Author: Papa Giorgio

How Polygamy Hurts Society, Hurts Men, and Hurts Women

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Originally posted December 2013 – Media Fixed)

How Polygamy Hurts Society

by Making Girls/Women Chattel,

and Stopping Boys from Turning

into Healthy, Productive Men

Where Does Liberty Spring From?

…“Monogamy seems to direct male motivations in ways that create lower crime rates, greater wealth (GDP) per capita and better outcomes for children,” Henrich concludes. But what’s more surprising than his conclusions is his speculation that monogamy is at the root of democracy and equality.”…. ~ Canadian scholar Joseph Henrich

In talking to a few people, I have noticed that they simply assume that polygamy is a valid lifestyle… that no harm, when compared to the ideal of one-man-and-one-woman in a marriage raising children. They do not know any history and why empires and countries have devolved in the past, nor do they follow logical arguments to their conclusions. (Here is the TinyURL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/k3o247o)

For instance, I had a conversation with a man I know (he is a man, but speaks on topics of importance as a boy) who simply stated, “I see no problem with it [being legalized], it doesn’t harm me personally.” He then asked what would “harm him.

A liberal society might, then, find it prudent to ignore homosexuality. It might well deem it unwise to peer into private bedrooms. However, this is not the issue before us. Today the demand is that homosexuality be endorsed and promoted with the full power of the law. This would require us to abandon the standard of nature, the one standard that can teach us the difference between freedom and slavery, between right and wrong…. (Read More)…. In Reynolds v. United States (1878) the Court rejected the Mormons’ free exercise argument on the grounds that even though “Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion,… [it] was left free to reach actions [such as polygamy] which were in violation of social duties or subversive to the public good.” What the Court meant by this is that certain institutions and ways of life, such as marriage and the family, are essential to the preservation of civil society. (Read More)

I made multiple points throughout the conversation that many things he does “harms him” that he would not think do. For instance, he knows people personally affected by legislating laws via a vote towards a specific party. He knows two people, personally, that he works with that because of Obamacare lost their policies. One can afford to pay substantially more for his new coverage (thus, having less capital to invest in the company), and the other cannot afford a new policy. The point being that any change in legislation (small or large) has direct consequences to many.

Let us say that single-motherhood brought on by the father walking out on his responsibility and is rewarded for this action by being subsidized for his choice (see Thomas Sowell’s classic 1980 debate about the dynamics of welfare with Pennsylvania Secretary of Welfare, Helen O’Banion). Now, we KNOW the many consequences of fatherless homes (crime, delinquency, drug use, not finishing education, etc), even Obama admits this… higher tax rates and land taxes are incurred to pay for the jails, these persons also creating at a higher rate fatherless homes, and the like. Our co-worker in the shop had his biological father killed at an ATM… any bets on the murderers family structure? The statistics are on my side. So the question becomes this: “which of the two should government support in order to have a society that is best for the safety, well being, productivity, of its citizens?”

Another legislative act talked about in the shop after this conversation about polygamy took place, are politicians listening to environmental activists and legislating the regular light-bulb illegal. In January it will be officially against the law to sell most forms of the standard — incandescent — light-bulb (BREITBART).  The idea is that if we use higher efficiency bulbs we will “save the planet” from those evil* fossil fuel emissions. (*I picture blood dripping from the word as well as evil laughter off in the distance somewhere.)

The problem? In every bulb that researchers tested they found that the protective coating around the light creating ‘phosphor’ was cracked, allowing dangerous ultraviolet rays to escape (RPT). You got it… through legislation, the power of government has made many people, in their own homes mind you, at a far greater risk for skin-cancer. A risk that this Irish-man knows all too well. What sounded good and altruistic, “saving the planet,” ironically has deadly consequences.

The question[s] coming from this event that made my home more dangerous is this: “Is a government big enough to tell me, the consumer, what light-bulb I can-and-cannot buy… is this good for liberty, or bad for liberty?”; “Is this a threat to or a bolstering of  this experiment in freedom and self-governance the Founders started?”

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — CS Lewis

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’.” — Ronald Reagan

I pointed out as well that society, while not outlawing same-sex relationships (see quote to the right), should not raise these relationships to the status of the ideal, that is, heterosexual, monogamous, marriages. Whether you believe in evolution or creation… the best environment for children to be raised is the hetero one[all things being equal]. This doesn’t mean there are not great single or gay parents… but there is an ideal that we know works… and was honed throughout mankind’s time on earth (naturally or Divinely inspired). We know. for instance, that polygamy increases “crime, prostitution and anti-social behavior. Greater inequality between men and women. Less parental investment in children. And, a general driving down of the age of marriage for all women” (Canadian study used in court, quoted more further below).

So the question becomes this: “which of the two should government support in order to have a society that is best for the safety, well being, productivity, of its citizens?” In other words, when society puts its stamp of approval on something, making other forms of “marriage” equal in worth to society as the hetero one, is that a net benefit to the health of society, or a net detraction from it?

I made a few points as found in my Cumalative Case against same-sex marriage which likewise apply to polygamy. In other words, we can see some detrimental aspects to relationships that are “less than” the ideal, and the results have different effects on society.

The conservative asks three questions the liberal, as we will see, does not ask:

1) compared to what?
2) at what cost?
3) what hard-evidence do you have?

I mentioned statistics of the jail population being from a less than ideal family structure, the jealousies in polygamous marriages and broken families. I asked as well if he (this person I know) knew about what philosophical/family structures the liberty he enjoys came from. After all this, I think he missed the point, because he told me, “this is MY belief… you can’t laugh [fault me] at my beliefs.” And the point is this:

A person may think polygamy (or other legislative rulings/laws) do not affect them, but when given evidence on how it can or does effect them AND the people involved — more negatively than the traditional family structure… you cannot then substitute your opinion in the place of facts. Society should support that structure that is best to raise children in, period. Same-sex “marriages,” single-motherhood/fatherhood, show devolution when compared to [everything being equal] the nuclear family structure.

Honesty is sometimes the best policy. One could say have said, “you know what, I never heard that before, let me think this over.” Or one can even say, “You are right… it does affect me, and it harms specifically the people involved… I don’t care.” So my friend should really have said this entering into to adults talking about a recent ruling in our United States:

“I see no problem with it [being legalized], it doesn’t harm me personally… and no matter what evidence you can show me of how the less than ideal family structure [traditional marriage] causes more incarceration, drug use, torn families, stresses on liberty, and the like… I am firm in ‘my opinion that opinion‘ trumps reality. MY reality IS fact. I do not wish to participate in possibly being wrong on a position [based only in my immediate understanding with no input from history, social scientists, statistics, or the like], or being mature enough to enter adulthood by taking in previously unknown evidence and testing it against my opinion, thus evolving or changing/challenging my previously held [actually — newly found] position based on evidence or differing points of conclusions based on others knowledge of history, social scientists, statistics, the cults, or the like.”

Or, put another way: “These are my unfounded, unassailable thoughts that I am sharing with you.” To engage in this type of conversation with a person who holds to this form of firm-absolutism is more a commentary on said person than the topic brought up in the shop.

...Politically Correct Emoting

Political correctness is the invention of Western intellectuals who feel guilty about the universal triumph of Western values and economic prosperity…. “In the long run of history, political correctness will be seen as an aberration in Western thought. The product of the uniquely unchallenged position of the West and unrivalled affluence, the comparative decline of the West compared to the East is likely to spell its demise. Finally, Western minds may be free again to reason rather than just emote, to pursue objective truth rather than subjective virtue.” — The Retreat of Reason, page 87

A person who practices this way of thinking is like a child telling the group of adults they like chocolate cake (or turtles). It is a form of emoting oneself to others. To which I would simply respond,

➯ “thank-you for sharing [emote, act-out] your unassailable position with us, but please, in the future abstain from adult conversation.”

Alternatively, if you do wish to emote, be prepared to not be taken seriously, ignored… or even derided a bit.

What advice do I have? Cut down on video games and pick up a goddamn book! “…growing into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness. Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of pop-culture and shallow thinking…” (Ephesians 4;14, PapaG’s version).

An adult would formulate Sowell’s questions something like this:

1) How do polygamous marriages compare to traditional marriages?
2) What are the costs incurred by such choices? Are there any harmful effects to the

a.) persons involved as well as to the
b.) society and
c.) societies founding principles that have given us the freedoms we currently enjoy?

Is there a loss of or a gain in freedom in this indigenous structure? Are young girls more or less protected from predators or exploitation or used to gain affluence?
3) I have come to a firm conclusion on a subject I just heard of, HOW have I come to my conclusion? Is this new to mankind, or have past cultures practiced this? What were their outcomes?

The above is just an example of where “Stage-Two“ thinking can get you.

This thinking ~ thank God! ~ is the keystone to a healthy/well-balanced faith that is separate from but that interacts and can even change the culture it finds itself in (link in pic).

Lets see if we can shed some light on the history behind many freedoms assumed or freedoms not realized today, under-girded by the family structure via this “ethos” we speak of, Christianity:

Paul, who often gets a bad rap for his perceived low view of women, considered at least twelve women coworkers in his ministry.* Paul clearly had a high view of women: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The earliest Christians recited these remarkable, countercultural words as a baptismal confession. Widows, far from being abandoned, were cared for, and older women were given a place of honor. In light of all of this, is it any wonder “the ancient sources and modern historians agree that primary conversion to Christianity was far more prevalent among females than males”?

In recent history, Christians were responsible for the banning of three despicable practices inflicted upon women around the world. Christian missionaries pressured the Chinese government to abolish foot binding in 1912. This practice was done for the sole reason of pleasing men— “it made a woman with her feet bound in an arch walk tiptoe and sway seductively.” In 1829 the English outlawed the Indian practice of suttee, in which widows were burned alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands, because of Christianity’s teaching regarding widows and women. Finally, Western countries influenced by a Christian view of women and sexuality have condemned clitoridectomy (female genital mutilation), a gruesome practice that is still common in Muslim countries in Africa and the Middle East.

AGAIN:

  • “But what’s more surprising than his conclusions is his speculation that monogamy is at the root of democracy and equality” — Canadian scholar Joseph Henrich

Sean McDowell and Jonathan Morrow, Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2010), 230-231.

Historian Alvin Schmidt points out how the spread of Christianity and Christian influence on government was primarily responsible for outlawing infanticide, child abandonment, and abortion in the Roman Empire (in AD 374); outlawing the brutal battles-to-the-death in which thousands of gladiators had died (in 404); outlawing the cruel punishment of branding the faces of criminals (in 315); instituting prison reforms such as the segregating of male and female prisoners (by 361); stopping the practice of human sacrifice among the Irish, the Prussians, and the Lithuanians as well as among other nations; outlawing pedophilia; granting of property rights and other protections to women; banning polygamy (which is still practiced in some Muslim nations today); prohibiting the burning alive of widows in India (in 1829); outlawing the painful and crippling practice of binding young women’s feet in China (in 1912); persuading government officials to begin a system of public schools in Germany (in the sixteenth century); and advancing the idea of compulsory education of all children in a number of European countries.

During the history of the church, Christians have had a decisive influence in opposing and often abolishing slavery in the Roman Empire, in Ireland, and in most of Europe (though Schmidt frankly notes that a minority of “erring” Christian teachers have supported slavery in various centuries). In England, William Wilberforce, a devout Christian, led the successful effort to abolish the slave trade and then slavery itself throughout the British Empire by 1840.

In the United States, though there were vocal defenders of slavery among Christians in the South, they were vastly outnumbered by the many Christians who were ardent abolitionists, speaking, writing, and agitating constantly for the abolition of slavery in the United States. Schmidt notes that two-thirds of the American abolitionists in the mid-1830s were Christian clergymen, and he gives numerous examples of the strong Christian commitment of several of the most influential of the antislavery crusaders, including Elijah Lovejoy (the first abolitionist martyr), Lyman Beecher, Edward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin), Charles Finney, Charles T. Torrey, Theodore Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, “and others too numerous to mention.” The American civil rights movement that resulted in the outlawing of racial segregation and discrimination was led by Martin Luther King Jr., a Christian pastor, and supported by many Christian churches and groups.

There was also strong influence from Christian ideas and influential Christians in the formulation of the Magna Carta in England (1215) and of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787) in the United States. These are three of the most significant documents in the history of governments on the earth, and all three show the marks of significant Christian influence in the foundational ideas of how governments should function.

Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010], 49-50.

From My Book:

Social commentator and radio show host, Dennis Prager, takes note that males tend to be “rule oriented.” The implication being that Western culture is heavily influenced in the Judeo-Christian standards of moral code — this, he says, is ironic… that, in the name of feminism women are attempting to emasculate the God of Western religious morality.  “For if their goal is achieved, it is women who will suffer most from lawless males.”[1]  This is seen in the history of pagan cultures and their tendency to crumble under the weight of licentiousness and the lowly place women had in it.  Christianity raised women out of these “pagan cultures in which polygamy, arranged marriages, and oppression of women predominated, the church promoted the idea of monogamous marriage by free consent of both spouses.”[2]

[1] Dennis Prager, Think a Second Time (New York, NY: Regan Books, 1995), 249.
[2] Harold Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,  1983), 226.

So…

…what [if any] are the negative affects of polygamy on society? Are there any secular, progressive, arguments against it? We will explore this a bit here as the main topic of this post. To wit, the later point is the first I wish to deal with right now… and it shows a lack of asking the above three questions any conservatively minded libertarian would. Take note that equality is the guiding force in this short — honest — look by a group of decidedly progressive persons:

That’s right. Trying to argue against something as arbitrary as a number (e.g., marriage is between two people) once you have argued against a clear delineation that nature has honed, such as gender… is useless. Gay Patriot eruditely explains that is one, then the other (take note the emphasized portion near the end):

…Commenter Richard Bell notes the following: Judge Cites Same-Sex Marriage in Declaring Polygamy Ban Unconstitutional.

Interestingly, the judge’s 91-page opinion cites a series of legal precedents that have gradually redefined marriage, and limited the ability of the state to define it. Almost as though there had been some kind of negative gradient, and the law had been gravitationally drawn to the lower end of the gradient as a result of the lack of adhesion on that gradient.

(Breitbart) In his 91-page opinion in Brown v. Buhman, on Dec. 13, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups struck down Utah’s law making polygamy a crime. In so doing, he may have opened Pandora’s Box.

As a condition for becoming a state in 1896, Congress required Utah to outlaw polygamy, which is marriage between three or more persons. This case involved a family of fundamentalist offshoots of nineteenth-century Mormonism. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints disavowed polygamy in 1890, and again in 1904, but some splinter groups continue the practice.

Waddoups’ opinion would not only cover such groups, however, but also Muslims or anyone else who claims a right—religious or otherwise—to have multiple-person marriages. He notes that the Supreme Court ruled against polygamy in its 1878 case Reynolds v. U.S., but said he cannot simply rest upon that decision “without seriously addressing the much developed constitutional jurisprudence that now protects individuals from the criminal consequences intended by legislatures to apply to certain personal choices.” (read more)

Since marriage is no longer about creating a stable environment for children, and has become (and this mainly the fault of heterosexual liberals) about personal fulfillment, validation, and access to social benefits, there literally is no constraint on how much more broadly it can be redefined.

Take note that religious freedom IS enumerated specifically in the Constitution, whereas… marriage between same genders and multiple partners is not. Why mention this? Because in order to get “equality” as the progressive left sees it, religious positions will need to be expunged. In doing so, one ends without liberty, freedom, and the like.

The American Trinity:

“Socialism values equality more than liberty” ~ Prager

Here you find agreement between people who you would assume would be at odds with each-other, but share a love for both:

✂ tradition of [all] cultures (“tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead” ~ G.K. Chesterton) [even Grecian thinkers argued for heterosexual unions];
✂ what made societies collapse in the past (our Founders were students of history);
✂ and what is the best ideal for our experiment in freedom.

This next great commentary comes from two people who you would never think would be in such agreement… a conservative evangelical apologist, and a libertarian gay-man. The commentary is about a different case, but is similar in many ways. Here is conservative apologist, Frank Turek, making a point about a similar case:

  • “…imagine a homosexual videographer being forced to video a speech that a conservative makes against homosexual behavior and same sex marriage. Should that homosexual videographer be forced to do so? Of course not! Then why Elane Photography?….”

