With a thrill running up his leg, Chris exclaimed that Biden’s inaugural address was the bestest of the bestest inaugural speech he’s ever heard! No, not THAT Chris—not Chris Matthews. Chris Wallace said it was the best. He was wrong. It wasn’t the best inaugural speech ever. It was the BEST SPEECH period. I’m tearing up just thinking about how best it was.

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Good job, David French, Ed Stetzer, Christianity Today, Lincoln Project, and other assorted Never-Trumpers. The senile, morally corrupt President-Elect of the once great United States of America just nominated a delusional man with a cross-dressing fetish to be the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. Now decent people won’t be able to teach their young children about our president’s Cabinet. With Dr. Richard “Rachel” Levine‘s appointment will come Big Brother’s prohibition of “misgendering” Levine. In other words, Big Brother and his minions will command all Americans to mis-sex the burly Dr. Levine. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.

Oh, but that’s not all.

Biden has a plan to spread the leftist sexuality ideology within the United States and export it to infinity and beyond. Biden—the self-identifying Catholic—chooses to offend the God he claims to serve rather than offend the gods of homosexuality and “trans”-cultism he actually serves. In terrifying rebellion against God, Biden calls theologically orthodox biblical beliefs about homosexual acts “hatred,” specifically identifying Mike Pence’s beliefs as such.

Further, Biden says, “defeating” those beliefs “is an essential first step” in achieving the leftist goal of full societal approval of homosexuality, which he fallaciously calls “equality.”

Biden has committed to passing the Equality Act, which has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with eradicating First Amendment protections of religious free exercise. Biden has said that through the Equality Act, he will force women’s shelters to house biological men who pretend to be women. Those places where abused women and their children take refuge, often from abusive men, will under Biden, house men.

Biden has committed to reversing the ban on sexual passing in the military. In other words, female soldiers will be forced to bunk and shower with men who pretend to be women, and U.S. taxpayers will be forced to subsidize elective cosmetic procedures and ongoing cross-sex hormone-doping for delusional soldiers.

Biden has committed to forcing Christian adoption and foster care agencies to place children in the homes of homosexuals or lose access to all government funds. In other words, Biden will discriminate based on religion when funding adoption agencies.

Biden has promised that on his first day in office he will require all public schools to allow “trans”-identifying students to have full access to the restrooms, locker rooms, and sports of opposite-sex students. I’m sure that will go over well with Muslim parents.

We can’t forget that Biden has promised to restore funding to America’s abattoirs, Planned Parenthood. With Biden ensconced in the Oval Office, Christians from sea to shining sea will be forced to fund human slaughter. But at least now that the uncouth, boorish Trump is gone, Never-Trumpers will be able to sleep at night.

And this is just the tip of the cold, dark iceberg, Biden and Never-Trumpers kept hidden during the campaign.

Never-Trumpers, besotted with dreams of Downton Abbey’s Lord Grantham (without the white skin, biological sex, or elitist title, of course) running for president, couldn’t abide the coarse, abrasive, pugilistic Trump winning a second term, so they colluded with leftists to kneecap him.

Never mind that Joe Biden is an inveterate liar and plagiarist. Never mind that he inappropriately touches women. Never mind that he has been accused by Jill Biden’s first husband of having an affair with her when Joe’s wife was still alive and Jill Biden was still married. Never mind that he was accused of digitally raping a staffer years ago. Never mind that there is good evidence that Joe and his corrupt son and brother colluded to line their pockets with the filthy lucre of America’s chief enemy. Never mind that with a straight but slightly confused face, he lied during election season, telling voters that he knew nothing about Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings. To Never-Trumpers, Biden’s plans to destroy America are trivialities to be ignored.

While facilitating the election of Joe Biden—a man who will enact policies that destroy the bodies, minds, and hearts of children—apparently has no bearing on our Christian witness, voting for Trump does—or so goes the argument of Ed Stetzer, dean and professor at Wheaton College and contributing editor at Christianity Today.

Stetzer thinks the dim view the world has of evangelicalism has everything to do with gullible, non-thinking, Trump-voting evangelicals. No mention of the hatred the world has for the word of God when it comes to homosexuality and sexual passing.

No mention either of the unconscionable cowardly silence of theologians and pastors who have said next to nothing as the world captured the hearts and minds of children in their own houses of worship and whose silence contributed to the spread of evil so dark and ugly that many evangelicals, when faced with the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, believed rightly that Trump was better.

Trump offered hope to parents who didn’t want their daughters sharing locker rooms with boys. He offered hope that Planned Parenthood would be defunded. He offered hope for a Supreme Court that would protect their religious liberty.

In Stetzer’s myopic view, expressed in a USA Today editorial devoid of nuance, “far too many [evangelicals] failed to live up to their promise of speaking truth to power.” Perhaps. But there are tens of thousands more evangelicals who voted for Trump than there are well-known evangelicals who had access to Trump to speak truth to power, and Stetzer lumps them all together.

What about the well-known evangelicals who have had opportunities for decades to speak truth to power about the poisonous, enslaving “LGBTQ” ideology and have said nothing either to the powerful or publicly. How does Stetzer think the world—whose opinion he seems to care so much about—would think about evangelicalism if every well-known evangelical spoke truth to power publicly about the “trans”-ideology and homosexuality?

Has Stetzer considered that maybe evangelicals wouldn’t have been so attracted to Trump’s muscular rhetoric, if evangelical leaders had not been speaking in such emasculated tones for so many years?

Maybe Stetzer doesn’t know any, but there are scores of evangelicals who see with clarity Trump’s flaws and who worship no political (or evangelical) leader. Those evangelicals were careful to distinguish between Trump the man and the policies of his administration. Given a choice between a corrupt man with terrible policies and a corrupt man with better policies, they chose the latter.

The dark shape of things to come

The 1619 Project has changed the date of America’s founding. All summer, Orwellian monsters—also known as Biden voters—rampaged through our cities, tearing down statutes and demanding that buildings and streets be renamed and artwork replaced. Birth certificates are now legally falsified to indicate a biological male was identified at the time of his birth as female. Birth certificates will now identify a biological woman who was impregnated by a biological man and birthed a baby as the “father.” Within a nanosecond after the announcement by a Hollywood starlet at age 33 that she will henceforth pretend she’s a man, the Internet was scrubbed of any past references to her by female pronouns. Her history was erased.

In the novel 1984, George Orwell wrote,

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

As I wrote several weeks ago, “Leftists See Orwell’s Novel 1984 As a Blueprint for Progress.”

So, tell me again, Mr. French, Mr. Stetzer, and Christianity Today, how exactly does facilitating the election of the patently corrupt Biden who heartily endorses sexual perversion, religious persecution, human slaughter, and the erasure of history enhance the witness of theologically orthodox Christians?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/auThe-Shape-of-Things-to-Come.m4a

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Good job, David French, Ed Stetzer, Christianity Today, Lincoln Project, and other assorted Never-Trumpers. The senile, morally corrupt President-Elect of the once great United States of America just nominated a delusional man with a cross-dressing fetish to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Now decent people won’t be able to teach their young children about our president’s cabinet. With Dr. Richard “Rachel” Devine‘s appointment will come Big Brother’s prohibition of “misgendering” Devine. In other words, Big Brother and his minions will command all Americans to mis-sex the burly Dr. Devine. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.

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Chinese Translation – 中文翻译

No matter what you think of Trump’s character or rhetoric (I’ve never been a fan of either), his presidency accomplished many great things for America, perhaps chief among them getting the left—especially Big Tech—to expose its purulent underbelly. The real power today rests in the delicate fingers of the tech Oligarchs sitting behind their screens moving walls to trap Americans in their prison-like mazes equipped with virtual solitary confinement cells and freedom-crushing language rules euphemistically called “community standards” and “policies.” Trump was the immovable force that stood for a brief moment in their way.

The tyrannical nature of leftists has emerged more fully following the indefensible and shocking 90-minute assault on the Capitol. The fury of those robbed of faith and family by leftist ideologies turned from the theft and arson of businesses and police precincts—targets Dems couldn’t have cared less about—to the Capitol. The monsters who were created and abandoned have turned on some of their Frankensteinian creators, that is Congressmen and women.

Yes, leftist ideologies create lawless anarchists on both the left and right. Violence is the business of fatherless, faithless, anchorless young men. Always has been, always will be.

After five months of lawless leftist anarchy during which CNN, AOC, and scores of other leftists defended and egged on alienated leftist anarchists who attacked symbols of government, law, and order, alienated far-right anarchists decided to attack a symbol of government, law, and order too.

