Witless Western feminists now have an annual event, World Hijab Day, in which they don hijabs in order to show solidarity with Muslim women in the West who supposedly experience abuse for wearing the hijab, although a great many of these incidents have been found to have been faked by the alleged victims. The real victims of abuse over wearing the hijab are much more often girls and women who don’t wear it, such as Ola Salem.
Elementary school teachers in Tunisia were threatened with death for not wearing hijab. Syrian schoolgirls were forbidden to go to school unless they wore hijab. Women in Gaza were forced by Hamas to wear hijab. Women in Iran protested against the regime by daring to take off their hijabs. Women in London were threatened with murder by Muslim thugs if they didn’t wear hijab. An anonymous young Muslim woman doffed her hijab outside her home and started living a double life in fear of her parents. Fifteen girls in Saudi Arabia were killed when the religious police wouldn’t let them leave their burning school building because they had taken off their hijabs in their all-female environment. A girl in Italy had her head shaved by her mother for not wearing hijab.
Other women and girls have been killed or threatened, or live in fear for daring not to wear the hijab. But where are the feminists standing in solidarity with them?
“Staten Island fugitive arraigned, held without bail in Staten Island slay of Muslim activist daughter,” by Rocco Parascandola, New York Daily News, December 22, 2020:
A former Olympic boxer charged with the strangulation of his daughter — an activist for the rights of Muslim women — was arraigned on murder charges Tuesday and ordered held without bail, the Staten Island district attorney said.
Kabary Salem, 52, was extradited from Kuwait on Friday, ending a year-long manhunt that started shortly after his daughter, Ola Salem, 25, was found strangled in Bloomingdale Park, a 138-acre park on the South Shore of Staten Island, the morning of Oct. 24, 2019.
Salem fled the country, possibly spending time in Egypt, authorities said — and even tried to throw investigators off his trail by telling The New York Times his daughter had complained to him that she was being tailed by another car on the highway.
“I want to know what happened to her, what is the reason for that, but no one tells me,” he told the news outlet. “I am just waiting.
“She was a really good, beautiful girl.”
Kabary Salem was indicted by a grand jury Nov. 3 and charged with murder, manslaughter, concealment of a human corpse and strangulation….
It’s unclear what sparked the violence. The DA’s office wouldn’t comment on a report that the father wasn’t happy with the man his daughter was dating.A source who knew the daughter told the Daily News she was becoming more Westernized and didn’t want to wear her hijab.
“She was very outspoken,” the source said. “She wasn’t timid.”
“She was becoming Americanized,” the source said….
The suspect was a top boxer in Egypt and competed in the 1992 and 1996 Olympics. His daughter also boxed and had dedicated her life to championing the rights of Muslim woman.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-12-24 02:57:352021-10-07 21:10:14NYC: Muslim murders his daughter for being too ‘Americanized’ and not wanting to wear hijab
December 21st was the darkest day of the year, the Winter Solstice, and at day’s end, in the black of night, a light appeared in the southwest sky.
Some called it the Bethlehem Star, a perfect alignment of planets that only occurs every 800 years. It penetrated the darkness of 2020 at a time when we all needed a sign that heaven hears our cries. Who doesn’t feel the weight of this Dark Winter, brought to us by those princes of darkness – Soros, Gates, Bloomberg, Biden, Clinton, Obama, Trudeau, Fauci and their brethren in the CCP?
These oppressors promise us they will not let up with their COVID deception in 2021.
No, they plan to double down until all is destroyed.
This must happen so they can launch what they call the Great Reset, a grand plan to “build it back better,” as they say.
This is a Tower of Babel moment, writ large.
The builders envision a complete reordering of society – the economic system and the entire social order – affecting every facet of your life, your work, your child’s education, entertainment, how you travel from one point to another, even how you are allowed to practice your religious faith. You will have no say in this grand redesign of the global order. No, it’s not up for a vote.
Klaus Schwab, director of the World Economic Forum and one of the main pushers of the Great Reset, has publicly stated that COVID-19 presents the “narrow window of opportunity” that elites have been waiting for to launch the plan.
No one will be able to hide from it. “No person will be left behind” promises the United Nations, which is cooperating with the WEF, the Vatican, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and most of the world’s governments to bring it about.
The forces of darkness call everything they want to keep hidden from the masses a conspiracy theory. Why? Because it’s just vague enough to be impossible to deny. How does one prove he or she is not a conspiracy theorist?
It’s just another clever lie.
One could make the argument that the oppression we feel right now hits us so strongly because it’s hard to live in a society where so many lies are accepted by so many as truth.
The left never debates the facts anymore, they just label you a conspiracy theorist. Just shut up and “do what you’re told,” says Dr. Fauci, who continuously mocks Americans who persist in believing they have individual rights under the U.S. Constitution. To believe such fantasies makes you “literally a murderer,” says New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, one of many governors being played like pawns by the global crime families.
These global reseters have a clearly defined agenda, a conspiracy. On the one hand they brag about their plans for us, without once consulting us, while on the other hand they denigrate those who call them out on their deceptive sugar-coating of what amounts to a global power grab. We are not “conspiracy theorists,” as much as we are whistleblowers, blowing the whistle on their conspiracy.
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary traces the word “conspire” to the Latin term comspirare or “to breathe, more at spirit.” So you see there is something spiritually driven at the core of every conspiracy, which Webster defines as follows:
“Plot. Contrive; to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end. Scheme. To act in harmony.”
Luciferian conspiracies
To truly understand evil, you must understand the nature of conspiracies because evil people never tell their intended victims the truth about their plots. They will leak out partial truths but they always withhold the big truth, which if known would ensure the plot’s failure.
Now, if God is Truth and wants His people to “walk in the truth,” then Satan is the opposite. He wants as many people as possible to be shielded from truth and walk in falsehood.
Satan was described from the beginning as “the most crafty” of the beasts. He used clever lies to entice the first humans into doing something he knew would harm them. When his victims believed the lie, Satan pulled off the world’s first successful conspiracy.
By their nature, conspiracies are Luciferian, because the real agenda lies cloaked in darkness.
Every communist revolution throughout history has been conspiratorial and therefore Luciferian. They use deception to win power. Once in power, their lies are exposed but it’s too late. They use their power to brutally repress their enemies.
Communists typically launch their revolutions in a time of crisis. The crisis is used to distract from the details behind their fake revolutionary promises. When the Soviets took over Russia, they promised “bread and peace” during a time when the Russian people were war weary, beaten down by the ravages of World War I. Many people had lost loved ones. Many more had lost their means of making a living. They were hungry and desperate.
This is what’s going on right now in the world, with the Great Reset waiting in the wings. They are using the COVID virus to shut down people’s businesses and jobs, pushing them into poverty.
We have a Luciferian cabal that is trying to use this crisis, a virus unleashed on the world by their comrades in communist China, to bring the world to its knees. When we are sufficiently beaten down, they will launch a new economic system that enslaves the vast majority of people on the planet.
Communist revolutions have been going on since the French Revolution, but they have always been conducted on the national level. The Great Reset is the first time in history that a communist revolution has been attempted at the global level. And it won’t be pure communism, it will be modeled after China’s variation on the theme. Some call it state capitalism, where the state picks the private enterprises it wants to partner with and dooms the others to forced impoverishment.
This impoverishment is already taking shape under the COVID rules, where Walmart, Amazon and Costco, along with other big-box stores are favored while small businesses are forced to close or operate under impossible conditions.
Whether this conspiracy – it’s no longer a theory at this point – is successful or not could very well be determined by whether the United States joins in. If Donald Trump stays in office, that’s a non-starter. Trump delivered two speeches last year, one before the United Nations and the other before the World Economic Forum, in which he set aside all ambiguity as to where he stands. He told the globalists to basically go to hell. “The future does not belong to globalists. It belongs to patriots,” he said. His America-first philosophy is the antipathy of the globalist Great Reset.
Like Barak Obama before him, Joe Biden is totally on board with the Great Reset. He speaks its language and he has appointed cabinet members who are 100 percent aligned with the goals of the Davos crowd at the World Economic Forum.
The epic struggle in which we are engaged has nothing to do with Trump and Biden but everything to do with the two visions for the future that these men represent.
So, if the dueling forces of good and evil are embodied in these two men, we should know what to expect in the days, weeks and months ahead.
Unless one side concedes, we are heading for a clash of worldviews.
Time for an exorcism?
Even if Trump’s America-first, God and country vision prevails, it’s not going to be easy. It will happen with much pain, almost like an exorcism of demons from a possessed human body. Why? Because this is a spiritual battle. Demons don’t leave without a fight.
In fact, a Catholic priest, Fr. Chad Ripperger, who specializes in spiritual warfare and exorcisms, made some interesting comparisons in a recent video presentation,
Ripperger says the conspirators trying to rope the world into a Great Reset are “basically in league with Satan. They believe the same things that he does. They want the same goals. I think what we’re seeing is, there’s some stark comparisons between what I see in the behavior of some of these people and what I see in a session.”
When Ripperger speaks of a “session,” he is speaking about an exorcism.
“For example, right now, things are leading up to a crescendo,” he explains. “And that’s what you tend to see right before a person has been liberated. So there’s this buildup of the diabolic manifestation that becomes much more drastic, much more open, much more out there, sometimes even more preternatural right towards the end, and then the person is actually liberated.”
