Catholic Charities Helping to Relocate Congolese Illegal Aliens

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Those entering the U.S. through this route did so because they “were scared the [refugee] process was not gonna work, or that it’s last (sic) a standstill.” (Christina Higgs, Catholic Charities San Antonio)

I am furious to see that the border jumpers claim (or at least their Catholic handlers claim) that the refugee process might not work for them!

Why isn’t the media reporting that we have admitted as refugees to the US over 50,000 DR Congolese refugees in under five years with 8,000 arriving here in the last 8 months!

The DR Congolese are at the moment, by far, the largest refugee ethnic group being admitted to the US.

When is enough, enough?

Not fast enough for them so they headed to South America for a long and EXPENSIVE trip to the southern border.

I sure hope we don’t find out that the Catholic Church has been paying for the migration!

If you missed last night’s post about the Laura Ingraham segment about how cagey the Congolese were when interviewed in Portland, go here.

Then see where else this first batch was placed!  The word is that more are on the way!

From the Washington Examiner,

African migrants pass through San Antonio and swiftly fan out across the country

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Roughly 300 Congolese and Angolan citizens who arrived in San Antonio the first week of June after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border days earlier have all briskly departed the city for destinations across the country, some with fuzzy plans based partly on hope.

The hundreds of family members and single adults from Central Africa first showed up June 4 at the southern border’s Eagle Pass and Del Rio towns in south-central Texas. The migrants surrendered to Border Patrol agents and claimed asylum after crossing the Rio Grande.

The agency did not, as it is supposed to, turn families over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Instead, it released families onto the streets of Eagle Pass and Del Rio, according to two government and nongovernment officials with first-hand knowledge of the matter. The African migrants then bought bus tickets to either San Antonio or Austin, according to San Antonio Interim Assistant City Manager Colleen Bridger.

“If — a family, the sponsor — it’s been 24-48 hours and they can’t buy the [bus] ticket, then we’ll buy it,” Elizabeth Nemeth, executive director of Catholic Charities’ west side center, told the Washington Examiner Thursday.

[….]

“They come with a place in mind. ‘My friend told me to go to Portland, Maine, because there’s a lot of Congolese families that already live there and it’s welcoming,” said Nemeth. “And they have that plan in mind, right? But they don’t understand the geography — like where it is, how much it costs to get there. There’s a lot of misconceptions. They may think, ‘I have a friend there,’ but they don’t have a friend’s phone number … [We can look into] what is their last name, phone book, call shelter and ask about them, connect the dots. I wouldn’t say that we’re just putting them randomly.They have an idea.”

The African migrants are spending six to seven months traveling to Brazil then up to the U.S.

Those entering the U.S. through this route did so because they “were scared the [refugee] process was not gonna work, or that it’s last a standstill,” said Christina Higgs, Catholic Charities spokeswoman for the San Antonio region. Some worried traveling to or through Europe was “getting really dangerous.”

“He used the term, and I hate to say it, but they were trying to hedge their bets by coming his way and see if they couldn’t get here that way,” she added.

More here.

We have been more than ‘welcoming’ to the DR Congolese, heck we have been busy moving them en masse (on the taxpayers dime) to every corner of America and it still isn’t enough!  Hundreds simply break in!

My head is exploding!

What is it going to take to get the facts to the public when most reporters are ignorant, lazy, or worse!

RELATED ARTICLE: Illegal Aliens Sue Border Patrol. The Lawsuit’s Outcome Can Have Massive Implications. 

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Muhammad’s Night Journey

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What it is:  The basis of the story is that one night while Muhammad was sleeping in Mecca, the angel Gabriel came and woke him and had him mount the mighty steed Buraq, usually described as a steed with supernatural powers.  Buraq took Muhammad to Jerusalem where he found Abraham, Jesus, and other prophets.  There Muhammad led these great prophets in prayer.  Muhammad then mounted a ladder and climbed all the way into the seven heavens where he once again sees all the prophets, as he ascends through the various levels of heaven.  He eventually reached the seventh heaven where he talks with God.

Even though it takes 100,000 light years just to cross our one galaxy of the Milky Way in a starship, Muhammad manages to do the entire universe in just one night . . . while climbing a ladder!

Muhammad’s “night journey,” or laylat al-isra’ w-al-mi’raaj, is one of the most amazing stories found in Islamic culture.  As we can see, it is very fanciful, and at times humorous.  As a result, many Islamic scholars have discounted it, believing that it is not mentioned in the Qur’an and is nothing but stories that found their way into the ahadeeth (a collection of supposedly sacred sayings of Muhammad inspired by the angel Gabriel).  The problem for these Islamic scholars (by trying to deny the night journey) is that it actually is in the Qur’an, or at least sort of.

The 17th chapter (or sura) of the Qur’an is actually titled al-isra’ (meaning the “night journey).  The first verse of that sura says: Glorified is he who caused his servant to travel by night from the inviolable Mosque (Mecca) to the furthest Mosque (Jerusalem).

While it is true that no more details of this fantastic journey are given in the Qur’an, Muhammad’s biography by ibn Ishaq (written 130 years after Muhammad’s death) provides several versions of this story, apparently passed down by word of mouth from those who knew Muhammad.

Before I get into the details of this story, I have to say something about that 17th sura which mentions the night journey.  Muslim scholars classify it as one of the “middle Meccan” suras.  I find that assumption to be outrageous for a couple of reasons:

First, Most authentic (so-called) Mecca suras are written in a childish, choppy style of short two, or three word “sentences,” like children’s nursery rhymes.  Whereas all of the Medina suras are written in a flowing, easier to read, prose with (usually) superior syntax and grammar (in the original Arabic).  And, the surat al-isra’ is written in the style of the Medina suras.

Second, Muhammad’s final wife, ‘Aisha, is often quoted as a witness who said that “his body never left the room” indicating that it was only a vision, and not a physical journey (even though other accounts do make it out to be an actual physical journey).  And, Muhammad did not marry ‘Aisha until late in his life, shortly before he returned to Mecca to conquer it.  Meaning that this sura had to be a Medina sura.

Third, this “night journey,” whatever it was, allegedly took place “when Islam had spread in Mecca among the Quraysh and all the tribes” (ibn ishaq, 263, p.181).  This sentence describes a time late in Muhammad’s life after he had returned from Medina to conquer Mecca.  Because his earlier stay in Mecca only netted him a max of 200 followers, all from among the citizens of Mecca, and none from any of the other tribes–according to the Islamic sources themselves.

FIRST STOP:  JERUSALEM

Buraq was truly an amazing animal because each of his strides covered a distance as far as the eye could see.  Buraq had also been around for a long, long time, since other prophets before Muhammad had ridden on him.  The Arabic word buraaq, is derived from barq meaning “lightning.”  So, you might say that the steed Buraq was as fast as lightning.

The story begins while Muhammad was sleeping in the Hijr (refers to Mecca) the angel Gabriel woke him during his sleep.  Gabriel then led Muhammad outside and there was good old Buraq.  The animal is described as white, half mule and half donkey (an interesting trick since mules are sterile), and it had wings on its sides with which it propelled its feet (an interesting anatomical feature, indeed).

Buraq was more than surprised to see Muhammad.  Heavenly steed that he was he “shied” when Muhammad approached him.  Gabriel then admonished the white steed saying “Are you not ashamed, O Buraq, to behave in this way?  By God, none more honorable before God than Muhammad has ever ridden you before.”  The poor animal was so ashamed that he broke out into a sweat and stood still so Muhammad could mount him.

Muhammad and Gabriel then arrived at Jerusalem (none of the accounts ever say what means of transportation Gabriel used to get there).  Visiting the temple at Jerusalem Muhammad found Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and a bunch of other prophets, whereupon Muhammad led them all in prayer (showing Islam’s superiority over all other religions).

THE ASCENT TO HEAVEN

A popular folk belief among many Muslims is that Muhammad rode the steed Buraq from Jerusalem up to heaven.  However, the accounts given in ibn Ishaq say that Muhammad used a ladder.  “A ladder was brought to me finer than any I have ever seen.”  Muhammad and Gabriel then mounted it until they came to one of the gates of heaven called the Gate of the Watchers.  There they were greeted by an angel called “Isma’il,” and under his command were twelve thousand angels each of which had twelve thousand other angels under their command.  That comes to something like 144 Billion angels, an obvious takeoff on the 144,000 of “super saved” individuals of Christian tradition (The Revelation 7:3-8).

