Written by Dr. Everett Piper

On Thursday, Sept. 17, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation extolling our country’s virtues and praising our Founding Fathers for their courage, wisdom, insight and sacrifice as they crafted a Constitution that would guard and guarantee life and liberty for all United States citizens.

In his corresponding speech, the president announced his intention to establish a “1776 Commission” aimed at encouraging our nation’s public schools to teach the historical facts of our nation’s founding.

Within seconds the progressive establishment completely lost its mind and went apoplectic.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten bewailed, “It’s disgusting. The president has no right …!”

White House correspondent and NBC and MSNBC contributor Yamiche Alcindor mocked the “loud applause” the president received for his educational priorities.

And New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones lamented, “The efforts by the president of the United States to use his powers to … dictate what schools can and cannot teach … should be deeply alarming … .”

Now one might wonder what exactly the president said about his priorities for this new commission that has the left so up in arms.

What did the president suggest that was so offensive?

Was it when he said he wanted to “encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history?”

Or maybe it was his admonition that “the only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans?”

Or perhaps it was when he suggested that “our youth [should] be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul” and that “we [must] save this cherished inheritance for our children, for their children and for every generation to come?”

Or could it have been when he declared that he and the commission “embraced the vision of Martin Luther King where children are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character?”

Or maybe it was when he contended that, “[We cannot] divide Americans by race in the service of political power?”

Or it might have been his invocation that, “we are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny. We will reclaim our history, and our country, for citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed?”

Or perchance it was his condemnation of those who seek to “silence dissent, to scare [others from] speaking the truth, and [who] bully [our children] into the abandonment of their values, their heritage and [our] very way of life?”

Or maybe it was his charge that “America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism and built the most fair, equal and prosperous nation in human history?”

Or possibly it was when he implored that teaching our youth “concepts such as hard work, rational thinking, the importance of the nuclear family, and belief in God” are good things and not racially pejorative values?”

Yes, one does wonder what the Democrats find to be so outrageous in the president’s call for our public schools to teach these simple truths.

Could it be that the answer is obvious?

Could it be that when one wants to “fundamentally transform” a culture and a country that the first step is to disparage its history?

Could it be that you must first deconstruct a nation’s principles when your goal is to “redistribute” a nation’s “power”?

Could it be that if your end game is “death to America,” as the Democrats’ favorite child, Black Lives Matter is now chanting in the streets, you must first kill the American dream in the minds of America’s youth?

Russell Kirk once wrote, “Ignorance is a dangerous luxury.” He went further,

“Many Americans are badly prepared for their task of defending their own convictions and interests and institutions … The propaganda of radical ideologues sometimes confuses and weakens the will and well intentions of Americans who lack any clear understanding of their nation’s first principles. And in our age, good-natured ignorance is a luxury none of us can afford … We need to urgently recall to our minds the sound convictions that have sustained our civilization and our nation … If we ourselves are ignorant of those ideas and institutions which nurture our culture and our public liberty, then we will fall … .”

Could it be that the reason for the left’s angst is that they understand Kirk’s warning quite well?

Could it be that our president just struck at the very heart of their cause — the Democrats’ desire for an “ideology of ignorance” and, thus, they are furious?

History tells us that Demosthenes pleaded, “In God’s name, I beg you to think!” as he tried to awaken the confused and divided people of Athens to stand against the looming tyranny of Macedonia.

An “ideology of ignorance” or an educated, aware and “thinking” citizenry. Something to think about as you prepare for Nov. 3.

This article was originally published by The Washington Times. Dr. Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper) is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery).

Before you read this, you might want to have a fire extinguisher at the ready, because this news just may light your hair on fire.

State Representative La Shawn K. Ford (D-Chicago) held a press conference on Sunday in which he called for all Illinois schools to cease teaching history because he’s “Concerned that current school history teaching leads to white privilege and a racist society.”

In a press release titled a “Call for the Abolishment of History Classes in Illinois Schools,” Ford proclaimed from his high horse,

When it comes to teaching history in Illinois, we need to end the miseducation of Illinoisans. I’m calling on the Illinois State Board of Education and local school districts to take immediate action by removing current history books and curriculum practices that unfairly communicate our history. Until a suitable alternative is developed, we should instead devote greater attention toward civics and ensuring students understand our democratic processes and how they can be involved. 

Has Ford created and made public the criteria that would be used to evaluate the fairness of “history books and curriculum practices,” or does he just presume that all current history books and curriculum practices communicate history “unfairly”?

The press release announced that speakers would discuss “how current history teaching practices overlook the contributions by Women and members of the Black, Jewish, LGBTQ communities and other groups.” Take note of the implicitly racist bias in Ford’s press release that capitalized “Black” while not capitalizing “white.” Yes, persons of Color can be as racist as Colorless people.

Here’s a translation of Ford’s rhetoric: Ford wants schools to cancel all history classes until all textbooks can be reviewed by Big Brother to determine if they are sufficiently woke (i.e., leftist/revisionist) in their treatment of properly melanated persons, women (i.e., persons with DNA-determined vaginas), homosexuals, and opposite-sex impersonators. In the meantime, Ford proposes teaching “civics,” focusing on presenting BLM and Antifa riots as constitutionally protected intensely peaceful assemblies.

In the early stages of the pandemic, when most Americans were fretting about the Chinese Communist virus, leftists were hatching plans on how to weasel the widely criticized New York Times revisionist 1619 Project into Illinois public schools.

To achieve that goal, Ford first proposed the silly partisan bill HB 4954 to add yet more “commemorative holidays” to the school calendar and mandate the teaching of the Civil Rights Movement, which is already taught in schools everywhere.

Then just two weeks later, Ford, who in 2012 was charged “with eight counts of bank fraud and nine counts of submitting false information to the bank in a 17-count indictment,” filed an even more partisan and dangerous amendment that would require the following:

“The study of the pre-enslavement history of Black people from 3,000 BCE to AD 1619, including instruction about ancient civilizations, kingdoms, kings, queens, and warriors; their contributions to medicine, literature, technology, architecture, and economics; and their achievements,” and “The study of the reasons why Black people came to be enslaved.”

The amendment was the brainchild of community activist Meleika Gardner who also wrote the amendment.

According to Scene Chicago, Gardner attributes the murders of “her father, a stepfather, her nephew, and several friends to gun violence due to systemic racism,” which she seeks to eradicate through school indoctrination. I’m unable to find, however, any identification by Gardner of the systemically racist acts that allegedly killed her loved ones or explaining exactly how these racist acts killed them. It seems, for example, that her nephew, Xavier Joy, was the tragic victim of robbery in Woodlawn, a neighborhood on the South Side that is 98 percent black. Maybe some intrepid reporter will ask Gardner for some specific details on how systemic racism killed her friends and relatives.

