Sunday, July 05, 2020



The attack on Christ

The devolution of America is reaching a critical stage, and columnist Rod Dreher asks exactly the right question. "What's your Woke Breaking Point?" We may now have an answer. "All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down," tweeted radical BLM activist Shaun King. "They are a gross form of white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down."

King is not alone."Every time you see white Jesus, you see white supremacy," asserts Anthea Butler, associate professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning science-fiction author Nnedi Okorafor agrees, tweeting, "Yes, 'blond blue-eyed jesus' [sic] IS a form of white supremacy."

Both women were quoted in an article denigrating artist Warner E. Sallman's "Head of Christ," a portrait of Jesus that achieved mass popularity in the mid 20th century. In the same article, author Edward J. Blum reveals the endgame the revolutionaries have in mind. "If white Jesus can't be put to death, how could it possibly be the case that systemic racism is done?" Blum asserts. "Because this is one that just seems obvious. This one seems easy to give up."

Obvious? Who's kidding whom? This isn't about white Jesus or any other religious statues that have represented Christianity for over two millennia. As columnist Andrea Peyser astutely notes, "Biblical figures have long been represented by images that resemble the artist's own community. So in Ethiopia, Jesus has been depicted as black for more than 1,500 years. In the Far East, works showing Jesus as Asian can be found. There's nothing to stop artists from creating new works depicting Jesus however they wish."

That's not good enough for a mob that does not wish to compete on the battlefield of ideas, culture, or religious sensibilities. Their agenda is about the acquisition and maintenance of absolute power — by any means necessary. Thus, attacking one of the few bastions of conservatism that hasn't been completely defiled by capitulation to "woke" sensibilities is an absolute necessity.

And just to be clear, this is not in reference to the Christian leaders in various denominations who long ago surrendered their moral authority to the mob. This is about ordinary Americans derided by former President Barack Obama as people who bitterly "cling" to their religion because they dare to stand against an all-encompassing progressive dogma.

One that now threatens their very existence.

Thus, an army of wannabe fascist enforcers is displaying an animus that abounds in the history of totalitarian takeovers. "Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries have always hated Christianity because it elevates truth and offers a moral authority beyond politics," columnist Lloyd Billingsley explains.

Politics is too nice a word. What religion in general and Christianity in particular represent is the antithesis of totalitarian control that seeks to literally replace God with government. Government run by those for whom the idea that there is something bigger than mankind — and thus a government of men — represents the most potent threat to their contemptible ambitions. "Our fundamental rights don't come from the government," former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee reminds us, "because if government gives them, government can take them. They come from God, and we created a government unlike any that's ever been, whose sole purpose was to protect those God-given rights so that we could live in our personal, individual liberty."

Because that immutable reality represents an existential threat to the progressive agenda, the onslaught won't stop with white Jesus or other religious statues. In Salinas, California, evangelical Christian church New Harvest is being forced to sell its downtown property because a city ordinance bans houses of worship from occupying the first floor of downtown buildings. A federal court in the San Francisco Bay Area recently sided with the city, ruling that churches generate limited interest, do not draw tourists, and therefore detract from the city's stated aim to "establish a pedestrian-friendly, active and vibrant Main Street."

That the Court itself noted the church's weekly schedule of activities "includes a Sunday morning worship service (including a worship band) and programs for children and teens/tweens; a Tuesday evening worship service, 'Fun Club' for children ages 3-4, and boys' ministries (which alternate weekly between two different age groups); a Thursday evening worship band rehearsal; a Friday evening prayer meeting; and a women's Bible study on some Saturday mornings"?

"Salinas deems churches as less deserving of equal treatment under the law than the live children's theatre, two cinemas, and event center that share the city's downtown corridor with New Harvest Fellowship," said Pacific Justice Institute Chief Counsel Kevin Snider, the lead attorney who is appealing the ruling to the Ninth Circuit.

