GELFAND’S WORLD - CBS ran some previously aired footage on 60 Minutes the other night in which members of the Oath Keepers were interviewed.

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA-Friends, Californians, fellow drivers, stop honking your horns and lend me your ears. 

RECALL-L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón said Friday that the people backing the effort to unseat him, less than six months after he took office, are supporters of former President Donald Trump.

ANIMAL WATCH-Animal cruelty is a “gateway” or “indicator” crime, often first committed as a juvenile and leading to other serious offenses, including sexual predation and assault on humans. 

THE CITY-Murders increased 36 percent in Los Angeles in 2020. LA City Council is getting fired up for more policies that can build opportunities for those on the tightrope and the governor is taking a break from firing million dollar checks out of a t-shirt cannon to jump in on the action. 

ALPERN AT LARGE-One of the greatest and boldest things the late Democratic President Harry Truman did was to recognize the State of Israel on May 15, 1948.

PEACE VOICE-Remember the Space Force? You know, the sixth branch of the U.S. military, officially created in 2019, “establishing space as a warfighting domain and guaranteeing that the United States will dominate in that environment just like all others.” 

LA’S HOUSING SQUEEZE-As most people know, Los Angeles and California are in a housing crisis, with very few low- and moderate-income housing units being built by private developers to meet the demand with accompanying increases in housing prices, up by 17.2 % in Los Angeles County during the past year.

CAL MATTERS-How you interpret California’s latest unemployment numbers may have a lot to do with whether you’re a glass half-full or glass half-empty kind of person.

PEACE VOICE-Did you really think that electing Joe Biden would mean major reductions in military spending and the shift of Pentagon resources to spending on social well-being, as progressives have long advocated? 

VIEW FROM HERE-The interplay between lies and myths is complex. On the other hand, understanding that in America, white supremacy (WS) is cultural treason is simple. 

Initial Caveat: Because WS is cultural treason does not mean that the Dem’s Wokerism (Identity Politics) is not also treason. 

As Adam Kirsch shows in his June 14, 2021, New Yorker article discussing Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, The Classicist Who Killed Homer, myth making rests at the heart of any society. The act of taking the facts surrounding ancient events and forming a national narrative can take centuries or even millennia, but overall, the result represents the society which fashioned it. The Jews, as well as all other peoples, went through a similar process. When the myths are based on events far beyond the memory of any living person, the foundational facts are clouded. The truths, which emerge from the national narrative, set the modus operandi of a society’s culture. 

Lies Become Part of the Cultural Myth 

The Trojan War occurred, but that does not mean the events in the Iliad and the Odyssey are facts. If we could quiz someone who lived at the time, they would likely say about various aspects of the epics, “that never happened,” or “it was kind of like that” or even, “Yep, the Greeks built a wooden horse and hid soldiers inside.” The legacy of the Iliad and the Odyssey are not in the factual accuracy but in the cultural values which arose during the myth making process. 

The Essence of the American Myth Is Well Known 

While it is beneficial to have some understanding of the philosophical trends leading up to the writing of the Declaration of Independence, its meaning is clear. Its core myth has 18 words: “. . . all men . . . are endowed. . .with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” While these few words fall outside the realm of verifiable fact, they constitute America’s essential truth.  

(1) The word “equal” was not quoted above as its function in 1776 was to emphasize the sanctity of each individual. In a world where different individuals had varying rights and privileges based on the class to which they had been born, it was necessary to kill off the pernicious idea that some persons had more or better inalienable rights than others. 

(2) The words “by their creator” were likewise not quoted as they did not refer to any religion or to any religious tenet. It was merely a common way to say that a person’s inalienable rights were inherent in being human and did not derive from any man-made institution.   

Equality Is Not an Inalienable Right 

The Declaration made clear that equality was not an inalienable right. It listed three: Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. Thomas Jefferson and all the other signers of the Declaration as well as those at the subsequent Constitutional Convention were well aware of the philosophical concept of equality.  Their exclusion of equality from the Declaration and from the U.S. Constitution was intentional.  Liberty and equality are inherently incompatible. 