As Muhammad travels through this “lowest rung of heaven” he sees sinners being tortured for their sins.  In the second heaven he sees Jesus and John the Baptist (but I thought that he had just seen Jesus back down in Jerusalem?).

In the third heaven Muhammad sees Joseph, and in the fourth heaven the prophet Idris.  Idris, in Islamic tradition is the first of the prophets after Adam.  He is identified with the Enoch of the Bible, and with the Greek Hermes Trismegistus, and the Egyptian god of wisdom Thoth.

On to the fifth heaven Muhammad sees Aaron, brother of Moses. In the sixth heaven is Moses himself.  In the seventh heaven he meets Abraham.  Abraham then takes Muhammad into “paradise” where he sees “a damsel with dark red lips.  And I asked her to whom she belonged, because she pleased me much when I saw her, and she told me ‘Zayd bin Haritha.'”

Now, this is really interesting on a couple of levels.  First, because Zayd bin Haritha in real life was Muhammad’s adopted son, and it was Zayd’s wife in real life about whom Muhammad lusted over.  So he had a “vision” where Allah tells him that it is permissible for him to marry his adopted son’s wife, and that it would be wrong for him “to deny that which Allah has caused you to desire” (Qur’an 33:37).   And, so Muhammad did indeed marry his adopted son’s wife.  So, in this trip to heaven we see Muhammad having yet another vision implying sexual lust, over Zayd’s wife.

Second, this idea of entering “paradise” and seeing a beautiful maiden reminds me of the ancient Indo-Iranian myth of the worthy soldier, priest, or ruler being met on the bridge linking earth with “paradise” being met by a beautiful young maiden.

Thirdly, this episode plays into the “babes in heaven” fantasies of Islam which reached its apex in the 72 virgins lore of the Islamic ahadeeth.

FIFTY SHADES OF PRAYER, or IS IT JUST FIVE?

While roaming the 7th heaven, Muhammad comes face to face with God.  God tells him that he has to go back down to earth and tell the people that they have to pray 50 times a day.  So, Muhammad begins his trek back down through the layers of heaven.  As soon as he steps down into the sixth heaven he runs dab smack into Moses and tells Moses that God ordered him to command the people to pray 50 times a day.  Moses says that’s way too much.  People are weak, they could never stick with that tough of an assignment.  So, Muhammad goes back up to the 7th heaven to argue with God and got the number reduced down to 40.  Stepping back down to the 6th heaven he told Moses the results, and Moses said, “nah, that’s still to high, go back up there and keep trying.”

So, up and down Muhammad went arguing with God to get the sentence reduced, and then being prodded by Moses to get back up there and tell God that it is still too much.  So, finally God agrees to reduce the number of prayer calls to just five times a day.

Thus, Muslims believe that this little story is the reason why Shari’a law demands Muslims to pray five times a day, even though the Qur’an never mentions more than three prayer calls a day.  This part of the story was obviously invented to deflect the Muslims’ ability to recognize the real reasons why shari’a demands five prayers a day in conflict with the Qur’an.  And, this real reason is that the idea of the five prayer calls a day is one of the many Persian Zoroastrian customs the inventors of Islam imported into their religion.

DANTE’S INFERNO AND ISHTAR’S DESCENT INTO THE UNDERWORLD

In reading Muhammad’s journey through the seven layers of heaven, any student of western literature would easily recognize Dante’s inferno.

But there are even earlier parallels.  The Babylonian fertility goddess Isthar’s descent into the underworld where the dead go, for example.  First off, Ishtar encounters “gates,” just as Muhammad encountered “gates” up in the various levels of heaven . . . where the dead people go.

Each “gate” that Ishtar goes through, takes her through a layer of the underworld.

But guess how many layers, or “gates” Ishtar encounters and goes through in the underworld?  Yeah, that’s right, seven–paralleled by Muhammad’s seven heavens.

In order to enter each new level, Ishtar has to remove an article of clothing until she is completely naked upon reaching the seventh level (a precursor of Salome’s “Dance of the Seven Viels”).

There, Ishtar also has to divest herself of her life (and her body) and face Ereshkigal, the Goddess of the underworld devoid of everything except her spirit.  Perhaps presaging Muhammad’s alleged “out of body experience.”

And, of course, the Ishtar story was borrowed from an even earlier Sumerian story of the Sumerian fertility goddess Inanna’s descent into the underworld involving, yes, seven layers.

BIBLICAL PARALLELS

The ladder that Muhammad ascended to heaven on reminded me of the story about “Jacob’s ladder” in Genesis 29:10-13.

A new testament parallel is found in I Peter 3:18-22.   In this story Jesus Christ, like Ishtar, is put to death in the flesh, but with his spirit still vibrant “he also went and preached unto the spirits in prison.”  What prison are these “spirits” in?  The prison of the same underworld that Ishtar and Inanna visited, the 1st layer of heaven that Muhammad visited.

The difference between Jesus and Muhammad here is that Jesus preaches to these sinners to give them one more chance to see the light so they can repent and find a better resting place in the afterworld.  Muhammad, on the other hand, simply passes right on by these sinners suffering in torment totally unconcerned about their fate.  I think that illustrates the different attitudes of the two religions:  Christianity is about helping others.  Islam is entirely self-absorbed like its Jew-hating, infidel beheading, sex-slaving “prophet.”

After ministering unto the sinners, Jesus then ascends up to the highest level, to God’s right hand.  This is, of course, echoed by Muhammad’s ascending up to the highest level of heaven to be in God’s presence (and Ishtar’s reaching the seventh level of the underworld to face Ereshkigal).

THE BOOK OF ENOCH

But now, we turn to the best example of all, and this is Enoch’s ascension into heaven.  Genesis 5:22 mentions that “Enoch walked with God:  Enoch walked with God; and he was not; for God took him.”  This passage could simply mean that Enoch died.  But the full story of Enoch was fleshed out in a collection of apocryphal literatures written in the century before and century after the birth of Christ.  The book of Enoch itself is believed to have been written during the earliest years of Christianity, and had a considerable influence on the New Testament writers.

Enoch’s ascension is told in the first book of Enoch: 3-22.  Unlike Jesus and Ishtar, but like Muhammad, Enoch did not really have to die because he lived to come back to earth to tell his sons about his journey–just as Muhammad was to return to earth to tell his followers about his journey.

Unlike Muhammad, Enoch did not have to climb all the way up to heaven on a ladder, no, he was born aloft on the wings of angels.  Strangely though, Enoch describes 10 heavens, rather than seven.  However, at one point of this journey, Enoch is stranded and left alone on the 7th level of heaven.  He cries out to God to help him, and shortly who should show up to accompany him through the eighth, ninth, and tenth levels?  None other than the angel Gabriel, who was to play the same role for Muhammad six and a half centuries later.

SUMMARY

Muhammad’s much ballyhooed night journey to Jerusalem and ascension to heaven was cobbled together from a long list of previous such journey’s to the seven layers of the afterworld, and the face-to-face meetings with God.  Inanna, Ishtar, Enoch, Jesus, and Muhammad all have similar  experiences of going through “layers” in the afterworld before meeting up face-to-face with deity.

The Muhammad story itself reads more like a disjointed dream than an actual experience.  Even Islamic scholars today are beginning to recognize that the night trip to Jerusalem never did occur.  For one thing, in the seventh century it took a full month to travel from Mecca to Jerusalem, so to claim that Muhammad did it one night sort of negates the veracity of the story.  Even his wife ‘Aisha claimed that his body never left the room.

Another serious problem with the Muhammad story is the claim that he prayed in masjed al-aqsa (the furthest mosque) in Jerusalem.  There were no mosques in Jerusalem until after the Arab conquest in the late 630s.  Jerusalem was taken in 638, six years after Muhammad’s death.  The masjid al-aqsa was not built until around 700, probably in 705.

Therefore, it is safe to say that this entire story of the night journey to Jerusalem was back-written many decades after Muhammad’s death.

These facts are important for today’s Israeli-Palestinian struggle.  This is because the only claim that Arabs and Muslims have to Jerusalem is this alleged tenuous dream of Muhammad which was back-written decades after Muhammad’s death–even if there was such a person a this Muhammad.

For decades I have always said that the only reason Jerusalem is important to Islam is because it is important to Christians and is the only holy site for the Jews.  Therefore Islam just had to steal it away.

