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Wednesday, April 29, 2020

A World Without God


With few exceptions, the overwhelmingly secular filmmakers in Hollywood don’t present Christianity in a favorable, or even a balanced, light. Characters who are overtly Christian are almost always caricatures if not the bad guys: fanatical fundamentalists, over-the-top hypocrites, sexually perverse, outright evil, or a combination thereof. The British leftist propaganda network, the BBC, is typically just as bigoted in this respect as Hollywood, which makes its series The Frankenstein Chronicles all the more stunning as a pro-life, cautionary tale of a world without God.
The Frankenstein Chronicles is a two-season BBC series (six episodes in each) from 2015-17, available on Netflix. It stars Sean Bean, who is well-known from dozens of films and TV shows such as The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and the James Bond film Goldeneye (Bean reportedly was once considered for the role of Bond). Set in 1820’s London, the series follows Bean, looking even more grizzled than usual here, as war veteran and river detective John Marlott. He is tasked with investigating a monstrous crime: the body of a young girl has been recovered from the Thames, and Marlott learns that her corpse actually consists of the parts of eight different children, stitched together into a single body. Someone is kidnapping and murdering street urchins, then performing unholy experiments on them. But for what purpose?
The show reflects a real-life, early 19th-century surge of interest in anatomy thanks to an increase in the importance of surgery. At this time, only the corpses of executed murderers could legally be used for dissection. But the rise of medical science and a reduction in executions meant that an underground trade in grave robbing began to flourish. The trade was conducted by so-called “resurrectionists,” who robbed graves to sell corpses for medical study. An Anatomy Act was proposed which would ensure that anyone practicing anatomy had to obtain a license from the Home Secretary. It gave physicians, surgeons, and students legal access to corpses unclaimed after death – in particular, those who had died in hospitals, prisons, and workhouses – which would end the work of the despised resurrectionists but meant that the bodies of society’s downtrodden would be denied dignity and become fodder for medical experiments.
Marlott is a working-class stiff whose soul has been ravaged by the drowning death of his young daughter and his wife’s subsequent suicide – and if you’re familiar with Sean Bean’s work, you know that there is literally no actor alive whose face more convincingly conveys a world-weariness and torturous guilt. Troubled by dreams and hallucinations in which he sees, but cannot reunite with, his deceased family, and disturbed by the prospect that children are being victimized by “a monster with a human face,” Marlott begins to obsess over the case, which leads him deeper and deeper into a tangled political web, and dangerously close to the darkest evil.

Trump and Churchill


I’m a firm subscriber to the “Great Man” theory of history, which posits that the course of history largely (but not entirely) has been determined, for better or worse, by the decisive impact of individuals of unique vision and indomitable will. What would the world look like had Alexander the Great, for example, never been born? Or Jesus Christ? Or George Washington? Or Adolph Hitler, for that matter? Fortunately for the world, Hitler’s impact was checked by the timely emergence of another towering figure who validates the Great Man theory: Winston Churchill.

Now conservative author and speaker Nick Adams has written a book linking Churchill to President Donald Trump as men who share certain qualities that Adams believes confirms their stature as history’s two greatest defenders of Western civilization.

If you’ve ever seen my friend Nick Adams speak in person or in the news media, you know that one would be hard-pressed to find a more enthusiastic cheerleader for America – especially considering that he’s from Australia (he describes himself as an American trapped in an Australian body). A legal immigrant, Nick is genuinely so grateful and excited to be an American that he founded FLAG, the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating Americans about the values and principles that make our nation exceptional. Toward this end, FLAG promotes civics education to K-12 students across the country.

