REVOLUTION: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World

 A Patriot’s Take on the American Revolution  

History isn’t written by “the winners.”  It’s written by historians and persons of letters.  Thus, what we know about the past depends on the interests and biases of those who compose treatises about the subject.  Eric Metaxas’s number one best seller, Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World provides in its subtitle an unambiguous declaration of the author’s conclusion about events in colonial America that are covered in this scrupulously researched book.  Upon finishing its nearly 600 densely packed pages most readers will likely wonder why so many things delineated therein were neglected or distorted by prior historians.

 

Foremost among those distortions is the assertion that most of America’s founders were deists who rejected the idea of God’s post-creation activity in human affairs.  As Metaxas clearly shows via the words of various patriots, especially John Adams and George Washington, the notion of God’s “providential” acts on behalf of the emergent nation was ubiquitous, a faith indissolubly linked to its adherence to biblical principles as articulated by ministers like George Whitefield.  These “no King but Jesus” convictions spread by the ministerial “Black Robe Regiment” were often derided by British elites who denigrated colonials as, in today’s parlance, bible-bangers.  A practical consequence of this gulf between British and colonial morals is illustrated by the humane treatment Americans typically provided captured troops versus the wretched fate most  patriot soldiers faced who fell into British hands, an estimated 10,000 of whom died in captivity, outpacing the “less than 7,000” killed in combat.

 

Metaxas further illustrates the decadence of Britain’s leadership under George III by providing detailed descriptions of gatherings in England by prominent members of the Hellfire Club who not only embraced hedonism but even mocked Christian beliefs.  Later the author devotes several pages to General William Howe’s lavish farewell party in Philadelphia.  By contrast, Washington is shown stressing the importance of discipline and moral conduct for himself and his troops in view of their “sacred” cause, a cause for which colonials officially beseeched God’s help by declaring days of fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving.

 

Though John Adams is invariably included in any worthy account of America’s founding, the lasting memory history has bequeathed us often features slurs directed toward a “blind, bald, crippled, and querulous” Adams who as President had backed the Alien and Sedition Acts.  Metaxas focuses instead on the biblically schooled, anti-slavery patriot hailed as the “Atlas of American Independence” by contemporaries.  Indeed, Metaxas notes that Thomas Jefferson thought authorship of the Declaration should be given to the indispensable early promoter of American liberty and only agreed to compose the document himself at Adams’s insistence.

 

Metaxas’s total narrative focuses on important players and crucial events from the death of George II in 1760 to the agreement ending the revolution in 1783.  In that effort he employs materials mostly derived from original sources and numerous scholarly works.  His extended description of the Boston Massacre is particularly compelling and makes clear that the colonies had their own share of less-than-pious rowdies.  When perusing the author’s account of this event, one’s sympathy likely falls more with the handful of trapped British soldiers than with the unrelenting mob, including Crispus Attucks, that pelted the longsuffering troops with projectiles – a scene bearing no resemblance to the inaccurate etching of the “massacre” distributed by Paul Revere for propagandistic purposes.  How the scrupulously principled John Adams managed to provide those British soldiers with a partially successful legal defense while still maintaining his strong opposition to their being stationed in Boston is another significant story.  

 

If Adams is Metaxas’s political hero, Washington is his military Cincinnatus. The general’s many challenges are covered extensively, as are battlefield maneuvers that should resonate with aficionados of military strategy.  During those fateful years Washington endured defeats, wretched fighting conditions, assassination attempts, rivalries from within the officer corps, and bleak prospects of success, all with a steadfast equanimity that bore witness to his character and leadership ability.  Following this magnificent and grueling service to the fledgling country, Washington, like Cincinnatus, relinquished power.  

                                                                                     

Metaxas also provides rich portraits of other important individuals including John Hancock, Nathan Hale, Henry Knox, and Samuel Adams.  Among those additional portraits is that of Abigail Adams, whose letters to her husband reveal a strong, biblically grounded spouse who stoically endured the vicissitudes of war for the sake of “justice, truth, and righteousness” -- an image more complete than that of a woman whose primary contribution to history were the words, “Remember the ladies.”  Metaxas’s rendering of General Benedict Arnold also fleshes out what for most folks is an incomplete picture.  Arnold served heroically in the crucial battle of Saratoga during which he suffered a painful injury that doubtless contributed, alongside unquenched ambition, to his act of treachery that could have changed the course of history.  Finally, incidental accounts of the savage treatment meted out by tribal warriors to combat enemies should cause a reassessment of any Disneyesque images of largely civilized and pacific “Native Americans.”           

