THE COLUMN: First, Posit a Counter-Factual...

Michael Walsh01 May, 2023 6 Min Read
How may we fool you today?

One of the hallmarks of Leftist methodology is to assert blatant falsehoods as real and then act on them—with the fierce urgency of now!—as if they were true. At first dismissed as too absurd to take seriously, this approach has proven highly successful. The triumph of relativism and the concomitant loss of belief in even the most fundamental verities has resulted in the complete emasculation of the culture —and don't expect newly defeminized women to take up the slack. The Left's squadrons of vicious, shameless lawyers take as their operating principle: "we can make the argument that...," the argument being wholly imaginary. But who's to call them on it? They may win some and lose some, but every win goes in the permanent win column and every loss can always be relitigated later.

And they're getting bolder. You have to admire the sheer audacity of trying to convince the public that there are more than two sexes, rather than two sexes and various aberrations, which is one reason they long ago replaced the word "sex" (which to the Left solely means sexual intercourse of some exotic variety or another, not an intrinsic aspect of being) with the grammatical term "gender." Voila! There really are three genders—masculine, feminine, and neuter. Problem solved: since the notion of binary sexes was merely arbitrary, why not three or four? Or more?

The answer lies below the waistline.

Case in point: over the weekend, college dropout Chuck Todd conducted the following exchange on Meet the Press with presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (video at the link):

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: But below the age of 18, I think it's perfectly legitimate to say that we won’t allow genital mutilation or chemical castration through puberty blockers.

CHUCK TODD: You’re calling it that, but how do you know it’s that? Again, how do you know? Are you confident that you know that gender is as binary as you're describing it? Are you confident?

RAMASWAMY: I am.

TODD: That there isn’t a spectrum?

RAMASWAMY: I am.

TODD: Do you know this as a scientist?

RAMASWAMY: Well, there’s two X chromosomes if you're a woman, and an X and a Y that means you’re a man—

[crosstalk]

TODD: There is a lot of scientific research that says gender is a spectrum.

RAMASWAMY: Chuck, I respectfully disagree. Gender Dysphoria for most of our history all the way through the DSM-5 has been characterized as a mental health disorder and I don't think it's compassionate to affirm that. I think that’s cruelty. When a kid is crying out for help, what they’re asking for is—you’ve got to ask the question of what else is going wrong at home. What else is going wrong at school let's be compassionate and get to the heart of that rather than playing this game as though we’re actually changing our medical understanding for the last hundred years.

TODD: I go back to this if a parent is dealing with a child that has these—that may have these issues, trust me, the parent—the last thing they want to do is consider something like this, but if that is what they think could help their child pursue happiness or not to kill themselves, I—why take away that option? Again, why shouldn't it be up to the parent?

RAMASWAMY: So—part of why parents now suddenly feel that way. Let’s ask ourselves that Chuck—is we've created a culture that teaches parents that they're being bigoted or that they’re bad people if they don't actually take those steps. So part of what I think is—listen, Gender Dysphoria for the rare few people who’ve suffered it, is a condition of suffering. My question is why on Earth are we going out of our way to create even more of it? And there's no doubt that the cultural movement in the country, even education is creating more gender dysphoria if it's a condition of suffering, let's not create more of it. That’s what we’re doing.

What?

Can you believe we're even having this discussion? About chemical castration and sexual mutilation as positive good things? This is how far down the cultural-Marxist road we've traveled.

Meanwhile, the transgressive attacks on everything you thought you knew continue apace. For example, did you know that the early Church father Augustine of Hippo was black? After all, he came from North Africa and as we all know Africa = black, so Q.E.D. This, at least, is the opinion of one Tia Noelle Pratt writing in U.S. Catholic magazine, who's apparently ignorant of history, genetics. and geography but whose imagination was fired by a new painting of the saint depicting him as George Floyd's cousin in Roman drag:

St. Augustine was an African man. For many years, I didn’t appreciate the magnitude of this because his African identity was usually muted in favor of describing him as a North African citizen of the Roman Empire with a distinct emphasis on “North” and “Empire.” Currently, the United States Census classifies individuals of Middle East and North African (MENA) descent as white. Consequently, emphasizing that St. Augustine was North African allows him, especially in the United States, to be racially coded as white. At the very least, it allows for deemphasizing his Amazigh origins—the endonymic term for the people of North Africa.

