So, let me see, we should not worry about, discuss, or try to stop the in-your-face totalitarian aspect of the left/liberal/Democrat/Communist movement going full throttle that is taking place. The rampant censorship, the crumbling economy, the deliberate importation of illegal aliens---including criminals---by the millions, the fraudulent elections that have taken place, the calls for the trashing of the Constitution, the propaganda peddling aspect of the media, the attempted murder---by the State---of Trump, the two-tier system of justice, the Antifa and BLM thugs, the drag shows inside schools, the indoctrination of children, the anti-white racism, the encouraging children to agree to sexual mutilation, the Deep State which is an out of control entity in the government, the calls to scrap the Supreme Court, the attempt to remove a political candidate from the ballot, the calls to eliminate farming and ranching. Instead, we should worry about a wish list by conservatives that would eliminate some of these things.
Riiiiiiight.
My question is, why do leftists always insult the public's intelligence?
Literally nothing in this deranged rant bears any resemblance to reality. Pull your head out of Fox News and take a look around. (Why does someone so deluded even subscribe to this blog?)
For one thing, I never watch Fox News. Or CNN. Or MSNBC, or ABC. Etc.
If you have any intellectual acuity, you would take a few minutes to examine why you automatically assumed I did, and, why anyone who objects to the drive for totalitarianism does that.
I'm originally from Communist Cuba and all the signs are there. Hell, even someone who did not grow up in a totalitarian country should recognize totalitarianism when it's breathing down your neck.
You're parroting Fox talking points, so it's a pretty straightforward inference. None of the things you mentioned have ever happened. That's not a matter of interpretation, it's just facts.
This is a legitimate research question to ask. However, I would have taken the response more seriously if you hadn’t commissioned a writer who has a serious vested interest in vilifying the subject.
Tax cuts are NOT handouts. To believe they are would also mean that the monies generated (taken) from others is actually the property of the government. One must own something to be able to give it away. Claiming tax cuts as handouts is a tactic of the demagogue. Moreover, nothing in Project 2025 would "destroy American Democracy." American Democracy stems from the U.S. Constitution. The document appears more embrace the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, much of this commentary is just fear-mongering. Very telling that it was presented as truth.
Oh, and I forgot about the leftists constant drive to mutilate science by emphasizing race rather than merit, by suppressing research that contradict leftist dogma, the defenestration of scientists who dissent from the raping of science. By all means, let's keep supporting the Left. After all, they also hate the Christian religion.
I really appreciate almost all of your work and support hearing from all sides. This piece seems to have crossed a line to bias.
I think we are at a crossroads. If you are commissioning left wing radicals to write bad hit pieces, I think we really may be done. That is not my idea of a fair use of "my" funds. If you commission someone like Victor Hansen to write the rebuttal piece I'm good with the idea. (I may even fund it myself. Fine to contact me.) Stewart is very obviously of an extreme left political persuasion. Her interpretation of portions of the 2025 Project would fail any SAT level comprehension test. I'm not endorsing P 2025, but have seen too many biased left misrepresentations.
I read the entirety of Page 5 that she references and surmise that the brief except she provided below is her main reference:
""Not surprisingly then, eliminating pornography is a major focus of the Project 2025 program. And just what qualifies as pornography and what’s to be done about it? On the fifth page of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” Kevin Roberts calls for distributors of “pornography” (which appears to include references to non-marital sex and anything non-hetero-normative) to “be imprisoned” and for purveyors, including “educators and public librarians” to be “classed as registered sex offenders.” Here is the full passage:
Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment Protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.""
Nowhere is there even an inferred reference to "heteronormative sex" or "premarital sex" that I see. She uses these phrases as a straw man argument or negative influence to the reader. Where is there any statement that these phrases would be regarded as pornography? Her inferences are very similar to the Disney issue in Florida. Attempting to keep 1st graders from seeing diagrams of oral sex between same sex couples can be clear, but banning those depictions can meld into more subtle banning issues. The left seems to grossly extrapolate any limits on child sexual exposure to banning premarital sex or non-heteronormative sex way to easily.
I've received very inflamed statements that P 2025 bans/punishes single moms or same sex parents.
If you read the actual page that is referenced there is a statement that society should promote a 2 parent household. You are certainly aware that a 2 parent household has been repeatedly studied and shown to result in a better outcome for children and yet that is somehow condemned.
How do we get fair and balanced reporting. It is certainly not by spending readers contributions for pretty grossly biased commissioned reports.
Authors like this are feeding at the endless trough of money lavished on anyone who presents a seemingly reasoned rebuttal to the dreaded MAGA. Note I said ‘seemingly’.
I am disappointed that Michael chose to publish this disingenuous article without rebuttal (yet). We’ll see.
As for the author; people like this never stand by their positions in the public square. In a debate for example. They simply throw their screeds at the rest of us from behind their citadels of wealth and privilege and (typically) anonymity and then go collect their checks.
