The Progressive Pandemic – Page 2 – Challenging the Progressive Assault on Church, State, and Society

The Escalation of the Progressive Attack on Speech

The progressive assault on speech is entering a new and more sinister phase, advancing beyond censorship by social media companies and crossing the line into government censorship. This new phase is aptly characterized in a January article found in Defense One, entitled “Regulate Social Media Companies.” The article commingles many different errant ideas, but its most disturbing attribute is the reckless way in which various sorts of speech formerly considered to be free are suddenly judged to be subject to progressive discipline. Take the very first sentence, for example:

“The events of January 6 showed existing approaches to quell disinformation and incitements to violence on social media platforms have failed, badly.”
[1]

The first thing to be noted in this sentence is the mischaracterization of the origins of the January 6^th Capitol protests and the dismissal of the legitimate concerns with election fraud held by much of the U. S. electorate. But beyond that bit of chicanery, of greater concern is the underlying mindset displayed here, which conflates both disinformation and incitements to violence as examples of prohibited speech. While incitement to violence is clearly prohibited in the U. S., disinformation is nothing of the sort. Terms like disinformation suffer from a critical malady, which is that someone must define them for any given issue. And since every issue has at least two sides, then one side’s definition is not by itself sufficient. All sides must be represented in the free and public exchange of views.

The U. S. Catholic Bishops and the Equality Act

It must be rough to be a Roman Catholic bishop in America these days. Seriously, half the flock is in open rebellion. Then there’s that other problem that won’t go away, having to do with clerical abuse, which has caused so much damage to the lives and souls of Catholics. And now the bishops have to deal with the Equality Act, a concerted attack upon Christianity by the U. S. government, which is paradoxically and painfully led by a Catholic President and a Catholic Speaker of the House. In my humble opinion, a calamity like this deserves a hard-nosed response, but it is difficult to envision the bishops as an aggressively outspoken group. They typically approach conflict as nice avuncular gentlemen, who would prefer to dialogue rather than forcefully preach. Such a genial strategy is not seen by all as effective – in fact, one priest recently characterized the ministry of the Catholic bishops over the last several decades as one of “bad catechesis and cowardice.” [1] While “cowardice” might be a somewhat harsh characterization of the bishops’ performance, it is fair to say that their recent statement to Congress opposing the Equality Act was certainly not as vigorous as it could have been.

The Equality Act, [2] pending now in Congress, has far-reaching and disastrous implications not only for religious and faith-based organizations, but also for the foundations of our society itself. The scope of the Act was characterized well by Mary Beth Waddell of the Family Research Council:

“The Equality Act is legislation that would massively overhaul our federal civil rights framework in order to mandate special privileges for sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), expand abortion access, and gut religious liberty—leaving many to suffer the consequences, including women, children, medical professionals, parents, teachers, students, families (including small business owners), the unborn, churches, religious organizations and schools, people of faith, and even those members of the LGBT community it claims to protect.” [3]

But the broad reach of the Act is not its most dangerous aspect: it is a threat not just to persons and religious organizations, but more importantly, to Christianity itself. Catholic League President Bill Donahue understands this:

“ . . . its effect is to promote the most comprehensive assault on Christianity ever written into law.” [4]

This is because the Act is really an attempt to force everyone to accept a disordered vision of human sexuality. As described by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council,

“This is a radical bill that uses the government to control, through coercion, how every American thinks, speaks, and acts on human sexuality.” [5]

While the progressive attack on the Christian faith is nothing new – the Supreme Court in particular has been instrumental for decades now in removing the Christian understanding of human sexuality from U. S. law with decisions such as Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Obergefell – never before in the U. S. has the destruction of God’s design been so systematically codified into law. This law affects marriage. It affects the family. It affects children. And as Amy Welborn writes, it is particularly dangerous for women:

“Many aspects of life call for sexually integrated spaces — but not all. Women deserve their own spaces when they are escaping from abuse, when they are imprisoned, when they are under medical care, when they are tending to personal physical needs, and if they desire, when they are educated, just to name a few. Women deserve to be safe in those spaces, and the Equality Act, as written, would open up those spaces to the presence of men – the worst men, who for whatever reason, cannot or will not leave vulnerable women alone, or who are sexually aroused by pretending to be women in women’s spaces.” [6]

This Act exploits the human misery experienced by those afflicted with homosexual or gender confusion, using the force of law to foster the propagation of their illness throughout all of our society. This is clearly not legislative business as usual. We stand two Democrat senators away from losing the filibuster, and therefore failing to defeat this Act. This dire circumstance requires an emphatic and courageous counter-attack.

Yet on February 23^rd, 2021, five bishops representing the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops could muster nothing more than what amounts to a rather mild reproach to U. S. Congress, with a bottom line stating “We oppose this legislation.” Although the letter did note that “the bill represents the imposition by Congress of novel and divisive viewpoints regarding “gender” on individuals and organizations,” and did instruct the Congress that gender differences are real and not merely “social constructs,” it avoided drawing the obvious conclusion that both Christianity and the stability of society are at significant risk. [7]

Instead, the bishops chose to focus on a number of ways in which the Act will discriminate against Christians and and their organizations. But even here the bishops understated the case. For example, several of the social harms listed in their letter predict that people will be forced to act against their religious beliefs. But if “faithful” people act against the tenets of their faith, that is not a problem with the Equality Act – it is actually a problem with the inherent weakness of the Church and her faithful. The bishops should have argued that faithful Christians and their organizations will not comply with such an unjust and unconstitutional law, and will therefore be stripped of the functions they have been performing in society. The consequence, assessed with that perspective, is then seen to be much more than mere discrimination: the real damage is that Christianity itself will be expelled from society – Christianity as it influences and is exercised in all societal arenas – including charities, schools, businesses, health care, and churches.

The bishops failed to mention the potential devastation to schools, except for the loss of exclusively female sports competitions and facilities. It is bad enough that there exists a very real potential loss of Christian schools which refuse the implementation of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity curriculum. Beyond that, however, the Equality Act will ensure the indoctrination of public school children in this evil ideology. Concerned parents should read the Heritage Foundation’s detailed analysis, which provides the following key point, among others, about the Sexual Ideology Indoctrination that is coming with the Equality Act:

“Under the Equality Act, schools would, in effect, be forced to propagate the view that traditional beliefs regarding marriage, sexuality, and gender are bigoted and discriminatory—regardless of objections from parents.” [8]

Schools are just one sector of society in which this law will operate. When it comes to fundamentals, let’s consider the family, another institution not mentioned in the statement by the bishops. Think about how the diseased view of human sexuality mandated by this Act would affect the family, in light of the following description of the family and its role in society from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2207:

“The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society.” [9]

The mandates of the Equality Act are directly at odds with this vision, God’s vision, of the family. And given its expansive scope, no one yet completely grasps the extent to which the tentacles of this nasty law will mutilate the American community.

With this Act the Democrat Party is setting in place the infrastructure for persecution of the Christian Church. If anyone can lead the fight against this assault, it is the bishops – because, after all, they are the successors of the Apostles. As prescribed in the 2004 Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops:

“Foremost among the different ministries of the Bishop is that of proclaiming the Word of God, as did the Apostles (cf. Rom 1:1) (351), announcing it with courage (cf. Rom 1:16) and defending the Christian people against errors that threaten them (cf. Acts 20:29; Phil 1:16). The Bishop, in communion with the Head and members of the College, is an authoritative teacher, invested with Christ’s own authority, both when he teaches individually and when he teaches in union with the other Bishops.” [10]

It would no doubt be a novel and salutary experience for the “whited sepulchres” in Congress to encounter Apostles who speak with authority, as Jesus did in the following instance with the Pharisees and Sadducees:

“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones, and of all filthiness. So you outwardly indeed appear to men just; but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”
– Mt 23:27-28 Douay-Rheims Version

An authoritative exhortation to Congress in defiance of this ominously pagan monstrosity masquerading as law requires a response far stronger than the meek objection that “We oppose this legislation.” The bishops should persist in the fight against this sinister Act, and challenge the Congress in no uncertain terms:

– “We will not comply with this unjust and immoral law.”

