Planned Parenthood Spends Big For Democrats, Faces Cuts Under Republican Control

By Casey Harper

Written by Casey Harper

Planned Parenthood’s political donations to Republicans have plummeted in the past decade, leaving the nation’s largest abortion provider with few friends on the right as it faces funding cuts under the Trump administration.

Planned Parenthood reports that about 34% of its funding comes from the federal government, usually through federal grants or reimbursements from Medicaid. 

Planned Parenthood turns around and gives millions of dollars to Democrats each political cycle. In 2024, an analysis from the watchdog group Open Secrets, examining political donations from the large network of Planned Parenthood affiliates and political arms, the group donated $5,144,579, nearly all for liberal groups or Democrats, including former Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid against President Donald Trump.

No Republicans in the U.S. House or Senate received any donations from Planned Parenthood’s array of affiliates, according to Open Secrets. 

At the federal level, Democrats received 99.83% of the political donations. 

The nation’s largest abortion provider seems to have gone all in on one party, but that wasn’t always the case. A look back at the tenures of Barack Obama and George W. Bush showed Planned Parenthood gave to Republicans at the federal level as well. However, federal donation records show that the Trump era in Washington, D.C. is when donating to both sides came to an end.

Now, Trump is in charge of the executive branch and Republicans hold narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress, which seems poised to make his tax cuts permanent and enact other parts of his agenda.

Among a wave of other cost-saving cuts, Trump’s Health and Human Services agency is reportedly cutting tens of millions of dollars in Title X funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in about two dozen states. 

HHS Title X grants are long-standing funding sources from the HHS Office of Population Affairs to Planned Parenthood for family planning services. During his first term, Trump limited Title X recipients from referring for abortions, a measure that was overturned by the Biden administration. Now, the battle over the same funding is underway.

A coalition of 29 senators sent a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week demanding the funding be reinstated. Notably absent were any Republican signatures.

Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the group’s lobbying arm, blasted Trump for his recent cuts and defended the nonprofit’s work.

“President Trump and Elon Musk are pushing their dangerous political agenda, stripping health care access from people nationwide, and not giving a second thought to the devastation they will cause,” McGill said.

But so far, it appears nobody is listening.

Meanwhile, in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a case that involves South Carolina’s ban on Planned Parenthood from receiving any Medicaid funds because it performs abortions, even if those funds are not being used on abortions. 

The Supreme Court case is not a direct challenge to South Carolina’s ban but whether private beneficiaries can sue to use their preferred provider, in this case Planned Parenthood.

The ruling involving South Carolina’s 2018 ban is expected in June. It could rebuff or pave the way for other states to ban Medicaid funds from going to Planned Parenthood.

Republicans have eyed defunding Planned Parenthood for years, though without success, over the abortion issues. Now, Planned Parenthood has become a staunch advocate on transgender issues, a less popular tenet that has become the subject of scrutiny for Republicans and some moderates.

“Planned Parenthood” is really a collection of linked groups, not a single entity. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) provides medical services at hundreds of clinics around the country. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund is one political arm. Planned Parenthood also has a SuperPAC called Planned Parenthood Votes. Affiliates around the country vary in their size, funding and political engagement.

On top of that, there are state and regional political arms of Planned Parenthood affiliates, similar to how labor unions have national political activity and then local activity carried out by local affiliates.

This series of graphics from Open Secrets, shows the political donations of Planned Parenthood’s affiliates and demonstrates the recent dropoff in support for even moderate Republicans. These figures include donations to members of presidential committees as well.

When defending their federal funding, Planned Parenthood advocates regularly point to the necessity of their healthcare services, like STI testing and cancer screenings in poorer areas.

In its 2022-2023 annual fiscal year report, Planned Parenthood boasted 392,715 abortions. It also conducted 1,721 adoption referrals.

A Knights of Columbus/Marist Poll in 2022 found that 71% of Americans support legal limits on abortion and 54% oppose taxpayer funding for abortions. 

Under current federal law, Planned Parenthood cannot be reimbursed by the federal government for abortions via Medicaid or Medicare except in the cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother.

However, Planned Parenthood received about $700 million in one year from the government, according to its 2022-2023 report.

Critics argue that even with limitations to prevent federal funding from directly paying for most abortions, taxpayers are still propping up the nation’s largest abortion provider to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Defenders of Planned Parenthood say it helps underserved populations and provides abortions in places where recipients might otherwise struggle to obtain one.

*****

This article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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The Prickly Pear Announces A Strategic Alliance with Patriot Mobile

By Neland Nobel

Written by Neland Nobel

The Prickly Pear, an online news and opinion magazine, has entered into a strategic alliance with Patriot Mobile.

We made this decision based on what would be a good deal for our readers, what provides the best cellular coverage for customers, and Patriot Mobile’s values.

As to the deal, we are confident that you, the readers, will receive a substantial discount from what you are paying the major carriers. They have plans that can fit any budget. As for The Prickly Pear, this alliance may provide a modest cash flow to support the growth and maintenance of our site.  So, while you get a good deal, your dollars also help to maintain independent citizen journalism.

In addition, Patriot Mobile offers a Contract Buy-Out. This offer allows new customers to buy out a current device from their departing carrier and receive up to $500 per device applied as a credit to their phone bill. Patriot Mobile also offers competitive business plans for companies of any size.

Concerning the best coverage, they provide you with the best options.  We did some research, and there seems to be a consensus that AT&T has the widest coverage ( 64% for the state) for 4G in Arizona.  But as you likely know, coverage may vary where you live. Patriot Mobile is unique in that you can choose towers from AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile.  Whatever works best for you in your state or locale.  If you later find your choice of towers is not to your satisfaction, you can select another tower system at any time at no charge.

We mentioned earlier the question of values. When you become a Patriot Mobile member, your dollars will help fund and support our God-given rights and freedoms. A portion of every dollar earned by the company is given to organizations that support our First Amendment rights of speech and freedom of religion, our Second Amendment Rights  which support all other rights, the Sanctity of Life, and the needs of veterans and First Responders. This is much better for liberty-loving Americans than giving your dollars to a huge corporation that have supported DEI, CRT, and other current dangerous left-wing fads.

It is incumbent on all Conservatives that, wherever possible, their dollars should go to organizations that support our Judeo-Christian values, smaller government, the free enterprise system, and our Constitutional Republic.

It is easy to make the switch to Patriot Mobile, keeping your same phone number and you will save money.  It is a Win-Win for all parties concerned.

Click here, and be sure to use the promo code PEAR.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Biden Administration’s War on Life: A Moral Outrage

By The Editors

/by

Published by National Review | March 10, 2023

The Biden administration’s war on life has reached new heights of moral depravity, with the president pushing for policies that would expand abortion access and undermine the sanctity of human life. From rescinding the Mexico City Policy to advocating for taxpayer-funded abortions, Biden’s agenda is an affront to our nation’s values. As Kathryn Jean Lopez argues in her latest piece, the left’s obsession with abortion is a symptom of a deeper spiritual malaise, one that threatens to tear apart the very fabric of our society. It’s time for conservatives to stand up and defend the most vulnerable among us, before it’s too late.

Key Takeaways

  • Biden is pushing policies that would expand abortion access and undermine the sanctity of human life.
  • The left’s obsession with abortion is a symptom of a deeper spiritual malaise.
  • Conservatives must defend the most vulnerable among us before it’s too late.

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0 0 The Editors 2025-04-14 20:23:02The Biden Administration’s War on Life: A Moral Outrage

Common Sense Revolution thumbnail

Common Sense Revolution

By Daniel J. Mahoney

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

The positives and potential pitfalls of the Trump coalition’s approach

The most popular and encouraging part of the upheaval unleashed by the Trump presidency may be the administration’s fierce determination to break the grip that wokeness, the new racialism, and gender ideology have had on all levels of government, as well as on the commanding heights of civil society. As William Voegeli perceptively argues in the latest issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Trump speaks for the 80% of Americans who are appalled by “anti-racism” being turned into a weapon of war by other means; who want free speech to be respected again; who are alarmed by limitless social engineering, the genital mutilation of the young, and literally open borders; who do not want women’s sports to be dominated by biological men; and who deeply resent the constant invective being directed against the noble American project itself.

President Trump has repeatedly spoken of a “common sense revolution,” a “revolution” that puts the lie to the para-Marxist claim, beloved by academics, journalists, and almost all politicians, that the concerns of citizens are almost exclusively “bread-and-butter” ones, and that “culture war” issues are at best a distraction and at worst an exercise in demagoguery, racism, and homophobia.

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That view was perfectly—and predictably—expressed by Piotr Smolar, the Washington correspondent of the influential French leftist newspaper Le Monde. A few days after Trump’s inauguration, he contended that Trump’s promise of a “revolution of common sense” was nothing more than “a conservative reaction to certain recent developments in American society, notably the recognition and promotion of sexual and racial diversity.” Never mind Trump’s broad appeal and his success in building a genuinely multiracial, patriotic coalition. For Smolar and his ilk, the appeal to reinvigorated civic common sense is nothing more than an exercise in “populist newspeak,” at once dangerous and irrational.

Trump’s response to the woke revolution is indeed “reactionary” (rather than revolutionary) since it aims to undo, or at least significantly mitigate, the harm done to the country by left-liberal currents who confuse “diversity” with a Manichean cult of victims and exploiters, who deny the reality of the sexual binary—the natural and fecund complementarity of men and women—and who confuse liberty with limitless liberation and a crude coercive utopianism.

Trump did not start this culture war. That was the work of those who repudiate our moral and civic inheritance in the guise of fully actualizing liberty and equality. But he is to be credited for refusing to treat its destructive work as “historically inevitable,” and thus irreversible.

Too many of his critics on the establishment Right, the Freedom Conservatives, for example, proceed as if the moral foundations of democracy have not been brutally assaulted by a cultural and political Left grown ever more destructive and illiberal. These soi-disant conservatives may oppose woke fanaticism, but they are not willing to do much about it. They confuse moderation with a not-so-slow accommodation to the intellectual zeitgeist, and thus succeed in conserving very little. They direct their misplaced ire at those who (perhaps indelicately) resist the culture of repudiation and the revolution of nihilism. We have little to learn from such faux moderation.

