In October of last year, in a “girls” high school volleyball game in North Carolina, a student was injured painfully. The ball was spiked by a member of the opposing team—only it wasn’t by a biological female but a biological male—a transgender player. That had to leave a mark. Watch the video for yourself.

Today that girl, Payton McNabb, is speaking out to support a bill that would disallow biological males from competing in girls’ sports.

In our Brave New World, people can claim to identify as a member of the opposite sex, and so it is. But that neither comports with the Bible nor science.

In his new book, The War on Virtue, Dr. William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, writes, “Among many members of the ruling class, gender ideology is all the rage. But the fact is that we cannot change our sex. We are either male or female. We cannot change our chromosomes.”

Congress acted last week to bar biological males from competing with biological females in schools and colleges that receive federal funds. It passed in the House, 219-203.

The sponsor of the bill, Greg Steube (R-Florida) said, “The integrity of women’s sports must be protected.” Kevin McCarthy (R-California) called it a “great day for America, a great day for girls and women and for fairness in sports.”

Sadly, not one Democrat voted for it. No, not one. And President Biden threatens to veto it.

Furthermore, punishment awaits those who deviate from the new “sexual orthodoxy” that claims a man can be a woman if he so wills it. Such as a Christian school in New England.

Last month, the New York Post reported, “A Vermont high school has been banned from participating in state athletics after its girls’ hoops team forfeited a playoff game against a team with a trans player.” And so it goes in our Brave New World.

Terry Schilling, executive director of the American Principles Project, has become an outspoken critic of the transgender movement. In a radio segment on its impact on women’s sports, Terry told me: “The transgender movement believes that sex is not important. What is really important is your gender identity or who you identify as. Men and women are different. Our founding fathers would have said it is a ‘self-evident truth’ that men and women are different.”

Schilling adds, “We have studied this scientifically—the biological difference between males and females, and there are many of them. When they come to sports, they apply the most. Men have more bone density than women do. Men are taller on average. Men are typically faster. They have more muscle mass….This is what scientific research has shown time and time again. And it’s all related to our hormones and our biological makeup, and it’s why we needed to create Title IX.”

The federal government notes that Title IX is a part of the Education Amendments of 1972: “Title IX protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”

Out of Title IX grew women’s sports leagues. So that women could compete against women.

But the transgender movement is disrupting all this. Many girls who have practiced for years in a particular sport are now losing to biological males who have a natural advantage over them. The girls then lose out on valuable scholarships.

What are biological males doing in women’s sports? It is grossly unfair. Sometimes it’s even dangerous—as in the volleyball example.

One of the great ideals of America is basic fairness. It’s abiding by the Golden Rule, articulated by Jesus, that we should treat others as we would want to be treated. If you were a biological female, would you want to have to compete with biological males claiming to be girls?

Some of our presidents noted the importance of the Golden Rule in a variety of contexts:

• Teddy Roosevelt told the Congress: “The Golden Rule should be, and as the world grows in morality it will be, the guiding rule of conduct among nations as among individuals.”

• President Harry Truman noted, “All the questions which now beset us in strikes and wages and working conditions would be so much simpler if men and women were willing to apply the principles of the Golden Rule. Do as you would be done by.”

• Before he became president, California Governor Ronald Reagan asserted, “With freedom goes responsibility. Sir Winston Churchill once said you can have 10,000 regulations and still not have respect for the law. We might start with the Ten Commandments. If we lived by the Golden Rule, there would be no need for other laws.”

The longer society goes down this path, the longer we abandon our moral sanity, the worse off we are.

[Hat tip to Bill Federer and his America’s God and Country for help with the quotes.]

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For 42 years American school children have been subject to a barrage of misinformation about our American history. This has helped cause many of them to hate America. And virtually every day we read about the results.

For example, there’s a curriculum clash in one of our nation’s most conservative states. On Friday, Gary Bauer reported that the Oklahoma Board of Education decided to downgrade the Tulsa Public School District’s accreditation. This is because in Tulsa, they’re still teaching Marxist critical race theory—which is now against the law in the Sooner State.

Oklahoma’s Secretary of Education is Ryan Walters, who told Fox News: “What we’ve got to do is go back to teaching our history and ensuring that every young person has the ability to be successful and be inspired by our history.”

He added, “We’re the greatest country in the history of the world, and our kids need to know that.”

But how will children in Oklahoma, and all the other states, learn to appreciate our country when so many have been brainwashed with a false view for so long?

“Howard Zinn died in 2010, but [his book] A People’s History of the United States lives on and carries the rhetoric of past decades of leftist politics forward with it.” So writes Dr. Mary Grabar, author of the book, Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America (2019).

Grabar is a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization and is the founder of Dissident Prof Education Project, Inc. She has taught at the college level for two decades, including at Emory University.

Grabar describes the late Howard Zinn, the American history professor who would’ve turned 100 this year, as a “communist propagandist.”

In her book, Grabar observes, “Zinn’s pervasive influence is a national tragedy, especially considering just how distorted, manipulative, and plain dishonest A People’s History of the United States is.”

Zinn’s work has been widely read by many who assume it is truthful. Indeed, A People’s History remains among the most widely-assigned history textbooks in America. But Zinn was a self-described Marxist, and author Daniel Flynn once described him as an “unreconstructed, anti-American Marxist,” whose book was a “cartoon anti-history.”

Grabar quotes many reputable historians who similarly find Zinn’s historical standards sub-par.

I spoke with Dr. Grabar for a radio segment on Zinn and his influence. She told me, “I don’t think there’s another book on American history that has sold as many copies as Howard Zinn’s has. It has been in constant publication since 1980 when it first came out…. His view of American history…has become the dominant one.”

I asked her if there is a link between Zinn’s teachings and the mobs in the streets tearing down historical statues related to American history. She answered “Absolutely.” She noted that readers of Zinn tend to “get this very jaundiced picture of the founders, of Christopher Columbus. These people are presented as enslavers, committing genocide.”

For example, in her chapter, “Columbus Bad, Indians Good,” Grabar states, “Zinn was instrumental in the sea change that has transformed Columbus from the discoverer of America into the genocidal villain whose murder and enslavement of the Indians is the original sin that makes America a crime.”

Zinn leaves out such facts as the explorer’s log entry for October 12, 1492: “I warned my men to take nothing from the people without giving something in exchange.”

Graber told me: “It’s all done through lies about American history. Very little of it is accurate, so there’s this false picture of the people we have justly honored.”

Graber continued, “We have generations of people who have grown up disillusioned with this country—thinking there is something better off on the horizon. And what they think is better is socialism.” And Zinn deserves a great deal of the credit—or rather, blame—for that.

This is all astounding when you think about it. Zinn was a propagandist for the Communists, who were guilty of far worse atrocities than the men and women who founded America. The records are not comparable.

A couple of disillusioned former communists summarized the legacy of seven decades of the atheistic U.S.S.R. in one phrase: “tens of millions of corpses.” And yet Zinn continues to poison the minds of millions of Americans against our country.

This reminds me of the famous quip from Ronald Reagan: “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

What is America in its essence? Very simply this: self-rule under God. Both of those phrases are necessary for a free and prosperous future for our country. May God spare us from the propagandists who withhold that information from present and future generations.

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This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

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Many politicians and educators want to steal our children. According to these activists, parents can feed and house children, but can’t guide their education or tell them how to choose right from wrong. Parents merely act as custodians of the State’s property. Here are recent samples of this line of thinking.

Media says that parents have no right to interfere with a public school education. The Washington Post printed a guest editorial that claims:

[E]ducation should prepare young people to think for themselves, even if that runs counter to the wishes of parents.

…

When do the interests of parents and children diverge? Generally, it occurs when a parent’s desire to inculcate a particular worldview denies the child exposure to other ideas and values that an independent young person might wish to embrace or at least entertain.[1]

That is, parents have no right to shield their children from any sort of predator or groomer having evil intent. As we’ll see later, this “no rights” idea comes from the claim that the interests of the child are automatically at odds with those of the parents.

Politicians also say parents have no such rights. In his campaign for reelection, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe promoted this statist argument against parents’ rights in education. He said it this way:

“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions … I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”[2]

This statement was a key reason for his electoral defeat. But he didn’t get this opinion out of the blue. His friends and donors, teacher unions and school administrators, encouraged this thought.[3] They even call these nurturing parents “terrorists.”[4]

Parents are tyrants. Noah Berlatsky, a prominent liberal author, claims:

parents are tyrants. “parent” is an oppressive class, like rich people or white people.

…

socialists should be wary of the nuclear family; Marx is pretty definitive about that.[5]

Berlatsky has the traditional Marxist fear about the family, that its primary loyalty is to itself and not the (socialist) community.

We must abolish parenthood itself. According to columnist Joe Mathews[6] we must forbid parents from raising their own children. This amounts to abolishing parenting altogether. His article says:

Fathers and mothers with greater wealth and education are more likely to transfer these advantages to their children, compounding privilege over generations. As a result, children of less advantaged parents face an uphill struggle, social mobility has stalled, and democracy has been corrupted.

…

My solution — making raising your own children illegal — is simple, and while we wait for the legislation to pass, we can act now: the rich and poor should trade kids, and homeowners might swap children with their homeless neighbors.

…

In his “Republic,” Plato adopted Socrates’ sage advice — that children “be possessed in common, so that no parent will know his own offspring or any child his parents” — in order to defeat nepotism, and create citizens loyal not to their sons but to society.

…

But don’t pay those critics any mind. Because they just can’t see how our relentless pursuit of equity might birth a brave new world.[7]

(Note: Mathews’ is apparently embarrassed by what he said. Other web sites have a version of this column that reads “My solution is simple”, along with other minor changes. Just what is Mathews’ afraid of you reading?)

If a mother is banned from raising her own newborn – how can one even contemplate this confiscation? (Jeremiah 31:15) – then it’s likely that women won’t bother to have children at all. Whether Mathews offered satire or no, his “universal orphanhood” proposal aligns with socialist thought.

Why should we care what they say? These screeds against parents’ rights give us glimpses of why these activists, including teachers and school administrators, have become our opponents. Their words disclose their desires and plans. Believe them when they say they want to make changes. And if unopposed, they’ll create a cultural revolution by government fiat. Read on to understand what drives their animosity. You’ll also find some thoughts on how to confront this war on parenting.

The war against families and parental authority

Whose child is this? Does the child “belong” to his or her parents, or to the State? The answer to this question shapes our society. For example, without families raising children you wouldn’t have multi-bedroom homes, minivans, or even suburbs. We’d merely have loose communities of selfish, self-centered people, for the responsibility of nurturing children teaches commitment, devotion, and compassion.

By tradition and law, the parents have the primary responsibility for a child’s custody, care, and nurture. This responsibility also covers teaching morals and values, and deciding the content of education. That these decisions are for the parents to make, and not the State, has been repeatedly confirmed by the courts. One such Supreme Court case is Wisconsin v Yoder:

The history and culture of Western civilization reflect a strong tradition of parental concern for the nurture and upbringing of their children. This primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition. – Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972) [8]

But recent academic agitators have decided to debate the issue anyway. They say that parents are unfit to teach because they’re tyrants.[9] One of these agitators is Elizabeth Bartholet,[10] who wrote this about parents directing their children’s education:

The legal claim made in defense of the current homeschooling regime is based on a dangerous idea about parent rights—that those with enormous physical and other power over infants and children should be subject to virtually no check on that power. That parents should have monopoly control over children’s lives, development, and experience. That parents who are committed to beliefs and values counter to those of the larger society are entitled to bring their children up in isolation, so as to help ensure that they will replicate the parents’ views and lifestyle choices.

This legal claim is inconsistent with the child’s right to what has been called an “open future”—the right to exposure to alternative views and experiences essential for children to grow up to exercise meaningful choices about their own future views, religion, lifestyles, and work.

It is inconsistent with state laws and constitutional provisions guaranteeing child rights to education. It is inconsistent with state and federal laws guaranteeing children protection against abuse and neglect.[11]

By “open future,” she means State-approved morals and perspectives. Her view, and distortion of family law, is meant to break our society. She claims that children must be presumptively protected from their very own parents! James Dwyer,[12] a close associate of Bartholet, claims that “parental rights” amounts to kidnapping. He wrote:

But it is only because state statutes make biological parents the legal parents of a newborn child and give legal parents presumptive custody rights that birth parents have legal permission to do what would otherwise be kidnapping—that is, to take a person to their home and confine the person there without that person’s consent.[13]

And elsewhere Dwyer wrote:

The reason that parent-child relationship exists is because the state confers legal parenthood on people through its paternity and maternity laws.[14]

According to Dwyer, the concepts of “parenting” and “family” are mere legal constructs, that they didn’t exist until some government made them happen. Instead of government existing to serve the community, he thinks that people exist solely to serve the government. In the end, these activists want to make all children wards of the state.

Through this analysis, it becomes apparent that the claim that parents should have child-rearing rights – rather than simply being permitted to perform parental duties and to make certain decisions on a child’s behalf in accordance with the child’s rights – is inconsistent with principles deeply embedded in our law and morality.[15]

In Dwyer’s world, once you bring your children home you may only do for them what the government permits.

I propose further that the law confer on parents simply a child-rearing privilege, limited in its scope to actions and decisions not inconsistent with the child’s temporal interests. Such a privilege, coupled with a broader set of children’s rights, is sufficient to satisfy parents’ legitimate interests in child-rearing.[16]

In short, the mother and father may only play at being parents, being sure to not to instill virtues not preordained by the statist bureaucrats. This mirrors what the Soviets tried, and failed at, in Russia:

What responsibilities are left to the parents, when they no longer have to take charge of upbringing and education?… The state does not need the family, because the domestic economy is no longer profitable: the family distracts the worker from more useful and productive labour.[17]

Even today, Communists want to abolish the family:

Today, the main backwards role the family plays is the oppression of children, who are subjected to a tyranny of the parents and denied the basic rights which should belong to every human, most importantly the right of free development of the personality.[18]

To summarize, we don’t find American parents begging the government to take away their rights. Rather, academics have invented a rift between parent and child. They want the government to institutionalize their divisive, never-tried, and ungodly ways of dealing with children.

Defend all of our rights of parenting

Elected officials promise to represent all of us. However, they keep aligning themselves with tiny activist groups. Maybe it’s for the campaign money, or maybe the officials feel threatened by the activists’ political threats. Senator Everett Dirksen said about politicians, “when they feel the heat, they see the light.”[19]

To preserve our religious and parental rights, Christians need to do more than just vote. We must bring our own “heat.” Here are my suggestions for bringing political heat, some of which may surprise you.

