The White House and the Department of Justice (DOJ) worked together to conceal the discovery of President Joe Biden’s classified documents for months, according to The Washington Post (WaPo).
Days after the first trove of documents was discovered at the Penn Biden Center, a senior official in the DOJ wrote a letter to Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, asking for him to cooperate in the inquiry, WaPo reported.
The official also asked Bauer to get the documents but to not look inside, and requested for him to disclose where more documents could be located, according to the outlet. More documents were discovered at Biden’s Delaware residence Dec. 20, Jan. 10 and Jan. 11.
The White House had initially endeavored to find out how the documents had gotten to the Penn Biden Center and other locations, but on Nov. 10, the DOJ said it would be taking over the investigation, two anonymous sources told WaPo.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco refused to say Wednesday if law enforcement officials told Biden administration officials to stay quiet, according to the outlet.
Although the documents were originally discovered Nov. 2, the news was kept hidden for months and only surfaced after CBS published a report Jan. 9. The White House Counsel office refused to tell the Daily Caller when Biden first knew of the documents, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that the press office knew nothing of the documents until the CBS report.
Biden downplayed the significance of the classified documents on Thursday and said he has “no regrets.”
“I have no regrets in following what the lawyers have told me what they want me to do, it’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no there there,” Biden said.
“Look, as we found a handful of documents that were filed in the wrong place, we immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice department. We are fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly. I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there,” he added.
The WEF is now calling for millions of cats and dogs worldwide to be killed in an attempt to reduce the "carbon footprint" that they produce as a result of eating meat. They’re introducing an international policy that would require most pet owners to euthanize their animals. pic.twitter.com/EUiqtR3SBy
As the globalist Marxist forces, currently gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum, continue to point to their lust for power, it’s clear as a bell they are betting on people being stupid. They aren’t taking over the world with guns and bullets and bombs and wars. They are seizing control of minds.
And any sane analysis shows how it’s done: through co-opting education and media. The perversion of education, especially higher-level institutions, has proven very successful. Irreligious and unpatriotic forces slowly invaded America’s education system until the scales had tipped, and they became the dominant force.
As far back as the mid- to late-1970s, the idiocy pouring out of American colleges and universities was labeled “political correctness” (PC). PC was the advance team for “wokeness.” What began on the blackboards, faculty lounges and classrooms of the ivory tower gang soon spilled into the streets and corporate boardrooms all over the country. It truly was the poisoning of the American mind, first becoming visible on college campuses.
In his massively successful bestseller The Closing of the American Mind, professor Allan Bloom laid out his case about the toxic atmosphere seizing control of academia and its consequences. The subtitle to his classic says it all: “How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students.” Poisoning the intellect of a culture is not an overnight endeavor; it is, in fact, a multigenerational assault.
It’s an all-out blitz on everything previous generations held as sacred. So a tidy recipe has to be concocted that both destroys what went before and replaces what went before with something new. Enter the media.
While college students, many of whom moved on to become political and industry leaders, were being indoctrinated in Marxist values, the general population had to be prepared to accept — had to be primed to embrace — radical notions as not really that radical. So the news and entertainment media got to work.
There has always been a streak of anti-establishmentism in journalistic circles. Indeed, keeping a check on authority is the main reason journalism exists. Authority should be viewed with a suspicious eye simply because it is the authority. So the news media already had the preexisting DNA to be useful in overthrowing the old order.
As college students, fresh off their Marxist training and diplomas in hand from prestigious universities and schools of journalism, began tipping the scales in numbers, news “coverage” began shifting. In the attempt to destroy the old order, sympathetic notes had to be struck — meaning victims had to be created to show the inherent unfairness of the establishment and the consequent need to overthrow it.
What colleges and the media bet on — went all in on — was the ignorance and stupidity of the masses. It was a well-placed bet. Very few people fall into the category of critical thinkers — those who ask deep, probing questions to arrive at the actual truth.
Most — as is expressed in the kick-butt movie Gladiator — are quite happy with “bread and circuses.” As long as they can be distracted by leisure, fun and handouts of some sort or another, they can easily be led. After all, there are only 24 hours in a day for each person, and if most of those hours can be consumed with trivial stuff as well as the basics of just ordinary life, talk about a winning combination for taking control.
While the entertainment media was expanding and largely corrupting minds by stealing time from critical thought, the news media was corrupting minds by presenting a distorted reality. News media presentations always came down to nothing more than feelings. In my own news career, we were constantly told to ask almost anyone we interviewed on anything: “How does that make you feel?” Not, “What are your thoughts on this or that,” but, “What are your feelings?” The great ignorant masses fell for it hook, line and sinker — and still do.
On this 50th anniversary weekend of Roe, for example, think about how all this came to be. A pregnant woman was presented in the media as a victim. She should have “rights.” The big, bad, mean government is crushing her — destroying her life and any chances for “bettering” herself. Back in the day, there was nothing short of a cavalcade of these stories flooding newspapers and TV outlets: story after endless story of victim women, heroic doctors — tears galore, feelings as far as the eye could see.
In the maelstrom of distortions and half-truths, what was forgotten and cast aside was the very heart of the issue — the life in the womb. But you never got to see an interview with him. He didn’t get to cry. He was never portrayed as the victim; his rights were never discussed. Ignorant, unthinking masses embraced the “victimhood” of the pregnant woman constantly pushed by the news media.
Of course, the entertainment media presented its own version in movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Cider House Rules and even the incredibly popular CBS TV sitcom Maude, which aired a two-part special one month before Roe was handed down, casting abortion as an “emotional” decision.
The influence of media today is so dominant that even Elon Musk can’t resist talking about it: “Why did American media go from questioning the State and ‘speaking truth to power’ to doing their bidding?” The answer to that question is actually pretty simple. The concept of truth — objective correctness and error — no longer exists.
Thanks to the collusion between academia and media, students are now conditioned to obey authority, not question it. And the reason they can’t question it is because they no longer really possess the requisite skill set to do so. They can’t think; they just emote. They emote and then attach ridiculous talking points to their emotions to try and support them in some intellectual-sounding way. They fail miserably.
The same is true in the most important of all disciplines: theology and philosophy. Differences in theology absolutely matter when contradictory things are being proposed. And a person must possess some skill at critical thinking to comprehend in the first place that various positions are contradictory. That some points here or there happen to align does not make unimportant the essential points that are in contradiction.
