20 Questions Youre Not Supposed to Ask in 2018 America

By John Hawkins As politics has become more tribal and geared toward demonization instead of debate its amazing how many important questions dont seem to be asked any more. Instead of discussing issues rationally people are stuck in little boxes based on where they fall on an issue. Whatever happened to actually assuming that there are two potentially legitimate sides to a debate and hashing them out based upon which one makes more sense? Of course to do that youve got to get beyond political correctness to ask the basic questions -- questions that are deemed racist sexist fascistic etc. etc. as part of an effort to shut down necessary conversations. At the end of the day if you want to actually prove someone wrong youve got to engage him on his ideas and make better more logical points. If you cant even handle the basic questions so many people have then maybe you dont have the best ideas. 1) Are we really doing transsexuals a favor by pretending they can change into another gender and allowing them to mutilate themselves via surgery or are we actually setting them up for failure when we pretend that theyre not mentally ill? 2) Couldnt you make just as good an argument that America is a matriarchy as a patriarchy? Life expectancy for women is 79 in the United States while its 72 for men. Men are expected to pay for everything on dates. Men are required to sign up for the draft; women are not. Divorce courts are notoriously stacked against men. Fifty six percent of college students are female and only 44 are male. In the United States 78.8 of murder victims are male. In 2015 men suffered 93 of the workplace fatalities. In other words if you want to claim one gender is at an advantage or disadvantage in the United States doesnt it almost entirely depend upon what factors you pay attention to and what factors you ignore? 3) Are the problems black Americans have as a group a result of racism or a result of the sort of culture that Thomas Sowell talks about in Black Rednecks and White Liberals?"  A culture that leads to a significant percentage of black Americans committing more crime being more anti-intellectual and producing far more children out of wedlock than many other groups? 4) Shouldnt we roll our eyes at people who come up with new reasons to be gratuitously offended most of the time? Arent people who are offended by things that most people just shrug off the ones with the problem not the rest of the world? 5) If the government gives money to Planned Parenthood and PBS why would it be wrong for the government to give money to the NRA or Heritage Foundation? 6) Do we make life better for college students by coddling them giving them safe spaces" and encouraging everyone to be incredibly sensitive about what we say in front of them or are we setting them up for failure in a world that only cares what you can deliver not how you feel about anything? 7) If youre gay and a Christian doesnt want to bake you a cake for your wedding why cant you just go to another shop? We wouldnt demand that a black baker make a cake for the KKK that a Jewish baker make a cake for a Nazi or even that a liberal baker make an I love Trump" cake. So why should Christians whose religious beliefs are protected by the First Amendment be punished because some gay couple thinks they can turn their persecution of Christians into a payday? 8) If Hillary Clinton and illegal aliens dont have to obey the law why should the rest of us respect the law? Why shouldnt we break the law any time we think we can get away with it? 9) If it takes two to make a child and if a man is quite correctly held financially responsible for a child after hes born then why shouldnt a woman need the permission of the man who impregnated her to end the childs life? After all she didnt make that baby by herself. 10) Given that California is poorly governed a negative influence on the rest of the country and doomed to go bankrupt wouldnt America be better off if California does secede? 11) If we really want to settle the fight between the Israelis and Palestinians shouldnt we suggest the same formula that Americans used? We paid the Indians for their land when possible and drove them away militarily when it wasnt -- until we took the land for ourselves. Why not suggest that the Israelis crush the Palestinians take their land and let the surrounding nations that claim to love the Palestinians settle them as citizens? 12) If America is geared toward benefitting white Americans how do you explain the fact that Asians perform better as a group academically and make more per capita income than Caucasians? 13) What if the Parkland kids you see on TV dont represent the kids who died or even their own classmates? Instead could it be that they have no moral authority at all because they were just tragedy-adjacent liberal kids who saw a bunch of dead bodies and thought Wow this could be my opportunity to get on TV?" 14) What if frequently racist comments and vicious generalized attacks on white people made by black Americans on TV and social media were treated with the same sort of disdain that we reserve for white supremacists and Nazis? Do you think that would improve or damage race relations? 15) If we can have sanctuary cities and states where our immigration laws arent followed why cant conservative states refuse to allow abortions or arbitrarily lower the federal tax rates their residents have to pay? 16) Given that women now make up 56 of college students shouldnt our focus be shifted away from helping women in colleges and toward helping men? 17) Poll after poll after poll shows that there are a very significant number of radical Muslims out there. In some countries a majority of Muslims could fairly be labeled as radical Islamists while in many others only a small percentage would fit that definition. However since we have no reliable way to tell the moderate Muslims from the blow-up-the-infidels throw-the-gays-off-the-building Jews-deserve-to-die Muslims does it not make sense to take steps to limit Muslim immigration as much as possible since their religion represents a unique threat? Even if you grant the fact that most Muslims are moderates it does not change the fact that the radicals make Islam the most violent and terrorist-prone religion on the planet. Why shouldnt we take that into account? 18) Wouldnt our military be a lot more effective and wouldnt we lose fewer troops if we were less concerned about civilian casualties? The conquered Japanese didnt work so well with us after WWII because we never killed their civilians (because we killed large numbers of Japanese civilians); they worked with us because we were stronger than they were and they knew wed use as much force as necessary to keep them in line. 19) If being racist is such a horrible thing then isnt it also horrible to falsely accuse people of being racists without having good evidence? In fact given the small percentage of Americans who dislike people specifically because of skin color and the large number of people who falsely accuse people of racism could you not fairly argue that false accusations of racism are a much bigger problem than actual racism? 20) Wouldnt we be better off as a nation if fewer people voted? For example if youre taking in more from the government than youre paying out why would we want you to vote? If youre convicted of a serious criminal charge how does it benefit our nation to have someone like you voting? If you dont know who the Vice-President is or which party is against abortion how does it improve our country to have you give your input?