Mediaboss Marketing

State Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington Washington D.C. West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Puerto Rico US Virgin Islands Armed Forces Americas Armed Forces Pacific Armed Forces Europe Northern Mariana Islands Marshall Islands American Samoa Federated States of Micronesia Guam Palau Alberta, Canada British Columbia, Canada Manitoba, Canada New Brunswick, Canada Newfoundland, Canada Nova Scotia, Canada Northwest Territories, Canada Nunavut, Canada Ontario, Canada Prince Edward Island, Canada Quebec, Canada Saskatchewan, Canada Yukon Territory, Canada

Zip Code

Country United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe

See the rest here:
Letter to the editor: Sheehy only seems interested in culture wars - Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Dispatch

07:00

by Flo Read

Billionaire Peter Thiel addresses students at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford

Oxford

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have a secret agreement to talk about the culture wars as much as possible, Peter Thiel has said.

Already registered? Sign in

Speaking at the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford as part of the Scruton Memorial lecture series, the Silicon Valley billionaire argued that the Prime Minister and Labour leader were trying to distract the population from the economic problems facing the country:

- Peter Thiel

He began his speech with a chant he remembered from his days as a student at Stanford: Hey hey, ho ho, western cultures got to go. It sums up, he says, a battle that has raged ever since. But the woke vs. anti-woke dichotomy is a magic trick designed to distract us from what is really going on.

Thiel singled out the housing crisis, which successive politicians have failed to remedy over the last two decades: Think about the craziest woke excess in the UK of the last 10 years and then think about how it increased aggregate housing prices, he told the audience, before adding that the Marxist critique had quite a bit to it:

- Peter Thiel

Thiel asserted that the Left was more prone to trying to repeat old radical ideas than the Right, warning that going back to Blair is a mistake we have to make in the UK:

- Peter Thiel

In his address and subsequent conversation with philosopher John Gray, Thiel said there were other issues that politicians and elites were attempting to distract from. One was the decline of the sciences in universities.Be suspicious of cancer researchers claiming theyll have a breakthrough in just a few more years, Thiel warned. Science has been degraded, and it is no longer progressing:

- Peter Thiel

The most significant loss in contemporary society, according to Thiel, has been that of God and religion. Its an odd thing to be distracted from, Thiel said, because it suggests so many ways that this debate could be reframed. Wokeness, meanwhile, was a perversion and acceleration of Christian narratives: woke post-Christian temptation is to be more Christian than the Christians.

The venture capitalist concluded that a possible alternative to the extremes of fascism or communism might be some form of Christian democracy.

Read more:
Peter Thiel: UK leaders have 'secret agreement' to talk up culture wars - UnHerd

Its hard for Americans in the 21st century to think about their guns as ordinary objects. When nightmarish events like the recent mass shooting in Maine occur, we retreat to reassuring positions in the culture wars.

Gun cultureis our collective, contentious effort to apply meaning to these inanimate things made of wood, plastic, and steel. For some, guns may be the biggest force for evil in America, as Seattle Times columnist David Horsey wrote last year of the firearms industry. For others, like the National Rifle Association, guns are in fact the best defense against malevolent supernatural forces. In the aftermath of the horrific 2012 mass slaughter of children in Newton, Connecticut, NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre explained that genuine monsters walk among us, people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. We ought to expect similar platitudes from the gun lobby in response to Maine in the days ahead.

A 2021 study by a group of sociologists found a correlation between Americans who believe in the earthly presence of demons and devils and support the expansion of gun rights. You might negotiate with metaphorical monsters, you might think the laws you pass limit their ability to harm others, but when it comes to genuine monsters, you must shoot to kill.

