Walter Williams defines "social justice"

Walter Edward Williams (31/3/36 - 1/12/20 was an American economist, commentator, and academic. He was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, a syndicated columnist, and author. Mr Williams held classical liberal and libertarian views, and wrote frequently for Townhall and Jewish World Review. He was also a popular guest host of The Rush Limbaugh Show.

Here's what Walter Williams had to say about "social justice".

In case you didn't notice, Walter Williams was black. Surprised? Why?

VIDEO: Drunk driver plays diversity, victim cards, gets arrested anyway

Bodycam footage seen recently on X illustrates the social justice/police brutality/yada yada bullshit that cops (especially white male cops) have to put up with in Woke America.

If you didn't catch all of it, here's a list of excuses this... errr... lady?... Karen?... libtard?... wokester came up with in just three minutes.

* I have bad social anxiety

* I don't wanna step out of the car because there's a lot of stuff going around

* I'm an indigenous person

* I'm non-binary

* Don't call me "ma'am"

* I have mental health problems [I believe that one. Ed.]

* You're trying to intimidate me

* I have PTSD

* This is triggering

* I have generational trauma

* I don't like being around white people and cops

* You're scaring me

* You're hurting me!!!

To think that in Biden's woke America, people like this are allowed to not only drive cars (even when drunk), but to vote!

Where are they now?

Yesterday we devoted this space to an article written 36 years ago by Nat Hentoff, decrying the hypocrisy of the liberal elites. Mr Hentoff accused the gliberals of trying to silence all views that did not reflect the politically correct orthodoxy of the day. I promised I'd give you an update on what became of the organizations mentioned in his rant, so here it is.

According to Wikipedia, the National Organization for Women is one of the main liberal feminist organizations in the USA, and primarily lobbies for gender equality within the existing political system. One supposes they are still awaiting the election of the first female president. Who do they support now? Karmala Harris? Hellery Clinton (again)? Or the one the DNC insiders are plotting to nominate? [Who do you mean? Ed.]

The Progressive, which Wikipedia calls "an American magazine and website of politics, culture and progressivism with a left-leaning perspective", is still publishing. "It supports civil rights and civil liberties, gender equality, immigrant rights, labor rights, environmentalism, criminal justice reform, and democratic reform." You still can't buy an ad to promote the pro-life cause. 

Eagle Forum is still a voice for conservatives. It is the parent organization of the Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund and the Eagle Forum PAC. The Eagle Forum focuses on social issues and describes itself as pro-family. Wikipedia, on the other hand, calls it "socially conservative and anti-feminist." No bias there, of course. 

Feminists for Life of America is still out there, fighting the pro-life battle. The organization describes itself as "shaped by the core feminist values of justice, non-discrimination, and non-violence". It publishes a biannual magazine, The American Feminist, and aims to reach young women, particularly college students. Wikipedia can't resist pointing out that FFL's anti-abortion positions have been criticized by feminists. 

According to its website, the Funding Exchange, "a pioneer in social justics philanthrophy", was a national network of social justice foundations created in 1979 by "young activists with inherited wealth who had a 'change, not charity' vision of how they felt their money could make a difference."

The founding members sowed the wind by "involving community activists in grantmaking decisions", and reaped the whirlwind. The Funding Exchange was legally dissolved effective November 21, 2018, because of (among other things), "challenging conversations about race,"

A quick read of the organization's official history, p. 46 ff, reveals that it fell apart because of... wait for it... divisions over race! How American is that?! Seems the white gliberals couldn't get along with the BLM types, and vice-versa. Here's a quote from the history, which I'm including because I love seeing the liberals eat their own.

[One of the foundations] would bring a large contingent to board meetings, basically packing the room. Board meetings...were taken up with contentious anti-racism sessions, separate white and people of color caucuses, and political discussions that never seemed to resolve anything. There was a sense that a lot of time was wasted on infighting and spinning of wheels. As a result, several member funds began to opt in and out of participating in board meetings.

So the Funding Exchange is gone, but the SJWs, BLMers and other looney leftists still have plenty of money, quite apart from the grant money and other "reparations" they get from the Brandon maladministration. (Does the name George Soros mean anything to you?) 

But our side has money too, and the fight goes on. The voices of conservatism and common sense have not been silenced. On the issue of abortion, those who advocate women's "rights" to kill their babies, without regard to the rights of the unborn babies, are running scared now. Roe v. Wade could be overturned even before President Trump is re-elected in 2024. Keep fighting ladies (and gentlemen!) and God bless you!