Of course, Congress hasn’t worked alone on the pernicious project to destroy humans from conception to unnatural death. Leftists and RINOs in Congress colluded with among others, leftist academics, Hollywood, Christian apostates and heretics within the church, propagandists who self-identify as “journalists,” and, of course, Big Tech.

Big Techies have been colluding during a long game of 3D chess while Republicans have been in a corner playing tiddlywinks and occasionally wondering where their winkies disappeared to. (They disappeared long ago during the Great Gelding of Republicans in year … oh, I can’t remember. It was so long ago.)

And now we’re on the verge of the Great Purge of conservatives from society.

Those who had eyes to see discerned the oppression goose-stepping toward the center in stocking feet. Those with 20/5 vision tried to warn the flocks. They’re still trying to warn them. But the tyrants are now in our midst, and they’re replacing noise-cancelling socks with speech-cancelling jackboots. The center is not holding.

First Twitter suspended the accounts of President Trump, General Michael Flynn, and Sidney Powell. The collaborators at Google, Apple, and Facebook joined in the Purge.

Next came Amazon banning Parler—the up and coming Twitter competitor—from its web-hosting service. Apparently Jack Dorsey held his breath and stomped his feet at the mere thought of competition. Once servers refuse to host social media platforms like Parler, those platforms are toast. This is Big Brother on steroids.

And then there’s CNN business “reporter” Oliver Darcy who wrote this on Friday:

[I]t is time TV carriers face questions for lending their platforms to dishonest companies that profit off of disinformation and conspiracy theories. After all, it was the very lies that Fox, Newsmax, and OAN spread that helped prime President Trump’s supporters into not believing the truth.

This from the “news” organization that refused to ask Biden any hard questions before the election and that censored news stories in order to shovel Biden, the malleable and dim marionette, into the seat of power.

Even a Democrat lawmaker got into the rollicking censorship fun. New Jersey assemblyman Paul Moriarty (distant relative perhaps of Professor James Moriarty, arch-nemesis of Sherlock Holmes?) texted a Comcast executive with this subtle message:

Fox and Newsmax, both delivered to my home by your company, are complicit. What are you going to do??? You feed this garbage, lies and all.

Some conservatives have drawn a line in the virtual sand, saying they refuse to be forced off Facebook. They don’t see that the Tech Oligarchs—now including Bezos-the-Bezillionaire—are not trying to force them off. Quite the contrary. The Oligarchs and Overlords are trying to keep conservatives trapped in their virtual prisons. They’re trying to prevent conservatives from leaving by cutting off all other means of communicating ideas in the public square or to friends.

If you want to communicate far and wide with friends old and new, you will be able to do it only on platforms created by the Oligarchs and Overlords and only within the speech parameters they create and impose—on their “neutral platforms.” The Tech Oligarchs don’t want us to leave their fiefdoms. They want us to stay and remain under their sclerotic poisoned thumbs.

It’s not just conservatives who are concerned about tech tyranny. Kate Ruane, attorney for the ACLU, issued a statement via Twitter last Friday saying,

[I]t should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions.

And Kevin Roose, technology columnist for the New York Times echoes the worries of many on both sides of the political aisle—but mainly on the right—about the power of social media wielded with no accountability and no transparency:

Above all, Mr. Trump’s muzzling provides a clarifying lesson in where power resides in our digital society — not just in the precedent of law or the checks and balances of government, but in the ability to deny access to the platforms that shape our public discourse. Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Zuckerberg’s names have never appeared on a ballot. But they have a kind of authority that no elected official on earth can claim.

While leftists have spent four years calling Trump a Nazi, tyrant and dictator, did he ever try to do what leftists are doing now? Has Trump or any other Republican ever attempted to compel or censor speech?

And this is what Never-Trumpers and their small-minded obsession with Trump’s pugilistic rhetoric have brought to our doorsteps. Never-Trumpers with their beady little myopic eyes still can’t see that without Trump’s pugilism, leftists would not yet have revealed their game plan, because unlike Trump, leftists, like the unctuous Obama and arrogant Oligarchs in charge of Big Tech—which is to say, our lives—are more practiced at the art of political deception.

Leftists and RINOs scorn the idea that drove thousands of law-abiding non-insurrectionists to Washington D.C., which is that the election was stolen. Curiously, those same scorners keep their gimlet eyes and forked tongues focused on the Kraken, never acknowledging other concerns of non-insurrectionists like, for example, what liberal Democrat and Biden-voter  senior research psychologist at the  American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology Robert Epstein—a Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden—said in Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee hearing on the Constitution in July 2019:

Google presents a serious threat to democracy and human autonomy. … Data I’ve collected since 2016 show that Google displays content to the American public that is biased in favor of one political party—a party I happen to like, but that’s irrelevant. No private company should have either the right or the power to manipulate large populations without their knowledge. … [D]emocracy as originally conceived cannot survive Big Tech as currently empowered.

Epstein’s earlier research showed that millions of votes were shifted to Hillary in 2016, and post 2020-election research showed that millions were shifted to Biden by Google’s tricksy algorithms.

They’re also ignoring what liberal Democrat Senator Ron Wyden said in Feb. 2020 and which sounds a lot like what conservative non-insurrectionists are being pilloried by leftists for saying:

I fear the 2020 election will make 2016 look like small potatoes. The list of threats and vulnerabilities is enough to give you a migraine.

There were the ES&S voting machines that for years came with preinstalled remote access software.

There’s the fact that Russia hacked an election vendor called VR Systems in the summer of 2016.

VR systems machines in North Carolina malfunctioned on Election Day that year, and one polling place had to shut down for hours. It took two and a half years before the Department of Homeland Security investigated what happened.

Right now, many election officials across the country are buying election systems they believe are high-tech, but they’re vulnerable to hacking and out-of-date the moment they come out of the box.

There is the spread of mobile voting apps like Voatz that have never been vetted by top security experts.

There’s a reason cybersecurity experts have been sounding the alarm for years, warning that putting computers between a voter and their ballot is a recipe for disaster.

What happens when the “glitch” changes a candidate’s vote totals by just 2 or 5 percent, instead of 50 percent? What happens when a glitch shuts down machines in some precincts and not others, disenfranchising voters and skewing election results?

Five states still exclusively use hackable, paperless voting machines, and nine other states still use paperless machines in some counties.

The problems are daunting … but the solutions are clear.

My bill, the PAVE Act, mandates the three key priorities that experts most universally recommended—paper ballots, routine, post-election risk-limiting audits, and federal cybersecurity standards for election systems.

… Senator Klobuchar introduced the Senate version of the SAFE Act, which I’m proud to co-sponsor. The SAFE Act has all three key elements recommended by our nation’s top cybersecurity experts: paper ballots, security standards and post-election audits, as well as the funding necessary to make sure states can live up to the new standards.

There is another obstacle to the Oligarchs’ domination of infinity and beyond. It is Senator Josh Hawley, virtually the only Congressman to take on Big Tech by calling for social media platforms to lose Section 230 protections from liability. Section 230 protections apply to “neutral platforms” which Twitter and Facebook with all their censoring, de-platforming, and slammer-tossing clearly are not.

So, the whipsmart and courageous Josh Hawley had to be taken out by the delicate-fingered. His effort to demonstrate that Pennsylvania’s illegal and unconstitutional extension of the voting deadline matters provided just the opportunity the slimy Tech Oligarchs, Dems, and RINOs needed to do just that.

The problem for the delicate-fingered and their congressional collaborators was Hawley’s objections alone would not have been sufficient. The Oligarchs, conscience-free Dems, and RINOs needed something more.

And then the anarchists gave them the crisis they needed. Flying to their virtual barns, the Oligarchs and their collaborators hauled out their waiting pitchforks, tar, and feathers. Sparks flying from their fingertips, they demanded Hawley resign, accusing him of contributing to an insurrection. Then more gelded Republicans came creeping out of their dark corners squeaking in their high castrated voices that they would no longer support Hawley’s effort.

Somehow the well-respected and reasonable journalist Byron York didn’t notice how crazy the idea that Pennsylvania violated the Constitution was. In a piece titled “The Election Lawsuit Trump Should Win,” York wrote:

The court fight over Pennsylvania’s election rules … involves a fundamental issue that is important to all 50 states. … putting aside the specifics of the Pennsylvania situation, the matter concerns a hugely important principle, which is the constitutional authority of state legislatures to make election law for their states.

York’s essay is an important read for anyone who may not know the details of the Pennsylvania mess.

Not even Trump is guilty of “incitement to insurrection,” let alone Hawley. In an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, attorney Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, known during his years as a D.C. prosecutor as “protestor prosecutor,” writes that “The president didn’t mention violence on Wednesday, much less provoke or incite it.”