To kill fantastical creatures, you need fantastical weapons. Thats where the gun industry comes in, to provide you with the talisman you need to operate in a world in which evil people possessed by demons walk. Guns are more than just metal and plastic, more than just technology. They protect, defend, secure, preserve, and safeguard. They connect, too, linking gun owners present with an imagined past, with those who resisted tyranny with arms, or who took up arms to fight for causes noble and ignoble. Youa white man armed with an AR-15 and storming your state capitol building to protest state coronavirus restrictions, or stockpiling guns just outside Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021you are the minuteman who grabs his musket to answer the call to confront the Redcoats. Magical thinking about guns is one of gun capitalisms most effective products, turning cheap crap into cherished commodities, at the cost of a society increasingly fearful and armed.

Read More: Maine Is Missing Opportunities to Stop Gun Violence, Experts Say

Magical thinking about guns is a kind of fetishism, which sees guns as totems instilled with meaning beyond their basic material parts. Its a variant of what Karl Marx called commodity fetishism, which obscured the more mundane material realities of the social relations of industrial capitalism. Commodities were raw materials transformed through human labor into objects of utility. But capitalism made magic of them, in the process making invisible the labor of the exploited workers who made raw materials into consumer goods.

Gun capitalists of the 19th century first learned to sell the magic of guns to American consumers. Samuel Colt and Oliver Winchester, among others, knew that selling guns meant selling stories about guns and thus imbuing the guns with cultural meaning. God created men equal. Colonel Colt made them equal, went one variation of a popular tagline, while Winchesters Model 1873 rifle was the gun that won the West. These early gun capitalists were storytellers as much as they were inventers and tinkerers.

The innovative gun capitalists of the postwar United States crafted a different narrative. Chief among them was Samuel Cummings, founder of Interarms, which became the worlds largest arms dealer by the 1960s. While the press occasionally linked him to international arms dealing intrigue, he made most of his money in the most mundane of ways: he sold American consumers millions of cheap guns. His biggest moneymakers in Interarmss first two decades were war surplus firearms, hauled out of European warehouses where they had been collecting dust. Cummings cleaned them upsporterized them, in the parlance of the times, anticipating the 21st centurys modern sporting rifle by a half-centuryand shipped them to hunters and collectors and the gun-curious, mostly white men, suddenly flush with cash in the afterglow of Americas moment of global supremacy.

The story Cummings and the new postwar gun capitalists toldthe magic they soldwas of a country without limits when it came to partaking of the worlds bounty of firearms. Interarmss advertisements, packed with dozens of guns for sale, most of them war surplus imports, spoke of abundance and power: guns from vanquished foes like Germany, Japan, and Italy, and even from new rivals the Soviet Union, could be yours for as little as $10. The gun consumer was a global conqueror. Cummings joked that a cheap Carcano rifle made in wartime Italy, just like the one Lee Harvey Oswald used to kill John F. Kennedy, was a throwaway gun, one you could leave out in the woods after you bagged your first deer.

Oswalds Carcano inevitably drew attention, however, as did the plague afflicting urban residents in an era of rising crime rates: cheap handguns, many of them also imports, mass-produced in fly-by-night factories in Western Europe out of scrap metal leftover from the war. When Congress began debating new restrictions on firearms in 1963, a movement of consumers rose up to oppose itthe gun rights movement. The National Rifle Association, arguably the worlds most successful consumer lobby, stepped in to help write new laws that would not so much prevent gun violence as they would protect gun consumerism. The resulting 1968 Gun Control Act was a mild set of restrictions that respected the fundamental legitimacy of the gun consumer market and sought to protect the law-abiding citizenanother magical totem of our gun culturefrom certain categories of people (like convicted felons) who might give gun buyers a bad name.

The Gun Control Act didnt make anyone happy. Despite prioritizing the needs of the law-abiding citizen, it angered gun rights activists convinced that it was the first step down a slippery slope toward totalitarianism. For the early grassroots gun control activists emerging after 1968, the law was so weak precisely because it was written to placate gunmakers and consumers. These activists urged their political leaders to look to other liberal democracies around the world, which either rejected guns as a market good altogether or regulated the gun consumer market so extensively as to make it unrecognizable to its American counterpart.

