Wednesday, September 04, 2019


Preaching Race-Bait Hate

Instead of working to fix our community, "faith leaders" are protesting the police.

In my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, a recent incident involving black suspects and white law-enforcement officers is proving to be yet another case study of how perennial race-baiting agitators wait for any opening to promote themselves.

The opportunities for such self-aggrandizement have been slim lately, but finally, opportunity rang. Two white Hamilton County deputies stopped a vehicle for having unlawfully dark window tinting — which is to say they could not see inside the vehicle — always dangerous to officers making a stop, which is one of the reasons window tinting is regulated. Because the officers could not see the occupants of the vehicle, it would be difficult to make a “racial profiling” case, but crack cocaine was found in the underwear of a black occupant (a favorite place for concealment) and that is the basis for the race hustlers’ complaint.

The usual race-baiters have their panties in a wad, claiming the suspect, who as it turns out has 40 prior arrests, was “strip searched” in public and subjected to a “cavity search,” despite the fact video footage from two camera angles negates those claims. After a meeting of black community faith leaders convened, most pastors declined to participate in this charade. But a small group of the loudest agitators, along with the leader of hater Louis Farrakhan’s local Nation of Islam cadre, are calling for Sheriff Jim Hammond’s resignation.

My friend Mark Alexander, who has a background in law enforcement, has known Jim Hammond for 30 years, and notes, “Jim is a man with an impeccable color-blind career, an ethical and faithful man who is the most professional Sheriff in HCSO’s history — by a measure of magnitude.” But leftists never let facts get in the way of their agenda.

Meanwhile, Chattanooga, like most urban centers Democrat mayors are turning into slums, had one of the bloodiest weekends of 2019. Among the murder victims was a pregnant 19-year-old and mother of a two-½-year-old girl. But the agitators and community are not coming together to find the assailant or demand justice for this young mother; they are on the government steps blasting the officers that have sworn to protect and serve them.

Pastors and ministers are not called to be race-bait hustlers but peacemakers. Peacemakers are not partial and prejudiced. Ironically, the racially biased behavior exhibited by these local “men of faith” is the same behavior they claim they oppose.

Of course, race-baiting hustlers are nothing new.

Writing about such race agitators in his 1911 book, My Larger Education, Booker T. Washington wrote the following words that are even more relevant to present-day race agitators: “There is [a] class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public… Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays.”

Washington continued: “Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs… There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”

The real tragedy in this unfortunate situation is that young black men are dying at an alarming rate, most murdered by other young black men.

Pastors, where is your concern for the souls of these citizens? Where is the call to repentance? Where is the strategy to build flourishing Christian families? Where is the Good News of the Gospel that gives your community hope? These are valid questions that challenge these race-bait agitators. Instead of fulfilling the Great Commission, these pastors have been indoctrinated with hatred and black tribalism, fomented by today’s Democrat Party and its cadres of social justice warriors who thrive on dividing us by race and every other measure.

Truth is, the great majority of Hamilton County citizens support our law enforcement, as do real pastors doing the real work of the cross. We will not stand idly by while radical Islamists and agitators sow racial discord in our community. We have worked too hard and too long to build a peaceful city.

As Washington wrote, “Great men cultivate love. … Only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.”

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'The Bible Stays!' Trump Admin Stands Up to Anti-Christian Bullies
   
For eight years the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and the Obama administration waged a relentless war on religious liberty within the ranks of the Armed Forces.

Nativity scenes were removed from military bases, airmen were punished because of their religious beliefs, and VA hospitals imposed draconian rules that even forbade school children from distributing Christmas cards that included the words “Merry Christmas.”

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s most recent attack came in May when it filed a federal lawsuit demanding that a World War II veteran’s family Bible be removed from a Missing Man Table at the VA Medical Center in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Herman Streitburger, who recently turned 100 years old, was captured by German fighters in 1944 and held as a prisoner of war. Mr. Streitburger donated his family Bible to the table honoring missing military personnel and prisoners of war.

But the MRFF claims the inclusion of the World War II veteran’s Bible on the Missing Man Table is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

It was not the first time it made such an accusation, and more often than not VA hospitals capitulated to its demands without even putting up a fight.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to tell the nation it was time to fight back.

“We will always respect the freedom of religion of every veteran of every faith,” the vice president said in remarks to the American Legion. “And my message to the New Hampshire VA hospital is: The Bible stays.”

