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By Steve Woodward

Carol Swain drives the Left absolutely insane.

She was born into poverty in the 1950s. By the early 1980s Swain had earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

But along with Dr. Ben Carson and Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, to name two, Swain is not beholden to government largesse as the catalyst for her emergence from an economically disadvantaged childhood. She refused to be held back by the soft tyranny of low expectations, the decades-long Democrat playbook intended to create an endless cycle of dependence on government entitlements.

Swain broke that cycle after a tumultuous upbringing as one of 10 children in southwest Virginia. Her story is one of a serendipitous encounter after a drug-induced suicide attempt. Already a single mother after a brief marriage that ended in divorce, a hospital physician looked her in the eye and offered something Swain had rarely encountered — encouragement.

“You are intelligent; you are attractive,” he said. “You can do more with your life.”

Swain said the compliment came as a shock. “I was 20, 21 years old and I’d never heard anyone tell me I was attractive.”

Working as a nurse’s aide in a senior home, a hospital orderly was similarly impressed by Swain. A Sierra Lyon migrant who believed in American opportunity, he advised, “You ought to go to college.”

“Those words changed my life,” Swain said.

That was all the encouragement Swain needed. She set forth to earn a G.E.D. (General Educational Development, a high school equivalency degree), having dropped out after eighth grade. Swain was motivated by determination she’d never known, and undeterred by long odds before her.

Swain paid her way through and graduated from Virginia Western Community College with an associates degree in 1978. She was 24. 

Six years later she earned a Master’s Degree at Virginia Tech, and five years thereafter, in 1989, became a UNC-Chapel Hill Ph.D. A self-described introvert, Swain was not automatically drawn to a career as a college professor. She could not have imagined standing before and lecturing classrooms populated by students. But she would soon find herself teaching at Duke University and Princeton University (1990-99), and added another degree, Master of Legal Studies (Yale Law School, 2000), before launching an 18-year run teaching political science and law at Vanderbilt University (1999-2017) in Nashville, where Swain still resides.

When early signs of what is today is known as “wokeness” began to emerge on the Vanderbilt campus around 2015, Swain stood in defiance. She wrote an opinion column for The Tennessean newspaper following the brutal January 7, 2015, attack by Islamist terrorists on staff members of a Paris-based satirical magazine.

Swain refused to ignore the message the attackers sent:

“The Jan. 7 terrorist attack resulting in 12 deaths at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine that committed the apparently unpardonable sin of lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, once again illustrates that Islam is a dangerous set of beliefs totally incompatible with Western beliefs concerning freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association.”

Swain’s conclusions set off a firestorm on the Vanderbilt campus. Virtue signaling factions demanded that she be fired or suspended. She stood her ground and retired on her own terms in 2017. Swain said she was not supportive of “what American universities have allowed themselves to become.”

That reality led to campuses beholden to diversity, equity and inclusion doctrine. In 2023, Swain published her ultimate denunciation of woke higher education, a book entitled “The Adversity of Diversity”.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in 2023 that race-based admissions are unconstitutional, Swain instinctively predicted that workplace DEI was destined to collapse. Based on her life experiences, Swain knew that artificial constructs are no match for divine providence, courage and the American work ethic. 

Dr. Swain presents her assessment of DEI’s fate when she visits Moore County for an appearance at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 15, 2024, in the Sandhills Classical Christian School auditorium. Admission is free. Signed copies of Swain’s book will be available for purchase after her remarks.

By Steve Woodward

A child accompanied by her mother walked into our local coffee shop on a recent morning. The child, around seven years old, was wearing a black cloth mask. It was 2021 in the blink of an eye. 

Back then, encountering masked-up children with their fear gripped parents, some of them double masked or “fortified” by a plastic face shield, infuriated me and a dwindling number of fellow sane people. You did not have to be a highly trained pediatrician to know, intuitively, that masking tiny mouths and noses posed a respiratory threat, was not sanitary and would surely damage mental health over time.