 

Metaxas’s fine book, I must note, occasionally employs words and foreign phrases that are beyond the vocabulary of average readers who may have to keep a translating computer at hand or guess at meanings.  Also, at times I wished an editor had excised some of the details Metaxas provides that aren’t as critical as those happily included in his account of the Boston Massacre.  For example, Henry Knox’s heroic effort to bring cannons and other weaponry in Fort Ticonderoga to General Washington in Boston was recounted so thoroughly that a reader might feel he was enduring the icy, mountainous 300-mile trek himself, alongside the horses and oxen.

 

That said, those complaints are miniscule compared to the insight achieved by looking at the American Revolution, as Metaxas does, through the eyes of patriots like Washington and John Adams and not through the eyes of a Marxist like Howard Zinn whose People’s History of the United States has sold well over two million copies.      

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer and retired teacher living in Southern California.  His book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle , as is his book Poetry with a Moral Edge.

   

SUICIDAL EMPATHY: Dying to be Kind

Rhamell Burke had been arrested four times since February 2^nd for assault, burglary, drugs, and weapons charges.  On May 7^th he was released from New York’s Bellevue Hospital psychiatric facility, and a few hours later he allegedly shoved seventy-six year old Ross Falzone down a flight of subway stairs, resulting in Falzone’s death.  One of the prior assault charges involved a young woman who declined to press charges.  The 23-year-old lady later said, “Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail.”  Reportedly, she now regrets her choice whose tragic consequence has been cited as an instance of suicidal empathy, or more accurately in this case, homicidal empathy.

The term “suicidal empathy” was coined by Professor Gad Saad, and his new book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind, revolves around the concept.  Rhamell Burke’s repeated low- or no-consequence legal encounters and the young woman’s confession about her mental disposition constitute two prime examples of the psychic malady in which compassion for ostensibly victimized groups is so overblown that it outweighs social well being.  Saad provides a plethora of additional examples including attitudes toward illegal aliens, drug users, the homeless, transgenders, Hamas terrorists, and even socialism.  These feelings are connected to destructive policies such as open borders, massive benefits for illegals, absurd indulgences for criminals, men in women’s sports, anti-merit DEI programs, and numerous redistribution efforts that reward failure and punish success.    

Saad’s work is a valuable resource for identifying areas where empathy has been weaponized with palpably destructive results.  Billed as an “evolutionary psychologist,” Saad is less focused when it comes to explaining the reasons behind what he frequently calls the “misfiring” (or even “orgiastic misfiring”) of the emotional system, thus linguistically linking suicidal empathy to a cerebral malfunction.  Elsewhere in the book Saad points to a highly theoretical cognitive function:  “The West’s lack of a cultural theory of mind is destroying our societies.”  His primary focus, however, when it comes to the etiology of the affective malady, centers on academic institutions that spawned theories such as cultural relativism and deconstructionism, philosophical perspectives that undermine traditional ideas about truth and natural law.  With intellectuals freed from the pursuit of truth, their endeavors moved toward emotionally driven projects as opposed to rational analysis of moral principles and hard evidence, especially in Saad’s case hard evidence grounded in evolutionary development.   (C.S. Lewis came to a similar conclusion in The Abolition of Man based on the modern rejection of objective truth.)

Thus, it isn’t surprising that Saad cites with approval Thomas Sowell’s idea in The Vision of the Anointed about the intelligentsia espousing “policies that make them feel virtuous for their unlimited compassion while being decoupled from the actual consequences of their policies.”  Unlike Las Vegas, ideas that originate in academia don’t stay there.  The attitude of suicidal empathy, Saad observes, spreads like a contagion, as illustrated by the head-turning pace with which transgenderism infected the whole country bringing with it biological absurdities, the invasion of girls’ sports, and even the mutilation of children’s bodies for the sake of “gender affirmation.”  Of course this contagion wasn’t spread by germs floating in the air; it was spread by educational and media institutions controlled by Democrats, Socialists, and Marxists -- a sociological and political point obscured by Saad’s overreliance on biological and psychological perspectives.

My own term for the largely unscrutinized compassion associated with suicidal empathy is “utopian narcissism.” The policy of unlimited empathy is impractical and thus utopian, but the true reason for demanding compassion toward presumably victimized groups is, as Sowell observes, self-congratulation and not empathy.  Thus, being ignorant of a policy’s negative consequences is essential to bolster one’s sense of moral superiority.  In this regard physical separation from those consequences, combined with political insularity, conspire with media complicity to enforce ignorance of rapes, murders, human trafficking, and drug deaths attributable, for instance, to Biden’s open border policy.  Indeed, in California identifying a criminal as an illegal alien by law enforcement or the media carries a professional stigma akin to use of the n-word.  Better to hide the truth from Hollywood stars and a general public infected with suicidal (or narcissistic) empathy than to risk the discomfort of cognitive dissonance.    

