FUK OFF!
There was a time when creatives — the likes of Steinbeck — understood mobs for the evil that they were. Today, the mob — in its Twitter incarnation — is marching across the internet swiping clean all that it disapproves of.
Judicial Watch Sues Air Force Academy for Records on Critical Race Theory, 'White Supremacy'
(CNS News) -- The government watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Defense Department because it has failed to release documents concerning "Critical Race Theory" and "white supremacy," reportedly being taught at the Air Force Academy. The academy is overseen by the Defense Department.
“Marxist critical race theory and its racial division have no place at the Air Force Academy, which is training the next generations of Air Force leadership,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement.
“And, per usual, the scandal is compounded by the cover-up of records about the propaganda program abusing Air Force cadets," he added.
Back in August 2021, Judicial Watch requested the records as permitted under FOIA law. Despite affirming receipt of the request, the Defense Department to this day has not released any documents related to the request -- thus, the lawsuit.
In the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Nov. 16, Judicial Wacth asked for the following public records from the Air Force Academy:
1. Any and all PowerPoint presentations used for training and/or classroom instruction discussing Critical Race Theory, CRT (when used to represent Critical Race Theory); and/or “white supremacy.”
2. Any and all emails referencing Critical Race Theory, CRT (when used to represent Critical Race Theory); and/or “white supremacy” sent between .mil and/or .gov email accounts and any of the following USAFA officials: Superintendent LTG Richard M. Clark; Vice Superintendent COL Otis C. Jones; Commandant of Cadets BG Paul Moga; and/or Dean of Faculty BG Linell A. Letendre.
The timeframe of the request is from August 1, 2020 to the present.
As Judicial Watch notes, the Air Force Academy was required by law to make a "final determination" on the FOIA request by Sept. 17, 2021 "at the latest."
In a press release, Judicial Watch noted that in June 2022 it had "received records revealing critical race theory instruction at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. One training slide contains a graphic titled 'MODERN-DAY SLAVERY IN THE USA.'"
As defined by the Heritage Foundation, "Critical race theory (CRT) makes race the prism through which its proponents analyze all aspects of American life, categorizing individuals into groups of oppressors and victims. It is a philosophy that is infecting everything from politics and education to the workplace and the military."
Woke Catholic Church Architecture: Ugly as Sin
Down with God, up with people.
So called Neo-Morphism or woke architecture has affected sacred architecture, and especially Catholic Church architecture, over the last several decades.
Architect magazine put it this way:
“The tendency towards design weirdness is all over the place, and not just in trend-conscious California… if there is one dichotomy that should be evident across the world of architecture today, it is the push and pull between those who are pursuing social agendas with little interest in form or image and those who are delighting in their ability to invent shapes and colors that shock and amuse…”
In the 1920s and ’30s, the American Catholic church had its own design style. Early liturgical movements in the country at that time made the crucifix a prominent feature in Catholic churches. In the decades before Vatican II, the American Catholic altar was relatively unencumbered with other images. The combination of altar, tabernacle and crucifix, minus saints and angels, stood in stark contrast to the interior of most European cathedrals.
Modernism in Church architecture came to a head after the Second Vatican Council was convened to renew and invigorate the Church. While words like renew and invigorate have a positive feeling, that’s not quite what happened.
The Council unleashed a storm that not only affected how Catholics worship, but the buildings they worship in. That windstorm produced a fair amount of architectural self-destruction.
The modernist “woke” Catholic Church is easy to spot: a circular altar table with a plus sign surrounded by burlap banners; no icons, statues of the Virgin or frescoes. These churches are really auditoriums.
According to Michael Rose, author of Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed Our Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces—and How We Can Change Them Back Again, the catalyst for the change was a duplicitous 1978 draft statement by the U.S. Bishop’s Committee on Liturgy, entitled “Environment and Art in Catholic Worship.”
Rose asserts that this document was “cunningly published in the name of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, implying approval from Rome. But the Vatican II document, Sacrosanctum Concilum, which was cited in the draft statement as the reason for the “wreck-o-ovation,” did not call for the wholesale slaughter of traditional Catholic Church architecture.
What Vatican II actually said was: “The practice of placing sacred images in churches so that they can be venerated by the faithful is to be maintained.”
So what happened?
Many rebel U.S. Catholic bishops apparently wanted to reshape Catholic churches into more people-oriented worship spaces.
