Joe Biden Named In 2017 Email Discussing Massive Multi-Million Dollar Gas Deal with CHINA

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All off Hunter’s laptop which the deep state, in an act of high treason, deep-sixed while blatantly lying to the American people – calling it “Russian disinformation.”

We are in real trouble, my friends.

81 million votes!

EXCLUSIVE: All in the family: Joe Biden is named in 2017 email discussing multi-million dollar gas deal with CHINA, with Louisiana lawyer writing to brother Jim that he ‘arranged a call’ with the former VP and his son Hunter ‘to discuss the purchase’

  • In October 2017, Hunter and his uncle, Joe’s brother Jim Biden, were brokering a multi-million dollar deal to supply gas from Louisiana to China
  • Louisiana-based lawyer Robert Fenet was on the US-side of the deal
  • Fenet wrote in an email he arranged ‘a call from Joe Biden and Hunter Biden on Monday morning to discuss the purchase of the 5 million tons of gas’

By Josh Boswell For Dailymail.com, 20 January 2023

Joe Biden was named in an email found on Hunter Biden’s laptop discussing a 25 million-ton gas deal with China, DailyMail.com can reveal exclusively.

In October 2017, Hunter and his uncle –Joe’s brother Jim Biden – were brokering a multi-million dollar deal to supply gas from Louisiana to the country on behalf of their business partners, Chinese energy giant CEFC.

At the time Joe Biden had finished his term as vice president and had yet to announce any plans to run for president in 2020.

A Louisiana-based lawyer on the other side of the deal wrote in an October 27, 2017 email that he had arranged ‘a call from Joe Biden and Hunter Biden on Monday morning to discuss the purchase of the 5 million tons of gas.’

Joe Biden was named by Louisiana-based lawyer Robert Fenet in a 2017 email discussing a multi-million dollar deal to supply gas from Louisiana to the Chinese

Fenet wrote in an October 27, 2017 email that he had arranged ‘a call from Joe Biden and Hunter Biden on Monday morning to discuss the purchase of the 5 million tons of gas’

Jim Biden’s venture with CEFC eventually collapsed amid bribery accusations against high-ups in the Chinese company. Joe and Jim are pictured together in 2008

While it’s possible the Baton Rouge lawyer, Robert Fenet, mistyped ‘Joe’ instead of ‘Jim,’ other emails and whistleblower testimony suggest Joe was involved in Hunter’s business dealings with the Chinese.

The White House did not respond to DailyMail’s requests for comment.

In emails with Fenet, Jim emphasized the Biden family’s involvement in the project.

‘We Biden’s often fraught with problems, that they can can [sic] come from working with family members, are of a different mind. It’s all about family, and people we choose to do business with,’ he wrote to Fenet on October 19 that year.

The call Fenet was setting up for the Biden family was with Cherniere, a Texas energy company whose executives have close links to Joe Biden.

The email – like other incriminating evidence – came from Hunter’s abandoned laptop hard drive, of which DailyMail.com obtained a copy

The president hired former Cherniere board member Heather Zichal as his campaign climate adviser in 2020, and former Cheniere lobbyist and vice president Ankit Desai was Joe’s political director in 2005.

Fenet laid out one proposal for his liquid natural gas (LNG) deal with the Bidens and their Chinese partners in an email on October 20, 2017.

‘The Ashton Fenet and Sons Construction Company, Inc. will, in a joint venture with a Louisiana company, provide a 25 year natural gas-LNG supply to your group,’ he wrote.

‘We can begin supplying LNG in 2018 at the rate of three, four, five, or six million metric tons of LNG on a five year basis. From year five until year twenty-five, we will have the capacity to supply 13 million metric tons per annum of LNG to the Port in China. (To Be Decided)

‘If your client will purchase a twenty-five year stream of LNG, I can build the plant for $12 billion dollars.’

