Feminists for Trump

 Republicans have a problem: a fast-moving narrative that will dominate the news cycle for the next few months if they allow it to. This comes courtesy of some eager beaver operative who dug up this clip of JD Vance from 2021 that has now gone viral.

The old me would have joined the outrage train on X, distorting what he said into an opportunity to wax sanctimonious and proclaim that it’s great to be a woman who chooses not to have children, and how dare he say such a disgusting, sexist thing?

She made news. Lots and lots of news, which shows you what the GOP is up against.

Team Kamala now has a great piece of propaganda to juice her already energized base.

The “Childless cat ladies” echoed what James Carville said about the Democrats not too long ago, that they were dominated by “preachy women” and that it was alienating voters, especially men."

Both of them are essentially saying the Left is dominated by a certain kind of woman, whether childless or not - meaning - they are up in everyone’s business all of the time.

I know that kind of woman. I was that kind of woman. The kind that used to be a powerful consumer demographic back in the 90s, in the Oprah era, but no longer is. Women who have been sidelined by the social justice movement that has decided feminism is too exclusionary. So what else did we have except to ask to speak to the manager and fuss over politics?

When Hillary lost our entire world collapsed. It was as though there was nothing left. We were the center of the universe one minute and invisible and powerless the next.

If anything, Vance’s comments hurt women who can’t have children more, not those who have chosen not to have them. Women have struggled with infertility, even with IVF. Aniston might be one of those women; if so, my heart goes to her. I live with regret every single day of my life that I aborted babies I could have and should have had.

Now, the abortionists want young women to see their babies as just a “clump of cells” and that it doesn’t matter. But guess what? It does matter, and they’re lying to women about it right now.

There were one million abortions last year, a ten-year-high. That’s after they overturned Roe V. Wade. How many more abortions will make them feel empowered? Two million? Five million?

Who will tell them that they might not be able to get pregnant later, or that they might regret not taking the opportunity now, or that the faces of their would-be babies might haunt them in their later years as they do mine?

And honestly, the Left is becoming a party that doesn’t care about mothers and doesn’t see us as even essential. Because what are we anyway? Defined by interchangeable body parts, even words that used to belong exclusively to us have now vanished. Chest feeding, uterus havers.

They can shame JD Vance all they want, but it is true that if you’ve had children and raised them, you understand things that people who have never had children will never understand, and every honest person knows that.

If you raised them, changed their diapers, wiped their noses, held them when they cried, listened to them when they babbled, rocked them to sleep, tended to their fevers, dressed them and fed them every day you will know your child better than any counselor or teacher ever could. Why would they want to diminish that?

Women are seeking power now because it’s been stripped from them on the Left. They used to be the center of the Democratic Party, but they aren’t, not if they’re white women. There is no such thing as feminism anymore, not really. They can’t even define what a woman is; how can they possibly fight for women’s rights?

So that isn’t what Harris is pitching. She’s skipping right over women and heading into her own loose definition of the word “freedom.”

Here is her first campaign ad. Not once does she mention women:

I am so sick of the cowards on my former side of the aisle. I’m so sick of watching them say nothing and do nothing to stop what has happened to women and children at the hands of this cult. They’re so afraid of being exiled from the tribe that they bow to the fanatics' whims, especially on social media.

I wake up every day, and I can’t believe this is our country, that this imaginary government is now running it.

Today, Harris auditioned as the President, which means Joe Biden must really be out of it. Why else would he allow her to speak as though she spoke for the United States? She doesn’t—not yet.

We’re watching a takeover of our government without the people’s vote, decided on by the likes of George Clooney and the guy who runs Netflix. It shouldn’t be like this, but they’ve just given up trying to follow the rules. They’re so afraid of a Trump presidency that they staged their own version of the Russian Revolution, skipping the war and bloodshed part.

They’ve just decided to overthrow our democracy and install their preferred leaders largely based on skin color and gender. They want a woman of color so they put a woman of color in the leading role.

Shockingly, there was one loud voice of dissent, a miracle that pierced the delusion from, of all places, Black Lives Matter:

But otherwise, they were like braindead zombies in how fast they conformed. Rob Reiner describes our inevitable future if the Democrats stay in power.

This election is either 1980 when the totalitarian Left is removed from power at long last, or 1984 and America will never be the same.

“Feminists for Trump”

No, feminists will never be for Trump, and the feeling is mutual. But how long before they realize they’ve been giving their time and money to a party that no longer cares about them?