By depicting St. Augustine as an unabashedly African man, the painting invites all those who engage his writings including students, scholars, and members of the religious order that bears his name, to reconsider how we have thought about him. It also invites us to learn more about the Amazigh people—an ancient, diverse, culturally rich community found across the entirety of North Africa. Depicting St. Augustine as a Black man actively decenters whiteness and demands that we all recognize what it means for the church, the academy, and the world to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the intellectual and cultural gifts Africa has given the world. Centuries of slavery and colonialism not only robbed the African continent of so many of its treasures, but also robbed Africa of credit for those treasures. By racially coding St. Augustine as white, he became one of those treasures for which Africa was not given due credit. This painting compels us to think of St. Augustine as an African man and render to Africa that which is Africa’s.

Not Greek either, but closer.

Right. The problem is that Augustine was a Berber, and Berbers aren't black. (Neither was the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, despite what Netflix thinks.) In the interests of historicity, I appended a comment to the story:

This is utterly false. Augustine was a Berber, non-Arabic and non-sub-Saharan black. The name "Africa" was given by the Romans to their province in and around Carthage, which was a Phoenician city; it was later applied to the entire continent. The Berbers lived in Numidia. During the reign of Augustus, Cleopatra Selene (the daughter of the Roman Mark Antony and the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, Cleopatra) was married off by the imperial family to King Juba II, who similarly was neither black nor Arabic. (The Arab conquest of the Mahgreb didn't occur until the late 7th and early 8th centuries.) By assuming incorrectly that "African = black" you're putting the cart way before the horse. U.S. Catholic magazine should retract this piece immediately.

But of course they won't. Finally, the New York Times —the fons et origo of Leftist thought in America—took note of this utterly predictable development since the introduction of women into the work force on a massive scale, and found it to be, well, both sexist and racist:

Menopause costs American women an estimated $1.8 billion in lost working time per year, according to a Mayo Clinic study published this week. The paper examined how hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings and the myriad other symptoms associated with this time of life affect women in the workplace. It’s the largest study of its kind to have been done in the United States... Though a majority of survey participants were white, the researchers found that menopause can have a greater effect on Black and Hispanic working women, Dr. Kling said. “Black women tended to have more menopausal symptoms,” she said. “And higher percentages of Black women and Hispanic women reported adverse work outcomes related to menopausal symptoms compared to white women.”

It takes a real man to be a real woman.

The Times, of course, has been cheering on women's empowerment for five decades, no matter how many families it destroyed, how many women it made miserable, how many lawsuits of the "hostile environment" variety it costs businesses that previously had none, how many abortions it indirectly triggered, or how many women contracted toxoplasmosis gondii from going home to their cats every evening after work. But it was all for the greater good: you can't make the New Socialist Omelet without breaking millions of egg-producing hearts, minds, and bodies.

Girls can be boys and boys can be girls; Berbers can be black; and women need to abandon all the trappings of womanhood in order to compete in the brave new world of Bud Light, to infinity and beyond. How's that for a counter-factual, fully acted upon?

Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic and a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. His works include the novels As Time Goes By, And All the Saints, and the bestselling “Devlin” series of NSA thrillers; as well as the nonfiction bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace and its sequel, The Fiery Angel. Last Stands, a study of military history from the Greeks to the present, was published by St. Martin's Press in December 2019. He is also the editor of Against the Great Reset: 18 Theses Contra the New World Order, published on Oct. 18, 2022. Follow him on Twitter: @theAmanuensis

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5 comments on “THE COLUMN: First, Posit a Counter-Factual...”