If America is to be liberated from the globalists and communists who make up the deep state, Ripperger sees the same process playing out as a man being liberated from the demons that torment him.
“Once Satan thinks he has the upper hand, he presses it all the more. He doesn’t wait, he doesn’t take his time, he will in certain circumstances take his time but once he thinks he has control over a situation he’s going to drive it until he gets ultimately what he wants,” the priest said.
He went on to explain that many of the people in politics and business who are being used by Satan right now are involved in horrific sins, things like human trafficking and using people in the most depraved ways.
“And I think that’s slowly starting to come out. If you read about it, it’s in the public record about some of the behavior of some of the people that have been the most vociferous during this time frame, and it reminds me a lot of how the demons themselves, when they get caught in something, or their shame gets revealed in something they have committed, they sometimes become very vociferous and very angry about it and try to push the envelope even more,” Ripperger said.
“Once their sin is revealed and people see it, then what they do is, they’ll try to create a distraction onto something else,” he continued. “So one of the things an exorcist has to constantly be on guard about during a session is, when you start getting to a certain point where the demons actually, where you’re starting to gain certain control over them or you’re starting to get somewhere in the session where it looks like he’s going to start telling you some information, he’ll actually start doing things to distract you or he’ll dig into the person, the demons.”
[FACT: When Hillary Clinton was caught sending compromising emails over a private server, she concocted the Russia hoax against President Trump, in an attempt to deflect attention away from her own guilt. This was revealed in personal notes from former CIA chief John Brennan that were declassified in October.]
Another deceptive trick of demonic forces is to “claim victory” before the victory is actually in hand.
“The other thing that’s very common is, claiming that they are victorious or that they’ve already won when they really haven’t yet, or that they actually have rights, or that there’s certain things that they have that other people can’t take away from them. So it’s very similar to a lot of things we’re actually seeing, on their [evil] side.”
Ripperger also commented on what he sees happening on the other side, among those aligning themselves with the forces of light.
“As for those on our side, on the side of the angels, people who actually want things that are best for this country, I think there is in the minds of people a feeling of vulnerability right now. That’s because people recognize that the checks-and-balance system in our country has essentially broken down, meaning people in one part of the government are just doing whatever they want. We’ve seen mayors setting aside constitutional rights of citizens so the actual checks and balances are broken down.”
This collapsing of the rule of law creates mounting anger among the people who want to see America’s crime families brought to justice.
“There’s kind of a slow burn with people in a sense that people are angry at systemic crime,” he said. “Certain families who are just systematically getting away with crime year after year and nothing is ever done about it.
“How much evidence do you need when the public sector knows ten times more than what it takes to get people convicted in a court?” he said. “You wonder what is it going to take for certain people to be put away for their crimes, especially when the crimes involve tremendous damage, basically treason, selling out the country and things of that sort.”
Demoralizing the people of God
People got their hopes up that the Supreme Court would step in and rule against the evil ones, the thieves, only to see them dashed. Again, Ripperger sees a parallel to the exorcism.
“That demoralization is precisely what you see when demons are attacking people. One of the things we have to do when people are possessed, is constantly get their focus back on God. Don’t let the demons drag your focus into the stuff that you’re suffering and the things that you’re dealing with, keep your focus, because that’s when things start to go downhill. It’s also one of those things that the shift in the focus is what the demons are always trying to get us to do, and to be demoralized.”
Efforts at demoralization are evident in the way certain mayors, governors and members of Congress brow beat the people to stay home for Christmas in compliance with draconian COVID rules while they themselves disregard these rules and in some cases even brag about how they flaunt such rules.
“Demons are liars so never believe them. My concern is the people on the other side are being used to make us feel demoralized and distracting us so we lose our focus.”
Prayer is a must, he said, when engaged in this kind of spiritual warfare.
“There’s a reaction from the demons; they get more angry when we respond to God’s grace and begin to rise up in prayer.
“They take everything personal. That’s how demons function. That boils down to the fact that, demons are narcissistic, that’s pretty much the description of demons and that’s the description of communists. The riots. It was all perceived. The actual facts showed they weren’t in the right, but when we rise up in prayer that means God will answer our prayers, you just have to be very persistent. But the demons know that if you are praying what they are working for will get stripped from them, and that’s why they get so angry, they get really irritated that you are even fighting against them. Demons are typical bullies just like these other people are — once you rise up against them they’re basically cowards and they flee.”
So stay prayed up, don’t lose hope, stay focused on the hope of hopes, Jesus Christ. Wise men were led to Him by that Bethlehem star 2,000 years ago, the same star which re-appeared this week. Right when we needed it.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Leo Hohmannhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngLeo Hohmann2020-12-23 05:02:122021-10-07 21:10:16When demons conspire to take over a nation . . . there’s only one option
“God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” – John 3:16
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from Heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” – 2 Chronicles 7:14
For the first time in my lifetime I have witnesses a sitting President declare Jesus Christ as our Redeemer.
As we celebrate the birth of Jesus let us not forget that He was the very first Christmas present to the world. Jesus is truly the gift that keeps on giving. For whoever believes in Him shall have life everlasting. What more can one ask for?
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2020-12-22 10:12:482021-10-07 21:10:18VIDEO: The First U.S. President in my Lifetime to Openly Declare Jesus as ‘The Redeemer’
The hypocrisy of the EU’s new terror content law & free speech stateside.
A recent agreement drafted for the European Union (EU) mandates that social media companies must take down terrorist content within an hour of it being flagged or risk paying enormous fines.
On the face of it, we may automatically agree that this is a good idea considering the fact that propaganda is actually dangerous due to its proven ability to influence people and sway their opinions.
Most of us would also naturally assume that the new rule will apply to ISIS videos, neo-Nazi content and the like.
But will it apply to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which churns out terrorist content on its state-run media channels non-stop for young and old? Or will the PA be given an exemption considering the fact that between 2017 and 2020, the EU’s baseline amount of funding for the PA was $1.57 billion?
Will the law apply to Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism, and the genocidal content that regularly comes out of its leaders’ mouths? Or will the EU merely condemn such sentiments but look the other way on its social media platforms due to its financial investment of billions of euros in the Islamic Republic in the years since the nuclear deal was signed?
Will it apply to Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that most countries in the EU can’t even bring themselves to ban completely, possibly due to the fact that it is an Iranian proxy?
Will it apply to Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian Islamist leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who gives cover and funds to Hamas, slaughters Kurds in Syria and incites religious radicalism to the point of worldwide terror? Or does that also fall under “complicated” territory considering Erdogan’s stranglehold on the EU vis-à-vis the immigration/refugee crisis?
Judging from the EU’s tepid response to the assassination of Iranian terror leader Qassem Soleimani followed by its full-out condemnation of the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program, as a “criminal act – not to mention its failure to condemn Erdogan – we already know the answers to these questions.
So a very real question to ask when the dust settles is: Who defines “terrorist content”?
The relative standards of what constitutes terrorist content in our increasingly transactional world not only serves to call out the hypocrisy of this new EU mandate but represents a slippery slope to the rights of free speech everywhere, including stateside.
While Europeans have never enjoyed the freedoms of speech, expression or religion that form the bedrock of the U.S. constitution, a debate over these freedoms are raging in the public sphere in America as well.
Only in our increasingly woke America, where words are now perceived as “violence” (to the degree that students in colleges around the country need “safe spaces” from them), the term “terrorist content” has been largely replaced by “hateful content.”
This, in turn, has prompted ersatz purveyors of American culture to demand that tech companies take down “hateful content” from their platforms.
Take former basketball legend turned cultural commentator Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Speaking without the least hint of irony (he says he’s been commenting about culture and politics for the last 30 years), Abdul-Jabbar wants tech companies to take down content he finds objectionable from celebrities. That content includes everything from conservative ideas to commentary about election fraud to information questioning the safety of the rapidly rolled out and experimental coronavirus vaccine.
“It would be tempting to dismiss this self-mutilation as merely the triggering of overly sensitive ‘cancel culture,’” he says about celebrities like J.K. Rowling who go against the current Leftist groupthink. “But some of this public braying does immediate harm to the foundation of society.”
(Rowling had the temerity to tweet about biological sex being important.)
Ultimately, Abdul-Jabar and many others like him would like to see celebrities like Rowling canceled altogether, so that “their professional legacies could become brief footnotes to the memory of their collection of mason jars filled with their excreted opinions.”
There was a time when cultural purveyors such as Abdul-Jabbar would have been ostracized themselves as extremists due to the centrality of free speech in the American system of liberty, but now they are positioned sturdily in the mainstream.
Take Richard Stengel, President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team leader for U.S.-owned media outlets. Writing in The Washington Post just last year, Stengel argued for making hate speech a crime.
Stengel gets around the sticky issue of freedom of speech as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution by presuming to get into the heads of the country’s framers.
“… the intellectual underpinning of the First Amendment was engineered for a simpler era,” he contends. “The amendment rests on the notion that the truth will win out in what Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas called ‘the marketplace of ideas’ … [yet] no one ever quite explained how good ideas drive out bad ones, how truth triumphs over falsehood … [how] truth would prevail in a ‘free and open encounter.’”
