From Illinois Church Action on Alcohol & Addiction problems (ILCAAAP)

The House could amend SB 516 to lower the tax rate for a Chicago-owned casino. This is the only gambling shell bill that could be amended and passed in the House and Senate TODAY – the last day of the Veto Session!

Speaker Madigan has chosen not to be involved in the gambling legislation. But Rep. Robert Rita, who sponsored the massive gambling expansion bill in May, is working on the language for SB 516, with as many as 6 amendments today, Capitol Fax reported.

Last night Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot had 47 or 48 lawmakers in her court but needs 60 to get the bill over the hump, and is struggling to get the support necessary. She’s enlisted a team of lobbyists and is working the phones to help do that. Labor unions, including Chicago Federation of Labor, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police and even the SEIU, have also come out to lobby in favor of the bill, Politico Illinois Playbook reported.

TAKE ACTION: Click HERE to email your State Representative TODAY to ask him/her to Vote NO on SB 516. Plus, if you have time, also take a minute to call their Springfield office while they are there today. Ask to be connected directly to their office. The Capitol Switchboard is 217-782-2000.

 

File this story in your now-bulging “Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned” folder.

Just three weeks ago, on September 19, 2019, the U.S. House Ways and Means Oversight subcommittee—chaired by John Lewis (D-GA) and composed of 7 Democrats and 4 Republicans—held a hearing portentously titled, “HOW THE TAX CODE SUBSIDIZES HATE.” Since conservative beliefs on sexuality are deemed “hateful” by regressives, such a subcommittee hearing should raise the alarm antennas of conservatives and libertarians concerned about assaults on the First Amendment by “progressive” thought police who roam the halls of Congress and the nooks, crannies, and interstices of social media.

What should also trouble them is that 3 of the 7 Democrats specifically mentioned or alluded to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as their source for identifying “hate groups.” (Full, shameless, and cheerful disclosure: the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) has been erroneously listed on the scandal-pocked SPLC’s “hate groups” list since shortly after I began writing for IFI in 2008.) Less than two hours after the beginning of the hearing, the Oversight subcommittee tweeted this:

“[H]omosexuality is a poor and dangerous choice, and has been proven to lead to a litany of health hazards to not only the individuals but also society as a whole,” The American Family Association, Tax Exempt Hate Group.

The first of the five witnesses to testify was busy-beaver homosexual activist Brandon Wolf, a “nationally-recognized advocate for LGBTQ issues” and  “Central Florida Development Officer and Media Relations Manager” for Equality Florida who survived the horrific Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida and said this:

[I]f you are not using everything at your disposal to snuff hate out, then you’re simply not doing enough. The time is now for us to fight harder, lead more courageously, and use everything we have to put an end to this cancer that is ravaging our communities…. Rather than use every tool at our disposal to combat hatred, we have chosen to subsidize it, embolden it…. Inaction in the face of hatred has consequences, and it’s high time that this Congress do something to protect those of us in the line of fire.

Wolf was urging Congress to use the IRS as a weapon to mow down moral views about homosexuality he hates and was doing so by deceitfully exploiting a tragedy that evidence suggests had nothing to do with “anti-gay” sentiment.

Journalist, constitutional lawyer, and (homosexual) co-founder of The Intercept Glenn Greenwald and co-author Murtaza Hussain published an article 18 months ago examining in detail the evidence for Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen’s motives:

Mateen went to Pulse only after having scouted other venues that night that were wholly unrelated to the LGBT community, only to find that they were too defended by armed guards and police, and ultimately chose Pulse only after a generic Google search for “Orlando nightclubs” — not “gay clubs” — produced Pulse as the first search result.

Several journalists closely covering the Mateen investigation have, for some time now, noted the complete absence of any evidence suggesting that Mateen knew that Pulse was a gay club or that targeting the LGBT community was part of his motive. 

…

By repeatedly emphasizing this anti-gay motive, U.S. media reports had the effect, if not the intent, of obscuring what appears to have been Mateen’s overriding, arguably exclusive motive: a desire for retribution and deterrence toward U.S. violence in Muslim countries.

…

Despite this mountain of evidence that strongly negates the original media-disseminated themes about Mateen’s life and his likely motive in targeting Pulse, the early myths remain lodged in the public mind and even in contemporary news reports. In part that’s because much of the evidence has remained under seal, in part because subsequent media debunking received a tiny fraction of the attention of the early, aggressively hyped inflammatory theories, and in part because there has been no political advantage to challenging the politically moving and useful narrative that the attack on Pulse was a hate crime against gay people.

Does anyone really believe full-time homosexual activist Wolf is unaware of this evidence?

Fortunately, one of the Republican members present at the hearing was Illinois’ own Darin Lahood (R-Peoria) who challenged references to the anti-Christian hate group, the SPLC:

[T]he IRS should not be used as a political tool to discriminate against organizations that differ in viewpoints…. We cannot use political disagreement as a metric to define hate speech or a hate group. This type of labeling can and has led to violent acts. I know my colleague just referenced the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2012, an armed man named Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the Family Research Council Washington headquarters with the intent to shoot and kill as many of its employees as possible. He was apprehended, but not before wounding the non-profit’s business manager. Mr. Corkins later told the FBI that he had seen the nonprofit group listed as an anti-gay hate group on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website.