Be persistent in pleading your cause. Politicians expect any that outrage against them will fade over time. Usually, political persistence is found only in those people wanting favors, and who have the money with which to buy them. If politicians don’t hear opposing voices, then they’ll forget their true constituencies.

Christians must frequently remind their officials just whom they represent, and that they’re supposed to be both just and impartial (Exodus 23:1-3; Leviticus 19:15). For example, isn’t trading donations for favors showing partiality? We must be like the widow who petitioned her unrighteous judge both day and night (Luke 18:1-5).

Be persistent in prayer. After telling us of the widow and the wicked judge, Jesus told us to be persistent before God. He will surely bring forth justice (Luke 18:6-8).

Be loud and be heard. Don’t be crude, but also don’t be timid. After all, the prophets weren’t gentle with the people concerning with God’s word (Jeremiah 36). And even Jesus riled up people when he scourged the Temple (John 2:13-16). Make sure that your officials have heard you, even if it means following them around. Make them uncomfortable, and even give them midnight serenades. After all, it’s protected political speech.[20] 

Be the all-important precinct captain. The best way to get politicians you like is to help weed out the bad ones before they even get to the ballot. That means becoming your own precinct’s captain, the most important political role in the country. Both the Democrats[21] and Republicans[22] recognize that political power starts with the precinct. The precinct captain walks through the precinct, at each home promoting the candidates he or she approves of. This means the captain has great power to influence elections.

Becoming a captain is easier than you think. See the site precinctstrategy.com to find out how.[23]

Be bold in the courts. The right to worship (First Amendment) doesn’t mean only the ability to think religious thoughts. It means being able to physically practice your religion in your private and public life. This also includes how your religion affects your parenting, such as in the Wisconsin v Yoder case (see above).[24] And ever since the Fourteenth Amendment, state law can’t be used to limit religious rights or activity.[25] But government officials, or the courts, won’t proactively fight for your rights. You yourself must act, challenging bad actions, laws, and decrees (“executive orders”) in court.

Be obedient to God, not to evil commands. In Romans 13, the apostle Paul speaks of obedience to authorities. The ruler is a “minister of God to you for good” (Romans 13:4). That is, a ruler is God’s delegated authority to encourage and enforce godly behavior. But if a ruler issues evil commands, he or she does so outside of that delegated authority to be a “minister for good.” You have no obligation before God to obey any evil commands.[26]

This principle was understood, and used, many times. Here’s a few cases:[27]

• In the 16^th century, Lutherans resisted the Emperor. He told them to abandon “salvation by grace” or be killed.

• In the 17^th century, Scots resisted King Charles. He gave them a new, “official” way to worship which denied their Presbyterian beliefs.

• In the 1770s, the American Colonists resisted King George. He tried numerous means to deny their God-given rights and freedoms.

All three of these cases have the same idea: while a ruler may have physical power, he or she has no moral or legal authority when acting beyond the ruler’s scope of office. In all three cases the communities resorted to military force to resist the unrighteous commands.

This “minister for good” concept is worth understanding well. It’s guidance for when you must decide to either obey God or obey an ungodly command. I recommend you read the referenced article, to be sure of yourself.

Be a shield against cultural insurrection. As we see, teachers, advocates, and politicians are seeking control of children that aren’t theirs. This is a power grab, a literal insurrection by elites. If Christians, and if parents, don’t block this then we might lose both our children and our American society.

Protect our children from subversive public schools

We’ve been blind and lazy about our public schools. We trusted our teachers and school officials, but they betrayed this trust by actively, and unapologetically, working against community values. They deny parental input, and also refuse oversight of their dealings.[28] We can’t even believe them when they do tell us things.[29] Perhaps as a joke, President Ronald Reagan said about the Russians “Trust, but verify.”[30] We could been verifying public schooling a long time ago, saving ourselves much grief.

If the public school people won’t teach community values, and reject community oversight, then why pay them with community property taxes? They promote society-altering socialism: Critical Race Theory,[31] the anti-American 1619 Project,[32] and liberating children from their parents (see above). These aren’t American community values!

Therefore, protecting our children revolves around getting them into schooling that their parents can trust. This generally means private schools or homeschooling. But what about families for this is a pipe dream? For them, leaving the public schools is hard for reasons like these:

• Private schools aren’t cheap. One survey has the tuition of Illinois private high schools at about $12,000 per year.[33] You might find a lower-priced school hosted in a subsidized building, or supported by charitable donations. You also might find a school with a fancy campus, because it’s intended to attract wealthy parents. But on the average, attending a private school is a substantial burden on the family budget.

But even at those rates, a family still might be able to swing a private school education. That is, if that family wasn’t forced to also pay for the expensive public schools. For example, in 2020 Chicago public schools spent about $30,000 per student![34] Even Paul Vallas, who used to run the Chicago public schools, now wants a practical school voucher program.[35]

• Parents are at work, and not available for homeschooling. Many families are single-parent households, or have both parents working outside of the home. They can’t take advantage of homeschooling because no adult would be at home to supervise their children.

• Educating special needs children is costly. When schooling children with severe mental or physical handicaps, extra aides, specialists, and facilities are needed. Parents of these children can currently turn only to the public school systems.

I don’t have big, comprehensive, plans that fix community schools to everyone’s satisfaction. And I don’t want such plans, for they lead to big, comprehensive bureaucracies. Rather, when people act in their own self interest they uncover small solutions to limited problems. Those that work get adopted by others. Here are my ideas for small solutions to education problems.

Take over your local school board. If you don’t trust the public schools, then why not clean house? Once you, and your friends, have control you can get rid of the bad people, fix the curricula, create transparency, etc. Sure, the teacher unions would be determined and formidable opponents. After all, you’re cutting in on their game. But a community coalition can win.

I’m serious about this. Here is a campaign cookbook that teaches how to network, and how to campaign to win.[36] Yes, it’s hard work, but it pays off. At the very least, you’ll have created the sort of “heat” your local politicians pay attention to.

Invent, and promote, easy-to-use homeschool systems. Homeschooling has a reputation for being hard to do. Yet:

• There are already homeschooling systems that claim to be easy to use. The parents get guidance on setting up their school. The student lessons might even be supplied as computer lectures. And the vendors do the hard work of getting the students’ efforts academically recognized.

• There might already be an online catalog or directory of easy homeschooling systems.

But if these easy systems are out there, then why are they so hard to find? And if there is a catalog of them, then where is it? My point is that self-promotion goes a long way to multiplying the number of families willing to try homeschooling.

I’m willing to use my blog to promote easy-to-use curricula providers, and catalogs of curricula. I also think that other blogs would do likewise. And if these online catalogs don’t yet exist, then who can start the first one?

Create models for bare-bones, but affordable, private schools. Modeling a private school on the public school model results in a pricey education. After all, public schools aren’t designed to be economical.

But what if a school pattern was created that has no frills: no sports teams, no fancy campus, no snob appeal for parents. Its attraction would be providing a competent, but inexpensive, education. The parents could shop among such schools, choosing which one best suited their desires. Such schools could be held wherever empty office space, or empty meeting halls, could be found. And they’d be priced so low that parents could use them even while paying for the public schools they aren’t using.

How inexpensive can we get? A school is just curricula, a teacher, some students, and a place for holding classes. Suppose that:

• Online curricula were used to do the actual teaching. The students would be largely interacting with the computer lessons. Such online teaching is already available from various private schools, and from some homeschool curricula publishers. It ought to be inexpensive to license these for a private school.

• Teachers and assistants monitor the students in their online learning. Their main teaching role would be to help the students over particular lesson difficulties, so you wouldn’t need many people. Perhaps you could get by with three or four adults per hundred children. That, and reminders from the parents that their children behave “or else.”

• The school could be held in a church basement, a rented hall, or some underused business property. There are enough of these places that a school could be placed most anywhere in a community. A quick online search of school codes reveals few conditions on building suitability, the biggest concerns being those of the fire departments.

A school of a hundred students, with full-time staff, held in a business property (that is, paying rent), might get by with an annual tuition of less than $6000. The actual numbers depend on the details.[37]

For me, an added benefit of inexpensive private schools is that it forces the public schools to scale back, for their funding is partially based on actual student attendance. A shrinking student base means they must sell underused properties, and perhaps become more responsive to their communities.

Promote a “community chest” to help special needs children get their education. Public schools are primarily funded by community property taxes. This means that parents of public school students don’t pay the entire costs of that year’s education. They’re subsidized by other homeowners.

This subsidy is even greater for special needs children. For example, a student with severe disabilities might need a one-on-one aide. The community, through the school, subsidizes this student more than it does other students.

If the switch to private schools works out, and the public school system shrinks, then we must remember these special needs students, along with their families. But we should help them through private donations, and not through taxes. A community, and not its government, should take care of its own. For example, look at what President Grover Cleveland said.

In February 1887, President Grover Cleveland, upon vetoing a bill appropriating money to aid drought-stricken farmers in Texas, said,

“I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and the duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.”

President Cleveland added,

“The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.”[38]

You already see Facebook and Go Fund Me appeals for certain individuals and causes. That is the same sort of giving spirit that these parents will need for their disabled children’s education. What did you think those Monopoly “Community Chest” cards meant? Give, to help those in your community.

May I help?

I’d like parents to regain control of their children’s education. I currently know precious little of the details concerning private schools, but I think I can help anyway. For example, I could help catalog and promote useful homeschooling systems. And I could help work out details of “model inexpensive schools.” I also know a thing or two about computers.

If you’d like to write and see if I really can help, leave an email at this (slightly-obfuscated) address:  trusted.schools –at- fixthisculture.com

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Footnotes 

[1]      Schneider, Jack and Berkshire, Jennifer, Parents claim they have the right to shape their kids’ school curriculum. They don’t., Washington Post, October 21, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/parents-rights-protests-kids/2021/10/21/5cf4920a-31d4-11ec-9241-aad8e48f01ff_story.html

[2]      Terry McAuliffe’s War on Parents, National Review, October 1, 2021, https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/terry-mcauliffes-war-on-parents/

[3]      Duggan, Laurel, Teachers Union President Backing McAuliffe Promotes Article Claiming Parents Don’t Have A ‘Right’ In What Kids Are Taught, Daily Caller News Foundation, October 26, 2021, https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2021/10/26/randi-weingartin-terry-mcauliffe-teachers-union-curriculum/

[4]      Sims, Gwendolyn, Concerned Parents Are ‘Immediate Threat’ Says National School Boards Association President—Some Are Even Domestic Terrorists!, PJ Media, October 1, 2021, https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/gwendolynsims/2021/10/01/concerned-parents-are-immediate-threat-says-national-school-boards-association-president-some-are-even-domestic-terrorists-n1521073

[5]      Berlatsky, Noah, Parents are tyrants, Twitter, December 14, 2020, https://twitter.com/nberlat/status/1338586940157927427

[6]      Joe Mathews, LA Progressive, https://www.laprogressive.com/author/joe-mathews/

[7]      Mathews, Joe, Column: California should abolish parenthood, in the name of equity, Yahoo News, January 13, 2022, https://www.yahoo.com/news/column-california-abolish-parenthood-name-181725030.html

[8]      The Supreme Court’s Parental Rights Doctrine, Parental Rights, https://parentalrights.org/understand_the_issue/supreme-court/
The left column has several legal quotes, accessed by clicking on the line of “dot” links. The Yoder quote is merely one of these quotes.

[9]      Poole, Christian, The Case for Homeschooling (Part 1): The Strangeness of the Anti-Homeschool Movement, ThinkingWest, May 19, 2020, https://thinkingwest.com/2020/05/19/part-1-the-anti-homeschool-movement/

[10]    Elizabeth Bartholet, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bartholet

[11]    Bartholet, Elizabeth, Homeschooling: Parent Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education & Protection, Arizona Law Review, Volume 62, Issue 1 [2020], https://arizonalawreview.org/pdf/62-1/62arizlrev1.pdf

[12]    James Dwyer, William & Mary Law School, https://law2.wm.edu/faculty/bios/fulltime/jgdwye.php

[13]    Dwyer, James, A Constitutional Birthright: The State, Parentage, and the Rights of Newborn Persons, UCLA Law Review, page 762, 56 UCLA LAW REVIEW 755 (2009), http://www.uclalawreview.org/pdf/56-4-1.pdf

[14]    Prominent Law Prof: ‘State Should Take Over the Legal Parental Role of Children’, Truth and Action, http://www.truthandaction.org/prominent-law-prof-state-should-take-over-the-legal-parental-role-of-children/2/
Alas! The original quote was in an interview on the CRTV network, but any transcription isn’t found on the internet. In some cases, the internet is NOT forever.

[15]    Dwyer, James, Parents’ Religion and Children’s Welfare: Debunking the Doctrine of Parents’ Rights, page 1373, William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository, Faculty Publications, January 1994, https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1167&context=facpubs

[16]    Dwyer, James, Parents’ Religion, page 1374.

[17]    Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family, published in The Worker, 1920, collected in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, Allison & Busby, 1977, found at https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm

[18]    Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now!, March 26, 2017, https://destroycapitalismnow.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/abolish-the-family/

[19]    “Politicians see the light when they feel the heat”, The Big Apple blog, December 2, 2010, https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/politicians_see_the_light_when_they_feel_the_heat

[20]    Schow, Ashe, Washington Post Defends Protesters At Senator Josh Hawley’s Home: ‘Peaceful Vigil’, The Daily Wire, January 5, 2021, https://www.dailywire.com/news/washington-post-defends-protesters-at-senator-josh-hawleys-home-peaceful-vigil

[21]    Rural Organizing & Engagement Toolkit for Precinct Captains, Democratic Party Official Website, https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Rural-Precinct-Chair-Toolkit.pdf

[22]    5 Duties of the Precinct Chair, Collin County Republican Party, September 3, 2015, https://www.collincountygop.org/news/5-duties-of-the-precinct-chair/

[23]    Shultz, Dan, Precinct Strategy, https://precinctstrategy.com/

[24]    The Supreme Court’s Parental Rights Doctrine, Parental Rights

[25]    McCarthy, Mary, Application of the First Amendment to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, Notre Dame Law Review, Volume 22, Issue 4, Article 2, May 1, 1947, https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3880&context=ndlr

[26]    Perry, Oliver, American Christians, Tyranny, and Resistance, Illinois Family Institute, May 20, 2021, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/faith/american-christians-tyranny-and-resistance/

[27]    Ibid.

