Why I’ve Tuned Out National Public Radio

Why I've Tuned Out National Public Radio
ON THE WORSHIP OF THE MOLOCH OF EQUALITY

By John Lyon | September 2019

One day recently, prompted by programming on National Public Radio (NPR), I undertook a penance I had often threatened myself with on similar provocation but had firmly resisted: I listened to an hour of Rush Limbaugh.

Since 1956 I’ve listened to NPR via various state affiliates from Pennsylvania to Minnesota, including 26 years of broadcasts from Madison, Wisconsin. Over those 63 years, I’ve witnessed the steady drift of NPR’s programming downward and to the Left: the expectable, inevitable, massive movement of most institutions in a democracy.

By some fey magic, NPR manages to continue providing valuable programming: classical music; the narration of vital books; generally useful because informative programs about agricultural, medical, and scientific matters; and even news of events. The slant of commentary about events, however, as well as the choice of topics and sociopolitical pitch of most of its talk-show sessions, is obnoxiously slanted and blatantly partisan. It is sheer “progressive” propaganda. And this is particularly dangerous in a republic degenerating into a democracy.

National Public Radio pleads the cause of radical feminism. (Why isn’t this a form of sexism?) It foments racism by offering outrageous examples of it, all designed to demonstrate that nothing white is right. I can’t recall the last time it covered a case of egregious black-on-white or black-on-black violence. Recently, NPR has been treating listeners to endless harassment over “reparations” — even poetry is called to take sides — because some of our ancestors were here when slavery was legal. How does this bring people together in our society? If genuine reconciliation is to take place, then truly monstrous behavior in the past ought not to be forgotten, but it ought never to be emphasized by public media.

National Public Radio plays about with socialism — a discreet, tentative, middle-class, pleading, speaking-in-euphemisms about what is, in fact, revolutionary. In NPR’s scope, policemen, policing, and, above all, any action carried out by ICE functionaries tend ipso facto to be in the wrong; meanwhile, NPR makes celebrities of chosen criminals.

National Public Radio turned the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh into a circus maximus performance, abetting the pre-judged, thumbs-down verdict of social media in the circus minimus. It played to the galleries about the bad, bad Covington High School students’ oppressing and threatening a poor, unarmed, tom-tom beating “Native American,” when it was, in fact, the tom-tom beater who was attempting to incite an outrage.

Spadaro and Figueroa in La Civiltà Cattolica: Eeeek! The FUNDAMENTALISTS are coming!!!

But wait! Do they even know what a 'Fundamentalist' is? Of course not! And here is Frank J. Sheed to prove it in "Reading is Fundamental!" (July 21, 2017).

[Hat tip to JM]

Natural born haters behind the monolithic cult of 'diversity'

The Editors, "The Cult of Diversity at Providence College," New Oxford Review (January-February, 2017):

One of the common propaganda techniques used by today’s cultural hucksters is known as the empty vessel — a vague “virtue word” or phrase that aims to evoke positive feelings rather than convey meaningful information. An empty vessel is often so vague that everyone is expected to agree on its appropriateness and value, though no one is really sure just what it means. Empty vessels are designed to make us approve and accept certain assertions without examining any real evidence. Consider the words change, equality, sustainability, progressive, and multiculturalism — words that are readily bandied about in our ordinary political exchanges but rarely convey anything meaningful or specific.

Anthony Esolen, a professor of Renaissance studies and an acclaimed Dante scholar at Providence College in Rhode Island, recently took on the politically correct usage of the word diversity. Esolen, an orthodox Catholic who’s taught at the Dominican-led school for twenty-five years (and who has appeared in our pages), is an enthusiastic proponent of both liberal-arts education and the teachings of the Church. In an article at the website of Crisis magazine (Crisis.com, Sept. 26), Esolen lamented his Catholic college’s manipulative misuse of the watchword diversity as a political slogan — for example, the phrase Celebrate Diversity is brightly emblazoned on a conspicuous campus mural, and the school’s website prominently features a four-page Diversity Program. “Is not diversity as it is now preached a solvent for any culture?” Esolen asked. “Is not that same call for diversity, when Catholics are doing the calling, a surrender of the Church to a political movement which is, for all its talk, a push for homogeneity, so that all the world will not look like the many-cultured Church, but rather like the monotone non-culture of western cities that have lost their faith in the transcendent and unifying God?”

