Good morning, everyone.

Barbarism is characterized by extreme cruelty or brutality. It's the kind of word we associate with people of the past. The Incans, for example, recently labelled one of the "most advanced" civilizations in the history of mankind, had some particularly barbaric practices, namely the sacrifice of children in order to promote a healthy harvest and the working of the sun.

Go read about the Icans, and you'll see there is much bandied around about how this practice was not as barbaric as it seemed. Google reveals ample apologetics praising the Incans and excusing their mass murder of war prisoners and sacrifice of children as being done with "more humanity than in other civilizations". I guess it depends on who you compare them to because the Spaniards that wiped them out had no comparable practices to the mass murder of political prisoners and child sacrifice.

The Incan rituals of mass murder and child sacrifice were not motivated by any of the positive, edifying ideas and institutions coming out of the West which lead to the most successful attempt at providing a representative, egalitarian government in the history of mankind. Fear is what turned children into useful instruments to appease the Incan sun god, Inti. Fear is what drove them to brutalize and dishonor the lives of their people to such an extent that they were thrown in mass graves and never given the honor of a proper, ceremonious burial.

No Western Gods ask for so great an offering. One could argue that the dawn of Western civilization began when child sacrifice was explicitly forbidden, practiced as it was in the Middle East across all peoples up until roughly 500 B.C. The end of human sacrifice as a means to worship God comes for the Jews and Christians in Genesis when Abraham, at the behest of God, offers his son Isaac up for sacrifice only to be told that a nearby ram would be perfectly sufficient. From this harsh break from the barbaric practice of child sacrifice, Western Civilization emerged. The ideas that grew from this beginning elevated the life of man above all else—at least in theory.

The demonization of Western thought, literature, and religion is nothing less than a return to barbarism, and it permeates every aspect of the new Woke Barbarian Regime's agenda. A very basic example is excusing the barbarism of non-Western civilizations from the past—such as the Incans—who were "colonized" by the civilizing forces of the Western world.

A barbaric civilization that does not value human life except in relation to its utility as an offering to a God would never venture to provide good lives for its people. It would discourage family formation and having children—to appease the climate god. It would promote degenerate sexual identities—to appease the sex god. It would reduce people to their most superficial dimensions: sex, race, and orientation—to appease the equity god. It would force citizens to ingest the proper "medicine"—to appease the health god.

It would do all these things in the name of progress, equity, anti-racism, sustainability, and health: words as vague and meaningless as the Incan sun god is real.

Thanks for reading.

Nashville

🏫 EDUCATION NAPKIN MATH

Tennessee Education: Where does the money go? Across the state, Tennesseans are paying more attention to the public education system. Governor Lee and Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn read the room. Last Friday, the duo announced a 90-day listening tour in which the Tennessee Department of Education will conduct committee meetings and public forums, as well as surveys to collect input from parents, teachers, policymakers, and advocates alike. This all to address the ever-elusive Tennessee education funding formula, an archaic and complicated framework known as the Basic Education Program (BEP) which hasn’t been revamped in decades.

Governor Lee and Commissioner Schwinn advocate for a student-centered approach. Avoid the highly politicized soundbites and opinion pieces touting themselves as journalism by brushing up on the current state of Tennessee’s educational funding with this Beacon Center of Tennessee report.

DEVELOPMENT

• Developer buys Hillsboro Village property for $4.25M (Post)
• Bass, Berry & Sims law firm to relocate headquarters to Nashville Yards (Biz Journal)
• Dickerson Pike Eyed For 1,150 Unit Mixed-Use Development Near River North. (Now Next)
• Chicago company pays $11.7M for One City site (Post)
• New images, details released for three-tower Cumulus site project (Biz Journal)
• Sylvan Heights apartment building sells for $71.75M (Post)
• New images released for three-tower project (Post)

National

💺 PSYCHOBILLY SOUTHWEST SICKOUT

We all heard about Southwest's flight cancellations over the weekend. The official company line on the source of the cancellations was "weather" and "staffing issues", but against the best wishes of a mostly silent media, it eventually emerged that some employees at Southwest had chosen to participate in a "sickout" to protest the company's vaccine mandate. Even up to this morning, Southwest denies that protest caused the cancellations. The effort sparked chaos for a weekend travellers and exposed just how fragile systems that we take for granted like air travel are to even the slightest disruptions. Good insight on the situation from a Southwest pilot below.

