On November 7, 2020, four days after the General Election, a millennial friend who identifies as a Christian and is a devoted disciple of critical race theory and BLM posted this sacrilegious image on her Facebook page:

These were the last words of Christ before he died on the cross. The debt mankind owes to God for our sin and rebellion was finished, that is, paid in full, by Christ’s suffering and death. Jesus provided the means—the only means—for man to be reconciled to God. Satan was defeated. The sinless lamb of God’s self-sacrifice for the sins of man fulfilled all Old Testament prophecies. And this millennial Christian used that biblical allusion to celebrate the defeat of Donald Trump.

In addition to being sacrilegious, it is nonsensical as an analogy. If “it” refers to Trump’s tenure as president, in what precise way or ways is that analogous to Christ’s finished work on the cross? If Trump’s presidency is in no ways akin to Christ’s finished work—which, of course, it wasn’t—why use that allusion? Did she think it was clever? Funny? Unifying?

One thing is clear, this millennial and countless other Never-Trump, pro-Biden evangelicals believed that the country suffered under Trump’s presidency and that Biden would be America’s savior. And with their eyes blinded by rage at Trump and their minds clouded with foolish ideology, they have brought untold suffering to the world.

Cultural regressives who self-identify as “progressives” ripped Trump for his purported foreign policy ineptitude, claiming that he was destroying America’s reputation on the international stage. And here we are now with Western European leaders publicly savaging Biden’s astonishingly inept exit from Afghanistan, the effects of which worsen every day. As of this writing, two ISIS-K bomb blasts at the Kabul airport have left at least 12 U.S. service members dead, 15 injured, and an unknown number of Afghans dead or injured.

Politico has reported that “U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter” of the Kabul airport. An outraged defense official who described this act as “appalling and shocking,” said, “they just put all those Afghans on a kill list.”

Rebecca Klapper writing in Newsweek Magazine—no friend of conservatism—paints a vivid picture of the dim view European leaders have of bumbling Biden and his gang of accomplices who are too busy planning the forced entrance of men in dresses into women’s locker rooms to plan an exit of soldiers and allies from one of the most dangerous countries in the world:

Markus Soeder, a leading member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s center-right Union bloc, called for accountability from the United States.

Soeder said Washington should provide funding and shelter to people fleeing Afghanistan, since “the United States of America bear the main responsibility for the current situation.”

…

Even in the United Kingdom, which has always prided itself on a its “special relationship” with Washington … barbs were coming from all angles.

Former British Army chief Richard Dannatt said, “the manner and timing of the Afghan collapse is the direct result of President Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. At a stroke, he has undermined the patient and painstaking work of the last five, 10, 15 years to build up governance in Afghanistan, develop its economy, transform its civil society and build up its security forces. ” Dannatt said Wednesday in Parliament.

In response to attempts to “absolve” Biden of culpability for the botched exit, Charles Cooke writing for National Review said,

The Biden administration could. … quite obviously have ensured that before our troops were drawn down we had got every American, permanent resident, and eligible Afghan out; we had removed both our weaponry and any sensitive information; and we had consulted properly with our allies. That part … was within Joe Biden’s control. And he completely and utterly screwed it up.

Allies are not angered by just the exit debacle but also by Biden’s unconscionable lies concocted to shift blame, lies that provoked unprecedented bipartisan rebukes by members of Parliament:

Biden putting much of the blame on Afghan forces for not protecting their nation has not gone down well with Western allies, either.

Conservative Parliament member Tom Tugendhat, who fought in Afghanistan, was one of several British lawmakers taking offense.

“To see their commander-in-chief call into question the courage of men I fought with, to claim that they ran, is shameful,” Tugendhat said.

Chris Bryant, from the opposition Labour Party, called Biden’s remarks about Afghan soldiers, “some of the most shameful comments ever from an American president.”

Cranky leftists with their gender-neutral underpants in a twist repeatedly croaked that Trump lied about Stormy Daniels, lied about the weather on his inauguration day, and lied about the number of attendees at his inauguration.

Contrast those lies with Biden’s. Biden lied when he said al Qaeda was gone from Afghanistan. He lied when he said, “we know of no circumstance where American citizens are—carrying an American passport—are trying to get through to the airport.” He lied when he said, “I have seen no question of our credibility from our allies around the world.” And he lied when he said, “The Afghan military gave up, sometimes without trying to fight.”

Add those lies to the mound of whoppers from leftist journalists, members of Congress, Democrat Party operatives, the CIA, and FBI (aided and abetted by the algorithmic mischief of Big Tech) throughout Trump’s presidency and the 2020 campaign—lies which were created to take down a duly elected president and then to prevent his reelection.

They lied when they claimed Trump called all illegal immigrants rapists and murderers. They lied when they said Trump put immigrant children in cages. They lied about Trump and a Russian prostitute. They lied about Russia-collusion. They lied about Hunter Biden and his colorful computer.

And now in addition to the tragic scene of suffering on our southern border created by Biden, China, Russia, Iran, the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS-K are celebrating the humiliation of America. Our relations with our allies have never been worse. Americans are dead or stranded in the hellhole of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. And Afghan women and girls await their fate as sex slaves to barbarians.

I wonder if my millennial friend still thinks the election of Biden signaled the arrival of a savior who will end the suffering caused by former President Trump. It’s hard to know because she hasn’t posted a single thing about Biden since her sacrilegious post.

Our notorious Illinois state lawmakers must really want to hasten the exit from Illinois public schools and the state. A woke committee created by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) concocted a partisan amendment to the ISBE teacher standards. The amendment is called “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards”—heavy emphasis on “leading.” The wokesters are trying to strengthen their iron grip on the hearts and minds of Illinois children by requiring government schools to disseminate leftist beliefs about identity politics—beliefs that derive from Critical Race Theory/Critical Theory and which inform BLM and the 1619 Project.

Rather than traveling the well-worn path of other laws, which would involve greater public notification and scrutiny as well as debates on the floor of the Illinois House and Illinois Senate, those tricksy little woke dogmatists and propagandists are working this proposed “rules change” through a rules committee in hope of avoiding the prying eyes and potential opposition of the citizens of Illinois over whom Democrats rule. If this passes the rules committee on Feb. 16, 2021—that’s 12 days from now—it becomes de facto law.

As I wrote in mid-November 2020, the goal of the leftists who created these “standards” is to infuse the assumptions of Critical Race Theory, identity politics, BLM, and the 1619 Project into 1.  all teacher-training programs/education majors, 2. all Professional Education Licensing (PEL), and 3. all public school classrooms. Further,

Knowledge of objective facts and the development of the capacity to think logically through critical examination of diverse ideas are relegated to the back of the “education” bus in favor of promoting propaganda about identity, “systems of oppression,” “sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege,” and “Eurocentrism.”

This amendment will require—among other things—that teachers “value” the belief that “there is not one ‘correct’ way of doing or understanding something.” So, does that apply to the entire amendment? If it does apply to the entire proposed amendment, then by its own logic, it should be rejected.

