Note from the editor: This article was originally published on CareyMartell.com
As recent readers of my blog will note, I published the other day a long article featuring my criticism of the actions of a local social activist in my hometown, Tai Harden-Moore. You can read the full article, Meet Tai Harden-Moore, the Racist Consultant Employed by Newberg, Oregon City Council At the Heart of the Controversy in Town before you read this one, if you have not already done so. That way you can familiarize yourself with the claims I made and which Tai Harden-Moore is responding to in this debate.
Today, in the Yamhill County News and Discussion Group, Tai Harden-Moore posted a rebuttal to the claims made in my previous essay. Likewise, I responded to her rebuttal and so a short debate took place. This article is for showcasing the records of the debate, in the public forum, about the public issues at the heart of my hometown of Newberg, Oregon which have been in the news.
The Debate
What follows is a transcript of the debate as best I could assemble from the screen captures. If there are any errors, it’s likely because I was debating several different people at the same time (but I have tried to only focus on the debate between Tai Harden-Moore and myself, which is the focus on this article).
Thus ends the debate with Tai Harden-Moore; as of the present time I am compiling this I have not seen any new notifications from her on any replies to my questions.
I hope that residents of the town of Newberg, Oregon will find the contents of this compilation of the debate between myself and Tai Harden-Moore to be enlightening of the situation in our town.
Why I am Organizing the Recall
I would like to take this time to once again declare that it is my intention to organize a recall election against our city’s mayor Rick Rogers, the city council and the school board members that wish to utilize a Common Enemy approach to diversity in our town instead of the Common Humanity approach which I advocate for, and which this town previously utilized when I attended school and which the vast majority of residents are familiar with. It seems clear to me the city has been mismanaged and allowed to get to this point, and needs new leadership that will restore the Common Humanity approach to these issues as our town’s policy. We should not be teaching kids to not utilize divisive and exclusionary symbols in our schools to tribalize around. We need new candidates to step forward for these positions.
As I said in my previous article, there are not many moments in American history where citizens are called upon to oppose tyranny, because genuine tyranny is rare in our country. That time is now. They are after the children. They wish to undo 200 years of progress. They must be stopped. The residents of Newberg must stop them.
If you are interested in participating in the organization of this recall election for all the reasons I have stated previously in my article about Tai Harden-Moore, you may contact me via my Facebook profile page if you would like to work together on this campaign.
I welcome all residents of this town to join me in the effort to restore the teaching that children should not be taught to think that ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation are the most defining of qualities of a person, and that they should instead be judged by the content of their character. While I am not a professional politician, I am a quick study and I will do my best to organize this and I hope that others will join me. I have only entered this situation because I believed it was heading into a very disastrous route and that if I did not take any action, I will have failed my oath to this country, which I took when I enlisted into the Army at seventeen years of age. Part of the oath is to defend America from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and this part of the oath I have always considered to never possess an expiration date.
An Important Message For These Times
I do wish to clarify something that is exceptionally important and often missed in our current political environment with the rhetoric. that is commonplace today What follows is perhaps the greatest speech I have written in my life to date, and I am writing it now for the town and place that birthed me. I am writing it for my family, for my father, my mother and my brothers and my step-parents, and my grandparents who are buried in this town, and all of the people who I have met throughout my entire life; and for those I am still yet to meet. I am writing it for every author whose book I have ever read, and whose efforts to record their wisdom allowed that precious substance to be passed on to me. I am writing it for my state, my county and the world. I am writing it for our human species. The words I say now, while I have your attention, are a product of a sacred torch called Liberty that has been passed through the ages from person to person, and unto me, and through my hands typing these words, I now pass that sacred torch onto you.
It is not individuals such as Tai Harden-Moore and others who believe in ideas like Critical Race Theory that are the enemy. This trap is easy to fall into when tensions are high, and when we are ideological opponents. Yes, they must absolutely be stopped in their plans. Their plans are bad, motivated by an evil ideology that was designed to poison people against their neighbors, family and friends, and which aims to re-ignite the last remaining embers of racism in our country.
Yet, the true enemy I see is the Common Enemy ideologies based on motivated reasoning and fallacious ideas that are turning communities against each other, that motivate them to become an agent of radicalized tribalism, instead of finding commonality in shared identity as Americans; as members of states and cities. This enemy can only truly be combated by employing logic and an evidence based approach to reveal truth.
I have shown you this debate with Tai Harden-Moore , as well as the previous one with Erin McCarthy, for a very important reason above all others: I am providing you the means by which to combat their ideology directly.
Look at their reactions to the arguments I make.
See how they have no suitable counter-arguments and eventually give up.
This is not an issue of intellect; it is an issue of not using good sound logic, when one is actually capable of doing so, because they have been taught to not do so by bad teaching.
I do not have the formal education that Tai Harden-Moore has. She has multiple degrees, including in law.