Also testifying was UCLA law professor, the libertarian-esque Eugene Volokh who argued that with only very narrow exceptions, all speech is protected by the First Amendment:

The Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that tax exemptions can’t be denied based on the viewpoint that a group communicates…. The Court has also made equally clear that excluding speech that manifests or promotes “hate” is forbidden viewpoint discrimination…. The law may treat groups differently based on their actions, but not based on the views they express…. Groups may be denied tax exemptions for deliberately engaging in speech that falls within one of the few narrow exceptions to the First Amendment, such as true threats of criminal attack, or incitement intended to and likely to cause imminent criminal conduct. But “hate speech” writ large doesn’t fall within any such exceptions.

Our First Amendment rights will not long stand against the sexual appetites of the deviant who run amok among us. Neither our constitutionally protected religious free exercise rights, nor our speech rights, nor our assembly rights will be protected now that they have been subordinated to subjective and disordered sexual desires. And neither will our intrinsic privacy rights remain protected. Cultural critics warned about the dangers posed to this once-great Republic by 1. allowing the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to Guinea-worm their way into anti-discrimination policies and laws, and 2. the Obergefelle U.S. Supreme Court decision, which has been interpreted as legalizing same-sex marriage everywhere in the United States. But conservatives largely dismissed such warnings out of either a failure to think deeply about the implications of these changes or cowardice or both.

Leftists are turning—not turning right—turning against the U.S. Constitution, and slowly they’re coming, step by step, straight for the First Amendment.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative to ask him/her to reject the SPLC’s definition of “hate groups,” which includes conservative and faith-based groups, such as IFI and AFA. Traditional Judeo-Christian teaching about human sexuality is neither “hateful” nor “vile.” Ask them to stand up for the First Amendment and protect religious liberty and speech rights by rejecting this effort to penalize so-called “hate” speech.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Slowly-Leftists-Turn-Step-By-Step.mp3

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

-and, please-

Written by L. Brent Bozell III

Washington Post book critic Ron Charles made a confession the other day. “I banned a book,” he wrote. “Or at least I helped get it banned, which makes Banned Books Week a little awkward for me this year. Like celebrating Arbor Day by cutting down a tree.”

The book is titled “The Trigger: The Lie That Changed the World — Who Really Did It and Why.” It’s an 898-page paperback. The author, David Icke, is a longtime conspiracy kook from Britain. The publisher is also David Icke. This book is the latest example of 9/11 trutherism. In this version, the “satanic” Israeli government did it, in addition to its role in international drug running and assassinating John F. Kennedy. Charles called it “harebrained word vomit.”

He wrote to Barnes & Noble inquiring about a photo a reader sent him that showed Icke’s book on a “New Releases in Paperback 20% off” table. A day later, a spokesperson told him, “After being alerted to the content, we are removing the book from all stores.”

When asked more broadly about the national bookstore chain’s selection process involving “hate speech” purveyors, the spokesperson added, “We work to never allow content with hate speech in our stores, and in cases when something slips through, we take quick and resolute action to remove it.”

This would thrill most liberal hearts, but Charles asks the obvious question: How will Barnes & Noble determine what is “hate speech”? And is “quick and resolute action” always the wisest course?

In the spirit of Banned Books Week, Charles wonders how hard liberals would fight to defend free speech, even for a book they consider abhorrent. Would they still fight today as the American Civil Liberties Union fought for the right of neo-Nazis to march down the street in Skokie, Illinois?

There’s no need to wonder.

Charles noted that the American Library Association has a new list of Top 10 Most Challenged Books in libraries, and “the list is dominated by books that draw censure for their positive portrayal of LGBTQIA+ relationships,” such as David Levithan‘s 2013 “young adult” novel, “Two Boys Kissing.”

The book chronicles Harry and Craig, two 17-year-olds who are about to participate in a 32-hour kissing marathon to set a new Guinness World Record. It has a broader theme about the dreadful toll of AIDS. Libraries and bookstores promote these tomes in Banned Books Week displays and events.

This is where Charles admirably puts his free-speech advocacy to the test:

“I can’t help noticing that no liberal tastes were harmed in the making of this list. It costs us nothing to celebrate these banned books. The whole campaign is pungent with self-satisfaction, a chance for us enlightened liberals to remind each other that we are freedom fighters.”

The American Library Association is unlikely to promote its own courage in making “harebrained word vomit” about 9/11 available in libraries. This underlines why Banned Books Week often feels like Favorite Books Week. It would be fascinating to know just how many American libraries are stocking the latest David Icke book so we could see how often it is protested by people won’t don’t want to aid the spread of his crackpottery.

Troublemakers with time on their hands could have fun compiling a list of books that libraries choose not to stock. We could host a splashy celebration of Books Librarians Hate Week. They should acknowledge that some noxious books and ideas are worth protesting or ignoring.

But you cannot celebrate free speech except for that which you want to ban.

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L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at creators.com.

Written by Trevor Thomas

If death—anyone’s death—brings you joy, you should intently re-examine your worldview. Even the just execution of a mass murderer—which I support in every case—should not bring anyone joy. As a Christian, I often find myself opposed—spiritually, politically, and otherwise—to those outside of my faith. However, I take no joy in anyone’s death, especially those outside of my faith. Christianity teaches that “each one of us will give an account of himself to God.” Any death that results in eternal separation from God is always particularly tragic.

