Rod Dreher's Blog, page 75
March 24, 2021
How To Screw With A Kid’s Head
A reader in Washington DC passes along some information about a super-woke public charter school in the city. Lee Montessori is a Washington DC public charter school with two campuses. It combines Montessori pedagogy with progressive values, offering “ABAR” (Anti-Bias, Anti-Racist) education. It’s worth dwelling on this material to understand just how profoundly schools like this are scrambling the minds of little children. My source said that earlier this year, Lee sent out a description of curriculum goals for kids studying there that included making the kids “queer-affirming” — that is, building a world in which “heteronormative” thinking doesn’t exist; and “disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”
This school serves children aged three to 10. One of the two campuses is in Anacostia, a part of the city that is traditionally poor and black.
Here’s something the school’s Director of Equity sent out to parents more recently:
Gender Identity = Anti-Bias Practices
Good Afternoon Lee Families,
I hope you all had a restful weekend and that you got to enjoy the beautiful weather we were gifted by mother earth. Many families have been asking several questions, in regards to gender identity as a whole; specifically when it was reflected and amplified in our Black History Month curriculum. Our commitment and stance around gender identity development about being that safe space where all of our students can show up as their authentic selves. Reminder: “We exist to create a more just and liberated world.”
As a school that embeds ABAR practices, Equity, and SEL into our Montessori education, we are committed to embracing each and every one of our students (honoring the whole child). Lee Montessori is an identity-affirming school that believes that building gender-diverse and inclusive school environments enhance socio-emotional relationships among children, families, and our staff. Families have been asking, how did we decide to focus on identity development? We decided to focus on positive identity development, as it is the first goal of abar education (see the graphic below for all abar goals). A positive sense of identity is crucial to the development of self-esteem and confidence. Children who feel worthy and capable are more likely to be optimistic and to do well in school. A healthy sense of identity also helps children to be more open to people from other backgrounds and identities because they are less likely to fear differences or put other children down to feel better about themselves.
Overall, inclusive environments support wellness, academic achievement, growth, and development for all the children we currently serve and will serve in the future. One of our top priorities at Lee is that every child feels safe (mentally, physically, and psychologically) and that they belong no matter their intersecting identities. ABAR education aims to be a proactive approach that is capable of giving our students the tools they need to be advocates for themselves and others while having accurate language as part of their learning. Gender identity development is for everyone; it’s about empathy and respect for one another.
We often hear, “stop indoctrinating our child!” or “are you trying to make my child confused?” or “why are you trying to make my child gay?”. Our response, none of the above. What we are trying to do is provide students with windows and mirrors, teach them that diversity in our community shows up in many forms not just racially, and overall becoming listening leaders and models for our students. We will not tell students who they are, we will listen and honor who they tell us they are; we will let them decide for themselves. Gender identity is not about “ex. sex education for primary students”, it’s about learning about concepts and really breaking away from societal norms around gender roles (of course at the age-appropriate level). One example I always share is the one where my son had long hair until he was age 6 and was constantly called a girl for having long hair. It made me uncomfortable because as a parent we want our children to feel affirmed and understood. My son and his dad both had very long hair at the time because they would donate their hair to children with cancer. But the miseducation, ignorance, and social norms/roles just saw them as trying to be “feminine” and not just a boy and his dad with long hair (that at times is cultural). We often make erroneous assumptions and misconceptions of people’s identities, instead of just respecting who they are and how they show up. Our words and actions can be hurtful to people, we are no longer focused on intentions but the impact our actions have on others.
At Lee, we honor, respect, and understand that many families may not agree with our approach, but we will not oppress anyone to make others feel comfortable. Our commitment is to ensure that each family is welcomed and has a sense of belonging; our differences make us the amazing community that we are. We of course will always welcome feedback to find common ground, best practices, and resources that will help us move this work together. We value each and every family in our school community. In order to help you and your family have conversations at home, I am sharing some helpful resources. If you have others that should be included, please add them to the comment section. See the graphics below to help you better understand what topics fall under anti-bias education; as well as shared language around diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are planning to provide family education sessions as part of Lee Family University, more details to come.
Helpful Resources
“Range of gender identities” by Amaze.org (video)
“Help kids learn about gender [with Scoops & Friends]” by https://amaze.org/jr/ (video)
“Gender Diversity and LGBTQ Inclusion in K-12 Schools by Sharon Verner Chappell, Karyl E. Ketchum, Lisa Richardson (Book)’
“Lee Montessori ABAR primary curriculum booklet” shared with the school community in Dec. 2020 newsletter
In service and truth,
Betsy Romero
Director of Equity & Engagement
The letter features these explanatory images beneath Romero’s sign-off:
Let’s have a look at the “Range Of Gender Identities” video that Lee Montessori wants families to use. It’s only three minutes — take a look:
It features an older black uncle who doesn’t understand that there are more than two genders, and who is educated out of his ignorance by his young family members. I wonder what the parents of kids studying at Lee’s campus in Anacostia think of this.
Here is a link to Lee Montessori’s family guide to explain ABAR (Anti-Bias, Anti-Racist) education. This is the kind of thing with which they are filling the heads of children ages three to 10. Below, a glimpse.
Why would you do this to children? Why would you want your child to go through this kind of bizarro brainwashing? What kind of pseudo-religion is this?
The post How To Screw With A Kid’s Head appeared first on The American Conservative.
Antiracist, Anti-Christian
Critical Race Theory is anti-Christian. No doubt about it. Listen to “antiracist” guru Ibram X. Kendi, speaking about it in a woke Manhattan church:
It’s a three-minute clip, but well worth your time. Kendi distinguishes between “liberation theology” (“The job of the Christian is to liberate society from the powers on earth that are oppressing humanity”), and “savior theology,” which he construes as “to go out and save these individuals who are behaviorally deficient. In other words, we are to bring them into the church, these individuals who are doing all these evil, sinful things, and heal them. And save them. And once we’ve saved them, we’ve done our job.”
Kendi says that this so-called “savior theology … goes right in line with racist ideals and racist theology.” Why? Because it tells people that the reason why they are struggling on earth is because of their own sinful deeds, rather than oppressive power structures. Says Kendi, “That type of theology breeds bigotry.”
Kendi and his followers in the churches are preaching a rival gospel, a false gospel. We have got to get that straight. This does not mean that the obligation to refuse racism goes away. It means, though, that we cannot fight it with a lie.
What Kendi is teaching is just another revival of the whole “social gospel” movement of over a century ago, but it never goes away. He’s creating a false dichotomy, claiming that you can either be for fighting injustice in this world, or for saving souls. In fact, Christians are called to do both, but the primary reason for Christianity is that it is the means through which God calls all souls to reconcile with Himself. What Kendithought does is radically revise Christian teaching to locate sin not in the hearts of all people, but in social structures exclusively. He gives people a reason to see themselves as Elect, and to project the problems of the world onto others.
If you or your church follows this false gospel, it is going to lead you away from Christ. Note that Kendi blames traditional orthodox Christian teaching about sin and salvation as a catalyst for bigotry. What he’s doing is preaching Antichrist: a false Christ who is going to be more Christian than Jesus. Rene Girard saw this coming. From a piece I did here last fall about “the Antichrist of compassion”:
Now, here is where Girard becomes especially interesting, and relevant to our moment. He says that today, “we hear repeated in every way that we no longer have an absolute,” but in fact the concern for victims “is our absolute.” That is, it is the basis for our morality: “it is the concern for victims that determines what is most important.” This is the case because all other sources of absolute value have been lost. More:
The current process of spiritual demagoguery and rhetorical overkill has transformed the concern for victims into a totalitarian command and a permanent inquisition. … We are living through a caricatural “ultra-Christianity” that tries to escape from the Judeo-Christian orbit by “radicalizing” the concern for victims in an anti-Christian manner. … The intellectuals and other cultural elites have promoted Christianity to the role of number one scapegoat.
Girard says we are at the advent of what he calls “the other totalitarianism,” saying that it is
the most cunning and malicious of the two, the one with the greatest future, by all evidence. At present it does not oppose Judeo-Christian aspirations but claims them as its own and questions the concern for victims on the part of Christians (not without a certain semblance of reason at the level of concrete action, given the deficiencies of historical Christianity). The other totalitarianism does not openly oppose Christianity but outflanks it on its left wing.
This is the force of what in the Christian tradition is called Antichrist. You don’t have to believe in a literal Antichrist figure to grasp what Girard is saying here. Girard points out that in the symbolic language of the New Testament, Antichrist opposes Christ by imitating him and seeking to be better than him. More:
The Antichrist boasts of bringing to human beings the peace and tolerance that Christianity promised but has failed to deliver. Actually what the radicalization of contemporary victimology produces is a return to all sorts of pagan practices: abortion, euthanasia, sexual undifferentiation, Roman circus games galore but without real victims, etc.
Neo-paganism would like to turn the Ten Commandments and all of Judeo-Christian morality into some alleged intolerable violence, and indeed its primary objective is their complete abolition. Faithful observance of the moral law is perceived as complicity with the forces of persecution that are essentially religious. Since the Christian denominations have become only tardily aware of their failings in charity, their connivance with established political orders in the past and present world that are always “sacrificial,” they are particularly vulnerable to the ongoing blackmail of contemporary neo-paganism.
The black Baptist pastor Voddie Baucham has a hugely important book coming out on April 6, called Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe.
I read it a couple of weeks ago, and it is not just a dynamite attack on Critical Race Theory, it is Hiroshima. Baucham lays it out as clearly as is possible about how and why this stuff is anti-Christian, and cannot be trifled with. I’m going to write more about Baucham’s book when we get closer to the publication date, but I want to encourage you all, especially Evangelicals, to pre-order this book.