As Megan Messerly pointed out in an astute discussion of Trump’s “common sense” culture war in Politico piece from February, Trump is building a tent that houses far more Americans than merely the social and religious conservatives of old. He opposes abortion-on-demand and has pardoned unjustly held pro-life prisoners (many of them old and infirm) who were given draconian sentences for violating trespassing laws. As Messerly points out, social and cultural conservatives welcome “the revolution of common sense,” even if some worry that Trump will tend to downplay pressing moral issues that cannot galvanize mass 80% support (or opposition).

Nearly the entirety of Trump’s supporters—and many others besides—are opposed to “transgender wokeness, the indoctrination of kids, the oversexualization of kids,” as one senior White House official told Messerly. These are increasingly winning issues. But as Messerly also points out, many in the secular wing of Trump’s coalition have bought into the premises (for example, diversity, openness to moderate forms of gender ideology, an easygoing moral relativism) that allowed woke “bull***t” (as Trump has bluntly called it) to metastasize in the first place.

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They had little or no concern with these notions ten years ago. In a word, many have revolted against the ideological fanaticism without quite knowing the reasons why. Perhaps this is best understood as an inchoate form of what Leon Kass once called “the wisdom of repugnance.” My guess is that many of the more egregious DOGE revelations—surely an American version of glasnost—aptly highlighted in President Trump’s Joint Address to Congress in March (almost all centering around supporting and promoting sexual and cultural transgression) will only make more citizens stand up to wokeness. The revelations about USAID alone, which, per J. Michael Waller, has “become an out-of-control agency spending billions a year in bloated crony contracts, rotten from top to bottom with systemic fraud, corruption, and politicization,” are enough to justify Trump’s case to the American people. But these good folks need to know why their “resistance” is perfectly reasonable, and thus nothing to be ashamed of.

For all this, I am inclined to give two cheers to the common sense “revolution,” and not the proverbial three. Common sense has been under sustained assault both theoretically and practically for a very long time now. Its undoubted truths (and good sense) are not self-evident. It needs a theoretical defense and an articulation by writers, thinkers, and theorists who are in a position to expose the sophistry of social constructivism and deep-seated moral relativism.

One cannot adamantly oppose the repudiation of common sense and continue to ignore the grounding of free and decent political life in certain unchanging truths about human nature and the nature of reality. These provide the ultimate ground, the surest foundation, of a politics of common sense, as our Founders surely knew. Human beings are not autonomous, and liberty is always liberty under God and a non-arbitrary moral law. We aim to conquer nature—and human nature—at our own peril, as the 20th-century experience with totalitarianism, and our own recent experience with uncontrolled biotechnological experimentation, surely show.

Too many members of the common-sense coalition have unthinkingly adopted the language of gender (think “gender reveals”), not knowing that this mode of discourse implicitly liberates “gender identity” from any grounding in natural and biological reality. Hence, the truly mad assertion, as far from common sense as one can imagine, that men and women are just two possible “genders” among 73 or, for that matter, 173.

While a majority of Americans are right to assert the inherent dignity of our homosexual friends and neighbors, it was surely a mistake to separate marriage from any grounding in the nature of things (that is, the sexual binary, and the accompanying “production” of new human beings and citizens). We must face a damning truth: de-naturalized marriage led inexorably to the terrible excesses and fantasies of transgenderism. As C. S. Lewis put it so well in his incomparable The Abolition of Man:

In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the gelding be fruitful.

The appeal to a reinvigorated common sense, to a broad anti-ideological coalition, is indeed a necessary first step in the recovery of moral and civic sanity. But it is not enough. We must ultimately recover common sense’s roots in practical wisdom, in right reason (the intellection of the true, the good, and the beautiful), and in a humanizing appreciation of moral limits and self-restraint. As the great political philosopher Eric Voegelin liked to point out, the Anglo-American world was once a bastion of common sense and sound constitutional politics, and thus was seemingly immune to the totalitarian temptation. But beginning in the 1960s, an inchoate, ill-defined, and ill-defended Anglo-American common sense increasingly gave way to the ideological deformation of reality. We must not let that happen again. The common sense “revolution,” which is really a noble restoration, must never take the self-evidence of common sense for granted, especially in an age deformed by ideological lies.

*****

This article was published by The American Mind and is reproduced with permission.

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Shot Heard Round the Web: Booker T. Washington on Lifting Our Nation Up thumbnail

Shot Heard Round the Web: Booker T. Washington on Lifting Our Nation Up

By Catherine Salgado

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

America became the greatest country in the world by being a nation of individualists who would let no obstacle hinder them from accomplishing their goals. We must become that nation again if we are to restore our economy, culture, and political system.

We have witnessed numerous instances of elites’ unwarranted arrogance in recent weeks. There’s the shameless vulgarity of Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), who despite her ignorant incompetence previously sneered that we need illegal aliens to do menial jobs so elites like her can live the high life and grow wealthy off our money without earning it. There’s the raging hypocrisy of Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Rep. AlexandriaTax the Rich” Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who grew rich and influential off being corrupt and power-hungry politicians, and yet are conducting a “fighting oligarchy tour. There’s Judge Boasberg and his fellow activist judges, who insanely and illicitly demand the ability to overrule all three branches of government and run the world’s most powerful nation (and for some mystifying reason, the Trump administration is meekly acquiescing). All these politicians and judges and their Marxist ilk could use a dose of reality from the late, great Booker T. Washington.

“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed,” Washington observed. “Character, not circumstances, makes the man.” And again, “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” Booker T. Washington learned these truths the hard way. Born a slave, he was freed by Union victory and the 13th Amendment while still young, but continued to face aggressive and even abusive racism and stark poverty in his youth. Finally, he became an internationally respected orator and educator, the founder and head of the prestigious Tuskegee Institute, which operated on the brilliant educational model of requiring both a classical education and training in different trades and manual labor. Magnanimous, forgiving, generous, and humble to the point of holiness, Booker T. Washington was truly a model of the best of the American spirit, and the most admirable sort of success.

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Indeed, he was therefore very much an individualist. Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the early 19th century that American individualism meant that each man and woman felt a strong sense of responsibility towards his community. Contrary to what Communists and oligarchs will tell you, individualism is actually very beneficial to society as a whole. Booker T. Washington is the perfect example. On the one hand, he worked very hard to become educated and to achieve personal success, both in his career and in his family life. On the other hand, he also made it his business to provide young people with an excellent education, and to encourage citizens across America to support his work and his vision.

“Among a large class, there seemed to be a dependence upon the government for every conceivable thing. The members of this class had little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the federal officials to create one for them. How many times I wished then and have often wished since, that by some power of magic, I might remove the great bulk of these people into the country districts and plant them upon the soil,” Washington exclaimed. And again, he wisely noted of contemporary propagandists, “Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” What a perfect description that is of Jasmine Crockett, AOC, Barack Obama, Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and numerous other Democrats. Leftists in America, both in government and media, have made grievance and victimhood into the foundation of their own rise to power, and if all Americans were to see through their lies, they would be out of jobs.

Next week, we will also mark the anniversary of traitor General Lee surrendering to the great Union Lt. Gen. U.S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. While it was not the end of the war — another Confederate army had yet to surrender at Bennett Place — it made overall Confederate defeat inevitable. But many Americans don’t know that the Confederates were Democrats who originally launched the Civil War because of the election of anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln. And even those Confederates who professed personal dislike of slavery, like Robert E. Lee, were by the end of the Civil War actively involved in murdering or enslaving every black civilian and soldier they could find, in compliance with Jeff Davis’s Retaliatory Act (read more about Confederate war crimes here). Why is this relevant to my original point? Because the Democrats have never really gotten over losing their slaves. They still fancy themselves as superior aristocrats who own their fellow human beings. And since they cannot shackle and sell us anymore, they try to control our minds. They want us not to be free-thinking, free-acting individuals, but rather mere members of a herd that repeats and does whatever it is told.

That is why it is so vital for us to reject altogether not only the Democrats’ propaganda but even their manipulative language, as for instance substituting “gay” for “homosexual” or “reproductive rights” for “baby killing.” Like Booker T. Washington rising from slavery to a height of political, moral, societal, and educational excellence, let us free our minds from the shackles of leftist ideology and vow to lift up both ourselves and others.

*****

Please visit Pro Deo et Libertate for more excellent content

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The Myth of Non-Partisan School Board Elections thumbnail

The Myth of Non-Partisan School Board Elections

By Anne Marie DiCarlo

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Editors’ Note: Progressives have dominated school boards because the elections often attract little attention and thus can be swayed by the subterranean coordinated activity of teacher’s unions and their allies. Nonpartisan labeling allows candidates the ability to hide their radicalism and penetrate educational institutions. If one ran as a Democrat today, the public has come to understand it comes with a suite of social and political positions that are unpopular and destructive. We agree with the author. Party labels do not precisely describe a person, to be sure, but they convey ideas and principles that inform the public. A Democrat today is for wars that can’t be won, transgenderism, Critical Race Theory, DEI, extreme environmentalism, colonial settlerism, and an overt hostility to the foundations of Western Civilization and the nuclear family. Without knowing party affiliation, innocent voters can, and have been, easily misled.

Republicans have introduced a measure in the AZ House that, beginning next year, all ballots for school board will include a candidate’s party designation. SB1441, sponsored by Carine Werner, District 4, will ensure that voters know the political ideology of the candidates they are voting for. As one would expect, the vote in the Senate was strictly based on party lines, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats in opposition. In fact, every single Democrat (save two abstentions) voted against this bill. In and of itself, this is very telling– the Democrats have always known that voter ignorance benefits them, and they are not eager to telegraph to voters what they actually stand for. Regardless of the issue, transparency is always the best policy and one that the Democrats always seem to oppose.

The argument for ‘non-partisan’ school board elections may have had some basis, in fact, years ago. No one can deny that schools have moved beyond teaching children reading, writing, math, history, and science. Since the introduction of sex education under the guise of health, the curriculum of public schools has expanded to include a variety of social issues, inevitably leading to politicization and indoctrination according to a politically oriented worldview, one that, at times, is in direct conflict with the moral viewpoint of many parents.