– “We will fight this legislation with every means at our disposal.”

– “We will urge our faithful to do the same.”

References.

1. LaChance, Mike. “Catholic Priest Goes Off On Joe Biden In Viral Rant (VIDEO).” Gateway Pundit. March 21, 2021. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/03/catholic-priest-goes-off-joe-biden-viral-rant-video/

2. U.S. Congress. House. EQUALITY ACT. HR 5. 117th Cong., 1st sess. Introduced in House February 18, 2021. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5/text

3. Waddell, Mary Beth. “How the ‘Equality Act’ Is Actually Unequal, Unfair, and Unjust.” Family Research Council. February 2021. https://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF19D32.pdf

4. Donahue, Bill. “Equality Act is Anti-Christian.” CNS News. February 22, 2021. https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/bill-donohue/equality-act-anti-christian

5. “FRC urges US House of Representatives to reject the far-Left Equality Act.” Family Research Council. February 24, 2021. https://www.frc.org/pressrelease/frc-action-urges-us-house-of-representatives-to-reject-the-far-left-equality-act

6. Welborn, Amy. “The foundational (but largely ignored) problem with the Equality Act.” Catholic World Report. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/03/23/the-foundational-but-largely-ignored-problem-with-the-equality-act/

7. “Letter to Congress on Equality Act.” USCCB:Resources. February 23, 2021. https://www.usccb.org/resources/letter-congress-equality-act-february-23-2021/

8. Jones, Andrea and Kao, Emilie. “Sexual Ideology Indoctrination: The Equality Act’s Impact on School Curriculum and Parental Rights.” The Heritage Foundation: Backgrounder. May 15, 2019. https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/sexual-ideology-indoctrination-the-equality-acts-impact-school-curriculum-and

9. United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Catechism of the Catholic Church, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994, paragraph 2207. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a4.htm

10. Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops, “APOSTOLORUM SUCCESSORES.” Congregation for Bishops, No. 119. Vatican Website, 2004. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cbishops/documents/rc_con_cbishops_doc_20040222_apostolorum-successores_en.html

Misguided Guidance: The Failure of the U. S. Response to the China Virus

When a theory no longer fits the facts, then the reasonable thing to do is to reassess that theory, and adjust it or adopt a new one. For many months now, the theory for defeating the corona virus has incorporated these fundamentals: mask-wearing and social distancing, hand-washing, and lockdowns. [1] But after nearly a year of employing these methods to fight the virus, there has been no improvement in control of the virus: instead, the end of 2020 saw a resurgence of the virus to levels as severe as were seen in April 2020. [2] This, in spite of all the mask-wearing, social distancing, hand-washing, and lockdowns.

Is it not past time that we rethink these approaches to defeating the virus, and implement better ones?

Let’s take a look at the concepts underlying each of these anti-viral measures of the conventional wisdom.

The Demise of the Republican Establishment

The mainstream media, big tech, and the establishment political parties are spending the day today expressing their outrage against President Trump for continuing to attack the 2020 election fraud and encouraging his supporters to demonstrate at the capitol yesterday. While such anger is a popular and entirely predictable preoccupation for these groups, it really has nothing to do with holding the President accountable for dangerous rhetoric.

That stentorious wrath is actually all about two things: pure and unadulterated vengeance against President Trump for managing to disrupt the political establishment for four years; and the effort to damage him for the future. Why an effort to damage him for the future? Because Democrat and Republican establishments alike realize that the President is the single most formidable candidate for the 2024 elections, and anything they can do now to remove him from the scene is to their political advantage.