We see this within Christianity, in Catholic teaching versus the enormously wide range of Protestant positions. There are way too many contradictions to simply walk away and assert, “Well, we have lots of things in common.” Not really, not where the rubber hits the road.
Politicians, for example, from all sides, each assert we are all American. I believe in the Constitution, blah blah — all the while, no, they don’t. Are there overlaps of belief in those competing political views? Of course there are. That doesn’t excuse someone from papering over the actual differences and pretending they don’t matter. They do — because in politics, people’s material lives are affected by those differences.
In theology and philosophy, people’s eternal destinies are affected by those differences. But society has been conditioned to believe that truth (as a concept) is now determined by your feelings. Therefore, differences don’t really matter all that much. Everything is basically the same. Why can’t we all just get along?
Academia and media have not only brought this about, but they each continue to sustain it. They keep betting — and winning — on stupid. America’s problems are spiritual, and the spiritual realm is what plays out in the material order. A crisis in the world is visible because there is first a crisis in the soul.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Church Militanthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngChurch Militant2023-01-20 13:43:492023-01-23 15:29:43WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM IS BETTING ON STUPID: A Winning Wager—Every Time.
The top leader of the United Nations urged politicians to make unpopular decisions that may benefit their people in the long run after making a “special address” at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres criticized politicians around the world for caring more about “polls, future elections, [and] political power struggles” than “effectively solving problems.” He called for them to ignore polls reflecting their people’s will and instead do what they think is best for the long-term future.
Recommended for you
“Politicians need to understand — and sometimes we are faced with these kinds of challenges — it is better to take today decisions that will eventually be not popular, but that will be essential to be able to shape the public opinion itself,” Guterres said.
WEF | Davos Agenda 2023 UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres wants politicians around the world to shape public opinion themselves based on making decisions that will eventually be 'not popluar':
He made the remark about 20 minutes and 15 seconds into the presentation, which is viewable on the WEF website. It was preceded by a 15 minute “special address” where he said the battle against climate change “is being lost” and the people of the world must “end our self-defeating war on nature.”
He was responding to a question from WEF President Børge Brende, who asked why leaders don’t follow the “common sense” that dictates they must work now to stem off a future “climate disaster.”
Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal, went on to speak from his own experience.
Recommended for you
“When I was following the polls, I would have problems in the short term,” he said. “When I was able to show leadership and … take the decisions that were necessary to ensure the future of my country at the time, that in the end would pay.
“My appeal to decision makers in the public and private sector is: Don’t look about what’s going to happen to you tomorrow. Look into what’s going to happen to all of us in the future.”
More than 2,700 world leaders, including 11 members of Congress, are spending this week at the Davos meeting, where they’re discussing ways to manage the global system. This year’s event involves speeches and panel discussions on issues like recession fears, the Ukraine war and climate change.
Note: This column first appeared on January 24, 2020, before the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson last year, which reversed the Court’s finding in Roe v. Wade that there was a federal right to abortion – and returned questions about abortion to the individual States. Three years later, as the debates continue in many States, there is still a refusal to come to grips with the stark numbers indicated below. And as the national Pro-Life March takes place in Washington D.C. today, the World Economic Forum (currently meeting in Davos, Switzerland) seems to take it for granted that global access to abortion is an integral part of a better human future – though better for whom and at what moral cost doesn’t enter into the economic calculus.
Robert Royal: Despite the pro-life victory in Dobbs, and as we march in Washington today, we need to redouble efforts to end modernity’s murderous, sinister, anti-life ideologies.
As a thought experiment, let’s assume something I would never accuse TCT readers of being: that you are materialist and utilitarian. You believe that “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” in tangible, physical measures, is the pre-eminent moral principle. What might you have to consider today, when hundreds of thousands of Americans will be marching to protect life in the womb? (And people in various countries conduct their own pro-life marches?)
Well, to begin with, though all such numbers are a bit uncertain, roughly 55 million people die, globally, every year. And numerous public health organizations intensely scrutinize the slightest increase or decrease in mortality, in a laudable effort to identify what factors may be harming or helping the health of diverse peoples around the world.
That number does not include the number of babies killed by elective abortions, however, which at one time would have been thought a rare, emergency measure. The Guttmacher Institute, an advocate for abortion, estimates that there are roughly 56 million abortions around the world every year. So allowing for the statistical uncertainties, we can say in broad terms that as many innocents are slaughtered every year in the womb as there are deaths from all other causes in the entire world.
That’s the kind of mayhem you associate with murderous ideologies like Nazism and Communism, not “reproductive health.”
Because of an ill-advised accord with China, the Vatican refrains from speaking about that government’s persecution, brainwashing, organ harvesting, and interference with the internal life of religious groups, including Catholics. But how about the more than 300 million abortions there since the 1970s, many forced – a number about equal to the entire population of the United States?
Or the more than 60 million abortions in America since Roe v. Wade? That’s more or less the population of the United Kingdom or France or Italy; much larger than Spain; a figure close to the populations of Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, and Poland combined.
Would even a materialist/utilitarian believe that such prodigal slaughter of the innocents has not and will not have enormous consequences?
At their annual meeting last November [2019], the American bishops, recognizing the moral questions in play during this year’s presidential campaign, tangled over whether abortion was the “pre-eminent” issue.
Or not.
Chicago’s Cardinal Cupich and San Diego’s Bishop McElroy, staunch partisans of Pope Francis, argued that the pontiff considers other life issues equally urgent. Nonetheless, two-thirds of the bishops voted to keep abortion “pre-eminent.”
Couldn’t the bishops, or at least some bishop, somewhere, do a little painting by the numbers? And speak out about the enormity that goes on unnoticed in the world, year after year now. Indeed, there’s a creepy current in international bodies seeking to define this slaughter as a universal human right.
The controversy among the bishops was cast in the media as the usual debate over Pope Francis. But Francis is not, as we have learned, in entire agreement with his champions.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann, who heads the USCCB’s Committee for Pro-Life Activities, met just a few days ago with the pope, along with other Midwestern bishops on their scheduled ad limina visits. He asked whether abortion is pre-eminent. Francis replied, “Of course, it is. It’s the most fundamental right. . . .This is not first a religious issue; it’s a human-rights issue.”
