Stop It, America. Politicians Can Not Make Our Lives Better

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Here’s the deal, if you are looking to this president, or you were looking to the past president, or you are looking to a future president to make your life better you’re on a fool’s errand. It was the furthest thing from the minds of the Founders and Framers that any individual should have such power and sway.

If you are looking to Congress — this Congress or a past Congress or a future Congress — to make your life better you’re on a fool’s errand. It was maybe the second furthest thing from the minds of the Founders and Framers that any part of the federal government could so greatly impact your life.

There is very little government can do to make your life better. There are quite a few things government can do to make your life worse. (See: All of history.) Most of your problems in life are going to be up to you to solve, to improve or at least to deal with.

For instance, if you want to make more money you’re going to either have to work harder and/or longer, or get training or education to get a better paying job. And if you keep making the same decisions you’ve made all along, and you’re 35 and stuck working at Walmart at minimum wage, there’s nothing the government can or should do for you. You need to change your choices to change your future. If the government steps in to improve your future for you, it inevitably begins a cascade of events that makes many lives worse, including yours eventually.

When governments try to solve poverty by giving poor people a little more money each month, they actually end up keeping them subsistent on government largesse and locked in a hopeless cycle. This has been demonstrated for 50 years now. And the government forcibly takes other people’s money to do it; lose-lose.

The best overall situation is when we can all act freely; free people exchanging goods and services for money freely in markets that are both free and competitive. That simple, relational structure has lifted, literally, billions out of poverty in the past 40 years. Government’s primary role was to stay out of the way, with a small role in making sure there were no monopolies and there were courts to settle contractual disputes.

This is well-documented through our history, but it is not well-known among our population. Schools, universities and the media are the primary culprits in purveying this ignorance. There may be a role for a temporary safety net, but because politicians are politicians it always grows, such as what we have now with enormous entitlements and transfer payments.

But promising more giveaways often garners votes. Some would say buys votes.

So naturally, we have a lot of politicians saying that they can, and will, make things more fair for you, make things better for you and give you this, that and everything you want. Just vote for them. Well not to burst your bubble but there’s nothing they can give you except that they take it from someone else, through taxes now or taxes later to pay off deficit spending now. And eventually they’ll be taking it from you, too, unless you stay at the bottom in poverty, in which case the government will in due time run out of other peoples’ money and then you are lost, too. More lose-lose.

As Margaret Thatcher said: “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

The better way, the only proven way, is the collective intelligence of hundreds of millions of Americans, and even billions of people around the world. This is almost infinitely greater than any group of central-planning politicians. (See Russia’s five-year plans, East Germany’s junk new cars, Maoist China’s everything, Venezuela’s oil.)

So when you hear all these politicians promising a plan for this and a plan for that, trillions here and trillions there, remember that the Great Society government plan to end poverty starting in the late 1960s under President Lyndon Johnson resulted in the transfer of $22 trillion from working Americans to poor Americans. It was not charity. It was government force, benefitting politicians along the way, but no one else. The result was that as of today, there is virtually no change in the poverty rate. More welfare programs will have the same net effect until all of the money is gone.

No politician is going to improve your life. That is going to be up to you and your choices. The American dream does not come from government; it relies on a constrained government. It then comes via each American exercising their individual God-given natural rights in liberty.

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

September 17th Israeli Election: Will the Right snatch defeat from the jaws of victory…again?

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The continued existence of the Left as a viable force in Israeli politics, despite the manifest failure of its political credo, is the gravest indictment of the Israeli Right.

For by… faith more firm in their unhallowed principles, the bad have fairly earned a victory over the weak, the vacillating, inconsistent good. – William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850).

Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the upcoming September 17 elections is the fact that they are taking place at all—after the “ Right” managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of almost certain victory . But no less astounding is the fact that the “Left” actually has plausible chance of winning them!

(Of course, in the Israeli political context, the Left- Right rift is not along the usual welfare state vs free market divide in the socio-economic sphere; but more along the dove-hawk split on security and foreign policy, particularly with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—with the former advocating Palestinian statehood and far-reaching territorial concessions by Israel, and the latter opposing them.)

Lack of intellectual depth and daring

Indeed, there can be no greater indictment of the political incompetence and impotence of the “Right” than fact that the Left still remains a viable force in Israeli politics. After all, not only has their entire political credo been proven, beyond shadow of reasonable doubt, to be a disastrous blunder that has wrought death and devastation on Jew and Arab alike, but the Right has been totally vindicated in warning of the calamitous consequences that the “Left’s” patently ill-founded folly would precipitate.

Perhaps more than anything, its failure to vanquish the “Left” reflects the lack of intellectual depth of the Right—and even more so, a lack of intellectual daring.

It is true that Israel has progressed and developed almost beyond recognition under Likud-led coalitions, which had held power the for first two decades of this century—except for the five years of the brief Ehud Barak incumbency and the slightly longer one of Ehud Olmert. In terms of its physical parameters, its architecture, its infrastructure, in terms of its economic stature, its cultural achievements, its diplomatic relations and its military prowess, it is almost unrecognizable from what it was in the last decade of the preceding century.

Yet despite all of this, the “Right” has not been able to inflict strategic defeat on its failed political rivals on the “Left”. In this regard, it is important to note that the point is not merely to defeat the “Left” at the polls but to remove any thought of implementation of its perilous prescription from the political discourse.

Inexplicable ideological capitulation

Indeed, in the wake of Oslo and up until recent years, the “Right” focused its energies (rightly) in condemning the dangerous defects of the concessionary policy of political appeasement and territorial withdrawal that the “Left” had embarked upon—without ever offering an actionable prescription of its own.

As a result, it found itself unable to respond effectively to the pointed and pertinent question from its adversaries on the “Left”: “So what’s your alternative?”

With no comprehensive, countervailing policy paradigm to promote or defend, the “Right” found itself gradually forced to give way under the weight of this irksome question, and to adopt increasing portions of the failed formula it had once rejected.

This process culminated in 2009 at Bar Ilan University, when Palestinian statehood was officially—albeit under duress—embraced.

Having crossed the ideological Rubicon into the “Land of the Left,” the “Right” found itself in what, for it, was largely uncharted territory.

This ideological capitulation by the “Right” is totally inexplicable—for it came about after all its censure of the “Left’s” wildly reckless doctrine had proven totally justified.

After all, by 2009, the jury was no longer out—or at least, should not have been. None of the promises of sweeping benefits, pledged by the architects of the land-for-peace initiative, launched by the “Left” over a decade and a half previously, had been fulfilled; while all the perils, warned of by its opponents on the “Right”, had indeed materialized.

Lebanonization or Balkanization?

Unwilling, or unable, to base its own strategic paradigm on an independent analysis of Israel’s strategic imperatives and deriving a consequent comprehensive policy prescription from that analysis, the “Right” took the “Left’s”  paradigm as a conceptual point of departure and attempted to formulate its alternative as a negation thereof.

The result was an unfortunate and unconvincing batch of proposals that were easily exposed to be either a formula for:

(a) The Lebanonization of Israeli society (by annexation of all of Judea-Samaria, together with is Arab residents remaining part of Israeli society); or

(b) The Balkanization of Judea-Samaria (by partial annexation—with the overwhelming bulk of the Arab population left encapsulated in disconnected, quasi-autonomous enclaves, whose orderly administration would be all but impossible).

Indeed, any dispassionate assessment of Israel’s minimal strategic needs will reveal that, to endure as the nation-state of the Jewish people, it must adequately address at least two imperatives—the geographic imperative and the demographic imperative.

This is almost a self-evident truism since if it does not, it will either be untenable geographically, or demographically—or both.

The former precludes any withdrawals west of the Jordan River, significant enough to facilitate a self-governing Palestinian entity; while the latter precludes the inclusion of a large, recalcitrant Arab minority within the permanent population of Israel—whether fully enfranchised or not.

For more details of the perils of full and partial annexation—see here and here respectively.

Dangerous & detrimental symmetry

Clearly then, the geographic imperative rules out the “Left”-wing prescription for a Palestinian state; while the demographic imperative rules out the alternatives usually proffered by the “Right”—for full or partial annexation of Judea-Samaria together with the Arab population resident therein.

Thus, while the “Left” is prepared to imperil Israel geographically to preserve it demographically; the Right is prepared to imperil it demographically to preserve it geographically.

