The prophets of fact check

By now we should all know that the current spate of 'Fact Checkers' are basically thralls and hacks who rush in to defend the Left at all costs.  Period. 

There are many ways they do this under the guise of 'Fact Checking'.  Ignoring a mountain range of correct analysis to zoom in on one falsehood uttered by a non-leftist.  Or admitting a non-leftist is correct, but then finding something unrelated that is false just to say it isn't correct.  Or the opposite, where the leftwing advocate has made a false claim, but rushing about to find something she said that is true.  

And on and on.  You know the tricks.  Well, here is a fine example.  So John C. Wright posted this:

It sure makes a point.  Though I'm always skeptical of memes to begin with, so I did some digging. I eventually found a similar meme.  It wasn't the picture Mr. Wright used, but it was another one making a similar point:

A strong point to be sure.  According to this 'Fact Checker (TM)', however, that's a false meme.  Because, apparently, it's not a lithium mine at all, but a copper mine.  Therefore it's false.  True, copper is used in electronic cars, but we won't go there.  It's not a lithium mine, so technically the meme is false.  

Instead, the "Fact Checker" points out that the biggest lithium mine in the world isn't anything like that one, so it's not just false but patently unfair.  So I went to see the big lithium mine it mentions (in Australia, FWIW).  And what does that mine look like?  It looks like this:

So, we can have this meme instead:        

And boy does that make all the difference!  Thanks Fact Checkers, for clearing things up! 

As the ancient proverb says, she who trusts in Fact Checkers has hole in head. 

Satanists and New Prolife Catholics dealt setback

As the attempt to overcome Texas's abortion restrictions falls flat.  Must be tough.  An interesting alliance that speaks volumes about those who have not transferred membership to the Secular Church and those who have.  

It's more than just bad optics that so many New Prolife Catholics chose to blast Texas for its attempts to stop the horrific evil of our age.  It's worse than just the bad look that comes with Satanists proudly joining with those New Prolife Catholics in an attempt to keep the Texas abortion mills turning. 

It reminds us that we are in a cosmic battle between good and evil.  That's Good and Evil.  Objective Good, objective Evil.  The Sacred and the Demonic. Choose wisely. There's at least a chance that secularism's spin on the historical Gospel message may be as faulty as all the different claims made about Covid in the last year and a half. 

Congress shall make no law

Liberals and Democrats approve this practice

Blocking the veneration of pagan religions by brutally crushing the right to practice the Christian religion thereof.  I'm no Constitutional Lawyer, but that's the First Amendment if I'm remembering correctly.  Or at least the First Amendment as currently understood. 

Not that we should care.  Per a CBS report from all the way back in 2018, well over 40% of Americans think it's time to ditch the old Constitution anyway.  That fits with a recent survey that found 48% now support the government stepping in and working with Tech Barons to censor free speech misinformation. And since we know only conservatives haven't read the Constitution, you can bet those surveyed have done their homework.  

I guess that's why a school would ask its students to chant to the glorious gods of the Aztecs.  The same reason we've seen stories about schools taking their kids to hear the Dalai Lama, or teach the kiddos the Five Pillars of Islam.  Or do Yoga.  Or basically any darn religious/spiritual/cultic lesson or exercise as long as it's not that vile Christianity thing that is the only religion the First Amendment apparently spoke to. 

As an aside, this story about the school puts me in mind of my son's cultural anthropology class that I've mentioned a few times.  You know, the one where the class broke out into a thoughtful debate about the human sacrifice of the Aztecs.  You know, where they concluded apart from the silly religion gibberish, the need to cull the human herds in light of Global Warming demands we could do worse than looking to the Aztecs and other cases of human sacrifice for inspiration. 

Thus is our world. We're being taught to be the Nazis redux, with a peppering of Communism for taste and effect.  Race hate?  Sure, as long as you hate the right race.  Erasing history?  You bet, as long as it's the history of those unforgivable reprobates from the West.  Judging others?  Sure, just judge the right sinners for the right sins. Banning books and censoring speech?  Alrighty then, just make sure it's the really bad stuff.  Ethnic discrimination?  That works, as long as you are doing it to the right ethnic groups.  Presumption of innocence, equality, burden of proof, redemption, forgiveness?  The Leftist cares not for these things.

But the Leftist controls the institutions of our culture, so the Leftist gets its overthrow of life, liberty and democracy.  Truly we are the worst generation. 