All tyrants use crises to expand powers that are never relinquished. They inflame public fears about threats to their safety from disease, from foreign enemies, or from dangers lurking in their midst. They are skilled at fomenting social division, imposing censorship, and disseminating propaganda to acquire more control. What’s next? Facial recognition cameras everywhere? Then a social credit system like China has?

There’s something rotten in the Upside Down ruled by the Oligarchs and administered by their algorithmically determined minions who control the speech by which ideas are disseminated. Somewhere along the life journeys of the Oligarchs, they lost sight of the meaning of the First Amendment, which was intended to protect unpopular speech—not just the speech leftists like. Who knows, maybe one day the only way conservatives will be able to communicate is via underground newspapers. So, hold on to those archaic printing presses, my friends. I think we’re gonna need ‘em.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

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“Progressives” are variously amused, baffled, or outraged by talks percolating around the Internet about secession, viewing it as not only impracticable but also wacky. If, however, leftists would take a few moments from their narcissistic, navel-gazing search for their authentic selves, which often involve strange sexual preoccupations, to really listen to conservatives, maybe they could understand why many them no longer want to live under the progressively tyrannical rule of “progressives” who self-identify as open-minded, tolerant, and compassionate even as they seek to destroy fundamental rights and institutions.

Compared to the legal recognition of same-sex unions as “marriages,” double-mastectomies on healthy teen girls who wish they were boys, “neo-vaginas” for men forged by turning their penises inside out, and drag queen story hours for toddlers in public libraries, secession sounds not only sane but like a breath of fresh air after living chained to a wall in miasmic cave for decades.

Maybe “progressives” are furious about the quixotic idea of secession because it would mean a place would exist where they couldn’t control the dissemination of ideas or the indoctrination of children.

Maybe they’re enraged at the prospect of a country where imperfect, unwanted humans have a right to exist.

Maybe the existence of people anywhere on the planet who hold moral views that “progressives” can’t abide turns their stomachs—well, except for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) whose moral views leftists overlook as they eagerly collude with the CCP for fun and profit.

Maybe leftists are angry at the mere thought of not having conservatives to kick around anymore.

There’s no better illustration of all that’s wrong in America—all that has led to both the rise of populism and increasing calls for secession—than the tale of Hunter Biden and the collusion that covered up the Biden crime family’s enduring influence-peddling—until, that is, after the electors met on Monday.

It’s a tale of stunning and yet utterly commonplace corruption, hypocrisy, deceit, elitism, deep state bureaucratic rule, influence-peddling, greed, sexual immorality, and the corrosive effects of the collusion of Big Tech and the Fourth Estate to promote leftism.

Many have long known that Hunter Biden was kicked out of the military and lived a sexual life as irresponsible and unethical as his professional life—if leeching off his father’s career can be considered a “profession.”

I knew he had been married and had three children with his first wife. I knew he began a sexual/romantic relationship with his deceased brother’s widow shortly after his brother died. I knew that while he was in a relationship with his brother’s widow, he had a fling with a stripper from a strip club he frequented that produced a child whom Hunter denied was his until paternity testing proved otherwise. And I knew he married yet another woman who gave birth to his fifth child.

What I didn’t know was the whole story about his military history, so …

Once upon a time there was a 43-year-old man who decided he wanted a “direct commission” into the U.S. Navy Reserve, which, as explained by a man who pursued this path, is a “little-known entry point to get into the military; it’s mostly done for doctors, nurses and dentists. But age 40 is pretty much the brick wall for those outside of those disciplines.”

Wikipedia explains a direct commission in more detail that warrants some attention in light of the background of the hapless character at the center of this story:

A direct commission officer (DCO) is a United States uniformed officer who has received an appointed commission without the typical prerequisites for achieving a commission, such as attending a four-year service academy, a four-year or two-year college ROTC program, or one of the officer candidate school or officer training school programs. … Civilians who have special skills that are critical to sustaining military operations, supporting troops, health and scientific study may receive a direct commission upon entering service.

The problem was our hapless middle-aged man was three years past the permitted age of 40 and he had a prior “drug-related” incident. In addition, he had none of the usual special skills direct commission officers have. In fact, he had few skills other than lobbying and living parasitically off his father’s connections.

His first job out of law school in 1996 was with a banking holding company that was “one of the largest donors” to Joe Biden‘s U.S. Senate campaign. Hunter’s salary was over $100,000 with a signing bonus. Within two years, he was bored and done with practicing law, so it was time for Biden to find another one of his father’s connections to latch on to.  That connection was William Daley, a name with which all Chicagoans are familiar.

In a 2019 profile in the New Yorker, one of the beneficiaries of Hunter Biden’s “earmarking” skills, which go back decades, said that Hunter had, “a very strong last name that really paid off in terms of our lobbying efforts.”

And then there is this fascinating tidbit—fascinating at least to many unconnected deplorables:

By the mid-two-thousands, a growing number of lawmakers were criticizing earmarking as a waste of taxpayer money and a boon to special interests. Hunter was concerned about his future as a lobbyist, and his financial worries increased in 2006, when he bought a $1.6-million house in an affluent neighborhood. Without the savings for a down payment, he took out a mortgage for a hundred and ten per cent of the purchase price.

His life of leeching and lobbying continued, until one day he decided what he really wanted was some kind of military honor—but one that didn’t require any actual sacrifice or service. The problem was the honor he sought would require multiple, extraordinarily difficult-to-come-by exemptions for his advanced age, drug history, and absence of requisite skills.

Fortunately, he did have a special skill just for a situation like this: He knew how to ply the unctuous trade of feeding off connections, and by now his connections were really big connections. His father, the prevaricator and plagiarist Joe Biden, was the vice president of the United States. Joe Biden had the honor of administering his son’s “commissioning oath in a White House ceremony.”

For one glorious month, Hunter Biden served his country by acting “as a public affairs officer; mostly, he went to Norfolk, Va., once a month and did a weekend of service.”

Sadly, after all that arduous string-pulling, he was discharged a month after his service began when a urinalysis revealed cocaine, which Hunter Biden claimed was the result of smoking a cigarette borrowed from a friend that must have been laced with cocaine.

Yeah, that’s the ticket—a borrowed cigarette laced with cocaine. I guess he’s learned some other skills from dear old dad.

Now that the cognitively impaired Joe Biden has almost been ensconced in the sanctuary White House where no implacable reporters can access him and knowing the contents of Hunter’s infamous laptop will soon become known, the dis-informationists at CNN, the New York Times, and Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post feel it’s the perfect time to say, “What ho, Hunter Biden appears to have been on the take! Who knew?”

The Bidens are dishonest, inept, unethical profiteers, and the mainstream press, Facebook Overlord Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s otherworldly emperor Jack Dorsey, and CNN’s Jeff Zucker and his stable of minions run cover for them.

I know secession sounds crazy, but the reasons for desiring it are not.

Many Americans do not want to live in a country where neither they nor their children have free speech, the right to exercise their religion freely, or the right to bear arms.

They don’t want to live in a country where they can’t publicly say that homosexual acts are morally repugnant, that marriage is a sexually differentiated union, that cross-sex hormones and mastectomies don’t turn women into men, or that men have no right to participate in women’s sports or be present in women’s locker rooms.

They don’t want to live in a country where the state may legally appropriate children from their parents, if those parents won’t participate in and facilitate the fiction that their children are the sex they aren’t.

And they don’t want to live in a country where their hard-earned money is taken by the government and used to slaughter tiny, defenseless humans.

I know, I know, secession is too complicated, but a girl can dream about letting the tyrants go their own way and create their own hellhole untouched by rationality and morality. Maybe if they were to live for a time in the anarchical, debauched dystopia for which they long, they might come around to moral sanity. And until that time, the rest of us would be free people once again.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Why-Many-Americans-Want-to-Secede_audio.mp3

For many Christian conservatives, the number one voting issue is abortion. Under no circumstances will we vote for a “pro-choice” candidate, no matter how good that candidate’s other policies may be. Conversely, we will vote for a strong pro-life candidate even if that candidate does not line up with some of our other ideals. After all, we reason, what is more important than the shedding of innocent blood, especially the blood of babies in their mothers’ wombs?

And while it is true that having an abortion is not exactly the same as burning a baby on the altar of the god Molech, as the ancient Israelites used to do, it is certainly high on the list of things that God hates. For good reason are we grieved and outraged over it.

That is one reason why so many of us voted for President Trump. And that is one reason why so many of us voted against Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (and Kamala Harris). Abortion. That one word says it all.

