The Facebook Overlords are operating in overdrive. On Tuesday, August 16, I discovered that the FB Overlords had “fact-checked,” not one, not two, but three of the satirical memes I had posted over the past four days on my personal Facebook page. All of the memes satirized Biden’s proposed 87,000-member Schutzstaffel: the IRSS. This is a sure sign that Dems are quaking in their jackboots about how much the public hates their Inflation Reduction Act that spends buckets of hard-earned ducats on more bureaucrats, whose job will be to squeeze more money from Americans.

Enquiring minds wonder if Biden and his merry band of congressional pocket-pickers and Zuckerberg brown-nosers had a little confab with Zuck or his lackeys, begging them to do something—anything—to stop social media jokes. Luckily for Biden and congressional Democrats, it doesn’t take much to get the dour, humorless, and literal Overlords tasked with fact-checking satirical memes to start slapping scary “MISSING CONTEXT” stickers on posts willy-nilly.

Maybe the Overlords, overloaded with their censorship duties, farmed out their dirty work to Macedonian teens with time on their hands, or maybe the scary “MISSING CONTEXT” stickers—the next best thing to censorship—were slapped on by avatars in the Metaverse where real people go to die. Clearly, someone isn’t happy about viral jokes about the Democrats hiring an 87,000-member fiscal goon squad.

Here are the memes that got the Overloads all worked up:

Word to the Meta meme-slayers: All memes lack context. All cartoons lack context. All jokes lack context. Are the meme-slayers actually saying that Facebook kinda, sorta prohibits all memes, cartoons, and jokes?

Even satirical essays lack context. What would the meme-slayers do if someone posted Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal on Facebook?

And why do satirical memes about the IRSS generate such a fevered response from Facebook? Could it be that some Democrats and their collaborationist social media moguls fully understand the power of both social media and satire not only to reflect public sentiment but also to affect it?

Could it be that the Democratic Party and monopolistic leftwing social media seek to influence public opinion just as they influenced the 2020 election by burying news stories, spreading mis- and dis-information, and engaging in well-concealed algorithmic mischief?

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tried to assuage the fears of the public, justifiably alarmed at the prospect of 87,000 new recruits into the IRSS army, while concomitantly fueling class division:

Specifically, I direct that any additional resources—including any new personnel or auditors that are hired—shall not be used to increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels.

But the Heritage Foundation pokes a sharp stick into the sunshiny balloon Yellin tried to fly over the heads of deplorables:

But considering the sheer magnitude of 87,000 new IRS agents and an estimated $204 billion in new revenues from enforcement, is it possible for all those new audits and revenues to involve only taxpayers making over $400,000?

—Returning to 2010 audit rates for all individuals making over $400,000 would generate only 28%, or $9.9 billion, out of the estimated $35.3 billion in new IRS enforcement revenues in 2031.

—Even increasing recent audit rates 30-fold for taxpayers making over $400,000—including 100% audit rates on taxpayers with incomes over $10 million—still would fall more than 20% short of raising the estimated $35.3 billion in new revenues in 2031.

Sounds like Yellin, Biden, and congressional Democrats—including U.S. Senator Joe Manchin—have once again foisted on Americans a mess of fiscal pottage gussied up with some mis- and dis-information. And if some satirical social media jokes create problems for their political futures and their hopes for total control of American lives, those jokes must go.

This isn’t the first time FB Overlords have come unexpectedly to my tiny soapbox in the virtual public square. Like the Spanish Inquisition, they appeared and hauled me off to Meta-prison for 30 days because of this cartoon on the economy, claiming it violated their “standards” on (wait for it) “suicide”:

Silly me, I thought it was a cartoon about socialism and the economy. My apologies to all those people who contemplate suicide with a dinner fork.

Everyone who cares about the future of our declining republic seeks to influence public opinion. There’s nothing wrong with that. But there is something very wrong about the means the unholy alliance of the Democrat Party and social media use to achieve their ends—ends that include expanding the permanent, unelected, unaccountable government bureaucracy that has the power to destroy lives.

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As we head into the next presidential campaign season, it would serve us well to remember how leftist hatred and the lies they created to serve their hatred have caused ordinary Americans to suffer.

Leftist hatred of former President Trump resulted in the election of the senile mob boss Joe “Bananas” Biden, who has destroyed virtually every good thing Trump did during his four years in the White House. (Ironically, leftists consumed by hatred hurl the epithet “hater” at anyone who holds different moral views than they do.)

With his ill-conceived COVID and economic policies, Bananas Biden destroyed a once- flourishing economy that helped communities of color. Democrats don’t really care about the welfare of those communities. Rather, they exploit those communities for votes. If they did care, they wouldn’t incentivize fatherlessness, celebrate single-sex family structures, and deny families school choice. If Democrats did care about families of color, they wouldn’t defund the police and release criminals who plunder communities already ravaged by crime and poverty.

While Trump presided over the historic Abraham Accords and foreign policies that kept bad actors in check, the feckless Biden emboldened tyrannical regimes.

Biden’s fear of the hysterical AOC and other climate Chicken Littles rendered the energy-rich United States oil-dependent again, thereby contributing to gas prices that influence-peddlers can afford, but ordinary Americans cannot.

Biden’s enthusiastic support for racist academic theories half-baked in Ivory Towers intensified racial division in America. Judge people by the color of their skin and their genitalia—especially if that genitalia is fake—say Biden and his collaborators. Normalizing racism and “trans” nonsense sits squarely at the top of Biden’s list of unprincipled convictions.

The anti-woman Biden embraced science-denying “trans” cultic beliefs, thereby robbing all citizens of their intrinsic right to privacy in shared private spaces, jeopardizing the safety of girls and women, and destroying women’s sports.

Biden opened wide the Southern border floodgates to law-breakers whom Bananas ships around the country under cover of darkness after giving them smart phones.

While Trump presided over the development and delivery of the COVID vaccine at lightning speed, Biden left his slimy, sluggish mark on the delivery of COVID-testing kits.

Worst of all, Biden the fake Catholic, dismantles every policy that protects preborn humans and supports any law that enables women to order the killing of their living offspring up until birth.

All of this harms ordinary citizens of every color, while the wealthy, powerful, and well-connected remain immune from the consequences of their corrosive decisions.

