You know you’re living in the dark, deceitful, and depraved Upside Down when a U.S. Senator—a woman no less—says what inveterate liar Elizabeth Warren recently said:

Crisis pregnancy centers … are there to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help. … We need to shut them down here in Massachusetts, and we need to shut them down all around the country. You should not be able to torture a pregnant person like that.

Nope, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) do not “exist to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help.” Crisis pregnancy centers exist to help women who believe the only one way to deal with a crisis pregnancy is to terminate the life of their child. Crisis pregnancy centers exist to shine light into the shadowy, deceptive “reproductive health services” propaganda leftists like Warren spew.

CPCs offer ultrasounds in order to provide women with objective, conclusive proof that a human is growing inside them—not a nothing as the left deceitfully suggests. Crisis pregnancy centers offer resources like diapers, maternity clothes, and parenting classes to help young mothers and fathers feel less overwhelmed.

It’s ironic that Warren—the fake Native American—would bring up fooling people. It’s doubly ironic that the fake Native American would bring up “fooling people” in the context of abortion.

The human slaughter lobby has made an art of trying to fool people. They used to call the human fetus “a blob of tissue” and a “clump of cells.” Well, to be fair, I suppose all humans at any stage of development, born or soon-to-be-born, could be deemed blobs of tissue or clumps of cells, but we human blobs and clumps are special kinds of blobs and clumps. And when each of us was in our mother’s wombs, we were blobs and clumps composed of rapidly dividing and differentiating cells with a complex design.

When the blobs and clumps tomfoolery was exposed and became unsustainable, the Warrens of the world began referring to human fetuses as tumor-analogues and parasites. Then leftists admitted that fetuses growing in women’s bodies are human, but they’re not—in the view of leftists—persons.

Deceivers like Warren are trying to fool people into believing that some people who become pregnant are not women, hence Warren’s deceitful term “pregnant person.” All pregnant persons are women. So committed to deception is Warren that she won’t admit that a human in a woman’s womb is a person but will pretend that some men are pregnant “persons.”

Warren tries to fool people when she refers to “pregnancy termination.” That, obviously, is a euphemism, for human termination—the leftist final solution to a crisis pregnancy.

Of Warren’s many grotesque deceptions, perhaps the worst is describing what takes place in a CPC as torturing pregnant persons. While Warren supports, celebrates, and promotes procedures that dismember the bodies and crush the skulls of tiny, innocent humans in their mothers’ wombs, she calls efforts to persuade mothers not to do this “torture.”

The social justice warrior and human rights activist Warren does what all cultural regressives do when faced with speech they hate: She has called for the cancellation of all CPCs in the entire country.

Not yet able to shut down all CPCs, ironist Warren and some U.S. Senate collaborators (Bob Menendez, Mazie Hirono, Brian Schatz, Cory Booker, Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Patty Murray, Jeff Merkley, Richard Blumenthal, Diane Feinstein, Ron Wyden, Kirsten Gillibrand, Ed Markey, and Mark Warner) have an interim plan. They have sponsored a bill to punish CPCs.

One of the ironic reasons they offer for the bill is that “CPCs target under-resourced neighborhoods and communities of color, including Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and immigrant communities.” The bill doesn’t, however, mention the reason CPCs are located in those neighborhoods. They are located there because Planned Parenthood clinics—founded by racist, eugenicist Margaret Sanger—has long targeted impoverished communities of color.

The bill, titled the “Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act” (SAD Act) would “direct the Federal Trade Commission to prescribe rules prohibiting disinformation in the advertising of abortion services.”

The bill accuses CPCs of “routinely … disseminating inaccurate, misleading, and stigmatizing information about the risks of abortion and contraception, and using illegitimate or false citations to imply that deceptive claims are supported by legitimate medical sources.”

Maybe while they’re at it, the FTC could require abortion clinics to advertise that they routinely kill humans.

Elsewhere in the bill, Warren and her fellow abortion cheerleaders refer to the purported use of “misleading statements” by CPCs. Non-profit CPCs that are found to include “misleading” information—as defined by leftists—will be fined up to $100,000 or “50 percent of the revenues earned by the ultimate parent entity” of the non-profit charity.

Warren and her collaborators are trying to transform the FTC into their much longed-for Ministry of Truth/Disinformation Board.