Now, here is the libertarian, conservative, guy[s] I know who blogs — GayPatriot:

  • “…it’s a bad law, a law that violates natural human rights to freedom of association and to freely-chosen work. It is not good for gays; picture a gay photographer being required by law to serve the wedding of some social conservative whom he or she despises.”

Again, if “for ‘a’,” it must be applied to “b.” What comes from this ILLIBERAL EGALITARIANISM  is a TOTALITARIAN view that all must think alike. But lets get to some of the harms this does to our society. Lets start with a well-known Canadian [gay] sociologist who is against raising same-sex marriage to that of equal status of heterosexual marriage. I am not here arguing against same-sex marriage, I do that elsewhere… but we are taking Paul Nathanson’s premise and applying it to polygamy:

One of the most respected Canadian sociologist/scholar/homosexual, Paul Nathanson, writes that there are at least five functions that marriage serves–things that every culture must do in order to survive and thrive. They are:

1. Foster the bonding between men and women
2. Foster the birth and rearing of children
3. Foster the bonding between men and children
4. Foster some form of healthy masculine identity
5. Foster the transformation of adolescents into sexually responsible adults

Note that Nathanson considers these points critical to the continued survival of any culture. He continues “Because heterosexuality is directly related to both reproduction and survival, … every human societ[y] has had to promote it actively . … Heterosexuality is always fostered by a cultural norm” that limits marriage to unions of men and women. He adds that people “are wrong in assuming that any society can do without it.”

…read more…

Polygamy, likewise, breaks down this OH-SO-IMPORTANT aspect that is crucial to a healthy society.

Unmentioned Boys:

This is from the documentary “Banking on Heaven: Polygamy in Heartland of the American West,” and is a small portion that talks about the harm of polygamy to boys. We know of the harm to women and girls… but this aspect is often not realized. Boys who have no fathers because the men need less boys to get more wives.

We know about the damages to women in these polygamous families (see some resources below), but these family structures have consequences for men as well. This “trickle up” negative affect, then, brings us to this larger question involved in this “rubber stamp of approval” by society on “less than” the ideal:

➯ “is polygamy good or bad for the liberty, freedom [and the like], for the following generations?”

There are many resources showing the deleterious effects of polygamy on men and women. Two resources not pictured in my resources are Sons of Perdition (which is a digital download and follows the lives of three boys) and a movie (YouTube) from a ministry I highly recommend, Sacred Groves. What is pictured above are:

  1. Escape, by Carolyn Jessop;
  2. Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs, by Elissa Wall;
  3. Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist’s Wife, by Irene Spencer

And DVD’s: Lifting the Veil of Poplygamy; ABC News Primetime Escaping Polygamy; and, Banking on Heaven.

Girls As Chattel | Polygamy’s Consequences

(For the above video) This is a combination of excerpts, both audio and video from the following sources:

  • NPR: Talk of the Nation | “’Sons Of Perdition,’ Exiles From Jeffs’ Church”  (June 24, 2010)
  • LAW & CRIME | Sexy Darling: Polygamist Cult Leader Allegedly Had Phone Sex with Underage Wives in Jail (March 8, 2023)
  • LAW & CRIME | Polygamist Cult ‘Prophet’ Faces Kidnapping Charges for Towing Underage Girls in Trailer with Wives (February 1, 2023)

Here is a great interview with a woman who was in a polygamous community for many years, it is long, but to understand why something is or may be bad to society’s “net goals,” one needs to spend time reading, watching, reflecting, and the like (see more interviews of people personally impacted by polygamy and the cults, here):

In a recent dealing with this in our neighbor to the north, well known Canadian scholar Joseph Henrich pointed out the following facts about this “net benefit” in regards to the traditional understanding of hetero marriages involving one-man-and-one-woman:

POLYGAMY IS HARMFUL TO SOCIETY, SCHOLAR FINDS

…Increased crime, prostitution and anti-social behaviour. Greater inequality between men and women. Less parental investment in children. And, a general driving down of the age of marriage for all women.

These are some of the harms of polygamy (or more correctly, polygyny, since it is almost always men marrying more than once) that are outlined in a 45-page research paper by noted Canadian scholar Joseph Henrich, filed Friday in B.C. Supreme Court.

Henrich is uniquely qualified to look at polygamy’s harm. He’s a member of the departments of economics, psychology and anthropology at the University of British Columbia and holds the Canada Research Chair in Culture, Cognition and Coevolution.

But he’d never really thought about it until this year when Craig Jones approached him. Jones is the lead lawyer in the B.C. government’s constitutional reference case, which will be heard in November by B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman.

[….]

Another social harm that Henrich says is consistent regardless of whether researchers use data from 19th-century Mormon communities or contemporary African societies is that children from polygynous families have considerably lower survival rates. It seems polygynous men, rather than investing in their offspring, use their money to add wives.

“Monogamy seems to direct male motivations in ways that create lower crime rates, greater wealth (GDP) per capita and better outcomes for children,” Henrich concludes.

But what’s more surprising than his conclusions is his speculation that monogamy is at the root of democracy and equality.

He argues that as the idea of monogamy spread through Europe during the 15th century, king and peasant alike had the same rules and the idea of equality gained a foothold — at least among men.

With reduced competition for women, men began loosening their tight control over wives and daughters.

And with fewer unmarried men, the pool of soldiers that had previously been harnessed by warring rulers was reduced.

Even though this compelling argument goes far beyond the scope of the trial, it may make it even harder for polygamy’s advocates to convince the judge that its practice is benign.

…read more… (ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY | VANCOUVER SUN)

When the above debate was happening in Canada, our radio talk-shows here in the states discussed the matter in-depth. Here is one such show from Michael Medved on the topic This is either from 2009 or 2011’ish:

Biblical Memes

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Originally Posted June of 2017 – Updated Media)

(Updated! This post is now married — ha — to this post of dietary laws in Leviticus. Also, posted some excerpts from a book at bottom.) After posting the above graphic, Jonathan Lewis [I believe Jonathan closed his FB down since last checked] said this in response to a friends post.

Here is his initial post.

The point of this, for me, is that marriage has been something that changes. I hate when people use the bibles example to deny my friends the right to get married when marriage today is nothing like marriage was in the bible. On top of all this, almost all marriages where arranged. Just as it used to be illegal for a black man to marry a white women. That had to change and it did. And people used the bible to try to stop it from changing. It’s just here to show that marriage has changed. And needs to change again to allow the LGBT community rights.

There are a few things wrong with how Jonathan has come at this issue. The first is how one should approach any historical document, this is called Hermeneutics. This way of approaching any document of antiquity pre-dates Christ [by about 500-years] and can be summed up in the “eight rules.”

Rule of Definition.
Define the term or words being considered and then adhere to the defined meanings.

Rule of Usage.
Don’t add meaning to established words and terms. What was the common usage in the cultural and time period when the passage was written?

Rule of Context.
Avoid using words out of context. Context must define terms and how words are used.

Rule of Historical Background.
Don’t separate interpretation and historical investigation.

Rule of Logic.
Be certain that words as interpreted agree with the overall premise.

Rule of Precedent.
Use the known and commonly accepted meanings of words, not obscure meanings for which their is no precedent.

Rule of Unity.
Even though many documents may be used there must be a general unity among them.

Rule of Inference.
Base conclusions on what is already known and proven or can be reasonably implied from all known facts.

Another important term that is often missed in a post like Jonathan’s to engender emotional responses and not critical thinking, is Etymology:

  • “the study of the origins of words or parts of words and how they have arrived at their current form and meaning” (Encarta Dictionary).

So, what does a historical thinker say about the above?

They [the critics] start with some improbable presumption; and having so decreed it themselves, proceed to draw inferences, and censure the poet as though he had actually said whatever they happen to believe, if his statement conflicts with their notion of things…. Whenever a word seems to imply some contradiction, it is necessary to reflect how many ways there may be of understanding it in the passage in question…. So it is probably the mistake of the critics that has given rise to the Problem…. See whether he [the author] means the same thing, in the same relation, and in the same sense, before admitting that he has contradicted something he has said himself or what a man of sound sense assumes as true…. The objections, then, of critics start with faults of five kinds: the alle­gation is always that something is either (1) impossible, (2) improbable, (3) corrupting, (4) contradictory, or (5) against technical correctness. The answers to these objections must be sought under one or other of the above–mentioned heads, which are twelve in number.

(Source)

So taking the above from Aristotle and applying this thinking to one area, say, language, will afford us a great deal of help:

LANGUAGE GAP

…Consider how confused a foreigner must be when he reads in a daily newspaper: “The prospectors made a strike yesterday up in the mountains.” “The union went on strike this morning.” “The batter made his third strike and was called out by the umpire.” “Strike up with the Star Spangled Ban­ner.” “The fisherman got a good strike in the middle of the lake.” Presum­ably each of these completely different uses of the same word go back to the parent and have the same etymology. But complete confusion may re­sult from misunderstanding how the speaker meant the word to be used…. We must engage in careful exegesis in order to find out what he meant in light of contemporary conditions and usage.

(Source)

So these are just some quick, higher educational deep-thinking skills/points, to apply to the graph. There is a history gap not mentioned in the graph or following conversations about the graph. For instance, King David in the Old Testament had many wives. Why would someone take this event (fact) and rip it from its historical context and apply modern day thinking to it? If this is done then there is another purpose behind doing so, an agenda. Sure, the Bible states that God “gave David Saul’s wives” (2 Samuel 12:8),but that is just a figure of speech. In ancient times, it was commonplace for a new king to take possession of everything owned by the former king, including his wives. So let’s take the “cultural gap” here and open it up a bit:

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

8. I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives-The phraseology means nothing more than that God in His providence had given David, as king of Israel, everything that was Saul’s. The history furnishes conclusive evidence that he never actually married any of the wives of Saul. But the harem of the preceding king belongs, according to Oriental notions, as a part of the regalia to his successor.

Knowing now that culturally speaking (using the understanding of idioms and ideas as known in a particular time-period) that it was commonplace for a new king to take possession of everything owned by the former king, including his wives, is not the same as God saying go out and take many wives to fulfill the lust of man. In-other-words, just because a great man in the Bible had more than one wife does not mean we should. The Bible faithfully records — as a true history book would — both the advances and the failures of people. Not only that (e.g., ripping something from its historical, cultural, geographic, etymological, and theological understanding), but context is important as well, context in a book recording evil deeds done along side righteous ones, and how to regulate man’s inhibitions.

The only direct command against polygamy is given to the kings that were to rule Israel, as they are told not to “multiply wives” to themselves (Deuteronomy 17:17). It is also interesting to note that polygamous relationships seem to be regulated in the commands Moses gave to the nation of Israel. Leviticus 18:18 instructs that a man should not marry sisters, and Deuteronomy 21:15 talks of assigning an heir to a man with two wives. Many commentators suggest that the passages do not endorse polygamy but rather prohibit it. Deuteronomy 21:15 may also be translated as “has had two wives” in succession rather than at the same time. The sisters in Leviticus 18:18 are understood by some to be any Israelite women. Regardless of the interpretation of these passages, the taking of multiple wives is not in accord with God’s design from the beginning.

(Source)

An analogous understanding is that the Bible gives commands on how to treat slaves, even having an entire New Testament book written with regards to this understanding. Does this mean the Bible supports slavery? Of course not, however, slavery was an institution around almost as long as man, so the Bible treats the reality of this institution in a way that will create the most fair actions of “owners” of slaves towards the humanity of current affairs. The Bible was the first historical document to say such a radical thing as “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). And this radical change in direction led to women and slavery being defeated (see my chapter in my book on Feminism, and, Listen to Thomas Sowell’s chapter from his book on slavery).

Now, in Christian thinking, Christ is understood to be God, bringing something new to man. He taught on many aspects of this “something new,” and even dealt with this topic – marriage.

In Matthew 19:4 (and Mark 10:2) we find the Pharisees challenging Him by asking if it is lawful for a man to put away his wife:

(vv. 3-8) Some Pharisees came to him. In order to test him, they said, “Does the Law allow a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” Jesus answered, “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the creator made them male and female? And God said, ‘Because of this a man should leave his father and mother and be joined together with his wife, and the two will be one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, humans must not pull apart what God has put together.” The Pharisees said to him, “Then why did Moses command us to give a divorce certificate and divorce her?” Jesus replied, “Moses allowed you to divorce your wives because your hearts are unyielding. But it wasn’t that way from the beginning. I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

Christ took it back to Adam and Eve one man one woman as did Paul in 1st Corinthians 7:1-2 ~

(vv 1-2) Now, about what you wrote: “It’s good for a man not to have sex with a woman.” Each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband because of sexual immorality.

Oneness is clear here as is it here Malachi 2:14 ~

But you say, “Why?” Because the LORD testifies about you and the wife of your youth against whom you cheated. She is your partner, the wife of your covenant.

Notice how the practice of many wives just does not fit into the passage? Context. We know that God intended for one man, one woman and that this relationship was to be for the duration (Matthew 19:4) the only allowable cause for divorce is fornication God then sought to regulate the polygamous practice (Exodus 21:10). So, again I reference my thinking on the matter of regulating versus abolishing institutions:

In Scripture, God sometimes allowed what was less than ideal because people’s hard hearts made the ideal unattainable (e.g., Ex 13:17; 1 Sam 12:12-13). To be able to exercise some degree of restraint over human injustice, Moses’ civil laws regulated some institutions rather than seeking to abolish them altogether: divorce, polygyny, the avengers of blood, and slavery (Keener 1992: 192-96). Jewish lawyers in fact recognized that God had allowed some behavior (marrying a Gentile captive in Deut 21:11-13; according to some, slavery) as a concession to human weakness (Daube 1959); some of their own rulings, such as the prosbul, conceded human weakness in hopes of improving the situation of justice (Daube 1959: 10). Nevertheless, Jesus’ opponents here assume that whatever the law addressed it permitted (19:7; cf. ARN 24, §49B); Jesus responds that Moses permitted this merely as a concession to Israel’s hard hearts.14 That his questioners exploit this concession thereby implies their own hardness of hearts, a charge ancients would easily enough apply to those deficient in love toward family members (Epict. Disc. 3.3.5). Thus in Matthew (in contrast to Mark), the Pharisees even exploit Moses’ concession as a command (Gundry 1982: 380). Jesus, by contrast, uses Scripture differently (cf. 12:7), here probably seeking to protect an innocent Jewish wife from her husband wrongfully divorcing her….

Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rpids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2009), 465.

I wish also to posit another idea completely missed by this chart, or the conversation that insued, and that is “is it wrong?” For instance, Christopher Wolfe makes the point that “arguments about whether homosexuality is biological or inherited are secondary to arguments about whether or not it is moral.” He continues,

Dallas declares that “even if it can be proven that genetic or biological influences predispose people toward homosexuality, that will never prove that homosexuality is in and of itself normal.” I have argued elsewhere that “it is an epistemological error to base value decisions on empirical data alone. For example, parents may reject dishonesty or homosexual behavior on moral grounds, regardless of what percentage of the population happily engages in those behaviors.”

Christopher Wolfe, ed., Homosexuality and American Public Life (Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing, 1999), 83-84.

Not only this, but the chart points out another fact, that is, no where in the Bible or in all religious history and cultural history, that homosexuality was never normalized. Therefore, the radical change is coming from those who support this idea. that is, that homosexuality should be normalized via marriage “rights.” In fact, this is one of the main strains of thought in comparing political worldviews. In the book A Conflict of Visions, Thomas Sowell makes this point in comparing the two models for coming to decisions:

While the constrained vision sees human nature as essentially unchanged across the ages and around the world, the particular cultural expressions of human needs peculiar to specific societies are not seen as being readily and beneficially changeable by forcible intervention. By contrast, those with the unconstrained vision tend to view human nature as beneficially changeable and social customs as expendable holdovers from the past. Ideals are weighed against the cost of achieving them, in the unconstrained vision. But in the unconstrained vision, every closer approximation to the ideal should be preferred….