If they’re voting for Democrats, then they will be complicit in every terrible thing that comes next. Just wait until there are more lawsuits for “gender-affirming care.”

Thus far, the climate of fear is keeping them from speaking out about permanent harm done to their bodies and their reproductive organs while the so-called “feminists” sit idly by watching yet another video of Chelsea Handler screaming about Trump.

Says Megyn Kelly:

They’ve ceded this ground to the Republicans without even knowing it. Of course, hell would freeze over before the Republicans embrace the word “feminist.” Still, they seem to be the only political party right now that is going to bat to protect women and children, something the Democrats used to do.

Harris and all of the women in the Democratic Party — ALL OF THEM — said nothing when Biden signed the Executive Order to eliminate protection for women and girls in Title IX.

No, it’s only the Republicans, time and time again. Here is Harriet Hageman:

Trump and Vance should make it clear to all voters that a vote for them is a vote to protect women and a vote to protect children from irreversible harm, or better yet, find female surrogates to do it for them, like de-transitioner Chloe Cole.

They should also make it clear that a vote for Democrats is a vote to keep the indoctrination in our schools, which are slowly removing parental rights.

Gavin Newsom just signed legislation to that effect, protecting the schools, not the parents, when the cult gets hold of their child. California is the first state in the country to sign this law, and I can’t think of anything that eliminates mothers' rights more than this.

The Democrats said nothing when obvious sex offenders pretend to be “trans” to get away with everything from rape to child molestation.

Kamala Harris will pretend she fights for women’s rights, but she can’t do both. She can’t protect women and girls while also being an “ally” for the LGBTQIA lobby. She is taking women's votes for granted, and she’s probably right.

She’s also now been endorsed:

So please forgive me if I am not shocked and outraged by something JD Vance said. All I hope is for him to be Teflon against their attacks. And that he and Donald Trump will go on offense to wake Americans up to what they’re about to put into power.

Our problems aren’t going to be solved with one election, but at least if Trump wins — which I hope he does — the Democrats will get a lesson they desperately need. If they win, they will have a prosecutor who will not hold back when it comes to jailing “enemies of the state,” starting with Trump.

Watching the machine turn Harris into the candidate she never was feels like gaslighting of the highest order. Sometimes it helps to turn to the head doctors to set us all straight. Here is Dr. Todd Grande.

Trump is hitting the right tone by focusing only on the policies that the American people care about. He should leave the culture war jabs to others, preferably other women.

As for JD Vance, this is only the beginning of what they plan to do to him. He will have to survive it. He knows what matters and what doesn’t. Still, he’d be advised to follow Trump. Sell to the people a better life, outside the clutches of the militant left. If they can do that, they might be able to win.

It’s only to get harder and steeper from here on out. Godspeed, gentlemen. Godspeed.

https://sashastone.substack.com/p/feminists-for-trump

American Maoism: Contemporary American mode of protest made in China

 The protest movements of the last ten years or so—roughly from the end of Obama’s first term—have struck observers as consistent in their themes and tactics. Based around some apparent outrage, the protesters converge around a particular message—“Black Lives Matter”; “We Are the 99%”; “Free Palestine”—and enact a camera-friendly public display of civil disobedience of varying intensity, with the bulk of the protesters providing cover for extremists in their midst whose acts of disobedience are less than civil. But where did this methodology come from?  

On May 25th, 1966, a poster appeared at Peking University, in the People’s Republic of China. The poster called for a purge of “reactionary” professors and university officials. In response, mobs of students, henceforth known as the Red Guards, humiliated, tortured, and murdered these “reactionaries.” Soon thereafter, similar posters appeared in China’s universities and secondary schools, students formed new factions of Red Guards, and the violence spread. The Guards then targeted Communist Party officials identified as reactionary. The police stood aside. 

The formation of the Red Guards was not wholly spontaneous. While Chinese youth, subjected to twenty years of propaganda, constituted the combustible materiál, Mao himself ignited the spark that lit the “prairie fire.” It was a revolution from above, pitting Mao’s faction of the elite against its challengers, most importantly within the Party. Mao was a close student of Lenin, who, in turn, had been a close reader of von Clausewitz, the Prussian theorist of war. Mao extended the Clausewitzian realm of war from the bracketed, state conflicts of the ancien régime, to an unbracketed, absolute war waged by a Party against its internal enemies. Following von Clausewitz, Mao accepted that, barring the complete destruction of the enemy, renewed war was always possible. Without an absolute result, the recovery of the enemy was always a threat. Therefore the Maoists, despite their conquest of China, would not leave any opposing forces in peace.  

