Good point by Malcolm Gladwell that trans people have won their place at the table but then went too far in demanding that no one dare question such things as the advantage of biological males competing in women’s sports. That demand came with bullying threats.
Those who dared challenge such things (even just question it) were smeared as “hating trans people”. Panel guest David Angelo adds that if you challenged the trans activist’s dogma they would “destroy your career”. Apply that across many issues.
Gutfeld and panel discuss how many people remained silent due to fear of being smeared, vilified, ostracized, and cancelled during outbreaks of bullying hysteria over past years- i.e. fearful to publicly challenge the Russia Collusion lie, Covid lies, Biden’s mental state, biological males in female sports, the climate crisis narrative, etc.
They discuss those who, contrary to Gladwell’s cowardice, had the courage to speak out and pay the cost of public backlash from bullying extremists. Gladwell admits that he knew better but remained silent out of fear. He was “cowed”.
“Gutfeld! 9/5/25 Greg Gutfeld Full End Show, Breaking News Today, September 5, 2025”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o35tidvEZ8
More comments and links below on this issue of cowardice and courage in the face of threatening mobs. We continue to live through these “madness of crowds” episodes of varied forms- i.e. climate hysteria, Far-left Woke Progressive censorship and authoritarianism (arresting citizens for online comments that upset others), etc.
More on the courage and cowardice front:
“A void of moral courage at the very heart of the Liberal party (Canada): The fact that 80% of the Liberal caucus didn’t sign a letter denouncing antisemitism speaks volumes”, Avi Benlolo, Sept. 5, 2025
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/a-void-of-moral-courage-at-the-very-heart-of-the-liberal-party?itm_source=index
Quotes:
“Leadership in the fight against antisemitism is measured not by words, but by action. This week, Quebec MP Anthony Housefather and 31 of his Liberal colleagues signed a statement on “the deplorable rise of antisemitism in Canada.”
“It was a clear, moral and necessary acknowledgement of the hatred that is endangering Jewish-Canadians. The statement recognized that a Jewish woman was stabbed in Ottawa solely because she was Jewish; that synagogues, schools and Jewish-owned businesses are under threat; that monuments have been defaced; and that this reality has become chillingly normalized in our country.
“It drew a link between October 7 and the rising tide of antisemitism, while also pointing to statistics showing that the Jewish community, representing just one per cent of the Canadian population, is the target of 70 per cent of hate crimes. The MPs are correct: antisemitism is a spreading plague that demands action.
“And yet, the deafening silence in response spoke louder than the statement itself. Out of 169 Liberal members of Parliament, only 31 joined Housefather in signing the statement. Of those, at least five are Jewish….”
See also below- “Mendel continues the past historical development of the apocalyptic mythology that has since dominantly shaped Western narratives, consciousness, and civilization across the past two millennia.”
Here is a fascinating discussion of evolutionary psychology by two experts in the discipline:
“Dr. Geoffrey Miller- Evolutionary Psychology, Human Mating, and Academic Life (The Saad Truth- 1887), Gad Saad, Sept. 2, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OguFPVCDzxI
These two touch on some very interesting ideas from evolutionary psychology that expose where Woke Progressivism has violated fundamental human nature in pursuit of unrealistic utopian visions. This has been evident in the Cracker Barrel and Budweiser false steps (“Go woke, go broke”) that cost those companies severely as they shifted toward woke ideals in their advertising, ideals that normal people react against due to natural human psychology.
Miller and Saad say that is the result of letting elite “empathy signalling” political views dominate advertising. The “educated” elites shaping the advertising, missed entirely what their customer base wanted in reality, as evolutionary psychology input could have warned them. You can tell women, for example, that they must embrace feminized versions of men, but you are violating basic human nature in doing that and it will fail, even with so-identified “liberal progressive” women. Romance novels will give you more insight into what all women naturally desire in men. What has been demonized as “toxic masculinity”.
Also, they offer some interesting comment on Thomas Sowell’s “unconstrained vision”, the idea of parents telling their children that they can become anything they desire. That is simply a “false hope” that can be very damaging to children who may then invest excessive time and resources in pursuit of some occupation or goal that they can never attain.