The achievements during Trump’s brief tenure were all the more remarkable in that he had to contend with Democrats in Congress who were determined to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to promote what they knew to be lies in order to unseat a duly elected president. That, in leftist la-la land is an ethically defensible way to refuse to accept the results of an election. Manufacturing a Russian collusion hoax involving FBI agents, wasting taxpayer money, and lying to judges to unseat a sitting president is the modus operandi of the proudly non-insurrectionist Democrat party

At the same time, Trump had to contend with relentless assaults by a shockingly partisan and hostile press more skilled at licking the muck boots of the DNC than at journalism. They will attack Republicans with a viciousness that only ethics-free bullies would engage in. This was a press so full of hatred and so petty that no women’s magazine invited the most beautiful First Lady in history to appear on its cover. Some might call that micro-aggressive.

Many on the left and a fair number of people on the right argue that Trump is a flawed man. No argument there. Who among us isn’t? Liar extraordinaire Adam Schiff? Nancy let-them-eat-cake- while-I-get-my-hair-done Pelosi? Hillary Clinton, whose list of ethical violations—including attacking the victims of her husband’s sexual predations—is too long to enumerate? Yet no mention of their corruption from the haters and liars on the left who concocted wild conspiracy theories and a web of lies involving powerful government agencies to—dare I say it—rig the election.

There are many ways to rig elections, at least three of which were at play in 2020:

First, the cognitively fading Joe Biden was largely concealed from the public eye, and the bootlicking press found nothing troubling with his cellar dwelling. Had any Republican, let alone Trump, engaged in such obvious campaign avoidance, he or she would have been savaged. Even a woman of color—if Republican—would have been savaged.

Second, social media superhero Meta-Man, aka Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife poured millions—$419 million—of their own money, laundered through two non-profits to ensure Biden’s win. In other words, they surreptitiously plopped down their bars of gold onto the scales of equity.

And third, another social media mogul, the pixilated Jack Dorsey, banned from Twitter a major story about the laptop of the second-in-command of the Biden crime family, Hunter Biden. Other press outlets followed suit, thereby keeping information from voters about a real influence-peddling/collusion scheme involving the Bidens, Ukraine, and China.

So, as we enter the presidential campaign season, let’s not be deceived by lies, nor distracted by a quixotic quest for a perfect candidate. There will be none. Support candidates whose policies will result in conditions that allow free speech, religious liberty, and human life to flourish. Reject candidates whose party seeks to constrain speech; undermine religious liberty; indoctrinate children; kill humans in the womb; foment racism; endanger the safety of girls and women; subordinate human needs to the desires of climate hysterics; facilitate border lawlessness and criminality in our cites; and render America less safe from enemies foreign and domestic.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Hatred-Animates-the-Left.mp3

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Yesterday the Facebook Overlords threw me in the Zuckerland Gulag for 30 days for violating their speech codes by posting this in the comments section of a friend’s Facebook page:

… some tr*nnies are able to create very convincing skin costumes (think “Buck Angel”), and it will be much easier for the next generation of tr*nnies who aren’t permitted to go through puberty to do so. But right now most men aren’t able to pass as women.

My comment was in response to a post about men who deceive others by masquerading as women.

My choice of the terms “tr*nnies” and “skin costumes” was intentional, but the reason for those choices was not to insult. My choices are motivated by a refusal to capitulate to the language rules of the “trans” cult. The left has absorbed the lessons of Saul Alinsky who wrote in Rules for Radicals that “He who controls the language controls the masses.” Many conservatives—far too many—are allowing themselves to be controlled.

There is nothing intrinsically insulting about the term “tranny.” In fact, it has a long history of use by “trans”-cultists. Wikipedia explains the history of the term:

Trans activists like Justin Vivian Bond and Kate Bornstein and drag queens such as Ru Paul and Lady Bunny, have advocated for use of the term. Bond said in 2014 that banning the word does not eliminate transphobia but rather “steal[s] a joyous and hard-won identity from those of us who are and have been perfectly comfortable, if not delighted to be trannies.” At the same time, RuPaul said “I love the word tranny”, and that the word was not being redefined by the transgender community, but only by “fringe people who are looking for story lines to strengthen their identity as victims.” Bornstein said the word was used in the 1960s and 1970s in Sydney, Australia by trans people as “a name for the identity they shared.” … Cristin Williams reviewed historic uses of the term and found the first published instance in 1983, originating among gay men, and expressed doubt that it originated many years prior to this. … In 2017, Facebook’s anti-hate speech algorithms started blocking posts containing tranny.

In order to both enhance their victim status and to erase from the public square any expressions of moral disapproval of cross-sex impersonation, the “trans” cult and its collaborators are attempting to control the language.

They seek to control our language in order to control culture by making it impossible to express ideas they detest. They seek both to ban words and to determine how terms are used. In Transtopia, pronouns no longer correspond to biological sex but to subjective feelings about one’s biological sex. Rather than referring to normal men and women as “men” and “women,” we’re expected to refer to them as “cismen” and “ciswomen.” Women are referred to as “bodies with vaginas” or “persons who menstruate.” And all that leftists need do to win compliance is whine that their feelings are hurt by language they hate, and abracadabra conservatives comply.

The term “transwoman” refers to a man who pretends to be a woman. Since the “trans” cult says “transwomen” are women, how long before they demand that people drop the “trans” from “transwomen”? If they claim their feelings are hurt by the term “transwoman,” if they claim “transwoman” is hateful and discriminatory, will conservatives comply with their Orwellian diktats? Will conservatives refer to cross-dressing men as “women”?

My guess is yes, and the end goal of eradicating all public recognition of sex differences will be that much closer.

It should be noted that Christians view “transphobia” and “homophobia” as insulting, bigoted, ignorant, intolerant pejoratives that make them feel uncomfortable. Does that matter to leftist sexual anarchists? Rhetorical question.

I use the term “skin costume” to accurately describe how chemically and surgically constructed bodily changes function. These so-called “treatments” are designed to conceal the sex of “trans”-cultists, making is easier for them to deceive others, including in private spaces. “Trans”-cultists are, in effect, creating skin costumes.

