A federal grand jury indicted two Florida residents with alleged links to Antifa this week on charges of violating the FACE Act. According to a Justice Department press release, Caleb Freestone and Amber Smith-Stewart, both in their 20s, along with other unidentified co-conspirators, conspired to prevent access to “reproductive services health facilities.” Freestone and Smith-Stewart are accused of vandalizing a Winterhaven pregnancy resource center with slogans including “If abortions aren’t safe neither are you,” and threats such as, “We are coming for you.”
The press release made no mention of the rash of attacks conducted in the name of Pro-abortion anarchist group Jane’s Revenge although graffiti from Winterhaven incident clearly referenced the group.
According to social media posts identified by Antifa Watch, which maintains a database of individuals charged with rioting and other violence linked to Antifa, both Freestone and Smith-Stewart have self-identified as being affiliated with Miami-Dade Antifa. This would seem to confirm previous analytical judgements that Jane’s Revenge represents a front for a network of anarcho-communist affinity groups likely linked to Antifa and not a brand new organization.
The Department of Justice’s decision not to openly address the identity and nature of the conspiracy to attack pro-life pregnancy resource centers is unfortunate but not surprising as it has largely declined to recognize the organized nature of left-wing extremism for some time.
The decision to charge the Florida suspects with violations of the FACE Act, a federal civil rights violation which the DOJ has aggressively used against non-violent pro-life groups in recent months also suggests an element of politicized decision-making, creating a false equivalency between Jane’s Revenge, which has conducted multiple arsons and issued terroristic threats, and non-violent demonstrations.
The FACE act does carry potentially severe criminal penalties, including up to 12 years in prison. Florida state law enforcement officials might consider whether there is also justification for indicting suspects on state charges which reflect the violent and terroristic nature of the threats made in this case, particularly if DOJ should either fail to successfully prosecute the case or if it seeks a reduced sentence, as it has been accused of doings in other cases involving left-wing extremism.
This is the first case related to Jane’s Revenge where the DOJ has successfully identified and indicted a suspect or suspects.
Director and Senior Analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Center For Security Policyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCenter For Security Policy2023-01-30 12:13:082023-01-30 12:13:08DOJ indicts two Antifa-linked individuals from Florida for Jane’s Revenge vandalism
Ronna McDaniel keeps her position as Republican National Committee chair, despite three disastrous election cycles for the Republican Party since 2018. Under McDaniel’s leadership, the Republican Party will continue to alienate it’s voters and lose winnable elections.
How long before the Republican Party becomes a regional party at the rate it’s going?
It is best to donate directly to candidates instead of putting coins in Ronna’s GOP piggy bank.
Ronna McDaniel will serve a rare fourth term as chair of the Republican National Committee, emerging victorious in a contentious bid for reelection.
DANA POINT, Calif. — Ronna McDaniel will serve a rare fourth term as chair of the Republican National Committee, emerging victorious in a contentious bid for reelection.
McDaniel on Friday defeated her main challenger, the RNC’s California national committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon, by a vote of 111 committee members to 51. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, whose campaign drew little support, received four votes.
The fact that Ronna still kept her job despite being an unlikable failure with lower approval ratings than Kamala shows you just how much of our donor money is being paid to insiders
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-01-30 06:21:532023-01-30 06:27:54RNC is Dead: Ronna McDaniel Wins RNC Chair Race Despite Being a Despised Failure With Ratings in The Toilet
The Bible radically challenges the status quo. It speaks truth to power.
During a recent conversation with Margaret, a woman who suffered life-changing injuries after Islamists assaulted a Catholic church in Nigeria last Pentecost Sunday, I couldn’t help but reflect deeply on the words of Christ:
“Whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5)
Indeed, who is it that can forgive their enemies and overcome hatred, violence and abuse of the kind suffered by Margaret but he or she who knows Christ?
In my work for the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) UK, I am frequently asked about how I deal with all the negative stories and the “doom and gloom”. But as St John’s letter reminds us, a strong faith in Christ’s ultimate victory upends this question: rather, how can I deal with all the pessimism and negativity without learning from the example of the modern-day martyrs?
Speaking to Margaret taught me two key lessons: that we in the West need the example of the persecuted Church, and they need us. The more that the opponents of the Church become emboldened in persecuting her, and the less we speak truth to power, the more severe will the persecution be this year. Our silence is a green light to violence.
2022 made this fact clearer than ever. More Christians suffer for their faith in Christ than any other religious group suffers for their faith, according to the Pew Research Center. This is borne out by fresh data from Aid to the Church in Need’s latest report Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for their Faith 2020-22.
The oppression or persecution of Christians increased in 75 percent of the 24 countries ACN surveyed. In Africa, the situation for Christians worsened in all countries reviewed amid a sharp increase in genocidal violence from militant non-state actors, including the jihadist groups Islamic State West Africa Province and Boko Haram. Nigeria is in particular trouble. In the Middle East, continuing migration deepened the crisis threatening the survival of three of the world’s oldest Christian communities located in Iraq, Syria and Palestine.
State authoritarianism has been the critical factor causing worsening oppression against Christians in China, North Korea, Vietnam and Burma (Myanmar). Religious nationalism has caused increasing persecution against Christians in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, among other countries. Fashionable holiday destinations like the Maldives fare poorly when it comes to the treatment of Christians. Football-famous Qatar has also been on our radar.
A key trend we are witnessing in the West which aids and abets the persecution of Christians is civil authorities’ frequent denial of the extent of the problem. This can stem from ignorance of and outright unwillingness to alleviate the suffering of Christians, but also takes the form of dubious arguments that reject explanations of the crisis rooted in anti-Christian hatred, instead preferring economic justifications or cries of “climate change”. But climate change alone cannot explain Christian persecution, as the UK parliamentarian Sir Edward Leigh MP explained in a recent article.
2023 will see these trends escalate, ACN’s research suggests. Our work proactively identifies the trends Christians face early on, rather than being purely reactive. This call to justice is crucial to waking up governments, decision-makers and the Church to the plight of the most vulnerable. We defend the persecuted Church and stand in solidarity with her but, perhaps even more importantly, we provide support and pastoral care so that she can persevere in her mission to preach the Gospel to all nations, whatever the cost.
