We are all familiar with the expressions, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” or, “A stitch in time saves nine,” meaning it is wise to catch a problem early, while it is small and manageable, rather than to wait until it has grown and become a serious threat. We understand this with things like weeds in our garden or cancer.  But somehow, we neglect it in the arenas of politics and culture.

James Madison lamented that Americans waited until a situation became a crisis before they acted. Politics are so wide ranging, and solutions seemingly beyond the reach of the individual, so most people simply throw up their hands and hope for the best. This must change if America is to survive the Socialist onslaught it is now facing!  “Now is the time,” as Patrick Henry admonished, “for all good men to come to the aid of their country!”

If you are at all aware of what is going on in America, you know radical changes are occurring. This nation was founded on the novel idea that if people are adequately taught in Christian virtues and are self-disciplined, they can govern themselves. Is it not transparently clear that if people govern themselves, they need nobody else to govern them? America is the only, or at least best, example in human history of a self-governing nation!

Abraham Lincoln noted in his famous “Gettysburg Address” that we have a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” The point being that, as the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution states, “We the People” are the government and those we send to our state and national capitals are our servants, not our masters. With the events of the last several years it appears that many of those we have sent to do our will now see themselves as rulers, not servants. President Joe Biden exposed his own personal ambition when he commented publicly regarding Georgia gubernatorial candidate, Stacy Abrams, that if the Democrat Party had more like her, “We could rule the world!”

No, Mr. Biden, the U.S. Constitution does not make politicians rulers! It makes them servants! Any American politician who establishes himself as the “ruler” is guilty of insurrection!

Good and wise leaders do not exacerbate public fears or exploit them to increase their own personal power, but rather seek to calm the public in times of crisis. Yet day after day our political and cultural leaders ignite new fires and then throw gasoline on them to arouse as much fear as possible. Sweep aside the rhetoric and anyone can see that while the pandemic has tragically taken many lives, it has not done nearly as much damage to America as the rhetoric and fearmongering have.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died in wars to enable us to be free to live according to our own consciences, desires, and abilities, but we are now being led down a path toward submission, even tyranny, ironically in the name of “saving lives!” However, virtually everything we have heard from the media and government over the last two years has proven to be either inaccurate or outright lies!  One mandate after another is conditioning Americans to the idea that our elected leaders are our masters, and we must obey them! This must be resisted!

Individually we do not have much power, and neither do our political leaders, which is as it should be. It is only as we come together, listen to one-another, find common ground, and make decisions as a nation that changes are made.

Should we be concerned that tyrants might lurk in the halls of Congress or other institutions of power in the United States masquerading as beneficent saviors?  Well, consider that Joseph Stalin studied religion as a young man, and Adolf Hitler wanted to be an artist. Basher al-Assad, the butcher of Syria, studied for a career in medicine. From these examples we understand that tyrants’ personal ambitions and brutality are generally not known until it is too late to stop them.

The adage, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” reminds us that under no circumstance can we allow individuals or small groups to gain too much power. Do we have a Hitler or Stalin walking in our midst? Do we really wish to find out? By the time we figure it out it will be too late  At times like this we should look back to patriot Patrick Henry who notably asked,

“is life so dear and peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?  Forbid it, Almighty God!” 

He also noted that

“the Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government-lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” 

How prescient he was!

For that reason, we must act now to prevent any person or any group from amassing such political powers.  If multiplied thousands of Americans went to their deaths on the battle fields of Europe and the South Pacific to ensure our liberties, then we must not shirk our responsibility to stand for freedom, regardless of the personal or national cost.

We were told in panicked tones that COVID-19 would take millions of lives in America, but if we wore masks for two weeks it would flatten the curve and put us on a course to defeat it. Here we are, over two years later and neither of those predictions were accurate. Such proclamations were, in fact, merely a pretext for amassing power in Washington. Sadly, a precise accounting of deaths appears impossible as anecdotal evidence suggests the government incentivized listing any death where Covid-19 was present a COVID death, even if the virus was not the actual cause of death.

And we have myriad reports of people dying who were not infected at all yet were reported as COVID related deaths. What actually happened? We don’t really know, do we? It is said that “the first victim of war is truth.” And, if you are not seeing it, understand that we are in, as some have pointed out, a “cold civil war.” Americans are terribly divided, and our leadership is largely to blame.

Actor Michael Douglas in a video made not long ago noted that our political system has been “hijacked” to “ensure that those with power keep it.” Truer words have not been spoken. Our Constitution yields very limited power to elected officials and only for a brief time. It is diametrically opposed to anyone having great power for even a moment.

The answer to the power-grab by the Leftists is not to accrue power to conservatives, but to educate all Americans regarding the necessity of diffusing power across the electorate, and the importance of informed voting. Loyalty to God and country must eclipse Party and even friends. Too much is at stake!

First and foremost, the answer for America is to bow at the feet of Jesus Christ in repentance and submission to His lordship over every nation and people!

If noble and patriotic citizens do not stand up, speak up and act, it may soon be too late.

As the debate over abortion rages, with the U.S. Supreme Court poised to possibly overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 pro-abortion ruling, I find myself wondering: How can anybody claim that God is in favor of abortion? But some do. Or how can they claim that the issue is important, but not really that important?

‘It’s About Abortion’

Francis X. Rocca wrote for The Wall Street Journal (6/13/22) on the ongoing split between Catholic bishops on the issue of “Abortion Politics.” The issue is: Should Catholic politicians who are strongly pro-abortion, such as Nancy Pelosi, nonetheless receive Communion?

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco thinks Pelosi should not receive it. As Bishop Michael Barber of Oakland puts it, “because it’s really not about Communion, it’s about abortion, the killing of a child in its mother’s womb.”

In contrast, Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego claims also to oppose abortion, but his view (as characterized by Barber) seems to be, that “it’s not wrong enough that you need say or do anything about it or interact with the politicians who are publicly promoting it.”

Christian Leaders Who Support Abortion

This debate is not among Catholics alone. A few weeks ago the Associated Press (5/20/22) wrote an article highlighting professing Christian leaders who claimed their faith demanded that they support abortion.

They quote Kendra Cotton of the Black Southern Women’s Collective: “We know that Christianity supports freedom, and inherent in freedom is bodily autonomy. Inherent in Christianity is free will. When people talk about the body being a temple of God, you have purview over your body, there is nothing more sacred.” Than what — being able to abort your own baby?

Obviously, what is ignored here is the sacred nature of the unborn child created in the image of God. In Psalm 139, David describes how we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” even in utero: “You knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”

“Thou shalt do no murder” is the 6th Commandment. That directly applies to abortion, the deliberate taking of a human life, albeit in the womb (hidden from view).

Meanwhile, it would seem that the vast majority of Christian leaders in the conservative denominations are clearly opposed to abortion — thankfully.

And why shouldn’t they be? We know more today, scientifically, about the humanity of the unborn baby than the Supreme Court did in 1973, when they gave us Roe v. Wade.

From Planned Parenthood to Pro-Life

When women see a sonogram of the unborn, they often become pro-life.

Abby Johnson, author (with Cindy Lambert) of the book, Unplanned, was the Planned Parenthood Employee of the Year in the late 1990s. The very next year, at her own clinic for which she served as the manager, she quit shortly after witnessing the sonogram of a 15-week old preborn child being aborted. The poor kid didn’t have a chance.

Today pro-life Abby helps medical workers transition out of the abortion industry into other jobs through her outreach, And Then There Were None.

Other Excuses for Abortion

Another commandment is that we are not to tell lies. But we often forget that Roe v. Wade was built on a series of lies, e.g., that “Jane Roe” was raped. She was not. Well, if you favor killing unborn babies, why would you have a problem telling lies?

Another commandment forbids adultery. Sometimes abortions are committed to cover up the sin of adultery. Abortion could be viewed as violating at least three of the Ten Commandments.

When Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address, he brought out the issue of God and slavery. Speaking about the two sides in the Civil War, he said, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces but let us judge not that we be not judged.”

He goes on to point out, “The prayers of both could not be answered — that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’”

An Act of Violence

And we would ask today: How can any true Christian accept the direct violence of dismembering an unborn child simply because the mother has been deceived to think this is her only choice in the matter?

Every abortion is an act of violence no matter how sterile it may be presented in the media. Lila Rose of Live Action has documented that violence.

Those who claim God is on the side of the abortionist are not only supporting a terrible evil; but they are likely violating the Third Commandment by taking the name of the Lord God in vain.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

A Lawless Decision Finally About to Be Overruled

The U.S. Supreme Court appears to be poised, absent dereliction of duty or cowardice, to overrule one of the most wicked, unlawful, and murderous decisions it has ever issued.

In overturning (destroying, really) Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113), the Court will have done much to restore judicial integrity, but not enough.

In 1820, amid the attempt to end slavery in the United States, a compromise for admitting the State of Missouri to the Union was reached. While imposing some limits to official political support for slavery, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, in effect, continued the U.S. Government’s official endorsement of the systematic enslavement and forced servitude of large numbers of kidnapped Africans.

Likewise, in 1854, this compromise was replaced with another [1]; to let the States decide for themselves whether or not to allow the majority to enslave the minority. Opposition to this replacement (proposed by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas) was the basis for formation of the Republican Party and the rise in prominence of Abraham Lincoln.

Once again, the unalienable Right to Liberty of these People, was officially alienated from them with the explicit consent of The United States of America!

