Here’s an excerpt from a July 7, 2020, blog post titled “The White Man Leading the White Man’s Party—and the White Church” written by Nathan Cartagena, associate professor of philosophy at evangelical flagship Wheaton College:

From his birtherism charges against President Obama, to his threats against “bad hombres,” to his bragging about getting away with sexual assault, candidate Trump signaled that he was going to be a white man’s president, dedicated to tapping into and drawing from the U.S.’s deep white nationalist roots and their accompanying sexism. Since ascending to office, he’s labored to establish Trumpism identity politics for white folks. And the Republican establishment has coddled his efforts, as Senator McConnell’s four-year defense of President Trump makes clear.

President Trump and establishment Republicans like Senator McConnell show no signs of ceasing their strategic gendered racism. Instead, they’re doubling down on it to keep their base. Yes, they’re cunning enough to place white women such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany before reporters. But they know these women will pull all necessary stops to promulgate the Party’s racist, patriarchal agenda. Sanders relentlessly lied. Kayleigh tirelessly defends Trump while claiming “I know who I’m ultimately working for, and it’s the big guy upstairs.”

…

[R]emember that a white man is leading a white party—and the white church is promoting both. What you’re witnessing is a byproduct of the seventies, the latest manifestation of the deplorable linking of Christianity and male-exulting whiteness. … And, to rift [sic] on St. Paul, beware: You may become someone’s enemy if you tell the truth about the Republican Party’s strategic gendered racism. Christian or not, President Trump’s followers prefer their white lies.

Cartagena seems not to remember that Senator McConnell was compelled by the corrupt antics of Democrats to defend former President Trump against a series of lies, including the whopper about Russian collusion paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Apparently Cartagena would have preferred Christians vote for the lying, race-exploiting, abortion cheerleader Hillary Clinton who supports compulsory taxpayer-funding of human slaughter throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy for any or no reason.

Does Cartagena have any problem with those Christians who voted for either the corrupt Hillary Clinton or the equally corrupt Joe Biden, both members of the party that, as black professor Carol Swain wrote for Prager U,

defended slavery, started the Civil War, opposed Reconstruction, founded the Ku Klux Klan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynchings, and fought against the civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s.

In contrast, the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party. Its mission was to stop the spread of slavery into the new western territories with the aim of abolishing it entirely. This effort, however, was dealt a major blow by the Supreme Court. In the 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford, the court ruled that slaves aren’t citizens; they’re property. The seven justices who voted in favor of slavery? All Democrats. The two justices who dissented? Both Republicans. …

[A]fter Reconstruction ended, when the federal troops went home, Democrats roared back into power in the South. They quickly reestablished white supremacy across the region with measures like black codes – laws that restricted the ability of blacks to own property and run businesses. And they imposed poll taxes and literacy tests, used to subvert the black citizen’s right to vote.

For decades, the Democrat party passed laws and endorsed policies to buy black votes even when those policies destroyed the black family, killed black babies, kept black children in lousy schools, and made urban black communities unlivable. Does Cartagena think those laws and policies are racist?

What about efforts by leftists to defund police which will inevitably result in more black deaths? Are those racist?

Cartagena calls Sarah Huckabee Sanders a liar and implies both Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany are female tokens. Well, is Jen Psaki a liar? Did she lie when she blamed the defunding of police on Republicans? Rhetorical questions, obviously.

Cartagena whines about the GOP’s alleged “patriarchal agenda” and “gendered racism” but says nothing about Biden’s gendered racism in deliberately choosing members of his administration based—not on merit, wisdom, knowledge, or experience—but on their skin color and sex. Biden makes no secret about his commitment to tokenism, aka “gendered racism.”

I’m not sure what a “patriarchal agenda” is or why Cartagena opposes it seeing as the Bible has a lot of good stuff to say about patriarchs and patriarchal structures. But coming from a leftist, this term would suggest Cartagena holds women in high esteem. For those who hold women in high esteem, it would seem that Trump would have been the preferred candidate over both Hillary and Biden, since both have made it clear they support the sexual integration of girls’ and women’s private spaces and sports.

