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There Is Going to Be a Revolution Either Way

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Based on our current trajectory, it seems inevitable: there’s going to be a cultural revolution one way or another. We will either continue with our precarious shift to the left, thereby going over the edge, so to speak. Or we will recover our moral bearings and save our country from collapse. We will be woke or we will be awakened. But either way, there will be a revolution. The center can no longer hold.

In his article in the September edition of Commentary Magazine, titled “Yes, This Is a Revolution,” Abe Greenwald wrote, “The battle for the survival of the United States of America is upon us.”

Indeed, he noted, “If it wasn’t clear in late May and early June, it should be well understood by now that we are in the throes of a genuine revolution of the most extravagant sort. Like messianic revolutionaries of the past, the revolutionary mob of the 21st century is out to ‘remake the world.’ … This is, then, most fundamentally a revolution against the United States of America and all it stands for.”

Unfortunately, he added, “And yet, we seem to be treating the great unraveling as something less than a revolution.”

To do so would be to make a fatal mistake.

Twenty years ago, when the first edition of my book Revolution first came out, I tried to convince the readers that we were at a cultural crossroads, that we were living in revolutionary times. A major shift was coming, I argued, one that would be either heaven-sent or hell-bent. There was a void and discontent that needed to be filled. Which ideology would win the day?

Now, as the second, updated and revised edition of Revolution has just been released, I hardly need to convince my readers that we are living in revolutionary times. Even though Greenwald noted that many see this “unraveling as something less than a revolution,” many others recognize what is at stake.

Using my Revolution book as a case in point, I can illustrate how much clearer things have become. (The first edition was released September 2000, the second October 2020.)

Each chapter begins with striking opening quotes which then set the tone for the rest of the chapter. When rewriting the second chapter of the book, I replaced every single opening quote from the first edition with a set of entirely new quotes. The chapter now starts with this:

“This isn’t a protest—it’s a revolution!” — shouted through a megaphone during a Black Lives Matter protest in Elgin, Illinois, June 5, 2020.

“This revolution won’t be televised—it’s going to be streamed!”— shouted a protester during a Black Lives Matter rally on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, June 2020.

“This movement is about revolution, not reform.” — Alexandra Hart, a student at Tulane University, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2020.

We are in volatile times, analogous to 1861 or 1968, and anything that can happen often has. —Victor Davis Hanson, The Case for Trump, written in August 2019.

Such quotes could have been easily multiplied. We are living in revolutionary times.

One culturally astute Christian editor emailed me privately, stating that we are on the verge of “plunging the nation into a totalitarian future run by rage-fueled Marxist revolutionaries openly at war with God.”

Do you think he was exaggerating?

Writing from the perspective of a liberal American Jew and with specific reference to the rising tide of antisemitism in America, BarriWeiss said this in Tablet Magazine.

“Over the past few decades and with increasing velocity over the last several years, a determined young cohort has captured nearly all of the institutions that produce American cultural and intellectual life. Rather than the institutions shaping them, they have reshaped the institutions. You don’t need the majority inside an institution to espouse these views. You only need them to remain silent, cowed by a fearless and zealous minority who can smear them as racists if they dare disagree.”

She added, “I share with the majority of American Jews’ disgust toward Trump and Trumpism, which has normalized bigotry and cruelty in ways that have crippled American society. That truth doesn’t detract from another: There is another danger, this one from the left. And unlike Trump, this one has attained cultural dominance, capturing America’s elites and our most powerful institutions. In the event of a Biden victory, it is hard to imagine it meeting resistance. So let me make my purpose perfectly clear: I am here to ring the alarm. I’m here to say: Do not be shocked anymore. Stop saying, can you believe. It’s time to accept reality, if we want to have any hope of fixing it.”

All this, of course, is much larger than Trump vs. Biden, and my focus in this article is not on the elections, as important as they may be. And, without a doubt, as much as I oppose many of the policies of the Democrats, I am not looking to Trump and the Republicans to lead the positive, moral and cultural revolution of which I speak.

Instead, it must be spiritually based, meaning that it must be based in a return to God and the Scriptures, a return to prayer and purity. And it must be a multi-faceted awakening, beginning with an awakening of our conscience and of our spiritual and moral bankruptcy.

It must also be a grass-roots awakening, driven from and by the populace to the government rather than from the top down.

And it must truly be revolutionary, just as the Civil Rights movement was revolutionary in so many good ways. And just as the Counterculture Revolution was negative in so many ways.

Nothing less than radical, dramatic change will turn the tide.

The words I wrote to followers of Jesus in 2000 are all the more relevant today: “Fellow-soldiers, holy servants of the risen Lord, blood-bought disciples of the Master, heed the call. It’s now or never, time to put up or shut up. Either we take a stand once and for all or forever we hang our heads in shame. History is awaiting our move. So … on with it! Let’s start a revolution.”

In the new edition of Revolution, I simply changed the last sentence. It now reads, “Let’s give ourselves wholeheartedly to a Jesus revolution.”

Do we really have a choice?

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.



A Major Problem that Explains a lot in Society

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In the last two weeks I have met with two legislators who separately made the same observation as we discussed various cultural problems and issues of the day.  They both said this all goes back to the breakdown of the traditional family.

Well, a new study finds that the lack of marriage is a growing social problem in America. While on the up-side, marriages tend to be more stable with divorce rates declining somewhat, at the same time fewer Americans are choosing to marry. In 2018 a record rate of Americans ages 25 to 50, a group making up 39 million people, have never been married.  That record rate of never marrieds is now up to 35%. In 1970 only 9% of this demographic were not married. In less than 20 years the proportion of never married Americans has risen from 21% to 35%.

A Pew Research study report projects that if these trends continue, 1 in 4 of today’s young adults may never marry. Young people are waiting to get married today. In 1970 the average young person married in their early 20’s, today they are marrying close to the age of 30. Additionally, more young people are forgoing marriage for cohabitation. The vast majority of couples living together never make it to the altar, and for those who do, their divorce rates are dramatically higher than those who do not live together before marriage.

Something else that has changed over the years is that today, lower income individuals are less likely to marry than those in higher income brackets. In years past there was no marriage rate income gap.

Marriage provides more economic and family stability and even physical safety, for those who are married and any children they produce than those who live together. While children can do well in various situations, statistically, children raised in a family with a married mother and father are much less likely to be poor, more likely to do well in school and less likely to be involved in crime (particularly boys) than those raised in other living arrangements.

The Civic Fallout of Marital Decline

In the item above, I point out the decline of marriage and the societal problems this can create. There is another problem or at least a distinction between those who marry and those who do not, particularly among the young. Those who are married, whether they have children or not, are much more likely to vote in an election than those who are not married or were formerly married. In the 2018 congressional elections, 56% of married adults reported voting, in contrast to just 37% of adults who had never married.

As seen in this chart, marriage appears to have several civic benefits that are important to our self-governing republic.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.



Hey You with the Spooky White Skin, You’re a Racist!

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In June 2020, Kennedy Mitchum, a 22-year-old graduate of Drake University, needed a way to call non-racists “racists,” so she emailed Merriam-Webster Dictionary to tell them to change the definition of “racism” in such a way as to enable people to use the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to call non-racists “racists.”

Heretofore, Merriam-Webster had defined “racism” as “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” Mitchum griped that because of that definition, whites who don’t believe in racial superiority, who harbor no ill-will toward people with a different skin-color, and who don’t mistreat people with a skin color different from their own would deny they were racists. And she needed a way to prove that non-racist whites are, indeed, racists.

