Dem Civil War: Fukushima Kamala Glows as Democrat’s Fight For Survival By Kelly O’Connell  July 1, 2021 Voyage of the Damned: Democrats were beyond thrilled hearing Biden declared Prez. But after rum-soaked celebrations, their heads cleared and doubts arose. In already plague-infested times, they should have declined selling their soul for a quick and dirty victory. By drafting the aged, infirm, and preposterously unserious to gain back the levers of power—hic incipit pestis—so starts Dem’s oozing terminal illness. Satan now whacks White House doors demanding his pound of flesh. As Shakespeare wrote:  “If there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it, Making it momentary as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ‘ere a man hath power to say, ‘Behold!’ The jaws of darkness do devour it up; So quick bright things come to confusion.”  Kamala, a Titanic Carrying Liberals to Ocean’s Bottom Nominate the Lame & Infirm: Joe Biden isn’t fit to be a Waffle House greeter. Worse, Democrat’s free-will choice of political poseur Kamala is one of the great mistakes of modern politics.  Giggling at her Les Miserables-esque rise, political teacup poodle Kamala carries all the gravitas of a junior high cheerleader.  The best part—serious Democrats know they’ve committed a democrat capital offense and therefore signed on for political suicide. So, with two incapable top leaders and no obvious master plans, Dems must now offer a spectacle and pay for their sins by public expiation. War of Beclowned Kamala:Is any American secretly pleased with the new VP besides Kamala herself? An unreported war rages in the Dem Party over Harris’ utter unfitness for higher office. Can Unbearable Lightness of Kamala be trained? But isn’t that like asking an unskilled army draftee to learn anatomy during battle-field surgery? Or can Harris be embarrassed into resigning? Her appointment to head the catastrophic border crisis was all about forcing her to woman-up and lead or be outed. Spectacular fail! Deafening demands for the aged-coquette to resign now rebound off the walls of DC’s power centers, while she covers her ears, looking around, trembling wide-eyed—like the fawn in Bambi Meets Godzilla.  A VP Harris Talk on Border is Like a Crack Addled Mr. Roger’s Warnings on Drugs Typhoid Kamala Must Be Sacrificed: Like a one-legged kicker, the VP’s status is untenable. Her future presidency, unsurvivable. It’s obvious Harris must be dumped for the Party to have a prayer.  But, how will it play out? Kamala’s office is already in strum and drang chaos. Will she feign illness? Can Kamala resign without explanation? How would that look for proponents of race and gender politics? About her office, it’s reported: In interviews, 22 current and former vice presidential aides, administration officials and associates of Harris and Biden described a tense and at times dour office atmosphere…an insular environment where ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals and decisions are dragged out. Often, they said, Kamala refuses to take responsibility for delicate issues and blames staffers for the negative results that ensue. The VP herself bears responsibility for the way her office is run. “It all starts at the top,” said one of the administration officials, who like others requested anonymity to be able to speak candidly about a sensitive matter. “People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment,” said another person with direct knowledge of how Harris’ office is run. “It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s—-.”Turn of the Shrew: French Revolution style, Democrats foisted themselves on their own petard, and are now pondering the feel of the guillotine. After all, in leftist revolutions, the early rebels are always killed off. And so it will be for Kamala Harris.  Consider Kamala the Democrat’s Billy Budd, criticized, confronted, court-marshaled, and obliterated by Pelosi. Bon Voyage, giggling, ill-suited VP!!

On Saturday, June 26, 2021, 02:38:41 PM EDT, Raymond Antonini <rayantonini@yahoo.com> wrote:

Dear Bishop Gracida,
    Thank you for posting on your site that a pope that would embrace formal heresy would fall ipso facto from the Papal Office without a declaratory sentence being necessary as stated by St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Alphonsus de Liguori and the Dominican theologian St. Antoninus, Pope Innocent III and in the 1917 Code of Canon Law section 188.4.
    I’ll include some links to those citations below from an archived version of my former web site, but first I would ask you to consider the possibility that Bergoglio, and other claimants to the papacy since 1958, were formal heretics BEFORE election to the papacy.
    Did heresy suddenly infect Bergoglio after leaving Argentina and arriving in Rome or was he heterodox in his beliefs during his entire career? Did the syncretism of religions in his ‘Abrahamic Religions Temple’ spring up suddenly or had it been there all along? A certain former Jesuit in his book, “The Encounter” called for this exact heresy back in 1970.
     Fr. Kolvenbach, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus in the 1990s, while not addressing this particular delict of heresy, wrote to Karol Wojtyla upon the latter’s nomination of Bergoglio to the episcopacy and warned him that Bergoglio was a sociopath and told him not to elevate him.
    If Bergoglio or others were formal heretics, schismatics or apostates BEFORE election to the papacy then under Divine Law and Ecclesiastical Law as codified by Pope Paul IV to guard against this exact situation of infiltration by heretics into the hierarchy of the Church, in his Apostolic Constitution “Cum Ex Apostolatus Officious” (February 15, 1559) he decreed:
“6. …or even the Roman Pontiff, prior to his promotion or his elevation as Cardinal or Roman Pontiff, has deviated from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy:
(i) the promotion or elevation, even if it shall have been uncontested and by the unanimous consent of all the Cardinals, shall be null, void and worthless;”
Pope Paul IV then continues in Section 6 to override every other possible objection to the nullity of the election and this claimant’s papacy such as universal assent, elapse of time, not partially valid such as in the later formal vs. material argument of des Lauriers, etc.
In Section 7 Pope Paul IV decrees that no allegiance of any sort is binding upon Catholics to the heretical claimant and if the heretic will not leave on his own, that the civil governments can be enlisted by Catholics to forcibly remove him. Does not specify a council being necessary.
Cum Ex Apostolatus Officiohttps://web.archive.org/web/20100413163652/http://home.earthlink.net/~saintmarychapel/ceao.htm

Please note that all of this further solidifies the principle that a heretic either before election by absolute nullity or after by his own act, ipso facto, would fall from the Office of the Papacy, and no council of bishops or cardinals would be necessary to first declare the See vacant.
Please also note  that this IS the position of St. Robert Bellarmine and not what someone occasionally incorrectly posts in items to your site.