But that leads to an important question. Other than voting for pro-life candidates every two (or four) years, what else are we doing to save babies’ lives? Other than expressing our moral outrage in tweets or comments, what practical difference are we making? If this is such a grave evil in God’s sight and if we are so burdened by it, what are we doing the rest of the year?

I remember speaking at a pro-life rally in Charlotte, North Carolina in conjunction with the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. There was a fairly small crowd present, which only highlighted the degree of apathy in the Church on the subject. In fact, one might say that our degree of passion when it comes to voting against abortion is in inverse proportion to our degree of action when it comes to actually working for the pro-life cause outside of the voting booth.

But as I spoke at the small rally, rather than having a holier-than-thou feeling, I was struck with the opposite emotion, saying to those gathered, “For many of us, attending this rally once a year is the only thing we will actually do to save the lives of the unborn.” Most of us could hardly pat ourselves on the back.

To be sure, there have been countless thousands of pro-life workers who have given themselves to the cause for decades. They have endured ridicule and scorn. They have been arrested and attacked. And yet week in, week out, standing in front of abortion clinics, they have lovingly offered women (and men) a better way. “Choose life,” they have pleaded, with passion, regardless of the opposition they have received.

Others have served faithfully in pro-life clinics, offering alternatives to abortion and affirming the humanity of the child in the womb. Others have worked on the legal front, while others have lobbied politically. Still others have given themselves to prayer and fasting, spending many a sleepless night praying for the unborn and for the emergence of a culture of life.

Here in Charlotte, a powerful pro-life movement, called Love Life, was birthed by some Christian businessmen deeply burdened by the shedding of innocent blood. It quickly moved to other cities in North Carolina and has now been duplicated in other states and countries. As a result, many hundreds of babies are being saved and many families being formed.

But the truth be told, as dogmatic as we are when it comes to voting pro-life (and I’m with you in terms of taking that stand) most of us are often just as apathetic when it comes to actually doing something to save the lives of the unborn.

Does that not smack of hypocrisy? Does that not speak of superficiality? If we really are so burdened, why so little action? If this sin really is so ugly in God’s sight, why do we do so little to stop it outside of our periodic votes? If these unborn children are so precious and innocent, why do we hardly lift a finger to save their lives?

A recurring theme of the Bible is that talk is cheap and that actions speak louder than words. Or, to paraphrase the words of Jacob (James), “If you have so much conviction, show it to me by your deeds” (see James 2:18).

Our voting is certainly important, and there are many legislative victories being won even as we continue to fight to overturn Roe v. Wade. (See here for a grudging acknowledgment of this in Time Magazine.)

But if we really care as much as we claim to care about the unborn, and if abortion is as serious an issue as we claim that it is when we go to vote, then surely, for most of us, there is far more we can do to be pro-life.

Let us turn our passion into action and let us put feet to our conviction. Lives are hanging in the balance, and you and I can be the difference between life and death. Literally.

This article was originally posted at AskDrBrown.org

We are committed to upholding truth while resisting and opposing the rising wave of delusional thinking and tyrannical laws/mandates that have afflicted our state and nation. IFI will continue to provide our supporters with timely alerts, video reports, podcasts, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences, and thought-provoking commentaries—content that is increasingly hard to find.

We encourage you to join us in our efforts. Your support will help us to continue our vital work in 2021. A vigorous defense of biblical truth is needed more than ever in Illinois. 

Remember when homosexual activists lied with straight faces saying what they do in the privacy of their own bedrooms affects no one and, therefore, is no one’s business? And here we are today with the government recognizing non-marital unions as marriages, shameful parades polluting our streets, drag queens reading stories to toddlers in public libraries, a 4,000 percent increase in adolescent girls suddenly deciding they’re boys, and schools requiring faculty to use incorrect pronouns when referring to students who seek to pass as the sex they aren’t.

An NBC News article titled, “Biden administration on track to be most LGBTQ-inclusive in U.S. history” exults, “President-elect Joe Biden has repeatedly vowed to make LGBTQ rights a priority in his administration.” We now have leaders—grown men and women—who think it’s a noble achievement to pick administration officials based on what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms or because they pretend to be the sex they aren’t. Astonishing.

With that puckish grin, lost occasionally in his mental fog, Biden has cast aside character, knowledge, and experience as central employment criteria for his administration. All that really matters is sexual anatomy, erotic interests, and sex identification (oh, and skin color). Goodbye meritocracy. Hello intersectionality.

In the service of demonstrating his ardent commitment to unbiblical sexual deviance, Biden, the less ardent, self-identifying Catholic has so far picked a number of sexually dubious characters for administrative roles and other assorted functions.

Biden chose Karine Jean-Pierre, an “out lesbian” as his deputy press secretary. She may help speak on behalf of the cognitively impaired Biden or clarify the baffling things he says when his handlers allow him to speak. He chose Pili Tobar, another lesbian, to be the deputy White House communications director.  And he chose homosexual Carlos Elizondo to be the White House social secretary.

Elizondo is only the second man in the history of the United States to be chosen to be a White House social secretary. The first, Jeremy Bernard, was chosen by Barack Obama. Bernard too is homosexual and evidently not selected based on his educational background. Bernard, who didn’t finish college, along with his erotic partner at the time, Rufus Gifford, had been major fundraisers for Obama and were hugely influential in the homosexual community. Forget education, training, wisdom, and integrity. Money and sexual deviance will take you to the core of the Democrat machine.

Lesbian attorney Chai Feldblum and bisexual attorney Pamela S. Karlan, who is “married” to a woman, have been tasked with “reviewing the Department of Justice and related agencies for the Biden transition team … including the Federal Election Commission and the Commission on Civil Rights.”

Karlan’s name may be familiar to some. She is one of the three “progressive” law professors who testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in support of the impeachment of President Trump and was forced to apologize for using Barron Trump’s name to make a point. She is also one of the attorneys in the infamous Bostock U.S. Supreme Court Case that Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch bungled.

Homosexual Dave Noble “was named to two teams, one reviewing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the other the Office of National Drug Control Policy.”

Shawn Skelly, a man who now masquerades as a woman following his 20-year stint as a naval flight officer, “will be part of the team reviewing the Department of Defense.” Biden has vowed to reverse President Trump’s ban on gender-deluded men and women serving in the military. I guess Skelly believes that nothing strengthens the military quite like the presence of cross-dressing soldiers and forcing women to bunk and shower with men who cross-dress.

Axios has reported that 39-year-old failed former mayor of South Bend, Indiana and homosexual, Pete Buttigieg, is being seriously considered for the ambassadorship to China, America’s arch-enemy that unleashed the Wuhan Virus on the world and seeks worldwide economic and military domination.

But the homosexual rag The Washington Blade reports that Buttigieg wants nothing less than a Cabinet post. In the Blade piece titled “Frustration builds as Biden’s Cabinet includes no LGBTQ picks,” Chris Johnson writes,

In talks with the Biden transition team, one Democratic insider said the idea of Buttigieg becoming White House OMB director came up, but he rejected it and said he wanted a “real Cabinet” position, not a “staff-level” job.

Well, you can’t say the diminutive former small-town mayor lacks hutzpah.

Behind the scenes the homosexual community is fuming that Biden hasn’t yet chosen a Cabinet member based on his or her private bedroom activities. Johnson continues,

Some LGBTQ leaders are quietly expressing frustration that the movement hasn’t pushed more aggressively for representation in Biden’s Cabinet. …

Things might be changing in terms of ramping up calls for an openly LGBTQ Cabinet member. On Tuesday, the congressional LGBTQ Equality Caucus made public a letter to the Biden transition team making the case for prominent LGBTQ appointees in his administration. “While your administration is on track to be the most diverse in American history, we ask that you continue your commitment to diversity by ensuring LGBTQ+ professionals are included in your Cabinet and throughout your administration. …”

Biden must discriminate based on erotic desires and sex-identification status to keep the most tyrannical demographic in America—“LGB” and “T” activists—sated and quiet. He also needs to feed their legislative and policy desires—most of which involve stripping conservative people of faith of their First Amendment rights.

For example, the country’s largest, most influential homosexual/“trans” activist organization, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), whose 2019 revenue exceeded $44.5 million, has published a 24-page “Blueprint for Positive Change 2020” with a staggering list of “recommendations” for Biden. I’ll mention just two.

The HRC recommends changing a regulation regarding charitable organizations that partner with the federal government to help those with diverse problems and needs. The HRC wants to make sure that any religious charity that receives federal funds to help the suffering be forced to hire homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators.