Another explanation I would propose for unlimited compassion is even crasser than the aforementioned ego-inflating rationale, namely, power.  Political players often feign empathy as a cynical tool to gain support from various groups.  In the case of the Southern Poverty Law Center their “empathy” secretly funded enemies of “victimized” groups to make it clear how important it was for likeminded folks to support their organization.  If one wishes to add a Messianic savior complex to this cynical power play, that oxymoronic combo can’t be excluded.

In short, Saad is to be commended for delineating the large number of cases where empathy for supposedly victimized groups has suicidal consequences.  His diagnosis of the academic origin of the contagion also has merit, though additional and simpler explanations are available as well.  Saad’s heavy reliance on biological and psychiatric analytical tools, however, sometimes obscures motives that aren’t all that murky -- self-aggrandizement, cynical manipulation, self-hatred, power, and even the thrill (and benefits) of blindly identifying with an elite in-group under the guise of compassion.  

 Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California.  His book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle , as is his book Poetry with a Moral Edge

PANDEMIC OF LUNACY: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy

The chance of finding a philosophy professor like J. Budziszewski is about as rare as finding a teenage student who doesn’t believe that right and wrong, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder.  In Pandemic of Lunacy Professor Budziszewski makes a compelling case for the opposite view, one seldom embraced nowadays even by members of his own profession, namely, that right and wrong are objective categories and not, in general, “vague and equivocal.”  Nor are they “different for everyone.” 

If the reader immediately objects that different cultures have different notions about what is right and wrong, the former nihilist and Nietzsche aficionado  who has ruffled many feathers at the University of Texas has a logical answer for you, one that distinguishes what right and wrong actually are from what any person or culture asserts they are.  Beyond that currently heretical belief, Budziszewski provides scholarly evidence that the moral elements in the Ten Commandments are, in some form, embedded in all cultures.  You’ll have to buy the book to get a reasoned and likely convincing reply to your objections, but be warned that Margaret Mead’s conclusion about South Sea Islander sexual license (precursors to those now extant in America) has been debunked.  

Budziszewski’s analysis concerning basic concepts of right and wrong serves as a foundation for the other topics he addresses in this short, six-part tour de force, written for “laymen” and employing a bare minimum of philosophical terminology.  Part one, “Delusions about Virtue and Happiness” is followed by topics that concern politics, sexuality, being human, reality, and lastly, God and religion.  That final category shouldn’t mislead folks into thinking the book is based on religious dogma.  It is not.  Aristotle is the philosopher Budziszewski relies on most, even in the final section about God.  Accordingly, when speaking about happiness, the professor points readers toward Aristotle’s definition of the term that concerns an activity, living well, not merely a feeling of pleasure.     

Natural law and human nature are two concepts that comprise the measuring rods by which the author exposes our contemporary lunacy.  For example, the “natural” function of human sexuality, Budziszewski argues, is procreation, just as the “natural” function of eating is body nourishment.  When that natural function is ignored, a host of negative consequences follow.  If pleasure is considered sex’s primary purpose (as students are inclined to tell the professor) its “natural” connection to procreation and family formation is suppressed, thus leading to promiscuity, STDs, pornography, and the severance of marriage itself from procreation and the family.  Needless to say, the sixties-initiated revolution in sexual mores has been a disaster for children, a quarter of whose fathers aren’t in the home and whose mothers likely believe that nurturing them at home is an inferior vocation compared to the feminist ideal of income equality with men.

The preceding paragraph provides an example of Budziszewski’s warning: “Just as lies beget lies, self-deceptions beget new self-deceptions.”  Stated otherwise, when one violates natural law, the negative consequences have a cascading quality.  So in addition to the harmful effects listed above about sex-related delusions, one must add millions of abortions, legislation expanding abortion’s scope, and in recent years even abortion’s celebration.  The taking of human life in utero also cheapens human life itself and makes suicide and euthanasia more common.  (I offer as additional evidence this article about Canada’s MAiD program that now accounts for one in twenty deaths in that country.)

Of course none of these things are moral problems, at least intellectually, for those who insist that natural law is a social fiction.  But Budziszewski argues persuasively that conscience exacts a cost for violating its moral parameters.  Sometimes that price is compulsive repetition of the immoral behavior, often leading to addiction.  Sometimes the penalty is destruction of the ability to truly love another person sexually.  And for some individuals unacknowledged guilt compels them to recruit others into sharing and celebrating their ruling vice -- a form of confession without contrition.  Of course we all pay the price of living in a disordered world brought about by disordered loves and beliefs.