St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Francis de Sales, St. Alphonsus de Liguori, St. Thomas Aquinas:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100413163652/http://home.earthlink.net/~saintmarychapel/fdph.htm

Pope Innocent III and also Code of Canon Law (1917) section 188.4 (Note this section was intentionally not included in the 1983 Code of the heretical Vactican 2 sect!):
https://web.archive.org/web/20100413163652/Home.EarthLink.net/~saintmarychapel/#Teaching%20of%20the%20Magisterium%20of%20the%20Roman%20Catholic%20Church

St. Antoninus and other citations:
http://www.protestanterrors.com/pope-heresy.htm

Fr. Wernz, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, (ob. 1914) in his five volume work “Ius Canonicum” affirming St. Robert Bellarmine’s position of ipso facto vacancy without judgement or declaration as the teaching of the Church. Citation from (after the implementation of the 1917 Code) 1938 edition by Fr. Vidal, S.J.:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120321082313/http://sedevacantist.org/wernzvidal.html

1882 essay by Fr. O’Reilly on a prolonged vacancy of the Holy See:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110720082331/http://www.sedevacantist.org/oreilly.html

         In either case before or after election to the papacy, formal heresy, the criteria for which has most certainly been met, renders the claimant by his own act outside of Christ’s Church, completely severed from the Mystical Body, and thus permanently incapable of being its head.
    We can take comfort in the fact that Our Lordpermitted this to happen only by heretical infiltrators to the Chair and not by one who fell from it. Thus just as their claims to the papacy are null, void and worthless, so were all their acts from calling for the Council to the imposition of false worship displeasing to the Sight of God to whatever is the current apostate ignominy uttered by the current claimant.
     I will leave those citations for another time.   
     In Christ,      Raymond Antonini 

Getting smarter about

Critical Race Theory

If CRT is correct, is America worth defending?

By Clifford D. May 

June 29, 2021

Hat Tip: Rip McIntosh

At a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee last week, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this about Critical Race Theory: “I’ll obviously have to get much smarter on whatever the theory is, but I do think it’s important actually for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read.”

Fair enough but that leads to this question: How does one become smarter about CRT? In much of the media, it’s being described as nothing more than an “academic concept” or an “analytic tool” for understanding “white rage” and “systemic racism.”

That assumes there is convincing evidence to support the charge that people with pale skin are especially prone to violent, uncontrollable anger. And is the claim that “systemic racism” is the defining feature of 21^st century America really beyond debate?

Coverage of the hearing may have misled you about what troubled several members of Congress: not military personnel learning about CRT but rather CRT advocates proselytizing to military personnel. It seems that “foundational” military reading lists now include, alongside books on history and strategy, tracts on CRT that allege that all people of color are victims, and all people of pallor are victimizers – irredeemably so.

Rep. Mike Waltz, a former Green Beret, cited a classroom slide labeled “White Power at West Point,” and a seminar at the academy titled “‘Understanding Whiteness and White Rage’ taught by a woman who described the Republican Party platform as a platform of white supremacy.”

Rep. Waltz expressed concern that “our future military leaders are being taught that the Constitution and the fundamental civilian institutions of this country are endemically racist, misogynist, and colonialist and therefore it is their duty to resist them.”

 He added: “The military needs to be open to all Americans, absolutely, that is the strength of the United States military. But once we’re in, we bleed green, and our skin color is camouflage.”

As suggested above, if you want to understand CRT, the mainstream media is not a reliable source. Look instead to the Manhattan Institute or the Heritage Foundation or to historian Allen Guelzo, director of the James Madison Program Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship and senior research scholar in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University.

Last week, he was interviewed by the American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka and Marc Thiessen on their excellent What the Hell Is Going On? podcast. You should listen to the entire conversation, but I’ll touch on a few key points here.

Critical Race Theory is a variant of critical theory, Professor Guelzo explains, and has its “origins in a reaction against the Enlightenment and against the confidence that scientific reason could discover the answers to things.” Of particular note: Immanuel Kant, a 19^th century philosopher, developed “a critique of reason, a critical theory, if you will.”

 This “set off a chain reaction of romantic investigations for non-rational explanations of reality.” For example,“you might think that economics functions as what Adam Smith called a natural instinct to truck and barter.”

But Karl Marx saw it as “governed by the oppressive relations of class” – a struggle between the oppressor class (capitalists, employers, the bourgeois) and the oppressed class (workers, the proletariat). Marx further asserted that to overcome this “structure of oppression” requires revolution.

 Another ideology that grew out of critical theory: Nazism. If one believes, as do Nazis, “that the Jews are responsible for all political and economic events, then my pointing out that the overwhelming majority of political leaders are not Jews merely shows that I am either a dupe of the Jews or that I’m in on the fix. That is how Nazi racial theory functioned.”

Whereas Marxist theory focuses on class, and Nazi theory focuses on ethnicity and/or religion, CRT focuses on race. Those deemed “white” (a term so vague it can include Swedes, Greeks, Chechens, and Iranians) are presumed guilty of oppressing “people of color” (a term so vague it can include those with African, Latin American, Asian, and Arab ancestry).

Ibram X. Kendi, a leading CRT proponent, is candid about what must be done. “The only remedy to racial discrimination is antiracist discrimination,” he has declared. Also: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

 While some people cast as oppressors will acquiesce to the establishment of this new, race-based hierarchy, others will embrace what Mr. Guelzo calls the “opposite irrationality. The irrationality, for instance, of genuine white supremacy, of genuine Aryan Nazi fairytales.”