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The reality is that our schools reflect our polarized society. Progressive ideology found fertile ground among academics, and for too many generations, parents and taxpayers failed to speak against the Marxist views that took deep root in school curricula. To illustrate, many children are not taught about the rich contributions that Western civilizations have made to law, science, and culture. American students are often inundated with negative views on the founding of our own nation, and a heavy emphasis on the stain of slavery and colonization completely overshadows the exceptionalism of the American experiment. Patriotism and love of country in schools are a dim memory.

Thanks to the last three Democratic administrations, the school environment has become toxic. The introduction and promotion of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI), Critical Race Theory (CRT), and gender identity nonsense have led to a generation of children who embrace victimhood, subjugate reality to personal delusions, and refuse to talk and reason with one another. It has come to the point where schools in states like California are initiating the removal of children from their homes because the parents refuse to affirm a gender identity that does not align with biological reality.  

To make the case that schools are “not partisan” is delusional.

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Elected officials who represent the public on school boards come to that role with an ideology as well. No one is without bias. People join political parties because they align themselves with the party’s value system.

So, let’s look at what the Democrat party has stated in its own 2024 Party Platform:

“Democrats will provide free, universal preschool for four-year-olds, saving the families of 5 million children $13,000 a year.” 

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Rather than ensuring that families have more money to have young children in the most formative years cared for and nurtured by a parent, the Dems advocate for the creation of yet another massive entitlement that will take more money away from working families by way of taxes.

“…helping schools to lift student achievement, rather than punishing them based on state standardized tests.” 

Removing objective standards of evaluation is the best way to hide failure. Standardization by definition establishes a benchmark so that weaknesses in curriculum can be identified and changed.

Democrats will continue to fight for LGBTQI+ youth by building on President Biden’s historic actions to ban so-called “conversion therapy”; protecting LGBTQI+ children from bullying and discrimination; guaranteeing that transgender students are treated fairly and with respect at school; and ending the homeless crisis among LGBTQI+ youth.”

No American wants unfair treatment applied to any other class of persons. However, how these policies have been implemented is to trample on the rights of others to privacy in locker rooms, bathrooms, and sports teams. Feelings do not change biological facts; this entire battle does not belong in schools. Parents should always be the primary counselors of their own children. Allowing schools to hide ‘transitions’ from parents is an utter violation of parental rights. Here in Arizona, several schools in Paradise Valley, Phoenix, Tempe, and Tucson have school policies that direct school administration to conceal from parents a student’s gender transition.

We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education.”

To remove all competition is to create a monopoly. Monopolies very rarely strive to improve customer service or satisfaction because they have no incentive to do so. Competition breeds excellence, and the Democrats fight against this constantly. 

The aforementioned items are but a few of the many viewpoints that the Democrat party espouses. Abortion rights, equity and inclusion are threaded throughout many areas and provide the fuel for the DEI and CRT programs that have led to further divisions among Americans.

The Senate approved SB1441 and awaits a full house vote. We need to urge our House reps to support this change, and we need enough votes to override the veto that is sure to come from the Governor.

Hobbs maintains that the bill will” further the politicization and polarization of school districts.” Races are already partisan thanks to the radical policies of the left. We just need the voters to know that upfront.

*****

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Leftist and Marxist Beatitudes thumbnail

Leftist and Marxist Beatitudes

By Conlan Salgado

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Karl Marx is famous for saying, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”–a statement of such breathtaking stupidity, one would have to search out a sitting member of the United States Congress for a more inane utterance. Marx then closed out his highly unreadable Communist Manifesto by telling the working class they had nothing to lose but their chains, which was not quite true, for they also had their lives to lose. Stalin and Mao did not fail to oblige.

Like Charles Darwin, Marx is unavoidable as a major influence. Indeed, leftism simply is Marxism, and all subsequent leftist thinkers are greater or lesser disciples of the German philosopher. The primary trope of leftist sociology is Marx’s theory of victimhood, while the basic structure of leftist ethics is the zero-sum enmity between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It was later provocateurs who created the category of the meta-proletariat, the universal victim who spans the many genres of oppression–sexual, gender, political, social, religious, legal, linguistic, etc., and who resembles a sort of Platonic form more than a historical reality.

Marxism, despite its obvious and toxic legacy, can be difficult to analyze and frustrating to refute, firstly because of its incoherence, and secondly because, despite its pedigree of predictive failures, its proponents remain fanatically loyal. This is due to the powerful manner in which Marx’s philosophy satisfies the unquenchable and basic human urge to resent, to covet, to seek revenge. Marxism, notwithstanding its inability to deliver the workers’ paradise, jives too well with the worst of human nature, and in that sense, it is probably impossible to dispense with.

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The poor we will always have with us, said Christ.

As a matter of fact, I am inclined to see Marxism as a virulent Christian heresy. Should one make the very healthy decision not to read Karl Marx, the easiest way of understanding him is to lift the beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the earth”, and, due to Marx’s being a materialist, simply eliminate “in spirit” from Christ’s blessing. Afterwards, we are left with “Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth”, which was precisely what Marx believed.

Without the Christian metaphysic, naturally, the insight becomes entirely silly. Why there should be anything blessed about poverty per se is baffling, though, sometime later, another silly Marxist transformed the already vacuous statement into an even more vacuous statement along these lines: “Blessed are they who lack, for they shall inherit society.”

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NB: They who lack a voice, they who lack a portion of the center square, they who lack resources, communities that lack opportunities for equality in employment or education as compared with other communities, they who lack a home within their “bodies assigned at birth”. . . .

It is an equally bastardized Christian insight which fuels the universal redistribution agenda of Marxist politicians. After all, it was Christ who told the rich young man, “Go, sell everything you have, and give the money to the poor”; if this is not the same as “Take everything the rich have by force, and give it the poor”, the sentiments are at least distant relatives, if one considers the dangerous absence of charity among Marxist doctrines. It must be remembered that Marxism is a philosophy of ends more than means; voluntarily selling everything to the poor and involuntarily having one’s possessions redistributed to the poor differ as means, but the end result is identical: the poor have the rich’s possessions.

Consider, as an example, the raping of female spaces, bodies, and identities by viciously ill adult men, i.e. transgender women. This, in the eyes of the Marxist heretic, is a redemptive act of justice. It is a redistribution of female identity and venue–both precious resources–to those who have historically lacked those resources. Even childbirth is denied to women through new turns of language such as “birthing people” or “inseminated individuals”. It is the selling of everything belonging to women and giving to “the poor”, the transgenders, they who “have not” womanhood.

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Both Marxism and Christianity are also historically eschatological, and the left has borrowed two ultra-powerful historical doctrines from Christianity. The first is that of “the effects of sin”; the Christian would say that even after a sinner has confessed his sins and received forgiveness and grace, concupiscence remains. A man who lusts continually after women in the privacy of his mind and binges pornography, even after he has admitted this before others, been absolved, and turned away from the evil, will still be tempted to lust. Likewise, his ability to relate properly to another, his ability to refrain from treating her as an object, his ability to restrain his passions and therefore be self-sacrificing and faithful in a relationship, will be severely damaged. He will need to take remedial action to heal his psyche and his body.

In a similar way, consider the term “the effects of slavery”: the exact point of the Marxist is that the damage of slavery remains, even if the act itself has ceased. The harm done to black culture, psychology, and resources after centuries of enslavement is extensive and requires remedial social measures. Just as the Christian would call upon a dispensation of grace which aids the healing of the sinner, the Marxist, by definition an atheist, is drawn to a new definition of grace: state action on behalf of the oppressed.

The second notion pilfered from Christianity is “universal salvation”, wherein Christ did not die merely for sins present and future, but also for sins of the past. The Marxist discourse is continually engaged in digging up corpses and trying them for grave offenses and high crimes. The Marxist project is not merely to save the oppressed of today, or even of tomorrow, but yesterday’s victims as well. The Marxist desires to redeem history, and therefore to reconstruct it, re-enact it, and punish those who, in the present moment, are beneficiaries of historical misdemeanors. It is this final purification of history through narrative, this falsification of the past so that the perpetual victim is transformed into the ultimate victor, wherein historical salvation is effected.

Returning to the definition of grace as state action on behalf of the oppressed, we are capable of discerning the Left’s deep discomfort with the democratic empowerment of their ideological enemies, as well as Marxists’ strong penchant for violence. President Trump’s decimation of federal funds for DEI is a perfect case example, for, in the eyes of the Marxist, this certainly has nothing to do with reigning in irresponsible government spending, but neither is it merely an immoral use of lawful executive action. Rather, the termination of DEI is the abandonment of the oppressed, leaving them graceless, with no advocate, no dispenser of privileges meant to remove the long-suffered disfigurement of their social standing and equality.

In the mind of the Marxist, the ending of DEI is not less catastrophic than if, in the mind of the believer, God were to abandon his creatures to the tyranny of sin.

Coercive power is the only way to implement justice (the uplifting of the proletariat), since there is only the will-to-power and its aesthetic disguises (truth, beauty, merit, success, goodness). Therefore, to allow power to fall into the hands of one’s enemies, even through democratic means, is to abandon the proletariat to increased denigration and oppression.

The centrality of this in Marxist activism cannot be overstated. There is no situation which validates or legitimizes the possession of power by the overlord. To suggest that elections somehow sanction violence against the proletariat simply because a bourgeoisie billionaire was voted in by a non-woke public is both repulsive and evil. Donald Trump is just as intolerable as president now than if he had staged a military coup.

In the scenario that one’s enemies do assume power, the most responsible and virtuous approach is to undermine state action and stability through drastic and widespread brutality. As I have written elsewhere, blowing up Teslas, vandalizing government property, and even physically assaulting undesirable people under the current conditions become acts of eloquence and even kindness toward the proletariat. Like Christ, isolated from all of his other teachings, the Marxist came to bring fire and the sword. Under the boot of the tyrant, violence is the only efficacious method, and certainly the quickest way to ensure the state falls into the right hands again, the hands of those who will direct the state to resume dispensation of grace (i.e. action on behalf of the victim).

