President Trump finally did it—after years of calls from blackballed conservatives, GEOTUS signed an executive order yesterday removing liability protections for social media companies that censor users based on their political views.
Here is a lengthy excerpt from Fox News‘s reporting:
The president’s order, which also cuts federal funding for social media platforms that censor users’ political views, came just two days after Twitter took the unprecedented step of slapping a “misleading” warning label on two of Trump’s tweets concerning the fraud risks of nationwide mail-in balloting. The move immediately backfired: Experts disputed that Trump’s tweet was actually misleading, in part because mail-in balloting has been linked to ongoing fraud; Twitter’s fact-check itself contained false statements; and Twitter failed to apply the standard of review to other users.
At Thursday’s signing ceremony, Trump called the fact-check “egregious,” and held up a photo of Twitter executive Yoel Roth, who heads up the site’s fact-checking and rules-making operation. Fox News reported on Wednesday that Roth has mocked Trump supporters, called Trump’s team “ACTUAL NAZIS,” slammed “scary trannies” in New York City, and called GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “bag of farts.” (In a statement, Twitter did not dispute Fox News’ reporting, but called it “unfortunate.”)
“My executive order calls for new regulations under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to make it so that social media companies that engage in censoring any political conduct will not be able to keep their liability shield,” the president said.
Essentially, social media platforms have always had a choice: either act as a publisher, in which case you’re liable for what users post, but you can remove and censor content as you see fit; or act as a neutral platform, in which case you’re protected from liability for what users post. Twitter, Facebook, et. al., are trying to have the best of both worlds—ban political posts and users with which they disagree under the companies’ “Terms of Services,” while disclaiming responsibility for everything else.
Today marks graduation for the private school where I teach. For the first time in my teaching career, attendance at graduation is option for faculty and graduates, except for “essential personnel.” I’m The Sound Guy, so I’m essential. On the plus side, I’ve rigged up my Yamaha mixer in the teacher’s lounge, so I’ll be chilling—literally—in air-conditioned comfort while my colleagues are sweating it on the front lawn.
We’re conducting one of the first major graduation ceremonies in The Age of The Virus in our region, so the school is going to great lengths to make the graduation as safe and socially distant as possible. They’re spreading everyone out over a yuge front law and capping attendees to four per graduate. Everyone’s wearing face masks (facial freedom is another benefit of being alone and inside behind my Wizard of Oz curtain). Our Buildings & Grounds crew has been working hard all week to make everything look immaculate, and I pre-rigged cables earlier in the week.
With today being Graduation Day, I thought I’d do as so many other unqualified individuals have done and offer up my nuggets of wisdom to the Class of 2020:
On Tuesday this week—19 May 2020—the great Christian apologist and evangelist Ravi Zachariaswent Home to Christ. The obituary on his ministry’s website details the story of his radical conversion to Christianity in a hospital bed in India, where he heard the Gospel while recovering from a suicide attempt, and then on through his remarkable ministry.
Ravi Zacharias brought intellectual heft to Evangelical Protestantism; even his radio program was called Let My People Think. Zacharias recognized that emotional appeals alone would not always win people to Christ; there had to be compelling reasons for what made Christianity True, not just one religion among many. The knee-jerk response among Evangelicals (one I have been guilty of many times) is not the bold, intellectual defense of the faith, but denunciations of other faiths in a sort of Truth-by-elimination, something Zacharias warned against in an address in 1983. From the obituary:
In front of 3,800 evangelists from 133 countries, Zacharias opened with the line, “My message is a very difficult one….” He went on to tell them that religions, 20th-century cultures and philosophies had formed “vast chasms between the message of Christ and the mind of man.” Even more difficult was his message, which received a mid-talk ovation, about his fear that, “in certain strands of evangelicalism, we sometimes think it is necessary to so humiliate someone of a different worldview that we think unless we destroy everything he holds valuable, we cannot preach to him the gospel of Christ…what I am saying is this, when you are trying to reach someone, please be sensitive to what he holds valuable.”