Todays predominant understanding of the Second Amendmentthe widespread popular belief that this constitutional provision protects an individual right to own a firearm independent of service in a militiaemerged in the first decades after the Second World War, when gun consumerism boomed and Cold War anxieties supercharged conservative politics. Just as consumers grew accustomed to Cummingss seemingly limitless bounty, state and federal officials started debating how to restrict it. A burgeoning gun rights movement seized on the obscure Article II of the Bill of Rights (few Americans in 1968 could have told you what right it protected) to claim that any limits on gun ownership amounted to a violation of basic freedoms. Those activists saw themselves as the well-regulated militia (even if few of them were active members of the United States actual militia, the National Guard), ready and eager to defend the nation from its external and internal enemies. But as the gun rights movement increasingly became a popular gun consumer movement in the 1970s and 1980s, the right-wing cold warriors commitment to what the Constitution calls the unorganized militia fell by the wayside, and the Second Amendment increasingly became a statement of consumer rights centering the individuals desire rather than the collective good. It, too, is fetishized, divorced from its historical origins and imbued with mystical power.

But the Second Amendment says nothing about capitalism or commerce; its two crucial verbs are keep and bear, neither of which is or ever has been a synonym for buy, sell, distribute, market, or manufacture. Yet weve mostly fought our political battles over guns on the field of commerce. Various federal efforts to restrict guns stand on Congresss constitutional power to levy taxes and regulate interstate commerce. Any suggestion that a government has an obligation to defend its citizens from deadly violence is met with the circuitous counterargument that the government cant strip the citizen of the right to defend himself from his own government. If gun capitalism sold magical abundance in the 1960s, today it sells the fantasy of insurrection and righteous violence against political enemies, or even against ones own government of the people.

Thinking about gun capitalism means thinking about the quotidian experience of buying and selling guns in America. Sam Cummings didnt sell freedom or security or insurrection; he sold cheap crap. Thinking about gun capitalism also means considering how weve written our laws and built a legal and state infrastructure to accommodate all that gun buying and selling. Gun capitalism is too deeply embedded in our political life, and as a result, too easily obscured by its ability to make magic out of the mundane, to convince us that only the most lethal violence can stop the monsters and demons that walk among us.

Excerpt from:
How Magical Thinking Gave Guns Their Power - TIME

Where have all the flowers gone? American icon Pete Seeger sang. When will we ever learn?

This question stands. Our children, family, friends and neighbors die at the hands of angry, violent men (mostly) and boys shooting legal assault weapons at innocent, peaceful citizens trying to live freely. We increasingly use firearms to kill ourselves at vulnerable moments, too. Firearms are now the biggest culprit in the death of our children. We are exhausted, exasperated and outraged.

Keep hope, take action, we are also a rightful majority.

Im 100% with author Stephen King, who said last week: Stop electing apologists for murder. Im also with Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, who wrote: Lets try to bypass the culture wars and try a harm reduction model familiar from public health efforts to reduce deaths from other dangerous products such as cars and cigarettes.

Teach peace at home and at school lets strongly work to raise more gentle men. Support litigation that holds manufacturers and marketers of defective battlefield products accountable for this reign of terror. If you see something, say something.

We must all channel our anger and heartfelt prayers into a sense of purpose.

Peter Scott Yarmouth

Previous

Read more:
Letter to the editor: We must channel anger into a stand against gun ... - Press Herald

In an unexpected move that surprised parents, educators and community members, the school board in a small Garfield County school district Wednesday night suddenly voted 3-to-1 to adopt the state social studies standards that were backed by a diverse committee of district residents.

Community members had been expecting the board for Garfield County School District RE-2 to institute the controversial American Birthright social studies standards after this Novembers election. However, Board President Tony May pulled the discussion item from the agenda after learning a local committee was going to recommend the board instead adopt the state social studies standards. Pulling the item from the agenda enraged community members who packed the boardroom Wednesday night.