Today, according to the verified initial draft of Justice Samuel Alito‘s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center [2] (better described as Jackson Unwanted Children’s Death Center), the Court rightly demolishes both Roe [3], and its descendant Planned Parenthood v. Casey (505 U.S. 833).

In the Dobbs draft though, the Court continues to sanction the States’ unconstitutional denial of certain persons’ Right to Life at the hands of those more powerful. States may not lawfully do so. I call it the Mississippi Compromise of 2022.

According to one list of deaths at the hands of tyrannical dictators, the United States’ denial of the Right to Life of 63,000,000 children unwanted by their mothers since the Roe v. Wade decision—boys and girls whose only crime was being too small to be defended—places post-1973 America in second place (behind only Mao’s Communist China and ahead of Stalin’s Socialist Russia and Hitler’s National Socialist Germany) [4].

Justice Alito’s draft several times vaguely refers “the rule of law.”

The foundation of any American Rule of Law must be what we, the People of the United States, declared to all mankind to be “self-evident” truth, in support of our revolution from England, simply that:

• All mankind is created, equal.
• The Creator has given rights to man (endowed with) which cannot be removed (unalienable).
• Governments, such as that we were about to form, are instituted for the purpose of securing those rights (which include Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness) deriving their power from the consent of the governed.
• The governed have a right to overthrow governments which do not follow the Rule of Law.

The Court’s draft states, that abortion “presents a profound moral question,” but as Justice Alito proves, science has answered that question (i.e., “is there a human in a pregnant mother’s womb?”), in the affirmative.

The question therefore really becomes a profoundly immoral one, “will government permit the stronger Person (parent) to extinguish the life of the weaker (unborn child)?”

The draft purports to “return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.” This is tyranny of the majority.

Neither the U.S. Constitution, nor the Rule of the Law permits such injustice. Neither the People nor their representatives can ever possess such authority:

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. (Romans 13:3-4)

According to the Rule of Law, every human being has a self-evident, God-given, unalienable Right to Life, which is to be secured by any legitimate government. From the moment of conception, we are now scientifically able to identify precisely, the existence of a human being. Therefore, we (i.e., all branches of government, and the governed, by whose consent they rule) must secure this right to every human being within our authority:

This will of his (mankind’s) Maker is called the law of nature … no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this. (William Blackstone [5])

As the draft indicates, the U.S. Constitution most certainly does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion, as Roe and Casey did. Neither though, does it permit the citizens of each State to deny persons within their borders, their human Right to Life!

The unalienable Right to Life of every human being within the borders of the United States of America must be secured by the equal protection of the laws of all governments within the Union. The court has the duty under the U.S. Constitution (several places) and the American Rule of Law to so rule.

This is only a first draft. Let us continue to pray, more fervently than ever, that the Court will revise this draft and finally affirm the U.S. Constitution and American Rule of Law: that all States must, to the best of their ability, secure the Right to Life for all people within its jurisdiction.

[1] Note that these “compromises” occurred while the nation was still operating under the American Rule of Law, based upon the law of the Creator, and therefore came from Congress. The legal profession soon thereafter adopted positive law (foundation of law is judicial decisions, therefore improperly expanding role of judiciary), so this similar “compromise” is now coming from the Court.

[2] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21835435/scotus-initial-draft.pdf

[3] As demonstrated by the Court’s draft opinion, lawyers, including those who approve of the result, have always known Roe was a bad decision, but modern law schools leave no concept of a decision being ‘bad’ law, since cases determine the law.

[4] https://about-history.com/list-of-dictatorships-by-death-toll-the-top-10-biggest-killers-in-history/

[5]  Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law was the third most cited source in the writings of the founders. https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/founding-father-s-library

First, they came for the George Washington mural in a school in San Francisco—because our first president had been a slaveowner. Later they came for his name on the same school, and as of last count, the name survived.

Then, they came for the statues of the father of our country during the summer of statue-toppling.

Now, the left wants to strip his name from his eponymous university.

Commentator Nick Nolte (not the actor) notes that The Washington Post, named after you-know-who, has published the opinion of a student at George Washington University, which is in the city of you-know-who, District of Columbia.

Nolte sums up the student’s article thusly: “This university is racist, and George Washington was racist, and while I didn’t find this offensive enough to pass up attending school here, harrumph, harrumph, harrumph, half-truth, half-truth, half-truth, I’m so virtuous, I’m so virtuous, I’m so virtuous…”

That student even wants Winston Churchill’s name removed from the library.

This is just another indication of how the left is at war with Western Civilization. If we continue down this path, there would be virtually nothing left of the great traditions of freedom and flourishing that the West has enjoyed, primarily because of our Judeo-Christian tradition.

Was George Washington a hero or a villain? Well, consider this. William Wilberforce was often called “The George Washington of Humanity.”

Alas, many don’t know who Wilberforce was. But he was a committed Christian statesman who served as a long-time Member of Parliament. With a team of colleagues and friends, he bitterly fought against slavery in the British Empire—and succeeded.

It took him more than half a century to accomplish this. And he did it in two stages. First, he fought against the slave trade itself. This stopped British ships from going to Africa, paying for slaves from Muslim slave-traders, who got them from other conquering African tribes.

Step one stopped the bleeding. Although they get virtually no credit for it, the founding fathers of America beat Britain in passing a law to stop the importation of slaves. As part of the original Constitution, they stipulated that in 20 years (1808) from the document being ratified (1788), there would be no more importation of slaves into the United States.

Step two in Wilberforce’s Christian crusade was to get all the slaves in the British Empire to be freed. He retired from Parliament in 1825, but others kept his crusade going through completion. Wilberforce received the news of the complete abolition of slavery in the British Empire on his deathbed in 1833.

Historian, retired professor, and bestselling author Dr. Paul L. Maier noted in our D. James Kennedy Ministries television special, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? that Wilberforce’s successful crusade helped ultimately lead to the end of slavery in America.

Maier says, “And then we also in our country on the basis of Christian principles, Abraham Lincoln and others, were able to do the same thing.”

William Wilberforce was one of history’s greatest heroes. And, again, this humanitarian leader was called “the George Washington of Humanity.”

What does that say about George Washington? That speaks volumes of our first president. He helped give birth to a nation that stands for freedom, under God. The Constitution he helped create had within it the seeds to one day overthrow the evil of slavery. And it happened.

At the cost of the lives of 700,000 men, but it happened.

Keep in mind a few facts about the father of our country. Washington voluntarily served his country when called on, relying on God to help him throughout.

Dr. Peter Lillback and I wrote a book many years ago about the faith of our first president, George Washington’s Sacred Fire.

 Lillback, the founding president of Providence Forum (for which I now serve as executive director), notes that Washington was a fourth-generation Virginia gentleman farmer. Slavery was built into that system. Washington inherited slaves by birth and later by marriage. When he died, Washington freed his slaves and made provision for them. He broke the cycle.

Both Washington and Wilberforce saw Jesus Christ as the ultimate hero. George Washington said in a famous letter that what America needs most is to imitate Jesus, “the Divine Author of our blessed Religion.” If we don’t, he warned, we can never hope to be a “happy nation.”

The Marxist iconoclasts of today, such as the triggered student at George Washington University, or the editors at The Washington Post, who promulgated such ideas to a wider audience, have no appreciation for the sacrificial contributions of those who went before us, that we might be free.

First, they came to remove Washington murals, then topple his statues. Now they want to rename the university named in his honor. What’s next? A call to rename the capital city?

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

We are all familiar with the expressions, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” or, “A stitch in time saves nine,” meaning it is wise to catch a problem early, while it is small and manageable, rather than to wait until it has grown and become a serious threat.  We understand this with things like weeds in our garden or cancer.  But somehow, we neglect it in the arena of politics.

James Madison lamented that Americans waited until a situation became a crisis before they acted, but I expect it is not only Americans who have that problem. It is people in general. Politics are so wide ranging, and solutions seemingly beyond the reach of the individual, most people simply throw up their hands and hope for the best. This must change for those of us who love what made America the greatest and freest nation ever!

If you are at all aware of what is going on in America, you know radical changes are occurring. This nation was founded on the novel idea that if people are adequately taught in Christian virtues and self-disciplined, they can govern themselves. America is the only, or at least best, example in human history of a self-governing nation! Abraham Lincoln noted in his famous “Gettysburg Address” that we have a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”  The point being that, as the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution states, “We the People” are the government and those we send to our state and national capitals are our servants, not our masters.  With the events of the last several years it is clear that many of those we have sent to do our will now see themselves as rulers, not servants.  President Joe Biden betrayed his own personal ambition when he commented publicly regarding Georgia gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, that if the Democrat Party had many more like her, “We could rule the world!”

No, Mr. Biden, our Constitution does not make politicians rulers!  It makes them servants!  Any American politician who establishes himself as a “ruler” is guilty of insurrection!

Good and wise leaders do not exacerbate fears or exploit them to increase their own personal power, but rather seek to calm the public in times of crisis.  Yet day after day our political and cultural leaders ignite new fires and then throw gasoline on them to arouse as much panic as possible.  Sweep aside the rhetoric and anyone can see that while the pandemic has tragically taken many lives, it has not done nearly as much damage to America as the rhetoric and fearmongering.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died in wars to enable us to be free to live according to our own consciences, desires, and abilities, but we are now being led down a path toward submission, even tyranny, ironically in the name of “saving lives!”  However, virtually everything we have heard from the media and government over the last eighteen months has proven to be either inaccurate or outright lies! One mandate after another is getting Americans used to the idea that “they” are our masters, and we must obey! This must be resisted!