Ignoring the obvious answer that the country is made up of citizens who are able to think for themselves, Stengel goes on to denigrate the framers’ belief that the free exchange of ideas is “necessary for people to make informed choices in a democracy.”
Somehow, he says, even if that “magically” happened in the past, Stengel says it isn’t possible today: “On the Web, it’s not enough to battle falsehood with truth; the truth doesn’t always win. In the age of social media, the marketplace model doesn’t work.”
Stengel then opines that banning hate speech was really the intent of the framers:
“Hate speech has a less violent, but nearly as damaging, impact in another way: It diminishes tolerance. It enables discrimination … Isn’t that, by definition, speech that undermines the values that the First Amendment was designed to protect: fairness, due process, equality before the law?
“Why shouldn’t the states experiment with their own version of hate speech statutes to penalize speech that deliberately insults people based on religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation?” he asks.
The ideas of Stengel, Abdul-Jabar and other would-be censors and purveyors of “truth” represent a serious slide into a rabbit hole that historically has been tried and never ended well.
Whether it begins with the hypocrisy of the EU banning “terror content” on social media platforms, the condescending attitude of Stengel toward everyday Americans or the nanny state being proposed by Abdul-Jabar, the endpoint of that route is always totalitarianism.
It’s a sticky issue. Yes, ISIS videos and neo-Nazi propaganda can and should be taken down, but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that criminalizing hate speech is a good idea instead of what it really is: a euphemism for silencing our political opponents. Better we should talk “hate” and let truth prevail.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Clarion Projecthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngClarion Project2020-12-21 11:51:012021-10-07 21:10:21Should Extremist Content Be Taken Down or Should We Talk About It?
Made possible by the greatest POTUS in history. It is just a matter of time before Israel and Saudi Arabia establish full diplomatic relations. What President Trump has accomplished in the Middle East is a miracle.
The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education finds attitudes in the kingdom towards Israel are becoming “more balanced and tolerant.”
Saudi authorities have been removing anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist content from the country’s textbooks for the coming school year, a report by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education has found.
The report came amid growing speculation of a potential rapprochement between the Jewish state and the Arab Gulf power. Saudi Arabia’s neighbors, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, normalized ties with Israel in September in a deal brokered by the United States. Washington has made it no secret that it would like to see Riyadh join the Abraham Accords before U.S. President Donald Trump’s term in office ends next month.
The monitoring group said that while it “did not find that new tolerant material had been injected into the curriculum, a substantial amount of offensive material had been removed.”
The report said that many of the books no longer include the prediction of a religious war in which Muslims would annihilate all Jews. Furthermore, the classic anti-Semitic trope saying that “Zionist forces” use nefarious methods to control the world has been dropped.
“Examining the trendline of our 2002, 2008 and even 2019 reports of the Saudi curriculum, it is clear that these new 2020 textbooks represent an institutional effort to modernize the Kingdom’s curriculum,” said IMPACT-se CEO, Marcus Sheff. “The Saudi authorities have begun a process of rooting out anti-Jewish hate.”
Attitudes towards Israel are becoming “more balanced and tolerant,” the institute said, giving as an example the removal of an entire chapter that was titled “the Zionist danger,” which delegitimized Israel’s right to exist.
More generally, the majority of references to jihad have been removed, whereas a decade ago the focus of the curriculum was to prepare students for martyrdom, the group found.
“This being said, anti-Israel content does still remain in the curriculum,” IMPACT-se noted. Hatred of Jews is still present, including “a decontextualized and ambiguous” story about Jewish “wrongdoers,” who are described as monkeys.
Once again, anger and fear resurface among Christians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, who also are preparing to celebrate Christmas amidst the restrictions due to the Covid19 pandemic.
However, their concerns are not because of the spread of coronavirus, but rather because of a letter (which was made public on social media and other Palestinian websites) that was sent to the government of Hamas in Gaza regarding the upcoming celebrations of Christmas.
The letter, entitled “Activities to reduce interaction with Christmas during the next two weeks,” was sent by the Director-General of the General Administration of Preaching and Counseling of the Palestinian Endowment Ministry in Gaza.
In what appeared to be an official correspondence between Palestinian officials, the letter discussed the steps taken during “an emergency meeting” that was held in Gaza on December 15. It included the issuance of “awareness and guidance” that needed to be implemented by 10 departments within the Islamic Waqf ministry.
The main goal behind this campaign would include “issuing fatwas [to prohibit Muslims from participating in Christmas], releasing videos, and requesting some preachers” to talk about the great sins of celebrating their holidays with the Christians.
It is worth noting that the number of Christians still living in Gaza may not reach 1000, while the Orthodox and Catholic churches continue to provide parish services to the remaining families, in addition to two schools whose students are mostly Muslims.
After Hamas gained full control of the Strip, the Baptist Church in Gaza, which had operated since 1950, was soon almost shattered. In October 2007, Rami Ayyad, one of its active members in Gaza, who managed its Christian bookstore there, was kidnapped, tortured, and then killed.
After Ayyad’s assassination, seven church leaders left for the West Bank, while Hanna Massad, the church’s pastor, moved to Jordan with his family.
Since Hamas installed Shari’ah law in Gaza, which fomented further threats against the remaining Christians from Islamic extremists, Christians in general feared gathering in groups. They no longer wear crosses, while women dare not move around freely by themselves or be unveiled.
Hamas has always prohibited the Christians from holding public celebrations during Christmas and New Year, ever since its usurpation of power in 2007. This time, it intends to socially isolate them as well.
In the West Bank, the situation of the Christians may seem relatively better, but the fear of Islamic jihad remains a ghost haunting them.
The number of Christians in Bethlehem, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, is rapidly dwindling. Christians today make up merely 15% of what was once known as a Christian-majority town. The violent military actions taken by Fatah militants wreaked havoc on the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ after the outbreak of the so-called Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.
Palestinian Christians singing Christmas carol near the Church of the Nativity
A few years ago, a visa clerk at the US consulate disclosed to this writer that Palestinian Christians who met the US tourist visa requirements often decided to overstay their visit to the United States, and eventually applied for political asylum because of fear of growing Islamic jihad activity within the Palestinian society. Those applicants share with the USCIS in secrecy their valid stories of persecution at the hands of “their Muslim brethren.”
On the other side of the country, Christians inside Israel tell a completely different story. They increasingly are incorporated in all walks of life, and their numbers are growing. It is worth noting that their academic achievements rival those of the majority Jewish population.
The head of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association recently posted on his Facebook page an appeal to the Likud, the main party of the current Israeli government. “We call upon the Likud party which is the [ Israeli] government to open up for appointing Christians and to work on integrating our Christian community and our youth into the state of Israel. This is the responsibility of the members of the Likud party today.”
The Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, recited by Shadi Khaloul, head of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association
In Jordan, where Christians have lived so far in peace and safety and enjoyed opportunities that secured them access to both the public and the private sectors, the picture has begun to change.
Yesterday, The Students’ Union of the College of Sharia at the University of Jordan issued a statement expressing its refusal to erect a Christmas tree and light inside the university courtyard. It added that what the university did is a matter that does not appease God in a country whose religion is Islam.
“Muslims, in general, are living in a crisis because the image of Islam has worldwide been shaken. I am not surprised that they seek to defuse their anger in the remaining Christian minorities.” George Abu Kova, a Palestinian Christian who lives in the United States commented on Facebook in reply to Hamas’s letter against Christmas.
Samir Qumsiyeh, a former advisor to the Orthodox and Catholic Patriarchs in Jerusalem, expressed his dismay and anger to the letter in a post on Facebook, saying, “Hamas’s positions are well known. Have you forgotten that Ismail Haniyeh [Hamas Prime Minister] congratulated Erdogan for turning the Hagia Sophia Church into a mosque and thus ignored the feelings of Christians in general and the Christian Palestinians in particular? Then you hear from them that we are one people within all its components.” Unfortunately, our reality is painful and we have no future.“
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-12-20 05:22:402021-10-07 21:10:27Gaza: Internal Hamas government memo calls for ‘activities to reduce interaction with Christmas’
Jonathan Greenblatt is discovering that any dissent, no matter how small and qualified, from the far-Left agenda — which is increasingly open in its hostility to Israel — will get you defamed as an “Islamophobe,” no matter how much you pander, no matter how much you desperately try to stay in the good graces of those who set the tune to which the rest of us must dance. The sinister Salam al-Marayati of MPAC has smeared ADL as “anti-Muslim” for supporting Israel, and Greenblatt is dismayed, saying that “the allegation that ADL falls along the same side of Islamophobes is patently false.”
Of course it is. The ADL has repeatedly done to foes of jihad violence against Israel and other states, and foes of Sharia oppression of women and others, exactly what Salam al-Marayati is doing to him now. Greenblatt could have used this as an occasion to wake up and realize how he is being played, and how the entire “Islamophobia” enterprise is a scam designed to intimidate people into fearing to oppose jihad terror, for fear of falling prey to what al-Marayati is doing to him now. But instead of having an original thought for the first time in his life, Greenblatt is doubling down, pleading with al-Marayati to accept him. Will it work? Almost certainly not, but it will likely lead the ADL to become even more anti-Israel than it is now.