This idea had actually been around prior to the misreading of the texts of Vatican II.
In 1952, there was a booklet published by the Liturgy Program at the University Of Notre Dame called “Speaking of Liturgical Architecture.” Its author, Father H.A. Reinhold, was a respected liturgist of his day. The booklet was a compilation of Reinhold’s lectures in 1947 delivered at the University of Notre Dame ( today the most woke Catholic University in the U.S.)
Reinhold campaigned for a fan-shaped congregation or a church in the round.
This meant plain wooden altar tables rather than marble high altars with images of saints and angels; carpeted rooms; plain glass stained windows, potted plants in place of traditional Catholic artwork; small and nondescript Stations of the Cross that disappear into the walls; churches in the round resembling MTV soundstages; the elimination of altar rails and sanctuary lamps. Crucifixes were replaced by wooden crosses or geometric plus signs; the traditional baptismal transformed into a hot tub. Older churches, including many cathedrals, were stripped bare as high altars were removed and dismantled, and historic frescoes and icons whitewashed.
Suddenly choir lofts were a thing of the past, as choirs were placed in front of the church alongside the main altar. The area would soon become crowded with the so-called presider’s chair, lecterns, and microphones, recalling—if you are of a certain generation—The Tom Snyder Show or the Dick Cavitt stage set.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of churches worldwide were destroyed by the iconoclasts.
In Philadelphia, a number of churches have fallen victim to the new design.
In Philadelphia’s Holy Name parish, founded in 1905, there was an architectural wreck-o-vation in the freewheeling ’70s. The project was the brainchild of a Dominican pastor.
The Dominican cut off the high altar and installed a Home Depot-style butcher block in the center of the church. Then, as if trying to relive His WWII Air Force days, he hung a 747-sized crucifix from the ceiling. He and his Dominican cohorts then ripped out the marble altar rail, and covered the sanctuary in Holiday Inn-style carpet that tends to buckle over a period of time. When the new pastor arrived in 1998, he looked at the church and commented, “This is a mess,” as if surveying the damage caused by an exploding carbuncle.
The Dominicans, unlike the iconoclasts in the 6th and 7th centuries, did show some restraint. Somehow they managed to leave the side altars intact. They also spared the statues and, miraculously, allowed a bejeweled Infant of Prague image to remain in its quiet side altar niche.
Holy Name’s new pastor got rid of the butcher block, and replaced it with a real high altar from a church that had closed in the city in 1999. He also painted the church and added ceramic tile to the sanctuary. What he could not replace was the altar rail.
Vatican II did not issue any edicts calling for the removal of church altar rails. What happened is that in many American churches this was done more or less by design consensus when communion-in-hand became a popular form of receiving the sacrament. The altar rail, traditionally, is the western version of the Eastern iconostasis (a screen of icons that frames the altar). In many modern Catholic churches today there’s no delineation of the sanctuary; an altar rail used to signify that one was entering a place of special reverence.
In Northeast Philadelphia, the once beautiful church of Saint Leo’s underwent something like botched cosmetic surgery.
The pastor of Saint Leo’s told me that the reformers got to the church in the 1960s, barely a nanosecond after the close of Vatican II. They took out the big marble altar along with the domed pulpit. Unlike the rabid Dominicans, who only half-wrecked Holy Name, the St. Leo reformers dumped all the church statues in the church school, where they soon fell into disrepair. As for the church’s large sanctuary lamp that looked as though it might have once hung in a European cathedral, it was replaced with a small, nondescript Martha Stewart/Target-inspired patio lamp. The exquisite altar rail was also ripped out as if it had been nothing but a tapeworm eating at the body of Christ.
No matter where I travel– Louisville, Kentucky, Vienna, a remote island in the Caribbean, Paris, Montreal or Quebec City—I see revamped Catholic sacred spaces, cathedrals stripped bare, such as Louisville’s downtown cathedral or even Thomas Merton’s old church at the Abbey of Gethsemane.
When I traveled to Eisenstadt, Austria, and visited the so called Haydn Church of the chapel of Mercy Mountain church, a church decorated and embellished by Prince Nicholas III, I was shown a new addition, not far from the Haydn crypt. My tour guide, visibly embarrassed, pointed out the Reconciliation Room, a substitution for the centuries-old confessionals. The white plastic and smoky glass construction framed with a few potted plants could easily have doubled as a men’s room. Only the absence of flushing sounds set it apart as a space for contemplation. It reminded me of the hot tub baptismals I’d seen in some new churches where the constant gushing water makes the ordinary pilgrim think of his or her bladder.