Cartagena writes about critical race theory (CRT)—a lot and favorably. Much of his writing is academic in nature, picking apart arguments from scholars critical of CRT—you know, dancing on the heads of pins kind of stuff. He takes particular aim at Manhattan Institute senior fellow, Christopher F. Rufo, who has been influential in exposing the tenets and influence of CRT in academia, the corporate world, and the government—including the military. About Rufo, Cartagena says,

Culture-war agitators such as Rufo aren’t interested in offering a just, charitable understanding of CRT.

As evidence for this claim, Cartagena provides a decontextualized tweet—yes, a tweet. That doesn’t seem all that charitable now, does it?

But while he fusses about whether some critic gets a point wrong or misses a point, Cartagena doesn’t spend much time acknowledging that when scholarly theories wend their way down the sewage pipe from sullied Ivory Towers, academic theories morph. Big theories pass through filters that strain out the minutiae scholars love to debate. Large chunks of excrement remain to pollute culture. Right now, ideas derived from Marxism, critical theory, and CRT are stinkin’ up the joint.

In addition to CRT theorists Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Cartagena cites Paulo Freire—a lot and favorably—calling him a “Brazilian Christian.” Since “Christian” means many things to many people, a bit more information from Cartagena about Freire’s Christianity might be helpful to Cartagena’s readers, particularly students.

Freire was a Brazilian Marxist/Christian socialist, heavily influenced by liberation theology. Other  thinkers who influenced him include “Marx, Lenin, Mao, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro, as well as the radical intellectuals Frantz Fanon, Régis Debray, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, and Georg Lukács.”

Freire wrote the well-known book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which former City-Journal writer Sol Stern critiqued in an article titled “Pedagogy of the Oppressor,” (subtitled, “Another reason U.S. ed schools are so awful: the ongoing influence of Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire”). Stern describes Freire’s polemic as a “derivative, unscholarly book about oppression, class struggle, the depredations of capitalism, and the need for revolution.”

Cartagena wants the church and all of America to study CRT as intensely as leftist scholars study it, and unless they do, any criticism of CRT is, in Cartagena’s view, illegitimate:

Because marginalization and oppression in pigmentocracies operate along racialized lines, Christians should share the common interests of critical race theorists. And they should recognize that assessments of those scholar’s conclusions must be robust and nuanced. An endorsement or rejection of CRT requires examining a lot of U.S. history—especially U.S. legal history—political philosophy, sociology, and theology. … We must repent of our shoddy, unjust presentations of CRT. We must labor to understand and evaluate CRT in light of history, political philosophy, sociology, and theology and the movement’s internal diversity. This is what neighborly love demands.

I’m not sure that “neighborly love” demands the kind of lucubration of an academic theory Cartagena demands.  Does neighborly love demand such laborious study of other academic theories? If so, which ones?

His assertion seems a clever way to use Scripture to force Christians either to spend inordinate amounts of time studying CRT or remain silent. His tricksy reasoning is based on the biblical truth that God commands us to love our neighbors. Then he asserts—with no biblical warrant—that “neighborly love demands” that Christians “labor to understand and evaluate CRT in light of history, political philosophy, sociology, and theology and the movement’s internal diversity.”

I haven’t read everything the Cartagena, prolific devotee of CRT,  has written on CRT (or “whiteness“) but so far I haven’t read anything suggesting he believes neighborly love demands the same kind of in depth study accompanied by “robust and nuanced” assessments of criticism of CRT.

No word about whether all teaching of CRT principles and tenets should be banned in public schools unless and until teachers prove they have studied CRT and its critics deeply.

And no word about whether public school teachers should advocate for CRT or present it without bias or favor.

I first wrote about Cartagena in May in an article about Wheaton’s RACIALIZED MINORITY RECOGNITION CEREMONY, which followed close on the heels of Wheaton’s controversial decision to cancel a plaque honoring slain missionaries, replacing it with one more palatable to Wheaton wokesters—one that removes references to the savagery of the killers who happened to be indigenous people.

With Wheaton awash in wokery, the following letter from Wheaton College president Philip Ryken to the Wheaton College community in the fall of 2020—just after the spring and summer destructive, violent BLM/Antifa insurrections—shouldn’t surprise anyone. Disappoint? Yes. Surprise? Not so much.

Dear Campus Community,

We all are witnesses to the egregious and senseless violence that recently claimed the lives of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd. Their deaths speak to the enduring presence of systemic and institutional racism within our society. As a community, we are deeply distressed by violent acts that have persisted in our country for more than four centuries.