Ford and Gardner were joined at the press conference by their collaborator, Evanston alderman Robin Rue Simmons, who tied the amendment that would mandate yet more leftist propaganda in government schools to both slave reparations and the riots destroying America:

Simmons, who has spearheaded the push for reparations in Evanston, called education “a key piece of what repair looks like.” Acknowledging the recent Black Lives Matter protests and nationwide “awakening” to the oppression black people face, she said “now is the time” to fight for this bill.

The collaborators know that it would be infinitely easier to get brown, yellow, red, and white Americans who have never owned slaves to support paying reparations to blacks who never were slaves if these Americans have been propagandized.

Ford, a former history teacher in Chicago Public Schools, made this jaw-dropping statement to Fox News:

We know that the history books that we have were written years ago, decades ago, centuries ago by pretty much one group of people, and that’s white men.

Does Ford think teachers are today using textbooks written centuries ago? Is he so racist that he thinks white people can’t write about historical events involving black people? Does he believe black people are similarly incapable of writing about historical events involving white people? I guess we should be glad Ford is no longer in the classroom.

Ford’s policies are likely shaped more by his desire for political power in a leftist city than by principle. When running for mayor in 2019, Ford was asked by the homosexual newspaper Windy City Times if he has any “experience working in LGBTQ-related issues.” Ford, who pretends to be Catholic while supporting abortion and issues related to homosexuality, acknowledged that his lesbian sister is a “strong adviser on issues.”

If this Trojan horse filled with 1619 Project swamp gas looks like it’s going to pass in the Springfield swamp, some good conservatives should file an amendment that would require a complete history of slavery throughout the world to be taught and would require that all resources used in history classes be ideologically balanced between conservative and leftist. So, if resources by 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones are used, then equal time must be spent studying resources by Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, and John McWhorter.

Let’s make sure Illinois children know that between 1501-1866, more enslaved Africans went to Brazil/Portugal (5,848,266), Great Britain (3,259,441), France (1,381,404), Spain/Uruguay (1,061,524), and the Netherlands (554,336) than the United States (305,326), and that “Less than one-quarter of white Southerners held slaves,” and that it is estimated that “3,776 free Negroes” owned slaves.

And let’s make sure they study the work of prolific black scholar Thomas Sowell who writes that,

Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18^th century. People of every race and color were enslaved—and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed. Everyone hated the idea of being a slave but few had any qualms about enslaving others.

Sowell further points out the hypocrisy of leftists on slavery:

The treatment of white galley slaves was even worse than the treatment of black slaves picking cotton. But there are no movies or television dramas about it comparable to Roots, and our schools and colleges don’t pound it into the heads of students.

Sowell offers a corrective to the myopic perspective offered by America-hating leftists—a corrective of which students should be made aware:

The inhumanity of human beings toward other human beings is not a new story, much less a local story. There is no need to hide it, because there are lessons we can learn from it. But there is also no need to distort it, so that sins of the whole human species around the world are presented as special defects of “our society” or the sins of a particular race.

If American society and Western civilization are different from other societies and civilization, it is that they eventually turned against slavery, and stamped it out, at a time when non-Western societies around the world were still maintaining slavery and resisting Western pressures to end slavery, including in some cases armed resistance. Only the fact that the West had more firepower than others put an end to slavery in many non-Western societies during the age of Western imperialism. …

Every American should be troubled by the goals of leftist demagogues and censors in government schools. Sowell makes clear that they are not interested in ascertaining truth but, rather, they seek to distort children’s understanding of America for power and money:

It is not just the history of slavery that gets distorted beyond recognition by the selective filtering of facts. Those who go back to mine history in order to find everything they can to undermine American society or Western civilization, have very little interest in the Bataan death march, the atrocities of the Ottoman Empire or similar atrocities in other times and places.

Those who mine history for sins are not searching for truth but for opportunities to denigrate their own society, or for grievances that can be cashed in today, at the expense of people who were not even born when the sins of the past were committed.

Why did Ford collude with other leftists to concoct this amendment? Leftists understand that it’s easier to forge 15-year-olds into good leftist foot soldiers than it is to forge 25-year-olds and easier still to squeeze malleable 5-year-olds into desired shapes by plunking them into government Play-Doh molds. Leftists want to prevent freethinkers who may later become incorrigibly resistant to leftist dogma and then have to be cancelled.

Conservatives best get their kids out of government indoctrination centers and re-education camps pronto. Leftists are not winning the culture war by the persuasive force and rationality of their ideas but by indoctrination and intimidation.

The Orwellian anti-freedom sharks smell and taste the blood of conservatives in the water. Every day that conservatives choose fear over courage, capitulation over resistance, and silence over bold dissent, they sacrifice the future freedom of their children for one more hour of uneasy peace.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state lawmakers and urge them to vote no on both HB 4954 and Rep. La Shawn Ford’s amendment, which would politicize the teaching of history in Illinois schools and foment more division.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Leftist-Lawmakers-and-Activists-Call-for-the-Cancellation-of-All-History-Classes_audio.mp3

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As summer temperatures began heating up and cases of COVID-19 started trending upward, the media started to look for a place to lay the blame. The New York Times quickly found it – Christians and the churches they attend.

In an article titled “Churches Were Eager to Reopen. Now They Are a Major Source of Coronavirus Cases,” the Times accused churches resuming in person worship services of being responsible for the uptick in the viruses spread. After a few days of criticism, the headline was toned down to read, “Churches Were Eager to Reopen. Now They Are Confronting Coronavirus Cases.” In particular, the article focused on “how the virus rages through Texas, Arizona, and other evangelical bastions of the South and West…” There is no mention of the large protests that have been taking place across the country and could be contributing to the higher numbers.

What’s interesting is that the article focuses on 650 cases of the Coronavirus emanating from nearly 40 churches and religious events from around the country. The article’s three writers neglect to mention that, according to the Hartford Institute, there are an estimated 300,000 churches with approximately 56 million worshipers in the United States. The numbers cited in the article are statistically insignificant: .013333 churches and .001161 worshippers. They alone cannot be responsible for the nationwide resurgence.

However, the Times counts on readers not noticing and instead focusing on what the paper sees as the politicization of the issue. Most Christians are more likely to call it a religious liberty issue. The article describes “thousands of churches, synagogues and mosques” as having “been meeting virtually or outside on lawns and in parking lots to protect their members from the virus, the right to hold services within houses of worship became a political battleground as the country crawled out of lockdown.” There is no mention that some areas had little to no cases of the virus and wished to meet with the proper social distancing protocols in place. Nor was there a rush by churches to be reckless or unsafe. Such willful negligence would hopefully have been called out by the Christian community itself.

It’s been a stressful time for everyone, but it has been particularly difficult for pastors as they have tried to navigate the unknown. Throughout the pandemic, most pastors and their congregations have taken the matter seriously. They’ve sacrificed and have been incredibly creative in finding new ways to minister to their congregations and community.