The problem, as Esolen sees it, is this: Providence College (the initials of which are, perhaps fittingly, P.C.), in appealing to the vague and undefined empty vessel of diversity, is willingly suppressing its own Catholic culture in favor of an infection with Western sexual obsessions. What that means for professors like him who believe in the teachings of the Church is that they must risk anything from censure to public humiliation to outright firing for simply speaking with the voice of the Church, especially in the realm of sexual morality. The secular preachers of diversity brook no dissent from the politically correct acceptance of all celebrated sexual attractions and proclivities. Their vision, Esolen explained, is “a vision that pretends to be ‘multi-cultural,’ but that is actually anti-cultural, and is characterized by all the totalitarian impulses to use the massive power of government to bring to heel those who decline to go along.”

Esolen complained that several of his faithful colleagues at Providence had been harassed by fellow faculty members and university administrators for simple expressions of the Catholic faith and Church teaching. The college even has a Bias Response Team standing by to field any and all reported incidents of “bias” — such as explaining why the Church opposes same-sex marriage and does not condone acts of sodomy. According to Esolen, these bias investigators “are like a Star Chamber whose constitution and laws and executive power no one will know.” If a Catholic college threatens to bring its faithful professors before a diversity-review board, how can it possibly allow for expressions of disapproval toward any disordered inclination or sin, sexual or otherwise? Ironically, this is not diversity at all. It is conformity and homogeneity: Accept our politically correct principles or suffer the wrath of the Thought Police. Think like us or be bludgeoned in the name of an undefined and perhaps undefinable “diversity.”

As if to prove Esolen’s point, the diversity police at Providence College somehow got hold of his Crisis article and used it to publicly denounce him. In an interview with Rod Dreher (The American Conservative, Nov. 1), Esolen explained that a group of students led by a “radical professor” took heated umbrage with him. “The students accused me of racism,” he told Dreher, “despite my explicit statements in the article that I welcome people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds.” Bizarre! Nowhere in his Crisis article did Esolen even remotely intimate that he took issue with a member of any racial or ethnic group. The students — and later, it turns out, fellow professors — went into apoplectic spasms inspired solely by his criticism of the diversity obsession. “They were angered by my suggestion,” he said, “that there was something narcissistic in the common insistence that people should study themselves rather than people who lived long ago and in cultures far removed from ours by any ordinary criterion, and there was something totalitarian in the impulse of the secular left, to attempt to subject our curriculum to the demands of a current political aim.”

In other words, Esolen’s detractors didn’t even understand the well-reasoned argument he was making about the misuse of the term diversity. It was much easier for them to disregard his arguments and all relevant facts in favor of calling him a racist — another propaganda technique, by the way, simply referred to as, you guessed it, name-calling. But they weren’t satisfied with just calling him a racist. The group later organized a protest on campus. “About 60 students marched around,” he told Dreher, “while a female student led them around, shouting slogans through a bullhorn.” These students ended their protest march at the office of the college president, Fr. Brian Shanley, and demanded a response from him. Some even demanded that Esolen be fired right then and there.

Is it me, or is it getting cold in here ...

Thus spake a reader who emailed me this: Michael J. Kruger, "How my books are being banned at the Society of Biblical Literature" (Cannon Fodder, October 19, 2016). Excerpts:

... Dr. John Kutsko, executive director of the Society of Biblical Literature, has just proposed that InterVarsity Press–one of the largest evangelical presses in the country– be suspended from having a book stall at the annual SBL meeting (starting in 2017).

The reason for this ban is the recent decision by InterVarsity to uphold the biblical view of marriage and to ask their employees to do the same (see IVP clarification on their policy here).