  1. Those that can make people believe absurdities, can get them to commit atrocities. Trans is a totalitarian ideology and purely demonic. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ― George Orwell, 1984. The greatest trick the devil ever played: getting the world to believe he didn't exist.

  2. pt 2
    And then the Right wonders why it's 'argument' *constantly* loses to the Left's 'argument'!! That the Right claims not to understand *why* it loses when it uses such a psychotically evil argument speaks *volumes*!!

    So let's try this again. See if you can finally grasp the outright horror you are proudly presenting here. Consider again Bauer's (and FEE's) response to the Left's claim about Covid.

    The Left states: "People are murdering Grandma with Covid." To which the Right simply shrugs and essentially complains:

    "Well, yes. But it's wrong to focus on justice alone. Where are the mental health experts to tell us how stopping Grandma's murder will negatively affect the psychology of our most vulnerable, both young and old? Where are the economists to insist on a cost-benefit analysis between murder and the "economy"? Where are the ethicists to weigh in on the appropriate balance between murder and personal autonomy? ... I was told to shut up and stop murdering grannies."

    Now, since you don't see the evil of that 'argument', imagine that same exact response being given consistently and explicitly to *all* of the Left's above claims of injustice:

    In regard to race, the Left states: "Jim Crow laws etc violate the rights of blacks." To which the Right simply shrugs and complains:

    "Well, yes. But it's wrong to focus on justice alone. Where are the mental health experts to tell us how integration will negatively affect our most vulnerable, especially poor whites and white women? Where are the economists to insist on a cost-benefit analysis of integration vs segregation? Where are the ethicists to weigh in on the appropriate balance between the mixing of races and the separation of races? ... I was told to shut up and stop discriminating against blacks."

    Talk about a completely evil anti-justice, anti-rights response by the Right!

    In regard to the environment, the Left states: "Man is murdering the planet." To which the Right simply shrugs and complains:

    "Well, yes. But it's wrong to focus on justice alone. Where are the mental health experts to tell us how 'saving the planet' will negatively affect our most vulnerable, the poor in both the First and Third worlds? Where are the economists to insist on a cost-benefit analysis of destroying the planet vs saving the planet? Where are the ethicists to weigh in on the appropriate balance between the death of the planet and the health of the economy? ... I was told to shut up and stop the genocide of all mankind!"

    Talk about a completely evil anti-justice, anti-rights response by the Right!

    In regard to animals, the Left states: "Man is committing genocide against entire species of animals." To which the Right simply shrugs and complains:

    "Well, yes. But it's wrong to focus on justice alone. Where are all the mental health experts to tell us how preventing genocide will negatively affect our most vulnerable, from our children to our brother species? Where are the economists to insist on cost-benefit analyses of the complete violation of the rights of an entire species vs the benefits of mass murder to man? Where are the ethicists to weigh in on the appropriate balance between the extinction of whole societies of animals and the profits of some human beings? ... I was told to shut up and stop murdering entire species."

    Talk about a completely evil anti-justice, anti-rights response by the Right!

    In regard to smoking, the Left states: "Smokers are murdering non-smokers." To which the Right simply shrugs and complains:

    "Well, yes. But it's wrong to focus on justice alone. Where are all the mental health experts to tell us how stopping murder via second-hand smoke will negatively affect our most vulnerable, both new and old smokers? Where are the economists to insist on cost benefit-analyses of "second-hand smoke" murders vs banning productive members of society from work and entertainment? Where are the ethicists to weigh in on the appropriate balance between murder and a nice meal in a smoky restaurant? ... I was told to shut up and stop murdering children and the rest of the non-smokers."

    Talk about a completely evil anti-justice, anti-rights response by the Right!