Fun bonus: Snopes "fact checks" this story and gives it a mostly false.  Why?  Because apparently the school has the students chant based on the meaning of the gods' names, rather than the gods.  You see, because the students are chanting in the name of the Aztec concepts that the gods represent rather than the gods, it's OK.  Fact checkers; the Snake Oil Saleswomen of the modern age.  Since apparently the name of a god meaning something must mean you're not speaking about that god?  Again, to be the Left is to be filled with pride, slander, BS, and denial. 

The lie of multiculturalism for Columbus Day

Is best displayed in this, that popped up on a history Facebook page I follow:

You see that?  I hope this is fake and no actual Indian ever said this.  But if it's genuine, then Indians were ... perfect.  Without sin.  Never did anything wrong.  Wonderful.  Fabulous.  Better than Jesus.   Just like those Bushmen in The Gods Must Be Crazy.  There simply was no sin, evil or wrongdoing before Europeans came to the lands. So says this meme that strongly suggests it's the opinion of an American Indian. 

Which is stupid, wrong, a lie and false.  Indian culture was like any and all cultures.  It had plenty of wars, genocide, slavery, imperialism, conquest, thieving, wrong doing and politicking that would make Machiavelli blush.  Just like all tribes and cultures and kingdoms and nations since the beginning of time. 

Multiculturalism was supposed to teach us Western children of Western Imperialism what the world was really like.  It functioned under two basic premises. One, that us Americans (and Westerners in general) never knew Western culture did anything wrong or bad.  Two, our views of the world were skewed because of our racist imperialism imposing our ideas of the world on the world instead of seeing the world from its own vantage point.

Therefore, there were two solutions.  First, emphasize, perhaps over emphasize (can you really overemphasize?), the sins of America and the West to wake people up to our own imperfections and egregious sins.  And second, allow other cultures to tell us just what their cultures and civilizations were really like. 

On the surface, the first solution doesn't appear terrible.  Repentance and admitting to sin is a very Christian, and hence Western virtue, as long as it is done with the correct purpose in mind.  The second was a problem from the beginning.  It should be obvious that simply asking American Indians or Hindus or Africans or Japanese or Muslims or any people in the world about their own culture might actually meet with the same skewed or dishonest picture that Americans were supposed to have.  Especially since cultural repentance and admitting ancestral and cultural sin is not a universal trait. 

But so it was, and so it is.  When my son had a cultural anthropology class, the line was already moved from my anthropology classes in college.  Back then, it was 'who are we to judge?'  In fairness, that was also how we were told to look at our own sins: the Inquisition, the Witch Hunts, Slavery.  We condemn the sins but not the sinners.  

Today, we condemn the sins and sinners of the West, and go beyond simply not judging the sins of the rest of the world to almost embracing them.  In my day, we said human sacrifice or infanticide or child sacrifice were bad, but we don't judge the Aztecs or the Celts or the Native Americans who did such things.  In my son's class, they don't even know why we're fussing.  After all, in their course the question of human sacrifice itself is up for debate.  We know Global Warming is the threat of the ages and too many people are causing the world to die.  Therefore, it's perfectly acceptable to look at those Aztecs or Celts and think they may have been on to something when it comes to population control. So said his class's discussion.  

Because we know from Multiculturalism, if it ain't Western, it's good.  We know this because people from those cultures are happy to say so.  Likewise, the idea that those things like child sacrifice or terminating the weak and sickly were bad comes from old white Western, Christian ideals.  And we know those were always and altogether bad.  Therefore, it's time to give sacrificing the baby to the fires a second look.  After all, if the worst civilization in history - Western that is - said it was bad, there might be something to it after all!

Happy Columbus Indigenous Peoples Day.  Celebrated not despite the savagery and barbarism of those non-Western cultures, but increasingly because of them. 

Boston celebrates torture, slavery and infanticide

More and more liberals approve this practice

Yep.  Boston has officially replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.  Now, the logic is that we cannot celebrate anyone who sinned the unforgivable sins, no matter their accomplishments.  That's because apparently there is no way to celebrate a person unless you celebrate everything they did.  You just can't set things apart and say I celebrate this person despite those unforgivable sins over there.  You either condemn or celebrate. 

Therefore, since Boston is celebrating the broad 'Indigenous Peoples Day', it stands to reason it doesn't think things like torture, human sacrifice, matricide, infanticide, patricide, slavery, and wars of tribal conquest are necessarily bad. In fact, apparently they're praiseworthy, since to celebrate Columbus is to celebrate all of his sins. So stands the logic behind eradicating his memory from our history must happen because we can no longer tolerate the unforgiven able sins. 