[28]    Kingkade, Tyler, They fought critical race theory. Now they’re focusing on ‘curriculum transparency.’, NBC News, January 20, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/critical-race-theory-curriculum-transparency-rcna12809?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

[29]    LaChance, Mike, Report: California Public School Teachers Being Told to Hide Critical Race Materials From Parents, Legal Insurrection, April 14, 2021, https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/04/report-california-public-school-teachers-being-told-to-hide-critical-race-materials-from-parents/

[30]    Watson, William, Trust, but Verify: Reagan, Gorbachev, and the INF Treaty, The Hilltop Review, Volume 5, Issue 1 (Fall), Article 5, Western Michigan University, December 2011, https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1045&context=hilltopreview

[31]    Perry, Oliver, Critical Race Theory is anti-Christian, Illinois Family Institute, October 8, 2021, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/marriage/crt-racismblm/critical-race-theory-is-anti-christian/

[32]    The 1619 Project, Critical Race Training in Education, https://criticalrace.org/the-1619-project/

[33]    Illinois Private High Schools By Tuition Cost, Private School Review, https://www.privateschoolreview.com/tuition-stats/illinois/high

[34]    Conklin, Audrey, Chicago Teachers Union demands to know how Lightfoot is spending $2B in federal COVID relief for schools, Fox Business, January 5, 2021, https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/chicago-2-billion-covid-relief-schools
The article has an embedded link (see below) that effectively hides per-pupil spending by dividing it between fixed costs (the buildings, etc.) and instructional costs (the teaching). See http://www.illinoisreportcard.com/District.aspx?source=environment&source2=perstudentspending&Districtid=15016299025

[35]    Vallas, Paul, Guest Column–Paul Vallas: There is No Choice But School Choice, John Kass News, https://johnkassnews.com/there-is-no-choice-but-school-choice/

[36]    Toolkit: Combatting Critical Race Theory in your Community, Citizens for Renewing America, June 8, 2021, https://citizensrenewingamerica.com/issues/combatting-critical-race-theory-in-your-community/

[37]    Let’s try to estimate annual tuition for a school of 100 students.

1. A private school needs adult staff, which are full-time jobs for them. Factoring in benefits, let’s estimate one school master at $100,000, plus two assistants at $50,000, plus one administrator at $70,000. This gives annual labor costs of $270,000. We can use so few people because the teaching is done largely through computers, and we’ll have substantial moral support from the parents, pressuring their children to cooperate.
2. There are various homeschooling curricula that can be used. We could also turn to existing online schools whose online lessons we can lease. These sources will provide lessons, as well as proof (like “accreditation”). I see advertised costs of somewhere near $1,000 per pupil. I’d think that for a hundred students at once you could get a substantial discount on leases, so estimate licensing at $500 per pupil, or $50,000 per hundred students.
3. The school needs a suitable site. It might be the “between friends” use of a church hall, or currently vacant business space. Lacking specificity, I pick a number out of the air and say that facilities and utilities cost $300,000 for a year.
4. The annual costs for teachers, curriculum, and facilities comes to about (270,000 + 50,000 + 300,000 =) $620,000, or $6,200 per student.
5. A particular school could end up with much lower operating costs, but because of donated labor or facilities. Additionally, does the school intend to make even a small amount of money, or is it offered as a community service?

[38]    Williams, Walter, Charity Not a Proper Function of the American Government, The Liberal Institute, http://www.liberalinstitute.com/CharityNotProperGovernmentFunction.html

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A national group of Satanists is putting their cards on the table.  They are opposing abortion restrictions and adamantly defending abortion as worship of their god.

Meanwhile, a group of liberal pastors in Maine claims that abortion can supposedly be the Christian thing to do. In an op-ed in the Bangor Daily News, “Why a Christian minister supports abortion rights,” their leader writes of the importance of “reproductive justice.”

Abortion is a spiritual battle. So what does the Bible have to say abortion?

I write this shortly after the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade (and its companion decision, Doe v. Bolton) of January 22, 1973, that gave us abortion on demand. And here we are 63 million abortions later. That’s nothing to celebrate—but much to mourn.

Psalm 106:37 speaks of a time of disobedient Israelites, noting, “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to false gods. They shed innocent blood…and the land was desecrated by their blood. They defiled themselves by what they did.”

Did Christ ever address abortion? Not directly. But note how His brilliant statement on human relations, the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12), has direct application to the subject of abortion.

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them,” He said in the Sermon on the Mount. You were once an unborn baby. Would you have wanted your mother to kill you in utero? The majority of those mothers feel forced, against their will, to abort.

When Ronald Reagan was running for president in 1980, he was asked why he wasn’t “pro-choice.” He responded, “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” Touché.

Dr. D. James Kennedy once said, “If you’re pro-choice, you should get down on your knees and thank God that you’re mother wasn’t pro-choice.”

Some people say that abortion doesn’t kill human beings. And yet everything you and I are—our sex, how tall we will be, the color of our eyes—all of these things were determined at the moment of conception.

And from conception to birth, it’s all one continuous period of growth. The Mayo Clinic documents the humanity and growth of the preborn baby in the womb until birth.

We look back at previous generations, and we say, “How could they have been slave-owners?” Well, I believe future generations will look back at us and ask, “How could they have been so complacent about abortion—especially when they had 3-D sonograms, giving them a window to the womb?”

Many times when a pregnant woman contemplating an abortion gets to see the sonogram of her unborn baby, she changes her mind.

David states in Psalm 139, “For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

The prophet Jeremiah says this in the very opening of his book: “The word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.’” So, here’s this little unborn baby being appointed a prophet of the nations by God Himself.

Jumping ahead to the New Testament, in Luke 1, we read of two pregnant relatives visiting with each other. Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist, and Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus. Elizabeth says, “As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” Baby? The Greek word in Luke 1 is brephos, which means baby.

Luke 2:12 says: “The angels told the shepherds, ‘This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.’” The same word, brephos, is used there. Thus, whether in English or in Greek, the word baby is used for born and unborn alike.

The Bible also says that God has made human beings in His image. He has made us a “little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8:5). But many people today believe that we’re essentially “a little higher than the apes.” As the abortion ethic has spread in our culture, like a cancer, it has cheapened human life all the way around.

It’s time we follow the Biblical ethic and treat the unborn as we ourselves would want to be treated. Let them live.

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This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is the New York Times Magazine reporter who wrote the 1619 Project which is being used in many schools across the country. The 1619 Project postulates that America began in 1619, when the first black slaves were brought here—not 1776, when the founders declared independence.

Hannah-Jones made an historical faux pas in a tweet the other day, in which she said that the U.S. Civil War began in 1865. She later apologized, claiming that her tweet was just “poorly worded.” She said she knows the conflict that ultimately ended slavery in America began in 1861 and ended in 1865.

We all make mistakes, but I can’t help but feel her historical error reveals her lack of a true grasp of our history. We’re all entitled to our own opinions, but we’re not entitled to our own facts.

Hannah-Jones coincidentally doesn’t have a firm grasp on the concept of parental rights, either. She recently told Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught. I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science….I think we should leave that to the educators.”

Gary Bauer, former Under Secretary of Education for President Reagan, reacts to her remarks: “She admits that she’s not a professional educator. She’s right about that. She’s a professional left-wing agitator.”

Bauer adds, “Parents, policymakers and state legislators are right to ban the 1619 Project. It’s garbage! Numerous professional historians have thoroughly debunked it. It has no business in our schools. But she thinks banning her radical screed is a sign of oppression.”

Dr. Carol M. Swain is a prominent black scholar who has taught at Vanderbilt Law School and at Princeton. I spoke with her on my radio show about the ongoing battle over American history.

She told me the 1619 Project presents a “revisionist history. [It postulates that] the country is racist to the core. Black people built the country. Racism defines who we are as a nation.” Swain would remind us: “When slavery was introduced into America, we were British colonists.”

When I asked her about the idea of America being “systemically racist” today, she said that the passage of the Civil Rights laws in the 1960s, “really ended systemic racism under the law. And any racism that continues is not because of our national structure.”

It pains her to see the distortion of our history which is propagandizing whole new generations against America. She said, “I care about America. And I care about race relations, and anything [the Left] pushes takes us backwards.”

Swain also notes that this America-is-and-always-was-racist message has a “crippling” effect to underprivileged children because “they give up before they ever get started.” What a tragedy.

Nonetheless, the “historian” peddling this false narrative of American history is feted today by the left. Fox News notes that Hannah-Jones “was named to TIME’s list of the ‘100 most influential people’ in 2021.” That is scary since she peddles this false narrative that America began because of slavery.

America became America despite the evil practice of slavery. The American founders created the framework whereby slavery could one day be uprooted. And it was—at the cost of about 700,000 lives.

Civil rights leader Bob Woodson of the Woodson Center created the group 1776 Unites, which aims to address our history in an accurate way. He has recently compiled a book entitled, Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers.

I’ve interviewed Woodson on a couple of occasions. He told me in reference to the 1619 Project, “There are all kinds of historical inaccuracies. We at the Woodson center organized 23-plus scholars and activists to confront this 1619. We called ourselves the 1776 Unites.” Many of these scholars are African-American.

There is a battle over history today. But there are a few historical resources that I would point people to. I have a set of The Annals of America, which is a series of volumes put together by the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1976. The first three volumes in this 20-or so book set focus on the settling and the founding eras of America. It provides the text (and context) of the leading documents in American history. God and the Christian faith can be found all over in many of these original sources.

Meanwhile, Yale University has put such key documents on-line as part of their Avalon Project. This is much more trustworthy—since it’s the original sources—than revisionist claptrap sold to us today by the likes of Nikole Hannah-Jones.

There’s a battle over history in our time. And this battle has big implications as to what our nation was, is, and ever will be.

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Is the Biden administration governing in a way that takes into consideration the will of the American people? Based on his plummeting poll numbers and crude anti-Biden chants filling sports stadiums, the answer would seem to be no.

The recent defeat of the left at the polls in Virginia and elsewhere was a reminder of the pushback of “we the people.”

Some leftist pundits said Terry McAuliffe lost his Virginia gubernatorial campaign in 2021 because he didn’t campaign to the left enough. Others remarked it was the alleged “white supremacist” factor that gave conservatives the victory. Of course, they say this while ignoring the victory of the lieutenant governor-elect in Virginia, Winsome Sears. She is the first black person to win that position in that state.

[That] election was a reminder of the genius of the founding fathers to build into the system the opportunity for “we the people” to correct earlier political mistakes.

Conservative columnist Star Parker made a comment about this principle once in a television  interview with D. James Kennedy Ministries. She noted,

“What I’ve learned about this whole political arena is that the words of President Garfield are really true.  If you have recklessness and corruption in government, it’s because you tolerate it. Because of the beauty of the founding, they give us elections every two years, every four years, and every six years. So, in two years, we get to [elect Congress members] again; every four years, we get the president again; and every six years we get to determine who’s going to be our senate representation.”

Parker made this remark right after Biden’s victory about a year ago. She added,

“So, I’m just staying encouraged, because this moment in our history is only this moment in our history. History is long, and history is after us, but it’s also before us….We are now being tested…and it’s uncomfortable to have to get up and actually engage. But we’re called to do that. And we have that chance every two years, every four years, and every six years.”

Our political developments are a reminder of the American experiment created by the settlers and then the founders of America.

What is America in a nutshell? It is an experiment in self-government under God.

Some people want to remove the self-government part—but then they ultimately crown the government God. That scenario violates both parts of the phrase: self-government under God.

Others want to remove the God-part of the phrase. But when we have government without God, even self-government (without God), it all tends to break down because of the inherent sinfulness of humanity. John Adams famously said,

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

America’s founders designed things in such a way that we would be a self-governing people. The more people govern themselves the less outward government they need. The less they govern themselves, the more outward government is needed.

Knowing that we are all accountable before God, our founders understood the need for keeping one’s passions in check. As Thomas Jefferson noted,

“Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

Self-government under God leads to greater freedom. The converse is true—bigger government under man (not God) constricts our freedom.

Why has America been so blessed—despite all our flaws—lo, these many centuries? I believe that the  first steps to self-government under God in America go back to the positive influence of the Pilgrims. 400 years ago this autumn, the Pilgrims who settled Plymouth held their first Thanksgiving celebration.

Our recent Providence Forum documentary, THE PILGRIMS, makes the simple point that the Pilgrims just wanted to worship God according to their conscience. In pursuing this religious freedom in the New World, they helped cast a long and positive shadow on what would become the future nation.

As the hymn, “America the Beautiful,” points out, “O beautiful for pilgrim feet / Whose stern impassioned stress, / A thoroughfare for freedom beat / Across the wilderness!”

Ronald Reagan once observed,

“Here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights. We the people declared that government is created by the people for their own convenience. Government has no power except those voluntarily granted to it by we the people.”

The founding fathers took and extended the Pilgrims’ concept of liberty under God. Our 40^th president added, “Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.” And for that, all Americans should be full of thanksgiving.

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This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

With the possible exception of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists (Nazis), socialists and communists throughout the past century have all insisted that planetary socialism is needed.

They all agreed, too, on the chief weapon in their arsenal: government indoctrination posing as “education.” From the tyrants in Moscow and Beijing to the infamous Socialist International, the goal of planetary slavery in the form of a global socialist government has long been at the forefront of collectivist thinking. And schools have long been the means.

As the tyrants of the world have discovered by experience over more than a century, subduing people under collectivist rule for any length of time can be difficult—especially if the people can read and think, and if they know their history. But if the children can be brainwashed into collectivism early on in government schools, the process becomes much easier.

And so, socialists and communists from around the world joined forces after World War II to create the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to advance that agenda.

The primary goal of this new body was simple: control education around the world, weaponizing it to advance socialism, globalism, collectivism, and other dangerous “-isms” that threaten individual freedom and self-government.

It was obvious from the beginning, and remains obvious still today, that the views of UNESCO’s leaders are entirely incompatible with a free society. Unfortunately, UNESCO now plays a dominant role in public education worldwide.

Formed in 1945 under the guise of ending war by building “defenses of peace” in “the minds of men” through education, UNESCO worked to hijack control over public schools from the very start. Where no government schools existed yet, UNESCO used American and European taxpayer money to establish them, or to bribe governments to do it. And at every step in the process, these emerging indoctrination centers marketed as “educational” institutions worked fiendishly to brainwash children into collectivism and globalism.

The historical record on this global “education” organization is clear. In fact, it was so obviously dominated by communists, socialists, crackpots, totalitarians, and subversives that President Ronald Reagan ordered a U.S. government withdrawal from UNESCO in 1983. Britain left, too, for the same reason. After some alleged “reforms,” the U.S. government rejoined in 2002. But the Trump administration once again pulled out, along with Israel, in 2018.

When announcing the U.S. exit, the Reagan administration was blunt about the problems. Speaking at a press conference, State Department spokesman Alan Romberg said UNESCO exhibited “hostility toward the basic institutions of a free society, especially a free market and a free press.”