What comes after statues and churches? People. People like Colorado baker Jack Phillips, who despite a Supreme Court ruling in his favor regarding exercising his religion by refusing to bake a same-sex wedding cake was targeted yet again by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for refusing to bake a cake celebrating a "gender transition." People like Little Sisters of the Poor who also remain under attack despite a Supreme Court ruling that said they were under no obligation to provide contraceptives and abortifacients to their employees. People like every American who believes in the nuclear family the mob now labels as "cisgender privilege."

In a column for The Week, writer Bonnie Kristian attempts to make the distinction between depictions of a white Jesus for "devotional purposes" and one "whitened to cloak racialized oppression with a lie of divine approval." Christianity Today columnist Christina Cleveland takes it one step further. "Not only is white Jesus inaccurate, he also can inhibit our ability to honor the image of God in people who aren't white."

Really? Then why is the overwhelming majority of racial arson, epitomized by the concepts of "intersectionality" and white "privilege," coming from the secular Left? Why is the blue state of California trying to reinstitute affirmative action? Why are progressive black college students demanding segregated dorms? And why did a county in the blue state of Oregon demand that only white people wear masks?

It is absolutely critical that decent Americans understand one thing above all else: The mob is not the least bit interested in compromise or reconciliation. Every concession made by people who consider themselves reasonable and decent will be met by demands for further concessions. And until they reach the point of absolute control, the mob's appetite will never be satisfied.

That's not politics. It's human nature, and as such people will be forced to take a side, even those naive enough to believe being "down with the cause" offers them exemption. There is no exemption, and in November, the electorate will be presented with one of the clearest choices in history:

One can vote for civilization, the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and freedom of religion — or one can vote for Democrats.

SOURCE 






A cowed nation

It’s an interesting electoral strategy – call every white person a racist and demand they vote for you as a way to absolve themselves of their guilt. That’s what Democrats are doing in 2020. I guess it’s better than running on their record and policy ideas. There used to be a word for dividing everyone by race and demanding different treatment based on that division, but I can’t quite recall it at the moment. Oh, yes, it’s racist. But words no longer mean what they used to, they mean whatever leftists demand they mean, which is turning the whole country into one big college campus.

Dictionary.com defines “racism” as follows:

1 a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.

2 a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.

3 hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

If that sounds pretty sane, that’s because it is. It’s also not the definition anyone in the Democratic Party uses anymore. And it’s not the definition Merriam-Webster is going to use much longer. After receiving a request from a recently graduated college snowflake who was upset that people were pointing out the definition of racism, MW is adding a new definition involving “systemic oppression.”

Of course, this is normal for life on college campuses – demand action first, find out if it’s true or not later. More often than not, the cause of the outrage turns out to be false.

But true or false, right or wrong, these quaint concepts no longer matter. Not just on college campuses, but everywhere now. Don’t like your boss? Say they’re bigoted or unfairly harsh and demanding. You don’t need any more proof than that. If your boss is a leftist, they’ll likely commit hara-kiri before you hit send on the email anyway, which will only bolster the case for their dismissal because of cultural appropriation.

For the past few decades it’s been harder and harder for anyone to speak on college campuses. For conservatives it's nearly impossible, but a growing number of liberals have had their share of violent mob shout-downs too. Stray one inch away from acceptable liberal orthodoxy and you might as well be a Trump, many Democrats have discovered.

It was all well and good for a while. Sure, you’d get an unfavorable segment on Fox News about your school, but the fervor would fade in a day, replaced by some other outrage. What did it matter? You didn’t go to that school, nor did your kids.

But now those kids are out in the workforce and they haven’t grown up, they’ve only grown bolder.

A lifetime of pedestrian existence and accomplishments meant to celebrate being over achieving, of not keeping score and a wall full of participation ribbons treated as victory have created a generation of spoiled, entitled brats. Worse, they’ve not only been told they’re special, they’ve been told they’re victims too. And they believe both.

Rather than being smacked across the face with the cold, dead fish of reality, “woke” companies bow to their demands, bend the knee to their wishes, and destroy anyone who stands in their way.