On the other hand, in a nation where our womenfolk have successfully aborted over 65 million of their pregnancies in a few decades to sustain our modern sex and drugs culture during the AIDS pandemic as suicides, violent crimes and drug overdoses claim our children in unprecedented numbers, it's not hard to see those things aren't especially bad for post-modern values.  Nor is it difficult to see a growing number of Americans warming up to the old practices that were driven out by the rascally West. 

So in a way, it makes perfect sense.  There was a time we felt the pagan peoples of the New World benefited from the civilization of science, democracy, and Christian virtues, if not the Gospel itself.  Today we reject all of those, seeing nothing positive at all brought to these shores from Europe. And yes, that includes science. We no longer cheer the indigenous peoples despite such practices as human sacrifice, slavery and infanticide.  No.  With each passing day, it becomes clear that American liberals and Democrats celebrate the indigenous peoples precisely because they engaged in such practices.  

And the American Catholic Church apparently approves this message.  A prophetic song apparently, as the descendants of pagan Americans effectively paganize America along with all the glories of a pagan society:

The leftwing lynch mob pics up steam

During the Kavanaugh hearings, we heard pundits, politicians and even some fine religious leaders remind us that it isn't a case of evidence or not, but it's about offending women who want to abort their pregnancies.  The whole 'it's not necessary to have evidence when you know someone is guilty' has been picking up pace among the American Left for some years.  

Of course uncritically condemning past ages for failing to conform to the infallibility of our own sensitivities is the only way to approach historical studies nowadays. That has allowed the Left to challenge the idea that anything dreamed up in the past - including, but not limited to, ideas of democracy, freedom of speech, sanctity of life, or presumption of innocence - have to be good.  Because everyone in the past was bad, anything they came up with can be judged and dispensed with accordingly.

But what of the cases in which we're not sure? Maybe someone in the past wasn't so bad, or guilty of the sins of the age.  My friends, I give you the Leftwing.  There are no principles, values, morals, truths, facts, or any such rubbish.  They simply say things and they happen.  Because they control our nation and have for decades. 

Therefore, voila:

You see that?  Rod Dreher gets it.  They don't have to prove he was a person who didn't bow before the altar of gay sex.  It's enough that he lived then.  And we can condemn the entire period of time and everyone in an entire nation or demographic at any given period in time, so it's enough he was part of those.  Guilt by chronological association.  That's all we need.

Expect many "Christians" to realize just how great it is we no longer need anything but when and where someone lived to condemn and exterminate accordingly.  

At least the gestapo went through the motions of a kangaroo court to eliminate someone.  The modern Left is seeing to it that no such burden will be placed on its followers.  It will be enough to say someone might be guilty just because, and then proceed to eliminate. 

These are dark times we live in, and they are only going to get blacker.  

Because freedom of expression is important

The Nobel Peace Prize this year has been awarded to two journalists for their tireless work for safeguarding freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia.  No commentary.  Just thought it was interesting given the state of affairs in our country right now. 

Where have you gone Leonid Brezhnev

Our leftists turn their lonely eyes to you.   

Rod Dreher posts a story about the NSB board sending that letter to President Biden, comparing parents trying to get straight answers at school board meetings to domestic terrorists.  Furthermore, they want the Feds to step in and do something about it.   Dreher's post is from an East European anticommunist who notices the similarity between that move and the move for old time communists asking the USSR movers and shakers to come in and help.

That's common to what I heard in my years sojourning with the Orthodox.  If I learned anything in those six years, it's that Americans have no clue what is going on in the world today because our media outlets - both sides really - paint false pictures about the people and events in our world, when they bother to mention them at all.  

Likewise, I met several who grew up behind the Iron Curtain.  Orthodox after all.  One was a fascinating gentleman who, along with his wife, is a professor at one of our big state universities.  More than once he pointed to the developments in our country and compared them alarmingly to what he saw as a youngster when the Soviets came storming in to take over.  Many of the things going on, including universities asking students to 'watch' other students or professors, were straight out of the playbook of the Iron Curtain wonderland. 

