Mum challenges a school who wants to infuse Critical Race Theory’s false doctrines into the curriculum.
She’s right. Black Lives Matter Inc. and the whole CRT, “hate whitey”, money making industry has more in common with the Nation of Islam, and Malcom X, than it does Martin Luther King Jnr.
CRT is a rejection of the early civil rights movement. It does what David Horowitz has accused “Black Power” thugs of doing: keeping African-Americans chained to poverty through as politics of grievance, and bitter sense of entitlement.
Criticisms from former Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, aimed at Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison’s Christian faith, are asinine, petty, and hypocritical.
In response to Scott Morrison’s speech at an Australian Christian Churches conference in April, Rudd told the ABC’s 7:30 Report,
“The idea that anyone leading a political party could believe that it is ‘God on our side,’ is just the stuff of real danger in my view.”
Rudd’s problem with Morrison is largely manufactured outrage.
Morrison never said or alluded to the absolutizing of the Church through the State by way of hyper-nationalism.
In ripping apart Morrison’s testimony concerning answered prayer, Rudd twisted what Prime Minister said, and skewed the message to serve his own ends.
No where in the speech – which was transcribed by Crikey – does Scott Morrison say about the 2019 election that “God was on our side,” nor did Morrison suggest that Australia should become a theocracy.
The Prime Minister spoke of being the image bearers of God. A key part of healthy Biblical theology, and a major part of the fabric from which Western Civilisation was formed.
Contrary to Rudd’s self-centred accusations, Morrison asked those gathered to be what they are called to be: a landmark; a beacon of hope under the 24/7/365 Lordship of Jesus Christ.
In essence, Morrison was calling the Church to be image bearers of the self-revealing God in a sea of poisoned politics, societal division, ideological extremism, and the subsequent surge of political turbulence.
There’s nothing Morrison said that justifies Kevin Rudd’s venomous anti-Church and State tantrum.
Granted, his concerns about the excesses of Pentecostalism weren’t all that off the mark. I’ve seen some dumb stuff done in the name of the Holy Spirit.
While criticism of certain aspects of the Christian denomination are necessary, the more appropriate platform for such criticism is theological analysis, not trial by media.
Certainly not trial by ex-Prime Minister, who from his political pulpit, appears to be saying that the Christian faith should be constrained to four walls on a Sunday, and read through the lens of Das Kapital.
Rudd’s bourgeois leftist social justice Christianity, is as concerning as cultural Christians who keep Jesus in his Sunday box, bringing Him out for a cameo at Christmas, and Easter. Only apply if necessary. Particularly if there’s an election on, and the mood feels right.
By using Morrison’s Christian faith, to shove his own bigoted bourgeois leftist, Marxist Jesus of “Social Justice,” down the throats of Australians, Rudd appears to be completely unaware that his self-righteous chest-beating negates proclamations about his own Christian faith.
For example, Rudd, in his article for the Guardian placed his own “garden-variety theology” (whatever that is) against what he alleges is Morrison’s “radical political theology.”
His juvenile outbidding of Morrison should be read as it appears to have been written: “Morrison isn’t a real Christian. I know, because I’ve always been one.”
It’s not the first time.
In a quarterly essay discussing faith and politics, Chris Uhlmann explained how Rudd “compared his faith, with that of John Howard, and [did so] to find his opponent wanting.”
Could Rudd’s hypocrisy be any more blatant?
He condemns Scott Morrison for bringing “religion” into politics, but was not averse to using God in his 2006-2007 election campaign.
In a 2006 essay for the Monthly, Rudd appealed to the strength of German Evangelical (Lutheran) theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Rudd appears to have used Bonhoeffer’s Christian opposition against the Nazi state, to inadvertently portray the Liberal National Party as Nazis, and the Australian Labor Party as anti-Nazis, for the goal of winning the 2007 election.
Spot the irony. Kevin Rudd, a “Christian Socialist” employed an ecclesiastically Conservative Christian theologian, who stood up against National Socialism, to promote Christian Socialism.
Bonhoeffer wasn’t a fan of the all-consuming, and never satisfied, economic leviathan, stating, (and I’m quoting him verbatim): ‘a lack of obedience to Scripture is characteristic for the teaching of the social gospel.’ (DBW 12, Memorandum, p.242)
Around the time of the 2007 election, when it came to roles played in society by both the Church and State, Kevin Rudd was all for it, writing,
‘The function of the church in all these areas of social, economic and security policy is to speak directly to the state: to give power to the powerless, voice to those who have none, and to point to the great silences in our national discourse where otherwise there are no natural advocates.’
Adding to this, he then asks secular politicians not to reject the Christian perspective:
‘A Christian perspective, informed by a social gospel or Christian socialist tradition, should not be rejected contemptuously by secular politicians as if these views are an unwelcome intrusion into the political sphere. If the churches are barred from participating in the great debates about the values that ultimately underpin our society, our economy and our polity, then we have reached a very strange place indeed.’
It’s telling. Kevin Rudd is okay with the Christian perspective in politics, as long as it’s the Leftist authorised version.
A deceptive, flowery version informed for the most part, by false doctrines that submit the Lordship of Jesus Christ to the tyrannical lordship of Karl Marx.
It’s not Morrison’s faith in politics that needs a health check-up, it’s Kevin Rudd’s.
‘Socialism’s real error’, said Christian, ex-Marxist and French scholar, Jacques Ellul, is ‘the one that lies behind all the rest, is that it ended up formulating a new religion, setting up gods: history, proletariat, socialism, revolution.’ (Jesus & Marx, 1988. p.139)
Rudd’s hypocrisy and its utterly self-important nonsense beg the question, why is #kevin07 still being taken seriously?
The former populist P. M has discredited himself by letting his lust for media attention assuage his narcissistic opportunism.
Watching Kevin Rudd’s responses to Leigh Sales on the 7:30 report was like watching a sketch from the Comedy Company.
The election of Kevin Rudd ignited over a decade of destabilisation in Australian politics. Him calling the Prime Minister “wacky” is genuinely laughable.
To be in Christ, is to be in the Church.
Crucially, and perhaps most importantly, is that Rudd’s criticism of Morrison, not only misconstrues the role of church and state, it neglects vocation.
Vocation is God’s sovereign grace working through human hands, where, says, Lutheran scholar, Gene Veith, ‘His Word extends into the world.’
Through vocation the spirituality of the cross is lived out in ‘parenting, farming, labouring, soldiers, doctors, judges or retailers.’
It’s impossible for a genuine Christian to be separated from Jesus Christ.
The distinction between church and state is not to be understood as a separation between the secular and sacred.
A Christian defined by their church attendance record, melanin, ethnicity, or loyalty to a political ideology – is not a Christian.
Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison has rejected identity politics and cancel culture in a speech delivered to the United Israel Appeal Dinner, in Randwick, NSW.
Morrison’s April 29th address wasn’t a thunderous “no,” but it was an encouraging reiteration of comments he’d originally made during an informal speech at the Australian Christian Churches conference held on the Gold Coast the previous weekend.
One that inadvertently triggered a meltdown amongst the radical leftist vanguard because a) he seemingly didn’t ask their permission, b) didn’t officially schedule it on his Prime Ministerial calendar, and c) a Christian Prime Minister giving a speech at a Christian conference, was a bridge too far for the “Australia is supposed to be a secular country” blusteringly bigoted, anti-Christian belligerents.
The essence of his speech reinforces a commitment from the 3rd highest office in the land, after God and Governor-General, that Australia won’t be led by extremists on the left, who are demanding total conformity to their divisive ideological agenda.
This all sounds promising, but there is a caveat. Morrison’s words are dimmed by the Liberal National Party appearing to follow the direction of Australian Labor’s virtue signalling vote grab, by implementing gender quotas.
With this in tow, we’d be fools to not ask whether the Prime Minister was fully committed to his convictions?
If the Prime Minister’s commitment to tackling the toxins of identity politics and cancel culture is an authentic “hell no – full stop!”, we are seeing a watershed moment in Australian politics.
Morrison’s boldness wasn’t a Menzies sonic boom, heard when the Liberal founder, and Prime Minister, stood in the gap for all Australians with ‘The Forgotten People,’ and his perceptive, if not over-the-top-at-times, consistent defence of Australia’s [Classical] Liberal Democracy, against the totalitarianism of Communism at the height of its insidious power.
This said, Morrison’s address was, in many ways, a Menzies moment.
Scott Morrison, drove home the message of community, and individual responsibility; of offering grace towards our neighbours through the Biblical Christian emphasis on an ‘inherent dignity’ handed to humanity by way of the being made in the image of God (Imago Dei).
Liberty, the Prime Minister said, ‘is not borne of the state but rests with the individual, for whom morality must be a personal responsibility.’
He adds,
‘This is not about state power. This is not about market power. This is about morality and personal responsibility…That is the moral responsibility and covenant, I would argue, of citizenship. Not to think we can leave it to someone else. ‘
‘Community begins with the individual, not the state, not the marketplace…to realise true community we must first appreciate each individual human being matters.
Then Morrison qualifies his meaning stating that,
‘In this context, we must protect against the social and moral corrosion caused by the misuse of social media, & tendency to commodify human beings through identity politics.’
‘We must never surrender the truth that the experience and value of every human being is unique and personal. You are more, we are more, individually, more than the things others try to identify us by, you by, in this age of identity politics.’
‘You are more than your gender, you are more than your race, you are more than your sexuality, you are more than your ethnicity, you are more than your religion, your language group, your age.’
Finally, and with justification, Morrison solemnly nails the fascist nature of identity politics, cancel culture, and by extension Critical Race Theory/Queer theory, asserting:
‘Throughout history, we’ve seen what happens when people are defined solely by the group they belong to, or an attribute they have, or an identity they possess. The Jewish community understands that better than any in the world.’
Cancel culture and identity politics are birthed from same DNA found in Communism, Nazism, and Islamism. They are totalitarianism proper.
That Australians have a Prime Minister publicly moving against this new authoritarianism, is, to lean on the sentiment expressed by CDP leader, Lyle Shelton, a gift.
This, Shelton said, ‘has been Morrison’s finest hour as PM. For a politician who is known more for his pragmatism, this is a welcome and necessary shift.’
I’m a little more cautious. At the moment Morrison’s words are just that, words.
They come from the same Prime Minister whose Communist Chinese inspired anti-COVID counter measures hurt civil liberties, and came without any promise of preserving those liberties, hand-in-hand with his Government’s fight against the Communist COVID virus.
They also come from a P.M. who entertains the hysterical dogma of apocalyptic climate change catastrophisers.
Hopefully, Morrison’s new speech suggests a new direction.
Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister that no one seems to be able to box in, pin down, or label, no matter how hard they try, has gone into bat, shouldering his fair share of the burden for the sake of our civil liberties.
As such, Morrison has delivered one of the best speeches of his time in office, and is to be commended for it.
Australian Senator, Amanda Stoker, has, according to reports from The Australian, directly criticised a plan to infuse an antiracism campaign by The Australian Human Rights Commission, with Critical Race Theory.
Linking the two, The Australian said that AHRC has now held back from a committing $140,000 tender to align Critical Race Theory with the “Racism: its stops with me” (RISWM) campaign.
The intention of the “addition” was to move the ‘focus of the campaign beyond the level of interpersonal racism towards a critical look at forms of structural/systemic and institutional racism, as well as unconscious bias.’
The $140,000 ideological alignment tender’s purpose was to ‘increase understanding about these concepts,’ along with ‘mobilise supporters and potential supporters into action to address them.’
Amanda Stoker is quoted as saying that after learning of the project, she ‘immediately called AHRC president to express concern that it was fostering racial division.’ Racism, Stoker said, ‘is completely unacceptable in modern Australia, but ideas like Critical Race Theory, only lead to greater racial division.’
AHRC president, Rosalind Croucher, said that the call with Amanda took place, but denied that Stoker’s criticism had any influence on the decision to put the project on the back-burner.
Defending the $140,000 tender, Croucher said, crucially, it was an idea that sought to include CRT, ‘not replace the current focus on individual behaviour and building social cohesion.’
The Australian said that Croucher rebuked Stoker, telling her that ‘while open communication is valuable, it is not for an assistant attorney to give direction to an independent agency head.’
IPA director, Bella d’Abrera backed Amanda Stoker, ‘accusing the AHRC of using radical race theory to divide Australians, while notorious Twitter race baiter, Greens Senator, Mehreen Faruqi backed the AHRC infusing CRT into its RISWM campaign.
The debate over CRT as a basis for education is raging in the United States. Donald Trump restrained CRT because of its far-left wing toxicity, but Joe Biden backs it.
Some States, however, are following the Trump lead, and seeking to limit the radical Left-wing ideology’s reach, by banning the teaching of CRT in schools.
In other words, these states are seeking to restrain maddening radical left-wing dogmas such as: ‘systemic racism, white privilege, “whiteness”, and gender bias issues.’
Stoker’s concerns are valid.
The minute the Australian Human Rights Commission starts preaching from the “woke gospel” of Critical Race Theory, and it’s sibling, Queer theory, it’s no longer an organisation advocating human rights, but reinforcing the protection of an emerging oppressive political class, and its false doctrines.
Ex-hard-line Communist, and veteran of the New Left, David Horowitz, in ‘Hating Whitey & Other Progressive Causes’ described what we now know to be Critical Race Theory, as an academic movement of ‘radical left anti-white hatred’, calling it ‘a by-product of anti-Americanism.’
Horowitz, once an avid supporter of the Black Panthers, noted,
“Ideological hatred of whites is now an expanding industry. [See] Noel Ignatiev’s “Whiteness Studies,” an academic field promoting the idea that “whiteness” is a “social construct” that is oppressive and must be “abolished.” [Also] The magazine Race Traitor, the theoretical organ of this academic cult, emblazoned with the motto: “Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity.”
He wrote this in 1999.
His comments pre-date – and perhaps predict – the rise of Black Lives Matter, popularity of CRT, Democrat race baiting, and the “all white people are racist” stereotyping.
Recall what Kemi Badenoch, a Conservative MP from the U.K., said in October last year:
CRT as an “an ideology that sees blackness as victimhood and whiteness as oppression. We do not want to see teachers teaching their white pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt…What we are against is the teaching of contested political ideas as if they are accepted facts.”
If the AHRC is as passionate about antiracism as they claim, surely the AHRC’s hierarchy will recognise this, and look to a broader range of voices, than those identified by Horowitz.
Critical Theory praxis is designed to discredit. CRT and Queer theory are its weapons. Manipulative thought cancelling platforms used to censure a person based on the lightness of their melanin, convictions about biology, faith, and the man for woman, woman for man, union.
Critical Theory, and its offshoots, Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory, are not what they appear to be.
In the end, Rosalind Croucher, the AHRC president, is to be commended for halting the $140,000 tender, for the simple fact that ultimately, ‘Critical Race Theory is culturally accepted racism.’ – Virgil Walker
Silicon Valley is yet again proving that they’re an anti-democratic monopoly, willing to ban, block, boot, and blunt the voice of Democratically elected representatives.
Craig Kelly is their latest victim.
Facebook has banned the Australian Member of Parliament for breaching their COVID rules.
ACL director Martyn Iles called the targeted ban, “big tech censorship”, noting that one of his “The Truth of It” videos have been censored, and that when it comes to Facebook “he, himself, is on borrowed time.”
Iles has good reason for thinking this way. Radical Leftist Jihadists spurred on by the collaborative cancellation of President Donald Trump, appear to love a book burning.
For instance, as Iles noted, Amazon’s ‘recent ban on one of the most carefully written scholarly books on transgenderism, by Dr Ryan T Anderson.’
In addition, Tik Tok ‘(without explanation) permanently banned PragerU’s Amala Ekpunobi, a young, African American, conservative woman whose content tends to be nothing short of excellent.’
The ACL director declared: they censor because they’re scared of ‘truth. Truth is exposed by analysis. Truth has the power to persuade people. It is hard to fight fair against truth.’
He then pointed out that ‘the woke worldview is built on a foundation of lies, which must be protected at all costs – especially the most fragile ones. Censorship is the only tool they have to fight truth. They dare not let it free, or argue with it.’
I’m going to add that the kings and queens of the information age seem determined to exert political power, where political power hasn’t been granted to them.
The technocratic Tower of Babel bubble, that is Facebook, and Twitter (et.al) are how people do business.
There is no opt-out clause. Ours is now truly a technological society.
Technocrats don’t seem to just want the world, they want to run it, and they’re on their way to owning you.
Many businesses use their platforms to communicate with employees, passing on vital information that affects the livelihoods of everyday people, living everyday lives.
The technocracy in California thrives on this co-dependent relationship. They are rulers of the governed, without the consent of the governed.
It’s an abusive relationship, trademarked by Big Tech’s collaborative effort to interfere in the 2020 United States election, when they punished customers on their platforms for objecting to conscription into Silicon Valley’s predominantly Leftist groupthink paradigm.
The way they wield power through their sheltered, centralised hub betrays an arrogance not dissimilar to what Democrat Senator, J. William Fulbright, in 1966 called, ‘power confusing itself with virtue.’
Fulbright was lamenting his vote supporting the Democrat led push to increase America’s involvement in Vietnam. He saw the ‘organised slaughter’ as an outworking of the ‘arrogance of power.’
The relevance is simple. For Fulbright, this was ‘welfare imperialism’; a big nation dictating their terms of existence onto a smaller nation.
In today’s geopolitical vernacular, it’s Communist China vs. the Free People of Hong Kong. Likewise, Communist China vs. the Republic of China (Taiwan).
By banning criticism, Big Tech follows the road of ‘exaggerated power’, where it ‘can admit no wrong-doing,’ because it’s too invested in an agreed upon consensus, that demands ‘unquestioning support.’ (ibid)
Their COVID-19 wall of silence that bans alternative opinions from “unapproved” professionals, and its vetting system that ensures loyalty to the agreed upon narrative is an expression of this ‘arrogance of power.’
This overthrow of elected representatives raises some important questions about where do we go from here.
One possible way that Big Tech can work around their concerns about “fake news” content is by extending grace to the official accounts of our elected representatives.
Could something akin to parliamentary privilege be extended to elected representatives using social media?
I’m convinced it could. If Big Tech is serious about civil liberties, primarily freedom of expression and speech, such an extension is not only an appropriate application of grace towards elected representatives, but its fast becoming a necessity.
The voice of the people, for the people should be protected.
Parliamentary privilege empowers this; it ‘refers to an immunity from the ordinary law, which is recognised by the law as a right of the houses and their members.’
As such, ‘parliamentary privilege exists for the purpose of enabling the houses of the Parliament to carry out effectively their functions.’
For example: ‘the primary functions of the (upper-senate; lower-representatives) houses are to inquire, to debate and to legislate.’
The sad reality is that, for all the bluster about being platforms for freedom of speech, Big Tech aren’t all that interested in being platforms for freedom of speech.
There can be, said Fulbright, ‘no solution to a problem until it is first acknowledged that there is a problem.’
It’s doubtful that the technocratic kings and queens of this new aristocracy are aware that the fault, as well as the remedy for it, lies with them.
References:
J.W Fulbright, 1966. The Arrogance of Power Random House Publishing Group.
First published on Caldron Pool, 28th April, 2021.
The chilling image from Western Australia of a lone elderly man defying authoritarian COVID-19 lockdowns, is an anathema on the reactionary political decisions of soft leaders, who’ve sold out to the political capital Communist China’s COVID-19 grants them.
The apparent veteran was seen wearing medals, and marching with metal walking aids down an empty street in Perth, during what would have been Perth’s ANZAC Day commemoration service on the weekend.
Parts of the city were thrown into a three-day lockdown by Western Australia’s Labor government after two people tested positive to the controversial virus. One, a 54-year-old man, ‘had completed quarantine on April 17th, after arriving from China.’ (SBS)
According to the Daily Mail (which was one of the only established media outlets to report on the event), ‘under the strict lockdown rules, residents are only allowed out for essential reasons, and the current lockdown may be extended.’
Western Australia’s flash lockdown was on par with Victoria’s ludicrous limitations in Melbourne, and its fenced off perimeter around the ANZAC memorial, which was met with a justifiable amount of criticism online.
Similar criticism was being directed towards the Western Australian Labor government.
Noteworthy among them was Herald Sun, and Sky News presenter Rita Panahi, who applied her almost flawless characteristic sharp wit, saying,
‘What a powerful image. Strength, principle and character. What a contrast from WA’s bedwetting premier who cancelled Anzac Day commemorations. ‘Complexity of feelings’…that’s one way to describe scaremongering & hysterically disproportionate response.’
In parts of Canada and Victoria (Australia), he’d have been tackled or tasered.
The media would have called him a “grandma killer,” claiming he wanted people to die, and “Zooming” celebrities with masks on would be slamming him for his rebellious stand for civil liberties.
All this would be happening while doctors and nurses with too much time on their hands performed well-rehearsed dances on Tik Tok, as bureaucrats took to hourly press conferences informing nations that this veteran’s actions mean lockdowns have been extended for months, because only they know what’s best for us.
It’s a travesty that we’re allowing governments to turn its attacks on the virus, into an attack on the people.
#AnzacDay is not a spectator sport. It’s an open-air Church service where ALL in attendance participate to remember the fallen; mark the tragedy of war, and respond to a summons to vigilance, and the obligation we are handed to preserve light, life and liberty.
Don’t believe me? Look up the history.
The architect of Anzac Day was Christian chaplain, Canon David John Garland. He was active in helping soldiers during WW1, and ‘served from 1918-19 in the Middle East.’
He was also a staunch fighter for civil liberties. According to the ‘Australian Dictionary of Biography’ (Mansfield, Vol. 8, 1981), in 1937 he protested the ABC’s ban on politicians from broadcasting for three months before the Federal election, calling the decision ‘dictatorship of opinion.’
Deemed the ‘heart and soul of ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee,’ Garland set up Anzac Day ‘ceremonies and rituals; initiated the Anzac Day march, the returned soldiers’ luncheon, the two minutes silence, the wreath-laying ceremonies at memorials and the special church services. He also began a trust to use money raised from Anzac Day badges for the care of soldiers’ graves at home and abroad.’
The politicisation of COVID-19 is the further promotion of COVID control-by-fear narratives, it’s an echoing of Communist totalitarianism; the elevation of hubris through bureaucratic nonsense, over-against common sense.
By applying excessive political force to the COVID-19 crisis, catastrophising bureaucrats have happily used fear-porn, to jump from press conference to press conference to convince us they’re excessive lockdowns are needed.
Through their unelected narrow health bureaucratic advisors, they’ve rejected the scalpel, and applied the hammer and cycle.
Computer modelling were stepping stones to totalitarianism.
Just as they’ve politicised COVID-19 for the cameras, they’re politicising ANZAC Day, but it’s likely to backfire. Many will see their hijacking of ANZAC services to satiate their lust for power for what it is, a mockery of the dead, and the enslavement of the living.
If you, once said Chuck Colson, ‘get the notion in your head that there’s a political solution to everything, and you don’t have to do anything except let Government take care of everything for you, you will eventually be controlled by those people.’ [i]
Chaplain Garland would agree, the ‘dictatorship of opinion’ from which a narrow band of unelected health bureaucrats determine what is essential and what is not, isn’t what those who we remember on ANZAC Day fought, and died to preserve.
ANZAC Day exists because pastoral care is an essential service.
Being baby-sat by bureaucrats isn’t.
References:
[i] Colson, C. 2015. I’m Happy, Not Happy, My Final Word, Zondervan, (p.123)
First published on Caldron Pool, 26th April, 2021.
Dr. Kevin Donnelly’s Wilkinson Publishing new release, ‘Cancel Culture & The Left’s Long March,’ is an Australian first.
Aussie academics have teamed up to produce a long overdue scholarly rebuttal of the influential Radical Left’s Maoist inspired Culture War (p.62).
Connelly’s authors aren’t numb to the stresses of everyday life, or ignorant of the chasm between the non-fiction of real life, and fiction over facts life of social media netizens. Its content isn’t long-winded, verbose, nor does it come from a group of high-minded ivory tower theorists.
His compilation of essays comes from a broad spectrum of professionals who’ve directly felt the impact of Cancel Culture in their respective fields.
Some of whom have lived some of their professional life staring down the barrel of Cancel Culture’s fully locked, and loaded “fall in, line up, goosestep in unison, or else!” gun.
With contributions from the more well-known personalities such as Geologist Ian Plimer, Former Prime Ministe Tony Abbott, Sky News host Peta Credlin, and Independent scholar Dr. Stephen Chavura, the book introduces other ‘culture war warriors’ Kevin Donnelly, Gary Marks, Jennifer Oriel, John Steenhof, Anthony Dillon, Patrick Byrne, Dr. Fiona Mueller, and Kristian Jenkins.
For all that ‘Cancel Culture & The Left’s Long March’ teaches, it is a well-informed push-back, as much as it is a group of concerned academics drawing a powerful line in the sand.
The book has left me somewhere between anger at Western apathy, disappointment with society’s quick surrender, and being buoyed by its impassioned intellectual plea to step up the fight in a war no one wanted, but were forced onto fighting because the Radical Left will not tolerate an opposing viewpoint, or any viewpoint that doesn’t enhance, deify, or support their own.
What this means is actuating a firm “no” to the totalitarian Left’s imposition of new cultural law; laws that are designed to cancel out civil liberties, the family unit, science, and Biblically Christian based constitutional democracy.
At the centre of Cancel Culture’s black heart is a manufactured reset of society, that’s part of a broader new paradigm which measures good and evil by the yardstick of ‘safe versus dangerous, instead of true versus false.”
It’s why ‘those who value Western Civilisation must be vigorously opposed to the never sleeping militant left’s totalitarian agenda’ (p.30).
One of the significant features of Donnelly’s work is the depth of knowledge its authors have about their subject matter.
Gary Marks, for instance gives a strong overview of the New Left’s, Marxist Frankfurt School, its origin, mandate, and founders.
Donnelly runs through the tactics of infiltration used not for the purpose of educating children in Australia, but re-educating them.
For example, he says, ‘instead of being an impartial and balanced pursuit of knowledge, wisdom and truth’, education curriculums emphasise ‘politically correct language, ideology and group think.’
He grimly adds, ‘where English once involved teaching clear thinking and the importance of logic and reason when evaluating arguments and differing points of view as a result of [Marxist/New Left] critical theory and post-modernism, students now judge arguments according to how they feel’ (p.35).