As we learned from the recent controversy involving Benet Academy, a prestigious Catholic-in-name-only private high school, the disciples of the ongoing sexual revolution not only want to make it impossible for conservative Americans to express their moral views of sexuality but they also want to make it impossible for Christians to train up their children in the way they should go.

Benet Academy rescinded a coaching offer to a woman when they found out she was a lesbian in a faux-marriage—a relationship that obviously violates both Catholic doctrine and Scripture—and then the school crumbled like a stale cookie when apostates and heretics squeezed them.

And public schools, where Christians continue to send their children to be “educated,” now introduce wicked leftist ideas about homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation starting in kindergarten. All dissenting ideas are banned because the left has successfully convinced Americans that such ideas make some students feel “unsafe.” Of course, whether they are unsafe or not depends on which moral claims are true.

One cannot rationally argue that moral opposition to homosexual acts and cross-sex impersonation is hateful or destructive unless it can be proven that God does not exist, that his will for humans and plan for history are not revealed in Scripture, or that Scripture is false. And those conclusions fall far outside the purview of public school teachers and politicians.

If God exists and if his perfect will for humans and plan for history are revealed in Scripture, then it is support for the “LGBTQ+” ideology that is destructive. Affirmation and dissemination of the false, socially constructed and imposed “LGBTQ+” ideology will result in not only temporal suffering but also in unimaginable, eternal suffering.

What the “LGBTQ+” community is trying to do with laws that require government schools to teach positively about disordered sexuality, with censorship of dissenting ideas, and with Orwellian language rules is to prevent Christian parents from training up their children in the way they should go. Expect to see increasing assaults on Christian private schools via laws and lawsuits. Next the “LGBTQ+” community will come after the accreditation of Christian colleges—both Catholic and Protestant. And then homeschooling will be in its sights.

Do not capitulate on even seemingly trivial issues. Don’t submit to the manipulative efforts of the “LGBTQ+” community and their collaborators to shame you into using their deceitful language. And don’t send your child to any institution that employs adults who hate or are ashamed of the gospel.  What the left wants is for your children to lose their religion.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Losing-Our-Religion.mp3

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‘Twas the week before New Year’s, when all through the house
No reporters were stirring, not even a louse.

They turned off their ‘puters and phones with great care
In hopes that celebrities soon would de-pair.

When from their i-Phones there arose such a clatter,
They sprang from their beds to see what was the matter.

Into the now-lit abyss of their phones
Dorsey and Zuck sucked in all the drones.

When what to their wondering eyes did appear—
Not Ellen—now Elliot—whose gender’s so clear.

But Spaniard Hilaria, a native Mallorcan,
Who oddly grew up in a suburb of Boston.

Shock, indignation, and fury arose
From the heads of reporters down to their tiptoes.

How dare could a person pretend to be thus—
Changing her name to deceive all of us!

Appropriate gender like Jenner and Page,
Passing as someone like that’s all the rage.

But don’t even think about faking birthplace
That devious act will cause family disgrace.

Denying the sex assigned at one’s birth,
Is muy importante for joy here on Earth.

Denying the sex of one’s birth is a must,
Denying the place of one’s birth is unjust.

Remember these rules about reality:
It matters unless she should want to be he.

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For those who missed last week’s celebrity news, a surprising years-long deception by Hilaria Baldwin, the diversely flexible young wife of angry, sanctimonious actor Alec Baldwin, was exposed.

For years, she claimed she was from Mallorca, Spain and that her name is “Hilaria.” She also affected a Spanish accent, once pretending to forget the English word “cucumber” in a television appearance. As of this writing, she continues to claim she moved to the United States when she was 19.

The truth—that is, that which corresponds to reality—is that she was born Hillary Hayward-Thomas in Boston to American physician/professor Dr. Kathryn Hayward and American attorney David Thomas. She attended high school at the expensive Cambridge School of Weston, graduating in 2002, the year before she claims she arrived on the shores of NYC from Espagne. Her parents retired to Spain in 2011 when Hillary was 27 years old. English is her native language.

Many leftists are outraged about Hillary’s commission of the mortal sin of culturally appropriating a Spanish identity. Social media is afire with brutal and often hilarious mockery of her deception, which, as mentioned, included adopting a new name and intentionally modifying her behavior to create the illusion that she is a native Mallorcan.

Meanwhile, men and women all around the country are adopting new names and intentionally modifying behavior to create the illusion that they are the sex they aren’t. They cross-dress and hire voice and movement coaches to teach them how to pass as the sex they aren’t. Not only are Americans forbidden to mock them, but they are also forbidden to say the emperors in ladies’ clothes are not empresses.

While leftists merrily “deadname” Hilaria Baldwin (“deadnaming” is the practice of referring to opposite-sex impersonators by their birth name—something forbidden by the Ministers of Truthiness), the moment diminutive actress Ellen Page assigned herself the sex of male, our gullible, so-called journalists scurried to their computers to scrub “Ellen” from history. With sparks flying from their lying fingertips, journalists replaced every occurrence of the name “Ellen Page” from the Internet.

Leftists forbid Hillary Baldwin to identify as a Spaniard even if she subjectively feels that her authentic self is Spanish. Even if she experiences a mismatch between the reality that she is a Bostonian and her internal felt sense that she is a Spaniard, tough luck. She was not born in Spain, so she is not and never can be a Spaniard.

If, however, Ellen Page and Chastity Bono choose to identify as men, we must all pretend they are men.

To be clear, in the Upside Down—the dark twisted un-reality where leftists are demanding we all live and move—it’s wicked to appropriate a Spanish ethnicity (i.e., Spanish-ness) but an unmitigated good for Bruce Jenner to appropriate woman-ness.

Just curious, what did Alec Baldwin know and when did he know it?

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/audio_NO-ETHNIC-SELF-IDENTIFICATION.mp3

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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

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Censorship today looks like my three-day stint in the Facebook pokey over Thanksgiving weekend during which my mad keyboarding fingers were (almost) crushed in tiny Facebook thumbscrews engraved with a photo of Lord Zuckerberg. The reason for my imprisonment by Facebook Overlords in one of their many Cells of Iniquity beggars belief.

It all started when I posted about the image Facebook created to advertise their new avatars. As you can see, this image doesn’t include any white male avatars.

