US Politics Preclude Sane War-Fighting [+video]

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The Limited-war Premise

With the advent of nuclear weapons, many civilian think-tank warfare theorists and liberal politicians believed that direct superpower confrontation had become too dangerous to contemplate. Thus was born “limited-war” in the national lexicon of strategic thinking when the Korean War broke out in 1950, and President Truman limited the war objectives and means in order to avoid nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. The Korean War began the change in the American concept of war away from total war, or what was called at the time “general war,” to a form of war that was more “civilized” and “less dangerous” in the minds of politicians and social scientists.

The problem of limited-war from an American national interest standpoint was that it assumed all U.S. enemies would likewise be restrained in objectives and means. This fanciful social science assumption rested on the unproven belief that no foreign national leader in his right mind would dare oppose America, following its World War II victory, once U.S. willingness to fight was made clear.

However, the advocates of limited-war never came to grips with what would happen if an enemy refused to “play” by limited-war “rules.” In other words, how and when would limited-war be concluded when the enemy was pursuing uncompromising total war objectives, but with limited means (that is, means short of triggering nuclear attack), and the U.S. was in contrast erroneously waging a war for negotiable, limited objectives with limited means? This resulting mismatch of U.S. limited-war objectives versus enemy total war objectives spawned the modern version of asymmetrical insurgent warfare, which has bedeviled the U.S. since mid 20th century when the U.S. limited-war strategic doctrine was adopted.

In 1961 President Kennedy and his civilian social-science theorists rewrote the U.S. rules of war, conceiving and implementing a formal limited-war doctrine they dubbed “Flexible Response” to counter Soviet client-proxy warfare. It was at this point that we completely departed from the strategic thinking that had won World War II.

The change in national strategic mindset was profound. The fundamental change in the U.S. approach to warfare now had at its essence the new approach that America would answer enemy aggression against its interests with just a limited force response that was “proportional” to the threat, thus inculcating the institutional idea in the U.S. national security infrastructure that American military responses should only be gradually escalated according to the perceived immediate seriousness of the crisis. Crisis management replaced strategic thinking in the top levels of the U.S. Government.

The operative concept was that an enemy would “receive the message” that the U.S. intended to act militarily to defend its interests, and therefore, would be deterred from escalating the crisis further. Then, after it was clear to the enemy that his war objectives could not be attained, negotiations would ensue that would end the crisis. “Message sending” to the enemy through gradual escalation became an integral part of U.S. national security thinking and strategy. So, U.S. limited-war strategic doctrine is not geared to defeat the enemy, only to get the enemy to negotiate or temporarily withdraw from the battlefield. Of course, by not eliminating the enemy’s aggressor forces, the conflict is just put on hold until the enemy deems it advantageous to reinitiate aggression against U.S. interests, as Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have conclusively demonstrated.

What it really suggests is a mind-set that believed the whole of mankind operated under the same set of values, which American politicians have. In other words, according to the mindset of American politicians, there is nothing really worth fighting for until the end. So, in the view of U.S. political policy-makers and academic social science advisors, total dedication to nationalist goals (North Vietnamese) or religious zeal (Muslims) are subject to compromise. After all, if that was the view of the American political leadership, they concluded, it must be the view of our enemies.

The first principle of warfare, which is that in order to prevail in armed conflict overwhelming kinetic force must be employed as quickly as possible to prevent increases in enemy power, was thus completely excluded from the U.S. warfare repertoire. That decisive force exclusion was a major fatal fallacy in limited-war strategic doctrine because it assumes the American people would support an open-ended war where the termination is completely determined by the enemy’s decision to discontinue hostilities.

Therefore, limited-war strategic doctrine totally cedes initiative and control of the war to the enemy.

The eventual fall of Saigon in 1975 was due in part to dragging the war out as opposed to destroying the enemy capability to continue the war that was located in North Vietnam and not in the South Vietnamese jungle where the U.S. mistakenly fought its limited-war.

As the commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific Theater, Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, noted in his memoire, Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect:

Once the decision was made to participate in this war and engage Americans in the military conflict, I believe we should have taken the steps necessary to end the war successfully in the shortest possible time. It was folly to commit Americans to combat and then force them to fight without utilizing the means we so richly possessed to win an early victory. It is my firm belief, however, that we did exactly that by not using our air and naval power to its full effectiveness . . . . . We could have brought the Vietnam War to a successful conclusion in short order, early in the game, once the decision had been made by the civilian leadership to engage with US forces. All we needed to do was assemble the necessary force and then use it the way it was designed to be used . . . By 1966 we had the full measure of air power to do the job, and our ground forces were strong enough that in combination with such air power properly applied we could have forced Hanoi to give up its efforts to take over South Vietnam. But authority to use our air power to this end was simply not forthcoming.

How Wars Are Successfully Concluded

As Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz in his masterwork, On War, makes clear, war reduced to the most fundamental equation is:

WAR = MOTIVATION (psychic forces) + CAPABILITY (physical forces).

Historical war MOTIVATIONs have been religious, politico-nationalist, geo-strategic, economic, and revanchist, while CAPABILITY is composed of manpower, firepower, and re-supplying that manpower and firepower, which is logistics. Remove one or both of these MOTIVATION and CAPABILITY factors in war, and the war is over in short order. It should be noted that in war, a combatant must not only attempt to destroy the opponent’s MOTIVATION and CAPABILITY; it is also imperative to safeguard one’s own MOTIVATION and CAPABILITY. Unfortunately the U.S. has consistently failed to protect MOTIVATION on its side, that is, public support for the war.

Again, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have conclusively demonstrated this failure and the sad results.

Obviously preparing to destroy an enemy’s MOTIVATION and/or CAPABILITY is dependent on the enemy’s existential interests and the character of his fighting forces. In considering the various international conflict MOTIVATIONs, religious and politico-ideological rationales have historically produced more vicious and sustained combat than those wars that have been conducted for secular justifications unrelated to belief systems, such as for geo-strategic and/or economic gains. Material goals are more readily forsaken than are belief goals. This very important motivational differentiation has been over-looked by our political class increasingly in every conflict since the end of World War II. American politicians and the public tend to think of war in terms of “one size fits all.”

