Political Endorsement Quotes

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals, and to imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home--but not for housing. They are strong for labor--but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights. They favor minimum wage--the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all--but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine--for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing--but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think American standard of living is a fine thing--so long as it doesn't spread to all the people. And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.

The emperor is naked!" The parade stopped. The emperor paused. A hush fell over the crowd, until one quick-thinking peasant shouted: "No, he isn't. The emperor is merely endorsing a clothing-optional lifestyle!

Sometimes you must agree with someones opinion for the sake of being polite and modest, but within you, you know that you are not foolish and crazy.

Teaching students the evidence for and against Darwinism is not the same as teaching intelligent design. The U.S. Congress has officially endorsed teaching students 'the full range of scientific views' about Darwinian evolution.

Republican or Democrat, this nation's affluent urban and suburban classes understand their bread is buttered on the corporate side. The primary difference between the two parties is that the Republicans pretty much admit that they grasp and even endorse some of the nastiest facts of life in America. Republicans honestly tell the world: "Listen in on my phone calls, piss-test me until I'm blind, kill and eat all of my neighbors right in front of my eyes, but show me the money! Let me escape with every cent I can kick out of the suckers, the taxpayers, and anybody else I can get a headlock on, legally or otherwise." Democrats, in contrast, seem content to catalog the GOP's outrages against the Republic, showing proper indignation while laughing at episodes of The Daily Show. But they stand behind the American brand: imperialism. They "support our troops," though you will be hard put to find any of them who have served alongside them or who would send one of their own kids off to lose an eye or an arm in Iraq. They play the imperial game, maintain their credit ratings, and plan to keep the beach house and the retirement investments if it means sacrificing every damned Lynndie England in West Virginia.

If women really choose prostitution, why is it mostly marginalized and disadvantaged women who do? If we want to discuss the issue of choice, let’s look at who is doing the actual choosing in the context of prostitution. Surely the issue is not why women allegedly choose to be in prostitution, but why men choose to buy the bodies of millions of women and children worldwide and call it sex. Philosophically, the response to the choice debate is ‘not’ to deny that women are capable of choosing within contexts of powerlessness, but to question how much real value, worth, and power these so-called choices confer. Politically, the question becomes, should the state sanction the sex industry based on the claim that some women choose prostitution when most women’s choice is actually 'compliance’ to the only options available? When governments idealize women’s alleged choice to be in prostitution by legalizing, decriminalizing, or regulating the sex industry, they endorse a new range of 'conformity’ for women. Increasingly, what is defended as a choice is not a triumph over oppression but another name for it.

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.

When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think.

[T]he Bible is neither an eighteenth-nor a twenty-first-century policy textbook. It endorses neither the fiefdom nor the global superpower. America is not a "uniquely Christian" nation, and it never was.

One reason Elvis mattered, she said, was that in his prime, pop music had still been politically innocent, therefore deeply life-affirming, therefore relevant. By the time he died, most pop songs had become, usually without the conscious intention of those who wrote and sang them, anthems endorsing the values of fascism, which remains the case to this day.

Churches are political even when they refuse to act politically, because silence is a form of complicity and thus an endorsement of the status quo.

…so that’s why I’m pleased to announce my endorsement of Sarah Palin for President in 2016: because you know that whoever gets elected is going to fuck you over. So why not vote for somebody that you actually want to get fucked by?

By privately endorsing Seward’s spirit of compromise while projecting an unyielding public image, President-elect Lincoln retained an astonishing degree of control over an increasingly chaotic and potentially devastating situation.

Another part of the Puritan legacy is the belief that no one should have joy or abundance until everyone does, a belief that austere at one end, in the deprivation it endorses, and fantastical in the other, since it awaits a universal utopia. Joy sneaks in anyway, abundance cascades forth uninvited...Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.

This falling-out was to be more than personal, for the rift between Hamilton and Madison precipitated the start of the two-party system in America. The funding debate shattered the short-lived political consensus that had ushered in the new government. For the next five years, the political spectrum in America was defined by whether people endorsed or opposed Alexander Hamilton’s programs.

When someone joins a party, it is usually because he has perceived, in the activities and propaganda of this party, a number of things that appeared to him just and good. Still, he has probably never studied the position of the party on all the problems of public life. When joining the party, he therefore also endorses a number of positions which he does not know. In fact, he submits his thinking to the authority of the party. As, later on, little by little, he begins to learn these positions, he will accept them without further examination. This

Are you for peace? The great test of your devotion to peace is not how many words you utter on its behalf. It’s not even how you propose to deal with people of other countries, though that certainly tells us something. To fully measure your “peacefulness” requires that we examine how you propose to treat people in your own backyard. Do you demand more of what doesn’t belong to you? Do you endorse the use of force to punish people for victimless “crimes”? Do you support politicians who promise to seize the earnings of others to pay for your bailout, your subsidy, your student loan, your child’s education or whatever pet cause or project you think is more important than what your fellow citizens might personally prefer to spend their own money on? Do you believe theft is OK if it’s for a good cause or endorsed by a majority? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then have the courage to admit that peace is not your priority. How can I trust your foreign policy if your domestic policy requires so much to be done at gunpoint?

The conventional public opposition of 'liberal' and 'conservative' is, here as elsewhere, perfectly useless. The 'conservatives' promote the family as a sort of public icon, but they will not promote the economic integrity of the household or the community, which are the mainstays of family life. Under the sponsorship of 'conservative' presidencies, the economy of the modern household, which once required the father to work away from home - a development that was bad enough - now requires the mother to work away from home, as well. And this development has the wholehearted endorsement of 'liberals,' who see the mother thus forced to spend her days away from her home and children as 'liberated' - though nobody has yet seen the fathers thus forced away as 'liberated.' Some feminists are thus in the curious position of opposing the mistreatment of women and yet advocating their participation in an economy in which everything is mistreated.

Christians are commanded to pray for those in political leadership, but they have no biblical mandate to use the Christian ministry or the cause of Christ to endorse or campaign for any politician. They are entitled to their own views and opinions, but they are not entitled to equate those views and opinions with Christian dogma.

All of this highlights several important ideas. First, growth under authoritarian, extractive political institutions in China, though likely to continue for a while yet, will not translate into sustained growth, supported by truly inclusive economic institutions and creative destruction. Second, contrary to the claims of modernization theory, we should not count on authoritarian growth leading to democracy or inclusive political institutions. China, Russia, and several other authoritarian regimes currently experiencing some growth are likely to reach the limits of extractive growth before they transform their political institutions in a more inclusive direction—and in fact, probably before there is any desire among the elite for such changes or any strong opposition forcing them to do so. Third, authoritarian growth is neither desirable nor viable in the long run, and thus should not receive the endorsement of the international community as a template for nations in Latin America, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, even if it is a path that many nations will choose precisely because it is sometimes consistent with the interests of the economic and political elites dominating them. Y

The hospital’s endorsement of early artificial feeding conveyed the idea that it was a safe feeding method.

You don’t seem the type to endorse the obscure dictates of polite society,” she noted, thinking that he only played at being a gentlemen. There was something rather rebellious about him.

Just as the Anabaptists were scorned by Protestants and Catholics alike, anarchism been dismissed equally by the political Left and Right in modernity.  But in our age of political bankruptcy, this is perhaps the best endorsement.  With Ellul, I think that anarchism deserves to be reconsidered, particularly by Christians, and even more particularly by contemporary Anabaptists. 

In the leadup to the election of 1876, swing votes were tied to the issue of Chinese immigration in the same way that immigration was a hot topic during this election cycle. Rutherford Hayes endorsed Chinese exclusion and won the election. In the following election, James Garfield also carried the torch of anti-Chinese immigration into office. (From those days to now, every presidential election has fanned the flames of anti-immigration. This, Henry, shows that hate and fear are reliable, predictable, and effective political tools.) All of this led eventually to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred the entry of all Chinese immigrants to the United States except for those who were teachers, students, diplomats, ministers, or merchants. It also declared all Chinese totally ineligible for naturalized citizenship. This clause alone allowed the United States to join Nazi Germany and South Africa as the only nations every to withhold naturalization purely on racial grounds.