While this has been happening, religious liberty has been threatened. It is a serious issue, for we see Socialist and Marxist ideas being embraced by some in our country. We’ve seen the governor of our own state of Illinois taken to court over his restrictions on churches. Court battles have been fought in numerous states including California, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, New York, and Wisconsin. Many cases are still being litigated and churches in California have just seen their worship services shut down for a second time due to a resurgence of COVID cases in that state. There is no room for the Times and other media to belittle the concerns of Christians over their First Amendment rights. However, this is the same media that has been ignoring a recent spate of vandalism and burning of Catholic churches.

May we as Christians stand together and prayerfully seek God’s wisdom in ministering to our communities and protecting the health of our congregants. May we also be bold in proclaiming his Word and our right to come together and to proclaim it without fear of being targeted and silenced.

Please consider a gift to the Illinois Family Institute. As always, your gift to IFI is tax-deductible and greatly appreciated!

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In their pursuit of replacing culture with anti-culture, the spanking new 21st Century culture Reformers are going to be very busy. Rather than nailing 95 theses on a church door, they’re going to tear down 950,000 monuments and place names honoring imperfect and altogether yucky colorless people and replace them I guess with the names of perfect colorful people. This provides yet more evidence of the silliness of Barack Obama’s out-of-context quote, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It also provides evidence of the truth of Dr. Martin Luther King‘s use of the quote, first spoken by 19th Century pastor Theodore Parker:

Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated with [Christ’s] name. Yes, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Neither Theodore Parker nor Dr. King was making the point that history moves always and ineluctably toward justice. They were making the point that ultimately Christ will redeem history. Christ has already won. It’s interesting that leftists have adopted BCE and CE in order to no longer refer to Christ. No matter, Christ still wins.

In the meantime, the devil roams the earth lying and destroying.

Now, after decades of canceling conservatives through a thousand tiny cuts and an occasional deep slash, the Reformers smell all that yummy human blood and are mercilessly cannibalizing their own.

The cannibals at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art forced out their curator, Gary Garrels, “[c]onsidered one of the country’s most prominent curators,” for the sin of saying he “would not stop collecting work by white men lest the institution take part in ‘reverse discrimination.’” The cannibals leapt on him. First, he tried futilely to stop the attack by groveling, saying,

I want to offer my personal and sincere apology to every one of you. I realized almost as soon as I used the term ‘reverse discrimination’ that this is an offensive term and was an extremely poor choice of words on my part.

His groveling delayed their devouring by seconds. The Cannibal Reformers responded, yum yum eat ‘im up. He’s gone, baby, gone.

The Cannibal Reformers have been noshing on Lin-Manuel Miranda, the beloved leftist author of the beloved musical Hamilton, for being insufficiently Reformed.

Homosexual, slightly conservative and now former New York magazine writer Andrew Sullivan was nibbled on for writing in ways about the protests that “triggered” “sensitive junior editors.” He resigned before being eaten alive.

And on social media and in her former place of business, writer Bari Weiss, who describes herself as  “center left on most things … and … socially liberal,” was gnawed on mercilessly. When the Cannibal Reformers, with blood dripping from their ghoulish mouths, paused to catch their breath, Weiss fled and used her best weapon to try to stop the cannibalization. She wrote and posted a resignation letter that exposes the intolerant, bigoted, ideologically non-diverse work environment at the New York Times:

[T]he lessons that ought to have followed the [2016] election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. …

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist. … Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned. …  [S]ome coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are. …

[T]he truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. … Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

Weiss’s resignation echoes what leftist journalist Matt Taibbi wrote in June:

It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

I worked with such Robespierres and experienced firsthand their bigotry and hypocrisy at Deerfield High School on Chicago’s North Shore. Ironically, some of the most vicious bullies were those who most vigorously claimed to honor all voices and to value diversity even as they promoted only one set of assumptions on how to think about race, sex, and erotic attraction. All views with which district oppressors disagreed were designated “hateful” and  their imperious judgments justified silencing—through bullying if necessary—all dissenting voices. While proclaiming that everyone should “Speak” their “Truth,” they ostracized anyone who expressed truths they hated.

Seeing the cannibals eating their own, ethics (or panic) seized 153 men and women who work in journalism, academia, and the arts—mostly leftists—and penned an open letter in Harpers in which they “raise their voices against” the “new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.” The signatories include Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, Todd Gitlin, Garry Kasparov, Damon Linker, Steven Pinker, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Jonathan Rauch, J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, Randi Weingarten, Garry Wills, Matthew Yglesias, and Fareed Zakaria.

After first taking potshots at conservatives, as is their wont to do, they wrote this:

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. … [C]ensoriousness is … spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.

But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. … the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.

Some of the most bloodthirsty cancel culture cannibals live and move and have their anti-being in the “trans” cult, and when Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling said men can’t be women, the Cannibal Reformers came for her with bared fangs and unsheathed drag queen talons. Fortunately, Rowling has an impenetrable armor made of gold bricks. Unfortunately, few Americans have such armor. Maybe AOC, Bernie, and Biden can provide some to each and every American—oh, and while they’re providing free stuff, I’d like my fair share: a Martha’s Vineyard mansion just like the Obamas’.

While this letter is a good start in undoing the damage done to the Republic by leftists, seeing the name of the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, undermines trust in the sincerity of the signatories in that teachers’ unions are at the forefront of leftist politicking, including using schools to advance their leftist ideology.

Not surprisingly, when the letter was published, the Cannibal Reformers lost what was left of their minds, beginning with Todd VanDerWerff, whose “trans” alter ego is “Emily” VanDerWerff. To be clear in the miasmic ontological fog created by the noxious exhalations of the “trans” cult, “Emily” is a biological man—forever.

He, like Harper’s letter signatory Matthew Yglesias, is a writer at Vox, and VanDerWerff laughably claimed that upon seeing Yglesias’ signature near the signature of J.K. Rowling, he felt “less safe working at Vox.” And the Cannibal Reformers were off and terrorizing.

Leftist stormtroopers unaccustomed to pushback kicked up a Twitter storm, and fearing for their professional lives, a handful of Harper’s letter signatories bailed. Three days later, a racist counter letter appeared, griping that many of the Harper’s letter signatories were “white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms.” Of course many were wealthy and endowed with massive platforms because only those with wealth and massive platforms can survive the Cannibal Reformers’ Purges.

What we need now is massive pushback against ideological Robespierres, storm troopers, and Cannibal Reformers. Don’t let their tactics intimidate you. Don’t be manipulated. Don’t be deceived. Don’t hold your fire. And don’t send your kids to their re-education camps.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Leftists-Canceling-and-Cannibalizing-Their-Own_audio.mp3

Please consider a gift to the Illinois Family Institute. As always, your gift to IFI is tax-deductible and greatly appreciated!

