Written by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D.

Remember when Bernie Sanders passionately attacked budget office nominee Russell Vought because Vought believes salvation comes only by faith in Jesus Christ—something Christianity has taught for two millennia?

It looks like it’s open season for anti-Christian bigots to hunt down and destroy any Christian nominated to public office—especially if that Christian doesn’t toe the line of environmental political correctness. Forget Article 6 of the Constitution insisting “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Michael Dourson, whom Trump has nominated to head the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chemical safety office, is taking the same kind of fire. Dourson is an environmental health professor in the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine. He’s a “board-certified toxicologist with an international reputation for excellence in environmental risk assessment.” He’s co-published more than 150 papers on risk assessment methods and chemical-specific analyses.

But he’s also a Christian who, like any serious Christian, tries to integrate his faith with all his life. That just doesn’t sit well with some folks.

CUE THE OUTRAGEOUS OUTRAGE

Raymond Barfield, a professor of pediatrics and Christian philosophy at Duke University, is upset. It seems Dourson wrote that chemical analysis provides some evidence that the Shroud of Turin—which allegedly wrapped Jesus in his burial—might be authentic. Dourson’s not sure. Sounds like the attitude of a good scientist to me.

But there’s more. Dourson isn’t convinced that the chemical risks from flame-retardant fabrics outweigh the fire-prevention benefits. He points out that “exposures from consumer products were much lower” than those involved in a study claiming significant risk. That’s a fairly typical weakness of many environmental risk studies. They expose laboratory animals to extremely high levels of a suspect chemical, discover ill effects, then try to extrapolate to human risk at much lower exposure levels.

Barfield disagrees, and seeks to discredit Dourson because he made $10,000 consulting for a flame retardant industry group. Dourson had questioned a study warning of potential harm from flame retardant chemicals because it hadn’t been replicated yet. That’s confusing, because replication is the hallmark of good science.

As a professor of philosophy, which usually requires some knowledge of logic, Barfield should know that attacking Dourson’s motives because of money commits the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem circumstantial. He further labeled Dourson’s argument that the risks from fires are higher than the risks from fire-retardant chemicals as “pure utilitarianism.” That label’s red meat for Christians.

Recently Ben Shapiro, writing for National Review, exposed a serious failure of lawmakers that partisan debates conceal. Partisan debates conceal that fundamental, first-principle policy arguments about governance are avoided like the proverbial plague by politicians of all political stripes.

Shapiro uses comments about health care from three prominent political figures, President Donald Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Governor John Kasich, to illustrate that there is little principled difference between their positions:

President Trump wants to re-enshrine Obamacare’s two central premises: that it is the government’s job to make sure everyone has health insurance, and that health-insurance companies should therefore be forced to cover pre-existing conditions. Sanders wants to spend more money on the same two principles — or do away with the second principle altogether in favor of a direct government program. Kasich expanded Obamacare in his own state, saying that St. Peter would want government health-care spending expanded, and he mirrors both Trump and Obama in his central contention that there is a government-guaranteed “right” to health insurance.

What are these three fighting over? Whether to spend an insane amount of money on Medicaid or simply a crazy amount of money on Medicaid; whether to pay for everyone’s insurance through taxes later or today; whether to force insurance companies to cover services that are unnecessary or allow them to pare such services back to a moderate extent; whether to mandate that healthy people buy health insurance or whether to coax them into gradual single-payer acceptance via back-door fines. All of this matters, of course. But to suggest that this is a cataclysmic conflict over principles is idiotic. Democrats and Republicans apparently agree on health care’s central principles, they just argue over how best to implement them.

In other words, these are tales full of sound and fury signifying almost nothing.

Lawmakers avoid discussions of fundamental policies and principles

Shapiro elucidates what kinds of discussions politicians avoid and why:

[O]ur politicians generally elide the most important policy questions of the day — the ones that would implicate central principles. That’s because so long as they stick to the center of the road and then act as though they’re facing threats for doing so, they don’t have to alienate anyone — and they can rake in money.

Then Shapiro reveals the central conflict facing our republic now and the one from which our lawmakers flee with all due haste:

[O]n the hot-button issue of whether religious Americans ought to be protected from government intervention when they operate their businesses according to religious dictates — the single most important cultural issue in America today — politicians have been largely silent. What’s Trump’s perspective on the issue? We have no idea. Bernie Sanders doesn’t spend a good deal of time talking about it either. And John Kasich couldn’t be more vague. When politicians do have to sound off on such issues, they often run from the fray.