As Michael Rose explains, there’s no focal point in the modern worship space. The altar is too low to be visible in most cases, and the priest’s chair, at the level of the congregation, is inconspicuous to all but those sitting or standing in the first two rows.
In many modern churches there’s no sanctuary distinct from the nave. This is the religious version of “woke” grassroots democracy.
The chief architect of modern church design, Father Richard Vosko, a member of the Diocese of Albany Architecture and Building Commission, has designed/redesigned or gutted over 120 Catholic churches. Father Vosko’s brainchild is Cardinal Mahoney’s Los Angeles cathedral, Our Lady of the Angels, aka the Yellow Armadillo or the “Taj Mahoney.”
“This cathedral,” Vosko stated to the press, “is of its own time, of its own liturgy, of its own people.” Vosko added that he was not interested in establishing a sacred place like the European cathedrals of past centuries.
Vosko’s “cookie-cutter” churches all have the same look: they are functionalist or industrialist with harsh lines; they are dominated by colder materials such as metal, concrete and glass. They are noted for their off-centered or less-than-prominent altars and, of course, there’s a lack of a clearly defined sanctuary or nave. There’s also a distinct lack of color and sacred imagery.
Vosko likes tabernacles placed in obscure side chapels, away from the main altar. He opts for hot tub baptismal Jacuzzi, the removal of pews in favor of mobile chairs. His message is that everything should be “throw-a-way,” a church should be able to be cleared of all objects and double as a basketball court if needed.
Johann Winckelmann once noted that noble simplicity must not be confused with mere functionalism, abstract minimalism or crude banality.
Unfortunately, that’s what the Diocese of Milwaukee got when they employed Vosko to redo the Milwaukee’s cathedral of Saint John. Archbishop Rembert Weakland was in command at the time. Weakland’s plans to denude the old cathedral, especially the 40-foot-high marble canopy over the high altar—something he decried as having “no artistic or historic value,” met with Vatican censure. But Weakland went ahead and did it anyway and now the cathedral, denuded and stark, stands as a testament to fashionable bad taste.
In 1831, famed novelist Victor Hugo lamented the destruction of Notre Dame in Paris in his book The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Hugo was not talking about the decapitated statues or injuries to the old queen of French cathedrals caused by the French Revolution, but to the grave damage that Notre Dame suffered at the hands of school-trained architects.
Hugo criticized the removal of colored stained-glass windows, the interior of which had been whitewashed, as well as the removal of the tower over the central part of the cathedral. Fashion, Hugo claimed, had done more mischief than revolutions: “It has cut to the quick—it has attacked the very bone and framework of the art,” he said.
Hugo called these school-trained architects slaves to bad taste and said they were guilty of willful destruction.
Thom Nickels
Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism.
Bad Words: California Colleges Push Students To Purge ‘Harmful’ Phrases Like ‘Brown Bag Lunch’
Stanford University and California Polytechnic State University also discourage 'gender-based' terms like 'mother and father'
If you’ve ever used the phrases "brown bag lunch" or "long time, no see," congratulations: You’re a racist, according to Stanford University.
That’s the judgment of the university’s IT Department, which is rolling out its "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative," an effort to purge "potentially harmful terms" from the university’s websites. The guide cautions that the phrase "blind study" is "ableist" and that saying "balls to the wall" inappropriately "attributes personality traits to anatomy."
Stanford isn’t alone in its linguistic purge. Down the coast, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo warns incoming students against saying "father and mother" or "boyfriend and girlfriend," according to a set of instruction slides for student orientation leaders obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Suggested alternatives to mother and father include "supporter," while the university prefers "partner, beloved or lover" to boyfriend and girlfriend.
Universities and other elite institutions have increasingly embraced "woke" language in a bid to appear progressive. The Biden administration referred to mothers as "birthing people" in its 2022 budget proposal. Stanford is one of several colleges that urge students to use the term "Latinx" to describe Spanish-speaking people, even though most Hispanic people disavow the term.
Both Cal Poly and Stanford apparently worry that mere mention of words commonly used by most Americans will upset their students. They offer "content warnings" before listing problem language like "stupid" and "OCD."