Along these lines, a reader writes with shocking news about the Church of England (which, yes, still retains the power to shock, though never in a good way). The invaluable Douglas Murray writes in The Spectator that the C of E is now preparing to mandate racial quotas on clergy:
And the church’s theology too must change. The curriculum for ordinands must include participation in ‘an introductory Black Theology module’. They must ‘diversify the curriculum’, ‘produce a workable plan for increasing racial diversity’ and ‘formally adopt Racial Justice Sunday in February of each year’. All this will be overseen by the creation of a ‘Racial Justice Unit’, to be funded in these cash-strapped times ‘for a five-year fixed-term basis in the first instance’.
As though there is a vast ‘pipeline’ of people wishing to enter the C of E, those who make it through must be forced to examine ‘the underlying theological assumptions that shapes racial justice such as Eurocentrism, Christendom and White normativity’. The report stresses the need to ‘decolonise Theology, Ecclesiology and possibly examine official teachings of the Church that follows prejudicial theological value system’.
After this year of absence from our national life, the C of E proposal for going forward is to go backwards once again to the issue of slavery. It must again ‘acknowledge, repent and take decisive action to address the shameful history and legacy of the Church of England’s involvement in the historic transatlantic slave trade’. The reason is that all now stands in a different perspective. ‘The BLM movement and in particular the dumping of the Colston statue in Bristol docks shed new light and brought needed urgency to the C of E’s consideration of its own contested heritage.’ The report makes it clear that the church is going to have to bring down monuments and statues that disturb the modern mind, for ‘Our churches should be welcoming spaces for all and we must deal with any part of the church building that may cause pain or offence’. I would give the crucifixes two years, max.
The reader who sent me that comments:
In general, what will happen is that a parallel religion with a parallel notion of original sin according to a parallel law that requires a parallel liturgy will take up residence in the church alongside the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. It will be a parallel gospel of freedom to the POC and a parallel message of judgment on the white. There is no parallel grace or forgiveness for the white, nor does any parallel sin apply to the poc nor is any parallel repentance required. The poc will always be blameless no matter what they do, the white will always be guilty no matter what they do. In the parallel liturgy, the white, always guilty, will always be compelled to publicly confess their sin (white privilege) in front of an audience and yet never receive absolution. Offering? The white will continually make sacrifice in atonement for what they are, not for anything they have done.What kinds of sacrifices? They’ll have to renounce their whiteness. Disavow their ancestors. There actually is not anything connected to them that they will not have to offer up as a sacrifice–it is limited only by your imagination. The inquisitors will choose anything precious or familiar to the whites to be renounced. They will make up narratives of cultural appropriation or white supremacy and target any food, song, tradition, turn of phrase, and so on. A song will be called problematic and cultural appropriation if a plausible connection can be drawn to blacks. But if one can’t? Why then it is white supremacy! Either way the white must renounce something valued. The inquisitors love playing this game, inventing new narratives of racist/cultural appropriation origins of anything they hear their target say or anything familiar to their target. It is a heads I win, tails you lose game that only sick people enjoy, but the priests of CRT are among the sickest. The whites will always have to be poor in spirit and meek–and if a white is not meek, someone will come and put him in his place–but though ever meek, they will never inherit any kingdom. Though they will repent and offer sacrifices for their white privilege, they will never be able to share communion with the righteous. They’ll never be accepted at the table to celebrate the kingdom for the kingdom is defined by their subjugation and demonstration of self-loathing. Repentance and sorrow is meant to be their final condition.But which religion will rule the church? There simply can’t be two, there can only one. Here is what you will see with those who participate in the parallel liturgy. At first it may seem they can participate in both, but this is unstable and it won’t last. They’ll end up embracing one and rejecting or neglecting the other. No one can serve two masters, he will love one and hate the other and that is true of churches and the false gospels they love. Each of these opposing gospels demands all of one’s heart, all of one’s mind, and all of one’s strength.Those who practice the liturgy of CRT will always have one gospel on their mind, one gospel they want to share. The gospel of CRT will always be on their lips. The testimony that they will spontaneously give to strangers at the coffee shop will be about how they learned how white privileged they were. It is the gospel they’ll want to convert their friends and family into. See if you can count how often these people will preach the gospel of Jesus to their neighbors vs the gospel of CRT. See how much pressure they will put on their non-church going friends and family to go to church versus how much pressure they put on their non-woke friends and family to confess their white privilege. Where is their spiritual energy? What do they love telling people about? What is the testimony they give most often? Does the confession of their ordinary sins bring them to tears as often as their public confession of their white privilege? I have already heard many reports of teary confessions of white privilege in (virtual) Sunday School classes at local churches.When push comes to shove, the CRT gospel will always qualify the gospel of Jesus, not the other way around. The gospel of Jesus will always be subordinated to the gospel of CRT. Can Jesus forgive you of your white privilege? No, because there is no grace and no forgiveness for it. Can black people sin against their white brothers and need to confess and repent? Obviously not. Under the CRT schema, it is impossible for the oppressed to ever wrong the oppressor. But one might ask, doesn’t that apply to groups, not individuals? Can’t a black person as an individual sin against a white person as an individual? Oh, my sweet summer child! Read your CRT Bible. There are no individuals or individual responsibility–that’s a white supremacy conceptual scheme, a manifestation of Whiteness! No man is anything more than a representative of his race. So contrary to White Supremacy, there are no individual interactions, only interactions between groups and their representatives. A man’s identity is subsumed by the groups he belongs to. So it is always black vs white and in that relationship, the white is always oppressor and the black always oppressed. The black can never do any wrong and any violence on the part of the black is always defensive and authorized.Everything within the church will become politicized. Nothing is exempt. Everything will have to be reconceived and reinterpreted according to the canons of CRT. Everything ‘white’ will have to be renounced. Any time any political issues comes up related to race, the church will be expected to sign some letter of agreement or show up at a protest. (Make sure to order some rainbow stoles for your clergy.) Documents that look a lot like petitions that concern the political program of CRT will constantly be pushed towards the clergy to sign. The church will constantly be asked to publicly repudiate something deemed “racist” even if it involves an event on the other side of the country that has nothing in the world to do with the local community. The church will always be asked to renounce some manifestation of whiteness and demonstrate its woke credentials.If people in your church try and hold on to Christianity, they will constantly be pressured by the CRT crowd to go woke. To accept the gospel of CRT. To subordinate Jesus’ gospel to the CRT. Accepting Woke doctrine will become the de facto condition of fellowship with the woke members. You may see a completely divided church. The CRT church will insist its message is an extension of Christianity that cannot be denied, but really they will accomplish a complete reinterpretation of Christianity according to its false gospel. A false gospel that leaves everyone in a state of guilt and sin, nobody free or forgiven and in a constant state of anxiety over what political cause they must support in order to be anti-racist and what part of their personality and history they must renounce. Ever hungry and never filled, they can only make more and more absurd renunciations of whiteness, condemn ever more trivial alleged instances of racism, and engage in only more histrionic false confessions of white privilege. They’ll accuse one another of racism and white supremacy just to prove their own anti-racist credentials or to settle disputes and eliminate rivals for positions of honor. It is happening already if you just look at the evangelical churches where wokeness has crept in unopposed.There is no salvation in the false gospel preached by Ibram X. Kendi and his Christian followers. There is only strife and spite. I say it again: any church that welcomes Kendithought is trifling with its own demise.
UPDATE: Well, this is something. Another Christian trading truth for a pot of message:
I’d like to warmly welcome @JemarTisby, our new Assistant Director of Narrative and Advocacy @AntiracismCtr. Tisby is the @nytimes bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism. He is the founder of The Witness and co-hosts the Pass The Mic podcast. pic.twitter.com/Hh8RDLFHDD
— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) March 24, 2021
UPDATE.2: A reader comments:
At one time, I belonged to one of the crowds (social justice-minded Jesuit university students) that eventually melded into what we now might call the “woke Church.” Looking back, it’s impossible to sufficiently emphasize the extent to which we believed we had, no joke, discovered Christianity for the first time in centuries. Jesus was about justice in the world, full stop. His message had since been obscured by people who either consciously wanted to co-opt its revolutionary power, or who did not have the courage to grasp its fullness. All the bells, incense, icons, and Thomism were ways to dance around Jesus’ central demands without meeting them. Other people did not know this. We did. In that sense, it had a whiff of Gnosticism.
A decade and a half later, I think very differently. It was this political gospel we preached that could be, and has been, co-opted. Only a transcendent gospel of atonement and redemption ultimately had the ballast to not be bought, intimidated, or conned. But when we believed it, we believed it, and from my vantage point today it truly was a different religion, Christian in name and language but something else entirely in substantive content. It is a church unto itself, whole and entire. I came belatedly to realize it. I hope others aren’t quite so belated.
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If Only Ahmad Alissa Had Been Southern Baptist
Though Boulder police have stated no known motive yet for this crime, here is some of what we know about Boulder shooter Ahmad Alissa:
He had a history of anger and violenceHe was “deeply disturbed,” “very anti-social,” and “paranoid,” according to his brotherHe hated Donald TrumpHe had been bullied in high schoolHe posted a lot on social media about his religion, IslamHere is what we are not seeing from the media: rash speculation about whether Islam drove him to murder, or whether Trump Derangement Syndrome had anything to do with this attack. All ten of Ahmad Alissa’s victims are white. We are seeing no speculation as to whether or not anti-white racism played a role in this crime.
And you know what? The media are being responsible here. From what we know at this point, there is no reason to blame his religion or his political views for what he did, nor is there reason to blame race hatred.
This is not the standard the media applied to the white male Southern Baptist shooter of Asians in Georgia, of course.
