Parents Organize to Fight Back against authoritarian "welfare" organizations
  
Brian was a 15-year-old big man on campus. Good-looking and witty, he had a way with the girls, and the guys thought he was fun too.

But Brian’s party spirit included consuming lots of alcohol. Soon he was smoking pot, and then even that was not enough. In a few months he was not only using hard drugs but selling them, too.

For a while he was able to maintain his charm and respectful attitude at home. Inevitably, his personality and health quickly plummeted along with his school attendance and grades.

Thankfully, his parents finally recognized the problem before it was too late and enrolled Brian in a private residential drug-rehab clinic.

The reality that Brian had become a secret addict under their noses crushed his mom and dad. They felt guilty, helpless, and heartbroken.

On their knees before God, they pledged to do everything possible to help their son and committed to change their lives so they could be a bigger part of his.

When they called the clinic to arrange a meeting and seek reconciliation with their beloved boy, they were told that they could have no contact.

As a physician, Brian’s dad asked to review the medical records and speak to the doctor so he might understand the treatment. He was flatly turned down.

Why the secrecy? Brian’s father was told that the law forbids parental access to Brian’s medical information without his consent. And Brian — detoxing, embarrassed, and angry at the world — would not consent.

Since the state laws extended to every rehab center and Brian’s life was in jeopardy from drug abuse, there was no choice but to allow Brian to complete the program. Without his parents’ help, it took far too long for Brian to get well. He and his parents still despise the laws that kept them apart during a vulnerable and painful period.

The law far too often gets between parents and their children. Increasingly, just when kids need their parents the most, moms and dads discover that the state has taken their place; that the government has determined that immature children, often in trouble because of bad choices, are wiser than their parents.

A nonpartisan group of parents is fighting back. Led by Deborah Flora, Parents United America seeks to restore parental authority in every area of a child’s life.

“The biggest argument against parental rights is that the state needs to protect children from potentially abusive parents,” Ms. Flora said. “However, we have laws in place to deal with abuse. The state should never try to usurp the rights of the vast majority of parents who work tirelessly to provide a home and a future for their children. Yet that is what we are seeing from multiple fronts in our society.”

Ms. Flora points to several frightening examples of how the government is quickly becoming not just a nanny state — not just a bully of a big brother — but a god-like, all-encroaching force set on destroying the family unit. Consider:

A six-year-old girl in Texas was committed to a mental-health facility without parental consent.

State legislators in Washington are attempting to require mandatory sex ed for kindergartners even though 54% of the community is against it.

When parents of a five-month-old boy sought medical care for a broken bone, he was forcibly taken from his parents by Colorado by Child Protective Services and placed in foster care without due process. It turns out that the baby wasn’t abused but suffered from a bone disease.

In many states, parents of children as young as 12 are denied access to their medical records without the child’s consent.

Wisconsin parents are suing the Madison Metropolitan School District over a new policy that allows children of any age to change their gender identity at school without their parents knowledge.

You probably have your own horror stories. To share them, join hands and hearts with other loving parents — and get help to fight back — by logging on to www.parentsunitedamerica.org.

Ms. Flora told me, “Most parents want what is best for the children. The question is, who gets to decide? Remote bureaucrats who don’t know the individual needs and unique personalities of each child? Or the parent who knows their children intimately, who understand what brings them joy and what keeps them up at night? This radical shift is only happening because many parents are either unaware or bullied into silence.”

"Numerous studies in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that the key factor in helping children flourish is parental engagement,“ Ms. Flora continued. "Anyone who truly cares about the well-being of children will fight for increased parental engagement, not take a radical stance to exclude them. Parents United America connects, informs, and empowers parents by joining our voices. When united, parents will become an unstoppable force that can no longer be ignored by administrators, bureaucrats, or politicians.”

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Supreme Court Strikes Down Orwellian Government Attempt to Redefine the Catholic Church in Puerto Rico

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a horrifying Orwellian court ruling that told the Catholic Church in Puerto Rico that it could not define itself as an organization. Puerto Rico's Supreme Court had ruled that individual Catholic churches and schools do not exist as independent legal entities, holding them jointly liable for claims against the "Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church in Puerto Rico."

In a unanimous decision in Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Juan, Puerto Rico v. Yali Acevedo Feliciano, et al. (2020), the Court struck down the previous ruling on technical grounds of jurisdiction that had nothing to do with the Puerto Rico court's extensive violation of the Catholic Church's religious freedom to define its own structure. However, Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurring opinion insisting that the underlying religious freedom issue is important and may need to be reconsidered.