 So, if CRT becomes the new orthodoxy at West Point and other educational institutions, in federal bureaucracies, and corporate America, increased racial division, animosity, and conflict will inevitably result.

 CRT also envisions group rights replacing individual rights, and the destruction of capitalism and the institutions of American democracy. Because they are seen as “systemically” racist, they must be “exploded,” as CRT advocate Derrick Bell wrote.

 And, of course, Martin Luther King’s dream of American children one day living “in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” will be relegated to the dustbin of history (to borrow a phrase from critical theorist Leon Trotsky).

 If Gen. Milley is to “get much smarter” about CRT, he will need to understand such things. He’ll also need to grapple with this question: Why should young people, of whatever color, serve in the armed forces and risk their lives to defend the failed experiment that CRT alleges America is and always has been?

 

 

Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

Dr. Huber’s Research Team: The Masks “made COVID-19 Worse in Every Way… Masks have Quite a Hazardous Profile”

June 29, 2021

Huber has researched the mask issue extensively. The conclusion of her research team after publishing four peer-reviewed papers found that the masks “made COVID-19 worse in every way,” due to oxygen deprivation, bacterial pneumonia, and more. Huber points to demographic data showing that mask use also correlated with higher rates of COVID-19, as well as the physics and chemistry of why.

“Masks have quite a hazardous profile,” she said. – The Epoch Times and  Dr. Colleen Huber’s research team

The Epoch Times reported on the mask and what Naturopathic Medical Doctor, Dr. Colleen Huber, in her book “The Defeat of COVID” shows about “the scientific evidence related to COVID-1” and what her research team says about the “hazardous profile” of the mask:

Perhaps no aspect of COVID is more controversial than masks, and a lot of this confusion stems from very mixed messaging from the people promoting the practice. First, masks were said not to protect people from viral transmission, then, a month later they were considered essential daily wear for everyone. Earlier this year, two and three masks were recommended for even more protection.

The message on masks is still all over the place. A few months ago, officials stated that even after receiving a COVID vaccine, masks would still need to be worn until at least 2022 and possibly beyond. But recently, fully vaccinated individuals were permitted to go maskless indoors. However, many who have already received their jabs still choose to keep their face covered in public.

But the perceived safety features of mask wearing haven’t stood up to real-world experience. In March, Texas and Mississippi lifted their state requirements on mask orders, despite warnings that the move would lead to a surge of new coronavirus cases and certain doom. Instead, death counts plummeted.

Huber has researched the mask issue extensively. The conclusion of her research team after publishingfour peer-reviewed papers found that the masks “made COVID-19 worse in every way,” due to oxygen deprivation, bacterial pneumonia, and more. Huber points to demographic data showing that mask use also correlated with higher rates of COVID-19, as well as the physics and chemistry of why.

“Masks have quite a hazardous profile,” she said. [https://www.theepochtimes.com/combing-through-the-science-of-covid_3859882.html]

Moreover, renowned statistician Dr. William Briggs, who is a consultant and adjunct Professor of Statistics at Cornell University with specialties in medicine and philosophy of science, gave a list of the “hazardous” effects of the mask:

Paper by Kai Kisielinski and a slew of others asks “Is a Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose Free from Undesirable Side Effects in Everyday Use and Free of Potential Hazards?” 

Before reading, guess the answer!

Le Abstract (with my added paragraphification):

Many countries introduced the requirement to wear masks in public spaces for containing SARS-CoV-2 making it commonplace in 2020…For a quantitative evaluation, 44 mostly experimental studies were referenced, and for a substantive evaluation, 65 publications were found. The literature revealed relevant adverse effects of masks in numerous disciplines. In this paper, we refer to the psychological and physical deterioration as well as multiple symptoms described because of their consistent, recurrent and uniform presentation from different disciplines as a Mask-Induced Exhaustion Syndrome (MIES). 

We objectified evaluation evidenced changes in respiratory physiology of mask wearers with significant correlation of O2 drop and fatigue (p < 0.05), a clustered co-occurrence of respiratory impairment and O2 drop (67%), N95 mask and CO2 rise (82%), N95 mask and O2 drop (72%), N95 mask and headache (60%), respiratory impairment and temperature rise (88%), but also temperature rise and moisture (100%) under the masks. Extended mask-wearing by the general population could lead to relevant effects and consequences in many medical fields.

Here’s the list of negative effects, documented across many papers (from their Figure 2, which I wish was a Table): lowered O2, uppered CO2, increased humidity and temp, increased breathing resistance, increased respiratory rate, increased blood pressure, cerebral vasodilation, increased heart rate, respiratory impairment, exhaustion and fatigue, drowsiness, dizziness, headache, psycho-vegetative effect (my favorite), decrease in empathy (brother!), itch, skin irritation, acne, rhinitis, voice disorder, false sense of security (ahem), bacterial contamination, fungal contamination, and, the best for last, viral contamination. 

Even ignoring the wee p-values, the result are obvious. Masks are a cult. Don’t think so?[https://wmbriggs.com/post/35507/]

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He want you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes:  

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1 – A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020: 
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1 What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”: 
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it. SHARE