As a result Americans only see war through a U.S. cultural prism, while strategic objectives of U.S. Islamic enemies, like the jihadist, non-negotiable propagation of the Islamic religion and Islamic Sharia religious law, are consistently ignored or downplayed. U.S. policy-makers make the irrational assumption based on their secular beliefs that, because we will limit our warfare objectives and efforts, so will those we are fighting.

Another basic aspect of war where American government policy-makers, who set the politico-military parameters of U.S. wars, have been totally misguided is in the timing of termination of hostilities. The appropriate point to end combat is when the enemy knows he is defeated because he has lost the will and means to fight. But in 2003 U.S. Government policy-makers stopped the fighting in Operation Iraqi Freedom and began repairing battle damage to Iraqi civilian infrastructure while, undaunted, the enemy was in fact transitioning from conventional to unconventional insurgent warfare.

These U.S. policy-makers misinterpreted capturing the enemy capital, Baghdad, and vanquishing enemy main force formations of Republican Guards as the equivalent of capturing Berlin and Tokyo and the total decimations of German and Japanese militaries and war industries. When U.S. and allied forces entered those enemy capitals in 1945, there was no doubt in German and Japanese minds that they had been completely defeated. Their will to fight and their means to fight were gone. U.S. governmental policy of unconditional surrender in a ‘total war’ ensured that victory was achieved with the destruction of enemy MOTIVATION-psychic forces and CAPABILITY-physical forces. While enemy CAPABILITY was severely damaged in Iraq in 2003, enemy MOTIVATION was as strong as ever.

Why U.S. Politics Preclude Sane War-Fighting

For whatever reason or reasons, be they cowardice, arrogant hubris, or just old-fashioned stupidity, U.S. political policy-makers since World War II have consistently not focused U.S. war efforts against what Clausewitz termed the enemy’s “centers of gravity.” These centers of gravity are the sources of strength; the destruction of which yield crippling effects on the enemy’s war-making MOTIVATION and/or CAPABILITY.

Instead, as noted above, limited and gradual force application has been used for “message sending” to induce the enemy to negotiate by blunting the enemy’s aggression and fighting him to a stalemate. This approach to warfare is the essence of U.S. limited-war strategic doctrine. From the national politicians’ point of view, such restraint in warfare is the intellectually enlightened and the prudent way of war. And also from the politicians’ perspective, it permits a cautious, incremental approach that is meant to avoid international political dangers, such as provoking decisive hostile reactions from unexpected quarters, as when the Chinese Communists unexpectedly entered the Korean War (although alert, intelligent national leadership would have foreseen it).

While judging the content of a politician’s heart and the intent behind his motivations are solely the province of the deity, it is possible to accurately assess the results of a politician’s policies and decisions and classify them. And when it comes to setting war objectives, strategy, and rules of engagement policy, the U.S. political leadership class has failed miserably since World War II to today in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the on-going worldwide world war against Islamic jihad. In each of these wars the U.S. political leaders have not only misjudged the enemies’ MOTIVATION and CAPABILITY, they also misjudged America’s MOTIVATION and CAPABILITY. Sun Tzu forewarned of such ignorance:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Due to America’s superior military technology and combat training, U.S. forces have not lost battles, but have lost or are losing the wars instead through U.S. political malfeasance. The final results of the Iraq, Afghanistan, and the on-going worldwide world war against Islamic jihad are not in yet, but the outlook is not good.

In every case the problem has been the same, the U.S. politicians have opted for limited-war strategic doctrine instead of setting the objective of attacking and eliminating the enemies’ centers of gravity, which generate the enemies’ MOTIVATION and CAPABILITY. Although the U.S. military leadership receives war objectives, strategy, and rules of engagement policy from the politicians, they also share blame for the failures because they have institutionalized limited-war strategic doctrine to the point that, even when retired officers are disagreeing with politicians in the public media, they pose their disagreements within the limited-war strategic doctrine framework. In other words, the military establishment has so completely embraced limited-war strategic doctrine that there are no professional military common-sense voices advocating that the U.S. take the offensive and destroy the actual sources of enemy aggression.

There is also a related ancillary problem. Unfortunately, many taxpayers and most politicians are totally illiterate when it comes to the subject of warfare. Judging from the dismal results in the last thirteen years, a similar conclusion might to drawn concerning the U.S. officer corps. In U.S. academia, the study of warfare takes a distant second place behind black and women’s studies, while Reserve Officer Training Courses are shunned by universities. Consequently, only a tiny fraction of the American electorate even know enough to question politicians on the wisdom of limited-war strategic doctrine, or understand its inherent strategic shortcomings.

Surveying American political correctness culture, it is only logical to conclude that the reason why timidity rules U.S. war-fighting is because timidity rules the American political correctness culture. Both of the U.S. national political parties are led by faint-of-heart individuals, lacking character, that are more concerned with their personal fortunes than the nation’s. These characterless political leaders are the genesis of America’s inept war-fighting. And as the saying goes: A democracy gets the leaders it deserves.

However, more to the point, the both the Bush and Obama administrations have remained steadfast in their resolve not to identify the actual enemy to the American people. We are only told that we are fighting non-descript terrorism and terrorists.

Then at rare times, we are told they are radical Islamists who have somehow hijacked the “noble religion of peace.” But had presidents Bush and Obama made clear that our enemy is every nation, every regime, every network, every conspiracy, and every individual who preaches, teaches and advocates Islamic Sharia law, which is a politico-religious ideology bent on world domination, the ability to communicate war goals, progress, and strategy would become infinitely more effective, as would focusing the U.S. war effort. Instead, these presidents and their national security teams insist we are fighting just some kind of violent, non-ideological tactic without faces other than a limited and finite number of fanatical Al Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists. This official governmental dissimulation leads people to wonder why the entire Islamic world actually seems to be on fire and at war with Western Civilization? The American people realize they are being continually lied to, but no political clarifying voice has yet arisen to identify Islamic Sharia as the enemy, regardless whether the Sharia is Sunni or Shia.

