April 25, 2016

Absent any Boreades, Cokie Roberts has in Harpy like wrath unleashed a vile storm of obloquy against Alexander Hamilton in the New York Times, leaving behind the fetid aroma of her dissatisfaction at history’s table and the place of women at it. Says she, Hamilton was a “philandering liar,” a man of ambition who selfishly put honor before his loved ones pecuniary interests, and worst of all: his standing in our national pantheon kept a female from her “rightful” place on the ten dollar bill.

     Her feminist fury is misleading and undue; foolishly denigrating Hamilton only reveals the feminist lack of probity. To mantle Hamilton a philanderer is to intentionally misrepresent a grievous indiscretion as a habit of character and treats history’s authority like a trollop. As to ambition, yes he was, and more. Catherine Drinker Bowen wrote of him, “Perhaps no man in annals has been so variously characterized.” “Talleyrand…selected Hamilton as the greatest of the ‘choice and master spirits of the age.’ Lord Bryce was to declare that Hamilton, alone among the founding fathers, had not been done full justice by Americans. Theodore Roosevelt went further and placed Jefferson ‘infinitely below Hamilton.’” His enemies were not so generous, “To John Adams, Hamilton was ‘the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar [sic].” “His manners,” wrote a Convention delegate, “are tinctured with stiffness, and sometimes with a degree of vanity that is highly disagreeable.” He was, “Impatient with the slow witted, humble with those he loved, fiery yet capable of a cold arrogance.” And he possessed an energy that “caused Jefferson, later his enemy, to say that this man ‘without numbers is an [sic] host within himself.” It should not be a surprise then that Hamilton, presciently seeing the need for a national government, started writing in September of 1780 and wrote for the following seven years to bring about a convention. The “evidence points to Hamilton as the most potent single influence toward calling the Convention of ’87….”

     Bowen further tells us: “It was typical of young Hamilton to marry advantageously…and then to fall so deeply in love with his wife, his dark-eyed Betsy, that he feared himself incapacitated for business. ‘My Angel!’ he wrote. ‘I told you truly that I love you too much. I struggle with an excess which I cannot but deem a weakness and endeavor to bring myself back to reason and duty….’Tis a pretty story indeed that I am to be thus monopolized by a little nut-brown maid.’ ”

     To contaminate their good memory with her poisoned prose is reprehensible. Roberts also observes that, “Hamilton’s farewell letter to his wife said that if he told her in advance what he was about to do, it would ‘unman’ him,” claiming he acted selfishly. Her reading of the sentence is accurate; her conclusion is not, let us go further. In the paragraph he affirms his love for all his family, makes clear the place of honor in his decision, declares his regret of leaving her, and of her anguish at the outcome; but the last sentence swept aside all the curtains of his soul to allow an intimacy reserved for his beloved, where he lays bare his apprehensions of what was to be a tragic encounter, “Nor could I dwell on the topic [of leaving you in death] lest it should unman me.” Hamilton was communicating on the deepest level where the souls of lovers meet, and Elizabeth was there with him.

     There are those moments when Hamilton disappointed, as all men do. But when we put our books away for the evening and reflect on the men and women who people our history, I do not think it would be nearly so interesting without our swashbuckling Hamilton; moreover, if one were to listen closely one might hear the voices of some eminently interesting associates: “James Wilson’s cold, cutting logic, Gouverneur Morris’s easy ironic flow, Roger Sherman’s drawling Yankee common sense; Madison’s quiet, extraordinary performance day after day.” The voices of history can make good company. (The references to our history are all cited from Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Miracle at Philadelphia.)

     Robert’s disparagement only points out her poor understanding of honor. She dares to make of Elizabeth a puppet, and of Hamilton a villain.  If she were to harken to honor’s sighs Elizabeth might instruct her. Fiscal concerns were not the source of Elizabeth’s grief but Robert’s invention to besmirch her husband. It is beyond the pale to slander these innocents because one is unhappy with the placement of women on our currency. She reasons like a mean drunk to persuade the unwary of her sober wisdom.

     Furthermore, she and her feminist company have set themselves up as preceptors of honor for women. How dare they? They have made themselves odious to honorable women. Let us recur to a scene of war, when the enemy pour themselves over the conquered dead to claim their spoils. Even the semiconscious might appreciate the great reserves of courage to be found in those that men gave their lives to protect. In this terrible way the courage of men and women, and even children, is equally revealed. And in this way feminists show themselves to be worthy of the contempt they so liberally apply to history’s courageous women, and, yes, even children. Moreover, in this way history reminds us of the deep love and respect mutually reflected in some women and men for each other. They are not forgotten.

