As you may have surmised having read some articles on this site, I value honesty most of all.

I can say with absolute confidence that society would be much the better if all else paled before honesty and truth in dialogue and correspondence.

In this article, I would like to share with you, and impress upon you three quotes from three different wise men. Who have helped shape my thinking in their own way.

One is from the 1800s, one is from the 1900s and one is from the 2000s.

The first is Abraham Lincoln, good old Honest Abe.

I can tell you he got that nickname for a damn good reason. During the American Civil War Lincoln needed to replace Burnside as commander of the army.

This was an interesting situation because his likely replacement, Joseph Hooker had promoted a spirit of dissent against Burnside.

Here is Lincoln’s promotion letter to Hooker…

Major General Hooker:

General.

I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons. And yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which, I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and a skilful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm. But I think that during Gen. Burnside’s command of the Army, you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country, and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in such way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes, can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The government will support you to the utmost of it’s ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the Army, of criticising their Commander, and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can, to put it down. Neither you, nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army, while such a spirit prevails in it.

And now, beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilance, go forward, and give us victories.

Yours very truly

A. Lincoln

Now honestly there is so much to take away from this, but Hooker did comment personally stating this…

“That is just such a letter as a father might write to his son. It is a beautiful letter, and, although I think he was harder on me than I deserved, I will say that I love the man who wrote it.”

This response is the perfect place to start. My takeaway is that a son will love an honest father, even if he feels the father is too harsh. Of course this makes perfect sense, what person in their right mind would grow up to love a dishonest but kind parent?

It is clearly better to be honest and harsh than dishonest and amenable.

A second key point, is that Lincoln points out that Hooker will find himself in a situation where he will reap what he has sown… having fostered dissent.

Such a warning would be good advice from any father to a son.

Lastly I like the sentence that reminds Hooker that ambition does more good than harm “within reasonable bounds”. In other words it is a caution about the importance of moderation. Also wise advice to be sure.

To be perfectly clear, we also need to examine what this letter does not say. At no point does Lincoln give him unbridled confidence or affirm him or in any way obscure the truth, on the contrary Lincoln points out that Hooker was a big risk. Lincoln clearly valued the truth as being more important than building the confidence of those around him.

The second wise man is far more obscure. In fact I stumbled onto a gem of wisdom in the strangest of places. It was in a book about a business model, I never had any plans of using the business model, however it was an interesting read, buried amongst the business advice was a personal story by the author. The book is called “The Perfect Business” by Michael LeBoeuf…

When I began my teaching career 1969 the University of New Orleans, I noticed a very pessimistic attitude around campus and the city that went something like this: “There’s no opportunity in New Orleans if you’re a woman or a member of an ethnic minority or you don’t have the right connections. It’s all a matter of whom you know. So if you want to be successful, move to Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, or somewhere else because you can’t make it here.” My colleagues and I called it the “New Orleans Syndrome,” and I still hear it today.

I must admit that I was starting to believe it was true. Then something very interesting happened. In 1975 the Vietnam War ended, and a number of Vietnamese refugees settled in the New Orleans area. They were a minority. Most were broke. They weren’t American citizens. They had no connections whatsoever to the business or political powers. And most of them couldn’t even read, write, or speak English. If there ever was a seriously disadvantaged minority, this was it.

But by the early eighties, many Vietnamese families owned nice homes and successful businesses. Their children were graduating from high school and college, many as valedictorians and honor students. And some were already financially independent. How could this happen in an area where there was no opportunity?

Again, perception created reality. The Vietnamese didn’t think, There’s no opportunity here because we’re a poor, disadvantaged minority and don’t know the language. Instead they thought, What a Country! There’s no war. We won’t get shot or killed. Our homes and businesses won’t get burned. We’ve landed in the richest nation in the history of the world! There’s free enterprise and unlimited opportunity. Are we Lucky or what? We can do some good here. Let’s go to work and make it happen! And they did.

The major difference between the Vietnamese refugees and many native New Orleanians was simply one of perception. There’s never hope or opportunity if you choose not to see it. Think about opportunities and you find opportunities. Think about obstacles and you run into obstacles. As the old saying goes, “Two men looking through prison bars. One saw dirt and the other saw stars.” Once again it all goes back to choice. You will see what you choose to see.

I personally think this story of New Orleans syndrome is brilliant. It perfectly explains why most people who are not successful and held back by only one thing… their own mindset. It proves quite well that arguments about systemic oppression are completely incorrect.

The third wise man is none other than Matt Walsh, this is quoted from Episode 1313 from the Daily Wire.

The back story behind this quote is a situation that has developed in the culture war where Trans activists staged a “die in” at a DMV in Florida over Biological sex being present on a drivers licence.