Francis is notorious for saying one thing to one group and the opposite to another. And as Archbishop Viganò has documented recently, we can’t be sure how much he’s permitted to know by those around him. So it may very well be that he wasn’t aware that “pre-eminent” is a term that, in America, is also a tripwire.
Many of us have suspected, going all the way back to then-Cardinal McCarrick’s misrepresentation of Cardinal Ratzinger’s 2004 letter to the American bishops, that efforts to make abortion just one of many “life” issues is really an effort to preserve the “political viability” of pro-choice Catholic politicians, almost all Democrats.
Still, Francis has, at least in one mood, spoken of abortion as “hiring a hit man” to solve a problem. He has not, however, shown anything like the urgency towards the tens of millions of deaths via abortion that he has towards the much smaller numbers of refugees, illegals, etc. who die every year.
The world desperately needs a sense of proportion about the evils we experience. For example, officials of various stripes warn against “hate crimes,” which, from their rhetoric, you might think constitute a vast epidemic, threatening the moral tone and very existence of civic life, especially in the “age of Trump,” who somehow is blamed for them, even though they largely predate his presidency.
Numbers? The FBI says in 2018 there was a “bump up” in incidents against Hispanics – from 430 to 485. Muslims? 270 – the fewest, by the way, since 2014.
Numbers, of course – even if minuscule – are not the only factor worth considering. Every human life is infinitely valuable, and injustice of any kind must constantly be fought. Catholics and other Christians realize this – quite contrary to the anti-Christian slurs, pro-life Christians seek to preserve all human life – from conception to natural death.
Still, numbers cannot be ignored. If millions, tens of millions, were dying crossing into America at the Rio Grande, or into Europe across the Mediterranean, or from the Middle East to refuge in Europe, there would be non-stop outrage around the globe – and rightly so.
So if the Catholic Church and others believe that abortion is the destruction of innocent human life, why do many – even within the Church – treat it like just one in a list of problems, and often far down the list?
The world looks at that relative passivity and asks, with some justice: So do these pro-lifers really think abortion takes a human life?
We do, of course. And as we march in Washington today and engage in other pro-life activities throughout the year, we all need to redouble efforts, both to defend the millions who are dying and to dispel yet another of modernity’s murderous, sinister, anti-life – and unrecognized – ideologies.
The Scotland police recently referred to pedophiles as “minor attracted people.” Many expressed outrage over this attempt to normalize the abuse of children. Now comes this.
The West is sinking deeper and deeper into a Kafkaesque mix of socialism and depravity, while the Churches remain largely silent instead of protecting Judeo-Christian values and innocent children.
The “EU project’s use of the term Minor-Attracted People (MAPs) to describe paedophiles” is causing a huge backlash. Let’s hope that those who are dissenting succeed in stopping this abuse. The European Commission “is funding the Drag Queen Shows across Europe,” which means taxpayers are funding it, with no say in where their money is going.
A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) has accused the European Union of pushing “horrible propaganda” after a project described paedophiles as “people with a sexual interest in children”, accusing the bloc of seeking to rebrand them with a term that is both “more appealing and morally neutral”.
Cristian Terhes, a Romanian MEP who sits with the European Conservatives and Reformists group, has slammed the EU for allegedly pushing for the term “paedophile” to be replaced with something “more appealing and morally neutral”.
It comes after controversy surrounding an EU project’s use of the term Minor-Attracted People (MAPs) to describe paedophiles, despite the fact that the term is highly controversial, and seen by some as overly sympathetic towards predators.
However, despite the use of the term prompting huge backlash only last month, Terhes claims that the EU still seems to be trying to soften the language around paedophiles, with another EU project on child protection repeatedly referring to them as “people with a sexual interest in children”.
“I am shocked and appalled, in equal measure, that the European Commission was, until very recently… replacing the term ‘paedophile’ with the more appealing and morally neutral phrase of Minor Attracted Person,” Terhes alleged in comments to Breitbart Europe.
“They even intensified this horrible propaganda and are now talking of ‘people with a sexual interest in children’,” he continued.
“This attitude of the European Commission to soft soap an evil and criminal behaviour, like paedophilia, is dangerous and a threat to all children in Europe,” the public representative went on to say, calling for the project in question to be withdrawn by European Commission, currently led by Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen.
The Romanian MEP also took aim at the EU’s continued funding of drag queen shows for children, with the bloc giving financial support to drag projects in the likes of Germany, Spain, and Slovenia.
One project sponsored by the EU that took place in Berlin — titled ‘Drag It Up!’ — saw “38 young queer people” trained in the art of drag, with those involved being taught to put on makeup and wigs, walk in high heels, and implement “methods of blurring and exaggerating traditional binary gender roles”….
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2023-01-20 05:56:222023-01-20 06:37:33EU Rebrands Pedophiles as ‘People with a Sexual Interest in Children’
Fox News reports that shocking video has surfaced of Ohio school officials discussing how they can push Critical Race Theory (CRT) covertly, working around school policies already in place and “tricking” parents.
“It should be a parent and school partnership, and it’s really not,” said Protect Ohio Children Coalition co-chair Cathy Pultz, a former teacher herself, on Fox & Friends First Thursday. “In our district in Upper Arlington, the transparency has been a problem for years. They have their agenda. They get caught doing something. They get caught reading books without telling the parents. And they turn around and say, we’re going to do an investigation, but then nothing happens.”
“There have been no consequences for any of our teachers or staff when they’re breaking board policy, and it is really frustrating,” she continued. “And this is just another example of parents losing control of what’s being taught to their children.”
The video, showing Ohio school officials discussing how they can secretly advocate the controversial content even if the state banned it, was released by a conservative media watchdog, Accuracy in Media.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Matthew Boaz, the executive director of diversity, equity and inclusion of Upper Arlington Schools, said. “You can pass a bill that you can’t teach CRT in a classroom, but if you didn’t cover programming, or you didn’t cover extracurricular activities or something like that, that message might still get out. Oops.”
“If we have a certain content that we want to share with students, and they see one in word the language, it’s like, oh, no, we can’t do that,” Hillary Staten, an administrative assistant for Groveport Madison schools, said in the video. “We have some parents… they don’t fully understand. So… it’s when we trick them, you know?”