    In regard to jobs, the Left states: "Bigots are refusing to hire women and racial minorities." To which the Right simply shrugs and complains:

    "Well, yes. But it's wrong to focus on justice alone. Where are all the mental health experts to tell us how a mixed workforce will negatively affect our most vulnerable, especially the poor working man and the latchkey kids? Where are the economists to insist on a cost-benefit analysis of a mixed workforce vs a white male workforce? Where are the ethicists to weigh in on the appropriate balance between white males filling most jobs and women and minorities being included in those jobs? ... I was told to shut up and stop being a racist, sexist pig!"

    Talk about a completely evil anti-justice, anti-rights response by the Right!

    In regard to marriage, the Left states: "Prejudiced religious zealots are preventing same sex couples from getting married." To which the Right simply shrugs and complains:

    "Well, yes. But it's wrong to focus on justice alone. Where are all the mental health experts to tell us how gay marriages will negatively affect our most vulnerable, both straight couples and children? Where are the economists to insist on cost benefit-analyses of voluntarily married gays vs forcibly unmarried gays? Where are the ethicists to weigh in on the appropriate balance between religious feelings and personal autonomy? ... I was told to shut up and stop being a prejudiced religious zealot!"

    Talk about a completely evil anti-rights, anti-justice response by the Right!

    In regard to white privilege, the Left state: "White racists are systematically violating the rights of minorities in every aspect of society." To which the Right simply shrugs and complains:

    "Well, yes. But it's wrong to focus on justice alone. Where are all the mental health experts to tell us how society treating everyone equally will negatively affect our most vulnerable, white men and women? Where are the economists to insist on cost benefit-analyses of systemic discrimination vs systemic equality? Where are the ethicists to weight in on the appropriate balance between the racially superior and the racially inferior? ... I was told to shut up and stop being a racist psychopath!"

    Talk about a completely evil anti-rights, anti-justice response by the Right!

    THAT is the problem with Bauer's 'argument'. That is the problem with FEE's 'argument'. That is the problem with the Right's 'argument'. You *all* constantly tell "society" that the Right stands for evil and injustice, not justice and rights. And you do that while simultaneously telling "society" that the Left stands for good and justice, and against injustice and the violation of rights.

    Talk about SELF-destruction!

    Do you see the evil of the Right's response yet?

    In a nutshell, the Right is Charlie Brown.

    Despite Lucy's (the Left's) repeatedly wrong behavior, Charlie Brown (the Right) never learns from it. Instead, Charlie Brown (the Right) always accepts Lucy's (the Left's) claim that the ball will stay in place (that rights are being violated). So Charlie Brown (the Right) accepts Lucy's (the Left's) claim and runs at the ball (proclaims that rights need to be violated). And when the ball is yanked away (when 'society' rejects the Right's evil demand), Charlie Brown suffers an embarrassing fall (the Right loses) and gets angry at Lucy (the Left), rather than being angry at himself (rather than the Right being angry with itself) for mindlessly repeating his (the Right's) stupid (evil) behavior (believing that rights need to be violated).

    That is why the Right constantly loses to the Left.

    And all of that happens because the Right rejects rights.

    As evidenced by every FEE article - including this one - the Right explicitly declares rights are not its inviolable moral standard. The Right proclaims it is impossible - for anyone - to hold rights as their "absolute" standard. Instead, the Right declares it's actually impossible not to violate rights. The Right declares it is an inescapable necessity to violate rights.

    The Right declares "society" must violate rights.

    That is why the Right's response to the Left is not to defend rights from violation, but to pit some rights against other rights. That is why the Right demands a "balance" be achieved between various supposedly competing, conflicting, irreconcilable rights. For instance, in the Covid example, that is why the Right demands the right to "life" be pitted *against* the right to "personal autonomy" (aka the right to free association, free trade, property, to "walk on the beach" etc). And the Right does this because it believes rights are, by their very nature, contradictions of one another, rather than a harmonious, indivisible whole. Thus the Right declares that human interaction requires the violation of rights. That the violation of rights is inescapable. So the Right simply squabbles with the Left over which rights 'should' be violated and why.