     Robert’s is an inelegant voice who would have us believe feminists are omniscience incarnate. Nevertheless, she and her feminist cohort are more likely to sell ones little boys and girls to Congress than to exert the effort to understand anything but their cravings and itches.

     Virtue shall never rest in their souls; they are like cows that prefer the company of steers.

As to a woman’s “rightful” place on our currency, I confess my ignorance of where this is located. But it seems our republic is working it out. Congratulations to the honorable Harriet Tubman. Her memory will make good company.

I HAVE THE HONOR TO BE,

LYNN SWARTOS

April 4, 2016

Civilization is before all, the will to live in common…. Barbarism is the tendency to disassociation.  –Ortega y Gasset

What is meant by “republic” in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.  –Tocqueville

John Locke exemplified objective values when he described liberty taking place within the “bounds of the law of nature,” or the law of human nature, the law of right and wrong; and by that same law, our reciprocal equality. We were to be equally free and, at the same time, mutually equal within a moral context defined by truth drawn from an objective reality.

     Equal freedom and mutual equality are interdependent premises; you cannot have one without the other. But without virtue these premises tend to become the law of primeval nature and end in the same way: the dystopian rule of the brute. In the hands of progressives liberty and equality become stand-alone imposters with which they bludgeon society into a fractured mass of incoherence.

     Progressives have destroyed the salutary inter-relationship; any understanding of an objective reality; and the virtue of just sentiments. A dogmatic adherence to objective values has been replaced with something much more pliant and open to arbitrary change: a subjectivism that denies “the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of things the universe is and the kind of things we are.” (Lewis)  So equality comes to mean the ever growing government and its despots will manage our lives and tell us how to live and what to believe. In this way we shall be free—to do and believe as we are told.

     Like Plato’s cattle what is true will be no more; our appetites will plod to the fore.

     In view of this thesis of destruction progressivism must be defined. By my definition it is synonymous with what I have termed Totalitarian Socialism. Totalitarian because it invades and forces its control of our lives; and to achieve this victory of “progress” it discredits, corrupts and eventually nullifies any authority but its own. Free to vote, we are, but having been bound by the authority of our rulers we are mostly expressing our hope of a better prince. Antecedent to this the centers of power were heterogeneous. They could be found in a multiplicity of institutions and the individual. Today there is no guardian of liberty undefeated or not substantially altered for the worse by progressive doctrines. Everything that made us a culture united has been stripped or twisted, deformed or depraved, denied or forbidden, ad nauseam and made subject to the authority of policy and laws formed by the guiding hand of “progress”; hence the Court has continued its tradition as an unaccountable chief political/social policy magistrate (e.g., Dredd Scott, Roe, and Windsor) and perforce corrupted the interpretation of the Constitution to absurdity—it is all relative; the Executive has assumed the powers of a Tyrant, and Congress has fiddled away its responsibilities and gone to sleep. In the sphere of law enforcement organized criminals are ascendant and law enforcements focus is limited to the lower stratum of society. Having been given access to the minutia of our lives by the force of law they bring such things as tanks to minor disputes; bomb innocents, including children, whose seared flesh is further evidence of the insanity of this militarization; they do roadside vaginal searches (Why not anal? Why not everybody? Just in case); turn its citizens into human torches; and sometimes twist the law to make up crimes and sometimes make laws that make up crimes.  Aggravating force, lengthy sentences for one and affluenza for another, or the stigma of a criminal record arbitrarily created gives the impression of justice’s absence.

     The military has rules of engagement that if egregiously violated will result in prison time; these authorities seem to, at times, have but a mysterious few. One might incur their deadly wrath for offering up a license and registration or reaching for a cell phone, playing with a toy gun, or rebuffing their advances; this while the majority of society cannot be bothered to turn around in their car seats when backing up, so the unwary are killed or greatly injured, too often without penalty. Of business, the connected rule the market by a force of law put on the market—and other means—while politicians are rewarded in secret. Furthermore, if you object to transgressions of the law for the sordid benefit of criminal profit try persuading those politicians with a resounding thus sayeth the law. You are likely to be laughed out of the room. Law shapes only that part of society not exempted by influence.