The medical community knew masking children was wrong, and that masking adults was futile. But many physicians remained silent, or complied with their clients, who generally were not physicians but were equipped with vast knowledge supplied by CNN and The New York Times. A physician told me he had no intention of masking himself or his staff until a patient, a petulant attorney, threatened to report him to the board of health demanding his practice be shuttered.

The relatively brief era of masking was absurd.  It merely provided “Covidiots” an irresistible virtue signaling opportunity. It was actually enjoyable to boycott businesses that enforced masking even at the risk of alienating customers. 

In the present, I feel sorrow for a child who perhaps has grown fond of her mask. I also wonder if said child actually is immunocompromised because of years of masking and isolation imposed by tyrannical adults and their CDC-compliant edicts. Time will inform us what toll China’s bioweapon will take on our children and young adults.

As for the toll exacted by experimental use mRNA injections the time for reckoning is upon us. Do mounting revelations of medical malpractice make you melancholy? Do you feel vindicated because you refused to be jabbed? Or do you feel the way I do? Furious. Vengeful. These are stark emotions. They often bubble up after the fog of war. The title of Dr. Naomi Wolf’s COVID book captured what we endured: “The Bodies of Others: The War Against the Human”.  

We loathed COVID jab tyranny because it was closing businesses, costing people their jobs, their futures. It was damaging the fabric of society, the rhythms of life. It was imperiling the mental health of children isolated from structure, learning and human interaction.

But it was even worse than all of that. How do we know? We know because even corrupt, corporate media outlets are waking up and reporting on the lingering, often fatal, toll of the jabs and boosters rushed into circulation by the pharmaceutical kings and their “science enablers”, and, of course, elected and unelected government enforcers.

“Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening? (The New York Times, May 3, 2024)

Ex-CNN Host Chris Cuomo Makes a Shocking Reversal on COVID (NewsNation cable news, May 7, 2024). He says he is “sick” after complying with jab-mania. 

These are monumental headlines not because they break new ground (independent reporting uncovered the truth about the lab origin of COVID and the inefficacy of jabs during 2023, if not before) but because they tacitly acknowledge that the mainstream media cover-up is finally ending. Naturally, the Times was not about to fully confess its transgressions in its May 3 report. Yes, “thousands of Americans believe they suffered serious side effects following Covid vaccination,” writes the Times’ Apoorva Mandavilli. But, don’t forget this, folks: The jabs were “a triumph of science and public health” and “prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths.”

Also don’t forget that the “safe and effective” narrative was a lie, 100%. The Times not only interviewed vaccine injury victims but actually quoted some of them, including a Ph.D. neuroscientist who, ironically, was diagnosed with brain damage soon after receiving a Johnson & Johnson COVID jab. 

Notably, an investigation by The Epoch Times goes deeper than vax injuries. Its May 1, 2024 headline confirms that the consequences of medical hubris cost lives and, if there is justice in the world, should cost people their careers and freedom.

EXCLUSIVE: CDC Found Evidence COVID-19 Vaccines Caused Deaths. “CDC officials found evidence that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines caused multiple myocarditis (heart inflammation) deaths before claiming that there was no evidence linking the vaccines to any deaths.” 

Similar headlines are sprouting like weeds lately. Consider the rise and fall of the Astra Zeneca jab.

AstraZeneca Admits COVID Vaxx Can Cause Clots (The National Pulse, April 30, 2024)

AstraZeneca withdraws Covid vaccine worldwide (The Independent, May 8, 2024). What a coincidence.

How long before the other pharmaceutical profit mongers pull back their perilous “vaccines”? When will the next needle drop? Meanwhile, light is exposing many dark subplots connected to the COVID jab scandal. 

To the north, another consequence of injections never subjected to lab trials: Canadian Gov’t Database Reveals Catastrophic Reproductive Damage to Men and Women Post-mRNA Vaccine Rollout (Daily Clout, April 29, 2024)

Brownstone Institute, purveyor of one of the most comprehensive digital archives of COVID reporting, recently posted a comprehensive deep dive on the many black holes into which federal COVID financial “relief” disappeared, approximated at $200 billion. While small businesses never saw much if any, drug gangs, racketeers, woke university researchers and administrators clamoring for community and school surveillance systems raked it in. “Post-Covid America is a little more like a Chinese surveillance state than in the Before Times,” writes Daniel Nuccio for Brownstone (May 5, 2024).