TV families in the Age of Woke

I don't watch TV much any more, except for news and politics, and (of course) hockey [and sometimes Judge Judy! Ed.]. I avoid dramas, soap operas and sitcoms like the plague, because I'm sick of the constant propagandizing for the liberal agenda, besides which the sitcoms just aren't funny any more. So also sketch comedy, like SNL, which I guess is funny if you're a Dumbocrat.

Although I restrict my TV diet, I can't escape commercials, which appear at intervals of 40 seconds or so during the hockey games and fake news broadcasts. Some of them are entertaining, and every now and then we at WWW give the good ones the coveted Wally award for creativity. But I've noticed lately a trend in the portrayal, in TV ads, of American families. That's our topic for today.

Here's the kind of American family we saw on the toob in TV's so-called "golden years".

Yes, folks, it's the Andersons, of Father Knows Best. They're often held up as examples of the happy, well-adjusted, fully functioning family who should be role models for those of us who aren't so happy, well-adjusted, etc. Of course they're white folks. But there were happy, well-adjusted black families too, like the Huxtables.

You remember the Huxtables, don't you? Wow, they were even better than the Andersons because both parents were hard-working professional people. No stay-at-homee mom there! Some people complained that the Huxtables were "too white" in their speech and lifestyle -- "Oreo cookies" or, dare we say it, "black Republicans". But there were other black families, such as the Evans Family, from Good Times.

More down-to-earth than the Huxtables, eh? Climbing back up the social ladder, we find the Banks family, of Bel Air, who were always coping with their home boy relative, the Fresh Prince.

Elsewhere in America, we were invited to laugh along with the Keatons of Family Ties, as Alex faced the challenge of being a Republican in a family of Democrats.

All of these families are uniracial -- white or black, period. SJWs have been complaining for years that blacks have been under-represented on American TV. When challenged to square that assertion with the existence of shows like Good Times, Fresh Prince and the Cosby Show, they say that those shows were "blacksploitation" or (more recently) failed "to accurately portray the Black lived experience". 

The result is this year's remake of The Wonder Years, which featured the all-white Arnold family, to portray the all-black Williams family. Is that better? Apparently not. In response to the "wokeness" fad, Corporate America and the MadMen have decreed an end to segregation. What we need to see... must see... now are biracial families, like this one.

Ah, there you are! A happy biracial family -- black father, white mother, two adorable mulatto children, apparently one each of the two leading genders. I haven't seen a family like that in a sitcom yet, but there are lots of them in commercials for "woke" corporations. That's the way America is spozed to be, in the Age of Woke.

If you want to know how it really is, look no further than the evening newscasts of the latest episodes of black crime in your community [especially Lori Lightfoot's Chicago. Ed.]. Both victims and perps will be described as "a future basketball star", "an aspiring rap artist", and/or "a good boy who was trying to turn his life around." 

That desccription will come from the boy's mother. There will be no father in sight, or anywhere around.  That's how it is, even in the many cases where the mother is white. For the sad fact is that there are 1000s of plain-looking, fat white women who will do anything, anything to  get a black guy to show them a little love. And that includes being a baby mama. 

It is a statistical fact -- evident from the welfare rolls, if nothing else -- that black and biracial families are more likely than white families to be broken -- headed by women whose partners have deserted them. The happy biracial family we see in TV ads is largely mythical, the creation of propagandists pushing the liberal, BLM agenda as a matter of "social justice" to make reparations for the second-class status to which black people have been supposedly consigned.

The funny thing is that black people no longer buy into the concepts of integration and multiculturalism. Just last week, two white Arizona State University students were harassed at the school's "multicultural center" over their race and their support for police. Video of the incident shows black students attempting to force two white male students to leave the area, claiming they were making the space "uncomfortable" with their whiteness and a pro-police sticker. 

That's  how things are, really, not in TVland but in America, in the Age of Woke.

Canadian company won't embrace "wokeness", will stick to business

Cazart! At a time when big businesses in America and Europe are "taking a knee" to kiss BLM/gay ass, the largest publicly-traded company in Canada warned employees that their job is to sell products, not solve social problems. Tobias Lutke, CEO of e-commerce giant Shopify, laid down the law to employees demanding "woke" corporate virtue signalling, reminding them that anyone who was focused on other things when they were supposed to be working should not expect to keep their job. Believe it or not! 