Continuing Dr. Sowell quotes Hayek and then makes his point:

The growth of knowledge and the growth of civilization are the same only if we interpret knowledge to include all the human adaptations to environment in which past experience has been incorporated. Not all knowledge in this sense is part of our intellect, nor is our intellect the whole of our knowledge. Our habits and skills, our emotional attitudes, our tools, and our institutions— all are in this sense adaptations to past experience which have grown up by selective elimination of less suitable conduct. They are as much an indispensable foundation of successful action as is our conscious knowledge.

In this vision, it is not simply that individuals rationally choose what works from what does not work, but also — and more fundamentally — that the competition of institutions and whole societies leads to a general survival of more effective collections of cultural traits, even if neither the winners nor the losers rationally understand what was better or worse about one set or the other. Values which may be effective at the tribal level will tend to be overwhelmed by values that permit or promote the functioning of larger aggregations of people. From this perspective, “man has certainly more often learnt to do the right thing without comprehending why it was the right thing, and he still is better served by ‘ custom than understanding.” There is thus “more ‘intelligence’ incorporated in the system of rules of conduct than in man’s thoughts about his surroundings.”

Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (New York, NY: basic Books, 2007), 28, 37-38.

Which explains the almost elitist “knowing better than all of human history” — mentality:

The following are excerpts are from the following book, click to enlarge:

[….]

 

 

Gay Christians Making the Tough Choice for Truth | The New Man

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Originally posted June of 2015 – Updated Media)

During his 2013 Australia Speaking Tour, Dr William Lane Craig spoke at Saint Barnabas Anglican Church Broadway. Afterward, there was a lengthy Q&A time for people to text in their questions for Dr Craig to answer. In this clip, Dr Craig answers a question concerning what the Apostle Paul taught about homosexuality in the New Testament.

  • …and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (GALATIANS 2:20)

Luther Comments:

“Yet not I.” That is to say, not in mine own person, nor in mine own substance. Here he plainly showeth by what means he liveth; and he teacheth what true Christian righteousness is, namely, that righteousness whereby Christ liveth in us, and not that which is in our own person. And here Christ and my conscience must become one body, so that nothing remain in my sight but Christ crucified, and raised from the dead. But if I behold myself only, and set Christ aside, I am gone. For Christ being lost, there is no counsel nor succour, but certain desperation and destruction must follow.

The following story starts will quote first BREITBART, following it will be a portion of an article (and audio) from an NPR PIECE.

(BREITBART) National Public Radio aired a remarkable interview on Sunday’s Weekend Edition with Allan Edwards, a Presbyterian pastor who is gay, yet lives a heterosexual life. Torn between his sexuality and his faith, he chose his faith–without trying to “convert” his attraction to men, and without trying to change his religion to fit his personal preferences. The conversation between NPR’s Weekend Edition and Edwards–and his wife–sheds light on an often overlooked constituency in the debate over gay marriage.

Edwards explains that he began to realize he was attracted to men during his teenage years, at the same time he was active in his church youth movement. He realized immediately that there was a conflict between his sexuality and his faith, and tried to find a justification in the Bible for living a gay life as a Christian. He could not, he says–and so he chose to live a heterosexual life, in accordance with the teachings of his church. He does not deny his gay sexuality, but does not act on those feelings, he says.

In that way, Edwards says, he is no different than anyone else. Everyone, he says, experiences some kinds of forbidden desire, or a sense of discontentment with their lives, and they have to adjust their behavior to their values and goals. He and his wife have a sexual relationship, despite his attraction to men, and they are expecting their first child. He is reluctant to judge others, but when pressed by Montaigne, says that he believes those who try to adjust Christianity to accept same-sex marriage are “in error.”

He acknowledges that others might call his lifestyle one of suppression–one that is doomed to divorce or suicide. He disagrees, and says that his relationship with God comes before other parts of his identity, including his sexuality….

…read more…

How did this young man come to find his identity within the Christian faith? Simple, if Jesus is who He claims to be, then he [pastor Edwards… and we/us] should believe what Jesus believes. Simple:

(NPR)

Allan Edwards is the pastor of Kiski Valley Presbyterian Church in western Pennsylvania, a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. He’s attracted to men, but considers acting on that attraction a sin. Accordingly, Edwards has chosen not to act on it.

“I think we all have part of our desires that we choose not to act on, right?” he says. “So for me, it’s not just that the religion was important to me, but communion with a God who loves me, who accepts me right where I am.”

Where he is now is married. He and his wife, Leanne Edwards, are joyfully expecting a baby in July.

[….]

He didn’t understand how he could resolve his feelings, he says, and had little support from his friends. “I didn’t know anyone else who experienced same-sex attractions, so I didn’t talk about it much at all,” Allan says.

But at a small, Christian liberal arts college, he did start talking.

“My expectation was, if I started talking to other guys about this, I’m going to get ostracized and lambasted,” Allan says. “I actually had the exact opposite experience … I actually was received with a lot of love, grace, charity: some confusion, but openness to dialogue.”

Allan considered following a Christian denomination that accepts gay relationships, but his interpretation of the Bible wouldn’t allow it, he says.

“I studied different methods of reading the scripture and it all came down to this: Jesus accepts the rest of the scripture as divined from God,” he says. “So if Jesus is who he says he is, then we kind of have to believe what he believes.”

…read more…

In other words, Christ’s claims and later His backing his claim with the Resurrection should make any one WANT to thank his/her creator by worshiping Him in obedience for the work done for each of us on Calvary. Pastor Edwards is building riches in his heavenly home in his obedience.

Wesley Hill, who is a scholar of New Testament studies and happens to be an openly gay Christian. He says the Bible makes it clear that marriage is between one man and one woman. And so, subjects himself to the will of the Lamb… not subjecting the Lamb to his will:

Now… I would be remiss to note as well that there are many people who once were gay, but through Christ’s redeeming power they no longer identify as homosexual.

The above testimonies and viewpoints add to a previous upload of mine a while back with three church leaders talking about this same-sex attraction but duty to God ~ and it is this duty to God that gives a new identity (a “new man” if you will):

The three men in the above interview (see below) have a powerful testimony to God working in their lives. They take Scripture serious and share their struggles openly and honestly in this interview by Justin Brierley of Premier Christian Radio for his show, “Unbelievable” (A Different Kind of Coming Out). This interview and some other recent insights via Stand to Reason and Girls Just Wanna Have Guns, has me evolving and honing my apologetic on this more and more (SEE #4 OF MY CUMULATIVE CASE).

  • Sean Doherty is associate minister at St Francis, Dalgarno Way in London and teaches theology at St Mellitus College;
  • Sam Allberry is associate minister at St Mary’s Church, Maidenhead;
  • Ed Shaw is part of the leadership of Emmanuel Church, Bristol.

This is the larger interview of which I isolated Sean Doherty’s portion HERE.

And Savi Hensman of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and Anglican blogger Peter Ould debate the issues in the interview.

James White’s A&O ministry has some articles worth considering in regards to “testing that which is good”:

Here I am adding a video by First Things, and it is a short talk about a woman who is gay but has chosen to live towards truth. While I am not a Catholic, I am an admirer of people who sacrifice for the faith:

Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith
— from First Things on Vimeo —

Eve Tushnet is a lesbian and celibate Catholic freelance writer. She studied philosophy at Yale University, where she was received into the Catholic Church in 1998. She writes from D.C., and has been published in (among others) Commonweal, First Things, The National Catholic Register, National Review, and The Washington Blade. Eve blogs at Patheos.com.

And one of the most important presentations delineating the issue of “can a Christian be a homosexual?” is by Dr. William Lane Craig (see also his article, “Christian Homosexuals?” & “A Christian Perspective on Homosexuality“). His other noteworthy videos are these:

Another pastor who grew up in the mix of the LGBT culture… and his in-depth knowledge of what is often “Messy Grace” in a fallen world.

Ruining the Good In Pursuit of the Perfect | Baby Matt Gaetz Legacy

Published by Papa Giorgio

Jesse Watters: The Democrats Are Laughing At The Republicans Now

  • “Matt Gaetz doesn’t want to be speaker and he has no idea who else should be speaker. He just knows Kevin McCarthy shouldn’t be speaker.”

This is going to be a post that doesn’t completely side fully with one side of the GOP aisle or the other. I am going to present some articles and media that I have seen in this short period since House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was vacated. Again, I am not fully committed to one side as I sympathize with arguments from both sides of the GOP aisle.

What are my thoughts at the outset? Well, while I sympathize with Gaetz’s qualms with McCarthy breaking his promise on the bills coming to the floor, and some other issues. BUT! Was right now the best time to remove him? I say no. The bill that most upset Gaetz was one that would have cut spending in government by 8%, with substantial increases in border security. Some say this is a reducing of the size of government, however, I view reduction of government as striking regulation or the closing of Federal Departments… something many past Republican’s promised, but never happens.

Until Trump’s “if you pass regulation you have to strike two.”

Here I am thinking of a quote by Thomas Sowell speaking of government/political debates (to the right – click to watch short video). YES, we need to get our fiscal house in order — something I say is impossible, especially with the coming de-dollarization. Even with that last statement, do you throw all economic soundness to the wind? No, you reign in government.

I think Gaetz ruined quite a few avenues… even if Jim Jordan gets the Speakership — can he be as ecumenical as McCarthy? I don’t know. And I love Rep. Jordan!

I may be wrong, as often in the case in politics, the best case scenario could come from this. However, as a friend roughly noted on my Facebook, “Gaetz is a douchebag attention whore with no answers.” Here is an excellent interview I heard this morning:

Rep. Mike Lawler On Matt Gaetz And His Recent Actions The House Republican Majority

(BTW, the news that McCarthy would  not seek the position again… he may stick with this, but Hugh Hewitt seemed not to be privy to this bit of information.)

After sharing this story from RED STATE with my boys, a bit of conversation ensued:

…. But, from where I sit, if anything were to blow back on Gaetz, it would be the fact that he cozied up with Democrats to remove a Republican. He did more than simply engage in some bipartisanship; he actively collaborated with Democrats to remove McCarthy knowing he would never get enough support from Republicans to accomplish this feat. Regardless of how one feels about McCarthy, this is sure to leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths.

Now, let’s put the shoe on the other foot.

It is also possible that Gaetz’s unholy alliance with Team Blue might not matter as much as it seems. Among those who do not hold McCarthy in high regard, this pragmatic, even Machiavellian, move might just boost Gaetz’s popularity with the base, many of whom are disenchanted with the GOP. The fact that the overwhelming majority of Republican lawmakers voted against the motion might further solidify their dissatisfaction with the GOP. If they view McCarthy as ineffective, then how will they view those who voted to keep him in his position?

However, those who might feel this way likely do not represent most Republican voters. When McCarthy was first installed as speaker, an Economist/YouGov poll showed that 59 percent of Republicans approved of him while only 21 percent disapproved. …..

Here are the texts between myself and my oldest. (Left to right, click to enlarge)

And according to Gaetz, who now are RINO? (Republican in Name Only). When a majority of Trump supporters backed McCarthy, even those that initially challenged McCarthy’s original Speakership:

So… the bomb has been dropped by “Baby Gaetz,” let’s let the chips fall over the next couple of weeks and maybe revisit the topic then. But let’s not forget until then the damage the GOP need to overcome — PJ-MEDIA:

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) successfully led a coup against now-former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday. He managed to eke out a “win” by rallying the entire Democratic caucus and eight Republicans to oust him. It’s the first time that has happened in U.S. history.

And it’s a total clown show.

Not only does it distract from the already tense budget negotiations, but it makes a laughingstock of the GOP—and the U.S.—and gives Democrats even more leverage to push through their radical policies.

Gaetz got a win, but at what cost? Sure, he’ll raise a lot of campaign money from this—he’s already sending out emails and asking for money on Fox News— but is there a plan going forward? Of course not. The two congressmen whose names have been bandied about as potential House speakers—Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Steve Scalise (La.)—both spoke on behalf of McCarthy ahead of the vote and then voted to keep him as speaker. McCarthy announced tonight that he will not seek reelection as speaker. Gaetz stated emphatically that he doesn’t want the job. At publishing time, Scalise had sort of thrown his hat into the ring, and some are floating Trump as the next speaker, but none of that will be sorted out quickly.

House Democrats and Republicans have been at a stalemate over budget negotiations. The continuing resolution will expire on Nov. 17. There will be another showdown and possible shutdown as the country races toward the proverbial fiscal cliff. Instead of working on that problem, Republicans will be squabbling over the speakership. How does that help the country?

Gaetz, whether intentionally or ignorantly, overplayed his hand. He’s being celebrated in some circles as the brave defender of all that’s good, but not everyone is on board.

Asked about former president Trump’s support for his plan to oust McCarthy—whom Trump had endorsed and supported throughout his tenure—Gaetz equivocated and wouldn’t give a straight answer.

Trump took to Truth Social to berate Republicans for their disunity, writing, “Why is it that Republicans are always fighting among themselves, why aren’t they fighting the Radical Left Democrats who are destroying our Country?

Hardly a ringing endorsement of Gaetz’s strategy (if he even had one)……

So, this coming Tuesday [next week, October 10th] we will see Congress meet again to start the process of choosing another Speaker. Hugh Hewitt asks Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI),

“what’s next?”

A Worldview/RPT Rant On a Reasonable Zuby Quote

Published by Papa Giorgio

I think the below is applicable to many things. Like masks, mandatory vaccines for colds. etc. But I can also see how the below will be used to counter life and the freedom the Founding Documents of this nation afford. This is to say I like the quote, but can see it being misused as well.

That is the reason for the post — just to counter what I can see others using it for.

So, how does this play out with the Left? [Or, strict Libertarians.] Below I will use some personal experience as well as some legal interpretation and thought experiments – with a dash of religious philosophy to get us started.

WORLDVIEWS IN THE MIX

Before we begin, many who know the site know that I speak with informed knowledge in my Judeo-Christian [theistic] worldview to those of other adopted worldviews [known or unknown] to change hearts and minds. Often people do not know what a worldview is or if they hold one, or that knowing of it even has purpose. Nor do they know that higher education just a couple generations ago thought it educations purpose to instill it. A quote I came across in seminary that I kept discusses this:

Alexander W. Astin dissected a longitudinal study conducted by UCLA started in 1966 for the Review of Higher Education [journal] in which 290,000 students were surveyed from about 500 colleges.  The main question was asked of students why study or learn?  “Seeking to develop ‘a meaningful philosophy of life’” [to develop a meaningful worldview] was ranked “essential” by the majority of entering freshmen.  In 1996 however, 80% of the college students barely recognized the need for “a meaningful philosophy of life” and ranked “being very well off financially” [e.g., to not necessarily develop a meaningful worldview] as paramount. [1 & 2]

[1] Alexander W. Astin, “The changing American college student: thirty year trends, 1966-1996,” Review of Higher Education, 21 (2) 1998, 115-135.

[2] Some of what is here is adapted and with thanks to Dr. Stephen Whatley, Professor of Apologetics & Worldviews at Faith International University… as, they are in his notes from one of his classes.

I wish to highlight the “a meaningful philosophy of life.” This is known as a worldview, or, tools to dissect life and define reality. So the question becomes, what then is a worldview? Why do we need a coherent one?

WORLDVIEW: People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently based on these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize.  By “presuppositions” we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic worldview, the grid through which he sees the world.  Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists.  People’s presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world.  Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.  “As a man thinketh, so he is,” is profound.  An individual is not just the product of the forces around him.  He has a mind, an inner world.  Then, having thought, a person can bring forth actions into the external world and thus influence it.  People are apt to look at the outer theater of action, forgetting the actor who “lives in the mind” and who therefore is the true actor in the external world.  The inner thought world determines the outward action.  Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles.  But people with more understanding realize that their presuppositions should be chosen after careful consideration of what worldview is true.  When all is done, when all the alternatives have been explored, “not many men are in the room” — that is, although worldviews have many variations, there are not many basic worldviews or presuppositions.

— Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1976), 19-20.

So, even if one isn’t necessarily aware they have a worldview, they operate as if they do — borrowing from what they perceive as truths but are often a patchwork of interpretations that if questioned on, the self-refuting nature of these personally held beliefs are easy to dissect and show the person is living incoherently. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “worldview” this way:

1) The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world; 2) A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.” 

