Written by Monica Cole

From HBO Max comes the new abortion comedy Unpregnant, and it is anything but funny. The movie mocks the sanctity of human life and turns one teenager’s pursuit of an abortion without parental consent into a fun cross-country road trip in which a broken friendship is restored.

Seventeen-year-old Veronica finds out she’s pregnant. She can’t turn to her parents who are Catholic and referred to as Jesus Freaks, nor can she turn to her boyfriend who is trying to sabotage her out-of-state college plans. The only person Veronica can turn to who won’t judge her is her former best friend Bailey. Despite their friendship problems, Bailey agrees to help Veronica and together they take a road trip from Missouri to New Mexico, the nearest abortion clinic that does not require parental consent.

Veronica’s Ivy League college plans are the reason she is choosing to end the life of her unborn baby at an abortion facility over 900 miles away. Along the way they run into drama: They find out they are driving a stolen vehicle; they run into pro-life activists, and they stop at a carnival and enjoy rides that are unsafe during pregnancy.

The movie is based on a young adult novel by the same name written by Jenni Hendriks. The director of the film Unpregnant, Rachel Lee Goldenberg stated:

“I want there to be less shame and stigma around the topic of abortion. I want to educate people on the problematic existing laws and also demystify the abortion procedure. I’m not sure if one movie can do everything I want it to do, but it’s not going to stop us from trying.”

HBO is making a mockery of a tragic life-or-death situation and calling it entertainment. A majority of our supporters likely do not subscribe to this premium channel because of its risqué and inappropriate content. But with so much available on-demand, a warning needed to be sent concerning the plot of this PG-13 rated film. We also want HBO to hear our voices on this matter.

Take ACTION:  Please sign the AFA petition to HBO Max vowing you will never watch ‘Unpregnant’ and urging your friends and family not to watch it either.

This article was originally published by AFA.net.

Now that the new Netflix movie “Cuties” is available for viewing, we know that it is far worse than we imagined. Yet there are movie critics and movie stars who are celebrating this trash rather than denouncing it. What has happened to our culture? Have we lost all vestige of a conscience?

In the words of Kyle Hooten on Twitter, “‘Cuties’ just released and it’s WAY worse than anybody expected. Netflix just published soft-core child pornography, and they’ll probably get away with it.”

Jason Howerton’s tweet was even more emphatic: “I’m dead serious, people should go to prison for this. ‘Lawfully defines as pedophilia’ and look at the media ratings. All of you are going to hell. #Cuties.”

As my wife Nancy asked when I sent her some links, “How can this even be legal????” How indeed.

Before the movie came out, but based on initial reports, I asked, “At what point does this stop? At what point does our society say, ‘Enough is enough’ when it comes to the assault on our children? At what point do we stand up as a nation and put a stop to this attack on innocence?”

Now that the movie is out, with a sickening segment posted for viewing on social media (viewer discretion advised), we must say, “Enough!” as loudly and clearly as we can.

A good place to start would be canceling Netflix subscriptions. As Robby Starbuck tweeted, “The 11 year old girls who were sexually exploited filming Cuties shot those scenes in front of a director, a DP, a gaffer, their parents, a choreographer, a MUA, a hair person, a camera assistant, a wardrobe person, extras and more. Not one adult protected them. #CancelNetflix.”

Yes, these are young girls dancing sexually in the presence of adults (no doubt to be viewed online with glee by sexual perverts). Young girls who could be your daughters or granddaughters. Young girls being exploited for profit. And Netflix distributes this without consequences? Enough!

Yet, despite this outrage, one which is uniting social liberals with social conservatives, the movie has its admirers.

In the words of actress Tessa Thompson, “#CUTIES is a beautiful film. It gutted me at @sundancefest.  It introduces a fresh voice at the helm. She’s a French Senegalese Black woman mining her experiences. The film comments on the hyper-sexualization of preadolescent girls. Disappointed to see the current discourse. ”

So Thompson is disappointed to see mothers and fathers and others grieved over “the hyper-sexualization of preadolescent girls,” failing to realize that they are being exploited in this very movie.

In other words, the movie does not simply tell a sad story about young girls being sexually exploited (many would argue it celebrates their sexploitation). The movie itself exploits the children. But rather than being brokenhearted over the contents of the movie, Thompson is “disappointed” to see the negative reaction to the flick. This is turning morality upside down.

Yet Thompson is not alone, and what I am about to report provides a glimpse into the morally confused bubble in which many in the film industry live.

On the Rotten Tomatoes website, viewers gave the movie a rating of 3% an incredibly low (but rightly deserved) score. (As of this writing, there were 1,047 viewer ratings.) But film critics gave it a score of 88%, a very good rating.  (This was based on 32 reviews.) They really loved the film!

This sums up the perversion of much of the film industry – the lack of morality, the lack of conscience, the lack of family awareness.

And what is the critics’ description of the film? “A thoughtful look at the intricacies of girlhood in the modern age, Cuties is a coming-of-age film that confronts its themes with poignancy and nuance.”

Only one word comes to mind to describe my reaction to their words: sick.

No wonder America is so morally lost. These critics are our guides and our prophets.

Yet, the truth be told, I’m not in the least bit surprised. Not when a sexually degrading, vulgar song can be the number one hit in the nation (and in other nations). Not when there is an epidemic of porn sweeping the land, affecting the religious and non-religious alike. Not when our legislators pass laws protecting sexually aggressive adults (who have sex with younger teens). Not when we celebrate 11-year-old drag queens dancing in gay bars.

So, it is not just the film critics who are sick. It is not just those who exploited those young girls in “Cuties” (this includes their parents, who allowed it) who are sick. No, our whole nation is sick, drowning in a sea of depravity.

It is that serious. There is no hyperbole in my words.

And so, while canceling our Netflix subscriptions is a good place to start – in recent weeks, the series “Lucifer” was trending at the top of the charts – it can only be a starting point.

This is a time for deep personal reflection. A time for searching of soul and heart. A time of sweeping repentance.

In short, either we have a massive spiritual and moral awakening, or we perish. What will it be?

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

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.

At what point does this stop? At what point does our society say, “Enough is enough” when it comes to the assault on our children? At what point do we stand up as a nation and put a stop to this attack on innocence?

There was a time when our kids were not bombarded with “pornographic” sex-ed curricula in middle school.

There was a time when condoms were not given out to elementary school students.

There was a time when first graders were not taught LGBTQ terminology.

There was a time when we did not celebrate 8-year-old drag queens (and when drag queens did not twerk for our toddlers in libraries).

There was a time when movies were not made about 11-year-old girls joining sensual dance teams.

But that time is not now, and the assault on our children’s innocence is at an all time high. Should we not be concerned? Should we not be grieved? Should we not be outraged?

Lest you think I’m exaggerating, the California Globe reported on May 9, 2019,

Despite hundreds of parents protesting and testifying, on Wednesday the California State Board of Education approved highly controversial changes to the state’s health and sex education framework including teaching children about bondage, anal sex, pederasty, sex trafficking, sexual orientation and transgender and non-conforming students.

One book, recommended for transitional kindergarten through third grade includes “graphic, close-up illustrations of child/adult genitals and the sex act itself.” This is for kids aged 6-9!

Another book, also recommended for the same age group, teaches “kids they can be a boy, a girl, both, neither, gender queer, or gender fluid, etc. and that adults guess a child’s gender based on body parts.”

As for high school students, one textbook, “Introduces or encourages anal sex for all sexual orientations, BDSM (bondage, domination, sadomasochism), body fluid (urinating on each other) or blood play, fisting, and a long list of other sexual debauchery.”