Like many other corporations, Shopify is being pressed by some of its left-leaning employees to take an activist stand on causes such as "equity", "diversity", "inclusion", yada yada yada. Mr Lutke made it clear that doing so is not part of his company's strategy. 

"Shopify is also not the government," he wrote in an e-mail. "We cannot solve every societal problem here. We are part of an ecosystem, of economies, of culture, and of actual countries. We also can't take care of all your needs. We will try our best to take care of the ones that ensure you can support our mission."

That last part addressed complaints by six former employees over how the company has handled racial and social justice issues this past year. "Shopify, like any other for-profit company, is not a family," Mr Lutke wrote, noting that "family thinking" makes it more difficult to dismiss workers who perform poorly. In other words, his company bases its personnel decisions on merit, not who you are or what disadvantaged group you represent.

He added that his company may see opportunities to nudge certain social causes forward, but does so "because this directly helps our business and our merchants and not because of some moralistic overreach."

Mr Lutke's letter to employees comes after Jason Fried, CEO of  American web software company Basecamp, announced that staff will no longer be permitted to engage in "societal and political discussions." He said in a blog post that Basecamp was not a "social impact company," adding, "Every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant."

Disgruntled Canuck thought Anglicanism was supposed to be a religion

Ed. here. We hope the good folks who are keeping Blazing Cat Fur going, strong as ever, won't mind our anticipating their permission to repost the following excellent article, written by a resident of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia (The Ocean Playground TM) who wonders when his church (or that of his mother) ceased being a religion and started being a part of the anti-racism industry.

The alleged church in question is the Anglican Church of Canada -- sometimes called "The Tory Party at Prayer" -- whose "Giving with Grace" promo invites Canadians "to help the ministries of the Anglican Church of Canada make real transformation in real communities here at home and abroad." It's not about religion, now, but about social justice, or so it seems. That prompted someone known only TLDR to write

The Good Lord Help Me, I Am Now Holden Caulfield. 

(Don’t Read This, It’s Just Me Whining. TLDR.)

It’s been a horrible year, basically, for everyone. Obviously some more than others. I get that. And I can’t even look out of the window without seeing some idiot walking down an abandoned street wearing a muzzle. I live opposite a school. Some parents are making their tiny children wear them. "What a great childhood! I remember having cloth over half my face most of the time."...

I spent most of the summer in bed (something else, I think/hope I’m fine now) and the experience seems to have rendered me a bit morbid. I am now, without exaggeration, convinced that if Justin (Totally Not Fidel Castro’s Son) said that cars should start “social distancing” because maybe they breathe or something half these people would be doing that exact thing an hour later. Because Science!

I hit a wall two days ago when I staggered out of bed a bit hungover in a bad mood and found this in the dining room. My mother subscribes. Whether she pays or not I don’t have the calories to investigate. I didn’t make it past page one, although I have perused this mag before. I mean, they have a regular contributor priest called Something MacDonald who has a beard and is slightly whiter than Fauxcahontas Warren (which is saying something) and is pretending to be Indian. Because it’s usually "Native Native First Nations Native" with these guys, except when it’s not "Black Black Black".

I thought Anglicanism was supposed to be a religion. Just look at this thing. What gets me is that everyone involved, by which I mean the subjects, the writers, the editors, the publishers, the subscribers, every single person except possibly the postman is completely full of it. 

There's a South African priest whose profile is headlined "We can name the evil that is racism". How trailblazing. How original. Gosh, I bet they all stood up and applauded at your courage! I wonder if he can do anything else. 

And then there's some chick who claims that she "...still remembers conversations from a church she attended years ago. The congregation constantly associated whiteness with purity and goodness, and darkness with evil. They talked about people being 'washed white' from the blackness of sin." Apparently this was "hurting me, it is damaging to my soul."

If that's true then she's a mental case, and if it's not true (which would be my guess) she's a liar and a talentless drama-queen. Or, best case scenario, a good con artist. But I'm basically cool with her. I don't have too many talents myself. It's the ageing "Anglican" or "United" or whichever denomination creeps who listen to her speeches and congratulate themselves on how wonderfully un-racist and woke etc. they are who make me sick. 

She’s a pet to them. She’s miss "Blackity-black-black-black" who massages their ridiculous egos. Has she mentioned in the last 20 seconds that she’s black? I hope so. Otherwise, what's the point of her to these low IQ egomaniacs pretending to be religious leaders? 

