The iconic, famously woke ice cream company, Ben & Jerry’s, announced on Monday that it will no longer sell its product in “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” As the company explained, “We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).” However, they added, “Although Ben & Jerry’s will no longer be sold in the OPT, we will stay in Israel through a different arrangement.”

Put another way (and to read between the lines), “We will continue to sell our ice cream to the evil oppressors in their own apartheid state, one that was founded on genocide and ethnic cleansing and one that exists to this day on stolen Palestinian land. But we will not sell our ice cream to these evil oppressors who live in illegal settlements in other portions of equally stolen land.”

How righteous. How consistent. How just.

Had I not given up eating Ben & Jerry’s ice cream 7 years ago (for health reasons, along with lots of other foods I dropped), I would be losing my taste about now.

The responses to Ben & Jerry’s announcement have been as predictable as they have been telling.

From the Israeli side, the new prime minister Napthali Bennett said, “There are many ice cream brands, but only one Jewish state.”

Israelis can do without the ice cream but not without their state.

Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted, “Now we Israelis know which ice cream NOT to buy.”

Well said, sir.

From the anti-Israel side, the BDS movement tweeted, “Following years of #BDS campaigns @benandjerrys has announced it will end sales of its ice cream in Israel’s illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

We warmly welcome their decision but call on Ben & Jerry’s to end all operations in apartheid Israel.

#BDSsuccess”

In other words, “This is a good step in the right direction, but if you really want to do the right thing – and be assured we will keep pressuring you until you – you must stop doing any business with evil Israel.”

A fuller statement from the BDS movement (which stands for boycott, divestment, and sanctions) said this: “After years of pressure from activists, Ben & Jerry’s announced it will not renew its licensing agreement with its Israeli licensee, who is involved in selling the ice cream in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“The BDS movement welcomes Ben & Jerry’s decision as a decisive step towards ending the company’s complicity in Israel’s occupation and violations of Palestinian rights.

“Ben & Jerry’s, a leading socially responsible international company, is finally bringing its policy on Israel’s regime of oppression against Palestinians in line with its progressive positions on Black Lives Matter and other justice struggles. We hope Ben & Jerry’s has understood that, in harmony with its social justice commitments, there can be no business as usual with apartheid Israel.”

All, clear, BDS.

The Jewish people in Israel have created an apartheid state on stolen land. No business as usual with them. Not until they remove the protection barrier designed to keep out murderous terrorists. Not until they retreat to pre-1967 (= suicidal, indefensible borders). And not until they allow all Palestinian “refugees” to return to their homeland.

In other words, BDS will exist until Israel is no more, since the demands of the movement, if fully implemented, would result in the end of the Jewish state.

Why then is Ben & Jerry’s only pulling its ice cream from the “illegal settlements” rather than from the nation as a whole? Why allow those evil Israelis, those apartheid genocidal monsters, to enjoy these sumptuous treats in the luxury of their homes in West Jerusalem or their restaurants in Tel Aviv?

And if the ice cream will not be sold in the “OPT,” does that mean that the Palestinians living nearby will not be able to buy it either? Or that those of them whose jobs involve the distribution of the ice cream will be hurt economically by the boycott?

As for these last two questions, I’m simply putting them up for discussion, since the official announcement is lacking in details. But one thing is sure: a good case can be made for the fact that the BDS movement actually hurts the Palestinians more than it helps them. (For a strong, anti-BDS statement from Palestinian activist Bassam Eid, see here.)

Of course, there are other reasons not to be impressed with Ben & Jerry’s “righteous” stand, not the least of which is the company’s contractual agreement with Unilever.

As explained on the Washington Free Beacon, “The most common expression of anti-Semitism on the left is the application of double standards to Jews and the Jewish state.

“Look no further than Ben & Jerry’s partnership with Unilever, which acquired the ice cream company in 2000. There is no comparison between Israeli policy in the West Bank and the practices of the world’s greatest human rights abusers. Unilever happily does business everywhere from occupied Northern Cyprus to occupied Tibet and Xinjiang, home to Uyghur concentration camps. We won’t hold our breath for the ice cream boycott of China or Russia. But hey, there are no Jews in Xinjiang.”

Exactly.

As a lover of God and a lover of justice, I, too, want to see the fair and equal treatment of the Palestinians along with the safety and thriving of the Jewish state of Israel.

That’s why I so reject the incoherent and hypocritical policy decision of Ben & Jerry’s.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

My wife and I recently celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary.

I guess you could call that one of the first big milestones.

Compared to a lot of older folks, of course, we’re still just getting started—practically newlyweds. But still, a decade isn’t exactly nothing.

If I’ve learned anything in ten years of marriage (besides the fact that marriage is pretty awesome), it’s that my wife has to be one of the most patient, gracious people I’ve ever known. In our ten years together, she’s had to put up with a variety of challenges: long-term income irregularity, my struggles with some mental health issues, giving birth to five children, living in our “starter home” much longer than we intended (let’s see . . . ten years and counting!), and a variety of other challenges that could easily tax her patience.

But she never criticizes, belittles, or nags. She doesn’t cut me down or compare me to other husbands who may be more successful providers. And she’s never, ever made so much as the slightest hint that she’d be better off without me or that she could do better elsewhere. Despite the life struggles, I know she’s 100% committed to me and our marriage.

Now, let me pause for a moment lest I give the wrong impression. I don’t want to imply that our first ten years of marriage have been nothing but a long parade of problems. We’ve had lots of wonderful times and made some great memories. We’re happily married and very much in love.

Nor am I suggesting that the challenges we’ve faced are particularly unusual. On the whole, the difficulties we’ve encountered probably don’t fall much outside the mainstream. If we could all get together and swap stories, most of us would find that some couples have had an easier time than us, and some have had it harder—some a lot harder. We live in a fallen world and perfection isn’t to be had this side of eternity.

The point isn’t the difficulties themselves, but our response to them.

My wife could very easily have decided to give up at a variety of points in our marriage. When some mental health struggles of mine spun out of control several years ago and became a dominant force in our lives. When the family business I had been part of was struggling and finally shut down after fourteen years. When my next business venture didn’t get off the ground right away. These were stressful times and it would have been easy for her to say, “This isn’t what I signed up for. I want out.”

But she didn’t say that.

She stuck with me.

And I’m grateful for that. Truth be told, I’m not sure what would have become of me if she had ever suggested that our relationship was up for discussion when other parts of our lives were hard or uncertain.

I’m not here to claim vast expertise on the topic of marriage, but I do know that husbands and wives have an enormous ability to impact each other for good or bad. We can build each other up, or tear each other down. We can give each other a sense of security and belonging, or we can sow doubt and uncertainty. That’s a huge amount of influence to wield over another human being, but marriage, of course, is unique among all human relationships. It makes sense that the stakes would be unusually high.

Difficult times are unavoidable.* Life is a mixture of good and bad, ups and downs, highs and lows. These various situations can certainly impact our relationship with our spouse, but life is much better when we bring grace to the inevitable hard times.

I don’t know what the next ten years will bring. If our first ten are any guide, there will be a lot of good mixed up with a fair amount of challenge and a large dose of the unexpected. But whatever comes our way, we plan to stand by each other. And by God’s grace, we’ll be stronger and more in love than ever before.

*Please note that I’m not trying to give advice for tragic situations like abuse or infidelity. If that’s your situation, I suggest seeking counsel from wise believers who can give you Biblical and practical guidance on how to navigate your particular situation.

Three recent articles, one on NBC on June 15, one in Vanity Fair on June 16, and one on CNN on June 18, futilely attempt to recast conservative objections to the use of public schools to promote Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a “freakout,” “national panic,” “moral panic,” and “hysteria.” When leftists lack sound arguments, they resort to demagoguery. Any means to the ends of preventing conservatives from being as vocal as leftists in shaping culture are, in the narrow minds of leftists, justified.