In that case, the media chose to serve the Narrative instead of truth. If no evidence emerges that these killings were racially motivated, we will not hear NPR stories arguing that even though there is no evidence that these killings were racially motivated, they might well have been, because professors know better than police.
And not just the media. We will not have universities issuing statements of sorrow and solidarity with the victims in Boulder, because ordinary white people who died at the hands of a Muslim gunman are not useful politically:
Note all this. Don’t forget it. This is how the power-holders in this society think. It’s not exactly news, of course, but surely we are at the point in which it is insane to deny the bigotry and bias of our ruling class and the institutions they administer.
This is why people hate them.
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March 23, 2021
Is The US Military Being Purged Of Rightists?
I just read your piece, “Witness Against Wokeness” which reverberated strongly with me — not because I have any experience with Eastern European Communism, but because it is happening here and now and I am on the receiving end. I’ve already spoken with our mutual friends [names] about this matter and had hesitated to bring it to your attention. However, given the tenor of your latest article I have to warn you, the soft totalitarianism you’ve been trying to draw attention to is right in your own backyard. The great purge of Conservatives from the US military has begun; once the ranks are sufficiently cleansed then the overarching work to remake our country can begin in earnest.I am a part-time Army Reservist who has drilled for the past 4 years at the [unit] in [Louisiana city] and had recently transferred to the [unit near a different Louisiana city]. A week ago, I received my “Notice of Purge” in the form of a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand (“GOMOR”) personally signed by Lt. Gen. Charles Pede, The Judge Advocate General of the Army (the guy who advises the Joint Chiefs of Staff and briefs at the White House). This is akin to Zeus looking down from Mt. Olympus and hurling a thunderbolt from on high to obliterate some unsuspecting peasant plowing in his field. Although I never suspected something of this magnitude, I did have a suspicion that something was up.A month or so ago, I went back to the unit in [Louisiana city] to turn in some gear, etc. and noticed that everyone was avoiding me — office doors were literally closing and whispering was echoing in the halls as I passed. Finally, a friend, an old Master Sergeant, approached me to subtly let me know a Special Agent from Army CID had been asking questions about me. I texted my Colonel to see if he wanted to go to lunch and he told me to meet him in the parking lot. Normally, I’d be the one to drive (as a rank thing) so I got my car and came to pick him up; however, as he walked up he immediately barked, “No, you’re riding with me.” So I went ahead and parked my vehicle and climbed into his.Immediately he demanded, “Did you bring your phone?” “Sure, Sir,” I responded, handing it over, thinking he wanted to borrow it. He recoiled from it like it was a snake and told me, “Turn that off!” Then he continued, “Better yet — sit on it! My confused reply was, “What, Sir?” He said, “Cover that with your butt! The microphone can still work when it’s off.” At this point I was starting to feel sick.“They’ve been listening to your phone, you know” was his next utterance. He then proceeded to tell me how he’d been questioned for half an hour by his General as to how well he knew me, what he knew about me, etc; and this was not occurring in 1960s Yugoslavia but on a bright sunny day in Louisiana, on our way to lunch.As you may know, Christian Conservatives are now being targeted for elimination from the military — myself included. By painting in broad brush strokes and labeling everyone they disagree with (or, more aptly, who disagree with them) as “Extremists,” the new powers-that-be at DoD are moving swiftly to appease their political masters. The pretext for my removal is based on the extreme vetting of Facebook accounts of military members in the wake of the January 6th Capitol protests and Biden’s inauguration (and, specifically, a post I made on Jan. 6th). Because of the irregular bypassing of my chain-of-command and unnecessarily high-profile nature of the action against me, it is clear that this censuring is being directed at the highest echelons of the Defense Department.The free-speech implications of these actions against me and others are chilling. I am the guy who gives the briefs on what is and is not permissible online conduct and I can assure you nothing I ever posted “crossed the line” (unlike many of my fellow Soldiers over the past year+ who have overtly disparaged the former Commander-in-Chief, et al.). The post at issue was made on my own time, not in a duty status and not on a government device or computer, in my role as a private citizen. There is no nexus to the military and no precedent for this level of overreach. Although my post was not a political statement, the reaction to it has been undoubtedly politically motivated and ideologically driven. If this GOMOR is allowed to go forward, separation from the Army will automatically be initiated against me. Because of these proceedings, I have a suspension of favorable personnel action placed upon me, so that I cannot be promoted, transferred, or even receive an award. This is more than being “nibbled to death by ducks,” it is how they kill you softly and avoid the due process rights which a court-martial would trigger.I wish more Americans really knew what was happening. The military I came up in was overtly apolitical; that military is gone. Still, my fellow service members and I deserve better than to be constantly jerked around in the never ending social-engineering experiments of the radical Left, and drummed out when we don’t tow the Party line. However, the writing is on the wall. God-fearing men and women in the Armed Forces are about to suffer; I fear it is only a precursor of what is to come for society in general. I served in Iraq and Afghanistan and my family has fought in every war this country ever fought, since before there was a United States. But none of that matters anymore in the new Amerika. I feel like the old Roman, still manning the frontier as Rome burns behind me.If there is any way you can help my situation and/or call attention to the plight of thousands of other Christian Conservatives who are similarly in the line of fire, it would be deeply appreciated. Please do not hesitate to contact me and/or let me know anyone to reach out to who might be able to help defend those who defend others. I pray that the Lord of Battles will deliver us. If not, then I pray that I may be counted worthy to suffer for His name. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you for what you do, Rod, and keep fighting the good fight.I asked the reader to send me a copy of the Facebook post that got him into trouble. He did. I reproduce it below with names blacked out:
Here is the GOMOR that that facetious post earned (again, I’ve taken his name and identifying details out):
The reader adds:What I really think is that this military judge advocate exercised poor judgment by joking in poor taste. But it was clearly a joke — it had a smiley-face emoji — and not an endorsement of sedition. He deserved at most a slap on the wrist. Maybe the Army knows something more about this man and his views than is evident here, and that information justifies its harshness — that is, maybe the Army was listening in on his phone (in which case, did it have a warrant)? But based on what we see here — and acknowledging that we only have this man’s side of the story — this really does seem like an extraordinarily rash punitive action. They have basically ended this man’s military career, it sounds like. This, over a single jokey comment. Is this really what the military means by attacking extremism in the ranks? Absolutely, go after closet neo-Nazis and Ku Kluckers. Get them out of the military at once. But to destroy the career of an Army lawyer because of that? Because of a joke?I would love to know what other soldiers reading this case think of it. And I would like to know what other military personnel are facing on this front.Again, it seems to me that nobody can object to actual neo-Nazis and similar extremists being unmasked and forced out of the military. But if soldiers, sailors, and airmen are facing the end of their careers for piddly social media postings like what got my reader into trouble — if that’s what it means to be an “extremist” in the new woke military — then that feels like a political purge. I received an e-mail today from another reader in the military who said that the wokeness is coming so strong that they are now expected to accept that it is just to keep white males from promotion simply because they are white males at a time when the senior leadership wants to see women and people of color moved up. My correspondent said that the woke consciousness is “poison” for the armed services, and that this is not what he signed up for.If we really are at the outset of a political purge in the armed services, what does the Biden administration think they are creating in this country? A different reader sent me this meme today:Obviously, I didn’t mean to paint a target on my back but, admittedly, made it easy for them (yet who knew at the time that the ensuing witch-hunt was coming?). In this day and age where anti-racism is the ascendant tenant of the state religion, anything with a Confederate flag is immediately suspect. Never mind that I am a bonafide Military History Nerd and Civil War Reenactor who wears blue as much as gray; the irony of Calhoun, et al was lost on my unintended audience (although my actual “friends” understood perfectly well). But the way my words were lifted out of context and their meaning twisted is what is so especially galling (see the emoji, General? This is what is called “satire.”).
However, the post was just a convenient excuse to help the DoD Kommissars accommodate their political masters’ mandate to remove Conservatives from the ranks. That has always been the experience of those living under both soft and hard totalitarianism — the oppressors can always find a justification. In order to accomplish their aims they have to have an enemy — and the enemy of these times is, of course, white supremacists. Once they’re able to portray you as the enemy, then the next leap (towards elimination) is a much easier one to make (just ask Bonhoeffer and the Jews).I wish I had not deleted the post now, although I did after only a few days. The tenor of the comments was in much the same vein as the author’s intended meaning — “What Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia couldn’t accomplish in four years, this clown just did in 4 minutes… lol.” And, keep in mind, my post was made contemporaneously with the events as they were happening — I actually lifted the photo from NBC News. In legal terms, the post was equivalent to an “excited utterance” — I was struck by the sheer historical immensity of the occasion; at that point in the day, no one had died, etc. and I didn’t know the depths to which the Alinskyites would exploit the situation (“never let a crisis go to waste”).If I had received a counseling statement (a military slap on the wrist) I would’ve admitted with chagrin a lapse in judgment and apologized for my jest made in poor taste. But this is so over the top, it requires an equal and opposite reaction. Regardless, at the end of the day, free speech is free speech — or at least it used to be. Take a look at the attachments and then let me know what you (really) think!