In a radio interview, Mitchum said, “It’s not just disliking someone because of the color of their skin. There are systems in place in health care, in the justice system that are automatically formed to put people of color at the bottom and keep them at the bottom of the barrel.” While providing no evidence, Mitchum asserts that the very reason health care systems and the justice system were formed was to put and keep people of color at the bottom of the barrel.

In her dialogue with Merriam-Webster, Mitchum argues that “Racism is not only prejudice against a certain race due to the color of a person’s skin, as it states in your dictionary. It is both prejudice combined with social and institutional power. It is a system of advantage based on skin color.”

This article of faith is necessary to exempt racists of color from their culpability in propagating actual racism. If racism requires power, and persons of color supposedly have none, then no matter how explicit and ugly their racism is, it’s not—by this Newspeakian redefinition— racism.

This convoluted view of racism is a central tenet of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Mitchum also said, “the current definition also fails to acknowledge microaggressions.” Once again, leftists manipulate language in order to advance an ideology.

By hook or by dictionary, persons of color will prove that colorless non-racists are racist. And if you deny that, you’re racist. Got it you achromatic, washed-out bigots?

Why didn’t Mitchum go for broke? Why didn’t she ask for this new dictionary entry:

“racist”: n. 1. Having little melanin; being “white.” 2. Being pale-skinned and, by that fact, personally responsible for 400 years of evil.

Critical Race Theory has spread from the academy–where surely Mitchum ingested the poison–into even historically theologically orthodox churches. Tim Keller—well-known and influential author, founder of The Gospel Coalition, and pastor of the Manhattan megachurch, Redeemer Christian Church—has embraced elements of the ugly racist philosophy of collective guilt. On June 3, 2016, Keller said this:

[M]y pastor friend said “studies have … pretty much proven that if you have white skin it’s worth a million dollars over a lifetime, over somebody who doesn’t have white skin.

And that’s because of historical forces that have come about. … if you have that asset of white skin, right now … then you actually have to say “I didn’t deserve this” and also to some degree, “I’m the product of…I’m standing on the shoulders of other people who got that through injustice.”

So, the Bible actually says “yes…you are involved in injustice,” and even if you didn’t actually do it, therefore you have a responsibility—not just to say “well, maybe if I get around to it, maybe we can do something about the poor people out there.” No- you’re part of the problem.

Keller’s strange interpretation of Scripture goes back further still. He expressed the same ideas in a troubling presentation delivered at a Desiring God event in 2012.  In his sermon “Racism and Corporate Evil: A White Guy’s Perspective,” Keller misused Joshua 7, Daniel 9, and Romans 5, overlooking the distinction between the Old Testament and New Testament covenants as well as the distinction between personal sin and the doctrine of original sin.

Jonathan Bradford summarizes and refutes Keller’s CRT-infused views:

Keller argues that when a person is part of a community or ‘system’, they are in part responsible for the actions of that system or community. The only exception to this doctrine seems to be if one is ‘resisting’ the sinful system. If someone is ‘resisting’ then they are not responsible for the sin.

If this doctrine is true, then Christians must always and constantly be resisting the system if they desire to stop being imputed with the sins of their community (because every community always has sin).

Keller didn’t explain how the following verses comport with his woke interpretation of Scripture:

 “Yet you say, ‘Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?’ When the son has done what is just and right, and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live.  The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. (Ezekiel 18:19-20)

 But he did not put to death the children of the murderers, according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, where the Lord commanded, “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. But each one shall die for his own sin.” (2 Kings 14:6)

What a tragedy that Keller should embrace any part of the anti-biblical ideology of corporate sin and guilt—an ideology rejected by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl who said this in 1985:

[M]y deepest conviction is … that there is no collective guilt! Let alone—if I may so call it—a retroactive collective guilt, in which someone is held responsible for what their parents’ or even grandparents’ generation may once have done.

Guilt can only be personal guilt—guilt for what one has done oneself or even not done, neglected to do. 

In a recently published article titled “A Biblical Critique of Secular Justice and Critical Theory,” Keller makes a statement that seems to contradict his embrace of collective guilt:

To see whole races as more sinful and evil than other races leads to things like the Holocaust.

Keller’s earlier statements about whites being “involved in injustice” based on nothing more than their skin color seems to contradict this statement. Keller may be trying to distinguish between a Nazi belief in genetic superiority and his own belief in white culpability for injustice based on membership in a racial group in possession of social advantages due to past racism. If so, his distinction is muddled and unbiblical and, therefore, unhelpful.

In this article, Keller offers a far superior perspective on postmodern Critical Theory (CT), of which Critical Race Theory is a part, by examining some of its contradictions, most notably the idea of the social construction of “truth-claims”:

If all truth-claims and justice-agendas are socially constructed to maintain power, then why aren’t the claims and agendas of the adherents of this view subject to the same critique? Why are the postmodern justice advocates’ claims that “This is oppression” unquestionably, morally right, while all other moral claims are mere social constructs? And if everyone is blinded by class-consciousness and social location, why aren’t they? Intersectionality claims oppressed people see things clearly—but why would they if social forces make us wholly what we are and control how we understand reality? Are they less formed by social forces than others? And if all people with power—who “call the shots” socially, culturally, economically, and control public discourse—inevitably use it for domination, then if any revolutionaries were able to replace the oppressors at the top of the society, why would they not become people that should subsequently be rebelled against and replaced themselves? What would make them different? The Postmodern account of justice has no good answers for these questions. You cannot insist that all morality is culturally constructed and relative and then claim that your moral claims are not. This is not a flaw that only Christians can see, and this may therefore be a fatal flaw for the entire theory.

In contrast to CRT’s and Kennedy Mitchum’s redefinition of racism, here’s pastor and theologian John Piper’s view of racism:

Here’s my definition of racism: attributing to one race intrinsic superiority or valuing it above another and then treating others as undesirable or evil. … It is a history-long problem and a global problem, not just a little black and white problem or a little Asian problem or a little Rwanda problem or a little Jewish problem. It is a massive, global, history-long, devastating, bloody, murderous problem. For example, the Armenian Genocide in Turkey in 1915—a million slaughtered Armenians. Holocaust in Germany: six million. Who knows how many tens of million in the Soviet Gulags under Stalin? The massacres in Rwanda in 1994, the Japanese slaughter of six million Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos and Indo Chinese—a litany of history-long bloodletting all in the name of ethnicity or race. That is because humans are in rebellion against God.

That’s where that comes from—exalting ourselves over against our Maker and, of course, if over against our Maker, over against each other. That’s a given. Anybody that would have the audacity not to submit to the King of kings and Lord of lords would not have any problem putting you down. We find our pleasure and self-exaltation being made much of and if I have to use my ethnicity to do that, thank you very much, I will do it. That sin of racism … grows in the ground of pride and self-exaltation.

Those who do not use race or ethnicity as a source of pride or self-exaltation, those who do not attribute intrinsic superiority to one race above another, those who do not treat others as undesirable or evil based on their race or skin color are not racist. And the sins and concomitant guilt of their forefathers and foremothers should not be imputed to them—at least God doesn’t.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Racist.mp3

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Human Trafficking, Humanity, and History

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In recent years, some organizations and movements on the left have placed a greater emphasis on the role of slavery in our nation’s past. To their view, this “original” sin surrounding the nation’s beginnings cast a permanent pall that cannot ever be overcome. Black Lives Matter (BLM) and The 1619 Project are two of the most prominent examples of this, but neither seek to engage and end slavery for its present-day victims.

