Newspaper Page Text
The ADVANCE, November 2, 2022/Page 6A
Stye Aiiuancg
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
-James Russell Lowell
editorials
Joe Biden, Dylan Mulvaney
and the Collapse of the West
By Ben Shapiro
This week, Presi
dent Joe Biden held an
interview with a Tik-
Tok influencer named
Dylan Mulvaney Mul
vaney is a man — a
former Broadway star
in “The Book of Mor
mon” — who less
than a year ago de
cided that he was a
woman. Ever since, he
has made daily videos titled “DayX as a Girl.”
These videos range from the stereotypical
(on Day 1, Mulvaney announces, wearing
drag, that he has cried three times) to the
bizarrely cringe-inducing (on Day 120, Mul
vaney analyzes his nipple size, which has in
creased from “cute little nipples” to “pepper-
oni nipples”). And they have earned Mul
vaney in excess of 8.4 million followers along
with makeup deals from CeraVe, MAC, Neu-
trogena and Kate Spade.
Mulvaney’s cosplaying as a woman also
earned him an interview with the most pow
erful person on the planet. In that interview,
Mulvaney asked Biden, “Do you think states
should have the right to ban gender-affirm
ing health care?” For those who are unaware
of the medical euphemisms currently in
practice, “gender-affirming health care”
amounts to a slate of “treatments” including
socially transitioning minor children, calling
them by new names and pretending that
they are members of the opposite sex; pump
ing minors full of cross-sex hormones and/
or puberty blockers, with unknown long
term effects; progressing toward surgeries
ranging from phalloplasties (fake penises at
tached to females) and mastectomies (re
moval of breasts) to vaginoplasties (removal
of the penis and testes and creation of a fake
vagina for males) to facial reconstruction
surgeries.
Biden answered, “I don’t think any state
or anybody should have the right (to restrict
that). As a moral question and as a legal
question, I just think it’s wrong.”
As a moral question, the president of the
United States told a man dressed as a woman
and engaging in the most idiotic stereotypi
cal behavior that it would be a deep wrong to
deny life-altering treatments to confused
minors.
How did we arrive at this point in Amer
ican life? How did our country decline to the
point that a geriatric dotard, representing the
global hegemon, can declare it immoral to
prevent genital mutilation of young people
in the name of anti-scientific “gender the-
ory ?
The answer is obvious: traditional values
are losing.
They are losing because the best defense
of tradition is tradition itself. And that de
fense has now been obliterated by a society
dedicated to the proposition that tabula rasa
quasi-intellectualism is a better policymaker
than tradition. To state that we ought to
abide by effective and useful age-old tradi
tions is no longer seen as enough; we must
come up with some sort of argument that
fulfills the demands of Left-wing secular hu
manists. The burden of proof has been
shifted from radicals who wish to tear down
durable institutions — up to and including
binary sex distinctions — to those who ad
vocate for those institutions. Radicals need
not explain how tearing down these institu
tions will create a better world. They need
only criticize the existing arrangements as
“intolerant” and “noninclusive.”
This is a recipe for societal collapse. Ex
perience and wisdom are our teachers; de
stroying those teachers in the name of tabula
rasa pseudo-rationalism is disastrously fool
ish. As FA Hayek observed, “Experience
comes to man in many more forms than are
commonly recognized by the professional
experimenter or the seeker after explicit
knowledge... The appropriateness of our
conduct is not necessarily dependent on our
knowing why it is so.”
That’s not to say that there are no secular
humanistic arguments against the insanity of
gender theory — there are, and they are con
vincing, which is why even moderate liberals
have turned against the most radical aspects
of the Left-wing agenda. But the fact that
social radicals have been able to push so far
so fast is disturbing evidence that our entire
traditional framework of thinking and acting
has been undermined.
It must be restored. The burden of proof
must be on those who wish to destroy, not
on those who wish to maintain. This means
that Americans must have confidence
enough to say, “It’s worked before, and it
works still. I will not surrender it simply be
cause you demand that I do so.”
Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCtA and
Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro
Show," and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a
three-time New York Times bestselling author: his
latest book is “The Authoritarian Moment: How
The Left Weaponized America's Institutions
Against Dissent." To find out more about Ben
Shapiro and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate website at www.creators,
com.
COPYRIGHT 2022 CREATORS.COM.
Report: Stacey Abrams
Funnels Millions to
Campaign Chair’s Law Firm
By Benjamin Wilson, writer for
Washington Free Beacon
Georgia Democrat
Stacey Abrams's advocacy
group has funneled $9.4
million in legal fees to a law
firm owned by the guberna
torial candidate's campaign
chairwoman.
The group, Fair Fight
Action, paid the seven-fig
ure sum between 2019 and
2020 to a firm where Allegra
Lawrence-Hardy, Abrams's
campaign's chairwoman
and close friend, is one of
two partners. The payments
were part of Abrams's $25
million legal campaign to
challenge Georgia's vot
ing laws—an effort largely
struck down by a federal
judge last month.
Additional payments
made in the last two years
are not yet publicly avail
able, Politico reported:
The firm received $9.4
million from Abrams’ group<,
Fair Fight Action, in 2019
and 2020, the last years for
which federal tax filings are
available. Lawrence-Hardy
declined to comment on how
much her firm has collected
from Fair Fight Action in
2021 and 2022 — years
in which Fair Fight Action
v. Raffensperger, for which
Lawrence-Hardy was lead
counsel, had most of its court
room activity.