Budziszewski’s penultimate lunacy (#29) deals with the popular proscription against “judging,” an incoherent dogma encapsulated in the verbal challenge, “Who’s to say?” As the professor observes, this rejection of judgment amounts in point of fact to a judgment against something else, usually traditional beliefs such as the definition of marriage or the humanity of an unborn child.  After confounding his imagined interlocutor by asking, “Who is to say that tolerance is right?” Budziszewski concludes his lesson by noting that nonjudgmentalism isn’t what it seems to be. “It is always a disguise for imposing a moral judgment without having to give reasons for it, just by pretending not to be making one.”

Some of the more traditional philosophical delusions that Budziszewski addresses include the belief that everything is material, that humans are naturally good or bad, that humans have no “nature” at all, and the belief that humans are merely animals.  Whatever the topic, the professor writes clearly and cogently, employing logic, experience, and common sense to support conclusions that are sure to confound and possibly infuriate persons tied to the unexamined delusions that underpin the lunacy of our time.

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer and a retired philosophy and religion instructor.  His book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle , as is his book Poetry with a Moral Edge.

CALIFORNIA SCREAMIN': A pre-primary article about Becerra vs. Steyer

Steyer vs. Becerra:  California Screamin’  (published May 29, primary was June 2...)

For the last three weeks proletarians in the People’s Republic of California have been inundated with campaign ads for two gubernatorial candidates, billionaire Tom Steyer and machine Democrat office holder Xavier Becerra.  Promos for the potato and f-word shot slinger Katie Porter are almost as rare as commercials supporting Steve Hilton whose televised appearances outside the debate stage are primarily interviews on conservative media networks.

In those debates the primary qualification for governor on the Democrat side is hatred of Donald Trump -- a longstanding political tactic that not only encourages repeated assassination attempts but also recently cost a Trump supporter in Escondido his life.  For those same Democrat candidates, illegals in the state have been transformed into “immigrants” or “all Californians” or “our diverse community”-- a group who, as Porter unintentionally confessed, are responsible for any growth the state has recently experienced.  (Nothing is said, of course, about their contribution to the “growth” of rents, housing prices, state budgets, or ER crowds). 

All the Democrats likewise tout the abolition of ICE with a passion that slanders these law enforcement officers as members of a “criminal” organization.  The Dems also vow to save California’s environment from the evil fossil fuel industry, a pledge they’ve already made good on by driving out refineries, shutting down drilling operations, and imposing regulatory burdens that recently led to Chevron's threat  to leave the state completely after having moved its corporate headquarters to Houston in 2025. (No mention is made of the fact that their climate change policies have also driven the state’s energy prices, including gasoline and electricity, through the roof.)

Steyer’s aforementioned ads tout the candidate as an agent of change, despite his being the largest financial supporter of Democrats for decades, the party that has long enjoyed a supermajority in Sacramento and since 2011 has held every statewide office.  Since blaming his own party for California’s ills isn’t an option, Steyer rants against corporations whose money, he claims, have bought elections and whose greed has made life unaffordable in the state.  So far Steyer (whose billions were obtained via a corporate hedge fund and investments in businesses that include the fossil fuel industry) has poured over a quarter billion bucks (mostly his own) into the governor’s race. His cost-of-living solutions to make California affordable include a single-payer health care system for “all Californians” paid for by corporate taxes as well as a government-funded project to build affordable houses.     

It’s enjoyable for sane Californians to see Becerra’s ads making some of the obvious arguments against Steyer mentioned above:  a corporatist billionaire who pledges to fight corporate interests; a candidate who blames corporate money in politics for the state’s problems but spends hundreds of millions to “buy” the governor’s office.  Added to these talking points are accusations about Steyer’s investments in ICE detention centers and big tobacco.  Steyer, of course, returns the favor by mocking Becerra as an undistinguished go-along politician linked to big oil who even lost track of thousands of unaccompanied minors as Biden’s HHS Secretary. 

Becerra’s ads also focus on endorsements from some of California’s major union organizations that boosted his campaign poll numbers from mid-single digits to near the top of the heap after the former Democrat top dog, Eric Swalwell, dropped out of the race over his sex scandal.  At least three of these unions, including SEIU, formerly supported Swalwell, a fact that suggests Becerra is the default candidate of California’s Democrat machine.  Beyond union support, Becerra brags about beating Trump in lawsuits as California’s AG, helping pass Obamacare, taking down big oil, and even being a vehicle to stop the avalanche of Steyer political ads.  