Indeed, it was promoting communism, humanism, and even a global “licensing” regime for journalists. Romberg also noted that the outfit “politicized virtually every subject it deals with.” But that was no surprise to anyone who had been paying attention.

Founded by Globalist-Collectivist Fanatics

The very first director-general of UNESCO, Julian Huxley, who also served as executive secretary of its Preparatory Commission, was a collectivist in every sense of the term. Like John Dewey, previously exposed in detail in this series and almost universally regarded as the architect of America’s public-education system, Huxley was also a “humanist.” So devoted was he, that he even served as the first president of the British Humanist Association, working to advance these ideas with Dewey, whose Humanist Manifesto was basically socialism and communism masquerading as a religion.

Huxley was also quick to fill the ranks of UNESCO with communists and socialists, as documented extensively in the book “Freedom On the Altar: The UN’s Crusade Against God & Family” by William Norman Grigg. For instance, the chief of the Soviet “Education Ministry” served as director of UNESCO’s department of secondary education. That trend continues to the present day, with myriad card-carrying members of the Communist Party and Socialist Party literally running the powerful global agency.

Even many of the Americans who worked under Huxley at UNESCO were communists. According to testimony by Chairman Pierce Gerety of the U.S. International Organizations Employees Loyalty Board, charged with preventing communist infiltration of U.S. delegations, UNESCO had a “clique” of Americans working in it “who placed the interests of the Communists and Communist ideology … above their own country.”

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee concluded in 1956 that UNESCO was “by far the worst,” from the standpoint of “disloyal” and “subversive” (communist) Americans in global organizations. That’s because communists recognized the importance of weaponizing education.

Like Hitler and his National Socialist barbarians, Huxley was also a fervent advocate of eugenics, the idea of improving humanity by removing “undesirables” from the racial gene pool. So passionate was Huxley about breeding genetically “superior” human beings and removing “degenerates”—something he compared on numerous occasions to improving the quality of livestock—that he actually led the British Eugenics Society. Prior to founding UNESCO, he served as vice president of the eugenics group. After his term at UNESCO, he became president of the eugenics organization.

UNESCO was one of the ways in which he hoped to promote eugenics. In his infamous 1946 policy document “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Philosophy,” written during preparatory negotiations, Huxley said one of the key tasks for the organization would actually be to promote “radical” eugenics.

“Even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable,” he said, explaining why UNESCO’s leadership has been so obsessed with breaking down children’s moral values.

Huxley was also open about the fact that UNESCO was working to brainwash children into accepting a socialistic world government. A fervent believer in Darwin’s theory of evolution, Huxley declared in “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Philosophy” that “political unification in some sort of world government” would even be “required” for humanity to “evolve” to the next level. “The world is in the process of becoming one,” Huxley said in the document. “A major aim of UNESCO must be to help in the speedy and satisfactory realization of this process.”

Just a few years after its founding, UNESCO was already pumping out propaganda aimed at undermining individual liberty, the family, and the nation-state in the minds of children. In a 10-part series of pamphlets headlined “Toward World Understanding,” for instance, the UN “education” agency called for using schools to promote the concept of “world citizenship.” As part of that, schools would have to “combat family attitudes” on everything from “nationalism” (patriotism) to religious beliefs on the nature of sin and reality.

When reading through UNESCO documents and the writings of its leading operatives, it becomes clear that the goals went beyond even just brainwashing children into dangerous ideologies. In fact, Huxley and his cohorts envisioned creating an entirely new system of secular morality divorced from all the major religions of the world.

Then the plan was to use government schools, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, behavior modification and conditioning, values clarification, indoctrination, and propaganda to replace the old values and systems of morality with the new. It was audacious and extreme. But it’s working.

Before and After Huxley, More Extremism

By the early 1960s, UNESCO had decided that traditional values on sexuality needed to be replaced too. And UNESCO-guided government schools around the world were to be the primary tool to bring about the sought-after change. This would help break down the nuclear family—crucial to any free and civilized society—by promoting promiscuity and the breakdown of sexual morality.

And so, in 1964, UNESCO sponsored a conference in Germany claiming that “sex education should begin at an early age.” Since then, UNESCO has been relentless in sexualizing children, a topic that will be addressed in an upcoming piece of this series.

The trends toward socialism and communism within UNESCO only got more and more extreme. In 1970, for instance, UNESCO hosted a symposium on mass-murdering Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin in Finland.

“Lenin was a man with a mind of great clarity and incisiveness,” declared then-UN boss U Thant at the event. “His ideals of peace and peaceful coexistence among states are in line with the aims of the U.N. Charter.” Apparently nobody at the summit objected to the idea that Lenin, one of the cruelest mass murderers to ever walk the planet, shared the same values as the UN and its “education” arm.

UNESCO’s affinity for socialist and communist leaders continues to this day. Right now, French Socialist Party member Audrey Azoulay, who boasted that she “grew up in a radical left-wing family,” is leading the outfit. Before that, she served as “culture minister” in the government of former French President François Hollande. Of course, Hollande was also a member of the French Socialist Party, which is itself a member of the Socialist International, the leading global alliance of Marxist, socialist, and communist parties, including many with the blood of countless innocents on their hands.

Before Azoulay, UNESCO was run by Irina Bokova, who has a long background and pedigree with the savage Bulgarian Communist Party. Trained in the Soviet regime’s KGB-controlled State Institute of International Relations, Bokova proudly served the mass-murdering communist Bulgarian regime before she and her party reinvented themselves as “socialists.”

She hoped to have communist Chinese operative Qian Tang take over her post after leaving, but was thwarted amid an avalanche of bad publicity in Western nations.

None of this should be a surprise, considering the history of UNESCO. In fact, socialists and subversives in America were instrumental in creating the global agency. As this series explained in part 8 last week, the National Education Association (NEA) was critical. Indeed, the NEA, which has been dominated by socialists and collectivists for at least a century, was openly promoting the creation of a planetary “board of education” in its publications, with the goal of creating what they described as a “world government.”

“World organization may have four branches which in practice have proved indispensable: The legislature, the judicial, the executive, and the educational,” wrote NEA “Journal” chief Joy Elmer Morgan in a December 1942 editorial headlined “The United Peoples of the World.” “To keep the peace and insure justice and opportunity we need certain agencies of world administration such as: A police force; a board of education,” and much more.

Morgan also called for the global government to have a world currency, a new calendar to replace the Christian calendar, a “basic” language, a “board of health,” a “planning board,” a “radio-television commission,” a board to oversee “economic matters,” and much more. If that sounds like a recipe for communism and totalitarian rule, that’s because it is.

For the next three years, the NEA Journal was filled with propaganda supporting a global board of education. And just a few short years after Morgan’s call for such an institution, with powerful support from the NEA and its international allies, UNESCO was born to serve precisely that purpose out of the ashes of the failed League of Nations.

“The organized teaching profession may well take hope and satisfaction from the achievements it has already made toward world government in its support of the United Nations and UNESCO,” gushed Morgan in December of 1946 in the NEA Journal, celebrating the union’s success. “It is ours to hold ever before the people the ideals and principles of world government until the practice can catch up with those ideals.”

UNESCO was literally created to facilitate the emergence of a collectivist global system, and its own leaders spoke openly about it.

Trump’s decision to leave UNESCO was helpful, but as this series will show in the weeks ahead, the danger from this subversive agency and the U.N. itself remain significant—especially when it comes to education. Its tentacles can now be found entangled in schools across the United States and the world. If freedom is going to survive, it’s imperative that Americans become educated on the dangerous agenda of this supposed U.N. “education” agency.

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This article was originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.

Written by Julie Tisdale

This January marked the 48^th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion across America. And recently, President Joe Biden rescinded the Mexico City Policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid to organizations that provide or promote abortion. Both serve as grim reminders of the millions of unborn children whose lives have been aborted – currently an estimated 44 million worldwide each year, with an annual average of more than 1.3 million in the U.S. since 1973.

The Mexico City Policy was first introduced by Ronald Reagan and prohibits federal funding to NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that provide abortions or abortion counseling, refer women for abortions, or advocate for expansion of abortion rights. Unfortunately, like many policies related to abortion, the Mexico City Policy has become highly partisan. Since its introduction in 1985, every Republican administration has upheld it, while every Democratic administration has rescinded it. It’s become one of the more predictable presidential actions anytime control of the White House shifts from one party to the other. President Biden’s action, then, is highly disappointing, but not surprising.

The Mexico City Policy matters because America, with our Judeo-Christian tradition, should be one of the world’s staunchest defenders of the vulnerable, and few people are more vulnerable than unmarried women and unborn children in many developing nations. By withholding federal dollars from NGOs that perform or promote abortion, we ensure that U.S. taxpayers aren’t paying for practices that take advantage of and abuse women, and that many of us find abhorrent. But we also send a message about our values, that we believe all life is important, no matter how marginalized. We affirm that all children are valuable because they are made in the image of God.

As people of faith who care about these issues, we should be vocal in our objection to the lifting of the Mexico City Policy and the use of our tax dollars to fund abortions around the globe. We should continue to advocate to our elected officials for the protection of vulnerable women and children. We should keep a close eye on the actions of the Biden administration and the 117^th Congress, who are expected to make other moves to lift restrictions on abortion domestically.

We should also back up our advocacy with other types of support. Vulnerable women consider abortion for a variety of reasons. They often lack the resources – money, jobs, housing, family and community support – that they need to parent well. Many face social stigmas associated with pregnancy outside of marriage. Sometimes there are serious health concerns that women feel unable to face. Too many women have been victims of sexual violence. All of those situations call for compassion, not condemnation.

Internationally, there are ministries working in many parts of the world to address these issues. If we’re going to tell women that they should choose life for their babies, then we also need to help them in the right way to make that choice. We can do that by supporting organizations like Food for the Hungry that provides education and job training, community development, and basic health care. We can do that through sponsorship programs like Compassion International that provides schooling for kids and food assistance to families. We can do that through working with groups like Potter’s House Association that addresses poverty’s root causes and helps to empower poor families in the developing world. There are many groups doing good work, and supporting them is a way we can show love in very practical ways to our neighbors around the world.

Domestically, we should also support pregnancy centers and homes for unwed mothers that help moms facing unplanned pregnancies… We should offer practical help with things like diapers and childcare to struggling moms in our community, either through our churches or through organizations like Safe Families for Children. We should consider adoption ourselves or support families in our churches who are adopting, providing homes for children whose parents chose life but are unable to parent. ­­­­And, addressing the heart of this situation for many, we need to support abstinence education that teaches that the wisest and healthiest choice is to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage.

And of course we should pray—for elected officials here and abroad, for organizations working with vulnerable and marginalized communities, for families in poverty, and for women facing unplanned pregnancies. We know that God cares about all women, and men, and children. As Christians, then, we should advocate for policy change, but we must also work to provide the support that women need to help them make a choice for life.

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This article was originally published by NC Family Policy Council.

An article written by freelance writer Erin O’Donnell and published in Harvard Magazine has justifiably gone viral among the diverse homeschooling communities operating in the United States—for the moment the freest nation in the world. The article, titled “The Risks of Homeschooling,” is accompanied by a cartoon illustration of half a dozen children romping joyfully outside while one child locked behind the prison bars of her own home looks forlornly and longingly out at them. One of the exterior walls of her home depicts books with the words “Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Bible” to ensure readers know that the prison guards are Christians.

O’Donnell’s article is far less important than the work of the woman about whom O’Donnell is writing: Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, a long-time opponent of home-schooling and proponent of feminism, abortion, and the near-absolute autonomy of children. Too few people, it seems, are reading Bartholet’s deeply troubling Arizona Law Review article “Homeschooling: Parent Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education & Protection” on which O’Donnell’s article is based and in which Bartholet lays bare her subversive plan to radically refashion American society according to the philosophical, political, and moral fever dreams of leftists everywhere. Bartholet issues an explicit call for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling. While Bartholet claims to be concerned about homeschooling in general, it’s clear from her article that she has a particular antipathy for Christian homeschoolers.

While Bartholet belches out some gaseous but tactically useful words of concern about potential abuse of children by fringy parents and cites some fringy anecdotes to becloud the issue, her real goal is not to end physical abuse but, rather, to undermine parental authority, increase the power of the state, and remake the Constitution into a living, breathing leftist phantasm.

Bartholet argues that “Appropriate education. … makes children aware of important cultural values. …  [H]omeschooling parents … are not likely to be capable of satisfying the democratic function.”

Homeschooling parents will likely be not only taken aback by that claim but also confused by it. What, they may wonder, are those “important cultural values” and what renders homeschooling parents incapable of satisfying the democratic function. While Bartholet doesn’t specifically identify the “important cultural values” on which the democratic function relies, it’s not difficult to infer what they are from oblique statements like this:

[T]he current homeschooling regime is based on a dangerous idea about parent rights. … [t]hat parents who are committed to beliefs and values counter to those of the larger society are entitled to bring their children up in isolation. … This legal claim is inconsistent with the child’s right to what has been called an “open future”—the right to exposure to alternative views and experiences essential for children to grow up to exercise meaningful choices about their own future views, religions, lifestyles, and work. … [E]xposure to the values of tolerance … has been seen as a primary goal of public education from its origins.

Since tolerance has been redefined by leftists to mean “affirming leftist sexuality dogma,” has “tolerance” really been the primary goal of public education from its origins?

To be clear that she wants the nation’s children to be indoctrinated with leftist sexuality dogma, Bartholet also criticizes families who want to teach their children “that people with nontraditional sexual orientations or gender identities should be ‘cured’ or condemned.”

Interestingly, here is what one of the studies Bartholet cites—the Cardus Education Survey—says about religious homeschoolers and the value of tolerance in the “democratic function”:

We might expect that the private and familial approach of education would fail to prepare students for effective participation in a democracy. But we don’t find any evidence for this. … [H]omeschoolers are more willing than public schoolers to extend freedom of speech to those who want to speak out against religion. And we don’t find any difference in the extent that homeschoolers favor greater tolerance for non-Christian religions in American society. Relatedly, some might expect that religious homeschoolers would socialize students into more authoritarian orientations to public life. However, on one of the measures often used to capture authoritarian orientations, respect for authority, we don’t find that homeschoolers are any more supportive than public schoolers are of the notion that one of the main problems in the US today is the lack of respect for authority. It seems that one of the strengths of homeschooling, which may be related to the counter-cultural minority status of homeschooling, is robust support for democratic principles of individual freedom and freedom of expression.

When she likes Cardus findings, Bartholet calls them “good social science.” When she dislikes them, Bartholet dismisses them as “advocacy.”