Conclusion

U.S. politics, which dictate the nation’s war objectives, strategy, and rules of engagement policy, are dominated by timid political correctness. So, regardless whether the American public wants to attribute U.S. politicians’ behavior to cowardice, arrogant hubris, or just old-fashioned stupidity, American warfare will remain ineffective as long as timid political correctness and self-serving, characterless politicians rule Washington, D.C. Consequently, sanity in U.S. war-fighting is not in America’s immediate future. (See “US Politics Preclude Sane War-Fighting”, originally posted HERE)

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The Most Forgotten Man in the Immigration Debate [+video]

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“We need to do something on immigration.”

If a penny went to the Treasury every time this phrase has been uttered (in hushed tones in GOP briefings with their consultants), our more than $18 trillion national debt would be paid off.

Just today U.S. News reports that Republicans are looking for numerous paths to enact elitist/corporatist immigration preferences. Of course, all to be preceded by a superficial “border security” bill with vague language that fails to address the true sources of the illegal immigration problem. Concurrently, they plan “to sidestep the thorny issue[s].”

What is completely lost throughout this entire debate are the needs and demands of the forgotten men – the American taxpayer and worker who must bear the brunt of appalling crime, schools overrun with illegal aliens who can’t speak English, hospitals flooded with the massive unfunded liability of caring for their primary care needs, and with the gargantuan wealth transfer in the form of welfare and refundable tax credits.

Yes, indeed, “we need to do something about immigration,” but that something is the focus of those people for whom Congress swore an oath to protect and defend – the people subject to the jurisdiction of this country and its constitution, not illegal immigrants. That something includes what the Washington “elite” refer to as “thorny issues,” but the American public regard as common sense, justice and fairness.

There is no emergency to “deal” with those who broke our laws or who would otherwise be ineligible for admission under our public charge law – a provision that unfortunately is never enforced [Section 212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)]. But there is an emergency and an obligation for Congress to immediately deal with the following issues:

Violent Crime

There are now 900,000 illegal aliens who have been ordered to leave the country by the courts, yet the Administration is refusing to lift a finger. Of those ordered to be deported, 167,000 are criminal aliens, the very type Obama said he would prioritize for deportation. After releasing 36,000 criminal aliens in FY 2013, the Administration has let go another 30,558 this past fiscal year. As Jessica Vaughn noted, these criminals racked up “convictions on 79,059 crimes, including 175 homicides, 373 sexual assaults, 186 kidnappings, and 14,014 impaired driving offenses.” According to data from the House Judiciary Committee, 3,100 are deemed “Threat Level 1” criminals. The Atlanta Journal Constitution has published a riveting expose on the extent and danger of these criminal aliens released into our communities throughout the country.

In addition to those let out of jail, DHS has refused to track the countless thousands who were immediately let go upon apprehension as a result of faux prosecutorial discretion. Couple this with the ridiculously lax screening of DACA recipients – 94% of all applications have been approved, despite a number of them turning out to be criminals – and we have an unprecedented national security gap. As the threat of Islamic terror continues to rise, there is no greater more imminent emergency for Congress to contend with.

Where is the solemn sense of urgency from the GOP Congress to “do something on immigration” as it relates to Obama’s release of dangerous criminals? Who is going to stand for people like police officer Brandon Mendoza murdered in the prime of his life by an illegal alien drunk driver? Who will stand for those raped and murdered by illegal aliens?

Protecting the States

The courts are dismantling any ability of beleaguered states to deal with the crime and fiscal burden of illegal immigration. The Ninth Circuit just denied the citizens of Arizona the right to block bail for illegal aliens, most of who never show up to their trials and disappear onto the streets. Where is the eagerness to pass legislation immediately deputizing the states to enforce federal immigration laws? This is a lot more effective and important, than vacuous and unaccountable, promises of “border security.”

The Crushing Fiscal Burden

The IRS Commissioner is now admitting that amnestied aliens will receive huge windfalls from refundable tax credits. Remember, even though the court blocked Obama’s recent amnesty, the DACA program has already legalized 664,607 illegal immigrants. They have all received Social Security cards and are eligible for refundable tax credits. Additionally, it is now clear that almost all illegal aliens are eligible for Obamacare subsidies. Also, the continuous flood of illegal immigrants (something no court can enjoin) has burdened the school systems with a record number of children who can’t speak English.

Who will stand for the forgotten man and woman – the true “undocumented American” – the families of hard working native taxpayers and legal immigrants who are completely undocumented and unrepresented in this debate? They lack the powerful lobbies, legal defense groups, and foreign special interests promoting the “Dreamers.” Who will protect their communities and their slice of the America Dream?

Indeed, there is no greater responsibility of elected officials; no greater emergency than the need to “do something about immigration,” for immigration stands at the nexus of national security, criminal justice, education, health care, welfare, and American culture. Sadly, the elite politicians only plan to do something as it relates to filling their campaign coffers…the needs of their true constituents be damned. (See “The Most Forgotten Man in the Immigration Debate”, originally posted HERE)

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“I Had Sex Change Surgery and Regret It”: What Bruce Jenner, Diane Sawyer, and You Have to Hear [+video]

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[Editor’s Note: the author, Walt Heyer, will be on The Joe Miller Show this coming Monday] Bruce Jenner and Diane Sawyer could benefit from a history lesson. I know, because I suffered through “sex change” surgery and lived as a woman for eight years. The surgery fixed nothing—it only masked and exacerbated deeper psychological problems.

The beginnings of the transgender movement have gotten lost today in the push for transgender rights, acceptance, and tolerance. If more people were aware of the dark and troubled history of sex-reassignment surgery, perhaps we wouldn’t be so quick to push people toward it.

The setting for the first transgender surgeries (mostly male-to-female) was in university-based clinics, starting in the 1950s and progressing through the 1960s and the 1970s. When the researchers tallied the results and found no objective proof that it was successful—and, in fact, evidence that it was harmful—the universities stopped offering sex-reassignment surgery.

Since then, private surgeons have stepped in to take their place. Without any scrutiny or accountability for their results, their practices have grown, leaving shame, regret, and suicide in their wake.

The Founding Fathers of the Transgender Movement

The transgender movement began as the brainchild of three men who shared a common bond: all three were pedophilia activists.