     (For the sake of the honorable it is here noted that a rotten few can cast a pall of criminality over the righteous, so it has come to be that by the corruption of our trust good police work is too often labeled as bad police work. However, on the federal level that proposition is reversed, the perpetration of injustice being the norm.)

     And socialistic in that progressivism insists society must be insured by government from any anxiety—the vicissitudes of life will be smoothed out into pure boredom; we will be equal, something like lab rats; and forced to live as if in a maze that directs our existence according to other people’s plans. Society having been defeated by forces beyond its control has opted for the forlorn comfort of despotism over freedom. Instead of self-determination we take what crumbs of happiness fall from the masters table and hope for a better prince.

     The legitimate American offspring of character and convention born of us have been delegitimized by a tyranny of progressivism hostile to our society’s coherence, actuated by hate for American success and given force by the conquered authority of government. Thus has the republic that acts on itself been driven into retreat to make way for the bastard child of a preponderate progress, “a real domination of the few, under an apparent liberty of the many” (Madison); therefore the few fain command us, submit and obey. A liberal good faith has come to a bad end.

     It is thus concluded the manifest disassociation in American society has been brought about by the abandonment of liberalism for a reckless progressivism that knowingly acts to fracture and, therefore, subjugate society, destroying what is required for that end.  Their “progress” necessarily tramples equal liberty according to nature’s law; so it is that we have traded mutual equality for a solvent and a fraud that destroys and empowers but a few to command the many. Their “truth” is drawn from the well of fancy.

     If the measure of a statesman is, as Edmund Burke thought, “A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve,” we ought to pay attention to the designs and character of those we delegate our authority to. (That can be part of an argument for a common good in annulling the 17^th Amendment.)

The Donald, where to begin? One is tempted to dismiss him as a mobbed up, slobbering, sharp toothed, short-winged whiner of low tastes and high intrigue who would if he could indenture Americans to serve his particular interests. This summation is not unfair, he is a man of disreputable associates and tastes—that protester should have been roughed up—ruled by appetites that leave him drooling in anticipation of their fulfilment. His flagging business endeavors might be revived by his newly acquired office—a bit of favor mongering with the captains of enterprise certainly would not hurt his accounts; and the access and consequent influence that he could exert from the White House in plucking the ripe fruit of civil society for the benefit of himself and like-minded traders could bring life to his grandiose vision of self-aggrandizing success. But he fancies himself a political hero as well; he longs to carry on the corruption of our republic, in which society may act upon itself, by imposing a blank slate on which progressives will continue to scratch out their ukase for our lives. This is a man of hostile and cruel intent, not to be dismissed.

     However, his emotional maturity is that of a gamboling clown, suitable only for a frivolous game show. When called to account for saying, in regard to John McCain, he “likes people who didn’t get captured” by a father whose son had been captured and killed in Iraq, the worms that are his lips seemed to wriggle across his face in surprise. The reality that some people suffer terribly, even to death in service—not to mention their survivors—and that that fidelity to duty ought to be thus hallowed will never be given entrance to his subjectivist mind. Bring me some wine he might command, or perhaps a boy, or his buddy Robert Craft, but never will it occur to him, as he slurps up the benefits the captured sometimes give their lives to guard, to dignify their service with an expression of simple human gratitude and lament. Life’s just a game show. 

     This leads one to the contemplation of justice and dispensations. That it might be possible to bring to justice those who have discarded their humanity—leaving nothing but disdain for ours—with a special dispensation in the law.

     Moreover, this benefits Bill Clinton who put Trump up to this. Bill is desperate to stay out of court and, therefore, prison for launching on his authority as president, a terror attack on a child whose only crime was being my daughter. Bill wanted to punish us for his own gratification, and he wanted to make her mom and I watch. He wanted us to see and to feel her daily, unceasing degradation and he wanted Lynn and Gwen and Ashley to understand their utter powerlessness to resist. In brief, he wanted to feel our pain—he wanted to feed on it. We were all to be reposed in a prostrating grief because Bill, and perhaps “Gang Rape Hillary,” said so. With the presumed nominations of Hillary and Donald no matter who wins he will have a powerful friend in the White House. Slick, Willy.

     (Note: I am easy to find Bill—and Hillary? And do please understand that whereas you have in your filthy cowardice and your vicious plots savaged my child and family, your daughter will never be savaged by my pen. History will show you as you are, a couple of festering old trolls who, as everyone who knows trolls will tell you, gave up light for darkness a very long time ago and run from the consequences ever since. Keep running.)