The Stanford guide discourages the use of "gender-based" terms like "landlord" and "mankind." Even the seemingly progressive phrase "preferred pronouns" makes the list, since it "suggests that non-binary gender identity is a choice and a preference." The once-public Stanford list was hidden behind a university login page sometime Monday. The university did not respond to the Free Beacon’s request for comments on the change.
Stanford claims that administrators "are not attempting to address all informal uses of language," but simply "educate people about the possible impact of the words we use." Cal Poly’s language initiative has a loftier aim.
The university’s presentations, which are given to student leaders who run orientations for freshmen and transfers, state that they should do more than switch up their language and adopt gender pronouns. "In order to support trans people in their lives, allies need to dismantle the binary ideas they have of gender in their heads," one slide says.
The Cal Poly materials caution students against using words and phrases like "crazy" or "that’s lame," because they were "used during a time of eugenics against disabled folx, such as forced sterilization and institutionalization."
A Cal Poly spokesman confirmed that the slides have been used in orientation programs "for several years" to promote "using inclusive language around gender and ability." The spokesman added that the speech codes are part of the school’s efforts to promote a "welcoming" campus.
Both Stanford and Cal Poly say they are committed to free speech, which the latter institution avows as a "cornerstone" of democratic societies. But students and faculty say they feel stifled by the speech codes.
"There are people who maybe 5 or 10 years ago would have been in the trenches fighting this stuff with me, but they are even sort of throwing in the hat because it's just bigger than them," said Brian Kennelly, a French professor at Cal Poly. "I think people are just exhausted and if they can just get by unnoticed and get a paycheck that's enough for them, which is so sad."
Kennelly was the only faculty member willing to speak to the Free Beacon on the record. Two Cal Poly instructors who asked to remain anonymous said that students won’t even take rhetorical positions for the sake of argument in class, as they seem afraid of saying something that violates the social justice creed.
"My guess would be there's 30 to 50 percent of the student body who don't buy into this and believe it, but they know they just have to show up and bite their tongue and bide their time," one of these instructors said.
Stanford likewise stresses its free speech imperative. The university’s top leaders, however, have sought to temper its First Amendment mandate with concerns for those "who are negatively impacted by speech" and acknowledgment of the "additional challenge" of "outside speakers who may be controversial."
One Cal Poly instructor said the science and engineering-focused university—long considered the "crown jewel" of the California State University system—has seen a complete "brand shift" as the campus became consumed by social justice.
"I don’t think it’s going to end well for the institutions," the instructor said.
Kennelly worries about the effect on an entire generation.
"If we are expecting our students to all kind of walk in lockstep and have this group think and basically be brainwashed," Kennelly said, "they're going to be incapable of engaging in the way that we would normally expect a college student to engage."
Published under: Anti-Racism, Feature, Stanford University, Transgender, University of California
White Students Are Prohibited From Applying to This UNC Fellowship
The public university dragged into court over its race-conscious admissions policy is now advertising a research fellowship that bars white applicants from applying.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—whose affirmative action program, along with that of Harvard University, is under review by the Supreme Court—sponsors the Fellowship for Exploring Research in Nutrition, which accepts applications exclusively from students who are "Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC)," according to the program's website. Fellows earn thousands of dollars, live in on-campus apartments paid for by the university, and receive generous mentorship opportunities, including letters of recommendation.
"The field of nutrition is overwhelmingly comprised of white researchers," an ad for the fellowship states. "Increased BIPOC representation in food policy research is critical for developing effective, equitable, comprehensive, and culturally competent policies that address nutrition-related health disparities."
On Monday, the economist Mark Perry filed a complaint about the fellowship with the District of Columbia's Office of Civil Rights. The complaint, which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, asks the office to investigate the university for "race-based discrimination."
UNC Chapel Hill did not respond to a request for comment.
The program, which UNC Chapel Hill announced last week on its website, comes as UNC Chapel Hill and Harvard await a verdict from the Supreme Court over a lawsuit from Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit opposed to affirmative action. The group argues that both schools are violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans racial discrimination by the recipients of federal funds, and that UNC Chapel Hill, as a public university, is also violating the 14th Amendment, which bans racial discrimination by the government.
At oral arguments for the case in October, the Supreme Court's conservative justices seemed receptive to that argument. The nutrition fellowship—and white students' explicit exclusion from it—undercuts the school's claim that it does not discriminate based on race, though in this case the discrimination is occurring outside of the school's admissions office.
