Blogger Banned from FaceBook After Sharing Instapundit Permalinks on Dubious Fact-Checkers in a… Private Messenger Conversation (!)

The day after the 2020 election, I was banned from Facebook — for the very first time, if I am not mistaken (and for God knows how long) — for sharing a handful of Instapundit permalinks in… private messages (PMs)!

That's right, it wasn't anything that I posted for the public on my wall, it was a personal conversation on Messenger between myself and one other person in which I shared two or three permalinks linking to posts around the internet (casting a modicum of doubt about the supposed neutrality of fact-checkers).

[Update: Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this story; If anybody knows a way to contact FaceBook and ask them to speed up my recovery, that would be highly appreciated…]

On Wednesday, a lefty friend contacts me after seeing me during the night being interviewed on several French TV news shows for the Republican viewpoint during election night (France is five or six hours ahead, so my interviewing started at… 3 in the morning). An anti-Trumper, he made a bunch of snide remarks, asking, why would Donald Trump mention the Supreme Court instead of simply trusting the process and counting every single vote?

I reply by sending him Ed Driscoll's permalink of the video in which Joe Biden says that "we have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics" (italics mine).

He replied by sending me a Snopes webpage where Dan MacGuill had (yes) fact-checked the news report, calling it, invariably, "False" — but that's an entirely different story.

At that point, I thought he should know a little about fact checkers, so I did a search for "fact check" on Instapundit, and PM'd him the permalink about a fact-checker denying that Biden ever eulogized a KKK Grand Wizard' (since the person he was eulogizing turned out to be a KKK 'Exalted Cyclops').

I was about to PM a second instalink (regarding fact-checkers being nowhere to be found when whoppers are made by Democrats like Kamala Harris) when suddenly I started getting all these messages that my account had been shut down.

Strangely, for someone who has been trying to gather all the articles telling the truth about the bogus 1619 Project (see the list in the second half of this post), I was shut down at 4:19pm, or, in military parlance, at 1619 hours.

What happened? Was it the Joe Biden video? Was it the KKK post? Who did it? The computer? Or a FaceBook fact-checker a Facebook Drama Queen? And when will my account be restored?

Your guess is as good as mine…

Related: Evidence of Fraud in 2020 Election? A Surprising Number of Parallels with JFK's 1960 Campaign …

• A coup? On election night, we watched states call for Biden before votes were counted, while states that Trump has a solid lead in, stopped counting 

• Donald Trump Is One Tough Dragon to Slay

Evidence of Fraud in 2020 Election? A Surprising Number of Parallels with JFK's 1960 Campaign

Note: The following post originally appeared eight years ago, in April 2012, as that year's elections were moving forward, under the same title except for one word — the year…

Evidence of Fraud in 2008 Election? A Surprising Number of Parallels with JFK's 1960 Campaign

In some ways the most dangerous kind of politician is a man who is good at PR and nothing else

writes Paul Johnson in his monumental History of the American People.

No, he was not talking about the current occupant [Barack Obama] of the White House (his book was written in 1999, after all — before Obama had even published his (first) autobiography), but about John F Kennedy, and I am speaking as a former Kennedy devotee and Camelot maniac. (Yes, even if the book was written before 911 and even the George W Bush presidency, it is a must-read — as you will see below.)

I was coaxed into pulling Paul Johnson's masterpiece from my shelves again, as I read Instapundit's review of the PJMedia piece on what the Wikileaks memos say about the 2008 election, getting increasingly angry as I read through the J Christian Adams original.

What we do know is this: First, that people in the McCain campaign thought they had evidence of election tampering that cost McCain the election. Second, that McCain thought it best for the country to do nothing about it, in part because of fears of mob violence.

Interestingly, Glenn Reynolds calls his link to J Christian Adams' article "Bad Call." That turns out to be entirely appropriate, in view of the fact that Bernie Marcus recently pointed out (video) that

the Republicans play the rules of … golf. In golf, if you miss a putt or you touch the ball, you call a shot on yourself. We're playing the game of golf. The Democrats are playing ice hockey. It's a killer game. And that's the difference in politics.

This brings to mind uncounted parallels with the 1960 election, rarely if ever disclosed in mainstream history books, and which I only learned through Paul Johnson's History of the American People, the reading of which sometimes made my eyes pop out as previously-undisclosed facts (of the unpalatable sort) were revealed.

As I re-read part of the book this morning, it turns out that there are many more parallels than you would at first assume.

Just consider:

By all historical standards, Nixon should have been an American media hero. He was a natural candidate for laurels in the grand old tradition of self-help, of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. He came from nowhere.

Think of John McCain, who should have been — and who was! — an American hero for other reasons, linked to dramatic combat, horrific jail conditions (with — very — violent wardens, of a decidedly racist bent), and the ever-present risk of death in a foreign country. (In France, while both of Obama's autobiographies became best-sellers, McCain's autobiography, with its full life (written past the age of 60) and with all the drama of its war "adventures", was not even translated.)

Yet, from start to finish, the media, especially the 'quality' press, distrusted [Nixon], consistently denigrated him, and sought to destroy him, indeed in a sense did destroy him. At every crisis in his career — except the last — he had to appeal above the heads of the media to the great mass of the ordinary American people, the 'silent majority' as he called them.

When I first read Paul Johnson's book, incidentally, I remember thinking, But of course! What has always been described as an unsavory character trait in Richard Mulhouse Nixon — his alleged paranoia — turns out perhaps not to have been so paranoid at all and to have been provoked by those who claimed to be innocent bystanders, if not the actual entirely-innocent victims of "Tricky Dick"… (If only for Paul Johnson's description of Watergate — which he likens, persuasively, to a witch hunt — you must read A History of the American People.)

[2020 update: and cannot similar lines be written about Donald Trump?]

By contrast, the media did everything in its power to build up and sustain the beatific myth of John F. Kennedy, throughout his life and long after his death, until it finally collapsed in ruins under the weight of incontrovertible evidence. The media protected him, suppressed what it knew to be the truth about him, and if necessary lied about him, on a scale which it had never done even for Franklin Roosevelt.

C'mon. Don't tell me that I really need to point out the parallels here with Barack Hussein Obama, the anointed One come to save America and Americans from their own demons.

And this was all the more surprising because Kennedy had most of the characteristics of an American anti-hero. … the running theme of the Kennedy family [was] how to turn money into political power … Maximum use was made of Jack's war career in all his campaigns. … Old Joe set about making Kennedy first a congressman, then a senator, then president. This train of events is worth studying because it shows the extent to which money paved the way to political power in mid-20th-century America …

Again: need I really point out the parallels with Obama, and his war-chest(s), along with his billion-dollar campaigns and his spending sprees? At this point of the book, Paul Johnson brings an interesting aside:

As Tip O'Neill put it: …

'I'd have to say that [Jack] was only nominally a Democrat. He was a Kennedy, which more than family affiliation. It quickly developed into an entire political party, with its own people, its own approach and its own strategies.'

