Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

TUCKER CARLSON QUIZZES PLANNED PARENTHOOD SPOKESPERSON

Witness the multiple contortions encountered in the refusal to answer the question,  "If you can feel a heartbeat, what is that thing tht's being aborted?  Is it a piece of tissue?  Is it a separate human being?"

 

TIM KELLER SPEAKS AT GOOGLE - "MAKING SENSE OF GOD" (VIDEO)

This is a tremendous talk which gets better and better as it goes along.  He was invited to speak on his new book, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical.   

 

RESTORED B-29 TAKES TO THE AIR

A friend sent this to me.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

PRAYER IN THE WHITE HOUSE FOR JUDGE NEIL GORSUCH SUPREME COURT NOMINATION

I hadn't seen this photo until a friend sent it to me earlier today.  This "moment of prayer photo" was tweeted out 2/1/17 after President Trump announced the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court.  

Among those pictured in the huddle are Trump; his sons Donald Jr. and Eric; Vice President Mike Pence; second lady Karen Pence; Chief of Staff Reince Priebus; Gorsuch and his wife Louise; and from the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's family, his widow Maureen Scalia and son Paul, a Catholic priest.

 

 

EUROPEAN MUSLIM TERROR ATTACKS WHITEWASHED AS "PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS"

Daniel Greenfield castigates the spineless European governments and media for looking the other way or finding excuses for Muslim terrorist attacks.   Greenfield writes:

In a Dusseldorf train station, Fatmir, a Muslim refugee from Kosovo, went on the attack with an axe. His victims included several adults and a 13-year-old girl.

The authorities are blaming his attack on that familiar standby; drug and psychological problems.

There have been quite a few Muslims in Germany boarding the crazy train and trying to ride it all the way to the 72 virgins, dazzling white camels and musk mountains of Islamic paradise.

In July, a Muslim refugee took an axe and assaulted passengers on a train in Würzburg while shouting, “Allahu Akbar”.

Muhammad Riyad, the unaccompanied Afghan minor, had come seeking asylum. He concluded his stay in Germany by slashing and stabbing a family from Hong Kong. His motive was hotly debated.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann insisted that he wasn’t an ISIS Jihadist. He denied that ISIS had ordered the attack.  Then an ISIS flag was found in his room.

The Interior Minister vowed to follow every lead to determine his motive. To help him out, ISIS released a video of Muhammad brandishing a knife while vowing to “slaughter infidels”.  

"They will slaughter you in your own back yard and they will live in your houses and break your rules and take your land. We will target you in every village, every city and every airport Allah Willing,” he ranted.

That was a strongly worded hint. But German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere argued that the attack occupied “a grey area between a crazed rampage and a terrorist act.”

"ASSISTED SUICIDE: THE MUSICAL" -- A THEATRICAL RESPONSE TO EUTHANASIA PROPAGANDA

If you don't read anything else today, you can call it a good and important day just by reading this article.   (Available on p. 2 below.)    As you probably know, assisted suicide propagandists latch on to mantras such as "death with dignity," "the right to die," and "self-determination" and in turn receive only limited effective pushback from opponents of euthanasia.  But then along comes Liz Carr, a person who suffers from a genetic disorder that prevents her from extending her muscles, who crafts a musical which has performed in the U.K. to rave reviews.

I can only say, "Bravo!" and again, "Bravo!"  A musical (!) is an extraordinary-- and entertaining --  way to engage in cultural debate and offers an important supplement to debates, speeches, documentaries, and interviews.  My hope is that other creative people hearing of this musical will be inspired to give reign to their own creative juices and produce similar musicals or other inventive creations that relate to contemporary debates.  I note that Dinesh D'Souza in a recent speech said he would be moving from documentaries to producing full length dramas in order to reach more people.

Here is a brief introduction to Ms. Carr's "Assisted Suicide: The Musical":

SHELBY STEELE - LIBERALS' ARROGATION OF MORAL AUTHORITY AS PERSONAL IDENTITY

Tucker Carlson's interview with Shelby Steele deepened my understanding of liberals.  I gained insight into the modern American liberal's profound sense of moral superiority and identity which renders ideological conversation and debate impossible.   An opponent is evil and his or her speech must be shut down.