The U.S. State Department issued its 20th annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report over the summer, which estimated nearly 25 million adults and children around the world are victims of sex trafficking or forced labor—in other words, slavery. According to the State Department, “The United States considers ‘trafficking in persons,’ ‘human trafficking,’ and ‘modern slavery’ to be interchangeable umbrella terms that refer to both sex and labor trafficking.”

In presenting the report, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo noted a biblical truth: “Desecration of the inherent value and immeasurable worth of human beings, each of us created in the image of God, makes human trafficking a truly wicked act.”

As Christians know, the Bible clearly states that humans are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27, 9:6) and are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). The Bible also clearly condemns the selling and enslavement of humans (1 Timothy 1:10, Exodus 21:16). Tragically, there have been those in our nation’s and the world’s history who have sought to misuse other Bible verses to provide support for their sin of owning slaves.

Where memories of the slave trade still linger

With the focus on the issue of slavery in our nation’s past, it’s often overlooked that slavery continues in the open in some parts of the world and is a recent memory in others. In some parts of Africa, those memories are recent, upsetting, and very uncomfortable for us today. The BBC published an article by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani titled, “My Nigerian great-grandfather sold slaves.” It’s an interesting but hard read for someone with Western sensibilities. The author notes that “it would be unfair to judge a 19th century man by 21st century principles,” but here the difference is in cultural, between developed and developing nations.

Nwaubani explained that slavery was practiced in Nigeria long before Europeans arrived on the continent and was considered acceptable and even celebrated. “The successful sale of adults was considered an exploit for which a man was hailed by praise singers, akin to exploits in wrestling, war, or in hunting animals like the lion,” she shared. European offers to locals of money for the capture or trade of more slaves only served to increase the growth of the practice.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, her grandfather, Nwaubani Ogogo, lived among the Igbo people and owned several slaves who were seized by the British colonial government. She told how Ogogo found this unfair and stood up to the government earning him the respect of both the locals and the British. She recalled hearing stories while growing up of how his agents would capture slaves, selling them through the port cities of Calabar and Bonny in southern Nigeria.

Although the British worked to eliminate slavery throughout the colonial period, the slave trade in southeastern Nigeria continued until the late 1940s or early 1950s. Igbo historian Adiele Afigbo described it “as one of the best kept secrets of the British colonial administration.”

Nwaubani justified her grandfather’s actions, saying he was eventually appointed a paramount chief by the British, engaged in legitimate businesses and trade, and “willingly donated land for missionaries to build churches and schools.”

Describing Ogogo and his peers, she noted, “Assessing the people of Africa’s past by today’s standards would compel us to cast the majority of our heroes as villains, denying us the right to fully celebrate anyone who was not influenced by Western ideology.” Her line of reasoning is similar to what was taught not so very long ago in the majority of public schools about America’s Founding Fathers.

Combatting slavery today

The State Department’s report, released in late June, rates how 188 countries performed in preventing trafficking, protecting victims, and prosecuting traffickers.

Today, Nigeria is on the Tier 2 Watch List. According to the report, the country’s government “does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.” There is still a “significant number” of victims of human trafficking in Nigeria and the country has failed to provide evidence of improvement in the last year according to the State Department.

The United States is among 34 countries in Tier 1. Tier 1 countries meet the minimum standards to eliminate trafficking. Tier 2 countries, which include Japan and Saudi Arabia, don’t satisfy the minimum requirements but are making an effort. Tier 3 includes Afghanistan, China, Cuba, Iran, Lesotho, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela among others. For a full list see the TIP Report.

The TIP report proves there are still many places around the world where people think it is fine to own another person. It is equally saddening, however, that there are places in our own country where people think it is fine to traffic another person for sex but fail to equate it with slavery.

“To turn the tide, action must accompany words,” said Pompeo. “Among other steps, governments must end state-sponsored forced labor; they must increase prosecutions of human traffickers; and they should expand their efforts to identify and care for trafficking victims, while ensuring they are not punished for crimes traffickers compelled them to commit.

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NBA Viewers Flee As The League Turns “Too Political,” Poll Finds

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Written by Peter Heck

A recent Harris poll has revealed that 39% of self-identified sports fans have chosen to watch fewer NBA games this season, largely because the league has become overly politicized.

Following the pandemic-induced sports-drought, many expected a ratings surge for the return of basketball. Instead, even heading into the playoffs, viewership for the NBA has tanked.

Of those who acknowledged watching less of the NBA:

  • 38% of respondents said it was because “the league has become too political”
  • 28% of respondents said it was because the games are “boring without fans”
  • 19% of respondents said it was because of the NBA’s relationship with China

The ratings drop caught the attention of President Trump.

The Harris poll also revealed a far more notable partisan distinction in NBA viewers than other leagues.

“Harris also found the NBA is more partisan than any other sport. Only 34% of Republicans say they ‘actively follow’ the NBA, compared with 48% of Democrats. The gap of 14 percentage points is the largest of any sport. For comparison, 54% of Democrats actively follow the NFL versus 51% of Republicans,” Forbes wrote.

The NFL kicks off its 2020 season next Thursday.

This article was originally published at Disrn.com.



Student-Athletes Boycott Practices After Athletic Director Said All Lives Matter

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Written by Matt Lamb

Athletic director apologized for comments

Student-athletes at Illinois State University are boycotting practices because the school’s athletic director offended them with a comment during a conference call at the end of August.

Athletes at the public university in central Illinois announced a boycott after Larry Lyons, the school’s athletic director, said that “All Redbird Lives Matter,” a version of the “All Lives Matter” statement that used the school’s team name instead.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported:

Students in all but one of the university’s 17 athletics programs have said they won’t return to their teams until their list of social justice demands are met, including a concrete, comprehensive plan of action to support racial justice protests and a commitment to diversity in the athletics administration. The missed team events are mostly practices because competitions are postponed or canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Athletic Department released a plan Monday afternoon that partially addressed some of those issues, but that athletes quickly said was insufficient.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the baseball team is the only team that does not have athletes participating in the boycott.

Kimathi Johnson, a track and field athlete, posted the list of demands on his Twitter account on August 30.

The list includes: required diversity seminars for the entire athletic department, putting “more people of color in positions of power,” “more diversity in athletic trainers and student athletic trainers,” and a plan for the athletic department to publicly support Black Lives Matter.

The student-athletes say they will not end their boycott until that last demand is met. The Athletic Department released a response on August 31 that appeared to largely agree to the demands of the athletes.

Jeff Proctor, a running back at the school, said Lyons’ comments downplayed the Black Lives Matter movement.

“It makes us feel like that he doesn’t have our back and doesn’t care about the Black community,” Proctor told the Vidette, the campus paper. “How a lot of people took it is down playing the Black Lives Matter movement.”

Even coaches at the school criticized Lyons.

“The movement is BLACK LIVES MATTER. The statement ‘All Redbird Lives Matters’ is insensitive and frankly one that attempts to drown the movement,” Mary Wood, the associate head track coach, tweeted August 27.

Lyons explained his comments and apologized in an August 28 comment to the campus paper:

My intention was to tell all 413 student-athletes that they matter to me and I care about them. The words I choose to use, ‘All Redbird lives matter’ was offensive to many of our student-athletes and I know I hurt a significant number of them by the choice of those words. That was not my intention and I am truly sorry for that.

Black lives do matter and I am serious when I say that, and all Redbird student-athletes lives matter equally. I should have said that, and I did not. I have a lot of trust to build back.

At least one athlete refused to attend an August 26 apology meeting with Lyons.

Mya Robinson, a track athlete at the school and a sports reporter for the campus paper, wrote that she cannot forgive Lyons.