It has been the Right’s inability to eliminate this perceived vulnerability to the charge of promoting a policy that exposes Israel to no less a peril than the concessionary policy of the “Left”, which has breathed life into what should have been, by any rationale criterion, the long lifeless shell of its political adversaries.

For, unless it breaks away from unlikely proposals that entail “domesticating” an addition to Israel’s permanent population of around two million hostile and recalcitrant non-Jewish inhabitants, drenched with decades of incandescent Judeocidal hatred, the Right will not be able to dispel claims of a detrimental symmetry between the dangers entailed in its policy prescriptions and those of the “Left’s”.

For that, it is not enough to point out the flaws, however fatal, of the “Left”.  It must present the public with a plausible and persuasive alternative that does not merely replace a geographic peril with a demographic one.

Until it does that, the “Left”, in defiance of all rationality and reality, will remain a viable political force, with a tangible chance of retaking the reins of power. That is the gravest indictment of the political “Right” in Israel.

Epilogue

Of course, one need not be endowed with exceptional powers of deductive analysis to reach the inescapable conclusion that the only non-kinetic policy that can effectively address Israel’s twin imperatives of geography and demography—in order for it to survive as the nation-state of the Jewish people—is that of a large-scale initiative for incentivized emigration of the non-belligerent Palestinian population to third party countries.

Happily, the necessity of such a policy seems to dawning on increasing sectors of the political “Right” in Israel—see here, here, here, and here – although, regrettably, it is doubtful whether its promotion will play a significant part in the upcoming elections.

(Just how the Right should go about advancing this crucially important policy—and the public discourse on it—in an upcoming column.)

Sadly, until September 17, there is little to do in this regard but to wait and see whether, once again, the “Right” will snatch defeat from what should be, without a shadow of doubt, the jaws of certain victory.

© All rights reserved.

U.S. Road To Hell Is Paved With Gun-Grabbing Intentions by Francis Marion

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America’s largest retailer, Walmart, is the next to succumb to the anti-gun movement following the high-profile shootings over the past few weeks.

Walmart has decided to remove all “handgun” and “short barreled rifle” ammunition from their shelves in order to focus their sales on ammunition more appropriate for hunting purposes. This should not be a surprise considering the recent push to appease voters in the Democrat primary battleground, along with the relentlessly anti-gun focused media coverage of these killings.

The firearms industry will not suffer as a result of Walmart’s decision. There are plenty of available outlets for purchasing ammunition. The greatest concern for many 2nd Amendment supporters is the level of ignorance in anti-gun circles, from retail stores to the media to politicians.

First and foremost, America’s favorite rifle platform is a highly modular device with hundreds of variations, configurations, and caliber options. So what does Walmart mean by “pistol and short barreled rifle ammunition?”

The AR-15 rifle which is traditionally chambered in 5.56 NATO or 223 Remington rounds has been extended well beyond the ammunition that had been the standard cartridge of the U.S. military and her allies for the past 60 years. In the past 20 years, the AR-15 has been modified to accept more than 50 additional calibers to include popular hunting and defensive pistol cartridges, not to mention the several dozen calibers associated with the larger cousin of the AR-15, the AR-10.

Lastly, hunting cartridges far exceed the performance of small arms cartridges like the 5.56 nato round. For example, one of the most popular hunting calibers, the 30-06, saw military service for seven decades and is still in common use today. The 30-06 cartridge has an effective range double that of most modern small arms cartridges.

All of this means that Walmart’s decision, along with virtually every political proposal, doesn’t truly impact anything more than to put on display the dangerous level of ignorance on the subject.

So where do we go from here?

It is incumbent upon 2nd Amendment supporters to educate those who do not understand the finer points of the gun debate, from the gun terms to the history and meaning of the 2nd Amendment.

We have begun our descent down the slippery slope of citizen disarmament and an infringement on our basic natural rights outlined within our Constitution. As virtue-signaling policies fail to address the greater issues in this country that lead to mass shootings, the woke left will take advantage of the next tragedy to try to grab the next mile of Americans’ rights.

ABOUT FRANCIS MARION

Francis Marion is a nine-year veteran of the U.S. Army, as an Infantryman and Airborne volunteer. He led a squad fighting in the Iraqi and Afghan campaigns. He was wounded during a deployment to Paktika Province in Afghanistan and medically retired in 2016. He is currently transitioning into a medical career while working as a small arms repairmen, firearms instructor and advisor to security professionals.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Why the Right to Bear Arms Is an Individual Right

Dumb Arguments About Gun Control

To Promote Gun Control, AOC Just Accused Dan Crenshaw’s Friends of Being Violent Domestic Abusers

Dear Walmart, It’s Time We Start Seeing Other People

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

Video Special Report — Bishop Busted on Secret Audio Tapes

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Buffalo bishop remains defiant.

TRANSCRIPT

The beleaguered bishop of Buffalo, Richard Malone, is now facing furious calls for his resignation.

The calls are reaching fever pitch following the release of secret audio recordings revealing that Malone himself thinks he will not be able to survive as bishop much longer.

The tapes were recorded secretly by Malone’s own personal secretary, Fr. Ryszard Biernat, during a conversation between the two men.

In that conversation, Malone confesses that his own staff is saying it’s time to go and that he does not think he can survive this latest scandal.

Despite what he said in the secret recordings, Malone continued in what critics call his arrogance, holding a press conference where he declared he is staying.

The specific scandal is tied directly to Christ the King Seminary in Buffalo and involves yet more charges of homosexual harassment of seminarians — and the reappointment by Malone of accused priests.

Malone has tried unsuccessfully for a year to keep the lid on the burgeoning scandal that has been decades in the making.

His repeated attempts to cover up, however, have blown up in his face, owing to a series of whistleblower disclosures made to local Buffalo media.

It got so bad that CBS News’ 60 Minutes aired a segment last October interviewing whistleblower Siobhan O’Connor, who was Malone’s private secretary and who had released hundreds of pages of internal documents proving Malone was covering up abusers.

It was less than a month after the 60 Minutes segment that Church Militant caught up with Malone in the Detroit airport asking him about his reinstatement of a three-times accused homopredator priest.

Malone, traveling back from the national conference of bishops meeting in Baltimore was accompanied by his spokeswoman, Kathy Spangler, who attempted to run interference for the bishop and physically block our access.

Spangler is key here because Malone brought her on staff last year specifically for damage control.

She is part of Malone’s inner circle and reports are she too was saying resignation was imminent.

As the scandals erupted last year, Malone stood defiant, refusing calls back then for him to step down.

The latest case involves the striking story of Fr. Jeffrey Nowak, who is alleged to have broken the seal of confession and made sexual propositions to second-year seminarian Matthew Bojanowski.

Bojanowski went to Fr. Biernat, Malone’s secretary, and told him everything about Nowak’s harassment.

Father Biernat then secretly recorded meetings with Malone where the case of Fr. Nowak was discussed.

In an Aug. 2 damage control meeting with his inner circle, Malone comes straight out with his deep concerns about Fr. Nowak.

Yet, after being caught on tape freely admitting he fully comprehends the issue of Nowak’s homopredation of Bojanowski, Malone plotted a course to keep everything covered up.

In a disturbing turn of events, Buffalo insiders tell us that Malone is trying to cover for Nowak because Nowak has dirt on Malone and is using it as blackmail against him.

While details have been relayed to us here at Church Militant, we have not yet been able to confirm those, so we will hold off on reporting any specifics. But that is at least the talk folding into this scandal.

In either case, Malone was keeping details of Nowak under wraps and even issued a midnight statement last night to try and cover his tracks.

What’s clear is that Malone’s history in Buffalo, where he inherited a polluted seminary which was part of the South American gay seminarian pipeline, a story Church Militant broke last summer, has been nothing less than abominable.

All sources in Buffalo report that it’s no longer a question of if, but when, the lying, cheating Malone will have to step down.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Buffalo Abuse Cover-Up Allegations: Will ‘Vos Estis’ Be Applied?

Homosexuality and Catholic Decline

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

Why an Arab-Israeli Peace may be Impossible

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According to an article on www.aljazeera.net (Arabic version) of 28 July 2019, the Jordanian “artists union” demanded that all Jordanian actors and technicians working on a certain film set in the Petra region should withdraw from the project–even though the producer of the film is himself, an Arab.

