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Ten Things That Are True About God Today

I recently wrote about the value of asking ourselves during challenging times the question “What is true about God right now?”

With all that’s going on in our nation these days, perhaps now would be a good time to reflect on that question in the context of current events.

Here are ten things that are true about God no matter what’s going on in the world around us.

#1: He’s Still in Control

Psalm 97:1: “The LORD reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.

No matter the outcome of an election, God is still on His throne and will never be voted out or removed from office!

#2: Jesus is Still the Same

Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.”

We don’t know how long it will be before Jesus returns, but whether He comes today or a hundred years from now—and no matter what happens in the meantime—Jesus is still the same and always will be.

#3: His Word is Still True

John 17:17b: “Thy Word is truth.”

We can still turn to Scripture for help, hope, and wisdom even in the midst of a culture that has lost its way. Our society may not be able to agree on the truth, politicians may stretch the truth, schools might not teach the truth, but we can still find the Truth in the Word of God!

#4: He Still Loves His Children

Romans 8:38-39: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

If none of those things can separate us from the love of God, I don’t think elections or worldwide pandemic can do it either!

#5: Jesus Still Saves

Romans 10:9: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

That was true when Paul wrote it, and it’s true today. God is still at work in the world to bring lost sinners to Christ.

#6: Jesus Has Overcome the World

John 16:33: “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

Jesus foretold it two thousand years ago: in the world, we’ll have trouble. But His encouragement can still give hope today: He has overcome the world!

#7: He Still Has a Plan for You

Psalm 37:23: “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.”

In times of upheaval, it’s good to know that God still orders our steps. His plans for us aren’t thrown off track based on the changing circumstances around us.

#8: He’s Still Working All Things Together for Good

Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.”

All things? That’s what Paul said! That’s a big promise that I have a hard time getting my head around, but we can believe by faith that it’s true.

#9: He’s Still Working to Sanctify His People

Philippians 1:6: “Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ . . .”

Our problems aren’t just “out there” in the world—we still have the problem of our own sin nature right inside us. Thankfully, God is still at work sanctifying His people and conforming us to the image of Christ. That’s great news!

#10: He Will Never Leave Us

Hebrews 13:5b: “for He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”

God is always with His people. What a promise! In good times and bad, in times of plenty and times of poverty, in times of peace and times of chaos, in times of sickness and times of health, in times of joy and times of sorrow, in times of peace and times of conflict, He is always there. Always.

There may be plenty of things to be concerned about in our world, but let’s not forget that we have hope beyond this world. Take a few moments to reflect on what is true about God today, and let Him encourage and strengthen your heart!


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The Importance of Today

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to be lazy sometimes?

Or distracted?

Or preoccupied with “important” things?

Or forgetful of our values and what really matters?

I was thinking about parenting recently, and it struck me that it’s easy to talk about how vitally important Christian parenting is in a broad, general sense, but then get lazy in our day-to-day practice.

In other words, it’s easy to say how important good parenting is, then act as if we don’t believe it.

My guess is that just about any sincere Christian parent will agree that being a good Dad or Mom is important to them. They’ll agree that a lack of good parenting hurts kids and is bad for our society as a whole. We would agree that we need a return to good, solid, Biblical parenting.

We agree with all of that in principle. Say any of those things from a pulpit in America and you’ll probably get some nods and “amens” from the congregation.

But none of those things matter only in a theoretical, big-picture sense. They matter in daily practice. And they matter today.

I want to focus on that word today.

See, God doesn’t want us to believe in the importance of our parental role only in theory. He wants us to act on that belief. He wants us put it into practice.

In other words, we need to believe not just in the vital importance of Christian parenting in general, but in the vital importance of being a good parent to our children today.

Not tomorrow.

Not next week.

Not sometime when it’s easier, simpler, or more convenient.

Today.

Because in a very real sense, today—this moment—is all I have.

Let me give you an analogy.

Many of us want to lose a few pounds. We know we should. We know it would do us good. We know it would improve our health and the quality of our lives. We see the importance. And so we decide to start dieting and exercising—tomorrow.

As I remember my mother once observing, however, we never really live a “tomorrow.” Tomorrow is just another today that hasn’t arrived yet. And when it gets here, it’s not going to feel any easier, simpler, or more convenient to make good choices than it does today.