Upper Arlington interim Superintendent Kathy Jenney wrote Wednesday, “While we remain committed to DEI, critical race theory is not part of the district’s academic program,” it continued. “The district follows the state learning standards and all laws in effect related to public education.”
This is the lie the Left always pushes: “We’re not teaching CRT in schools, you right-wing conspiracy theorists!” The truth is that CRT is being taught everywhere from pre-K through grad school, only it’s rarely actually called CRT.
Founded by the late Derrick Bell, critical race theory is an academic discipline which maintains that society is divided along racial lines into (white) oppressors and (black) victims, similar to the way Marxism frames the oppressor/victim dichotomy along class lines. Critical race theory contends that America is permanently racist to its core, and that consequently the nation’s legal structures are, by definition, racist and invalid. As Emory University professor Dorothy Brown puts it, critical race theory “seeks to highlight the ways in which the law is not neutral and objective but designed to support white supremacy and the subordination of people of color.”
A logical derivative of this premise, according to critical race theory, is that the members of “oppressed” racial groups are entitled—in fact obligated—to determine for themselves which laws and traditions have merit and are worth observing…
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2023-01-20 05:40:072023-01-20 05:47:18Video Catches School Officials Plotting to ‘Trick’ Ohio Parents, Teach Critical Race Theory Even if Banned
The US Supreme Court has called life ‘the most basic human right’
I’m grateful that the majority of the US Supreme Court in its 2022 Dobbs case overturned the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision (and the 1992 Casey decision) that had declared the existence of a constitutional right to elective abortion.
Some of my friends are disappointed, however, that the Supreme Court left the abortion question up to state and federal law, rather than recognizing the unborn child as a fellow human being with his or her own constitutional right to life. This disappointment is understandable.
But it’s important that we also take note of some strikingly pro-life aspects of the Dobbs majority’s opinion, and even of the opinion of the pro-choice dissent.
It is true that Justice Alito’s majority opinion does not explicitly recognize that the unborn child has rights under our Constitution. But it provides future legislators and courts with quite useful arguments in favor of prenatal protection.
First of all, the opinion recites the pro-life findings and conclusions of the Mississippi legislature, without questioning their accuracy. Here are those legislative determinations as described in the majority decision:
The legislature . . . found that at 5 or 6 weeks’ gestational age an “unborn human being’s heart begins beating”; at 8 weeks the “unborn human being begins to move about in the womb”; at 9 weeks “all basic physiological functions are present”; at 10 weeks “vital organs begin to function,” and “[h]air, fingernails, and toenails . . . begin to form”; at 11 weeks “an unborn human being’s diaphragm is developing,” and he or she may “move about freely in the womb”; and at 12 weeks the “unborn human being” has “taken on ‘the human form’ in all relevant respects.”
It found that most abortions after 15 weeks employ “dilation and evacuation procedures which involve the use of surgical instruments to crush and tear the unborn child,” and it concluded that the “intentional commitment of such acts for nontherapeutic or elective reasons is a barbaric practice, dangerous for the maternal patient, and demeaning to the medical profession.”
Indeed, at the end of the majority opinion, the Court clearly validates similar sorts of claims, by saying that they constitute a “rational basis” for laws against abortion, as required by the due process clause of the Constitution. The majority affirms that the state’s
legitimate interests include respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development; the protection of maternal health and safety; the elimination of particularly gruesome or barbaric medical procedures; the preservation of the integrity of the medical profession; the mitigation of fetal pain; and the prevention of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or disability.
Even the dissent does not attempt to cast doubt on the majority’s affirmation of the continuous dignity of prenatal life throughout pregnancy. Indeed, in opposing the overturning of Roe, it readily acknowledges that “Roe and Casey [themselves] invoked powerful state interests [in ‘protecting prenatal life’] operative at every stage of the pregnancy and overriding the woman’s liberty after viability.”
The dissent goes on to argue, however, that those two cases found that, prior to viability, a pregnant woman’s liberty interests override the state’s interests in protecting prenatal life, a conclusion to which the Dobbs dissent adheres, over many pages and with great emotion.
The majority opinion counters that, by letting maternal liberty override life prior to fetal viability, the dissent thus
would impose on the people a particular theory about when the rights of personhood begin. According to the dissent, the Constitution requires [emphasis in original] the States to regard a fetus as lacking even the most basic human right—to live—at least until an arbitrary point in a pregnancy has passed.
These brief lines are the spearhead of the entire Dobbs decision. The majority here makes three or four striking affirmations central to understanding the scope of the permission the Dobbs Court gives to the states to forbid abortion.
It calls Roe’s viability line “arbitrary,” thus presumably forbidding any state or federal “codification” of Roe, since the due process clause of the Constitution requires a “rational basis” for all laws. It further avers that states may recognize the rights of “personhood” in the unborn child prior to viability. Among the “human” rights that a fetus may have, the Court explicitly declares the right “to live” to be “the most basic human right,” thus responding decisively to the dissent’s insistence that, prior to viability, states must treat a mother’s freedom as more important than a child’s life.
Moreover, although the Dobbs majority does not explicitly find that a child enjoys federal constitutional protection prior to birth, it does provide a strong argument against those who claim the fetus is not worthy of protection because it doesn’t yet count as a “person”:
Some have argued that a fetus should not be entitled to legal protection until it acquires the characteristics that they regard as defining what it means to be a “person.” Among the characteristics that have been offered as essential attributes of “personhood” are sentience, self-awareness, the ability to reason, or some combination thereof. By this logic, it would be an open question whether even born individuals, including young children or those afflicted with certain developmental or medical conditions, merit protection as “persons.”
There’s something else the majority’s language provides to pro-lifers. It gives them a solid counter to folks who might call them “woman haters” in light of the dissent’s passionate elaboration of abortion’s alleged benefits to women. The Court reaffirms a finding, originally made in 1993, that “the ‘goal of preventing abortion’ does not constitute ‘invidiously discriminatory animus’ against women.”
Perhaps its greatest gift to pro-life people, however, is Dobbs’s complete lack of interest in the subject of religion. None of the opinions treats as even worthy of debate the common suggestion in the media that abortion involves a war between religious theocrats and secular democrats.
Nowhere in the majority opinion, the concurring opinions, or the lengthy dissenting opinion is there any allegation that opposition to abortion arises simply from religious doctrine, rather than from a rational understanding of the universally acknowledged facts of human gestation.
