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"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

October 2023

Male Throwbacks


There is sorrow, but no surprise, at Afghanistan?s fanatical Muslim treatment of women. The Taliban government represents the worst culture and religion of the past. The Taliban men preside over a dying nation with a crashing birthrate, with the few trapped competent people slipping out of the country.

The documentary recently aired on MSNBC, "Ayenda," tells the story of the Afghan women?s soccer team that escaped from the Taliban?s hellhole. The film underscores the terri more...

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June 2023

Teaching American History (2 of 2)


American history teaching has become a battleground between pollical operatives who want no mention of America?s original sin (slavery) or our gradual attempts at empathetic correction (emancipation of slaves and women and protection of the gender spectrum), and those who emphasize our past injustices.

America?s history is more than these two approaches. Students will benefit from exposure to the best scholarship available: both liberal and intelligently conservative, whi more...

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Teaching American History (1 of 2)


Part of the Republican Culture War is about how American History is being taught. Florida takes the lead, followed by most of the once slave-owning states, in attacking what they perceive as the leftist focus on America?s original sin, slavery. They call this "critical race theory," and they do not want it taught even at university level.

They also attack leftist focus on crimes against women, trans-gender, same-sex marriage, and call all of these "woke" issues, in other w more...

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How Goes It With Women Around the World?

I am writing this on International Women?s Day, March 8, a holiday I remember well from its start in 1975. In 1999, I was heading the UN Association of San Francisco, responsible for public lecturing about UN issues: what the UN can and cannot do.

The UN can set standards, but has no real enforcement mechanism, such as stopping a war or protecting citizens from abuse. It can provide help in emergencies: such as food in a famine, aid in natural disasters, and programs that provide more...

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July 2022

Replacement Theory Conspiracy


The Republican Party has adopted an old chestnut, the fear that demographers have been predicting that the "White Race" will soon lose its status as the majority, and will be replaced by people of color. Yes, "white" people, both in the US and in Europe, are having declining birth rates. Even the most fertile non-white people are beginning to have the same decline in fertility. The decline in birthrates everywhere should be applauded! This means that women are having more autonomy over t more...

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Disgruntled, Hating Everything

April 8, 2022
Laina Farhat-Holzman
Pajaronian

Perhaps one-third of our population is disgruntled (unhappy, annoyed, and angry). Disgruntled is a word that dates back to the Middle Ages and derives from "to grunt."

We daily see the film clips of the mobs who attacked Congress on January 6. Faces were angry, voices were loud, and intentions were clear: search out elected representatives and kill as many as possible. They shouted profanity and during the more...

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Status of Women Around the World

January is a good time to see how women are doing around the world in the past year. The status of women has changed more in the past century than it had in 10,000 years. But these changes for the better (recognition that women are citizens, not property), has not changed in many of the darker, religious, backward places outside of the English-speaking world and Western Europe. Elsewhere, even with cautious new changes, there is unfortunate backsliding in recent years.

The backsli more...

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September 2021

Tenacity of Prejudice

An American research group did an interesting experiment. They produced a resume that clicked off all the requirements of many national companies and sent it to them, changing only the name of the applicant. The names were Greg, Lucy, and two names identifiable as African-American men and women.

They found that at least 50% of companies never opened the African-American applicants and a number of them also rejected Lucy! Prejudice against Blacks and women still exist.

more...

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Global Dilemma: Polarization

We human beings have no global culture to which everyone agrees. We have been a polarized lot from the beginning of civilization (birth of cities). Our earlier ancestors, however, had little choice but to agree with the rules that enabled clans of hunter-gatherers to survive.

In the first civilizations, complex institutions required different talents. Some people were leaders, initially people of special talents. Priests and priestesses were specialists in communicating with the g more...

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Violence Against Wome (2 0f 2)

I am old enough to remember when women were not considered equal in rights to men. Women were "protected," according to the laws and courts. The benefits to being born female were thought to be respect, protection from heavy physical labor, and honor as wives and mothers. For some, these benefits were enough, but for many others, they were neither respected, protected, nor spared heavy labor.

They were paid much less than men, often those doing the same job. Even a university deg more...

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August 2020

The Glass Half Full


We have had an ugly year, one in which we suffered a dreadful pandemic, a wobbling economy, and the daily offence of watching our president, a man we should be able to trust, do nothing but lie, falsify history, and pander to our worst behaviors.

If we do not put all of these spectacles in historic perspective, we could well be depressed. But history in perspective can save us from despair. Just consider the two-part final exam question I once asked my college students: a more...