While Warren blathers on about “reproductive rights,” she says nothing about the right of humans in the womb merely to exist. After all, no woman has to raise a child she finds inconvenient or burdensome, or a child who interferes with a mother’s plans for living an authentic life, or a child whose life the mother believes is unworthy of life.

In the conflict between a woman’s “reproductive rights” and a living human’s right to continued existence, it should be obvious that the right to exist is a right of a higher moral order. In fact, it’s the right upon which all other rights depend.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative and Illinois’ U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to vote against S. 4469, the SAD Act. Pro-life crisis pregnancy centers help women through stressful, emotional trials. They not only provide free spiritual/emotional/health care for women, but food, clothes and whatever help is needed. Some CPCs help women find jobs, child care, provide living arrangements and vehicles. They do that so that women don’t feel forced by circumstances or abortion cheerleaders to abort a baby.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SEN-Warren-Wants-to-Ban-All-Crisis-Pregnancy-Centers.mp3

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The intellectually incoherent U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) sought to apply an unconstitutional religious test for office today when interrogating nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Neomi Rao. Perhaps hoping everyone listening were idiots, he first attempted an indirect tactic by asking her this irrelevant question, the answer to which is none of his business: “Are gay relationships in your opinion immoral?”

Word to the seriously unwoke Booker: Americans—including judicial nominees and judges—are entitled to think sexual activity between persons of the same sex is immoral.

When Ms. Rao questioned the relevance of his inquiry, the smug Booker responded,

I think it’s relevant to your opinion. Do you think African American relationships are immoral? Do you think gay relationships are immoral?

Seriously, he actually said Rao’s opinion on the morality of homosexual relationships is relevant to her opinion on the morality of homosexual relationships.

But his reasoning—if it can be called that—is worse than circular. His questions imply an analogy between race and homosexuality when there are literally no points of correspondence between the two conditions. Does he understand what an analogy is and what it requires?

Here’s a primer regarding this particular and particularly unsound analogy for the dull-witted “progressives” among us: Race—as understood in such analogies—is a 100% heritable, non-behavioral condition, immutable in all cases, and objective. In contrast, homosexuality is a non-heritable, and in some—perhaps many–cases mutable condition that is constituted by subjective feelings and volitional behaviors that are legitimate objects of moral assessment.

A far better analogue for homosexuality would be polyamory, so, if Booker wants to continue his  moralistic and judgmental line of questioning on irrelevant matters with judicial nominees, he should ask them if they think polyamorous relationships are immoral, to which nominees should respond, “What possible relevance are my beliefs on the morality of particular types of sexual unions?”

Then Booker transmogrified from arbiter of morality to constitutional ignoramus by asking Rao,

Do you believe [“gay” relationships] are a sin?

Whoa, hold up there, cowboy.

The Constitution expressly prohibits religious tests for office, so what the heck was he doing asking Rao for her theological position on homosexual relationships?

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) took Booker to task for his egregious line of questioning:

The Senate Judiciary Committee should not be… an avenue for persecution.

We’ve seen a growing pattern among Senate Democrats of hostility to religious faith…. I was deeply troubled a few minutes ago to hear questioning of a nominee, asking personal views on what is sinful.

In my view that has no business in this committee. Article Six of the Constitution says there should be no religious test for any public office. We have also seen Senate Democrats attack what they have characterized as religious dogma, we’ve seen Senate Democrats attack nominees for their own personal views on salvation.

I don’t believe this is a theological court of inquisition. I think the proper avenue of investigation is a nominee’s record. So let’s look at your record, which is what this committee should be looking at, not our own personal religious views, or your religious views, whatever they may be.

Presidential-hopeful Booker nervously responded to Cruz’s remarks, defending himself with this patently absurd claim:

I would defend—die for—to protect the ideals of religious freedom in our country. And I was in no way trying to attack the nominee’s religious freedom. I was simply saying that discrimination under any standpoints, whether it’s religion, someone’s race, someone’s sexual orientation, should not be tolerated….[R]eligion was used as a ruse to discriminate against African Americans.

For someone who wasn’t trying to attack the nominee’s religious freedom, he did a pretty darn good job of doing just that by framing his question in a way that implied her unfitness to serve on the court. The hubris of Booker’s attempt to reframe his accusatory question about Rao’s moral and theological beliefs is mind-boggling. He would no more die for the right of theologically orthodox Christians to freely exercise their religion than CNN would fact-check anti-Trump news stories.