French intellectuals on the left admired Maoist theory and the Red Guards. They applauded the “purity,” violence, and “authenticity” of the Cultural Revolution. The Tel Quel journal was the Parisian locus of Maoist thought. From Paris, Maoist thought migrated to the United States, adopted by far Left intellectuals and revolutionaries. Domestic terror group Weatherman honored Mao by titling their 1974 manifesto Prairie Fire. Radicals adopted Maoist tactics such as consciousness raising, self- criticism, rectification, and struggle sessions. The Western Maoists also adapted the key principle of Maoist insurgency—the counter-state. For the Maoists in China, this was a geographical as well as institutional concept. In Maoist theory, successful insurgency requires patience, endurance, and the slow accretion of incremental gains. It is a war of position, not maneuver (until its dénouement.) To defeat the state, the insurgents must slowly but surely construct their counter-state, which incrementally encroaches upon the state, eventually absorbing and replacing it. Geographically, the Chinese Maoists constructed their counter-state in the countryside, surrounding the state-controlled cities. The Chinese Maoists dominated all the institutions—legal, educational, etc.—in their area of control. The Maoist counter-state shrank the space, resources, people, and institutions under the control of the state, until its defeat was inevitable. In contrast, our domestic Maoists have—so far—taken a purely institutional approach to the development of the counter-state. One might interpret the 2024 campus protests as a campaign by the revolutionary Left and its Islamist allies to cow the remaining liberals within the universities, thus fortifying a key redoubt of the counter- state.  

Mao and his Western followers were uninterested in conservatives or the Right, whom they never took seriously as enemies. The real enemy was always Liberalism, whether overt or camouflaged. Mao despised Liberalism’s belief in law, reasonable debate, negotiation, compromise, and the common good. For Mao, these merely anaesthetized the revolutionary class and dulled its immutable conflict with the reactionary classes. Not only the Liberal state, but the Liberal mode of politics had to be destroyed; thus Maoists embrace hatred. Rather than moderating conflicts between parties, interests, and groups, Maoists seek to intensify the hatred between them, to blow away the Liberal polity’s capacity for compromise between clashing political forces. 

Liberal American society of the seventies, although weakening, was still too fundamentally healthy for the Maoists to ignite the fire which would consume it. They deferred overt, violent revolution, burrowed into universities and adjacent institutions, and transmuted their lust for violence from action to thought and language. Thus commenced the “Long march through the institutions”—another nod to Mao.  

This deferral of physical violence violated, in theory at least, Mao’s tenets of insurgency. For Mao, the “cause” is the most important element of the insurgency (and, by implication, the counter-insurgency); it is the cause which unites, motivates, and actuates the insurgents during the arduous, exhausting, and deadly struggle against their enemies. To advance the cause, Mao believed that insurgents must utilize both violence and non- violent politics, synergistically, at every stage of the insurgency.  

Non-violent political activities include propaganda, indoctrination, and infiltrating political parties, unions, and similar institutions. Violence demoralizes enemies, cows neutrals, and, properly applied, opens up space for the insurgents to acquire greater resources. But the violence must be carefully calibrated, for what counts as a proper application of violence at one stage of the campaign could set the insurgency back at another. Improperly applied, violence repulses potential supporters, prematurely alerts enemies, and precipitates counter- attacks by the state. Most insurgencies fail precisely because they indulge in excessive violence, divorced from a proper political strategy. 

What would the opening stages of a contemporary Maoist insurgency look like, when targeting a weakened, desiccated, liberal society and state? It would look like the events of the past decade. The violent tactics began with threats, vandalism, and parading outside the homes of enemies. Such actions motivated the insurgents, drew attention to the cause, and intimidated neutrals and enemies, but did not precipitate an effective response by those enemies or the neutral, liberal state. The insurgency gained recruits, allies, and support. The targets of the insurgency remained passive, vainly pleading for the feeble, liberal state to come to their rescue.  