The following month Hunter wrote a letter addressed to CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming, saying that the deal would provide ‘large quantities of LNG at very competitive rates while also advancing the long term goals of CEFC through a partnership or acquisition of a promising LNG terminal project in Louisiana.’

The First Son added that he was ‘making inquiries regarding arranging a meeting for you with the Chairman of Cheniere.’

That month, ​​Cherniere signed a long-term deal with another Chinese energy firm, China National Petroleum Corp, to supply gas to China, during then-president Donald Trump’s state visit to the country.

Hunter and Jim’s venture with CEFC eventually collapsed after Ye and his right hand man Patrick Ho were arrested for bribery and corruption offenses – though not before they poured over $10million into their joint venture with the Bidens.

FIRST EMAIL: Here and here.

In emails with Fenet, Jim emphasized the Biden family’s involvement in the Chinese project. ‘We Biden’s often fraught with problems, that they can can [sic] come from working with family members, are of a different mind. It’s all about family, and people we choose to do business with,’ he wrote to Fenet on October 19, 2017.

SECOND EMAIL: Here, here and here

In November, Hunter wrote a letter addressed to CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming, saying that the deal would provide ‘large quantities of LNG at very competitive rates while also advancing the long term goals of CEFC through a partnership or acquisition of a promising LNG terminal project in Louisiana’

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Smoke Grinder Government: How Gridlock Can Be Good

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Back in the ’80s, I used to watch a quirky PBS show with my dad on woodworking called “The Woodwright’s Shop.” In one episode, host Roy Underhill introduced an old wooden folk toy called a “smoke grinder,” or “do-nothing-machine.” It consisted of a block of wood with dovetails cut into the top, with a handle attached that would spin along the grooves in an elliptical pattern. Just for fun, my dad built one, and it did exactly what its name implied: nothing.

Like the wooden toy before it, the 118th Congress all but threatens to be a smoke grinder government. The 2022 midterm elections missed the anticipated “red wave,” but, the GOP did gain control of the House of Representatives, ending two years of Democrat control of all three branches of government. And with control of the people’s house, comes the return of a term all-too-familiar to the nation’s capital: gridlock. Any controversial legislation passed by a Republican-majority House likely won’t make it past the Senate’s Democratic majority, much less have any chances of being signed by a Democrat president. Likewise, any controversial Democrat-led legislation will go nowhere. Forget being off to the races, major change in Washington won’t leave the treadmill for the next two years.

But what if this was a good thing? Don’t get me wrong, dysfunction — especially in the essential functions of government — is rarely helpful. But what if instead of dysfunction, the gridlock imposed by a two-party system was a function for good? As the conservative magazine National Review launched, its founder, William F. Buckley, Jr. famously wrote that its mission was to, “stand athwart history, yelling Stop.” Indeed, it is good to bring traffic to a halt when the bridge up ahead is out. Motion doesn’t necessarily drive morality. And for governments, there are quite often times when their inaction serves their people better than action. At the very least, an inactive government can be far less expensive to the people who fund it.

But bringing government to a halt is not the only thing that happens in a gridlock situation. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has wasted no time introducing legislation that is doomed to fail. For example, the House just passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act, which requires legal protection for babies born alive during an abortion, by a vote of 220-210. The bill will go nowhere in a Democrat majority Senate. And even if somehow it miraculously broke through a Senate filibuster and made it to the desk of the pro-abortion President Biden, there’s little mystery as to what he would do with it. All this raises the question, why bother?

For starters, 210 elected representatives of the people are now publicly on record as voting against providing life-saving protection to newborns. The significance of this one vote cannot be understated. It underscores for the nation just how polarized America is on this issue. What once may have masqueraded as middle ground has given way to a giant sink hole. The curtain on an issue once framed by abortion supporters in terms of a woman’s “choice” has been pulled back to reveal its ugly fruits, and those fruits are oozing with the fermented rot of evil.

