Category Archives: Politics
Google Warns Freedom Center to Censor Islamic Terror from Search Engine
Big Tech monopoly finally reveals why it’s censoring Front Page Magazine.
When Front Page Magazine applied to join Google’s AdSense advertising program, we were turned down. Since Google, like other Big Tech monopolies, has censored and deplatformed us in the past, we weren’t too shocked. But this time, Google told us why we had been banned.
Usually Big Tech monopolies censor, shadowban and deplatform you without telling you why.
But the Google AdSense rejection told us what we could do to make our way into the good graces of the company that dominates online search and advertising, controlling what much of the country and the world sees. All we had to do was stop talking about Islamic terrorism.
According to Google AdSense, our “entire site” contained “dangerous or derogatory content”, as did David Horowitz’s writing in particular, but one of the sample pages that the company claimed contained forbidden content was an article about the San Bernardino Muslim terrorist attack.
The article, “Remember The San Bernardino Fourteen” by Lloyd Billingsley, like a lot of our articles, is blocked in Google Search. The Front Page article doesn’t come up when you type in its name. It doesn’t even appear when you do a site search for the exact title in quotation marks that has been entirely limited to the Front Page Magazine site. That means that Google likely specifically excluded it. And it’s far from the only one of our articles banned by Google.
It’s an extraordinary act of censorship for a company that claims to want to collect all the information in the world and make it easily available for everyone to find. But it’s also a silent act of suppression that is hard to confirm and easy to blame on technical factors or errors.
But now here it was, Google flagging “Remember The San Bernardino Fourteen” as “dangerous” and “derogatory” content, not to mention guilty of “unreliable and harmful claims”.
What’s dangerous, unreliable and harmful about “Remember The San Bernardino Fourteen”?
Published on Dec 3, 2021, around the anniversary of the Islamic terrorist attack, it contains fairly little editorial commentary and a great deal of uncomfortable facts.
Lloyd Billingsley starts by documenting how “Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik drove up to the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, and began firing automatic rifles.” He names the victims, describes the bombs and quotes Kamala Harris, then attorney general, defending Islam and excusing Islamic terrorism, as she would go on to do after the Islamic terrorist attacks of Oct 7, while promoting CAIR and other Islamist terror friendly groups.
Billingsley’s article laid out the complicity of other family members of the Muslim terrorists in the attack, and the silence of Biden and Kamala about Islamic terrorism, and closed by urging, “remember the 14 innocents murdered by Islamic terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik on December 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, California, USA.”
Google would rather that you not remember the 14 victims or the Islamic terrorists who killed them. It has told us that we “must fix” this and numberless other articles that it objects to. But what would it like us to “fix” here? What else except the truth about Islamic terrorism.
The Big Tech’s ‘Dangerous and Derogatory’ content policy has previously cast a wide net, banning Martin Luther King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” at one point because the civil rights leader had used the “n word” in the letter and also banning skin lightening products because they “imply the superiority of one skin tone over another.”
Conservative sites had previously been forced to dump their comments sections to appease Google AdSense, but we will not self-censor or compromise to appease the Big Tech giant.
The David Horowitz Freedom Center has always spoken out for what we believe in. And that’s not about to change. In a time of severe financial challenges, it would be easier for us to go along. And it would have been easier for us to bow to the IRS when it came after us for writing about Hillary Clinton’s emails than to spend 5 years resisting because we believe that our journalism is legitimate and important, not something to be ashamed of and apologized for.
We know what Google’s politics are.
We remember the Google employees crying publicly when Trump won. We know that Google employees funneled $21 million to Democrats in 2020. And we know a lot of that money went to Biden. And we know that this time around, they’ve already pumped in nearly $300,000 into the Biden campaign, over $400,000 to Democratic congressional campaign committees, $174,000 to the DNC and another fortune to leftist extremists like Silicon Valley’s Rep. Ro Khanna.