The reason given for pulling all the Jordanian actors and technicians out of the film project was the claim by the union that “it falsified the history of the Levant region, especially Petra and southern Jordan, and was a security threat to Petra and southern Jordan.”

The producer, himself an Arab, argued that the film is based on historical facts and it will be filmed as the script is written because it will not be shown in the Arab world, but in America.  Yet, the Jordanian actors, and the union, have all stuck to their guns in rejecting this film because of the belief that it “gives the Jews rights in the Petra region.”

So, what is the storyline of this script that so offends Jordanian sensibilities?

According to the producer, the script, though based on historical facts, was drawn from a “fictional story” published by the “Arab Institute for Studies” in Beirut, and was well-known in Jordan’s capital ‘Amman a while back.  The story is about a young Jordanian boy who discovered a slab of stone with ancient Hebrew writing on it.  He then turns the stone over to the Jordanian department of antiquities.  The plot then revolves around the Department of Antiquities trying to confront the criminal gangs that trade in stolen antiquities, while also trying to fend off the Israeli Mossad trying to intervene in the matter.

Looks like a good patriotic script for Jordan, but what the naysayers are all objecting to is the very idea of an ancient Hebrew inscription even existing in Jordan.

In actual fact, such an inscription on a stone slab stele was found in that region in the 1860s.  It is known as the Mesha stone.  The Moabite king Mesha (Moabite for “Moses”) had this stele inscribed and erected (as a sort of ancient “Facebook page”) complaining about their god Khamosh deserting them and allowing “Omri,” the king of Israel (northern ten tribes) and his son to achieve hegemony over them for forty years, and then Khamosh giving king Mesha the strength to win back lost territories and then some.  This stele was written sometime in the 9th century B.C., and the basic facts are confirmed in 2nd Kings 3:4-8.

Most scholars of North West Semitic languages (Hebrew, Amorite, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Phoenician, Moabite, and Edomite) believe that the Moabites were illiterate and that the Moabite king had to hire an Israelite or Jewish scribe to inscribe the stele.  So, in other words, the famous Mesha Stele is an historical example of an ancient Hebrew inscription, written by a Jew, or an Israelite (not the same thing), discovered in southern Jordan and which the Jordanian government itself is demanding its return to Jordan from France (where it is currently on display in the Louvre in Paris).

And, yet, we now see Jordanians protecting a film that depicts exactly that sort of thing and in a fictional story no less!

In a possibly related story, on 03 August, the Saudi-owned al-arabiyya TV channel reported that Jordan has issued a prohibition against all Israelis from praying at the tomb of Aaron which is located in that same general area of southern Jordan.

ANALYSIS:

What these stories tell us is that there is so much hatred in Jordan towards Israel in particular and Jews in general that the Jordanians (most of whom are actually Palestinians) deny the existence of the historical fact of Jews and Israelites having ever passed through Jordan during all the centuries that they lived in the region.  In other words, their current belief system demands the erasure of all history that predates Islam in the region.

And this goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian issue.  Arab propagandists have long been trying to rewrite the history of the Levant to erase any evidence of Jewish and/or Israelite presence in the region–ever.  This is in spite of the fact that their own Qur’an, as well as early Arabic histories, make countless references to the bani Israel and repeat many of the Old Testament stories almost verbatim.

This hatred-generated denial of history makes it impossible for Jordanian Palestinians, and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to ever accept the state of Modern Israel as an entity that deserves to continue to exist.

The only possible solution to this impasse would be a Western supported and managed program (using radio, TV, and the internet) to “force feed” the history of the region to the region’s Arab and Palestinian citizens until they come to accept the reality of the historicity of the Jewish and Israelite presence in what is now Israel and the West Bank, and the influences these ancient Jewish and Israelite communities had on their neighboring cultures.

The “D” in Democrat stands for “Delusional”

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A friend sent me the following in an email:

When one tries to “reason” with a lefty democrat, remember you are dealing with a person that believes that a man can be a woman and a woman can be a man and that such a delusion should be encouraged, not discouraged.  Discouragement of the delusion is considered immoral and bigoted. Thus our society has unnecessary dilemmas concerning bathrooms,  athletic competition at all levels, and “pronoun” controversies subjecting ourselves to all manner of laws, rules, regulation and more needless government control.

Here is a suggestion to break the left’s ridiculous gender ideology and denial of biological reality.  President Trump should make a declaration that he is identifying as a woman.  The left will have to admit the absurdity of their gender ideology or accept and celebrate “Donna Trump” as the first woman President, thus beating Hillary, Liz Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand to the glorious goal of one of their “female firsts”.  Furthermore, if he remains married to Melania he will also be the first gay president and the first lesbian president. He will also be the first lesbian president married to an immigrant! What a most glorious event for the democrats to celebrate.

This, in a nut shell, explains just one of the many delusions that have become part of the Democratic Party’s platform. Ask any Democrat, and even some Republicans, about “gender identity” and you will get as many different answers as their are gender pronoun choices on Facebook.

Why there’s even going to be the second annual International Gender Pronoun Day on October 16, 2019. International Gender Pronoun Day, “seeks to make respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns commonplace.”

One can lose their job, be arrested and even be fined up to $250,000 for addressing someone by the wrong gender pronoun.

Science is clear, there are two sexes XX (female) and XY (male). There is no gay gene.

But science only counts when Democrats want it to count, like in climate change.

The Delusion of Gender Politics

I recently wrote about identity politics. Identity politics began with Black feminists in 1977 as a socialist movement to further the “destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy.”

Gender politics has the same goals but adds to it the destruction of scriptural beliefs of the three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Here are quotes from the Old Testament, New Testament and Qur’an on homosexuality:

  • Genesis 19:4-7 Before they could lie down, all the men of Sodom and its outskirts, both young and old, surrounded the house. They called out to Lot and asked, “Where are the men who came to visit you tonight? Bring them out to us so we can have sex with them!” Lot went outside to them, shut the door behind him, and said, “I urge you, my brothers, don’t do such a wicked thing.”
  • Leviticus 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
  • Amir ul-Mu’minīn ‘Ali (a.s.) has said: “Sodomy is a Greater Sin and carries punishment when a man mounts upon another man but does not penetrate. If he penetrates, it is kufr”.

Destroy God and replace Him with government is the ultimate goal. One of the minority groups (less than 4%) that want to destroy every culture and its religious foundation are gays. They do it in the name of “equal rights.” They use words such as “pride.”

Equal rights, pride and gender pronouns are oxymoronic.

The LGBTQ community wants equal rights for them but not for you. The LGBTQ and their allies (i.e. Antifa) protest against straight pride parades being held in cities like Boston. The LGBTQ community wants you to guess what is their preferred pronoun and if you get it wrong they want to punish you.

Each of these oxymorons violates the U.S. Constitution.

Destroy the U.S. Constitution bit-by-bit and you will eventually destroy America. Once this is done you can then fundamentally transform the culture as you wish.

Making personal pronouns commonplace requires that the idea of heterosexuality be erased.

Just as identity politics has destroyed the nuclear family (especially in the black community) so to does gender politics destroy the traditional family, defined as marriage between one man and one woman.

Destruction of the traditional family means that the new patriarchy is government.

Conclusion

The primary outcome of this socialist/LGBTQ identity politics is the destruction of the nuclear family.

Delusional right? But happening.

© All rights reserved.

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Government Shouldn’t Force Teachers to Use Transgender Pronouns

No ‘gay gene’: Massive study homes in on genetic basis of human sexuality – Nature: International Journal of Science

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Ruling in Minnesota Wedding Videographers’ Case Properly Prioritizes First Amendment Rights

Did Jefferson Really Edit Out the Miracles from his Bible?

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Once in a while, the myth that Thomas Jefferson edited down the Bible in order to remove the miraculous, resurfaces. He supposedly did this because he was essentially an unbeliever who thought that religion had no place in the public square.

A couple of years ago, I teamed up with a pastor from Jefferson’s home town of Charlottesville, Virginia, Dr. Mark Beliles, to write a book on the faith of our third president. The book is Doubting Thomas: The Religious Life and Legacy of Thomas Jefferson (Morgan James, 2014).

There are two main points to our book.

