Is Joe Biden Catholic? - Fay Voshell

 

by Fay Voshell

Biden certainly demonstrates the symbolic and real embodiment of the progressive idea of the radical separation of church and state.

As the withdrawal of Christian values from the formation of public policy has accelerated, the religion of progressive secularism has rushed in to fill the gap.  It is to this religion Biden and the Democratic Party have pledged their devotion. It is on the bases of the religion of progressivism they form public policy, domestic and foreign.

Biden certainly demonstrates the symbolic and real embodiment of the progressive idea of the radical separation of church and state. According to radical progressives, Christianity, including Catholicism, is to play no part in public policy. 

Catholicism; indeed, Christianity in general, is to be confined to private domains, expressed entirely in private rituals and ceremonies conducted behind church doors or within one’s own domicile.  Once one walks out of home or church, life in the public arena is guided by the latest progressive principles; which principles progressives hope may be gradually incorporated into an increasingly syncretistic seminaries and churches, Catholic and Protestant.

The policy of absolute separation of church and state embraced by Biden was articulated and affirmed by John Kennedy in his famous speech to Protestant leaders when he was running for president. JFK’s policy has been one of the chief instruments employed by progressives to cordon off Christians, confining them to a cultural preserve where Christian practices can be safely contained and observed as curiously exotic rituals.    

Kennedy believed religious belief is a purely private matter. He said, “I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.” 

In addition to making faith a purely personal matter, Kennedy announced his belief in the absolute separation of church and state. Progressives have since interpreted the First Amendment in a similar fashion.

Kennedy stated: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.”

Kennedy’s speech was rife with false comparisons and red herrings, but the bottom line was that he regarded the Christian religion as merely and entirely a personal matter. The core principles of Christianity were not to extend to public policy in any way. The separation of Christianity and the State was to be severe and complete.  

Joe Biden has absorbed the progressive ideas about separation of church and state articulated by JFK. As the American Independent and other news sources reported, White House press secretary Jen Psaki remarked about Biden’s faith, echoing JFK’s remark that an elected official’s religious views are “his own private affair.”

Psaki said, "It's personal to him. He doesn't see it through a political prism… And we're not going to comment otherwise on the inner workings of the Catholic Church." She said separately, "Joe Biden is a strong man of faith. And as he noted just a couple of days ago, it’s personal. He goes to church, as you know, nearly every weekend. He even went when we were on our overseas trip [in England].”

Because Biden considers the Catholic faith to be merely a matter of interior and completely private and individualistic belief, he can through severe compartmentalization separate out the rituals of faith from public practice of faith. 

The above means he can carry a rosary on his person. He can expect to attend mass and receive the sacrament of the Eucharist.  He can bury his late son according to Catholic funeral rites.

But while acting in the public square he can openly flout longstanding dogma of the Catholic faith.  He can officiate at a same-sex marriage ceremony in direct defiance of the Catholic view of marriage as between a man and a woman; he can appoint to public office a man who claims to have transitioned to the opposite sex in contradiction of the Catholic view of human beings being created in the image of God as male and female; and he can support abortion as an inalienable human right despite the Catholic teachings forbidding the taking of innocent human life.

In short, Biden practices Catholicism through private rituals at home or in the sanctuary but practices the religion of leftist progressivism in public.  The Catholic faith does not speak to his actions. Again, Biden echoes JFK, who said, “For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me. (Italics mine.)

In other words, Christianity does not inform or even speak to Biden when it comes to public policy, domestic or foreign.  Hence the schizophrenia and resultant chaos and confusion accompanying his policies.

For centuries the Catholic Church has outlined a world view that includes what it means to establish a just and righteous governance according to the foundational beliefs of Christianity. Application of Christian principles to public policy eventually resulted in the abolition of slavery and helped ameliorate many other societal ills.

Be it St. Paul in his letters to the early Church, Augustine’s City of God, Cardinal Newman’s thinking about Catholic academia or countless other expounders of the Christian faith, including Protestants such as Abraham Kuyper, great expositors of the Christian faith have always articulated a weltanschauung that finds Christianity as informing all facets of society.  From its roots in Judaism and onward, throughout its entire history Christianity has had a world view that includes what it means to govern justly, righteously according to the Law of God as revealed in nature, scripture and tradition.

Prophets of old and Christ himself made it abundantly clear that observances of rituals, feasts and formalities mattered little when the greater issues of injustices within society were ignored or flouted. Christ rebuked the Pharisees for their fastidious concentration on minute legalities while they “neglected the more important matters of the law -- justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.”

In his rebuke, Christ echoed the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, who wrote: “This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.”

If we consider only Biden’s wholehearted endorsement of abortion, which is the shedding of innocent blood, it is obvious Biden does not practice the Catholic faith he professes to believe.

Biden continually violates core beliefs of the Catholic Church. In fact, he actively and continually attacks and undermines the Christian faith, as did his predecessor and influencer Barak Obama.

As Christ said of those who faked being his followers, “You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?”

Bottom line: Judged by his fruits, Biden is not Catholic.

Image: Adam Schultz

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Fay Voshell holds a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, which awarded her the prize for excellence in systematic theology.  Her thoughts have appeared in many online magazines.  She has been a frequent contributor to American Thinker for a decade. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com

Source:https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/is_joe_biden_catholic.html

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'New government likely to expand Abraham Accords, put Palestinian issue on back burner' - Ariel Ben Solomon , JNS and ILH Staff

 

by Ariel Ben Solomon , JNS and ILH Staff

Center-Left coalition has yet to prove itself and therefore it "does not have a mandate from the public to deal with the peace process," Middle East expert says.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid is scheduled to travel to the United Arab Emirates next week, marking his first visit there since he became the country's top diplomat.

The visit comes as Israel and the Biden administration seek to find common ground on mutual issues. While both have expressed a desire to expand the Abraham Accords, key differences are likely to remain on issues such as the Palestinians and Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, like his predecessor, is opposed to the United States rejoining the Iranian nuclear deal, and the new government is unlikely to possess the political willpower to make any significant moves on the Palestinian front.

The international move to offer Iran concessions has put countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE on edge – not to mention Israel – and decreases their willingness to take diplomatic risks. As a result, the Saudis and Emiratis are again engaging with Tehran because they want to contain the damage of the revival of the nuclear deal, Reuters reported earlier this month.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that the Biden administration is considering appointing former Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro as a Middle East envoy to expand ties with Arab states and Israel.

Shapiro is currently a distinguished visiting fellow at INSS.