“ADL: We’re proud of our record defending Jews — and Muslims,” by Jonathan A. Greenblatt, Forward, December 16, 2020:
As one of the oldest civil-rights organizations in the Jewish community, we’re not unaccustomed to criticism, even in the pages of one of America’s oldest Jewish news outlets. But the OpEd by Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which the Forward published on Tuesday morning, was illuminating about how certain quarters in our society desperately try to employ cancel culture to silence others. In this case, the author is trying to marginalize ADL and make support for the State of Israel disqualifying in pursuing civil rights for all Americans, including the Muslim-American community.
Al-Marayati argues that ADL is a source of “anti-Muslim” rhetoric and cannot be fully trusted as an ally in the fight for civil rights because of our support of the Jewish state. It is an argument taken from the playbook of a fringe smear campaign being run against ADL that, to its credit, MPAC has not signed his name to, but which he still chose to directly quote in his piece. Still, their campaign is wrong and without merit on a number of levels. It is also dangerous, creating a space where we as a Jewish organization are judged more for what we do or do not say about Israel than for all of the advocacy work we do here in the U.S. and abroad fighting for marginalized communities.
This is a common tactic in a smear campaign – narrow down a broader argument (in this case, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) into a singular, unfounded allegation (in this case, that ADL is Islamophobic because of our support for the Jewish State). But the allegation that ADL falls along the same side of Islamophobes is patently false….
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-12-19 05:17:192021-10-07 21:10:29ADL smears foes of jihad violence against Israel as ‘Islamophobes,’ gets canceled as ‘anti-Muslim’ anyway
False prophets will come and lead many astray. Jesus warned us about that in Matthew 24. Pope Francis is definitely one of them as he is working hard to lay the foundations for a one-world religion. It will be like a shiny red apple, delicious looking on the outside but rotten to the core. Posing as a man of God, he is leading many Catholics and Christians into the arms of ravenous wolves who intend to enslave them under the guise of offering peace and security. Please read the guest post below from David Martin for more on their plans.
Francis also announced recently he has entered into a partnership with the Rothschilds and Rockefellers to promote the globalist “Great Reset,” a total reorganizing of society set to be launched in 2021. As Taylor Marshall explains in the video below, they are attempting to merge the world’s major religions with their proposed new economic system, which they call “inclusive capitalism,” along with the pagan climate agenda of Mother Earth. Inclusive? Yes, for everyone except Bible-believing Christians, who will reject their plans for a total surveillance society, a centrally planned economy managed by elitist technocrats akin to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and the supposed brotherhood of man.
Pope Francis recently published a new book titled, Let us Dream: A Path to a Better Future, which is being touted “an inspiring and actionable blueprint for building a better world for all humanity” (Simon & Schuster). What is strange is that the book is void of the instructions for a better world given to us by Christ. There is nothing about doing penance (Mt 3:2) and obeying rules and commandments (John 14:15).
In his book, Francis talks about “creating something new”, “our new principle”, and “reimagining a new world.” This immediately calls to mind the lyrics of John Lennon’s anti-religious song “Imagine,” in which he says, “Imagine there’s no Heaven … and no religion too.”
Sees COVID as a Launch into “Great Reset”
The pope indeed appears to be dreaming, as if he is saying a “new world” with a “new principle” is too good to be true, i.e. a dream. His book is all about emerging from the COVID crisis and arriving at a new plateau they call the “Great Reset” – a New World Order dreamed up by globalists in which man forgets his religious past and bows to the planetary idol of “mother earth.”
Francis says:
“This is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities – what we value, what we want, what we seek…. God asks us to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Leo Hohmannhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngLeo Hohmann2020-12-17 07:02:472021-10-07 21:10:33Pope Francis: Let us Dream of a New World Order
In C. S. Lewis’s book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he describes a beautiful place (Narnia) under the spell of an evil character (the White Witch)—who symbolizes the Devil. Lewis writes of her that it was she who has made it “always winter, but never Christmas.”
“Always winter, but never Christmas”—what a great phrase to describe this world, without the loving, powerful, and positive influence of Jesus Christ.
Could you imagine life in such an intolerable state where we had to endure the brutal conditions of the winter season—but never having Christmas to look forward to?
Well, this winter, there are some tyrannical state and local officials who are using the coronavirus as a pretext for shutting down churches and family gatherings. To the degree that these regulations are imposed on the people in those states, it will be always winter, but never Christmas. At least this season.
These are the same people who might as well have a sign on their desks for the world to see, declaring, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
We’ve all heard the stories of mayors and governors who urge people to stay home while they are out and about getting haircuts, shopping, and eating at restaurants with large groups. One mayor actually recorded a video urging people to stay home at Thanksgiving. The kicker—he recorded it while vacationing at a family timeshare in Mexico. We don’t have to make this stuff up. Thankfully, people are catching on to the hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, the war on Christmas seems to continue this year, as always. Here are just some examples:
The woke now tell us that putting up Christmas lights demonstrates “systemic biases.” An ordinary display of Christmas lights in Minneapolis triggered one snowflake neighbor to write an anonymous letter protesting the non-ostentatious display: “The idea of twinkling, colorful lights are a reminder of divisions that continue to run through our society, a reminder of systemic biases against our neighbors who don’t celebrate Christmas or who can’t afford to put up lights of their own….We must do work of educating ourselves about the harmful impact an outward facing display like yours can have.” As if penning satire, the writer called for shutting down the display to “respect the dignity of all people, while striving to learn from differences, ideas, and opinions of our neighbors.”
Abortion clinic staffers erected a sacrilegious Christmas tree display. Instead of a star or an angel at the top of the tree, they placed a forceps that is used to kill unborn babies. Christmas is all about celebrating the birth of a Baby; instead, abortionists use the celebration to promote their work of killing babies. As Lifenews.com notes of this incident: “It is not the first time abortion activists have sought thrills by mocking Christmas, a holiday celebrating the birth of an unplanned child to a young unwed mother. In 2010, a pro-abortion group sold ‘Abornaments,’ a desecration of plastic fetal models depicting unborn children at various stage of development before birth, online. Some of the ornaments were plastic fetal models decorated with red noses and reindeer antlers hanging from coat-hangers.” Depravity knows no bounds in the abortion industry.
Fewer poor people will be helped this year, thanks to the grinches at one of the Christophobic groups that runs around our country looking to abolish any remaining vestiges of our Judeo-Christian heritage in public places. Onenewsnow.com (of the American Family Association) writes: “The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) put an early end to Liberty Middle School’s Operation Christmas Child program—a project organized by Samaritan’s Purse that allowed students at the school fill shoeboxes with Christmas gifts for underprivileged children living in oppressed and embattled nations around the world.” Well done, FFRF. You successfully protected innumerable poor children from receiving Christmas cheer this year.
A great contrast to these anti-Christmas sentiments can be found in the words and actions of many of this nation’s founders and leaders.
Just take one example. John Jay was a key founding father. He wrote some of the Federalist Papers, and he served as the nation’s first Chief Justice. He gave a Christmas address before his fellow representatives of the state of New York in 1776, in which he mentioned God and faith 33 times. For instance, he said, “And we should still have enjoyed the blessings of peace and plenty, if we had not forgotten the source from which these blessings flowed; and permitted our country to be contaminated by the many shameful vices which have prevailed among us.”
Ultimately, C. S. Lewis’s novel is a beautiful Christian allegory showing how Jesus Christ has come into the world to undo the works of the Devil. Thank God for Jesus. Otherwise, it would be always winter, but never Christmas.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJerry Newcombe, D. Min.2020-12-17 06:54:192021-10-07 21:10:34“Always Winter, But Never Christmas”
It’s the sort of thing that can make someone proud to be an American: Two Christians are on trial now in Algeria for “insulting the prophet and denigrating the precepts of the Muslim religion.” Imagine: on trial for expressing opinions that go against those of the elites. But that could never happen here, right? We have the freedom of speech in the U.S. We can say anything we wish, aside from calls for violence or criminal activity, and express our opinions, no matter how unpopular, without fear of reprisal, right?
Wrong – as a recent incident in Tennessee illustrates.
“Tennessee legal watchdog out after lawyer accused him of being an ‘anti-Muslim bigot’” was the headline in Saturday’s edition of the Nashville Tennessean, and of course everyone despises bigotry, so most people might be inclined to think that the legal watchdog in question was entirely in the wrong and justifiably fired. But the details, as is so often the case, makes all this a great deal more complicated.
In the first place, the legal ethics watchdog, whose name is Jerry Morgan, was pressured to resign as disciplinary counsel for the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility because Nashville lawyer Brian Manookian, who according to the Tennessean “was suspended from practicing law last year after the Board of Professional Responsibility said he violated ethics rules by sending threatening emails,” accused him of this Islamophobic bigotry.
Manookian “said Morgan couldn’t do his job effectively because of multiple social media posts he made criticizing Muslims and the Islamic faith.” Manookian’s lawyer, Daniel Horwitz, claimed that Morgan’s judgment in Manookian’s case was tainted “because Manookian’s wife and children are Muslim,” and because Morgan has reportedly “made a slew of disparaging comments against Muslims on Twitter.”
