The recent convention of the Canadian New Democratic Party (NDP) became a microcosm of the inanity of identity politics found in forums ranging from politics to higher education. Participants were given familiar “equity cards” as literal card-carrying members of groups demanding preferred treatment. The problem is when one identity group demands preference over another. The result, as seen in Winnipeg, was calamity and quickly became comedy.
Many in education have long pushed equity cards and “identity markers” to get students to define themselves by their race, disability, gender, or other criteria. Even computer science teachers are told to tailor their lessons to identity markers. Such markers are treated as essential to creating “Identity safe classrooms.”
There are even DEI games where children are encouraged to “match” their identity groups.
At the NDP convention, people were given equity cards to give preference to certain identities over groups such as males or whites. The problem is that the cards create an entitlement that can clash with others’ claims to speak first.
The cards were based on identity categories, including gender, race and ethnicity, LGBTQ+ status, and Indigenous status. You were supposed to be able to jump ahead of others because of your priority identity.
One video shows a person holding up their green gender equity card to claim the right to speak first as another woman waves her pink race equity card to speak. What followed were objections to people not yielding to those with greater priority or right to speak with one noting that cards for people who identify as Black women “have no value outside of this space.”
Then there was the speaker who called out another delegate for the sin of misgendering the speaking who identified as “non-binary.”
The collapse of the equity house of cards is due to the inherent myth that identity politics produces equity. It is, in fact, a separate system of privilege and entitlement. It is used to marginalize other voices in the name of amplifying other voices.
The greatest impact is to balkanize a population or party rather than emphasize common identities. The alternative is to enforce uniform treatment of any speakers based on such novel devices as a line to speak.
Under this cutting edge approach, people are guaranteed to speak in the order in which they line up to speak. It may be a radical experiment for the NDP, but it has been shown to have some success in other areas.
NDP= No Distinct Properties
I think it is accepted understanding that it is inherent in all of nature for marginalization, ostracization, and/or social rejection or hesitancy, as a matter of survival and social cohesion. Even in the fields of botany, biology, zoology, etc., species are recognized as either “native” or “alien.” After all, who came up with the words “normal” or “abnormal?”
That being said, in the human species and mostly due to moral evolution, “acceptance” is often forced upon others, with little effort by those ostracized to create a channel for acceptance. Instead, it becomes a retaliatory “in your face” effort to gain acceptance.
While looking up the YouTube video provided by the good professor, I looked off to the right for other related videos. I found this one which evokes the good and commonality among all of us, i.e., ‘I will not force myself upon you, but please look at what I have to offer you.’ (I am not familiar with the song or the lyrics, but I doubt there are many who can do a better job delivering it!)
“They Didn’t Like Her Look, But Then She Sang Like a Star!” @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szoM2gwNt5Q
(scroll past the two commercials)
Ever since Canada declared its independence from Great Britain in the 1960s, it has been drifting toward incoherence.
“elitist, “I am more entitled than you!” Guess you don’t know the definition of elitist? Good job none the less. 🤣
Gorsuch and Barrett pretty much destroyed the absurd Trump administration position on birthright citizenship in a remarkable exchanges with the fast talking, but slow witted Solicitor General John Sauer.
Trump’s position is that birthright citizenship should only apply to children whose parents are “lawfully domiciled” in the U.S. They interpret the phrase, “under the jurisdiction of” in the 14th Amendment to mean “domiciled” in the sense of being a lawful resident. The implication is that any child born to someone not domiciled in the US cannot be a citizen. In his presentation, Sauer emphatically described that birthright citizenship turns on meeting the “domicile test”.
Gorsuch asked a very pointed question, if Native Americans born in the U.S. today would qualify as birthright citizens under Sauer’s “domicile test”. Before he joined SCOTUS, Gorsuch was a judge in Colorado where he had considerable experience dealing with Native American rights and tribal law.
Gorsuch focused on the administration’s “domicile” test, which argues that only children of parents with a permanent, lawful intent to remain in the U.S. should be citizens.
Gorsuch pointed out that Native Americans on reservations in 1868 were physically “domiciled” in the U.S. and had a lawful intent to stay permanently.
If domicile was the only requirement, then Native Americans should have been birthright citizens immediately in 1868. However, history shows they were excluded by the 14th Amendment until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
When Sauer initially replied that Native Americans are granted citizenship “by statute” (referring to the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924), Gorsuch cut him off, insisting that he should set aside the statute and answer whether they would be considered birthright citizens under the 14th Amendment itself.
Sauer suddenly realized that he was caught in a logical contradiction. He then stumbled in his response saying, he wasn’t sure and that he would have to think that through.
Gorsuch highlighted that the administration’s “domicile” rule is a modern invention that doesn’t align with how the 14th Amendment was actually understood in the 19th century
Why was Gorsuch’s question so important and an obvious trap that Sauer fell into?