Since I have a current book with IVP Academic, The Question of Canon, and a forthcoming book with them on Christianity in the second century, SBL would effectively be banning my books from the annual meeting. And that would be true for hundreds and hundreds of other IVP authors.

Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

"Profound hypocrisy of ACC, NCAA and others making business decisions desguised as moral outrage"

The following is taken from a PDF of a letter from Franklin Graham from Boone, NC, to Commissioner John D. Swofford of Atlantic Coast Conference in Greensboro, NC, dated September 15, 2016:

As a lifelong resident of North Carolina and current CEO and president of two organizations employing nearly 1,500 North Carolinians, I am saddened -- even outraged -- by the vote of the ACC Council of Presidents to move conference championships from our state in protest of legislation requiring people to use public bathrooms that correspond with their birth gender.

While I recognize this legislation -- and legislation like it in other states -- is complicated by society's continued blurring of the lines of gender and sexual identity, I also recognize the profound hypocrisy of the ACC, the NCAA and other companies and organizations who are making calculated business decisions disguised as moral outrage.

For example, the football championship game your conference voted to move from Charlotte in December is called the "Dr. Pepper ACC Football Championship." Dr. Pepper and its parent company, Cadbury Schweppes and Carlyle Group, proundly sell their products in countries where homosexuality is illegal. Will ACC drop its title sponsor? And why isn't the LGBT community demanding you sever ties with such a "bigoted" corporate sponsor?

Currently, LGBT relationships are illegal in more than 70 countries -- including 10 where homosexuality is punishable by death. Dr. Pepper is often bottled under contract by Coca-Cola bottlers -- yet Coca-Cola conducts business in virtually every nation on earth, including nearly every country where homosexuality is currently criminalized. Can your conference continue to tolerate that?

The ACC website proudly features Toyota as an "Official Corporate Champion," yet Toyota maintains factories and distribution centers in several of these discriminatory countries, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Egypt. Where is the moral outrage of the presidents of Boston College, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami, UNC, North Carolina State, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest?

Indeed, the ACC's member schools compete in 25 sports divided by gender -- 12 men's sports and 13 women's. Though gender issues may be becoming more complicated in higher education and other parts of society, the athletic conference you serve as commissioner doesn't seem to have any problem distinguishing between the two genders -- male and female. Yet, when a state like the one I live in seeks to make the same distinction with regard to use of public bathrooms in an effort to protect its citizens from those who would use the men's room today and th women's room tomorrow, the academic elites who comprise your conference fake a moral outrage that is frankly shameful.

Ironically, the NCAA is more discriminatory towards transgender people than the public policy they apparently wish to see as law in America. For example, opponents to legislation like NC House Bill 2 support permitting people to use the bathroom which corresponds to the sex they identify with on a given day -- meaning someone might feel like a man today and a woman tomorrow, switching bathrooms at will.

Yet even the NCAA doesn't allow such casual gender identity for participation in collegiate athletics. The NCAA Policy on Transgender Student-Athlete Participation states, "Any transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatment related to gender transition may participate in sex-separated sports activities in accordance with his or her assigned birth gender."

I think I represent the views of millions who would rather preserve gender-specific public bathrooms -- a mainstay for generations -- than to attend a football game in my state to determine the champion of a conference governed by politically-correct, morally hypocritical academics.

Commissioner, in your statement today you said, "the ACC Council of Presidents made it clear that the core values of this league are of the utmost importance, and wthe opposition to any form of discrimination is paramount. Today's decision is one of principle." Will this same paramount "opposition to any form of discriminatin" have you now sever ties with Toyota and Dr. Pepper?

I am a big sports fan. My only daughter married a college football star that went on to play in the NFL. But I would rather defend the biological definition of the two genders as created by the Creator of the universe than attend -- or even watch on TV -- a football or basketball game to determine the AC champion.

Commissionar Swofford, you maintain your conference's decision is "one of principle" and that "core values ... are of utmost importance." Well, millions of us who oppose your decision do so as a matter of principle and core values -- values of privacy, safety and protection of our sons and daughters in public restooms, and the principle that God created just two genders and assigned them at birth.