Should we be concerned that tyrants might walk the halls of Congress or other institutions of power in the United States?  Well, consider that Joseph Stalin studied religion as a young man, and Adolf Hitler wanted to be an artist.  Basher al-Assad, the butcher of Syria, studied medicine. From these examples we understand that tyrants’ personal ambitions and brutality are generally not known until it is too late to stop them.

The adage, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” reminds us that under no circumstance can we allow individuals or small groups to gain too much power. Do we have a Hitler or Stalin walking in our midst? Do we really wish to find out? By the time we figure it out it will be too late! At times like this we are reminded of the thoughts of patriot Patrick Henry who notably said, “is life so dear and peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?  Forbid it, Almighty God!” He also noted that “the Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government-lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” How prescient he was!

For that reason, we must act now to prevent any person or any group from amassing such political powers. If multiplied thousands of Americans went to their deaths on the battle fields of Europe and the South Pacific to ensure our liberties, then we must not shirk our responsibility to stand for freedom, regardless of the personal or national cost.

We were told in panicked tones that COVID-19 would take millions of lives in America, and that if we wore masks for two weeks it would flatten the curve and put us on a course to defeat it. Here we are, going on two years since the virus showed up and neither of those predictions were accurate. Such proclamations were, in fact, merely a pretext for amassing power to Washington. Sadly, a precise accounting of deaths appears impossible as the government incentivized listing any death where COVID-19 was present a COVID death, even if COVID was not the actual cause of death.  And we have myriad anecdotal reports of people dying who were not infected at all yet were reported as COVID related deaths. We understand that “the first victim of war is truth.” And, if you are not seeing it, understand that we are in, as some have pointed out, a “cold civil war.”

Actor Michael Douglas in a video made not long ago noted that our political system has been “hijacked” to “ensure that those with power keep it.”

Truer words have not been spoken, and if noble and patriotic citizens do not stand up, speak up and act, it may soon be too late.

I recently read a very interesting, and brave, editorial from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. It appeared on AFA’s national news service – One News Now. He points out the contradiction in the efforts to remove statues all across America because of how the culture now views the words or actions of certain individuals which can often cloud how they are remembered today for their larger contributions.

The “woke” liberal culture has now even questioned statues of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and some abolitionists who worked to end slavery because they may have said things in certain ways reflecting their era about race or slaves that are frowned upon today. This cancel culture movement has even questioned Martin Luther King’s teachings and gone after people like Christopher Columbus and George Washington.

Donahue applies this new revisionist view to the homosexual movement. He wonders why corporations went over the top in promoting June as “Pride Month” when so many founders of the Pride movement were child molesters, supportive of child molestation, or other abhorrent behaviors.

For example, Harry Hay who is considered the founder of the modern gay rights movement supported adults having sex with minors stating that “young males would love it.” Hay admitted that he was molested by a 25-year-old adult male when he was 14, referring it as a “most beautiful gift.” He criticized homosexual parade organizers who tried to exclude NAMBLA (the North American Man Boy Love Association which advocates for pedophilia and the repeal of all age of consent laws) stating, “NAMBLA walks with me.” Hay also had connections to the Communist Party including setting up an organization of homosexual communists in the early 1950’s called the Mattachine Society.

Brenda Howard, who organized the first gay pride march in 1970 and was known as the “Mother of Pride” was an open advocate for sadomasochism, bondage, and polyamory.  Larry Kramer, founder of ACT-UP was also an advocate for NAMBLA. Gilbert Baker, the creator of the rainbow flag, was anti-Catholic and also reported to be a member of NAMBLA. Harvey Milk, a San Francisco politician memorialized in a Hollywood movie, and praised by President Barack Obama, was known to have had a live-in relationship with a young, runaway, 16-year-old boy when Milk was in his 30’s.

Donahue opposes the removal of many of our historic figures’ statues but wonders why these morally compromised founders of the gay rights movement are not held to similar standards when their beliefs and actions are far more problematic. “Why is it OK to trash Harry Truman but not Harry Hay?” Donohue asked.

It’s not a pretty subject, but it is a contradiction that our culture does not want to consider as it rushes to embrace an “anything-goes” ethic of sexual behavior.

(Note: In 2008, the Centers for Disease Control reported that homosexual and bisexual males were abused as children at a rate three times higher than heterosexual males. Other studies have found higher rates of childhood abuse among lesbian and bisexual women.)

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Tax-funded propagandists in media and academia across Illinois are demonizing the historic 1776 Report report on the public’s dime, without offering any examples of errors or inaccuracies among the facts presented by President Donald J. Trump‘s 1776 Commission.

Trump’s commission was created partly as a response to the debunked 1619 Project by the New York Times, which used deliberate lies to paint the United States as evil yet is being taught in government schools across Illinois. In particular, the previous administration sought to provide a counterweight to the indoctrination taking place in public schools. The goal:

“enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.”

Among the taxpayer-supported Illinois critics of the historical document was fringe “history” professor Lionel Kimble Jr. with Chicago State University. In his ramblings against the report, quoted by Chicago’s tax-funded NPR radio station WBEZ, Kimble did not challenge a single fact presented by the commission.

“I went between laughter to confusion to utter disdain,” Kimble told the tax-funded “news” station, as if ridicule were a substitute for facts, logic, and evidence. “I had this visceral reaction as I read it, and I just was shaking my head through most of it.” Calling it “ahistorical,” and with “no basis in historical fact,” the far-left professor said he “wasted my time reading it.”

In reality, the 40-page report was absolutely filled with historical facts, as anyone can verify by reading it. Indeed, much of the report is composed of direct quotes and excerpts from primary-source documents and historical statements by key figures in American history such as the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and more.

Saying that the report has “no basis in historical fact” when it is packed with primary-source documents and quotes from key historical figures shows Kimble either never read the report, knows nothing about what constitutes history, or is deliberately trying to mislead the people of Chicago.

Kimble then proceeded to offer powerful evidence that he had never actually read the report that supposedly made him laugh between his disdain and confusion. Ironically, he blasted the Trump administration because it “put this document out to say that America was perfect” right before the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

If Kimble had read the report, he would know that it dealt extensively with America’s failings. Indeed, the largest section in the report other than the appendix was about “challenges to America’s principles” including slavery (a scourge that has plagued virtually every human culture and civilization throughout history).

When asked by the Chicago NPR propagandist about its release before the MLK holiday, Kimble truly stepped in it. “I think that casts a long shadow on King’s assassination,” claimed the fringe “history” professor, whose book glorifying Big Government has not received a single review on Amazon in five years. “It tells people who believe in King and believe the things that he stood for that he died for nothing.”

But again, if Kimble had actually read the report, he would know that King was one of the most extensively quoted figures in the report. And ironically, considering his anti-American attitude, it appears that it is Kimble, not the 1776 Commission, who wants people to reject “the things that [King] stood for.”

Consider King’s own words quoted in the 1776 Report. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir,” King said, adding that the founding documents protected the unalienable rights of black and white Americans.

Kimble’s rambling interview continued by claiming America is a “historical wasteland” where Americans “don’t talk about things” because “it doesn’t make Americans feel good about the atrocities that we’ve done as a nation.” Then he suggested that America, like National Socialist (Nazi) Germany, must repent more.

Yes, seriously; Brought to you by the taxpayers of Illinois and the Unites States of America. Efforts to reach Kimble to explain his bizarre comments were unsuccessful. A phone number listed for him on Chicago State University’s website had been disconnected, and no alternate number was provided by the recording.

Kimble and Chicago’s NPR were not the only tax-funded extremists to demonize the report and America without actually citing a single example of something wrong with it. Tax-funded propagandists at NPR Illinois did the same thing, quoting a tax-funded academic blasting the 1776 Commission’s report without identifying a single error in the document.

Legitimate journalists would have at least provided balance. They could have done this by quoting or interviewing any of the scholars and experts behind the report — people like the highly respected Dr. Carol Swain, the co-chair of the 1776 Commission and a (black) former law professor at Vanderbilt Law School, for example.

Instead, tax-funded propaganda outlets in Illinois chose to interview tax-funded pseudo-“scholars” whose specialty appears to be the fact-free demonization of America. No wonder opposition to tax subsidies for NPR and other far-left propaganda is growing so quickly across America.

Please consider supporting the work of Illinois Family Institute. 

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In the article describing “hate speech” tactics,[i] we saw how people are called haters if they oppose the homosexual or transgender agenda. The intent is to shame the opponents into silence, that the activists’ march through American culture can continue unopposed. In this article, we’ll see how the activists try to punish those who actually do stand against them. It touches on these points:

• When people are brave and unfazed by accusations, the activists turn to the personal destruction tactics of cancel culture.

• The effects of cancel culture can be expensive and physically dangerous. The idea is to eliminate the target’s opposition and discourage others.

• Even businesses and politicians are using these tactics.

• Defenses against political cancel culture involve forcing politicians to treat all of us fairly, and to honor our Constitutional rights.

• Defenses against business and social media cancelling involves diversification, greatly multiplying our communications choices.