I wrote:

I totally get why there are no white, male avatars here. White males are so creepy. In all my old family photos, I’m colorizing my grandpas, dad, husband, brother, uncle, cousins, son, sons-in-law, grandsons, and nephews.

No, that’s not what sent the Overlords to their fainting couches.

A friend commented, “Some inclusion is more equal than others,” an allusion to George Orwell’s Animal Farm (which I now believe may be an allusion that escaped the Overlords’ limited understanding). Here is the sentence from Animal Farm, to which my friend was alluding and which is spoken by pigs who control the government: “Some animals are more equal than others.”

In response to the Animal Farm allusion, I replied sarcastically, “That reminds me, white males are pigs too.”

That was what got me thrown in the clink.

Ironically, by using irony to criticize Facebook’s exclusionary avatar image and the hatred of white males by “progressives,” I was punished for allegedly violating Facebook’s Ministry of Truth standards on hate speech. The Overlords definitely don’t get sarcasm.

I hope everyone sees the danger illustrated in this one Facebook jail sentence—the danger in the brave new world that Big Brother Biden, zillionaire Zuckerberg, and the “progressive” plutocrats who control America hope to create. In that new world, nameless, faceless algorithms that are unable to recognize sarcasm or satire will censor books and cancel articles, posts, and speakers that deviate from the leftist beliefs of their creators.

To make such imprisonments—which are very bad PR for tyrants—less necessary, leftists have taken a few pages from Red China and added “struggle sessions” to their indoctrinating toolbox in which, for example, non-racist whites are humiliated into confessing they’re racists.

Those intransigent few who refuse to capitulate to leftist dogma and diktats will be publicly named and shamed for their allegedly dangerous, unwoke ideas. Currently, those ideas pertain to race and sexuality, but there is no reason to expect the boundaries of banned ideas won’t expand.

First a little necessary history before the surprising news.

“Struggle sessions” were a tactical tool the Chinese Communist Party used during the Communist Revolution to secure compliance from those deemed opponents of Chairman Mao. An article in the Atlantic describes these precursors to today’s ubiquitous naming and shaming sessions:

In such sessions, everyone from politicians to teachers would be dragged before a large audience and forced to humiliate themselves with withering self-criticism, denunciations of their friends and allies, and pleas for forgiveness.

Sounds remarkably like what Critical Race Theorists, diversity trainers, and BLM activists are doing all over the country in schools, corporations, and our increasingly lawless streets.

Struggle sessions emerged from the earlier Chinese Communist practice called “Speaking Bitterness.” From his chapter titled “Speaking Bitterness” in a collection of essays in a 2019 book on Chinese Communism, Jeffery Javed explains how the Chinese Communist Party mobilized workers and peasants to support the revolution:

To relate abstract ideologies to the lived experiences of ordinary people is the great task of all revolutionaries. How do we then explain the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) remarkable success in mobilising workers and peasants, many of whom had little interest in Marxism-Leninism, to join its fervent, violent cause? One of the key foundations of the CCP’s successful mobilisation was its ability to tap into human emotions, which it did most notably and effectively through a practice known as ‘speaking bitterness’ (suku)—the public expression of an individual’s woes with the intent to cultivate sympathy toward the speaker and outrage against those who caused his or her suffering. As one of the foremost strategies the CCP used … its principal purpose was to leverage morality and emotion to inculcate in the populace new mass identities that accorded with the Party-state’s ideology of class struggle. Operating through outrage and sympathy, it sought to build hostility towards an outgroup of class enemies and solidarity among an ingroup of ordinary villagers.

Now here’s where things get really interesting. Jeffrey Javed—someone few Americans have heard of—has a fascinating new job that he describes on his website (emphasis added):

Hello! I am a mixed methods researcher on the Ads Delivery team at Facebook. My research uses survey, interview, and experimental approaches to understand social perceptions of AI and machine learning, particularly in the context of fairness and responsibility. …

 My research on social media built on my research on violent mobilization in Maoist China to understand how false news content harms and divides communities in the US. Combining survey experimental and machine learning approaches, we found that sensational content, rich in moral-emotional language, provokes outrage and fear and amplifies support for violence and aggressive online behavior.

Javed was hired by Facebook in Election year 2020—the year Facebook and other social media platforms with whom Facebook colludes communicates began “fact-checking” for allegedly false news and defending their warnings and punishments by claiming commitments to fairness and social responsibility.

Does Javed oppose the use of public expressions of an individual’s woes with the intent of cultivating sympathy toward the speaker and outrage against those who purportedly caused the speaker’s purported suffering? Does he oppose leveraging morality and emotion to inculcate in the populace new mass identities that accord with “progressive” ideologies? Does he oppose public humiliation or other forms of social oppression to coerce capitulation?

Javed’s Twitter feed reveals his anti-Trump, pro-Biden sentiments as well as his support for reporters trying to influence elections. Javed supported this 2016 tweet from New York Times religion reporter Liam Stack:

The Electoral College was meant to stop men like Trump from taking office.

The Electoral College is important to leftists–until it’s not.

I wonder if Javed is friends with Yoel Roth, head of “Site Integrity” for Twitter, who multiple times tweeted that President Trump and members of his administration—including Kellyanne Conway—were “actual Nazis.”

Leftists have no need to worry about any feeble resistance that may be bubbling up beneath the surface. No need to fret that wrongthink may spread. No sleepless nights fearing that leaders will emerge to oppose the oppressors who control corporate America, the castrated press, and the ideological lemmings in academia and Hollywood who produce soma for the masses.

No need for worry because Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai, the New York Times, and Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post will step into the breach to hide stories and ideas that may interfere with their quest for global domination fairness and responsibility. Power and money, money and power.

Liberty, freedom, tolerance, inclusivity, and justice for those who think just like them.

Submission for the rest of us.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/No_Whites_3.mp3

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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. 

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to become President. If elected, one of her plans is to implement a wealth tax. She said:

We need structural change to get our economy and our democracy back on track – and no billionaire is going to get in my way of fighting for it.[i]

While a wealth tax would bring in revenue, its most important effect might be fast-tracking a complete government takeover of the economy. Merely change some tax rates, some thresholds, and the government taxes everything into its own hands. Behold! The socialist dream of “the people” owning everything.