America’s Second Peculiar InstitutionBy: Kathleen Brush, Ph.D.June 30, 2021 Like the first, America’s Second Peculiar Institution, Wokery, is racist. Instead of Blacks, the victims are White. This institution’s goal is securing minority voters by carrying out campaigns of disinformation that censor, publish propaganda, manipulate search outcomes, and control educational curricula. Execution relies on allies in the media and academia. Academia has the weighty role of building a foundation for new systems of racism to flourish. To do this, born egalitarians are taught to hate Whites. Using exaggerated tales, untestable theories, and biased materials America’s future leaders are indoctrinated to see Whites as oppressors and minorities as victims. Some children are shamed into a life seeking redemption for being born white.  Disinformation to support woke/racist laws, programs, and policies is promulgated by mainstream and social media. They hammer disproportional racial/ethnic outcomes in income, incarceration, police shootings, education, and health outcomes as products of systemic racism overseen by white supremacists.  Verified data refuting these assertions by showing the outcomes are products of personal decisions, like what and when to study, raising children with one parent, observing rule of law, and a healthy lifestyle are censored or overridden by propaganda.  The purpose of disinformation is to misleadingly validate politically motivated decisions, such as passing laws, programs, and policies that favor some races/ethnicities. To fool people, racist initiatives are called equity. The outcomes aren’t fooling anyone. They broadcast the dangers of decisions based on politics rather than data and common sense. The hardest hit are the people Wokery is pretending to help. The goal of two equity initiatives is to match arrests and incarcerations to racial/ethnic populations instead of the commission of crimes.  One limits police in Black and Latino communities. It’s working, but murders are rising, and 85% of the hardest hit are Black and Latino communities.  A second initiative creates a two-tiered justice system that delivers social justice to Blacks and Latinos and legal justice to Whites and Asians. Portland and Seattle lead the nation in equity in policing and the courts. They were known as cities that were safe and egalitarian. Now, both rank in the top 5% of the least safe cities in the country. The worst-hit are minority neighborhoods experiencing the downsides of social justice. Outcomes from lowering school performance requirements to permit equitable grades and graduation rates are known. America has been lowering standards for a while and its students perform abysmally on international tests, which affects national competitiveness. Individual student performance, however, still affects personal opportunities. Because performance increasingly relies on household priorities placed on after-school studying, Blacks and Latinos, on average, will suffer more.  Falsely fingering disproportional health outcomes on a racist health care system will perpetuate unaddressed epidemics in obesity and sedentary lifestyles that lead to many preventable diseases and a decreased quality of life. The hardest hit are Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans. Biden’s declarations that white supremacy is the “most lethal threat to the homeland” precipitated multiple outcomes. Woke journalists and politicians revived a KKK practice of reflexively accusing one race for horrible minority crimes/accidents. America’s NATO allies are bracing for blowback from America’s ignorance of white supremacy and systemic racism.  These allies plus Russia are the white supremacists. Into the 20th century their empires globally conquered and colonized Black, Asian and indigenous populations then cleansed them based on race, ethnicity, religion, and social class using genocides, cleansings, pogroms, transportation, and enslavement. As to America’s adversaries, they are cheering an opening to the return of Russian and Chinese supremacy. America was central to ending white supremacy after WWII by facilitating independence for over 100 colonies of white supremacist empires.  In 1964, systemic racism was dealt a death blow that was actualized in the 20th century, making America the leading anti-racist nation.  In pursuit of power, the Democrats have squandered this great American achievement by repugnantly insinuating that America today resembles the Jim Crow era.  In history, Wokery will be remembered for the Democrats perpetuating a second regrettable peculiar institution that inferred and designated people, based on race, as inferior.  Unlike the first institution, this one isn’t legal or an accepted practice in the world. It is not the 0.04% white supremacist population that is the biggest threat to America; it is wokery.

I built the wall; Biden built a humanitarian catastrophe
By: Donald J. Trump June 30, 2021
When I was president, I delivered on my promise to build a border wall to protect our country. All Joe Biden had to do was paint it. 
Instead, Biden has enacted the most radical open borders agenda imaginable. This is perhaps the first time in world history a nation has purposely and systematically dismantled its own defenses to invite millions of foreign migrants to enter its territory and break its laws.
No one knows who they are, presenting a dangerous threat to Americans. To say that Biden has provoked a national security disaster does not even begin to do justice to the calamity.
In May, illegal border crossings were nearly 700% higher than when I was president during the same period last year. For each of the last three months, more unaccompanied minors have arrived than in any prior month in recorded history. Seizures of ultra-lethal fentanyl are up 265% from last year — more of the drug has already been intercepted than in the entirety of 2020.
Joe Biden has restored catch-and-release, torn up our hard-earned asylum agreements with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, and announced that anyone on the planet who lives in a crime-afflicted area now qualifies for asylum in the United States.
Meanwhile, ICE is effectively shut down, senior border security officials have been fired, and criminals are being released in record numbers. 
To top it all off, the Biden administration has announced a new program whereby the U.S. government will literally pay to fly illegal aliens’ relatives from other countries to join them in the United States. 
These policies are utterly depraved — the actions of someone who by all indications wants to completely abolish America’s southern border.
Yet of all the vindictive, shocking, and self-defeating border security actions Joe Biden has taken, none surpasses his decision to stop the final completion of the wall.
Nearly 740 miles of a border wall had been fully funded and more than 660 miles were already built or undergoing construction, Customs and Border Protection confirmed on Jan. 15, five days before I left office. After more than two years of litigation and Democrat obstruction, the wall was going up at an average rate of two miles per day. We had already more than doubled the length of the physical barrier protecting our southern border. We had also replaced much of the previously existing dilapidated fencing with new impenetrable metal beams, focusing on the highest traffic areas that border patrol agents themselves had identified. 
The wall was planned, approved, paid for, and virtually done. Only a few key areas remained to be completed. All Joe Biden had to do was let the contractors finish their work. The border agents wanted it, and it would make the whole country safer.
Instead, Biden sabotaged the completion of the wall, ordered an immediate halt to construction on his first day in office, impounded the funds Congress had appropriated, and took steps to terminate the National Emergency declaration that had facilitated it. 
By stopping construction, Joe Biden purposely and deliberately left gaps in the wall, creating unsealed channels right in the middle of the border to be exploited by human traffickers and drug smugglers.
I built a wall — Biden built a humanitarian catastrophe.
This decision has also done egregious harm to our sovereignty. As my administration clearly demonstrated, walls work. After my border wall was constructed, illegal border crossings dropped by 90 percent in the Yuma area and 80 percent in the Rio Grande Valley, and parts of El Paso. Illegal drug trafficking and human smuggling also drastically decreased in those areas. Building just 12 miles of border wall in San Diego alone reduced necessary border patrol manpower by 150 agents a day, saving millions of taxpayer dollars, and freeing up those agents to provide additional border security elsewhere. 
As a result of Biden’s abdication of his sworn duties, Texas now says they will “build the wall.” This should not be necessary and is at best a band-aid over the gaping wound Biden created. 
Border security is a core responsibility of the federal government — and my administration had already done everything required to complete the project. We secured the necessary legal authorities, acquired the land, designed, engineered, and tested the wall. With little help from Congress, my administration obtained the money, executed the contracts, and hired the personnel. For Texas to be unnecessarily forced to repeat these complicated steps will take months or years if it is even possible for them to do it at all. 
Governors and state legislatures should certainly do what they can — but there is no substitute for federal action.
We handed Biden the most secure border in history. We ended asylum fraud, terminated catch and release, negotiated historic migration agreements with Mexico and other countries, and virtually stopped illegal immigration. Precisely because of these policies, we achieved an incredible 90% reduction in illegal crossings. 
Our nation is being destroyed by Biden’s border crisis. The United States must immediately restore the entire set of border security and immigration enforcement measures we put into place — and, critically, we must finish the wall.
A nation without borders is not a nation at all. For the sake of our country, Joe Biden must finish sealing the border immediately, or the American People must elect a Congress that will.