Aristotle is known for originating empirical science by observing actual nature to see what is happening and then making conclusions from that evidence. Climate cult alarmists have not learned how to do that yet. Not even the “leading expert” scientists.
Ideologically/politically shaped climate models, that grossly exaggerate the human contribution all out of touch with natural reality, take precedence over empirical evidence. Hence, the fraudulent apocalyptic narrative of “climate crisis” that has cost humanity trillions of wasted dollars and significantly damaged Western societies, harming the poorest people the most (i.e. needlessly inflated energy costs that spread inflation to the 6000 “fossil fuel derivative” products that our societies depend on).
“No evidence climate change has accelerated sea level rise, finds first global study of real world data: Drawing on 100 years of data, the authors found an average rise of just 1.5mm per year”, Michael Shellenberger, Sept. 2, 2025
https://www.public.news/p/no-evidence-climate-change-has-accelerated
Shellenberger opens:
“For over a quarter-century the world’s leading climate scientists and news media have warned that human-caused climate change has doubled the rate of sea level rise and is thus putting civilization in grave danger. “We will see at least four feet of sea level rise and possibly ten by the end of the century,” wrote The New York Times’ David Wallace-Wells in 2019. “The oceans we know won’t survive climate change,” claimed The Atlantic that same year. The author, Robinson Meyer, quoted estimates by Princeton University’s Michael Oppenheimer that sea levels would rise by more than 34 inches by 2100.”
He notes that those exaggerated claims have all been proven false by the first global study of “sea level rise data rather than on models extrapolating from assumptions.” The study is “A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes,” by Hessel Voortman, a Dutch engineer, and Rob de Vos, a researcher.
These two researchers discovered that “The average rate of sea level rise in 2020 is (only) around 1.5 mm/year (15 cm per century),” and “This is significantly lower than the 3 to 4 mm/year often reported by climate scientists in scientific literature and the media.”
They conclude that, “Headlines about sea level rise have been catastrophic for decades.”
To assist understanding of why some exaggerate the threat of looming apocalyptic disaster (catastrophize natural events and rhythms in the world) add here sociologist David Altheide’s “Creating Fear: News and the construction of crisis”. Altheide notes that proclamations of catastrophe gains followers and income. And remember the totalitarian’s formula of “Fear=control”, so well expressed by H. L. Mencken:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”, In Defense of Women.
Shellenberger notes the same incentive in climate alarmism: “The same incentives behind climate alarmism were at work when it came to sea level rise. Journalists and scientists have an incentive to exaggerate the effects of climate change to attract attention, readers, and funding.”
He continues, “At the same time, it’s notable that the error when it came to sea level came from exaggerating its size, which is similar to the scientific exaggerations on other issues in recent years, including on atolls, glaciers, ice loss, and coral reefs.”
His conclusion: “The IPCC and the news media have become increasingly politicized and alarmist”. Welcome to apocalyptic exaggeration, alarmism, and hysteria, known formally in historical research as the phenomenon of “Madness of crowds”.
These from Taibbi. I strongly recommend subscribing to Taibbi’s Substack- “Racket News”. He and Walter Kirn do the excellent summary of major issues of our day on their “America This Week”.