Speaking to ACN last year after her release from captivity in Mali, west Africa, Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez said: “My God, it is hard to be chained and to receive blows, but I live this moment as you present it to me … And, in spite of everything, I would not want any of [my captors] to be harmed.”
The Franciscan sister was held by Islamist militants for over four years, during which time she was repeatedly physically and psychologically tortured. Sister Gloria made clear that her Christian faith was the source of the animus against her, describing to us how her captors became enraged when she prayed. On one occasion, when a jihadist leader found her praying, he struck her saying: “Let’s see if that God gets you out of here. Sister Gloria continued: “He spoke to me using very strong, ugly words…My soul shuddered at what this person was saying, while the other guards laughed out loud at the insults.”
As Christ says to the persecuted Church and to us: “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
When I read these words, the smiling portrait of a humble and persevering Nigerian woman comes to mind. This year, like so many other Christians, Margaret will continue to suffer and to triumph. This year truth and falsehood will be asserted variably in the courts of power.
Yet, however worldly justice deals with the cause of persecuted Christians, long may their suffering smiles ring out the joy of victory.
John Pontifex is Head of Press and Information at Aid to the Church in Need (UK), an international Catholic charity which supports persecuted and other suffering Christians. More by John Pontifex
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2023-01-30 06:04:262023-01-31 14:53:59What Will Persecuted Christians Face in 2023?
In an article on the website of the Canadian Public Health Agency entitled “Inequalities in Health of Racialized Adults in Canada,” one reads that “populations who are racialized in relation to a ‘white’ or non-racialized social group experience stressors including inter-personal and systemic discrimination throughout the life course,” that “racialized adults are less likely to feel that their health is either good or excellent,” and that “racialized Canadians are disproportionately impacted by inequalities in safe and stable housing.”)
As a linguist, I was struck by the repeated use in this article of a new past participle that I was not familiar with — “racialized”. I began to wonder about the implications underlying the use of this verb form, which implies the existence of a verb “to racialize”.
So I looked on the internet to see if I could find other forms of this verb. My search turned up examples such as the following: “Coleman Hughes on how America racializes its citizens”; “Not all racializers do the same thing when they racialize”; “Discourses that are racializing and othering muslim*women [sic] can sustain hegemony, by disguising their particularities”.
The past participle of this verb therefore represents the person or group to which it is applied as having undergone the action of being racialized by some agent who is represented as a racializer. This leads to the question as to who is doing the racializing. A further search on the internet showed that the answer to that question is invariably the same — whites.
Behind that little past participle “racialized”, consequently, there lies a whole worldview which sees the relations between different races in terms of racializer/racialized or, in other terms, oppressor/oppressed. As Robin Diangelo states in White Fragility, “white people raised in Western societies are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions,” and this worldview “brings into existence whites and nonwhites, full persons and subpersons.”
The name of this worldview is Critical Race Theory, and its underpinnings are essentially Marxist. It divides the world into two opposing power groups: the oppressor (capitalists/whites) and the oppressed (workers/nonwhites). Since everything is governed by power-relations in this system, the only recourse of the oppressed is to use whatever power they have to rise up against the oppressor and throw off his yoke: as one of the foundational thinkers of Critical Race Theory, Ibram X. Kendi, has written in How to be an Antiracist: “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
One doesn’t have to be a linguist in order to see that the division of the world into racializer/racialized is a recipe for conflict and violence, and not for the resolution of unjust discrimination.
As Edward Feser points out in his book All One in Christ. A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory, “if one were to replace expressions like ‘whiteness’ and ‘white supremacy’ with terms such as ‘Jewishness’ and ‘Jewry’, it would be difficult to distinguish Critical Race Theory literature from the ugly propaganda of Nazism. Its claims are comparably extreme, even if it has not (yet?) led to comparable levels of violence.” Feser advocates that the way forward entails “not Critical Race Theory’s cancel culture and hermeneutics of suspicion, but rational discourse and mutual understanding. Not the demonization of any race as inherently oppressive, but solidarity and mutual respect.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2023-01-30 05:52:052023-01-30 06:33:28Department of Critical Race Theory Neologisms: ‘To Racialize’
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http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00John Droz, Jr.http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJohn Droz, Jr.2023-01-30 05:38:462023-01-30 07:36:45AWED MEDIA BALANCES NEWSLETTER: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.
A few weeks ago, the now-septuagenarian actors Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, who appeared in 1968’s Romeo and Juliet as minors, filed a lawsuit against the film’s distributor, Paramount Pictures, for being forced to perform nude on camera at the ages of 15 and 16 years old.
The lawsuit was filed in accordance with California law that has now extended the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse. According to Hussey and Whiting, they had been promised by the film’s director, Franco Zeffirelli, that they would be wearing flesh-colored undergarments while filming sex scenes.
Hussey and Whiting allege that when it came time to film the scenes, the director reneged on his promise and told them that they had to do the scenes completely nude or “the film would fail.” The two child actors reluctantly complied, their nudity was depicted onscreen, and they have carried the trauma from that coercion with them to this day.
Sadly, the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s were filled with other movies that featured nude depictions of minors such as Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon, featuring a child Brooke Shields. There was also Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which included a scene of a young male fantasizing about an underage girl removing her bikini top and exposing her breasts. Perhaps the most egregious, 1984’s Blame it on Rio, depicted several instances of child nudity and sexual exploitation in a story about a middle-aged man being pursued by an underage girl and eventually having sex with her. The young actress playing the girl, Michelle Johnson, was 17 at the time of filming and the filmmakers had to get a signed waiver from her parents before her nude scenes could be filmed.
There are countless other examples. But the main thread running through all of them is the shameless child sexual exploitation. And that exploitation continues to this day.
Child Sexual Exploitation Has Moved From the Movie Screen to the Computer Screen
While many in our culture – especially in light of the #MeToo movement – now condemn the the way these older films sexually exploited minors, the truth is the exploitation goes on. It has just moved from the movie screen to the computer screen. And like Hollywood in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the exploiters are laughing all the way to the bank.
