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The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

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More madness from our intellectual betters

Below is another collection of links I have been gathering since last week, illustrating the intellectual bankruptcy that presently dominates American society and the so-called elite culture that is supposed to lead us.

I wish I could say that these stories are the exceptions that prove freedom and the demand from western civilization that we always seek the truth is still thriving in America, but if I did I’d be lying. These stories reflect the close-minded and oppressive attitude that is permeating our intellectual climate and is acting to squelch freedom and the ability of people to express alternative points of view.

The first three stories illustrate the hate of western civilization that dominates modern intellectual culture. The last three stories illustrate its close-mindedness. For example, consider the James Madison University speech guide:

Student leaders of this year’s freshman orientation at James Madison University were given a list of 35 things they should avoid saying, including phrases such as “you have such a pretty face,” “love the sinner, hate the sin,” “we’re all part of the human race,” “I treat all people the same,” “it was only a joke,” “I never owned slaves,” and “people just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps,” among other expressions.

Meanwhile, a police chief (who happens to be black) is banned from speaking about the use of forensics in police work because he has had the nerve to publicly criticize the racist Black Lives Movement. We can’t have that!

The worst aspect of these stories is the lack of resistance to these totalitarian measures. If I was attending James Madison University, my response to that speech guide would be to start wearing t-shirts with those banned phrases blazoned across the front, while chalking those phrases everywhere on sidewalks. I do not get the sense that today’s students have the same courage. In fact, the story on trigger warnings suggests that today’s students are wholly in favor of this oppression, and get upset if anyone dares express a dissenting view to them.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

8 comments

  • mike shupp

    Ah, such youthful enthusiasm! Such excitement, such spectacle, such a disturbance in The Force.

    Know what it reminds me of? All those protesting students back in the 1960’s.

    We get these intellectual and social waves in this country, religion revivals and political turmoil. They tend to repeat at 50-60 year intervals, so we’re due another long round of student protest.

    And what happened in the end to all those noisy dissidents? They got old and pooped when the Baby Boom finally popped. And turned Trump supporters in their dotage.

    Be patient, Mr. Zimmerman.

  • Mike Shupp: You haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about. Those 1960s protesters, of which I happened to have been one, weren’t protesting the possibility they might be exposed to opinions they didn’t like. They were protesting being sent to Vietnam to fight in a war that hadn’t been declared, that had no logic in policy or defense strategy, and was being fought badly.

    Unfortunately, many of those same protesters later became oppressive leftwing academics, who have since trained later generations that free speech is only good for those they agree with.

    If you can’t see the difference than you deserve the oppression you are going to get. Unfortunately, you are among too many other Americans who somehow think protesting for free speech is the same as protesting against free speech.

  • Brendan

    Many of the 60’s radicals are also responsible for the disaster that is occurring in the middle east, the insane national debt, and many of the other ills that are impacting our country.

    Young radicals become older politicians. What is being bred in these universities is not a good sign for the health of the republic (if it will even still exist inside of the next decade).

  • wayne

    mike–
    I was going to say– no, they didn’t just fade-away.
    They grew up and took over.
    (Bill Ayer’s for example, became a tenured, “expert” on Childhood Education.)

    The “1960’s” was a complex time, too complex to address here.

    As Mr. Z notes, the anti-war movement was a major force.

    And as well, we had Civil Rights, the Free-Speech Movement, The “New Left,” the ecological movement, (the Space race) etc., etc. It was not a monolithic era & all these factions didn’t agree on everything and they weren’t all inherently leftist radicals.
    And as well, at some point in the 1960’s, 1/2 the population was below the age of 30.

    I fully agree these “things” appear to go in “cycles,” but we’ve been moving steadily toward the left & never appear to re-orient ourselves. The lurch to left we are in right now, I fear is and was, our tipping point.

  • Cotour

    “(Bill Ayer’s for example, became a tenured, “expert” on Childhood Education.)”

    I have listened to Bill Ayers speak, very smart and practiced and believes in his cause. We are currently beginning to experiencing his manifested philosophical imaginations.

    Childhood education = mind control.

    But then “they” all are looking to control minds.

  • INSOMNiUS

    The “Black lives matter” groupthink, tend to behave more like the KKK who were opposing the civil rights that Martin Luther King strived for. “To the back of the bus!” Did Martin Luther King ever do this in his protests for civil rights?
    Hell no! He gladly and sincerly welcomed all races to march with them. Everybody united for a noble cause, hand in hand.

    If it wasn’t for that, white people who chose to protest alongside Martin Luther King, there would have been no civil rights for black people, period.

  • Cotour

    INSOM:

    Black Lives Matter has a need to make “white” people the enemy. They do not want to work together, that is not a part of the movements goals. The movement needs racial tension and an “enemy”. This is the Leftist agenda.

    Normal pedestrian Americans think like Martin Luther King thought, through common struggle, respect and being reasonable and rational we can come together. This new paradigm demands the exact opposite, division, in order that the power be retained by the Leftist movement. The goal being power and promoting the Leftist agenda.

    Where do you think Obama will be spending his time and what will he be doing after his retirement? I believe that he is in the process of formulating his power base and his leverage in the form of the threat of violence using the Black Lives Matter group. He spent a lot of time validating the organization by inviting the leadership to the White House and it has been established that G. Soros has funded it the tune of I think over $100 million dollars. That is an investment being made by both men.

  • Cotour

    INSOM:

    It is the “white” mans power paradigm that they seek to destroy and their Socialist utopia will issue forth. That’s the vision anyway. I suspect that the reality would spell out something more along the lines of if Venezuela mated with the Congo and Animal Farm.

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