Muslims can counter by saying that Jerusalem is important because it was the first gibla (meaning the city that Muslims must face when they pray).  In fact, some of the early “mosques” are alleged to be oriented towards Jerusalem instead of Mecca.

But this is because the Arabian portion of Islam evolved out of the Jewish Ebionite Christianity which was popular in Arabia during the 5th and 6th centuries.  And, the “northern” portion of Islam was cobbled together from elements of the Christianity of the followers of Bishop Arius, the Gnostics, and Talmudic Christianity, all of which, like the Jewish-Christian Ebionites in Arabia, would have venerated Jerusalem as the holy city.  Besides, Mecca did not become an important site in Islam until at least 630 when Muhammad conquered it, if one believe the traditional Islamic interpretation of Islam’s origins.  In the skeptic’s view, that shown by history, linguistics, and archaeology, that of the “out-of-Arabia” origin of Islam, Mecca was not chosen as Islam’s holy site until sometime around 700 A.D.

Ironically, the “out-of-Arabia” view of the origins of Islam gives Muslims a much stronger connection to Jerusalem than does their own made up, back-written stories about Muhammad’s night journey and ascension to heaven.

June is LGBTQ Pride Month: So What Are They Proud of?

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I have read on Twitter comments by many who question why we have an annual gay pride month. This is a question deserving of an answer.

Who started the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month?

According to the Library of Congress website:

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month is currently celebrated each year in the month of June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan. The Stonewall Uprising was a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States. In the United States the last Sunday in June was initially celebrated as “Gay Pride Day,” but the actual day was flexible.

The Law Library of Congress has compiled guides to commemorative observations, including a comprehensive inventory of the Public Laws, Presidential Proclamations and congressional resolutions related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender and Queer Pride Month.

Former Presidents Clinton and Obama issued proclamations related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Pride Month.

President Trump on May 31st, 2019 tweeted:

As we celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made to our great Nation, let us also stand in solidarity with the many LGBT people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute individuals….on the basis of their sexual orientation. My Administration has launched a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality and invite all nations to join us in this effort!

What are gays supposed to be proud OF?

In a June 6, 2011 Scientific American article titled “Why I’m Not Proud of Being Gay” Jessie Bering wonders, “I’m particularly interested in knowing what it is, exactly, that I’m supposed to be proud of.”

What is pride? Bering used the below Oxford English Dictionary definitions:

pride n. A high, esp. an excessively high, opinion of one’s own worth or importance which gives rise to a feeling or attitude of superiority over others; inordinate self-esteem.

pride , n. Arrogant, haughty, or overbearing behaviour, demeanour, or treatment of others, esp. as exhibiting an inordinately high opinion of oneself.

Bering wrote:

In fact, a team of University of British Columbia psychologists led by Jessica Tracy would note that the foregoing definitions of pride are actually referring to a particularly ancient, evolutionarily derived subtype, which they refer to as hubristic pride. Tracy and her colleagues have argued that hubristic pride evolved to promote and sustain dominance, with the emotional engines of conceit and arrogance motivating individuals to scale the social hierarchy, which translates to genetic fitness. Laboratory participants induced to feel hubristic pride display increased aggression, hostility, and manipulation—all tactics of a tooth-and-nail pathway to social dominance that is based primarily on fear rather than respect. It’s not terribly surprising, in this light, that individuals who are more prone to exhibiting hubristic pride tend also to be more disagreeable, neurotic, narcissistic, are less conscientious and have a history of poor relationships and mental health problems. [Emphasis added]

Is the LGBTQ community suffering from hubristic pride?

Bering believes not when he wrote:

After all, these are people that have been “culturally victimized” by an overwhelmingly oppressive heterosexist society, one that has systematically devalued and derided them as deviants for as long as they can remember. Developing in such a society is emotionally crippling and poisonous to one’s self-esteem; it’s not exactly a recipe for creating hubris and an inflated ego.

Bering offhandedly dismisses the beliefs of the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism (Genesis 19:1-7), Christianity (Romans 1:24-28) and Islam (Al-Mustadrak 2/375), concerning sodomy and pride. IslamWeb.net notes this about pride and arrogance:

Pride and Arrogance:

Allah, Almighty, Says (what means): “I will turn away from My Ayaat (verses of the Quran) those who behave arrogantly on the earth, without a right, and (even) if they see all the Ayaat (proofs, evidences, verses, lessons signs, revelations, etc.), they will not believe in them…” [Quran; 7:146] and (what means) “… truly He likes not the proud.” [Quran; 16:23]

Bering stated,

“These definitions clearly sit astride religious notions of pride being one of the Seven Deadly Sins . To many Christians, pride is the worst sin of all because placing oneself above others conflicts with spiritual egalitarianism. From a scientific perspective, at least, we can safely dismiss the God-hewn conjectures of pride being essentially evil, since there is no evil in essence, and there almost certainly is no God .

Are there objective moral values?

In an article published by BeThinking.org titled “Can Moral Objectivism Do Without God?” Peter S. Williams notes:

The most discussed moral argument for God’s existence is currently the argument concerning the ontological basis for objective moral values:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist
2. Objective moral values do exist
3. Therefore, God exists.

[ … ]

Francis J. Beckwith observes how “our experience indicates that moral obligation … is deeply connected to our obligations toward other persons.” I have moral obligations, but since I can’t be obligated by anything non-personal (e.g. the evolutionary history of my species), I must be obligated by something personal. Since there are objective moral obligations that transcend all finite persons (or groups thereof), there must therefore be a transcendent personal reality to whom we are most fundamentally obligated.

Read more.

Laws are based upon objective moral values such as: murder is morally wrong and therefore must be punished. So too are the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Each leads to breaking the moral values (laws) created by mankind over the millennia to prevent immoral values from becoming cultural norms.

Billions of people have faith and believe there is a monotheistic God. Jews, Christians and Muslims alike hold this faith and belief.

New Questions.

Since 1969 there is growing scientific evidence that homosexuality leads to serious health problems. According to EchoHealthAlliance.org:

That virus, commonly known as HIV, is the defining pandemic of our time. More than 35 million people have been killed by the virus to date.

Seeing what is happening today there are new questions that the LGBTQ community must answer.

  1. Are gays proud of what they have done to the Catholic Church?
  2. Are gays proud of what they have done to the Boy Scouts?
  3. Are gays proud of what they have done to a baker who didn’t bake them a wedding cake?
  4. Are gays proud of the annual march in Boston dressed in revealing clothing and performing sexual acts in public, in front of children?

Given what has happened since 1969, the question: What are gays proud of?, is still relevant.

Conclusion

The LGBTQ community must regain its objective moral obligations to society.

RELATED ARTICLES:

MassResistance mothers expose what really happens to children at LGBT “Youth Pride” events

Vermont Poised to Let Kids, Not Parents, Make Gender Decisions

Transgenderism and Perfect Freedom

Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution

The Most Cited Study In The Transgender Athlete Debate Is Bad Science

MassResistance activists help stop reparative therapy bans in state legislatures across the country

Money Can’t Buy You Health

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Preview:  So how would government-funded primary care have prevented the diseases my patients have had? Heart failure? (Statin drugs probably make it worse.) Heart attacks? (When the patient has one, it is too late to prevent it.) Stroke? (Preventive aspirin is now criticized because of the bleeding it may cause.) Osteoarthritis? (We have great joint replacements but are much better at blocking access to surgery than at curing the arthritis.) Gall bladder disease, cancer, pneumonia, blood clots, thyroid disease, cataracts, arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation, herniated disks, asthma, endocarditis from drug abuse, on and on. If we put all the doctors to work pretending to keep people healthy, who would treat disease and injury?

Healing the sick is what medicine is about. The politicians who promise to “fix healthcare” can only destroy medicine—while bankrupting the country.

“Healthcare” is supposed to be the big election issue, and politicians promise to give people universal and equal “healthcare,” or prevent the bad guys from taking it away.

Everyone of course wants to be healthy, and a $3 trillion industry wants to keep the money flowing.

So, I have a confession to make as a doctor: I don’t think I have ever kept anybody healthy. If someone comes to me asking for “health maintenance,” I don’t have a shot of “health” to give, or a prescription for “health” to be filled at your neighborhood Walgreens, CVS, or Rite-Aid.

