Look at this yard sign. Pause the video if you need to. Surely you’ve seen it before. For those listening, it reads…
In this house, we believe:
Black Lives Matter.
Women’s Rights are Human Rights.
No Human is Illegal.
Science is real.
Love is love.
Kindness is Everything.
Recently, I casually mentioned my assessment of this sign: “Dumb talking points” with “bumper sticker logic.” I was surprised when a loved one asked me why.
The loved one is young, but he’s no dummy.
And it occurred to me that the ubiquity of this yard sign speaks to its persuasive power. So, I promised to explain my assessment.
I’ll share the result with you, point by point.
In This House, We Believe
It would be too easy to overlook this first bit on the original yard sign. But it frames the sign with powerful ambiguity: It could mean that in THAT house they all happen to believe the same things; or it could mean that if you step into this house, you must believe as we do or you’re not welcome.
Given that the opening line carries the full religious valence of “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord,” I’m guessing the ambiguity is intentional. So, every time I see that sign, I feel unwelcome. It’s just too easy to read the intro as: If you don’t share my sentiments, don’t bother knocking.
Black Lives Matter
I don’t want to reopen old wounds or rehash the scandals surrounding the organization’s founders.
I want to look at the phrase itself—and the glaring hypocrisy of how it’s applied.
The implicit premise of the movement is that black lives are under unique, existential threat from systemic violence. But if you look at actual mortality data, the narrative falls apart.
According to the FBI’s 2019 expanded homicide data, in single-offender cases, white offenders killed 246 black victims. That same year, black offenders killed 566 white victims—more than double, despite the white population being roughly five times larger.
Now, the standard defense here is that interracial crime is a fraction of total homicides, and that most crime is intra-racial. That’s true. Overall, nearly 7,500 black Americans were homicide victims that year, and roughly 90 percent of the offenders were black.
Furthermore, police shootings of unarmed black individuals—while tragic and deserving of scrutiny—number in the low dozens per year in a country of 330 million people.
So here is the question of logic: If the slogan is Black Lives Matter, why does the outrage engine activate only in the rarest of circumstances?
Why does an exceedingly rare event stoke nationwide protests, while thousands of daily deaths generate quiet indifference from the very people displaying this sign?
If Black lives matter, they should matter everywhere, at all times—not just when a tragedy fits a preferred narrative.
Women’s Rights are Human Rights
M’kay. This one is a head-scratcher, till you notice the double standard. It comes in how the sign frames universal rights and dignity. Expanding “Women’s rights” into “Human rights” is offered here as a necessary moral upgrade. But if anyone tried similarly to expand “Black Lives Matter” into “All Lives Matter,” they would be accused of erasing the unique struggles of a particular group.
So, universal dignity is treated as the ultimate justification in one context, but a bad-faith distraction in another… On the very same yard sign! Is this subtlety, stupidity, or cynicism? I cannot say. All I know is that the very same people who claim that women’s rights are human rights are not willing to restrict access to immigrants from cultures where most men treat women as chattel... Which leads us to our next bromide.
No Human is Illegal
This bumper-sticker line doesn’t make everyone roll their eyes, but perhaps it should.
The slogan relies on a semantic trick: it conflates a person’s existential humanity—which cannot be illegal—with a person’s legal status (after unlawful entry).
Jurisdictions have borders that function like porous membranes, regulating the inflow and outflow of people.
Citizenship is a legal designation that defines an individual’s formal membership in a jurisdiction. It carries with it certain rights, duties, protections, and benefits.
None of these is infinite.
So, whatever you think about immigration levels, there must be limiting principles.
Science is Real
Science is real, huh? What does that mean? Science is a process rooted in both skepticism and methods of observation. People apply these in their efforts to determine what is real and perhaps to explain real phenomena.
It’s true that science is not the same thing as writing fiction or making art. But writing fiction and making art are real, too, though writers and artists might be less concerned with investigating reality or explaining real phenomena. Still, why would anyone care if I claimed that art is real?
We can only assume, then, that “Science is real” is shorthand for “Science is a method for understanding the world.” Yet almost no one denies this. So why mention it on the yard sign? Maybe it implies something more like “Trust the Science™,” which we shouldn’t always do, especially because The Science™ is so often corrupted or in error.
Just ask Anthony Fauci and Al Gore.
Love is Love
And a tautology is a tautology. I understand the sentiment: people of any race, sex, or sexual orientation can fall in love, and that isn’t inherently wrong or unhealthy. But as a slogan, it’s more a vague platitude designed to signal moral high ground than to make any meaningful case.
Besides, one can hold traditional taboos or advocate for sexual restraint without opposing the basic truth that love is valuable.
Indeed, sometimes love requires sexual restraint.
Kindness is Everything
Sure, kindness is important. But it’s not everything. Nor is it universally practiced by the people displaying these yard signs.
Starting with kindness is generally good practice. But sometimes we have to get stern. Sometimes we even have to strike fear into real enemies. And kindness cannot be the basis of social or economic policy.
Kindness is a practiced virtue. It’s good. It’s valuable. And it helps hold society together. But it ain’t everything.
So, let’s kindly request a little more critical thinking.
The Whole Enchilada
Now, what can we conclude about the sign, taken as a whole? At best, it’s vague moralism. At worst, it’s a tangle of contradictions and feelings. Somehow, though, it managed to persuade millions of people that it contained a powerful message. It signaled solidarity in sanctimony. But that says so very little about the people who took the money to buy it, and the time to stake it in the ground.
And look. We could do a whole episode about the vacuous bumper-sticker logic of MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. And maybe my loved one would like to see that, too. But for now, we’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Until next week, I’m Max Borders.
Let’s criticize by creating.