Equally troubling is our now broader understanding of how committed officials were to covering up the origin of the virus and how it was unleashed due to reckless gain-of-function lab experiments. None were more brazen than Dr. Anthony Fauci, a career virologist who wanted nothing more than a pandemic to enrich himself, his colleagues and the pharmaceutical cartels. Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was complicit, too, but retired abruptly to avoid accountability.

And then there is the despicable Dr. Peter Daszak, president of the federally funded EcoHealth Alliance, which did the NIH’s dirty work. A May 1, 2024, House Select Subcommittee hearing, featuring Daszak’s testimony, determined that “EcoHealth violated the terms and conditions of its NIH grant by failing to report a potentially dangerous gain-of-function experiment conducted at the (Wuhan, China, Institute of Virology). Evidence shows that Dr. Daszak was aware of this potentially dangerous research, yet he failed to inform the NIH,” reported John Leake in a post for DailyClout.io on May 3, 2024.

None of these monsters — Daszak, Collins, Fauci and other instigators — have been charged with crimes, and probably are off the hook. In fact, in PharmaWorld researchers are working at warp speed to adapt mRNA jabs as cancer treatments, if not “cures”. Independent journalist Jessica Rose explains the end game: cancer patients lining up again for mRNA jabs without regard for their inherent danger.

By now, with corrupt mainstream media joining forces with the many heroic independent journalists who have emerged since 2020 (Alex Berenson, Ian Miller, Steve Kirsch, Robert Malone, Rose and Wolf), we might have reason to be optimistic that the medical and quasi-governmental tyrants are taking a break to allow collective outrage to cool. Don’t be too sure.

Later this month, the World Health Organization is convening its annual meeting to rekindle aspirations toward the establishment of a New World Order. A key element is a so-called global pandemic treaty between the nations of the world. It’s nothing to worry about, says the WHO. It merely would empower the WHO to control and dictate responses to the next, inevitable, (and glorious) pandemic.

On cue, back in the U.S., the CDC has issued initial “findings” as to the “pandemic potential” of the bird flu virus. The CDC is floating the “if” scenario. If bird flu transfers from birds to humans (impossible, until it’s not) … the impact could be “100 times worse than COVID.” 

The tyrants are betting that they will readily quell our emotional responses — fury and vengeance — to their COVID-era manipulation. How? With another orchestrated tsunami of fear taking flight on the wings of bird flu. And what do you know? An election season is upon us.

By Steve Woodward

After a standing ovation swept him toward the podium, Rep. Richard Hudson greeted constituents assembled in a church’s meeting hall on the occasion of North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District Republican convention.

Hudson might have been expected to rally core volunteers who reside in the six counties that comprise the Ninth in this critical election cycle — possibly the last chance Republicans will have to impede the downfall of our nation, and sustain the world’s indispensable beacon of freedom.

He is not known as a rousing orator but Hudson was particularly subdued on this April afternoon inside Asheboro’s Sunset Avenue Church of God. We all get it. The halls of Congress are toxic. It is the Garden of Good and Evil. Being one of the good guys is hard work.

But that’s what we elect Hudson and fellow Republicans to do in Washington. To defy the Left, stand in the breech, take the arrows. With our culture eroding and our economic foundation crumbling, this is not the time to come home looking for sympathy.

Hudson’s objective for being on hand, other than obligation, apparently was to deliver a civics lesson. Those who actually paid attention noted a tone and tenor of frustration toward Republicans who are not universally pleased by recent House passage of a $1.2 trillion bill to avert a “government shutdown” until the next one looms in September.