“On the ‘Ersatz Religion’ of Transhumanism: Interview with Dr. Aaron Kheriaty: One of the Covid-19 pandemic’s most suppressed voices speaks on the conflict between the transhumanist project and human nature”, Matt Taibbi, Sept. 2, 2025
https://www.racket.news/p/on-the-ersatz-religion-of-transhumanism
Quotes from this Taibbi article:
“Oxford’s Nick Bostrum described transhumanism as the rejection of the traditional idea that the “human condition” is static, and that science and technology may be embraced to welcome in a “dazzling landscape of radical possibilities, ranging from unlimited bliss to the extinction of intelligent life”… A precondition for any and all these beliefs, however, is the idea that human nature is neither fixed nor worth preserving…”
“Aaron Kheriaty: I’ve had an interest in transhumanism, I would say, for a few years, just philosophically on a low level. Entry-level forms of transhumanism basically involve questions about the use of medical technologies for so-called human enhancement. So, that’s a bioethics question…”
“Aaron Kheriaty: That’s right. If you take transhumanism far enough, you get to the point where essentially there is no such thing as a human nature or a healthy, well-working human body that would be normative. The idea is that we’re just raw biological material. We’re a blank slate that you can refashion or remake with whatever technologies we’re capable of developing…. what we have instead is raw biological material that can be hacked and upgraded and the hardware is potentially infinitely malleable…”
“The first philosopher in the Western tradition to deny that there was such a thing as human nature was Karl Marx… The foundation of Marx’s philosophy was a radical rejection of any form of dependence. And he thought basically that mankind as a whole was a blank slate that we could radically refashion, but we did that by refashioning society…”
“Look at any of the totalitarianisms of the 20th century. Not only did they fail to achieve their stated aims, they produced the exact opposite of what they aimed for. I worry that transhumanism would do the same thing. Not only would it fail to create superhumans or super happy humans, I worry that it would produce an increase in human misery.”
And this also from Taibbi:
“The War on Humanity: The belief that humanity can be transcended, once a dream, is demanding acceptance as fact, with tragic consequences”, Matt Taibbi, Sept. 2, 2025
https://www.racket.news/p/the-war-on-humanity
Quotes from article:
“transhumanism arises from the groins of transgenderism…”
“… impieties to the transhumanist religion have risen to become arrestable offenses in an increasingly censorious West. Some of the stern new police tactics are pitched as responses to the increased threat of right-wing populism, but it seems more in reaction to the public’s refusal to accept doctrinal dictates…”
“If you’re like me (or comedian Louis C.K., below) and you wondered in the past about the outsized amount of ink and activist attention paid to transgender issues, you’ve probably by now realized the topic carries a political imperative beyond the rights of a small “marginalized” community…”
“When activists successfully lobbied Americans to accept gay rights, they stressed research that showed people are born with same-sex inclinations. The trans issue was presented differently. Activists demanded the general public revise its understanding of biology, even the idea that “male” and “female” exist (a form of disinformation called “sex essentialism,” they said).”
(End of Taibbi article quotes)
“This Is What It’s Like to Spend Your Life in Prison | NYT Opinion”, The New York Times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chpgT_VTEjE
Men imprisoned for life without parole tell their stories of how they have changed and are no longer the young men who made destructive mistakes harming others. This video clip points to “Second Look” reforms for those lifers who have transformed themselves and have already served a major portion of their sentences. Many have made significant changes in their lives.
If people are concerned that they might harm others on release, if they are able to access the “Second Look” programs, the clip points out that of those released, less than 3% are rearrested and frequently for technicalities and not violent crimes.
One of the inmates asks- Where does the rehabilitation process end? Does it have a goal somewhere, sometime, that shows that it has succeeded and the person is safe to return to freedom and make a contribution to society?
Good points raised by these men. And of course, to balance this, there are the victim’s statements and concerns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxOF4MMic4
More from Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”
Mendel continues the past historical development of the apocalyptic mythology that has since dominantly shaped Western narratives, consciousness, and civilization across the past two millennia. He quotes varied Gospel verses that threaten violence through “unquenchable fire, eternal burning” as punishments for sinners.
He says, “Denunciation of the existing world and its sinners as too corrupt for repair and their condemnation to total destruction is the first principle of apocalyptic theory and practise. The second is an absolute certainty that his just retribution and accompanying world transmutation are imminent” (p.41, Vision and Violence).
“With the old world annihilated, all things would be made new again. Rebirth, a new creation, ex nihilo… the new creation would go far beyond mere social transformation- all the way back to Eden” (p.43).
He asks what force and who could make all this catastrophic upheaval happen?
“Only absolute certainty of deliverance for the pure and vengeance against those who had flourished in sin could inspire the ecstatic martyrdom and justify the sanctimonious cruelty that are the hallmarks of all apocalyptic upheavals.” He goes on to state that the necessary force to make all this happen was illustrated in the gospel accounts of miracles- “God and his Son can and will make all things new, novum ex nihilo (out of nothing)”, p.43.