Wilson argued further, as he had to, that the federal courts are not bound to the Constitution. “The weightiest import of the matter is seen only when it is remembered that the courts are the instruments of the nation’s growth, and that the way in which they serve that use will have much to do with the integrity of every national process. If they determine what powers are to be exercised under the Constitution, they by the same token determine also the adequacy of the Constitution in respect of the needs and interests of the nation; our conscience in matters of law and our opportunity in matters of politics are in their hands.”10 Moreover, the only legitimate opinions the federal courts can render are those that endorse and promote the expansion of federal power. “[T]hat if they had interpreted the Constitution in its strict letter, as some proposed, and not in its spirit, like the charter of a business corporation and not like the charter of a living government, the vehicle of a nation

Food has a unique political power, for several reasons: food links the world’s richest consumers with its poorest farmers; food choices have always been a potent means of social signaling; modern shoppers must make dozens of food choices every week, providing far more opportunities for political expression than electoral politics; and food is a product you consume, so eating something implies a deeply personal endorsement of it. But

Across the board, identity politics endorse the concept that people are essentially tribal, and our differences are irreconcilable, which of course makes diversity and inclusion impossible. This is the toxic dead-end of identity politics; it’s a trap.

Given these payoffs, endorsing a belief that hasn't passed muster with scientific and fact checking isn't so irrational after all, at least not by the criterion of the immediate affects on the believer. The affects on the society and planet are another matter.

The Catholic Church then owed its popularity to the widespread popular skepticism which saw in the republic and in democracy the loss of all order, security, and political will. To many the hierarchic system of the Church seemed the only escape from chaos. Indeed, it was this, rather than any religious revivalism, which caused the clergy to be held in respect.39 As a matter of fact, the staunchest supporters of the Church at that period were the exponents of that so-called “cerebral” Catholicism, the “Catholics without faith,” who were henceforth to dominate the entire monarchist and extreme nationalist movement. Without believing in their other-worldly basis, these “Catholics” clamored for more power to all authoritarian institutions. This, indeed, had been the line first laid down by Drumont and later endorsed by Maurras.40

While I had followed a policy of not endorsing political candidates, I felt that the prospect of Senator Goldwater being President of the United States so threatened the health, morality, and survival of our nation, that I could not in good conscience fail to take a stand against what he represented.

...ideas of hope are deeply disturbing to a certain kind of presumptive progressive, one who is securely established one way or another...Another part of the Puritan legacy is the belief that no one should have joy or abundance until everyone does, a belief that's austere at one end, in the deprivation it endorses, and fantastical in the other, since it awaits a universal utopia. Joy sneaks in anyway, abundance cascades forth uninvited...Joy doesn't betray, but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.

He began with the core principle he had intoned at the dawn of his political career 25 years before: A democratic Calvinist in the Netherlands could not vote Democratic in the United States because that party trays its origins to Thomas Jefferson, who in turn had endorsed the principles of the French Revolution.

The white nationalist, nativist politics that we see today were first imagined and applied by David Duke during the heyday of his Grand Wizardshop, and the time of my undercover Klan investigation. This hatred is never gone away, but has been reinvigorated in the dark corners of the internet, Twitter trolls, alt-right publications, and a nativist president in Trump. The Republican Party of the 19th century, being the party of Lincoln, was the opposition to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist domination insofar as America's newly freed Black slaves were concerned; it is my belief that the Republican Party of the 21st century finds a symbiotic connection to white nationalist groups like the Klan, neo-Nazis, skinheads, militias, and alt-right white supremacist thinking. Evidence of this began in the Lyndon Johnson administration with the departure of Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) to the Republican Party in protest of his civil rights agenda. The Republicans began a spiral slide to the far right that embrace all things abhorrent to nonwhites. David Duke twice ran for public office in Louisiana as a Democrat and lost. When he switched his affiliation to Republican, because he was closer in ideology and racial thinking to the GOP than to the Democrats, and ran again for the Louisiana House of Representatives, the conservative voters in his district rewarded him with a victory. In each case his position on the issues remain the same; white supremacist/ethno-nationalist endorsement of a race-centered rhetoric and nativist populism. What change were the voters. Democrats rejected Duke politics while Republicans embraced him.

Without the participation of one fifth of the global population, without the endorsement of the world's second-largest economy, without the political will and security guarantee of this emerging power, international institutions and norms will be irrelevant and the legitimacy and credibility of their resolutions and arrangements will fall short of promise.

It is little wonder that about two-fifths of Republicans (in a poll this year) expressed an openness to political violence, under certain circumstances. People in this group are not being stigmatized. They have the effective, endorsement of a former president and likely GOP presidential nominee in 2024. Michael Gerson in the Washington Post, September 27, 2021

That brings us to a final factor shaping President Trump’s ability to damage our democracy: crisis. Major security crises—wars or large-scale terrorist attacks—are political game changers. Almost invariably, they increase support for the government. Citizens become more likely to tolerate, and even endorse, authoritarian measures when they fear for their security.

When freshman Democrat congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib endorsed Bernie Sanders, they were chastised in both traditional and social media for throwing their support behind “an old white guy” rather than a woman. How is it that so many white feminists still cannot grasp the many factors that shape the politics of women from such diverse backgrounds?

What I saw in Washington that October were a lot of Americans who were genuinely dismayed by what their country was doing in Vietnam; I also saw a lot of other Americans who were self-righteously attracted to a most childish notion of heroism - namely, their own. They thought that to force a confrontation with soldiers and policemen would not only elevate themselves to the status of heroes; this confrontation, they deluded themselves, would expose the corruption of the political and social system they loftily thought they opposed. These would be the same people who, in later years, would credit the antiwar 'movement' with eventually getting the U.S. armed forces out of Vietnam. That was not what I saw. I saw that the righteousness of many of these demonstrators simply helped to harden the attitudes of those poor fools who supported the war. That is what makes what Ronald Reagan would say - two years later, in 1969 - so ludicrous: that the Vietnam protests were 'giving aid and comfort to the enemy.' What I saw was that the protests did worse than that; they gave aid and comfort to the idiots who endorsed the war - they made that war last longer. That's what I saw.

We think with our culture. That is, we rarely think from first principles, even first principles we ourselves sincerely endorse, but rather from sentiments instilled in us by our culture. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of humanity’s moral attitudes toward non-human animals. Even most utilitarians, who by their own ideals ought to consider the suffering of all beings important, are still in fact exceptionally anthropocentric in their attitudes. The insights of Darwin have not yet trickled fully into our moral consciousness, not even among those whose moral views demand it. Such is the heavy momentum of culture, which is reflected in every facet of modern politics and political thought. The anthropocentrism of most political philosophy is, to put it mildly, a massive failure.

If Gissing is less compassionately observant than Mrs Gaskell, less overtly polemical than Kingsley, still The Nether World and Demos would be sympathetically endorsed by either of them, or by their typical readers. Yet Gissing does introduce an important new element, and one that remains significant. He has often been called ‘the spokesman of despair,’ and this is true in both meanings of the phrase. Like Kingsley and Mrs Gaskell, he writes to describe the true conditions of the poor, and to protest against those brute forces of society which fill with wreck the abysses of the nether world. Yet he is also the spokesman of another kind of despair: the despair born of social and political disillusion. In this he is a figure exactly like Orwell in our own day, and for much the same reason. Whether one calls this honesty or not will depend on experience.

Victorian novelists such as George Eliot could write about female vocation as at least a meaningful ambition, but in the claustrophobic world of Sense and Sensibility, marriage is the only eligible destiny. In this respect, the courtship plot that structures all six of Austen’s published novels, though sometimes held to imply her endorsement of a patriarchal status quo, is equally a means of exploring themes of female disempowerment.

We long ago ceased expecting that a President speak his own words. We no longer expect him actually to know the answers to questions put to him. We have, in effect, come to elect newscasters-and by a similar process: not for their probity or for their intelligence, but for their "believability." "Hope" is a very different exhortation than, for example, save, work, cooperate, sacrifice, think. It means: "Hope for the best, in a process over which you have no control." For, if one had control, if one could endorse a candidate with actual, rational programs, such a candidate demonstrably possessed of character and ability sufficient to offer reasonable chance of carrying these programs out, we might require patience or understanding, but why would we need hope? We have seen the triumph of advertising's bluntest and most ancient tool, the unquantifiable assertion: "New" in what way? "Improved" how? "Better" than what? "Change" what in particular? "Hope" for what? These words, seemingly of broad but actually of no particular meaning, are comforting in a way similar to the self-crafted wedding ceremony. Whether or not a spouse is "respecting the other's space," is a matter of debate; whether or not he is being unfaithful is a matter of discernible fact. The author of his own marriage vows is like the supporter of the subjective assertion. He is voting for codependence. He neither makes nor requires an actual commitment. He'd simply like to "hope.