What are these self-refuting aspects people find themselves moving in-between? What are the worldviews? Here are some listed, and really, that first list of seven is it. That is as broad as one can expand the worldview list:

  1. theism
  2. atheism
  3. deism
  4. finite godism
  5. pantheism
  6. panentheism
  7. polytheism[1]

Others still reduce it further: Idealism, naturalism, and theism.[2] C.S Lewis dealt with religious worldviews much the same way, comparing: philosophical naturalism (atheism), pantheism, and theism.[3]

[1] Doug Powell, The Holman Quick Source Guide to Christian Apologetics (Nashville, TN: Holman Publishers, 2006); and Norman L. Geisler and William D. Watkins, Worlds Apart: A Handbook on World Views (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers);

[2] L. Russ Bush, A Handbook for Christian Philosophy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1991).

[3] Mere Christianity (New York, NY: Macmillan Inc, 1943).

Knowing what “rose-colored-glasses” you are wearing and if you are being internally coherent in your dissecting of reality is important because of the cacophony of what is being offered:

Faith Founded on Fact: Essays in Evidential Apologetics (Newburgh, IN: Trinity Press, 1978), 152-153.

Joseph R. Farinaccio, author of “Faith with Reason: Why Christianity is True,” starts out his excellent book pointing a way to this truth that a well-informed public should know some of:

  • This is a book about worldviews. Everybody has one, but most individuals never really pay much attention to their own personal philosophy of life. This is a tragedy because there is no state of awareness so fundamental to living life. — (Pennsville, NJ: BookSpecs Publishing, 2002), 10 (emphasis added).

  • “A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our well being.” — James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004), 122 (emphasis added).

Is this part of the reason so many today, especially young people, do not have “well-being”?

(More on worldviews can be found in my first chapter of my book titled: “INTRODUCTION: TECHNOLOGY JUNKIES” — PDF | As well as my WORLDVIEW POST on the matter)

The Law of Non Contradiction

I bet many reading this will have used the phrases or ideas below without realizing it was incoherent at best. I link to my chapter above, but here is an excerpt from it to better explain why a person’s worldview should be internally sound:

The law of non-contradiction is one of the most important laws of logical thought, in fact, one textbook author goes so far as to say that this law “is considered the foundation of logical reasoning.”[1]  Another professor of philosophy at University College London says that “a theory in which this law fails…is an inconsistent theory.”[2]  A great example of this inconsistency can be found in the wonderful book Philosophy for Dummies that fully expresses the crux of the point made throughout this work:

  • Statement: There is no such thing as absolute truth.[3]

By applying the law of non-contradiction to this statement, one will be able to tell if this statement is coherent enough to even consider thinking about.  Are you ready?  The first question should be, “is this an absolute statement?”  Is the statement making an ultimate, absolute claim about the nature of truth?  If so, it is actually asserting what it is trying to deny, and so is self-deleting – more simply, it is logically incoherent as a comprehensible position[4] as it is in violation of the law of non-contradiction.  Some other examples are as follows, for clarity’s sake:

“All truth is relative!” (Is that a relative truth?); “There are no absolutes!” (Are you absolutely sure?); “It’s true for you but not for me!” (Is that statement true just for you or is it for everyone?)[5] In short, contrary beliefs are possible, but contrary truths are not possible.[6]

Many will try to reject logic in order to accept mutually contradictory beliefs; often times religious pluralism[7] is the topic with which many try to suppress these universal laws in separating religious claims that are mutually exclusive.  Professor Roy Clouser puts into perspective persons that try to minimize differences by throwing logical rules to the wayside:

The program of rejecting logic in order to accept mutually contradictory beliefs is not, however, just a harmless, whimsical hope that somehow logically incompatible beliefs can both be true… it results in nothing less than the destruction of any and every concept we could possess.  Even the concept of rejecting the law of non-contradiction depends on assuming and using that law, since without it the concept of rejecting it could neither be thought nor stated.[8]

Dr. Clouser then goes on to show how a position of psychologist Erich Fromm is “self-assumptively incoherent.”[9] What professor Clouser is saying is that this is not a game.  Dr. Alister McGrath responds to the religious pluralism of theologian John Hick by showing just how self-defeating this position is:

The belief that all religions are ultimately expressions of the same transcendent reality is at best illusory and at worst oppressive – illusory because it lacks any substantiating basis and oppressive because it involves the systematic imposition of the agenda of those in positions of intellectual power on the religions and those who adhere to them.  The illiberal imposition of this pluralistic metanarrative[10] on religions is ultimately a claim to mastery – both in the sense of having a Nietzschean authority and power to mold material according to one’s will, and in the sense of being able to relativize all the religions by having access to a privileged standpoint.[11]

As professor McGrath points out above, John Hick is applying an absolute religious claim while at the same time saying there are no absolute religious claims to religious reality.  It is self-assumptively incoherent.  Anthropologist William Sumner argues against the logical position when he says that “every attempt to win an outside standpoint from which to reduce the whole to an absolute philosophy of truth and right, based on an unalterable principle, is delusion.”[12]  Authors Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl respond to this self-defeating claim by showing that Sumner is making a strong claim here about knowledge:

He says that all claims to know objective moral truth are false because we are all imprisoned in our own cultural and are incapable of seeing beyond the limits of our own biases.  He concludes, therefore, that moral truth is relative to culture and that no objective standard exists.  Sumner’s analysis falls victim to the same error committed by religious pluralists who see all religions as equally valid.[13]

The authors continue:

Sumner’s view, however, is self-refuting.  In order for him to conclude that all moral claims are an illusion, he must first escape the illusion himself.  He must have a full and accurate view of the entire picture….  Such a privileged view is precisely what Sumner denies.  Objective assessments are illusions, he claims, but then he offers his own “objective” assessment.  It is as if he were saying, “We’re all blind,” and then adds, “but I’ll tell you what the world really looks like.” This is clearly contradictory.[14]

Philosopher Roger Scruton drives this point home when he says, “A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely negative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.”[15]

[1] Manuel Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text with Readings (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001), p. 51.

[2] Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (New York, NY: Oxford Univ Press, 1995), p. 625.

[3] Tom Morris, Philosophy for Dummies, 46.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 40.

[6] Ibid., 38.

[7] Religious Pluralism – “the belief that every religion is true.  Each religion provides a genuine encounter with the Ultimate.” Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 598.

[8] Roy A. Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2005), 178 (emphasis added).

[9] A small snippet for clarity’s sake:

Fromm’s position is also an example of this same dogmatic selectivity. He presents his view as though there are reasons for rejecting the law of non-contradiction, and then argues that his view of the divine (he calls it “ultimate reality”) logically follows from that rejection. He ignores the fact that to make any logical inference — to see that one belief “logically follows from” another — means that the belief which is said to “follow” is required on pain of contradicting oneself. Having denied all basis for any inference, Fromm nevertheless proceeds to infer that reality itself must be an all-encompassing mystical unity which harmonizes all the contradictions which logical thought takes to be real. He then further infers that since human thought cannot help but be contradictory, ultimate reality cannot be known by thought. He gives a summary of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist expressions of this same view, and again infers that accepting their view of the divine requires him to reject the biblical idea of God as a knowable, individual, personal Creator. He then offers still another logical inference when he insists that:

Opposition is a category of man’s mind, not itself an element of reality…. Inasmuch as God represents the ultimate reality, and inasmuch as the human mind perceives reality in contradictions, no positive statement can be made about God.

In this way Fromm ends by adding self-referential incoherency to the contradictions and self-assumptive incoherency already asserted by his theory. For he makes the positive statement about God that no positive statements about God are possible.

Ibid., 178-179. In this excellent work Dr. Clouser shows elsewhere the impact of logic on some major positions of thought:

As an example of the strong sense of this incoherency, take the claim sometimes made by Taoists that “Nothing can be said of the Tao.” Taken without qualification (which is not the way it is intended), this is self-referentially incoherent since to say “Nothing can be said of the Tao” is to say something of the Tao. Thus, when taken in reference to itself, the statement cancels its own truth. As an example of the weak version of self-referential incoherency, take the claim once made by Freud that every belief is a product of the believer’s unconscious emotional needs. If this claim were true, it would have to be true of itself since it is a belief of Freud’s. It therefore requires itself to be nothing more than the product of Freud’s unconscious emotional needs. This would not necessarily make the claim false, but it would mean that even if it were true neither Freud nor anyone else could ever know that it is. The most it would allow anyone to say is that he or she couldn’t help but believe it.  The next criterion says that a theory must not be incompatible with any belief we have to assume for the theory to be true. I will call a theory that violates this rule “self-assumptively incoherent.” As an example of this incoherence, consider the claim made by some philosophers that all things are exclusively physical [atheistic-naturalism]. This has been explained by its advocates to mean that nothing has any property or is governed by any law that is not a physical property or a physical law. But the very sentence expressing this claim, the sentence “All things are exclusively physical,” must be assumed to possess a linguistic meaning. This is not a physical property, but unless the sentence had it, it would not be a sentence; it would be nothing but physical sounds or marks that would not) linguistically signify any meaning whatever and thus could not express any claim — just as a group of pebbles, or clouds, or leaves, fails to signify any meaning or express any claim. Moreover, to assert this exclusivist materialism is the same as claiming it is true, which is another nonphysical property; and the claim that it is true further assumes that its denial would have to be false, which is a relation guaranteed by logical, not physical, laws. (Indeed, any theory which denies the existence of logical laws is instantly and irredeemably self-assumptively incoherent since that very denial is proposed as true in a way that logically excludes its being false.) What this shows is that the claim “All things are exclusively physical” must itself be assumed to have nonphysical properties and be governed by nonphysical laws or it could neither be understood nor be true. Thus, no matter how clever the supporting arguments for this claim may seem, the claim itself is incompatible with assumptions that are required for it to be true. It is therefore self-assumptively incoherent in the strong sense.

Ibid., 84-85 (emphasis added).

[10] Metanarratives, or, Grand Narratives – “big stories, stories of mythic proportions – that claim to be able to account for, explain and subordinate all lesser, little, local, narratives.” Jim Powell, Postmodernism for Beginners (New York, NY: Writers and Readers, 1998), 29.

[11] Alister E. McGrath, Passion for Truth: the Intellectual Coherence of Evangelicalism (Downers Grove, IL: IVP,  1996), 239.

[12] William Graham Sumner, Folkways (Chicago, IL: Ginn and Company, 1906), in Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Planted firmly in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1998), 46-47.

[13] Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1998), 47.

[14] Ibid., 48

[15] Modern Philosophy (New York, NY: Penguin, 1996), 6.  Found in: John Blanchard, Does God Believe in Atheists? (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2000), 172.

This is part of a larger audio piece on Relativism:

Okay, that should get us all prepped for the next section…

….which is slightly more historical.

THEISM & AMERICA’S FOUNDING

Theism was the basis for our Founding Documents that undergirded our nations birth. For instance the phrase in the Declaration of Independence, “Law of Nature and Nature’s God.” AMERICAN HERITAGE EDUCATION FOUNDATION discusses this phrase a bit, of which I excerpta portion of:

The Declaration of Independence of 1776 tells much about the founding philosophy of the United States of America.  One philosophical principle that the American Founders asserted in the Declaration was the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God.”  This universal moral law served as their moral and legal basis for creating a new, self-governing nation.  One apparent aspect of this law is that it was understood in Western thought and by early Americans to be revealed by God in two ways—in nature and in the Bible—and thus evidences the Bible’s influence in America’s founding document.

The “Law of Nature” is the moral or common sense embedded in man’s heart or conscience (as confirmed in Romans 2:14-15).  It tells one to live honestly, hurt no one, and render to everyone his due.  The law of “Nature’s God” as written in the Bible and spoken by Jesus Christ consists of two great commandments—to love God and love others (as found in Deuteronomy 6:5, Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 7:12, Matthew 22:36-40, Mark 12:28-31, and Luke 10:25-28).  The first commandment, first found in Deuteronomy 6:5, is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.”  The second commandment, often referred to as the Golden Rule and first found in Leviticus 19:18, is to “love your neighbor as yourself” or, as expressed by Jesus in Matthew 7:12, to “do to others as you would have them do to you.”  Thus the content for both the natural and written laws is the same.

The law of Nature and God can be traced through the history and writings of Western Civilization.  This principle is found, for example, in medieval European thought.  In his 1265-1274 Summa Theologica, published in 1485, Italian theologian Thomas Aquinas acknowledged a “two-fold” moral law that is both general and specific:

The natural law directs man by way of certain general precepts, common to both the perfect [faithful] and the imperfect [non-faithful]:  wherefore it is one and the same for all.  But the Divine law directs man also in certain particular matters….  Hence the necessity for the Divine law to be twofold.[1]

Aquinas explained that the written law in the Bible was given by God due to the fallibility of human judgment and the perversion of the natural law in the hearts of many.  In the 1300s, medieval Bible scholars referred to the “Law of Nature and God” as a simple way to describe God’s natural and written law, its two expressions.  The phrase presented this law in the same order and timing in which God revealed it to mankind in history—first in creation and then in Holy Scripture.

During the Reformation period, French religious reformer John Calvin affirmed this two-fold moral law in his 1536 Institutes of the Christian Religion, observing, “It is certain that the law of God, which we call the moral law, is no other than a declaration of natural law, and of that conscience which has been engraven by God on the minds of men.”[2]  He further explains, “The very things contained in the two tables [or commandments in the Bible] are…dictated to us by that internal law which…is…written and stamped on every heart.”[3]  Incidentally, Puritan leader John Winthrop, who led a large migration of Calvinist Puritans from England to the American colonies, identified God’s two-fold moral law in his well-known 1630 sermon, A Model of Christian Charity, delivered to the Puritans as they sailed to America.  He taught,

There is likewise a double law by which we are regulated in our conversation one towards another:  …the law of nature and the law of grace, or the moral law and the law of the Gospel….  By the first of these laws, man…is commanded to love his neighbor as himself.  Upon this ground stands all the precepts of the moral law which concerns our dealings with men.[4]

During the Enlightenment period, British philosopher John Locke, who was influential to the Founders, wrote of the “law of God and nature” in his 1689 First Treatise of Civil Government.[5]  This law, he further notes in his 1696 Reasonableness of Christianity, “being everywhere the same, the Eternal Rule of Right, obliges Christians and all men everywhere, and is to all men the standing Law of Works.”[6]  English legal theorist William Blackstone, another oft-cited thinker of the American founding era, recognized the two-fold moral law in his influential 1765-1769 Commentaries on the Laws of England.  This law, he believed, could be known partially by man’s imperfect natural reason and completely by the Bible.  Due to man’s imperfect reason, Blackstone like Aquinas observed, the Bible’s written revelation is necessary:

If our reason were always, as in our first ancestor [Adam] before his transgression, clear and perfect, unruffled by passions, unclouded by prejudice, unimpaired by disease or intemperance, the task [of discerning God’s law and will] would be pleasant and easy.  We should need no other guide but this [reason].  But every man now finds the contrary in his own experience, that his reason is corrupt and his understanding is full of ignorance and error.

This [corruption] has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of divine providence which, in compassion to the frailty, imperfection, and blindness of human reason, has been pleased, at sundry times and in divers manners, to discover and enforce its laws by an immediate and direct revelation.  The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures.[7]

[1] Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, pt 2/Q 91, Article 5, trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Benziger Bros., 1947) in Christian Classics Ethereal Library, ccel.org <https://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/home.html >.

[2] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 3, bk. 4, trans. John Allen (Philadelphia, PA:  Philip H. Nicklin, 1816), 534-535.

[3] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion:  A New Translation, vol. 1, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh, Scotland:  Printed for Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 430.

[4] John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity, 1630, in Puritan Political Ideas, 1558-1794, ed. Edmund S. Morgan (Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing, 2003), 75-93.

[5] John Locke, First Treatise of Civil Government, in Two Treatises on Government, bk. 1 (London:  George Routledge and Sons, 1884), 142, 157, 164.

[6] John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, as delivered in the Scriptures, Second Edition (London:  Printed for Awnsham and John Churchil, 1696), 21-22.