Mendel then concludes this chapter on the development of the basic ideas of apocalypse, “The Apocalypse was now complete and ready to begin its long and violent career in our history. For, whether explicitly religious, as were the medieval and early modern messianic movements, or implicitly so, as were their secular revolutionary successors, all apocalyptic movements thereafter mirrored the original model. For all of them, the existing society is beyond repair, too corrupt for reforms and doomed to complete annihilation… the outcome has always been the exact opposite of that promised- not millennial liberation but authoritarian domination” (p. 44). Think- The outcomes of the apocalyptic crusades of Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism as in “climate crisis apocalyptic”.
Ongoing assaults on free speech/liberal democracy, Wendell Krossa
Jordan Peterson once asked his podcast audience what they wanted their life story to be, their legacy to their family. Would it be one of courage and paying the cost for speaking out against, for example, assaults on freedom of speech, or would their story be one of cowardice and fear of paying some cost, Wendell Krossa
This edition of Megyn Kelly’s podcast:
“Arrested for posts, Epstein victims speak, and sick Trump health reax, with Ungar-Sargon and Lukianoff”, Megyn Kelly, Sept. 3, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9Y3bRLLUsE
The background to this podcast discussion relates to what others have also commented on- i.e. that a small minority of extremist activists (notably trans) have elevated their feelings as the dominant criterion for evaluating what is good and bad in our societies, what is to be considered righteous or evil, what should be permitted or made illegal, even criminalized. The dominant criterion that these extremist activists demand for all others is their personal feelings of upset, feeling uncomfortable, feeling offended, and outraged at the words, comments, even the jokes of disagreeing others.
There is no diversity, equality, or inclusion (DEI) allowed when their feelings are the dominant criterion for all others. These activists are angered and outraged that others disagree with their views and their minority outrage has cowed politicians, CEOs of major corporations, and mainstream media who love to virtue signal for moral status as defenders of these outraged few. Consequently, mainstream media have abandoned the defense of liberal democracy to become the propaganda arm for these tyrants.
No one in our liberal democracies, in general, deny the same equal rights and freedoms to such minority groups. They have won the battle for such diversity, equality and inclusion (note “equality”, not equity). But not satisfied with that win, activists among them have shifted to demanding that all others must view the world exactly as they do and use only the terms/words that they demand all should use. Or else.
Minority activists have shifted from earlier activism, to gain equal rights and freedoms, toward extremist stances that basically amount to “the hell with the rights and freedoms of all others”. They too often now take the position of “the formerly oppressed becoming the new oppressors”. Eye for eye discrimination as “justice”. There is no progress in human societies when that is the outcome. Look at Nelson Mandela courageously breaking such cycles by “setting aside his feelings of hatred” as he left prison (his words) to work for an inclusive South Africa. Illustration from his personal life- He included his former prison guards in his presidential security detail. That is a generous and great human spirit.
Extremist activists are unleashing a totalitarian spirit that has become an assault on the basic freedoms of all. They are actively undermining and deforming our liberal democracies. It is stunning how this totalitarian extremism, in all its varied expressions, has emerged to dominate now in Germany with banning of opposition parties and in the UK where comedians are arrested for what the ruling party claims is offensive speech. This is insanity and headed in a very dangerous direction for all.
Matt Taibbi below gives an example of the cowardice in media, in regard to these issues, as one well-known writer has admitted that he was cowed by the screaming bullies on the far-left Woke Progressive side of our societies.
Another example of cowardice in the face of more general left-wing bullying was John Cena dropping submissively to his knees to beg forgiveness from the CCP authoritarians in Beijing who tolerate no dissent on any issue. He mistakenly, he claimed, acknowledged that Taiwan was an independent country. He then gave us an unbelievable display of cringe cowardice in the face of totalitarian bullying. The Hollywood film industry has also repeatedly exhibited that same cowering cowardice in the face of Chinese threats over what they might portray in movies that will upset the CCP bullies. So also sports such as the NBA have chosen silence over defense of freedom when facing possible outrage from the same bullies.