Zacharias profoundly shaped my own walk with Christ. I am very thankful for my Pentecostal upbringing, which bathed me from the time I was a child in God’s Word. But Southern Pentecostalism in the 1990s tended to be extremely emotive—I would say, at times, even performative. The emphasis of the (often agonizingly) long church services of my youth were more about creating an atmosphere of worship—at worst, attempts to tempt the Holy Spirit to move, at best sincere responses to the Moving of the Holy Spirit—than about digging into the hard Truths of the Gospels.
At least, that sometimes seemed the case to my thirteen-year old self, who often wondered what my problem was when I wasn’t getting caught up in everything the way the rest of the congregation was. But then one of my aunts—probably my Aunt Marilyn, though it could have been my Aunt Cheryl, the best one-eyed piano player in Aiken County—introduced us to Ravi Zacharias in Sunday School. We did a study using the youth version of Zacharias’s Jesus Among Other Gods, a masterpiece of Christian apologia.
Suddenly, here was a man who debated Ivy League philosophers—and got the better of them! For a bookish teenager who didn’t always respond to the emotive side of faith, Zacharias was a powerful role model. Here was a man who thought critically about faith, and who used his intellect to defend ours. The fact that he came to Christ out of a totally alien culture and religion further demonstrated the power of the Holy Spirit to reach anyone.
I should note that, while the church services were often heavy on emotion, our Sunday School classes were where the deep digging occurred; we didn’t just shut off our brains. Southern Pentecostalism—probably as a result of its strong Scotch-Irish roots—is inherently skeptical of all worldly claims. The default position towards the world’s wisdom is critically analytic. There’s also a scrappy outsider mentality, which, at its best, serves to embolden our tenacity, even if it makes us wary of potential faith allies. In other words, it wasn’t all just pew-hopping and thirty-minute altar calls: that plucky skepticism of worldliness is one of the best qualities of my religious upbringing.
But I digress. Zacharias drew others to a deeper understanding of their faith in Christ. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany—talk about a spunky Scotch-Irish fighter!—gave a tearful interview to CBN News in which she detailed Zacharias’s influence:
When asked where the tears were coming from, she explained further. It goes back to her days developing her faith at Oxford University in England of all places.
“To have someone from an academic place, as an apologist could equip you with those arguments where you didn’t have to check your brain at the door when you became a Christian where there is the intellectual foundation for everything we believe,” McEnany explained. “There’s prophecy. There’s the human cell. There’s the amazing creation of the human body and all of its complexity and the planet, the universe.”
“And he put a philosophical and academic rationale for the heart that I had for Christ, but gave me the ability to go to Oxford, where there are renowned atheist scholars who try to say there’s no intellectual undergirding for Christianity,” she continued. “Ravi Zacharias, who happened to have an office at Oxford was the person who provided the counter to that, the intelligence behind why we believe what we believe.”
Amen. Ravi Zacharias’s influence will reverberate through the lives he won for Christ, and his bold, intellectual defense of Christianity will continue to win souls.
You can’t cuck him—Tucker Carlson, that is, the pie-faced Fox News host with an infectiously boyish laugh and a gift for destroying Leftist shibboleths.
Tucker Carlson says that he’s not a populist—he’s an elitist—but that our current elites aren’t up to the job. Further, they’re not even doing the job correctly; that is, our elites aren’t looking out for the interests of the people they govern, which is pretty much their only job. Instead, they’re working for their own interests at our expense.
Well, that’s good enough for me. An elitist on the outs with our current crop of “elites” is a populist in my book. Carlson’s commentary certainly suggests as such. This look back at my posts about his ideas will demonstrate that:
“Tucker Carlson’s Diagnosis” (and “TBT: Tucker Carlson’s Diagnosis“) – This post was about a monologue Tucker gave in early 2019 (I think the monologue was actually delivered on my birthday). That monologue really opened my eyes to the folly of pursuing economic efficiency at all costs. A key quote from The Tuck: “We are ruled by mercenaries, who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule.”
“You Can’t Cuck the Tuck” – This short piece was about “some cheeky remarks” Tucker made on a raunchy radio show over a decade ago—true but politically-incorrect statements not to be uttered in polite company (or where the social justice commissars can hear). Rather than issuing a whimpering apology, The Tuck demonstrated his uncuckability and refused to apologize. He’s still pulling in three million eyeballs a night.