If we sleep while others work, then this scenario will become our reality. This article will teach you what the stakes are. You’ll learn these things:

• What a wealth tax is, and how it eats away at your wealth and financial security.

• How a wealth tax can be used to rapidly institute an actual socialist economy.

• What is blocking this tax, and the attempts to overcome the block.

• Steps to stop this “structural change” before it is implemented.

What is a wealth tax?

A wealth tax is a tax on what you already own, not on new income. An annual wealth tax means you get to pay it over and over again. Keep this going long enough and all of your wealth is taxed away – the government, bite-by-bite, dispossesses you.

Warren’s plan would create an annual wealth tax of 2% to 3% of everything that rich people own.

All I’m asking for is a little slice from the tippy, tippy top. A slice that would raise — and this is the shocking part, Jim — about $2.75 trillion over the next 10 years.[ii]

What would a wealth tax cover?

• To start, tax your bank accounts, stocks, bonds, and other sorts of financial instruments.

• Then comes taxes on real estate, starting with your house. If you’ve a farm then tax its land and improvements. Even the vacation retreat, or time share, gets taxed. Even though there could be constitutional concerns, wealth tax proposals generally include taxing real estate.

• Certainly, businesses and corporations are going to get taxed. This includes buildings, machine tools, inventory, and even the value of inventions, copyrights, and other intellectual property.

• And finally, tax personal property. Artwork, cars, even your wedding band have taxable value.

Of course, the government doesn’t like people who try to evade the tax man. Senator Warren says so.

So the way that this is written is to say is to say first all of going to tax all your assets wherever located around the globe. So if you were planning to move them to Switzerland or some island, doesn’t make any difference. They are all going to be taxed.[iii]

Why have a wealth tax?

Why a wealth tax? Its proponents don’t fully reveal their hand. Senator Warren touts a national day-care system, saying:

That’s money we need so that every kid in this country has a decent child care opportunity, has an opportunity for pre-K, has an opportunity for a decent school.[iv]

But national child care is merely political cover. Her progressive friends have more ambitious plans for wealth tax money, implementing a “universal basic income.” At his campaign site, presidential candidate Andrew Yang provides a decent definition of the term.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a form of social security that guarantees a certain amount of money to every citizen within a given governed population, without having to pass a test or fulfill a work requirement.[v]

Every U.S. citizen over the age of 18 would receive $1,000 a month, regardless of income or employment status, free and clear. No jumping through hoops. Yes, this means you and everyone you know would receive a check for $1,000 a month every month starting in January 2021.[vi]

That is, the government becomes everybody’s parent, providing each of us enough to get by. It pays if you work and if you don’t work. This is underscored by Kelsey Piper, writing for Vox:

“That is, instead of people working poorly paid jobs they hate, they’d feel able to work jobs that might be similarly poorly paid but which they love — founding a company, opening a restaurant, managing a community theater, making art, running kids’ programs. That’s a way UBI could avoid affecting the labor supply at all, while making the world a better place.”[vii]

That $12,000 per year figure is merely a starting point. Soon someone will notice that this is less than a “living wage,”[viii] and the cry will be for its equivalency, $30,000 per year or more.

Note that this money isn’t poverty relief. Everyone is supposed to get it, because it is meant to be the fulfillment of the second part of the socialist pledge,

“… to each according to his needs.”[ix]

Soon enough, this becomes your only income as what you have, and what you can get, is taxed away. That will fulfill the first part of the pledge,

“from each according to his ability.”[x]

When a wealth tax is combined with a universal basic income you easily get a socialist economy. The government takes all of the fruit of your labors. All you have left is the government-supplied, but guaranteed, income.

The power to tax is the power to destroy

Through a wealth tax, Senator Warren only wants “a little slice from the tippy, tippy top.” That little slice will surely, and rapidly, drain its victim dry. Do some simple math, where you are the target.

• 2% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 30 years.

• 3% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 22 years.

• 7% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 10 years.

• 12% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 5 years.

Although U.S. Senator Warren is thinking 2%, others hope for more. Thomas Piketty is the progressives’ favorite economist, because he has schemes for pauperizing the wealthy. He has an opinion about how stiff a wealth tax should be:

We are not going to wait until Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg reach the age of 90 before they begin to pay taxes. With the 3 percent annual rate proposed by Warren, a static estate worth $100 billion would return to the community in 30 years. This is a good beginning but, given the average rate of progression of the highest financial assets, the aim should undoubtedly be higher (5 to 10 percent or more).[xi]

That is, the government should eat these estates, these holdings (“return to the community”) in maybe a decade. This would be a vigorous implementation of the old socialist cry.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.[xii]

Before your children have grown up their college fund, your retirement money, and your bank accounts will have been devoured by the government. It gets still worse, for at some point you’ll find that you no longer have ready cash to pay these taxes. You’ll have to sell things, even your home, to pay up.[xiii]

Don’t think that only the very rich will be targeted by a wealth tax. All the money obtained from them will be consumed by expanded social programs. Once the rich are fully drained more victims will be needed. The wealth tax rules will get changed to include the “merely wealthy,” and then the “middle class.” This wealth tax is coming for all of us. It will tax away all of your wealth, not merely that of some wealthy person you never knew.

A wealth tax is a legal implementation of envy. Our envy will give us socialism, and in turn that will consume us. Quoting the great economist Ludwig von Mises:

More and more the policy of taxation evolves into a policy of confiscation. The aim on which it concentrates is to tax out of existence every kind of fortune and income from property, in which process property invested in trade and industry, in shares and in bonds, is generally treated more ruthlessly than property in land. . .

Nothing is more calculated to make a demagogue popular than a constantly reiterated demand for heavy taxation on the rich. Capital levies and high income taxes on larger incomes are extraordinarily popular with the masses, who do not have to pay them. . .

The destructionist policy of taxation culminates in capital levies. Property is expropriated and then consumed. Capital is transformed into goods for use and consumption. The effect of all this should be plain to see. Yet the whole popular theory of taxation today leads to the same result.[xiv]

What does Bible say?

A wealth tax would have the government take money from our richest people, all in the name of “income inequality.” The Bible has a word for that: envy.[xv] We want the government to act on our behalf, steal money from the rich in the name of “the people,” and give it to others. Each of us who supports a wealth tax are guilty of a mix of envy, covetousness, and encouraging lawbreakers (i.e., the government’s tax agents).