    That is the obscenely evil premise of Bauer's entire book. That is the obscenely evil premise of FEE's every article. That is the obscenely evil premise of the Rights every response to the Left:

    'Which rights, of which individuals, must be violated? Which violations of rights 'best' serves "society" - ie 'best' serves the "public good"?'

    Those are the only words the Right produce in response to the Left's claims of injustice. Not that injustice must be stopped, but *which* injustices need to be committed, and against *whom*.

    Injustice and the violation of rights are your *explicit* moral 'standards'. Evil is your *explicit* moral standard.

    And, to quote Yoda: "That is why you fail."

    You fail because - contrary to your wishes - "society" rejects evil and embraces justice, as *all* mankind should!

    As I've indicated elsewhere, Bauer, Carroll, FEE and all the rest of the Right need to reject injustice and the violation of rights as your 'moral' standard. You need to recognize the fact that rights do not conflict. You need to recognize the fact that rights are inalienable and inviolable. And you need to make these ideas your fundamental moral and political standards - standards which you'll steadfastly refuse to subjugate to anything else - especially the whims of the Collective.

    Then you need to apply that fundamental principle to each and every instance of the Left declaring a violation of rights is occurring. In almost every case you will find that what the Left claims - and you have blindly accepted - as a violation of rights is not a violation at all, but is the exercise of rights. And, in the rare instance there is a violation of rights, you will find that the Left's 'solution' is - exactly like yours - simply to violate more rights rather than to stop all violations of rights.

    (If you are confused as to how to apply this fundamental principle of rights in regard to any of the examples I have provided - ie if you agree with any of the Right's anti-justice, anti-rights responses given above - then just ask. I will explain why, in those specific examples, the Left's claims of rights-violations is false - or how the Left's 'solution' is itself a violation of rights [along with what is the appropriate rights-exercising solution to that violation of rights]).

    Until the Right stops aiding and abetting the Left's 'justice' tactic - until the Right stops agreeing with the Left that a violation of rights is occurring or that the violation of rights can be justified - the Right will continue to *lose* to the Left, as it has done for over a century now on these and countless other issues.

    Put simply, the Right has to stop being Charlie Brown.

    The Right has to finally learn from its mistake of mindlessly accepting what the Left (Lucy) says, so that - unlike Charlie Brown - the Right will not *forever* end up flat on its back with the Left smugly standing over it, laughing.

  3. "One of the hallmarks of Leftist methodology is to assert blatant falsehoods as real and then act on them—with the fierce urgency of now!—as if they were true. At first dismissed as too absurd to take seriously, this approach has proven highly successful."

    This is indeed quite true. In fact, I just wrote about this Leftist tactic over at FEE (the Foundation for Economic Education). There I identified the fact that there are two problems with the Right's response to the Left's evil but successful tactic.

    FEE was hawking a book entitled "Blindsight is 2020". And the argument made by both FEE and the author was that the Left's response to Covid was too narrow. It's focus was solely on harm caused by the virus, whereas more things needed to be considered ("mental health", the "economy", the "children", etc). And so both FEE and the author demanded that "cost/benefit analyses" and comparisons of "outcomes" need to be "weighed" and "balanced" as the solution to the Left's narrow focus. To this, I pointed out:

    The Left has long employed a tactic against which the Right is not only impotent to defend itself, but which the Right proudly aids and abets. The Left's success in getting their responses to Covid enacted are just the latest in a long line of successes achieved by the Left with this undefeated tactic.

    So what, exactly, is this tactic?

    Well, that's simple. On issues ranging from race, to the environment, to animals, to smoking, to jobs, to marriage, to white privilege, to Covid, etc etc ad nauseam, the Left's tactic is to simply declare that rights are being violated and that justice demands those violations be stopped immediately.

    In other words, the Left knows everyone shares, both on the intellectual and the emotional level, a sense of justice. And so the Left smartly appeals to this universal fact about human beings to get what it wants.

    For instance, in regard to race, the Left states: "Jim Crow laws etc violate the rights of blacks. Thus civil rights laws must be enacted to prevent evil State and private discrimination - ie to stop people from violating blacks."