Now I don’t think Matt Walsh ever thought this would be considered a great piece of oratory, however despite the fact that it had not received a spit polished editing job, which necessitated I did make some minor edits for clarity. In my opinion this speech does say a lot, in particular about the state the world is in right now…

“They’re dead because their drivers license has their correct biological sex on it, they’ve died.

The DMV… you know a man goes in there the DMV puts male in the drivers license and the guy just collapses and dies on the spot. That seems to be the claim here.

When actually when you think about it you realize that the claim is actually worse than that, because what they are really doing here is… they are doing two things.

One of the things they are doing is that they are threatening to kill themselves, that’s the implication.

Most of the time when trans activists claim something is killing them, what they mean… and they will tell you this, is that they don’t like the thing, whatever it is and they might kill themselves because of it, and we hear about the trans genocide and all that kind of stuff.

All of it is totally fictional, you listen to the stats and most of what they are talking about is suicide, because these people as we have discussed many times, these people wield suicide threats as a political tool and they do it in a way that no other social movement in the history of the world ever has.

Now you can think of individual protests here and there of monks setting themselves on fire, self immolation that sort of thing, which by the way shows a lot more commitment than these people are, at least you can give them that.

I’m talking about a broad social movement, where one of their primary bargaining chips is this constant spectre, this constant threat of suicide. You don’t find this anywhere else, this is the only time.

Go back to the civil rights movement in the middle of the 20^th century, were they threatening to kill themselves?

No

In fact in almost every case where a group of people have actually been persecuted in some way, unlike trans people who are not persecuted at all they are the opposite of persecuted in this country.

But whenever there has been persecution you find that generally suicide rates for the persecuted groups go down, they don’t go up, usually they go down. That’s because you find, usually, a kind of resiliency, a sense of purpose and cohesion in the persecuted group. It’s human nature to respond that way.

Yet with trans people, who are not being arrested, who are not being sent to labour camps, they are not having any of their fundamental human rights taken away… they’re killing themselves in extraordinarily high rates, and they threaten to kill themselves in even higher rates than that

Which tells us that this has nothing to do with persecution, their problems are all internal, and one of the problems is an extreme level of narcissism.

This is a hallmark of toxic manipulative narcissists where they try to get you to do what they want by threatening to harm themselves.

Its a classic manipulation tactic of narcissists, usually you find it in abusive relationships and that sort of thing, where someone says “don’t leave me or I’ll kill myself”

It’s evil, people who do that are evil.

It’s the worst kind of manipulation you could possibly use against someone.

And generally when you find that it relationships we all would agree… if you’re talking to someone and they are saying [if they threaten to kill themselves]…

that’s all the more reason to break up, this person is dangerous, they shouldn’t be doing that… it’s wrong.

And yet trans activists have taken that and they have adopted that on a wide scale, as a political tool, and the proper response is disgust.

How dare you use a tactic like this.

This breaks every rule of basic decency, that we have recognized up until now. But we are used to that from trans activists. They don’t abide by any standard of decency at all, they don’t recognize any moral or ethical standards at all.

Although we should acknowledge when they claim that the drivers license will kill them its not just suicide they are referring to.

There is the suicide threat and then there are just lies as well, one of the activists involved in the demonstration said this to explain it…

“Every time a trans person has to present an id that now presents an opportunity for them to be forcefully outed, trans people already face heightened violence that physically threatens their daily lives and this only places them at greater risk. For folks who are not at a significant risk of being killed just because of who they are. I can see why our action might just seem dramatic entitled or silly (you think?) But for trans Floridians the danger is very real and ever present”

And that’s just a total lie, it’s an absolute lie.

If you listen to this show you know you have already heard this claim debunked many times, really we can’t debunk it enough it keeps getting repeated. That in reality Trans people as a group have a lower murder rate, they are less likely to be murdered than members of the general public. Their murder rate is lower than the general public. That is a fact you can look it up.

A vanishingly small number of trans people are killed every year, and in almost every single case the ones that are killed are killed of course for reasons that have nothing at all to do with who they are, I mean… well… they might be killed because very often things involve prostitution, drugs, so if they are killed for who they are the who they are problem is prostitute, drug addict that sort of thing.

But as far as trans person just being killed for being trans, you might have one or two cases a year at most. It almost never happens. Overall even if you take all murder into account you are safer, the statistics tell you you are safer being a trans person than non trans, that’s what the stats say so it’s a total lie.

So they just lie about everything all the time, nothing they ever say is true. If they told you it’s raining outside you have to go check yourself because they lie instinctively about everything, and they wield suicide like a weapon.

It’s just awful all around is how we could sum it up.

Matt Walsh is correct of course, but this shows that certainly for the first time in my life, the world is awash with dishonesty. With people who’s sole interest is to lie about being oppressed and to make up evidence and threaten people who point out the truth. They fail to realize that the only oppression they are suffering from comes from their own mindset.

I really do wonder what Honest Abe would say if he could comment on all this current strife.