America’s Second Peculiar Institution

By: Kathleen Brush, Ph.D.

June 30, 2021

Like the first, America’s Second Peculiar Institution, Wokery, is racist. Instead of Blacks, the victims are White. This institution’s goal is securing minority voters by carrying out campaigns of disinformation that censor, publish propaganda, manipulate search outcomes, and control educational curricula. Execution relies on allies in the media and academia. Academia has the weighty role of building a foundation for new systems of racism to flourish. To do this, born egalitarians are taught to hate Whites. Using exaggerated tales, untestable theories, and biased materials America’s future leaders are indoctrinated to see Whites as oppressors and minorities as victims. Some children are shamed into a life seeking redemption for being born white.  Disinformation to support woke/racist laws, programs, and policies is promulgated by mainstream and social media. They hammer disproportional racial/ethnic outcomes in income, incarceration, police shootings, education, and health outcomes as products of systemic racism overseen by white supremacists. 
Verified data refuting these assertions by showing the outcomes are products of personal decisions, like what and when to study, raising children with one parent, observing rule of law, and a healthy lifestyle are censored or overridden by propaganda.  The purpose of disinformation is to misleadingly validate politically motivated decisions, such as passing laws, programs, and policies that favor some races/ethnicities. To fool people, racist initiatives are called equity. The outcomes aren’t fooling anyone. They broadcast the dangers of decisions based on politics rather than data and common sense. The hardest hit are the people Wokery is pretending to help. The goal of two equity initiatives is to match arrests and incarcerations to racial/ethnic populations instead of the commission of crimes. 
One limits police in Black and Latino communities. It’s working, but murders are rising, and 85% of the hardest hit are Black and Latino communities. 
A second initiative creates a two-tiered justice system that delivers social justice to Blacks and Latinos and legal justice to Whites and Asians. Portland and Seattle lead the nation in equity in policing and the courts. They were known as cities that were safe and egalitarian. Now, both rank in the top 5% of the least safe cities in the country. The worst-hit are minority neighborhoods experiencing the downsides of social justice. Outcomes from lowering school performance requirements to permit equitable grades and graduation rates are known. America has been lowering standards for a while and its students perform abysmally on international tests, which affects national competitiveness. Individual student performance, however, still affects personal opportunities. Because performance increasingly relies on household priorities placed on after-school studying, Blacks and Latinos, on average, will suffer more.  Falsely fingering disproportional health outcomes on a racist health care system will perpetuate unaddressed epidemics in obesity and sedentary lifestyles that lead to many preventable diseases and a decreased quality of life. The hardest hit are Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans. Biden’s declarations that white supremacy is the “most lethal threat to the homeland” precipitated multiple outcomes. Woke journalists and politicians revived a KKK practice of reflexively accusing one race for horrible minority crimes/accidents. America’s NATO allies are bracing for blowback from America’s ignorance of white supremacy and systemic racism. 
These allies plus Russia are the white supremacists. Into the 20^th century their empires globally conquered and colonized Black, Asian and indigenous populations then cleansed them based on race, ethnicity, religion, and social class using genocides, cleansings, pogroms, transportation, and enslavement. As to America’s adversaries, they are cheering an opening to the return of Russian and Chinese supremacy. America was central to ending white supremacy after WWII by facilitating independence for over 100 colonies of white supremacist empires. 
In 1964, systemic racism was dealt a death blow that was actualized in the 20^th century, making America the leading anti-racist nation. 
In pursuit of power, the Democrats have squandered this great American achievement by repugnantly insinuating that America today resembles the Jim Crow era. 
In history, Wokery will be remembered for the Democrats perpetuating a second regrettable peculiar institution that inferred and designated people, based on race, as inferior. 
Unlike the first institution, this one isn’t legal or an accepted practice in the world. It is not the 0.04% white supremacist population that is the biggest threat to America; it is wokery. 

