A Time for Truth

Yesterday was Father’s Day. I thought I might approach today’s topic by talking about fathers in the family as an essential ingredient for civilization. That’s true. But the urgent situation doesn’t give us enough time to solve things by means of that necessity only.

So, with that fatherhood idea in the background, this message is for those who already learned enough about living in a civilized world.

Truth is always better.

Jordan Peterson’s Rule for Life #8: Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie.

Also,

Thou shalt not bear false witness against they neighbor.—Exodus 20:16

Some things we’ve known for a very long time, but as humans we keep re-testing. As if, “Maybe it’s different now, for me, in my circumstances.”

Hint: It’s not different. You don’t make things better—in the long run—by lying.

So when some new power monger comes at you with a threat of ruining your life if you don’t bow and speak untruths that they dictate to you, would your life be better off if you lie?

Back in the day, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were told to lie by kneeling to display their worship of the king as their deity. They didn’t. Their honor was at stake. Their standing with the God they worshipped was at stake.

August Landmesser, the man who didn't salute Hitler
image from here

Bowing down has meaning. Often religious meaning. Certainly it is submissive. By doing it you grant power to the entity to whom you are bowing down. If you’re doing that while it is a lie, you are granting power to an entity you do not wish to serve.

Sometimes it’s another gesture, maybe a salute, or taking a disrespectful knee when the national anthem is playing.

What am I referring to? A power-mongering movement disguised as a gesture of goodwill.

Black lives do matter—as well as all other human lives. God is no respecter of persons. God-given rights are granted to all humans. In our country, founded on the idea that all of us are created equal—rather than granting certain classes or individuals special rights before the law, as has been common historically—that should be obvious to us.

But suddenly it’s uncomfortable to say so. More than that, it’s dangerous to say so. People have lost their livelihoods for holding such a belief.

Something is very wrong.

It’s bigger than this issue, but this is one that illustrates our dire straits. Here’s what it is. While black lives matter, Black Lives Matter is a coercive force intent on taking down our civilization and replacing it with a tyrannical racist regime. And they’re working to force you to submit to them.

Bad guys have a pattern that includes depending on people of goodwill to act as expected—to humbly do what it takes to get along, to be sympathetic, to examine themselves and recognize their own imperfections. To say, “excuse me,” even when the other person bumped into them; to assume maybe they were in the way. People of goodwill are expected to be apologetic for the sake of civility.

With the bad guys, your very act of saying, “Maybe you’re right; I’m certainly not perfect” is used, not to improve the relationship between you and the bad guy, but to give the bad guy ammunition to use against you.

The solution? Tell the absolute truth. At the very least, don’t lie about some pretend sin you’re accused of in the hopes of getting exoneration and moving on. You’re not dealing with civilized people; this isn’t a small thing to be dispensed of with an “excuse me.”

If you have never enslaved anyone, you do not help anyone by apologizing for slavery to someone who has never been enslaved. If you’ve been falsely accused, expect to be convicted of the crime once you confess to it. Don’t give a false confession.

If you’ve treated people of all races equally, not only before the law, but as a natural part of your community of friends, acquaintances, and coworkers, then do not say, “Please forgive me for my inherent racism.” Why are you speaking that lie? Your words and life have already revealed your heart. If that isn’t enough, then you’re dealing with something completely outside of civilization.

The bad guys are not looking for ways toward peace; they are looking for ways toward power.

And right now Black Lives Matter is an entity seeking and gaining power—not for the sake of benevolent rule, but for the sake of ruling in violently coercive tyranny.

A few days ago Tucker Carlson discussed this on his show. It was frightening. Polls show this political force actually has higher approval than the president, or the Democrat candidate for president, or really than either party. People have been told by a lying media that approval of Black Lives Matter equals recognizing the struggles of a particular race—and, since you don’t want to appear racist, then of course you must support this movement.

No. Don’t fall for this bait and switch. Having sympathy for a group, instead of individuals, may be unwise in itself, but still it does not require you to give up approval of your nation with its freedoms, prosperity, and civilization. It does not require you to bow down to Marxist thugs whose plan is to dismantle everything you know as civilization and replace it with tyranny—with them in charge—along with the natural results: poverty, and savagery.

That’s the choice you’re making by supporting them. At least have the presence of mind to do it consciously.

Here’s something to think about: blacks do not need you, as a person of a different color, to grant them the right to matter.

There’s a PragerU video out this past week, combining part of a talk by Jordan Peterson on privilege with a 5-minute video by black former cop Brandon Tatum on the wrongness of supporting the idea that you’re required to feel guilty about some invention called “white privilege.”