I remember P.J. O’Rourke – not, recently, a hero of mine – writing years ago that he was in the Philippines, listening to the state broadcaster, and palpably, physically felt that he couldn’t get "the hum of bullshit" out of his ear. That's how I feel now. I'm willing to believe that none of these people are exactly geniuses, but some of them have to be human enough to have some glimmer of self-awareness. Yet they do this anyway. Bastards.

Reposting a rant you're not going to like, by Brandon Morse

Ed. here. The last couple of months has been hard on Walt's blood pressure, and kindly ol' Doc Martin has suggested some time away from the USA might do him some good. He is therefore in partibus infidelibus until further notice, but we -- Poor Len Canayen and I -- won't let our faithful readers down.

Our National Sports Editor will wait until after tonight's NHL playoff game between the Penguins and the Habs to make sure he wasn't dreaming on Saturday night, so today we'll share with you excerpts from "Stop Being Nice: A Rant You're Not Going to Like", by Brandon Morse, in RedState, 31/7/20. By "you", Mr Morse means you conservatives and libertarians who aren't fighting back against the BLM/SJW/Antifa war on our society. Here are some choice chunks from his call to action.

I'm convinced that we've become a nation that has gotten so out of control in our adherence to social justice that it's even infected the people who are supposed to resist it, or worse, we've become too scared to rebel against it....

America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, isn’t living up to its reputation as either of those things. Social justice has infected everything and turned the United States into the shadow of its former self.

Despite all the fighting back we've done, the left is still managing to make their reality-rejecting ideological stances the standard in how the public conducts itself. It doesn't matter if its a complete denial of science or embracing failed political systems, the general public has become too afraid to look at the raging, temper tantrum throwing, hate-filled left and say "no."....

Social justice has taken over our society so much that we have a mass of people so brainwashed by leftist propaganda that they actually believe that socialism and communism are awesome. Socialists and communists [come] out of the woodwork to let me know that capitalism is actually the place where people starve and that Soviet Russian citizens actually ate better than Americans back in the day....

So convinced are the brainwashed left by their professors and peers, however, that their position is that my own eyes and ears are useless and that I should trust theirs. So consumed with social justice are they, that despite reality slapping down every position they have on the subject, they embrace it with their heart and soul to the point of violence....

These are the same idiots screaming "Black Lives Matter" in the streets as they burn down black-owned businesses, destroy their neighborhoods, and even kill them over television sets during riots. The same idiots who tell you that they're the good guys as they pummel you into a near-coma because you think pummeling people into a near-coma isn't the way we fix society.

...the end-goal of Black Lives Matter isn't equality and elevation of black lives but the fact that despite repeated actions from the BLM rioters and their leaders have proven me right time and again, the general public either still believes BLM cares or is too afraid to say otherwise. It's this cowardice that drives me nuts.

Our nation is collapsing around us, people have lost or are losing their jobs, businesses are failing, and the stress of it all is causing drug and alcohol abuse, as well as suicide rates to shoot up....

If all the truly responsible people went out and opened their businesses and conducted their lives like normal, the politicians and COVID-Karens could rant, scream, and rave all they want, lefty doctors could fear-monger till they were blue in the face and show us skyrocketing infection rates, but beyond these people, you wouldn't know a damn bit of difference between now and pre-COVID America....

I think a lot of this is happening because, frankly, we've become so passive and polite. Our enemies have interpreted our mild-mannered kindness as weakness and we’ve done nothing to prove otherwise....

I'm sick of this "nice guy" routine we’ve gotten ourselves into a rut with. It’s not doing us any good and we’re clearly being taken advantage of....

I'm promoting self-defense, which we have a right to. I guarantee that if rioters began seeing that the likelihood of being shot went up significantly, you'd see a lot of people a lot less gung-ho about being destructive and violent. The choice to loot and pillage becomes a lot more difficult to make when the consequences involve dying somewhere between the store and the hospital bed.

That means speaking truths that are uncomfortable and not doing things that our polite society has taught us to do. Stop qualifying your facts with reassurances that you’re not racist or sexist. Stop being afraid to make other people uncomfortable with your disagreements. ...stop entering every verbal combat situation by putting yourself on the back foot as a show of friendliness. They won't show you that mercy and will only take advantage of it.

We're not a nation of cowards so let's stop acting like it. The old saying that "all evil needs in order to succeed is for good men to do nothing" applies here. Our enemies deserve no quarter as we have received none ourselves.