For many organizations, it’s too late to fix their corporate culture. Accusations are not only treated as fact, they’re almost treated as confessions. “Why did you do this?” has replaced, “Did you do this?” Lost in all of it is, “Does any of this really matter?”

Of course, the answer to the last question, generally, is no, it does not. But when you’re a snowflake, the slightest breath can melt you.

The Democratic Party has aided and abetted the ideas that have turned so much of our country into one big college campus, without the fun. But Republicans let it happen. Tweeting your disgust over someone being uninvited to speak is literally the least someone could do, yet it’s the most that gets done. As these publicly subsidized factories of the put-upon crank out more professional grievance monsters, lip service isn’t going to be enough.  These political times require someone to have metaphorical content in the front of their underpants, not literal content in the back when it comes to confronting this mob.

It being an election year, and it being the Republican Party we’re talking about, there’s a less than 50-50 chance anyone will effectively stand up and tell these adults that they need to start acting like adults.

Afraid of being called an “ist” or a “phobe” of some sort, too many people have simply watched as the civil society is being treated like a Target in Minneapolis. There’s a hunger for leaders who will actually lead, particularly when leading is a risk. That’s why you ran for the job in the first place, isn’t it?

Audio out of Chicago this week showed just how feckless and cowardly elected leaders are when the chips are down. The city’s Aldermen all whined about the destruction of their neighborhoods to the Mayor, who couldn’t care less. None of them led, they all lamented that the Mayor wouldn’t. This “somebody’s got to do something” attitude won the day, and the city burned.

It’s not unique to Chicago - there just happens to be audio of it there. Democrats were reluctant to speak out because they benefited from the woke mob. Republicans were reluctant to speak out because they thought the woke mob hurt Democrats. Neither is true, and with no one doing anything, the real loser is the country.

The woke factories have to be shut down.

You can’t count on Democrats to stand up, but Republicans need to. Not only fighting, for as long as it takes, to end funding to schools that embrace these witch hunts, but also speaking repeatedly to donors and alumni about cutting them off as well. Hitting them where it hurts is the only way to get their attention; and if some go under in the process, who cares? The country is more important than any institution, especially one dependent upon our tax dollars.

The country is becoming one big college campus, except the fun has been sucked out of it by the joyless, entitled, gang of crybabies who used to contain their whining to the quad now doing exactly what they’ve been trained and encouraged to do in the real world. No one will fully be able to make up for the lifetime of bad parenting and miseducation that led them to this point, but numbers will be able to stop them, and we have the numbers. We just need a leader willing to sound the battle cry before they go from rewriting the dictionary to burning it. As the history of progressives has shown, they start with one book but they quickly move to others, and they never stop there.

SOURCE 





Majority of Black Voters Support a Position that the Left Believes Is Bigoted

A majority of black voters believe there are only two genders, according to a joint poll by Just The News with Scott Rasmussen. Black voters are also more likely than white and Hispanic voters to reject the radical left-wing theory that there are more than two genders.

The poll found 62% of Black U.S. voters said there are only two genders, biological male and females, while 49% of whites and 51% of Hispanics said the same. Thirty percent of black voters said there were “other gender identities,” compared to 44% of whites and 39% of Hispanics.

Overall, 51 percent of U.S. voters believe in the science-based fact that there are only two genders. That is low, but still more than the 41 percent who believe other gender identities exist. Just 8 percent are not sure.

“This is a pretty significant measure of a massive cultural shift,” says Scott Rasmussen. “As on many other questions, there is a significant gap between voters under 45 and their elders. A majority of older voters believe there are just two genders. Younger voters are evenly divided.”

Scott Rasmussen surveyed 1,200 registered voters June 18-20, 2020. The poll has a margin of sampling error: +/- 2.8%.

It’s remarkable to see just how out of step black voters are on this issue with the Democratic Party. A whopping 57 percent of Democrats believe in more than two genders, while just 34 percent believe in just two. An overwhelming majority of Republicans, 77 percent, believe that there are only two genders.