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Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Prime Minister 

Naftali Bennett at the weekly cabinet meeting, June 20, 2021 (Amit Shabi)

"Appointing a special envoy to promote the Abraham Accords would be positive, and if it is Shapiro, that would be a good choice," said Yoel Guzansky, a senior research fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies. "The combination of the Biden administration's emphasis on pushing the Palestinian file and the recent Gaza war means there may not be any momentum for new countries to join the Abraham Accords soon."

These factors could keep Saudi Arabia on the sidelines, seeing no benefit from joining the accords.

During his recent visit to the region in late May, Blinken told Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas that America would reopen its Jerusalem consulate to the Palestinians and provide $360 million in support.

In addition to causing more malign behavior from the Palestinians, this approach could also cool off other Arab states from joining the peace deal.

"The Saudis and other Arab states may be thinking: Why join the Abraham Accords now and risk embarrassment if there is another Gaza war soon?" added Guzansky, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and who previously served on Israel's National Security Council.

He sees a significant risk that another Gaza war could break out in the not-so-distant future.

Regarding the Abraham Accords, "nobody knows what these deals entail in their entirety," he said, though added that these agreements "passed their first test with the Gaza war as none of these countries canceled the deal or withdrew their ambassadors, but only voiced rhetorical concern."

A focus on domestic and social issues

At the moment, the new Israeli government led by Bennett does not have a coherent ideology or strategy. It comprises far-left elements – Meretz and Labor – and even an Arab Islamist party, the United Arab List (known by its Hebrew acronym, Ra'am).

"The new government's agenda does not plan to focus on the Palestinian file, but domestic economic and social issues," Ido Zelkovitz, head of the Middle East Studies program at the Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, told JNS.

He predicted that the security agencies and the military would primarily handle security and Palestinian issues.

Indeed, this week IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi led a delegation of senior military officials to the United States to meet with American military counterparts, becoming the first senior Israeli official to visit since the new government took power.

"The fragile government does not have a mandate from the public to deal with the Palestinians and the peace process," said Zelkovitz, also the research fellow at the Chaikin Chair for Geostrategy at the University of Haifa.

Bennett negotiated to become prime minister with only six Yamina Party members (one refused to support it) in a narrow coalition of a bare majority of 61 seats. Coalition partner and Alternative Prime Minister Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid received 17 seats in the election.

Zelkovitz sees the most probable scenario to be a continuation of the status quo and some understanding reached with Hamas-ruled Gaza through Egyptian mediation to solidify the ceasefire.

"With time, as the new government gains confidence, combined with international pressure, it could be that it would take a more active role in the Palestinian issue after it deals with passing a budget," he assessed.

However, he warns that dealing with the Palestinian issue could also "lead to the government's breakup in a year-and-a-half to two years."

For this reason, it is most reasonable to expect the new government to focus on expanding the Abraham Accords to more Arab and Muslim-majority countries, and for now, keep the divisive Palestinian issue on the backburner.

Reprinted from JNS.org.

 

Ariel Ben Solomon , JNS and ILH Staff

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/06/24/new-government-likely-to-expand-abraham-accords-put-palestinian-issue-on-back-burner/

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Suppressing and Punishing Speech to Fight 'Racism' in Public Schools - Richard L. Cravatts

 

by Richard L. Cravatts

Those who begin eliminating dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters.

 

Even before the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, universities had demonstrated that they were in thrall with an obsession about racism and racial equity. Diversocrats in bloated fiefdoms of equity, diversity, and inclusion diligently indoctrinated so-called marginalized students on how to be victims and oppressed, and whole systems were set up to monitor the behavior of potential racists and punish them for their transgressions.

At the University of San Diego’s Law School, for example, members of the Black Law Students Association, in order to confront “the oppression that is inextricably linked to [their] Blackness,” demanded that the law school “develop a classroom diversity officer position tasked with observing classroom practices and reporting questionable conduct within the classroom to the administration” so that perpetrators could be censured and punished.

At Princeton, several hundred faculty members published a letter to the administration in which they asked that the University form “a committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty . .  ,” overlooking the fact that what they were calling for was a veritable star chamber in which a handful of virtue-signaling, race-obsessed faculty would use their own bias and subjectivity to vet the research and teaching of fellow faculty and decide which viewpoints would be permitted and which, henceforth, would not (and would potentially even be punished)—a blatant violation of both the spirit and intent of academic freedom.

That same desire to ferret out any racist thought or bias which might injure or make uncomfortable a member of an identity group has seeped into public schools, as well, along with the impulse to censure and punish any staff or students who violate the overly-broad strictures of conversations about race, culture, and politics.

In Chicago, for example, where out of nearly 1,500 shooting victims so far in 2021, over fifty were 15 or younger, at least school-aged children will not be threatened by racism and bias on the part of their school peers now that they can identity and report bigotry in their schools. The formal program, “Transforming Bias-Based Harm,” promotes some of the insidious aspects of now-typical diversity and inclusion campaigns, including finding racism where it is almost imperceptible: implicit or unconscious bias and microaggressions. Students will be able to report the misbehavior of fellow students, including “everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional,” directly through the Chicago Public Schools website, and perpetrators are potentially subject to being punished for their unacceptable speech. 

Officials in the Wellesley, Massachusetts public school system have proposed a nearly identical program to Chicago’s and have found themselves at odds with parents and other critics alarmed at what they see as further degradation of education because of an obsession with anti-racism and the desire to make everyone tolerant and accepting.

In March, in the wake of a mass shooting at spas in Atlanta during which six Asian women were murdered, the Wellesley school system’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) hosted a Zoom session described as a “Healing Space for Asian and Asian American students (grades 6-12), faculty/staff, and others in the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) community who wish to process recent events.” Noticeably absent from the invitation to this race-based “affinity session” were white students. How was that outrageous decision justified by Wellesley officials? “Note,” the invitation read, warning that minority sensitivities had to be respected. “This is a safe space for our Asian/Asian-American and Students of Color, ‘not’ for students who identify only as White.”

Virtue-signaling Wellesley school officials had also decided that it was a good idea to mandate that all schools fly the Black Lives Matter flag to show solidarity with the movement and its goals. Questioning that decision, a group of Wellesley parents wrote an open letter critiquing the flag decision, “not [because of] the concept behind the slogan” but because “the flag and the slogan mirror those of the Black Lives Matter, or BLM, political organization and the associated political movement,” and Wellesley should be neutral on a political issue. More seriously, the parents pointed out, not all of the group’s objectives are positive and the neo-Marxist BLM organization has called for the murder of police officers, violent demonstrations, hatred of white people, and support for the anti-Semitic BDS movement in its campaign to destroy Israel.