Similarly, ‘beauty’, writes Jennifer Oriel, ‘is replaced by a simulation that is culturally impotent.’ University ‘leaders have so diminished freedoms that the miseducated are taking the uneducated into a realm of darkness’ (p.51).
Her examples include the cancelling of non-leftist speakers on campuses, to booting academics for expressing leftist wrong-think with whip statement terms like the ‘thought-terminating cliché Islamophobia’; manufactured for the ‘purpose of beating down critics’ (p.59).
As Oriel writes, the New Left’s ‘neo-Marxist colonisation of the university’ replaced ‘the pursuit of objective truth and classical liberal education with revolutionary education that taught students what to think’ (p.57).
Dr. Fiona Mueller concurred calling the new cultural-left’s triumph over our education institutions, and the ‘ideological intimidation epitomised by cancel culture’ (p.75), the ‘closing of the Australian mind’ (p.67).
‘Cancel Culture & The Left’s Long March’ indicates a significant cultural shift; it’s a watershed proclaiming the counter-culture, though forced underground by radical leftist jihadism and its Cancel Culture crusaders, is a thriving community, determined in their resistance to stop a resurgence of bloodthirsty 20th Century authoritarianism.
As Daintree said, while noting that this takeover of the masses was a consequence of post-modernism’s rejection of objectivity, there are ‘signs things will improve.’
The emergence of ‘small liberal arts institutions like Sydney’s Campion college’, for instance, as well as ‘the Ramsey foundation’, and intellectuals in the same calibre as Sir Roger Scruton, and Jordan Peterson, encourage us to ‘reverse the darkening influence’ of those who fixate on identity, gender, and sexual preference (pp.93 & 94)
Speaking of the COVID-19 response, Tony Abbott adds ‘it’s vandalism to demolish anything when there’s nothing better to replace it with’; society has ‘gone beyond accommodating people’s fears to the point of playing on them’ (pp.102 & 104).
It’s this well-ordered, plainly stated insight that allows ‘Cancel Culture & The Left’s Long March’ to take its author’s much needed objective message beyond the corridors of the academy into the colossal subjective Thunderdome of post-modern society.
Cancel Culture is the culture of death equivalent of “life unworthy of life.” The same issuing of demands for ideological conformity under both Nazism and Communism, which forged a legal wall of silence around Stalin’s Gulags, and purges; and euthanized contemporary criticism of Auschwitz, Dachau, Ravensbruck and Buchenwald (among others).
As John Steenhof points out ‘Australian laws are being weaponised to silence religious voices, and to cancel religious Australians who express ideas that are discordant with the atheistically secular ideological fashions’ (p.109).
Israel Folau being the primary example of how weaponised ‘vilification laws are abused.’ Dr. Jereth Kok a Victorian G.P. is another.
Jereth was ‘suspended from practicing medicine after an anonymous complaint from an activist triggered the Medical Board to suspend his licence, alleging that his conservative Christian political views made him a menace to his patients. Despite his patients ‘never complaining about his professionalism’ (pp.114 & 115).
This should send a chill up and down the proverbial spine of Western society. The same callous hands which gripped Europe in the 20th Century, are wrapping its cold, dead, bony fingers round the necks of Western society.
Perhaps the greatest outworking of this cultural-leftist toxin is the Left’s vile misuse of Aboriginal Australia, where ‘fuzzy sounding and emotive words or phrases – like “first nations people”, “connecting with country”, “institutional racism” – that have no precise meaning, are used to bolster an argument to make an opponent look sinister, or make the one using the rhetoric sound intelligent and morally superior.” (p.126)
Anthony Dillon writes, ‘such [CRT] rhetoric is a smokescreen’ used by “whinger ninjas” [sic.]. They turn attention away from the ‘fact that very often the worst offenders in treating Aboriginal people badly are other Aboriginal people’ (p.129).
Critical Race Theory [CRT] and Queer theory share the same genetic origins in New Left Critical Theory, formed by the reduction of society into an oppressor and oppressed class, with related post-modern, historical revisionism to justify it.
Queer theory, says Patrick Byrne, opposes the ‘biological worldview.’ It cancels criticism on the false moral relativist view that biology is a social construct.
Byrne compares gender dysphoria to anorexia, where the ‘anorexic female’s perception of her body as obese is in conflict with the reality.’ If we’re forced to affirm gender dysphoria, because not to do so is labelled “transphobic”, will they also ‘insist on supporting a person with anorexia nervosa’ to ignore their biological fact for subjective fiction? (p.143).
Ian Plimer and Stephen Chavura conclude the book.
Plimer impressively argues it’s the ‘sun that drives the surface temperature of the planet’, not carbon dioxide. Writing, ‘it has never been shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming’ (p.162)
He also explains how the ‘Climate cult’ has manufactured the “Climate Crisis;” Stating that ‘science is tribal, is politicised, and because science is government funded, has a tendency to follow the party-line.’
Adding, this ‘Climate change cult is part of the ‘cancel culture community masquerading as science.’ We know this because basic questions such as “how do we know what we know?’ is considered a seditious and offensive question (p.164).
Cancel Culture’s biggest tool says, Chavura, is Social media. It’s ‘virtual mobs’ are unlike anything seen in history; and the ‘only speech they tolerate is that which conforms to the leftist social agenda.’
He writes, ‘at the end of the day cancel culture thrives on timidity, and codes of free speech,’ as opposed to Cancel Culture’s obsession with arbitrary, and ambiguous “hate speech” rubrics, that often are used to silence speech the Left hates.
The power of Cancel culture’s effectiveness is limited by the attention we feed it.
‘Cancel Culture & The Left’s Long March’ a book of criticisms, and observations.
I’m confident in saying that it is one of the most important books I’ve read in a while.
Donnelly’s well put together compilation isn’t a manifesto, it’s a response to, and exposition of demonic false doctrines, deceptively emerging from the hegemonic leftist swamp as a liberating, benevolent force.
May we see more academics follow these courageous few.
First published on Caldron Pool, 24th April, 2021.
Australian academic, author and public speaker, Dr. Stephen Chavura has given his strongest message to date on the dangers of apathy in the face of virulent cancel culture.
In his essay from Kevin Donnelly’s ‘Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March’, abridged by The Australian, Chavura argued for what he calls, ‘courage culture’ to meet and ‘remedy cancel culture.’
Central to cancel culture, writes Chavura, ‘is an emerging therapeutic totalitarianism, which seeks to outlaw speech and practices deemed “unsafe” or “harmful.”
This is evidenced by the emerging police state in the West, which from behind a wall of fearmongering narratives, ambiguous legislation, and EULA’s headlined as regulating “hate speech,” the Left arbitrarily polices thought and speech that it hates.
By extension, we also see the cancelling of livelihoods, personalities, places, and conservative platforms the Left hates, which are now becoming too numerous to mention.
For instance, cancel culture’s ‘woketivists’ have seen to the ‘termination of careers and punishment of free speech of ordinary Australians working in education, health, the public service, and private corporations. In Australia the Human Rights Law Alliance represents dozens whose religious views – particularly regarding sexuality and gender – have resulted in them losing their jobs or being disciplined in their workplaces.’
The upside to this, says Chavura is that there are a growing number of people, corporations, and institutions who recognise that Cancel culture is fascism proper. That it’s a direct domestic threat to civil liberties, and constitutional democracies.
In thanking them for their courage, Chavura acknowledges the limitations these groups face in the struggle to be heard within the Leftist echo chamber that violently opposes opposing viewpoints, with often manipulative lawfare, and intimidation through false claims on the moral high ground, and a consensus from the majority.
These groups see Cancel Culture’s inherent negation of life, its hypocrisy, and absolute hatred of anything its “feelings first” yardstick renders as life unworthy of life.
What’s needed, said Chavaru, are ‘more organisations defending freedom of speech and other liberal rights [to] emerge to fight back against cancel culture.’
If so, then ‘more brave individuals will stand tall when the cancel mob comes for them.’
Along with this community uprising will come support for those holding the line against the fire on the horizon, stoked as it is by the darkness of another world-shattering gathering storm.
He writes, ‘Cancel culture is itself a test of how committed citizens in comfortable and prosperous liberal democracies are to their freedoms of speech, religion, and, conscience.’
This storm can be stopped, ‘but only by courage culture.’
If, he adds, ‘our freedoms are cancelled because of our apathy and fear, then we’ll only have proven that we forfeited our right to those hard-won freedoms long ago.’
Closer to home, Chavura has long held the view that the Church in the West faces a Kairos moment; built for a time such as this, a time for choosing, of risking, of meeting the task handed to it as Christ’s hands, and feet on earth.
This is a time for defending society where freedom is governed by objective morality, against a phantasmagorian utopia governed by nothing other than what has been prescribed for us by mob rule, an unelected bureaucratic elite, and the nihilistic abandonment of individual responsibility, God and the obligation of reciprocity His grace commands of us.
Those who deny the existence of Cancel Culture are usually part of the “resistance” pushing Cancel Culture.
These groups are all too ready to throw other Christians under the bus for personal gain.
Buying permission to speak into politics, they purchase privilege with the blood of saints they’ve slain on the altar of their own self-righteousness.
It’s a political play for influence, power and an audience. It has nothing to do with building up the body of Christ; and everything to do with maintaining the Left’s hold on the body of Christ. Man’s lordship over against Christ-as-Lord.
Its therefore not hard to see why these goats are quick to attack others for calling a spade a spade.
Cancel Culture represses free speech, demands heart allegiance, and imposes new cultural laws in order to pursue the erasure of civil liberties.
The goal is to replace Classical Liberal societies, and their Biblical foundations, withMarxist Promethean wokeness (my definition for Cultural Marxism.)
Chuck Colson called barbarism, ‘inhumanity done in the name of humanity; the killing of people for their own good.’
Cancel culture is fascism proper. It’s barbaric, and this barbarianism is punching its way through the gates.
Flawed, anti-Nazi theologian, Karl Barth, saw this first hand. His faith in Jesus Christ led him to reject the deification of the state, and its sycophants in the German Church. As a result, he was booted out of Germany by Hitler.
His resistance is summed up with one sentence:
‘Christianity is the protest against all the high places which human beings build for themselves’ (C.D IV/II p.524).
It’s why the Barmen Declaration that he helped forge was a founding document of the Confessing Church.
It sought to stop opportunistic clergy, and their congregations, from subsuming Christian theology into the service of Nazism, boldly proclaiming:
‘We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords–areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.’ (Barth, 8.15 second thesis, Barmen Declaration 1934).
Heed Chavura’s call, because he’s right: ‘Courage is the only way forward.’
In the spirit of the movement supporting cancelled Star Wars actress, Gina Carano, of The Mandalorian, ‘Welcome to the Rebellion!’
Nile’s time in politics spans 40 years, and like many Christians in the public eye, it’s been met with a mixture of hate, vilification, misrepresentation, and admiration.
He left school at 15.Worked as a booky, converted to Christianity, served in the military, worked a day job and an event co-ordinator. He is the Parliament of NSW’s longest serving member.
Rev. Dr. Ross Clifford wrote of Nile’s legacy, ‘He’s never sought to disrupt the elected Government but rather amend bills where appropriate, oppose bad and immoral legislation and ensure legislation based on Christian principles is considered and debated.’
Though not without mistakes, like his myopic opposition to Christian 80s metal band Stryper, Nile is the personification of John Stott’s axiomatic ‘Christianity belongs in the marketplace, not the museum.’
Fred Nile’s greatest examples are consistency, and teachability. His greatest achievement is providing a reliable voice for Christians, at the round table of democratic power, so often sold out to the dehumanising gods of the secular humanist religion; and it’s “me, myself, and I”, neo-Pagan age.
Shelton faces the same challenges.
Tom Rabe, The Sydney Morning Herald’s transport reporter, quoted “independent” MP Alex Greenwich mocking the baton exchange calling Shelton “an irrelevant political blow-in,” stating that he’d ‘feel “completely out of place” [in the] NSW Parliament, because it valued and celebrated the LGBTI community.’
Greenwich’s criticism isn’t surprising. He was the architect of the poorly debated, ambush legislation that now allows for abortion up to birth in New South Wales.
Long absent from the media, Greenwich appears to be out for some quick political relevance himself, riding themes imbedded in click-bait articles from pro-totalitarian woke websites unhappy at the news, falsely claiming that Lyle’s replacement with Nile is ‘One homophobe replacing another homophobe.’
Lyle’s acceptance of the position, which is yet to be confirmed by the party’s State council, comes amid tax payer funded LGBTQAAI+ activists taking the former ACL director to Queensland’s human rights tribunal, demanding Lyle be pay them compensation, and be permanently gagged (aka cancelled), because of list of alleged “grievances,” among those is “hate speech.”
Shelton expressed reverence for Rev. Fred Nile’s years of dedication to Church and State, and publicly voiced gratitude for the opportunity in a brief social media link to Nile’s press release:
“A privilege & honour to be asked to succeed the Rev Hon Fred Nile MLC. He has been a courageous & often lone voice for Christ’s values in Australian politics over 40 years. Never before has the Christian voice been more needed in public life.”
He graciously told Eternity News (even after they published an ACL hit piece just hours before current director, Martyn Isles was to be a guest panellist on the Australian Public Broadcasters show Q & A) that, “Nile pioneered Christian political activism in this country and history will judge him to have been right on so many issues.”
In response to what appears to have been “social justice” questions from the Leftist social club for “woke” “Christians”, Shelton said he’ll be advocating ‘first and foremost for vulnerable people. The poor and disadvantaged, human rights for the unborn and support for their mothers.’
As well as taking a stand against radical transgenderism, and standing up for “freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”
With Nile handing the CDP baton to Lyle, along with John Anderson returning to the fold, a new and interesting era in Australian politics has begun.
Include here the steadfast Claire Chandler, George Christensen, straight-shooting Mark Latham, Pauline Hanson, and no-nonsense Craig Kelly, all of whom are holding their own; paralleled with Andrew Hastie, Peter Dutton, and Amanda Stoker gaining what should be considered providential ministerial positions, the frontline in the Marxist culture war nobody but leftists wanted, has never looked so promising.
If we add to this the meteoric rise of non-leftist Indigenous Australians, such as Jacinta Price, Anthony Dillon, Warren Mundine and brave new arrival, Cheron Long, it’s no stretch to say that this diverse youthful brigade of new faces means the leftist dominated toxic swamp, colloquially known as the “Canberra Bubble” or “inner city elites”, has its days numbered.
Rebel News has reported that police in Canada have gathered en mass to stop Christians from gathering at Grace Life Church, led by Pastor James Coates, who was arrested earlier in the year and spent 35 days in a maximum-security prison for opposing bureaucrats bullying citizens with COVID for political gain, by abusing power through the use of unmitigated fear.
The authorities also barricaded the church with fences, closing of the private property so that no one could use it.
There’s also been unconfirmed reports posted to social media, noting that the same police state crack down isn’t being applied to Mosques, with one Twitter user saying “Dont forget, this isn’t happening at the mosques in Calgary.”: https://youtu.be/XBKKNQI3Pr0
Rebel News’ Ezra Levant explained that ‘These are heavily-armed lockdown police in Edmonton, Canada. They operate out of a garrison they built at a church they seized because it wouldn’t close. FACT: These cops have set up latrines on the front steps of the church.’
Levant commented on the Church’s tenacity writing on Twitter, ‘Canada wouldn’t obey politicians and lock its doors. So they jailed the pastor for 35 days. The church still wouldn’t close. So police raided it, turned it into an armed garrison & occupied it. And still the Christians come.’
Blaze Journalist at large, Elijah Schaffer said “You cannot lock down Christianity.”
The crackdown brings to life the relevance of anti-Nazi theologian, Karl Barth’s resistance to Government assuming the role of God:
‘We confuse men’s consciences if we don’t reject the view that God’s laws and the so-called ‘ten commandments’ of socialist morality have the same humanist ends in view.’ (Karl Barth, Ten Articles on the Freedom and Service of the Church)
Despite Big Tech’s efforts to present themselves as platforms for freedom of speech, they seem bullheadedly determined to build an iron curtain of silence around critics not aligned with their preferred ideological paradigm, or political party.
Following on from Silicon Valley’s ongoing wall-to-wall de-platforming of President Donald Trump, including pulling the kill-switch on competing social media platforms such as Parler, and Gab, the monolithic golden gods of the information age are engaging in Soviet-Maoist tactics in the way they gag dissent, and cancel unapproved opposition.
Big Tech’s reassuring words which attempt to calm increasing concerns over their new collaborative monopoly that decides what news gets shared, and who gets to share it, when matched against their praxis, suggest that these reassurances are nothing more than the soothing platitudes of empty rhetoric.
Put simply, they aren’t delivering on what they promise.
Actions speak louder than words.
For example, Rebel News reported yesterday that YouTube has suspended them for a video talking (ironically) about Big Tech censorship and cancel culture.
This means that Rebel News cannot upload, or post any of its news content on YouTube for one week.
The suspension, according Editor-in-Chief Ezra Levant, also came with a warning from YouTube stating that the next breach of the “rules” will be met with a longer suspension, followed by the deletion of the Rebel News account.
RN pointed out that the double-standard by reminding people that while Big Tech bans, blocks or boots those not aligned with Leftism or the current political narrative of Globalists etc, ‘accounts for Nicolas Maduro, the Communist dictator of Venezuela, or Ayatollah Khamenei, the theocratic ruler of Iran, or numerous Chinese Communist regime propagandists are permitted to remain.’
YT’s suspension of RN, was trailed by Twitter locking out Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe for what Ben Shapiro said was a violation of Twitter’s rules regarding “spam.”
The most probable reason for their censoring of O’Keefe is connected to him reporting the truth about CNN’s anti-Trump electioneering propaganda, where he revealed CNN’s vicious, utter contempt for their viewers.
Shapiro agreed, writing in response, ‘I’m sure this has nothing to do with O’Keefe’s latest investigation, in which he utterly humiliated CNN by exposing its rank bias. The timing is probably just a coincidence!’
He’s right. The timing is too convenient.
Shapiro was also right to state that ‘this should concern everyone – left, right, and center. It is becoming easier and easier for Big Tech to silence people they view as “problematic.” This problem is going to get worse before it gets better.’
As ex-New Left foot soldier, David Horowitz has noted in his somewhat informal confession ‘The Black Book of the American Left (2013)’, anyone aligned, or appearing to be aligned with the leftist ideological hegemony is beyond reproach, those deemed unworthy of life, however, are easy prey, targeted with ‘defamation and then quarantine.’
Progressives, he said, ‘disconnect from reality in the service of a destructive illusion, and are blind to the human consequences of their ideas and actions.’
Thus, with one hand Silicon Valley can say they stand for civil liberties, while with other they denounce, then guillotine anyone considered to be a threat to their increasingly centralised power base.
This is, as Horowitz explained, ‘the common tack’ of the Leftist regime. Revisionism, and an ‘inability to face up to the past, a penchant for rewriting it, resistance to historical truth, and the deliberate suppression of facts or inversion of facts in the service of a political cause.’
Big tech’s behaviour personifies the culture war. That battle, as this new iron curtain proves, isn’t left vs. right, black vs. right, it’s truth vs. falsehood.
Those would benefit from hiding the truth, profit from lies. Which is why there’s no room for self-reflection in a room full of self-righteous romantic revolutionaries.
One thing we’re big on in theology is literary criticism. The scientific process of taking a statement back to its original source through questions, context, analysis, research, and faith-filled dialogue about our reasoned conclusions.
It’s a sure guard against deception, misrepresentation, and ignorance.
A good reason for our focus on this is highlighted by Eric Voegelin in his 1968 book, ‘Science, Politics & Gnosticism’:
‘The deception of the reader occurs when a text or citation is separated from its context and is used in isolation from its original intended meaning.’ [i] (paraphrased)
Context matters.
Voegelin had just gotten through explaining how Karl Marx in his doctoral dissertation of 1840–41 misrepresented the statement, “In a word, I hate all the gods”, from Prometheus in Aeschylus’ ‘Prometheus Bound.’
For Voegelin, “anyone who doesn’t know Prometheus Bound must conclude that Prometheus’ “confession” sums up the meaning of the tragedy.”
Marxism’s revolt against, and hatred of God, is a product of Marx’s misunderstanding of ‘the Hellenic [Promethean] symbol.’ [ii]
Voegelin states that Prometheus is reinterpreted by Marx, ‘The revolutionary reversal of the symbol—the dethronement of the gods, the victory of Prometheus—lies beyond classical culture; it is the work of gnosticism.’
This is where, said Voegelin, the ‘young Marx presents his own attitude; under the symbol of Prometheus’ Marx wages war against God, and because they’re inseparably linked, also, man.
It could be said that Marxism uses a god, to dispose God, in order to exalt themselves as god; leaving in the wake of Promethean “wokeness,” a sea of mass graves, in exchange for the Divine seat of power.
Marx either got Prometheus horribly wrong, or deliberately manipulated the Greek myth to build a school of thought, and oppressive ideology around it.
Prometheus wasn’t a Marxist, but Marxists have forged Prometheus in their own image.
Bonhoeffer, in his lectures on Genesis, recorded in DBW3: ‘Creation and Fall,’ substantiates good reasons for discernment, and suspicion of this Marxist Promethean self-justification, better penned as Promethean wokeness.
According to Bonhoeffer, in the Garden of Eden, God’s Word was used as a weapon against God. The result was a catastrophic fallout between the creature and its benevolent Creator.
The power to decree that which is right and wrong, good and evil, is now considered to have been taken up into the hands of humanity.
Rather than a new day dawning [enlightenment], darkness descends [truth is hijacked] and humanity descends with it.
The source that determines what good and evil is relocated; reassigned by, and lowered down to a Creatorless humanity.
Humanity in its abstraction from God devours itself.
Instead of being liberated, God’s creature becomes burdened. The Promethean Marxist’s hatred of God, is powered by human lust for dominion and power. This is why I am convinced that Socialists, for all their protests to the contrary, care only about power, not people.
Marx’s Promethean wokeness seeks to overthrow God – demanding God’s kingdom, be ruled by man, without God in it [iii].
Thus, human beings, wrote Bonhoeffer, ‘renounce the word of God that approaches them again and again out of the inviolable center and boundary of life; they renounce the life that comes from this word and grab it for themselves.’
Man positions himself in God’s place; Good is called evil, and evil is called good, for ‘humanity stands in the center; disobedience in the semblance of obedience, the desire to rule in the semblance of service […]’ [iv]
We’re told in the Biblical accounts, such usurpation is the nonsense of Nothingness, it turns humans into the playthings of demons, and is ultimately destined to catastrophic failure.
The Governed become pawns, Government becomes God.
The overbearing weight of being governed by a government which has confused the Creator with the creature, is inevitably unjust, corrupt, and self-destructive.
Who, and what governs those who govern us? No one. There is no limit to Marx’s Promethean Wokeness.
Despite appearances, the Promethean self-justification, its pride filled proclamation about the “death of God,” and subsequent coronation of man as a god, doesn’t happen without a decisive response from God.
God isn’t wounded outside His own choosing [e.g.: as He does for our sakes in Jesus Christ].
Neither is He killed off.
Instead of liberation, in humanity’s exaltation of itself over against God, humans mortally wound themselves.
Despite this, God shows compassion.
In spite of the Promethean self-justification where ‘the ultimate possible rebellion, portrays the truth as a lie. [Where] the Abyss that underlies the lie lives because it poses as the truth and condemns the truth as a lie,’ [v] God doesn’t abandon His self-centred, rebellious creation.
He graciously intervenes, judge’s humanity, and in doing so saves it from itself. He then covers His creatures’ nakedness, and blesses it with posterity.
God remains God for us, even when He disagrees and takes a stand against us.
Even though His creature is so infused with, and consumed by the maddening effects of Marx’s misguided Promethean hate, God chooses to reconcile, liberate, and save the creature He loves.
God chooses not to jettison His creature, as it has jettisoned Him.
Promethean wokeness doesn’t allow any connection with this God.
It in fact, denies it. Reduces humanity to systems, and calls all questions that challenge it, “enemies,” “traitors,” and “bugs.”
Karl Marx’s big mistake was to read into the Promethean myth his own lust for power.
Promethean wokeness is a Marxist monstrosity.
What’s left behind is the butchered, and disfigured creation of an idea that prides itself as man’s true liberator, but conceals behind its mask the deep black void of the Abyss.
Sources:
[i] Voegelin, E. 1968, Science, Politics & Gnosticism: Two Essays, (paraphrased). Kindle (Loc.492)
[ii] ibid, 1968
[iii] Johnny Cash, U2 ‘The Wanderer’
[iv] Bonhoeffer, D 1937, Creation & Fall, Fortress Press (pp.109-116)
Dr. Suess Enterprises appear to have threatened to take legal action against the online home of Christian satirists, The Babylon Bee.
The alleged offending article entitled ‘In New Dr. Seuss Book, Cat In The Hat Gives Kids Puberty Blockers While Their Mother Isn’t Homewent’ went live on March 5th.
In it, the double “B” took a satirical look at Cancel Culture’s recent cancellation of six classic Dr. Suess books. Books such as ‘And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street’; ‘If I Ran the Zoo’; ‘McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!’; ‘Scrambled Eggs Super!’; and ‘The Cat’s Quizzer.’
The Left’s “woke” revolutionary vanguard have seen to it that each title is ejected from Dr. Seuss printing runs because, according to them, the content is ‘hurtful and wrong’, as it has images ‘containing racist stereotypes of Black people, Asians and Arabs’; woketivist speak for “I say it’s politically incorrect, therefore it is, so burn it!”
The Bablyon Bee was drawing attention to the double standards by which humourless Cancel Culture operates; illustrating the dissonance between moral relativist “politically correct” Leftist revolutionaries, who demonise everything they don’t like as “harmful, wrong, and politically incorrect”, but then in absolutist terms promote adult “entertainment” as wholesome, and helpful for children, such as transgenderism, and out-of-place LGBTQAAI+ Drag Queen Storytime in public libraries.
The Bee wrote:
“I have some new drugs,” said the cat in the hat. “A lot of good drugs! I’ll inject them in you. Your mother will not mind at all if I do.”
Adding, ‘the children learn a lesson in intolerance, too, as their goldfish ignorantly tries to stop them from taking the drugs, warning them of permanent side effects. The goldfish is then killed and flushed down a toilet.’
The only real crime here is that the Bee’s piece doesn’t rhyme the way Dr. Seuss books actually chime.