     Now we know the “what” of Bill’s vile scheming. But there is more to the why of it. Certainly Bill is gay and a sociopath. Nobody thinks more of smiling Bill than Bill. So we may have been a somewhat random target; it has been my experience that gays and feminists are often random killers. Yet even they, sometimes, have a criterion to which they recur. Gays are viciously hostile to anyone who does not, unreservedly, buy into their doctrines; feminists take it a step further, nursing their hostility to men as such: men are bad, if you are a man you are bad. Thus it may be that Bill and “Gang Rape Hillary” perceived a variance of objective values and standards not to be bridged by subjective relativism. The Christians, the “Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic…and Oriental,” had to go. Those holders of objective values couldn’t be tolerated, “We’ll put them in their place, ship them off to be dealt with by ISIS like those Christians and other religious minorities in the middle-east,” they might have said. “What is wrong with genocide—they are asking for it,” they might have said. (Genocide has been aided by the policies that ignore the plight of Christians and other disfavored groups in the middle-east.)

     This may all sound a little far-fetched, but no more so than walking into a place of business and finding a pretty young woman wants to flirt with an older man, who is decidedly less than irresistibly handsome, to thereby fabricate an excuse to harm him—reciprocal flirting may now be worthy of the death penalty. But when he doesn’t engage her with witty wordplay she wants to hurt him anyway. Or walking into another business to be confronted, on separate occasions, by a feminist and a homosexual, respectively, that wanted to hurt him for no apparent reason.

     Neither is it any more improbable than Bill making tacit threats on a national scale with Big Media’s help. Toward the end of his second term there was a spurt of brief but seemingly incessant news coverage about the character of cat lovers. They were, it was claimed by experts (so you know it’s true), prone to hold grudges and seek revenge. This intellectual refuse—evidence of the misleading stories frequently planted by the media—was followed by, of all things, news coverage were Bill made his feline affections known while holding a cat. Having taken a national stage to address a national audience it seems his object was to threaten the nation. Jump for joy, Bill was on the job. In that one action Bill, the homosexual movement, and the media, confessed their unequivocal insanity for all to see. Moreover, they confessed themselves terrorists who bear certain culpability for all the dead bodies that have resulted from their illicit objects. Thus they have the same options as any other terrorists at bay, surrender or die. (It is fervently hoped Bill surrenders. On that day he is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, I have him pegged as a blubbering screamer.)

     Further, to name homosexuals terrorists is not hyperbole. Violence and threats of is unexceptional, the usual means when the society does not acquiesce to their demands and grovel; a record of which is not made known by media but nevertheless exists.

     In a recent incident in Texas, two homosexuals, who approached bakers Edie and David Delorme for a wedding cake whipped homosexuals into a frenzy of violence and intimidation with the help of the local media when their request for that cake was, with all courtesy, politely declined. In addition to various terror threats of horrible violence, (e.g., burning down their house) the couple’s young son was threatened with anal rape with a broken beer bottle if they did not comply and participate in that homosexual “wedding” by baking a cake. The bakers recently lost their 19 year old daughter in a car accident and because of the intimidating phone calls had to send “their younger daughter to stay with relatives.” There is no question that they were terrified. (Family Research Council, 3/9/2016)

     Their names can now be added to the list of bakers, in this case, whose liberty, religious and otherwise, has been forbidden by law and its oft masters, homosexual terrorists, (male and female). Jack Phillips, Colorado; Victoria Childress, Iowa; Daniel and Amy McArthur, Northern Ireland; David and Lily Stockton, Indiana; and Aaron and Melissa Klein whose vicious treatment at the hands of Oregon’s comrade Brad Avakian is instructive as to how freedom including religious, is in peril at the subversive hands of progressives. In the Klein’s case, Avakian seemed to be taking his instructions from homosexuals—he was in touch with them frequently. The outcome surely pleased them. Avakian issued a monstrous ORDER to pay a 135,000 fine and he, moreover, decreed “the Klein’s…restrict expressing their religious views on marriage!” Disdainful of constitutional authority he simply voided it; how very progressive. Then he “garnished the Klein’s private bank accounts, to enforce payment of the fine.” This included an account labeled “God’s Money” on bank documents. However, the coup de grace to western thoughts of liberty may be Avakian’s avowed intention to “rehabilitate” the Klein’s from their Biblical beliefs. But, of course, if a restoration was what progressives had in mind they would attack themselves. They must be confused. What they want is to indoctrinate us.  It is not enough to take physical possession of and dominate a population, we must accept their conditioning, and grovel. (Family Research Council, 3/14/2016)

