PODCAST: In Which Direction Are the Democrats Heading?

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It is not much of a secret the Democrats have a divided party. One side consists of “moderates,” representing traditional party values, and the other consisting of “extreme-Leftists,” representing radical politics, such as Socialism, the New Green Deal, and a plethora of entitlements. The question is, which side is winning? In 2019, and for the first time ever, a Gallup Poll noted the majority of the party classified themselves as “liberals.” This is to be expected as the Democrats began to turn extreme-left in 2016 when Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, began preaching his far-left dogma on the campaign trail to the Democrats. This opened the door in 2018 allowing extremist Democrats to be voted into the House of Representatives, e.g., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) (aka, “AOC”), Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-5), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (MA-7), and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI-13).

We are now in the early stages of the political primary season, and already we are learning more about Democrat inclinations from the voters. Between the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA), both generally acknowledged as representatives of the extreme-Left, pulled approximately 40% of the votes cast. This leaves approximately 60% for the other Democrat candidates. Some would claim Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former VP Joe Biden, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar are “moderates,” but their background suggests otherwise as they subscribe to liberal doctrine. None could possibly be accused of being a conservative. All support abortion, open borders, health care, and additional entitlements. So much so, the Democrats are now referred to as the party of “giveaways.”

The fact there is a 60/40 split in the party suggests the majority of Democrats are traditionalists and do not necessarily embrace radical concepts like Socialism. Yet, if front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders lands the nomination, this is precisely what the party will ask Democrats to accept.

News reports claim voter turnout was down in both Iowa and New Hampshire. I could not verify this, but if it is true, why? Three possible reasons: general voter apathy, people believe there isn’t a candidate who can beat President Trump, or more likely, the extreme-Left leanings are turning off traditional Democrats. Apathetic voters do not bode well for the party as we approach the elections.

The perspective of the party split is still a bit hazy, but will become clearer following the primaries of Nevada, South Carolina, and Super Tuesday. After this, we should have a complete picture of who is leading the party, “moderates” or the “extreme-Left.”

As an aside, the New Hampshire primary also had a Republican contest. At this time, President Trump received approximately 128K votes, representing the largest voter approval by an incumbent President in history, easily trouncing the last three incumbent Presidents:

2020 – Donald Trump – 128,781
2012 – Barack Obama – 49,080
2004 – George W. Bush – 53,962
1996 – Bill Clinton – 76,797

The President received strong support as he has energized his base through a solid economy and anti-extreme-Left policies. It appears the more he is attacked by the Democrats, the stronger he becomes politically.

So, are the Democrats prepared to accept extreme-Left doctrine? Maybe, but the American people overall are not. Either way, this will be an awkward election for the Democrats.

Keep the Faith!

P.S. – Also do not forget my books, “How to Run a Nonprofit” and “Tim’s Senior Moments”, both available in Printed and eBook form.

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce is Right podcast is republished with permission. © All rights reserved. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

Paganism in 21st-century Europe – what’s the attraction?

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Some Europeans have turned to ancient pagan religion to fill the spiritual vacuum created by today’s materialistic world – with a bit of tweaking here and there.

Our ancestors worshipped an array of nature spirits and deities before the advent of Christianity. The shaman (to use a generic term) was the intermediary between spirit beings and people. Fictitious beings such as fairies, pixies and elves were also part of this picture. The more advanced ancient civilizations developed complex belief systems involving pantheons and priesthoods. It all falls under the broad heading of ‘religion’ – pagan religion. (A good background source is Ken Dowden’s ‘European Paganism: The Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages’, 2000.)

Pagan beliefs have not completely vanished from Western culture. The Easter bunny, the mistletoe as a harbinger of future romantic love, and aspects of the Arthurian legends (the sword in the stone and the druids, for instance) have withstood the ravages of time to become part of our cultural heritage.

Most of us do not consciously think of these as relics of European paganism. But some people in our midst take all this quaint stuff deadly seriously to the point of professing belief in the chimeras our distant past throws up. They even call themselves ‘pagans’ despite the pejorative connotations of the term in common usage – paganism has long had bad press, including films such as the 1973 box-office success ‘The Wicker Man’ (a play on the word ‘wicca’) with sterling performances by Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee but apparently intent on portraying pagan religion as an orgy of barbarity and licentiousness.

Some commentators have applied the label ‘neo-pagan’ to the modern phenomenon. However, many self-professing pagans object to this term because of its alleged association with Nazism, particularly within the SS – Heinrich Himmler harboured eccentric views harking back to Germany’s pre-Christian past which he supposedly infused into SS ideology. What I will do in this article is use ‘Pagan’ (capital ‘P’) when referring to organised modern paganism.

Paganism is well established in a number of European countries including Sweden, the Netherlands and Britain, where the Home Office recognized it as a bona fide religion in 1971; one of the practical implications of that official recognition is that prisoners can ask to be visited by Pagan chaplains. As well as having a website, the British Pagan Federation produces the quarterly ‘Pagan Dawn’ – one edition for each season beginning with spring, identified using ancient Celtic names. I subscribed to this journal for several years and took part in some of the lively discussion that arose in the ‘Letters’ section.

My personal association with European paganism actually arises from my first name, which is of ancient Caucasian origin and is an allusion to the bear as a totem animal – given my generous BMI and the beard, that seems rather appropriate!

At a more intellectual level, what I am interested in is what makes the 21st century Western Pagan tick. There appears to be a dearth of scholarly interest in the matter, although the past decades have seen a lot of attention being paid to the ‘New Age’ phenomenon which overlaps with Paganism but should not be confused with it.

Some social scientists seem to be taking note – see, for instance, Irving Hexham’s ‘Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth’ in the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology Vol. 36 No. 3 1999. I have formed my own impressions from Pagan source materials and come up with the following themes:

A romanticized view of our pre-Christian past.

There are shades of Garden of Eden mythology in Pagan writings when alluding to our distant past. Everything was honky-dory in those halcyon days of yore when paganism ruled the roost until outsiders came and screwed it all up. Perhaps Goscinny and Uderzo, the creators of the ‘Asterix and Obelix’ comic books, have something to answer for in this regard – look at all those happy, healthy, well-nourished folk in the idyllic Gaul village that those awful Romans are trying to subdue. (Not a hope while the Druid can still brew his magic potion, of course… remember, the one Obelix fell into as a baby?)

First it was the Romans bringing dreaded modernity; then later it was Christians who really put the boot in (as they see it). Hankering for a return to a mythical ‘perfect day’ past appears to be something many Pagans share with at least some Christians!

Hostility towards Christianity.

To claim that Pagans are contemptuous of Christianity is an understatement. They rightly point to the persecution of pagans by Christendom throughout the Middle Ages and well into the 17th century. To the Christian establishment, paganism was a tool of Satan. The widely recognised elk’s head with horns as a symbol of Satanism actually arose from an ancient European fertility ritual involving a guy prancing around in that head attire.

The hysteria surrounding the witch-hunts was largely attributable to the belief that witches – in practice, usually local ‘wise women’ who practised ‘the craft’ inherited from traditional paganism – were the Devil’s fifth columnists. The early Protestants were of much the same view and dealt with the perceived threat in much the same barbaric manner.

The most appalling atrocities were committed against innocent people because of the association the Christian authorities made between paganism and Satanism. Today’s Pagans have neither forgiven nor forgotten the main perpetrators (as they see it) responsible for that dark period in European history.

The ‘spiritual dimension’ that Paganism provides.

Pagans on the whole display a cynical attitude towards the modern materialistic lifestyle. They seek a spiritual dimension to existence but unequivocally reject the one that Christianity offers. For them, Paganism fills the vacuum. It moreover does so by returning them to their ethnocultural roots, giving them a sense of belonging that the ostensibly universal belief systems, particularly Christianity, do not.

The ‘roots movement’ aspect of Paganism is a sensitive one. I recall a vibrant discussion in the pages of ‘Pagan Dawn’ about 20 years ago concerning the ethnic aspect of pagan beliefs. Some commentators were aghast at the suggestion that there is any ‘racial’ aspect to Paganism, but I interpreted this as a kneejerk reaction to the prospect of being called ‘racist’, which is what one has to anticipate these days when to self-identify as a member of a European ethnic group is likely to be wilfully misinterpreted.