UPDATE: A reader with a military background writes:Your recently reprimanded reader has a genuine complaint about the injustice done to him. At the same time, there’s a certain naiveté. He’s not being reprimanded for being Christian, conservative, or Republican. He’s being reprimanded for posting a picture with a Confederate flag, an approving comment, and a smiley face. He says it’s an ironic history joke. But it is easily construed as approving the action depicted in the picture, and the “2021 is just getting started” comment could be an expression of hope that more things like that happen this year. In a more just world, this would be a teaching moment, not a career killer. But if you’re a major, you really should know better. The tolerance for questionable judgment goes down as rank goes up. I’ve seen officers’ careers ruined for less. Stalin only stopped purging the Red Army after Hitler invaded.When a bureaucracy is threatened from the outside, it will do whatever it has to in order to handle the threat with the minimal loss of autonomy. If the Army didn’t show sufficient motivation to appease the civilian political leadership, it would lose autonomy. Being able to show how a hapless major was a closet extremist rooted out of the service by diligent investigation is the sort of thing that preserves bureaucratic autonomy. It’s not personal… it’s just the nature of the machine.To prevent this sort of thing from happening to any of your other readers, here are the pertinent lessons we can all learn:1. Revolutions eat their own. If the Woke offer up someone else’s scalp, it prolongs the time until the revolution eats them. Avoid making yourself the entree.2. If you know nothing else about the Woke, remember that they are congenitally humorless. If you have to explain how to comment you made on social media was sarcastic, just don’t make it. You’re at the mercy of someone else getting your joke, and if they can get a scalp by purposely not getting your joke, they won’t.3. Better yet, don’t make any comments on social media. If asked why you’re not on Twitter, or Facebook, don’t go off on a public political rant. Explain that it’s creepy, it’s a time suck, it’s all ads, etc. All true, and safe to say in any environment. No one actually likes social media anymore, and most admire those who have given it up. Your life is more likely to be totally ruined than even mildly improved by posting on social media.4. If you must use social media, don’t put your job, full name, picture, etc on your profile. If you have to use it for business, stay militantly on topic and never post or like anything not directly related to your business and totally unobjectionable to everyone.As for the phone thing, assume a hostile intelligence service is transcribing everything said within earshot of your phone for future blackmail purposes. Not all hostile intelligence services are foreign.As a lawyer, the reader should know the fourth amendment protects you from the state introducing illegally collected evidence in a criminal trial against you. I bet there’s a judge somewhere who would sign a search warrant based on that Facebook post. Cops can judge shop, too. Even without a warrant, there are exceptions to using that information against you, and the reinterpretation of “Violent Extremist Organization” to include anyone to the right of Obama circa 2012 will only make those exceptions broader.
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You Aren’t Crazy — And You Aren’t Alone
I had breakfast this morning with some Christian friends — a married couple and their kids — traveling through from southern California. They reported to me that everybody they know in church circles is reading Live Not By Lies. That’s always gratifying to hear, but what intrigued me was what they said beyond that.
The mom said that she’s finding that her Christian mom friends are devouring the book. She said that they have all come through reading Jen Hatmaker, Glennon Doyle, and those other therapeutic Christian-ish women writers, and have all been left feeling empty and lost. What’s getting to them all right now is their fears for their young children coming at them from this culture (especially in California). “The mama bear instinct is kicking in,” she said, “and we are now looking for something solid and true that can help us get through what’s coming.”
She said several times: “Being neutral is not enough.” What she meant is that it has finally begun to dawn on Christians in her circle that you cannot stay out of the fray, that you are going to have to take a stand. If you are not consciously and tenaciously a dissenter from pop culture, then you will be assimilated.
The husband talked about how a number of their Christian friends have become totally woke over this past year. The year 2020 was a time of separation. He said that it is now clear to his Christian circles that the people you go to church with aren’t necessarily the people who you want to be standing with when the bad stuff starts. He explained that a lot of church folks he knows are finding each other in small groups, even though they go to different churches. Some of them report that their churches may not be fully woke, but the churches are so desperate to avoid taking a hard stand on anything that might get them accused of bigotry that they are trying to avoid trouble.
These churches are not going to make it through what’s coming. And they are not going to prepare their people for it either. My friend said yes, this reality is sinking in with some of the Christians he knows, and they’re starting to act on it.
It really is a Kolakovic moment for America — a time to prepare, build networks, and dig in, before it all comes down.
I published a piece in the Deseret News today about how and why we US Christians need to prepare ourselves for what’s coming. I love telling the story of Alexander Ogorodnikov. Here’s how the piece starts:
I’m in Moscow, a stone’s throw from Red Square.
I’ve chosen this hotel, the Metropol, after reading Amor Towles’ 2016 bestseller “A Gentleman in Moscow,”where the novel is set. The Metropol, radiating old-world charm, does not disappoint.
But the old man mounting the stairs at the hotel’s entrance, coming to meet me, does not share my daydream affection for the place. The warmth and luxury into which Alexander Ogorodnikov, 70, has stepped from the cold does not melt his icy scowl. We shake hands, and take our seats on a nearby sofa. He mutters something in Russian to my interpreter, who turns to me and says, “Alexander is afraid when he comes into this hotel. In communist times, it was known as a center for the KGB.”
His fear is understandable. Born in the final years of Stalinist rule into a prominent Bolshevik family, he became a leader in the Soviet Union’s Komsomol pro-Lenin youth movement. But in 1973, he scandalized his parents and the Communist Party by converting to Christianity. He organized a small fellowship of fellow Orthodox Christians and began campaigning for religious liberty, for which the Soviets sent him to prison in 1978.
Ogorodnikov wasn’t sentenced to death, but the Soviet authorities nevertheless decided to make an example of the young man who had renounced communist privilege for Christ. They placed him on death row in one of the USSR’s hardest prisons — a facility where, according to one of Ogorodnikov’s captors, the state sent people to be broken, “to bleed you out, drop by drop.”
Recalling the experience to me, Ogorodnikov is pensive and reverential. “When I went into the cell and looked at the others who were there, I told them, ‘Listen brothers, I was sent here to help you meet death, not as criminals but as men with souls that are going to meet their makers, to go meet God the Father,’” he says.
Not yet 30 at the time, Ogorodnikov told these hardened criminals that though he was not a priest, he would still be willing to hear their confessions. “I told them I couldn’t absolve them, but when I die and go before the Lord, I will be a witness to their repentance,” he recounts. “If I wanted to describe for you their confessions, I would need to be Dostoevsky. I don’t have the words myself.”
When the prison authorities realized that confinement in a cell with the worst of the worst was not leading Ogorodnikov to repent of his supposed sins against the Soviet state, they put him in solitary confinement. He was eventually moved to another prison entirely, and it was there where Ogorodnikov says he heard the most haunting confessional. This time, it didn’t come from a prisoner, but from a prison guard.
One night, the single guard on duty entered Ogorodnikov’s cell with a wild look on his face. “They come at night,” the old guard said to Ogorodnikov. He then told Ogorodnikov who exactly was coming at night from the prison guard’s past and haunting him:
“When I was a young guard in a different prison, they would gather 20 or 30 priests who had been behind bars, and take them outside. They rigged them up to a sled, so that they were pulling the sled. They had them pull the sled out into the forest. They made them run all day, until they brought them to a swamp. And then they put them into two rows, one behind the other. I was one of the guards who stood in the perimeter around the prisoners.
“One of the KGB guys walked up to the first priest. He asked him very calmly and quietly, ’Is there a God?’ The priest said yes. They shot him.
“Then, he continued, they went to the next priest, and asked, ‘Does God exist?’
“‘Yes, he exists.’
“The KGB man shot this priest in the same way. We didn’t blindfold them. They saw everything that was about to happen to them.”
Ogorodnikov, whose face remains partially paralyzed from his prison beatings, fights back tears as he comes to the end of telling me this story. In a voice cracking with emotion, the former political prisoner says, “Not one of those priests denied Christ.”
We are not the Soviet Union here, and are probably not going to be. But if the extremes of “hard totalitarianism” in the USSR causes us to ignore the emerging soft totalitarianism here, we are going to be caught off guard, and be vulnerable. That’s what my book is about.
So many Christian churches are so desperate to be thought of as nice that they are opening themselves up to anti-Christian ideology. For example, if your church is promoting Ibram X. Kendi and his thought, leave. It is radically anti-Christian. Here is Kendi himself, speaking about it in a woke church in Manhattan:
Ibram Kendi, speaking in a Manhattan church, says “antiracists” fundamentally reject “savior theology” (“the Christian is to go out and save these individuals who are behaviorally deficient”) and embrace liberation theology (“the Christian is to revolutionize society”). pic.twitter.com/sMsKaWAjRe
— Woke Preacher Clips (@WokePreacherTV) March 23, 2021
Andrew Beckwith, a brave Christian who leads the Massachusetts Family Institute, writes this morning:
The first week of the Live Not By Lies book club went really well. We had 150 people zooming in. You can see it here on youtube: https://www.mafamily.org/icymi-mfi-book-club-session-1/
The level of excitement about your book surprises even me, and I’m a huge fan. People keep reaching out to me and telling me how much they love the book and how glad they are that MFI is doing this. You’ve really struck a chord with LNBL.
Tonight’s session, I will have about half a dozen college-age students on to talk about what their families did to help keep them in the faith and navigate the pressures of LGBTQ, liquid modernity, etc. I intentionally picked younger adults, because they lived their formative years during the madness of the last two decades, basically since I went to law school. I’m asking them to look at the practices of the Benda family and compare their own experiences. Interestingly, so far, the most consistent theme they share with the Bendas is “do not be afraid to be weird in society’s eyes.”
You want to join tonight’s book club session, which kicks off at 7pm Eastern time? Click here to register.
I love the way the MFI is presenting Live Not By Lies:
This is what I heard from my California friends this morning, and what I’ve heard on recent travels to Birmingham and to northern Virginia: that people who thought they were alone in thinking that this world is going crazy are discovering that no, there are others of us, and there are those among us who have lived through this sort of thing before. We have to awaken ourselves to the radical nature of what’s going on, lay aside our fear of being seen as weird or mean in society’s eyes, and prepare ourselves, our families, and our churches for the hard struggle ahead.
We cannot wish it away. It’s here, and more is coming. Now is the time of testing what we’re made of. Are were mere admirers of Christ, or are we disciples? Here is a scene from Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life that speaks directly into our crisis. The church painter is working just before the Nazis take over:
The painter says — speaking of the Nazi period — that a time is coming when people will not even fight the truth — they’ll just ignore it.