The insurgents then proceeded to escalate their calibrated violence to riots and arson. Commandeering public spaces, selective assaults, and occasional, precise murder might follow- but the insurgents will likely avoid a premature, direct challenge to the security and military organs of the state. An insurgency informed by Maoist theory will vary its assaults according to local conditions. But the tactics are clear: violence is necessary, and the cause and political aims must always control the application of such violence. The summer of 2020 called for one set of violent tactics and targets, and the Spring of 2024 called for another. 

Mao noted that an insurgency will always consist of multiple campaigns, or “struggles.” For example, within the broader Leftist insurgency against American society, a Leftist-Islamist alliance is waging a narrower struggle against American supporters of Israel. The insurgents are probing the liberal state and their targets, to see how far they can go. The minds behind the broader insurgency are watching this narrower struggle quite carefully, and will learn from it.  

Over the past sixty years, the Maoist-inspired insurgents have expanded their counter-state by leaps and bounds. The Liberals of the center right (i.e. the conservatives and Republican Party) and the Neoliberals in the Democratic Party have failed to decisively respond. According to the tenets of Maoist insurgency, the American Maoists must unleash further violence, combined with non-violent political assaults, upon their remaining enemies. The question is whether or not the remnant of American liberalism can muster the strength to defend itself.  

https://americanmind.org/salvo/american-maoism-3/

EPA Rules Will Increase Power Outages

 Many Americans have experienced power outages this summer. These outages are dangerous and can cost billions in economic losses. Unfortunately, our future could be filled with even more power outages if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is successful in its bid to eliminate America’s coal-fueled power plants.

To date, the EPA has issued five rules that will force coal plants to close prematurely even though they play an essential role in providing dependable electricity to people in 40 states. The EPA’s actions are especially concerning because they will  eliminate a major source of electricity at a time when demand for electricity is rapidly growing.

While scientists and policymakers debate the ramifications of new technologies like artificial intelligence, one area where there is agreement is that this technology requires massive amounts of electricity. As a growing number of industries continue to adopt AI, electricity demand will continue to grow alongside it. The data centers that help fuel AI are expected to use 8 percent of our nation’s electricity within the next six years. In 2022, these centers required just 3 percent of America’s electricity.

Artificial intelligence is critical to remaining competitive in the global economy. One recent survey found that China is already the world leader in adopting the generative AI technologies used to create new content.  American companies will also require AI and the massive amounts of electricity to use it.

Despite these realities, the current administration is seeking to  replace the fossil fuels responsible for nearly 60 percent of our nation’s electricity. Thanks in large part to EPA regulations and other bad policies, more than 130 coal plants in 31 states are expected to retire prematurely within the next five years, and there is no realistic option for quickly replacing them.

The number of solar panels and wind farms may be growing but not at a rate that would allow them to seamlessly replace the power generated by fossil fuels. For the sake of argument, even if such a rapid expansion of renewables was possible, it would require significant new investments in infrastructure such as power lines that often require nearly two decades to complete. Importantly, these sources also remain weather dependent thus tying our electricity supply to whether the sun is shining or wind is blowing on a particular day.  

Fortunately, a pair of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions may provide an indication that EPA’s anti-electricity actions may not stand up in court. In one case, the Court stopped EPA from implementing a rule that would have forced the premature closure of a large number of coal plants. In another decision, the Court overturned the Chevron legal doctrine which the EPA and other agencies had been using as cover to create policies that far exceed the authority given to them by Congress.

Americans cannot afford EPA policies that leave the country with inadequate power supplies incapable of meeting our exploding electricity demand. These rules need to be struck down by the courts, rejected by Congress, or withdrawn by a new President. In addition, dependable power sources like coal should not be shuttered until equally dependable replacements are constructed and connected to the electricity grid. Failing to do this will heighten the risk for more power outages and more American families and cities being left in the dark.

Michelle Bloodworth is President and Chief Executive Officer of America’s Power, whose mission is to advocate at the federal and state level on behalf of coal-fueled electricity and the coal fleet.

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2024/08/02/epa_rules_will_increase_power_outages_1049147.html

The Looming Kamala Calamity

 Barring a possible but unlikely “October surprise,” Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee for president. When Democratic string pullers decided that Joe Biden was unfit to run again, Harris became the obvious—if not best—choice.

Her disapproval ratings are telling. While 38% approve of Harris, 52% disapprove, and a detailed report by the David Horowitz Freedom Center spells out a legacy that would make the late Joe Stalin proud. Just a few of the taxpayer disasters that Harris has in mind are that health care is a fundamental right and “Medicare for All” should be the policy. She also believes in economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work. She favors family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security for all workers, as well as “high-quality health care” administered by the federal government.