Literally millions of children are having their sexual abuse images trafficked daily on the Internet. For example, after Nicholas Kristof’s explosive article, The Children of Pornhub, appeared in the New York Times in December 2022, Pornhub had to take down more than 10 million videos from their website because they could not verify the age of the individuals featured in them. This means that any number of those 10 million videos could have been child sexual abuse material (the more apt term for “child pornography”).
But NCOSE is taking action to stop this exploitation.
The NCOSE Law Center sued Pornhub and its owner, MindGeek, on behalf of a 16-year-old girl, who was drugged and then had her rape by a Tuscaloosa, Alabama man filmed and uploaded to Pornhub, which then profited from the images and video. No attempt was made by Pornhub to verify the young girl’s identity or age. Another underage girl had sexually explicit videos, which she was forced to participate in, uploaded, distributed, and profited from by Pornhub. NCOSE is suing Pornhub on her behalf as well.
There are the typical nefarious exploiters, such as Pornhub and other hardcore pornography sites – but the exploitation and sexualization of children also occurs daily on mainstream social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter.
NCOSE has filed a federal lawsuit against Twitter for facilitating and profiting from child sexual abuse images of two young boys. The suit is presently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The NCOSE Corporate Advocacy team is working with mainstream social media companies to curb child sexual exploitation on their platforms. Working with our ally, #Traffickinghub, Pornhub was booted off of Instagram, Tik-Tok, and YouTube – resulting in them losing 15 million subscribers!
2022 was a big year for the anti-exploitation movement. 🙌 Look at everything you've made possible! https://t.co/G9nXHWZEoF
— National Center on Sexual Exploitation (@NCOSE) January 15, 2023
Help NCOSE Combat Child Sexual Exploitation Whenever it Occurs
The track record of both Hollywood and the tech industry when it comes to child sexual exploitation is shameful. The unwillingness of both industries to be held accountable – whether the depicted exploitation occurred 50 years ago or yesterday – means organizations such as NCOSE, along with many of our allies, have to step up, file lawsuits, and demand legislation to force them to end the abuse or face the consequences.
You can help us end the sexual exploitation of children on pornography sites as well as mainstream social media platforms! See quick actions you can take here and here.
People like Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, should not have to wait decades to achieve justice for the sexual exploitation they endured as children. With your help, justice can be achieved now for the millions of others whose sexual exploitation is depicted daily on computer screens worldwide.
Donate now to support the fight to end all sexual abuse and exploitation!
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00National Center on Sexual Exploitationhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngNational Center on Sexual Exploitation2023-01-29 07:34:162023-01-29 07:47:29Child Sexual Exploitation is Not New—It Has Just Moved Online
Like a bad movie sequel, leftwing nonprofits like the Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL) are once again pumping millions of dollars in left-wing “dark money” into election offices across the country. Just like they did in 2020, these groups are looking for ways to skew elections and boost liberal turnout in battleground states.
But this time, there’s a twist. CTCL and its allies aren’t just doling out eye-popping grants. They are aiming for nothing less than a shadow takeover of election offices. Through their new $80 million program, called the “U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence,” the left is targeting local election offices. The goal: push liberal voting policies and systematically reshape how our elections are run.
Voters need only to look to the contentious 2020 election cycle to appreciate the significance of this program. That year, Mark Zuckerberg pledged more than $400 million to support election offices during the pandemic. But he didn’t give the money to election offices directly. Instead, he gave the funds to left-wing nonprofits like CTCL.
CTCL then directed these “Zuck Bucks” disproportionately to cities and counties that voted Democratic. The aim was to boost turnout in blue areas. Just look at the impact in Georgia, which got $31 million in “Zuck Buck” grants, or nine percent of all Zuckerberg funding awarded nationwide. Between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, Georgia counties that were funded by “Zuck Bucks” became, on average, 2.3 percentage points more Democratic.
Elections should be run freely, and be accountable to voters. That’s why, since 2020, nearly half the states have passed legislation outlawing the corrupting influence of private funding.
But in states like Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, Democratic governors have vetoed commonsense “Zuck Buck” bans. It is no surprise that the Alliance for Election Excellence has recruited target offices in all three states, and is pouring in millions in left-wing “dark money.”
But the Alliance’s tactics are even more insidious than before. Using public records requests, the Honest Elections Project has revealed the Alliance as a bait-and switch operation meant to reshape election offices and thwart oversight and public accountability.
The records we uncovered revealed that unsuspecting election offices believed they were getting a badge of excellence from a nonpartisan group. In truth, they were being targeted by a highly partisan organization. Each of the Alliance’s partners has deep ties to the Democratic Party and to the biggest “dark money” groups in the country. CTCL’s founders, for instance, worked for the New Organizing Institute, a group once dubbed the “Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for Digital Wizardry.” The Institute for Responsive Government and the Center for Secure and Modern Elections are both projects of the Arabella Advisors network, which raked in $1.5 billion in 2021 to support left-wing causes.
After the first ten election offices were chosen — so-called “Centers for Election Excellence” — the Alliance revealed that each would get an enormous grant from CTCL, complete with detailed restrictions on how the funds could be used.
At the same time, the Alliance announced a “pivot” from its original plan to offer free programming to recruits. Instead, participating election offices would pay dues, which would be converted into credits that offices can spend on services from CTCL and the other left-wing partners behind the Alliance. Those services include “legal” and “political” consulting, euphemisms for pushing partisan politics, as well as coaching, training, technology, software, “best practices,” and more.
To add insult to injury, the Alliance is adopting a quid pro quo structure that requires election officials to provide them with in-kind contributions in exchange for grants and services – all using taxpayers’ dollars. That includes enormous amounts of data about how they operate, so the Alliance can craft so-called “improvement plans” that reshape how each office functions.
If that does not sound like a plan to slowly convert these offices into outposts for the Left, then nothing does.
The program is so comprehensive that the Alliance even provides election officials with preapproved talking points to dismiss any public concerns over their participation in the Alliance’s scheme.