What disparaging remarks did Morgan make? Did he say that Muslims were “the most vile of created beings”? No, that’s what the Islamic holy book, the Qur’an, calls non-Muslims (98:6). Did he call Muslims “apes and pigs”? No, that’s what the Qur’an calls Jews (2:63-65, 5:59-60, 7:166). Did he say Muslims were “unclean”? No, that’s what the Qur’an says of non-Muslims (9:28).
So what egregious statements did Morgan actually make?
As it turned out, he has been forced to resign for “praising President Donald Trump for ‘stopping Muslims’ and ‘talking big against Muslims,’” and “said Islam was not a peaceful religion and made comments linking the faith with violence and ‘Muslim terrorists.’”
Morgan, a court filing claimed, also showed “extreme prejudice toward minorities,” displaying “disturbing views on ‘blacks,’ ‘illegals’ and their children, and the ‘slave’ mentality of minorities.” Even worse, he “has made countless statements evidencing extreme prejudice against ‘liberals,’ ‘Democrats,’ and attorneys who support the Democratic Party in particular.”
On the basis of that, Horwitz intoned piously: “Allowing an extreme anti-Muslim bigot — whom Tennessee’s Board of Professional Responsibility has inexplicably employed and permitted to maintain prosecutions on our Supreme Court’s behalf — to undertake a prosecution against an attorney who has a Muslim family shakes confidence in the integrity of this entire proceeding.”
Manookian and Horwitz prevailed: The Administrative Office of the Courts started an investigation of Morgan, and he resigned. However, as he took a victory lap on Friday, Horwitz “said Morgan’s ‘apparent termination’ was driven by bad publicity rather than the content of his social media posts.”
That in a nutshell is why the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and allied organizations make a fuss when someone says something they don’t like: They know that most groups don’t have the stomach or the courage to stand up to the outrage mob, and so they will throw the putative offender under the bus just for the sake of peace.
Jerry Morgan’s statements are presented in the Tennessean in a highly pejorative light (of course), but all he essentially did was support Trump’s travel ban on people entering the U.S. from jihadi hotspots and other places where officials cannot or will not provide adequate information about those wishing to enter; said Islam was not a religion of peace; linked Islam with violence, as Islamic jihadis do every day; and supposedly demonstrated prejudice against minorities and dislike of Democrats. The prejudice against minorities appears only to consist of disapproving of the “slave mentality” of some, which was likely a reference to their tendency to vote Democrat even against their own best interests.
But such things cannot be said today. America reveres the freedom of speech, except when it doesn’t. Freedom of speech is fine for Leftists, but for anyone else, it’s an egregious offense for which one can be fired. What has happened to Jerry Morgan is a disquieting harbinger of worse to come.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-12-17 05:21:232021-10-07 21:10:35Tennessee Lawyer Fired for Saying Islam Isn’t a Peaceful Religion
Strangely, many Jewish liberal progressive leftists have become inured and blinded to the Jew-hatred prevalent on the left.
Despite its affinity for extremists who delegitimize Israel using classical stereotypes, the Jewish left often attempts to silence critics by branding them antisemitic. Progressives have no problem excusing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (“BDS”) movement, validating Hamas, or disparaging Jewish historical integrity, but they often cry “antisemitism” when rebuked for maintaining alliances with anti-Israel zealots. Given their apparently selective sensitivity to bigotry, however, the question is whether they have waived the right to claim victimhood status by consorting with those who promote ancient conspiracy theories or demonize the Jewish State.
There is no dispute that BDS is antisemitic given its revisionist contempt for Jewish history and stated goal of opposing a Jewish state in any part of “Palestine. ”This goal denies Jewish historical rights in favor of a country that never existed and whose proponents lay claim to another people’s ancestral homeland.
Nonetheless, progressive grant organizations support a variety of groups and NGOs sympathetic to boycotts or hostile to Israel’s existence. Some claim not to endorse BDS while simultaneously providing grants to radical organizations that impugn Israel’s legitimacy or falsely accuse her of human rights abuses. When chided for maintaining relationships with those who malign Israel’s Jewish character, progressives often respond by ironically accusing their detractors of antisemitism.
Though some critics of the Jewish left are undoubtedly motivated by antisemitic hatred and the belief in global Jewish conspiracy theories, many others are sincerely dumfounded at how leftists can betray their own people’s tradition, legacy, and history. It is ironic when progressives ascribe hateful intent to those who honestly challenge them for legitimizing terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, slandering Israel, supporting Congressional Democrats who express antisemitic views without fear of party censure, or endorsing UN resolutions (e.g., Security Council Resolution 2334) designed to bolster apocryphal Palestinian claims by denying the Jews’ well-documented history and presence in their homeland.
Progressive communal and religious leaders are inconsistent when they validate such conduct while proclaiming fealty to Jewish tradition. Many nontraditional rabbis, for example, falsely accuse Israel of racism, consort with Islamist front organizations posing as moderate, or defend political attacks against the Orthodox community. When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered shutdowns in observant neighborhoods during the festival of Sukkot – citing community resistance to anti-COVID measures while ignoring widespread noncompliance during Black Lives Matter demonstrations–some liberal and secular leaders cheered.
It was especially disturbing when hundreds of predominantly liberal rabbis publicly supported Cuomo’s disparate treatment of the Orthodox community, which was benignly described as an effort to contain pandemic “hotspots.” If they were so concerned about public health, however, they should likewise have criticized the failure to practice social distancing or wear facemasks at anti-police rallies or protests against President Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It seems that concern over the pandemic was merely pretext for clamping down on religious neighborhoods during the holidays and shielding Cuomo from criticism for apparently singling out observant Jews.
Such pandering contrasts with the liberal failure to acknowledge and condemn antisemitism at BLM and Antifa demonstrations or coming out of identity communities. Though quick to side with Cuomo against the Orthodox, the liberal rabbinate was largely silent when progressive-inspired mobs turned against Jewish targets in Los Angeles and New York and vandalized Jewish buildings and landmarks on college campuses and across the country.
In promoting social activism from the Bima as an innately Jewish virtue, moreover, the nontraditional movements seriously misrepresents traditional values.
On an individual level, the amelioration of Jewish tradition leads to personal estrangement from community and facilitates assimilation, while on the communal level it triggers the erosion of normative standards and weakens cultural cohesion. This is especially apparent when secular and non-Orthodox leadership elevates “social justice” over observance and spirituality. But progressive ideology does not become intrinsically Jewish when adopted by non-Orthodox clergy or secular communal organizations– any more than violations of Jewish law are reconciled with tradition by the prevalence of nonobservance. Playing golf on Shabbat or eating bacon for breakfast do not rise to the level of tradition simply because many secular Jews do so. Likewise, progressive causes that contravene Halakha do not become synonymous with Jewish values just because liberal clergy and congregants support them.
Individuals who jettison observance and ritual may risk personal assimilation, but those who impose alien ideologies on their communities threaten Jewish cultural integrity and continuity.This has been amply demonstrated throughout Jewish history.
The story of Hannukah, for example, is not merely a political parable about Jews rising up against Greek domination, but rather emphasizes the rejection of Hellenistic influences that infused Jewish culture of the day. Jewish Hellenizers were arguably more threatening than foreign occupiers because they promoted alien culture from within using their own language and societal frames of reference. The Maccabean revolt was as much about rooting out internal corruption as rebelling against Greek authority.
Similarly, apostates during the Middle Ages renounced their ancestral communities and beliefs while assisting the Church’s persecution of Jews who remained faithful to their heritage. Indeed, some were even complicit in the disputations that precipitated the burning of the Talmud. And as demonstrated by the pathological cruelty of Torquemada, degree of Jewish ancestry was often proportional to one’s zeal in persecuting fellow Jews who refused to submit.
The Haskalah (Enlightenment) brought an entirely new threat when Jews believed they could achieve political enfranchisement by voluntarily casting off that which distinguished them from ancestral Europeans. For perhaps the first time in history, westernized intellectuals sought to supplant religious observance with secularity among the Jewish population. Some maskilim may have believed they were reforming Jewish culture rather than degrading it, they discarded many of the beliefs, doctrines, and practices that had assured Jewish physical and spiritual continuity throughout generations of exile.
As a result, many progenitors of Enlightenment failed to preserve for subsequent generations the tools necessary for Jewish survival. Moses Mendelsohn is widely considered the father of Jewish enlightenment, for example, but within two generations all his descendants were culturally and religiously assimilated. Others ended up abandoning their roots altogether, like Eduard Gans, a leader of the German Society for the Culture and Science of Judaism (“Wissenschaft des Judentums”), who chose baptism in 1825 to advance his academic career.
Though assimilation from within was always exacerbated by the rejection of personal observance, the impulse to force it on others became a hallmark of the European progressive movements, particularly socialism and communism. The left declared ideological war on religious faith and national character and in particular despised a people – the Jews – whose identity incorporated elements of both. Consequently, progressive leadership attempted to enforce assimilation, often with enthusiastic assistance from the Jewish left.