But isn’t income inequality itself a sin, and something that the government should address? According to the Bible, no and no. The Bible expects that some people will be rich, even wildly so, and that others will be poor. God rewarded Abraham with so much wealth that Abraham needed what amounts to an army to take care of it (Genesis 14:14). And Jesus used income inequality approvingly in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). To read more on capitalism and monetary rewards, see the article Is Capitalism Immoral?[xvi]

The government is Gods’ minister of righteousness (Romans 13:1-4). This commission shows that it is answerable to God for its actions (Luke 12:42-48; 1 Corinthians 4:2). Stealing through a wealth tax isn’t right, and even if instructed to do so by popular vote.

The money obtained from a wealth tax is meant to implement a socialist economy. Socialism changes how society works. It breaks our morals, our families, and what we’re allowed to say or do. A socialist government not only moves the boundary stones (Deuteronomy 19:14; Proverbs 22:28), it throws them far into the sea. It is like the sin of Jeroboam, where he changed the peoples’ worship (1 Kings 12:26-33).

By every Biblical measure, a wealth tax is a license to steal, pressed into being by envious voters, so that the government may destroy our traditions, our freedoms, and our right to worship. A triple threat.

Wealth tax is currently blocked

A federal wealth tax would be a boon for starting a socialist economy. But it can’t become law because the Constitution forbids it. Or does it? The answer depends on whether we have an “originalist” or “activist” U.S. Supreme Court.

The fate of a wealth tax depends on what the U.S. Constitution means by “direct tax.” This phrase appears only twice in the U.S. Constitution, in Article I:

• Within Section 2: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.[xvii]

• Within Section 9: No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.[xviii]

Over time, the Court has come up with definitions for “direct tax.” Its first meaning was supplied through the 1796 case Hylton v United States. In it the Court had to decide if a federal tax on carriages was constitutional. Having no established meaning for “direct tax,” the Court invented one.

“The boundary, [between direct and indirect taxes] then,” he argued, “must be fixed by a species of arbitration, and ought to be such as will involve neither absurdity nor inconvenience.” Then followed HAMILTON’S distinction: “The following are presumed to be the only direct taxes: capitation or poll taxes; taxes on lands and buildings; general assessments, whether on the whole property of individuals, or on their whole real or personal estate. All else must of necessity be considered as indirect taxes.”

The court accepted HAMILTON’S reasoning and the three judges who delivered opinions took the stand that only taxes which could be apportioned should be considered direct.[xix]

The Court ruled that the carriage tax was constitutional, and that it was an indirect tax. Property couldn’t be taxed, but some income could.

Then came the 1895 case Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. In it the Court had to decide if a federal tax on state and municipal bonds was constitutional. In its ruling the Court knocked down the tax, while redefining “direct tax” as follows:

[Chief Justice Fuller] then says that a tax upon the income derived from real estate is a tax upon real estate, because as Lord Coke says, “What is the land but the profits thereof ?” And therefore that the tax upon income derived from rents and real estate is a tax upon land, and that a tax upon land is a “direct tax ” within the meaning of the Constitution, and unconstitutional because not apportioned.[xx]

Property still couldn’t be taxed, and income derived from it also couldn’t be taxed. Subsequent events, like the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment (income tax), have diluted the effects of the Pollock decision. However, its version of “direct tax” still holds in the legal community. The Pollock interpretation of direct taxes would likely prevent a wealth tax that targets stocks, bonds, and real estate.

Many scholars would like the Court to return to the Hylton version of “direct tax.” Other scholars, like Walter Dellinger, want the Court to go even further.

Devising a progressive tax system that effectively taxes the wealthy is notoriously difficult, but whether a wealth tax is part of that system should depend upon the policy choices of democratically elected representatives, not faulty constitutional understandings.[xxi]

That is, he wants the Court to rubber-stamp whatever Congress devises. That is effectively a “living Constitution,”[xxii] one that accepts whatever tyranny Congress may devise. Such a U.S. Constitution is worthless, as is the Court that implements it.

Senator Warren has many advisors intent on assuring her that this wealth tax is constitutional.[xxiii] Yet many of these scholars, such as Dellinger and Bruce Ackerman,[xxiv] also campaign for expensive social programs like a universal basic income. Does their opinion come from their social advocacy, or is it the other way around? They are conflicted witnesses, and their judgment on constitutional matters can’t be trusted. We really don’t know how good their advice is on this matter.

How would the U.S. Supreme Court rule on a wealth tax, and on the critical phrase “direct tax?” Since its precedents are disputed, there will be pressure to decide based on political goals. Pray for judges to resist political pressures to be activist, and instead to rule impartially (Leviticus 19:15).

What can we do?

Everybody can do something. Some have more time, or skills, and can contribute more keeping this wealth tax evil far from us.

Repent of envy. There are no grounds to take money from the rich simply because they have a lot of stuff. We understand that rich people are responsible to God for how they use their wealth. For example, they ought to be generous and wise. But that is a problem between them and their Maker, and doesn’t include Uncle Sam.

Everybody has time for prayer. We need God to have mercy on us, and his Church. We need peace from government persecution and from harassment by libertines and progressives (Genesis 19:4-11). We must be the righteousness that is a model for society (Matthew 5:14-16), the yeast of change that permeates society (Luke 13:20-21), so we bring the nations into obedience to Him.

Try a little light reading. There are summary articles to help you navigate through this issue.

• Learn about the disaster called socialism. The article To Know Socialism is to Hate It[xxv] will teach you what socialist leaders want to do to our economy, or families, and our right to worship. You may not want socialism, but socialism wants you. The less we all like socialism, the less we all want a wealth tax to empower it.

• Learn why capitalism is OK by God. The article Is Capitalism Immoral?[xxvi] will show you that God accepts capitalism, and that being even extremely wealthy isn’t a sin. Having money isn’t the issue, but rather being righteous and merciful in our dealings.

Get politically involved. If you have free time to affect the campaign season, here are activist things to do.