This is not how election offices should operate. Elections should be run neutrally, and that ought to be a bipartisan principle. Indeed, some states with Democratic governors, like Pennsylvania, have passed laws protecting public elections from the influence of billionaire donors.
But the fight is far from over. This week, Democrats in the Virginia legislature advanced a bill to roll back the existing “Zuck Buck” ban and let offices accept “subject matter expertise regarding election law, policies, and administration” from outside groups. In other words, the left wants to open Virginia to the Alliance.
But private funding bans are not enough. The documents we uncovered prove that the Alliance aims to expand nationwide, and is structured in ways that may allow it to skirt existing laws. Vigorous oversight and complete transparency are vital, and so is public engagement. The citizens of Greenwich, Connecticut are waging a fight right now to stop the spread of “Zuck Bucks 2.0.” Others should follow suit.
This is a democracy, after all. Government should be accountable to the people, not the special interests behind the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Donald Trump held his first campaign events in New Hampshire and South Carolina on Saturday, kicking off his 2024 presidential bid in early voting states.
“I’ve got two years… I’m more angry now and I’m more committed now than I ever was,” the former president said in a speech to hundreds of GOP leaders in New Hampshire, defending starting the new phase of his launch months after the initial November announcement.
His 55-minute keynote speech focused on President Joe Biden, fentanyl and the border crisis, voter ID, the “woke” military, men playing in women’s sports and Hunter Biden’s laptop falsely being labeled “Russian disinformation.”
He said Democrats “hate our country” for allowing a record-breaking number of illegal immigrants to cross the border, and that it’s time to “wage war” on the drug cartels.
Trump also stood by his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, saying the documents were “sealed” and “not laying all over the garage floor,” alluding to Biden keeping classified documents in his Delaware garage.
“What a pigsty that place was,” Trump added. The White House and the Department of Justice have not stated what condition the documents were found in Biden’s garage, but one 2020 campaign video appears to show boxes of papers.
Hours later in Columbia, South Carolina, Trump spoke at the state Capitol building alongside South Carolina leaders Governor Henry McMaster and Senator Lindsey Graham.
Trump’s South Carolina speech largely echoed that of New Hampshire, reiterating that many Democrat policies are like “April Fools’ Day,” because “they do just the opposite of common sense,” and unveiling his campaign leadership team for the state.
“We need a fighter who can stand up to the Left, can stand up to the swamp, stand up to the media, stand up to the deep state, am I allowed to say, ‘stand up to the RINOs’ too? I think we can say that,” Trump said, adding that he’s set to challenge the “entire establishment.”
The Saturday two events coincide with Trump’s campaign strategy for 2023. His campaign includes rolling out “top-level teams” in early voting states to “wage an overwhelming campaign that’s never been seen before,” Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, told the Daily Caller.
Up till now, Trump has released policy videos and made speeches at private events, including at the Republican Jewish Coalition and the America First Policy Institute.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-01-29 06:39:022023-01-29 06:55:42‘I’m More Angry Now’: Trump Kicks Off 2024 Campaign In New Hampshire And South Carolina
This is a republication of a column and radio interview I did in 2012. In my interview with Paul Ibbetson we discussed the Occupy Wall Street movement, which I wrote about here and here. We now know Occupy Wall Street was an anti-capitalist Marxist movement. Fast forward to 2023 and we now have groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter picking up the Marxist torch and burning down towns and cities across America in the name of a socialist change labeled as diversity, inclusion and equity (DIE). DIE is now public policy under the Biden administration and is being taught to our youth from Kindergarten to colleges and universities as Critical Race Theory.
When you walk through the local mall you may see clothing, jewelry and patches featuring the “peace symbol’. When driving down the road you will see cars with a peace symbol proudly displayed on a bumper or rear windshield. Have you even seen this symbol on t-shirts issued to your public school student? Do you ever wonder if those displaying this symbol truly understand its meaning?
Perhaps a short history will help you understand the meaning of the peace symbol.
The peace symbol dates back to ancient times. The fifth and final Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Nero (born Lucius Domitius Ahenabarbus 37 – 68 AD), is remembered in history for persecuting Christians. Nero’s rule was so wicked he even had his mother executed. The First Roman-Jewish War (66 – 70 AD) started during his reign and today the term “Nero Cross” [today’s peace symbol] is the symbol of the “broken Jew” or “broken cross.”
Anti-religious and satanic groups use the “Nero Cross” or inverted “Latin Cross” to symbolize everything opposite of Christianity. Today this is clearly illustrated by “black metal” or heavy metal music lyrics and imagery that communicate anti-Christian sentiments. An album cover for the black metal group, Mayhem, displays the “peace symbol or Nero Cross” on an album cover. Film makers have reinforced the notion that the upside down cross is an anti-Christian symbol as illustrated by The Omen in 1976 and The Exorcism of Emily Rose in 2005.
During WWII the “peace symbol” was used by Hitler’s 3rd Panzer Division from 1941 to 1945. The image is the regimental 3rd Panzer Division symbol. Soviet, Polish, and Hungarian citizens, having suffered from the Nazi massacres, undoubtedly struggle with use of the symbol as a thoughtful way to communicate peace. The symbol can also be found on some of Hitler’s SS soldiers’ tombstones.
Finally, the symbol was revitalized by the UK artist and anti-war advocate Gerald Herbert Holtom (1914 – 1985). Holtom is credited with creating this now popular symbol on February 21, 1958 as part of the nuclear disarmament movement. The symbol combines the the naval code semaphore with the symbol representing the code letters for “N” and “D” (nuclear disarmament).
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970), a philosopher, historian, mathematician, and a member of the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War, supported using the peace symbol globally. Russell’s interest in the peace symbol becomes visible when you know he was a member of the British Fabian Socialist Society, a secret society advocating a New World Order.
The symbol was imported into the United States in 1960 by Philip Altbach, a freshman at the University of Chicago. Altbach had traveled to England to meet with British peace groups as a delegate from the Student Peace Union (SPU) and on his return he persuaded the SPU to adopt the symbol. The SPU joined with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to hold anti-war protests in Washington, D.C. in 1962. We know the SDS gave birth to the Weather Underground movement co-founded by 1960 era domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn.