If the claim is correct and there is no “one correct way of understanding” anything, then either schools must spend equal time studying all viewpoints on race, sex, privilege, eurocentrism, “gender identity,” and homosexuality, or no time studying any views on these topics. Further, leftist views must not in any way or context be affirmed as true.

Some intrepid reporters or educators should ask the “progressive” lawmakers who support this project these questions:

1.) Why is a heavily Democrat ISBE committee performing the job of lawmakers? Shouldn’t this proposal be a creation of lawmakers who present it to their constituents and who debate it on the floor of the Illinois House and Senate before the entire body votes on it?

2.) Since these standards “shall apply both to candidates for licensure and to the programs that prepare them,” will teachers be free to ignore all the ideas when it comes to classroom teaching, or would ignoring these ideas potentially result in the revocation of licenses?

The story of this proposed law—er, I mean “rules change”—has garnered national condemnation from numerous sources including National Review and Charlie Kirk and in so doing increased the likelihood of not only more parents opting out of Illinois re-education camps but out of Illinois completely. Fewer residents = smaller tax base = higher taxes for the serfs who remain. Good job, Illinois Democrats.

All that bad press evidently did result in one change to the amendment. Here was one sentence from the pre-condemnation amendment:

The culturally responsive teacher and leader will … Embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives that leverage asset thinking toward traditionally marginalized populations.

Here is the worthless, one-word, post-condemnation bone ISBE wokesters threw to Illinois serfs:

The culturally responsive teacher and leader will … Embrace and encourage inclusive viewpoints and perspectives that leverage asset thinking toward traditionally marginalized populations.

Do the wokesters really think their deplorable serfs are that stupid? Do they really think we don’t know that their definition of “inclusive” excludes conservative viewpoints? Do they really think we won’t notice the insertion of the adverb “traditionally,” which necessarily excludes contemporary marginalized populations—e.g., the theologically orthodox Christian population, which is today excluded, hated, and cancelled?

This is what’s called a distinction without a difference—a distinction intended to dupe the deplorables.

Here is the plain, unvarnished truth about living as Christians in Illinois:

No Christian has a moral right to place their children under the authority and tutelage of any teacher who affirms homosexuality as a positive identity or who affirms cross-sex identities.

No Christian has a moral right to place their children under the authority and tutelage of any adult who asks children for their pronouns, or who refers to any child or teen by opposite-sex pronouns, or who allows students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms.

No teachers who identify as Christ-followers have a moral right to ask children under their authority and tutelage for their pronouns. Nor do they have a moral right to refer to children by opposite-sex pronouns or allow them to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms.

Any Christian teacher who does any of those things is implicitly teaching the false, ungodly idea that biological sex has no intrinsic purpose or meaning. Such acts teach the Gnostic belief in the severability of body from spirit. Such acts teach that maleness and femaleness derive from subjective feelings—not from God’s created order. Such acts teach that compassion requires girls, boys, women, and men to relinquish their God-given feelings of modesty and desire for privacy when undressing or engaged in personal bodily functions.

Scripture prohibits lying. Scripture teaches us to train up our children in the way they should go. Scripture warns that “it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.” Scripture commands Christ-followers to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s—not what is God’s. Scripture teaches us to take up our crosses daily and count it all joy when we encounter trials for Jesus who suffered grievously for us.

We don’t choose who is called to the frontlines of this battle for truth and righteousness. God chooses.

Do Christ-followers not understand what all this means with regard to placing their children in government schools that affirm “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices? Do Christian teachers in government schools not understand what this means in terms of what they may or must not do as teachers? Are pastors asking the parents and teachers they shepherd about their actions in those spheres? Are churches preparing ways to help the families they shepherd to exit schools that teach evil as good?

Andrew Klavan, Christian, novelist, podcaster, and wit par excellence writes,

All of you who have written to me to ask, “What do I do when my boss forces me to attend the class on the hateful philosophy of critical race theory, or what do I do when my teacher threatens to fail my kid if he doesn’t use the wrong pronoun, or what do I do when my Facebook friends threatened to unfriend me or my professor threatens to drop my grade, if I don’t pretend to toe the leftist line?” I hate to tell you the truth, but here it is:

If you love your freedom, you’re going to have to resist and pay the price.  …  You don’t even have to speak the truth if you don’t think you can risk it, but at some point, if ordinary individuals don’t at least refuse to lie, then the lies and the tyrants will win.

When we think about how our freedom came to us through Valley forge and Gettysburg and Normandy, it’s really not too much to ask that we say “no” from time to time to thugs like Jack Dorsey on Twitter and that woke dame in HR, who wants you to rat on your coworkers if they make an off-color joke. Mortal danger couldn’t stop the birth of freedom, [so] the question now is will wealth and comfort smother it in his featherbed, as we fear to lose our luxuries more than our forefathers feared to lose their lives?

It’s a strange thing to be summoned—not to battle—but simply to think and speak freely like true American women and men. But our enemies are the very people who supply us with the meaningless stuff we love so much, and we have no choice, but to sacrifice … if we want to save the country from the coming trial.

Take ACTION: It is vital that the members of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) hear from all Illinois taxpayers. Please click HERE to send a message to this committee urging them to vote against any proposal that would mandate all Illinois teachers be indoctrinated with left-leaning “woke” beliefs.

The Democratic Co-Chairman is Illinois Senator Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago). His office number is (773) 445-8128.

The Republican Co-Chairman is Keith Wheeler (R-North Aurora). His office number is (630) 345-3464.

More ACTION: Here is a list of all the members of JCAR, and their individual contact information. It is imperative that we respectfully contact these state lawmakers to urge them to reject these new divisive “standards” by the ISBE.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/audio_Illinois-Woke-School-Mandate-Garners-National-Condemnation_01.mp3

More Info: [SHORT VIDEO] The Revolution in Education in Illinois Continues (Pastor Calvin Lindstrom)

Please consider supporting the good work of Illinois Family Institute.

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

Written by Robert Knight

President Trump caused a stir in July when he issued an order terminating some Obama housing policies aimed at killing off the suburbs.

“The [Democrat] plan is to remake the suburbs in their image so they resemble the dysfunctional cities they now govern,” he wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal column jointly authored with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Benjamin Carson. “As usual, anyone who dares tell the truth about what the left is doing is smeared as a racist.”

Outraged Democrats called the president a racist.

The rule he overturned, Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) program, would “abolish single-family zoning, compel the construction of high-density ‘stack and pack’ apartment buildings in residential neighborhoods, and forcibly transform neighborhoods.”

Meanwhile, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are doubling down. Their plan, costing $640 billion over 10 years, would unleash a tsunami of social engineering.

As the Biden website proclaims, “Housing is a right, not a privilege.”

Everybody needs a home, no doubt about it.  The question is how best to ensure liberty and encourage home ownership while still making sure the poorest have a place to live.  America’s “safety net” of welfare and public housing provides minimal needs, but it’s also created a permanent underclass of fatherless families. The Democrats’ war on marriage was tailor-made to create a dependent, Free Stuff Army.