Of course per my sons in college, many students today believe all that 'Evil Empire' rubbish was American war propaganda.  Turns out the USSR wasn't bad at all.  The whole Gulag Archipelago was just a bunch of lies perpetrated by people on the Evil American Empire payroll.  Those dissidents speaking of the horrors of the USSR being liars who made it up in order to cash in on fame and celebrity in the years when the USA was the only Evil Empire on the block.  My sons have done no actual survey, but from their classroom discussions and social media platforms at college, they wager about 1/3 of the students believe that.

Which isn't hard to believe.  When I became Catholic in 2006, I got a job at a book publisher.  A fine young lady was also working there as she went to OSU for her MA degree.  She had an undergrad degree from Boston College.   She was very adamant that the whole Cold War was a giant American conspiracy for Wall Street and our Military Complex.  Turns out the Soviets were just misunderstood beatniks wanting peace, love and John Lennon songs.  That was 2006.  And she was working on a Masters degree. 

So it's not hard to see, while there are traces of Nazi styled race hate, ethnic cleansing and mass extermination of undesirables among the Left, you can't help but notice strong communist flavors just the same.  And yet how many Christians are abandoning the faith to join it.  Truly ours will be a generation used by future generations as a cautionary tale. 

Are we finished blind trusting scholars and experts and scientists yet?

As I said here, never forget that the majority of German experts, scientists, doctors, teachers, preachers, intellectuals, artists, filmmakers and delivery truck drivers remained in Germany and did the Nazi government's bidding. Never forget that as you look at this article at The Atlantic. 

It turns out that, by its own words, "many psychologists wrongly assumed coercive attitudes exist only among conservatives'.  Meanwhile, many wrongly believed that people who turn copper pennies into copper wires are only known to be Jewish.  Also, many wrongly believed that women are thought to be intellectually inferior to men.  By the by, it's also known that many wrongly believed that all blacks like watermelon and fried chicken. 

These are, quoth The Atlantic, the "many" psychologists.  Those who are part of the thriving multibillion dollar a year mental health industry.  That industry in which we put all of our modern hopes and dreams to fix all of humanity's problems.  The same industry that has convinced us no behavior is anything but a mental issue, rather than a case of character, morals, values, behavioral choices.  

Except, apparently, coercive attitudes, which many believe are capable of being embraced only among conservatives - however conservatives happen to be defined.  

Again, most 'psychologists' in Germany were all about the Master Race attitudes toward the German peoples, the Jews, the Gypsies, and everyone the German government with the big paychecks wanted.  I'm sure the liberal dominance of our society's big institutions of wealth, power and parties with T&A have nothing to do with those psychologists concluding this about conservatives, or deciding it would take an impressive amount of scholarship to suggest otherwise.  

Trust in God.  Trust in Christ.  Trust in the Gospel.  Even if the Church isn't pointing us that way right now, that is who we better trust in, because if you're trusting in anyone or anything else, you deserve whatever 'many psychologists' will likely say about you. 

The LGBTQ community approves this message

A Canadian tribunal in British Columbia has now made it a crime to apply the wrong pronoun to a person.   And the little piece that reports the news is an LGBTQ news rag.  

It's about tyranny of course.  Growing up in the post-war (that's WWII) era, we were told freedom of speech is the capstone of all democracy and liberty.  Feminism is what did it in.   Back in the 1970s, even as St. George Carlin was lobbying for a nation of unbridled freedom of speech, feminists were demanding an end to the male pronoun.  

Policeman you say?  You chauvinist pig!  It's police person!  You're my relief man?  That's relief person.  Remember that?  Shortly afterwards, Happy Holidays and Seasons Greetings ceased being alternatives used to describe Christmas and the December holidays, and became the mandated terms used to describe that holiday on December 25th.  Indians became Native Americans.  Blacks either became black or African American or both or neither, I was never sure.  

But you get the point.  The left, while screaming unchecked tolerance for all speech and expression, was simultaneously walking back the same.  The point was the destruction of the Christian West and its replacement with a new secular global gospel. Changing our words and speech was simply a major step forward toward that goal. 

After all, punishing people legally for saying truth is even better than using social pressure to shame entire people groups (men, Americans, Christians, whites).  To actually say if you indicate squares are not round, you'll be legally punished is as close as you get to tyranny without the gulags and killing fields. 

For the record I do not approve

The George Floyd memorial statue in New York has been vandalized again.  

For the record, I don't think there should be a memorial to Floyd.  I've pointed out before that they've moved the bar quite a distance since it was about police killing unarmed, innocent black Americans.  Now you can be a black American in the process of trying to kill the police, wanted for sexual assault or other felonies or even trying to kill a citizen and still be lauded, praised and even turned into a millionaire.  Hence the spike in crime over the last year. 