As Christ followers, we denounce systemic racism and police brutality against any racial or ethnic group. Today especially our hearts are filled with pain for the inhumane treatment of our brothers and sisters in the African American community. We stand united with African American students, faculty, and staff who are all deeply affected by these ongoing acts of racial violence and other sinful injustices, often on a daily basis.

…

[W]e are also committed to identifying and addressing policies and systems in our own institution that hinder access and success of members who belong to marginalized and oppressed groups. In order to have the impact on the world that God is calling us to have, we are resolved to think and act in ways that create a more loving, equitable, and just community.

Wheaton College pursues a biblical commitment to respect and love all people as equal image-bearers of Jesus Christ. This is mandated by Scripture, promised in our Community Covenant, and detailed in our Christ-Centered Diversity Commitment.

…

To the members of our community belonging to the African diaspora, please know that you have our love, support, and concern.

Disabuse yourselves of any fanciful notion that Cartagena is the only wokester at Wheaton. He’s not. Parents considering paying boatloads of money to send their kids to Wheaton College might want to consider other, less woke Christian colleges. And Wheaton donors might want to reconsider how they steward their donations.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Wildly-Woke-Wheaton-College-Professor-Nathan-Cartagena.mp3

Chinese Translation – 中文翻译

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

But wait, was it? Wouldn’t the best speech necessarily be a true and honest speech?

Biden said, “[A]t this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed. … [T]he American story depends not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us. … [T]o restore the soul and to secure the future of America—requires more than words. It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity. Unity.”

I love unity, unity, as much as the next gal or nonbinary human, but I’m wondering how the efforts of Big Tech, corporate behemoths, AOC, John Brennan, and other Democrats to cancel and crush anyone who expresses ideas they hate fulfill Biden’s quest for double the amount of unity we have right now.

Just a few nights ago on MSNBC, John Brennan cheerfully told lefty Nicole Wallace that the Biden administration is “moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about” the “insurgency” composed of “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.” Hmmm …

So, how does the Biden administration define these groups? Will the criteria used for identifying “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists” and “libertarians” be made public? After the laser-focused secret police uncover the plot of Brennan’s enemies to compete freely in the market place of ideas, what will be done with the dissident freethinkers? Will they be forced into PBS’s “enlightenment camps” or will AOC’s “de-radicalizing” pogroms to cleanse America of conservative Christians take care of their disunifying presence?

In the service of doubling our unity, will Biden plead with Big Tech, Big Business, AOC, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and Washington Post to call off their dogs, Overlords, and spy agencies?

Will Biden plead with the press to interrogate him fairly—you know, exactly as they interrogated President Trump? Will he plead with them to take off their soiled kid gloves?

Will Biden’s executive order mandating the sexual integration of children’s locker rooms, restrooms, and sports in government schools fulfill his quest for doubling our unity?

In the spirit of unity, will Biden acknowledge that the desire of girls and women to be free of the presence of opposite-sex persons in their private spaces is natural, normal, and good?

In his laser-like focus on unity, will Biden send “guidelines” to public schools recommending they no longer promote the controversial and divisive beliefs of the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory?

How does the leftist ideological monopoly in our colleges and universities double our unity or foster democracy? We know that in addition to unity, Biden is bigly into diversity. We also know that without diversity of thought, critical thinking is impossible. So, in the service of both unity and diversity, will Biden urge college and university administrators and faculty to seek equity among faculty? Will he implore them to work diligently toward ideological parity, perhaps threatening to withhold government funds until such parity is achieved?

Will Biden condemn the cancellation of conservative speakers on campuses and the refusal to invite conservative speakers to campuses?

Will he condemn Hollywood and book publishers for their anti-conservative bigotry and de facto censorship of movies, plays, and novels with themes that criticize “progressive” ideas or embody conservative themes?

Will he denounce ugly epithets like “homophobe,” “transphobe,” “hater” and “bigot” that are hurled continuously at any Catholic or Protestant who upholds the historic teaching of the church on sexual matters? Will he agree that Christians should be free to use pronouns that correspond to scientific reality and God’s created order? Will he agree that Christian business owners should be free to make employment and service decisions in accordance with their faith?

To double our unity, will Biden urge Americans to remove lawn signs that say, “Hate has no home here,” since all Americans know those signs are a passive macro-aggressive way of leftists calling their theologically orthodox Bible-believing neighbors—both Catholics and Protestants— “haters”?