For us, that time is now. What are you going to do about it?
Late last week this appeared on the Theoria channel. Watch it and share it, please:
The post You Aren’t Crazy — And You Aren’t Alone appeared first on The American Conservative.
March 22, 2021
Kristi Noem’s Surrender To Big Business
One of the stories I tell often is about going to Capitol Hill in the autumn of 2015 to give a talk, then meeting with some key GOP Congressional staffers afterward. This was several months after Obergefell. I asked them what plans the Republican Party had for shoring up religious liberty in the wake of that ruling. The answer was: none. No plans at all. Wasn’t on their agenda.
I don’t know why, but I can make a pretty good guess. Earlier that year, the Indiana GOP and Gov. Mike Pence backed down on a state version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act after a powerful business coalition, including the NCAA, threatened to punish the state economically for its supposedly anti-LGBT legislation. That was the Waterloo of the social and religious conservatives, and it showed who holds the power in the Republican coalition: business.
Well, it has happened again, though this time not to religious believers:
South Dakota’s GOP governor declined on Friday to sign a bill from legislators in her own party that would have banned transgender girls from participating in women’s high school sports.
In a statement released on Twitter, Noem said that she was sending the bill back to lawmakers for changes, and indicated that she thought the ban should not be extended to college athletes.
“Unfortunately, as I have studied this legislation and conferred with legal experts over the past several days, I have become concerned that this bill’s vague and overly broad language could have significant unintended consequences,” Noem wrote.
“I am also concerned that the approach House Bill 1217 takes is unrealistic in the context of collegiate athletics,” she added, writing that banning transgender athletes from collegiate sports would cause conflict with national college athletic associations.
To be fair, the GOP lawmakers did their job. It was the GOP governor who collapsed. The NYT writes:
Ms. Noem’s goal, she said on Monday, was to avoid punishment by the N.C.A.A. that could be financially damaging to schools and surrounding communities in South Dakota, even though the association has not yet issued an official rebuke to the 20 other states that are enacting or considering similar bills.
“South Dakota’s chances of winning a lawsuit against the N.C.A.A. are very low,” Ms. Noem said at a news conference in Pierre, the state capital, on Monday.
“The N.C.A.A. is a private association — that means they can do what they want to do,” said Ms. Noem, who consulted widely for legal advice on the measure. “If South Dakota passes a law that’s against their policy, they will likely take punitive action against us. That means they can pull their tournaments from the state of South Dakota, they could pull their home games, they could even prevent our athletes from playing in their league.”
House Bill 1217, called “An Act to promote continued fairness in women’s sports,” was introduced by South Dakota Rep. Rhonda Milstead last month. The bill advanced out of committee in short order on February 22nd, 11-2, and passed the full House on February 24th, 50-17. Many speculated that the bill would ultimately die in the Senate, and there’s a reason for that.
South Dakota is a one-party red state, but it’s a state where the Chamber of Commerce and other socially left-wing factions, such as financial and health sector corporate interests, enjoy a great deal of power. The Senate is controlled by Republicans 32-3, but conservative bills that pass the House easily often fail to escape committee. Last year, the House passed legislation, 46-23, banning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for the purpose of sex changes for children under the age of 16, but the bill died in committee. While Governor Noem managed to avoid publicly endorsing or condemning the bill, she did tell one media outlet that she had “concerns.” (Sources within the state have told my organization that she effectively killed it.)
But protecting women’s sports isn’t exactly a radical idea. Not only have 28 other states introduced similar legislation, but 25 Members of Congress and 18 U.S. Senators have signed on to a federal version. Would this really be a difficult lift in a state President Trump won by 26 points? Unfortunately, yes. On March 3rd, like so many good bills before it, House Bill 1217 was killed in a Senate committee.
But something strange happened. Using a rarely used legislature procedure colloquially referred to as a “smoke out,” the Senate voted to revive the bill out of committee, 18-17. The bill then passed the Senate on March 8th, 20-15.
More:
For two weeks, Governor Noem effectively went dark. In the first week, her office told supporters of House Bill 1217 that a decision would be coming shortly. In the second week, when rumors began to fly that she might change her mind about the bill, her office ignored requests for meetings with the bill’s sponsors and even with Republican House and Senate leadership.
Meanwhile, she and her team were actively engaging critics of the legislation, which included the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce, the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce (arguably more powerful than the state chamber), the South Dakota Board of Regents, the Sioux Falls Sports Authority (presumably representing the interests of the NCAA), left-wing advocacy organizations, and, not surprisingly, Amazon, the censorious Big Tech behemoth, which is planning to bring more than 1,000 jobs to the state by building a fulfillment center in Sioux Falls.
By the end of the second week, it was widely known that Noem had listened to the advice of the bill’s critics and was preparing to veto, and sure enough, she dropped a “style and form veto” at 4:30 P.M. on a Friday.
Last clip:
It’s well known that Noem had hopes of building a national profile and perhaps even running for president in 2024. People really liked her. She handled COVID-19 beautifully. Her speech at Mount Rushmore with President Trump was exceptional. And now she loses everything she built, and for what? To please the Chamber of Commerce? To keep a few college presidents happy? Whoever advised her on this issue did her a great disservice.
Gov. Noem went on Tucker Carlson Tonight last evening to defend her decision. He called her out on her b.s.:
These Republican politicians like Noem have to learn that there will be a price to be paid if they side with Big Business over their voters. It has happened far too many times. I am hearing that there are some folks putting together a kind of NRA of social conservatives — an organization that makes lawmakers who cross them pay a price.
(For that matter, why should the NCAA have the power to frighten a state out of passing basic protections for its female athletes?)
Tucker looked like this for most of the interview. I watched it too, and I know how he feels:
In the years to come, when the United States has turned into the People’s Republic of Canada on these issues, we can thank Republican politicians like Kristi Noem, who cared more about corporate interests than the common good. Here’s the latest from the front lines of social justice in Canada:
There is a man in Canada who can only be alluded to as He Who Shall Not Be Named, the father to a child who is undergoing gender transition. For the sake of natural justice, it is important to speak this man’s name. He is now the Canadian state’s prisoner of conscience.
The warrant was issued by a judge for the arrest of a father after calling his biological female child his “daughter,” and referring to her with the pronouns “she” and “her.” The father was found to be in contempt of court.The father is a father to a gender non-conforming biological female 16-year-old who identifies as transgender and prefers the use of male pronouns. The father has repeatedly called this person his daughter, though the court has forbade it. The transition has been underway for more than two years.On Tuesday at 10 am Vancouver time, the father surrendered himself to the court in response to the Attorney General of British Columbia’s warrant his arrest for contempt. He was the arrested and jailed. The warrant was issued by Judge Tammen on March 4, 2021.The father opposes his child’s undergoing “gender affirmative” medical procedures, and has stated this opposition again and again, in the hope of saving his child from irreversible harm. The Canadian medical system, the legal system, and the child’s mother press ahead with social and medical transition of the child.
More:
In 2019, the father abided by the court order, hoping to get his daughter off testosterone. However, in January 2020, the highest court in British Columbia declared that the child should continue to take testosterone. It also imposed a conduct order on Hoogland that he must continue to refer to his biological female child by male pronouns.
The father said that “They’ve created a delusion, and they’re forcing parents to live in this delusion.”“What happens when the bubble explodes and the delusion ends… She can never go back to being a girl in the healthy body she should have had… These kids don’t understand. What kind of 13 year old is thinking about having a family and kids?” He said, lamenting his child’s stolen future.The father gave interviews to several Canadian commentators. The broadcasts were suppressed by digital platforms, and he was threatened with contempt of court proceedings.
“What kind of father would I be if, in ten years time she’s detransitioning, and she asks me ‘why didn’t you do anything to stop this? None of your stuck your neck out for me back then,'” he said.
You know who told us this was coming? Him:
This could never happen, said those who called my stance against Bill C16 alarmist. I read the law and saw that it was, to the contrary, inevitable https://t.co/zi8vB5x4x0
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) March 18, 2021
And so I ask once again: where are the Republicans? A majority of the South Dakota legislature found the spine to buck Big Business, but Kristi Noem surrendered. Conservatives cannot allow politicians like Noem to succeed after showing what they are really made of: that they are the kind of people who do the bidding of rich and powerful corporate leaders who shred the fabric of society for the sake of making more money.
The post Kristi Noem’s Surrender To Big Business appeared first on The American Conservative.