The view that the history of Christianity is a history of unrelenting persecution persists in modern religious and political debate about what it means to be Christian. It creates a world in which Christians are under attack; it endorses political warfare rather than encouraging political discourse; and it legitimizes seeing those who disagree with us as our enemies. It is precisely because the myth of persecution continues to be so influential that it is imperative that we get the history right.

identity politics endorse the concept that people are essentially tribal, and our differences are irreconcilable, which of course makes diversity and inclusion impossible. This is the toxic dead-end of identity politics; it’s a trap. But even so I didn’t reject people because they believed in this, or wanted to align themselves with a particular candidate. They were free to do as they wanted, and as a friend I supported them. I might not have agreed with them but I wasn’t about to unfriend anyone because of what his politics happened to be.

The witch-hunt narrative is now the conventional wisdom about these cases. That view is so widely endorsed and firmly entrenched that so widely endorsed and firmly entrenched that there would seem to be nothing left to say about these cases. But a close examination of the witch hunt canon leads to some unsettling questions: Why is there so little in the way of academic scholarship about these cases? Almost all of the major witch-hunt writings have been in magazines, often without any footnotes to verify or assess the claims made. Why hasn't anyone writing about these cases said anything about how difficult they are to research? There are so many roadblocks and limitations to researching these cases that it would seem incumbent on any serious writer to address the limitations of data sources. Many of these cases seem to have been researched in a manner of days or weeks. Nevertheless, the cases are described in a definitive way that belies their length and complexity, along with the inherent difficulty in researching original trial court documents. This book is based on the first systematic examination of court records in these cases.

social workers today are hardly radicals; few engage in social and political action even of a reformist nature. In 1996, when President Bill Clinton signed legislation that “end[ed] welfare as we know it,” there was little organized protest from the social work profession. Although the act terminated a 60-year-old entitlement to assistance for low-income children and their caretakers that social workers had helped to create and had defended vigorously for decades, NASW endorsed Clinton for reelection with little reference to the issue. In marked contrast to past generations, the protests of radical social workers received scant attention inside and outside the profession.

News people—the media elite—had been a terrible scourge during his childhood. But they had gradually lost power with the advent of bidirectional, reputation-endorsed public commentary via Web links shortly after the turn of the millennium. People who published on the Web—especially people who wanted the title of "reporter"—had to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Failure was brutally and swiftly punished with electronic tar and digital feathers. Despite a rocky start, honesty had taken over as the currency of the Web—a devastating if subtle blow to manipulators of public opinion. Weakened by the Web, the media elite had died alongside their political bedfellows [...}

Where radical politics once stood for full citizen empowerment, it now stood for the empowerment of professional politicians in state and national government; where it once endorsed democratic assemblies, it now recommended “the numbing quietude of the polling booth, the deadening platitudes of petition campaigns”; instead of complex social theory, its new métier was bumper-sticker slogans; and instead of stirring demands for revolution, it meekly begged for paltry reforms. People no longer wanted to dedicate themselves to a revolutionary project that might “require the labors and dedication of a lifetime.” Instead, they craved instant gratification and were willing to surrender their long-term ideals to get it. Indeed,

That a president is inevitably put forward and elected by the forces of established wealth and power means usually that he will be indentured by the time he reaches office. But in fact he is the freest of men if he will have the courage to think so and, at least theoretically, could be so transported by the millions of people who have endorsed his candidacy as to want to do the best for them. He might come to solemn appreciation of the vote we cast, in all our multicolored and multigendered millions, as an act of trust, fingers crossed, a kind of prayer. Not that it’s worked out that way. In 1968 Richard Nixon rebounded from his defeat at the hands of Jack Kennedy, and there he was again, his head sunk between the hunched shoulders of his three-button suit and his arms raised in victory, the exacted revenge of the pod people. That someone so rigid and lacking in honor or moral distinction of any kind, someone so stiff with crippling hatreds, so spiritually dysfunctional, out of touch with everything in life that is joyful and fervently beautiful and blessed, with no discernible reverence in him for human life, and certainly with never a hope of wisdom, but living only by pure politics, as if it were some colorless blood substitute in his veins—that this being could lurchingly stumble up from his own wretched career and use history and the two-party system to elect himself president is, I suppose, a gloriously perverse justification of our democratic form of government.

Being solemn has almost nothing to do with being serious, but on the other hand, you can't go on being adolescent forever, unless you are in the performing arts, and anyhow most people can't tell the difference. In fact, though Americans talk a great deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious. In politics, the rare candidate who is serious is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging. Jogging is solemn. Poker is serious. Once you grasp that distinction, you are on your way to enlightenment.

If anything, the current state of the world is already a testament to our inability to either imagine a possible world different to ours or to abandon the raft of the medusa that is our present. The reality of this world seems to have bottomed out into a Hobbesian jungle in which we are stuck and which constantly grows and is cut back in vain. In the Hobbesian or game-theoretic jungle, no matter how drastically your social and political convictions differ from those of your supposed adversary, no matter how much your experience of the world seems truer or more authentic, auto-cannibalization is unavoidable. In the Hobbesian jungle, all groups not only gnaw at one another, but will also end up eating their own kin alive. We as either Hobbesians or as Platonic Universalists ought to pay attention to the truth of particularity. Universalists think that the commensuration between human experiential or local particularities is an easy path. The true enemies of universalists—the neoreactionaries—think what is universalist is misguided but they nevertheless go on and build island-utopias. The problem of both factions is that the real issue is not the universal which both camps to different degrees endorse, but the specific and discrete particularities of the human experience. Not paying attention to the problems of the latter is a sure recipe for failure, not just for rationalist universalism but also for the neoreactionary craft of methodological individualism. Without the proper attention to the depth of particularities or local conditions, we are all doomed to the cannabalistic jungle for which Hobbes is a prophet.

The problem is this: when we separate Jesus from his ideas for an alternative social structure, we inevitably succumb to the temptation to harness Jesus to our ideas—thus conferring upon our human political ideas an assumed divine endorsement. With little awareness of what we are doing, we find ourselves in collusion with the principalities and powers to keep the world in lockstep with the ancient choreography of violence, war, and death. We do this mostly unconsciously, but we do it. I’ve done it. And the result is that we reduce Jesus to being the Savior who guarantees our reservation in heaven while using him to endorse our own ideas about how to run the world. This feeds into a nationalized narrative of the gospel and leads to a state-owned Jesus. Thus, our understanding of Christ has mutated from Roman Jesus to Byzantine Jesus to German Jesus to American Jesus, etc.

Peace cannot require Palestinians to acquiesce to the denial of what was done to them. Neither can it require Israeli Jews to view their own presence in Palestine as illegitimate or to change their belief in their right to live there because of ancient historical and spiritual ties. Peace, rather, must be based on how we act toward each other now. It is unacceptable for a Palestinian to draw on his history of oppression and suffering to justify harming innocent Israeli civilians. It is equally unacceptable for an Israeli to invoke his belief in an ancient covenant between God and Abraham to justify bulldozing the home and seizing the land of a Palestinian farmer. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which proposes a political framework for a resolution to the conflict in Ireland, and which was overwhelmingly endorsed in referendums, sets out two principles from which Palestinians and Israelis could learn. First “[i]t is recognized that victims have a right to remember as well as to contribute to a changed society.” Second, whatever political arrangements are freely and democratically chosen for the governance of Northern Ireland, the power of the government “shall be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions and shall be founded on the principles of full respect for, and equality of civil, political, social, and cultural rights, of freedom from discrimination for all citizens, and of parity of esteem and of just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos, and aspirations of both communities.” Northern Ireland is still a long way from achieving this ideal, but life has vastly improved since the worst days of “the Troubles” and it is a paradise on earth compared to Palestine/Israel.

As individuals, we also are apt to use the canon as a cannon. We invoke the stripling warriors of Helaman and the iron rod of Lehi’s vision to ground our own version of unflinching obedience. Or we invoke the lessons of the Liahona to support our more spontaneous and flexible approach to gospel living. In America, some Mormons find Jesus’ ministry to the downtrodden and King Benjamin’s words about withholding judgment but not relief from the beggar to be apt endorsement of their preferred political policies. At the other end of the spectrum, some invoke the war in heaven fought over agency and consider the Mormon ethic of self-reliance to be adequate support for a different political outlook. Or, sometimes individuals even employ the cannon against the canon, citing inconsistencies and imperfections in the record as grounds for nonbelief in the principle of inspiration, one’s faith tradition, or even God.