Fight back.

That's about half of what Brandon Morse wrote. Click on the link in the introduction to read the whole thing. Any further comment from us, even an "Amen!", would be superfluous.

At last people are starting to speak out vs "progressive" intolerance

Imagine that! Just a few days ago Walt posted a very positive review ("Read the book!") of Hate, Inc., in which Matt Taibbi criticizes the narrowing of the parameters of debate on social and political issues, and the culture of conformity being imposed by the political, business and media elites.

Now comes news* that dozens of artists, writers and academics have signed "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", published in Harper's Magazine, decrying the weakening of public debate and warning that the free exchange of information and ideas is in jeopardy amid a rise in what they call "illiberalism."

J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood are among dozens of writers, artists and academics to argue against ideological conformity. Another signatory is cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky, whose interview with Matt Taibbi forms an appendix to Hate, Inc. We posted a couple of pithy excerpts in "Noam Chomsky on the 'Crisis of Democracy'", WWW 1/7/20. Included in that post is a video in which Prof Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent is summarized in under ten minutes!

Academics on the list of more than 150 signatories hail from American universities such as Princeton, Yale, Harvard Law, Brown, Rutgers and more. They wrote (collectively) that the "needed reckoning" regarding racial and social justice "has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity."

"More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms," the letter continues. "Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes."

The letter says, "The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world.... But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion.... The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides."

*Just Fancy That Dept.: When Ed. went to Google to research this story and get the Harper's URL, the top three returns led to The Grauniad, New York Times and WaPo.

According to Matt Taibbi and Dave Rubin (in Don't Burn This Book) those are the three papers most guilty of pushing the kind of forced ideological (i.e. left-liberal) purity of which the signatories to the letter complain. Probably just a coincidence.

Further reading: "Learn How to Spot Fake News", Chapter 8 of Dave Rubin's Don't Burn This Book (Signal, 2020). Excerpts:
Newsrooms are now filled with progressive activists who bend the truth, as opposed to old-school professionals who feel a duty both to themselves and their audience.... News is a business like any other. Although we'd like to think that the business it's in is to inform and enlighten, we should always remember that it's really in the business of keeping our eyes on the TV or our fingers clicking.
Matt Taibbi's point exactly! Hey, you don't have to read only Chapter 8. Read the whole book!

What happened to our society: Pat Buchanan's view

This is a follow-up to yesterday's post in which British writer Pat Condell summarized in under four minutes what went wrong with the society of the AABC countries (America, Australia, Britain and Canada). If you haven't seen the video, be sure to check it out. Today I want to share another summary, using the printed word this time, by another Pat -- Patrick J. Buchanan.

Mr Buchanan has been described as "America's leading populist conservative". He has been a senior advisor to three American presidents, ran for the Republican nomination in 1992 and 1996, and was the Reform Party's presidential candidate in 2000. What follows is excerpted from "The Last Chance", the final chapter of his best-selling book Suicide of a Superpower: Will America survive to 2025? (St. Martin's Press, 2011).

Our intellectual, cultural, and political elites are today engaged in one of the most audacious and ambitious experiments in history. They are trying to transform a Western Christian republic into an egalitarian democracy made up of all the tribes, races, creeds, and cultures of planet Earth.

They have dethroned our God, purged our cradle faith from public life, and repudiated the Judeo-Christian moral code by which previous generations sought to live.

They have declared men and women to be basically the same, that all voluntary sexual relations are morally equal, that the traditional family is but one social option, that men can marry men and women can marry women, that race is a social construct invented by bigots bent on repressing others, that all are endowed with the intelligence and ability to succeed in the most competitive society on earth.

All religions and all "lifestyles" are equal and all are to be equally respected. These elites will fight to ensure that a mosque is built at Ground Zero with the same ferocity as they will to ensure that no Nativity scene ever appears on the National Mall. If there is an inequality of rewards in our society, they believe, this is the residue of a reactionary America, the fruit of societal injustice, and it is the moral duty of our modern state to rectify that injustice and mandate equality. Those who reject these truths are benighted or bigoted.

Our secular elites believe in this revolution. The people never did. Middle America detests it. Thus it has had to be imposed from above, by judges, bureaucrats, professors, and those who control the content of our culture. One part of America believes we are headed for a wonderful new age. The silent majority thinks the country has lost its mind....