     If you think the chattering class does not endorse homicide think again. Years after Bills admission of his insanity a story came up on the national news about a child who had been playing unsupervised with a gun. It was documented with a video-tape taken not far away by some progressives. The parents were shooting on a range. The child escaped their notice, went to the car, retrieved the weapon and as children are prone to do he gave it a thorough examination. As the parents knew, the weapon was unloaded, so no worries. However, the videographers did not know that, and thinking the gun was loaded kept on recording for something like half an hour. They said they feared for the child’s safety if they intervened. The parents were savaged by the media even though the gun was unloaded. But nary a word of condemnation was to be heard for the good progressives taking the pictures. They wanted that kid to die. That is why they did not intervene. And the media supported them.

     Progressives, of whom the Donald is one, want to be the big dog and call the shots for America; Trump wants to be the biggest. Having distinguished himself as the alpha pooch he stands at the head of the mostly gay presidential pack, lifting his leg on good sense and common decency, our objective values and liberties. Like demagogues of all time he happily hurls empty epithets to play on citizen’s frustration and fear in order to lure the despairing to his side. He is adept at entertaining an exasperated crowd that, having become accustomed to living on empty promises and drama, yet for their patriotism desperate to see reform, does not notice his is just another empty entertainment. The audience is “having a lot of fun,” he says, “We are going to be so great,” he says, “This is huge,” he says. But what he says is nothing but airy adjectives and vituperative posturing. He has nothing to say of substance except that which he will not say publicly. That is, society will be formed by progressives, not society.

     Nor does this put him at odds with republican moderates who as a species are parasitical creatures with no real principles. They are just along for the ride. Pestilent little wretches, they content themselves with gnawing at the substance of what they do not understand in order to keep, what are, for the most part, the best jobs they ever had. Theirs is not to excel but to keep the cash and benefits coming. So they sink their sharp little teeth into the body national and content themselves with nibbling at the necrosis of standards along the way; political, intellectual, moral, philosophical, cultural, they are all to be debunked. What they are to be replaced with they do not know, but progressives will inform them at the proper time. 

     These are charges that will certainly be fought. Politicians who raise their, mostly pinkish, rumps in surrender to hostile insurgents (manliness taken aback, or in arrear) cannot just admit it, they would lose their jobs. So they will make much of such things as “no new taxes,” conveniently ignoring the reality that such as this ploy is analogous to a recreant knife in the back of the nation. These politicians want public and private institutions to keep paying for superfluous stuff; it makes them look good, hence electable. Yet at the same time refusing to raise taxes to pay for these indulgences drives up the nation’s debt. The status quo or the results of their policies becomes that which progressives want moderates to conserve, so far so good.  They get elected but it is a callous strategy that they know will end in a heritable harm to the country and its people—especially to those in the lower half of the earnings spectrum. (There is a fallacious argument that debt, national and unfunded, isn’t really that bad because posterity is inheriting our assets as well. That is like willing a mortgaged property to your child. Title is always held by the debtee; until the account is settled the child holds title to but a reckoning, thus made a slave to the former generation’s self-indulgence.)

     But this does not budge them from hitching a ride on the progressive bandwagon that daily trundles down the imaginary road of a fallacious progress. If they were to refer to history they would find that even a mere fifty years ago things were quite different in America. It was a time when a single mother could take a job as an office girl and buy a car and pay for it in a short time, rent a home (on the beach), and live; a time when pennies would be pinched but there would be enough. A time of happiness in one’s little platoon where conversation was a skill taken for granted and the social graces and good will a common balm in a common life; a time when law was not a tyrant and often had a short memory; when authorities other than the law often as not resolved matters; the cops (if I may) might very well have been respected neighbors; and federal involvement in citizen’s lives was definitely more limited. Of course, that was all about to change, and it did.

     America has been defrauded. There is no evidence that for all the pretensions of “progress” we are any better off. In fact we are worse off, and the deleterious results seem to have been foreordained by progressives, i.e., they seem to be making a deliberate attempt to tear down liberalism and replace it with Totalitarian Socialism or Progressivism.