Nearly everywhere---often even when dealing with purely technical problems---instead of thinking, one merely takes sides: for or against. Such a choice replaces the activity of the mind. This is an intellectual leprosy; it originated in the political world and then spread through the land, contaminating all forms of thinking. This leprosy is killing us; it is doubtful whether it can be cured without first starting with the abolition of all political parties. . . . When joining the party, [man] therefore also endorses a number of positions which he does not know. In fact, he submits his thinking to the authority of the party. . . . If a man were to say, as he applied for his party membership card, 'I agree with the party on this and that question; I have not yet studied its other positions and thus I entirely reserve my opinion, pending further information,' he would probably be advised to come back at a later date.

One feature of sexual politics is the almost complete absence of critical scholarship that approaches it from any viewpoint other than enthusiastic advocacy. Ostensibly objective scholars are often active participants and promoters of the phenomenon they should be studying and understanding critically. Scholars who refrain from endorsing sexual liberation and insist on analyzing these subjects from a detached perspective find it almost impossible to publish their work and are quickly driven from the universities. “Some subjects are not only undebatable; they are unresearchable,” writes Phyllis Schlafly, “because they don’t want the public to know the facts that research might uncover.” 4 The fact is that the Western academic world today is not an “open society” of free inquiry and critical thinking. It is largely closed, inbred, and controlled by heresy-hunters who vet scholarship according to a litmus test of political doctrine and punish heterodoxy with ostracism.

Pastor Max Lucado of San Antonio, Texas, said in an editorial for the Washington Post in February 2016 that he was “chagrined” by Trump’s antics. He ridiculed a war hero. He made a mockery of a reporter’s menstrual cycle. He made fun of a disabled reporter. He referred to a former first lady, Barbara Bush, as “mommy” and belittled Jeb Bush for bringing her on the campaign trail. He routinely calls people “stupid” and “dummy.” One writer catalogued 64 occasions that he called someone “loser.” These were not off-line, backstage, overheard, not-to-be-repeated comments. They were publicly and intentionally tweeted, recorded and presented.18 Lucado went on to question how Christians could support a man doing these things as a candidate for president, much less as someone who repeatedly attempted to capture evangelical audiences by portraying himself as similarly committed to Christian values. He continued, “If a public personality calls on Christ one day and calls someone a ‘bimbo’ the next, is something not awry? And to do so, not once, but repeatedly, unrepentantly and unapologetically? We stand against bullying in schools. Shouldn’t we do the same in presidential politics?” Rolling Stone reported on several evangelical leaders pushing against a Trump nomination, including North Carolina radio host and evangelical Dr. Michael Brown, who wrote an open letter to Jerry Falwell Jr., blasting his endorsement of Donald Trump. Brown wrote, “As an evangelical follower of Jesus, the contrast is between putting nationalism first or the kingdom of God first. From my vantage point, you and other evangelicals seem to have put nationalism first, and that is what deeply concerns me.”19 John Stemberger, president and general counsel for Florida Family Action, lamented to CNN, “The really puzzling thing is that Donald Trump defies every stereotype of a candidate you would typically expect Christians to vote for.” He wondered, “Should evangelical Christians choose to elect a man I believe would be the most immoral and ungodly person ever to be president of the United States?”20 A

What I saw in Washington that October were a lot of Americans who were genuinely dismayed by what their country was doing in Vietnam; I also saw a lot of other Americans who were self-righteously attracted to a most childish notion of heroism—namely, their own. They thought that to force a confrontation with soldiers and policemen would not only elevate themselves to the status of heroes; this confrontation, they deluded themselves, would expose the corruption of the political and social system they loftily thought they opposed. These would be the same people who, in later years, would credit the antiwar “movement” with eventually getting the U.S. armed forces out of Vietnam. That was not what I saw. I saw that the righteousness of many of these demonstrators simply helped to harden the attitudes of those poor fools who supported the war. That is what makes what Ronald Reagan would say—two years later, in 1969—so ludicrous: that the Vietnam protests were “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” What I saw was that the protests did worse than that; they gave aid and comfort to the idiots who endorsed the war—they made that war last longer. That’s what I saw.

as the social sciences advanced in the twentieth century, their course was altered by two waves of moralism that turned nativism into a moral offense. The first was the horror among anthropologists and others at “social Darwinism”—the idea (raised but not endorsed by Darwin) that the richest and most successful nations, races, and individuals are the fittest. Therefore, giving charity to the poor interferes with the natural progress of evolution: it allows the poor to breed.12 The claim that some races were innately superior to others was later championed by Hitler, and so if Hitler was a nativist, then all nativists were Nazis. (That conclusion is illogical, but it makes sense emotionally if you dislike nativism.)13 The second wave of moralism was the radical politics that washed over universities in America, Europe, and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. Radical reformers usually want to believe that human nature is a blank slate on which any utopian vision can be sketched. If evolution gave men and women different sets of desires and skills, for example, that would be an obstacle to achieving gender equality in many professions. If nativism could be used to justify existing power structures, then nativism must be wrong. (Again, this is a logical error, but this is the way righteous minds work.)

The trick was to use the maximum number of words with the maximum number of legitimate interpretations. Put that way, it sounds terrible, but there’s no other way to do it. If a constituent writes to ask the governor the best way to get into politics, and you (in the governor’s voice) write back using words like “I think you should run” or “Go for it,” you may soon hear about some nitwit running for county council claiming he’s been endorsed by the governor. Or take the “Won’t you please run for president?” letters, of which there were many around this time. In case the letter was made public, you couldn’t have the governor responding in a way that could be construed as an admission of an intent to run or of an interest in running, or as an admission of anything. At the same time, though, you wouldn’t want to deny an intention to run for president because that would have been obviously dishonest and, as I thought, soon disprovable. In both these cases you’d want to give the letter writers at least two full paragraphs in response; otherwise it looked cold and dismissive. So you would elongate every sentence with superfluous phrases. “I believe” would become “I have every reason to believe,” and platitudinous observations would be prefaced by “What I’d say—and I am absolutely certain about this—is that . . .” The phrase “going forward” was very useful, as was “from where I stand.

Now, let me preface this story with the following: If you think that I am in any way endorsing cultural appropriation by writing this, you should just stop reading. I swear to Goddess,* if I hear about any one of you reading this passage and deciding, “Okay, yeah, great, the moral of this story is that Jacob thinks it’s awesome for white people to dress up as Native Americans for Halloween, so I’m gonna go do that,” I will use the power of the internet to find out where you live and throw so many eggs at your house that it becomes a giant omelet. Or if you’re vegan, I will throw so much tofu at your house that it becomes a giant tofu scramble. The point of this passage is not that white people should dress their children as Native Americans for Halloween. That’s basically the opposite of the point here. Capisce? All that being said, it was 1997. I was six years old and hadn’t quite developed my political consciousness about cultural appropriation or the colonization of the Americas and subsequent genocide of Native American people at the hands of white settlers yet. I also didn’t know multiplication, so I had some stuff to work on. What I did know was that Pocahontas was, by far, the most badass Disney princess. Keep in mind that Disney’s transgender-butch-lesbian masterpiece Mulan wasn’t released until a year later, or else I would’ve obviously gone with that (equally problematic) costume.

Another reason for our passivity is the fact that Hispanics are now 16 percent of the population, and their numbers are growing. Politicians from both parties say they cannot afford to alienate Hispanics because of their increasing power at the ballot box. But what do Hispanics want? Amnesty for illegal immigrants and yet more Hispanic immigration. It is folly for white politicians to think they will win the loyalty of Hispanic voters by endorsing policies that increase Hispanic power. As Hispanics gain in numbers and influence, they will replace non-Hispanic politicians with Hispanics. Foolish whites will be shoved out just as blacks shoved out Chris Bell, the white Democratic congressman from Texas [...] who was left sputtering that blacks forgot all about his career of “fighting for diversity” once they had a chance to vote for a black. It is already nearly impossible to discuss immigration rationally, or even enforce laws that are on the books. If we are afraid to take measures that might upset 16 percent of the population, what are our chances of defending larger interests if Hispanics are 20, 30, or even 40 percent of the country? We already have tens of millions of citizens whose primary loyalty is not to the United States but to Mexico. If there were a crisis with Mexico is there any doubt which side they would take? The United States already finds it difficult to advance its own interests against Mexican opposition. As the Mexican-American population grows, it could become impossible.