Please don't make political pawns of student-athletes who just want to play football or basketball in North Carolina, and don't continue to offend millions of Americans who endorse thousands of years of gender-specific bathrooms while you continue to accept corporate sponsorship money from companies proudly conducting their business in countries that discriminate against homosexuals to the point of death.

Sincerely,

Franklin Graham President & CEO of Samaritan's Purse President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

cc. Presidents of the 15 member schools.

[Hat tip to J.S.]

Why this bit of political correctness will not end well for Wheaton College

I posted THIS on December 15th, 2015, about the "same God" comment by an evangelical Wheaton College professor who wore a hijab in identification with Muslims.

D.G. Hart now writes: "Why This Won’t End Well For Wheaton" (Old Life, January 8, 2016).

The nub of the issue, says Hart, is that Hawkins (the professor who did this at Wheaton) "doesn't seem to recognize that the unity of creation [which gives all of us creatures a certain solidarity] can't make up for the antithesis that Christ introduces." (He quotes Mt 10:34-38.)

"Microaggressions"

"From Leviathan University's Student Modification Guidebook, 2015-16" (Intercollegiate Review, Fall, 2015):

Leviathan University prides itself on leading the fight against social maladjustment and transgressive vocables. Toward this end, we have added this new chapter on microaggressions.

Please read this carefully, as the penalties for violating the new behavioral guidelines include social-media shaming, shunning, serious threat of expulsion, quasi-expulsion, expulsion, post-expulsion I-Told-You-So, and self-financed apology tour.

Definition

A "microaggression" is unintended and unconscious discriminatory behavior resulting in emotionally, psychologically, or politically discernible marginalization. It entails the application of "known social norms" to unsuspecting victims, who suffer discriminatory-like repercussions such as bed head (due to sleep disruption), moodiness, whiny affect, and killing sprees.

Microaggressions typically manifest themselves in three ways:

• microassault: an explicit verbal/nonverbal derogation -- e.g., denying that someone is a person of color solely on the basis of color, thereby implying that race is not a social construct; speaking as if you were mentally placing "microaggression" in quotation marks, etc.
• microinsult: coded messages, subtle snubs that demean a person's identity, whether that identity is obvious or not -- e.g., telling someone to be "reasonable," a white, Western category associated with a history of slavery and overcharging for fresh produce.
• microinvalidation: expressions of negativity that make persons feel they are not worthy to feel their feelings; insisting that something didn't happen just because it didn't, etc.

Professor Hroswitha Gandersheim of Leviathan's Department of Noetic Poetics has define three further sublevels of microaggressive activity:

• mini-microaggression: an aggressive communication that only dogs can perceive; dreaming that someone you know is dreaming of you in a nonconsensual manner, etc.
• subatomic microaggressions: shifts in elementary particles that affect energy flow, resulting in unwanted changes to one's position relative to the cafeteria.
• macro-microaggressions: repeating oneself to a nondeaf person; saying "Ya know" when clearly the intended victim does not; insisting that someone is innocent until proven guilty, thereby privileging a white, Western standard of jurisprudence, etc.

How to Respond When You Are the Victim of Microaggression

1. Panic: The long-term effects of such assaults are undetectable, and thus are the more subversive in theirimpacts.
2. Take to social media: Tweeting out the nature of the offense and the name of the offender will create a "wall of susceoptibullying"
3. File a formal complaint with the Office of Hostile Gestures: It won't take more than two or three hours, and there is cake and nontactile massage.
4. Seek counseling: Leviathan offers a wide variety of treatment and exhortation options, including an app for your phone that can be programmed to confirm your self-image every fifteen minutes.

We at Leviathan University remain hopeful that one day no one will ever interact with another person in such a way that a "communication" can be proved to have taken place. Until such day, there's always university bureaucracy.

"Modern Educayshun"

[Hat tip to L.S.]