Our Indefensible, Unsustainable Status Quo Stephen P. White: The reason for Eucharistic discipline is not to punish wayward Catholic politicians but to defend the innocent and to bring souls closer to God’s mercy. It has been thirty-seven years since Mario Cuomo’s infamous Notre Dame speech – the Magna Carta for pro-choice Catholics – in which the former governor of New York laid out the argument that personal opposition to abortion might be compatible with a refusal to “impose” those personal beliefs in law. It was never a very good argument, effectively reducing the divine law and natural law to a kind of private piety. But for more than a generation, it has provided sufficient cover for pro-choice Catholic politicians (of both parties, for what it’s worth) looking to obfuscate the inconsistency of professing the Catholic faith while refusing to uphold the basic demands of justice.                       It has been seventeen years since Cardinal Ratzinger, then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote to then-Cardinal McCarrick, clarifying the Church’s teaching regarding worthiness to receive Communion: pro-choice politicians should not present themselves for Communion and those who obstinately persevere in opposition to Church teaching must be denied Communion.                       John Kerry, a pro-choice Catholic, was the Democratic nominee for president that year and suggestions that he be denied Communion were being denounced as (what else?) a politicization of the Eucharist. McCarrick misrepresented Ratzinger’s letter to his brother bishops to maintain the political peace. The result: interminable dialogue without discipline.                       Now, questions about “Eucharistic consistency” and Communion for politicians who oppose Church teaching are once again in the news. As the USCCB doctrine committee begins drafting its document on the Eucharist, it’s worth asking: has the dominant pastoral strategy of the last several decades, a strategy of perpetual dialogue unmatched by meaningful pastoral discipline, produced the hoped-for good fruits? Have things improved since 1984? Or since 2004? Or has the pastoral approach taken by most of our bishops, however well-intentioned, enabled the ever-worsening divisions we see around us?   Click here to read the rest of Mr. White’s column . . . Image: The Mocking of Christ by Matthias Grünewald, c. 1503-05 [Alte Pinakothek, Munich]

The Democrat Architectsof White Supremacy

Democrats are the historical architectsand political beneficiaries of systemic racism.

By: Mark Alexander

The Patriot Post

June 30, 2021

HAT TIP: RIP MCINTOSH

“The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.” —George Washington (1796)

This week, as we prepare to celebrate our American Independence Day and the launch of the most enduring assertion of individual liberty in the history of the world, it is worth taking a look at another “independence day” codified into federal law two weeks ago. 
June 19 is now a federal holiday. Historically known as “Jubilee Day” or “Emancipation Day,” the celebration originated in Galveston, Texas, to commemorate that day in 1865 when General Order No. 3 proclaimed the freedom of remaining slaves in Texas — then the last state of the Confederacy. It enforced Republican President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on January 1 of 1863.
The official holiday, called Juneteenth National Independence Day, received unanimous support in the Senate and overwhelming bipartisan support in the House — the only objections being how Democrats had politicized the commemoration. President Donald Trump advocated for the date’s national holiday status last year, and it’s the first national holiday to receive legal status since the establishment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day by Ronald Reagan in 1983.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) rightly noted: “As Texans, we’ve long understood the importance of Juneteenth. When President Trump said it should be a holiday, many of us said it was long overdue. We should be proud and unified in celebrating this day as an important historical milestone for freedom and inalienable rights. Freedom is always worth celebrating! … Republicans have been and always will be the party of freedom over tyranny and liberty over oppression.”
But more to the point, the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, our friend Allen West, observed, “Juneteenth is a celebration of why the Republican Party was established in 1854, the abolition of slavery.” West also noted: “Today, the Democrats are economically enslaving Blacks and have turned inner-city communities into modern plantations of welfare and economic dependence. Juneteenth is a celebration of why the Republican Party was established in 1854, the abolition of slavery. Only a flaming incompetent idiot would give the party of the jackass any credit for Juneteenth.“
Our grassroots writer Patrick Hampton (who identifies as “Brown,” not “Black“), after seeing photos of Biden surrounded by Black members of Congress at the Juneteenth signing, observed, “You know, 155 years ago, their white Democrat masters would have considered them ‘house Negroes.'”
Indeed, over the last 50 years, Democrats turned Martin Luther King’s dream into a nightmare for tens of millions of Black men, women, and children. That’s the irrefutable Democrat record.
To that end, in Chicago alone over the new Juneteenth holiday weekend, there were hundreds of assaults and 10 murders, mostly Black victims assaulted and murdered by mostly Black assailants. Much to the disappointment of Joe Biden, none of the victims this year or last were murdered by “white supremacists.“
As our Nate Jackson asked regarding the proposed holiday, “So why are Democrats so intent on memorializing an extraordinary Republican accomplishment?” He concluded, “Many reasons, but deceitful pandering is chief among them.”
At the forefront of that deceit, Biden has devoted a lot of rhetorical gas to the creation of a mythical bogeyman of “white supremacy,” which he insists is “the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today.” 
Two weeks ago, I outlined the fallacy and absurdity of Biden’s “white supremacy” claims, a BIG Lie to perpetuate his delusional assertion that the Capitol riot was a white supremacist insurrection.
Of course, his delusional reference to “white supremacists” and “right-wing extremists” is, by extension, a thinly veiled code for anyone who supported the conservative domestic and foreign policies of the Trump administration over the last four years.
These “white supremacists” are the architects of what Biden claims is “one of the great crises of our time,” that catch-all race-bait phrase, “systemic racism.”
Biden built his stairway to the presidency on the erroneous claim that America is besieged, top to bottom, with “systemic racism” and “white supremacists.”
However, America is no more besieged by systemic racism than it is besieged by white supremacists — at least not by the definitions of “systemic racism” and “white supremacist” Biden and his Demo cadres promote.
However, there is a widespread and much more subversive form of white supremacy across our nation: white supremacists who are in fact the architects and authors of systemic racism. These racial supremacists benignly hold the view that the White race is superior to other races, and they demonstrate that constantly by pandering to Black and Hispanic Americans — but would never admit to such white supremacist beliefs in words.
In a July 2000 speech to the NAACP, President George W. Bush declared to great applause: “Discrimination is still a reality, even when it takes different forms. Instead of Jim Crow, there’s racial redlining and profiling. Instead of separate but equal, there is separate and forgotten.“
He then asserted these memorable words: “I will confront another form of bias: the soft bigotry of low expectations.“
The harsh reality is, there is nothing “soft” about the “bigotry of low expectations.” In fact, that bigotry is the direct result of white supremacy, but not the “KKK” variety. It’s the result of a much more insidious and subversive variety because the wolves who perpetuate it masquerade as the sheep they are ostensibly protecting.
Thus, I would submit that the most dangerous white supremacist in America is … Joe Biden. After all, he’s the titular head of the white privilege Democrats who have built a political empire pandering to the “lesser” races. Biden is not of the variety of white supremacists who are overtly racist, but the variety whose pandering to Black and Hispanic people is framed by the Democrats’ bigotry of low expectations — implying non-whites are an inferior and subservient constituency.
Moreover, as a direct result of generations of Democrat Party oppression of Black and Brown people, the most obvious racists in America, those who demonstrate overt hatred for others based on their race or ethnicity, are the large cadres of black supremacists, most notably now the radicals who lead the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement.
But the most influential and insidious of white supremacists are the Democrat Party’s regressive leaders and their white privilege leftistadherents who placate black Americans, in effect segregating them into a modern underclass of people whom they insist are incapable of taking care of themselves. And every black politician who buys into such ugliness is the equivalent of what the Democrat slave owners once referred to as “house slaves,” those who were trustworthy enough to be in direct association with their white masters.
The result of their bigotry is the racial Balkanization of America.As political observer, Candace Owens, concludes: “Democrats know that they can no longer use physical force to enslave Blacks, as they once did. Today, they weaponize language, the media, and culture to convince black people to oppress themselves. If you hold a permanent view of yourself as a victim, you become your own oppressor.”
Furthermore, as political analyst Andrew McCarthy notes in his column on the race demagogue politicians: “America has a serious racial problem. Not a racism problem, a racial problem. We have a party in power whose strategy for remaining in power is to divide the country along racial lines. Democrats calculate that urban-centered racialist tribalism, amplified by media and pop-culture allies and underwritten by cowed corporations, can cast mainstream America as a deplorable bastion of white supremacism.“
Fact is, the solution to racism is not more racism, but for Democrats, the systemic exploitation of race is the solution to maintaining power and the status quo.