The experiment is failing and will continue to fail. For it is based on a theory which runs counter to reality, an ideology whose tenets are at war with the laws of nature. Like the Marxists who were going to create a new man and a new society, our establishment is attempting the impossible.

Our elites have created a concept of the ideal nation -- the most egalitarian, diverse, democratic, and liberated that ever existed. And they have mobilized the vast power of government and law to force America to conform to that concept. They will fail, and this great and good country will die of their experiment.

Book Review: Alta Vendita - The Masonic plot against the Church

Until his untimely death a year ago, John Vennari+ was the editor of Catholic Family News, a popular speaker at Catholic conferences, and the author of many articles and books on the Catholic Faith. I had the pleasure of working with him, off and on, for many years. I enjoyed his sharp sense of humour, and was inspired by his devotion to the True Faith and, especially, Our Lady of Fatima.

To commemorate his life and work, the Fatima Center has just published a second edition of The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita: A Masonic blueprint for the subversion of the Catholic Church.

Mr Vennari wrote the first edition (TAN Books, 1999) as a translation and commentary on a document, originally published in Italian in 1859, written by "Piccolo Tigre" (the code name of Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini) for the highest lodge of the Italian Carbonari, a network of secret revolutionary societies active in Italy in the 19th century. It is a blueprint for revolution against the state, and against Holy Mother Church -- a revolution which continues in the mainstream Roman Catholic Church of the 21st century.

The 19th-century revolution in the Church, fomented by Mazzini and others intent on Her destruction, was condemned by Pope St. Pius X in his famous encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (On the Doctrines of the Modernists), published in 1907.

Following the Saint's motu proprio of 1910, requiring the Oath Against Modernism to be taken by "all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries", the virus of revolution lay dormant for half a century, only to be given new life in the 1960s, when the architects of Vatican II -- many of them secret Freemasons -- told us the Church must "reform itself" and "get with the times".

Thus began the jettisoning of all that has given the Church Her character and constant teaching. The diabolical disorientation which the Church and the faithful are now experiencing has not happened by chance. In The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, John Vennari shows that the disasters of the mainstream Church -- e.g. the questioning of the existence of Hell by the Pope himself! -- are the culmination of a long process of patient planning by a Masonic group that has infiltrated the Church, not to take over its government openly, but to transform it from within.

According to the booklet (only 43 pages), their goal is to turn the Church from its mission of supernatural salvation to a focus on saving the world. Thus Her mission becomes "social justice" rather than salvation. All we hear from the Church's leaders -- up to and including the Pope -- these days is globalism, immigration, open borders and other ideals of secular humanism. There is lots about helping our neighbours, but little about helping ourselves to save our own souls.

Can there be any doubt that the revolution Mr Vennari describes is in "progress" -- the word itself has a distored meaning -- right now? We must fight it, but to fight it, we must first recognize it. To get your copy of The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, click here to e-mail the Fatima Center or call (toll-free in North America) 1-800-263-8160. Tell `em Walt sent you!

Book review: "I Can't Breathe", by Matt Taibbi

It's been difficult for me to read I Can't Breathe, by Matt Taibbi (Spiegel & Grau, 2017). Not that it is poorly written; it is quite the opposite. Nor was it because I don't see eye-to-eye with the author on the issues. Mr Taibbi is reliably liberal, as you would expect of a writer for Rolling Stone. If anyone is entitled to put the letters "SJW" after his name, it's Matt Taibbi. My discomfort stems from being reminded that those advocating "Justice for Eric Garner" and other victims of police killings are not always wrong, as some on the right say. That's what I Can't Breathe is about.

For those who don't remember, Eric Garner was a petty criminal who eked out a subsistence living for himself and his wives and children by hawking untaxed cigarettes around Tompkinsville Park, in Staten Island, a borough of New York City. On 17 July 2014, a cop named Daniel Pantaleo, already the subject of numerous complaints, put a chokehold on Mr Garner during an arrest for allegedly selling "loosies" -- single cigarettes.

The final moments of his life were captured on a video shot by Ramsey Orta, another small-time miscreant and Mr Garner's friend. What millions saw in the video was Officer Pantaleo killing Eric Garner. In spite of the video evidence, Officer Pantaleone was never indicted, let alone convicted, nor was he punished in any way for anything.

The case was presented to a grand jury by the then District Attorney (now Congressman) Dan Donovan. Mr Taibbi suggests, as have numerous lawyers, that Mr Donovan "threw" the grand jury hearing, focusing on exculpatory evidence and the unsavoury background of Eric Garner, rather than trying to get an indictment. We will never know, because the authorities have stonewalled the release of any details of the grand jury hearing.