The Declaration Ended All Forms of Group Rights 

When writing the Declaration, Jefferson knew that John Locke’s triad of rights were Life, Liberty, and Property. Slaves were considered property and Jefferson knew that if he used Property, he would be excluding slaves, i.e., Blacks, from having inalienable rights. A piece of property cannot have an inalienable right to liberty. Thus, property was replaced with Pursuit of Happiness. It is doubtful that anyone was so unschooled not to know that the Declaration and the subsequent U.S. Constitution spelled the end of not only slavery but also affirmed inalienable rights to all Blacks as well as all other humans. 

White Supremacy Rejects the Declaration 

“White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of white power and privilege.” 

White Supremacy directly contradicts the core American value of individual inalienable rights where no individual has more or less inalienable rights than any other person. White Supremacy posits group rights for Whites. Group rights and individual inalienable rights are two irreconcilably immiscible belief systems. Hence, White Supremacy is cultural treason against America. 

Jefferson Was No Pollyanna 

The near ubiquitous belief that some men where inherently inferior to others was widely held in Jefferson’s age. The Declaration was America’s Alea Jacta Est moment when America had to decide whether to go down the path of group rights or individual inalienable rights. Christianity threw its weight behind group rights with its dichotomy of the saved vs the damned. The Declaration, however, irrevocably rejected Calvinism with its Doctrine of Predetermination where God decided before one’s birth whether one is saved or damned. A government based in individual inalienable rights had to separate the state from religion. Privately, people could hold whatever beliefs they wished. 

E Pluribus Unum 

America’s original motto was E Pluribus Unum, One from Many. The motto recapitulated the Declaration that we were forming one nation from many different individuals of untold backgrounds.   This value gave rise to the Melting Pot Theory, where everyone could retain their own distinctive character while coming together to form a unified whole. Carrots do not become onions. 

One would have been taken as simpleton to think that because reality was so radically different from the America’s philosophical goal, that we should jettison individual inalienable rights in favor of system where one group could legally dominate another group. We have seen what becomes of such a system in Nazi Germany. The fact that many White Supremacists are Nazis should surprise no one, nor should one be shocked that many fundamental Christians believe that their religious dogmas should become the law of the land. In America, all calls for group rights are cultural treason, which some people have translated into actual insurrection and treason. 

White Men Wrote the Declaration 

One would think that White Supremacists would be all gung-ho for individual inalienable rights. After all, the Declaration was written by a white man and signed by other white men based on a European philosophical tradition of white men. Later white men used it as the basis for the U.S. Constitution. If WS is true, then the white cream should rise to the top and nothing could be dandier than a nation where each person had inalienable rights. Yet. WS is based on group rights where a particular group has more innate rights than another group and the Whites possess such superior rights that mass murder of others is A-OK.   

America First Should Reject WS, Nazism, the KKK, and Wokerism. 

The irony of America First movements is that they are based on a repudiation of America’s core value, i.e., individual inalienable rights. Their danger derives from their willingness to use violence and terror to seize control of the government and replace individual rights with a system where one race is superior to all others. That is cultural treason. 

(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a realtor, and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch. You may email him at RickLeeAbrams@Gmail.com). Illustration: Ben Wiseman. 

GUEST COMMENTARY-China’s increasingly aggressive geopolitical and economic stance in the world is unleashing a fierce bipartisan backlash in America.

COUNTERPUNCH - Years pass, and journalist Julian Assange languishes in a British jail. His crime? Truthful reporting of U.S. military atrocities in Iraq, reporting that sparked a lust for vengeance among U.S. politicos and military men.

How strong and powerful is a country if it cannot handle the slightest bit of self-reflection or self-criticism?

CAL MATTERS-If Billy McCasland had gotten his $1,200 stimulus check, he would have moved his family out of the Modesto house the pediatrician says is responsible for his 7-year-old’s lead poisoning.