“I did not attend the meeting for his apology because I do not want to hear his pity toward us,” Robinson wrote. “He was wrong, and for that, I can never forgive him.”

MORE: Syracuse athletes feel upset because white peer was given second chance

This article was originally published at The College Fix.



Words Matter

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One of the most effective ways that Marxists advance their agenda is to change how we talk about things.   When clever rewordings replace the truth, it’s easier to fool people.

For example, the Washington Post this past week said a transgender plaintiff “was designated female at birth, but identifies as male.”

In the blink of an eye, a biological fact – that someone was born a girl – is brushed aside and replaced with a term that implies that male or female sex is assigned, not a natural phenomenon.

In fact, the idea that your sex is “assigned at birth” is an increasingly common description. It validates the Gnostic-based insanity that one’s sex has nothing to do with physiology, just what goes on in people’s heads.  By this reasoning, birth records can be altered to distort reality, which is a way to lie officially.  And to force others to do so as well.

Gavin Grimm, who is now 21, sued the Gloucester County, Virginia school district in 2015 to force them to allow her to use boys’ facilities.  Two years later, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court but was set aside when President Donald Trump overturned a Barack Obama gender identity school mandate.

But last Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled 2 to 1 that the school board had violated Grimm’s 14th Amendment right against sex discrimination. The high school had offered a gender-neutral bathroom, but the plaintiff’s attorneys rejected that solution, as did the two Obama appointees who sided with Grimm. A George H.W. Bush appointee dissented.

They drew from the bizarre Bostock opinion in June written by, of all people, Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch, which expanded the definition of “sex” in the Civil Right Act of 1964 to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”  Just like that, the Court put every institution in America that won’t kneel to the LGBTQ gods in jeopardy of ruinous lawsuits or even governmental sanctions.

Given the Court’s reasoning, how could any sex-based distinctions, predicated on real and important differences between the sexes, be maintained? Sports teams? Locker rooms? Bathrooms at any business of any size? Private schools?

The transgender movement, for all its caring rhetoric, is not really about eliciting compassion for sexually confused people – something we should embrace. It’s part of the Marxist Left’s campaign to overhaul society and force people to lie.

Anyone not toeing the line, which keeps changing, is “canceled.”  That means being censored, fired, shut out of promotions or jobs, and de-platformed on social media.

Over the years, the Left has peppered our discourse with advocacy-filled descriptions. “Choice” long ago replaced abortion, “gay” replaced homosexuality, and “hater” and “racist” became all-purpose descriptors for anyone dissenting from the Left’s worldview. Erasing biology is just more of the same.

Sometimes, the ideologically-driven changes are more subtle. Journalists now capitalize racial terms, as in Black people and White people. The adjectives, which describe merely one important aspect of the human race, instead become the whole. No more thinking about people just as fellow human beings created in the image of God. Race must be first and foremost in everyone’s minds.

Herded into identity groups, we’re more easily divided and manipulated. Regardless of the impressive racial progress that America has achieved since eradicating slavery and Jim Crow, the media are utterly obsessed with race as the only aspect of humanity worth talking about.

But if America’s “systemic racism” is the main driver of the riots that have raged for the last three months, why are mobs beheading or defacing statues of Jesus and Mary and black heroes like Frederick Douglass or Arthur Ashe, burning churches and Bibles, and looting stores in Chicago’s Magnificent Mile?

There’s method to this madness. Racism is an excuse to pour gasoline on a larger cause – that of taking down America as we know it and replacing it with a socialist utopia. The founders of Black Lives Matter, after all, admit to being “trained Marxists.”

During the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s (which is still with us), activists began forcing journalists and medical professionals to use the term “living with HIV,” as a way to de-stigmatize the disease. You could get kicked out of a medical conference for talking about “AIDS infections” or the “AIDS disease.” They’d not hesitate to beat the drums for “living with covid” if they thought it would advance their cause.

Language is a formidable instrument for human progress when used properly.  But, all too often it can be abused, destroying souls, families, or even entire societies.

The most profound and positive use of language in history was when Jesus offered Himself to everyone on Earth, saying, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” and when the Gospel writer John referred to Him as simply The Word.

Amid the current chaos, we need to work hard to preserve America. And, we need to pray that the Marxist-inspired madness and abuse of language will crack up, a victim of its own hostility to truth.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com. You can follow Robert Knight on Twitter @RobertKnight17 and his website is roberthknight.com.



3 Reasons Black Lives Matter Is Incompatible With Biblical Christianity

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Written by Meeke Addison

Does God care about justice? Absolutely! In fact, God says of Himself in Isaiah 61:8, “For I, the Lord, love justice.”

What about life? Does God care about life? Of course! Psalm 139 powerfully communicates the value, worth, and sanctity of human life.

God’s concerns for life and justice are woven throughout the Bible, and the two are not mutually exclusive. So we as Christians should care about justice and defend life. Likewise, we must make sure that our endeavors to plead for justice or defend life don’t inadvertently align us with covert missions and agendas that seek to undermine God’s standard of holiness.

As of late, many Christians have touted their support of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. For example, InterVarsity’s Urbana Conference recently chose to feature a keynote speaker who challenged those in attendance with the BLM movement’s publicized cause.

But the question is not whether an evangelical collegiate ministry should tackle a discussion on perceived or actual racism; the question is whether or not tackling that issue under the umbrella of the BLM movement is compatible with the morals and values of said organization.

Actually, the question for all biblical Christians with an interest in social justice is “do the core values of #BlackLivesMatter square with the Bible’s clearly-prescribed ways of holiness and morality?” The short answer is no.

Because of its thoughtfully-crafted agenda, values, and mission, #BlackLivesMatter is unmistakably incompatible with biblical Christianity, and the many reasons Christians have to reject this movement can easily be found at BlackLivesMatter.com. According to its own “herstory,” #BlackLivesMatter was founded by three black women, two of whom are self-proclaimed queer. And while these women may care about injustice and racism, they also care about normalizing sexual deviance, deconstructing the biblical definition of family, and emasculating strong, black men who identify as straight.

Before you hashtag anything else, you might strongly consider the fact that this particular tag is an organized movement with leadership and core convictions. We are not simply talking about an organic movement with social justice as its aim; BLM is far more sinister than that. In fact, this movement has inextricably linked its calls for black justice to core convictions that are the antitheses to any biblical Christian’s convictions.

Here are three reasons #BlackLivesMatter is incompatible with biblical Christianity:

1.)  Black Lives Matter seeks to dismantle the biblical definition of family.  In their own words, they are “committed to disrupting the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.” One man married to one woman is not a Western prescription for family; it’s a biblical one. The mystery of two (man and woman) becoming one flesh is so powerful a union that the Apostle Paul used this illustration to talk about Christ and the Church in Ephesians chapter 5.

2.)  Black Lives Matter champions the celebration of homosexuality. They refer to it as “queer-affirming,” but it simply boils down to rebellion against God’s created design for sexuality. In their own words, BLM gathers “with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or, rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual unless s/he or they disclose otherwise.” No matter what secular culture decides about sexuality, the Bible is still unequivocal regarding God’s design for sexual intimacy. Romans 1, for example, lists homosexuality as a “vile passion.” How now can we link arms with individuals whose mission is to undermine and celebrate rebellion against God’s design?

3.)  Black Lives Matter touts gender confusion as normal and seeks to make heroes of those who are mentally confused.  The movement taking culture by storm and increasingly validated by Christians, black and white alike, wants to “dismantle cis-gender privilege and uplift Black trans folk.” Yep — the justice movement is also the movement of gender revolution. #BLM is “committed to embracing and making space for trans brothers and sisters to participate and lead.”