Systems 1 and 2 are both active whenever we are awake. System 1 runs automatically and System 2 is normally in a comfortable low-effort mode, in which only a fraction of its capacity is engaged. System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings. If endorsed by System 2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions. When all goes smoothly, which is most of the time, System 2 adopts the suggestions of System 1 with little or no modification. You generally believe your impressions and act on your desires, and that is fine—usually. When System 1 runs into difficulty, it calls on System 2 to support more detailed and specific processing that may solve the problem of the moment. System 2 is mobilized when a question arises for which System 1 does not offer an answer, as probably happened to you when you encountered the multiplication problem 17 × 24. You can also feel a surge of conscious attention whenever you are surprised. System 2 is activated when an event is detected that violates the model of the world that System 1 maintains. In that world, lamps do not jump, cats do not bark, and gorillas do not cross basketball courts. The gorilla experiment demonstrates that some attention is needed for the surprising stimulus to be detected. Surprise then activates and orients your attention: you will stare, and you will search your memory for a story that makes sense of the surprising event. System 2 is also credited with the continuous monitoring of your own behavior—the control that keeps you polite when you are angry, and alert when you are driving at night. System 2 is mobilized to increased effort when it detects an error about to be made. Remember a time when you almost blurted out an offensive remark and note how hard you worked to restore control. In summary, most of what you (your System 2) think and do originates in your System 1, but System 2 takes over when things get difficult, and it normally has the last word.

Believing in the divinity of Jesus is the heart of Christian orthodoxy. But believing in the viability of Jesus’s ideas makes Christianity truly radical. Divorcing Jesus from his ideas—especially divorcing Jesus from his political ideas—has been a huge problem that’s plagued the church from the fourth century onward. The problem is this: when we separate Jesus from his ideas for an alternative social structure, we inevitably succumb to the temptation to harness Jesus to our ideas—thus conferring upon our human political ideas an assumed divine endorsement.

NOTE: The political spectrum, known as right and left, is in actuality being purposely manipulated. The fact is that the essence of freedom lies in the proper limitation of government. Indisputably, throughout history no source has proven itself more deadly and destructive than the authority invested in government. While this is general knowledge to those who enthusiastically advocate freedoms, most, unfortunately, are uninformed. Accordingly, this creates the perfect environment for deception. Indeed, an accurate political spectrum from right to left would undeniably begin with “freedom” (e.g., non-intrusive government, self-sovereignty, and self-determination), defined by “little or no government control.” Thus, the political spectrum would end up on the left with “totalitarianism” (e.g., authoritarian dictatorial government, subjugation, and tyranny), defined by “unlimited government control.” In accordance, a correct paradigm would begin with ideals of “anarchy,” endorsing “no government.” Next would come the ideals of “libertarianism,” also known as “classical-liberalism,” endorsing “limited government.” Thereafter, would come “modern-liberalism,” also known as “social-liberalism,” endorsing “greater government.” Ultimately, the spectrum would end with the ideals of “fascism,” “socialism,” and “communism,” endorsing “totalitarian government.

I was among the first elected officials in the country to endorse gay marriage. The political wise guys said I was taking a big chance: Boston is a heavily Catholic city. So I conducted a focus group with Frankie, a neighbor who runs a garage:   ME: What do you think about this same-sex marriage? FRANKIE: If they want to be miserable, let ’em do it.   I knew I was safe after that.

Robert Kennedy called the DeKalb County judge, demanding to know why King could not be released on bond. Nixon never called. “I had known Nixon longer,” King wrote. “He had been supposedly close to me and he would call me frequently about things, seeking advice. And yet when this moment came, it was like he had never heard of me.”6 King was released a day after the Kennedy call. After his release from prison, King publicly thanked John Kennedy, and King’s father switched his endorsement from Nixon to Kennedy, marking a political shift as blacks

Wait a minute!" you say. "Didn't Jesus answer, Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's when the Pharisees tried to trick him into denouncing a Roman-imposed tax?" Yes indeed, he did say that. It's found first in the Gospel of Matthew, 22:15–22, and later in the Gospel of Mark, 12:13–17. But notice that everything depends on just what truly did belong to Caesar and what didn't, which is actually a rather powerful endorsement of property rights. Jesus said nothing like "It belongs to Caesar if Caesar simply says it does, no matter how much he wants, how he gets it, or how he chooses to spend it." The fact is, one can scour the Scriptures with a fine-tooth comb and find nary a word from Jesus that endorses the forcible redistribution of wealth by political authorities. None, period.

The Illuminati use several umbrella organizations whose leaders usually don’t know that they are being manipulated and controlled. One of the Illuminati organizations working from behind the scenes of visible world politics is the Association of the Round Table. Just like the Order of the Illuminati this society is devoted to the destruction of national states, and they strive for a sort of international super-state: the prototype of the so-called New World Order! The Round Table was founded in 1891 by the politician Cecil Rhodes and is built in the same way as the Order of the Illuminati. In 1902 the Association of Helpers (a group of supporters from the outside from seven different countries) was created. This group created the Round Table Societies in different countries. The North American branch of the Round Table Group was initially called National Civic Federation, a name that was changed in 1921 by Colonel Mandell House into Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).[46] Today the organization claims approximately 2000 members. It is striking that almost all members of the CFR hold important positions in the government of the United States, the CIA and the American financial world. Aside from the enormous influence of the organization over the majority of American public life, it also exercises considerable pressure on the Congress and the government of the United States. At the moment the CFR is the most important component of the “World Government” operating behind the scenes.[47] The grandson of Franklin Roosevelt declared that the President completely depended on the CFR; every step he took was dictated by this institution. In 1975 retired Navy Admiral Chester Ward, former Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy and former CFR member, wrote in a critique that the goal of the CFR is the submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all powerful One World government. In one of the first issues of Foreign Affairs (1922), the Council on Foreign Relations magazine, World Government is already endorsed:

The most controversial part of the controversial legislation now derided by Republicans as “Obamacare”—the mandate that individuals buy health insurance—was originally proposed by Republican economists, championed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, introduced in Congress by Republican politicians, and enacted in Massachusetts under Republican governor Mitt Romney.16 Planned Parenthood, now anathema to Republicans because of its pro-choice policies, enjoyed the support of two of the biggest dynasties of Republican politics, the Goldwater and Bush families, until the rise of the Religious Right in the 1980s made the pro-life position a litmus test for the GOP. And Republican platforms from 1940 to 1976 endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment for women.

The fine-grained intricacies laid out in the legal papers show the three plotting like petulant and juvenile pranksters, using government resources, time and personnel to punish a public official whose sole offense was failing to endorse their political patron.

In the Old Testament, Israelites persisted in ascribing to hand carved idols powers and abilities that only God retains. In our day, we provide to actors and sports figures, not only mega wealth, we also ascribe wisdom to these human idols. We listen attentively to the political and governmental views of people who are paid to be something they are not. Voters are actually swayed in determining how they vote by what an actor or sports figure may say, or whom he or she may endorse. We are “mad upon our idols.

The lack of knowledge on the part of followers perpetuates a culture of abuse by bad leadership. Every day, issues are being endorsed in the name of standing for the ignorant masses, only to benefit those who sponsor the agendas. Priorities are set and resources allocated, never to benefit or reach those cited as the underlying justification for sourcing the funds or setting the priorities.

Aldous Huxley is known today primarily as the author of the novel Brave New World. He was one of the first prominent Americans to publicly endorse the use of psychedelic drugs. Controversial political theorist Lyndon Larourche called Huxley “the high priest for Britain’s opium war,” and claimed he played a conspicuous role in laying the groundwork for the Sixties counterculture. Huxley’s grandfather was Thomas H. Huxley, founder of the Rhodes Roundtable and a longtime collaborator with establishment British historian Arnold Toynbee. Toynbee headed the Research Division of British Intelligence during World War II, and was a briefing officer to Winston Churchill. Aldous Huxley was tutored at Oxford by novelist H. G. Wells, a well-known advocate of world government. Expounding in his “Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution,” Wells wrote, “The Open Conspiracy will appear first, I believe, as a conscious organization of intelligent and quite possibly in some cases, wealthy men, as a movement having distinct social and political aims. . . . In all sorts of ways they will be influencing and controlling the apparatus of the ostensible government.” Wells introduced Huxley to the notorious Satanist, Aleister Crowley.