If you blush while reading these words as an adult (or don’t know what some of the terms mean), can you imagine teaching this to high school kids? Yet it is adults, many of them parents, who approve of trash like this. What an outrage.

Now, Netflix has come under attack for its new documentary called Cuties. Yes, “The streaming giant is facing backlash for its promotional poster for the French film, whose young stars are 11-years-old. The promo image in question shows the children wearing revealing dance attire of shorts and crop tops and striking various dance poses, like kneeling on the floor and squatting.”

Netflix quickly apologized for the poster, removing it from the promotional material. But it did not apologize for the movie itself, stating,

We’re deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties. It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which won an award at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description.

Ah, but of course. The film won an award at Sundance. It must be good and moral. After all, Sundance is kind of like the Bible Belt of movies. Conservative. Almost prudish. Right.

Rather, as Indie Wire noted, “The Sundance Film Festival has been shocking audiences — and launching careers — for years.” An early Sundance winner was the 1989 movie “Sex, Lies, and Videotape.”

As described on IndieWire, “In someways the quintessential movie of Sundance’s early years, Steven Soderbergh’s landmark debut remains one of the best movies ever to come out of the festival — and one of the most sexually frank.”

So much for winning an award at Netflix.

And what, exactly, is “Cuties” about? As reported on Heavy, in the movie, which earned a TV-MA rating, “Amy, an 11-year-old girl, joins a group of dancers named ‘the cuties’ at school, and rapidly grows aware of her burgeoning femininity – upsetting her mother and her values in the process.”

It is also described as a “coming-of-age moving about an 11-year-old,” which really says it all. Girls that young are not “coming of age” to sensual dancing unless someone else teaches them. The thoughts would never enter their minds on their own, especially when they come from traditional religious backgrounds, as does Amy.

A headline in The U.S. Sun reads, “THIS IS GROSS! Netflix’s new ‘Cuties’ show sparks fury with ‘highly sexualised’ drama about 11-year-old girl joining ‘twerking squad.’” This should spark fury among parents. (And what about the little girls who posed for the Netflix poster? Should anyone think about them?)

Someone might say, “But the film simply tells the increasingly common story of a girl raised in a religious home (in this case, a Muslim home) who discovers a whole new world through social media and her school. This is the new reality.”

But that’s the whole problem. The new reality is rotten. The new reality defiles. The new reality destroys. And the new reality gets worse by the day. Almost all innocence has been lost.

Young kids grow up singing the most salacious lyrics, gyrating sexually as they mouth the words, being exposed to filth long before they can even understand it. And kids as young as 8 are regularly encountering porn. How have we let this happen? How have we let our children be emotionally and morally raped?

There is even concern now about pedophile dolls. I am not making this up.

As a nation, we are outraged over the allegations against the late Jeffrey Epstein. And we are mortified when we learn that sex trafficking is taking place in front of our eyes in major cities across America.

But our outrage should go deeper. The very souls of our children are under daily assault, from their cell phones to their classrooms. Shall we not put up a wall of protection around them?

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. This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

Here is part one of the video of the presenters from the BFM rally. The speakers include the Master of Ceremonies Dr. Eric Wallace, Pastor Arthur Guice, Dr. Richard Mantoan, Pastor Ceasar LeFlore, IL Second Congressional Candidate Theresa Rayborn, and Pastor Greg Morris.

Written by Arielle Leake

The Baby-Sitters Club is a new Netflix series based on the popular children’s books by the same name published in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The books—and now the television series—follow the lives of four 12-year-old girls and their entrepreneurial babysitting endeavors. Unfortunately, parents who fondly remember the books from their own childhood should think twice before allowing their impressionable children to watch this G-rated show.

Transgenderism is brazenly presented, unchallenged, and actively celebrated. The fourth episode of the show “Mary Ann Saves the Day” prominently displays the show’s cultural indoctrination. One of the four main characters, Mary Ann, is tasked with babysitting Bailey, a young boy who firmly believes he is a girl and lives a transgender lifestyle. The episode is fraught with highly concerning dialogue and messaging. For example, Mary Ann’s friend explains Bailey’s lifestyle to her by saying, “We all want our insides to match our outsides.” This explanation clearly illustrates the two-story dualism underlying the transgender movement or, as Nancy Pearcy puts it in her book Love Thy Body, “the idea that your brain can be at war with your body.”

The scriptwriters are so committed to the idea that your feelings control who you really are that they cannot even promote healthy encouragement. When Mary Ann, who struggles with self-confidence (as most tween girls do), exclaims that she is “a pathetic cry-baby,” the only help her friend can offer is to say, “If you believe you are a pathetic cry-baby who am I to tell you otherwise.” It could have been a moment used to show young girls how to support and encourage one another while not affirming a lie someone believes about themselves. Instead, all the show can muster is a weak statement meant to shove forward the philosophy that how you feel dictates who you are.

Mary Ann finally finds her “confidence” when she takes it upon herself to reprimand the doctor and nurse who dare to address Bailey by his biological sex. Mary Ann instructs them that “from here on out,” they should “recognize her for who she is.” Further, she requests that they bring Bailey something other than the standard blue hospital nightgown, which he evidently finds highly offensive.

Even more appalling, those in the position of authority—both the medical professionals and the child’s parents—willingly go along with the young child’s whims. Instead of helping him see who God created him to be, they encourage his harmful fascinations and reinforce the idea that fitting a certain “stereotype,” whether it be wearing blue or playing tea parties, is what makes you a male or female.

As a young woman, I am disappointed to see a show that will be viewed by many young and impressionable girls espousing such harmful views—without so much as a question about the consequences of these ideas. Instead of giving young girls a proper view of what it means to be a woman, The Baby-Sitters Club presents womanhood as something that is merely a product of your feelings and not a God-given identity.

In a world that is becoming increasingly accepting of transgender ideology, parents should be cautious about the ideas being espoused in the media their children consume. Christians have a role to play in restoring an understanding that humans are a unique combination of both body and soul, which equally make up who we are and are not at war with each other. Nancy Pearcy defines the Christian’s role as being “the first in line to nurture and support kids who don’t ‘fit in’ by affirming the diversity of gifts and temperaments in the body of Christ.” This is exactly the opposite of what is done in The Baby-Sitters Club.

Arielle Leake is a Policy & Government Affairs intern focusing on religious liberty. This article was originally published at the FRC blog.

As summer temperatures began heating up and cases of COVID-19 started trending upward, the media started to look for a place to lay the blame. The New York Times quickly found it – Christians and the churches they attend.

In an article titled “Churches Were Eager to Reopen. Now They Are a Major Source of Coronavirus Cases,” the Times accused churches resuming in person worship services of being responsible for the uptick in the viruses spread. After a few days of criticism, the headline was toned down to read, “Churches Were Eager to Reopen. Now They Are Confronting Coronavirus Cases.” In particular, the article focused on “how the virus rages through Texas, Arizona, and other evangelical bastions of the South and West…” There is no mention of the large protests that have been taking place across the country and could be contributing to the higher numbers.

What’s interesting is that the article focuses on 650 cases of the Coronavirus emanating from nearly 40 churches and religious events from around the country. The article’s three writers neglect to mention that, according to the Hartford Institute, there are an estimated 300,000 churches with approximately 56 million worshipers in the United States. The numbers cited in the article are statistically insignificant: .013333 churches and .001161 worshippers. They alone cannot be responsible for the nationwide resurgence.