Harris also adheres to all the au-courant left-wing fashions. As the Black Lives Matter riots were spreading like wildfire, she tried to set up a bail fund for those who were arrested. She wants to ban right-to-work laws, which allow private industry workers not to be forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment.

Harris fought for the passage of the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan”—virtually all of which was financed by borrowed money and which even liberal finance experts warned would be inflationary—and she cast the deciding vote for the laughably named “Inflation Reduction Act,” the projected costs of which have risen to more than $1 trillion, leading to out-of-control inflation.

She is a nightmare on taxes. As if we are all not forking over enough money already, Harris has pushed to raise the corporate income tax, expand the estate tax, impose a financial transaction tax on stock trades, raise the top marginal income tax rate on the top 1% to 39.6%, and implement a 4% “income-based premium” on households making more than $100,000 annually to pay for her “Medicare for All” gambit.

Harris, as the so-called border czar, has failed miserably. In fact, “border-free czar” would be much more accurate. Under her watch, illegal immigration has exploded. As of January 2024, more than 7.2 million migrants had illegally crossed into the U.S. over the southern border during the Biden administration—a number higher than the individual populations of 36 states. Even left-wing fact-checker Snopes rates this number as accurate.

Harris is notorious for rambling, often incoherently, when speaking. Cal Thomas offers a typical example of her word salads: “Culture is (pause) It is a reflection of our moment in our time, right? And, and present culture is the way we express our feeling about the moment. And, and we should always find time to express how we feel about the moment that is a reflection of joy ’cause, eeeh, you know, it comes in the morning (cackles). We also have to find ways to also express the way we feel about the moment in terms of just having language and, and and, a connection to how people are experiencing life and I think about it in that way, too.”

And then there is education. Harris asserted in 2019, “I am running to declare education is a fundamental right, and we will guarantee that right with universal pre-k and debt-free college!”

That same year, as a senator, she tried and failed to enshrine the 21st Century STEM for Girls and Underrepresented Minorities Act, which would have directed the Education Department to provide funding for school districts to cover the costs of STEM education activities for girls and children from racial minorities. Harris supports increasing Title I funding, changing the Title I formula to be “more equitable,” and incentivizing states to increase spending on schools. The current national outlay of $927 billion on government schools will easily top $1 trillion if Harris gets her way.

In November 2019, Harris proposed offering federal funds to encourage schools to add after-school programming to accommodate working families’ schedules.

When running for president in 2020, Harris said she would work to cut child poverty by 50% in her first term. Her proposed strategies included expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit and boosting food stamp benefits for children.

Most recently, Harris inanely proclaimed, “And yet, today, extremists pass book bans—book bans, in this year of our Lord 2024—while they also try to erase, overlook, and rewrite the ugly parts of our past.”

It’s no surprise that she is the darling of the teachers’ unions. She maintains that public school teachers earn 11% less than professionals with similar educations.” To address the situation, which Harris claimed in 2019 is “creating disastrous consequences,” proposed providing the “average teacher” with a $13,500 raise, with states being forced to add $1 to the pot for every $3 the feds throw in.

The cost of Harris’ teacher pay plan would be prohibitive. As Mike Antonucci explains, the raise would cost taxpayers about $42 billion a year. Not only that, but teacher pensions are typically based on average salary over a period of time, and Harris’ scheme would greatly stress already underfunded state pension systems.

It’s worth noting that the above assertions are erroneous when looking at what teachers really make. As Just Facts notes, in the 2021–22 school year, the average school teacher in the U.S. made $66,397 in salary but received another $34,090 in benefits (such as health insurance, paid leave, and pensions) for a total compensation of $100,487.

Additionally, full-time public school teachers work an average of 1,490 hours per year, including time spent on lesson preparation, test construction, and grading, providing extra help to students, coaching, and other activities, while their counterparts in private industry work an average of 2,045 hours per year, or about 37% more than public school teachers.

Overall, with various perks included, a teacher makes an average of $68.85 per hour, whereas a private sector worker makes about $40 per hour.

The National Education Association, the nation’s largest union, announced its endorsement of Harris on July 24. The following day, Harris gave a rip-roaring speech at the American Federation of Teachers convention, in which she trotted out a bevy of bromides that warmed the cockles of the unionistas’ hearts.