Nevertheless, Seuss Enterprises have responded to the piece, sending a sloppy email to the double “B’s” CEO, Seth Dillon, (who shared it on Twitter):
“Your article, satire or not, is a copyright infringement and breaking multiple defamation laws. Remove this or we will proceed accordingly.”
Dillon asked people to respond in rhyme, then reshared the piece, commenting,
‘Unfortunately for them, this piece was a work of satire, which is fair use. We will not be taking it down the way they took down several of their own, perfectly harmless titles to score worthless virtue points with insatiable leftists.’
Among the best rhyme responses were:
‘I would not could not cease and desist. I could not would not when you say resist. I do not like your litigious suits I do not like them Dr. Suess’ – @RoyceMcCutchoen
‘We will not comply with your outlandish request. Spend all you want of your benefactor’s bequest. We shall win the day and win by a lot! You’ll rue the day. Satire or not.’ – @kchessor
Due to the shoddy nature of its grammar some have questioned the authenticity of email. With one Twitter user quipping: “Reason: Complain” Apparently Seuss Enterprises is located in the same area as the deposed Prince of Nigeria.’
Until it’s authenticated, we can safely assume it’s legit. Suess Enterprises have joined the joyless “woke” revolutionary vanguard, and murdered original classics to appease the humourless, Leftist mob.
Great Barrier Reef Marine Scientist Dr. Peter Ridd has halted donations to his GoFundMe page, after it reached the necessary financial target, allowing him to seek an end to a long running court battle over freedom of speech.
The scientist was sacked from James Cook University after the University claimed he’d breached “codes of conduct” by criticising other scientists for being too ‘emotional and not objective’ enough.
Ridd challenged the decision, and originally won his case of unfair dismissal, but that ruling was overturned by the Federal court, and is now being challenged in the High Court of Australia.
The cancelled (alleged) “climate denier’s” crime was challenging groupthink assumptions about Climate Change which hinders the scientific method, and taints research.
Since then, offended activists, whose apocalyptic climate change beliefs were challenged by Dr. Ridd, have been falling over themselves to reduce damage done to apocalyptic predications (read: narrative) which they say justifies cancelling Dr. Ridd.
Ridd’s opposition to the standard hegemonic Climate Change party-line is summed up in an article for The Australian in 2020, where Dr. Ridd criticised a report from The International Union for Conservation of Nature which he said, ‘blames climate change, agricultural pollution, coastal development, industry, mining, shipping, overfishing, disease, problematic native species, coal dust — you name it, [for allegedly] killing the reef.’
The report didn’t take important factors about the life of the reef into account, such as that,
‘The reef occasionally conspires to give the impression it is dying. All these events are entirely natural and are part of life on the reef. Sixty years ago, when these cycles of death and destruction were first being discovered by scientists, it was legitimate to be concerned about whether they were unnatural. But there is now abundant evidence, almost totally ignored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, that the reef is fine. The coral always recovers vigorously after major mortality events.’
The Marine Scientist damned the report as a ‘rehash of old, mostly wrong or misleading information produced by generally untrustworthy scientific institutions with an activist agenda and no commitment to quality assurance.’
The Leftist cancel Ridd campaign hasn’t subsided.
Witnessed by responses to his criticisms, chief among them being his assertions in The Australian, that ‘the amount of coral, while fluctuating dramatically from year to year, is about the same today as when records began in the 1980s.’
An AAP Factcheck, funded by the NGO, Australian Conservation Foundation and published by The Courier, claimed Ridd’s statement was “partly true,” but emphasised that ‘annual surveys of the reef show significant fluctuations in coral cover, and for this reason it may be difficult to assess the reef’s future health based on the readings alone.’
Consequently, the Factcheck accused Ridd of making “baseless” generalised statements, because he only ‘provided figures which combined the three regions in the annual surveys to show the coral cover on the reef as a whole.’
Thus, Ridd’s claim was written off as “mostly false” based on what they asserted was a consensus among “experts and officials” whose counter-claim is that while ‘average coral readings for the past decade have been well below both long-term averages and those from the 1980s. In sum, the condition of the reef [suggests] its health had deteriorated and continued to decline.’
In addition, the AAP Factcheck seemed to imply that Ridd’s professional assessment was reckless because it took the spotlight (the cynic in me reads this as potential funding) away from those who claim that ‘climate change was predicted to negatively affect the growth and recovery of the reef. Its likely impacts included more frequent storms and bleaching events.’
In his defence Dr. Ridd pointed out the problems of statistical data: it can be loosely applied to forge an image that misrepresents the reality.
In response, the AAP Factcheck tu quoque’d Dr. Ridd, suggesting that he has ‘made similar comparisons in his column when he argued that there had been essentially no change in reef cover since the 1980s.’
The AAP Factcheck’s conclusions appear, in the end, to be based on confirmation bias regarding apocalyptic climate change predications, and only loosely on the historical data Dr. Ridd was referencing.
Historical data that Jim Steele’s expositional piece ‘Coral Bleaching Debate’, published on Judith Curry’s ‘Climate Etc.’ in 2016 appears to back up.
Peter Ridd faces the same ready-made Leftist gallows as cancelled Climate Scientist, Judith Curry, and Australian Geologist Ian Plimer, who’s against-the-stream facts, and straight talk threaten the gargantuan amounts of dollars being plunged into NGOs, from people who’ve been conditioned by the Climate Change Apocalypse narrative, to fear the worst, and “follow the science.”
Fear easily separates a fool from his or her money, and the well-oiled (no pun intended) marketing machine that is today’s fashionable “climate emergency,” is big business.
It’s no wonder “follow the science” activists are so eager to cancel Scientists for doing that very thing.
As Dr. Ridd explained, I was ‘fired for saying that, because of systemic problems with quality assurance, work from JCU coral reef centre, which also publishes extensively on climate change, was untrustworthy. I believe what I said was true and have given plenty of published evidence to support that statement.’
He added, ‘the case has already demonstrated a major problem with Academic Freedom of Speech at a university. This may be the most important long-term implication of the case.’
Peter Ridd’s case is set to be heard by the High Court of Australia at 10:00am on Wednesday, 23 June 2021 in Court No. 1, Parkes Place, Canberra, with the final judgement being handed down sometime after.
Instead of wasting time making childish digs at Australian opposition leader, Anthony Albanese’s misspoken gaff, last week’s criticisms of the alternative Prime Minister and his party, should have been deeper, and a lot more sober minded.
Albanese’s gaff, telling reporters that we can all charge our Labor ordained, tax-free shiny “non-luxury” electric cars at night with solar power, was an honest mistake.
It was clear enough he meant that those Labor subsidised electric cars can charge overnight on Labor subsidised “renewable energy”, with workers (tax-payers) paying an arm, and a leg for the privilege.
Humour about the gaff aside, pointing out the gaff was pointless.
The white noise “sound bite” distracted the Australian public from the Labor Party conference, where they announced a range of far-left election proposals; ironically, suppressed debate on the Communist Chinese Party thanks to Penny Wong; and scuttled in-party opposition to legitimising the current Islamist antisemitic leaders of the Palestinians, by recognising the Palestinian territories as a Palestinian State (another Penny Wong move).
The Australian reported, ‘former federal MP Michael Danby, was prevented from speaking on the proposed resolution.’ In addition, Labor senator Kimberley Kitching was barred from binding Labor to equating the CCP’s treatment of the Uighur’s with genocide.’ (Wednesday, 31st March 2021)
Labor is buoyed by a recent win in Western Australia, which has essentially brought the state under one-party rule, and they’re on the Culture War war path to see if Australians will do the same for them on a Federal level.
This utopian hubris, however euphoric it may make the belligerent far-left feel, may be short lived.
The real gaff Australia’s alternative Prime Minister has made is his decision to lead the Labor Party to an election on a platform very similar to that of far-left British Socialist, and former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
Morrison vs. Albanese is looking like Johnson vs. Corbyn. With the opposition leader revealing that he has no real plan, other than to accuse the LNP of having no real plan, stating that Morrison has no “post-pandemic plan for women, jobs, climate change, and First Nations people.”
The 2022 election (which could be sooner if legacy media speculation has any insider merit) is looking like a rehash of Britain’s Boris Johnson underdog race against the more hegemonically fortified radical leftist, Jeremy Corbyn.
This was hinted at from within the Labor Party when Michael Danby criticised members for “adopting Corbyn’s plan for “unconditional recognition of a Palestinian state, but also his Stalinist methods by suppressing debate on the foreign policy motions.” (ibid)
Earlier in the month, Australian/Israel and Jewish Affairs council’s Dr Colin Rubenstein, called it “problematic” because ‘it denies negotiation with Israel as part of the two-state solution.’
Ergo, the Labor Party is effectively affirming the Palestinian rejection of negotiation with Israel, and, in a nutshell rewarding antisemitic sentiment, in exchange for quick political capital squeezed from the post-modern vine of virtue signalling.
Labor’s platform shows it’s unconcerned with doing real work to combat immediate threats to the Australian people; that its only concern is with appealing to policies that seek to answer threats manufactured by the people they share an ideology with.
Labor are navel gazing about electric cars, fantasizing about apocalyptic climate change, preaching about what white people are not doing for black people, what men are not doing for women, and lining up the ABC’s to be replaced in schools by the LGBTQAAI+, BLM and CRT.
Meanwhile, the Morrison government, for all it’s obvious flaws, such as their COVID-19 downgrade of civil liberties, flirting with quality killing identity politics quotas, and pushing policies based on the Climate Change religion is, however fostering a return to pre-COVID normal, economic recovery, improvements in defence capabilities, real action on caring for the environment, countering a racist, belligerent, and anti-Christian, Chinese Communist Party, as well as building the QUAD, a partnership with four key nations who share Australia’s national security concerns.
More electric cars, aren’t going to save Australians from a militarised South Pacific, with Communist Chinese Party beachheads, and forward staging bases, all pointing in our direction, designed to intimidate and coerce, should we not agree tow the Leninist-Maoist Party line.
Tax-payer funded renewables, and gender fairies in schools aren’t going to save jobs, help bring back manufacturing, reduce mental health issues, or prepare Australians for a future that appears more and more troubled by society’s surrender to ideologies at war with healthy Western traditions, and it’s surrender to anti-christs, bent on taking power, for power’s sake.
Which party has its head in the clouds, and which party is in-tune with the corrosive state of the world?
Which party is taking its role as a Government for the people, in that world seriously, and which party is too busy powdering its face for the cameras to notice?
At the moment, when it comes down to a choice between the two, the LNP is the undisputed winner.
One of Australia’s rising political stars, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price lead a small contingent of young, concerned Indigenous Australian women to Canberra last week, to raise awareness about high rates of Domestic Violence in Indigenous Australian communities.
Nampijinpa Price arrived in Canberra with Cheron Long, the cousin of 15-year-old Layla Leering, who died in 2017 after being sexually abused.
The initial police investigation recorded the cause of death as suicide, but was disputed.
Thanks to pressure from Layla’s family, the inquiry into her death, has been reopened as a murder investigation, with Layla’s family (according to Advance Australia) ‘proving that the police and government had ignored several warnings about Layla’s wellbeing, bringing rise to the opening of a long-overdue review into police and child protection agencies.’
While Nampijinpa Price hit the Canberra bubble with the goal of shining a light on D.V issues, she ended up exposing the infamous double-standard-shuffle found among Australia’s leftist elite, whose favourite target is usually white, heterosexual, Caucasian Christian men.
This is the elitist class who went from being on the “all men are dogs” offensive, to being on the “don’t marginalise gay men” defensive, after facts about men recording themselves committing sex acts in the workplace, and ‘defiling’ an employer’s desk in Parliament house, turned out to involve male staffers who identify as Homosexual. [i]
It’s the same elitist class, who praised the recent women’s ‘March 4 Justice’, flaunting it as a liberating voice for the ‘sisterhood’, preaching loud, and proud, about the evils of the “patriarchy”, sexism, and so-called ‘toxic masculinity’, but stopped short (presumably for fears of appearing racist by “marginalising Indigenous Australian men”) in giving a voice to Australia’s Indigenous women suffering much higher rates of D.V. within their own communities.
All good reasons that justify Vikki Campion’s (Barnaby Joyce’s partner and former staffer’s also somewhat defensive) scathing remarks in the Saturday Telegraph:
‘We are so powerfully sucked into salacious stories of sex that the desk involved in the act got more than 1200 media mentions at the time of writing; the rape and death of 15-year-old, Layla, got only 10, three being in her local paper.’
Campion added,
‘Instead of hearing Layla’s story, the media reported more clumsy advances, such as Annastacia Palaszczuk’s encounter with someone who shook her hand too hard.’
Including, notes Campion, hype over the LNP entertaining the introduction of a quota, where women will be put before men for candidacy.
On which Campion spoke of identity politics hysterics, and concluded,
‘Instead of bringing in quotas, support the perfectly capable women like Nicolle Flint, who did turn up and listen to Layla’s cause, who is leaving parliament for good because of how she was treated at the so-called top of the political tree.’
Her criticism is backed by the actions of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, who cut away from Nicolle Flint’s speech in the house while Flint was pointing out Jacinta and Cheron’s concerns about a Domestic Violence, and rape culture within Indigenous Australian Communities.
This prompted Cheron Long’s Facebook response,
‘I’m fighting back tears writing this; today I have lost all trust and respect for the ABC. I am in shock, that the ABC has shut down and censored Nicole Flint MP, when she was giving a direct quote from a speech that I delivered earlier.’
These victims, Long said,
‘Have no voice, they have no support. The ABC have no heart for the silent victims of abuse in the bush; they rather champion the Left, then listen to real stories, and when a real story comes along, the ABC CENSOR IT!!’
In her own criticisms Jacinta expressed dismay at the selective hearing amongst the “elitist” class, stating,
‘It’s trauma enough that as an Aboriginal woman under threat of violence for speaking out against ‘Aboriginal rape culture’ Cheron travelled all the way to Canberra to publicly share the tragic story of her murdered cousin in order to get justice, but then the trauma is exacerbated by being deliberately ignored by the ABC.’
Ignoring Credlin, Campion, Flint, Cheron and Nampijinpa Price’s concerns further encourages a politically correct paralysis that perpetuates a culture of silence, stifles freedom of speech, and enables abuse.
Instead of addressing an alleged ‘Aboriginal rape culture’, or the downgrade of professionalism in Parliament House, by way of Post-Modern, “love is love” anything goes nihilism, legacy media and politicians are playing political football with its victims.
We know the Left has a voice. Their boisterous, persistent, divisive, “Invasion Day”, and “genocide”, anti-Australian rhetoric, gets shouted from the streets every January.
If it seems that this matters more than Layla Leering’s death, it’s because the anti-Australia virtue signalling is a quick injection of political capital.
It’s a comfortable protest; armchair activism powering a paper-thin narrative based on manufactured grievances, dressed up to look like the real thing.
Platitudes of justice for (alleged and factual) “historical wrongs” cost less, than loving those in the here, and now, by helping them help themselves through the messy task of healing wounds, tending scars, changing culture, untangling battered communities, and defending the defenceless.
Layla Leering’s legacy was a chance for the Left to put their heart where they say it is.
Instead, what the Left has shown, is how uninterested they are in helping real people, with real problems.
If their real stories don’t pad the fake Woke (and racist) Critical Race Theory party-hotline, it’s the proverbial, “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
This isn’t an example of Right vs. Left, or Black vs. White, it’s an example of truth vs. falsehood.
Substance will always, always trump appearances.
Cheron and Jacinta stand in a similar place to Trugernanner (Truganini; 1812–1876). I think she’d be proud of what they’re achieving, and as dismayed as they are at the rot among elites, and the cycle of abuse that their selective silence still perpetuates.
References:
[i] Credlin, P. ‘I stand by every decision I made to clean the place up’ The Sunday Telegraph March 27, 2021
[ii] Campion, V. ‘Rape, murder ignored in favour of salacious pollie sex stories’ The Saturday Telegraph March 26, 2021
Chuck Colson saw in advance the contradictions of a society guided purely by the sexual revolution.
In the late 1960s feminist sexual liberation was celebrated as a utopian moment; the elevating of an oppressed “class” through the seizing of power from both men and women, to achieve biological equality.
The great feminist cry against misogyny, through “equality with men” become a misandrist war against men. Its high point was the sexual revolution, and its war-cry ever since has been “choice.”
Respect for women was never the goal. The movement’s primary motivation was the impossible goal of irradicating natural inequalities, through the equality of biological choice.
Raising woman in the eyes of man, for him to see woman as being of equal value, was, at best, a bonus. Not necessarily desired, but welcomed as a consolation prize, should the great feminist war be lost.
Respect for women wasn’t a core virtue. Feminists tended/tend to disrespect other women, and show contempt towards them for not making pro-feminist choices.
Illustrated by author, political scientist, and early feminist, Jean Bethke Elshtain, who, after choosing to join a feminist group with a friend in the 70s, found that being married, and having children appeared to exclude them from being allowed to express an opinion.
Elshtain said, ‘my friend and I left, for we could not treat our children as abstractions, as nuisances to be overcome, or as evidence of our “sad capitulation” to the terms of patriarchy.’
The group’s facilitator had ‘abruptly and publicly’ cut off their discussion declaring, “We will have not diaper talk here. We’re here to talk about women’s liberation.”
Feminists won battles, not just with their ambivalence towards respect, or ignorance of their own hypocrisy, but with their dismissal of restraint, and revelation.
Restraint was considered repressive, and God’s revelation, which included the objective moral law, was demonised as archaic, oppressive, and patriarchal.
According to the thought leaders of the day, such as Simone de Beauvoir, restraint and revelation didn’t liberate women from being a ‘parasite’ on man. They protected, and were used to propagate the parasitical condition of woman, by equally oppressed man. [i]
The feminist bible peached that the human condition wasn’t oppressed by sin. It was oppressed by objective morality, and the shackles of Christendom’s institutionalisation of marriage. Marriage was no longer a vocation, or Godly union where man exists for woman, woman for man, both free before God, but as matrimony –marriage reduced to a woman becoming a mother. [ii]
While feminists got the latter partly right, they got the former spectacularly wrong.
The condition of the human heart is ‘deceitful above all things, desperately sick, outside understanding.’ (Jeremiah 17:9) Without God’s revelation empowering restraint there is no genuine liberation.
Which is why Colson’s brief analysis finds relevance with concerns about reactionary feminist protests today, and the over-reactions to them by Governments.
In observations he’d made about the ‘self-refuting nature of the post-modernism social model,’ Colson wrote: ‘the irony of removing all restraints of shame and modesty is that women led the charge. The feminists thought this was great: women could be “equal” to men, sexually speaking.’ [iii]
It was, he said, ‘the great liberation movement that would lead us to nirvana, freedom, equality.’
Colson added, ‘feminists [haven’t yet] realized [that] they’ve sold their constituency down the river, because the only people who profit from “no restrictions, no limits” philosophy are men’, who are encouraged by this way of thinking to look at women ‘as objects of gratification, and pleasure.’
The ejection of restraint and revelation has ‘reverted culture back to the ancient Greeks, who viewed women as property – as chattel.’
For Colson, the rejection of ‘radical Christian doctrine that considers all human beings to be created in the image of God, with innate dignity’, has created the ‘ultimate post-modern impasse.’
Society wants ‘total freedom [from objective morality] (nihilism), but then, all of a sudden, when it begins to hurt and be untenable, people scream.’
They then turn to big government to solve the problem.
In other words, feminists are running to government, after running away from God, to bring in moral restraints on sexuality, that they’re advocacy for nihilistic, no-restraints, free-sex pandemonium has birthed.
This is the great feminist contradiction, born from legitimate feminist criticisms, that were taken too far by people high on the myth of man created by De Beauvoir, Daly and Greer.
Feminism hasn’t delivered a utopia for women, it’s in fact bought them a ticket on the Titanic. A gargantuan enterprise in the pitfalls of good ideas, corrupted by human arrogance.
It is, as Karl Barth wrote, ‘the myth of man, built up without respect to man and woman’s relationship to the Divine command, which, ends in the negation of real man.’ (paraphrased)
Freedom cannot be maintained where virtue isn’t flourishing, asserted Colson; and he’s right: ‘Moral chaos will lead us to lose our freedoms. The inevitable consequence of the modern project of complete liberation from all restraints is slavery.’
Women’s liberation cannot be achieved through humiliating man, in order to exalt woman, humiliated by man.
The crux of liberation is God on the Cross, who, in, through and, with Jesus Christ becomes our only way to freedom from sin.
It’s the choice between a House of Freedom, and a House of slavery.
It’s the essence of the Easter message, reminding us that it’s not man’s humiliation of man that saves, and exalts, but the humiliation of God, and His exaltation of humanity. [iv]
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ – John 3:16, NIV
God is true to His Word. Restraint and revelation will never lose its relevance, because the liberating, living God, commands it, and still speaks through it.
References:
[i] Beauvoir, Simone de. 1949. The Second Sex Vintage Books
[ii] I’ve merged Kierkegaard’s critique in ‘The Instant’ with Barth, K. Man and Woman, Church Dogmatics: Doctrine of Creation KD 3:4, (p.127)
[iii] Colson, C. 2015, My Final Word: Hook Up Culture, Zondervan (pp.89-90)
[iv] See Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 27), Dietrich Bonhoeffer DBW 12 (p.343) & Karl Barth, Respect for Life, KD 3:4 (p.397)
‘I will be voting to have a Royal Commission on Veteran Suicides NOW. My electorate of Hughes includes the Holsworthy army barracks, and veterans have told me they want a Royal Commission now. Let’s have a starting date ASAP!!#istandwithveterans’
In a more detailed video posted to the straight-talking politician’s Facebook page, Kelly’s support for an enquiry into veteran suicides was made even clearer.
The member for Hughes explained his disappointment at the Government’s handling of the Brereton report, stating that LNP didn’t just throw Special Forces Veterans under the bus, they threw them under a tank.
At the time of the report, the LNP appeared to be appealing to an opportunist wave of hate towards the military coming from within Leftist dominated Legacy Media. The pile-on burnt the 99% for sins of a few. Among non-media opportunists targeting our military were Melbourne’s Socialist Alliance.
I noted through Caldron Pool at the time, reform in any institution is a necessary part of good management.
This should involve improving how we as a society look after, show appreciation for, and serve our military, and its veterans. This process shouldn’t involve hurting our veterans in order to help them.
The battlefield criminality of a few, doesn’t justify stripping meritorious recognition earned by the good deeds of the many.
Kelly’s firm advocacy for a Royal Commission, is a step in the right direction.
The Senate passed the motion, but the motion is set to be rejected by the Morrison Government when it comes up in the lower house (House of Representatives), because of a counter proposal which would create ‘a permanent independent commissioner to investigate the issue.’ (TND)
According to Craig Kelly just passing the motion in the Senate was ‘a victory for all our service men and women.’ He added, ‘we have an obligation when we sign someone up to put that uniform on, it should be a lifetime obligation that we look after them.’
Explaining his vote, Kelly said, ‘we’ve seen such a great number of tragic suicides after Defence Force personnel leave the service, and especially in recent months following the Government’s appalling response to the Brereton report, this was something that was urgently needed.’
Any Aussie raised on the Redgum anti-war anthem, ‘I was only 19’, has lived, and breathed John Schumann’s vocalisation illustrating the internal struggle of Australia’s Vietnam War vets.
More than Cold Chisel’s, ’78, ‘Khe Sanh’, Schumann’s 1983 lyrical bridge between Vet, and citizen created a sense of empathy, and appreciation for those who came back, and weren’t welcomed back, but bore the cost of defending our freedom.
I come from a family with a history of military service. Raising public awareness about the needs of Australia’s veterans, rides the rich Australian tradition of mates helping mates.
A Royal Commission’s thorough investigation into Veteran suicides, coupled with its inevitable findings, and recommendations, will open the door to a tactical blueprint for how we can fight for those, who fight for us.
The Australian entertainer, and comic, also famous for the successful, Aussie larrikin vaudeville Saturday night regular, ‘Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday,’ (1971-2010) lamented the new morality, its Iron Curtain hecklers, and Soviet-era thugs, telling the Daily Telegraph,
“You couldn’t get away with half the stuff you could on Hey Hey now, because of political correctness and cancel culture. It’s a shame because showbiz doesn’t get much of a chance.”
The 69-year-old added,
“’A lot of comics can’t work much because what would have been just tongue-in-cheek previously now can easily get them into trouble. I can’t say I am enamoured with it, but it is a changing world in which we live and you just have to work around things.”
Somers’ comments were met with a deluge of hate on Twitter, as Jack’s goons – behind their morbidly heavy chairs, lattes, and expensive Apple computers, with their “everything is racist” CRT crusade, hiding their dissatisfaction with their own achievements in life – in true Red fashion, gave Somers’ “the gong.”
Then, and not without irony, the perpetually angry, run-of-the-mill, unsatisfied radical leftist jihadist, fighting imaginary Nazis online – heaped insults, ridicule, and “hate speech” at a man they don’t personally know, at a show, they don’t understand, and have probably never seen (other than selective ‘Hey, Hey it’s Saturday’ clips designed to stir up anti-Israel Folau level animosity to fever pitch), because of humour that goes over their immature heads.
With one such Twitter loudmouth claiming the cast “bullied Kamahl” (an Australian legend in his own right), reviving Kamahl’s grievances aired on ‘A Current Affair’ in 2011, about ‘Hey, Hey’s’ ‘ethnic comedy,’ while overlooking Daryl Somers telling ACA that he was ‘very fond of Kamahl, had the greatest respect for him and always will.’ Adding, “I think this is all rather silly.”
To add, what Australia’s version of America’s race-baiting racists didn’t bother mentioning, is that Kamahl made regular appearances on the show.
Kamahl joined hundreds of other musicians, who benefited from the cast’s ability to draw a crowd.
Far from delegitimising him because of ethnicity the “Hey, Hey” platform legitimised Kamahl, and made him a respected, household Australian name; helping him sell albums, and increase his fan base. (Noted by the fact that I’m writing about him 11 years after the show was cancelled.)
That’s the real “Hey, Hey” legacy. Not racism. Not sexism. Not homophobia. [Insert the long list of apparent phobias those of us are not on the Left are continually being diagnosed with, by those on the Left.]
The poor decision to include a blackface “Jackson Jive Show” in Red Faces during a 2009 reunion show, shouldn’t be the “Hey, Hey’s” defining moment. Irrespective of the joyless, graceless, and cold bony finger of Karl Marx reaching through his humourless, Cultural Marxist disciples today.