The HRC’s blueprint for religious oppression also wants to make it possible for college accreditation boards to deny accreditation to any college that has employment or student conduct criteria that reflect biblical standards on sexuality. Such a radical accreditation change would constitute, in theologian Al Mohler’s words, “an atomic bomb.”

If Christian colleges cannot be accredited, then students who want to pursue masters’ degrees, Ph.D.s, law degrees, or medical degrees that require undergraduate degrees from accredited schools would be forced to go elsewhere.

Leftists want to close all avenues to positions of influence for those who reject their sexuality ideology. So much for diversity and tolerance.

Biden has promised that his first order of business will be to pass the pernicious Equality Act, which will happen if Republicans lose the Senate. The Democrat-sponsored Equality Act—which as everyone knows has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with oppression—will deny conservative people of faith First Amendment speech and religious free exercise protections.

As I wrote 1 ½ years ago when the U.S. House passed it, the Equality Act would require federal law to recognize disordered subjective feelings and deviant behaviors as protected characteristics. Federal law would absurdly recognize homoeroticism and cross-sex masquerading as conditions that must be treated like skin color and biological sex.

It’s a remarkable feat of rhetorical and political legerdemain to use the ugly racial discrimination suffered historically by blacks to normalize discrimination based on race (i.e., against whites), sex (i.e., against men), mental health (i.e., against “cisgenders”), and erotic desire (i.e., against heterosexuals). Now it’s not only acceptable to choose not to hire people because they’re white, male, heterosexual, or who accept their biological sex, it’s de rigueur.

The real goal in the new and socially acceptable form of discrimination is to normalize homoeroticism and cross-sex impersonation by exploiting the instruments and institutions of power to silence public expressions of moral beliefs that leftists don’t like.

The first step is to confuse the issue by treating dissimilar conditions as if they were the same. So, conditions that are not genetically determined, in many cases fluid, and constituted centrally by freely chosen acts (e.g., homoeroticism and opposite-sex identification) are compared to conditions that are 100% heritable, in all cases immutable, and have no behavioral dimensions (e.g., skin color and biological sex). This is called a “category mistake.”

Leftists use this category mistake relentlessly in their effort to make it socially and legally impossible for Christians to exercise their religion and speech rights freely. They want to make it impossible to publicly express moral propositions about homoerotic acts or to conduct one’s business in accordance with religious beliefs. They want to make it impossible, for example, to refuse to hire a man who freely chooses to cross-dress.

Homoeroticism and cross-sex passing are moral issues about which it is entirely fitting to express views even if others disagree with or detest those views. Shouting “identity” and “authenticity” is not a “Get Out of Moral Assessment” free card. It doesn’t seem that leftists feel any shame about condemning my beliefs even if they derive from my authentic identity as a theologically orthodox Christ-follower.

“LGB” and “T” activists are far from done with their unholy work of transforming a once decent place to raise children into a moral sinkhole in which the government will soon appropriate children whose parents don’t toe the line drawn by regressive pagans.

I have long contended that there is no greater threat to First Amendment religious free exercise and speech protections than homosexual and “trans”-cultic activism. If Harris and Biden win the White House, and Democrats win the U.S. Senate, fasten your seatbelts, Christian conservatives, because it will be a bumpy night.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Harris-Biden-Administration-Sexual-Deviance-and-Religious-Oppression.mp3

We are committed to upholding truth while resisting and opposing the rising wave of delusional thinking and tyrannical laws/mandates that have afflicted our state and nation. IFA will continue to provide our supporters with timely alerts, video reports, podcasts, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences, and thought-provoking commentaries—content that is increasingly hard to find.

We encourage you to join us in our efforts. Your support will help us to continue our vital work in 2021. A vigorous defense of biblical truth is needed more than ever in Illinois. 

With our nation on a razor’s edge, the days are getting shorter — and darker.

In fact, the winter solstice is coming in a couple of weeks on Dec. 21, marking the shortest day on the calendar and thus the darkest time of the year.

More than ever, it’s better to look to the heavenly light of Bethlehem instead of, say, the gaslight emanating from the pixels of a profoundly corrupt media.

A random sampling of news every day can inflict whiplash. Conservative outlets report, in detail, numerous documented allegations of vote fraud that should invalidate Joe Biden’s reported victory in most of the battleground states.

During the same news cycle, the major networks and papers like The Washington Post and The New York Times assure us over and over that there is “no evidence.” Because the evidence is piling up, some have taken to adding an adjective, saying there’s no evidence of “systemic fraud.”

In other words, don’t believe your lying eyes. Their intention is to ensure that even if compelling evidence is revealed, the sheer weight of nonstop propaganda will frighten legislators and judges to head for the tall grass and decline to do their duty — even the U.S. Supreme Court.

More than ever, we need to pray that truth will prevail, that justice will be done and that God will have undeserved mercy upon us and our troubled country.

On the bright side, the dark days of December are a perfect time to celebrate the Lord arriving in the form of a baby 2,000 years ago as the greatest gift to humanity ever given. Jesus brought light, life and love and the promise of eternal salvation to a very dark world.

It’s why we celebrate by putting up Christmas lights, giving gifts and singing carols.

The most significant event in history evokes different feelings depending on one’s heart condition. In 1868, Phillips Brooks wrote the lyrics of a beloved carol that resound to this day.

The last two lines of the first verse indicate that not everyone would be happy that the Lord would engage His creation so personally:

O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in the dark street shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

Fears? Yes. If Christ is Who He says He is, then those who reject Him are choosing misery over hope, consciously or not. They brush away evidence of God’s love, relegating stories of redemption to delusion, coincidence or even ultimate self-interest.

Theologian A.W. Tozer challenged the idea of God as an absentee creator, a “Blind Watchmaker,” as prominent atheist Richard Dawkins titled his 1986 book:

Be assured that God did not create life and toss it from Him like some petulant artist disappointed with His work. All life is in Him and out of Him, flowing from Him and returning to Him again, a moving indivisible sea of which He is the fountainhead.

It may sound a lot like The Force in “Star Wars,” but the difference is stark. There is no “dark side” in God, Who is indivisible, omnipotent and all loving. We’ll never know this side of eternity why evil exists. Or why God’s love is so deep that He sent His only Son to die on our behalf. But nothing should stop us from being grateful for the gift of life itself and all that sustains it.

For Christ is born of Mary,
And fathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth
And praises sing to God, the King,
And peace to men on earth.

The reason for the season speaks to all people, even unbelievers. The beauty of Christmas transcends doubts and calms hearts. It’s hard to be callous toward Salvation Army bellringers tending their red kettles or to shut off one’s heart upon hearing the melodies of carols that pierce the soul and offer hope. Timeless, classic movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life” can elicit tears from even the crustiest viewers.

How silently, how silently,
The wondrous Gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

In our culture, we’re told, over and over, that meekness is weakness; that looking out for No. 1 is the smartest way to live and that only fools bend their knee to an invisible God. But God-inspired goodness and truth are the most disarming forces on Earth.

In 1994, Mother Teresa spoke at a prayer breakfast, flanked by President Bill and Hillary Clinton and Vice President Al and Tipper Gore.  The two couples sat stone-faced as she proposed a “culture of life” and called abortion evil. At one point, Mr. Clinton’s hand was shaking nervously, apparently in reaction to the spiritual strength in this tiny, fearless woman.

Whatever happens with the election, we need to keep our eyes on the God Who promises not only salvation and mercy but courage to face the future and act accordingly.

Robert Knight is a contributor to The Washington Times, where this article was originally published. His website is roberthknight.com. 

We have been blessed with many liberties here in America, many of them unknown throughout human history. And we should diligently guard those liberties. It would be a terrible tragedy if we lost them, especially for the generations that will follow. Few things are as precious as our freedoms.

At the same time, as followers of Jesus, it’s easy for us to lose our perspective because of those very liberties and freedoms. It’s easy for us to become dependent on the government. Or to put our trust in a worldly system. Or to believe that human limitations can put limitations on God. Perish the thought.

With this in mind, we do well to think back to the situation of the first century church, living in the Roman Empire and subject to the Roman emperor, meaning men like Caligula (37-41 AD) and Nero (54-68).

According to one history website, “Caligula was Rome’s most tyrannical emperor. His reign from 37-41 AD is filled with murder and debauchery, to levels even his infamous nephew Nero could not reach. The great-great grandson of Julius Caesar certainly left his mark by his possible madness and definitely horrific acts.”

Another website states, “Historical accounts of Caligula may vary, but nearly all historians agreed on one dark fact: this deranged emperor placed very little value on human life. In one twisted story, Caligula was supposedly meant to sacrifice a bull to the gods by hitting it over the head with a huge mallet. At the last minute, Caligula had an even worse idea—he turned and struck the priest instead.”