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PHILOSOPHY

Rejecting the Culture of Authenticity

JUNE 30, 2021BY DAVID C. BURRISUnless and until the excesses of authenticity culture are able to be moderated, we can expect the widespread relational fragmentation, loneliness, and loss that flows from it to continue unabated. Nevertheless, authenticity should not be discarded as an ideal. Instead, we must articulate a more constructive and reasonable conception of authenticity that can be passed on to the next generation.

Two months ago, Bill and Melinda Gates released a statement on Twitter announcing the couple’s decision to end their marriage of twenty-seven years. They acknowledged the good that their marriage has produced, such as raising “three incredible children” and building an effective philanthropic foundation that is improving the lives of people all over the world. Yet despite all of this, the couple states that they “no longer believe that [they] can grow together as a couple in this next phase of life” and ask for privacy as they begin to “navigate this new life.”

My purpose here is not to comment on the circumstances surrounding the Gateses’ decision to split. However, I would argue that their brief explanation and the presuppositions it contains are culturally significant, because they embody the flawed conceptions of the nature of authenticity and personal fulfillment that have become ubiquitous in Western society today. Such attitudes are pernicious and continue to produce disastrous social consequences.

Nevertheless, authenticity should not be discarded as an ideal. Instead, we must articulate a more constructive and reasonable conception of authenticity that can be passed on to the next generation. To do so, we need to recognize the primacy that enduring relationships have in the project of self-definition, embrace external standards of objective reality against which our choices can be measured, and evaluate the quest for authenticity within the framework of classical virtue ethics.

Transactional Relationships

In The Ethics of Authenticity, Charles Taylor skillfully diagnoses some of the problems we face. He begins by characterizing the society that supports and nourishes a fixation on creating authentic selves as a “culture of authenticity.” He claims that such cultures tend to promote perverse and inadequate ideas about the true nature of authenticity, as well as the ethical frameworks needed to support it, and he predicts that a weakening and dissolution of personal relationships will be the inevitable result. This is true in part because the pursuit of authenticity instrumentalizes our relationships with associations and communities instead of respecting their intrinsic value.

On an interpersonal level, Taylor argues, the culture of authenticity “fosters a view of relationships in which these ought to subserve personal fulfillment. The relationship is secondary to the self-realization of the partners.” In such a view, the motivation to make commitments that last for the duration of one’s life is diminished. Indeed, it may even be counterproductive. If a relationship is no longer serving the purpose of helping one of the partners to achieve self-fulfillment, then committing to remain together in spite of it makes little sense.

To illustrate the point, Taylor includes an excerpt from Gail Sheehy’s 1976 book Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life. Sheehy’s advice to those entering mid-life is to become more comfortable with the pursuit of transitory and transactional relationships, which she calls the “gift of portable roots.” This “gift” can be enjoyed to the extent that one is able to ignore the social “roles” he or she has been playing, along with the expectations and obligations attendant to those roles—or at least to hold them in a more tentative mode. Once you hold those you love with a looser grasp, the truly authentic self can emerge and the capacity for love will be enhanced: “For each of us there is the opportunity to emerge reborn, authentically unique, with an enlarged capacity to love ourselves and embrace others…. The delights of self-discovery are always available. Though loved ones move in and out of our lives, the capacity to love remains.”

For Sheehy, authenticity requires us to end our relationships with those who no longer contribute to our sense of personal fulfillment and redirect our love to those who can. Duties and obligations become conditional rules of convenience. The Gateses’ announcement echoes this language: as they enter this new “phase” of their lives, they sadly no longer believe they can grow as a couple. It is ambiguous what we should take their use of the word “grow” to mean, but at a minimum, it seems to imply that they believe their marriage should be accomplishing certain results for their private ends that are not forthcoming.