I Can't Breathe focuses chiefly on the death of Eric Garner and the subsequent denial of justice by the so-called "justice system", but Matt Taibbi also canvases some of the many other extra-judicial killings -- police murders -- which have occurred in today's "postracial America" (as the Prez would have it), in Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, Ferguson MO and Star City AR. The author makes a powerful argument for the proposition that the "criminal justice system" is (a) racist and (b) broken.

Having been caught up in the system myself, I cannot but agree with (b). The system is FUBAR. For me, (a) is the hard part. But the evidence is there, in black and white (if you'll forgive the pun). I don't believe that anyone, of any colour, no matter how much of a lowlife he may be, deserves to be killed or even physically assaulted by cops who believe their badge gives makes them judge, jury and... yes... executioner. If you think Eric Garner and the others who met death at the hands of the police "just got what was coming to them", please read I Can't Breathe.

Further reading: "Prez calls for 'soul searching' in wake of Baltimore race riot", WWW 28/4/15.

Rapper shows smarts by watching solar eclipse without protection

Dis yere is Jo-Vaughn Virginie Scott, aka Joey Bada$$. He's not just an aspiring rapper who's struggling to turn his life around. He's an actual wrapper who's already released an album, All-Amerikkkan Bada$$, which tackles racism, mass incarceration and other "social justice" issues caused by white Amerikkka and especially General Lee.

Mr Bada$$'s debut single was called "Unorthodox". That proves he's not one to accept conventional wisdom about anything. If further proof was needed, he let the world know (by Twitter, of coursse) that he watched Monday's solar eclipse -- the whole thing -- without protection. Here are his tweets from the fateful day.

Wow! Dat'll show da whiteys! No way dis nigga's gonna pay fo a pair o' dose fly sunglasses! What could go wrong? Here's Joey Bada$$'s tweet from the following afternoon.

The cancellation was due, he said on Wednesday, to "unforeseen circumstances". He tweeted that he was "Seeing double, stacking triple", which seems to be a reference to vision problems... or something. Adding any further comment would be gilding the lily, so that's all for today, rap fanz.

Swarthmore pseudo-Marxists disband because of "white privilege"

It's getting very hard, nowadays, to tell the difference between life and satire in the Excited States of America. Conservatives and other right-thinking people have been saying for decades that our universities are hotbeds of immorality, Communism and worse. See, for example, such fine satirical stories as The Zebra Derby and Barefoot Boy with Cheek, by Max Shulman.

The author makes great fun of the pseuds masquerading as Marxists and SJWs striving to uplift the masses. Over six decades later we have news of a self-styled Marxist student group at Swarthmore College, which recently disbanded itself after realizing that its members were too rich and too white to be real Commies.

According to screenshots confidentially provided to CampusReform by an individual with access to the group's private Facebook page, the demise of the Swarthmore Anti-Capitalist Collective (SACC) came in the wake of a farewell letter from a member who had decided the group could never be an effective proponent of "unproblematized anticapitalist politics" due to its "history of abuse, racism, and even classism."

"From my understanding SACC disbanded because they realized the makeup and tactics of their group was at odds with their espoused principles," Swarthmore Conservative Society President Gilbert Guerra told CampusReform. "Their main support base was middle-upper class white kids who enjoy jogging."

The farewell letter corroborates Mr Guerra's understanding, asserting that "SACC's fundamental failure" was that "at its formation, it was made up of entirely white, with the exception of one person of color*, students." To make matters worse, "not one of [the founding members] are [sic] from low-income and/or working class backgrounds." Walt gives that statement a failing grade because, apart from the typical US collegians tenuous grasp of English grammar, the writer failed to include the phrase "white privilege".

Arguing that "low-income people of color [i.e. poor blacks. Walt] should never be an afterthought in a group whose politics supposedly focus on their liberation," the author then went on to accuse SACC of having a "history of abuse, racism, and even classism that was never adequately addressed or recognized despite constantly being brought up as an issue."

Think we're making this up? Click here to see the original story on the CampusReform blog. Thanks to "Red Square" at The People's Cube for bringing this to Walt's attention.