Becerra’s personal and political links to the radical organization formerly known as La Raza (now UnidosUS) and thus to the Mexican government, won’t be used against him by Steyer or any other Democrat candidate since the state with a large Anglo majority when it twice elected Ronald Reagan governor and backed the Gipper for President is now over 40% Hispanic and only a third Anglo.  The same see-no-upside goes for criticizing Becerra’s “my family” links to the non-profit CHIRLA that’s also tied to Mexico’s leadership and illegal immigration.

As most readers likely know, California’s “jungle primary” lumps every candidate together on the ballot, regardless of party, and sends the top two of this year’s sixty-one gubernatorial hopefuls to the general election in November.  Currently Hilton (22%), Becerra (21%), and Steyer (15%) are the only real contenders in a recent Democratic Party poll.  So one of these  three is going to be the odd man out next Tuesday (or rather in a week or two from election day given how California sends mail-in ballots capable of being “harvested” to all “active” registered voters and later “verifies their authenticity”).  Unfortunately, even if Hilton gets into the fall election, his chances of winning are slim given the power of California’s union-led Democrat establishment and complicit media.  But at least during this primary season Californians get the rare opportunity to hear two Democrats “expose” each other -- though often for the wrong reasons.   

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California.  His book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle , as is his book Poetry with a Moral Edge.

Rationalizing Moral Depravity: A Documentary Exposing JERRY SPRINGER SHOW Depravity

A recently released documentary worth watching focuses attention on producers responsible for putting together The Jerry Springer Show.  This episode of Hollywood Demons (“Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!”) serves as a primer for rationalizing moral depravity.  The show also contains numerous comments by Dr. Drew Pinsky that include several troubling observations and a couple of bona fide moral boners.  

Springer himself, who passed away in 2023, is only briefly in the position of an interviewee, during which time he minimizes the impact of his decades-long program as “a stupid television show.”  He also distances himself from responsibility by saying he wasn’t involved in the nuts and bolts of production.  Presumably the star had little say about content and was “just following orders.”  Of course he was also cashing fat checks issued by the accounting department.  In another absurd rationalization Springer, who earlier in his career was the Democrat Mayor of Cincinnati and a regular news anchor, included himself among the “regular people” who were picking themselves (via ratings one supposes) as stars of the show as opposed to a couple of executives in New York and Hollywood.  In another clip he employs a “free speech” diversion as a defense for hosting  twenty-seven years of what TV Guide judged the worst television show of all time, thus conveniently confusing what one has a right to do with what is right to do.

The producers and other major players behind the scene can be divided into two groups, those who seemed hardened to any moral sensibility and those who felt pangs of conscience that prompted their departure from the show.  Among the latter group was an associate tasked with luring guests into ambushes via complementary airplane, limo, and hotel accommodations. The young producer quit after a “sweet” Southern mom was crying in his arms following a program in which her son callously insulted her.  That case of mistreatment was mild compared to others, including a 14-year-old sexually abused girl who was booked three times along with her abusive dad and mocked as “a racist family.”  That very popular formula likely did more than the Southern Poverty Law Center to spread the notion among low information voters that white supremacy was a threat to democracy.   

Beyond the typical shows noted above, Springer productions were directly connected to legal cases involving incest, murder, and suicide.  In 1998 two 15- and 13-year-old brothers in Hollywood, Florida mentioned a prior Springer episode as their inspiration for victimizing their 8-year-old sister.  Two years later a murder was committed by a man who, along with his new wife, had humiliated his ex-wife on the show.  Significantly, he later murdered his ex on the very day the prerecorded episode was broadcast and viewed by her serial abuser.  Still, the show continued.  Eighteen years later after a “secrets revealed” episode led to a suicide, NBCUniversal finally pulled the plug -- likely as part of an arbitrated settlement with the young man’s family, and also because treating people like dispensable pawns wasn’t sufficiently shocking in the age of mouse-click depravity.   

Naturally, many producers along with Springer whitewashed their product as “just entertainment”-- the word “just” providing absolution for the degradation of human beings for public amusement.  One of the show’s mafia-redolent producers proffered the excuse that a single TV show wouldn’t destroy the country, a ludicrous moral standard the COVID pandemic would pass with flying colors.  Burt Dubrow, the program’s initial executive producer, began his interview with an air of self-justification, saying he wanted to “set the record straight” and noted that the show initially had a Phil Donahue format, and what it later became was only discovered “accidentally” on an episode featuring white supremacists alongside black activists.  The predictable brawl produced a ratings bounce, and the rest is history. Throughout the documentary Dubrow appeared impervious to any moral concerns.     