This introductory sentence in the Vanity Fair article illuminates much of the problem with leftists when it comes to their use of public schools and funds to promote Critical Race Theory:

The right-wing freakout over critical race theory—or, at least what some Republican politicians and pundits think it is—has been playing out simultaneously in statehouses and TV studios, with lawmakers crafting bills to ban schools from teaching about systemic racism and conservative media figures fanning the flames.

Reading left-wing analyses of anything pertaining to race or sex requires a close look at every term to determine whether and how it’s been redefined. By “freakout” leftist writer Charlotte Klein, who writes for the appropriately named Vanity Fair Hive (lol), means the objections of “Republican politicians, pundits,” and “disgruntled parents” to the use of public schools to promote uncritically CRT and its many manifestations.

CNN’s Nicole Hemmer views opposition (what she calls “hysteria”)  to public school advocacy of assumptions derived from CRT as a red herring used by conservatives to divert attention away from the institutional racism poisoning America:

[A]rguing about critical race theory shifts the conversation away from the continued consequences of structural racism.

That conversation opens up challenging issues about equity, affirmative action, reparations, and government intervention to dismantle racist systems.

Both Klein and Hemmer assume that systemic/structural racism exists. And they assume the objections of conservatives to the promulgation of CRT in government schools are impelled by their desire to stop teaching about racism. In the view of leftists, the only way to think about race and racism is through a CRT-beclouded lens.

Moreover, neither Klein nor Hemmer acknowledges that CRT (and its many incarnations manufactured by racist “antiracism” profiteers) is a theory—a collection of arguable ideas—about race; race relations; oppression; “identity,” American history; equity; and equality (not to mention biological sex, homoerotic attraction, and cross-sex identification).

Leftists don’t want students to study assumptions derived from CRT along with critiques of CRT and resources that offer dissenting views on those topics. Leftists want CRT promoted uncritically and dissenting resources banned.

NBC slyly suggests that schools don’t even teach CRT, so what’s all the brouhaha about:

Virtually all school districts insist they are not teaching critical race theory, but many activists and parents have begun using it as a catch-all term to refer to what schools often call equity programs, teaching about racism or LGBTQ-inclusive policies.

Weeelll, that may be technically true. School administrators are gifted at the art of speaking technical truths with forked tongues. But take a look at the “equity” programs, racism teaching, and “LGBTQ-inclusive” programs. Then go read a primer on CRT. If I were a betting woman, I would bet you’d find some, shall we say, overlap.

NBC writes,

There’s no shortage of free publicity for the cause. The conservative focus on critical race theory is pervading right-wing news publications, like Fox News and Breitbart.

And CNN’s Nicole Hemmer writes that according to Media Matters,

Fox News … has mentioned critical race theory … nearly 1,300 times in the past three-and-a-half months.

What NBC failed to mention is the ample free publicity from the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, CNN, Daily Beast, Slate Magazine et al. for the arguable assumptions derived from Critical Race Theory and embedded in government schools, colleges and universities, corporate diversity re-education, and military diversity re-education.

And Hemmer failed to mention the countless times arguable assumptions derived from Critical Race Theory have been uncritically “mentioned” in resources used in classrooms and professional development training throughout the country over the past 30 years. Her failure to acknowledge what can only be described as decades-long CRT advocacy in government schools reveals that she is either profoundly ignorant or indefensibly deceitful.

NBC’s lengthy hit-job describes the epic plague that conservative opposition to CRT has–in the view of leftists–become:

The groups swarm school board meetings, inundate districts with time-consuming public records requests and file lawsuits and federal complaints alleging discrimination against white students.

Awww, poor wittle school districts having to endure swarms of locust-like conservatives attending board meetings and forcing districts to use valuable indoctrination time to reveal what goes on behind the scenes. Leftists are looking back wistfully at the good old days when conservatives had no idea what resources were used in classrooms and professional development—you know, the days before our re-educated youth looted and burned down our cities in racist, maskless, spittle-fueled insurrections.

NBC’s piece tries to recast long-overdue organized efforts by conservatives as some sort of secret nefarious plot to take over schools. But every strategy and tactic NBC attempts to besmirch has been used by leftists for decades. Leftists want to stop conservatives from doing exactly what leftists have been doing for decades and which enabled them to gain control of government schools. They desperately want to stop conservatives from organizing. They want to smear conservatives for using think tanks, political action groups, non-profits, and legal foundations to aid in the effort to restore pedagogical soundness to government schools.

But here’s what’s remarkable about the high dudgeon of leftists: This is their playbook.

The article mentions school board meetings attended by conservative “local residents, many without children in the district,” implying without asserting that it is illegitimate for local taxpayers without children currently attending schools to object to funding the promulgation of leftist ideas about race and sex.

What the NBC article didn’t mention is that for years leftists without children in district schools have both spoken at and served on school boards. And leftists have spoken at school board meetings who don’t even live in the district whose policies or curricula those leftists were addressing.

In a richly ironic statement cited by NBC, Sonja McKenzie, “a member of the board of directors of the National School Boards Action Center” claims to be “disturbed” by efforts of conservatives to oust leftist school board members:

The thing that disturbs me the most about politicizing school boards is there is no mention of kids. It’s not community centered, it’s centered on political thought and theory and things that don’t connect to education. 

Surely, she jests. Leftists have been colonizing and politicizing school boards, state boards of education, university teacher-training programs, teachers’ unions, the American Library Association, the Modern Language Association, and educational conferences for decades to ensure leftist political thought and theory on race and sexuality shape curricula, policy, practices, and professional development—all of which are intended to “connect” to the “education” of “kids.”

Just curious, how are the efforts of community members to oust leftists on school boards “not community centered”?

Here’s NBC’s objective reporting on two school board meetings in Nevada:

In Nevada, Washoe County’s school board halted in-person meetings in April, after residents filled a large auditorium and lobbed insults and threats of violence during the public comment portion. …

During the most recent meeting, which lasted 11 hours, speakers railed at school board members, calling them Marxists, racists, Nazis and child abusers, among other epithets.

Kristen De Haan, the mother of a senior in a district high school, said she attends the meetings in support of an expanded social justice curriculum and LGBTQ-inclusive sex education.

“I don’t always agree with the board by any stretch of the imagination,” De Haan, who is white, said. “But listening to the anger, and what truly feels like hatred … it’s really hard. I definitely get glares when I go up and speak.

What is notable about this “reporting,” is how different it is from reporting about school board meetings when conservatives who oppose, for example, co-ed locker rooms, obscene novels, or CRT, are routinely called racists and ignorant hateful bigots who support the bullying of children. No anger or hatred in those epithets, no siree. Just love, sweet love.

Notable too is missing context. Why might some community members call school board members Marxists, racists, or child abusers? Could it be that the accused school board members support the use of government funds to teach positively about controversial racist, Marxist CRT-infused ideas? Could it be that some parents view teaching children that their white skin makes them oppressors constitutes child abuse? Could it be that some parents view the sexual integration of children’s private spaces—also supported by CRT-infused organizations like BLM™—as child abuse?

Perhaps nothing better demonstrates both the arrogance and panic of leftists than the title of Charlotte Klein’s article: “The Right-Wing Meltdown Over Critical Race Theory is Spiraling Out of Control.”

To leftists, conservative efforts to stop the heretofore unobstructed ideological rampage of leftists through taxpayer-funded schools must be controlled. The Hive will leave no child’s mind unmolested by leftist dogma.

Leftists have thrown down the gauntlet. Take it up and slap ‘em—hard—figuratively speaking, of course.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/leftistsFreakOut_audio.mp3

The American birth rate has fallen for the sixth consecutive year in a row, with the lowest number of babies born since 1979.

This raises an interesting question. Which do people regret more, having or not having children? There is a large divide between, for example, feminists who see children as a prison sentence, and environmentalists who see childbearing as harming the planet, and parents, who wish they would or could have had even more children. These two views often bring about commentary on whether people should have fewer or more children, but such opinion often overlooks which choice people actually regret more.