Horizons of Significance and the Definition of the Self

The rejection of what Taylor terms “horizons of significance” is also present in the Gateses’ declaration. Horizons of significance are those objective sources of meaning and morality that exist independent of one’s own will or the satisfaction of personal desires.

For Taylor, there is a “horizon” of meaningful choices, lifestyles, and virtues against which the self can be measured and deemed to be significant. We are born into a cosmos, which requires individuals to search out and understand their position in a broader order. All attempts at finding or creating the authentic self that reject this basic supposition are doomed to collapse into a naïve subjectivism that levels the moral status of all choices. Without an external, objective basis, even the assumption that the authentic is preferable is left utterly unsupported.

Furthermore, engagement with and reference to significant others are necessary conditions in the pursuit of self-definition. Taylor shows how the very tools of self-definition and discovery are “dialogical” in character. The articulation and innovation of self-identities require languages that allow the self to express or define its significance. Yet, he observes, “no one acquires the languages needed for self-definition on their own.” Communication is learned through a process of exchanges with others. We may use these means of communication in solitary ways, but when it comes to working out the contours of our own identity, we often find ourselves engaged in “dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the identities our significant others want to recognize in us.” These conversations are formative and constructive of who we regard ourselves to be. Promoters of authenticity underestimate the roles that others play in our personal enjoyment, pleasure, and aspirations. The identity of being an elite track star, for example, is only intelligible when it includes relationships with competitors, coaches, referees, fans, friends, and family members.

Sheehy suggests that unleashing the authentic self requires tentative and provisional ties and responsibilities. This, she predicts, will result in “an enlarged capacity to love ourselves and embrace others.” Such an idea could only find purchase in a cultural context in which the discharging of duty and cultivation of virtue increasingly becomes regarded as instrumental, one that acknowledges no greater horizon of significance outside the self and actively ignores the dialogical role that others play in understanding our identities. A constructive conception of authenticity, by contrast, exhorts us to understand that meaning and fulfillment derive from internalizing one’s own situatedness and answering the call to live for a world outside of the self.

Preserving the Ideal of Authenticity

It can be tempting to dismiss the ideal of authenticity as inherently narcissistic, egoistic, and doomed to slide down the slippery slope to subjectivism. To those who hold this view, authenticity culture is considered an outgrowth of a self-indulgent and self-obsessed generation, one that encourages individuals to participate in the world as the leading characters in a film they have written for themselves. It is antithetical to the belief in objective morality or the formation of virtue.

While this reaction is understandable, we should not be too quick to throw out the proverbial baby. There are compelling reasons why authenticity should be retained as an ideal, and indeed, developed as one of the virtues. The first is that there is a psychic cost that inauthenticity puts on individuals. Doing and saying things that one does not in fact believe to be the case are associated with higher rates of feeling both immoral and impure. While the feeling of discomfort is not dispositive of the virtue of authenticity, it does let us know when we are perpetrating a deception about our own thoughts and character, and it provides a psychological disincentive to engage in that behavior. As such, these feelings will play a crucial role in either aiding or opposing behaviors that reinforce other virtues.

In fact, authenticity is a necessary condition for the cultivation of any of the virtues. Without a commitment to authenticity, we stand powerless to resist when we are challenged to act in a way inconsistent with our own characters. If I stand to benefit by telling a lie, then it will only be my commitment to remain faithful to my disposition and desire to tell the truth that allows the trait of honesty to manifest itself.

Those who live in habitually inauthentic ways leave themselves vulnerable to a corruption of their characters. In the gospels, for example, we read repeatedly how Jesus lampoons the Pharisees for performing external acts of piety while lacking a true heart of compassion and love for their neighbors. It’s easy to see why. This type of hypocrisy provides the soil in which self-deception and pride may easily take root. The inauthentic individual plays a role for which he or she is lauded. This praise reinforces certain behaviors, such as praying loudly in public spaces, yet those actions are not truly building the virtues of reverence or piety. Instead, hypocrites learn to be selective, performing the behavior on cue and only when they derive social accolades for their performance.

Avoiding Both the Excess and the Defect of Authenticity

Like all virtues, true authenticity strikes a mean between two extremes.

The “culture of authenticity” is on one end of the spectrum, characterized by excess. In this view, authenticity is regarded as the supreme virtue, the chief means by which one may flourish. All other virtues are put into its service. It does not need to submit to the contours of objective reality, nor does it need to make any discriminating judgments about the appropriate context for expression.

The virtue of authenticity, by contrast, does not make excuses for poor decisionmaking. It is not a pretext to ignore or justify acting in ways inconsistent with one’s duties or the demands of justice. It recognizes the existence of a universe outside the self that, in Taylor’s words, “makes claims” on the individual. Any feelings of inauthenticity that one experiences as one exercises the virtues should correctly be ignored.

This must be done, while at the same time, without completely surrendering the project of self-definition and expression to whatever social or cultural forces exist externally. This would constitute a defect or lack of authenticity. Specifying exactly when and under what circumstances such a reassertion of the self should occur is difficult to do without assessing a particular person’s character and their particular context. Still, at a minimum, when the natural rights of individuals are being violated, or when vice is praised as virtue, living in a way consistent with one’s one authentically held values and convictions is both necessary and appropriate.

In order to militate against the culture of authenticity, the virtue of authenticity must be rehabilitated and widely promulgated. The dissolution of the Gates family is a tragic but predictable result of authenticity culture. And unless and until the excesses of authenticity culture are able to be moderated, we can expect the widespread relational fragmentation, loneliness, and loss that flows from it to continue unabated.

About the Author

DAVID BURRIS

David C. Burris is a full-time instructor of philosophy and religious studies at Arizona Western College in Yuma, AZ, as well as a faculty associate in the program of Organizational Leadership at Arizona State University.