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

If you haven’t been called it yet, surely, you’ve heard it: the ubiquitous epithet “transphobe.” It’s the evil spawn of “homophobe.” I don’t mean those accused of being “transphobes” are evil spawns of “homophobes.” I mean the term “transphobe” is the evil spawn of the spurious term “homophobe.” In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, British writer…

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In Chicago Public Schools, captive students are being indoctrinated to believe that one of the very first societies in the world to end slavery was actually a monster defined by the evils of slavery — almost as if this monstrous nation had invented it.

This narrative is peddled despite the fact that the nation in question sacrificed hundreds of thousands of its finest men to eradicate slavery — not only ending it domestically, but eventually, worldwide, too.

And this slanderous lie is peddled despite the fact that institution of slavery has been ubiquitous throughout human history — at least until America and the Christian West put an end to it.

Indeed, in the African nation of Mauritania, slavery did not even become a crime until 2007, and the institution remains firmly entrenched there, as it does across broad swaths of Africa and the Middle East.

But supposedly, it’s America that is evil.

Welcome to the upside world of America’s “progressives” — the post-modernist absurdity where good is evil, evil is good, up is down, and truth does not even really exist.

During a recent visit to Chicago, self-styled “journalist” Nikole Hannah-Jones, a fringe left-wing race-monger, argued that the real history of America begins not with the Pilgrims in 1620, but with the almost unknown arrival of a slave ship the year before.

“It is a moment that is really at the basis for so much of American life, the very definition of American freedom, our culture, our politics,” claimed Hannah-Jones, founder of the so-called “1619 Project” and a prominent propagandist for the racist New York Times.

This absurd narrative has now been embedded into government schools in Chicago, with Hannah-Jones giving a “shout out” to CPS CEO Janice Jackson for forcing it on the child inmates under her control.

During an interview with the tax-funded “Chicago Tonight” show on WTTW, Hannah-Jones admitted that this is a “radical re-framing” of history.

Of course, it is also an absurd and shameful re-writing of history that turns reality upside down and deliberately misleads innocent children.

But in Chicago and beyond, radical anti-American activists have been working for decades to completely re-write U.S. history, literally flipping reality on its head for the purpose of undermining liberty and the United States.

In reality, America is a unique and special nation — perhaps the first to be founded on the biblical principles brought over by the Pilgrims.

This would lead directly to the creation of the first self-governing Godly republic since ancient Israel.

And eventually, this would lead to the ending of legal slavery worldwide and the near-universal acceptance of what America’s Founding Fathers said in the Declaration of Independence was a “self-evident” truth: the idea that “all men are created equal.”

Like virtually every society throughout all of human history, some Americans originally tolerated slavery.

However, it was because of America’s founding, and the biblical principles and worldview upon which it was founded, that this ubiquitous scourge was practically eradicated from the face of the Earth, beginning in the Christian West and then slowly spreading around the globe.

Before William Wilberforce in Britain would use God’s Word to explain why slavery was evil in the sight of God, many of America’s Founding Fathers were plotting to systematically end slavery for the first time in human history.

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, for instance, was one of the original and most fervent anti-slavery crusaders to ever walk on the planet up until that time.

Calling slavery a “national evil” and blasting the slave trade as “criminal conduct” and a “violation of the laws of humanity,” Madison demanded in 1810 that Congress devise “further means of suppressing the evil.”

This “1619 Project,” though, wants Americans — and especially children in government schools who don’t know any better — to believe that the great Christians who made this all possible are actually the culprits for the evils they helped eradicate.

Naturally, the half-baked project is being spearheaded by the New York Times.

Ironically, though, the Times has a long and sordid history of this sort of racism and deadly dishonesty.

In 2018, for instance, the Times hired virulent racist Sarah Jeong to serve on its editorial board. Among other outrages, Jeong admitted it was “kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” She also argued that “white people” are “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” The raw, seething hatred shocked America, but the Times saw no problem with it.

Before that, Times “journalist” and Soviet apologist Walter Duranty helped the mass-murdering Bolshevik regime conceal its ghastly genocide of Ukrainian people via deliberate starvation. An estimated 10 million people were murdered while Duranty deceived Americans into believing everything was just fine.

Another Times “journalist,” Herbert Matthews, marketed mass-murdering communist butcher Fidel Castro to America as an “anti-Communist” so-called “freedom fighter,” even referring to him as the “George Washington” of Cuba. As a result, the nation of Cuba was enslaved and destroyed.

It is bad enough that a dying newspaper would peddle this sort of disgusting and dishonest propaganda to gullible “progressive” adults who pay to read that garbage.

But forcing these twisted lies on captive school children at taxpayer expense should be considered a crime. It is time for the people of Illinois to speak out.

IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

President Trump is a lightning rod for opinions in American Christianity. As a pastor, I know. Some of my Christian friends love Donald Trump’s personality, while others find it appalling. Some strongly support his policies, while others think he is a tyrant ruining America. Few are unsure about their opinions on Trump.

Last week, Mark Galli shared his opinion about Trump. He spoke not as an individual but as the voice of Christianity Today (CT). He spoke with biblical authority or at least tried to. In Galli’s essay,“Trump should be removed from Office,” he intentionally draws a biblical line in the sand for Christians:

Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

CT’s call for Trump’s removal is built on three assertions.

1.) The call for removal is not an act of politics but a prudential judgment that seeks to preserve the church’s witness.

2.) President Trump broke the law and needs to be removed because Christians should not support a criminal in office.

3.) President Trump’s moral behavior makes him unfit for the office of the presidency. His removal is an ethical imperative.

The logical conclusion of CT’s article is that “loyalty to God” means Christians must remove the President from office. If not, you are disloyal to God.

Galli writes a poorly argued essay that is more political talking points than Christ in culture. Galli should have never written it, but he did. His editorial causes the very harm from which he seeks to protect Christianity.

Galli couches his assertions in the “reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel.” In other words, support of Trump is anti-Christ. This is a strong accusation against Christians who support Trump’s reelection. It’s no wonder there has been backlash from conservative Christians. The evangelicals-are-stupid trope aligns with a “progressive” narrative that says evangelicals have made a deal with the devil and need enlightenment. This is Never-Trump 2.0.

Galli didn’t write his call for Trump’s supporters to remove the president to protect the church’s witness but to not feel embarrassed by Trump and his supporters. Justice Joseph Story observed in his highly regarded magnum opus on impeachment that,

Many of the offences, which will be charged against public men, will be generated by the heats and animosities of party.