In his letter to the Ephesian church, Paul wrote, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11). This is a must for Christ’s church, and it wouldn’t hurt for Congress to follow this directive as well. The right thing to do isn’t the right thing because it’s effective. The right thing to do is the right thing because it is right. Daniel’s service in Babylon didn’t revolutionize pagan Babylonian society, but it did preserve a legacy of doing the right thing in the eyes of the Lord.

After all is said and done in the 118th “smoke grinder” Congress, we may not get the fruit we desire. Much of the fruit may be ugly, stunted, and underdeveloped. But we can help the fruit that we end up with to grow in the long run. If wrongs can be thwarted, let them be thwarted. And if right can be attempted, let it be attempted. And if darkness can be exposed, let it be exposed and allow that exposure to someday break the smoke grinder and deliver the unity we need.

AUTHOR

Jared Bridges

Jared Bridges is editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

South Dakota’s ‘Help Not Harm’ Bill Protecting Minors from Gender Transition Procedures Introduced

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A bill to protect minors from gender transition procedures was introduced in the South Dakota legislature on Tuesday. South Dakota Representative Bethany Soye (R) and South Dakota Senator Al Novstrup (R) filed H.B. 1080, nicknamed the “Help Not Harm” legislation, along with 23 House cosponsors and six Senate cosponsors. Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers: 63-7 in the state House and 31-4 in the state Senate.

The “Help Not Harm” bill prohibits the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgery “for the purpose of attempting to alter the appearance of, or to validate a minor’s perception of, the minor’s sex, if that appearance or perception is inconsistent with the minor’s sex.” It instructs licensing boards that if they find that any health care professional has violated this provision, “the board must revoke any professional or occupational license or certificate held by the healthcare professional.” It also creates a private cause of action, whereby the child can recover damages for the malpractice inflicted upon him or her.

“It’s time for us to stop experimenting on kids’ bodies,” said Norman Woods, executive director of the South Dakota-based Family Heritage Alliance. “We have been perpetuating the dangerous lie that through medical intervention, we can change a person’s sex. This harmful idea, and the industry profiting from it, are leaving a trail of broken bodies in their wake.”

Conservative legislators introduced a similar bill in the South Dakota House during the previous legislative session (2020-2021), the Vulnerable Child Protection Act. After sailing through the House (46-23), the Senate Health and Human Services Committee voted it down (5-2). The move bewildered onlookers at the time, but a recent investigation by National Review’s Nate Hochman tracked the bill’s failure back to heavy lobbying by Sanford Health, a health care conglomerate based in Sioux Falls, with 15 hospital locations across the state. “When it failed, that was all Sanford,” lamented State Rep. John Mills (R), a cosponsor on the bill. “That might be explained at least in part by the fact that Sanford sells puberty blockers and performs gender-reassignment surgery,” reported Hochman.

But Soye expressed optimism that this time will be different. “There are just so many more people behind it this time,” she said on “Washington Watch.” She anticipated opposition “from the normal activist groups and then also from the hospital,” but added, “we’re really

A bill to protect minors from gender transition procedures was introduced in the South Dakota legislature on Tuesday. South Dakota Representative Bethany Soye (R) and South Dakota Senator Al Novstrup (R) filed H.B. 1080, tagged as the “Help Not Harm” legislation, along with 23 House cosponsors and six Senate cosponsors. Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers: 63-7 in the state House and 31-4 in the state Senate.

The “Help Not Harm” bill prohibits the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgery “for the purpose of attempting to alter the appearance of, or to validate a minor’s perception of, the minor’s sex, if that appearance or perception is inconsistent with the minor’s sex.” It instructs licensing boards that if they find that any health care professional has violated this provision, “the board must revoke any professional or occupational license or certificate held by the healthcare professional.” It also creates a private cause of action, whereby the child can recover damages for the malpractice inflicted upon him or her.

“It’s time for us to stop experimenting on kids’ bodies,” said Norman Woods, executive director of the South Dakota-based Family Heritage Alliance. “We have been perpetuating the dangerous lie that through medical intervention, we can change a person’s sex. This harmful idea, and the industry profiting from it, are leaving a trail of broken bodies in their wake.”