[7] William Blackstone, Blackstone’s Commentaries in Five Volumes, ed. George Tucker (Union, NJ:  Lawbook Exchange, 1996, 2008), 41.

The researcher may benefit from my “The Two Books of Faith – Nature and Revelatory“

I also wish to commend to you an article by James N. Anderson (Professor of Theology and Philosophy, at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte) in the Reformed Faith & Practice Journal (Volume 4 Issue 1, May 2019).

Abraham Williams preached a sermon where he drilled down on the idea at an “election day sermon” in Boston Massachusetts’s, New-England, May 26. 1762.

  • “The law of nature (or those rules of behavior which the Nature God has given men, … fit and necessary to the welfare of mankind) is the law and will of the God of nature, which all men are obliged to obey…. The law of nature, which is the Constitution of the God of nature, is universally obliging. It varies not with men’s humors or interests, but is immutable as the relations of things.” 

Amen pastor.

A good resource for resources on this topic is my bibliography in a paper for my class on Reformation Church History in seminary — and I steered the topic to the Reformations influence on America. The paper is titled, “REFORMING AMERICA“ (PDF), the bibliography is from pages 16-19. I commend to the serious reader Mark Noll’s book, “America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln.“

Moving on from the “do you even worldview bro?” section to the application process.

One area I see the Left saying YES! to Zuby is on Same-Sex Marriage (SSM).

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

SSM, I argue, flouts Natural Law in many respects, and becomes an utennable special right.

The “potentials” in the male-female union becoming a separate organism is not found in the male-male or female-female sexual union. Nor is this non-potentiality able to be the foundation [pre-exist] for society (“Is Marriage Hetero?”). The ideal environment – whether from Nature or Nature’s God – to rear children, sorry Hillary. Etc. Or religious: “No Religious or Ethical Leader in History Supported SSM” (does wisdom from the past matter?). [I would add until very, very recently.] Even gay men and women oppose SSM being normalized LIKE hetero-marriage: “Another Gay Man That Opposes Same-Sex Marriage #SSM”.

Another Example via Personal Experience.

Many Gays Reject Court Forced Same-Sex Marriage

For some time, a few years back, I and about 10-20 gay men and women… and at times their extended family would meet monthly. All were lovers of the Constitution — what brought us together was the website GAY PATRIOT (gaypatriot[dot]net – now defunct, sadly) and admiration of what Bruce Carroll and other gay writers boldly forged in countering current cultural trends.

Some of these people I met with and have communicated with over the years [friends] held the position that same-sex marriage should not be placed on the same level in society as heterosexual marriage, as, the family pre-dates and is the foundation for society. All, however, held that what is not clearly enumerated in the Constitution for the federal government to do should be left for the states. And thus, they would say each state has the right to define marriage themselves. Speaking out against high-court interference – as they all did about Roe v. Wade. (All were pro-life.)

As an aside, we met once-a-month at either the Sizzler in Hollywood or the Outback in Burbank, exclusively on Mondays. (All coordinated by “GayPatriotWest” – Daniel Blatt). Why? Those two CEOs gave to Mitt Romney’s campaign. And on Mondays because the L.A. City Council asked people not to eat meat on Mondays to help the planet.

A joint hetero [me]/gay [them] “thumb in LA City Councils eye.” Lol.

What I respect are men and women (gay or not) who protect freedom of thought/speech. Like these two-freedom loving lesbian women I post about on my site.

Here is a Christian, conservative, apologist — Frank Turek — making a point (in an article titled: “Freedom: Another Casualty of the Gay Agenda”):

  • “…. Imagine a homosexual videographer being forced to video a speech that a conservative makes against homosexual behavior and same sex marriage. Should homosexual videographers be forced to do so? Of course not! Then why Elane Photography?”

Now, here is a gay “Conservatarian” site, Gay Patriot’s, input (in a post, “New Mexico Gets It Wrong” – now gone in the ether of the WWW):

  • “… it’s a bad law, a law that violates natural human rights to freedom of association and to freely chosen work. It is not good for gays; picture a gay photographer being required by law to serve the wedding of some social conservative whom he or she despises.”

However, I also live in a Constitutional Republic — even if by a thread. So, items not clearly enumerated in the Constitution are reverted to the States to hash out. So, I get an opportunity to vote on items or influence state legislatures to come down on, say, marriage being between a man and a woman. So, as a Conservatarian, what I call a “paleo-liberal,” I get to force my morals on others for lack of a better term. (See my “Where Do Ethics Come From? Atheist Convo | Bonus Material” | and Norman Geisler and Frank Turek’s book, “Legislating Morality: Is It Wise? Is It Legal? Is It Possible?”)

What those freedom loving gay men and women and I have in common is the rejection of Judicial Activism. We all agreed that in California, the H8 bill passed by a slight majority of Californians should have been law defining marriage as between male and female. Why? Because this is what the Constitution in the 10th Amendment clearly stated:

  • The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And that like Roe v. Wade, the courts interfering with the body politic hashing these things out on the state level. This Court interference created more division and lawfare down the road. As well as bad law. Some examples of this rather than just my statement:

Roe v. Wade — which ruled that the U.S. Constitution effectively mandates a nationwide policy of abortion on demand — is one of the most widely criticized Supreme Court decisions in America history.

As Villanova law professor Joseph W. Dellapenna writes,

  • “The opinion [in Roe] is replete with irrelevancies, non-sequiturs, and unsubstantiated assertions. The Court decides matters it disavows any intention of deciding—thereby avoiding any need to defend its conclusion. In the process the opinion simply fails to convince.”

Even many scholars sympathetic to the results of Roe have issued harsh criticisms of its legal reasoning. In the Yale Law Journal, eminent legal scholar John Hart Ely, a supporter of legal abortion, complained that Roe is “bad constitutional law, or rather … it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” He wrote:

  • “What is unusual about Roe is that the liberty involved is accorded … a protection more stringent, I think it is fair to say, than that the present Court accords the freedom of the press explicitly guaranteed by the First Amendment. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-a-vis the interests that legislatively prevailed over it. And that, I believe … is a charge that can responsibly be leveled at no other decision of the past twenty years. At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking.”

Below are criticisms of Roe from other supporters of legal abortion.

  • “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” — Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard law professor
  • “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose. … Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the … years since Roe’s announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.” — Edward Lazarus, former clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun
  • “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations. … Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.” — Archibald Cox, Harvard law professor, former U.S. Solicitor General
  • “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As a constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.” — Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania law professor
  • “Roe, I believe, would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the Court. … Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
  • “In the Court’s first confrontation with the abortion issue, it laid down a set of rules for legislatures to follow. The Court decided too many issues too quickly. The Court should have allowed the democratic processes of the states to adapt and to generate sensible solutions that might not occur to a set of judges.” — Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago law professor
  • “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy). … [C]lear governing constitutional principles … are not present [in Roe].” — Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor
  • “[O]verturning [Roe] would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary. … Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself.” — Jeffrey Rosen, legal commentator, George Washington University law professor
  • “Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference.” — William Saletan, Slate columnist, writing in Legal Affairs
  • “In the years since the decision an enormous body of academic literature has tried to put the right to an abortion on firmer legal ground. But thousands of pages of scholarship notwithstanding, the right to abortion remains constitutionally shaky. … [Roe] is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” — Benjamin Wittes, Brookings Institution fellow
  • “Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching.” — Michael Kinsley, columnist, writing in the Washington Post.

Abortion and Gays… Why Manny Are Pro-Life

Some gay men and women oppose abortion for religious reasons. Other view this as a life issue. Here is an example of what I am thinking of:

“If homosexuality is really genetic, we may soon be able to tell if a fetus is predisposed to homosexuality, in which case many parents might choose to abort it.  Will gay rights activists continue to support abortion rights if this occurs?”

— Dale A. Berryhill, The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals (Lafayette, LA:  Vital Issues Press, 1994), 172.

THE BLAZE has a flashback of Ann Coulter saying pretty much the same thing: “The gays have got to be pro-life. As soon as they find the gay gene, guess who the liberal yuppies are gonna start aborting” — yep

Ann Coulter has a penchant for making controversial statements that often lead to snickers, jeers and plenty of other reactionary responses. In an upcoming episode of Logo’s “A List: Dallas,” the well-known conservative pundit told Taylor Garrett, a gay Republican and a cast member on the show, some things about liberals and abortion that will surely get people talking.

The general premise of her words: Gays and lesbians should become pro-life, because liberals may start aborting their unborn gay children once a homosexual gene is discovered.

“The gays have got to be pro-life. As soon as they find the gay gene, guess who the liberal yuppies are gonna start aborting,” she said. Watch her comments, below: ….

“All Gays Should Be Republican” | Ann Coulter Flashback

The rule of nature in this situation would be to always promote and protect innocent life. Once you start deviating from that rule that is the foundation of our Constitution found in the Declaration:

  • We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

You start to create “special rights,” and these “special rights” are then put under the jurisdiction of politicians and special interest groups. And we all know what happens to the integrity of an issue or topic when that happens. Here is one example:

Feminists, Gays, Abortion and Gendercide | Ezra Levant Flashback

So as much as the quote by Zuby at the outset is a good one in a universe governed by reason and natural law and Nature’s God…. the progressive Left will always destroy what it touches… life and family being two issues exemplified above. So to adopt a quote wrongly is on the easier side of the Left ruining an idea.

From the Boy Scouts to literature, from the arts to universities: the left ruins everything it touches. Dennis Prager explains.

An example of the BOY SCOUTS via PRAGER:

…. Take the Boy Scouts. For generations, the Boy Scouts, founded and preserved by Americans of all political as well as ethnic backgrounds, has helped millions of American boys become good, productive men. The left throughout America — its politicians, its media, its stars, its academics — have ganged up to deprive the Boy Scouts of oxygen. Everywhere possible, the Boy Scouts are vilified and deprived of places to meet.

But while the left works to destroy the Boy Scouts — unless the Boy Scouts adopt the left’s views on openly gay scouts and scout leaders — the left has created nothing comparable to the Boy Scouts. The left tries to destroy one of the greatest institutions ever made for boys, but it has built nothing for boys. There is no ACLU version of the Boy Scouts; there is only the ACLU versus the Boy Scouts.

The same holds true for the greatest character-building institution in American life: Judeo-Christian religions. Once again, the left knows how to destroy. Everywhere possible the left works to inhibit religious institutions and values — from substituting “Happy Holidays” for “Merry Christmas” to removing the tiny cross from the Los Angeles County Seal to arguing that religious people must not bring their values into the political arena.

And, then there is education. Until the left took over American public education in the second half of the 20th century, it was generally excellent — look at the high level of eighth-grade exams from early in the 20th century and you will weep. The more money the left has gotten for education — America now spends more per student than any country in the world — the worse the academic results. And the left has removed God and dress codes from schools — with socially disastrous results.

Of course, it is not entirely accurate to say that the left builds nothing. It has built vast government bureaucracies, MTV, and post-1960s Hollywood, for example. But these are, to say the least, not positive achievements.

In his column this week, Thomas Friedman describes General Motors Corp., as “a giant wealth-destruction machine.” That perfectly describes the left many times over. It is both a wealth-destruction machine and an ennobling-institution destruction machine.

Rape Is The Norm In Illegal Immigration | “Rape Trees”

Published by Papa Giorgio

So the real question after going through this post is:

  • “Do you [government officials] dissuade or encourage illegal immigration?(deportation back to your country, build walls, etc. | VS. | cut razor wire to allow into country, invite to swarm the border, reverse previous policies shown to dissuade people making the trip up to our border, etc.)”

In other words, do you encourage more rape? Put another way: do you sacrificially offer more women up to the rapists? Or do you dissuade this offering?

JUST AN UPDATE TO THE BELOW:

Just read this DAILY WIRE story this morning, and thought of this post:

Migrant women are reportedly being raped on the Mexican side of the southern border as they wait and seek to enter the U.S.

Sexual violence has ticked up in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, both of which are across the border at the southern tip of Texas, Reuters reported.

Both border cities are major destinations for migrants who make the treacherous journey north in hopes of coming to America.

The two cities have seen record criminal investigations into the rape of foreign nationals this year, state data stretching back to 2014 shows. Eight sexual assault survivors and more than a dozen local aid workers also confirmed the rise in sexual violence to Reuters.

The sexual attacks are often perpetrated by human smugglers who demand cash from migrants. The details are graphic.

One woman, Carolina, said she arrived in Reynosa on a commercial bus with her 13-year-old son, but she was quickly kidnapped and brought to a house where she and other migrants were raped. At dawn one morning in late May, she was pulled out of the stash house by the men and raped on a broken-down bus.

“It’s the saddest, most horrible thing that can happen to a person,” she told Reuters.

She was released when her family paid a $3,100 ransom, and she was interviewed by Reuters after she had arrived in Chicago.

Another woman from Ecuador said she was also held hostage in Reynosa, and her captors allowed a drug dealer to rape her in exchange for a white powder he gave them, possibly cocaine. She escaped through a window one night holding her Christ child figurine as her kidnappers were sleeping.

She was interviewed by Reuters after she arrived in New Jersey and said, “I still have nightmares.”

Rape is also reportedly one of the torture tactics used by smugglers to get migrants to pay them more money……

END OF UPDATE

(As an aside, the “rape culture” Democrats always mention is being created at the border and the trip up here by their invitation to come, illegally.)

Just wanted to excerpt a portion of a larger post where I detail three lies by the media and Democrats about President Trump. Before that excerpt however, I want to add a more recent story regarding a portion of what will follow:

JUST THE NEWS reports on Senator Ted Cruz’s above mention of “rape trees”:

Mexican cartels are moving millions of people into the U.S. over the border, and “rape trees” are a reminder that the Biden administration isn’t doing enough to stop them, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said during a news conference with a group of Republican senators who visited the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We heard multiple reports of something, I’ll be candid, I had never heard of before until today — something called a rape tree, which are trees where the traffickers would violently rape young women and then hang their undergarments in the tree as a trophy,” Cruz said on Friday.

According to an Amnesty International report, about 60% of the women and girls who make the trek to the U.S.-Mexico border are raped.

Cartels reportedly charge thousands of dollars to bring someone through Mexico to the U.S. illegally. Republican senators have noted that migrants who cannot afford to pay the fee end up working for the cartel to repay the debt once they enter the U.S.

“How do you think the young women pay off their 5, 6, 7, 8 thousand dollar human trafficking fee?” asked Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. “I think we all know,” he said, referring to the “rape tree.”

I mentioned this way back in November of 2016, as well as the Amnesty International report… here is the excerpt.

EXCERPT

OKAY… I will now post three responses to items of discussion that my guess is those who are very distraught over Trump’s win and view either him or a large segment of the population who voted for him as racist or bigoted, or mean to disabled persons, is more complicated than these labels. First up is this:

Is Mexico Sending Rapists?

When I ask people to offer me an example of Trump’s “racism,” I get a reference to this example most often:

  • “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems…. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you…. They’re sending people that have lots of problems…. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” ~ Donald J. Trump

Before I add information that I doubt a millennial has heard because either they or their friends are quick to label Trump as being bigoted or racist for saying this, and moving on without further reflection, I want to note that all Republican politicians said to round up illegals in America would be an impossible task. Trump has evolved on his statement that many understood as rounding up 11-million (actually, there are 30-million). ALSO, every Republican politician noted that the Constitution would not allow for the banning of all Muslims coming to our country. Again, our Constitution forbids this. It allows for banning all persons from a country, but not a religious or sectarian belief. He [Trump] has backed away from this as well, as all of us knew he would. In fact, this was removed from his site. Trump is not a politician, but his team is counseling him well.

…Continuing.

Okay. What of Trump’s statement? It surely sounds bigoted at best.

I will shock the reader.

I think that is the most pro-woman statement in a long time by a politician regarding real — violent — crime against women.

Let me explain.

This is from the HUFFINGTON POST:

As the number of Central American women and girls crossing into the U.S. continues to spike, so is the staggering amount of sexual violence waged against these migrants who are in search of a better life.

According to a stunning Fusion investigation, 80 percent of women and girls crossing into the U.S. by way of Mexico are raped during their journey. That’s up from a previous estimate of 60 percent, according to an Amnesty International report…

[….]