Once-thriving cities have huge areas where it’s not safe to go even in the daytime. Newly elected Democrat district attorneys financed by George Soros have abandoned the “broken windows” method of curbing crime and are reaping the whirlwind.  BLM mobs are still rioting.

It’s no secret why millions of people, including minorities, have moved to the suburbs. They want a safer, better quality of life.  But the Democrats, motivated by extreme environmentalism and political ambitions, want to force urban patterns on the burbs.

Mr. Biden says he is going to ensure that “every American has access to housing that is affordable, stable, safe and healthy, accessible, energy efficient and resilient, and located near good schools and with a reasonable commute to their jobs.”

That’s sweeping. Maybe he should ask the Communist Chinese how to go about achieving this. They move millions of people around to where they want them.

The Biden scheme includes expanding the Community Reinvestment Act.  That was the Bill Clinton/Barney Frank law forcing banks to issue mortgages to people who could not afford them.  It triggered the collapse of the stock market and the Great Recession.

So, now Mr. Biden wants to apply it “to mortgage and insurance companies.”  This would create more ways to pressure lenders to issue toxic mortgages.  If only we had some experience as to how this sort of thing turns out.  Maybe Mr. Biden could get Barney Frank to run it.

The sneakiest part of the Democrat housing plan is to use zoning laws to end suburbia as we know it. “It will be as if America’s suburbs had been swallowed up by the cities they surround,” social anthropologist Stanley Kurtz wrote recently in National Review.

“They will lose control of their own zoning and development, they will be pressured into a kind of de facto regional-revenue redistribution, and they will even be forced to start building high-density low-income housing.”

Are all those suburban moms who supposedly are going to vote Democrat in November listening?

Some jurisdictions are already going down this road.  In January, Minneapolis, where the city council has also decided to disband the police department, became the first major city to ban zoning for single-family homes.

“Our landmark 2040 Comprehensive Plan helps advance those goals by tackling our city’s long history of exclusionary zoning,” Mayor Jacob Frey exulted.

Mr. Frey, if you recall, was shocked that he was shouted down by rioters during his foray into the war zone that BLM and Antifa created in the wake of George Floyd’s death.  He refused to say he would defund the cops, but did bemoan a “systemic racist system.”

This guy is doing his best to turn Minneapolis into a mob-ruled version of Stalingrad. You’d think the mob would show more gratitude.

Minneapolis is not alone.  In 2019, the state of Oregon banned single-family zoning in cities with more than 10,000 residents.

In California, a pending bill would require California cities and counties to permit duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes on residential land zoned for single-family homes.  Take that, Orange County! Wait. Ballot harvesting swept Democrats into power in the formerly conservative bastion. Maybe never mind.

Senate Bill 50, sponsored by San Francisco Democrat Senator Scott Wiener, has been endorsed by the leftist mayors of Oakland, Sacramento, San Jose, and San Francisco.  Wonder if a fourplex will rise someday behind Nancy Pelosi’s mansion?  She could wave to the neighbors while scarfing down some of that $12 a pint ice cream from her giant freezer.

As for the Democrats’ lust for power over housing, letter-to-the-editor writer Roger Ruvolo put it this way in the Wall Street Journal:

In the Democratic vision of the future, antireligious automatons will live in small ‘multifamily’ units stacked sky high next to bus or train stations.

This election is no more about President Trump than it is about Vice President Biden; it’s about freedom, or not.

Robert Knight is a Townhall contributor. You can follow him on Twitter at @RobertKnight17 and his website is roberthknight.com.

When an organization makes billions of dollars killing babies in the womb, it is clearly a bloodthirsty organization. And when a disproportionate number of those babies are black and Hispanic, it is clearly a racist organization.

All this is self-evident when it comes to Planned Parenthood, but recent events – the firing of Planned Parenthood’s president and a blatantly racist tweet – underscore just how deeply Planned Parenthood is a bloodthirsty and racist organization.

First there was the unexpected firing of president Leana Wen.

Her primarily failing, it appears, was that she did not have the cold-blooded killer instinct necessary to make abortion the priority of Planned Parenthood.

Perhaps it was her training as a medical doctor.

Perhaps it was a trace of the image of God that still pervaded her humanity, as much as she was still an abortion advocate.

Whatever the underlying causes may be, the broad strokes are clear. As noted by Alexandra Desanctis on National Review, “The organization has ousted its president, apparently for being insufficiently committed to pro-abortion advocacy.”

Indeed, “Planned Parenthood has long sought to downplay its commitment to abortion, calling itself a health-care organization and spreading the lie that abortion is only 3 percent of its business, even as its clinics perform between one-third and half of all abortions in the U.S. annually. The group’s leadership evidently believes this political moment demands more aggressive advocacy.

“And Wen wasn’t up to the task.”

More bluntly, cultural commentator Bill Muehlenberg put it like this: “What they are saying is this: ‘You are not blood-thirsty enough! You are not meeting your quotas! More babies MUST DIE!’ That is the mindset of PP. They are after blood – and money. That is their core business. That is why they exist.”

And he suggested that Planned Parenthood should run an ad that sounded something like this: “Wanted, an experienced baby killer who has no qualms about taking human life, nor about selling body parts of babies to others for profit. It is preferred that you resonate with past such ministries, such as the Nazi extermination camps. Having no heart and no conscience is also essential. Those who think that the vulnerable and defenceless should be our priority need not apply.”

Do you think he was exaggerating? I do not.

When it comes to Planned Parenthood’s racism, there is a spirited debate concerning the connection between Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s founder, and eugenics. Sanger’s conservative critics are sure that she wanted to reduce the number of black Americans (among other races and ethnicities), if not exterminate them entirely. Her defenders deny this passionately, also claiming that her interest in eugenics was not racial.

Yet even the left-leaning Time Magazine admitted in 2016 that Sanger did “make some deeply disturbing statements in support of eugenics, the now-discredited movement to improve the overall health and fitness of humankind through selective breeding. She did, and very publicly. In a 1921 article, she wrote that, ‘the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.’” (Time also cited her defenders who claimed that she “uniformly repudiated the racist exploitation of eugenics principles.”)

And the very left-leaning Snopes.com, in an article devoted to debunking a quote attributed to Sanger, uncovered this hardly flattering quote from a 1923 New York Times article. She wrote: “Birth Control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.” (Snopes’ emphasis.)

To my liberal, pro-abortion friends: Are you sure you want to defend Sanger against charges of racism?

But let’s not worry about 1923. Let’s look at the present, as in July 19, 2019, when Planned Parenthood tweeted,

’Black women are sexy and sexual entities, independent of anyone else’s ideas of what that means.’ For #SummerOfSex, our partnership with @WearYourVoice, @GloriaAlamrew talks about creating space for Black girls to understand their sexuality.

In one short tweet, Planned Parenthood’s motives are revealed for the world to see.

Bound4Life, a pro-life organization, noted that, “Black non-Hispanic women have the highest abortion ratio. Black women’s abortion ratio has reached 444 abortions per 1,000 live births, while non-Hispanic white women’s abortion ratio is 124 abortions per 1,000 live births.”