Repeatedly and ironically, Bartholet frets that,

homeschooled children miss out on exposure to others with different experiences and values. … A very large proportion of homeschooling parents are ideologically committed to isolating their children from the majority culture and indoctrinating them in views and values that are in serious conflict with that culture.

Never once does she mention the ideological monopoly on sexuality that perverts public education and results in pervasive censorship of resources that express dissenting views. Nor does she critically examine her assumption that the role of education is to affirm the views and values of “majority culture.” Did she hold that position in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s?

In her section on the “Child Maltreatment Piece of the Homeschooling Picture,” Bartholet writes that the “very isolation of so many homeschooling families puts children at risk. Child maltreatment takes place disproportionately in families cut off from the larger community.” First, Bartholet provides no evidence of the percentage of all homeschooling families or of religious homeschooling families that are “cut off from the larger community.” And then, as evidence for her implicit claim that homeschooling poses a danger to children, she cites in a footnote her own book written over two decades ago on systemic problems with the child welfare system.

While discussing her alleged fears regarding socialization, Bartholet says nothing about the serious socialization problems in public schools that range from drug and alcohol use; sexting; and social contagions related to eating disorders, suicide, cutting, and gender dysphoria.

Bartholet cites a study by the pro-regulation organization Homeschooling’s Invisible Children, which is an affiliate of pro-regulation organization Coalition for Responsible Home Education, as evidence that homeschooled children are at greater risk of death, but the study itself concludes that “This finding does not yet reach the threshold for statistical significance, so at this point we cannot say conclusively that homeschooled students die from child abuse and neglect at a higher rate as other students.”

Would increased regulation increase safety for children? Does regulation and oversight by Big Brother guarantee child safety? How does Bartholet account for the abuse of children in highly regulated government schools by school staff? As a result of that abuse, is she calling for a presumptive ban on public schools?

Bartholet has a game plan that she defends in part by employing the bandwagon fallacy, arguing that “Many countries ban homeschooling altogether, others fail to legally recognize it, and many impose significant requirements, often including required home visits and annual testing.”

Get with the European program, you philistines!

Bartholet believes that,

The homeschooling movement’s claim that the current regime is justified by absolute parent rights is morally wrong and inconsistent with growing recognition worldwide that child human rights have equal status with adult human rights. … The movement relies on adult freedom of religion rights to oppose regulation affecting religious homeschoolers. But such rights should not trump child rights to exposure to alternative views, enabling them to exercise meaningful future choice about their religion.

So, while Bartholet wants to prevent Christian parents from inculcating their own children with their religious worldview, she wants to ensure that government schools are allowed to inculcate other people’s children with only leftist sexual views and, in so doing, prevent those children from being able “to exercise meaningful future choice” about sexual matters.

Bartholet’s proposes a “new regime” for homeschooling that would require permission to homeschool, which would be granted under only very narrow circumstances, and would require that homeschooled students still attend government schools part-time:

The new regime should deny the right to homeschool, subject to carefully delineated exceptions for situations in which homeschooling is needed and appropriate. Parents should have a significant burden of justification for a requested exception. There is no other way to ensure that children receive an education or protection against maltreatment at all comparable to that provided to public school children. … When exceptions are granted, children should still be required to attend some courses and other programs at school.

Bartholet’s fervor for mandating that Christians teach leftist views to their own children extends to Christian private schools as well:

Some private schools pose problems of the same nature as homeschooling. Religious and other groups with views and values far outside the mainstream operate private schools with very little regulation ensuring that children receive … exposure to alternative perspectives.

Bartholet points to three obstacles to her plan to achieve absolute autonomy for children and destroy the family: The Homeschool Legal Defense Association, organized parents, and the U.S. Constitution. She attacks all three and offers a plan for circumventing the U.S. Constitution until such time as it can be changed.

She argues that “state constitutional provisions on education provide a strong basis for challenges to the homeschooling regime,” and that “State court decisions based on state constitutions can eventually provide evidence of the kind of national consensus that often helps the Supreme Court find new meaning in the Federal Constitution.”

In an email to this writer, constitutional attorney Joseph A. Morris, who served as assistant attorney general of the United States under President Ronald Reagan, writes that Bartholet’s screed is “one of [the left’s] most important and most powerful attacks, against the family. … Bartholet’s article is a call to arms to the left to attack parental authority by means of a frontal attack on home-schooling.”

Mr. Morris offered too the larger context from which Bartholet’s “call to arms” emerges and summarizes her dangerous strategic plan:

Since the time Marx published The Communist Manifesto, the left has understood that to prevail against the civilization of the West—made strong by the organic relationships we generally describe under the rubrics of faith and family—it must seize control of the minds of children at the earliest possible time. Parental control of schooling, either by supervising how others educate their children or by doing it themselves, is a major obstacle to this prime tyrannical goal.

Bartholet marshals every argument, including (1) the asserted inferiority of home-schooling against the governmental product; (2)  the asserted roots of the modern home-schooling movement in racism and religious benightedness; (3)  home-schooling as a mask for child abuse, including child sexual abuse; and similar horribles.

She seeks to awaken and mobilize every constituency that would join the battle against parental authority and home-schooling, including public sector (teachers’) unions, which have direct financial stakes in forcing children into government schools; child-protection advocates; opponents of racism, religion, particularity of every stripe, and binary sexual worldviews; and progressives in every category.

She is not content to argue that, in protecting parental authority and the rights of home-schoolers, American courts have lately misinterpreted and misapplied the provisions of the United States Constitution. Her enterprise is far more ambitious than that. She proposes to take on the evil United States Constitution itself, and to use home-schooling as a good battleground on which to launch that war.

The heart of her legal argument will be found on page 59:  “The U.S. Constitution with its negative rights structure is an anomaly, outdated and inadequate by the standards of the rest of the world.” In two or three rather clear paragraphs on that page she makes her case against the American constitutional tradition and sets her gunsights squarely on the Constitution itself, hoping to overturn it by using the case for “affirmative rights” of children to education free of parental domination (and thus, of course, open to domination by someone else!). To this end, then, she marches off to praise foreign constitutional traditions, even of other democracies, that Americans have rejected since founding modern constitutionalism in the 18th century.

This article was meant to be a clarion call to arms, seeking to mobilize her radical confreres in all Marxist domains and the progressive left in general. The article is being widely touted throughout the legal and academic communities.  It is already on the nightstands of teachers’ union presidents, leftist community organizers, mainstream media editorial writers, and crafty plaintiffs’ lawyers from coast to coast. Once the pandemic ends, the 2020 elections are held, and State legislatures convene for their 2021 sessions, leftist think tanks will spoon-feed cookie-cutter legislation to “progressive” State senators and representatives to begin the long project of abolishing home schooling, by overburdening it with regulation to the point that parents collapse of exhaustion, or by outright prohibition, if necessary.

The publication of Bartholet’s article in a law journal, even an obscure one, gives it a veneer of “mainstream” legal scholarship. I have no doubt that she will soon have a publisher for a full-length, less technical version of the article as a book meant for a wide general readership.

The drumbeat of anti-home-schooling editorials will begin in the editorial pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post within months, and certainly in time to attempt to set agendas across the land in the 2021 State legislative season.  

We should thank Erin O’Donnell for bringing to wider attention the insidious efforts of Ivory Tower leftist Bartholet to exploit the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions to ban homeschooling or regulate it into submission to leftist assumptions.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Harvard-Law-Professor-Wants-to-Ban-Homeschooling.mp3

Read more:

Public Schools Failing Illinois Children Academically

American Students Are Failing: You Can Thank Public Schools

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IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

Written by Dr. Paul Kengor

My family just visited Chocolate World at Hershey Park in Hershey, Pennsylvania—the so-called “sweetest place on earth.” For those unfamiliar, it’s a giant candy-land. The primary attraction is a tour where visitors ride in self-guided vehicles through an exhibit learning about the history of Hershey’s chocolate.

At the end of the tour stands a Hershey’s employee who hands everyone a complimentary chocolate bar. It’s a highlight. The last several times we’ve done the tour, the boy handing out chocolate has been a kid with Down Syndrome—a job he does without a hitch. It’s an added sweet thing that makes you smile. In fact, everyone smiles. I observe a mom who looks him in the eye and says very deliberately, “Thank you very much.” I generally say something like, “Thank you, sir!”

What strikes me about the moment, however, is something much less happy; nonetheless, I think it should be expressed, especially at this time of year, October, when America quietly marks Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and when many religious believers also happen to mark Respect Life Month.

While probably 80-90% of the people passing through that line at Hershey happily accept a chocolate bar from that Down Syndrome child (actually, the number is probably more like 100%), it’s tragic that upwards of 80-90% of women in America who receive a prenatal identification of a Down Syndrome child choose to abort. In Denmark, the rate is 98%. And in Iceland, officials assert that they have almost completely “eliminated” Down Syndrome.

“My understanding is that we have basically eradicated, almost, Down Syndrome from our society,” says Kari Stefansson, a geneticist in Iceland, “that there is hardly ever a child with Down Syndrome in Iceland anymore.”

How so? A magic pill? Surgery in the womb? Chromosomal engineering? No, they’ve done so by so thoroughly identifying Down Syndrome in utero, and creating a culture that embraces abortion, that Down Syndrome children are not born to begin with.

Only one or two Down Syndrome children are born per year in Iceland. Oftentimes, those one or two result from parents having received inaccurate pre-screenings.

“Babies with Down Syndrome are still being born in Iceland,” concedes the head of the nation’s leading Prenatal Diagnosis Unit. “We didn’t find them in our screening.” They’re the lucky ones. The others are aborted.

“We don’t look at abortion as a murder,” shrugs another “health” official in Iceland. “We look at it as a thing we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication … preventing suffering for the child and the family.”

Some solution, eh?

But what millions of Down Syndrome children like that boy at Chocolate World show us is that these children are not a thing to be ended. They are lives to be welcomed. And as anyone with a Down Syndrome child will tell you, they are happy. They are, literally, among the happiest people on the planet, bereft of the anxieties and complexities that afflict so many others.

One of my favorite testimonies to such human beings, and how they can bring out the best in us, is a letter that Ronald Reagan received from New York’s Cardinal Terence Cooke, which Reagan shared in a July 1987 talk to pro-life leaders. “I’d like to leave with you a quotation that means a great deal to me,” said Reagan. “These are the words of my friend, the late Terence Cardinal Cooke, of New York. ‘The gift of life, God’s special gift, is no less beautiful when it is accompanied by illness or weakness, hunger or poverty, mental or physical handicaps, loneliness or old age. Indeed, at these times, human life gains extra splendor as it requires our special care, concern, and reverence. It is in and through the weakest of human vessels that the Lord continues to reveal the power of His love.’”

Yes, the gift of life is God’s special gift, and it’s no less beautiful when it involves a Down Syndrome person. Quite the contrary, it’s in caring for such people that human life carries extra splendor and can bring out the best in us. Through these human vessels, we can mirror God’s love for His creatures.

I shared this message from Cooke-Reagan with a former student who is the proud, loving parent of a daughter with Down Syndrome. He smiled and said, “Ah, that’s so true. So true.”

It’s also so counter-cultural in modern Western society, from Iceland to the United States. Here in America, the largest abortion provider is Planned Parenthood, founded by Margaret Sanger, who began her work precisely for purposes of eugenics and “race improvement,” to rid America of what she termed “imbeciles” and “idiots” and “morons.” Sanger insisted that “the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.” In her 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger urged that “every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who in turn are just as certain to breed other defectives.”

For Sanger and many of her disciples, these weakest vessels (her “moron class”) were to be lamented, prevented, eliminated. Iceland is achieving Margaret Sanger’s dream.

Again, this month of October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and Respect Life Month. Unlike, say, Pride Month, every June, now unmistakable by the profusion of rainbow flags in every major city, few will see visible reminders of Down Syndrome Awareness Month. The month is not marked by any signature symbols, nor by the Down Syndrome children who were eliminated. Their lives were erased before they were born. We should take pride, however, in those who are here, and we should not fear or halt those yet to be born.

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This article was published by The Institute for Faith & Freedom.

It wasn’t so long ago that such a thing would be unthinkable: a standing ovation for abortion in the New York State Senate chamber with the passage of legislation permitting abortion for any reason up until the moment of birth. Already in New York City, one in three babies are aborted. The bill goes so far as to drop the requirement that doctors perform abortions and decriminalizes acts of violence that result in the deaths of unborn babies. In other words, if an unborn baby dies in the commission of an act of violence against his or her mother, the perpetrator will no longer be held criminally liable for the baby’s death.

So much for “safe, legal and rare.” With this patently facetious mantra, it took Democratic president Bill Clinton only two days into his presidency to reverse policies restricting abortion instituted by his Republican predecessors Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

Virtually all Democratic candidates in recent memory, from candidates for president on down, have campaigned on their commitment to preserving the legal right to kill the unborn. It wasn’t always this way. In 1937, in response to doctors performing abortions during the Great Depression, the National Federation of Catholic Physician’s Guild issued a statement condemning abortion. In those days the opponents of abortion were more likely to be Democratic than Republican. President Roosevelt’s New Deal drew considerable support from the Catholic Church’s desire to protect and nurture all life–including the unborn.

Some of the first vocal proponents of abortion were, surprisingly, Republicans. Moderate Republican governor Nelson Rockefeller shepherded through his state’s abortion reform law in 1970. In 1967 in California, that icon of conservatives, a then “moderate” Ronald Reagan, signed a similar bill loosening restrictions on abortion. But the issue was gaining steam, and by the 1970’s conservative Republicans, campaigning on opposition to abortion after the disastrous Roe vs. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1973, were able to wrest control of the GOP.

The battle lines were drawn in 1976 when the first presidential election since Roe vs. Wade brought the issue to the forefront. Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter, despite his Evangelical Christian bona fides, walked a tightrope trying to appeal to both sides. From then until the present, Democratic politicians have declared, despite massive evidence to the contrary, that they only wish to have abortion “safe, legal, and rare.” In 1976, the outrage against such duplicitous arguments produced a successful effort to end Medicaid funding for abortion with the Hyde Amendment, the first significant legislative victory for anti-abortion activists after Roe vs. Wade.

While abortion activists argue for unrestricted access to abortion throughout pregnancy, polls show that support for late-term abortions continues to decline, with a paltry 13 percent of Americans supporting abortion during the third trimester. The enthusiastic crowds at the annual March for Life are further evidence of the widespread desire to protect innocent human life in the womb. The most recent March for Life saw an unprecedented show of political firepower, with addresses by the president, vice-president and House speaker, all heralding the gains that the movement has made under the presidency of Donald Trump, who stated: “Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life.”