Justice Story is spot on. Impeachment can happen when the person being impeached is despised by his opposing party. President Trump is despised by his opposition but more important, Trump is despised by the elites in the United States. Elites are easy to identify. They’re the ones that snicker at Trump supporters and can’t imagine how anyone could ever support him. Elites are utterly embarrassed that anyone could vote for Trump. They feel he represents everything wrong, backwards, and racist in our country.

CT is striving to be part of, in the words of Matthew Schmitz, the “Evangelical elite.” They are yearning for affirmation from the New York Times and airtime on CNN. This article has done exactly that. This has more to do with social clout than Christianity.

Galli also builds his argument for removal by declaring that the President broke the law:

[T]he facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is … a violation of the Constitution.

Unambiguous means that there is only one way to see it. This is a factually untrue claim concerning Trump’s actions. All the U.S. House Republicans disagree with the assertion made by CT. Annalisa Merelli from Quartz disagrees with Galli’s claim saying, “there is no clear law on the matter.”  Democrat and law professor Alan Dershowitz disagrees as well. The point is that whether Trump broke the law or not is highly ambiguous. By stating as fact—and condescendingly so—what is opinion, Christianity Today aligns with the left’s political machine. CT has provided talking points for those who despise Trump. Go on Twitter and you will see for yourself.

The crux of CT’s argument is that President Trump is the high water mark of presidential immorality, and all Christians must oppose him. Surely Galli understands how ridiculous the claim is that Trump is especially sinful. Here is a look at some of President Trump’s competition–all of whom claimed to be Christians:

President Lyndon Johnson was vulgar, crude, racist, and groped women.

President John F. Kennedy had multiple affairs while in office, worked with mobsters to get elected, and was probably blackmailed as President to award a multi billion dollar federal contract.

President Bill Clinton was credibly accused of groping and/or raping multiple women, had an intern perform a sexual act on him, and lied to Congress about it.

President George W. Bush invaded Iraq on what can kindly be called, spin. At the very least, the Bush administration suffered from confirmation bias. The Bush administration involved the United States in a multi year struggle costing thousands of lives and hundred of billions of dollars on a rush to war.

President Barack Obama rewarded top fundraisers with administration positions. The more money raised, the better chance of getting a position. The positions were given based upon raising money for a campaign not competency. This is called quid pro quo.

The egregious sins of these former presidents do not justify the sins of Trump. Rather, they provide evidence that the reason he is being pursued for removal is not that he is worse but that the opposition thinks there is a chance they can do it. They aren’t removing him because of his immorality but because this is the most effective strategy to neutralize his agenda. If Trump had the command of the legislature like Johnson, or the love of mass culture like Obama, it is very likely this would be a non issue. Impeachment is “political [in] character” according to Justice Story. It’s not about deciding right and wrong. If it were, the judicial branch would make the decision. An impeachment process is the highest form of political theater, and CT appears to be trying to have a starring role.

The real tragedy of CT so blatantly entering into this partisan battle is that now CT has been swallowed up by what Justice Story calls, the “vortex of the political.” Politics saturate our cultural landscape. CT has jumped right into the middle of the chaos and picked up a sword against its own. They aren’t defending Christianity; they are striking at it.

There is a better way. Justice Story speaks about a class of citizens that stays above the fray. He was referring to judges. For Story, judges must be seen, “as impartial and just.” This is because they represent justice–not politics. Democracy fails when the rule of law becomes political. In the same way, the world flourishes when Christian leaders represent Christ. We must be seen concretely living for another world and serving a greater king. We represent Christ not politics. Sadly, CT has forgotten the primacy of Christ. They diminish his glory by lowering themselves into this impeachment farce.

Reverend Billy Graham, as is often the case, is the model of a better way. Graham’s personal convictions were private. In public he (almost) always represented Christ not politicians. He was a pastor to both Democratic and Republican Presidents. He was a non-partisan Christ-follower to the whole nation. He served the country on behalf of Christ. In 2011 reflecting upon his legacy and his occasional missteps into politics he said,

I … would have steered clear of politics. I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to. But looking back, I know I sometimes crossed the line, and I wouldn’t do that now.”

Christianity Today, you are making the very mistake that Rev. Graham regretted at the end of his life. By taking sides on Trump, you weaken your credibility on the very issues that Christians need biblical wisdom on engaging. Abortion, marriage, immigration, race and sexual identity are at the center of American culture. Display Christ here. Otherwise, Christianity is lost at Christianity Today.

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It’s always nice to be able to point to the polls when they support your position. But polling, when done accurately, does nothing more than tell you what other people think. And just because you have the majority on your side doesn’t mean you are right. In fact, when it comes to morality, the majority is often at odds with the Bible, which sets the standard of morality for practicing Christians.

But this should come as no surprise.

After all, Jesus famously said, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13–14).

As the related saying goes, the road to destruction is broad.

Ironically, a Gallup article from June, 2018 indicated that, “Forty-nine percent of Americans say the state of moral values in the U.S. is ‘poor’ — the highest percentage in Gallup’s trend on this measure since its inception in 2002. Meanwhile, 37 percent of U.S. adults say moral values are ‘only fair,’ and 14 percent say they are ‘excellent’ or ‘good.’”

So, almost half of the country thinks that the moral values of the country are “poor,” leading to an obvious question: Are we right about our morals being wrong? If so, then why are so many of us immoral?

Gallup reported in May of this year that, “A majority of Americans (63 percent) continue to say same-sex “marriage” should be legal, on par with the 64 percent to 67 percent Gallup has recorded since 2017.”

As recently as 1996, however, only 27 percent of Americans believed same-sex “marriage” should be legal.

As for same-sex relationships in general (outside of marriage), Gallup reports that in 1987, 57 percent of Americans said that consenting, adult relationships between gays or lesbians should not be legal while only 32 percent said they should be legal. By 2019, those numbers had more than flipped, with only 26 percent saying those relationships should not be illegal and 73 percent saying they should.

The Gallup chart is quite graphic, with the numbers crisscrossing somewhat through 2004 and then becoming an ever-widening gap from roughly 2005.

Are these numbers significant? Absolutely.

Do they point to major social shifts? Obviously, they do.

Are they great news for LGBT activists? Without a doubt.

Do they prove anything when it comes to determining what is moral? No, they do not.

During the time period from 2003 to 2017, support for polygamy in America rose from 7 percent to 17 percent, an even more dramatic shift from a statistical point of view. And it’s up to 18 percent in 2019.

Gallup noted that this “may simply be the result of the broader leftward shift on moral issues Americans have exhibited in recent years. Or, as conservative columnist Ross Douthat notes in his New York Times blog, ‘Polygamy is bobbing forward in social liberalism’s wake …’ To Douthat and other social conservatives, warming attitudes toward polygamy is a logical consequence of changing social norms — that values underpinning social liberalism offer ‘no compelling grounds for limiting the number of people who might wish to marry.’”