Apparently, however, this is not enough. More black women need to have sex. More black women need to have unwanted pregnancies. More black women need to have abortions.

This, to me, is all part of the “Jezebelic” attack on our nation. It is an attack we must resist with prayer, with truth, and with compassion. May Planned Parenthood be exposed.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

The U.S. House of Representatives just passed the disastrous and dishonestly titled Equality Act that if passed into law will not merely gut First Amendment protections but effectively ban Christianity and any other religions that teach that homoerotic acts and cross-sex impersonation are immoral.

This proposal (H.R. 5) passed Friday afternoon by a vote of 236 to 173 (with 23 not voting). The Illinois Congressional delegation voted along party lines. Congressman Darrin LaHood (R-Peoria) was absent but has told us that he was a “no” vote.

Here are the 8 traitorous U.S. House Republicans who voted with the Democrats in favor of the faux-equality act: Reps. Susan Brooks (Ind.), Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) Will Hurd (Texas), John Katko (N.Y.), Tom Reed (N.Y.), Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and Greg Walden (Ore.).

They sold their souls and our religious liberty, assembly rights, and speech rights for a mess of pottage in the form of their re-election bids. Either self-serving desire to preserve their position was their motivation, or they have no understanding of either equality or the differences between conditions like race and sex and conditions like homoeroticism and opposite-sex impersonation.

The National Review exposes how radical and dangerous the Equality Act is:

Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia, has been a longtime supporter of same-sex marriage…. Laycock has also been a longtime supporter of enacting a federal gay-rights non-discrimination law, but he doesn’t support the Equality Act, a bill just approved by the House of Representatives that would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, because it would “crush” conscientious objectors.

“It goes very far to stamp out religious exemptions,” Laycock tells National Review in an email. “It regulates religious non-profits. And then it says that [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] does not apply to any claim under the Equality Act. This would be the first time Congress has limited the reach of RFRA. This is not a good-faith attempt to reconcile competing interests. It is an attempt by one side to grab all the disputed territory and to crush the other side….” Laycock says that religious schools would probably be viewed as “public accommodations” under the Equality Act even if they refuse all federal funding.”

If passed and signed into law, the Equality Act would require that federal law recognize disordered subjective feelings and deviant behaviors as protected characteristics. Federal law would absurdly recognize homoeroticism and cross-sex masquerading as conditions that must be treated like race and biological sex, which are objective, 100 percent heritable conditions that are in all cases immutable, and carry no behavioral implications.

Once the law is enjoined to protect two groups based on their subjective, internal sexual feelings and volitional sexual behaviors, we open a Pandora’s Box of evils that will inevitably result in conflicts between the spanking new legal rights of those who embrace sexual deviance as “identity” and 1. the First Amendment rights of those who reject sexual deviance, 2. the moral right of businesses to require restrooms, locker rooms, and showers to correspond to biological sex, 3. the right of businesses to fire or refuse to hire a person who chooses to masquerade as the opposite sex, and 4. the right of public schools to fire or to refuse to hire a person who chooses to impersonate the opposite sex.

Thomas Donnelly–aka “Giselle”

There is nothing intrinsically unjust about treating people differently based on their volitional choices. There is nothing unjust about treating biological women as different from biological men who impersonate women. And it is manifestly just and proper for an organization or business to fire people like Thomas Donnelly (see photo), a defense and national security Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and BDSM aficionado who now masquerades as a woman named “Giselle.”

Just as the legal prohibition of discrimination based on homoerotic feelings and acts conflicts with the legal prohibition of religious discrimination, so will the legal prohibition of discrimination based on feelings about maleness and femaleness and acts related to those feelings set in motion conflicts with prohibitions of religious and sex discrimination. It is morally and intellectually untenable that subjective feelings and volitional acts supersede both biological sex and religion as a protected class.

Pastor and theologian Doug Wilson makes clear the totalizing and totalitarian impulses and goals of LGB and T activists (a schism among whom is growing):

[T]he sexual revolutionaries are not interested in anything shy of total and complete victory.

And that is what the faux-equality act is about: total and complete victory over theologically orthodox Christians, which necessarily means eradicating their freedom to speak freely, assemble/associate, and exercise their religion.

Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University, provides a troubling list of effects that will ensue from the passage of the pernicious Equality Act—which speaking in the strident voice of cultural regressives, Dr. Gagnon facetiously calls the “Get the Homophobic and Transphobic Bigots Act.” According to Dr. Gagnon, the faux-equality act will mandate:

1.) Nationwide “LGBTQ” indoctrination in school curricula and in workplaces, where you and your children will regularly learn and relearn that anyone who is not a cheerleader for all things “gay” and “transgender” is a hateful, ignorant, and indecent bigot who has no place in society (note that Christian teachers in public schools will be forced not only to listen to such presentations but also to make them for students).

2.) State social services to take your children away from you if you oppose your child’s “right” to transition to a person of the other sex or enter homosexual sexual relationships.

3.) Affirmative-action hiring of people who identify as “transgender” and “gay” throughout industry and academia.

4.) Speech that embraces the faux gender identity of “transgenders” under penalty of fines and imprisonment.

5.) “Transgender female” (i.e., male) access to female restrooms, showers, locker rooms, dressing rooms, shelters, dormitories, and sports.

6.) Use of all commercial talents (photographers, artists, bakers, wedding planners, printers, etc.), including forced speech (lettering, messages) to promote transgenderism and homosexual intercourse, under pain of fines and imprisonment.

7.) The firing of white-collar employees who express any religious or secular views deemed “hateful” by “LGBTQ” radicals, even if that view is expressed outside the workplace, say (for example) in social media.

8.) Loss of federal financial aid, science grants, and ultimately accreditation for Christian colleges and universities that maintain “discriminatory” policies toward LGBTQ behavior and relationships, whatever short-term, bait-and-switch exemption is offered to get the bill passed.

9.) Doctors and Catholic hospitals to perform “sex-change” operations on children and to treat all “trans” patients not as their real biological sex but as the sex that they pretend to be.

10.) Law enforcement agencies, courts, and medical research studies to categorize “trans-persons” by their pretend sex.

11.) Censorship, with punitive penalties imposed if at all possible, on all speech and publications that make homosexual and transgender persons “feel unsafe” (essentially all speech critical of homosexual intercourse and transgenderism).

Just slapping the word “equality” onto legislation does not transform it magically into something good or make it about equality. The Equality Act—like the ERA—is not about equality. The Equality Act—like the ERA–serves the tyrannical interests of the “LGBTQQAP” community. And both will be used to deny the rights of women and Christians.

You have been amply warned. Now, do something.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators to urge him/her to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.” If you know the name of your local official, you can also call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask the operator to connect you with his/her office to leave a message.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/HR5.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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A common refrain when people lament violence, sex and f-bombs in movies, goes: “How did we get from the golden days of Hollywood to this?”

Actually, Hollywood, with many notable exceptions, has been at war with decency and American values since its inception. It just wasn’t as starkly apparent.