Through May, the number of unaccompanied girls younger than 18 caught at the US-Mexico border increased by 77 percent.

But while many of these girls are fleeing their homes because of fears of being sexually assaulted, according to the UNHCR, they are still meeting that same fate on their journey to freedom…

For clarity in the sources for the HUFFPO article, for those that are of the impatient and research non-oriented generation:

✦ 60% Amnesty International Report (PDF)
✦ 80% Is rape the price to pay for migrant women chasing the American Dream? (FUSION)

(UPDATED EDITORIAL BY RPT) To be clear, these rapes are happening by residents who live in towns and districts these migrants are passing through. Other rapes are happening by Coyotajes, as well as many by the men making the trip as well. We know that many Honduren gang-members make the trek, and so, a high percentage of these men (criminals) do in fact cross our border into our nation. Where American women of all ethnic background are subjected to assault. Since we know illegals commit crimes at double the rate of native-born… rape is also part of these increased stats.

NEW STORY

80% of C. American Illegals Raped on Trip to US, Still Dems Encourage Them to Come

…“According to a stunning Fusion investigation, 80 percent of women and girls crossing into the U.S. by way of Mexico are raped during their journey. That’s up from a previous estimate of 60 percent, according to an Amnesty International report,” the well-known news outlet continued….

So, many of the men they travel with are rapping them. Many of the Coyotajes as well take advantage of them. There are what are now being called “RAPE TREES,” which you can learn more about on a previous post of mine, here. Here is how a conversation using this understanding went in the real world:

  • The above exchange was discussed a bit wrong, like Trump, the main idea is lost in the presentation. Gavin McInness made it sound as if the rapes were happening at the border when in actuality they are happening during the entire trip. And the girl thought he meant Coyotes, the real animal. Not Coyotajes. (That was very funny BTW, and why I ended the video like I did.)

What would be the most compassionate step to take? I would say, to control our border. That would help the migrant woman AS WELL AS our own mothers, daughters, and wives. Many from these countries that are experiencing these horrible circumstances are experiencing it because of their government models they have chosen. But this is neither here-nor-there.

The bottom line is that Trump, while not explaining this well at all, was actually making a statement about policy that in the end will protect women. There is this as well dealing with drugs and violence aspect of the comment:

A fresh wave of crime from the infamously violent MS-13 gang in the District of Columbia is being driven by the heavy recruitment of young illegal immigrants.

A surge of minors crossing the U.S. southern border is helping the notorious gang boost their ranks and instigate a new string of violent attacks in the city, reported The Washington Times. Over the past few years a wave of illegal migrant children crossed the U.S. border, and MS-13 appears to be targeting them for recruitment.

“They are certainly susceptible,” Ed Ryan, gang prevention coordinator in Fairfax County, Virginia, told The Washington Times. “They are new, they have very little family, they don’t know the language very well. They are looking for someone who looks like them, talks like them.”

Experts say violence from MS-13, which originally started in California, historically occurs in waves. Currently MS-13, on orders from El Salvador, is ramping up efforts in cities across the U.S. to reestablish their dominance on the streets, reports The Washington Times….

This is just a very short clip of a longer audio (here: ) of John and Ken discussing Mollie Tibbetts and her murderer, Christian Bahena-Rivera. According to the DAILY CALLER, he was employed by a Republican small business owner…

  • “He worked on Yarrabee Farms, which is owned by the family of GOP official Craig Lang, who was a former 2018 Republican candidate for state secretary of agriculture, according to reports by the Des Moines Register.”

…who may have illegally had him in their employ? However, he was an example of the DACA young… so did he have his temporary papers? I have no idea. Nor would I know if he immigrated legally if he would have passed all the checks/balances.

As an side…

Is this man a racist or bigot? He was the co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, and spoke out against the racist organization, La Raza, as well as calling workers who crossed the border “illegal immigrants” and “wetbacks.”

“In the mid 1970s, he conducted the ‘Illegals Campaign’ to identify and report illegal workers, ‘an effort he deemed second in importance only to the boycott’ (of produce from non-unionized farms), according to Pawel. She quotes a memo from Chavez that said, “If we can get the illegals out of California, we will win the strike overnight.”

…“Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration,” Levin said during a Wednesday appearance on Fox News’ Hannity. 

After saying that the premise that “compassion is an open border” is a “new idea” that has been pushed in recent times, Levin said that “a nation has a right to secure its border” and its citizens have a right to know who is coming into their country. 

Chavez, who was also against ethnic organizations like La Raza, would tell illegal immigrants to get out of the country, especially because they lowered the wages of American workers. And he was often far from compassionate in handling illegal immigrants….

(NATIONAL REVIEW, BREITBART and the HUFFINGTON POST)

School District in Minnesota Call Native-Americans Racists

Published by Papa Giorgio

There was one customer at Whole Foods [when I worked in retail] who rocked an afro. She was firstly, very tall, very beautiful, and rocked a huge afro. She looked like a model. I mentioned to her that I grew up in the in Detroit from the 70’s to early 80’s, and that I missed the afro and was glad it was coming back into style. I then complimented hers as absolutely gorgeous.

So now, that is a micro-aggression? I equally compliment “white” women’s hair when it is on point. Both the black woman and white women I compliment seem to take it well. I will compliment a clothing item at rare moments as well. In the retail business making the customer feel good — as well as on a human perspective — is our communal nature as humans.

But now, I guess, I will not compliment black women’s clothing, hair, or any other aspect said person takes the time (often an hour or more) trying to accentuate. I will only compliment white  women from now on.

Wait…

Isn’t THAT racist?

  • “Your mosquito videos represent a disgusting, racist attempt to formulate hate. You should be ashamed, but Marxist sociopaths have no idea what that is. Take your hostility and … buzz off.” (PJ-MEDIA has more commentary and links to other videos.)

….And there’s more.

Another video titled “Our Hidden Biases” paints a picture of a world where every white individual is inherently suspicious of black children. From store owners calling the police to doctors making baseless accusations, the narrative is clear: white people are the problem.

Superintendent Vollmuth, in his infinite wisdom, told Alpha News that these videos are all about creating an “inclusive opportunity” for students.

He claims they’re trying to “honor the uniqueness of each individual.” But aren’t they doing the exact opposite by painting an entire race as biased?

“The New Prague Area Schools is dedicated to creating a culture where all students have an equal and inclusive opportunity to thrive academically, socially and emotionally,” Superintendent Vollmuth told Alpha News.

“As a school system, we will honor the uniqueness of each individual and embrace diverse backgrounds, values and viewpoints that will build an empowered school community while acknowledging our differences as strengths.”

(MARTIN MAWYER)

A section that caught my eye @ the 44-second mark

The video notes — in a surfer/red-neck way — that keeping the Washington NFL team’s name, “The Redskins,” is a micro-aggression. Here is a recent story that caught my eye that shows Native Americans as racists. (I will repost below this an older post on the same topic.)

The Native American Guardians Association have filed a lawsuit against the Washington Commanders for defaming their organization after the name was changed from the Redskins in 2020.

Here’s the news:

The #Commanders have been sued by The Native American Guardians Association, which have been trying to get the Commanders to change their name back to #Redskins. “The logo on the Redskin’s helmet is an actual person, it’s Chief White Calf. Every time they go out on that field, they were honoring Chief White Calf and they were battling on the football field with the same honor and integrity and courage. They should continue to honor that.” They are suing after the team allegedly made defamatory comments attacking the association’s integrity.

Here’s more from NBC Montana:

The Native American Guardians Association (NAGA) have filed a lawsuit against the Washington Commanders after the team allegedly made defamatory comments attacking the association’s integrity.

]The suit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of North Dakota, alleges the Commanders have a “monopoly on the narrative” concerning Native American sentiment regarding the team’s 2020 name change which stripped it of its Redskins moniker. NAGA seeks $1.6 million in damages.

Included on the suit are the team owner Josh Harris, sales representative Matthew Laux and the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). These groups, NAGA says, are working in concert to suppress and defame their organization which represents Native Americans everywhere.

Chad LaVeglia, who is representing NAGA, told The National Desk (TND) Monday the group was given “no choice” but to file suit after the Commanders repeatedly ignored their demands to open a dialogue with the team.

We would like them to sit down at the table with NAGA and hear what they have to say and they also have to fix the harm that they’ve done to NAGA’s reputation by calling them fake and attacking their very identity,” LaVeglia said.

By changing their name, LaVeglia said, the Commanders dishonored many years of Native American tradition and heritage.

“The logo on the Redskin’s helmet is an actual person, it’s Chief White Calf. Every time they go out on that field, they were honoring Chief White Calf and they were battling on the football field with the same honor and integrity and courage,” LaVeglia said. “They should continue to honor that.”

A Commanders spokesperson told TND Monday the team plans to “address the matter in court,” but believes the lawsuit is “without merit.”

There have been over 100,000 signatures calling for the Washington organization to change their name back to ‘Redskins’…..

FLASHBACK

I was honored to be called an “ultra-rightest” and “racist” by an extremely liberal blogger,

The post referenced my excellent post, Thin-Skinned Over the Redskins ~ Warnings of Government Overreach. So I asked this blogger (we will see if I get a response) the following:

Navajo Code Talker Washington Redskins

Please tell me how I am an racist? A leader of the Navajo Code Talkers who appeared at a Washington Redskins home football game said Wednesday the team name is a symbol of loyalty and courage — not a slur as asserted by critics who want it changed.

Is this Navajo leader a racist?

Are the 90% of Native-Americans who are not maligned by the name racist? I am sure many of them vote Democrat… would that mean they [Democrats] are “ultra-leftists/racists”??

Maybe next you can push to rename Oklahoma ~ which is Choctaw, “okla humma,” which literally means “red people.”

I will let Napoleon Dynamite finish off my thoughts of your post:

Since most Native-Americans vote Democrat (as linked in the above text), and most of them support the Redskins name, thus, making them [Democrats] racist… are they not also racist for supporting Obama in the general election[s]?

Part of the following is from my post, Hot-Tub Conversations:

Bush Analogy

Walter, I will use Bush in my analogy. Let us say for twenty years Bush attended a church that twice prominently displayed David Dukes likeness on the cover of their church’s magazine which reaches 20,000 homes, and a third time alongside Barry Mills (the founder of the Aryan Brotherhood). Even inviting David Duke to the pulpit to receive a “lifetime achievement award.” Even selling sermons by David Duke in the church’s book store. Authors of sermons sold in Bush’s church’s bookstore teach in accordance with Christian Identity’s view that Jews and blacks are offspring of Satan and Eve via a sexual encounter in the Garden of Eden. In the church’s bookstore, the entire time Bush attended, books like Mein Kampf, My Awakening (David Duke), and other blatantly racist books. Even members of the Aryan Brotherhood felt comfortable enough to sit in the pews at times… being that the pastor of the church was once a reverend for the group.

Now Walter, if Bush had gone to a church like that I would walk arm-n-arm with my Democratic comrades in making sure he would never be President. You would expect me to I am sure?

Here is the rest of the post, really, an actual conversation:

Obama Reality

I purchased from Obama’s church’s bookstore online 3-books: A Black Theology of Liberation, Black Theology & Black Power, and Is God A White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology. In these books Walter, God is said to be against white people, and mirror in their hatred of whites to that of Jews in Mein Kampf, calling both devils.

These 3 quotes I did not insert into the original conversation

  1. “The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” | Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf
  2. “The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” | James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.62
  3. “White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality” | James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.64

Obama’s pastor not only was a minister in The Nation of Islam, an anti-Semitic/racist group, but the church’s book store sells sermons by Louise Farrakhan, who teaches that the white man was created on the Island of Cyprus by a mad scientist, Yakub. (Mr. Farrakhan also believes he was taken up on a UFO to meet God, and was told he was a little messiah, take note also that he was directly involved in the deaths of police officers as well.) Louise Farrakhan was featured twice on the church’s magazine which reach 20,000[plus] homes in the Chicago area. Even placing on the cover with Louise Farrakhan a third time the founder of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad. Elijah Muhammad likewise taught that the white man was created by Yakub 6,600 years ago. Walter, Louise Farrakhan teaches that the Jews in Israel do not belong there, and that the true Jews are the black people. Louise Farrakhan was invited into Obama’s church, to the pulpit and given a “lifetime achievement award.” In fact, the New Black Panthers and members of the Nation of Islam often times sat in the pews for sermons by Rev. Wright, whom Obama called a mentor.

Another was a montage of faces – black leaders, past and present, with the title “The legacy lives on” – that included Wright, Farrakhan, Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, Rosa Parks and even O.J. Simpson attorney Johnny Cochran. (Weekly Standard; and WND)

So I expect you, Walter, to join arm-and-arm with me on finding out why the media, and Democrats who are so concerned about racism let such a man into office, when, if the tables were turned, I wouldn’t want in office.

Do you know the next thing out of Walter’s mouth was?

✫ “Didn’t Bush speak in a church that forbid interracial marriage?”

I responded that no, it was a speech at Bob Jones University…

….and you are making my point Walter. If that bugs you soo much to mention it during the course of a conversation, why doesn’t Obama’s history more-so irk you? Not to mention the university overturned its silly rule, even Bob Jones said he couldn’t back up that policy with a single verse in the Bible (CNN). Obama’s CHURCH OF TWENTY YEARS has made no such concession.

At least STTPML came-out and SAID it… unlike many who hide their thoughts but still malign you:

  • (She said) “Black people and white people weren’t allowed get married years ago either… if small minded, bigoted people had their way it would still be that way. Gay marriage Is NO different…. religious folks who believe and support same sex marriage ?? They must not be real religious people.”
  • (I Responded) In other words, a discussion to you is calling me and other readers here “bigots,” and impugning the character of religious gays by creating straw-man arguments of what I (we) say/mean? And when I politely point this out by not pointing out how you name call and use “cards” (sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted ~ S.I.X.H.I.R.B.)….

Via: “Unfriended” for Judge Judy ~ Traditional Marriage Now Bigoted

MORE:

★ BILL CLINTON: “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,”

★ JOSEPH BIDEN: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” continuinh he said, “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

★ DAN RATHER: “but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”

Since almost ALL of the Dixiecrats stayed Dixiecrats (only 3-of the 26 Dixicrats ever switched sides, often times 20-years later*), and the KKK type Democrats died of old age or finished their terms in Congress (or actually applied the Bible to their ignorance and changed their ways)… we have a new style of “racism” on the left replacing leftist racist ideology.

For instance: We have a President that went to a church [for 20-years… what if Bush had gone to a similar church?] that sold books in its book store entitled: “A Black Theology of Liberation,” or, “A Black Theology of Liberation.” These books have some quotes I AM SURE you care deeply about since you are against racist ideology:

▼ “The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.62

▼ “White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.64

And here is Hitler in Mein Kampf: “The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” In this same church bookstore, you could walk in and buy sermons by LOUISE FARRAKHAN.

Remember he is the guy who preaches that the white man was created on the Island of Cyprus 6,600 years ago by a mad scientist Yakub. He teaches that a UFO will put up an invisible wall around America and kill all the white people with fire who reside in that invisible “air wall”. He also teaches that he [Farrakhan was taken up to a UFO and told by ELIJAH MUHAMMAD and Jesus] that he was the “little Messiah”. This same guy was placed on the front cover of the churches magazine 3-times (once with Elijah Muhammad). AND, he was brought in and received a lifetime achievement award at the church. Even Farrakhan’s ex-aid said Obama and Farrakhan’s ties are [were] close.

DEMOCRATS chose a racist to be the keynote speaker at the 2012 Convention. JULIAN CASTRO is a member of La Raza… the group CESAR CHAVEZ (founder of the founder of the United Farm Workers [UFW]) said was a supremacist group. Not only that, but CASTRO’S MOTHER is involved deeply in the MEChA movement. That is the group that wants Mexico to take back the portion lost in the Mexican-American war. These guys/gals ACTUALLY show up in brown shirts.

Many Democrats in the House have open ties to the New Black Panthers as well…CYNTHIA MCKINNEY in fact, when she was in Congress, had them for security. So if you are truly interested in racist ideology, do not worry about all the old and gone Democrats who were racist. Or that DAVID DUKE endorses current Democrats running for office or other leaders in the current KKK vote en large for Democrats —today.