However, it is impossible to remove ethnicity from the pagan equation. Only Greek Pagans worship Zeus, and only Irish Pagans acknowledge the existence of leprechauns. Having said that, classical pagan beliefs are mostly local or regional rather than national. A Cornwallian Pagan and a Highlands Scottish Pagan share few pagan traditions or beliefs.

The special status of women in paganism.

This aspect of paganism past and present would merit several doctoral theses in its own right. The somewhat idealised Pagan reconstruction of pre-history presents an ‘equal but different’ gender scenario in which women formed a religious society that ran parallel to men’s, with its own hierarchy and rituals. Women in Paganism are considered to be endowed with extraordinary spiritual powers which are manifested through certain aspects of wicca (‘the craft’).

A lot of women who belong to the Pagan movement call themselves ‘white witches’ or just plain ‘witch’ – a term of respect in Pagan society. Many female Pagans worship goddesses – some reverentially speak of ‘The Goddess’. There’s plenty of room in Paganism for feminism, albeit with its own distinctive spin.

Paganism as environmentalism.

Paganism is replete with nature spirits that animate the natural world. The notion of sacredness is extended to living entities such as trees and geological features such as mountains. Harmony with Nature is a recurring theme in Pagan literature. Many Pagans are passionate about the natural environment, particularly those parts of it that remain relatively unspoiled. Pagans stand shoulder to shoulder with environmental activists in protecting such sites from exploitation.

Despite some of the trimmings that make Paganism appear more of a lark than a serious spiritual movement, it deserves to be taken seriously. Akin to many adherents of mainstream religion, bona fide Pagans are profoundly concerned about the direction our societies have taken – and have come up with countermeasures drawn from their own European religious past.

COLUMN BY

Barend Vlaardingerbroek

Barend Vlaardingerbroek BA BSc BEdSt PGDipLaws MAppSc PhD is at the American University of Beirut. Feedback welcome at bv00@aub.edu.lb. I would be particularly interested in hearing from anyone who shares my academic interest in current-day European Paganism.

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

Coming Out of the Closet

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Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky is a conservative, a label sometimes distracting; an invitation for controversy. But preaching the truth and acting on it is a Catholic thing.

At times, priests reveal intimate secrets about themselves from the pulpit.  I’ve always hesitated to do so mostly because a sermon should be about Jesus, and innermost secrets and feelings are none of your business. But there are certain advantages that a priest has in the twilight of his priesthood.  The expanding mosaic of his experiences – good and bad – can provide others with useful insights.

Parishioners notice many uncomfortable details about priests, ranging from personal hygiene to personality quirks.  Depending upon circumstances, a pastor may have a duty to affirm or deny rumors for the sake of tranquility, and transparency.  These acknowledgments can be painful but necessary.

So here is one of my many secrets:  I am a conservative.

I prefer the term “Catholic.” But since I have an obligation before God to conserve and preach what I have received, after careful consideration, I have come to accept the conservative characterization.

But I wasn’t “born that way.” My Baltimore Catechism upbringing, my undergraduate training in philosophy and logic, and even my professional grasp of accounting – that debits must always equal credits – contributed to a conservative understanding of words and reality. Honesty and realism are the stuff of a traditionalist spirit.  Nonetheless, the life of a conservative is not without real conflict.

Years ago, over lunch, a retired priest dismissed me as an “arch-conservative.”  Puzzled, I questioned the venerable old man. Did he consider me a heretic?  No. Did he disagree with me on any doctrinal matter?  No. Was he referring to my political positions, if he knew them?  No. Did he object to my preference for traditional Catholic practices?  No. What, then, is an arch-conservative? No answer.

I concluded that a “conservative” dares to vocalize the hard truths of Church teaching, and an “arch-conservative” – like the priests who deny pro-abortion politicians Communion – acts on his beliefs.  Of course, conservative testimony may be more imprudent or contrarian than courageous.  But even if the delivery isn’t picture-perfect, bold witness comes with a priest’s job description.  “Since we have the same spirit of faith as he had who wrote, ‘I believed, and so I spoke,’ we too believe, and so we speak.” (2 Cor. 4:13)

*

Many Gospel passages boldly challenge and deeply disturb souls.  Years ago, a permanent deacon read the Gospel and preached the homily during a Mass I celebrated. The Gospel included this phrase:  “every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Mt. 5:31-32)

To avoid controversy, the deacon ignored the passage in his homily and preached his customary platitudes.  After Mass, an irate parishioner – failing to distinguish between the sermon and the Gospel text – lambasted him for suggesting certain behavior was adulterous. The Gospel not only provokes consciences but can even implicate hesitant and timid messenger boys.

The new secular moral world order is far more demanding and unforgiving than the Ten Commandments.  Violations of political correctness provoke mean-spiritedness, hate, and intolerance.  The politically incorrect is an unforgivable infraction of the politics of inclusion, and respectable society must banish all offenders.

Even children are not immune.  Recently, prominent banks withheld scholarship money from Christian schools because of their religious opposition to gender ideology.

Perhaps, for the sake of peace, priests should insist that the Ten Commandments are not their personal opinions.  They are merely delivery boys, reporting to parishioners what God teaches us through His Church.

After all, priests and people alike fail to live up the demands of the Ten Commandments. We all hope for a patient, kindly, and an understanding priest for Confession. Not to put too fine a point on it, we might argue that if you disagree with the Ten Commandments, do not crucify the messengers. You actually want to crucify the Divine Author.

Alas, Jesus even has an uncomfortable answer to that scheme:   “A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.” (John 15:20)

Contrary to the dogmas of political correctness and heterodoxy within the Church, intolerance is not exclusively a conservative vice.  The breakdown in the seminary system over the last fifty years is old news, though there seem to be recent improvements.  (Most senior priests like me are too far out of the loop to know for sure.)  But some of us recall past intolerance of Catholic orthodoxy and still have our seminary PTSD flashbacks.

In 1984, as a new seminary recruit, I attended a day of recollection at a retreat house in the Midwest.  Over beverages and snacks that evening, the conversation turned to the hot theological topics of the day.  I boldly weighed in on the questions of celibacy and the ordination of women, supporting Church teaching.  But I unwittingly violated a taboo and paid the price.

The vocations secretary breezily dismissed me with, “Jerry, you’re so conservative.”  I responded with good cheer. “You flatter me.”  But the rest of the evening, I found myself excluded from the conversation by seminarians who likely feared guilt by association.  It was an early encounter with the soft tyranny of institutional theological dissent.  In those days, many counted on the “spirit of Vatican II” (not the texts) to change the Church. Dismayed and isolated, I returned to the dormitory room and retired.

By and by, there was a gentle knock on the door; it was a young seminarian.  He introduced himself and asked:  “Doesn’t it bother you that they think of you as conservative? So am I, but I haven’t told them!”

In time, I moved on to happier ecclesial hunting grounds and lost track of the young Nicodemus, who always kept his distance, publicly at any rate.  In recent years, he was consecrated a bishop. Maybe he has come out of the closet.

The “conservative” label may be distracting and an invitation for controversy.  But preaching the truth and acting on it is a Catholic thing – and the cause for hope.

COLUMN BY

Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky

Father Jerry J. Pokorsky is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington. He is pastor of St. Catherine of Siena parish in Great Falls, Virginia.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 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.

Michael Bloomberg’s Plan for Immigration: We Need More!

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I pay fairly close attention to the 2020 campaign news and especially when it comes to the Dem candidate’s plans for immigration should they regain the White House.

But, I think it’s odd that with all the other news about Michael Bloomberg, there is little mentioned about his now decade-long plan to increase immigration as seen in his National Partnership for a New American Economy.

I told you all about it here last November, but I have been writing about it off and on for years.

Now I see that there is a short piece at Bloomberg news briefly summarizing his immigration plans.

But, strangely, no mention of his organization that has been gradually softening up mayors by handing out grant money and praising elected officials for a decade through his New American Economy network.