No compromise is possible for attackers of America’s culture

America started with a strong Christian identity. But thanks, in part, to Christians saying that culture isn’t important,[ii] we no longer have a solid consensus about what our culture should be. Because “the Supreme Court follows the election returns,”[iii] we now have legalized “gay marriage,” even though our society is still fighting about it.[iv] Then there is the matter of transgender behavior, which its proponents expect all of us to unconsciously accept, not merely tolerate. We’re supposed to mindlessly support these things:

• Accept that a man or woman is whatever sex they choose to dress up as.

• Let those individuals use whatever sex-segregated public facility they choose to, just because they say so.

• Address them by whatever pronoun they’re pleased to use, whether it be “Mr,” “Miss,” “Xi,” “They,” or a great number of other odd pronouns.[v]

Or as Professor Karen Blair says, you shouldn’t care whether your potential mate is a man or woman. If you care then you’re adding to social injustice. She says:

Just as sociologists have tracked acceptance of inter-racial relationships as a metric of overall societal acceptance of racial minorities, future fluctuations in the extent to which trans and non-binary individuals are included within the intimate world of dating may help to illuminate progress (or lack thereof) with respect to fully including trans and non-binary individuals within our society. After all, it is one thing to make space for diverse gender identities within our workplaces, schools, washrooms and public spaces, but it is another to fully include and accept gender diversity within our families and romantic relationships. Ultimately, however, this research underscores the consequences of shared societal prejudices that impact our trans friends, partners, family members, and coworkers on a daily basis.[vi]

God condemns homosexual and transgender behavior. We see this both in the Old Testament (Leviticus 20:13) and New Testament (Romans 1:26-27).[vii] Christians can’t be faithful to God and also accept these behaviors in society. In turn, the promoters of homosexuality and transgenderism can’t back down without admitting that they’re living a lie. The resulting standoff is a culture war, and requires a victor. There is no long-term compromise possible. Soon enough one side gets overwhelmed. Remember when the call was to “please just tolerate gays?” The new call is for no dissent from their dogma, and full participation in their coming culture.

A decade ago, homosexualist activists were arguing that legalizing same-sex “marriage” was all about “acceptance” and “love,” and that it would have absolutely no impact on the daily life of most ordinary citizens. Opponents of same-sex “marriage” were routinely mocked with statements like: “How is it any of your business what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms?”, or, “If you don’t support gay marriage, don’t get one.” In other words: why get yourself worked up about something that has nothing to do with you?

However, just as pro-family advocates warned at the time, things haven’t turned out that way.

There are just too many examples of how same-sex “marriage”, and LGBT ideology in general, have impacted the daily lives of every citizen to cite in a single column. We saw this in a dramatic way throughout June – so-called “pride month.” One could scarcely open a website, or walk down the street, without being confronted by rainbow flags or other overt celebrations of licentious sexual practices. Many schools, libraries, and city and state legislatures flew the flag and held “pride” celebrations, while any effort to question the wisdom of using public buildings in this way was immediately shouted down as “homophobia” and bigotry.

However, this total saturation of the public space with pro-LGBT propaganda is merely one of the milder ways that LGBT extremism has inserted itself into everybody’s lives. Far more troubling is the way that the LGBT movement is propagandizing and recruiting children, often right under the noses of their parents. As a result, many well-meaning parents who decided not to speak out against same-sex “marriage” out of a desire to be more tolerant, are finding that they are losing their very children to belief-systems that they do not, in fact, support.[viii]

Christianity is evangelistic by nature. Through its obedience to God, His church illuminates the world with examples of God’s righteousness and mercy.[ix] It is a faith of action, of doing (James 2:14-26). When the church has freedom of action then God uses it to change the world. The homosexual and transgender activists can’t allow this, so they try to shut us up, with accusations of hate speech.[x] If we don’t voluntarily silence ourselves, and let them win unopposed, then they apply muscle to their demands. Cancel culture is their weapon of choice.

Cancel culture is how they silence our objections

The online Cambridge Dictionary has this definition for “cancel culture:”

a way of behaving in a society or group, especially on social media, in which it is common to completely reject and stop supporting someone because they have said or done something that offends you[xi]

The definition has interesting suggestions for using it in conversations:

Cancel culture has its place – it helps to call out and remove problematic people from mainstream culture.

In a cancel culture, we appoint ourselves the arbiters of right and wrong and also the judge and jury, because thanks to social media, we get to dole out punishment.

People participating in cancel culture mean to deprive their victims of social legitimacy and the privileges of community life. If this also inflicts economic loss or physical harm, so much the better. Since they can do these attacks without personal consequence, we see activity like this:

• Ruin someone by digging up a now unfashionable comment. In 1987 the young Navy pilot Niel Golightly wrote an opinion of why women should be kept out of combat roles. In 2020 this comment was discovered and Golightly got targeted. He lost his job for once having had a now politically incorrect opinion.[xiii]

• Punish someone who criticizes your cause. The professor Harald Uhlig criticized “Black Lives Matter” for being unrealistic about police funding. The cancel culture mob searched for things to use against him. Finding some minor incidents, they claimed that these proved how Uhlig was unfit to head a national academic journal. They demanded his firing.[xiv] The intended lesson is to never criticize “Black Lives Matter”.

• Change the culture through vandalizing history. Abraham Lincoln is accused of not having believed “black lives matter.” The mob ginned up support to remove his name from buildings, and statues honoring him are being vandalized and torn down.[xv] George Orwell pointed out, in his novel 1984, that if you can control what the public thinks, or can learn, about its past, then you can steer them into a future of your choice.[xvi] The mob has learned how to cancel history.[xvii] They also found that vandalism pays.

Political activists for homosexual and transgender issues have learned how to apply cancel culture tactics against “problematic people.” A small sample:

• Church ostracized from arts community because of sermon. The Crossing Church in Columbia, MO had an arts outreach ministry, giving money to local artists. But because of a sermon on God vs. transgender behavior, the church is now persona non grata in the arts. Galleries and theaters are pressured to stay away from the church’s assistance, or they themselves will get cancelled.[xviii]

• Feminist-supporting author cancelled for defending biology against transgenderism. Robert Jensen writes books and gives lectures. But his audience dried up once he asserted that biological sex is immutable. Bookstores won’t accept his books, he’s disinvited from speaking engagements, and he’s shouted down at other events. His views are inconvenient to the transgender behavior community.[xix]

• Pizza parlor forced to close after statements about not catering to “gay weddings.” The Memories Pizza parlor was reported to be unwilling to cater to a “gay wedding.” What followed was criticism, threats of vandalism against the business, and death threats against the owners.[xx] They never were actually asked to do that catering, but a reporter decided to create a news story. Despite the First Amendment, and Indiana religious freedom laws, apparently even advertising your Christian beliefs is a capital offense deserving of summary death.

These victims of cancel culture didn’t break any laws. In fact, their views and statements are generally mainstream culture. In a real sense, cancel culture is a form of social terrorism. It is effective, too, even if the results are temporary. The actual or imagined costs of being targeted by mob action – money, injury, vandalism – works to deter others from opposition, or even from offering silent support. This definition of cancel culture rings true:

Cancel culture is a call on organizations to terminate the financial sustenance (e.g., fire employees, stop hiring entertainers for gigs) or means of communication (removing from media platforms) of individuals who have done something objectionable. The objectionable thing may be an expressed opinion, or a statement made or action performed in the past. The act may have been unintentional, the person may have been unaware that it was objectionable, or it may be something that was not widely considered objectionable at the time. Since it is a past act, clearly the intention is not to return to favor by stopping the objectionable thing, it is to permanently punish and shun the transgressor.[xxi]

Businesses get into the cancel culture action

Business managers are human, and sometimes seek to make their businesses act as extensions of their own wants and desires. That’s how you end up with snack cracker ads “encouraging people to rethink what it means to be family,”[xxii] or assertions that “years of manufacturing and selling toothpaste make Colgate uniquely qualified to address questions around gender.” [xxiii] These ads show the world their managers’ political and cultural positions.

Running ads doesn’t interfere with the rights of anyone else, but cancel culture does. On the internet, it’s when a company blocks posts, and suspends the posting rights of people, because the company managers disagree with the posts’ cultural or political content. It’s when they block your company from getting any internet hosting at all, for the same reasons. Everyone else can have their say, but not you.

With Twitter and Facebook acting this way, it has become dangerous to our culture. Consider these reasons.

• Presented as being politically and culturally neutral. Since their content is user-generated, Twitter and Facebook supposedly have a fair slice of American opinion, reasonably reflecting the strengths and diversity of our culture. We know now that they aren’t neutral, but people still think that they are.

• Monopoly position. Twitter and Facebook have each gained a monopoly share in their particular specialty. Few people even realize that there are competitors.

• The go-to place for reaching people. The masses flock to Facebook to keep up with their friends and interesting people. They go to Twitter for timely news. Politicians post there because their constituents are already there. And it’s free to use, no subscription fees. These sites have become de-facto public squares, where people congregate to hear what is going on in their communities and the world. And supposedly, if it isn’t being said there then nobody is saying it at all.

• Hard to displace. It is a truism, that if you’re not paying for the product then you are the product. Twitter and Facebook make tremendous amounts of money from our being there. They get money from companies posting ads and from those buying audience information. A potential competitor would have to suffer years of heavy economic losses in hopes of taking back even a small share of the audience.

• Invisible hand in shaping opinions. People who visit Twitter or Facebook see posts, both deep and trivial, and think that this is the entire scope of American political and cultural discourse. These firms shield their viewers from non-approved content. People are propagandized, not through salesmanship but by omission. They’re being misled and haven’t a clue about it.