"Our clients are pleased that the court vacated the Puerto Rico court’s ruling that jeopardized their ability to operate without government interference," Lea Patterson, Counsel to First Liberty Institute, which represented two Catholic schools in the case, said in a statement. "If a court can dictate a church’s operating structure, it’s only a matter of time until government tells churches what they can believe. The Supreme Court’s decision is an important step towards protecting religious liberty in Puerto Rico."

The case dates back to 2016 when former employees of various Catholic schools brought suit against a number of Catholic entities, including the two schools in question. The Puerto Rico Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision finding that individual Catholic churches and schools don't exist as independent legal entities but rather holding them jointly liable for claims against the "Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church in Puerto Rico," an entity that does not exist. The true organization unit is the Archdiocese of San Juan.

In its brief to the Supreme Court, First Liberty argued, "By assigning legal personality to an entity that does not exist within the Catholic Church’s polity while dissolving the legal personalities of entities that do exist within that structure, the decision below destroys the hierarchical polity governing Catholic churches and other Catholic entities throughout Puerto Rico."

The Supreme Court struck down the ruling on jurisdiction grounds, remanding the decision back to lower courts. Yet Justices Thomas and Alito argued that "As the Solicitor General notes, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment at a minimum demands that all jurisdictions use neutral rules in determining whether particular entities that are associated in some way with a religious body may be held responsible for debts incurred by other associated entities."

They raised important questions that "may well merit our review": "(1) the degree to which the First Amendment permits civil authorities to question a religious body’s own understanding of its structure and the relationship between associated entities and (2) whether, and if so to what degree, the First Amendment places limits on rules on civil liability that seriously threaten the right of Americans to the free exercise of religion as members of a religious body."

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian law firm responsible for many Supreme Court victories, filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the Catholic schools.

"The U.S. Constitution protects every American’s right to exercise religious freedom, and central to that freedom is a church’s ability to decide its own structure without civil government intrusion," ADF Vice President of Appellate Advocacy and Senior Counsel John Bursch said in a statement. "The U.S. Supreme Court properly vacated the Puerto Rico courts’ ill-advised attempt at church governance by deciding for themselves what constitutes ‘the Catholic Church’ in Puerto Rico."

"Our country has an admirable history of restraining the government’s impulse to police and micromanage communities of faith, and we are confident that the Puerto Rico courts will now abide by this vital constitutional principle, which ADF highlighted in its friend-of-the-court brief and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas echoed in their concurrence to the high court’s order," Bursch concluded.

Churches and religious organizations must have the freedom to define themselves as they see fit. Intrusions into this liberty are a serious injustice, as Luke Goodrich explains in his book Free to Believe: the Battle Over Religious Freedom in America.

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Abortion Debate Shows How Media Deploys Language Gymnastics to Serve Left-Wing Goals

“Pregnancy Kills. Abortion Saves Lives.”

That was the headline on an absurd opinion article in The New York Times, deploying Orwellian language to turn the abortion debate on pro-lifers and comfort those who support abortion on demand.

The media, cleverly and often subtly, use rhetorical adjustments to reinforce left-wing ideas under the guise of objectivity.

It’s not just on the abortion issue that the media kowtow to the left in the terminology they use in charged public debates.

For instance, The Guardian, a British outlet, recently updated its style guide to reinforce the idea that challenging prevailing left-wing ideas about man-made climate change is fundamentally illegitimate.

The Guardian is updating our style guide to accurately reflect the nature of the environmental crisis.

“Climate change” —> “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown”

“Global warming” —> “global heating”

“Climate skeptic” —> “climate science denier”

Few topics, however, draw out media bias like abortion, where the concerns of pro-life Americans are left on the back page or uncovered, and a magnifying glass is put on anyone who challenges pro-abortion orthodoxy.

Ultimately, media bias regarding abortion is nothing new. Ross Douthat, a conservative New York Times columnist, wrote in 2012:

Conservative complaints about media bias are sometimes overdrawn. But on the abortion issue, the press’s prejudices are often absolute, its biases blatant, and its blinders impenetrable. In many newsrooms and television studios across the country, Planned Parenthood is regarded as the equivalent of, well, the Komen foundation: an apolitical, high-minded and humanitarian institution whose work no rational person—and certainly no self-respecting woman—could possibly question or oppose.

This is certainly the case today.

Not only is coverage of abortion highly skewed, but it’s clear that the language used to describe it is made to soften the reality of what the practice is, while diminishing the concerns of those who believe fundamental rights are being violated.