In his effort to unify the country twice over, will Biden publicly acknowledge that the claim that homoerotic acts are moral is neither a scientific claim nor objectively true?

Democrats have demonstrated that they are gung-ho about calling in the National Guard and every weapon in our formidable military apparatus to prevent further violence in the Capitol. So, in an effort to multiple our unity, will Biden beseech the New York Times to offer former editorial page editor James Bennet his job back? Bennet was the editor who was forced to resign for publishing an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton in which Cotton argued that it was legitimate to call in the National Guard to quell the unremitting violence that roiled American cities last summer.

In his inaugural address, Biden said, “This is a great nation and we are a good people.” I’m confused. Critical Race theorists have been telling us for years—and emphasizing it through arson and looting—that America is a systemically evil nation conceived in racism and dedicated to the proposition that all people of color are inferior. So, which is it?

Biden said, “I ask every American to join me in this cause. Uniting to fight the common foes we face: Anger, resentment, hatred. Extremism, lawlessness, violence.” Later, on Inauguration Day, Antifa attacked a federal building in Portland. Has Biden condemned that lawless, violent attack by angry extremists? Did he label it an attack on democracy? Did he call it an insurrection?

While his inaugural address rightly condemned the “riotous mob” that used “violence” to attack the Capitol building, Biden said not one word about the riotous mobs that attacked federal buildings; monuments; private property; and police precincts, vehicles, and officers all summer. Why did his unifying address remain mute on that violence?

If and how Biden answers those questions will give Americans a better idea about whether he wants unity in diversity or unity by crushing diversity. We’ll know if this is the beginning of the Unity Games or—as Lady Gaga’s inaugural costume suggested—the Hunger Games.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Was-Bidens-Inaugural-Address-the-Best-Ever_audio.mp3

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Chinese Translation – 中文翻译

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The problems are daunting … but the solutions are clear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article was originally posted at AskDrBrown.org

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On July 23, 2020, conservative University of North Carolina professor, Townhall writer, and Christian, Mike Adams, was driven to suicide by the vile and relentless bullying of devotees of diversity and teachers of tolerance who fancy themselves “progressive.” They were aided and abetted by spineless Christians who failed to come alongside a brother in Christ because of his “sins” of violating leftist language rules.

Leftists and some Christians were especially peeved by a metaphor Adams employed to criticize oppressive pandemic commandments issued by North Carolina’s Democrat governor Roy Cooper.

On May 29th, Adams tweeted, “This evening I ate pizza and drank beer with six guys at a six seat table top. I almost felt like a free man who was not living in the slave state of North Carolina. Massa Cooper, let my people go.”

Which of the following metaphors is more offensive: Comparing a political leader who oppresses citizens with unjust orders to a slave master or comparing those with wealth who ignore the starvation of the poor to cannibals?

Is one acceptable speech and the other unacceptable? Are both acceptable? Neither?

Of course, the cannibal metaphor was employed by Jonathan Swift in his satirical essay “A Modest Proposal,” which we teach in public schools.

When Reverend Jesse Jackson referred to President Trump as a slave master and knee-takers as slaves, I can’t recall anyone on the left or right batting their exquisitely sensitive eyes. Are only blacks allowed to use slave metaphors, or does it depend wholly on whose ox is being gored with condemnation that determines whether metaphors should send adults to the fainting couch?

While their sanctimonious and empty proclamations of fealty to inclusivity, love, equality, tolerance, subjectivism, autonomy, freedom, and diversity echo systemically throughout American institutions, Leftists reveal their inky underbellies rotted with hypocrisy and depravity when they screech hater and hurl death wishes at those who dare to disagree with Big Brother, Critical Race Theory, or their anarchical sexuality ideology.

But it’s not just leftists, secularists, and atheists who faux-tie their own panties in a twist about bold language from conservatives. Even conservatives get the heebie-jeebies if Christians use bold language.

In a mostly moving tribute to his “close friend” Mike Adams, political pundit David French made sure to include that, although protected by the First Amendment, some of Adams’ writing was “acerbic,” “intemperate,” “insensitive,” “excessively provocative,” and “outright infuriating.” French further said, he “cringed at some,” of Adams’ comments and that “my friend could frustrate me. He could say things I disagreed with. He could say things that outraged me. He could be wrong.”