Daisy has a unique spirit,” Westcliff said. “A warm and romantic nature. If she is forced into a loveless marriage, she will be devastated. She deserves a husband who will cherish her for everything she is, and who will protect her from the harsher realities of the world. A husband who will allow her to dream.” It was surprising to hear such sentiment from Westcliff, who was universally known as a pragmatic and level-headed man. “What is your question, my lord?” Matthew asked. “Will you give me your word that you will not marry my sister-in-law?” Matthew held the earl’s cold black gaze. It would not be wise to cross a man like Westcliff, who was not accustomed to being denied. But Matthew had endured years of Thomas Bowman’s thunder and bluster, standing up to him when other men would flee in fear of his wrath. Although Bowman could be a ruthless, sarcastic bully there was nothing he respected more than a man who was willing to go toe-to-toe with him. And so it had quickly become Matthew’s lot in the company to be the bearer of bad tidings and deliver the hard truths that everyone else was afraid to give him. That had been Matthew’s training, which was why Westcliff’s attempt at domination had no effect on him. “I’m afraid not, my lord,” Matthew said politely. Simon Hunt dropped his cigar. “You won’t give me your word?” Westcliff asked in disbelief. “No.” Matthew bent swiftly to retrieve the fallen cigar and returned it to Hunt, who regarded him with a glint of warning in his eyes as if he were silently trying to prevent him from jumping off a cliff. “Why not?” Westcliff demanded. “Because you don’t want to lose your position with Bowman?” “No, he can’t afford to lose me right now.” Matthew smiled slightly in an attempt to rob the words of arrogance. “I know more about production, administration, and marketing than anyone else at Bowman’s…and I’ve earned the old man’s trust. So I won’t be dismissed even if I refuse to marry his daughter.” “Then it will be quite simple for you to put the entire matter to rest,” the earl said. “I want your word, Swift. Now.” A lesser man would have been intimidated by Westcliff’s authoritative demand. “I might consider it,” Matthew countered coolly, “if you offered the right incentive. For example, if you promise to endorse me as the head of the entire division and guarantee the position for at least, say…three years.” Westcliff gave him an incredulous glance. The tense silence was broken as Simon Hunt roared with laughter. “By God, he has brass ballocks,” he exclaimed. “Mark my words, Westcliff, I’m going to hire him for Consolidated.” “I’m not cheap,” Matthew said, which caused Hunt to laugh so hard that he nearly dropped his cigar again. Even Westcliff smiled, albeit reluctantly. “Damn it,” he muttered. “I’m not going to endorse you so readily—not with so much at stake. Not until I am convinced you’re the right man for the position.” “Then it seems we’re at an impasse.” Matthew made his expression friendly. “For now.

MT: That's Régis Debray's thesis: the incarnation of Christ and the defeat of the iconoclasts gave the West mastery of images and thus of innovation. Here's a question that may be absurd: does a phrase like “if someone hits you on one cheek, turn the other” have anything to do with imitation? RG: Of course it does, since it's directed against “adversarial” imitation, and is one and the same thing as the imitation of Christ. In the Gospels, everything is imitation, since Christ himself seeks to imitate and be imitated. Unlike the modern gurus who claim to be imitating nobody, but who want to be imitated on that basis, Christ says: “Imitate me as I imitate the Father.” The rules of the Kingdom of God are not at all utopian: if you want to put an end to mimetic rivalry, give way completely to your rival. You nip rivalry in the bud. We're not talking about a political program, this is a lot simpler and more fundamental. If someone is making excessive demands on you, he's already involved in mimetic rivalry, he expects you to participate in the escalation. So, to put a stop to it, the only means is to do the opposite of what escalation calls for: meet the excessive demand twice over. If you've been told to walk a mile, walk two; if you've been hit on the left cheek, offer up the right. The Kingdom of God is nothing but this, but that doesn't mean it's easily accessible. There is also a pretty strong unwritten tradition that states that “Satan is the ape of God.” Satan is extremely paradoxical in the Gospels. First he is mimetic disorder, but he is also order because he is the prince of this world. When the Pharisees accuse him of freeing the possessed from their demons by the power of “Beelzebub,” Jesus replies: “Now if Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself; so how can his kingdom last? […] But if it is through the Spirit of God that I drive out devils, then be sure that the kingdom of God has caught you unawares.” This means that Satan's order is the order of the scapegoat. Satan is the whole mimetic system in the Gospels. That Satan is temptation, that Satan is rivalry that turns against itself—all the traditions see this; succumbing to temptation always means tempting others. What the Gospel adds, and what is unique to it, I think, is that Satan is order. The order of this world is not divine, it's sacrificial, it's satanic in a certain sense. That doesn't mean that religions are satanic, it means that the mimetic system, in its eternal return, enslaves humanity. Satan's transcendence is precisely that violence temporarily masters itself in the scapegoat phenomenon: Satan never expels himself once and for all—only the Spirit of God can do that—but he more or less “chains himself” by means of the sacrificial order. All medieval legends tell you: the devil asks for but one victim, but as for that victim, he can't do without it. If you don't obey the rules of the Kingdom of God, you are necessarily dependent on Satan. Satan means “the Accuser.” And the Spirit of God is called Paraclete, that is to say “the Defender of Victims,” it's all there. The defender of victims reveals the inanity of Satan by showing that his accusations are untruthful. Oedipus's parricide and incest, which give the plague to a whole community—they're a joke, a very bad joke that helps cause quite a bit of damage among us when we take it seriously, as, in the final analysis, is the case with…the psychoanalysts: they take the lie of the Accuser seriously. Our whole culture is dominated by mythical accusation to the extent that it does not denounce it. Psychoanalysis endorses the accusation.

Your vote should not be cast in fear. A fearful vote will lead to harm in two ways. First, it will ensure that your vote is made selfishly; from a desire to protect yourself and your interests rather than a desire to serve and bless others. Second, a fearful vote is usually won by a candidate that employed fear to gain support. Where the fires of fear are stoked, the warm glow of Christian love will not long endure. Those who think making people afraid will result in flourishing are deluded. They are not on a path paved by Christ that leads toward his kingdom, no matter how many Bibles they display or Christian endorsements they secure. A fearful vote is a vote for demagoguery not divinity.

This lesson is especially important when so many Christians today identify themselves with some “single issue” (a concept drawn from politics) other than the cross, other than the gospel. It is not that they deny the gospel. If pressed, they will emphatically endorse it. But their point of self-identification, the focus of their minds and hearts, what occupies their interest and energy, is something else: a style of worship, the abortion issue, homeschooling, the gift of prophecy, pop sociology, a certain brand of counseling, or whatever. Of course, all of these issues have their own importance. Doubtless we need some Christians working on them full time. But even those who are so engaged must do so as an extension of the gospel, as an extension of the message of the cross. They must take special pains to avoid giving any impression that being really spiritual or really insightful or really wise turns on an appropriate response to their issue.

The loss of white ethno-cultural confidence manifests itself in other ways. Among the most important is a growing unwillingness to indulge the anti-white ideology of the cultural left. When whites were an overwhelming majority, empirically unsupported generalizations about whites could be brushed off as amusing and mischievous but ultimately harmless. As whites decline, fewer are willing to abide such attacks. At the same time, white decline emboldens the cultural left, with its dream of radical social transformation. ... From a modern perspective, the most important figure to emerge from this milieu is Randolph Bourne. Viewed as a spokesman for the new youth culture in upper-middle-class New York, Bourne burst onto the intellectual scene with an influential essay in the respected Atlantic Monthly in July 1916 entitled ‘Trans-National America’. Here Bourne was influenced by Jewish-American philosopher Horace Kallen. Kallen was both a Zionist and a multiculturalist. Yet he criticized the Liberal Progressive worldview whose cosmopolitan zeal sought to consign ethnicity to the dustbin of history. Instead, Kallen argued that ‘men cannot change their grandfathers’. Rather than all groups giving and receiving cultural influence, as in Dewey’s vision, or fusing together, as mooted by fellow Zionist Israel Zangwill in his play The Melting Pot (1910), Kallen spoke of America as a ‘federation for international colonies’ in which each group, including the Anglo-Saxons, could maintain their corporate existence. There are many problems with Kallen’s model, but there can be no doubt that he treated all groups consistently. Bourne, on the other hand, infused Kallen’s structure with WASP self-loathing. As a rebel against his own group, Bourne combined the Liberal Progressives’ desire to transcend ‘New Englandism’ and Protestantism with Kallen’s call for minority groups to maintain their ethnic boundaries. The end product was what I term asymmetrical multiculturalism, whereby minorities identify with their groups while Anglo-Protestants morph into cosmopolites. Thus Bourne at once congratulates the Jew ‘who sticks proudly to the faith of his fathers and boasts of that venerable culture of his’, while encouraging his fellow Anglo-Saxons to: "Breathe a larger air . . . [for] in his [young Anglo-Saxon’s] new enthusiasms for continental literature, for unplumbed Russian depths, for French clarity of thought, for Teuton philosophies of power, he feels himself a citizen of a larger world. He may be absurdly superficial, his outward-reaching wonder may ignore all the stiller and homelier virtues of his Anglo-Saxon home, but he has at least found the clue to that international mind which will be essential to all men and women of good-will if they are ever to save this Western world of ours from suicide." Bourne, not Kallen, is the founding father of today’s multiculturalist left because he combines rebellion against his own culture and Liberal Progressive cosmopolitanism with an endorsement – for minorities only – of Kallen’s ethnic conservatism. In other words, ethnic minorities should preserve themselves while the majority should dissolve itself.

