Publisher’s note:  Dr. Luis Villar is an amazing guy.  Not satisfied with just being a very brilliant, successful, and sought after Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Villar is also an engineer, inventor, accomplished pilot, and curator of his own aviation museum.  

Very recently, he composed a brief piece which asks several thought provoking questions.  I am honored that he has allowed me to share it with my readers. 

Luis F. Villar, M.D., F.A.C.S.:  Is a treaty with Iran surrender to the acceptance of a nuclear terrorist nation?

Does Iran need peaceful nuclear power for energy?  Is Iran the number one exporter of terrorism?  Does Iran have territorial ambitions in Iraq and Yemen? Does Iran have the stated goal of wiping Israel off the map?  Does Iran have the stated goal of destroying infidel Western Civilization?  Would a nuclear Iran trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East?

Are 45% of Iranians under 24 years old?  Do millions of Iranian youth surf the web, love rock n roll, love western jeans, rebel against their parents, and wish to be free to follow their dreams? Do many of these occasionally take to the streets to protest, facing imprisonment, torture, and death?

Does Sharia law have a doctrine of “taqiyya” (deceit)?  Does taqiyya limit treaties to ten years? Does the doctrine of deceit allow treaties to be repudiated unilaterally before they expire, should it appear more profitable for Islam to resume the conflict?  Is it naïve to trust any entity practicing Sharia Law “taqiyya”?

Are there two clocks running in Iran, the atomic bomb clock and the regime change clock? Does easing sanctions strengthen the ruling class, better enabling them to suppress the rebellious youth, finance and export terrorism, and secretly accelerate the bomb? 

Has there ever been a nuclear treaty that wasn’t violated?  Has there ever been an inspection program that was successful in discovering illegal nuclear weapons production?  Should we have any confidence that Iran will be the first?

Do strict sanctions, no matter how imperfect, accelerate the regime change clock?  Do constantly delayed negotiations with eased sanctions to show good faith, accelerate the atomic bomb clock?  Does a “deal” for the sake of a deal enhance the safety of Western Civilization?

JUST ASKING...

Publisher's note:  As always, Tim Dunkin has tackled a huge problem, one that a lot of people are thinking about, but no one has put into words.  Because it is a bit long I was going to make it a two part series, however I felt doing so might lose the interest of some readers and I believe it too important to risk that.  I encourage all of our readers to take a few moments and read this very on point article.  And then think about it. 

Tim Dunkin:  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who guards the guardians?) – Juvenal

Honest observers in this country have to admit that we have a police problem that is increasingly growing more serious.  While some of the stories that have come out about police brutality and police overreach have clearly been invented or exaggerated by the Left for the purposes of inflaming racial tensions and undermining American civic stability, there are nevertheless a large number of incidents in recent years which cannot simply be wishcast away.  The warrantless, no-knock, early morning, heavily-armed SWAT raid for even the most minor of things is becoming the norm all across America.  Though many on the Right want to make excuses or attribute the increasing prevalence of these types of incidents to “a few bad apples,” the fact of the matter is that the “policing problem” is becoming obvious enough that concern about it is no longer confined to a few “fringe” libertarian or “anti-police” sites, but is being recognized by more mainstream conservative outlets.  Police militarization (which is as much an issue of mindset as it is of equipment), heavy-handedness, and bureaucratization are leading to a situation where America is beginning to look less and less like the land of the free, and more and more like an authoritarian police state.  

This is apparent from the news we see coming out of Wisconsin about the “John Doe” investigations conducted by hyper-partisan opponents of Scott Walker.  In a plain and obvious effort to silence and intimidate conservatives and other supporters of Scott Walker, Milwaukee district attorney John Chisholm used the extraordinary (and soon to be found unconstitutional) powers granted by declaring an investigation a “John Doe” case.  “John Doe” investigations, under Wisconsin law, allow prosecutors to bypass the usual grand jury requirements, replacing empanelled citizens with a “supervising judge” (who, in this case, was also a hyper-partisan Democrat opponent of Scott Walker).  The prosecutor is also allowed to keep targets of the investigation a secret, and said targets are restrained by gag orders from speaking to anyone – even friends or neighbors – about anything that has happened to them during the investigation.  If this sounds like the perfect set up for a star chamber, then you know human nature better than many.