While not designed to specifically look at this question, in March, a “U.S. Adult Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes Study,” of 1,518 US adults gave a glimpse at this question.

Among the respondents, ranging in age from 18 to 74, sixty-eight percent have at least one child. Another 19 percent have not had children nor want to have children, while the remaining 13 percent do not have children but still hope to. The fact that more than three-fourths of adults already have, or want to have, children, reveals a lot about the human biological desire for offspring.

The survey did not explicitly ask whether people regretted having or not having children. However, it did ask those with children to agree or disagree with the statement, “I wish I had had fewer children.” Just 14 percent of people with children agreed with the statement. Yet, it is not known whether they regret ever having children or just wish that they had fewer children. Conversely, when asked if they wished for the opposite if they agree that, “I wish I had or would still like to have more children,” 24 percent fall into the category of already having but still wanting more children.

Summarizing the study, to include the views of those without children, 29 percent of U.S. adults either do not want to have children or wish they had fewer. A third (34 percent) have children and are happy with the number they have. The largest group (37 percent) wish they had more, whether they are currently parents or not. In other words, those with no apparent regret or reluctance about having children outnumber the rest by more than 2 to 1.

To add to this, 88 percent of those surveyed agree that “having children is one of the most important things I have done.” This suggests the joy far outweighs any negatives in parenting.

(Note:  Many women or married couples do not have a realistic choice to parent due to infertility, divorce, singleness, or other issues.  Nothing stated above should ignore the emotional hurt many have with this issue. The research seems to focus on those who likely can have children and their choices in a culture that does not value family as it once did.)

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Our culture can’t seem to agree on what masculinity should look like, nor what it means to be a “real man.” Some promote the concept of “toxic masculinity” while others strongly condemn it. Who is right? Do men have a problem?

As always, the Bible gives us some answers.

Before we get to that, let’s acknowledge one point. Although I don’t like the term “toxic masculinity,” we need to recognize that sin perverts everything it touches. That includes masculinity. There are definitions and manifestations of masculinity in our culture today that are perverted by sin, yet some men unfortunately hold onto them. Whether it’s defining manhood based on sexual conquest, brute force, or an unquenchable lust for power, perversions of what it means to be a true man exist in our culture.

But acknowledging that basic truth doesn’t mean that all definitions or forms of masculinity are “toxic” or that we need a wholesale rejection of all traditional ideas of what it means to be a true man. What it does mean is that we need to make sure our ideas of manhood are aligned with the Bible rather than our culture.

So what does the Bible tell us and show us about being a true man?

Let’s first take a quick step back to the issue of sin and observe that any definition of masculinity that tries to encompass behavior or attitudes that the Bible would label as sinful can’t be right. Thus, pride, arrogance, selfishness, lack of self-control, a quick temper—these aren’t part of Biblical masculinity. Those are perversions. Jesus wasn’t an arrogant jerk or a macho chest-thumper—and we shouldn’t be either.

But let’s also acknowledge that God made men and women differently and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong or toxic about either true masculinity or femininity.

As we look at the Bible, we can learn both from the instructions and examples we see in its pages. Here are some qualities that I believe are important for a true man to display in his life.

Boldness

Jesus—our ultimate example—was bold. He wasn’t afraid to speak the truth to those in positions of power and influence. We would do well to follow his example. A true man needs to be willing to stand up for what’s right whether it’s easy or not. Besides Jesus, I’m also reminded of the examples of the Apostle Paul, David, Daniel, Elijah, and others who stood strong in the face of opposition in order to do what was right.

Boldness, however, should never become a cover for rudeness or a lack of love. We should speak the truth in love, as Paul reminds us in Ephesians 4:15, and our speech should always be with grace, as he instructs in Colossians 4:6. There are times we need to allow humility and love for others to smooth the rough edges off our boldness.

Loving

A man’s display of love may look different than a woman’s, and that’s fine. But the definition of love found in 1 Corinthians 13 applies to all believers, both men and women. There may not be one universal way to display love, but there are some universal things that love is and is not. True manliness isn’t at odds with love and all the qualities it contains.

Let’s also remember that displays of the more tender emotions aren’t incompatible with true manliness either. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, and we can certainly imagine strong emotions as He lamented over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37. The Psalms, many of them written by David—a real man if ever there was one—express plenty of emotion. Real men can be tender, compassionate, and yes, even emotional.

There are times, of course, that we need to put emotions aside and take care of the task at hand. But suppressing our emotions or our more tender side doesn’t need to be our constant condition. 

Self-Sacrificing

Once again we can turn to Jesus as our ultimate example. As the perfect display of self-sacrifice, He gave His life to pay for the sins of the world even though not a single one of us deserved it. In addition, Jesus pointed out to His disciples that he came to serve others, not for others to serve Him (Matthew 20:28). That’s our model.

True manliness isn’t about looking out for Number One. It’s not about getting our own way in a dog-eat-dog world. Instead, we should be looking out for the needs of others.

Faithful

A true man should be faithful. This should encompass everything from faithfulness to God, to faithfulness to his wife, to faithfulness to his own word and commitments. A man who can’t be trusted due to a lack of integrity and faithfulness isn’t practicing Biblical manhood. In fact, he may be violating some of the most basic principles of manliness by leaving those around him vulnerable and unprotected due to his unreliability.

Surrendered

Jesus came to do the will of His Father (John 6:38). He wasn’t here to advance His own agenda. In the same way, those of us who seek to be real men in the truest sense should be surrendered to the will of God. Our aim shouldn’t be to live for our own glory or advancement, but for the glory of God and the advancement of His kingdom.

Living for something greater than ourselves is something that I think most of us aspire to. That’s why we love the stories of heroic soldiers who give everything to defend home and country or protect their fellow soldiers. God gives us that opportunity to live for something bigger by calling us into His service.

Many More

We’ve only scratched the surface here, of course. There are many other qualities we could discuss: integrity, honesty, diligence, perseverance—the list could go on and on.

God wants real men to serve Him. Being a follower of Jesus doesn’t require us to become weaklings who leave masculinity behind. The Bible is full of stories of real men who did amazing things by the power of God. We can aspire to the same. But we’ll do best when we put aside what our culture says about masculinity—positive or negative—and embrace God’s vision for what it means to be a man.

Written by Patience Griswold

In a recent video from TakeCharge Minnesota, Rashad Turner, a former leader of Black Lives Matter explained why he left the organization. “I believed the organization stood for exactly what the name implies,” Turner said,

Black lives do matter. However, after a year on the inside, I learned they had little concern for rebuilding black families, and they cared even less about improving the quality of education for students in Minneapolis.

A year and a half after he founded the Saint Paul chapter of Black Lives Matter, Turner left and is now engaged in a movement that is seeking to rebuild families and expand access to quality education.

Until recently, Black Lives Matter stated on their website that one of their goals is to “disrupt the nuclear family.” This goal is incredibly harmful. The data shows that marriage reduces poverty in every racial demographic, and family breakdown consistently harms children and communities. Last year, World magazine’s Tim Lamer drew attention to the international data on fatherlessness, pointing out that throughout the world, fatherlessness hurts kids. Even if the economic disparities are removed, kids who grow up without a dad still face hurdles that their peers do not. No program can ever replace fathers.

Family breakdown has affected all demographics in the U.S. — currently, nearly a quarter of children in the U.S. do not have a father figure in the home and 50% of births occur outside of marriage for women under 30. The black community has been hit especially hard by this trend, with the rate of fatherlessness recently hitting 75%.  Take Charge MN has pointed out,

skin color is not the consistent variable for low performance… Fatherless homes is the consistent variable. The disparity is spreading in the Hispanic and White communities as well. It is prominent in the Black community because of a 50-year head start.

And as Take Charge MN has also noted, government policies that have disincentivized marriage have played a significant role in this trend.