Throughout our societies we hear more and more now of people who have been terrified into silence by bullying minorities. See the report below on Canadian university campuses where most students remain silent in the face of mobs that block access, vilify with smears, threaten the ruin of lives and careers, totalitarian minorities who protest and ban authentic “diversity, equality, and inclusion”.
A quote from that report below: “A tiny minority of threatening activists (0.4%) bully majorities into fearful silence.”
And this exhibits the real scandal of “collusion with the communist regimes in China/Russia”. A common McCarthyite smear that many Democrats have levelled against opponents over past years.
What about the collusion of cowing to the mobs on campuses and elsewhere that hate liberal democracy and are trying to replace it with authoritarian socialism? Mobs consisting of an interesting mixture of “anti-Semitics” and far-left Woke Progressives, among others, that share a common project to overthrow liberal democracy.
Moving on…
Kelly, like Taibbi, plays the comments of Malcolm Gladwell where he now admits that a few years back he was cowed into silence by trans activist bullying, and has now seen the error of his ways.
In all this we are watching the spirit of totalitarianism being unleashed in our liberal democracy societies in insidious ways under the disguise of protecting minorities/children from harm (online harm bills). While that concern is legitimate, these bills come (intentionally?) with unclear boundaries that permit far-left woke politicians to go after, silence, and outright ban opposition. That has happened in France and Germany. And now we see the ongoing arrest of citizens in the UK for online comments. As Kelly’s guest comments, we saw this perversion of common sense when the victims of the mass-rape scandal in Britain were threatened and silenced while the state and police went easy on the perpetrators.
Matt Taibbi on similar topics:
“The UK earns status as a censorship state: The arrest of Graham Linehan for his tweets is one of many examples that show the country should not be treated as a free one”, Greg Collard, Sept. 3, 2025
https://www.racket.news/p/the-uk-earns-status-as-a-censorship
See also this from Taibbi on his Substack site- Racket News.
“Malcolm Gladwell conquers Mt. Suck: What a world: Comedian Graham Linehan is arrested in England for telling truths Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell was rewarded for concealing”, Matt Taibbi, Sept. 3, 2025
And this on some willing to now admit that they were “cowed” and remained silent.
Waking up from the Woke fog. Yes, as Cosh notes below, many went crazy but then the precursor was decades of climate hysteria madness, abandonment of basic science for irrational apocalyptic mythology, or better psychopathology that deforms human minds and personalities entirely, then spreads to entire societies. That myth (apocalyptic) has driven billions crazy for millennia now.
“Malcolm Gladwell awakens from the transgender fog: The bestselling author regrets not pushing back against those who insisted that trans-identifying males belong in female sport”, Colby Cosh, Sept. 4, 2025
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-malcolm-gladwell-awakens-from-the-transgender-fog?itm_source=opinion
Cosh begins: “A question that is about to break like a tsunami over social media: wait, did Malcolm Gladwell really say that? On Tuesday, the renowned Ontarian journalist, podcaster and former youth track star appeared on the Real Science of Sport podcast, and you would have to say he immediately established a hell of a pace….”
Cosh says that Gladwell moderated a conference discussion with sports scientist Ross Tucker in 2022 on the “inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s athletic competitions”. He says that Tucker had argued that the inclusion of transgender athletes with “biological-male physical advantages” was fundamentally “incorrigible and incompatible with the entire concept of a women’s competition.”
Cosh continues, noting that the panel had been stacked against Tucker’s position and the audience reacted with “deathly silence” to his points but cheered the others arguing against Tucker. Gladwell knew what was happening, acknowledges that if that panel was replayed today it would run in exactly the opposite direction. Today, there “would be, I suspect, near-unanimity in the room that trans athletes have no place in the female category. I don’t think there’s any question.”
Gladwell remained silent during that 2022 panel and now states to Tucker, “I’m ashamed of my performance at that panel… because I share your position a hundred per cent, and I was cowed.”