Witnesses Against Wokeness
I have never written to an author of a book I read but I feel like I have to do it after reading ‘Live Not By Lies’. It is one of the most important and timely books I have read in a very long time! I experienced a physical reaction to it because of my family history in Former Yugoslavia but also because of what I am observing around me where I live today.My maternal grandparents were both political prisoners in Tito’s Yugoslavia. They were accused of being Stalinists just after WWII and sent to Goli Otok, the most brutal camp for dissidents in the country. My grandmother’s crime was singing a Russian song at college. A fellow student reported her to the secret police. She spent two and a half years in the camp and after she was released almost no one would greet her on the streets of her town. As an orphan she had no family support and her friend whose family took her in was later expelled from college because of that. The student who reported her to the police ended up being sent to the same camp a few years later.My grandfather joined the Partisans at the beginning of WWII after Nazis executed a few thousand school students in his town of Kragujevac. He was 16 at the time and 19 when the war ended. After the war he worked in the army. When he was asked to persecute his friends from the war because they were seen as enemies of Tito, he declined. Due to that he was sentenced to five years in Goli Otok. The Communists convinced his wife with whom he had a son to leave him as he will never come out alive, which is what she did.After their release, the secret police introduced my grandparents to each other and suggested that they should get married so that they wouldn’t ‘corrupt’ other citizens. They were together only for a year, which is when my mother was born. My grandfather had serious trauma from torture and he spent some time in a mental asylum but more importantly the secret police harassed him for another ten or so years. During that time he continuously changed his place of residence and mostly worked as an artists, painting portraits of tourists on the Adriatic coast. He spent the last few years of his life working as an artist, obsessively making wooden crosses, which I think is great symbolism for his experience.My paternal great grandparents and some of their children were Serbian Monarchists from Dalmatia, loyal to the old king and Western Allies. They were in-prisoned after the war because of that and no one from the family could get a job for years, which is why many of my grandfathers siblings migrated to the West.I am sure that you’ve heard many stories like these and those in your book are even more interesting. I just want to say that I couldn’t agree more with your suggestion that we are moving towards soft totalitarianism. I have worked in the social services and education sectors for the past seven years and in arts before that. I left the arts because it was impossible to navigate the anti-Christian sentiments and now I am experiencing the same in these sectors. The obsession with transgenderism and critical race theory is getting out of control. These people are behaving like religious fantastics and I constantly have to watch what I say. They are practically forcing children to go down these paths and to see themselves as victims. I feel like it is a matter of time before I get into serious trouble because I’ve been refusing to participate in these initiatives and I have started looking for work in other fields, yet again.Last week, I went to my brother-in-law (who is an Orthodox Priest) to tell him about your book and before I could do that he pulled out a copy of The Benedict Option! He is planning to order many copies for his parish.I don’t know if you’ll get a chance to read this email. I can only imagine how busy you are and don’t expect you to respond. I just felt the need to write to you as a fellow Orthodox Christian and to thank you for the important work you are doing. May God help you and your family on this journey!Thank you, sir. It is humbling to hear from people whose families suffered under Communism, thanking me for telling their family’s story too (in that the accounts in the book are close to what their particular families suffered).On the way home from Virginia last night, I thought about my words at the church, and how very strange it is that the names of Alexander Ogorodnikov, Silvester Krcmery, and others reverberated off the walls inside a church in rural Virginia. But they did yesterday. I told the story of Jan Simulcik (above), and his labors as a college student in the underground Slovak church. I tell of the deeds of these great men and women, and suffering to every audience I address, and of the triumph over evil that God gave them through their fidelity. And I pass on the warnings of all these people, who see more clearly than we do.Please, reader, if you have anybody in your life who lived under Communism, take them aside and ask them what they think about the current direction of American society, particularly about free speech. Don’t argue with them — just listen.And if you are a reader who lived under Communism, please start telling Americans and others who never have about what it was like.
UPDATE: This video just dropped:
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The Creation Of A Big Lie
We know from the recent past how the American news media work. When the Covington Catholic boys, resplendent in MAGA caps, stood accused of attacking a peaceable elderly Indian on the Washington Mall, the media went berserk with stories accusing them of being bigotry-driven bullies. Any ambiguity in the evidence was discarded. The media just knew that these white, Catholic school Trump supporters were the villains, and this poor old Indian man was their target. It fit the narrative.
Almost none of that was true. It turned out that the schoolboys had been cruelly taunted by members of a black racist cult prior to the confrontation with the old Indian — who provoked the boys, and then lied about it. This was all captured on video. The media narrative collapsed. Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic teen who had been at the center of the controversy, sued the Washington Post for $250 million for slander and libel, and later settled the suit for an undisclosed sum.
Our media are eager to believe things that suit their preferred narrative, and to bang away at the story, despite the evidence to the contrary. I’m old enough to remember a time when our media were yes, biased to the Left, but still interested in trying to be fair and accurate. Those days are gone; it’s all moral panic, all the time now.
This brings us to the reporting on the Atlanta massage parlor massacre. It is staggering to see how our media — and our elite class in general — seized on this atrocity to advance the idea that America is seething with white supremacy, and angry white men (especially religious conservatives) are just lying in wait to massacre people.
To this point, there has been no substantial evidence that Robert Long, the confessed massage parlor killer, chose his victims out of anti-Asian animus. It may yet emerge, but it has not yet. To the contrary, we have plenty of evidence that he chose his victims because he was overcome by his own self-hatred and sexual compulsion, and he turned that self-hatred outward to attack the people he held responsible for his unwanted desires.
We know, because his former roommates have said so, that Long visited Asian massage parlors seeking sex. Why did he choose Asian massage parlors? We don’t know for sure, but the probable answer is: because they’re there. We know that in the US, Asian massage parlors are often used as fronts for sex work, and that the Asian immigrant women who work there are often sexually trafficked by the mafia. In 2019, The New York Times did a good piece explaining how this evil business works.
In a reasonable world, we would be talking now about the scourge of sex trafficking, and how these Asian women are exploited. We would also be talking about the scourge of pornography, with which Long was obsessed. He spent six months in rehab, trying to master his sexual compulsions, and had recently been kicked out of his house by his parents, who were sick and tired of his porn use.
But we are not talking about these real-world problems instantiated in this atrocity, because we are talking about the phony claim that Long murdered these people because he hated Asians.
According to a Times story from several days ago, those two spas where Long shot and killed victims were known for providing sexual services. Excerpts:
The killings of eight people at three massage businesses in Georgia have focused attention on an industry that has long been a target of law enforcement scrutiny.
Although many massage parlors are just that — places to get a massage — experts say there are more than 9,000 such businesses in the United States that are fronts for prostitution, and that many of the women working there are being exploited.
More:
In 2020, Street Grace, a faith-based anti-trafficking organization, used a popular website used by those who frequent such spas to identify 165 illicit massage businesses in Georgia, more than three quarters of which were in the greater Atlanta area. The organization set up cameras outside the shops and reviewed the comments on the review website, RubMaps, to estimate that the illicit massage industry in Georgia has more than 1,000 customers a day and an estimated annual gross revenue of more than $42 million.
Yvonne Chen, an advocate for sex trafficking victims who works with Asian women who work at massage businesses, said not all of them are willing to provide sex to their clients, but those who refuse are often attacked by their customers.
“I don’t think there’s enough discussion of the violence that comes from the buyers,” she said.
Customers often go on membership-only review websites where they describe in detail what sexual services employees at a given spa are willing to provide. The two spas targeted in the attacks in Atlanta, Aromatherapy and Gold Spa, have dozens of comments on RubMaps.
The Atlanta police have said that there is no evidence that this is an anti-Asian hate crime, but that did not stop the Washington Post today from publishing a piece that advances the intersectional claim that this 2021 massacre is tied to a 1997 bombing of a gay club in Atlanta:
And last week, after police in Cherokee County, Ga., appeared to play down the role of race in the spa shootings, many advocates have since called for the incident to be treated as an anti-Asian hate crime. Of eight victims killed at Gold Spa and two other businesses, six were Asian women.
“It’s just an awful thing that happened to them, and the same to us,” McMahon said. “It is a hate crime, and it doesn’t go away.”
The progressive elites who control the means of cultural production — the media, academics, and others — are determined to force the facts to fit their insatiable desire to believe that America is a wicked white supremacist nation.
It is true that there has been an upsurge in bias crimes against Asian-Americans. What you will struggle to find online in news reports is how many suspects in these crimes are non-white. Anecdotal evidence over the past year has shown videos of black people attacking Asian people. Do we have hard numbers on the reported race of suspects in these anti-Asian bias crimes? If so, why are they not being reported by the media? Rather, we have the media and liberal institutions like Brookings rushing to tell people to get back on message, that this idea that there is racial tension between Asians and blacks is nonsense.
If you have lived in a big city, you know that is a lie. One of the most frightening moments of my life was one afternoon at the Korean-owned bodega near my apartment on Capitol Hill, back in 1988. The elderly Korean owner had caught a young black man stealing, and told him to leave. The black man unleashed a torrent of racist invective against the Korean man. The store was full, but none of us had the courage to defend the old Korean man, because at that time, DC was an extremely violent place. It was reasonable to fear that the black man abusing the old Korean man (who held his ground) had a gun. Eventually the black man left before the police arrived, but it was a horrible situation. Korean shop owners in DC in those days reported this kind of thing all the time.
You have to wonder: why are the media, think tanks, and institutional leaders (like college presidents) so eager to believe that the Atlanta atrocity was driven by racial hatred, and that therefore Asian-Americans are in special danger at this moment?
Why did they not sound the alarm when some evidence indicated that Asians were being assaulted disproportionately by blacks?
Why did the six people killed in Chicago on a single weekend earlier this month not merit a mention by the media outside of Chicago, or the attention of President Biden, or statements of solidarity with the victims by college presidents? Could it be because these were black people killed by other black people — that is to say, politically inconvenient perpetrators and victims?
Melissa Chen, writing in The Spectator:
The only piece of evidence so far that potentially supports the racial animus theory is a report in a South Korean newspaper that the shooter had yelled out ‘I want to kill all Asians’. But let’s be real. If the claim had even one iota of credibility, it would already have been reported all over a desperate media in search of a smoking racist gun. Nevertheless, the rumor did the rounds on social media and reporters parroted it unquestioningly.
This murder took place in the wake of a surge in anti-Asian crimes, which first gained momentum during the COVID-19 lockdowns and increased recently. Numerous videos of elderly Asians being assaulted and attacked have gone viral on social media; recent high-profile cases such as the unprovoked attack of a 84-year-old Vietnamese man in San Francisco who died of his injuries forced the national media to pay attention.
Yet the cognoscenti can only think on way, so it ascribed blame on Trump’s rhetoric surrounding the ‘China virus’ and the eternal boogeyman of white supremacy. Vox showcased impressive mental gymnastics to explain that it was white supremacy that fueled the black-Asian racial hostilities while a sitting member of the Oakland City Council wrote in an op-ed that ‘anti-black and anti-Asian violence comes from the same root causes: white supremacy and capitalism’.
