Tag Archive for: Family Research Council

VIDEO: Is Biden Going Soft on China?

The first few weeks of Biden’s presidency has seen the rollback of several Trump-era policies that put pressure on China. But while Chinese leaders may feel relieved, the United States has received nothing in return for the gradual easing of tensions.

President Biden consistently refers to China as a “competitor.” This language is quite a bit softer than former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s labeling of the Chinese Communist Party as “the central threat of our times.” Gordon Chang notes that it is difficult to compete when we know our competitor is cheating. When President Biden talks about competing with China on technological advancements, “That sounds fine, but China steals somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 billion worth of U.S. IP each year,” Chang said on Washington Watch. China’s persistent theft of intellectual property makes it impossible to compete fairly with.

Several of President Biden’s early executive orders have directly benefitted China, while exposing Americans to risk. Chang cites several concerning examples. “President Trump, with an executive order, barred China from supplying equipment to our electricity grid. In other words, that prevents China from committing sabotage. And that’s not a theoretical concern when it comes to the grid. Yet Biden, in an executive order, repealed that Trump era protection.”

President Biden has also failed to take the spread of Chinese propaganda on America’s college campuses seriously. There are around 60 Confucius Institutes still operating in American colleges, and though they purport to simply teach Chinese language and culture, they are not to be taken lightly. Chang points out that Confucius Institutes are “run by the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, which is this part of the Communist Party which tries to subvert foreign countries. So really what we’ve got here is propaganda on our campuses.” The U.S. does not develop propaganda programs in Chinese colleges, so why should we let them do so here?

The day before the Trump administration left office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took perhaps the administration’s most significance stand against China by officially calling the Chinese’s government abuses of Uyghur Muslims genocide. Secretary of State Antony Blinken initially affirmed Pompeo’s finding that the Chinese government was committing genocide in Xinjiang. However, we have yet to see the administration indicate it has plans to do anything about it. Chang says, “when you talk about genocide, we’ve got to remember that the U.S. is a party to the Genocide Convention of 1948, which requires every country to stop genocide. And I don’t hear any of that language from the Biden team so far.”

Genocides always loom large in history. If the administration does not consider China’s genocide to be a priority now, future history texts books will ask why. In America’s dealings with China, history will remember how the Biden administration reacted to China’s heinous human rights abuses.

Ultimately, the threat that China poses to the free world makes it more than a competitor. As the world’s second most powerful country, China has been flexing its diplomatic and political muscles at the United Nations and the World Health Organization to the detriment of democratic societies. The Chinese government is guilty of an ongoing genocide of a religious and ethnic minority. Not to mention China’s imprisonment of political dissidents, crackdown on churches, and mass surveillance of its people.

As China grows more powerful, it has the capacity to compel others to do what it wants. That is worrying not because China is a competitor, but because the Chinese government has no respect for democracy, rule of law, or basic human rights. Smaller countries with less resources struggle to stand up to China. If the United States does not lead the way in doing so, no one will.

COLUMN BY

Arielle Del Turco

Assistant Director of the Center for Religious Liberty

Arielle Del Turco serves as Assistant Director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, where she is responsible for international religious freedom policy and advocacy efforts. Through research and analysis of international religious freedom matters, she helps craft effective policy solutions along with coordinating FRC’s advocacy on this issue. Arielle’s work has appeared in the USA TodayNational ReviewJerusalem PostWashington ExaminerCBN NewsThe FederalistThe National InterestChristian PostThe American ConservativeDaily Signal, and Townhall. She has conducted a number of media interviews on international religious freedom, and has herself interviewed key advocates and victims of persecution. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Politics and History from Regent University, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in International Relations.

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC-Action column with video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Breaking News from Harvard: Faith is Good for You

The Bible tells us that there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1:9). So often what passes for “news” is really nothing more than a refresher. A case in point is a new study from published this month in the American Journal of Epidemiology about the link between religious upbringing and subsequent health and well-being.