Perhaps, then it is fitting to leave the reader with a religious idiom –  four anti-Beatitudes, or curses- which capture, if not the thought of Marx, certainly his unholy spirit. Here are the epitaphs of hundreds of millions of Russians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cubans, and others whose nations fell prey to Marxism and its Satanic heresy:

Blessed are the poor, for they are dissatisfied, and want blood.

Blessed is the lamb, who has blood that can be shed.

Blessed are those who accept our ideology meekly, for they shall inherit the earth: though, less of the earth than initially promised.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst, for they received no food, they received no water, but they received righteousness, for they are dead.

*****

Image credit: Grok Image Generator

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Study: Gen Z Has More Traditional Views of Marriage Than Their Parents thumbnail

Study: Gen Z Has More Traditional Views of Marriage Than Their Parents

By Sarah Holliday

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

A recent study found that members of Generation Z are more traditionalist and conservative when it comes to marriage—more so than their Millennial parents.

According to The Times Generation Z study, “only a fifth of 18 to 27-year-olds believed that marriage was ‘irrelevant,’ while a third thought it better for a couple to be married before having children.” Additionally, “the research showed that young adults today were more in favor of marriage than young adults 20 years ago, when almost twice the proportion—39%—thought marriage to be irrelevant.” And it’s not just marriage that Gen Zer’s view differently, but sex as well.

In 2004, 78% of Millennial respondents considered “one-night stands” or “casual sex” outside of marriage to be common practice for the people in their lives. Now, only 23% feel this way. Even the use of pornography seemed to be slightly less of a factor, with 58% of respondents stating people in their circles viewed it commonly while only 40% say the same today. Even a third of Gen Zer’s felt couples should get married before having kids. However, researchers believe this worldview is not necessarily driven by a desire for romance and companionship so much as it is stemming from a pursuit of “economic survival.”

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Concerning the results, generational expert and Human Resources consultant Bryan Driscoll told Newsweek that the “shift toward marriage,” in particular, wasn’t surprising. Beyond romance, he added, “Gen Z has grown up watching Millennials [experience] skyrocketing housing costs, stagnant wages, student debt traps, and a work culture that treats burnout and overwork like an admirable personality trait. … Gen Z sees that and, instead of rejecting traditional relationships outright, they’re looking for stability in an economy that offers them none.” Driscoll believes that young people today see marriage as a “strategy” to getting better “access to healthcare, housing, and even basic financial security.”

Yet, despite the more conservative views Gen Z seems to have on marriage, other research finds that there has been an overall decline in the number of people getting married over the last three decades among rural women aged 15 to 44. According to The Washington Post, “between 1988 and 2018, the proportion of rural women who were married fell from 55% to 33%.” At least among rural women, the Washington Post concluded that lower rates of marriage appear directly linked to lower education levels and lower income.

On a recent episode of “The Briefing,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler addressed these findings. “We’re looking at the very essence of human civilization by God’s own design,” he said. “[W]e are looking at a long-term crisis that is not unique to rural America, [but] is present throughout America of declining marriage rates.” Whether it is concerning the women in the Washington Post research or the Gen Z study from The Times, Mohler acknowledged that there are many factors likely at play.

However, regardless of the causation, Mohler pointed out that Christians understand “creation order is very much at stake here.” Concerning the decline of marriage, he emphasized, “what began on the campuses, began in the cities, began on the coasts, is now in the heartland. It affects red America as well as blue America. And in that sense, we should all be saddened by the understanding of what’s taking place.” Yet, he added, “it also shows the importance of Christian churches and of Christian parents. It shows the importance of Christian pastors preaching and teaching the word of God, pointing to God’s plan, affirming and explaining creation order, setting forth God’s plan … a man and a woman coming together in marriage, receiving children as God’s gift, and raising those children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

But as Mohler stated, “The family … is the greatest engine for turning out successful adults. … It also, in ways that many people don’t want to think about, becomes one of the greatest predictors of how future citizens will vote and how they will act.” Ultimately, the “intact family” through healthy marriages that produce children “also turns out to produce people who want to conserve the intact family.”

And “if you’re surprised by that,” he concluded, “you shouldn’t be.”

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*****

This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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The War on Motherhood: Why the Left Wants to Erase Moms thumbnail

The War on Motherhood: Why the Left Wants to Erase Moms

By C.J. Pearson

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Democrats are upset about President Donald Trump renaming the former Gulf of Mexico but want to replace the word “mother” with “inseminated person.” You can’t make this up.

The Left’s war on language has reached a new level of insanity, and this time, they’ve set their sights on one of the most sacred and fundamental institutions in human existence: motherhood.

In Wisconsin, Democrat Gov. Tony Evers and his administration are pushing to erase the word “mother” from official documents, replacing it with the sterile and dehumanizing term “inseminated person.”

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If that sounds absurd to you, that’s because it is.

This isn’t just some minor bureaucratic change—it’s a deliberate and calculated attack on the very concept of family, gender, and biological reality. The Left has been waging this war for years, but now they’re saying the quiet part out loud.

They don’t just want what they call “inclusivity” or “progress.” They want to dismantle and redefine the very essence of what it means to be a mother.

It’s not enough for the radical Left to control the media, academia, and corporate America. They now want to control language itself.

Their goal is simple: if they can redefine the words we use, they can reshape our culture, our values, and our understanding of truth.

By replacing “mother” with “inseminated person,” they are stripping away the love, sacrifice, and irreplaceable role that mothers have played in society since the beginning of time. They want to reduce the most profound human experience—the bond between a mother and her child—to a cold, clinical process.

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Think about the message that sends to young women and mothers across the country. The miracle of childbirth, the nurturing instinct that has defined human civilization, is being reduced to nothing more than an “insemination.”

It’s offensive, it’s degrading, and it’s deeply anti-woman.

For decades, feminists fought for women’s rights and the recognition of women’s unique contributions to society. Now, in an ironic twist, today’s so-called progressives are actively erasing womanhood itself.

They tell us that men can become women, that gender is a social construct, and that motherhood is just a biological function that can be described in purely mechanical terms.

How did we get here? How did we reach a point where the same people who once championed women’s rights are now telling us that a woman is nothing more than an “inseminated person”?

This isn’t progress. It’s regression.

If we accept this insanity, where does it stop? If “mother” is offensive, what’s next? “Father” becoming “sperm provider”? “Family” being replaced with “cohabiting legal units”? The Left’s obsession with dismantling traditional values is a dangerous path that leads to a society completely detached from reality.

The bottom line is this: Language matters. Words shape our culture, our beliefs, and our identity. The radical Left knows this, which is why they are so hell-bent on controlling it. But conservatives—and all other Americans who still believe in truth—must stand firm.

Mothers are not “inseminated persons.” They are the heart of the family, the cornerstone of civilization, and the very people who bring life into this world. No amount of leftist linguistic gymnastics will ever change that fact.

Evers and his allies can try to rewrite the dictionary, but they can’t erase the truth. And the truth is this: Motherhood is irreplaceable, and we will not stand by while the radical Left tries to erase it.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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Independent Women Applauds HHS for Issuing Clear Definitions of ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ Under Trump Executive Order thumbnail

Independent Women Applauds HHS for Issuing Clear Definitions of ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ Under Trump Executive Order

By Editors of The Independent Women’s Forum

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Independent Women applauds the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for executing on its implementation of President Donald Trump’s day one executive order — “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” — in issuing clear guidance on the definition of sex-based words like ‘male’ and ‘female’ to the U.S. Government, including federal agencies, external partners, and the public. Guidance from the HHS is a critical step in ensuring unelected bureaucrats stop redefining language to fit a false narrative and erase women.

Independent Women is the original architect of the model that laid the groundwork for President Trump’s sex-definition executive order to define ‘woman’ and other sex-based terms in law and code, preserve the legal existence of women as distinct from men, and protect women-only spaces. In July 2022, Independent Women’s Forum won the Heritage Foundation’s Innovation Award for the development and popularization of sex definition model legislation. Since then, Independent Women has ushered the model legislation into law in nine states, with bills in over a dozen state legislatures now, impacting the lives of over 17.5 million women and girls.

Having clear and precise definitions of sex-based terms is not only necessary for the protection of single-sex spaces and opportunities but also protects the integrity of sex-based data collection to accurately reflect biology.

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Importantly, HHS uses Independent Women’s recommended definitions of ‘sex,’ ‘female,’ and ‘male’ in Trump’s executive order as based on reproductive potential, rather than chromosomes, to ensure clarity and protection for all individuals.

Jordanne Kemper, state affairs director for Independent Women, said: “Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has made it clear that he believes in objective truth and sound scientific research. Defining the sexes and offering clear guidance that biology is real is a gift to the American people after years of the Government ignoring science, biological truth and real and important differences between the sexes. We know that sex matters, particularly when it comes to vital data statistics that help measure the impact of chronic diseases on males and females. I look forward to turning the page on the insanity we’ve been subjected to through the Biden-Harris administration and seeing what HHS achieves in their quest to Make America Healthy Again.”

Beth Parlato, senior legal advisor for Independent Women, said: “I applaud HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. bringing common sense back into HHS by clearly defining there are only two sexes – male and female. In order for HHS to comply with their overall mission to improve the health, safety and well-being of all Americans, it’s vital that they start with the foundational truth that females are biologically distinct from men.”

*****

This article was published by The Independent Women’s Forum and is reproduced with permission.

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A Duty to Die? thumbnail

A Duty to Die?

By Anne Marie DiCarlo

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Not that many years ago, when the ‘Death with Dignity’ movement was in its infancy, the thought of helping another human being end their lives was sold as a solution for those in unbearable pain, for whom death was an inevitable conclusion. It was argued by supporters of the movement that a compassionate society must offer relief to those in such a state of suffering with no hope for recovery because expediting death in such circumstances is indeed humane.