The man who got it right at the time was the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. He grasped the important point that electing a Kennedy was not so much giving office to an individual as handing over power to a family business, a clan, almost a milieu, with a set of attitudes about how office was to be acquired and used which at no point coincided with the American ethic. Having paid his first visit after Kennedy's election as President, Macmillan was asked on his return what it was like in Kennedy's Washington.

'Oh,' said he, 'it's rather like watching the Borgia brothers take over a respectable North Italian city.'

But let's get back to the election of 1960 (as you read the few next parts, remember all the nasty things you have heard through the years about Tricky Dick).

Nixon had deliberately decided to keep Catholicism out of the campaign, and succeeded in doing so. The day after the result, he said to his aide Pete Flanigan:

'Pete, here's one thing we can be satisfied about. The campaign has laid to rest for ever the issue of a candidate's religion in presidential politics. Bad for me, perhaps, but good for America.'

In fact, Kennedy's catholicism won him the election … In the Northern industrial states, where the margins were very close, the swing of the Catholic vote to a Catholic candidate made all the difference.

Think of McCain opining that the election of a black man was good for America — which it undoubtedly was. But regarding America's alleged nightmarish racism, note that it was precisely Barack Obama's race that won him, or that helped win him, the election — as much among minorities as among liberal whites pining to demonstrate their status as "good" whites.

Unfortunately, there is a more ominous parallel between 1960 and 2008 (although not necessarily in the states specifically mentioned), which should overshadow Nixon's (and McCain's) satisfaction with the (respective) result(s), along with pride in his (in their) countrymen. Indeed, why be satisfied with a result (and why be proud of your country) if the result was the product of cheating?

This was a crooked election, especially in Texas and Illinois, two states notorious for fraud, and both of which Kennedy won. In Texas, which gave its twenty-four college votes to Kennedy, by a margin of 46,000 votes (out of 2.3 million), one expert made the calculation that

'a minimum of 100,000 votes for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket simply were non-existent.'

… (in one polling station, where only 4,895 voters were registered, 6,138 votes were counted as cast)

Then again, perhaps there does turn out to be a parallel between 1960 and 2008 in regards to one of the states mentioned: …

In Illinois, Nixon carried 93 of the state's 102 counties, yet lost the state by 8,858 votes. This was entirely due to an enormous Democratic turnout in Chicago, under the control of the notorious Democratic city boss and mayor, Richard Daley. Daley gave Kennedy the Windy City by the astonishing margin of 450,000 votes, and the evidence was overwhelming that fraud was committed on a large scale in Kennedy's favor.

An interesting side-note:

The mafia played an important part in this fraud. Afterwards, its boss Giancana often boasted to Judith Campbell, the mistress he shared with the President, 'Listen, honey, if it wasn't for me your boyfriend wouldn't even be in the White House.'

I don't suppose the mafia helped Obama in 2008; however — No, I wouldn't want to call into question the honesty and the civility of members of ACORN and of the Black Panthers (for fear of being labeled a racist, natch).

While reading History of the American People the first time, I remember thinking: it can't be possible that the MSM history books wouldn't mention this, so probably the fraud was tiny, and/or hard to prove, and not worth mentioning, so perhaps Paul Johnson is exaggerating, if ever so slightly. Then I came to this part:

If Nixon, instead of Kennedy, had carried Texas and Illinois, the shift in electoral votes would have given him the presidency, and the evidence of electoral fraud makes it clear that Kennedy's overall 112,803 vote plurality was a myth: Nixon probably won overall by about 250,000 votes. Evidence of fraud in the two states was so blatant that a number of senior figures, including Eisenhower, urged Nixon to make a formal legal challenge to the result. But Nixon declined. … A legal challenge … would have produced a 'constitutional nightmare' and worked heavily against the national interest.

Doesn't this sound like the Wikileaks memo stating that "McCain felt the crowds assembled in support of Obama and such would be detrimental to our country and it would do our nation no good for this to drag out like last go around" — Bernie Marcus's dependable, mature golf player acting responsibly to prevent the ice hockey players from going berserk?

Just as interesting is the passage preceding the story of the 1960 election, which explains the downplaying of the Republican candidate while the extolling of the Democrat's alleged virtues. As you read the following passage, think also of all the ways that Rupert Murdoch has been demonized over the years, as has his Fox News network.

We come now to an important structural change in America. America had always been, from the earliest time, a democratic society, in that men (and indeed women) paid little attention to formal rank, even where it existed. Every man felt he had the right to shake hands with every other man, even the President … But this democratic spirit was balanced by the tribute of respect to those who, for one reason or another — experience, learning, position, wealth, office, or personality — had earned the title of 'boss.' The balance struck between egalitarianism and deference was one of the most remarkable characteristics of America, and one of its great strengths.

The Sixties brought a change. In the space of a decade, the word 'boss' passed almost out of the language, certainly out of universal usage. Deference itself deferred to a new spirit of hostility to authority. It became the fashion to challenge long-established hierarchies, to revolt against them or to ignore them. Nowhere was this spirit more manifest than in the media …

The gradual but cumulatively almost complete transfer of opinion-forming power from the owners and commercial managers of TV stations to the program-makers and presenters was one of the great new facts of life, unheard of before the 1950s, axiomatic by the end of the 1960s. And it was gradually paralleled by a similar shift in the newspaper world, especially on the great dailies and magazines of the East Coast, where political power, with few exceptions, passed from proprietors and major stockholders to editors and writers. Owners like Hearst and McCormick (of the Chicago Tribune), Pulitzer and Henry Luce (of Time-Life), who had once decided the political line of their publications in considerable detail, moved out of the picture and their places were taken by the working journalists. Since the latter tended to be overwhelmingly liberal in their views, this was not just a political but a cultural change of considerable importance. Indeed it is likely that nothing did more to cut America loose from its traditional moorings.

… The change could be seen in 1960, in the way the East Coast media (the New York Times and Washington Post, Time and Newsweek), handled the contest between Nixon and Kennedy.

The final word?

There is a sense in which Kennedy, who loved to use words like 'bearing,' 'results,' and 'in,' was a professional sportsman, a political huckster, and a propagandist rather than a serious statesman

Related: From November 2008: Stealing the Election: The 1960 and the 2008 Contests Compared

• I knew Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon was a friend of mine, and you, Barack are no Richard Nixon (thanks to Instapundit)

• The Watergate Cover-Up Trial: Justice Denied? (thanks to Instapundit)

There were real crimes and real criminals. But newly found documents suggest a denial of due process of law to the defendants, a move that did the Constitution no favors.

A coup? On election night, we watched states call for Biden before votes were counted, while states that Trump has a solid lead in, stopped counting

It's good to have friends, because when you are looking at trying to figure out a situation, they can help you along…

Sarah Hoyt of Vote as if your life depended on it! fame:

OKAY, I’M SICK AND TIRED OF THIS AND I WANT TO CALL IT OUT RIGHT NOW:

I don’t want to hear a word about Trump’s tone. I don’t want to hear a word about how he crossed a line.