Meanwhile, it was plain to see from viral surveillance videos that it wasn’t MAGA-hatted assailants chanting ‘Chy-na virus’ or ‘Kung Flu’ while as they took out defenseless elderly Asians. These attacks, mostly carried out by minorities in progressive cities like Oakland, San Francisco and New York, make it really hard to argue that the rhetoric of a former president is responsible for pulling the puppet strings of constituents who most likely didn’t vote for him. Indeed, Department of Justice statistics show that while victims of violence tend to be targeted by perpetrators within their ethnicities far more than any other, Asian victims are targeted more by other races at the following rates: 27.5 percent black, 24.1 percent white, 21.4 percent Hispanic (compared to 24.1 percent Asian). This seems to suggest that the white supremacy thesis is extremely weak.
What we have instead is an emerging picture, corroborated by friends and family, of a mass shooter who struggled with reconciling the sin of extreme sex addiction and his Christian faith. So much so, he checked into a rehab clinic for sexual addiction, blocked porn sites from his computer and only used a flip phone in order to avoid ‘falling out of God’s grace’. It all culminated in the brutal assassination of the people he believed had led him into temptation and dishonor. In a way, this crime resembles more of an honor killing, a moral crusade steeped in misogynistic vengeance. He’s more Elliot Rodger than Dylann Roof.
The way this story and the discourse surrounding broader trends of anti-Asian violence has played out reveals the media’s commitment to activism, in particular, to view and dissect everything through the prism of critical race theory. It’s why previous anti-Asian assaults perpetrated by other minorities were largely ignored. When such incidents finally entered the national consciousness, they were explained away with white supremacy. NBC News even published an ‘expert’ view that insists that racial hatred inspired the Atlanta shooter because there ‘wasn’t a variety among the victims’. You wonder if murderers now have to adopt Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives into their moral calculus before pulling the trigger so that they would be considered ‘just’ a murderer? Our media class has decided that just because an outcome of the murder is racist — six out of eight victims were Asian women — and the killer, a white male with incel vibes, that there is no doubt that white supremacy was the culprit, long before the authorities have made headway into the investigation. This is a test, and just like the Covington Catholic School and the Jussie Smollett story, the mainstream media is failing it.
The mainstream media, and the progressive establishment (college presidents, Democratic politicians, think tankers, et alia), are stoking racial hatred and suspicion with their false narratives. They are once again telling a Big Lie. Two years ago, the Huffington Post reported on how everybody got the story of the massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub wrong. It was not an anti-gay hate crime. The killer was a radical Muslim who chose the nightclub at random. But the eagerness of the media to slot this massacre into pre-existing categories was too great to resist.
This keeps happening over and over. The thing is, I don’t think the media are like standard propagandists, knowing that the story they’re telling is untrue or radically distorted. I think they really do believe this garbage — and so do college presidents like Villanova’s Father Donohue. They are all so eager to believe these lies, and to tell them. Why?
For one, it’s plain human frailty. I have said on many occasions in this space how much I fault myself for being eager to believe whatever lies the US Government told about 9/11 and Iraq’s supposed involvement in it, and risk to the national security of the United States. I allowed myself to be a patsy for the propaganda of the Bush administration, because it fit the narrative I wanted to believe. I was enraged over 9/11, and wanted some Arab Muslim SOB to pay for it. If the one to pay for it was to be Saddam Hussein, fair enough: we needed a scapegoat.
Understanding years later how I was manipulated, and how I had allowed myself to be manipulated, was one of the truly formative intellectual experiences of my life. We are all human; we make mistakes. But we should work hard to understand our own biases, and how those biases can mislead us, and cause tremendous harm in the world. I recall to my shame how good it felt to watch bombs falling on Baghdad in 2003 — I remember the Manhattan bar in which I was sitting when the news special report came on. My thought: We are avenged.
I believe that the people who run institutions like the media, colleges, and so forth, take the same sort of sick pleasure when they hear about atrocities like what happened in Atlanta. They feel vindicated in their view of the world.
But here’s what is harder to understand: why are people like this so happy to frighten themselves and others, and embrace weakness and vulnerability? Why are college presidents so quick to reinforce anxiety among their students, instead of help the students to understand that they are not really at risk, and are going to be okay?
The answer, I believe, is that in our decadent civilization, fragilization is the path to power.
In a post from a couple of years ago, I explained how Rene Girard’s theories explained why the media and other powerful progressives rushed to scapegoat the Covington Catholic boys. I discussed why it feels so good to find a scapegoat. This is why the progressive media are so eager to deny that there is any meaningful racial tension between blacks and Asians: because it wants to build solidarity between those groups against what these progressives regard as the real menace: white supremacy. Never mind that this line depends on lies. Never mind that by racializing it, we ignore the real problems at the core of the Atlanta massacres: the poisonous role of pornography in conquering the minds of some vulnerable young men, and the hidden scandal of many massage parlors used as fronts for sex work and sex trafficking of vulnerable Asian women.
Neither one of those actual problems can be fitted into the white supremacy narrative, or the sub-narrative that Evangelical Christianity is to blame, because of its sexual prohibitions.
I used to despise Donald Trump for calling the media “the enemy of the people.” It’s a fascist slogan. But I’m a hell of a lot more open to it now than I once was, because these jackals in newsrooms are bound and determined to turn us on each other, using ideological lies.
Tangentially, when I was in Virginia this past weekend, I met a soldier who works at the Pentagon. He told me that he is extremely worried about wokeness being forced onto the armed forces by the senior leadership. He said these lies stand to tear the armed forces apart. I’m going to write about this in a separate post, but I include it hear to point out that these racialist lies propagated by the media and elite culture in America are having and will continue to have terrible consequences.
At the conference where I spoke over the weekend, Georgetown Prof. Joshua Mitchell told the audience that one of his great worries is that these weaponized progressive narratives are creating a social environment in which far-right people simply quit caring what the left has to say about them, and start embracing racial and political extremism as a mode of self-defense. As for myself, whenever the subject is about race, religion, or sexuality, I assume that the media are lying, straight up, unless proven otherwise. I assume that on those subjects, academic institutions are lying, straight up, unless proven otherwise. I also assume that the media, academia, big business, and now the military, are the enemies of people like me, because they consider us to be wicked not because of what we have done or not done, but because of who we are.
I’m a middle-class white male heterosexual conservative Christian American, and I am alienated from almost all the institutions of American life. It’s not that I think any of those institutions were ever perfect, or are perfectible. It’s that I thought that they were at least trying to live towards truth, and fairness for all. I now believe they and the people who run them have been captured by an ideology that demonizes people, and is building a political, social, and economic structure that will seek to disempower, humiliate, punish, and impoverish entire groups of people on the basis of their race, religion, and other factors.
This is what the American ruling class is doing to our country and its people. That soldier I talked to this weekend said that for the first time in his life, he is asking himself about the difference between being a “good Christian” and a “good American.” The Left in power is turning people against their country and its institutions. Even the military.
From Military.com three days ago:
Some troops have drawn equivalencies between the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and last year’s protests for racial justice during recent stand-downs to address extremism, worrying the military’s top enlisted leader.
In a Thursday briefing with reporters at the Pentagon, Ramón “CZ” Colón-López, the senior enlisted adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that some troops have asked, when the Jan. 6 riot is brought up, “How come you’re not looking at the situation that was going on in Seattle prior to that?”
He said that is one example of the mindset many military leaders are encountering, and he is “concerned about the way that some people are looking at the current environment.”
More:
The military remains an apolitical organization, Colón-López said, and it doesn’t matter if an extremist group is far right or far left — both are off limits.
“If it’s an organization that is actually imposing harm, threat, destruction, criminal activity and so on, then we don’t condone that behavior,” Colón-López said. “We’re focusing on letting people know exactly what the oath tells us to do when it comes to obeying lawful orders, remaining apolitical and basically being good stewards of society.”
But as the training sessions took place, some themes emerged that worried leaders.
Those conducting the sessions wanted “to make sure that military members understand the difference between Seattle and [the Jan. 6 riot in] Washington, D.C.,” Colón-López said. “But some of our younger members are confused about this, so that’s what we need to go ahead and talk to them about and educate them on, to make sure that they know exactly what they can and cannot do.”
The military remains an apolitical organization. Yeah, so this “apolitical” military is having its senior leadership read and absorb the lessons of Ibram X. Kendi’s neoracist book. The enlisted soldiers understand better than their leadership does that they are being gaslit by all this, that these books are deeply political.
A soldier told me the other day that he fears the only thing that’s going to stop the march of politicization in the military is America losing a major war. He said that the Chinese military is focused like a laser beam on building the mightiest armed forces it can. The new, woke US military, by contrast, is focused on social engineering within the ranks.
The Big Lie will have very big consequences. Live not by lies!
UPDATE: Freddie de Boer is a left-wing journalist that a lot of progressives hate, because he calls them on their b.s. (though from the Left). Progressive media people have been laying into him lately for a small deal he has to write a Substack newsletter for a year. In this new mailing, de Boer cold-cocks the jerks. Excerpt:
Substack might fold tomorrow, but someone would else sell independent media; there’s a market. Substack might kick me and the rest of the unclean off of their platforms tomorrow, but other critics of social justice politics would pop up here; there’s a market. Establishment media’s takeover by this strange brand of academic identity politics might grow even more powerful, if that’s even possible, but dissenters will find a place to sell alternative opinion; there’s a market. What there might not be much of a market for anymore is, well, you – college educated, urban, upwardly striving if not economically improving, woke, ironic, and selling that wokeness and that irony as your only product. Because you flooded the market. Everyone in your entire industry is selling the exact same thing, tired sarcastic jokes and bleating righteousness about injustices they don’t suffer under themselves, and it’s not good in basic economic terms if you’re selling the same thing as everyone else. You add that on to structural problems within your business model and your utter subservience to a Silicon Valley that increasingly hates you, well…. I get why you’re mad. And I get that you don’t like me. But I’m not what you’re mad about. Not really.