One of the pioneers of the movement, which began to flourish in the 1970’s (interestingly, in conjunction with the legalization of abortion) was the Hemlock Society founded by Derek & Anne Humphry. Anne was Derek’s second wife; his first spouse, Jean, had developed cancer and died in 1976, with the assistance of Derek, who had provided her with a lethal cocktail. The experience of killing his first wife became the subject of a book called Jean’s Way.

The publicity and success of the book became the impetus for the Hemlock Society, which brought the couple to the US, where they tirelessly worked to change the laws regarding assisted suicide from that point forward. What is less known about this story is that later, Anne, too, developed cancer. When she refused to end her life despite the urging of her husband Derek to do so, Derek then abandoned Anne, firing her from the Society and cutting off her medical insurance at a time when Anne most needed support, love, and caring assistance, the man who talked so much about compassion was cold and brutal. Anne found care and assistance through her last days at the hands of Rita Marker, an anti-euthanasia advocate and, ironically, her most vocal opponent. Anne, who had once battled Rita, now relied on Rita during the worst parts of her cancer treatment for transportation, food, and a shoulder to cry on. When Anne passed away, Rita was at her side.

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Why take this walk down memory lane?

To evaluate an action taken, one must understand the starting point. With respect to euthanasia, it is especially critical given the ever-shifting goalposts. 

As a case study, Canada was much quicker to embrace the euthanasia ideology than the US. This is not surprising given that the secularization of Canadian society has progressed much faster than the US. However, we are most certainly heading in the same direction.

Canadians allowed euthanasia only for the terminally ill, at first. Later, it was extended to those who were in a ‘vegetative state’ with no hope of recovery. Subsequently, the elderly who developed dementia and Alzheimer’s were also deemed ‘better off dead’. In March of 2024, legislation was introduced to include in the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program people suffering from mental illness. Fortunately, push back has delayed the implementation of this goal. The Canadian government, however, is determined to have its way. Following the initial defeat, new legislation was re-introduced proposing to extend the temporary exclusion of eligibility in MAID for persons suffering solely from a mental illness for three years. According to government officials, this extension would “provide more time for provinces and territories to prepare their health care systems, including the development of policies, standards, guidance, and additional resources to assess and provide MAID in situations where a person’s sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness. It would also provide practitioners with more time to participate in training and become familiar with available supports, guidelines, and standards.

Today, in Canada, access to the MAID program is routinely offered to the sick and dying. MAID has always trumpeted compassion and whispered of cost. The Canadian government, which funds the one-payer national healthcare system, quickly realized that significant cost savings were achieved by expediting the disposal of the dying, sick, and elderly, who represent a greater drain on the health system. What they also realized is that the system also benefits by reducing the number of poor and disabled who need care. Stories abound of the disabled who are denied pain medications, access to wheelchairs, prosthetics, and transportation but are offered coverage for life-ending drugs.

Wesley Smith, a long-time anti-euthanasia advocate, has said that “such proposals are merely stations on the way to creating a crassly abandoning society in which the weakest and most vulnerable among us become a killable caste.” He is exactly right.

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The question then becomes, how does one get the majority in a society to accept this?

It is done by creating the myth of a duty to die.

In March of 2024, British political writer, broadcaster, and former politician, Matthew Parris, has argued that the cost of keeping the elderly alive means we should consider killing them. Parris admitted, in his piece, that social and cultural pressure will grow on the terminally ill to hasten their own deaths so as “not to be a burden” on others or themselves, and as he put it, “that’s a good thing”.

His piece in The Times is titled, “We can’t afford a taboo on assisted dying.” He frames the sanctity of life as a sort of superstition, appealing to the progressive zeal for busting outmoded taboos – such as the essential value of human life. How stunning and brave.

Most recently, it was leaked that discussions were held at the World Economic Forum (WEF) behind closed doors revisiting the idea of the “Age of Death Laws.” These proposed guidelines would establish an age of death, whereby one would need to justify the extension of their life beyond that point to a government authority.

This is when the choice to die becomes the obligation to die. Welcome to the world of Logan’s Run.

Is the US poised on the brink of the abyss?

At the end of 2024, New York Sun ran an article on a proposed bill to permit federal funding for assisted suicide. Democrat Members of Congress introduced a HR 8137 to reverse the 1997 Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act and replace it with the Patient Access to End of Life Care Act. The language of the bill is not yet available, but the new act would permit federal funding for assisted suicide. 

For nearly 30 years — since Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted death — Congress has prevented federal funding such as Medicare from being used by patients to pay for the practice. A bill proposed by Democratic lawmakers seeks to change that.

In 1997, Congress passed the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act, which prohibits using federal funds to provide for any health care services that assisted in someone’s death, including “assisting in the suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing of any individual.”

In order to circumvent the legislation, the sponsors of the bill, Democratic Representatives Brittany Pettersen and Scott Peters, released a draft discussion that states: “Medical aid-in-dying, an authorized medical practice, is not euthanasia, mercy killing, or assisted suicide.

In other words, the bill’s sponsors intend to get funding approved for assisted suicide by redefining assisted suicide as not being assisted suicide.

The threat is real, and those on the other side are tireless advocates.

We need to be equally vigilant in safeguarding the dignity and sanctity of every life at every stage, from conception to natural death.

 Anything less is not compassionate and not humane.

*****

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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Antisemitism in the 21st Century: A Story from the Front Lines thumbnail

Antisemitism in the 21st Century: A Story from the Front Lines

By Hannah Becker

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

I  couldn’t believe what was before me, as I attempted to walk into the U.S. Army Military Ball building. Protestors with megaphones screaming that people like me—Jewish Americans—deserved to die, be raped, held hostage, and be annihilated. The protestors threw red liquid, held up signs that would have made Nazis proud, and chanted over and over antisemitic rhetoric calling for the end of people like me.

In the 15+ years I’ve attended military balls, this was the first time I’d ever encountered protestors. This was the first time I’d ever felt unsafe. This was the first time I walked in the doors questioning the state of my country—a nation for which my family sacrificed everything for four consecutive generations through military service.

Like many American Jews, the events of October 7, 2023, changed my life forever. I couldn’t believe what had happened. Members of my synagogue who were at the kibbutz were murdered. A friend’s son was abducted. Another friend’s daughter was brutally raped until she died, and videos of this gruesome attack were broadcasted across multiple social media channels. “How could this have happened?” I asked, struggling to process the brutality and pure evil that had occurred in a country that I consider to be my second home.

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The second shockwave came in the form of responses to the terrorist attacks of October 7th. People I had worked with in academia, including many self-proclaimed “feminists,” championed support of Hamas, along with the Palestinians and “aid” organizations that participated in the attacks. “Was I hearing them correctly?” I questioned. “Did they not see the brutal videos? How could they witness such breadth of horror and ‘support’ it?” Their hypocrisy was a complete betrayal of women.

In the months that followed, I have participated in the March for Israel and October 7th Remembrance events. Given that my expertise—cyber warfare and social media—were elements utilized to amplify the impacts of Hamas’ attack, I shared my insights with organizations, groups, and individuals, hoping to increase collective understanding of how technology was being weaponized to promote wide-scale antisemitism, and how it could subsequently be combatted in a way that promotes the safety of women.

The impacts of Hamas’ attack on Israel had many of the terrorist groups’ intended consequences. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), antisemitic hate crimes in 2023 reached an all-time high in the United States. Reports of Jewish students and faculty members at the U.S. colleges and universities being attacked surged. Internationally, Jews are being violently attacked as they attempt to participate in recreational activities, as we saw just a few months ago in Amsterdam. How, 80 years since the ending of the Holocaust, are we seeing this level of Jew hate not only occur but garner this much support?

I grew up in rural Mississippi, hearing stories from Holocaust refugees and the U.S. soldiers who liberated the Nazi concentration camps. As a child, I was shown photos of emaciated bodies, traced my fingers over the numbers tattooed on their forearms, and listened as they told the horrific stories that ended in immense strength and resilience. “Never again,” was their rallying cry. “Never again.” But, never again IS now. Egregious acts of antisemitism are currently happening all over our nation and world.

What would my Pop think of the protestors outside the military ball calling for the death of Jewish Americans? His generation made great strides for the safety of people across multiple countries—Europe, Israel, and the United States. Could he even wrap his mind around the level of blatant antisemitism that is currently visible as graffiti in our nation’s capital, in hateful rhetoric spewed in our collegiate classrooms, or in violent attacks on people like me with the sole “justification” being our existence as humans?

January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day—a day designated to remember the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. My family will light candles and attend a Remembrance event, as we always do; however, this year will be different, because Hamas remains a constant threat, 90 hostages—including multiple Americans, women, and small children—remain in the horrors of hell, and there will be protestors lined up outside the Remembrance Day event chanting for the erasure of people like me.

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Hamas is a terror organization that has recruited supporters all across the globe to further their annihilation of Jews agenda. They stoke terror, commit heinous crimes against humanity, and (somehow) secured the backing of far-left organizations who have their own unethical agenda when it comes to the survivability of my people. It’s up to us to ensure “Never Again” remains a promise fulfilled. We must take action in countering the pervasive toxin of antisemitism and anti-Israel hate that has flooded our world.

*****

This article was published by the Independent Women’s Forum and is reproduced with permission.

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End Of Biden’s Title IX Rule Change Hailed By Arizona Lawmakers thumbnail

End Of Biden’s Title IX Rule Change Hailed By Arizona Lawmakers

By Daniel Stefanski

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Arizona Republicans are applauding a recent court decision that helps to protect females.

Late last week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky dealt a significant blow to a Final Rule from the Biden administration on Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The court ruled that “the Final Rule and its corresponding regulations exceed the Department’s authority under Title IX, violate the Constitution, and are the result of arbitrary and capricious agency action.”

According to the press release issued by the Arizona Senate Republicans, this Biden administration rule “required schools to allow boys and men in girls’ and women’s private spaces like restrooms and locker rooms, on their female-only sports teams, and to disregard other sex-based protections created for the safety, security, and well-being of biological females within federal law.”

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In a written statement, Senate President Warren Petersen said, “We are grateful for the conservative attorneys general nationwide who are working tirelessly to protect women and girls from bigger, stronger boys and men, while the radical Left continues to ignore not only science, but common sense. Women and girls are fighting an uphill battle as progressives try to undo the protections created for them, including Arizona’s Save Women’s Sports Act, which the Republican-led Arizona Legislature is currently litigating while Arizona’s own Attorney General refuses to do so.”