The next revolution

I would add another hot-button issue which implicates first principles and on which politicians remain largely silent: That is the Left’s reality-denying attack on the public’s recognition of and respect for sexual differentiation.

Never in the history of the world has there been a sustained attack on a proper understanding and recognition of sexual differentiation. What we are witnessing now is a cultural revolution the likes of which no society in history has encountered.

Because of the obsession lawmakers have with raking in money in the service of securing their re-elections, because of their cowardice, because of their intellectual incuriosity, and because of their ignorance, they are failing to address this radical and destructive revolution. And for all these reasons, our political leaders have no sense of the end game.

What is the end game of “trans” cultists? It is nothing less than the eradication of public recognition of sex differences everywhere for everyone.

While Leftists pursue their end game via strategic incrementalism, naïve, ignorant, and cowardly Americans incrementally capitulate. Some conservatives argue that if men who pretend to be women have been castrated, it’s okay if they invade women’s restrooms and locker rooms. It’s as if these conservatives believe that an elaborate disguise effaces the meaning of sex. Or that being unaware that an objectively male person is present where girls and women are undressing legitimizes their presence.

If that’s the case, then these same women should be comfortable with peeping Toms peeping as long as women are unaware of the peeping. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not suggesting those who experience the disordered desire to be the opposite sex are voyeurs. Rather, I’m suggesting that if being deceived about the presence of men in private spaces legitimizes their presence, then surely being deceived about the presence of peepers should legitimize peeping.

No efforts to masquerade—not surgical, chemical, or sartorial—can change the sex of humans. So, no matter how convincing a gender-pretender’s disguise, he or she should not be permitted in opposite-sex private spaces.

Our politicians need to know what the “trans” cult end game is and once they understand that, they need to have the courage to address it. If they are stubbornly committed either to ignorance or cowardice, then they have no business serving the people in elected office.

“Trans” cult beliefs

So, here’s what our politicians and the people they serve need to know about the “trans” ideology:

• “Trans” cultists do not believe surgery, cross-sex hormone-doping, cross-dressing, a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, or even the experience of gender dysphoria is necessary to “identify” as “trans” or to access opposite-sex locker rooms, restrooms, dressing rooms, showers, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, or any other historically sex-segregated spaces.

• They believe all that’s required to “identify” as “trans” and to access opposite-sex private facilities is their word.

• They believe that one’s “gender identity” can change day to day.

• They believe that genitalia have no connection to maleness or femaleness.

• They believe that those who care about the genitalia of their romantic/sexual partners are “transphobic.” That is to say, any man who wants his sexual partner to be an objectively female person with female anatomy is “transphobic.” And any homosexual man who wants his sexual partner to be objectively male with male anatomy is “transphobic.” (This is getting “trans” cultists in hot water with the homosexual community.)

• They believe that sex-segregated private spaces are intrinsically and unjustly discriminatory. They believe that they should have unrestricted access to opposite-sex private facilities. In their view, requiring them to use privacy stalls is unjust and discriminatory.

• They believe spaces in which undressing and bodily functions are engaged in should not be permitted to “discriminate” based on either sex or “gender identity.”

If lawmakers don’t believe me, maybe they could scrounge up 30 minutes to watch this video of a young man who “identifies” as a “transwoman.” He spells it all out:

“Trans” cult end game

So, now that we’re clearer about what the “trans” cult believes, let’s see what their peculiar and doctrinaire beliefs will look like in practice. In other words, here’s a glimpse into their desired gender-free, co-ed-everything, dystopian world:

• The sexual integration of private spaces will not be restricted to “trans”-identified persons: 1.) Schools and all other places of public accommodation—including places like Disney World and health clubs—that permit one objectively male “trans” person access to women’s facilities will have no rational grounds to prohibit other objectively male persons (i.e., normal men) from accessing women’s facilities because that would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity.” 2.) If genitalia are as irrelevant to physical privacy as say, hair color, then sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms no longer make sense. 3.) There’s no rational reason for women to be more comfortable undressing in front of men who wish they were women than undressing in front of men who are content being men.

• Men who claim to be “transwomen” but choose not to be castrated will have unrestricted access to all previously women-only private spaces. And if women are permitted to walk naked in a locker room, so too will men with penises who claim to be women. So too will men with penises who have had breast implants.

• Women who claim to be men and who have birth certificates that identify them as male but have forgone “top surgery” will be exempt from laws and ordinances that prohibit women from going topless in public. These pretend-men with congenital breasts will be able to play topless frisbee in the park along with breastless, topless actual men.

• Objectively male persons with falsified birth certificates identifying them as women will be assigned semi-private hospital rooms with actual women.