  1. Whatever serious doubts he may have privately held later in life, Jefferson was not a lifelong skeptic. In fact, when he was most productive and helpful to the country, he was from all outward appearances a practicing Christian. This would include when he wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom (1777, passed in 1786), which says that because of the example of the “holy author of our religion” (Jesus), people should be free to believe or disbelieve.
  2. Regardless of whatever theological unorthodoxy he held (later in life), he did not believe in the separation of God and government—which is the way the ACLU and other secularists try to portray him. For example, on a regular basis, when he was president, Jefferson attended the Christian worship services held at the U.S. Capitol building—services he approved of, which continued long after he was president.

As president, Jefferson took time one night in 1804 to cull through the sayings of Jesus as found in the four Gospels. Why did he do this?

The title he himself put on this unpublished work gives us a clue: The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted From the Account of His Life and Doctrines as Given by Matthew, Mark, Luke & John; Being an Abridgement of the New Testament for the Use of the Indians Unembarrassed with Matters of Fact or Faith Beyond the Level of Their Comprehensions.

This abridgment, clearly intended for the Indians, was not a biography of Jesus, only His “philosophy” as the title states. As such it left out most material found in the Gospels that did not fit the goal of compiling a “philosophy,” but there is no evidence of a motive to delete all of the miracles or evidences of Jesus’ divinity.

As our third president, Jefferson had made the largest land addition in American history with the Louisiana Purchase. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of Native-Americans, many of whom had never heard about Jesus, were added to American territory. He wanted them to benefit from the moral teachings of Jesus Christ.

Jefferson believed:

“Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.” (Letter to William Canby, September 18, 1813).

Much thought in the Christian world has gone toward important theological matters like the nature of Christ (as fully divine and fully human), and the nature of the Godhead—Three Persons, One God (the Trinity). Jefferson felt (perhaps condescendingly) that such matters of theology and philosophy were beyond the Indians. As a result, he wanted to simplify Christ’s teachings. He may have been misguided, but there’s no evidence that his motive was secularization or anti-supernaturalism, as many today claim.

Jefferson wanted the Native-Americas benefit from Jesus’ moral teachings–things we take for granted, like: the golden rule (i.e., do unto others as you would have them do unto you, Matthew 7:12) or the command to love one another, as Christ loves us (John 13:33).

There is no evidence I am aware of that Jefferson ever published “The Philosophy of Jesus.” There is evidence that around 1819, he created a second version of his private book, this time in English (the King James Version), in French, in Latin, and in Greek (the language of the Gospels). It was only published long after his death.

Apparently, he used this compilation of the teachings of Jesus for his own personal edification.

Here are some miracles that remain the so-called “Jefferson Bible”:

  • Jesus sent His disciples to “heal the sick,” “cleanse the lepers,” “raise the dead,” “cast out devils” (Matthew 10:8).
  • He healed a man on the Sabbath (Luke 14:1-6);
  • He raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead (Matthew 9:18-25);
  • He healed the bleeding woman (Matthew 9:20-22);
  • Jesus healed two blind men (Matthew 9:27-31).

Jefferson’s approach to the Bible, to strip away some of its rich doctrine in Christology or in the beauty of the Godhead, is not commendable or worthy of imitation. But contrary to what some atheists say today, Jefferson was not on a crusade to edit the miracles out of the Bible.

The Black Roots of Identity Politics

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Identity politics began with the the 1977 publication of the Combahee River Collective Statement. The statement was written by “black feminists” with this goal:

Above all else, Our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else’s may because of our need as human persons for autonomy.

The Combahee River Collective Statement reads:

We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. [Emphasis added]

Merriam-Webster defines identity politics as:

politics in which groups of people having a particular racial, religious, ethnic, social, or cultural identity tend to promote their own specific interests or concerns without regard to the interests or concerns of any larger political group.

The Democratic Party has fully embraced identity politics in all of its forms.

Those who embrace identity politics are fickle and can, and many times do, either turn against one another or their political party. We are seeing this happen since the 2016 Presidential election.

My Way or the Highway

My way or the highway is a predominantly American idiom that dates back to the 1970s. It is an ultimatum like “take it or leave it.” You’re either with me or against me.

Identity politics is tearing the Democratic Party apart.

Identity politics died on November 8th, 2016 according to the Left Voice’s Albert L. Terry III. In his column A Few Words on Marxism and Identity Politics Terry wrote:

The year 2016 will be remembered as the year that identity politics, as it is commonly understood, began the long descent into irrelevancy. The first Black President that saw conditions grow worse for Black Americans and Clinton’s corporate identity politics saw electoral defeat. We must build a Marxist identity politics, which recognizes the special oppression that comes with race and the consequent importance of fighting racism head-on. [Emphasis added]

Terry says identity politics is irrelevant but believes that only Marxism will help restore identity politics to its glory. What Terry wrote on January 8, 2017 is coming true today in the Democratic Party.

The Black Rot that has Infected Identity Politics

The key question: What are the outcomes of the effort to “liberate” the black feminists.

According to according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data:

The share of U.S. children living with an unmarried parent has more than doubled since 1968, jumping from 13% to 32% in 2017. That trend has been accompanied by a drop in the share of children living with two married parents, down from 85% in 1968 to 65%. Some 3% of children are not living with any parents.

The Pew report notes:

More than half (58%) of black children are living with an unmarried parent – 47% with a solo mom. At the same time, 36% of Hispanic children are living with an unmarried parent, as are 24% of white children. The share of Asian children living with unmarried parents is markedly lower (13%).

The primary outcome of this socialist/black feminist/identity politics is the destruction of the nuclear family.

Socialism, true to form, equally shares the life long misery of single parenthood. We are now in a time when there is no real liberation, rather there is government patriarchy in the form of welfare programs. Welfare is dependence and not freedom. Only jobs, created by capitalists, and a Constitutional Republican form of government can defeat imperialism.

The single parent family is neither valuable nor autonomous, rather it is dependent on government largess. 

The black roots of identity politics has infected the entire family tree, which is now rotten to its core.

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RELATED ARTICLE: About one-third of U.S. children are living with an unmarried parent

RELATED VIDEO: Bill Whittle – Racism – Democrats and Republicans switch sides?

Why do so many Muslims murder in the name of Allah?

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A neighbor of mine was listening to the day’s headline news. It was about an Afghani immigrant in Paris who went on a knife wielding rampage against numerous people waiting at a bus stop. He had been shouting the Muslim war cry, Allahu Akbar (Allah is Greater) as he plunged the knife into one victim after another. The horror prompted my neighbor to ask, “Why do so many Muslims murder in the name of Allah?” Why indeed!

Mahatma Gandhi is quoted in the book, Gandhi: The Power of Pacifism, by Catherine Clement, as follows:

“While Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Parsees and Jews, along with several million adherents of an animistic religion, all coexisted in relative harmony, one religion that would not accept compromise stood out from the rest: Islam.”

Gandhi was referring to the experience during his lifetime in the Indian sub-continent, but the growth of Wahhabism and the current resurgence in Islamic triumphalism since Gandhi’s death in January 1948 now poses an increasingly existential threat to the West, to Judeo-Christian civilization, as well as to Hindus, Buddhists, and members of other faiths or no faith.

The question repeatedly asked is how and why so many Muslims, young and old, living in the West and enjoying all the material and educational benefits bestowed upon them — are committing hideous acts of terror and perpetrating atrocities upon non-Muslim innocent civilians, even against their very own neighbors. Those Muslim Arabs, who call themselves Palestinians, frequently murder Jewish civilians. Thousands have died and been maimed as victims of the blood soaked hands of Palestinian terrorists including just this week when a young Israeli girl, who had just celebrated her 17th birthday, was brutally murdered while hiking with her father and brother.

The Times Square bombing attempt on May 1, 2010 by Pakistani-born, Faisal Shahzad, and the 2009 Fort Hood massacre of unarmed members of the military by Major Nidal Hasan are well-known. So was the attempt at terrorism by a Somali immigrant, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who had come to America at the age of five with his family as a refugee from the hell that is Somalia, yet who attempted to kill thousands during a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon. Mohamud arrived about the same time that the fiendishly anti-Semitic Somali ingrate, Ilhan Omar, arrived and who now pollutes Congress as a Democrat member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Since the 9/11 destruction of the Twin Towers and part of the Pentagon by the 19 Saudi Arabian Muslim hijackers, in which 3,000 people were murdered, a long and depressing list of atrocities have been perpetrated by other Muslim ingrates.