That is, of course, exactly what happened – and this is where the police come in. While pursuing this technically-legal-yet-grossly-immoral-and-unconstitutional investigation, the prosecutor’s office sent in heavily-armed SWAT teams, utilizing pre-dawn raids and helicopters, to roust several conservative supporters of Scott Walker in their own homes, pointing guns at them, scaring their children, defaming their reputations in front of their neighbors, seizing all of their financial and other personal records, and then ordering them not to talk about it to anyone on pain of imprisonment for “contempt of court.”  The only reason we know about these raids is because one of the victims finally, and courageously, violated the unconstitutional gag order and broke the news wide open.  

What could have been accomplished merely by sending in a couple of county sheriff’s deputies with a subpoena and a search warrant to politely knock on their doors and serve the paperwork was instead done in a way that was purposefully intended to be psychologically and physically intimidating.  And much more dangerously, too.  What if one of the victims – many of whom initially believed they were facing a (non-state initiated) criminal home invasion - had shot at the police thinking they were defending themselves from armed robbers, and were killed, or killed a police officer, as a result?  These people were no threat to the police.  They weren’t going to come out guns blazing should a deputy simply serve them papers.  SWAT was there simply for the repression and intimidation factors, nothing more.

Publisher's note:  Once again Tim Dunkin grabs his topic by the horns and dissects it down to its basic elements.  In a very short, easy to read article, Tim discusses the utter ridiculousness of the left and the foolish hissy fits they throw at every turn.  Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Tim Dunkin:  Why Do We Put up with Liberals?

Left-wingers and progressives in America are becoming insufferable, are they not?  It’s quite apparent that they have no desire to “live and let live,” but want to force their delusions off onto everyone else.  You will live, think, and do as the Left tells you, whether you like it or not.  Even in the pettiest of way, they can’t help themselves.  

Take, for example, this story coming out of the University of Oregon.  To summarize for the reader, a student named Elle Mallon, who was running for office in student government filed  a number of grievances against a rival student organization also running candidates in the recent election.  The grievances she claimed?  First, that the rival group – We Are Oregon – had organized a campaign event in a building which did not have “gender inclusive bathrooms.”  She successfully (!) managed to get the ASUO (Associated Students of the University of Oregon) Elections Board to sanction We Are Oregon for this transgression, causing that group to be forbidden to campaign for 36 hours.  The campaign manager for We Are Oregon, a student named Taylor Allison emailed an apology (!) to Ms. Mallon.  Mallon then filed an addition grievance, claiming that Allison had “misgendered” her and charged her with sexual harassment.  How so?  Because Ms. Mallon has invented a whole set of pronouns – all her own – and demands that people address her using these pronouns (!).  She wants people to use these entirely made-up words (“Mx” for “Ms.,” “xe, xhem, and hyr,” presumably for “he, it, and her” [?]) when referring to her or addressing things to her.  Because Allison referred to her as “Ms.” Mallon in the apology email, this was “sexual harassment” and grounds for additional sanctions.  

Did you feel as ridiculous reading that as I did in writing it?

Eventually, the Student Constitutional Court heard the case and lifted the sanctions against We Are Oregon – but not on the grounds that the whole set of complaints were preposterous nonsense from start to finish and a waste of time that could have been spent more profitably watching paint dry.  Rather, the court ruled for We Are Oregon solely on the technicality that bathroom access is not actually a “campaign related purpose,” though not before admonishing them to be more mindful of their manners in the future,

“While this Court is empathetic towards Respondent’s original grievance, and advises all future campaigns to remember their cultural competency trainings in order to promote as inclusive a community as possible, access to a bathroom is not a campaign related purpose…. “Sexual harassment is a very great evil, but the record supports the conclusion that only a single unintentional gender-based microagression occurred. To conflate the two may serve to salve the sense of anger Respondent may feel at Petitioner’s mistake. However it may serve Respondent, it is unnecessarily inflammatory and risks damaging the reputation of Petitioner, an ASUO member who the record shows made a mistake, and then took the first opportunity to apologize. At no time was any of this relevant to the matter before the Court, which is a dispute over whether the Elections Rules require campaigns to provide gender-neutral restrooms.”

“Cultural competency training”?  “Microaggressions”?  Seriously?

No wonder American millennials are “overeducated and underprepared” – they’re too busy avoiding microaggressions and ensuring that their dorms will accommodate fifteen imaginary genders to have any time to actually learn anything of any value or use in the real world.  

But the point here is not how ridiculous it all is, but how, despite its ridiculousness, this became a serious issue at this university.

Look, it’s a free country.  If Elle Mallon wants to invent weird little pronouns and use them in her speech and writing, that’s her business.  What she is NOT (or at least should NOT be) free to do is to require other people to have to use them, and to punish those who don’t.  