The 14th Amendment’s original “jurisdiction” clause was historically interpreted to exclude most Native Americans because they were considered members of sovereign tribes rather than fully under U.S. jurisdiction. They only received universal automatic citizenship through the 1924 Act.
Gorsuch noted that Native Americans living on reservations were clearly “domiciled” in the U.S. in a physical and intentional sense.
Historically, the Supreme Court ruled in Elk v. Wilkins (1884) that Native Americans were not birthright citizens because they owed allegiance to their tribes, not the U.S. They only received universal citizenship through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
The Trap: If domicile is the only metric for citizenship, as Sauer argued, then Native Americans should have been considered birthright citizens from the moment the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868.
The Flaw: If the government’s new “domicile” test were correct, the 1924 Act would have been redundant.
The Implication: By forcing Solicitor General John Sauer to admit that Native Americans might be birthright citizens under his test, Gorsuch highlighted that the administration’s theory is a “revisionist” departure from both historical understanding and existing statutes.
Barrett also pointed out the absurdity of the administration’s “allegiance” theory, – the idea that parents must owe “total allegiance” to the U.S. for their children to be citizens.
Sauer conceded that the primary purpose of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to formerly enslaved African people and their children.
Barrett then raised the case of an enslaved person brought to the U.S. from Africa against their will who viewed themselves as a captive and never intended to stay, thus lacking “allegiance” or “domicile” in the way Sauer defined them.
If Sauer’s “allegiance” test were applied strictly, many of the very people the 14th Amendment was written to protect would have been excluded from citizenship because they had no intention of staying when they first arrived. When they arrived they did not intend to stay and they definitely did not feel allegiance to a country that held them captive.
The absolute absurdities and logical contradictions in Sauer’s argument are plainly obvious to any rational observer.
This absurd interpretation of the 14th Amendment will go down by a vote of 7 to 2.
Thomas and Alito will twist themselves into a Gordian knot of absurdities to rationalize Trump’s position, as they always do.
Thanks for posting. Did not read it.
Lets see Anonymous the know it all on every subject. If the four billion women in the world get pregnant they can just jump on an airplane flying to the U.S. Once in the U.S. they can give birth and poof the baby is an American citizen. If they do it in California the welfare checks are soon to follow.
You can bet that the cost of their flight will be paid for by the welfare scammers in California. Just being anti Trump on every subject is also simply being anti intelligent. The know it all strikes again.
First sentence told me it was off-topic TDS nonsense from Gigi. Did not read past that.
Canada has been a joke for a very long time. But it used to be funnier….
Ah, the one major flaw in the progressive ideology of the “perfected man”. They can’t/won’t accept the fact that humans have built-in (either genetically determined, or G-d given) proclivities that override any slight manipulation by other mere mortals. Their hubris-inebriated sense of self-righteousness and above average IQ allows them to think that their superiority gives them the wisdom to re-shape a world that, again, was (either, through dint of extraordinary evolution had arrived at its necessary state, or had been divinely planned – you pick). They will always fail because they only rely on humanities good nature and ignore the other half of the human psyche. But, true to their defiance of facts, they will continue to bedevil the world in a fashion similar to various other plagues that been wrought on us such as marxism, islamism, and let’s not forget, leperosy.
Um… you sound like a NDP nutjob.
No privilege card for you.
Again, only inventive and hate – your typical left loon – totally inadequate at debate because that would require a functioning brain stem.
Good grief, Turley is really leaning into the ‘filler’ content while waiting for a script that makes Sauer’s birthright citizenship arguments sound coherent. It takes a special kind of irony to challenge the 14th Amendment using the legal genius of John Eastman, only for Trump to TACO his way out of the room before the other side even spoke. Whether it’s a disastrous Supreme Court showing or a botched war in Iran, Trump’s new foreign and domestic policy is simple: Walk away and hope the gas prices don’t follow him. I look forward to Turley’s ‘both sides’ fairy tale tomorrow.
George/X: What a resentful, hateful, coveting outburst from you, yet again, first thing in the morning!
I do hope you realize that you have become theeee poster child on this site who reflects the very subject of today’s topic, –i.e., how to correctly handle those who feel marginalized by others and feel the jealous need to strike out against all of them, especially their host who graciously permits their insulting presence here. Do you agree with the good professor’s approach
to one who bites the hand that feeds him/his need?
(p.s. please notice my moniker carefully so that you do not confuse me again with someone else, in your hurried effort to strike me down.)
THanks, George. Have a nice day.
Good grief, its George again. Anyone get what he’s ranting about today? Didn’t read it.
This topic really brought out all the bitter lefttards!
Hannah Arendt and Mattias Desmet both explain that totalitarian movements do not start with tanks in the streets; they start by reshaping how people are formed. You first atomize individuals, strip away any shared civic identity, and then give them a new identity, a cause, and an enemy to rally against.