The opinions as a group and the case as a whole bespeak not a battle of faiths but a straightforward struggle between liberty and life, with life now favored by law to win.
Richard Stith is a professor emeritus of law at Valparaiso University. He is active in the Consistent Life Network, although the positions taken in his essays are not necessarily those of the CLN or its… More by Richard Stith
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2023-01-20 05:17:492023-01-20 05:25:39Tomorrow’s March for Life in Washington D.C. Has Something to Celebrate
Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., details how the elite 1% intend to “divide and rule” in order to achieve their exploitative goals
The world’s top 1% — the ultra-wealthy elite — and the modern empires they control — Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Ag — are responsible for destroying the planet and sending most of humanity into financial and health crises
We’re at an unprecedented point in history when the “civilizing mission for humanity” is technology — technology owned by the 1%
It’s an illusion that technology companies are “creating” these systems that will supposedly make our world a better place — they’re largely extracting, using data mining, including mining your mind
Divide and rule is a necessity for the 1% to continue to hold on to power as protests and unrest increase
Pay attention to the economic policies being pushed while people are divided — that’s really the agenda
The world’s top 0.001% — the ultra-wealthy elite — and the modern empires they control — Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Ag — are not only responsible for destroying the planet and sending most of humanity into financial and health crises, they’re intent on attaining ultimate control. If and when that happens, 99% of people will become disposable.
Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., founder of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in India, details how globalists are exploiting the masses in her book, “Oneness Vs. the 1%: Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom.” In the video above by After Skool, she expands on how the 0.001% intend to “divide and rule” in order to achieve their exploitative goals.1
A Lesson From Quantum Theory
Shiva is trained as a physicist and initially planned to study atomic energy. But as she grasped the devastation it had caused worldwide, she gave up her idea of being a nuclear physicist and instead went looking for knowledge as a whole. She studied on her own, finding quantum theory,2 which formed the basis of her life’s work:3
“The way you design the world in your mind is the way you relate to it. When you design it as dead matter just to be exploited, you will exploit it. When you design it without any understanding of limits, you will violate the planetary limits.
When you design it with deep recognition of interconnectedness, you will nurture those relationships. And this basic recognition is what I drew from my learnings in quantum theory — that nonlocality, nonseparation, interconnectedness … is the nature of reality.”
However, she explains, within the paradigm of mechanistic thought, there’s a design that didn’t evolve. As such, mechanistic thought is based on the following assumptions:4
We are separate from nature
Nature is constituted of discrete particles separate from each other, which can only relate through violence, force and action by contact
But in the quantum world, Shiva explains, “There is no separability. My thesis was on nonlocality in quantum theory. Everything is interconnected. There are no fixed essentialized qualities that have been built into the way people are looked at, nature is looked at. Potential is the defining quality in the quantum world, and because it’s about potential, it’s also about uncertainty.”5
Shiva states that the mechanistic world is based on a false illusion of determinateness, or a quality of being highly predictable. “In the quantum world, we know we cannot get rid of uncertainty,” she says, citing the uncertainty principle created by German physicist Werner Heisenberg in 1927.
Referring to atoms and subatomic particles, the uncertainty principle maintains that the position and velocity of an object cannot be measured at the same time. “The very concepts of exact position and exact velocity together, in fact, have no meaning in nature,” Britannica notes.6
Further, while in the mechanistic world things are either/or — “you can either be a wave or a particle,” Shiva says — “in the quantum world, you have potential to be both and they’re complementary.” She continues, “When you realize that the world is one interconnected whole you also realize that what appears different is actually different expressions of an interconnected reality.”7
Billionaires’ Technology Has Become the New ‘Mission’
We’re at an unprecedented point in history when the “civilizing mission for humanity” is technology — technology owned by the 1%. It’s an illusion, however, that technology companies are “creating” or inventing these systems that will supposedly make our world a better place.
“They extract,” Shiva says, “They don’t create anything … software programmers create the platforms that they use. Even Bill Gates didn’t really write his basic program. It was two math professors in Dartmouth College.”8
She uses Gates’ Ag One9 as an example, which is basically the idea to make one type of agriculture for the whole world, which will be owned and controlled by Gates from the top down. It’s headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, where Monsanto, acquired by Bayer in 2018,10 Bayer is also headquartered.
This includes digital farming, in which farmers are surveilled and mined for their agricultural data, which is then repackaged and sold back to them. There are parallels throughout society. Shiva explains:11
“We watched what’s going on in India and we pieced it together. So basically he’s financing a lot of data mining from farmers, which will then be packaged as Big Data and sold back to farmers. This is exactly what happened in your 2016 elections. Facebook sold data to Cambridge Analytica.
So when you think of, ‘What are the kind of leaders that we have getting created?’ it’s very important to remember that in these 25 years of corporate deregulation of commerce you basically have a lot of money in the hands of very few people.
And they then are the ones investing in all the companies. The companies are not independent companies anymore. They’re basically billionaire money managed by the investment funds like Blackrock and Vanguard.”
Divide and Rule Is the Plan
Protests and unrest are increasing throughout the world as people grow tired of being controlled and downtrodden by the 1%. Demands for change are surging, so the 1% has rolled out a plan to overcome it — divide and rule.
Shiva believes the East India Company in 1857 set the historic precedence. A revolt occurred that year against oppressive company rule, and the company was taken over by the British state. Up until that point, Hindus and Muslims in India had stood together to defend their land, livelihoods and freedoms.
They identified primarily with their occupations and communities; religion was secondary. But when the crown took over, Shiva says, “They established a policy called divide and rule … it took from about 1857 to about 1920” to essentially divide the population against each other based on their religion. She explains:12
“That partition is still being played out. It’s an incomplete project. So, divide and rule becomes a necessity for the 0.001% to continue to hold on to power. What are the economic policies being pushed while people are divided? Because that’s really the agenda.”
The Duty of Truth
The refusal to cooperate with unjust law was termed a duty of truth by Gandhi. Shiva describes apartheid in 1906, when the British attempted to turn Indians in South Africa into second-class citizens. Indians had to register their race and carry identification. Police officers could enter homes and demand papers, and people were restricted from local trade and certain professions based on their race. “The people said we would rather die,” Shiva says.