It was the baleful President Carter who undercut the shah of Iran, an autocrat who jailed and restricted the jihadists and Islamic groups, but who was nevertheless a supporter and ally of America. Just like President Obama, who equally undercut Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the subsequent void was quickly and gleefully filled by Islamic fundamentalists and the Muslim Brotherhood who imposed barbaric sharia law and raised the banner of Islamic supremacy. This is the same Obama who gave $150 billion to the mad mullahs in Iran and horrifically provided them with a roadmap to obtain a nuclear arsenal.

With the shah’s fall came the Ayatollah Khomeini from his exile in France, and almost immediately Carter’s catastrophic act resulted in a seemingly endless and humiliating imprisonment of American Embassy staff in Tehran. Since then Iran has fed the flames of Islamic terror around the globe, arming, and funding terror organizations such as Hamas and Hezb’allah.

Ayatollah Khomeini preached violence to ultimately conquer “the land of the infidel.” By that he meant not only Israel, but Christian European states and Britain, the United States, and the entire non-Muslim world. His fanatical followers throughout the Muslim and Arab world have all endorsed the legitimacy of jihad against what they call the “enemies of Islam.” Islamic martyrdom operations – specifically blowing up soft targets like the spectators at sporting events – are guarantees to paradise for the jihadists, even if their victims are women and children.

So the answer to my neighbor, and to those talking heads in the media who endlessly ask why so many Muslims commit such atrocities, can be seen both in Koranic passages and in, for instance, the sickening hate indoctrination found in the regime-controlled Palestinian schools and TV and radio broadcasts.

Here are some of the grisly passages from the Koran:

“Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them.” Koran 2:191

“Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood.” Koran 9:123

“When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them.” Koran 9:5

“Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable.” Koran 3:85

“The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them.”… Koran 9:30

“Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam” Koran 5:33

“Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water; melt their skin and bellies.” Koran 22:19

“The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them.” Koran 8:65

“Muslims must not take the infidels as friends.” Koran 3:28

“Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an.” Koran 8:12

“Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels.” Koran 8:60

And here are some examples of the Palestinian broadcasts that sow hate among children as young as three years of age, spawning yet another generation of terrorists and destroying hope of any true and lasting peace with the embattled State of Israel.

For example, the children’s show, The Best Home, included a scene in which a young girl recited a poem filled with messages of hate and other libels demonizing Jews. The poem made the vile and fantastic assertion that Jews, “Allah’s enemies, the sons of pigs,” defiled the Quran and Jerusalem, “murdered children,” “cut off their limbs,” and “raped the women in the city squares.” Here is the twisted example of the very horrors carried out by the Islamists and jihadists being falsely ascribed to their victims.

In our politically correct world, members of the fake media and commentators often seek to distance Islam from so many acts of horrific violence, using terms of alleged distinction such as “radical Islam” or “moderate Islam” and so on. But let us reflect on the words of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the close friend of both Iran’s genocidal Ayatollah and its president.

In reply to the term “moderate Islam,” which was apparently quoted to him by a Western journalist, Erdoğan erupted and said: “These descriptions are very ugly; it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam, and that’s it.”

Certainly, attempting to constantly give, as liberals and the Left do, a free pass to Islamic abuses; to play down its violent ambitions of world conquest; to ignore the evident threat to Judeo-Christian civilization from sharia law and imposed dhimmitude merely encourages the violent tendencies of the followers of what was so presciently called by Winston Churchill, “an ideology wrapped in a religion.”

The two Chechen brothers, as with so many other Muslims, thus almost certainly succumbed to the hatred towards non-Muslims which proliferate in Islamic texts, on Islamic websites, and in Islamic social media. And they are not alone as that knife wielding Afghani proved so horribly in Paris.

© All rights reserved. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

News Flash: Legally Buying a Gun Isn’t So Easy After All

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Earlier this month, an intrepid news reporter for Business Insider decided to see for herself how easy it was to get a gun from Walmart, even as gun control activists were calling on the retail giant to stop selling firearms. She then recounted her experience in an admirably straightforward article.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t work out so well for her or for gun control advocates who hope to convince Americans that guns are just too easy to get.

There’s a whole genre of gun control rhetoric centered around all the things that are supposedly more difficult to get or to do in America than buying a gun.

Barack Obama was a frequent practitioner of this trope, insisting guns were easier to get than computers, books, and even fresh vegetables.

One author went so far as to claim it was easier to buy a gun in America than to take a shower or to find toilet paper in a public bathroom.

Of course, America is a big country, and not everyone has the same experience buying guns from sea to shining sea. In New York City, for example, buying a firearm will take an eligible person many months and hundreds of dollars, apart from the price of the gun itself. In the nation’s capital, you can’t shop for firearms at all, because there are no stocking firearm dealers. And if you want to buy a gun in San Francisco, you’re just plain out of luck, as the local officialdom ran off the last dealer some time ago.

But Hayley Peterson conducted her investigation in Virginia, one of the more straightforward places to buy a gun. Virginia has stricter laws than the U.S. government for firearm purchases. But an eligible person who comes prepared to a gun shop can still hope to fill out a couple of forms, receive a timely answer from the Commonwealth’s “instant check” system, and leave with the firearm at least in the same day, if not considerably sooner.

Private businesses, however, may have their own policies that add additional time and complications to this process, as Ms. Peterson would soon discover.

Ms. Peterson was not being particularly choosy about the gun she wanted to buy. She understood that Walmart does not sell handguns or semi-automatic rifles. Her main criteria, it seems, was to find the most inexpensive gun she could.

Her first hurdle was that Walmart does not advertise its gun sales, and only some of its stores sell guns. In fact, Ms. Peterson learned that neither Walmart’s website nor even the corporate personnel who answered its telephones would provide information on which Walmart stores stock firearms. It took her hours and dozens of calls before she found a location that acknowledged it sold guns onsite.

When Ms. Peterson did find a Walmart stocking guns, the selection was limited. The guns were also locked behind glass and strung together with zips ties and a metal cable, so customers could not handle them without a sales associate’s assistance.

Ms. Peterson was able to inspect a gun on her first trip to Walmart. She did not get to complete her transaction, however, because a manager told her there was no one working that day who was authorized to sell firearms. Only select Walmart employees go through the enhanced vetting and special training necessary to be eligible to sell firearms.

Ms. Peterson returned to the same Walmart store two days later. This time there was an authorized seller on hand.

But before the reporter could even finish the paperwork, the employee had identified a problem. The address on Ms. Peterson’s driver’s license, which she was using as her official form of identification for the purchase, didn’t match her actual home address. Thus, Ms. Peterson would have to provide additional substantiation of her actual address for the transaction to proceed.

That’s the point at which the young reporter decided to abandon her attempt to buy a gun at Walmart.

Her assessment: “Overall, the experience left me with the impression that buying a gun at Walmart is more complicated than I expected, and that Walmart takes gun sales and security pretty seriously.”

Welcome to your first experience with American gun culture, Hayley Peterson. Complexity, security, and taking rules seriously are par for the course.

In fact, law-abiding gun owners have been routinely and patiently jumping through a variety of governmental and private sector hoops to exercise their right to keep and bear arms throughout modern history.

But when gun control proposals focus on the hoops for their own sake, rather than as safeguards against the diversion of guns for nefarious purposes, then it’s time for gun owners to take a stand in favor of their rights. With more and more gun control proponents admitting that what they really want is to keep guns away from everybody, law-abiding or not, and even take away the guns people already own, this is more necessary than ever.

As for Ms. Peterson, she didn’t get her gun, but she did produce an honest and revealing article.

And even we might admit that it’s easier to get a gun than to get honest reporting on firearms out of most of the “mainstream” media.

RELATED ARTICLES:

NASCAR Takes a Hard Left

The Texas Legislature Passed Ten Bills Protecting Your Second Amendment Rights During the 2019 Session. These Measures All Take Effect on September 1.

NRA Statement on Walmart’s Decision to Change Firearms Policy

California: Anti-Gun Legislation Passes Appropriations Committees and Heads to the Floor

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

INTEL REPORT: Israel-Lebanon, Israel-Egypt-Hamas, Japan-America

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ISRAEL-LEBANON

Last week we reported that the Foreign Minister of Bahrain, Shaykh Khaled bin Ahmad bin Muhammad Aal Khalifa, tweeted that Israel has a right to defend itself, in response to the flap over the two Israeli drones that violated Lebanon’s airspace, one of which carried explosives and took out an Hizbollah office in south Beirut.  In this context, the Bahraini FM stressed that since Iran “has declared war against all of us,” implying that any attack against any of their IRGC entities, their Lebanese Hizbollah, their “popular mobilization” militias in Iraq, or their Houthi arm in Yemen, constitutes “self defense.”