During the 1980s the “peace movement” was supported and funded by the Soviet KGB. Following the large peace demonstrations in Europe in October and November 1981, Ronald Reagan said of the peace movement, “[T]hose are all sponsored by a thing called the World Peace Council, which is bought and paid for by the Soviet Union.”
So now that you know about the history of the so called “peace symbol” you may want to rethink buying your child or grandchild new clothing with this symbol on it?
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2023-01-28 15:10:052023-01-28 15:41:55PODCAST: What The ‘Peace Symbol’ Really Means
The U.S. government recently hit its $31.5 trillion debt limit after years of careening baseline spending on entitlements combined with emergency COVID-19 spending in the last few years to produce record-busting deficits. The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, elected largely on economic concerns like inflation and runaway spending, now faces an obstinate Senate and White House. A showdown appears likely as does the ritual brow-beating of all those who object to simply raising the debt limit “without conditions,” as President Biden demands.
To those who will inevitably cry, “Don’t use the debt ceiling as a negotiating tool!” over the coming weeks and months, it should be pointed out that it is the only tool that has been even remotely effective at taming Congress’s appetite for spending. In the same way that an intervention is only possible when a drug addict is in crisis, debt limit negotiations are the only context in which Uncle Sam has accepted even modest constraints on government spending in recent decades.
Conservatives and libertarians rightly decry the rapidly-expanding national debt as an embarrassment, a threat to the nation, a root cause of inflation (as the Federal Reserve must expand its balance sheet to purchase the Treasuries that finance these huge deficits, as happened most clearly in the pandemic’s peak), and a promise of higher future taxes. While all these are accurate observations, one effect of massive government spending and deficits is often overlooked in the standard conservative critique: the forgone private investment of capital and therefore forgone economic growth, often termed the “crowding out effect.”
The basic idea is that there exists a total sum of money, or financial capital, that individual and institutional investors are willing to loan out or invest. Most economists call this the “loanable funds market.” The supply of loans, as with any supply curve, slopes upward and to the right. In other words, as the interest rate (the price of a loan) rises, more people will be eager to supply loans. In contrast, the demand for loanable funds slopes, like a normal demand curve, downward and to the right. That is, as the interest rate goes down, more people are interested in borrowing money. Just think of any normal supply-demand graph, but with the good in question being a loan rather than a physical good or a service, and the vertical axis labeled “interest rate” rather than “price,” as in other markets.
The demand for loanable funds is a function of how much capital investment businesses need (which is itself a function of how profitable those capital investments are), what quantity of money consumers need for purchases like homes and new vehicles, and how much money the government needs to borrow. In a game where the total supply of loanable funds per year is set, say at $5 trillion, every $1 trillion the government runs up in deficits is $1 trillion less available for private investment in the innovations that improve quality of life, bring us new medicines, and create new jobs.
Increased government deficits shift the demand for loanable funds to the right. As any student of elementary economics knows, this increases the price, or in this case, the nominal interest rate. Many private sector projects that make sense at 4 percent interest are no longer acted upon if the government runs such a large deficit that the interest rate must increase to 7 percent for investors to shell out the cash necessary to finance that deficit. Increasing the supply of loanable funds through monetary expansion, as happened in the COVID pandemic with breathtaking speed, can temporarily hide this effect. However, this spurs inflation that reduces real returns and hampers economic growth (the stock market’s dismal returns since runaway inflation started in late 2021 is one example of this result).
In contrast to the Keynesian “money multiplier” theory, which insists that government spending stimulates the economy by circulating money via transfer payments that otherwise would have remained in savings and uncirculated, savings in nearly all developed countries are not locked away gathering moths and rust, but invested. Of every dollar put in the bank, more than 90 percent is invested in loans for commercial enterprises, in home loans, and in bonds, and this doesn’t account for the fact that a larger and larger share of surplus savings in the United States are not in the traditional banking system, but in brokerage accounts, 401(k)s, and elsewhere.
Government spending does not multiply the economic power of money, it diminishes it. If the opposite were true, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela would be among the wealthiest nations on the planet, since nearly all economic activity is facilitated through government spending in those nations. That they are not, but that nations with relatively free markets such as the United States, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Japan punch above their weight economically suggests that private investment in the innovations and technologies of tomorrow everywhere and always beats government transfer payments in facilitating economic growth.
Every dollar the government must borrow is a dollar not available for private businesses or individuals to borrow, and that reduces future economic growth and job creation. With America’s debt now hovering near 125 percent of GDP (before netting for debt held by government entities) and deficits topping $1 trillion yearly as far as the eye can see, we can no longer ignore this drag on the American economy.
Nathan Richendollar is a summa cum laude economics and politics graduate of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA. He lives in Southwest Missouri and works in the financial sector.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2023-01-28 13:32:532023-01-28 13:36:35The Unseen Cost of Government Largesse
“Real people need to know they’ve been unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.” — Twitter exec Yoel Roth.
The took a wonderful digital platform designed to share our thoughts and ideas and with the express assistance of the country’s most venerated intel agencies weaponized to destroy our freedoms, our country, our very way of life.
This is bombshell.
The FBI Director is openly bragging at the corrupt WEF about how much the FBI “partners” with Big Tech to censor the Free Speech of Americans
4.“Virtually any conclusion drawn from it will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.” pic.twitter.com/g7Ozzj4ST8
5.These are quotes by Twitter executives about Hamilton 68, a digital “dashboard” that claimed to track Russian influence and was the source of hundreds if not thousands of mainstream print and TV news stories in the Trump years. pic.twitter.com/KzCVBCm1hv
6.The “dashboard” was headed by former FBI counterintelligence official (and current MSNBC contributor) Clint Watts, and funded by a neoliberal think tank, the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD). pic.twitter.com/XW4JXfAlGM
7.The ASD advisory council includes neoconservative writer Bill Kristol, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, ex-Hillary for America chief John Podesta, and former heads or deputy heads of the CIA, NSA, and the Department of Homeland Security. pic.twitter.com/Nug3CpF6iK
https://t.co/0yk0y7VlGX outlets for years cited Watts and Hamilton 68 when claiming Russian bots were “amplifying” an endless parade of social media causes – against strikes in Syria, in support of Fox host Laura Ingraham, the campaigns of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. pic.twitter.com/Qwf5UuKUkb
10. The secret ingredient to Hamilton 68’s analytical method? A list: “Our analysis has linked 600 Twitter accounts to Russian influence activities online,” was how the site put it at launch. pic.twitter.com/8ipRLSfzOm
11. Hamilton 68 never released the list, claiming "the Russians will simply shut [the accounts] down." All those reporters and TV personalities making claims about “Russian bots” never really knew what they were describing. pic.twitter.com/q89kuDPIIH
14. In layman’s terms, the Hamilton 68 barely had any Russians. In fact, apart from a few RT accounts, it’s mostly full of ordinary Americans, Canadians, and British.