Gallup also observed that, “It is certainly true that moral perceptions have significantly, fundamentally changed on a number of social issues or behaviors since 2001 — most notably, gay/lesbian relations, having a baby outside of wedlock, sex between unmarried men and women, and divorce.”

Interestingly, Gallup also noted that there were social reasons that help to explain some of this larger leftward shift (including the rise in divorce and changes in laws; another obvious reason is that people have friends and family members who identify as gay or lesbian).

In contrast, “there is little reason to believe that Americans are more likely to know or be polygamists now than at any other time in the past. But there is one way Americans may feel more familiar with or sympathetic to polygamy: television.”

Euphemistic language is an essential tool of all efforts to promote evil as good. Watch anti-life, anti-woman, anti-human-rights “feminist” Sophie Lewis defend human slaughter through such absurd language-torturing that it would be comical if it weren’t serving such an evil end:

Lewis:

In the past the strategies that our side has tended to use have included a kind of ceding of ground to our enemies. We tend to say that abortion is, indeed, very bad, but we say, “Luckily it’s not killing, luckily it’s just a healthcare right.”

We have very little to lose at the moment when it comes to abortion, and I’m interested in winning radically. And I wonder if we could think about defending abortion as a right to stop doing gestational work.

Abortion is, in my opinion—and I recognize how controversial this is—a form of killing. It’ s a form of killing that we need to be able to defend. I am not interested in where a human life starts to exist…. The other end of the spectrum is learning to die well… and let each other go at the end of our lives as well as the beginning.

But looking at the biology of this kind of hemochorial placentation helps me think about the violence, that, innocently, a fetus metes out vis-a-vis a gestator. And that violence is an unacceptable violence for someone who does not want to do gestational work. The violence that the gestator metes out to essentially go on strike, or exit that workplace, is an acceptable violence.

Now that panicked, anti-life dogmatists can no longer deny that the product of conception between two humans is a human, they’ve shifted into rhetorical overdrive, saying, “Well, of course, it’s human, but it’s not a person,” the womb is a “work place,” pregnancy is “gestational work,” and  human gestation is “violence.” At least she admitted abortion kills.

But after acknowledging that abortion “is a form of killing,” Lewis shockingly admits to being completely uninterested in figuring out if the living thing being killed is a human life. In admitting such extraordinary incuriosity (especially for a scholar), she implicitly concedes that abortion may kill a human being. Only sociopaths have no qualms about killing innocent humans.

In addition to being morally flawed, her statement is nonsensical. It’s inarguable that the object growing in a woman’s womb is living because you can’t kill something that is non-living, and Lewis admitted abortion is killing.  And it’s inarguable that the product of conception between two humans is a human. Lewis knows that abortion kills, she knows that the thing abortion kills is alive, and she knows that the living thing abortion kills is a human.

“What the heck is ‘hemochorial placentation,’ you may be asking yourself, and how does it do “violence” to “gestators”? Defining it is easy-peasy. “Hemachorial placentation” is a $10 technical term that refers to the natural process by which a mother’s body sustains her developing offspring by bathing his or her chorion (outer layer of tissue enveloping the baby) in nutrient-rich blood (hemo) via the placenta (placentation).

Hemachorial placentation doesn’t mete out violence—innocently or otherwise—unless, of course, “violence” is redefined to include non-violent, natural processes. Lewis needs to redefine this natural process as violence in order to justify the actual violence mothers and their hired killers mete out to humans in the womb—humans that have no part in nor cause the alleged “violence” of “hemochorial placentation.”

Lewis, author of the book Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family, should be able to notice the difference between letting “each other go at the end of our lives” and voluntarily snuffing out others at the beginning of their lives.

As demonstrated by both the anti-woman Lewis and the moral empty shells at Governor JB Pritzker’s Kill-Babies-Bill celebration—shells held upright by a constant refilling of hot air and puffed-up pride—euphemisms are the stock-in-trade of every Leftist.

Recently, New York Times writer Alan Blinder (I kid you not) said this (I kid you not):

Louisiana lawmakers voted on Wednesday to ban [abortion] after the pulsing of what becomes the fetus’s heart can be detected…. The measure would require an ultrasound test for any woman seeking to terminate a pregnancy, and forbid abortion if the test detects embryonic pulsing.

Someone should drive a stake through the New York Times’ organ of pulsing and then through their embryonic organ of moral reasoning.

One mother’s embryonic moral reasoning is evident in a PBS documentary on abortion in which she is seen starting the chemical abortion of her twins. But first some euphemistic language from the abortionist who says, “This is the mifepristone that will stop the pregnancy from growing…”

A pregnancy (also known as gestation) doesn’t grow. Humans grow.

The doctor then explains that the second medication will help the mother’s body “push the pregnancy tissue out of her uterus.” She won’t even say fetus—let alone baby. I wonder, when she enters delivery rooms at the moment of delivery, does she say, “Okay, mom, push that pregnancy tissue out of your uterus.”

Finally, hear the empty and chilling words of the mother, spoken about and to the twins she’s  aborting:

What I hope I feel is a sense of peace, not only with myself and the decision that I’ve made but also of a sense of peace with these two beings that I’ve chosen not to bring into the world.

Thank you for choosing me. And I’m honored to be given this gift of life. And also, I can’t do it right now.

Can’t? Or Won’t?

Soul-sickening, dishonest rhetoric.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Torturing-Language-to-Kill-Humans.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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Educating Voices, Inc. is pleased to present Alex Berenson for an eye-opening report, based on his new best seller, that exposes the link between teenage marijuana use and mental illness, and a hidden epidemic of violence caused by the drug. Tickets are free, but you must register in advance!

Featured Speaker:

Alex Berenson is a former New York Times reporter and award-winning novelist. Born in New York, he attended Yale University and went on to join the New York Times in 1999. There he covered everything from the drug industry to Hurricane Katrina and served two stints as a correspondent in Iraq.

Books will be available for $15.00 each and Alex Berenson will be available following the presentation for signing.

Educating Voices, Inc is a national organization founded to proactively support education and communication about the dangers of marijuana use, medical marijuana and legalized marijuana and other drugs, and to share truthful, well-researched, fact checked information.

Illinois Partners Providing Marijuana Education is a coalition of autonomous voices whose mission is to educate, network, collaborate, convene, strengthen, and mobilize organizations from different sectors across Illinois to counteract misinformation about marijuana and legalized marijuana.

Educating Voices, Inc. is pleased to present Alex Berenson for an eye-opening report, based on his new best seller, that exposes the link between teenage marijuana use and mental illness, and a hidden epidemic of violence caused by the drug. Tickets are free, but you must register in advance!

Featured Speaker:

Alex Berenson is a former New York Times reporter and award-winning novelist. Born in New York, he attended Yale University and went on to join the New York Times in 1999. There he covered everything from the drug industry to Hurricane Katrina and served two stints as a correspondent in Iraq.