However, the Times counts on readers not noticing and instead focusing on what the paper sees as the politicization of the issue. Most Christians are more likely to call it a religious liberty issue. The article describes “thousands of churches, synagogues and mosques” as having “been meeting virtually or outside on lawns and in parking lots to protect their members from the virus, the right to hold services within houses of worship became a political battleground as the country crawled out of lockdown.” There is no mention that some areas had little to no cases of the virus and wished to meet with the proper social distancing protocols in place. Nor was there a rush by churches to be reckless or unsafe. Such willful negligence would hopefully have been called out by the Christian community itself.

It’s been a stressful time for everyone, but it has been particularly difficult for pastors as they have tried to navigate the unknown. Throughout the pandemic, most pastors and their congregations have taken the matter seriously. They’ve sacrificed and have been incredibly creative in finding new ways to minister to their congregations and community.

While this has been happening, religious liberty has been threatened. It is a serious issue, for we see Socialist and Marxist ideas being embraced by some in our country. We’ve seen the governor of our own state of Illinois taken to court over his restrictions on churches. Court battles have been fought in numerous states including California, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, New York, and Wisconsin. Many cases are still being litigated and churches in California have just seen their worship services shut down for a second time due to a resurgence of COVID cases in that state. There is no room for the Times and other media to belittle the concerns of Christians over their First Amendment rights. However, this is the same media that has been ignoring a recent spate of vandalism and burning of Catholic churches.

May we as Christians stand together and prayerfully seek God’s wisdom in ministering to our communities and protecting the health of our congregants. May we also be bold in proclaiming his Word and our right to come together and to proclaim it without fear of being targeted and silenced.

Please consider a gift to the Illinois Family Institute. As always, your gift to IFI is tax-deductible and greatly appreciated!

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In their pursuit of replacing culture with anti-culture, the spanking new 21st Century culture Reformers are going to be very busy. Rather than nailing 95 theses on a church door, they’re going to tear down 950,000 monuments and place names honoring imperfect and altogether yucky colorless people and replace them I guess with the names of perfect colorful people. This provides yet more evidence of the silliness of Barack Obama’s out-of-context quote, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It also provides evidence of the truth of Dr. Martin Luther King‘s use of the quote, first spoken by 19th Century pastor Theodore Parker:

Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated with [Christ’s] name. Yes, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Neither Theodore Parker nor Dr. King was making the point that history moves always and ineluctably toward justice. They were making the point that ultimately Christ will redeem history. Christ has already won. It’s interesting that leftists have adopted BCE and CE in order to no longer refer to Christ. No matter, Christ still wins.

In the meantime, the devil roams the earth lying and destroying.

Now, after decades of canceling conservatives through a thousand tiny cuts and an occasional deep slash, the Reformers smell all that yummy human blood and are mercilessly cannibalizing their own.

The cannibals at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art forced out their curator, Gary Garrels, “[c]onsidered one of the country’s most prominent curators,” for the sin of saying he “would not stop collecting work by white men lest the institution take part in ‘reverse discrimination.’” The cannibals leapt on him. First, he tried futilely to stop the attack by groveling, saying,

I want to offer my personal and sincere apology to every one of you. I realized almost as soon as I used the term ‘reverse discrimination’ that this is an offensive term and was an extremely poor choice of words on my part.

His groveling delayed their devouring by seconds. The Cannibal Reformers responded, yum yum eat ‘im up. He’s gone, baby, gone.

The Cannibal Reformers have been noshing on Lin-Manuel Miranda, the beloved leftist author of the beloved musical Hamilton, for being insufficiently Reformed.

Homosexual, slightly conservative and now former New York magazine writer Andrew Sullivan was nibbled on for writing in ways about the protests that “triggered” “sensitive junior editors.” He resigned before being eaten alive.

And on social media and in her former place of business, writer Bari Weiss, who describes herself as  “center left on most things … and … socially liberal,” was gnawed on mercilessly. When the Cannibal Reformers, with blood dripping from their ghoulish mouths, paused to catch their breath, Weiss fled and used her best weapon to try to stop the cannibalization. She wrote and posted a resignation letter that exposes the intolerant, bigoted, ideologically non-diverse work environment at the New York Times:

[T]he lessons that ought to have followed the [2016] election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. …

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist. … Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned. …  [S]ome coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are. …

[T]he truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. … Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

Weiss’s resignation echoes what leftist journalist Matt Taibbi wrote in June:

It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

I worked with such Robespierres and experienced firsthand their bigotry and hypocrisy at Deerfield High School on Chicago’s North Shore. Ironically, some of the most vicious bullies were those who most vigorously claimed to honor all voices and to value diversity even as they promoted only one set of assumptions on how to think about race, sex, and erotic attraction. All views with which district oppressors disagreed were designated “hateful” and  their imperious judgments justified silencing—through bullying if necessary—all dissenting voices. While proclaiming that everyone should “Speak” their “Truth,” they ostracized anyone who expressed truths they hated.

Seeing the cannibals eating their own, ethics (or panic) seized 153 men and women who work in journalism, academia, and the arts—mostly leftists—and penned an open letter in Harpers in which they “raise their voices against” the “new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.” The signatories include Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, Todd Gitlin, Garry Kasparov, Damon Linker, Steven Pinker, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Jonathan Rauch, J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, Randi Weingarten, Garry Wills, Matthew Yglesias, and Fareed Zakaria.

After first taking potshots at conservatives, as is their wont to do, they wrote this:

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. … [C]ensoriousness is … spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.

But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. … the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.

Some of the most bloodthirsty cancel culture cannibals live and move and have their anti-being in the “trans” cult, and when Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling said men can’t be women, the Cannibal Reformers came for her with bared fangs and unsheathed drag queen talons. Fortunately, Rowling has an impenetrable armor made of gold bricks. Unfortunately, few Americans have such armor. Maybe AOC, Bernie, and Biden can provide some to each and every American—oh, and while they’re providing free stuff, I’d like my fair share: a Martha’s Vineyard mansion just like the Obamas’.

While this letter is a good start in undoing the damage done to the Republic by leftists, seeing the name of the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, undermines trust in the sincerity of the signatories in that teachers’ unions are at the forefront of leftist politicking, including using schools to advance their leftist ideology.

Not surprisingly, when the letter was published, the Cannibal Reformers lost what was left of their minds, beginning with Todd VanDerWerff, whose “trans” alter ego is “Emily” VanDerWerff. To be clear in the miasmic ontological fog created by the noxious exhalations of the “trans” cult, “Emily” is a biological man—forever.

He, like Harper’s letter signatory Matthew Yglesias, is a writer at Vox, and VanDerWerff laughably claimed that upon seeing Yglesias’ signature near the signature of J.K. Rowling, he felt “less safe working at Vox.” And the Cannibal Reformers were off and terrorizing.

Leftist stormtroopers unaccustomed to pushback kicked up a Twitter storm, and fearing for their professional lives, a handful of Harper’s letter signatories bailed. Three days later, a racist counter letter appeared, griping that many of the Harper’s letter signatories were “white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms.” Of course many were wealthy and endowed with massive platforms because only those with wealth and massive platforms can survive the Cannibal Reformers’ Purges.

What we need now is massive pushback against ideological Robespierres, storm troopers, and Cannibal Reformers. Don’t let their tactics intimidate you. Don’t be manipulated. Don’t be deceived. Don’t hold your fire. And don’t send your kids to their re-education camps.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Leftists-Canceling-and-Cannibalizing-Their-Own_audio.mp3

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Back in 2008, with a little encouragement from friend, Constitutional law professor and radio talk show host, Hugh Hewitt, I signed on to Twitter and was know as an early adapter.