20.“I also have been very frustrated in not calling out Hamilton 68 more publicly, but understand we have to play a longer game here,” wrote Carlos Monje, the future senior advisor to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. pic.twitter.com/JvfSkyUlfL
22.“I’m shocked,” says Sonia Monsour, who as a child lived through civil war in Lebanon. “Supposedly in a free world, we are being watched at many levels, by what we say online.”
24. “When I was growing up, my father told me about the McCarthyite blacklist,” says Oregon native Jacob Levich. “As a child it would never have occurred to me that this would come back, in force and broadly, in a way… designed to undermine rights we hold dear.”
25. Even Twitter execs were stunned to read who was on the list. Wrote policy chief Nick Pickles about British comic @Holbornlolz: “A wind-up merchant… I follow him and wouldn’t say he’s pro-Russian… I can’t even remember him tweeting about Russia.” pic.twitter.com/kFCqyFjG0l
26. I’m listed as a foreign bot?” said conservative media figure Dennis Michael Lynch. “As a proud taxpaying citizen, charitable family man, and honest son of a U.S. Marine, I deserve better. We all do!” pic.twitter.com/HhKE9FPfpO
28.What makes this an important story is the sheer scale of the news footprint left by Hamilton 68’s digital McCarthyism. The quantity of headlines and TV segments dwarfs the impact of individual fabulists like Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass. pic.twitter.com/zfyjLb5Tkq
30.These stories raised fears in the population, and most insidious of all, were used to smear people like Tulsi Gabbard as foreign “assets,” and drum up sympathy for political causes like Joe Biden’s campaign by describing critics as Russian-aligned. pic.twitter.com/3lsuG1ZTrd
https://t.co/FAazMoLnTO was a lie. The illusion of Russian support was created by tracking people like Joe Lauria, Sonia Monsour, and Dave Shestokas. Virtually every major American news organization cited these fake tales— even fact-checking sites like Snopes and Politifact. pic.twitter.com/zleliOsckq
My response to being on the discredited list. I also should thank @elonmusk for allowing Matt and team to reveal the truth about what's been happening behind the ugly curtain. pic.twitter.com/zf0cFzghTc
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-01-28 09:43:282023-01-28 09:45:29NEXT TWITTER FILES BOMBSHELL: Massive Media Fraud on An Unimaginable Scale, Silence the Masses At All Costs
How strange! Why might this be? Could it have something to do with these teachings of Islam?
Jesus is not the Son of God and belief in the Trinity is “excess”: “O people of the book, do not exaggerate in your religion or say anything about Allah except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and his word that he conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from him. So believe in Allah and his messengers, and do not say Three, Stop, it is better for you. Allah is only one God. It is far removed from his transcendent majesty that he should have a son. Everything that is in the heavens and everything that is on the earth is his. And Allah is sufficient as defender.” — Qur’an 4:171
And: “It is not fitting for Allah that he should take to himself a son. Glory be to him, when he decrees a thing, he says to it only, Be, and it is.” — Qur’an 19:35
Jesus was not crucified: “And because of their saying, We killed the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, the messenger of Allah, they did not kill him nor crucify him, but it seemed so to them, and indeed, those who disagree about this are in doubt about it, they have no knowledge of it except pursuit of a supposition, they did not kill him for certain.” — Qur’an 4:157
Those who believe in the divinity of Christ are unbelievers: “They indeed have disbelieved who say, Indeed, Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. Say, Who then can do anything against Allah, if he had willed to destroy the Messiah son of Mary, and his mother and everyone on earth? To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them. He creates what he wills. And Allah is able to do all things.” — Qur’an 5:17 (cf. 5:72)
Christians have forgotten part of the divine revelations they received: “And with those who say: Indeed, we are Christians, we made a covenant, but they forgot a part of what they were reminded about. Therefore we have stirred up enmity and hatred among them until the day of resurrection, when Allah will inform them of their handiwork.” — Qur’an 5:14
Those who believe that Jesus is God’s Son are accursed: “And the Jews say, Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say, The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the statements of those who disbelieved before. May Allah curse them. How perverse they are.” — Qur’an 9:30
Christians who do not accept Muhammad and the Qur’an are the most vile of created beings: “Indeed, the unbelievers among the people of the book and the idolaters will remain in the fire of Gehenna. They are the most vile of created beings.” — Qur’an 98:6
Muslims must fight against and subjugate Christians: “Fight against those do not believe in Allah or the last day, and do not forbid what Allah and his messenger have forbidden, and do not follow the religion of truth, even if they are among the people of the book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” — Qur’an 9:29
Also, a hadith has Muhammad predicting that Jesus will return at the end of the world and break the cross, as it is an insult to Allah’s power to say that he would have allowed one of his prophets to be crucified: “Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, ‘By Him in Whose Hands my soul is, son of Mary [Jesus] will shortly descend amongst you people [Muslims] as a just ruler and will break the Cross and kill the pig and abolish the Jizya [a tax taken from the non-Muslims, who are in the protection, of the Muslim government]. Then there will be abundance of money and nobody will accept charitable gifts.’” — Bukhari 3.34.425
Iran has risen back to eighth place on an annual list of the countries where it is hardest to practise the Christian faith.