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The Gaslighting Phenomenon


A new term has now entered our lexicon: "gaslighting." In a 1940 movie called "Gaslight," an evil husband and his housemaid/mistress attempt to drive the wife mad by making her think that lies were true. They played tricks on her, hid things that she knew she had not lost, and finally almost convinced her that she no longer could tell truth from deception. Gaslighting now means that people can no longer tell truth from even an obvious lie. Gaslighting also requires people to aid in the d more...

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September 2019

Men Who Deserve Praise


The "Me-Too" movement has focused our attention on the plight of women, a heritage as old as human culture. But as a woman, I find reasons to praise good American men, most of whom do the right thing but get little recognition for it.

In rereading John F. Kennedy?s Portraits in Courage, written more than a half century ago, we see that even in the worst of times, good men (and women, not in this book) do the right thing despite paying terribly for doing so.

more...

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The Abortion Hypocrisy


No one should force a pregnant woman to have an abortion, a practice in China years ago to address population explosion (the one-child policy). But forcing a pregnant woman to bear an unwanted child is "involuntary servitude." The key concept here is force. If men and women in a modern society are legally equal citizens, how is it that the radical branch of the Republican Party has been relentlessly trying to eliminate the 1973 law that permits women to make decisions about their own bod more...

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The Pros and Cons of Tolerance


That famous bastion of intellectual freedom and tolerance, Universities, have lately been accused of hypocrisy: tolerant only of those ideas believed by the majority and unwilling to give ear to opposing views. The terminology covering this has given rise to a new term: political correctness. Only certain ideas are correct and all others are false.

Voltaire is attributed to have said: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." To more...

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November 2018

What?s Happening to the Global Islam Project?

Islam as a global religion is having a crisis. Despite years of propaganda that began with the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the boast that Islam is on a roll around the world needs to be revised.

I have long rejected the mantra that "Islam is the world?s fastest growing religion," the illusion that people are rushing to convert. We really do not have any reliable numbers on how many people belong to a faith (modern censuses do not ask this question) so we must get the numbers from more...

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July 2018

Alien Children in History


While watching with horror the recent deliberate separation of children from their parents at Mexican-American border crossings, I thought back to other comparable policies in history. Unlike those instances in the past, the public outcry against this cruel policy speaks well for us as a society.

This ugly policy choice was designed to deter families or unaccompanied children from securing asylum in this country. Both President Trump and Attorney General Sessions spoke op more...

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The "Deep State" Conspiracy


A popular notion among conspiracy lovers is that there is a secret government that really runs our country. They currently call it the Deep State, but it has been known in the past by comparable concepts, such as the Jewish Conspiracy (a worldwide money cult that runs everything). One idiot on the Washington, DC city council actually believes that weather is secretly controlled by the Rothschild family (another Jewish conspiracy.) This family, he believes, can create storms and bad weath more...

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December 2017

Good Manners Need a Renaissance


Our country is having an epidemic of bad manners, causing all sorts of discord. In Western Civilization, good manners are the grease that makes the social wheels spin. One of our oldest definitions of good manners is the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," or in the Hebrew scriptures, "Do not do unto others what would be hateful to you." This simple formula works for most of us, with the exception of sociopaths or psychopaths, who do not feel the pain of t more...

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Gender Wars in Perspective


An obnoxious Hollywood mogul, a man who for decades sexually harassed seemingly every female who came in range, has been named, condemned by everybody, and even fired from the successful film company that he founded.

A once beloved comedian, Bill Cosby, now in doddering old age, has been outed as a sexual predator of young women whom he was supposed to be mentoring.

A conservative Fox Network executive and a popular show host on the same network have both b more...

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September 2017

"Why Can?t a Woman Be More Like a Man?"


One of the funniest songs in My Fair Lady is when two men, a professor and his best friend deplore the situation that women are not like men. Men are so easy, so uncomplicated, so decent. "Why can?t a woman be more like a man?" they ask.

George Bernard Shaw was making fun of them, of course, because at the end, the misogynistic professor finds that he cannot do without the woman that he considered at first a scientific experiment and learned how very special she was. No, s more...

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Afghanistan?s Gender Benders



The bathroom battles raging in the United States today (which toilets transgender people can use) reminds me of how little new there is in the world. For eons, some human beings have been born aware of wiring (or something else) amiss in their gender.

Ancient Greek mythology has been a gift to the world. Tiresias was the only human being who had been both male and female. He was a blind prophet who could warn kings of danger but was often not believed until too lat more...

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