• A Southwest Pilot Explains What Happened over the Weekend (AG)

⛓ IT'S RIGGED FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE

What gets lost in the wash of the "rigged election" narrative is that romance novelist turned Democratic superstar turned romance novelist, Stacey Abrams, still refuses to concede her 2018 loss to Brian Kemp for Governor of Georgia. In response to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger bringing attention to this very fact, MSNBC launched a reflexive defense of Abrams that amounts to a long-winded, "Yeah, but..." with no substantive claims to back it up to which Raffensperger penned another response in National Review. The key difference here is that Raffensperger is speaking for himself, issuing op-eds at the risk of tarnishing his image while Abrams plopped lazily behind the wall built by CNN and MSNBC against any bad words the "Nazis" throw at her.

🦄 WOKE-ACRACY

• Lego vows to remove gender bias from its toys (NBC News) In the coming years, we'll see a renaissance of female bricklayers and truck drivers thanks to the bravery of Lego. In California, they mandated this for toy stores.
• The Art Institute of Chicago fires all 122 of its (unpaid and volunteer) docents because they aren’t sufficiently "diverse" (WEIS) The average length of service for AIC's docents was 15 years prior to this initiative.
• DC's New Superman Jon Kent Comes Out As Bisexual (Screen Rant) It's past time we just start handing children the Bible, Homer, a little Shakespeare, and some Dickens. At least the characters in these books cannot change their sexual identity at will.
• K-dramas cured my prejudice against Asian men (Salon) This is an article written by an Asian woman who says that seeing white men on American TV made her detest Asian men. How about watching less TV?
• McAuliffe campaign targets Taylor Swift fans with ads linking Youngkin to Scooter Braun (The Hill) On the next season of Teen Vogue's 'Election Strategy for Hot Girls'...
• Raiders Coach’s Emails Included Homophobic and Misogynistic Comments (NYT) Trash talk just ain't what it used to be.

Entertainment

THINGS TO DO

You can view our full weekly event calendar here.

Tonight
🎭 Dusty Slay's Grand Ole Comedy Show @ Zanies, 7p, $17 (Info)
🛋 Daily Wire Presents Backstage Live @ Ryman Auditorium, 7:30p, $77 (Info)

COMING SOON

🎞 The Velvet Underground Opens Fri. 10/15
Acclaimed filmmaker, Todd Haynes' new documentary on the NYC of the 60s and how the band created a new sound that changed the world of music, cementing its place as one of rock 'n' roll's most revered bands.

📺 Succession Returns Sunday 10/17
Season 3 of the popular HBO show premiers on Sunday night.

Covid Gutter

Trends and news concerning everyone's favorite viral pandemic.

HEADLINES

• Permission to party from America's nanny. ‘Go out there and enjoy Halloween,’ Dr. Fauci says. (NYT)
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bans any COVID-19 vaccine mandates — including for private employers (Texas Tribune)

Around the Web

🎸 Every Hit Removed From Rolling Stone's Top-100 'Greatest Songs' When Rolling Stone magazine first published its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" in December 2014...

🐎 Steppe of the Spirit On the Enclosure of Commons

🩺 What Is the CDC? Eleven ways of looking at the troubled agency

Political Theater Highlight Reel

1. Criticizing Teachers Union Allies? You Might Be a “Domestic Terrorist.”
2. Joe Biden calls Chicago’s female mayor ‘Mister’ during Illinois speech in yet another gaffe
3. Jon Gruden resigns as Las Vegas Raiders' head coach after allegations of inappropriate emails

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Have a great Tuesday