And as a patient, I can’t recall any ways in which doctors kept me healthy, although they did save my life by taking out my appendix, and they treated some illnesses and injuries. I am very grateful to them, and whatever I paid them seemed reasonable and well worth it.

To my mind, a healthy person is one who does not have to see a “healthcare provider” regularly or take medicine every day, and who can go to work, take care of family, and generally lead an active life.

We hear endless complaints about how we spend too much money treating sickness instead of preventing it. If only we had the government take all the money, plus trillions more, and “invest” it in health, we wouldn’t have to spend so much, and everyone would be healthier—so they say.

This was the rationale for the National Health Service in Britain. Once the NHS took care of the backlog of untreated illnesses, much of the need for it would melt away. This did not happen. Expenditures kept rising and were never enough. The backlogs and waiting lists grew. Ambulances circle emergency departments, and patients are crammed into hallways and storage rooms.

Suppose you go for your government-funded, “value-based” health maintenance visit. Details of your once-private life will be entered into a very expensive electronic health record. (For most people, it will be their own data, but occasionally someone else’s will be cut-and-pasted in, causing endless trouble.) You will be checked for diabetes or pre-diabetes, hypertension or pre-hypertension, tobacco use, cholesterol, in many cases gun ownership, body mass index, and other government-mandated items. You will get educated about the evils of tobacco (in case you have been on Mars and hadn’t heard). You’ll be lectured about obesity if your BMI is too high. You’ll very likely get a prescription to lower your blood pressure or cholesterol, and you may get vaccinated for something.

Your provider will likely get a bonus for checking all the right boxes and for “keeping you healthy,” and will get penalized if your “numbers” don’t improve or you get sick. Since I don’t think others are any better than I am at creating health, there is a huge incentive to “manage the case mix” to discourage unhealthy or noncompliant patients from joining the practice.

People on drugs for blood pressure or cholesterol may feel worse rather than better, but are supposed to be less likely to have a heart attack or stroke decades later. Studies with huge numbers of patients, who may be very different from you, have shown a decrease in such events with treatment. So far, a decrease in expenditures has not been shown, in view of the cost of all the drugs and side effects.

Of course, as an internist I treat high blood pressure and diabetes, but I consider this to be disease management. Would better diet prevent these things? Possibly, but what diet? I recommended low-fat diets for years. This government-approved advice is now questioned.

So how would government-funded primary care have prevented the diseases my patients have had? Heart failure? (Statin drugs probably make it worse.) Heart attacks? (When the patient has one, it is too late to prevent it.) Stroke? (Preventive aspirin is now criticized because of the bleeding it may cause.) Osteoarthritis? (We have great joint replacements but are much better at blocking access to surgery than at curing the arthritis.) Gall bladder disease, cancer, pneumonia, blood clots, thyroid disease, cataracts, arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation, herniated disks, asthma, endocarditis from drug abuse, on and on. If we put all the doctors to work pretending to keep people healthy, who would treat disease and injury?

Healing the sick is what medicine is about. The politicians who promise to “fix healthcare” can only destroy medicine—while bankrupting the country.

Don’t Say They Didn’t Warn You: Left Leaning Voices Question Democrats’ Anti-Gun Proposals, Fervor

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If the 2020 Democrat presidential primary is any indication, that party’s base and donor class will accept nothing less from their nominee than commitments to sweeping gun control. And the contenders appear happy to accommodate them.

No one doubts that the political hard left is unified around the idea of gun control in principle. But some in that camp are expressing concern that the pathway to the presidency may not lie in promising to criminalize otherwise law-abiding gun owners and to seize firearms that were obtained lawfully and never misused by their owners.

Honesty, in other words, is not the best policy when it comes to infringements of the right to keep and bear arms.

Leftist political pundit and talk show host Bill Maher claims to be a reluctant firearm owner, but no one would mistake him for a Second Amendment advocate. “[T]he Second Amendment,” he has repeatedly said, “is bull-[expletive deleted].”

Nevertheless, he is among the seemingly dwindling number of those on the far left who still maintain some awareness that America is a big country and that its politics are not necessarily defined by its most “progressive” coastal enclaves.

Last Friday, Maher used a panel discussion on his cable show “Real Time” to caution fellow opponents of Donald Trump that many Americans like guns. “Lots of people do,” he said, “and their view is, ‘Yes, there is a violence problem with guns, but not me. And you’re going after me.’”

Referring to the Democrats’ gun control proposals, Maher continued: “And I’m just saying, some of their solutions, all of the solutions, I don’t know if it would solve the gun problem.”

Maher went on to remind his guests that “we’ve lost elections before on this issue, which is not a winning issue for Democrats.” He also said that “liberals should learn more about guns” and noted that primary contender Cory Booker – who recently invoked the Virginia Beach murders to argue for gun control – did not answer the questions of CNN’s Jake Tapper about how his own proposals would have prevented those crimes.

Maher’s advice, unsurprisingly, was not well received by his guests. Charles Blow, a writer for the New York Times, insisted that “journalists have to stop asking that horrible question.” Blow indicated that picking out one incident to focus on is unfair, given the broader scope of firearm-related deaths in America. “The framing of the question is wrong,” Blow lectured.

Blow might have had a valid point, but for the fact that Booker and his fellow candidates essentially demand these inquiries by constantly bringing up rare but infamous and highly-publicized mass murders that account for a tiny fraction of firearm-related deaths, most of which are suicides.

Commonplace firearm-related homicides, meanwhile, very often occur in cities with strict gun control and involve repeat offenders who ignore the laws already on the books and undoubtedly would do the same to any additional laws that were imposed.

To his credit, Maher himself seems to recognize this. “You really don’t think it’s that simple?” he asked Blow. “It’s complicated. If you did everything that the Democrats wanted – and I support all of that – I still think you would have this problem, because it’s much more complicated than just the guns … or the type of guns.”

Later, Jake Tapper would find himself fending off a social media mob incensed that he would ask an embarrassing, if obvious, question of a left-leaning politician who favors gun control. “Booker changed his speech in CA to talk about the Virginia Beach shootings and need for more gun laws,” Tapper tweeted the Sunday after the Maher piece aired. “Asking what laws would have prevented/mitigated the specific tragedy he wanted to discuss was a natural question and a sincere one too.”

Maher and Tapper are hardly the first on the left to recognize the conundrum of gun control advocates who exploit the victims of mass murders to promote their agenda without actually offering any responsive proposals.

Mark Glaze was a founding figure and executive director of Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun empire, Everytown for Gun Safety. Glaze stepped down from that position in 2014, telling the Wall Street Journal at the time: “Is it a messaging problem when a mass shooting happens and nothing that we have to offer would have stopped that mass shooting? Sure it’s a challenge in this issue.”

Later, Glaze would become an advisor to another gun control group, Guns Down America, which aims to “take down the NRA, ” “reduc[e] the number of guns in circulation,” and “[m]ake guns significantly harder to get … .”

Glaze, in other words, can at least take satisfaction in now being more honest about his intentions. It’s not a question of preventing unpreventable crimes. It’s simply a question of doing everything possible to get rid of guns and to silence those who advocate for the right to keep and bear arms.

The real problem for anti-gun Democrats and gun control advocates, however, isn’t how they package their message.

It’s that they want to take away the hard-won freedoms of a freedom-loving people.

And while their occasional moments of self-reflection may not be making much of a dent in the fanaticism the hard left has for gun control, voters who support the Second Amendment should pay close attention.

Because when the oversharing of the primary ends and the real presidential campaign begins, the eventual nominee may well heed Maher’s advice and take a much more moderate (and misleading) tone on guns.

Yet the Democrat hopefuls have by now expressed all that needs to be said to betray their true designs on your Second Amendment rights.

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Obama Lies about Guns… Again

EDITORS NOTE: This NRA-ILA column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Florida Passes Toughest Sanctuary City Ban In The Nation

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis just signed into law the toughest sanctuary cities bill ban in the nation, keeping a campaign promise despite apoplectic, snarky media coverage.

DeSantis today signed Senate Bill 168 requiring Florida law enforcement officials and governmental entities to honor federal “immigration detainer” requests that ask a law enforcement agency to detain someone on probable cause that they can be removed from the country under federal immigration laws. That is, they are here illegally and will be sent home. Because law enforcement is holding them, that means they either have or are accused of committing crimes beyond illegal entry into the U.S.

In sanctuary cities around the nation, law officers cannot hold them for Immigration officials, but must release them back into the population.