Others inspired by Gandhi and the duty of truth include Martin Luther King. “But … when King started to take up economic justice and economic equality issues, that’s when he was assassinated,” Shiva says, “because … you can talk in very sweet ways about civil liberties but you don’t touch economic justice and the economy.”13
The word economy comes from oeconomia, or the art of living. But when this got changed into the art of money-making, it brought on violence. “When you turn the art of living into the art of money-making, which Aristotle called chrematistics, then you have to practice violence against the Earth and violence against others — destroy their livelihoods, destroy their freedoms, take away their resources.”14
Sowing the Seeds of Earth Democracy
With the convergence of Big Tech and artificial intelligence, Shiva fears mechanical work, from radiography to law, will be made redundant, and 99% of people will become disposable. The solution lies in activating our sense of oneness or interconnectedness with all life and sowing the seeds of what Shiva calls Earth democracy:15
“You can either share this beautiful planet with love and abundance and sustainability, or say it’s all mine — every bit of land, every seed, every mind. Because what’s being mined is our mind now, and if we don’t defend the freedoms of all species and the freedoms of all human beings we could see, within 20 to 30 years, a level of disposability built into the structures that humanity will not be able to respond to.”
Currently, democracy has shifted to being “of the corporations by the corporations for the corporations.” Earth democracy calls for a restoration of democracy “of the people by the people for the people,” not only for humans but also for nature.16 According to the ancient Vedas, the universe is divine, and everything therein — even the smallest grass — is an expression of the divine.
The universe exists for the well-being of all, but her gifts must be enjoyed without greed. Taking more than your share is theft, and will only backfire. The solution to true sustainability doesn’t lie with new technology but in relying on the natural “technology” that is the universe.17 Shiva says:18
“This is the time to make oneness and interconnectedness, as one humanity on one planet, the political project of our time. We have to remember we are one humanity. We are part of one Earth, and whatever we do we will not let this basic recognition divide us, either from the Earth or from each other … together we are strong.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2023-01-20 05:04:052023-01-20 07:07:35If This Happens, 99% of Us Will Be Disposable
If an economist sees the handiwork of God in the economy, does that invalidate his economic arguments from a secular perspective?
The great economist Ludwig von Mises, who himself was either atheist or agnostic, noted that:
“Many economists, among them Adam Smith and Bastiat, believed in God. Hence they admired in the facts they had discovered the providential care of ‘the great Director of Nature.’ Atheist critics blame them for this attitude.”
A Transcendent Order
For instance, Adam Smith famously wrote of how producers in a market economy are “led by an invisible hand” to benefit the public even when they only seek private profit.
And Frédéric Bastiat warned humanity against “rejecting the order God has given it” in favor of the grand schemes of social reformers.
Leonard Read, in his essay “I, Pencil” wrote of how, in the market production of a pencil, “we find the Invisible Hand at work.” His pencil narrator concludes, “Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me.”
All three thinkers contributed mightily to the case for the free market. Anti-capitalist critics have tried to dismiss that case as relying on religious faith, citing the references to God and the invisible hand. Free-market defenders have countered that Smith, Bastiat, and Read were speaking figuratively, not literally.
However, even if they were speaking literally, and even if atheism is true, it still would not invalidate their arguments. That is because those arguments did not rely on a divine characterization of the economy.
The point being made by Smith, Bastiat, and Read in the relevant passages is that, in an economy consisting of acting human individuals, there is a perceivable order that emerges from the planned actions of those individuals but that transcends the plans of any single individual. In that sense, the market order is transcendent relative to the order created by any single market participant.
Smith, Bastiat, and Read demonstrated that transcendent order using economic reasoning and empirical observations about human nature. That demonstration did not rely at all on religious premises. This is plain to see in any honest reading of Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Bastiat’s Economic Harmonies, and Read’s “I, Pencil.” Whether those men saw in that transcendent order something literally divine has no bearing on the validity of their reasoned demonstration of that order.
Newton and God
A cross-discipline comparison may make this point easier to see.
Whereas Smith, Bastiat, and Read examined the economic order of society, Sir Isaac Newton studied the physical order of the material universe. And it is well-established that Newton, as Mises said of Smith and Bastiat, “admired in the facts [he] had discovered the providential care of ‘the great Director of Nature.’”
For instance, Newton wrote in his Optics, “Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain? And whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world?” “From God” was clearly Newton’s answer.
Would anti-capitalist atheists argue that that discredits Newton’s physics?
Surely not. They would acknowledge in this case what they refuse to acknowledge in the other: that Newton demonstrated the order of the physical universe using reason and evidence, and that whether he saw in that order something literally divine has no bearing on the validity of his reasoned demonstration.
Why the double-standard? It is probably due to the fact that the critics of Smith, Bastiat, and Read have an axe to grind against capitalism, but not physics. And they are particularly loath to concede that there is a transcendent order to the market, because such an order would put a crimp in their plans.
The Borders of Utopia
As Mises wrote, throughout most of history people assumed that “there was in the course of social events no such regularity and invariance of phenomena as had already been found in the operation of human reasoning and in the sequence of natural phenomena.”
In other words, people assumed there were no social equivalents to the laws of logic, math, and physics circumscribing human endeavors. Oblivious to any such restrictions, “Speculative minds drew ambitious plans for a thorough reform and reconstruction of society.” As Mises wrote:
“They did not search for the laws of social cooperation because they thought that man could organize society as he pleased. If social conditions did not fulfill the wishes of the reformers, if their Utopias proved unrealizable, the fault was seen in the moral failure of man. Social problems were considered ethical problems. What was needed in order to construct the ideal society, they thought, was good princes and virtuous citizens. With righteous men any Utopia might be realized.
The discovery of the inescapable interdependence of market phenomena overthrew this opinion.” (…)
“In the course of social events there prevails a regularity of phenomena to which man must adjust his actions if he wishes to succeed.”
In other words, economists discovered economic laws that, together, make up a transcendent, immutable order to the market society. And human beings ignore those laws and that order at their own peril.
As Dave Prychitko put it, “Economics is the art of putting parameters on our utopias.” Economic laws can be denied, but they cannot be defied, even by the grandest kings, the most ingenious lawgivers, the most brutal dictators, the most ambitious central planners, or the most self-righteous social reformers.