If you don’t think so, take in some of those black and white films on the Turner Classic Movies channel. Sure, you won’t get nudity, gratuitous violence, or profanity, and some are delightful.  But many are not very good, with stilted dialogue and ham acting, and certain films from the Golden Era are surprisingly subversive.

A case in point is “Theodora Goes Wild,” a 1936 “screwball comedy” that netted Irene Dunn an Oscar nomination for her role as a prim, church organ-playing small-town girl who secretly writes racy novels under a pseudonym.  Upon meeting the randy illustrator of her book covers (Melvyn Douglas), she flees from the New England home she lives in with her two uptight aunts and goes hog wild in New York as the scandalous novelist “Caroline Adams.”  We’re supposed to think this is great.

What’s most subversive is the acidic portrayal of small-town America, and particularly the church ladies. They’re uniformly unattractive, small-minded gossips, backbiters and hypocrites.

The Christian life in “Theodora” is cold, boring and the enemy of a good time.   The only spark of life comes in nightclubs, parties or scenes when the protagonists put it over on the uptight yokels.  Absent is fellowship and community, the pursuit of truth, love of family and neighbor, happiness, mutual sacrifice, and God’s love, all of which are found in a vibrant church.

The deal is sealed for hedonism when the entire town turns out with a marching band to welcome home their heroine once her cover is blown. She’s now famous for writing smut, and lives happily ever after with the illustrator. Nobody but a prude would object. Life is colorful once more.  A literal version of this theme of salvific sex is expressed in “Pleasantville” (1998).

In a larger sense, this is where we find ourselves today. There’s no need for Hollywood to employ subtexts to attack the moral order when we’re already drowning in a sea of sensations. Unless you’re Amish, staying free from the pornified culture is like trying to focus on small print with a tiny book lamp in the middle of the Vegas strip.

Recent columns in Politico.com, the New York Times and National Review have explored America’s acquiescence to the porn culture. They point to the Internet tidal wave and the invention of the smart phone in 2007, which is putting adults –and children – at risk in ways undreamed of a dozen years ago.

Still, technology is only one powerful element.  The main factor is the mid-20^th Century sexual revolution, in which morality, sexual roles, family and what constitutes the good life were upended.

In his 1941 opus “The Crisis of Our Age,” Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin traced the waning of traditional American norms to just before World War II, when advertising imagery and movies became increasingly sensual.  America was an ideal-driven culture that honored virtue, duty and delayed gratification.  Then it began to slide toward a sensate culture that valued cultivating and sating appetites above all. Sorokin compared it to the decline of Greece and Rome, whose art evolved toward the sensual as the empires declined.

In “Kinsey, Sex and Fraud” (1990) and subsequent books, Judith Reisman has chronicled the enormous impact of Alfred Kinsey’s fraud-packed sex studies in 1948 and 1953.  Hugh Hefner drew inspiration from them to launch the Playboy empire, which mainstreamed porn and helped fund Roe v. Wade’s legalization of abortion. With the advent of the birth control pill and the explosion in visual stimuli, the wheels came off.

In his classic “Brave New World,” Aldous Huxley envisioned a future in which every need was met and sex was noncommital.  Anyone experiencing discomfort could take the drug “soma” to zone out on “soma holiday.”  Unlike our opioid crisis, people did not overdose on soma, but both dull the body and soul.

So here we are, with every conceivable way to gratify our appetites.

Are we happier? Does constant pursuit of sensations bring sustained joy? Not likely. That comes from purpose, accomplishment, and close bonds with family and friends.  It comes from knowing that we’re valued and loved by a creator God Who cares enough to give us rules to live by, and, as shown in Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, forgiveness and reconnection.

Perhaps not all is lost.  There seems to be genuine concern among some in the intelligentsia over the culture’s destination. The campaign to label porn as a public health hazard is finding purchase, and what actually produces health and happiness is becoming more evident by the day.

Hollywood turns out some good flicks now and then, and there’s always hope for more uplifting fare even beyond the wholesome stuff on the Hallmark Channel. Three years after scripting “Theodora Goes Wild,” Sidney Buchman was nominated for a screenplay Oscar for “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

Robert Knight’s latest book is “A Nation Worth Saving: 10 Steps to Restore Freedom” (djkm.org/nation, 2018).

This article was originally published at Townhall.com

Last week the people of Ireland voted to repeal Ireland’s Eighth Amendment that granted “equal protection of the right to life of the preborn child and his or her mother.” After the repeal, “legislators will have the power to legalize abortion for any reason up to birth.”

Leading up to the vote, however, Facebook, Twitter and Google all weighed in — arguably on the side of the pro-abort forces:

Google, Facebook, Twitter ban pro-life ads on Ireland abortion referendum

Leading up to the May 25th referendum in Ireland on repealing the Eighth Amendment, Google announced that it would suspend all advertising related to the subject. The move has been condemned by pro-life groups as an attempt “to rig the election.”

In the announcement, Google claimed the decision came as part of “our update around election integrity efforts globally.” Pro-abortion groups applauded the decision, but as observers have noted, the only ads related to the referendum appear to be pro-life ads, so the ban would effectively benefit the pro-abortion campaign and harm campaign efforts for life in Ireland.

Also, from the article:

The repeal campaign has benefitted from marked pro-abortion bias in the media, celebrity endorsements and significant funding from the international abortion lobby. As such, the pro-life campaigners are at a disadvantage and have used online advertising on Google and social media platforms to reach voters with their message. The pro-life groups Save the 8th and the Iona Institute issued a joint statement that read in part, “Online was the only platform available to the No campaign to speak to voters directly. That platform is now being undermined in order to prevent the public from hearing the message of one side.”

And this:

Twitter has also announced that it will suspend ads related to the referendum ahead of the May 25th vote. Twitter has a confirmed history of censoring pro-life content.

Facebook also “jumped on the bandwagon” to ban ads. The article notes that “the pro-abortion side is far from immune from outside influence as this side has received significant monetary support from George Soros and other globalist elites.” The question whether the social media giants would’ve issued the restriction “if a surge in advertising had come from the Yes [pro-abortion] side?” is worth asking.

Facebook claimed “neutrality” in a statement: “We understand the sensitivity of this campaign and will be working hard to ensure neutrality at all stages… Our goal is simple: to help ensure a free, fair and transparent vote on this important issue.”

Do you believe them?

There is plenty of reason not to. After all, the way the social media giants have been caught censoring conservatives, the claim of neutrality isn’t believable in the least. To read more about that — skim the many articles linked here.

After the 2016 elections, those social media giants realized that if their political agenda was to be advanced, they were going to have to clamp down even further on the information being provided by conservative organizations. Here was a headline at The Daily Signal: “After Royally Screwing Up the Election, the Media Want Control Over Your Facebook News.”

If the social media giants are indeed Leftists and committed to silencing conservatives, what is to be done?

An interesting article recently posted at National Review about whether those big tech companies are violating anti-trust laws. Here is an excerpt:

There is a strong Republican antitrust tradition.