With “close friends” like French to write a tribute, who needs enemies.

New Testament professor and friend of Mike Adams, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, wrote about Adams’ sadness at the socially distancing of David French:

[W]hen [Mike] reached out to David by phone for help in his hour of greatest crisis in June 2020, he viewed David’s brush-off as due to the negative change in David in the Trump era. While he couldn’t be entirely surprised by David’s failure to help, there’s no question that it was a body blow to his gut. He twice initiated mention of David to me in mid-June and on July 1. I didn’t bring David French up as a topic of conversation. Mike did, unsolicited from me. …

Mike felt that David had abandoned him precisely because he didn’t share David’s NeverTrump stance and because of David’s heightened desire to distance himself from Mike’s tweets in order to preserve his (David’s) reputation with people on the Left. …

I would never say that David French single-handedly killed Mike Adams. … David was simply the most painful among many acts of silence and detachment toward Mike by Christian “elites” and “friends” at his end. The primary blame belongs with the vicious Left.

Every Christian on the frontlines of the culture war has experienced the voluntary social distancing of brothers and sisters in Christ who don’t want to be tainted by friendship with cultural lepers. We all know the experience of having friends or colleagues either secretly whisper their thanks for our work, or avoid us entirely, or turn against us. There’s no skin in the game for many Christians when the game gets rough. Instead of marching into battle accoutered with the armor of God, they scuttle into their safe havens accoutered with protective platitudes acceptable to God’s enemies.

Oddly, I’ve seen very little criticism of Andrew Klavan—another Christian who uses satire brilliantly and effectively to mock stupid and evil ideas that deserve mockery. For example, assuming the voice of a presumptuous Hollywood celebrity, Klavan recently wrote,

I take responsibility for being a fatuous, virtue-signaling, useless, celebrity knucklehead. Which is a much better life than yours by the way. For which I take complete responsibility… and then run away before you realize I haven’t done a damn thing for you and your life still sucks.

Before reading Klavan’s satires, all those legions of PC Christians holed up in their bunkers hoping no unbelieving colleague learns they disapprove of homosexuality better stock up on smelling salts.

Not quite a year ago, I wrote an article about the superintendent of a large Illinois high school district who sexually integrated all locker rooms in the five-school district—a decision so wicked that all Christians should have felt enraged.

He was aided and abetted by wealthy Hollywood Matrix director “Lana” Wachowski—a man who pretends to be a woman—homosexuals from outside the district, and a school board member with a vile sexuality podcast for children. In strong language, I wrote about this evil action and the vipers who promoted it.

In response, I received an email from a conservative Christian who identified herself as the “dean of rhetoric” in a “Christian co-school.” She chastised my “language and tone,” saying that she found them “disturbing.” She criticized the “vitriol and loaded language … name calling and hyperbole” and “uncharitable language,” saying it “would never be tolerated” in her rhetoric classes, that she was “disappointed to read” such language, and that she found my “writing style offensive.”

So, a Christian is teaching children that the use of biblical language and tone are sinful even when describing egregious sin.

I asked if she had ever sent an email with as much passion and strong language as the one she sent to me to any of the many political leaders, public school teachers, administrators, or heretical “Christian” leaders who promote sexual deviance to children. No response.

“Progressives” use the phrase “my truth” a lot—a phrase that Boston College philosophy professor Dr. Peter Kreeft describes as both oxymoronic and moronic. Much of what “progressives” affirm as “their truth,” seems to be sexual desires that originate in their dark bellies—or what in The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis calls the seat of mere animal appetites.

Lewis argues that to protect against domination by our imperious appetites, human emotions must be properly trained:

Without the aid of trained emotions, the intellect is powerless against the animal organism…. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.

Do tell, Christian brothers and sisters who favor warm milquetoasty language at all times, how do we train human animals of all sizes to feel disgust and hatred of those things which really are disgusting and hateful while using only warm milquetoasty language?

Lewis continues, describing what education should do:

Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt. … Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.

Yes, there are things—desires, ideas, images, words, and acts—for which we should properly feel hatred. The prophet Amos said, “Hate evil, and love good.” In Romans, Paul teaches us “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” For love to be genuine or true, we must abhor what is evil.

Children must be taught to feel love for the good and feel hatred for that which is evil, which is wholly different from hating people. True love requires first knowing what is true and good. Affirming in and to people that which God detests is not love; affirming in and to people that which God detests is detestable.