It’s a well-established fact, that without Daryl Somers, Australian artists, and the Australian music industry would never have achieved what it did. It’s no coincidence that the Australian music industry’s life support was pulled around the time ‘Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday’ ended.
Somers is a dead-set Aussie legend.
It’s good to see him speaking out.
Examine the claims. The problem isn’t Somers. It’s the hate-anything-Australian leftists, beating up Somers, tearing-down-others in order to make themselves famous.
The problem isn’t an Australian entertainment icon, who had the balls to put his face to an always controversial, vaudeville variety show with an original Aussie larrikin flair.
They often mocked themselves along with everyone else.
It’s worth repeating the words of Karl Barth,
“Away with the yardsticks! Those who cannot sigh with others, and laugh about themselves are warmongers.” (Attributed)
Wednesday’s front page of the Australian has exposed government proposals that would lower the Warragamba dam level (Sydney’s water supply) to save homes from dam overflows.
Overflows, that well paid government advisors, like Tim Flannery, from as far back as 2007, said, we’ll never see again because the rain that did fall wouldn’t be enough to fill the dams – due to “apocalyptic climate change.”
When it comes to this latest overflow, (thanks to unexpected rainfall) it would seem that Australia’s bureaucratic caste would rather dump a precious resource, leaving an infamously dry continent with less drought resilience, rather than increase storage capacity, which would a) bring infrastructure up to speed with population expansion b) help drought proof the city.
Why would they even consider ditching water?
Because the “apocalyptic climate change” narrative buys them votes from citizens they’ve scared into submission, and floods their coffers with money; and maybe advance their tax-payer funded career with a cushy position on the UN Climate panel.
In all fairness, bureaucrats appear to be conflicted about whether to dump water, or raise Dam walls.
According to The Australian, the New South Wales LNP State government has ‘been pushing for years to raise the Warragamba Dam wall by up to 14m,’ which would ‘aid in flood mitigation.’ As well as add to Sydney’s water storage capability.
The problem with this is (predictably) ‘the plan is opposed by environmentalists and Indigenous groups who argue it would damage unique ecosystems, and [first Australians] heritage sites.’ [i]
Salvatore Babones, whose book on Trumpism, and the Left’s New Authoritarianism was the focal point of an article a few weeks back, penned a piece for the same Wednesday edition.
Babones describes an apathy within our bureaucratic system, that hinders the better management of water drawn from rainfall.
He argues, for example, that our knowledge of how much groundwater Australia has, such as the ‘Great Artesian Basin,’ is 60 years out of date. There’s a general assumption that rain provides ‘2% of all groundwater, and although the basin is in decline,’ above average ‘rainfall can recharge water naturally stored underground.’
How much groundwater is left, asks Babones?
No one seems to know, and the data from NGIS system for measuring it is suspect, because ‘there’s been no co-ordinated effort to drill new’ bore holes to investigate it. [ii]
To add, Water storage, and management is a national security issue.
It’s beyond the pale that Australia’s bureaucratic caste would major in chasing the apocalyptic climate change fairy, by entertaining apocalyptic climate change fever, rather than major in securing, cultivating and better managing our most important natural resource.
Humans ‘are not the enemy’ said Chuck Colson, expressing his views on the clash between eco-totalitarians and Christians.
‘Our job is to cultivate, and till; making the fullest use of the resources God has given us, to enhance life, God’s supreme creation, which is the human being. But we must do it in a way that is productive of the earth’s resources, free from despoiling it.’ [iii]
This, he said, ‘is where we part from the “green” movement, which puts the earth first,’ and views humanity as a virus.
Concern about a loss of tribal heritage, or the environmental impact caused by raising the Warragamba Dam wall, does not overrule arguments, and the practicality of doing so.
Storing more water, means more water can be used to protect, sustain, and cultivate the environment, as well as be a life affirming resource for the decedents of Gundangara people, and their neighbours. It’s a win-win.
In addition, the Gundangara ancestral legacy is also affirmed, noted by how the Gundangara people recognised Warragamba’s significance, and the impact rivers attached had in sustaining life on one of the driest continents on earth.
Increasing a dam wall cannot, and does not erase that legacy.
The other aspect to all of this is that the “Apocalyptic climate change” bandwagon is a lucrative cash cow, and eco-fascist evangelists know it.
Which is why Bjorn Lomborg said in a piece cross-posted by The Australian,
‘the easiest way to get societies to authorise the spending of tens of trillions we don’t have is to scare us. The academic and activist faction that sets the threatening tone in the climate conversation wants dissent eliminated, leaving themselves the only ones authorised to tell you how scared you should be.’ [iv]
In a controversial move, Australian Liberal Nationals Senator, Amanda Stoker is asking for concerned citizens to support her petition aimed at preserving ‘objective truth,’ ‘basic biology’, parental rights, and ‘common sense,’ against proposed, weaponised legislation packed inside the LGBTQAAI+ trojan horse transgenderism.
Stoker argues that ‘when you get to the heart of the transgender debate, you realise that you and I are being expected to abandon objective truth.’
Adding, ‘for too long now, the Left has told you what you can and cannot say, the time for action is now.’
She’s right. Biology isn’t a social construct. Everything about the “LOVE IS LOVE” mantra pivots on forcing people to believe a lie, and forcing them to deceive others.
Telling a child, for example, that they don’t have a father or a mother, only a parent, and or, birth parent. (And other examples can be added to this one).
There’s a distinctive line between tolerance, and intolerable tyranny.
Acknowledging this, the Queensland senator wrote,
‘Australians are polite people. If a grown man chooses to wear women’s clothing and change their name, we are generally content to live and let live. No one wants to make anyone feel ‘less than’.
Most people agree that adults are free to live their life the way they want.
But that doesn’t mean we abandon truth. It doesn’t mean we abandon common sense or our understanding of basic biology.
The transgender agenda’s list of demands is completely unreasonable and it’s time you and I stood up for common sense.’
Stoker joins Tasmanian, LNP senator, Claire Chandler, whose pro-women opposition to queer theory’s invasion of women’s sport, is a popular target for Cancel Culture’s hungry Radical Leftist Jihadists.
Despite the Left’s manipulation of anti-discrimination law, issuing their usual threats, and intimidation, Chandler has, with significant credit to her, remained unmoved.
If not more determined, posting to Facebook on International Women’s Day,
‘remember that ‘woman’ is not a feeling, a political movement, an identity, a fashion or a trend. A woman is a female. The more people who acknowledge that fact, the more chance we have of making the world a better place for women.’
Chandler and Stoker’s pro-woman platform deserves our support.
‘to know what your child is being taught about gender and sexuality in school. You do have a right to keep women’s sport for women. You do have a right to protect children from hormone treatment and surgical procedures. You do have a right to teach your children they are born as either a boy or a girl and that gender isn’t something we can choose.’
This isn’t “slippery slope” anti-marriage equality, homophobic, transphobic, right-wing supremacist, “you’re all Nazi’s and Trumpists”, hate speech.
This is genuine representation on a political level; an invitation for stakeholders, which include the unconcerned, and concerned voter, to stop the new Barbarianism before it removes the right to life, light and liberty, replacing it with servitude, and subjugation.
Chandler and Stoker’s have, and are, voicing concerns about the totalitarian weaponization of legislation by the LGBTQAAI+ lobby, and the movement’s perpetually angry, jackboot wearing foot soldiers.
Something that might already too late for some Western nations, such as Canada, but not yet here in Australia.
Demonstrated in Ben Davis’ latest article, where, in essence, a Canadian father has been charged with “family violence” and then imprisoned, for refusing to bow to the LGBTQAAI+ religion because he chose to affirm his daughter’s biological sex, instead of lie to her, and participate in her LGBT conversion indoctrination.
Another example is Twitter’s lockout of Binary’s, Kirralie Smith, for asserting the male and female scientific, binary distinction, alleged by Twitter to be “hateful conduct.”
I’ve followed Kirralie on Twitter for a few years. She’s never posted anything close to the kind of hate I see vomited up, and out by the propaganda wing of Radical Leftist Jihadists.
Proving one thing: Twitter may protest against accusations of bias and partiality, but it’s clear by their behaviour that they are NOT a politically neutral organisation.
We can be thankful that the Senate passed a ‘motion banning’ the use of radical queer theory language, such as “Chest feeding” and “Lactating Parent”, but the march towards affirming it, is still moving forward.
As the imperfect, anti-Nazi theologian, Karl Barth wrote,
‘The incontestable truth that male and female as such are together man [humanity] becomes a lie when it is not significantly counterbalanced by the recognition that man as such is male or female and not a third term.’ [i]
So goes objective truth, so goes humanity, and with it, civilisation.
Fearmongering shadows the so-called “apocalyptic climate change emergency“.
I realise that in saying this, I’m breaking the kind of taboo that’ll get a scientist fired, the average citizen harassed, and any celebrity with a mind of their own, cancelled.
Defining terms, and questioning narratives don’t appear to be the highest priority for those sucked into the emotional vortex of double C hysterics.
Which is why the debate is smashed to pieces; disallowed by quick appeals to oxymorons like “believe the science” or “the science is settled.”
Global climate patterns are complex, and fluid; rain and temperature fluctuate, it’s much more powerful than humanity, and it’s in constant movement. We could say it’s perpetually adjusting and readjusting. It’s what makes life possible.
‘Climate Change’ seems to be a misleading term that ignores the micro-level plural, “climates”, in favour the macro singular, “climate.”
When in conversation with a CC fanatic, it’s worth asking then, which of the five climates are in crisis?
1. Subtropical/Temperate
2. Alpine/Continental
3. Desert/Dry
4. Rainforest/Tropical
5. Ice-cap/Polar
Why has the language moved from theoretical anthropogenic Global Warming negatively impacting an alleged [Global] Climate, to the fanatical alarmism of “climate crisis”, “climate emergency” to “climate justice”?
Which of the five climates that make up the global climate need “climate justice”?
One climate naturally changing, doesn’t equal an emergency.
The popular response will be polar. They’ll quote Al Gore’s cash cow propaganda films, something about sea levels, Ice Caps melting (which they tend to do naturally anyway), and polar bears dying (which they also tend to do naturally).
Then they’ll fog up, and drift into some vague warnings about how asking these kinds of questions makes one a “climate change denier.”
The real answer is they don’t really know. They just say so because it’s catchy, popular, and feels right to do so.
Evidenced by the quagmire of emotional responses, filled with panic, hatred of opposing viewpoints, asinine “follow the science” religious assertions, and ambiguous catch-phrases built on conjecture.
All of this suggests that “Apocalyptic climate change” isn’t about the environment, Global climate, nor the climates.
It’s about money, politics, and power. It’s about changing patterns of behaviour to stimulate automatic responses, not changing weather patterns.
Not science. Not people, not the climates, and most certainly not about preserving the environment from deliberate, and accidental pollution.
Swaying public opinion to profit from fear is easy. Fear is more of a motivator than freedom.
Activists – those among the fray who are more akin to eco-fascists than genuine environmentalists – know this, and that’s why they milk every dollar, and vote they can from it.
Australian Geologist, Ian Plimer agrees. ‘It’s a game of power. There is no climate emergency. Climate always changes.’
In his ground-breaking book, ‘How to Get expelled from School’ he adds, ‘human induced global warming has nothing to do with climate or the environment. It’s a method to take money out of your pockets.’ [i]
“Climate Change” is about who holds power, and how much power they can harvest from it, not what powers our electricity.
Danish author, and sceptic, Bjorn Lomborg came to the same conclusion. Not once, but twice.
In January 2020, Lomborg accused activists of ‘exploiting the tragic Australian bush fires’ by using the word “unprecedented” in order to falsely claim that the bush fires were ‘near-proof of a climate emergency.’
Lomborg’s well referenced source material showed that burnt areas from 1997-2020 was in decline.
Hence Lomborg’s refutation of CC hysterics: “[this graph] suggests two things. First, that the area burnt in Australia is not increasing and likely decreasing. This result is similar to what we see across the world — lower, not higher burnt area. Second, the current Australian fire season in terms of area burnt is not unprecedented compared to the recent past.”
Lomborg revisited the data this year; updating it with new information that refuted claims from activists and vindicated his original scepticism. The conclusion: the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires were not unprecedented.
‘The biggest Australian fire is the 1974-75 fire, mostly documented by satellite.
It burned 117 million hectares in Central Australia, or 15.2% of Australia in one year
“Fires burned 10% of Australia’s land surface on average every year in 20th century. In this century, it burned 6% (2001-19)
We now have the data for 2019-20, the year with “Australia ablaze”: 4% (3.95%) Yes, tragedies: Much more fire close to where people live (NSW and Victoria).
But we were told “Australia burns” and “this is what a climate crisis looks like.” No. Australia had one of its lowest areas burned in last 120 years.
[The area of] Australia burned in 2019-20 [is] inconsistent with climate change. The total burn should have been *larger* — when in fact it was *much smaller*…’
Lomborg also highlighted the climate crazy propaganda, writing that the ‘fires [were] inconsistent with climate impact.’ The data doesn’t back ‘bad media coverage, and misleading graphics [that] pushed the idea that the Australian continent was ablaze.”
Exhibit (A):
Exhibit (B):
Lomborg’s proof that we’re being manipulated by activists, within, and outside, both government, and Legacy Media, is staggeringly blatant.
These organisations are complicit in orchestrating a shared narrative that conditions the reflexes of gullible citizens to cry “wolf”, hate on their neighbour, and dehumanise those with an opposing viewpoint, when so commanded.
The “apocalyptic climate change” political narrative is built on an organised myth.
Social engineers clued into behavioural science, know that people will choose order over chaos, even if the cost of order is the absolute surrender of their personal freedom, and individual responsibilities; i.e.: civil liberties, and civil rights.
Weather patterns are as dynamic, as the climates they support. How the climates interreact, and change, is a natural phenomenon.
Using the 80/20 rule, in general, speculative science, the science of approximation, only gets weather predictions right up to 80% of the time, it’s an easy to conclude that they could be wrong about “Apocalyptic Climate Change.”
To quote Caldron Pool writer, Matthew Littlefield,
‘Just a reminder for all you east coasters here in Australia, that climate experts predicted drier warmer weather. As we enjoy this cooler wetter weather let’s remember that climate experts have about the same batting average with their predictions as doomsday prophets from bad churches:
Taking in the advice of Plimer and Lomborg, by all appearances “Apocalyptic climate change” is a tool, and idea, preached with the aim of wresting control of constitutional democracies away from the people.
When our politicians start sounding like beauty pageant contestants, citing “fight climate change” in the same way as “world peace,” you know they’re signalling towards virtue, not science.
Building legislation on this, in order to score easy political points is reprehensibly irresponsible.
Hell isn’t a climate change apocalypse, hell is an activist induced inferno triggered by reckless, and reactionary legislation, written on the run, in the ink of hyperreactive climate change hysterics.
References: [i] Plimer, I. 2011, How to Get Expelled From School: A guide to Climate Change for pupils, parents & punters, Connor Court Publishing (p.18)
UPDATE: Since posting this, Eastern Australia has had record rainfall. With many dams overflowing, and major floods. The opposite of predictions posted by News.com.au on 9th, December 2020. (see headline screenshot above).
First published on Caldron Pool, 20th March, 2021.
House speaker, Nancy Pelosi when addressing the avoidable humanitarian crisis unfolding on the southern border of the United States, blamed the ‘impact of climate change,’ not good border policy being ditched for bad.
Speaking straight from her hate-Trump-era playbook, Pelosi shifted the blame, acknowledged Central American “corruption, violence, and all that” as a factor, then insinuated that President Biden’s hands were tied because “they” inherited a ‘broken system.’
Pelosi apparently wrote the script for Biden, which was echoed by his White House Press Secretary on Tuesday, who also said, “the last administration left us a dismantled, and unworkable system.”
Heaping praise on Biden, Pelosi stated, that he’s assigned FEMA the task of helping resolve the developing crisis, by ‘transitioning [from] what was wrong before, to what is right.’
Democrat political doublespeak for attempting to deflect accountability for a human tsunami that their ‘policies and rhetoric’ invited. (Attested to by Julio Rosas for Townhall)
Commenting on Pelosi’s political manoeuvre, Australian journalist, Miranda Divine rightly called it, ‘Soviet level gaslighting.’
In other words, manufacture a crisis, push the credibility of another manufactured crisis. Then blame others for it.
Melanie Phillips described as much in 2010, writing, ‘the left divides the world into two rival camps of good and evil, creating as the sole alternative to itself a demonic political camp called “the right,” to which everyone who challenges it is automatically consigned. Since “the right” is by definition evil, to dispute any left-wing shibboleth is to put oneself beyond the moral pale. There can be no dissent or argument at all. Only one worldview is to be permitted.’
Published on the 24th February, and either missed, or overlooked by Legacy Media, China’s leader of the opposition-in-exile, Wei Jingsheng’s 魏京生 short treatise, ‘Why Praise the Tyrant?’, argued that silence, and appeasement, strengthen tyrannical despotism.
He isn’t new to the subject. Branded the father of Chinese democracy, Wei was imprisoned, then released in 1997, as part of a Clinton administration negotiation with then Chinese President Jiang ZeMin.
Wei served a total of ‘18 years in prison’ for non-violent, pro-Democracy opposition to the Chinese Communist Party.
In his February piece, Wei asks, ‘Why are there so many people liking the tyrant?’
He then provides two reasons: ‘First, people become accustomed, numb, they don’t know to be afraid. Second, no one dares to talk about tyrants at home.’
Wei said, ‘people are brainwashed by propaganda, people believe [what they’re told] that tyranny is inevitable [e.g.: for their own good], or at least cannot be overthrown.’
In other words, people are conditioned to embrace the tyrant as an altruistic patron of the people, and tyranny as their benevolent benefactor.
Under a false sense of security, as alluded to by Wei, the populace falls asleep, ‘they accept tyranny as reality – since resistance is useless, just as well lie down and enjoy.’
For his example, Wei uses the Chinese middle class. They ‘belong to this lying down, and enjoy being part of the group, [which is rewarded] with material living conditions which they can lie down and enjoy.’
Wei argues that ‘some people have developed a Stockholm syndrome, who would defend tyrants with tears in their eyes. There is no shortage of this kind of people in the elite class in China, including the elites overseas.’
Condemning manipulative propaganda, and revisionism, he links back to a recent TV series’ portrayal of ‘Qin Shihuang, the founder of the Qin dynasty, first emperor to unite China.’
Wei explains, ‘it is said the part of Qin Shihuang killing his two brothers was censored and deleted, which, for 2,000 years has been viewed by scholars as evidence of Qin Shihuang’s tyrannical character.’
This deletion, Wei said, ‘highlights’ the fact that the ‘core purpose of the censor, is to praise the tyrant.’
If I’ve read Wei correctly, the CCP approved period drama, deceptively revised the history of Qin Shihuang in order to falsely align the Communist Chinese Party with the Qin Dynasty in the hearts, and minds of the Chinese people.
(The article’s translation from Chinese into English isn’t particularly well done, but it’s good enough to get the gist.)
Wei concludes, ‘tyrants have one thing in common, that is, they ignore basic rights, and dignity of the people. For their great goals, they enslave the people, and sacrifice their power.’
This is done by ‘stripping the power away from the people, and imposing severe penalties. In order to implement severe penalties to deter the people, one must ignore human dignity. This includes grooming villains, and cruel officials, corrupting social morality, and creating social unrest.’
China has come a long way financially because reforms embraced a market economy. For Wei, however, when ‘compared with Democratic systems that manage market economies, a Communist managed market economy is a backward system. It can’t adapt to economic development, and technological progress, nor can it adapt to modern people’s pursuit of freedom and dignity.’
Wei then writes, ‘people in the West have now come to realise that continuing to infuse blood into authoritarian countries not only endangers their own interests, but also endangers their own living conditions and values.’
Referring perhaps to the West’s widespread adoption of Communist Chinese C0V1D-19 authoritarianism, Wei said, ‘the Chinese model can no longer be maintained.’
To paraphrase Wei, this means that ‘the tyrant model of cruel repression, that strengthens despotism to save shaky vested interests’ is a fool’s errand.
The ‘blood transfusion diplomacy’ with the CCP is a toxin to Civil Liberties, and Classical Liberal, constitutional democracies.
Can we say this about Cancel Culture, and its alphabet mafia, where the real oppressors march, not with the oppressed, nor for the oppressed, but as the oppressed?
I think so.
As I firmly stated last year, the culture war isn’t between left vs. right, black vs. white, it’s between truth vs. falsehood.
In the context of the Church, if we fail to bring a confession of Jesus Christ up against the clear, and present false doctrines woven into the current platforms of allowable debate, we’ve failed, not only in our civic duty, but as Christians.
At CP we aim to fight for truth over against falsehood by ministering through the vocation of speaking truth in love; informing, by being well informed.
A Christian who isn’t Missional, isn’t a Christian.
Wei is right. The ‘core purpose of the censor [propagandist and revisionist], is [indeed] to praise the tyrant.’
Silence, and appeasement, strengthen tyrannical despotism.
Engagement with the culture is an imperative; joyless defeatism dressed up as “losing graciously”, isn’t a Gospel centred stratagem for Christians in a post-Christian paradigm.
For those who already support us, thank you.
For those interested in supporting us, you can add your voice to that engagement by financially support Caldron Pool here:
Images from Myanmar of Christian Nun, Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng, staring down police officers, pleading with them not to shoot protesters, exposes just how close the Western world is to the precipice of its own demise.
Tawng opposed the brutal crackdown asking the officers “not to hurt the protesters, but to treat them kindly like family members.”
She told Reuters, “I told them that they can kill me, I am not standing up until they give their promise that they will not brutally crack down on protesters.”
Her actions failed. Two protestors were killed, and according to Reuters, ‘several others were injured.’
If you missed this, it’s because, Nu Tawng’s selfless defiance was drowned out by a British Prince, an American actress, and an American talk show host.
The embarrassing, vain self-serving media frenzy, elevating two millionaires, and a billionaire, caused a news blackout.
It’s the tale of two cities. One (not without irony) speaks freely, claiming to be oppressed, while the other fights just to have its voice heard.
Yet the first sucks in the sympathy, and attention of the world, while the second, barely acknowledged, humbly kneels before guns, and the prospect of no freedom at all.
To understand Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng’s fight, Myanmar commander-in-chief, Min Aung Hlaing, brought the country back under military control on the 1st February.
Arguing electoral fraud, he sided with the opposition, then booted the Democratically elected government, placing pro-Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, (a lifelong campaigner for Democracy in the country, and Nobel Peace Prize winner) under house arrest.
Suu Kyi is charged with ‘possessing illegal walkie-talkies, violating Covid-19 restrictions during last year’s election campaign and publishing information that may “cause fear or alarm”.
Suu Kyi’s governing hasn’t been without scandal. According to the BBC, her policies regarding the Muslim, Rohingya minority have been the focus of embarrassing international attention for the country. Many claim her 2017 crackdown on the Rohingyas, considered by the Suu Kyi government to be ‘illegal immigrants’, was ‘genocide.’
Supporting Suu Kyi is synonymous with supporting Democracy. Min Aung Hlaing’s overthrow strengthens this parallel.
In some aspects this shares a likeness to the shady totalitarian actions of the West’s militarised bureaucracy; through which many Governments have manipulated constitutional protections, and turned the “fight” against the Wuhan COVID-19 virus, into a fight against the people.
Exemplified in particular by Canada’s arrest, and imprisonment of Pastor James Coates.
Like Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng, Coates’ story is sidelined in favour of “bigger things”, “better people”, and bigger ratings.
Harry, Megan, and Oprah’s, soap opera, took centre stage on social media, and dominated headlines.
One particular allegation, created a short-lived anti-Monarchy industry, filled with unthinking, banal netizens virtue-signalling a cult-like chant in unison: “Black Lives Matter”, “time for a republic in Australia!”, “the Royal family are all racists.”
While the world obsessed over three excessively rich Westerners, decrying their alleged oppression at the hands of other excessively rich Westerners, a poor Christian nun from Myanmar was kneeling in front of real oppressors, asking them to turn their guns away.
Where were Oprah’s cameras?
Where were Megan’s tears, and concerns for the oppressed?
Where was Harry’s sympathetic endorsement?
Where was the focus of the world?
Though Tawng’s efforts didn’t succeed, at least she did something.
Though Coates is in prison, at least he did something.
We fail to be taken seriously if we fail to hear, and see, Coates and Nu Tawng.
They are an example of how life-affirming Christianity is in the face of oppression. They embody a rejection of the false doctrine that teaches defeatism behind the veil of “losing graciously.”
One not far removed from Chamberlain’s well-intentioned Munich agreement, which gave Hitler the Sudetenland in Western Czechoslovakia, to “seal” the promise of “peace in our time.”
Take in the observation of Czech philosopher, Jan Patočka, talking about the civil disobedience:
‘Accommodation has so far never led to an improvement in a situation, only to a deterioration. The greater the fear the servility have been, the greater the lack of consideration been on the part of the authorities. There is no other way to make them lessen the pressure than show to them that injustice and arbitrariness are not ignored. People must always be dignified, refuse to let themselves be frightened and humiliated, say that which is true – behaviour that will make in impression just it will be such sharp contrast to the behaviour of the authorities.’ [i]
Knowing that we are not free from suffering, but free in our suffering, we live in Christ’s victory, not our victimhood.
It’s radical. Determined. Joyful, humble, and defiant in the face of tyranny.
The Christian has a Lord, and under, with and because of His Lordship, we can stand firm against the Abyss.
It’s on the plains of appeasement, and the back of “losing graciously” that Blitzkrieg was born.
This is why we must reject the false doctrine so often shoved down the throats of parishioners, by Christian leaders, who’ve abdicated mission to centrism, surrendered the uniqueness of Christ to pluralism, and applied “losing graciously” as a coping mechanism for the post-Christian context.
I’ll give Clarke Pinnock the penultimate word,
‘There is no future for liberal Christianity because it just listens to the culture and has nothing to contribute. It allows itself to be led around by the nose, while ruining churches and robbing the world of the Gospel.’ [ii]
Tawng’s defiance holds a mirror up to most progressive Churches in the West. What’s reflected back isn’t what many would expect to see.
References:
[i] Citizen vs. State, cited by Harry Jarv, Living in Truth: Tribute to Václav Havel, p.243
[ii] Clarke Pinnock’s rebuttal of John Hick’s case for Religious Pluralism. Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralist World, 1995.