The new law prohibits local officials from implementing any sort of “sanctuary” policies, which problematically had previously not been defined in state law, and gives the governor the authority to remove officials from office if they do not comply with the law.

That is a powerful strong law.

Despite the media talking about how the law is “controversial” — mostly in newsrooms and Democratic headquarters — DeSantis and team created a huge, public signing ceremony, live-streamed it on Facebook and had a lot of those involved present. U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, who represents Okaloosa County, where the bill-signing took place, and bill sponsor state Sen. Joe Gruters, of Sarasota, also the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, joined at the event.

Apparently these guys don’t feel it is too “controversial.”

DeSantis told a packed Okaloosa County Commission Chambers that the bill “is about the rule of law” and emphasized the issue of “public safety.”

“I said we were going to do certain things, and I’m happy to report after having just one legislative session under our belt we’re delivering on the promises we made to the people of Florida,” he said.

Sanctuary cities are popular in liberal states and in some cities in red states. But they are also havens for criminals who obviously flock to those areas where they will be protected from the feds.

DeSantis called them “law-free zones” where people who are here illegally can commit crimes, and then “just walk out the door and continue to do it.”

The media is running their normal PR campaign for Democrats. The Tampa Bay Times’ snarky headline is: “Gov. DeSantis signs ‘sanctuary cities’ ban into law. There aren’t any in Florida.”

Well yes, because there had not been a definition before and this is designed to make sure there won’t be any in the future.

Here’s the lead right below it.

“Fulfilling a key, controversial campaign promise popular with his party’s base, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Friday that will ban so-called “sanctuary cities” in Florida, though the policy is expected to draw a legal skirmish over its constitutionality as it goes into effect next month.”

See, it’s just about playing to the base. But is it? The Hill reported:

“A survey from Harvard–Harris Poll provided exclusively to The Hill found that 80 percent of voters say local authorities should have to comply with the law by reporting to federal agents the illegal immigrants they come into contact with.”

So maybe not all that controversial among Americans after all. Mostly journalists.

Considering the chaotic and tragic crisis at the southern border that President Trump and some Republicans have been trying to fix — and being blocked at every turn by activist judges and Democrats in Congress — this issue will remain a winner for Republicans in 2020.

EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

For those concerned about Leftism taking over in the church, this was a sad week.

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Judd Saul is the producer of the film Enemies Within the Church.

Judd wrote in an email:

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) voted to affirm Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality as analytical tools.

Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality are Leftist frameworks for dividing society.

From these theories come the terrible ideas you hear about on a daily basis:

  • Microaggressions
  • White privilege
  • Victimology
  • Identity politics

… The list doesn’t stop there:

  • Oppressors/oppressed
  • Rejecting “color-blindness” in judging people’s character
  • Institutionalized partiality
  • Race-based reparations

This week, the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the US, made its first tepid resolution to allow the Devil’s foot in the door.

Though the wording included qualifications, the resolution nevertheless will be seen as a huge victory for the growing contingent of Leftists intent on re-writing the Bible and dressing up Cultural Marxism in a clerical collar.

The SBC endorsed the idea that these wicked postmodern theories can work within Christianity.

This is what we have been working to warn people about. We know you see it. It’s time to wake up our friends and our churches.

That’s why we’re creating the film Enemies Within the Church.

What the SBC did this week is just the tip of the iceberg. We are going to name the names. We are going to expose the bad actors.

We are going to tell the truth about where the America church went wrong, who sold out the church to postmodernism, and how the deed was done.

RELATED ARTICLES:

How socialism violates all Ten Commandments

Abortion, gay Christians and critical race theory: The statements Southern Baptists made at their annual meeting

Southern Baptist Convention To Officially Affirm Marxist Critical Theory as Viable | Reformation Charlotte

Why I Left the Southern Baptist Convention

The Humanitarian Hoax of Black-Only College Graduation Ceremonies: Killing America With Kindness

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The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

The humanitarian hoax of black-only college graduation ceremonies is a classic example of destruction disguised as altruism. Let’s examine how resegregation has become fashionable.

Martin Luther King Jr. was the icon of the civil rights movement in the United States from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Dr. King advocated nonviolence and civil disobedience similar to Gandi’s nonviolent activism. At the legendary 1963 March on Washington Dr. King delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech which exhorted Americans to judge each other by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. His impassioned speech facilitated the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

The Civil Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, is considered the most comprehensive civil rights legislation since Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery in 1865. What happened?

The 13th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act were legislative remedies designed to achieve the Constitutional principle that all men are created equal. Black Americans, white Americans, brown Americans, red Americans, and yellow Americans – one united American family indivisible by color. Being American is the foundation and common denominator of equality.

In a shocking 5.16.19 article written by Drew Van Voorhis, he reports the findings of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) study of Neo-Segregation, the voluntary racial segregation of students. WHAT??

Neo-Segregation is the consequence of social scientists eliminating the merit system in favor of racial quotas. Racial quotas in the 60s resulted in elite universities like Yale, admitting under-qualified minority students who were doomed to fail. Over a third of the students dropped out, and those who remained were bitter and angry.

It is important to remember that had an equal number of under-qualified white students been admitted they would have suffered the same failure rate. This was always a qualification issue and not a racial issue even though it was race-based.

Instead of learning from the failure rates and emotional misery that failure inevitable brings, the social scientists doubled down and provided remedial classes for under-qualified students in another ill-advised attempt to level the playing field.

The result, according to the NAS study, was that students turned to each other for emotional support and found inspiration in black nationalism. Radical and militant black groups on campus offered a new separatist ethic that rejected integration in favor of identity politics.

The NAS report states:

“On campus after campus, black separatists won concessions from administrators who were afraid of further alienating blacks. The pattern of college administrators rolling over to black separatists demands came to dominate much of American higher education. The old integrationist ideal has been sacrificed almost entirely. Instead of offering opportunities for students to mix freely with students of dissimilar backgrounds, colleges promote ethnic enclaves, stoke racial resentment, and build organizational structures on the basis of group grievance.”

More that 76 of the 173 universities studied by the National Association of Scholars, a whopping 44%, host black-only graduation ceremonies. Even Harvard University hosted its first black-only graduation ceremony in 2017.

What would possess university administrators to surrender to black separatists demands and implement black-only study lounges, black-only clubs, black-only housing, black-only classes, black-only scholarships, black-only student associations, and black-only graduation ceremonies? Why has segregation become desirable again?

If you want to know the motive look at the result. Race based distinctions foment racial divisiveness and are antithetical to racial harmony. Leftism preaches unity but its policies foment racial tension. Can anyone imagine if these same universities held white-only graduation ceremonies or had white-only study lounges and housing?

Reverse discrimination is the wrong answer to the right problem, and is as egregious as the original discrimination. Harvard disingenuously describes its segregated graduation ceremony in lofty terms as being, “designed to celebrate their unique struggles and achievements at the elite institution that has been grappling with its historical ties to slavery.” REALLY?

If the nation’s goal is racial inclusion and harmony, then graduation ceremonies would be expected to celebrate the shared value of student achievement regardless of the color of their skin. Graduations would honor white students, black students, Asian students, Indian students, and Latino students experiencing student life together. It would recognize the social value of studying together, and the commonality of learning together, achieving together, and graduating together.

Young children on playgrounds naturally fulfill Martin Luther King’s dream effortlessly because they naturally focus on character and not on race. Students at leftist colleges unnaturally focus on race instead of character. What happened?

Why did resegregation become fashionable? Because the left realized that racism is a useful and powerful political tool to create divisiveness and social chaos in America.

Race-based policies are not only an admissions debacle, they are a threat to the productivity of America. Lowering academic standards and course requirements collapses the integrity of universities and results in many useless degrees. Caps and gowns become costumes of competence that do not reflect actual competence.

Under-qualified students who cannot compete in the classroom cannot compete in the workplace either. This creates more anger, bitterness and simultaneously makes America less productive. It is the merit system that drives the engine of a fair, successful, competent, independent, productive America. In the real world, competence is the mother of self-esteem.

It is the acquisition of skills and competence that actually make students proud of themselves – not the social engineering of leftist sociologists disingenuously insisting that performance, achievement, and merit are oppressive constructs of the white man. The blame game is a destructive, regressive, and deceitful strategy calculated to foment racial discord because the leftist leadership understands that anger fuels the revolution.