Amidst all of this indignation, one important fact is being missed: the frustration expressed by President Trump is not simply his alone. The establishment elites completely fail to understand this. President Trump speaks for a very large percentage of the country, and therefore, the baseless attacks proceeding against him today are also attacks upon those who support him. Among those supporters must be realistically included the 80 million or so (I am counting the votes which were fraudulently deprived from the President) citizens who voted for him (since we all know that non-citizens voted exclusively for Biden).

Blank Stare Jurisprudence, Lethargic Law Enforcement, and Blind-eye Journalism: The 2020 Presidential Election

If you had the misfortune to be a long-time San Diego Chargers fan, you know well the sick feeling you got when the Chargers began to sit on a lead in the fourth quarter, and they commenced three and out run plays on offense, along with something called the “prevent defense.” And you knew before it happened: they were going to lose again.

The very same feeling engulfed me on election night, when the vote counts in the key swing states mysteriously stopped updating, and then later, on the morning of November 4^th as huge numbers of votes came rolling in for Biden, and suddenly the President’s commanding lead in those swing states was lost. You didn’t want to acknowledge it, but you couldn’t avoid the certainty: something had gone grievously wrong, and your team was going to lose.

It is apparent now, two months later, that massive fraud [1] happened that night, on a scale never before attempted in an American election. The evidence is overwhelming, including: a thousand affidavits [2] signed under penalty of perjury by election observers describing every type of election malfeasance imaginable; video evidence [3] of hidden ballots counted in Georgia without observers present; statistical analyses of wildly improbable vote spikes and vote ratios [4] in Biden’s favor coming late in the morning after those inexplicable voting shutdowns [5] in the key swing states; and computer forensics analyses [6] of Dominion Systems in Antrim County, Michigan, revealing a system which flagged 68% of all votes as having errors. The implications of such a high error level are devastating to the integrity of the election:

Trafalgar 2020 Swing State Polls Signal Election Fraud

In 2020, as in 2016, the Trafalgar Group provided accurate presidential election polls for the swing states. However, despite remarkably consistent precision, Trafalgar’s win predictions for the swing states were, on average, incorrect. At the same time, the conventional pollsters, even though far less precise, were correct as to their predictions for the winner in the swing states. This seems on the surface to be rather anomalous: why would the more precise pollster get the wrong overall answer?

One answer to this question could be that fraud conducted during the election occurred on such a large scale that the resulting distortion of the vote caused otherwise very accurate polling to appear to be wrong, when it really was not. There is already plenty of evidence that substantial election fraud occurred, especially in the swing states. [1,2] In particular, the numerical analyses of voting patterns are quite disturbing. [3,4,5] The purpose of this article is to show that Trafalgar polling was better in the swing states Trump won, and significantly worse in swing states Trump lost. Similarly, the reverse was true for the conventional pollsters. Both of these circumstances support the hypothesis of election fraud, since this sort of polling dichotomy would not be expected for pollsters who routinely produce consistent results. Election fraud could explain this unanticipated difference, because it would cause the “actual” vote to depart significantly from accurate pre-election polls.

Is President Trump Really That Far Behind?

Updated 11/02/2020

It is now the day before the election, and the professional progressive political prognosticators are still predicting an overwhelming victory for the Democrat candidate, just as they so wrongly did in 2016. And once again, that pesky Trafalgar Group, which correctly predicted almost the exact electoral college vote in 2016, is producing swing state polls which are not in line with the main stream polling consensus. But how do the electoral vote totals look if the main stream polling consensus is adjusted to take the Trafalgar results into account?

Presidential Covid-19: Metaphor for the Trump Presidency

The President’s Corona virus infection has emphatically demonstrated that Americans need not fear this virus. Despite the risk, the President remained fully engaged with the business of government and his campaign. He did not go into hiding, and did not attempt to do everything possible to avoid catching the virus. He did not know any better than the rest of us how dangerous the virus would be if he caught it, and by forging ahead with his job as usual, he displayed decisive and courageous leadership, reflecting character traits which are in exceedingly short supply these days in America.