Through Twitter and Facebook meddling, America gets all the disadvantages of a one-newspaper town, except that the effects are national. It’s been shown many times that Twitter [xxiv] and Facebook [xxv] block conservative posts, and block proscribed people from posting. There are way too many outrage stories to list here. The important point is that they do interfere with American culture, seeking to influence us to accept the “progressive” way by choking opposing speech.

When companies can lever the opinions of its owners and managers into American culture, we become an oligarchy.[xxvi] The masses are ruled not by representatives but by an elite few. The actions of the people running Twitter and Facebook match those you’d expect of those aspiring to the oligarchy. We used to prosecute such companies for being monopolies.

Then there is the curious case of Apple and Google, which recently blocked the Parler application from their app stores.[xxvii] They effectively prevent people from accessing Parler until that service starts censoring posts Twitter-style. Through their actions, Apple and Google claim the right to censor what people say on forums. Although people can access Parler through a laptop computer, but not having a smartphone app cuts out a huge part of Parler’s potential audience.

Apple gave Parler 24 hours to “remove all objectionable content from your app … as well as any content referring to harm to people or attacks on government facilities now or at any future date.” The company also demanded that Parler submit a written plan “to moderate and filter this content” from the app.[xxviii]

These blocking activities come from cancel culture, for they seek to shut down a nexus of conversation because the companies disagree with the content. It is also monopolistic and anti-competitive,[xxix] but the government seems quite selective about what firms it goes after.

Politicians use cancel culture against their cultural opponents

We generally elect politicians because they’re opinionated. Their beliefs and views of our possible futures are important to us. But when they act on their opinions there are at least two ways where they can go wrong and betray their offices:

• Passing unconstitutional laws. A constitution is a charter for government, stating what acts it can try and the limits of its powers. Despite this, constitutions are exceeded quite frequently. For example, the U.S. Constitution’s commerce clause is leveraged by Congress to regulate most everything, even when the regulated activity doesn’t involve interstate commerce.[xxx] It is excused by all with a wink and a shrug.

Americans also have the Bill of Rights, amendments to the U.S. Constitution and, because of the Fourteenth Amendment, applying to all state governments.[xxxi]. These amendments don’t grant rights to the citizens. We don’t have religious freedom, etc., because of these amendments. Rather, these are warnings to, and restrictions on, the government. These are assertions that our rights pre-exist the Constitution, and a government that touches them overreaches its bounds. For example, the Ninth Amendment essentially says “if we’ve missed some of the citizens’ rights, then these, too, can’t be restricted by the government.”[xxxii] Note that these rights restrict the government, while modern activists want rights that expand government to provide new goodies.[xxxiii]

If an unconstitutional law is in place it is hard to get it overturned. Fighting off even the most blatantly wrong law takes lots of money and effort. And if you get a justice who favors that law – doesn’t it seem that only they get these cases? – this protracts the repeal efforts. So, passing an even obviously bad law could hurt many people for an awfully long time. When only those with enormous resources can get justice, then justice is generally denied. But that topic is out-of-scope for this article.

• Playing favorites when enforcing the law. “Nobody is above the law” is often said, but lots of people have charges dropped or overlooked because they “know somebody.” God doesn’t condone government favoritism (Leviticus 19:5), and these officials are “servants of God” (Romans 13:6) whether they like it or not. Some politicians are elected even though they’ve goals to overturn our Constitution.[xxxv] When laws are selectively applied then some citizens become more equal than others. When rioters aren’t arrested and prosecuted,[xxxvi] but their victims are,[xxxvii] then officials are participating in cancel culture.

A politician or bureaucrat practices cancel culture through denying some citizens their constitutional rights, and by treating groups differently depending on their political or cultural leanings. Consider these examples:

• Claims that your religious practices are illegal. Cultural activists create conflicts, inviting a District Attorney or Human Rights Commission to claim that you can’t actually practice your religious beliefs (James 2:14-26). Look how the Masterpiece Cakeshop was sued three times because the owner has Christian principles.[xxxviii] When a Commission, or a state’s attorney, works to disregard the accused’s religious rights, despite the First Amendment, it declares that some citizens have fewer rights than others. It also claims that a civil rights law is superior to the Constitution. These officials are trying to cancel the citizens and also our legal system.

• Create laws to ban your religious practices, and even force you to violate them. The Equality Act of 2020 would “prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.”[xxxix] Besides its actual provisions, it forces the changes onto the public and invalidates any religious objections. It’s been called the “Criminalizing Christianity Act.” It amounts to a cultural revolution through legislative fiat. It’s blatantly unconstitutional, but if it gets passed in the future then just try to get justice.

It is good and necessary to defend our Christian-based culture

The Christian basis of our founding is still rather alive in America’s culture. If it weren’t then there wouldn’t be these fierce cultural battles. The people practicing cancel culture want to break resistance to their aims of a political coup. They apparently don’t want to wait for our culture to gradually come over to their views. Perhaps they’re afraid of repentant Christianity.

But before renewing an expensive and exhausting defense of our culture, we should review why we want it. Is it worth fighting for? It is, for these reasons:

• The Christian believes that God created us, and that through Jesus redeemed us to be His children. We’re living for His sake.

• God’s tells us what is right and wrong. No other standard will do. From the Bible we learn how to relate to God, to live in righteousness, and to live peaceably with each other.

• Our faith is acted out in daily life. It isn’t a faith of mere meditation, but also of activities and decisions coming from that faith (James 2:14-26).

• Our resulting society must be righteous and God-honoring, or else. God judges all nations, whether ancient Israel, the rest of the ancient world (Daniel 4:27-37; Jeremiah 18:7-10), or any modern nation (Luke 3:14; Acts 12:21-23). God holds all the world to his standards, and woe to them who spurn His reproof.[xli]

A Christian society will endure if its members maintain their standards, and teach their children to do likewise. But if it slacks off its watchkeeping, then people with other ideas will reach our children, training them instead in the humanist, socialist religion.[xlii]

Make our politicians respect our Constitutional rights

A person taking a seat in the U.S. Congress promises to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”[xliii] A similar oath is taken by members of the various state legislative bodies. But when a politician promises to “take back” guns (Second Amendment), or make the “Equality Act” override religious objections (First Amendment), isn’t that oath breaking? And why isn’t it called “dereliction of duty” when government overreach is shown to them and they won’t set things right? These legislators are trying to sneak through overrides of the Constitution without going through the amendment process, and that is wrong.

The people don’t have the tools to directly remove faithless legislators. For example, only Congress can remove its own members through expulsion. The best the people can do about those seats is to ensure that the offending politicians don’t win reelection. But there are still tools available to us. As former Senator Everett Dickson said, “when I feel the heat, I see the light”.[xliv] Heat costs dedication, time, and money. How hot do you want to make your politician? Even hard line progressives tend to love their perks more than their ideology, and will work to appease you.

Then there are politicians who take sides in the culture war and render unequal civic services. For example, how the mayors tell the police to stand aside during Antifa riots in Portland and Minneapolis, and when the district attorneys won’t charge the rioters. They’re not rendering equal justice, but instead discriminating based on politics. Surely there are any number of laws that these officials are breaking, and there are many suits that can be filed. Justice is expensive, very much so. But the choice seems to be either expensive justice or no justice.

One thing that cancel culture warriors do is to dig up dirt on their targets, and then tell everyone about it. In other words, they do investigative reporting. We can, too. The newspaper and on-air reporters tend to hide bad news about the politicians they like.[xlv] This means that other people are going to have to investigate these faithless politicians. It is likely that, once the news is out, they’ll be destroyed by their own friends.

Every remedy mentioned here involves giving lots of time and money, and learning how to work with like-minded people. But we must do these things, and pay the costs, because our politicians fail us. It’s the price of defending our Christian culture. It’s also a witness to our enemies, and the currently uninvolved, of how we value what we still have.

Beating censorship through diversity and anonymity

The internet has millions of sites, such as the one hosting this article. Out of all of them, Twitter and Facebook are considered the American “go to” places for news and announcements. But since they’ve proven to be unfaithful at that, Americans ought to relearn the habit of seeking out multiple news sources. We can’t literally force people off of these services, but through small efforts can start an exodus, which we hope leads to bigger things.

• Stop posting on Twitter and Facebook. If you post worthwhile content on Twitter, your posts only increase its viewership. Likewise, if your social club is hosted by Facebook, it increases their advertising numbers but doesn’t benefit you any. Go ahead and move your internet home to some other service. Wherever you land, your audience will still seek you out. They might even like the relief from sponsored ads.

• Stop reading Twitter or Facebook. There ought to be other, equivalent sources for your news and entertainment. And every defection from Twitter and Facebook drops their revenue stream. If you have sources which only appear on Twitter, such as a politician or a funny writer, ask them to also post their messages elsewhere. You’re now building your own “not Twitter” network.

• Advertise your own “goodbye” movement. Compared to their total viewership, there aren’t that many people getting cancelled by Twitter or Facebook. But if people get the idea that it’s trendy to leave, and start doing it, you will have started a movement.

But diversity doesn’t mean just visiting more web sites. The internet itself is an information bottleneck, a trap. If your communications are only through the internet, being blocked from it would leave you deaf and dumb. There is little solace in having our First Amendment rights if we’ve no place to practice them. There’s safety in having backup plans (Ecclesiastes 11:2). What sorts of alternative communications can there be?