A president who thinks he can defy the law of supply and demand and impose price ceilings without incurring shortages will fail, just as he would if he thought he could defy the law of gravity by stepping off his presidential palace without falling.
And any bureaucrat who, in defiance of “the knowledge problem,” thinks he can outperform the free-market price system in coordinating the production of pencils will similarly fail, as Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil” makes plain.
Those who try to dismiss “I, Pencil” do not want to admit that they or their favorite social schemers cannot outsmart or outdo the transcendent order of the market. Those who sneer at the invisible hand want a free hand to remold society as they please.
But intellectually honest secular thinkers unburdened by such an agenda will not get hung up on any differences over religion they have with Smith, Bastiat, and Read. Like Mises, they will see the wisdom in acknowledging, respecting, and even wondering at the transcendent order of the market society, whether or not they attribute that order to God.
Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in-chief of FEE.org. Follow him on Substack and Twitter.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2023-01-19 15:40:202023-01-19 15:51:36How Atheist Anti-Capitalists Miss the Point
I recently joined Florida This Week for a Live TV Debate against Florida’s Democrat Leader of the State House – Representative Fentrice Driskell.Watch the debate and let me know if you agree or disagree with my comments.
My favorite part of the discussion was hearing the Democrat Leader stating that the Florida Democrat Party has reached ‘ROCK BOTTOM’ and a Liberal Reporting admitting that the Democrat Party is a ‘TRAIN WRECK’ (WATCH). Music to my ears and great recognition of our State Elected Leaders, the entire FloridaGOP Organization, County Leaders and Grassroots Do-ers!
Florida This Week Breakdown:
Topics:
The Florida Democrat Party hitting ‘Rock Bottom’ – Watch
Gov. DeSantis instituting higher education reform (Flipping New College from Liberal to Hillsdale-like model) – Watch
Gov. DeSantis mobilizing the National Guard to counter illegal immigrants – Watch
Live TV Debate Panelists:
Rep. Fentrice Driskell,Florida House Democrat Leader
Christian Ziegler,Vice Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida
Zac Anderson,Reporter for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Diane Roberts, Writer for Florida Phoenix & FSU Professor
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Christian Zieglerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngChristian Ziegler2023-01-19 15:25:232023-01-19 15:25:23VIDEO: Democrat Leader States The Florida Democrat Party has reached ‘ROCK BOTTOM’
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made his third visit to Daytona Beach Shores since the devastation wreaked by hurricanes Ian and Nicole to announce a $100 million dollar commitment to fund projects to restore and protect the beaches. $37.6 million of that allocation will go to Volusia County which will also received $20 million to replace sand on the eroded shoreline.
WATCH:
The Governor presented a $37.6 million check to fund beach and shoreline property restoration projects in Volusia County. That’s a large portion of the $100 million allocated for 16 Florida counties by a special session of the Florida State Legislature.
He’s also providing $20 million dollars to replace sand that was eroded away by the fierce assaults of the two storms.
The Governor was joined by Rep. Cory Mills, Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, Volusia County Council Vice Chair Danny Robins, Volusia County Council District 2 member Matt Reinhart, & County Manager George Rechtenwald.
Also attending were Edgewater Mayor Diezel Depew, New Smyrna Beach Mayor Fred Cleveland, Port Orange Mayor Don Burnette, Ponce Inlet Mayor Lois Paritsky, Daytona Beach Shores Mayor Nancy Miller, Daytona Beach Mayor Derek Henry and Holly Hill Mayor Chris Via among others.
The Governor delivered his good news at the Dunlawton Beach approach with a storm-wrecked beach facility as the backdrop.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2023-01-19 15:09:162023-01-19 15:09:16VIDEO: Governor DeSantis Delivers $100 Million for Beach Recovery in Volusia County
Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz introduced legislation Wednesday that would abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) after they enacted a rule that would make pistol stabilizing braces illegal for anyone without a certain license.
The legislation, titled the “Abolish the ATF Act,” would totally eliminate the ATF immediately after the bill is enacted. Gaetz introduced the bill after the ATF announced they would make gun owners face the possibility of being charged with a felony if they do not register their firearms with the stabilizing braces.
Gaetz said that the House GOP has the ATF in their “crosshairs.”
“House Republicans have the ATF in our crosshairs. The continued existence of the ATF is increasingly unwarranted based on their repeated actions to convert law-abiding citizens into felons. They must be stopped. My bill today would abolish the ATF once and for all,” Gaetz said in a statement.
In June of 2021, Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also introduced legislation that would abolish ATF if signed into law, which Gaetz was a co-sponsor of. The Daily Caller first obtained that legislation, titled the “Brian A. Terry Memorial Eliminate the ATF Act.” The bill was named after Marine and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a gunfight after a group of armed men attempted to rob smugglers who were transporting drugs from Mexico to the U.S.
The Caller also broke the news of legislation introduced by Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall in the Senate that would protect Americans’ second amendment rights from the ATF-proposed registry for firearms with stabilizing braces.
Democrats have been focused on passing legislation that would stop gun trafficking, ban the import, sale, manufacture, transfer or possession of high-capacity magazines, raise the purchase age for certain rifles from 18 to 21 and promote safer storage of guns.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-01-19 14:44:432023-01-19 14:52:16Matt Gaetz Calls To Abolish The ATF After Agency Issues Rule Allegedly Making It Harder For Certain People To Buy Guns
‘Go Woke, Go Broke’, the saying goes. Today’s news brings the story the Texas Attorney General stopped Citigroup from underwriting municipal bond offerings in the state after finding Citigroup discriminated against the firearms sector. This follows recent actions by states against BlackRock for skewing its investments in favor of left-wing political priorities like climate change and racial justice. One example of that is Florida pulling $2 billion in state pension assets from BlackRock last month. Then there’s the case of Bed, Bath & Beyond which had to close 150 stores and is looking at bankruptcy after going Woke and taking Mike Lindell’s MyPillow products off its shelves. Conservatives stopped shopping there – me included – and bought from Mike Lindell directly, instead.
What kind of business model is it to alienate half the country? Not smart.