There are two genders: male and female. The science is clear, and the Bible is crystal clear when it comes to God’s creation.

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:27).

Gender confusion is an attack of Satan to mar the Imago Dei. Black Lives Matter is complicit in this destruction.

Aside from its divisive nature, #BlackLivesMatter calls for violence and holds an insatiable desire for lawlessness, so Christians have deep, spiritual reasons to resist aligning with this movement, its founders, and their core convictions. Just a few of the movement’s “guiding principles” should provide plenty of evidence to Believers that aligning with such an ungodly ideology is at least troubling and at most diabolical. Christians can and should stand up against injustice, but we should absolutely refuse to stand behind a movement that vehemently opposes God and His righteous standards. There is absolutely no room for debate.

I can support working with people on a common cause, even when we disagree on secondary issues. However, when the primary issues are inextricably linked to secondary issues that also happen to be some of the greatest spiritual battles I fight, those issues cannot be ignored. But I would suggest that sexual revolution, gender confusion, and dismantling the family are not secondary issues for BLM; I believe they are equal to the movement’s well-televised “justice” work. These issues, however, could never garner the support and traction currently enjoyed by the movement if they were widely known. So, #BlackLivesMatter benefits from two epidemics in our culture today: ignorance and apathy.

This article was first posted on The Stand in February of 2016. The resurgence of BLMr prompted its reposting.



“Hail Satan”: After Terrorizing Churches, BLM Witchcraft Exposed

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There is now proof that there are very dark forces behind Black Lives Matter, and it’s not just the blatant Marxism of its founders and leaders. The darkness literally includes summoning dead spirits and allowing them to work through BLM leaders. Sound crazy? BLM bosses admit it.

Clues about the true nature of BLM have been available for quite some time. Last month, Black Lives Matter activists terrorized church attendees in Troy, New York, while chanting “hail Satan.” They even shrieked at black families and young mothers trying to get in the building. Just this week in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a church with a “Black Lives Matter” sign on it was torched by BLM activists. In a video that went viral this week, a mob of white BLM activists shout at a couple at a D.C. restaurant for refusing to raise their fists, with one activist asking the confused victims, “Are you a Christian?”

Now, newly released audio recordings reveal the occult practices, ancestor worship, African paganism, and literal witchcraft of at least one of the national group’s co-founders, as well as the founder of BLM’s Los Angeles chapter. Apparently the entire George Soros-funded leadership of BLM is involved in these practices as well.

In the audio, BLM co-founder Patrice Cullors, who boasted in a TV interview of being a “trained Marxist,” revealed that she is also consulting spiritual entities and allowing them to “work through” her. “I’m calling for spirituality to be deeply radical,” she said. “We’re not just having a social justice movement, this is a spiritual movement.”

Of course, Christians, pointing to Ephesians 6:12 and its reference to spiritual warfare, have been making this argument since the fruit of BLM became more clear: destruction, hate, looting, burning, Marxism, division, riots, and more. But until recently, the spiritual nature of the struggle was simply inferred and deduced from the Bible and the news. Now, the proof is available to all.

In a recorded conversation with Cullors, BLM Los Angeles founder and California State University Professor of “African Studies” Melina Abdulla reveals more than she thought she should have. “Maybe I’m sharing too much, but we’ve become very intimate with the spirits that we call on regularly, right.” she explained. “Like, each of them seems to have a different presence and personality, you know. I laugh a lot with Wakisha, you know. And I didn’t meet her in her body, right, I met her through this work.”

Cullors echoes the sentiments of Abdulla. “It’s a very important practice, um, hashtags are for us, are way more than a hashtag, it is, um, literally almost resurrecting a spirit so they can work through us to get the work that we need to get done,” said Cullors, one of the three founders of BLM. “I started to feel personally connected and responsible and accountable to them, both from a deeply political place, but also from a deeply spiritual place.”

“Always, you know, in my tradition you offer things that that your loved one who passed away would want, you know, whether it’s like honey or tobacco, things like that,” the trained Marxist and BLM co-founder continued. “And that’s so important, not just for us to be in direct relationship to our people who’ve passed, but also for them to know we’ve remembered them. Um, I believe so many of them work through us.”

Cullors also admits that the very first thing BLM leaders do when they hear of a “murder” is to pray to the spirits and “pour libation.” Again, she emphasized, this is not just about “racial and social justice.” “At its core, it’s a spiritual movement,” she continued. “You can’t pretend like that work is just organizing work. That’s, you know, that’s some serious stuff.”

The whole “say his name” mantra also has deep spiritual significance, according to Cullors. “When we say the names, right, so we speak their names, we say her name, say their names, we do that all the time that, you kind of invoke that spirit, and then those spirits actually become present with you,” she explained, revealing something that virtually none of the “useful idiots” attending BLM rallies understand.

“Spirituality is at the center of Black Lives Matter, and I think that’s not just for us, I feel like so many, um, leaders and so many organizers, um, are deeply engaged and in a pretty, um, important spiritual practice,” Cullors continued. “I don’t think I could I could do this work without that. I don’t think I could do it as long as I’ve done it, and as consistently. Um, it feels like if I didn’t do that it would be antithetical to this work.”

Talk-show host and Christian attorney Abraham Hamilton, III, first aired the audio recordings on August 19 during his show The Hamilton Corner. His conclusion is that the conversation proves top BLM leaders are involved in witchcraft, “summoning the spirits of the dead,” and engaging in other satanic practices that are firmly condemned and strictly prohibited in the Bible.

“What they are describing is their adherence to the Yoruba religion of Ifa, to where they are summoning dead spirits,” Hamilton explained before getting into more depth about the occult pagan practices. What Cullors revealed, Hamilton continued, is exactly what the Apostle Paul was referring to in Ephesians when he explained that Christians wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness.

Quoting the Bible, Hamilton also noted the link between those who sacrifice children to demon gods such as Molech (abortion) and summoning spirits (witchcraft). Interestingly, the Yoruba were known for practicing human sacrifice until Christianity became more prevalent in the region.

The Bible is very clear about what is happening here, as consulting spirits of the dead is strictly prohibited. In fact, under the Old Testament law revealed by God for Israel, necromancy — consulting the dead — was punishable by death. All those who do it are described as “detestable” to God. Multiple passages in the Old and New Testaments also suggest that the supposed “spirits” that necromancers and witches believe they are communicating with, or sacrificing things to, are in fact demons.

Professor Abdulla’s voice message machine said she was on sabbatical for the 2019-2020 academic year. Nobody answered any of the other phone numbers listed at the Pan-African Studies department, and messages seeking comment by The New American were not returned. Abdulla did not respond to an e-mail before press time.

Terrorizing Churches

Even before the audio became public, the true nature of BLM was becoming obvious for all to see. Last month, supposedly responding to a church’s giveaway of an AR-15, BLM activists terrorized black and white churchgoers alike in Troy. They literally beat Christian adults and harassed little children while shouting obscenities and chanting “hail Satan.”

A young mother and her very young children, as well as a black family, had to be escorted by church members through the screaming mob of BLM supporters. The mob threatened to call Child Protective Services on parents in the church and started shrieking “save those kids” as families walked by. At least one protester even threatened to torch the church.

While the scenes at Grace Baptist Church were captured on video and made headlines across conservative-leaning independent media, the establishment’s propaganda organs had a virtual black-out on the story. Only the local paper ran an article — a highly biased “article” against the church. No politicians rushed to condone the violence and hatred on display. The government official involved has not been fired.