• Printed newspapers. Newspapers have been dying in the internet era. This is partly because they put content on the internet for free, and partly because so many of the papers have the same progressive slant. They’re just not worth reading. Yet small town local news, such as a village town hall, goes unreported for lack of a printed forum. Wouldn’t locals want to buy a weekly paper if it contained local news? How about a paper whose reporting reflects the community’s values, rather than fighting against them? We can only hope…

• Email lists. Email lists are still used in places. Subscribers periodically get an email with news, articles, or comments from other subscribers. They then submit their responses back to the central service. Because the back-and-forth of an argument depends on sequential posts from the central server, a conversation might take days to resolve. The virtue here is that these communications are available “off the web.”

• FidoNet messaging network. Before the modern internet appeared, people could set up a network of communicating computers, using software called FidoNet. This network operated much like an email list does, but did its work using phone calls. It had great flexibility for routing messages, and could work even with part of the network out-of-service. It required an expert to configure, but it worked. It’s almost forgotten today. Want to set up a secretive network? Why not use a forgotten technology?

• The practice of printing and distributing handbills has always been with us. You see them under windshield wipers, slid onto screen doors, and attached to light poles. The whole neighborhood will know that your group has been there. Although how many flyers you can distribute is limited by your manpower, any number of groups can distribute copies of that flyer, wherever they might be. And when your groups coordinate, they’re gaining networking skills. Consider buying a genuine printing press, because using ordinary computer printers cost way more for the volumes of leaflets you’ll generate.

Once you’re a target, seemingly anything can be accessed if your opponents have clout. Who would have expected to lose their privacy in these circumstances?

• Obama got his opponents’ sealed divorce proceedings revealed. During the 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate, Obama’s campaign people twice got the newspapers to reveal divorce proceedings of his opponents.[xlvi] First came details about his Democratic primary opponent, then those of his Republican general election opponent. Sticking with a winning tactic, President Obama’s reelection campaign of 2012 tried, but failed, to get Mitt Romney’s tax records. Similar attempts are still being made to get President Trump’s tax records. That the courts are willing to reveal sealed records shows that government promises of confidentiality can’t be trusted.

• Donors to Proposition 8 revealed, harassed, and attacked. In 2008, California held an election concerning Proposition 8, which essentially banned “gay marriage.” Many people donated to the campaign trying to pass the measure. After the election, opponents of the measure got the list of campaign donors and published it. This led to donors getting harassed and attacked. [xlvii] Some donors suffered property loss. Others lost their jobs, once news of their donations came out.

• Cell phone tracking identifies rally participants, traces them home. In 2020, people protested at the Michigan state capitol about the coronavirus virus lockdown decrees. After they went home, much cell phone data was harvested by political advocates.[xlviii] This is because many protestors had set their phones to permit location tracking by third parties. Organizations like VoteMap, which works with Democratic political campaigns, got the data and was able to trace these people almost all the way home.

You can sometimes evade becoming a cancel culture target. You’re not required to broadcast your location to everybody. Whether you’re at home or away, if you stay “communications anonymous” then you can’t be singled out for later harassment. Here are ways to reduce, or hide, your own tracks.

• Avoid using your credit card when out and about. When you’re on the road and use your credit card, the company knows where your card has been. By looking at the details, people can make guesses about what you were doing between purchases. There are lots of credit card employees willing to breach their company’s secrecy and spill that data to activists. It’s better if that data doesn’t exist at all. Ask at some gas stations, and you’ll be surprised by how many people are paying with cash.

• Stifle your cell phone. When you let your phone’s location data be collected by others, as in the Michigan rally story, you’re asking that your activities get spied on. You can disable that yourself. Even so, all cell phones constantly seek out the nearest cell phone tower. They’re calling home, and leaving an auditable trail of where they’ve been, whether it is to a rally, to church, or to a restaurant. This tower seeking occurs even when the phone is supposedly turned off. Only removing the battery truly turns the phone off, but many phones don’t have removable batteries. You could leave the phone at home, or you could put the phone in a Faraday bag. This envelope-like wallet blocks all signals into or out of the pouch, preventing the phone from snitching on you. Be aware that if you take the phone out of the pouch it will resume announcing its position until it is put away again. These pouches are cheap ($20 or so) and readily available online – look them up.

• Avoid using a car having GPS or satellite radio. A car with GPS map navigation, or satellite radio, knows where you are. The location is presumably recorded, as with a cell phone. If you want to travel without being tracked, you’ll have to find ways to disable this communication. If you’re carrying a portable device, such as that from Garmin, then disconnect its battery. If the GPS or satellite radio is built in, perhaps you can disconnect the antennas (which might also disable your radio). You could also try adding a GPS jammer to your car, to overwhelm the car’s own GPS antennas.

When you centralize your communications you get easy, one-stop shopping for news, etc. You are also easily controlled. Pay the costs of diversification to preserve your own uncensored communications. By doing this you might even play a part in monopoly busting.

Continue transforming the world for Christ

Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is like yeast, affecting every corner of society (Matthew 13:33). Through our obedience to God, how we live, our relationships, and the standards we insist on, God’s church spreads throughout society and transforms it. We’re not in a lifeboat awaiting salvation, we’re of the Great Commission, making disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:19-20). In the face of all trials, continue being the transforming yeast God wants us to be.[xlix]

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois! 

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Written by Dr. Everett Piper

I have said it a thousand times.

Ideas matter.

What is taught today in our classrooms will be practiced tomorrow in our culture. Teach self-actualization rather than self-restraint in your schools, and you are going to get a bunch of self-obsessed, perpetual children throwing tantrums in your streets.

Garbage in. Garbage out.

Teach narcissism, and you get a bunch of narcissists.

Spend more time showing young boys how to use a condom than teaching them how to be men of character and don’t be surprised with Matt Lauer and Harvey Weinstein.

Teach lechery, and you get lechers.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will become the philosophy of the government in the next.” Hitler agreed, “Let me control the textbooks, and I will control the state.”

Why do you see a gaggle of arrogant adolescents strutting the halls of Washington, D.C.? We produced them. We taught them to behave this way. We created this monster. This situation is of our own making. These people are our fault. They are the product of our local schools, our colleges and our universities.

Some of you might be tempted to dismiss this. You might be inclined to say that you don’t care that much about this topic because you’re not in college any longer, or you don’t have children or grandchildren headed off to the ivory tower this fall. This is the next generation’s problem.

Well, you’re wrong.

This is your problem, and it’s your problem in spades.

Just turn on the news.

Just read the paper.

Just pick up your smartphone or open your laptop.

If the burning cars, destroyed monuments and broken windows in Minneapolis, Seattle and New York haven’t caught your attention, what will? If tearing down statues of Frederick Douglass isn’t a bridge too far, what is?

Our culture is collapsing right before our eyes, and it is clear where the responsibility lies. Our nation’s educational establishment is to blame.

If we don’t admit this and admit it now, our country and culture are lost.

John Adams once wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He knew that for any nation to survive, it must have a moral and religious glue to bind it together, or it will die for lack of definition.

It will suffer the fate of the Bolshevik, French or Cultural Revolutions. It will fall for the lies of the likes of Robespierre, Lenin or Mao.

The American experiment was and is the singular exception to the guillotine and the gulag.

Why?

Because ours was a revolution driven by the Creator rather than the created. It was a revolution grounded in self-evident truths rather than self-righteousness arrogance. It was a fight for liberty rather than license. It was a battle for freedom rather than safety, for principles rather than power.

And where do these principles, these moral and religious truths, come from? They are passed from one generation to another through our schools. Our Founding Fathers knew this. This is why they founded Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton and Yale — all chartered expressly in the principles of biblical Christianity.

All these colleges were created to educate a free people, a moral people, a people who could and would control themselves, a people of personal restraint, a people of private and public virtue. These schools were founded to create a nation of biblical character and individual integrity.

Remove this cornerstone from our culture, and the house crumbles. When our schools rot, the fish stinks from the head down.

Our nation stands on the very precipice of hell, and your local school district thinks fomenting victimization, anger, balkanization and division is the solution.

Your neighborhoods are burning, and your schools rush to throw the gasoline of resentment, recompense and revenge on the fire.

Your teacher unions and many of their members march in solidarity with Marxists while they malign capitalism. They defend the destruction of Antifa. They applaud the divisiveness of BLM. They wave their rainbow banners while disparaging our country’s flag. They deny the science of X and Y chromosomes while calling you a science denier. They extol socialism while condemning free enterprise. They teach the racism of critical race theory. They tout the intolerance of intersectionality. They demand the privilege of denouncing your privilege. They use your sons and daughters as pawns in their ugly game of power and politics. They proudly boast of judging people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.

And they teach your children to do the same.

Yeah, that’ll solve the problem, won’t it?

The house is aflame, and your schools hold the match.

Dr. Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). This article was originally published at The Washington Times.

In a cowardly effort to lick the jackboots of Black Lives Matter, the NFL is reportedly going to have every NFL game during Week 1 open with the song “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” long known as the “black national anthem,” followed by the American national anthem, the “Star-Spangled Banner.” According to the Associated Press, the NFL is also “considering putting names of victims of police brutality on helmet decals or jersey patches.” (Maybe the NFL wants to tackle another serious societal problem and allow players to put the names of victims of domestic abuse committed by professional athletes on their helmets or jerseys. #LogInTheirEye)

African American James Weldon Johnson wrote the lyrics to “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” in 1899, and his brother John Rosamund Johnson composed the music. It was first performed by 500 black students at a segregated school on the occasion of Abraham Lincoln‘s birthday. In 1919, the NAACP adopted it as their official song. It is a moving and inspiring hymn to God, deeply meaningful to the black community. But is it an appropriate song for sporting events that bring together diverse peoples from all over the world for some diversionary entertainment?