A few years after the San Bernardino terror attack, Imam Omar Suleiman, who had called for a Caliphate, defended Muslim sex slavery, described Jews as “apes and pigs”, and prayed, “we ask Allah to humiliate this Israel”, had demanded that Google ban “Islamophobia” from its search engine.
And Google complied.
After I tweeted that, “Google just erased my Sultan Knish blog and Front Page Mag articles from the first pages of results for my name doubt very much this is accidental”, Robert Spencer wrote that, “I checked for myself, and sure enough: a Google search for ‘Robert Spencer’ now does not bring up Jihad Watch, where most of my writing outside of books has been published for the last seventeen years, but it does give you defamatory and distorted attack pieces from the far-Left Southern Poverty Law Center and the Saudi-funded Bridge Initiative, and nothing that doesn’t portray me and my work in the most unfavorable possible light.”
Google has been purging us for political dissent for at least 5 years. So we’re not surprised by what happened, but we are determined to continue fighting for the truth at all costs.
The David Horowitz Freedom Center is dealing with some very challenging times because we held fast to our principles. Facing a financial crunch, we looked at AdSense as an option, but we won’t compromise our belief in the truth in exchange for Google’s money. As we struggle to navigate the high legal cost of fighting the IRS, we are exploring every possible option.
But we’ll do it while holding on to our traditional commitment to fighting for what’s right.
Daniel Greenfield
California Synagogue Leases Space to Moslems in “Outreach” Effort; Guess how the Mosque Responded

Hamakom synagogue, a conservative congregation in Los Angeles, has just gotten a bracing introduction to the reality beneath the surface of efforts at “outreach” and “dialogue”: it leased its facility to a local Muslim group, only to have it host a viciously anti-Israel speaker who has refused to condemn Hamas and likened the Jewish state to National Socialist Germany. Yeah, tensions are really eased now.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Monday that Hamakom “axed its leadership and is struggling to retain members” after leasing its main facility to the Islamic Society of West Valley. The synagogue “entered into an agreement with the Islamic Society that allowed it to take over the synagogue’s main campus, pushing Jewish members onto a smaller satellite branch.
The synagogue leadership did this in the hopes it would build bridges with Muslims in Los Angeles: “In this time of rising anti-Semitism and Islamophobia,” synagogue leaders told the congregation, “it is incumbent upon us to reach out to strengthen the bonds between religious communities in our neighborhood, recognizing there is more that unites us than divides us.” Almost immediately, however, their starry-eyed hopes of bridging the gap of centuries of hatred and suspicion, and showing the Muslims of Los Angeles that Jews weren’t really “the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe,” as the Qur’an says (5:82), were dashed.
Yet Hamakon gave its all to this effort. The synagogue leadership allowed the Muslims to use the building every night, while the Jews themselves “would only be allowed to worship in two rooms from 8 p.m. to midnight. Evening programs and Friday night Sabbath services were also relocated to a smaller site also owned by the synagogue.” Even worse, “in anticipation of the lease’s commencement, the synagogue’s leadership covered up pictures of Israeli hostages (pictured above) captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.”
Yes, you read that right. It wasn’t the mosque that covered up the pictures of Israeli hostages. It was the synagogue leadership, showing that they were so avid to build bridges with the Muslim group that they were willing to abandon their own principles and basic standards of human decency to do so.
The Islamic Society of West Valley, in contrast, was not so eager to abandon its own beliefs in order to make friends with the Jews. “Soon after the Islamic Society began using Hamakom’s facility, it hosted anti-Israel activist Hussam Ayloush, who said last year that Israel did not have a right to defend itself following the Oct. 7 attack and compared Israel to Nazi Germany.” Even worse, years ago I myself was on a radio show with Ayloush, the top dog of the Los Angeles chapter of the the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). I repeatedly challenged him to condemn Hamas and Hizballah. He steadfastly refused.
The Ayloush appearance led to outrage among members of the synagogue, with the anger growing so great that Hamakom ultimately severed its arrangement with the Islamic Society. The leaders of the synagogue have resigned, and Hamakom is promising a “thorough internal review to understand the missteps taken and to implement corrective measures.”