Cosh adds, “Gladwell — who, remember, was a genuinely elite 1,500-metre and mile track competitor as a teenager — then spent about 10 minutes talking with Tucker about the plain preposterousness of allowing biological men and boys to compete in women’s and girls’ sport. He emphasized his own cowardice in a way that has already infuriated some commentators who upheld the sane position all along.”
Cosh notes Gladwell’s rethinking of his past cowardice as due to the “now-receding moral mania surrounding trans athletes.” He adds that Gladwell says, “I think in retrospect we will look back on the COVID period as a period of profound cultural destabilization. I think we all went crazy…. It was a crazy period! … And what we’ve done is, we’ve, in some sense, returned to normal.”
Cosh concludes: “Some critics will find “COVID drove everybody crazy” to be an insufficient or superficial excuse, despite the self-evident element of accuracy in it, and some of those people, of course, actually did stand up against a moral stampede while it was still in progress.”
My added comments- Some did speak out early on in the face of recently erupting “madness of crowds” episodes of hysteria (i.e. whether climate crisis lunacy, Covid insanity, or other issues) and these courageous spirits suffered greatly, being publicly vilified, censored, and banned from public forums and spaces, even losing jobs and careers. Now that the public tide has turned, it takes less courage to come out of the closet of fear and join the public shift to sanity.
A “pissed off” Gad Saad adds his input on the Solomon Asch experiment
Things Pissing Me Off – Malcom Gladwell, Coldplay, and Other Degenerates (THE SAAD TRUTH_1888)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbjGnvzmXQs
“AI Overview
“The Solomon Asch conformity experiments, conducted in the 1950s, showed how powerfully social pressure can influence individuals, demonstrating that people are willing to give incorrect answers to conform to a group’s obviously wrong consensus. In the classic “line test,” participants would judge the length of lines alongside several confederates (actors) who were instructed to give wrong answers, leading a significant portion of the real participants to conform to the incorrect majority.’
And then- The National post on campus fear and silenced majorities:
Backed by too many “far-left woke progressive” professors (surveys have shown roughly 90%-plus of professorships are liberal/leftist) a tiny minority of threatening activists (0.4% in Canada) bully majorities into fearful silence. Where is inclusion, diversity, and equality in this? Is this training future generations to understand and defend a free and liberal society?
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/nearly-half-of-all-canadian-university-students-are-actively-hiding-their-real-beliefs-survey?itm_source=index
“Nearly half of all Canadian university students are actively hiding their real beliefs: survey. The survey by Aristotle Foundation also finds that students with conservative views now outnumber those with liberal views”, Tristan Hopper, Sept.3, 2025
And this on a once proud “worker’s party of Canada”, that has now become the party of woke extremists.
Exemplifying the same lunacy of “Go woke, go broke” that the Democratic Party in the US is following down to rejection by a majority of Americans, descending to low double-digit support numbers, so the NDP (New Democrat Party) in Canada has been on the same downward trajectory to oblivion.
There is a locked-in dogmatism exhibited by true believers in Woke. Note, for example, that refusing to acknowledge the majority rejection of Woke Progressive extremism, Kamala Harris’s VP choice, Tim Walz, has said recently, that they must double down on Woke Progressiveness (and get those tampons back in boy’s bathrooms).
“AI Overview:
“A “cis man” is a man whose gender identity aligns with the sex he was assigned at birth. The term “cis” comes from Latin and is a prefix meaning “on the same side,” used in contrast to “trans” (meaning “on the opposite side”). This term distinguishes cis men from trans men, who were assigned female at birth but identify as men.”
“The NDP is here to rescue us from ‘cis’ men: Identity obsessed rules for leadership race show the party has learned nothing”, Adam Pankratz, Sept. 3, 2025
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/adam-pankratz-the-ndp-is-here-to-rescue-us-from-cis-men?itm_source=index
Quotes from Pankratz article:
“The NDP have begun their leadership race and apparently wish to confirm to Canadians that they have learned absolutely nothing from their electoral flogging earlier this year. The language and rules for the campaign are emblematic of an organization so beholden to the deranged ideology of identity politics that even being reduced to seven seats in the House of Commons isn’t enough to change course. It is their apparent desire to make sure that there is no comeback from the abyss, no second chance, as they drive their own brand even further into the mud.”
