Is the federal government interested in monitoring speech?

My first read every day is The Federalist, and there I found a very interesting article by Margot Cleveland. In it, she reveals some research that The Federalist has been doing about the federal government’s plans to monitor speech. Not just the speech of journalists and politicians, but also churches, and even individuals. What would they do with this information?

Excerpt:

Our government is preparing to monitor every word Americans say on the internet—the speech of journalists, politicians, religious organizations, advocacy groups, and even private citizens. Should those conversations conflict with the government’s viewpoint about what is in the best interests of our country and her citizens, that speech will be silenced.

[…]Research by The Federalist reveals our tax dollars are funding the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) technology that will allow the government to easily discover “problematic” speech and track Americans reading or partaking in such conversations.

Then, in partnership with Big Tech, Big Business, and media outlets, the government will ensure the speech is censored, under the guise of combatting “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

Here’s how they found out what the government is doing:

The federal government has awarded more than 500-plus contracts or grants related to “misinformation” or “disinformation” since 2020. One predominant area of research pushed by the Department of Defense involves the use of AI and ML technology to monitor or listen to internet “conversations.”

Originally used as a marketing tool for businesses to track discussions about their brands and products and to track competitors, the DOD and other federal agencies are now paying for-profit public relations and communications firms to convert their technology into tools for the government to monitor speech on the internet.

What’s troubling about this for me is the not only that truth-tellers would be censored, or labeled “domestic terrorists” and harassed by law enforcement. That’s already happening in the United States. Just look at the Twitter Files revelations. My concern is the freezing of bank accounts as coercion. That’s already happening in Canada. And it would be even easier to do if we converted to a digital currency, that was used by all of our banks.

Here’s a Wall Street Journal article:

“Central-bank digital currency” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But you might want to get used to saying it. These so-called CBDCs, or digital versions of dollars, yuan, euros, yen or any other currency, are coming, say those who study them. And depending on how they are designed and rolled out, their impact on the banking system could be profound.

[…]The U.S. is studying the issue and has run trials of various technologies to enable a digital currency, although Fed chair Jerome Powell has indicated the U.S. central bank has no plans to create one, and won’t do so without direction from Congress.

[…]First, there is the obvious issue of privacy. A digital currency could allow governments to track every transaction a person makes, no matter how minute. This level of transparency would be a powerful disincentive to using these currencies for crime or fraud, but it could also open the door to new kinds of social control, especially in countries with already-scant protections for human rights.

For example, says Dr. Prasad, a government could make it impossible to spend the digital currency on things the ruling party deems problematic… The government also could make transacting with certain people difficult or impossible—China already has a social credit system that ranks citizens algorithmically, and punishes them in various ways.

Here’s Joe Biden’s position on digital currency, reported by NBC News:

The Biden administration is putting its support behind the research and development of a “U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency,” or CBDC.

The move is part of a sweeping executive order President Joe Biden signed Wednesday instructing the federal government to explore possible uses of and regulations for digital assets like cryptocurrencies.

And here’s Ron DeSantis’ position on digital currency, reported by Townhall:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday moved to protect The Sunshine State from the Biden administration’s potential “weaponization of the financial sector” through a Central Bank Digital Currency.

The legislative proposal would amend the state’s Uniform Commercial Code to prohibit the use of federal or foreign CBDC and calls on other states to join in the fight by instituting similar prohibitions.

There are very clear differences between Democrats and Republicans on the issues of surveillance, censorship, coercion and totalitarianism. Something to think about, as we approach the 2024 elections. Choose wisely.

Young people are more likely than older people to think that women power has gone too far

If I asked you whether young people or old people are more in favor of feminism, I’ll bet that the majority of you would answer “young people”. Because you would say that old people are more traditional than young people. But that’s not what a recent survey found. There’s an article about it in the New York Post, although the original article comes from an Australian news web site.

Excerpt:

A surprising number of people in younger generations believe that women’s rights have gone too far, with a new survey revealing gender equality progress could be at risk of stalling.

New research conducted by Ipsos UK and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London found that over half of people in younger generations believe the push for equality is now negatively impacting men and that they are being expected to do “too much” to support progress.

