Noam Chomsky "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put … Continue reading How leaders limit the scope of what can be discussed

Infantilizing minorities, the disabled and the young is regressive In recent years, there have been well-documented movements that infantilize students and minorities. These trends in part involve helicopter and snowplow parenting. They are also rooted in a postmodernist social justice ideology that characterizes minorities as emotionally fragile victims within a fundamentally oppressive society. These infantilization and victimhood … Continue reading Progress Requires Treating People Like Adults

Louis-Ferdinand Celine is considered one of the great novelists and stylists of the 20th century and was expelled from France for supporting the Nazis and writing antisemitic pamphlets Everyone is complex, imperfect, and at times hypocritical, shaped by the context of their times. Good people can do bad things, bad people can do good things, … Continue reading Good ideas can come from bad people

This issue is not new. I wrote about it last year and authored a 2020 paper on antisemitism in the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) and progressivism. In the late 2010s, Jews protested Unitarian Universalist congregations in Massachusetts and Washington State for showing a film they felt was antisemitic. In 2016, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, told UUs that … Continue reading The UUA deepens its rift with mainstream Jews

Unitarian Universalism (UU) has historically been a non-creedal, pluralistic and classically liberal church built upon the foundations of tolerance, freedom of belief and expression and the welcoming of individuality and personal spiritual journeys. One of its core principles is "A free and responsible search for truth and meaning," encapsulated by the slogan "We don’t have … Continue reading How Unitarian Universalism Became a Church of Shaming, Bullying and Coercion

Answers to common questions

Conspiracy theories, often resistant to factual counter-arguments, claim secretive forces manipulate events. These unproven beliefs can result in significant harm. Though some theories are verified, most are based on paranoia, cognitive biases, and a distrust of authority. It is crucial to apply critical thinking to differentiate between factual and unsupported theories.

A clinical psychologist compares the current UUA to a cult

In a uniquely race-fixated United States, a regular question is if Jews are white. You will get a variety of answers, including from Jews.