Since incidents of blatant, visible racism are extremely rare on either university or high school and elementary school campuses anymore, diversity officials now have sought ways to ferret out examples of racism even where few realize it even exists—including its purported victims. Thus, we have witnessed the creation of what the Chicago officials referred to as “microaggressions,” instances of bigotry and racism that are subtle, unintentional, almost imperceptible to both victim and perpetrator. Nonetheless, for the diversocrats, microaggressions are another form of racism that must be revealed, suppressed, and punished, which is why Wellesley, in its latest racism misstep, has instituted a reporting system so that students, faculty, and staff can anonymously report instances of alleged racism, bigotry, hate speech, and other unwelcomed speech and behavior from members of the community.

As articulated in its policy statement, “Responding to Bias-based Incidents,” a bias incident is “any biased conduct, speech or expression that has an impact but may not involve criminal action, but demonstrates conscious or unconscious bias that targets individuals or groups that are part of a federally protected class (ie. race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, or disability). Bias-based behavior can also be described as when someone treats another person differently or makes an offensive comment because of their membership in a protected group, such as their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or disability.” The troubling policy allows students and parents to file complaints, even anonymously, so that transgressors can be identified and punished. “Potential disciplinary actions for students who violate the anti-discrimination policy,” the policy reads, “could include detention, suspension, or,” in language that Cotton Mather might have written, “other restorative responses that require them to acknowledge their responsibility and minimize its impact.”

While observers o this situation may think that identifying and targeting bigotry and microaggressions is an easy task, they may well have overlooked the logistical issues that impact the creation of a speech policy. Who decides what words and which expressions and thoughts are forbidden and in what context they may or may not be used? A committee, school officials, experts from outside the school system, parents, students? Must there be a consensus?

Is only anti-racist speech covered by the policies or are all forms of bigotry and hatred included? Is simply telling jokes subject to punishment? Can an accused defend himself or herself and who decides if punishment should move ahead? Is there an appeal process? The problem with proscribing speech and telling students who may say what to whom, and when, is that there are invariably exceptions and contradictions in both the selection and enforcement of forbidden speech.

If someone utters “All Lives Matter,” for instance, does that constitute a microaggression that diminishes the Black Lives Matter slogan and can be considered racist? If the BLM organization itself is attacked for some of its radical beliefs, as it has many times by faculty and students alike, would that constitute hateful speech or expose the perpetrator to censure or punishment, or both? Would Jewish students, who are now almost universally considered to be white and who are said to enjoy “white privilege,” be able to complain when someone says, “Zionism is racism”? Or “free Palestine”? Or “from the River to Sea, Palestine will be free,” suggesting, of course that there will be no more Israel and Jews will have been expelled or murdered to create a Palestinian state?

Are only “people of color” to be protected and insulated from criticism, censure, or bigotry in the Wellesley and Chicago schools? In the wake of a nation-wide spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes in recent months, and especially after the recent Gaza incursion, will the equity officers offer Jews-only affinity spaces in which Jewish students will be coddled and minority students and other non-Jews will be forbidden from attending because they cannot empathize with Jewish pain and fear?

Clearly, this is a thorny issue with which school officials must deal, and it is precisely because this attack on individuals’ right to express themselves—even poorly or in bad taste—is often threatened by zealous, self-appointed censors that the courts have frequently found themselves examining where rights begin and end. In the case most relevant to this topic, Tinker v. Des Moines, for example, the Court famously found that “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” and the right to express oneself, even hatefully, was sacrosanct, providing the speech is not excessively and obviously disruptive to school activities or operations. So even if, in the name of diversity and inclusion, schools implement policies to eliminate any expressions that might threaten racial equanimity, those policies should not and cannot override the individual’s right to speak his or her mind. “In our system,” the Court found, “students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate. They may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved.”

School officials now apparently see themselves as social workers and therapists as well as teachers, and this role they have usurped is dangerous because it is motivated by the leftist ideology embodied in critical race theory and such terms as “white privilege,” notions that, instead of making children less race conscious, work to make them more aware of racial differences and whether they are, by virtue of their skin color, either oppressor or oppressed, victim or victimizer, tolerant and accepting or bigoted and regressive. 

And that students can now be singled out, censured, and punished for not conforming to the totalitarian effort to control what children can say about each other is both violative of constitutional rights and morally unacceptable. In 1943, when the Supreme Court addressed the issue of mandatory saluting of the flag in the case of West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, it noted that even when policies are well-intentioned and are designed to create a common good, there is a danger in allowing government or individuals to impose a specific view of the world on others, even with supposed lofty purposes. “Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country,” the Court noted, “have been waged by many good, as well as by evil, men.”  

And, more disturbingly, initial efforts to define what is right and good—such as improved race relations—can eventually lead to a required adherence to one set of beliefs and the suppression of other views. “Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent,” the Court concluded, “soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.” 

 

Richard L. Cravatts

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/suppressing-and-punishing-speech-fight-racism-richard-l-cravatts/

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman rattles Muslim clergy, challenges sources of sharia - Thomas Lifson

 

by Thomas Lifson

Remarks made by the real ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), suggest that he is carefully laying the ground for a fundamental reinterpretation of orthodox Islam.

This is huge.  Those of us who have had hopes that Saudi Arabia can be transformed from a sponsor of hard-line jihad into a modernizing force in the Islamic world have cause for optimism.

Remarks made by the real ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), suggest that he is carefully laying the ground for a fundamental reinterpretation of orthodox Islam.

Tarek Fatah, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, writes in the Toronto Sun:

When the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, challenged the fundamental precepts of Islamic Sharia in an interview on April 28, the tremors were so deep, they left most Muslims and their clerics in a state of silent shock.

MBS, as the crown prince is known, had questioned the very validity of 'Hadith' literature — sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammad — that provide much of what is today considered Islamic Law in places as far apart as Aceh in Indonesia to University campuses in California in the West.

As an example, the hijab suddenly lost its religious justification and much of the Islamic laws that created the Taliban lost their validation.

Many of us who had for decades fought the Saudization of Islam were taken aback by MBS's statements. The man who is turning his country slightly away from funding overseas jihads and civil wars had quietly heralded women's rights and in an unprecedented move included the Hindu texts of Mahabharat and Ramayana into the school syllabus.