BY ALL MEANS, speak out against it (new Democrats) instead of old Democrats.

* The strategy of the State’s Rights Democratic Party failed. Truman was elected and civil rights moved forward with support from both Republicans and Democrats. This begs an answer to the question: So where did the Dixiecrats go? Contrary to legend, it makes no sense for them to join with the Republican Party whose history is replete with civil rights achievements. The answer is, they returned to the Democrat party and rejoined others such as George Wallace, Orval Faubus, Lester Maddox, and Ross Barnett. Interestingly, of the 26 known Dixiecrats (5 governors and 21 senators) only three ever became republicans: Strom Thurmond [20-years later], Jesse Helms and Mills E. Godwind, Jr. The segregationists in the Senate, on the other hand, would return to their party and fight against the Civil Rights acts of 1957, 1960 and 1964. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower proffered the first two Acts. (URBAN LEGENDS)

(Did you guys/gals comment on this when it happened? So in St Louis they beat up a black man who was handing out buttons and flags as a protest against the runaway out of control federal government. President Obama has said that the “tea party patriots” who have questioned his plan for the takeover of health care by the government are using “mob tactics.” Here is a quick video of Moveon . org, SEIU, and DNC using “mob tactics.” — The Democrat Carnahan packed the event and attempted to prevent the opposition from attending. As the video below reveals, ACORN and SEIU activists also received preferential treatment at the stage-managed event: https://youtu.be/cFeUhSlHiUQ)

Gaetz/Seinfeld Bob Menendez Cold-Open

Published by Papa Giorgio

This may be the greatest video to ever be posted on this site.

  • Authorities say they found nearly $500,000 in cash, much of it hidden in clothing and closets, as well as more than $100,000 in gold bars in a search of the New Jersey home Menendez, 69, shares with his wife. (WaTi)

Free Speech Battles | California DEI Totalitarianism

Published by Papa Giorgio

Just as an aside, Leftists and Democrats are the ones pushing “institutional racism,” as the below notes. Also note, I use “totalitarianism” in the sense of “total thought.” Which is a forced “homogenization” of thought… or, state instituted/forced “total thought.”

UPDATED VIDEO

This is an interview by Lex Fridman of Greg Lukianoff of F.I.R.E. (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression). The entire interview, “Greg Lukianoff: Cancel Culture, Deplatforming, Censorship & Free Speech | Lex Fridman Podcast #397,” can be seen HERE (I grab from around the 1:10:50 mark). There are a few universities/colleges involved in legal action in California, but The Renegade Institute for Liberty at Bakersfield College is one this is made for.

DEI stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” — all of which sounds fine, right? But materials put out by the state of California show that in this case, DEI translates to highly contested and controversial views. The state’s definitions say that the idea of “color blindness” “perpetuates… racial inequities,” and even the idea of “merit,” is “embedded in the ideology of Whiteness” and “upholds race-based structural inequality.” FIRE has filed a lawsuit on behalf of six California community college professors to halt new, systemwide regulations forcing professors to espouse and teach these politicized conceptions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The regulations are now in effect in the State Center Community College District, and FIRE’s clients have already been forced to change their syllabi and teaching materials, lest they face repercussions. (More info on the lawsuit @FIRE)

Here is an article from THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE that is worth reading in it’s entirety. It is titled: “First Amendment lawsuits challenge state’s DEI rules for community colleges” If you encounter a paywall, grab the URL from the link and put it into this “hopper: REMOVE PAYWALL.

California’s new community college rules sound simple enough: As of this year, all instructors must teach in a way that is culturally inclusive and must prove during employee evaluations that they respect and acknowledge students and colleagues of diverse backgrounds.

But what if an instructor holds so-called color-blind [more on this idea after article excerpt] views and prefers to ignore people’s race, ethnicity, gender or other physical and cultural characteristics as a personal philosophy? Or if an instructor disagrees entirely with the “anti-racism” and “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility lens” that state’s college officials now require?

Seven instructors from four community colleges in the Central Valley are now testing that cultural collision on constitutional grounds, saying their views could get them fired under the new rules. With the backing of national advocacy groups, the instructors are suing state and local college officials in federal court to have the regulations tossed.

The suits echo another federal lawsuit, filed in May against the University of California, in which a psychology professor hoping to work at UC Santa Cruz ran up against a UC requirement that applicants submit a statement supporting “diversity, equity and inclusion.” The applicant likened it to a “modern-day loyalty oath” of the kind discredited in the 1950s, when those who wouldn’t sign might be labeled communist subversives.

[….]

Another group, the Institute for Free Speech, filed a similar lawsuit on July 6 on behalf of Daymon Johnson, a history instructor at Bakersfield College in Kern County.

“Almost everything Professor Johnson teaches violates the new DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility) requirements — not just by failing to advance the DEIA and anti-racist ideologies, but also by criticizing them,” the suit says, noting that compliance with the new rules would violate the instructor’s conscience and force him to surrender his academic freedom.

SEE MORE AT THE INSTITUTE FOR FREE SPEECH’S BLOG:

RPT is asking people to donate HERE.

In his U.S. History class this fall, for example, Johnson plans to have students read two books claiming to debunk the historian Howard Zinn’s work, which reveals less flattering versions of the American story, and the well-known 1619 Project, which digs deeply into the foundations of slavery.

His lawsuit contains a long list of things that the instructor “does not wish” to do. These include referring to transgender students by their preferred pronouns, acknowledging that social identities are diverse, and demonstrating “DEI and anti-racism practices” because he “rejects and even finds (them) abhorrent.”

Johnson is also a leader of the Renegade Institute for Liberty, a Bakersfield College group that opposes “political and ideological tyranny.” Its acronym is RIFL.

The suit claims that Johnson is already in the crosshairs of the college administration for his views and quotes a Kern college district trustee saying, in reference to employees holding anti-DEIA views: “They’re in that 5% that we have to continue to cull. Got them in my livestock operation and that’s why we put a rope on some of them and take them to the slaughterhouse.”

The Kern trustees did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The suit says that Bakersfield College already fired another instructor, who was Johnson’s predecessor at RIFL, and calls him “the first cullee.”

According to the suit, the person who oversaw the firing was the Kern district’s former chancellor, Sonya Christian, who has just become the chancellor of the California community colleges. With 116 schools and more than 2 million students enrolling each year, it’s the nation’s largest higher education system.  

On Friday afternoon, state Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office filed a response to Johnson’s suit on behalf of Christian, arguing that the instructor has not only failed to show that he’s been harmed by the rules, but because of that, he also lacks standing to complain about them. 

The response defends the diversity regulations and says the rules “do not restrict the free speech of any employee,” nor do they infringe on anyone’s academic freedom, “including Johnson’s.”

The system’s Board of Governors has the right to establish policies that “reflect its ideals and principles regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility,” the state argues. 

A spokesperson for Christian said the college system has not yet responded in court to the more recent lawsuit and would not comment on it.  

The new regulations require all 73 college districts to develop policies for evaluating employee performance and tenure eligibility in light of their “DEIA competencies.”

The rules follow a series of other DEIA guidance and messages from the chancellor’s office in recent years, and say that to ensure academic success, “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) and anti-racism remain at the heart of our work.”

The college system also posts a glossary of DEIA terms, which defines color blindness as a “racial ideology” that ignores “a large part of one’s identity and lived experience” and therefore “perpetuates existing racial inequities.”….

COLOR BLIND

Dennis Prager discusses a call about a gentleman disagreeing with his statement that he doesn’t see color, and others shouldn’t as well. After the discussion of the previous call, I include the call as well as the lead up to it.

MORE!

  • LINK to a Facebook video: Dennis Reacts: “I See No Color” Is Racist?” (FACEBOOK)

The Issue Is Values, Not Systemic Racism

Do you let your race, gender, or orientation define you? If you are on the left, everything is perceived through the lens of identity politics. Systemic racism is not the real issue plaguing America—it is our opposing values system. Dennis Prager offers some refreshing insight into how to heal our broken nation.

Should We Be Colorblind?

Nothing reveals the moral confusion of our time more than those who label the term “colorblind” racist. Who would want to see themselves in terms of their skin color? And what does a person’s skin color really say about who they are — their likes, dislikes, values, and so on?

Prager Notes The Left’s Proclivity Towards Racism

A girl is legally kidnapped in Santa Clarita by state authorities. The Left’s dogged emphasis on race, class, gender is destroying families, keeping them in poverty, and utterly failing our country’s motto, “out of many, one.” The Left has dumped out the melting pot and keeps us as divided as ever. This story is maddening!

Here is the what the main battle is over: “A battle over custody of a little girl who is 1/64th Choctaw has been in and out of the courts for three years now, and returns on Friday with a new appeal hearing” (ABC-7).

  • “Is it one drop of blood that triggers all these extraordinary rights?” — Justice Roberts

Keep in mind the racial science of NAZI Germany were concerned with a 1/16th racial mix… here we see the racial sciences of the Choctaw Nation and the State of California concerned over a 1/64th portion of heritage. Sick! Racist! Leftism!

  • In 1911, Arkansas passed Act 320 (House Bill 79), also known as the “one-drop rule.” This law had two goals: it made interracial “cohabitation” a felony, and it defined as “Negro” anyone “who has…any negro blood whatever,” thus relegating to second-class citizenship anyone accused of having any African ancestry. Although the law had features unique to Arkansas, it largely reflected nationwide trends. (source)

ONE DROP RULE

More from the LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS Opinion Page:

Five hundred years ago, the Incas sacrificed children.

They removed children as young as six from their families, transported them with great ceremony to a mountain location, and left them to die of exposure.

Did they have the moral right to do it?

Some people think so. “To their credit,” wrote Kim MacQuarrie, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, anthropologist and author, “the Incas did their best to ensure the survival of their people and empire by paying close attention to nature and doing their best to use every means at their disposal, including human sacrifice, to gain control over it.”

There’s something seriously wrong with any kind of reasoning that places human sacrifice in the category of “doing their best.”

SEE MY: “Mayan, Incan and Aztec “Terrorism“

And there is something seriously wrong with what happened in Santa Clarita this week to a 6-year-old girl named Lexi and the foster family that has cared for her since she was 2.

Rusty and Summer Page tried for years to adopt Lexi but were blocked from doing so. The reason? The little girl has a tiny bit of Choctaw ancestry — just 1.5 percent — and under federal law the Choctaw Nation can decide her fate. The tribal authorities decided that Lexi will live in Utah with distant relatives. They issued this statement:

“The Choctaw Nation desires the best for this Choctaw child. The tribe’s values of faith, family and culture are what makes our tribal identity so important to us. Therefore we will continue to work to maintain these values and work toward the long-term best interest of this child.”

This is not human sacrifice, but it is closely related. It is collectivism, the opposite of individual rights.

Collectivism holds that an individual’s life belongs not to the individual, but to the group in which the individual is a member. Where other children would have the right to have a parent or guardian make decisions for them, Lexi’s future has been decided by group leaders seeking to preserve “tribal identity.”

On Monday, in a most disturbing scene, the 6-year-old was pulled weeping and frightened from the arms of her foster father on the driveway of the only stable home she has ever known.

Lexi is not the only child to be victimized by the enforcement of a federal law that, ironically, was intended to prevent children from being removed from their families.

In Arizona, a foster family’s adoption of a baby girl, who was placed with them at birth, is being blocked by the Gila River Indian Community, and the Navajo Nation is standing in the way of foster parents seeking to adopt a 5-year-old boy who has lived with them for four years.

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank based in Phoenix, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of these children and “others similarly situated” over this “separate and unequal treatment.”

The lawsuit argues that children of Native American ancestry are being unfairly denied their civil rights: “Alone among American children, their adoption and foster care placements are determined not in accord with their best interests but by their ethnicity, as a result of a well-intentioned but profoundly flawed and unconstitutional federal law, the Indian Child Welfare Act.”

The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978 in reaction to another government program, the Indian Adoption Project, which began in 1958 and continued until 1967.

The Indian Adoption Project was the result of an agreement between the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Child Welfare League of America. It encouraged the removal of Indian children from their families on reservations so they could be adopted and “assimilate” into “mainstream society.” By the 1970s, between 25 and 35 percent of all Indian children nationwide had been removed from their homes, and 90 percent had been adopted by white families.

Outrage over the Indian Adoption Project led to the Indian Child Welfare Act. It requires social workers to make an extra effort to avoid removing Indian children from troubled homes, a greater effort than they would make for non-Indian children. When foster care or adoption becomes necessary, the law requires an active effort to place the child with an Indian family.

The Goldwater Institute says these requirements are discriminatory and harmful, making it harder to protect Indian children from abuse and neglect, and forcing longer waits for permanent homes.

The foster care system has many challenges and many heartbreaking stories. We don’t need laws that cause more pain. The Indian Child Welfare Act should go. Give the kids a break.

Susan Shelley is a San Fernando Valley author, a former television associate producer and twice a Republican candidate for the California Assembly.

The parents of a six-year-old girl taken from her family due to her Native American heritage speak out in a statement after officials from the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services took their daughter, Lexi, away. Read more at SCV-NEWS.

George Will gets it right over at WA-PO:

Opinion | The Brutal Racial Politics Of The Indian Child Welfare Act

Lexi lived four of her first six years with a non-Native American California foster family, but because she is 1/64th Choctaw, tribal officials got her taken from the Californians and sent to live in Utah with a distant relative. On Friday, the Supreme Court will consider whether to hear a challenge to the law that made this possible — the Indian Child Welfare Act, which endangers many young Native Americans. It also is a repudiation of the nation’s premise that rights are inherent in individuals, not groups.

In 1978, before “Native Americans” became the preferred designation for Indians, but when racial “identity” was beginning to become the toxic political concept it now is, Congress enhanced tribal rights. This violated, among other principles, those of federalism: Congress thereby reduced the right of states to enforce laws on child welfare. And it plunged government deeper into making distinctions solely on the basis of biological descent.

The ICWA, an early bow toward multiculturalism, buttressed tribal identities by strengthening tribal rights. For example, tribes can partially nullify states’ powers to intervene against tribal parents’ abuse endangering children. And the ICWA conferred rights on tribes, rights adjudicated in tribal courts, including the right to require Native American children be adopted by Native Americans.

Equal protection of the laws? Not under ICWA.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has asked, “Is it one drop of blood that triggers all these extraordinary rights?” Indeed, the primitive concept of racial “blood,” recast as DNA, triggers tribal rights and extinguishes a state’s right to protect many children’s rights. Sometimes with dire consequences.

In 2015, this column acquainted readers with Declan Stewart and Laurynn Whiteshield. Declan was 5 in 2007 when he was beaten to death by his mother’s live-in boyfriend. Oklahoma had removed him from his mother’s custody after he suffered a fractured skull and severe bruising between his testicles and rectum. But when the Cherokee Nation objected to his removal, Oklahoma, knowing that the ICWA favors tribal rights, relented. Beaten again, he died a month after returning to his mother.

From the age of 9 months until almost 3, Laurynn was in a North Dakota minister’s foster care. When the minister tried to adopt her, the Spirit Lake Sioux tribe invoked the ICWA, and Laurynn was sent to a reservation and the custody of her grandfather. Less than six weeks later she was dead, having been thrown down an embankment by the grandfather’s wife, who had a record of child abuse.

The ICWA requires that “Indian children” be placed with “Indian” foster families. Because the ICWA allows a child to be yanked from a non-Indian foster home — and from possible adoption — it discourages non-Native American adults from providing care, including early infant attachment, which is a foundation of healthy child development.

Born with fetal alcohol syndrome, Antonio Renova was 3 days old when he was taken from his biological parents, members of the Crow tribe, and put in foster care. Five years later, the biological parents, both on probation following felony convictions (the mother’s included child endangerment), obtained custody of Antonio through a Crow tribal court. He suffered beatings by his parents, who have been charged in his death.

Antonio was a casualty of the ICWA’s form of identity politics — the allocation of legal status and group entitlements based on biology. The ICWA has insinuated into law a “separate but equal” test regarding Native American children in jeopardy. It demotes “the best interests of the child” from the top priority; it makes a child’s relationship with a tribe supremely important.

