Industry, the Medical-Industrial Complex. Identity politics, DEI, and the rest of it still pervade our institutions, channeling the resentment of the proles the Party has sacrificed on the alter of corporate profit and cultural decadence. The apparatus must be deconstructed and the people liberated. And we don’t have a lot of time to get this done. The United Kingdom under the thumb of Labour has become Airstrip One. This is the fate that awaits the United States if Democrats regain power. House elections are less than two years away. November 5 should be the beginning of the end of our long national nightmare. But to be this, the moment needs seizing. Tomorrow’s historical question of whether America awakened in time will be determined by citizen actions today.

A big part of that struggle is to reclaim language from the Ministry of Truth. The problem of gender ideology is central to this struggle. But so is the language we use to describe our political standpoints. This is why I am so tenacious when it comes to grasping the meaning of the word “liberal” and insisting that we use this word with reference to its actual meaning. We therefore must also clarify the meaning of “conservative” and “progressive.”

Perhaps the main difference between the conservative, as originally understood, and a liberal person is that the latter openly embraces modernity. I see a lot of criticism of modernity from self-identified conservatives. But what is modernity? Modernity is the shift away from agrarian, feudal, and traditional relations towards industrialization, secularism, and urbanization, those developments associated with the rise of rationality, science, and technology. Modernity is the concrete embodiment of Enlightenment ideals: individualism and personal autonomy, progress (not progressivism, another inversion that conceals regressive tribal desire), humanism, reason and science, and skepticism of authority. Modernity is aligned politically with the development of capitalism, the modern nation-state, and republicanism. Modernity is the state that takes man away from the primitive and tribal politics of identity and pushes him towards rational individualism and nationalism.

If one takes a moment to reflect on this, he will see that most modern conservatives are substantially liberal. The conservative of old—the monarchist and traditionalist of the Ancien Régime—is a reactionary, out of place in the modern world. What the modern conservative—the man who lacks self-awareness of his liberal sensibilities—is really reacting to is postmodernity and the project to abandon modernity for totalitarianism and transhumanism, a desire rooted in anarchist and nihilistic sensibles, i.e., authoritarian desires organizing and organized by the corporate state. Liberals reject all that, as all that is inherently destructive to the Enlightenment values liberals and modern conservatives embrace. As such, one cannot be both liberal and progressive. When people identify as both, they are admitting they’re either purveyors or victims of doublethink.

A few days ago on Facebook, I used the movie franchise Star Wars as a metaphor to remind progressives who saw in that series of what is happening in the actual world. I wanted to remind them of this to help them find the liberal that may still be lurking in their bosom—to join the fight to restore the Old Republic. In the first installment of the franchise, the Rebel Alliance prevailed. Speaking metaphorically, 2016 repented the destruction of the Death Star. But the Empire remains and persists and always coming after the Rebel Alliance. The Empire struck back in 2020. And they’re not done after the Return of Jedi. The Empire hates the American Creed—federalism, civil liberties, and popular sovereignty—because the Creed stands in the way of the Agenda. The Agenda: the Empire wants to make America something other than what it is meant to be. Progressives cheered on the Alliance in theaters. And when Disney infused the franchise with woke progressivism, many progressives resisted. We need to help the progressive now grasp the spirit of those sympathies, to find their inner liberalism—their authentic self. That’s the spirit of the American Revolution.

If a white man murders a black man, and his motive is racism, are other white men responsible for his actions? From an ethical and legal standpoint, the actions of one individual cannot be automatically attributed to others who share similar characteristics, such as race, unless there is direct evidence of complicity or shared responsibility. In a case where a white man murders a black man motivated by racism, the culpability rests solely on the individual who committed the act unless others actively participated, encouraged, or conspired in the crime.

If a white man murders a black man, and his motive is racism, are his offspring responsible for his actions? No, his offspring are not responsible for his actions. Responsibility for a crime or immoral act lies solely with the individual who committed it, not with his descendants. This principle aligns with both legal doctrines, which prohibit assigning guilt to others based on familial ties, and ethical reasoning, which emphasizes individual accountability.

These moral truths apply to all crimes. Individuals are solely responsible for their own actions, and guilt cannot be inherited or transferred to others, including offspring or family members. Ethical frameworks and legal systems universally uphold this principle, emphasizing individual accountability rather than collective or familial blame. The alternatives are barbaric and primitive.

Given these principles, which are correct, how are reparations paid to ethnic or racial groups for wrongs committed against them by members of other ethnic or racial groups acts of justice? Is it not unjust to assign blame to those who committed no wrongdoing, to hold them accountable for the actions of others, most of whom are dead? Who are the living victims? The actual victims are buried in the same ground as the perpetrators. Most are dead and gone. Any perpetrator alive can be help responsible—as an individual.

The same is true with land acknowledgments. A land acknowledgment is a formal statement that recognizes the indigenous peoples as the traditional stewards of the land and pays respect to the history and culture of the communities that lived on and cared for it before colonization. These acknowledgments often highlight specific tribes or nations historically connected to the area and express solidarity with ongoing efforts for justice and reconciliation.

What justice is being sought? To shame those who live today for actions taken by people who are now deceased? To extract from the living reparations for the actions of the dead—to take from those who did nothing to give to those who suffered no injury? What is being reconciled? The historical and ongoing injustices faced by indigenous peoples due to colonization? Colonialism is in the past. The past cannot be changed.

Much of world history involves the conquest, colonization, and domination of one group by another. This pattern has occurred across civilizations, empires, and eras, as societies have often expanded through warfare, subjugation, and exploitation of others. Examples include the Roman Empire’s expansion across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East; the Mongol conquests across Asia and Europe; the spread of Islamic caliphates; and European colonization of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Conquest and colonization have shaped borders, cultures, languages, religions, and economies throughout history. The contexts, scales, and consequences of these processes vary widely, but the principles of justice remain firm: no collective or intergenerational penalty allowed.