The story starts with the infamous Dr. Alfred Kinsey, a biologist and sexologist whose legacy endures today. Kinsey believed that all sex acts were legitimate—including pedophilia, bestiality, sadomasochism, incest, adultery, prostitution, and group sex. He authorized despicable experiments on infants and toddlers to gather information to justify his view that children of any age enjoyed having sex. Kinsey advocated the normalization of pedophilia and lobbied against laws that would protect innocent children and punish sexual predators.

Transsexualism was added to Kinsey’s repertoire when he was presented with the case of an effeminate boy who wanted to become a girl. Kinsey consulted an acquaintance of his, an endocrinologist by the name of Dr. Harry Benjamin. Transvestites, men who dressed as women, were well-known. Kinsey and Benjamin saw this as an opportunity to change a transvestite physically, way beyond dress and make-up. Kinsey and Benjamin became professional collaborators in the first case of what Benjamin would later call “transsexualism.”

Benjamin asked several psychiatric doctors to evaluate the boy for possible surgical procedures to feminize his appearance. They couldn’t come to a consensus on the appropriateness of feminizing surgery. That didn’t stop Benjamin. On his own, he began offering female hormone therapy to the boy. The boy went to Germany for partial surgery, and Benjamin lost all contact with him, making any long-term follow-up impossible.

The Tragic Story of the Reimer Twins

The third co-founder of today’s transgender movement was psychologist Dr. John Money, a dedicated disciple of Kinsey and a member of a transsexual research team headed by Benjamin.

Money’s first transgender case came in 1967 when he was asked by a Canadian couple, the Reimers, to repair a botched circumcision on their two-year-old son, David. Without any medical justification, Money launched into an experiment to make a name for himself and advance his theories about gender, no matter what the consequences to the child. Money told the distraught parents that the best way to assure David’s happiness was to surgically change his genitalia from male to female and raise him as a girl. As many parents do, the Reimers followed their doctor’s orders, and David was replaced with Brenda. Money assured the parents that Brenda would adapt to being a girl and that she would never know the difference. He told them that they should keep it a secret, so they did—at least for a while.

Activist doctors like Dr. Money always look brilliant at first, especially if they control the information that the media report. Money played a skilled game of “catch me if you can,” reporting the success of the boy’s gender change to the medical and scientific community and building his reputation as a leading expert in the emerging field of gender change. It would be decades before the truth was revealed. In reality, David Reimer’s “adaptation” to being a girl was completely different from the glowing reports concocted by Money for journal articles. By age twelve, David was severely depressed and refused to return to see Money. In desperation, his parents broke their secrecy, and told him the truth of the gender reassignment. At age fourteen, David chose to undo the gender change and live as a boy.

In 2000, at the age of thirty-five, David and his twin brother finally exposed the sexual abuse Dr. Money had inflicted on them in the privacy of his office. The boys told how Dr. Money took naked photos of them when they were just seven years old. But pictures were not enough for Money. The pedophilic doctor also forced the boys to engage in incestuous sexual activities with each other.

The consequences of Money’s abuse were tragic for both boys. In 2003, only three years after going public about their tortured past, David’s twin brother, Brian, died from a self-inflicted overdose. A short while later, David also committed suicide. Money had finally been exposed as a fraud, but that didn’t help the grieving parents whose twin boys were now dead.

The exposure of Money’s fraudulent research results and tendencies came too late for people suffering from gender issues, too. Using surgery had become well-established by then, and no one cared that one of its founders was discredited.

Results from Johns Hopkins: Surgery Gives No Relief

Dr. Money became the co-founder of one of the first university-based gender clinics in the United States at Johns Hopkins University, where gender reassignment surgery was performed. After the clinic had been in operation for several years, Dr. Paul McHugh, the director of psychiatry and behavioral science at Hopkins, wanted more than Money’s assurances of success immediately following surgery. McHugh wanted more evidence. Long-term, were patients any better off after surgery?

McHugh assigned the task of evaluating outcomes to Dr. Jon Meyer, the chairman of the Hopkins gender clinic. Meyer selected fifty subjects from those treated at the Hopkins clinic, both those who had undergone gender reassignment surgery and those who had not had surgery. The results of this study completely refuted Money’s claims about the positive outcomes of sex-change surgery. The objective report showed no medical necessity for surgery.

On August 10, 1979, Dr. Meyer announced his results: “To say this type of surgery cures psychiatric disturbance is incorrect. We now have objective evidence that there is no real difference in the transsexual’s adjustments to life in terms of job, educational attainment, marital adjustment and social stability.” He later told The New York Times: “My personal feeling is that the surgery is not a proper treatment for a psychiatric disorder, and it’s clear to me these patients have severe psychological problems that don’t go away following surgery.”

Less than six months later, the Johns Hopkins gender clinic closed. Other university-affiliated gender clinics across the country followed suit, completely ceasing to perform gender reassignment surgery. No success was reported anywhere.

Results from Benjamin’s Colleague: Too Many Suicides

It was not just the Hopkins clinic reporting lack of outcomes from surgery. Around the same time, serious questions about the effectiveness of gender change came from Dr. Harry Benjamin’s partner, endocrinologist Charles Ihlenfeld.

Ihlenfeld worked with Benjamin for six years and administered sex hormones to 500 transsexuals. Ihlenfeld shocked Benjamin by publicly announcing that 80 percent of the people who want to change their gender shouldn’t do it. Ihlenfeld said: “There is too much unhappiness among people who have had the surgery…Too many end in suicide.” Ihlenfeld stopped administering hormones to patients experiencing gender dysphoria and switched specialties from endocrinology to psychiatry so he could offer such patients the kind of help he thought they really needed.

In the wake of the Hopkins study, the closure of the flagship Hopkins clinic, and the warning sounded by Ihlenfeld, advocates of sex change surgery needed a new strategy. Benjamin and Money looked to their friend, Paul Walker, PhD, a homosexual and transgender activist they knew shared their passion to provide hormones and surgery. A committee was formed to draft standards of care for transgenders that furthered their agenda, with Paul Walker at the helm. The committee included a psychiatrist, a pedophilia activist, two plastic surgeons, and a urologist, all of whom would financially benefit from keeping gender reassignment surgery available for anyone who wanted it. The “Harry Benjamin International Standards of Care” were published in 1979 and gave fresh life to gender surgery.