Despite the fact that black voters overwhelmingly vote Democrat, polls suggest they more closely identify as moderate, and identify as more religious and socially conservative than the Democratic Party as a whole. This suggests (to me anyway) that the best way for the GOP to win over black voters is to appeal to them on social issues.

SOURCE 






America's Jews and Christians Are Failing the Test of Their Lives

If you are a Jew or Christian in America, the seriousness of your Judaism or Christianity is now being tested.

People look back in time and wonder how religious people, especially religious leaders — specifically, the clergy — could have failed in times of moral crisis. The failure of most rabbis, priests and pastors to speak out today — when the risk to personal safety is so much less than it was in communist and fascist countries — should provide the answer: Religion doesn’t have all that much impact on most religious people. During comfortable times, it provides two essentials to a happy and fulfilled life — community and meaning — but when tested, it often fails like an umbrella that fails to expand just as it starts to rain.

America is being taken over by violent mobs; a vast amount of destruction and stealing has taken place (with little police intervention and the apathy of our political leaders). Why aren’t all clergy delivering thundering sermons about the Seventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal”? Does it now come with an asterisk?

A central part of a major American city has been seized and occupied by people who hate America and its values, including its Judeo-Christian values. Heard any clergy (aside from some evangelical Christians) speaking out against it?

And most ominous by far, for the first time in American history, free speech — the mother of all freedoms — is being widely suppressed, not by the government but by the press, the universities, the high schools, the elementary schools, all the giant internet media, Hollywood and virtually every major business in America. Christians and Jews place repentance at the center of their theologies, yet there is no place for repentance if you did or said one insensitive thing — real or alleged — even if it was 20 or more years ago. Yet all we get from American religious leaders on this matter is … silence.

The freest, least racist, most opportunity-providing country in history — “the last best hope of earth,” in Abraham Lincoln’s words — is smeared as “systemically racist”; all white people are declared “racist”; and the statues of the greatest Americans, including George Washington and even Abraham Lincoln, are toppled and/or defaced. And all we get from most American religious leaders is either agreement or silence.

It leads this religious American to ask the question the anti-religious ask: Of what use is religion?

Take the claim that being “colorblind” is racist.

If you are a religious Jew or Christian — let alone a rabbi, priest or minister — do you believe that? Do you believe that the human ideal is not to be colorblind? Do you believe that the ideal is to see every person, first and foremost, as a member of a race? Is that what you learned at seminary? Is that what you have taught from your pulpit all of your life?

I doubt it. I assume that, until as recently as a year or even six months ago, you have always believed and preached that we are, in Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, to measure people not by “the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Isn’t it fundamental to all Bible-based religions that we are all created in God’s image, that God has no race and that Adam and Eve, from whom we all descend, had no race? If you are a Christian, do you see Christians of other races first as fellow Christians or first as members of their race? If you are a Jew, do you see Jews of other races as anything other than fellow Jews? Does God?

So, why the silence? Why aren’t all rabbis, priests and pastors telling their congregations and telling America — in tweets, on Facebook, in letters to the editor, on television and radio, in opinion pieces — that there is one race, the human race, and that the only antidote to racism is to deny that race determines our worth, not to affirm its significance?

Does an ideology that affirms the significance of race have an honorable pedigree? Has it ever led to anything good? Isn’t that exactly what Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan advocated?

So, how are we to explain this tragic failure of religious Jews and Christians — and their clergy — to speak up against looting (aka stealing) and for freedom, for America, for Western civilization and for being colorblind?

The answer to this question also goes to the core of what it means to be religious. At the center of our two religions is the notion of fear of God: “Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13). But what is now apparent is that most Jews and Christians fear the left, fear The New York Times, fear being shunned by “friends” on Facebook and mobbed on Twitter more than they fear God.

That’s what this moment comes down to. Jews and Christians who fail this test will not only lose their freedom, lose the great American hope for mankind and lose the West; they will have also lost their souls.

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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