The mob was angry about a variety of issues, especially the church’s decision to give away an AR-15 rifle. On several occasions over the last decade, the church has given away or raffled off the classic and highly popular AR-15 rifle, partly in response to unconstitutional government attacks on the right to keep and bear arms. The church said on social media that it had no regrets over its decisions.

Much of the barbarism was caught on video. One clip, for instance, shows violent BLM supporters physically attacking church members. At about 1:20 in the video, a protester can be seen grabbing a church attendee and putting him in a headlock after a verbal spat. Another BLM activist then begins savagely beating the victim, throwing punch after punch after punch. A man identified by the church as Alexander Contompasis was seen punching two church members from behind before pushing the pastor. Police eventually show up to stop the physical attacks on churchgoers.

In a statement to The New American, Pastor John Koletas said the church has stood firmly against communism and totalitarianism since it was founded in 1987. “Too many Americans view the church as weak and apathetic to self defense and the biblical command to arm ourselves,” he said, explaining the decision to give away a semi-automatic rifle in light of that and unconstitutional gun-control policies. “We wanted to be an encouragement to lawful gun owners who had been vilified by the anti-Christian, socialist media and fake, phony, and fraudulent religious leaders.”

“When this year’s gun giveaway was announced, it brought out the God haters and devilish forces again,” Koletas continued, adding that the reasons for the attack by the BLM mob included anger over the church continuing to hold services during coronavirus, the preaching, and the promotion of firearms ownership through the AR-15 giveaway. “All were angry that we refused to back down on all accounts.”

Koletas expressed shock about the “screaming” mob of BLM activists who “mocked and jeered” a black missionary family that was attending. Other videos recorded during the attacks showed a man, identified by the church as Lukee Forbes, berating a black man on the steps of the church. The reason: “He dared to stand with the church instead of the communist detractors,” Koletas said, adding that Forbes was a government employee of the City of Albany who did time in prison for nearly beating a homosexual to death after a “Pride” parade.

Making matters worse is that the police refused to intervene until the mob actually became physically violent, Koletas said. In fact, they even sent some church members away rather than protect their rights to religious liberty, freedom of association, and private property from the angry BLM mob. “A black couple from our church were turned away by the police because of the mob: ‘tonight might not be the best day to go to church,’” he continued.

The pastor responded to the hate and extremism by inviting the mob inside, hoping for peaceful dialogue and that the angry protesters would benefit from hearing about the Bible. Some went in, but when invited to receive salvation, they became disruptive, with some again threatening violence and bearing false witness against the pastor, he explained.

All of that evil should have been evidence enough to understand the reality of what is going on and what BLM is really about. But the true spiritual nature of the BLM mob was even more clearly evident throughout the mob’s rampage. According to Koletas and other witnesses, as well as video evidence, an actual witch stood outside the church with candles and ritual drawings. Cries of “hail Satan” could be heard clearly, too.

The spiritual implications of the billionaire-funded BLM attack on America are becoming clearer. As The New American has been documenting for months, the Marxism and the hatred of the BLM has been beyond dispute for quite some time. Now, the occult connections of the leadership and the spiritual nature of the battle are beyond dispute, too.

BLM is not just an attack on liberty, property, statues of great Americans, history, and Western civilization. It is an attack on Christianity and God, too. Churches must take their rightful place on the front lines.

This article was originally published at TheNewAmerican.com.



Wrecking the Suburbs on Purpose

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Written by Robert Knight

President Trump caused a stir in July when he issued an order terminating some Obama housing policies aimed at killing off the suburbs.

“The [Democrat] plan is to remake the suburbs in their image so they resemble the dysfunctional cities they now govern,” he wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal column jointly authored with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Benjamin Carson. “As usual, anyone who dares tell the truth about what the left is doing is smeared as a racist.”

Outraged Democrats called the president a racist.

The rule he overturned, Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) program, would “abolish single-family zoning, compel the construction of high-density ‘stack and pack’ apartment buildings in residential neighborhoods, and forcibly transform neighborhoods.”

Meanwhile, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are doubling down. Their plan, costing $640 billion over 10 years, would unleash a tsunami of social engineering.

As the Biden website proclaims, “Housing is a right, not a privilege.”

Everybody needs a home, no doubt about it.  The question is how best to ensure liberty and encourage home ownership while still making sure the poorest have a place to live.  America’s “safety net” of welfare and public housing provides minimal needs, but it’s also created a permanent underclass of fatherless families. The Democrats’ war on marriage was tailor-made to create a dependent, Free Stuff Army.

Once-thriving cities have huge areas where it’s not safe to go even in the daytime. Newly elected Democrat district attorneys financed by George Soros have abandoned the “broken windows” method of curbing crime and are reaping the whirlwind.  BLM mobs are still rioting.

It’s no secret why millions of people, including minorities, have moved to the suburbs. They want a safer, better quality of life.  But the Democrats, motivated by extreme environmentalism and political ambitions, want to force urban patterns on the burbs.

Mr. Biden says he is going to ensure that “every American has access to housing that is affordable, stable, safe and healthy, accessible, energy efficient and resilient, and located near good schools and with a reasonable commute to their jobs.”

That’s sweeping. Maybe he should ask the Communist Chinese how to go about achieving this. They move millions of people around to where they want them.

The Biden scheme includes expanding the Community Reinvestment Act.  That was the Bill Clinton/Barney Frank law forcing banks to issue mortgages to people who could not afford them.  It triggered the collapse of the stock market and the Great Recession.

So, now Mr. Biden wants to apply it “to mortgage and insurance companies.”  This would create more ways to pressure lenders to issue toxic mortgages.  If only we had some experience as to how this sort of thing turns out.  Maybe Mr. Biden could get Barney Frank to run it.

The sneakiest part of the Democrat housing plan is to use zoning laws to end suburbia as we know it. “It will be as if America’s suburbs had been swallowed up by the cities they surround,” social anthropologist Stanley Kurtz wrote recently in National Review.

“They will lose control of their own zoning and development, they will be pressured into a kind of de facto regional-revenue redistribution, and they will even be forced to start building high-density low-income housing.”

Are all those suburban moms who supposedly are going to vote Democrat in November listening?

Some jurisdictions are already going down this road.  In January, Minneapolis, where the city council has also decided to disband the police department, became the first major city to ban zoning for single-family homes.

“Our landmark 2040 Comprehensive Plan helps advance those goals by tackling our city’s long history of exclusionary zoning,” Mayor Jacob Frey exulted.

Mr. Frey, if you recall, was shocked that he was shouted down by rioters during his foray into the war zone that BLM and Antifa created in the wake of George Floyd’s death.  He refused to say he would defund the cops, but did bemoan a “systemic racist system.”

This guy is doing his best to turn Minneapolis into a mob-ruled version of Stalingrad. You’d think the mob would show more gratitude.

Minneapolis is not alone.  In 2019, the state of Oregon banned single-family zoning in cities with more than 10,000 residents.

In California, a pending bill would require California cities and counties to permit duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes on residential land zoned for single-family homes.  Take that, Orange County! Wait. Ballot harvesting swept Democrats into power in the formerly conservative bastion. Maybe never mind.

Senate Bill 50, sponsored by San Francisco Democrat Senator Scott Wiener, has been endorsed by the leftist mayors of Oakland, Sacramento, San Jose, and San Francisco.  Wonder if a fourplex will rise someday behind Nancy Pelosi’s mansion?  She could wave to the neighbors while scarfing down some of that $12 a pint ice cream from her giant freezer.

