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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Where do you far right guys get this idea about "indoctrinating children into gender dysphoria" and the "mutilation of children", etc.? It is delusion; this is not happening.
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.
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 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.
The purpose of this so called "dictatorship" was to save lives, and it did. Given the knowledge at the time it was the right thing to do. Your rant is full of misinformation and lies.
If the response to COVID was a from a dictator, then there were 50 simultaneous ones. Each state set its own laws, just like many RINOs would like it. I am thankful for my Georgia governor and legislature to have shown the country a middle way.
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?
Easy enough to present what is there, good and bad, without cherry-picking, and without editorializing while doing it. Don’t slant your presentation and leave it up to the reader to draw conclusions.
I stopped at the (preliminary) sentence saying, “[The authors of Project 2025], most of them drawing salaries from reactionary think tanks funded by wealthy donors .. “
(1) Before we even get to what is in Project 2025, here is an attempt to discredit it by argumentum ad hominem. Disgraceful.
(2) The planted axiom is that everyone is bought—except you and me, of course. What difference does it make where they draw their salaries (or, if of the political left, trust fund payments)? If their arguments and evidence are good, they’re good; if they’re bad, they’re bad.
(3) A reporter and certainly a scholar should use neutral language for description. There is no neutral definition of “reactionary.” It is a pure animadversion.
(4) “Funded by wealthy donors”? Can she name an institution funded by some other kind of donor? The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the Brookings Institution, the Washington Post, all are funded by wealthy donors.
(5) After that much idiocy in one sentence, I don’t need to read on; and I recommend against for everyone else.
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.
Project 2025 is pure fascism and is evil. It should not be dealt with like it is legitimate.
The author distorts. It’s a hit piece.
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
Boy oh boy, Clarence Thomas, Roy Moore, and Mark Robinson are not going to like the part about banning porn!
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.
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.
My use is ironic. I don't believe in demons or anything else supernatural.
You would call communism "demonic", well so is fascism. Project 2025 fits the definition of fascism.
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.
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.
PS: https://freepressers.com/articles/judge-california-mom-can-proceed-with-chemical-castration-of-trans-boy-12-against-fathers-wishes Maybe you should pay better attention
Where do you far right guys get this idea about "indoctrinating children into gender dysphoria" and the "mutilation of children", etc.? It is delusion; this is not happening.
Far right...lol. Where do you far left guys get the idea that questioning loopy ideas and pointing out truths is a far right thing?
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
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 the road to fascism , the right uses it's same old tired tactics of fear.
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 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.
The purpose of this so called "dictatorship" was to save lives, and it did. Given the knowledge at the time it was the right thing to do. Your rant is full of misinformation and lies.
If the response to COVID was a from a dictator, then there were 50 simultaneous ones. Each state set its own laws, just like many RINOs would like it. I am thankful for my Georgia governor and legislature to have shown the country a middle way.
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?
How can one be unbiased when dealing with a radical fascist document?
Easy enough to present what is there, good and bad, without cherry-picking, and without editorializing while doing it. Don’t slant your presentation and leave it up to the reader to draw conclusions.
Someone needs to correct the typos.
I’m sold when can we enact this project!?
I stopped at the (preliminary) sentence saying, “[The authors of Project 2025], most of them drawing salaries from reactionary think tanks funded by wealthy donors .. “
(1) Before we even get to what is in Project 2025, here is an attempt to discredit it by argumentum ad hominem. Disgraceful.
(2) The planted axiom is that everyone is bought—except you and me, of course. What difference does it make where they draw their salaries (or, if of the political left, trust fund payments)? If their arguments and evidence are good, they’re good; if they’re bad, they’re bad.
(3) A reporter and certainly a scholar should use neutral language for description. There is no neutral definition of “reactionary.” It is a pure animadversion.
(4) “Funded by wealthy donors”? Can she name an institution funded by some other kind of donor? The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the Brookings Institution, the Washington Post, all are funded by wealthy donors.
(5) After that much idiocy in one sentence, I don’t need to read on; and I recommend against for everyone else.