One not-so-surprising finding of the study, which was done by Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is that, “Compared with no attendance, at least weekly attendance of religious services was associated with greater life satisfaction and positive affect, a number of character strengths, lower probabilities of marijuana use and early sexual initiation, and fewer lifetime sexual partners.” Additionally, among the studies’ participants:

“Compared with never praying or meditating, at least daily practice was associated with greater positive affect, emotional processing, and emotional expression; greater volunteering, greater sense of mission, and more forgiveness; lower likelihoods of drug use, early sexual initiation, STIs, and abnormal Pap test results; and fewer lifetime sexual partners.”

These findings aren’t a surprise to us here at FRC. For years, we’ve seen this in practice, and in data like those published by our friend Pat Fagan at the Marriage and Religion Research Institute. It is a demonstrable fact that when faith is allowed to flourish, good outcomes are in store for society at large.

The study’s author observes,

“These findings are important for both our understanding of health and our understanding of parenting practices. Many children are raised religiously, and our study shows that this can powerfully affect their health behaviors, mental health, and overall happiness and well-being.”

Of course, we know that “faith” in a generic sense doesn’t always guarantee a comfortable outcome, but an abiding faith in Jesus Christ can anchor a person’s soul for whatever he or she may face in life. A study like this won’t necessarily cause people to embrace faith, but it does show that a society in which religious liberty thrives will be a healthier society. And any government that wants to promote the well-being of its people should give ample space for people to have the freedom to believe and to live out those beliefs.


Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.


RELATED ARTICLES:

Deplorables, Irredeemables, and the Dregs of Society

Kavanaugh Allegations: Aimed at Justice or at a Justice?

FRC in the Media

As John Kerry declares a ‘Christian Genocide’ in the ME, Muslim leaders label Ted Cruz ‘Islamophobic’

The Council on American Islamic Relations labeling of presidential candidate Ted Cruz and his advisers as “Islamophobic” is ill timed. This declaration comes on the same day as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declares that the Islamic State is perpetrating a Christian genocide in the Middle East.

Secretary of State Kerry asserted:

In my judgment, Daesh [the Islamic State] is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions — in what it says, what it believes, and what it does.” This official American genocide designation is a critically important step. Genocide is internationally recognized as the most heinous human-rights offense. Legally, it is known as the “crime of crimes.

And while the Genocide Convention does not prescribe specific action to “prevent and protect” against genocide, the conscience does.

So, is Senator Cruz “Islamophobic” given this statement about the Islamic State? According to the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) National Executive Director Nihad Awad, he is.

Awad said:

“Who a candidate picks for his or her advisers says volumes about that candidate’s worldview. By choosing infamous Islamophobes as foreign policy advisers, Senator Cruz indicates that he subscribes to their conspiratorial worldview and to the anti-Muslim bigotry that would inevitably shape their policy recommendations. We ask Senator Cruz to drop any adviser who has a past history of promoting conspiracy theories or religious bigotry.

Awad objects to Senator Cruz having on his advisory team two men: Frank Gaffney and Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin, U.S. Army (Ret.). Mr. Gaffney is is the Founder and President of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. The Center is a not-for-profit, non-partisan educational corporation established in 1988. Under Mr. Gaffney’s leadership, the Center has been nationally and internationally recognized as a resource for timely, informed and penetrating analyses of foreign and defense policy matters.

Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin is serves as Family Research Council’s Executive Vice President. He was one of the original members of the U.S. Army’s Delta Force. He commanded SOF Delta in combat operations. Boykin commanded all the Army’s Green Berets as well as the Special Warfare Center and School. Boykin spent 36 years in the army, serving his last four years as the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. He is an ordained minister.

Awad on MSNBC’s Chris Matthews show has referred to Gaffney as “one of the country’s leading anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists.”