Yet, this story is really a microcosmic view of modern liberalism, leftism, progressivism, whatever term you want to apply.  Everything the Left wants is coercive and detrimental to the rights of everyone else.  Use the wrong pronoun?  We’ll sanction you.  Do the wrong thing to or with your own property?  We’ll slap an injunction on you and sue you for tens of thousands of dollars.  Donate money to the wrong political cause or group?  We’ll hound you out of your job, and we may even sic armed SWAT teams on you. Don’t want to bake a cake for a “wedding” that goes against your deeply-held beliefs?  We’ll fine and imprison you.  On and on it goes.  Everything – and I mean everything – that those on the Left do is designed to force, coerce, compel, bully, or intimidate you into doing what the Left wants you to do, rather than simply allowing free people to do what they like in their own lives.  

The question I have is this: Why do we tolerate this?  Why do we tolerate them?  I’ve already pointed out that left-wingers have broken America’s unspoken-yet-real social contract for civil society, so why do we still feel obligated to show them any tolerance or any “fair play”?  They deserve no tolerance from us. None at all.

It is high time for liberty lovers to wake up and get serious about resisting the left-wingers, the cultural marxists, the social justice warriors, and the rest.  They only get away with the things they do because they are organized and we are not.  A small minority of radical left-wing fanatics are busy making life increasingly miserable for the normal people in this country.  Why continue to allow them to do so?  Why won’t we take the time and energy to stand up for what’s left of the good and decent things in America? Why not get serious about putting them down at every turn, opposing them, protesting them, mobbing them, making things difficult for them?  I am convinced that we have the numbers - but not the organization.  It’s time for conservatives, traditionalists, and liberty-lovers to get our heads out of the sand and stop being concerned only when something personally and directly affects us individually.  What happens to the other guy today can and will happen to YOU tomorrow.  Fight them, or suffer the consequences of cowardice and inaction.

Publisher's note:  As many of my regular readers know, Tim Dunkin appears in these pages with some regularity.  Once again, Tim has spelled out one of the most critical issues facing our basic freedoms these days.  It's a bit long, but well worth the read.

Tim Dunkin:  The Lesson from Indiana is that We Need to Repeal Public Accommodation Laws.

"Freedom of association includes the freedom not to associate." – Ayn Rand

The past week has presented this nation with the spectacle of raw, unadulterated freedom-hating liberalism in action.  The state of Indiana passed a law which allowed for religious freedom to be used as a defense for both individuals and businesses when facing discrimination lawsuits.  Because one of the key points in the leftist cultural marxism agenda has been to create a legal environment in which businesses (and eventually churches) can be punished for refusing to participate in gay “weddings,” the Left went absolutely bonkers because this law worked directly contrary to that goal. The radical Left desires nothing less than a regimen in which any wrongthink by a business owner can be penalized, and laws which place gays into “protected” categories can be used as a bludgeon to destroy the enemies of the Left.

Indeed, that is what started this whole thing to begin with – the use of the radical gay agenda to go after Christian businesses that refused to participate in gay “marriage” ceremonies.  The gays would seek out these businesses, purposefully target them knowing they would refuse service, specifically so they could then hound them legally through short-sighted and wrong-headed laws on the books. Indiana’s law was intended, among other things, to prevent this sort of thing from happening.  It was not a proactive law that “encourages” or “allows” discrimination; rather, it was a defensive law designed to help protect religious liberty by requiring the state government to apply a strict “compelling interest” argument when considering whether to override a citizen’s or a business’ religious liberties.  And it protected everyone, not just Christians – under it, a Jew couldn’t be compelled to arrange flowers for a Neo-Nazi event, nor would a gay baker be compelled to bake a cake for Westboro Baptist church.  

I think much of the discussion has been off-base on both sides of the aisle.  So much sound and fury has been made about the particular issue of homosexuality and “discrimination” against gays that the greater point – that of fundamental liberty of the individual – has been lost.

Specifically, this controversy should raise in the minds of anyone who actually cared about individual liberty the question of whether we should even have public accommodation laws – the sorts of laws on the books that declare certain groups to be “protected” and disallows “discrimination” against those groups by businesses because these businesses, by virtue of operating publicly, are “public accommodations.”  I believe that rather than extending the reach of these laws, they should instead be stricken from the books because they are assaults on the First Amendment freedoms of association.

Let me begin by asking a question that will shock many folks, but which needs to be addressed in a rational, reasoned way that doesn’t involve a bunch of emotionalism and dramatics.  

“Why shouldn’t individuals and businesses be allowed to discriminate against anyone they want?”