"It is indisputable this UNC student research program is racially exclusive and therefore is in violation of our nation's civil rights laws," said Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions. The program is similar to other minority-only fellowships, such as Pfizer's Breakthrough Fellowship, that have been hit with discrimination lawsuits in the past year.
If Students for Fair Admissions wins the case, colleges and universities will no longer be allowed to use race as a factor in admissions. Ryan Park, the solicitor general for North Carolina, told the Supreme Court that such an outcome would deny students "the educational benefits" of diversity. That led to a tense exchange in which Justice Clarence Thomas, who grew up in a segregated town in Georgia, pressed Park to explain what he meant.
"I guess I don't put much stock in that" argument, Thomas interjected, "because I've heard similar arguments in favor of segregation too."
Published under: 14th Amendment, Affirmative Action, Civil Rights Act, Harvard, North Carolina, Racism, Supreme Court, University
San Francisco Considers Axing Elections Director for Being a White Man
The San Francisco Elections Commission is considering terminating its contract with its elections director John Arntz—one of the city's most highly esteemed civil servants—citing concerns about "racial equity." Arntz, who is white, will need to reapply next year if he wants to keep his job.
The commission voted 4-2 last week to "open a competitive search" for Arntz's position, which he has held for two decades, rather than to renew his contract automatically, Cynthia Dai, a member of the commission, told the Washington Free Beacon. That decision, Dai said, was "driven in large part by the city's plan for racial equity," which requires all departments and commissions to address internal racial disparities.
"It's hard to achieve diversity targets if senior roles never open up," said Dai, who voted in favor of the search process. "This has nothing to do with his performance."
The vote by the commission, whose members are appointed rather than elected, sparked pushback from elected officials, who credit Arntz with cleaning up a broken system. Before Arntz took the helm, San Francisco's chief attorney David Chiu (D.) told Mission Local, a San Francisco-based newspaper, the city "had five directors in as many years, ballot boxes floating in the bay, and an intense lack of confidence in city elections."
San Francisco mayor London Breed (D.) went so far as to imply that the commission was putting free and fair elections at risk. "John Arntz has served San Francisco with integrity [and] professionalism and has stayed completely independent," Breed told Mission Local. "He's remained impartial and has avoided getting caught up in the web of city politics, which is what we are seeing now as a result of this unnecessary vote."
Aaron Peskin (D.), a member of the city's board of supervisors, called the commission's decision "malfeasance."
The divide between elected officials and the elections commission is a variation on a familiar theme: From discriminatory hiring programs in corporate America to the race-based rationing of COVID drugs, progressive identity politics have advanced faster through unelected bureaucracies than through democratic channels, where the public typically vetoes overt racialism.
That's true even in liberal bastions like California, where voters have overwhelmingly rejected affirmative action. And in February, more than 70 percent of San Francisco voters supported the recall of school board members who dismantled merit-based admissions to Lowell High School, the city's most academically rigorous public school, in an effort to diversify its student body. In June, the board reinstated the old admissions system.
Though Californians have consistently rejected identitarian policies, they have also created cover for them: San Francisco's racial equity plan, which motivated the commission's vote, was created by the very same elected officials who say Arntz's ouster would be a disaster for the city.
Breed signed a law in 2019 mandating the development of a citywide "racial equity framework," which all departments, including the Election Commission, are required to follow. The law was cosponsored by Peskin, the member of the board of supervisors who called the commission decision "malfeasance"—and who in 2020 said the new framework would "make our city more just."
Before becoming San Francisco's chief attorney, Chiu introduced a similar law while serving as a representative in the California State Assembly. The bill, which is working its way through the legislature, would create an "Office of Racial Equity" tasked with closing racial disparities throughout the state government.
California has prohibited affirmative action in government hiring since 1996. If Arntz is still the most qualified candidate after a competitive search, Dai said, he will have his contract renewed.
Published under: Anti-Racism, Election Law, Equity, Identity Politics, Racism, San Francisco, woke
When Did Artists Become the Mob?
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
Editor’s note: The following article, from former Mumford & Sons co-founding musician/songwriter Winston Marshall, was originally posted at The Spectator in February of 2022.