This marks a return to Iran’s 2021 ranking on the World Watch List, which is produced by Christian charity Open Doors International, after a year in ninth place.
For the past five years, Iran has oscillated between eighth and ninth place on the list.
This year, Iran has moved back above Afghanistan, which last year topped the list, even ahead of perennial “winner” North Korea.
The other countries in the top 10 are Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sudan.
Iran’s rise by one point in Open Doors’ scoring system was “mainly caused by an increase in reported violent incidents”, said the charity, “including an abduction”.
“The outlook for Iranian Christians, in particular converts from Islam to Christianity, is by no means improving,” Open Doors said….
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2023-01-28 09:04:432023-01-28 09:09:48Eight of the Top Ten Countries that are Persecutors of Christians are Majority-Muslim
“Well, you know, you can take anything -– sexism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, whatever, the war, and if you really get into it, and study it and learn about it and the history of it and — everything’s connected. There’d be no climate crisis if it wasn’t for racism,” she said.
Asked to elaborate, Fonda replied, “Where would they put the shit? Where would they put the poison and the pollution? They’re not gonna put it in Bel Air. They’ve got to find some place where poor people or indigenous people or people of color are living. Put it there. They can’t fight back. And that’s why a big part of the climate movement now has to do with climate justice.”
This is a ridiculous simplification of the issue and doesn’t address where the vast majority of pollution comes from (it doesn’t come from “shit” put in black neighborhoods), but it’s par for the course for climate activists.
This isn’t the first time Hanoi Jane has tried to make bad weather a social justice issue. In a December appearance on MSNBC’s The Beat, she claimed — again without evidence — that racist and misogynistic “mindsets” are causing the “climate crisis.”
In late May 2020, while scores of American cities were being ravaged by violent Black Lives Matter– and Antifa-led riots in the aftermath of the infamous police-involved death of a black Minneapolis man named George Floyd, Fonda claimed that most of the protests were non-violent. “I think it’s important for us to recognize that the media cameras may be focused on the breaking of windows and the burnings and the fires, but the vast majority of people at least in the cities where I talked to people and from what I have seen on tv, it’s non-violent,” she told CNN’s Don Lemon on May 31. “These are people who are white. They are Latino. They are old. They are young. They are in wheelchairs, they have children with them. They have dogs with them. And it’s organized. Black Lives Matter, Color of Change, they don’t want violence. I don’t know who the people are that are doing the violence, but I think what matters is that more and more white people are getting it.”
I don’t claim to speak for all Vietnam Vets but in my opinion this is a despicable and treasonous woman and perhaps you can understand the scorn I have for this evil ass! pic.twitter.com/C3fjKq92WA
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2023-01-28 06:55:202023-03-12 13:43:11Hanoi Jane Fonda: ‘There’d Be No Climate Crisis if It Wasn’t For Racism’
It’s no secret that the Biden Justice Department appears to be highly politicized—and now Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is underscoring that.
Asked Thursday about the indictment this week of two pro-abortion activists in Florida on charges of spray-painting threats on the exterior of a pregnancy resource center, DeSantis said he was “surprised” the case had moved forward since “the Department of Justice had not been willing to hold those types of perpetrators accountable.”
“Meanwhile, on the other side, you could have a pro-life advocate [with] a picket sign and they’re going to treat him like he’s some hardened criminal,” the Republican governor added, saying there is a “massive imbalance” in how pro-life and pro-abortion activists are treated by federal law enforcement.
.@RonDeSantisFL addresses the DOJ's indictment of two radical pro-abortion activists for attacking pro-life pregnancy facilities in Florida: "I was surprised to see that case brought because the DOJ had not been willing to hold those types of cases accountable." pic.twitter.com/1xpzuqB9lw
The indictments were a “step in the right direction,” DeSantis said, noting that there should be accountability for those trying “to intimidate these crisis pregnancy centers.”
The governor called on the Justice Department to change its approach.
“The DOJ has been asleep at the wheel on this for a long time,” DeSantis said. “So I’m glad to see it, I am surprised to see it. But they need to do a lot more.”
The facts back up DeSantis’ take.
Since the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last May, an astonishing 79 pregnancy resource centers and pro-life organizations have been vandalized or attacked, according to a CatholicVote tracker.
Yet, despite these scores of attacks, only two pro-abortion activists appear to have been indicted. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request from The Daily Signal asking whether any additional arrests were made in attacks on pro-life organizations or pregnancy resource centers.
Even a pregnancy resource center a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol Building and about two miles from the Justice Department wasn’t spared: In June, a vandal or vandals doused the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center’s front door in red paint and painted the words “Jane Says Revenge”—a reference to the domestic terrorist group Jane’s Revenge—on the exterior of the center.
Other pregnancy resource centers and pro-life organizations have been subjected to even more violent attacks. CompassCare Pregnancy Services, near Buffalo, New York, was firebombed June 7. Life Choices, a pregnancy resource center in Colorado, was firebombed in June, as was Wisconsin Family Action, a pro-life organization.
Susan Campbell, director of the Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center in Lynchburg, Virginia, described a June 25 attack on the center in an interview with The Daily Signal.
“They had taken crowbars to almost all of our windows, two of our doors, and just shattered all of the glass,” Campbell said. “They had spray-painted [the shapes of] coat hangers on the sidewalks, on the brick facing of the buildings, and [wrote] political things like ‘Vote blue.’”
“In red on the stamped concrete, it read ‘If abortion ain’t safe, you ain’t safe,’” she added.
In stark contrast, the Justice Department took action on several pro-lifers accused of violating the FACE Act, a law that is supposed to apply to both abortion clinics and pregnancy centers.
In March, the Justice Department announced the indictment of nine people for violating the FACE Act. In September, the FBI arrested a pro-life dad of 11, Mark Houck, for allegedly pushing a pro-abortion activist who he said was harassing his son. According to Houck’s attorney, Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society, “20-plus heavily armed federal agents with shields and long guns” came to the Houck home in Pennsylvania to arrest him.
In October, the Justice Department announced the indictment of 11 pro-life activists in Tennessee on charges of violating the FACE Act. Paul Vaughn of Centerville, Tennessee, told The Daily Signal that when he was arrested, the FBI came to his home with “guns pointed at the door.”