As Cruz alluded to, Booker’s not alone among U.S. Senate Democrats who engage in open religious discrimination. U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (D-VT) Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) have all revealed their brazen religious bigotry and attempted to apply a religious test for public office during U.S. Senate hearings over the past two years.

During the campaign, someone should ask armchair theologian Booker if he thinks theologically orthodox views of homosexuality are immoral and sinful.

This isn’t Booker’s first religious-test rodeo. Remember the Booker inquisition of Mike Pompeo in which Booker asked Pompeo if he thinks “it’s appropriate for two gay people to marry,” and asked, “Is being gay a perversion,” and asked, “Do you believe gay sex is a perversion? Yes or no.”

Someone should also ask Booker what he thinks should happen in cases where the rights of those whose Christian, Orthodox Jewish, or Muslim beliefs are central to their identity come into conflict with the purported rights of those whose homoerotic desires are central to their identity.

Lesbian Chai Feldblum, until recently a commissioner on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission whose reappointment was thankfully blocked by U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT),  said this about such conflicts long before the Obergefelle decision legalized same-sex faux-marriage:

[L]et us postulate that the entire country is governed – as a matter of federal statutory and constitutional law – on the basis of full equality for LGBT people….

Assume for the moment that these beliefs ultimately translate into the passage of laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation… [G]ranting this justified liberty and equality to gay people will likely put a burden on… religious people….

Let me be very clear…in almost all the situations…I believe the burden on religious people that will be caused by granting gay people full equality will be justified….

That is because I believe granting liberty to gay people advances a compelling government interest, that such an interest cannot be adequately advanced if “pockets of resistance” to a societal statement of equality are permitted to flourish, and hence that a law that permits no individual exceptions based on religious beliefs will be the least restrictive means of achieving the goal of liberty for gay people….

In blocking Feldblum’s reappointment Lee, said, “Don’t think for a second that you, your family, and your neighbors will be left alone if Feldblum gets her way.” The same can be said about Booker.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Booker-4.mp3

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Christian Life in Exile
On February 22^nd, IFI is hosting a special forum with Dr. Erwin Lutzer as he teaches from his latest book, “The Church in Babylon,” answering the question, “How do we live faithfully in a culture that perceives our light as darkness?” This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at Jubilee Church in Medinah, Illinois.

Click HERE for more info…

 

 

 

Introduction by Laurie Higgins

One of the joys and blessings of working for IFI these past ten years has been meeting remarkable people from across the country. One very special friend is Dr. Daniel Boland who has master’s degrees (one in theology and one in education), a PhD in psychology, and three years of post-doctoral training and research in human behavior and applied behavioral science. He taught, supervised and counseled at the University of Notre Dame and, later, at Arizona State University. After teaching, he opened a private practice as consulting psychologist in Scottsdale, Arizona and eventually moved to Southern California, where he enjoys the atmospheric climate much more than the political one. Dr. Boland now studies and writes about the radically secular trends and de-moralizing ideas which are eroding the influence of traditional Judeo-Christian principles, beliefs and practices. His wise, compassionate, and edifying essays are available on his blog to which you can and should subscribe. Here’s his essay on the meaning of the Kavanaugh imbroglio:

Beyond the Kavanaugh Event: America’s Fading Traditions
Written by Dr. Daniel Boland

A vast divide now exists among Americans. It is far more than a political rift between Democrats and Republicans. It is not merely a struggle between conservatives and liberals. The true nature of this conflict centers on how we shall live as individuals and what values we shall uphold as a nation. The facts at hand are not encouraging.

The Kavanaugh Event highlights the rabid polarization in the struggle for survival of our fundamental values, our American identity and even our national security.

“Progressivism’s” Errant Values

“Progressive” Leftists seek to create a nation without national boundaries, moral traditions or constitutional restraints. “… Let people do what they want. Let them have their way, no matter what price we pay for unhindered progress or what age-old laws and time-honored customs of dead-white-men we banish along the way…” say “progressive” Leftists.

America’s national character and moral coherence are based on 230+ years of constitutional stability inspired by Judeo-Christian mores. These legal and spiritual codes emphasize individual accountability and define the natural and lawful limits of human behavior.

Until recently, individual rights have always been balanced by personal responsibilities—and by accountability to God and to other human beings—for the common good, starting with the first natural right of all persons, the right to life, which includes the unborn.

