Wednesday, August 22, 2018



Leftist hate speech

Leftists are by far the main users of hate speech.  The torrent of hate speech pouring out at Trump and his supporters is totally unambiguous.  It cannot be mistaken as anything but hate.  Yet the accusations of hate speech that are normally directed by Leftists at others are rarely directed at utterances that  express hate.  A sincere Christian who opposes homosexual marriage is not acting out of hate but rather out of faith in the unambiguous teachings of his holy book.  It is simply a libel to say that the Christian is acting out of hate.

But what is wrong with hate speech anyway?  U.S. courts have decreed that hate speech is constitutionally protected free speech.  And most people give at least lip service to the desirability of free speech.  The basic answer coming from the Left is that hate speech  leads to hate crimes.  But no evidence is normally quoted for that assertion.  The only scientific study of the theory that I could find I have previously noted here.  The finding was that there was a weak tendency of hate speech against immigrants to go with attacks on immigrants -- but even there it was not at all clear that the speech was the cause of the attacks.

Occasionally a report emerges about a political conservative attacking someone in conjunction with pro-Trump speech  -- as here -- but they are exceedingly rare. 

And what about the (say) 100 million other people who heard Trump's alleged hate speech  and did not assault anybody?  Doesn't that prove that Trump's speech is wonderfully safe and that hate speech does not cause  hate crime?  If hate speech does not lead to hate crime in 100 million cases, what more evidence do we need to conclude that hate speech does not cause hate crimes?

We do have to look at ALL the evidence, of course.  Not that any Leftist ever does.  Reality is so far inconsistent with  Leftist beliefs that they would become conservatives if they let themselves consider all the evidence.

And what evidence do we have that the men would have behaved differently if they had not heard Trump?  There is none.   It is just a claim. Trump could be just an excuse for an inclination to violence.

And how can we base any generalization on one instance?  It's because we can't that we have statistics. If lots of people had gone out and bashed illegals after hearing The Donald, the Left   might have a case.  But as it is, one swallow doesn't make a summer.

Collective hate speech

There is however one sort of hate speech that undoubtedly leads to violence: Not hate speech by one individual but collective hate speech.  History has many examples of that:  The Nazi condemnation of Jews and the Holocaust; the Ku Klux Klan hatred of blacks and the lynching of some of them etc.  If there is a widespread campaign of hate directed at one subset of people, that can generate physical attacks on that group.  And note that both the Ku Klux Klan and Hitler were on the Left.  Hitler was a socialist and the  1924 Democratic National Convention was so dominated by the Klan that it was referred to as the "Klanbake" convention.

And history is repeating itself right now.  There is a concerted campaign of hate pouring out of most of the media directed at Donald Trump and his supporters.  And violence in response is already happening.  The violence is so far mostly trivial, with the major effect being discrimination against conservatives in many ways -- refusing to serve them in restaurants etc.  But such is the volume of hate that history tells us to expect more serious attacks in due course.  Some leading Democrats, such as Maxine Waters, have gone very close to urging it.

Another current form of collective hate speech is hatred of the police, as  encouraged by Obama --  "If I had a son he would look like Trayvon" -- and very recently  continued by Elizabeth Warren.  Clashes with police by blacks are now routinely blamed by blacks on the police -- not on black thugs.  Hate speech against the police is now epidemic among blacks.  And the result?  Several police have been shot and killed.  Collective hate against the police has indisputably led to real violence there.

And to some extent whites generally have been subjected to hate from the Left -- with claims of "white privilege" etc.  There is no clear example of that so far leading to attacks on whites but, again, history leads us to expect that they will come.  Many attacks on whites by blacks in connection with mugging, home-invasions etc. are probably in part motivated by hate but such attacks were going on long before the current campaign condemning whites emanating from the Left.

Where whites do suffer from the outpouring of Leftist anger is in discrimination:  Being knocked back from a job or college enrolment because a less qualified black must  be given preference.  Leftists condemn discrimination but they are by far the biggest practitioners of it  -- JR






The Cost of Homosexual Catholic Abuse

An inconvenient truth: The vast majority of the crime was perpetrated by homosexuals.

The sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in recent days marked the culmination of seven decades of horrendous wrongdoing by hundreds of priests. But the media would rather ignore one particularly inconvenient truth: The vast majority of the crime was perpetrated by homosexuals.

Monsignor Charles Pope, a Catholic priest writing of previous abuse scandals in the National Catholic Register, makes the case:

It is evident that the vast majority of the cases involving both the sexual abuse of minors and of adults involve male victims. The 2004 John Jay Report (The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States), which was commissioned by the U.S. bishops themselves, found that 81 percent of the victims were male and 78 percent of all victims were post-pubescent. . So, the large majority of cases involved attraction by homosexuals to young men who, though legally minors, were physically and sexually mature males, not little children. This is not pedophilia. It is homosexual attraction.

In the Catholic Herald, Madison, Wisconsin, Bishop Robert C. Morlino likewise writes of the current situation, "It is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord." He continues, "In the specific situations at hand, we are talking about deviant sexual - almost exclusively homosexual - acts by clerics."

And Cardinal Raymond Burke, a member of the highest court at the Vatican, the Apostolic Signatura, said, "It was clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were in fact homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men. There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this." He added, "Now it seems clear in light of these recent terrible scandals that indeed there is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even within the hierarchy, which needs to be purified at the root."

Pope Francis reiterated that the Church's policy is not to admit to seminary or holy orders homosexuals, those with such deep-seated tendencies, or those who support a so-called "gay culture." He also wrote, "No effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated."