Nominations for party leadership must be limited (not over 50%) from cis men and many must be from “equity-seeking groups… and racialized members, Indigenous members, members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community, and persons living with disabilities.”
Pankratz says the former party of the working class is now “definitively the party of identity politics and grievance culture” and the message is that they must be even more radical.
He says the current lunacy arrived with recent party leader Jagmeet Singh who degraded the formerly respected worker’s party by aligning with and supporting Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in minority power as they destroyed the country.
“The current NDP is a frail carcass of grievance, extremism and zealotry which bears no resemblance to its respectable past.”
My added comments on the above lunacy:
This minority unleashing of the totalitarianism impulse is why this site goes after the ideas driving this lunacy that undermine our hard fought for and won liberal democracies, none more important as driving forces than the religious themes that have been uncovered behind Marxism, Nazism, and are now evident as driving environmental alarmism- i.e. the “apocalyptic millennial” themes of Paul’s Christ myth that have most dominantly shaped Western narratives, both religious and secular. These themes have dominated human consciousness, emotions, motivations, and behaviors across two millennia and have resulted in mass-death/mass-harm to our societies.
As a guest interviewed by Matt Taibbi said regarding the emerging dominance of the anti-human “transhuman” movement (born out of the transgender crusade):
“Aaron Kheriaty: I think there is something there, but I would prioritize a change in ideas and a change in philosophical outlook as the primary driving force.”
The ideas/ideals/beliefs that we embrace in our worldviews powerfully shape all in our minds and lives.
And some interesting comment on DNA
Here (only 13 mins) is Stephen Meyer (PhD in philosophy of science) at his best on the discovery of coded information in DNA and the conclusion that coded information is a “mind product”, not the produce of blind, random material processes. This traces the Crick Watson discovery in 1953 and following discoveries. I am not with Meyer where he takes his conclusions to the Christian God, but with him when he leaves it at some transcendent Mind. He does better on that general conclusion.
In this, he shows the incredible complexity of cells and DNA’s role in directing material processes that build material things. His point is that the materialist explanation (that of “philosophical materialists”) does not explain what is actually going on. Chemical processes do not do what philosophical materialists want them to explain. They do not code information. Overall, “Chemistry does not move in a life-friendly direction”.
Meyer says that Darwin actually helped him sort out this “origin of life” question, and that it was assisted by Mind. He says that Darwin argued for reasoning from “the most likely cause of a given effect that we see today”, his point on “inference to the best explanation”. Meaning, we conclude a cause that best explains the thing in question. From that argument in Darwin, Meyer reasoned to “What is the cause today that produces digital information?” It can only be Mind or Intelligence that produces information in digital or alphabetic form. It always comes from a mind, not from a material process (certainly not an undirected, random material process).
“Why DNA points to a Mind behind the universe”, Stephen Meyer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEIfsQjVB14
This from Gutfeld: on the decline in liberal democracies as people assaulting freedom are “exploiting empathy”, letting people into our societies who hate liberal democracy, invade and take over.
“Greg Gutfeld show 9/4/25 Full End Show, Fox breaking news, Sept. 4, 2025”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfMMKBwa0cU
Gutfeld comments on the fact that British police make up to 30 arrests a day (12,000 arrests a year) of people making online comments that cause “annoyance, inconvenience, and anxiety” for others who complain. This, while the grooming gangs that have mass-raped thousands of children are allowed to flourish. Police and politicians, says Gutfeld, turned a blind eye to the raping gangs of Muslim immigrants out of fear of being labelled “Islamophobic”. And instead, they went after those trying to expose that mass crime.
Gutfeld adds that you can rape women, but you can’t insult the rapist. He then notes a woman in Germany who was given a harsher sentence than a convicted rapist for calling the rapist a “disgraceful rapist pig”. Germany will also jail people for calling someone an “idiot”.
He comments on migrant riots and the recent Canadian home invasion incident where the home-owner was charged for defending himself against the intruder. He also played the video clip of Toronto police advising citizens to leave their car keys at the front door of their homes for thieves, in order to dissuade them from breaking into homes to find the keys.