Twitter was a new social media tool whereby like-minded conservatives could share content, message, and cheer each other on. The Right was swimming upstream and almost all broadcast media and other societal gatekeepers had lurched radically to the left, leaving conservatives adrift and feeling alone in an ever-darkenting culture.

I wrote some tutorials (Twitter for Newbies and Twitter for Newbies 102) on using Twitter for conservative and Christian messaging. Now, a mere 12 years later we’ve experienced another seismic shift in culture: the radical “gay” agenda, the radical pro-abort agenda, the socialist agenda, BLM et al have pressed the attack to their advantage.

And now the Twitterverse is closely guarded by its Leftist CEOs and social media techinitions, censoring conservatives and any who object to their godless worldview.

Which is why we’re seeing a mass exodus from Twitter to the newer, freer Parler.

What in the wide, wide world is Parler?

Parler is the French verb, “to speak” and the French pronunciation (par LAY) was the initial pronunciation, but since has changed to the English “parler,” (PAR ler) as in “a place to sit and visit.”

The platforms website explains its inception:

Parler was founded in 2018 and based in Henderson, Nevada. After being exhausted with a lack of transparency in big tech, ideological suppression and privacy abuse, our co-founders, John Matze and Jared Thomson decided to create an alternative solution.

Parler provides a Commenting and Social News platform for digital publishers, influencers, bloggers, writers, politicians and social users to share news, opinions and content in real time. Additionally, we provide enterprise tools to enhance online blogs, media and websites with direct social integrations and monetization capabilities.

Their tagline:

Parler is a non-biased free speech driven entity

Of note…while Twitter, Facebook and YouTube mention “Community Guidelines,” those mysterious guidelines are nowhere the average Joe can find them and they seem to be entirely subjective, bending and moving to suit the social media entity’s progressive policing staff.

Parler, on the other hand, has easy to find Community Guidelines which appear to be quite reasonable: no spam, no terrorism, no unsolicited advertisements, no pornography, no obscenity, plagiarism, sex trafficking, etc. Every listed constraint falls in line with a decent citizen’s mindset, a Christian or faith worldview.

Laura Ingraham interviewed Parler CEO John Matze in May 2019:

And on Fox Business last month a short report aired of prominent Conservatives who have made the move to Parler (including Devin Nunes, Ted Cruz, President Donald J. Trump, Dan Bongino, etc.):

Even the Washington Examiner featured an article on June 24, chronicling the Conservative migration wave to Parler, “Conservatives fed up with ‘censorship’ on Twitter jump to Parler“:

Conservative commentators, politicians, and others are shifting to a social media platform that competes with Twitter.

A slew of Twitter users looking for a social media platform they believe won’t censor them, including Rep. Devin Nunes, commentator Jesse Kelly, former Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill, and others, announced they have established accounts on Parler.

Nunes told the Federalist’s co-founder Sean Davis that “Parler will set you free!”

I made the move to Parler a couple years ago, when my friend, Elizabeth Johnston (“The Activist Mommy“) recommended the new social media platform.

https://www.facebook.com/theactivistmommy/posts/1929353640516109

As Christians, we are called to:

Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky. (Phil. 2:14&15)

And we are admonished in the Gospels:

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. (Matt. 5:13)

And in the epistle of Peter:

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. (1 Peter 3:15)

Those verses are our marching orders from Jesus: we Believers are to shine like stars (reflecting the light of The Son!), be “salt” (both preserving from decay and adding savor) in our culture, and be perpetually ready to tell a lost world about the great and mighty hope we have!

Such a mission is not for cowards, but brave and courageous souls. The meekness we’re instructed to temper our words is “power under control,” not mealy-mouthed reticence.

We should be joyful warriors, battling as outlined in Ephesians:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Eph. 6:12-17)

Defensively, social media platforms can indeed be effective mediums to counter the untruths being propagated in our society. And offensively, social media can be a powerful means of disseminating a message of life and hope.

Unfortunately, too many of the big tech companies are wholly owned and operated by progressives more concerned with leftist indoctrination than providing a free speech forum.

For now, Parler seems to provide such a forum with only minimum and reasonable constraints.

I say make the move! Sign up at Parler and join those of us who choose speak words of truth and life to our dark, dark culture.

You can download the apps on your smartphone:

These may or may not be the last days, but we know we’re to be busy no matter what sharing the Good News and telling the truth to hungry hearts in a dark, dark world.

For now, Parler may just be a great tool to further that important and eternal mission!

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois! 

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My fellow-Americans, we are being sold a bill of goods. Race is not what is dividing us. Rather, we are being divided by competing ideologies. Let us put our focus where it belongs.

Listening to the news, you would think that racism is deeply entrenched in every neighborhood in our country. That racial hatred is the norm. That judging people by the color of their skin is what the average American does.

But I do not believe that for a second – and I say that while fully acknowledging the very real racial issues we continue to face.

A caller to my radio show on Monday said he was born in Hong Kong. Then he lived in Ghana, in West Africa. Then in Ireland. And now in America.

He said that America was by far the least racist place he lived. (The call starts here.)

One week earlier, I had interviewed Prof. Craig Keener, a dear friend and one of the world’s foremost New Testament scholars.

He is white but was ordained into the ministry in a black church in America, and he is married to an African woman and they have a son. Craig has also co-authored two books on race relations, together with a black co-author.

He is acutely aware of racial issues and does not downplay them for a minute.

But he said that his wife, a highly educated woman who speaks fluent French, suffered real discrimination while living in France. She would arrive for a job interview, for which she was well qualified. But when they met her, they would say, “We don’t hire blacks.”

She never experienced that here in America.

Not only so, but Craig told me that the worst racism she ever faced was within her home country in Africa, where the racism had nothing to do with skin color, since everyone was black. It had to do with where you came from or what strata of society you lived in.

Racism no knows no bounds.

That being said, I do not believe racism is the norm in America.

On June 11, I polled my Twitter followers, asking, “Would you be completely at home having a neighbor of a different race?”

Now remember, even though my Twitter followers (a little over 41,000, so not particularly large) are roughly equivalent to the national averages when it comes to demographics, they are quite conservative. The strong majority are probably Trump supporters as well.

How did they respond to the poll?

Just under 97 percent said, “Absolutely.” (The exact number was 96.8 percent.) Yes, almost 97 percent said they would absolutely “be completely at home having a neighbor of a different race.”

Only 2 percent answered with, “Depends on which race.” Only 1.2 percent said, “Absolutely not.”

And remember: this is an anonymous poll, so people can vote freely.

As for the results, they didn’t surprise me in the least, especially in Christian circles. (The vast majority of my social media followers identify as Christian.)

Many of our churches are multi-racial, especially if they are in multi-racial locations. And when they are not, joining together for multi-racial gatherings is often considered a highlight. And in cities across America, pastors work together in multi-racial coalitions.

And just ask yourself about your own circle of friends or co-workers. How common is racism in your midst?

Getting back to the poll, I was inspired to do the “neighbor” poll by a 2013 article by Max Fisher in the Washington Post. It was titled, “A fascinating map of the world’s most and least racially tolerant countries.”

Fisher reported the results of a major study by two Swedish economists who felt the number one way to determine racial attitudes was this: “The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors.”

What were their findings?

“Anglo and Latin countries most tolerant. People in the survey were most likely to embrace a racially diverse neighbor in the United Kingdom and its Anglo former colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and in Latin America.”