That’s great, but it’s unlikely that this internal review is going to be deep or honest enough to uncover the real problem. Jews in Los Angeles (and elsewhere, of course) have been reaching out to Muslims for years, without any reciprocal action from the Muslims. As far back as 2012, the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles canceled a speech by human rights activist Pamela Geller; Geller remarked that the Federation had “cravenly submitted to Islamic supremacists who wanted to suppress free speech.”
Indeed. In its story on the cancellation, the Los Angeles Times quoted none other than Hussam Ayloush, who said all the things that he knew the leftist Times and its equally leftist audience would want to hear. Geller, he claimed, was a “fringe speaker.” He added: “We will not be affected by the noise of people who hopefully become more and more irrelevant. Unfortunately, outrageous rhetoric gets attention because it’s outrageous, and Pamela Geller knows that very well.”
The “outrageous rhetoric” to which Ayloush referred had to do with Geller sounding the alarm about the necessity of awakening to the reality of Islamic jihad. Meanwhile, here is some genuinely outrageous rhetoric: “For 75 years, every single day for the Palestinian people had been October 7.” Let’s see. In 1950, the population of Gaza was 63,444. Now it is estimated to be over 800,000. Have the Israelis really been going into Gaza and carrying out orgies of murder and rape every day for 75 years? Hamas jihadis murdered 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023. If Israel did the same thing every day in Gaza, 32,850,000 people would have been killed.9
Who made this preposterous and incendiary claim? Hussam Ayloush. Ayloush was speaking at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City, and clearly was trying to stir up his hearers to hate Israel and be willing to support the jihad against it. Ayloush isn’t interested in building bridges; he is interested in blowing them up (figuratively!).
Or if he is interested in outreach, it is in order to bring people to Islam. “Building bridges” is also a frequently enunciated goal of CAIR. Such bridges, however, are really just proselytizing mechanisms to convert the Christians to Islam, not an attempt to engage in genuine dialogue — as the Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb explained: “The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah [the society of unbelievers] is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.”
So on the one side, we have a coarse and brutish propagandist spreading blood libels against the Jews. On the other side, we have leftist Jews so anxious to be friendly to Muslims that they give over their premises to a mosque that brings in this same hateful propagandist to speak. What’s wrong with this picture? If leftist Jews in Los Angeles had listened to what Pamela Geller was trying to tell them in 2012, they wouldn’t be in this fix.
Robert Spencer, Front Page Magazine
Yes, They are Destroying the Constitution
(WND)—Consider the following part of my often discussed greater discourse I reference as contributing factors in the death of America.
Pursuant to my opening paragraph, it’s stunning to me that so many people, including many of my peers, fail to realize the finality of the condition confronting the world, and specifically confronting America.
We’re not fighting a conventional war; therefore, conventional weaponry and strategies won’t work. Any and all attempts to reclaim loss ground are pointless, because an unconventional war cannot be won conventionally. We are in a full-blown spiritual war.
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The enemies of America and global civilization as a whole understand said factoid very well. America was truly a gift from God to the world, second only to Moses, Abraham and other great leaders found in the scriptures. But, as I’ve repeatedly said: The only thing our governmental construct was unable to protect America from were evil and wicked men.
It’s one thing to not see the forest for the trees, but it’s another thing altogether to misidentify the trees.
America is being deconstructed piece by piece. Speaking metaphorically, the illusionists have the people focusing on how the rabbit got out of the hat and failing to realize that the rabbit was never in the hat.
The American public from womb to grave in ever increasing numbers are being misinformed and misled for the express purpose of destroying what God, through our Founders, gave us.
The truth has been misstated to the point that even well-meaning people unconsciously accept and advance the fraudulent representations.
The so-called intellectuals and elitists today view the four foundational constructs of America – church, family, education and military – with hostility. But, hating same is one thing, getting rid of these foundations is the goal.
Change the language and the founding documents become of no effect; e.g., the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence never mention nor refer to America as a democracy. That’s because America isn’t a democracy nor was it ever intended to be. (See: “Why the United States was Designed as a Republic” by David Shestokas.)