The most militant assimilationist group in the former Soviet Union was the “Yevsektsiya,” or Jewish Section of the Communist Party, whose goal was the destruction of Jewish tradition, Hebrew culture, and Zionist thought in the USSR. The Yevsektsiya led the charge in closing synagogues, seizing communal property, criminalizing the practice of Judaism, and outlawing Jewish education. Despite its willingness to serve its Soviet masters, however, the Yevsektsiya was dissolved in 1929, and many of its members, including chairman Semyon Dimanstein, were executed during Stalin’s “Great Purge” of the 1930s. Persecuting their own people in the name of Communism clearly did not save Section members from being murdered as Jews.
Today’s radical left seems guided by the same rejectionist impulse as the Yevsektsiya in Soviet Russia. Its proponents miss no opportunity to disparage Jewish tradition and history, delegitimize Israel, or promote the Palestinian national myth. Perhaps more insidiously, their dogmatic self-rejectionism has filtered down to the liberal mainstream, which as a consequence often blames Jewish behavior for provoking antisemitism among progressives and minorities or accuses Israel of disproportionality whenever it defends itself against unprovoked attacks and terrorism – views that are common among non-Orthodox clergy.
Certainly, not all Jewish liberals are self-loathing rejectionists, but far too many have become inured to Jew-hatred on the left. Moreover, most will not acknowledge progressive antisemitism because doing so would require them to admit that liberals are just as capable of intolerance as the political opponents they routinely slander–despite their protestations of moral superiority. Considering how they falsely conflate Jewishness with liberal politics, such an admission would likely produce existential angst. For some, however, the resulting identity crisis mayprovide the moment of clarity needed to encourage self-reflection and to reconnect with authentic tradition.
For others, it might just lead the way to cultural oblivion.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Matthew Hausman, J.D.http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMatthew Hausman, J.D.2020-12-16 14:53:362021-10-07 21:10:36Jewish Left Cries Antisemitism to Silence Critics but Ignores its Prevalence on the Left
A group backed by congressional Democrats touting a “Secular America” has sent a 28-page document to the Biden transition team advising him to strip First Amendment rights from Christians who advocate traditional biblical positions on the sanctity of life, marriage, education and the nuclear family.
The document, presented by Reps Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and endorsed by Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., states that an incoming Biden administration must “educate the American public,” particularly those identified as the “religious right,” on the need to keep their “religious dogma” to themselves. The document calls for a purge of social conservatives from all levels of government, labeling them as “white nationalist” and “conspiracy theorists.”
“They don’t have a problem with churches, they have a problem with conservative churches that voted for Donald Trump,” Brannon Howse, a conservative radio host who aired a program on the document Monday night, told LeoHohmann.com. “And some of the people promoting this are members of the leftist neo-evangelical community.”
He said vengeful Democrats are making enemy lists and have their sights set on the traditional Catholic community as well as the conservative evangelical Protestant community – two groups that voted for Donald Trump in droves.
“As long as you’re teaching a leftist progressive socialist religiosity you’ll be just fine, but if you preach anything that is wrapped around a Judeo-Christian value system they’re coming after you,” Howse said. “They’re telling Biden don’t use the term Judeo-Christian. They don’t like that term.”
The document states:
“The constant entanglement of religion and government—promoted by the religious right and intensified by the Trump administration—sweeps far beyond hot-button ‘culture war’ issues like abortion and contraception. It permeates every aspect of government policy— healthcare, public and private education, foreign policy, tax policy, environmental policy, military policy, and more, all of which will be addressed in this document.”
It goes on to support the most draconian governmental responses to the COVID-19 virus and climate change, which sounds eerily similar to the World Economic Forum’s proposed “great reset” of the global economic and social order [this is a plan to replace free-enterprise capitalism with a type of scientific dictatorship run by unelected technocrats].
The document chastises President Trump for not following all of the arbitrary, constantly changing rules coming from the World Health Organization and “experts” like Dr. Anthony Fauci:
“Policy decisions that should be guided by science and evidence — on matters ranging from climate change to comprehensive sex education to federal funding for stem cell research — have been skewed or blocked entirely by powerful religious interest groups and further undermined at every turn by the Trump administration. There is no example more grave than this administration’s lethal mishandling of the COVID-19 global pandemic, which has brought death to hundreds of thousands of Americans. Disregard for science and disdain for expertise have reached an all-time high in this Administration of magical thinkers and conspiracy theorists, but these policy distortions did not begin with the Trump administration and will not end without deliberate action to restore rationalist, scientific and pragmatic policy methods and judgment. We believe that now is the right time to make the case for reviving a Jeffersonian approach to governance that favors reason, science, and evidence, and to disentangle government policy from the influence of sectarian religious interests that have become dangerously entrenched at all levels of government.”
Labeling traditional Christian views as ‘white supremacist’
Trevor Loudon, an author and filmmaker specializing in communist revolutionary movements throughout history, described the document in aninterview Monday with Howse at Worldview Weekend TV as “an advisory to what they hope is going to be President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris basically to clamp down on religious liberty in this country.”
The document demonizes conservative Christians as enemies of the state, equating them with “white nationalists” and “white supremacy,” which to the left is code for fascism, deserving of extreme retribution and ostracizing them from society.
The paper states:
“We urge you not to underestimate the institutional strength of what we refer to (interchangeably) in this document as the ‘Christian nationalist movement’ or the ‘religious right.’ … Its extreme and sectarian agenda is on constant display under the Trump-Pence administration. Its political ideology is anti-democratic and anti-scientific. It provides constant cover for white supremacy.”
Loudon told Worldview TV that this could be interpreted as a recommendation to send conservative Christians to re-education camps.
“Well it was definitely talking about re-educating, and reprograming people who have a traditional Christian point of view,” Loudon said. “From their perspective, these are dangerous people. They’re racist, they’re nationalist and they really need to be reprogrammed and there needs to be programs developed to do that, to deprogram them.”
Loudon, who has spent decades studying the speeches, papers, articles and books put out by radical leftists, says that when the left says they’re going to “unbrainwash you,” what they’re really saying is they want to brainwash you in their way of thinking.
“This is a document that the communists would be proud of. It is couched in the same sort of manner that I read in the communist press,” Loudon said. “They use certain weasel words that you can figure out what it means, and it is very, very scary stuff.”
Preparing for a Maoist Cultural Revolution?
Yet, this document will undoubtedly find a receptive ear in the Biden camp, which has already been infiltrated by Chinese-supporting communist sympathizers. One such person is Anita Dunn, who Biden hired last summer to be the chief strategy adviser. Dunn was caught on audio saying her favorite political philosopher is Chairman Mao Tse Tung, the godfather of Chinese communism who was responsible for launching the Chinese Cultural Revolution that brutally forced the Chinese people to submit to his strict anti-freedom, anti-God, anti-religion policies that erased Christianity from public life and enthroned the state as the one and only acceptable god in that country.
While they don’t call themselves communists, radicalized Democrats plan to launch a similar cultural revolution in America if Biden gets in power, said Loudon.
“The Democratic party is now a Marxist party,” Loudon said. “This document is aimed at the Marxists’ main enemy in this country, which is traditional Christianity. It’s very, very clear.”
Authors include Rep. Jamie Raskin, son of Marcus Raskin, the founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, which Loudon said has connections to the Soviets dating back to the 1970s.
“Jamie Raskin has long connections to the Democratic Socialists of America, he’s written for their publication, and he’s what I call a ‘small c communist,’ meaning he’s not actually a member of the Communist Party but he’s a sympathizer and a collaborator with a neo-communist organization.”
Another author is Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which was established by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders. Also listed as a co-author is Rep. Jerry McNerney.
The document calls on Biden to make the following changes:
Eliminating government support for all crisis pregnancy centers and all abstinence-only education programs in schools.
Deny free speech and religious liberty to select Americans based on their religious beliefs.
Incentivize states to strip parents of all non-medical exemptions to mandatory vaccinations for children in schools or daycare centers.
Remove “In God We Trust” from U.S. currency.
Repeal the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)
Rescind and replace the Trump DOJ’s federal protections for religious liberty.
Appoint an attorney general who will support governors whose emergency COVID-19 executive orders restrict gatherings at houses of worship.
Reverse the Trump administration policies that have allowed faith-based government-funded contractors to provide adoption and foster care services and work with Congress to pass the Every Child Deserves a Family Act.
Fully and robustly fund “comprehensive” sex education, which to the leftist means encouraging elementary and middle school-age children to declare themselves one of dozens of made-up non-biological gender identities and learn how to engage in various deviant forms of sex.
Work with governors to educate and combat Project Blitz and encourage the introduction of the Do No Harm Act at the state level. [Project Blitz is a pro-family lobbying group described by the Secular Democrats as “a coordinated effort by Christian Nationalists to inject religion into public education, attack reproductive healthcare, and undermine LGBTQ equality using a distorted definition of ‘religious freedom.’”
The document tells Biden: “We urge you to avoid invoking the phrase ‘Judeo-Christian values,’ as it has been weaponized by the religious right to advance an agenda that has the veneer of inclusivity but actually undermines religious freedom and tolerance and does not represent tens of millions of Americans implicitly excluded from its formulation.
Among those endorsing the document as part of the Congressional Free Thought Caucus are the following members of Congress, all Democrats:
Rep. Jared Huffman (Co-Chair and Founding Member)
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Co-Chair and Founding Member)
Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich. (Founding Member)
Rep. Jerry McNerney, (Founding Member)
Rep. Don Beyer Jr., D-Va.
Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill.
Rep. Steve Cohen, D-TN
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, non-voting delegate from D.C.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisc.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.
Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa.
Rashida Tlaib wrapped herself in the Palestinian flag on election night 2018, then went on a rant swearing to her young son that, when it came to Trump, “We’re going to impeach the Mother F’ker.”
Steve Cohen has ties toMemphis Socialist Party USA and to members of Liberation Road, a pro-China communist organization. He traveled to Cuba in 2011.
“This is a Democratic Socialist of America-influenced document. It’s Marxist to the core,” Loudon said.
You can see from the flyer that the Secular Democrats of America were preaching their hateful, divisive message before the election, slandering Christians who hold mainstream conservative views as part of a “white supremacy” conspiracy theory.
The document sent to Biden explicitly singles out the “religious right” — Americans who have always leaned conservative, who elected Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Donald Trump in 2016.
“This is aimed directly at the religious right for one reason and one reason alone, they hate their politics,” Loudon said.
“From the leftist point of view, from the communist point of view, they have control of Hollywood, they control the education system, the media, most of our institutions; the only thing they don’t control is conservative Bible-believing Christians. They voted for Ronald Reagan and they voted for Donald Trump.”
It was these same Christian conservatives who were seen as having blocked Hillary Clinton’s coronation as the rightful heir to Barack Obama.
“She was supposed to finish off the communization of America and these Christians went out and voted for Donald Trump,” Loudon said.
They turned out for Trump again in 2020, in record numbers [Trump was the first incumbent president in American history who received more votes in his second run and yet supposedly did not win re-election].
“So the left understands, they have to get on top of Christianity, they have to suppress it, or pervert it into their own direction,” Loudon said.
Clinton stated in her 2016 campaign that people with “deep-seated religious and cultural beliefs, cultural codes and structural biases have to be changed,” a bigoted comment that garnered her no negative press from the establishment media.
Joe Biden in 2018 called the same body of believers, those who voted for Trump, the “dregs of society.”
Their strategy calls for redefining conservative churches and Christians as “white nationalist” and target them for attacks in the media, on social media, and by weaponizing the federal Department of Justice against these declared enemies.
All Christians who love their country, God and the Constitution will be targeted. Black churches and black pastors will not get a pass.
“Even if you’re black you can be a ‘white nationalist’ in these folks’ eyes and you’re a danger to society,” Loudon said. “You’re residing in a country whose Declaration of Independence says your rights come from God, you believe in borders, freedom, but if you believe in that according to these people, you’re an enemy of the state.”
“If you believe that, you need to be shut down, reprogramed and put out of business.”
The Secular Democrats of America publishes on its website a list of atheist and humanist elected officials who support its agenda of wiping all vestiges of Christianity from public life, from the federal level all the way down to the state and local levels.
Making lists and checking them twice
Loudon said Marxists are historically“very efficient about identifying their enemies.”
“Look at any communist revolution in history and they always have lists, of who to go after, who their enemies were, who to shut down, who to arrest, who to execute. Marxists take revolution as a science, they’re very methodical,” he said. “And they always have lists.”
And atop that list is traditional Christianity. Why? Because it honors a higher authority than the state.
“These people are secular Marxists,” Loudon said. “Their own religion is the state. They do not want competition. They are absolutely antithetical to religion. You see this in California. They shut down churches but strip clubs and casinos are still open.”
Loudon challenged Christians to get prepared for the most anti-Christian administration in history should Biden get inaugurated and urged them not to give up their First or Second Amendment rights without a fight.
“Everybody should be prepared because the government is coming for you if these people get into power. They’re coming to shut down your liberties, and the best guarantee of a free society is an armed protective society. Keep your Second Amendment. …It’s not like the left hates guns. They just want a monopoly on the guns. If a thousand people have guns and a million people have none, who’s going to win that fight?”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Leo Hohmannhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngLeo Hohmann2020-12-16 06:33:292021-10-07 21:10:37Democrat document surfaces demanding Biden clamp down on conservative Christians, remove them from public office and re-educate Trump voters
As 2020 draws near to its close, one good thing that has happened is the revelation of just how many communist bastards have set up shop in the Church and the government. Many faithful and patriotic Catholics and Americans have gone about their lives for decades almost totally unaware of the evil in their country and their Church.
A few sensed something was not quite right here and there but were content to dismiss most of it as isolated and not connected. A smaller group concluded that this seems to be a lot worse behind the scenes than what it appears on the surface, intuiting (correctly) that it was largely all connected somehow through some nefarious networking.
And then there was the even smaller group which was spot on in understanding that it is, in fact, all connected and related right back to communism — and, yes, in not only the country but also the Church. Count Church Militant in the last group.
True, we did not start there when we first established this apostolate 15 years ago, but as we have been following the evidence as it emerged over the last decade, we have arrived there now. And our reporting on all this, as we followed the trail of truth, has earned us massive backlash from those who want to keep all the evils covered up. Oh well. Tough.
And, speaking strictly spiritually, it makes complete sense that communism would firmly plant itself in both Church and State. It took them a century, but they have done it quite ably. In 1917, when the Queen of Heaven appeared to the three children at Fatima, this was her warning from Heaven that communism’s errors would spread throughout the world.
We disregarded that warning, and, well, here we are now. Marxism, at least for the time being, needs the Church to put a friendly face on the evil and make it appear not evil, even make it appear Christian. Check that box, and more in a moment. But it also needs to control the levers of government so that its goals can move from the streets to the halls of power.
As an aside, the role the media plays in all this is to keep you in the dark. Spread the lies, smother the truth. It’s a simple formula. So let’s quickly look first at the usurpation of government. Trump says massive voter fraud occurred. There are now 2,000 sworn affidavits that testify to this. Church Militant has interviewed multiple eyewitnesses from all four states in question, plus Nevada and Arizona.
All of their stories match up, in the large, to wit: Election officials in each state changed the rules laid out in their own constitutions about how the election was to be managed, resulting in tens of millions of mail-in ballots being used. In all four cities where the vote count swung the state to Biden and a giant Trump lead was overcome (Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee) the vote-counting suddenly stopped late in the evening, poll observers were sent home, hundreds of thousands of ballots showed up, counting resumed in the dead of the night unsupervised, and when people woke up the next morning, those leads were wiped out or very close to being evaporated.
The following day, GOP poll observers were not allowed in to watch the final votes being counted, and the few that were allowed in had to stand many feet away and could not observe anything. And if they raised concerns, they were escorted out. The management of the ballots (chain of custody, verification of signatures, correct counting, correct tabulation, fair observation of the counting, etc.) was handled extremely poorly — to say the least — and the results cannot be verified as a result.
Additionally, all sorts of statistical analyses of the vote “results” have shown massive issues — in distribution, timing, trends, probabilities and so forth. These analyses were done by very reputable mathematicians at, for example, Rutgers, Harvard, MIT, etc. Likewise, historical trends in the presidential race were completely turned on their heads.
Bellwether states, bellwether counties, predictable state combinations, voting patterns across multiple voter categories, down-ballot victories for the GOP (almost flipping the U.S. House) were uniformly defied by a Biden “victory.” Never before in American politics has something like this set of events occurred.
The odds of the incumbent losing with even one of these things happening are slim. The odds of him losing and all of these things happening in combination place the odds of an actual Biden win at one in a quadrillion, as we reported the other night. The rebuttal to all of this has been, on the part of the media (who are Democratic allies): “It’s all lies and misinformation; there is no evidence.” Well, that’s not a rebuttal. It’s a refusal to engage with the evidence.
And, as a result, half the country believes election fraud took place. And if Biden takes the oath on Jan. 20, he will be an illegitimate president. That is causing huge numbers of Americans to assess what they will do in their day-to-day lives. Not a small number have already begun a migration from blue states to red states, fearing Biden administration support of a state-run tyranny.
Already, actual threats are coming from multiple Democratic lawmakers that those who supported Trump better watch out. A specifically detestable one came from a state legislator right here in Michigan. She then doubled down on it. That’s how communists are: Friendly looking at first — until they believe they have the upper hand — then they unleash hell.
Of course, the same is true in the Church, as Marxism (under the guise of the modernist heresy) has firmly implanted itself here as well. Although obviously administered differently than a secular government, many of the same underlying principles are at play: Evil leaders who are traitors have usurped their authority to bring about radical change.
If you look even not all that closely, you can see some of this. For example, the leading proponent of Marxism in the world today is communist China. And Marxists, both in the U.S. government and the Church, have very close ties to the atheistic state. We know all about Hunter and, now, Eric Swalwell, not to mention scores of others as testified to by the Chinese communist professor who let the cat out of the bag in a series of lectures about how China has spies and plants all over the government.
In the Church, the Vatican-China accord is example number one, as are Vatican officials making the ridiculous assertion that China puts into action the Church’s social justice doctrine more soundly than anyone else on the planet. I’m not sure when forced abortions became part of the Church’s social doctrine, or religious persecution of millions, or a concentration camp setup that would make Hitler blush.
Likewise, in the administration of the Church, the Marxist bishops are right in lockstep with their Beijing buddies as well as Beijing Biden. They shut down opposition faster than you can say “Tiananmen Square.” If a priest preaches the truth, he is called into the bishop’s office, assessed on the spot as having “anger issues” and shipped off to St. Luke’s nuthouse for clergy.