Senator Sine Kerr added, “This is a big victory for the women and girls who’ve had athletic and educational opportunities stripped from them at the hands of biological males posing as females, but there is still much more work to be done. While Governor Hobbs vetoed last year the Arizona Women’s Bill of Rights, Senate Republicans have vowed to continue to push legislation that safeguards women and girls on the playing field, in their bathrooms, their locker rooms, and anywhere else carved out specifically for them. Our daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and neighbors deserve to feel safe and supported, and it is our duty as elected officials to ensure their protection.”

After receiving the news of the court order, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, who led the coalition of attorneys general against the new rule on Title IX, said, “This is a huge win for Tennessee, for common sense, and for women and girls across America. The court’s ruling is yet another repudiation of the Biden administration’s relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology through unconstitutional and illegal rulemaking. Because the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office.”

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, one of the attorneys general in the coalition also weighed in, saying, “I’m proud to have successfully defended Title IX from the federal government’s power grab that threatened to upend half a century of landmark protections for women and punish States for following their own laws.”

Petersen continues to use his office as the leader of Senate Republicans to help stand in the gap for Arizona in major state and federal legal fights in the absence of Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes. He promises more intervention into legal matters in 2025 as legislative Republicans work toward protecting their state from government overreach and special interests that attempt to take Arizona in radical directions.

*****

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This article was published at AZ Free News and is reproduced with permission.

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Big Pharma Continues to Hide the Truth thumbnail

Big Pharma Continues to Hide the Truth

By Harvey Risch

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

On Thursday, Joe Rogan and Marvel megastar Josh Brolin traded stories about the preponderance of Covid vaccine injuries among their friends. Brolin even described contracting “a mild case of Bell’s palsy” earlier this year, which Rogan attributed to the vaccine, noting he knew several people who suffered facial paralysis following Covid vaccination.

There is no perfect medicine. The benefits and harms of any treatment must be carefully considered in order to prescribe the safest, most effective course of action for a patient. While the FDA and CDC continue to extol the benefits of the Covid vaccines, they have ignored a growing body of evidence that these products can also be harmful. The code of medical ethics demands a transparent and balanced accounting of their impact on the American people. Only then can we set the best course for healthcare policy and future pandemics.

An honest accounting begins with clinical trials, supposedly “the most rigorous in history.” Pfizer’s own legal arguments suggest otherwise. Responding to a whistleblower lawsuit alleging major deviations from protocol, Pfizer’s lawyers noted that the company’s “Other Transactions Authority” agreement (OTA) with the Pentagon didn’t require clinical trials to comply with FDA regulations because the vaccine was a military prototype for “medical countermeasures.” This agreement allowed Pfizer to “grade its own homework,” so to speak — a point emphasized by DOJ lawyers in a separate filing in Pfizer’s support.

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The FDA intended to keep Pfizer’s data hidden for 75 years, but attorney Aaron Siri’s FOIA lawsuit forced the agency to release them. Naomi Wolf’s DailyClout led 3,250 volunteer experts in analyzing more than 450,000 pages of internal Pfizer documents and uncovered massive harms ignored by the FDA, detailed in The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity.

This effort revealed 1,233 deaths in the first three months of the vaccine rollout, and a litany of injuries: “industrial-scale blood diseases: blood clots, lung clots, leg clots; thrombotic thrombocytopenia, a clotting disease of the blood vessels; vasculitis, dementias, tremors, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, epilepsies.”

These harms are echoed by data from V-safe, a smartphone-based tool created by the CDC. Among 10.1 million registered V-safe users, 7.7 percent reported side effects so serious they were compelled to seek medical care, many more than once.

The main culprit is the Covid spike protein encoded in the vaccine’s mRNA technology. This protein is an antigen, or foreign immunogenic substance, located on the outer coat of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that triggers an immune response. The mRNA in the shots instructs the body’s cells to produce identical spike proteins, inducing the immune system to create antibodies that bind to them, theoretically protecting vaccinated individuals against the virus. Unfortunately, this plan has a fatal flaw: The spike itself is toxic and potentially deadly.

Hundreds of peer-reviewed articles have demonstrated the spike’s potential for harm independent of the rest of the virus. Potential complications include myocarditis, blood clots, neurological injuries, and immune dysfunction. Pfizer’s own pre-market biodistribution studies show that vaccine components leave the injection site in the arm and penetrate every major organ system within hours, where mRNA can linger for weeks, forcing cells to churn out more and more of the toxic spike protein, which can persist for months. There is no way to predict how much spike protein the mRNA injections will produce in any individual, and there is no “off switch.”

According to CDC figures analyzed in Toxic Shot: Facing the Dangers of the COVID “Vaccines,”  from 2021-2023 the US suffered 600,000 excess deaths not associated with Covid. Furthermore, Bureau of Labor Statistics data reveal that two million Americans became newlydisabled, with unusual excesses in historically low-risk groups.

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These trends coincided with mass Covid vaccination, including an unaccountable 59 percent surge in deaths among Americans ages 15-44 in the third quarter of 2021 compared to 2019. Crucially Covid contributed only part of this excess mortality: in that quarter the US suffered around 201,000 excess deaths, with Covid officially accounting for 123,000, leaving 78,000 excess deaths — 39 percent of the total — still unexplained.

Similar figures from abroad underscore a tragic loss of life among healthy people at minimal serious risk from the virus.

It could get worse. No carcinogenicity studies were performed on the injections prior to their launch, thus long-term cancer risks are essentially unknown. The spike protein also appears prone to prion-like misfolding, raising the specter of potential neurodegenerative disorders.

Medical ethics demand a balanced approach to every intervention, weighing potential benefits against potential harms. However, in the case of the Covid vaccines, federal agencies have chosen only to proclaim benefits. By surfacing data that bear upon both the positive and negative impacts of the Covid vaccines, and evaluating the pandemic performance of CDC, FDA, and other health agencies, the new administration can restore confidence and integrity in medicine and public health.

*****

This article was published by The Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Harvey Risch, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a physician and a Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine.

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Alternatives To Biden’s Presidential Medal Of Freedom Awards thumbnail

Alternatives To Biden’s Presidential Medal Of Freedom Awards

By Mark Wallace

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Those following the news these days will note that President Joe Biden has been generously doling out Presidential Medal of Freedom Awards to some of the major heroes of the so-called Progressive Left.  Among the recipients are Liz Cheney, Hillary Clinton and George Soros.  Also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden is Cecile Richards, a past president of Planned Parenthood.

More appropriate awards for these individuals are as follows:

For Liz Cheney, 30 pieces of silver.  (For those unfamiliar with the Bible, consult Matthew 26:14-16).  Regrettably, the rope Judas Iscariot used to hang himself is no longer available. 

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For Hillary Clinton:  A broomstick, a black pointed hat and a DVD of the movie Rosemary’s Baby.

For George Soros:  Three consecutive life sentences in a federal prison.

For Cecile Richards, the Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann Award for Extinguishing Innocent Human Life.

More seriously, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (established by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 prior to his assassination) has been awarded to individuals who are distinguished in their field, be it athletics, religion, music, architecture, science, journalism and an entire host of other disciplines. The award can be given posthumously and is not restricted to U.S. citizens.  Past United States Presidents have generally refrained from using the award to make a political statement or to intentionally antagonize large sectors of the U.S. population.

Thus, the awards have been given to Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mother Teresa, architect Mies Van Der Rohe, James Watson (discoverer of DNA), and Edward R. Murrow (TV journalist).  Awards have also been bestowed on U.S. Senators, past U.S. Presidents and other distinguished public servants.

Joe Biden, when he took office as President following inauguration, made a point that he was going to be a great unifier for the United States.  This was one of his first Big Lies as President.  Throughout his tenure, he frequently went out of his way to antagonize large portions of the U.S. population — primarily conservatives, Republicans and MAGA supporters.  He sicced the Justice Department on parents attending Board of Education meetings and on pro-life activists praying at abortion clinics.  The Presidential Freedom Medal awards are yet another instance Biden’s “in your face” taunting of millions of Americans.  

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So let’s review the four awards described above. Liz Cheney served a mere three terms in the House of Representatives.  She authored no distinguished legislation.  Her main “achievement” is betraying the Republican Party of which she purported to be a member.  Giving the award to her would be as if George Washington gave a presidential medal of freedom to Benedict Arnold.

Hillary Clinton’s “achievements” are (1) jeopardizing national security by routing tens of thousands of government-related emails through a personal router in her private residence, and (2) failing to take appropriate steps to defend Americans in the Benghazi Affair, who ended up paying for her negligence with their lives.  Additionally, she has characterized millions of Americans as “deplorables” and has fostered an atmosphere of hatred toward those on the Right.  

Soros earned vast sums of money by shorting the British pound.  It’s a good guess that he’s roundly hated by those across the pond in Great Britain.  He then used this money with the objective of destroying the West, particularly the United States.  One of his latest campaigns is to finance left-wing prosecutors who decline to prosecute the criminals who are ruining our cities.

Cecile Richards is a past president of Planned Parenthood, an organization dedicated to extinguishing the lives of millions of unborn babies in their numerous Death Camps across the nation that masquerade as abortion clinics.  One can imagine Satan as grinning widely as Biden bestowed the award on her.   

*****

Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot award to George Soros

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The Biggest Peacetime Crime—and Cover-up—in British History thumbnail

The Biggest Peacetime Crime—and Cover-up—in British History

By Dominic Green

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Editors Note: As details begin to leak out about the situation in England, the scale of these crimes, spanning several decades, shows deep corruption in the English government. Progressive thinking Labour and the ineffectual Conservatives have always been on the outlook to be multicultural and concerned about the feelings of Muslim immigrants. They not only covered up these crimes, they participated in them. Moreover, they have lied about this problem, up and down the political chain of authority. Once you are taught that all cultures are equal and that all formerly colonized countries have been “marginalized,” and thus due special dispensation, society has no protection from cultural usurpation. If you have been taught your country is always wrong, and your culture is indefensible, a government will no longer defend itself or its people. Lying becomes chump change when a government fails in its most basic function: the protection of the rights and safety of its people. What did Muslim leadership know or do about this catastrophe? You must read this complete story. It is a cautionary tale for us in the US. We should not allow mass immigration of people who do not fit into the basic precepts of Western Civilization. Clearly, governments cannot be trusted.  Elon Musk deserves the world’s thanks for his insistence on opening this cesspool of political lying and depravity.