Michael Bloomberg Unveils Plan for ‘Broken’ Immigration System

Michael Bloomberg proposed an immigration plan similar to proposals from his moderate [LOL!] Democratic presidential rivals that includes reversing President Donald Trump’s policies, creating a path to U.S. citizenship for undocumented residents and allowing “place-based” visas.

The former New York mayor does not go as far as progressive rivals Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who would decriminalize migration.Bloomberg’s plan contains many of the same elements as those offered by Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. They include rescinding Trump’s travel ban, ending family separations at the border, protecting so-called dreamers — young adults who were brought illegally to the U.S. as children — as well as increasing the cap on resettling refugees and updating the asylum process.

[….]

Bloomberg would expand temporary worker visas to address labor shortages and allow certain localities to petition for “place-based” immigrant visas to meet economic or social needs in their communities.

For regular readers of ‘Frauds and Crooks‘ this should give you a chuckle….

He would also allow more opportunities for foreign-born doctors, nurses and other health professionals to address the shortage of health-care workers in under-served areas.

More here.

And, now see his platform that includes increasing refugee admissions to 125,000 per year!  (Trump’s is presently set at 18,000.)

End policies that run counter to our deepest values as Americans

Mike will rescind President Trump’s disgraceful travel ban, end family separations at the border, establish rigorous safeguards for children, and promote alternatives to detention for individuals and families who pose no threat to public safety. Mike will set the annual refugee resettlement target at 125,000 and also restore fairness and timeliness to the asylum process. And he will honor and protect immigrant service members, veterans and their families.

[….]

Mike will create a federal Office of New Americans to support the integration of newcomers….

With that he is recycling an Obama White House plan.

Read it all.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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Bloomberg: We Can No Longer Provide Health Care to the Elderly

Michael Bloomberg’s Constitutional Blinders

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

Political Bias and Anti-Americanism on College Campuses

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A recent Pew Research Center survey finds that only half of American adults think colleges and universities are having a positive effect on our nation.

The leftward political bias, held by faculty members affiliated with the Democratic Party, at most institutions of higher education explains a lot of that disappointment.

Professors Mitchell Langbert and Sean Stevens document this bias in their study “Partisan Registration and Contributions of Faculty in Flagship Colleges.”

Langbert and Stevens conducted the new study of the political affiliation of 12,372 professors in the two leading private colleges and two leading public colleges in 31 states.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

For party registration, they found a Democratic to Republican (D:R) ratio of 8.5:1, which varied by rank of institution and region.

For donations to political candidates (using the Federal Election Commission database), they found a D:R ratio of 95:1, with only 22 Republican donors, compared with 2,081 Democratic donors.

Several consistent findings have emerged from Langbert and Stevens’ study.

The ratio of faculty who identify as or are registered as Democratic versus Republican almost always favors the Democratic Party.

Democratic professors outnumber their Republican counterparts most in the humanities and social sciences, compared with the natural sciences and engineering. The ratio is 42:1 in anthropology, 27:1 in sociology, and 27:1 in English.

In the social sciences, Democratic registered faculty outnumber their Republican counterparts the least in economics, 3:1. The partisan political slant is most extreme at the most highly rated institutions.

The leftist bias at our colleges and universities has many harmful effects. Let’s look at a few.

At University of California, Davis, a mathematics professor faced considerable backlash last month over her opposition to the requirement for faculty “diversity statements.” University of California, San Diego, requires job applicants to admit to the “barriers” preventing women and minorities from full participation in campus life.

At American University, a history professor recently wrote a book in which he advocates repealing the Second Amendment. A Rutgers University professor said, “Watching the Iowa caucus is a sickening display of the over representation of whiteness.”

Robert Reich, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, and former secretary of labor, chimed in to say:

Think about this: Iowa is 90.7% white. Iowa is now the only state with a lifetime voting ban for people with a felony conviction. Black people make up 4% of Iowa’s population but 26% of the prison population. How is this representative of our electorate?

A Williams College professor said he would advocate that social justice be included in math textbooks. Students at Wayne State University no longer have to take a single math course to graduate; however, they soon may be required to take a diversity course.

Then there’s a question about loyalty to our nation.

Charles Lieber, former chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, was arrested earlier this year on accusations that he made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement about work he did for a program run by the Chinese government that seeks to lure American talent to China.

Lieber was paid $50,000 a month and up to $158,000 in living expenses for his work, which involved cultivating young teachers and students, according to court documents.

The Justice Department said Lieber helped China “cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity, and national security.”

It’s not just Harvard professors. Newly found court records reveal that Emory University neuroscientist Li Xiao-Jiang was fired in late 2019 after being charged with lying about his own ties to China. Li was part of the same Chinese program as Lieber.

A jury found a University of California, Los Angeles, professor guilty of exporting stolen U.S. military technology to China. Newsweek reported that he was convicted June 26 on 18 federal charges.

Meanwhile, NBC News reported that federal prosecutors say that University of Texas professor Bo Mao attempted to steal U.S. technology by using his position as a professor to obtain access to protected circuitry and then hand it over to the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.

The true tragedy is that so many Americans are blind to the fact that today’s colleges and universities pose a threat on several fronts to the well-being of our nation.

COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

COMMENTARY BY

Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams is a columnist for The Daily Signal and a professor of economics at George Mason University. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

Too Often, Trump Critics Rely on False, Dangerous Ideas About National Security

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No question, President Donald Trump is an unconventional statesman. On the global stage he looks like a fullback at a field hockey match.

Different doesn’t always mean wrong—except to the critics who have gone to absurd lengths to weaponize policy differences to undermine the legitimacy of the president’s decisions.

One of the most extreme and wrongheaded complaints is that this administration has violated how policy must be made. Critics complain the president seems to have a mind of his own and the audacity to not reflexively implement the recommendations the bureaucracy cranks out.

Nonsense. Not only is it wrong to suggest the White House must follow only the policy proposals its “experts” devise, it can at times be the worse step a president can take.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

It is risky business for the Oval Office to make policy in a vacuum. But there are a lot of ways for the White House to get good advice, and Trump actually may be better than most presidents when it comes to gathering information for decision-making.

Past as Prologue

The modern national security decision-making process emerged after World War II with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. The law created the National Security Council to create better coordination among the key government departments engaged in defense and foreign policy.

The establishment of the National Security Council facilitated a more systematic process for developing and making recommendations to the president.

Department representatives and National Security Council staff members would get together to hash out proposals and pass them to a deputies committee that included high-ranking department officials. These committees would, in turn, pass along their thinking to “principles committees” made up of Cabinet-level officials, who would, in turn, make recommendations to the president.

This bottoms-up approach solidified under President Dwight Eisenhower. As former military man, Eisenhower appreciated the rigor of staff work and frequently chaired National Security Council meetings.

Every president has had his own version of a national security policy-making process. The process isn’t codified in law and rarely looks like the flow chart in textbooks—just as the way Congress crafts legislation often doesn’t match what students are told in their civics lessons.

These advisers and this process are meant to help the president make decisions; not to put him in a straitjacket that allows the bureaucracy to hold the president’s policies hostage.

There are crucial, important moments in history when president’s ignored the “best” advice and did the right thing. Harry Truman recognized Israel against the recommendations of his Cabinet. JFK made all the tough calls in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ronald Reagan turned down Mikhail Gorbachev’s deal at Reykjavik. And all three emerged with better outcomes.

There also are instances where presidents went it alone and came to regret their decisions. President Jimmy Carter announced he was going to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea—only to find almost no one in Washington, not even his own secretary of defense, was willing to go along. Reagan turned over Iran-Contra to a few staffers in the National Security Council—and that didn’t end well.

Judge Policy by Outcomes, Not Process

Decision-making at the top is at least as important as bottom-up deliberations, particularly when the bureaucracy isn’t delivering good policy options. That said, making decisions in the isolation of the Oval Office can result in ghastly groupthink that’s no better than the mind-numbing same old, same old the agencies often crank out.

Smart presidents will shake things up and seek outside advice. FDR famously ranged far and wide for recommendations during World War II, consulting everyone from columnists to heads of state. Trump is more in the FDR mode; he likes to hear lots of opinions. Also like FDR, he is very much the decider-in-chief.

This is how Trump has chosen to run his presidency.