As for the Democrats’ lust for power over housing, letter-to-the-editor writer Roger Ruvolo put it this way in the Wall Street Journal:

In the Democratic vision of the future, antireligious automatons will live in small ‘multifamily’ units stacked sky high next to bus or train stations.

This election is no more about President Trump than it is about Vice President Biden; it’s about freedom, or not.

Robert Knight is a Townhall contributor. You can follow him on Twitter at @RobertKnight17 and his website is roberthknight.com.



Karl Marx and Black Lives Matter

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An important new book by historian Paul Kengor sheds considerable light on Karl Marx and by implication the madness and mob violence that has descended on the country.

The throngs setting fire to police stations, looting stores and tearing down America’s cultural history are acting in the name of Black Lives Matter, a Marxist group that our ruling elites have airbrushed and turned into a totem of worship.

The current conflict is not merely a political disagreement over rectifying racial disparities; it’s a clash of religions: atheistic Marxism versus Christianity and Judaism.

At issue is whether the mobs, allied with the Democratic Party and leftist groups, can overthrow America’s Christian-inspired self-governing republic, where our rights come from our Creator, not fickle men in power.

In “The Devil and Karl Marx,” Prof. Kengor explores not only the communist icon’s religious views but how they corrupted so many others over nearly two centuries.

Marx hated God and Christianity with a white-hot passion. His prose is packed with attacks on faith, and his youthful poetry bristles with malice:

Look now, my blood-dark sword shall stab

Unerringly within thy soul.

God neither knows nor honors art.

The hellish vapors rise and fill the brain

Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed.

See the sword—the Prince of Darkness sold it to me.

For he beats the time and gives the signs.

Ever more boldly I play the dance of death.

Citing numerous biographies and Marx’s own writings, Prof. Kengor reveals a man whose own family and friends were frightened by his demonic fits of rage and dark babblings about violence.  His own father said he was “governed by a demon.”  A key biographer, Robert Payne, described Marx as having “the devil’s view of the world and the devil‘s malignity.”

In 1849, Marx wrote,

When our turn comes, we shall make no excuses for the terror. There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.

A direct line can be drawn from Marx to Adolph Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung, all of whom despised Christianity and embraced murderous forms of socialism.

Before Marx, violent socialism was unleashed in 1789, with the guillotining of 40,000 aristocrats and others.  The French Revolution was ultimately an atheist revolt against the church and the rule of law.  The Jacobins in revolutionary France sought to wipe out history in order to create a Godless utopia. A hint of their fanatical atheism can be seen today in the beheadings in America of statues of Jesus and Mary and the torching of churches.

Communist revolutions, beginning in Russia in 1917, have taken at least 140 million lives, enslaved literally billions of people and spread unspeakable horror everywhere Marxism has taken root, Dr. Kengor notes.

When Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullours boasted in 2015 that “myself” and BLM co-founder Alicia Garza “are trained Marxists,” was she aware of the poisonous pedigree of her stated worldview?  Perhaps it didn’t matter.

BLM’s website is packed with Marxist rhetoric and flat-out lies like this: “In 2014, Mike Brown was murdered by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.”  Mr. Wilson, who was acting in self-defense, was cleared during the Obama Administration.  Never get in the way of a useful narrative.

Among other things, BLM is using the LGBTQ movement as a blunt instrument:

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure… foster a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.

Families produce independent-minded people, which is why socialists promote sexual anarchy.  Marx and his co-author Friedrich Engels denounced families, saying the state should seize and raise children.

The rapidity with which virtually every sizable institution in America has bent its knee to BLM is stunning.  To be fair, most probably think it’s just about racial remonstrance and reforming police procedure, and even love of neighbor and equality before God.

But the call for getting on one’s knees to this movement and parroting their Marxist slogans is anything but sacred. How do Christians, in particular, justify kneeling to anything other than God Almighty and His Son Jesus Christ? A few courageous athletes have refused to go along.

For many, fear of man has triumphed over devotion to God.  Aided by a relentless media, Democrats have embraced Marxist mob rule while few Republicans other than President Trump have found the courage to call it what it is: un-American and evil.

A final word on Marx. If he had had a glimpse into the murderous misery his philosophy would unleash, would he have shelved his books and spared the world?

Hardly likely. Prof. Kengor shares a line from the heroine in one of Marx’s poems:

Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, is chosen for Hell.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.



It’s Looting, Not Reparations

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In the early morning hours of August 9th, looters ransacked stores along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Known for its high-end retail shops, the 13-block stretch along North Michigan Avenue filled with people, quickly descending into chaos and overwhelming the Chicago Police Department (CPD).

Early reports claimed the rioting and protests were in response to police shooting and killing a child Sunday afternoon in the Englewood neighborhood. That was quickly proven false when police reported the actual incident involved a shootout with a 20-year-old man who was wounded, but not fatally, and had fired first at officers in an hours-long standoff.

But that did not matter to leaders of the group Black Lives Matter Chicago. The Chicago Sun-Times reported the group warned the City’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot in a statement that the unrest would not end until “the safety and well-being of our communities is finally prioritized.”

The statement continued, “The mayor clearly has not learned anything since May, and she would be wise to understand that the people will keep rising up until the [Chicago Police Department] is abolished and our Black communities are fully invested in.” True to their word, the group has continued to hold protests around the city.

CPD Superintendent David Brown said that police have arrested over 100 people, two were shot that night, and 13 officers were injured. Brown described the looting as “pure criminality.” BLM Chicago countered that people were just “protesting.”

According to the BLM Chicago statement, “Over the past few months, too many people — disproportionately Black and Brown — have lost their jobs, lost their income, lost their homes, and lost their lives as the city has done nothing and the Chicago elite have profited. When protesters attack high-end retail stores that are owned by the wealthy and service the wealthy, that is not ‘our’ city and has never been meant for us.”

The next morning, Superintendent Brown said the shooting led to a wave of overnight looting downtown and on the Near North Side that resulted in two people being shot, over 100 arrests, and 13 injuries to officers. Though Brown characterized the looting as “pure criminality,” Black Lives Matter Chicago again claimed that those involved were protesting.

Ariel Atkins

That same day at a demonstration in the city, Ariel Atkins, a Chicago BLM organizer, encouraged looters to take “anything they want to take” as “reparations.”

“I don’t care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci, or a Macy’s, or a Nike,” Atkins said, “because that makes sure that that person eats. That makes sure that that person has clothes. That’s a reparation. Anything they want to take, take it, because these businesses have insurance.”

Atkins doubled down on her previous statement the following day, telling WBEZ radio that BLM supports the looters 100% and they should take “anything they want” as “reparations.”

When questioned about the looters who tried to break into a nearby Ronald McDonald House where frightened sick children and their parents were staying, Atkins defended them, stating, “I will support the looters ’til the end of the day. If that’s what they need to do in order to eat, then that’s what you’ve got to do to eat.”

It’s not just Atkins and BLM Chicago who feel that way. In June, CNN’s Christine Amanpour interviewed Nikole Hannah-Jones, the lead writer for the New York Times’ 1619 Project. Amanpour asked Hannah-Jones about a statement she had made about the act of taking being symbolic for restitution. Hannah-Jones replied,

When we see someone killed by the police, that is the worse manifestation of police violence,”  “but it doesn’t get to the daily violence that doesn’t end in death, or the daily degradation that black Americans face. The fact that these communities have been preyed upon by predatory lenders, it goes on and on. When we think about someone taking something from some big-box name store, it is symbolic. That one pair of shoes that you stole from Footlocker is not going to change your life, but it is a symbolic taking.