“You Can’t Cuck the Tuck: Immigration” – Another short post; in this one, Tucker calls out the folly of unlimited immigration of people who hate the United States, and points to Somalian immigrant Ilhan Omar as a “living fire alarm” to the American people. Let’s wake up and ban immigration from places and cultures that hate everything we love.
“Tucker Carlson’s Platform for Victory in 2020” – A sobering bit here from Tucker: in order to win in 2020, Trump and Republicans need to improve people’s lives. Tucker’s key insight is that whichever candidate and/or party makes it easier for a thirty-year old to get married and own a home is the candidate that is going to win in 2020. Get on it, Republicans!
Every liberty-loving American can recall Benjamin Franklin’s famous quip that “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” It’s become also cliched to quote Franklin, but those words bear repeating, cliched or not, in The Age of The Virus.
The response to The Virus has been something akin to mass social and economic suicide, coupled with plenty of scorn for those not willing to go along with the kabuki theatre of our national hara-kiri. It seems that the early attempts at “flattening the curve” have worked at preventing hospitals from turning away afflicted patients, so much so that our hero nurses and doctors are staging elaborate Internet dance routines (and yet will also be the first to urge us to take their advice to shut everything down forever).
What I’m beginning to realize is that people truly fear The Virus. I don’t just mean they’re worried about getting it—I certainly don’t want to succumb to it—they’re worried about dying from it. That’s not an unrealistic concern for the elderly or those with preexisting health conditions, but I think that fear runs deeper.
Consider: the people most hysterically concerned with The Virus, in general, are deep progressives. Progressivism, at bottom, is a materialist philosophy: it can only conceive of existence in this realm. That’s not to say it isn’t a religion; rather, it’s a religion without an afterlife. That’s why progressives spend so much time attempting to create Heaven on Earth—to immanentize the eschaton, as William F. Buckley, Jr., warned us not to do.
It’s an ideology that constantly sacrifices the good to the perfect, because anything less than perfection isn’t paradise. And because there is no life after this one, the fear of death takes on a terrifying new dimension. Coupled with progressives’ lust for power and perpetual revolution, and you have half of the population ready to sacrifice everything—including liberty—to appease The Virus.
Two weeks ago, in “Lazy Sunday LVII – Christianity, Part II,” I wrote that my three “God Pill” posts “would make a really good Lazy Sunday… and out of increasing desperation to cobble together compilations, I’ll likely do it one week, with greater detail about each individual post.” Well, here we are: the desperation (and my lack of originality) has brought me to this point.
For those unfamiliar with the terminology, the concept of “pilling” someone, or of being “pilled” in some way, ultimately goes back to The Matrix. Orpheus offered Neo the blue pill, which would allow him to continue living in the simulacrum of our world, a world that was an entirely false but somewhat comforting illusion, or to take the red pill, would which would allow him to peek behind the veil and see Reality for what it truly is.
The edgier corners of the Internet began using the term “red-pilled” some years ago—I don’t know exactly when, but I saw the term used increasingly in during the long and exciting 2015-2016 election season—to refer to those who embraced the hard Truths that the mainstream media and our elites refuse to tell. They’re those comforting little lies (“Diversity is Our Strength!”) that are hammered into us from an early age at school, in the news, in pop culture, etc.
For some, red-pilling turned to the dreaded Black Pill: embracing nihilism. Black Pillers argued that the hard Truths of the Red Pill revealed to them another hard truth: that Red Pill reform is impossible at this point, as it would require an impossibly massive paradigm shift. As such, the only option was to acknowledge the Truth—and that no one would ever believe it. The Black Pillers are nihilistic Cassandras that, knowing they can’t warn the Blue Pill masses about the doom they face, instead decide to go along for the ride, seeing no other options.
But despair is a sin. Ultimately, some Red and Black Pillers, in their relentless searches for Truth, came upon THE Truth: Jesus Christ. Thus, the God Pill. They came to realize there is more to life than being good with chicks (much of the Red Pill community was centered in the manosphere) and wallowing in hopelessness.
Such was the case of Roosh V, the notorious proprietor of the now-defunct Return of Kings, and a former pick-up artist. Roosh converted to Christianity after moving through all of the phases above: Blue Pill chumpitude, Red Pill immorality, and Black Pill despair. Ultimately, he embraced Christ, and it’s been a remarkable conversion experience.