• When entering a nursing home, elderly men who pretend to be women will be assigned rooms with actual women. Bill SB 219 is pending in California right now that if passed will require that long-term care facilities must assign “transgender” residents rooms in accordance with their “gender identity” rather than their sex. Further, it would make it illegal to reassign “transgender” residents to a new room if their roommates complain about their “gender identity.”

• Women’s athletics are doomed.

Despite the dire portents that no one should be able to miss, lawmakers who claim to want to lead and serve say virtually nothing and probably know less.

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Recently Ben Shapiro, writing for National Review, exposed a fundamental failure of lawmakers that partisan debates conceal. Partisan debates conceal that fundamental, first-principle policy arguments about governance are avoided like the proverbial plague by politicians of all political stripes.

Shapiro uses comments from three prominent political figures, President Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Governor John Kasich, to illustrate that there is little principled difference between their positions.

Read more HERE…

The men and women that you elect to the U.S. Congress in both chambers need to hear from you regularly on the important issues, and they need to hear from you today regarding the latest actions of Illinois’ own U.S. Senator Dick Durbin.

U.S. Senator Durbin along with radical Leftists such as Bernie Sanders aim to undermine the brilliant Electoral College established by our Founding Fathers. Durbin and Sanders and others are ignorant of the purpose and importance of the Electoral College. They argue that it’s a “relic” and “racist” in its design.

Electoral College opponents could all benefit from the teachings of Tara Ross, author of Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College. In two Prager University 5-minute videos (watch them here and here), Ross provides an excellent short civics lesson:

Why didn’t the Founders just make it easy, and let the presidential candidate with the most votes claim victory? Why did they create and why do we continue to need, this Electoral College?

The answer is critical to understanding not only the Electoral College but also America.

The Founders had no intention of creating a pure majority-rule democracy. They knew from careful study of history what most have forgotten today or never learned: pure democracies do not work.

They implode.

Democracy has been colorfully described as two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner. In a pure democracy, bare majorities can easily tyrannize the rest of a country. The Founders wanted to avoid this at all costs.

Both videos lay out the basics in an easy to understand fashion:

Our Founders so deeply feared a tyranny of the majority that they rejected the idea of a direct vote for President. That’s why they created the Electoral College. For more than two centuries it has encouraged coalition building and national campaigning, given a voice to both big and small states, and discouraged voter fraud.

In this video, Ross addresses a “well-financed, below-the-radar effort to do away with the Electoral College” that wants to do “exactly what the Founders rejected: award the job of president to the person who gets the most votes nationally.” Ross explains that the effort’s goal is to ask states to “sign a contract to give their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner of the state’s popular vote.”

Ross gives an example of how this would have worked had it been in place in 2004:

[W]hen George W. Bush won the national vote, California’s electoral votes would have gone to Bush, even though John Kerry won that state by 1.2 million votes!

Can you imagine strongly Democratic California calmly awarding its electors to a Republican?

Our U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives need to hear from us on this important issue.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to U.S. Senators Dick Durbin, Mark Kirk, and your local U.S. Representative asking them to defend the Electoral College and to vigorously oppose the efforts to undermine the remarkable electoral system that has served our nation so very well. Speak up for the vision of the Founders by telling your lawmakers you want the Electoral College preserved.

Year-End Challenge

As you may know, IFI has a year-end matching challenge to raise $110,000. That’s right, a small group of IFI supporters are providing a $55,000 matching challenge to help support IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.

Please consider helping us reach this goal!  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2017!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 876
Tinley Park, Illinois 60477

The totalitarian attitude on campus hit me in a very personal way on March 30 as I was sitting on an airplane at Reagan National Airport on my way to Albany, New York. I was informed that a campus debate I was scheduled to participate in later that day had been cancelled. I was told to get off the plane and go home.

I believe this is the first time on a college or university campus that a left-right debate has been cancelled because of objections to one side of the debate.

It appears the totalitarian left is so determined to crush the conservative point of view that it had to be suppressed even when a leftist was on the same panel.

My debate opponent, Jeff Cohen, the founder of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), was taken aback. It was as if the far-left censors on the campus of the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz didn’t think he could hold up his end of the debate.

The topic was media coverage of the presidential campaign. Jeff and I have participated in such debates many times in the past, always getting a good reception and generating many questions. The contracts had been signed. New Paltz cancelled the morning of the debate.