Turley’s post today is a small but very clear example of that kind of mass formation at work. The people in that room probably do not think of themselves as part of a totalitarian movement, and I am not saying they got up this morning wanting a dictatorship. But the tools they are using are the same tools those movements rely on: you break people into narrow grievance identities, teach them to trust the card more than any shared “we,” and they become much easier to steer.
That is why “formation” matters so much. Either we are being formed as citizens for self‑government, ordered liberty, and a common national identity, or we are being formed for something very different, and what you see in that Canadian hall is a picture of the latter.
OLLY
You do not seem to understand that the NDP is a completely irrelevant fringe party in Canada.
Instead you fly off into one of your predictably absurd rants about “forming citizens”, and “self-government”. You are a ridiculous one trick pony who responds with these nonsensical diatribes in exactly the way that Pavlov’s dogs respond to the bell.
The NDP has only 100,000 members. In the recent election they won only 6 seats in the 343 seat Canadian parliament. They previously held 24 seats.
Now that they have less than 12 seats, they are no longer recognized as an official party in parliament.
They do not get any funding to hire staff.
They do not get any committee assignments.
They do not have a right to speak in debates.
The Speaker can completely ignore them in the house.
They play no functional role in the Canadian federal government whatsoever.
This post by Turley is a completely irrelevant push piece designed to rile up the MAGA mob, and as you prove, it has worked as designed.
You are right that the NDP is small and weak in Ottawa right now. That is not really what I am talking about. The American colonists were also a fringe within the British Empire until their ideas and their formation work caught up with history. The point is that big political shifts almost always start in “irrelevant” corners, where people are quietly being trained to think in a new way.
What I see in this Turley post is not just a goofy Canadian sideshow. It is a live example of how people get atomized into narrow identities and then taught to seek protection and meaning through those identities instead of through any shared civic “we.” That is the formation piece. We have watched the same basic pattern here, as a lot of once‑fringe groups and ideas have done decades of quiet work in universities, media, HR, and nonprofits and now have enormous influence over the modern Democratic Party. So I am less interested in how many seats the NDP holds today and more interested in what kind of citizen these little experiments are building for tomorrow.
So Olly somehow connected Arndt and the NDP. What a leap… into insanity.
Another goofy Olly comment. He’s about to set the blog record for the most irrelevant comments. Surpassing X/George.
Atta boy Olly, you go.
OLLY
You really are an absurd one trick pony.
This response is completely nonsensical gibberish. A completely meaningless word salad of terminology that you have manufactured for your own purposes that has no meaning outside of your absurd little world of fantasy.
You seem to think that the NDP is a small irrelevant fringe group that is “quietly training people to think in new ways”, as if they are the thin edge of the wedge that will eventually become more mainstream.
In fact, the exact opposite is true. They have steadily lost support over the last 15 years.
Here are the results of the last 5 elections.
2011: 103 seats
2015: 44 seats
2019: 24 seats
2021: 25 seats
2025: 6 seats (they initially won 7 seats, but one of them defected to the Liberals)
So you see, your absurd hypothesizing about the “pattern” that is developing is absolutely ridiculous.
The ridiculous antics of this declining fringe party are being rejected by the Canadian people.
Even some of their own members are rejecting the party’s current antics as demonstrated by the fact that one of the elected members in 2025 defected to the Liberals in protest.
You base your absurd analyses of “forming citizens” and “self-government” in an entirely fact free land of wild fantasy.
What, no Privilege Card today Olly?
OLLY,
Well said.
I find it ironic that the supposedly inclusive NDP is more like a segregated, elitist, “I am more entitled than you!” party. On the face of the video, it is truly comical they are even having those . . . discussions. But as you point out, they are using those tools in an attempt to reform society to conform to their individual “equity” for some to stand above all others. In their quest for equity, they have to erase the rights of the individual, and, of course, free speech.
“elitist, “I am more entitled than you!” Guess you don’t know the definition of elitist? Good job none the less.
Upstate, I appreciate that you actually get what I am driving at. At some point more people are going to have to bother trying to understand the psychology behind how a culture shifts right under our noses. Otherwise we are left scratching our heads, wondering how we end up with a Supreme Court justice who will not define “woman,” how “Black Lives Matter” is celebrated while “All Lives Matter” can get your city burned, how someone like Spanberger in Virginia or Mamdani in New York becomes the respectable face of ideas that would have been fringe not long ago, or how people will defend the killer of an insurance CEO while doing everything possible to shield an illegal alien who murdered a jogger.
All of that looks random and insane until you see it as formation work. Small groups, often written off as fringe, spend years atomizing people, breaking down any shared civic “we,” and then rebuilding their identity around grievance, enemies, and a new moral code. That is how you get sanctuary cities, no‑go zones run by radicals, and mobs ready to punish anyone who still talks about equal justice or ordered liberty. Turley’s little Canadian video is not the whole story, but it is a clear snapshot of the same process.