This is where the BLM mentality has gotten us.  A mentality only made possible by the news media developing its ability to be entirely false without ever lying.  Blacks killed by police? Sure.  Americans across the board are killed by police in a given year.  But just ignore all the others, and make any case involving a black American into round the clock headline news, and it's a false narrative without being entirely false. 

Despite all this, someone decided to put up a statue to Floyd in the modern genuflecting before group identity and group guilt and anti-Americanism.  Because of that, have a discussion, a debate, or something if you don't like it.  Don't tear it down, vandalize it, or in any way try to destroy it.  That's wrong.  That's the stuff of barbarians and savages to be honest.  It was always presented as such when I was growing up, even when it was colonists tearing down a statue of King George. I've seen nothing over the last few years to suggest that appraisal was wrong. 

So no, I don't approve of this at all.  

If you ever wondered

 How animals would run if they were people, Daniel LaBelle is here to help:

CNN continues to hate it some America

And encourages blacks especially to join with the America hate.  That's the heavy communist influence behind the Left coming through.  The only good thing about CNN is that so few bother watching it./ 

I've mentioned several times how, back when I was part of an ecumenical organization as an Evangelical minister, I gave a talk on that strange phenomenon of demographic self-hate.  Why it was that among liberals, hating your own demographic and forebears seemed as American as apple pie and baseball to conservatives. 

I also mentioned it was equally strange that, with the exception of the LGBTQ movement, the most 'anti'-rhetoric you had came from those in the same demographic being hated.  That is, the most anti-male rhetoric wasn't from most feminists, it was from liberal men.  Or the most anti-white race hate wasn't from non-whites, it was from white liberals.  And on and on.

I can say it's time to revise that, as a growing number of black Americans have been bitten by the 'white-hate' bug.  They despise this country and everything in it.  They have no problem speaking  of whites the way Nazis spoke of Jews, or the KKK speaks of blacks for that matter.  Openly saying they hate whites, don't care if whites die, or other warm and fuzzy rhetoric is becoming more the rule than the exception. 

This is fine for the Left of course. Its desire is the destruction of the Western Democracies and the values and principles of the Christian religion.  That's the Left's end goal and it's well on its way to achieving it.  Part of what made this possible was the neurotic self loathing that came to define Western liberalism, particularly among whites and men.  But now you are seeing people demonstrate an age old fact of humans: Sin is universal.  If you give people the chance to take the low road to Hell, they'll take it.

Seeing the ease and joy with which a growing number of non-whites are embracing the white hate and America hate with rhetoric in the manner of Goebbels or Hess, it's harder and harder to believe one of the Left' most stupid lies: that only whites in Europe and America were ever able to be racist.  That's a level of stupid falsehood that makes Flat Earthers seem wise by comparison.  But it's also accepted dogma, and hence the growing number of non-whites ready and willing to take it to the next logical step. 

At some point - and boy I know this may put some people off, and trust me I don't consider myself a racist - we're going to have to be honest that people are people.  And whether Jew, Black, Muslim, Asian, or Native American, if you give them the encouragement to do wrong and evil, they'll do it. 

Continuing to hang our heads or shuffle our feet or do a Rodney Dangerfield collar tug when people from various groups make it clear the extermination of whites, Christians, America and Western culture is their end goal will show itself more like cowardliness than humble virtue.  We might actually have to take a stand.  After all, if we're not on the side of the Left and all its manifold evils, we're already racists and sexists and bigots anyway.  What will we have to lose? 

Is Ken Weyler barking mad?

 Or is this just partisan bilge: 

I've looked under Ken Weyler and anything to do with a 52 page document, and apart from the statement by a liberal democrat Mary Jane Wallner, I've seen no news stories about it.  I've looked.  Perhaps this story could help.  It's a local rag and does speak of the blowup between the Dems and Welyer.  

But no mention of 52 page anything. That story was dated Sept. 23, 2021.  Much of the  news I've found centers more on Weyler being a key block to Democrat budget agendas.  Given how quickly darlings of the Left are now being vilified for standing in Biden's way, I have to wonder.

Nonetheless, I've found nothing at all about a 52 page document sent by Weyler.  I went to stories about  Wallner and found nothing saying she made the claim at all.  Perhaps she did.  Perhaps he did.  Maybe the above Twitter post is spot on.