Said Hudson, “72 percent of the bill funds the military.” Technically, that’s fairly accurate but nothing extraordinary. These government funding bills always are weighted toward defense spending. Conversely, the Democrat-fueled narrative that a government shutdown imperils military defense of national interests is false. When shutdowns occur — sometimes, they are necessary, which we will explain shortly — soldiers are paid (on a deferred basis), social entitlement checks are delivered, and layers of bureaucrats do us the favor of staying home.

We know there are members of Congress who understand what fellow Republicans demand at this tenuous moment in history because we see them come to the fore when the status quo defenders begin closing their ranks. We see unrelenting North Carolinian Dan Bishop, Florida’s Matt Gaetz, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert and tough-as-nails Texan Chip Roy, illuminating the rampant hypocrisy. We saw 112 Republicans vote “no”, in fact.

This is not the time for lectures about “making choices in a divided government”. That was Hudson’s defense of this spending bill that only a Democrat could love — as evidenced by its immediate passage by the Dem-controlled Senate.

If House Speaker Mike Johnson possessed the leadership instincts to meet the moment, not one penny would have been allocated to any program until the U.S. southern border was shut down. Completely. Every port of entry. Every Non-Governmental Organization-supported processing center. Every charter flight into the homeland.

Instead, the border remains wide open. And, even if you turn a blind eye to the ongoing security crisis it poses, to the murders of innocent Americans where they live, work and go to school, and to the deadly toll of unfettered fentanyl that crosses with the young savages, even if all for this does not infuriate you, then where do you turn for solace? In what happens to those who are spared?

What is their reward in the Faustian bargain? They live to see the implosion of the U.S. economy when the federal debt bomb finally detonates.

“This bill affirms and funds (Joe) Biden’s open border invasion,” a statement issued by Rep. Bishop warned after its passage on March 22, 2024. “At this very moment, Biden is allowing illegal immigrants to pour across our border and is using your tax dollars to sow disorder and chaos in our communities.

“The bill is also chock-full of earmarks that fund the radical Left’s cultural indoctrination crusade against our children and families. They are selling our children and grandchildren deeper down the swirling debt spiral.”

That’s what we did not hear last Saturday in Asheboro. From Rep. Hudson we heard complaints that social media distorts his record. We heard that the spending bill funds more border patrol agents (it actually funds the recruitment of agents without a timeline specified); funds more beds (7,500) for detainees, who are detained until they are turned over to Catholic Charities, and similar organizations, which send them into the night by the busloads.

The 101 Republicans who voted for an open border to keep an open (dysfunctional) government cheered a $27 billion funding increase for the Department of Defense. But just guess what concessions Johnson and his loyal lieutenants did not demand in return:

• An end to funding inter-state travel by military personnel seeking abortions when they can’t abort a birth where they are based;
• An end to transgender “care” (mutilation surgery) for DOD personnel and related agencies;
• Defunding of the DOD’s offices dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion
  
  Also hidden away in the 1,012-page theft manual (bill) were obscene earmarks running the gamut from the funding of programs to advance “climate resilience” and “equity in manufacturing” (how’s that working for Boeing?).
  
  Rep. Hudson did not address the earmarks but he did remind the room that he is third in line to become House Speaker. Rather than continuing to audition we’d have been much more impressed had he simply voted “no” on the bill and focused less on Civics 101 and more on critical analysis.
  
  “All I think about is how we can win,” Rep. Hudson said.
  
  Worthy as that is if it’s at the expense of Democrats, it’s also not very reassuring for dialed-in Americans who see federal debt surging toward $35 trillion, who read in The Wall Street Journal that “the federal budget deficit for the first six months of fiscal 2024, ending in March, was $1.064 trillion” fueled by $3.25 trillion in total outlays, and that interest payments on debt across those same six months are $440 billion, which “exceeded the $412 billion in outlays for defense.”
  
  In the face of this grim reality that sentences future generations to debt enslaved serfdom, for which we assign blame in equal measure to members of both parties, why stand up when our elected servants walk into a room? Why do we even clap? We should be using the backs of our hands.
  
  
  

By Steve Woodward

Donald J. Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, is a dominant news story this week. One of the truths Trump articulated a few years ago is as true now as then.