The serial rape of thousands of English girls went on for many years. Few in power cared. Then Elon Musk started tweeting.

The grooming and serial rape of thousands of English girls by men of mostly Pakistani Muslim background over several decades is the biggest peacetime crime in the history of modern Europe. It went on for many years. It is still going on. And there has been no justice for the vast majority of the victims.

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British governments, both Conservative and Labour, hoped that they had buried the story after a few symbolic prosecutions in the 2010s. And it looked like they had succeeded—until Elon Musk read some of the court papers and tweeted his disgust and bafflement on X over the new year.

Britain now stands shamed before the world. The public’s suppressed wrath is bubbling to the surface in petitions, calls for a public inquiry, and demands for accountability.

The scandal is already reshaping British politics. It’s not just about the heinous nature of the crimes. It’s that every level of the British system is implicated in the cover-up.

Social workers were intimidated into silence. Local police ignored, excused, and even abetted pedophile rapists across dozens of cities. Senior police and Home Office officials deliberately avoided action in the name of maintaining what they called “community relations.” Local councilors and Members of Parliament rejected pleas for help from the parents of raped children. Charities, NGOs, and Labour MPs accused those who discussed the scandal of racism and Islamophobia. The media mostly ignored or downplayed the biggest story of their lifetimes. Zealous in their incuriosity, much of Britain’s media elite remained barnacled to the bubble of Westminster politics and its self-serving priorities.

They did this to defend a failed model of multiculturalism, and to avoid asking hard questions about failures of immigration policy and assimilation. They did this because they were afraid of being called racist or Islamophobic. They did this because Britain’s traditional class snobbery had fused with the new snobbery of political correctness.

All of which is why no one knows precisely how many thousands of young girls were raped in how many towns across Britain since the 1970s.

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What we do know is that the epicenter was the postindustrial mill towns of England’s north and Midlands, where immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh settled in the 1960s. White locals say the grooming and rapes began soon after. In Rotherham, the rundown Yorkshire city where the scandal first broke, local police and councilors were notified about systematic grooming and sex abuse by 2001. The first convictions did not occur until 2010, when five men of Pakistani background were jailed for multiple offenses against girls as young as 12 years of age.

These men targeted the most vulnerable girls—the poor and the fatherless, children in care homes—with candy, food, taxi rides, and drugs. They raped the girls, passed them around family and friendship networks, pimped them into similar networks in other cities, then discarded them as they reached the age of consent.

This pattern was repeated in as many as 50 cities across the country, including in leafy Oxford and liberal Bristol. A 2014 inquiry estimated that 1,400 girls had been serially raped in Rotherham alone.

The details are established beyond doubt in the small number of prosecutions that eventually made it to court. The suffering described in the court papers is sickening to read: The girls were drugged, beaten, sodomized, gang-raped, trafficked, and tortured…..

*****

Continue reading this article at The Free Press 

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GENDER INDOCTRINATION: 16 States That Force Transgender Lessons on Kids thumbnail

GENDER INDOCTRINATION: 16 States That Force Transgender Lessons on Kids

By Tyler O’Neil

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

It’s easy to grow desensitized to the threat of gender ideology in schools. It seems every day there is a fresh new outrage about kindergarteners getting indoctrinated into “trans joy” and school clinics offering transgender “medicine” for minors.

President-elect Donald Trump’s historic reelection victory represented a loud rebuke to the transgender movement—after all, one of his most effective ads slammed Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats’ presidential nominee, as being “for they/them,” while Trump is “for you.” But this noxious ideology still has a stranglehold in many institutions, backed up in some cases by official state policy.

In fact, no fewer than 16 U.S. states have curriculum standards that force teachers’ hands on the issue, according to an important new report from The Heritage Foundation.

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The report, “Gender Ideology as State Education Policy,” highlights the state-level education standards and frameworks of 16 states that encourage gender ideology, which the report defines as “the subordination or displacement of factual, ideologically neutral lessons about biological sex with tell-tale notions such as ‘gender identity,’ ‘sex assigned at birth,’ and ‘cisgender.’”

This ideology rejects biology and tradition, promoting vague notions of identity that often rely on rigid sex stereotypes that feminists have rejected for decades.

Jay Richards, director of Heritage’s DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family, and Daniel Buck, senior visiting fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, analyzed the state-level education frameworks of all 50 states.

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Richards and Buck asked whether the frameworks “encourage a distinction between sex or sex organs, and gender, the latter of which is undefined or treated as a social construct?” The analysts also asked whether the policies promote the notion that sex is merely “assigned at birth” and whether they use terms such as “cisgender,” “transgender,” and “nonbinary.”

These tell-tale signs reveal the promotion of gender ideology, which not only contradicts basic biology and tradition but also poses a real danger to impressionable children.

By telling little boys that they may really be girls, schools prime them for experimental medical interventions that leave kids stunted, scarred, and infertile. The fact that medical societies endorse these interventions—despite the lack of evidence that they improve children’s lives and in the face of evidence that they carry severe side effects such as the risk of cancer in teens—is a scandal of epic proportions.

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Even simply teaching children that “gender identity” may be different from biological sex carries the risk of setting kids on a destructive path. These lessons are rightly controversial, and parents should be able to remove their children from any such indoctrination.

Below is a list of states and the specific state policy requiring each to teach gender ideology.

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United Health Care CEO Murder a Reflection of the Left’s Moral Belief System thumbnail

United Health Care CEO Murder a Reflection of the Left’s Moral Belief System

By Conlan Salgado

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Editors’ Note: The essay below is penned by Conlan Salgado, a recent college graduate and a contributor to The Prickly Pear. Conlan is an astute political observer and highly informed conservative. His essay deserves careful reading. We recommend reading Mr. Salgado’s excellent articles published in The Prickly Pear.

I was recently bemused at the indignation of retail pundits who breathlessly could not believe the Left’s ugly celebratory reaction across social media to the murder of United Health CEO Brian Thompson.

To illustrate my point, I compiled a list of categories of persons the Left has publicly and recently celebrated or would celebrate killing:

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1) Unborn children and unwanted infants
2) Donald Trump
3) Men
4) Donald Trump
5) White people
6) Donald Trump
7) Political figures one disagrees with
8) Donald Trump
9) CEOs
10) Donald Trump
11) Jews

Apparently, we had to reach no. 9 on the list for certain individuals to realize the left’s genocidal tendencies. In fact, on the far left, killing seems to be increasingly accepted as the preferred alternative to winning elections, reforming healthcare, marrying, engaging in responsible sex, tolerating natural inequality, and defeating the leader of the MAGA movement.

As regards the motives of the alleged murderer, I will not speculate, except insofar as to state that he probably did not like insurance companies. In the final analysis, motives are always private and always personal.

To the question of why the left considers murder as a legitimate form of resistance, several possible explanations might be offered. On the historical side of things, it would be useful to point out the modern Left’s origins in the French Revolution. In an impressive debate against Christopher Hitchens, David Berlinski reminded us that after renaming Notre Dame Cathedral to the Temple of Reason, the French Revolutionists went out and killed 50,000 innocent people not DESPITE the fact that they considered themselves worshipers of reason, but BECAUSE they considered themselves worshipers of reason.

His point was that it becomes very easy to kill other people once you have decided that you are, by definition, reasonable; just as it is fairly easy to kill people once you have decided by definition that you are good, or just, or on the “right side of history.” For those of us who never believed the ridiculous proposition that fascism is a rightwing ideology, the industrialized murder regimes of the 20th century are a continuation of this historical argument.

My inclination, however, is to find the explanation in the Left’s ideology of power and resentment. On the one hand, it is a natural feature of human nature to scapegoat failures. An example is to blame black poverty and crime on white people.

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On the other hand, the postmodern Left’s philosophy of power has always been skeptical of the democratic premise that power can be delegated to others who will use such power to uplift others.

Power naturally tends to more uncouth ends—domination, control, the belittling of enemies or dangerous elevation of self. For the Left, the-will-to-power (an inherently selfish tendency) is the primal energy of human action—call it will, call it motivation, call it whatever you like.

Stretching all the way back to Nietzsche—greatest of postmodern philosophers—the idea was that power realized how ugly it was, and donned various aesthetics to justify itself: truth, beauty, goodness, rightness, etc. Nietzsche famously said that truth was a movable set of metaphors and conventions.

In other words, power disguises itself as beauty or righteousness in order to make itself both acceptable and appropriate. In the contemporary era, the postmodern Left would argue, “legitimacy” is the latest face paint that their power puts on to distract from its hideousness.

“Meritocracy” is another way of saying “White power is wholly legitimate”; or perhaps “male power”, or Jew power, or rich people power. The point being that the entire democratic process is a way for dominant ideological groups—white people, males, rich folks—to transfer power to trustworthy proxies who act appropriately in their interest alone while at the same time pretend those interests are both popularly supported and implemented in conjunction with the will of the whole.

It is likely that you’ve heard sexism and misogyny and racism as explanations for Mr. Trump’s win. Well, there you have it!

But where does violence fit into the leftist scheme? In one word, law . The Law is yet another bafflement, another sleight-of-hand by which power establishes itself as “proper”. Each new category of “justification” also expands the vocabulary of censorship used by those in power. Criminal, ugly, false are all registered as ad hominem attacks by which the social elites delay confrontation with the ideological proletariat.

Criminal behavior is anti-establishment activism. Ugliness is an aspect of revolution. Falsehood is the eloquence of the marginalized.

Do you see? For the Left, the justification of power is just a rhetorical strategy.