In addition to Black Lives Matter’s ambivalence toward, and even promotion of family breakdown, Turner has pointed out the organization’s failure to pursue policies that expand access to quality education. Turner was raised by his grandparents after his father was shot and killed when he was two years old and his mother was no longer able to take care of him. They instilled in him a love of learning and emphasized the value of education. “I am living proof that no matter your start in life, quality education is a pathway to success,” he said. “I want the same success for our children and our communities.”

 In 2016, Turner left Black Lives Matter when the organization called for a moratorium on charter schools and an end to the “privatization of education.” Turner is an outspoken champion of school choice and has rightly pointed out that for students to succeed, families need to have the ability to put their children in educational settings that best fit their needs.

A student’s access to quality education should not be limited by their zip code, but without school choice, this is the reality for many students. Minneapolis-area schools have been failing black families for years, but when black children from those same Minneapolis neighborhoods attend private, faith-based schools, they score above the national average on exams. BLM’s 2016 decision to call for an end to the “privatization of education” put them at odds with student success.

Turner left Black Lives Matter because he saw how the organization’s goals were hurting, not helping the black community. In his words, “I was an insider in Black Lives Matter, and I learned the ugly truth.” It is impossible to help families and communities while encouraging family breakdown and shutting down educational opportunities.

This article was originally published by the Minnesota Family Council.

In the midst of our dangerous, steady descent into cultural madness, there are signs of encouragement as well. The morally-based, rationally-grounded resistance is rising. More and more people are saying enough is enough. Even the liberal media is giving voice to this dissent.

But this is what many of us have been expecting for years, knowing that the cultural radicals would overplay their hand. A push-back has been inevitable, as witnessed by these recent examples.

First, consider this op-ed published May 24 in USA Today by Chelsea Mitchell, titled, “I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it an unfair fight.”

She explains that, despite being ranked the fastest 55-meter female runner in her state, time after time, she has been losing big races. Why? It’s because she is now racing against biological males.

As she wrote, “I’ve lost four women’s state championship titles, two all-New England awards, and numerous other spots on the podium to transgender runners. I was bumped to third place in the 55-meter dash in 2019, behind two transgender runners. With every loss, it gets harder and harder to try again.”

This is as outrageous as it is unfair, and soon enough, it will reach the breaking point as the world’s best female athletes lose to mediocre male athletes who identify as female.

Will the next Olympic games (if they’re held soon, despite the COVID outbreak in Japan) mark that breaking point? Either way, it is coming.

Second, there are now so many young adults regretting their decision to become transgender that the last episode of Sixty Minutes devoted time to the subject of “detransitioning.”

In response to this powerful segment, one which goes against the normal, trans-celebratory mood of the liberal media, Keira Bell tweeted, “I stand behind you all, I could see how difficult that was for you all to speak on. Honest, raw and powerful. I can only hope that viewers will pay attention and read between the lines. Stop the lies.” (For Bell’s own moving story of detransitioning, see here.)

Naturally, trans-activists and their allies are upset with Sixty Minutes for airing these stories. But you can be sure of this: if there were not a lot of young people regretting the tragic, life-altering decisions they made, Sixty Minutes would not have offered such a sympathetic treatment.

In February of this year, Newsweek printed the gut-wrenching story of Scott Newgent, herself a female to male  (FTM) transgender. The op-ed was titled, “We Need Balance When It Comes To Gender Dysphoric Kids. I Would Know.”

Newgent ended the article with this powerful plea: “I am currently building a bipartisan army to protect our children, hold the medical industry accountable and educate our president and the rest of society about the dangers of transgender extremism. We must throw our differences aside for a moment; I promise you, once children are safe, we can resume fighting. But until children are safe, nothing else matters.”

Newgent and I have since interacted several times, since she is totally serious about working together across ideological lines for the good of these children. The diverse coalition is growing.

What is tragic, though, is that it took two years for Newgent to find a major, secular publication willing to carry her well-documented article. What is positive is that Newsweek did decide to publish it. These stories must be told and will be told. As a result, the push-back will only intensify.

Fourth, a retired professor has been removed from an American Psychological Association email discussion group after challenging the idea that there are more than two biological sexes.

As reported by College Fix, “John Staddon, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, was taken off the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology Division 6 listserv overseen by the APA. (This group is devoted to “studying the biology of behavior. Their focus is on behavior and its relation to perception, learning, memory, cognition, motivation, and emotion.”)

As Staddon explained, “This incident just illustrates the current inability of some scientific communities to tolerate dissent about issues related to sex and race. Psychology and sociology seem to be especially flawed in this respect.”

According to Staddon, what likely got him taken off was this post: “Hmm… Binary view of sex false? What is the evidence? Is there a Z chromosome?”

What? Only two biological sexes? Heresy! Ban him!

You can read Staddon’s actual exchange with the APA oversight for yourself and draw your own conclusions. The evidence is fairly straightforward, and the extreme bias against rational thinking is on full display.

But, as Ben Shapiro has often reminded us, facts don’t care about your feelings. And as Ryan Anderson and others have pointed out, biology is not bigotry. Reality cannot be denied for long.

Soon enough, more and more fair-minded Americans will say, “I did not sign up for this,” realizing that the slippery slope we warned about is much steeper than they realized.

They wanted to see equality and tolerance. Instead, they ended up with the destruction of the very foundations of our society, not to mention a new, oppressive Big Brother ruling the day.

So, the hour is urgent, and the sooner this cultural shift happens, the better. This is not a game we can afford to play for long.

At the same time, as our nation begins to regain its sanity, with God’s help, let it be with greater compassion for those who do struggle. Standing for what is right and true and best does not mean hating those who perceive things differently.

Let us, then, commit to doing the right thing, and at the same time, let us commit to showing mercy on those who are hurting. On with the truth-based, love-empowered cultural revolution.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

Written by Ryan Scott Bomberger

I’m half white and half black. My melanin doesn’t change my worth or my propensity to sin. Yet we live in a culture where we are told that our skin color confers upon us a status that is fixed, assigned by an elite class of humans who call themselves “scholars.” They want us to see everything through the broken lens of “race”—a human construct that has only served to dehumanize us throughout history. As a person with brown skin, I reject my assigned “status” and refuse to see everything through that distorted prism.

It leads to blindness.

Instead, I choose to see through the breakthrough filter of Scripture that opens our eyes to the truth of our identity, the perfect bond of love, our oneness through Christ, and the freedom of forgiveness. Our human condition, and the frailty that marks us, can never be illuminated by the darkness of tattered theories.

And that’s exactly what Critical Race Theory (CRT) is.

How can a theory derived from anti-Semites who were virulent racists hell-bent on abolishing the family and religion bring healing to the sin of racism? Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels saw Christianity as an impediment to their socialist ideology. How can a godless theory be used as an “analytical tool” to address issues needing a Godly solution?

I’m particularly irked by Christians who don’t want the struggle of wrestling with solutions but simply hop aboard the latest bandwagon sponsored by an insanely profitable victimhood industry. Racism is evil as is every other sin known to humankind. Sin diminishes and destroys us. It is a brokenness that cannot be remedied by more brokenness. But for many, the goal is not to offer a solution but a continual subscription.

Famed educator and leader Booker T. Washington, a former slave, explained this industry well on page 144 of his book “My Larger Education”:

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Today, that class of people is of varying hues and NY Times bestsellers capitalize on a form of activism that seeks to divide us, erase equality, and offer forced redistribution in the form of “equity”. Dr. Carol Swain, the brilliant former (black) professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, offers a helpful definition of Critical Race Theory:

“Critical race theory is an analytical framework to analyze institutions and culture. Its purpose is to divide the world into white oppressors and non-white victims. Instead of traditional forms of knowledge, it holds up personal narratives of marginalized minority “victim” groups (blacks, Hispanics, Asians) as evidence (considered irrefutably by its nature) of the dishonesty of their mostly white heterosexual oppressors.”