However, for those who have put their faith in the things of this world, who are determined to rule their own world, death usually has no such significance. Thus, for such people, like the death of an “inconvenient” child, the death of an enemy is often something to celebrate. The most recent case in point is the death of the wealthy philanthropist David Koch. After Mr. Koch died, many on the left again found themselves in a celebratory mood. We shouldn’t be surprised that those who engage in or promote the evil “shout-your-abortion!” movement would celebrate the death of a political enemy.

Nor should we be surprised that the hate-filled American left would promise political—and perhaps other forms of—apocalypse if President Trump gets the opportunity to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with someone who will actually follow the U.S. Constitution. Liberals dancing with joy over the death of Mr. Koch were soon brought back to earth with the same-day news that Justice Ginsburg underwent a fresh round of treatment for a cancerous tumor on her pancreas.

Despite our political, legal, and moral differences, I admire Justice Ginsburg for her strength and determination to do her job. As another recently noted, she has survived pancreatic cancer twice, lung cancer once, and colon cancer once. And she’s 86 years old. Many Americans—no matter their political stripes—would be very interested in getting the names of her oncologists.

In an interesting bit of irony probably lost on Justice Ginsburg and her like-minded ideologues, if the U.S. had Medicare-for-all, or some other version of single-payer healthcare—a dream of the American left—almost certainly Mrs. Ginsburg would’ve long ago departed this world. Thank God for the U.S. medical industry, right libs? (The U.S. has the world’s best cancer survival rates.)

In their foolish efforts to create “heaven on earth”—Utopia—modern liberals have often relied on the courts to give them what they could not otherwise gain by actually winning elections and passing legislation. Of course, this is why the left in the mainstream media—I repeat myself—and the U.S. Senate engaged in media malpractice and political treachery in their evil efforts to derail the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

Many have implied that if President Trump has the opportunity to name Ginsburg’s replacement, the battle that would erupt would make the Kavanaugh confirmation look like the Mayberry City Council debate on whether to hold a Founder’s Day parade. This shouldn’t be the case—because, as long as U.S. Senate Republicans have his back, there is simply nothing Democrats can do to stop President Trump from nominating and having confirmed any judge he wishes.

However, today’s Democrat Party is as far from rational as they are from moral—which is totally unsurprising as those two extremes often go hand-in-hand. Even more so than the vengeful tweets over a dead philanthropist or the angry threats over a potential U.S. Supreme Court vacancy, few things illustrate this as well as the gender debate the modern left insists we have.

After (frequently) pointing out—and being far from alone—that the stupid, evil notion of “gender fluidity” most harms females—including young girls—I keep thinking that the left will soon abandon this wickedness. Silly me. I forget how blindly stupid those corrupted by evil can be.

Recently the GOP candidate in Louisiana’s governor’s race, Ralph Abraham, made headlines—headlines!—because he ran a 30 second ad that included the phrase “as a doctor, I can assure you, there are only two genders.” They were so aghast at MSNBC that host Chris Jansing declared that Abraham’s comments were “incendiary.” According to Newsbusters, Jansing’s guest—because, of course, the left must have their “experts” explain to us why there are not only two genders—went even further and said that to declare that there are only two genders is now “despicable” and “un-American.”

In other words, a statement that, just a few years ago, the vast majority of us would’ve considered so obvious that it was patronizing is now “incendiary” and “despicable.” Orwell was indeed a prophet.

Thus, it should come as little surprise that those who can’t tell the difference between who is a male and who is a female would choose to fight crime with euphemisms, still believes that “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” really happened, still thinks that man-made climate change is a real problem with a political solution, believes that widespread institutional racism still exists in America, and would conclude that “Seattle Has Figured Out How to End the War on Drugs.”

The latter bit of editorial “brilliance” was recently proffered by The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff. I guess Kristoff missed the fact that Seattle is Dying largely because of rampant drug abuse (and because, of course, “liberalism is killing it”). If he truly didn’t know this before, he does now because many of the 1300+ comments following his piece told him as much. Many of the comments were from Seattle residents.

SKM from Seattle wrote,

I live here and you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Downtown Seattle is a classic example of when inmates run the asylum. Downtown Seattle frequently feels like “Night of the Living Dead.” Quality of life issues here are outright dismissed, all in an effort to help drug addicted zombies that walk our streets. Sleeping in doorways, public defecation/urination, shooting up right in the open, blatant drug dealing w/ out any fear of incrimination, verbal abuse, etc. I can more easily get a summons for jaywalking here than dealing Fentanyl.

Another Seattle resident, “robofaust,” added,

As a 26 year resident of Seattle (and a x2 time voter for Ralph Nader and Obama), I couldn’t disagree more. This city is littered with homeless drug addicts. Seattle’s choice to “decriminalize homelessness” is just another term for enabling the self-destruction of thousands of people…

Every few days I come across people who are passed out, or worse yet, who are actively shooting up, at the foot of my home. Petty crime is rampant, and it is no longer possible to get the police to respond to a stolen bicycle or smashed car windows…

The city’s drug addicts live in a parallel subculture that is disconnected from the lives of the locals who tolerate it in the name of social virtue. This subculture is a law unto itself, and is rife with predators who prey on the weak with violence, theft, and sexual abuse…

There will be political reckoning in the city for this, sooner or later. Mr. Kristof’s analysis is deeply flawed.