The vice president affirmed what I have been reporting for over a decade at Fox News — the Obama administration was no friend to people of faith.

“It’s really no surprise because, under the last administration, VA hospitals were removing Bibles and even banning Christmas carols in an effort to be politically correct,” he said.

The vice president vowed that the Trump administration would always respect the freedom of religion of every veteran of every faith. “But let me be clear: Under this administration, VA hospitals will not be religion-free zones,” he said.

Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the MRFF, was enraged by the vice president’s remarks.

“Mike Pence is one of the most repulsive and repellent fundamentalist Christian supremacists and bullies on the scene today,” he said in a prepared statement. “It is hardly surprising that he is lending his ugly bigotry and pervasive prejudice in support of keeping that Christian bible bolted down on that POW/MIA table.”

VA Secretary Robert Wilkie refused to be bullied by Weinstein’s lawsuit or the Obama administration’s attempt to eliminate religious symbols from VA facilities.

“They did not know the makeup of the force,” Wilkie told the Washington Examiner. “They did not know the history of this country when it came to religious foundations, the religious support for those in uniform.”

In July the Department of Veterans Affairs announced an overhaul of Obama-era policies that limited religious liberty.

Moving forward, children will be able to send veterans religious-themed Christmas cards and patients will be able to use sacred texts during visits to VA chapels. And Bibles will be included on Missing Man Tables.

“It is offensive to me that we send our troops into the most godforsaken places on the planet, and yet we have people suing us because they’re offended by the presence of a Bible at a table memorializing missing soldiers,” he told the Examiner.

People of all faiths, especially Christians, owe the Trump White House a debt of gratitude for defending religious liberty and rolling back the anti-Christian infestation that took root during the previous administration.

Mr. Weinstein once bragged that his organization’s influence was so vast during the Obama administration that he had a hotline to the Pentagon. Well, it looks like President Trump just disconnected the line.

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Why the silence over the behaviour of pro-Remain protesters?

Remainers are the British "swamp"

If you call Anna Soubry a ‘fascist’, you get arrested. If you call pro-Brexit protesters ‘fascists’... nothing.

A clip emerged last night on Twitter of two men unfurling a banner at the Westminster #StopTheCoup demo. It read ‘Brexit Now’ on a blue background that mirrored the logo of the Brexit Party. The Remainer protesters went batshit crazy. The men carrying the banner were surrounded. The crowd started yelling ‘fascists out’ and grabbing at the banner. One protester tried to set it on fire. It really did look like the men were about to be attacked. The police were forced to intervene and even told the men that they ‘should leave’. They eventually moved the men further into Parliament Square and away from the main group of Remainer protesters, who applauded as the men were moved on.

Compare this clip to the clips that circulated in January showing abuse being hurled at Anna Soubry MP and Guardian journalist Owen Jones. In January, Soubry was apoplectic when a small group of protesters chanted ‘Soubry is a Nazi’ from a distance, interrupting her BBC interview. She said the behaviour was ‘astonishing’. ‘This is what has happened to our country’, she said. She was then approached by the protesters as she walked towards parliament. They questioned her on her Brexit stance and called her a fascist again. Owen Jones encountered the same protesters in Westminster. They called him, among other things, a ‘tampon’ and a ‘horrible little man’.

The reaction to these incidents involving Soubry and Jones, both of whom campaigned for Remain, was instant. MPs called for tougher laws. Nicola Sturgeon called the incidents ‘appalling’ and said ‘we all have a duty to stand against this kind of behaviour’. David Lammy MP said the abuse was ‘not only appalling’ but also ‘historically illiterate’. There were immediate calls for legal reform. Dozens of MPs wrote to the Metropolitan Police expressing ‘serious concerns’ about the ‘deteriorating public order and security situation’ in Westminster. Two of the protesters, James Goddard and Brian Phillips, were eventually arrested, charged and convicted for the incidents involving Soubry. Both men received suspended prison sentences.

Yet, so far, there is silence from MPs about the treatment of the Brexiteer protesters yesterday. On one level, this is good. No one should be arrested for spirited protest. But there is also a remarkable double standard. The behaviour of those Remain protesters yesterday was far worse than that of the ‘yellow vest’ protesters who confronted Jones and Soubry. Yet there have been no calls for ‘tougher laws’. No calls for arrests. No one pointing out how historically illiterate it is to call pro-Brexit people fascists.