Popular author, public speaker and Evangelical, Beth Moore has officially removed herself from the Southern Baptist Convention.
The Washington Post, in an article copy and pasted from Religion News Service, added their weight behind the insinuation that Moore’s departure was the result of Trumpism, sexism, and bullying.
As part of a longish biographical sketch, the RNS/WAPO piece described Moore as an ‘unlikely celebrity Bible teacher’, who was a threat to those within the SBC because her ‘outsized influence and role in teaching the Bible have always made some evangelical power brokers uneasy, because of their belief only men should be allowed to preach.’
Faithwire appropriately added that ‘the “Beth Moore brand’s” partnership with the SBC was over’ (slightly paraphrased). Then stated that Moore’s departure was due to how she ‘no longer felt at home’ there, hence her announcement on Religion News Service that she was “no longer a Southern Baptist.”
While the RNS/WAPO article gives a well-deserved glowing rendition of Moore’s noteworthy calibre as a ministry team leader, and evangelist, there was little mention of Moore’s move towards accommodating Social Justice ideology, in an appeal to the Social Justice Warrior mentality.
To fill in the gaps WAPO left behind, it’s Moore’s slow embrace of Critical Race Theory, and apparent watering down of the Bible that has some in the SBC concerned. Not Moore’s gender, success and popularity.
As Black Lives Matter critic, Darrell B. Harrison, dean of Social Media at Grace to You, has articulated at length since 2018 about what he sees as Moore’s move to syncretise Christ’s liberation, with Marxist Liberation Theology:
‘Beth Moore is a self-centered, cowardly opportunist. She is a woke fraud. Only when this current wave of social justice/CRT became the cause du jour within the SBC did she begin to conveniently, and disingenuously, comment on it. Prior to that—crickets!’
With his extensive list of credentials and experience, it’d be hard to argue that Harrison’s observations (however harsh they may appear to be) of Moore’s political theology were wrong. Worth noting, in response to his early criticisms expressed on Twitter, Moore blocked him.
Her own concerns might be more complex and nuanced, (like SBC member’s fragmented support for Donald Trump), but blocking out concerned stakeholders from engaging with her journey through those concerns, only appears to back claims that Moore’s public displays of concern, especially for black America are, in the end, self-serving.
There’s no way around ignoring how Moore has positioned her brand, and with her departure from the SBC, is perhaps repositioning her theology. She is fast becoming the Oprah of the Evangelical world. Not entirely a bad thing, unless there’s an empire to maintain. Ears to tickle. Fame to be had, drama to capitalise on, and fast money to gain.
Moore appears to have done everything she possibly could to push others away, and herself out. Removing herself from the SBC is akin to a celebrity tantrum. Thrown because the majority refuse to entertain virtue signalling, or surrender to Critical Race Theory, and compromise the Gospel by removing Christ, and coronating Marx in His place.
This isn’t unfair criticism when viewed in the context of her appeal to unfair, bandwagon hysteria.
While the Pauline view is that only men should hold the office of pastor. Nowhere does Paul say women aren’t entitled to a voice, or having an opinion. Regardless of its clumsy nature, Moore was given a platform for the latter, tolerated, celebrated, promoted, critiqued, and embraced.
Her decision to leave isn’t a betrayal, or abandonment, but many may see it as just that.
Despite the SBC’s flaws, it’s not Beth Moore’s theology that’s outgrown them, it’s her apparent compromise with the zeitgeist, allowing the post-Christian culture, not Christ to determine The Way forward for the Church.
“The English Language is Racist” would have been a better title for academic, Asao B. Inoue’s obscure 2019 book, ‘Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate.’
Inoue is a self-styled “antiracist” whose literary history, and Twitter feed, reflects an obsession with race as a subject.
Not unusual, considering the wave of profits flowing in for the likes of ‘White Fragility’ author Robin DiAngelo, and Critical Race Theory advocate, Ibram X. Kendi.
Milking white guilt from the gullible is a cash cow.
Most agree that racism is sinful. Few deny historical wrongs happened by way of the rejection of the Imago Dei Biblical Christian Doctrine, and the subsequent embrace of the social Darwinian mythos of race, but there’s still hard cash to be won from it.
Labelling people racist simply because of the colour of their melanin translates into big dollars. Making racism, big business.
Granted, there’s room for the honest critique of any ethnic majority. There isn’t when the context of that critique is built on poisoned presuppositions that measure a white person as sinful or evil, just for having white skin.
It’s clear that Critical Race Theory replaces a culture of silence with a culture of suspicion. Thus, throwing society from one form of racism into another.
Through his conclusions Asao Inoue appears to be guilty of both.
According to The Daily Wire’s Chrissy Clark, Inoue (an associate Dean at Arizona State University) believes ‘English is derived from white people, which means it’s inherently white and racist.’
Inoue (who believes ‘he lives in an explicitly racist world’) claims that grading English isn’t done so by an objective rubric, but through the lens of white supremacism.
For example, ‘ranking is rooted in racism; grading is a form of ranking, grading must also be a racist idea.’
(Note the circular reasoning.)
Clark writes that Inoue’s ‘main argument is that grading calls for student uniformity and high-quality completed assignments, both of which are allegedly racist ideas.’
Inoue’s solution is to ‘get rid of grading systems’, which would remove what he calls a ‘slave making mechanism.’
By removing the system that ‘requires children to speak and write proper English during English and literacy classes’, society can fight ‘white language supremacy.’
In other words, cancelling grading a student’s understanding of correct syntax, grammar, vocabulary, and conventional linguistic standards within the English language is quintessential “antiracism” that will end the ‘white racial habitus’, and it’s ‘racist status quo.’
His reasoning rests on the assumption that white people have an “unearned privilege”, because they’re taught to speak English at home, which for Inoue translates as systemic racism, and the reason why he never received an “A” in English class, only a “B.”
Clark explains that Inoue, born in Hawaii, to a father who is ethnically Japanese, and mother who is Eastern European, holds a Doctorate from Washington State University.
Following the necessary facepalm, two reactions to Inoue are justifiable. First, serious prayer. His conclusions appear to be drenched in victimhood, and rooted in resentment. Second is exasperation for those who buy into the victim mentality.
In particular, Bureaucrats, who, keen for some virtue signalling P.R, would sacrifice academic standards on the twofold racist idea that all “white people are racist”, and the presumption that non-white people need English language standards dumbed down for them, because “antiracists” consider those with a darker shade of melanin, incapable of understanding, or mastering the English language.
The consequences of Inoue’s conclusions are a downgrade of professionalism.
Would you trust your family or your own healthcare to institutions that give potential professionals degrees based on their skin tone, gender or sexual preference, not the quality of their performance/acumen/merit?
The kind of degree-by-where you land on the intersectionality scale, will create higher risk, further division, and racism, because those who’ve been elevated by virtue of their skin colour, or sexual identity, aren’t actually capable of doing the job entrusted to them, and therefore can’t be trusted in the role their degree/doctorate is supposed to prepare them for.
Sadly, it won’t be “WOKE” unis who get the blame. It’ll be you. Just like all bureaucrats, the buck will be passed. So will the blame. As the WOKE mob pins racism on anyone who decides to steer clear of those sold out to this Cancel Culture trend, and those whose academic credentials are questionable, because “WOKE” unis were more interested in virtue signalling quotas, than the quality of academic achievements.
English isn’t racist. Today’s “antiracism” is, and today’s “antiracists” are.
Inoue isn’t a product of racism. He’s a product of a racist victimhood industry.
For those fed-up with this endless rule-by-idiocracy, it’s a reminder of the dumbing down of Western Societies.
It’s also indicative of the fact that while a civil war is still avoidable, a schism in the West, is, now, all but inevitable.
On one side stands those who side with Truth over falsehood. On the other, stands those like Inoue, who embrace the Radical Leftist totalitarian phantasmagoria.
The best outcome the leftist ideological hegemony could hope for is that the majority turns towards self-preservation; switches off, and tunes out, while holding their breath, and hoping, that the gathering storm doesn’t hit them in the same way it is hitting others.
To quote Churchill,
“World War 2 was preventable, but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We surely must not let that happen again…We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.” – (1946. ‘The Sinews of Peace’)
Teaching is not teaching without a sure grasp of what it means to learn. Or, at least, that’s what I’m learning.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and anxious about the torrential downpour of, “how to’’, “when to”, “10 things you must do”, “five things you should do.” […and the lists go on and on]
Whilst some of these lists are good, there is a limit to them. This includes the fact that they’re largely compiled by Westerners. Most contain a predominantly Western perspective built on tried and true concrete concepts about education.
These, however, are also haunted by a variety of legislating, and the enforcement of ever-changing approaches to education. (Some of which is thrown about by the ‘’revolutionary’’ whims and fads of a minority among the tenured academia, and which are, sometimes, too quickly approved by the approval ratings hungry, bureaucratic class. Just look at how the ABCs are being replaced by LGBT)
For those parenthesized reasons, it’s important to hear beyond the Westernized realm from time to time.
In his 2012 book ‘Teaching That Guarantees Learning’, Nigerian teacher, Dr. Obed Onwuegbu, writes:
‘Teachers are employed for three reasons. To set the goal, select and arrange factors and guide the learner to learn. The student can learn without the teacher if proper arrangement is in place.’[i]
For Onwuegbu, teaching is about the setting up of a learning environment. The teacher takes into account the form and content of the material, and then facilitates the way forward. This involves identifying primary “factors.” Then by enabling these primary factors, such as the learning environment and learning tools, an interest in learning is stimulated. Each factor or “method of delivery” plays a key role in empowering the student’s education.
Here Onwuegbu attempts an explanation:
‘Let me illustrate. Onwuegbu is my last name. Invariably Americans ask me to teach them how to pronounce it. Left on their own they say On-wu-eg-bu. Then they struggle but almost never succeed to say Onwu- egbu, because there are six instead of eight letters and two syllables instead of four in the name. That “struggle” from pronouncing four syllables On-wu-eg-bu to two syllables Onwu-egbu is what I refer to as process and only the learner can experience it.[ii]
By focusing on facilitating the primary factors that empower learning and moving to a facilitators position in the learning process, the teacher removes any chance of becoming an obstacle to the student’s learning experience. The responsibility to learn what is taught is then placed in the right order, first, on the learner and secondly, on the teacher.
Onwuegbu’s approach has weight.
‘The teacher arranges the factors before the learners walk into the classroom. Imbedded in the arrangement is the objective of the lesson. The teacher introduces the learner to the goal and the arrangement, i.e. how to achieve the goal before the learner interacts with the factors. At this stage, the student is present. He has been introduced to both the goal and the means of achieving it. The facilitator waits and watches to help. He reinforces or corrects. That is teaching. The result is learning.’[iii]
Instead of rushing towards progress at the expense of process, Onwuegbu places progress and process on the same line. Process is then placed before progress, whilst progress still rightly maintains a position of importance. In short, Onwu-egbu, if I’m reading him correctly, aims to bring teachers back to a place where “the means” are put back before “the end.”
This is akin to merchandising. The seller sets up a display. In retail jargon it’s what’s called a “silent” salesman. From there the customer learns about the product both with and without the sales staff. This invokes a learning experience whereby the customer gets a hands-on, up close, and personal encounter with the product in the context ascribed to it by its producer. The display is designed to create interest, and invite interaction.
According to Onwu-egbu,
‘Identifying the factor per se is not enough. For example, it is not merely choosing a film or going to the library, but it is choosing the right film and books, and knowing what, how and when to use them. It is not going to the library alone, but knowing what section, books, topics, pages, questions and answers or even other materials the learners may need to facilitate learning.[iv]’
In a similar way to a merchandiser, the teacher functions as a manager of the process and progress of a students learning. By dressing up the educational environment with exciting and interesting material the teacher has effectively merchandised the learning environment. Thus creating “silent educators” by which the student can meaningfully interact.
‘Whatever arrangement the teachers make must be finished before the students enter to interact with the factors. One arrangement takes about eighty to eighty-five percent of the teacher’s teaching time.The remaining fifteen to twenty percent of teaching time is used to reinforce and guide the students while they interact with the factors‘ [v]
What Onwuegbu isn’t advocating is the abdication of teacher responsibility nor the abolition of teachers.
He’s advocating liberation from a sort of curriculum purgatory; a gulag. Where constrained creativity incites boredom; where meaning and purpose is easily lost. A place where zero incentive is given and indifference is propagated en masse.
“Silent educators” still require preparation; ground work, creativity, clear communication, and reviews. I.e.: direction, vision, and management.
The teacher is freed to teach.
Not robotically, but dynamically. Exercising freedom in limitation, unchained from an empty, and static routine.
Onwuegbu writes,
‘‘I know that teachers use films when they teach in the U.S.A. That is a luxury I did not have throughout my years as a student or teacher in Nigeria. I was lucky if I had a picture. My granddaughter in fifth grade complained about a film her class watched. It seemed the film babysat the class for the teacher […] For this arrangement to succeed, the lesson should last for more than the usual fifty minutes.[Then] the teacher introduces the lesson and plans for the students’ interaction […] A different arrangement should be made for every lesson. This is one of the reasons the current number of lessons per day must give way to a new time arrangement. There must be less number of lessons, and more time for every lesson. Time and tests will no longer control classroom activities.’ [vi]
I’m in agreement with Onwuegbu’s main theme about process and progress. I’m on board with his idea of teaching being about ‘facilitating the factors’.
As for the other points he makes, I need a little longer to really think about them. For example what are the consequences of not having tests? Of restructuring grade tiers, and how do we avoid real-time restrictions if we’re to extend lesson times?
Overall, his research and experience gives wider credibility to the concept that the world is our classroom because
‘teaching did not start in schools.’
His conclusions are reassuring. Facilitating eliminates the temptation to see teachers and learning tools as baby sitters. The teacher still has to teach. As a facilitator the teacher or parent/s cannot escape his or her own leadership role in the learning process or the progress of the learner.
Teachers are an essential part of the interwoven fabric of child rearing factors. Onwuegbu’s idea that the function of a teacher, is that of a facilitator, has the potential to reform Western societies notion of what a teacher is, and what a teacher does.
As Onweugbu concludes,
‘If there is one word, which describes learning, it is process. Hence, to teach is to enhance and facilitate that process. The teacher is the facilitator. The function of education is to do everything to promote the process.’[vii]
Quoting from the results of a study carried out in 1963 by Stanley Milgram, Chuck Colson predicted the kind of C0V1D-19 lockdown authoritarianism that was birthed by Communist Chinese authorities, and copycatted all around the world.
The Milgram ‘shock experiment’ was a study into ‘the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.’
Milgram’s aim was to see how ‘easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII.’
He designed the study to answer questions raised by the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials, and the defence’s justification that those on trial “were only following orders.” [i]
‘I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist.
Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not.’
Colson explained that up to 80% of those who participated in Milgram’s experiment were willing to ‘inflict painful electric shocks on another person if an authority figure told them to do so.’ [ii]
In 2007, Santa Clara University’s, Jerry Burger ‘replicated the experiment, and Burger’s results were nearly identical with Milgram.’
This prompted New York Times’ Adam Cohen to conclude, ‘that ordinary Americans are about as willing to blindly follow orders to inflict pain on an innocent stranger as they were four decades ago.’
Colson, not surprised by the results said, ‘the two experiments are a huge cautionary tale of how people respond to authority.’
The studies, he said, show that ‘nothing changes about human nature; we really do blindly follow authority, and very few people challenge it.’
Colson wrote, ‘when there’s social chaos, people will choose order over liberty. It’s the reason why, if you give a prison guard or a government clerk a little power, they become abusive.’
The ‘only real barrier preventing people from inflicting pain is conscience,’ which Colson explains is our God-given ‘internal moral bearings’ (see Romans 2:15) that have to be nurtured into maturity.
The problem and its cause are, as the Milgram/Burger studies infer, a lack of Godly nurturing, which is the consequence of ‘the breakdown of the family and moral decay in American life.’
The abdication from nurturing our God-given internal moral bearings blinds us to tyranny, and binds us to sinful participation in it.
People will obey a lawful authority without question, because there’s no acknowledgement of God; no other authority or power higher than Government fiats and stuffy, bloated Bureaucratic rules.
This is God vs. Government-become-god territory.
Where unjust laws are obeyed because, as Colson argued, ‘people have lost the concept of a law beyond the law.’
Which, says Colson, leads to a rejection of civil liberties, because ‘given a choice between order and chaos, Americans will always choose order – even if it shuts down some of our freedoms.’
The act of civil disobedience, he said, also becomes a farce, because ‘in a morally relativistic era, there’s nothing that kicks in and tells us that something is wrong.’
A docile, conditioned polis simply can’t know what they’re protesting, or find reasons to justify why.
It was a dismal prediction. Now a C0V1D-19 reality.
Atheist, secular humanist Governments following their Communist Chinese counterparts turned neighbour against neighbour. The police were weaponised against the people they’re paid to protect, and fighting the virus became about denouncing people perceived to be lockdown “lawbreakers”.
The highest civic duty was the surrender of civil liberties, wearing a mask, not questioning the mandated medical advice from bureaucrats, applauding their disaster porn, and staying glued to the media’s daily “briefings”.
As Milgram, commenting on the outcome of his experiment noted,
‘The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.’
To paraphrase Colson, the only sure-fire way to protect civil liberties, and live out just civil disobedience, is by ‘courageously asserting the law beyond the law’; disobeying unjust laws that are contrary to our internal moral bearings, informed as they are, by the self-revealing God of Grace, and His objective moral law.
Though it may seem like we are being ‘plunged into the abyss of hell’, Charles Spurgeon once said, ‘God does not leave us there alone.’
The ‘star of hope is still in the sky when the night is blackest. Surely out of death, darkness, and despair, we shall yet arise to Life, light and liberty’.
The late, and formidable, Sir Roger Scruton when tackling the post-modern downgrade of truth to interpretation filtered through subjective emotion, insinuated that the late 20th Century theory, now popular amongst 21st century academe and Western culture, created a liar’s paradise.
He was right. Post-modern society has no real base justification for its own existence.
Its theology is confused, and syncretistic, producing an uncertain ethic that elevates niceness to heaven entry righteousness, and prides itself on a hypocritical version of tolerance as high enlightenment, while ignoring the high cost of its double standards.
Post-modern ethics, and the society embracing it, is a ship slowly sinking, and few seem aware, or are awake enough to care.
Most people poisoned by post-modern extremes aren’t able identify a hole in the hull, from a shadow in the water.
Whether the ship is sinking or not, is just a matter of your truth versus mine.
For the docile, the rising water devouring the ship could be the result of an increase in the tide, (or for the more conditioned), proof of “apocalyptic climate change”, not the ship’s structural integrity having been compromised.
Such is the nature of post-modern thought. It dismisses evidence-based argument as a fight, and reduces truth to nothingness.
It conditions and sedates, as much as paralyses, fact-based responsible action.
Scruton quipped that the post-modern plausibility structure’s fatal flaw was that any ‘writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him.’
So, Scruton said, ‘don’t.’ [i]
When philosophers reject the ‘goal of truth’ – like Nietzsche and Foucault – they are arguing for the acceptance of falsehoods as truth.
The assumption makes facts pliable; open to interpretation. Thus, the goal of truth is unreachable because truth is merely a plurality of competing perspectives.
The ‘gap between truth and falsehood’ shrinks to the point where neither are distinguishable. The distinction between fantasy and fact is so blurred that skewing fantasy as fact is inevitable.
For example, “the ship isn’t sinking, it’s just your imagination.” Push for further enquiry and you’re bound to be called a “conspiracy theorist,” “fear-mongerer”, or “climate denier!”
Self-destruction and avoidable tragedy aren’t thwarted, they’re embraced.
Harmful and blasphemous lies run free.
The post-modern devaluing of truth injects into society a toxin that C.S. Lewis described as the ‘poison of subjectivism.’
Where Lewis might have applauded the openness of post-modernism to God’s objective Word spoken in time and space as “true myth”, Lewis would reject post-modern praxis as ‘false philosophy.’
Evidence based value judgements, once viewed as ‘rational’ are now dismissed as ‘sentiments, complexes, or attitudes’ produced by a person’s environment, and community traditions.
Good and evil are determined by “feelings.”
Through the subjectivism [let’s call this the navel gazing of Post-moderns], comes (according to Lewis) ‘the disease that will certainly end our species (and in my view, damn our souls) if it is not crushed; the fatal superstition that men can create values, that a community can choose its ideology as men choose their clothes.’
He would add that men and women are confronted by truth, contra to post-modernism’s false claim that men and women create truth.
‘Everyone is indignant’, he says, ‘when they hear the German’s define justice as that which is to the interest of the Third Reich. But it is not always remembered that this indignation is perfectly groundless if we ourselves regard morality as a subjective sentiment to be altered at will.’ [ii]
Adding,
‘Unless there is some objective standard of good, over-arching Germans, Japanese and ourselves alike whether any of us obey it or no, then of course the German’s are as competent to create their ideology as we are to create ours. Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring.’ [ibid]
Post-modern society is a tyrant’s paradise.
If truth is a construct, truth is (the Orwellian) “whatever the State says it is.”
If, for example, love can be shaped in man’s image, and has no objective grounding, there’s no solid ground on which to dispute the perverted “love” the tyrant has for owning slaves.
If “love is love” and “truth is whatever someone feels it is” then the hands of good men will be bound, and held back from opposing evil, through laws that call it unloving, and intolerant to do so.
This disarming of the responsible strong man, by the tyrannical, weak man, stops the strong man from living out his responsibilities towards others.
Post-modernism’s post-Christian vices and obsessions taint all it comes into contact with. Those who are detached from objective truth don’t connect well with reality.
Christians, and conservatives alike, have to recognise this, and understand how standing on objective truth, undoes the often, false and manipulative messages of the radical Left.
A failure to recognise this will mean stepping on landmine after landmine, with Christians and conservatives shooting themselves in the foot with the gun the Left hands to them on daily basis.
Culture is won through action, empathy and a willingness to engage.
For Conservatives and Christians to deliver an affective, and attractive counter-culture alternative, nothing less than a full commitment to objective truth, expressed through pathos, logos and ethos will do.
“Facts don’t care about your feelings, but facts don’t care about anything we do. If we don’t start to acknowledge the fact that humans care about feelings at least as much as we care about facts, we may end up faced with a dystopian hell where power cares neither about your feelings nor your facts.”
The Culture War forced onto the West by an unrelenting belligerent Leftist jihadism, isn’t an emotionless spectator sport. Southern is right.
There are real people in need of hearing objective truth, but are failing to hear it because the approach is compromised by joyless tedium.
Too many who profit from being outraged at the Left, don’t want to be an effective answer to the Left. The status-quo of back-and-forth spite, pads their bottom line.
God is displaced, and with His displacement, so goes objective truth.
Subjectivism is poison. That is the target. Post-modernism is the context.
The battle ground isn’t Left vs. Right, Black vs. White, it’s truth vs. falsehood.
Post-modernism is a liar’s paradise.
So said Nietzsche, ‘when fighting the dragon take heed, lest you become the dragon.’
Conservatives need to stop playing by the Left’s vicious, lifeless rules, allowing themselves to be lampooned as tribal, irrelevant, bitter old cronies, spitting venom from the sidelines.
An attitude adjustment is in order. An affective opposition, is an effective alternative.
As Southern’s return to the public forum has exemplified:
Love your enemy. (Matthew 5:44) Speak truth in love (Eph.4:5). Be above reproach (Titus 1:6-7; 1 Tim.3:2-3).
References:
[i] Scruton, R. 1994. Modern Philosophy Bloomsbury Publishing. (p. 6).
[ii] Lewis, C.S. The Poison of Subjectivism, Christian Reflections, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (pp.90-91)
[iii] Scruton, R. 2014. How To Be a Conservative, (p.83)
They said what needed to be said, when others were too afraid to say it.
Their latest three-hour-long exposition on Critical Race Theory is no different.
The dynamic duo agreed that “CRT (created by Marxist legal scholars in 1989) promotes an unbiblical anthropology, hamartiology, soteriology, and eschatology.”
In other words, CRT preaches its own gospel. The “amen and a-woman”; a false “gospel” of race and identity.
All of which are antithetical to Christianity’s Imago Dei (image bearers of God), original sin (all have fallen short), Jesus the Christ (The Gospel), and God’s promised judgement. The end goal of justification where, through His own humiliation, He lifts His creature to be covenant partners, through undeserved and unmerited favour (grace).
The “sufficiency of God’s Word is the battleground,” but instead of challenging ideology with theology, many in the Church appear to bind theology to CRT through a policy of surrender; correctly viewed as accommodation.
CRT is added onto the Gospel under the presupposition that the Gospel isn’t sufficient enough to answer sin. Especially the sin of racism.
Thus, accommodation is surrender. CRT is “a new religion preaching a false gospel. Its adherents seek to remove God as King. They desire to remove His Word as sufficient, and they desire to remove His Gospel as the power of God unto salvation.”
Harrison explains that Critical Race Theory is the progeny of Critical Theory. CT is the opposite to analytical theory. Full of “subjective reflexes, unconcerned with empirical evidence” and “never satisfied with facts.”
Just like Critical Theory, CRT ejects evidence based reasoning, and objective verification. Hence, CRT “doesn’t allow itself to be critiqued.” As an ideology “it refuses to submit itself to the scrutiny of objective evidence or logic.”
Quoting Thomas Sowell, “CRT is not a testable hypothesis.” Meaning that CRT’s accusations, are not supported by empirical evidence.
CRT holds itself to be the determiner of truth, right and wrong. Not a seeker, or subject of objective truth. Nor a hearer and receiver of God’s transcendent morality spoken to humanity from outside itself.
This is imperfect men and women calling the perfecting of the Gospel, imperfect.
They believe that The Gospel is in need of an ideology born from man’s imagination, superstition, and (when left Logosless), corrupted ideas.
Ergo, perpetuating the myth of race is preferred over the more accurate term ethnicity when referring to biological differences.
Advocates of CRT can blur distinctions between disparities and differences. From here CRT adherents can claim that “all social and economic disparities are the result of racial discrimination.”
And in their Marxist zero sum game assert that “equality of outcomes must triumph over equality of opportunity,” if real justice is to be achieved.
As Harrison explained, this puts “the pre-CRT civil rights movement at odds with the CRT “civil” rights movement. The latter isn’t concerned with equality of opportunity, but with inequalities of outcome, which it attributes to “racial” power structures.”