This week, according to www.al-jazeera.net, the Bahraini FM has doubled down by directly accusing Hizbollah of escalating the situation by attacking Israel (in reference to Hizbollah’s taking out an Israeli military vehicle this weekend).  Then he took it a step further by accusing the Lebanese government itself of being complicit in the escalation.  This would stem from the fact that the “Lebanese government” (which includes Sunni and Christian members) is essentially hostage to Hizbollah).

Therefore, according to the Bahraini FM’s reasoning, the Lebanese government is responsible and “any aggression by one state against another is forbidden by International Law” and is subjecting its citizens to the subsequent danger.

The Foreign Ministry of Bahrain then issued a formal statement ordering all of its citizens in Lebanon to leave immediately.

The above statements by the Bahraini FM were also reported on the Saudi-owned www.al-arabiyya TV, a day later.

ISRAEL-EGYPT-HAMAS

Israel sharing sensitive Counter-Terrorism (CT) intelligence with its arch enemy, the terrorist entity of Hamas?  Ridiculous!  Or is it?  According to an article published by

al-Monitor, a Washington, DC-based news entity founded by a Christian Arab-American from Lebanon/Syria, that is exactly what is happening.  The author of this al-Monitor article is one Shlomi Eldar, an Israel-based journalist who for the past two decades has covered the Palestinian Authority and Gaza for Israel’s TV channels 1 and 10.

Here is how this has come about:  Israel and Egypt have been sharing intelligence information for several years.  At first this intelligence information included CT on Hamas, which both countries considered to be a terrorist group.  Egypt had declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist group in 2013 with former General as-Sisi assuming the presidency of Egypt’s nominally civilian government.  Since Hamas was founded as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), Hamas was automatically included in that designation.

Furthermore, Egypt has been having trouble with Hamas in terms of cross-border smuggling of weapons, drugs, and jihadis.  As a part of this Egypt-Hamas contention Egypt had closed its border with Gaza and joined with Israel in enforcing an embargo on it.  Egypt had also accused Hamas of aiding the anti-government protests and terrorist activities in Egypt’s Sinai.

So, what gives?  What led to both Egypt and Israel altering their positions on Hamas? Or vice-versa?

For one thing, according to Mr. Eldar, Hamas has been moving closer to Egypt in order the get the embargo eased.  Egypt, for its part is wanting to woo Hamas to get its aid and cooperation vis-à-vis the ongoing CT war in the Sinai, and beyond that, to entice it on board a possible future pan-Palestinian peace deal with Israel.

However, as Hamas has moved closer to Egypt, including pretending to disassociate itself from the mother ship, the MB, in order to please Egypt, a note-worthy splinter group has declared Hamas to be a “traitor” to the “Arab-Islamic-Palestinian” cause and has begun conducting car bombings and other terrorist acts against the terrorist group Hamas!

The name of this splinter group is bayt al-miqdis, which in Arabic means “The House of Holiness” and is a name for Jerusalem.  This term also refers to an Islamic prophecy contained in the ahadeeth referring to a massive Islamic army that will march out from Khorusan (an area in SW and central Asia including Afghanistan and parts of Iran, Pakistan and other Central Asian countries).  This army, it is said, will bear the “black banners” and will reconquer bayt al-miqdis for the Muslims.  Most Palestinians believe that when this Latter Day army reaches their region that they will become the vanguard, the spearhead, of this army as it destroys Israel and takes over Jerusalem.

Hamas, consequently, fears that this bayt al-miqdis organization will out recruit it and become a major threat to its hold on power in Gaza.  Thus its acceptance of CT intel from Israel, the very entity it has vowed to destroy.  But, of course, it can’t admit to itself that it is doing so.  This is where Egypt enters the equation according to Mr. Eldar.  This bayt

al-miqdis group is the primary group causing Egypt headaches in the Sinai, and so, as Hamas has recently moved closer to Egypt, it and Egypt are now sharing CT intelligence on bayt al-miqdis and “inadvertently” as Hamas accepts CT intel from Egypt among that CT intel is intel Israel has provided to Egypt.  Egypt, for its part, passes along Israeli CT only that intel agreed upon by Israel.  “The very essence of a paradox” says Mr. Eldar. “The relationship between Israel and Hamas is tangled and complex, with all sorts of remarkable twists and turns.

This paradox also underscores two age-old adages:  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” (at least temporarily), and “politics makes for strange bedfellows.”  Frankly, Egypt, Israel, and Hamas all in bed together is about as strange as it can get.  Welcome to the modern Middle East.

JAPAN-AFRICA

Over the weekend, and immediately after the G-7 meeting in France, Japan hosted the Japan-Africa conference.  Egyptian talk-show host ‘Amru Adeeb reported on this conference for his al-hakaya (The Story) show as a vehicle for boasting about Egypt’s importance.  Mr. Adeeb first beamed with pride over President as-Sisi’s hobnobbing with the world leaders of the planet’s major powers, then flying directly to Japan to represent the entire continent of Africa as this year’s president of the Organization of African States.

According to Mr. Adeeb, Japan has pledged to invest some $20 billion U.S. in Africa, in hopes of competing with China for Africa’s allegiance.

Homosexuality and Catholic Decline

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David Carlin: To approve of homosexuality is tantamount to saying that the Church has been teaching a false sexual morality for 2000 years.

Many factors have contributed to the 50- or 60-year decline of Catholicism in America, but one of the most important – and in recent decades THE most important – is the sympathy felt for homosexuality among many priests, bishops, and laypeople, especially liberal or progressive laypersons.

I’m not talking only about those who are homosexual in their orientation or have been homosexual in their conduct.  I’m talking also about a more general sympathy, the sympathy felt by those who say something like this to themselves: “Well, it’s unfortunate, but it’s not really horrible – at least not when they refrain from molesting underage boys, a dreadful thing that has little to do with homosexuality.  It’s hard not to sympathize with gay priests when one remembers that they are in all probability born that way.”

“Born that way.” The LGBTQ movement, one of the great manifestations of present-day atheism, has had no more effective propaganda slogan than this.  It has played a major role in persuading most Americans, including Catholic Americans, to drop their traditional moral (and aesthetic) antipathy to homosexual conduct. Among Americans in their late teens and twenties, there is now something close to universal approval of homosexual sodomy.  Only homophobes, it is held, could possibly disapprove of that kind of love.

The reasoning goes like this.  A decent person, above all a decent Christian who believes that “love your neighbor” is the greatest commandment, doesn’t blame somebody for a trait that he or she is born with.  And so we don’t blame a person for being born with dark skin. Therefore we shouldn’t blame a person for being born with a sexual attraction to persons of the same sex. And while it is not totally unfair to ask persons with same-sex attractions to abstain from acting on those attractions, it is pretty unrealistic to do so given how powerful are the human drive for sex and the human need for intimate affection.

And so (feels many a Catholic) the Christian thing to do is to feel sympathy for people of this kind, and especially for priests of this kind.  Further, they claim, we should remember that there is such a thing as “development of doctrine.”  And thus it may well be that Catholic moral doctrine is now developing in the direction of giving its stamp of approval to homosexual conduct – provided, needless to say, that it is done in a loving way, the two lovers genuinely caring for the well-being of one another.

But the “born that way” thesis has been conclusively “proven” only by means of an obviously fallacious bit of reasoning.  It is argued that there are only two possibilities: (a) gays and lesbians are born that way, or (b) they choose to be gay or lesbian.  But since it is obvious that nobody chooses to be homosexual (for why would anybody wish to endure the hostility that homosexuals have to endure?), it follows that they are born that way.  But there are more than two possibilities; and so the conclusion doesn’t follow.

As a recent large study has shown, there is no single “gay” gene, and scientists believe a complex interplay of multiple genes may account for as much as one-third of the same-sex inclinations. (Scientists strongly sympathetic to homosexuality conducted this study so the data will have to be carefully checked.) But even this tells us that environmental factors are at least twice as strong as the biological factors.