Those who don’t like it can vote him out. But it’s wrong to suggest the president is not legitimate or responsible because he doesn’t govern the way critics prefer.

COMMENTARY BY

James Carafano
James Jay Carafano, a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is The Heritage Foundation’s vice president for foreign and defense policy studies, E. W. Richardson fellow, and director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies. Read his research. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

Time to End the Tyranny of District Court Judges’ Nationwide Injunctions

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Question: What is the difference between God and a federal judge?

Answer: God knows that He isn’t a federal judge.

On Feb. 6, U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs of North Carolina issued an injunction barring the Trump administration from implementing a new policy that changes how the government calculates the duration of an illegal immigrant’s unlawful presence in the country.

Although an injunction is the correct legal tool to stop someone from doing something, Biggs had a choice in how broad that injunction should be.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

She could use an injunction that prevented the government from using the new calculation on the plaintiffs who sued, or she could use a so-called nationwide injunction that barred the government from using the new calculation against anyone, anywhere.

Biggs chose to issue a nationwide injunction. Actually, that’s a misnomer. These are better called “universal” or even “absent-party” injunctions, because they aren’t limited either by their geographic scope or the parties they cover.

Instead, they stop the government from enforcing a law or policy against anyone, anywhere.

These universal injunctions are controversial. U.S. Attorney General William Barr denounced them in a speech last May. Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen did so in a speech on Feb. 12, and Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have criticized them as well.

So, what exactly are these strange things, and are they legal?

As always, it’s wise to start our analysis with the Constitution. The Constitution defines the judicial branch’s role in our system of government. Judges don’t pass laws or set broad policies, because that’s the job of the other branches.

Instead, according to Article III, judges decide “Cases” and “Controversies,” which are actual legal disputes between specific parties. Whether civil suits between private parties or criminal cases involving the government, these disputes are brought by the parties, and judges settle them for the parties.

It makes sense, therefore, that when a judge issues an injunction in the process of deciding a particular case, that injunction will not cover more than is necessary.

Historically, when a plaintiff successfully challenged a law as unconstitutional, for example, the judge would most often block the government from enforcing the law against the plaintiff, rather than completely wipe that law from the books.

But the judiciary has grown more powerful than America’s Founders intended and, since the 1960s, this has included issuing universal injunctions.

This type of injunction has become increasingly common over the past few decades as political activists try to enlist judges to make the kind of widespread policy changes that the legislative or executive branches are designed to handle.

Like a gavel thrown into a well-oiled machine, these universal injunctions cause a host of problems for our constitutional government—and for the judiciary itself.

First, they empower judges to exercise power over the entire government, rather than just the parties who brought a case before them.

Second, universal injunctions give individual district judges far more power than they ought to have. Even if 1,000 judges have upheld a law, or limited their injunctions only to the parties in specific cases, one granting a universal injunction means that the law cannot be enforced anywhere.

Third, they undermine public confidence in the judiciary by giving activists judges near limitless power to undo the laws and policies of the democratically accountable branches of government.

One infamous activist judge, the now-deceased Stephen Reinhardt, once joked of his lawless decisions that “they [the Supreme Court] can’t catch them all.”

Finally, universal injunctions lead to what Gorsuch calls “rushed, high-stakes, low-information decisions.” Oftentimes, judges issue universal injunctions at the beginning of a case, even before resolving legal and factual issues.

When that happens, the Justice Department often appeals on an emergency basis. That’s not good, because it doesn’t give the higher courts, including the Supreme Court, the time they need to make sure they get the answer right.

The Supreme Court, in particular, prefers to weigh in on a legal issue only after many lower courts, lawyers, and legal scholars have had time to discuss it. That debate sharpens the arguments and refines the issues. Emergency appeals, however, eliminate that.

The criticism of universal injunctions has reached a boiling point, and now it’s likely that the Supreme Court will step in. On Jan. 17, the Supreme Court accepted the case of Trump v. Pennsylvania.

One of the questions presented there is whether the court of appeals erred when it affirmed a universal injunction striking down regulations that would have allowed employers with sincere religious or moral objections to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage in employers’ insurance plans.

The high court should take this opportunity to end the practice of issuing universal injunctions. It should remind the lower courts that their power is limited to resolving cases and controversies, and that they are not gods sitting in judgment over the rest of the government.

COMMENTARY BY

GianCarlo Canaparo

GianCarlo Canaparo is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

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

How Not to Learn About a Religion

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Randall Smith: Modern secular views of religion purport to have respect for each of them but often breed a sort of dilettantish disrespect for all of them. 

Periodically, I find myself wanting to learn more about other religions.  It might be a major world religion such as Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam, or something more obscure, such as what Mormons hold or Seventh Day Adventists.  I am not usually interested in a “deep dive” into the nuts and bolts, just a nodding acquaintance.  But I also want something that does justice to their beliefs so I can gain a better understanding of why they believe what they believe.

I occasionally turn to books on “comparative” or “world religions” since these books are usually written by “experts in the field.” I read about Hinduism or Confucianism for a while. But then my eyes glaze over, and I wonder why people believe all this weird, boring stuff.

But then, I go to the section on Christianity. I don’t start there because I don’t go to such books to learn about Christianity; I go to the Bible and the great texts of the Christian tradition: Genesis and Exodus, the Gospel of John, and the writings of Basil, Gregory, Augustine, and Aquinas.

When I open my “world religions” textbook and read the section on Christianity, soon my eyes glaze over and I would wonder why people believe all this weird, boring stuff if I weren’t already Christian.  What I actually say is: “What’s this?  This is what these people think Christianity is?  Anyone reading this would have only the strangest, most distant notion of what Christians believe or of what animates their lives.”

Reading their descriptions of Christianity is like looking at a shadow puppet of a dog.  You can say it “looks like a dog” – if you know what a dog actually looks like.  But if you start by looking at the shadow puppet and then search around for something that “looks” like that, thinking “I know what a dog is,” you would be more wrong than right. And you would certainly never understand why people love their dogs.

I have had conversations with friends from other religious traditions who report having had the same experience. They read the description of their religion, and their reaction is: “We believe that?  Well, sort of.  But not exactly.”  It’s like hearing someone who speaks another language use an English colloquialism who doesn’t get it quite right.  “I am going to do the kicking of the butt” is not really the same as “I’m gonna kick your butt!”  I once heard a Frenchman say to his Belgian friend: “Are you in the picture on this?”  That’s like something we say, but not quite.

Reading these descriptions is also a bit like the experience a Latina friend had going to a class on “Hispanic Culture and Spirituality.”  The professor kept telling the mostly white college kids what “Hispanics” believe and what Hispanic culture was like.  She, an actual Hispanic, kept wondering why none of this resembled anything she had experienced in her large extended family or extensive Hispanic community.  Granted, there are different ways of being “Hispanic,” but when you go to a class about your own people, it shouldn’t be like hearing about a strange race from another planet.  And this is often what reading these books on Christianity is like.

So if all of us from every religion say, “That’s not my religion; that description has not captured the heart of what we believe or why it animates our lives,” then what are such books teaching?

Actually, I don’t know.  But I fear that the effect may be a lack of real respect for all religions. The message is: Here are about a dozen different ways people could think about religion, but there is no good reason to actually accept any one of them, other than your own autonomous choice.  In the marketplace of religions, which do you choose?  Or would you prefer to take little from column A, some from column B, and perhaps a smattering from column C?

What people who read such books should understand is that very few of the adherents of the religions they are reading about (perhaps none of the authentic believers) “chose” their religion in this way.  Rather, it chose them.  They saw themselves as “called” by a truth larger than themselves. And accepting this truth led them to a more authentic life, a life of meaning and goodness. It wasn’t a smorgasbord from which they selected what looked tasty.

People who have dabbled in a lot of religions probably understand very little about any of them – not the way you know something you love, something deeply moving and meaningful.  It is fine to “get acquainted” with a religion.  Just don’t say you “know” a religion if you hold yourself aloof from it and examine it as you would examine a car you are thinking about buying.  “I like this one, but with different tires and in yellow.”  To treat a religion this way is to misunderstand what “faith” is for those who have it and have dedicated their lives to it.