I DON’T WANT TO HEAR A WORD.

Listen to me: On one side we have the left, who is running a barely alive candidate, and a woman with all the appeal of week-old fish and no accomplishments she can point to.

Add to this they almost didn’t run a campaign, AND went to the point of not having offices in most cities. 

For months now, I’ve been looking at this and going “They have a coup planned. The fix is in.” And everyone told me oh, no, I was seeing things.

Tonight we watched states called for Biden before votes were counted, while states that Trump has a solid lead in, stop counting.

And if you need help seeing what’s before your eyes, the left has for weeks now claimed Trump was going to attempt a coup. How many years have you known they accuse you of what they’re doing? What are you? Stupid?

Look, they are tainted by the previous failed coups, tainted by (most if not all of them) accepting money from Xi, and FYI China ALWAYS arranges for extra compromise for security, honeypots being their favorite, tainted even by association with Epstein. A second Trump term means a good chance that they go down hard and don’t get up again.

ALL OF THEM from the left politicians to the so called “tech lords” are fighting for their lives. 

They’re cornered rats. There’s nothing they won’t do.

And all we have against them is Trump.

Stop calling Trump names.  Put on your big boy or girl pants.

They’re fighting for their lives.  And we are too. Because — look at Venezuela — socialism kills.

Matthew Vadum:

Joe Biden maxes out at about 250 electoral votes, short of the 270 needed to win. Unless Donald Trump loses states in which he is now leading, Trump wins. So it’s not over but it’s looking bad for Biden. 🙂

 … Joe Biden is finished. He just doesn’t realize it yet. Trump appears to have won but the media won’t call the various red states for days. Republicans have every reason to feel good. Now they must prepare for the Democrats’ legal challenges and attempts to steal the election in places like North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Be patient. We’ve got this.

 … The TV pundits are lying to you. Donald Trump is the tentative unofficial winner as of right now. They are refusing to call states Trump has obviously won such as Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia in order to stall on behalf of Joe Biden. The only way Biden can win is if he can flip back the states AP has called for Trump and the states Trump is now leading in. It is almost a mathematical impossibility for Biden to get the 270 electoral votes he needs, absent fairy dust. 

Eber Haddad: 

Le scénario cauchemardesque des élections est en train de se passer sous nos yeux. J’avais parlé de fraudes et c’est exactement ce qui s’est passé toute la soirée. A 80% des suffrages exprimés ils n’ont pas donné la Floride gagnante pour le candidat Républicain, pareil avec le Texas mais ont donné l’Arizona gagnant pour les Démocrates avec seulement 71% des suffrages exprimés. La volonté de manipuler les résultats tout au long de la soirée était flagrante. Il est resté les états litigieux pour essayer de gagner ces élections par avocats interposés. Trump n’est pas du genre à se laisser faire et cela peut traîner encore des semaines voire des mois. 

 

Les Démocrates ont fait plus fort que le litige Gore-Bush en 2000 qui ne se cantonnait qu’à la Floride, aujourd’hui c’est bien plus compliqué puisqu’il va s’agir de 5 à 6 états au minimum. 

 

Les Démocrates qui ont fait circuler des sondages bidons qui ne se sont aucunement matérialisés, 11 à 12% d’avance pour Biden, la Floride perdue pour les Républicains, etc... ont essayé de frauder en amont et tentent maintenant de le faire en aval. Trump avait prevu ce scénario dès l’été et avait tenté d’y résister. 

 

Où est passée la fameuse vague bleue prévue par tous les instituts de sondages ? 

 

Cette histoire est loin d’être terminée. Je reviendrai plus tard sur les détails. À présent cette élection va faire l’objet de multiples procédures légales et les résultats sont loin d’être publiés.

And, finally, Fausta: 

 

Donald Trump Is One Tough Dragon to Slay

 • What the heck, how come he's still movin'?!

The take of Le Monde's Plantu on the USA's 2020 elections shows Joe Biden as a frustrated Saint George trying to slay the Donald Trump dragon…

Ils sont américains, pro-Trump, et vivent en France…

La chaîne France 24 a fait un reportage sur des Américains pro-Trump qui vivent en France

Ils vivent depuis des années en France où le président américain Donald Trump est très impopulaire et où leurs opinions conservatrices sont loin d’être majoritaires. Refus de l’État providence, contrôle de l’immigration, tensions avec l’Europe… À quelques jours de l’élection présidentielle qui opposera Donald Trump à Joe Biden, les Américains pro-républicains résidant à Paris expliquent pourquoi l’actuel locataire de la Maison Blanche a leurs faveurs.

Adieu Charaid: Sean Connery 1930-2020; and What Nobody Knows About James Bond

Good-Bye, Sean Connery — the most charismatic actor who ever lived; here are three of the Scottish star's best movies of all time…

The Man Who Would Be King

The Wind and the Lion

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

 

In that perspectivwe, here is as good a place as any to present: 

What nobody knows about James Bond

 

I added the following tidbit to the IMDb's trivia section for Dr. No:

In the very first Bond movie, Dr. No (1962), two other people - both of them Bond girls - introduce themselves "the Bond way." On the Caribbean beach, Ursula Andress gives her name as "Ryder [...] Honey Ryder"; and, in the casino at the very beginning - before Sean Connery has uttered more than a handful of words in the movie - Eunice Gayson presents herself as "Trench, Sylvia Trench." 

 

When Connery then replies "Bond, James Bond", it is to poke sweet fun at the young lady, by mimicking her cadence. 

 

It is extremely likely, therefore, that, at the time, there was never any intention of ever having 007 use that exact type of presentation again. 

A Few Remarks to BluElephants, Republicans Who Are Urging People to Vote for the Democrat Party

It seems that a couple of days from now, a number of Republicans are voting for the Democrat party out of disgust for the failings, real or alleged, of Donald J Trump. 

Not only that, but the #AngryBluElephants, who want to #TakeBackTheGOP, are requesting that the rest of the population #TurnBlueNovember3, and in that spirit have been circulating memes like the one above, holding OrangeManBad responsible for the death toll caused by the Coronavirus.

To one Republican elected official's anger (who was a dorm mate of mine in college and who regrets the time of Ronald Reagan), my reaction on his wall has been as follows:

Thank God that (with the help of the mainstream media), people are managing to figure out who is to blame for the virus in America.

Just a couple of questions: 

 • When looking for the party responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans (as well as tens of thousands of Chinese, Europeans, etc…) at the "hands" of the Coronavirus, how come no news outlet ever seems to mention… China? 

 • Speaking of which: in compiling Trump's allegedly sorry record in fighting the Wuhan virus, how come no news outlet ever mentions that, like it or not, the very first steps taken against the virus were Trump's outright ban of flights from China? Steps widely ridiculed and demonized (as xenophobic and racist) by the media and in Europe, by the likes of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi (who promptly set up in a photo-op in San Francisco's Chinatown), and by such luminaries as the Italian politician who organized a "Hug a Chinese Tourist" movement.