These tremors in Islamdom were so deep and fundamental, they left the Imams, Muftis and mosque clerics who had always looked towards Riyadh for inspiration — both financial and religious — in a state of stunned silence. They still have not reacted.

Even the Islamist scholars in Canada held their breath, not knowing what to say or how to react to the changing winds in Islam. 

Because Saudi Arabia sends so much money to support mosques and Muslim clergy overseas, it is quite understandable that there is silence, at least for the moment.  No one is better positioned to help Islam reform and modernize than the ruler of Saudi Arabia.

I have from the start of his reign seen MbS as attempting something similar to what the Meiji reformers did in Japan, following its 19th-century opening to the West.  I am guessing that he and his advisers have studied their success closely, for he is adopting the same basic approach: labeling modernization as a "restoration."  In Japan, the claim was made that the reformers were "restoring" direct imperial rule, getting rid of the corrupt shogun, who stood between the people and their divine ruler (while installing themselves as the interpreters of the Emperor's wishes).

MbS is returning to direct Quranic law, eliminating the potentially inaccurate hadith sayings as a source of sharia law.  It is much simpler to interpret (and reinterpret) the shorter body of the Quran than the much more voluminous hadith — especially when the Saudi government is subsidizing the clergy who will issue the re-interpretations.

Here are some of the relevant excerpts (emphases added):

[W]e are bound to implement the Quran in some form or another. But in social and personal affairs, we are only obliged to implement stipulations that are clearly stated in the Quran.

So, I cannot enforce a Sharia punishment without a clear Quranic stipulation or an explicit stipulation from the Sunnah. When I talk about an explicit stipulation from the Sunnah, most hadith writers classify hadith based on their own typology, like Bukhari, Muslim and others, into correct hadith or weak hadith. But there is another classification which is more important, namely whether a tradition or hadith has been narrated by many people or a single narrator, and this is the main reference for jurisprudence for deducing regulations, Sharia-wise.

In essence, he is saying that some of the hadith may not be reliable.

So, when we talk about a Mutawater hadith, i.e., narrated and handed down from one group to another group to another starting with the Prophet, PBUH, these hadiths are very few in number, but they are strong in terms of veracity, and their interpretations vary based on the time and place they were revealed and how the hadith was understood at the time.

But when we talk about Ahad hadiths, which is handed down from a single person to another starting with the Prophet PBUH, or from a group to a group to a single individual then another group etc. starting with the Prophet PBUH, so that there's and individual in the chain. This is called ahad hadith. And this is broken down into many classifications, such as correct, weak, or good hadith. And this type of hadith, the ahad, is not as compelling as the mutawater hadiths; the ones narrated by a chain of groups unless paired with clear Quranic stipulations and a clear mundane or worldly good to be had, especially if it's a correct ahad hadith. And this is also a small portion of the body of hadith.

While a "Khabar" is a hadith handed down from a single person to another single person etc. to an unknown source, starting with the Prophet PBUH, or from a group to a group, then a person to another person, and so on, starting with the Prophet PBUH, so that there's a missing link. This represents the majority of hadith and this type of hadith is unreliable whatsoever, in the sense that its veracity is not established and that it isn't binding.

Wow!  A majority of hadiths are unreliable!

And in the biography of the Prophet PBUH, when the hadith was first recorded the Prophet PBUH ordered those records to be burnt and forbade the writing of hadith, and that should apply even more so to "Khabar" hadiths so that people are not obliged to implement them from a Sharia perspective, since they also might be used as ammunition to dispute God Almighty's power to produce teachings that are fit for every time and place. Hence, the government, where Sharia is concerned, has to implement Quran regulations and teachings in mutawater hadiths, and to look into the veracity and reliability of ahad hadiths, and to disregard "khabar" hadiths entirely, unless if a clear benefit is derived from it for humanity.

So, there should be no punishment related to a religious matter except when there is a clear Quranic stipulation, and this penalty will be implemented based on the way that the Prophet PBUH applied it.

The Crown Prince has the best security that money can buy.  He needs it.  This has the potential to change the character of Islam in the modern era.

Photo credit: Mazen AlDarrab.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Thomas Lifson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/saudi_crown_prince_mohammed_bin_salman_rattles_muslim_clergy_challenges_sources_of_sharia.html

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How Bennett became the darling of the Left - Dr. Yitzhak Dahan

by Dr. Yitzhak Dahan

The kippah-wearing politician made his way into the Knesset as the leader of a staunchly right-wing party only to become the savior of the opposing camp.

 

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett speaks with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in the Knesset | Photo: Reuters / Ronen Zvulun

The March 23 Knesset elections presented the "Anyone but Bibi" camp with an opportunity to oust then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which it eagerly took, pushing aside all of the principles and morals in its way.  

But what's more striking is the mental acrobatics the Left engaged in just in order to coronate Naftali Bennett – the man whom they had despised – as their new leader and Israel's prime minister. 

The paradigm shift the Left underwent so that it could embrace Bennett reached the point of self deception. And indeed, the kippah-wearing politician who entered the Knesset on a right-wing platform they loathe is now being cast as a savior. Likewise, they have cut him a lot of slack just so he could come across as an acceptable patriot in their eyes.

An example of this is Yedioth Ahronoth columnist Daniella London-Dekel, who opposes the "occupation" and is in favor of removing Jewish settlements. Last weekend she waxed poetic on Bennett, praising his family, his military service and songwriting skills. 

The Left went through a similar transformation in the early 2000s, when it suddenly fell in love with then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon because of his decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. 

The government's alphabet soup of ideological factions will result in some of its members trying to rationalize to their public on their motives and decisions, to the point of devising a new ideology ex nihilo. They are all going to just talk about how Israelis want unity and having everyone sing Kumbaya under Bennett's auspices. 

The contradictions in this government means could mean that even as the health minister tries to improve healthcare for refugees, the interior minister, who represents the other edge of the political spectrum, will enact laws to send those refugees back. When the housing minister promotes construction in Judea and Samaria, the transportation minister will slash budgets for the development of transportation infrastructures in those very areas. 

But like everything in life, the small details are what matter. In this case, the public simply doesn't buy the fake harmony and political engineering whose entire purpose was to get a plurality in the Knesset and install Bennett as prime minister.