As someone who is “biracial,” I’m both the “oppressed” and the “oppressor.” Through no fault of my own, since no one controls the circumstances of his or her conception, I’m foisted into perpetual perplexity simply based on the sins or the sufferings of my lineage. Just to further illustrate the absurdity of this deeply prejudiced CRT approach to classification, I can simply highlight my own origin story. I was conceived in rape. So, am I responsible for my (black) biological father’s heinous act? Of course not. Interestingly, my white father—who chose to adopt and love ten children (of varying beautiful hues) that other men abandoned—is branded as part of the “white supremacist patriarchy” that is guilty of every negative outcome of black Americans. My dad, Henry Bomberger, recently passed away. The only legacy he left behind was one of unconditional love and self-sacrifice. His devotion to us proved that it’s not color that binds us; it’s love.

Despite Scripture’s insistence on the unity of believers and how Christ makes us one (Galatians 3:28), CRT diabolically separates us using the deeply flawed human construct of race. Ironically, in a culture that rejects the science of binary gender the progressive priests of CRT demand we can only be the “oppressed” or the “oppressors”. How nihilistic. It also preaches perpetual “guilt” and undeserved “privilege” based solely on one’s skin color.

Fake guilt will never erase real problems.

As Christians, we are all privileged to know and worship a God who could’ve merely condemned us but chose to redeem and rescue us (John 3:16-17). We are privileged to no longer be slaves to sin (Romans 6:6). We are privileged, through Christ’s strength, to be more than conquerors (Romans 8:37).

The Bible tells us to no longer conform to the pattern of this world in Romans 12:2, yet this is exactly what we do when we embrace the warped worldliness of CRT. Blame, Deceive, Repeat. This destructive pattern is recognizable throughout Scripture. Satan is the accuser, and he constantly coaxes us to embrace the lie instead of the Light.

CRT is a debilitating disease. Its malignancy in the body of Christ is spread by pastors who don’t believe the Word is enough. Some of these leaders apparently think the World has the answers to the temporal and eternal devastation of sin.

Mainstream media gave voice to a handful of black pastors who support using CRT and several who left a major denomination over it. Pastor Charlie Dates, of the Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago, exited the Southern Baptist Convention over SBC Seminary presidents’ rejection of Critical Race Theory, despite their clear denouncements of the sin of racism. I thoroughly agree with their statement. I’m not a Southern Baptist, so I have no interest in defending a denomination but merely want to uphold the Truth. Pastor Dates, who embraces unbiblical Black Liberation Theology and the Black Lives Matter movement, issued a defiant (and historically challenged) OpEd sharply condemning those who oppose CRT. He claims the rejection of CRT is due to “fear of liberalism.” I don’t fear liberalism. I wholeheartedly disagree with it because of its dependence on deception and division. Dates strangely then attributed certain social movements to “liberalism” (aka the Democrat Party) such as abolition, women’s suffrage, and civil rights. On all three, Republicans led the fight. But CRT and its advocates value feelings far more than facts.

I don’t think there’s any more eloquent a pastor speaking about cultural issues and Biblical authority than Pastor Voddie Baucham. As a black adoptive father, he embodies what many Christians should aspire toward—Godly character and critical thinking. He exposes and denounces CRT—not with emotionalism (like Pastor Charlie Dates) but with factualism.

Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw, credited as a co-founder of “Critical Race Theory” (of course, derived from Marxist Critical Theory) is a leading proponent of this poison. Never mind this accomplished black woman was the recipient of Ivy League education at Cornell and Harvard Law School. But, you know, systemic racism. She sees it in everything…well except the abortion industry which massively and disproportionately kills black lives. Crenshaw, who is radically pro-abortion, pro-LGBT, anti-nuclear family and denies the clearly evident consequences of fatherlessness, blames racism for everything that victimizes black people and other “marginalized” groups. Her organization, the African American Policy Council, is holding an event on April 29th featuring Crenshaw, Brad Sears (Executive Director of UCLA’s dubious and radically pro-LGBT The Williams Institute) and Planned Parenthood’s President, Alexis McGill Johnson, as keynote speakers.

But sure, let’s use Critical Race Theory—an ideology that is hostile to Christianity in countless ways—as a means by which Christians should see the world. CRT activists claim to fight for justice but regularly reject truth and morality. Psalm 89:14 says: “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne. Mercy and truth go before Your face.” You cannot have justice without mercy (the compassion or forgiveness toward an offender) and truth. To ignore this is to welcome a cancer instead of the cure.

This article was originally published at TheRadianceFoundation.org.

Join us in Collinsville on Saturday, May 22nd for an IFI Worldview Conference about CRT!

It’s a curious phenomenon that racists rarely see their own racism—the plank in their own eyes. That was true during the long, torturous days of slavery. It was true during the long torturous days of Jim Crow laws. It was true during the Civil Rights Movement. And it’s true now. No, it’s not conservatives who are spreading racism while remaining blithely blind to it. It’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robin DiAngelo, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and BLM who are spreading racism like manure throughout our cultural system. And it’s racist Ibram X. Kendi who sees himself as “anti-racist” and wrote,

The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

And like racists of yore, they profit handsomely from their efforts to encourage Americans to judge people by the color of their skin.

Leftist change-agents posing as “diversity educators” have captured the wills of corporate executives. Now Big Business is in the business of not only selling goods and services but also in repackaging racism as “antiracism” and browbeating employees into pretending they believe it.

Prior to capturing the wills of corporate execs—not known for their familiarity with or investment in arcane academic theories or for steely-spined moral integrity—leftist change-agents in sullied ivory towers captured the wills of teachers and administrators—not known for independent or “critical” thinking, or for commitments to diversity, inclusivity, or tolerance. In my experience, will-capturing of yellow-bellied teachers and administrators is an almost effortless task. All it takes is a bit of name-calling topped by a dollop of mockery, and the spineless among us bend like paper straws dipped in a Big Gulp.

Now states are requiring ongoing critical race theory (CRT) indoctrination for staff and faculty. Schools are forcing white students to engage in exercises designed to make them feel shame for their skin color (goodbye self-esteem movement).  And schools are racially segregating students in what are euphemistically called “affinity” groups. “Separate but equal” has returned with a vengeance thanks to vengefully regressive “progressives.”

That probably explains why administrators and faculty said next to nothing when the increasingly woke, decreasingly conservative evangelical Wheaton College held a racially segregated pre-graduation ceremony for colorful people on May 8, 2021, which was advertised as “RACIALIZED MINORITY RECOGNITION CEREMONY” (all caps in original) and held in the campus chapel. While it was created “Especially for undergraduate students, staff, and faculty of color,” the school provided “limited seating” for colorless people. I wonder if those seats were way in the back.

One Wheaton faculty member who likely loves Wheaton’s embrace of re-segregation is associate professor of philosophy and critical race theorist Nathan Cartagena who was recently interviewed for leftist Christian Jim Wallis’ Sojourners’ magazine. In this interview, Cartagena explained how he sussed out Wheaton’s friendliness to CRT by delivering a visiting lecture on controversial critical race theorist Tommy Curry during the interview process:

I wanted to see: Is this a place that would welcome such reflection? I received a warm welcome from the students, my department, etc., so I thought “OK, this is a place where I can do this.”

And by “do this,” Cartagena meant, not expose students to the debate on CRT, but to promote CRT:

I taught a reading group my first year at Wheaton that involved one of the important texts in the critical race theory movement, Faces at the Bottom of the Well by Derrick Bell. The following year I asked if I could teach a half-semester class on critical race theory—I got a full thumbs up.

Derrick Bell is another controversial figure in the critical race theory movement “whose writings on ‘critical race theory,’” conservative African American economist Thomas Sowell explains “promoted an extremist hostility to white people.”

Sowell described the academic transformation of Bell, attributing it largely to his scholarly inadequacy at Harvard:

As a full professor at Harvard Law, Derrick Bell was … surrounded by colleagues who were out of his league as academic scholars. What were his options at this point?