If you want to understand a religious tradition and take it seriously, first, get it from those who have dedicated their lives to it.  And second, examine it as a series of responses to the “fundamental questions” that St. John Paul II mentions in the first paragraphs of his encyclical Fides et Ratio:  Who am I?  Where am I from?  Where am I going?  What about suffering, death, and the afterlife?  What is the nature of the human person and human flourishing?   These are questions we should ask of any religious or philosophical tradition – including our own.

But we should treat other traditions with the respect with which we would wish them to treat ours.  The problem with modern secular treatments of religion is that, although they purport to provide a greater respect for each religion, they often breed a sort of dilettantish disrespect – for all of them.

COLUMN BY

Randall Smith

Randall B. Smith is the Scanlan Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. His most recent book, Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide, is now available at Amazon and from Emmaus Academic Press.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 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.

MIDEAST INTEL REPORT: Turkey, Syria, Russia and the Perils of Appeasing Hitler

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TURKEY/SYRIA

On 15 February 2020 both the Qatar-based and owned, and pro-Muslim Brotherhood, and pro-Turkey www.aljazeera.net and the Saudi-owned www.alarabiya.net and both of their TV outlets reported that Russia is accusing Turkey of arming “rebel” groups in Syria with American manufactured weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles.

Both news outlets also reported that in addition to Turkey providing these “rebels” with weapons, they are also providing them with regular Turkish army uniforms.

What is interesting here, is the different terminology that each of these news organizations use to describe these “rebel,” or anti-regime groups.  We will look first at Al-Jazeera, which supports Turkey’s policy of using former ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorists  as “shock” troops to pave the way for Turkey’s eventual re-establishment of the Jihadist Ottoman Empire Caliphate, a goal which Qatar and its Muslim Brotherhood client also support.

Al-Jazeera uses the terms al-mu’aaredah (opposition) and al-musaleheen (the armed ones) to describe the groups receiving the Turkish uniforms and American weapons.  By ignoring the al-Qaeda and ISIS connections of these groups Turkey is arming, al-Jazeera is legitimizing them in the eyes of western media outlets many of whom simply copy

al-Jazeera reports for their Middle East news.  This in turn, makes it easy for western political leaders to ignor Turkey’s ISIS and al-Qaeda connections.

Whereas al-Arabiyya TV, and website, provide the full, correct identification of the recipients, namely hay’at tahreer ash-sham (The Liberation of Syria corps), which is nothing but a spin-off of jebhet an-nusrah (The Victory Front), which in turn is nothing but a spin off from al-Qaeda.

Let me repeat what this actually means.  Our NATO “ally” Turkey is providing American arms to al-Qaeda.

The Saudi-owned al-Arabiyya outlet went on to report that Turkey has also deployed more than 70 tanks, 200 other types of armored vehicles, and 80 artillery pieces.  The report went on to say that a “large part” of this equipment was handed over to the fighters of the an-Nusrah front terrorist group.

The al-Jazeera account, while ignoring the al-Qaeda connection, quoted Turkish President Erdogan as saying that if Syria does not halt its “aggression” and pull back to the lines Erdogan says were agreed upon at Astana and Sochi by the end of this month, that Turkey, supported by its allies, would force them to withdraw, and if Turkey’s allies would not help, then Turkey would accomplish that by itself.

Turkey maintains (and has said this numerous times) that it will never leave Idlib beause Idlib is vital to Turkey’s national security.

RUSSIAN INFORMATION

Both of these Arabic news entities cited as their source for some of this information a Russian Political Military source via the website “interfax.”  Many in West would therefore like to discount it as Russian misinformation.  However, I tend to believe this is accurate information for the simple reason that it tracks with everything else Turkey has done in the so-called “War on Terror.”  Why not?  The United States itself directly armed and worked with al-Qaeda offshoots in Syria during the Obama Administration years, and Turkey is the godfather of ISIS, helping it through its gestation period and selling its stolen oil on the black market to help finance it once it had taken over large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

ANALYSIS:

As for Idlib being vital to Turkey’s national security . . . since when?  And, by whom?  For the last several years of the Syrian civil war Idlib has been a province ruled almost entirely by al-Qaeda–under Turkey’s auspices.  The only difference now is that Turkey is moving in itself, and it is moving in to stay.

Notice also that Erdogan is threatening to bring NATO in on its plan to conquer Syria, and in so doing possibly start a major war between NATO and Russia.  Erdogan’s threats against the Syrian armed forces is a veiled threat against Russia whose airpower is supporting the Syrian push into Idlib.  That’s all we need is for this pro-Muslim Brotherhood NATO “ally” to get us into a war with Russia which could spill over into Central Europe should Russia begin to lose ground in Syria.

And, since when does an invading country have the right to call the armed forces of the country being invaded the “aggressor” when it tries to retake its own territory from armed terrorist groups supported by the invading country?

Turkey complains about the flood of refugees entering its country.  Well, this is a war that Turkey is largely responsible for, so I for one have no sympathy.  As for the current situation in Idlib, had Turkey not armed and coddled Al-Qaeda, and supported their occupation of Idlib, the Syrian armed forces would not now be having to use military force to reacquire that province and there would be no flood of refugees into Turkey.

THE PERILS OF APPEASING HITLER

Neville Chamberlain is accused of being responsible for WWII because he gave Hitler the green light to invade a portion of a neighboring country.  But Chamberlain really had no other choice.  The Brits had no troops in Czechoslovakia, therefore no way to deter Hitler anyway.  Nor was there any unified western stand against Hitler’s ambitions until it was too late.

Do we not see the same thing happening here?

Erdogan, the 21st century Hitler, is following a very predictable game plan.  First he sends armed terrorist groups into a country to create chaos.  Then he complains about “national security threats to Turkey” and wins a Western okay to either engage in “joint patrols” which then become all Turkish patrols because the joint patrols “didn’t work,” or he wins Western acquiescence to go ahead and send in Turkish troops to establish order as he is now doing in Idlib.

We can expect Turkey to repeat this process over and over again until it has reconstituted the jihadi Ottoman Empire Caliphate in its entirety, and then some.

Poor old Neville Chamberlain.  But at least he, and the English, never armed their Hitlerian enemy.  The United States, on the other hand, has been, is, and will in the near future arm its new Hitlerian enemy to the teeth with the latest high tech weaponry (probably to include F-35s).  And, not only that, the U.S. looks the other way when this 21st century Hitler arms the terror group al-Qaeda with American manufactured weapons no less.

Hey folks, wasn’t al-Qaeda the whole reason we got into these “never-ending” Middle Eastern wars?  Anybody out there remember 9/11?

So, where did these policies come from?  Why is the Trump administration in 2020, over three years into its 1st term, following this same path of its predecessor, at least on this one issue?

I believe the origins of this policy are to be found in academia.  Throughout the 20th century academia has exerted tremendous efforts to whitewash Islam in general, and towards the last few decades of the 20th century, the Muslim Brotherhood in particular.  This in turn led to a strain of “thought” in the State Department that the solution to violence and terrorism in the Middle East would be Muslim Brotherhood rule.

The Obama administration went one step further making one of the cornerstones of its Middle East Foreign Policy the re-establishment of the Ottoman Empire Caliphate under Turkish auspices united with the Muslim Brotherhood heading up the Sunni Arab countries.  That viewpoint still holds sway in at least the upper levels of the State Department, if not throughout its entire cadre, and current Secretary of State Pompeo has apparently adopted that idea as a major policy plank and sold it to President Donald Trump.

Though President Trump has dropped hints that he’d like to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization (as have seven other countries), he can’t do so unless he also comes to terms with the Turkey situation, since its ruling party the AKP is a clone of the Brotherhood, and Turkey is one of the leading supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood international, along with its ally and fellow terrorism supporter Qatar.

Therefore, I see the U.S. administrations continuing to go along with Erdogan’s schemes like the proverbial toad in the pot of slowly boiling water.

Heartbreaking.

TURKEY AND LIBYA

Turkish advances into northern Syria have had ramifications on the Libyan war as well.  Egyptian and Saudi media outlets have been reporting continuously for the last several months on the flood of “fighters” from Syria that Turkey is transporting to Libya to support the Sirraaj government in Tripoli.  Were Turkey to win the current tug of war with Russia and Syria over the Idlib province in Syria, that process of sending al-Qaeda and ISIS leftovers and sympathizers into Libya will continue.