For this reason, Walker states, “CRT is a dangerous game, it actually destroys those it claims to help. It cries “racism” while clinging tightly to the same racist hatred it claims to despise and hopes to eliminate.”
As Harrison asserts “the propositions of CRT rest on words of woe and victimhood.”
These are force fed by Marxists to a gullible audience through the five conduits of:
1. Interest convergence.
2. Unconscious discrimination
3. Intersectionality.
4. Narrative analysis and storytelling.
5. Revisionist history.
In practice these conduits manifest in demands for reparations such as the call for black votes to be counted twice, and the idea that “all white people are racist.”
Walker drops the mic:
“The greatest proponent of White Supremacism in our current culture is Critical Race Theory, and its myth of the almighty, all knowing, all powerful, all seeing “White Man.” (Slightly paraphrased).
Then kicks the door in:
“Critical Race Theory is culturally accepted racism.”
In concluding, Harrison and Walker explain how CRT is about resetting the West on Marxist terms, replacing Christianity with critical social theory.
The nexus for which is the de-Christianisation of the young through Marxist dominated Universities.
CRT is “a moral proposition that seeks to subjectively tell others what truth is.” This means that “CRT’s Achilles heal is subjectivism and the sin of partiality.”
Critical Race Theory is “a worldview based on vindictive and prejudiced principles that are subjective and changeable depending upon what direction the winds of white supremacy and black oppression happen to be blowing.”
Hence the tendency, says Walker, to “use racism to argue against racism.”
The answer to CRT is, therefore, the unfiltered, unadulterated Good News (Jesus Christ in the flesh) and the Biblical understanding of sin, justice, and the impact of Gospel.
If we embrace the latter, we can answer the former.
As Karl Barth once quipped,
“Away with the yardsticks! Those who cannot sigh with others and laugh about themselves are warmongers.” (Attributed)
By embracing the doctrine of the Imago Dei, not doctrines of racial hate, we can reject both the Marxist Critical Theory’s protectionism of CRT and CRT, which “keeps alive dissentions and animosities of the past; where there is no forgiveness, redemption, only anger, vengeance, resentment and revenge.” (Thomas Sowell).
Most honest, level-headed people on both sides of the political aisle would agree that the unrestrained, self-centred use of censorship as a weapon, is barbaric discrimination.
It’s big, bright, and dangerous false dawn; cheered on as it sets civil liberties and civil rights on fire wherever it is blown or directed.
The burnt scarring it leaves behind is left screaming silently to the world that the doctrine of original sin can be ignored, but never truly rejected, because its barbarism has, once again, punched its bloodthirsty fists through the gates; salivating after any opportunity to remove, censor, and/or if possible, rape and behead (Cancel Culture style) Conservative Christians, and Classical Liberals.
Chuck Colson called barbarism, ‘inhumanity done in the name of humanity, the killing of people for their own good.’
He said that the new Barbarians weren’t Goths or Vandals, with ‘clubs climbing over the walls, but the well-dressed people [comfortably] sitting in well-lit rooms with clean fingernails, deciding what was best for other people.’
You’d be spot on if you thought Colson was describing the current bureaucratic caste, legacy media, big tech, big medicine, big business, and their elitist egos, buttressed by self-congratulating sanitised tax-payer funded, leftist political bubbles, and a conditioned public programmed to kneel at every word.
High profile examples of this new barbarism were added this week to the systemic trend blacklisting all those refusing to fall in, line up, goose step in unison, salute, and take the [proverbial] Hitler oath of allegiance.
The cancelling of Gina Carano, Disney stamping trigger warnings all over Jim Henson’s creative legacy, ‘The Muppets,’ and Legacy Media throwing outspoken, Australian politician Craig Kelly under a bus, calling him, in sum, an “ego driven Trumpist, and threat to democracy.”
Christian conservative and former Western Australian, LNP candidate, Andrea Tokaji, ‘was dis-endorsed by the WA Liberal Party weeks before the 2021 Election after five months of campaigning for simply exercising her freedom of speech in an article she wrote months before being endorsed.’ (Rowan Dean, SkyNews)
Then there was Coca Cola repackaging the Nazi doctrine of Blut und Boden, by using their brand to push Critical Race Theory, telling white people to be less white.
While the woke World Council of Churches literally called the modern nation of Israel demonic, claiming that alleged human rights abuses were on the same level as white supremacists in South Africa. Noteworthy, the WCC failed to mention the Chi-comms crushing Hong Kong, threatening Taiwan, and incarcerating ethnic minorities, and Chinese Christians.
In addition, privileged “popstar” Madonna, worth $850 Million, while remaining completely silent about Gina Carano being booted from The Mandalorian, demanded an end to the patriarchy, because of male “systemic oppression”.
Even the Vatican was seemingly keen to join the bandwagon.
NPR reported that ‘Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Robert Sarah (of Guinea), removing a conservative who was seen as an opponent of the Pope’s vision for the church.’
The differences were stark. Along with Cardinal Sarah’s conviction for the priesthood to maintain the practice of celibacy. Sarah held the line on irresponsible immigration (open borders), and the clear Biblical Christian line on homosexuality, Western Civilisation, and the ‘Churches’ relationship with the Muslim world.’
An exposition from the Express in the U.K. said that the relationship soured years ago. Instead of ‘removing Sarah directly, Francis decided to fill the liturgy department with a number of [centrists] who opposed his views.’
The Summit news concluded that the 75-year-old Cardinal’s retirement was ‘more of a firing’ because Sarah was ‘mandated to submit his resignation when he turned 75, while other serving in the position have been known to continue.’
Barbarianism is punching its way through the gates.
Out of control censorship is a false dawn, consuming all its being directed towards, and there are very few willing to put up a fight.
To paraphrase Colson, it’s easier to fight those whose actions are clearly inhumane. It’s harder to fight those who do inhumane things and call it “humane”.
References:
Colson, C. 2015. A Flight to Amsterdam, My Final Word, Zondervan (p.42)
First published on Caldron Pool, 24th February 2021.
Trigger happy Disney are adding trigger warnings to the release of classic episodes of ‘The Muppet Show’.
According to the Daily Mail, Disney+ viewers will be met with the “disclaimer” stating:
“This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.”
This comes a week after the behemoth entertainment company cancelled The Mandalorian star, Gina Carano for sharing a Tik Tok post to her personal Instagram account that they deemed to be “abhorrent and unacceptable.”
In essence, Carano was cancelled over comments she made paralleling cancel culture with Nazi Germany.
Carano’s point was not without some justification.
Cancel culture is largely the Leftist cultural practice of cancelling those who don’t share the left’s political ideology, sign on without question to their new cultural laws, or align with their god-like ideological hegemony.
Where Carano hit a landmine was mentioning the Jews, inadvertently invoking the Holocaust, which is, in the eyes of the far-left “expert class”, sacred ground; earning for Carano a blacklisting.
The now deleted Instagram post read:
“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”
Inferring that the suffering of six million Jews (some of whom were Jewish Christians – as testified to by Victor Frankl) is parallel to the American far-left shutting down, censoring, threatening to “de-program”, and banning Conservatives, is a no, no.
The doctrine is clear: Nothing can or should be compared to the persecution of the Jews by National Socialists.
No matter how relevant, even as far as pointing to the history as a precedent goes, to do so distracts attention away from the gravity of that tragedy.
While I share the concerns and understand them, the whole point of “Never Again” is to stop legislation like the “final solution,” buttressed as it was by ideology like “blut und boden” (blood and soil) and ‘Lebensunwertes Leben’ (life unworthy of life), from never happening again.
Banning anyone from pointing, with good reasons, to any precipice that shares relevance to 1930s/40s Germany, undermines this goal.
The Left doesn’t own the rights to the history of the Holocaust. Anyone who slams the Right for pointing out its relevance in contemporary society, isn’t preserving the memory of those who perished, they’re desecrating it because Cancel Culture is fascism proper.
It would seem that the Left like to use parallels, only if they can twist the history of the Holocaust, and human suffering, around in order to weaponize it against their political enemies.
Cancelling Carano, and hitting out against Jim Henson’s loveable and iconic series The Muppets, suggests that Disney are failing to see the light for the love of the encroaching darkness.
In real time, we see the trajectory of political sensitivities, and measuring sticks, similar to those which invaded the hearts and minds of Germans, that conditioned them to see a threat, and an enemy in the Jewish people, where there wasn’t one.
Is it just a matter of time before Henson is given Billy Bone’s black spot, sent past the rainbow connection, straight to gaol, without collecting $200 hundred dollars, and cancelled completely?
If you think I’m jumping to conclusions, look closer.
Using the Leftist Cultural Marxist, Intersectionality rubric (aka yardstick), which is akin to National Socialists digging in a person’s family tree for Jewish heritage or Aryan purity, The Muppets are as toxic as they come:
Sam Eagle is a Trump voting Nazi.
Animal makes fun of people with disabilities; ableist.
Dr Teeth is a racist, cultural appropriating stereotype; perpetuating a white supremacist narrative of black people.
Miss Piggy’s love for Kermit isn’t inclusive enough. Ergo, “heteronormative” oppression of homosexuals.
Waldorf and Statler are quintessential patriarchal misogynists.
Pepe is a cisgender transphobe; negatively stereotyping Latinos as sex-crazed predators.
Burt and Ernie aren’t “best friends”; they’re repressed gay-lovers forced into hiding by “bigoted homophobes” against gay marriage.
Gonzo perpetuates the mistreatment of illegal immigrants by portraying them as “weirdos,” but scores points because his love for chickens celebrates “LOVE is LOVE” bestiality.
Fozzie the bear is too white.
The Swedish Chef’s gibberish makes a mockery of Sweden; expressing America’s toxic exceptionalism.
Scooter, Bunsen and Beaker are offensive; Scooter is white privileged. Bunsen fat shames scientists, and people who wear glasses. Beaker makes fun of people with social anxiety disorders.
Rawlf the dog is blackface. He negatively reinforces toxic media portrayals of the black community.
Lew Zealand is anti-environment; anti-Climate justice. Zealand supports over-fishing; violence against the Climate.
Crazy Harry’s penchant for explosives encourages white supremacist domestic terrorism, and might be linked to the Jan.6th Invasion of Washington D.C by “attackers, assaulting the Capitol building in an insurrection only stopped by the vigilant, benevolent, glorious Democrat leaders.”
Rizzo is a Republican.
Need I say more?
If, like me you’re asking:
What kind of joyless person watches The Muppets and says “I’m offended by this; that should have come with a trigger warning, I’m now traumatised for life?”
Here’s the answer:
Deluded, practicing life unworthy of life – don’t question this, or “Zor name, vill, also go on ze list!” – Lefties, who, ironically, think that cancelling everyone who doesn’t fall in, goose step in unison and salute, puts them on the same level as allied soldiers landing on beaches in Nazi occupied France.
First published on Caldron Pool, 23rd February, 2021.
World Council of “Churches” (WCC) Commission moderator of International Affairs, Frank Chikane equated Israel with demons in a recent online address.
Chikane told those in attendance that he was “convinced that [Palestine] is dealing with the same demons we dealt with in South Africa. Except that in their case the demons have invited other demons to make their struggle much more difficult…It’s almost like the whole world is against the Palestinians; nobody cares.”
He then asserted his belief that “the whole world seems to be conspiring against them. Trump’s administration came with what was called the deal of the sanctuary; which was really an entrenchment of the oppression and brutalisation of the people of Palestine, permanently robbing them of their rights.”
‘Chikane levelled a hostile incendiary assault on the legitimacy of the Jewish State, and an implicit threat against those who support it. Chikane, who offered not one word of criticism toward the Palestinians, made it perfectly clear that he is devoted to using his position of influence within the WCC to portray the Jewish state as a singular source of violence and sin in the Holy Land.’
Algemeiner explained that ‘the list of participants on the Zoom call included anti-Israel activists and anti-Zionist authors.’
According to Van Zile, Chikane’s address was organised by Christian organisations who have a ‘well-documented history of singling Israel out for condemnation while downplaying Palestinian hate, incitement, and violence towards Israel’ Such as ‘Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, Christ at the Checkpoint, Kairos Palestine, and the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation.’
In response, the much-respected Jewish human rights organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre called on Christians to show their disagreement, writing on a Facebook link to The Algemeiner,
‘Wanted: Christians who will declare to WCC “not in our name!” Medieval Christendom Jew=Devil dehumanized our people, paved the way to blood libel pogroms and Auschwitz. Now WCC declares Israel=Devil as the Jewish state is threatened by Genocidal Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah?’
The WCC’s ambiguity about where it stands when it comes to Arab-Israeli conflict is renowned. Specifically, the WCC’s clandestine support for BDS –The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions protest movement designed to pressure Israel into conforming with its stated ideals, by ending international support for Israel.
Van Zile was right to state in a February 18 follow-up piece, with Frank Chikane voicing support for the misleading, and emotionally charged widespread claim, that “Israel is practicing Apartheid” there’s no doubt to where the World Council of Churches stands.
He adds that WCC advocacy against Israel, while not speaking out against ‘actual crimes against humanity in China and Syria’ – only adds to Jewish suspicions about Christians.
I flat-out agree. The caveat being that the WCC left Christian Gospel orthodoxy for the social gospel of progressive leftism years ago.
It’s best not to equate Leftist “Christianity” with Biblical Christianity.
To qualify terms, Leftist “Christianity” generally rides the Liberation Theology victim train, replacing God’s justice with social justice, and Christ with Marx.
To be blunt about it: Liberation Theology is not a theology of Christian liberation.
All three remain vitally relevant to a Biblical Christian framework of true Christ-centred liberation. The context of which is the self-revealing God, who, in, through and with Jesus Christ, makes Himself known, and makes clear His existence, along with the important distinction between God setting humanity free from sin, not setting humanity free to sin.
Although, WCC members have in the past called their apparent, Marxist “upgrade” of the Gospel, and observable strands of apostasy, “a myth” (see ‘National Council of Churches Faces a New Type of Critic,’ NYT, 1982), they are open advocates of asinine movements such as “Climate Justice,” calling it a ‘the focal point of the WCC advocacy’ in its participation with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Chikane accusing Donald Trump of protecting Israel’s ‘oppression and brutalisation,’ along with there being no mention of peace deals that the Trump administration orchestrated between Israel, and some predominantly Muslim countries, also shows that the WCC has taken a hard lean to the Left. Many of whom mock those peace deals, laughing them off as ‘dodgy.’
In an op-ed for the Christian Post Rabbis Cooper and Alderstein responded, saying,
‘The WCC’s moral blindness means that it serves as an expression of Christian love about as successfully as ISIS can raise the banner of Islamic compassion…‘the time has come for Christians to declare “Not in our name.” For their good, more than ours…The WCC’s moral failure is not limited to Israel, however, and that is why it is a danger to those who take their Christianity more seriously than something to use as a political football.’
Fall back on what Eric Metaxas suggested this week and see the dangers for what they are: Americans (and I’ll add Australians) turning-a-blind-eye to CCP human rights abuses, in exchange for cheap Chinese made, Communist Chinese owned, tech – like Hisense big screen TVs and white goods – is in the same ball-park as German society conveniently ignoring the smoke stacks, trains, and violent removal of Jews.
Tack onto this any leap-before-you-look support for dubious schemes like BDS, “Climate Justice,” and support for equating Israel with white supremacy; the concerns of Van Zile, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, and the Jewish community find sound justification.
It’s right to stand with Israel, on the proviso that Israel maintains its gracious humanitarian outreach to those who identify as Palestinians, hand-in-hand with Israel’s right to self-defence.
The WCC supporting a one-sided political narrative demands the strong rebuttal: not in my name!
First published on Caldron Pool, 19th February, 2021.
Australian politician, Craig Kelly’s Facebook page has been suspended over at least four quotes he’d posted in February. Each post gave expert opposing viewpoints to the accepted expert narrative over treatments for C0VID-I9.
The Liberal Party member for Hughes told The Australian’s Richard Ferguson that ‘Facebook went through thousands of my posts and only found five that led to the ban.’
Kelly, who isn’t an “anti-vaxxer”, said he “supported the Morrison government’s message on vaccinations,” and that all he is only “advocating for treatments in concert with the vaccine.”
According to The Australian, Facebook declined to comment, but said ‘that social media giant would crack down on any COV1D misinformation on its site;’ [quote] “We don’t allow anyone to share misinformation about C0VID-I9 that could lead to imminent physical harm.” [unquote]
Kelly has been a strong advocate for civil liberties throughout the COV1D-I9 crisis.
He is one of the few politicians with the moxie to tell it like it is. Up until his public confrontation with Labor’s Tanya Plibersek, and a subsequent ‘dressing-down’ by the Prime Minister, Kelly took a strong stand for Australians to have the right to “weigh the evidence” before taking the vaccine.
In a blunt explanation for Kelly’s ban, Rebel News explained that he was “booted” for one week for ‘touting the benefits of hydroxychloroquine.
The Guardian, outlining reasons for the social credit score reduction to Kelly’s page stated that
‘The three posts related to: unproven claims about hydroxychloroquine by professor Dolores Cahill; a profile of professor Thomas Borody in the Spectatorwhich includes advocacy of ivermectin to treat coronavirus; and claims by pathologist Roger Hodkinson that masks are “useless” for children and “paper and fabric masks are simply virtue signalling”.’
In response, Kelly told the Guardian that,
“The points are a legitimate point of view. I’m not posting my opinions; I’m posting the opinions of medical experts. “whether [the views are] right or wrong is a matter of debate, but their views should be debated”.
When asked for comment, Craig Kelly told Caldron Pool that “it was a sad day for free speech and public debate.”
He explained that,
“the four they’ve identified are actually not my opinions but opinions of highly ranked medical professionals, which I’ve put direct links to. In fact, one of them was nothing more than a cut and paste job from a story published in the Spectator magazine, on Australia’s professor Thomas Borody, and how he was suggesting Ivermectin could be an effective treatment against C0VID.”
The minister commented on the leap-before-looking, heavy-handed nature of the ban, stating
“The real danger of this is, Facebook argue, ‘It’s against our Community Standards – it’s dangerous stuff. With the studies that are coming through, it’s very likely in the next couple of weeks that the World Health Organisation will actually recommend Ivermectin, which Borody tried to do six months ago; now that debate has been shut down and over a million and a half people have died.”
Speaking directly about the mounting number of reckless bans, and blocking of reasoned content providing an opposing viewpoint, Kelly added,
“The effect of censoring [of] debate on these early treatments could have possibly been responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people.
So, where we should have been having more open debate and more free debate, shutting down debate is likely to have killed people. Not just one or two people, but probably hundreds of thousands. This is why throughout the last 250 years people have said free speech is so important. This is why people have said, ‘I may not agree with what you say but I’ll fight to my death your right to say it.’”
Cancel Culture’s COV1D-I9 fanatics may have scored a temporary win over Kelly, but in doing so they’ve added to further erosion of civil liberties.
Noting the word, “crackdown” used by Facebook, a better headline here would be:
Fascistbook suspends truth-teller for advocating the right of informed consent.
First published on Caldron Pool, 17th February, 2021.
The second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump has ended in an acquittal.
The charge of ‘incitement of insurrection’ concerned the January 6th security breach in Washington D.C., when a mob participating in a MAGA rally broke from the majority, and forced their way into the Capitol building.
The mob, described as rioters by legacy media, carried out acts of vandalism, which culminated in the tragic deaths of two people.
9News reported that Ashli Babbitt, a female veteran was ‘fatally shot by police’ as she entered the building. In addition, The Guardian reported that Officer Brian Sicknick, died due to head injuries inflicted by Capitol Hill vandals, who are alleged to have struck Sicknick with a fire extinguisher.
Three other people died during the incident, in what 9News referred to in speech marks as “medical emergencies.”
According to The Guardian, 50-year-old Benjamin Phillips, a computer programmer and huge Trump fan, died of a stroke. 55-year-old Kevin Gleeson, died of an ‘apparent heart attack, related to a history of high blood pressure’; and Rossane Boyland, 34, who had a ‘criminal history, including possession and distribution of heroin,’ lost consciousness, due to what 9News alleged was the direct result of being ‘crushed by the crowd.’
The Democrat push to pin the security breach, and subsequent vandalism from both known, and alleged MAGA supporters, on Donald Trump, as “insurrection at the Capitol”, was supported by big government Democrats, big media, big tech and big business.
The Guardian were quick to label the tragic event a ‘planned insurrection,’ joining legacy media’s chorus of buzzwords such as “invasion,” “attack,” and “incitement.”
Joe Biden called it ‘an assault on the citadel of liberty’; and Nancy Pelosi (speaker of the house) – among others – laid the blame on the then sitting President Trump, calling for him to be removed from office.
Silicon Valley joined the assault, using the constructed narrative of “insurrection at the Capitol” as an excuse to boot Trump from their social media platforms; killing off a competitor through the equivalent of a permanent D.O.S (denial of service) attack on Parler; which was justified through the distorted claim that the fervent freedom of speech, social media service, was a hotbed for ‘right-wing extremism.’
The January 6th tragedy involving between 500-800 people was a nexus for Trump’s nemeses.
Four-year-long “hate Trump because love trumps hate” campaigners, got in before a clearer picture emerged, and the dust settled. They called for impeachment, capitalising on the momentum of public confusion and concern.
The following weeks saw Trump’s enemies salivate over the possibility of connecting Trump, and Conservatives to the deaths, security breach, and vandalism.
This involved a ‘new rhetorical framing,’ or ‘rhetorical inflation’:
‘[Where] Trump supporters used to be portrayed as nationalists, as extreme patriots whose desire to “make America great again” was too laudatory of the U.S.A. Now they are being portrayed as insurrectionists and [anti-American jihadist] terrorists who are trying to destroy America.’ – (Gene Veith/Jonathan S. Tobin)
Far-left Democrats are being true to their “whatever it takes to win” promise. It’s a zero-sum game and they know it.
Just like they knew what they were doing when they ‘played an edited video of former President Donald Trump’s speech on January 6, 2020, at the beginning of the impeachment trial on Tuesday, leaving out his call for supporters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” (Breitbart)
Tackling this ‘new rhetorical framing,’ CBN called out the hypocrisy of those citing Trump’s use of the phrase “fight like hell” as proof of incitement to insurrection. Stating that ‘several members of the impeachment team, have used similar rhetoric in the past.’
Such as, but not limited to, ‘Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., as well as Reps. Joe Neguse of Colorado and Eric Swalwell of California, [who’ve all used] “fight like hell” or similar phrasing in their past statements.’ (Fox)
Rand Paul (Rep.Kentucky) used the example of Chuck Schumer’s speech given during the Kavanaugh trial to a mob in front of the Supreme Court, when the leading Democrat said:
“you have unleashed the whirlwind and you will pay the price, and you won’t know what hit you.” – ‘the mob charged the door of the Supreme Court and they tried to tear it down. They stood on top of statues, they were confronting and belligerent.’
Paul, in Trump’s defence then appealed to context, saying,
“The thing [here] is [that] you have to look at the President’s actual words. What did he say? He said go fight. Let your voices be heard, and he said march peacefully and patriotically. How can you twist that into words that incite violence?…I think Democrats if they look in the mirror, they’ve been guilty of much more than they’re accusing Trump of.”
The far-left failing to secure a second impeachment against Donald Trump is a blow to their ‘planned’ “insurrection at the Capitol” narrative (new rhetorical framing).
Stakeholders should take note. This push for the impeachment Trump, on trumped up charges, also shows that the far-left’s libido-dominandi driving the hate-fest for anyone, and anything they deem to be unworthy of an opinion, is far from over.
Cancel culture is on full display here.
Breaking down the votes for, and against impeachment, The ABC revealed a well-organised (“pre-planned?”) co-ordinated approach from the Left, with some on the Right supporting the motion (seven in total).
The Left were unanimous. ‘Senators voted 57-43 not guilty on the charge of incitement of insurrection’, which is 10 numbers below the 67 ‘required to convict’ Trump.
The far-left’s real loss here, is the failure of cancel culture to cancel out Donald Trump’s chances of running for President again in 2024. Which was, according to a wise American friend of mine, “the whole reason for the push for impeachment in the first place.”
The far-left engaging in ‘rhetorical inflation’; the twisting of words, facts, and events, in order to carve out a self-serving narrative, is a greater threat to Constitutional Democracy, and civil liberties, than an imperfect man, who for four years served for next to no pay, in the office of President, but sometimes posted mean tweets to his personal Twitter account.
Trump’s second impeachment trial was a fake charge, based on fake news.
I stand by my statements made earlier this year: The real oppressors are masquerading as the oppressed. Cancel culture is fascism proper.
First published on Caldron Pool, 16th February 2021.
Without a doubt, interference in the United States election was a four-year long campaign to manufacture the 2020 election result, on a ‘whatever it takes’ to payback Trump for dethroning Hilary Clinton basis.
The framework of debate, if debating about 2020 electoral procedures and its outcome were allowed, includes the relationship between interference in the election, and electoral fraud.
Being convinced there was election interference, doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing that there was widespread electoral fraud.
MyPillow’s CEO, Mike Lindell’s now banned 2 hr exposition ‘Absolute Proof’ takes this approach, but lands squarely on the conclusion that the election result was ‘the biggest cyber attack in history’ involving both foreign and domestic players.
‘Absolute Proof’ is a “paper or plastic” critique of electronic voting systems. It seeks to show how easy it is for ‘votes [to be] wiped out and replaced’ through malware programs like ‘Qsnatch.’
Lindell’s argument draws from professional assessments, and forensic analysis, which establishes the plausibility, intent and technological process that can be used to manufacture an election result.
Acknowledging assurances from organisations like Dominion, (and others) regarding the safety and security of their product, Lindell unpacks how, despite those assurances, ‘massive security vulnerabilities’ compromise electronic voting systems, and make them susceptible to interference, through digital manipulation from outside forces.
Lindell’s questions come about because of ‘deviations in the count [that] didn’t make sense’, claims that the CCP have a known relationship with Dominion (see NBC’s article from 19th Dec. 2019 supporting this), right up to ‘having access to Dominion code,’ and the fact that questions like his are met a ‘solid wall of resistance. With those asking them told to “leave it alone.”
Fortifying this is the en masse, Social Media banning of Mike Lindell. Cancel Culture’s equivalent of a public beheading.
All of it removed from the eye of the public by Big Tech, because it questions the authorised version of events, handed down from what the NY Times called: ‘a group of federal, state and local election officials [who’ve] said “there is no evidence” any voting systems were compromised.’