Don’t get me wrong. You’ll hear so-called conservatives and certain others correctly argue that America is a constitutional republic. But, day after day in public school classrooms and America’s equivalent to Pravda, i.e., higher education and the mainstream state media propagandists, malleable minds are brainwashed through an uninterrupted diet of references to a fictional “democracy.”
This error isn’t being committed by accident. This damnable lie is being advanced as heterodoxy for the express purpose of destroying the Constitution of the Untied States of America. It’s being advanced for the express purpose of undermining and abandoning the veritas of the Constitution.
Our son forwarded me an article about Washington becoming the fourth state, following Oregon, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, that will no longer require the bar exam to become a licensed attorney. This a travesty on its face; it’s a definitional miscarriage of language, because in order to be licensed for anything, one must pass a test of some sort on some level.
In reality, this is the next step in reducing the Constitution to no effect, without a Constitutional Convention.
People are ignoring the true rationale of the Fabianists. I’ve warned over the years that the democratic socialists advance with ophidian-like rapidness using gradualism and reformist guerrilla tactics. And their tactics are working, in large part because the foundations of America have been eroded by the pursuit of those entrusted to defend them, becoming more desirous of the riches/trappings of the godless than they are in honoring the foundations America was built upon.
I predict in the very, very near future these so-called attorneys will find themselves appointed to judgeships, ultimately leading to state supreme courts, all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). They will be hailed as evidence that doing away with bar exams and the renunciation of all licensing was a success with these persons placed in judicial positions.
It will be done with the usual political cast posing as a symphonic retinue to fakes and charades. We will be inundated with “firsts”: the first crayon-color unlicensed judge, the first queer unlicensed judge, the first unlicensed transgender, ad nauseam. Having not taken a bar exam will be reason for ascension to judgeships, because those people will be seen as more compassionate. Their efficacy will be judged on their ability to fundamentally disregard and alter the Constitution and laws of our once great nation.
Despite what is argued by those who refuse to admit this hellish transmogrification happened to America on their watch, I blame our collapse on the compromise of the church and our failure to hold politicians accountable.
This did not happen overnight. It has been structured and set in place in plain sight.
Consider the damage that has been done by the pathetic creatures masquerading as legal professionals today. The woman who couldn’t define what a woman was during confirmation hearings, now sitting on SCOTUS openly lamented the First Amendment, referencing it as a handicap and restraint to her idea of jurisprudence.
In their present incarnation, barely qualified judges, attorneys general and district attorneys are haters of modernity and political hacks, and we’re to believe removing the bar exam will fix the whole thing.
Trump’s “Incredible Win” is no Win at All
Everyone is calling Trump’s bond appeal an “incredible win.” It’s not an incredible win. An incredible win would consist of an appeals decision that said:
“This is ridiculous. Trump was not guilty of anything. This is a made up figure, for a nonexistent crime based on a Marxist opinion that he made too much money, even though everyone associated with the real estate deals made a profit. No fraud was proven, nor was fraud the point of the case.
These kinds of damages have never been applied to anyone before, and never will be again — not if New York state does not intend to blow itself economically off the face of the earth. There will be ZERO bail, because there are no damages to atone for, not by Donald Trump.
The state of New York should pay all legal bills. The Attorney General of New York should be removed from office, immediately disbarred and criminally charged for her actions, along with all her henchpersons.
$400 million bond, $100 million in bond, $1 in bond — it’s all viciously wrong in principle, and should never, ever happen to anyone again. “
THAT is what an incredible victory would look like.
Everyone is calling Trump’s bond appeal an “incredible win.” It’s not an incredible win. An incredible win would consist of an appeals decision that said:
“This is ridiculous. Trump was not guilty of anything. This is a made up figure, for a nonexistent crime based on a Marxist opinion that he made too much money, even though everyone associated with the real estate deals made a profit. No fraud was proven, nor was fraud the point of the case.