In Peterson’s part, he says that we have all kinds of privileges, and we shouldn’t apologize for them. Here are his words:

I think the idea of white privilege is absolutely reprehensible. And it’s not because white people aren’t privileged. We have all sorts of privileges. And most people have privileges of all sorts. And you should be grateful for your privileges and work to deserve them, I would say.

But the idea that you can target an ethnic group with a collective crime, regardless of the specific innocence or guilt of the constituent elements of that group—there is absolutely nothing that is more racist than that. It’s absolutely abhorrent.

He talks about the kulaks, farmers in the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

They were the most productive element of the agricultural strata in Russia. And they were virtually all killed and raped and robbed by the collectivists, who insisted that, because they showed signs of wealth, they were criminals and robbers. One of the consequences of the prosecution of the kulaks was the death of 6 million Ukrainians in the famine in the 1930s.

He makes the point, “The idea of collectively held guilt at the level of the individual as a legal or philosophical principle is dangerous.” The 20^th Century has plenty of history to teach us that.

But, as you’ve probably noticed, history is one of the things the thugs are tearing down.

If you’ve paid attention to history, you know that punishing children for the crimes of their fathers was common in the ancient and pagan world; bringing it back is not progress.

Brandon Tatum, in his part, talks directly to those white people who think they’re more sensitive than all. To them he says,

Woke white people, I’d like to ask you a favor: Please stop asking for forgiveness for your white privilege. You’re not fooling anybody. You’re not helping black people, or any other minority. And your public confessions don’t make you look virtuous. They make you look disingenuous, which is a really nice way of saying fake, phony, and fraudulent.

He debunks the white privilege myth. Those things he’s supposed to have suffered? He hasn’t. Not only that, he says,

In many ways, in today’s America, blacks have more privilege than whites. It’s been my experience that whites bend over backwards to give blacks every possible advantage. If two people are equally qualified for a job, the black person will usually get it. Big companies and prestigious universities fall all over one another trying to sign up talented black people. If you deny this, you’re denying reality.

But his main point is that, you people apologizing for your skin color, you’re doing it for self-serving reasons:

To acknowledge your white privilege is supposed to make you feel bad. Only it doesn’t. It makes you feel good, because, by acknowledging your white privilege, you’re declaring yourself to be enlightened. And, as a virtue bonus, it also makes you a better person than those whites who don’t acknowledge their privilege. White privilege, which is supposed to make you feel bad, ends up making you feel good.

Meanwhile, the real damage is to blacks. What makes whites feel good makes blacks angry. More than 50 years after the Civil Rights movement, the message is, “You’re still oppressed.” How can this not create a victim mentality?

He takes on the idea that the type of privilege you get from skin color matters more than plenty of other factors:

screenshot from here

Let’s take this for example. A black lawyer and his wife have a baby. And a meth addict single white woman has a baby. Which kid has privilege? The white one? Because he’s white? Come on, now.

Finally, he tells us what’s really going on:

So let’s be real. White privilege is an attempt by the left to divide Americans by race. It’s all theory, and all nonsense. If you want to fall for it, go ahead. It’s a free country. But don’t try to sell it to me.

I’m an American who deals with my fellow Americans one-on-one. Try it. It works.

screenshot from here

Brandon Tatum feels a lot more a part of my community than a person of my color who is a Marxist America hater. Maybe ideas and behavior matter a whole lot more than melanin content.

Candace Owens has been called a traitor to her “black community” for speaking out against Black Lives Matter, and in favor of personal responsibility. Here’s how she answers:

The criticism that I often get is, “Candace, how can you not support your community?” My answer to that is, How could you think that that represents my community? My community is not a group of men that do drugs. It’s not a group of men who taser police officers. It’s not a group of men who assault police officers, or who don’t want to listen to basic instructions.

My community is the larger American community, the community built on law-abiding citizens, who want to make sure they can raise their children and their families in a country that they recognize. In a country that is not run by radicals. In a country that is free of autonomous cities and states being built of radical individuals and socialists screaming, and demanding justice, and setting fires, and rioting and looting businesses. That is not the America that I recognize. It is not the America that I want to raise my children in. It is not the America that I want to see my family live in. And so I use my voice to speak out against it.

My question is, Why don’t you?

The people trying to sell the “white privilege” idea? They’re the racists. They hate you for your skin color. And they intend to rule over you by force. Do you really think that would be an improvement over our constitutional republic?

My concern is that, while we’re not looking, while too many people are pandering and mollifying and patting themselves on the back for their wokeness, an evil force is gaining power in our country, and that power doesn’t care about laws or elections or civilized expectations.

Don’t give in. Don’t sympathize with their false narrative. Don’t play nice to get along. Don’t kneel and mutter a lie.

Speak up with truth—or at the very least don’t lie.