The alleged killer of CEO Brian Thompson is a hero precisely because he challenges the normal exercise of power. The entire history of capitalism is violence justified by various aesthetics: Luigi Mangione is a hero because he used violence-as-violence to fight a system of organized violence.

Luigi was not only brutal, but ironic. His act of murder was a confession of understanding and resistance.

Christ conquered death by death. The left obsesses over this point quite heretically: to use the weapon of oppression against the oppressor is a sacred act.

For those who wonder whether a common culture might be achieved for all Americans, we draw upon Pierre Manent’s essential insight about what a community is: a group of people with a common “task” or “agendum”.  The Left considers the task of society, its “agendum,” to be essentially oppression. The task of the leftist is therefore inherently anti-social (“No justice, No peace”).

Its credo is almost entirely borrowed from Christianity and shallowed out: just as the sinner spends the rest of his life “in prayer and fasting”, a just society is one which redistributes resources (the meek shall inherit the earth) while committing itself to penitential acts, acts of anti-whiteness as repentance for anti-blackness, acts of anti-manhood as repentance for anti-womanhood. Indeed, grand theft from the rich and the privileged is the greatest act of repentance.

The more cynical of the left’s critics might summarize the whole thing as a project of cynicism, of opportunism, of emotional puppetry. Philosophers hate this answer. People of common sense suspect its truth.

The Left’s ideology is at once religious and sociological, ideological and action-oriented. The Left does not believe in a community except as a coalition of power. To paraphrase a Marxist translation of the Bible:

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for righteousness is bloodshed.

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Risqué Or Revolutionary? People Are Losing Their Minds Over A New ‘Conservative’ Dress thumbnail

Risqué Or Revolutionary? People Are Losing Their Minds Over A New ‘Conservative’ Dress

By Mary Rooke

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Editors’ Note: We hardly consider ourselves fashion consultants, but it seems refreshing that a women’s magazine features… women. In an era where homecoming queens are guys, and beauty pageants are giving prizes to men in drag, showing off the female body’s genuine and distinctive physical characteristics should be applauded. The trans movement either tries to erase womanhood or suggests it can be hijacked simply by a man declaring himself as one. Being a woman is more than applying makeup with a trowel and adopting women’s clothing. We can’t say we object to the dress style being promoted. Most men like women and their distinctive physical attributes. Perhaps this is a cultural sign that we are a peak “trans” and the way back to liking women is in process.  Now, all we need is to work on Leftist women, who, because they hate men, dress in studied frumpiness to signal they don’t care to be attractive because they want to be appreciated solely because of their women’s study degree.

A women’s magazine is going viral after introducing a new line of provocative dresses. While everyone is allowed to express their opinions, conservatives are missing the point.

Our culture is starved of beautiful things. Everything women are sold to wear is either casual clothes or made to make women appear more masculine. From oversized sweaters and pants to yoga leggings and matching sweatsuits, femininity is left out of the equation when designers craft our wardrobes.

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Enter Evie Magazine. Evie has never claimed to be a conservative magazine. For goodness sake, its website boasts sex and relationship tips. However, it wants to be a magazine where women can find beauty and reconnect with their feminine style. Between the posts about the harms of birth control, marital advice and sweet Christmas traditions, they started a dress line with their brand Sundress.co.

Their latest release is a dress they dubbed “The Raw Milkmaid Dress.” Conservative “trad-moms” lost their minds over the model’s size 32G bust almost falling out of the dress. Critics slammed the company, claiming it was overpriced (it’s being sold for around $190) and not modest, traditional or conservative in any way. (ROOKE: ‘Fighting For Women’s Rights’ Is What Got Us Into Transgender Bathroom Mess In The First Place)

And that’s fine. It’s okay for people not to like that dress or feel it’s too expensive. However, people are missing the point. If we want to form a culture that gives women their divine femininity back, we have to start somewhere. If we’re going to reject the scourge of feminism and the woke culture it bore, why attack seemingly the one company searching for a way to draw young women in?

With Evie Magazine, we can finally reclaim what was taken from us. The magazine’s readers are mostly moderate to conservative women looking for someone to speak to them about their desire to join the anti-feminist movement. They hate birth control but don’t really understand why. They want to be good wives, girlfriends and mothers and need a voice that gently guides them into our world.

The Evie dress harkens back to a time when women weren’t forced to be corporate shills, working in an office all day with people who do not care or love them, destined to climb the corporate ladder where each step sheds another layer of their beauty and femininity.

No, the dress isn’t practical. You can’t actually milk a cow or tend to chickens and children in this dress. But, again, those critiques aren’t the point of this product. It’s not made for the women who have already broken the cycle of our anti-feminine culture. (ROOKE: Leftist Magazine Champions Dangerous Solution To Solve Military’s Recruitment Problem)

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This dress is for the women who look into our lives and dream of the day they are us. They want to leave their corporate jobs, get married and have pictures of themselves holding a baby on their hip, one more in their belly and a toddler making funny faces at their side. They want this life but have no bridge to cross to get there.

The Raw Milkmaid Dress is the bridge. It’s what will draw them out of their androgynous clothing and into the world where femininity is celebrated. Single women can wear this dress and envision themselves walking their future pastures with their children in the late fall, waiting for their husbands to come home. It’s also a symbol for like-minded men to see and know that this is the life they are searching for.

Evie should be celebrated for bringing beauty back to women’s clothing, not demonized because their dress line doesn’t fit a conservative dress code. This is the first time in decades that the female body has been celebrated for its natural beauty and not forced into a corporate girlie design.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

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NEW REPORT: Faith-Based Groups Play ‘Integral Role’ In Serving The Needy thumbnail

NEW REPORT: Faith-Based Groups Play ‘Integral Role’ In Serving The Needy

By Mathew Holloway

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

A new report from the Center for American Institutions (CAI) at Arizona State University (ASU) has revealed that faith-based organizations are playing an “integral role” in addressing housing and food insecurity, addiction, at-risk youth, and more.

The report on “Religion, Charity and American Life,” is entitled A Thousand Points of Light Still Shine and was compiled with survey and research data from the CAI with feedback from faith leaders Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., and Rabbi Pinchas Allouche.

In a press release, CAI wrote, “While often overlooked, volunteers from congregations of many faiths feed, clothe, and support our communities, according to the report. They collect and distribute food. They help with rent and utilities and point people to additional organizations that can assist. The authors of the study said it can be seen as a call to action and a reminder of the necessity to affirm the religious liberty necessary to make way for these institutions to do this life-sustaining support and outreach.”

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The report noted that in the metro Phoenix area, Jewish Family and Children’s Services is known for providing treatment for illnesses, mental health problems, and drug abuse. It also assists people with food insecurity, offering nutritional assistance and even dental referrals. The Living Streams Church’s food pantry of Central Phoenix feeds approximately 5,000 people per year working Mondays through Thursdays. The Catholic St. Vincent de Paul conferences, small groups of volunteers within local parishes, conduct food deliveries to needy people within their parish boundaries.

A Jewish temple located in Phoenix doesn’t operate a food pantry but rather its members contribute their time and money to two nearby pre-existing food pantries. The CAI observed that other congregations, such as a Disciples of Christ Church in Phoenix, also contributed to nearby pantries.

Looking further, the report found that 86% of food pantries in Detroit, Michigan, that are found on findhelp.org are faith-based with many housed-on church property and run by volunteer staff. CAI also found that four of the seven “best” drug addiction treatment centers in the Detroit metro area, as reported by Addiction Resource, are also faith-based.

The report notes that the role played by faith-based groups in combating food insecurity is crucial.

“Since the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of Americans are caught in a squeeze. As food prices skyrocketed, along with other basic needs like transportation, housing, and energy, SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps) did not keep up. In a 2023 survey conducted by Feeding America, the largest American charity focused on food insecurity, 65 percent of food banks reported increasing demand. Food pantries, meanwhile, found that food inflation meant their contributions did not go as far as they did pre-pandemic, even as lines at their doors grew longer.”

The study also drew attention to the dangers of the heat to the homeless during Arizona summer finding, “Summer in Phoenix can be deadly without access to water and cooling. Alongside public hydration and cooling stations, faith-based groups go to homeless camps and distribute water and necessities. For example, St. Vincent de Paul has trucks that make the rounds to places where homeless people congregate to hand out water, food, and supplies. On a smaller scale, Sunnyslope Ministries of Hope distributes water in central Phoenix most every summer evening, along with personal care items and shoes. Also, in Phoenix, Young Single Adult groups from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) congregations take part in distributing aid to the homeless.”

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Rabbi Pinchas Allouche, Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Tefillah, also contributed to the report writing, “Faith-based organizations are the lifeblood of America’s moral fabric, calling each of us to fulfill our God-given responsibility to heal the world. Through acts of goodness and kindness, we can restore faith in humanity and remind the world that light can dispel even the thickest darkness. This call to action can propel readers to reflect on how they, too, can contribute to making the world more divine through small yet powerful acts of goodness and kindness. It will also highlight the importance of treating each other with respect, as God’s children who are all part of God’s human family.”

The commission made four key recommendations based upon the collected data:

  • Faith-based organizations need to do a better job of informing the general public of these programs. On a community level, faith-based organizations should consider creating a collective website to report on their activities.
  • Greater media attention needs to be driven by individual churches, synagogues, temples, and faith-based charities to newspapers, the media, and social media about the stories of individuals who have benefited from their programs. Americans love success stories.
  • Media itself should give more attention to the importance of faith-based charities and programs in their communities.
  • Americans need a better understanding of religious liberty, as embodied in the First Amendment. This should begin in the classroom. State legislators and school boards should require that time be given in the classroom to the foundational concept of religious liberty in American life.

Professor Donald Critchlow, Director of the Center for American Institutions at ASU, explained, “Religion is under unprecedented attack on multiple fronts, with growing secularization, declining attendance, and hate-filled attacks on people of faith. And yet, as this report illustrates in vivid detail, volunteers from various religious congregations are still showing up for those most in need in their local communities.”

He added, “The irony is that while faith-based organizations are more active in our communities today than at any time in modern American history, these good works coincide with a rise in hate crimes.”

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This article was published by AZ Free News and is reproduced with permission.

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