The big digital monopolies demand that we conform to their worldview and shut us down when we dissent. They have too much power. They are are threat to this country. Congress is doing nothing about it. It’s time to complain, while we still can. #Tucker @FoxNews

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 27, 2018

When he tweeted these words, Carlson was expressing a sentiment that many on the right have come to embrace. People are concerned, with good reason, that big tech companies discriminate against conservatives. Numerous conservative outlets have had their videos demonetized on Google’s YouTube. PragerU is appealing their loss in a lawsuit over that. A study by The Western Journal showed that a change to Facebook’s algorithm disproportionately harmed conservative sites.

In normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be a problem for government to solve, but social media has come to dominate our national conversation. Large political websites thrive or die based on changes to Facebook and Google algorithms. Everyone from cable news to newspapers to online-only publications create and tweak their content based on how they think it will play on social media. A study has also shown that Google search results can have a frighteningly large impact on elections:

Randomized, controlled experiments conducted with more than 10,000 people from 39 countries suggest that one company alone — Google LLC, which controls about 90 percent of online search in most countries — has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections in the world for several years now, with increasing impact each year as Internet penetration has grown.

Keep in mind that we’re not talking about individuals or even whole industries here; we’re talking about unaccountable monopolies with detailed information about hundreds of millions of Americans, billions in cash reserves, and the capability to shape what is discussed and what is not discussed in America in a way that no book, radio show, television show or individual has ever had.

The entire article can be found here.

Not everyone agrees. You can read an opposing view here.

Earlier this year, IFI asked the question “What is the Conservatives Movement’s Answer to Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube’s ‘Viewpoint Discrimination’?‘” That question is still on the table.

So many smaller groups often rely on the relatively inexpensive social media advertising options to help make more people aware that there are other arguments other than those coming from the Leftist “mainstream” media, Hollywood, and any number of other outlets.

This issue, and this challenge, isn’t going away any time soon. There is plenty of talent and resources available on the conservative side of the aisle. Eventually that talent and those dollars will have to get serious about winning the information war — with the help of Leftist social media giants or not.

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There’s a troubling piece titled “Time for a Compromise on Transgenderism” posted on National Review online and written by purportedly conservative, “gay vegetarian”  J. J. McCullough. In condescending language, McCullough argues that it’s time for Americans to hop on the fast train to the Shangri-La of polymorphous perversity. In McCullough’s view, now that Americans have ceased “judging” homosexuality, they should cease “judging” the science-denying “trans” ideology.

He engages in the worst kind of demagoguery in his unholy effort to normalize the “trans” ideology by insulting those who find the ideology destructive and the demands of its advocates tyrannical.

McCullough makes this myopic statement about the cultural transformation of America on the issue of homosexuality:

Disinterest in judging homosexuality is not an attitude government has coerced Americans into, it is the product of a free people’s informed knowledge.

In McCullough’s presumptuous worldview, “informed knowledge” leads inevitably to “disinterest in judging homosexuality.” For clarity—something in which McCullough seems little interested—let’s establish from the outset that judging homosexuality is distinct from judging homosexuals. Judging homosexuality means to make a judgment about the moral status of homosexual activity. Informed, knowledgeable, wise, and loving people can, do, and should make the judgment that homosexual activity is not moral and jeopardizes the temporal and eternal lives of those who engage in and affirm it.

McCullough goes on:

To the extent that America is still having any political debate about homosexuality, it has evolved into a more substantial conversation about religious liberty…. These are difficult debates but are also far more useful than those of earlier eras, which mostly centered on demagogic judgment of the gay ‘lifestyle’ untethered to any tangible constitutional principle or policy objective.

His description of the debates of earlier eras makes me wonder how much he knows about those debates. Countless debates of earlier eras were both useful and substantive.

Surely McCullough is aware that there are non-demagogic bases other than “tangible constitutional principles or policy objectives” on which to debate or to which to tether debates on homosexuality. In fact, debates tethered to ontology, epistemology, theology, and philosophy are far more substantive and essential than those tethered to tangible constitutional principles and policy objectives. And these are the bases on which a free and informed people should be debating.

But “progressives” aren’t interested in debates so-tethered when epithet-hurling, bad analogies, and false claims work effectively to change public views and silence dissent. You know the epithets commonly hurled, like “hater” and “bigot.” McCullough raised epithet-hurling to an art form, calling those who still make moral judgments about sexual behavior immature, unfair, dishonest, ostentatious, insensible, boorish, petty, cruel, and regressive.

Can anyone claim—I mean, with a straight face, truth-telling lips, and a small, perky nose—that Americans have freely arrived at their “informed,” non-judgmental view of homosexuality? Government schools advance the leftist sexuality ideology and censor dissenting views. Corporate America advances the leftist sexuality ideology (look at which organizations they support and look at their ads) and punishes dissenters. Remember Brendan Eich? The mainstream press is in the tank for homosexuality, celebrating as “heroic” those who announce their predilection for erotic activity with persons of the same sex and scorns those who come to reject their prior “gay” identities. The politicized professional medical and mental health communities are controlled by leftists, and small committees create homosexuality-affirming policies that they imply to the public are uniformly embraced by all members. Let’s not forget the arts and Madison Ave, or the wolves in sheep’s clothing who are infiltrating churches. Just try saying in any public forum that you believe homosexuality is immoral. You’ll likely end up on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate list and out of a job. Freedom doesn’t taste so free anymore.

McCullough then moves on to a harsh indictment of anyone who rejects the “trans” mythology, criticizing as “theatrical” the natural and wholly sound repulsion people feel about barbaric amputations of healthy breasts and castrations. McCullough evidently believes that the perduring presence of a human phenomenon is some sort of argument in favor of its normalization:

[M]ost adults could admit [transgenderism] does seem like a rather persistent aspect of humanity…. If we concede that transgenderism is not going away, and is not something anyone intends to exert effort toward ending, then Americans, especially conservative ones, should reflect on our culture’s honest and fair attitude toward homosexuality and acknowledge that the most sensible path out of the present acrimony will probably require similar compromise. Some degree of cultural ceasefire and consensus seems the only path for both sides to maintain a degree of pride while avoiding a more radical, disruptive societal transformation.

McCullough doesn’t explain how unwavering commitments to sexual truth and morality are inconsistent with maintaining a “degree of pride.” Assertions without evidence are more his gig.

Here McCullough is tilting in the direction of a “naturalistic fallacy,” which suggests that because something exists, it’s good. Does he believe Americans should “compromise” on every “persistent aspect of humanity” that isn’t going away? If not, on what basis does McCullough decide which persistent aspect of humanity ought not be accommodated? What sorts of compromises are Americans obliged to make and who decides? So many questions untethered from tangible constitutional principles or policy objectives.

I would argue that radical, disruptive societal transformation has been caused by the “trans” ideology and will be exacerbated in intensity and extent by further compromise, resulting in incalculable harm to countless lives.

McCullough then again ridicules conservatives in his morality-untethered effort to compel acquiescence to compromise:

Part one of the compromise will be borne by cultural conservatives and traditionalists. It asks for broad tolerance for the reality that transgender men and women exist, and are entitled to basic human dignity, just like everyone else. This… impl[ies] that acts like ostentatiously calling people by pronouns they don’t want… are boorish and petty. It means acknowledging that arbitrary discrimination against transgender people is a cruel bigotry like any other.