 • Do you remember the media's predictions in March, of two million deaths caused by Covid-19 in the U.S. before the end of the year? Would it be fair, some wag might say, to at least consider the viewpoint that the actual 220,000 toll means that Trump has… saved nearly 1,800,000 American lives?! 

• And, more generally: a perennial with leftists is that (they love to repeat endlessly that) they are tolerant and considerate and (exceedingly) polite and, last but not least, and open to debate and discussion… 

Why, then, is it that they like so much to shut conversation down? 

 ••••••••••

This comment was not to the liking of the elected Republican official or to his wife (a charming woman, incidentally, whom he met at our college), who asked who I was to stand up for Donald Trump and why I did not believe Bill Gates when the Microsoft honcho denounced Trump's handling of the virus.

My answer:  

I’m not standing up for Donald Trump, nor for Joe Biden; I am not standing against either of them, either (or for or against Bill Gates, for that matter) 

I am standing up (as best I can) for facts and the truth — in whatever direction they will lead me 

All I am saying is that for every criticism of the Republican, you can find a criticism of a Democrat; or of a foreigner 

If Trump can be criticized for halting the plane flights (Bill Gates criticisms which I disagree with, but that’s not the point), shouldn’t at least some opprobrium be directed at, say, Nancy Pelosi for telling people to go visit Chinatown or at the Italian mayors whose response was it to institute (get this) a Hug-a-Chinese-tourist policy? (the appalling public service (sic) videos are on YouTube!) 

You speak of the “well-documented” policies of Donald Trump…

Whatever the case with policy failings, general or detailed, real or alleged, the fact remains that Europeans didn’t react until weeks afterwards and few media outlets, American or European, seem to make much of that. Why isn’t that well-documented? And why does that not deserve any criticism? 

It’s very strange that people living abroad are always allowed to think ill of the USA 🇺🇸 — antagonism which is supposed to reveal a deep dark truth about America — but when they are skeptical of the PC view and have something positive to say, they are told — by Americans and by their respective fellow countrymen alike — to mind their own business.

In that perspective, you seem to be forgetting that “the second-rate actor”, Ronald Reagan, was just as criticized and protested against in the 1980s as DT is now, by (outraged) Americans and foreigners alike, and for the same reasons…

People, American or foreign, are allowed to think that a Republican’s policy towards the Soviet Union (in the 1980s) or China 🇨🇳 (now) might be better than the PC fairy tale about how we can all live together if leaders only speak to each other, all the while ignoring how the same foreign leaders are really treating the West, stealthily, as well as their own people — i.e., shabbily is the softest word that comes to mind

If Foreigners (as well as Americans living abroad) have the right to criticize and protest the occupant of the White House, whoever is in the Oval Office, certainly they have the right to support same president as well, or to simply issue reservations… 

In that perspective, it is telling that while protestors in America were burning the American flag, protestors in Hong Kong were waving the Stars and Stripes while singing the Star-Spangled Banner… 

Does a protestor from Hong Kong, 🇭🇰 Xinjiang, or Tibet, i.e., not from the USA and living abroad — just like a person from the USSR or Eastern Europe in the 1980s — likewise have no right to praise Washington’s less conciliatory policy towards Beijing or Moscow — or, for that matter, any other of the president's policies (not excluding his vow that America will never be a socialist nation, leading the economic locomotive of the world to follow in the footsteps of, say, Venezuela, Russia, or… China)?

Those might be things to ponder over…

One Hundred Years Ago, a 16-Year-Old Slovak Girl Sailed past the Statue of Liberty into New York Harbor

Less than two years after the end of the Great War, and after crossing half the European continent alone and by themselves, two young sisters from the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire arrived in the harbor of Rotterdam in October 1920 and embarked on a liner to America.

Anna and Zuzanna Uhríkova, 16 and 22, were the latest of the six of a total of seven children to be sent across the Atlantic by a widowed farmer in the tiny Slovak hamlet of Vrbica.

A widower whose wife had died in 1903 from childbirth complications at age 38, Ján Uhrík decided that his offspring would be better off in America than in Europe, and as soon as he had earned enough, he would send one child off, one after the other over the years (the brothers first), for a better life in the New World. Only one of his seven children would remain with him in the newly-formed nation of Czechoslovakia. (Ďakujem Glennovi Reynoldsovi za hypertextový odkaz na Instapundit)

After 11 days at sea, Anna and Zuzanna spotted the Statue of Liberty as their ship (named the Rotterdam after the Dutch port) sailed into New York harbor. After the required stop at Ellis Island, they were met on shore by their elder brother Georg (by then George Uhrik of South Orange, New Jersey).

Anna Uhrikova, called Annicka by her siblings, was my maternal grand-mother.

After working as a furrier, she would marry a veteran of the army of Kaiser Wilhelm. The military had never been Hans Birkenmaier's cup of tea, and the only memory of World War I that he ever shared was that, when it was all over in November 1918, he and his comrades had to walk all the way back to Germany on foot.

He also emigrated eventually, albeit first to Argentina, where his Germanic roots could not click with the Latin mentality, and so, a few years later, in the 1920s, he uprooted again, to New York, where he became a tailor named John Birkenmayer and where he met and wed Anna.

Their only daughter was my mother who, after she finished college, met a young foreigner at the United Nations. After he returned to Denmark and joined the foreign service, Virginia Birkenmayer and Eskil Svane were married (at Hamlet's Elsinore castle), and the diplomat couple's first assignment happened, quite by chance, to be the Danish embassy in, of all places, Prague.

Growing up in Queens, Virginia used to say she was so far to the left that she was almost a communist. That came to an end after living, even as part of the élite (foreign or domestic), three years in the Czecho-Slovak Socialist Republic (the CSSR).

In fact, for the first time in 40 years, Anna Birkenmayer returned to her native country (this time by air), met up with her daughter and son-in-law, and together with my mom took a 500-km road trip, just the two of them, to show her the place outside Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš (Liptov (region)'s Saint Nicholas) where Ján and Mária had lived, and where they had died…

Before she flew back to New York a week later, my mom took her into her arms and gave her a big hug:

"I am so grateful that you left this God-awful place and moved to America"

In the Year of Covid-19, Denmark Has So Few Deaths That the Country's Undertakers Are Considering Asking the Government for Hand-Outs

Denmark's undertakers have been considering petitioning the government for redress because there have not been enough deaths in the Scandinavian country this year.

It's not just that fewer people have died than expected; it's that fewer people have died than over the same period in 2019, when there was no virus from Wuhan, or from China, or from anywhere else.

• Related: Now that Donald Trump Has Caught the Corona Virus,
Here Are the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know

That's right: In the year of the Coronavirus, there are fewer deaths than at the same period in 2019, and indeed, 2020 has the lowest death toll so far compared with the previous six years. So: the industry, one could say, feels let down.