The nation has abundant reasons to regret its mistreatment of Native Americans, and the ICWA was perhaps motivated by an impulse to show respect for Indigenous cultures. But the cost, in broken bodies and broken constitutional principles, has been exorbitant.

Today, the nation is reverting — in the name of “social justice” and “equity” understood as improved social outcomes for government-favored groups — to a retrograde emphasis on racial identities. So, the ICWA’s sacrifice of individual rights to group entitlements probably has a diminished power to shock. Come Friday, however, the Supreme Court should be shocked into hearing the arguments against the federal government usurpation, through the ICWA, of the states’ responsibility for protecting children in jeopardy, regardless of their biological ancestry.

Canada vs. India and the Waffen-SS

Published by Papa Giorgio

CANADA VS. INDIA

So over the past couple weeks Canada has been in the news… enough so that I feel prompted to post on it. And the tow countries (India and Canada) have expelled diplomats of the issue. Here is more:

The WASHINGTON TIMES covers the story:

NEW DELHI — Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh independence advocate whose killing two months ago is at the center of a widening breach between India and Canada, was called a human rights activist by Sikh organizations and a terrorist by India’s government.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday that his government was investigating “credible allegations” that Indian government agents were linked to the slaying on June 18 when Nijjar was gunned down outside a Sikh cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia.

India has denied any role in the killing, calling the allegations absurd.

Nijjar was a prominent member of a movement to create an independent Sikh homeland known as Khalistan, and at the time of his death was organizing an unofficial referendum among the Sikh diaspora with the organization Sikhs For Justice.

He also owned a plumbing business and served as president of a Sikh temple or gurdwara in suburban Vancouver. In a 2016 interview with the Vancouver Sun he responded dismissively to reports in Indian media that he was suspected of leading a terrorist cell.

“This is garbage – all the allegations. I am living here 20 years, right? Look at my record. There is nothing. I am a hard worker. I own my own business in the plumbing,” Nijjar told the newspaper.

Following his death, the World Sikh Organization of Canada called Nijjar an outspoken supporter of Khalistan who “often led peaceful protests against the violation of human rights actively taking place in India and in support of Khalistan.”

Nijjar was a wanted man in India, where authorities labeled him a terrorist in 2020.

In 2016, Indian media reported that he was suspected of masterminding a bombing in the Sikh-majority state of Punjab and training terrorists in a small city southeast of Vancouver. He denied the allegations.

India also filed a criminal case against Nijjar in 2020 for “conspiring to create an atmosphere of fear and lawlessness, and inciting people to rise in rebellion against the Government of India” when farmers, many from Punjab, camped out on the edges of New Delhi to protest controversial agriculture laws.

Last year, Indian authorities accused Nijjar of involvement in an alleged attack on a Hindu priest in India and announced a reward of about $16,000 for information leading to his arrest.

India has waged an at-times bloody struggle against the Sikh independence movement since the 1980s, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered a raid to capture armed separatists taking refuge in a major Sikh temple.

The raid killed hundreds of people, and two of Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her shortly after. In response, anti-Sikh riots took place across India in which members of the minority were dragged out of their homes and killed.

More recently, the Hindu nationalist-led government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cracked down on both non-Hindu rights movements and dissidents.

Canadian police said Nijjar was shot as he was leaving the car park of the Sikh temple where he served as president in British Columbia. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds and died at the scene.

After the killing, a lawyer and spokesperson for Sikhs For Justice, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, said Nijjar had been a target of threats because of his activism. His killing was the second in two years of a prominent member of the Sikh community in Canada …..

One of the interviewees in the video above noted Canada’s parliament just coming back into session, which brings me to this next story.

A story of the Waffen-SS, WWII, and Ukraine.

CANADA VS Waffen-SS

Quite a few online personalities noted the story, here is one for instance:

What Benny and others have seemingly said is that this was a planned introduction and that the background of Yaroslav Hunk was known by Canadian officials. Even if Benny was not intimating it, it can be seen that way surely. The article Benny shared in his feed after the above intimation said this in their article ender:

  • It is unclear whether Zelenskyy knew that Hunka fought with the unit. In 2021, the Ukrainian president joined the governments of Israel and Germany in denouncing a march honoring SS Galichina in Kyiv.

A fellow “Facebooker” noted this article from NEWSWEEK discussing the issue:

Hunka, 98, was recognized by Anthony Rota, the speaker of Canada’s House of Commons, as a “Ukrainian hero” who fought for the First Ukrainian Division. The speaker has since apologized for the blunder.

“We have here in the chamber today a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today, even at his age of 98,” Rota said before the Canadian parliament on September 22, after which Hunka was met with a round of applause, while Zelensky raised his fist.

Rota added, “He’s a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service. Thank you.”….

This ended up being an impromptu blunder that has brought some unawares of WWII history up to speed on this narrow piece of Ukrainian history. More on this in a moment, back to NEWSWEEK. After Newsweek catalogues the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies clarifying the man’s background, you had the official apology for the blunder released:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was also present at the time of Hunka’s recognition. A statement issued by his office said “no advance notice was provided to the Prime Minister’s Office, nor the Ukrainian delegation, about the invitation or the recognition.”

[….]

Rota has issued a statement apologizing for his move to recognize Hunka.

“In my remarks following the address of the President of Ukraine, I recognized an individual in the gallery. I have subsequently become aware of more information which causes me to regret my decision to do so,” Rota said. “I particularly want to extend my deepest apologies to Jewish communities in Canada and around the world. I accept full responsibility for my action.”

This being a mistake is the more believable side of the coin, I mean, who would intentionally sink their political career by knowingly supporting a member of the SS controlled unit?

Here is more via the POLITICO:

  • “I wish to make clear that no one, including fellow parliamentarians and the Ukraine delegation, was aware of my intention or of my remarks before I delivered them,” he said. “This initiative was entirely my own, the individual in question being from my riding and having been brought to my attention.”

Here is more on the history of this unit by FORWARD — and excellent article:

The Canadian Parliament gave a standing ovation on Friday to a 98-year-old immigrant from Ukraine who fought in a Third Reich military formation accused of war crimes.

The elderly veteran, Yaroslav Hunka was honored during a session in which President Volodomyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine addressed the lawmakers to thank them for their support since Russia invaded his country, saying Canada has always been on “the bright side of history.” The  Speaker of the House of Commons, Anthony Rota — who had compared Zelenskyy to Winston Churchill — recognized a “veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today even at his age of 98.”

The assembly then rose to applaud a man in a khaki uniform standing on the balcony, who saluted, according to this screenshot from Canadian television.

The man was identified as Hunka by the Associated Press, which published a photograph showing Zelenskyy smiling and raising a fist during the ovation.

The AP caption described Hunka as having “fought with the First Ukrainian Division in World War II before later immigrating to Canada.” The First Ukrainian Division is another name for the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, the military wing of the Nazi Party; the unit was also called SS Galichina.

This is the same unit that is honored by controversial monuments in Canada, Australia, and, as the Forward recently exposed, the suburbs of Philadelphia and Detroit. Jewish groups have called for their removal.

After a Forward article in August that was followed by coverage in the Philadelphia Inquirer, local television stations and other news outlets, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia temporarily covered the monument located in a cemetery in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, pending discussions with local Jewish leaders. The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and regional branches of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League had expressed outrage about the monument.

FROM THAT ABOVE LINKED ARTICLE:

Two monuments to a Nazi military division with a record of war crimes have been hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Detroit. Both honor the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), commonly known as SS Galichina.

Formed in 1943, SS Galichina was a Ukrainian unit in the Waffen-SS — the combat branch of the SS (Schutzstaffel) wing of the Nazi Party. Such units “were heavily involved in the commission of the Holocaust through their participation in mass shootings, anti-partisan warfare, and in supplying guards for Nazi concentration camps,” according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and were “responsible for many other war crimes.” 

Marches and monuments honoring SS Galichina in other nations including Canada have been condemned by Jewish organizations and the governments of Ukraine, Germany and Israel. The Forward has over the last three years documented more than 1,600 monuments, memorials and streets honoring Holocaust perpetrators and Third Reich collaborators in 30 countries.

Formed in 1943, SS Galichina was composed of recruits from the Galicia region in western Ukraine. The unit was armed and trained by the Nazis and commanded by German officers. In 1944, the division was visited by SS head Heinrich Himmler, who spoke of the soldiers’ willingness to slaughter Poles.”

Three months earlier, SS Galichina subunits perpetrated what is known as the Huta Pieniacka massacre, burning 500 to 1,000 Polish villagers alive.

During the Nuremberg Trials, the International Military Tribunal declared the Waffen-SS to be a criminal organization responsible for mass atrocities including the “persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labor program, and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners.” 

After the war, thousands of SS Galichina veterans were allowed to resettle in the West, around 2,000 of them in Canada. By then, the unit was universally known as the First Ukrainian Division.  

A blog by an association of its veterans, called “Combatant News” in Ukrainian, includes an autobiographical entry by a Yaroslav Hunka that says he volunteered to join the division in 1943 and several photographs of him during the war. The captions say the pictures show Hunka during SS artillery training in Munich in December 1943 and in Neuhammer (now Świętoszów), Poland, the site of Himmler’s visit. 

In posts to the blog dated 2011 and 2010, Hunka describes 1941 to 1943 as the happiest years of his life and compares the veterans of his unit, who were scattered across the world, to Jews.

Canada has two monuments to the unit, one in a Wayville, which is outside Toronto, the other in Edmonton. Canadian Jewish organizations have called for their removal. ….

By the way, at the beginning of this conflict I was of the mindset of Dennis Prager that Ukrainian Fascism was a Russian propaganda lie. I can also see the point made that maybe there is more truth to the matter than we are told. Maybe the safe way to say it is that Ukraine has many more Nazi’s that the United States, per capita.

But is this an “enemy of my enemy” situation? Yeah, probably:

Enemy Of The Enemy

In its existential struggle against Russian invaders, Ukraine, a pro-Western democracy, has elevated some problematic heroes with fascist origins. And its allies — including Jewish leaders and liberal politicians usually on guard against such forces — have largely downplayed or denied this phenomenon.

Here is a story by NBC NEWS I read a while back:

Of the many distortions manufactured by Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify Russia’s assault on Ukraine, perhaps the most bizarre is his claim that the action was taken to “denazify” the country and its leadership. In making his case for entering his neighbor’s territory with armored tanks and fighter jets, Putin has stated that the move was undertaken “to protect people” who have been “subjected to bullying and genocide,” and that Russia “will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.”

On its face, Putin’s smear is absurd, not least because Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and has said that members of his family were killed during World War II. There is also no evidence of recent mass killings or ethnic purges taking place in Ukraine. Moreover, labeling enemies Nazis is a common political ploy in Russia, especially from a leader who favors disinformation campaigns and wants to stir up feelings of national vengeance against a WWII foe to justify conquest.

But even though Putin is engaging in propaganda, it’s also true that Ukraine has a genuine Nazi problem — both past and present. Putin’s destructive actions — among them the devastation of Jewish communities — make clear that he’s lying when he says his goal is to ensure anyone’s welfare. But important as it is to defend the yellow-and-blue flag against the Kremlin’s brutal aggression, it would be a dangerous oversight to deny Ukraine’s antisemitic history and collaboration with Hitler’s Nazis, as well as the latter-day embrace of neo-Nazi factions in some quarters.

On the eve of World War II, Ukraine was home to one the largest Jewish communities in Europe, with estimates as high as 2.7 million, a remarkable number considering the territory’s long record of antisemitism and pogroms. By the end, more than half would perish. When German troops took control of Kyiv in 1941, they were welcomed by “Heil Hitler” banners. Soon after, nearly 34,000 Jews — along with Roma and other “undesirables” — were rounded up and marched to fields outside the city on the pretext of resettlement only to be massacred in what became known as the “Holocaust by bullets.”

The Babyn Yar ravine continued to fill up as a mass grave for two years. With as many as 100,000 murdered there, it became one of the largest single killing sites of the Holocaust outside of Auschwitz and other death camps. Researchers have noted the key role locals played in fulfilling Nazi kill orders at the site.

Nowadays, Ukraine counts between 56,000 to 140,000 Jews, who enjoy freedoms and protections never imagined by their grandparents. That includes an updated law passed last month criminalizing antisemitic acts. Unfortunately, the law was intended to address a pronounced uptick in public displays of bigotry, including swastika-laden vandalism of synagogues and Jewish memorials, and eerie marches in Kyiv and other cities that celebrated the Waffen SS.

In another ominous development, Ukraine has in recent years erected a glut of statues honoring Ukrainian nationalists whose legacies are tainted by their indisputable record as Nazi proxies. The Forward newspaper cataloged some of these deplorables, including Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), whose followers acted as local militia members for the SS and German army. “Ukraine has several dozen monuments and scores of street names glorifying this Nazi collaborator, enough to require two separate Wikipedia pages,” the Forward wrote.

FROM THAT ABOVE LINKED ARTICLE:

L’viv and two other locales — 1.5 million Jews, a quarter of all Jews murdered in the Holocaust, came from Ukraine. Over the past six years, the country has been institutionalizing worship of the paramilitary Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which collaborated with the Nazis and aided in the slaughter of Jews, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which massacred thousands of Jews and 70,000-100,000 Poles. A major figure venerated in today’s Ukraine is Stepan Bandera (1909–1959), the Nazi collaborator who led a faction of OUN (called OUN-B); above are his statues in L’viv (left) and Ivano-Frankivsk (right). Many thanks to Per Anders Rudling, Tarik Cyril Amar and Jared McBride for their guidance on Ukrainian collaborators.

THAT BEING SAID, the leader of Ukraine is proud and vocal about his Jewish heritage:

… When Volodymyr Zelensky won his election in 2019, it meant that for the first time in Ukraine’s history, the country had a president and a prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, who were both Jewish and open about their Jewish background. For a time, Ukraine was the only country outside of Israel where the heads of state and government were Jewish. Yet neither promoted nor relied on ethnicity in their politics.

In fact, Tsyba, a childhood friend and now MP in Zelenksy’s Servant of the People party, says Zelensky rarely mentioned his Jewish background and it was not something people talked about. “It never mattered … There were a lot of Jewish people around yet there was no particular interest in who was who.”

Grandparents

Days before taking office in 2019, Zelensky put flowers on the grave of his Jewish grandfather, who fought the Nazis in World War II.

“[Simon] went through the whole war and remains forever in my memory one of those heroes who defended Ukraine from the Nazis. Thanks for the fact that the inhuman ideology of Nazism is forever a thing of the past. Thanks to those who fought against Nazism — and won.” …

(THE JEWISH CHRONICLE)

So, while I agree that the Left in Canada is horrible, like they are here. They in no way support “Fascists” openly…. sorta (BREITBART):

See my posts:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has many political issues right now, from his suppression of the Freedom Convoys Covid protests to how the Canadian government froze bank accounts of those involved in the protest. But his problems do not include openly supporting historical Nazism.

He is a Lefty who was a horrible replacement for Stephen Harper, an awesome balance to Barack Obama to have North America hold the freedom line… but we are stuck with our Northern Neighbor’s choice till 2025. Hopefully the Canucks elect a “Pierre Poilievre” type.

One can only hope.

The Cluster B Society | Christopher Rufo

Published by Papa Giorgio

How psychological dysfunction has been embedded in our institutions.

CHRISTOPHER F. RUFO:

You’re not imagining that the world has gone mad.

Healthy debate has been replaced by activist hysterics. Speech is declared violence, while violence is excused as speech. Masculinity is condemned as regressive, while men in skirts and heels are celebrated in the public square.

It’s easy to laugh at these outbursts as the ravings of a small but vocal minority, but the compromised health of our body politic is not a trivial concern. A strange, new pattern of psychological dysfunction has infiltrated our most prestigious institutions, our corporate bureaucracies, and the highest offices in the land.

In short, we’re sick. Our society is out of balance. We’ve been consumed by a cluster of disorder that appeals to our worst instincts and deranges our most important social functions.

We need to recover our sanity. But to do so, we must first know exactly what we’re dealing with: the emergence of a Cluster B Society.