If he played it straight, he could not expect to command the respect of either the faculty or the students — or, more important, his own self-respect. …

Derrick Bell’s options were to be a nobody, living in the shadow of more accomplished legal scholars — or to go off on some wild tangent of his own, and appeal to a radical racial constituency on campus and beyond.

His writings showed clearly that the latter was the path he chose. His previous writings had been those of a sensible man saying sensible things about civil-rights issues that he understood from his years of experience as an attorney. But now he wrote all sorts of incoherent speculations and pronouncements, the main drift of which was that white people were the cause of black people’s problems.

Cartagena openly admits the cunning way he gets his students to accept CRT:

When I was first teaching on CRT, I was very explicit about when something was a CRT essay or quote. Now, one of the things I do is I present CRT literature without telling students that it’s CRT literature. Then I ask them what they think about it. The overwhelming response from the students is: “Wow, this essay is so rigorously researched, so clear, and so well-argued. Even if I don’t agree with every claim, I learned so much,” etc. Then, after they’ve sung a little praise song, [laughs] I tell them they’ve read a piece by a critical race theorist. You can see a look of disillusionment set in — this part gets really hard, if I’m honest. On the one hand, it’s a healthy destabilization. You’ve gotta remember that a lot of my students are racialized white folks. If they’re not now going to say that everything they just said was false, how do they reckon with believing there are things to learn from critical race theorists while knowing that the stakes, in some of these communities they’ve been a part of, are so high that to say such is to find themselves ostracized?

While this tactic appears to be a means to enable students to approach ideas objectively, with a mind decluttered and “decolonized” by the detritus of white privilege and systemic racism, educators know it’s a tactic that can be used to propagandize. Presenting students with an interpretive lens beclouded by jargon, ambiguous language, assumptions, and subtexts with which students have no familiarity doesn’t educate; it indoctrinates.

At least as offensive is Cartagena’s evident pleasure in “destabilizing” his students and emotionally manipulating them by manufacturing cognitive dissonance.

Enquiring donors and parents considering sending their children to Wheaton may want to know if Cartagena spends equal time having students study any of the many works of criticism of CRT like Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everyone or Voddie Baucham’s book Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe.

Anthony Esolen, professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, senior editor at Touchstone Magazine, and contributing editor at Crisis Magazine, opposes the teaching of CRT in schools:

The problem is that the schools shouldn’t be teaching any “theory” of human behavior at all, for two principal reasons. First, the students do not have anything close to the learning or the broad human experiences that would serve as evidence for checking the theory. For the same reason why it is pointless, and perhaps destructive, to teach literary theory to young people who have hardly begun to read literature at all, because they have no evidence or experience from which to judge the theory, and they will instead be prone to force what literature they do encounter to fit the predeterminations of the theory, so it is pointless, and probably destructive, to teach some theory of human behavior to children who need first to have the experiences, personal or vicarious, that the theory purports to explain.

But the second reason … is more grave. It is that human behavior does not admit of that kind of theory at all. I am not talking here about moral philosophy, or about anthropological observations, or about history and its more or less reliable guidelines. All “theories” of human behavior are necessarily ideological and reductive: whether it’s from Skinner or Marx, it doesn’t matter. The simplest things we do in a given day are steeped in so many motives, passions, thoughts, physical exigencies, and moral commitments, we dare not simply paste a label on them to explain them away and have done with them.

There are glimmers of hope that Americans on both the right and left may be approaching their limits with the racist “antiracism” movement. Virtually everyone on the right and increasing numbers of people on the left are fed up with the ubiquitous manifestations of critical race theory. Americans see CRT is corrosive and divisive. They see CRT is being used to control discourse. And they see that “progressives” are passing CRT off as inarguable, objective truth. “Progressives,” in control of most of the levers of power and influence, feel no obligation to debate CRT’s arguable assumptions. Nor will they acknowledge that CRT is arguable as they use hard-earned tax dollars to promulgate it in government schools. And hoo boy, are they promulgating.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CRT-at-Wheaton-College.mp3

Join us in Collinsville on Saturday, May 22nd for an IFI Worldview Conference about CRT!

What nation or organization do you suppose is attempting to amass the most influence and power in the world? Could it be China, Russia, North Korea, or the United Nations? Or might it be Planned Parenthood and the International Planned Parenthood Federation who are orchestrating the biggest power grab of all with their push for worldwide Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE)?

If you think this sounds like the wildest conspiracy theory ever, or even just a bit far-fetched, watch this video.

No longer content with merely aborting millions of babies every year, Planned Parenthood and IPPF are vigorously promoting an agenda that sexualizes children and threatens their health, champions dangerous gender ideology, subverts the parent-child relationship, and violates parental rights.

Parents and grandparents, this is a crisis! In order to protect our children and grandchildren, we must stand firmly against this destructive evil agenda. It is imperative that we know exactly which government schools, and unfortunately some private schools, have adopted CSE and are brainwashing K-12^th grade students. Watching this video documentary by Family Watch International is a good first step.

**View Discretion Advised**

Secondly, legislation pending in Springfield (SB 818) which would  require every school-age child in Illinois public and private schools (including homeschools) to be introduced to homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation through mandatory “comprehensive sex ed.”

Yes, lawmakers doing Planned Parenthood’s bidding want to expand “comprehensive” sexuality indoctrination, which currently starts at sixth grade, to start in kindergarten. Laurie Higgins wrote about these bills back in February. If passed these proposals “will enable leftists to reach deeper into the hearts and minds of impressionable children to shape their feelings and beliefs about sexuality under the viperish guise of protecting children.” Read more HERE and please take action to speak out!

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state lawmakers to ask them to vote against SB 818. This radical CSE bill is heartily endorsed by Planned Parenthood of Illinois and by Illinois’ premiere “LBGT” activist organization, Equality Illinois, which should tell you everything you need to know.

Shame on the lawmakers and schools that are willingly promoting this perverse comprehensive sexuality education on other people’s children! Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

More info:

Stop CSE Tools & Resources

Sign the Online Petition

Please consider supporting the good work of Illinois Family Institute.

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

The dust that racist bullies tried to kick in the face of the honorable U.S. Senator Tim Scott for his crime of delivering a far superior speech in response to Biden’s lackluster recitation before a sparsely attended joint session of Congress has not quite settled.

In addition to delivering a poignant, inspiring speech, Sen. Scott committed the crime of rejecting the dogma spewed by leftists who detest tolerance, inclusivity, and free-thinking—especially from blacks whom they desperately need to keep chained to the Democrat Party.

In order to malign Sen. Scott, MSNBC’s oft-deceitful Joy Reid had to misrepresent what he said. In a scornful tone, she imitated Scott, saying, “This isn’t a racist country. There’s no racism here.”

The first problem is Sen. Scott never said, “There’s no racism here.” He said America is not a racist country—big difference that apparently escaped Reid.

America is constituted and defined centrally by the principles delineated in our founding documents—documents which assume the existence of God–and Americans can be justifiably evaluated in terms of how they align with those principles. The Left is now moving America at a precipitous pace away from the Constitution and God and toward racism and other forms of oppression.

Since there are racists in every country in the world, and racist acts—including speech acts—are committed in every country in the world, does Reid believe every country in the world is racist?

There are liars in this country (including at MSNBC and CNN) and every other country. Does that, in Reid’s view, make America and every other country lying countries? In Reid’s view, are MSNBC and CNN lying companies?

There are lazy people in this and every other country. Does that make America and every other country lazy countries?

There are egregiously selfish people in this and every other country. Does that make America and every other country egregiously selfish countries?

There are lawless anarchists who loot and burn private businesses in America. Is America, therefore, a lawless, anarchical country?

Joe Biden said America is not a racist country, and Kamala Harris said Americans are not racists. In Reid’s view, are they racists?

“Progressives” have spewed virulently racist comments at Sen. Scott in the hours and days since his response. In Reid’s view, is “progressivism” racist?