Lindell’s crimes? Supporting President Donald Trump, and challenging the culture of silence about electoral procedures, and the election.
Questioning that is justified, in the context of Time Magazine gloating that a cabal was involved in manufacturing the 2020 election outcome, and how these revelations infer that this cabal was the Deus Ex Machina Biden needed to win against Donald Trump.
One of Lindell’s strongest points comes from Allied Security Operations Group’s (ASOG) investigation (Transcript: Scribd) into election fraud. Specifically, Dominion equipment in Antrum County.
ASOG’s high calibre report was rejected without a whole lot of due process.
The questions being asked were dismissed as a Right-Wing conspiracy theory, and their evidence quickly discounted as being ‘false’ and ‘misleading.’
MSN citing, John Poulos, the CEO of Dominion called ASOG, a “biased, non-independent organization.” Backing ‘assertions from Michigan State officials’ about election integrity, while dismissing ASOG, because they have ‘no apparent expertise in election administration and technology. Their work is limited to the previous release and amplification of other false information and fake documents.’
ASOG was dismissed under the blanket narrative that ‘the qualifications of those who authored the report are suspect, with no evidence or credentials provided to back up their “expertise.” (Sec. of State, Michigan Jocelyn Benson)
Factcheck.org (who are financially supported by Google and Facebook, among others) also rebutted the ASOG report in an “analysis” written by U.S Election Assistance, Government employee, Ryan Macias.
He also claimed that “the majority of the findings are false and misleading due to the fact that the entities reviewing the system lack knowledge and expertise in election technology.”
Macias follows this up with an offering of tribute to the only election narrative allowed, concluding: “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”
It should be acknowledged that,
a) Macias, by all appearances, a career bureaucrat, worked with the Californian Sec. of State’s office ‘shaping the voting system and approval process in California’, 10 years before joining the U.S E.A.C in 2016.
b) has an operations management connection to Dominion.
c) appears to have analysed the ASOG report, not the evidence.
Where ASOG visited ‘Antrim County twice and examined Dominion Voting Systems’, Macias admits: ‘I have not had access to the Antrim County voting equipment, or any voting equipment in the State of Michigan.’
Exhibited by his rebuttal’s convenient dismissal of the ASOG report as ‘preposterous,’ based solely on a flimsy appeal to authority, and the approved narrative.
Macias primarily attacking ASOG, not the report, and his admission of not having done the groundwork ASOG did, works against his accusations of ASOG “bias”, opening up questions about bias of his own.
Add to this, the bandwagon genetic fallacy Macias appeals to in order to discount ASOG’s findings.
Done so on the grounds that ASOG lacks inside knowledge, and electronic expertise; and are only ‘regurgitating unsubstantiated claims of [so-called right-wing] misinformation and disinformation.’
From which Macias (much like Michigan State Democrats, as linked above) concludes ASOG’s findings can’t be trusted, or given serious consideration.
ASOG’s findings aren’t imagined.
What is imagined is Macias’ Fact Check credibility. All he’s done is regurgitate the official Michigan Democrat party-line.
Does Lindell’s ‘Absolute Proof’ provide absolute proof of potential election interferance?
Yes. Move past the opinions, and what Lindell does is pose a series facts and questons. Unlike the suppression of opposing viewpoints from far-left ministry of propaganda “fact-checkers”, Lindell gives the facts a platform, leaving the viewer to decide.
Weighing some of the unadulterated information Lindell presents, I’m more convinced, than I was, that actual election fraud took place. Allbeit carried on a well-hidden, covert micro-scale, which, when tallied gave Biden that Deus Ex Machina, dubious, winning spike.
With a long list of Leftist meltdowns and tantrums since 2016, alongside Time Magazine’s confession, and Lindell’s expositional; election interferance and the possibility of electoral fraud, can’t be ruled-out as a ‘right-wing conspiracy.’
Attach the facism proper tendencies of the Left,
1. legacy media’s hyped-up “insurrection at the Capitol” narrative.
All of this leaves no doubt in my mind that the 2020 election was interfered with, and that this inteferance in the Democratic process was probably just the beginning of a much larger “coup” orchestrated by the far-left to punish and subdue, an unsuspecting public, and their political opponents.
In this sense, was Biden’s election was the real insurrection?
With the evidence, intent and censoring of questions, I can see why people moved from questions about electoral interferance towards conclusions about electoral fraud.
As Terry Turchie, former FBI Counter Terrorism division, told Lindell:
“the purpose of any intelligence operation of this magnitude is to conceal itself, and to be so hard to figure out that by the time you get to the conclusion, it’s too late.”
‘Absolute Proof’ is no smoking gun.
This said, Lindell hits a raw nerve.
Huffpost accused Lindell of ‘going off the rails’, YouTube deletedthe video, and Twitter booted him, locking out both his personal and business accounts – without due process.
The Leftist hegemon’s demonisinig censorship of him, his argument, evidence and video infer that Lindell’s ‘Absolute Proof’ shines a light, where the Left don’t want light to shine.
Note that the Michigan A.G is pushing to steal the livelihoods of lawyers who failed to fail in, line up and jackboot march in unison.
With the quick suppression of anyone seeking a true and independent anaylsis of the evidence, such as JSOG presented back in January; combined with a Leftist army of so-called “Fact-Checkers” pushing a party-line, the Left’s anti-liberal behaviour shows that Lindell’s ‘Absolute Proof’ carries serious weight.
Lindell makes a good case.
Even without his conclusions, drawn from a variety of sources and evidence about Democrat election interferance, there’s also a ton of incriminating circumstantial evidence; a varifiable signpost proving that Leftist’s were not only capable of manufacturing the outcome of the 2020 election, but had probable cause, and acted with intent to do so.
Such as statements of intent, that ‘they’d do whatever it takes to remove Donald Trump from office.’
This, along with left-wing Russian collusion conspiracy theories, wall-to-wall demonstrations, and violent demonisations of the Trump administration.
In addition, we have Time magazine’s Molly Ball(a Nancy Pelosi biographer)who’s confessed to the existence of
‘a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.’
Ball’s admissions are bold, and her justifications pivot on the hope that no one will care enough to notice the dishonest, type ‘a’ leftist sleight of hand abuse of language, justifying interference (even perhaps electoral fraud) as not ‘rigging the election’, but ‘fortifying’ it.
Just as, “ALL white people are racist, is anti-racism”, “abortion is healthcare”, “love is love”, “men can be women”, “Trump is Hitler”, “socialism has never been properly tried,” “Same-sex marriage is about equality,” and ‘Antifa’s fascist tactics is “anti-fascism.”
Joining the manipulative chorus of Leftist slogans, and falsehoods, is the four year long, dark Democrat campaign of fear and division, culiminating in the conditioning of the electorate to “vote for Biden, or face certain death at the hands of Covid, Climate Change, Rascists and Nazis.”
As Mark Powell expressed this week in response to Time magazine,
‘So, are we truly supposed to believe that the ultimate goal of the polyamorous relationship between Big-Media, Big-Tech™ and Big Business™ was the protection of our democratic freedoms? Because, if so, then someone better quickly inform The New York Post whose bombshell expose article on Hunter Biden’s laptop was more censored than a communist cultivated coronavirus.’
The zero-sum dishonest game from the Left, that blurs distinctions, up-ends definitions, interferes in elections, and redefines truth as opinion, makes ‘Absolute Proof’ worth the time and effort.
Eat the fish, spit out the bones.
First published on Caldron Pool, 11th February, 2021.
‘The 46th potus is more than the saviour of the Union… He’s a true-blue style icon too.’
The GQ “Grooming director” gave a glowing portrayal of the 46th President.
Complete with the praise, adulation and hagiography, you’d expect from a leftist media starry-eyed by their glorious leader, and drunk on the euphoric sense that they now not only own you, but have absolute control over your very existence.
Broeke’s “woke” rendition of the many sides of Biden, looks like a cheap Communist Chinese commercial advertising a knock-off Barbie range they’d stolen from Mattel’s design floor.
So much so, that if GQ hadn’t given it a blue tick approval by posting it to their Instagram page, anyone seeing this stuff on social media would think the geniuses at the double B (Babylon Bee) had birthed it.
GQ went all out. With high gloss, a professional set, with some serious attention to detail; right down to Biden’s correct positioning of the A-minor chord on the guitar.
Broeke’s article has all the buzzwords one would expect to see written on posters praising Dictators. The kind we see in video games like Just Cause 3, or Ghost Recon, factual copies of real life examples found in Saddam’s Iraq, Islamist Iran, Cuba, China, North Korea, Soviet Russia, Venezuela, and potentially, the new Democrat headquarters recently relocated to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
GQ’s praise ticks all the propaganda boxes.
From noting the ‘no surprises, designed by Ralph Lauren inauguration outfit’ to ‘it was expensively stitched demonstration of both his dependability and stability, acting as a cypher for his unimpeachable patriotism.’ [!!!]
Also, not surprising is GQ dumping some smug bitchiness on Trump. Stating that their celebration of the new president was also a celebration of the fact:
‘we no longer need to look at the giant orange buffoon in his two-legged body bags day in, day out.’
This coincided with the snarky GQ “Grooming director” referring to Trump as a ‘clown’, an ‘overinflated orange rodeo clown,’ and implying that Trump was in the list of ‘dead Presidents being carried around in Biden’s pocket.’
If you’re wondering about whether fat shaming the “former” President breaches Cultural Marxist “hate-speech” rules you’d be right to do so.
The problem there, of course, is that the Intersectionality yardstick only applies Cancel Culture to those pushed into the “oppressor” category by the so-called “oppressed” – “you are what they say you are, agree or else!” means, they can be what they say they’re against, because “it’s never wrong” when the Left does it, it’s just “never properly been tried before.”
Broeke isn’t even trying to be funny, and the juvenile smack-talk only bolsters this observation.
Let’s call a spade a spade.
GQ calling Biden ‘more than a Saviour’, while pouring scorn on Trump, is fascism proper.
GQ isn’t winning graciously.
This fascism proper comes further into focus, when you realise that this photoshoot, was photoshopped.
To quote Broeke,
‘we thought we’d give Biden the all-American makeover of his (but really our) dreams.’
What follows is a series of images showing Biden dressed in a range of clothes, in a range of settings, alongside glowing comparisons with Benjamin Franklin, JFK, James Dean, Billy the Kid, and Ennis Del Mar.
It should send a chill down the spines of every genuinely concerned keyboard warrior who fell in line, and goose stepped in time with the attempts to falsely paint Donald Trump as a racist, Nazi and/or Hitler.
There are enough trimmings here to make Leni Riefenstahl smile, and Moa, Pol-Pot, Stalin and Goebbels green with envy.
If I’ve read GQ right, Biden’s inauguration was a coronation.
This is everything you’d expect from the 47-year career politician, who’s addiction to executive orders, and ‘vetted for loyalty’ standing army now garrisoned in Washington D.C, leaves Donald Trump’s so-called “fascism” in the dust.
Quality control at GQ, must be on COVID-19 Wuhan Virus sabbatical.
First Published on Caldron Pool, 9th February, 2021.
Like Iron Maiden’s pro-life, Cold War protest song, ‘2 Minutes to Midnight’, truth bombs from Independent Canadian rap artist, Tom MacDonald’s latest release, ‘Fake Woke’ epitomise a truism: sometimes truth-affirming criticism comes from the most unexpected of places.
Instead of jumping ship to ride the go-with-the-flow anti-Trump, Joebama-is-the-messiah crowd, MacDonald has gone head-to-head with the culture of fear, lies and division, that keeps the far-Left in positions of power, and helped Democrats take the Presidency.
MacDonald, acknowledging cancel culture – which arrests freedom of speech by gagging anyone speaking truths that don’t affirm or confirm to the far-Left’s ideological party-line – wrote in a tweet on the 13th of January,
‘I don’t even know if I can release any of the new music I had planned to start the year with. The risk of getting deleted/banned/removed from platforms is REAL. I’m seeing it happen to dozens of people every day.’
The song was released on January 29th. Since then, it’s flown under the radar of Big Tech censorship, and their trigger-happy, fall-in, line-up, goose step in unison, salute or else, thought police. This may change as the song’s popularity continues to explode.
So far, the only real controversy has been over MacDonald’s opening lyrics referring to Eminem and Cardi-B as hypocrites and poor role models. With Hiphop24x7, being the only Rap affiliated site so far to cover it in context, albeit briefly.
According to Popvortex, the self-released single is the current number 1 song on itunes.
However, this polling position appears to depend on where you look.
‘Fake Woke’ is listed nowhere on the Apple Web Top 100, but in the actual itunes store it’s sitting at number 17; with over 3 million views on YouTube since its release on YT four days ago.
Kristin Smith’s review for PluggedIn (Focus on the Family’s online entertainment, culture and society news site) noted that the song’s ‘extremely controversial’ lyrical content comes from how the lyrics contrast with Hollywood, the music world, and “progressive” legacy media’s own bigotry.
This is exhibited by the far-Left’s oppressive intolerance towards anyone with a different opinion, or opposing viewpoint.
As per Caldron Pool editor, Ben Davis’ apt observation,
‘Bigotry is NOT refusal to affirm the opinions of the day. Bigotry is “intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself.” (Oxford)
With ‘Fake Woke’ MacDonald has good reason for concern.
Humourless Cultural Marxists abusing their positions of power and perma banning whatever doesn’t suit them, or support their manipulative, forced conformity to new cultural laws, is now standard practice.
As the song states:
‘Cancel culture runs the world now, the planet went crazy Label everything we say as homophobic or racist If you’re white, then you’re privileged, guilty by association. They never freed the slaves, they realized that they don’t need the chains. They gave us tiny screens; we think we free ’cause we can’t see the cage. They knew that race war would be the game they need to play. For people to pick teams, they use the media to feed the flame.’
MacDonald isn’t new to controversy. His August 2020, ‘People So Stupid’ took aim at the mislabelling of heterosexual men as homophobic, because they refuse to date transgender “women”, perpetual victimhood, and abortion.
‘Fake Woke’ hits a similar vein, challenging Black Lives Matter, and defund the police; putting a mirror up to the face of politicians (most often on the Left) who preach anti-racism, but need racism to keep votes, and campaign dollars rolling in:
‘Segregation ended, that’s a lie in itself That was a strategy to make us think they were tryin’ to help They knew that racism was hot if they designed it to sell We buy up every single box and divide us ourselves.’
Adding to this, MacDonald slams the slaying of truth, with specific reference to the slaughter of the Hebraic word “Amen” on the altar of radical feminist wokeness,
‘Censoring the facts turns our children into idiots They claim it’s for our safety, I’ll tell you what it really is Removing information that empowers all the citizens The truth doesn’t damage points of view that are legitimate They’re tryna change amen to a-men and women How’d we let ’em make praying a microaggression? Instead of asking God for the strength to keep winnin’ We cheat to get ahead, and then we ask Him for forgiveness.’
“I just thought that it’s important to point some fingers at the hypocrisy and the way the world is changing; not for the better…People have become allergic to opinions in North America in these last five years, and pretty soon they’re gonna cancel everything.”
As I wrote last year. The fight isn’t left vs. right, black vs. white, it’s truth vs. falsehood.
First published on Caldron Pool, 4th February, 2021.
The planned Hollywood Union show trial of Donald Trump was extinguished after the former President, woke to the fake woke people’s court nonsense, headed them off at the pass.
Trump’s response? Resign.
By doing so he effectively nullified Hollywood’s self-serving attempt at using its Union arm to charge, and convict him (as far as it’s within their power to do so) with crimes he never committed.
USA Today reported that President Trump ‘resigned from SAG-AFTRA after facing expulsion from the actors’ guild’ for his alleged “incitement” of riots on January 6th.
As noted, ‘on January 19th, the Screen Actors Guild board voted “overwhelmingly” that there is probable cause’ in regards to ‘Trump violating its guidelines for membership.’
USA Today added that ‘the charges are for Trump’s [alleged] role in the Capitol riot, and [again, allegedly] sustaining a reckless campaign of misinformation aimed at discrediting and ultimately threatening the safety of “journalists”, many of whom are SAG-AFTRA members.’ (parentheses mine).
The NY Times called the move a ‘disciplinary hearing’ then repeatedly referred to the former President as ‘Mr. Trump, a businessman.’
According to the NYT, SAG-AFTRA has confirmed the move, with the Union President stating,
“Donald Trump attacked the values that this union holds most sacred — democracy, truth, respect for our fellow Americans of all races and faiths, and the sanctity of the free press […] there’s a straight line from his wanton disregard for the truth to the attacks on journalists perpetrated by his followers.”
Rolling Stone rightly called the hearing an attempt to ‘banish Trump,’ and included Hollywood’s simple ‘thank you’ reply to his resignation.
In the official resignation letter Trump labelled the Union’s move a ‘blatant attempt at free media attention to distract’ [people] from lawsuits against the Union such as the group lead by Ed Asner. Who, according to Hollywood Reporter, are suing the ‘SAG-AFTRA Health Fund and its board of trustees for allegedly breaching their fiduciary duties…Actors say they’ve been abandoned by their guild, and are losing their health coverage.’
The resignation letter is classic Trump; a reminder of why we “the-deplorable-little-people”, which includes 75 million+ Americans, and many more worldwide, still respect the imperfect man’s steadfast grit and love for his country, despite the being the primary target of irrational hate from an all-too-powerful, and smug elitist caste.
Trump’s move also disarms far-Left Democrats from using any Hollywood verdict of ‘guilty as charged’, ‘off with his head’ exile, as a precedent, or proof of his guilt, in its own potential State sponsored criminal [show] trial.
Despite Biden’s mandated ‘healing and unity’, many Democrats have made it clear that they’re not through with trying to punish the man who dethroned the Clintons, and helped awaken the world to the free-pass handed to powerful allies in Hollywood. (E.g.: Weinstien; Epstein et.al)
It’s the kind of trial that’d make Nazi, people’s court judge Roland Freisler jump with whatever is the fascist equivalent of joy.
Alongside an over-excited Goebbels ready, with pen and paper, to spin the “historic” and “unprecedented” act of “social justice” quelling “dangerous” hate-speech from individuals deemed enemies of the Reich.
Of course, Hollywood’s relationship with Nazism borderlines morbid obsession. There’s a reason why we see few movies portraying the war crimes, and human rights abuses from other countries under Socialist rule.
It’s worth noting that Hollywood’s Anti-Nazi league (later run by Communists, once they booted Christians) [i] practised a policy of neutrality, courting the Third Reich and its cinema market.
Let’s not forget that the league went silent in their opposition to Nazism, when Soviets signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression pact with the Nazis, which saw the Nazis and Communists tear apart Poland, and enslave the Polish people.
Hand-in-hand, both Nazi and Communist, socialists one and the same, mined Poland to satiate the wolf (Nazi) and the bears’ (Bolshevik) socialist empire building, blood lust. [ii]
After four years of anti-Trump hysteria, Hollywood’s obsession with Nazism begins to look a lot more like admiration.
If the attempt to try Donald Trump reveals anything, it’s not Hollywood’s anti-Nazism, it’s Hollywood’s fascination with fascism.
As Thomas Doherty observed,
‘In the digital age, the collection and repackaging of images of the Nazis remains a growth industry, sustaining documentary features, action films, and cable channels.’ (Hollywood & Hitler, p.371)
It’s fair then to ask:
Do the dollars attached to Hollywood’s obsession with the Nazi worldview mean that Hollywood is essentially marketing Nazism?
Does this explain why they a) don’t speak about the just-as-equal evils of socialism, and b) are quick to spread alarmism about a so-called “far-right extremist” crisis?
Nazism and Communism are two wings on the same vicious bird.
It’s a shame that the subjective bias of Hollywood has held them back from speaking this truth to power.
References:
[i] The Communist beachhead in Hollywood caused a split, which created the far-left’s Popular Front, and the Catholic, National League of Decency (formed in 1934).
Doherty, T. 2013 Hollywood & Hitler: 1933-1939 Columbia University Press
First published on Caldron Pool, 6th February, 2021.
Conflating Donald Trump “losing” the 2020 election with Conservatives, and their allies [i], losing the Culture War is a mistake.
Just as unsteady is the conclusion that the modern Conservative position is now irrelevant; not the majority view in the West, or that “progressive” elites have categorically won their Culture War.
This mistake is being made by many on the far-Left, who are overjoyed with the feeling of total domination; enlivened by the prospect of a Stalin-style purging of political opposition; buoyed by a false sense of security, and contempt, stemming from what is being played out as a total victory.
It’s a falsehood that shouldn’t be echoed by Conservatives and those not aligned with the Left’s extremist ideological hegemony.
It’s a false conclusion that denies key variables.
Such as the collective impact of four years of Leftist tantrum throwing. Including among other things, division, threats, and intimidation. Their war-like strategy of attrition. The wearing down of the masses through a blitzkrieg of outrage, blame and false witness, carried out against Conservatives because many on the Left couldn’t handle the legitimate 2016 election outcome.
It denies context.
Such as the universal impact of the COVID-19 Wuhan virus, mass destruction caused by Marxist Black Lives Matter riots, and the Biden-Harris campaign of fear: “vote for me, or face certain death at the hands of COVID, “Climate change”, Nazis and racists.”
Distance sharpens perspective.
Step back for a bit, recalibrate and you’ll see that today’s conservative movement isn’t dead. It’s not even on life support, but there are improvements that need to be made.
Here’s one area where I think this applies.
While 95% competition and only 5% cooperation persists among conservatives and their allies, they will remain a house divided; doomed to struggle in the Culture War forced onto society by the far-left.
As opposed to excessive self-promotion, and the holding back of support for fear of losing an audience to any “competition”, unity in purpose demands creative cooperation.
The “I’ll let you share my stuff, but be damned if I’m going to do the same for you” has to go.
More cooperation and less competition amongst those within replacement media is the primary means through which Conservatives, and their allies, will overcome the leftist hegemony’s marginalisation, and monopolisation of the masses.
Cooperation and less competition counter the attempt from the far-Left to suffocate all means of communicating reasoned opposing viewpoints, which includes the Conservative Biblical Christian message.
Take as a shining example PragerU’s relationship with The Daily Wire, BLEXIT, and the WalkAway movement. A partnership, not always in agreement, but a partnership nonetheless that accounts for a good portion of their success.
It boggles the mind that other groups aren’t borrowing from their leadership in this area. Choosing instead to work against, rather than with those who on the same team.
Healthy competition has its place, but when that competition compromises cooperation, we’re no longer talking about teamwork, we’re talking about friendly fire, and causalities of war.
The adage there is no “I” in team pulls its own weight on the battlefield of ideas.
Conservatives in media need more of a ministry approach, less of an industry approach. More willingness to work with, rather than against each other. Less suspicion over motive, and more momentum in communicating the message.
This is what we aim for at Caldron Pool.
We’re aiming high, and are praying that others, particularly our army of dedicated readers, and Australia’s replacement media industry will be aiming towards as well.
It’s a mistake to view the Biden Presidency as the death of the Conservative movement.
If the first weeks of the Biden administration are anything to go by, the far-Left overplaying their hand is inevitable.
There’s still work to be done.
Support the alternative.
Build up a replacement media that will challenge the hypnotic newspeak of legacy media, and the 24/7 manipulative propaganda opiate keeping the masses under their thumb through disaster porn.
Connor Court Publishing’s Fundamental Rights in the Age of Covid-19, edited by Augusto Zimmermann and Joshua Forrester, is a formal Classical Liberal rebuke of totalitarian anti-COVID-19 prohibitions.
Its chief criticism is against the blatant absence of any steadfast verbal or visual confirmation (from most of our elected representatives) affirming a desire for the dogged preservation of civil liberties. Reassurances which should have gone hand-in-hand with most daily briefings about Government initiatives aimed at protecting citizens from the COVID-19 Wuhan Virus, but didn’t.
This lack of passion for the conservation of civil liberties (even from so-called Conservatives or Christians in government) justifies the kind of necessary criticisms found in Fundamental Rights in the Age of COVID-19. One such being the danger of despotic Government’s undermining constitutional law, and placing citizens at risk of Governmental abuses of power by politicians arbitrarily granting themselves the right to act outside the Constitution.
The protection of civil liberties is a debate worth having.
Zimmermann & Forrester’s readable compendium achieves this and more.
Beginning with Rex Adhar’s cost to benefit analysis of lockdowns balancing the economic argument with the medical. His charge that elected representatives have ‘abdicated political decision-making to scientists’ is evidenced by ‘rushed COVID-19 laws’ was pointed. The bottom line is that the disproportionate responses to COVID-19 are likely to create greater casualties than the virus itself.
James Allan rightly states that many of the people advocating for lockdowns weren’t affected by them; and that ‘one of the effects’ of following the Communist Chinese Party’s lockdown fanaticism, was the ‘turning of law enforcement in an arm of the nanny state’ (p.43).
Noting in contrast to many Western nations adopting the CCP’s dehumanising Communist meat-grinder, that Taiwan (p.43) and Sweden’s response worked, and they ‘didn’t drive a truck through civil liberties’ (p.46 & 47) in order to do so. All for a virus ‘nowhere near The Spanish Flu’ in terms of ‘lethality and seriousness.’ (p.44).
As Morgan Begg argues, the virus has been exploited by bureaucrats, with ‘many of the isolation and social distancing rules going beyond what should be required under the guidelines’ (p.69). The ‘disproportionate response’ exposes citizens to ‘structural flaws in [COVID] legislation’ (p. 74) that allows governments (particularly Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews) to rule via emergency powers without accountability.
David Flint’s essay in chapter 5 is on par with Adhar’s ‘abdication’ argument. Governments let [helpful, but also unreliable] computer modelling rule the day (p.83). [i]
Another highlight is Anthony Gray’s distinction between whether a law is ‘prohibitive’ of foundational rights (Constitution) or ‘protecting’ those foundational rights, applied when testing laws against the constitution. For Gray Western Australia’s border closure offends Section 92 of the Australian Constitution.
Expanding a little bit in this direction, Polish contributors, Kudla and Blicharz see the marginalisation of Christians, and Churches as “non-essential” being the result of bureaucrats exploiting COVID-19, as well as ‘the collision of two fundamental rights: the right to practice one’s religion and the right to protect one’s life’ (p.144).
While condemning the marginalising of Christians under COVID-19 “protections” the authors contrasted Poland’s Church and State cooperative approach with the dehumanising, “non-essential” quota applied to the Church by most Western nations (p.159).