I've just found nothing at all about any of it, other than Weyler is in hot water for bucking the dominant narratives about vaccines and Dems are trying to get rid of him.   No document.  No tentacle monster claims.  Just that the scuff over his claims about percentages of vaccinated in hospitals and problems with the vaccines.  I wonder if anyone else has found anything.

I should add I'm not saying that the Twitter post itself is a false story and there was no such thing.  Or that the Wallner never made such a claim.  Or that Weyler - an MIT grad - never actually sent any such document, and the above image is a lie.  Heaven forfend.

I'd just like to find some actual information, a copy of the actual document (all 52 pages if possible), and see exactly what was written and hear the parties involved actually corroborate that it all happened as the Twitter post says. 

But that's just me. 

Another one bites the dust

Or ditches the Christian Faith.  Dave Armstrong goes through the minutes of the reasoning.  I have never heard of
Audrey Assad.  Apparently she is, or was, a big name in music, at least for Christians.  She's done with all that God stuff now, concluding that the modern Faith of Science has debunked all that made up folk tale gibberish we call religion.  At the end of the day, that's why she left.  

For all the unpacking Dave does, and he does an admirable job, I think it's simple.  She no longer believes and, most likely, hadn't believed for some time.  A great many in our churches likely don't anymore. They can't bring themselves to do what she's done because they don't know where else to go.  Thinking of the implications of a religionless world is terrifying.  This is all you get, then a feast for maggots and your objectively valueless life is forgotten about in a generation and that's it?  So they hang on, not believing it in their gut of guts, until a chance to bolt finally appears. 

Oh, we have that secular paganism, that 'heavenly birthday' and 'we pray to something' or such at times of crisis. Just enough fluff to paste over the implications of a truly secular universe.  But it's not much, and means less. Therefore many are no doubt where she was.  She may give this or that reason, the Church is thus, or the Church judges, or the Church intolerant, or hypocrites as good as always.

But that's all rubbish.  From non-religious hypocrites to intolerant atheists, the idea that these problems in the Church aren't found anywhere else is demonstrably false.  After a few days in the real world, it isn't difficult to discover in the fields of secular living the same problems.  

But it ultimately does not matter that they are wrong about such reasons, because the people who say 'too much politics' or 'too intolerant' aren't leaving for those reasons.  They are leaving because they no longer believe in 1) God, 2) Christ, 3) the Bible, or 4) Religion.  They've been taught those things have long been debunked by Science.  They believed the Secular Faith for years, perhaps without realizing it, but couldn't bring themselves to admit what Ms. Assad has admitted. 

More and more don't believe in God or the Holy Spirit any more than they believe in Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy.  I'm not a talented enough writer to find a way to emphasize just how urgent a crisis this is, but: 

PEOPE DON'T BELIEVE IN THE CHRSITIAN RELIGION ANY MORE!    

Not the Bible, not the stories of the Bible, not any particular God if any at all,  not in some God Incarnate Messiah born in a stable, Miracles, Eternal Life, or any of it.  Certainly none of it as presented by the historical Christian Faith.  And that means more and has farther reaching implications than I think we can fathom. 

As I said, there's likely just enough nod to a 'vague spirit energy something when we die' to cover the awful implications of a truly materialistic philosophy, but that's all there is.  Otherwise, the Biblical stories and doctrines of the Faith mean absolutely nothing to them because they don't believe in them. Because our society has been a secular society and has preached and proselytized the belief in secularism for decades.  

If I may be brutally honest, most of our traditions have foolishly tried to meet this secularism halfway when there was no halfway between 'no God' and 'One God, maker of heaven and earth.'  We may have thought we were bringing them from 'no God' to at least 'some God', but all along they were bringing us from 'One God', to merely 'some sort of God'.  And in a secular age where secularism has been the universal faith for some time, that's a small step to no God of any meaning at all. 

That's why people are leaving in ever growing droves.  At least they're leaving and admitting it. Honesty about one's state of affairs is always best.  I fear many more in our churches are where she already was, even if she had to find reasons to justify no longer staying there.  I fear that a great many of our leaders, even in the highest places, no longer believe it either.  

How else can we account for people who no more than a few years ago swore things to be the revealed truth of the Thrice Holy God who now set those same things aside under mild pressure from the World?  How much did they really believe?  And if those teachings and morals can be tossed aside, how much else can and will join them? 