“Progressives” understand that the emotions must be trained, which is why they use the arts—especially our myth-making machine, Hollywood, and government schools to shape the hearts of America’s children. Tragically, since “progressives” don’t know truth, they’re training America’s children to love evil and hate good.

In our public schools, interactions with friends, and Facebook posts, we have at our disposal many tools for training emotions, among which are rhetorical tools. The Bible warns that the tongue “is a restless evil, full of deadly poison,” and that “Kind words are like honey—sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.” But such verses do not and cannot possibly mean Christians must never use strong language or sarcasm. We know that because the Bible includes numerous examples of the use of strong language and mockery.

Amos called women fat “cows” and warned that God would take them away by harpoons or fishhooks. Imagine how today’s evanjellyfishes would feel if a Christian were to use that biblical language.

Paul wrote this to Titus: “As one of their own prophets has said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.’ This testimony is true.” In other words, Paul called Cretans liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons.

Jesus said,

“You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! … You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.”

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”

Paul said this about sinners,

There is none who does good, no, not one.”
“Their throat is an open tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;
“The poison of asps is under their lips”

In Revelation, those who are not saved are called “dogs.”

Peter describes false teachers—of which we have many in the church today—as “irrational animals … born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant. … They are blots and blemishes. … Accursed children!”

Paul calls the Galatians, “foolish Galatians.”

John the Baptist called the multitudes a “brood of vipers.”

If the dean of rhetoric of the Christian co-school thinks calling a top school leader who sexually integrates the locker rooms of 12,000 minor children “depraved” undermines our witness—as she claimed I did—then logically she must think John the Baptist undermined his witness by calling the multitudes a brood of vipers.

Theologian and pastor Doug Wilson makes clear that the Bible does not mandate the kind of saccharine language that corrupts evangelicalism or prohibit bold, bracing, condemnatory language from which many evangelicals flee:

Evangelical Christians are very sweet people and there’s an upside to that. … But they’re so sweet they can’t be friends with diabetics. And what happens is, if you respond to the prevailing ungodliness with a response that’s tart, or serrated, or pungent, or satiric, you will have more than a few Christians taking you aside saying, “Hey brother, you probably don’t want to talk to them that way. … Would Jesus have responded that way?” And when you reply, “Well, yes, he would have. And here’s how he did it in Matthew 23 where he disassembles the Pharisees.”

[Evangelical Christians] don’t have a category for that. They’re so used to having Christlikeness defined by their ecclesiastical culture instead of having Christlikeness defined by the Bible, it is astonishing for many Christians to discover that this kind of verbal polemical engagement is preeminently biblical. It’s a very common biblical way of expressing righteousness. … If you take the smarmy, sweetie, nice discourse that many Christians think is supposed to be the norm and drive it into the Bible, you can’t find examples of that anywhere.

American philosopher and Catholic, Dr. Edward Feser, shares Wilson’s disdain for the unbiblical and unhelpful contemporary perversion of the Christian obligation to love our neighbors:

Niceness. Well, it has its place. But the Christ who angrily overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, who taught a moral code more austere than that of the Pharisees, and who threatened unrepentant sinners with the fiery furnace, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, was not exactly “nice.”

Feser finds fault with the unbiblical notion that “even a great many churchmen seem to have bought into,” which is that “inoffensive ‘niceness’ is somehow the essence of the true Christian, or at least of any Christian worthy of the liberal’s respect.” He argues that in,

innumerable vapid sermons one hears about God’s love and acceptance and forgiveness, but never about divine judgment or the moral teachings to which modern people are most resistant—and which, precisely for that reason, they most need to hear expounded and defended.

Feser argues against church “teachings on sexual morality” that are delivered “half-apologetically, in vague and soft language, and in a manner hedged with endless qualifications”:

Such “niceness” is in no way a part of Christian morality. It is a distortion of the virtues of meekness (which is simply moderation in anger—as opposed to too much or too little anger), and friendliness (which is a matter of exhibiting the right degree of affability necessary for decent social order—as opposed to too little affability or too much).