Can I get a “wowzer”?

1.) Conservatives have never denied that “transgender men and women exist” (and by “transgender men and women,” McCullough means men and women who pretend to be the sex they are not).

2.)  Conservatives agree that those who embrace a “trans” identity are entitled to human dignity—which their embrace of a “trans” identity undermines. McCullough’s implied proposition—which is wholly untethered from tangible constitutional principles and policy objectives—is that respect for the dignity of “trans”-identifying persons requires silence on the “trans” mythology.

3.)  Without warrant, McCullough characterizes as “ostentatious” opposition to bearing false witness (i.e., calling “trans”-identifying persons by incorrect pronouns). Maybe he could tell conservatives how they can live in accordance with their belief that lying is wrong without acting “ostentatiously”?

4.)  What is “arbitrary” discrimination? Would prohibitions of objectively male persons in women’s private spaces be arbitrary discrimination? If so, how is it more “arbitrary” to believe that access to private spaces should correspond to objective, immutable biological sex than to believe it should correspond to subjective, internal feelings about one’s “gender identity”?

Perhaps McCullough doesn’t believe sex-segregated private spaces are arbitrary. Perhaps his claim that “Tolerance does not necessitate a purge of any and all public manifestations of the gender binary in the name of extreme exceptions to the rule,” means he approves of sex-segregated private spaces. The problem is we don’t know, because he doesn’t say.

Unfortunately, his maybe-sop to conservatives was followed by yet another insult:

Transgenderism seems to be the issue on which many on the right prefer to let loose their inner reactionary, which then further rationalizes petty tyranny on the left.

McCullough believes that opposition to the science-denying myth that men can, in reality, be women or vice versa is “reactionary,” and that any who cling to that rational belief are responsible for “trans” tyranny. Conservatives just can’t win. Refuse to embrace irrationality and they’re reactionary and culpable for the unethical responses of the irrational.

On one aspect of this debate, McCullough demonstrates a modicum of wisdom:

[T]he risk of psychologically and physically damaging children by encouraging or enabling them to embrace transgender identities before pubescence must be acknowledged as a valid concern backed by credible evidence. Protecting children from the confusing, anxious, dangerous world of adult sexuality and sexual identity before their developing minds can fully conceptualize its complexities is not bigotry, it is good sense, and the sovereign right of every parent. It should be the responsibility of the public education system as well.

But read carefully: McCullough applies this sound warning only to pre-pubescent children—not to all minors.

McCullough concludes with more manipulation, this time employing two types of fallacies (i.e., chronological snobbery and appeal to emotion):

American history teaches that it is neither the radical nor the regressive who are ultimately vindicated in their response to cultural disruption, but rather those cautious conservatives who assign themselves the difficult task of thoughtfully working through the new and unexpected in the cause of preserving a social order as peaceful and free as the one that came prior.

Who will now rise to that task?

Well, history teaches lots of things. It also teaches that not everything new and unexpected is good or can contribute to preserving a peaceful, free social order. It teaches that cultural disruption often follows the embrace of false, destructive ideologies and that people can be mightily influenced to acquiesce by propaganda, sophistry, peer pressure, and coercive policies untethered from sound ontology, epistemology and morality. And it teaches that cautious thoughtfulness can include courageous commitment to transcendent, enduring moral truth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/National-Review-Online-Demagogue-Taunts-Conservatives.mp3

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Here is a recent headline from the Independent Journal Review: “Salon: Identity Politics Is ‘Dragging the Progressive Agenda Down.’” IJR’s Pardes Seleha explains that yes, indeed, a “far-left publication” [Salon] is “finally denouncing its long-embraced identity politics…”

Salon isn’t the only place on the political left to find critics of I.D. politics. Last November, Mark Lilla, a professor at Columbia wrote an op ed that ran in the New York Times titled, “The End of Identity Liberalism.” Here was his opening:

It is a truism that America has become a more diverse country. It is also a beautiful thing to watch. Visitors from other countries, particularly those having trouble incorporating different ethnic groups and faiths, are amazed that we manage to pull it off. Not perfectly, of course, but certainly better than any European or Asian nation today. It’s an extraordinary success story.

But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.

So, Lilla writes, “the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end.”

The “fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups,” he adds. Ouch. Trigger alert!

At the level of electoral politics, Lilla says, “identity liberalism has failed most spectacularly, as we have just seen. National politics in healthy periods is not about ‘difference,’ it is about commonality.”

Why is this series about identity politics running at the Illinois Family Institute’s website? Because those who have been running up the white flag of surrender in the “culture war” should pull down that flag immediately.

Another name for that culture war is identity politics. Aggrieved groups demand their rights. Women are to be treated to taxpayer funded abortion. The LGBT(etc.) crowd are to be treated as if their sex-centric identity is legitimate. College campus snowflakes are to be treated as if they were grown-ups.

Professor Lilla’s article attracted a good bit of attention on both the left and the right.

Here was Rich Lowry writing at the National Review:

A recent essay in the New York Times elegantly diagnosed the problem and inadvertently illustrated it. Mark Lilla, a professor at Columbia and highly respected intellectual historian, wrote that “American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender, and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.”

His piece itself occasioned a moral panic, focused overwhelmingly on how Lilla is, in fact, himself a white male. His op-ed was denounced from the left as “the whitest thing I’ve ever read,” and part of an “unconscionable” assault on “the very people who just put the most energy into defeating Trumpism, coming from those who will be made least vulnerable by Trump’s ascension.”

Lilla was so undeterred by the criticism from his fellow Leftists that he decided to turn the topic into a 160 page book, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics.

Beverly Gage, writing at the New York Times, wasn’t completely happy with the effort.

Still gobsmacked by the 2016 election, many liberals may be yearning for a thoughtful, generous and well-informed book to put it all in perspective, a strategic account of where they’ve been, where they are now and where they ought to go. In “The Once and Future Liberal,” Mark Lilla, a professor of the humanities at Columbia and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, says his aim is to unify today’s fractured liberals around an agenda “emphasizing what we all share and owe one another as citizens, not what differentiates us.” Unfortunately, he does this in a way guaranteed to alienate vast swaths of his audience, and to deepen left-of-center divisions. Rather than engage in good faith with movements like Black Lives Matter, Lilla chooses to mock them, reserving a particularly mean-spirited sneer for today’s campus left. “Elections are not prayer meetings, and no one is interested in your personal testimony,” he instructs “identity” activists, urging them to shut up, stop marching and “get real.”

You can see why I included that entire paragraph. It was too much fun not to.

So, it’s clear that not everyone on the political left wants to move past identity politics — and that is very good news for those of us on the political right. Again, here is Beverly Gage:

This is not, of course, a work of historical scholarship. It is a polemic about the dangers of “identity liberalism,” and a critique of the misguided professors and students who seem so enamored of it.