Conservative legislators introduced a similar bill in the South Dakota House during the previous legislative session (2020-2021), the Vulnerable Child Protection Act. After sailing through the House (46-23), the Senate Health and Human Services Committee voted it down (5-2). The move bewildered onlookers at the time, but a recent investigation by National Review’s Nate Hochman tracked the bill’s failure back to heavy lobbying by Sanford Health, a health care conglomerate based in Sioux Falls, with 15 hospital locations across the state. “When it failed, that was all Sanford,” lamented State Rep. John Mills (R), a cosponsor on the bill. “That might be explained at least in part by the fact that Sanford sells puberty blockers and performs gender-reassignment surgery,” reported Hochman.

But Soye expressed optimism that this time will be different. “There are just so many more people behind it this time,” she said on “Washington Watch.” She anticipated opposition “from the normal activist groups and then also from the hospital,” but added, “we’re really gaining momentum with House sponsorship and with citizens who are contacting their legislators.”

The “Help Not Harm” legislation already enjoys the support of 24 out of 70 members of the South Dakota House, two-thirds of the way to a majority; a similar bill passed last session with 46 votes. If the bill passes, it will proceed to the 35-member state Senate, where it already has the support of seven members, but where a similar bill failed in committee during the last session. “The problem in South Dakota is usually more on the Senate side,” admitted Soye. If it passes both houses, the bill will head to Governor Kristi Noem (R), who signaled support for the bill on Wednesday despite having close ties to lobbyists for Sanford Health. In 2021, she promised to sign a bill to protect women’s sports before she vetoed the bill later that month.

Soye believes the increased visibility of gender transition procedures on children will help the bill’s chances, too. “The argument was, ‘Oh, it’s not happening in South Dakota.’ But now you really can’t deny [it] because Sanford is just being so up front with what they’re doing.”

Sanford Health is proud to provide gender transition services; it announced that it had “invest[ed]” in attaining “Healthcare Equality Index” (HEI) accreditation, “a national LGBTQ+ benchmarking tool that evaluates health care facilities’ policies and practices related to the equity and inclusion of their LGBTQ+ patients, visitors and employees.” The weekend prior to the bill’s introduction, beginning on January 13, Sanford Health hosted “The Third Annual Midwest Gender Identity Summit.”

Dozens of South Dakotans, who had recently learned about Sanford’s gender transition practices, gathered in the snow outside the Summit to protest. “That really started to build especially the local media momentum,” said Soye. “And we have several groups across the state that are really getting fired up.”

Similar legislation to protect children from gender transition procedures has been introduced this month in both of South Dakota’s North Plains neighbors, North Dakota and Nebraska.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Let Them Grow Act’ Introduced to Protect Minors from Gender Transition Procedures

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Can America Emerge From The Current Dark Age?

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Following WWII, the Greatest Generation came home to raise America to be the most productive and prosperous nation on earth. This happy state had its ups and downs (the Cold War, Vietnam, and the Gulf Wars come to mind) but this new Golden Age lasted until the advent of a new Dark Age with the election of Bill Clinton in 1992.

Recall, the tenures of President Ronald Reagan, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and President George H.W. Bush resulted in the end the Cold War on December 26, 1991. Earlier, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. our military, rehabilitated after Vietnam by Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, destroyed the world’s fourth-largest army in only 100 hours of combat.

Doesn’t it seem strange that President George H.W. Bush, a highly decorated World War II naval aviator hero, a Cold War and Gulf War I leader, was denied reelection by an admitted pot smoker, known serial womanizer, Oxford dropout, and Vietnam draft dodger? Surely, George H.W. Bush did not lose reelection simply because he broke his campaign pledge to never raise taxes. Politicians routinely make that same pledge and then go on to raise taxes and be elected or reelected. No, it had to be something else to cause a seismic shift away from a distinguished Eastern Establish scion like George H.W. Bush to a Bubba from a relatively poor, rural, southern state.