From the party of Lincoln, Republicans have become the party that endorsed Roy Moore and cheered when the man they would choose for president called Mexicans “rapists.” The White House welcomes and empowers those on the right who peddle conspiracy theories and religious and racial bigotry on the internet. Strange, angry freaks like Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller are celebrated, not shunned. Across the country almost every state party is now dominated by the angry and aggrieved who seem to believe the purpose of our politics is to make America at last safe for white people.

The political professionals who once managed the system and protected against such eruptions from below are gone with the wind. Trump’s candidacy was conventionally viewed as a grassroots revolt against the Republican establishment.16 But that turned out to be a nostalgic fiction. The 2016 primary season revealed a Republican Party bled dry of coherence and authority as an institution. The party “establishment,” under any description, had cracked to pieces long before Trump arrived: only the word remained like an incantation. Jeb Bush’s risible impersonation of an establishment champion only proved the point. Bush lacked a following, barely had a pulse at the polls, and could claim nothing like an insider’s clout. He had been out of office for nine years, “a longer downtime,” one perceptive analyst wrote, “than any president elected since 1852 (and any candidate since 1924).”17 The Republican worthies who endorsed him had been out of office for an average of 11 years. If this once had been the party’s establishment, it was now a claque of political corpses.

Overall, laterborns were twice as likely as firstborns to champion major scientific upheavals. “The likelihood of this difference arising by chance is substantially less than one in a billion,” Sulloway observes. “Laterborns have typically been half a century ahead of firstborns in their willingness to endorse radical innovations.” Similar results emerged when he studied thirty-one political revolutions: laterborns were twice as likely as firstborns to support radical changes. As a card-carrying firstborn, I was initially dismayed by these results. But as I learned about birth-order research, I realized that none of these patterns are set in stone. We don’t need to cede originality to laterborn children. By adopting the parenting practices that are typically applied primarily to younger children, we can raise any child to become more original. This chapter examines the family roots of originality. What’s unique about being a younger child, how does family size figure in, and what are the implications for nurture? And how can we account for the cases that don’t fit these patterns—the three only children on the base-stealing list, the firstborns who rebel, and the latterborn who conform? I’ll use birth order as a launching pad for examining the impact of siblings, parents, and role models on our tendencies to take risks. To see why siblings aren’t as alike as we expect them to be, I’ll look at the upbringing of Jackie Robinson and the families of the most original comedians in America. You’ll find out what determines whether children rebel in a constructive or destructive direction, why it’s a mistake to tell children not to cheat, how we praise them ineffectively and read them the wrong books, and what we can learn from the parents of individuals who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust.

Indeed, King said in the same speech, without actually endorsing communism, that, nonetheless, "Communism is a judgement against the US way of life; against its materialism, against the poverty it tolerates in the face of great wealth, against its constant insistence on war, and against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated." As he explained, "[I]t is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the anti-revolutionaries." This is undeniably true.

So there was good reason that very powerful potentates of the medical cartel were already targeting HCQ long before President Trump began his infamous romance with the malaria remedy. President Trump’s endorsement of HCQ on March 19, 20207 hyper-politicized the debate and gave Dr. Fauci’s defamation campaign against HCQ a soft landing among Democrats and the media. Trump’s critics relegated any further claims of HCQ efficacy to the same anti-science waste bin as Trump’s notorious recommendation for bleach to cure COVID and his denial of climate change. But HCQ had a long history of safe medical use that got lost in the politics and propaganda.

The kingdom is the people under King Jesus who fellowship with one another and form churches. These churches are the politic of Jesus in this world. That is, a local church embodies—or is designed by God to embody—the kingdom vision of Jesus in such a way that it tells the kingdom story. That is a politic, a witness to the world of a new worship, a new law, a new king, a new social order, a new peace, a new justice, a new economics, and a new way of life. Engagement at the pulpit level to endorse or denounce a candidate is a minor chord in God’s masterpiece. Rather than spending our time with candidates, kingdom politics means we embody all that the country could be and far more than it is by living out what Jesus calls us to do. As John Howard Yoder has said, “If in society we believe in the rights of employees, then the church should be the first employer to deal with workers fairly. If in the wider society we call for the overcoming of racism or sexism or materialism, then the church should be the place where that possibility first becomes real.”2

A different type of endorsement of authoritarian growth recognizes its unattractive nature but claims that authoritarianism is just a passing stage. This idea goes back to one of the classical theories of political sociology, the theory of modernization, formulated by Seymour Martin Lipset. Modernization theory maintains that all societies, as they grow, are headed toward a more modern, developed, and civilized existence, and in particular toward democracy. Many followers of modernization theory also claim that, like democracy, inclusive institutions will emerge as a by-product of the growth process. Moreover, even though democracy is not the same as inclusive political institutions, regular elections and relatively unencumbered political competition are likely to bring forth the development of inclusive political institutions. Different versions of modernization theory also claim that an educated workforce will naturally lead to democracy and better institutions. In a somewhat postmodern version of modernization theory, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman went so far as to suggest that once a country got enough McDonald’s restaurants, democracy and institutions were bound to follow.

The tide began to turn in Rudy’s favor when he endorsed Clinton’s crime bill and its funds for social programs he’d just gutted. “My city comes first,” said the mayor to congressional Republicans. “Political parties come second.” His approval rating broke 50%, something Mario Cuomo noticed as he ran for a fourth term, this time against D’Amato’s guy George Pataki. Despite giving signals that he’d sit this one out, Giuliani endorsed Cuomo on live television on October 25, a “Dirty Deal” Republicans packaged to represent everything they hated about New York City. Massive Upstate turnout gave Pataki an easy win, but Rudy had made himself look like the Fusion mayor he’d promised to be, transforming perceptions of his Reaganomic takeover into the rough but necessary medicine of Koch’s emergency budgets.

After the CCP gained power, it sealed China off from information beyond its borders, and imposed a wholesale negation of China’s traditional moral standards. The government’s monopoly on information gave it a monopoly on truth. As the center of power, the party Center was also the heart of truth and information. All social science research organs endorsed the validity of the Communist regime; every cultural and arts group lavished praise on the CCP, while news organs daily verified its wisdom and might. From nursery school to university, the chief mission was to inculcate a Communist worldview in the minds of all students. The social science research institutes, cultural groups, news organs, and schools all became tools for the party’s monopoly on thought, spirit, and opinion, and were continuously engaged in molding China’s youth. People employed in this work were proud to be considered “engineers of the human soul.” In this thought and information vacuum, the central government used its monopoly apparatus to instill Communist values while criticizing and eradicating all other values. In this way, young people developed distinct and intense feelings of right and wrong, love and hate, which took the shape of a violent longing to realize Communist ideals. Any words or deeds that diverged from these ideals would be met with a concerted attack. The party organization was even more effective at instilling values than the social science research institutes, news and cultural organs, and schools. Each level of the party had a core surrounded by a group of stalwarts, with each layer controlling the one below it and loyal to the one above. Successive political movements, hundreds and thousands of large and small group meetings, commendation ceremonies and struggle sessions, rewards and penalties, all served to draw young people onto a single trajectory. All views diverging from those of the party were nipped in the bud.

On September 16, 2020—the fourth anniversary of Crutcher’s death—religious leaders from Tulsa’s churches and temples gathered outside a midtown Unitarian Church to commemorate Crutcher and to endorse the message that “Black Lives Matter.” Rabbi Dan Kaiman of Congregation B’Nai Emunah said, “We… see a need, the need, right now to hold up this phrase, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and to reclaim it for our lives, for all our lives, here in Tulsa. We do not view this phrase, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ as political speech but as a declaration of something that should be obvious but is not.”33

In 2016 and again in 2020, Conservative Evangelicals were lost in the sea of materialism, capitalism, corruption, and hypocrisy as they endorsed their bloated orange Messiah. Trump embodied the shallow faith and deep rot that reflected their own souls. Through the love of politics, power, and money, the church relegated the message of Jesus into political t-shirts and bumper stickers. Christ became a prop or mascot of a forgotten faith.