The new Democratic mantra: “While personally opposed to abortion, the U.S. Supreme Court is the law of the land, and thus I must respect Roe vs. Wade” is beginning to wear thin. As we lament the 45^th anniversary of that calamitous legal decision, the effect of this assertion wanes and the abortion issue is becoming an even more highly charged issue.

Democratic leaders have used the 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade to reiterate their support for legal abortion and launch new onerous legislation in Illinois and other states–hoping to expand so-called “reproductive rights” and access at the expense of innocent human lives. Now is the time for people of faith–Democrats and Republicans alike–to raise their voices in defense of the most vulnerable among us: the unborn.

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Why Socialism is bad for Christians, bad for America

We keep saying that socialism is bad, but our message isn’t being believed. Maybe we don’t fully believe it ourselves. So let’s dig deeper and understand just how bad, and how anti-Christian, socialism really is.

This article examines how American society changes when socialists get to run things. You’ll see, quoting the socialists themselves, how:

• Everyone is made paupers, on purpose.

• Society is reorganized, where children become wards of the state and families, even marriages, are discouraged.

• Christian worship and behavior get driven out of society. Those who persist can even be sent to sanitariums.

Once you’re alert to what socialism does to a society, you can begin to protect your community, your family, and yourself from the designs of these politicians and activists.

Dial it up to 11: look at fully-implemented socialist programs. Don’t think that socialist-leaning politicians are satisfied with the few initiatives they promote in their political campaigns. Once they get into power they tend to hire radical bureaucrats and aides, people who do the real work of implementing both announced and hidden socialist schemes. Think of the politician as the nose of the camel, poking into the tent.

This is why it is both fair and reasonable to associate any socialist-leaning politician or activist with the full socialist agenda. And this is why this article looks at the full effects of socialist policies on America.

As far as communist activists versus socialist ones, there is no practical difference between them. Both sides get their theories from Karl Marx. The communists are just emphasizing the supposed socialist endgame, evoking some future utopia.

Socialism in three minutes

To frame a discussion of socialism we need a definition. According to one dictionary, socialism is:

1.) a theory or system of social organization in which the means of production and distribution of goods are owned and controlled collectively or by the government.

2.) (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.[i]

This definition has these implications.

Individuals may not own any productive property. A socialist society will take over (that is, “steal”) farms, mines, factories, warehouses, and other things in the name of “the people.” But what about personal property? Will your house, or your jewelry, remain yours? That’s hard to say. Considering that socialist activists can’t even agree if you are allowed to own a bicycle, expect chaos to occur.[ii]

The government is the de-facto owner of practically everything. We all can’t visit that nice beach getaway at the same time. Nor can more than 100 million adults be bothered with the details of thousands of factories. This means that “the people” really means “the government.” It alone will own and manage all of these properties. You can already guess how well that will go.

Under socialism, the State puts itself in the place of God and says, “The earth is the State’s, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.”[iii]

The intent is to transform human character. Socialists don’t want control because of a mere power trip. They think that this actually improves the human condition, that individuals owning things is the root of all evils. Removing property ownership from us will somehow automatically transform us into a freely giving, naturally sharing, people.[iv] Society will be free from crime and strife, and there will be no need for police, army, legislators or bureaucrats.[v]

This goal of transforming humanity exposes the religious nature of socialism.[vi] It also helps explain why these activists are so devoted to their cause.

Socialism: Give me this day my daily bread

We already know that having private property is good with God.[vii] But socialists don’t care what God says. They aim to have everyone utterly dependent on the government, with all devoted to the common good. This is much like being utterly defeated by an invading army, except that we will voluntarily open the fortress gates and let them in.

Socialism must take away everything. The socialist state’s signature belief is simple, courtesy of Karl Marx:

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

A socialist government will certainly dispossess, that is “steal,” factories, farms, transportation systems, distribution networks, mines, warehouses, and much more from their current owners. These would theoretically be owned by “the people,” but everybody knows that the government becomes the true owner and manager.

They say that you can keep your personal property, but why believe them? It isn’t like they have morals against theft. If your house looks useful for a group home, or somebody else happens to need a bike at this moment,[ix] then why not take them away?

You will live from hand to mouth. Karl Marx describes the goal of socialist economic planning:

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”[x]

Each of us must apply ourselves for the common good. The children won’t be exempt from this work, according to modern activists:

“Furthermore, in communist society children will be given the freedom to work from a young age.” [xi]

In return we’re promised that the benevolent government will meet our needs. Understand, though, that they are the ones that decide what we need and get.

God help you if the government thinks your region needs to be taught a lesson. Stalin taught a lesson to the Ukrainians in 1933 and starved about 7,000,000 people.[xii] China is spying on its own people, creating a computerized “social ranking” that determines if individuals can acquire needed things.[xiii] History has a habit of repeating itself.

Welcome to slavery. If the government owns and controls everything, and you have nothing, then you’re completely dependent on its good will. Socialists would merely say that you’re a good citizen, a diligent supporter of the new socialist state. However, there are other words for this condition. From Herbert Spencer, a 19^th century “jack of all trades” intellectual:

Suppose that for a company we substitute the community; does it make any difference to the slave if the time he has to work for others is as great, and the time left for himself is as small, as before?

The essential question is—How much is he compelled to labour for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labour for his own benefit? The degree of his slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain; and it matters not whether his master is a single person or a society. If, without option, he has to labour for the society, and receives from the general stock such portion as the society awards him, he becomes a slave to the society.[xiv]

Socialism wastes away the spirit. When taken to its logical conclusion, the socialist state develops what amounts to a royal caste, which gets to run and enjoy the material largesse. The rest of us are working drones, without property or means of escape from our slavery. Some interesting, perhaps unexpected, things develop from this.

• The raison d’être of a socialist state is to overproduce everything for the people to luxuriate in. But that bounty will be hard to come by. First, socialists will never be as competent about running an economy as all of us are now collectively doing. Second, people will be a lot less productive when they can’t see the reward of hard work. Why work harder when there isn’t a commensurate reward for it?

• This listless work force will be paired with less innovation. Without a spur for being creative, technology will stagnate.

• Because it took away everything, the government becomes the only charity and relief-giver. Nobody else has anything to share. The futility of caring, but not being able to help, will result in callous, uncompassionate nation.

Socialism: The family is obsolete

According to socialists, taking our property isn’t enough. We must become an entirely different country, with new values and ideals. This is revealed in the words of Alexandra Kollontai, a champion of Marxist feminism and leader in family issues for Lenin’s Russia.

There is no escaping the fact: the old type of family has had its day. The family is withering away not because it is being forcibly destroyed by the state, but because the family is ceasing to be a necessity. The state does not need the family, because the domestic economy is no longer profitable: the family distracts the worker from more useful and productive labour. The members of the family do not need the family either, because the task of bringing up the children which was formerly theirs is passing more and more into the hands of the collective. In place of the old relationship between men and women, a new one is developing: a union of affection and comradeship, a union of two equal members of communist society, both of them free, both of them independent and both of them workers.[xv]

Why worry about what a Soviet functionary said a century ago? Because with socialism there is really nothing new. Neither does anything become obsolete. What has been tried before will come around again. Think of it as a warning from history. Her words summarize these intentions.

Break the bonds between parent and child. According to Kollontai,

The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.[xvi]

Defying our natural attachment to our children (Isaiah 49:15), parents are to be aloof towards them. A mother must birth the child, but must also then be willing to turn it over to state care. According to modern American socialists,

From a young age children will be given the choice to leave the family home and live in social homes, or on their own, with their food and home being guaranteed for free. In communism, children will be allowed to do anything which does not harm themselves or others; and they will be free to do more risky things from a much younger age than they are now, as soon as they demonstrate they have the rational capacity to take decisions. No arbitrary restrictions, indoctrination nor censorship would take place.[xvii]

In short, the parents will be robbed of the affection, and even of contact with, their own children. Their children will hardly know them.

Those aren’t your children any more. Revisiting what Kollontai wrote,

The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.[xviii]

The state doesn’t want the parents to be in the child raising process. The parents procreate, but the government provides the food, the clothes, the shelter, and the child’s education. The state will accommodate those “those parents who desire to participate in the education of their children,”[xix] but can you guess who will win out if the parents and state differ on what the child is learning.

The family must go because it resists the state. According to Kollontai, once the parents no longer provide for the child, nor teach the child, why is there a family at all?

What responsibilities are left to the parents, when they no longer have to take charge of upbringing and education?… The state does not need the family, because the domestic economy is no longer profitable: the family distracts the worker from more useful and productive labour.[xx]

The state’s problem with families is how they are loyal to themselves. Their youth learn to question the world around them according to their parents’ shaping. According to socialist activists, this is a major crime against humanity.

Today, the main backwards role the family plays is the oppression of children, who are subjected to a tyranny of the parents and denied the basic rights which should belong to every human, most importantly the right of free development of the personality.[xxi]

In the parents’ place, the state will impose a uniform shaping of personality. It prefers clones raised in a values factory.

A committed marital relationship isn’t needed. According to Kollontai, the bond between husband and wife must also change. Repeating her earlier quote:

The members of the family do not need the family either, because the task of bringing up the children which was formerly theirs is passing more and more into the hands of the collective. In place of the old relationship between men and women, a new one is developing: a union of affection and comradeship, a union of two equal members of communist society, both of them free, both of them independent and both of them workers.[xxii]

Relationships are encouraged, but committed ones are not.

Instead of the conjugal slavery of the past, communist society offers women and men a free union which is strong in the comradeship which inspired it. Once the conditions of labour have been transformed and the material security of the working women has increased, and once marriage such as the church used to perform it – this so-called indissoluble marriage which was at bottom merely a fraud – has given place to the free and honest union of men and women who are lovers and comrades, prostitution will disappear. This evil, which is a stain on humanity and the scourge of hungry working women, has its roots in commodity production and the institution of private property. Once these economic forms are superseded, the trade in women will automatically disappear. The women of the working class, therefore, need not worry over the fact that the family is doomed to disappear. They should, on the contrary, welcome the dawn of a new society which will liberate women from domestic servitude, lighten the burden of motherhood and finally put an end to the terrible curse of prostitution.[xxiii]

To clarify, the man and woman are to be free to create, and dissolve, relationships as their emotions and desires take them. Don’t let the possibility of children slow you down, for the state is there to cover for you. From Frederick Engels, one of Marx’s buddies:

In any case, therefore, the position of men will be very much altered. But the position of women, of all women, also undergoes significant change. With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not. This removes all the anxiety about the “consequences,” which today is the most essential social – moral as well as economic – factor that prevents a girl from giving herself completely to the man she loves. Will not that suffice to bring about the gradual growth of unconstrained sexual intercourse and with it a more tolerant public opinion in regard to a maiden’s honor and a woman’s shame? And, finally, have we not seen that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution are indeed contradictions, but inseparable contradictions, poles of the same state of society? Can prostitution disappear without dragging monogamy with it into the abyss?

Here a new element comes into play, an element which, at the time when monogamy was developing, existed at most in germ: individual sex-love.[xxiv]

In short, sex without consequences, the so-called “free love.” Soviet Russia had a bout with that.

As soon as the communists took power in 1917 in Russia, they began to systematically enact policies that followed the doctrines of Karl Marx. Their dream of a materialistic utopia could be attained “only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions,” as Marx had written in the “Communist Manifesto.” That included not only confiscating “means of production,” like factories and land, but also disintegrating the institution of the family. Communists saw commitment to family as an obstacle to people’s devotion to the pursuit of their utopia. Instead, people were to live in “free unions,” mating at will. [xxv]

The idea caught on too well, and the Soviets rapidly backtracked.

To reverse a society-wide disaster, by 1936 the Soviet Union abandoned the “free love” ideology and returned to pro-family policies, outlawing abortion, requiring substantial fees for a divorce, imposing higher penalties for abandoning a family, and encouraging women to have more children.

“The idea that the state would assume the functions of the family was abandoned,” Goldman wrote.[xxvi]

Socialism creates a selfish, shallow, mean-spirited society. People don’t raise children to get rich. With love they pour youth and fortune into their children, in hopes of them becoming wise, diligent, and compassionate adults.

However, the new socialist world will have none of that. As is their want, the state knows best, and how can mere untrained people be trusted to raise a baby? For example, the state of Oregon wants to come between the parents and the child:

If Oregon Governor Kate Brown has her way, the Beaver State will become the first to require universal home visits for newborn children in the care of their own parents…. While it’s not clear whether either of these programs would be mandatory, the use of the term “universal” suggests that they would. It’s frightening to think about what would happen to parents who refuse such visits.[xxvii]

If the socialists get to fulfill their plans, what are some consequences?

• Parents are taught to not have children, or not care about them if they “make a mistake.” The state orphanage will raise them. This option, and encouraging this option, reinforces selfishness.

• Young adults will stay lazy and careless. Many people don’t learn of diligence and hard work until they find themselves responsible to provide for those in a household.

• There isn’t a place to learn love, intimacy, compassion or commitment. If you’re having relationship difficulties, it is easy to run away. There isn’t a venue for character building. There also isn’t a way to build loyalty, a giving love. There is no need for honesty, and certainly no reason to be a hero.

• There will be even fewer children than now. If it is hard to birth children, and care for them through their infancy, and then soon enough the state grabs them, then what is the payoff? Why bother with the pain in the first place?

• The few children that there are will grow up hard-boiled. There will be nobody to comfort them about hurts or the unexpected. They’ll learn society’s rules from the gangs. They will be aloof. From what wellspring will come love or compassion?

Socialism: God can’t be dead, because He never existed at all

Socialists have the chutzpah to insist that the America you know, its institutions and values, must be completely overturned. They’ve reassured themselves that this a good thing because there is no God to tell them otherwise. They believe in Materialism, which is “…the belief that nothing exists apart from the material world (i.e. physical matter like the brain).”[xxviii] This claim, that there is nothing spiritual, and nothing intelligent, that could have created things, denies that any God exists.

A socialist government will have to deal with Christians as enemies, because we’d be condemning their policies from God’s word. It will want to shut us down. Early in his activist career, Vladimir Lenin lectured his fellow socialists on how socialists should treat religion.

So far as the party of the socialist proletariat is concerned, religion is not a private affair. Our Party is an association of class-conscious, advanced fighters for the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to lack of class-consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in the shape of religious beliefs. We demand complete disestablishment of the Church so as to be able to combat the religious fog with purely ideological and solely ideological weapons, by means of our press and by word of mouth. But we founded our association, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, precisely for such a struggle against every religious bamboozling of the workers. And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat.[xxix]

That is, while the government can claim be religiously neutral, socialist activists will care about you, your religious practices and attitudes, and make your life difficult until you get with the socialist program.