Recall, the birth rate of the Baby Boom generation (1946-1964) caused an unprecedented upward spike in the number of young people. And History tells us young people are more than willing to test conventional norms and customs. Which they did in the Swinging Sixties when the availability of penicillin and the Pill dropped the traditional barriers to extra-marital sex.

The Boomers were mostly interested in trendy fashions, rock and roll music, getting high on marijuana, and avoiding any kind of public service that included any personal inconvenience; especially, military service. And thus, the stage was set for the likable Bill Clinton and his Saul Alinsky-devotee wife, Hillary.

Recall, during his eight years in the White House, Bill Clinton is notable for spending the “peace dividend.” — given to us by the blood of our troops — on social welfare programs, and notable for multiple sexual scandals and, more importantly, notable for Clinton’s repeated failures to kill or capture Osama bin Laden. Failures for which Americans are still paying in blood, and treasure, and still suffering under the President George W. Bush-enacted Patriot Act than empowered the FBI and the Intelligence Community to run roughshod over our civil liberties.

Then, President Obama took us deeper into a New Dark Age by his efforts to take America down a peg or two. Efforts continued via the Deep State through President Trump’s term and on with Obama’s control over Biden’s* first two years in office.

So, is there a forward way out of this New Dark Age? Yes, the victims of the first Dark Age (476 A.D. to 1000 A.D.), rediscovered the sage writings of the ancient Greeks and early Romans. Likewise, America must rediscover its founding documents and live by them. Not by the writings of Marx, Lenin, Mao, Alinsky, and Obama.

Suggested reading: A World Lit Only by Fire, by William Manchester, 1992.

©2023. William Hamilton. All rights reserved.

Destroying American Democracy – An Inside Job

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Over the last few years, there has been much written about the destruction of American democracy. Frequently the threat has been of alleged interference in U.S. elections by Russia, China or other state actors. Government agencies, the name of election integrity, were assigned to identify and disrupt these foreign intrusions. As more and more information is revealed about these agencies, it seems that America’s Intelligence Community participated in these activities domestically, and in a way that poses a grave threat to both election integrity and American democracy.

Just last week it was revealed that the FBI again withheld pertinent information from the American public, for past two months, until after the November 8, 2022 federal election. As with the Bureau’s reported cover-up of evidence influence-peddling reportedly found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, agents knew, since November 2, 2022, about at least some of the three sets of classified material that illegally found their way into the garage and library of President Joe Biden and into the Penn Biden Center think tank at the University of Pennsylvania — to which anonymous members of the Chinese Communist Party have donated $54.6 million.

Their existence only became known this week, after the newly elected Republican-majority House of Representatives announced that it would hold hearings on “how the [Justice] department handled investigations into classified materials found at former President Donald Trump’s Florida home and those found at President Joe Biden’s office in a Washington think tank bearing his name and his Delaware home…”

In addition, the recent release of the “Twitter Files” has raised at least two major concerns regarding actions by the Intelligence Community. The first is that the wall of separation between the Intelligence Community and the U.S. media has not only sprung a leak, it has totally collapsed. The report that officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) met weekly with Twitter executives to coordinate information is totally inappropriate. Would officials from the ODNI review, affirm or label certain sets of information as false? When ODNI was created, no one intended its officials to have a role in these types of discussions.

It also appears that intelligence officials in recent years have politically weaponized intelligence. The combination of a politically weaponized Intelligence Community, operating hand-in-hand with organizations that are the main gateways for information to millions of Americans, poses a serious threat to American democracy and the integrity of our elections.

Let us just briefly look at the steep slope of lying, deceit and corruption that has seeped into the leadership of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

First, there are not enough words to praise our Intelligence Community and the men and women who risk their lives to keep America safe. These are the rank-and-file professionals that form the core of the Intelligence Community. Most are dedicated to the mission of gathering the necessary information to protect our nation. Their leaders have a responsibility to serve these individuals. Too often, however, as the current array of whistleblowers indicates, those leaders have let these individuals down.