Beverly in not a fan, either:

Despite his lofty calls for solidarity, Lilla can’t seem to get out of his own way — or even to take his own advice. He urges fellow liberals to focus on “the hard and unglamorous task of persuading people very different from themselves to join a common effort,” then proceeds to insult his own audience…

“The Once and Future Liberal” is a missed opportunity of the highest order, trolling disguised as erudition.

One note of thanks to Ms. Gage: Since I’m not going to read Lilla’s book, I appreciate her including this quote in her review — again, too much fun:

“Elections are not prayer meetings, and no one is interested in your personal testimony,” [Lilla] instructs “identity” activists, urging them to shut up, stop marching and “get real.”

Let me close with Michael Brown, also writing last December partly in response to the Lilla op ed:

[Leftist] radical agendas can only go so far before the people begin to push back, and that it is partly what happened with the recent elections.

Enough with the divisive ways of identity politics. Enough with the attack on traditional American values. Enough with the assault on our religious freedoms. Enough.

So, in that sense, yes, we are witnessing a larger moral and cultural backlash, even if some of these issues were not front and center in the Trump campaign. And to the extent we can make the case for a biblically-based, moral conservatism, one that treats everyone fairly but that recognizes that certain boundaries are healthy and good, we can turn the hearts of the younger generation as well as recapture the hearts of the older generation.

As my close colleagues and I have said for the last 15-plus years, on with the revolution.

Also worth reading on this topic is Kay S. Hymowitz‘s article “Why Identity Politics Are Not All-American,” where she opens with a reference to Mark Lilla’s NYT article.

Read more:  Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias

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Written by Stan Guthrie

Confucius once said, “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” When it comes to radical Islam, it’s clear that too many people have chosen foolishness over wisdom. The question is, in these dangerous times, are there enough of us willing to embrace wisdom?

Our answer will go a long way toward determining whether the West, founded upon Judeo-Christian principles, will prevail over radical Islam. For, as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said recently, “You cannot remedy a problem if you will not name it and define it.”

The Obama administration’s verbal contortions over the nature of our self-avowed enemies would be comical if they weren’t so seriously misguided. After a recent atrocity by the Islamic State (also called ISIS or ISIL), the president opined, “ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.” Following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean offered this: “I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it’s a cult.” These statements bring to mind the odd Bush administration mantra after 9/11: “Islam is a religion of peace.”

Then there’s the absurd statement by one of the current president’s spokesmen. He asserted that the Taliban—which murdered nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and which saw one of its affiliates slaughter 132 schoolchildren and nine staff in Pakistan—isn’t a terrorist group. No, it’s merely an “armed insurgency.” Cut from the same cloth is the refusal by Al Jazeera’s English service to use words such as “terrorist,” “jihad,” and “Islamist” when describing Al-Qaeda and ISIS. As one executive at the network said, “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.”

Contrast this kind of politically correct denial with the growing realization in Europe that things must be called by their proper names. The massive march in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo massacres is one sign. Another is the willingness of growing numbers to speak up.

“Europe has tacitly accepted that from now on the freedom of satire is valid for everything but Islam,” writes Angelo Panebianco in Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. “Now [Islamists] are aiming for a more ambitious objective to strike at the religious heart of the West, forcing us to accept that not even the pope is free to reflect aloud on the specificity of Christianity or that which differs from Islam.”

Czech President Miloš Zeman warns that the world faces a challenge similar to the Nazis. “We have to ask ourselves if a repeat of the Holocaust could happen,” Zemen said in a recent speech in Prague marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. “This time it would not comprise 6 million Jews, but rather members of countless faiths as well as atheists—and even Muslims. Which is why I would like to welcome the fact that moderate Arab countries recently joined in the battle against Islamic State.”

Another president, Egypt’s Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, says it is time for a fresh start for Islam, which he avows is a tolerant religion. “The terrible terrorist attacks which we have seen and this terrible image of Muslims is what led us to think that we must stop and think and change the religious discourse,” he said, “and remove from it things that have led to violence and extremism. We need a new discourse that will be adapted to a new world and will remove some of the misconceptions.”

Removing those things won’t be easy. In an editorial, National Review acknowledges that most Muslims worldwide seek to live peacefully with their non-Muslim neighbors. But that does not end the discussion about whether Islam is a tolerant faith or ISIS killers are “true” Muslims.

The editorial notes “a large minority of Muslims—maybe hundreds of millions worldwide—who cleave to interpretations of their faith that enjoin murder, rape, torture, and cruelty as pious, even mandatory, acts. They take their diabolic faith seriously, and the result is what we saw in Paris. . . .

“Thus, there are in practical terms two Islams—a religion, if not of peace, then of peaceful accommodation, and a religion of death.”

That is so for several reasons that cannot be dismissed lightly. First, there appear to be two basic approaches to interpreting the Qur’an and how to make sense of verses that call for violence, side by side with those that call for peace and tolerance.

The older, classical school of interpretation, the one followed by the Islamists, endorses what is called the “law of abrogation.” This law, actually a hermeneutical principle, says that earlier verses in the career of Muhammad must be interpreted in light of later ones. If there is an apparent contradiction, they say the later ones must hold sway. Defending this approach, they point to verses such as 2:106: “When we cancel a message, or throw it into oblivion, we replace it with one better or one similar. Do you not know that God has power over all things?”

The problem for those who insist that “Islam is a religion of peace” is that the later verses reflect the more warlike stance of Muhammad and the Muslim community, when the movement was strong and aggressive. So the oft-cited verse, “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256), has been abrogated in the minds of Islamists. They point to later verses, such as 9:5: “Kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush.” They say the later, more violent verses are controlling.

Of course, so-called “moderate Muslims,” such as El-Sissi, disagree. They point out that the law of abrogation implies that the Qur’an has errors, which they do not believe. It is an ongoing theological debate among Muslims worldwide.

There is a second reason we cannot dismiss the fact that there are at least two Islams around the globe. Simply put, there is no interpretative authority that all Muslims recognize. There is no “pope” or modern-day prophet to resolve all the theological disputes within Islam. Not only are there two main branches of Islam—Sunni and Shi’a—there are multiple religious leaders, each with varying levels of influence. While all Muslims revere the Qur’an and Muhammad and seek to follow the Five Pillars, they do not agree on all the particulars of the religion. Whatever you or I might think of the “true” DNA of Islam, if this global faith of 1.6 billion people is ever going to settle on a peaceful vision, it won’t be non-Muslims who talk them into it.

That’s why pronouncements from the White House or various media quarters about what constitutes “true Islam” are ludicrous. These self-appointed experts about Islam might as well declaim on whether all Christians must come under the authority of the pope.

Islam, in practical terms, is however Muslims themselves practice it—peacefully and violently. Let us pray for and encourage the former, knowing also that God is drawing many Muslims to Christ these days. But let’s also recognize that simply wishing for something doesn’t make it so.

We can start by calling things by their proper names.

This article was originally posted at the BreakPoint.org website.

 Islam in America
A Christian Response 
featuring Dr. Erwin Lutzer

May 7, 2015
CLICK HERE for Details