Books will be available for $15.00 each and Alex Berenson will be available following the presentation for signing.

Educating Voices, Inc is a national organization founded to proactively support education and communication about the dangers of marijuana use, medical marijuana and legalized marijuana and other drugs, and to share truthful, well-researched, fact checked information.

Illinois Partners Providing Marijuana Education is a coalition of autonomous voices whose mission is to educate, network, collaborate, convene, strengthen, and mobilize organizations from different sectors across Illinois to counteract misinformation about marijuana and legalized marijuana.

In a stunning December 20, 2018 New York Times article  titled “Planned Parenthood Is Accused of Mistreating Pregnant Employees”, former employees of the $1.5 billion dollar ($543.7 million in government grants and reimbursements) organization assert that they were discriminated against because of their pregnancies.

The New York Times has long been one of the staunchest supports of Planned Parenthood as a great champion of “reproductive choice” through abortion, so it is ironic that their article paints a terrible picture of how the organization treats its own employees when they make the reproductive choice to have a child.

The New York Times interviewed several current and former employees of Planned Parenthood who described discrimination that violated state or federal laws against pregnancy discrimination by declining to hire pregnant job candidates, refusing requests by expecting mothers to take breaks and in some cases pushing women out of their jobs after they gave birth.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking story was that of  Ta’Lisa Hairston, an employee who became pregnant but later started battling high blood pressure that threatened her pregnancy. However, her multiple medical orders stating she needed frequent breaks  were ignored by management. Her hands swelled so much that she couldn’t wear the required plastic gloves and her doctor ordered bedrest. When she returned with orders not to work over 6 hours, she worked a much longer shift and few days later had to have an emergency C-section at 34 weeks. She resigned after repeated calls urging her to return to work before her guaranteed 3 months under the Family and Medical Leave Act was up.

Dr. Leana Wen, the new head of Planned Parenthood, says that the organization is looking into the allegations and will be “conducting a review to determine the cost of providing paid maternity leave to nearly 12,000 employees nationwide.”

While the New York Times article admits that “most Planned Parenthood offices do not provide paid maternity leave”, it counters that “(d)iscrimination against pregnant women and new mothers remains widespread in the American workplace.” The Times also blames “conservative lawmakers (who) routinely threaten to kill” Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding, making the organization’s financing “precarious”.

THE REAL TROUBLE WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Planned Parenthood tries to downplay its’ role as the largest provider of abortion in the U.S. by touting  services like breast cancer screening (without mammograms), birth control pills and devices, pregnancy tests, etc. to low-income women even though the reality is that there are many more places, such as federally qualified community health centers (which do not provide abortions) that provide more comprehensive health care services than those offered by Planned Parenthood.

But the larger problem is that it is hard to reconcile two completely opposite philosophies: an unborn child is nothing more than tissue that can be removed by abortion if a woman so chooses vs an unborn child is a living human being deserving of protection. Planned Parenthood is firmly on the side of the first philosophy.

Thus, as Live Action found when it contacted 97 facilities at 41 Planned Parenthood affiliates, it is almost impossible to find a Planned Parenthood clinic that offers prenatal care as well as abortion, not to mention Planned Parenthood’s current campaign to encourage women to “Shout Out Your Abortion”.

So it perhaps it should not be a surprise that a pregnant employee who wants her unborn baby might pose a challenge in a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic.

This article was originally published at NancyValko.com.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat says the culture war in America may not be so much about secularism or atheism replacing Christianity but the rise of an old Christian foe – paganism.

This ancient religion differs from atheism in that it allows for a spiritual dimension to life and creation, but not an omnipotent, benevolent God.  The power is in the creation itself, which is why so many New Age adherents find divinity when they look at a sunset, a flower, or in some cases, their own mirror image.

Mr. Douthat explains the clash of worldviews presented in a new book by Steven D. Smith, “Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac”:

“What is that conception? Simply this: that divinity is fundamentally inside the world rather than outside it, that God or the gods or Being are ultimately part of nature rather than an external creator, and that meaning and morality and metaphysical experience are to be sought in a fuller communion with the immanent world rather than a leap toward the transcendent.”

This is quite different from, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1) and “All things were made through Him” (John 1:3).

Increasingly, “the universe” is replacing references to God in current TV shows and movies.  On the flip side, some of this year’s new Hallmark holiday flicks lean the other way, featuring sacred carols such as “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

The pagan worldview is promoted by leading figures such as Oprah Winfrey, with her New Age version of “can’t we all just get along?” and the prolific writer Sally Quinn, widow of longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.

Ms. Quinn writes on religious topics for the Post, and used to edit the Post’s religion page, which is a smorgasbord of modern heresies, the wilder the better.   The Left favors almost any religious expression other than orthodox Christianity, which is why it’s soft on paganism and even Islam.

The latter’s militants are inflicting terror all over the world, most recently when a gunman yelled “Allahu Akbar” before gunning down 16 people, killing at least two, at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France on Dec. 11.  The Post, like the rest of the media, downplayed it, ignoring the religious motivation and playing up the shooter’s criminal past.

Ms. Quinn chronicles her own plunge into witchly pursuits in her 2017 memoir “Finding Magic” in which she describes dabbling with the paranormal and hexing people she didn’t like.

She says she left behind the dark arts following three deaths that occurred shockingly soon after her hexing.  But she’s not done with the occult.  In a Washingtonian magazine profile in August 2017, Michelle Cottle wrote, “Ouija boards, astrological charts, palm reading, talismans—Quinn embraces it all. And yes, she has been in contact with her husband since his passing. Through a medium. Repeatedly.”

A week ago Monday, Ms. Quinn moderated a bookstore appearance by porn star and Trump accuser Stormy Daniels.  She said, with her son looking on, that she planned to attend Daniels’ strip show that evening, and that “I’ve watched Stormy’s porn, and it’s good. She knows what she’s doing.”

If you wonder why the Post gives short shrift to the biblical view that sex is a God-given gift to be enjoyed only in marriage, well, it shouldn’t be a mystery.

Elsewhere in the Post’s Style section, columnist Monica Hesse admits an addiction to the classic movie “White Christmas,” but makes sure to point out its politically incorrect flaws, such as a song about minstrel shows.  The movie is redeemed when Danny Kaye rebuffs a kiss from the beautiful Vera Ellen.  Mr. Kaye “demures so vehemently that the ‘White Christmas’ message boards have speculated that the character might be gay. Well, if so, kudos to that subversive choice, too.”

Kudos for subversion of romance between a man and a woman?  This is liberal virtue-signaling at its purest.   In the progressive worldview, everything is political, including sex.

Ms. Quinn says that friends have repeatedly asked her to place a hex on President Trump, an idea which, to her credit, she’s rejected. But think about that. Sally’s lefty pals hate Mr. Trump so much they want him magically killed, not just removed from office.