“While you (the teachers) teach about our nation’s past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn, and to acknowledge our nation’s full history, including book bans,” she declared. “We want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books.”

Harris doubled down on the Biden administration’s ambitious efforts to ease the burden of student loan debt by describing a teacher in Philadelphia she met recently who had been paying off her student loan for 20 years but still had $40,000 to pay off, despite being part of the public service loan program that has been in place for years.

“We forgave it all,” she said.

However, as the New York Times reports, Ms. Harris’s speech to the AFT ignored several crucial education issues that could put her on shaky political ground, and that Republicans are ready to pounce on them.

She avoided discussing the horrific damage caused by the pandemic-era school closures, which were dictated by the teachers’ unions. She did not address whether families should have greater access to charter schools, private school choice, or public funds for homeschooling—all popular options that the unions falsely claim reduce funding for traditional public schools. Harris also never alluded to the rampant antisemitism and stifling of free speech on college campuses that the teachers’ unions haven’t addressed.

A vote for Harris will accelerate America’s descent into an authoritarian, woke, and socialist hellhole. While Trump is far from perfect, he is a much better choice to lead the country.

*   *   *

Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. 

https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/02/the-looming-kamala-calamity/

Olympian Obscenity

 Radical queer ideologues have long been willing publicly to profane Christ and Christian values. But before last week, they had never done so at an Olympic ceremony, which had historically represented our common humanity across nations and cultures. 

That line has now been crossed. In a now-infamous moment from the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony, a group of drag queens flanked a woman with a ring around her head, with a topless, blue-painted man lying atop a platter at the display’s center. The exhibit was an obvious mockery of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. The display prompted pushback from Christian leaders across the globe. For example, Bishop Robert Barron, at whose Word on Fire organization I serve as senior director, called on Christians to take a public stand against the mockery.

In response, Olympic organizers removed the opening ceremony from YouTube and issued a qualified apology for causing offense. Unfortunately, these same organizers now seem to be gaslighting the public, denying that the display was a play on The Last Supper, despite their own performers’ claims to the contrary.

How can Christians and like-minded allies prevent this ugly event from being memory-holed? More broadly, how can they combat an increasingly pervasive queer ideology—that is, a political worldview that seeks to dismantle objective, biologically based conceptions of women, men, and family formation and replace them with subjective, transgressive expressions of gender and sexuality decoupled from the creation and nurturing of human life? 

Here are five suggestions:

Boycott the Institutional Backers. The movement plants its flag on the territory it holds. Garish rainbow symbols identify the movement’s corporate supporters. Christians and all who embrace traditional values should pull their money from such organizations, forcing them to choose between virtue-signaling and profit.

Cleanse Our Temples. The belief system that inspired the Olympic debacle has too often penetrated Protestant and Catholic churches, charities, and schools. My family and I, for example, just visited one of the most well-known Catholic universities in the world; we were greeted by an admissions counselor who enthusiastically introduced herself to prospective students and their parents with her pronouns: “she/they.”

Such capitulation is now commonplace in many Christians institutions, despite the obvious conflicts between biblical religion and the radical ideology. The Bible upholds and celebrates the integrity of the human body, the intrinsic and complementary goodness of the two (and only two) sexes, the innocence of children, and the creation of new human life within a natural family. Queer ideology, by contrast, denies every one of these goods. No effort to resist it will succeed if Christians continue to allow its exponents to capture the pulpits and indoctrinate children. It’s time for believers to insist on doctrinal orthodoxy within their ranks.

Go on the Rhetorical Offensive. The ideology’s most effective weapon of institutional capture is rhetorical. Grounded in a postmodern understanding of the subjectivity of language, its proponents have gutted words of their meanings and stuffed them with their own content. They have redefined, for example, “compassion,” “kindness,” “inclusion,” “safety,” “diversity,” and “equality,” to fit their political goals. The opening ceremony’s creative director put this linguistic manipulation on display when he stated that the drag exhibit was intended to “celebrate community tolerance”—“tolerance,” in rainbow argot, meaning publicly mocking those whose values you do not share.

Christians and their allies must not only reclaim the stability and coherence of language but also go on the offensive, describing in clear terms the perversions of the ideology, including its support of so-called “gender affirming care.” Consider, as a representative example, Christopher Rufo’s use of the term “child sex-change procedure” to describe the surgical mutilation of children’s healthy reproductive organs. The phrase accurately captures the reality underneath the euphemism and shows how Christians can respond to the ideologues’ efforts to use language to shield their radicalism.