Not to be outdone by Reid in the creepy racism department, MSNBC host Tiffany Cross described the “inside” of Sen. Scott’s head as “hollow,” asserting that he represents “no one but the sleepy, slow-witted sufferers of Stockholm syndrome who get elevated to prominence for repeating a false narrative about this country that makes conservative white people feel comfortable.” Cross called him Mitch McConnell’s “tap dancer,” and a “token” who is “thirsty for white approval.”

That’s rhetoric that would make a KKK grand wizard smile.

Cross claimed that when blacks speak “an uncomfortable truth, like Nikole Hannah-Jones [author of the 1619 Project], the party that Scott claims is not racist gets big mad and tries to silence you.” Her evidence for the outlandish claim that Republicans try to silence black “progressives” was that “Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell asked Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to scrap teaching of the 1619 Project.” Perfect encapsulation of the “progressive” belief that their freedom to do (or have) anything requires government subsidization.

Not using tax dollars or providing federal support for a particular curriculum does not constitute silencing it. And Republicans don’t object to the 1619 Project being taught in government schools because it articulates “uncomfortable” truths. They object to it because it’s a biased load of propaganda that many historians—including historians of color—find historically inaccurate.

While we digest the unsavory tripe that racist “progressives” are force-feeding us, trying to gaslight Americans into believing the freest, least racist country in the history of the world is “systemically racist,” let’s ruminate on a few questions.

Which political party supports the sale and purchase of humans (or genetic material to create humans)?

Which party separates children from mothers or fathers?

Which party declares some humans to be non-persons?

Which party denies children the freedom to go to good schools?

Which party tries to command persons of color what to think and say?

Which party is obsessed with skin color, averring that skin color matters more than character?

Are “progressives” like Reid and Cross concerned about the disproportionate number of black babies being slaughtered in their mothers’ wombs every year? Black Arizona State Representative Walt Blackman sure is:

Abortion impacts African Americans at a higher rate than any other population group. In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released an Abortion Surveillance Report. According to that report, black women make up 14 percent of the childbearing population. Yet, 36 percent of all abortions were obtained by black women. At a ratio of 474 abortions per 1,000 live births, black women have the highest ratio of any group in the country. …

A study by Protecting Black Lives, in 2012, found that 79 percent of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of minority communities.

In the past, we criticized the tobacco industry for targeting young people with their advertising. Recently, the nicotine vape industry has been criticized for similar practices. The prevalence of abortion providers in African American and Hispanic neighborhoods indicates the abortion industry is targeting too. It smacks of the eugenics-linked past of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and her views of contraception and abortion as ways of diminishing the black population.

What do Reid and Cross call “progressive” support for the killing of black babies? What do they call “progressive” support for Planned Parenthood, which plants most of its abattoirs in the heart of black communities? What do they call “progressive” endorsement of fatherless families and the policies that incentivize them when studies show one of the chief predictors of success is being raised in a home with a father? What do they call “progressive” refusal to offer school choice to disadvantaged families of color? What do they call it when “progressives” teach children of one skin color that children of another skin color are “lesser than”? What do they call it when “progressives” hurl the epithet “Uncle Tim” at a black man for thinking freely?

I call the whole stinking mess systemic racism.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/systemicRacismProgressives_mixdown.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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

Have you seen the Project Veritas, undercover video footage exposing CNN’s extreme anti-Trump animus (see here and here)? Have you seen the candid comments about their intentional misrepresentations of both Trump (negatively) and Biden (positively)? Have you heard the unashamed admission that “fear sells”?

On the one hand, this is not surprising at all, given the obvious bias of CNN’s coverage, in particular, over the last 5 years.

On the other hand, to hear Charlie Chester, a technical director with CNN, state things so plainly is almost unnerving.

He said, “Our focus was to get Trump out of office, right? Without saying it, that’s what it was.”

And this: “[Trump’s] hand was shaking or whatever, I think. We brought in so many medical people to all tell a story that was all speculation – that he was neurologically damaged, and he was losing it. He’s unfit to – you know – whatever. We were creating a story there that we didn’t know anything about. I think that’s propaganda.”

Chester also boasted that the network targeted anti-Trump voters with stories on climate change, noting that “fear sells.”

Yet, before we condemn CNN for using this fear-based tactic, we conservatives (and Trump voters) should ask ourselves an honest question. Do we not also use the “fear sells” technique?

This, of course, does not justify CNN’s propagandistic reporting. Not for a moment.

This does not minimize the depth of their deception or the degree to which they knowingly and willingly misled their audience.

Not at all.

But, to be candid, we must realize that the “fear sells” sword cuts both ways, and it is not just the left that has a monopoly on exaggerated and even misleading reporting.

Wasn’t “fear sells” a major weapon in Trump’s arsenal? Wasn’t it one of his most powerful rhetorical tools, as he warned Americans about the dangerous direction in which this country was heading? And weren’t we encouraged to vote for Trump as if he were the last bastion standing against the destruction of America? Fear sells indeed.

The real question is whether the fear is based on truth rather than on lies. That’s what really matters.

Personally, I have been sounding the alarm for years, warning my readers and listeners and viewers about the spiritual and moral decline of the nation. I have written articles with titles like “Revival or We Die,” making clear that a national awakening is our only hope.

I have often warned that we stand on the edge of a very real precipice, and we are close to crossing over the point of no return.

That being said, there’s a big difference between spreading fear-inducing propaganda in order to increase your ratings vs. speaking the truth with a broken heart in order to avert coming judgment. There’s a big difference between willfully misreporting the facts in order to obtain a political outcome vs. issuing a prophetic warning based on love for your nation.

The former activities will, in fact, increase your ratings. The latter will increase the resistance that you face. The former will gain favor with the people you want to influence. The latter will gain favor with God.

That means that the use of fear to mobilize your audience is not wrong in itself, as long as the fear is based on truth. Hundreds of warnings in the Bible follow this very pattern, and the motivation for the warning is love.

In contrast, if it is a manufactured fear or an exaggerated fear, and if that fear is created to advance a selfish or partisan agenda, then that is a highly unethical, terribly dangerous practice.

Was Trump acting like a true prophet, warning of the demise of America, speaking accurately and carefully? Or did he, too, play fast and hard with the truth for the purpose of political gain? History will judge his actions and his words, and only God knows his heart.

What we can say for sure is this. To the extent that Charlie Chester’s words reflect CNN policy, their use of “fear sells” was of the basest, most vile sort. History will not judge them kindly.

This article was originally posted at AskDrBrown.org.

In a previous article, I focused on an important poll that IFI and other groups commissioned, which surveyed 600 registered voters in Illinois.

Reflecting on this poll, I want us to consider why we are where we are as a state.

We often lament how this great state is so stupid. You likely have friends and family that have abandoned ship before it sinks, moving to states much more friendly to sanity, reason, and freedom.

In the midst of so much foolishness and folly, it is good to consider that even though our state is on the decline in many ways, we still are an important state. According to Wolfram Alpha, Illinois has a population of 12.67 million. This is equal to the total population of Iowa, Indiana, and half of Wisconsin. The GDP of Illinois is $863.5 billion which is almost equal to the combined GDP of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana ($904 billion).

So why are in such a moral and fiscal mess?

Well, according to the recent poll, only about 1 in 3 registered voters in Illinois attends church weekly or more than once a week.

This translates to less than 1 in 3 residents and citizens of Illinois who hear the Word of God faithfully proclaimed and are part of the public worship of the only true God. When we are not hearing God’s Word, what is going to happen to a society? Given this lack of worship of the true God in our state, why would we expect things to be different? God has given this state what we want and the consequences that are part of our rebellion.

Those consequences include a year in which we were gripped by fear of COVID-19 and controlled by our leaders. We now have a public education system that is increasingly at war with God and His truth. And, even though our state is stagnant in terms of population growth, the number of abortions performed in Illinois increased by over 4,000 from 2016 to 2018.[1] That is over a 10 percent increase when our population did not increase by the same amount. We rightly mourn the loss of lives from COVID-19 and other diseases, while the deaths of over 116 babies by abortion is just a statistic too many.