The hypocrisy is astonishing. Remainers are happy for Brexiteers to be mobbed, but cry ‘harassment’ the moment a Remainer MP or journalist is approached in the street. They are happy if Brexiteer banners get vandalised, or if Brexit-leaning MPs get milkshaked. They are certainly happy to call Brexiteers ‘Nazis’ and ‘fascists’, while calling for anyone who uses the same language against Remainers to be locked up. Remainers use the law to their own ends, which is why Brexiteers are arrested and prosecuted for what they say while Remainers are left alone. What a dreadful double standard.

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We must not introduce new blasphemy laws

The clampdown on ‘Islamophobia’ poses a grave threat to free speech.

The UK schools exam board OCR recently disqualified a GCSE student for making what it called ‘obscene racial comments’. It turned out the student had called halal slaughter disgusting, and OCR ruled that this act of ‘Islamophobia’ constituted a ‘malpractice offence’.

When it was brought to OCR’s attention that the criticisms were made from the student’s perspective as a principled vegetarian, it promptly apologised. But what is truly chilling is the implication that it would have been less merciful had she been criticising an Islamic practice in its own right.

Indeed, OCR seems relaxed about policing students’ opinions, saying it ‘takes all incidences of suspected offensive material against a religious group in exams very seriously’. Apparently, there are ‘rules which are set out for all exam boards in such cases’.

Do we want students to be afraid of applying their own critical thinking to anything and everything? Surely, in an academic context especially, religious practices and beliefs should be freely discussed?

Such censoriousness runs deep. It is increasingly accepted in certain quarters that there are such things as ‘illegitimate opinions’ that must be silenced, and that we must search for the unseen motives of those who hold them to determine the extent of their guilt.

Historically, the accusation of Islamophobia has been employed like a blasphemy law to silence criticism and discussion of Islamic practices. It has been wielded against journalists and researchers investigating issues of public interest – from grooming gangs to Islamist activity – as well as against liberal Muslims, who are tarred as ‘Uncle Toms’ for working to counter extremism.

In November last year, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims published its report on the definition of Islamophobia. The definition has already been adopted by political parties and councils. But it has not faced proper scrutiny. And it should. Because it could have potentially insidious effects on civil liberties. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that is certainly true of this definition.

The APPG defines Islamophobia as being ‘rooted in racism’ and as ‘a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’. This vague, expansive definition rests on the confused concept of ‘cultural racism’ – a form of racism that supposedly expresses itself through aversion to cultural practices. The Islamophobia definition therefore conflates anti-Muslim discrimination and mere criticism of beliefs and practices.

Criticising what is thought to be a symbol of Muslim culture – the hijab, for example – could, under this definition, be perceived as targeting expressions of Muslimness. Sound unlikely? Ofsted was accused of racism last year after it raised concerns about very young female pupils wearing the hijab to school (girls wearing the hijab from a young age can be construed as a form of sexualisation). For this, it was accused of Islamophobic racism.

The APPG definition attempts to draw a distinction between ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ criticisms of Islamic belief and practice. But such a distinction cannot be easily drawn, and I dread to think who might present themselves as the one to draw it.

In May, a diverse group of more than 40 experts, activists and religious leaders signed an open letter objecting to the APPG’s definition on the grounds that it would harm free speech and silence criticism of Islam. Others have warned that it has the potential to limit historical research.

The APPG insists that the definition won’t trample on free speech. But the report itself is dismissive of free speech, stating that ‘the recourse to the notion of free speech and a supposed right to criticise Islam results in nothing more than another subtle form of anti-Muslim racism, whereby the criticism humiliates, marginalises and stigmatises Muslims’ (my emphasis). ‘Giving up the term Islamophobia – and with it the possibility of creating legal instruments to tackle it – simply because of the perceived risk that may limit free speech would be highly misguided’, it goes on.

It is particularly worrying that the police are now calling on the prime minister to accept the definition, having previously expressed concerns that the definition would undermine counterterrorism efforts.

So far the government has showed more caution than most by rejecting the definition. But in the final months of her premiership, Theresa May set the wheels in motion towards adopting some definition of Islamophobia. She appointed Imam Qari Asim as an adviser. He had previously criticised Boris Johnson for fanning the flames of Islamophobia.

We have no reason to hope that any new definition reached by the government would be any less damaging than the last. Concerns are being expressed from all directions. But there is a real risk they will be swept under the carpet, and our civil liberties with them.

There are many ways to deal with the discrimination faced by Muslims, as a new Civitas anthology explores, but chilling free speech is not one of them.

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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