Twenty-nine speakers spoke in support two did not of the state-adopted standards. One called the Birthright standards religiously and politically charged, and many spoke of their fatigue over political battles at school board meetings.

Over the last year Ive watched the priorities change from doing whatever it takes to help every child to fighting meaningless culture wars and pushing radical agendas that do not benefit or even reflect the interests and needs of the community, said Celeste Kratzer, who grew up in Rifle and now teaches at Rifle Middle School.

But what most struck community members was how a social studies review committee composed of residents from different political and economic backgrounds, faiths and beliefs agreed on recommendations for the board.

Garfield County is a conservative county on the Western Slope, and the school district student body is more than half Latino.

Everyone came together to hash it out, to really figure out what the community of this district really wanted, said Jay Puidokas during the comment period. And it was extremely eye-opening to see the values align.

State law requires each school district to host a local forum about the new social studies standards. Garfield chose to create a 59-person committee to review how well three sets of standards the adopted state social studies standards, revised state standards, and the American Birthright standards aligned with several Colorado laws and how well the standards aligned to community values.

Our entire goal has been to work collaboratively with the school board and with our community to understand what the community values are, said Jacob Pringle, secondary school curriculum director.

In the end, 83 percent of the committee members decided that the state-adopted standards best aligned with law and the communitys core values.

You have brought us together Director May, by inciting this outlandish political conversation. People from across the spectrum are now united in our community, Angela Strode of Rifle told the board.

She said the board needs to move on to other issues such as a school staff shortage.

We need to harness the energy behind me to start fixing the problems in our schools.

After hours of testimony, the board majority voted to move forward on the social studies standards.

Last year the state board of education passed new social studies standards to align with several state laws. The most controversial called for social studies standards to reflect the history, cultures and social contributions of diverse peoples. The law names specific groups: African American, Latino, American Indian, Asian Americans, and LGBTQ people.

Some Garfield board members pushed back on the states adopted standards.

But the community, alarmed that the option could be the American Birthright standards, began to rally. Several parents said they were afraid the district was going down the same path as the Woodland Park school district, where a conservative board adopted Birthright standards and instituted several dramatic changes, including the elimination of many mental health counselors and social worker positions. An estimated forty percent of school staff left Woodland Park last year.

We dont want our community to be torn apart like Woodland Park, where vocal ideologues took over the school board, causing chaos where there used to be peace, Willow Brotzman, a parent with two students in the RE-2 District, said in a press release issued Thursday after the vote.

District leaders in Garfield led an exhaustive community review process that involved public surveys, community and staff meetings as well as a social studies curriculum committee to identify the core values the community wanted to see embedded in the social studies standards, such as students becoming independent problem solvers and being a critical thinker.

Still, despite many in the community backing state standards, curriculum leaders said there is wariness among some in the community around LGBTQ topics in school.

If a 4th grade student asks what LGBTQ is, asked board member Jason Shoup, is that instructor obligated to get that in-depth? Or in the (district) training (for state adopted standards), does it give avenues of an out?

Simone Richardson, elementary curriculum director, gave an example of how such an issue might arise according to state-adopted standards: a teacher is reading a book about mom and dad taking their children to the zoo. If a child raises his hand and says, I have two dads who took me to the zoo! the teacher acknowledges the child and moves on, she said.

Much of training would be around how does a family carry out those conversations and not an educator, said Richardson, meaning teachers could encourage students with more questions to ask their parents.

Pringle, the secondary school curriculum director, said training for teachers prior to the implementation of new standards would consist of age-appropriate responses.

District officials will now make sure the curriculum aligns to the state-adopted standards. Garfield RE-2 has three open seats on the school board this election.

Go here to see the original:
Garfield County residents rallied against the American Birthright ... - Colorado Public Radio