The student paper said the event was cancelled after a sociology professor who helps teach women’s studies had caused a controversy over my appearance. She apparently had Googled my name, turning up a denunciation of my views from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).  The SPLC reportedly said I had made “controversial statements in the past about Muslims, climate change and homosexuals,” and that I was “an unrepentant propagandist for extremist right-wing causes.”

I was not allowed to respond to the charges before the decision was made to prevent me from appearing.

Digging into the fiasco, the student paper said, “In a discussion that originated on the faculty email system and subsequently obtained by The New Paltz Oracle, Anne R. Roschelle, Ph.D., a sociology professor, voiced her objections to Kincaid’s involvement in the debate. However, Roschelle made clear to note that she did not seek to bar Kincaid from speaking.”

That was quite interesting. She had “voiced her objections” to my involvement in the debate but did not “seek to bar Kincaid from speaking.” Whatever the meaning of this double-talk, it appears that a faculty member had decided what students should be exposed to on campus.

She was quoted as saying that she was “not advocating he be uninvited or that people disrupt his talk.” But Roschelle said, “What I am suggesting is that for people who do go to his talk to ask critical questions and make your alternative voices heard. We are an open-minded campus.”

Yes, and that’s the purpose of a debate. A debate by definition is where different voices are heard.

It couldn’t be that she was concerned that different voices were not going to be heard. That was the whole purpose of the event. Her concern was that MY voice was going to be heard.

Of course, this isn’t the first time a conservative has been kept off campus. In this case, however, the event was a debate involving a left-wing media critic who happens to be a professor at Ithaca College. In other words, both sides were going to be represented. Still, the mere fact that I was going to be part of the debate was enough to get the event cancelled. I think this is unprecedented. It demonstrates the kind of atmosphere that exists at New Paltz.

This is the kind of “educational atmosphere” that U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the socialist running for president, wants to subsidize with more taxpayer dollars.

This incident and others have convinced me that the old brick-and-mortar universities have run their course and need to be defunded. It’s time to replace them with true centers of learning that offer real academic freedom, and courses that teach marketable skills at a reduced cost. The kind of “political revolution” we need in this country is not of the Bernie Sanders variety. Rather, it’s a way forward that offers real learning through alternative educational institutions that provide online opportunities and career-advancement to students where they live and work.

The taxpayers who pay the bill for these Marxist re-education camps we call colleges and universities have to revolt against the socialism that rules higher education in America. Sanders wants to perpetuate that mind-set because he knows that, under the guidance of faculty from sociology, women’s and queer studies, students are being mind-controlled and groomed for jobs that don’t exist. Hence, they become more cannon-fodder for the revolution.

Perhaps the taxpayers who help fund New Paltz might want to know how such things happen in an atmosphere that is supposed to assure freedom of speech on campus. I certainly want to know.

Indeed, I am attempting to get to the bottom of the reasons for the cancellation of the event through a Freedom of Information request using a state law meant to assure transparency in state government and state-funded institutions. Let’s see if the university administration will follow the law and give me the names.

I want to determine who on the campus was part of the process to deny students the right to hear a left-right debate on coverage of the campaign.

New Paltz declares on its website: “Creativity permeates campus life at New Paltz. The learning atmosphere has an air of imaginative inquiry that bridges all academic endeavors. The faculty encourages students to question, experiment, and discover in ways that lead to innovative thinking.”

But not in this case.

The website also declares that a New Paltz education is “one that retains lifelong relevance through what is required to achieve it: broad and specific knowledge, exposure to differing perspectives, open-minded inquiry, and a spirit of inventiveness.”

But not in this case.

Parents who consider New Paltz for their students are being given a big dose of false advertising.

I informed University President Donald P. Christian in a letter:

“I was very disappointed for the lost opportunity to share my ideas with young college students. I had thought that a college campus was the perfect place for an exchange of ideas. I have had two of my sons go through college, and my youngest, who is turning 17, is on a tour of college campuses.

• “What should I tell him about New Paltz being open to different ideas and freedom of speech and expression?
• “Why should any student or parent consider New Paltz as an option for those who engage in free thinking, rational thought, and open debate and discussion?
• “Why has this happened at New Paltz, alone among many different colleges and universities?”

Later that day, after receiving my letter, the administration reversed itself, saying they wanted to reschedule and bring the debate to campus after all. Unfortunately, my schedule wouldn’t permit such an event until the fall. I look forward to going back, with adequate security and police protection.

By then, I should have the answers to why, in an unprecedented development, a debate was cancelled on a university campus.

What we know so far is that “diversity” on campus doesn’t apply to diversity in thought and opinion. These institutions of “higher education” are bankrupt financially and morally.

This article was originally posted at Accuracy in Media.