This was the leader of the empire.

As for Nero, where do we start? According to the historian Tacitus,

“. . . to stop the rumor [that he had set Rome on fire], he [Emperor Nero] falsely charged with guilt, and punished with the most fearful tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were [generally] hated for their enormities. . . . . Accordingly first those were arrested who confessed they were Christians; next on their information, a vast multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city, as of ‘hating the human race.’” (Yet, these early Christians were called “haters.”)

Tacitus continues:

“In their very deaths they were made the subjects of sport: for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and when the day waned, burned to serve for the evening lights.”

Picture this happening in your city to your friends and family members.

Yet it was during the reigns of Caligula and Nero, among others, that the early church thrived. It was during these times of intense, unspeakable cruelty and persecution, that the gospel message flourished and grew.

And it was while the demented, murderous Nero was emperor that Paul wrote these words: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Romans 13:1).

Of course, Paul did not call for unqualified submission to governing authorities, as in cases where the authorities command you to do evil. Accordingly, if you were a Christian living in Hitler’s Germany and were commanded to turn in any Jews you knew, the right thing would be disobedience – disobedience to man but obedience to God. We always submit to the highest authority.

But that’s now what I want to focus on. Instead, I want to draw our attention to the attitude of believers under a dictatorial regime. You cannot vote. You cannot take legal action against the government. You cannot protest (unless you want to be killed in the process). You cannot change “the system.” Such matters are out of your hands.

But you can do something much more powerful. You can spread the gospel. You can advance God’s countercultural, spiritual kingdom. You can liberate people’s hearts and minds. You can bring healing and redemption. You can be an agent of eternal change. You can challenge the system from the ground up.

And that’s what these early believers did, turning their world upside down.

The ultimate battle is a spiritual battle, and that battle can be waged regardless of what kind of government we’re under.

In fact, it is often during the hardest times that the church grows the most. Just look at the explosive growth of the Church in Communist China over the last 70-80 years. Or consider the church in Muslim Iran, which is growing as rapidly as any church in the world.

The church often does much better under persecution than under prosperity.

That’s why it doesn’t surprise me that the most precious, devoted Christians I have met in the world are Christians under persecution. Conversely, it doesn’t surprise that, quite often, the most complacent Christians I’ve met have been Christians in the midst of abundant prosperity.

That’s why the church became much more compromised and worldly once Constantine Christianized the Roman Empire. With the good came the bad. Governmental backing now produced a foreign mixture, as the Church became an appendage of a still-worldly empire.

Freedom and prosperity are gifts that can be easily abused.

It’s true, of course, that at different times in history (including recently), radical Islam has virtually wiped out entire Christian populations in some parts of the world. And it’s true that no one in their right mind would want to bequeath brutal persecution and mass killing on the generations to come.

To repeat: we must guard the freedoms and liberties God has given us here in America.

But let’s also be realistic. Just as Donald Trump is not Jesus, Joe Biden is not the devil. Neither is he Nero.

Biden may support gay “marriage” and transgender activism, but  Nero “castrated a boy named Sporus to make him womanlike, and then married him in a traditional ceremony, which included a bridal veil and a dowry, according to the Roman historian and biographer Suetonius (circa A.D. 69).”

And I do not believe for a moment that Biden would call for Christians to be set on fire and burned alive to illuminate the night. Please! (And for the record, we still do not officially know who our next president will be.)

So, while we work hard to preserve our freedoms and push back against those who seek to take them from us, we must never put our trust in the arm of flesh.

Paul’s counsel was simple: “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:1-4).

Here in America, we should get involved in the political system as much as we are called to and have the opportunity to do so.

But our trust is placed elsewhere. The invisible kingdom is advancing, and no power in heaven or on earth can stop it.

Peter and Paul and a host of other first century Christians, all killed for their faith, would add their hearty Amen.

This article was originally published at AskDr.Brown.org.

If you have logged on to Netflix, Amazon, and other places recently, you have probably seen some of corporate America’s virtue signaling via banners in support of Black Lives Matter. By itself, it is a powerful slogan which no one can disagree with, even if you’d prefer to say all lives matter. However, there’s more to this than just a slogan.

The organization Black Lives Matter has some very specific goals and views that many casual observers may not know: it was founded to dramatically change America, and its leaders have not been shy about where they stand. Here are just a few of their policy positions with a couple of my comments in parentheses.

• Black Lives Matter supports abortion. It states: “We deserve and thus we demand reproductive justice that gives us autonomy over our bodies and our identities while ensuring that our children and families are supported, safe, and able to thrive.” (Aborted babies don’t thrive nor are they safe. Black babies are disproportionately terminated by the abortion industry which has racist roots stemming from Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.)

• Black Lives Matter supports the radical LGBT agenda. It states: “We foster a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.” (Two of the three founders of BLM describe themselves as “queer,” a rather radical term for a homosexual activist.)

• Black Lives Matter opposes the traditional nuclear family which is a vital sociological part of overcoming crime and poverty. It states: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.” (Villages without fathers are poor [literally] substitutes for communities with intact families.)

• Black Lives Matter supports reparations. It states: “Reparations for full and free access for all Black people (including undocumented and currently and formerly incarcerated people) to lifetime education…retroactive forgiveness of student loans, and support for lifetime learning programs.”

• Black Lives Matter supports the abolishment of police. It states: “We believe that prisons, police and all other institutions that inflict violence on Black people must be abolished…”

• Black Lives Matter claims to oppose racism, but it is an organization with anti-Semitic leanings. In 2016 BLM adopted derogatory policy statements about Israel. It described the nation of Israel as an “apartheid state” committing “genocide” and supports the boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) movement against Israel. BLM opposes any support of Israel by the United States government.

• Black Lives Matter’s activism is helping the presidential campaign of Joe Biden. If one goes to the BLM website and chooses to donate, he is redirected to a site hosted by ActBlue and prompted with the message: “We appreciate your support of the movement and our ongoing fight to end state-sanctioned violence, liberate Black people, and end white supremacy forever.” Joe Biden is the top beneficiary of ActBlue’s fundraising efforts.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Written by David Limbaugh

The liberal media are urging Joe Biden to form a shadow government to upstage President Donald Trump‘s crisis response effort, which illustrates its consuming partisanship — and its insufficient attention to the health and welfare of the American people.

MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle floated the idea during an interview with former Barack Obama staffer Jim Messina. Referring to Trump’s COVID-19 daily press briefing, Ruhle asked, “Should Joe Biden be counterprogramming that? Should he be creating his own shadow government, shadow Cabinet, shadow SWAT team, and getting up there at a podium every night, saying, ‘Here’s the crisis we’re in. Here’s what we need to do to address this’?”

I’ll concede that if Biden were to follow Ruhle’s ludicrous suggestion, Trump would be the biggest beneficiary. If some are still unaware of Biden’s diminishing competence, they would certainly learn of it in counter-press briefings. But let’s not get sidetracked with our own partisan ruminations when we should be working together to mitigate Americans’ medical and economic hardships.

Sadly, the media can’t get beyond their obsessive hatred for Trump to approach this moment with even minimal clarity. We witness this repeatedly at the briefings. Some reporters seek to elicit facts that will help inform the public, but far too many are there to grandstand, and to embarrass and shame the president.

They sling their gotcha questions, hoping to trick Trump into admitting he didn’t act quickly enough and isn’t effectively overseeing the distribution of equipment and other aid to the states. Some have very nearly accused Trump of causing American deaths.

Aside from the spuriousness of their claims, these questions are utterly inappropriate and counterproductive at briefings whose purpose is to update the American people on our battle against the coronavirus and on plans to reopen the economy.

Accusing President Trump of an initially tardy response, even if true (which it isn’t), distracts our attention from combating this pandemic. It may satisfy their Trump-hating lust, but it serves no constructive purpose. If they want to pursue yet another investigative crusade against Trump in time to damage him before the November election, how about they wait just a few more months while the adults try to alleviate real pain befalling real people?

The idea of a shadow government is not just ill-motivated; it is absurd. Who are these clowns kidding? The president’s principal medical advisers on this crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, are certainly not Republicans telling Trump whatever he wants to hear. If they’re paying attention, they also know that Trump is respectfully considering their every word and, in most cases, deferring to their judgment. The media were aghast when Birx shattered their narrative of Trump as an inattentive lummox. “He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data,” said Birx. “I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues.” So do I.