Dr. Pinsky, an M.D. and addiction specialist, was regularly inserted into the documentary for comments that were sympathetic toward those being exploited but inordinately exculpatory with respect to Springer whom the doctor knew and confessed was “a hard guy not to love.”  In Dr. Drew’s estimation, Jerry was charged with the task of transforming “dog excrement” into “Devonshire cream.”  Apparently lost on the doctor was the fact that Springer, despite his Jewish heritage, regularly platformed racists and thus could hardly be credited for confronting anti-Semites.  At least Pinsky didn’t specifically give Springer “Devonshire cream” credit for his final thoughts segment at each program’s end -- an obvious face-saving device comparable to the mob’s use of a store front establishment to launder money obtained through extortion and murder.

The doctor’s most disturbing observation was the following commonplace:

Jerry always said that the show doesn’t create society, it reflects it.  And he’s absolutely correct; it is a hundred percent correct.

That someone as prominent as Dr. Pinsky could enthusiastically endorse one of the most frequent and mendacious excuses for debauchery since the advent of mass media was shocking.  And he said it with more intensity than anything else he observed in the entire documentary.  The only way Springer’s show “reflects society” is that its very existence reveals a powerful media group willing to exploit the nation’s most vulnerable and degraded individuals for profit -- other consequences be damned.  Stated otherwise, the show “reflects” a vanishingly small segment of society, a segment manipulated to produce contrived confrontations.  Most people would never do what Springer and company did.  Their habits don’t make ratings spike but do make the country function at work, at worship, through charitable activities, and as caring parents.  In short, Springer’s show is a proctologist’s view of society with fake tumors added willy-nilly to the radiological photos.       

 Having all but absolved his “hard not to love” acquaintance of transmogrifying society into a moshpit of degeneracy, Pinsky acknowledges that the show does, at least, “desensitize” and “spiritually deplete” guests, producers, and arguably the mob-like studio audience.  His sociological coup de grace, however, was this declaration about desensitization, also made with intensity: “They are human beings, and we dehumanize them.  That is on us, and we should look at ourselves very carefully.”   

Who is “we”?  I never watched more than a few minutes of Springer, and it was as an ethics teacher keeping up with the depravity displayed on the networks and MTV.  How exactly are “we” responsible for the “desensitization” (to say nothing of incest, murder, and suicide) perpetrated by Springer and his producers?  Earlier in the documentary Pinsky had opined, “Television doesn’t ruin society because we watch” -- a non-sequitur that combines an overstated premise with an ill-defined conclusion.  The doctor could at least have pointed to regular viewers alongside Springer, his producers, and television higher ups, then apportioned degrees of culpability.  After all, no one would watch the “dehumanization” if it weren’t first produced and broadcast. Those who quit the show clearly felt its negative impact on themselves, guests, and society, and they took responsibility.      

By placing blame upon an amorphous “society” or on “us” one fails to assign guilt where it properly belongs, typically with the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of morally vacuous individuals willing to do almost anything to make a pile of money or become famous and powerful -- including the “lovable” Springer.  

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California.  His book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle , as is his book Poetry with a Moral Edge.

THE FOX NEWS FRAT HOUSE

Here’s a conspiracy theory worth pondering.  On Monday, April 6, 2026, Fox News’ premier evening program, The Five, featured not only Dana Perino, Kellyanne Conway, Greg Gutfeld, and Jesse Watters, but also Kat Timpf in the chair typically occupied by Harold Ford or Jessica Tarlov.  The conspiracy?  Someone has been transforming the news organization into an unserious, morally vacuous source for information and opinion.  Maybe it’s the former House Speaker and Mitt Romney’s 2012 running mate, Paul Ryan, who continues to sit on the board of Fox Corporation.  Or maybe it’s Karl Rove, the Bush 43 whiteboard guru.  Or maybe it’s some other Deep State figure who has penetrated the bowels of Fox News.  But some cabal must be afoot to populate the network’s programs with contributors or hosts that stand slightly above late night comics when it comes to credible analysis.   