Time to pull the plug on general "higher education" (I use the words loosely)

To quote my son, C.B., "these students belong in nursery school, not college":

• Robby Soave, "Students at Yale, Missouri Beg College Administrators to Play Mommy and Daddy" (reason.com, November 9, 2015)
• Katy Waldman, "Yale Students Erupt in Anger Over Administrators Caring More About Free Speech Than Safe Spaces" (Slate, November 7, 2015)
• "Yale University Students Protest Halloween Costume" (TheFIREorg, November 6, 2015)

C.B. comments: "Perhaps the most astonishing thing about these students’ censorious actions is how profoundly conservative they are. By communicating an expectation that their master or president protect them from unsightly Halloween costumes, or promise them no more hurtful words will be said at their expense, students are essentially calling for a return to campus life under in loco parentis. They reject not merely a free and open campus dialogue, but adulthood itself."

Why "gun-free zones" are magnets for mass murders

I don't usually address topics like this, but Marshall Lewin makes a pretty good case for how I would explain, among other things, the otherwise seemingly counter-intuitive reason why I avoid movie theaters which have signs prohibiting firearms. Yes, it IS counter-intuitive. It doesn't mean you yourself necessarily have to be armed. But public gathering places that explicitly ban arms inadvertently advertise themselves as easy targets for mass murders. Here's how: Marshall Lewin, "Let's End The Charade Of Gun-Free Zones" (America's 1st Freedom, September 25, 2015) - abridged and edited:

“Gun-free zones” don’t protect anyone except the evil. How? By disarming law-abiding, peaceable people. By giving the lawless and the merciless a monopoly on force. And by guaranteeing that suicidal mass murderers will have zero resistance and 100-percent success against disarmed and defenseless victims....

Gun-Free Zones At Military Facilities

This summer’s attacks on two military facilities in Chattanooga, Tenn.—in which Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez murdered four Marines and a Navy sailor at a recruiting office and Navy reserve center—are far from unique. From the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, where an Islamic jihadist killed 13 people and wounded 32 more while screaming “Allahu Akbar!” ... to the 2013 Washington Navy Yard shootings, where a lone gunman shot 15 people, 12 of them fatally ... to the 2014 Fort Hood shootings (again) in which four people were killed and a dozen more were shot—every one of these crimes was committed at military facilities where our own soldiers and sailors were rendered helpless by “gun-free zones.” ...

Magnets For Mass Murder

... Consider the case of the Aurora movie theater shooter. As [John] Lott wrote for Fox News, “There were seven movie theaters showing ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ within 20 minutes of the killer’s apartment.” Yet he didn’t choose the theater closest to home. And he didn’t choose “Colorado’s largest auditorium,” which was only 10 minutes away and surely must have been tempting for someone who wanted to kill as many people as possible. Why not? Because, as Lott wrote, “all of those theaters allowed permitted concealed handguns.” Instead, the killer chose “the only one with a sign posted at the theater’s entrance prohibiting guns.”

Internationally renowned self-defense firearms instructor Massad Ayoob, who refers to “gun-free zones” as “hunting preserves for psychopathic murderers,” has analyzed many such events. Here are just a few examples:

Pearl, Miss., 1997: A 16-year-old stabs his mother to death, then takes a 30-30 rifle to his school, where he murders two young women. As he tries to drive away to continue his shooting spree at a nearby junior high school, Vice Principal Joel Myrick retrieves a Colt .45 from his truck, intercepts the killer and holds him for police.

Edinboro, Pa., 1998: A 14-year-old brings a gun to an off-campus school dance at a banquet facility and opens fire, killing a science teacher and wounding three others. Restaurant owner James Strand retrieves a shotgun and, as the killer is reloading, points it at him, forcing him to surrender.

Santa Clara, Calif., 1999: A 21-year-old man rents a 9 mm handgun at a gun range, then takes it into the adjoining store, fires it into the ceiling, and herds three store employees into an alley, where he tells them he’s going to kill them. One of those employees is secretly armed with a pistol, however, and uses it to end the attack.

Grundy, Va., 2002: After a 43-year-old former student shoots two faculty members to death, two students, Mikael Gross, 34, and Tracy Bridges, 25, immediately and independently run to their cars, retrieve their firearms, return to the scene, disarm the gunman and hold him for police.