These horrific crimes have cost the thousands of victims more than we can imagine. But how much has this homosexual culture cost the Catholic Church? Obviously, its reputation has suffered greatly. But lay people who give their tithes and offerings must be appalled that, rather than feeding the hungry or providing other ministerial needs, the Church is attempting to compensate victims for the damage done by priests - to the tune of $3 billion.

Finally, the words of the Apostle Paul are especially damning (Romans 2:24): "For, as it is written, `The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.'"

SOURCE







Another social media giant reveals its leftist bias against conservative content.

Last Thursday, Prager University issued a public statement alerting its millions of Facebook followers to the fact that "our last 9 posts have been completely censored reaching 0 of our 3 million followers." PragerU's Will Witt added, "At least two of our video posts were deleted last night for `hate speech' including a post of our recent video with The Conservative Millennial, Make Men Masculine Again."

The deleted video in question had no graphic content, bad language, or calls for violence warranting Facebook's own parameters for its "hate speech" designation. So why were these videos censored? This is now the second instance of PragerU being "erroneously" censored on social media over the false designation that its conservative political content was "hate speech."

On Friday morning, Facebook issued a lame apology: "We mistakenly removed these videos and have restored them because they don't break our standards. This will reverse any reduction in content distribution you've experienced. We're very sorry and are continuing to look into what happened with your Page." However, the question remains, how could this mistake happen, especially given the fact that PragerU is a well-known and vetted media organization to which millions of people intentionally subscribed for news and opinion?

Much of the answer lies in the obvious leftist bias of those running these social-media giants. In a recent interview on CNN, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted as much, stating that those at Twitter do indeed have a "left-leaning" bias. Left-leaning? At the same time, he claimed that their bias did not affect how they handled "political ideology or viewpoints." Dorsey added, "We do not look at content with regards to political viewpoint or ideology. We look at behavior."

His answer is sly for its presumption of separating ideological content from behavior. Social media exists solely for the public sharing of various thoughts, viewpoints, and ideologies, no matter how trivial or mundane. Yet the social-media gatekeepers have a certain ideological bent that impacts how judgments are made as to what user content constitutes appropriate or inappropriate behavior. Thus, Dorsey's assertion that his and his employees' leftist bias doesn't have an impact on decision-making is dubious at best.

Back to Facebook. Giving no other explanation other than it was a mistake only serves to increase speculation that the pervasive leftist bias within the company was the primary culprit. It's increasingly clear that Facebook's post-2016 algorithms are tilted against conservative perspectives, which are too easily flagged by trolls as content containing "fake news" or "hate speech." As long as millions of Americans seek to get their news from social media, this filtering by the thought police is going to be hugely problematic.

SOURCE






Pastor Faces Eviction for Hosting Home Bible Study
    
A semi-retired Lutheran minister in Fredericksburg, Virginia, faces the possibility of being evicted from a senior living community because he's been hosting a small Bible study in the privacy of his apartment, his attorney alleges.

First Liberty Institute, a law firm that specializes in religious liberty cases, is representing Pastor Ken Hauge. They accused the management of The Evergreens at Smith Run of a pattern of verbal abuse and harassment directed at Christians who live in the complex.

"The threat of eviction follows repeated religious discrimination by Evergreens management, including forcing Hauge to refer to his event as a `Book Review' rather than a `Bible Study,'" First Liberty attorney Hiram Sasser wrote in a letter to the corporate owner of the community.

I reached out to Community Realty Company, the parent company of The Evergreens at Smith Run, and referred the comments to the apartment building manager. The manager did not return my phone call.

Sasser told the "Todd Starnes Radio Show" that management also withdrew support of a social event because a resident said grace over a meal. It also banned all religious activities from the community room.

He is calling on Evergreens to rescind the eviction threat, rescind the rule banning religious activities from the community room, and stop the harassment of people of faith.

Pastor Hauge's troubles with management began in early 2017 when a group of about 20 residents asked him to lead a nondenominational Bible study in the community room. That gathering eventually moved to a private apartment.

Management initially approved of the gathering provided the participants call it a "Book Review" meeting instead of a "Bible Study." In 2018 management relented after a resident complained to corporate headquarters.

However, it was also about that time that Pastor Hauge came under attack from some residents opposed to the gathering.

"Several residents attempted to interfere with the Bible study on several occasions," Sasser said. "At least one of these residents repeatedly harassed and verbally abused Hauge and other Bible study attendees on the basis of their religious beliefs."

On July 23 residents received a notice that the community room was off-limits to future religious activities. Bingo and poker were permissible; prayer was not. On that same day Pastor Hauge and his wife were threatened with an eviction notice.

"The notice threatened to terminate the Hauge's lease and evict them unless Hauge stopped leading the Bible study entirely, either in his private apartment or in the community room," Sasser said.

The eviction threat also accused the pastor of inviting nonresidents to the Bible study and counseling people. However, First Liberty denies the accusations, calling them false.

It also took exception to management labeling the Bible study as a "home business" - which is impermissible according the eviction threat.

"Hauge may be a minister by profession, but he led the Bible study in his personal capacity and on his own time," Sasser said. "He received no compensation for his leadership."

First Liberty Institute accused the senior citizens community of "obstructing and stifling residents' religious beliefs." "These actions violate federal law, including the Fair Housing Act," Sasser said.

The FHA clearly prohibits discrimination against any person because of religion. It also forbids landlords from imposing different conditions or privileges because of a person's religion.

And it appears that's exactly what happened in Fredericksburg.

In essence, the apartment complex told the pastor that if he wishes to stay he must never pray or discuss the Bible with anyone - even in the privacy of his home. That's not just wrong - that's unconstitutional.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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