These kinds of damages have never been applied to anyone before, and never will be again — not if New York state does not intend to blow itself economically off the face of the earth. There will be ZERO bail, because there are no damages to atone for, not by Donald Trump.
The state of New York should pay all legal bills. The Attorney General of New York should be removed from office, immediately disbarred and criminally charged for her actions, along with all her henchpersons.
$400 million bond, $100 million in bond, $1 in bond — it’s all viciously wrong in principle, and should never, ever happen to anyone again. “
THAT is what an incredible victory looks like.
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Faulty Thinking Got Us Into This Mess
“I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.” (Arthur Rubinstein)
So true.
One of the worst mistakes people make is to approach life passively. “Life hasn’t shown me much. So what’s the point of taking risks or expending energy?” So they do the bare minimum, and wonder why they’re not happy. Or they opt to live off others (family, the government) and then wonder why they don’t feel self-confidence, self-respect or self-esteem.
The mental health and psychiatric industry (paired with the government-subsidized pharmaceutical industry) call it “depression.” What they mean by this is: People who are unhappy, to any degree or for any reason. What they also mean is: Only a PASSIVE response will help. Sit back and take your medication. What, it’s not helping? Don’t question the doctors who represent the pharmaceutical industry, who in turn represent our fascist government. And you’ll only get 5 minutes every four months with your psychiatrist anyway. Medicare or Medicaid will still reimburse him or her. So just shut the hell up.
I’m basing this on decades of having worked in the psychiatric industry, by the way. It’s not pretty.
And then there’s the snake oil, aside from the drugs. They tell you that “if only you listen to me, or read this book, your depression will evaporate.” Again, that’s passive.
Passivity does not work. If you’re a human being, you need an active attitude. If you’re depressed, you’re not suffering from the lack of a passive attitude; you’re suffering from the lack of an ACTIVE attitude. If you’re unwilling to adopt or practice an adaptive attitude, that’s your prerogative. There are plenty of people willing to pay your way, or pump you up with drugs that barely have an impact, if we’re (even for five seconds) honest about it.
But don’t say, “I’m a victim of depression” or “I suffer from depression” and then complain that passivity is doing nothing to resolve it. If you don’t have energy or motivation — then you do everything in your power to find it. Because if you don’t, you’re as good as dead — at least, psychologically speaking.
And when you seek help, you don’t ask: “Can you please give me energy and motivation?” Nobody can ever give you that, as much as they will lie to the contrary. You have to find a purpose for your life. If anyone helps you, they’re helping you help yourself. They don’t carry you, and live your life for you. They inspire you, assuming they’re inspirational. That’s the only kind of help there is.
All of this is connected to our growing sociopolitical crisis. More and more people don’t believe they should have to be active. They do the bare minimum, and — increasingly — are handed material prosperity to them by their parents or family (and in poorer sectors, the government — especially if you’re an illegal immigrant). But none of it works. It leads only to more depression, angst, anger and resentment. You can’t have a society filled with millions of people — tens of millions of new people dependent on the government, waiting for the next expensive government handout — and not expect a horrendous sociopolitical crisis. It’s frankly amazing that we haven’t seen worse. It’s a tribute to how much America started out with, that we don’t have an even worse crisis on our hands. But we will: Unless real people start to challenge all the faulty thinking that got us into this mess.
There is absolutely no other solution.
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Nobody Can Do Our Thinking for Us
People talk about the importance of humility. For example, reformed alcoholics or drug addicts will say, “Until I learned humility, I could not become sober.” They’re certainly on to something profound and important here, but is it really humility that saved them?
A website focused on addiction and recovery defines humility this way: “Humility can mean different things to different people, but in basic terms it refers to modesty and respectfulness … . Being humble means that an individual is able to accept [his or her] own limitations and weaknesses. It also means [having] a realistic understanding of [one’s] own strengths.”