In not just Seattle, but all over America, liberals have become “a law unto themselves.” Thus, the nastiness in Seattle is only the tip of the iceberg. Liberals think that Seattle is doing a good job with criminal drug users, that there are more than two genders, that marriage is whatever we define it to be, that killing the unborn is merely a “choice,” and so on, because the left in America long ago abandoned the idea that some things are settled for all time.

I certainly hope there is soon a political reckoning. There will certainly be a spiritual one.

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This article was originally published at TrevorGrantThomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America

A conservative meme circulating on Facebook recently asserted that a dystopian future isn’t in the future. It’s now and we’re living it.

For theologically orthodox Christians, and others who want to stay grounded in reality, the West has rapidly become a disorienting place to live. So, a surreal article in the Chicago Tribune July 31 portraying workplace accommodations for “gender queer” and “nonbinary” employees as perfectly normal shouldn’t come as a surprise, even if it induces nausea.

It’s the kind of article that makes you despair not only about the collapse in traditional norms surrounding male and female but also about the state of journalism. Written by a Tribune business reporter, the article is headlined “He, she or they: How companies are starting to address calls for a gender-neutral workplace.” Devoid of critical thought, the article reads like a press release from an LGBTQ advocacy group. It’s fully sympathetic to those who “describe themselves as identifying as neither male nor female, identify as both, or reject gender labels entirely: gender fluid, gender neutral, gender queer or gender nonconforming.”

The reporter, Corilyn Shropshire, an experienced journalist with a master’s degree in social policy from the London School of Economics, apparently could think of no valid concerns about “nonbinary” employees causing tension and confusion in the workplace by insisting, among other things, that they be referred to individually with the pronoun “they,” correctly used to refer to more than one person. The angle Shropshire took with her story was that all challenges posed by those who are “gender queer” should be met by catering to their whims. She wrote,

Redefining a workplace as some employees redefine themselves has meant challenges on both sides of the desk. For nonbinary workers, it’s explaining who you are to your bosses and colleagues and getting them to understand it, accept it and use the right pronoun. For employers, it’s making the office an environment that is accepting of nonbinary employees and in turn, changing workplace dress codes, the company directory, personnel manuals and longstanding forms that require employees to check off boxes identifying them as “male” or “female.”

What’s especially disconcerting is that at a paper the size of the Chicago Tribune, a story like this one goes through multiple layers of brainstorming and editing. No one thought this piece came across as lacking in how it presented a controversial issue? The story quotes not a single soul who finds pandering to “nonbinary” employees to be a troubling development.

The story quotes only proponents of “gender queer” accommodations, including an associate professor of history at Amherst College who complains that “human resources practices are usually very binary” and that for those who are “nonbinary,” “there’s not even a place for you to exist in the (HR) system.” But HR practices have historically been binary because they correspond to reality, that reality being that we are created male and female, and except in the cases of rare birth defects, the differences are obvious.

There also used to be an understanding that one’s personal proclivities and habits had to sometimes be put aside for the good of the organization, at least during work hours. Today the self reigns supreme, especially when it comes to sexuality, and all must bow down before it. The demands of “nonbinary” employees are so absurd that in a sane world such employees would be told to knock it off or encouraged to get help. That the business world and mainstream journalists now see such demands as legitimate is a disturbing sign that too many influential people in our culture are losing their minds. It’s not just those personally identifying as “gender queer” who are sick. It’s also their enablers.

The Tribune article relates the story of Avery Matthew, a young woman who takes testosterone and works at Brilliant Staffing in Chicago. She pouts that “some colleagues still stumble over the appropriate pronoun to use” even though she’s been out as “nonbinary” for more than two years. “It becomes emotionally exhausting to have to correct people,” she says. But has Matthew tried thinking of her coworkers, who might be exhausted by having to remember during their busy day to use different pronouns with her or risk being labeled insensitive or worse? The reason it’s hard to remember is that it’s unnatural. The natural thing is to refer to people by words correspond to their objective, unchangeable, true essence as men or women. It wears on people to be forced to a participate in a lie when there are many other stresses in the workday competing for their attention.

Matthew is also upset that there are no gender-neutral bathrooms at work. She uses both, but wants one she can “walk into without worrying about people’s reactions.” But of course there is one–the women’s restroom. Why can’t the female essence of her “gender fluidity” be content with that during work hours? What’s the big deal if she at least partly identifies as female? Unfortunately, the Tribune had no interest in digging deeper and pondering how immaturity and self-absorption might play a role in the weird and nonsensical demands of the “gender queer.”

Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, addressed gender confusion on his podcast The Briefing Aug. 9, calling on Christians to stand firm against calls to abandon reality. He said:

Christians have to speak sanity even if no one else does. It’s because our understanding of humanity and of identity begins with God, begins with a Creator who made us for his glory, who determined not only where and when we would be born, but that we would exist, putting us on this earth and giving us an identity as his gift. Of course, there is some extent to which every single individual develops a self and develops personality, but that is fundamentally different from understanding that we determine our own identity.