Social chaos is the prerequisite for seismic social change. The regressive left is inciting divisiveness, discord, and violence to make America ungovernable in its quest to make America socialist. Leftism has a lot of help these days from Islamists and globalists who have common cause to join the “resistance” and destroy America from within.

Neo-Segregation is a deliberate and alarming return to the fractious, divisive, hateful, era of racial conflict before Martin Luther King.

The racism and black separatism that has torn college campuses apart is now embraced by New York public schools K-12.

Consider the “white-supremacy culture” training program for school administrators being promoted by New York City Department of Education and Schools, Chancellor Richard Carranza. His shockingly racist slide show presentation is derived from “Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups” by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun.

These are the dirty dozen hallmarks of “white-supremacy culture” that school administrators are directed to avoid:

1. Perfectionism
2. Sense of Urgency
3. Defensiveness
4. Quantity over Quality
5. Worship of the Written Word
6. Only one right way
7. Paternalism
8. Either/or thinking
9. Power Hoarding
10. Fear of Open Conflict
11. Individualism
12. Progress is Bigger, More
13. Objectivit
14. Right to Comfort

Chancellor Carranza’s openly race-based perspective is explosive. His 14-point mandatory training program assumes “implicit bias” and “white privilege.” His directive creates reverse discrimination and a doctrine of “toxic whiteness.” Instead of embracing Martin Luther King, Chancellor Carranza has chosen civil rights activist Malcolm X to emulate. Malcolm X, a black separatist and supremacist, advocated against racial integration. Instead of supporting an American family of equality, integration, and equal opportunity, Malcolm X indicted the white community and blamed “whitey” for the failures in the black community.

In a letter addressed to Dr. King on July 31, 1963, Malcolm X describes the power of racial tensions saying, “A racial explosion is more destructive than a nuclear explosion.” Malcolm X, minister of Muhammad’s New York Mosque at the time, sarcastically acknowledged the “minor” differences between his own approach and that of Dr. King.

Failed university policies of racial divisiveness are being repeated in New York schools by Chancellor Carranza, and are supported by his leftist boss Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio, a radical socialist/communist, understands the long game of social chaos that racial divisiveness necessarily generates.

Race-based policies will fail in K-12 just as they failed in universities. Instead of Dr. King’s dream of harmony and respect, Carranza’s racial policies encourage the nightmare of racial divisiveness and anarchy.

America is based on equal opportunity – not equal outcome. Competence is the mother of self-esteem. If administrators want to develop students who become citizens with self-esteem, they must abandon the failed strategy of artificially leveling the playing field and insist upon equal opportunity for all students white, black, brown, or yellow. Only then will America reunite and judge each other by the content of character and not the color of our skin.

Resegregation is not a humanitarian effort that respects the black experience. It is a sinister exploitation of black students that fuels their anger and makes them useful to the revolution. Social chaos is the prelude to tyranny. The humanitarian hoax of black-only college graduations is the deeply dividing intentional fomenting of racism designed to tear America apart and make it ungovernable.

Esegregation is the humanitarian hoax designed to ignite racial tensions that will trigger the nuclear explosion of anarchy that Malcolm X predicted. Anarchy is the leftist strategy for seismic social change designed to make America socialist – the necessary precursor to one world government. Game over.

EDITORS NOTE: This Goudsmit Pundicity column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Based on Crime Rates, Pro-2A Advocates Should Control the Narrative

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Anti-gun advocates have claimed that the gun-rights lobby has been running rough-shod over our nation’s gun laws for thirty years. Interestingly enough, though, in those thirty years, gun crime has been on the decline.

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VIDEOS: Black Pigeon Speaks on the State of Things on YouTube

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BY Eeyore

There is also D tube, where a lot of our videos are now being uploaded.

Once the migration to Bitchute hits a point where it is also a threat to the tyrants and crony-capitalists, they will implement DNS poisoning like they have in Australia so people cannot see Bitchute without a VPN, or learning how to change DNS.

D Tube, and whatever the people at bit.tube are cooking up, is a genuinely distributed system and its an excellent alternative to single server platforms which seem to be vulnerable in a lot of ways, to the new crop of tyrants.

(I know nothing about PJW’s new platform, but I would go with D Tube, Bitchute, Bit.tube and Jordan Peterson’s new venue when it launches. These have track records and the technology will defeat censorship for now.)

RELATED ARTICLE: Social Media Drops The Hammer On Conservatives Crowder, Rose, Beck

Cato and St. Paul

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Note: Many people think that the Church in America is in crisis because of sexual abuse by priests and bishops going back decades. That’s true, but after the bishops’ meeting in Baltimore this week, at least beginning to be resolved. A deeper and perhaps more long-lasting crisis is the Church’s weakness in proclaiming Catholic faith and morals in a hostile world, as David Carlin explains today. Sinners we will always have with us, but the failure of courage and faithfulness and holiness ultimately does far more damage everywhere, inside and outside the Church. Speaking truth is one our primary missions at this site and we’re not shy about doing so. But we also need support – spiritual, social, and financial – from you if this mission is to continue. I’d like to wrap up this campaign but that depends on our receiving the resources we need. Please, if you are a faithful reader, do your part in making sure that not only TCT but the Catholic thing that has shaped our whole civilization remains present in a world sorely in need of what we can give. – Robert Royal

David Carlin: Modernist Catholicism is tainted by the very widespread reluctance to denounce homosexuality as the Church traditionally has.

We all remember the ancient Roman Cato the Elder and how he was in the habit of concluding every speech he made in the Roman Senate, regardless of the subject matter, with the words, “Carthage, it seems to me, must be destroyed.”

Well, it seems to me that every Catholic priest in America should end every homily he gives, regardless of the subject matter, with the words, “Our Catholic religion regards homosexual behavior as a great sin, and has always regarded it as a great sin since the time of the Apostles.” (You might even say, “Since the Jews gave us the law of Moses.”)

Why do I make this suggestion?  Because in the United States, Catholics are on the verge of forgetting this ancient moral truth.  Increasingly, the average Catholic feels that homosexual conduct is at worst a minor sin or perhaps no sin at all.

Consider some of the evidence.

1. Although nobody is quite sure how widespread homosexual practice is among our clergy, almost everybody agrees that it is far more common than it is among the general population.

2. Rare is the priestly sermon denouncing homosexual practice. I myself, an old man, have heard homosexuality mentioned only once in a sermon; and in that case, not to remind the congregation of the Catholic teaching, but to remind us to treat gays and lesbians with respect (okay, so far as that goes).

3. The likelihood is great that a priest who gives a sermon of denunciation would annoy, or even infuriate, some parishioners. A few years ago, I remember, at a Catholic school not many miles from where I live, a priest got in trouble with parents for telling students that homosexual practice is a great sin.

4. There is a widespread feeling among Catholics that the expression of disapproval of homosexual behavior is un-charitable, hence un-Christian; for such expressions cause pain to gays and lesbians and their atheistic fellow travelers.

5. Among students attending Catholic colleges (many of these colleges today no more than nominally Catholic), it is not easy to find a student who disapproves of homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

6. Though Church leaders have been willing to acknowledge that priests and even some bishops have been guilty of sexually molesting minors, they have generally been reluctant to acknowledge that homosexuality has been at the root of about 80 percent of that abuse.

7. Church leaders, while pledging to put a stop to clerical sexual abuse, not just of minors but of “vulnerable” adults (this latter category including adult men well into their twenties), have not pledged to purge the priesthood of its homosexual members. Who can be surprised if many Catholics have come to feel that the official attitude is: We don’t mind if a priest is homosexual provided he doesn’t “abuse” anybody, especially kids.

8. The pro-LGBT book written by the well-known Jesuit, Fr. James Martin, Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity, has been a best-seller among liberal Catholics.

9. Martin’s book has received favorable reviews from such Church luminaries as Cardinal Kevin Farrell (a high-ranking Vatican official), Cardinal Joseph Tobin (archbishop of Newark), Bishop Robert McElroy (of San Diego), and Archbishop Wilton Gregory (of Washington D.C.).

10. There is the appalling history of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was allowed to rise to the College of Cardinals despite many high-placed clerics, including bishops, knowing of his homosexual proclivities.

The Catholic Church in the United States, I contend, is on the verge of forgetting that homosexual sodomy is an atrocious sin. That’s how St. Paul (remember him?) evaluated it in the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans.  And that’s how the Catholic religion has evaluated it for the subsequent twenty centuries.