Believers to be called mentally ill. If there can be no God, then people who persist with religious beliefs are obviously mentally ill, living in a fantasy world. The technique of “psychiatric incarceration” was frequently used against dissidents by Soviet Russia, because you must be literally crazy to oppose the state.[xxx] Already people in America assert that religion is an illness,[xxxi] so how long before Christians are spirited away for “treatment?”

Public scorn and persecution for believers. People who demonstrate religious behavior will be noticed and punished for it. It’s even happening today, before your very eyes.

• Karen Pence, wife of the Vice President, is supposed to not support a Christian school because it offends someone.[xxxii] She should lose her Secret Service protection.[xxxiii] More to the point, religious people should stay out of politics.[xxxiv]

• Jack Phillips, cake designer, must give up his religious rights in order to make a living.[xxxv]

• A Ford employee gets fired for not toeing the line with the transgender movement.[xxxvi]

• A pizza parlor closes because of internet outrage over how they might handle catering to a “gay wedding.”[xxxvii]

The government doesn’t have to directly come for you. Rather, it can pretend to be officially neutral, all the while letting the “Party” do the dirty work (see Lenin’s quote, above).[xxxviii]

No soup for naughty people. Remember that Chinese social rating plan?[xxxix] It comes for you, too. Not attending enough socialist classes? Praying at meals? Being turned in by your children for talking about Jesus at home? Soon you’re known in the computers as a malcontent and can’t buy food, or transportation, as you might need.

Socialists are the generation that knew not God (Judges 2:10). The socialist leaders know of the Bible, but they won’t read it or obey it. They won’t let others know of it. They are condemned just as Jesus condemned the Pharisees (Matthew 23:13). They lead the land into great difficulties.

• As in the time of Josiah (2 Kings 22:8-13), the people won’t know what the word is, nor what the Bible is. Nobody will know the revealed concepts of right and wrong.

• Society will know no restraints on lust, self-centeredness selfishness and hard-heartedness. Without God there aren’t internal checks on behavior, and no character-building virtues. Everybody just looks out for Number One.

• No regard for life, other than as a resource to be used and disposed of.[xl] Likewise, no concept worth sweating for, crying over, even being a hero for.

One can only hope that such a society is so self-destructive that it quickly does so, that something better can rise in its place.

Your freedom: defend it now, before you lose it

We’ve seen some of what socialists intend to do to us:

• Society reduced to pauperism.

• Everyone on the government dole for food, clothing, housing.

• Family life broken, and the government directly interacting with children.

• Destruction of religious life, and religious rights.

• Creating a uncompassionate, sullen, ignorant generation.

The columnist Stella Morabito aptly sums this up this dismal condition.

So it goes: Socialism, when left to its own devices, irresistibly moves towards authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

As with all bait-and-switch scams, socialism promises you the world. That’s the only way it can get any traction before it delivers you to a virtual prison. It forces compliance and dependency in every aspect of life—housing, employment, medicine, mobility, education, even your creativity.

Oh, sure lots of clueless Che T-shirt-wearing kids will talk real savvy about it while they’re free. But once it’s got them for real, it will permeate their daily life both in body and mind. In this very respect, slavery is a very fitting description of socialism. All of socialism’s promises— equality, social justice, blah, blah, blah—amount to nothing but bait.

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself this: What could be more oppressive than living under a system run by a tiny clique of power-mongers who exert control over you through a morbidly obese machinery of bureaucrats? What could be more claustrophobic than having some apparatchik from that bloated bureaucracy telling you where you may live, what you are allowed to study, where you can travel, what you can express in art or writing, whether you may receive medicine for your illness, what you may eat, what you can say, and even to whom you may speak?[xli]

The bright spot here is that the socialists aren’t now in control. Not yet. There is still opportunity to set things right. Samuel Adams, from 1771, spoke encouragement to a different conflict. Yet, his words are timely today.

The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.

We have receiv’d them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas’d them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence.

It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.

Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath’d to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.[xlii]

— Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.

Let us remember that “if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.” It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

What is this defense we must take up? To preserve the republic, because a fully-developed socialism replaces our republic with a dictatorship. It’s true – ask anyone who lived through the years of Soviet Russia. And how do you, Mr. & Mrs. Average, accomplish such a feat? If we each do a few simple tasks, socialism has no place to run, and no way to keep a foothold in America.

First: Stop asking the government to give you something for free. Ronald Reagan said:

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.[xliii]

Government services are never free. Taxpayers pay a lot for them, usually more than if they were done by private contractors. And as for the “free” part, when government becomes the purveyor you pay plenty.

• You lose freedom of choice. When the government gets involved it muscles private providers out of the business. Obamacare, with its “you can keep your doctor” is a prominent example.[xliv]

• You get a planned social change. Government policies always favor the political and philosophical plans of its promoters. For example, Obamacare is intentionally a first step to a government single-payer health plan. You know, the rationed health care system that England and Canada are cursed with.[xlv]

You spent your childhood looking to grow up and start your own household, your own family. Are you to now accept socialism and become a child again, this time to an uncompassionate government father? No, plan on supporting yourself, and supporting your family. The “free” government services just plain cost too much.

Second: Learn to recognize the socialist lie. Learning all about socialism is a tedious task. Their writers are long-winded, and they repeat each other. Fortunately, you don’t need to immerse yourself in their sins. At a minimum, just remember this easy phrase: there is no such thing as a free lunch. This is key to discerning all sorts of socialist enticements. Let’s try it out.

• Everyone is entitled to health care.[xlvi] At some point, everyone needs health care services. And it is true that many people sometimes need care they can’t pay for, at least not right away. But inability to pay can be handled, and was handled, through built-in charity and existing health care insurance programs. Yet the government insists that they can provide all health care, to everyone, at no cost to you.Looking at this from the “no free lunch” viewpoint, when the government gets involved private parties must bow out. Health care gets more expensive, and yet less available. And without the spur of competition, and profits, health care research also dries up. The end result is rationed, low quality, medical care, with very few medical advances.

• Free college education.[xlvii] If a young person could attend college for free then they could get into life without having a shadow of tuition debt hanging over them. This is supposed to be a good thing for society.Let’s apply the “no free lunch” test to this. If the students don’t have to pay, then why should they pay attention to coursework? We’d get a lot of youth celebrating a taxpayer-funded Spring Break celebration for four years. Public colleges would get fat on guaranteed money. Private colleges would suffer from government-funded competition. And we’d still be sending our youth to guaranteed indoctrination. Finally, college diplomas will be as common as participation trophies, and be worth as much.

• Guaranteed minimum income.[xlviii] If someone knew that they’d have a certain minimum income per year, no matter what they did, then their lives would have stability. Paid for by the taxpayers, of course.The “no free lunch” analysis says that this is merely a giant welfare program, an expansion of the dole. People will be paid even more and need do nothing to get it. It is also the starting point for implementing a “guaranteed maximum income,” otherwise known as “to each according to his needs.”[xlix]

• Socialism means plenty for all.[l] The cry is “let’s put the socialists in charge and show those capitalists how production is really done!” The “no free lunch” test notes that this claim is strictly advertising, never proven. We’re asked to accept “a pig in a poke,” promises of never-realized government efficiency, while surrendering our property and our liberty. This is a very high cost for obtaining a few “free” goods.

Once you “learn the lingo,” you hear phrases like “community organizing,” “responsible corporations,”[li] and “social justice” and become alert to activists nearby, even if they happen to be wearing three-piece suits.

Third: Discover those politicians or activists that would take away your freedom, and shun them. Many politicians, like Senator Bernie Sanders, are openly socialist. Others hide their socialism, or are unaware their support for it, but still are willing to support an expanded government at the right opportunity. The problem is to discover these bad guys before they get into high-level positions.

It is important to identify these bad guys early. Once they’re in power, they attract aides who think like them, or worse, and install bureaucrats that share their goals. They get to begin implementing their socialist ways before you become aware of their real politics.

• Get personal. Research their social media, their degrees, their school yearbooks, their friends. If they boast of their Marxist creds, or “like” socialist celebrities and organizations, then you know their thinking and what they’ll favor in the future.

• Get in their faces. Haunt their town halls and campaign meetings. Repeat their words back to them, that the attendees learn the candidate’s true leanings. Make the other attendees feel uncomfortable to be associated with the candidate and his, or her, views. Why shouldn’t they be shamed for promoting our eventual enslaving? Who knows? Maybe they’re unaware of what socialism really means, and are willing to change.

The fight you’re in – the socialists have always been fighting it, generally unopposed – is known for a long time. Yet they win only when we don’t defend ourselves. Margaret Thatcher, who led Great Britain out of a great deal of socialist bondage, has this to say about liberty.

“Perhaps I can summarise it best by saying this—Nations that have pursued equality, like the Iron Curtain countries, I think have finished up with neither equality, nor liberty. Nations, which like us, in the past have pursued liberty, as a fundamental objective, extending it to all, have finished up with liberty, human dignity, and far fewer inequalities than other people.”

“[L]iberty is fundamental. Liberty, human dignity, a higher standard of living is fundamental. And, steadily, I think, people are beginning to realise that you don’t have those things unless you have a pretty large private enterprise sector. Any Iron Curtain country has neither liberty, nor a very high standard of living. The two things go, economic and political freedom, go together. I’ve been right in the forefront of saying that, here, in the States, and it’s very interesting to me now, to see a number of articles from people who are taking up the same theme. They are disturbed that Socialism is reducing liberty and freedom for ordinary people, and that’s really what matters.”[lii]

Footnotes

[i] socialism (n.d.), Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, 2010, https://www.thefreedictionary.com/socialism

[ii] https://libcom.org/forums/theory/there-any-private-property-under-socialismcommunism-22022012

[iii] McDurmon, Joel, God versus Socialism, The American Vision, April 24, 2015, https://americanvision.org/6459/god-versus-socialism/

A concise arraignment and judgment of socialism from God’s point of view.

[iv] Fairman, Glenn, Socialism as Religion, American Thinker, November 22, 2012, https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/11/socialism_as_religion.html

[v] “Criminal activity will be almost nonexistent since the catalysts for anti-social activity—injustice and inequality—will no longer exist.”, from https://www.allaboutworldview.org/marxist-law.htm

[vi] Perry, Oliver, Socialism is Also a Religion, Illinois Family Institute, September 21, 2018, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/uncategorized/socialism-is-also-a-religion/

[vii] Perry, Oliver, Patriarchy, Gender Roles and Marxism: An Educational Campaign to Destroy the Family, Illinois Family Institute, December 12, 2017, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/marriage/patriarchy-gender-roles-marxism-educational-campaign-destroy-family/

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

[ix] https://libcom.org/forums/theory/there-any-private-property-under-socialismcommunism-22022012

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

[xi] Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now!, March 26, 2017, https://destroycapitalismnow.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/abolish-the-family/

[xii] Genocide in the 20th Century: Stalin’s Forced Famine 1932-1933, The History Place, 2000, http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm

[xiii] Information Warfare: 1984 Becomes Real In 2024, Strategy Page, January 20, 2019, https://strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20190120.aspx

[xiv] Spencer, Herbert, The Man versus the State, with Six Essays on Government, Society and Freedom (LF ed.) [1884], found at Online Library of Liberty, https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/spencer-the-man-versus-the-state-with-six-essays-on-government-society-and-freedom-lf-ed

[xv] Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family, published in The Worker, 1920, collected in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, Allison & Busby, 1977, found at https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now!

[xviii] Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now!

[xxii] Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family

[xxiii] Ibid.

[xxiv] Engels, Frederick, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, II. The Family, 4. The Monogamous Family, Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume Three, October 1884, found at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm

[xxv] Svab, Petr, The Failed Soviet Experiment With ‘Free Love’, https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-failed-communist-experiment-with-free-love_2242535.html

[xxvi] Ibid.

[xxvii] Bolyard, Paula, Oregon Could Become the First State to Require In-Home Surveillance of Newborn Babies, PJ Media, January 15, 2019, https://pjmedia.com/trending/oregon-could-be-the-first-state-to-require-in-home-surveillance-of-newborn-babies/

[xxviii] McLeod, Saul, Mind Body Debate, 2007, found online at https://www.simplypsychology.org/mindbodydebate.html

[xxix] Lenin, V.I., Socialism and Religion, given December 3, 1905, from Lenin Collected Works, Volume 10, pp 83-87, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, found online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/03.htm

[xxx] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union

[xxxi] Cooper-White, Religion & Mental Health: New Study Links Belief In ‘Punitive God’ To Emotional Problems, Huffington Post, August 15, 2014, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/religion-mental-health-angry-god-brain_n_3097025.html

[xxxii] Haag, Matthew, Karen Pence Is Teaching at Christian School That Bars L.G.B.T. Students and Teachers, New York Times, January 16, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/us/politics/karen-pence-school-lgbt-ban.html

[xxxiii] Brest, Mike, CNN’S JOHN KING QUESTIONS IF KAREN PENCE DESERVES SECRET SERVICE PROTECTION, Daily Caller, January 18, 2019, https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/18/cnn-john-king-karen-pence-christian/

[xxxiv] Beeson, Katie, The Preacher’s Role, U.S. News and World Report, August 25, 2017, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-08-25/religious-leaders-should-stay-out-of-politics

[xxxv] Farris, Michael, Colorado’s continued campaign against Jack Phillips, Denver Post, August 19, 2018, https://www.denverpost.com/2018/08/19/colorados-against-masterpiece-cakeshop-jack-phillips/

[xxxvi] O’Neil, Tyler, Employee at Ford Office Fired After Disagreeing With Transgender Post, PJ Media, January 8, 2019, https://pjmedia.com/trending/engineer-at-ford-plant-fired-after-disagreeing-with-transgender-post/

[xxxvii] Buckley, Madeline, Threat tied to RFRA prompt Indiana pizzeria to close its doors, Indy Star, April 2, 2015, https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2015/04/02/threats-tied-rfra-prompt-indiana-pizzeria-close-doors/70847230/

[xxxviii] Lenin, V.I., Socialism and Religion

[xxxix] Information Warfare: 1984 Becomes Real In 2024, Strategy Page

[xl] Shaw, Adam, Virginia Gov. Northam faces backlash for comments on 3rd-trimester abortion bill: ‘Morally repugnant’, Fox News, January 30, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/va-gov-faces-backlash-for-comments-on-controversial-third-trimester-abortion-bill

[xli] Morabito, Stella, A Vote for Socialism Is A Vote For State Run Slavery, The Federalist, October 29, 2018, http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/29/vote-socialism-vote-state-run-slavery/

[xlii] Straub, Steve, Samuel Adams, The Liberties of Our Country Are Worth Defending, The Federalist Papers, July 3, 2012, https://thefederalistpapers.org/founders/samuel-adams/samuel-adams-the-liberties-of-our-country-are-worth-defending

[xliii] Reagan, Ronald, quote found online at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ronald_reagan_128358

[xliv] Bier, Jeryl, Obamacare Website No Longer Addresses ‘You Can Keep Your Doctor’, Weekly Standard, August 24, 2016, https://www.weeklystandard.com/jeryl-bier/obamacare-website-no-longer-addresses-you-can-keep-your-doctor

[xlv] Malcolm, Candace, The Pitfalls of Single-Payer Health Care: Canada’s Cautionary Tale, National Review, April 13, 2017, https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/04/canada-single-payer-health-care-system-failures-cautionary-tale/

[xlvi] Sanders, Senator Bernie, Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege, Huffington Post, July 9, 2009, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/health-care-is-a-right-no_b_212770.html

[xlvii] Norton, Vince, Why Free College is a Bad Idea, Norton|Norris Inc., March 16, 2018, https://nortonnorris.com/free-college-bad-idea/

[xlviii] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-income/california-city-fights-poverty-with-guaranteed-income-idUSKCN1J015D?mod=article_inline

[xlix] Marx, Karl, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Chapter 1, 1875

[l] Pankhurst, Sylvia, Socialism, Workers’ Dreadnought, July 28, 1923, found online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/pankhurst-sylvia/1923/socialism.htm

[li] Teivainen, Teivo, Milton Friedman’s Argument about Socialist Implications of Corporate Social Responsibility, March 9, 2013, https://teivo.net/2013/03/09/friedman/

[lii] Thatcher, Margaret, TV Interview for Thames TV This Week, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, February 5, 1976, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=102953

When you look at the history of Christianity in the West, it is largely defined (despite popular anti-Christian myth to the contrary) by Christians promoting social justice and charity for the poor and underprivileged. No other social group has been responsible for more positive social reform and improvements for the underprivileged, sick and downtrodden than Christians.