St. Luke’s is part of a small network of what amounts to little other than a concentration camp set up for “dissident” priests. And like China, the Marxist administrators use your money to pay for it all. Evil men are in key positions in the Church and the government. They each want their respective institutions completely refashioned along the lines of Marxist ideology, and they have already had great success in that area.
A large number of Americans are fine with socialism, and a large number of Catholics are fine with modernism. But see, here’s the point: Americans fine with socialism and Catholics fine with modernism are not actual Americans or Catholics. They are, in a word, traitors. Some follow Benedict Arnold, others follow Judas. Some, we dare venture, follow both. But at the end of the day, they are all guilty of treason.
They are communists — communist “Catholics” and communist “Americans.” Or better stated, they are communists in the Church and in the nation. But they are not in any conceivable way American or Catholic. Communist bishops wrap themselves in religiosity; communist politicians wrap themselves in the U.S. flag.
But both will happily throw off their disguises as soon as is convenient, and many have already begun to do so — sensing, rightly or wrongly, that their moment has arrived. So as we stand on the brink here, we must first pray, in many ways like we have never prayed before. But we must also not remain silent in the temporal realm.
I am not the renowned chronicler of all things Florida Man, Stephen Green, but it does seem as if Jonathan Guerra Blanco nevertheless deserves a place among the Florida Men, as he is among the first-ever jihad terrorists to join the hallowed ranks. (Omar Mateen, who murdered 49 people in the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando on behalf of the Islamic State in 2016, was the first, or at very least the most horrifically effective.)
The Miami Herald reported Tuesday that Guerra, who was born in Cuba and now lives near Fort Myers, is currently incarcerated in Miami and has been charged with providing material support to the Islamic State (ISIS). He was denied bail and is looking at twenty years in prison, although his lawyer, Ana Davide, said that he intends to cop a plea.
Guerra, according to the Herald, “was swept up in an FBI undercover operation that targeted an ISIS suspect known as ‘Confederate A’ who allegedly collaborated with him in producing promotional and recruitment videos that were distributed on the Islamist terrorist organization’s encrypted social platforms and networks, including ‘IMN1’ and ‘IMN2,’ a criminal affidavit says. Guerra’s alias was ‘Abu Zahraal-Andalusi.’”
The FBI stated that Guerra intended the videos to “incite and equip primarily Spanish-speaking followers to conduct operational attacks in support of ISIS.” He also worked on producing translations of the ISIS propaganda material into English, Dutch, French, German and Indonesian.” One of his videos threatened jihad massacres on subways in Spain, as well as attacks on the Spanish National Police. He was also responsible for the notorious article entitled, “Elabora una bomba en la cocina de tu Mama,” “How to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom,” which al-Qaeda published a few years ago and the Boston Marathon jihad bombers followed when assembling their pressure-cooker bombs.
Guerra, a naturalized U.S. citizen, produced another video that threatened jihad attacks in the U.S. itself, featuring video footage of Las Vegas and the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida. When one of his comrades got arrested in Spain, Guerra taunted the FBI, sending them a link to a graphic entitled Jamas Nos Capturaras, that is, You Will Never Capture Us.
Guerra told the same FBI operatives that all he was trying to do was “make the word of Allah…the highest,” and explained: “I always strive to please Allah. I don’t want to brag, but I dedicate my life to [jihad].”
All this raises numerous important issues. The main one is the question of how it is that yet another convert to Islam somehow got the crazy idea that his new, peaceful religion encourages violence against unbelievers. Pope Francis tells us that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” Hillary Clinton famously said: “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism,” which is certainly true of a great number of Muslims. French President Emmanuel Macron recently declared, “France has no problem with Islam.”
Statements from non-Muslim leaders insisting that Islam is a religion of peace, if I quoted them all, would make this article longer than War and Peace. Everyone knows today that the real problem is that Muslims are victims of “Islamophobia,” and that there are so many misconceptions swirling around their benign, cuddly religion. So how is it that Jonathan Guerra Blanco, and so many other converts to Islam like him, somehow missed all the teachings of peace in Islam that Pope Francis and Hillary and the rest find so easily and consider to be so obvious?
Law enforcement officials should be pondering that question and others. It would be illuminating to know not only how Guerra came to believe that his new religion commanded him to wage war against and try to kill unbelievers, but where. Who taught Jonathan Guerra Blanco about Islam? Where did he go to mosque? What does that mosque teach?
Why aren’t Fort Myers officials asking — and answering — those questions? For as long as these questions and others like them are ignored, the only thing we can be sure about is that there will be other Florida Men like Jonathan Guerra Blanco.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-12-15 06:28:012021-10-07 21:10:42Florida Man Converts to Islam, Starts Making ISIS Videos
Hadley Arkes: “Climate change” gives the Left a “moral” code, a kind of pseudo religion, without the reasoning that animates true religion.
The state of our public discourse may not be at one of its heights, but it should be a telling sign that we haven’t heard anyone say that we have a remarkable “consensus” on the Pythagorean theorem. There is no citation to credentialed people to assure us that it’s “accepted” among those who should know that the square of the hypotenuse in the right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the two adjacent sides.
When we are dealing with an axiomatic, or necessary truth, it would be a vulgar move to suggest that this is a matter that may hinge on the “opinions” or the consensus among eminent people. And yet we persistently hear from the Left in our politics that there is an “overwhelming consensus” among scientists that we are facing a grave crisis over “climate change,” a crisis that will require stringent controls on the way we light and heat our houses, power our cars, and live our ordinary lives.
The passion that animates the partisans in this cause has approached a level of unblinking certitude that runs beyond the conviction of the religious. For the religious, anchored in the world, seeing as it as, may find good reasons for doubt, and rely on the confirmation of their faith.
The partisans in this cause have often rejected, with contempt, the possibility of knowing “moral truths.” My own sense is that they cling to the orthodoxy of climate change precisely to take the place of those anchoring moral truths that firmed up conviction, and offered consolation, to an earlier generation.
The people sounding the alarm over climate change invoke “science” as their new religion, and yet they have been compelled to speak only of a “consensus” among the credentialed people who come together under this banner. And yet, for people ostensibly tutored in the hard sciences and mathematics, they don’t seem to realize what they give away in their claims when they are forced to appeal, at most, to a “consensus” of “opinion” among people with academic degrees.
The appeal to “consensus” is a veiled admission that the “truths” they appeal to have fallen notably short of the truths that the Laws of nature can reveal to us. The people who have denied them their “consensus,” and forced them to use that word, are people like the estimable Will Happer and the distinguished colleagues who have joined him in their dubieties about the theories and ideology of “climate change.”
Will Happer was born in India just before what people of my years call “the War.” His father was a Scotch physician in the Indian army, his mother a medical missionary from North Carolina. With that absorption in science and faith, he was drawn back to his mother’s country, where he did a Ph.D. in Physics at Princeton and returned there to teach. He rose to become Cyrus Fogg Brackett Chair of Physics and the chair of the University Research Board, a committee to provide guidance and oversight in the grants sought in the sciences.
Along the way, he did stints in the Administrations of two Bushes and one Trump. Under the first President Bush, he became the Director of Energy Research in the Department of Energy. There he oversaw a budget in the billions covering research in high energy, nuclear physics, and environmental science. He would go on to co-found a company dealing with “magnetic imaging technologies” – and secure a few patents of his own.
His criticism of the cause for “climate change” did not spring then from the musings of one merely “passionate about the environment.” He would be joined by a small army of physicists and meteorologists who would add their own searing critiques. And one of the striking points in the argument has been that, instead of being a danger, carbon dioxide actually helps plants to flourish.
The response of course of the partisans over climate change has mainly been to ignore the evidence and reasoning brought forth by these other, accomplished men of science. It is far easier to preserve a new orthodoxy if one simply pretends that it draws no serious critique.
But I leave the science here to the scientists. Let us assume that the heralds of climate change and doom are correct. What would be the source of the moral conviction that there is an urgent problem here, that it would be morally wrong for anyone to deny the problem and resist the remedies?
I take it that the moral force comes from a concern for the human lives that may be destroyed as the oceans rise, and catastrophes unfold. But then the obvious question arises in response: How could one justify massive controls out of a speculative concern for the human lives that might be begotten and destroyed in the future – while attaching no concern at all for the 800,000+ killings performed every year in abortion of nascent babies, not at all speculative, but palpably with us and known to us?
Of course, there is nothing novel here, even with intellectuals in advanced societies, simply drawing a veil over a class of human beings who will not “count,” whose injuries will simply not matter. They could be slaves in America, Jews in Nazi Germany, or Catholics – at various times – in all places.
The Left came to its position on abortion in the momentum of sexual liberation. They would reject all moral truths as they would reject any ground of moral judgment on the way that people practice their sexual lives. But the moral functions of commending and condemning are simply built into our nature.
The Left may reject moral truth, but they want something to feel righteous about, and they do want to ring condemnation for their adversaries. “Climate change” has given them a “moral” world nicely detached from those vexing moral truths, and a kind of pseudo-religion, bereft of the weave of reasoning that runs through the religion we have come to know.