Is a song that emerged from and reminds listeners of the most grievous historical sin of this great country a fitting song to start an event that is intended to entertain? And why now? Why when racial discrimination is at historic lows should we use sporting events for this purpose? When slavery and Jim Crow laws are long gone; when we have had a black president; when we have black congressmen and congresswomen; when we have blacks serving and performing at the highest levels of every institution and profession in the country; and when we have interracial children, families, churches, and friend groups, why begin a diversionary bit of entertainment with a song about the “blood of the slaughtered” blacks killed by whites?

Of what other historical sins or political causes should we use sporting events to remind attendees? How about a Chinese anthem reminding Americans of their treatment when they built the transcontinental railway? How about a song at the start of entertainment events reminding Americans about the internment of the Japanese during WWII? How about reminding Americans at sporting events of the anti-Semitism that has percolated throughout American history? How about a song reminding Americans about the ongoing slaughter of the unborn? How about a song about the grievous and systemic/institutional injustice done to children by divorce and/or their fathers’ abandonment?

Sin and injustice mar the story of every country and institution that has ever existed because sin is the state of man. But America has been a marvel in the annals of history as a place in which racial, ethnic, and religious diversity can flourish. That’s why emigrants from around the world continue to come.

Our national anthem should be one like the third verse of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” (a verse that leftists likely detest) that places God first in leading us to a better place—a place in which we judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. It should express the foundational principle that we are all created by God and endowed by Him with unalienable rights and that out of many, we become one as American citizens. I’d say this does the job quite nicely:

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
…
O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

If the NFL pursues this controversial political act—an act which will result in yet more lost revenue—let’s pray the third verse of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” is sung to Lord:

God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/The-NFL-and-the-Black-National-Anthem_audio.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois! 

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Statues depicting prominent figures in U.S. history have been coming down across the nation. The actions of those portrayed are being reevaluated through the eyes of some who feel their past bad deeds outweigh any of the good they accomplished, with no regard given to the common mores of past centuries. Someone living four centuries ago is held up to 21^st century standards.

Some statues have been removed by local municipalities, while others have been pulled down  or even decapitated and dragged into a lake. Such was the case with Union Civil War Colonel Hans Christian Heg’s statue. The statue of the abolitionist, who was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga, stood on the grounds of the Wisconsin state Capitol in Madison. In other cases, when statues were targeted for removal, it was a little more understandable – they portrayed Confederate generals and other military leaders. The removal of Heg by a violent mob made little sense. One of the mob leaders cleared up the confusion, telling the Chicago Tribune that the statue was removed because it portrayed Wisconsin as racially progressive, when slavery had never really ended but rather continues in the state through the prison system.

Viewing the protest-turned-mob leader’s words through the lens of history, one can’t help but be reminded of the Russian and French Revolutions, and even of events out of Mao’s little red book. Activists may say that suggesting such comparisons is alarmist or dramatic, but the proverbial slippery slope is there for a reason.

Now Illinois’s beloved President Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator himself, is one of the historical revisionists’ targets. Lincoln, born February 12, 1809 in Kentucky, lived in Indiana from ages 7-21, then moved to Illinois. In 1831, at age 19, he made his first flatboat trip to New Orleans. Historians believe that it was on that or another trip to the Crescent City that he witnessed a slave auction. What he saw forever changed him. Lincoln is first recorded as publicly speaking out against slavery as a member of the Illinois state legislature in 1837.

Lincoln went on to become president and was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, with the Civil War beginning just over a month later on April 12. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued September 22, 1862, which stated that if the Confederate south did not cease its rebellion by January 1, 1863, the executive order would go into effect. When it failed to do so, 3.5 million African-American slaves held in the Confederacy were freed. Lincoln then endorsed the passage of the 13^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the country as a whole.

The great orator and civil rights activist Frederick Douglass was a free black man who had escaped slavery. He met with Lincoln at the White House at least four times, but some historians believe the number was much higher. In his personal papers, Douglass said that the two men had different agendas when they first met and would argue, but they grew to be good friends. After his first meeting with the President, Douglass said to a group of abolitionists in Philadelphia, “I will tell you how he received me – just as you have seen one gentleman receive another, with a hand and a voice well-balanced between a kind cordiality and a respectful reserve.”

Was Lincoln recorded as having said things that sound racist to our ears today? Yes, he was. We know when he lived and we know he wasn’t perfect. We also know that he was leaps and bounds ahead of many in his day. He was a good man and a good president who freed the slaves. He was assassinated by the then-well-known actor John Wilkes Booth for freeing the slaves and defeating the Confederacy.  Lincoln, along with 450,000 white and 40,000 black Union soldiers, gave their lives to end slavery.

Now, students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison want to remove President Lincoln’s statue from campus because of things he said that they disapprove of and a homesteading act he signed that gave Native American land to white settlers and designated it to become the campus of their university. In Washington, D.C., protests continue to call for the removal of the Emancipation Memorial Statue in Lincoln Park. The statue, dedicated April 14, 1876, was paid for by an association of former slaves. The dedication speech was given in front of President Ulysses Grant by Frederick Douglass.

In his speech, Douglass described Lincoln’s assassination as an act of “malice” that had “done some good after all. It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator.”

Although he developed some mixed feelings about Lincoln in the years following his death, Douglass went on to say that “no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him – but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is double dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.”

Much has been said about the position of the freed slave positioned next to the standing Lincoln. A reporter interviewed Marcia Cole, a member of the Female Re-Enactors of Distinction (FREED) as she stood near the statue in Lincoln Park. Cole portrays Charlotte Scott, an African-American woman from Virginia who gave the first $5 she earned towards the statue. Cole told the reporter that she was there to speak on behalf of Miss Charlotte, who would not want the statue removed.

“People tend to think of that figure as being servile, but on second look, you will see something different, perhaps. That man is not kneeling on two knees with his head bowed. He is in the act of getting up. And his head is up, not bowed, because he’s looking forward to a future of freedom.”

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois! 

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Written by Dennis Prager

There are many recent developments in the godless West. To name a few:

–The Supreme Court of Italy last week ruled that public masturbation is legal (except in front of minors).

–The New York City Council voted in May that public urination is not a criminal act.

–The San Francisco City Council decided, by one vote, to continue the city’s ban on public nudity — not, of course, on the grounds of “decency” but on the grounds of public health. Since that can easily be resolved by use of a towel on public benches and chairs, it is only a matter of time, probably a couple of years, before people will be permitted to walk around naked in San Francisco.

–A few weeks ago, teachers in Charlotte, North Carolina, were instructed not to refer to their elementary school students as “boys and girls” but as “students” and “scholars.” The reasoning is presumably for inclusivity — there may be a student who has no gender identity — and that adults should not impose a gender identity on young people.

–In a New York Times op-ed column, a professor of philosophy noted his shock at learning that most young Americans do not believe that moral truths exist. They are incapable of asserting that anything, including killing for fun, is wrong beyond personal opinion.

These are all inevitable consequences of the death of belief in God and Judeo-Christian values, and of the Bible as society’s primary moral reference work.

The West has been in moral decline since World War I, the calamity that led to World War II and the death of national identity and Christianity in most of Europe.

There has always been one exception: the United States. But now that is ending. The seeds of America’s decline have been sown since the beginning of the 20th century, and they came to fruition with the post-World War II generation, the baby boomers.

Radical and aggressive secularism and atheism have replaced religion in virtually every school and throughout American public life.

We have gone from President Abraham Lincoln reading the Bible every day to Alaska Airlines feeling forced to stop passing out prayer cards with meals. In a hundred years, we’ve gone from near-total biblical literacy to near-total biblical illiteracy. One wonders whether half of America’s college seniors could correctly identify Cain and Abel, or whether more than 1 in 10 Americans could cite the Ten Commandments. We have gone from President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaiming the need to save “Christian civilization” in World War II speeches to a virtual ban on American presidents mentioning the word “Christianity.” And, as is widely noted, Americans are no longer supposed to wish strangers “merry Christmas,” and they must refer to a Christmas party as a “holiday party.”

Similarly, the European Union constitution never mentions Christianity, despite the fact that it was Christianity that formed Europe.

The prices that we Americans and Europeans are paying for creating the first godless societies in recorded history amount to civilizational suicide. Boys and girls are not to be referred to as boys and girls; Western elites dismiss national identity as protofascism; the belief that moral truth exists has been destroyed and replaced by feelings and opinions; fewer people are marrying; and more people live alone than at any time in American history.

Western European countries have become empty, soulless places. They are pretty and appear materially secure (for now), but they stand for almost nothing (except “multiculturalism” and “tolerance”). They have replaced a Jewish population that overwhelmingly wanted to assimilate with a Muslim population that does not want to. And nearly all European countries are headed to Greece-like insolvency as fewer and fewer workers pay enough in taxes to support those who collect welfare, and as tensions with their Muslim inhabitants increase.

But the good news is that now, beginning with Italy and New York, citizens can watch each other masturbate or urinate in public.