Too bad the Tribune didn’t see fit to give this perspective at least a passing mention. It’s one many Americans still hold, even if the Tribune treats them as if they don’t exist.

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IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

What is culture? For many Christians, “culture” simply means “all the bad stuff that happens in the world,” but according to John Stonestreet, it’s far more than that. The problem is not with culture, for culture is neither good nor bad; the problem is our understanding of it.

From a working definition of culture as “what humans make of the world,” Stonestreet addresses the way we ought to participate in culture. After all, he says, one of the things God created us to do is to make culture. By asking the right questions, we can come to a right understanding of culture, and from there, we can rightly see our place in it as Christians, for we were placed in this world in this time and place for a reason, not merely to be saved as a means of escape.

God redeemed us so that we might do what we were created to do, Stonestreet says. We were created to live and work in the world and make it what God wants it to be.

This is the third of John Stonestreet’s lectures delivered at the 2019 Illinois Family Institute Worldview Conference. You can find the link to it here, and the previous lectures here. We hope and pray that you will intentionally use these free videos to further your own understanding and pass on a traditional Christian worldview to your children, grandchildren, friends and neighbors.

You can watch this presentation on the IFI YouTube channel, and find the other worldview sessions here.

Background

John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He’s a sought-after author and speaker on areas of faith and culture, theology, worldview, education and apologetics. John is the daily voice of BreakPoint, the nationally syndicated commentary on  the culture founded by the late Chuck Colson.

Before coming to the Colson Center in 2010, John served in various leadership capacities with Summit Ministries and was on the biblical studies faculty at Bryan College (TN). John has co-authored four books: A Practical Guide to Culture, Restoring All Things, Same-Sex Marriage, and Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN). He and his wife, Sarah, have four children and live in Colorado Springs, CO.

You can follow him on Twitter @jbstonestreet.

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A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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

Three Points to Draw out of the Flag-Kneeling Spectacles in Sports

“Psh … I’m not going to the f***in’ White House,” sneered U.S. Women’s National soccer team co-captain Megan Rapinoe, barely letting the reporter finish his question. “No, I’m not going to the White House,” she said again, just in case there was any doubt.

This took place before the team had won its fourth World Cup championship amid sophomoric Twitter squabbles between Rapinoe, her lesbian girlfriend Sue Bird, and President Trump over Rapinoe’s national anthem protests. In 2016, she’d followed Colin Kaepernick in kneeling during the national anthem until the U.S. Soccer Federation adopted a policy requiring players to stand, at which point she complied but stood silently with her arms at her side. She says she does so to draw attention to inequality in the U.S.

Now, for those of us who don’t particularly sympathize with her manner of woke protest, there are a few ways we might respond. One way would be to go tribal and call her some name or insult her as a person. Such ad hominem attacks litter the online world, and although they can be entertaining in a schadenfreude kind of way, they don’t tend to build bridges in ideologically divided times. Another way would be to simply ignore the affront, denying it the attention it surely craves. While more honorable, this deprives the public of alternative points of view.

Here’s another way. It’s peaceable and potentially edifying for all, and it only requires knowing a little political history.

Revolutions, Right and Left

The American Revolution: More accurately called the American War for Independence, historians date the beginning of this conflict to 1765, when Great Britain’s Stamp Act imposed a direct tax on the colonies and the colonists said, “No.” “No taxation without representation,” to be specific. Had Parliament accepted this principled “No,” the conflict would have ended right there.

Instead, Parliament doubled down until, as most of us in America recently celebrated, the colonies put pen to paper and issued a bill of separation. That “putting pen to paper” is highly significant. Make note of what the authors did. They: (1) stated what they were doing, (2) stated why they were doing it, and (3) appealed to God and Natural Law as their witness and judge. England again declined to accept “No,” and war ensued until the new nation prevailed. It is unfortunate that blood was shed, but the Americans deemed their cause noble, and two centuries of their posterity have been its beneficiaries.

The French Revolution: A historical minute later, on July 14, 1789, an unruly mob stormed a military garrison in Paris and seized some 32,000 muskets, along with cannons and munitions. This exercise in “street politics” set in motion a decade of bloodshed and social dissolution ending in absolute dictatorship under Napoleon Bonaparte.

The contrasts between the two could not be more stark. The founders of America drew from Enlightenment ideals while retaining as their grounding the basic principles of the biblical worldview. The Declaration of Independence presupposed the existence of God and Natural Law. The aggressor was King George III, and the Declaration was an attempt to resolve their dispute with him peacefully using principled, rational argumentation.  This is how the political Right works.

The French Revolution was an entirely different animal. It, too, drew from Enlightenment ideals, but its prosecutors summarily rejected God and therefore dispensed with any transcendent foundation for reason or morality. The aggressors were mobs, might made right, and no one came out better for it. This is how the Left operates.

Illuminating the Woke

Here’s how to tie this history to the flag-kneeling and other expression of woke pseudo-virtue. First, to the extent the protest is nonviolent, we should commend the nonviolence. Restraint of expression is consistent with conservative principles and inconsistent with the Left. Point that out.

Second, Ms. Rapinoe’s very act of publicly snubbing her home country and saying “No” (“F*** off!” to be more specific) to its chief executive demonstrates that she does, in fact, enjoy political equality of the highest order. The First Amendment affords her that privilege, which she may exercise without fear of state reprisal. The First Amendment, too, is consistent with the Right and inconsistent with the Left, which observes an “end justifies the means” hierarchy of values. Point that out.