Modesty and respect towards whom? And why? Should we show the same respect toward everyone? Or should we first show respect to ourselves, and then to those who have earned our respect, love and trust? The essence of self-esteem is self-respect. Ask any recovering addict. Regardless of what he says about modesty, he will tell you that stopping substance abuse goes hand in hand with greater self-respect. Without that, nothing else works. You hear about the corrosion of values and consideration in people who abuse drugs. They lie, steal and even kill for the sake of their addiction. Do such behaviors come from a sense of too much self-interest or too much self-respect or too much love of life and self? Of course not. Just ask any former addict.
Accepting ones limitations and weaknesses doesn’t sound like modesty to me. It simply sounds like an acceptance of reality. But be careful here. Your limitations and weaknesses refer to facts you cannot change, i.e., you can’t read people’s minds; you can’t foretell the future; you can’t flap your arms and fly; you cannot control or change other people. It’s not humility, but simply realistic to accept these hard facts. They’re not really flaws or limitations; they’re just facts – metaphysically given truths nobody can change. In fact, it is difficulties with reality itself that leads so many to substance abuse in the first place.
A lot of reformed addicts, especially those who participate in Twelve Steps programs, talk about humility in the face of God. “God” is a totally faith-driven concept, but authentic self-esteem, while often influenced by significant others, is rooted in confidence in one’s own mind – not just the mind’s capacity to feel, but to rationally and objectively think and know. Again, ask any reformed addict, and she will likely tell you that she’s much more confident in her own reasoning abilities now, than when she was stoned or drunk every day.
Arrogance is the opposite of humility, many say. But what is arrogance? It’s certainly arrogant, but also naïve and foolish, to think more of yourself than you really are. It’s arrogant to think you can change the oil in your car if you don’t even know how to open the hood. It’s arrogant and stupid to lie to yourself; to declare war on facts or reality. But the risk of arrogance does not rule out the possibility of confidence.
We all should be confident in our capacity to think and reason. Thought and reason do not guarantee success. But they offer the always present possibility that we can figure something out. If we can’t figure it out, we can find intelligent people to ask, while using our own brains to critically evaluate their answers.
We’re in the driver’s seat of our own lives and our own minds. Nobody can do our thinking for us. That doesn’t mean we have to pretend we know everything. But we’re capable of thinking, concluding and judging, and don’t have to let anyone else do these things for us. Even when we delegate tasks to specialized people – car mechanics, tax accountants and the like – we still exercise judgment about what to ask, and whom to trust.
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How to Cope When a Culture and the Government Have Gone Batshit Crazy
You only need to be informed about facts, and objective truth. The insane ravings of lunatics in 99 percent of the media and government are neither facts nor truth. Stick to what’s true, and what’s necessary for survival. Focus on what you know, not on what morons and sociopaths babble about. Ditch most of the media, and ignore the government and the culture as much as you can. It’s all in the process of falling apart completely, and in many ways the world will be better off without them.
In the likely troubled times ahead, you will need your inner strengths and your virtues; Rachel Maddow, the View, the DNC, and Don Lemon–trust me–are not going to matter. The people you’re allowing to compromise your sanity are parasitical, and have no virtue, no strength, and no redeeming qualities whatsoever. They really don’t matter. Once you better understand this, you’ll be both sane, and free.
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Watch “The Devastating Legacy of Obama’s Presidency – A Point of No Return | Thomas Sowell” on YouTube
Ayn Rand’s Wisdom for the Ages
Each of the following quotes are from Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.”
The spirit and the content of this novel are the polar opposite of everything in our culture, our corporate world, our schools, our art and our government today.
If you sense that absolutely everything today is wrong, both in principle and practice — implicitly and explicitly — then you’d do well to take a look at Ayn Rand’s magnificent and timeless novel, “The Fountainhead.”
“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons – a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.”
“Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You’ve wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he’s ever held a truly personal desire, he’d find the answer. He’d see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He’s not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion – prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can’t say about a single thing: ‘This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me’. Then he wonders why he’s unhappy.”
“It’s easy to run to others. It’s so hard to stand on one’s own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It’s easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It’s simple to seek substitutes for competence–such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.”
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