The Five Threats to Freedom

As explained in a handout my son received in his college Political Science class (I have not copied it here because I'm not sure on any copyright or restrictions, and don't want my son to get in Dutch, just in case).  So here they are, those five big threats to freedom as outlined for my son and his classmates:

1.  The Senate.

Yep.  The Senate is a threat to democracy and freedom.  Why?  Because it skews the wishes of the many for the radicalism of a few.  Basically that's its point.  Which is odd, since the entire post-Civil Rights era mantra of liberalism was that a nation has no right to exist based on the majority.  But in this case, it lamented a disproportionate level of representation from states where radical ideas that threaten democracy can hold equal time with enlightened views, and thus block legalization that guarantees our freedoms and rights.  No particular example was given. 

2. The Electoral College

Not a shock.  Not that I'm not willing to take a second look at things.  An electoral system that gives me the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton can certainly do with some tweaking.  The odd thing is, that both in 2000 and 2016, by the eve of the elections, leftwing pundits/journalists (but I repeat myself) were setting the stage for electoral victories by the Democrats.  In the case of Al Gore, I remember specifically being told by the election night round tables that the Electoral College was the smart way, so obviously it would be how stiff as a board Gore would beat likeable but stupid hayseed Bush.  In both cases they were wrong.  In both cases, they screamed for the rules to be changed because they lost in horrible, stolen, illegal and fraudulent elections.  Apparently, they're still screaming. 

3. Misinformation

A vague word, presented vaguely in the paper.  Basically a term best defined as 'anything challenging the Left.'  There is plenty of misinformation to go around of course.  But I get where the handout is coming from.  It means things that challenge the Left's take on Climate Change, or Covid mandates, or BLM, or abortion rights, or gender, or any one of a million leftwing dogmas.  The cases of Covid were the ones mentioned, but I get the feeling you could replace those examples with any non-leftwing narrative as an example of misinformation and not miss a syllable. 

4. Judges

Judges?  Yes, judges.  Judges who succumb to ideology and radicalism to curtail our clear and obvious rights.  Also judges who have an obsession with holding to antiquated ideals and concepts from periods in our past where bigotry and prejudice were rife is also a problem.  That is, holding to the Constitution is the point I think it was trying to make.  The contemporary example was  the Texas abortion law decision by the SCOTUS (obviously a recent emergency handout).  I have a feeling, like misinformation or the Electoral college, it could be summed up by saying 'any time judges don't give liberals what they want.'

5. Voter Suppression 

I've heard this bad boy since I majored in political science in college.  It almost always means anything that adds a regulation to voting procedures.  Despite being the ones who scream fraud and fake voting results the loudest when they lose, the Democrats and liberals seem otherwise to despise any attempts to shore up the system to make sure such fraud doesn't happen.  The handout references the GOP's attempts to limit voting rights and access to our Constitutionally (old bigoted document, see above) guaranteed right to take part in our democratic systems.  Not much unexpected there.

That's what he's being taught in his fine institution of higher education.  As of now there has been no counter point given out.  That's not to say they won't present the class with an alternative set of threats from, say, a more conservative or traditional perspective.  We'll see.  Nonetheless I won't hold my breath, since two and a half months is a tough amount of time to go without breathing. 

The National School Boards Association compares parents who challenge the Left to domestic terrorists

How 'bout that.  This nice little local news outlet catches the story.  

The point is the school boards say they're getting death threats and threats of violence.  That doesn't shock me.  In the Internet age, death threats and threats of violence are as common as stinky feet in a locker room.  Just like it's easy to insult people, call them names and falsely accuse them from the safety of your keyboard, so are death threats as easy as pie. Everyone gets them.

Heck, even I got one once, and it was the only commeter I ever blocked.  I deleted a couple comments once, but was always slow to block people.  It was unlikely a real threat, just an 'I can find where you live' type.  That was enough for me.  For me.  A schmuck who's a nobody and I still got a threat.  Imagine what people in the spotlight get. 

Not that death threats shouldn't be taken seriously.  They should.  But when we act like only one side or another does it, or don't consider school board trying to shove radical leftist agendas down our kids' throats while threatening any dissenters with being shut up or silenced, then we have an issue.

I have no idea if it's about Critical Race Theory, or mask mandates, or vaccine mandates, or any one of a thousand leftwing 'the genitals alone are god' programs being challenged.  It could be many.  I know it's not as easy as 'Evil White MAGA types', since a local news story covered protests of CRT at one of our nearby schools, and I'd say about 2/3 of the protesters on camera identified as black. 