"We made the mistake of trusting in the government's predictions that there would a sharp increase in deaths among elder citizens because of Corona," is how one Politiken wag imagined one funeral director's reaction. "And now the latest data now show that on the contrary, there have been fewer deaths under the pandemic." The Graulev undertaker was said to add that "it is a [government] failure without equal."

The morticians have been forgotten by the kingdom's prime minister (aka Mette Frederiksen), wrote Bent Falbert already back in August under the heading The Undertaker Branch Is Bleeding, who adds that "Some of them are complaining that they don't have enough corpses on their hands"!

Probably too many people are going overboard in washing their hands, maintaining social distance, and not touching each other, quipped Ekstrabladet's Falbert during the summer, who goes on to point out that

The 621 Danes who have so far been killed by the virus so far hardly represent a higher figure than the annual toll from suicide.  Not to mention the 15,000 who die every year of cancer, or the 6,000 victims from heart disease.

But these figures are not addressed by Corona Commander-in-Chief Frederiksen. Her propaganda consists in convincing others that they share her opinion.

Let us take a look at the death toll for the year's first two quarters. The Southern Denmark region has seen 214 fewer deaths than in the same period in 2019. And nationally, this year is trailing last year by 141 deaths

None of us must forget that the Northern Jutland home of Mette Frederiksen stands valiantly in solidarity with her stringent restrictions by being in "arrears" of 96 deaths [compared to 2019]. And nationally [as mentioned], we are still 141 deaths in debt.

One more statistic: the 621 dead represents 0.00107% of the Danish population, meaning 99.999% of the population have not been killed by the virus so far, and leaving the occasional skeptic wondering to what extent the corona virus is a threat so horrifying that it warrants sacking, bankrupting, and impoverishing thousands of citizens in the government's pursuit of the destruction of the national economy.

 A meme making the rounds has this to say:

Scary scary Covid-19. 2020 will always be remembered as the year in which Denmark was struck by a deadly pandemic, which … lowered the death toll to the lowest in the past six years. How ludicrous is that? Covid-19 is so "deadly" that undertakers are requesting compensation for the missing death toll. Welcome to Circus Corona…

Related:
• Now that Donald Trump Has Caught the Corona Virus,
Here Are the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know
And from the March and April archives:
• Is There 100% Irrefutable Proof that the Covid19 Pandemic Is Overstated?
• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619

In View of the 1619 Project’s "Serious Factual Errors, Specious Generalizations, and Forced Interpretations", 21 Scholars Demand that the Pulitzer Prize Board Rescind its Award to Nikole Hannah-Jones

We call on the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the 2020 Prize for Commentary awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones for her lead essay in “The 1619 Project” … The Pulitzer Prize Board erred in awarding a prize to Hannah-Jones’s profoundly flawed essay, and through it to a Project that, despite its worthy intentions, is disfigured by unfounded conjectures and patently false assertions.

Peter Wood joins 20 other signatories from the National Association of Scholars in condemning the ludicrous 1619 Project and in writing a public letter to the Pulitzer Prize Board, calling on it to rescind the prize it awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones.

That essay was entitled, “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written.” But it turns out the article itself was false when written, making a large claim that protecting the institution of slavery was a primary motive for the American Revolution, a claim for which there is simply no evidence.

… Beginning almost immediately after its publication, though, the essay and the Project ran into controversy. It has been subjected to searching criticism by many of the foremost historians of our time and by the Times’ own fact checker. The scrutiny has left the essay discredited, so much so that the Times has felt the need to go back and change a crucial passage in it, softening but not eliminating its unsupported assertion about slavery and the Revolution.

 … The Project as a whole was marred by similar faults. Prominent historians, most of them deeply sympathetic to the Project’s goal of bringing the African American experience more fully into our understanding of the American past, nevertheless felt obliged to point out, in public statements beginning in September 2019, the Project’s serious factual errors, specious generalizations, and forced interpretations.

 … Hannah-Jones did not refute these criticisms or answer them in a respectful or meaningful way. Instead, she dismissed them. In December 2019 five prominent historians wrote a joint letter to The New York Times expressing their “strong reservations about important aspects of the 1619 Project.”

The New York Times Magazine’s editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein brushed aside the letter with the explanation that “historical understanding is not fixed; it is constantly being adjusted by new scholarship and new voices.” True enough; but he refrained from also mentioning that the advance of historical understanding always involves the testing of new interpretations through a process of open criticism and the free exchange of ideas in honest debate, the very things that Hannah-Jones has consistently disdained. Despite this stonewalling, the criticisms of The 1619 Project continued, notably in another joint letter signed by twelve other historians on December 30.

 … Hannah-Jones’s refusal to correct her errors or engage her critics, we have recently learned, was accompanied by surreptitious efforts by The New York Times to alter the record of what it had published in the original magazine of August 18, 2019. 

 … Correcting factual errors in their published works, of course, is an important responsibility of both the journalistic and scholarly press. But such corrections are typically and rightly made openly and explicitly. The author and the publisher acknowledge an error and correct it. That is not what happened in this case. Rather, the false claims were erased or altered with no explanation, and Hannah-Jones then proceeded to claim that she had never said or written what in fact she has said and written repeatedly, assertions that the Project materials also made.

 … The Pulitzer Prize Board erred in awarding a prize to Hannah-Jones’s profoundly flawed essay, and through it to a Project that, despite its worthy intentions, is disfigured by unfounded conjectures and patently false assertions.

RELATED: 1619, Mao, & 9-11: History According to the NYT — Plus, a Remarkable Issue of National Geographic Reveals the Leftists' "Blame America First" Approach to History

• Wilfred Reilly on 1619: quite a few contemporary Black problems have very little to do with slavery

NO MAINSTREAM HISTORIAN CONTACTED FOR THE 1619 PROJECT

• "Out of the Revolution came an anti-slavery ethos, which never disappeared": Pulitzer Prize Winner James McPherson Confirms that No Mainstream Historian Was Contacted by the NYT for Its 1619 History Project

• Gordon Wood: "The Revolution unleashed antislavery sentiments that led to the first abolition movements in the history of the world" — another Pulitzer-Winning Historian Had No Warning about the NYT's 1619 Project

• A Black Political Scientist "didn’t know about the 1619 Project until it came out"; "These people are kind of just making it up as they go"

• Clayborne Carson: Another Black Historian Kept in the Dark About 1619

• If historians did not hear of the NYT's history (sic) plan, chances are great that the 1619 Project was being deliberately kept a tight secret

• Oxford Historian Richard Carwardine: 1619 is “a preposterous and one-dimensional reading of the American past”

• World Socialists: "the 1619 Project is a politically motivated falsification of history" by the New York Times, aka "the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party"

THE NEW YORK TIMES OR THE NEW "WOKE" TIMES?