So here we are, not even two weeks after the President was diagnosed with Covid-19, and he has already been back at work since a few days after that diagnosis. For those who buy in to the hysteria of the mainstream media this must surely be incomprehensible. After all, we have been hearing the drumbeat for months on end that this is a dangerous disease, which we can only survive if we are extremely cautious. We have been told that we must all wear those nasty and useless masks, [1] keep our social distance, stay home from work, school, and church, and otherwise shut down our economy and our normal daily life for some indeterminate period. And many, perhaps a majority of us, continue to believe this, despite the CDC statistics which show a Covid-19 survival rate of 99 percent for anyone age seventy and under. [2]

How strikingly different the wisdom and strength and common sense demonstrated by President Trump from the timidity and weakness and exceedingly poor judgment shown by the Democrat left and the liberal elites, who are afraid to confront even the slightest of risks.

In Memoriam

Did you feel it?

A few days ago the veil of satanic oppression smothering this country was lifted, just a bit. Suddenly, in the midst of all of the other turmoil engulfing the country just now, the opportunity has arisen for President Trump to select another Supreme Court justice. There now exists a real possibility that the United States will be blessed with a Court capable of overturning not only the hideous abortion decision Roe v. Wade, but also other decisions rendered by the Court which were based on a bankrupt and progressive view of the Court’s role. However, the fight to install that new justice promises to be ferocious.

I am reminded of the incident in Holy Scripture when Jesus was called upon to cast out a devil from a deaf mute afflicted with seizures from birth. The devil did not go easily – its rage was evident as it was extracted from that boy:

“And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘You dumb and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.’ And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse; so that most of them said, ‘He is dead.’”
Mark 9:25-26 RSV Catholic Edition

And here we are, a country full of people stricken mute and deaf while unspeakable violence has been visited upon the most innocent and vulnerable among us – for decades. We are indeed afflicted by demons, of the worst sort. And Catholics and other Christians for many years have fought against this evil with activities and events such as the annual March for Life, 40 Days for Life, and praying outside of abortion mills. I will personally never forget the overwhelming sense of God’s grace I felt last January when I stood on the National Mall, and saw there in front of me, for the first time ever, the President of the United States exhorting the nation with a pro-life message.

But perhaps now, at this critical juncture, it is time to up the ante, and take to heart the words of Jesus at the end of this passage from Mark, when his disciples wanted to know why they could not cast out this demon:

“This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”
Mark 9:29 RSV Catholic Edition

Defeating Internet Censorship

The social media phenomenon seemed at first to represent a magnificent advance for human freedom, extending to the common man the opportunity for expression of his thought to the entire world. Yet what we thought was a new, paradigm-changing degree of liberty is now rapidly being thwarted by vigorous social media censorship carried out in the name of policing offensiveness, and of protecting people from the harm of hearing someone else’s opinion. Social media censors are even expanding their arbitrary enforcement of speech limitations into the realms of political and religious speech. Facebook warnings on RNC ads, YouTube restrictions on PragerU, Twitter censoring President Trump, Facebook “fact-checks”, and now even suspension of Trump campaign ads by Twitter, typify such aggressive censorship. What a stark contrast exists between the heavy-handed intervention by social media censors and the principle underlying the very limited constraints on public speech which the government may impose in accordance with the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court explained just a few years ago in Matal v. Tam:

. . . it is a fundamental principle of the First Amendment that the government may not punish or suppress speech based on disapproval of the ideas or perspectives the speech conveys.¹

Since social media now sustains our public discourse to a very great extent, the progressive suppression of conservative speech on social media at will is nothing less than a catastrophe. Conservatives must find and implement effective means for fighting internet censorship – quickly.