Nick has also written a number of books extolling and defending American virtues, including Green Card Warrior: My Quest for Legal Immigration in an Illegals' System, Class Dismissed: Why College Isn’t the Answer, and Retaking America: Crushing Political Correctness. His latest book, available May 19, is Trump and Churchill: Defenders of Western Civilization“part historical, part rallying cry, part sociological analysis,” as he puts it. In it, Nick examines the former British Prime Minister and America’s 45th President through a combination of ten qualities crucial to their greatness, each of which is assigned its own short chapter: genius, patriotism, prescience, instinct, defiance, pugnacity, and ebullience, among others. He asserts that the mix of these qualities enabled Churchill and Trump to rise above adversity, controversy, and overwhelming opposition both without and within their own governments to become the saviors of Western civilization and its values at moments in history when the West was challenged by perilous threats, and he predicts that Trump will surpass even Churchill in terms of his historical significance for our way of life.

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

If You Protest Against Leftist Tyranny, You’re Racist


Over the last week, thousands of frustrated Americans gathered at state capitols in Michigan, Ohio, California, Minnesota, and other states to protest stay-at-home orders from totalitarian progressive leaders such as Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who argue that the lockdowns are crucial to containing the coronavirus. But with literally tens of millions of Americans losing their jobs and their businesses, and the economy collapsing with the worst possibly to come, Americans are legitimately complaining that the draconian cure is shaping up to be worse than the disease.
Speaker of the House and nepotism-enthusiast Nancy Pelosi decried the protesters, of course: “What they're doing is really unfortunate,” she condescended. “What we have to do is, is, is shelter in place.” That’s easy for her to say. While Pelosi (who as of last year has a net worth of over $120 million) “shelters in place” in her San Francisco mansion that features a $24,000 refrigerator stocked with gourmet ice cream, her constituents are losing their livelihoods and life savings. Her nephew-by-marriage Gov. Gavin Newsom, California’s answer to Justin Trudeau, said he will not be swayed by public protests in deciding when he will reopen the state: “We are going to do the right thing: not judge by politics, not judge by protests, but by science.” Of course, what the left means by “science” is “science that conforms to our political agenda,” because progressives reject any scientific conclusions that present them with inconvenient truths.
President Trump has encouraged the demonstrations, calling last Friday for the citizens of Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia, specifically, to be “liberated.” This kind of language didn’t sit well with the totalitarian left; race-mongering MSNBC propagandist Joy Reid, for example, called it “faux-Confederate.”
Saturday on MSNBC’s AM Joy, host Reid discussed the nationwide protests with fellow Victimhood Propagandist, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who also compared the protesters to the Confederacy and claimed hyperbolically that President Trump is “literally willing to sacrifice the lives of Americans for personal gain.”
Reid asked Ellison, “When you hear Donald Trump talking in this sort of faux-Confederate language about these lockdown orders – which are meant to save lives – and you see people with these insta-protests, paid for by activists for the super-rich, egging on this kind of activity that could get violent, what does that say to you?”

Friday, April 17, 2020

The Left is Panicking That the Pandemic Will Encourage Homeschooling


One of the more significant social and political consequences of the coronavirus pandemic is the fact that countless American parents of public school-enrolled children suddenly find themselves faced with the daunting prospect of having to homeschool those kids for an indefinite period of time. When normalcy returns, most of those families, who for various reasons are unable or unwilling to continue homeschooling, will simply fall back into their old groove and schooling will resume as before. But many parents may find themselves enlightened and excited about homeschooling’s benefits and how it actually operates, as opposed to common misconceptions, which are usually pejorative. This is a possibility that the secular leftist elites in education will not tolerate.

Decades ago progressive activists realized that revolution was best brought about not through overt attacks on the Establishment, but through subversion from within its structures – in particular, the field of education. After all, children are the future, and thus the surest and most direct way to mold the future is to mold impressionable young minds who are a captive audience for progressive, social justice indoctrination. This is why domestic terrorists like Barack Obama’s ghostwriter Bill Ayres and his (literal) partner-in-crime Bernardine Dohrn abandoned bombmaking for the Weather Underground and became respected, credentialed educators working primarily with children (Ayres earned two master’s degrees in Early Childhood Education and a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction; the law professor Dorhn is one of the founders of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law).