In March 2021, Marshall committed the cardinal sin of tweeting praise for the book Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy by courageous journalist Andy Ngo. The ensuing leftwing outrage prompted Marshall to take a break from the band “to examine my blindspots.” But in June of that year he wrote an essay defending his support for Ngo and announcing that he would be permanently leaving Mumford & Sons to exercise free speech about politics without involving his former bandmates. He subsequently launched a podcast to discuss controversial issues with fellow figures from the artistic community.
In this time of “cancel culture” and “soft totalitarianism,” when artists risk violent condemnation for expressing opinions that dissent from the Progressive orthodoxy in pop culture, Winston Marshall’s intellectual independence and courage are a vital antidote and inspiration.
* * *
“The mob’s going to want a chicken to kill and they won’t care much who it is,” wrote John Steinbeck. “Why don’t people look at mobs not as men, but as mobs? A mob nearly always seems to act reasonably, for a mob.”
I’ve been thinking about those words in recent days as more “cancelled” headlines fill the news. I was a co-founding member of the band Mumford and Sons, which I quit last year. I praised a book critical of far-left extremism in the United States and all hell broke loose, so I decided better to leave my band and save my bandmates the trouble. Better that than stay and self-censor. Now that I am on this side of the parapet I thought I should use my voice to identify the totemic difficult taboo topics that we can’t talk about. That’s why I have launched a new show, Marshall Matters, on Spectator TV: I’ll be talking not to politicians but to musicians, artists, composers, comedians, everyone in the creative industries, and encouraging them to speak freely at a time when many feel they can’t.
You’ll have heard about the Jimmy Carr joke about gypsies and the Holocaust. It was distasteful, deliberately so, and I won’t repeat it here. What is strange is that it was broadcast more than a month ago online, yet the fuss has erupted only now. Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, who is pushing the online safety bill, called the joke “abhorrent and unacceptable,” adding ominously: “We don’t have the ability now, legally, to hold Netflix to account for streaming that. But very shortly we will.” You don’t have to find Jimmy Carr funny to be alarmed at a politician sounding so authoritarian.
The word “Stalinist” is overused but I take it seriously from the likes of Ignat Solzhenitsyn. He was born in Moscow just before his father was exiled for publishing The Gulag Archipelago. Now a pianist and conductor, Ignat tells me about the parallels he sees between the Soviet Russia his family fled and the culture war we have now, a world in which “problematic” remarks are reported to the authorities. “As soon as a view that somehow ranges outside an increasingly narrow orthodoxy is expressed,” he says, “it must be not engaged with, not defeated. Not exposed for the foolish or retrograde view that it surely is: it must be reported so the ‘appropriate’ authorities can deal with it. This is Stalinist.”
In another episode, I speak to the songwriter Don McLean, now 76, who has similar concerns. “People are a bit drunk with power,” he tells me. “We’ve cancelled God, we’ve cancelled religion, we’ve cancelled civility, we’ve cancelled the English language. In a sense isn’t that what ‘American Pie’ says? Isn’t that the day the music died?” Music, comedy, satire, conversation: there’s a lot at stake.
I believe in more speech, not less. The arts industries are quickly ossifying in orthodoxy. Dissenters are punished. For me it was far-left extremism. For the podcaster Joe Rogan it is going rogue on COVID. Those who happen to agree with dissenters learn to zip it. And so develops a culture of compliance. What is most disturbing, to me at least, is how freedom of expression has become an unpopular concept among those whose careers are meant to be about expressing themselves. It is musicians, comedians and actors all over the world who have been lining up to take aim at the once indomitable Rogan over his amazingly popular podcast. Rogan felt obliged to apologize and some of his older episodes have been scrubbed. The British comedian Stewart Lee — who I’m proud to say included me in this year’s Pedal Bin list of people he doesn’t like — is leading the charge to have Rogan removed from Spotify on this side of the Atlantic. “Artists big and small can band together to do something to change this where the money men won’t,” he says. What a strange way to think about the role of the arts in society.
There was a time when creatives — the likes of Steinbeck — understood mobs for the evil that they were. Today, the mob — in its Twitter incarnation — is marching across the internet swiping clean all that it disapproves of. And it is led by the great artists of the day. As with any mob, eventually they turn on their own. It’s not always “the left” — whatever that means now — that demands censorship. Supposedly conservative commentators do it too. The actress-turned-TV panellist Whoopi Goldberg is currently serving a temporary cancellation for uttering the flagrant flapdoodle that the Holocaust was “not about race.” No doubt by the time you read this, several other similar stories will be generating clicks all over the place. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect,” Mark Twain wrote. I hope my new show will help people do just that.