     Montesquieu wrote, “The customs of an enslaved people are a part of their servitude, those of a free people are a part of their liberty.” Furthermore, the principle of a republic is virtue, that of despotism is fear, said he. (The Spirit of Laws, p. 142, 13)

     The habits and manners of American society were shaped by its religious constitution and the practical experience of governing themselves. Having separated themselves from the strictures of the former system, equality was defined by individual participation, political and economic; hence laws and manners accorded with the nature of the society that formed them, they were reciprocal. Habits of liberty came of opportunities taken to improve their fortunes; hence entrepreneurship and respect for property became the norm. And self-interest came to fruition and liberty was guarded in cooperative endeavors for the common good, independent associations. No man is an island and they knew it.

     This produced a culture fashioned after external standards, actuated and sustained by gratitude and affection for the equality and liberty that shaped the nation—with resulting muscles, so to speak—improving and reproducing society according to its foundations, for a very long time. (Remember the move from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution.)

     But a youthful liberty that moved of its own free will has aged to decrepitude. Permissions and punishments have supplanted freedoms vigor and equality has surrendered to privilege. This while nature’s law has been subverted by an elite few who, directed by their appetites, decide what is better and what is worse.

     Societal norms form its physiognomy. Today, the mores, habits, attitudes and beliefs—even those of science, sometimes—that come into conflict with so called progress are connoted walls, society’s benighted opposition to progressive’s tenets, to be torn down by authorities from on high who know better, or so we are told. But, in fact, these are the last vestiges of our former ethos, and an accountability that progressives oppose with servitude. (For an example of progressives assault on science and children see attached)

     Progress can be like putting a bandage on a wound that never heals, that being our less than perfectible human nature (though that does not foreclose trying) that can bring about entropy in the best of institutions. A Burkean incremental change addressed to specific needs, while mindful of the whole, can bring about improvement while guarding systemic integrity. But neglect and stratagem and ultimately a state of ethical and political desuetude that hollows out our institutions has left them prone to occupation by political speculators.

     Separation of church and state is a useful illustration. The metaphor, in the style of progressives, has been perverted by the courts. The religion clause in the First Amendment was meant to shield the exercise of faith from government interference, including Establishment. So the institution of democracy as equality would be preserved for religion; and the resulting freedom would protect the individual and corporate lives in which it dwelt from coercion, both individuals and communities were to be free. But equal liberty and reciprocal equality, and the law of nature as understood from their religious constitution, those same that formed our nation, are now considered illegitimate parturitions to be declared by, not the law, but, the political cant of the courts, unviable. Benign expressions of faith are now their sworn enemy.

     This ought not to surprise us given the courts hostility to the integrity of institutions and private associations that formerly guarded our independence. Shock and terror, shame and mourning are the appropriate sentiments. For whatever institution is thus enervated will simply cease to exist, continuing as a witting or unwitting puppet of the state, if anything. The objective values in the Declaration have been repudiated by progressives. They are nearly empty words that have very little of their original meaning left. The courts, glutted on their, now, unchallenged sovereign authority, will redefine and sanction what they please. Thus progress will make irrelevant the accountability of the state. The people can shut up or suffer the consequences. Stalin’s smiling.

The race for the presidency goes on. But it is not a pretty picture. One is reminded of childish disputes of yore when tantrums gave voice to the reign of immaturity until proper habits and attitudes had been inculcated by example. Unfortunately, those dispositions did not take, so to speak, in the current crop of hopefuls. Perhaps they need a time out. (Do we daresay spanked?)

     The political insincerity and scheming of the mostly gay candidates is, however, fascinating. Chris Christie has endorsed the Donald. But he has always been Mitt Romney’s boy, and Mitt (who wanted to give me a ride in his airplane after I denounced him. I have the email) has lambasted Donald. Ted Cruz has made overtures of an alliance accepted by the Donald and yet their choreographed war of words goes on. And poor Marco, perhaps, unaware of the swirling intrigues traipsed on, until the polls collapsed. And we ought not to forget John Kasich who just wants everybody to come together. This is his general policy, hugs for everybody. Yet if he had bothered to consult thinkers such as Robert Bork he would understand things are not that simple. Kasich is like his fellow candidates an experienced politician. But given their reticence in speaking to issues that harm the nation, their complaisant acceptance of the status quo, or the establishment, and his apparently comfortable place in their company he appears to have nothing to offer the nation. The liberty of our republic to act on itself is in conflict with a barbarous disassociation that means to vanquish it. There is no indication he will take a stand for the nation. He is another dog to be fed from the table, not unlike his co-conspirators.