What might those be?

(1) A child is socialized to believe that homosexuality is a fine thing – and often is these days because all sexual “choices” are deemed equally good.

(2) A maturing child mimics the attitude of a liberal parent – or turns to homosexuality as a way of rebelling against anti-homosexuality parents.

(3) A teenager is homosexually seduced or raped by an older teen or an adult, e.g., a Catholic priest, finds the experience pleasant, and after further experiences becomes addicted.

(4) Even if you don’t choose the end result (homosexuality), you may choose those things that lead to homosexuality – just as you may not choose to be a drug addict yet choose those things that lead to drug addiction, e.g., bad companions, risky experimentation.

(5) Despite the popular notion that nobody in his right mind would choose to become homosexual – the social penalties for homosexuality being so great – this notion is almost certainly not true. Perhaps nobody chooses it the way one chooses a meal from a restaurant menu.  But there are such things as “deep choices,” that is, unconscious or barely conscious choices made in the depths of our hearts and minds – for example, the choice of a vocation or a spouse, or the choice of whether or not to be an honest person or a devoted parent.

It is not hard to believe that one of these deep choices has to do with whether to be heterosexual or homosexual.  Most of us choose the former, or rather in our choice we simply ratify the choice that nature itself made for us.  But some of us, rebelling against nature’s plan (that is, God’s plan), choose the latter.

It used to be the case that Catholics were good at logic – back in the days when Catholic colleges insisted that their students take a course in elementary logic.  That so many of today’s Catholics would fall such an obvious fallacy as the false dichotomy of “born-that-way versus choice” (the kind of choice one makes when dealing with a restaurant menu) shows that the Catholic mind has become illogical.

Whether it is fallacious reasoning or something else, perhaps something even worse, a widespread sympathy for homosexuality is helping to ruin the Catholic Church in America – for to approve of homosexuality is tantamount to saying that the Church has been teaching a false sexual morality for 2000 years, and this in turn is tantamount to saying that Catholicism is a false religion.

This is not the “development” of doctrine.  It is the destruction of doctrine.

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.

How 50 Years of No-Fault Divorce Gave Us a Throwaway Culture

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Fifty years ago this week, Ronald Reagan made what he later admitted was one of the worst mistakes of his political life: As governor of California, he signed a bill bringing no-fault divorce to his state.

California was the first state to take the plunge, but by no means the last. Reagan’s signature unleashed what became a national divorce revolution.

Within five years, 44 states would follow suit and pass some form of no-fault divorce.

Many lawmakers who pushed for it had fine intentions. At the time, the divorce regime had become a sham that made a mockery of the legal system. Because a judge had to find “fault” in one spouse to grant a divorce, spouses would often make phony allegations against each other, sometimes even working in tandem to fool a judge into granting them a divorce.

Obviously, this was a problem. Some lawyers called the trend “institutionalized perjury.” They thought it would be much better to lower the barriers to divorce and thus remove the incentive to make phony allegations.

Yet 50 years later, the perverse incentive to commit perjury seems utterly miniscule when compared with the wreckage that came from the divorce revolution.

The consequences of no-fault divorce are almost impossible to overstate. It was like dropping a nuclear bomb into our nation’s social ecosystem—the blast wave has hit millions of families, and the fallout is worse than we could have imagined.

The Blast Effect

As one might expect, the nation saw a spike in divorce rates following the enactment of no-fault divorce laws. Between 1960 and 1980, the divorce rate more than doubled and remained relatively steady into the 1990s.

Generation X was the first of the collateral damage. Roughly half of all children born to married parents in the 1970s saw their parents divorce, a massive increase from just 11% of kids born in the 1950s.

Two of those Gen Xers were named Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus. They later would become the lead singers and the guitarist and bassist, respectively, for the popular punk band Blink-182.

DeLonge and Hoppus were both born in the 1970s in Reagan’s California. By the early ‘90s, they had both felt the sting of their parents’ divorces.

Their song “Stay Together for the Kids” captured the cry of a generation reeling from divorce. The song’s original music video pictured a wrecking ball destroying a house—a visual metaphor for the chaos divorce brought to their homes.

DeLonge later explained: “You look at statistics that 50% of parents get divorced, and you’re going to get a pretty large group of kids who are pissed off and who don’t agree with what their parents have done.”

He added: “Is this a damaged generation? Yeah, I’d say so.”

And the damage continues. Each year, 1 million U.S. kids see their parents get divorced. Half of all children at some point will see their parents split. And the most common reason now given for divorce? Lack of commitment, at 75%.

In a positive sign, Gen Xers and millennials seem to have taken lessons from their parents and are getting divorced at lower rates. Between 2008 and 2016, the divorce rate actually dropped by 18%.

But this comes as fewer people are choosing to get married in the first place. Many millennials are choosing to cohabitate rather than get married—a path that leaves divorce off the table from the outset.

But ironically, cohabitation offers them less security than marriage. It may keep one’s options open and eliminate the legal hassle of a divorce, but it makes bailing on a committed relationship that much easier.

Defining Marriage Away

One hallmark of a healthy and stable country is that contracts are enforceable. If two people sign a contract, one person can’t just bail without paying the consequences.

A contract has to be binding on all parties. Otherwise, it’s worth nothing, and people will stop making contracts altogether.

No-fault divorce essentially made void the contract of marriage. It told either party that they could break their vows and get divorced on the basis of “irreconcilable differences.”

Those vows derive from what our society once understood marriage to be: a permanent reality that, once joined, takes on a transcendent quality that places it beyond the reach of any human whim. This transcendent vision of marriage was the basis of its legal recognition, and the children that resulted from the union made its stability all the more important.

But no-fault divorce cut ties with this vision. Marriage vows were reduced to mere poetry for a romantic ceremony and evacuated of any legal substance.

For all legal purposes, “as long as we both shall live” became “as long as one of us doesn’t change our minds on a dime.” Spouses could no longer depend on courts to enforce their marriage vows because, legally, marriage was now severed from those vows.

People often think of same-sex marriage as the great Rubicon moment that changed America’s view of marriage forever. That’s not true.

No-fault divorce is the original rupture in our view of marriage. Same-sex marriage was just the latest mutation to an institution long robbed of its original meaning.

Millennials are onto something when they reject marriage as it’s widely understood and practiced. They see it for the contradiction that it has become. Better to shack up and take no vows, they say, than to take vows that won’t be kept.

Reckoning With the Throwaway Culture

Easy divorce is part of what Pope Francis calls the “throwaway culture.” We throw away unwanted trash, unwanted babies, and unwanted spouses. Such is life in a culture that rejects the transcendent, the idea that we owe duties to each other by virtue of being human—and by virtue of our word.

This throwaway culture is the great cost of our contemporary religion, which is self-actualization. The creed of our day is that each person’s private happiness and self-actualization is the ultimate good. Kids, the unborn, and spouses we no longer love must bow the knee to our own personal quests for happiness.

But this contemporary vision shows signs of weakness.

For all our secular disenchantment, we still crave the transcendence and permanence offered by marriage as it was once understood. We long for bonds that don’t break.

Being spiritual creatures, we ache for solidarity, and we seek it, even if from 77-year-old politicians promising to “bring people together.”

No-fault divorce sent us looking for permanence and transcendence in all the wrong places. The irony is that while many of us decry the wreckage of divorce, it’s not clear we are willing to realign our values to rebuild what’s fallen apart.

For those who are willing, the solution is available: We must begin to prize fidelity in relationships over our ever-evolving desires for self-actualization.

Legal changes to reverse no-fault divorce should come as well, but above all, we need a culture that prizes fidelity—and shames infidelity. Spouses who seek a divorce for weak reasons need an obstacle in their path, one that isn’t just legal, but cultural. It should be socially costly to break our vows.

Fidelity is the only thing strong enough to rebuild the basic blocks of our society. It’s what the Bible calls “covenant faithfulness,” and in the long run, it’s the most beautiful life available to us.

It’s also the most rewarding, because self-centered happiness is a fool’s errand. We don’t ultimately find joy in creating our own reality, but in finding our rightful place within it.

Relational bonds are much more easily torn apart than melded from scratch and maintained. We live in the aftermath of 50 years of bond-fraying, and it now falls to us to rebuild.

It may be that in the 21st century, the most heroic act for a young American will be to play a small but faithful part in this rebuilding effort—to get married and cleave to one’s spouse, till death do they part.