In making sense of the East-West divide as it concerns the endorsement of cosmopolitan values, we should also bear in mind that in this respect the legacies of Nazism and Communism differ significantly. The German drive for cosmopolitanism was also a way to escape the xenophobic legacy of Nazism, while it could be argued that central Europe’s anticosmopolitanism is partially rooted in an aversion to a communist-imposed internationalism. This strange legacy explains why the revolt against cosmopolitan elites takes the form of criticism not only of Brussels but also of anticommunist sentiment, particularly in a moment when majorities have moved to the left in their economic and political views. (In western Europe, 1968 symbolizes the endorsement of cosmopolitan values, while in the east it stands for the re-birth of national sentiments.)

The core idea here is that belief in the objectivity of morality makes one sensitive to what others endorse, and so belief cascades of this sort can produce a convergence on a common rule. However, another feature of objectivity threatens this happy analysis: a belief about moral objectivity of R1 is associated with withdrawing cooperation from those who reject (what we believe to be) objective morality. These others, after all, are not just doing something different - they are acting IMMORALLY. If society is divided between R1 and R2 proponents, should each refuse to cooperate with those others, group cooperation is endangered. So beliefs in objectivity in deeply divided societies would prevent convergence on an equilibrium: if people are ready to infer that a rule is objectively correct in the face of considerable disagreement, conflict would be exacerbated, and cooperation stymied. Interestingly, recent work indicates that when a community is significantly divided on some issue it tends not to be viewed as one that has an objectively correct answer, but as the overwhelming majority comes to adopt a position, belief in its objectivity increases. If the belief in the objectivity of morality is characterized by very high treshold (t) values in this way, it would seem more of a device for stabilizing moral equilibrium than generating one (as in the preceding model). In such 'high t value' cases, should an R2 equilibrium be established, a belief in the moral objectivity of R2 and thus condemnation of other alternatives, would help secure the R2 equilibrium, since people will come to believe it is not only what we have agreed upon, but it is the objectively correct answer. 'Each society believes that its behavior is appropriate, while its neighbours do things improperly.' This supports the hypothesis that belief in moral objectivity evolved as an equilibrium stabilizing mechanism.

We can now apply our lessons from our discussion of multilevel selection: if there are two levels of selection operating on a moral rule, then the strength of the different selective pressures will be critical in determining which of the two is more influential. If cultural competition decreases or moderates, then we can expect INDIVIDUAL-level selection to be a much stronger determinant. An interesting hypothesis thus emerges: if cultural evolution is genuinely multilevel in this way, then in eras of decreased GROUP competition, public justification of a rule should be a much stronger force in a rule's selection as it is competing for individual agents' endorsement against alternative rules. On the other hand, in eras of intense inter-group competition, we should expect that rules are not well-aligned with the moral commitment of individuals, but which are selected at the group level, may predominate. This in turn, leads to another important point. In multilevel analysis, effective high-level GROUP selection inherently restraints lower-level INDIVIDUAL selection. There really is no point to invoking higher-level selection if it does not. In the evolution of cooperation literature, the point of invoking a GROUP-level selection is to restrain the success of INDIVIDUAL (selfish) agents so that within-group less adaptive, cooperative agents can thrive. A mammal can be seen as a case of GROUP-level selection, insofar as the possible strategies of individual cells are constrained by the adaptive needs of the GROUP (individual mammal). A cancer cell is precisely a part that has broken free of these restraints, and because of this threatens ultimately system collapse. We might say, in a rough and ready way, that restricting the social influence of INDIVIDUAL-level preferences (in which a rule's within group fitness is determined by its attractiveness to individuals) in order to secure system-wide functionality is precisely what GROUP selection accomplishes. If GROUP-level pressures are great, the rules will be less responsive to the aims of the INDIVIDUAL agents, and indeed significantly restricting their actions will be critical to the culture's success. When GROUP-level selection is strong, it is entirely appropriate to call a culture a 'superorganism.' In such a culture, rules will tend to be more restrictive, and public justification may be less important

Most importantly, though, what made the Morales regime universal was its struggle for égaliberté. Its political objective was to fight for the part of no-part, that is, to plainly address social antagonism (racial and socioeconomic injustice) for the benefit of—and from the partial perspective of—the excluded. It may not have succeeded in accomplishing its objectives, but its universality lay in decidedly taking sides, that is, in endorsing a particular position. Yet because this was not just any position, but that of the excluded, it meant that by addressing their demand for égaliberté, it was addressing everyone’s; by confronting racial and social injustice, it was confronting a social antagonism that cut across the entire social body. Such is indeed the paradoxical nature of (negative) universality: backing a particular disposition, yet in so doing, addressing a gap that affects us all.

This notion—that for most of humankind, concern about the environment came only after their basic material needs were met—stuck with me. Years later, as a community organizer, I helped mobilize public housing residents to press for the cleanup of asbestos in their neighborhood; in the state legislature, I was a reliable enough “green” vote that the League of Conservation Voters endorsed me when I ran for the U.S. Senate. Once on Capitol Hill, I criticized the Bush administration’s efforts to weaken various anti-pollution laws and championed efforts to preserve the Great Lakes. But at no stage in my political career had I made environmental issues my calling card. Not because I didn’t consider them important but because for my constituents, many of whom were working-class, poor air quality or industrial runoff took a backseat to the need for better housing, education, healthcare, and jobs.

The Leckwiths were excited about the Beveridge Report, a government paper that had become a bestseller. “Commissioned under a Conservative prime minister and written by a Liberal economist,” said Bernie. “Yet it proposes what the Labour Party has always wanted! You know you’re winning, in politics, when your opponents steal your ideas.” Ethel said: “The idea is that everyone of working age should pay a weekly insurance premium, then get benefits when they are sick, unemployed, retired, or widowed.” “A simple proposal, but it will transform our country,” Bernie said enthusiastically. “Cradle to grave, no one will ever be destitute again.” Daisy said: “Has the government accepted it?” “No,” said Ethel. “Clem Attlee pressed Churchill very hard, but Churchill won’t endorse the report. The Treasury thinks it will cost too much.” Bernie said: “We’ll have to win an election before we can implement it.

For Sedgwick, productive political work can be achieved by forcing the maintenance of a clear contradiction because doing so undermines a stable sense of meaning for the relevant concepts. The incoherence of endorsing two contradictory models of sexuality at once can help us accept the complexity and mutability of sexuality. Thus, we see here, yet again, the commitment to rejecting objective truth and concrete categories and the idea that incoherence and fluidity are liberating and politically necessary. Queer Theorists can expand this thinking to encompass almost anything and they think of this as “queering” the topic. Theorists have, for instance, queered categories of time and history42 and life and death.

One might win battles and even campaigns with Sun Tzu, but it is difficult to win a war by following his principles. The reason for this is that Sun Tzu was never interested in shaping the political conditions, because he lived in an era of seemingly never-ending civil wars. The only imperative for him was to survive while paying the lowest possible price and avoiding fighting, because even a successful battle against one foe might leave one weaker when the moment came to fight the next one. Mark McNeilly emphasizes the advantages of following a strategy based on Sun Tzu’s principles for modern warfare. As always in history, if one wishes to highlight the differences to Clausewitz, the similarities between the two approaches are neglected. For example, the approach in Sun Tzu’s chapter about ‘Moving Swiftly to Overcome Resistance’ would be quite similar to one endorsed by Clausewitz and was practised by Napoleon.

This so-called “independent” monitoring and accountability body’s purpose was to validate the imposition of police state controls by global and local political leaders and technocrats, endorsing their efforts to take the kind of harsh actions that Gates’s simulation modeled: subduing resistance, ruthlessly censoring dissent, isolating the healthy, collapsing economies, and compelling vaccination during a projected worldwide health crises. GPMB’s board includes a pantheon of technocrats whose cumulative global power to dictate global health policy is virtually irresistible: Anthony Fauci; Sir Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome Trust; Christ Elias of BMGF; China’s CDC director, George Gao; Russian health minister, Veronika Skvortsova; WHO’s health director, Michael Ryan; its former director, Gro Harlem Brundtland; its former programming director, Ilona Kickbusch; and UNICEF’s Henrietta Holsman Fore, who is former director of USAID, that used to be a reliable CIA front.