It's nice to learn the details of project 2025, beyond claims it's a demonic plan of unparalleled evil. What Stewart lays out concerning Christian nationalism and anti-abortion policies does resonate with me. The rest of the country seems increasingly to favor my/this view.
On the other hand, there are indications that the author is not to be fully trusted. For example, she writes that cutting corporate taxes is a handout to the wealthy. In reality, it's an unwise double tax on all investors, including pension funds and the non-wealthy. It's insulting to call this a handout. I also don't buy that the Department of Education shouldn't be radically reformed or eliminated.
There is only one issue in this election. That is to elect the party least likely to allow another episode of medical dictatorship if any governing individual or party ever tries that again. The dictatorship of 2020 to 2023 must never be repeated. Any politician who was in favor of lockdowns, masks, vaccinations, stay-home orders, or other tyranical measures must never be allowed into any position of power again because they have proven they cannot be trusted with it.
Right-wing parties are far from innocent in this matter, but they are much more likely to be nationalistic and willing to defend national independence if any international body such as the WHO should ever again try to impose an international tyrany. Right-wing Federal judges are the ones most likely to over-rule any attempts by the Executive or Legislative Branches to infringe peoples' natural rights. And it goes without saying that Trump is most likely to appoint judges who will rule against any such future efforts by póliticians or international bodies to impose totalitarianism.
Yes, there are some trade-ofs. Such right-wing judges are also more likely to rule against abortion, for example, but that is a relatively trivial matter, of immediate concern to only a small minority of the population. And, certainly, right-wing administrations are more likely to favor trashing the environment for economic motives, but that also hardly matters since the environment is a lost cause and is going to be trashed anyway due to population presures, no matter who is in office.
The events of 2020 to 2023 showed us how vulnerable we are to a dictatorship imposed under cover of a massive propaganda campaign, even if the alleged excuse, a relatively mild and harmless disease, was no real threat to anyone in good health and only endangered already ill individuals who were almost certain to die soon anyway. The political task for this election and, indeed, for the next generation, is to ensure nothing like it ever happens again. If that means some minor and unimportant issues like abortion must be sacrificed, so it must be.
I'm currently reading THE POWER WORSHIPPERS and was thrilled to find this outstanding response to Project 2025 by the author. She has the bonafides of being proved out prophetically in her concerns in that book and so I trust her follow through on the analysis of P2025. She also peppers it well with objective facts to back up her conclusions. The existential threat of the power worshippers getting back into the newly ordained unitary executive position cannot be overstated and P2025 is literally dangling the plan right in front of our eyes and, for the most part, being ignored by the electorate and especially those blinded by their devotion to the Red cult.
Unfortunately this was not an unbiased or objective report on Project 2025. Cherry-picked items for outrage and presented them in as negative a context as possible. With so many groups submitting ideas some are bound to be pretty far right. So?
The GOP went off the rails many years ago, even before Trump and his MAGA deplorables came along. Its rise to authoritarianism has been predicted, especially by John Dean – “There’s a cancer on the presidency” guy – who wrote in his 2006 book “Conservatives Without Conscience:”
“Frankly, when I started writing this book, I had a difficult time accounting for what had become of conservatism or, for that matter, the Republican party. I went down a number of dead-end streets looking for answers before finally discovering a true explanation. My finding, simple stated, is the growing presence of conservative authoritarianism. Conservatism has noticeably evolved from it so-called modern phase (1950-1994) into what might be called a postmodern period (1994 to present,) and in doing so it has regressed to its earliest authoritarian roots.
Authoritarianism is not well understood and seldom discussed in the context of government and politics, yet it now constitutes the prevailing thinking and behavior among conservatives. Regrettably, empirical studied reveal that authoritarians are frequently enemies of freedom, anti-democratic, anti-equality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral. They are also often conservatives without conscience who are capable of plunging this nation into disasters the like of which we have never known.”
Dean’s prophetic description of conservatism has come true. Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave. Any honest observer can see that Trump and his useful idiots are not Republicans. They are the true RINO’s.
There is also the assumption that Independents and Moderates will not object to the most extreme ideals in the plan. It's a wish list, nothing more. Some of the items I agree with, others I don't.
What I do object to is the growing censorious attitudes of the Left, the blatant disinformation, lies from the press, indoctrination of children into gender disphoria, mutilation of children and alienation of affection from parents - among many other whacko ideals coming from the Left.