Tyler, Texas, 2005: A man enraged over his divorce proceedings and wearing body armor opens fire on the courthouse steps, killing his ex-wife and wounding his son. Police fire upon the killer with handguns, but he drives them back with his rifle. Hearing gunfire, Mark Allan Wilson rushes to the scene with his Colt .45 and shoots the gunman, who flees without inflicting additional casualties. The gunman is later killed in a shootout with police.

Colorado Springs, Colo., 2007: After killing two and wounding two more at a nearby religious center, a gunman opens fire at New Life Church, killing two and injuring three more. Jeanne Assam, working volunteer security at the church, rushes the killer, shooting him with her Beretta 9 mm before he kills himself.

Moore, Okla., 2014: An Islamic jihadist who has pictures of Taliban fighters on his Facebook page returns to Vaughan Foods, where his employment had recently been suspended, and beheads a 54-year-old grandmother. He then slashes the throat of a 43-year-old female employee, but before he can behead her, company CEO Mark Vaughan, an Oklahoma County reserve deputy, retrieves a rifle from his car and shoots the assailant.

Chances are, you haven’t heard about most of these cases—or if you have, you haven’t heard about the armed citizens who stopped the attacks. And the reason is because that truth doesn’t fit into the media’s anti-gun narrative.

Wimpy translators of papal tweets?

The underground correspondent we keep on retainer in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, also sent us the following disturbingly-amusing remarks today: "I am sorry, but I laughed. But there was this comment too:

'You should look at the latin versions of the pope’s tweets. They are much more interesting. Other than the whole Mary thing, I’m beginning to think a big part of the problem with the Vatican in English is the wimpy translators.'"

The piece that provoked Noir was a post by the Evangelical blogger, Doug Wilson, entitled "As Gay As a Pope Tweet" (Blog & Mablog, December 8, 2014):

One of our central problems today is that Christian men have been maneuvered (and/or bludgeoned) into thinking that ungodly and sentimental softness is a biblical virtue.... It comes down to a “softer than thou” sort of posturing. The corruptions of feminism have gotten into everything .... The end result is that evangelical men, taking one thing with another, are gayer than a pope tweet.

And lest this seem like a random insult — instead of an incredibly apt metaphor — let me just say that Pope Francis (@Pontifex) takes sentimentalist sap to new and majestic heights. “Advent begins a new journey. May Mary, our Mother, be our guide.” “Advent increases our hope, a hope which does not disappoint. The Lord never lets us down.” “There is so much noise in the world! May we learn to be silent in our hearts and before God.”

It didn’t always used to be this way. It almost makes one yearn for the days of the badass popes. For example, Pope Urban VI ordered the torture and execution of five of his cardinals, responding to their screams with his taunt of “weak old women!” That also would be a bad hash tag, but at least it wouldn’t be so insipid and boring . . . okay then, all right. I changed my mind. I am prepared to grant the effeminate Francis is an improvement, but still . . .
#DeathByBromide.

But I got distracted from the point anyhow. The problem we are discussing is evangelical men who do not know what gentleness is. They do not know what men are for. They do not understand how tenderness is supposed to work....

Thence, he launches into a Bible study of the virtues of masculine gentleness and tenderness and how those virtues equip a man for war. Interesting.

It may be that the author fails to understand that Marian piety, among other things, wasn't historically regarded in the Catholic tradition as something the least bit effeminate or wimpy. Then again, I've often personally found some of the papal prayer intentions regularly communicated throughout the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, as well as Francis, rather banal-sounding. Maybe that's one reason I enjoy the absence of "General Intercessions" or what the English call "Bidding Prayers" in the usus antiquior. I certainly get the #DeathByBromide bit. We could all use a bit more "masculine" clarity in religion and less sentimentalism.

[Hat tip to G.N.]

"The Times Are Never So Bad ...

... that a good man cannot live in them." Work in them? That may be another question. As Guy Noir pointed out in a message today, the following story shows just how "bad" the times are getting. Depressing for anyone who values free speech and virtue.