Reclaim Where We Can, Build Anew Where We Must. The opening ceremonies may have been the most prominent display of the ideology’s success at institutional capture, but at the local level, especially in public schools and universities, its proponents are taking power as well. Some of these institutions are past the point of reform, but others might yet be reclaimed. In those cases, organized campaigns—such as the legal challenges and parent-led movements that have liberated some public schools from transgender madness—can save institutions. It will be an uphill battle and require courage and persistence, but motivated, organized, and politically savvy people can succeed.

Be Fruitful and Multiply. Queer ideology is literally sterile. Its view of human sexuality denies the primacy of the naturally formed family and makes idols of kink, fetish, and self-mutilation. Left to its internal logic, it will die out. Those who remain after this ideology’s demise will be the descendants of those who cherished and fought to protect the creation and nurturing of new human life. But those who seek to pass on the goods of civilization to the next generation must produce the next generation.

The 2024 Olympic ceremony is a watershed moment. The organizers’ version of The Last Supper ridiculed self-sacrificial love and laid bare the rotten fruit of a radical ideology. Christians and non-Christians alike ignore the threat at their own peril.

Matthew R. Petrusek is the senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and a Manhattan Institute Logos Fellow. 

https://www.city-journal.org/article/olympian-obscenity

Ill. Stupidest Bill Of Year Signed: Falsely Labeled, Unconstitutional "Worker Freedom Of Speech Act"

 By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

Illinois progressives are all over the media congratulating themselves on passage of The Illinois Worker Freedom of Speech Act, signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday. It passed both houses in the General Assembly along strict party lines, with Republicans opposed

It has nothing to do with worker freedom of speech, creates a nightmare for employers and is yet another measure by the state that flagrantly ignores the First Amendment’s right to free speech.

Under the Act, most every employer in the state faces mandatory fines of $1,000 per employee plus civil lawsuits if they discuss “religious or political matters” at meetings where worker attendance is mandatory.

Think about that – no discussions allowed on political matters.

So, say you work for a company that makes a renewable energy product of some kind. Your employer would be fined for  a meeting discussing the importance of government subsidies for your product and your job . Likewise, a company making conventional gasoline powered vehicles could not tell its employees about the impact of government efforts to replace them with electric vehicle makers.

The list of similar examples is endless. Most every company today has matters pending in government that could impact the company, its capacity to hire people, how much it can afford to pay them and even matters outside of the company’s business that may be important to workers. Employers obviously should have the right to communicate their views on that and hope their workers will support them, and they do under the First Amendment.

Some companies are particularly political. Take a look, for example, at some of Google’s leaked “all hands meetings.” Many brim with discussion of political matters. Here’s a clip from one where Google execs melted down, some choking up, while discussing Donald Trump’s election and how they should counteract it.

I don’t know whether attendance was required at those meetings, but if it was and such a meeting was in Illinois, the company would be fined a thousand bucks under the Act for every Illinois employee there. That’s wrong. Giggle if you want but they should be free to discuss those things as they choose.

The list of exemptions from the Act is very narrow. Even nonprofit 501(c)(3) companies are covered. Most think tanks and many political policy operations on the left and right are 501(c)(3)s, including Wirepoints. We and others like us now can’t discuss government matters at our internal meetings?

Good luck trying to force us to comply. The Act is as brazen a First Amendment violation as you will find. At least six other states have passed or are considering similar legislation, called “captive audience bans,” and they are already being challenged in court on First Amendment grounds.

The main purpose of the Act was to ban meetings where management discourages union activity. The Act does that, but to say it’s overbroad would be a monumental understatement. Even that purpose is legally questionable. Other captive audience bans are being challenged on the grounds that the field is preempted by the National Labor Relations Act, making the state laws impermissible.

Illinois has now firmly established itself as the state most hostile to freedom of speech. A list of examples is below.

In one case last year, the state’s First Amendment violation was so extreme that a federal judge ridiculed it as “stupid” as well as unconstitutional. That forced Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to give up trying to defend the law at issue.

Let’s hope this new law gets taken to court fast. It, too, is stupid as well as unconstitutional.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/illinois-stupidest-bill-year-signed-law-falsely-labeled-unconstitutional-worker-freedom