Shelby Steele's Wall Street Journal article which occasioned the interview is titled, The Exhaustion of American Liberalism. 

Partial transcript beginning at the 3:15 minute mark: 

Liberalism is not an ideology.  It is an identity.  People who think of themselves as liberals really are adhering to an identity, to the idea of "my personal self."  I am the kind of person who is above racism, who is above sexism.  And if you take that position that I don't like, then you are challenging not just my ideas, but you are challenging me as a human being with a particular identity and that is why the passions, the ferocity of the Left that we see today in the streets and elsewhere.

There's a complete shutdown of any honest intellectual exchange because you are not threatening my ideas, you are threatening me, and I don't have the patience to be reasonable and argue with you on the basis of reason.  I need to literally extinguish or annihilate you in your position.  You see the anti-Trump sentiment in many ways.   Annihilate him!  There is nothing redeeming in this man!  And so forth, because...  liberalism is an identity

TIME FOR A COMEDY PAUSE - CHILDREN INTERRUPT BBC NEWS INTERVIEW

A BBC interview with Professor Robert Kelly on South Korean politics gets interrupted by family members.  Watch!

Allahpundit comments appropriately:

It’s perfect comedy. There’s the self-serious straight man; the swaggering two-year-old, strutting her stuff like she owns the place; the surprise punchline of the baby rolling in; and then the Kramer-esque entrance by mom, reducing to pulling the door shut from her knees as she struggles to control the chaos around her. . . .  Everyone’s timing is superb. You couldn’t script it better.

Update:  Ben Thompson does a frame by frame commentary that will enhance your viewing enjoyment!

AYAAN HIRSI ALI - WESTERN FEMINISTS NEED TO SPEAK UP FOR MUSLIM WOMEN

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somali-born research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, founder of the AHA Foundation (which exists to protect women and girls from abuses), author of a February Op-Ed piece, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sharia?," yesterday wrote an article regarding the International Women's Day saying:

 . . . As a moral and legal code, Sharia law is demeaning and degrading to women. It requires women to be placed under the care of male guardians; it views a woman’s testimony in court as worth half that of a man’s; and it permits a husband to beat his wife. It’s not only women’s legal and sexual freedoms that are curtailed under Sharia but their economic freedoms as well. Women generally inherit half of the amount that men inherit, and their male guardian must consent to their choosing education, work, or travel.

In Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, and parts of Nigeria, where Sharia law underpins the judicial system, women’s rights suffer greatly.

There is a growing trend among some feminists to make excuses for Sharia law and claim it is nothing more than a personal moral guide, and therefore consistent with American constitutional liberties. Yet the rules that such “Sharia-lite feminists” voluntarily choose to follow are also invoked to oppress women—to marry them off, to constrain their economic and human rights, and to limit their freedom of expression—who have not consented to them. The moral conflict between Sharia and universal human rights should not be dismissed as a misunderstanding, but openly discussed.

DINESH D'SOUZA ON "TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME"

D'Souza delivered a really terrific speech at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas on March 7, 2017.  He knows history as few others do, and tells facts about fascism, slavery, and the Democratic party that will astonish you.   Stay tuned for the Q&A.  Terrific.  Note: the video has a long lead-in.  The introduction doesn't begin until about the 19:30 minute mark.

 

 

DAVID HOROWITZ - "THE WAR AGAINST TRUMP"

David Horowitz  writes:

As I explained in my book Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America, the source of this civil war mentality is a profound rejection of the American idea. This is the idea that we are equal citizens regardless of our origins, and that we are accountable as individuals for what we do. The left’s creed – identity politics – is an anti-American, racially charged determination to reject individual accountability and individual freedom, and to establish in their place group privileges, and racial/gender hierarchies. These hierarchies are based on the malicious premise that whites, heterosexuals and males are oppressors and - in the words of the Democratic platform - America is a society governed by “systemic racism,” which needs to be fundamentally transformed.

This collectivist, racial creed is the heart and soul of today’s Democratic Party and its allies in the mainstream media. It is the inspiration for the war Democrats have declared on the newly elected government of Donald Trump. In his inaugural address, Trump addressed the war in uncompromising but thoroughly American terms. “Through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other…. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice…. Whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag.” This is the American creed, and it is the voice of the American people who elected Trump in November 2016.

[Read the whole thing.  It's not long.]