  

The plot began three years ago when Jesse Watters, formerly Bill O’Reilly’s “Man on the Street,” was elevated to the 8 p.m. (ET) anchor spot replacing Tucker Carlson.  While Watters occasionally strings together salient talking points, on a gravitas scale he rates near Pee-wee Herman.  To his credit (if not his credibility) Watters regularly observes that his prestigious journalistic position was a stroke of luck, not a status achieved through professional merit.  On Watters’ Primetime show he chums it up with folks like “K-Mac” (Kevin McCarthy) and “VDH” (Victor Davis Hanson) during interviews where serious issues are approached on his part like exchanges between frat house buddies.  This insouciance turns into Gutfeld-inspired frivolity and stupidity on The Five where, in the aforementioned episode, he turned a question about Democrats touting tax cuts into an analogy involving a return to the missionary position after experimenting with various sexual alternatives. 

Gutfeld is a different matter given the fact that he regularly composes poignant diatribes eviscerating leftist absurdities.  The problem is that his not-so-late-night obscenity fest (7 p.m. on the West Coast) totally destroys his credibility as a serious individual whose opinions are worthy of consideration.  On Gutfeld! his psychological instability and moral vacuity are clearly displayed.  Compulsive sniggering, a scatological fixation, plus jokes that completely discard the notion of taste reveal that Gutfeld is “a sick man,” as Paul Mauro recently observed when countering the host’s ecstatic praise for an erotic chatbot.  While “late night” Gutfeld generally tows a pro-MAGA political line, his comic persona is that of a rank degenerate.  (No, Greg, it isn’t funny that you have some young pool-boys confined in your basement.)  Indeed, Gutfeld’s comic “brand” is that nothing is sacred, a shtick that completely obviates his serious monologue about Democrats destroying the boundaries a society requires.  Finally, Gutfeld’s comic (and at least partially real) personality has lowered the intellectual and moral tone of The Five, especially in terms of acceptable language and imagery (cf. the aforementioned Watters analogy).  

Kat Timpf’s addition to The Five on April 6 was the coup de grâce for that episode’s integrity.  Timpf, who infiltrated FOX via Gutfeld’s late-late night program, Red Eye, brought to the highly rated evening show Gutfeld’s personal moral void plus none of his political insights.  Though careful to mute her freshman level  “libertarian” views about borders, drag queens, and drug and prostitution legalization that air on Gutfeld!, when given a chance to speak on this more serious program, Timpf was still able to plug her idea that no joke is off limits -- the premise of her first self-referential book. 

When asked about a very successful SNL gag that implied Trump’s attendance at a theater performance might result in a repetition of Lincoln’s fate, Timpf (along with Gutfeld and Watters) shrugged it off as nothing important -- no thought given to “unintended” consequences or the uproar that would inevitably (and rightly) ensue were the same barb directed toward Barack Obama.  Only Kellyanne Conway provided a reasonable response by noting that liberals are vastly more willing than conservatives to condone political violence and said so just a few days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.  Timpf was also able to declare that she often employs the f-word in less restrictive contexts and can joke about her own mastectomy -- as if a self-referential and presumably humorous observation about a personal crisis justifies tasteless and harmful jokes about anything else.  Such justifiably forbidden comedic territory is a landscape upon which Gutfeld!, SNL , and Jimmy Kimmel regularly tread.

While I don’t care for Jessica Tarlov’s pre-packaged TDS talking points, at least her comments represent a perspective that can’t be casually dismissed as coming from a “Poo Detective” (Gutfeld!) or someone who hysterically berates the thoughtful Federalist correspondent Brianna Lyman for a crocheting hobby.  According to Timpf, Brianna is “blowing it” if in her twenties she’s not at a bar getting wasted, smoking cigarettes, throwing up, then going back to the bar.  (See Timpf lose it here at minute 9:30.)   

If Fox News wishes to foil the news-rot conspiracy against it, I suggest utilizing Will Cain for Primetime and employing Johnny Jones, Lisa Boothe, Kayleigh McEnany, Lawrence Jones, Paul Mauro, and Erin Maguire to fill open opinion slots.  Also insist on more decorum from Gutfeld or confine him to late-late night.

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California.  His book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle , as is his book Poetry with a Moral Edge.

 

 

     

IMMORTALITY VIA ATROCITIES: KILLED TO ORDER by JAN JEKIELEK

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were chatting while strolling toward a military parade at Tiananmen Square in September of 2025 when a microphone picked up their comments about living 150 years or longer.  In Communist China, that possibility isn’t just wishful thinking, as Jan Jekielek’s book, Killed to Order, reveals.  The regime clearly has a supply of fresh body parts in prison storage available when needed for elite party members as well as for transplant tourists willing to pay handsomely for an anonymous victim’s liver, kidney, or heart.  The public obituary of an 87-year-old communist official in which he boasts that “many of his components are not his anymore” hints at that fact.  