Now teaching CRT in schools is teaching racism.  It's also teaching a very communist sounding anti-Americanism.  It's a purely leftwing biased spin on the need to burn the American experiment to the ground.  If we want to teach that, then teach other alternative templates for understanding our country. I'd be fine with that.  But when parents have objected, they've been listened to sometimes, sometimes silenced, sometimes even threatened with retaliation by the schools against them or their students. 

So while I am the first to say take threats seriously, I'm the last to say I want one of the most powerful education associations comparing people with serious and legitimate concerns to terrorists.  That screams to me they're doing something they don't want us to know about.  And for me, that's not terrorism.  That's tyranny. 

Then my advice to Cardinal Gregory is don't be divisive

That's my advice to Cardinal Gregory regarding his lament over the divisions in the Church.  If we remember, Cardinal Gregory was the one who received kudos from the media for blasting Trump for his appearance at the John Paul II shrine.  

This would be the same cardinal who referenced the January 6 riots in his condemnation of the demon of divisions in our country while heaping praise on the BLM riots protests the previous year.  Oh, and the same cardinal that invoked the classic 'people who criticize me remind me of the critics of the priets who supported Civil Rights Movement' shtick so common among liberalism.  Critics you say?  Just say they would have hated blacks back in the day, too.  These examples speak to politically driven partisan divisiveness that is sweeping both our country and our church. 

No, send a different messenger than him if we care about divisions in our church or country.  That puts me in mind of the whole post-inauguration plea from democrats that conservatives stop being divisive and admit they're Nazis. They didn't say it that way of course. But it's the usual thinly veiled use of divisions and dividing people by giving them only one possible alternative to avoid being divisive. 

By the way, an interesting question from my sons when thinking of the political narratives the good cardinal clearly endorses.  Why is it so hard to believe that the political party that existed to defend slavery, that fostered the KKK, promoted Jim Crow, fought against desegregation, and opposed the Civil Rights movement, never really stopped its war against black Americans?   

Why is it hard to think that it simply found a new way to exploit black America by sanctioning destructive and counterproductive attitudes and behaviors, lowering expectations and standards, and then seize upon the logical consequences by insisting if it is just given continual power, it promises to crush the real villains who are the real cause of black American suffering?  

Why is it easy instead for so many, including Catholic leaders (ahem), to be offended at that possibility and instead embrace like the Gospel the idea that the fault is the whole of American history, every white American who ever lived, and the sum total of the heritage of the Christian West - oh, and white conservative Republicans? 

I had no good answer, other than the people who run the culture want one thing to be true and what could likely be true not possible. 

Let's call it setting the seasonal mood

 Courtesy of the great Vince Guaraldi: 

This is either the most brilliant argument ever

Or stupid.  But then, she's an academic type, so it can't be stupid. 

Goodness knows I can't figure out what she's saying.  Is this an argument?  Angry feminists, but Jews and Jew feminists, so ... what?  I might just be slow on the draw, but I can't figure it out.  Does that mean she shouldn't be upset with conservatives or vaccine skeptics because some are Jews? Or by using the word 'Jews' it should stop all debate?  I have not clue one what she is getting at.  I get a feeling it was as well thought out as a fortune cookie. 

Of course she follows up with this:

Which, I guess, means saying something like 'many Jews have been angry feminists, and that often their anger has been deeply thought out, valid, and justified'?  I dunno.  Again, I get the feeling she's in the middle of a conversation with an invisible party who must be saying things nobody can see.  Because the parts I'm seeing make no sense, or at least make no point that I can tell.  

This is why I've concluded listening to Ms. Weiss about anything would be like going to Ringo Starr for harp lessons.  A waste of time.  Another reason I'll be going back to my self-imposed Twitter ban, because people post things like this and others think it's brilliant. Or at least act like it's brilliant when the agenda suits them.  Which then leads to this:

Chillingly evil.  Teaching your kids to fear for their lives because of those 'not me' types over there - in the name of Catholicism of course.  It reminds me of Debbie Wasserman Schultz bragging how she scared the shite out of her kids by telling them Conservatives wanted to tunnel under their house and kill everyone.  Parents should warn their kids about the evils of the world.  They should also be wary about warning them who the evils are.  But purposefully scaring the bejesus out of your kids in order to teach them to hate and fear your ideological opponents means you learned little from the last century. 

There's enough of that in the world.  I don't need to see people celebrated for their Catholicism doing the same.  And sadly, you'll find it nowhere else more often than you will on Twitter. So, back to the ban.