NPR, which is of course publicly funded, recently updated its language guidelines for reporters.

Here are some of the terms now off-limits for NPR journalists: pro-life, late-term abortion, fetal heartbeat, partial birth.

Instead they are to use terms such as “intact dilation and extraction” (to describe a partial-birth abortion)and “medical or health clinics that perform abortions” (instead of simply “abortion clinics”).

The phrase “abortion doctor” also would drop off the list of acceptable phrases. Instead, NPR reporters are instructed to list the doctor’s name and write that he “operated a clinic where abortions are performed.”

If anything, the attempt to use more scientific language to describe abortions, such as “intact dilation and extraction” in the place of “partial birth abortion,” at best merely confuses readers as to what actually is being performed.

This article does a lot to explain why our abortion debate is utterly dysfunctional. A mainstream outlet openly articulating its policy for manipulating language to disguise what abortion is

Of course, NPR has also set strict guidelines about how to treat the words “unborn” and “baby,” making sure that reporters never describe, well, unborn babies in anything other than technical language to remove thorny debates about personhood or humanity. NPR instructs its reporters:

The term ‘unborn’ implies that there is a baby inside a pregnant woman, not a fetus. Babies are not babies until they are born. They’re fetuses. Incorrectly calling a fetus a ‘baby’ or ‘the unborn’ is part of the strategy used by antiabortion groups to shift language/legality/public opinion.

Media bias on this issue will become only more pronounced as the “positive good” school of thought about abortion becomes more pronounced on the left than the “safe, legal, and rare” camp.

Regardless of where one stands on the issue of abortion, attempts to dance around prickly questions about life and humanity are unlikely to solve the division.

The media, as is so common today, distinctly reveals its biases and lets slip the mask of objectivity that’s becoming increasingly difficult for Americans to believe.

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Audiences have had a gutful of incessant pontificating and virtue signalling by Hollywood and actors generally

Comment from Australia

While normally not one to believe conspiracy theories, I sometimes muse there is a secret and sinister political movement that over many years has infiltrated our creative and performing arts industry and now controls it. Its members are actors, writers and singers, and they range from the highest paid celebrities to those struggling to make a name for themselves.

If there is such a movement, its methodology is to subject audiences and the wider community to incessant pontificating and displays of virtue, the aim being to elect and defend centre-right governments worldwide. You read that correctly. Conservatives are massively indebted to celebrities for sabotaging so-called progressive causes.

You probably thought Hollywood is a hive of leftist activism, that writers’ festivals are an imbibing of wokeism, and that concerts take the form of endless social justice homilies, interrupted only by the occasional song. If so, you failed to look beyond the superficial. While ostensibly supporting movements that the left holds dear, these artists use self-ridicule not only to discredit themselves, but everyone associated with the cause in question.

When Sir Elton John paused his concert in Verona, Italy, last year to rage against the evils of Brexit, he personified the petulance of Remainers. “I’m ashamed of my country for what it has done,” he wailed. “It’s torn people apart … I am a European. I am not a stupid, colonial, imperialist English idiot.”

Not so ashamed, apparently, that he would surrender his knighthood, together with its connotations of a colonialist and imperialist country of old. Only months later Britain’s conservative government, led by prime minister Boris Johnson, won a landslide victory under a Brexit banner.

As for US president Donald Trump, the celebrities who so loudly opposed his election in 2016 are doing their best to ensure he is given a second term. To acknowledge all of them would be too massive a task. Two warrant special mention: first: actor Robert De Niro, who announced in a choreographed scene just before the 2016 election that he wanted to “punch” Trump in the face.

It reeked of De Niro trying to trade on his onscreen tough guy persona, and merely highlighted the Democrats’ bluster and impotence.

The other is singer and actor Bette Midler. When she’s not tweeting foul-mouthed insults to Republican supporters, she composes what can only be described as erotic Vogon poetry as she speculates about Trump’s sex life.

There once was a girl from Slovenia
Who now lives right on Pennsylvinia
To the East Room she’ll flee
From her husband’s wee wee
While he plays with his own schizophrenia

— Bette Midler (@BetteMidler) June 18, 2019

It is behaviour that is imbecilic, pathetic and counterproductive. Given Midler’s abysmal record in trying to unseat Trump, prime minister Scott Morrison is unlikely to be fazed to learn that last month she questioned his leadership, as well as labelling him an “idiot” and a “f**kwit”.