We always have reasons (excuses?) for why today isn’t a good day to begin. I’m meeting friends for coffee. There’s leftover birthday cake on the counter. It’s supposed to rain so I can’t go for a walk. Tomorrow will be better.

If we’re not careful, we can take the same attitude with our parenting. We’ll be late if I take time to deal with the tantrum now. I’m too tired to sort out another squabble. I just need to finish sending this text.

We get lazy. Complacent. Distracted. Preoccupied. It’s not that we’ve stopped believing in the importance of being a good parent; we just don’t want to put in the effort to be a good parent right now.

I’m talking to myself here as well. How many times have I missed opportunities to be the Dad God wants me to be because I was too lazy, distracted, or preoccupied?

The truth is, we can’t embrace our calling tomorrow. We can only do it today. I can only be a good Dad moment by moment, decision by decision. If I lack the character to overcome my natural laziness and apathy and be the involved Dad God wants me to be, it’s not going to be magically easier tomorrow.

So how about it? Will you join me in asking God to help you believe in the vital importance of being a good parent today? And if—like me—you know you need to grow in your own character so you can be the Dad or Mom He wants you to be, will you join me in asking God to bring that change?

Because after all, Christian parenting is important.

And it’s important today.


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How May & Should Christians Speak About Evil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lewis continues, describing what education should do:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus said,

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

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

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

Paul said this about sinners,

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

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

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

Paul calls the Galatians, “foolish Galatians.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

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


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“Education” in a Pro-Propaganda Culture

On July 10 at Walled Lake Western High School in Michigan, popular teacher Justin Kucera who taught AP World History and coached varsity baseball and basketball and who by all accounts never brought his politics into his teaching or coaching was fired for tweeting, “I’m done being silent. Donald Trump is our president.” Meanwhile,

Paulette Loe, a now-retired Walled Lake Western teacher, encouraged students to read an article from the Atlantic about “how to beat Trump” while still employed. Nicole Estes, a kindergarten teacher in the district, called Trump a “sociopath” and a “narcissist” on Facebook in 2016 and is still employed at Keith Elementary School [also in Walled Lake Consolidated school district].

It should be unbelievable that a teacher could be fired from a government school for expressing his support for a sitting president while indoctrinators are free to bring their politics into the classroom regularly with no fear of retribution. Sadly, this is now the new normal.

Twelve years ago when I was a member of the English Department at Deerfield High School on Chicago’s North Shore working full-time in the writing center, teachers Elliott Hurtig and Jeff Berger-White were teaching the repugnant play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and Hurtig was also teaching the historically inaccurate Laramie Project, both plays of which espoused politically “progressive,” morally regressive views of homosexuality.

Setting aside the egregious obscenity in Angels in America, I discussed with a purportedly Catholic writing center colleague the ethical problem of teachers presenting resources from only one side of the debate on this most controversial cultural issue. I made the case that in an educational environment, teachers have an obligation to present resources from opposing voices as well. She responded that because she was absolutely sure opposing voices—that is, conservative voices—were wrong, they shouldn’t be allowed to be presented to students.

This is the kind of presumptuousness that has long poisoned education in America from elementary schools through colleges and universities, and has created a dissolute and destructive culture. Leftists demand absolute autonomy and arrogate to themselves the right to indoctrinate other people’s children because they have unilaterally concluded that their political and moral beliefs are objectively true, and opposing views are false. From kindergarten on up, leftists are indoctrinating other people’s children with their arguable leftist beliefs on homosexuality, opposite-sex impersonation, race, sex, American history, and presidential politics with no negative repercussions.

In his essay “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mills presciently warns about the very arrogance infecting today’s “educators” hell-bent on imposing their beliefs on vulnerable, ideologically malleable students:

The rules which obtain among themselves appear to them self-evident and self-justifying. … People are accustomed to believe, and have been encouraged in the belief …  that their feelings … are better than reasons, and render reasons unnecessary. The practical principle which guides them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct, is the feeling in each person’s mind that everybody should be required to act as he, and those with whom he sympathises, would like them to act. No one, indeed, acknowledges to himself that his standard of judgment is his own liking; but an opinion on a point of conduct, not supported by reasons, can only count as one person’s preference; and if the reasons, when given, are a mere appeal to a similar preference felt by other people, it is still only many people’s liking instead of one. … his own preference … is not only a perfectly satisfactory reason, but the only one he generally has for any of his notions of morality, taste, or propriety.