The secular left is terrified of losing control of America’s children to homeschoolers, who tend to be (but are not always) conservative and often religious. The secular left also resents the notion of parental control; after all, as former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry put it bluntly in a network promo several years ago, “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.” Harris-Perry too was a college educator. In light of developments due to the pandemic, the left is gearing up to clamp down on any increased interest in homeschooling.

One example of the left’s offensive against homeschoolers: the Daily Caller reports that in June, Harvard Law School will be hosting an invite-only “homeschooling summit” to discuss the “problems of educational deprivation and child maltreatment that too often occur under the guise of homeschooling, in a legal environment of minimal or not oversight.” The event, which will host speakers from education and child welfare policy backgrounds as well as academics, policy advocates, and legislators, is sponsored by Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, in cooperation with the Academy on Violence and Abuse, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, the Institute for Human Services, the New York Foundling, the William & Mary Bill of Rights Institute, and the Zero Abuse Project. Note how many of those organizations focus on child abuse. That’s because homeschooling parents are often demonized as abusers of their own children in order to justify government intrusion – oops, I mean “oversight” – into private homes. 

Sunday, April 12, 2020

The Coronavirus Confirms Who Our Friends – And Enemies – Are


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – although right now it just seems like the worst of times, with the world stricken either by the Chinese coronavirus itself (that’s right, I called it Chinese) or by the media-fanned panic about it. But a silver lining of any crisis, perceived or real, is that it swiftly reveals who one’s friends really are – whom you can trust when the chips are down – and that is a vital lesson for Americans to take to heart.
Conversely, of course, a crisis also exposes who one’s enemies are, and that may be an even more valuable lesson to digest. Whom has the coronavirus pandemic shown to be the enemies of the American people? Let us run down the list.
China is not your friend. More specifically, the Communist Chinese regime – not the Chinese people as a whole – is not your friend. This should come as no surprise to most Americans, but as Bill Gertz notes in his recent book Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy, in past decades American governments, both Democrat and Republican, have suffered from a willful blindness about that country stemming from the false assumption that “if the United States simply conducted business with China, the Communist regime in Beijing would eventually evolve into a free market, democratic system,” and then we would be partners. Unfortunately, the plain fact is that China is driven not only to position itself as the world’s preeminent superpower, but to destroy America in the process.
The coronavirus originated in China (and may even have been weaponized in a lab; the leftist media treats this possibility as a conspiracy theory, of course) and the regime did its utmost to suppress any information about it even as countless numbers of Chinese travelers spread it abroad. For that reason, the culpability for the many thousands of coronavirus deaths worldwide, as well as the devastating economic impact, can be laid directly on the regime’s doorstep. China officially continues to deny responsibility and has even attempted to shift blame to the United States, because the left’s automatic, go-to strategy is to accuse others of that of which you are guilty.
Our willful blindness has been reinforced by the establishment news media’s obsession with Russia since 2016, which has provided recent cover for China’s dangerous ambition. Which brings us to…
The leftist news media is not your friend. American patriots have long known that the Democrat-controlled news media is the enemy of the people, never more so than during the age of Trump. Indeed, he occupies the Oval Office in large part because he relishes exposing so many so-called journalists as the leftist activists they are, and goading them into confirming their bias every day.
News propagandists at every network have disseminated Chinese disinformation about the coronavirus, whipped up hysteria about it, ignored positive developments, and steered blame toward Trump. Chuck Todd (pictured above, with Joe Biden), to name one media hack, shamefully declared that the President has “blood on his hands.” Citizens who care about the truth and about making America great again must choose from two options: tune them out or call them out. Either way, never forget that they have no interest at heart but Democrat power. And that leads us to…

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Progressive Destruction: The Pandemic is the Perfect Time to Abolish the Family