Pity the poor #Australians, their country ablaze, and their rotten @ScottMorrisonMP saying, “This is not the time to talk about Climate Change. We have to grow our economy.” What an idiot. What good is an economy in an uninhabitable country? Lead, you fuckwit!!

— Bette Midler (@BetteMidler) January 3, 2020

As for Australia, we too have a tradition of celebrities lending their support to causes, only to botch them completely. When the minority Gillard Government rolled out a publicity campaign for its carbon tax in 2011, remember who fronted the camera to serenely inform financially strapped Australians this was all in the name of addressing “carbon pollution”?

That’s right, it was actor and multimillionaire Cate Blanchett, accompanied by fellow actor Michael Caton, whose idea of establishing his common man cred was to wear a flannelette shirt. One of the few who thought the choice of Blanchett was a good idea was then Treasurer Wayne Swan, which only showed he knew as much about connecting with ordinary Australians as he did delivering budget surpluses.

In 2015 — just prior to the executions of Australian drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran — actors Bryan Brown, Geoffrey Rush, Guy Pearce and Joel Edgerton and others featured in a video titled “Save our boys”. It was based on the false and slanderous insinuation the Abbott Government was doing nothing to ask the Indonesian Government to grant clemency.

While the celebrities were largely restricted to reciting “I stand for mercy”, the video also featured lesser known types indulging in rank opportunism. Some examples: “Show some ticker,” “Come on Abbott, be a leader,” “Imagine if it was your child”, and “The time for diplomacy has now passed”. The corollary being an invasion of Indonesia I take it?

If you thought that was abject stupidity, wait for this: “Tony Abbott you need to give diplomatic immunity and protection to Andrew and Myuran before it’s too late,” an anonymous blonde woman tartly states. But the daddy of them all was from actor Brendan Cowell.

“Tony, if you had any courage and compassion, you’d get over to Indonesia and bring these two boys home,” sneered Cowell as he was filmed reclining on a bed. “Show some balls,” he added contemptuously.

As to who was lacking a pair, that was made very clear when Cowell hurriedly deleted his Twitter account in response to a social media backlash. He also conceded to radio station 2UE that he had no idea how Abbott could prevent the executions.

Brown surfaced again in 2018, along with New Zealand actors Sam Neill and Rebecca Gibney and singer Jimmy Barnes, this time in a video decrying the policy of detaining asylum-seekers in Manus and Nauru. Urging politicians to “stop playing politics with people’s lives” (oh the irony), Neill described these measures as a “barbarity”. For good measure Gibney’s voice quavered as she urged Australians to lobby politicians. As expected, none of the celebrities concerned suggested a viable alternative to mandatory detention.

All these cases and countless others serve as an example to celebrities that the best thing they could do for their pet causes is not to be a part of them, at least not overtly. Or if they must appear publicly in these movements, they should not condescend or patronise.

Clearly this was lost on actor Simon Baker, star of the television series The Mentalist. This week Greenpeace launched a climate change and renewable energy campaign video titled “Dear Scotty” featuring the actor, which targeted the prime minister. “Mate, sorry to do this to you,” he says in the opening scene, dripping with faux melancholy as he and others lambast Morrison in sequence for his supposed failings. “How will history remember you?” he asks pensively.

Should not a renowned actor be expected to — how does one put this — act? Likewise, they should be able to recognise a lousy script. “The audience should be treated with a certain level of intelligence, and I get very upset when we talk down to them,” Baker told the Glasgow Times in 2015. “It annoys me,” he added. Yes, Mr Baker. It annoys us too.

In 2018, Baker campaigned against Adani’s Carmichael Mine, telling viewers it was “just inland” from the Great Barrier Reef. In fact, the distance between the two is around 350km. “It’ll unleash one of the biggest reservoirs of carbon pollution we’ve ever known,” he said. “It’s a death sentence for the reef.” This is fearmongering. It is also elitist, given the unemployment rate in regional Queensland is higher than 14 per cent in some areas. Then again, it is all too easy to forget the plight of the unemployed when your lifestyle reflects that of the highest-paid actor in US television.

Predictably he also voices his opposition to “fossil fuels”, yet when Baker resided in Los Angeles he and his family frequently travelled between the US and Australia. “Mate, sorry to do this to you,” you might ask him, “but can we assume none of these multiple international trips involved a zero-carbon yacht?” Or “When you were filming in Western Australia in 2018 and someone stepped on your glasses, is it true you flew to New York just to get a replacement pair from your favourite store?”

Again, sorry for the impertinent questions. We are just compiling a record about you and all other activist celebrities. Its title is “How will history remember you?”

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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