Conversely, “India and Jordan by far the least tolerant. In only two of 81 surveyed countries, more than 40 percent of respondents said they would not want a neighbor of a different race. This included 43.5 percent of Indians and 51.4 percent of Jordanian.”

So, America is one of the least racist countries on the planet?

To repeat. This does not mean that we do not have problems to address. And, as I have stated before, to the chagrin of some of my conservative friends, I have no problem asking if there is still systemic racism in America. (If not systemic racism, then system inequity.)

My point in this article is to stress that our biggest issues in America are not race-based. They are ideologically based. And right now, those pushing a radical leftist agenda are the most divisive among us, by far.

Of course, if the radical right (which includes the “alt-right”) had a bigger platform today, they would be just as divisive. But they do not. They have been largely marginalized, and for that I am glad.

Instead, it is the radical left (which includes the BLM movement and its Marxist-fueled agenda) which has become dominant, championed by a complicit (or foolishly naïve) media. They are the ones dividing us.

On a personal level, I will continue to listen to people of color as they their share perspectives with me (like a caller on Monday who told me he started picking cotton at the age of 5 and that I had no idea what his life experience was like; he is correct). And I will continue to ask God to show me my blind spots.

But I will not allow cultural radicals to paint a false picture of our nation.

We are far from perfect. But we are hardly a country that is deeply divided by race.

Let us join together then and stand as one for what is right.

I truly believe that is what the great majority of Americans want to do.

Do you agree?

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

I had awarded Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey the award for Most Cringeworthy Performative Act/photo op of 2020 for his fake body-wracking sobbing while kneeling at George Floyd’s casket. Frey’s performative act/photo op topped even that of the genuflecting congressional thespians adorned in culturally appropriated African kente-clothe scarves led by prayer warrior Nancy Pelosi.

You might want to take some Zofran 30 minutes before watching this:

But now I must rescind the award and give it to the dozen apparently racist celebrities publicly confessing and self-flagellating before the Black Lives Matter Crusaders for their collective, systemic white transgressions.

In melodramatically somber tones, lesbian Sarah Paulson, Aaron Paul, bisexual Kesha (formerly Ke$ha), Bethany Joy Lenz, Kristen Bell, Justin Theroux,  Debra Messing, Mark Duplass, Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard’s daughter), Julianne Moore, Piper Perabo, Stanley Tucci, Ilana Glazer, and gymnast Aly Raisman are taking responsibility for “every unchecked moment, for every time it was easier to ignore than to call it out for what it was, for every not-so-funny joke, every unfair stereotype, every blatant injustice, no matter how big or small, every time” they “remained silent,” and “every time” they “explained away police brutality, or turned a blind eye.”

Eleven of the twelve sanctimonious celebrities work in an industry rife with sexism and exploitation of women and now we learn they are also, apparently, guilty of racism. While profiting from one of the most hypocritical and destructive industries in the country that creates and promotes soft-core porn and glorifies violence, all these self-indulgent, privileged celebrities are now confessing to being racists.

Are they really responsible for every not-so-funny joke, unfair stereotype, and blatant injustice in the world? Did all twelve of them really explain away police brutality? If that’s true, they have a lot to atone for.

The moralizers/offenders identify what they see from their snazzy digs:

Black people are being slaughtered in the streets, killed in their own homes. Going for a job should not be a death sentence. Sleeping in your own home should not be a death sentence. Playing video games with your nephew should not be a death sentence. Shopping in a store should not be a death sentence. Business as usual should not be life-threatening.

No disagreement. Is there anyone in America who believes black people should be slaughtered in the streets, killed in their own homes, killed while playing video games with their relatives, or killed while shopping?

But is there a pervasive problem with black people being slaughtered in the streets, killed in their own homes, or murdered while shopping? Well, yes, there is, but the slaughtering of blacks—including innocent children sitting on their porches, sleeping in their beds, and walking home from school—is being committed primarily by young black men raised without fathers.

Here are some data from scholar Heather MacDonald that the celebrity social justice warriors may want to consider:

However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.

In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.

The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued—a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day. This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is. …

A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during interactions with police.

Of course, everyone knows the celebrity pontificators aren’t really confessing and don’t really feel guilty. They’re doing what socially insular, intellectually myopic, presumptuous, and self-righteous celebrities do best: scold the deplorables—oh, and act.

What other icky cultural manifestations of kowtowing to the destructive Marxist ideologies of BLM and Antifa fascists are emerging? Here are a few:

• As of this writing, Seattle, a sanctuary city with a plague of homelessness, is now a lawless Antifa/BLM enclave, which has been named the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ). At the command of political leaders, Seattle police surrendered the entire 6-block area to anarchists, including their own police precinct, which has been renamed “Seattle People’s Department East Precinct.” Leftists promptly erected borders around their zone and appointed a defacto armed police department. Lawlessness and chaos–which ultimately result in tyranny–are the logical ends of “progressivism.” Next up, the Purge. If current policemen all across this once-great nation walked off the job and BLM members took over “protecting” our rights and communities, would we have less racism, fewer bad “cops,” and communities better suited for human flourishing? I wonder if any businesses will open stores or corporate headquarters in Seattle? I wonder if any families will move there? Other than anarchists and zombies, who will want to move there?

• There are a number of candidates vying for the title of “Progressive” Hypocrite of the Pandemic Year. Top of the list is Michigan governor Christine Whitmer, or as Andrew Klavan calls her, “Obersturmfuhrer Whitmer, ” who prohibited Michiganders from buying seeds or paint when they were shopping at Home Depot, who told Michiganders not to travel north on Memorial Day weekend as her husband traveled north on Memorial Day weekend to get their essential boat on the water early, and who banned lawn care workers from mowing lawns—alone. Well, here she is marching shoulder-to-shoulder with BLM. Sheltering in place is good for thee but not for she when there’s a campaign for the vice presidency that needs a photo op. #PerformativeAct
  Does anyone think that if there had been hundreds of thousands of conservatives marching peacefully in streets for the past two weeks to protest the crushing quarantine—with zero rioting, arson, looting, and brick-throwing—that leftist quarantine zealots would have been silent? Or would there have been mass rage, rending of clothes, and sanctimonious scoldings over the iniquitous disregard for human life demonstrated by demonstrators?

• The mob is coming for your jobs. John Daniel Davidson writing for The Federalist warns that your position on BLM has consequences:

There will be no opting out of the Black Lives Matter movement. You’re either for BLM or against it—and if you’re against it, you’re a racist. You will either support BLM publicly and enthusiastically, or you will be harassed, shunned, and shamed out of mainstream America. If you dare to speak a word against BLM, you will be targeted, mobbed, and probably fired.

• Leftists now want to burn books (and movies and historical monuments), but since they can’t actually say that, they had to figure out a way to conceal that they want to burn books. What to do, what to do? 💡Brainstorm!Just rename book-burning. Call it “decolonizing your bookshelf.” Oh, and when you’re done with all that decolonizing, call the Firemen:

Coloured people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. (Captain Beatty, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury).

We just put our American flag up at our house. I think it’s going to stay up for a while. I am deeply thankful to live in America where “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and where our forefathers wrote, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

This is a remarkable country built on principles that enable it to become “a more perfect Union” as long as we remember the Creator who endowed us with Rights. Without a Creator, there exist no unalienable Rights. Without a Creator, there exist no transcendent truths, no moral absolutes. Un-created human lives don’t matter. Un-created humans create and inhabit a world of highly intelligent dogs eating dogs.