The survey collated the responses from more than 22,500 people aged 16-74 across 32 countries, including approximately 1000 people from Australia.

According to the results, 52 percent of Gen Z and 53 percent of Millennials agree that “we have gone so far in promoting women’s equality that we are discriminating against men”.

This is compared to 46 percent of Gen X and 40 percent of Baby Boomers.

The article is in favor of the women power movement, and it expresses shock and horror that anyone could ever have a reason to disagree with it.

What does this mean? Well, I think older people have an out-of-date view of just how much society (government and other institutions) has done to give preferential treatment to women at the expense of men.

To take just one example, about 60% of undergraduate degrees are being given to women, with men getting only 40%.

The American Enterprise Institute reports:

  • For every 100 women who earn bachelor’s degrees from US colleges and universities, there are 73 men.

  • For every 100 women who earn master’s degrees from US colleges and universities, there are 65 men.

  • For every 100 women who earn doctor’s degrees from US universities, there are 85 men.

  • For every 100 women who are recent college graduates but not in the labor force, there are 108 men.

  • For every 100 women with an advanced degree but not in the labor force there are 114 men.

When I looked into what was causing this, I found out that men underperform women on classroom tests, but men outperform women on standardized tests. Studies have shown that teachers (85% women) discriminate against boys in the classroom, and that’s why boys underperform girls on classroom-administered tests. But on standardized tests, boys do better, because there is no discriminator present and the grading is more fair.

Hypergamy

The problem with this discrimination against men is that women typically like to “marry up”. They are looking for men who have more education and better careers and higher salaries than they have.  When the number of desirable men shrinks, it becomes harder and harder for women to lock one down. That’s the law of supply and demand. When the supply of marriage-ready men (good education, good job, good savings) shrinks, the price of a marriage-ready man goes up. The price of goods always goes up when there is a shortage. And right now there is definitely a shortage of educated men with good careers and lots of savings. Discrimination against men by feminists, feminist laws and feminist policies caused this shortage.

It’s the younger generations who are seeing firsthand how discrimination against men makes relationships, much less marriage, harder to achieve. Sadly, the older generations aren’t paying attention. If men aren’t doing well, then women aren’t going to be able to find men to marry and start families with. What satisfies women in the long run is family. Marriage and family are dying in the west, and young people understand that feminism was the murder weapon. Young people understand this, because they see relationships and marriage drying up.

It’s not just the left-wing feminists who want the discrimination against men to remain. Pro-marriage feminists, including many “chivalrous” Christians (men and women) also want feminist discrimination against men to remain. They blame the retreat from relationship and the decline of marriage on MEN, not on feminism. Until this changes, don’t expect relationships and marriage to return.

Does the “legacy of slavery” explain black women’s 72% out-of-wedlock birth rate?

James White asks: does the Bible apply to black women?
James White asks: does the Bible apply to black women?

I don’t like Calvinist theologian James White very much, but at least he’s willing to defend the moral teachings of the Bible against the woke identity politics that is taking over Christian churches. A few months ago he tweeted something very controversial (see above), and got into a lot of hot water with fake Christians. In this post, I’ll explain why he is right.

So, as you can see above, James is concerned that black women are having so many abortions, and he thinks that the solution to this is to encourage black women to take the Bible’s advice on sexual morality. Shocking, I know.

If you read the replies to his tweet on Twitter, you’ll see millions and millions of comments calling him a racist, and telling him that slavery is to blame for EVERYTHING that black women do wrong. Basically, the James haters say that black women can do anything they want, and should never be told that it’s wrong according to the Bible, because their bad choices are all the fault of slavery. So the Bible doesn’t even apply to them, or something.

Here is an example from a radical feminist progressive named Karen Swallow Prior:

Karen Swallow Prior says that black people have no moral agency
Karen Swallow Prior says that unlike whites, blacks have no moral agency

According to the fake Christians, it’s not that black women make poor choices with sex, it’s that the ghosts of white slavers who raped their great-great-great grandmothers reach through time with magic and force them to have sex with hunky bad boys who won’t commit to them before sex. It’s not rap music calling black women hoes! It’s the ghosts of slavery past. And even if this ghost theory isn’t true, we shouldn’t tell black women not to sin, because… it would hurt their feelings. After all, the Bible isn’t a book that’s designed to set boundaries to prevent self-destructive behaviors. It encourages us to listen to our hearts, be reckless, and sin as much as we can.