These posts detail that transformation:
“The God Pill” (and “TBT: The God Pill“) – This original post in what I’m now dubbing The God Pill series dives into some of the history I detailed above, focusing more on the manosphere itself, and Roosh’s role in it as one of the neo-masculine trinity (alongside the other “R” names: Rollo and Roissy). It also talks about Roosh’s conversion, and the concrete changes he made at the time to live a more godly life.
“The God Pill, Part II” – About a year after his conversion, Roosh decided to unpublish the remainder of his “game” books—books with advice for men about how to meet women. He’d already unpublished most of his more explicit works, but left his tour de force, Game, available, as he viewed it as an “agnostic tool” that could be used for good or evil—to find a good Christian wife for marriage, or to bed random floozies.
“The God Pill, Part III” – This post delves a bit more into how Roosh began to see how debased modern society is, and what brought about his ultimate conversion to Christianity. It also ends with a reminder that “God loves you. That’s why He sent His Son to die for us.”
The Internet is a frightening place, but there are a lot of folks turning to it to find meaning. Many of them, sadly, get lost down some dark byways. But God is working even there. Roosh’s conversion is just one example of how a thoughtful, flawed individual was brought to a loving knowledge of Christ, and I hope his story will inspire others.
Apes, monkeys, gorillas, chimps: they’re fascinating creatures. Part of their allure is their similarity to humans. Indeed, I think part of what we like about higher-order animals is when they do anthropomorphic things. Everyone loved Koko because she had a pet kitten and talked with a Speak-&-Spell. Even more alien creatures with human abilities draw our attention. I love octopuses because they’re beautiful, odd creatures, but also because they can open jars and possess memory.
There’s also the connection to primal energy: a silver-back gorilla is as fat and hairy as I am, but it could rip my head off. King Kong holds such a powerful presence in our cinematic minds because it’s the story of Beauty and the Beast—the love of the soft and feminine subduing an unbridled, masculine force.
So this story from The Epoch Times about a recovered orangutan really caught my attention. A female orangutan was shot and separated from her baby in Indonesia. A team from International Animal Rescue managed to save the poor creature, who was starving on the jungle floor, and release her a few weeks later into a primate sanctuary.
The late Reverend Pete Cooper, who was once the ornery, cantankerous, and thoroughly lovable chaplain of my little private school, once made the point that Christ’s Crucifixion wasn’t merely excruciating in a physical sense. In that moment, He took upon Him the weight of every sin ever committed, before or since. Whoa—talk about a sobering realization.
Imagine—as impossible as it is—being completely without sin, and then assuming ALL of it—undeservedly. It’s the greatest act in all of history.
So, let’s not let The Virus get us down. Christ endured far worse. Humanity has endured far worse, for that matter. But we can be secure in our knowledge that our Savior watches over us, and is always with us.
Happy Easter to everyone! Today’s post is another short one for this important holiday weekend (it also marks sixteen weeks of daily posts—shew!).
Jesus Christ died for our sins around 2000 years ago, and was resurrected three days later. Today, Christians all over the world celebrate His death and resurrection, and eagerly await His eventual return.
The Age of The Virus is unprecedented. Well, not entirely—major plagues and pandemics have swept the world before. What’s unprecedented this time is the wholesale closure of the most commerce, along with rigid governmental and social admonitions to “social distance” and “shelter-in-place.” Tin-pot municipal tyrants and State governors are engaged in a virtue-signalling race to see who can curtail liberties more rapidly and completely.
Pointing out this reality opens one to social scorn. It’s amusing—and a bit frightening—to see the earnestness with which some Americans cling to their new mantras, the articles of faith handed down from the CDC and various government apparatchiks. Even as our knowledge of The Virus seems to change daily, these public health acolytes cling to the every pronouncement from so-called “experts.”
Please don’t misunderstand me. Yes, we should be vigilant about washing our hands and avoiding the accidental infection of one another, especially the elderly.
What concerns me is how quickly so many of us have been willing to accept greater degrees of control over our lives in the name of combating an invisible threat. But now it feels like we’re living in the episode of Sliders called “Fever,” in which a totalitarian CDC cracks down on Los Angeles because, in that universe, penicillin was never discovered.