In other words, while Pastors and Christians were told that 2,000 years of care and charitable service was “not essential”, Polish (and even Italian) authorities recognised that Pastoral Care is an essential service.
While there are some overlaps, Zimmermann and Forrester’s careful ordering of well referenced essays creates an interwoven text. It all flows in an engaging, consistent and logical direction.
Rocco Loiacono’s criticisms of mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, and Government overreach, pivot on the principle of the ‘informed consent’ of the governed. For him 2020 saw the rise of ‘elected dictatorships…aided and abetted by a now all-powerful health bureaucracy’ that tends to ignore ‘frontline medical advice, preferring instead to hide behind [a] cadre of unelected bureaucrats, and state of emergency’ powers (pp.165 & 171).
The chapter is punchy, includes Big Tech’s ban on Doctors like Simone Gold, advocates for HCQ, and concludes with an appeal against rapid rollouts, when herd immunity still can’t be ruled out, with reference to the ‘horrible effects of thalidomide, a sedative given to pregnant women in the 1950’s and 1960’ precedent: ‘just because we are assured something is safe, or legal, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is’ (p.180).
Closing out the book, Gabriel Moens, with whom Jacques Ellul would agree (see Technological Society & Propaganda), talks about Government’s manipulative use of behavioural science (Obama in particular p.192), remarking that Government ‘intervention should be a last resort, not a reflex instinct’ (p.193). [ii]
The well-read, and prolific, Bill Muehlenberg presents a theological ‘petition, flight, and as a last resort, fight’ push back against the surrender of religious freedoms to what is essentially leftist Gnosticism (and exceptionalism).
Understood as such through Thomas Sowell’s description of ‘the exaltation of the anointed above others’ (p.220) – and I’d add Eric Voegelin’s ‘Science, Politics and Gnosticism’. The (conservative) sinner saved by grace ridiculed by the Übermensch “victim” class: sinless (leftists) saved by special knowledge.
As was witnessed in Michigan (Gov. Gretchen Esther Whitmer, U.S) and Victoria (Premier Daniel Andrews, Aust.) when these Leftist bureaucrats approved fiats granting Leftists the right of protest, while denying other community groups that same right; often through police intimidation, encouraging neighbour to denounce neighbour, arbitrary arrest, and cost prohibitive fines.
Recall how Black Lives Matter, and anti-Australia “Invasion Day” protests went unopposed, but anti-lockdown protesters and unity preaching patriots were dehumanised as “Grandmother killers”, banned, blocked or defamed by celebrities and the legacy media as selfish deplorables.
While good, Monika Nagel’s defence of civil liberties (Chpt.11) through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the good and bad of Globalisation, and the purpose of fundamental rights, was unanchored; too existential. It lacked transcendent; concrete, objective ground.
The only protection of fundamental rights comes from the commanded order as revealed by God through His self-revealing in time and space, through Covenant and Christ: God gives us those rights, good government recognises, and protects those rights. It doesn’t make themselves the source of them or the determiners of good and evil.
As has been said, man over-Lord is man overboard. Anything else displaces the Logos from His rightful place, positioning man-made power structures to rule, tyrannically, instead.
Further along, Johnny Sakr’s use of Luis de Molina’s theological argument in respect to the relationship between Divine Sovereignty and creaturely freedom, seems overly verbose.
Though, Sakr’s end point linking up Molina’s theory with a “where is God in all this” question is well worth the effort. From God’s freedom, comes our freedom, and all the responsibility it infers.
Navigating both fatalism and open theism, Molina’s description of God’s Providential activity in the life of humanity as ‘strong actualisation and weak actualisation’ can also be read as Calvin’s distinction between ‘God doing and God allowing”, Karl Barth’s ‘God’s free, Divine Lordship and the invitation for participation given to His Creature as Covenant partners.’
As I have come to express it:
Not all suffering comes from God, but God works through all suffering. Those in Christ are not free from suffering, but are free in their suffering.
Steven Samson’s appeal to history, predominately the act of ‘interposition’ as just protections applied by just protectors against despotism, whether it be a Monarchy, Democracy or Republic, joins up with Muehlenberg’s argument.
Samson’s chapter is a fine read. In it pushes towards the conclusion that COVID-19 counter-measures were blurring, if not being used to abolish a separation of powers by merging the judicial, executive and legislative tiers into one politically aligned body.
William Wagner later calls this: ‘Governance by Decree.’
For Wagner COVID-19 reveals an erosion of fundamental rights as granted by foundational laws. ‘Decades of judicial activism diabolically evolve constitutional law, enabling State Governments to justify their infringements, emboldening them to govern despotically.’ Consequently, we see ‘an activist judiciary enabling Executive tyranny’ (p.351)
Wagner amplifies Samson’s,
‘which will prevail: politics – the art of persuasion and consensus-building – or despotism – the coercion of surrender and acquiescence? ‘days of reckoning are upon us.’ (p.338)
In sum, Fundamental Rights in the Age of COVID-19 asks and seeks to answer two main questions from a Classical Liberal perspective:
Where are the sunset clauses for Totalitarian anti-Covid-19 measures?
Why are our politicians not standing up for the protection of civil liberties, with as much gusto as they are protecting people from a pandemic?
There are syntax errors and some spelling issues, making the exceptional body of work look rushed.
I also think the limited number of references engaging with leftist academics might work against the book; opening it up to asinine accusations of confirmation bias. The Spectator and The Australian are linked to frequently.
Overall, Zimmermann and Forrester’s book is a readable compendium, full of uncomfortable truths that we need to adjust our ears to hear.
The slack approach from politicians in protecting civil liberties; the ease at which people have been willing to hand over total control to Government, not just without question, but with thunderous applause, lets an unelected bureaucratic caste lead our us, and our elected representatives around by the nose. We shouldn’t be letting such apathy and compromise slide.
COVID-19 prohibitions on fundamental rights are an atrocious betrayal of constitutional protections.
This isn’t justice and liberty. It’s fascism proper – make-up on a muddy pig.
In the words of Anglican theologian John Stott,
‘…the one thing a totalitarian regime cannot endure is to be refused the total allegiance which it coverts.’ [iii]
[i] This ‘abdication’ is also evidenced by how the ‘Australian government ignore[d] world’s best practice, that of Taiwan, which was available at the time when relevant decisions were being taken’ (p.79). Reasons for this might include the fact that the CCP has ‘long made it clear that Taiwan is to be treated like a pariah’ (p.80).
[ii] In sum, “never waste a crisis” can be translated: disaster porn is a drug and they know how to use it.
[iii] Stott, J. 1992, Contemporary Christian, Christ & His Cross (p.67)
First published on Caldron Pool, 31st January, 2021.
Last November the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison (LNP-Cook) gave a ‘UK Policy Exchange Virtual Address.’
As out of place as it sounds in a virtual setting, the virtual audience was treated to a traditional owners’ acknowledgement, followed by thanks to any members from the Australian Defence Force who might have been watching.
Morrison commended Boris Johnson on his ‘global ambitions for Britain’ which include economic development, and newly opened post-Brexit trade avenues. The P.M talked up his connections with his British counter-part, and made special note of Australia’s longstanding relationship with the United Kingdom.
Among the list of acknowledgements and praise, Morrison also mentioned values both he, and Johnson share.
Paradoxically placing ‘Liberal-Conservative traditions’ alongside restrictive policies that conform to Australia’s ‘emissions reductions’ and the ‘global climate change agenda.’
After citing the Treaty of Westphalia, and Hugo Grotius’ prison work ‘The Rights of War and Peace’, Morrison, in quarantine after a state visit to Japan, inadvertently compared quarantine with imprisonment.
The P.M stating, ‘Grotius wrote most of the book while imprisoned in the Loevestein Castle…Given that I join you today from quarantine isolation… I hope my own isolation will be nearly as productive.’
From there Scott Morrison gave a defence of nation-states, as ‘building blocks of an international order’; a ‘community of nations built around common understanding of international law.’
That ‘nation-states mattered [at the time of the Westphalia Treaty] and they matter now.’
The ‘key point’ being that ‘the collective efforts of like-minded nation-states can make a difference.’
This ‘society of sovereign states’ hold international institutions accountable; ‘especially true for liberal democratic states, where no authority can ever rise higher than the people who elect their own governments.’
The Prime Minister moved to applaud the soft-capitalist policies of China’s ruling Communist Party. Stating that ‘no country has pulled more people out of poverty than China. And [that] Australia is pleased to have played our role in the economic emancipation of millions of Chinese through the development of the Chinese economy.’
Extending an undeserved, but gracious olive branch to the CCP, Morrison declared
‘Australia desires an open, transparent and mutually beneficial relationship with China as our largest trading partner, where there are strong people-to-people ties, complementary economies and a shared interest especially in regional development and wellbeing, particularly in the emerging economies of Southeast Asia.
Equally we are absolutely committed to our enduring alliance with the United States, anchored in our shared worldview, liberal democratic values and market-based economic model.’
Qualifying the above olive branch with a subtle rebuttal of the CCP’s year-long one-sided, punitive trade-war with Australia, Morrison pointed to Australia’s national interest, saying, Australia will not be pushed by polarisation into making a choice between two powers, who seem to forget that Australia is a sovereign state in its own right – ‘at all times, we must be true to our values and the protection of our own sovereignty.’
Closing with a rejection of those using COVID-19 as a trojan horse to impose ‘The Great Reset’ (as proposed by the WEC, and promoted by Time Magazine among others) Morrison stated that ‘the pandemic recession [wasn’t] the product of the failure of world capitalism or liberal, free market-based values.’
He denied the need for a ‘reset’ of values, or a ‘reset’ of the economic agenda among like-minded liberal democracies, concluding that
‘it is actually these values that have provided the platform for the greatest period of peace and prosperity the world has ever known, and has underpinned the very global institutions that has helped sustain it.’
Get past the “safe space” buzzwords, like emissions reductions, climate change, inclusion, empowerment, and the use of terms like extremism, terrorism ‘in all its forms’ without qualification, the speech is impressive.
Noticeable for its defence of Australia’s sovereignty, multi-ethnic nationalism, economy and social values built on classical liberalism.
Notable for its gracious, but firm rejection of the Chinese Communist Party’s manipulative political manoeuvring.
Noteworthy for its (carefully worded) rejection of global communism, otherwise known as ‘The Great Reset.’
The lessons provided this week by the unjustified social media ban of Donald Trump, along with the industry wide cancellation of Parler are dangerous precedents.
This abuse of power from Big Tech is solid proof that political favouritism exists within Silicon Valley.
Arbitrary cancellations, double standards, and selective censorship, tells their customers (and investors) that Big Tech cannot be trusted to apply their own EULA standards to their favoured side of politics; nor live out their civic responsibility in preserving the basic tenets of liberty and justice for all.
First, we have a sitting, duly elected president, booted from communication platforms without due process or factual evidence, under the extremely weak premise that he “incited violence.”
This premise IS weak because it rests on confirmation bias. An abstract quote, ripped out of context, to fit the false idea embedded in four years of manipulative propaganda from the Left, in the false belief that Donald Trump is a “Fascist, Nazi, Racist” and worse.
This was best expressed today by ACL director, Martyn Isles’ in his apt conclusion
‘[Trump] said the three words, “fight like hell” in one Tweet about opposing electoral fraud, they say he directly incited an insurrection. That is deliberately one-eyed and unfair, and clearly not his intent. He was certainly unpresidential, but you can’t ban a bloke for that.’
Second, we witnessed the public execution of a private business, when a monopoly of business competitors entertaining industrial espionage denied Parler’s right to trade, exist, create, and compete.
All seemingly for the sole purpose of squeezing more political leverage from the 2020 election, for the lifeless Democrat campaign which was only kept alive because Big Tech, and Big Media ran interference for the Democrat Left, behind the justification that they were stopping misinformation.
Then there’s the Left’s dissonance and double speak.
Those defending Twitter’s right as a private business to operate as a private business, by permanently banning the President, justify the execution of Parler, also a private business, but apparently denied the same rights and responsibilities, for refusing to comply with the well-financed, and powerful Leftist hegemony.
Further to this is the standard being communicated, which I think both sides would agree on, if the reasoning here is properly understood.
If Twitter and Facebook can decline service to customers based on private convictions or conscientious objections, Christian businesses and professionals should be LEFT ALONE TO do the same.
If the argument in defence of Twitter extends to Christian florists, bakeries, school, Churches, and NGO’s, we should now expect permission for those entities to have the full ability to politely decline to bake or service an LGBTQAAI+ wedding, or employ anyone who is not in agreement with the ethos, and values of those entities.
If Jack Dorsey’s Twitter can deny service to a customer on the grounds of “it’s a private business”, “he’s acting on” conscience and convictions, Christian businesses who offer a respectful and reasoned disagreement with SSM, the practice of homosexuality, and the rising authoritarian ideology associated with it, should by rights, also be able to do the same.
The big difference being that most of these Christian businesses aren’t power drunk entities, crushing competition by way of bearing false witness, or cancelling those they disagree with.
From the growing list of court cases against Christian businesses from LGBTQAAI+ lawfare groups, more often it’s the other way around.
Proof that for most people aligned with the Radical Left, force and duress, are now not just a way of life, but inform the implementation of fundamentalist, Cultural Marxist policies.
If worse is to come from a society divided into oppressed and oppressor by a Radical Leftist horde, it won’t be because of Donald Trump.
If worse is to come, it will because discerning voters are fed up with the Left’s “you are what we say you are”, now “fall in, line up, goose step in unison, salute or else!”
Blatant double standards, dehumanising pejoratives, self-centred politics, and hypocrisy are not conducive to “unity and healing.”
Gagging freedom of speech, hijacking private businesses, policing thought, bearing false witness, and enforcing new cultural laws; all of it is yet another reminder that for the past four years at least, the real oppressors have been masquerading as the oppressed.
It’s a zero-sum game. They know it, and the only winners are those who submit, are willing to revise history, denounce their neighbour, and renounce their faith in the One who reveals Himself in Covenant and in Christ.
If civil unrest, or God forbid, a Civil War erupts in the West, let the record show that it was the Radical Left who fired the first shot.
To quote British Theologian, John Stott:
‘Freedom is much misunderstood. Even those who talk loudest and longest about freedom have not always paused first to define what they are talking about.
A notable example is the Marxist orator who was waxing eloquent on the street corner about the freedom we would enjoy after the revolution.
“When we get freedom,” he cried, “you’ll be able to smoke cigars like that,” pointing at an opulent gentleman walking by. “I prefer my cigarettes,” shouted a heckler.
“When we get freedom,” the Marxist continued, ignoring the interruption and warning to his theme, “you’ll all be able to drive in cars like that,” pointing to a sumptuous Mercedes which was driving by.
“I prefer my bike,” shouted the heckler. And so the dialogue continued until the Marxist could bear his tormentor no longer. Turning on him, he said: “When we get freedom, you’ll do what you’re told!”
First published on Caldron Pool, 12th January, 2021.
Trump has conceded the 2020 election to Joe Biden. In his speech, the President first condemned the ‘heinous attack on the Capitol’ saying he was ‘outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem.’
Before Trump was permanently banned from Twitter, he called for calm, asserting that ‘America must get on with business’, and that his ‘only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote.’
The president added that he was committed to a peaceful transfer of power, stating, ‘my focus now turns to ensuring a smooth orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.’
What’s important to stop and recognise here is that this concession doesn’t mean Trump has to surrender to blatant injustices committed by monolithic, and now potentially unstoppable faceless power brokers behind the scenes. Among them, Big Tech and legacy media.
Trump’s next move should be to:
Fund replacement media.
The biggest ally Trump can count on is one who’ll tell him the truth; who isn’t afraid to say “Bad Trump” or “Good Trump”, as Ben Shapiro has done when the hot, political tamale is in play.
2. Establish an election integrity foundation.
Regroup, fight back against the system from within the system. Outsmart, and outplay corrupt stakeholders who hold the keys to voting booths and electoral tickets. Trump should petition for an independent Electoral Commission, voter I.D, an end to ballot harvesting, and electronic voting systems.
3. Back alternative social media platforms such as Parler, Connectzing, MeWe and Rumble.
Platforms who aren’t in the back pocket of Christophobic, anti-classical liberal Radical Leftists sitting on golden thrones in Silicon Valley at the expense of freedom.
4. Look towards 2024, with an eye to what happened in 2020.
Not as a candidate, but backing candidates from among the few Republicans and even Democrats who’ve backed him. One team suggestion might be Tulsi Gubbard, and Ted Cruz. Even a Tulsi/Ivanka power ticket would send the Radical Democrats into a tail spin.
5. Trump should take a leaf out of Chuck Colson’s journey.
Perhaps the greatest thing Trump could do to dump hot coals on the heads of his haters, is live out his alleged Christian faith with greater vigour. To put his faith in Christ, his best foot forward, letting God take care of the rest.
As John wrote,
‘By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.’ (1 John 4:2-4, ESV)
If many on the Left are doing business with the Devil, as is apparent by the blurring of distinctions, hijacking of definitions, preaching of falsehoods, confusion, and the gaslighting of all who argue an opposing viewpoint, Trump and his supporters cannot fail if they appeal to a theology of the cross, not a theology of glory.
Events from 2016 onwards are visible signs that the United States is dying a slow death by a thousand self-inflicted cuts.
We’re seeing the fruit of this self-harm, pushed since 2016 by mostly those on the Left, in how it benefits leftist fat cats, career politician Rhinos, fringe political extremists, and sycophantic “centrists.”
What should concern everyone is that under the cover of COVID-19, Radical Democrats seem to have hatched a way to manufacture election wins without even trying. Consequently, this could be the beginning of one-party rule in the United States.
The kind of one-party rule that seems to hover over California, which has only a veneer of choice at the voting booth remaining, may be reflected in the federal governing structure.
Where, like all standard dictatorships, so Jacques Ellul observed, the idea of choice is entertained, even promoted, all in order to give the people the feeling that they have a Democratic voice. However, in reality that freedom is an illusion designed to appease the populace, and outsiders.
Under the cover of COVID-19 they are turning neighbour against neighbour, and man against God. Then justifying it with manipulative slogans to condition people to be seen, but not heard, speak only when spoken to, and to leap without looking, when they say “jump!”
The Apostle Paul’s words to the Church in Thessalonica still ring true today for any confessing Christian with ears to hear, ‘You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober.’ (1 Thess. 5:5, NIV)
Nothing in recent history has brought us as close to the Johannine predictions of anti-christ.
If Trump fails to do any of these things; if he fails to uphold grace and truth in the face of an increasingly one-sided, belligerent aggressor, the next to follow the beheading of truth on the Leftist’s gallows is justice.
Kyrie Eleison.
First published on Caldron Pool, 10th January, 2020.
Earlier this month, Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison announced that his Government had made the surprise unilateral decision to adjust the Australian national anthem by replacing the phrase “for we are young and free,” with “for we are one and free.”
Although Scott Morrison has claimed the adjusted phrasing had the support of the majority of Australians, his claim of majority support doesn’t appear to be backed by any clear formal consultation with Australians.
Breaking the news, The ABC appealedto the overused, ad nauseum click-bait term “historic”, quoting Morrison as saying that the change was about ‘recognising the timeless land of ancient First Nation’s people.’
The 1-billion-dollar tax payer funded national broadcaster reported that ‘Indigenous leaders welcomed the new wording’, but (as is easily predicted) others complained that the “for we are one and free” isn’t representative of the socio-cultural fabric of Australia.
As cited by the ABC, Indigenous Australian Composer, Deborah Cheetham, stated that changing the anthem “one word at a time is probably not the right way to go. It may be time to write something that captures the spirit of the nation.”
According to the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, boxer and Indigenous Muslim activist, Anthony Mundine, wasn’t happy either.
Mundine called the change ‘tokenistic.’ Then played the mythological race card, and ranted about how the Australian National Anthem was white supremacy.
So much for the “spirit of unity.”
So much “for we are one and free.”
It appears Cheetham, and Mundine were just as surprised by the change, as the majority of Australians who are said to be in “support of the change.”
We see and hear this every Australia Day. Mostly summarised as Black = sinless, white = sinner; never the two shall meet, until the sinners have been either obliterated, or made subjects of the sinless.
Activists are telling us it’s not enough. They want more.
Which is why the arbitrary anthem change is also one further step towards implementing the myth of race into the Australian constitution – under the label of Indigenous recognition – which would not only codify a protected minority class in law, but segregate citizens, apply preferential treatment, not measured by need or merit (as is currently the case with Abstudy, and a whole range of social outreach programs), but by a man or woman’s shade of melanin or ethnic heritage.
As the somewhat insightful SBS documentary ‘First Australians’ could not avoid concluding, while racism existed, there was no clear-cut white vs. black oppression that fits the narratives of genocide spewed forth every Australia Day.
Indigenous tribes were not a nation. Though tribes congregated, had a degree of similarity in mythological beliefs, they were not an organised, united, advanced entity, or civilisation with towns, roads, common government, and a shared common law.
As clumsy as European settlement was in seeking to live amicably with those tribes, European settlement united those tribes with the birth of the Australian nation.
As SBS’ ‘First Australians’ and atheist Robert Kenny’s ‘The Lamb Enters the Dreaming’ documents, Christian Europeans (although flawed in many ways), were a vanguard for Indigenous languages and survival.
Christians stood with Indigenous communities against the rise of Social Darwinist secularism, which with rise of the 19th Century’s popular ‘survival of the fittest mantra,’ had relegated Australia’s Indigenous people to extinction, largely through secular humanism’s embrace of evolutionary ethics.
We should be cautiously willing to accept the Prime Minister’s call. Purely on the grounds that “for one and free” from “for young and free” does a lot for national unity.
The caveat to this is highlighted by the outrage from a minority of privileged urban activists, who want to not just rewrite Australia’s national anthem, but rewrite European Australian history with revisionist Cultural Marxist black vs. white, us vs. them, cognitive distortions.
These are often applied using the vicious lens of the Stasi like, Leftist intersectional rubric, which makes McCarthyism, The Inquisitors and the Salem Witch trials look like a day at the fair.
I’m fully aware that my argument here will be lost on many people. I accept this. In fact, I know I’ve lost the argument before even stating it.
Not for lack of good reasoning, but for the fact that like Malcolm Turnbull’s dodgy, 2017 Gay Marriage plebiscite, (one that was used to change the definition of marriage, on the claim that it had majority support, but saw over 2 million Australians abstain from participating in), 2020 has revealed a willingness among Australians to accept what they’re fed, without question; bear false witness against their neighbour, and throw hate on dissent by demonising any reasoning that might form part of a valid opposing viewpoint.
Allowing a change to the National Anthem without first hearing the national voice via a referendum or formal consultation, isn’t the same as the governed leaving the Government to decide on fixing a road, or building a much-needed dam or bridge.
Allowing the Government arbitrary rule over changing items essential to national identity without the voice/debate/approval of the people is civic negligence.
Referendum isn’t a plebiscite. Referendums are the voice of the people. It’s what gives Australians their united voice, and keeps the power of Government at bay. Referendums are a key part of our God given and constitutionally ratified Democratic rights. The moment we allow bureaucrats to bypass that voice, all is lost.
To quote Professor of Law at the Sheridan Institute, and Caldron Pool contributor, Augusto Zimmerman,
‘Regardless of whether you agree with the substantive nature of this change, surely this effectively opens a dangerous precedent for further arbitrary behaviour.’
If we’re going to boot this essential public voice in the name of convenience or financial cost, given the lawfare pandemic against Christians post SSM, and the COVID-19 totalitarian shift towards greater dependence on a nanny state, we may as well boot the word “free” along with the word “young”!
Also published on Caldron Pool, 8th January, 2020.
Note: Precedent for referendums being held outside constitutional changes, were held in relation to national identity and national service in 1916 and 1917.
‘Referendums, other than for purposes of constitution alteration, were held in 1916 and 1917. These referendums related to the introduction of compulsory military service and were rejected by the people. The first was authorised by an Act of Parliament[174] and the second was held pursuant to regulations made under the War Precautions Act.[175]‘ (APH.gov.au)
‘The cross [grace] will always constitute an assault on human self-righteousness & a challenge to human self-indulgence…Escapism & conformity are opposite mistakes, neither is a Christian option.’
– John Stott, Contemporary Christian, 1992:26 & 27
“Defund the Police” Alyssa Milano has offered unsolicited advice to anti-maskers in a swipe at gun owners.
The Daily Wire unpacked the nonsensical anti-gun Twitter tirade where the Milano, keyboard warrior and actorvist,asserted that
“Anti-maskers are the same people who think they need an AR-15 for ‘protection.”
This was followed by her “shouting to the bleachers” in an apparent attempt to make herself better heard, writing,
“LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK: A MASK WILL PROTECT YOU *MORE* THAN AN AR-15 WILL.”
Conflating questionable protections against COVID-19 with the effectiveness of guns as a deterrent against an aggressive assailant, is false equivalence.
The logical fallacy may have garnered Milano attention, but her use of it isn’t impressive.
For me, Milano’s appeal to faulty logic joins the “either/or” Joebama train of fear, election campaign which preached the falsehood of “vote for me or face certain death at the hands of COVID, climate change, racists and Nazis, man!”
This also furthers serious concerns about how COVID-19 is being used by the Leftist “elite” to expand their influence, control and financial power base.
Further to this, surely her anti-gun rant inadvertently equates gun-toting criminals with a virus, and therefore comes under the Leftist banner of “hate speech”, intolerance, bigotry and fascism?
Noting Milano’s hypocrisy in high definition, The Daily Wire referenced a Fox News piece from September reporting Milano’s reliance on local police.
According to Fox, Police were called by Milano’s neighbour because said neighbour was concerned about a “a man dressed in all black, walking in the woods between our properties with a gun.”
Milano’s husband then rang the police in order to ‘find out when they were arriving.’
The gun toting man turned out to be a ‘hunter stalking squirrels with an air rifle.’
Entering 2021, be sure not to overlook the hypocrisy.
The lived-out message from our would-be overlords hasn’t changed:
There’s one rule for those who wish to rule us, another for those they wish to rule.
Come the zombie apocalypse or anything close in equivalence, be assured of this fact: following any celebrity’s advice outside exceptions like Denzel Washington in ‘The Book of Eli’, will prove to be as stupid a move, as Hollywood’s spate of unoriginal, “avant-garde” films, that drip with all the trimmings of California’s Radical Leftist social engineering industrial complex.