So, let me see, we should not worry about, discuss, or try to stop the in-your-face totalitarian aspect of the left/liberal/Democrat/Communist movement going full throttle that is taking place. The rampant censorship, the crumbling economy, the deliberate importation of illegal aliens---including criminals---by the millions, the fraudulent elections that have taken place, the calls for the trashing of the Constitution, the propaganda peddling aspect of the media, the attempted murder---by the State---of Trump, the two-tier system of justice, the Antifa and BLM thugs, the drag shows inside schools, the indoctrination of children, the anti-white racism, the encouraging children to agree to sexual mutilation, the Deep State which is an out of control entity in the government, the calls to scrap the Supreme Court, the attempt to remove a political candidate from the ballot, the calls to eliminate farming and ranching. Instead, we should worry about a wish list by conservatives that would eliminate some of these things.
Riiiiiiight.
My question is, why do leftists always insult the public's intelligence?
Literally nothing in this deranged rant bears any resemblance to reality. Pull your head out of Fox News and take a look around. (Why does someone so deluded even subscribe to this blog?)
For one thing, I never watch Fox News. Or CNN. Or MSNBC, or ABC. Etc.
If you have any intellectual acuity, you would take a few minutes to examine why you automatically assumed I did, and, why anyone who objects to the drive for totalitarianism does that.
I'm originally from Communist Cuba and all the signs are there. Hell, even someone who did not grow up in a totalitarian country should recognize totalitarianism when it's breathing down your neck.
You're parroting Fox talking points, so it's a pretty straightforward inference. None of the things you mentioned have ever happened. That's not a matter of interpretation, it's just facts.
I imagine this guy gets most of his “news” from even further right sources like Breitbart, Alex Jones at Info Wars or some other even kookier sight.
To be more honest, Shermer should call his position and support, “Selective Skeptic”.
Bingo!
I think the most reasonable answer to your question is that people like you clearly show that you don’t have any.
This is a legitimate research question to ask. However, I would have taken the response more seriously if you hadn’t commissioned a writer who has a serious vested interest in vilifying the subject.
The author distorts. It’s a hit piece.
Tax cuts are NOT handouts. To believe they are would also mean that the monies generated (taken) from others is actually the property of the government. One must own something to be able to give it away. Claiming tax cuts as handouts is a tactic of the demagogue. Moreover, nothing in Project 2025 would "destroy American Democracy." American Democracy stems from the U.S. Constitution. The document appears more embrace the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, much of this commentary is just fear-mongering. Very telling that it was presented as truth.
Oh, and I forgot about the leftists constant drive to mutilate science by emphasizing race rather than merit, by suppressing research that contradict leftist dogma, the defenestration of scientists who dissent from the raping of science. By all means, let's keep supporting the Left. After all, they also hate the Christian religion.
In the first paragraph obvious bias sarcastic attitude
If you want people to read a critical piece you shouldn’t start like this - we already know the summary/ conclusion
Michael
I really appreciate almost all of your work and support hearing from all sides. This piece seems to have crossed a line to bias.
I think we are at a crossroads. If you are commissioning left wing radicals to write bad hit pieces, I think we really may be done. That is not my idea of a fair use of "my" funds. If you commission someone like Victor Hansen to write the rebuttal piece I'm good with the idea. (I may even fund it myself. Fine to contact me.) Stewart is very obviously of an extreme left political persuasion. Her interpretation of portions of the 2025 Project would fail any SAT level comprehension test. I'm not endorsing P 2025, but have seen too many biased left misrepresentations.
I read the entirety of Page 5 that she references and surmise that the brief except she provided below is her main reference:
""Not surprisingly then, eliminating pornography is a major focus of the Project 2025 program. And just what qualifies as pornography and what’s to be done about it? On the fifth page of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” Kevin Roberts calls for distributors of “pornography” (which appears to include references to non-marital sex and anything non-hetero-normative) to “be imprisoned” and for purveyors, including “educators and public librarians” to be “classed as registered sex offenders.” Here is the full passage:
Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment Protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.""
Nowhere is there even an inferred reference to "heteronormative sex" or "premarital sex" that I see. She uses these phrases as a straw man argument or negative influence to the reader. Where is there any statement that these phrases would be regarded as pornography? Her inferences are very similar to the Disney issue in Florida. Attempting to keep 1st graders from seeing diagrams of oral sex between same sex couples can be clear, but banning those depictions can meld into more subtle banning issues. The left seems to grossly extrapolate any limits on child sexual exposure to banning premarital sex or non-heteronormative sex way to easily.
I've received very inflamed statements that P 2025 bans/punishes single moms or same sex parents.
If you read the actual page that is referenced there is a statement that society should promote a 2 parent household. You are certainly aware that a 2 parent household has been repeatedly studied and shown to result in a better outcome for children and yet that is somehow condemned.
How do we get fair and balanced reporting. It is certainly not by spending readers contributions for pretty grossly biased commissioned reports.
Ken MD
Authors like this are feeding at the endless trough of money lavished on anyone who presents a seemingly reasoned rebuttal to the dreaded MAGA. Note I said ‘seemingly’.
I am disappointed that Michael chose to publish this disingenuous article without rebuttal (yet). We’ll see.