Meanwhile, the Europeans are pushing for a permanent “cease fire” in Libya, and trying to pressure the Libyan National Army led by General Khalifa Haftar to accept it.  Such a cease fire will only guarantee not only the survival of the Sirraaj government in Tripoli, which hosts a number of the world’s leading terrorists, but would also preserve Turkey’s foothold in Libya.  According to numerous Saudi, Egyptian, and Russian reports,  and as reported previously on this site, Turkey has been using that foothold to smuggle weapons into Africa’s Sahel region in which a large, de facto “super Islamic State” is forming.  This is a region that will soon be exporting terrorism into Europe, and possibly beyond.

Thus, any sort of cease fire or international agreement to make the current status quo permanent only guarantees  the fulfillment of the worst case scenario cited by numerous news entities in the West as well as the Middle East.

The Europeans by voting in favor of a permanent cease fire in Libya are voting for their own suicide.

This is turn illustrates an issue that virtually all decision-makers and policy wonks in the west share, and this is an inability to identify the enemy.  In World War Two it was easy.  The enemies were the nation states of Germany, Japan, and for a while, Italy.  When you are fighting nation states, it is easy to identify the enemy and therefore easy to demonize the enemy and rally public opinion around the war effort.

But when the enemy happens to be a religion, the West is entirely bamboozled.  The best the West could come up with was a “War against Terrorism.”  This war was fought by killing off the leadership of known terrorist organizations and in some cases, undermining their organizational structures, and then thinking that the “War against Terror” was won.  But it did absolutely nothing in terms of undermining and destroying the ideology that makes the terrorist groups possible, and that will continue to feed those groups and/or their successors for many decades, or centuries, to come if we continue to fail to take this threat seriously.

The United States is very good at winning conventional wars against conventional enemies (i.e. the nation states), but is at a total loss as to how to deal with this 1400 year war for survival that it refuses to acknowledge.  It is much easier for the Pentagon bosses, media, and politicians to “pivot” away from a problem it does not understand so as to direct its energies towards problems that it does understand, namely other nation states.

Unfortunately, one of the chief axioms of war is that you cannot defeat an enemy that you cannot identify.

It was to address this gap in Western thinking that I wrote the book mentioned below.

TUNISIAN ELECTIONS

The result of the Tunisian parliamentary elections several months ago had the

an-nahdhah (renaissance) party wining a narrow plurality of the votes.  The an-nahdhah party is a clone of the Muslim Brotherhood, though they have tried to pretend otherwise, and have been suspected by segments of the Tunisian populace of a pair of political murders when they briefly held the majority in the parliament in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

As a result of the Tunisian public’s suspicions about an-nahdhah none of the other Tunisian political parties were willing to join with it in a coalition government.  Thus, the Tunisian President Qais Sa’eed asked the number two party to form the coalition, which they did.  But now, Arabic media sources are reporting that the an-nahdhah party refused to recognize the coalition as legitimate because they were left out of it.

Consequently, the Tunisian political situation is still in turmoil.  This is especially pertinent given the on-going civil war next door in Libya, and that the head of the Muslim Brotherhood clone an-nahdhah party just paid a visit to Turkish president Erdogan, whose ruling AKP party is also a clone of the Muslim Brotherhood, and who also happens to be deeply involved in the Libyan Civil war.

© All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Iran’s Sham Parliamentary Elections Aim to Strengthen Hard-Liners’ Hand

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: Deny sex is binary, embrace conversion therapy and then theirs Pete Buttigieg

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EDITORS NOTE: This is the eleventh in a series titled Decadent Democrats. You may read the previous installments here:

DECADENT DEMOCRATS — From Pedophilia to Sex with Animals

DECADENT DEMOCRATS — From Electing a Dream ‘Queer Latina’ Candidate to No Incarceration For Drug Use of Any Kind

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: The Enemies of America are Our Best Friends Forever

DECADENT DEMOCRATS — From Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globe Diatribe to Abortion to Climate Change [+Videos]

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: From Creating Weak Men and Disorderly Women to Making Sex a Biological Reality Illegal

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: From the Party of Abortion and Allah Akbar to the 2020 Right to Life March and death of terrorist Soleimani

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: The Party of Marx, Mao and Mohammed

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: Their calls for violence created ANTIFA

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: Biden, Warren and Sanders reject President Trump’s Middle East peace plan

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: Liberals pay $2,500 to be told they’re racists, kiss the boots of blacks [Video]

The Democratic Party is all in when it comes to homosexuals. The party of Catholic President John F. Kennedy can’t help itself. Democrats even have, for the first time in history, Pete Buttigieg, a homosexual, running for president in their primary.

This is a turn around in policy and politics. We must remember what President Barack Obama, Oct. 27, 2010, in in an interview with liberal bloggers discussed his views on gay marriage:

“I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage. But I also think you’re right that attitudes evolve, including mine.”

Then in May, 2012 Politico reported that President Obama evolved in his opinion of same-sex marriage stating:

“I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”

Rhuaridh Marr in a July 27, 2016 article The Democratic Party Platform is the most pro-LGBT in history reported:

This week, in Philadelphia, Democrats approved the most pro-LGBT party platform in their history. Almost half a century in the making, it represents a culmination of the struggle of LGBT activists to be recognized at the highest levels of politics. If 2012 was a watershed moment, when marriage equality was enshrined in that year’s party platform, 2016’s platform is an affirmation, a celebration of the rights of every LGBT American. The sheer breadth of the platform stands in contrast to the hate and opposition of its Republican counterpart.

Why do Democrats fully embrace the LGBTQ agenda?

The LGBTQ agenda includes:

  • Conversion therapy.
  • Teaching children about homosexuality in elementary schools.
  • Supporting male transgenders into women and girl sports.
  • Call anyone who disagrees with the LGBTQ agenda homophobic.
  • Embracing pedophiles such as Jeffery Epstein.
  • Passing policy The Equality Act on on May 17, 2019. The Equality Act is a bill passed by the United States House of Representatives that would amend the Civil Rights Act to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of the sex, sexual orientation, gender identity.”

ANSWER: Because the Democratic Party loves what they consider homosexuals to be consummate victims.

For Democrats homosexuals are victims, just as are blacks, Muslims, illegal aliens, pedophiles, transsexuals, Hispanics, etc. Victimhood is a prerequisite to becoming a member of the Democrat Party.

What is most interesting is that Democrats embrace a lifestyle that is both harmful and hurts individuals according to recent studies.

Democrats ignore science, genetics, DNA and multiple scientific studies that show homosexuality is neither natural nor normal. In fact science tells us that homosexuality is harmful and hurtful.

But this doesn’t matter because its all about getting votes.

Sex is Binary

In a February 14, 2020 Breitbart article titled No Sex ‘Spectrum’ Beyond Male and Female Thomas D. Williams, PH. D wrote:

The Wall Street Journal has issued a throwdown to the gender lobby, insisting in an op-ed Thursday that sex is binary and there is no “spectrum.”

“In humans, reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female at birth more than 99.98% of the time,” note biologists Colin M. Wright and Emma N. Hilton. “The evolutionary function of these two anatomies is to aid in reproduction via the fusion of sperm and ova.”

“No third type of sex cell exists in humans, and therefore there is no sex ‘spectrum’ or additional sexes beyond male and female. Sex is binary,” they assert.

In a February 16, 2020 article in the journal Public Discourse titled Transition as Treatment: The Best Studies Show the Worst Outcomes notes:

A pattern begins to emerge as we survey some of the best and longest outcome studies on gender transition: the longer the studies and the better the methods, the more negative the results.

The [conversion therapy]treatment for this particular disorder is severe: lifelong experimental medicalization, sterilization, and complete removal of healthy body parts—a treatment Dr. Ray Blanchard, one of the world’s foremost sexologists, calls “palliative.” In spite of its severity, however, medical gender transition is no longer a rarity. It is the recommended treatment for gender dysphoria, a diagnosable disorder of incongruence between one’s felt “gender” and one’s natal sex, the prevalence of which is increasing tremendously throughout the world. More and more children and adolescents are being diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and are undergoing medical treatment prior even to completing puberty.