Again, this all is so entirely stunningly crazy, especially coming from countries like Britain that birthed the Classic Liberal freedom that gave the West its liberal democracies.
Gutfeld makes the point that we do not just accept the decline of our liberal democracies but must fight back to preserve critical rights such as free speech. Kat Timpf adds that while generally the “slippery sliding slope” argument is overly used in relation to the decline of Europe, it is proving true that if you don’t act to prevent it, decline in rights and freedoms will happen.
She adds that we must, for example, defend the “hate speech” rights of others, not agreeing with their speech but with their right to say it. If we don’t, if we take that right away, then who decides what does or doesn’t count as hate speech? And that has been abused as the Twitter Files revealed, where one party used the intelligence agencies to silence the political speech of their political opponents. Rob Schneider adds that you end letting the most sensitive members determine what all others can say.
Schneider also made a good point that much comedy today is no longer funny because it coms from a place of hatred of the others being made fun of (i.e. Alex Baldwin’s Trump impersonation). Schneider uses the contrary example of Dana Carvey’s George Bush portrayal that came from a place of fun and respect, not hatred.
Black commentator Tyrus adds that Robert Downey’s portrayal of a fellow black brother in “Tropical Thunder” was the funniest thing he has watched because it was not from hate.
As Tyrus said, referring to a black comedian in white face who recently mocked NASCAR fans as rednecks, “We (blacks) did not want people portraying us with hatred in the past and we don’t want our side doing that to others now.”
Matt on the move toward increasing online censorship in European liberal democracies (“Online Safety Act” policies, or to fight “disinformation”) and the pressure on the US to follow that censorship and criminalization of speech. He notes the problem the First Amendment has posed for pro-censorship types- “Seeing John Kerry last fall talk to the WEF about the difficulty the First Amendment posed in “hammering [disinformation] out of existence” heightened worries. The one thing everyone in the “anti-disinformation” universe seemed to agree on is that the First Amendment was a unique pain in the ass of global enforcement.”
“What is the bigger threat to free speech, Europe, or Donald Trump’s America? Thoughts after a challenging discussion with Freddie Sayers of Britain’s Unherd”, Matt Taibbi, Sept. 5, 2025
https://www.racket.news/p/what-is-the-bigger-threat-to-free
Quotes from below:
“On Tuesday morning, a day after Father Ted writer and comedian Graham Linehan was arrested at Heathrow airport for three tweets deemed transphobic, I spoke with Freddie Sayers of the U.K.-based Unherd, in an interview released yesterday. For the unfamiliar, Unherd has been a stalwart, often lonely defender of free expression in a post-Brexit era that saw significant shifts in British attitudes. Freddie’s site responded to the Linehan story in characteristic fashion: “The Shameful Arrest of Graham Linehan.”…
“The BBC similarly wondered what Musk’s “curious fixation” was with Britain, noting that one of the 30-odd daily arrests in England ended in “a three-month jail sentence for a person who posted a meme along with the caption ‘let’s [expletive] riot’” last year. British state media could equally have cited a case of 40-year-old David Wootton, convicted for going to a Halloween party dressed as suicide bomber Salman Abedi, or the Derbyshire student who called someone a “Polish twat,” or the Bedfordshire resident arrested for saying being “pansexual” was “not a thing,” or dozens of other preposterous cases.
“There haven’t been releases of scary surveillance video of “kidnapped” Halloween partiers, which makes one wonder why the American press is willing to embrace Khalil as a speech martyr but not Julian Assange or Linehan or the retired German army sergeant arrested for calling Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck a Schwachkopf, which apparently translates as “dunderhead” or “moron.”
“In the U.K., these dumb arrests are inevitable because the law under which Linehan was detained, for instance, is based on whether or not the complainant felt “alarm” or “abuse.” Like many American campus speech codes, it’s a harm standard where injury doesn’t have to be proven, just asserted. Instituting a criminal law in the U.S. using that concept would be a radical step for us, but less so in Europe, which has been moving in that direction for a while.”