As for the author; people like this never stand by their positions in the public square. In a debate for example. They simply throw their screeds at the rest of us from behind their citadels of wealth and privilege and (typically) anonymity and then go collect their checks.
It's nice to learn the details of project 2025, beyond claims it's a demonic plan of unparalleled evil. What Stewart lays out concerning Christian nationalism and anti-abortion policies does resonate with me. The rest of the country seems increasingly to favor my/this view.
On the other hand, there are indications that the author is not to be fully trusted. For example, she writes that cutting corporate taxes is a handout to the wealthy. In reality, it's an unwise double tax on all investors, including pension funds and the non-wealthy. It's insulting to call this a handout. I also don't buy that the Department of Education shouldn't be radically reformed or eliminated.
"...it's a demonic plan..."
Why are so many people these days calling things "demonic"? Did that start with Jordan Peteson of something? It seems like a step backwards.
There is only one issue in this election. That is to elect the party least likely to allow another episode of medical dictatorship if any governing individual or party ever tries that again. The dictatorship of 2020 to 2023 must never be repeated. Any politician who was in favor of lockdowns, masks, vaccinations, stay-home orders, or other tyranical measures must never be allowed into any position of power again because they have proven they cannot be trusted with it.
Right-wing parties are far from innocent in this matter, but they are much more likely to be nationalistic and willing to defend national independence if any international body such as the WHO should ever again try to impose an international tyrany. Right-wing Federal judges are the ones most likely to over-rule any attempts by the Executive or Legislative Branches to infringe peoples' natural rights. And it goes without saying that Trump is most likely to appoint judges who will rule against any such future efforts by póliticians or international bodies to impose totalitarianism.
Yes, there are some trade-ofs. Such right-wing judges are also more likely to rule against abortion, for example, but that is a relatively trivial matter, of immediate concern to only a small minority of the population. And, certainly, right-wing administrations are more likely to favor trashing the environment for economic motives, but that also hardly matters since the environment is a lost cause and is going to be trashed anyway due to population presures, no matter who is in office.
The events of 2020 to 2023 showed us how vulnerable we are to a dictatorship imposed under cover of a massive propaganda campaign, even if the alleged excuse, a relatively mild and harmless disease, was no real threat to anyone in good health and only endangered already ill individuals who were almost certain to die soon anyway. The political task for this election and, indeed, for the next generation, is to ensure nothing like it ever happens again. If that means some minor and unimportant issues like abortion must be sacrificed, so it must be.
I'm currently reading THE POWER WORSHIPPERS and was thrilled to find this outstanding response to Project 2025 by the author. She has the bonafides of being proved out prophetically in her concerns in that book and so I trust her follow through on the analysis of P2025. She also peppers it well with objective facts to back up her conclusions. The existential threat of the power worshippers getting back into the newly ordained unitary executive position cannot be overstated and P2025 is literally dangling the plan right in front of our eyes and, for the most part, being ignored by the electorate and especially those blinded by their devotion to the Red cult.
Unfortunately this was not an unbiased or objective report on Project 2025. Cherry-picked items for outrage and presented them in as negative a context as possible. With so many groups submitting ideas some are bound to be pretty far right. So?
The GOP went off the rails many years ago, even before Trump and his MAGA deplorables came along. Its rise to authoritarianism has been predicted, especially by John Dean – “There’s a cancer on the presidency” guy – who wrote in his 2006 book “Conservatives Without Conscience:”
“Frankly, when I started writing this book, I had a difficult time accounting for what had become of conservatism or, for that matter, the Republican party. I went down a number of dead-end streets looking for answers before finally discovering a true explanation. My finding, simple stated, is the growing presence of conservative authoritarianism. Conservatism has noticeably evolved from it so-called modern phase (1950-1994) into what might be called a postmodern period (1994 to present,) and in doing so it has regressed to its earliest authoritarian roots.
Authoritarianism is not well understood and seldom discussed in the context of government and politics, yet it now constitutes the prevailing thinking and behavior among conservatives. Regrettably, empirical studied reveal that authoritarians are frequently enemies of freedom, anti-democratic, anti-equality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral. They are also often conservatives without conscience who are capable of plunging this nation into disasters the like of which we have never known.”
Dean’s prophetic description of conservatism has come true. Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave. Any honest observer can see that Trump and his useful idiots are not Republicans. They are the true RINO’s.
I’m sold when can we enact this project!?
There is also the assumption that Independents and Moderates will not object to the most extreme ideals in the plan. It's a wish list, nothing more. Some of the items I agree with, others I don't.
What I do object to is the growing censorious attitudes of the Left, the blatant disinformation, lies from the press, indoctrination of children into gender disphoria, mutilation of children and alienation of affection from parents - among many other whacko ideals coming from the Left.
Someone needs to correct the typos.