There is no way to prove that God exists. But what is provable is what happens when societies stop believing in God: They commit suicide.

This article was originally posted at TownHall.com

Written by John C. Eastman

Until her release [last week], Kim Davis, the clerk of rural Rowan County, Kentucky, was confined to a jail cell because she refused to issue marriage licenses over her name to same-sex couples. She has been pilloried in the media for “lawlessness” and compared not to Martin Luther King Jr. for her civil disobedience but to Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Michael Keegen of the grossly misnamed People for the American Way called her actions an “abuse of power” and proposed instead that she should “find another line of work” — that is, resign her elected office — if she “can’t in good conscience fulfill [her] duties.”

The double standard on display is palpable. I don’t recall Keegen or any of the other self-righteous, newfound devotees of the rule of law calling for the resignation of Kentucky’s attorney general when he refused to defend his state’s marriage law — or any of the other state attorneys general who did the same, from California’s Jerry Brown to Pennsylvania’s Kathleen Kane, and several others, including perhaps most notoriously Oregon’s Ellen Rosenblum, who was caught actively colluding with plaintiffs to ensure judicial invalidation of the Oregon marriage law she disliked.

“But Davis was refusing to comply with a decision of the Supreme Court,” it will be argued. So, too, did all those illustrious attorneys general. All of them refused to do their duty and defend their state’s man-woman marriage laws, even though the binding precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court at that time, a 1972 case called Baker v. Nelson, was that such laws were constitutionally valid.

Ms. Davis’s position has also been mischaracterized as asserting that because the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision is contrary to God’s authority, she cannot be compelled to comply with it and therefore can prevent same-sex couples from getting married in her county. Her position — so described — has been belittled by simpletons across the political spectrum as nothing more than the misguided stance of a crazy evangelical clinging to her Bible. But that is not her legal argument at all (however much merit it might have as a reaction to an illegitimate decision by the U.S. Supreme Court). Her actual argument is much more restrained.

Kentucky has a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which expressly prevents the government from imposing a substantial burden on someone’s religious beliefs unless the government’s mandate is narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental interest. Because this lawsuit is pending in federal court, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which contains the same protection, is also applicable. Ms. Davis’s lawyers have simply argued that these federal and state laws require that her religious objection to issuing same-sex “marriage” licenses over her own name be accommodated.

There is no compelling interest here. Even assuming the validity of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision holding that right to same-sex “marriage” is a fundamental right, no one is being denied the right to marry. As a matter of Kentucky law, the couples seeking to compel Ms. Davis herself to issue them a marriage license can obtain a marriage license from any other county in Kentucky. They can also get one from the county executive of Rowan County. And if the governor would simply call the legislature into special session to deal with the problem that has arisen since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June, it would likely even be possible for other clerks in Ms. Davis’s office to issue a marriage license without its being issued on Ms. Davis’s authority (the legislature could simply remove the problematic “under [her] authority” language from the statewide uniform form), or for marriage licenses to be obtained via a statewide online system.

But none of those options would accomplish what the same-sex couple and its chorus of advocates are really after, which is not the “marriage” but forcing Ms. Davis and everyone like her to bow to the new, unholy orthodoxy. In other words, this controversy has all the hallmarks of the one that engulfed Thomas More, who silently acquiesced in but would not condone King Henry VIII’s illicit marriage.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, both the federal law and Kentucky’s version of it, required that Ms. Davis’s religious objection be accommodated as a matter of law. The federal court’s refusal to respect those laws is where the real lawlessness lies in this case. And of course, that lawlessness is quite apart from the not insignificant question of whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision is itself lawless. Such claims did not originate with Ms. Davis, but with the four U.S. Supreme Court Justices who stridently dissented from Justice Kennedy’s diktat, calling it “illegitima[te],” “indefensible,” “dangerous for the rule of law,” “demeaning to the democratic process,” “a naked judicial claim to legislative — indeed, super-legislative — power,” “pretentious,” “egotistic,” a “judicial Putsch,” “deeply misguided,” a “usurp[ation of] the constitutional right of the people,” a “perhaps irremediable corruption of our legal culture’s conception of constitutional interpretation,” and an “extravagant conception of judicial supremacy.”

That latter point is important to put to rest the other charge that has been leveled against Ms. Davis, namely, that she is violating her oath of office by not upholding the law she swore to uphold. The Constitution requires that all officials, both federal and state, take an oath to “support this Constitution,” and the Constitution itself provides that “this Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Neither the oath clause nor the supremacy clause requires fealty to an erroneous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that is contrary to the Constitution itself. That is not constitutionalism, or the rule of law, but the rule of judges; a claim that although the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, the Constitution is whatever the judges say it is, even if what they say is a patently erroneous interpretation of the Constitution.

Reacting to a similar piece of judicial tyranny in the Dred Scott case, Abraham Lincoln famously said, in his first inaugural address, that although judicial decisions are binding on the specific parties to a case, “the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

In short, Ms. Davis was much more faithful to her oath of office, and to the Constitution she vowed to support, than the federal judge who jailed her for contempt, the attorney general of the state who refused to defend Kentucky’s laws, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, who usurped the authority of the states and the more than 50 million voters who had recently reaffirmed the natural definition of marriage, in order to impose his own more “enlightened” views on the nation. One can only hope that Ms. Davis’s simple but determined act of civil disobedience will yet ignite the kind of reaction in the American people that is necessary to oppose such lawlessness, or at the very least bring forth a national leader who will take up the argument against judicial supremacy in truly Lincolnian fashion.

This article was originally posted at the National Review Online.

— John C. Eastman is the Henry Salvatori Professor of Law and Community Service, and former dean, at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law. He is also the founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage.

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to see the new Abraham Lincoln movie from Steven Spielberg.  It was a technical and visual masterpiece in terms of costume, cast, scenery, computer graphics, etc. Sally Field was remarkable as Mary Lincoln.   However, I agree with several historians who criticized the movie’s script, which included nearly 40 uses of profanity. They contend that certain vulgar words were not used in the 1860’s and certainly not by “honest Abe.” 

Most all of the movie centers around passage of the 13^th Amendment.  It shows Lincoln trying to hold all his Republicans together and gather a few lame duck Democrats for passage of the amendment prohibiting slavery in order to overcome fierce opposition from House Democrats. 

Evident, but not specifically mentioned in the movie, was the fact that the Republicans were still a new party. They had only recently been formed in 1856 by social conservatives (if we can use that modern term).   The party had tension between “radical abolitionists” and more moderate slavery opponents.  The new party, according to its platform, had been founded upon ending the “twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery” in America. This occurred after the Whig Party shot itself in the foot when it decided to call a truce on the divisive issue of slavery with a “36/30 degree line” proposal making some states free and some slave holding.  Even now, 156 years later, those battles over the equal value of all life, the protection of marriage as between only one man and one woman, and those who want to avoid such issues, still remain in the GOP.

A few days after seeing the movie I happened to be in an antique store where a century old book caught my eye and then my wallet. The book is called Lincoln and Prohibition.  It contains a lot of original first hand sources and Lincoln documentation including a long speech Abraham Lincoln gave to the Washingtonian Temperance Society on Feb. 22, 1842 about the effort to eliminate alcohol consumption. (He was also involved as legal counsel for an 1855 Illinois statewide temperance referendum.)  Here is how Lincoln compared that movement to our nation’s founding struggles:

“Turn now to the temperance revolution.  In it we shall find a stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant deposed — in it, more of want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged.  By it no orphans starved, no widows weeping.  

And when the victory shall be complete – when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth – how proud the title of that Land which may truly claim the birthplace and the cradle of both those revolutions that shall have ended in that victory. How nobly distinguished that people, who shall have panted, and nurtured to maturity, both political and moral freedom of their species.”

 Twenty years later, then President Lincoln recalled his speeches in a meeting with the Sons of Temperance on September 29, 1863:

“When I was a young man, I in a humble way, made temperance speeches, and I think I may say that to this day I have never, by example, belied what I said.  I think that the reasonable men of the world would have long since agreed that intemperance [drunkenness] is one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, of all evils among mankind.”

It seems to me that Lincoln may have been much more of a Nineteenth Century social conservative than we remember him to have been.  Consider this point.  A few historians have questioned the profanity use in the Lincoln movie, including a couple by the President.  It seems highly unlikely that he spoke this way.

I spoke with historian David Barton about this, and he pointed out that early in the Civil War as Lincoln visited troops, he was distressed to hear profanity, so an order was issued against it, declaring:

 “Any non-commissioned officer or soldier who shall use any profane oath or execration shall incur the penalties expressed in the foregoing article.”

Concerning those penalties, it stated that . . .

“Commissioned officers be brought before a general court-martial, there to be publicly and severely reprimanded by the President; if non-commissioned officers or soldiers, every person so offending shall for his first offence forfeit one-sixth of a dollar, to be deducted out of his next pay; for the second offence, he shall not only forfeit a like sum but be confined twenty-four hours.”

Lincoln was so serious that these rules against profanity take hold among the troops that this order was to “be read every Sunday morning to each company and detachment serving in this Army.”    He even personally confronted one of his own generals when he learned of his profanity and then urged the general to use his authority to combat that vice.
 
Much of history as shown by Hollywood should be viewed with a discerning eye and ear and, if possible, compared with evidence of that era.  Still, it is worth remembering that much of what we do know through original documents will never be seen or heard by those who rely upon the entertainment medium to shape their opinions and views.