Category Archives: General Interest

June 10, 2015 · 7:05 pm

Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme

Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest

June 9, 2015 · 2:29 pm

Dissecting Political Correctness

A 2o13 Stella Morabito article in The Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse section. The article is filled with many interesting links to check out for additional information.

Losing your mind to the mob

Stella Morabito at The Federalist penned, “How To Escape The Age Of Mass Delusion“, which explains clearly how the political left in America operates in not merely nudging public opinion, but in creating mob hysteria and using mob force to compel their agenda from the accepted majority public opinion into law. If you’re one of the few independent thinkers left in America, sitting there scratching your head wondering how fringe ideas only a few years ago are now rock solid majority opinions today, well, this excellent article details the social psychology and history behind the transformation. Ms. Morabito writes:

“There is indeed a war on the private mind, as Kevin Williamson explained in a recent National Review column. Unfortunately, too many Americans have been sleeping through most of its propaganda battles, and for a very long time. When it comes to understanding the inner workings of social psychology and political correctness, we seem to be at a loss.

Meanwhile, the power elites who now control the media, academia, and Hollywood seem to understand social psychology well enough to exploit it on a massive scale. They have engaged in psychological warfare against the private mind by inducing “collective belief formation.” There’s really nothing new here. Conditioning and nudging the masses into groupthink is a very old trick of all wannabe dictators. The bloody twentieth century is filled to the gills with examples.

Yet it feels like we’ve awakened to an ambush. A lot of Americans watched in shock while cultish mobs suddenly attacked the RFRA that Pence initially defended. But the groundwork for mass hysteria like this was stealthily laid for decades, and the minefields sown.”

Ms. Morabito’s article includes numerous excellent links to additional reading on propaganda, mind control, political correctness and a wide array of hot button topics. A quick check of her bio includes work as an intelligence analyst on Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda. Rather than drone on about her article, please take a few minutes and read it yourself and then start clicking on the links within her article.

1 Comment

Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, History, Politics, The Media

June 7, 2015 · 3:38 pm

Winning my heart and mind

Even though I like to think of myself as not a rush to judgment type of person and a recurring theme in my posts has been, “Get to know people, not about people”, which almost always comes from sources other than the people in question.”, this past week I read General Stanley McChrystal’s new book, “Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World”, beginning with some negative preconceived notions about General McChyrstal. The Rolling Stones article, “The Runaway General” years ago left me with a vastly different impression of him as a leader than I hold now after reading his truly fascinating and brilliant book. He’s well on his way to winning my heart and mind and that’s no exaggeration!

I began reading his new book, expecting the usual, boring leadership prescriptions and a whole lot of detailed daring war stories to stir patriotic fervor, but instead General McChrystal offers some of the most brilliant, innovative, bold, and I might even say, radical, ideas ever put forth by an American general. Every chapter left me rethinking some of my cherished beliefs and considering new ways of approaching old problems. This book puts me in mind of sitting down and pondering Malcolm Gladwell’s books, where even if you don’t accept all of his conclusions, just exploring his fascinating ideas, forcing you to look at things differently, leaves you better off than when you started.

So far on amazon.com the book has a 5 star rating and I’d give it 6 stars if I could. In fact, I liked it so much, that I’m going to order his previous book, “My Share of the Task: A Memoir”, which I skipped over last year, because of opinions I formed from news reporting years ago.

4 Comments

Filed under American History, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics, Terrorism

June 7, 2015 · 1:10 pm

I Still Blame the Communists | The Weekly Standard

I Still Blame the Communists | The Weekly Standard.

2 Comments

Filed under Culture Wars, Education, General Interest, History, Politics

June 6, 2015 · 2:18 pm

A vastly different landscape

Thanks to JK for this link from the In From the Cold blog:

“If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words…”

Of course, another repercussion of the Obama administration’s abdication of a leadership role in the region is that the Saudis and Jordanians have turned to Putin and the Chinese for support.

2 Comments

Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Islam, Military, Politics, Terrorism

June 5, 2015 · 7:12 am