Interestingly, according to Discover the Networks, Nihad Awad is a supporter of Hamas, he rejects Israel’s right to exist, he suggested that Israel and Egypt played a part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he maintains that “many Presidents” of the United States “are servants to Israel” and to “the political authority of Jewish interests” and claims that America bore some of the blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Who is the real conspiracy theorist?

Awad is a Muslim migrant who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan. Awad came to America via “the Bosnian Refugee Committee—an Islamic aid organization based in Minnesota—Awad in late 1992 spent a month in war-torn Bosnia during a time when Muslim intransigents from around the world were flocking there to wage jihad.”

It appears Awad is continuing to wage Jihad, but this time with attacks against Senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

GOP Presidential Candidates Pledge Support of the First Amendment Defense Act

WASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — FRC Action, the legislative affiliate of the Family Research Council, has joined together with Heritage Action for America and American Principles Project, to invite each of the candidates running for President to sign the following pledge:

“If elected, I pledge to push for the passage of the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) and sign it into law during the first 100 days of my term as President.”

FADA would prohibit the federal government from penalizing people for their personal, moral or religious beliefs on natural marriage in federal employment, grants, contracts, tax treatment, and other programs. It also protects individuals or entities that believe, teach or establish in codes of conduct that sexual intimacy is reserved for natural marriage.

FRC Action President Tony Perkins commented:

“I commend the ten presidential candidates who have signed the pledge or have publicly stated support for legislation that simply protects Americans from being punished by the government for holding a belief in natural marriage.

“Our future President, whoever he or she may be, has an important part to play in making FADA a reality in the first 100 days of the new Administration but Congress still has a responsibility in 2016 and beyond.

“Every day the American people open their newspapers and read about how their fellow citizens are becoming targets of political correctness. This is why candidates who haven’t given into political correctness are being rewarded in the polls. Values voters who make up nearly half of the GOP recognize that our nation is in desperate need of a president who respects what the Constitution plainly states about religious freedom.

“The First Amendment Defense Act reflects our nation’s history of recognizing, respecting and protecting the moral and religious beliefs of people and faith-based organizations. No person or nonprofit should lose tax exempt status, face disqualification, lose a professional license or be punished by the federal government simply for believing what President Obama believed just three years ago, that marriage is the union of a man and a woman,” concluded Perkins.

So far, six candidates have signed the pledge: Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Dr. Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR), and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA).

Four candidates did not sign the pledge but have expressed public support for FADA: Donald Trump, former Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL), Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).

Senator Ted Cruz to attend ‘Rally for Religious Liberty’ on November 14th, 2015

no fear by tony perkinsWASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Tomorrow, Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins will join Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at the “Rally for Religious Liberty” in Greenville, SC. The rally will call attention to recent government attacks on the religious liberties of Americans.

Perkins, who is also author of the new book No Fear: Real Stories of a Courageous New Generation Standing for Truth, will share the book’s stories of young believers who, despite incredible opposition, courageously stood up for God’s truth. Perkins made the following comments:

“I am honored to join my friend Ted Cruz in defending America’s First Freedom. Last month I was privileged to join Gov. Mike Huckabee in Kentucky for a rally in support of Kim Davis, who had been jailed for exercising her religious freedom. I am grateful for these leaders who are willing to stand boldly not only for Americans’ freedom to believe, but the freedom to live according to those beliefs.

“I will stand with any presidential candidate who will stand for our First Freedom. Never before in the history of this country has religious freedom been more endangered than it is today under the policies of the Obama administration. I look forward to being with Senator Cruz at Bob Jones University,” concluded Perkins.

WHO: Tony Perkins, president, Family Research Council Action
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
Jason and David Benham, entrepreneurs and former Major League baseball players
Steve Deace, talk show host and columnist

WHAT: Rally for Religious Liberty

WHERE: Bob Jones University, 1700 Wade Hampton Blvd in Greenville, South Carolina

WHEN: TOMORROW, November 14, 2015

Doors open at 10:30 AM EST, and the event will take place from noon to 2 PM EST.