By contrast, I am a high school drop out, who also dropped out of film school. I say to you honestly and truly, my primary education was less our public schools and more our public library, which I used to sneak over to during recess when I attended Central School Elementary and spent many an afternoon in after school. There is nothing I have said that you nor most anyone else could not have said who understands logic and rhetoric even a little bit. The arguments I used were not that notable. They are truly rather ordinary. I am not saying this to be humble. I am saying it because it is objectively true.
Yet, Harden-Moore is presently unable to form a reply to me that does not depend on fallacious reasoning, and so she has withdrawn from debate with me. The problem is not a matter of intelligence, for Tai Harden-Moore unquestionable has that quality. The problem is her adoption of an ideology that is insidious and difficult to let go of once so indoctrinated, and that makes one view others as evil racists, when they objectively are not, and so has trained her to dismiss my arguments based on my gender and my skin color instead of by their content. This is an evil thing to do to a person’s mind, and while it is something that Harden-Moore has decided to make a career out of teaching, I do not believe that necessarily means she herself is evil. In fact I think she’s likely not. The ideology is evil. The person may yet be freed from the evil that has chained her mind. My mind was once so enchained by other different, yet still bad ideas. I freed myself by using logic and review of collective human wisdom. So too can she, and everyone else so affiliated, find Liberty from ideas that do not suit her intellect.
Liberty is not merely a state of rights or absence of such. It is also a state of mind. One is not able to correctly assess opportunity if your mind is chained down.
I am sure some will take issue with my metaphorical usage of the word ‘chain’ in this nature, but I think it is a most appropriate metaphor, as what I speak of is in my view the last remaining kind of slavery in our culture. Evil ideologies are a form of slavery we commit onto ourselves. No person truly has the exact precise idea in their mind that another has; we only have within our minds an imitation of the idea that we have learned from others, formed from the memories of that information we have learned. An idea that restricts our ability to think critically and employ logic meaningfully, and that therefore hinders our ability to identity truth, is a self-created chain of the mind. You must strive to not become a servant to ideas that do not serve you, nor others, with any dignity. This “anti-racism racism” and CRT gibberish is that kind of idea that does not serve anybody. If these ideas were truth then they could not be refuted so very easily by a dropout such as myself.
The darkness of lies cannot abide the light of truth. We must illuminate the minds of our fellow citizens so they may see our America is not a zero-sum game, and there is common benefit in setting aside old blood feuds and letting go of grievances that are no longer serving them or anyone else. I believe the only way to accomplish this is through reasoned and civil debate, so they may recognize the errors of the ideologies they have adopted. Our country got past this once before 50 years ago, and we can get through it again. Part of that debate is for no longer beneficial ideas to lose in the public forum, and that means the democratic process. This is what stabilizes our republic and allows it to endure.
I am not asking for a recall because I hate these people. I am asking for a recall because I love this town and its people, and I love humanity. I do not wish them to be poisoned by an evil ideology that will not serve them nor anyone else, and will only result in ruin, like so many other evil ideologies before it that are crafted to teach a vengeful tribalism and lay the blame for all of life’s woes at the feet of your neighbor.
The social activists in our town of Newberg may have adopted genuinely racist ideas right now. Yet, they still have the potential to let them go, however impossible that may seem to appear to you, and become our good neighbors again. In the meantime, while the consequences of cognitive dissonance is weighed in their minds after the debate has ended, they must lose the power they have gained over our institutions, so that the spreading of this indoctrination that afflicted them against their neighbors does not infect the school system any further. That is one very big leap toward ending this conflict and I think it has to be taken.
I still believe in the Dream of America. I hope that you do, too. Our country’s Dream is not yet over.
The difficulty of freeing people from a cult is always the same; it requires consistent challenge of the fallacious ideas until the person works the topic out internally, and this allows for the new evidence to be pondered and accepted, and fallacious ideas to be discarded by the person. This can be a hard process when people have formed a mob of hysteria; it takes time and consistent effort. Yet this is necessary to stabilize our communities again.
Together, using a genuinely logical and evidence based approach to addressing these social issues we can overcome them. This is a great city with great people, and I believe in this town’s ability to pull through this and correct its course.
I ask you to help me protect our city’s Dream. Perhaps in doing so, we may yet demonstrate to the world how America’s Dream may yet be protected, too.
You may contact me via my Facebook profile page if you would like to work together on this campaign to recall our city government, for mismanaging our city and allowing things in our town to get to the point that an entirely politically unqualified person such as myself must come forward to say these things. I am a proud person but I am also a realistic; this is not the path I had ever intended to take in life. I am doing this only because as the situation has become more severe, the thought occurred to me that if I don’t do something to improve the situation, it may never improve.
Does anyone else feel the same way? I imagine many of you do. Let’s work together.
(Apologies for any typos. I have been up for over 24 hours writing, responding to messages and debating. I actually can barely see the words on the screen but I wanted to finish this while this is still fresh in my mind)
UPDATE: 9/22
I am publishing this update, because Tai Harden-Moore made a rebuttal to this article. Here is what she said, and my response.