COMMENTARY BY

Daniel Davis

Daniel Davis is the commentary editor of The Daily Signal and co-host of The Daily Signal podcast. Send an email to Daniel. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: How the Sexual Revolution Gave Us Identity Politics

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

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

Crimes by Illegal Immigrants Widespread Across U.S.

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The decision by a California appeals court Friday overturning the conviction of an illegal immigrant who shot and killed Kate Steinle in San Francisco in 2015 once again put the national spotlight on the serious problem of crimes committed by people in the U.S. illegally.

The appeals court in San Francisco overturned the conviction of Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Garcia-Zarate was earlier found not guilty of first- and second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, and assault with a semi-automatic weapon.

Garcia-Zarate said he unwittingly picked up a gun, which he said was wrapped in a T-shirt, and it fired accidentally. The appeals court overturned his conviction on the firearm possession charge because it said the judge at his trial failed to give the jury the option of finding him not guilty on the theory that he only possessed the gun for a moment.

Opponents of federal efforts to enforce the immigration laws enacted by Congress repeatedly claim that illegal immigrants are “less likely” to commit crimes than U.S. citizens—and thus represent no threat to public safety.

But that’s not true when it comes to federal crimes.

Noncitizens constitute only about 7% of the U.S. population. Yet the latest data from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics reveals that noncitizens accounted for nearly two-thirds (64%) of all federal arrests in 2018. Just two decades earlier, only 37% of all federal arrests were noncitizens.

These arrests aren’t just for immigration crimes. Noncitizens accounted for 24% of all federal drug arrests, 25% of all federal property arrests, and 28% of all federal fraud arrests.

In 2018, a quarter of all federal drug arrests took place in the five judicial districts along the U.S.-Mexico border. This reflects the ongoing activities of Mexican drug cartels. Last year, Mexican citizens accounted for 40% of all federal arrests.

In fact, more Mexicans than U.S. citizens were arrested on charges of committing federal crimes in 2018.

Migrants from Central American countries are also accounting for a larger share of federal arrests, going from a negligible 1% of such arrests in 1998 to 20% today.

Critics will try to downplay the importance of the Justice Department’s report by pointing out that the majority of crimes in the United States are handled by prosecutors in state and local courts.

But even there the data is shocking.

A recent report from the Texas Department of Public Safety revealed that 297,000 noncitizens had been “booked into local Texas jails between June 1, 2011 and July 31, 2019.” So these are noncitizens who allegedly committed local crimes, not immigration violations.

The report noted that a little more than two-thirds (202,000) of those booked in Texas jails were later confirmed as illegal immigrants by the federal government.

According to the Texas report, over the course of their criminal careers those illegal immigrants were charged with committing 494,000 criminal offenses.

Some of these cases are still being prosecuted, but the report states that there have already been over 225,000 convictions. Those convictions represent: 500 homicides; 23,954 assaults; 8,070 burglaries; 297 kidnappings; 14,178 thefts; 2,026 robberies; 3,122 sexual assaults; 3,840 sexual offenses; 3,158 weapon charges; and tens of thousands of drug and obstruction charges

These statistics reveal the very real danger created by sanctuary policies. In nine self-declared sanctuary states and numerous sanctuary cities and counties, officials refuse to hand over criminals who are known to be in this country illegally after they have served their state or local sentences.

This refusal to cooperate with federal immigration officials suggests that state and local officials supporting the sanctuary movement believe it’s better to let these criminals return to their communities rather than being removed from this country.

Not all of their constituents would agree.

The Texas report is careful to note that it is not claiming “foreign nationals” commit “more crimes than other groups.” Whether that is true or not—and it is certainly true when it comes to federal crimes—is irrelevant.

What is highly relevant to the current debate about immigration policy is that the Texas report “identifies thousands of crimes that should not have occurred and thousands of victims that should not have been victimized because the perpetrators should not be here.”

We know that in Texas and around the country some individuals would be alive today—and their families would not be mourning their loss—if we had a secure border and an effective interior enforcement system.

Instead of trying to obstruct enforcement of our immigration laws, state and local officials should do everything they can to help the feds reduce the very real—and all too often fatal—dangers posed by criminal illegal immigrants.

One of the worst recent examples of a state official who refuses to help federal immigration authorities carry out their duties is North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.

The Democratic governor recently vetoed a bill that would require local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Cooper did so just days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents captured an illegal immigrant charged with first-degree rape and indecent liberties against a child.

The man arrested in that crime was on the loose because he had been released from custody by county officials, despite the existence of a federal detainer warrant for him.

Politicians who declare their jurisdictions to be sanctuaries for illegal immigrants who commit crimes are needlessly endangering their law-abiding citizens. That is shameful.

Originally published in Fox News

COMMENTARY BY

Hans von Spakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative. Read his research. Twitter: .

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Criminologists Mislead Us

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

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

Rep. Omar Declares Support for Terrorist Financier’s Company in her native Somalia

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A controversial Minnesota congresswoman known for racially inflammatory anti-Semitic views has publicly declared her support for a terrorist organization in her native Somalia. Democrat Ilhan Omar is demanding that a telecommunications company founded and operated by a renowned terrorist financier, receive protection from that country’s government and peacekeeping forces. An Israeli-based newspaper broke the story a few days ago, but the American mainstream media has been notably silent on the matter.

The company, Hormuud Telecommunications, was created and is operated by Ahmed Nur Ali Jim’ale, a chief financier of al–Shabaab, an east African-based jihadist group that serves as Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia. In her social media account, Omar writes that Somalia’s government and peacekeeping forces need to protect Hormuud and the Somali telecom industry as they make enormous contributions to the economy and provide vital services. “During my visit to Somalia in 2011, I was surprised by the quick evolution of technology in Somalia,” Omar posts, indirectly praising the telecom firm with terrorist ties. The Israeli article includes the links to a pair of United Nations Security Council reports documenting Hormuud’s direct support for al-Shabaab.

According to the first U.N. report:

“Ali Ahmed Nur Jim’ale (Jim’ale) has served in leadership roles with the former Somali Council of Islamic Courts, also known as the Somali Islamic Courts Union, which was a radical-Islamist element. The most radical elements of the Somali Islamic Courts Union eventually formed the group known as al–Shabaab.” The document also identifies Jim’ale, a prominent businessman who controls Hormuud, as one of al-Shabab’s chief financiers. “Hormuud Telecommunications is a company identified as being one of the single largest financiers of al-Shabaab, which includes large lump sum payments to al-Shabaab in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and these payments toal-Shabaab were facilitated by Jim’ale,” the U.N. report says, adding that “Hormuud Telecommunications has provided key material and logistical support to al-Shabaab to include weapons, private fighters, and ammunition.”

The second U.N. Security Council report, published last year, links a terror attack that killed hundreds in 2017 to Hormuud. The event is described as the deadliest terror attack in Somalia’s history, carried out with a large vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. “Two employees of the principal Somali telecommunications provider, Hormuud Telecom Somalia Inc., were also prosecuted in connection with the attack, for facilitating the entry of the large vehicle-borne improvised explosive device through the Sinka Dheere checkpoint on the outskirts of Mogadishu,” according to the U.N. report.

Considering this documented history of terrorist activity, it’s outrageous that Hormuud is endorsed by a member of the United States Congress. Omar has been plagued by controversy since becoming one of the first—along with Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib—Muslim women elected to Congress. The mainstream media has praised the legislators for being part of a “historic freshmen class with more women and minorities than ever.” The reality is that there is more than enough credible information for the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to open criminal investigations into Omar. Back in July Judicial Watch filed an ethics complaint with the U.S. House of Representatives Office of Congressional Ethics calling for a full investigation into potential crimes tied to allegations that Omar may have married her biological brother.

In the complaint Judicial Watch documents substantial, compelling and unrefuted evidence that Omar may have committed the following crimes in violation of both federal law and Minnesota state law: perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, state and federal tax fraud and federal student loan fraud. At the very least, such violations constitute a breach of the Code of Ethics for Government Service which subject officeholders to a higher standard.

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Judicial Watch Gets Bruce Ohr FBI 302S

Ilhan Omar Asked for Protection of Somali Company Linked to Terror

RELATED VIDEO: FITTON: IT’S About Time the DOJ Prosecuted McCabe.

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