• Dan Gainor on 1619 and rewriting history: "To the Left elite like the NY Times, there’s no narrative they want to destroy more than American exceptionalism"

• Utterly preposterous claims: The 1619 project is a cynical political ploy, aimed at piercing the heart of the American understanding of justice

• From Washington to Grant, not a single American deserves an iota of gratitude, or even understanding, from Nikole Hannah-Jones; however, modern autocrats, if leftist and foreign, aren't "all bad"

• One of the Main Sources for the NYT's 1619 Project Is a Career Communist Propagandist who Defends Stalinism

• A Pulitzer Prize?! Among the 1619 Defenders Is "a Fringe Academic" with "a Fetish for Authoritarian Terror" and "a Soft Spot" for Mugabe, Castro, and Even Stalin

• Influenced by Farrakhan's Nation of Islam?! 1619 Project's History "Expert" Believes the Aztecs' Pyramids Were Built with Help from Africans Who Crossed the Atlantic Prior to the "Barbaric Devils" of Columbus (Whom She Likens to Hitler)

• 1793, 1776, or 1619: Is the New York Times Distinguishable from Teen Vogue? Is It Living in a Parallel Universe? Or Is It Simply Losing Its Mind in an Industry-Wide Nervous Breakdown?

• No longer America's "newspaper of record," the "New Woke Times" is now but a college campus paper, where kids like 1619 writer Nikole Hannah-Jones run the asylum and determine what news is fit to print

• The Departure of Bari Weiss: "Propagandists", Ethical Collapse, and the "New McCarthyism" — "The radical left are running" the New York Times, "and no dissent is tolerated"

• "Full of left-wing sophomoric drivel": The New York Times — already drowning in a fantasy-land of alternately running pro-Soviet Union apologia and their anti-American founding “1619 Project” series — promises to narrow what they view as acceptable opinion even more

• "Deeply Ashamed" of the… New York Times (!),  An Oblivious Founder of the Error-Ridden 1619 Project Uses Words that Have to Be Seen to Be Believed ("We as a News Organization Should Not Be Running Something That Is Offering Misinformation to the Public, Unchecked")

• Allen C Guelzo: The New York Times offers bitterness, fragility, and intellectual corruption—The 1619 Project is not history; it is conspiracy theory

• The 1619 Project is an exercise in religious indoctrination: Ignoring, downplaying, or rewriting the history of 1861 to 1865, the Left and the NYT must minimize, downplay, or ignore the deaths of 620,000 Americans

• 1619: It takes an absurdly blind fanaticism to insist that today’s free and prosperous America is rotten and institutionally oppressive

• The MSM newsrooms and their public shaming terror campaigns — the "bullying campus Marxism" is closer to cult religion than politics: Unceasingly searching out thoughtcrime, the American left has lost its mind

• Fake But Accurate: The People Behind the NYT's 1619 Project Make a "Small" Clarification, But Only Begrudgingly and Half-Heartedly, Because Said Mistake Actually Undermines The 1619 Project's Entire Premise

• The Truth Is Out: "The 1619 Project Is Not a History," Admits Hannah-Jones, and "Never Pretended to Be"

THE REVOLUTION OF THE 1770s

• The Collapse of the Fourth Estate by Peter Wood: No one has been able to identify a single leader, soldier, or supporter of the Revolution who wanted to protect his right to hold slaves (A declaration that slavery is the founding institution of America and the center of everything important in our history is a ground-breaking claim, of the same type as claims that America condones rape culture, that 9/11 was an inside job, that vaccinations cause autism, that the Moon landing was a hoax, or that ancient astronauts built the pyramids)

• Mary Beth Norton:  In 1774, a year before Dunmore's proclamation, Americans had already in fact become independent

• Most of the founders, including Thomas Jefferson, opposed slavery’s continued existence, writes Rick Atkinson, despite the fact that many of them owned slaves

• Leslie Harris: Far from being fought to preserve slavery, the Revolutionary War became a primary disrupter of slavery in the North American Colonies (even the NYT's fact-checker on the 1619 Project disagrees with its "conclusions": "It took 60 more years for the British government to finally end slavery in its Caribbean colonies")

• Sean Wilentz on 1619: the movement in London to abolish the slave trade formed only in 1787, largely inspired by… American (!) antislavery opinion that had arisen in the 1760s and 1770s

• 1619 & Slavery's Fatal Lie: it is more accurate to say that what makes America unique isn't slavery but the effort to abolish it

• 1619 & 1772: Most of the founders, including Jefferson, opposed slavery’s continued existence, despite many of them owning slaves; And Britain would remain the world's foremost slave-trading nation into the nineteenth century

• Wilfred Reilly on 1619: Slavery was legal in Britain in 1776, and it remained so in all overseas British colonies until 1833

• Not 1619 but 1641: In Fact, the American Revolution of 1776 Sought to Avoid the Excesses of the English Revolution Over a Century Earlier

• James Oakes on 1619: "Slavery made the slaveholders rich; But it made the South poor; And it didn’t make the North rich — So the legacy of slavery is poverty, not wealth"

• One of the steps of defeating truth is to destroy evidence of the truth, says Bob Woodson; Because the North's Civil War statues — as well as American history itself — are evidence of America's redemption from slavery, it's important for the Left to remove evidence of the truth

TEACHING GENERATIONS OF KIDS FALSEHOODS ABOUT THE U.S.

• 1619: No wonder this place is crawling with young socialists and America-haters — the utter failure of the U.S. educational system to teach the history of America’s founding

• 1619: Invariably Taking the Progressive Side — The Ratio of Democratic to Republican Voter Registration in History Departments is More than 33 to 1

• Denying the grandeur of the nation’s founding—Wilfred McClay on 1619: "Most of my students are shocked to learn that that slavery is not uniquely American"

• Inciting Hate Already in Kindergarten: 1619 "Education" Is Part of Far-Left Indoctrination by People Who Hate America to Kids in College, in School, and Even in Elementary Classes

• "Distortions, half-truths, and outright falsehoods": Where does the 1619 project state that Africans themselves were central players in the slave trade? That's right: Nowhere

• John Podhoretz on 1619: the idea of reducing US history to the fact that some people owned slaves is a reductio ad absurdum and the definition of bad faith

• The 1619 Africans in Virginia were not ‘enslaved’, a black historian points out; they were indentured servants — just like the majority of European whites were

• "Two thirds of the people, white as well as black, who crossed the Atlantic in the first 200 years are indentured servants" notes Dolores Janiewski; "The poor people, black and white, share common interests"

LAST BUT NOT LEAST…

• Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech"

• Victoria Bynum on 1619 and a NYT writer's "ignorance of history": "As dehumanizing and brutal as slavery was, the institution was not a giant concentration camp"

• Dennis Prager: The Left Couldn't Care Less About Blacks

• When was the last time protests in America were marred by police violence? 1970, according to Ann Coulter, who asks "Can we restrict wild generalizations about the police to things that have happened in our lifetimes?" (Compare with, say, China…)

• The Secret About Black Lives Matter; In Fact, the Outfit's Name Ought to Be BSD or BAD

• The Real Reason Why Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and the Land O'Lakes Maid Must Vanish

• The Confederate Flag: Another Brick in the Leftwing Activists' (Self-Serving) Demonization of America and Rewriting of History

• Who, Exactly, Is It Who Should Apologize for Slavery and Make Reparations? America? The South? The Descendants of the Planters? …

• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619

Now that Donald Trump Has Caught the Corona Virus, Here Are the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know

(Or: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Covid-19, But Were Afraid to Ask)

In view of the fact that Donald Trump has become, along with the president's wife, infected with the Wuhan virus (doesn't this mean that China's plan has succeeded?!), it is pertinent to do a thorough reassessment of the pandemic.

