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TEXAS AG SAYS COUNTY CLERKS DON’T HAVE TO ISSUE SAME-SEX MARRIAGE LICENSES IF IT VIOLATES THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS:  Am I the only one having flashbacks to some of Kurt Schlichter’s Conservative Insurgency scenarios?

ISLAMIC STATE AND THE UTOPIA PROBLEM: DESTROYING THE PAST TO COMMAND THE FUTURE: At Fox News, Ralph Peters observes totalitarian zealots hard at work with airbrushes and warm glowing memory holes, at home and abroad:

For all of their profound differences, the Islamic State and the Left have one purpose in common: They want to wipe out history so they can write it anew to support their utopias, the perfected societies of their inhuman fantasies.

The Islamic State destroys wondrous monuments to prevent “pagan worship,” to purify Islam and restore the caliphate to a state of perfection it never possessed. Aiming at a less puritanical, if equally rule-bound utopia, the American Left has all but destroyed the teaching of history in our schools, scorning facts in favor of paternalistic condescension toward minorities.

Thus it’s not enough to take the reasonable step of removing the Confederate Battle Flag from state and local government properties. That flag must be driven from the marketplace, from all public spaces and, at last, from the personal space, since it might be “hurtful,” even if hung in a basement. It’s admirable to celebrate the Black Panthers, but not for a struggling working man to honor a Civil War ancestor. In this case, brothers and sisters, bigotry ain’t a monopoly.

Islamist State sledgehammers smash off the faces of classical-era statues. Our Left wants to remove Founding Fathers and others from our currency to replace them with minor figures that suit their agenda. Both actions are about mastering the past to control the future.

(Might I suggest a compromise on the currency issue? The Left can put anyone it wants on the 20-dollar bill, if our high-school textbooks can teach that the Democratic Party was the party of slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow and segregation into the 1960s – and remains the party obstructing quality education in inner cities.)

In a classic essay, Tom Wolfe contrasted the left’s universal goal of “Starting From Zero” with “The Great Relearning” that must inevitably follow. But I’m starting to wonder if too much history and knowledge has been wiped out for the great relearning to ever occur.

RAND PAUL:  Government Should Get Out of Marriage Business:

While I disagree with Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage, I believe that all Americans have the right to contract.

The Constitution is silent on the question of marriage because marriage has always been a local issue. Our founding fathers went to the local courthouse to be married, not to Washington, D.C. . . .

The government should not prevent people from making contracts but that does not mean that the government must confer a special imprimatur upon a new definition of marriage.

Perhaps the time has come to examine whether or not governmental recognition of marriage is a good idea, for either party.

Since government has been involved in marriage, they have done what they always do — taxed it, regulated it, and now redefined it. It is hard to argue that government’s involvement in marriage has made it better, a fact also not surprising to those who believe government does little right.

So now, states such as Alabama are beginning to understand this as they begin to get out of the marriage licensing business altogether. Will others follow?

I have long agreed with the basic premise that marriage is a contract and should not be a “license” granted by government.  The contractual approach isn’t a panacea for societal division over the meaning of marriage, however, as presumably many would still like to prohibit practices such as (adult) incest and polygamy, which contract law, alone, would not do.  A contractual approach would also necessitate (presumably) temporal limitations on marriage contracts, such that a “marriage for 30 minutes”–prostitution–would not be legal, as it is in Islam.

So for better or for worse (pun intended), government will remain in the marriage business to some extent, either by limiting those eligible for a “license,” or limiting those eligible to “contract.” Dispensing with the license-based marriage in favor of contract-based marriage may not lessen government regulation, but it would likely eliminate government benefits, such as joint filing for income tax purposes.

NEW YORK’S BIGGEST SLUM LORD: Time to evict New York’s public-housing slumlord.

FREUDIAN SLIP: CNN’S TOOBIN ADMITS ‘WE’ CELEBRATE GAY RIGHTS VICTORIES BEFORE WALKING IT BACK.