     So ends this missive.

I have the honor to be,

Lynn Swartos

Gender Ideology Harms Children

March 21, 2016 – a temporary statement with references. A full statement will be published in summer 2016.

The American College of Pediatricians urges educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.

1. Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: “XY” and “XX” are genetic markers of health – not genetic markers of a disorder. The norm for human design is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species. This principle is self-evident. The exceedingly rare disorders of sex development (DSDs), including but not limited to testicular feminization and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, are all medically identifiable deviations from the sexual binary norm, and are rightly recognized as disorders of human design. Individuals with DSDs do not constitute a third sex.¹

2. No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one. No one is born with an awareness of themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all developmental processes, may be derailed by a child’s subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward. People who identify as “feeling like the opposite sex” or “somewhere in between” do not comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or biological women.^2,3,4

3. A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such. These children suffer from gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), formerly listed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID), is a recognized mental disorder in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-V).⁵ The psychodynamic and social learning theories of GD/GID have never been disproved.^2,4,5

4. Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. Reversible or not, puberty- blocking hormones induce a state of disease – the absence of puberty – and inhibit growth and fertility in a previously biologically healthy child.⁶

5. According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.⁵

6. Children who use puberty blockers to impersonate the opposite sex will require cross-sex hormones in late adolescence. Cross-sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke and cancer.^7,8,9,10

7. Rates of suicide are twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBQT – affirming countries.¹¹ What compassionate and reasonable person would condemn young children to this fate knowing that after puberty as many as 88% of girls and 98% of boys will eventually accept reality and achieve a state of mental and physical health?

8. Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse. Endorsing gender discordance as normal via public education and legal policies will confuse children and parents, leading more children to present to “gender clinics” where they will be given puberty-blocking drugs. This, in turn, virtually ensures that they will “choose” a lifetime of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic cross-sex hormones, and likely consider unnecessary surgical mutilation of their healthy body parts as young adults.

Michelle A. Cretella, M.D.
President of the American College of Pediatricians

Quentin Van Meter, M.D.
Vice President of the American College of Pediatricians
Pediatric Endocrinologist

Paul McHugh, M.D.
University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital

References:

1. Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development, “Clinical Guidelines for the Management of Disorders of Sex Development in Childhood.” Intersex Society of North America, March 25, 2006. Accessed 3/20/16 from http://www.dsdguidelines.org/files/clinical.pdf.

2. Zucker, Kenneth J. and Bradley Susan J. “Gender Identity and Psychosexual Disorders.”FOCUS: The Journal of Lifelong Learning in Psychiatry. Vol. III, No. 4, Fall 2005 (598-617).

3. Whitehead, Neil W. “Is Transsexuality biologically determined?” Triple Helix (UK), Autumn 2000, p6-8. accessed 3/20/16 from http://www.mygenes.co.nz/transsexuality.htm; see also Whitehead, Neil W. “Twin Studies of Transsexuals [Reveals Discordance]” accessed 3/20/16 from http://www.mygenes.co.nz/transs_stats.htm.

4. Jeffreys, Sheila. Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism. Routledge, New York, 2014 (pp.1-35).

5. American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013 (451-459). See page 455 re: rates of persistence of gender dysphoria.

6. Hembree, WC, et al. Endocrine treatment of transsexual persons: an Endocrine Society clinical practice guideline. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2009;94:3132-3154.

7. Olson-Kennedy, J and Forcier, M. “Overview of the management of gender nonconformity in children and adolescents.” UpToDate November 4, 2015. Accessed 3.20.16 from www.uptodate.com.

8. Moore, E., Wisniewski, & Dobs, A. “Endocrine treatment of transsexual people: A review of treatment regimens, outcomes, and adverse effects.” The Journal of Endocrinology & Metabolism, 2003; 88(9), pp3467-3473.

9. FDA Drug Safety Communication issued for Testosterone products accessed 3.20.16: http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/PostmarketDrugSafetyInformationforPatientsandProviders/ucm161874.htm.

10. World Health Organization Classification of Estrogen as a Class I Carcinogen: http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/ageing/cocs_hrt_statement.pdf.

11. Dhejne, C, et.al. “Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden.” PLoS ONE, 2011; 6(2). Affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Psychiatry, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Accessed 3.20.16 from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885.