In the span of a decade or so, essentially all professional media not explicitly branded as conservative has been taken over by a school of politics that emerged from humanities departments at elite universities and began colonizing the college educated through social media. Those politics are obscure, they are confusing, they are socially and culturally extreme, they are expressed in a bizarre vocabulary, they are deeply alienating to many, and they are very unpopular by any definition. The vast majority of the country is not woke, including the vast majority of women and people of color. How could it possibly be healthy for the entire media industry to be captured by any single niche political movement, let alone one that nobody likes? Why does no one in media seem willing to have an honest, uncomfortable conversation about the near-total takeover of their industry by a fringe ideology?
And the bizarre assumption of almost everyone in media seems to have been that they could adopt this brand of extreme niche politics, in mass, as an industry, and treat those politics as a crusade that trumps every other journalistic value, with no professional or economic consequences. They seem to have thought that Americans were just going to swallow it; they seem to have thought they could paint most of the country as vicious bigots and that their audiences would just come along for the ride. They haven’t. In fact Republicans are making great hay of the collapse of the media into pure unapologetic advocacy journalism. Some people are turning to alternative media to find options that are neither reactionary ideologues or self-righteous woke yelling. Can you blame them? Substack didn’t create this dynamic, and neither did I. The exact same media people who are so angry about Substack did, when they abandoned any pretense to serving the entire country and decided that their only job was to advance a political cause that most ordinary people, of any gender or race, find alienating and wrong. So maybe try and look at where your problems actually come from. They’re not going away.
Now steel yourselves, media people, take a shot of something strong, look yourself in the eye in the mirror, summon you most honest self, and tell me: am I wrong?
Freddie’s Substack is worth subscribing to (click here). I only agree with him some of the time, but he’s a serious economic leftist worth reading.
The post The Creation Of A Big Lie appeared first on The American Conservative.
March 19, 2021
What’s Happening To Villanova?
This went out to Villanova University today from its president and its chief diversity officer. It was sent to me by a disgusted Villanovan who can hardly believe what is happening to the university:
March 19, 2021
Dear Members of the Villanova Community,
Since the summer of 2020, the Aequitas Task Force has been diligently working to create a Villanova community marked by a sense of openness, fairness and justice for all. In the process, we have come to see our work through the lens of antiracism and have adopted the aspirational goal of becoming an antiracist campus. The work of antiracism is not solely about race. The Task Force adopted an orientation that focuses on policies, practices and structures that create or sustain inequity of any minoritized people. Race becomes an entry point of focus; we know people are not just a single identity. The aspiration of becoming an antiracist campus means that we commit ourselves to work for justice and equity for everyone.
Recent headlines are replete with examples of hatred and violence aimed at the Asian and Pacific Islander communities. These acts of malice and cruelty are reported regularly but none so heinous as the murder of eight people in Georgia. We write today not just to mourn the deaths of the eight victims – six of whom have been identified as Asian American women – or to decry the acts of hostility often aimed at the most vulnerable in the Asian communities, but to say at Villanova we hold tenderly all members of the American Asian Pacific Islander (AAPI) community in our hearts and offer ourselves in kinship and support. It is in times like these, we need to hear the cries of all communities in pain and respond with meaningful care and empathy.
There is another community today feeling hurt and invalidated. A recent Vatican statement has left members of the LGBTQAI+ community and their allies at Villanova wondering whether their place on campus is safe and secure. Without equivocation, Villanova affirms that all people are welcomed on our campus, especially those who suffer from exclusion. We believe deeply in the humanity and intrinsic worth of the LGBTQAI+ community.
As we navigate these difficult times, the Office of the President and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (ODEI) share a responsibility to monitor the stability and health of our campus community. We are here for all Villanovans and are obligated to raise issues impacting the life and happiness of community members who feel unseen or unheard or unsafe. Understanding those around us will help us do everything we do here at Villanova better.
If you have concerns about your experiences on campus, please reach out to the resources available through ODEI, the Office of Intercultural Affairs, the Center for Access, Success and Achievement, or any of the diversity offices located in the schools and colleges. We are here to listen. You are not alone.
Remember, the difficulties of today unless challenged will become the reality of tomorrow. We will become an antiracist campus when we make issues of injustice our own.
Sincerely,
Rev. Peter M. Donohue, OSA
President
Terry Nance, PhD
Vice President of ODEI and Chief Diversity Officer
Where does one even begin? To be an “antiracist” campus is to embrace the crackpot neoracist ideology of Ibram X. Kendi. This Catholic university is committing intellectual and moral suicide.
Second, I’m old enough to remember when crimes happened elsewhere in America without university presidents feeling the obligation to issue a statement of sympathy and solidarity with the victims. This is pathetic virtue signaling, straight up. Tenderly … hearts … pain … care … empathy. What is going on here? Is this a university, or a therapist’s practice? It’s crazy.
It’s not that I believe people shouldn’t show empathy, but come on, what is the president of a Catholic university in suburban Philadelphia doing taking this opportunity to empathize in such an unctuous, simpering manner? It’s moral vanity. It’s woke kitsch, taking the horrible murders of these massage parlor employees and turning it into an opportunity for a college president to beat his breast in public. The novelist Milan Kundera said:
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.
Finally, there is not a single LGBT+alphabet-soup-osexual on that campus who believes that his or her place on Villanova’s campus is unsafe and insecure because the Vatican refuses to authorizing blessing same-sex couples. If anything, I’d bet that faithful Catholic students who believe that the Vatican has made the theologically and morally correct call here have more to fear on campus by publicly expressing agreement with the Pope. Again, this is Donohue engaging in kitsch. It’s a chance for the college president to signal that he is on the side of progressive sexual values, not Catholicism. Is Father Peter Donohue claiming indirectly that the Pope doesn’t believe in the “humanity and intrinsic worth” of these people because he will not bless same-sex couples?
Here’s how much it costs to attend Villanova:
Why would you go that deeply into the financial hole to attend a Moralistic Therapeutic Deist school whose president can’t bring himself to support his own Church’s teaching, and which is choosing to corrupt itself by embracing a fashionable neoracist ideology that will poison the minds of undergraduates and make dissent impossible (by characterizing it as racist)?
I don’t get it. Honestly, I don’t.
UPDATE: I’m trying to put my finger on why this irritates me so much. I think it’s the linking of the “antiracism” project of the university (which will destroy standards of justice and clear thinking for the sake of wokeness) to statements of sympathy for Asian students on campus (do they really feel at risk from sex-deranged Georgia Baptist gunmen?), to backhandedly denouncing the Vatican for defending Catholic teaching: it’s all a bunch of sentimental goop that represents the ne plus ultra of virtue-signaling among academics today … and a betrayal of what academic leadership is supposed to be. It’s a kind of corruption.
The post What’s Happening To Villanova? appeared first on The American Conservative.
Perv Children’s Court Judge Popped For Child Porn
Who could have seen this coming? Who?
A Milwaukee County Children’s Court judge was charged Wednesday with seven counts of possessing child pornography that showed the abuse of young boys.
Brett Blomme, 38, was arrested Tuesday and spent the night at the Dane County Jail. He made his initial appearance in Dane County on Wednesday afternoon, where a court commissioner set a signature bond, with the conditions Blomme not use social media or file sharing services, or have unsupervised contact with children, except for his own. By 4 p.m. he had been released.
Each of the counts carries a minimum mandatory sentence of three years and as much as 15 years in prison plus 10 years of supervised release.
The criminal complaint charges that Blomme uploaded as many as 27 images and videos of children being sexually abused last fall, using the messaging app Kik. The uploads charged in the complaint occurred from a home he and his husband own in Cottage Grove, in Dane County.
This man and his partner have two adopted children.
Prior to becoming a judge, Blomme was the head of the Cream City Foundation, a local LGBT charity that helped put on Drag Queen Story Hour in Milwaukee libraries. This story’s author screen-grabbed Cream City’s promotion of DQSH before Cream City deleted all of it:
Snopes points out that the Cream City Foundation was not a direct sponsor of the local DQSH:
According to Jonathan Hamilt, the executive director Drag Queen Story Hour’s national umbrella organization, Cream City Foundation acted as a fiscal sponsor to DQSH’s Milwaukee chapter so that the group could give and receive money as a nonprofit organization. However, Hamilt said, DQSH Milwaukee operates as a separate entity.
In an emailed statement, Hamilt told Snopes that “DQSH Milwaukee has never been run by the Cream City Foundation nor Brett Blomme,” and neither Cream City Foundation nor Blomme have participated in planning, organizing, hosting or performing at any of DQSH Milwaukee’s events, Hamilt wrote.
“Brett has never held a title or position within our organization ever,” Hamilt added.
Fair enough, but that is splitting hairs. Blomme still headed a foundation that made DQSH possible. In 2019, Houston public libraries allowed a convicted child molester to read to children in a DQSH there. While one can say that not all drag queens who want to read stories to children are child molesters or child porn aficionados, it is weird and sick to take your little children to an event where grown-ass men who dress like women read fairy tales to kids. Here’s what’s going on this summer in Milwaukee:
Yeah, no.
I understand that progressive mommies are often paralyzed by cognitive dissonance here, but progressive daddies, how about stepping up to protect your children?
The post Perv Children’s Court Judge Popped For Child Porn appeared first on The American Conservative.
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