Until recently, these codes have restrained government abuse and tempered the fads and foolishness to which humans are attracted. Today, the “progressive” Left jettisons these norms as outmoded, offensive, restrictive—the stale product of male/sexist/white/Christian/conservative dominance.

To advance their vision of unhindered “progress,” Leftists seek to eradicate our American system. Thus, many of our sacred traditions and boundaries are being overthrown by practitioners of Marxist political correctness and moral relativism, mental and moral distortions to which many Americans are in militant, yet ignorant, thrall.

And now comes the Kavanaugh Event where accusation and condemnation—rather than civility and restraint—are common. The dignity and achievements of a good man’s lifetime are expunged in favor of flimsy rumor and deliberate exaggeration (if not outright lies) in service to manipulative power.

Memory’s Weak Links

The Kavanaugh hearings quickly devolved into character defamation, focusing not on the nominee’s professional qualifications but on whether he was a teenaged drunkard, so afflicted by alcoholic blackouts that he was forgetfully capable of anything, including violent rape.

Politically correct character assassination is the goal of the Kavanaugh Event, with the threat of impeachment ever hovering. To the Left, solid reputations of moral probity earned over an adult lifetime are relative.

Judge Kavanaugh is accused of a felony. But the preponderance of evidence assuredly does not support this charge. However, many Leftists hope the ensuing FBI probe will unearth additional dirt about Kavanaugh’s college drinking and belligerency, and a subsequent charge of perjury they hope to pin on him—dirt with which they expect to bury Judge Kavanaugh.

It is crucial to note that dissociative amnesia and the validity of recovered memories—the bases of his accuser’s charges—carry scant weight in research psychology and forensic testimony. The validity and credibility of recovered memories is highly unreliable.

Research tells us that recovered memories are by no means credible and carry no probative value. Yet Democrats grant eager assent to the accusations, which originated in trauma forty years old. Despite this, the “progressive” Left celebrates the accusation as “proof” of Judge Kavanaugh’s guilt. (If you wish to review these accusations and, more to the point, read the report of Rachel Mitchell, the prosecutor who interviewed Dr. Christine Ford during the proceedings, click here.

The Progressive’s Approach 

To the “progressive” Left, accusation alone cancels reasonable doubt. It “proves” Judge Kavanaugh is unworthy. Henceforth, he shall be known and dishonored as a liar, drunk and rapist.

For the “progressive” Left, even a reckless, fact-less accusation that anyone is a racist or a homophobe, a chauvinist-pig or a sexist, a bigot or a promoter of hate speech or, worse, a faithful Christian baker or florist (with all the attached spiteful, religious baggage), even a mere accusation is sufficient to cast shadows over good people to justify punitive wrath and budget-busting fines.

Such is the “progressive” politically correct ethic in our morally-wounded, rationally-bereft culture.

The Behavior of Some Senators

The insults and “gotcha” posturing by Democrat Senators were, to many observers, way over the edge. It was deeply disquieting to watch our elected representatives leverage Judge Kavanaugh’s plight for their own unsavory political agendas, their unseemly grandstanding and their appeals to financial donors.

For example, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declared his resistance to Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination less than half an hour after the announcement. Mr. Schumer’s rush to pre-judgment was startling in its alacrity and vehemence.

U.S. Senator Kristen Gillibrand’s opportunistic “anti-males-in-power” feminist screeds were wearisome in their denial of historical and biological reality—which is nowhere better explained than in this brief, must-watch Prager U video.

U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono’s advice to men to “shut up and step up” was simply incoherent and outlandish.

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris’ fumbling, all-too-obvious attempts to trap Judge Kavanaugh into contradictory testimony were feckless and amateurish.

U.S. Senator Cory Booker indulged in several episodes of self-promoting rodomontade a’brim with cringe-worthy virtue-signaling and martyr-ish rhetoric. His performance was out of sync with his own teen-age sexual excesses, about which he wrote in a college column proclaiming his conversion to feminism.

One could also mention U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal’s needless slur that Judge Kavanaugh’s appointment will “stain” the Supreme Court. This is the same Blumenthal who claimed to have served in Vietnam when, in fact, he did not.

There are other embarrassing and unstatesman-like (or, if I must, unstateswoman-like) examples from our national leaders in this unfortunate inquisition, but the point is evident and disturbing.