Fair Fight Action has
maintained that the suit —
which ended last month when
a federal judge ruled against
the group on all three remain
ing claims — served an im
portant role in drawing atten
tion to voting inequities.
But some outside the
group questioned both the
level of expenditures devoted
to a single, largely unsuccess
ful legal action and the fact
that such a large payout went
to the firm of Abrams’ close
friend and campaign chair.
Those concerns were height
ened by the fact that Abrams’
national campaign against
voter suppression galvanized
the Democratic Party, many
of whose top donors helped
fill its coffers.
This isn't the first time
Abrams has been caught in
suspicious money dealings.
Abrams received $150,000
from a shadowy company
with no online presence
and sits on the board of
a foundation that gifted
thousands of dollars to an
anti-Israel activist who sup
ports terrorists.
Abrams filed the legal
challenge against Georgia's
voting laws after losing the
2018 gubernatorial race
by more than 50,000 votes
to now-governor Brian
Kemp (R.). With nearly
two weeks until the elec
tion, Abrams trails Kemp
by 6.3 points, according to
FivelhirtyEight.
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Warnock’s No Saint!
Democrat Raphael Warnock has
been resorting to a lot of muckraking
and mud slinging in his bid for reelec
tion to the U.S. Senate. He has attacked
the character of his Republican chal
lenger Herschel Walker in a smear cam
paign intended to detract from the real
issues that Americans face every day.
Since President Biden has been
in office, he and the Democrats have
spent $3.9 TRILLION to ramp up the
economy. Inflation has ballooned and
middle-class Americans are feeling the
squeeze. Wages are not keeping pace
with the cost of living, and you can
forget about buying a house right now.
Can you even afford gas to go to work?
By the way, who is going to pay for
all of the Democrats’ rampant spend
ing? You guessed it, the American tax
payer and his or her descendants — for
a long, long time. The question is, are
we better off under the Biden adminis
tration? The answer is painfully obvi
ous. No!
Democrats would have us believe
that the Economic Recovery Act has
curbed inflation, but in fact it has ener
gized inflation! Warnock is a part of all
this smoke and mirrors spending act,
and the scary thing is he wants to con
tinue to be a part of the nation’s down
hill slide.
Attacks on Herschel Walker
In his attempt to skirt the real is
sues, Warnock is bringing up Herschel
Walker’s mental health and domes
tic and workplace violence. Herschel
Walker acknowledges his past strug
gles; he has not tried to hide them. His
response to those attacks was humble
and sincere. He said that God saved
Herschel Walker, and there is no higher
authority to whom we all answer than
He is.
Herschel Walker and his ex-wife
have spoken together publicly about
their experience with mental illness,
and Walker considers them to be "best
friends" today. He even wrote a book in
2008 about his dissociative identity dis
order and his treatment. He has since
been an advocate for mental health
awareness and says he will continue to
push to expand mental health resourc
es across health care, law enforcement,
and the military.
As a minister, Warnock should
also be familiar with this passage from
the Bible: “Let he who is without sin
among you be the first to cast a stone.”
(John 8:7).
But if we want to talk about char
acter, Warnock has plenty of explaining
to do himself.
Raphael Warnock’s Wife Abuse and
Custody Scandals
In April 2022, the Republican Na
tional Committee put pressure on Act-
Blue (an American nonprofit technol
ogy organization established in June
2004 that enables left-leaning nonprof
its, Democratic candidates, and pro
gressive groups to raise money from
individual donors on the Internet - to
"empower small-dollar donors") to fol
low its precedent of kicking out Demo
crats accused of misconduct toward
women or minors and to boot Warnock
from its fundraising platform after War
nock’s ex-wife, Ouleye Ndoye, accused
Warnock of running over her foot with
his car during a disagreement. She also
accused him of violating their custody
agreement by refusing to pay child care
expenses and leaving her "financially
strapped" by skipping out on his visi
tation days. In addition, she claimed
Warnock has refused to return personal
items that were awarded to her in their
divorce agreement. Warnock denied
the claims.
Ndoye stated, "I've tried to keep
the way that he acts under wraps for
a long time, and today he crossed the
line," she told police. "So that is what
is going on here. And he's a great actor.
He is phenomenal at putting on a really
good show."
Raphael Warnock and Camp Child
Abuse
Warnock also faces allegations of
child abuse occurring at a church camp
overseen by him. He was arrested in
2002 over accusations of obstructing
a child abuse investigation at a Camp
Farthest Out in Carroll County, Mary
land. Breitbart News reported that
Warnock and another minister inter
rupted a police interview of a camp
counselor in 2002 and tried to prevent
one camper from directing police to
other potential witnesses. Warnock’s
campaign spokesperson claimed that
Warnock was simply “protecting the
rights of young people to make sure
they had a lawyer or a parent when be
ing questioned.”
Records from the Maryland De
partment of Health and Mental Hy
giene indicated that campers were
routinely left unsupervised; staffers
were not subject to the required crimi
nal background check; and at least five
cases of child abuse or neglect were
brought against the camp’s director,
who was ultimately forced to resign.
Campaign Funds Misuse
Warnock has also been hit with
allegations that he misused campaign
funds to pay legal services to defend
himself against a federal lawsuit stem
ming from his time as a pastor of Eb-
enezer Baptist Church. According to
the Federal Election Commission,
Please see Warnock page 9A
s "A&uancE
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