Ken Dryden explains how Hellery and the media blew the election

There are those who think of hockey players as big, dumb guys who beat each other upside the head with curved sticks. Some of them are. But some are well educated, thinking, feeling human beings. Intellectual, even. One of the latter types is Ken Dryden: lawyer, teacher, author, former member of the Canadian cabinet, and Hall of Fame NHL goaltender. [Poor Len wants it clearly understood that Mr Dryden played always and only for the Montréal Canadiens! Ed.]

Even when he was on the ice, in the middle of a game, Ken Dryden could be seen observing and thinking. This picture says it all. There he is, taking it all in, seeing the obvious and the not-so-obvious, figuring out what's going on. Like many thoughtful Canucks, Mr Dryden has spent the last couple of months pondering American politics, the events of last Tuesday and what the Trump triumph means for the Excited States of America, the Democratic Party and the lamestream media.

How could Mrs Bill Clinton, her Democratic and other supporters, and virtually all of the country's press and broadcast pundits get it all so wrong? Mr Dryden presents his analysis in a powerful op-ed piece in today's Toronto Star, headed "Clinton, media never understood Trump".

That the piece should appear in the Toronto Red Star is rather ironic, given that the Star has this year moved even more to the left than normal. It has long been a propaganda organ for the Liberal Party, and now finds itself the smug and self-righteous voice of progressivism and the fight for "social justice". Here are some other articles in its Commentary section today: "Why did women vote for Trump?"; "Canada could have its own Donald Trump" (intended as a warning); "Trump’s victory has become Obama’s legacy"; "We are really going to miss Obama"; "Prepare for the new world disorder"; and "How best to mount an anti-Trump opposition?"

What a load... But there is some gold hidden amidst the dross, in the form of Mr Dryden's article which is as unbiased as anything the Star would ever publish, clear and (IMHO) right on the money in analyzing what happened. And yes, I believe it could happen in Canada... and France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The next 18 months or so could well see a true "people's revolution" in which the will of the people -- the real people -- is expressed and acted upon. Let us pray....

UPDATED: Obama and Trudeau tell UN "Let's all be nice to each other"

Not all of Walt's readers pay a lot of attention to the intersection of American politics and Canadian politics. But you have to be have your anti-liberal blinkers firmly in place to not see the fine bromance that has developed between the Prez and Canada's ultra-photogenic new(ish) Prime Minister Justin "Selfie" Trudeau.

Sadly for their countries, the two amigos share not just a love of the adoration of the masses, but liberal, one-world views on globalization, free trade, refugees and immigrants (especially Muslims), and the war on The Enemy Which Cannot Be Named (especially Muslims). Now that President Obama is the lamest duck of all, Justin ("Himself Redux") is bidding fair to become the leader of the forces of liberalism, secular humanism and the war for "social justice". To him, from President 0's failing hands, the torch of progressivism is about to be thrown. (The Prez's preferred recipient, Hellery Clinton, is, alas, not guaranteed to be well enough to lift her arms high enough to make the catch.)

Messrs Obama and Trudeau were in the Big Apple this week to case a few pearls before the swine at the Disunited Nations. Some have suggested that Ahmed Khan Rahami was out to get the Prez when he planted his little bomb in Chelsea. (Shoulda used a GPS, Ahmed!) If he had, the assembled parasites would have been spared a speech in which POTUS actually admitted that his country was going to have to give up its "freedom of action" and "bind itself to international rules". If you think Walt is making this up, click here. Don't say you weren't warned.

Here's part of what Ted Cruz had to say about Mr Obama's suggestion that the US surrender to the Islamists. "At the United Nations today, President Obama took to the podium to once again blame the United States for the woes of the world. He suggested our country is just one of many that need to get beyond the old divisions of nationality. He chided those who would limit the inflow of refugees from nations infiltrated by Islamic terrorists as ignorant bigots, predicted climate change would destroy countries and cause mass conflicts, and referred to Israel as an occupying power. Mr. Obama would have done much better to use this opportunity to advance an American agenda, not a global one."

Mr Obama's speech was a pretty hard act to follow -- or swallow -- but M Trudeau tried out his "sunny ways" shtick on a half-empty General Assembly. In an article headlined "Mission accomplished: Trudeau wins over UN with strange speech full of liberal platitudes", John Ivison writes: "The lesson from both Obama and Trudeau is that if everyone just did more nice things, and not so many awful things, things would be much nicer." That's all ye know and all ye need to know.

Further reading, added 23/9/16: Rex Murphy calls Justin Trudeau's UN address "a meaningless speech to a worthless body": National Post, 23/9/16.