For those who express caution or concern there is a familiar retort: “Trust the experts.” If you don’t, “you’re a bigot.”

This argument, however, makes a mockery of the fact that three of the most influential sex researchers of the last couple decades—Ray Blanchard, Michael Bailey, and the recently vindicated Ken Zucker—all have problems with the affirmation-only transition narrative that is currently being promoted. You could add to this list names like James Cantor, Eric Vilain, Stephen Levine, Debra Soh, and Lisa Littman.

In the February 13, 2020 article Science, Sex, and Suicide   asks, “Why would Scientific American urge a ban on therapies that may free some from an identity associated with greater depression and suicide, and yet never question “treatments” for gender dysphoria that lead to increased confusion, depression, and suicidal tendencies?

Otto explains:

Scientific American started off the new year—the publication’s 175th—with an editorial that unintentionally demonstrates the reality that science is not simply the dispassionate determination of the laws of nature. A great deal more than genetics and biology seems to be involved when the subject is LGBTQ-related, particularly when it concerns young people who are questioning their sexual identity.

The editorial, “Time’s Up for ‘Anti-Gay Therapy,’” calls for a federal resolution banning “conversion therapy.” The editors begin by referring to the story of a man named McKrae Game, a former champion of conversion therapy who recently left his wife and his ministry, “Hope for Wholeness.” Game has now come out as gay, pleading forgiveness for the harm he did by promoting what his organization called “freedom from homosexuality through Jesus Christ.” Game joins a growing number of former leaders of so-called “anti-gay therapy” who have recently disavowed the practice.

Conclusion

Democrats are hell bent on pushing the LGBTQ agenda on all Americans. Saying that sex is binary, believing that marriage is between one man and one woman are considered “hate speech” by Democrats.

Pointing out  that conversion therapy is harmful is deemed non-scientific, when the science is clear. The entire concepts of boy and girl, man and woman, husband and wife are now foreign to the Democratic Party.

Same-sex marriage may be legal but it is not common. What is common is that since the legalization of same-sex marriage the Democrats in concert with LGBTQ activists have made it their mission to fundamentally transform the ideal that sex is binary.

© All rights reserved.

For more articles on the LGBTQ Agenda click here.

Does the Catholic Church Really Have An ‘Islamophobia’ Problem?

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My latest at PJ Media:

Out of India this week comes the harrowing story of T.J. Joseph, a professor at a Catholic college and member of the Syro Malabar Church, an Eastern Catholic Church in communion with Rome. Ten years ago, Joseph was accused of blasphemy, whereupon a Muslim group attacked him and severed his hand. In the ensuing years, the Syro Malabar Church, aghast not at the attack but at Joseph’s alleged “Islamophobia,” fired him from his job and excommunicated him. The day after that story came out, one Jordan Denari Duffner of Georgetown University’s Hamas-linked Bridge Initiative, published a piece in the Religion News Service (RNS) claiming that Catholics have an “Islamophobia” problem. Ask T.J. Joseph what he thinks of that, Ms. Duffner.

Duffner piece focused upon the case of the Rev. Nick VanDenBroeke, about which I wrote here at PJ Media. VanDenBroeke landed in hot water when he called Islam “the greatest threat” to Christianity and the U.S., and was subsequently forced to recant and apologize by his boss, Archbishop Bernard Hebda. “The whole incident,” says Duffner, “is reflective of a deeper problem,” which is unlikely to be something she would say about the excommunication of T.J. Joseph. No, Duffner is more worried about what she characterizes as “the discrepancy between the church’s positive official teaching on Muslims and the Islamophobia that often permeates U.S. Catholic communities and discourse.”

Duffner reminds us that “in its 1965 ‘Declaration on Non-Christian Religions,’ issued during the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church begins by declaring its high esteem and respect for Muslims.” She apparently would have us believe that VanDenBroeke, by identifying a threat from the religion that preaches warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers, is demonstrating a lack of esteem and respect for Muslims. For “the most important aspect of the church’s statement about Muslims,” she says, “is the first line — the teaching that we are to treat Muslims with respect and hold them in high regard. In other words, as Catholics our default attitude toward Muslims is to be a positive one.”

Back in the real world, however, the real problem the Catholic Church has is not the spurious neologism “Islamophobia,” but a fantasy-based Islamophilia that denies obvious reality and is ruthlessly enforced, as the outrages the Church committed against T.J. Joseph demonstrates, and of which Duffner’s article is an example.

Duffner is either spectacularly naive or outrageously deceptive or both; in all her writings, not just this one in RNS, she completely ignores the reality of jihad violence and the violent exhortations in the Qur’an and Sunnah. She continuously writes as if Muslims were victims of widespread discrimination and harassment in the U.S., which they are not and should not be, and that any examination of the motivating ideology behind that jihad violence is tantamount to inciting violence against innocent Muslims.

In her book Finding Jesus among Muslims: How Loving Islam Makes Me a Better Catholic, Duffner even laments the “Islamophobia” of a Christian family in Jordan she stayed with as an exchange student, claiming they picked it up from Christian television channels and not from their lived experience, which she assumes would have given them a positive impression of Islam: “Despite the fact that they lived among Muslims — who are the vast majority of the population in Jordan — my Christian host family bought into these Christian TV channels’ negative portrayals of Islam.”

There is much more. Read the rest here.

RELATED ARTICLE: HBO runs yet another anti-Catholic series, remains silent on Muslims

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

Forthcoming Book lists Trump as one of the Greatest Presidents, Twitter Leftists’ heads explode

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This morning I wrote an article for PJ Media that makes a point that I elaborate in my forthcoming book, Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Then over on Twitter I noticed that “#PresidentObama” was trending for Presidents Day, as a huge crowd of Twitter Leftists hailed the socialist internationalist Obama as if he had actually been a good President.

Well, I admit I couldn’t resist, and tweeted this:

Head over to Twitter and look at the comments on that tweet: watch the fun as the Twitter Leftists howl at the prospect of someone daring to question one of their most sacred dogmas. The truth really does hurt some people, badly, like a physical pain.

And preorder the book here.

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

Lawmakers in 9 States Move to Protect Children From LGBT ‘Transition’ Agenda

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Conservative lawmakers have decided to become proactive about the transgender epidemic infiltrating the nation’s youth.

In the past couple of months, Republican lawmakers in at least nine states have introduced legislation to ban medical providers from helping boys and girls undergo a medical transition via surgery and/or hormone replacement therapy before they turn 18.

Some of the bills would make it a felony to prescribe hormones or perform related surgeries for minors.

In South Dakota, state Rep. Fred Deutsch, a Republican, spearheaded the effort. The South Dakota Legislature passed its version of the bill just this month.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

If Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, signs the bill into law, doctors who offer medical transitions in the form of hormone replacements or surgery to children under 16 could receive a one-year jail sentence or a hefty fine.

Colorado, West Virginia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Missouri, Florida, Illinois, and Kentucky all have similar provisions in the works, although the details vary.

In a tweet, Deutsch said: “The world is upside-down that protecting children from sterilization and mutilation is causing a firestorm.”

In a statement emailed to USA Today, he said:

Every child in South Dakota should be protected from dangerous drugs and procedures. The solution for children’s identification with the opposite sex isn’t to poison their bodies with mega-doses of the wrong hormones, to chemically or surgically castrate and sterilize them, or to remove healthy breasts and reproductive organs.

Sex reassignment surgery—a phrase the LGBTQ lobby hijacked and changed to “gender reassignment surgery,” a subtle but important difference—has had enough success and failure for lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle to use to their advantage.

Or so they think. A USA Today article, which is rather thorough, paints GOP lawmakers as interventionists who suddenly want to get involved in people’s “personal” lives. It cites professionals who voice disdain for lawmakers who would keep today’s youth from living as their feelings dictate.

These lawmakers face an uphill battle because of LGBTQ backlash and public relations. Reputable medical groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry have come out in favor of providing surgical and hormone replacement transitions as appropriate treatment for children struggling with gender dysphoria, despite little evidence it cures the dysphoria.

In fact, while little evidence exists either for or against medical transitions, because it’s such a new phenomenon, statistics show that some people who transition experience regret.