And third, to the extent possible, we should invite people to articulate in words exactly what their grievance is. And it must be defended by reference to some transcendent moral principle. Rapinoe sympathizers, for example, could be invited to explain the criteria by which she (or anyone) has unequal standing under law.

This will pose significant challenges for the benighted woke, because when you drill down to the principles of the grievances du jour, the principles leftists rely on are only traceable to the conservative side of the American equation. It is the Right that seeks to conserve these principles. The Left has no principles, because principles do not exist in a Machiavellian order. It’s only “might makes right.” Look especially for ways to point that out.

Conservatives have to be the ones venturing out these ideological bridges, because the passive-aggressive woke are too busy protesting their non-aggressive opponents, most of whom actually do accept “No” for an answer.

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IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

In light of being accused of “intolerance” and “bigotry” on IFI’s Facebook page by purportedly tolerant and unbigoted “progressives,” I think some clarification of the meaning of tolerance and bigotry is in order. And while I’m at it, I’ll say a little sumpin’ sumpin’ about anger—again.

Save this. You may need it.

The first definition of “tolerance” in the Oxford English Dictionary is “the action or practice of enduring pain or hardship; the power or capacity of enduring.” Another definition is “the disposition to be patient with or indulgent to the opinions or practices of others; freedom from bigotry or undue severity in judging the conduct of others.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines “tolerate” as “to put up with.”

Note, that none of the definitions mentions approval, affirmation, or celebration. Nor do they  mention an obligation to refrain from expressing moral propositions with which someone else may disagree. If intolerance meant expressing moral views someone else doesn’t like, then wouldn’t “progressives” be equally guilty of intolerance?

Note too the qualifier “undue.” Someone who judges conduct to be immoral is not guilty of intolerance even if the judgment is severe. Only if it’s unduly severe is one guilty of intolerance. Leftists aren’t faulting conservatives for “undue severity” of judgment. They’re faulting conservatives for making any negative judgments about homosexual acts, cross-dressing, and other efforts to conceal one’s sex.

A “bigot” according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary refers to a person who is “obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially: one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.” Clearly, there is a distinction between bigotry and moral views. Bigotry cannot simply refer to holding opinions or being in possession of moral precepts, for if it did, everyone but sociopaths would have to be considered bigots because everyone but sociopaths holds certain behaviors as moral and others as immoral.

In addition, the word “obstinacy” in the definition of “bigot” warrants some discussion. First, “obstinate,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary, connotes “unreasonable rigidity.” I would argue that conservative views on homosexuality are completely reasonable, and that conversely, liberal views are woefully unreasonable.

In order to determine whether a tenaciously held conviction reflects obstinacy requires an evaluation of the content of the belief and the justifications for that belief. For example, very few would characterize the act of consistently, tenaciously, unrelentingly, and enduringly, holding the belief that infantilism, pedophilia, polyamory, genocide, racism, or female genital mutilation is wrong to be a manifestation of obstinacy or bigotry. Rather, holding unwaveringly to the moral conclusions that these behaviors are wrong represents legitimate and essential moral judgment.

Moreover, “obstinate” cannot be severed from the other parts of the definition. Bigotry is the obstinate devotion to uninformed or unintentional inclinations, especially ones that result in hatred of members of a particular group.

As such, moral views, even negative views, informed by reading diverse resources and thoughtful deliberation do not constitute bigotry.

Further, a bigot not only holds uninformed opinions but “regards or treats the members of a group… with hatred and intolerance.” Certainly, there are those in society who demonstrate this kind of behavior—including homosexual and “trans” activists—but any who have truly submitted their lives to Christ, do not treat anyone with hatred.

I, like countless other theologically orthodox Christians, not only do not treat people who self-identify as homosexual or “trans” with hatred or intolerance, but I also do not feel any hatred for them. My beliefs about homosexual conduct in no way diminish the love I feel for those who self-identify as homosexual or “trans,” the respect I have for their admirable qualities, the pleasure I take in their company, or the recognition I have of their infinite worth.

I do, however, often feel anger that adults are promoting body- and soul-destroying lies as truth to children. And I thank God for this proper feeling toward such iniquity.

In an article in Touchstone Magazine on “the Integration of Anger into the Virtuous Life,”  Dr. Leon Podles argues that “Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.”

This false understanding infects the church and prevents it from being salt and light in a fallen, suffering world, and that renders the church complicit in the destruction of countless lives.

He expresses what should be obvious: we should “feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.”

Podles describes the suppression of hatred and anger as “emotional deformation” and exhorts the church to remember that “growth in virtue,” which must include the integration of “all emotions, including anger and hate,” is the “goal of the Christian’s moral life.”

Dr. Podles quotes Catholic psychiatrist Conrad Baars who had been a prisoner under the Nazi regime:

‘[T]here is a difference between a person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed and the one who in addition also feels hate for the evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.’

How often do we hear in our churches anything akin to the idea expressed by early church father John Chrysostom:

‘He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong.’