In early 19^th century, William Wilberforce, a Bible-believing Christian, campaigned his entire political career in the British Parliament for the abolition of slavery. Christian groups have founded scores of hospitals and medical clinics. According to the Catholic News Service, over 117,000 Catholic health care facilities exist around the world today, including hospitals, clinics and orphanages.

The abolitionist movement and the underground railroad were largely Christian movements. Quakers, Anabaptists and many ministers called for abolition and helped protect slaves as they made their way to Canada.

Christianity Supports the Common Good

Researchers who study philanthropy tell us: “Per capita, Americans voluntarily donate about seven times as much as continental Europeans. Even our cousins the Canadians give to charity at substantially lower rates, and at half the total volume of an American household. There are many reasons for this American distinction. Foremost is the fact that ours is the most religious nation in the industrial world. Religion motivates giving more than any other factor.”[i]

Consider the amazing history of the humanitarian “Salvation Army” around the world since 1865. They have reached millions and millions with practical help and the message of the Gospel. Their mission statement is: “The Salvation Army, an international movement, is an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church. Its message is based on the Bible. Its ministry is motivated by the love of God. Its mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination.” With a “heart to God, and a hand to man,” they model what true Christians have always sought to do throughout all time: Preach the Gospel and demonstrate God’s love to others.

One of the most revered Reformed American preachers of all time, Jonathan Edwards (a staunch theological conservative), advocated for radical, “liberal” generosity:

“It is the duty of the people of God to give bountifully for the aforesaid purpose. It is commanded once and again in the text, ‘Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy poor brother.’ Merely to give something is not sufficient. It answers not the rule, nor comes up to the holy command of God. But we must open our hand wide. What we give, considering our neighbor’s (needs), and our ability, should be such as may be called a liberal gift.”[ii]

What is Social Justice Theology?

With this background, it may surprise some when some Evangelicals refuse to support a popular fad within liberal church circles called, “Social Justice Theology.”

As with most things, it’s unfair to say that a complex ideology can be described in one mere sound-bite. However, in a nutshell, the primary objection that conservative Christians have with Social Justice Warriors (SJW) is their insistence that we should help people…with other people’s money! This is where the new postmodern, liberal version of Christianity parts from the historic Christian faith and practice.

Jesus taught his disciples to give generously, of their OWN money to the poor. SJW’s look to the civil government as the great savior of society. They advocate for socialistic programs that promote a forced redistribution of wealth through mandatory taxation and government-controlled welfare programs. It’s quite easy to be generous with money taken by force from others. The problem is, that isn’t truly loving.

Socialism is Not Love or Justice

Former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, once famously quipped:

“Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people.”[iii]

In the end, Socialism always results in people losing their freedoms, as the government increasingly takes control of the mean of production and distribution. Ronald Reagan once said (speaking of the hip new packaging of Socialism as a social kindness), “Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx — first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a Government being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his ‘State Socialism’ and way before him it was ‘benevolent monarchy.’”[iv]

If you want to know where this “benevolence” leads, it ends up with all citizens (except those in elite political — and corrupt economic — power), losing their liberty. History has played that story out again and again.

As true Conservatives, our desire is to see true justice and true charity. Neither of these thrive when people have their liberties decreased through an ever-expanding government monopoly. Nor does it thrive through the financial plundering (and soon disappearance) of the working middle class (because of excessive taxation for government welfare programs).

As Christians, we are for the Biblical and historic Christian church’s version of social justice (where people demonstrate kindness from uncoerced hearts). We are not for the new Neo-Marxist version of force and political aggression. The new Social Justice is simply Socialism, disguised under a thin “Christian” veneer. Advocates of true social justice will want nothing to do with it.

(For more study on this topic, I will refer you to the excellent essay, “Rendering Unto Caesar: Was Jesus A Socialist?” by Lawrence W. Reed.)

[i] https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/statistics/who-gives

[ii] http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/charity.htm

[iii] https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102953

[iv] The New York Times (27 October 1984)

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Federal judges sit on the bench for life and can either uphold the law or rule like tyrants. This puts judicial appointments right near the top of the most important things a president can do.

The newest U.S. Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch, has already shown what a difference a constitutionalist can make. But we need many more to counter the hundreds of Clinton, Obama and Jimmy Carter-appointed judges who issue zany rulings that override common sense and thwart democratically enacted popular will.

A case in point is U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, a 2010 Obama appointee. In March, he issued a temporary restraining order to keep Mississippi’s new, 15-week abortion ban from taking effect.

Judge Reeves buys into the “viability” definition of human life beginning at 23 weeks. By contrast, science has confirmed that from the moment of conception, an entirely unique human being with DNA from mother and father is alive and growing exponentially. By the eighth week, the baby has a beating heart, arms, legs, organs and human shape. The judge’s ruling implies that babies before the 23^rd week are something other than human, and so, practically speaking, ending their lives is no more consequential than getting rid of a mole or skin tag.

“If there is no viability the state has no real interest in telling a woman what to do with her body,” the judge said, deploying the abortion industry’s arbitrary rationale. 

In 2014, Judge Reeves struck down Mississippi’s marriage law, which voters had approved by 86 percent to 14 percent. Seeing nothing uniquely valuable in the male-female complementarity central to marriage, he likened resistance to racism. This would be news to black and Hispanic Mississippians who voted overwhelmingly to define marriage as between one man and one woman and reject any comparison to morally neutral racial characteristics.

Throughout his two terms, Barack Obama made good on his goal to stack the federal judiciary with leftwing ideologues like Judge Reeves. His 333 appointees (George W. Bush had 330, Bill Clinton 379 and Ronald Reagan 384), which included two U.S. Supreme Court justices, have been hard at work to “fundamentally transform” America.

One of the most dramatic turns was on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from nine federal district courts in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina and federal administrative agencies. In 2007, Republican appointees held a 7-5 majority. After six Obama appointments plus retirements, Democratic appointees now dominate 9-7 and have made their presence felt.

For example, in April 2016, a three-judge Fourth Circuit panel with two Obama appointees ruled 2 to 1 against school officials in Gloucester County, Va. that a girl identifying as a boy could use boys’ restrooms and the locker room.

Three months after the transgender ruling, a three-judge Fourth Circuit panel comprising two Obama appointees and a Clinton judge struck down North Carolina’s voter ID law on a 3-0 vote, accusing lawmakers of discriminatory intent. The Left has long argued absurdly that requiring voters to show some ID when voting is “racist.”

Another key Obama judicial takeover was at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, perhaps the second most influential court in the country because it hears cases involving federal power.

In 2008, conservatives had a 6-3 edge. Mr. Obama quickly made four appointments, flipping it to a 7-4 Democrat majority. In June 2016, an Obama appointee and a Clinton appointee on a three-judge D.C. appeals panel upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s power grab of the Internet in the name of “net neutrality.” The ruling was a reversal of the same court’s opinion in 2010, when it ruled unanimously that Congress never gave the FCC jurisdiction over the Internet.

The good news is that President Donald Trump understands the gravity of his opportunity. In 2017, he seated 12 appeals court judges, the most ever in the first year of a presidency. So far, he has seated 30 judges, including Justice Gorsuch, with 61 nominees in the pipeline, another 90 vacancies on top of that, and a likely U.S. Supreme Court appointment looming.

By all accounts, the newly robed Trump judges are restoring balance to the federal courts, which alarms Democrats like California U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who explained the stakes last December:

“The Supreme Court hears between 100 and 150 cases each year out of the more than 7,000 it’s asked to review. But in 2015 alone, more than 55,000 cases were filed in federal appeals courts. … In a way, circuit courts serve as the de facto Supreme Court to the vast majority of individuals who bring cases. They are the last word.”

When all is said and done, the last word on the Trump presidency may well be his counterrevolution to restore judicial integrity and the rule of law.

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This article was originally published at Townhall.com

The topic of identity politics and the widening opportunity it presents to conservatives continues to be a hot topic. Here are just three examples from recent op eds.

First up is Glenn Stanton writing at Public Discourse:

Is America Running Out of Patience with LGBT Activism?

From surprisingly fast and unexpected victory can come great hubris and the desire to utterly crush one’s opponents.

GLAAD, a leading gay advocacy outfit, released a new report showing that positive attitudes toward homosexuality and people who identify as LGBT have decreased a bit over the last few years. They sum up their findings rather starkly: “This year’s survey reflects a decline with people’s comfort year-over-year in every LGBTQ situation…”

The organization shows great concern over what they describe as the “significant decline in overall comfort and acceptance of LGBTQ people… This year the acceptance pendulum abruptly stopped and swung in the opposite direction.”

Why? Glenn Stanton answers by asking, “Could it be the LGBT community’s post-Obergefell actions and attitudes have not rested well with mainstream America?” Obergefell was the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage decision.

This is not an outlandish hypothesis. Even some major leaders in the LGBT community have suggested it. Andrew Sullivan, writing about the GLAAD report in New York magazine, warns that no one “seems to notice the profound shift in the tone and substance of advocacy for gay equality in recent years, and the radicalization of the movement’s ideology and rhetoric.” This aggressive radicalization “is surely having an impact,” he holds. How could it not, Sullivan asks, when his movement’s public rhetoric shifted from “live and let live” to the thunderously demonizing “agree with us in every regard or be a bigot”?

In typical fashion, unfortunately, too few social conservatives in political office or on the campaign trail seem to have the intellectual or moral wherewithal to take advantage of this development.

Stanton concludes his article with this:

Perhaps GLAAD and its allies should learn to practice what they preach: tolerance of other people’s beliefs and practices, even if they don’t fully understand them.

Writing at The Federalist, Chad Felix Greene wrote about the same GLAAD report:

Why Americans’ ‘Comfort Levels’ With LGBT People Dropped Last Year

LGBT organizations’ efforts to coerce, impose, and enforce their ideas appear to be resulting in the exact opposite of what they wish to achieve.

Greene writes that the context of the shift in opinion coincides with the LGBT focus on transgender advocacy, and that it “may have an impact on how average Americans view LGBT as a whole.”

The left has a strange sense of entitlement to not only acceptance from the larger society, but also a universal embrace of their ideology. It is not enough to hold legal and civil equality — society must celebrate them as well. As a result, their rhetoric and activism become ever more petty and vindictive and naturally, the majority they accuse becomes more resentful.

. . .

The LGBT movement is deeply reliant on social acceptance and approval and wishes to micromanage how we perceive them. But their efforts to coerce, impose and enforce radical policy and ideas onto the culture appear to be resulting in the exact opposite of what they wish to achieve.

Evidently it extends beyond American sentiment and the GLAAD report — here is Stefano Gennarini also writing at The Federalist:

How Their Refusal To Tolerate Dissent Is Creating A Global Backlash Against LGBT People

Promoting LGBT preferences abroad is more likely to cause backlash against the very people it is intended to help, besides harming our standing in the world, as recent events show.

Last December, Politico published a leaked memo by State Department senior aide Brian Hook, on the importance of realism in U.S. foreign policy… Hook argues that instead of seeking to impose human rights, democracy, and liberal values, the United States should lead by example and incentivize good behavior.

This return to pragmatism breaks with the Obama years’ rigid ideological dogmatism about human rights and clearly rattled the bureaucrats who leaked the memo. But his arguments cannot be easily shoved aside. Promoting a rigid leftist agenda internationally is a form of social engineering.

“Nowhere is the obtuseness of this idealistic approach more evident,” Greene writes, “than in U.S. promotion of LGBT policies abroad.”

Without applying any moral calculus, a realist approach to foreign affairs requires accepting that LGBT rights likely will never be accepted by all the people of the world, no matter how many millions of dollars we pour into foreign LGBT organizations.

“Sadly, extreme LGBT ideologues do not accept reality,” Greene writes, citing the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court case. Their goal, he writes, “domestically and globally, is to impose social acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism even on those unwilling to celebrate it.”

Greene notes that United Nations Delegates “routinely complained about the relentless LGBT pressure from the Obama administration,” and concludes:

The State Department should not be peddling LGBT fantasies as legitimate foreign policy. It should severely dial back the LGBT pressure and reset on more attainable and less controversial goals. All-out LGBT diplomacy was always a losing proposition. It should have never happened. Cleaning up this mess will require significant changes.

The moment we are in presents a great chance to win back some cultural ground. Will more social conservative elected officials and candidates find the courage to speak more boldly in defense of common sense and in opposition to the radical left-wing LGBT(etc.) agenda? The Leftist agenda could be imploding — now is the time for our leaders to lead on all the issues — including the social issues.

Read more:  Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias

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RESCHEDULED: IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!