• Research the legislators and candidates. Does your legislator support, even advocate, a wealth tax? Do they agree with those who do? What you want is someone who is virulently opposed to a wealth tax. We don’t need more lukewarm, pleasing everybody legislators. Our opponents treat this tax like war, as the most important of issues. There is no room for compromise.

After you have done your research, spread it around. Get your friends, even your church, equally alarmed about this tax. Tell them who the good guys, and bad guys, really are.

• Keep after the legislators and candidates. Lobby your legislators to support you on this. Show them this article, and others, so they are informed and can’t say they never knew. Be a squeaky wheel, until they acknowledge with you that a wealth tax is a really bad idea, a non-negotiable issue.

• Go after the fellow travelers. A campaign has accompanying PR flacks, and maybe even scholars who wrote letters of support. These people also need to be pestered, so that their support of “the evil wealth tax” is considered a detriment, not a benefit. This creates the perception that a wealth tax isn’t an advantage, but rather a millstone about their candidate’s neck.

• Always label a wealth tax with pejoratives. It isn’t just a “wealth tax.” It is “legalized envy,” “license to steal,” “enabling socialism.” Where possible, use phrases like “socialist wealth tax,” or “envy tax,” or “socialist takeover tax.” After all, those who really want the tax are either misinformed and envious, or malicious and socialist. What they would do isn’t nice, so why play nice with words?

In our day, going before the U.S. Supreme Court has become a gamble. Because the Court is political, we don’t know if it will rule by law or by politics. It is best if a wealth tax law were never passed, and the Court not tempted to do the wrong thing. If it ever were ruled constitutional then we’d never really be rid of it. Things will go much better for us if a wealth tax is never tried.

Footnotes

[i] DeCosta-Klipa, Nik, Elizabeth Warren is clashing with billionaires over her wealth tax plan. But would it be constitutional?, Boston Magazine, January 29, 2019, https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2019/01/29/elizabeth-warren-wealth-tax-constitution

[ii] Axelrod, Tal, Warren: Billionaires should ‘stop being freeloaders’, The Hill, January 31, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/427967-warren-billionaires-should-stop-being-freeloaders

[iii] Schwartz, Ian, Warren on Wealth Tax: Assets Worldwide Will Be Taxed With A “Very High Rate of Monitoring, Auditing”, Real Clear Politics, January 25, 2019, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/01/25/warren_on_wealth_tax_assets_worldwide_will_be_taxed_with_a_very_high_rate_of_monitoring_auditing.html

[iv] Axelrod, Tal, Warren: Billionaires should ‘stop being freeloaders’, The Hill, January 31, 2019

[v] What is Universal Basic Income, Andrew Yang Campaign web site, https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Piper, Kelsey, The important questions about universal basic income haven’t been answered yet, Vox, February 13, 2019, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/2/13/18220838/universal-basic-income-ubi-nber-study

[viii] Amadeo, Kimberly, Living Wage and How It Compares to the Minimum Wage, The Balance, March 12, 2019, https://www.thebalance.com/living-wage-3305771

[ix] Marx, Karl, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Chapter 1, 1875, found online at  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

[x] Ibid.

[xi] Piketty, Thomas, A tax on wealth is long overdue, Boston Globe, February 11, 2019, https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/02/11/tax-wealth-long-overdue/AULwxlT7ZGu4uuB7dkpXTJ/story.html

[xii] Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists, Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

[xiii] In one scenario an owner sells stocks to satisfy a 3% wealth tax on them. Because of income taxes, and capital gains taxes, due on the stock sale a total of 20% of the stock must be sold to satisfy that 3% tax.

See the article by Adler, Hank, 70 Percent Income Tax, 3 Percent Wealth Tax, Townhall, January 28, 2019, https://townhall.com/columnists/hankadler/2019/01/28/70-percent-income-tax-3-percent-wealth-tax-n2540324.

[xiv] Hayward, Steven, Taxation, or Confiscation?, Power Line Blog, March 12, 2019, https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/03/taxation-or-confiscation.php

The link quoted Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, Part V, Chapter II (The Methods of Destructionism), Section 7 (Taxation), 1951.

[xv] What does the Bible say about envy?, Got Questions, https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-envy.html

[xvi] Perry, Oliver, Is Capitalism Immoral?, Illinois Family Institute, November 30, 2018, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/faith/is-capitalism-immoral/

[xvii] https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/articles/article-i

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Riddle, J. H., The Supreme Court’s Theory of a Direct Tax, Michigan Law Review, Vol. 15, No. 7 (May, 1917), pp. 566-578, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1275429.pdf

[xx] Jones, Francis, Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Oct. 25, 1895), pp. 198-211, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1321669.pdf

[xxi] Johnsen, Dawn, and Dellinger, Walter, The Constitutionality of a National Wealth Tax, Indiana Law Journal, Volume 93, Issue 1, Article 8, Page 111, https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11279&context=ilj

For an opposing view see:

Jensen, Erik, Taxation and the Constitution: How to Read the Direct-Tax Clauses, Scholarly Commons Faculty Publications School of Law Case-Western Reserve University 2006, https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1526&context=faculty_publications

[xxii] Leef, George, How The Ruinous “Living Constitution” Idea Took Root, Forbes, July 15, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2014/07/15/how-the-ruinous-living-constitution-idea-took-root/#10804cb46784

[xxiii] https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Constitutionality%20Letters.pdf

[xxiv] Sunstein, Cass, Cash and Citizenship (a review of The Stakeholder Society by Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott), The New Republic, May 23, 1999, https://newrepublic.com/article/62855/cash-and-citizenship

[xxv] Perry, Oliver, To Know Socialism is to Hate It, Illinois Family Institute, February 13, 2019, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/uncategorized/to-know-socialism-is-to-hate-it/

[xxvi] Perry, Oliver, Is Capitalism Immoral?, Illinois Family Institute, November 30, 2018, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/faith/is-capitalism-immoral/

Why is it that organizations like the SPLC can designate conservative Christians as hate groups while ignoring radical leftists like Antifa? Why is it that Facebook and Google and YouTube and Twitter appear to punish conservatives disproportionately for alleged violations of community guidelines?

The answer is as disturbing as it is simple. The left believes it is so morally and intellectually superior to the right that it can see nothing wrong with its extreme positions and hostile words. Is it wrong to be intolerant of bigots? Is it wrong to hate (or even punch) a Nazi?