Bed, Bath & Beyond should be a cautionary tale to companies more recently going Woke. Casual shoemaker Crocs sponsors child drag shows with child performers. I object. Drag shows are adult entertainment. Mars issued all-female M&M bags featuring lesbian couple and ‘fat-positive’ candies. What on earth for? Yes, I always get my politics from the candy aisle, don’t you? General Motors funds a transgender organization that puts books promoting transgenderism in kindergarten and elementary school classrooms. JPMorgan Chase closed the account of a religious freedom group and demanded a list of the group’s donors to reinstate the account, all the while denying these steps were being taken because of the organization’s beliefs. Former Kansas Republican Governor Sam Brownback, the founder of the group, said he is hearing the same thing from other groups and is calling on state attorneys general to investigate.
Good. How can you get a business license to serve the public, then turn around and refuse to serve half the public? Why is that allowed?
Other people are fighting back against the corporate tyrants. Social media users unleashed a firestorm of criticism against makeup retailer Ulta for inviting a biological male transgender to discuss “all things girlhood” on its podcast. “’Girlhood’ isn’t something you can buy from Ulta,” one post read. “A beauty brand gaslighting the customers,” another said. “Never shopping at ulta again,” went a third.
Heads up, Crocs. A conservative group in Chattanooga circulated a petition demanding an end to drag shows for kids. A nature center in Knoxville, a civic center in Jackson, and a restaurant & bar in Chattanooga all canceled their events.
Red Balloon, a conservative-leaning job board has employers sign a pledge not to discriminate against workers’ personal beliefs in the workplace. Over 2,000 employers have signed so far. Red Balloon also advises workers on how to assert their free speech rights, opt out of training that violates their beliefs, and organize co-workers to fight retaliation.
If you’re a CEO and thinking about taking your company Woke, don’t expect any sympathy when it blows up in your face. Kroger stopped carrying MyPillow and pulled pro-American products from its shelves. The company ran into flak from regulators when it announced a proposed merger with Albertson’s. Senator Tom Cotton told Kroger’s Woke CEO in a congressional hearing, “if they silence conservatives and center right voters across the country, if they discriminate against them in their company, they probably shouldn’t come and ask Republican Senators to carry the water for them whenever their Democratic friends want to regulate them or block their mergers…. I’m sorry that’s happening to you. Best of luck.”
Best of luck, Bed, Bath & Beyond. Best of luck, Kroger and Crocs. And BlackRock and Citigroup. We don’t need you. We have alternatives. Just remember that.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Defend The Borderhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDefend The Border2023-01-19 09:43:072023-01-19 09:43:07Kevin Sorbo Invites You To His New Movie — ‘Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist!’
A strong majority of Americans support stronger pro-life laws, according to a new poll released just days before the annual March for Life. More than two-thirds of Americans (69%) would support ending all abortion no later than the first trimester, including nearly three out of four women (72%) and nearly half (49%) of all surveyed Democrats.
The poll found 44% of people want increased abortion restrictions, including not allowing abortion at all (8%), allowing abortion only to save the life of the mother (10%), or in the case of rape or incest (26%). Only one in five voters believe abortion should be available at any point in pregnancy, without restriction.
The Marist poll, sponsored in partnership with the Knights of Columbus, shows a strong pro-life majority more in line with recent Republican pro-life legislation than the Democratic Party platform, which calls for taxpayer-funded abortion until birth. Additionally, the survey, conducted earlier this month, found:
78% of Americans oppose forcing taxpayers to fund abortion overseas;
60% of Americans oppose forcing taxpayers to fund abortion in the United States;
94% oppose sex-selective abortions (because of the child’s sex);
77% say people with religious objections should not be legally required to carry out abortions
60% of Americans oppose aborting a child because the child has been diagnosed with Down syndrome;
55% say employers with religious objections should not be forced to pay for abortion coverage in their employees’ insurance; and
91% of Americans, including 88% of Democrats, support the work of pro-life pregnancy resource centers.
Those results show a Republican legislative agenda is in the mainstream, or perhaps slightly behind, public opinion.
For instance, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act (H.R. 7) which restricts federal funds from going to “any abortion” (except in the cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother), stops taxpayer dollars from funding health benefits that cover abortion, and bars doctors who work for the federal government from carrying out abortions. The House had been poised to vote on the bill — which has attracted 113 co-sponsors, all Republicans — in its first two weeks in session. The vote on the bill has yet to be rescheduled, as of this writing.
The same day, the GOP-controlled House also passed a resolution condemning violence against pro-life churches and pregnancy resource centers 222-209. The Family Research Council has documented 101 such attacks since last May. Only three Democrats voted for the measure, which merely expressed the consensus of the body against violence.
“Life is winning in the Dobbsera. The American people overwhelmingly reject the extreme abortion lobby-Democratic Party agenda of abortion on demand until birth, paid for by taxpayers,” said SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “The pro-life movement will fight for the strongest protections possible, in legislatures across the land and in our nation’s capital. We will continue to grow the pro-life safety net, which includes nearly 3,000 pregnancy centers and maternity homes nationwide. We will hold elected leaders and candidates to a high standard, urging them to cast a clear and ambitious pro-life vision and to go on offense.”
The poll found active faith, participation in college, and party registration to be the most important factors in whether one supports abortion-on-demand or protects life in the womb. Those who practice a religion oppose abortion 61% to 39%, while the irreligious describe themselves as pro-choice by a margin of 70% to 21%. Two-thirds of practicing Roman Catholics oppose abortion (67% to 33%), while non-practicing Catholics describe their views as pro-choice 83% to 17%.
The groups most likely to identify as “pro-choice” included registered Democrats (88%), non-practicing Catholics (83%), and college-educated white people (72%). No other faith was surveyed by the poll, which was sponsored by the Catholic fraternal organization. Rural voters were twice as likely to be pro-life as those who live in large urban areas (62% to 31%). White Americans were modestly more likely (42%) to describe themselves as pro-life than non-white Americans (34%).
The Marist poll came out the same day as a separate poll, conducted by WPA Intelligence, showed that 60% of self-described pro-choice likely voters in Virginia supported a bill that protects unborn babies from abortion after 15 weeks. Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) supports legislation codifying these pro-life protections.
“In the face of pro-abortion extremism, we are more expectant than ever before that we will protect our victories, advance our leaders, and make new gains that will save countless lives,” said Dannenfelser.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-01-19 09:12:022023-01-19 09:25:133 Out of 4 Women Support Stronger Pro-Life Legislation, Poll Finds