The media have tried to drive a wedge between Fauci and Trump, but neither of them would have it. Fauci has insisted that there is little, if any, inconsistency in their positions. There is no tension between Trump and these doctors in the briefings. Fauci has also been quite clear in disabusing Trump’s media prosecutors of their claim that Trump was delinquent in responding to the crisis — because if Trump was late, Fauci was even later.

So what would these armchair quarterbacks hope to accomplish through their fantasy shadow team, other than keeping Joe Biden in the limelight by presenting some bogus alternative to the administration’s leadership?

As it turns out, Ruhle wasn’t the first to pitch the shadow government concept. On March 23, Washington Post opinion writer Paul Waldman proposed it. “In Britain, the opposition party maintains a ‘shadow’ cabinet, a group of spokespeople assigned the same policy areas as the ministries of the government, to offer the opposition’s view on whatever issue is being discussed at a given moment,” wrote Waldman. “While Biden probably wouldn’t want to assign specific Cabinet positions now he could utilize both his own aides and people in the broader Democratic world to give the public a picture of what government under President Biden would be up to — and provide a contrast with the chaos, corruption, and incompetence that characterizes the Trump administration.”

The common thread uniting Ruhle, Waldman and the rest of the Trump-hating media cabal is their inability to see anything outside a partisan lens. Even now while thousands of Americans have died and millions are suffering financially, they can’t see past their unremitting contempt for him, and they can’t apply their energy toward helping Trump solve these problems instead of scheming of ways to unseat him in November.

Meanwhile, Trump has organized both his coronavirus task force and his Opening Our Country Council on a bipartisan basis, and he is working across party lines with businesses and state governments to address the crisis.

While the media have failed to make their case against Trump for incompetence and partisanship, they have resoundingly demonstrated their own — and the public is not likely to soon forget it.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is “Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win.” Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Written by Peter Heck

How he managed to say it without choking on his own tongue I will never know. As President Trump began to dress down the hostile press that was attempting to use his Monday White House briefing to smear him as negligent, CNN cut away immediately to anchor John King who managed to prattle out these words without even a sniff of irony:

“To play a propaganda video at taxpayer expense in the White House briefing room is a new — you can insert your favorite word here – in this administration.”

For anyone at CNN to feign objection over “propaganda” is as convincing a testimony you will ever see to the staggering lack of self-awareness capable by seemingly coherent human beings.

This is, after all, the network of Jake Tapper, who just days ago allowed socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to repeat without correction the now widely debunked rumor that President Trump called coronavirus a hoax. Tapper actually defended his own silence saying that while he knew it was a lie, he let it slide by because President Trump lies about other things. Seriously:

I guess that’s the problem with a politician who lies so often; while I agree that Democrats are mischaracterizing what he said, what he did say was also false so it’s tough to justify taking the time for a fact check when it’s not taking a stand defining the truth.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 22, 2020

Tapper also allowed Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi to accuse Trump of “fiddling” without ever holding her to account for “fiddling” herself when she single-handedly delayed the coronavirus relief bill for a week.

This is the network of Brian Stelter who anchors a program unironically called “Reliable Sources,” and utilizes that platform to peddle misinformation on behalf of the Democrat Party:

I RT’ed a former LA Times reporter who had tweeted pics that mistakenly ran on the ABC local news broadcast. When I found out the story was erroneous, I deleted the tweet. Gosh, Brian, why does your tweet omit the MSM error that started it? Or does CNN only exist to attack GOP? https://t.co/ehvPHPMrGh

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 13, 2020

It is also Stelter who turned disgraced lawyer and convicted felon Michael Avenatti into a mainstay on his program in order to attack Trump, and even encouraged the Stormy Daniels attorney to think about running for president himself. With Avenatti in jail now, Stelter fills his time regularly attempting “gotcha” moments with President Trump that end just about as well. Like this:

Admin officials "say the White House has made a deliberate political calculation that it will better serve Trump’s interest to put the onus on governors — rather than the federal government — to figure out how to move ahead."

Let that quote sink in… https://t.co/v2QVZBXslD

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 11, 2020

Yes, let it. Because there’s a name for the concept articulated in that quote, of course. It’s called “federalism,” the central pillar around which our constitutional order and system is constructed. Let the fact that CNN’s chief media corresponded didn’t realize that sink in for a minute.

Besides, it isn’t too difficult to figure out what Stelter and company would be saying if Trump had seized power and claimed emergency authority to dictate nationalized policies to “move ahead.”

This is the network of Don Lemon, an activist masquerading as a newsman who is so sharply partisan that long-time journos cringe at the damage he continues to do not only to CNN’s credibility, but the industry itself.

This is the network that breathlessly covered every potential angle of every perceived accusation against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings, yet now remains the only major news organization that has not even mentioned the credible allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden by one of his former employees.

This is the network that at the very same press briefing that John King couldn’t bear to air another second of, allowed a staffer manning the chyron machine to post these on-screen Democrat talking points with the apparent blessing of both editors and producers:

I’m almost impressed with how hard the CNN chyron writers of my former network effort to get their revulsion for Pres Trump just right!

I don’t miss it… pic.twitter.com/FLQr2Nwz8a

— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) April 14, 2020

Incredible. As in, lacking in all credibility.

After recently surviving a bout with COVID-19, CNN host Christopher Cuomo made some startling remarks, indicating that he was re-evaluating his career at the network. Among other things, Cuomo called out CNN for trafficking in “ridiculous things.”

He not wrong in that assessment, even though I’d choose a different, more precise term for what this low-rated televised rumor mill peddles: propaganda.

This article was originally published at Disrn.com.

The United States of America was founded as an extraordinary experiment in freedom balanced by an almost universal worldview — the Christian or biblical worldview — which supplied inward moral constraints and rendered heavy handed government unnecessary and even repugnant.

But today, over 240 years later, America is a battlefield of opposing worldviews: secular humanists who have no transcendent truth to constrain them, versus people of faith who still embrace a biblical worldview. That biblical worldview includes exhortation to all manner of good and godly works and attitudes.

But what of The Left? Those with no moral compass who subscribe to the situational ethics school of thought? How can Progressive leaders and gatekeepers motivate their followers? Simple: fear.

People, in general, are either motivated by love or fear. Many times a healthy dose of fear is not a bad thing: ask the parent who loves their child unconditionally, yet understands the efficacy of fear of consequences.

Consider the notorieties of The Left and some of their chronicled pronouncements intended to evoke fear.

National Review columnist David French writes of fearmonger Al Gore:

In January, 2006 — when promoting his Oscar-winning (yes, Oscar-winning) documentary, An Inconvenient Truth — Gore declared that unless we took “drastic measures” to reduce greenhouse gasses, the world would reach a “point of no return” in a mere ten years. He called it a “true planetary emergency.” Well, the ten years passed today, we’re still here, and the climate activists have postponed the apocalypse. Again.

In case you missed seeing Al’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, here is the film’s synopsis:

Director Davis Guggenheim eloquently weaves the science of global warming with former Vice President Al Gore’s personal history and lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate change in the most talked-about documentary of the year.

An audience and critical favorite, An Inconvenient Truth makes the compelling case that global warming is real, man-made, and its effects will be cataclysmic if we don’t act now. Gore presents a wide array of facts and information in a thoughtful and compelling way: often humorous, frequently emotional, and always fascinating. In the end, An Inconvenient Truth accomplishes what all great films should: it leaves the viewer shaken, involved and inspired.

Notice the hyperbolic language — cataclysmic — and the ultimate goal of the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth accomplishes what all great films should: it leaves the viewer shaken, involved and inspired.” Shaken. Indeed. Trembling with fear. Now that’s some motivation!

Now consider the collective works and declarations of Hollywood heavyweight (pun intended) Michael Moore. Take a look at the PR description of Moore’s 2009 film, Capitalism: A Love Story:

Filmmaker Michael Moore explores corporate greed, the global economic meltdown, and their disastrous effect on American lives. As he travels from the Heartland to the financial epicenter of New York and the halls of government in Washington, Moore delves into the price the country pays for its love of capitalism.

Moore’s earlier 2002 movie, Bowling for Columbine, delivers a foreboding message concerning guns in America:

Political documentary filmmaker Michael Moore explores the circumstances that lead to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and, more broadly, the proliferation of guns and the high homicide rate in America. In his trademark provocative fashion, Moore accosts Kmart corporate employees and pleads with them to stop selling bullets, investigates why Canada doesn’t have the same excessive rate of gun violence and questions actor Charlton Heston on his support of the National Rifle Association.

Leftist Moore crafts his documentaries to support his radical worldview: capitalism is unadulterated greed which will destroy America and the globe; guns and the NRA and Charlton Heston are evil and the cause of violence in America. Each of Moore’s films seek to instill fear in the audience.