A close study of the Coronavirus — as well as of the various government responses thereto around the world since the epidemic erupted in January and February — ought to lead to the following seven main conclusions, which I consider definite:

1) The main question regarding the Coronavirus is:
A) whether we are facing one of the dreadful pandemics like the Middle Ages' Black Death, 1918's Spanish Flu, ancient Rome's Antonine Plague, or the Athens plague of 430 BC;
or: B) whether we are facing one of the regular epidemics such as the 2009, the 2002, the 1968, the 1957, and the 1889 outbreaks — which being more common seems to be the more logical explanation (and all of which happened to originate in China or Asia) — where no action was taken and which came to an end because the various countries' population ended up having immunity, precisely due to… no action being taken (in this case refraining from reacting functions almost like a vaccination, which suggests that wearing a face mask turns out to be nothing if not outright counter-productive).

Into this equation comes a bunch of people, mainly politicians and élites, who affirm that we need to act, we need to restrain, we need to mask — just to be on the safe side. 

2) The only problem with that attitude is that there is nothing pointing to the virus being anything other than one of the normal epidemics. Besides the (far from inconsequential) fact that the scary statistics we received in the beginning ("457 Spaniards have died in the past 24 hours," "The death toll in Italy has now reached 34,000," etc) happened to apply mainly to weakened seniors in clinics and retirement homes (see point 4), those news reports have totally ceased — not in the past three to four days, not in the past three to four weeks, but in the past three to four months…

3) In that perspective, do you remember the Sherlock Holmes story about the dog that did not bark in the night? Fake news is usually not about stating flat-out lies, but about the medias' professional drama queens refraining from reporting a certain type of news — notably news that are… positive and inspiring. 

During the past nine months, has there been a single country, a single city in the world where a single person has seen a single (rotting?) corpse lying in the street or a single disfigured person wailing in the subway as he or she collapses to the floor, erupting in convulsions and vomiting black blood? The answer is No, correct?

4) In other words, most of the infected were/are already in hospices, and if anyone feels unwell, they can simply choose to self-quarantine (exactly as Donald and Melania have just done) or, if need be, head for a hospital (see point 6). This, incidentally, is based on the revolutionary concept that (wait for it) the average adult is actually a responsible being with little need for bureaucrats, politicians, and kings (see, say, 1776) and who can be counted on to (yes) behave with a minimum of maturity.

Speaking of which: wouldn't it be nice if élites and politicians — aka professional drama queens always on the outlook for crises, real or imagined — started treating adults like responsible adults and stopped their attempts to derail their respective economies? As far as I know, none of these knights in shining armor have made any sacrifices themselves, by, say, requesting that their salaries be lowered, if not outright canceled…

As for the main argument against my position — i.e.,  the argument of those who blindly follow every command given by authority — unless I am mistaken, it has little to do with the virus and knowledge of epidemics past or present: it seems to be based on this, and no more: that we must trust the authorities and we must follow the rules, i.e., we must trust that professional politicians and our élites know what they are doing and talking about…

5) Now the world is seeing another outbreak of Covid-19 (of which, more below), but the only news we get nowadays is "Denmark registers 76 new Corona-infected" or "1,000 new hospitalizations in France in the past seven days." And yet, these reports continue to frighten us (or, at least, the politicians) just as much as with the dreadful death tolls at the outset, in February, and they continue to create just as much mass hysteria.

Moreover, the word quarantine comes from the French (or the Italian) quarantaine, which means 40 days' internment (and not a single day more). After nine months, let it be known that there exists no such word in French as centquarantaine (140 days), or as deuxcentsoixantaine (260 days)… And in any case, quarantine has always been for sick people alone, not for healthy people…

6) Indeed, today, for the overwhelming majority of infected, catching the virus means nothing more than two or three weeks in self-imposed quarantine (as it happens, three weeks' worth of interment is just about half of the prescribed 40 days, so the quarantine itself seems historically to have been a safe side measure), just like it did for people as varied as Tom Hanks, Madonna, Silvio Berlusconi, Prince Charles, Monaco's Albert II, and Greta Thunberg (for Boris Johnson, a brief stay in a hospital). What this suggests is that the average person (or at least the average Westerner) is, again, someone who behaves responsibly and is doing exactly what he or she would do if taken ill under any normal epidemic, with any normal flu, or, really, with any disease at all — including… the common cold!

In fact, if the survival rate of the virus is close to 100%, one is entitled to ask: what is the point of all the fuss to look for a vaccine?

7) In other words, it becomes self-evident that A) the Chinese virus is not, and has never been, significantly different from one of the common epidemics and B) we are in the middle of an outbreak of either a global scam (of which, more below) or mass hysteria (if not a combination of both). 

In that perspective, the politicians and the central planners of all Western countries are hereby invited to stop with their attempts to get their respective healthy and non-infected citizens to dress up like Boba Fett or like a circus clown; and same politicians and bureaucrats are hereby summoned, without further ado, to bring their attempts to destroy their respective countries' economies to an immediate halt.

In short: Offer the elderly, and those with weak immune systems, quarantine, and break the chains of the rest of the population.

• Update: Nr. 8) Here Is the Key Question Regarding the Coronavirus

A final note about the new wave of Covid-19 — which occurred, by the oddest and by the most peculiar of coincidences, after America's Democrats and the rest of the world's alleged "health experts" abruptly made a 180º turn in May regarding face-masks, social distancing, and lock-downs (all for the citizens' safety, of course) and decided that gigantic crowds engaging in mass protests — in addition to riots, arson, looting, and statue toppling — were suddenly permissible, indeed encouraged, if only they were/are in pursuit of the fight against racism, real or alleged. (Yes, you're right, these would be the same politicians who passed rules to arrest a lone paddle boarder off the Malibu coast or who ordered police helicopters over the Vosges mountains to fine isolated hikers…)

There is a theory that the hysterical response to the Wuhan virus (as well as the 180º protests) actually is (are) little more than a more or less well-thought-out clandestine plan by the Democrats and the rest of the world's politicians — few, if any, of whom make any sacrifices themselves (aren't all of them still getting their salaries?) — to weaken the economies of the United States and of the entire West in order to defeat Donald Trump in November.

No matter how you feel, dear reader, rightly or otherwise, about Donald Trump, I ask you the following question: Is the leader of one country such a danger for America and for the world that regular folk across the planet, our fellow citizens, our neighbors, and our families must accept downturns, bankruptcies, and other means of sacrifice — in addition to riots and looting — in order to bring down said leader?