 

Dr. Yitzhak Dahan

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/06/24/how-bennett-became-the-darling-of-the-left/

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Rashida Tlaib’s Finance Director Bullies, Harasses U.S. and Florida Legislators Over 'Palestine' - Joe Kaufman

 

by Joe Kaufman

State Rep. Carlos Smith accuses Rasha Mubarak and group of homophobia.

 

Rasha Mubarak, an anti-Israel activist and Finance Director for US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, is destroying relationships she has spent years building in the Democratic Party. She is leading an angry group of Israel bashers on a journey to intimidate and ridicule Progressive members of the US and Florida Legislatures, who do not cater to her and her group’s full list of demands. One of these legislators, Carlos Smith, following a testy and vulgar encounter with Mubarak and co., accused the group of homophobia. It is common for Islamists and their allies to target Jews and gays, and it is like Mubarak to add more Democrats to her list of enemies.

Rasha Mubarak hates Israel, so much so that she says Israel, a sovereign nation, has no right to self-defense. She also supports Palestinian terrorists. At the end of the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict, she cheered Hamas. This past March, she posted a video on her social media honoring former PFLP spokesman Ghassan Khanafani. In June and July 2020, Mubarak posted memorials for car-ramming terrorist Ahmed Erekat, who was shot and killed after attempting to run over a female Israeli border officer. And this past November, Mubarak promoted then-jailed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Maher al-Akhras with a message to free all like him.

This month, once again, Mubarak sought to whitewash terror. On June 12th, when Israeli border guards shot dead a Palestinian woman approaching them with a knife at a West Bank checkpoint, after she ignored orders to stop, Mubarak absurdly and baselessly described the event as “Israel’s deliberate attempts at Palestinian erasure.” Also, this month, Mubarak posted a statement written by Hamas fan Samer Owaida, ridiculously claiming that “Not a single Palestinian resistance org has ever committed a war crime.” This, when suicide bombings and firing rockets indiscriminately into civilian neighborhoods are universally considered war crimes.

It is this same irrational fanaticism that has driven Mubarak, under the banner ‘Florida Palestine Network,’ to organize others in an effort to terrorize Florida lawmakers from the US and Florida Legislatures with bullying tactics and a list of untenable demands. These demands include: 1. condemning Israel for “state sanctioned violence” against Palestinians and “forced expulsions” from and “forced demolitions” of Palestinian homes, 2. ending US military aid to Israel, and 3. denouncing Florida bill H.B. 741, which protects Jews from anti-Semitism.

H.B. 741, which was voted for unanimously in the Florida House and Senate, impacts Mubarak and her group of radicals personally, as it acts in part against those (anti-Semites) who single out Israel for attack on college campuses. The bill was signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the signing ceremony of which took place in Jerusalem.

At least two of the Florida legislators who have been targeted by Mubarak, Representatives Carlos Guillermo Smith and Anna Eskamani, in the past, have been seen as friends and allies of Mubarak. They have participated in events with Mubarak and embraced Mubarak. Now, these two have been vilified by Mubarak and her group with a vengeance.

On June 3rd, the group showed up on Representative Smith’s office doorstep. He came outside and, for over 40 minutes, listened to them, as they piled abuse on him. They accused him of “actively diminishing Palestinian rights” and being “complicit” with “Islamophobic rhetoric.” One member kept bringing up the term, “Jewish supremacy.” Another told him, “You just want to be coddled and told you’re doing fine. Oh, you did okay, because one time you said that you were pro-Palestine. That doesn’t matter now… People are f**king dying, so if we have to come here and yell at you, then that’s what we have to do.” She called his words to them, “bulls**t.”

When Representative Smith left, Mubarak began a chant, “Carlos Smith, you can’t hide.” The group mockingly laughed at him, as he quickly came out to tell the group he was not hiding. Later, Mubarak can be seen on video shouting at Smith, “Get out of my face!” She accused Smith of repeatedly “slamming the door on my face” and “almost severing my fingers off.” According to Smith, who is openly gay, someone from the group was “shouting into the megaphone about my husband” and saying his name. He stated, the “group began laughing after someone called him my ‘boyfriend.’” He accused the group of practicing homophobia.

The disrespect shown to Representative Smith was also given to Representative Eskamani. During the Smith episode, Mubarak’s younger cousin, Syria Lutfi, wore a placard around her neck of a long note Eskamani had sent her on social media. Lutfi, who at five years old, in January 2006, allegedly witnessed her father Mohammed attempt to stab her mother with a steak knife, described Eskamani’s tweets to her as “belittling,” “ignorant,” and meant to “serve as a tactic distraction to deflect from Palestinian voices.” In the note to Lutfi, Eskamani accused Mubarak of not liking her “on a personal level” and claimed the group was “yelling” at her.

It appears that Mubarak’s ‘Florida Palestine Network’ project has been a complete failure, as not one of the Representatives and Senators the group has targeted have given in to the group’s demands. On top of this, Mubarak and her group have looked like bullies, stalkers and, at times, lunatics, in the process. Furthermore, relationships with key Democratic lawmakers, who Mubarak had spent years developing alliances with, have now been severely compromised, and quite possibly these individuals will never be able to work with her again.

On June 25th, Rasha Mubarak is scheduled to speak along with US Congressman Andre Carson, at a lunch session, during the Indiana Young Democrats (IYD) convention. The Indiana Democratic Party (IDP) – indeed, the National Democratic Committee (NDC) – should take note of how Mubarak is working to tear down Democratic leaders and sow divisiveness within the Democratic Party and move to cancel this event. Bigotry against Jews and homosexuals should never be tolerated by any political party, let alone the party which claims to be the paragon of tolerance and inclusivity.

Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.

 

Joe Kaufman is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Chairman of the Joe Kaufman Security Initiative. He was the 2014, 2016 and 2018 Republican Nominee for U.S. House of Representatives (Florida-CD23).

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/rashida-tlaibs-finance-director-bullies-harasses-joe-kaufman/

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It’s Beginning to Look Like Enemy Action - John Green

 

by John Green

The defection of Dong Jingwei may mark a turning point in the new cold war against China.

Dong Jingwei is a Chinese defector working with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He served as Vice Minister of State Security in the Chinese Ministry of Defense.  Before defecting, he was responsible for the counterintelligence efforts in China.  He was in a position to know about all things “espionage” in China and is perhaps the highest-level Chinese defector the U.S. has ever had.  Even though the legacy media is playing it down, this is a big deal.

It speaks volumes that the man who knows the identity of all the Chinese spies in our country chose to defect to the DIA and only the DIA.  Further, it’s reported that the DIA is not sharing the information it’s receiving with the FBI or CIA.  Now, why would that be?