Maybe, just maybe, if every theologically orthodox Christian spoke in biblical tones and language about the perversity and corruption that confront our children every day in their TV shows, picture books, and government schools, and defile our society there would be less of it, and maybe, just maybe Mike Adams would still be alive.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/How-May-Christians-Speak.mp3

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Looking at the current political and cultural climate in Washington, D.C., you might get the idea that the ruling class is in the midst of a conniption.  Even the walls of the National Cathedral are vibrating with weirdness – more about that later.

In “Summer of Our Discontent,” Washington Post staff writer Dan Zak lays out the mood gripping Washington, D.C., or, as the headline in last Tuesday’s Style section describes it, “the capital of the resistance.”  Here’s the third paragraph:

“Here we all are. The start of a mad hot American summer in the nation’s capital. A president violating norm after norm. Immigrant children wailing for their mothers. A Supreme Court seat, open like a wound. A midterm election hurtling toward us like an avenging angel, or a killer asteroid. The resistance girding for war, or curdling into hysteria, depending on your view.”

Let’s opt for hysteria.   This is the shark fin of a Deep State that is determined to bring down the Trump administration by whatever means necessary.

“It’s reached a point of desperation,” explains Amanda Werner, described by Mr. Zak as a campaign strategist. “We’ve been civil (did she say this with a straight face?) and having endless debates, and all we’ve seen is the decimation of everything we care about.”

Two weeks ago, Ms. Werner and a dozen others invaded a D.C. restaurant to heckle Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and also came to her residence to scream, “We’re here to wake up your neighborhood.”  Last Sunday, the D.C. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America chanted slogans outside the Alexandria home of just-retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau Director Thomas Homan, accusing him of “fascism” (a socialist variant, but perhaps they don’t know that).  On June 22, the owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia kicked out White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and then led a crowd to heckle her party at another eatery.

“I think now is the time to start seeking them out and invading their spaces,” Ms. Werner told the Post.

So, what are we in for now?

Anthony Oiveira has some ideas.  The University of Toronto instructor wrote a column for the Post on Friday titled, “Welcome to LGBTQ Wrath Month.”  Not enough fealty was paid to LGBTQ demands during Pride Month in June, so he calls for something stronger: “Stonewall. The White Night. Riots. ACT UP. Wrath Month is a chance to remember that before our symbol was a rainbow, it was a hurled brick. Civility be damned….”

And it will be, if Rep. Maxine Waters has her way.  The Democrat from Los Angles has called for more crowds to harass Mr. Trump’s cabinet.

Here’s the amazing part.   After her party’s congressional leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, declined to endorse Ms. Waters’s mob warfare scheme, nearly 200 “Black women” and other Progressives for whom Ms. Waters “is our shero [sic],” signed a letter demanding that the top Democrats apologize.

The signers were torqued that Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer called the rent-a-mob tactics “unacceptable” and “not American,” and accused the Democratic leaders of — what else — racial insensitivity.  As a practical matter, this gives a free pass to Ms. Waters to say and do anything, no matter how offensive or bizarre.

Staring into the abyss of the upset election on June 26 in New York in which a socialist Millennial unseated Democratic House Caucus Chair Joe Crowley, a 10-term congressman, Pelosi promptly issued a statement blaming President Trump for the attacks on his staff and hailing Waters as a “valued leader.”

Moving on to the world of religion, the Post reports that the Episcopal Church USA has begun debating how to further edit the once-incomparable Book of Common Prayer that they “improved” in 1979.

Ms. Kelly Brown Douglas, the canon theologian at the Washington National Cathedral, wants to cleanse the book of masculine references.  Instead of “Lord,” which implies maleness, she wants to use “Creator, Liberator, Sustainer.”

The language will reflect “the God that I can see in the least of these.  The God that I can see in the face of a Renisha McBride or a Trayvon Martin – that tells me something about God.”

Another theologian on the language committee, Brite Divinity School Professor Wil Gafney, says she already routinely ditches “King” for “Ruler” or “Creator” and sometimes uses “she” to refer to God.

Others propose language about conserving the Earth, blessing a transgender person’s adoption of a new name and performing a same-sex “wedding.” So far, no one reportedly has offered up a prayer to bless having an abortion.  But wait for it.

Ms. Gafney did draw the line at altering Jesus’s opening to the Lord’s Prayer, which he gave his apostles in Matthew 6: 9.

“’Our Father,’ I won’t fiddle with that,” she told the Post.

What refreshing humility.   If only the rest of the Resistance could learn to be so humble.

This article originally posted at Townhall.com