In that case, I have what I believe is a truly extraordinary suggestion to make (and I believe that this just might apply to whether you are an American citizen or the citizen of any foreign country): 

As a citizen who has never been asked (before an election or at any other time) whether I agreed to the stealth policies of our politicians (in the USA, they are called not "our leaders" but "our servants") destroying, directly or indirectly, the economy, our businesses, and our statues — and engaging in the creation of mass impoverishment among our people, our neighbors, and our families — I would suggest that the élites in America, in Denmark, and elsewhere in Europe might not only be just as dreadful as Donald Trump allegedly is, they might actually be far worse.

From the March and April archives:
• Is There 100% Irrefutable Proof that the Covid19 Pandemic Is Overstated?
• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619 

• Update: Here Is the Key Question Regarding the Coronavirus

“Speaking Truth to Power” et al: The Left’s Most Common Catchphrases

Father Paul Graney’s impassioned Saturday evening homily will not soon be forgotten in Michigan and beyond

writes Benny Huang.

The Dearborn-based Catholic priest … seems to have caused chaos and dismay when he spoke out against the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement as “evil.”

“Cars have been torched,” said Graney. “Property has been destroyed. Businesses looted and burned, and police officers and other people have been intimidated, assaulted, and even murdered. All in the name of justice.”

Naturally, some people said his message was beyond the pale. But I say, preach it, brother!

As if to confirm everything Graney had said, later that same evening an assailant ambushed two Los Angeles County sheriffs’ deputies as they sat in a cruiser.

Miraculously, both survived. Though we don’t know for certain that the perpetrator was a BLM activist, it isn’t a huge leap to make in this current climate of anti-police enmity to think that the shooting was meant to avenge the death of George Floyd.

We do know however that BLM activists made tracks to the local hospital after the shooting in order to block the entrances and exits. If BLM didn’t perpetrate the murderous act — and I suspect it did — it at least applauded it. BLM activists were apparently shouting, “We hope they f*cking die!” … They later swarmed the emergency room. 

 … Nike gave a shoe deal to third-rate ex-quarterback Colin Kaepernick for having the courage to take a knee during the national anthem. His actions caused “pain, anger, and frustration” among some NFL fans who made their gripes known to the league. But the league didn’t care about those fans.

 … But Kaepernick’s newfound fans, most of whom love his politics more than his football, assert without evidence that he paid dearly for speaking out about racism and police brutality, two of the fakest pandemics in America today. There is no epidemic of police violence against unarmed black men.

The disparate treatment between activists like Kaepernick and activists like Father Paul Graney puts the lie to some of the Left’s most common catchphrases. Here are just a few.

“Difficult Conversations”

If I’ve learned anything over the past few months it’s that we’re all supposed to be having “difficult conversations” about race, privilege, systemic racism, and police brutality. Some of us are forced by our employers to participate in these difficult conversations under the implied threat of losing our jobs.

All Father Graney was trying to do was to start a different kind of difficult conversation with his parish. He soon learned that difficult conversations about certain issues are prohibited because those conversations are difficult for the wrong people.

Rest assured that conversations about race, privilege, systemic racism and police brutality are not “difficult” for everyone. They’re not difficult, for example, for the black lady who runs the “diversity and inclusion” office at your workplace. It’s all she ever talks about. She has a four-year degree in those subjects and she reads books about them during her lunch break — just for fun!

These kinds of conversations are difficult for people who cannot say anything lest they be accused of “whitesplaining,” using “dog whistles” and “coded language,” or committing “microaggressions.” They’re difficult for people who haven’t kept up with the latest terminology — “Latinx,” “people of color,” “DREAMers” — and who know that at any moment they might face an extreme social penalty for using a term that was completely acceptable until just a few years ago.  And they’re most difficult of all for people who merely dissent from the domineering white guilt narrative that is constantly being shoved down our throats.

In other words, these conversations are difficult for people who make the mistake of believing that they are actual conversations. They aren’t. They’re Maoist struggle sessions in which one side lectures and the other side engages in copious amounts of self-flagellation. They’re degrading and that’s the point.

The first thing you have to do during these Maoist struggle sessions is to agree that you are hopelessly racist because not owning your racism is racist in and of itself. Also, you may not sit quietly in the corner and watch the clock tick by. When the wokeness police come knocking, you do not have the right to remain silent because “silence is violence.” Speech is also violence if the words express any kind of disagreement. The only thing that is not violence is unconditional surrender to their agenda coupled with a humiliating petition for racial forgiveness — which may not be granted.

“Peaceful Protest”

Father Graney’s homily was a peaceful protest in the greatest American tradition, yet he may still pay a price for it because not all peaceful protests are created equal. Peacefully protesting police violence against black people is lauded in our society; peacefully protesting against the much more common occurrence of black violence against police officers — or against one another — is not.

I’ll never forget the first time I heard the old “peaceful protest” yarn used to defend anthem-kneeling football players. After years and years of watching people lose their jobs for disagreeing with left-wing orthodoxy, it seemed disingenuous that left-wing orthodoxy was suddenly squarely behind peaceful protest. Talk about “strange new respect!”

Most people, I believe, would agree that peaceful protest shouldn’t cost a person his job. Most people, that is, except employers. Not one employer I have ever had has allowed me to “peacefully protest” while on the clock — and I’ve had a lot of employers. Nor have I ever had a job at which I had anything resembling unfettered free speech. I could have been fired from any of my many jobs for remarks made in private conversation, or even off the clock. I certainly would have been fired if my aggressive political opinions had alienated even a handful of customers — which is exactly what Kaepernick did.

The “peaceful protest” card immunizes people with the right opinions from losing their jobs, being disciplined, or even being criticized. However, those of us who engage in Wrongthink may not play this card. And that includes Paul Graney.

“Speaking Truth to Power”

Just days into the 2016 season, CNN informed us that Colin Kaepernick was “bravely speaking truth to power.” Leftists love that phrase.

But it’s a lie. Leftists never speak truth to power because they never speak truth. The best they can manage is to speak untruths to power and more often they don’t even do that. I don’t know what “power” Kaepernick was speaking to, but I do know that he was far afield of the truth. Cops are not hunting blacks for sport and in fact they kill more whites every year than blacks.

Father Graney on the other hand did speak truth to power. We’re living through an epidemic of violence and destruction all predicated on a myth and propelled by an evil, racist, anti-American, anti-family group of Marxist agitators called BLM. His homily struck a blow against the most powerful people of all: the architects of the official narrative. I’m talking here about Big Government, Big Business, Big Education, and most of all, Big Media. If that’s not speaking truth to power, nothing is.

I sure hope Father Graney hangs tough. We as a society have a duty to stick up for courageous truth-tellers. Not only should he not receive a lick of punishment, he really ought to have his stature elevated in the Church. Is it too soon to start talking about Graney for pope?