Dong provided details of meetings between U.S. officials, Chinese spies, and Russian SVR agents.  He also provided details about how the Chinese government gained access to CIA communications, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of CIA assets.  Anonymous sources are also reporting that members of the federal law enforcement community (i.e. FBI) are “scared s**tless” about Dong’s information. 

Is it possible that the FBI and CIA are hopelessly compromised?  As we’d say in Minnesota -- you betcha!

Dong has allegedly provided the names of Chinese spies working or attending universities in the U.S.  He claims that a third of Chinese students in this country are actually PLA assets.  To validate his claims, Dong has provided financial records showing which businessmen and public officials have received money from the Chinese Government.  Private persons receiving money may or may not be illegal depending on what they’re doing for it.  If they’re selling protected technology, it’s illegal.  If they’re influencing public opinion, it may not be illegal, but is still problematic.  However, public officials receiving money is a huge deal -- it’s either bribery or espionage.

How much are businesses, educators, public officials, and opinion influencers beholden to China?  It appears to be a disturbing number.

Dong provided copies of Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drives to the DIA. Granted, there’s not much that’s secret about that laptop anymore.  But isn’t China verifying their possession of those drives kind of like a blackmailer showing his victim pictures of himself in bed with an underage girl?  How incriminating is that picture when information from Hunter’s laptop is combined with financial records which the Chinese surely have?  Maybe there’s more than one underage girl in that photo.

In 2015, the Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC) acquired Henniges Automotive.  This acquisition is significant because Henneges Automotive provides stealth technology for the F-35 program.  AVIC’s U.S. partners in this acquisition were none other than Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz.  The acquisition was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).  Secretary of State John Kerry was a member of the CFIUS during this decision.  He is also the stepfather of -- surprise, surprise -- Chris Heinz!  Dong provided details of how China was able to acquire stealth technology after the U.S. approved its purchase of Henniges Automotive.

Anyone who doesn’t see that the Biden family's financial ties to China leave President Asterisk vulnerable to blackmail is hopelessly naïve.

Dong provided copies of pathogenic studies to the DIA which show that the Chinese military was involved in the development of the COVID-19 virus.  He also provided copies of Chinese models which predicted the spread and damage that the pandemic would do to the U.S. and the rest of the world.  Given what we’re learning about Dr. Fauci and his “gain of function” research, we may have paid China to develop a weapon that was used against us.

Further, the Chinese government changed the travel plans of Chinese students returning to the U.S. after the Christmas break. Their travel plans were advanced so that they returned much earlier than originally planned -- prior to the outbreak of the pandemic.  Dong reportedly claimed that they were tasked to gather information about the U.S. response to the pandemic.  They were to gather information on:

• Policy changes
• Economic response and damage
• Impacts on the healthcare system
• Impacts on the supply chain
• Civil unrest

The implication is that even if the Chinese government did not intentionally release the virus, they intentionally let it spread and used it as an espionage bonanza.  As a side benefit to the Chinese, COVID-19 provided the excuse for massive election changes, which facilitated the removal of President Donald Trump -- China’s greatest threat.  They learned from the Democrats not to let a good crisis go to waste. 

As far as we know, Dong has not provided any direct information about BLM or Antifa.  However, the fact that returning Chinese students were tasked to monitor civil unrest is quite curious.  If our FBI and CIA weren’t hopelessly compromised, they might consider following the money.  But we already know that won’t be happening.

This all brings me to the most important point -- have we been under attack from China and didn’t know it?  A colleague recently reminded me of the Goldfinger dictum: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, now that is enemy action.”

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Star Idaho. He is a retired engineer with 40 years of experience in the areas of product development, quality assurance, organizational development, and corporate strategic planning. He currently writes at the American Free News Network (americanfreenewsnetwork.org).  He can be followed on Facebook or reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.

Image: Pixabay

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/its_beginning_to_look_like_enemy_action.html

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Fired For Speaking Out - Wayne Laugesen

 

by Wayne Laugesen

Lt. Col. Lohmeier warns of Marxist indoctrination in the military.

 

 

As the commander of a missile warning unit, Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier felt responsible to report threats foreign and domestic before they harm the people of the country he loves and defends. He wrote a bestselling book and spoke out against anti-american, Marxist radicalization of military personnel he has witnessed in his role as commander of the 11th Space Warning Squadron of Space Force, at Colorado’s Buckley Air Force Base.

In return for trying to expose what he considers a clear and present threat to national security running through all branches of the military, Lohmeier was relieved of duty on May 14 by Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting.

“I didn’t know the intent of that meeting, but I had my suspicion,” Lohmeier explained during a recent visit with The Gazette’s editorial board. “He said ‘I have seen your podcast and you have been politically partisan while acting in an official capacity,’ which I to this day deny. The second reason he cited is that I was publicly critical of the policies of my chain of command.”

Though the Defense Department announced an investigation of his “prohibited partisan political activity,” Lohmeier says he merely exposed increasingly institutionalized and mandatory left-wing political activity. He said the movement blatantly favors Democratic politicians, policies and ideologies.

“Military professionals have an obligation to be nonpolitical and that’s for good reason,” Lohmeier said. “We shouldn’t be political, and that includes me. I genuinely believe that. It is wise counsel and obligation, and that’s why I’m doing this.”

Lohmeier gives detailed accounts, in his book and in discussions, of emails, memos and down-day workshops that tell young military recruits and officers this country is a place of white “oppressors” and minorities oppressed by whites. They are lectured from and told to read passages of The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which pretends the United States was founded by the arrival of a slave ship and has grown as a culture of oppression ever since.

Lohmeier said service people are taught critical race theory, which characterizes the United States as a country of whites oppressing Blacks and other minorities.

“They’re taught about white groups of people versus Black groups of people — or, pick your oppressed group — and there’s this constant narrative that whites can’t help but be racist against Blacks so we need to disabuse them of their microaggressions and reeducate them in how to be anti-racist,” Lohmeier said. “We need to help white people understand that whether they think they’re racist or not they have implicit and unconscious biases that cause them to put Blacks or other minorities in a terrible position, even in our armed forces.”

Lohmeier believes it makes service personnel hate the country they are supposed to risk their lives defending. It divides personnel, who have more traditionally overlooked race to focus on a common purpose of defending freedom protected by a country they all would die for.