My Experience with Dr. Walker

I myself suffered greatly to come to terms with my gender. In 1981, I sought out Dr. Walker to ask him, the man who wrote the standards of care, for help. Walker said I was suffering from gender dysphoria. A mere two years after both the Hopkins study and the public statements of Ihlenfeld drew attention to the increased suicide risk associated with gender change, Walker, even though he was completely aware of both reports, signed my approval letter for hormones and surgery.

Under his guidance, I underwent gender reassignment surgery and lived for eight years as Laura Jensen, female. Eventually, I gathered the courage to admit that the surgery had fixed nothing—it only masked and exacerbated deeper psychological problems.The deception and lack of transparency I experienced in the 1980s still surround gender change surgery today. For the sake of others who struggle with gender dysphoria, I cannot remain silent.

It is intellectually dishonest to ignore the facts that surgery never has been a medically necessary procedure for treating gender dysphoria and that taking cross-gender hormones can be harmful. Modern transgender activists, the descendants of Kinsey, Benjamin, and John Money, keep alive the practice of medically unnecessary gender-change surgery by controlling the flow of published information and by squelching research and personal stories that tell of the regret, unhappiness, and suicide experienced by those who undergo such surgery. Negative outcomes are only acknowledged as a way to blame society for its transphobia.

Transgender clients who regret having taken this path are often full of shame and remorse. Those who regret their decision have few places to turn in a world of pro-transgender activism. For me, it took years to muster the courage to stand up and speak out about the regret.

I only wish Dr. Paul Walker had been required to tell me about both reports when I consulted him: the Hopkins study showing surgery did not alleviate severe psychological problems, and Ihlenfeld’s observation of the continuing transgender unhappiness and high incidence of suicide after hormones and surgery. This information might not have stopped me from making that disastrous decision—but at least I would have known the dangers and pain that lay ahead. (See “Sex Change Surgery: What Bruce Jenner, Diane Sawyer, and You Should Know”, originally posted HERE)

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Sorry “Caitlyn” Jenner, You’re Still Not a Woman (+video)

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By Louder With Crowder. Listen, I don’t begrudge Bruce Jenner for wanting to be happy. Everyone wants to be happy. The problem is that with the recent, hyper-aggressive push to normalize transgenderism, we’ll no longer be able to discuss whether some decisions made in the pursuit of happiness are healthful. Because… hate speech.

Many people, including many in the gay community, think that transgenderism is a mental condition more effectively treated with psychiatry than surgery. I get where leftists are coming from; this person isn’t hurting anybody (aside from themselves), so what difference does it make? On the surface, it seems like a reasonable position to hold. One that quickly falls apart when you begin to examine it more closely.

Apotemnophilia is a fetish in which people wish to become an amputee. They find sexual satisfaction and ultimately, happiness, through the act of the removal of limbs or simulating the removal of limbs. There are websites, message boards and get-togethers devoted exclusively to the activity. As a general rule, society doesn’t consider this to be healthful. Some of us may accept it, ignore it and move on with our lives, but we don’t praise it or trot apotemnopheliacs out as heroes. And let’s be honest… most of us think it’s pretty damn weird.

Now, change that limb to a penis. If you don’t accept it, even worse, if you don’t praise it, you’re deemed hateful. The politically correct lobbyists of the day will take great care in avoiding the staggeringly high suicide rate of transgenders, they will ignore the medical reality that sex change operations and hormone replacement therapies come with a litany of very serious health problems, heck, they’ll ignore overall science.

If you choose not to do so, you will be deemed hateful. This is the playbook. Know it, learn it, expect it. Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner, will be their poster child.

Something that was discussed on this week’s podcast, and something that I find to be an incredibly interesting point from Milo Yiannopoulous, is that the entire leftist theory on which transgender acceptance is based, forces leftists into a rough juxtaposition to begin with.

See, if it’s truly possible that a male body can be born with the wrong brain, or that a female body can be born with a male brain… it forces the left to concede that gender is not merely a product of societal construct, but biology. If, in order to avoid classifying transgenderism as a psychiatric disorder, we’re required to recognize the inherent biological, scientifically measurable differences between genders… that creates incredible contradictions for feminism, gay rights progress and ultimately, yes, transgenderism. (Read “Jenner, You’re Still Not a Woman” originally posted HERE)

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Neil Cavuto on National Fixation on Jenner’s Sex-Change: “Rome, Final Days”

You’ll Never Guess Who College Students Think Is More Evil Than Lenin, Stalin, and Mao

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We all know today’s college students have their heads filled with radical, liberal indoctrination at U.S. universities. American higher education is a socialist bastion where college professors act like gods in their classrooms and often tolerate no dissent.

One would expect that brainwashing to have its effect on those with pliable minds. Such is the case, considering the results of a recent study. The Libertarian Republic reports:

A research group conducted an international study among college students, asking them to rank 40 historical figures positively or negatively.

The study is called “‘Heroes’ and ‘Villains’ of World History Across Cultures.” In the final ranking, former US President George W. Bush was ranked as the 4th most evil, more villainous than Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

This is sad, but predictable given the left-wing tripe college students are fed today in what masquerades for history and political science on colleges campuses. (Read more from “Guess Who College Students Think Is More Evil Than Lenin, Stalin, and Mao?” HERE)

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Heart Patient Learns Firsthand: The Affordable Care Act Is NOT Affordable

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As a heart patient with a defibrillator and pacemaker due to life threatening arrhythmias, I must live with taking a certain amount of daily heart medications to survive. Months ago, I was hospitalized due to a shock by my defibrillator. The medications I take are supposed to control these deadly arrhythmias, but thankfully I have back-up when medications do not work.

While in the hospital, it came to my physician’s attention that I was being given the generic form of one of my heart medications. He asked me when this switch occurred and told me to tell the pharmacy that I was absolutely, under NO circumstances, to be taking the generic form of the drug! Apparently, many people with my condition have reported problems with the generic form, although it seems to work well in people with other conditions, and even though the active ingredient in generic brands is supposed to be the same as the brand-name drug.