So when did black community problems with sex and abortion start? Did it start with slavery times? Actually, blacks were doing GREAT at marriage and sexual matters just 50 years ago.

This reply to James White explained:

Blacks married at rates comparable to whites before welfare
Blacks married at rates comparable to whites before welfare

That’s true. Black children weren’t fatherless, so they weren’t having early sex outside of marriage, and so they weren’t getting abortions.

As the header graphic shows, black women were just as likely to be married as white women in the 1960s,  FAR AFTER the days of slavery.

The reason that the graph is going upward is because daughters raised in fatherless homes tend to engage in sexual activity at younger ages, because they are seeking approval from a man which their (single) mother cannot give them. It’s a tragic downwards spiral, and it affects all races. The only way to stop it is to tell women to choose marriage-minded men (not hot bad boys) and marry before having sex, like the Bible says. But woke fake Christians think the Bible is too mean, and better to allow sin by saying that sin is inevitable because slavery ghosts or something.

What’s neat is that black men who take Christianity seriously are totally on board with the facts:

Black man here. Can confirm that the Bible applies to black women.
Black man here. Can confirm that the Bible applies to black women.

On this blog, I don’t talk about my ethnicity myself, for confidentiality reasons, but I have said that my skin is darker than Barack Obama. I’m not white or Asian. And the reason that I don’t fall into this trap of causing babies to be born out of wedlock is because I think that when the Bible says that sex outside of marriage is a sin, that this is true. I don’t make excuses or shift blame. It’s incumbent on me to obey, since I claim to be a follower of Jesus.I’m not interested in identity politics. I’m not interested in racial divisions. I’m not interested in blame-shifting. The rules are the rules. And my following of the rules caused me to not cause abortions, according to Christian specifications. Period.

When it comes to sex outside of marriage, the answer of every Bible believing Christian is simple: I’m against it. That is the correct answer, and anything more or less than this answer is demonic. If you are a Christian, sex outside of marriage is always morally wrong. And if you try to justify it, or blame someone else, in order to excuse it, then you’re not a Christian at all. If you try to make excuses for why someone did it, you’re not a Christian. Whether you have had it and been forgiven, or never had it, the answer is always the same: it’s morally wrong. Don’t do it. Never do it.

What I am seeing from people who are critical of James White’s tweet is that they are basically trying to attack those who make moral judgments based on what the Bible says. They want to make room for sinners to sin. The root of abortion sin is sexual sin. Real  Christians discourage sexual sin, and therefore protect unborn children. Fake Christians want to be liked by appearing compassionate, so they make excuses for sexual sin. If you take the Bible seriously on morality, you won’t be liked. Those who try to excuse sin do so because their need to be liked is more important than their need to promote what the Bible teaches.

Some fake Christians will say “oh, but I do think the Bible is right about sex and marriage, but we have to care about slavery reparations and global warming and refugees and illegal immigrants and trasnsgender rights, too”. Baloney. An authentic Christian is concerned about the things that the Bible teaches are “major” things. Drunkenness is a major thing. Sexual immorality is a major thing. Divorce is a major thing. Homosexuality is a major thing. If you meet a Christian who treats those issues as minor issues, and instead majors in what the secular left tells them are major issues, then you’re talking to a fake Christian.

Christianity isn’t a brain-dead faith. You get your priorities from the Bible, and you argue those priorities using facts. The facts about marriage rates are clear and they show that the problems in the black community aren’t caused by slavery. They’re caused by single mother welfare programs. Those welfare programs taught women of all races that they didn’t have to listen to their fathers when choosing men. Those welfare programs taught women that feelings were a better guide in relationships than the Bible. Those welfare programs taught women that their eyes were a better judge of character than performance of traditional marriage roles. Those welfare programs taught women that recreational sex was a way to get a man to commit and stop being a bad boy. We need to go back to the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem was making excuses for disobedience to the Bible, and transferring money from married homes to out-of-control women. Of all races.

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