“I had a young Black female in my office saying ‘I’m beginning to learn that I’m not only an outsider in my country but I’m an outsider in the service.’ She had never been brought up to believe any of that, but a short time in the military had changed her entire perspective of her country. She said she had been trained to believe that whites are out to get her. I had to disabuse her of the fact she is not an outsider in this service,” Lohmeier said.

Lohmeier describes a slow and methodical anti-american, racially charged “radicalization” that began long ago and typically failed to gain traction. He believes it reached a tipping point after a white Minneapolis cop killed Black suspect George Floyd during an arrest on May 25, 2020.

“A host of military service members have not only become political they have been exceptionally radicalized to the left side of the political spectrum and they speak up without being held accountable for their radical views,” Lohmeier said.

He has examples, including enlisted personnel using social media to advocate burning down cities. He has screenshots of personnel posting “cops are bastards,” “f--- all cops,” and more. Often he sees personnel conducting political activism while in uniform, clearly violating Department of Defense rules without consequence.

“Some took to social media while President Donald Trump was their commander in chief so they could compare him to Hitler,” Lohmeier said. “I see that kind of activism going unchecked. If you criticize those who have become political, to call them out for politically partisan activities, the standard retort is that those of us who say anything about it are racists or unsympathetic. What I witnessed is hyperpoliticization of the military work environment yet calling it out is considered partisan.”

At first, Lohmeier went through the chain of command by documenting political activism in writing. He filed a complaint with the Space Force Office of the Inspector General, but his concerns were immediately dismissed without explanation.

“People were being divided at the ground level in an operational squadron because of politics and political ideologies which I recognized as Marxist,” Lohmeier said. “I’m talking critical race theory, woke culture, political correctness, all of that. I thought nothing I do internally seems to be fixing this problem. So, I’ll write a book about it. Then, fortunately, I had an injunction from the secretary of defense that came on Feb.

5 of this year saying that if you witness any extremism or radicalism you have an obligation to speak up and help educate fellow service members. I thought, ‘Hey, that’s great because I’ve been writing about it and I plan to do just that.’ ”

To avoid the mere appearance of subversive behavior, Lohmeier discussed his book with Space Force public affairs officials and lawyers. He sought counsel from another active-duty lieutenant colonel and author and learned the military’s requirements for books published by active-duty personnel.

“I made sure I wasn’t doing something illegal,” Lohmeier said. “I wanted to get the issue out. So, I did all of that and then I was the one accused of being politically partisan and I was fired in an instant. I understand that it brings embarrassment to the Defense Department. Well, that was my best judgment of what needed to be done to solve what is potentially an irreversible situation within the armed forces if it doesn’t get fixed really quick. Radical leftist rhetoric is accepted, excused, and encouraged and any criticism of that activism is considered partisan. That is a dangerous spot for our armed forces to be in.”

His book, “Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military,” contains at least 60 pages that document examples of radical political activity in the military.

He tells of his base commander sending out two 90-minute documentaries, asking personnel to watch them in advance of a downday discussion about race.

The videos feature interviews with Marxist revolutionaries, including Melina Abdullah who founded the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter and picketed the home of the first Black woman to head the District Attorney’s Office of Los Angeles.

“The videos demonize Republican officials by name, such as (Senate Minority Leader) Mitch Mcconnell, saying he can’t help his white supremacy,” Lohmeier recalls. “One video mentions Donald Trump, who was sitting commander in chief of the armed services, saying he contributes to a white ruling class that Democratic leaders are trying to help the country escape from. Then it mentions Bill and Hilary

Clinton and Barack Obama as virtuous, lovely, praiseworthy, and everything good in this world because they are trying to help Blacks escape from the oppression of whites.”

Lohmeier said the overtly partisan propaganda videos, emails, memos, and downday discussions have changed the military’s culture. Instead of a unified force devoted to one country, people want to debate each other and others want to quit.

“Service members I talk to of high and low rank are losing their desire to serve in the forces, regardless of their political views,” Lohmeier said.

“If they’re left-leaning they tend to buy into the narrative that America is an evil place and a place of inescapable racism with an oppressor class of whites who have formed a culture and laws only to benefit themselves. They start to question whether this country is worthy to defend. One active-duty social justice activist, who’s a lieutenant colonel, said on his Facebook page that we need to topple and dismantle the United States and bring about revolution. If that’s what you believe, you don’t want to serve in the armed forces defending this country. You’ve got bigger fish to fry and you want to join the revolution. If you’re conservative, you grow tired of being called a racist. The one trusted institution that has historically been nonpartisan, the American military, is participating in partisan politics constantly.”

One of Lohmeier’s chapters documents the communist origins of critical race theory, and the Marxist tactic of dividing and conquering societies.

“Marx’s economic class stratification of the working and ruling class doesn’t always fit,” Lohmeier explains. “Marxists in the West in the 1930s and ’40s were very disappointed that Western society seemed reluctant to embrace that narrative. So, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, they started to adopt a different oppressor versus oppressed and it was all about race. All the while we were making progress on those fronts they were eager to capitalize on the very narrative that they knew would be very divisive in this country and that is our tough history of racism, of oppression, of slavery.

“Those are sensitive issues to the American people because they are incompatible with our founding philosophy. And, so you’re able to abuse and weaponize those narratives in order to create victimhood on the one hand and then an oppressor class on the other, and then insist that the victim class has an obligation to use violent force to throw off the oppressor class. That turns into race wars. So, if history is at all telling of what the outcome of Marxist ideology is, it is to get people’s blood boiling enough so they hate each other and they show up and protest, get violent, and they smash windows and shout and yell enough in order for people to start throwing punches or stabbing or shooting each other.”

Lohmeier believes the violent left-wing protests that swept through the country in 2020 could be the metaphorical tip of the iceberg if the military, school systems, colleges and universities, corporations, and other institutions continue embracing the oppressor-victim narrative that undermines love for the United States.

“If it starts again and you have another Kenosha (Wisconsin) in 2021 or 22 with the bloodshed of 25 or 30 people, that can spread very rapidly to cities throughout the country,” Lohmeier said.

“Then, depending on how that goes, it could subside or there could be no end to it. As a trained strategist in the Defense Department, I look not just at foreign enemies but at domestic enemies. I see what this impulse leads to. It has the potential to unravel civil society and lead to violence domestically,” he said.

“If you’re military is polarized and fractured like American society, how do you unify as a force in order to fight your nation’s battles either abroad or domestically? You don’t. You have certain people who agree and others who disagree and then they’re empowered to either obey or not obeyed the orders, and that’s a dangerous situation for this country and the world.”