It is important to note, however, that the FDA allows generic drugs to use different inactive ingredients such as binders and time-release agents than their original counterparts. I wondered if anyone else experienced problems with generic drugs and found that an alarming number have. So much so, that ABC Dateline did an investigation and reported in September 2014 that the FDA had actually lied about testing certain generic drugs for safety . . .

Furiously, I questioned, “…even when my doctor is demanding that I take the brand name?!” The pharmacist was flippant and told to contact my health insurance provider to inquire. I found out that my insurance company would in fact “allow” me to take the brand-named drug my physician prescribed, but the caveat was that I had to pay for it myself. My insurance company (like most I presume) will only pay for brand-named prescription drugs now whenever the generic form is not available. No amount of arguing about it was going to change the situation . . .

When I helped my fiance with his taxes last month, he told me he thought he would meet the threshold in order to qualify for a deductible due to medical expenses. I told him the threshold was fairly high, and I was sure he would not reach it, not really wanting to look for all the receipts for the year and calculate them all. But I agreed to do it, and I was absolutely shocked to discover that his out-of-pocket medical expenses were well over $10,000 for the year! That did not include any insurance premiums or deductibles he pays for himself or his two children. (Read more from “Heart Patient Learns Firsthand: The Affordable Care Act Is NOT Affordable” HERE)

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Can True Conservatives Win in Primaries? One Group Has the Answer [+videos]

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In many presidential elections, conservatives have been frustrated that they get stuck with establishment Republicans such as John McCain or Mitt Romney, their votes often lost among a plethora of candidates. A group of New Hampshire conservatives has a plan to consolidate behind a constitutional conservative in advance of the pivotal first-in-the-nation New Hampshire Primary, coming up in February.

The group, the 603 Alliance, sees itself as a potential model for conservatives in other states that are sick of having establishment RINOs foisted upon them election after election. At a recent meeting in Littleton, New Hampshire, organizers of the 603 Alliance presented their plans to interested conservatives who share their frustration.
Before getting down to business, they psyched themselves up for the task at hand by watching clips of Ronald Reagan’s inaugural addresses. Especially inspiring were two famous lines—”government is not the solution, it is the problem,” and it is not the job of the government to make good people, but the job of the people to make a good government.

Another video clip, from the group’s foundational meeting about a month earlier, particularly resonated. It was by Trever Loudon, a New Zealander who is part of the organization. He said that if conservatives do nothing in the next 22 months, their children will live in slavery.

To prevent this, organizers presented their plan.

Another member of the steering committee, Andrew Hemingway, who was the 2014 Republican gubernatorial candidate, grilled some of the conservatives at the meeting about many of the potential candidates and which ones were acceptable to them ideologically. There were many good candidates, he said. Too many, and because of that, the conservative vote would be split up and more than likely Jeb Bush would be the candidate. Governor Chris Christie would not win, and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina would stay in the race just long enough so that South Carolina would be out of play for a conservative candidate.

If Jeb Bush becomes the nominee, there is no way he could beat presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Hemingway said.

The primary process can be deceptive, and make it appear as if the leading candidate has more support than he really does. 603 Alliance organizers said that with so many conservative candidates, votes are spread out among them. If Bush wins with 35 percent, and several other candidates such as Cruz, Paul, Carson and Fiorina get 15, 10, 7 and 5 percent, it would appear like Bush won by a great margin when in reality the votes of the conservatives, spread among several other candidates, would outnumber his.

The 603 Alliance hopes to prevent this by getting grassroots conservatives behind a constitutional conservative several months before the election so they can campaign for the candidate and really put a serious effort behind him.

There are lots of candidates, and any one of them would be better than Bush, Hemingway and others said. The important thing will be to coalesce behind one of them. They will do this by holding a caucus on Oct. 17. It will be similar in format to the Iowa caucus. At first, activists will gather in groups supporting their candidates. The one with the fewest votes will be dropped and that candidate will have 20 minutes to join another group. In this fashion, candidates will be eliminated until one is left.

All the activists who attend the caucus will have to agree in advance to stand behind the winner, and to campaign for him in the almost two months between the end of the caucus and the New Hampshire Primary in early February.

“The cause is greater than any single candidate,” Hemingway said.

Hemingway said organizers hope at least 500 conservative activists will attend the caucus and commit to support the winning candidate. Those 500 will have a large impact on the primary, he said. Around 250,000 will vote in the Republican primary and the 500 people from the caucus will influence around 25,000, about 10 percent of those voting.

Those 25,000 could have a decisive impact on the primary, lessening Bush’s lead, or even propelling an actual conservative to victory.

The 603 Alliance will be operating in conjunction with its sister group, the Conservative Business League of New Hampshire. The CBL will be raising funds for the group and will be sponsoring candidate visits around the state. Candidates will have to meet certain basic conservative criteria. Among them will be a strong position opposing illegal immigration and amnesty, control of the borders, opposition to Common Core, support of the Second Amendment, supporting states’ rights, repealing Obamacare, repealing the PATRIOT Act, and supporting judges who believe in a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

The idea behind the 603 Alliance has attracted the attention of conservatives in other states, who see it as a model for their primaries. Organizations in Iowa and South Carolina have contacted the 603 Alliance and a member of the steering committee is traveling to Wyoming to help conservatives there.

While it is too early to tell what impact this movement will have in New Hampshire and beyond, it is heartening that conservatives are not giving up to the establishment without a fight. (See “Can True Conservatives Win in Primaries? One Group Has the Answer”, originally posted HERE)

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The ‘Ferguson Effect’: How Obama’s Racial Pimping Has Endangered ALL Americans

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The effort to paint the nation’s police officers as uniformed crime families — led by the Obama administration, former Attorney General Eric Holder and America’s racial grievance industry– has created a “Ferguson Effect” of growing crime — and not just in the city’s where rioting has taken hold.

A Wall Street Journal column on Friday slammed the growing trend by the Obama administration and race baiters like Al Sharpton and media outlets such as CNN for seizing moments like the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Freddie Grey in Baltimore to create what writer Heather McDonald called the “Ferguson Effect.”

The consequence of the false narrative they’ve created is the end of the nation’s two decade long drop in crime.