In a recent appearance on Mark Levin’s program Life, Liberty & Levin, Dr. John Ellis, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German Literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz, chairman of the California Association of Scholars, and author of Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities and The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done discussed the root cause of the cultural “shout downs” and riots:

The real problem is way behind the scenes in the classrooms, which the public never sees. … you’ve had a very long campaign of converting the universities into one party campuses. If you go back 50 years … there were 3 left-of-center professors to 2 right-of-center professors. … that’s consistent with a very healthy debate between the left and the right on campus. But by … 1999, a study shows 5 to 1. … By another five to six years later, it’s gone to 8 to 1, and the current studies … coming out now, it’s something like 13 to 1. There’s every reason to believe that that’s getting more extreme all the time because one of these studies looks to the junior ranks—assistant professors, associate professors—and found that the ratio there, left to right, is 48 to 1.  … The hiring being done now is at the rate of about 50 to 1. … So, you’re going to wind up with a complete monoculture within a short period of time. And a one-party campus is a campus that’s dysfunctional. …

The campus is so far left and so irrational now, and it’s leftism that is poisoning the culture. One profession after another is being essentially corrupted. … It’s totally poisoned journalism. It’s poisoned the teaching in the high schools because the high school teachers are all trained on college campuses

Ellis also suggests that parents who continue to send their children to colleges and universities that are in the business of poisoning culture are part of the problem:

Parents have a very fixed attitude, derived from the past, that sending their kids to college is a first rate way to launch them into a life and a career, and then there’s the fact that those great names of the institutions of higher learning of Harvard, Yale, Columbia … are very, very impressive. It casts a kind of spell over the public. They really cannot believe … that what was so glorious is now in fact no longer there.

Conservatives often ask what they can do to help restore health to our ailing culture. Here’s one thing they can do: Don’t send their children to colleges and universities that have “monocultures,” and through those monocultures, poison culture.

Stop being impressed by the worldly accolades poured on the polluted Ivies that now oppose their original mission statements, mottos, logos, and seals. Harvard long ago rejected its original mission statement:

Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.

The Princeton University shield once depicted an open Bible inscribed with “VET NOV TESTAMENTUM,” that signified the Old and New Testaments; a ribbon above the Bible that said, “VITAM MORTUIS REDDO,” which means, “I restore life to the dead”; and a ribbon below the shield with the words “DEI SUB NUMINE VIGET,” which mean, “Under God’s power she flourishes.” Such expressions today would be an embarrassment to the faculty and a trigger to most students.

Dartmouth College’s original motto was “VOX CLAMANTIS IN DESERTO,” which is translated as “A voice crying out in the wilderness,” an allusion to Scripture about preparing the world for Christ. Ironically, Dartmouth is now a cacophonous voice creating wilderness out of the semi-tamed culture Christianity created.

When teachers and college professors preach their leftist sermons in schools, not only do they indoctrinate, but they also leave dissenters at the mercy of social tyrants. In other words, government school preachers and college professors fuel bullying. In “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mills writes,

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first … chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.”

You know there’s a problem when a left-leaning site like the satirical website the Onion skewers the close-minded propaganda that leftists identify as “education” as it did in a post titled “College Encourages Lively Exchange of Idea”:

As an institution of higher learning, we recognize that it’s inevitable that certain contentious topics will come up from time to time, and when they do, we want to create an atmosphere where both students and faculty feel comfortable voicing a single homogeneous opinion. … Whether it’s a discussion of a national political issue or a concern here on campus, an open forum in which one argument is uniformly reinforced is crucial for maintaining the exceptional learning environment we have cultivated here.(emphasis added for fun).

Leftists are fond of saying that free speech does not guarantee freedom from consequences. They fail to acknowledge that if those consequences are loss of employment, First Amendment speech protections are, in effect, nullified. And we all know, leftists couldn’t care less.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Education-in-a-Pro-Propaganda-Culture_podcast_01.mp3


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