A more chilling statement comes from the ex-wife of a Chinese surgeon in northwest China.  She asserts that three to four thousand political prisoners were killed for their organs at the hospital where she and her husband worked.  The husband estimated that he removed corneas from around two thousand live prisoners.  In another specific case reliably related to Jekielek, a “Chinese military surgeon killed eight prisoners of conscience to supply one foreign patient with a matching kidney.”

The fate of those subjected to forced organ removals is almost always death and immediate cremation, but one person, Cheng Pei Ming, survived an initial surgery and later told his story.  Cheng was arrested as a Falun Gong member for protesting the group’s persecution.  Tortured in prison, he survived an initial forced surgery.  Prior to what would doubtless have been a second surgery and death, he escaped and eventually made his way to the U.S. via Thailand.  In the States, he discovered that part of his liver and lung had been removed in a procedure that wasn’t health-based.  

In chapter five of Killed to Order, Jekielek provides a chronological arrangement of forced organ-harvesting events that goes back to 1984.  It includes numerous studies by human rights and medical groups that share an inevitable conclusion: The sheer number of Chinese transplants plus short waiting times and the number of transplant hospital beds disprove the regime’s 2015 claim to have ended executions of prisoners specifically for forced organ removals.  Further incriminating evidence is the regime’s attention to medical details like blood type among vast numbers of prisoners, many of whom are tortured.

Jekielek notes that Muslim Uyghurs in Northwest China were the first large group used by the government for forced transplants.  By 1999, however, a spiritual group practicing Falun Gong had grown to as many as 100 million adherents, a number that rivaled the regime’s party membership.  Falun Gong combines Tai Chi–like exercises with meditation and an emphasis on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.  This burgeoning practice, rooted in traditional Chinese spirituality, was seen as a threat to the Communist Party and began to be suppressed as a dangerous “cult.”  With thousands imprisoned, Falun Gong became a desirable source of forced organ transplants thanks to their healthy life practices.  

It may come as a surprise to readers that much of this relatively short book is devoted to the Chinese communist belief system, whose sole governing principle is the welfare of the Communist Party.  This focus explains how it’s possible for the regime to dispense with normal ethical standards and to treat the organs of dissidents, or even newborns, as inventory replacement parts for Party members and paying customers.  As part of this analysis of communist thought and practice, Jekielek mentions an intriguing concept introduced by Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Lobaczewski: political pathocracy. 

"In this system, he determined, power doesn’t rise through merit or moral character; it concentrates in the hands of those with sociopathic and psychopathic traits — people devoid of empathy, integrity, or restraint — because those are the qualities most rewarded by the system itself." (This observation, I think, also applies to political parties in the U.S., especially those obsessively focused on the accumulation of government power.)

Jekielek also explains why China’s medical barbarism isn’t widely publicized in the U.S.  Those explanations start with a trip to China in 2001 by New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and other paper bigwigs.  At those meetings, the regime successfully propagandized the delegation with the idea that Falun Gong is a dangerous cult.  Subsequently, the Times largely echoed the Party line vis-à-vis Falun Gong.  In return, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin complemented the Times as “a very good paper.”  It was another Walter Duranty moment in the Times’ inglorious history of spreading communist lies. 

Beyond the newspaper of record’s complicity, Jekielek mentions the illusion that Kissinger’s “opening” to China via trade would lead to China’s liberalization.  In fact, it led to decades of stolen property rights, the undermining of American manufacturing, and a huge market for corporatist billionaires willing to ignore communist atrocities.  Quoting Mark Twain, the author notes, “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”  That comment also applies to American universities long influenced by full-paying Chinese students and massive Chinese grants.  Finally, there is the psychological explanation that most people don’t want to believe such horrors are true — a response also encountered by a Polish resistance courier who brought eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to the West.

Jekielek himself, the son of a family that fled communist Poland in the ’70s, is a senior editor at the Epoch Times, a newspaper founded by Falun Gong dissidents in America who earlier experienced the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.  The paper continues to focus attention on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and has thus been a target of CCP-initiated vandalism and repression even in America.  A similar program of intimidation within the U.S. has been directed at the Falun Gong artistic group Shen Yun, which advertises its performances as “China Before Communism.”

Though I have some qualms about the book’s organization, the well documented information it provides about medical atrocities perpetrated by a morally corrupt regime certainly nullifies those reservations.  The more Americans know about China’s atrocities, the less likely they’ll give the regime a moral pass it clearly does not deserve.

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California.  His book Moral Illiteracy: “Who’s to Say?” is also available on Kindle, as is his book Poetry with a Moral Edge.