“When I opened the door and saw the guns pointed at me, I asked them what they wanted, who they were looking for, and they said they wanted me,” Vaughn said.
Nor should the DOJ’s actions come as a surprise.
My colleague Mary Margaret Olohan reported in December that a top DOJ official, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, “described the overturn of Roe v. Wade as a ‘devastating blow to women throughout the country’ that took away ‘the constitutional right to abortion’ and increased ‘the urgency’ of the DOJ’s work—including the ‘enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.’”
The Justice Department should be enforcing the law, not making politically driven decisions about what cases to prioritize and which to ignore.
DeSantis is right to call out the Justice Department. Let’s hope that attacked and vandalized pregnancy resource centers get justice sooner rather than later.
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Today marks exactly one year since @TheJusticeDept wrote to us promising action on an alarming rise in anti-Catholic violence. In May 2022, attacks on churches and pro-life clinics skyrocketed as “revenge” over Roe. As of earlier this week, the DOJ had made ZERO arrests.
Last week, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis (N.C.) bragged to The Washington Post that he doesn’t “vote for anything” that he thinks “will have a serious political consequence.” They were glib words for a man who’d just put his name behind a bill rewriting marriage for every American. Like the 11 other Republican senators whose moral courage collapsed before the nation’s eyes, Senator Tillis would have you believe there’s no fallout from his vote for same-sex marriage. But a young Georgia policeman who’s out of a job over his beliefs would beg to disagree.
“Christians should not be fearful of this legislation,” Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) wrote in an op-ed for the Indy Star. The so-called Respect for Marriage Act, he insisted, offers “far more in the way of religious liberty protections than [we have now].” Tell that to Jacob Kersey, who was a 19-year-old rookie of the Port Wentworth Police Department, until his supervisors decided his views on marriage were too “offensive.” Try telling Jacob that Christians don’t need to worry that these laws “will be used as a weapon to bludgeon them for their beliefs,” as Senator Young claimed, because this young man — like every American with a bullseye on their backs — won’t believe it.
Barely a month after Joe Biden signed his name to the law upending marriage in all 50 states, every excuse these 12 Republicans made is turning out to be exactly what conservatives warned they were — lies. “… [W]e have just improved on religious liberty protections … across the United States,” Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said, despite every legal argument to the contrary. Now, these dozen senators are making prophets out of conservatives, who warned that abandoning marriage would only usher in a new wave of oppression.
For Kersey, that oppression was swift, coming less than 24 hours after a Facebook post he made on his personal account. “God designed marriage,” he wrote January 2. “Marriage refers to Christ and the church,” he explained in reference to in Ephesians 5. “That’s why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage.”
The next day, the Daily Signal reported, Kersey’s supervisor called to tell him that someone had complained about the message. Take it down, he was told. Jacob refused. For that, he was hauled into a meeting with three superiors, Major Lee Sherrod, Captain Nathan Jentzen, and Police Chief Matt Libby, and ordered to “turn in everything he had that belonged to the city.” While people are entitled to their own views, Libby said, talking about natural marriage is the same as using a racial slur. It’s like “saying the N-word or ‘F— all those homosexuals,’” the chief insisted.
Despite the promise they saw in him as a police officer, the three men agreed Kersey would have to be placed on administrative leave while the city considered whether his job could be salvaged.
A week later, Kersey was given a choice: keep your opinions off social media or turn in your badge. If he wanted to post Scripture, fine. But if he shared anything else that offended someone, he could be fired. Does that sound like “a good step forward for religious freedom” to you? Is that what Todd Young meant when he talked about showing “diverse beliefs proper respect?” Or how Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.) defines “tolerance?”
A few sleepless nights later, Jacob resigned. “I didn’t believe that my department had my back, and I didn’t really want to go back and play that game and just wait to be fired, because I know it would happen at some point,” he told “Washington Watch” Thursday. “The leadership at that police department claims to be Christian. But I just don’t understand why they would say that an outspoken Christian is the same thing as a racist. It’s just absolutely ludicrous to try to equate me to [someone] who hates people based off the color of their skin, because I believe in God’s design for marriage.”
“I really enjoyed being a police officer,” Kersey admitted. “And that was a huge part of my identity at a young age. And I look forward to doing that for a long time. But, you know, you have to follow when Jesus calls.” As Jacob said, “We really, really have to understand that this isn’t all just a big political game. This is a spiritual battle that’s going on right now. … And Christ is King — and if we’re believers and we really believe that, then we should be fighting for His comprehensive rule overall, especially in our hearts, and we should stand for Him and His word.”
In the meantime, Jacob could lose his whole career because 12 grown senators couldn’t muster the courage he’s shown at 19. He is the fallout they denied, the collateral damage of a decision that will haunt our country for generations. While these men and women hold up their law’s non-existent protections as a shield from criticism, know that very real Americans have no defense. No shelter for the attacks that will come.
When we asked Jacob what he would say to the 51 Republicans who turned their backs on him and millions of other Americans, he grew serious. “My decision to stand up for biblical truth goes back to the Bible in Genesis 3. I see the serpent whispering in the ear of Eve. And Adam, who knows very well what God has said, stood passively by and let sin happen. And I think there are going to be consequences for those who stand idly by and watch the serpent slither around and ignore God. If you’re going to be a Christian, you’re going to have to decide — are you going to be like Adam? And what are the consequences for your action?”
Today, the consequences are exactly what we warned: the Left and those trying to curry favor with the intolerant mob are now empowered with the force of government to crush anyone who lives out their biblical faith. The retort of the 12 Republicans will likely be that the action against Jacob was unlawful, and he would have a good chance of prevailing in court. But why should a 19-year-old have to go to court to defend the teaching of the Bible in order to be a police officer? While it’s true he could win that challenge, the real effect is upon those watching.
“You can see exactly what they’re doing,” Dr. Albert Mohler warned when the votes were imminent. “They’re coming for us.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-01-27 14:49:472023-01-27 14:49:47Policeman’s Resignation Shows the Fallout over Marriage Has Begun