Another purveyor of fear, Nobel Peace Prize Winning Barack Obama has the bully pulpit and the Progressive mindset to disseminate chilling, but fictitious, dictums. With the looming danger of Islamic terrorism, Obama dons his blinders and preaches:

Today there is no greater threat to our planet than climate change.

. . .

No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.

Secretary of State John Kerry warns:

It is [climate change], indeed, one of the greatest threats facing our planet today.

Even Veep Joe Biden gets in on the “scare-your-pants off with man-caused climate change doom” act:

Climate change is the threat multiplier.

Watch the video below with these and more scary quotes:

Now we all know we should live in fear and trembling of climate change, gun owners and capitalism. But wait, there’s more.

Slow Joe Biden warned the black community in August 2012, replete with his phony “black brother accent:”

[Romney] said in the first hundred days, he’s going to let the big banks write their own rules — unchain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in chains.

Thus Americans can add Romney and all Republicans to the list of phobias. But, don’t put down your pen — if you’re taking notes.

President Obama decried flyover folks in 2008:

And when he spoke to a group of his wealthier Golden State backers at a San Francisco fund-raiser last Sunday, Barack Obama took a shot at explaining the yawning cultural gap that separates a Turkeyfoot from a Marin County.

“…And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

So there you go. According to Obama, working class Americans are bitter, God-clinging, gun-clinging, xenophobics who should be objects of suspicion and loathing.

Our universities have been indoctrinating students for several generations with this nonsense, instilling fear of patriots and what were once considered solid American values. Colleges advertise “safe zones” and decry “micro-aggression and trigger warnings.”

Oklahoma Wesleyan University President, Dr. Everett Piper, wrote an excellent rebuttal to all the PC/Lefty nonsense in his 2015 article, This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!:

At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge. We want you to model interpersonal reconciliation rather than foment personal conflict. We believe the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin. We don’t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don’t issue “trigger warnings” before altar calls.

Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up.

This is not a day care. This is a university.

Let’s face it, The Left is motivated by, and only by, feelings — not facts nor solid intellectual argument. With a worldview wherein man is both intrinsically good and, strangely, the enemy of the planet, the best mode of motivation is fear. Pure, unsubstantiated fear.

Contrast that with the Judeo-Christian, the biblical, worldview. Those who revere the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, those who read the Bible and try to live out its precepts. Those people of faith believe in right and wrong, in sin and mercy and grace. And they believe in absolute, transcendent truth.

If The Left motivates through fear, how does The Right, Conservatives of faith, motivate? Love.

There are over 360 passages in the Bible which tells us to “fear not.” And with great clarity the apostle John writes:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18

Dr. R.C. Sproul of Ligonier Ministries notes:

We are fragile mortals, given to fears of every sort. We have a built-in insecurity that no amount of whistling in the dark can mollify. We seek assurance concerning the things that frighten us the most.

The prohibition uttered more frequently than any other by our Lord is the command, “Fear not …” He said this so often to His disciples and others He encountered that it almost came to sound like a greeting. Where most people greet others by saying “Hi” or “Hello,” the first words of Jesus very often were “Fear not.”

Our culture may be a war zone as we wrestle against principalities and powers who wield fear as a weapon of control.

The antidote for that fear is truth and love. We must be apologists of truth, striking down the nonsense of the fear peddlers. As John Mark penned:

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Sorry fearmongers, you don’t have a chance of winning: perfect love casts out fear.

Join IFI at our Feb. 18th Worldview Conference

We are excited about our third annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Frank Turek on Sat., Feb. 18, 2017 in Barrington. Dr. Turek is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture:

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

One month ago, headlines proclaimed, “Grandson of Billy Graham: The Pulpit is No Place to Speak on Social Issues.”

The headlines were in response to comments made by Tullian Tchividjian, Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, during a panel discussion on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Pastor Tchividjian had said, “I think, in my opinion, over the course of the last 20 or 30 years, evangelicalism, specifically their association with the religious right and conservative politics, has done more damage to the brand of Christianity than just about anything else.”

He added, “That’s not to say that Christian people don’t have opinions on social issues and we shouldn’t speak those opinions, but Sunday morning from behind the pulpit is not the place, in my opinion.”

To give this further context, he explained, “It’s not so much religion in the public sphere as much as religion in the pulpit, behind the pulpit, that’s my primary concern. As a preacher, my job when I stand up on Sunday mornings to preach is not first and foremost to address social ills or social problems or try to find social solutions. My job is to diagnose people’s problems and then announce God’s solution to their problems.”

Was Pastor Tchividjian right? Have we politicized the gospel from our pulpits? Have we mixed with the culture wars with the gospel?

On the one hand, he is absolutely right, and to the extent we have confused allegiance with the Republican or Democratic Party with allegiance to the kingdom of God, we have damaged the cause of Christ.

The gospel message is divisive enough already, proclaiming that salvation is found only through Jesus. Why make it even more divisive by identifying Jesus with partisan politics?

I’d much rather defend Jesus than defend Barack Obama or Sarah Palin or Joe Biden or Ted Cruz, although to be sure, I have far more in common with some of the names on this list than with others.

And because the Republican Party has stood much stronger on a number of key moral issues than has the Democratic Party (at least in terms of their respective platforms), and because movements like the Moral Majority were associated with Republican leaders, Pastor Tchividjian is right to speak of the damage done to the gospel by associating it with conservative politics. (I’m speaking broadly here, fully aware that there are many voters who claim the Democratic Party is the more caring and compassionate in terms of the needs of the poor, also drawing a large percentage of conservative Black voters.)

It is also very easy to get so focused on social issues that we take our eyes off of Jesus, as if our primary calling was to “reclaim America” or stop abortion or preserve marriage rather than our primary calling being to make disciples and glorify God.

On the other hand, Pastor Tchividjian is absolutely wrong, since there is no separation between the gospel and culture, between how we live in society and how we live in our private lives, between the lordship of Jesus inside the four walls of a church building and outside that building.

Joel McDurmon, a resident scholar at American Vision, addressed this mentality in his Introduction to the reprint of Alice M. Baldwin’s book, The New England Pulpit and the American Revolution. He spoke of those who would say, “Christians should not preach politics! We should preach the ‘Gospel’ only!”

He responded, “Of course, this assumes that the Great Commission applies only to the inner, private lives of people and the salvation of their souls for the next world alone. In short, it limits the definition of the Christian calling in such a way as to exclude its social aspects up front.”

Put another way, we are called to go make disciples, but how do disciples live? How do we function in the world – in our marriages, families, schools, and places of business? How do we live as salt and light in the society?

That’s why it was preachers of the gospel who were at the forefront of the American Revolution (as carefully documented by Baldwin), preachers of the gospel who were at the forefront of the abolition movement, and preachers of the gospel who were at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement.

Do you think that Dr. Martin Luther King thought to himself, “Well, I shouldn’t be mixing the gospel with social issues”?

Conversely, we have no sympathy today for the German pastors who stood idly by as Hitler rose to power and began to make his murderous goals known. Should they have simply focused on the personal problems of their congregants?

And when a young woman in one of our congregations is contemplating an abortion, is that a personal issue or a social issue? When parents are trying to understand how to respond to the announcement that their son is “marrying” another young man, is that a personal issue or a social issue? When kids come home from school with virtually pornographic sex-ed material, is that a personal issue or a social issue? When a family is falling apart under the duress of severe economic pressure, is that a personal issue or a social issue?

There is also the matter of perspective, as an inner city black pastor once said to me, “You’re trying to get prayer back in the schools. I’m trying to get education back in the schools.”
Is that a personal issue or a social issue?

Recently, Rev. Franklin Graham addressed the concern that “your father wouldn’t get onto these subjects,” as he spoke about the need to stand up against the rising tide of secularism in our country.

He responded, “Wait a second. My father, when he was going to school, they had a Bible in school,” he continued. “When he was going to school, they had the Ten Commandments on the wall. When he was going to school, you could pray in school, and the teachers would lead in those prayers.

“Our country has changed. And we’ve got to take a stand.”

He also said, “Now I’m not talking about Baptists or Republicans and the Tea Party. I have no confidence that any of these politicians or any party is going to turn this country around. The only hope for this country is for men and women of God to stand up and take a stand.”

He’s absolutely right, and it’s time we take our stand, not with hatred, rancor, or insult, and not in the name of a political leader or political party, but in the name of Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, and in the love and truth of God.

Let us go into the world and make disciples, and let us go out into the world and be disciples.

(We reached out to Pastor Tchividjian for interaction without success but would welcome dialogue on these issues.)

This article was originally posted at The Christian Post website.