We’re not at Sliders levels—yet—but with that acquiescence has come an expansion of government power at nearly every level. I am not a libertarian, and I fully expect a robust federal response to a difficult international situation (remember, The Virus came from CHI-NA). But that doesn’t mean local, State, or even federal authorities can simply hand-wave away the Constitution.
The Framers surely knew disease and death in their time. When the Constitution was drafted in 1787, there was no capability for directing society with relative efficiency; even if there were, though, they would not have wanted to use it to suspend liberties. The Framers surely knew there would be plagues and sickness in the United States, yet they included no clause such as “in the event of widespread sickness, these Articles contained heretofore in are, and of right to be, suspended until such time as the Congress shall deem suitable for public safety and the common welfare.”
Yet we see officials at the lowest levels of government telling people not just to stay home, but threatening to shut down churches and other assemblies. Doesn’t that violate the First Amendment protections of freedom of religion and freedom of assembly? Again, the prudent approach is for churches to accommodate the health of their congregants with remote services or other workarounds, but shouldn’t they be allowed to hold traditional services if they so choose?
The critics and medical scolds by now are howling with rage. “What do these gossamer rights mean when we’re dead?” Is that all anyone cares about? What happened to Patrick Henry’s fiery cry of “Give me liberty, or give me death?” What’s worse: death from worshiping the Lord, or life in a soulless, gutless, freedom-less world?
I’m not alone in my assessment here. Bill Whittle ripped into New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio earlier this week, arguing that His Dishonor’s promise to shut down churches that continue to congregate would represent a high-handed assault on the First Amendment. Even Whittle’s colleague Scott Ott thought Whittle’s defense of the Constitution was a bit rich, basically arguing that the Constitution can take a break during this outbreak.
I’m perceiving similarly expedient arguments among others on the Right. It’s disgusting how many folks on our side are running like slavering dogs to lap up the crumbs of authoritarianism. Whittle in the video above makes the compelling point that the Constitution functionally means nothing if any government official at any level can simply ignore its protections. He also correctly points out that these rights are God-given, part of our very human nature. No government can legitimately deprive us of them.
Another one of the saner voices is RazörFist, who also sees a great deal of big government chicanery in this pandemic (warning, Razör’s videos often contain strong language):
Z Man has also expressed skepticism about The Virus—or, at least, our draconian responses to it—and has received his share of scorn and dismissal. But in his post Wednesday, “Fermi’s Paradox,” he made an interesting allusion to E.M. Forster’s novella “The Machine Stops,” originally published in 1909. That short story (which I highly recommend you read—it has the same chilling effect as Kipling’s “The Mother Hive”) details a world in which humanity exists in a state of mindless, perpetual comfort, its every need attended to by The Machine.
In the story, humans have become so accustomed to cloistering in their little cells that they abhor face-to-face interaction, instead communicating via blue discs across great distances. They are so dependent upon The Machine, they come to worship it (an interesting development, as their society has “advanced” beyond the “superstition” of religious belief—another subtle point from Forster). They only travel on rare occasions, and avoid it unless absolutely necessary.
Eventually, The Machine deteriorates, with disastrous results; I will likely write about the story in more detail next week. For our purposes, it sounds eerily like our current society: shelter-in-place, “Stay at Home” (as digital signs on the Interstate tell me, implicitly scolding me for being on the highway), watch Netflix, #AloneTogether, etc., etc.—we’re told to be comfortable and to crave safety and comfort above all else. They are the highest goods.
We’re through the looking glass here. I’ve been pessimistic that we’re even living under the Constitution anymore, especially after the intelligence agencies attempted to overthrow a sitting President. Vestiges and scraps of it still reign, but they seem to be the exception. And most Americans don’t seem to care, so long as they can watch TV, the WiFi is working, and there is pizza.
We’re no longer the Roman Republic, but we’re not the Roman Empire in the 5th century, either. We’re more like the Roman Empire in the 2nd or 3rd centuries: coasting along on the remnants of a functioning system, with a play-acting Congress shadowing the motions of republicanism.
The Portly Politico 