But today’s conventional moral wisdom – a secularist wisdom, be it noted, indeed an atheistic wisdom – tells us that Paul was homophobic, and tells us too that the Catholic religion he did so much to shape has always been a homophobic religion.  In other words, if Catholicism strongly disapproves of homosexuality, it is not because God has revealed his strong disapproval of homosexuality (e.g., in Mosaic law); it is because we Catholics are haters.

And therefore (we are told by the fashionable moral arbiters of our day), our religion contradicts itself; for while proclaiming that love is the greatest of all virtues, Catholicism encourages the practice of hate against LGBTQ persons.

It is not surprising that most American Catholics are more American than they are Catholic.  That was not terribly alarming when America was a predominantly Protestant country.  But that is no longer the case.  America’s opinion leaders, including those who are opinion leaders on questions of morality, are now persons who are atheist or near-atheist in their beliefs and values.  Today, unlike in the days prior to the 1960s, the decade in which Protestant cultural hegemony in America went into decline, if you’re a Catholic who is more American than Catholic, you are strongly tinged with atheism.

What do I mean by persons who are “near-atheist”? I mean persons who feel a kind of gravitational pull toward atheism.  They find modern-day atheism (which ordinarily sails under the flag of “secular humanism” or “progressivism”) attractive, but they are not quite willing to go all the way, at least not yet.

These near-atheists fall into three categories: (1) agnostics, who are virtual atheists; (2) liberal Protestants, who are virtual agnostics; and (3) liberal Catholics, who are virtual liberal Protestants.

American Catholicism has been significantly tainted with this atheism and near-atheism, and nowhere is this taint more obvious that in the very widespread Catholic reluctance to denounce homosexuality the way St. Paul was in the habit of denouncing it – a reluctance found among both laity and clergy, even among bishops.

Are we modern Catholics wiser than Paul?  Do we understand the nature of Christian morality better than he did?  Are we afraid to say what Paul said?

COLUMN  BY

David Carlin

David Carlin is a professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

BREAKING VIDEO: Pinterest Insider Speaks

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He exposed one of the biggest tech giants in Silicon Valley.

He risked his career to show you censorship of Christians, conservatives, and pro-life groups.

And now — he’s speaking out.

Meet Eric Cochran.  He’s a pro-life activist and a twenty-five year old software engineer in San Francisco.

Last night Eric went on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Show to share Pinterest’s censorship tactics with the world.  Now, he’s sharing his story with Veritas and he’s inspiring more like him to come forward.

“You can do anything.  Willpower is indomitable.  You take that first step then people have your back.  Come to Project Veritas for sure . . . the tech companies can’t fight us all.” 

If you would like support this courageous young man, you can contribute to his GoFundMe Account HERE.

If you work on the inside of tech, education, media or government — you can reach out to Project Veritas HERE.

Be Brave!

RELATED ARTICLE: Texas Town Outlaws Abortion, Declares Sanctuary City for the Unborn

Cuba Implements Food Rationing as Its Economy Enters Crisis Mode

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While it is fashionable to talk about Venezuela and its notorious shortage of basic goods such as toilet paper, flour, and milk, Cuba is now implementing a rationing program to combat its very own shortages of basic goods. A CBC report indicates this program would cover basic items such as chicken, eggs, rice, beans, and soap.

What has caused these shortages has been a subject of debate. Cuban Minister of Commerce Betsy Diaz Velazquez blames the Trump administration’s stiffening of the trade embargo with the island nation. Others contend that decreasing aid from Venezuela has contributed to Cuba’s newly emerging rationing dilemma. Over the past few years, Venezuela has provided Cuba with subsidized fuel and other forms of aid in order to keep its basic infrastructure intact.

Although these explanations do have validity and will be touched upon later, there is another factor that is not being considered. The lowest common denominator in the Cuban economy during the past five decades is excessive government control.

When Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1959, the Cuban state maintained an iron grip on the economy. For decades, the country has been a communist garrison state with very little respect for property rights and civil liberties such as free speech. More than 140,000 Cubans perished under the Castro regime, according to certain estimates, while millions of Cubans fled to the United States to start a new life.

During this timespan, economic stability was never really an option in Cuba. Because of the economic dislocations caused by state control of many industries, the government has had to provide citizens with Libretas de Abastecimiento (supply booklets) to ration out basic goods like rice, sugar, and matches. This system was established in 1962 in response to the economic sanctions the American government placed on Cuba which caused shortages of food, medicines, and supplies. From a free-market perspective, these sanctions should be condemned. They not only infringe on the rights of Americans who wish to do commerce and travel to Cuba, but they also do very little to topple tyrannical regimes.

But in the case of Cuba’s economic problems, there is a reason to believe they go beyond America’s embargo on the country. Jose Alvarez of the University of Florida does initially concede that “Cuba was forced to establish a rationing system for basic food and industrial products. This has brought serious limitations to consumers and their choice availability” after the initial blockade by the U.S. government.

However, Alvarez adds that solely pinning the blame on sanctions is misguided:

To blame US economic sanctions for the existence of a rationing system of basic food products is not a very sound argument to justify Cuba’s socialist system. It is an admission that Cubans cannot even produce what grows very easily on Cuban soil. If one lists the food products that have been rationed since 1962, it becomes evident that almost all of them were in abundance before the 1959 revolution and were produced domestically.

Alvarez also notes that even with the Soviet Union effectively serving as Cuba’s sugar daddy, the country still had to ration goods and services:

It is interesting to recall that, when the Soviet bloc was subsidizing the Cuban economy to the tune of five billion dollars per year, food was still rationed in Cuba.

U.S. sanctions on Cuba have generally allowed exemptions for humanitarian aid and basic products. The Trade Sanction Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 permitted the sale of certain foods and medicine, albeit to a limited extent. Even with sanctions in place, Cubans have found ways to bring goods to the market, but the Cuban state has remained an obstacle.

This was most clear during Cuba’s Special Period when the country could no longer rely on Soviet Union aid to prop it up. The country began to open up its markets to a limited degree by trading with other countries and making lukewarm attempts towards privatization. However, the government still stood in the way of allowing Cuba to have a functioning market, which Alvarez also points out:

Granted, some Cubans have been unable to consume a wide variety of food products because of the high prices under the rationing system, but there have been periods in which the abundance of several products have demonstrated the feasibility of returning to a stable and ample food supply. Examples include the proliferation of FrutiCuba (a chain of government stores) which was devoted exclusively to selling fruits and vegetables in the mid-1960s, free farmers’ markets in the 1980s, the free agricultural markets after 1994, and the new food outlets. These testify to the ability of Cuban farmers to produce abundant food supplies despite US economic sanctions, that could do away with the food rationing system.

The embargo on Cuba only affects current trade relations with America and the island nation. Cuba can still trade with other countries to acquire some of the rationed products. Indeed, Cuba does have a track record of not making debt payments. And when it’s no longer receiving aid from Moscow or Caracas, Cuba’s economic flaws stick out like a sore thumb, which generally makes it an unattractive trading partner.

Cuba’s recent political behavior indicates that the country’s leadership still does not get basic economics. In the midst of Hurricanes Gustave and Ike in 2008, the Cuban government responded with price controls. On top of the damage that the hurricanes dealt with Cuba, these price controls created even larger shortages than expected according to Reuters.

But Cuba’s price control forays did not end there. According to Agencia EFE, Cuba enacted price controls in May 2016 with the aim of increasing the stockpile and sale of highly demanded agricultural products.

Food staples such as plantains, beans, and mangos were covered under these price ceilings. Basic economics demonstrates that price controls cause shortages. When a price ceiling below the market rate is imposed, artificial demand ensues. In turn, suppliers, who look at the government-imposed price, act accordingly by not supplying as many goods to the market, which often causes shortages.Based on its most recent actions, it’s clear that price controls are in the Cuban state’s toolbox of economic tricks and likely won’t be going away anytime soon. The Cuban people will continue to suffer as a result.

The Cuban’s regime despotism is well-documented and merits private condemnation. However, this does not mean that top-down regime change nor sanctions are the best means of getting Cuba on the path towards markets.

Although Cuba’s economic ills are largely self-inflicted, U.S. sanctions aren’t making things better. There are some caveats to consider. Broad-based sanctions like the ones the U.S. has imposed on Cuba provide the regime political cover. They can now scapegoat the U.S. government for all of its problems. Ryan McMaken notes in an article dealing with Venezuela, that non-interventionism, both in terms of military action and economic sanctions, is the best approach to take for enhancing freedom. The same logic applies to Cuba. More meddling will embolden radicals within the regime and give them another boogieman to scapegoat.