Wouldn’t the church and society look very different if they embodied Dr. Podles’ conviction that “sorrow at evil without anger at evil is a fault.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/eftists-Have-Intolerance-and-Bigotry-All-Wrong.mp3

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A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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

As I have written before, I was almost fired for refusing to increase a morphine drip “until he stops breathing” on a patient who continued to breathe after his ventilator was removed. The doctors mistakenly presumed he had a massive stroke and thus was irreparably brain-damaged. I was told at that time that giving and increasing the morphine even though the patient showed no discomfort was merely “comfort care” that would “prevent pain.” I knew it was euthanasia.

I remembered this terrible incident when I read the April 1, 2019 Federalist magazine article “This Belgian Nurse Watched Euthanasia Turn Pain Management Into A Death Prescription”

Belgium has had legalized euthanasia for many years, including organ donation euthanasia and now even minors and psychiatric patients. But Sophie Druenne, a palliative care nurse, reached her breaking point when she had to call a doctor back to give another lethal injection when the patient didn’t die from the first injection. Sophie caught herself laughing at the absurdity of the situation at first but then realized the horror of the situation and began to question Belgium’s so-called social experiment with euthanasia.

What changed Sophie’s opinion was working in Belgium’s integrated palliative care (IPC) system. Palliative care is “medical aid that treats symptoms of a typically serious disease rather than the disease itself, which sometimes cannot be treated or not easily.” However Belgium’s euthanasia framework now includes integrated palliative care in the framework.

As the article states, palliative care used to be defined by the anti-euthanasia beliefs of its founder, Dame Cicely Saunders, a British nurse who developed holistic care for the dying in the 1940s. Dame Saunders believed that “that a patient’s request for euthanasia represented a failure to adequately care for the patient’s spiritual, emotional, and social needs.”

Although Belgium tried to reconcile Dame Cicely Saunders’ standard with its euthanasia laws, Sophie observed that the guiding intention to relieve suffering changed from “first, do no harm” to “first, relieve suffering.” This allowed euthanasia to become an “easy” solution that could effectively nullify even patient consent.

Sophie finally left Belgium to take a position in Paris at a hospital where terminally ill patients are treated with traditional palliative care

THE SITUATION IN THE US

Recently I was giving a talk on assisted suicide/euthanasia when I noticed that a woman in the audience was visibly upset. After I finished, I went over to her to ask if I said something that upset her. She responded that she was a nurse for 30 years and, when I related the story about the morphine overdose I refused to give, she said that she suddenly realized the truth of what was happening in her hospital. She started to cry while I held her hand. She was devastated just like the Belgian nurse.

Palliative care is a wonderful holistic approach to evaluating the patient’s needs beyond just the physical but it must not include causing death.

Unfortunately, a recent Delaware assisted suicide bill  actually tried to define assisted suicide as a palliative care option.

Currently, hospice/palliative care is held up as a good way to combat assisted suicide. However,  Compassion and Choices touts  that “(a) growing number of national and state medical organizations have endorsed or adopted a neutral position regarding medical aid in dying (physician-assisted suicide) as an end-of-life option for mentally capable, terminally ill adults.”

Barbara Coombs Lee, CEO of Compassion and Choices even issued a 2017 “Call to the Palliative Care Community for a Patient-Centered Response to Medical Aid in Dying (aka physician-assisted suicide)” stating that assisted suicide actually “could improve the image and acceptance of palliative care” by taking a position of  “engaged neutrality” that “indicates that it is a professional organization’s obligation to provide its members with the clinical guidelines, information, and tools they need if they choose to support their patients’ requests” for assisted suicide.” (Emphasis added)

Not surprisingly, Compassion and Choices had supported the 2016  “The Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act” (reintroduced this year as H.R. 647) that would provide millions of dollars in grants or contracts to “increase the number of permanent faculty in palliative care at accredited allopathic and osteopathic medical schools, nursing schools, social work schools, and other programs, including physician assistant education programs, to promote education and research in palliative care and hospice, and to support the development of faculty careers in academic palliative medicine.” (Emphasis added)

Fortunately, a provision was added to forbid federal assistance to any health care item or service causing or assisting death such as assisted suicide. Since then, the Compassion and Choices website has been silent on the Act.

CONCLUSION

Over the years, the public has been told that assisted suicide is a humane answer to emotional and physical suffering at the end of life. But if doctors, nurses and their professional organizations come to agree with this, we all will lose the protection of truly ethical healthcare that rejects causing death as a solution. We must be able to trust that our healthcare system will  give us the care we need and deserve, especially at the end of our lives.

We cannot become like Belgium.

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This article was originally published at NancyValko.com.

Blockbuster news came out this week revealing that Twitter has cut ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) because of reports of controversial financial activity, leaders tainted by scandal, and–according to one source–a “toxic” work environment.

The news has rocked an organization whose stated purpose is to combat discrimination, intolerance, and groups that in the view of the SPLC, practice hatred towards others.  The organization reports such groups to the FBI and is often cited by the media.  Academics and others rely upon SPLC’s listings, which they in turn use to ostracize such groups.

Founded in 1971 and based in Montgomery, Alabama, the SPLC is no stranger to controversy.  The group has long been accused of targeting conservative and Christian organizations.  Ironically, the SPLC attacks groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and Jihad Watch, who themselves are fighting discrimination and racism.