In short, if I’m a member of the KKK, is it wrong for you to disparage and mock me? If I’m a dangerous homophobe, is it wrong for you to vilify and exclude me? If I’m a hate-filled propogandist spreading dangerous lies, is it wrong for you to mark me and marginalize me?

Of course, there are double standards on all sides of the debate, on the right as well as on the left. And there is more than enough hypocrisy to go around, from the most progressive to the most conservative.

All of us also have our share of blind spots, so we tend to condemn in others what we justify in ourselves. Welcome to human nature.

Still, it is conspicuous that the same behavior gets treated differently by the leftist elite (including many a university professor) and by watchdog groups like the SPLC and by the internet giants.

Back in 2004-05, when I first began to address gay activism, I was widely mocked for saying, “Those who came out of the closet want to put us in the closet.”

The response was consistent: “No one wants to put you in the closet!”

A few years back, I noticed a change in tone: “Bigots like you belong in the closet!”

But of course!

While being interviewed on a Christian TV program back in 2011, I quoted the comment of a Christian attorney. He told me that those who were once put in jail (speaking of pioneer gay activists) will want to put us in jail.

For having the audacity to say this on Christian TV, I was vilified and maligned.

Yet when Kim Davis was jailed in 2015 for refusing a court order to grant same-sex marriage licenses, there was widespread rejoicing on the left: “Kim Davis is ISIS! Lock her up!”

Again, I’m aware of double standards on all sides, and it’s a point of personal reflection and self-examination in my own life.

For example, I believed that, in 2004, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom should have been disciplined for issuing same-sex marriage licenses in violation of the law. Yet I believe that Kim Davis was within her rights in refusing to issue such licenses and her home state of Kentucky failed to protect her, under the law.

These are debates we can (and should) have.

What I’m talking about here has to do with fundamental attitudes, with the basis of our judgments, with the inability to see wrong on one’s own side. I’m talking about a dangerous hypocrisy. (For the record, I never compared Gavin Newsom to Muslim terrorists.)

In my May, 2016, article “Is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg a Well-Intended Liberal with a Massive Blind Spot?”, I referenced the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious Nazi mass murderer, who was apprehended by two Israeli agents while living quietly with his family in Argentina.

They had to wait for several weeks before smuggling him out of the country, during which time they spent many hours in private conversation with him, somehow managing to restrain themselves from taking the law into their own hands.

During one of the conversations, one of the agents realized that Eichmann had given the order to exterminate the village in which his wife’s family lived, killing every single one of them.

When asked how he could do such a thing, Eichmann seemed perturbed, responding, “But they were Jews.”

Of course he gave the order to kill them. What else was he to do?

Again, to be clear, I am not comparing the SPLC or Facebook or Google to Eichmann and the Nazis. That would be as bad as leftists comparing conservatives to Nazis. Not a chance.

I’m simply pointing out that in Eichmann’s twisted world, he was only following orders and doing what was right.

So also, in Antifa’s twisted world (although, again, I emphasize, not as twisted as that of the Nazis), they are doing what is right in violently opposing the tyrannical right. Somebody’s got to do it!

Thankfully, there is an ongoing, healthy push-back against this liberal hypocrisy. In fact, just this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called out the SPLC for using hate group labels to “bully” conservatives. Let their hypocrisy be exposed.

But remember: You have been prejudged as guilty, so your mistreatment is well-deserved.

It is this highly bigoted attitude we must overcome with truth, reason, determination, and love.

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This article originally posted at Townhall.com.

Among the reasonable and fairly well-defined criteria Twitter uses to censor content is this more ambiguous criterion: content “that incites fear about a protected group” or that “degrades someone.”

Does Twitter think it’s degrading to say “homosexual acts degrade persons”? What if homosexual acts do degrade persons? What words constitute an incitement to fear? Does it incite “fear about a protected group” to say that allowing biological males in women’s private spaces is an assault on decency and puts at risk the safety of girls and women? Does Twitter think saying “polyamory is wrong, and its normalization harms society” would incite fear about polyamorists?

Similarly, Facebook includes this expansive and ambiguous definition of banned “hate speech”:

We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability….We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech. (emphasis added)

Like obscenity (which Justice Potter believed he could recognize, but “progressives” clearly can’t), the powers-that-be at Facebook will apparently know dehumanizing speech when they see it.

This may explain why IFI has had so much trouble getting many of our articles boosted on Facebook. “Boosting” is, in effect, advertising. IFI pays Facebook to create an ad which is then shown to our target audience. The most recent article about which we have been battling Facebook is titled “Will ‘Progressives’ Affirm the Identity of Christ-Followers?”

We requested a boosted ad for this article and were declined. We appealed that decision, were approved for a few hours, and then our ad was taken down. We appealed that decision, were approved for a few more hours, and then the ad was taken down again. We appealed a third time, and moments before this writing, after a week and three appeals, it was approved. We wait with bated breath to see if this one sticks.

The criteria used by Twitter and Facebook to justify ideological-screening remind me of the criteria high school English teachers use to do the same. The text-selection criteria exploited by “progressive” change-agents in public high school English departments around the country are so flexible, so malleable, so protean as to justify including any resource that affirms, espouses, or embodies their biases and exclude any resource that dissents from their biases.

The Left is fond of declaiming that Twitter and Facebook are private companies that have the right to establish whatever criteria they deem fit for censoring content. True, but such a declamation ignores the monopolistic nature of these two social media behemoths.

Facebook has claimed to be a neutral social media platform that merely enables or facilitates “communication and distribution of information.” Because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, if Facebook were a neutral platform, it would not be liable for content. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is “US legislation that paved the way for the modern internet by asserting that platforms cannot be liable for content users post on their sites.”

But both in court and before Congress, Facebook has acknowledged it is a publisher and “responsible for content.” In conjunction with its shutting down accounts and censoring posts for what appear to be ideological reasons, Facebook may have lost its legal immunity. And maybe that’s just the slap upside Zuckerberg’s pecuniary noggin that’s needed to restore his commitment to a neutral platform and to protect the First Amendment rights of conservatives that are eroding right before our gullible, obsequious eyes.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Facebook-Censoring-Say-It-Aint-So.mp3

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