“Everything woke,” he said, “turns to (crap).”

The Left is intent on ruining everything. Miserable tyrants, they are determined to destroy every sacred tradition, every norm. The Left is committed to vilifying anyone who does not comply with or embrace its new rules for living. Living has little to do with the Leftist agenda.

In fact, there is likely more dying to be expected. Woke / Diversity, Equity and Inclusion compromise U.S. armed forces and law enforcement, deprioritizing homeland security. The presumption of law and order is racist. 

A must read is the March 24, 2024, op-ed by Andy Kessler published by The Wall Street Journal, “The Lost Era of Reliability”. 

“Our electricity used to be so steady that plugged-in wall clocks rarely needed adjusting,” Kessler writes. “That’s funny now because power outages are so commonplace. Heck, we now schedule rolling blackouts in California — forced failure.

“Back then, the electric grid and phone system were designed for “five 9s” or 99.999% reliability—five minutes of unscheduled downtime a year. Last month, AT&T’s cellular network went down for around 11 hours. No TikTok? The horror. AT&T provided $5 credits to customers. Thanks for nothing. Today’s reality is that we’re preconditioned to accept failure.”

If it’s not failure it’s folly. We learned recently that organizers of the Paris Olympic Games deliberately constructed an athletes’ village in which housing units are not air conditioned. Vive la planet!

The agenda driven media and woke professional leagues have been at work for many years to erode the enjoyment once derived from participating in and consuming sports. ESPN does not defend on-air personalities who are lambasted for rejecting the insane notion of men legitimately competing in women’s sports. Sports Illustrated essentially put itself out of business by sacrificing journalism at the woke altar. USA Today pays a sports department staffer, Mike Freeman (photo nearby), whose title is “race and inequality editor”. Yes, but can he read a box score? Does he know golf’s Rule 9.1? Does he know the role of a nickel defensive back? He’s fine with the latter, as long as the back is black.

Now along comes the April 2024 edition of Architectural Digest (AD). AD always has been a favorite guilty pleasure. I’ve enjoyed the indulgence of it, the brilliant photography, stunning designs, intricate patterns, and luxurious fabrics. The architects and their clients made for captivating reading, too. What must life be like when it’s lived in a parallel universe? When priorities are finding the perfect end table, a precisely curated hue from a pallet of color, wooden beams from a wrecked ship, or creating the most obnoxious man cave money can buy? 

That said, AD began to annoy me years ago, long before the April issue dedicated to Earth Month. At some point in time, the editorial decision was handed down that homes featured in the magazine must be owned, predominantly, by gay couples. “His husband insisted on marble over granite in the mid-19^th century kitchen.”

The latest introductory letter by the AD editor-in-chief confirms my fear that I am actually subscribing to Archenemy Digest. To wit:

“In the face of climate change and the myriad obstacles to living an individually and collectively earth-friendly lifestyle, it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed and even defeated, but I found this month’s (issue) … full of hope and encouragement.”

Conversely, I found this month’s issue to be an unbearable combination of virtue signaling and self-righteousness.

A profile of climate change activist and eco-chic homeowner Amber Valletta fails to note that during a long career as a supermodel she burned millions of miles of jet fuel traversing the globe aboard private jets. AD focuses instead of her stellar record of arrests when protesting alongside Jane Fonda in Washington, D.C.

Valletta’s hilltop Los Angeles home is “a model of sustainability” with its thermal-insulated, double-glazed windows (required by California law), clay plastered, naturally pigmented interior walls (because paint emits volatile, cancer-causing compounds), natural fiber carpets and a desert garden that requires little water.

The owner says her home feels like “a sanctuary”. But do not expect breaking news that Valletta is planning to take in any of the 75,000-plus homeless in Los Angeles County. Remember, it’s the planet that must be saved. Actual human beings? Not so much.

The Valletta eco-vault sounds more like an asylum, or a minimum security prison. Thankfully, were are spared details as to what is stored in the refrigerator, if there is one. Nothing from the garden, obviously.