I hope Christians who, in the face of slander, hostility, and threats, offer feeble, vapid defenses of their silence on issues that both culture and Scripture address realize that 1. We the people are the government, 2. Children are watching as parents model cowardice and rationalization, and 3. Silent capitulators are feeding the behemoth that will devour their children’s and grandchildren’s hearts, minds, liberty, and maybe their bodies.

But by all means continue. Take up your crosses daily, and hide them in the basement.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/nauseating-performative-acts-by-celebrity-racists.mp3

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A controversial documentary airs Friday May 22 on FX titled “AKA Jane Roe” in which Norma McCorvey—the “Jane Roe” from the infamous Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade—makes a shocking deathbed confession. According to The Daily Beast, in the documentary the troubled McCorvey who died in 2017, “admits that her later turn to the anti-abortion camp as a born-again Christian was ‘all an act.’” The leftist Daily Beast reports other documentary highlights that are sending thrills up the legs of human slaughter advocates everywhere, including the claim that McCorvey was paid by pro-life leaders to be a quisling to her true anti-life beliefs and was coached by them. But can McCorvey be believed? And what does her past involvement with anti-life leftists reveal about both her and them? Most important, how is her confession relevant to the pro-life movement?

A 2013 profile of the deeply wounded McCorvey in Vanity Fair outlines a few of the huge lies McCorvey told over the course of her troubled life. McCorvey was—to borrow a literary term—an unstable narrator. Put more bluntly, she was an inveterate liar.

According to Vanity Fair, many of McCorvey’s claims have been either disputed or been proven false. Her claims include the following:

• She claimed her mother Mary took custody of Norma’s first child because she was a lesbian. Her mother said it was because of Norma’s drinking and drug use (“pot, acid, mescaline”).

• She claimed her third pregnancy was the result of rape. McCorvey later admitted that was a lie.

• She claimed she didn’t identify herself as “Jane Roe” or speak about the case for 11 years, when she actually identified herself 4 days after the U.S. Supreme Court decision.

• She claimed she and her lesbian lover Connie Gonzalez were shot at in their home. Gonzalez and a friend dispute that claim.

What is indisputable is that her father abandoned the family leaving Norma and her mentally ill brother to be raised by her violent, alcoholic, promiscuous mother Mary. Norma spent several years in state correctional institutions; was allegedly raped repeatedly by her mother’s cousin; married an abusive man when she was a teenager; engaged in promiscuous hetero and homo sex; was a long-time abuser of alcohol and drugs; and had three children, none of whom did she raise.

According to multiple reports, when she became pregnant the third time, she was encouraged by friends to say she was raped in order to secure a legal abortion. That plan failed, and she later confessed that her rape claim was a lie. After her rape scheme failed, she was referred to two women attorneys, Sarah Weddington and lesbian Linda Coffee, who were seeking pregnant clients to represent in their pursuit of the legalization of abortion. In other words, they exploited Norma McCorvey, and the toxic result was Roe v. Wade, which legalized human slaughter throughout the United States.

The two attorneys weren’t the only leftists to exploit McCorvey, and they weren’t the only people the emotionally damaged McCorvey would exploit.

Politico reported that,

[by 1980] Abortion was fast becoming the surest test of political affiliation. And so as to galvanize those who supported it, the pro-choice turned to McCorvey. At the time, McCorvey was game; she and her partner, Connie Gonzalez, were tired of cleaning homes.

By 1989, McCorvey’s pro-choice activism was really taking off:

McCorvey flew to Washington to march in support of abortion rights. There she met the feminist lawyer Gloria Allred. … Accompanied by Allred, McCorvey flew to Los Angeles for a brunch at the restaurant Baci with a roomful of pro-choice activists …  who paid $100 a plate to attend. In L.A., Allred also arranged for McCorvey to get lessons in public speaking. Among McCorvey’s documents is a card from the Los Angeles firm Ready for Media with a typed list of pointers. … Reportedly, the brunch at Baci was a benefit for the Jane Roe Foundation. But the foundation received no money. Rather, Allred told a reporter for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner later that year, the funds had gone directly to McCorvey.

Take note of four facts: McCorvey was used by leftists. McCorvey was coached by leftists. McCorvey was paid by leftists. McCorvey exploited leftists.

A brief digression to talk about “coaching” and financial support: Experts often coach ordinary people prior to public-speaking, especially when ordinary people are thrust into the spotlight that shines on controversial issues. Such coaching is not necessarily nefarious. It isn’t an ethical breach for either those on the right or those on the left to tutor those inexperienced in dealing with the press or other public speaking contexts. Nor is it an ethical breach to offer financial support, remuneration, or honoraria to speakers. It would be an ethical breach to pay someone to speak lies.

Daily Beast cites a quote from the McCorvey documentary that reflects a recurring theme in her life:

I took their money and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say. I’m a good actress. …

Perhaps realizing that such an admission of her inveterate lying might lead people to doubt this, her deathbed confession, she hastily added, “Of course, I’m not acting now.”

Vanity Fair included a telling quote about McCorvey from advertising executive Gus Clemens with whom McCorvey had concocted a money-making scheme in 1988 that exploited her role in Roe v. Wade and never came to fruition—a quote that reaffirms the recurring theme of manipulation that shaped her sad life :

I think it’s accurate to say that [we] were manipulating Norma … and that Norma was manipulating us.

The Economist reported that pro-abortion elitists had little tolerance for McCorvey, who was more like the deplorables “progressives” disdain:

She was too simple for the pro-choice people, who seemed to shun her at their rallies and sent a strong hint that she was totally stupid, though she had brains and ideas. She wasn’t their special chosen Jane Roe, and they didn’t want Norma McCorvey.

According to Vanity Fair, in the spring of 1995, McCorvey was working in a Dallas abortuary when the pro-life activist group Operation Rescue headed at that time by Flip Benham moved into the building next door:

[R]ight away—“instantly,” Benham recalls—McCorvey “would come over and ask us to pray for her … She began to see me as someone who could help her work things out.” The two began talking about their pasts and then about the Bible. Before long, says Benham, they were calling one another “Flipper” and “Miss Norma.” In July, McCorvey accepted Jesus as her savior.

In 2017 just after McCorvey died, The Washington Post shared this account from McCorvey on her initial meeting with Benham:

She recalled the weekend after Benham moved in. Saturdays were always big protest days, she wrote, and McCorvey was dreading the first one with Operation Rescue next door. As McCorvey stood outside smoking, she wrote, Benham sat down beside her. He apologized for calling her names: “I saw my words drop into your heart, and I know they hurt you deeply.” McCorvey was taken aback. She excused herself, went inside and cried, she wrote.

Whether McCorvey first approached Benham or Benham first approached her seems irrelevant. What both recollections have in common is that these early encounters were welcome and shaped by faith and good will. Neither party viewed Benham’s actions as exploitative. While many leftists view evangelism as inherently exploitative, Christians view evangelism as both an act of obedience to God and an offer of the greatest gift they possess: salvation.

Another major character in the story AKA Jane Roe that director Nick Sweeney tells is Reverend Rob Schenck, formerly a pro-life activist who worked with McCorvey and has now renounced his prior beliefs, claiming that overturning Roe v. Wade “would be destructive of life.” Schenck actually wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that protecting humans in the womb from being destroyed is “destructive of life.”

Schenck argues that allowing humans to be snuffed out prior to birth “if that child will enter a world of rejection, deprivation and insecurity, to say nothing of the fear, anxiety and danger that comes with poverty, crime and a lack of educational and employment opportunities” is dictated by Christian faith. Schenck argues that until the problems of rejection, deprivation, insecurity, fear, anxiety, danger, poverty, crime, poor schools, and unemployment are solved, all those who oppose abortion are “perpetrators of fake religion” and “fools.”