Imagine their reaction in 2013 when, in response to a question from Senator Ron Wyden to then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper about whether the National Security Agency (NSA) collects “any type of data on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans,” Clapper answered, “No sir, not wittingly.” Clapper, who had been given the question the previous day, was asked after the hearing if he wanted to amend the answer, and declined. It was shortly thereafter that a massive NSA program containing millions of pieces of Americans’ data was revealed. Clapper was caught in a huge lie — to U.S. Senator Wyden and the American people.

On January 12, 2017, CNN reported that President-elect Donald Trump had been briefed by DNI Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Michael Rogers. The topic: “Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Donald Trump.” It was intended to inform the President-elect that these allegations “are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress, and other government officials in Washington.” The briefing also touched on other major allegations they claimed were “circulating.”

Having this false information — some of which the FBI actually altered — in the public domain was evidently intended to damage Trump. The Russian “hoax” allegations would haunt and damage the Trump presidency for almost two years. Clapper himself stated:

“I express my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press … they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security.”

Clapper also released a statement that neither he nor anyone else in the Intelligence Community were responsible for the leaks. How did this highly classified information, then, get into the public domain?

A House Republican investigation provides the answer. Clapper denied leaking the dossier but admitted to discussing the dossier with CNN correspondent Jake Tapper and perhaps other journalists in early January 2017. Later in 2017, Clapper would go on to join CNN as a “national security” contributor and CNN would receive an award for its reporting at the White House Correspondents’ dinner.

Today we know that the “Russia hoax” was a lie. After a 22-month investigation, no evidence of collusion between any element of the Trump campaign and Russia was uncovered. The supposedly compromising evidence had never existed; the information in the “Steele dossier” was false — and the FBI had known it was from the start. The entire fabrication had been an attempt to attack and politically weaken Trump.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pete Hoekstra

Chairman of the Center for Security Policy Board of Advisors.

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM IS BETTING ON STUPID: A Winning Wager—Every Time.

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TRANSCRIPT

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.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

World Economic Forum: UN Chief Urges Ignoring Voters

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There it is. Them against us.

World Economic Forum: UN chief urges ignoring voters

By: American Military News, January 19, 2023:

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.
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“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.

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.
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“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.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

EU Rebrands Pedophiles as ‘People with a Sexual Interest in Children’

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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.

“Horrible Propaganda” – EU Project Rebrands Paedophiles ‘People with a Sexual Interest in Children

by Peter Caddle, Breitbart, January 16, 2023:

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”….

AUTHOR

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Video Catches School Officials Plotting to ‘Trick’ Ohio Parents, Teach Critical Race Theory Even if Banned

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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.

Critical Race Theory

16 Known Connections

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…

To learn more about Critical Race Theory, click here.

RELATED ARTICLE: MSNBC’s Joy Reid: Rep. Greene on Committees is Putting Confederates in Charge

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Tomorrow’s March for Life in Washington D.C. Has Something to Celebrate

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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.

AUTHOR

Richard Stith

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

If This Happens, 99% of Us Will Be Disposable

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Divide and Rule: The Plan to Make You Disposable.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • 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.”

Sources and References

EDITORS NET: This MERCOLA column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

How Atheist Anti-Capitalists Miss the Point

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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.”

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.

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.

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.

AUTHOR

Dan Sanchez

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.

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Democrat Leader States The Florida Democrat Party has reached ‘ROCK BOTTOM’

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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 

Watch the full debate:

©Christian Ziegler. All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Governor DeSantis Delivers $100 Million for Beach Recovery in Volusia County

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The Volusia County Republican Party in an email reported,

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.

©Volusia County Republican Party. All rights reserved.

Woke Corporations: Game On

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 ‘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.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

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