Kate Shellnutt, "Bible Citation Costs Atlanta Fire Chief His Job" (Christianity Today, January 9, 2015).

Can you imagine a fire chief being fired in a Buddhist country for citing the Lotus Sutra, or in a Muslim country for citing the Qur'an?

We may just have the most insane policies of any country in the world. Political correctness is killing us. Orwell was right. The thought police are now flexing their new-found muscles. Pray for major cramping.


[Hat tip to GN]

Dangerous illegal immigrants invading ... Canada! (Hilarious!)

Fr. Z, "It’s time to build camps! Dangerous illegal immigrants invading!" (Fr. Z's Blog, November 16, 2014):

In Grand Marias, MN, there is a Restaurant called, fetchingly, “South of the Border”.  Not a lick of Tex-Mex in sight.  It’s pretty funny.

Apparently the Canadians up there in Canadia are having their own border problems.   A friend sent this from the The Manitoba Herald (sorry, no link):

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The recent actions of the Tea Party and the fact Republicans won the Senate are prompting an exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt, pray, and to agree with Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.

Canadian border farmers say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

Read more >>

The myth of liberal democratic tolerance

J.L. Talmon was right: liberal democracy can become totalitarian and repressive if unchecked by traditional values -- as evidenced by yet another Colorado baker, Jack Phillips, who is being strong-armed by authorities into violating his religious convictions by serving sodomite couples asking for wedding cakes.

Reading Carol Kuruvilla's article, "Colorado baker ordered to serve gay couples vows to stop making wedding cakes" (Daily News, June 3, 2014), our underground correspondent we keep on retainer in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, writes: "I feel like we are in the Netherlands. Can you imagine the USCCB saying something with such plain clarity? 'We would close down the bakery before we would complicate our beliefs ...'" Good point.

Here is the Daily News article with Guy Noir's highlights:

Colorado baker ordered to serve gay couples vows to stop making wedding cakes This takes the cake.

A Colorado baker has pledged to stop making wedding cakes after his state’s Civil Rights Commission ordered him to start baking for same-sex couples.

Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, was willing to go to court to defend his decision to refuse service to two grooms who walked into his shop last year looking for a way to celebrate their marriage.

Phillips’ crusade turned out to be a giant failure after the Commission unanimously ruled that he had violated civil rights law by discriminating against the couple.

The devout Christian is retaliating by refusing to make wedding cakes altogether.

“We would close down the bakery before we would complicate our beliefs,” Phillips told CBS Denver.

The man said that he would be happy to make cakes for an LGBT person’s birthday party. But he believes making a wedding cake would be equivalent to participating in the ceremony.

“My issue is that I don’t want to be forced to participate in a same-sex wedding,” Phillips said.

The grooms at the center of the controversy, David Mullins and Charlie Craig, tied the knot in Massachusetts. They wanted to order a cake for a reception in Colorado.

Phillips isn’t too worried about his business shutting down—he says business is booming at Masterpiece Cakeshop. His brownies and cookies are reportedly flying off the counters, snatched up by people who agree with his stance on gay marriage.

But for the next few months, he’ll have to submit quarterly reports about who he refuses to serve. He’ll also have to give his employees anti-discrimination training.

[Hat tip to JM]

Why we like Carl Trueman . . .

In a recent post entitled "Five Fine History Books for Christmas" (Reformation 21, November 4, 2012), Carl Trueman writes:

When students ask me what they need to do to become good church historians, I always answer -- Read history, any history, as long as it is well-written. So here are five recommendations of new books in 2012 which some might want to think about asking for as presents:

...

Best new book to make it onto my syllabi:

Robert Louis Wilken, The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity(Yale). I have been a fan of Wilken, a leading Roman Catholic historian of early Christianity, ever since I went to Princeton to hear him give a lecture on the secularisation of modern Christianity. When asked by a member of the audience -- and remember, this is Princeton we are talking about -- to give an example of selling out to the world, he declared (without taking a breath) 'Inclusive language translations of the Bible.' The place descended into uproar.

Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

"Quite magnificent," adds Trueman. Indeed.

He concludes: "This book is a superb tour of the first millennium of the Christian faith, written with his usual learning, wit and clarity. It will be on both my Ancient Church and Medieval syllabi from now on."

Magnificent indeed!

[Hat tip to J.M.]

"VIDEO: Craven, narcissistic, bullying slubberdegullion liberal (redundant, I know) harasses Chick-fil-A employee"

"Cowardly liberal berates young woman at Chick-Fil-A" (CMR, August 2, 2012). Disgusting. Via WDTPRS.

"Exec Bullies Chick-Fil-A Worker, Then Promptly Gets Fired For It" (Business Insider, August 2, 2012).

"Chick-fil-A 'kiss' day marred by 'Tastes like hate' graffiti" (L.A. Now, August 2, 2012)

Who is guilty of hate speech here? Who? This is classic. Those who cry "Hate speech!" of course. Another face of the culture of death.

Where politics, money, and LGBT meet

Store.Barackobama.com

For the record: Syracuse University study shows global warming in medieval times

Ted Thornhill, "Is this finally proof we're NOT causing global warming? The whole of the Earth heated up in medieval times without human CO2 emissions, says new study" (MailOnline, March 26, 2012).

The state of Catholicism in Germany: a sample

A friend recently sent me a link to a piece of vintage current German liberal Catholic "religion talk," symptomatic of the state of the Church in Deutschland. The piece, entitled "Kirche 2011: Ein notwendiger Aufbruch" (April 4, 2011), is a sort of manifesto by liberal German theology professors and professorettes (the writers insist on being au courant in the gender inclusive department). Interestingly, the semantic range of "Aufbruch" covers everything from "start" and "departure" to "break" and even "awakening."

Taking recent sex scandals as their point of departure and pretext for distancing themselves from Catholic tradition, the authors blaze through the following points in rare, fashionable form: (1) Structure of participation; (2) Community; (3) Legal culture, respecting the rights, dignity and freedom of each individual; (4) Liberty of conscience, (5) Reconciliation, stressing a solidarity with 'sinners' which takes the Church's own sins seriously; (6) Worship.

Two excerpts -- #4 and #6 -- loosely translated:

(4) Freedom of Conscience: Respect for the individual conscience means to place trust in the decision-making ability and responsibility of the people. Supporting this capability is also a task of the Church, which must not turn into paternalism. On a serious note, this particularly concerns the realm of personal life choices and individual lifestyles. The Church's esteem for marriage and the celibate life is beyond question. But it also commands us not to exclude people living responsibly in love, loyalty, and mutual concern in same-sex partnerships or as remarried divorcees.

(6) Worship: The liturgy depends on the active participation of all believers. Experiences and expressions of the present must have a place in it. The service may not be frozen in traditionalism. Cultural diversity enriches liturgical life and is not consistent with tendencies towards centralized uniformity. Only when the celebration of faith partakes of concrete life, will the Church's message reach the people.

Yada, yada.

[Hat tip to C.F.]

Global warming ended but would have helped?

Do you still run into people who tell you that they still run into people who still refuse to believe in global warming? So do I.

Back in March of 2007, I noted the Inconvenient Detail, overlooked by Al Gore, suggested by the National Geographic News report that the melting of polar ice caps on Mars suggested a solar, not human, cause of global warming.

Now scientists are suggesting that global warming is probably part of a climatological cycle and that the warming may have ended some 15 years ago -- AND that global warming within any reasonably predictable range could actually be beneficial by promoting the greening of planet earth (something reported some time ago also by this First Things article, and this).

But here's the latest:

• Paper: global warming ended 15 years ago (MailOnline, January 29, 2012): "Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again).
  
  
• "Opinion: The Global Warming Hoax" (Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2012): Princeton physics professor William Happer on why a large number of scientists don't believe that carbon dioxide is causing global warming.

Related

• "The Himalayas and nearby peaks have lost no ice in past 10 years, study shows" (The Guardian, February 9, 2012)