    In regard to the environment, the Left states: "Man is murdering the planet. Thus environmental laws must be enacted to prevent unthinking humanity from 'changing' the environment - ie to stop people from violating the planet."

    In regard to animals, the Left states: "Man is committing genocide against entire species of animals. Thus species protection laws must be enacted to prevent arrogant humans from 'impacting' species - ie to stop people from violating species."

    In regard to smoking, the Left states: "Smokers are murdering non-smokers. Thus "second-hand smoke" laws must be enacted to prevent inconsiderate smokers from poisoning the "public" - ie to stop people from violating non-smokers."

    In regard to jobs, the Left states: "Bigots are refusing to hire women and racial minorities. Thus "Affirmative Action" laws must be enacted to stop deplorable bigots from discriminating against women and racial minorities - ie to stop people from violating women and minorities."

    In regard to marriage, the Left states: "Prejudiced religious zealots are preventing same sex couples from getting married. Thus gay marriage laws must be enacted to prevent zealots from being homophobic - ie to stop people from violating homosexuals."

    In regard to white privilege, the Left states: "White racists are systematically violating the rights of racial minorities in every aspect of society. Thus anti-racist laws must be enacted to stop white racists from practicing their society-wide discrimination - ie to stop people from systemically violating minorities."

    And, in regard to Covid, the Left states: "People are murdering Grandma with Covid. Thus lockdown/mandate laws must be enacted to prevent selfish people from murdering others - ie to stop people from violating Grandma."

    In each case, the Left states: "Someone is being violated and we (the State) must stop that violation of rights. We must practice justice, not injustice."

    That is their tactic.

    Put simply, the Left frame *everything* in terms of morality - of rights - of justice. That's the reason why, for years (from 1991 thru 2008 - see FEE's "How the Term Social Justice Warrior Became an Insult") they called themselves "social justice warriors" - ie why "justice" was literally their 'middle name'. "Justice" is the principle they apply - the accusation they make - regarding any and all of their 'concerns'.

    And they do so because *everyone* shares a moral sense of justice. No moral person is against justice.

    That's the reason this Leftist tactic has an unblemished track record of success. That, and the fact that the Right doesn't dispute the Left's claim of injustice. In all these cases - and countless more - the Right *agrees* with the Left. The Right agree rights are being violated.

    Instead of disputing the Left's claim by asking what rights are being violated and how - and then rationally rebutting that claim - the Right mindlessly concurs that all these injustices are, in fact, occurring.

    The only place the Right *disagrees* with the Left is *how* to deal with these supposed injustices. And here is where the Right goes wildly wrong. In contradiction to the Left, the Right turns around and acts against everyone's shared, visceral sense of justice.

    The Right rejects justice.

    The Right declares everyone must be unjust.

    As Bauer and Carroll here demonstrate, the Right explicitly declares that injustice - that murder, genocide, racism, sexism, etc etc ad nauseam - should not be morally condemned. Worse, the Right actually declares people must be "free" to murder, commit genocide, be racist, be sexist, et al!

    Put simply, the Right declares their very definition of "freedom" includes the "freedom" to violate rights!

    In other words, the Right declares that justice - the defense of the individual's rights - must never be the Collective's only consideration. Specifically, the Right declares that the violation of rights - ie rape - must be "balanced" by "society" against other concerns. As Guest used to put it here, the Right declares it is immoral - it is evil - for "society" to pursue a "rights-only agenda" - ie a 'sex-only agenda'. "Society" must pursue a 'violation inclusive agenda' - ie a 'rape inclusive agenda'.

    That is the Right's definition of justice!

    That is the Right's definition of 'good'!

    Whereas the Left offers its fellow human beings an unequivocal condemnation of rape as something evil - something which "society" must never tolerate, let alone permit - the Right declares that rape is not only necessary, but is a "benefit" to "society" - ie that rape is a social "good"!
    (cont)

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