Schenk shares on his blog that what now animates him is his antipathy for President Trump and the “Faustian pact” pro-life supporters have allegedly made with him. Schenck calls them “giddy sell-outs” to Trump who is advancing his “cruel agenda that includes separating families at the southern border, deporting people who have only known the USA as their home, cutting back social programs for the poor, and, now, interrogating pregnant women seeking tourist visas.”

The omniscient Schenck, who knows the motives of Trump, continues:

Mr. Trump is [sic] used the March for Life for his own ends. The pro-life leaders who ceded the stage to him did a supreme disservice to the people for whom that stage was built. If life really is sacred, then everything around it should be kept sacrosanct.

Remember, all of you who work tirelessly to defend the defenseless from slaughter: NEVER WORK WITH IMPERFECT PEOPLE!

For those unfamiliar with the director Sweeney, his body of work includes a documentary about sex robots and another about weird adult men who don full women’s body suits complete with breasts and women’s nether regions, women’s clothes, and masks of women’s faces. Sweeeney has also made fawning documentaries about “trans” cultism, including one about children who wish they were the sex they aren’t. Apparently working with the creepy Sweeney to undermine efforts to protect the unborn doesn’t pose a moral problem for the sanctimonious Schenck.

An article in GQ magazine about Sweeney’s documentary featuring the unreliable Norma McCorvey is titled “The Anti-Abortion Movement Was Always Built on Lies.” The anti-abortion movement was not built on Norma McCorvey. And the lies that propelled the anti-abortion movement were the lies told by human slaughter advocates, including that the humans growing in women’s wombs are just “blobs of tissue”; that when a woman has an abortion, there is only one body involved; and that incomplete development, bodily defects, crimes of fathers, desires of mothers, and poverty grant to adults the right to order the killing of their offspring.

The troubled McCorvey’s “confession” is an interesting factoid that may or may not be true. What is certain about her confession is that it is wholly irrelevant to the question of the moral status of slaughtering humans in the womb. This documentary is irrelevant noise that the left hopes will divert attention via a guilt by association fallacy away from the central arguments regarding the nature and rights of preborn, living humans.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Controversial-Documentary-Profiles-Unstable-Norma-McCorvey.mp3

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A recent article written primarily by a medical doctor in Alabama claimed that, “The way in which the media has pushed fear nonstop amounts to psychological warfare against this country.” He added, “If it hasn’t occurred to you that we have heard one story and essentially one story alone for literally two months, well, that should have aroused suspicion.” Is this doctor correct? Or is the media doing its best to be responsible in the midst of an unprecedented crisis?

I’m quite confident that nothing I write here will influence what the media is doing for two reasons. First, who am I that massive media organizations should listen to me? Second, fear sells and money talks.

That being said, the question remains: Is the media responsible in its reporting, helping its audience to act wisely during a pandemic? Or is the media using fear tactics to get more viewers, listeners, and readers? And if the latter is true, does this amount to sustained psychological warfare?

Obviously, “the media” is such a generalized term that almost anything good or bad can be said about it. But if we focus on the major, secular voices on TV, we can fine tune both our questions and our answers.

One of the secrets of psychological warfare (called psywar by the military) is to try to convince enemy troops that surrender is sweet, that it is better to capitulate than to continue to fight, that defeat is inevitable.

In keeping with this, an Air Force colonel shared with me that during World War I, psywar pamphlets were airdropped among the German troops.

Shortly after the end of the war, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, the Chief of Staff of the Kaiser’s Army, complained:

“In the shower of pamphlets which was scattered by enemy airmen our adversaries said and wrote that they did not think so badly of us; that we must only be reasonable and perhaps here and there renounce something we had conquered. Then everything would soon be right again and we could live together in peace, perpetual international peace. As regards peace within our own borders, new men and new Governments would see to that. What a blessing peace would be after all the fighting. There was, therefore, no point in continuing the struggle.” (From the USAF Special Operations School: Psychological Operations.)

And what were the results of this strategy? Military historian Stanley Sandler writes:

“As German Army discipline wavered or broke, these leaflets became responsible for defections on a large scale. Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler termed Allied military psywar ‘psychologically efficient.’”

Today, we are not having pamphlets dropped on us from the sky in order to break our spirits. But we are hearing a constant flood of bad news. Of distressing and depressing news. Of fearful statistics. And we are reminded daily of the danger of violating the status quo.

Does this mean that all these media outlets are ill-intentioned and motivated only by financial gain? Certainly not.

Does this mean that the talking heads all share a nefarious agenda and are under some hidden, central control? Not at all.

Does it mean that none of them are trying to do some good? Absolutely not.

But it does mean that, for whatever reason, we are basically being told that COVID-19 is the only story out there, that America is a real mess, and that things could get even worse in the days ahead.

Really now, is all of that meant to be helpful? Encouraging? Useful?

Or, to approach this from a different angle, ask yourself this: If the goal of the media was to help Americans function in a healthy and hopeful way during this difficult time, would their reporting be the same?

Doing a daily talk radio show, and with lots of interaction with the public on social media, I have been sounding a “fear not” message for the last two months. Yes, the virus is very serious, but it’s not the end of the world, and there’s no need for panic.

At the same time, I have had to counteract the attitude of fear and panic that arises by being subjected to day and night negative reporting. (Add in partisan politics, and you have a real toxic mix.) And in order to starve our fears and feed our faith and our practical wisdom, we cannot sit glued in front of the TV or computer screen.

But this is part of the vicious cycle of 24-hour news networks. The same stories get repeated endlessly, seriously undermining our ability to think for ourselves. Are we not getting brainwashed by it all?

But there’s another angle to consider, and that’s the angle of control.

Dennis Prager recently wrote that “the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking.”

Could this have happened without the media’s incessant, fear-producing drumbeat?

Prager pointed to four principle signs of a police state, one of which was, “A Mass Media Supportive of the State’s Messaging and Deprivation of Rights.”

He explained,

“The New York Times, CNN and every other mainstream mass medium — except Fox News, The Wall Street Journal (editorial and opinion pages only) and talk radio — have served the cause of state control over individual Americans’ lives just as Pravda served the Soviet government. In fact, there is almost no more dissent in The New York Times than there was in Pravda. And the Big Tech platforms are removing posts about the virus and potential treatments they deem ‘misinformation.’”

Recently, YouTube removed a viral video by two medical doctors in California who disputed the state’s safety recommendations.

According to YouTube, “We quickly remove flagged content that violate our Community Guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of local healthy authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance.”

In other words, disputed opinions offered by medical doctors (in this case, emergency room doctors) will be banned.

Does this concern you? What might be banned next? Can you not assess the information for yourself and make an informed choice?

A colleague with a massive Facebook page (I can’t share more details at this moment) had a viral post removed because a so-called fact checker deemed it false. Yet the content was entirely spiritual in nature.

So, not only do we have the 24-hour droning drumbeat of fear-based, often sensationalistic reporting, but we have a dangerous form of censorship as well.

Does that constitute a form of psychological warfare? You can decide for yourself.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

Written by David Limbaugh

The liberal media are urging Joe Biden to form a shadow government to upstage President Donald Trump‘s crisis response effort, which illustrates its consuming partisanship — and its insufficient attention to the health and welfare of the American people.

MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle floated the idea during an interview with former Barack Obama staffer Jim Messina. Referring to Trump’s COVID-19 daily press briefing, Ruhle asked, “Should Joe Biden be counterprogramming that? Should he be creating his own shadow government, shadow Cabinet, shadow SWAT team, and getting up there at a podium every night, saying, ‘Here’s the crisis we’re in. Here’s what we need to do to address this’?”

I’ll concede that if Biden were to follow Ruhle’s ludicrous suggestion, Trump would be the biggest beneficiary. If some are still unaware of Biden’s diminishing competence, they would certainly learn of it in counter-press briefings. But let’s not get sidetracked with our own partisan ruminations when we should be working together to mitigate Americans’ medical and economic hardships.

Sadly, the media can’t get beyond their obsessive hatred for Trump to approach this moment with even minimal clarity. We witness this repeatedly at the briefings. Some reporters seek to elicit facts that will help inform the public, but far too many are there to grandstand, and to embarrass and shame the president.

They sling their gotcha questions, hoping to trick Trump into admitting he didn’t act quickly enough and isn’t effectively overseeing the distribution of equipment and other aid to the states. Some have very nearly accused Trump of causing American deaths.

Aside from the spuriousness of their claims, these questions are utterly inappropriate and counterproductive at briefings whose purpose is to update the American people on our battle against the coronavirus and on plans to reopen the economy.

Accusing President Trump of an initially tardy response, even if true (which it isn’t), distracts our attention from combating this pandemic. It may satisfy their Trump-hating lust, but it serves no constructive purpose. If they want to pursue yet another investigative crusade against Trump in time to damage him before the November election, how about they wait just a few more months while the adults try to alleviate real pain befalling real people?

The idea of a shadow government is not just ill-motivated; it is absurd. Who are these clowns kidding? The president’s principal medical advisers on this crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, are certainly not Republicans telling Trump whatever he wants to hear. If they’re paying attention, they also know that Trump is respectfully considering their every word and, in most cases, deferring to their judgment. The media were aghast when Birx shattered their narrative of Trump as an inattentive lummox. “He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data,” said Birx. “I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues.” So do I.

The media have tried to drive a wedge between Fauci and Trump, but neither of them would have it. Fauci has insisted that there is little, if any, inconsistency in their positions. There is no tension between Trump and these doctors in the briefings. Fauci has also been quite clear in disabusing Trump’s media prosecutors of their claim that Trump was delinquent in responding to the crisis — because if Trump was late, Fauci was even later.

So what would these armchair quarterbacks hope to accomplish through their fantasy shadow team, other than keeping Joe Biden in the limelight by presenting some bogus alternative to the administration’s leadership?

As it turns out, Ruhle wasn’t the first to pitch the shadow government concept. On March 23, Washington Post opinion writer Paul Waldman proposed it. “In Britain, the opposition party maintains a ‘shadow’ cabinet, a group of spokespeople assigned the same policy areas as the ministries of the government, to offer the opposition’s view on whatever issue is being discussed at a given moment,” wrote Waldman. “While Biden probably wouldn’t want to assign specific Cabinet positions now he could utilize both his own aides and people in the broader Democratic world to give the public a picture of what government under President Biden would be up to — and provide a contrast with the chaos, corruption, and incompetence that characterizes the Trump administration.”

The common thread uniting Ruhle, Waldman and the rest of the Trump-hating media cabal is their inability to see anything outside a partisan lens. Even now while thousands of Americans have died and millions are suffering financially, they can’t see past their unremitting contempt for him, and they can’t apply their energy toward helping Trump solve these problems instead of scheming of ways to unseat him in November.

Meanwhile, Trump has organized both his coronavirus task force and his Opening Our Country Council on a bipartisan basis, and he is working across party lines with businesses and state governments to address the crisis.

While the media have failed to make their case against Trump for incompetence and partisanship, they have resoundingly demonstrated their own — and the public is not likely to soon forget it.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is “Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win.” Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Written by Peter Heck

How he managed to say it without choking on his own tongue I will never know. As President Trump began to dress down the hostile press that was attempting to use his Monday White House briefing to smear him as negligent, CNN cut away immediately to anchor John King who managed to prattle out these words without even a sniff of irony:

“To play a propaganda video at taxpayer expense in the White House briefing room is a new — you can insert your favorite word here – in this administration.”

For anyone at CNN to feign objection over “propaganda” is as convincing a testimony you will ever see to the staggering lack of self-awareness capable by seemingly coherent human beings.

This is, after all, the network of Jake Tapper, who just days ago allowed socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to repeat without correction the now widely debunked rumor that President Trump called coronavirus a hoax. Tapper actually defended his own silence saying that while he knew it was a lie, he let it slide by because President Trump lies about other things. Seriously:

I guess that’s the problem with a politician who lies so often; while I agree that Democrats are mischaracterizing what he said, what he did say was also false so it’s tough to justify taking the time for a fact check when it’s not taking a stand defining the truth.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 22, 2020

Tapper also allowed Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi to accuse Trump of “fiddling” without ever holding her to account for “fiddling” herself when she single-handedly delayed the coronavirus relief bill for a week.

This is the network of Brian Stelter who anchors a program unironically called “Reliable Sources,” and utilizes that platform to peddle misinformation on behalf of the Democrat Party:

I RT’ed a former LA Times reporter who had tweeted pics that mistakenly ran on the ABC local news broadcast. When I found out the story was erroneous, I deleted the tweet. Gosh, Brian, why does your tweet omit the MSM error that started it? Or does CNN only exist to attack GOP? https://t.co/ehvPHPMrGh

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 13, 2020

It is also Stelter who turned disgraced lawyer and convicted felon Michael Avenatti into a mainstay on his program in order to attack Trump, and even encouraged the Stormy Daniels attorney to think about running for president himself. With Avenatti in jail now, Stelter fills his time regularly attempting “gotcha” moments with President Trump that end just about as well. Like this:

Admin officials "say the White House has made a deliberate political calculation that it will better serve Trump’s interest to put the onus on governors — rather than the federal government — to figure out how to move ahead."

Let that quote sink in… https://t.co/v2QVZBXslD

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 11, 2020

Yes, let it. Because there’s a name for the concept articulated in that quote, of course. It’s called “federalism,” the central pillar around which our constitutional order and system is constructed. Let the fact that CNN’s chief media corresponded didn’t realize that sink in for a minute.

Besides, it isn’t too difficult to figure out what Stelter and company would be saying if Trump had seized power and claimed emergency authority to dictate nationalized policies to “move ahead.”

This is the network of Don Lemon, an activist masquerading as a newsman who is so sharply partisan that long-time journos cringe at the damage he continues to do not only to CNN’s credibility, but the industry itself.

This is the network that breathlessly covered every potential angle of every perceived accusation against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings, yet now remains the only major news organization that has not even mentioned the credible allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden by one of his former employees.

This is the network that at the very same press briefing that John King couldn’t bear to air another second of, allowed a staffer manning the chyron machine to post these on-screen Democrat talking points with the apparent blessing of both editors and producers:

I’m almost impressed with how hard the CNN chyron writers of my former network effort to get their revulsion for Pres Trump just right!

I don’t miss it… pic.twitter.com/FLQr2Nwz8a

— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) April 14, 2020

Incredible. As in, lacking in all credibility.

After recently surviving a bout with COVID-19, CNN host Christopher Cuomo made some startling remarks, indicating that he was re-evaluating his career at the network. Among other things, Cuomo called out CNN for trafficking in “ridiculous things.”

He not wrong in that assessment, even though I’d choose a different, more precise term for what this low-rated televised rumor mill peddles: propaganda.

This article was originally published at Disrn.com.