The Stunning Absence of Honesty

The intemperate name-calling and adversarial behavior of Democrats did indeed shock. Such behavior compels us to recognize with heavy heart that politics and far too many politicians no longer exemplify responsible civility, moral and intellectual clarity, human courtesy or simple fairness.

Some will counter with a challenge: “Yes, but how ‘bout Trump and his ranting, blathering incivilities?”

Yes, many Americans vehemently condemn President Trump’s tweety indiscretions. In fact, many loathe our president for his tactless style and his tasteless crudities.

Many people also criticize Republicans for their hesitant, tradition-bound approach to their exercise of their congressional majorities and for their failure to reach effectively across the aisle and seek unity with Democrats. “… After all, Republicans have the power…”

Fair enough.

But “progressivism’s” defamatory strategies and divisive energies—now on grim public display—clearly reveal how they are deliberately eroding our American ideals and how responsible these “progressive” Leftists are for the toxic state of affairs we now face.

To this day, the story of America is a record of human nature’s best attempts at limited governance and the evolution of justice. Sadly, today’s destructive Leftist politics reveals that power-grasping can overshadow the good will and highest hopes of human nature which defined American exceptionalism.

Political Life and Reality’s Bite

Our Declaration of Independence declares that our laws are codifications of rights and responsibilities granted by our Creator—except to the “progressive” Left.

Our nation’s historic struggle for a balance between human laws and their divine origin are summed up in the admonitions of John Adams, who cautioned that our form of governance relies not only on law but also on the virtue of citizens and their representatives—except to the “progressive” Left.

We can see that American politics today is no longer a unified struggle for a common goal. Party politics is now a bitter, morally divisive enterprise. Americans are separated according to our vision of human life, its origins, its rights and its inherent value.

These differences are nowhere more definitively clarified than with the issue of abortion. The divisions in our country relate to our beliefs about life itself—about the “right” of individuals to live and the “right” of both the state and private persons to take life away from its own citizens, especially from the unborn and the elderly.

It is the taking and giving of life which threaten our Republic’s very survival. It is abortion, its moral consequences and its political leverage which are at the dark core of the Kavanaugh Event. 

Threats to American Stability

The corrupting intrusions of Marxist political-correctness, the ascendance of moral relativism in the American consciousness and the denigration of Judeo-Christian principles now inspire character assassination as a mainstream political tool. But there is also much more to worry about.

Our national malaise is exacerbated by Leftist propagandists in the media and entertainment industries to the grave detriment to our entire culture. One has only to listen to some late-night hosts to realize how foul “humor” has become, as Jimmy Kimmel’s disgusting comment affirms.

To the Left, factual reportage and decency in speech are relative to the desired outcome.

The impact of the “progressive” Left’s relativism on American politics, education, family life, law enforcement on our entire culture is difficult to face but impossible to deny:

• erosion of speech and religious exercise protections and the concomitant ongoing denigration of Judeo-Christian traditions

• triumph of non-judgmental, “anything goes” moral madness

• acceptance by medical professionals and parents of gravely misguided “transgender” “identity” change therapies over natural sexuality

• destruction of moral codes that respect the unborn and the elderly

• increased taxation and subsequent re-distribution of income and opportunity, regardless of talent, work ethic or experience

• perpetuation of welfare without qualification

• the support for open borders and further influx of unregistered non-citizen “sanctuary” seekers demanding care and comfort for all entrants—this added to an illegal population which is twice what experts previously estimated

• increased control of industry, commerce and systems of distribution, psychological and medical services and educational institutions

There is also the mortal danger of Islamic militancy which promises violence and death to America. In fact, violence is now occurring throughout Europe, a continent made victim by its own twisted sense of giving aid to its destroyers and welcoming its enemy in the names of suicidal empathy and false altruism.

Do We Get It Yet?

The un-making of America in accordance with the desires and will of the “progressive” Left proceeds apace as self-restraint is diminished and counterfeit, artificial “freedoms” are let loose among us. The public destruction of Brett Kavanaugh is but one of countless tragic events ahead for America and for many Americans.

History tells us that disturbing outcomes are increasingly probable unless we take seriously the facts at hand. The facts at hand attest to the demise of our moral traditions, truth and civility in the “progressive” Left’s politically correct, socialist America and to the continuing destruction of American exceptionalism and identity.

It can’t happen here? Really?

It is unfolding before us every day.

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