According to the Journal, gun violence has risen 60 percent compared to where it was last year in Baltimore; homicides are up 180 percent in Milwaukee; St. Louis has seen a 39 percent increase in shootings, 43 percent in robberies and a 25 percent growth in homicides . . .

Those numbers are shocking. By declaring police to be the problem in inner cities, authority figures like President Obama have made criminals feel empowered to commit more crimes knowing officers would look to avoid situations that could result in them going to jail just for doing their jobs. (Read more from “The ‘Ferguson Effect’: How Obama’s Racial Pimping Has Endangered ALL Americans” HERE)

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Leftists Are Hijacking “Pro-Life” to Ban Guns and Carbon Dioxide and to Open the Borders [+video]

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One of the worst things ever written on the subject of abortion was a column in which a putatively conservative Christian writer announced that he was supporting a slate of pro-choice candidates in local elections, because they had better positions on … air pollution. “I’m pro-life,” he wrote. “Pro- my children’s lives.” (By the way, the air in his city was already among the cleanest in America, and the pro-choice Democrats whom he supported, who now mismanage Dallas, did nothing to make it cleaner.)

Others who present themselves as spokesmen for Catholic or evangelical Christianity have argued that candidates like Ted Cruz or Rick Santorum are “anti-abortion, but not pro-life” because of the candidates’ positions on the Second Amendment, capital punishment, or even immigration. As William Briggs chronicled at The Stream, Vatican officials are getting in on the action — accusing skeptics of climate change panic of contributing to abortion, human trafficking, and even organ piracy, because they oppose giving the UN more power to reduce fossil fuel use.

We can’t read minds, so we don’t claim to know what’s really going on in the heads of people who say such things.

1. Are they boldly consistent thinkers, looking bravely beyond the stale American left/right spectrum to assert a “radically” Christian position that challenges all of us?

2. Are they mushy-headed, impressionable, and desperate to fit in with their fellow shoppers at the local organic co-op? Or

3. Are they committed leftists, who put the lives of the unborn second or third to other priorities, who are working to muddy the issues and weaken the coalition of Christians and conservatives?

We suspect that they are mostly (2), convinced they are (1), gradually transforming themselves into (3).

Back in the 1980s, left-wing Catholics invented a slogan that went far and wide, and gave political cover to pro-choice Democrats like Teddy Kennedy, Geraldine Ferraro and Mario Cuomo. The “seamless garment” was a term of art among pant-suited feminist nuns and tenured, tattooed ex-Jesuits. It referred to a whole raft of “life issues” that went far beyond abortion, to include military spending, Medicaid funding, pollution control, the minimum wage, food stamps, and pretty much every subject dear to the Democratic National Committee.

By presenting such disparate issues as a “seamless,” interconnected whole, leftist Christians could claim that while Republicans might be sound on just one of those topics, abortion, Democrats were better on all the others. So pro-life voters not only could but probably should vote for liberal pro-choice candidates, since on balance their record was better.

Sometimes the seamless garment workers even add some decorative stitching, and argue that conservative policies on other issues increase the incidence of abortion, which means that pro-life conservatives are simply hypocrites. As the rhetoric goes, “You stop caring about life the moment it leaves the womb.”

There are so many intellectual fallacies woven into the seamless garment that it’s tempting to turn this column into a logic lesson. But with more than a million unborn children murdered every year with the connivance and funding of our government, and key pro-life bills before Congress and state legislatures across the U.S., protecting the lives of vulnerable unborn Americans is far too urgent for logic-chopping. So we’ll just offer a single analogy to help the reader shred the seamless garment whenever someone tries to pull that fake wool over his eyes.

Legal Protection for the Vulnerable is Non-Negotiable

If we lived in 1850, when slavery was legal in half the states, how seriously would you take someone who voted for pro-slavery politicians, but claimed that he really opposed the practice? Instead of a radical step like abolition, he’d argue, he wanted to eliminate the economic conditions that drove whites to feel like they had to own any slaves. He proposed government subsidies for farmers to buy mechanical harvesting equipment, to gradually reduce the need for slavery. In the meantime, of course, whites would still own millions of blacks and be able to flog them and even kill them with impunity. But his long-term, holistic strategy would promote a broader “culture of freedom,” and formed part of a “seamless garment” of “freedom issues,” including economic empowerment and redistribution of wealth — which in the long run would benefit black Americans. So he was the real pro-freedom voter, rather than those single-issue abolitionists.

You would know that someone who argued like this was at best deeply deluded, and at worst a slithering apologist for slavery. You would answer him that the legal protection for the fundamental human rights of African-Americans was a non-negotiable issue, and that until he supported that, all his effusions of concern for the well-being of farmers, black and white, were nothing more than a smokescreen. What black Americans demanded in 1850 were full legal rights. They deserved nothing less. It’s the same for unborn Americans today.

Being pro-life means that you favor full legal protection for unborn life. Period. That is all it means. If you want to take a stand on immigration, climate change, pollution, or food stamps, by all means take it and argue it on its merits as beneficial to society, or helpful to human flourishing. But don’t demean the lives and mock the deaths of a million children each year in order to do it. (See “Leftists Are Hijacking “Pro-Life” to Ban Guns and Carbon Dioxide and to Open the Borders”, originally posted HERE)

[Listen to the author’s recent interview on The Joe Miller Show]

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Building the Resistance Against Same-Sex Marriage

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On April 28, 2015, nine unelected lawyers drawn from three elite law schools (Harvard, Yale, and Columbia) listened to 90-minutes of oral argument about same-sex marriage and then retreated behind a wall of red velvet drapes to confer secretly about whether the U.S. Constitution requires that the U.S. Supreme Court impose same-sex marriage on the entire nation.

Consider for a moment the process by which that decision will be reached. When the Court decided to hear the Obergefell [homosexual marriage] consolidated cases from the Sixth Circuit, that decision was reached in secret. The Justices consult only with their colleagues and their law clerks, also drawn from elite law schools. When a decision in the case is issued, presumably before the end of the current term toward the end of June, the Court will address only those issues argued by parties and the amici curiae that it cares to address. Its opinion will contain only those reasons for its decision that the Court chooses to reveal. The majority decision may be agreed to by as few as five of these nine justices unaccountable to no one but themselves. And then, the Court will expect the American people to set aside their individual and collective judgment and passively abide by whatever decision is reached — based on a doctrine no where found in the U.S. Constitution — “judicial supremacy.”