Columnist decries looters

Liberal Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell came out against the looters in her August 10th column. “Sunday night’s assault on downtown businesses was a brazen display of criminal behavior, pure and simple,” she wrote.

Countering the BLM organizer’s statement, Mitchell wrote,

The people who smashed their way into luxe boutiques didn’t do it because they were fed up with police shootings, or because they are out of work and desperate.

They did it because they saw an opportunity to steal stuff they couldn’t afford to buy and because they have no respect for the rule of law.

More than a week has passed since BLM Chicago made its demands. CPD has bolstered efforts to track down looters through social media. Officers are working 12-hour shifts and days off are canceled. Businesses downtown are boarded up and some retailers have announced plans to leave the city. And the protests continue.

Will the mayor acquiesce to their demands? What exactly will it take for BLM Chicago to feel “the safety and well-being of our communities is finally prioritized?” Could the city see the violence get even worse as the November elections approach? Will President Donald Trump send federal intervention? Could the religious community unite and stand as one to push back the evil that’s overtaken Chicago? So many questions… no clear answers.

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Dr. Michael Brown: The Role of Christians in the Public Square

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If you’ve ever wondered how you can (or why you must) be the salt of the earth and a light to the world, you will want to listen to Dr. Michael L. Brown’s presentation, The Role of Christians in the Public Square, from the 2020 IFI Worldview conference. Using biblical principles and real-life examples, Dr. Brown explains the purpose and imperative of living out our faith in the secular world and asks straightforward questions that cut right to the heart of what it means to be a believer and follower of Jesus.

Please watch and share this timely video with family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers.

Dr. Brown is the founder and president of Fire School of Ministry in Concord, North Carolina. He is also a radio and podcast host of The Line of Fire and a prolific author. Jezebel’s War With America: The Plot to Destroy Our Country and What We Can Do to Turn the Tide is his latest book.

If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI,
please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.



Are Today’s Leftists Truly Marxists?

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Written by Walter E. Williams

Most people who call themselves Marxists know very little of Karl Marx‘s life and have never read his three-volume “Das Kapital.” Volume I was published in 1867, the only volume published before Marx’s death in 1883. Volumes II and III were later edited and published in his name by his friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels. Most people who call themselves Marxists have only read his 1848 pamphlet “The Communist Manifesto,” which was written with Engels.

Marx is a hero to many labor union leaders and civil rights organizations, including leftist groups like Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and some Democratic Party leaders. It is easy to be a Marxist if you know little of his life. Marx’s predictions about capitalism and the “withering away of the state” turned out to be grossly wrong. What most people do not know is that Marx was a racist and an anti-Semite.

When the U.S. annexed California after the Mexican-American War, Marx wrote: “Without violence nothing is ever accomplished in history.” Then he asked, “Is it a misfortune that magnificent California was seized from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it?” Friedrich Engels added: “In America we have witnessed the conquest of Mexico and have rejoiced at it. It is to the interest of its own development that Mexico will be placed under the tutelage of the United States.” Many of Marx’s racist ideas were reported in “Karl Marx, Racist,” a book written by Nathaniel Weyl, a former member of the U.S. Communist Party.

In a July 1862 letter to Engels, in reference to his socialist political competitor Ferdinand Lassalle, Marx wrote:

It is now completely clear to me that he, as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes from Egypt, assuming that his mother or grandmother had not interbred with a nigger. Now this union of Judaism and Germanism with a basic Negro substance must produce a peculiar product. The obtrusiveness of the fellow is also nigger-like.

In 1887, Paul Lafargue, who was Marx’s son-in-law, was a candidate for a council seat in a Paris district that contained a zoo. Engels claimed that Paul had “one eighth or one twelfth nigger blood.” In an April 1887 letter to Paul’s wife, Engels wrote, “Being in his quality as a nigger, a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district.”

Marx’s anti-Semitic views were no secret. In 1844, he published an essay titled “On the Jewish Question.” He wrote that the worldly religion of Jews was “huckstering” and that the Jews’ god was “money.” Marx’s view of Jews was that they could only become an emancipated ethnicity or culture when they no longer exist. Just one step short of calling for genocide, Marx said, “The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way.”

Marx’s philosophical successors shared ugly thoughts on blacks and other minorities. Che Guevara, a hero of the left, was a horrific racist. In his 1952 memoir, “The Motorcycle Diaries,” Guevara wrote,

The Negro is indolent and lazy and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent.

British socialist Beatrice Webb griped in The New Statesmen about declining birthrates among so-called higher races, which would lead to “a new social order” that would be created “by one or other of the colored races, the Negro, the Kaffir or the Chinese.” The Soviets espoused the same “Jewish world conspiracy” as the Nazis. Joseph Stalin embarked upon a campaign that led to the deaths of Jewish intellectuals for their apparent lack of patriotism. By the way, the Soviet public was not told that Karl Marx was Jewish. Academics who preach Marxism to their classes fail to tell their students that his ideology has led to the slaughter of tens of millions of people. What’s worse, they fail to even feign concern over this fact.

White liberals are useful idiots. BLM, Antifa, and other progressive groups use the plight of poor blacks to organize left-leaning, middle-class, college-educated, guilt-ridden suburbanite whites. These people who topple statues and destroy public and private property care about minorities as much as their racist predecessors. Their goal is the acquisition and concentration of power and Americans have fallen hook, line, and sinker for their phony virtue signaling.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.



Perspective Should Make Us Thankful Americans

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There is a lot of talk of oppression, privilege and struggles in America right now. Unfortunately, the vast majority of this dialogue is in the negative sense, very often as a smear against our system of governance. Americans have a tendency to look through a lens that clouds not only our history, but it also limits our views to an Ameri-centric perspective.

Ironically, and quite disturbingly, some of the loudest voices proclaiming oppression are from those who are among the wealthiest in the nation, and the world. As I mentioned before I do not believe in “white privilege.” I do believe in American privilege. It is something that is too often overlooked.

A groundbreaking study by Just Facts has discovered that after accounting for all income, charity, and non-cash welfare benefits like subsidized housing and Food Stamps—the poorest 20 percent of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries. This includes the majority of countries in the prestigious Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including its European members.

In other words, if the U.S. “poor” were a nation, it would be one of the world’s richest.

In a July 1st New York Times video op-ed claimed that “America is the richest country” in the OECD, “but we’re also the poorest, with a whopping 18 percent poverty rate—closer to Mexico than Western Europe.” Yet, World Bank data shows that 35 percent of Mexico’s population lives on less than $5.50 per day, as compared to only 2 percent of people in the United States.  In other words, poverty rates say nothing about which nation is “the poorest.”

To accurately compare living standards across or within nations, it is necessary to account for all major aspects of material welfare. None of the Times data did this. The OECD data is particularly flawed because it is based on “income,” which excludes a host of non-cash government benefits and private charity that are abundant in the United States.

When politicians, celebrities and the media talk about poverty, disadvantage or income inequality, they often use statistics that fail to account for large amounts of income and benefits received by poorer households. This gives America’s poor a purchasing power that far exceeds the purchasing power of every income group in many other nations.

In 2010, even the poorest 20 percent of Americans consumed 3 to 30 times more goods and services than the averages for all people in a wide array of developing nations around the world:

These immense gaps in standards of living are a major reason why people from developing nations immigrate to the U.S. instead of vice versa. America has more opportunity and wealth for all classes of Americans than many people around the world will ever know.   No one wants to be poor, but if you are, America is the best place to be.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.