When sanctions are taken out of the equation, it becomes clear to the populace and reform-minded figures within the government that their economic malaise is home-brewed. Even China, which featured one of the most heinous cases of democide under Communism, made a decent transition to a nominally capitalist economy in the 1980s under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. However, this would have never started if it wasn’t for Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, which normalized trade and diplomatic relations between the two nations.

America can have a role to play in Cuba’s economic revival, but it will do so by removing sanctions. This will remove any doubt as to whether it’s the U.S.’s punitive economic policies that are making the island nation more impoverished. Getting rid of this confounding variable is key for the country to move forward. More punitive measures, like the “highest level” sanctions that Trump promised to impose on Cuba in April, will reduce the influence of reform-minded individuals within the regime. It’s simply too easy for demagogic leaders to turn to radicals within a government who are eager to scapegoat foreign countries and stoke up the nationalistic sentiment against America.

However, the ball is still in Cuba’s court. After more than 50 years of embracing socialist governance, Cuba will have to learn that it needs to stick to the basic economic principles if it wants to break free from its long-standing cycle of poverty.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Mises Institute.

COLUMN BY

José Niño

José Niño is a Venezuelan-American freelance writer.

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RELATED ARTICLE: Mass Homelessness Exposes California’s Political Dysfunction

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

VIDEO: Walls Work – and We Can Prove It!

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I recently returned from our trip to Israel to see first-hand what walls can do to keep a country safe from war, invasion and worse.

What I saw was amazing.

Our Israeli hosts took us on a tour of their wall in the south that separates the Gaza Strip from Israel – a wall that has cut terrorists from crossing the border to kill Israeli farmers, families, and government officials by an astounding 99.9%.

I’ve posted a short video on our YouTube channel of our visit to the Gaza Wall – the kind of wall we need on our own border with Mexico to get our illegal immigration crisis under control.

As you may know, Hamas terrorists who control Gaza have been financed and armed by the radical Imams who run Iran – the same Imams who chant “Death to America” as a national motto.

In the north, my team and I went right up to Israel’s border with Lebanon where Hezbollah – also financed by Iran – has launched attacks and rockets into Israel’s interior. Thanks to Israel’s comprehensive border security systems, including the highly effective Iron Dome, these attacks that have been reduced to nearly zero.

Nevertheless, Hezbollah keeps digging attack tunnels under the border and Israel keeps finding and destroying these subterranean roadways into northern Israel communities. Through the direction of Iran, Hezbollah has exported their tunnel technology into Mexico and work with the drug cartels to tunnel into the United States!

This is not acceptable!

And now that the international community led by President Donald Trump has officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved our Embassy there, walls and strict control of border crossing points has shut down efforts by homicide bombers from inflicting terror on civilian populations.

WARNING: The dangers of ‘negative identification’ and the tyranny of blaming others for what you are doing

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I came across a very insightful clip of Jamie Glazov speaking about “negative identification.” Please watch:

I found this clip profound in that it explains the sadistic nature we are seeing played out today globally. Rape, incest, sodomy, hate, lies, torture and murder are headline news every day.

In my column Democratic Party Candidates for President Are Promoting the Seven Deadly Sins I noted:

As the Democratic field of candidates for president expands we are beginning to see what policies they are promoting. As we read their public statements of things that they promise they will do if elected it brought to mind that they fit into neat categories. These categories are the the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Seven Deadly Sins are: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Laziness, Wrath, Envy and Pride. Each of these can lead to a state of self negative identification.

Another outcome of those who embrace one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins is “projection.’ Projection is, “a form of defense in which unwanted feelings are displaced onto another person, where they then appear as a threat from the external world. A common form of projection occurs when an individual, threatened by his own angry feelings, accuses another of harbouring hostile thoughts.”

What we are seeing is words thrown about at the highest level of our government and lowest parts of our street culture that blame others for what one actually does. Whites calling other whites “supremacist”, blacks calling other black “Uncle Tom” because they hold conservative political views and socialists calling others Nazis, when in fact the Nazis were socialists.

As I have written these Seven Deadly Sins have now become public policy, at least in one political party in the United States. Here’s the list:

  • Lust – to have an intense desire or need. Each of the candidates for president has a lust for power over the masses. This lust for power (big government) is demonstrated by the turn of Democrats toward “Democratic Socialism.” In a 1989 television interview Senator Bernie Sanders described himself as a “socialist.” As the author of ‘From a “Race of Masters” to a “Master Race”: 1948 to 1848‘ A.E. Samaan wrote “Democratic Socialism devolves into totalitarian Socialism and eventually into full on Communism as people resist statism.”
  • Gluttony – excess in eating and drinking. Democrats work hard to portray the Republican Party, and President Trump, who support the free market system as gluttony. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said in 2015, “Let me say a word about that. You are looking at a candidate who does not represent the agenda of corporate America. Who does not represent the agenda of the billionaire class.” According to Celebrity Net Worth, as of 2017, Sanders is worth an estimated $2 million. According to Business Insider, “Sanders reportedly owns three homes, including a four-bedroom house in Chittenden County, Vermont, that he bought with his wife, Jane, for $405,000 in 2009.” Senator Sanders is considered one of the poorest of those running for president. For example, according to News Week Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, “O’Rourke had a net worth of about $9 million in 2015…O’Rourke also married into wealth. The woman he married in 2005, Amy Hoover Sanders, is the daughter of real estate tycoon William Sanders, whom The New York Times called a billionaire, but his net worth was closer to $500 million, Forbes estimated in November [2018].”
  • Greed – excessive or reprehensible passion in acquiring money or material things. See Gluttony.
  • Laziness – disinclined to activity or exertion: not energetic or vigorous. Democrats support two policies that promote laziness. The first is the $15 minimum wage ($15 Now). Raising the minimum wage without merit promotes laziness. Why work harder when a Democratic Party controlled government is going to raise every ones hourly salary anyway? The second is promising a job to everyone. Senator Cory Booker, D-N.J., released a plan that would create a pilot job guarantee programs in 15 communities where unemployment is particularly high. NPR reports, “Proposals like a job guarantee, Medicare for all and tuition-free college have moved from the policy fringe on the left toward the mainstream in the Democratic Party, embraced by some of those interested in challenging Trump as the party tries to give voters a clear, memorable outline of what Democrats stand for.” Getting something for nothing is the definition of laziness.
  • Wrath – strong vengeful anger or indignation. Anger, indignation and hate permeates the Democratic candidates. They cannot fathom that there are Americans who voted to make Donald J. Trump president and will do so again in 2020. Timothy P. Carney in a Washington Examiner column titled “Can Democrats love the voters Hillary hated?” wrote, “Democrats took over the House of Representatives in part by picking up dozens of seats in upper-middle-class suburban districts. The new bragging point for Democrats is that they are the party of the highly educated and the successful. It allows for the self-serving explanation that people who know the real deal vote Democratic, and only the clueless bitter clingers vote Republican.” The use of terms like racist, bigoted, hateful, misogynistic, Islamophobic and homophobic against those who support President Trump are key indicators of how wrathful Democrats and their supporters have become. What is also on the rise is the wrath of the Democratic Party against Jews. Anti-Semitism is now their official policy.
  • Envy – painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage. Democrats hate success (see Gluttony, Greed and Wrath). Democratic candidates for president are by all definitions successful people. However, they envy those who are as or more successful than they are. They want to tax those with wealth at a rate of 70%. It is most interesting that Democrats are fully embraced by a litany of Hollywood millionaires, corporate billionaires (CEOs of Facebook, Google, Twitter) and multi-millionaire sports and media personalities.
  • Pride – quality or state of being proud – inordinate self esteem. Democrats embrace the term “pride” but pride in what exactly? Are they proud to be an American? Do they take pride in making America, and thereby Americans, great? Their stated policies would show that they hate America. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder stated on MSNBC, “I hear these things about ‘let’s make America great again’ and I think to myself, exactly ‘when did you think America was great’?” Another example of pride is former President Barack Obama referring to himself a record-breaking 392 times in his April, 2019 Berlin speech. Democratic pride in deed and words.

When some say that the November 2020 Presidential Election is about the soul of this nation, they are spot on.