This article first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette.

 

Wayne Laugesen

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/wait-perm-fired-speaking-out-frontpagemagcom/

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In the Sway of the Narrative - Alexsandar Markovic

 

by Alexsandar Markovic

While holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become captive of a scientific-technological elite.

Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address has been considered visionary in its warning against a “military-industrial complex” that would lead us into numerous, endless wars to the benefit of a few at great cost to the many.  Often overlooked, however, was his immediately following warning against a takeover of government and academia by a similarly self-interested few:

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.  While holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become captive of a scientific-technological elite.

The above is an apt description of the state of education, research that’s scientific-in-name-only, and public policy in 2021 America.  It is the substrate in which the nation’s scientists are trained and must function.  If they’re intellectually curious about things outside a politically approved narrative it’s despite, not because of, what they’ve been taught.  They learn that investigating some things severely forecloses their options within the system that governs a scholastic or scientific career.  “Scientists in training” emulate the attitudes, beliefs, and priorities that are reinforced by those administering their respective departments, colleges, and funding sources.  If they do not demonstrate those prerequisite qualities they are denied entry into or progress within their desired career path.  That’s why students and professors espousing conservative ideas are rare in academia.  That’s why the majority of researchers in American academia today cover the ideological gamut all the way from “Woke” to “Woke+.” That’s why “peers” in “peer review” can be relied upon to keep inconvenient, dissenting, disconfirming research from ever seeing the light of day.  That's why one of the Ivy League's formerly preeminent institutions, Harvard, can give rise to something as intellectually specious and venomous as Critical Race Theory.  That's how newly minted Harvard physicians and their professors can voice with impunity their views on the propriety of treating minority before white patients, all while proclaiming they're against racism.  That's why a Columbia University student who defected from North Korea can credibly state that Columbia is more fanatically dogmatic than the Hermit kingdom.  That’s why people who challenge the orthodoxie du jour on college campuses are shouted down and frequently precipitate violent protests if they have the temerity to try to speak at one.  All of this is also why the world’s “expert class” may never recover its erstwhile credibility after so poorly, if not malevolently, navigating the COVID situation.

The preceding are logical results of replacing education with indoctrination, reason with feelings, and science with politics.  That’s why we are where we are.  Those responsible are now in power and trying to consolidate their power indefinitely.  Restricting the breadth of a nonapproved studies audience is the go-to tactic in protecting the narrative.

Research challenging politically desired outcomes will suffer a predictable fate.  Upon becoming aware of it, Eisenhower’s “scientific-technological elite” will collectively ignore it in the hope that it won’t catch on.  Should it begin drawing attention, it will be dismissed as unimportant, misguided, or fringe.  If it remains on the scholarly radar, it’ll be adjudged biased, poorly designed, or otherwise flawed.  If it’s still standing afterward the “popes of the new medieval church” will simply lie about it as befits their need.

 

 

Attention given competing theories about the SARS-CoV-2 virus’ origin provides a prime example.  Initially, China said the U.S. was the source; even home-grown America-haters couldn’t make that pig fly.  The “natural” position, that the virus came from a Wuhan wet-market, quickly followed, was heavily pushed by China and embraced by the World Health Organization (WHO).  The “lab-leak” theory was concurrently proposed and holds that the virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  It was ignored by “mainstream” and social media.  The blogosphere covered and sustained it.  Then media influencers attacked anyone who brought it up.  Social media censored any mention of it and subsequently banned users who continued to talk about it.  “Mainstream” media figures then ridiculed it and those associated with it.  The lab-leak theory nonetheless gained public traction in early 2020, precipitating more focused suppressive efforts.  Drs. Anthony Fauci and Jeremy Farrar, directors of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the British Wellcome Trust, respectively, organized a teleconference of relevant officials.  Afterward social media, health officials at all levels, and the WHO, in lockstep, actively suppressed any discussion of the lab-leak idea.  Shortly thereafter two peer-approved articles appeared in the Lancet and Nature, both of which forcefully denigrated the possibility of the virus originating in a Wuhan lab.  The “mainstream” media eagerly cited these publications in deriding any lab-leak talk.  It was attacked on procedural, philosophical, racial, and economic grounds.  President Trump’s advocacy of the lab-leak idea guaranteed that his political foes would act against it at every turn.  Reflexively anti-Trump media maintained that only extremists and crackpots, like Trump and his supporters, could possibly take it seriously.  It took a dogged and protracted FOIA request to obtain email exchanges between Fauci and other officials revealing that the Lancet's open letter had been drafted by Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth, which had received millions in funding from Fauci's NIAID.  Those same emails disclosed that EcoHealth had redirected over a half-million dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology -- the same one from which the “natural” theory’s advocates maintained the virus could not possibly have originated.  Of the five scientists who coauthored the Nature article, four had participated in the Fauci-Farrar teleconference.  Everyone is supposed to accept that these are just coincidences, that such activities were not coordinated.  Except that anyone competent in probability theory understands that they were.  A high-level Chinese defector has recently provided persuasive evidence of a Chinese lab being the virus's probable source.  Material from the same FOIA request strongly supports the lab-leak origin, so much so that media that had rabidly attacked it before have been forced to rein in their condemnation.  Now implicated parties and the media are furiously back-filling, removing altogether, and altering the substance of their earlier statements on the lab-leak theory.  Given its rising credibility, the lab-leak question now pivots on whether the virus was released deliberately or leaked by accident.  Of course, the same media and experts who uncritically snarked the lab-leak theory proclaim that only extremists and crackpots could possibly believe its distribution was deliberate.  The Narrative über alles.

Having mostly purged dissenting thought within academia and become dominant within the unelected bureaucratic groves of government, this “Pro-Regressive” mentality is now engaged in trying to consolidate itself as the dominant ethos in corporate America.  If successful, dissenters will have even fewer private sector options to satisfy genuine intellectual curiosity.  “Scientific” inquiry will have become as effectively controlled as in Orwell's direst predictions.  Wherever that leads won’t be good -- except for the parties who benefit from shaping public policy in their favor, using the public's money to do it, against the public's interests.  These are the same people who have always, without exception, risen to the top of collectivist societies as their masses sink into stagnation and misery.  Every time.  Without exception.

Trust Pro-Regressive “science” to take you where Your Betters want you to go.  Every time.  Without exception.

Image: Petri Damstén

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Alexsandar Markovic

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/in_the_sway_of_the_narrative.html

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