Although the Supreme Court’s only constitutional responsibility is to resolve “cases” and “controversies” brought before it, the High Court often acts as if it has been entrusted with the raw power to decide for us the most important public policy issues facing the nation. While the Court would have us believe that those decisions are mandated by faithful adherence to the constitutional text, the truth lies elsewhere. In his autobiography, Justice William O. Douglas provided a glimpse behind the curtain as to how the Supreme Court really works. In his autobiography, he explained that Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes had once explained to him: “[a]t the constitutional level where we work, ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.”

We have been working in the judicial vineyard in support of traditional marriage for many years. When one of the cases now being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court (DeBoer v. Snyder) was before the Sixth Circuit, we filed an amicus curiae brief. In the U.S. Supreme Court, we filed another amicus brief. When the Supreme Court decided the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) case (U.S. v. Windsor) in 2013, we filed three briefs, one at the petition stage, one on the merits, and one on the jurisdictional question, and in the Proposition 8 case (Hollingsworth v. Perry), we filed briefs at the petition stage and one on the merits. Even before that, we filed a brief in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas when the U.S. Supreme Court began down this short road to Same-Sex Marriage while denying that it was doing so. In total, working with groups like U.S. Justice Foundation and Public Advocate of the United States, we have now filed a dozen appellate briefs over the past 15 years addressing the issue of homosexual rights in one context or another.

Although the judicial trend to embrace “homosexual rights” is undeniable, we certainly have not given up hope about the Court’s decision. In fact, it is our belief that the case for same-sex marriage is so pathetically weak, that the Court may understand that it would suffer a crippling embarrassment once the People come to really understand that in no way does the U.S. Constitution command same-sex marriage.

But our role now, while hoping for the best, is to prepare for the worst — and that worst could be terrible indeed. Part of our last Supreme Court brief was published by The American Vision under the name “12 Reasons homosexual marriage will wreck the nation.” If you need additional reasons to give your concentrated attention to this issue in the coming days, you will find those reasons in that article.

The American people need to use the short days remaining before that momentous decision is reached to determine how to respond to an adverse decision. Will they yield to a U.S. Supreme Court that claims the power to override state constitutional and statutory provisions governing domestic relations — an area of law which has historically belonged exclusively to the states. Will they sit back while unelected judges decide for them one of the most important public policy issues of our lifetime? Or will they resist — and, if so, what tools do are available to stand against this judicial tyranny?

If you have not yet signed the “Pledge in Solidarity to Defend Marriage,” supported by Dr. James Dobson, Pastor Rick Scarborough, attorney Matthew Staver, Deacon Keith Fournier, and others, we urge you to do so. That pledge was an excellent first step.

To continue the battle, and to think through these many issues involved, a small group of lawyers and public policy experts experienced in this area have resolved to publish a series of a dozen or more articles to help inform their countrymen. You will not read these articles in the Establishment Media. However, thankfully, a number of publications, blogs, and organizations have agreed to publish this series of articles, as they are written. And, when we see other important articles, such as Robert Reilly’s piece “The New Gnosticism of the Homosexual Movement” we will bring these articles to your attention.

We know that some of you have grown weary of reading articles about homosexual issues. Yet, these issues cannot be ignored. Please look for these articles as they are published. These articles will be structured to inform about the issues which each American must think through to develop his own position, including:

* Does the Fourteenth Amendment Really Mandate Homosexual Marriage?

* Must a Decision of the U.S. Supreme Court be Obeyed as the Supreme Law of the Land?

* Does Romans 13 Require that Christians Yield to a Decision Mandating Same-Sex Marriage?

* Why Were Biblical, Moral, and Religious Arguments Ignored By the Parties Arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court?

* Have the Federal Judges Deciding in Favor of a Constitutional Right to Same-Sex Marriage Cases Truly Behaved Judicially?

* What Would Be the Consequences of Mandating Same-Sex Marriage for the Church and Christian Organizations?

* What Would Be the Consequences of Mandating Same-Sex Marriage for the Traditional Family?

* How Should Governors, Attorneys General, State Legislatures, and Other State Officers Respond to a Decision to Mandate Same-Sex Marriage?

* Could Congress Respond to a Decision Mandating Same-Sex Marriage by use of the U.S. Constitution’s “Good Behavior” Clause?

* Could Congress Respond to a Decision Mandating Same-Sex Marriage by Using its Power to Limit the Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts?

* How Could Congress Respond to a Decision Mandating Same-Sex Marriage using its Appropriation Power to Prohibit the Expenditure of Funds to Implement the Decision at the National Level?

* How Should U.S. Citizens Respond to a Decision Mandating Same-Sex Marriage in their various roles as members of grand juries, members of petit juries, taxpayers, and voters?

Although many of us find it increasingly difficult to recognize the nation that we grew up in, we can draw strength from the fact that we still live in a Constitutional Republic, and that our government still operates largely by the “consent of the governed.” And, as Americans, we have the right to determine to withhold our consent from the actions of government officials —if we believe those actions to be lawless. Whatever the U.S. Supreme Court will do, we are each accountable for how we respond. Voltaire counseled “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” Therefore, there could be personal consequences to each person who chooses the route of resistance, but ultimately each of us is responsible to God, not just to man.

We invite each of you to consider the arguments made in these articles, and then decide for yourself exactly what you believe, and even more importantly, how you will respond.

Should you want to help support this important work, contributions may be made to the U.S. Justice Foundation.

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William J. Olson served in three positions in the Reagan Administration. Herbert W. Titus taught Constitutional Law for 26 years, and concluded his academic career as the Founding Dean of Regent Law School. Together they have filed over 80 briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, and scores more in lower courts, addressing important public policy issues. They now practice law together at William J. Olson, P.C. They can be reached at [email protected] or twitter.com/Olsonlaw.

Permission is freely granted to publish, copy, reproduce, distribute, or excerpt from this article for any purpose.

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