Amid lockdowns and “shelter-in-place” orders and social distancing from strangers and even friends, the coronavirus pandemic has been a time, for many of us, of reaffirming the centrality of family in our lives. For utopians of the radical left, though, the pandemic is an opportunity to deconstruct flawed, traditional familial bonds and remake the world along the lines of new-and-improved, collectivist possibilities. As author Sophie Lewis (pictured above) puts it bluntly in a recent opinion piece at Open Democracy: “We deserve better than the family. And the time of corona is an excellent time to practice abolishing it.”
The author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family, Sophie Lewis’ academic work “focuses on eugenic, bioconservative and imperial feminism, queer and trans social reproduction, Black feminist family abolitionism, hydrofeminism, postgenomics, and Marxist-feminist accounts of care,” which seems like a lot to fit on a business card.
Writing in her article titled, “The coronavirus crisis shows it's time to abolish the family,” Lewis addresses what she calls “the unspoken and mostly unquestioned crux of the prescribed response to the pandemic: private homes.” She criticizes the assumption that we should all “stay at home” to contain the spread of the virus, arguing that 1) not everybody has a home, and 2) private property is already a “fundamentally unsafe space.”
“How can a zone defined by the power asymmetries of housework (reproductive labor being so gendered), of renting and mortgage debt, land and deed ownership, of patriarchal parenting and (often) the institution of marriage, benefit health?” she asks. “Such standard homes are where, after all, everyone secretly knows the majority of earthly violence goes down… A quarantine is, in effect, an abuser’s dream – a situation that hands near-infinite power to those with the upper hand over a home.”
Lewis approvingly quotes feminist Madeline Lane-McKinley, who had this to say in a tweet about the shelter-in-place imperative: “Households are capitalism’s pressure cookers. This crisis will see a surge in housework – cleaning, cooking, caretaking, but also child abuse, molestation, intimate partner rape, psychological torture, and more.”

‘Caliphate’ - The Series Every Western Feminist Needs to See


As an act of #Resistance! to the misogynistic dystopia America would surely be plunged into by the election of Donald Trump, the leftist media hyped the 2017 Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale, in which women are subjugated and dehumanized under a totalitarian patriarchy. “Relevant!” and “Timely!” were the marketing buzzwords used to sell the show to liberal females as an allegory of the horrors they would experience under a Mike Pence-led theocracy. The Handmaid’s Tale became a cultural touchstone for unfulfilled Western feminists whose lives were suddenly given meaning by costuming themselves as handmaids from the show and milling about in protest of their oppression – for example, outside the chambers where Brett Kavanaugh was smeared as a rapist during his Supreme Court confirmation.
The internet series and the original 1985 novel were both set in America, of course, because everyone who has been processed through our Progressive propaganda – er, education system knows that the United States is the historic epicenter of religious intolerance and sexual oppression. Precisely because of this indoctrination, the same feminists who were so inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale are either oblivious to, or intentionally silent about, the real-world suffering of girls and women who are oppressed under an actual totalitarian theocracy outside the West – territories ruled beneath the iron fist of sharia law.
Forget The Handmaid’s Tale – a new Netflix series called Caliphate (Kaliphat in the original) debuted last month which every feminist in the Western world needs to see, not because it will confirm their cultural self-loathing but because it may just open a few eyes to the misogynistic oppression That Must Not Be Named. Produced in Sweden (yes, the same feminist-run Sweden that has all but officially become a Muslim state; how did this show get made?), Caliphate’s storyline centers on Parvin, a Syrian woman desperate to get herself and her baby out of a marriage to a member of the Islamic State. Her only hope for rescue is to spy on her husband and his fellow jihadists, and surreptitiously pass along details of their terrorist plot against a Swedish target to an intelligence agent there named Fatima. Fatima is trying to pull off a balancing act between trusting Parvin, who could just be peddling misinformation, and battling her skeptical superiors, who seem suspiciously resistant to pursuing the lead.