Pre-and-Post Christian pagan societies are not known for their qualities of mercy.

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

This article was originally published at Townhall.com

A painfully honest and disturbing editorial by New York University PhD candidate Andrea Long Chu, a young man who longs to be a woman, recently appeared in the New York Times. Chu’s central thesis is that gender-dysphoric persons are entitled to surgery and that surgeons have an obligation to provide it regardless of their beliefs about what constitutes harm. In Chu’s skewed and revolutionary view, “surgery’s only prerequisite should be a simple demonstration of want…. [N]o amount of pain, anticipated or continuing, justifies its withholding.”

Chu, who has been taking estrogen and evidently had breast implants, is scheduled for “bottom” surgery on Thursday, November 29 and in this pre-op editorial admits what many “trans”-identifying people likely wish he hadn’t:

This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to…. People transition because they think it will make them feel better. The thing is, this is wrong…. I feel demonstrably worse since I started on hormones. One reason is that, absent the levies of the closet, years of repressed longing for the girlhood I never had have flooded my consciousness. I am a marshland of regret. Another reason is that I take estrogen—effectively, delayed-release sadness, a little aquamarine pill that more or less guarantees a good weep within six to eight hours.

Like many of my trans friends, I’ve watched my dysphoria balloon since I began transition. I now feel very strongly about the length of my index fingers—enough that I will sometimes shyly unthread my hand from my girlfriend’s as we walk down the street. When she tells me I’m beautiful, I resent it…. I know what beautiful looks like. Don’t patronize me.

I was not suicidal before hormones. Now I often am.

I won’t go through with it, probably.

Chu goes on to criticize opposition to the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of healthy and often very young bodies as “‘compassion-mongering,’” describing it as “peddling bigotry in the guise of sympathetic concern.” Apparently, Chu is unwilling to concede even the possibility that such opposition is motivated by genuine concern and sincere commitments to do no harm.

But harm is a concept that Chu inverts and twists in his effort to compel doctors to medically ravage the bodies of girls and boys, women and men. His confusing thicket of childish rationalizations for compelling doctors to concede to the “wants” of gender-dysphoric persons come down to these:

1.) Doctors shouldn’t be allowed to “gatekeep,” (i.e., to decide which treatment modalities will be prescribed for gender-dysphoric persons), because, Chu alleges, many doctors view “trans”-identifying persons with “suspicion and condescension,” and are motivated by “bigotry.”

2.) Doctors shouldn’t use the alleviation of suffering as a criterion for assessing treatment modalities, because some of the treatment modalities desired by gender-dysphoric patients will not alleviate suffering and may increase it.

3.) Allowing doctors to determine the best course of action constitutes an illicit dictatorial control over the bodies of gender-dysphoric persons and encourages them to lie by pretending that such treatment modalities will, indeed, end their suffering:

As long as transgender medicine retains the alleviation of pain as its benchmark of success, it will reserve for itself, with a dictator’s benevolence, the right to withhold care from those who want it….  [A]s things stand today, there is still only one way to obtain hormones and surgery: to pretend that these treatments will make the pain go away.

Chu wants what he wants, and any impediment—including the knowledge and expertise of doctors—to the satiation of his desire for self-negation is ipso facto wrong. This raises the question, does Chu believe his principles should be applied consistently to all medical and psychological conditions or just gender dysphoria?

Chu’s explanation that doctors are motivated by the goal of alleviating pain is myopic or incomplete. Many doctors believe the practice of medicine—both means and ends—is circumscribed by objective standards that determine the appropriateness of medical options. Those standards derive from objective measures of bodily health and wholeness. The goals are the eradication of disease, the restoration of proper form and function, and the alleviation of pain. The alleviation of pain is limited too by ethical principles. Most doctors won’t alleviate the suffering of those who identify as amputees by amputating healthy arms. Most doctors won’t treat insomnia with propofol. And many doctors won’t treat gender dysphoria by chemically sterilizing pre-teens, lopping off the healthy breasts of girls, and castrating boys.

Chu’s troubling editorial reveals the primacy of subjectivism in the “trans” ideology. Subjectivism is the philosophical belief that knowledge “proceeds from or belongs to individual consciousness or perception” and that “there is no external or objective truth.” Subjectivism is foundational to the “trans” ideology, which subordinates objective biological sex to subjective feelings about one’s maleness, femaleness, both, or neither. This exaltation of subjective experience is exposed in Chu’s implicit denial of the objective truth of his surgery: “Next Thursday, I will get a vagina.”

Chu is not getting a vagina. He will be getting a surgeon-constructed facsimile of a vagina. It won’t be materially or functionally a vagina. It will be composed of either the inverted skin of his penis and scrotum or a segment of his sigmoid colon. If skin from his penis and scrotum are used, his fake-vagina will not be self-lubricating as vaginal tissue is, and it may grow hair. If a segment of his sigmoid colon is used, his “vagina” may produce a smelly, mucus-y discharge, will be at risk for colon cancer, and will not have the sensitivity of an actual vagina.

Even while claiming he will be getting a vagina, Chu acknowledged that his body won’t see it as that: “Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain.” His body will always recognize this gaping hole as the unnatural wound it is and will seek to close it unless Chu regularly inserts dilating stents.

Ironically, while Chu places his subjective, internal feelings at the center of his identity and bases his actions on them, like many other opposite-sex impersonators, he denies the same freedom to others. In fact, he believes his subjective desires place obligations on others. His subjective feelings about his sex require actions of others that deny their subjective feelings and beliefs about the meaning of biological sex and of harm. Chu seeks to force doctors to violate their moral convictions, ethical principles, and concomitant feelings in order to serve his “wants.”

Chu writes this about the real possibility that more and new forms of suffering may follow surgery:

The negative passions—grief, self-loathing, shame, regret—are as much a human right as universal health care, or food. There are no good outcomes in transition.

While grief, self-loathing, shame, and regret are common experiences, it is nonsensical to refer to them as human rights. Chu seems to be suggesting that surgery and the ensuing suffering are not only human rights but also that they’re positive rights, which are rights that oblige others to do or provide something. Chu believes doctors, in violation of their own ethical convictions—convictions that are central to their identities—are obliged to provide services that will damage bodily functions and wholeness and may result in grief, self-loathing, shame, and regret.

In the mixed up, muddled up, shook up world of Andrea Long Chu, doctors will mutilate, treatment will harm, and men will be women. Isaiah writes, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20)

In his spiritually dark, inverted world, Chu seeks self-erasure and longs for woe:

Tragically I still want this, all of it. I want the tears; I want the pain. Transition doesn’t have to make me happy for me to want it.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/boy-ERASED.mp3

Save the Date!!!

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This coming year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; and Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman.

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Stay tuned for more information!

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