Biden’s Gender-Fluid Nuclear Luggage Thief – and His High Security Clearance
How did he get it?
In the end, he just had too much baggage. Sam Brinton, the Biden administration’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy at the Department of Energy, is now out of a job after being charged with felony theft and grand larceny for taking bags that didn’t belong to him at the Minneapolis and Las Vegas airports. But Old Joe Biden’s handlers still have a great deal to answer for regarding Brinton. Most notably, there’s this: how did this clown who appeared far more interested in showing himself off wearing women’s clothes than in actually dealing with nuclear waste get a high-level security clearance?
There will probably never be any answer to that question, given the sycophantic Leftist establishment media, but it remains an urgent question given the likelihood — actually, the outright certainty — that this administration will continue to appoint people more for their symbolic value than for their abilities. Did Brinton get rushed a security clearance because of his cardinal importance to the administration as, in Brinton’s own words, “the first gender fluid person in federal government leadership”? Will the administration give out high-level security clearances to anyone who can help them show how attuned they are to the latest Leftist cultural fads?
The Daily Caller reported Wednesday that according to “a former Justice Department Official in the Environment and Natural Resources Division,” it’s juuuust possible that “due diligence on Brinton was sidestepped over concerns about discrimination law and public accusations of discrimination against an LGBTQ person.” No kidding, really? How likely is it that Brinton received special consideration for a security clearance because the administration was so very eager to have on board a cross-dressing, gender-fluid individual with plural pronouns for his singular self? About as likely as the possibility that Old Joe Biden will garble an English sentence tomorrow.
But in this, the administration is yet again playing a dangerous game. “Such an action would be irresponsible, the former official said, as Brinton’s position within the Energy Department requires comprehensive knowledge of America’s nuclear secrets and extra vetting known as a Q clearance, which can take months to obtain if the bureaucratic process is not expedited.” Irresponsible? Well, let’s not get carried away. It’s really all a matter of priorities. If your priority is to protect the people of the United States from possible devastation from nuclear waste, then “irresponsible” is not a strong enough word. But if your priority is earning some woke points from your fantasy-addled far-Left base, then giving Brinton high-level clearance was the height of responsibility. And we all know what this administration’s priorities are.
And as is so often the case with Biden and his handlers, it gets worse. Back in 2018, Brinton published an op-ed in the New York Times claiming that he had been thoroughly traumatized, and indeed, tortured, by “conversion therapists” trying to turn him away from homosexuality: “In the early 2000s, when I was a middle schooler in Florida, I was subjected to a trauma that was meant to erase my existence as a newly out bisexual. My parents were Southern Baptist missionaries who believed that the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion therapy could ‘cure’ my sexuality.” Brinton claims that “the therapist ordered me bound to a table to have ice, heat, and electricity applied to my body. I was forced to watch clips on a television of gay men holding hands, hugging, and having sex. I was supposed to associate those images with the pain I was feeling to once and for all turn into a straight boy. In the end it didn’t work.”
However, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Jr. of the Reintegrative Therapy Association has revealed that Brinton’s claims don’t hold up: “Brinton claims he was in torture therapy as a young child for years and can’t remember the therapist’s name. He later claimed the therapy took place in his twenties. But even as he was attacking therapies that don’t exist, he was engaging in sadomachism (sic) and simulated bestiality with young men and women. Of course, no one cared about his credibility until he got caught stealing luggage.”
Whether or not Brinton’s claims were true, all these claims of torture and trauma would ordinarily be considered by those considering him for a security clearance. And if his claims are indeed false, that should have factored into the decision to give him the high-level security clearance he had. What’s more, the Daily Caller adds that “the rigorous process for obtaining a security clearance requires disclosing information going back at least 10 years. Subject matter can include financial information and mental health matters to ensure a federal employee is trustworthy and will not be subject to blackmail, the former Justice Department official said.”
Sam Brinton is so proud of his perversions that it is unlikely he could be blackmailed, but after all that professed trauma, the issue of his mental health should have been a consideration. Was it? Were proper procedures skirted in his case (actually, after his trips to Minneapolis and Las Vegas he has two cases)? The American people deserve answers. The American people will not get them.
Robert Spencer
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 26 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest books are The Critical Qur'an and Who Lost Afghanistan?. Follow him on Twitter here, and like him on Facebook here.
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