Fortunately, conservative lawmakers who propose these bills come from a place of education, combined with empathy and caution.

Because this is optional surgery, and not a life-or-death medical procedure (such as neurosurgery following a stroke), Republican lawmakers propose banning the surgery for teenagers, to err on the side of safety.

Although a speckling of success stories are told by medically transitioned teens and adults, more tales of failure, and horror, are out there.

These stories abound, though critics of the proposed bills seem to ignore them entirely.

In a powerful essay published by The New York Times in 2018, a writer who was born a man and was about to medically transition to a woman admitted, as the headline stated: “My new vagina won’t make me happy.” But the writer wanted to go ahead with the surgery anyway.

Jazz Jennings, 19, was born a biological male but socially transitioned to female years ago. The teen’s transgender journey has been a hit TLC show.

Doctors recently performed a third surgery on Jennings to further the transition from young man to young woman. Jennings suffered from severe complications after receiving a “new vagina.”

Walt Heyer is well known for his crusade against such medical transitions. Heyer, a fellow contributor to The Daily Signal, lived as a woman for several years. After taking female hormones, he had breast implants but was still suicidal after a short reprieve.

Eventually Heyer came to the belief not only that sex reassignment surgeries didn’t make him female, but that his issues were rooted in trauma and abuse—as they are for most people.

Heyer wrote in The Daily Signal in 2017:

Too many post-surgical patients contact me to report they deeply regret the gender change surgery and that the false hope of surgical outcomes was a factor. For children, the focus on encouraging, assisting, and affirming them toward changing genders at earlier and earlier ages, with no research showing the outcomes, may lead to more suicides.

Although it’s true that many conservatives would reject government involvement in the family via heavy-handed legislation, there are times when it’s necessary, specifically when safety—even common sense—is rejected in favor of the cause du jour.

This is such a time, when parents and activists are blindly answering the rallying cry of progressives who favor feelings over facts, even when it means leading our own children down a path of pain and regret.

COMMENTARY BY

Nicole Russell

Nicole Russell is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Parents Magazine. Twitter: .

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A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

VIDEO: Linda Sarsour Uses Nazi Tactic to Dehumanize Israelis

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Sharia-activist Linda Sarsour used a classic Nazi tactic employed against Jews when she urged her followers not to fall into the trap of “humanizing” Israelis. Dehumanization was a classic Nazi tactic used against Jews during World War II.

Sarsour made the comments while endorsing the many different anti-Israel strategies employed by activists. But the bottom line, she said, was,

“If you are on the side of the oppressor, or you are defending the oppressor or you are actually trying to humanize the oppressor, then that’s a problem, sisters and brothers, and we gotta be able to say that is not the position of the Muslim-American community.”

As noted in the tweet, British journalist Mehdi Hasan “nods along as Linda Sarsour warns against ‘humanizing’ Israelis.”

In addition, the tweeter, Stephen Knight, rightly comments, “The dehumanization of opponents is a bright red flag for anyone knowledgeable on extremism and fascism.”

Dehumanization was  a classic Nazi tactic used during World War II to turn the German people against the Jews, who were referred to as rats and vermin.

Psychologists warn that the first step in mass murder is to dehumanize the victim. In a talk titled “’Less Than Human’: The Psychology of Cruelty,” David Livingstone Smith, co-founder and director of the Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology at the University of New England, notes,

“[For the Nazis, Jews] were untermenschen — subhumans — and as such were excluded from the system of moral rights and obligations that bind humankind together. It’s wrong to kill a person, but permissible to exterminate a rat.”

Sarsour’s comments came just before the United Nations published a blacklist of Israeli businesses that operate in Jewish areas located beyond the 1967 lines in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

As The Jerusalem Post noted, “Israel is the only country against which such a list has been complied of businesses suspected [of] breaking international law.”

There are close to 100 land disputes worldwide that have not been subject to a similar blacklist, which means that the UN action falls under the classic definition of anti-Semitism, i.e. treating Jews or Israel with different standards than other people or countries in the world.

This is the main reason why the U.S., as well many other countries have deemed the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement against Israel anti-Semitic at its core. Sarsour is a huge proponent of the BDS movement.

After a year-long legal investigation by the U.S. State Department, in November 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced, “The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law.”

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

To Prosper, Africans Must be Free to Innovate

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The African Union must focus on reducing the overbearing costs of intellectual property across the region.

Africa’s potential to flourish in the coming years is enormous. The newly-minted African Continental Free Trade Area(AfCFTA) is set to immediately get rid of 90 percent of tariffs on goods traded between member states upon its July 1 implementation, which will dramatically ramp up trade and add billions to the continent’s economy.

Already, 29 of the 55 African Union (AU) nations have ratified the agreement. But to truly reap the potential benefits of this new trade area, African states must drastically reform existing intellectual property laws in order to allow and encourage innovation among their citizenry.

A recent report from the Brookings Institution found that in 2017, African countries registered a mere 1,330 patents. This amount is a fraction of the 592,508 patents registered in Asia and the 116,359 registered in Europe in the same year. What’s more, the majority of patents in Africa are registered by non-residents—and that’s not the case in the rest of the world. As a continent with a young and increasingly educated population, it’s vital that Africans are free to innovate and reap the rewards for doing so.

As Francis Gurry, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, notes:

Africa has a great tradition of innovation and creativity and has extraordinary creative resources but has often struggled to realize their full economic potential.

The main reason this potential is hindered is because of the hefty costs of patent registration. Indeed, Africa has some of the steepest registration costs in the world.

In two of the continent’s fastest-growing economies, Kenya and Ethiopia, patent registration fees are a whopping 13 and eight times the national average income respectively. To put that in perspective, in the U.S., patent registration costs equate to just 0.1 times average incomes, and in Germany, just 0.3. African innovators, who are mostly young with either no job, or a low-paying job, therefore struggle to afford these exorbitant fees.

To make matters worse, in some cases, new technologies are required to be registered in every single country they enter, meaning further costs for entrepreneurs who are often already facing significant financial challenges. Making it easier for Africans to obtain patents would help the states’ and the overall region’s economies, as it would boost the production and export of higher-value goods, rather than having nations primarily reliant on exporting commodities.

Today, many African economies rely heavily on exporting raw materials. And for three-quarters of African nations, commodities (which are typically exported outside of the continent) account for at least 70 percent of their exports. This is bad news for African nations, as raw materials are especially prone to price fluctuations, so reliance on commodities risks economic volatility, and creates unstable business environments.

However, when African states trade with one another, the goods traded are almost three times more likely to be higher-valued manufactured products, when compared to the goods that leave the continent. And as one of the main aims of the AfCFTA is to increase intra-regional trade, the enormous barriers to entry posed by large patent registration fees must be reformed in order for the continent to harness the talents of innovators and boost the trade of such manufactured and technological goods.

Indeed, the benefits of lowering the cost of patent registration have already been demonstrated in a variety of outliers across the continent. Botswana, Tanzania, and South Africa, for example, all have patent registration costs far below the African average, and partly as a result, have a much more diverse export market, which helps create a more stable business environment.

Phase I of the AfCFTA negotiations, which largely focused on removing concessions for goods traded intra-continentally, are coming to a close. The AU is now starting to look ahead at Phase II, which will largely focus on competition policy and, perhaps most importantly, intellectual property rights.

As Phase II draws closer, the AU must focus on reducing the overbearing costs of intellectual property across the region. Without a universal set cost, or unilateral lowering of patent registration fees, it seems the AfCFTA’s goal of drastically boosting intra-regional trade will be harder to achieve.

By reducing the costs of patents, African innovators will be free to reap the rewards of their innovations without being crippled by burdensome governmental regulation. If the AU fails to address this growing problem, intellectual property rights on the continent will remain something typically enjoyed by wealthy foreigners, and that’s not a future Africa should strive for.

This article is republished with permission from the Pulse by Business Insider. 

COLUMN BY

Alexander Hammond

Alexander C. R. Hammond is a researcher at a Washington D.C. think tank and Senior Fellow for African Liberty. He is also a Young Voices contributor and frequently writes about economic freedom, African development, and globalization.

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