Controversy has reached to the very top of the SPLC.  Morris Dees, the co-founder of the organization, was accused back in 1994 of discrimination against black employees, who according a local newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, “felt threatened and banded together.”

In 2007, Stephen Bright, a former president of a sister organization, the Southern Center for Human Rights, accused Dees of being “a con man and fraud” who “has taken advantage of naive people–some of moderate or low incomes–who believe his pitches and give to his $175 million operation.”

Dees was fired this year after two dozen employees complained about mistreatment and sexual harassment.  One former employee claimed that Dees had “a reputation for hitting on young woman” and had caused a staff revolt over his behavior.

Liberty Counsel is coordinating with more than 60 conservative and Christian groups (including IFI) that are considering taking legal action against the SPLC–a number that continues to grow.  The coalition claims that the SPLC, while ostensibly fighting bias and hate groups, is guilty of engaging in the same discriminatory activity that it purports to disavow–actions which resulted in conservative/Christian groups being banned from social media platforms, thus rendering them less effectual.

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, commented after Twitter disassociated itself from the SPLC: “The rest of the tech companies should follow Twitter’s lead and divorce from the SPLC. It appears to have taken a major implosion within the SPLC for others to finally see what organizations like Liberty Counsel have been saying all along.”

What we may be seeing is a revolution against enormously powerful organizations like the SPLC that for far too long have sought to blacklist groups that do not share their far-left ideology and for whom freedom of expression is a one-way street.

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A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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

A sure sign that leftist lawmakers in Springfield are obsessively driven by the desire to use government money and power to advance an absurd, science-denying ideology is House Bill 922  sponsored by State Representative Linda Chapa LaVia (D-Aurora) that, if passed, will require every public middle and high school in the state to make tampons and sanitary napkins available for free in every boys’ bathroom.

You read that right. Every middle and high school in the state will have to add feminine hygiene dispensers to every boys’ restroom for all the menstruating boys. #AnotherUnfundedMandate.

“What ho?!” you may be exclaiming if you’ve been sequestered in a cloistered world in which science still appertains. Surely—you think—teachers know that boys don’t menstruate!

Oh, you naïve, antiquated, science-loving peeps. We’ve left modernity and post-modernity behind. We’ve even left “truthiness” behind.

We’ve now entered the post-science, post-rationality, post-truth era where pseudoscience—aided and abetted by Big Brother and his ugly twin Big “Trans”—in the service of absolute autonomy, amorality, and pagan sexuality reign—and destroy.

To be clear, the “menstruating boys” are confused girls who masquerade as boys. Leftist lawmakers believe we the people and our taxes should be forced to subsidize their confusion and masquerades.

A less costly—in both dollars and sense—compromise with anti-science cultists would be to allow girls who pretend to be boys to get their feminine hygiene products from school nurses, but “trans”-cultists and their ideological allies demand that all society pretend along with “trans”-identifying persons. “Trans”-cultists seek to force everyone to pretend the empress is an emperor.

Leftist lawmakers believe that commitments to compassion and inclusivity require Illinois taxpayers to facilitate a body- and soul-destroying fiction that harms these children—a fiction that is supported by no actual hard science. There is no conclusive, research-based hard science proving that girls with healthy, normally functioning anatomy and physiology can be born in boys’ bodies or vice versa. There is no conclusive, research-based hard science proving that if a girl experiences a mismatch between her subjective feelings about her sex and her objective biological sex that the error resides in her body as opposed to her mind. There is no conclusive, research-based hard science proving that all cross-sex-identifying children as well as all other children are best-served by adults facilitating a fiction.

Parents of public school children must understand that pronoun mandates and restroom diktats like this bill are teaching all children that biological sex has no intrinsic meaning relative to anything, including to feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when undressing or engaged in personal bodily activities.

These intrusive, coercive mandates are teaching all children that the desires of opposite-sex impersonators take precedence over the desires of non-delusional people in every context.

These mandates are teaching all children that in order to be loving, compassionate, and inclusive, they must share private spaces with opposite-sex peers.

And parents must understand that these “trans” policies and the ideology taught to their children to rationalize these policies are desensitizing their children to co-ed private spaces. In other words, increasing numbers of children and teens are becoming unnaturally comfortable sharing restrooms and locker rooms with peers of the opposite sex.

It is our cowardice and complacency that allow these incremental changes to move forward, thereby ensuring what should be a shocking sexual revolution. We’re moving to a cultural place where it will be illegal to publicly recognize sexual differentiation in word or deed.

When you next contact your lawmakers and school leaders, make sure to ask them this question: “What is a woman?” Get back to me with their answers.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to ask him/her to vote down HB 922.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/HB922.mp3

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Why Socialism is bad for Christians, bad for America

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

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

• Everyone is made paupers, on purpose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialism in three minutes

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

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

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

This definition has these implications.

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

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

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

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

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

Socialism: Give me this day my daily bread

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialism: The family is obsolete

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relationships are encouraged, but committed ones are not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your freedom: defend it now, before you lose it

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

• Society reduced to pauperism.

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

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

• Destruction of religious life, and religious rights.

• Creating a uncompassionate, sullen, ignorant generation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[xvi] Ibid.

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

[xviii] Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

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

[xxii] Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family

[xxiii] Ibid.

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

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

[xxvi] Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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