All of the media kabuki about being “objective” dates back to a philosophy from the days of the first national radio networks 90 years ago. As I wrote several years ago in the New Individualist magazine, with the birth of mass media, journalists had to convince the public (and the FCC) that they were “objective,” since they were increasingly the only game in town until media began becoming democratized once again and as Alvin Toffler would say, “demassified,” via talk radio, Fox News, the Internet, and the birth of the Blogosphere.

In the 21st century, nobody buys the notion about journalists being objective, and news outlets and their spokesmen such as CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin would be far better off if they started being honest with their customers, and openly declaring their allegiances.

CAMPUS SUSTAINABILITY: “It’s the new religion, and it’s the new home of the entire liberal agenda,” Katherine Kersten writes in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune of all places:

The Church of Sustainability derives many of its major themes from Judeo-Christianity. It teaches that the Earth — once a pristine Eden — is now fallen and polluted because of human sinfulness, and that an apocalyptic Judgment Day looms unless mankind repents. Absolution and salvation are possible if humans heed the enlightened saints and prophets who warn us of impending doom.

As sustainability spreads beyond the campus, we increasingly see it touted in coffee shops, celebrated by major corporations and embraced by urban planners. For example, it’s the ideology driving “Thrive MSP 2040,” the Metropolitan Council’s new 30-year plan for development in the Twin Cities region, with its pervasive themes of top-down planning and rule by “experts.”

It’s ironic that college campuses are home base for the sustainability movement. For higher education is among the least sustainable of our contemporary institutions. Colleges and universities are caught in a death spiral of rising costs and declining benefits. Nevertheless, they obsess about recyclable napkins, solar panels and fossil-fuel divestment, and pour $3.2 billion annually — frequently without assessing effectiveness — into achieving their dreams of sustainability, according to the NAS.

Hey, I know somebody’s who’s written a bunch of books about that! But it’s not all that ironic that colleges are obsessed with “sustainability” even as they’re dying as institutions themselves. It tends to occur wherever the left congregates. Here in California, over half the residents seem to act like kids living in a giant dorm. As Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote, Sacramento can’t be bothered to address the myriad real-world issues tearing the state apart at the seams. It has a state-wide drought, despite bordering an ocean, because desalinization plants give environmentalists the vapors. Its roads and schools are some of the worst in the nation. But the state’s politicians sure are obsessed with fantasies such as high-speed rail, aren’t they? As Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote in an article titled “Goodnight, California,” it’s as if Sacramento is telling voters, “I am too bewildered by your premodern challenges, so I will take psychological refuge in my postmodern fantasies.”

JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, DAVE? Artificial Intelligence Machine Gets Testy With Its Programmer.

AN “ALLEGED SQUIRREL” and that character from the 1980s, subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz. (“A neighbor is complaining about something screeching in the walls.”)

SHAMELESS! BRITISH POLITICIAN PICTURED TAKING SELFIE AT SPOT ON TUNISIAN BEACH WHERE TOURISTS WERE SLAUGHTERED: “Amran Hussain, 29, an Army reservist who stood for North East Hampshire [representing the Labour party] in the recent election, was pictured holding his selfie stick aloft as he grinned in front of a pile of flowers and tributes. With the sun loungers where dozens tourists were slaughtered clearly visible in the background, the senior officer for NHS England looked directly at the camera in aviator-style sunglasses.”

If he can find someone brave/crazy enough to implement it, Adam Carolla has proposed a simple method to ban selfie sticks on tourist flights…

HILLARY GUMP: “The fictional and cinema hero Forrest Gump somehow always managed to turn up at historic moments in the latter twentieth century. But whereas Forrest usually had a positive role to play at the hinges of fate, the equally ubiquitous Hillary Gump usually appeared as a bit player who made things far worse,” Victor Davis Hanson writes.

ROGER SIMON’S JULY 4 PROPOSAL: Republican Candidates Should Stand Together to Block Iran Deal.

(Bumped.)