There are no quick and easy answers to the mess we face as a state. For the sake of life, we must stand against changes to laws that would facilitate more teenagers getting abortions. We must, for the sake of our Christian witness, be part of a church that is faithfully preaching the message of the gospel and seeking to spread the good news of salvation. And Christian parents must ensure that their own children are being trained in the fear of the Lord.

Humble yourself often before the Lord and do His will.

Read More:

U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time (Gallup)

Footnote:

[1] 2018 is the last year data has been provided.

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The other day I noticed one of my children acting selfishly toward his siblings. Concerned by his behavior, I ushered him into the next room and closed the door. I opened the access door to his internal control panel, and sure enough, just as I suspected, the “Selfishness” dial was turned all the way up. “No wonder we’ve been having trouble,” I thought. “Time for some adjustments.” I turned the dial back down. While I was at it, I turned up the “Love for God” and “Respect for Parents” dials.

“That should do it,” I said to myself as I closed the access door and sent our son back out to play.

Sure enough, the rest of the evening passed pleasantly as our son cheerfully shared his toys and obeyed our instructions instantly without complaint.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? If only it were that simple!

The truth, of course, is far more complicated.

As the parents of young children, my wife and I have seen our share of selfish squabbles. Recently, on a particularly rough day when selfishness seemed to be dominating our children’s interactions with each other, I decided to use our family Bible time that evening to look at the issue and do a little teaching. I read the passage in James 4 that answers the question of where “wars and fightings” come from. We read in James 1 about how our lusts are the source of our temptation and sin.

It was during all of this that I came face to face with a simple truth: I can’t make my children care about doing the right thing. It’s beyond my power. I don’t have the capacity to reach into their hearts and give them a desire to do what’s right.

That can be a hard truth to face.

We want our children to do well. We want them to love God, love each other, honor us as their parents, and have a genuine desire to do what’s right. We want them to exercise saving faith in Christ. We want them to choose a life of service to their Creator.

But we can’t choose any of that for them. We can’t force them to care about doing the right things for the right reasons.

Contrary to what we might wish, our children don’t come equipped with internal control panels with knobs and dials and switches that we can turn and twist and flip until they’re perfect examples of godliness.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we don’t wield an enormous amount of influence in our children’s lives. Clearly we do. God gave us that influence and He tells us to teach our children diligently in His ways. That’s our responsibility and calling.

But even so, as vast as our influence is, it’s not unlimited. It’s not infinite. And at some point, we come face to face with those limitations.

What are we to do? Throw our hands up in despair because we can’t force our children’s hearts to be right? Because we can’t purge out their sin and selfishness and rebellion?

No. It’s the time to pray and trust God. Because although we can’t reach directly into their hearts, He can. It’s also the time to keep faithfully doing the job God has given us to do. It’s the time to keep using the influence He’s given us to impact our children for good.

In many areas of life, God gives us responsibilities to fulfill even while calling us to trust Him for the outcome. For instance, I’m called to work and provide for my family, even while I have to understand that it’s not ultimately my efforts but God’s provision that meets our needs.

The same is true in parenting. It would be a dereliction of duty to sit back, do nothing, and claim we’re trusting God to work in the lives of our kids. But it’s equally foolish to work and strive as if the outcome is entirely in our hands. We have to trust God in the process.

If you’re like me, trusting can be hard. It’s easy to get worried and anxious about the problems. It’s easy to see faults in our children’s lives, to recognize our own failings as parents, and to fret and worry that our kids will never turn out the way we hope and dream they will.

But God calls us to trust Him. He calls us to cast our cares on Him because He cares for us. He calls us to come boldly to the throne of grace. He calls us to ask Him for wisdom without doubting.

The God who loves me also loves my children. The God who sent His Son for me also sent Him for my children. The God who cares for me knows my heart, knows my weaknesses, knows my failings, and loves me anyway.

We can trust a God like that. We can trust His heart of love for us and our children.

We can go to Him in all our weakness, all our brokenness, all our failings, and trust His grace to work in and through and around all the mess to bring the good outcome He has planned.

Our trouble comes when we take on more responsibility than God gives us. He doesn’t give us responsibility for results, as if we can force anything to happen. He gives us responsibility for our own actions, but He takes responsibility for results.

I’m reminded of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3:6. He planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. Don’t carry the burden of results that you don’t have the power to generate. Leave those in God’s hands.

And what if we’re having trouble trusting Him as we should? If we find ourselves fretting and worrying? We can take that to Him as well and ask Him for the grace to rest and believe as we should.

Let’s trust God with our children. Yes, let’s work hard and be faithful to our calling, but let’s never lose sight of the fact that our God is bigger than us, bigger than our children, bigger even than our biggest faults and failings.

We can trust Him.

I had plans for today that didn’t include most of what I’ve done so far.

With a clear Saturday in front of me, I was planning to take care of some things around the house, get out for a walk for the first time in weeks, and write my monthly article for IFI. (If you’re reading this, it means that I did ultimately accomplish at least one thing on my to-do list!)

My wife also had some things she needed to get done, beginning with running a few errands and giving three of our kids some overdue haircuts.

Having a two month old in the house, however, means that oftentimes both parents can’t be occupied at the same time. Such was the case today.

My wife left the house in the morning to do her errands. While she was gone, I thought I might be able to get started on some of my tasks if Myles, the two-month-old, would be content sitting in his bouncy seat.

No such luck.

He’s almost unfailingly content while being held, but it can be a tossup when it comes to the bouncy seat.

By the time my wife arrived home with her errands done, I’d accomplished about three minutes worth of work and the rest of the time was spent holding the baby.

My wife got started on the haircuts.

I got started making lunch (and probably held Myles more, but it’s all beginning to blur together in my mind!).

Then, one of our other kids decided to turn something that should have been simple into a struggle, necessitating an intervention on my part and a follow-up conversation about it later after lunch.

Also after lunch came the third haircut (bonus points to you if you correctly guessed that I held Myles during it).

Finally, around two o’clock, I made it upstairs to my office to begin writing.

And so here it is, the middle of a Saturday afternoon, and my to-do list has barely been touched.

I’ve been a dad instead.

There’s no doubt that parenting can be one of the most consuming tasks on earth. I would also add that it’s one of the most important.

Remember, God told the Israelites to teach their children diligently in Deuteronomy 6. If you look at the specifics, most of us probably don’t really reach that level of diligence in everyday life. I know I don’t.

That means there’s plenty of room for me to grow.

As a side note, it’s not just the diligence department where I need to grow. It’s also the wisdom, patience, gentleness, consistency, and intentionality departments. There are probably others, but those are some I think of right now.

Anyway, back to my to-do list. I didn’t write down “Hold Myles,” or “Be a good dad,” but maybe I should have. Because when dad duty calls and I have to put aside my other tasks in order to fulfill my fatherly role, it can be easy to feel like I’m not getting anything done. My “real work” is put on hold while I deal with the kids.

But is that the perspective I ought to have? Does that reflect godly, eternal priorities?

Not really.

I’m not saying that we never have other important tasks to accomplish besides parenting. Clearly we do, and we have to figure out how to be good dads and moms while also accomplishing a variety of tasks in our other roles.

But our mindset is important. If I’m viewing taking care of my children as an interruption to my “real” work for the day, something is almost certainly wrong with my thinking.

Most of us wouldn’t hesitate to rate our role as a dad or mom as one of our most important callings in life. But we sometimes lose sight of that in the nitty-gritty moments of every day.

So just take this as a friendly, in-the-trenches reminder from one parent to another. Your kids (and grandkids) are important. And if you arrive at the end of the day with a to-do list full of things you didn’t accomplish but you did take time to be a good dad or mom, don’t view it as a waste. I don’t think God does. Why should we?

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